727 research outputs found

    The politics of internet privacy regulation in a globalised world: an examination of regulatory agencies' autonomy, politicisation, and lobbying strategies

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    The rapid proliferation of new information technologies has not only made internet privacy one of the most pressing issues of the contemporary area, it has also triggered new regulatory challenges because of their cross-border character. This PhD thesis examines the politics of internet privacy regulation at the global level. Existing research has largely investigated the extent to which there is no international privacy regime, when and why data protection regulations in the European Union affect member state laws and trade relations, and how interest groups shape data protection regulations in the EU. Little scholarly attention, however, has been accorded to the decision-making processes and policies produced beyond the legislative arena. Non-legislative and technical modes of policy-making are yet becoming more prominent in global politics. This research focuses on global data protection and internet privacy rules determined by leading, but little-known, internet regulatory agencies, in particular: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, World Wide Web Consortium, Internet Engineering Task Force, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It investigates three distinct but interconnected questions regarding regulatory agencies' autonomy, politicisation, and interest groups' lobbying strategies. Each of the three questions corresponds to one substantive chapter and makes distinct contributions, using separate theoretical frameworks, methods, and analyses. Taken together, the chapters provide important theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on the making of internet privacy regulation, with a special emphasis on the role of corporate interests

    Ethnographies of Collaborative Economies across Europe: Understanding Sharing and Caring

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    "Sharing economy" and "collaborative economy" refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, digital platforms and forms of work that characterise contemporary life: from community-led initiatives and activist campaigns, to the impact of global sharing platforms in contexts such as network hospitality, transportation, etc. Sharing the common lens of ethnographic methods, this book presents in-depth examinations of collaborative economy phenomena. The book combines qualitative research and ethnographic methodology with a range of different collaborative economy case studies and topics across Europe. It uniquely offers a truly interdisciplinary approach. It emerges from a unique, long-term, multinational, cross-European collaboration between researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, geography, business studies, law, computing, information systems), career stages, and epistemological backgrounds, brought together by a shared research interest in the collaborative economy. This book is a further contribution to the in-depth qualitative understanding of the complexities of the collaborative economy phenomenon. These rich accounts contribute to the painting of a complex landscape that spans several countries and regions, and diverse political, cultural, and organisational backdrops. This book also offers important reflections on the role of ethnographic researchers, and on their stance and outlook, that are of paramount interest across the disciplines involved in collaborative economy research

    Towards a Digital Capability Maturity Framework for Tertiary Institutions

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    Background: The Digital Capability (DC) of an Institution is the extent to which the institution's culture, policies, and infrastructure enable and support digital practices (Killen et al., 2017), and maturity is the continuous improvement of those capabilities. As technology continues to evolve, it is likely to give rise to constant changes in teaching and learning, potentially disrupting Tertiary Education Institutions (TEIs) and making existing organisational models less effective. An institution’s ability to adapt to continuously changing technology depends on the change in culture and leadership decisions within the individual institutions. Change without structure leads to inefficiencies, evident across the Nigerian TEI landscape. These inefficiencies can be attributed mainly to a lack of clarity and agreement on a development structure. Objectives: This research aims to design a structure with a pathway to maturity, to support the continuous improvement of DC in TEIs in Nigeria and consequently improve the success of digital education programmes. Methods: I started by conducting a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) investigating the body of knowledge on DC, its composition, the relationship between its elements and their respective impact on the Maturity of TEIs. Findings from the review led me to investigate further the key roles instrumental in developing Digital Capability Maturity in Tertiary Institutions (DCMiTI). The results of these investigations formed the initial ideas and constructs upon which the proposed structure was built. I then explored a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to substantiate the initial constructs and gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between elements/sub-elements. Next, I used triangulation as a vehicle to expand the validity of the findings by replicating the methods in a case study of TEIs in Nigeria. Finally, after using the validated constructs and knowledge base to propose a structure based on CMMI concepts, I conducted an expert panel workshop to test the model’s validity. Results: I consolidated the body of knowledge from the SLR into a universal classification of 10 elements, each comprising sub-elements. I also went on to propose a classification for DCMiTI. The elements/sub-elements in the classification indicate the success factors for digital maturity, which were also found to positively impact the ability to design, deploy and sustain digital education. These findings were confirmed in a UK University and triangulated in a case study of Northwest Nigeria. The case study confirmed the literature findings on the status of DCMiTI in Nigeria and provided sufficient evidence to suggest that a maturity structure would be a well-suited solution to supporting DCM in the region. I thus scoped, designed, and populated a domain-specific framework for DCMiTI, configured to support the educational landscape in Northwest Nigeria. Conclusion: The proposed DCMiTI framework enables TEIs to assess their maturity level across the various capability elements and reports on DCM as a whole. It provides guidance on the criteria that must be satisfied to achieve higher levels of digital maturity. The framework received expert validation, as domain experts agreed that the proposed Framework was well applicable to developing DCMiTI and would be a valuable tool to support TEIs in delivering successful digital education. Recommendations were made to engage in further iterations of testing by deploying the proposed framework for use in TEI to confirm the extent of its generalisability and acceptability

