As an increasing number of open government data (OGD) portals are created, an evaluation method is needed to assess these portals. In this study, we drew from the existing principles and evaluation methods to develop a User Interaction Framework, with concrete criteria in five dimensions: Access, Trust, Understand, Engage‐integrate, and Participate. The framework was then used to evaluate the current OGD sites created and maintained by 34 U.S. municipal government agencies. The results show that, overall, portals perform well in terms of providing access, but not so well in helping users understand and engage with data. These findings indicate room for improvement in multiple areas and suggest potential roles for information professionals as data mediators. The study also reveals that portals using the Socrata platform performed better, regarding user access, trust, engagement, and participation. However, the variability among portals indicates that some portals should improve their platforms to achieve greater user engagement and participation. In addition, city governments need to develop clear plans about what data should be available and how to make them available to their public.

ICTs are pivotal in the existing social order and especially during the COVID‐19 global pandemic. This panel focuses on the use of ICTs by different actors, including individuals, nonprofit organizations, and governments around the globe in responding to this COVID crisis. We tackle three essential questions about ICTs and the global crisis. First, what role do ICTs play in a global crisis? Second, how do ICTs affect social order when tensions between control, autonomy, and power shift? Third, what are the theoretical and practical implications of ICT use during a global health crisis? Each of the panelists will discuss their ongoing research in social informatics or health informatics as relates to the panel theme and central questions in order to provide a holistic view of the role of ICTs during this global pandemic.

The notion of ownership of digital media content is complicated and fragmented, because of the interplay of intellectual property law, personal property rights, and contractual arrangements. Drawing from the existing literature on theoretical analysis of ownership, we present a framework with multiple ownership configurations of digital content. Using the online survey method, we investigated US users' perceptions of ownership of digital content, users' perceptions of the importance of various digital rights, and their preferences for different ways of obtaining media content. The results of this study show that downloadability and the continuity of rights together determine users' sense of ownership, and digital rights management (DRM) restrictions play a minor role in users' perceptions of ownership. Ownership, especially owning something physically, is still important to users with regard to books. With music, ownership is also important, but access, especially through the subscription model, is gaining in importance. Movie content shows a different pattern where users generally favor the access model over ownership. The study also found that users' perceived importance of digital rights varies with their preferences for obtaining different types of content.

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