Information Communication & Society最新文献

{"title":"Towards conceptualization and quantification of the digital divide","authors":"Vladimir Korovkin, Albert L. Park, Evgeny A. Kaganer","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085612","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The digital divide gained new importance since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemics. However, the phenomenon is far from being fully conceptualized or effectively measured. The key question, whether digital divide is a mere extension of other social inequalities, or it has significant new meaning, remains largely unanswered; a reason is the lack of effective instruments of quantitative study of the phenomenon that would capture its complex nature. The present paper addresses both conceptualizing and measurement issues, suggesting that separation of supply- and demand-side considerations is crucial in understanding the digital divide and introducing a composite Digital Life Index, measures separately the digital supply and demand across seven independent dimensions. The Index is based on Internet-borne data, a distinction from traditional research approaches that rely on official statistics or surveys. Though the empiric part of the paper is focused on the sub-national digital divide in Russia we argue that its methodology can be applied on many other levels and its conceptual findings are relevant to understanding the phenomenon globally. The hierarchical regression analysis is used to determine the relative importance of factors like income, human capital, and policy in shaping the digital divide. The result of the analysis suggests that the digital divide is driven more by the differences in demand than in supply; the role of income is insignificant, and the quality of policy and human capital is the key determinant of the divide. The paper advances the existing conceptual and methodological literature on the issue and can also inform practical decision-making regarding the strategies of national and regional digital development.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2268 - 2303"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43883864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Big Data—A new medium?","authors":"Michael Hegarty","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2091467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2091467","url":null,"abstract":"This edited volume of essays explores questions arising from the contemporary phenomenon of Big Data. As data structures and algorithms become more and more dominant in determining the form and direction of our lives, the contributors to this work interrogate the problems posed by the increasing influence data have over modern life. Indeed, the book’s parts are structured around the concept of ‘patterning’; knowledge, time, culture, people all proceed in one sense or another according to patterns—we might say, with Heidegger, patterns of the unfolding of Being. But how is that unfolding, the collection of patterns by which we live our lives and the concepts by which we live them, altered in a world increasingly governed according to the abstract schemata of data structures? Do big data represent a fundamental change in the modalities of human existence? How should these data structures be characterized? What will be the contemporary relationship between the individual and the collective under data-driven regimes of surveillance and categorisation? Such questions motivate, in different ways, the authors of this volume. As Natasha Lushetich (ed.), channelling Derrida, represents the issue in her introduction, problems of big data can be thought in terms of the reduction of l’avenir (the unfolding future) to le futur (that which is programmed, patterned, by the present) (2021:, p. 2). And, without attempting to define and constrain in definite terms that which is still evolving, the book seeks to assay ‘big data as a constellation and a multifaceted process of transformation that... occurs largely beyond the realm of human consciousness.’ (8) This work, indeed, could be viewed as an exploratory ingress into territory new, fecund, and as yet barely trodden; for while much has been written already, the phenomenon remains hard to grasp in full, and so much more will be needed before all the implications of modern technical paradigms can be understood. The scope of the volume is, nevertheless, broad, and covers a wide range of questions arising from modern data-driven methodologies from how these affect the unfolding of knowledge and time to biometric security to creative AI’s. The volume is divided into four parts consisting of three essays, each connected with the overall theme of patterning. Part I considers the relationship between big data and knowledge and time; part II relates to use and extraction; part III interrogates the effects of modern datadriven paradigms on cultural heritage and memory; and part IV informs the scope of debate around people and the ineluctable effects of big data on their lives and how they live.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2126 - 2129"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45168497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Relationships 5.0: How AI, VR, and robots will reshape our emotional lives","authors":"T. Nomura","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2091468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2091468","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2129 - 2130"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47354444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Participation inequality in the gig economy","authors":"Aaron Shaw, Floor Fiers, E. Hargittai","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085611","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In theory, the gig economy facilitates flexible, digitally mediated employment arrangements. Why do some people wind up doing gig work while others do not? We focus on how online participation inequalities, and Internet use experiences and skills, shape the composition of online gig workers. Specifically, we analyze a unique survey data set from a national sample of 1512 U.S. adults that includes information about background attributes and behaviors, detailed measures of Internet experiences and skills, as well as questions about whether study participants had completed specific steps necessary to becoming a task worker on two prominent gig economy platforms: Amazon Mechanical Turk and TaskRabbit. We use Bayesian regression to compare four stages of gig economy participation. Workers who participate in the gig economy tend to be younger, more highly educated, and more skilled Internet users. This implies that the gig economy increases labor market stratification and that digital participation inequalities compound labor inequalities.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2250 - 2267"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45060785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cultivation of new taste: taste makers and new forms of distinction in China’s Coffee Culture","authors":"Xinyue Xu, Aaron Yikai Ng","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085616","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Specialty coffee is increasingly produced and consumed as part of routine life in many cities in modern China, but the social and cultural shifts it has engendered yet to be systematically examined. By examining the intersections between social media and the operations of independent Chinese coffeehouses in the field of taste, this paper puts forward the idea of new taste among Chinese millennials, which comprises individual subjectivity, heterogeneous social relationships, and forms of class distinction. Using taste-oriented keyword searches on WeChat official accounts, 20 articles were returned and analyzed in terms of their textural and visual orientations to examine the processes underlying how taste is influenced in the consumption of specialty coffee in China. Findings suggest the importance of taste makers in this process, from routine creation of aesthetic ambience in the coffeehouses to the construction of affective taste spaces online, and the establishment of taste cycles from online to offline, which all underpin class privilege. Moreover, the emergence of an ‘urban café community’ appears to be characterized by specific forms of belonging resulting from a productive effect of the interplay between independent coffeehouses and consumers in everyday urban life in which a set of aesthetic boundaries reside. Second, these digital consumers distinguish themselves socially by positioning themselves as having a cosmopolitan taste grounded in coffee appreciation instead of merely consuming coffee for physiological benefits. These findings extend taste propositions through engagement of Chinese digital millennial consumers to uncover the underlying cultural classifications.