internet
Broadcast Yourself! Internet and playful media practices
The paper “Broadcast Yourself! Internet and playful media practices” (2007) presents a work- in-progress research about video self production on the Internet that is part of a broader research project which explores the ways current media practices convey a 'playful' relationship with digital technologies in popular culture.
The increasing relevance of video on the Internet as a cultural phenomenon can be traced through a set of related practices around viewing, searching, producing, mixing, sharing and distributing short video productions - generally of low technical quality through web sites of enormous popularity like YouTube, Revver or Blip TV.
These practices allow us to understand media consumption from a transformative point of view that, allegedly, breaks down the division between production and consumption of cultural products redefining the role of the audience.
The research of Gemma San Cornelio, Ruth Pagès, Elisenda Ardèvol and Antoni Roig, from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), tries to demonstrate that in many of these self productions, play has a crucial role in shaping the relationship between its producers, their audiovisual products and their expected audiences.
17th May. Events in Spain to celebrate Internet Day 2013
The World Information Society Day, also known as Internet Day, is observed every year on 17 May since 2006. The main objective of the day is to raise global awareness of the possibilities offered by new technologies and promote widespread Internet access, reducing the digital gap.
This year, the day will be celebrated throughout Spain with conferences, training sessions, competitions, online games and many other activities.
Universities will invite middle and high school students to virtually visit their premises and ask questions about their academic future.
The main event of the day will be held in the Spanish Senate in Madrid, where a high level panel debate will discuss about sustainable creativity and several awards will be handed.
All activities will be promoted and commented in Twitter with the hashtag #DiadeInternet
Organising a debate in the classroom: Internet, democratic life and the media
Académie de Besançon has produced a brief guide to help organise a classroom debate around the topic “The role of the Internet in democratic life – Public opinion and media”.
The goal of the suggested classroom debate is to work with students in the identification and analysis of news formats, compare them and learn to develop a critical vision of the different sources of information, including online media.
"Democracy cannot exist without online freedom of expression"
Born in Athens, European Union (EU) Special Representative for Human Rights Stavros Lambrinidis is an attorney, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece and a former Vice-President of the European Parliament. The speech he delivered at the Tech @State High Level conference in Washington, USA, highlights the EU's commitment to protecting human rights and democracy by promoting internet freedom.
Democracy cannot exist without both offline and online freedom of expression, according to Stavros Lambrinidis, EU Special Representative for Human Rights. To that end, the EU must uphold its norms, principles, and values in both offline and online worlds, he stressed. In his speech, delivered at the Tech @State High Level conference, Lambrinidis outlined the EU's action plan for reaching this objective.
One of the next steps will be to develop and publish a set of EU guidelines on freedom of expression—online and offline—that will include the protection of bloggers and journalists. The handbook will help unfurl the EU's view on the restriction of freedom, access to the Internet, and the arrest of bloggers, already made public through repeated condemnation of such acts.
Other planned action includes sending clear political messages against increased internet censorship, and possibly curbing the export of materials intended for internet monitoring and/or telecommunication surveillance in violation of human rights. The EU has already adopted sanctions prohibiting the export of this kind of technology to Syria and Iran, in hopes of preventing authoritarian regimes from using them against human rights defenders.
Code of EU Online Rights
As part of the Digital Agenda for Europe actions, the Code of EU online rights compiles the basic set of rights existing in EU legislation and related to the digital environment. The objective of the Code is to find simple explanations of their legal rights and obligations, set out in a transparent and understandable way.
Code of EU Online Rights
As part of the Digital Agenda for Europe actions, the Code of EU online rights compiles the basic set of rights existing in EU legislation and related to the digital environment. The objective of the Code is to find simple explanations of their legal rights and obligations, set out in a transparent and understandable way.
As foreseen in the Digital Agenda for Europe, this list of online rights and principles will be an important tool for inspiring trust and confidence among consumers and contribute to promote greater use of online services.
These basic rights protect citizens and consumers for instance when using online services, buying goods online, and in case of conflict with their providers of these services.
You may also find useful information about your online rights in the EU on the Your Europe website.
J Boye Aarhus 2012 Web and Intranet Conference on Higher Education
J. Boye Conferences are all about by combining presentations, demos, intense discussions with ample opportunity to have real conversations with smart people in a social, informal campus-style atmosphere.
