Search results

This study aims to determine the requirements and find out the challenges for the use of digital library services for rural areas of Capricorn District Municipality, Limpopo province. The research questions of the study are: What are the requirements for the use of digital library services in rural areas of Capricorn District Municipality? What are the challenges of accessing digital library services in rural areas?

Data was analysed thematically and deductively in this study, as researcher required to accomplish the purpose of the study through consistent structure (Zalaghi and Khazaei, 2016). In deductive analysis, the researcher starts with a set of categories, which are then used to categorize and organize data (Bertram and Christiansen, 2020). The researcher got familiar with data from the interviewing process and when transcribing data from audio tape. The transcription process was done for the coding purposes. Coding allows the researcher to simplify and focus on specific characteristics of data.

The study findings advocate for the establishment of digital libraries in rural areas. The library authorities are challenged to adapt digital ways of information provision. Since librarians have been providing digital content in libraries for use on users’ laptops and other gadgets, this implies that the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture has been lagging behind in finding innovative ways to provide information, especially in rural areas. To successfully keep libraries as sources of information, transformative measures have to be taken, and where possible, revisit the policies and keep drifting with the societal changes. The library authorities have to delve into new ways of providing LIS to the communities. Unquestionably, information and communication technologies have penetrated our societies and became a way of life. In addition, there are unlimited benefits which can be derived from digital technologies, especially given the lack of physical libraries in rural areas.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the academic research is original and has not been published anywhere before.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss impediments in the compilation of an application for a search and seizure warrant for digital evidence and the structure of such a warrant in South African criminal cases.

This paper provides a brief overview of international and local impediments, followed by a detailed discussion of the implications of these impediments and how it is approached in various jurisdictions. The methodology of this paper consists of a literature review.

Addressing the impediments in the compilation of the application and the warrant will be beneficial for forensic investigators, the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the administration of justice in South Africa.

Search and seizures for digital evidence form part of civil, regulatory and criminal search and seizures. This study focuses on the search and seizure of digital evidence in criminal matters pursuant to mainly the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 and the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020.

The originality of this paper lies in the approach to the drafting of applications for search and seizure warrants for digital information in South Africa. The contribution of the study is that, by using this approach, the SAPS can address the impediments during the application and compilation of the warrants, which would enhance the quality of investigations and contribute to the successful investigation and prosecution of crime in South Africa.

Generation Z refers to those born during a time when the internet and technology were available to practically everyone in education, social life and employment. Because Generation Z was born during a period of rapid technical growth and digital transition, it is also known as the ‘Digital Generation’. Digitalization is one of the developments that best symbolizes the twenty-first century, and it has both benefits and drawbacks. Because of its strong link with digitization, Generation Z is seen as the generation that experiences these benefits and drawbacks the most intensely. For this reason, the disadvantages as well as the advantages it provides to Generation Z come into question as an important issue. Generation Z benefits from digitalization in many ways, including faster and easier access to information, the elimination of time and space constraints in many issues, easier access to various needs such as shopping, education, entertainment and communication, faster completion of work that needs to be done, the ability to perform multiple tasks at the same time and the establishment of a universal perspective. Disadvantages include distraction, screen addiction beginning in childhood, diminished capacity to conduct business using traditional ways, cyber dangers and decreases in personal information security, and future risk to individual security from sharing on social media platforms. All of this highlights the necessity of understanding the benefits and drawbacks of digitalization for Generation Z, called as the Digital Generation.

In today’s information and knowledge society, it is indispensable for citizens to acquire the requisite digital and information literacy (IL) skills to search information independently to meet their multiple and diverse information needs. As a result of digitalisation in the world, development and acquisition of digital and information skills is critical even for students and learners to retrieve digitised and online information to meet or achieve their curriculum-related accomplishments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of the digital and information literacies in South Africa from 2016 to 2022.

This qualitative study used a scoping review approach to collect data from research articles, conference articles and textbooks on digital literacy and IL – published in the years ranging between 2016 and 2022 from Google Scholar.

The major findings revealed that majority of the citizens especially students and learners lack digital and IL skills to recognise when information is needed, to find, locate, evaluate and use the retrieved information to meet an information need in a particular situation or context. Practical implications of this study include the alignment of curricula towards information and communication technologies to face the everchanging digital information technologies.

