Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: An experiment was conducted to examine individuals’ memories of race-related facial features of an individual pictured in the news. Participants were presented with a series of news stories, including one of four different versions of the news story of interest: non-stereotyped, stereotyped/non-crime, nonviolent crime, violent crime. Subsequently, participants were asked to reconstruct the photograph of the individual pictured in the news story by selecting from a series of facial features (i.e., noses, mouths, skin tones) presented on a computer screen. While selected facial features did not differ from the actual photograph in the non-stereotyped and stereotyped/non-crime conditions, selected facial features in the crime stories featured more African-centered rather than European-centered features, and particularly so for the story concerning violent crime.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study uses a think-aloud protocol analysis of 20 native-Chinese speakers browsing two Chinese Web portals. The purpose of this study is to investigate how multimedia features affect Web users¡¯ portal preference as a function of innovativeness, by analyzing Web users¡¯ cognitive processes during the use of a portal dominated with text and graphic features and a portal dominated with integrated multimedia features.
Findings show that Web users across personal innovativeness levels have more higher-level cognitive processing and more favorable thoughts at a portal dominated with text and graphic features, whereas they have more lower-level cognitive processing and less favorable thoughts at a portal dominated with integrated multimedia features. Web users have more favorable experience in evaluation and elaboration at a portal dominated with text and graphic features, and they have less favorable experience in each type of cognitive processes at a portal dominated with integrated multimedia features.

Publication Type: Extended Abstract
Abstract: This report proposes an alternative "similarity approach" to efficiently identify constellations of characteristics for situations where factor analysis is not suitable. The described 10-step procedure may be applied to many types of preference hierarchies and other multi-referent measures. Here, the approach is applied to the case of shopping website features, with data from a sample of 218 adult Internet shoppers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the effectiveness of home pages to discover which design features of organizational home pages are more attractive to users of different cultures by employing two theories that were developed for studying different aspects and contexts of personality: self-construal and the social responses to communication technology (SRCT). The results of the experiment showed that the independent self-construal group tended to rate low graphic web sites more positively than the interdependent self-construal group, and it took less time to complete tasks in low graphic web sites than in high graphic web sites. However, even though the independent self-construal group was more likely to evaluate high interactive web sites favorably than the interdependent self-construal group, evidence that the independent self-construal group would be more competent in completing tasks in high interactive web sties than the interdependent self-construal group was not found. Although some findings have shown that traditional cross-cultural differences are still valid in distinguishing between different perceptions and behaviors online, others were interpreted as indigenous social issues and the technical progression of the Internet.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examines online user motivations for visiting an online newspaper and the relationship between user motivations and use of interactive features from a uses and gratifications perspective. Interactivity is defined as being on a continuum with three dimensions: human, human/medium and medium interactivity. Human interactivity that encourages dialogic communication between users is considered to be the highest form of interactivity. The findings from the study suggest three forms of user motivations: information seeking/surveillance, socialization and entertainment. In addition, the audience used medium interactive features most frequently, followed by human interactive features. Human/medium interactive features were used least. Further analysis found that all three motivations were predictors of use of medium interactive features. However, while socialization and entertainment remain as predictors, the information seeking/surveillance motivation was not a significant predictor of use of human and human/medium interactive features. Implications and limitations are discussed.