Bits of Life: Leveraging Emerging Technologies to Improve the Livelihoods of Refugees

This thesis examines the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in improving the livelihoods and employment opportunities of refugees. The ongoing Syrian refugee crisis is considered not only as a humanitarian crisis, but through the lens of human rights. “Bits of Life” argues that improving the livelihoods of refugees is in accordance with refugees’ rights to work, based on the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Furthermore, this thesis explores how access to reliable and affordable Internet serves as a crucial tool to help fulfill refugees’ efforts to obtain independent employment and economic security. Although access to the Internet has not yet been recognized as a basic human right, it plays a significant role in fulfilling refugees’ rights to freedom of expression and their rights to development. Issues surrounding the availability and utility of Internet access among refugees also raise important concerns regarding the right to privacy. By surveying existing technology-based humanitarian livelihood programs, notably Iraq Re:Coded, “Bits of Life” analyzes the successes and failures of existing initiatives and offers recommendations to improve the adaptability and effectiveness of future applications of ICTs in the field of refugees’ rights and livelihoods

Chapter 3 Analytical Sociology amidst a Computational Social Science Revolution

"The Handbook of Computational Social Science is a comprehensive reference source for scholars across multiple disciplines. It outlines key debates in the field, showcasing novel statistical modeling and machine learning methods, and draws from specific case studies to demonstrate the opportunities and challenges in CSS approaches. The Handbook is divided into two volumes written by outstanding, internationally renowned scholars in the field. This first volume focuses on the scope of computational social science, ethics, and case studies. It covers a range of key issues, including open science, formal modeling, and the social and behavioral sciences. This volume explores major debates, introduces digital trace data, reviews the changing survey landscape, and presents novel examples of computational social science research on sensing social interaction, social robots, bots, sentiment, manipulation, and extremism in social media. The volume not only makes major contributions to the consolidation of this growing research field, but also encourages growth into new directions. With its broad coverage of perspectives (theoretical, methodological, computational), international scope, and interdisciplinary approach, this important resource is integral reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers engaging with computational methods across the social sciences, as well as those within the scientific and engineering sectors.

Engaging voices or talking to air? A study of alternative and community radio audience in the digital era

textIn November 2012, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the implementation of the Local Community Radio Act of 2010, which marks the largest expansion of community radio stations in U.S. history. The act responds to the decade-long community radio movement in which many civilian groups advocated that community radio—an “old-fashioned” yet affordable public medium—still plays a significant role in fostering the expression of diverse voices and citizen participation in this digital era. Despite the successful advocacy effort in the policy-making arena, the real impact of community radio remains a question. Who listens to and participates in community radio? Does the connection between community radio and community exist? This dissertation investigates audience interaction and participation in the U.S. community radio sector, seeking to empirically and theoretically advance audience research in community radio and alternative media in general. Methodologically, this dissertation is based on case studies from two community radio stations KOOP and KPFT in Texas through multiple methods including 5-year ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews with 70 individuals including staff, programmers and listeners, a web-based listener survey with 131 respondents, and a textual analysis of producer-audience communication platforms such as blogs and social networking sites. The results demonstrate the limitations of audience interaction and participation caused by resource constraints and community radio programmers’ tendency to speak with themselves. Therefore, I recommend that community radio broadcasters should consider developing systemic approaches to evaluate and facilitate audience participation, which requires an understanding that the value of community engagement lies beyond audience size or the amount of listener donations. This dissertation concludes that community radio remains relevant in this digital era. This affordable and accessible form of alternative media to some extent bridges a digital divide. The medium also facilitates the development of a genuine relationship between radio programmers and listeners, thus the formation of virtual and real communities. These are the very elements that make meaningful dialogues possible in any communication environment.Journalis

Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/

A Multi-Case Study of Electronic Communication Policy in Rural East Texas School Districts

The purpose of this descriptive case study was to conduct a policy analysis regarding electronic communication between educators and students in three rural East Texas school districts. The policy analysis for each district began with the initial implementation of teacher communication via electronic sources provided by the districts. The focus of the study was limited specifically to the policy regulating nonschool related, electronic communication by educators with students. The challenge faced by school districts to embrace technology with one-to-one classrooms, virtual classrooms, constant connectivity, school texting applications, and open availability to teachers via email, complicates restrictions placed on non-school related communication. The need to protect educators and students with regard to such communication has caused school boards to review their current electronic communication policy thus narrowing the broad guidelines previously in place. The findings include educator perceptions and suggestions

From Davao City to Daly City: Examining Translanguaging and Transnationalism in the 1.5-Generation Filipin(a/o) Americans of Daly City

In the field of migration studies, research on transnationalism has been well established. Applying an intersectional framework of post-colonial narrative and linguistic anthropology to transnational migration, this research allows us to better understand how the transnational immigrant deploys language. Through a nostalgia studies approach, this study is able to analyze how transnational immigrants place value on their heritage and second languages, and reflexively deploy their language sets to reflect their unique positionality. This paper is a case study examination of five adult members of the 1.5-generation of Filipin(a/o) American immigrants, who immigrated to the US before the age of eighteen and have academic, employment, or residential affiliation with the Filipin(a/o) diaspora of Daly City, California. Through data analysis of oral histories collected through in-depth sociolinguistic interviews, this study uses these nostalgic perspectives to better understand how the relationship between language and identity formation is affected by socio-spatial experiences. By examining the intergenerational, post-colonial and transnational interplay of the narrators\u27 language ideologies, this study uses the archive to demonstrate the transformative power of memory to project the immigrant experience. Therefore, this thesis asserts translanguaging, or the cognizant, situational deployment of a multilingual repertoire, reflects a transnational identity formation

Investigating Cultural Values and Educational Technology Adoption in Central Asia: A Case Study

Although the adoption of new tools for communication and learning could reasonably be expected to influence culture, little is known about the relationship between cultural values and the adoption or diffusion of Web 2.0 technologies. This case study examines the way in which the cultural values of 59 teachers in four Central Asian countries influenced and were influenced by Web 2.0 technologies during five to eighteen months of online professional development. Data was collected through self-introductions, Likert-scale and open-ended prompts on initial and final surveys, online forum discussions, and capstone projects. This allows an examination of changes in the participants’ expressed attitudes toward and use of Web 2.0 educational technology as well as the identification of cultural values (Hofstede, 1980b) associated with these patterns of adoption and diffusion. The findings are especially beneficial to decision-makers who care about the way the use of Web 2.0 educational technologies could impact educational systems and cultures