This book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of inequality and the stratification of the digital sphere. Grounded in classical sociological theories of inequality, as well as empirical evidence, this book defines 'the digital divide' as the unequal access and utility of internet communications technologies and explores how it has the potential to replicate existing social inequalities, as well as create new forms of stratification. The Digital Divide examines how various demographic and socio-economic factors including income, education, age and gender, as well as infrastructure, products and services affect how the internet is used and accessed. Comprised of six parts, the first section examines theories of the digital divide, and then looks in turn at: Highly developed nations and regions (including the USA, the EU and Japan); Emerging large powers (Brazil, China, India, Russia); Eastern European countries (Estonia, Romania, Serbia); Arab and Middle Eastern nations (Egypt, Iran, Israel); Under-studied areas (East and Central Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa). Providing an interwoven analysis of the international inequalities in internet usage and access, this important work offers a comprehensive approach to studying the digital divide around the globe. It is an important resource for academic and students in sociology, social policy, communication studies, media studies and all those interested in the questions and issues around social inequality.

A welcome addition to Palgrave's Global Media Policy and Business series, Internet Governance and the Global South documents the role of the global south in Internet policymaking and challenges the globalization theories that declared the death of the state in global decision-making. Abu Bhuiyan argues that the global Internet politics is primarily a conflict between the states - the United States of America and the states of the global south - because the former controls Internet policymaking. The states of the global south have been both oppositional and acquiescing to the sponsored policies of the United States on Internet issues such as digital divide, multilingualism, intellectual property rights and cyber security. They do not oppose the neoliberal underpinnings of the policies promoted by the United States, but ask for an international framework to govern the Internet so that they can work as equal partners in setting norms for the global Internet.

How Journalists Use Twitter: The Changing Landscape of U.S. Newsrooms shows how leading reporters and editors at four major metropolitan newspapers are embracing Twitter as a key tool in their daily routines and how the social media platform influences coverage. This book builds on social media research by analyzing newsroom work through the lens of four different communications theories-diffusion of innovation, boundary, social capital and agenda-setting theories. This book will be of interest to scholars of communication, journalism, and new media.

This book provides a comprehensive review of China's Internet development in the past 23 years since the country's first access to the Internet, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. It offers a systematic account of China's experience in Internet development and governance, and establishes and presents China's Internet Development Index System, covering network infrastructure, information technology, digital economy, e-governance, cyber security, and international cyberspace governance.

Before use, standard ERP systems such as SAP R/3 need to be customized to meet the concrete requirements of the individual enterprise. This book provides an overview of the process models, methods, and tools offered by SAP and its partners to support this complex and time-consuming process. It begins by characterizing the foundations of the latest ERP systems from both a conceptual and technical viewpoint, whereby the most important components and functions of SAP R/3 are described. The main part of the book then goes on to present the current methods and tools for the R/3 implementation based on newer process models (roadmaps).

In recent years, billions of dollars (and euros, yen, and other currencies) have been spent by wireless services providers to acquire the radio frequency spectrum needed to offer so-called "Third Generation" (3G) mobile services. These services include high-speed data, mobile Internet access and entertainment such as games, music and video programs. Indeed, as voice communications are substituted by data communications, software -rather than terminals or networks- has become the driver of the wireless industry. Meanwhile, services are becoming increasingly specialized.
Why has the road to multimedia cellular been so difficult? These benefits of the mobile Internet have come with the costs of a massive transition that has coincided with the bust of stock markets and the technology segments worldwide, controversial and costly license auctions in several lead markets, dated or mistaken regulatory policies, the clash between the early hype and the pioneering realities of the mobile Internet. But these are generalities that barely scratch the surface. The devil is in the details. And it is these details that Competition for the Mobile Internet addresses.

The use of the internet for commerce has spawned a variety of auctions, marketplaces, and exchanges for trading everything from bandwidth to books. Mechanisms for bidding agents, dynamic pricing, and combinatorial bids are being implemented in support of internet-based auctions, giving rise to new versions of optimization and resource allocation models. This volume, a collection of papers from an IMA "Hot Topics" workshop in internet auctions, includes descriptions of real and proposed auctions, complete with mathematical model formulations, theoretical results, solution approaches, and computational studies. This volume also provides a mathematical programming perspective on open questions in auction theory, and provides a glimpse of the growing area of dynamic pricing.

