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This paper aims to critically examine the post-disaster emergency response amongst marginalised and disadvantaged social groups following the 2015 Nepal Earthquake (7.8 Mw).

A qualitative research method was employed by conducting interviews with disaster survivors from marginalised and ethnic social groups, humanitarian aid workers and government officials in the four districts worst hit by the 2015 Nepal Earthquake.

This research found that community members demonstrated remarkable cooperation in the aftermath of the disaster; however, caste-based discrimination still manifested in post-earthquake emergency environments. Further, this research showed that the engagement of government and local and international humanitarian organisations was noteworthy in the earthquake emergency response in Nepal as it localised relief packages and adapted the assistance corresponding to the fast-changing post-disaster environments. However, some relief materials were culturally inappropriate and climatically unsuitable. This paper also shows that the poor dissemination of relief distribution plans, resource duplication and ineffective targeting disproportionately impacted the oppressed and marginalised households in receiving humanitarian assistance.

Studies have been undertaken on the emergency response to the 2015 Nepal Earthquake, however, few have focussed on the lived experience of marginalised and disadvantaged social groups. Further, this research builds on, and contributes to, the humanitarian mobile sovereignty discourse.

Studies of disaster and conflict often mention the Indonesian case of Aceh province because of its twin histories of separatist conflict and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, each with massive losses of life and infrastructural damages. This chapter addresses the tourism angle in Aceh’s tourism–disaster–conflict nexus with a review and analysis of the efforts to memorialise these events through the establishment of museums in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. Museums that preserve dark aspects of the past, such as violent wars, disasters and mass death must navigate the tension between providing a record of what has occurred and engaging with collective memory while not denying the individual experience of the event. The tsunami has been formally commemorated with a monumental, centrally located museum. Meanwhile, a few local non-governmental organisations with a small grant from an international donor struggled to establish a Peace and Human Rights Museum to commemorate the violence and human rights violations of the war in Aceh. Memories of Aceh’s conflict remain largely in the informal sphere. These divergent memorialisations of Aceh’s disasters and conflicts serve as a point of entry for examining how museums and their benefactors engage in contested memory politics.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This chapter develops a conceptual taxonomy of five emerging digital citizenship regimes: (1) the globalised and generalisable regime called pandemic citizenship that clarifies how post-COVID-19 datafication processes have amplified the emergence of four intertwined, non-mutually exclusive and non-generalisable new technopoliticalised and city-regionalised digital citizenship regimes in certain European nation-states’ urban areas; (2) algorithmic citizenship, which is driven by blockchain and has allowed the implementation of an e-Residency programme in Tallinn; (3) liquid citizenship, driven by dataism – the deterministic ideology of big data – and contested through claims for digital rights in Barcelona and Amsterdam; (4) metropolitan citizenship, as revindicated in reaction to Brexit and reshuffled through data co-operatives in Cardiff; and (5) stateless citizenship, driven by devolution and reinvigorated through data sovereignty in Barcelona, Glasgow and Bilbao. This chapter challenges the existing interpretation of how these emerging digital citizenship regimes together are ubiquitously rescaling the associated spaces/practices of European nation-states.

Insofar as the digital layer cannot be detached from the current democratic challenges of the 21st century including neoliberalism, scales, civic engagement and action research-driven co-production methodologies; this chapter advances trends, aftermaths and emancipatory strategies for the post-pandemic technopolitical democracies. Consequently, it suggests a democratic toolbox encompassing four intertwined trends, aftermaths and emancipations including (1) the context characterised by the algorithmic nations, (2) challenges stemming from data sovereignty, (3) mobilisation seen from the digital rights perspective and (4) grassroots innovation embodied through data co-operatives. This chapter elucidates that in the absence of coordinated and interdependent strategies to claim digital rights and data sovereignty by algorithmic nations, on the one hand, Big Tech data-opolies, and on the other hand, the GDPR led by the European Commission might bound (negatively) and expand (positively), respectively, algorithmic nations' capacity to mitigate the negative side effects of the algorithmic disruption in Western democracies.

