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1 – 10 of 61Scholastica Chizoma Ukwoma, Ngozi Eunice Osadebe, Victoria Nwamaka Okafor and Chinwe Nwogo Ezeani
This study aims to show that digital literacy can serve as a tool for effecting social change and highlights the achievements of an academic library in digital content creation…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to show that digital literacy can serve as a tool for effecting social change and highlights the achievements of an academic library in digital content creation using the Wikipedia platform.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted qualitative research method, Interview and document analysis were used for data gathering. Data gathered were analysed using content (conceptual) analysis.
Findings
Findings showed that the library has created or edited digital content for various categories of women, such as women in academia, industry and politics. These entries have received more than eight million views over a period of two years, which shows that the entries are being utilised. However, the editing exercise had been confronted with challenges such as accessing reliable citations in terms of the notability and verifiability policy of Wikipedia amongst others.
Practical implications
Currently, people rely more on online resources for their research, leaving physical library resources unused. Even, more students start their research online using Wikipedia. Thus, libraries could create visibility for their physical material using regularly visited sites like Wikipedia and its sister projects such as Wikidata; otherwise, these physical materials will remain invisible to the people that needed them.
Originality/value
Contributing to Wikipedia by creating a new entry or editing an existing one can help students to deepen their knowledge about a subject; Wikipedia editing may serve as an avenue for improving information literacy skills. Drawing from the theory of cyberfeminism as used in the study, information and communications technology has the potential to empower women and transform gender relations.
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This chapter is a reflective evaluation of the preexisting and emerging issues and challenges which mediate contemporary efforts to sustain gender justice in the Caribbean. I use…
Abstract
This chapter is a reflective evaluation of the preexisting and emerging issues and challenges which mediate contemporary efforts to sustain gender justice in the Caribbean. I use the perspectives of undergraduate feminist theory students and online feminist activists to establish how contemporary Caribbean feminist advocacy is situated. I also evaluate this situatedness by considering the salience of perspectives and sentiments inherited from a legacy of collective consciousness raising through developed Caribbean feminist theorizing and vibrant women’s movements in the region. I assert that student responses reflect an awareness of this legacy with an understanding of self as inheriting a secure agency as a collective, particularly as a collective group of women, but at the same time expressing a preoccupation with the individualistic, particularly in terms of concerns over bodily autonomy. This suggests a turn from their legacy. In addition, online feminist activists lament that change is not as evident as needed; that they still live limits, are still subject to gendered structures of power, and that struggles over legitimacy and for freedom from gender-based violence continue to undermine the attainment of gender justice. Their sentiments suggest that the “there” has been engaged but by no means arrived at as a fixed end point; while some agency can be accessed, gender justice in the region continues to be a journey that is complex and requires response to an ever changing social, political and economic landscapes.
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Verónica Valcarce de Veer and Paloma Valdivia-Vizarreta
In a socio-educational context impregnated by social networks, feminist organizations and individuals have turned to social media to spread their knowledge. This paper aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
In a socio-educational context impregnated by social networks, feminist organizations and individuals have turned to social media to spread their knowledge. This paper aims to approach how feminist tweets are produced to ignite meaningful informal learning (IL) processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses an interdisciplinary mixed methodology. By using Twitter tracking tools, a database has been enabled to catalogue feminist hashtags into topics and categories for further analysis. These data have been contrasted with surveys to the managers of the most followed feminist accounts in Spain and Catalonia.
Findings
From an educational perspective, the analysed feminist hashtags have been organized in 13 different topic categories. The different propagation processes on Twitter – tweeting and retweeting – imply diverse learning processes. Moreover, tweets with complementary information such as images or links generate the most interaction, being the preferred format for IL.
Research limitations/implications
Researching with Big Data in educational sciences is a field in development, and Twitter data collection tools are mostly addressed to marketing and economic sectors; thus, free tools with limited services were used, offering the analysis of a brief and concrete situation of a platform in constant change. Although this ephemeral data and its relevance does not prevail over time, it has an impact on citizens’ learning.
Originality/value
It is the first study in Spain that illustrates the informal education that feminism offers to the community, facing the complexity of measuring Twitter with an educational perspective through the use of marketing tools.
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