scholarly journals Fifty years of digital literacy studies: A meta-research for interdisciplinary and conceptual convergence

Author(s):  
María-Cristina Martínez-Bravo ◽  
Charo Sádaba-Chalezquer ◽  
Javier Serrano-Puche

The following research has as its starting point the previous existence of different approaches to the study of digital literacy, which reflect a specialisation by area of study as well as connections and complementarity between them. The paper analyses research from the last 50 years through 11 key terms associated with the study of this subject. The article seeks to understand the contribution of each term for an integrated conceptualisation of digital literacy. From the data science approach, the methodology used is based on a systematized review of the literature and a network analysis using Gephi. The study analyses 16,753 articles from WoS and 5,809 from Scopus, between the period of 1968 to 2017. The results present the input to each key term studied as a map of keywords and a conceptual framework in different levels of analysis; in these, we show digital literacy as a central term that connects and integrates the others, and we define it as a process that integrates all the perspectives. The conclusions emphasise the comprehensive sense of digital literacy and its social condition, as well as the transversality to human life. This research aims to understand the relationships that exist between the different areas and contribute to the debate from a meta-theoretical level, validating meta-research for this interdisciplinary purpose.

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 121-136
Author(s):  
Tulimegameno Amutenya

Agriculture is the backbone of human life, it enables for food security, health and economy. Yet, many countries in Africa suffer from poor accessibility to agriculture data which is crucial for policy makers and farmers. Half of Namibia’s population depend on agricultural activities, for as their main income source, much of which is undertaken on smallholdings. Therefore, compiling statistics around agricultural outputs is of primary concern to many national statistics agencies Unfortunately, challenges to account for agriculture crop production statistics include low frequency of data collection, lengthy data processing periods, and the lack of timely output which can be linked to policies and decision making. This paper explores the use of satellite imagery and data science techniques in a statistics agency to complement the agriculture census. The paper assessed Google Earth Engine for image processing and extracted a range of indices (NDVI, SAVI, MSAVI and GLCM and Tasseled Cap Index based) in order to identify smallholder farmers’ plots and estimate the field area in a rural village in Namibia. Although groundtruth data was not available at the time of this issue, the findings showed a promising starting point for a scaled project.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Escotet Espinoza

UNSTRUCTURED Over half of Americans report looking up health-related questions on the internet, including questions regarding their own ailments. The internet, in its vastness of information, provides a platform for patients to understand how to seek help and understand their condition. In most cases, this search for knowledge serves as a starting point to gather evidence that leads to a doctor’s appointment. However, in some cases, the person looking for information ends up tangled in an information web that perpetuates anxiety and further searches, without leading to a doctor’s appointment. The Internet can provide helpful and useful information; however, it can also be a tool for self-misdiagnosis. Said person craves the instant gratification the Internet provides when ‘googling’ – something one does not receive when having to wait for a doctor’s appointment or test results. Nevertheless, the Internet gives that instant response we demand in those moments of desperation. Cyberchondria, a term that has entered the medical lexicon in the 21st century after the advent of the internet, refers to the unfounded escalation of people’s concerns about their symptomatology based on search results and literature online. ‘Cyberchondriacs’ experience mistrust of medical experts, compulsion, reassurance seeking, and excessiveness. Their excessive online research about health can also be associated with unnecessary medical expenses, which primarily arise from anxiety, increased psychological distress, and worry. This vicious cycle of searching information and trying to explain current ailments derives into a quest for associating symptoms to diseases and further experiencing the other symptoms of said disease. This psychiatric disorder, known as somatization, was first introduced to the DSM-III in the 1980s. Somatization is a psycho-biological disorder where physical symptoms occur without any palpable organic cause. It is a disorder that has been renamed, discounted, and misdiagnosed from the beginning of the DSMs. Somatization triggers span many mental, emotional, and cultural aspects of human life. Our environment and social experiences can lay the blueprint for disorders to develop over time; an idea that is widely accepted for underlying psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. The research is going in the right direction by exploring brain regions but needs to be expanded on from a sociocultural perspective. In this work, we explore the relationship between somatization disorder and the condition known as cyberchondria. First, we provide a background on each of the disorders, including their history and psychological perspective. Second, we proceed to explain the relationship between the two disorders, followed by a discussion on how this relationship has been studied in the scientific literature. Thirdly, we explain the problem that the relationship between these two disorders creates in society. Lastly, we propose a set of intervention aids and helpful resource prototypes that aim at resolving the problem. The proposed solutions ranged from a site-specific clinic teaching about cyberchondria to a digital design-coded chrome extension available to the public.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Jolanta Brzykcy