Adopting an informational perspective towards knowledge work, this book investigates how enterprise portals can promote knowledge creation, distribution, and use. Moving beyond the design and delivery of portals as mere information retrieval tools, an enterprise portal is viewed as a shared information work space that can facilitate communication and collaboration among organizational workers, as well as support the browsing, searching, and retrieval of information content. Adopting an information vantage point, the book uniquely explores the human issues surrounding enterprise portal adoption and use, as well as the utilization of intelligent agents to ameliorate the use of portals for knowledge-based tasks. The result is a novel, rich and comprehensive discussion on the factors affecting the design and utilization of enterprise portals for knowledge work, suitable for both graduate-level students and organizational workers alike.

Discover the depth of government information and services available online. The United States Government Internet Directory serves as a guide to the changing landscape of government information online. The Directory is an indispensable guidebook for anyone who is looking for official U.S. government resources on the Web. The U.S. government's online information is massive and can be difficult to locate. Many government sites are part of the "Deep Web" with content that does not surface or surface easily even with the most popular search engines. It is more important than ever to have a source that serves as an authoritative guide to the federal Web. The United States Government Internet Directory navigates the maze of data and locates the materials that you seek. The subject-based approach of this book allows you to browse for relevant sites in your field of interest rather than sift through hundreds of search results or try to guess which federal agency to consult. Researchers, business people, teachers, students, and citizens in the United States and around the world can navigate the labyrinthine federal Web with The United States Government Internet Directory. The Directory: contains more than 1,800 Web site records, organized into 21 subject themed chapters includes topics on a wide-range of subjects including employment, energy, defense and intelligence, culture and recreation, and much more provides descriptions and URLs for each site describes sites to help you choose the proper resource notes the useful or unique aspects of the site lists some of the major government publications hosted on the site provides a roster of congressional members with member's Web sites lists House and Senate Committees with committee URLs contains useful, up-to-date organizational charts for the major federal government agencies includes a one-page Quick Guide to the major federal agencies and the leading online library, data source, and finding aid sites identifies the changes in online government information that have occurred place in the past year

The availability of effective global communication facilities in the last decade has changed the business goals of many manufacturing enterprises. They need to remain competitive by developing products and processes which are specific to individual requirements, completely packaged and manufactured globally. Networks of enterprises are formed to operate across time and space with world-wide distributed functions such as manufacturing, sales, customer support, engineering, quality assurance, supply chain management and so on. Research and technology development need to address architectures, methodologies, models and tools supporting intra- and inter-enterprise operation and management. Throughout the life cycle of products and enterprises there is the requirement to transform information sourced from globally distributed offices and partners into knowledge for decision and action. Building on the success of previous DrrSM conferences (Tokyo 1993, Eindhoven 1996, Fort Worth 1998), the fourth International Conference on Design of Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing (DrrSM 2000) aims to: * Establish and manage the dynamics of virtual enterprises, define the information system requirements and develop solutions; * Develop and deploy information management in multi-cultural systems with universal applicability of the proposed architecture and solutions; * Develop enterprise integration architectures, methodologies and information infrastructure support for reconfigurable enterprises; * Explore information transformation into knowledge for decision and action by machine and skilful people; These objectives reflect changes of the business processes due to advancements of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the last couple of years.

This book brings together three great motifs of the network society: the seeking and using of information by individuals and groups; the creation and application of knowledge in organizations; and the fundamental transformation of these activities as they are enacted on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Of the three, the study of how individuals and groups seek information probably has the longest history, beginning with the early "information needs and uses" studies soon after the Second World War. The study of organizations as knowledge-based social systems is much more recent, and really gained momentum only within the last decade or so. The study of the World Wide Web as information and communication media is younger still, but has generated tremendous excitement, partly because it has the potential to reconfigure the ways in which people seek information and use knowledge, and partly because it offers new methods of analyzing and measuring how in fact such information and knowledge work gets done. As research endeavors, these streams overlap and share conceptual constructs, perspectives, and methods of analysis. Although these overlaps and shared concerns are sometimes apparent in the published research, there have been few attempts to connect these ideas explicitly and identify cross-disciplinary themes. This book is an attempt to fill this void. The three authors of this book possess contrasting backgrounds and thus adopt complementary vantage points to observe information seeking and knowledge work.

eTransformation in Governance: New Directions in Government and Politics is about transformation in government and governance due to the information society development. The book provides conceptual clarification of the e-transformation in governance, and presents empirical findings on the recent developments in Western countries. The book provides innovative and fresh views to recent developments and practices of e-governance.

