Natalie Lee San Pang

National University of Singapore | NUS · Department of Communications & New Media

Introduction. Context often provides the basis for studying information behaviour, and much of it has been studied in terms of particular occupations, roles, or socioeconomic status. A less studied, but as important basis is crisis coping as shaping information seeking. This paper focuses on a haze crisis as one such situation, and examines the inf...

In recent years there has been growing interest in the discipline of computing in relation to cultural heritage, parallel with developments in greater user participation in archives and advances in documentation work. These trends are reflected in the case of a documentation project of an old Chinese cemetery in Singapore, Bukit Brown Cemetery. Thi...

How can cultural institutions in Singapore make use of the contemporary media environment to harness participation from communities, or be participants themselves within the activities of local communities in the context of producing and sharing resources in the knowledge commons? What are the benefits and challenges? Abstract The report starts wit...

Many studies done in the study of usability and heuristic evaluations have evolved around the use of scenarios and heuristics. In our study, we aim to define usability attributes using research on scenario-based design methodologies as well as classical heuristic evaluation theories -specifically for hypermedia objects. We then apply these principl...

Prior internet studies research has examined dying, death, and disposal from the perspectives of material practices, new persistences, visibilities, and identities, but less so through the lens of platforms and algorithms. This special issue examines how digital infrastructures, manifested as platforms and algorithms, function to transform experien...

Extant literature has often focused on digital citizenship amongst youths in particular instances and contexts, but is limited in addressing how such citizenship compare to other generational cohorts. Examining political expression as a particular form of actualising citizenship, the paper utilises a longitudinal approach to explore the effects of...

Digital resources—which include devices, internet connection and digital literacy—have become basic needs. Thus with the global COVID-19 pandemic having accelerated digitalization, the urgency for universal digital inclusion has hastened. Otherwise, digital inequality will lead to social inequality and impede social mobility. Using Singapore as a c...

While there is a growing body of research on information behavior during nonroutine events such as natural disasters, the research has largely neglected older persons as a specific group despite their identification as a demographic that suffers disproportionately during disasters. To address this gap, this article reports on the study of the infor...

Using systematic review of the literature, we investigated how empirical studies have conceptualized at-risk or vulnerable youth digital information practices. A search for empirical studies published between January 2009 and December 2018 was carried out using keyword search. The results were filtered using a set of selection criteria, and 58 arti...

With Singapore serving as the subject of exploration, the volume explores the purview of imaginative representations of the city. Alongside the physical structures and associated practices that make up our lived environment, and the conceptualised space engineered into material form by bureaucrats, experts and commercial interests, a perceptual lay...

With Singapore serving as the subject of exploration, The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore explores the purview of imaginative representations of the city. Alongside the physical structures and associated practices that make up our lived environment, and conceptualized space engineered into material form by bureaucrats, experts and commercial int...

The use of instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp for civic and political purposes has been observed and reported to be growing faster than other social media platforms especially in recent years. Using empirical research on WhatsApp studies published from 2009 to 2019 as its corpus of data, this article systematically reviews them to provide...

The Internet or, as these authors argue, Internets (plural) in Asia are composed of cables and exchanges, protocols and firewalls, regulations and other legal devices, making them subject to investment and governance strategies, as well as treaties and court cases. But they are also composed of figures, layers, stories, and rumors. These latter des...

This research demonstrates the episodes of social media use in a conflict prevention movement in Ambon, Indonesia. Utilizing data collected from interviews and a secret Facebook group used for information sharing, three episodes of social media use throughout the stages of the movement are discussed. First, the rise of social media use describes re...

Considering the growing salience of nuclear energy in Southeast Asia, this study examines public perceptions of nuclear energy in Singapore, a technologically-advanced and affluent nation well-equipped to develop nuclear energy capabilities. Drawing from the source credibility theory, this study examines the public's credibility perceptions of nucl...

Purpose – During literature review, the task of finding similar research papers can be a difficult proposition for researchers due to the procedural complexity of the task. Current systems and approaches help in finding similar papers for a given paper, even though researchers tend to additionally search using a set of papers. Our research focuses...

Digital Libraries and Information Access - edited by G. G. Chowdhury December 2013

Cambridge Core - General - Digital Libraries and Information Access - edited by G. G. Chowdhury

Nuclear energy is widely regarded as a controversial technology that polarizes public opinion. Guided by the scientific literacy and cognitive miser models, this study systematically identified and examined the magnitude of the effects of 19 predictors on public perceptions of benefits, risks, and acceptance of nuclear energy. We meta-analysed 34 e...

