The mobile Internet and digital citizenship in African-American and Latino communities

Smartphone use is transforming the meaning of being online, especially for African-Americans and Latinos. To what extent has this enabled these populations to become digital citizens, able to participate in society online? Internet use is increasingly important for the exercise of the political, economic and social rights that have often been associated with citizenship [Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C. J., &; McNeal, R. S. (2008). Digital citizenship: The Internet, society, and participation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press], and can be measured by the political and economic activities that individuals engage in online. Using unique survey data from a diverse city, we use multilevel analysis and interactions to examine relationships between forms of access and activities online in 2013, controlling for neighborhood context as well as individual characteristics. In contrast with prior work, we find that while broadband access is most strongly associated with political and economic activities online, that mobile is as well. The effects are strongest for African-Americans and Latinos, especially for Latinos who live in heavily Latino neighborhoods – who have lagged behind furthest in Internet use.     

Disability,social groups,and political citizenship

The problem raised in this article is whether disabled people can and should be considered as a social group with respect to political representation. The question is first discussed on the basis of theories of social and status groups. Next, the article examines how the topic is reflected empirically at the local political level in Norway, expressed by party political leaders and elected disabled representatives. The authors suggest that disabled people can and should be considered as a social group in relation to political representation. Not doing so, they argue, will in effect delay the process towards full recognition and active political citizenship.     

A ‘Tripadvisor’ for disability? Social enterprise and ‘digital disruption’ in Australia

ABSTRACT

We explore how social enterprises can use platform technologies to plug ‘informational gaps’ in the provision of disability services. Such gaps are made more apparent by policies promoting self-directed care as a means of giving service users more choice and control. We use a case study of a start-up social enterprise seeking to provide a TripAdvisor style service to examine the potential for social innovation to ‘disrupt’ current models of service. The case study suggests that any disruptive effects of such changes are not due to new digital technology per se, nor to novel platform business models, but rather rest in the manner in which the moral orders which justify current patterns of social disablement can be challenged by social innovation.     

Do the rich get digitally richer? Quantity and quality of support for digital engagement

This paper asks what predicts having access to and using social support networks that might help an individual in using the Internet. Following the course taken by the digital divide or digital inclusion research, this paper uses socio-cultural, socio-economic, social, and digital indicators to predict access to and the type of potential and actual social support networks that might help an individual in using the Internet. In addition, the paper examines the quality of the support received which is neglected in most investigations that mainly focus on quantitative indicators of support. The study draws on a representative survey conducted in the Netherlands; 1149 responses were obtained. The results show that while there are no real inequalities in access to and use of support, the quality of the support that people access is unequally distributed replicating existing patterns of disadvantage. Thus, access to support is another level at which the digital divide manifests and strengthens itself. Those who experience most problems online also seem to have the most difficulty obtaining high-quality support even when it is available, creating an even larger ‘gap’ between those who do and do not need support.     

Media use,social cohesion,and cultural citizenship: an analysis of a Chinese metropolis

The emergence of new social strata and plural identities are two of the most profound changes in China's social transition toward integration into the global economic system. Differentiating three dimensions of cultural citizenship identity (i.e., cosmopolitan, national, and local), this study seeks to depict the paths of influence in the formation of such identities that involve reality construction by the media and evolving patterns of social stratification. Analysing data from a 2009 Shanghai survey, we found a strong relationship between individuals' consumption of local media contents and their local identity. Further, their perceptions of media's centripetal and centrifugal forces have significant effects on their identities, and the Internet has different effects from the traditional media, although such influences vary across different social strata.     

Back to the future,disability and the digital divide

The aim of this article is to explore disability and the digital divide using a quantitative methodology. The research investigates what impact digital technologies have had in improving the life-chances for disabled people from deprived neighbourhoods in the northeast of England. The study explores how disabled people engage with digital and assistive technologies in order to overcome disabling barriers and social exclusion. Unfortunately, the analysis found no evidence that digital and assistive technologies had any impact on reducing social exclusion for disabled people. In fact, the research discovered that these technologies seemed to construct new forms of disabling barriers as a consequence of the digital divide.     

