Milad Mirbabaie

University of Bamberg · Information Systems and Applied Computer Sciences

The spread of misinformation has become a pressing issue on social media platforms. Decentralised social media, which use open-source software and/or blockchain technology, are particularly prone to misinformation in the absence of a central platform authority. At the same time, the decentralisation of social media introduces new user-centric appro...

Digital detox is gaining increasing attention as a method of self-control to address the adverse effects of prolonged leisure information and communication technology (ICT) use. However, the existing literature on this matter uses inconsistent terminology and reports mixed empirical results due to different understandings of what constitutes a digi...

Rumours in social media are of continuous concern for society and research. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that medical rumours could lead to poisoning and threatens health. Rumours are further known to spread significantly further and faster compared to factual information. Scholars developed persuasive debunking strategies, yet rumour spreade...

Chronic diseases such as diabetes are among the most frequent causes of death, and thus, pose a major challenge for the healthcare sector. Information systems provide opportunities for minimizing risk behavior of patients and guiding healthcare specialists. However, existing applications do not provide the emotional and cognitive relief that patien...

The transitions individuals make between roles are critical for navigating professional and private life domains. These role transitions involve physical and psychological movements between positions and statuses in social structures. Today, digital technologies are becoming increasingly pivotal in these transitions. However, neither existing theor...

Social media constitute an important arena for public debates and steady interchange of issues relevant to society. To boost their reputation, commercial organizations also engage in political, social, or environmental debates on social media. To engage in this type of digital activism, organizations increasingly utilize the social media profiles o...

The advancement of digital technologies and the wider acceptance of remote work have led to heightened expectations among knowledge workers. Nowadays, many individuals make career decisions based on the level of flexibility that is offered by employers. This paper explores to what extent the label of 'digital nomadism' is used and perceived as an e...

Merely using new collaboration technologies does not necessarily result in the desired benefits, which is why it is important to understand what constitutes effective use behavior. In information systems research, the affordance network approach has been developed as a methodological approach to investigate effective use behavior. The approach has...

Climate change causes ever more natural hazards. In such crisis situations, individuals seek for information about the situations constantly. Due to its ever-growing relevancy in the everyday life, social media are increasingly used to seek and discuss crisis-related information. Social media platforms offer the possibility to deploy social bots (i...

An increasing number of clinicians (i.e., nurses and physicians) suffer from mental health-related issues like depression and burnout. These, in turn, stress communication, collaboration, and decision-making-areas in which Conversational Agents (CAs) have shown to be useful. Thus, in this work, we followed a mixed-method approach and systematically...

Digital transformation fundamentally changes the way individuals conduct work in organisations. In accordance with this statement, prevalent literature understands digital workplace transformation as a second-order effect of implementing new information technology to increase organisational effectiveness or reach other strategic goals. This paper,...

Many researchers hesitate to provide full access to their datasets due to a lack of knowledge about research data management (RDM) tools and perceived fears, such as losing the value of one's own data. Existing tools and approaches often do not take into account these fears and missing knowledge. In this study, we examined how conversational agents...

Digital labor platforms (and many other digital workplaces) can be anonymous, isolated, and lacking social interaction. In this context, implementing conversational agents (CAs) to provide social presence and relatedness could be a remedy. However, based on research in the context of human-to-human interaction, two counteracting effects of CAs’ soc...

Despite energy efficiency measures, global energy demand has gradually increased due to global economic growth and changes in consumer behavior. Even if people are aware of the problem and want to change their energy consumption, they have difficulty acting on their attitudes. This is called the attitude-behavior gap. To narrow this gap and reduce...

Pader

The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to various false information including that Ivermectin is effective against COVID-19 disease, which spread on social media. Because Telegram's structure poses a high risk for radicalization, it is imperative to understand the underlying spreading processes. Therefore, we gathered a network of German-speaking channels...

