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1 – 10 of over 2000Mamoun Benmamoun, Morris Kalliny and Robert A. Cropf
Although multinational enterprises (MNEs), according to John Dunning's work, are driven by motives of ownership, location, internalization and, ultimately, higher returns, these…
Abstract
Purpose
Although multinational enterprises (MNEs), according to John Dunning's work, are driven by motives of ownership, location, internalization and, ultimately, higher returns, these business entities, by virtue of their transnational products and services, and extensive reach and resources, provide direct and indirect mechanisms that can shape political and social outcomes. This paper seeks to explore those mechanisms in the context of the so‐called “Arab Spring”, the popular uprising that has ensued in a number of Arab countries. The paper also aims to explore virtual public spheres, the platform from which the Arab Spring was launched, and which owes much to the presence of MNEs.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is grounded on the theoretical construct of the virtual public sphere. The approaches taken are that of a general review and secondary research.
Findings
The main findings of this paper are three‐fold. First, in the examination of the role of MNEs and the virtual public sphere in the Arab Awakening, it is found that the new information and networking technologies have already made a sizable impact in terms of paving the way toward political and social changes. Second, it is found that foreign investments in Arab media, mobile, and internet markets are dominantly regional. Third, behind the social media phenomenon in the Arab world are “born‐global” American firms (MNEs), notably Facebook, Inc., Twitter, Inc., and Google, Inc.
Originality/value
Most research on the Arab Spring has not incorporated the likely distinctive influence of MNEs. In addition, the paper highlights the association between regional and transnational orientations of business activities of multinational firms and political outcomes.
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Robert G. Tian and Yan Wu
The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of virtual community identities among Chinese internet users and their motivation for lurking, posting or flaming.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of virtual community identities among Chinese internet users and their motivation for lurking, posting or flaming.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking Qiangguo Luntan as an online study site the authors apply an ethnographic approach for the research, a method that is becoming more and more favourable by scholars in study virtual communities. The data gathered are mainly through participant observation and in‐depth interviews.
Findings
The findings suggest that internet bulletin boards enable ordinary Chinese to have their identities as politically activated citizens constructed in cyberspace. A consistent enthusiasm for political participation can be found in user's pennames, signature files, political clusters, and online behaviours.
Originality/value
This is an original case study.
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Michael M. Widdersheim and Masanori Koizumi
The purpose of this paper is to construct a conceptual model of the public sphere in public libraries. Various international authors over the past 20 years have associated the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to construct a conceptual model of the public sphere in public libraries. Various international authors over the past 20 years have associated the public sphere with public libraries, but these associations have yet to be clarified and synthesized in a comprehensive way.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used qualitative content analysis to identify the dimensions of the public sphere in public libraries. The study’s scope included annual reports from an urban US public library system from 1900 to 2010.
Findings
Six dimensions of the public sphere in public libraries are described with examples. The dimensions are: core criteria; internal public sphere; external public sphere; collect and organize discourse; perform legitimation processes; and facilitate discourse. Three of these dimensions are newly identified. The six total dimensions are synthesized into a comprehensive conceptual model with three discourse arenas: governance and management; legitimation; and commons.
Originality/value
This study is distinctive because it used a data-based, empirical approach to public libraries to an abstract sociological concept. Three dimensions of the model are new to library studies literature and therefore represent new potential areas of inquiry. The resulting conceptual model is useful for both practitioners and researchers in the public library sector. Further, the model contributes to existing social and political theory.
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New media is reshaping mediated communication. This paper aims to examine whether the online community is concerned about ethical issues in citizen journalism.
Abstract
Purpose
New media is reshaping mediated communication. This paper aims to examine whether the online community is concerned about ethical issues in citizen journalism.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses critical thematic analyses to examine 1,402 comments posted in response to two YouTube videos of teenage girl molestation in India. This method was appropriate, as it will show how public reacts to information disseminated by common citizens and also show whether ethics are related to citizen journalism.