Revisiting the digital divide in Canada: the impact of demographic factors on access to the internet,level of online activity,and social networking site usage

The present study relies on the 2010 Canadian Internet Use Survey to investigate differences in people's access to the internet and level of online activity. The study not only revisits the digital divide in the Canadian context, but also expands current investigations by including an analysis of how demographic factors affect social networking site (SNS) adoption. The findings demonstrate that access to the internet reflects existing inequalities in society with income, education, rural/urban, immigration status, and age all affecting adoption patterns. Furthermore, the results show that inequality in access to the internet is now being mimicked in the level of online activity of internet users. More recent immigrants to Canada have lower rates of internet access; however, recent immigrants who are online have significantly higher levels of online activity than Canadian born residents and earlier immigrants. Additionally, women perform fewer activities online than men. People's use of SNSs differs in terms of education, gender, and age. Women were significantly more likely to use SNSs than men. Interestingly, high school graduates had the lowest percentage of adoption compared to all other education categories. Current students were by far the group that utilized SNSs the most. Canadian born, recent, and early immigrants all showed similar adoption rates of SNSs. Age is a strong predictor of SNS usage, with young people relying heavily on SNSs in comparison to those aged 55+. The findings demonstrate that the digital divide not only persists, but has expanded to include inequality in the level of online activity and SNS usage.     

Over the rainbow: Sexual minorities' bonding and bridging social capital and civic engagement

This study examines sexual minorities' participation in civic engagement using the theory of social capital. The analysis of the data from a US national survey shows that sexual minorities' bonding capital within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is positively associated with their civic engagement on LGBT issues, while it is negatively associated with their participation in activities addressing other social issues. Sexual minorities' bridging social capital as generalized trust is positively associated with their civic engagement for non-LGBT issues, but it has no statistically significant relationship with their civic engagement on LGBT issues. Overall, the findings reveal that sexual minorities' civic engagement beyond LGBT activism is closely related to their generalized trust and reciprocity in society. These findings suggest that an organizational culture of non-discrimination and equity will help create more diverse and inclusive philanthropy.     

Citizens of the margin: citizenship and youth participation on the Moroccan social web

This paper examines how marginalized youth in Morocco use YouTube to contest hegemonic discourses of state power and institutional practices of social exclusion. The paper analyses a user-generated, YouTube web-series, Tales of Bouzebal, as a performance of marginality and a social critique of state bureaucracies and institutions in the context of post-Arab Spring Morocco. Using a combined method of textual and discourse analyses, the paper argues that the new media practices of producing and consuming user-generated video are best understood as practices of cultural citizenship that contribute to social change through the production of counter-discursive political subjectivities among youth in MENA. The paper posits that the concept of citizenship needs to be expanded to account for citizen participatory media practices that contest the conditions of marginality and inequality sustained by normative definitions of citizenship.     

Patterns of evolutions of social enterprises in France: a focus on work integration social enterprises

The objective of this paper is to characterize the patterns of emergence and evolution of social enterprise in France with a focus on work integration social enterprises (WISEs). After a review of the history of social and solidarity economy practices, identifying the processes that brought these practices to develop, we discuss the boundaries of the notion of social enterprise in the French case. We then briefly present the historical evolution of work integration. On that basis, two models of social enterprise applied to the case of work integration are extracted, crystallizing crucial tendencies. The limits and prospects of social enterprise in the field of work integration in France are discussed in the conclusion.     

Racial projections: cyberspace,public space,and the digital divide

Scholars of critical race studies, urban history, and information and communications technologies (ICTs) share an interest in the relationship between spatial and racial disparities, including the quality of basic infrastructure, degrees of connectivity, and participatory culture. However, contemporary research on the digital divide struggles to link historical legacies of uneven development, as well as social justice strategies, with digital participation in urban spaces. By examining contemporary digital art that critiques the spatial inequalities encountered by U.S. racial minorities, this article illustrates how public intellectuals use ICTs in ways that draw upon past strategies to territorialize space for political ends. It focuses on digital pop-ups, open-air installations that cast images onto public space using projectors. Historicizing these new efforts illustrates a continuity of tactics engaged by communities of color in response to socio-spatial inequalities in the urban United States, such as the 1970s mural movement’s efforts to re-politicize spaces of exclusion. While existing literature finds that digital inequality results in differential digital human capital, this research indicates that place-based claims, such as digital pop-ups, are important sites for combatting racial injustice and creating more inclusionary spaces, especially among youth adults.     

