Communication Technology

Some contemporary moral panics orbit around youth sexuality and new media use. This article addresses those moral panics by investigating teenagers' practices regarding new media and sexuality. New media technologies are central parts of young people's social, romantic, and sexual lives. These communication technologies are important in their practices of meeting, dating, and breaking up. New media technologies also provide important resources about sexual health and identities. However, these informational and relational resources are not equally available to all young people. Indeed use and access to new media technologies often mirrors the contemporary ordering of economic, racialized, and gendered power. Additionally, while youth are aware of online safety practices, some youth are more vulnerable to online risks than others.

Web-based communication technologies such as YouTube can provide opportunities for social contact, especially between older and younger people, and help address issues of social isolation. Currently our understanding of the dynamics of social interaction within this context (particularly for older people) is limited. Elaborating upon this understanding will make it possible to proactively facilitate and support this form of intergenerational social contact. This study focuses on the experiences of an eighty year old video blogger (vlogger), Geriatric1927, and a video dialogue that develops between himself and three of his younger viewers on a particular topic.

The importance of communication, information sharing and interoperability in an emergency response scenario have risen recently based on the frequency of disasters throughout the world and the wide range of severities and degrees of impacts. This work contributes to the area of emergency response communication qualitatively by presenting a systematic approach to develop an organizational communication model to improve overall emergency response. Establishing and accessing a reliable communication infrastructure at crisis is crucial in order to have accurate and real-time exchange of information. This work identifies a set of potential network oriented problems in existing inter-organizational communication protocols incorporating the information collected at several drill participations and interviewing the first responders. We conquer the complexity of a large, unique and unpredictable emergency response process by a top-down approach. We are constructing a high-level hierarchical ...

Scholars have long recognized the potential of Internet-based communication technologies for improving network research—potential that, to date, remains largely underexploited. In the first half of this paper, we introduce a new public dataset based on manipulations and ...

This paper is a study on various electric signals, which were employed over the History of Communication Engineering in its main landmarks: the telegraph and the telephone. The signals are presented in their time and frequency domain representations. The historical order has been followed in the presentation: wired systems; spark gap wireless; continuous wave (CW) and amplitude modulation (AM); detection by rectification; and frequency modulation (FM). The analysis of these signals is meant to lead into a better understanding on the evolution of communication technology. The material presented in this work could be used to illustrate "Signals and Systems" and "Communication Systems" courses, taking advantage of its technical as well as historical contents.

Data compression is one of the enabling technologies for the application of communication technology with ever growing Internet, explosive development of mobile communication and the ever-increasing impact of video communication to store the data in a compact way for minimum cost of storage and transmission. There are various compression techniques available which are capable of application specific large compression ratios.

In traditional face-to-face classrooms, collaborative learning has been endorsed as an effective pedagogy that fosters skills of analysis, communication and higher order thinking. Increasingly, as online learning environments for tertiary learners make use of course support systems, there is greater recognition of the potential of communications technologies to foster dialogue, networking and team skills among learners. Such skills are now among the recognised core attributes that graduates are expected to develop. In face-toface classroom students learn the skills of collaboration and teamwork by engaging in tasks defined and supervised by a teacher. In online environments teacher presence is often limited to task definition, management and feedback functions. Team skills and collaboration therefore need to be supported though different pedagogies and processes such as establishing a climate of trust and openness, communication protocols, resolution of conflict and group processes that provide sanctions and support. In this paper we describe an innovative approach to building the skills of decision-making and conflict resolution, leadership and clarity in goal setting and communication. A case study of tertiary learners illustrates how the essential aspects of task definition, resources to support group learning and integrated online assessment foster team skills.

This paper deals with a system of integration of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and communication technologies for solid waste bin and truck monitoring system. RFID, GPS, GPRS and GIS along with camera technologies have been integrated and developed the bin and truck intelligent monitoring system. A new kind of integrated theoretical framework, hardware architecture and interface algorithm has been introduced between the technologies for the successful implementation of the proposed system. In this system, bin and truck database have been developed such a way that the information of bin and truck ID, date and time of waste collection, bin status, amount of waste and bin and truck GPS coordinates etc. are complied and stored for monitoring and management activities. The results showed that the realtime image processing, histogram analysis, waste estimation and other bin information have been displayed in the GUI of the monitoring system. The real-time test and experimental results showed that the performance of the developed system was stable and satisfied the monitoring system with high practicability and validity.

Recent advances in information and communications technologies have permitted new flexibility in work arrangements. The number of people who either work from their home or take work home from their job is increasing. This evolution has lead to a different set of needs at the person's residence than is traditionally required by the residential market. This paper presents an empirical study, based on 375 responses, to clarify: 1) the small business and residential market communications' needs and problems; 2) the new communications technologies' potential to fill those modern needs; and 3) the impact of the communications' needs and problems on the telecommuters' effectiveness. The implication of the findings from this study for the technologies providers, managers, university community, and researchers are discussed in detail.

SUMMARY This paper presents ACIS, an Autonomous Community Information System. ACIS is a proposition made to meet the rapidly changing users’ requirements and cope with the extreme dynamism in current information services. ACIS is a decentralized bilateral-hierarchy architecture formed by a community of individual end-users (community members) having the same interests and demands at specified time and location. It allows those members to mutually cooperate and share information without loading up any single node excessively. In this paper, autonomous decentralized community construction and communication technologies are proposed to assure a productive cooperation, a flexible and timely communication among large number of community members. The main ideas behind the proposed communication technology are: content-code communication (service-based) for flexibility and multilateral benefits communication for timely and productive cooperation among members. All members communicate produ...