This book presents a blueprint for corporate growth in the challenging environment of the first decade of the 21st century. It shows that Streamlining is an approach that leads companies to enable, automate and innovate, to control costs and improve performance in these new conditions. Pioneers like Cisco, Dell, GE, BP and Siemens have shown that it can deliver. This book will show all companies how to achieve results in the next part of their new techology/e-business journey and will be essential for managers.

Many Asian countries are achieving remarkable success in closing what researchers call the digital divide between developing and developed nations, while others continue to struggle. This collection of essays sheds light on the various ways in which the Internet has been seen in Asia. As we continue to debate new paradigms of research and development in the digital era, where innovations and convergences are the norm, this book fills an urgent need, revealing how the technological revolution has spread, and is spreading, throughout diverse nations.

Chapters on the United States and Japan offer a sort of yardstick by which to measure and compare the diffusion and the impact of the Internet in other Asian countries, including China, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Appealing to readers interested in the development of the Asian region, technological innovation, and international communication, "Cyberpath to Development in Asia" offers an acute study of how a global phenomenon continues to manifest itself in a crucial part of the globe.

As a new generation of technologies, frameworks, concepts and practices for information systems emerge, practitioners, academicians, and researchers are in need of a source where they can go to educate themselves on the latest innovations in this area. ""Semantic Web Information Systems: State-of-the-Art Applications"" establishes value-added knowledge transfer and personal development channels in three distinctive areas: academia, industry, and government. ""Semantic Web Information Systems: State-of-the-Art Applications"" covers new semantic Web-enabled tools for the citizen, learner, organization, and business. Real-world applications toward the development of the knowledge society and semantic Web issues, challenges and implications in each of the IS research streams are included as viable sources for this challenging subject.

This edited volume brings together experts from around the world to provide coverage and analysis of infrastructure's role in Internet governance, both now and in the future. Never in history have conflicts over Internet governance attracted such widespread attention. High-profile controversies include the disclosures about NSA surveillance by intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, controversy over a decision by the US government to relinquish its historic oversight of Internet names and numbers, and countless cybersecurity breaches involving unauthorized access to Internet users' personal data. Much of the Internet governance ecosystem-both technical architecture and coordinating institutions-is behind the scenes but increasingly carries significant public interest implications. An area once concealed in institutional and technological complexity is now rightly bracketed among other shared global issues-such as environmental protection and human rights-that have considerable global implications but are simply incongruous with national borders. This transformation into an era of global governance by Internet infrastructure presents a moment of opportunity for scholars to bring these politicized infrastructures to the foreground.

Over the last decade, a great amount of effort and resources have been invested in the development of Semantic Web Service (SWS) frameworks. Numerous description languages, frameworks, tools, and matchmaking and composition algorithms have been proposed. Nevertheless, when faced with a real-world problem, it is still very hard to decide which of these different approaches to use.

In this book, the editors present an overall overview and comparison of the main current evaluation initiatives for SWS. The presentation is divided into four parts, each referring to one of the evaluation initiatives. Part I covers the long-established first two tracks of the Semantic Service Selection (S3) Contest - the OWL-S matchmaker evaluation and the SAWSDL matchmaker evaluation. Part II introduces the new S3 Jena Geography Dataset (JGD) cross evaluation contest. Part III presents the Semantic Web Service Challenge. Lastly, Part IV reports on the semantic aspects of the Web Service Challenge. The introduction to each part provides an overview of the evaluation initiative and overall results for its latest evaluation workshops. The following chapters in each part, written by the participants, detail their approaches, solutions and lessons learned.This book is aimed at two different types of readers. Researchers on SWS technology receive an overview of existing approaches in SWS with a particular focus on evaluation approaches; potential users of SWS technologies receive a comprehensive summary of the respective strengths and weaknesses of current systems and thus guidance on factors that play a role in evaluation.

The rapid development and expansion of Web-based technologies has vast potential implications for the processes of teaching and learning world-wide. Technological advancements of Web-based applications strike at the base of the education spectrum; however, the scope of experimentation and discussion on this topic has continuously been narrow.

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