Viewing youth and mobile privacy through a digital policy literacy framework

Digital policy literacy is a critical element of digital literacy that emphasizes an understanding of communication policy processes, the political economy of media, and technological infrastructures. This paper introduces an analytical framework of digital policy literacy and illustrates it with examples of young people’s everyday negotiations of mobile privacy, in order to argue for increased policy literacy around privacy and mobile phone communication. The framework is applied to the Canadian context, where a small pilot study engaged 14 undergraduate university students in focus groups about their uses of mobiles and knowledge of mobile privacy issues. Preliminary findings show that while our participants were aware of a variety of privacy threats in mobile communication, they were not likely to participate in policy processes that might protect their privacy rights. The paper concludes with a discussion of why young people may not be motivated to intervene in policy processes and how their digital policy literacy around mobile privacy is mitigated by the construction of youth as a lucrative target consumer market for mobile devices and services

Introduction to the Special Issue: Gendering Global Media Policy: Critical Perspectives on "Digital Agendas"

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Introduction: What Would Ursula Franklin Say?

Introduction for "What Would Ursula Franklin Say?" Series: https://reprisingtherealworld.hcommons.org/wwufs-series

Public Interest Activism in Canadian ICT Policy: Blowin’ in the Policy Winds

In this paper the catalyzing influence of Bill C-61—a proposed amendment to the Canadian Copyright Act—and other recent ICT-related policy developments on activism in Canada is examined. The discussion expounds upon the role of academics and activists in fostering a broader public discourse about ICT policy, with attention being given to three key moments in Canadian communication policy: the development of the “information highway” in the mid-1990s and, in particular, the activities of the Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC); the creation of the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel (TPRP) in 2005; and the current debates regarding the issue of net neutrality. The analysis demonstrates how “esoteric” digital policy issues are now seen by many Canadians as worthy of their energies. This suggests that politicians cannot afford to ignore their constituents’ concerns about such policy issues as traffic shaping, throttling, fair dealings, and anti-circumvention measures. And, likewise, that academics working in the realm of communication policy domain would do well not to overlook the role of citizens, grassroots groups and non-profit organizations in actively seeking a voice in the various structures of policymaking

My So-Called Social Media Life

This short essay offers a personal reflection on social media and some of the challenges related to corporate ownership and policy issues of privacy and surveillance

Stirring Up the Pot?: Integrating Gender into ICT Policy, Practice, and Evaluation

Also published as: Shade, Leslie Regan (2006) “Getting Gender into the Agenda: Canadian Policy on the ‘Information Highway’”, in Susan B. Kretchmer, ed., Navigating the Network Society: The Challenges and Opportunities of the Digital Age, Thousand Oaks: CA.This working paper traces Canadian policy initiatives whose goals have been to insert a gender-based analysis into universal access policy to the Internet. Early policy formulations on what was then dubbed the ‘information highway’, by both public interest groups and the Canadian federal government, recommended that initiatives consider gender as an important category to include in universal access definitions. Although reflected in the final report of the Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), gender mainstreaming of Canadian Internet projects never materialized, nor did the creation of a ‘National Access Strategy’ as recommended by IHAC’s final report. Instead, emboldened by the promise of dot.com ventures, the government switched gears and pushed for a national strategy on e-commerce. Rhetoric changed to creating opportunities in a ‘knowledge-based economy’. Canada’s ‘national access strategy’ thus coalesced around Industry Canada’s Connecting Canadians agenda. This paper will first describe early work done by public interest groups to create a gender-based analysis to the information highway. Events, groups, and policy interventions in the Canadian context will be briefly outlined, with Appendix 2 providing a summary. The paper will then examine the increasing importance of gender analyses in ICT initiatives by diverse NGO groups, which has received particular attention in the follow-up to the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 (Beijing +5), at the 47th UN Commission on the Status of Women, held in March 2003, which dealt with women and ICTs, and at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva (December 2003) and in Tunis (November 2005). The paper will conclude by reiterating the need for considering gender in ICT policy and provide some policy recommendations for program evaluation within the Canadian context, looking briefly as well at how community informatics has addressed gender issues.Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) - Initiative on the New Economy Public Outreach Grant; Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN)

Review Essay: Get Smart?!

This review essay considers three books that provide a detailed overview of smart cities and the politics and eventual demise of the proposed Sidewalk Toronto project (2017-2020), an initiative of Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet’s urban technology company