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The purpose of this paper is to operationalise infomediaries in an agricultural context, specifically upland rice farming. Infomediaries are people who facilitate access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). This offers a socially grounded solution to the nagging issue of the digital divide.

This research is predominantly qualitative. The methods used were time transects, mobility mapping, photovoice, individual and key informant interviews. In total, 38 farmers' children from the upland communities in the provinces of Albay and Aurora participated in this research. Theoretically, this paper aims to contribute to literature on ICT 2.0.

The participants showed strong desire to help their parents on the rice farm, directly or indirectly. They had varying levels of proficiency in using ICTs. Average weekly expenditure on purchasing prepaid mobile phone credits was US$1.50. Evidence of mobile addiction (sending more than 200 text messages daily) was noted. Their youth's intimate relationship with ICTs increases hope that they can serve as infomediaries for their farmer-parents.

This research is anchored on giving context-specific solutions to ICT issues. Transferability is emphasised over generalisability.

Based on the mobility maps of the participants, their respective schools can serve as the nuclei for agricultural extension. The schools serve as their convergence point. This offers an alternative to the difficulty of individually visiting the farmers in the area, which is confounded by the scarcity of agricultural technologists tasked to do the job.

The paper offers an alternative extension mode, drawn from the intimate relationship between young people and ICTs. This is a welcome initiative, particularly because such initiatives to engage youth in agriculture, directly or indirectly, remain scarce. The ideas forwarded in this paper will benefit agricultural agencies in the Philippines and other developing countries.

Smart cities can be understood as an inclusive space for each and everyone to achieve their best options, within the framework of sustainable development, where institutions boost information and technology environments that help achieve the highest individual and social well-being with the aim of improving the lives of citizens. The youth group (between 15 and 24 years) was severely affected by the crisis. In this paper, youth employability, in relation to the new challenges of smart cities, is analyzed in the EU with the aim of assessing the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) skills on youth employability.

By means of a mean analysis and structural equation modeling, the differences between the Eurozone and the other countries in the EU is analyzed, as well as the importance of information technologies and the computer skills for increasing youth employability.

The results indicate that awareness of the importance of IT skills is greater in the Eurozone and that computer skills are highly significant to explain the employability of young people.

The achieved conclusions point out to the training on computers skills as a key factor for boosting youth employment.

This work could provide some tools to help policymakers design instruments for increasing youth employment, as well as to provide training mechanisms to obtain the skilled workforce needed for the enterprises that emerged in the environment of smart cities.

The main original value of this work is to relate computers skills and the employment rates for youth in the framework of the European Union.

Existing literature affirms that almost half of the young generation has remained unemployed worldwide. On the contrary civic engagement can be a powerful tool in combating this problem. However, the influencing factors that encourage the active participation of young adults yet to be identified. The purpose of this paper is to fill the research gap by creating and validating a research model by including three motives social presence commitment and online offline civic engagement.

The study took a quantitative approach to conduct a cross-sectional study. In total, 214 data were collected from the member of a Facebook group of Bangladesh named Foodbank, a restaurant review page through the online questionnaire. After that structural equation modelling techniques have been used to analyse the data, test the model validity and hypothesis.

The result shows that both commitment and social presence influence offline and online civic engagement. Excitement motives have a higher effect than information and convenience motive. Besides, 8 out of 10 hypotheses have shown significant results, with only the convenience motive not having any positive influence and effect on social presence and commitment.

Almost 47.6 out of 158.5 million are young people who are incapable of contributing fully to national development due to a lack of civic engagement. The outcome of this study will be useful for the Government of Bangladesh, as well as for non-governmental organisations and decision-making authorities to form assessments and develop policy on how to engage the young generation in civic activities to achieve further socio-economic development in the country.

This study contributes to existing literature with newly developed relationships between social presence-civic engagement and commitment-civic engagement. These unique relationships have been empirically tested and resulted insignificant. The study also identifies that it is vital to engage young people more in social works and increase their participation in offline and online activities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges encountered in e‐government implementation, as well as the potential opportunities available in the context of Jordanian society.

A detailed examination and analysis of Jordan's published e‐government vision and strategy is presented, together with a review of other relevant literature.

The findings and implications of this study reveal Jordan is still lagging behind in utilising information and communication technologies for delivering government services online.