Background: The consumption of 'fast fashion', which is expedited by cost-effective e-commerce systems, represents one of the major factors contributing to the acceleration of climate change. An emerging approach to steer consumers in the direction of more sustainable purchase decisions is digital nudging. This paper explores digital nudging in the...

In recent years, the application of digital technologies for learning purposes is increasingly discussed as smartphones have become an integral part of students’ everyday life. These technologies are particularly promising in the so-called “transition-in” phase of the student lifecycle when first-year students start to develop a student identity an...

Stress in the workplace and the resulting disorders present a significant chal-lenge for the employee, employer, and national economy. According to the transactional model of stress, a possible reduction in stress can be achieved by reevaluating the situation. According to the social response theory, con-versational agents should be very suitable f...

Working conditions of knowledge workers have been subject to rapid change recently. Digital nomadism is no longer a phenomenon that relates only to entrepreneurs, freelancers, and gig workers. Corporate employees, too, have begun to uncouple their work from stationary (home) offices and 9-to-5 schedules. However, pursuing a permanent job in a corpo...

Virtual reality promises high potential as an immersive, hands-on learning tool for training 21st century skills. However, previous research revealed that the mere use of digital tools in higher education does not automatically translate into learning outcomes. Instead, information systems studies emphasized the importance of effective use behavior...

The advent of social media and its commodification have created a never-ending feedback loop between businesses and their customers. In this context, constant negative Word-of-Mouth (NWOM) may jeopardize a corporate image and cause defensiveness in corporate communication. This paper presents a case study of several customer service accounts of the...

Increasing average temperatures and heat waves are having devasting impacts on human health and well-being but studies of heat impacts and how people adapt are rare and often confined to specific locations. In this study, we explore how analysis of conversations on social media can be used to understand how people feel about heat waves and how they...

Recently, virtual influencers (VIs) have become a more frequent alternative to human influencers (HIs). VIs can be described as non-human agents who behave in a human-like pattern. Big enterprises such as Prada, Porsche, Samsung, or Ikea have already collaborated with VIs in the past. Even though it should be clear to users that VIs cannot practice...

The study explores differences between three user types in the top tweets about the 2015 "refugee crisis" in Germany and presents the results of a quantitative content analysis. All tweets with the keyword "Flüchtlinge" posted for a monthlong period following September 13, 2015, the day Germany decided to implement border controls, were collected (...

The changing nature of knowledge work creates demands for emerging technologies as enablers for workplace innovation. One emerging technology to potentially remedy drawbacks of remote work arrangements are meta-verses that merge physical reality with digital virtuality. In the literature, such innovations in the knowledge work sector have been prim...

Unlabelled: Assuming that potential biases of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based systems can be identified and controlled for (e.g., by providing high quality training data), employing such systems to augment human resource (HR)-decision makers in candidate selection provides an opportunity to make selection processes more objective. However, as t...

Guiding individual decision-making in digital environments through persuasive system design (PSD) is a powerful tool. While some forms of PSD such as digital nudging are based on libertarian paternalism and mostly considered ethically acceptable, other forms have been criticized for violating user autonomy or disadvantaging users. Such "controversi...

A great deal of time spent with information and communication technologies (ICT) makes knowledge workers especially susceptible to technostress. In this regard, the concept of digital detox has emerged to describe a strategic and periodic disengagement with ICT. Whereas extant research has put emphasis on untangling the characteristics and effects...

The changing nature of knowledge work creates demands for emerging technologies as enablers for workplace innovation. One emerging technology to potentially remedy drawbacks of remote work arrangements are meta-verses that merge physical reality with digital virtuality. In the literature, such innovations in the knowledge work sector have been prim...

Over the past few decades, the number and variety of cyberattacks and malware patterns have increased immensely. As a countermeasure, computer emergency response teams were established with the responsibility of securing the cyber environment. However, recent studies revealed that currently performed manual processes and the unavailability of adequ...

