Abstract

Across the globe, many students have easy and constant access to media, yet they often receive little or no instruction about the impact of their media consumption. This article outlines a «24 hours without media» exercise in accordance with the guidelines set in Module 7, Unit 1 of the UNESCO curriculum. In the fall of 2010, nearly 1,000 students from a dozen universities across five continents took part in «The World Unplugged» study. Researchers at the University of Maryland gathered students’ narrative responses to the going without media assignment and analyzed them by using grounded theory and analytic abduction, assisted by IBM’s ManyEyes computer analysis software. Results showed that going without media made students dramatically more cognizant of their own media habits –with many self-reporting an «addiction» to media– a finding further supported by a clear majority in every country admitting outright failure of their efforts to go unplugged. Students also reported that having constant access to digital technology is integral to their personal identities; it is essential to the way they construct and manage their work and social lives. «The World Unplugged» exercise enabled experiential learning; students gained increased self-awareness about the role of media in their lives and faculty came to better understand the Internet usage patterns of their students, enhancing their ability to help young people become more media literate.

Abstract

The most significant developments in the field of mobile technology in 2014 are reviewed, with the aim of obtaining an overview of the sector and its market penetration in the library and reading worlds. First, major developments in terms of devices, operating systems, standards, applications and technologies are examined. Then we analyze their use by readers and libraries, both internationally and in Spain. To conclude, in a prospective exercise, we describe the mobility trends that we will see soon in our libraries.

Abstract

International audience; Incident reporting is a very well-known technique in application domains such as air traffic management and health, where specialized users are trained to provide detailed information about problems. Incident reporting systems are indeed complex systems that include many actors including the users reporting incidents, user’s colleagues and neighbors, stakeholders, policymakers, systems integrations. Incident report systems might change (positively or negatively) the users’ environment in many ways. In recent years, this kind of technique has been also been used in crisis management such as the hurricane Katrina. However, despite the fact that incident reporting systems using mobile technology are becoming more common, little is known about its actual use by the general population and which factors affect the user experience when using such system. In this paper we discuss the use of incident reporting system in critical context of use. In this paper we discuss the use of incident reporting system in several application domains. In particular we report findings in terms of dimensions that are aimed to identify social and technical aspects that can affect the design, development and use of incident reporting systems. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

The new mobile ecosystem that now defines the so-called mobile society and the mobile culture is already a key territory for contemporary political communication. Within this culture, mobile applications have become a common ground for the meeting between organisations and citizens interested in participating in political matters through the direct experience that these platforms allow. Despite this development, it is difficult to find a complete and reliable taxonomy of apps in the academic or professional literature that analyses how these relationships impact the field of political communication.This study tries to address this gap, introducing the first systematic taxonomy of political communication apps in Spain based on the development of a self-produced taxonomical model that gathers in detail all the variables required to understand the nature of these applications that are available for any smartphone. This rigorous taxonomy comprises political communication applications available at the main app stores (about 316 found in Play Store and App Store). Specifically, the methodological classification was elaborated based on the following categories: promoter agent, app objective, level of interaction, level of autonomy and predominant tone. A very complete picture was obtained from the empirical analysis, which defines and explains the landscape of political communication applications for mobile devices in Spain.