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2345 - 2362"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44087168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Free to express yourself online while off-duty? Tracing jurisdictional expressions of shifting workplace boundaries in Canada","authors":"D. Paré, Charles Smith","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2085613","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The myriad opportunities social media provide for amplifying individual expression are counterbalanced by the countless opportunities they afford employers to monitor and regulate employees’ off-duty speech. The embedding of social media platforms into peoples’ daily routines has blurred the boundaries between work and non-work domains. This presents a host of ethical, legal, and moral challenges pitting the rights and interests of employees against the authority and power of employers. In seeking to investigate whether, and the extent to which, employees’ off-duty expression is becoming subject to increasing employer control we conducted a systematic content analysis of Canadian judicial opinions from some 50 arbitration and court decisions involving the porous boundary between employees’ off-duty and work lives. The findings offer insights into the governance trajectory being charted by jurisdictional expressions in Canada that deal with reconciling employees’ right to freedom of expression with their contractual obligation to avoid harming employers’ public reputation. The analysis shows that employers are seeking to impose strong disciplinary measures for employee off-duty social media postings they deem contrary to their interests, and that adjudicators are upholding the imposing of such discipline while mitigating employer disciplinary excesses. These observations suggest the classic dichotomy between owners’ time and own time is being reconfigured into a distinction between owners’ time/space and one’s own tethered time/space. The recent introduction of ‘right to disconnect’ legislation offers labour unions a unique opportunity to develop collective bargaining proposals aimed at eliminating the tethering of employees’ time/space and better protecting their off-duty expression.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2304 - 2325"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47780482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"At the red table: how intergenerational Black women are using Facebook Watch to cultivate critical conversations on health, identity, and relationships","authors":"Jennifer Sadler, Chantell LaPan","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072752","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Red Table Talk, a web series exclusively aired on Facebook Watch, represents the narrative of intergenerational Black women who tackle critical conversations. The show, developed by Jada Pinkett-Smith and featuring her daughter and mother, brings in special guests for discussions on race, gender identity, sexual and mental health, co-parenting, and relationships. This paper relies on both qualitative and quantitative data from an audience survey, supplemented by thematic analysis to explore these themes. We show how the alternative media model of Facebook Watch and the series itself act as rebellions against institutionalized narratives that perpetuate stereotypes against people of color. We examine how Black women creators reclaim agency and resist generational forms of silencing by authoring a counter-narrative at the intersection of their lived cultural experiences.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2149 - 2167"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43560906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Young adults’ social network practices and the development of their media literacy competences: a quantitative study","authors":"Camille Tilleul","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072751","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Social networks are used by millions of people. These platforms are very popular with young audiences but also raise a growing number of questions: What are young people doing on social networks? What do they read and produce? Do they engage in a variety of activities? Are they media literate in relation to these social networks, and how do they develop these competences? This article focuses on the relationships between young adults’ social network practices and the development of their media literacy competences. Based on responses from 350 Belgian young adults, we identify profiles based on frequency and diversity of their practices. These profiles correlate with different levels of media literacy. We observe no relationship between frequency of participants’ reception practices (reviewing their newsfeed, reading posts, conducting in-depth research) and the development of their media literacy competences. However, we observe that the more young adults diversify these reception practices, the better their media literacy competences are. Conversely, and surprisingly, the more often they produce media content and the more they diversify these production practices (creating and sharing posts), the less media literate they appear to be.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2107 - 2125"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43224094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mediating Queer and Trans Pasts: The Homosaurus as Queer Information Activism","authors":"Marika Cifor, K. Rawson","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072753","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Libraries and archives have long been rich sites of exploration for LGBTQ+ people in search of self-understanding, identification, shared experience, and community. Yet the information infrastructures that guide every quest for queer and trans information remain silently powerful mediators of our research processes. Through an extended discussion of the Homosaurus, an international LGBTQ linked data vocabulary that the authors helped to develop, this article explores how queer information activism can confront the impoverished tools available for describing queer and trans resources. By focusing on both “corrective” and “analytic” strategies, the authors argue that the Homosaurus must work to expand the queer and trans terminology available for subject description while still challenging the structure and process of classificatory systems as always in tension with our queer aspirations.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2168 - 2185"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48669674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sudan’s December revolution of 2018: the ecology of Youth Connective and Collective Activism","authors":"Saadia Malik","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072754","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Sudan experienced a nationwide nonviolent revolution between December 2018 and July 2019, which has remained underrepresented in communication studies literature. This study employs empirical data from personal interviews with Sudanese activists as well as a theoretical framework of social movements based on media ecologies. The study’s theoretical framework considers social movements in terms of their historical contexts and as a whole consisting of communication networks and interaction between various forms of communication and actors, particularly the entanglement of online and offline elements of activism. The research contributes to the body of knowledge on social movements and communication, particularly in Sudan. The findings of the study show that the media ecology approach provides a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay and intertwinement of human actors in social revolution, collective agency, and technologies than the one-medium biased approach used in previous studies on social movements, particularly in the Arab world.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"1495 - 1510"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45284706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}