Students come from all over the world to participate in this unique program. The diversity of students obtained through our international recruitment enriches the experience for all students and faculty. Many of our students and faculty study cultural issues or issues specific to the Asia-Pacific region, so the presence of a contingent from Asia is appropriate, along with students from other countries and local residents.
An important criterion for an interdisciplinary program is the disciplinary mixture of incoming students. Applicants are required to hold a Masters’ degree. The degrees held by students have included Communication, Business Administration, Computational Sciences, English, Library Science, Economics, Engineering, European Studies, Philosophy, Public Administration, Public Health, Systems Management and many others. Coupled with the diversity of participating units and the focus areas, CIS is truly an interdisciplinary nexus.
CIS PhD Students
PhD Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My research interest is modeling actor experience in Collaborative Innovation Networks (CoINs). My central research question is whether phenomenological experience co-creation opportunities offered by the networks can boost communication, collaboration, and innovation in CoINs. Adopting the concept of value network, my research will shed light on the role of experiential benefits in gleaning more value out of these networks.
PhD Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: I am interested to combine Communication Theory, especially Intercultural Communication, with Biomedicalinformatics. My interests also include Swarm Intelligence, ICT Policy & Planning, Communication Rights, and Participatory Development Communication.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My research interest lies in exploring why employees do and do not follow information system security policies. In the first case, how do the antecedents of policy compliance behavioral intent vary over a threat spectrum? Surveys and quantitative analysis methods (such as structural equation modeling) will be used to analyze the impact of theoretically founded supporting factors. Second, what are the factors an employee encounters that change positive intentions to actual non-compliance behavior? Semi-structured interviews and qualitative research methods (such as content analysis) will be used. Research in this area requires an interdisciplinary approach that requires a deep understanding of information security risks, human-system interaction principles, and sociological and individual factors involved in the decision and action processes associated with policy compliance. While the topic is universally applicable, I am most interested in the context of United States Department of Defense organizations.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: Researching Broadband Development in Hawaii using futures research methodologies. Using local expert knowledge to create a model for simulation of scenarios. The study draws influences from Computer Science, Communication, Business and Information Science. Also kite surfing and stand up paddling.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: I am interested in finding out how communication happens when it goes across (disciplinary and/or cultural) boundaries and why it happens in the ways it does. Network analysis is the major perspective that motivates my research in the contexts of citations (about “interdisciplinarity” using bibliographic data) and acculturation (about “interculturalness” using social network data of people going across cultures). This line of research not only investigates what is interdisciplinarity but also being interdisciplinary as it combines the constructs and theoretical models from various fields (communication, social informatics, and psychology). I hope that my studies will offer insightful understanding about how and why a communication channel is created between two different entities and what are the bridging effects and results. My future goal is to simulate and predict specific behavioral changes based on network structures.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My research interests are in the area of intercultural nonverbal interaction in computer mediated communication (particularly Facebook). More specifically I’m examining communication accommodation (Giles) in intercultural interpretations of nonverbal behavior of high/low context individuals online in relation to intercultural competence. My preliminary research questions include: 1.How is nonverbal behavior demonstrated on Facebook? 2. To what extent does a participant’s cultural background or high or low context preference (Hall) influence their appropriation of nonverbal cues in Facebook? 3. Does a participant’s intercultural competence influence their nonverbal accommodation behavior? I will be looking at both chat and asynchronous postings on Facebook between Thais and Americans. The literature referenced in this study draws from journals of multiple disciplines including HCI, Anthropology, Communication Theory, Intercultural Communication, Computer Mediated Communication, CSCW, Psychology, and Educational Technology.
Graduate Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: Empowering uses of the internet and the appropriation of the social web for personal and social change. In particular, under which conditions the social web may support political deliberation within a rich diversity of perspectives. Analyses of online discussions using mixed methods, in particular discourse analysis and network analysis. Cross-pollination of methods and concepts from Philosophy, Social Informatics, Psychology, Network Analysis and Gender Studies.
PhD Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Medical and social informatics, device product design and evaluation, usability, accessibility, information visualization, attention and cognitive load. I am interested in interdisciplinary collaboration with both the medical field and software engineering field to better understand how to integrate HCI into the software design lifecycle, including evaluation of medical devices.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: I’m interested in community informatics and the integration of knowledge systems. Specifically, I’m interested in the integration of western knowledge (tech) and indigenous knowledge (IKS) in the development process for cultural preservation (hybridization – leading to innovation and dynamic IKS).
PhD Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My research interests include digital libraries, electronic books, and the digital representation of cultural objects. The data sources I've used so far are library catalogs and collections and digital library collections. The methods used are primarily based on the analysis of metadata and image files. My work is interdisciplinary because it combines library science, information science, and the study of culture.
PhD Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: I will try to build upon my previous (and interdisciplinary) final theses and research topic which involved IT and Healthcare, in particular the potential of assistive technology to both support and/or stimulate dementia patients using their remaining individual memory as well as integrate their (informal) caregivers around in a home caring environment.
Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~philippj/
Ph.D. Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: Communication and Information Theories (Organizational Communication); Management Information Systems (MIS); Communication Policy and Planning; Sustainability/Green IT. Current research involves collaborative work with UH's Collaborative Software Development Laboratory (CSDL); the project incorporates interdisciplinary research to study energy literacy, use, and behaviour change.