Increasing average temperatures and heat waves have devasting impacts on human health and well-being but studies on heat impacts and how people adapt are rare and often confined to specific locations. In this study we aimed to explore how social media data can be used to generate knowledge about how people feel about heat waves through an analysis...

Social media have become not only integral parts of our private and professional lives, but also an indispensable source of data for empirical research across a variety of academic disciplines. Applying a Social Media Analytics (SMA) methodology, however, imposes heavy ethical challenges on researchers. Scholars in the Information Systems (IS) disc...

This study focuses on Twitter affordances and sense-making outcomes during a single emergency situation. By using an interpretive affordance lens, this study aims to assess rumors as influencers of sense-making during the 2017 Manchester terrorist attack. The authors combined a quantitative network analysis with a qualitative content analysis to as...

The ethical dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) constitute a salient topic in information systems (IS) research and beyond. There is an increasing number of journal and conference articles on how AI should be designed and used. For this, IS research offers and curates knowledge not only on the ethical dimensions of information technologies,...

Clickbait to make people click on a linked article is commonly used on social media. We analyze the impact of clickbait on user interaction on Facebook in the form of liking, sharing and commenting. For this, we use a data set of more than 4,400 Facebook posts from 10 different news sources to analyze how clickbait in post headlines and in post tex...

Influencers in social media are often perceived as a trusted source for many people which is why companies increasingly promote their products through them. However, influencers can also cause reputational damage for a brand. Virtual (computer-generated) influencers can be used to minimize these risks and to better tailor content to a target group...

The study presents the results of a standardized content analysis comparing the use of Twitter as an information source on the websites of five news media types (quality newspapers, a tabloid newspaper, weekly magazines, broadcasters, and internet only). The theoretical assumption behind the study is that the adoption of Twitter as a source follows...

Organizations increasingly introduce collaborative technologies in form of virtual assistants (VAs) to save valuable resources, especially when employees are assisted with work-related tasks. However, the effect of VAs on virtual teams and collaboration remains uncertain, particularly whether employees show social loafing (SL) tendencies, i.e., app...

Large-scale societal crises require individuals and organizations to make sense of ambiguous situations. Nowadays, users use social media such as Twitter to seek and contribute crisis-related information. However, contradictory cues such as rumors increasingly break up their sense-and decision-making processes. We examine how sense-breaking (i.e.,...

Green IS (GIS) research addresses environmental challenges brought on by climate change and the need to preserve the natural environment. Within this scope, design-oriented research, most notably within the Design Science Research (DSR) community, aims to provide solutions to these environmental challenges in the form of novel artifacts. The result...

Green IS (GIS) research addresses environmental challenges brought on by climate change and the need to preserve the natural environment. Within this scope, design-oriented research, most notably within the Design Science Research (DSR) community, aims to provide solutions to these environmental challenges in the form of novel artifacts. The result...

Widespread mis- and disinformation during the COVID-19 social media “infodemic” challenge the effective response of Emergency Management Agencies (EMAs). Conversational Agents (CAs) have the potential to amplify and distribute trustworthy information from EMAs to the general public in times of uncertainty. However, the structure and responsibilitie...

So-called 'fast fashion' consumption, amplified through cost-effective e-commerce, constitutes a major factor negatively impacting climate change. A recently noted strategy to motivate consumers to more sustainable decisions is digital nudging. This paper explores the capability of digital nudging in the context of green fashion e-commerce. To do s...

Social media have become a valuable source for extracting data about societal crises and an important outlet to disseminate official information. Government agencies are increasingly turning to social media to use it as a mouthpiece in times of crisis. Gaining intelligence through social media analytics, however, remains a challenge for government...

Zusammenfassung Coworking Spaces (CSPs) sind geteilte Arbeitsplätze für Selbstständige, Freelancer*innen, Mikrounternehmen und Startups, die Isolation entgegenwirken und zum interdisziplinären Wissensaustausch anregen können. Jedoch existieren auch Barrieren, die Nutzer*innen davon abhalten, zu anderen Coworker*innen Kontakt aufzunehmen, da oft unk...

