Labor Markets and the Process of Income Attainment in the Multimedia Age

Abstract  This paper examines several foreseeable scenarios about the effects of information technology on the labor market and the process of individual's income attainment. While I do not intend to exclude other factors, I argue that computer literacy and information literacy are two distinct but complimentary factors, and that they will be the two critical issues in determining the productive capacities of workers in the multimedia age. I view information literacy as a firm-specific skill, and argue that it will be the key factor in determining the production function of workers within the firm. Computer literacy is viewed as the endowment of information literacy skills. Workers with higher levels of computer literacy will be at an advantage at the time of labor market entry. Further, such workers are more likely to have higher rates of return on firm's investments in information literacy skills. thereby yielding higher productions. Based on the premise that information technology and labor are complementary components which should reveal an increase in the demand for higher skilled workers, I suggest that income differences are likely to widen along the lines of educational attainment and establishment-size. The "Implications" section (V) of the paper examines several issues for further research in this incipient field of sociology.     

Assessment of a computerized medical record system: disclosing scripts of use

In the last two decades, empirical studies adopting a critical sociological approach to technology have shown how innovations are socially shaped, and how their introduction into human practices is often problematic. This paper describes how the Actor–Network Theory (ANT) can contribute to the evaluation of information technology. Results of the evaluation of a computerized medical record system implemented in four Quebec (Canada) hospitals are presented. The distribution of skills and tasks among nurses, physicians and managers (as implied by the design), and the use of the computerized medical record system proved highly problematic since they radically modified clinical practices. Theoretical and practical implications of using ANT as an evaluation framework are discussed.     

Inside Knowledge: second order measures of skill1

This paper is intended as a contribution to the sociology of skill. Research which suggests that skills and their transmission are the properties of communities leaves unanswered the question of how information may be explicitly transmitted and acquired as part of the process of leaning a skill. Second-order studies of skill accept that skill acquisition occurs within a culture, but then go on to examine in detail which aspects of skills can be explicated and which cannot. Such a second-order study is presented here. Observations of veterinary surgery are used to identify a quasi-quantitative measure of skill acquisition – hardness. This measure is useful in understanding how task uncertainty is resolved in practice and how new skills are learnt.     

Exploring literacy in Social Work Education: a social practices approach to student writing

The literacy of social workers has been highlighted as a concern by the strengthening of both entry and assessment literacy requirements of the new social work degree in the United Kingdom. This paper challenges the traditional perception of student writing, the specific focus of this paper, as being associated with basic literacy and skill acquisition, by presenting a ‘social practices’ approach to student writing in social work education. Whilst in no way contradicting the belief that literacy is central to professional social work competence, and thus an essential aspect of social work education, this approach provides a social and cultural framework for educators to reflect upon what it means for students to engage in writing in social work courses. The paper focuses in particular on meaning making experiences of non‐traditional (including Black and Minority Ethnic) students engaging in academic writing. The paper is based upon research which explores the experiences of a socially and ethnically diverse group of social work students engaged in academic writing on a diploma in social work programme. Whilst representing work in development, it suggests that the recognition of issues such as language history and identity are of significant importance for social work programmes striving to ensure that non‐traditional students are not disadvantaged in their academic writing.     

Internet literacy and digital natives’ civic engagement: Internet skill literacy or Internet information literacy?

This study aims to show the role of Internet literacy in empowering digital natives’ civic engagement. Using a survey of 10th graders, we analyzed the effects of digital media use and Internet literacy on adolescents’ political and social interest, participation, and efficacy, controlling for their home and school environments. In doing so, we try to highlight the following points. First, we emphasize that there are two separate dimensions of Internet literacy: Internet skill literacy and Internet information literacy. Second, we adopt a broader concept of civic engagement reflecting the changing youth practices observed in the contemporary media environment. The study empirically found that Internet information literacy, not Internet skill literacy, is intricately related to adolescents’ civic engagement. It was also shown that adolescents’ Internet use contributed only to new and alternative forms of participation. Overall, the findings show that an adolescent who can critically understand and effectively evaluate online information is more likely to become an active civic participant than one who lacks such skills. The study concludes with a few policy suggestions.     

