What does International Co-authorship Measure?

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2011This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. ©2011 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.By interviewing co-authors of papers in the field of bio-fuels this article looks at the various factors explaining how international research collaboration is organized. We found several factors such as motivations, differences in those from the Global North and South, and research rank. We then proposed new models for the emergence of international research collaboration.National Science Foundation (U.S.

Politics, power and gender justice in the Anglophone Caribbean : women's understandings of politics, experiences of political contestation and the possibilities for gender transformation

In 2011, the Jamaican government approved the National Policy for Gender Equality (NPGE). The NPGE was severely encumbered from its genesis in two ways. First, it was insufficiently radical to challenge the patriarchal status quo, and second, as an instrument of the state it will have to paradoxically change the same organizations and institutions that are responsible for implementing it. We begin from the premise that in addition to efforts to change existing structural sources of gender-based inequities, gender policies should seek to change notions of masculinity and femininity that sustain patriarchy

Online deliberation among regional civil society groups - the case of the Caribbean

Deliberative democracy has been promoted as a way improving legitimacy and political equality in policy debates. This dissertation seeks to understand how deliberation takes place within the intersection of two unique spaces: dialogue among members of regional civil society groups and communication in online fora. The motivation for this research is based on the notion that existing forms of decision-making have contributed to political inequality, a major issue in areas such as the Caribbean. Accordingly I examine the online discussions of three different civil society groups in the Caribbean. I looked at how certain variables in these fora were related to three of the main dimensions of deliberation, the use of reasoned arguments, reciprocity and reflection. With regard to reasoned arguments I examined how diversity among members, the participation of the moderator and the topic and scope of the conversation were pertinent to a discussion in a regional and multi-national setting. For reciprocity I looked at how variables related to time and the posting structure of a conversation were relevant in an online forum. Finally I looked at the strategies that were employed by participants as part of the communication process in an online forum and how these were related to processes of reflection. To address these questions I used a combination of content analysis and conversation analysis of email conversations and interviews with participants. One set of contributions from this dissertation is methodological through the development of a codebook and the novel application of conversation analysis to online deliberation. Also, the results are significant and can contribute to our understanding of deliberation in a context for which there has been little previous research. For example, I showed that national and occupational diversity can contribute to an increase in the proportion of reasoned arguments used in a conversation as does the presence of the moderator. However, these factors along with the scope and topic of a thread vary in their degree of influence on the use of reasoned arguments by the civil society group in question. I also showed that there are specific communication strategies that participants employ such as preference organization or speaker selection that are related to different forms of reflection evident in a conversation. Finally I observed that the posting structure of a conversation specifically the distribution of emails that participants send becomes less equal as reciprocity increases. This does not augur well for a deliberative ideal that envisions both reciprocity and equal participation. Furthermore, when considering deliberation as a whole, the results indicate that its different parts are not always correlated with each other. None of the lists has more than one significant correlation between the three dimensions of deliberation. In fact, reciprocity and the use of reasoned arguments were never significantly correlated in any of the lists. Together these results point to another main finding of this dissertation which is deliberation as a whole is difficult to observe in practice. Nevertheless I suggest that separately the results for each dimension can be useful from both a design perspective and for policy-makers in general. For example, encouraging the sharing of information and a more active moderator, having the opportunity to discuss regional issues could all help to promote a greater use of reasoned arguments overall. Experimenting with different ways in which group members can get to know each other might help to reduce the disparity between participation and reciprocity. Also encouraging participants to reply inline where possible, creating easier access to the message archives and having a system for collating threads and discussions online could all promote better reflection in the lists. Finally the list might benefit from having members go through an exercise of determining whether or not and in what way decision-making should be part of their discussions. With regard to policy-makers I note that several members reported benefits for policy-makers who themselves were members of the lists. This could stem from listening and learning from the discussions of other members or actually contributing to discussions. The groups also showed the potential to collate many different policy positions around a specific problem, thus assisting policy makers in understanding issues at a regional level.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Cozzens, Susan; Committee Member: Barke, Richard; Committee Member: Best, Michael; Committee Member: Burnett, Rebecca; Committee Member: Klein, Han

ICTs and Community Participation: An Indicative Framework

The goal of this paper is to develop an analytical framework to better understand the dynamic between ICTs and democracy. The aspect of democracy that is emphasized here is the participation of civil society groups, specifically community groups, in decision-making processes. The proposed framework articulates four main issues: (i) the social and economic context in which the community exists, (ii) the nature and extent of participation, (iii) the scope and purpose of the ICTs employed, and (iv) the balance between incorporating existing local governance structures and creating space for genuine participation. The framework is then applied to a case study from Jamaica. Through this analysis we are better able to understand the ways in which ICTs were used to support participation by looking at the context in which they are applied both in terms of capacity to participate and the information problem being addressed

Finding the Sweet Spot: Working At The Intersection Between Research and Technology Policy