Zusammenfassung Durch technologische Fortschritte in den letzten Jahren ist Virtual Reality erschwinglicher und benutzerfreundlicher geworden, sodass Unternehmen die Einführung der Technologie verstärkt in Betracht ziehen. Ihren Aufschwung erlebte die Technologie jedoch durch die Unterhaltungs- und Spieleindustrie, weshalb sich für Unternehmen die...

To improve disaster relief and crisis communication, public institutions (PIs) such as administrations rely on automation and technology. As one example, the use of conversational agents (CAs) has increased. To ensure that information and advisories are taken up seriously, it is important for PIs to be perceived as a trusted source and a trustworth...

Security Operation Centers are tasked with collecting and analyzing cyber threat data from multiple sources to communicate warning messages and solutions. These tasks are extensive and resource consuming , which makes supporting approaches valuable to experts. However , to implement such approaches, information about the challenges these experts fa...

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have gained immense importance in the world of work. Knowledge workers, however, do not only benefit from ICT use. One drawback is the so-called ICT availability demand which is associated with a constant pressure to be online, including after-work time. This demand can have severe consequences on th...

Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are experts responsible for managing cybersecurity incidents. To identify cyber threats, they consider a wide range of sources from official vulnerability databases to public sources such as Twitter, which has an active cybersecurity community. Due to the high number of topic-related tweets per day, credibi...

Virtual collaboration is an increasing part of daily life for many employees. Despite many advantages, however, virtual collaborative work can lead to a lack of trust among virtual team members, e.g., due to spatial separation and little social interaction. Previous findings indicated that emotional support provided by a conversational agent (CA) c...

To reduce the workload of employees working in Human Resource departments and to avoid bias in pre-selection of applicants, an increasing number of companies deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based algorithms. Some examples such as Amazon's discriminating recruiting algorithm showed that algorithms are not free of unethical decision making. Altho...

Social media have become major platforms of commerce and changed the way we communicate and consume. Phenomena such as social bots add new dynamics to discussions and the spreading of information with the possible aim to influence or shape opinions and decisions. This study examines the requirements under which organizations would use social bots f...

Social media data has become an important source of information for different parties including researchers from various research fields. Rarely is information given regarding the methods used to acquire social media data to a satisfying degree that would allow the reproduction of research methods and results. With the goal of providing researchers...

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) not only yields in advantages for healthcare but raises several ethical questions. Extant research on ethical considerations of AI in digital health is quite sparse and a holistic overview is lacking. A systematic literature review searching across 853 peer-reviewed journals and conferences yielded in...

Recent upheavals in the world of work have put many organizations in the position of forced virtualization, turning their extant working practices upside down. Prior to this development, however, increasing numbers of ‘born virtual’ organizations surfaced in the IT sector and beyond. These organizations rely heavily on ICT and work fully remote, wi...

Social media have become a valuable source for extracting data about societal crises and an important outlet to disseminate official information. Government agencies are increasingly turning to social media to use it as a mouthpiece in times of crisis. Gaining intelligence through social media analytics, however, remains a challenge for government...

So-called ‘fast fashion’ consumption, amplified through cost-effective e-commerce, constitutes a major factor negatively impacting climate change. A recently noted strategy to motivate consumers to more sustainable decisions is digital nudging. This paper explores the capability of digital nudging in the context of green fashion e-commerce. To do s...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being increasingly integrated into enterprises to foster collaboration within humanmachine teams and assist employees with work-related tasks. However, introducing AI may negatively impact employees’ identifications with their jobs as AI is expected to fundamentally change workplaces and professions, feeding into ind...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has moved beyond the planning phase in many organisations and it is often accompanied by uncertainties and fears of job loss among employees. It is crucial to manage employees' attitudes towards the deployment of an AI-based technology effectively and counteract possible resistance behaviour. We present lessons learned...