The COVID-19 pandemic not only gave us a global health crisis but also an infodemic, a term coined by the World Health Organization (WHO) to describe the overwhelming flood of information – both accurate and misleading – that inundated media channels. This information complicated the public understanding and response to the pandemic as people struggled to separate fact from fiction.

Researchers writing in the International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication suggest that a lot of attention has been paid to tracking and mitigating the spread of misinformation, but there has been less focus on the characteristics of the messages and sources that allow information to spread. This gap in the research literature has implications for how we might develop better strategies to counteract misinformation, particularly in times of crisis.

Ezgi Akar of the University of Wisconsin, USA, looked at social media updates, "Tweets" as they were once referred on the Twitter microblogging platform. Twitter has since been rebranded as "X". At the time of the pandemic, Twitter had famously risen to the point where it was a powerful tool that could shape public discourse and at the time played an important role in the dissemination of information and social interaction, and, unfortunately, the spread of misinformation.

The research hoped to reveal how the content of a given update and the credibility of its source might contribute to its spread, or reach, across the social media platform, and beyond. The aim would be to see what factors might then be influenced to reduce the spread of false information, often referred to as fake news in the vernacular of the time.

Akar's model used three main theoretical frameworks: the Undeutsch hypothesis, which examines the credibility of statements; the four-factor theory, which looks at the various aspects that influence how believable a message is; and source credibility theory, which explores how the perceived reliability of a source affects the dissemination of information. He then used the model to analyse a dataset of tweets, both true and false to look for patterns.

The findings of the study reveal that while the content of an update – such as the use of extreme sentiments, external links, and media, such as photos and videos – affects the likelihood of the update being "liked" or shared "retweeted", the credibility of the source has more effect on how widely the information spreads. This suggests that users will engage more with content from seemingly credible sources, even if the content itself is not particularly compelling.

An additional finding, that updates in all capital letters were more likely to be shared if they were providing true information. Usually, messages written in all capital letters are perceived as aggressive, akin to shouting, or naïve. But, "all caps" in the case of an important and urgent message seems to override typical user behaviour in certain situations.

Akar, E. (2024) 'Unmasking an infodemic: what characteristics are fuelling misinformation on social media?', Int. J. Advanced Media and Communication, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp.53–76.
DOI: 10.1504/IJAMC.2024.140646

New Product Development (NPD) is a complex undertaking for any company, but where the initial stage of idea screening is what commonly determines the ultimate success or failure of a product. This important phase usually involves the evaluation of countless product ideas, each of which must be scrutinized for technical feasibility, commercial viability, and practicality. It can throw up many problems, not least because of the uncertainty inherent in predicting a product's market success based on early-stage concepts.

Research in the International Journal of Business Excellence has introduced a new approach to idea screening that could make it more reliable. Mahesh Caisucar of Goa College of Engineering and Rajesh Suresh Prabhu Gaonkar of the Indian Institute of Technology Goa in Ponda-Goa, India, have proposed an approach that addresses one of the key limitations in existing decision-making frameworks, particularly those used in Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM). MCDM techniques are used to evaluate and prioritize options based on various factors, each of which may hold different levels of importance. However, these weightings can often be skewed inadvertently and so lead to poor decisions.

The new approach uses a hierarchical ranking system that takes into account the relative weight of each option by considering how it stacks up against the sum of all other ratings. This, the researchers suggest, offers a more subtle perspective on how likely a new product is to be successful. The team has undertaken tests on their hierarchical approach that works across five main criteria: design, manufacturing, cost, ergonomics, and handling. This gives them a ranking method for obtaining an overall performance score for each product idea.

The team suggests that the success of their approach could improve the ability of a company to choose product ideas most likely to be successful in the market.

Caisucar, M. and Gaonkar, R.S.P. (2024) 'A novel hierarchical ranking method for idea screening in new product development', Int. J. Business Excellence, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp.585–601.
DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2024.140591

Research in the International Journal of Agile Systems and Management has investigated the relationship between people and their environment, with a particular focus on food. The research by Ysanne Yeo and Masahiro Niitsuma of the Graduate School of System Design and Management at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan, suggests that standard approaches to analysing human behaviour need an upgrade. They suggest a more holistic view that recognizes the complexity of human systems is needed. The work could lead to a change in the way we design social systems and behavioural interventions.

Traditional methods of studying human behaviour often break down complex systems into separate components. This has the unfortunate side effect of ignoring the interactions seen in real-world situations, and so can result in fragmented understanding that then leads to interventions that do not take into account all the issues underlying that situation.