Critical Literacy as a Lens for Students’ Evaluation of Sources in an AP World History Class

Abstract

Critical literacy is an appropriate learning outcome for social studies courses because it has the potential to teach students how to critically evaluate sources of information relevant to historical texts and current news media. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the process through which students learned to apply critical literacy strategies while completing an end-of-unit research project in tenth grade AP world history. This study looks as student and teacher interviews to examine how students use critical literacy approaches and perspectives to analyze texts. As a result of this study it was determined that: (1) students at the elite private school had limited experience with source evaluation and critical literacy prior to this research project, (2) critical literacy served as an effective evaluation tool for reliability and bias for some students, (3) certain students experienced challenges in using critical literacy as an evaluation tool, and (4) students believed that critical literacy would benefit them personally and academically. Results include implications for instructors who wish to teach critical literacy and source evaluation in this information age.     

The American Way

Media consolidation and convergence have increasingly changed the way individuals as both consumers and citizens access, process, and communicate information at the local, national, and global levels. Media industries and institutions influence public perception and occupy our time at work and at home more and more. Media literacy has become recognized as a twenty-first-century skill necessary for civic competence and the development of informed, responsible citizens. Although it has long been established in the curricula of other nations, it is relatively new in the United States. Media literacy is not simply teaching with media—rather, it entails teaching about media. Key frameworks such as the Text, Audience, and Production (TAP) model, which is explained in this article, can be used to help students systematically analyze and evaluate the wide range of media texts they are exposed to on a daily basis. The author discusses how media literacy is also compatible with several of the major strands identified by the National Council for the Social Studies and can be facilitated by the growing range of resources available to teachers.     

The Perspective from the Field on Computer Literacy Training Needs

Summary

Rapidly evolving computer technology is changing agency life and social work practice and challenging schools of social work to incorporate such information technology into their curriculum in order to prepare students for these changes. This article describes one effort to meet this challenge: a planning and data-gathering approach utilized by the School of Social Work at the University of Washington to integrate classroom and practicum preparation with computer applications in the field. As part of this process, human service agencies that serve as practicum training sites and potential employers for master's level students within the Seattle metropolitan area were surveyed.

Based upon findings from this survey, this article presents an agency-based perspective on computer literacy training needs through addressing the questions of who is using what computer tools, toward what service ends, with what expected level of proficiency, and with what future needs and directions in mind. Implications of these field-based findings for curriculum planning, for prac-ticum development, and for the conceptualization of computer literacy within human services are identified.     

大学生社会责任型领导力调查与思考

社会责任型领导力是"有目的的、合作取向的、以价值观为基础的、引领积极社会改变"的过程。调查显示,上海大学生的社会责任型领导力水平低于美国大学生;在社会责任型领导力的所有维度中,上海大学生在"以礼相争"、"改变"、"自我意识"三个维度的水平上最低;性别、是否担任学生干部、是否曾接受过领导力培训、上大学以前的领导经验、团队合作方面的经验、在校园活动及社会实践方面的参与程度,以及对国家大事、社会热点、学校或所在社区事务及班级事务的关注程度等因素均对大学生的社会责任型领导力的发展有重要影响。因此,应大力推进大学生领导力教育,进一步丰富大学生领导力教育的内容,并通过提升大学生领导力教育的覆盖面,减少当前大学生领导力开发中的"马太效应",同时,着重提升大学生的社会兴趣,让大学生们在更多参与校园活动及社会实践中进一步增强领导力。     

TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN CENTRAL-EASTERN EUROPE:A case study of a computer literacy project in Slovenia

Based on in-depth interviews and a political economy analysis, this paper offers an evaluation of a Computer Literacy Project in Slovenia that was created as a part of a larger technological development project in the region. The article is divided into three main parts. The first part offers some critical arguments on the notions of development and technology. The second part contains an analysis of why the Computer Literacy Project received much support from the educational authorities in Slovenia - and it is argued that this is because it falls in line with general political and economic principles promoted by the dominant neo-liberal vision in the Central-Eastern European region. In the third part, a case study of the Computer Literacy Project in Slovenia is assessed. We attempt to unveil the discourses of the Computer Literacy teachers that were geared towards creating a specific vision of a Slovene future: a vision that continues to promise economic progress, and democracy through technology and the rise of the Internet. This section explores how their discourses stem from mainstream perspectives of development and technology. We attempt to unravel the paradoxes within the disourses, while showing how this vision sidesteps a morecritical analysis of the Internet's potential. Entrenched in a technological-deterministic perspective, the study respondents recognize that education and the democratic public sphere can be guaranteed by virtue of a technology access alone. We suggest that education policy-makers everywhere should carefully review their computer literacy policies, and we argue for a course on Information Literacy that would provide an alternative educational experience.     

