Introduction to the Special Issue on Inequality in the Digital Environment

The purpose of this special issue is to explore social inequalities in the digital environment. The motivation for this issue is derived from the disproportionate focus on technological and economic aspects of the Information Society to the detriment of sociological and cultural aspects. The research presented here falls along three dimensions of inequality. Two papers explore the ways that race orders interaction online. A second pair of papers explores the experiences of technology users with physical and mental disabilities. A final paper looks at gender, and the higher rates of intimate partner violence experienced by women online. Taken as a whole, these five papers highlight some of the ways that the digital environment can reproduce or mitigate inequalities that have been molded and routinized in the physical environment

Building a Community of Shalom: What the Bible Says about Multicultural Education

Multicultural education is a highly controversial topic in which it has been the center of contentions and conflicts as it has evolved for the last couple of decades. Several concerns and problems existed in the field of multicultural education will be addressed in this article. In addition, a new framework of multicultural education, called the shalom model, which is drawn from the Bible is presented, along with the characteristics of the model. The goal of multicultural education, according to this model, is to build a community of shalom, an image that is clearly described in Isaiah 11:6. In order to accomplish this goal, the model suggests that all people need to be equipped with the truth that all people are the image bearers of God. This concept is expanded into four implementation interventions when relating to others: biblical perspective; cultural competence; contextualized pedagogy; and intentional praxis. Finally, regarding the application issue of this model, some points of the implementation strategies are addressed in this article

Investigating the New Landscapes of Welfare: Housing Policy, Politics and the Emerging Research Agenda

As debates about housing form an increasingly important arena of political controversy, much has been written about the new fissures that have appeared as governments not only struggle to reduce public expenditure deficits but also attempt to address problems such as affordability and homelessness. It is widely anticipated that new conflicts will be played out in the private rental market as access to homeownership becomes unrealistic and the supply of social housing diminishes. However, what other tensions might surface; that hitherto have not been subject to the critical gaze of housing research? In this paper, we provide some thoughts on the nascent policy issues as well as the ideological schisms that are likely to develop in coming years, offering suggestions as to how the focus of housing policy research might be reoriented towards a “politics” framework to capture and better understand the conflicts that are likely to arise

Theorizing Digital Journalism: The Limits of Linearity and the Rise of Relationships

For more than 50 years, our understanding of journalism drew on theories that emerged in an environment in which the components of a mediated message could be isolated well enough to measure and track. Yet today we live in a media world that is simultaneously immersive and interconnected, instantaneous and iterative, and individualized to an extent unimaginable a generation ago. In this environment, theories positing ‘media effects’ are considerably less practical or meaningful than they once were, a topic explored in the first half of this chapter. Some of the ways that contemporary journalism scholars are actively recontextualizing the field are then outlined, followed by consideration of the proposition that our best hope for understanding the “effects” of digital journalism may be to focus on the diversity of relationships it engenders. Looking at connections and interactions can profitably guide our study of this fluid, holistic media world

Educational Disadvantage in Ireland

This report discusses various ways to measure educational disadvantage. The precise way in which educational disadvantage is measured also influences the type of targets set to address it. The National Anti-Poverty Strategy has set three key targets in the area of educational disadvantage: Educational disadvantage is a significant problem at all levels of the education system and is influenced by the characteristics of families, schools, neighbourhoods and by broader public policies. There is a substantial amount of activity which is endeavouring to address educational disadvantage in Ireland. However, relatively little is known about what works, and this suggests that projects with the potential to produce lessons about effectiveness would be particularly worth considering. Outlined are a selection of project ideas which address educational disadvantage from which lessons may be learned about effective ways of doing this work

Introduction: Legal Form and Cultural Symbol – Music, Copyright and Information Studies

Writers in information and communication studies often assume the stability of objects under investigation: network nodes, databases, information. Legal writers in the intellectual property tradition often assume that cultural artefacts exist as objects prior to being governed by copyright law. Both assumptions are fallacious. This introduction conceptualises the relationship of legal form and cultural symbol. Starting from an understanding of copyright law as part of systems of production (in the sense of Peterson 1976), it is argued that copyright law constructs the artefacts it seeks to regulate as objects that can be bought and sold. In doing so, the legal and aesthetic logic of cultural symbols may clash, as in the case of digital music (the central focus of this special issue)