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I am actively involved in several projects at this time.NewsTrust NewsTrust is a non-profit organization that aims to create a
volunteer-driven news rating service. The organization plans to provide an online service that will help users to accurately assess the quality of news content, and will aggregate results so that all users can
quickly and easily find reliable sources and careful reporting on topics that interest them. As a member of the advisory board, I have consulted on the design of the system since 2005. In December the group
conducted an experiment designed to enhance our understanding of how non-experts rate the news. I am using the data from this work to collaboratively pursue two lines of inquiry. The first regards the
creation of an effective recommender system. Research questions include how many assessment questions should be included in the rating tool?; Whether detailed or abstract questions generate more accurate
assessments?; And what user characteristics are associated with the most reliable ratings? The second line of inquiry is related to communication theory. How do individuals' viewpoints influence their
perceptions of the quality of a news story? My earlier research has demonstrated that people are drawn to opinion-reinforcing information, but they do not avoid opinion challenges. Does a similar dynamic
shape people's perceptions of news quality? My hypothesis is that opinion-reinforcing information leads to a perception of higher quality content, but that the presence of opinion-challenging information does not
reduce the perceived quality of a news story. For more information about the service, see:
http://www.newstrust.net/e-Government As a member of the POINT (People, Organizations, & Information Technology) Project, a $2.8M
NSF-funded research enterprise, I am responsible for proposing and developing a study of e-government at the local level. The e-government project is still in the planning stages. The first component of the
research will be a study of local elected officials' use of the Internet. We are partnering with the National League of Cities (NLC), and building on survey work the group conducted in 2002 in collaboration with
the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The longitudinal data will allow us to look at changes in officials' use and perceptions of new ICTs. We will also examine the political balkanization question,
building on work of Van Alstyne, Brynjolfsson, Rosenblat, and Mobius, among others. We will examine whether the use of the Internet and other new communication technologies is associated with smaller argument
repertoires, less diverse stakeholder contacts, or more homogeneous decision-relevant information. The second component of the research will focus on e-government from citizens' point of view. Surveying
citizens from across the country, and representing cities with a range of e-government deployment levels (from non-existent to extensively integrated), we will examine whether e-government initiatives are associated
with changes in citizens' engagement levels, their political awareness, their sense of empowerment, their confidence in local government, and so on. We will also test whether these relationships are dependent on
the extent to which the e-government initiatives support e-administration and/or e-citizenship. Computer-supported work This is the second area of on-going research for Project POINT. This research uses
survey data collected in two waves (2004, 2006) to examine the changing role of new ICTs in the workplace. Telework and anytime/anyplace work are of particular interest. One paper is forthcoming, and others
are currently in progress or under review. Topics addressed in these works include a theoretically-grounded and empirically tested taxonomy of telework, and careful examination of the influence that the attributes
of the computer-supported work environment (computer use, telework, computer-based surveillance, etc.) have on worker autonomy and satisfaction. The new survey data, collected in the summer 2006, will allow us to
study the causes and consequence of less well-known forms of telework (mobile telework, flexiwork), the influence of ubiquitous computing on anytime/anyplace work, and the relationship between more porous work-life
boundaries and workers' performance and satisfaction. |
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R. Kelly Garrett, Senior Research Fellow, University of California, Irvine, Center for Research on Information Technology
and Organizations (CRITO), 3200 Berkeley Place, Irvine, CA 92697
email: garrettk [at] uci.edu | web site: http://www.umich.edu/~garrettk/ | Last Updated: July 27, 2007 |
