Aelita Skarzauskiene

• Doctor of Social Sciences
• Professor (Full) at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University

Introduction: Telegram’s privacy-focused architecture has made it a fertile ground for the spread of misinformation, yet its closed nature poses challenges for researchers. This study addresses the methodological gap in capturing and analysing misinformation on Telegram, with a particular focus on the anti-vaccination community. Methods: The resear...

The growing frequency of climate-related events underscores the urgent need for effective adaptation strategies alongside mitigation efforts. This study investigates the motivations driving climate adaptation behaviors in Lithuania, a region less immediately affected by climate change impacts. Drawing on survey data from 1,013 respondents, the rese...

Previous research to some extent evidenced the links between trust in science and vaccination, but the links between trust in science, vaccination, and Internet usage, have not been explored in depth yet. The purpose of this study was to examine the links between Internet usage, trust in science, and vaccination, based on data derived from the CROs...

Sustainability and circular economy principles are increasingly important in civil engineering, as highlighted by the United Nations Environmental Programme in 2023 the construction activities represented 36% of global energy use in 2020. However, the sector's focus on reducing operational carbon overshadows the need for addressing embodied carbon...

The accelerating impacts of climate change present significant challenges to sustainable urban development, testing the resilience of current governance frameworks and stakeholder responsibilities. In alignment with the EU's Green Deal, robust adaptation strategies and proactive climate risk anticipation are essential. Traditional discussions empha...

This research paper aims to co-design a theoretical framework and methodological guidelines to monitor the performance, outcomes, and impact of Citizen Science projects. Hence, the proposed methodology com- bines the previous research efforts on the engagement of external stakeholders into a composite monitoring tool, which allows measuring and com...

Introduction. Today, the world's attention is riveted to Ukraine because of the war with the Russian Federation and counteracting the spread of fake news is more relevant than ever. That is why it is essential to highlight practices and interpretations of fake news from three perspectives: the perception and attitudes toward it, perceptions of inte...

Introduction Online communities are gaining importance in modern society by actively structuring public opinion and initiating discussions about various socio-economical issues. As information and communication technologies advance, the online communities are confronted with novel technological and societal hurdles (the spread of misinformation, la...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide answers regarding the factors that motivate or discourage the quadruple helix (QH) stakeholders and the wider public in citizen science (CS) activities. The research reveals a current overview of the perceptions, attitudes, concerns and motivation with regard to development of CS ecosystem in four cou...

The popularity of water and coastal tourism is steadily increasing. Marinas, an essential part of water tourism activity, are complex organizations with heterogeneous business structures with numerous suppliers of various tourist services. The purpose of this research was to determine the components of marina services that are relevant for visitors...

Understanding the diversity and complexity of factors that either enable or hinder the participation of general public and stakeholder groups is of critical importance for any successful citizen science initiative. Since citizen science is de facto based on creating and sustaining a critical mass of participation, in the same way volunteer-based pr...

Practices for the engagement of citizens and other research and innovation (R and I) stakeholders in science can be found aplenty in the existing literature, all along with principles, guidelines and tools providing meaningful guidance for practitioners in research funding and performing, organizations (RPFOs) and helping them achieve high quality...

This research aims to extend our knowledge about the factors for increasing participation and sustainability of digitally enhanced communities. Thus, the subject of the research is online community projects which act as the catalysts for collective behaviors exhibited through the crowd effect. Typical to online communities and their social orientat...

Co‐creation and open innovation have become an important source of competitive advantage. Over the past decades, huge amounts of information have become accessible to the external stakeholders of the organizations, changing the traditional value creation processes. However, co‐creation comes with its challenges, including the complex engagement of...

This e-book and correspondent platform MyC3Place present the collection of the outcomes carried out by the partners of the C3Places Project. It explores the new dynamics of open spaces as a trusted service for community and expands our understanding on how mediated public open spaces function, paying attention to stakeholders, local context and dif...

The arrival of Blockchain and cryptographic assets-driven decentralized technologies has brought to the world an entirely new spectrum of possibilities regarding social, financial, and technological innovation. While the first applications of Blockchain technology were for digital currency transactions, that same technology is now being applied to...

The chapters of this book bring science a little closer to the knowledge about the design, production and management of public spaces. 37 authors responded to the Project’s call to share experiences, visions and reflections on how co-creation and participatory processes can create possibilities for a sustainable and equitable future. This book inte...

