Newhouse School of Public Communications

Being responsive in cases of unplanned disruptions has been difficult for management in the past, but for IT it is even more challenging: IT Systems are developed to fulfill predefined properties, and offer a hard-wired set of exception handling functionalities. Resilience encompasses reaction on disturbances beyond the scope of known properties. An organization is resilient if its capabilities can be adapted to new requirements which have not been explictly incorporated into the existing IT design. This paper introduces the concept of resilience and its implications in the fields of business information systems.

Academic paper insights: Resilience - A New Research Field in Business Information Systems?. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268134677_Resilience_-_A_New_Research_Field_in_Business_Information_Systems [accessed Apr 5, 2017].

Sustainability is one of the most important challenges for organizations. For example the growing impacts of climate change affect the global economy highly unpredictably. Moreover, our interconnected and interdependent world reinforces the emergence of high-complexity and the exponential pace of change. As the pervasiveness of Information Technology (IT) provides a myriad of opportunities and productivity improvements, IT also increases complexity and interdependences of organizational services and assets. As a consequence, managing complexity and uncertainty is imperative for modern organizations to ensure resilient and sustainable operation, and to protect the transmitted and stored data. Presently, decision makers are already equipped with a broad set of tools and models to enhance organizational resilience and sustainability. Although IS-architectures such as Enterprise Resource Planning and Business Process Management (BPM) Systems for integrated management support already exist for decades, most organizations address security- and risk management, business continuity, and IT operations siloed, with little integration and communication. But nowadays, many organizations are realizing that these activities are complementary and collaborative functions having the same goal, namely to enhance organizational resilience and sustainability. Thus, there is a pressing need for an integration of organizational and technological views, as well as the integration of related, but usually disjointed activities of IS security, business continuity and IT operations. Accordingly, this thesis introduces Resilience Management Information Systems (RMIS) as a novel approach for the IT-enabled support of all phases along the resilience management cycle on the level of processes. Despite the wide spread of resilience across multiple disciplines, a number of open research issues remain. These encompass conceptual and definitional vagueness of resilience, a lack of empirical research and a lack of applicable (organizational) solutions and IS-artifacts (prototypical implementations) to bring resilience into action.

If you intend to cite some excerpts of this dissertation, please use the citation of the corresponding publications. //
Verwenden Sie bitte die jeweiligen Originalreferenzen wenn Sie Auszüge dieser Dissertation zitieren möchten.

Chapter 2: Copyright 2013 Springer, ISBN 978-3-319-08818-1;
Chapter 4: Copyright 2013 Springer, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-41687-3_2; Copyright 2013 IEEE, 10.1109/DSNW.2013.6615533;
Chapter 5: Copyright 2013 Springer, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-41098-7_12;
Chapter 6: Copyright 2011 Springer-Gabler, DOI 10.1007/s12599-011-0187-z; Copyright 2011 Association for Information Systems, DOI 978-0-615-55907-0

The superhero is the modern savior. Many superheroes were created during times of great national distress and served as a beacon of hope for a nation in crisis. Psychologically, there is evidence that exposure to American symbolism increases pro-national attitudes. This study attempts to discern the link— if any— between exposure to superhero media and nationalistic attitudes.
Keywords: nationalism, superhero media, patriotism, priming, cultivation theory

This study examines source type, citation accuracy, and anecdotal reliance in parenting blog articles about the autism/vaccine controversy. Existing literature on common errors and shortcomings of traditional health journalism, in conjunction with existing guidelines and suggestions for optimal health journalism practices, were used to synthesize a content analysis code structure. The code structure was used to examine 122 parenting blog posts from 18 different blogs, spanning a time period from June 22, 2005 to January 9, 2012, for details including the following: • author demographics (gender, profession, parenthood, vaccination patterns) • type of blog the article appeared in • author stance of the autism/vaccine link (support, reject, or conflicted) • inclusion of cited sources in the form of hyperlinks, whether links were cited correctly, and which sources the links represented (blog, news article, medical research, etc) • inclusion of anecdotal evidence • whether sources and anecdotes were used to support or refute the autism/vaccine link. Two coders (intercoder reliability 0.80 or higher for all variables) were used to analyze the blog sample. A statistical analysis including frequency descriptives, Pearson's correlation coefficient, one-way ANOVA, and independent t-tests were used to analyze the data. A demographic overview of the blogs revealed that the majority of the sampled authors were mothers with no health or science background, and that most did not believe that a relationship between vaccines and autism exists. An examination of the sources revealed that while most sources were cited correctly, the incorrectly-cited sources mirrored traditional journalism flaws. The statistical analyses revealed significant relationships between blog type and number of statements that supported the autism/vaccine link; and between the author's opinion on the autism/vaccine link and the number of "neutral" hyperlinks (not used to support or refute the autism/vaccine link). While the realm of parenting blogs as medical information source merits further research, the results of this study indicate that parenting blogs, an important resource to parents, should be treated with caution as a health authority. Parents find great value in being able to discuss their fears and concerns with other parents, and blogs can serve as a way for parents to hear about breaking news that is quite relevant to them. However, a lack of credible sources indicates that parents should seek in-depth health formation from health outlets other than blogs.

This paper examines media-propagated orientalism and Western hegemony in relation to the Middle East. There are countless films that portray Arabs as monodimensionally evil villains. One such film is the 2008 blockbuster Iron Man. This paper analyzes orientalism and hegemonic constructs in Iron Man and some of the effects and messages that Iron Man promotes.

This study examines source type, citation accuracy, and anecdotal reliance in parenting blog articles about the autism/vaccine controversy. Existing literature on common errors and shortcomings of traditional health journalism, in conjunction with existing guidelines and suggestions for optimal health journalism practices, were used to synthesize a content analysis code structure. The code structure was used to examine 122 parenting blog posts from 18 different blogs, spanning a time period from June 22, 2005 to January 9, 2012, for details including the following: • author demographics (gender, profession, parenthood, vaccination patterns) • type of blog the article appeared in • author stance of the autism/vaccine link (support, reject, or conflicted) • inclusion of cited sources in the form of hyperlinks, whether links were cited correctly, and which sources the links represented (blog, news article, medical research, etc) • inclusion of anecdotal evidence • whether sources and a...