Internet Information and Communication Behavior during a Political Moment: The Iraq War, March 2003

This article explores the Internet as a resource for political information and communication in March 2003, when American troops were first sent to Iraq, offering us a unique setting of political context, information use, and technology. Employing a national survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project. We examine the political information behavior of the Internet respondents through an exploratory factor analysis; analyze the effects of personal demographic attributes and political attitudes, traditional and new media use, and technology on online behavior through multiple regression analysis; and assess the online political information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War. The factor analysis suggests four factors: activism, support, information seeking, and communication. The regression analysis indicates that gender, political attitudes and beliefs, motivation, traditional media consumption, perceptions of bias in the media, and computer experience and use predict online political information behavior, although the effects of these variables differ for the four factors. The information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War differed significantly. We conclude with a brief discussion of the value of "interdisciplinary poaching" for advancing the study of Internet information practices

ANTECEDENTS OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE AT THE MACRO LEVEL

This paper reports the results of two studies that investigated factors that influence the digital divide at the macro level. We propose a telecommunications infrastructure index as a measure of the country-level digital divide that is composed of five primary indices that define a country\u27s ICT infrastructure capacity. The first part of the analysis identifies economic, socio-demographic, political, and cultural factors that differentiate 86 developed and developing countries. The second part of the analysis examines factors that differentiate ICT penetration rates for 21 Arab nations. Overall, results show that for the 86 countries political variables are the most important factor that influences the digital divide. Cultural differences, specifically gender disparities in literacy, influence the digital divide in the 21 Arab countries. The availability of secondary data published by official government sources is a serious limitation. Nonetheless, this research has practical and managerial implications for public management and for policy makers, including information about how to segment citizens into more refined groups to facilitate better resource allocation; development of policies designed to raise the literacy level, particularly ones that are specifically targeted at educating women; and training programs to educate the underserved about technology and to provide subsidized access to disadvantaged people

ANTECEDENTS OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN LEBANON

This paper reports the results of a study to investigate the digital divide in Lebanon based on data collected in August 2008 from 330 potential users of Lebanese public e-services. The study investigated factors that make a difference for e-access and e-skills and how socio-economic, demographic, and cultural factors explain the digital divide. Overall, results show that gender, age, religion, and geographic disparities related to income, to educational attainment, and to occupation influence the e-skills and e-access divides. Income and education have effects on e-skills but no effect on the e-access divide. When educational attainment increases, the e-skills divide decreases. Gender and religion have an impact on the e-skills divide but no significant impact on the e-access divide: men and Christians have more e-skills than women and Muslims. The impact of urban-rural disparities is unambiguous. Age is the only factor that impacts both the e-access and e-skills divide. Young urban males with high income and high educational attainment levels have more advanced eskills than their less advantaged counterparts; thus, these elite members of the Lebanese society are expected to benefit from the advantages of public online services. That will, however, not be the case of those in the less advantaged segments of the population. Inequalities in Lebanese society will continue

E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A NEOINSTITUIONAL APPROACH TO EXPLAIN FAILURE. An example from Lebanon

This paper presents the results of an ongoing study of e-government implementation in Lebanon. Following suggestions by various scholars that students of e-government employ theory to strengthen our knowledge about ICT for development, we apply a neoinstitutional theoretical lens to understand the principal explanatory factors that led the Lebanese public authorities, since 2000, to invest in e-services despite the country’s serious economic difficulties and heavy debt. We take an historical view that situates the implementation of an e-government infrastructure in the context of external pressures that Lebanese public administrators confronted. We focus on the social embeddedness, environment, and processes of Lebanese public administration to understand why Lebanese public officials responded when faced with pressures to modernize government. This analysis is based on the triangulation of evidence from semi-structured interviews with senior officials in government agencies who led the implementation effort, official government documents, and newspaper reports on the progress of this project. We find that the response by Lebanese public officials can be explained by the three isomorphic processes of coercion, mimesis, and transmission of norms. This case study suggests that implementing e-administration by developing countries is not necessarily motivated by a search for efficiency; under certain conditions, adoption results from external institutional pressures. Nonetheless, this implementation needs to be understood as only a very small part of a larger story of the history and politics of Lebanon which contributed to what has been called the “still born” implementation of e-government in Lebanon

On Rob Kling: The Theoretical, the Methodological, and the Critical

We explore Rob Kling’s conceptual scaffolding for Social Informatics: his integration of theory, method and evidence and philosophical underpinnings and moral basis of his commitment to a critical stance towards computers and social life. He extended his focus on organizational practices and a lifelong meditation on democracy, value conflicts and social choices to the discourses of computerization and social transformation and to the education of the information professional. He came to his project through careful observation of organizational life and a critical reading of research conducted by other scholars and the rhetoric about ICTs, As Kling conceptualized it, the project of Social Informatics was to intervene in the social construction of the meaning, value, use and even design of technologies as shaped by discourse and education.Indiana Universit

Internet Information and Communication Behavior during a Political Moment: The Iraq War, March 2003

This article explores the Internet as a resource for political information and communication in March 2003, when American troops were first sent to Iraq, offering us a unique setting of political context, information use, and technology. Employing a national survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project. We examine the political information behavior of the Internet respondents through an exploratory factor analysis; analyze the effects of personal demographic attributes and political attitudes, traditional and new media use, and technology on online behavior through multiple regression analysis; and assess the online political information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War. The factor analysis suggests four factors: activism, support, information seeking, and communication. The regression analysis indicates that gender, political attitudes and beliefs, motivation, traditional media consumption, perceptions of bias in the media, and computer experience and use predict online political information behavior, although the effects of these variables differ for the four factors. The information and communication behavior of supporters and dissenters of the Iraq War differed significantly. We conclude with a brief discussion of the value of "interdisciplinary poaching" for advancing the study of Internet information practices

The Impact of Computer Networking on the Social Science Data Library

The Impact of Computer Networking on the Social Science Data Librar

Papers Presented at the Second IASSIST North American Meeting, May 11-12, 1977

Papers Presented at the Second IASSIST North American Meeting, May 11-12, 197

Data Needs

Data Need

Training Seminars-Summer 1977

Training Seminars-Summer 197