While transitioning from autocracy to democracy, media in Africa has always played an important role in democratic and non-democratic states; focusing on politicians, diplomats, activists, and others who work towards political transformations. New Media Influence on Social and Political Change in Africa addresses the development of new mass media and communication tools and its influence on social and political change. While analyzing democratic transitions and cultures with a theoretical perspective, this book also presents case studies and national experiences for media, new media, and democracy scholars and practitioners.

This book provides an overview of the emerging smart connected world, and discusses the roles and the usage of underlying semantic computing and Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies. The book comprises ten chapters overall, grouped in two parts. Part I "Smart Connected World: Overview and Technologies" consists of seven chapters and provides a holistic overview of the smart connected world and its supporting tools and technologies. Part II "Applications and Case Studies" consists of three chapters that describe applications and case studies in manufacturing, smart cities, health, and more. Each chapter is self-contained and can be read independently; taken together, readers get a bigger picture of the technological and application landscape of the smart connected world. This book is of interest for researchers, lecturers, and practitioners in Semantic Web, IoT and related fields. It can serve as a reference for instructors and students taking courses in hybrid computing getting abreast of cutting edge and future directions of a connected ecosystem. It will also benefit industry professionals like software engineers or data scientists, by providing a synergy between Web technologies and applications. This book covers the most important topics on the emerging field of the smart connected world. The contributions from leading active researchers and practitioners in the field are thought provoking and can help in learning and further research. The book is a valuable resource that will benefit academics and industry. It will lead to further research and advancement of the field. Bharat K. Bhargava, Professor of Computer Science, Purdue University, United States

Entrepreneurship is undoubtedly a social process and creating a firm requires both the mobilisation of social networks and the use of social capital. This book addresses the gap that exists between the need to take these factors into consideration and the understanding of how network relationships are developed and transformed across the venturing process. Expert contributions from key scholars in the field illustrate how social networks evolve across entrepreneurial stages, using studies from different regions across the world. Offering a comprehensive understanding, they emphasize the role of formal networks created inside professions and firms. Also examined is the impact of context including both family and internationally variable institutions that can help entrepreneurs to access resources and competencies useful for their projects. The book concludes by emphasizing the various research challenges: which theories are useful for our endeavors and which new methods can be used to understand the dynamics of the venturing process? Dynamic and eminently practical, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students studying the entrepreneurial process and the impact of social networks. It will also prove a useful tool in aiding entrepreneurs to optimize the development of their networks and better manage their entrepreneurial processes. Contributors include: L. Aaboen, M.A. Abebe, A.R. Anderson, M. Brettel, D. Chabaud, H. Chebbi, M. de Beer, S. Drakopoulou Dodd, A. Fayolle, R.T. Harrison, F.M. Hill, S.L. Jack, W. Jansen, W. Lamine, H. Lawton-Smith, C. Lechner, C.M. Leitch, C. Leyronas, F. Lind, S. Loup, A.B.R. Lwango, R. Mauer, S. Mian, G. Mollenhorst, J. Ngijol, S. Qureshi, T. Redd, V. Schutjens, M. Virahsawmy, S. Wu

Although virtual worlds continue to grow in popularity, a substantial amount of research is needed to determine best practices in virtual spaces. The artistic community is one field where virtual worlds can be utilized to the greatest effect. New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds provides a coherent account of artistic practices in virtual worlds and considers the contribution the Second Life platform has made in a historical, theoretical, and critical context within the fields of art and technology. This volume is intended for both artists and scholars in the areas of digital art, art and technology, media arts history, virtual worlds, and games studies, as well as a broader academic audience who are interested in the philosophical implications of virtual spaces.

This book provides practical information about web archives, offers inspiring examples for web archivists, raises new challenges, and shares recent research results about access methods to explore information from the past preserved by web archives. The book is structured in six parts. Part 1 advocates for the importance of web archives to preserve our collective memory in the digital era, demonstrates the problem of web ephemera and shows how web archiving activities have been trying to address this challenge. Part 2 then focuses on different strategies for selecting web content to be preserved and on the media types that different web archives host. It provides an overview of efforts to address the preservation of web content as well as smaller-scale but high-quality collections of social media or audiovisual content. Next, Part 3 presents examples of initiatives to improve access to archived web information and provides an overview of access mechanisms for web archives designed to be used by humans or automatically accessed by machines. Part 4 presents research use cases for web archives. It also discusses how to engage more researchers in exploiting web archives and provides inspiring research studies performed using the exploration of web archives. Subsequently, Part 5 demonstrates that web archives should become crucial infrastructures for modern connected societies. It makes the case for developing web archives as research infrastructures and presents several inspiring examples of added-value services built on web archives. Lastly, Part 6 reflects on the evolution of the web and the sustainability of web archiving activities. It debates the requirements and challenges for web archives if they are to assume the responsibility of being societal infrastructures that enable the preservation of memory. This book targets academics and advanced professionals in a broad range of research areas such as digital humanities, social sciences, history, media studies and information or computer science. It also aims to fill the need for a scholarly overview to support lecturers who would like to introduce web archiving into their courses by offering an initial reference for students.

With the wealth of information that you can find on the internet today, it is easy to find answers and details quickly by entering a simple query into a search engine. While this easy access to information is convenient, it is often difficult to separate fallacy from reality when dealing with digital sources. Establishing and Evaluating Digital Ethos and Online Credibility features strategies and insight on how to determine the reliability of internet sources. Highlighting case studies and best practices on establishing protocols when utilizing digital sources for research, this publication is a critical reference source for academics, students, information literacy specialists, journalists, researchers, web designers, and writing instructors.

The internet of things (IoT) has massive potential to transform current business models and enhance human lifestyles. With the current pace of research, IoT will soon find many new horizons to touch. IoT is now providing a base of technological advancement in various realms such as pervasive healthcare, smart homes, smart cities, connected logistics, automated supply chain, manufacturing units, and many more. IoT is also paving the path for the emergence of the digital revolution in industrial technology, termed Industry 4.0. Transforming the Internet of Things for Next-Generation Smart Systems focuses on the internet of things (IoT) and how it is involved in modern day technologies in a variety of domains. The chapters cover IoT in sectors such as agriculture, education, business and management, and computer science applications. The multi-disciplinary view of IoT provided within this book makes it an ideal reference work for IT specialists, technologists, engineers, developers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in how IoT will be implemented in the next generation of smart systems and play an integral role in advancing technology in the future.

IN LITTLE MORE THAN HALF A DECADE, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects--even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran.
Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook's key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next. He chronicles its successes and missteps, and gives readers the most complete assessment anywhere of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the central figure in the company's remarkable ascent. This is the Facebook story that can be found nowhere else.
How did a nineteen-year-old Harvard student create a company that has transformed the Internet and how did he grow it to its current enormous size? Kirkpatrick shows how Zuckerberg steadfastly refused to compromise his vision, insistently focusing on growth over profits and preaching that Facebook must dominate (his word) communication on the Internet. In the process, he and a small group of key executives have created a company that has changed social life in the United States and elsewhere, a company that has become a ubiquitous presence in marketing, altering politics, business, and even our sense of our own identity. This is the Facebook Effect.