Suchergebnisse

This is a comparative case study of the relationship between telecommunications decision-making and sector development. It employs a resource dependence model of organizational decision making (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Cohen, Grindle and Walker 1985) to explain the development of voice communications (telephony) in North Africa (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) from the early 1970s to late 1980s. The study finds that the autonomy of the telecommunication operating entity from domestic political organizations (for financial resources) and from technological organizations (for equipment and services) is associated with the supply and quality of telephone services. Dependence on external financial and technological organizations influences the decisions of the telecommunications operating entity in terms of the levels and priorities of investment, the level and role of technical expertise and choices of technology. The findings of the study confirm preliminary research by Hirschman (1967), Saunders, Warford and Wellenius (1983), Israel (1987), and Roth (1987), among others, that the autonomy of the telecommunications entity is associated with improved supply and quality of telecommunications services. It is inconsistent with the expectations of earlier studies insofar as it finds that greater autonomy is not always associated with higher levels of investment in the sector. Greater autonomy is associated with higher quality, wider distribution and a comparable provision of services. This occurs (in Algeria) where investment in telecommunications was lower as percentage of GDP than Tunisia. The entities of Tunisia and Morocco (until 1984) were less autonomous, and showed lower levels of technical expertise, and lower quality and supply of services. Given the tendency of a technical organization to function more effectively than a non-technical organization, this study concludes that organizational autonomy is more important to the supply and quality of services than the amount of funds handled by the entity. ; Ph. D.

"The use of the internet in homes rivals the advent of the telephone, radio, or television in social significance. Daily use of the World Wide Web and e-mail is taken for granted in many families, and the computer-linked internet is becoming an integral part of the physical and audiovisual environment. The internet's features of personalization, interactivity, and information abundance raise profound new issues for parents and children. Most researchers studying the impact of the internet on families begin with the assumption that the family is the central influence in preparing a child to live in society and that home is where that influence takes place. In The Wired Homestead, communication theorists and social scientists offer recent findings on the effects of the internet on the lives of the family unit and its members. The book examines historical precedents of parental concern over "new" media such as television. It then looks at specific issues surrounding parental oversight of internet use, such as rules about revealing personal information, time limits, and web site restrictions. It looks at the effects of the web on both domestic life and entire neighborhoods. The wealth of information offered and the formulation of emerging issues regarding parents and children lay the foundation for further research in this developing field. The contributors include Robert Kraut, Jorge Reina Schement, Ellen Seiter, Sherry Turkle, Ellen Wartella, and Barry Wellman."

This article adds to the debate over whether easy access to the Internet is the only outcome of community computer network projects or if there are tangible impacts to these initiatives. Building from Putnam's links between quality of life, community involvement, and social capital, the authors provide evidence as to the quality-of-life implications of the community computer network known as the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV). The results of the longitudinal study indicate frequent and increasing use of the BEV and the Internet for local, social-capital-building activities. However, there is no trend toward an increase in community involvement or attachment except in a subset of the population that scores high on measures of preexisting community involvement. The results offer Putnam justification for his claims about the Internet's role in social capital formation.

Most of the research about how state governments use social media focuses on services, comparative perspectives or assessment of e-governments. The authors' focus is on the adoption of social media by state governments in Mexico. Many state governments may be slow to adopt social media due to a lack guidance on where their efforts may lead. The purpose of this research is to provide some insight into the factors affecting adoption of social media by state governments in Mexico. Guided by diffusion of innovation theory, the authors analyzed data from Twitter and Facebook accounts of all 32 Mexican state governments from 2010 to 2015. According to diffusion theory, the results find that only one state government in the sample is classified as an innovator, four state governments are early adopters, eleven are early majority, eleven are late majority, and five are laggards. The use of social media by state governments in Mexico is in its infancy, and there is a significant difference in the use of social media among the different states.

Civically and politically interested individuals often use the Internet to facilitate and augment their civic and political participation. At the local level, such people also use the Internet to communicate and share information with fellow members of the local community groups to which they belong. In doing so, local groups help to create awareness and draw citizens into public deliberation about local issues and concerns, not only offline (a role they have played for many years) but also online. This research examines the interplay of individual-level and local group-level factors through an analysis of household survey data from the town of Blacksburg, Virginia, and surrounding areas in 2005 and 2006. It seeks to reconcile different levels of analysis—individual and group levels—relating to the use and impact of the Internet on civic engagement. This study identifies the distinctive influences at both the individual level and the community group level by applying a multilevel statistical model (specifically, the hierarchical linear model). First, at the individual level of analysis, this study found that internal and external political efficacy and community collective efficacy were significant individual-level factors explaining the Internet use for civic and political purposes. Second, at the group level of analysis, community group Internet use—which includes listservs, discussion forums, and blogs, among other emerging Internet technologies—and group political discussion were revealed as key influences on citizens' perspectives on the helpfulness of the Internet for civic and political purposes. Finally, in multilevel analysis, when taking individual-level variables into account, the group-level variables (group Internet use and group political discussion and interests) are positively associated with the views of the helpfulness of the Internet in connecting with others in the community and becoming more involved in local issues.

The goals of this project are to ingest tweets and Web-based content from social media and the general Web, including news and governmental information. In addition to archiving materials found, the project team will build an information system that includes related metadata and knowledge bases, consistent with the 5S (Societies, Scenarios, Spaces, Structures, Streams) framework, along with results from our intelligent focused crawler, to support comprehensive access to event related content. With the support of key partners, the IDEAL team will undertake important research, education, and dissemination efforts, to achieve three complementary objectives: 1. Collecting: The project team will spot, identify, and make sense of interesting events. We also will accept specific or general requests about types of events. Given resource and sampling constraints, we will integrate methods to identify appropriate URLs as seeds, and specify when to start crawling and when to stop, with regard to each event or sub-event. We will integrate focused crawling and filtering approaches in order to ingest content and generate new collections, with high precision and recall. 2. Archiving & Accessing: Permanent archiving, and access to those archives, will be ensured by our partner, Internet Archive (IA). Immediate access to ingested content will be facilitated through big data software built on top of our new Hadoop cluster. 3. Analyzing & Visualizing: We will provide a wide range of integrated services beyond the usual (faceted) browsing and searching, including: classification, clustering, summarization, text mining, theme and topic identification, and visualization.

In this paper we briefly examine the use of Twitter in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt during the mass political demonstrations and protests in June 2009, December 2010 and January 2011 respectively. We compare this usage with methods and findings from other studies on the use of Twitter in emergency situations, such as natural and man-made disasters. We draw on my own experiences and participant-observations as an eyewitness in Iran, and on Twitter data from Tunisia and Egypt. In these three cases, Twitter filled a unique technology and communication gap at least partially. We summarize suggested directions for future research with a view of placing this work in the larger context of social media use in conditions of crisis or social convergence. ; Presented at CHI 2011, May 7-12, Vancouver, Canada

In this paper we examine the use of social media, and especially Twitter, in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt during the mass political demonstrations and protests in June 2009, December 2010 - January 2011, and February 2011, respectively. We compare this usage with methods and findings from other studies on the use of Twitter in emergency situations, such as natural and man-made disasters. We draw on our own experiences and participant-observations as an eyewitness in Iran (first author), and on Twitter data from Iran, Tunisia and Egypt. In these three cases, Twitter filled a unique technology and communication gap at least partially. We summarize suggested directions for future research with a view of placing this work in the larger context of social media use in conditions of crisis and social convergence.