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The growing importance of social media in conflicts and crises is accompanied by an ever-increasing research interest in the crisis informatics field in order to identify potential benefits and develop measures against the technology's abuse. This special issue sets out to give an overview of current research on the use of social media in conflicts and crises. In doing so, it focuses on both good and malicious aspects of social media and includes a variety of papers of conceptual, theoretical and empirical nature. In six sections, the special issue presents an overview of the field, analytical methods, technical challenges, current advancements and the accepted papers before concluding. Specific topics range from cyber deception over information trustworthiness to mining and near-real-time processing of social media data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study about communicability of conversational interfaces (namely chatbots) under a semiotic perspective. A chatbot is a software system that allows you to simulate real conversations between devices and users by means of a conversational interface (CI). After introducing the chatbot concept, focusing on its advantages and issues, we will present two domains of use in which chatbot interfaces can be effective: healthcare and smart home. For carrying out simple tasks such as finding information or triggering operations, users need an easy-to-use and to an easy-to-learn system to communicate with. To face this, conversational interfaces represent the latest trend in the field of digital design. For studying the communicability aspects of a CI, we carried out a user test to compare traditional and chatbot interfaces. This paper aims at evaluating the benefits at the communicability level of a chatbot in comparison to traditional GUI for incrementing the effectiveness and efficacy of communication between users and the system specifically for users with poor attitude in using technologies. In details, we evaluated the communicability of two prototypes that can be used to solve simple tasks in order to favour user inclusion, including everyone with very little exposure to technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to provide insights concerning the effects of the ubiquitous digital environment on the way people think and the subsequent need to equip young individuals with the necessary skills. Several studies focus on defining the so-called digital skills, also providing indications that higher cognitive skills are required. However, they do not examine how young individuals could perform better to adapt to the continuously evolving digital environment. To address this gap, the study introduces and analyses the construct of digital intelligence, representing the new way of thinking and behaviour in the digital environment. For the purposes of the study, a set of tests was given to students at Greek high schools, targeting 15–16 years old students and employing original tests to assess digital intelligence. According to the findings, digital intelligence is composed of: (1) logical reasoning, algorithms, and evaluation, (2) abstraction, decomposition, and patterns and generalisation, (3) digital emotional intelligence and communication, (4) digital safety and security, and (5) digital identity, use, literacy, and rights. Assessing digital intelligence, as proposed in this study, could be used to assist vocational guidance, employee selection and evaluation, and development of revised school curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, chatbots is one of the fast rising artificial intelligence (AI) trend relates to the utilisation of applications that interact with users in a conversational format and mimic human conversation. Chatbots allow business to enhance customer experiences and fulfil expectations through real-time interactions in e-commerce environment. Therefore, factors influence consumer's trust in chatbots is critical. This study demonstrates a chatbots trust model to empirically investigate consumer's perception by questionnaire from self-reported approach and by electroencephalography (EEG) from neuroscience approach. This study starts from integrating three key elements of chatbots, in terms of machine communication quality aspect, human-computer interaction (HCI) aspect, and human use and gratification (U&G) aspects. Moreover, this study chooses EEG instrument to explore the relationship between trust and purchase intention in chatbots condition. We collect 204 questionnaires and invite 30 respondents to participate the survey. The results indicated that credibility, competence, anthropomorphism, social presence, and informativness have influence on consumer's trust in chatbots, in turn, have effect on purchase intention. Moreover, the findings show that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal gyrus are significantly associated with building a trust relationship by inferring chatbots to influence subsequent behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]