The politics of the Digital Single Market: culture vs. competition vs. copyright

This paper examines the implications for European music culture of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Single Market strategy. It focuses on the regulatory framework being created for the management of copyright policy, and in particular the role played by collective management organisations (CMOs or collecting societies). One of the many new opportunities created by digitalisation has been the music streaming services. These depend on consumers being able to access music wherever they are, but such a system runs counter to the management of rights on a national basis and through collecting organisations which act as monopolies within their own territories. The result has been ‘geo-blocking’. The EU has attempted to resolve this problem in a variety of ways, most recently in a Directive designed to reform the CMOs. In this paper, we document these various efforts, showing them to be motivated by a deep-seated and persisting belief in the capacity of ‘competition’ to resolve problems that, we argue, actually lie elsewhere – in copyright policy itself. The result is that the EU’s intervention fails to address its core concern and threatens the diversity of European music culture by rewarding those who are already commercially successful.     

Inequality in digital skills and the adoption of online safety behaviors

ABSTRACT

Cyber-safety behaviors are important in preventing the loss of an individual's digital assets and ensuring the safety of important daily online activities. Individuals’ cyber-safety is also critical for national cybersecurity. The issue is highly relevant for Israel, a country that relies on the digital capabilities of its workers for its major technology industries and is also often a target of cyberwarfare and cybercrime attacks. The purpose of this study is to identify the determinants of cyber-safety behavior. We investigate the role of age, gender and education in the use of safety-related digital skills and antivirus software. Using a 2014 survey of a national sample of Internet users in Israel (N?=?1850), we found that age, gender, education and quality of access are associated with the level of users’ digital security skills. In addition, these skills and the frequency of conducting financial activities online are the main determinants of antivirus behaviors. Our results expand the understanding of cyber-safety by showing that social and digital disparities are reproduced in the use of measures to prevent online threats, putting the digitally disadvantaged at greater risk of becoming victims of online threats.     

面向新时代的国民经济核算研究议题及相关问题

本文结合国际国内研究动态分层次归纳、阐释当前国民经济核算的研究议题。具体包括:以国民账户体系2008版(SNA-2008)为起点的前沿研究,SNA中心框架的灵活运用研究,接驳中国国民经济核算体系(CSNA)及其实务的优化和创新研究,国民经济核算数据的综合应用研究。最后针对中国当前国民经济核算研究方法中存在的一些倾向性问题做讨论,比如是否过分关注与GDP的关联, 如何充分发挥卫星账户的作用等。     

Crowdfunding digital platforms: Backer networks and their impact on project outcomes

Crowdfunding platforms serve to connect project creators and backers. Previous research has explored several project and platform determinants that impact crowdfunding outcomes. However, there has been limited research on these determinants at an individual level. Our paper addresses how backers may influence the outcomes of projects in crowdfunding platforms. We explore several methods commonly used in the industry to identify influence and show that centrality measures through a backer affiliation network best exemplifies influence. Using data from Kickstarter, we construct a weighted backer network based on 52,678 common projects backed by 11,134 backers. Controlling for digital media mentions and project quality, we find evidence that backers in central positions within the network have a positive impact on multiple project outcomes such as the project success rates, amount of funds raised, speed of reaching the crowdfunding goal as well as the number of backers contributing to the project. These findings are replicated and reinforced by using data from a different crowdfunding platform using the entire backer network based on 1095 projects backed by 87,896 backers. Several robustness tests are used to validate these results.     

Responsibilisation,social work and inclusive social security in Finland

ABSTRACT

In this article responsibilisation in social work is studied by analysing two Finnish state-level policy documents (called final report and research report) which concern a current activation initiative called inclusive social security (ISS). It is asked how social workers and clients are constructed as responsible subjects in these documents. Responsibilisation refers to the advanced liberal mode of governmentality, which aims to strengthen citizens’ abilities to self-governance through various techniques that include the intertwined elements of surveillance and empowerment. It is demonstrated that the policy documents construct the social workers’ and the clients’ responsibilities partly in different ways. The final report leads activation to be based on shared responsibility and social work to be more community-based, whereas the research report strengthens more individual-based responsibility of clients and social workers. For the clients, the interpretation of ISS based on shared responsibility would probably be less stigmatising and paternalistic than the one based on individual responsibilities, i.e. approaching long-term unemployed citizens as being personally ‘at risk’ and thus a justified target group of individualised techniques for activation. For social workers and clients, future activation appears to be a wide mix of different techniques, moral expectations and possible ways of being a responsible subject.     