This year's higher education track is intended as a complete 1-day conference in itself, covering the key challenges facing higher education web professionals while enabling participants to network with peers from around the world.
Internet Science Summer School 2012
The Network of Excellence Internet Science is currently inviting applications from early career researchers for the first Summer School to be held in Oxford from 12-18 August 2012. The theme of the summer school is "Internet Privacy and Identity, Trust and Reputation Mechanisms," with sub-themes addressing online identity and ACTA/SOPA/CISPA.
Academic Programme
The principal aim of the programme is to promote interdisciplinary discussion of issues related to Internet Science among early career researchers (advanced PhD students and those in the first four years of their research career) engaged in research related to Internet privacy and identity, trust and reputation mechanisms. Daily activities will be structured around morning lectures and afternoon discussions aimed at developing participants’ thinking on a range of issues central to the Internet. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their research with faculty and other early career researchers. A range of social events will provide informal opportunities for continued discussions and networking among participants.
The summer school will draw upon the strengths of the Network of Excellence in Internet Science (described below) and will involve participation of many of its members, in addition to colleagues from partner institutions.
Benefits of participation
Participants will meet and work with a diverse group of their peers, a considerable benefit for researchers who may not have large academic peer groups in their own departments. Additionally, participants will:
- Join an international collaboration experience
- Exchange institutional research projects, methods, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
- Contribute to ongoing discussions of research and issues related to Internet Science
- Attend lectures from renowned experts and participate in multi-disciplinary discussions
- Engage in academic and professional networking
Research areas
We welcome applications from early career researchers in any discipline whose work in the field of Internet research engages with the theme of the summer school and reflects the disciplinary base of the Network of Excellence in Internet Science, as described below.
About the Network of Excellence in Internet Science
The Network of Excellence in Internet Science aims to develop an integrated and interdisciplinary scientific understanding of Internet networks and their co-evolution with society. The network is composed of over thirty research institutions across Europe from a variety of disciplines including physics, sociology, game theory, economics, political sciences, network engineering, computation, complexity, networking, security, mathematics, humanities, and law, as well as other relevant social and life sciences. Its main objective is to enable an open and productive dialogue between all disciplines that study Internet systems from any technological or humanistic perspective, and which in turn are being transformed by continuous advances in Internet functionality.
Fees and activities
Delegate fees are £900 and this includes 7 nights’ en suite accommodation at Queen’s College, daily breakfast, lunch (including one BBQ) and refreshments, and two evening college dinners. Summer school participants will have an opportunity to take part in Oxford social activities.
Applications must be submitted by 5p.m. (GMT) on Friday, June 1st. We will notify successful applicants by Friday, June 15.
Please contact Tim Davies for further information.
Study finds Spanish gender gap in Internet use and frequency
A new study reveals how the digital gender gap in Spain is larger than the European average. Presented in the journal Reis, the study investigated the use and frequency of the Internet in Spain and 30 other European countries. The findings indicate that Spanish men use the Internet more frequently than Spanish women do.
Compared with the average of all 31 nations, Spanish men rank 17th and Spanish women rank 19th. This puts Spain under the average in Europe for information and communication technologies (ICT) use. With respect to the level of gender equality in the digital world, Spain fares even worse by ranking 20th.
'Spanish men and women score lower than the European average on ICT use,' explains Juan Martín Fernandez from the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain and one of the authors of the study. 'For women, internet use frequency is lower than that of men and the gender gap is wider than the European average.'
The countries that report the highest levels of ICT use along with the smallest gender gap are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, followed by France and Slovenia, with the Netherlands just behind. With respect to Germany, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom, users in these countries score low in gender equality despite reporting high ICT activity.
Hungary, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia rank somewhere in the middle of the road, with Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Romania just behind. Belgium and Poland post high levels of gender equality in Internet use but not when it comes to society at large. Joining Spain in lower Internet use and gender equality are Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Women in Spain rank just above the average in Internet use when it is linked with specific areas, namely: public administration, leisure, employment, health and education.
'Women in Spain come in lower than average of internet use and frequency on far more occasions,' says Dr Fernandez, 'so much so that this far outweighs the few occasions in which they come in higher than the European average.'
