Agricultural information dissemination using ICTs: a review and analysis of information dissemination models in China

Open Access funded by China Agricultural UniversityOver the last three decades, China’s agriculture sector has been transformed from the traditional to modern practice through the effective deployment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Information processing and dissemination have played a critical role in this transformation process. Many studies in relation to agriculture information services have been conducted in China, but few of them have attempted to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of different information dissemination models and their applications. This paper aims to review and identify the ICT based information dissemination models in China and to share the knowledge and experience in applying emerging ICTs in disseminating agriculture information to farmers and farm communities to improve productivity and economic, social and environmental sustainability. The paper reviews and analyzes the development stages of China’s agricultural information dissemination systems and different mechanisms for agricultural information service development and operations. Seven ICT-based information dissemination models are identified and discussed. Success cases are presented. The findings provide a useful direction for researchers and practitioners in developing future ICT based information dissemination systems. It is hoped that this paper will also help other developing countries to learn from China’s experience and best practice in their endeavor of applying emerging ICTs in agriculture information dissemination and knowledge transfer

Outlaw Community Innovations

Recent studies of outlaw communities provide qualitative evidence of their existence and the organisation of the underlying innovation processes. We provide descriptive results from a large scale survey of two online outlaw communities focussing on Microsoft's XBox. In line with previous findings, we identify two types of participants in outlaw communities - user innovators and adopters. Based on 2,256 responses, we find that users modify their XBox mainly to be able to increase the set of available functions of their XBox. Users are also motivated to modify their XBox for the sake of having fun and to conduct pirate behaviour. Finally, the results from our survey suggest that user innovators are largely intrinsically motivated by fun and the intellectual stimulation of writing code for homebrew software

Mobile Voices: Projecting the Voices of Immigrant Workers by Appropriating Mobile Phones for Popular Communication

Mobile Voices, also known as VozMob (www.vozmob.net), is a digital storytelling platform for first generation, low-wage immigrants in Los Angeles to create and publish stories about their communities, directly from cell phones. The project is a partnership between the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA), a nonprofit that organizes low-income immigrants in Los Angeles. Founded in 1984, IDEPSCA's programs are focused on education, economic development, health access and reform, popular communication, and worker rights. Currently IDEPSCA runs six day laborer and household worker centers and two day laborer corners where workers look for jobs in a more humane and dignified way while learning about their rights and gaining valuable leadership skills. The Annenberg School for Communication (the research partner) and IDEPSCA (the community partner) came together around the shared goal of designing communication systems and processes that promote media justice and help those without computer access gain greater participation in the digital public sphere. This chapter is a reflection on popular communication, participatory design, andcommunity-based multimedia practice from the Mobile Voices project team. It was collaboratively written by 13 members of the project and includes a project overview and an exploration of themes including the pedagogy of popular communication, participatory technology design, and the dynamic

Kenyan Diaspora Philanthropy: Key Practices, Trends and Issues

Describes key trends in giving by the U.S. African diaspora; perspectives, social customs, and institutions of Kenyan philanthropy; how the U.S. diaspora adapt their practices, including with technology; and recommendations for expanding scale and impact

Designing Scalable Business Models

Digital business models are often designed for rapid growth, and some relatively young companies have indeed achieved global scale. However despite the visibility and importance of this phenomenon, analysis of scale and scalability remains underdeveloped in management literature. When it is addressed, analysis of this phenomenon is often over-influenced by arguments about economies of scale in production and distribution. To redress this omission, this paper draws on economic, organization and technology management literature to provide a detailed examination of the sources of scaling in digital businesses. We propose three mechanisms by which digital business models attempt to gain scale: engaging both non- paying users and paying customers; organizing customer engagement to allow self- customization; and orchestrating networked value chains, such as platforms or multi-sided business models. Scaling conditions are discussed, and propositions developed and illustrated with examples of big data entrepreneurial firms

Reuse potential assessment framework for gamification-based smart city pilots

The paper proposes a unified framework for assessing the re-use potential for the Smart Engagement Pilot currently being realized in the city of Ghent (Belgium). The pilot aims to stimulate the digital engagement in users (citizens) by involving them in online and offline communities, and increasing the social capital through the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology). To engage the citizens, the pilot makes use of Gamification based entities (intelligent wireless sensors) embedded in public hardware, through which innovative games are organized in places of interest (neighbourhood, parks, schools, etc.). Once finished, this pilot will be re-used in other European cities under the context of CIP SMART IP project. Since, the success of a pilot in one city doesn't guarantee its success in the other, an objective socio-economic-organizational reuse assessment becomes critical. To do this assessment, we propose a framework, which uses a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) based scorecard to determine the roadblocks and battlefields that could deter such a transition

Social network market: Storytelling on a web 2.0 original literature site

This article looks at a Chinese Web 2.0 original literature site, Qidian, in order to show the coevolution of market and non-market initiatives. The analytic framework of social network markets (Potts et al., 2008) is employed to analyse the motivations of publishing original literature works online and to understand the support mechanisms of the site, which encourage readers’ willingness to pay for user-generated content. The co-existence of socio-cultural and commercial economies and their impact on the successful business model of the site are illustrated in this case. This article extends the concept of social network markets by proposing the existence of a ripple effect of social network markets through convergence between PC and mobile internet, traditional and internet publishing, and between publishing and other cultural industries. It also examines the side effects of social network markets, and the role of market and non-market strategies in addressing the issues

Internet Governance : exploring the development link

This paper seeks to explore the issues of Internet governance from a development perspective. The WSIS process and the report of the UN Working group on Internet Governance provide an initial framework within which to develop the issues. These issues not only concern the equitable distribution of Internet resources and the ways in which a secure and reliable function of the Internet can be achieved, but also include issues of multi-lingualism and local content as well as the institutional setting of Internet governance mechanisms and participation. The paper observers that realising the contribution of the Internet to development goals requires a shift in policy focus away from supply side initiatives in the telecommunications sector to more co-ordinated approaches