An understanding of the current status of e‐government in Jordan can help policy makers in the country pursue development of the public sector organisations on the one hand, and would be of importance for Jordan's economic future success on the other.

This is believed to be the most up‐to‐date and comprehensive analysis of Jordan's plans and assessment of its level of readiness for delivery of e‐government services.

The purpose of this study is to explore the changing buying behavior of young Bangladeshi consumers in this pandemic situation toward online orientation. The major determinants of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and consumer value theory are used to explore their impact on buying attitudes toward behavior.

In this study, a model has been conceptualized to examine the influence of hedonic and utilitarian motivational values along with perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use on actual buying behavior under pandemic conditions. A structured questionnaire has been prepared for an online survey, and data have been collected from 395 online shoppers. The structural equation modeling technique has been applied to analyze the data using SPSS and SmartPLS 3 software.

The results of this study support that perceived enjoyment and utilitarian attributes (price, convenience and health aspects) positively affect online buying attitudes along with perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Finally, online buying behavior is significantly influenced by the positive attitude of consumers.

The findings of this study may contribute to developing marketing strategies that may attract buyers toward a new business orientation with prosperous supreme features in the future. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the existing behavioral patterns of consumers and opened a new opportunity for marketers.

Young consumers are a larger section, and deep knowledge about youngsters may direct marketers toward appropriate use of marketing tools and strategies in the future.

This study integrated the TAM with hedonic and utilitarian motivational predictors to measure their impact on consumers' online buying behavior.

This paper explores how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion in the context of UK rural communities.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders that operate nationally in government departments, government funded organisations and third sector organisations that provided a policy-level perspective on digital inclusion initiative provision across England, Scotland and Wales. Activity theory (AT) was utilised as a theoretical framework, where a variety of factors–tools, rules, community, division of labour and contradictions–were found to have an influence on digital inclusion initiative provision.

Digital inclusion initiative provision in UK rural communities is organised through the multi-stakeholder involvement of national organisations, and collaboration with intermediary organisations to provide digital skills training and support. The process is fraught with difficulties and contradictions, limited knowledge sharing; reduced or poor-quality connectivity; lack of funding; lack of local resources; assumptions that organisations will indeed collaborate and assumptions that intermediary organisations have staff with the necessary skills and confidence to provide digital skills training and support within the rural context.

This study highlights the benefit of using AT as a lens to develop a nuanced understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion.

This study can inform policy decisions on digital inclusion initiative provision suitable for rural communities.

The contribution of this paper provides new insights into the understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion and the provision of digital inclusion initiatives; it builds on the use of AT to help unpick the complexity of digital inclusion initiative provision as a phenomenon; it reveals contradictions in relation to trust, and the need for knowledge sharing mechanisms to span and align different interpretations of digital inclusion across the policy-level; and reveals an extension of AT demonstrated through the “granularity of the subject” which enables the multi-actor involvement of the stakeholders involved in digital inclusion at policy-level to emerge.

The purpose of this study was to attempt to answer some plausible questions like what do teenagers prefer to read at leisure, how do they read and why do they read? With the rapid changes in information technology, there is tremendous change in means of communication. Today, much more information is available from electronic and digital media as compared to traditional books. A paradigm shift in information delivery from just information to infotainment has also affected the preferences of the information seekers. Teenagers are a demographic group under transition and they are not untouched by these rapid changes in technology and their impact on their reading preferences.

For this purpose, a survey among 223 school-going (public/convent and government-/aided) teenagers aged between 12 and 18 years was done using a semi-structured questionnaire.

The findings revealed a decline in sports and outdoor recreational activities during leisure, and only 20.6 per cent teenagers preferred reading during leisure. However, self-perception as an avid reader was expressed by majority (53.8 per cent). Fictions were liked by > 75 per cent teenagers; however, non-fictions were also liked by majority (61.8 per cent). The reading preferences of the children were found to be affected by their age, their gender and the type of schools they attended. A significant inverse relationship of television watching and movie-going was observed with reading time.

The biggest limitation was inability to directly interact with the students and inability to gather data from more schools.

By knowing the current reading trends, leisure time habits and exposure to different means of information technology, the choice of medium for knowledge dispersal could be done. The study would help in providing a basis for a strategic change in the ratio of conventional books and other information media in the library.

By identifying the media exposure time and popularity, proper steps may be taken in order to enrich the particular media and to ensure that quality of information available on the media can be directed for social benefit in large.

