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This paper aims to examine major stakeholders’ communication preferences in eParticipation initiatives and discuss how this affects the public sphere. Despite the potential of social media, it has proven difficult to get people actively involved in the decision-making processes. There is a need for more research on how stakeholders manage and use social media to communicate.

The study was conducted as a qualitative case study. Data sources include interviews, social media content, document analysis and field notes.

Communication preferences of stakeholders vary according to their salience level. Stakeholders with higher salience are less likely to participate in social media, whereas those who are less salient will use every available medium to gain influence. This challenges the opportunity to create a traditional public sphere in social media.

The authors contribute to a better understanding of who participates in social media and why. Stakeholder salience analysis shows that in the case of citizen-initiated eParticipation, social media cannot be seen as a Habermasian public sphere.

The authors suggest two approaches for government officials’ handling of social media: to treat social media as a channel for input and knowledge about the concerns of citizen groups and to integrate social media in the formal processes of decision making to develop consultative statements on specific policy issues.

The study shows that power and urgency are the most important salience attributes. These findings indicate that social media may not be as inclusive as early research indicates, and less active social media users may have power and influence through other channels.

The findings extend current knowledge of the public sphere by adding the stakeholder perspective in addition to existing evaluative models of the public sphere.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivations of undergraduate students in choosing to study the information systems (IS) program and explore gender differences in students’ motivations.

This study examines the results of an online survey of undergraduate IS students at a public university in Norway. An online survey was used to collect the data from undergraduate students who enrolled in an introductory IS course. T-test was used to test the differences between male and female students.

The results identified that career-related factors such as job availability and job security were the two most prominent factors for both male and female students to choose IS. The results also show that male and female students have essentially similar motivations to choose IS. There were only two significant differences found between female and male students in the perceptions of the importance of factors that influence the decision to choose IS: “personal interest in subject matter” and “ease of study topics.” Male students rated the importance of personal interest and ease of study topics significantly higher than female students.

Despite the fact that Norway is a highly digitalized and gender-equal country, women are still underrepresented in IT-related jobs and higher education studies. Findings from this study will help to understand the motivations of students in choosing IS and gender differences in their motivations in a highly gender-equal and digitalized European country.

The purpose of this paper is to address the gender digital divide through the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by reviewing existing knowledge within the field. This paper explores the characteristics and factors contributing to the gender digital divide. To bridge the gender digital divide, it is important to understand the factors behind gender differences in ICT access and use.

In this study, the systematic literature review was conducted in accordance with the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) approach. In total, 24 articles were selected and analysed with using PRISMA steps.

Despite a significant increase in usage of the internet and other ICTs around the world, women, especially in developing countries, tend to be on the wrong side of the digital divide. The results indicate that while there are still gender differences in access to ICT in developing countries, second-level digital divide issues are more of a concern in developed countries. In the literature, several important factors have been identified as being associated with the gender digital divide. The results highlight the importance of implementable policies to bridge the gender digital divide, as well as how sociocultural factors play an important role in explaining the gender digital divide phenomenon.

By identifying the gender digital divide studies’ characteristics and factors contributing to the gender digital divide, the authors provide an overview of the existing research, allowing us to discuss future research needs within the field. The authors argue that more research is needed to understand how to better address the sociocultural factors affecting the gender digital divide, to understand why equal access seems not to result in equal use and, to understand the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender digital divide.