Measuring internet activity: a (selective) review of methods and metrics

Two Decades after the birth of the World Wide Web, more than two billion people around the world are Internet users. The digital landscape is littered with hints that the affordances of digital communications are being leveraged to transform life in profound and important ways. The reach and influence of digitally mediated activity grow by the day and touch upon all aspects of life, from health, education, and commerce to religion and governance. This trend demands that we seek answers to the biggest questions about how digitally mediated communication changes society and the role of different policies in helping or hindering the beneficial aspects of these changes. Yet despite the profusion of data the digital age has brought upon us—we now have access to a flood of information about the movements, relationships, purchasing decisions, interests, and intimate thoughts of people around the world—the distance between the great questions of the digital age and our understanding of the impact of digital communications on society remains large. A number of ongoing policy questions have emerged that beg for better empirical data and analyses upon which to base wider and more insightful perspectives on the mechanics of social, economic, and political life online. This paper seeks to describe the conceptual and practical impediments to measuring and understanding digital activity and highlights a sample of the many efforts to fill the gap between our incomplete understanding of digital life and the formidable policy questions related to developing a vibrant and healthy Internet that serves the public interest and contributes to human wellbeing. Our primary focus is on efforts to measure Internet activity, as we believe obtaining robust, accurate data is a necessary and valuable first step that will lead us closer to answering the vitally important questions of the digital realm. Even this step is challenging: the Internet is difficult to measure and monitor, and there is no simple aggregate measure of Internet activity—no GDP, no HDI. In the following section we present a framework for assessing efforts to document digital activity. The next three sections offer a summary and description of many of the ongoing projects that document digital activity, with two final sections devoted to discussion and conclusions

Local Authorities and Communicators Engaged in Science: PLACES Impact Assessment Case Study of Prague

Regional aspects of science communication represent a potential asset and as such are quite suitable topic for further examination with respect to future social and economic development in Prague based on the city's main development strategies. Closer analysis of SCIP aspects at re- gional level can present a suitable complement for development of suitable measures and projects of the regional innovation and education policies. This study focuses on research questions related to regional dimension of science communication, its impacts and suitable tools. Document analysis and questionnaire distributed among selected experts were chosen as tools for elaboration of the study. Results suggest that regional dimension of science communication policy and initiatives is a relevant one in case of Prague. However, the attention given to this topic by national and regional authorities is unsatisfactory resulting in lack of co-ordination of activities of the respective stakeholders. Impacts of SCIP, as far as causality can be identified, lie in encouraging young people in their interest in science, increasing awareness of general public in science-related issues and explaining role of science in society and problems that science is facing. To maximise effects of science communication there is a space for national and regional authorities to play an integrating role. Given the concentration of SCIP actors, the City of Prague could aspire to develop its science communication policy in order to promote itself as a Central European centre of science

Empowering Rural Citizen Journalism Via Web 2.0 Technologies

Once acquainted with the modern information and communication tools made available with the advent of the Internet, five Brazilian rural communities participating in a pilot project to develop a self-sustaining telecenter model, engaged in citizen journalism using inexpensive digital video cameras. Community members used Web 2.0 collaborative tools to post short videos on the telecenter portal. The 95 video blogs published between September 2006 and May 2008 recorded various aspects of community life,including religious celebrations,oral history arts and crafts traditions,folklore,and envirnmental concerns. This study evaluates the impact of video blogging in these communities

Kenya: Data Strategy and Capacity Building

Kenya has undertaken much work to date on data and knowledge issues, and has advanced this through the Kenya Data Forum—a national initiative managed by the Deputy President's office that aims to develop and implement a long term sustainable local data strategy. Kenya, however, lacks an organized framework for collecting reliable and comparable data on philanthropy in the country; to help meet this need, the Philanthropy Sector in Kenya has come together over the decades through the creation of the East Africa Association of Grantmakers (EAAG) and more recently the Kenya Philanthropy Forum (KPF) and its Data Sub-group. In June 2015 the KPF organized a Philanthropy Data Management convening that brought together over 30 foundations and trusts to explore opportunities for strengthening data collection, management, and sharing data in the philanthropy forum for greater impact and influence on national development efforts in Kenya. As a result, certain outcomes and aspirations were agreed upon. They included:Establishing the principles for data management for philanthropy.Expanding the forum so that participation reflects the size and diversity of existing forms of philanthropy.Developing a standardized tool for data collection.Actively engaging in the existing philanthropy data initiative.Partnering with the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) to establish data sets that effectively capture the contribution of philanthropy in Kenya's development.The June 2015 meeting highlighted the urgent need for philanthropic data and that "Kenya lacks an organized framework for collecting reliable and comparable data on philanthropy in the country." To begin systematically addressing these recommendations, Foundation Center (a philanthropic support organisation based in New York) designed a multi-stage Data Strategy and Capacity Building Program, working in partnership with KPF, EAAG, Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF), and the Sustainable Development Goals Philanthropy Platform (SDGPP). This initiative was kicked off at a special "Data Scoping Meeting" of the KPF on 28 April 2016, attended by a total of 51 participants representing across section of Kenyan foundations, trusts, and support organisations. As reflected in the meeting agenda (see Appendix A), the objectives of the Data Scoping Meeting were as follows:1. Establish principles for collaborative data and knowledge management2. Understand the core data needs of philanthropy in Kenya3. Leverage available technologies for collecting and sharing data and knowledge4. Leverage global knowledge for local purposes5. Identify data challenges and set local goalsThis report summarizes the outcomes of the Data Scoping Meeting and outlines next steps in preparation for a follow-up meeting on Data Capacity Building in the coming months

