Assessing the Quality of Internet Resources: Challenges and Useful Tools

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Persisting digital society territorial divides

The ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’ was issued in 2010 by the European Commission. This document constitutes a growth scheme for the decade 2010-2020 that aims to help the European Union to emerge from the current crisis through the so-called smart, sustainable and inclusive dimensions of growth. In this context, the basic aim of the SIESTA (“Spatial Indicators for a ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’ Territorial Analysis”) Project has been to illustrate the territorial dimension of the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’. In other words, to show how this document acts territorially, particularly at the regional scale, but, when possible, also at the urban level. The SIESTA Project has been funded by ESPON (“European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion”), a European Commission Programme whose mission is to support policy development in relation to the aim of territorial cohesion and a harmonious development of the European territory. This book includes most of the main findings and conclusions obtained through research of the SIESTA Project. The contents were presented and discussed as keynote addresses or communications at the SIESTA Final Conference held in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, on 4-5 April 2013

Keengganan memiliki komputer dan internet di rumah: Satu persoalan jurang digital dalam kalangan masyarakat Malaysia

Jurang digital adalah isu besar yang mendepani pembangunan dan kemajuan teknologi maklumat dan komunikasi (ICT) di seluruh dunia.Persoalan mengenai jurang digital seringkali menjurus kepada isu pembangunan infrastruktur fizikal teknologi komputer dan Internet.Malangnya, persoalan mengapa masyarakat enggan memiliki komputer dan Internet jarang diperkatakan.Kertas kerja ini membincangkan hasil kajian rintis dalam kalangan masyarakat Malaysia yang mempunyai telefon talian tetap di rumah tetapi enggan memiliki komputer dan Internet.Pengumpulan data dijalankan secara temubual melalui telefon terhadap 250 responden yang dipilih secara rawak dari lima negeri berdasarkan zon (utara, tengah, selatan, timur dan Malaysia timur).Data kajian dianalisa menggunakan statistik deskriptif.Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahawa majoriti masyarakat Malaysia yang mempunyai telefon talian tetap tidak memiliki komputer dan Internet.Keengganan untuk memiliki komputer adalah didorong oleh alasan ’tidak memerlukan komputer’ manakala keengganan memiliki Internet pula adalah disebabkan persepsi negatif bahawa Internet mengandungi banyak ’bahan lucah’.Kesimpulannya, kejayaan memasyarakatkan ICT dan menangani isu jurang digital sukar dilaksanakan sekiranya masyarakat sendiri enggan terlibat dengan teknologi.Oleh itu, usaha menterjemah kepentingan dan menangani persepsi negatif terhadap komputer dan Internet kepada masyarakat perlu dipergiatkan supaya ICT akhirnya dapat dibudayakan dan seterusnya meningkatkan kualiti hidup masyarakat Malaysia

Rob Kling In Search of One Good Theory: The Origins of Computerization Movements

Rob Kling’s intellectual contribution is a corpus of work that exemplifies the craft of inquiry and the social enterprise of science. He applied core sociological ideas and grounded them in evidence. His work connected theory, method, and evidence. His observations of the empirical world over more than a quarter-century led to research questions that transcended disciplinary boundaries, invigorated disciplines, transformed our thinking, and helped us develop a working vocabulary about technology and social life. He was decidedly unapologetic about his eclecticism — instead, reveling in the need to employ multiple theoretical frameworks, multiple methodologies, and multiple sources of evidence to make his arguments. This paper examines Rob Kling’s craft of inquiry. It traces the evolution of his theorizing, methodological choices, and gathering of evidence to understand computerization movements, an inquiry that situates his analysis in an unfailingly consistent critical stance towards computers and social life.Indiana Universit

Understanding students’ (non)use of information and communications technology in university

Six years after the Dearing Report’s call for IT to established as a ‘key skill’ throughout university curricula, overall use by university students remain inconsistent and often ‘low level’. This paper therefore presents an overview of why students do - and perhaps more importantly why students do not - make use of information and communications technology (ICT) in university settings. After briefly considering established social science explanations concerned with material or cognitive deficits on the part of the individual, the paper offers an alternative, sociologically-focused explanation rooted in the theoretical premise that technologies are socially sha ped. From this basis the paper presents a synthesis of empirical evidence suggesting that students’ (non)use of ICTs is complex, fluid and ambiguous - guided by pragmatic and strategic concerns over the ‘goodness-of-fit’ with their academic and non-academic lives. The fact that sustained use of ICT remains neither advantageous or is required in many academic situations leaves students in little doubt over its place; at best a short-term criterion to fulfil and ‘box to tick’ before commencing with the ‘real’ part of their studies. The paper then considers how ICT may be more meaningfully integrated into university curricula – offering three different scenarios for future practice