Purpose – Although many interventional approaches have been proposed to address the apparent gap between novices and experts for literature review (LR) search tasks, there have been very few approaches proposed for manuscript preparation (MP) related tasks. This paper describes a task and an incumbent technique for shortlisting important and unique...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of task and user’s topic familiarity in the evaluation of information patch (websites). Design/methodology/approach An experimental study was conducted in a computer laboratory to examine users’ information seeking and foraging behaviour. In total, 160 university students participated in t...

Purpose Misinformation, can have lasting impacts in the management and control of a public emergency. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how misinformation flows and how user characteristics can shape such flows in the context of a violent riot in Singapore. Design/methodology/approach We apply the two-step flow theory and discuss our m...

Purpose – Systems to support literature review and manuscript preparation tend to focus on only one or two of the tasks involved. This paper describes an intervention framework that redesigns a particular set of tasks, allowing for interconnectivity between the tasks and providing appropriate UI display features for each task in a prototype system....

An initial reading list is prepared by researchers at the start of literature review for getting an overview of the research performed in a particular area. Prior studies have taken the approach of merely recommending seminal or popular papers to aid researchers in such a task. In this paper, we present an alternative technique called the AKR (Auth...

Introduction.This paper looks at the issue of inadequate and omitted citations in manuscripts by collecting the experiential opinions of researchers from the dual perspectives of manuscript reviewers and authors. Method. An online survey was conducted with participation from 207 respondents who had experience of reviewing and authoring research pa...

In this paper, we propose a framework that combines aspects of user role modeling and user-interface features with retrieval and recommender systems components. The framework is based on emergent themes identified from participants feedback in a user evaluation study conducted with a prototype assistive system. 119 researchers participated in the s...

Much work has been done on the role and impacts of social media in social movements, but less attention has been paid to the use of content features such as hashtags and URLs, and visual rhetoric used in persuading and mobilizing in social movements. We address this gap by analyzing a sample of 1271 tweets during World Environment Day, a yearly and...

Opinion expressions on Facebook are characterized by “click speech” in which people express their opinions and support (or disagreement) of posts through the “like,” “comment,” and “share” buttons. This study uses a 2 (low vs. high opinion congruency) x 2 (message civility vs. incivility) between-subject factorial experiment to examine the spiral o...

The increased adoption of mobile devices and the pervasiveness of mobile social media lead to the pressing need for more empirical research to understand the use and impacts of mobile social media in Asia. In this chapter, two cases of mobile social media use will be presented as examples of collective action. The first case is a comparative analys...

Information retrieval (IR) and recommender systems (RS) have been employed for addressing search tasks executed during literature review and the overall scholarly communication lifecycle. Majority of the studies have concentrated on algorithm design for improving the accuracy and usefulness of these systems. Contextual elements related to the schol...

Purpose – Building on studies examining the role of social media in contemporary forms of collective action and social movements, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between prior informational use of social media and individualized collective action. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 220 participants were surveyed in real-t...

To address aging challenges, we examine the concept of smart living and its applications for the elderly. Smart living refers to improving quality of life by transforming environments to become more intelligent and adaptable to users. In this paper, we discuss how smart living applications can help to address the needs of the elderly, as well as th...

Older adults are facing various challenges while using technology. With an ageing society, it is desirable to develop senior-friendly innovations to empower older adults to lead enjoyable and fulfilling lives. This study examines ageing issues of older adults in Singapore and their coping strategies through adoption and appropriation of technology...

Literature Review (LR) and Manuscript Preparatory (MP) tasks are two key activities for researchers. While process-based and technological oriented interventions have been introduced to bridge the apparent gap between novices and experts for LR tasks, there are very few approaches for MP tasks. In this paper, we introduce a novel task of shortlisti...

We demonstrate the recently built Rec4LRW system, meant for assisting researchers in three literature review and manuscript writing tasks. The system has been designed to be useful for all researchers, albeit the evaluation results show that it is more beneficial for research students and beginners. In this demonstration, we provide a walkthrough o...

This study reviews and analyzes the published empirical research on the role of social media in promoting political expression and participation in Confucian Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In addition to providing a narrative review of the literature, our analyses show clear numerical estimates of the relation...

Hashtags are placeholder features for capturing the underlying themes in microblog posts. Prior studies have investigated the conversation dynamics, interplay with other media platforms and communication patterns between users for specific event-based hashtags. Commonplace hashtags have been largely ignored, albeit the utility of these hashtags is...