The study used scoping literature review research where empirical studies were retrieved and selected to address the objectives. This study provided significant approaches regarding promoting information and digital literacies in developing countries such as South Africa.

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can create participatory cultures by removing barriers to access materials, encouraging student modes of expression, differentiating student interactions through digital environments and increasing learner autonomy. Participatory cultures require competencies or new media literacy (NML) skills to be successful in a digital world. However, professional development (PD) often lacks training on CALL and its implementation to develop such skills. The purpose of this study is to describe teachers use of digital tools for multilingual learners through a relevant theoretical perspective.

This design-based research study examines 30 in-service teachers in South Carolina, a destination state for Latinx immigrants, focusing data over three semesters of PD: interviews and instructional logs. The researchers address the question: How are teachers using digital tools to advance NML for multilingual learners (MLs)?

The authors analyzed current elementary teachers’ use of digital tools for language learning and NML purposes. Three themes are discussed: NMLs and digital literacy boundaries, digital tools for MLs and literacy teaching for MLs and NML skills.

Teacher PD often needs more specificity regarding the intersection of MLs and digital literacy. The authors contribute to the literature on needed elementary teaching practices for MLs, the integration of NML and how these practices may be addressed through PD.

The interpretation of any emerging form or period in art history was never a trivial task. However, in the case of digital art, technology, becoming an integral part, multiplied the complexity of describing, systematizing and evaluating it. This article investigates the most common metadata standards for the documentation of art as a broad category and suggests possible next steps toward an extended metadata standard for digital art.

Describing several techno-cultural phenomena formed in the last decade, manifesting the extendibility of digital art (its ability to be easily extended across multiple modalities), the article, at first, points to the long overdue need to re-evaluate the standards around it. Then it suggests a deeper analysis through a comparative study. In the scope of the study three artworks, The Arnolfini Portrait (Jan van Eyck), an iconic example of the early Renaissance, The World's First Collaborative Sentence (Douglas Davis), a classic example of early Internet art and Fake It Till You Make It (Maya Man), a prominent example of the blockchain art, are examined following the structure of the VRA Core 4.0 standard.

The comparative study demonstrates that digital art is more multi-semantic than traditional physical art, and requires new taxonomies as well as approaches for data acquisition.

Acknowledging that digital art simply has not yet evolved to the stage of being systematically collected by cultural institutions for documentation, curation and preservation, but otherwise, in the past few years, it has been at the front-center of social, economic and technological trends, the article suggests looking for hints on the future-proof extended metadata standard in some of those trends.

The significance of digital literacy in online social capital accumulation and surviving the contemporary society is widely recognised. Despite that the current generation is regarded as “digital natives”, their levels and nature of digital literacy vary. To generate educational insights, this study investigates the type(s) of digital literacy which are mostly related to the online social capital accumulation, and how one’s socio-economic background affects the connection between digital literacy and online social capital.

A total of 1,747 participants aged 13–30 were invited to take part in a quantitative study. Spearman's rank correlation analysis, hierarchical regression analysis and mediation analyses were performed to investigate the relationship between participants' demographic background, engagement in the online platforms, digital literacy and online social capital.

The results showed that the creative dimension of digital literacy was mostly significantly predictive of online social capital accumulation. Also, education significantly affected the relationship between the creative dimension of digital literacy and online social capital more than demographic background.

Results suggest that education helps enhance digital literacy, offsetting the influence of socio-demographic background. The author examines the implications of how to implement training programmes in youth settings to enhance students' digital literacy and benefit those who are marginalised.

Information technology (IT) personnels’ technical, business and behavioral skills are critical enablers for generating IT value. In an increasingly digitalized working environment where non-IT employees participate in digital innovations, a focus on IT personnels’ skills only doesn’t meet researchers’ need for a framework to study digital skills and managers’ need to address digital skills challenges across an enterprise’s workforce. Nevertheless, the digital skills topic is complicated by conceptual ambiguity and a lack of theoretically derived and empirically validated model. The purpose of this study is to address this problem.

