Mediating towards digital inclusion: the monitors of internet access places

Local dynamics play a key role in individual and collective empowerment for digital literacy and citizenship. This paper presents the results and reflections from a broader investigation into the public Internet access places in Portugal in the inland municipalities of the country's coast, undertaken by ObLID Network. Specifically, we intend to reflect on the actual mission of these places and reveal the actual profile, activities and training needs of their monitors and coordinators. In the first stage of the empirical study, several documents available on the Internet Spaces Network are analyzed. In the second stage, a questionnaire was applied to monitors and coordinators of the Internet access places, in seventeen Portuguese municipalities. The research results warn of the need to redefine and clarify the social and educational value of Internet spaces, indicating that the dominant activities of monitors in the Internet access places do not induce the foster of literacy and digital inclusion of the most vulnerable groups. In this context, actions are proposed that can contribute to improving the mission of Internet places, as well as the training quality of their monitors and coordinators. Internet Access Spaces, made available by municipalities, should be used to promote digital literacy programs, for individuals and groups.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Couples’ places of meeting in late 20th century Britain: class, continuity and change

This article examines couples’ places or contexts of meeting in the second half of the 20th century in Great Britain, utilizing a typology developed by Bozon and Héran. The continuities are as striking as the changes, with social networks maintaining a consistent level of importance, but with trends towards meeting at places of education and work, and away from meeting in public places for drinking, eating or socializing. Rather than reflecting the impact of the rise of individualism and self-identity, these trends arguably reflect the changing importance of settings within people's daily lives, as may the recent growth in internet dating. Social class appears to have become more strongly related to the likelihood of meeting in ‘public’ settings, apparently more common in Britain than elsewhere. Achieved characteristics, especially occupational class, have a greater impact than parental class. Variations between place of meeting categories in the extent of occupational class homogamy appear to reflect levels of class homogeneity within settings more than the impact of either individualism or a homogamy norm. Regional variations in places of meeting highlight the ongoing importance of structural factors such as patterns of sociability or cultural norms

The Indivisibility of Social Media, Corporate Branding, and Reputation Management

From 1995 to 2004, the internet hosted static, one-way websites; these were places to visit passively, retrieve information from, and perhaps post comments about by electronic mail. This Web 1.0 was about getting people connected, even if its applications were largely proprietary and only displayed information their owners wished to publish. Today,Web 2.0 enables many-to-many connections in countless domains of interest and practice. People are connected and expect the internet to be user-centric. They generate content, business intelligence, reviews and opinions, products, networks of contacts, statements on the value of web pages, connectivity, and expressions of taste and emotion that search engines, not portals, fetch. They hold global conversations in forms dubbed, collectively, as social media

Spatial information retrieval and geographical ontologies: an overview of the SPIRIT project

A large proportion of the resources available on the world-wide web refer to information that may be regarded as geographically located. Thus most activities and enterprises take place in one or more places on the Earth's surface and there is a wealth of survey data, images, maps and reports that relate to specific places or regions. Despite the prevalence of geographical context, existing web search facilities are poorly adapted to help people find information that relates to a particular location. When the name of a place is typed into a typical search engine, web pages that include that name in their text will be retrieved, but it is likely that many resources that are also associated with the place may not be retrieved. Thus resources relating to places that are inside the specified place may not be found, nor may be places that are nearby or that are equivalent but referred to by another name. Specification of geographical context frequently requires the use of spatial relationships concerning distance or containment for example, yet such terminology cannot be understood by existing search engines. Here we provide a brief survey of existing facilities for geographical information retrieval on the web, before describing a set of tools and techniques that are being developed in the project SPIRIT : Spatially-Aware Information Retrieval on the Internet (funded by European Commission Framework V Project IST-2001-35047)

From paper maps to the Digital Earth and the Internet of Places

Maps have always been tools that have fascinated men, for their ability to make us see the world that surrounds us. They were and are the outcome of models and methods applied to the observation of the world, starting from geodesy, surveying photogrammetry and remote sensing. All these disciplines, which we now group under the new name of geomatics, have had a tremendous boost in recent years. However, the synergy with information computer technology is probably the aspect that is revolutionizing more cartography. Earlier computers and after the Internet have brought us to new concepts and tools that will have profound effects not only in the world of niche of cartographers, but also more generally in the life of all human beings. The Digital Earth, proposed in 1998 by Al Gore, has been enriched in just twenty years of a set of new demands, which make even more interesting and challenging being cartographers today. The paper, without claiming to be comprehensive, aims at providing a concise overview of the state of art and of the advancement in this area. Moreover, it urges the community of geomatics to be protagonist and promoter of a new cartography, largely to be reinvented, and that would put us at the center of processes of knowledge and management of the Earth. The map makers in the past helped discovering new worlds, now the challenge is to rediscover our common world with new eyes of environmental, social, economic equity, sustainability and participation

Is talking online to unknown people always risky? Distinguishing online interaction styles in a national sample of youth Internet users.

Abstract We examined the risk of unwanted online sexual solicitations and characteristics associated with four online interaction styles among youth Internet users. The interaction styles took into account the people with whom youth interacted online (people known in person only, unknown people met through face-to-face friends, unknown people met in chatroom, and other places online) and high- and low-risk patterns of online behavior. The aim was to provide a basis for identifying which youth may be most at risk from interacting online with unknown people

Social Media and the Public Sector

{Excerpt} Social media is revolutionizing the way we live, learn, work, and play. Elements of the private sector have begun to thrive on opportunities to forge, build, and deepen relationships. Some are transforming their organizational structures and opening their corporate ecosystems in consequence. The public sector is a relative newcomer. It too can drive stakeholder involvement and satisfaction. Global conversations, especially among Generation Y, were born circa 2004. Beginning 1995 until then, the internet had hosted static, one-way websites. These were places to visit passively, retrieve information from, and perhaps post comments about by electronic mail. Sixteen years later, Web 2.0 enables many-to-many connections in numerous domains of interest and practice, powered by the increasing use of blogs, image and video sharing, mashups, podcasts, ratings, Really Simple Syndication, social bookmarking, tweets, widgets, and wikis, among others. Today, people expect the internet to be user-centric

Data Privacy-AES Using Secure Hashing

Securing personal data in the public spaces is something to worry about, in particular, the privacy and the confidentiality. The Internet of Things (IoT) will be widespread all over the network to connect devices and the people through the Internet. However, maintaining privacy in public places has become a difficult task in the day-to-day life. This work is mainly concerned about the privacy and the confidentiality of the personal data in the public places