Designed and user-generated activity in the mobile age

The paper addresses the question of how to design for learning taking place on mobile and wireless devices. The authors argue that learning activity designers need to consider the characteristics of mobile learning; at the same time, it is vital to realise that learners are already creating mobile learning experiences for themselves. Profound changes in computer usage brought about by social networking and user-generated content are challenging the idea that educators are in charge of designing learning. The authors make a distinction between designed activity, carefully crafted in advance, and user-generated activity arising from learners’ own spontaneous requirements. The paper illustrates what each approach has to offer and it draws out what they have in common, the opportunities and constraints they represent. The paper concludes that user-generated mobile activity will not replace designed activity but it will influence the ways in which designed activity develops

Be Credible: Information Literacy for Journalism, Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing Students

This project was funded by KU Libraries’ Parent’s Campaign with support from the David Shulenburger Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright and the Open Educational Resources Working Group in the University of Kansas Libraries.This free and open textbook teaches college-level journalism students to become information experts. Using the themes of credibility and information literacy, the book helps today’s students, who start out all their research with Google and Wikipedia, to specialize in accessing, evaluating, and managing information that often is not accessible through Google searches. The book includes chapters on public records, freedom of information requests, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, scholarly research, public data, interviews and more. Through current examples, instructional videos, suggested classroom activities, and practitioner insights, the authors challenge students to examine the credibility of the sources they use as current and future professional communicators

The Future of Scholarly Publishing

The formal scientific communication system is currently undergoing significant change. This is due to four developments: the digitisation of formal science communication; the economisation of academic publishing as profit drives many academic publishers and other providers of information; an increase in the self-observation of science by means of publication, citation and utility-based indicators; and the medialisation of science as its observation by the mass media intensifies. Previously, these developments have only been dealt with individually in the literature and by science-policy actors. The Future of Scholarly Publishing documents the materials and results of an interdisciplinary working group commissioned by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) to analyse the future of scholarly publishing and to make recommendations on how to respond to the challenges posed by these developments. As per the working group’s intention, the focus was mainly on the sciences and humanities in Germany. However, in the course of the work it became clear that the issues discussed by the group are equally relevant for academic publishing in other countries. As such, this book will contribute to the transfer of ideas and perspectives, and allow for mutual learning about the current and future state of scientific publishing in different settings

Special Libraries, Fall 1988

Volume 79, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1988/1003/thumbnail.jp

Knowledge Unbound

Influential writings make the case for open access to research, explore its implications, and document the early struggles and successes of the open access movement. Peter Suber has been a leading advocate for open access since 2001 and has worked full time on issues of open access since 2003. As a professor of philosophy during the early days of the internet, he realized its power and potential as a medium for scholarship. As he writes now, “it was like an asteroid crash, fundamentally changing the environment, challenging dinosaurs to adapt, and challenging all of us to figure out whether we were dinosaurs.” When Suber began putting his writings and course materials online for anyone to use for any purpose, he soon experienced the benefits of that wider exposure. In 2001, he started a newsletter—the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter, which later became the SPARC Open Access Newsletter—in which he explored the implications of open access for research and scholarship. This book offers a selection of some of Suber's most significant and influential writings on open access from 2002 to 2010. In these texts, Suber makes the case for open access to research; answers common questions, objections, and misunderstandings; analyzes policy issues; and documents the growth and evolution of open access during its most critical early decade

In Black and White: The American Media’s Construction of Police Killings

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)With several highly publicized police killings during the latter half of 2014, the issue of police violence has been re-ignited in the United States as emotionally charged a topic as ever, dividing Americans politically and socially and racially. From Eric Garner to Nicholas Robertson, the media has been greatly influential on public perception of police killings. Based on 163 digital news articles about cases of police killings from the top ten visited American news sites of 2015, this study analyzes how the American media’s language contributes to readers’ perception of police killings, focusing on patterns of race-related modifiers, passivization, and evaluation. Use of these linguistic features can influence public perception of the role of race, police accountability, and societal expectations. Considering the findings, I advocate for media literacy education as professional development for journalists

The Future of Scholarly Publishing: Open Access and the Economics of Digitisation

Weingart P, Taubert NC, eds. The Future of Scholarly Publishing: Open Access and the Economics of Digitisation. Cape Town: African Minds; 2017

The identification of factors that influence online micropayment use in the news industry in Switzerland

Micropayments have experienced a significant growth in today’s everyday life. Surprisingly, the idea of using small amounts for payment of news is not among the most frequently-used payment modalities in the newspaper industry, particularly in innovative countries such as Switzerland. Apparently, there is still a knowledge gap regarding the manner in which consumers perceive online micropayments to pay for news. This affects the development of micropayment strategies and profit models implemented by publishers, who have experienced a rapid decline in circulation revenues due to other forms of perceived ‘free’ news, such as the internet. At the heart of this issue, one challenging area of research and business interest is to identify factors that consumers consider when deciding to make small purchases. In order to address this, this thesis adopts a primarily positivist philosophy utilising a mixedmethods approach to address the research question: ‘What are the factors that influence consumers’ use of online micropayments in the Swiss newspaper industry?’ Moreover, the study examines how various attributes add to the perception of usefulness and ease of use of such acceptance factors, as well as the degree to which they contribute to the purchasing intent of small payments for online news. A conceptual model based on the Technology Acceptance Model including a set of external variables comprising system characteristics and individual differences was used to structure these influences and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. Nine industry experts were used to identify additional influencing factors, a pilot study with business experts was used to verify the basic model and methodology and the model was evaluated using Partial Least Squares in the full-scale main study of 262 respondents. Finally, a validation study of eight academic specialists and business professionals enriched the research findings and acted as triangulation to strengthen the results. The results indicate that micropayments indeed play an important role for digital news in Switzerland, embedded in the application of system characteristics. Five concrete system characteristics — compatibility, later payment, single payment platform, mobility and convenience — are found to be positively and significantly linked to the perceived usefulness, with the latter two also showing a strong significant effect on perceived ease of use. Furthermore, it is found that attitude towards the use of micropayments has a strong positive relationship with the intention to use micropayments. The implication of the research outcomes provides strong potential for the practical proposition of micropayment services in the news industry and identifies future directions for creating appropriate strategies for users paying in small amounts. No prior study is known to have been conducted to empirically test behavioural factors that influence the consumer use of micropayments in the news industry, specifically in the Swiss market. Hence, several noteworthy contributions to the literature and to theory were gained from this study, particularly determinants that drive the use of micropayments for digital news. One major contribution is the narrowing down of the gaps in former research investigative factors between micropayments and mobile payment acceptance. Furthermore, the topic of micropayments as an emerging business model for newspaper organisations which can monetise digital news to sustain profitability has been addressed