Theoretically, this study draws on human capital (HC) and resource-based view (RBV) theories. Empirically, it follows mixed method combining interviews and a survey.

The digital skills construct is a multidimensional second order reflective construct. While its development is influenced by an organization’s commitment and exposure to digitalization, it influences the value organizations obtain from digitalization.

This study conceptualizes the digital skills construct, identifying technology agnostic subdimensions that are meaningful beyond a particular digital domain [information and communication technology (ICT), information, Internet, Inter of Things (IoT)] and establishing a valid measure. Other researchers can improve both the indicators of the existing four conceptually distinct and managerially recognizable workplace digital skills dimensions as well as testing new ones.

Managers can use the instrument to assess the extent to which their non-IT workforces are equipped with digital skills and get strategic insights for specific interventions such as upskilling or buying in skills.

The main theoretical contribution of the paper is the conceptualization and validation of the digital skills construct for the non-IT workforce. Furthermore, we provide a theoretical framework to explain the factors that could influence the development of digital skills and demonstrate the impact that digital skills have on selected digitalization value indicators. This contribution provides the foundation for investigating the drivers, outcomes and the relationship of digital skills to other constructs such as digital transformation, innovation and firm performance.

The study aimed to assess the digital literacy skills of the students of Sacred Heart College, Chalakudy, to know whether they possess the digital literacy skills to perform well in the digital environment. The study also analyzed how digital literacy skills were affected by various factors.

The study used stratified random sampling technique, and data were collected through a self-assessment survey using an online questionnaire designed based on DigComp 2.1: The Digital Competence Framework by the European Commission.

The results indicated that the college students needed training on digital literacy skills, as the majority students had only moderate to low digital literacy skills. It was proven that exposure to technology and the Internet will not necessarily yield skills to perform well in the digital environment. Also, digital literacy skills were not affected by various factors like age, level of study, etc.

The study helped to identify the digital literacy deficiencies in the students of Sacred Heart College, and it can serve as a valuable model for conducting similar investigations in diverse educational institutions. Conducting such studies offers institutions valuable insights, enabling them to create and implement personalized digital literacy training programs that can enhance students' abilities to navigate the digital landscape with proficiency and effectiveness. The study results can be insightful for educators, policymakers and the Kerala Government to reassess the current approaches and design an effective curriculum for integrating technology in education.

Although there are several studies that evaluated college students’ digital literacy in India and other countries, there are very few studies in the context of Kerala. Therefore, this study is distinctive and will serve as an example for all such studies in the future.

Cyber terrorism poses a serious technology risk to businesses and the economies they operate in. Cyber terrorism is a digital attack on computers, networks or digital information systems, carried out to coerce people or governments to further the social or political objectives of the attacker. Cyber terrorism is costly in terms of impaired operations and damaged assets. Cyber terrorism harms a firm’s reputation, thereby negatively affecting a firm’s stock market valuation. This poses grave worries to company management, financial analysts, creditors and investors. This study aims to evaluate the effect of cyber terrorism on the market value of publicly traded firms.

Financial information was obtained on business firms that were featured in news stories as targets of cyber terrorism. The firm’s stock price was recorded for 1, 3 and 7 days before and after the news article. Percentage changes in the firm’s stock price were compared to percentage changes in the Dow Jones Index to ascertain whether the firm’s stock price went up or down matching the market overall.

Results indicate that stock prices are significantly negatively affected by news of cyber terrorist attacks on companies. In all three time periods after the cyber terrorist attack, there was a significant negative decline in the stock value relative to the Dow Jones Index. Thus, the market valuation of the firm is damaged. As a result, the shareholders and institutions are financially damaged. Furthermore, exposed system vulnerability may lead to loss of business from consumers who have reduced confidence in the firm’s operations.

This paper examines the risks posed by cyber terrorism, including its impact on individual business firms, which in turn affect entire national economic systems. This makes clear the high value of cybersecurity in safeguarding computer systems. Taking steps to avoid being a victim of cyber terrorism is an important aspect of cybersecurity. Preventative steps are normally far less costly than rebuilding an information system after a cyber terrorist attack.

This study is original in examining the effect of cyber terrorism on the stock value of a company.