The new communication paradigm supported by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) puts end-users at the center of innovation processes, thereby shifting the emphasis from technology to people. Citizen centric approaches such as New Public Governance and Open Government in the public management research suggest that government alone cannot...

A wide range of public and private organizations, businesses and individuals throughout the world are experimenting with web-based, GIS, virtual and mobile technologies, often in collaboration with each other in order to develop civic technologies. Online communities form the basis for civic platforms, which are incubators for new ideas through pee...

The prevalence of so-called "fake news" is a relatively recent social phenomenon that is linked to disinformation, misinformation and other forms of networked manipulation facilitated by the rise of the Internet and online social media. The spread of misinformation is among the most pressing challenges of our time. Sources from which disinformation...

Purpose An increasingly urbanized global population is facing multiple, inter-related and inter-connected challenges. By applying the so-called Living Lab concept, the authors open up innovation processes through online and offline collaborations between urban policymakers, non-profit organizations, citizens and other stakeholder groups. However, m...

The accessibility and quality of public open spaces (e.g., parks, gardens, squares and plazas) are critical for cultural identity development as they provide important gathering points in the urban fabric and offer a place for social activities, enabling interaction among people of different generations and ethnicities. Public open spaces enhance t...

Co-creation can be defined as the involvement of citizens in the initiation and/or the design process of public services in order to (co)create beneficial outcomes and value for society. Mediated public open spaces are ideal environments for co-creation to emerge due to the involvement of the community and ICT in the knowledge creation. The aims of...

Digitally enhanced public open spaces are ideal environments for the social innovations to emerge due to the involvement of the entire community and ICT (Information and Communication Tools) in knowledge creation and aggregation. This research paper presents an early-stage methodological digital co-creation assessment framework that considers a var...

In this paper, we conduct a systematic survey of 50 Civic Tech platforms in Lithuania to evaluate their potential to co-create collective intelligence or "civic intelligence" applying Collective Intelligence Potential Index (CIPI) methodology that includes different socio-technological indicators. Civic intelligence is a form of collective intellig...

Traditional views on the public value creation focus on the public sector organizations as sole initiators of the value creation processes. The rise of interactive Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), however, opens new opportunities for broader engagement of civic stakeholders in the public value generation. The concept of co-creation...

The ‘Open Data’, ‘Open Knowledge’ and ‘Open Access’ movements promote the dissemination of information for societal benefit. Sharing information can benefit experts in a particular endeavour, and facilitate discovery and enhance value through data mining. On-going advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are accelerating the development of inventio...

Scientific society argues that human group demonstrates higher capabilities of information processing and problem solving than an individual does (Luo et al., 2009). Collective Intelligence (CI) is the general ability of a group to perform a wide variety of tasks (Woolley et al., 2010). With the growth and expansion of the Internet and social media...

The new paradigms of Open Innovation 2.0 and Web 3.0 have opened advanced possibilities for new dimension of digital collaboration and co-creation on each level of society. The Open Innovation 2.0 paradigm includes various concepts and practices, such as the principle of shared value, co-creation, high expectation entrepreneurship and triple helix...

This study addresses a specific challenge of non-utilized benefits from the potential of networked structures, design, and technological solutions in collaboration platforms as a source for improving and stimulating internal and external co-creation opportunities. The organization of the collaboration between diverse set of actors in sharing knowle...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at the factors driving online shopping and to develop an understanding of the factors influencing the online shopping by the consumers. This is done by exploring the factors that encourage consumers to shop online through analysis of such advantages as security, fast delivery, comparable price, conveni...

The main focus of this study is on the scientific identification of preconditions for collective intelligence (CI) to emerge and the prediction of possible development scenarios based on qualitative research results. The research subject is online communities that use innovative social technologies encouraging collective decision making, creativity...

Social Technologies and Collective Intelligence is a monograph written by 24 international researchers in the field of Social Technologies and edited by prof. dr. Aelita Skaržauskienė from Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, Lithuania. As an academic discipline, social technologies is a highly interdisciplinary research field that focuses on app...

The objectives of this paper are to overview and analyse the technological and social approaches of the IoT application areas. Applying things, which are connected in networks, could revolutionise many industry and service sectors thus creating new service provisions and administration methods based on information technology. Practical cases show t...

New technologies change our social ? economic everyday life by making considerable impact on its quality. The healthcare in the meantime is becoming more and more dependent on information and communication technologies, which enable the development of high quality healthcare services. The deployment of new ICTs has the potential to increase organis...