He goes on to say that equality, frequency and integration of ICT uses come hand in hand. 'Sometimes it is thought that with the extension of infrastructures and the passing of time, the gap will be bridged. Our results show that this is not the case. Active and encouraging policy is required in order to overcome this inequality,' Dr Fernandez concludes.
Earlier this year, Internet World Stats reported that the EU had more than 338 million Internet users, with a penetration population of 67.3%. This figure is much higher than the rest of the world, which had a penetration population of 27.3%.
For more information, please visit:
Complutense University of Madrid:
http://portal.ucm.es/en/web/en-ucm
Reis:
http://www.reis.cis.es/REIS/html/index.html
Castaño, C., et al. (2011). 'La brecha digital de género en España y Europa: medición con indicadores compuestos', Reis, 136,127-140.
Internet access and use in 2011. Almost a quarter of persons aged 16-74 in the EU27 have never used the internet
For many people today it seems difficult to live without the internet, however a decreasing, but still non-negligible, part of the EU population has never used it. In the EU27, almost three quarters of households1 had access to the internet in the first quarter of 2011, compared with almost half in the first quarter of 2006. The share of households with broadband internet connections more than doubled between 2006 and 2011, to reach 68% in 2011 compared with 30% in 2006. During the same period, the share of individuals aged 16-74 in the EU27 who had never used the internet decreased from 42% to 24%.
These data2 published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, represent only a small part of the results of a survey on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) usage in households and by individuals in the EU27 Member States, Iceland, Norway, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. As well as internet use and broadband connections, the survey also covers other indicators such as e-commerce, e-skills and e-government.
Household internet access ranges from 45% in Bulgaria to 94% in the Netherlands
The level of internet access increased in all Member States between 2006 and 2011, however differences remain significant. In 2011, shares of internet access of 90% and over were recorded in the Netherlands (94%), Luxembourg and Sweden (both 91%) and Denmark (90%), while shares of 50% and below were registered in Bulgaria (45%), Romania (47%) and Greece (50%).
Broadband internet access enables higher speed when browsing and performing activities over the internet. The proportion of households with a broadband connection rose in all Member States in 2011 compared with 2006. Sweden (86%) registered the highest share of broadband connections in 2011, followed by Denmark (84%), the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (both 83%) and Finland (81%), while Romania (31%), Bulgaria (40%) and Greece (45%) had the lowest.
Share of those who never used the internet varies between 5% in Sweden and 54% in Romania
The target set for 2015 by the Digital Agenda for Europe3 is to reduce the share of individuals in the EU27 aged 16-74 who had never used the internet to 15%. This share stood at 24% in the EU27 in 2011. In 2011, the highest proportions of those having never used the internet were observed in Romania (54% of individuals aged 16-74), Bulgaria (46%), Greece (45%), Cyprus and Portugal (both 41%), and the lowest in Sweden (5%), Denmark and the Netherlands (both 7%), Luxembourg (8%) and Finland (9%).
E-commerce most frequent in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and Sweden
Almost half of internet users4 aged 16-74 in the EU27 used the internet within the last 12 months to obtain information from websites of public authorities, and 28% to submit completed forms to public authorities, for example tax declarations (e-government). In 2011, the largest proportions of internet users who obtained information from websites of public authorities were observed in Denmark (86% of internet users), Sweden (74%), Finland (65%), Estonia and the Netherlands (both 62%). The highest shares of those having used the internet for submitting completed forms to public authorities were recorded in Denmark (70% of internet users), the Netherlands (52%), Portugal (48%) and Estonia (46%).
In 2011, 58% of internet users in the EU27 had ordered goods or services over the internet (e-commerce) within the last 12 months. The highest shares were observed in the United Kingdom (82%), Denmark and Germany (both 77%) and Sweden (75%).
The survey covered households with at least one person aged 16-74, and individuals aged 16-74. The main reference period was the first quarter of 2011. Households were asked about internet access by any member of the household at home. Individuals were asked about frequency of internet use and about activities they had carried out on the internet in the last three months prior to the survey for private purposes, or in the last twelve months for e-government and e-commerce activities, at home or at any other location.
- Eurostat, Statistics in Focus 66/2011 "Internet use in households and by individuals in 2011", available free of charge in pdf format on the Eurostat web site. The full set of data can be found in the dedicated section: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ict under "Data".
- Digital Agenda for Europe: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm
- Internet user: having used the internet in the last 12 months.