The new study adopts a model-based systems approach to bring together different aspects of human behaviour and to create a more comprehensive framework for studying them. This, the researchers suggest, should allow a better understanding of the various factors that affect attitudes to healthy eating or otherwise. This could then be used to guide how policymakers and healthcare providers encourage healthier eating habits in a way that does not lead to unintended consequences. The likes of “calorie counting” and “dietary restrictions” are often at odds with the body’s natural signals of hunger and fullness and so more holistic, sustainable, interventions might emerge from this new understanding.

The work points to the need for a more collaborative and nuanced approach to designing social systems that takes into account the knowledge inherent in any human system. This kind of knowledge can play an important role in how people interact with their environment. Understanding the factors involved could help us create environments that better support long-term positive outcomes for individuals and society as a whole.

Yeo, Y. and Niitsuma, M. (2024) ‘Proposal of an integral model of human-food interaction: insights for social systems design’, Int. J. Agile Systems and Management, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp.48–72.
DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2024.140464

The business environment is constantly changing, and sometimes does so very rapidly. Research in the International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, discusses how Agile Portfolio Management (APM) has emerged as a useful approach to allow companies to align their organizational strategies with the demands of this dynamic and complex environment.

Conventionally, portfolio management has relied on predictive methods that work across a range of project sizes and levels of complexity. However, as businesses increasingly adopt agile methodologies – originally designed for small, closely-knit teams – there has been a shift in portfolio management practices. Indeed, this shift has become necessary for continued success. Agile methodologies emphasize flexibility and responsiveness and work well with small-scale projects but can be problematic when they are used for larger, more complex portfolios.

Kwete Mwana Nyandongo of the School of Consumer Intelligence and Information Systems at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, has demonstrated that scaled agile frameworks, which have been developed to manage large-scale implementations, offer some value, but even these are often inadequate. He found that this is especially true in industries, such as information technology, where rapid technological change and complex project interdependencies are the stock-in-trade of the industry.

Nyandongo's study goes on to suggest that these frameworks, while useful for large solutions, do not fully address the challenges of managing an entire portfolio in a rapidly changing environment. He says that this shortfall may lead some organizations to struggle with effectively implementing their strategies or responding to new opportunities and facing up to emerging risks.

The answer lies, the study suggests, in taking an even more flexible approach to portfolio management. That approach needs to extend the capabilities of existing scaled agile frameworks and to bring together traditional and agile methods. Such a hybrid approach might better accommodate the deliberate strategies of long-term business plans, as well as exploit the short-term nature of emergent opportunities.

In other words, organizations need to recognize that the methods effective for managing individual projects or even large-scale solutions may not translate directly to managing an entire portfolio. Instead, they must be yet more adaptable than ever.

Nyandongo, K.M. (2024) 'Relevance of scaled agile practices to agile portfolio management', Int. J. Agile Systems and Management, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp.1–47.
DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2024.140478

An area of increasing importance in digital marketing is the role of the influencer. Influencers are individuals with some degree of fame online, a large and loyal following, and great reach, usually across a number of social media platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube in the International Journal of Information and Communication Technology has looked at how personality traits shape an individual's attitudes towards influencers.

Influencers have gained a lot of prominence in industries such as fashion, beauty, technology, and food and the biggest can affect public attitudes to brands quite significantly. Indeed, many people are reliant on these modern-day celebrities to guide their purchasing decisions and follow closely their favourite influencer's advice on brands. Brands know this and invest vast sums in influencer marketing to encourage the influencers to help them sell their products and services.

In the current research, a survey of almost 400 people from Colombia and Spain was conducted in order to fill the knowledge gap with regards to what leads to someone being "influenced". The team used the statistical approach partial least squares analysis, to help them identify cause and effect relationships in the data. They found that people with extrovert and disorganized personalities were more likely to have favourable attitudes toward influencers. That said, there was a gender gap: calm men and sympathetic women were particularly drawn to influencers.

The results suggest that the success of an influencer markting campaign may depend not only on the influencer's content but also on the psychological makeup of their audience. Armed this knowledge marketers might craft more personalized and targeted campaigns. Such an approach could be particularly beneficial in highly competitive sectors where influencer marketing has become a near-essential part of brand promotion.

Future research in this area might look at the specifics of whether various personality traits and being influenced are associated with specific influence types, such as beauty influencer as opposed to tech influencer.

Sánchez-Torres, J.A., Roldan-Gallego, J.S., Arroyo-Cañada, F-J. and Argila-Irurita, A.M. (2024) 'Which people are loyal followers of influencers? An exploratory study', Int. J. Information and Communication Technology, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp.25–34.
DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2024.139828

Various recent technological advances allowed people to reshape their physical exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those technologies are still in place and continue to allow people to engage in physical activity and sports in a virtual training setting. While many people have gone back to their traditional exercise venues, the outdoors, sports fields, and the gym, the paradigm shift wrought by the pandemic pressed alternatives on us with regard to our fitness routines that might continue to be a natural part of future public health.