The impact of demographic and environmental variables on reading habits of teenagers has not been evaluated in this part of the world, especially in view of the paradigm shift in information technology and the growing influence of electronic media and social networking. An understanding of this mutual relationship would help in modifying the reading behaviour of the teenagers.

The purpose of this paper is to anticipate the potential outcomes of efforts to promote social inclusion of youth from refugee backgrounds by considering diverse research conducted on information and communication technologies (ICTs), social inclusion, and young people of refugee backgrounds. It is argued that, while social inclusion programs might be successful at the local level, it is unclear whether they might actually do more harm than good in other, transnational contexts.

Literature reporting on projects that use ICTs to facilitate social inclusion is critically examined, with specific attention to identifying the foundational assumptions underlying such projects. These foundational assumptions are considered in relation to findings of research that identifies the transnational character of the experiences, expectations and aspirations of young people of refugee backgrounds.

The analysis highlights a conceptual disjuncture between the local aims of social inclusion and the transnational experiences of youth with refugee backgrounds. This conceptual disjuncture raises important questions about the potential effects of any program that aims to use ICTs to support young people from refugee backgrounds. While it is clear that a number of potentially positive outcomes are likely from using ICTs to promote social inclusion for refugee youth, several potentially negative outcomes are also apparent. It is argued that these potential harms tend to be overlooked because the foundational concepts of social inclusion assume a “local” community. One means of avoiding the potential for such harms could be to adequately recognise the extent to which individuals and groups participate in intersecting local and transnational communities, networks and flows of ideas, resources, and people.

This paper uses evidence of the significance of transnational social and cultural fields to propose an important intervention in social inclusion programs, by pointing to the possible harms that might result from the success of programs that facilitate social inclusion at a local level without appropriate awareness of its effects on non‐local contexts in which participants might also be active.

This study aims to explore consumption practices of new middle-class Indian women to explicate how they are challenging traditional social norms and redefining their identity through their consumption practices.

A total of 32 semi-structured and photo-elicitation interviews were conducted with new middle-class women between the age group of 23 and 40 years in India.

This study illustrates how the doing of consumption practices that involve creating, controlling, knowing and transforming is enabling new middle-class Indian women to undo gender disparities embedded in hegemonic patriarchal social order. Also, the study provides new insights into how class and symbolic capital intersect gender to redefine middle-class women’s feminine self.

This study specifically illustrates how new middle-class women are using consumption practices to uplift their position in household; bring about new modes of social interface; and identity expression and a reversal in gender roles.

The conflation of women’s independence with consumerism underlines the need for marketers to position consumer goods in a manner that strengthens women’s self and alleviates cultural perceptions of women as subordinate to men in the household. Indian market has considerable growth potential for publicly visible brands that affirm the elevated social status of women and allow them to effectively demonstrate their capital resources.

An under-researched consumer segment is explored by focusing particularly on the intersection of discourses of women’s individuality with that of their consumption practices. Additionally, pioneering use of photo-elicitation technique coupled with hermeneutic approach enabled to elicit effectively women’s reflections on their behaviours, values and motivations underlying their consumption practices.

This paper aims to determine how trust and perceptions shape uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in public access venues (libraries, telecentres, and cybercafés) in 25 developing countries around the world.

As part of a global study conducted by the Technology & Social Change Group at the University of Washington, local research teams conducted surveys, site visits, and interviews of over 25,000 respondents in different types of public access venues in the selected countries, using a shared research design and analytical framework.

The use of public access venues is shaped by the following trust factors: safety concerns, relevance of the information, reputation of the institution, and users' perceptions of how “cool” these venues are. While libraries tend to be trusted as most reputable, telecentres tend to be trusted as most relevant to meet local needs, and cybercafés tend to be perceived as most “cool”.

The paper is limited by its descriptive and not predictive nature, and is not based on a statistically representative sample of the population.

The insight presented in this paper can help inform policy decisions about public access initiatives, and inform future research to better understand the causes and consequences of trust in public access ICT. Understanding these perceptions helps gain a more nuanced understanding of the way services are provided in venues that offer public access to ICT.

This paper is novel as it covers public access to ICT in 25 developing countries across different types of venues, using a shared design and methodological approach. A study of this magnitude has never been done before. The findings provide valuable insight into understanding how people trust different types of public access ICT venues.