In this paper, we start by analyzing the presence of grey literature (GL) references in the bibliographies of different article-types using an extract of 122,406 articles from the ACM Digital Library. GL articles accounted for about 16% of the overall references with highest presence in proceedings (17.61%). Boosting techniques for promoting GL ref...

This meta-analytic study reviews empirical research published from 2007 to 2013 with an aim of providing robust conclusions about the relationship between social media use and citizen engagement. It includes 22 studies that used self-reported measures of social media use and participation, with a total of 116 relationships/effects. The results sugg...

With the widespread adoption of social media in many Asian societies, these platforms are increasingly used in a variety of ways to promote civic and political aims but such uses are shaped by various stakeholders and contexts of use. In this special issue, four papers on Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and China-Australia present highly contextualized...

The increasing volume of user-generated content via blogs, public forums, and social networks has led to a significant increase in conflicting or contradictory views being generated, and added to the level of complexity in the information that the electorate must process. Yet little is known about the effects of processing such conflicting informat...

Research in recent years has focused on examining the acceptance as well as the appropriation of technologies amongst older adults, especially in how technologies alleviate issues of functional declines, loneliness, and financial difficulties brought about by ageing. Yet such studies have often overlooked meaningful appropriation or disappropriatio...

Social media platforms such as blogs have been said to improve and expand the potential of the Internet in enabling open access to political discourse. Yet several factors may undermine such potential, even in a place like Singapore, where Internet penetration and usage of social media are high. Participation remains fragmented, with certain groups...

In this article the authors present a study of the use of documents by a small group of art conservators in the Philippines. Documents are important for these conservators, but not just, or even primarily, for their role as memory devices. Also important are the functions they play in creating a sense of professional identity, for mediating the ten...

This paper argues that the move towards a neoliberal vision of the city-state in the postindustrial era in Singapore has not gone unchallenged. With alternative resources of collective memory, the innovations of the social media and openings within the state dominated press, the authors seek to illustrate the process of counter-mapping of Singapore...

In this paper, we introduce Rec4LRW, a recommender system (RS) for assisting researchers in finding research papers for their literature review and writing purposes. This system focuses on three researcher tasks-(1) Building a reading list of research papers, (2) Finding similar papers based on a set of papers, and (3) Shortlisting papers from the...

Using coffee shops as information grounds in the context of Christians and Muslim violent conflicts in Indonesia, this paper explores and explicates the emergence of information grounds in the context of conflicts. In a polarized society, coffee shops are constructed as a venue for social reliefs and rituals. They function as social magnets, attrac...

Introduction. As Internet users mature in their usage of online platforms, diverse behaviour is emerging, including uncivil behaviour. While past studies on opinion expression online have indicated the potential association of anonymity, news frames, negativity, network structure on civil behaviour of citizens, less attention is paid to the informa...

The Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) Berhad railway line was a crucial mode of transport for goods and passengers moving between Singapore and its neighbouring country Malaysia. Tanjong Pagar railway station – the terminus of the KTM railway line in Singapore – ceased operation from 1 July 2011, and KTM railway tracks in Singapore were slated for remova...

Building on studies examining the role of social media in contemporary forms of social movements, we report a study of 220 participants at a protest against overpopulation in Singapore. Social media was instrumental for disseminating information about the protest, and reflecting perceived personal relevance for specific issues. We found mixed motiv...

The unprecedented penetration of smartphones into the Singapore market offers potentially cost-effective and sustainable solutions for people to stay connected with their families, friends and communities. However, due to financial constraints and limited technology literacy, older adults often lack the access needed to tap into the benefits of thi...

Purpose: Population ageing is widespread across the whole globe. However, current devices that facilitate social communication are not easily accessible to older adults1. Our on-going project aims to provide wearable communication and surveillance aids for older adults and the disabled, allowing them to reach their full potential for social and men...

Despite some previous contributions from the library and information science community to the ongoing scholarly discussions of space and place, the research on ‘library as place’ in the context of young people has received scant attention. To address this gap, a case study of the Jurong Regional Library as place for young people in Singapore was ca...

This study engages collective action framing theory to examine the strategies employed by Singaporeans, rarely seen on the front lines of politics, on social media to organize a protest against the government’s immigration policy. It addresses critical and theoretical questions on the formation and dynamics of collective action frames on social med...

Propósito – À medida que as tecnologias de comunicação tornam-se cada vez mais inovadoras e a Internet cresce, fica evidente a necessidade de rever o mandato do Fórum de Governança da Internet. O propósito deste artigo, então, é baseado em pesquisa feita sobre a globalização e a democracia (Chua, 2003), sobre os “trilemas” da globalização (Rodrik,...