Ideology and disease identity : the politics of rickets, 1929-1982

How can we assess the reciprocal impacts of politics and medicine in the contemporary period? Using the example of rickets in twentieth century Britain, I will explore the ways in which a preventable, curable non-infectious disease came to have enormous political significance, first as a symbol of socioeconomic inequality, then as evidence of racial and ethnic health disparities. Between the 1920s and 1980s, clinicians, researchers, health workers, members of Parliament and later Britain's growing South Asian ethnic communities repeatedly confronted the British state with evidence of persistent nutritional deficiency among the British poor and British Asians. Drawing on bitter memories of the ‘Hungry Thirties’, postwar rickets—so often described as a ‘Victorian’ disease—became a high-profile sign of what was variously constructed as a failure of the Welfare State; or of the political parties charged with its protection; or of ethnically Asian migrants and their descendants to adapt to British life and norms. Here I will argue that rickets prompted such consternation not because of its severity, the cost of its treatment, or even its prevalence; but because of the ease with which it was politicised. I will explore the ways in which this condition was envisioned, defined and addressed as Britain moved from the postwar consensus to Thatcherism, and as Britain's diverse South Asian communities developed from migrant enclaves to settled multigenerational ethnic communities

Auditing culture : the subsidised cultural sector in the New Public Management

This article explores the effects of the spread of the principles and practices of the New Public Management (NPM) on the subsidised cultural sector and on cultural policy making in Britain. In particular, changes in the style of public administration that can be ascribed to the NPM will be shown to provide a useful framework to make sense of what has been felt as an “instrumental turn” in British policies for culture between the early 1980s and the present day. The current New Labour Government, as well as the arm's length bodies that distribute public funds for the cultural sector in Britain, are showing an increasing tendency to justify public spending on the arts on the basis of instrumental notions of the arts and culture. In the context of what have been defined as “instrumental cultural policies”, the arts are subsidised in so far as they represent a means to an end rather than an end in itself. In this perspective, the emphasis placed on the potential of the arts to help tackle social exclusion and the role of the cultural sector in place‐marketing and local economic development are typical examples of current trends in British cultural policy making. The central argument purported by this article is that this instrumental emphasis in British cultural policy is closely linked to the changes in the style of public administration that have given rise to the NPM. These new developments have indeed put the publicly funded cultural sector under increasing pressure. In particular, it will be shown how the new stress on the measurement of the arts' impacts in clear and quantifiable ways – which characterises today's “audit society” – has proved a tough challenge for the sector and one that has not been successfully met. The article will conclude by critically considering how the spread of the NPM has affected processes of policy making for the cultural sector, and the damaging effects that such developments may ultimately have on the arts themselves

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE INTERNET

The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing theories of technology diffusion and media effects, particularly because it is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet’s implications in five domains: 1) inequality (the “digital divide”); 2) community and social capital; 3) political participation; 4) organizations and other economic institutions; and 5) cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain, utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities have given way to more nuanced and circumscribed understandings of how Internet use adapts to existing patterns, permits certain innovations, and reinforces particular kinds of change. Moreover, in each domain the ultimate social implications of this new technology depend on economic, legal, and policy decisions that are shaping the Internet as it becomes institutionalized. Sociologists need to study the Internet more actively and, particularly, to synthesize research findings on individual user behavior with macroscopic analyses of institutional and political-economic factors that constrain that behavior.World Wide Web, communications, media, technology

These Walls Can Talk! Securing Digital Privacy in the Smart Home Under the Fourth Amendment

Privacy law in the United States has not kept pace with the realities of technological development, nor the growing reliance on the Internet of Things (IoT). As of now, the law has not adequately secured the “smart” home from intrusion by the state, and the Supreme Court further eroded digital privacy by conflating the common law concepts of trespass and exclusion in United States v. Jones. This article argues that the Court must correct this misstep by explicitly recognizing the method by which the Founding Fathers sought to “secure” houses and effects under the Fourth Amendment. Namely, the Court must reject its overly narrow trespass approach in lieu of the more appropriate right to exclude. This will better account for twenty-first century surveillance capabilities and properly constrain the state. Moreover, an exclusion framework will bolster the reasonable expectation of digital privacy by presuming an objective unreasonableness in any warrantless penetration by the state into the smart home