Becoming a Digital Citizen in a Technological World

Author(s):  
Mike Ribble

In todays changing global society, digital technology users need to be prepared to interact and work with users from around the world. Digital technology is helping to define this new global society. Being part of a society provides opportunities to its citizens but also asks that its members behave in certain way. This new technological society is drawing users together to learn, share and interact with one another in the virtual world. But for all users to be productive there needs to be a defined level of acceptable activity by everyone, in other words a digital citizenship. The concept of digital citizenship provides a structure for this digital society, by conceptualizing and organizing appropriate technology use into a new digital culture. Anyone using these digital technologies needs to understand the parameters of appropriate use so that they can become more constructive digital citizens.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3/2021 (93) ◽  
pp. 12-31
Author(s):  
Jolanta Wartini-Twardowska ◽  
◽  
Dariusz Grabara ◽  
Ewa Wanda Ziemba ◽  

Purpose: Our research was performed to identify differences in the frequency of using digital technologies by scientists to support their research in the periods before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic Design/methodology/approach: A survey questionnaire was used and data were collected from 467 scientists from Poland and abroad, which were statistically analyzed. The non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test was applied to reveal the differences in the frequency of digital technologies use between scientists in Poland and abroad in three periods (before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic). The non-parametric Friedman rank test and the post-hoc Conover test with Benjamini-Hochberg adjustment were used to assess the significant differences between three paired periods: before-during, before-after, and during-after the COVID-19 pandemic. For these periods, the association between the use of digital technologies and the types of research (basic or applied) conducted by scientists in Poland and abroad was also measured using Spearman’s rank correlation. Findings: Scientists from Poland and abroad differed in the use of all digital technologies before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, the differences concerned only social media, owing to a similar increase in the use of both communication applications and e-learning platforms. The results demonstrated that there was a weak positive correlation between the use of all digital technologies and applied research by both groups of scientists for all paired periods. In Poland in particular, our research has confirmed a positive correlation between the use of communication applications and social media and basic research for two paired periods: before-during and during-after the pandemic. Research limitation/implications: The limitations of this study were primarily related to the sample size, which did not allow the results to be generalized to the entire population. Another limitation was that all scientists from outside Poland were assigned to one group, without division into countries or regions of the world. This, however, enabled the research scope to be narrowed and resulted in stressing the differences between Poland and the rest of the world. A further limitation that may affect the research results is the adopted 5-point Likert scale, which determines the possibility of making an analysis. Originality/value: This research contributes to knowledge about the adaptation of scientists in Poland and abroad to new conditions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the frequency of digital technology use in basic and applied research. The significant differences found in the frequency of digital technology use between the three paired periods (before-during, before-after, and during-after the pandemic) have the potential to encourage research into their permanence.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Dickson

This article explores the material and digital culture of warfarin, one of the most commonly prescribed medications in the world. The author uses the drug’s 60-year history to describe its materiality and use, showing how and why it has become an informed material. Three ethnographic cases then show where warfarin has produced and is now reproduced by three types of information: NHS Trust guidelines, genetic codes and the INR (International Normalized Ratio). When a drug becomes so entangled with informational and digital technologies, it becomes reliant on them for its proper and safe use; it can no longer be just an informed material but is a digitally informed one.


2020 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 01028 ◽  
Author(s):  
N V Vasilenko ◽  
A J Linkov ◽  
O V Tokareva

Clustering of services in the conditions of digital economy development is considered as a way of their integration with the purpose of increasing customer satisfaction, as well as that of strengthening the competitive position of service organizations based on the promotion of green consumption. Services are clustered with the aim of satisfying one main or several interconnected needs of individuals or businesses taking into account the degree with which the consumer influences the process of service delivery. This paper demonstrates how clustering of services can be used to solve sustainability problems. It is shown that digital technologies allow the service provider to customize a service to fit the needs and requirements of a particular consumer within the first type of clustering in the service sector, and they are also included in the service support of the main service within the second type of clustering. Moreover, these technologies have their own value for the consumer within the third type of clustering and provide tools for the fourth type of clustering. In general, digitalization promotes technologization and cooperation in service clusters. The authors suppose that further research can be done into how the types of clustering mentioned manifest themselves in different industries.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511985670
Author(s):  
Taina Bucher

The call for papers suggests a certain “loss of innocence” with regard to how media scholars view the nature of digital technologies and their potential role in societies today. As the editors write, “Just a few years ago, many scholars celebrated digital technology for its potential to flatten hierarchies and strengthen civic life. Today, many of the same observers are writing about the darker sides of digital culture.” While this may be true, given the ways in which digital technologies are pervasively used for surveillance, misinformation and so forth, there is also something to be said about the politics of polemics, of pitching a celebratory account of technology against a supposedly more “critical” one. What I want to do is to take the opportunity offered by this inaugural issue of 2K to reflect on polemics and neatly dressed straw men as rhetorical strategies used in scholarly argumentation. My goal is to argue for the virtue of ambivalence in thinking and writing about the nature of digital technology. Far from being agreeable or a cop-out, the ambivalent position means having to negotiate an ongoing tension without necessarily finding resolution. The kind of ambivalence I have in mind is not about occupying an indifferent position. It’s not an “anything goes” attitude, nor does it involve compromise. Ambivalence isn’t a lack of belief, but rather the ability to “stay with the trouble” of questioning basic assumptions and to be transparent about them.


