Ståle Angen Rye

Negotiating the symbolic power of information and communication technologies (ICT): The spread of Internet-supported distance education

The Internet may be, as typically suggested, important in distance education for facilitating connections between groups of students, educational institutions, and external learning resources. This article, however, reveals why this is not the only reason for applying information and communication technologies (ICT) in higher education in a remote area in a developing country. In addition, the Internet seems to be of great importance in symbolizing modernization and progress, thereby adding symbolic power to such education. Empirical sources originate from an explorative case study of an Internet-supported distance education program in the province of Bangka Belitung in Indonesia. Based on a translation perspective on the spread of pheromones, the analyses of empirical sources show how the Internet has contributed to the spread of distance education, but paradoxically this has not had much effect on the use of Internet by students in peripheral areas, at least not in the short term.

Distance Education and the Complexity of Accessing the Internet.

The focus of this paper is access problems distance students encounter when required to use the Internet for their studies, and how such problems influence the students’ ability to gain access to higher education. Empirically, the paper is informed by a qualitative case study of a Master’s programme in public administration offered to a group of students in a relatively remote area of Indonesia. It shows how access problems certainly become a challenge for such students, not only because of the absence of technology but also because of social constraints related to the presence of technology. However, as there are often no proper alternatives, new technology may well be considered a step forwards for such students, even if the new technology to some extent creates serious problems.

Online environmental activism and Internet use in the Indonesian environmental movement

This article investigates the use of the Internet among Indonesian environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and how this use influences the mobilizing structure of the environmental movement. The discussion is informed by an explorative study of nineteen Indonesian ENGOs working in the domain of forest protection. The study reveals that the Internet empowers the environmental activism of these organizations by enhancing opportunities for political participation. A main finding in the article is that well-established organizations with well-developed international networks benefit the most from the use of the Internet in their activism. However, smaller organizations with more informal charters seemed to have a better capacity to connect unconnected communities to the global flow of information.

Learning about distant places through the Internet: Young students as global citizens?

The article explores how the use of the Internet in school settings influences the way young people develop as citizens in an interconnected world and the possible implications for teaching geography subject at school. First, this topic is approached theoretically through a discussion of new forms of citizenship. The issue is investigated by using interview data and observations on the use of the Internet by upper secondary school students in Norway when searching for information about distant places. During the interviews, knowledge about tropical rainforests was used as a practical example. The main finding is that although the students could access information about a large part of the world from their laptop, a distance remained between the students and the rainforests and those who live in them. The article also reveals that, although it is often argued that the national context is weakened as a frame for civic engagement, the students referred to it as a basic frame when engaging with what is distant. Thus, it may be questioned how the use of the Internet in schools contributes to the development of students as global citizens.

Blended learning: communication, locations and work-life practices

The article discusses blended learning and how various delivery formats affect the way learning is situated in work-life practices. The authors approached this issue through an empirical study of an in-service training programme for middle-level managers in a number of case organisations. The programme used a combination of e-learning, textbooks and face-to-face seminars. The conclusion reached is that a purposeful blend of delivery modes and technology systems can situate learning outside the daily work location and at the same time facilitate the creation of communities of practice embedded in daily work experience. It is further argued that inflexibility can be a necessary for creation of such communities.

Between striated and smooth space: Exploring the topology of transnational student mobility

In this paper, we raise a question regarding how transnational students develop their spaces as mobile, temporary, and at times stable and territorially fixed. We argue that approaching transnational student migration and its relations to place as a Deleuzian assemblage is a fruitful way of highlighting this issue, and we propose the axes of the expressive/material and territorialisation/de-territorialisation as analytical tools for understanding aspects of the temporal and spatial dimensions of transnational student mobility. Our theoretical discussion is informed by the migration experiences of transnational students studying at a Norwegian university. Our core argument is that transnational student mobility should be approached as a complex process in which links to places in the student’s past, present and future dissolve the linear notion of causality and in which new notions of the relations between proximity and distance challenge ideas regarding the power relations embedded in a geometrical space.

International development aid and young people's participation in societal development of the global south

ABSTRACT International development aid has in recent years sought to strengthen youths’ societal participation by cooperation between international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and local youth associations. In this paper, we address and conceptualise some of the underlying causes that may enable and/or limit such efforts to support youth participation in the global south. We seek to contribute to the growing literature exploring the multiple scales of young peoples political agency. A core argument proposed is that notions of generational relationality, as seen in the case of international development aid targeting youth, must include conceptions of power as a topological relation across space.