Telemedicine as a Modality of Health Care Delivery and its Implications

This chapter provides both formal and operational definitions of telemedicine as well as the related concepts of telehealth, e-health, and m-health, and reviews the origin and historical evolution of the nomenclature and content of telemedicine over the last century. The rationale for telemedicine is discussed in terms of potential effects on improving access to care, especially for underserved, remote and isolated populations, redressing inequities in quality and cost containment in terms of greater efficiency and risk avoidance, not only singly but also symbiotically. The current status of telemedicine and the reasons for its limited diffusion to date are discussed. Finally, the empirical evidence is briefly reviewed, selecting one application as an example. The chapter concludes with an optimistic expectation of continued proliferation of the field to serve the common good.

Cyber Behaviors in Canada

The real world impacts the use of the cyber world. Two characteristics shape the Canadian cyber world: first, the bilingual nature of Canada; second and most important, the immensity of the Canadian territory and the related difficulties in physically reaching its population. Due to this situation, Canada has been at the edge of the development of cyberspace, investing major efforts in cyber-applications for the health system and for tele-education. This chapter describes the characteristics of cyber behavior in Canada and summarizes the current state of Canadian cyberspace, with a particular focus on the involvement of the government, media and entertainment, universities and hospitals, and a special emphasis on tele-medicine. Finally, this chapter describes some of the research of Canadian scientists in the field of cyber behavior. In the context of a globalized world, the experience of Canada provides a useful example for optimizing the use of cyberspaces in large territories, and facilitating interactions between different – real or virtual – communities.

Implementation of E-Governance in India

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was approved by the Government of India in the year 2006, comprising of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 components. The vision of this programme is –“to make all government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets, and ensure efficiency, transparency, and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man.” The effort has been made to demystify and simplify the process of delivering government services by taking a holistic view of initiatives across the country and proving an enabling ICT based platform. The ultimate objective is to bring government services to citizens’ doorsteps. This article discusses major e-governance initiatives before the launch of NeGP and the status of MMPs under Central and State Government and under integrated service category after the launch of NeGP. It also takes an overview of the number of online services provided to the stakeholders through government portals. A review of recommendations of National Knowledge Commission of India on e-governance is taken along with the actions taken in this direction. Major challenges in implementation of e-governance are also discussed.

Affective Agents in E-Learning Platforms

During recent decades there has been an extensive progress towards several Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts, such as that of intelligent agent. Meanwhile, it has been established that emotions play a crucial role concerning human reasoning and learning. Thus, developing an intelligent agent able to recognize and express emotions has been considered an enormous challenge for AI researchers. Embedding a computational model of emotions in intelligent agents can be beneficial in a variety of domains, including e-learning applications. However, until recently emotional aspects of human learning were not taken into account when designing e-learning platforms. Various issues arise when considering the development of affective agents in e-learning environments, such as issues relating to agents’ appearance, as well as ways for those agents to recognize learners’ emotions and express emotional support. Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) with empathetic behaviour have been suggested to be one effective way for those agents to provide emotional feedback to learners’ emotions. There has been some valuable research towards this direction, but a lot of work still needs to be done to advance scientific knowledge.

Cyber Conflict and Management

With the diffusion of networked technology in our society, online communication has become an integral part of daily life, and conflict no longer occurs only in face-to-face (FtF) contexts. Many people experience cyber conflict (i.e., a perceived incompatibility of goals among two or more cyber parties over computer-mediated communication (CMC) or online communication) and manages it online. While research in this significant and emerged topic is scattered across contexts and disciplines, this chapter provides preliminary knowledge by discussing the antecedents and outcomes of cyber conflict as well as factors that affect cyber conflict management. The chapter also offers future research directions.

Cyber Behavior and Social Capital

This chapter reviews historical development of research on cyber behavior and social capital, based on the definition by Robert D. Putnam, by focusing on the relationship between Information Communication and Technology use with social networks, civic engagement, as well as social trust. Firstly, the intellectual history of studies on cyber behavior and social capital is reviewed. Secondly, important past studies on the relationship between ICT use and social capital are focused from four perspectives: social networks, civic engagement, local community, and mobile phone use. Finally, future research directions are discussed from the perspective of comparative culture and rapidly evolving high-functionality smart phones.

Twitter and Political Elections

The rise of Twitter has changed human communication behavior not only in the political domain, but also in many other fields. Individuals are increasingly using microblogging platforms like Twitter for political deliberation, making full use of the features offered for discussions and social networking. At the same time, politicians and political parties hop on the bandwagon, using Twitter to reach a larger audience and communicate to constituents. As is the case for blogs, the political Twittersphere is fragmented along party lines, but stimulates communication between different ideological clusters. The publicly available discussions on Twitter can serve as a basis for election forecasts and have the potential to complement opinion polls and prediction markets in the future.

The Democratic Divide

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.

Internet Safety

Internet safety has become a great concern in daily life. This entry provides information about Internet safety in terms of: (1) psychological well-being; (2) online privacy; (3) cyberbullying; and (4) exposure to sexual content. As part of the narrative, the authors discuss problematic Internet use, online communication and psychological factors, breaches of online privacy, privacy concerns, privacy protection behaviors (online privacy), cyberbullying (Internet harassment), online pornography, and sexual offenders. For each topic, the authords identify factors that are related to Internet safety and the potential for harm in online and offline contexts.

Lying on the Internet

Mass media often presents a warped image of the Internet as an unreliable environment in which nobody can be trusted. In this entry, the authors describe lying on the Internet both in the context of lying in the real world and with respect to the special properties of computer-mediated communication (CMC). They deal with the most frequent motives for lying online, such as increasing one’s attractiveness or experimenting with identities. They also take into account the various environments of the Internet and their individual effects on various properties of lying. The current methods for detecting lies and the potential for future computer-linguistic analysis of hints for lying in electronic communication are also considered.