The Global Digital Divide

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederico Cruz-Jesus ◽  
Tiago Oliveira ◽  
Fernando Bacao

This article presents an analysis of the global digital divide, based on data collected from 45 countries, including the ones belonging to the European Union, OECD, Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). The analysis shows that one factor can explain a large part of the variation in the seven ICT variables used to measure the digital development of countries. This measure is then used with additional variables, which are hypothesised as drivers of the divide for a regression analysis using data from 2015, 2013, and 2011, which reveals economic and educational imbalances between countries, along with some aspects of geography, as drivers of the digital divide. Contrary to the authors' expectations, the English language is not a driver.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-11
Author(s):  
ŽANETA BALÁŽOVÁ

International cooperation, visiting new countries, meeting new people from all over the world are typical features of these days. The Universities of the Third Age as institutions focused on senior education and their opportunities to help people of older age familiarize with new cultures, it means to integrate into the multicultural society are presented in the paper. The European Union, especially the Erasmus+ program offers chances to students of all ages as well as seniors to enhance the knowledge and skills abroad, to make friends and to improve communication skills in English language.


2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordi Muñoz ◽  
Mariano Torcal ◽  
Eduard Bonet

Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that both will be positively related, others have proposed the opposite hypothesis: low levels of trust in national institutions will lead citizens to higher levels of support for the EU. We argue that both hypotheses are true but operate at different levels: whereas more trusting citizens tend to be so in both the national and the European arenas, we also find that at the country level the relationship is negative: living in a country with highly trusted and well-performing institutions hinders trust in the European Parliament. We test our hypotheses using data from the European Social Survey and Hierarchical Linear Modeling.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelly Tincheva

Abstract Brexit, i.e. the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU), is a major event not only in European but also in global politics. Its effect is still to be witnessed and its future impact is debated from a variety of angles – social, economic, cultural, ethnic, religious, etc. The present paper offers a cognitive linguistic perspective on the phenomenon. It aims to investigate the conceptual metaphorization of Brexit on the first days after the 2016 referendum. That period seems of special importance as, arguably, it was then that for many UK citizens, Brexit suddenly became part of reality and not just a hypothetical possibility. The paper presents data on the dynamics of employing different source domains on each of the first 4 days after the referendum. The main objective is to isolate regularities and tendencies in how the selected culturally-significant source domains help structure the concept. The analysis of the dataset of English-language EU online media texts appearing on the first 4 post-referendum days reveals that the most prominent source domains in the metaphoric conceptualization of brexit are divorce, a natural disaster and part of a journey.


Author(s):  
Tanel Kerikmäe ◽  
Archil Chochia ◽  
Max Atallah

Integration with the European Union has been far less distressing for the three Baltic States than for numerous other accessing countries owing to their strong societal impetus to (re)join Western political, economic, and legal culture after they regained their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. However, the accession of these states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—had several distinctive features related to constitutional background and settings, which heavily influenced problem solving between government and the EU institutions. In general, the controversial issues regarding how to solve the problems with supranational power have never been dramatic with regard to the Baltic States, which leads to the assumption that often the governments have taken rather compliant positions. The latest cases, such as the European Stabilization Mechanism, indicate the change in paradigm: the three Baltic States are more aware of the margin of appreciation and actual borderlines between policy making- and decision making. Today, in setting up an EU-related agenda, more skills than previously are needed in finding allies and choosing partners. The road the Baltic States took in joining the EU was a difficult one, nor has their role in the EU been easy. Should a small state with a big initiative be allowed to mentor other member states regarding that initiative, meaning in particular Estonia and its digital development? Another peculiar aspect of the Baltic States is their (inter)relationship with Russia. Considering themselves a bridge between East and West, the Baltics have been active in Eastern Partnership and Development Aid initiatives and have also spoken out strongly against intervention in Georgia and Ukraine. This position sometimes complicates any EU attempt to achieve consensus on foreign policy.


Author(s):  
Aleksander Grzelak

The main purpose of the article is to examine the compounds between economic results of agricultural holdings and their impact on the environment. The research was conducted on a group of 23 EU countries that have been members since at least 2004. The time scope of the analyses concerns the years 2004-2015. The study uses regression analysis based on panel data. It was found that the more favorable economic situation of the surveyed group of agricultural holdings is accompanied by a stronger negative impact on the environment. The strongest relative environmental impact (from the perspective of material pressure on the environment) was recorded for investments.