Author(s):  
Jessa Lingel

Whether by accidental keystroke or deliberate tinkering, technology is often used in ways that are unintended and unimagined by its designers and inventors. In this book, Jessa Lingel offers an account of digital technology use that looks beyond Silicon Valley and college dropouts-turned-entrepreneurs. Instead, Lingel tells stories from the margins of countercultural communities that have made the Internet meet their needs, subverting established norms of how digital technologies should be used. Lingel presents three case studies that contrast the imagined uses of the web to its lived and often messy practicalities. She examines a social media platform (developed long before Facebook) for body modification enthusiasts, with early web experiments in blogging, community, wikis, online dating, and podcasts; a network of communication technologies (both analog and digital) developed by a local community of punk rockers to manage information about underground shows; and the use of Facebook and Instagram for both promotional and community purposes by Brooklyn drag queens. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Lingel explores issues of alterity and community, inclusivity and exclusivity, secrecy and surveillance, and anonymity and self-promotion. By examining online life in terms of countercultural communities, Lingel argues that looking at outsider experiences helps us to imagine new uses and possibilities for the tools and platforms we use in everyday life.


Author(s):  
Vasiliy Svistunov ◽  
Valeriya Konovalova ◽  
Vitaliy Lobachyev

The article is devoted to the assessment of the impact of modern digital technologies on the world and Russian labor market. The relevance of the chosen problem is explained by the fact that the achieved level of digital development of society has a signifi cant impact on the size of labor markets, the qualifi cation composition of workers, the demand for certain professions. The article presents the results of the analysis of the impact of digital technology on the growth of Russia’s GDP, the contribution of individual factors of growth in value added of diff erent sectors of the economy, including the sectoral dimension, the dynamics of digital technologies across regions of the country. The article presents the results of studies characterizing new trends in the labor market, formed as a response to the increasingly active penetration of the digital economy in the socioeconomic sphere of society.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e11810111436
Author(s):  
Christiane Caneva

This study aims to identify both the level and frequency of digital technology use and perceived self-efficacy levels of pre-service teachers (n = 341). We collected data in Costa Rica through a survey during the 2016–2017 academic year; the survey includes closed-ended items on the use and frequency of digital technologies along with open-ended questions. Findings suggest that a majority of pre-service teachers frequently use digital technologies for both professional and private use and specifically the mobile phone and social media. Results further suggest they find themselves self-efficacious in the use of “traditional” digital technologies that are also used in teacher training by professors/teacher trainers such as laptop, email and video. They are less confident in using mobile phones and social media for teaching even though they use them extensively for their professional development.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Vedechkina ◽  
Francesca Borgonovi

The role of digital technology in shaping attention and cognitive development has been at the centre of public discourse for decades. The current review presents findings from three main bodies of literature on the implications of technology use for attention and cognitive control: television, video games, and digital multitasking. The aim is to identify key lessons from prior research that are relevant for the current generation of digital users. In particular, the lack of scientific consensus on whether digital technologies are good or bad for children reflects that effects depend on users’ characteristics, the form digital technologies take, the circumstances in which use occurs and the interaction between the three factors. Some features of digital media may be particularly problematic, but only for certain users and only in certain contexts. Similarly, individual differences mediate how, when and why individuals use technology, as well as how much benefit or harm can be derived from its use. The finding emerging from the review on the large degree of heterogeneity in associations is especially relevant due to the rapid development and diffusion of a large number of different digital technologies and contents, and the increasing variety of user experiences. We discuss the importance of leveraging existing knowledge and integrating past research findings into a broader organizing framework in order to guide emerging technology-based research and practice. We end with a discussion of some of the challenges and unaddressed issues in the literature and propose directions for future research.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Neil Selwyn ◽  
Selena Nemorin ◽  
Scott Bulfin ◽  
Nicola F Johnson

This paper explores the ways in which students perceive digital technology as being helpful and/or useful to their schooling. Drawing upon survey data from students (n=1174) across three Australian high schools, the paper highlights seventeen distinct digital ‘benefits’ in domains such as information seeking, writing and composition, accessing prescribed work, scheduling and managing study tasks. While these data confirm the centrality of such technologies to students’ experiences of school, they also suggest that digital technology is not substantially changing or ‘transforming’ the nature of schools and schooling per se. Instead, students were most likely to associate digital technologies with managing the logistics of individual study and engaging with school work in distinctly teacher-led linear and passive ways. As such, it is concluded that educationalists need to temper enthusiasms for what might be achieved through digital technologies, and instead develop better understandings of the realities of students’ instrumentally-driven uses of digital technology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 205520762110486
Author(s):  
Bradley Hiebert ◽  
Jodi Hall ◽  
Lorie Donelle ◽  
Danica Facca ◽  
Kim Jackson ◽  
...  

This paper presents results of a qualitative descriptive study conducted to understand parents’ experiences with digital technologies during their transition to parenting (i.e. the period from pre-conception through postpartum). Individuals in southwest Ontario who had become a new parent within the previous 24 months were recruited to participate in a focus group or individual interview. Participants were asked to describe the type of technologies they/their partner used during their transition to parenthood, and how such technologies were used to support their own and their family's health. Focus group and interview transcripts were then subjected to thematic analysis using inductive coding. Ten focus groups and three individual interviews were conducted with 26 heterosexual female participants. Participants primarily used digital technologies to: (1) seek health information for a variety of reproductive health issues, and (2) establish social and emotional connections. The nature of such health information work was markedly gendered and was categorized by 2 dominant themes. First, “‘Let me know when I’m needed’”, characterizes fathers’ apparent avoidance of health information seeking and resultant creation of mothers as lay information mediaries. Second, “Information Curation”, captures participants’ belief that gender biases built-in to popular parenting apps and resources reified the gendered nature of health and health information work during the transition to parenting. Overall, findings indicate that digital technology tailored to new and expecting parents actively reinforced gender norms regarding health information seeking, which creates undue burden on new mothers to become the sole health information seeker and interpreter for their family.


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