Findings
Results show that although some viewers questioned the cameraperson’s and the passerby’s morality, several supportive comments praised the cameraperson’s presence of mind and courage. Furthermore, it shows that while some viewers vilified the victim, others advocated a more prudent response. This shows ambiguity regarding ethics in cyberspace. The mixed reactions present strong evidence to challenge the idealistic and exceedingly rational original notion of the public sphere as homogenous or integrated on issues of public concern. Instead, result exhibits an emergence of pluralistic, intersecting and contending publics that are created by new communication technologies like the internet.
Research limitations/implications
The study was specific to a particular context thereby lacking generalizability. However, it implies further investigation of social agency and the underlying politics in the move from local to global.
Originality/value
These findings necessitate a reconceptualization of cyberspace ethics to accommodate the new publics that have materialized from new media technologies.
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Morris Kalliny, Mamoun Benmamoun, Robert A. Cropf and Seung H. Kim
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of large business corporations, particularly media corporations, such as television (e.g. satellite networks), newspapers…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of large business corporations, particularly media corporations, such as television (e.g. satellite networks), newspapers and social media (e.g. Facebook), on institutional change in the Arab world, which directly impact political and civil liberties in the region.
Design/methodology/approach
Although there are several methods to measure institutional change, this paper relied on Kaufmann et al. (2010)’s governance indicators that capture, historically, how authority is exercised in a nation state. As the focus of this paper is on how information flows have empowered citizens in the Arab world, we built a panel database around one relevant governance indicator: “Voice and Accountability”. As a measure of governance, “Voice and Accountability” summarizes the condition of political, civil and human rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of association in a given country. This indicator takes scores ranging from 2.5, corresponding to strong governance, to −2.5, corresponding to weak governance.
Findings
As predicted, the information flows variable has a positive and significant effect on institutional change. Table II also suggests that political globalization has a positive and significant effect on institutional change in the Arab world. In contrast, the variables for cultural proximity and human capital are associated with negative effects on institutional change.
Originality/value
This paper is unique in the sense that it tackles a growing trend in the Arab world, namely, the impact of media on institutions.
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This article aims to explore the impact of new social media on the 2011 English riots.
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to explore the impact of new social media on the 2011 English riots.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper suggests that discourse on the riots in the news and popular press is obscured by speculation and political rhetoric about the role of social media in catalysing the unrest that overlooks the role of individual agency and misrepresents the emotional dimensions of such forms of collective action.
Findings
In considering the riots to be symptomatic of criminality and austerity, commentators have tended to revive nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century crowd theories to make sense of the unrest, which are unable to account for the effect of new social media on this nascent twenty‐first century phenomenon.
Research limitations/implications
Here, the notion of the “mediated crowd” is introduced to argue that combining emotions research with empirical analysis can provide an innovative account of the relationship between new social media and the type of collective action that took place during the riots. Such a concept challenges orthodox nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century crowd theories that consider crowds to be a corollary of “emotive contagion” in spatial proximity, with “the mediated crowd” mobilised in the twenty‐first century through social networking in both geographic and virtual arenas.
Originality/value
The paper proposes that this original approach provides insight into the particular conditions in which the 2011 English riots emerged, while advancing crowd theory in general.
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Bridget Blodgett and Andrea Tapia
This paper aims to define and articulate the concept of digital protestainment, to address how technologies have enabled boundaries to become more permeable, and in which this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to define and articulate the concept of digital protestainment, to address how technologies have enabled boundaries to become more permeable, and in which this permeability leads to the engendering of new cultures.
Design/methodology/approach
Two case studies, within Second Life and EVE Online, are examined to see how digital protestainment, through the lens of cultural borderlands, creates a hybridized culture. Recorded interviews and textual analysis of web sites are used to illustrate the concepts of play, work, and blended activities.
Findings
Within virtual environments the process of hybridization is not only increased in size, scope, form, and function. The borderlands process draws in cultural elements through a complex interchange between the online and the offline, in which hybridized cultural bits are carried out into other spaces.