‘I guess it’s kind of elitist’: the formation and mobilisation of cultural,social and physical capital in youth sport volunteering

Policy and research portray sport volunteering as a means by which young people can develop skills and perform active citizenship. This paper draws on qualitative research with participants in a UK sport volunteering programme to critically examine young people’s volunteering journeys and how these are shaped by their formation and mobilisation of capital. The results show how programme structures and practices, such as selection criteria, privilege young people with higher levels of cultural and physical capital, and afford these youth additional opportunities to accumulate and mobilise cultural and social capital. The paper argues for a more critical understanding of youth sport volunteering; one that recognises that sport volunteering can reserve the practice of active citizenship for privileged youth.     

Policy,citizenship and governance: the case of disability and employment policy in Australia

Current discussions regarding the relationship between welfare governance systems and employment promotion in disability policy appeal to a rejuvenated neo-liberal and paternalistic understanding of welfare governance. At the core of this rationality is the argument that people with disabilities not only have rights, but also duties, in relation to the State. In the Australia welfare system, policy tools are deployed to produce a form of self-discipline, whereby the State emphasises personal responsibility via assessment tools, ‘mutual obligation’ policy, and motivational strategies. Drawing on a two-year semi-longitudinal study with 80 people with a disability accessing welfare benefits, we examine how welfare governance subject recipients to strategies to produce productive citizens who are able to contribute to the national goal of maintaining competitiveness in the global economy. Participants’ interviews reveal the intended and unintended effects of this activation policy, including some acceptance of the logic of welfare-to-work and counter-hegemonic resistance to de-valued social identities.     

Inequality in mobilizing online help after a negative life event: the role of education,digital skills,and capital-enhancing Internet use

Many studies have investigated inequalities in coping with stressful life events and often education is found to play a role in this (the higher educated are usually more successful in dealing with their problems in terms of well-being consequences). We examine whether something similar occurs on the Internet, whether the higher educated are more successful in mobilizing help online, and whether this is related to their digital skills and the way in which they use the Internet. With the latter, we link online coping to digital inequality research. Researchers have investigated digital inequalities with regard to skills and types of Internet use. However, we know little about the extent to which these factors translate into inequalities in resources mobilized from the Internet. This latter type of inequality is highly relevant, since it is an intermediary step between Internet use and (improved) well-being and life chances. Using a large sample of individuals living in the Netherlands, we find educational differences in the mobilization of online problem-focused coping resources, but no differences with regard to online socioemotional or disengagement coping resources. The educational inequalities in online coping are somewhat smaller than educational inequalities in offline coping, leading to remarkable consequences for social policy. Furthermore, we find a relatively complex pattern of interrelations between offline inequality (education) and different types of digital inequality (skills, usage, resources). In our conclusions we make a plea for more research on outcomes of Internet use and we discuss the implications of our findings for further research.     

Interface methods: renegotiating relations between digital social research,STS and sociology

This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called ‘interface methods’. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized the significant differences between prominent methods built into digital media and those of STS and sociology. This paper advocates a third approach, one that (a) highlights the dynamism and relative under‐determinacy of digital methods, and (b) affirms that multiple methodological traditions intersect in digital devices and research. We argue that these two circumstances enable a distinctive approach to methodology in digital social research – thinking methods as ‘interface methods’ – and the paper contextualizes this approach in two different ways. First, we show how the proliferation of online data tools or ‘digital analytics’ opens up distinctive opportunities for critical and creative engagement with methods development at the intersection of sociology, STS and digital research. Second, we discuss a digital research project in which we investigated a specific ‘interface method’, namely co‐occurrence analysis. In this digital pilot study we implemented this method in a critical and creative way to analyse and visualize ‘issue dynamics’ in the area of climate change on Twitter. We evaluate this project in the light of our principal objective, which was to test the possibilities for the modification of methods through experimental implementation and interfacing of various methodological traditions. To conclude, we discuss a major obstacle to the development of ‘interface methods’: digital media are marked by particular quantitative dynamics that seem adverse to some of the methodological commitments of sociology and STS. To address this, we argue in favour of a methodological approach in digital social research that affirms its maladjustment to the research methods that are prevalent in the medium.     