    Management of socio-economic transformations of business processes: current realities, global challenges, forecast scenarios and development prospects

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    The authors of the scientific monograph have come to the conclusion that мanagement of socio-economic transformations of business processes requires the use of mechanisms to support of entrepreneurship, sectors of the national economy, the financial system, and critical infrastructure. Basic research focuses on assessment the state of social service provision, analysing economic security, implementing innovation and introducing digital technologies. The research results have been implemented in the different models of costing, credit risk and capital management, tax control, use of artificial intelligence and blockchain. The results of the study can be used in the developing of policies, programmes and strategies for economic security, development of the agricultural sector, transformation of industrial policy, implementation of employment policy in decision-making at the level of ministries and agencies that regulate the management of socio-economic and European integration processes. The results can also be used by students and young scientists in the educational process and conducting scientific research on global challenges and creation scenarios for the development of socio-economic processes

    A Cultural Analysis of the Relationship Between Nationalism and Populism: The Case of South Korea

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    This study focuses on the relationship between nationalism and populism by analysing the political history of Korea. Populism studies have merely dealt with the cases in East Asia on those issues, as general literature remains a normative understanding of those issues and democracy, overlooking the tentative research cases in the region. The comparative studies of populism develop with a minimalist definition, emphasising the antagonism between the homogenous groups—‘the elite’ and ‘the people’. However, this minimalist definition homogenised heterogeneous natures of ‘the elite’, ‘the people’, and their forms of confrontations in different regional and historical contexts. This study expands the cases for populism studies while clarifying the relationship between nationalism and populism. The historical experience of people in South Korea is an excellent example of analysing the interaction between the nation-state and society. This thesis contributes to introducing new dimensions, the temporality of political economy and the spatiality of political cleavage. With nation and state decoupled, the meanings of the people varied significantly across Korean political history, causing the populistic elements in the country. A strong and administrative-oriented state vis-à-vis society resulted in the absence of horizontal confrontation between the Left and Right, instead conceptualising social demands as national, strengthened by a vertical antagonism between society and the state. The rapid development of the national economy enforced this verticality. Korean history has been prevalent with the imagination of power relations between the state high above and the people or society below. Analysing political history in South Korea provides an opportunity to innovate the recent definition of populism regarding its global political activism of nationalism and democracy

    Welcome to Mitchell’s Plain

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    Under the apartheid regime, South Africa’s Mitchell’s Plain, situated close to Cape Town, was devised as a “model township.” A cutting-edge urban planning scheme would provide middle-class Coloured people—evacuated from their homes by racialised rehousing programmes—with exemplary living conditions. This flagship for the regime was inaugurated with fanfare in 1976, and heavily publicised not just within South Africa but also in the international press. Cohorts of political leaders and journalists were invited to admire first-hand how racial segregation could be paired with progressive social planning. A documentary film was commissioned for worldwide distribution: Mitchells Plain (1980). Like other well-laid plans, however, Mitchell’s Plain would foil the designs of its architects. The vaunted utopian township was, for its inhabitants, deeply flawed: essential facilities such as schools and transport were thoroughly inadequate to the population’s needs. These sources of frustration generated a groundswell of civic activism. While the government had banked on separating the Coloured population from the national liberation movement, in 1983, Mitchell’s plain acquired important symbolic status as the birthplace of the United Democratic Front, an umbrella organisation of anti-apartheid associations. This event marked a turning point in the history of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. This study chronicles the fortunes of Mitchell’s Plain: its conception and role as propaganda for the apartheid regime. It draws on official documentary sources, but also on interviews with the various social actors whose life-experience conveys a very different image of the process, to reconstitute from a critical and historical perspective, the ill-fated window-dressing efforts of the National Party government during its declining years

