• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.59-70
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• 2018

With the breakthrough of speech recognition technology, conversational agents have become pervasive through smartphones and smart speakers. The recognition accuracy of speech recognition technology has developed to the level of human beings, but it still shows limitations on understanding the underlying meaning or intention of words, or understanding long conversation. Accordingly, the users experience various errors when interacting with the conversational agents, which may negatively affect the user experience. In addition, in the case of smart speakers with a voice as the main interface, the lack of feedback on system and transparency was reported as the main issue when the users using. Therefore, there is a strong need for research on how users can better understand the capability of the conversational agents and mitigate negative emotions in error situations. In this study, we applied social strategies, "forewarning" and "apology", to conversational agent and investigated how these strategies affect users' perceptions of the agent in breakdown situations. For the study, we created a series of demo videos of a user interacting with a conversational agent. After watching the demo videos, the participants were asked to evaluate how they liked and trusted the agent through an online survey. A total of 104 respondents were analyzed and found to be contrary to our expectation based on the literature study. The result showed that forewarning gave a negative impression to the user, especially the reliability of the agent. Also, apology in a breakdown situation did not affect the users' perceptions. In the following in-depth interviews, participants explained that they perceived the smart speaker as a machine rather than a human-like object, and for this reason, the social strategies did not work. These results show that the social strategies should be applied according to the perceptions that user has toward agents.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.35
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• pp.250-291
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• 2006

This study examines the regulatory issues and introduction problems of TV-betting data broadcasts in Korea by in-depth interview with a panel group. TV-betting data broadcast services of card games and horse racing games are widely in use in Europe and other parts of the world. In order to carry out the study, a demo program of TV-betting data broadcast in the OCAP(OpenCableTM Application Platform Specification) system environment, which is the data broadcasting standard for digital cable broadcasts in Korea was exposed to the panel group and then they were interviewed after watching and using the program. The results could be summarized as below. First of all, while TV-betting data broadcasts have many elements of entertainment, the respondents thought that it would be difficult to introduce TV-betting in data broadcasts as in overseas countries largely due to social factors. In addition, in order to introduce TV-betting data broadcasts, they suggested that excessive speculativeness must be suppressed through a series of regulatory system devices, such as by guaranteeing credibility of the media based on safe security systems for transactions, scheduling programs with effective time constraints to prevent the games from running too frequently, limiting the betting values, and by prohibiting access to games through set-top boxes of other data broadcast subscribers. The general consensus was that TV-betting could be considered for gradual introduction within the governmental laws and regulations that would minimize its ill effects. Therefore, the government should formulate long-term regulations and policies for data broadcasts. Once the groundwork is laid for safe introduction of TV-betting on data broadcasts within the boundary of laws and regulations, interactive TV games are expected to be introduced in Korea not only for added functionality of entertainment but also for far-ranging development of data broadcast and new media industries.