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This study examines the dualities of digital services – that is, how customers’ favorite everyday digital services can positively and negatively contribute to their well-being. Thus, the study describes the meanings of favorite digital services as part of customers’ everyday lives and the types of well-being to which such services can contribute.

We used a qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews conducted in 2021 to collect data from 14 young adults (22–31 years old) who actively used digital services in their daily lives.

Our findings revealed that customers’ favorite everyday digital services can contribute to their mental well-being, social well-being, and intellectual well-being. Within these three dimensions of well-being, we identified nine dualities of digital services that describe their positive and negative contributions: (1) digital escapism versus digital disruption, (2) digital relaxation versus digital stress, (3) digital empowerment versus digital subjugation, (4) digital augmentation versus digital emptiness, (5) digital socialization versus digital isolation, (6) digital togetherness versus digital exclusion, (7) digital self-expression versus digital pressure, (8) digital learning versus digital dependence, and (9) digital inspiration versus digital stagnation.

These findings suggest that everyday digital services have the potential to contribute to customer well-being in various aspects – both positively and negatively – accentuating the need for service providers to decipher the impacts of their offerings on well-being. Indeed, understanding the relationship between digital services and customer well-being can help companies tailor their services to customers’ needs. Companies that prioritize customer well-being not only benefit their customers but also create sustainable growth opportunities in the long run. Further, companies can use the derived information in service design to develop marketing strategies that emphasize the positive impacts of their digital services on customer well-being.

Although prior transformative service studies have investigated the well-being of multiple stakeholders, such studies have focused on services related to the physical and healthcare domains. Consequently, the role of everyday digital services as contributors to customer well-being is an under-researched topic. In addition, the concept of well-being and its various dimensions has received limited attention in previous service research. By investigating everyday digital services and their multidimensional contribution to customer well-being, this study broadens the perspective on well-being within TSR and aids in refining a more precise conceptualization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between digital skills and employment and in this way accentuate importance of policy interventions for improving digital literacy.

Using Eurostat data, this paper demonstrates statistically significant correlation between digital skills and employment rates in EU.

This implies why it is so important for governments and employers to seek, propose and implement new strategies to promote digital inclusion, literacy and the training not only for new ICT professionals but also for the whole workforce.

Digital skills, particularly digital literacy, are an important factor for socio-economic development of the society and employability of the labour force. Without adequate digital literacy, it is not possible to participate in the economy and the digital society, particularly having in mind the digital transformation that the world of work is experiencing in the content and the organisation. Beyond the work environment, it also affects the way people live and communicate.

In this paper, the importance and definition of digital literacy are elaborated, explaining the measurement of digital literacy and skills, as well as the relation between digital literacy and employability.

The work connects classic theories of selfing to the COVID-19 pandemic to make fresh connections between pandemic-induced trauma to the self and digital resources. This research introduces the concept of the “traumatized self” emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to digital disadvantage and digital hyperconnectivity. From Cooley’s original “looking glass self” to Wellman’s “hyperconnected” individualist self, social theories of identity work, and production of the self have a long and interdisciplinary history. In documenting this history, the discussion outlines key foci in the theorizing of the digital self by mapping how digital selfing and identity work have been treated from the inception of the internet to the epoch of the pandemic. The work charts the evolution of the digital selfing project from key theoretical perspectives, including postmodernism, symbolic interactionism, and dramaturgy. Putting these approaches in dialogue with the traumatized self, this research makes a novel contribution by introducing the concept of digitally differentiated trauma, which scholars can employ to better understand selfing processes in such circumstances and times.

It has been a decade, as the collaboration between the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) and the Ghana Library Authority (GhLA) to extend information and communication technology (ICT) and library services to rural deprived, unserved and underserved communities in Ghana dubbed the library connectivity project. This paper aims to evaluate this initiative from the perspective of relevant key stakeholders and through the lens of the digital inclusion model.

The study adopted a qualitative approach to evaluate the library connectivity project offered to deprived communities in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Interviews were conducted with the head librarians, ICT teachers and school librarians. Focus group discussions were held with pupils from four beneficiary schools of the project. The researchers also witnessed four of the outreach programmes and training sessions and observed the mode of instruction.

The study brought to fore the enormous benefits of the library connectivity project as it aided school pupils to acquire practical ICT skills, which were found to be useful towards their final exam. Despite the enormous benefit of the project, it was bereft with a lot of challenges such as inadequate logistics and personnel thereby restricting the project to very few schools. Low staff motivation and unmotorable roads were also found to be a challenge, which could all be as a result of lack of funds.

The paper underscores the importance of computer and information literacy and reveals how the GhLA is using innovative mobile library services to bridge the digital divide through the library connectivity project.

This paper makes a further contribution to the paucity of literature on the role of mobile libraries in the promotion of computer and information literacy.

Technology access, digital skills, and digital services are increasingly prerequisites for public life and accessing public services. The digital divide in contemporary societies matters for efforts to digitalize the welfare state. Research has already mapped individual determinants of digital exclusion and the existence of an age-related digital divide. However, far less attention has been paid to variations in digital inclusion between countries and to their potential explanations related to political systems. This study explores the influence of variations in welfare regimes on the digital divide among seniors (aged 65+) in Europe.

This article presents time-series cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors in European countries. The analyses are based on data from Eurostat, the World Bank, and the UN E-Government Survey.

The authors find extensive variation in the digital inclusion of citizens between welfare regimes and argue that considering regime differences improves the understanding of these variations. The findings indicate that the age-related digital divide seems to be least evident in countries with more universalistic welfare regimes and most evident in countries where seniors rely more on their families.

This is the first comparative study of the association between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore areas of challenge in managing personal finances among visually impaired older people, with critical appraisal of current structures available in financial institutions for equal access to financial services. The paper intends to create understanding of the drawbacks to financial inclusion from the perspectives and experiences of older people with vision impairment in Nigeria as well as highlighting areas where support is/are needed to tackle digital exclusion.

This study employed a qualitative approach, interviewing 30 visually impaired older adults, aged 60 years and over. Participants were drawn from a voluntary organisation for people living with vision impairment in Southwest Nigeria. Interview data were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically using qualitative data analysis software – NVivo (version 11).

Results provide clear insight on the nature of the challenges faced by visually impaired older people, particularly with managing finances on computer-enabled platforms. The findings also revealed fears and hopes of this group about the rapid evolution of technologies for managing finances.

The study critically explored an understudied population, showing peculiar challenges and made a case for inclusive designs that are useful for digital inclusion of this population.

The purpose of this paper is to create a research framework to scrutinize how individuals' digital technology use produces tangible and intangible outcomes in online (digital) and offline realms.

The paper applies the Bourdieusian e-capital perspective to create a theory-based framework. The framework was used to guide a survey design to explore women's “social media-assisted reuse” at the micro-scale in Helsinki, Finland.

The paper argues that a new form of capital emerges when individuals utilize digital technologies in correspondence to their goals to gain added value that would be impossible or significantly more arduous to gain without the digital realm. The survey indicates that the respondents utilize the digital space – set objectives and gain capital-related outcomes – in correspondence to their differing social, economic and cultural positions and related resources in- and outside of the digital realm.

If digital spaces – due to social inequality and underlying power structures – become increasingly stratified, there will be significant impacts on how individuals from differing backgrounds gain accumulated forms of capital through the digital realm. The question is of great importance for battling inequality.

The paper enhances and synthesizes recent discussions on different forms of capital and outcomes of the use of digital technologies and presents a combined “e-capital–digital divide” framework that offers a more complete agenda for investigating the finely nuanced links between the inputs, outputs and outcomes of digital technology use.