WEB PAGES, AUTHORS AND AUDIENCES: The meaning of a mouse click

One popular framework for analysing web pages has been to think of them as identity performances on the part of the author. This framework opens up possibilities for analysis of the ways in which identity performances are composed. The personal web pages to which this perspective is most immediately applicable, are, however, now only a small proportion of the overall amount of information available on the World Wide Web. It would be possible, by extension, to analyse institutional web pages as performances of the institutional identity. It is the contention of this paper that to do so is to miss out on some important aspects of web page design: namely that the production of a web page involves understandings not only of the audience for the page but also of the capacities of the technology. In addition, web page production has to become a socially meaningful act for the individual web page developer and the institution concerned. It is, therefore, argued that the analysis of web pages can usefully learn from media studies and the sociology of technology in this respect. An interview-based study of the developers of web pages for the service departments of a UK university is described. The ideas of audience which the authors use are far from homogeneous: they include an institutional offline audience for the page, a pre-existing imagined audience, developers themselves as audience, and the technology of the browser as a stand-in audience. The audience and the capacities of the technology are developed in context through the practices of designers.     

Setting socially mediated engagement parameters: A topic modeling and text analytic approach to examining polarized discourses on Gillette’s campaign

Opinions on social and political issues can be easily polarized in socially mediated contexts. Using an inductive topic modeling and text analytical approach, the study analyzes more than 100,000 original tweets on polarized discussions on Gillette’s controversial campaign addressing toxic masculinity. Results suggest that influencers serve as ideological hyper-prototypes that attract significant attention equally from supporters and detractors, while hashtags and users’ reference of current events span the conversations across multiple contexts. Study results also indicate that horizontal information cascades from external ideologically centered sources that serve users’ identity and ideological signaling are a potential contributor of discourse polarization. Based on the study results, an identity- and representation-based approach to understanding socially mediated discourses is proposed, and four parameters of socially mediated engagement identified to further theorize engagement for public relations research in digital contexts.     

From desire to disease: human papillomavirus (HPV) and the medicalization of nascent female sexuality

This article critically examines the proliferation of information on the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination as integral to contemporary processes of medicalization that take the young female body and her nascent sexuality as its primary object and target. We suggest that the recent introduction of voluntary HPV vaccination for girls, in North America and elsewhere, constitutes a form of neomedicalization (Batt & Lippman, 2010 ) that links risks for future disease (cervical cancer) with the transmission of a common, sexually transmitted infection (HPV). Informed by findings from a critical discourse analysis of Canadian English newspapers, magazines, and public information about HPV vaccination, our interest is on how the emergence of sexual relationships becomes constructed as a time fraught with risks to future health, and that must be managed through biotechnological intervention (vaccination). We suggest that this configuration of medicalization, rather than demarcate a new category of abnormality that can be treated with pharmaceutical or medical intervention, positions the emergence of sexuality itself as the basis of risk and pathologization. The article concludes by considering the implications of this form of medicalization for constructions of female sexuality and sexual health education.     

How does post-study employment policy for international students create “skilled” migrants? The case of Japan

The recent literature on skilled migration has addressed the socially constructed nature of the notion and category of “skilled” migrants, revealing the roles of the host state and its admission policy in shaping these migrants. This article adds to the literature by examining how the host state can also socially (or politically) create “skilled” migrants through policy that facilitates the post-study employment of international students. The extant research on the social construction of skill and skilled migration informs the hypothesizing of three strategic ways in which host states seek to retain international students who may otherwise be excluded from the host labour market after graduation: (1) the creation of new work permits, (2) the discretionary relaxing of criteria for issuing work visas and (3) the provision of skilling support for finding employment. The case of Japan empirically validates all these strategies and indicates the particular significance of the second strategy.     

BECOMING A TECHNOLOGIST Days in a girl's life

Studies of the gender relations of information and communications technologies (ICTs) seldom deal with these relations as experienced in early childhood, except as located in schooling. The construction of identity in relation to technology is negotiated from an early age. In this article a technological strand is identified in childhood using 'experience stories', writing about specific situations or events on a specific theme, with the focus of analysis being on the theme, rather than on the individual. In reflecting on this technological strand of childhood the article tries to make sense of how everyday experiences serve as sites for constituting our relations with ICTs, and more personally, how they constitute relations for a young white working-class girl. This article also hopes to make visible technological acts which are essentialized and/or made invisible in later years. This article draws on a multi-layer definition of technology and uses conceptions of locally situated knowledge and practices to explore how a young girl might develop a familiarity with technology as part of everyday living. Class and race relations as well as gender relations are significant in early conceptions of 'knowing and doing' and later awareness of constructions of technology and technological identities and subjectivities. This article therefore attempts to identify these relations within the experience stories. By applying a concept of technology that encompasses the knowledge, skills and practices in the everyday life of a young girl, the author hopes to contribute to a richer understanding of the gender, class and race relations implicit in what is recognized as technological knowledge and to contribute to a more inclusive understanding of the social relations of ICTs.     