Presented online via Bluejeans Events on March 17, 2022 at 12:30 p.m.Dhanaraj Thakur is Research Director at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where he leads research that advances human rights and civil liberties online. Over the last 15 years, he has designed and led several research projects aimed at tech policy audiences and ranging in scope from multi-national studies to community level work. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), and is a graduate of the London School of Economics, the University of the West Indies, and the University of Technology in Jamaica.Runtime: 49:09 minutesHow can we design research that informs technology policy debates? How can research help advance human rights advocacy in those debates? And at the same time how can that research be novel and offer a contribution to the field? These are some of the factors that guide research in advocacy organizations. In this talk I will discuss some of the ways we address these challenges drawing on practical experiences as well as my research. I will refer to our research in three broad areas - content moderation, surveillance, and disinformation. Specifically, I will share our experiences addressing problems such as detecting harmful content in end-to-end encrypted messaging services, understanding the extent to which school issued devices monitor students and in what ways, and an ongoing project examining the potentially disproportionate impacts of disinformation on women of color political candidates in the U.S. These diverse examples will also demonstrate how we bring together interdisciplinary teams of researchers to tackle these problems and how we create spaces for researchers and policy-makers to learn from each other

Learning to Share: Lessons on Data-Sharing from Beyond Social Media

What role has social media played in society? Did it influence the rise of Trumpism in the U.S. and the passage of Brexit in the UK? What about the way authoritarians exercise power in India or China? Has social media undermined teenage mental health? What about its role in building social and community capital, promoting economic development, and so on? To answer these and other important policy-related questions, researchers such as academics, journalists and others need access to data from social media companies. However, this data is generally not available to researchers outside of social media companies and, where it is available, it is often insufficient, meaning that we are left with incomplete answers. The problem is complex but not intractable. In this report, we look to other industries where companies share data with researchers while also addressing privacy and other concerns. In doing so, our analysis contributes to current public and corporate discussions about how to safely and effectively share social media data with researchers. We review experiences based on the governance of clinical trials, electricity smart meters, and environmental impact data. URL: https://cdt.org/insights/learning-to-share-lessons-on-data-sharing-from-beyond-social-media

The distributional consequences of mobile phones in Jamaica

Presented at the GLOBELICS 6th International Conference 2008 22-24 September, Mexico City, Mexico.The paper seeks to understand the nature of distributional consequences associated with mobile phones in Jamaica. By distributional consequences we are referring to the changes in the distribution of key aspects of social and personal development. Mobile phones are a pervasive technology in almost all societies. They are even more important in societies such as Jamaica which have had traditionally low levels of fixed-line telephone penetration. While the potential benefits from such a communication technology are enormous, from a policy level, it is also important to understand how these benefits (and costs) are absorbed by different groups in society given a particular set of national conditions. To understand this dynamic, we first explain the framework and methodology which we will use in this paper. Next, we look at national socio-economic conditions of Jamaica. This is followed by an examination of the development and diffusion of mobile phones in Jamaica and the current industry environment. We then review the various public interventions in the sector including major telecommunications policies. Finally we analyze the various distributional consequences of mobile phones based on the national conditions, industry structure and public interventions that have been outlined

The telecommunications policy process in post-conflict developing countries: the case of Liberia

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unites States License.Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the telecommunications policy process in immediate post-conflict countries and how that process differs from traditional settings. Design/methodology/approach – The authors consider the case of Liberia, a country that recently emerged from a protracted civil war. The authors focus on the Liberian Telecommunications Act of 2007 and the processes through which this act came about by applying a modified research framework. This framework identifies several factors in the literature that are posited to influence the policymaking process in developing countries. The authors also include other factors based on previous studies in post-conflict countries. The aim is to test the usefulness of this framework using the 2007 act. The authors apply it through the use of interviews with key actors in the government, industry, and international agencies. This was supplemented by secondary data from published reports and other sources. Findings – From the framework the authors identify the main factors influencing the telecoms policy making process in Liberia such as a weak and nascent institutional environment, intra-governmental competition, limited human and technical resources, the supportive (especially initially) role of the international actors such as the World Bank, and the dominance of elite groups in decision-making. The authors then make suggestions on overcoming some of existing challenges to the sector. Originality/value – This paper looks at the intersection of research in telecommunications policy, policy processes and post-conflict countries, an area in which there is currently very little work. The results indicate that several dimensions of the framework are germane to the post-conflict case and that some of these observations are also relevant to the future development of telecommunications in these countries

Facts and their Discontents: A Research Agenda for Online Disinformation, Race, and Gender

The January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol demonstrated how online disinformation can have severe offline consequences. For some time, the problems and possible impacts on democracy caused by online mis- and dis-information have dominated public policy discussions and thus research about these topics has developed rapidly in the last few years. However, this research generally lacks a focus on the impact of disinformation and misinformation on people of color, women, LGBTQIA+ communities, and other voices that are less prominent in mainstream political discourse in the U.S. Many disinformation campaigns are specifically designed with racist and/or misogynistic content, suggesting that disinformation is a tool used to promote ideologies like white supremacy and patriarchy. In September 2020, CDT brought together an interdisciplinary and international group of experts to share and discuss research on this issue. This report presents some of those ideas and builds upon them to identify key research opportunities, including important unresolved questions around the intersections of online disinformation, race, and gender. This report also makes recommendations for how to tackle the related methodological and technical problems that researchers and others face in addressing these topics. This is important in generating research that will be directly relevant for developing policy solutions to address disinformation. URL: https://cdt.org/insights/facts-and-their-discontents-a-research-agenda-for-online-disinformation-race-and-gender