Research in the International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management has looked at how the integration of technology into everyday exercise routines affected people in Colombia, Pakistan, and Spain. It offers insight into how the pandemic affected those people, how virtual training continues to be a part of people's lives, and how we might keep fit during the next pandemic or another global crisis.

The researchers used the Theory of Planned Behaviour, a psychological model often used to explain and predict individual actions based on attitudes, social influences (subjective norms), and perceived control over actions. This approach allowed them to understand the human response to abrupt closure of gyms and restrictions on outdoor movement during the pandemic lockdowns. They added structural equation modelling, a statistical technique, to analyse data from surveys to reveal the relationships between psychological factors and the adoption of virtual sports activities.

Earlier work has shown that psychological factors influence conventional sports participation, but the focus on virtual training during a global crisis, shows just how useful technology, such as fitness-monitoring watches, smartphones, and other devices, was during the lockdowns. In addition, people with access to fitness tutorials and online classes commonly used those in parallel with their devices to help them follow a structured routine and monitor their progress.

From the opposite perspective, the virtual world allowed many trainers and instructors to continue teaching but remotely from their students. Indeed, the notion of virtual training, which had been around for a while, but necessarily widely adopted, allowed trainers to teach students around the world and many did so during and after the height of the pandemic.

The pandemic emphasised once again the need to stay physically active even in times of crisis. Future public health initiatives might now prioritize accessible home-based sports and exercise options. This could happen with more investment in virtual training platforms, the promotion of digital fitness tools, and efforts to ensure that such resources are widely available to all before and after a period of crisis.

Sánchez-Torres, J.A., Arroyo-Cañada, F-J., Argila-Irurita, A., Montoya-Restrepo, A. and Saleem-ahmed, M. (2024) 'At-home virtual workouts: embracing exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic', Int. J. Healthcare Technology and Management, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp.129–142.
DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2024.140383

The invasive North American plant species, Parthenium hysterophorus, commonly known as Santa Maria Feverfew and Famine Weed. The species is now present in Africa, Australia, and India, where it is locally known in English as Congress Grass. According to researchers writing in the International Journal of Environment and Waste Management, Congress Grass, has become a serious concern for food security, biodiversity, and public health in India and beyond. The species is highly resilient and can quickly displace native plants and crops, threatening agricultural systems. It grows well even under poor climate and soil conditions in which crops usually struggle, and it is one of the most destructive weeds agriculture sees.

Not only is P. hysterophorus very resilient, it has allelopathic properties, which means it releases chemicals that suppress the growth of nearby plants. This gives it even more of an advantage over native plants and crop plants, allowing it to soak up water and nutrients and block sunlight from reaching seedlings. This results in even worse impact on biodiversity and ecosystems and on agricultural productivity where it is rife. In addition to ecological and agricultural problems, the plant is very allergenic and toxic to livestock.

The current research proposes a new approach to dealing with this weed. Instead of focusing on attempting to eradicate it, the team suggests that it might be harvested and composted so that any nutrient loss can be reincorporated into the farm. Moreover, proper composting will destroy the plant's seeds and so reduce the risk of it spreading. The approach benefits from all the economic and ecological advantages of avoiding herbicide use.

Satish Kumar Ameta of Mewar University in Rajasthan, India, and colleagues suggest that governmental and non-governmental organizations have an important role to play in educating farmers about the potential of exploiting a weed in this way so that it might be adopted as a sustainable practice.

Ameta, S.K., Bhatt, J., Joshi, M., Ameta, R. and Ameta, S.C. (2024) 'Management of an obnoxious weed Parthenium hysterophorus through composting: a contrivance for recycling the nutrients', Int. J. Environment and Waste Management, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp.187–208.
DOI: 10.1504/IJEWM.2024.139280

Thermal, infrared (IR), facial recognition technology has advanced apace recently. Research in the International Journal of Information and Communication Technology, moves us another step towards a tenable system that overcomes some of the limitations of traditional visible-light systems.

Naser Zaeri of the Faculty of Computer Studies at the Arab Open University in Ardiya and Rusul R. Qasim of Kuwait Technical College in Abu-Halifa, Kuwait, explain how IR imaging sidesteps the problem of ambient lighting conditions and variations in skin tone seen with visible-light facial recognition. The use of thermal imaging relies on capturing the unique heat patterns emitted by the face rather than reflected light. The heat pattern observed is determined almost wholly by a person's facial vasculature and tissue structures beneath the skin. These are consistent, broadly speaking, regardless of environmental lighting and skin tone. This could make thermal IR a much more reliable alternative to visible-light imaging for biometric identification.