Decision-making about the adoption of information technology in social welfare agencies: some key considerations

Government and non-government social welfare agencies have invested heavily in information technology, such as electronic information systems (IS) but evaluations have shown that they may undermine rather than support frontline practice. In this article, the findings of research in which senior managers and information technology managers were asked to reflect on why a particular application failed to achieve its aims are presented. The insights they provide can be used to guide future decision-making about the adoption of information technology.     

Infants' Understanding of Information Transmission in the Context of Communication Involving Multiple Agents

This study explored whether infants understand information transmission in a third‐party communication context involving multiple agents. Infants aged 12 and 15 months were habituated to two agents pursuing two different objects and then tested with one agent (the communicator) interacting with a new agent (the recipient), whereas the other agent (the noncommunicator) did not interact with anyone. Results showed that 15‐month‐olds looked for longer when the recipient reached toward the preferred object of the noncommunicator in contrast to that of the communicator, suggesting that they recognized information transmitted from the communicator (versus the noncommunicator) to the recipient. Furthermore, the information was perceived as being specifically transmitted between agents, and this inference was not driven by the low‐level perceptual factors of the communicator or the communication itself. However, 12‐month‐old infants did not show an understanding of transmission between the agents. The selective understanding of information transmitted among multiple agents, and the critical role of agency in such understanding are discussed.     

Visual studies of rural life

In the last 20 years the notion that images overpower words, and the belief that a decreasing lexical literacy among the young has been offset by an increasing visual literacy, has been repeated often enough to become accepted wisdom. Yet the precise nature of visual literacy among the young and the relationship between visual competencies and the notion of media literacy have not been fully explored or adequately specified. Concepts of visual literacy and media literacy are unproductively conflated, and visual competencies are too often assumed on the part of those that exhibit familiarity with media culture. This essay compares and analyses notions of visual competence and media literacy and argues that: (1) a cultivated awareness of the production of visual forms and characteristics, and their implications, is necessary for what has been described in the literature as ‘media literacy’; and (2) the acquisition of visual analysis skills pre‐requires a broader operational context of media literacy. Through an examination of images from religious painting to news coverage the article argues that visual competencies and media literacy skills may, indeed, be mutually dependent.     

Using social media dialogically: Public relations role in reviving democracy

This article explores how technology and our recent access to, and abundance of, information, are affecting democracy, and the role of public relations professionals in a post mass media society. The article reviews pros and cons of new technology, discusses how public relations can improve, democracy using dialogue, communitarianism, and Long Now thinking, and discusses how to actually, use social media dialogically. The article argues that as public relations revives its conceptualization of, relationship, communication professionals also benefit democracy and society as a whole.     

At risk of exclusion? Degrees of ICT access and literacy among senior citizens

Drawing on data derived from a nationwide postal survey (n?=?1264) with a simple random sample of Swedes between ages 65 and 85 (response rate: 63%), the article analyses the general patterns of: (a) degrees of information and communication (ICT) access and (b) ICT-literacy among Swedish senior citizens. The overall patterns of access and literacy are analysed in light of senior citizens’ assets – conceptualized as material, discursive and social resources – and their age and gender. The analysis reveals a positive correlation between levels of material (e.g., income), discursive (e.g., English skills) and social (e.g., social networks) resources and access to ICT. With greater resources, the average number of devices increases. The analysis also reveals a positive correlation between discursive and social resources and ICT-literacy. Gender has no bearing on access to devices, but might have some effect on ICT-literacy. The correlation between age, access and literacy is negative. With increasing age, both access and literacy decreases. In this respect, the study reveals a generational effect. However, since all three resources tend to decrease over the life cycle, the results are also discussed in terms of an age effect. These data and our analyses are contextualized by a critical discussion that reflects on the implications of these general patterns: What do they mean for senior citizens’ abilities to be included and participate in a continuously digitalizing society?