Author(s):  
Agnes Kasper ◽  
Anna-Maria Osula ◽  
Anna Molnár

Over the last decades cybersecurity has become a cornerstone of European digital development. Alongside with the diffusion of information and communication technologies and the deepening (as well as widening) of the European Union, the initial narrow and sectoral data security policies have expanded into a comprehensive cybersecurity framework addressing issues from resilient infrastructure and technological sovereignty, through tackling cybercrime, to cyber defence capabilities and responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. In this complex web of interrelated policies a relative newcomer at the European Union (EU) level is cyber diplomacy. Sometimes also called public diplomacy 2.0, it factors into the cross-border connectivity of cyberspace and reflects a shift in international relations where the lines between external and internal policies, military and civilian domains are blurred. However, the term cyber diplomacy is fluid and it is not well understood which topics should be under its “umbrella”, in particular in relation to cybersecurity, where it seems to be linked the most. This article aims to map existing and proposed instruments that make up the EU’s arsenal in this broad context to answer the following questions: what is cyber diplomacy and how is it related to the EU cybersecurity? Is cyber diplomacy in the EU becoming something in its own right as a distinct set of tools to secure the EU policy objectives?


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-240
Author(s):  
Silvia Manessi

The aim of this paper is to analyse the legal framework regulating the careers of civil servants working for the EU institutions and reveal how the values of equality and diversity are communicated and embedded in their daily lives. The research examines the English language used in the HR legal framework of the EU institutions and explores the linguistic aspects related to equality and diversity management and inclusive language. The starting point of this research is the idea that the European Union is based on the values of democracy, the rules of law and the equal treatment of its citizen, who are celebrated for their diversity. It is thus highly relevant to look at the EU in action and see if it is consistent in the understanding and application of these values. The methodological approach of this research entailed the creation and analysis of a unique corpus composed of all the applicable HR legal provisions in force within the EU institutions, and the examination of the linguistic features (word lists by frequency, concordances, collocations and lexical bundles) of the terminology related to four different areas of equality and diversity – the LGBTI community, gender, the elderly and persons with a disability – with the final aim to take stock of the related developments in the use of the English language. The results indicate that the language used in the EU HRM legal framework is not in line with the EU values of equality and diversity, and the research concludes with highlighting possible improvements of the language used in the corpus.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 556-576
Author(s):  
Gary J. Lewis ◽  
Lee de-Wit

Most psychological research on Brexit categorises participants as either leave or remain supporters. In the current study we take a data-driven approach and identify different clusterings of attitudes towards the European Union (EU) using latent class analysis (LCA), as well as how these classes differ across a range of important social and psychological variables. This analysis revealed 10 distinct classes of voters in a large (N = 15860) adult sample of UK citizens using data from the British Election Study. These classes ranged from being quite uniformly pro- or anti-EU in sentiment, to more mixed groups with more complex patterns of attitudes. The classes that included majority-remain supporters were younger and better educated, and self-rated more highly on the measures of actively open-minded thinking, openness, political trust, and external locus of control. The classes that included majority-leave supporters were older and less well educated, and self-rated more highly on the measures of authoritarianism and conscientiousness. However, there were also notable demographic and psychological differences within the classes associated with leavers and remainers. A full consideration of these attitudinal nuances will be necessary to achieve a deeper understanding of why the UK decided to leave the EU.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 883-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stockemer ◽  
Arne Niemann ◽  
Doris Unger ◽  
Johanna Speyer

Between 2015 and 2017, the European Union (EU) was confronted with a major crisis in its history, the so-called “European refugee crisis.” Since the multifaceted crisis has provoked many different responses, it is also likely to have influenced individuals’ assessments of immigrants and European integration. Using data from three waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) — the wave before the crisis in 2012, the wave at the beginning of the crisis in 2014, and the wave right after the (perceived) height of the crisis in 2016 — we test the degree to which the European refugee crisis increased Europeans’ anti-immigrant sentiment and Euroscepticism, as well as the influence of Europeans’ anti-immigrant attitudes on their level of Euroscepticism. As suggested by prior research, our results indicate that there is indeed a consistent and solid relationship between more critical attitudes toward immigrants and increased Euroscepticism. Surprisingly, however, we find that the crisis increased neither anti-immigrant sentiments nor critical attitudes toward the EU and did not reinforce the link between rejection of immigrants and rejection of the EU. These findings imply that even under a strong external shock, fundamental political attitudes remain constant.


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