Dynamism of digital economy requires innovation in the mobile payment system to provide for the free flow of information to facilitate electronic transactions. However, regulations and standards were introduced at the global and country levels to impose limitations on mobile payment system to protect consumers’ interests. The Malaysian government introduced the Anti-money Laundering, Anti-terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001 (Act 613) (AMLA) to protect the people from being involved in offences both locally and internationally and an unlawful activity carried out physically or by using virtual mechanisms. It is argued in this study that AMLA has hindered the innovation of the digital economic system that is promoted by the government in line with global developments. The research method adopted is personal interview with selected respondents to gather their views on the challenges posed by the restrictions imposed by AMLA that has had the impact of limiting innovations in the mobile payment system sector.

The aim of this research is to identify the characteristics that give rise to motivations to use social apps in light of behavioral concepts related to consumers’ desires and emotional values.

Netnography is used as the main methodology to analyze and categorize user profiles of online social networks. These profiles are presented through conceptual headlines, which highlight the main characteristics of each user group.

The results of the study show that many users have become dependent on the WhatsApp application, either for technological reasons or for social reasons related to fashion and status.

Few consumers actually explained the ways they use mobile social networks in the context of the procedures and level of communication performed. However, the influence of social contexts in the consumer environment is changing perceived values focusing on prestige and status to technological elements that the majority of consumers use.

Practical implications are directly related to forming business connections in a less formal and more hedonic environment, improving market results while fostering user enjoyment. In addition, the ongoing updates to WhatsApp have brought new functionalities and improvements to previously weak features.

Although other applications offer means by which to talk and send messages, WhatsApp continues to be (as of early 2021) the most used platform for conversation in Brazil. The sovereignty of WhatsApp is directly linked to its social value, which is related to the number of consumers who daily interact via the network.

This chapter explores if alternative participatory co-creation approaches have the potential for deploying an emancipatory urbanism that is able to contest the urban dynamics of (digital) capitalism. It does so by focusing on the Barcelona case. Barcelona fully embraced a “smart citizen” approach in 2011 to become a European referent in smart urban strategies. However, in 2015, with the arrival of a new municipal government, Barcelona has situated itself contesting the “smart city” and at the forefront of alternative possibilities with its “technological sovereignty” strategy. This shift aims to remake the smart city agenda for citizens through the advancement of the right to information and guarantees to open, transparent, and participatory decision-making through new digital and platform technologies. The chapter argues, first, that “technological sovereignty” has been instrumental in re-politicizing the notions of (smart) citizenship and technology, deploying initiatives aimed at regaining public control on data and citizens participating in policy-making. Second, Barcelona’s technological sovereignty strategy, though framed as locally and bottom-up, is based on a global comprehension and diagnosis of the global dynamics of digital capitalism. However, sometimes, there still remains an over-optimistic stance concerning digital technology. Thus, for any alternative to the neoliberal smart city, it is necessary to decenter the debate from the technologies themselves or the local, and recognize that any emancipatory strategy is also about acknowledging that technology-led solutions are not autonomous of broader relations of production and complex political economy geographies.

This study aims to understand the benefits and challenges associated with the adoption of a blockchain-based identity management system in public services by conducting an academic literature review, and to explore the design of such a system that can be applied to the Korean government.

This study explores the adoption of a blockchain-based identity management system using a literature review and an actual design case intended for use by the government sector.

Blockchain-based identity management systems can significantly improve transparency, accountability, and reliability in the user control of one's own data while reducing the time and cost needed to deliver public services, as well as increasing administrative efficiency. However, it is not always easy to implement such systems, and introducing new technologies in the government field requires a complicated, time-consuming process. There is currently an appetite for research extending beyond the typical technology-driven approach to elucidate the government adoption of new technologies and explore its implications.

The idea behind this system is that by storing and managing personal information on the blockchain and providing mobile apps to customers, users can log in or retrieve previously authenticated personal information without having to go through an authentication process. Since users do not need to go through the verification process every time, it is expected that they will be able to access only the necessary personal information more quickly and conveniently without having to deal with unnecessary details. In addition, the blockchain-based operation of a public service effectively increases the transparency and reliability of that service and reduces the social costs caused by personal information leakage.

This study introduces the design of a blockchain-based identity management system that can be used in public services, specifically in the Korean government sector for the first time. Along with a literature review, the implications that this study gleans from these real-world use cases can contribute to this field of research.