Research limitations/implications
The success of the cases does not represent all digital protest examples and so this study is limited in its ability to generalize to the population of virtual protests. This study limits the realm of digital protestainment to virtual worlds but the concept could be applied to any form of virtual community.
Practical implications
Companies that host these worlds will need to become aware not only of what their audience is but also how that audience will mobilize and the likely outcomes of their mobilization. Virtual worlds offer organizational leaders a new resource for training, support, and recruitment.
Originality/value
The theoretical concept of cultural borderlands is expanded to the digital environment and introduced as a potentially new and useful tool to internet researchers.
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The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework for applying Web 2.0 technologies and design principles to the development of participatory cultures within…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework for applying Web 2.0 technologies and design principles to the development of participatory cultures within libraries. A participatory culture is one that focusses on facilitating interaction and the creation of content by users rather than the consumption of content created or compiled by experts.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a literature-based theoretical analysis that explores the role of libraries as agents of cultural hegemony and techniques for developing socially responsible library praxis. It combines insights from a variety of discourses including Western Marxist theories of hegemony, critical theories of library and information science, professional literature regarding “Library 2.0” service models, and media studies theories of participatory culture.
Findings
Libraries do not just organize knowledge; they construct it. Furthermore, these constructions tend to reinforce dominant discourses while marginalizing others. By adopting participatory technologies and design principles, libraries can support greater diversity of expression and create spaces for marginalized discourses.
Practical implications
This paper offers suggestions for applying principles of participatory culture to the design of library services such as collection development, cataloging and classification, reference, instruction, and institutional repositories.
Originality/value
This paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating the significance of Web 2.0 for library and information science by applying theoretical perspectives from other disciplines.
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The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion and analysis of various assumptions and observations about the significance of blogging by politicians, particularly in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion and analysis of various assumptions and observations about the significance of blogging by politicians, particularly in relation to theories of representation and the public sphere, informed with an empirical study of the practice of politicians' blogs on the Read My Day platform (www.readmyday.co.uk).
Design/methodology/approach
Relevant literature was reviewed to set the scene for an original analysis of politicians' blog posts on Read My Day. These posts were examined via content analysis to systematically catalogue the information politicians disclosed about themselves and to uncover political themes that were featured. A total of 12 politicians who blogged on this platform were subsequently interviewed about their online activities.
Findings
The councillors used the Read My Day platform to discuss local political issues but also posted some personal information about the bloggers, indicative of a broad understanding of representation. Councillors generally refrained from attacking other political parties and saw it as a tool of representation and not campaigning. However, there was evidence that councillors got into political trouble because of their blog, even though many said they self‐censored themselves. This suggests that bloggers are not merely reciting political spin. While no precise “hits” data were used, the blogging politicians did not feel that their posts were widely read. This was partly explained by bloggers failing to exploit the interactivity that the medium affords.
Originality/value
This paper provides new data on political blogging based on a theoretically‐informed analysis of blog posts and interviews with blogging politicians in the UK.
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Warigia Bowman and Arifa Khandwalla
This essay surveys and synthesizes the academic literature, archival sources and interviews with key policy makers regarding the emergence of community technology centers in the…
Abstract
This essay surveys and synthesizes the academic literature, archival sources and interviews with key policy makers regarding the emergence of community technology centers in the US. Community Technology Centers (CTCs) came to the fore in the late 1990s through an activist nonprofit sector combined with federal government and private sector funding. Federal data indicates that CTCs now represent the most important access points to information communications technology for the poor in the US. This essay reviews the latest arguments for and against continued investment in CTCs and public access in general. In addition to providing access, which is often used beneficially for employment and education related purposes, CTCs appear to contribute to social capital as they become social gathering points. This paper concludes, that both government and nonprofits play a vital role in ensuring public access for the poor and that continued investment in CTCs is warranted.
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