论网络学习系统的自组织机制

网络教育是社会信息化的重要领域,网络学习是网络教育的主要学习方式。文中在分析网络学习系统特征的基础上,探讨了网络学习系统的自组织机制,即网络学习系统的开放性、非平衡性、非线性相互作用和涨落机制。     

浅谈学术期刊的优先数字出版

学术期刊的优先数字出版是学术期刊实现可持续发展的重要组成部分。优先数字出版是指通过数字传播媒介先于印刷版出版之前出版数字版定稿,其特征是快速出版和优先出版。目前在我国,由于优先数字出版并未得到和印刷版一样的广泛认可,因此其发展还存在一定的障碍。     

中国网络游戏产业集中度分析

产业集中度是研究产业市场结构的重要指标,对研究网络游戏产业市场组织有着重要作用。通过对2006年到2011年第一季度中国网络游戏市场的集中度计算得出目前我国网络游戏市场产业集中度较高属于垄断竞争的产业。在对我国网游产业的集中度形成原因进行分析的基础上对未来产业发展提出预测及政策建议。     

人文关怀视角下高职院校网络思想政治教育的思考

网络技术的迅速发展迫使高职院校思想政治教育必须提出新的教育理念和改革方法,要把人文关怀的理念贯穿于网络思想政治教育的原则、载体、内容、方式中。人文关怀作为中华传统文化的精华以及马克思主义思想理论体系的重要内容,在网络思想政治教育中实施,使思想政治教育具有了新的内涵,具备了重要的价值和意义。     

Relationship Preferences Among Gay and Lesbian Online Daters: Individual and Contextual Influences

There is currently little knowledge about what gay men and lesbians seek in a romantic relationship. This study extends the literature on gay men and lesbians' partnership preferences by engaging in the first large‐scale empirical study of the long‐term dating intentions and monogamy beliefs of gay and lesbian online daters across 53 regions in 8 European countries (N = 24,598). Looking at profile and preference information, the authors examined both individual and contextual determinants in a series of multilevel logistic regression analyses. They show that lesbians give more importance to monogamy but show less interest in starting a long‐term relationship. The data also reveal the importance of life course aspects such as relationship history and presence of children. Finally, the authors empirically demonstrate that social tolerance and legal recognition of same‐sex unions are associated with higher long‐term dating intentions and stronger monogamy beliefs.     

Implications of urbanism for the use of local news media: effects of population concentration on types of news acquisition in Japan

The Internet, a global computer network enabling people to send and receive information anywhere in the world, also functions as a local medium of communication. This study focuses on the role of the Internet in transmitting local news and examines the effects of community population concentrations as socio-ecological environments on the use of local news media consumed online and offline. Data from 1367 respondents across 156 Japanese communities were used to analyze the relationships between type of community and type of news source. The findings suggest that people who live in highly populated communities tend more often to use the Internet to access local news, whereas those in less populated communities tend to use more traditional mass media. However, the results of this study did not show a relationship between population concentrations within communities and the acquisition of international news, nor did the social features of residents adequately explain the effects of population concentration on the acquisition of local news. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions based on network externalities, urbanism, and collective action. The findings indicate that local news consumption is embedded in local social contexts in a way that international news is not, reinforcing the importance of urbanism in the information age.     

Kunuk took it to the streets of Greenland: single-issue protests in a young online democracy

Single-issue protests and online mobilization have proliferated in the wake of social media. While significant ground has been covered regarding the changing possibilities for mobilization, the question of how specific circumstances condition the political impact of online mobilization and public protests has received much less attention. During the last couple of years, Greenlanders have increasingly employed Facebook to mobilize the populace and arrange public demonstrations with noteworthy results. Arguing that single-issue protests cannot be separated from the issues they are concerned with, the paper explores how a single and potential trivial political issue – a new parliament building – developed from a prestige project supported by a nearly unanimous Parliament into a public-contested issue and a failed political project. The paper invokes Actor-Network Theory to account for the trajectory of the issue and how it was translated along the way as actors built and broke alliances. The concepts of mobilizing structures, opportunity structures and framing processes are employed to shed light on the conditions of possibilities for the emergence, development and impact of the protest against the parliament building. Finally, the paper discusses social media’s impact on the image of politically engaged Inuit and on the power relations between citizens and parliament in Greenland. This discussion is of paramount importance as Greenlanders are struggling with their colonial heritage while they are constructing Greenlandic democracy.     

Downloading culture: community building in a decentralized file-sharing collective

File-sharing collectives have significantly disrupted models of digital media distribution since their emergence and widespread popularization in the late 1990s. This study investigates how semi-anonymous and decentralized collectives construct their communities of practice. Conducting a case study of a private torrenting community, data were gathered via participant observation, interviews, and online postings (i.e., blogs and forums). Findings challenged dominant notions of opportunism, selfishness and task-oriented individualism advanced by Human–Computer Interaction scholars. Three key constructs were identified in private torrent community building: boundary construction, membership maintenance, and a sense of belonging and solidarity. Findings illustrate how a file-sharing community cultivates the formation of prosocial digital peers, fosters an affective approach to peer-to-peer collectives, and ultimately forges a downloading virtuoso community. This sisyphean, goal-oriented community seeks to create a comprehensive archive of media artifacts independent of and in opposition to dominant corporate platforms. The community demonstrates a downloading culture inspired by technological design, yet driven by trust and solidarity.     

Gendered work culture in free/libre open source software development

This article adopts a feminist perspective to examine masculine work culture in the development of free/libre open source software. The authors draw on a case study of the ‘Heidi bug’ discovered during the development of the Mozilla Firefox web browser to examine how ‘gendered talk’ was (en)‐acted to facilitate ‘bricolage’ in an online work environment. Such gendered talks contain cultural references familiar to male developers. Though seemingly innocuous, such acts could be seen as a performance of gender that simply reflects the hegemonic heterosexual masculine culture manifested in an online virtual work space. The virtual work space therefore can be exclusive to those who shared the cultural references. Although it may not necessarily be ignorance or insensitivity of male developers, a more gender‐balanced, women‐friendly and inclusive workplace certainly would benefit from a more diverse environment. This article highlights the gendered aspect of software development through examining the language use and mainstream ‘bricolage’ practice, and establishes a compelling ground for enlarging the talent pool to include more women and integrating gender ethics (e.g., raising awareness of sensitive language and design approaches) into computer ethics education.     

Domesticating technology for shared success: collective enactments of World of Warcraft

In this paper, we analyse processes of domestication as collective enactments, using online game playing of World of Warcraft as a case. We study how groups of players – guilds – develop practices and sense-making with respect to the technologies they use in their shared endeavours in raids to battle monsters. Previous studies of domestication have mainly focused on single-actor strategies and relatively little attention have been given to the impact of concerns for particular domestication outcomes, for example in competitive situations or with goals related to efficiency. This paper contributes to domestication theory by analysing what we call collective domestication in a performance-oriented setting, to see how domestication may produce compatible outcomes for individuals that need to act together. The paper is based on a one-year participant observation and qualitative interviews with players. Three types of players were identified – hardcore, casual and moderate – representing three rationales of play: a high level of performance, social benefits, or a combination of the first two. In the analysis, we compare how these three types of player groups’ domesticated the game. A main finding is that collective enactments of technology need extensive managerial efforts unless the group share a coherent and uncontested rationale for playing, thus being a moral community.