Social Technologies and Collective Intelligence is a monograph written by 24 international researchers in the field of Social Technologies and edited by prof. dr. Aelita Skaržauskienė from Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, Lithuania. As an academic discipline, social technologies is a highly interdisciplinary research field that focuses on app...

The project idea reflects European Commision recommended Work Programm 2013 for information and communication technologies management. Surveys conducted by analysts such as Forrester Research (2012) demonstrate that social technologies continue to grow in popularity inside the society and these developments will have an influence on policies and dr...

This paper introduces the theoretical model of CI (Collective Intelligence) Potential Index for a scientific discussion. The index will allow users to identify and to analyse conditions that lead online communities to become more intelligent, inclusive, reflective, and safe. The subject of the research is online community projects, which include co...

Today`s organizations are increasingly finding themselves in a world characterized by globalization, turbulence and complexity, paralleled with an exponential advancement in information technology (IT). These conditions require flexibility, collaboration, innovation and the courage to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. Such extreme challenges requi...

Collective creativity is a necessary quality in any innovative process which requires cooperation between groups or individuals. Gamification may be used as one of the possible methods for fostering collective creativity since it increases amusement of engagement/immersion into activities. The state of " flow " may be achieved during the participat...

Purpose – to analyse and summarise the problems of innovative business cluster performance in Lithuania and provide suggestions on how to improve the situation and to identify the main sources of their activity riskMethodology – general review of scientific literature that analyses the efficiency of clusters and factors that have a negative impact...

The scientific problem in our project is defined as a question: how social technologies could contribute to the development of smart and inclusive society? The subject of our research are networked projects (virtual CI systems) which include collective decision making tools and innovation mechanisms allowing and encouraging individual and team crea...

Health care sector modernizations and innovations are greatly depending on societal participation as any other public share sector. The goal of the research presented in this paper is to evaluate user inclusion to e-health development and reveal possible trends in adapting social media tools for e-health services development. In order to achieve th...

Although small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) involvement in the innovation process is a long standing issue and recently has resurged in the relevant literature, building and sustaining innovation is a hard and non linear work. The purpose of the paper is to explore the propensity of SMEs to innovate drawing evidence from three different cou...

Today's organisations change the focus from the ineffective bureaucratic models to more flexible communities of professional workers such as online communities, virtual self-managing teams, networked organisations, etc. Such extreme challenges require radical solutions and the transformation of leadership development. In this context, it is critica...

Social technologies continue to grow popularity inside the society. Even though the term “social technology’’ is most commonly used to refer to new social media such as Twitter and Facebook, a redefinition of this concept based on the original definition is needed. Nowadays the concept of “social technology” has several aspects which destabilize th...

The popularity of social technologies continues to grow in the society. The term ‘social technology’ is often referred to digital social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. In order to this a redefinition of this concept based on the original definition is needed. Nowadays the concept of social technologies has several aspects which...

Economic sectors of sail and repair of motor vehicles should be considered as specific and important for Lithuanian economy as they encourage economic growth in different regions. Used cars' market in Kaunas is the biggest in the European Union. On the other hand, this economic sector is one of the most risky sectors in terms of informal economy. D...

Straipsnyje tyrinėjamas elektroninio verslo modelių taikymas valstybinio sektoriaus įmonėse, analizuojant konkretų valstybinės įmonės „Lietuvos paštas“ veiklos modelį. Empirinis tyrimas įvertino pašto paslaugų kokybę ir paslaugų spektro plėtros galimybes liberalizuojamoje rinkoje. Straipsnio išvadose pateikiamas teorinis „Lietuvos pašto“ konkurenci...

Purpose The paper aims to analyse new management practices for addressing complexity, uncertainty and changes of today's business landscape. In this context it is critical to understand the role of intellectual capital and particularly what are the key competencies to be developed in order to deal with the fluidity of business. Effective decision m...

Purpose Effective decision making and learning in a world of growing dynamic complexity requires leaders to become systems thinkers – to develop tools to understand the structures of complex systems. The paper aims to clarify the relationship between systems thinking and leadership performance. The relevance of systems thinking as a competence was...

Purpose: To disclose the role of systems thinking as a competence in leadership. Findings: Correlational and regression analyses revealed that systems thinking competency was associated with higher leadership performance. Originality/value: This paper establishes a link between systems thinking and leadership performance. The relevance of systems t...