This paper seeks to discuss the ecology of memories in contemporary Singapore as reflective of emerging tensions between the state and civil society in remembering the development of the nation-state for close to about five decades of independence. At the core of the tension are competing efforts to curate public memories through traditional and ne...

Stories are becoming an increasingly important knowledge management and knowledge sharing tool to communicate ideas, values and experiences both to internal organizational members and to external stakeholders. This paper reports an initial effort to develop a framework for the analysis of organizational stories. The framework has two major parts: t...

In this paper, we have investigated the concept of "Cultural Robotics" with regard to the evolution of social into cultural robots in the 21st Century. By defining the concept of culture, the potential development of a culture between humans and robots is explored. Based on the cultural values of the robotics developers, and the learning ability of...

This article seeks to demonstrate the significance of new media in reconfiguring and expanding the politics of conservation in the rapidly urbanizing postcolonial city state of Singapore. The critical role of new media is examined, in providing new access and connectivity to the efforts of non-governmental organizations, particularly heritage group...

In this study we have explored the concept of "Cultural Robotics" for the evolution of social to cultural Robots for contemporary society. By defining the concept of culture in computing, the potential creation of a culture between humans and robots is explored. Based on the cultural values of the robots creators and learning ability of the robots,...

Little has been known about China’s policing of the Internet until recently, when researchers began publishing insights on the types of message that gets deleted and permitted on various social media platforms, as well as whether or not such moderations are performed automatically. Many discussions have focused on how such efforts may undermine the...

This study analyzes interaction techniques in previously proposed 16 user interface concepts that utilize the form factor of a finger-ring, i.e. ringterfaces. We categorized the ringterfaces according to their interaction capabilities and critically examined how socially acceptable, subtle and natural they are. Through this analysis we show which k...

To-date, most of the research concerning online health information search has focused on how users search the Web and how they evaluate health websites. Despite the concerns raised on the impact of online health information on users, there is little research specifically exploring the problems users encounter and emotions they exhibit during the se...

People with autism are prone to suffer from impairments in social interaction, in verbal and non-verbal communication, show delayed or absent language, and lack of interest in other people (Durkin, 2010). The current paper aims to shift from the dominant biomedical paradigm, which focuses on deficits, toward an approach that explores what it means...

"UbiRing My Bell" presents the concepts of UbiRing and UbiBracelet, wearable devices that enable triggering of mnemonics on smartphones such as making phone calls, sending SMS or tweeting. This video demonstrates how UbiRing and UbiBracelet can be used to create mnemonics freely on any static object and triggered by free-air pointing. Interaction p...

Ubiquitous Shortcuts is an image processing based method for making and using mnemonics set onto the real world using smartphones or other computing systems. The mnemonics can be created by taking photos of the user's vicinity and by binding them onto command sequences. The mnemonic is triggered every time a similar photo is taken. Our method uses...

Using the example of a group of spectators watching a live street dance, this paper presents a work-in-progress concept of real-time video summarizing service by 'jumping' in different point of views. This innovative service takes up the challenges from various aspects of multimedia: mobile multimedia, authoring, real time interactive multimedia ap...

As innovations in communication technologies advance and penetration of the Internet grows, the need to reconsider a new mandate for the Internet Governance Forum is approaching a critical threshold. This paper addresses this objective using research concerning globalization and democracy (Chua, 2003), the “trilemmas” of global integration (Rodrik,...

Stories are becoming an increasingly important knowledge management and knowledge sharing tool to communicate ideas, values and experiences both to internal organizational members and to external stakeholders. This paper reports an initial effort to develop a framework for the analysis of organizational stories. The framework has two major parts: t...

This paper presents the use of a mobile augmented reality for navigation and visualization of Bukit Brown Cemetery (BBC). Natural feature tracking is used to recognize each tombstone to eliminate the need of physical modifications to each grave. GPS-based terrain clustering techniques is applied to reduce the computation time and cost which overcom...

In this paper we analyze the state-of-art in the evaluation of telepresence, social presence and copresence and propose a qualitative approach for evaluating social telepresence in mobile context. Our approach aims to meet the need of rapidly growing industries of mixed reality, social media and video broadcasting services.

As treasure houses of human history and knowledge with rich repositories on cultural heritage, museums and libraries have advantages of presence experience and powerful searching abilities respectively. We propose in this paper an integrated design of virtual museum and digital library in the preservation of cultural heritage of the Chinese “qipao”...