    Co-designing Collaborative Care Work through Ethnography

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    Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China: From the cultural to the digital revolution in Shanghai

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    If we want to understand contemporary China, the key is through understanding the older generation. This is the generation in China whose life courses almost perfectly synchronised with the emergence and growth of the ‘New China’ under the rule of the Communist Party (1949). People in their 70s and 80s have double the life expectancy of their parents’ generation. The current oldest generation in Shanghai was born in a time when the average household could not afford electric lights, but today they can turn their lights off via their smartphone apps. Based on 16-month ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China tackles the intersection between the ‘two revolutions’ experienced by the older generation in Shanghai: the contemporary smartphone-based digital revolution and the earlier communist revolutions. We find that we can only explain the smartphone revolution if we first appreciate the long-term consequences of these people’s experiences during the communist revolutions. The context of this book is a wide range of dramatic social transformations in China, from the Cultural Revolution to the individualism and Confucianism in Digital China. Supported by detailed ethnographic material, the observations and analyses provide a panoramic view of the social landscape of contemporary China, including topics such as the digital and everyday life, ageing and healthcare, intergenerational relations and family development, community building and grassroots organizations, collective memories and political attitudes among ordinary Chinese people

    Internet Mediated NGO Activity: How Environmental NGOs use Weibo in China

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    This thesis uses an interdisciplinary approach that draws on both the political science and media and communication fields to analyse how Chinese environmental NGOs use the microblogging site, Sina Weibo, in their online activism. The study of NGOs and how they use the internet in China is widespread. However, in many cases, the way that NGOs in China work, both online and offline, has been analysed through the lens of traditional civil society and internet studies literature, which has mostly focused on the ability of NGOs, and the internet, to give rise to significant political change, and even democratisation.Through a mixture of thematic, network, and organisational analysis, this thesis investigates the communicative functions, themes, and use of interactive features in posts on Weibo, including the use of hashtags, retweets and @mentions. At the organisational level, the ways that NGOs engage with different actors, both online and offline, including fellow NGOs, government departments, their followers, and potential donors are interrogated using four case studies. These analyses found that although the political space afforded to environmental NGOs in China is severely constrained, and the operations of the NGOs could not be seen as overtly activist or confrontational in the traditional sense, the NGOs do in fact retain a certain amount of autonomy and are able to carve out some political space for themselves. The findings of this thesis therefore challenge the notion that NGOs in China are co-opted organisations without autonomy from the state and suggests that there is scope for digital activism by NGOs in an authoritarian context, even though the online and offline political space they inhabit may be tightly regulated and controlled

    Propaedeutics of Internal Diseases

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    УЧЕБНЫЕ ПОСОБИЯДИАГНОСТИКАПИЩЕВАРИТЕЛЬНОЙ СИСТЕМЫ БОЛЕЗНИ /ДИАГНОСТИКАМОЧЕПОЛОВЫЕ БОЛЕЗНИ /ДИАГНОСТИКАГЕМАТОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ БОЛЕЗНИ /ДИАГНОСТИКАДИАГНОСТИЧЕСКИЕ МЕТОДЫ ЭНДОКРИННЫЕДИАГНОСТИЧЕСКИЕ МЕТОДЫ ПИЩЕВАРИТЕЛЬНЫЕКОСТНО-МЫШЕЧНОЙ СИСТЕМЫ БОЛЕЗНИ /ДИАГНОСТИКАТЕРАПИЯ (ДИСЦИПЛИНА)DISEASES OF THE ENDOCRINE GLANDSDISEASES OF THE MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEMDISEASES OF THE BLOODDISEASES OF THE URINARY TRACTDISEASES OF THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEMINTERNAL DISEASESPROPAEDEUTICS OF INTERNAL DISEASESINTERNAL MEDICINEИНОСТРАННЫЕ СТУДЕНТЫСодержит следующие разделы: обследование пациентов с заболеваниями органов систем пищеварения, мочевыделения, крови, желез внутренней секреции и опорно-двигательного аппарата. Для студентов 2 и 3 курсов, изучающих пропедевтику внутренних болезней на английском языке. It contains the following sections: examination of patients with diseases of the digestive system, urinary tract, blood, endocrine glands and musculoskeletal system
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