Panayiota Tsatsou

Digital divides revisited: what is new about divides and their research?

A worldwide debate has taken place in the last two decades about the digital divide and its constituents, as well as its dimensions and variations in the different contexts in which it emerges. In this article, I refer to ‘digital divides’ throughout the text, since I argue that many different aspects and forms of divides co-exist today, leading the concept to be defined and approached in various ways by contemporary research: ‘this is, in fact, a whole series of interlocking “divides” – the gaps that separate segments of society as well as whole nations into those who are able to take advantage of the new ICT opportunities and those who are not’ (OECD, 2000: 3). Regardless of the technological advances achieved in the information society, inequalities in the adoption and integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to frame and give new nuances to the concept of digital divides. Although the conventional divisions of access to and usage of ICTs seem to have shrunk at the national and international levels and for particular population groups, digital divides are still in place and present new, more qualitative nuances (Tsatsou et al., 2009). The continuous presence of digital divides over the past two decades and the new challenges emerging from rapid technological development feed and inspire research and new directions for examination by scholars and other interested parties in the field. This article aims to critically review well established and recent trends in digital divides literature and research, examining what is new about divides and related research and making recommendations about future research. The key question the article attempts to answer is whether and the extent to which research on digital divides over the last two decades has managed to capture the scope and role of interactions between technology, society and politics when examining the nature and especially the importance of digital divides. To this end, this article discusses how digital divides have evolved in the last two decades and how research literature has approached their nature, scope and significance Media, Culture & Society 33(2) 317 –331

Towards a taxonomy for regulatory issues in a digital business ecosystem in the EU

This article addresses the role of trust and regulation where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union (EU) make use of e-business in a digital business ecosystem (DBE). We argue that in order for digital business to develop among entrepreneurs in the EU and within different industry sectors and geographical locations, trust and regulation are of critical importance. The article assesses the importance of this argument and focuses on the interplay of regulatory and trust-based issues that need to be accommodated before one can expect SMEs to engage in e-business supported within a DBE environment. It then presents a taxonomy that addresses key regulatory issues and fosters trust. The article proposes the taxonomy as the vehicle for the simplification of a bewildering array of laws, standards, norms and expectations, as well as for the elimination of regulatory overlap and conflict. The contribution of the taxonomy is demonstrated in the last section of the article, where it is empirically tested and applied to SMEs which participated in the EU-funded DBE project.

Responsibility to report: The politics of British press reporting of the Darfur humanitarian crisis:

This article aims to establish whether the news media adopt a responsibility to report when covering humanitarian crises. It explores British press coverage of the genocide in Darfur and finds that the British press maintains traditional and ethnocentric frameworks that undermine the need for responsible reporting. Ultimately, the news values of negativity, elite people and elite nations have determined coverage of the Darfur crisis, and official and Western sources have been used to maintain credibility and a sense of identification with the domestic setting. Geopolitical biases continue to determine what stories are newsworthy, and political context remains scant. Sparse use of foreign correspondents and meagre inclusion of personal experiences suggest that journalists remain detached from the crisis, urging political rather than humanitarian intervention. This article concludes that the British press maintains institutionalised approaches to reporting humanitarian crises by avoiding attachment.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Children and the Internet: A multinational research agenda

The Internet and new online technologies are becoming embedded in everyday life across Europe and elsewhere, with many countries under pressure to get online so as to stimulate innovation, education, participation and commerce. The increasing importance of the Internet for work, education, community, politics, family life, and social relationships raises new questions for social scientists, policy makers, and the public. Although everybody is affected, in one way or another, children and young people are often in the vanguard of new media adoption and use. The widespread speculation, both hopeful and fearful, that surrounds children’s online experiences requires an especially critical stance from the academy so as to steer a path, guided by empirical evidence, between the celebration of youthful experts supposedly pioneering new forms of social life online and the attendant anxiety that children are thereby particularly vulnerable to new forms of harm. In the early years of Internet diffusion, children were gaining access to the Internet in advance of a mature programme of research (Livingstone, 2003a). But recent years have seen an explosion of studies in many countries, thus challenging researchers and policy-makers to review and learn from the emerging multinational and multilingual body of research findings. Achieving such an overview is vital both because policy should be evidence-based and also because technological, economic, political, and cultural factors shape the processes of Internet diffusion and appropriation differently in different countries. Not only is a comparative lens needed to understand whether, how and why children’s online experiences differ but, without this, one risks the twin fallacies of assuming one’s own country is distinctive when it is not and of assuming one’s own country is the same as others when it is not. In short, the task is to find a path between the poles of idiographic and universalising approaches (Hofstede, 1998; Livingstone, 2003b). Even within Europe, where 75 per cent of 6–17 year olds are now online in the 27 member states, differences in Internet access and use are substantial, ranging from less than half of children online in Italy (45 per cent) and about half of children online in Greece and Cyprus (both 50 per cent) to two-thirds of children using the Internet in many countries and rising to 94 per cent in Finland (European Commission, 2008). Striking differences are also observed among different parts of Europe with respect to cultural, infrastructural, socio-economic, and political parameters shaping children’s experiences with the Internet and new media. For example, the social and religious traditions of childhood and parenting vary from the Scandinavian North to the Latin South; the gradual harmonisation of