Exclusion by design: intersections of social,digital and data exclusion

ABSTRACT

As smart technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation and Internet of Things (IoT) are increasingly embedded into commercial and government services, we are faced with new challenges in digital inclusion to ensure that existing inequalities are not reinforced and new gaps that are created can be addressed. Digital exclusion is often compounded by existing social disadvantage, and new systems run the risk of creating new barriers and harms. Adopting a case study approach, this paper examines the exclusionary practices embedded in the design and implementation of social welfare services in Australia. We examined Centrelink’s automated Online Compliance Intervention system (‘Robodebt’) and the National Disability Insurance Agency’s intelligent avatar interface ‘Nadia’. The two cases show how the introduction of automated systems can reinforce the punitive policies of an existing service regime at the design stage and how innovative AI systems that have the potential to enhance user participation and inclusion can be hindered at implementation so that digital benefits are left unrealised.     

Mapping the two levels of digital divide: Internet access and social network site adoption among older adults in the USA

Older adults have increasingly adopted Internet and social network sites (SNSs), but little communication scholarship has explored systematic differences in access within this population. Using a nationally representative sample of Americans over the age of 50 years from the 2012 Health and Retirement Study, we examine Internet access (N?=?18,851) and SNS adoption patterns (N?=?869) among this sample and explore how these patterns vary by age. Regarding Internet access, results suggest that while the gender divide has reversed in favor of women, older adults who are economically, socioculturally, or physically disadvantaged are less likely to have reliable Internet access. In addition, the view that the various divides in Internet access are less of a concern for those who are younger is only partially supported, as some access-related divides do not vary by age or even decrease with age. For SNS adoption, we found that access to technological resources (diversity of online activities) positively predicts SNS use. Moreover, SNS users are more likely to be younger, female, widowed, and homemakers, perhaps because these individuals are more motivated to use SNSs to complement or compensate for their existing social status. These findings reveal unique challenges and motivations in relation to Internet access and SNS adoption patterns across the later life span.     

Ethnography and the digital fields of social media

Qualitative researchers struggle to study the transient fields of social network sites like Twitter through conventional ethnographic approaches. This paper suggests that, in order to step further, we should distinguish between the relatively stable ‘contextual’ fields of bounded online communities and the fluid, ‘meta-fields’ resulting from the aggregation of scattered communicative contents based on their metadata. Both these two intertwined layers of the digital environment interplay with users’ online social practices – which are embedded within offline everyday life and vice versa. While Internet ethnography largely dealt with contextual digital fields, recent developments in the realm of online research allow the ethnographic exploration of digital meta-fields and their publics. This shift recalls Marcus’ appeal for a multi-sited ethnography but, in fact, goes further beyond, towards a truly ‘un-sited’ ethnography. I highlight and discuss the main methodological implications of meta- and contextual fieldworks by presenting an exploratory study of European exchange students’ Facebook identities.     

Inclusion and exclusion in the digital economy: disability and mental health as a live streamer on Twitch.tv

ABSTRACT

In this paper I explore economic and inclusion opportunities for people with disabilities and mental health issues afforded by ‘live streaming’ ? the live broadcast of one’s activities over the internet to a globally dispersed audience. In both 2016 and 2017, the leading live streaming platform Twitch.tv broadcast over 500,000 years of video, which were produced by over two million regular broadcasters (‘streamers’), and consumed by an audience of several hundred million viewers. Streamers can profit, up to and including a full-time living ‘wage’ for those at the highest levels. Numerous successful streamers with chronic health issues have discussed the personal and professional benefits streaming brings them. Utilising data from a research project with 100 interviews, alongside approximately 500 hours of ethnographic observation, this paper examines the experiences of live streaming for broadcasters with disabilities, mental health issues, or physical health issues. Firstly, I explore the positive elements of streaming for these broadcasters, focusing on the many conditions represented in this demographic, and the benefits streaming gives for inclusion and community. Secondly, I consider the negative experiences of these streamers, focused on entanglements of health and technology that make their streaming lives potentially more challenging than their colleagues. Thirdly, I focus on the economic opportunities, and the potential for entrepreneurial activity, the platform affords. I conclude the analysis by exploring how these aspects make live streaming a potentially exemplary emancipatory and entrepreneurial space for these individuals, but not one without challenges.