The Widening Information Gap between High and Low Education Groups: Knowledge Acquisition from Online vs. Print News

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Mass Communications/Telecommunications, 2008The primary purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the potentially widening gap in information acquisition across different educational groups, related to traditional print versus online news formats. Newspaper readership is declining and simultaneously the number of online news users is growing. In democratic societies the ability of new media formats to deliver cognitively accessible information to all citizens is indeed a pressing issue. This dissertation adopted the strengths of both survey and experimental traditions of knowledge gap research. Specifically, this study follows in the survey research tradition by emphasizing social structural aspects of the knowledge gap phenomenon. At the same time, this research used controlled experimental procedures and an assortment of memory measures to rigorously investigate the formation of knowledge gaps. The experimental procedure also allowed for focus on a much neglected dimension of knowledge gain, namely news exposure preferences (public affairs vs. entertainment) of citizens. To this effect, news exposure was examined using a behavioral measure, which is more rigorous than the heavily relied on self-report measure. The findings show strong support of the existence of knowledge gaps. First, participants in the higher education group (some postgraduate education) outperformed the lower education group (no more than a high school education) in terms of information gain, particularly for public affairs information, despite the similar news exposure pattern across the two education groups. The strong education effect on public affairs knowledge acquisition is therefore robust beyond the influence of news exposure levels. Second, newspaper readers exposed themselves to more public affairs news than online news users and therefore acquired more public affairs information than online news users. Third--and most important and alarming--comprehending public affairs news stories varied most prominently between the high and the low education groups in the online news condition. As such, the findings of this dissertation produced evidence that supports the main thesis of a widening information gap between high and low education groups, driven more so by new media than traditional print media use. In conclusion, emerging media are likely to exacerbate the existing information gaps among citizens with different socio-structural backgrounds

Online social systems, social actions, and politics: a narrative analysis of the role of social media in revolutionary political change

One of the demonstrators during the 2011 Egyptian revolution tweeted “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world,” thus acknowledging and establishing the fundamental role of social media in the political unrest and revolution against the regime in Egypt. Information Systems (IS) have been recognized as an important vehicle for national progress, social movement and political change (Majchrzak et al., 2013; Oh et. al., 2015; Oh et al., 2013). Contemporary social and political changes highlight new forms of social movement that are taking place using Information and Communications Technology or Information Systems, specifically social media. While social and political scientists as well as information systems researchers have studied social movements for a number of years, the majority of these studies has explored the role of ICT on activism and social movements in the Western world. Yet, the political implications of these technologies in the context of authoritarian and repressive political systems remain relatively under-researched and need further development (Breuer et al., 2012). In addition, studies in the IS discipline addressing the role of information systems in general, and social media in particular, in the context of revolutionary political change as has happened in the Case of 2011 Egyptian revolution are limited (Greengard, 2009; Maghrabi & Salam, 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2013; Oh et al., 2015; Oh et al., 2013; Wattal et al., 2010). Majchrzak et al. (2013) states that “the time has come to assess the evidence about ICT’s social consequences and to develop better theories about the precise nature of the role of ICT in complex social problems” (p.1). Using narrative research approach, we explore the relationship among social media, social movement, and rapid revolutionary political change by focusing on the role played by social media, particularly Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, in the context of the 2011 Egyptian revolution that led to the fall of authoritarian Mubarak regime. More specifically, our narrative research aims to understand and generate a theoretical explanation of the process by which social media influences online activism and shapes social movement collective interpretation for revolutionary political change. Narrative analysis is used to examine how social media offers a platform that facilitates social movement process to develop and affect social actions in the context of rapid revolutionary political change. Through the perspective of our study, we highlight the unique characteristics of social media that are driven, not by technology in isolation, but by the bond between technological attributes and characteristics of the social systems. The process and narrative approach offer a sophisticated, multi-dimensional, and holistic analysis that avoid a narrow focus on individual dimensions of the phenomenon. The findings of our study provide a narrative that offers a meaningful explanation of the process in which citizen social movements evolve through social media. Our narrative analysis of citizen social movement process revealed five distinct phases preceding the political change. These phases highlight the unique nature and activities of each stage of the social movement development, and the different roles played by social media throughout social movement process. Further, the emphasis on temporality, which is a key characteristic of narrative methods, revealed different important aspects of social media role in rapid revolutionary political change. Exploring the impact of social media in particular, and ICT in general, on social and rapid political change is an important area for research in information systems due to the emerging role of IS in politics across the globe, and the importance of political environment to business and economies. In this broader sense, this study of social media contributes to IS discipline by expounding on the role of social media in revolutionary social movement and its influence on, and being influenced by, the larger political context. One of the larger contribution of this research is to lay the foundation for IS scholars to further investigate the larger role of Information Systems and Technologies in our social and political systems both for the benefit of business organizations as well as for the larger society