Ph.D. Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: Social informatics, communication policy (in governments, organizations, and the socio-technical relationship it has in education), online role development in chat sessions with a primary focus on identification and the implications of it, and cyber assurance. Current research involves building a taxonomy to identify various leadership roles that informally immerge through interactions in online chat sessions. This study seeks to examine whether identifiable communicative patterns are evident through a content analysis that correlate to certain informal roles within the chat environment. This interdisciplinary study seeks to look at communication that has traditionally been studied in offline face-to-face settings and look at it through the lens of social informatics and social network analysis.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: The purpose of my dissertation proposal is to use the transtheoretical model to describe changes in behavior with a type 2 diabetic population when shown their digital retinal images and given access to a personal health portal (PHP) website. The PHP allows the patients to remotely view their retinal images and other related health educational information on their own time. Participants are currently being recruited from the Waianae Comprehensive Health Center on the west side of Oahu. The following methods are being used to collect data: visit 1(baseline) – surveys completed, retinas imaged, patient shown the patient portal and educational site, printouts also given; visit 2 (1-2 months later from baseline) – surveys complete; Visit 3 (3-4 months later from baseline)– surveys completed, focus group/group interview performed for further inquiry. This proposal incorporates the fields of medical informatics (teleretinal imaging, electronic records), communications (teleretinal imaging, Internet portal), and public health (transtheoretical model and behavior change).
Interests: Dissertation research focuses on the development of key information sharing roles in sociotechnical networks, utilizing structural signatures and longitudinal social network analysis investigating membership trajectories in an online community of practice over seven years. Also involved in research on cell phone-based expert systems for health behavioral change. Interested in interdisciplinary research related to the areas of sociotechnical networks; communication in communities and organizations; roles and identity; computer supported communication, collaboration, and learning; information and communication technology management; human computer interaction; multimedia; behavioral change; telemedicine; mobile and ubiquitous computing; and augmented reality.
Website: http://www.viil.net
PhD Student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My research interests focus on how emerging technologies can be used for journalistic activities such as gathering, organizing, analyzing, sharing and communicating information. I am also interested in how usable interfaces can improve the quality of discourse on news websites, engaging citizens and fomenting an exchange of diverse ideas. Twenty-first century journalism sits at the nexus of information technology and social life. For this reason, I plan to draw on many fields in my research, including Human-Computer Interaction, Communication Studies, Library Information Science and Social Informatics. An interdisciplinary approach is vital to advancing the news industry technologically while remaining faithful to journalistic principles of accuracy, objectivity and fairness.
PhD student Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: digital libraries, information retrieval
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My interest is in cultural informatics, a interdisciplinary study of information science, anthropology, sociology and ICT. My research will focus on how digital information enables to transfer, exchange, represent, and preserve cultural memories and material cultures. I hope to contribute the scholarly discourse in digital humanities through exploring digitization projects, museum outreach programs or community activities.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My research intends to shed light on how interorganizational information systems emerge, how they evolve, and how they coevolve with various social institutions and communities both at local and global level that develop, regulate, use, and change them. A qualitative approach to data collection and analysis is employed. Longitudinal data are drawn from a single case of interorganizational information system for trade and transport facilitation so-called the Single Window that has been implemented in Thailand. Longitudinal data are collected through a review of documents and in-depth elite interviews. The conceptualization of 'interorganizational information system as complex adaptive system' as well as 'information, knowledge, and ideas that contribute to the existence interorganizational information system as meme' allows data to be analyzed using a combination of evolutionary perspectives from Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck’s theory of acquired characteristics and inheritance and Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection as a theoretical lens. My research is interdisciplinary in the sense that: * It uses knowledge in evolutionary biology discipline to enhance our understanding about the phenomenon in the information system world. * The research findings should be able to explain the emergence, evolution, and coevolution of not only interorganizational information systems but also other types of social artifacts.
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: Formal organizations get institutionalized through different processes and so does virtual organizations. Much of the literature on coordination and governance has focused on virtual teams, and members of these teams typically belong to an organization (e.g., employees of a geographically dispersed organization), or they are bound by a well-defined contractual arrangement, likely one with highly structured and well-articulated standard operating procedures. However what happens when actors are widely distributed ephemeral non-binding virtual communities who interact through Social networking sites? How do they institutionalize their organization to sustain their group objectives in the long run? How institutional environment influences governance structures and how decision-making is reproduced in such organization? How institutional carriers, including IT artifacts, influence these online environments? Knowledge gained from such studies is expected to help law enforcing agencies to understand and help control anti-social behavior (e.g. cyberhate) particularly in crisis situations. My research interest is interdisciplinary as it is focused on netizens behaviors on social media during the time of crises, which encompasses several research domains including information management, communication and sociology.
Website: http://rsubba.tripod.com/cvofrs.pdf
Communication and Information Sciences Program, University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Interests: My interests lie at the intersection of information science and communications. Specifically, I am studying the behavior of scholarly publishing networks, in the hope that we can understand and predict the direction of scientific progress. Ultimately, this might allow the creation of indicators that can highlight important scientific works quickly, a tool that becomes more and more necessary as the amount of information produced increases with each year. I use diverse methods in my research, including traditional bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, and communication theories. The CIS program has given me the opportunity to learn and make use of these various fields (Communications, Information Science, Library Science, Biomedical Informatics), apply them to this research question, and integrate them into a new and powerful interdisciplinary tool.