The article is an analysis of the poetry of Gisella Lachman (1895–1969), poet of the “first wave” of Russian emigration, from the perspective of the poetics of space. The poet expressed her emigration experience (multiple changes of residence: Russia, Germany, Switzerland, USA) in her poems in spatial relations. They appear on different levels of the works’ morphology: in the construction of the lyrical “I”, in the organisation of the presented world, in the repertoire of motifs and the selection of poetic lexis and genre forms. Space plays a literal role in Lachman’s poetry; it is a representation of extra-literary reality, seen subjectively. It is also subject to metaphorisation, becoming a tool for expressing philosophical content. The poet creates not only a spatial model of the world, but also a spatial model of human life, which she perceives as a transit on the road to eternity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 270-281
Author(s):  
Andrzej Gzegorczyk

The first Ukrainian translation of the text by Andrzej Grzegorczyk "Anthropological Foundations of Global Education". Andrzej Grzegorczyk (1922-2014) asks the question: is the current construction of the world educational system theoretically justified in terms of human cognitive needs in the modern world, and does it have prospects for development? The theoretical starting point for the rational substantiation of the construction of a modern educational program needed in our era can be represented by distinguishing two components of the picture of human life: 1) stages of development of knowledge of the child and 2) branches (spheres) of human activity to which the school should prepare. Andrzej Grzegorczyk offers his own vision of the sequence of formation of the student's personality. Based on the achievements of socio-evolutionary psychology, he proposes to correlate ontogenesis and phylogeny in education. The young human individual goes, in particular, through successive phases of development, in each of which in turn is dominated by the following four educational and developmental processes initiated by the natural human environment (as well as school). The stages of learning correspond, thus, to the prospects of student development: from the narrowest (family-tribal) perspective to the universalist, which is a synthesis of what tradition brings, as well as acquired knowledge and development of a sense of universal values. Thus, the stages (levels) of education can, in his opinion, be called as follows: 1) family-tribal, 2) traditionally national-religious, 3) individual-rationalist-scientific, 4) universalist-synthetic. The second dimension of the education program is the field / field of study. Presenting the problems of creative realization of values ​​in public life, they can be arranged according to certain parameters: guidelines for activity, way of seeing one's place in society, forms (mechanisms) of action to which the individual is usually subject or implements at this stage, related norms and positions. Among the positions of special attention deserves the experience of self-worth. In the formation of the educational system should include in the content of education the following topics related to culture, the following parameters: type of culture, the main idea of ​​culture of this type, characteristics of the richness of cultural production of this type and related type of knowledge.


Author(s):  
Tatsiana Valodzina ◽  

The article deals with one of the most popular techniques in Belarusian magical medicine — the so-called historiolae, the essence of which is to recall precedent situations. This implies that the “disequilibrium of being, which has arisen in human life at the present moment (e.g. a disease), is restored according to a sacred pattern that took place in the past”. The texts declare connections between different levels of the worlds, past and present, but to the same extent between the microcosm and the macrocosm, erasing all distinctions between the real and the supernatural worlds. The present time of these charms prevents the transfer of the patient and the healer to ancient times of the myths. Instead, it is the sacred world that spreads around the requester. The most common form of such charms includes a narrative that relates certain events in Christian history, primarily describing the life of Christ or of one of the saints. A particular place among the narrative manifestations of historiolae is occupied by references to the Passion of Christ. These narratives, in turn, possess powerful life-affirming and healing potential. It is not the logical correspondence of a specific comparison in an incantation that is central, but the very desire to place the situation of treatment in an appropriate context. A number of texts from the author’s field records and archival materials are introduced here into scholarly circulation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Ingrida Baranauskiene