However, thermal recognition has faced challenges. The technology often has to cope with degraded image quality due to factors such as noise, blurring, reduced spatial resolution, and temperature drift. Additionally, variations in facial expression and pose can complicate the recognition process. Overcoming these issues requires advanced methods capable of accurately processing and recognizing faces even in less-than-ideal conditions.

Zaeri and colleagues have demonstrated the potential of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in enhancing the recognition of degraded thermal face images. CNNs are a class of deep learning models that have made a significant impact on the field of computer vision, thanks to their ability to automatically extract and learn complex features from raw images without requiring extensive pre-processing. This capability makes CNNs particularly well-suited to face the biometric challenge.

The team has worked with the well-known ResNet-50 CNN architecture. They applied it to a database of 7500 thermal images in order to evaluate performance with images of different quality and where facial expression and pose are different. The promising results show that this CNN-based system can achieve better recognition accuracy even with degraded thermal images and works across a range of scenarios. The work will have applications in security and the military world.

Zaeri, N. and Qasim, R.R. (2024) 'Resilient recognition system for degraded thermal images using convolutional neural networks', Int. J. Information and Communication Technology, Vol. 25, No. 5, pp.50–71.
DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2024.140327

Research published in the European Journal of International Management has looked at how positive attitudes towards cultural diversity can significantly enhance team performance. The study, conducted with over 1000 leaders from highly globalized academic research teams in the Nordic region, shows that teams open to diverse cultural values, especially when combined with openness to language diversity, perform better and are more creative than others.

The findings from Jakob Lauring of Aarhus University, Denmark, Christina L. Butler of Kingston Business School, London, UK, Minna Paunova of Copenhagen Business School in Copenhagen, Denmark, Timur Uman of Jönköping University, Sweden, and Lena Zander of Uppsala University, Sweden, have some implications for better management of multicultural teams across various sectors, particularly in an increasingly globalized work environment.

It is important from the management perspective to understand how cultural values and language interact and how they affect workplace behaviour and success. "Cultural values" usually refers to the underlying principles that guide decisions in different societies, such as beliefs about hierarchy, individualism, and communication styles. Language diversity, by contrast, refers to the inclusion of multiple languages within a team, reflecting the varied backgrounds of its members. Both factors are critical to success in increasingly international teams.

Openness to cultural values it appears influences team performance positively. Moreover, teams that are receptive to both cultural and language diversity are commonly better positioned to capitalize on the benefits of each. Essentially, a willingness to embrace different languages within a team enhances the positive effects of being open to various cultural values, leading to improved collaboration, creativity, and overall team outcomes. The impact is synergistic, whereas earlier studies had not necessarily demonstrated that these two factors work together and were perhaps considered as operating independently. It is therefore time to refine research models concerning the way teams work Different types of diversity attitude and how they interact and influence each other must be embedded in such models.

Lauring, J., Butler, C.L., Paunova, M., Uman, T. and Zander, L. (2024) 'Openness towards language differences and cultural differences in multicultural teams: how do they interact?', European J. International Management, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp.1–24.
DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2024.140297

Research published in the International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management has looked at how additive manufacturing, colloquially referred to as "3D printing", is changing healthcare. This transformative technology, long associated with advances in traditional manufacturing, is increasingly being recognized for its capacity to produce highly customized, patient-specific medical models. Such models can be used in surgical planning, training, and the production of custom prosthetics and other medical devices.

However, despite its promise, Ethan Sanekane, Jill Speece, Mohamed Awwad, and Xuan Wang of California Polytechnic State University in Obispo and Sara Moghtadernejad California State University Long Beach, California, USA, suggest that access to this technology in healthcare is rather limited. There is an information gap that the current research seeks to fill.

Additive manufacturing, as the name suggests, involves the creation of objects by adding material layer by layer. This approach, pioneered in the 1980s, but having come to the fore in many areas in the last couple of decades, can be used to produce highly complex and detailed structures that would be beyond economic viability in conventional manufacturing. In healthcare, this technology enables the creation of models that might be an exact replica of a patient's anatomy, for instance. Surgeons could, for example, then use such a model of a disease site to plan a sophisticated procedure with unprecedented precision. Such a model might be even more useful with robotic surgery, where the model could be used to train the robot with no risk to the patient.

The same technology could be used to craft bespoke orthotics and prosthetics that are precisely tailored to the patient's unique needs, rather than being off-the shelf components that might be cut to fit, as it were.

The research has taken an important step forward in identifying the full potential of additive manufacturing in healthcare. By addressing the barriers to access and strategically locating additive manufacturing hubs, the researchers have perhaps paved the way for greater adoption of this transformative technology.

Sanekane, E., Speece, J., Awwad, M., Wang, X. and Moghtadernejad, S. (2024) 'Healthcare industry input parameters for a deterministic model that optimally locates additive manufacturing hubs', Int. J. Healthcare Technology and Management, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp.111–128.
DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2024.140392