Literacy and training in digital research: Researchers’ views in five social science and humanities disciplines:

This article examines the views of researchers in five social science and humanities disciplines on their digital literacy and the training they need or have undertaken. Theoretically, this article draws upon two competing conceptualisations of digital literacy: digital literacy as ‘user skills’ and digital literacy as ‘user–technology interactivity’. Empirically, it suggests that social science and humanities researchers’ understandings and evaluations of their digital literacy unfold at two levels – the factual and the perceptual – and involve not only (technical) skills but also user experiences, emotions and complex processes of learning, practising and self-development when interacting with technology. Furthermore, researchers challenge the value of generic institutional training for literacy enhancement and envision the development of informal communities of experience exchange and knowledge-sharing across the research community. These findings lead to recommendations on training provision and support the conceptualisation of digital literacy as a process where user interactivity with technology results in certain experiences, reflections and lessons, rather than merely reflecting users’ technical skills.

A “Two-Level Social Capital Analysis” of the Role of Online Communication in Civic Activism: Lessons From the Role of Facebook in the Sunflower Movement:

In this article, we propose a “two-level social capital analysis” for the study of the role of online communication in new, contemporary forms of civic activism. We assess the applicability and value of the proposed analytical framework in a small-scale study of the role of Facebook in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement. The case study showcases that the proposed two-level social capital analysis can offer depth and nuance in the analysis of the role of online and social media platforms such as Facebook in civic activism by unpacking the attributes of online social capital and untangling their links to offline activism undertaken within complex, both online and offline, forces and actors. At the same time, we acknowledge the need for further evaluation of the proposed analytical framework, and we note lessons that future research should take into account.

Can media and communication researchers turn the present challenges of research impact and interdisciplinarity into future opportunities

This statement critically reflects on two of the main challenges in media and communication research: the disputed societal value and impact of media and communication research and the shortage of interdisciplinary research in the field. The statement makes concrete suggestions about how these two ‘deficiencies’ can be turned into opportunities, with one paving the way for encountering and solving the other. At the same time, it acknowledges the existence of the following two caveats: first, the notion of interdisciplinarity has not yet been sufficiently explored or even comprehended among researchers across disciplines, and its future shape and directions cannot be foreseen; second, impact itself is time- and context-relative and researchers must be in tune with broader developments in the real-life world to sense the changes happening and the emerging areas of impact that require their attention.

Mobile Phones Like Any Other ICT?: The Case of Greece and its Adoption of Mobile Phones from a Socio-Cultural Perspective

Yogesh K. Dwivedi is a lecturer at the School of Business and Economics at Swansea University in the UK. He was awarded his MSc and PhD by Brunel University in the UK, receiving a Highly Commended award for his doctoral work by the European Foundation for Management and Development. His research focuses on the adoption and diffusion of ICT in organisations and in addition to authoring a book and numerous conference papers, has co-authored papers accepted for publication by journals such as Communications of the ACM, the Information Systems Journal, the European Journal of Information Systems, and the Journal of the Operational Research Society. He is Senior Editor of DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, Managing Editor of Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, Assistant Editor of Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy and a member of the editorial board/review board of a number of other of other journals, and is a member of the Association of Information Systems, IFIP WG8.6 and the Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management, New Delhi. Yogesh K. Dwivedi (Swansea University, UK)

Social media and informal organisation of citizen activism: Lessons from the use of Facebook in the Sunflower Movement. Social Media + Society.

The literature embraces several arguments regarding the influence of online communication platforms and practices on communicative, semantic, affective and organisational elements of citizen activism. Although organisational matters are inherent in most discussions in this area, there is a need for empirical insight into under-explored cases of citizen activism that can contribute toward addressing questions about the informal organisation of citizen activism and the associated role of social media. This paper presents an interview study of the role of Facebook in the informal organisation of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. The study found that participants in the Sunflower Movement engaged more with Facebook’s information-spreading and information-sharing functions than with its networking affordances. They used these functions to enhance the public’s engagement with the movement and recruit new participants, as well as to initiate, support and coordinate offline action. In addition, in the context of the Sunflower Movement, Facebook appeared to support the largely self-organised and loosely structured character of the coordination of offline action. It also fostered movement participants’ actions and feelings of ‘altruism’ toward other participants as well as their desire to ‘awaken’ other groups and the public at large. Regarding leadership, the study shows that leadership structures still exist in technologically mediated citizen activism, but they are often challenged by activists, while decision-making is a lot more complex and multi-layered than in the past.

Internet policy and regulation through a socio-cultural lens: A dialogue between society’s culture and decision-makers?

Abstract This article argues that a dialogue of society and its culture with decision-making practices is taking place in the information society and with respect to phenomena such as digital divides. The article reports on focus group research conducted in Greece. This qualitative research concerns Internet policy and regulation in particular and examines the dialogue of policy and regulation with society’s culture as reported by users and non-users of the Internet. The research finds that the perceived role of Internet policy and regulation passes through society’s everyday culture, with significant implications for the implementation, efficiency and future course of Internet policy and regulation. These findings aim to fill in the relevant gap in the literature which often neglects the interlinkages between society’s cultural traits and mindsets and the practices applied in the complex field of policy and regulation for the information society.