<p>Dear authors, members of the editorial board, and readers of the scientific interdisciplinary journal <em>Social Welfare: Interdisciplinary Approach</em>. We present to you one more issue of the journal. As in previous issues, in the present issue, an interdisciplinary approach to social welfare in a national and intercultural context is important to us. In this issue, we present to your attention the works of scientists from three countries in one way or another related to social welfare, the concept of which is constructed and presented in three chapters: <em>Social Challenges</em>, <em>The Development of Professional Competences</em> and <em>Disability Studies</em>. Going deeper into the presented scientific works, it can be seen that in many of them we can name social justice as the main idea. This scientific concept and the starting point of the formation of the concept of life has reached us from ancient times. All of us know Plato, Socrates’ disciple, and his ontological concept of justice related to a virtue of the soul. Justice for Plato is one of the major virtues that encompasses both state governance and human life in general. It can be argued that he saw the benefits of justice in the life of the state and the individual, including the idea that justice unites society (Plato, 2000<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>). Aristotle gives justice the meaning of redistribution and sharing. On the other hand, although Aristotle’s justice is restricted to Greek citizens, in any case, the idea of sharing, redistributing, offsetting was spread thanks to Aristotle (Aristotle, 1990<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a>). Thomas Aquinas not only linked the Christian tradition to the teaching of Aristotle, but also further developed the idea of justice and emphasized the importance of transposing the idea into law (Aquinas, 2015<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a>). Immanuel Kant developed a moral theory which, in the context of our days, is, in my view, an important duty as the strongest pillar of morality (Kant, 1987<a title="" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a>). Without going into polemic about how much Immanuel Kant’s philosophy influenced John Rawls’ theory of social justice, I will quote the principles of justice defined by him: “a) each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value. b) Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity” (Rawls, 2002, p. 61<a title="" href="#_ftn5">[5]</a>). It can be said that Rawls’ idea that we will not achieve social welfare in the state until justice, including social justice, is ensured, has laid the foundations for a modern understanding of social justice. The dialectic of the concept of justice is also reflected in the works of our authors as the emphasis on justice as a value (Arūnas Acus, Liutauras Kraniauskas; Ilona Dobrovolskytė), the disclosure of the meaning of sharing (Jurgita Lenkauskaitė; Olga Kuprieieva, Tetiana Traverse, Liudmyla Serdiuk, Olena Chykhantsova, Oleksandr Shamych), the construct of the concept of law (Daiva Malinauskienė, Aistė Igorytė; Ingrida Baranauskienė, Alla Kovalenko, Inna Leonova), the understanding of a theory of civic morality, a duty that is a pillar of morality (Svitlana Kravchuk; Elena Kuftyak; Asta Volbikienė, Remigijus Bubnys; Simas Garbenis, Renata Geležinienė, Greta Šiaučiulytė). And it does not matter at all whether this is analyzed in the context of social challenges, disability studies or professional competences. It can be stated that the idea of social justice is the driving force behind the scientific works of this journal.</p><p>Wishing everyone to stay healthy, both physically and spiritually, I place social justice as a fundamental value in these turbulent times of a global pandemic. But life does not stand still, so we look forward to your new research works. There will be no us without you.</p><div><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /></div>


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
Siska Dwi Purwanti ◽  
Daryono Daryono

Transformation is a process of changing form, nature, and so on into new forms without leaving the values that existed in the previous culture. The process of transformation always produces elements of novelty, both in terms of style, taste, and meaning even at different levels of change. Transformation in art does not only occur in similar arts. Ancient relics, for example, as one form of art can be a starting point to be interpreted into visual expression in contemporary art, including dance. Tubuh Ritus Tubuh is one of the dance works which is a form of transformation of the Prambanan Temple relief. This study tries to uncover the allegations of the  transformation of the Prambanan temple reliefs that can be observed on Tubuh Ritus Tubuh dance presentation. The problem of transformation is examined using the theory of change expressed by Lorens Bagus. The participatory research method carried out by the author is able to uncover the form of transformation found in certain parts of the dance presentation. Keywords: transformation, relief, Prambanan Temple, Tubuh Ritus Tubuh.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luci Pangrazio ◽  
Neil Selwyn

The capacity to understand and control one’s personal data is now a crucial part of living in contemporary society. In this sense, traditional concerns over supporting the development of ‘digital literacy’ are now being usurped by concerns over citizens’ ‘data literacies’. In contrast to recent data safety and data science approaches, this article argues for a more critical form of ‘personal data literacies’ where digital data are understood as socially situated and context dependent. Drawing on the critical literacies tradition, the article outlines a range of salient socio-technical understandings of personal data generation and processing. Specifically, the article proposes a framework of ‘Personal Data Literacies’ that distinguishes five significant domains: (1) Data Identification, (2) Data Understandings, (3) Data Reflexivity, (4) Data Uses, and (5) Data Tactics. The article concludes by outlining the implications of this framework for future education and research around the area of individuals’ understandings of personal data.


2012 ◽  
pp. 1010-1017
Author(s):  
Seong-Jae Min

The democratic divide, or the political participation gap in cyberspace, raises a critical social question as it suggests that new communication technologies, which are expected to contribute to the development of all humans, actually widen the political inequalities among different segments of people. Studies of the democratic divide show that human behavior in cyberspace is not equal, as individuals possess different levels of digital literacy and political motivation. The democratic divide will likely persist in a variety of forms.


Biometrics ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 559-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maulilio J. Kipanyula ◽  
Anna M. Geofrey ◽  
Kadeghe G. Fue ◽  
Malongo R.S. Mlozi ◽  
Siza D. Tumbo ◽  
...  

Rabies has continued to claim human life despite different efforts to controls its transmission cycles between humans and domestic dogs. New developments in ICT have provided an opportunity for increased possibilities for community involvement in rabies surveillance. The main objective of this study was to investigate on approaches and practices to improve the communication of rabies surveillance information at different levels. Specifically, a study was carried to establish the significance of applying human sensor web system. Human sensor web has a potential of strengthening rabies surveillance system and serves as applied research tools for investigating strategic spatially targeted control activities, identifying areas most at risk and early detection of rabies incursions. Web and mobile based rabies surveillance system was developed and piloted as a support tool for the detection, surveillance and control of rabies. Wide application of the developed system will pave way for effective and efficient country-wide sharing of rabies surveillance information.


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