Mass media digitization is an unfolding phenomenon, posing novel societal opportunities and challenges that researchers are beginning to note. We build on and extend MIS research on process digitization and digital versus traditional communication media to study how and to what extent social media-one form of digital mass media-are emancipatory (i.e., permitting widespread participation in public discourse and surfacing of diverse perspectives) versus hegemonic (i.e., contributing to ideological control by a few). While a pressing concern to activists and scholars, systematic study of this issue has been elusive, owing partially to the complexity of the emancipation and hegemony concepts. Using a case study approach, we iteratively engaged with data on the discourse surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and source literature to identify six facets of interpretive media packages (i.e., competing social constructions of an issue) as measurable constructs pertinent to emancipation and hegemony. These facets included three structural constraints (on authorship, citation, and influence) and three content restrictions (on frames, signatures, and emotion). We investigated propositions regarding effects of social versus traditional media and lean versus rich social media on these interpretive media package facets by comparing the SOPA discourse across two lean traditional and social media (newspapers and Twitter), and two rich traditional and social media (television and YouTube). Our findings paradoxically revealed social media to be emancipatory with regard to structural constraints, but hegemonic with regard to an important content restriction (i.e., frames). Lean social media mitigated structural advantages and exacerbated content problems. These findings suggest that, as with traditional media, some inevitable evils accompany the societal benefits of social media and that mass media is having a detrimental effect on public discourse. We offer practical steps by which private and public institutions may counter this effect, theoretical implications for wider consideration of the six interpretive media package facets proposed here, and encouragement to MIS researchers to increase efforts to compare different digitized processes so that a more comprehensive theory of the effects of different forms of digitized processes can be developed.

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Online product reviews are influential sources of information that some companies attempt to manipulate by compensating reviewers for favorable comments. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has mandated disclosure of reviewer compensation to address this potential conflict of interest, but the effect of such disclosures on consumer attitudes is unknown. By extending prominence-Interpretation theory, this work reconciles conflicting empirical results by introducing two novel elements of prominence (i.e., proximity and embedding) and demonstrating the effect disclosures have on reviewer credibility through two experiments (N = 750). The effects of social consensus and prior warnings on how consumers interpret disclosures are also studied. Using a general population sample (N = 346), Experiment 1 demonstrated that proximity to review increased disclosure prominence while embedding the disclosure in the review decreased disclosure prominence. More prominent disclosures reduced reviewer credibility, but less prominent disclosures had no effect. Using a student sample (N = 404), Experiment 2 demonstrated that disclosure interpretation is affected by prior warnings about conflicts of interest and the consensus of other reviews. When there was disagreement between reviews and prior warnings were provided, disclosures reduced reviewer credibility. But when there was a consensus of positive reviews or no consensus information was provided, disclosures had no effect. Our studies show that both prominence and interpretation are important to consider in understanding the effects of disclosure statements. However, variables associated with prominence produced the most robust results. The theoretical implications of these results and the practical implications for consumers, companies, and policymakers are discussed.

Decision makers' initial and continued use of information technology has traditionally been viewed as

This study examines the potential risk reducing benefits of Bitcoin against systemic risk in 28 countries from 2011-2020. The results indicate that Bitcoin provides a safe haven in times of extreme financial market volatility and during periods of financial crisis.