We were at the HICSS!

At this year’s Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Professor Mirbabaie contributes two research papers.

Paper 1 deals with conversational agents (CA) and data sharing as researchers, often hesitant to provide full access to their datasets, can find guidance through research data management (RDM) processes in CAs that nudge them towards more data sharing. In this paper, Professor Mirbabaie, Jonas Rieskamp and their colleagues present an online experiment on researchers’ interaction with a CA and a survey on participants’ data-sharing behaviours and indicate that the presence of a guiding and enlightening CA on an RDM platform has a constructive influence on a researchers’ intention to share data and their data sharing behaviour. Notably, individual factors do not appear to impede this effect.

Mirbabaie, M., Rieskamp, J., Hofeditz, L. & Stieglitz, S. (2024). Breaking Down Barriers: How Conversational Agents Facilitate Open Science and Data Sharing. Proceedings of the HICSS 2024, Honolulu, United States.

Paper 2 examines the spreading process of false information on Telegram. During the COVID-19 pandemic, various false information spread on social media, making understanding the underlying spreading processes an urgent necessity. In this paper, Professor Mirbabaie, Jonas Rieskamp, Marie Langer and Alexander Kocur specifically examine the platform Telegram since its structure poses a high risk for radicalisation. Through gathering a network of German-speaking channels that spread false information about Ivermectin’s effectiveness against COVID-19, they compared results from Telegram to X (formerly known as Twitter) to gain important insights for research on practice. Their results show the significance of opinion leaders during the spreading process and outline avenues for future research regarding false information on Telegram.

Rieskamp, J., Mirbabaie, M., Langer, M. & Kocur, A. (2024). From Virality to Veracity: Examining False Information on Telegram vs. Twitter. Proceedings of the HICSS 2024, Honolulu, United States.