广州的金融抗战之失陷前夕大撤退

全民族的抗日战争爆发后,以广州各银行为主体的华南地区金融机构即"肩负经济作战之重任,以银行严整之阵容,运用金融之力量,与军事同时并进,贡献于国防和民生",在作出战时大撤退抉择后泰然自若,以极其简陋的交通工具成功突围,完整保存了华南地区金融的组织系统和金融实力。文章以第一手史料为背景,以全面抗战爆发到广州失陷为时段,从当时广州的经济金融秩序、战时产业的发展以及社会实情等角度,剖析了广州金融所起的作用以及所形成的历史和现实的意义。     

iDecide: supporting inclusive decision-making in European schools

iDecide is a KA3 - Support for policy reform project with partners from public and private sectors- from Cyprus, Romania, Greece, Ireland and Portugal. iDecide was conceptualised with the aim of supporting school leaders and teachers in their efforts marginalised groups, and to support their learning in their everyday decision-making. The iDecide toolkit supports the decision-making processes that the majority of schools face every day in all aspects of school life (visits and excursions, school projects, parental involvement, school canteen, homework, students’ council etc). The iDecide toolkit has the capacity to provide teachers and school leaders with practical guidelines for these common decisions in straightforward, simple language. It also gives school leaders the opportunity to retrieve pupils’ and parents' opinions through online polls and forum discussions. This short paper describes the iDecide toolkit functions.     

Technology as a Weapon in Domestic Violence: Responding to Digital Coercive Control

ABSTRACT

Technology-facilitated domestic violence is an emerging issue for social workers and other service providers. The concept of Digital Coercive Control (DCC) is introduced to highlight the particular nature and impacts of technology-facilitated abuse in the context of domestic violence. While practitioners have become more adept at working with women experiencing DCC, there is still little known about its dynamics and whether this violence requires a change in current service responses. This article explores findings from survey research conducted with 546 Australian domestic violence practitioners about the ways perpetrators use technology as part of their abuse tactics. The findings demonstrate that DV practitioners believe perpetrator use of technology is extensive and has significant impacts on the safety of clients. A major dilemma faced by practitioners is how to promote and facilitate client safety from DCC while still enabling safe use of technology so clients can remain connected to family, friends, and community.

IMPLICATIONS

• The use of digital technology in domestic violence creates a significant practice issue for Australian domestic violence practitioners.

• The development of a practice framework for responding to digital coercive control may assist practitioners to highlight the risks posed by this abuse, while still enabling women and children the freedom to participate in the digital realm.

     

Understanding platform business models: A mixed methods study of marketplaces

Recent technological advances have enabled the emergence of novel business models based on digital platforms. Marketplace like Airbnb or Uber offer such digital platforms to connect previously unmatched demand-side and supply-side participants through innovative forms of value creation, delivery and capture. While countless firms claim to offer the next ‘Airbnb for X’ or ‘Uber for Y’, we lack knowledge about the defining business model characteristics of these marketplaces. To close the gap, this paper provides a conceptually and empirically grounded taxonomy of their business models. Applying a mixed methods approach, it first develops an integrative framework of marketplace business models. Guided by the framework, the research systematically analyzes 100 randomly selected marketplaces with content analysis and binary coding. The gathered data is analyzed with cluster analysis techniques to develop a taxonomy for marketplace business models. The clustering process reveals six clearly distinguishable types of marketplace business models and thus shows that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating, delivering, and capturing value with marketplaces and platforms in general. We characterize these distinctive types on basis of the qualitative and quantitative findings. Among others, we find that two of these types are highly aligned with business model characteristics associated with the so-called sharing economy. The findings are discussed against platform, marketplace, and sharing economy literature to contribute to a higher integration of different literature streams that are concerned with similar organizational types and phenomena.     

Critically assessing digital documents: materiality and the interpretative role of software

As a contribution to the ongoing tradition of critically assessing documents for research, this paper aims to highlight materiality as a key factor in the co-shaping of knowledge derived from digital documents. The paper first builds upon prior debates in document studies with work from the fields of Science and Technology Studies, and Communication Studies, to establish the role of document materiality in the interpretative process. By first establishing digital documents’ material reality as electrical signal, the paper then discusses the interpretative role of software, in both the representation of that signal for human interpretation and the production of the document through software tools. Finally, the paper considers the implications for persistence and access to digital documents posed by their material reality and the private archival contexts in which they often reside.