Structurational analysis of e-government

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Social informatics perspective as an integrative design method for information systems technology and business intelligence and analytics: a critical realist study

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, 2016.This study contends that Information Systems and Technologies (ISTs) fail to adequately provide for effective delivery of Business Intelligence and Analytics (BIA), which limits the value that organisations can derive from their data assets. In spite of the influence that each has on the other and their widely acknowledged and undisputed relationship and interdependencies, design and development approaches still promote a silo approach to IST and BIA in theory and practice. The evolution of the role of data in the digital economy not only compels academics and practitioners to collaborate on how to enable creation of good quality data at source but intensifies the requirement for an integrated approach to IST and BIA design. The research problem that the study addresses is that design methods commonly employed in both Information Systems (IS) research studies and practice do not advocate for an integrated approach to design and development of IST and BIA. While IS research accounts for both IST and BIA, IST and BIA design and development studies are approached independently and/or in isolation, with limited integration. The effectiveness of Social informatics (SI) as an interdisciplinary study of design, uses and consequences of use, puts it above the rest of the commonly applied socio-technical design theories and approaches. SI’s strength is in studying designs, uses and consequences of IST use after implementation. However, the theory versus practice inconsistencies presented by the interpretivist paradigm, which is an underpinning philosophy for classical SI, limit its use as a design method. Critical Realism (CR) offers the research study a viable alternative and is crucial in addressing both contextual requirements, while embracing the positivist, deterministic aspects of the study. CR is a pluralist approach based on sound research method principles; hence the study adopted it as both the theoretical paradigm and research method. The research study objective is to reconceptualise the SI perspective as an integrative design method underpinned by CR. The study adopts CR as its research methodology. CR is a philosophy of science that allows for the pluralistic approach to operationalisation of the research strategy, a catalyst in addressing the paradigmatic challenges of the research study. The ability to address the qualitative realist requirements of the study while effectively dealing with the positivist characteristics of the research was crucial in ensuring comprehensive results. The insights which could only be effectively gained through a qualitative realist process of enquiry were invaluable in advancing the IST and BIA design knowledge and practice. CR’s strength in focusing the research practice on the complexities of the real world is a critical enabler for an open system discipline such as IS. It ensures that the research is placed within the realist context of time, space and culture. CR is effective in allowing the researcher to explain the mechanisms that influence the social actor action at different levels of social organisations. It allows for the identification of non-deterministic tendencies in a complex, multidisciplinary and open system such as IS. It not only accounts for the varying social actor requirements at empirical level but reveals possible underlying causes and relationships of the observable or non-observable events and/or activities at play. This approach to analysis of IST and BIA requirements offers a unique ability to frame problems in meaningful and social actor-centred ways, at all levels of social organisation, enabling design and development of IST that are BIA centric. The development of new knowledge advances the field of IS design, a crucial step towards offering practitioners with a practical, structured and integrative design method. The critical realist approach is the most appropriate theoretical paradigm to adopt to address the theory-practice inconsistency challenges at the heart of the IS field. Its strength as a research methodology offers the researcher a unique ability to interact with data at a level that other research methods do not: that is, to examine the impact of data at the three fundamental levels of research – empirical, actual and real – thereby enhancing the effectiveness of its application in practice. Therefore, reconceptualisation of the SI perspective theoretical paradigm from interpretivism to CR offers greater benefits not only to this research study but to the IS field. This is yet another development in the field which seeks to address the long-standing challenge of IS value contribution that is constantly diminished by ineffective design methods and poor integration of the IST and BIA disciplines, which by design should be leveraging on each other’s strengths in a quest to deliver superior results to businesses. Business requirements analysed as input into the design process using the integrative CR-based design method account for BIA requirements, thus enhancing value derived from both IST and BIA.MT 201