Cell phones are a pervasive new communication technology, especially among college students. This paper examines college studentsÕ cell phone usage from a behavioral and psychological perspective. Utilizing both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (survey) approaches, the study suggests these individuals use the devices for a variety of purposes: to help them feel safe, for financial benefits, to manage time efficiently, to keep in touch with friends and family members, et al. The degree to which the individuals are dependent on the cell phones and what they view as the negatives of their utilization are also examined. The findings suggest people have various feelings and attitudes toward cell phone usage. This study serves as a foundation on which future studies will be built.

An approach to watermarking digital signals using frequency modulation-'Chirp Coding'-is considered. The principles underlying this approach are based on the use of a matched filter to reconstruct a 'chirp stream'code that is uniquely robust. The method is generic in the sense that it can, in principle, be used for a variety of different signal (the authentication of speech and biomedical signals, for example). Further, by generating a bit stream that is signal dependent, chirp coding provides a method of self-authentication, ...

This paper asks what should be demanded from urban open space in the 21st century. It explores the social and spatial implications of new lifestyles, values, attitudes to nature and sustainability, and the models for future city life and the patterns of urban open space that might accommodate these. One vital role that urban parks play is providing space for the expression of diversity, both personal and cultural; this raises issues of democratic provision for and access to public open space. It suggests, inter alia, that the role of the urban street as public space may need to be re-thought. The social and cultural values of open space include attitudes towards nature and the desire for contact with it; contemporary understandings of ecology offer new insights into ways to serve both human needs and the broader ecological framework of urban open space structures. It has been suggested that the urbanity of public open space is threatened by the increase in 'virtual' transactions, obviating the need for real, social interaction, but there is also evidence that use of new communications technology can increase and enhance use of public open space; this may include engagement in the productive aspect of our landscape. A more flexible approach to open space definition and usage is proposed, recognising 'loose-fit' landscapes which allow opportunities for the socially marginalised and the ecologically shifting within a dynamic framework of urban structures and networks.

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – As part of a global study conducted by the Technology & Social Change Group at the University of Washington, local research teams conducted surveys,

In 2001, a widely distributed email urged people to indicate 'Jedi' (from the movie Star Wars) as their religious affiliation on the National Census to be undertaken that year. The email, which may have originated from a prank, stated that if large enough numbers of people declared an affiliation to Jedi, the government would be forced to include it as a religion in future censuses. More than 70,000 Australians and 390,000 Britons heeded the call to action and recorded Jedi as their religion in the 2001 census. While the majority of people claiming affiliation to Jedism probably did so in a spirit of fun and/or rebellion, research suggests there are members of society who take the 'religion' quite seriously. The introduction and establishment of new religious beliefs once reliant on migration or trade is now facilitated by a global sharing of ideas through mass media and communications technology. Using Jediism and the events surrounding the 2001 National Census in A...

Purpose – To explore the use of LexiURL as a Web intelligence tool for collecting and analysing links to digital libraries, focusing specifically on the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH). Design/methodology/approach – The Web intelligence techniques in this study are a combination of link analysis (web structure mining), web server log file analysis (web usage mining), and text analysis (web content mining), utilizing the power of commercial search engines and drawing upon the information science fields of bibliometrics and webometrics. LexiURL is a computer program designed to calculate summary statistics for lists of links or URLs. Its output is a series of standard reports, for example listing and counting all of the different domain names in the data. Findings – Link data, when analysed together with user transaction log files (i.e., Web referring domains) can provide insights into who is using a digital library and when, and who could be using the digital library if...

Can information-communication technology enable new organizational designs, such as the networked organization and the adhocracy? An exploratory study into the accounting industry was undertaken in order to improve our understanding of this problem. On the basis of the literature of new designs a non-traditional organization model was developed in which information-communication technology was juxtaposed to a number of structural and cultural dimensions. The model was tested on a set of offices in the accounting industry and corroborated for the most part. degrees put the stress on ICT have been proposed. Examples include the adhocracy [30], the information/knowledge-based [16], and shamrock [19] and the network organization [44]. A common denominator of the models is a criticism of the traditional hierarchical or command-and-control organization's inefficiency and ineffectiveness in this time of tremendous changes in organizational environments. The denial of the traditional organization is complemented by conceptualizations of alternatives to its characteristics, such as less of hierarchy, centralization and formalization, and more of teamwork and co0peration/collaboration.

Cell phones are a pervasive new communication technology, especially among college students. This paper examines college studentsÕ cell phone usage from a behavioral and psychological perspective. Utilizing both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (survey) approaches, the study suggests these individuals use the devices for a variety of purposes: to help them feel safe, for financial benefits, to manage time efficiently, to keep in touch with friends and family members, et al. The degree to which the individuals are dependent on the cell phones and what they view as the negatives of their utilization are also examined. The findings suggest people have various feelings and attitudes toward cell phone usage. This study serves as a foundation on which future studies will be built.

New communication technologies offer novel possibilities for the prevention of mental illness, in which geographical and psychosocial distances often hamper help-seeking. This paper introduces ES[S]PRIT, an Internet-based eating disorders (ED) prevention programme for university students. The programme follows a stepped-care approach combining various support components of increasing intensity. These components comprise psychoeducation, symptom monitoring, supportive feedback, peer support, and professional online counselling. Participants who develop substantial ED symptoms during their participation are referred to the University Student Counselling Center. We outline the underlying concepts and various components of the programme and report first experiences with the approach in a sample of German college students. Finally, potentials of the approach are highlighted and the need for further research is stressed.

The advanced traveler information system (ATIS) is a type of intelligent transportation system application areas that implements emerging computer, communication, and information technologies to provide vital information to the users of a system regarding traffic regulation, route and location guidance, hazardous situations and safety advisory, and warning messages. ATIS requires a large amount of data for processing, analysis, and storage for effective dissemination of traveler information to users. A geographical information system (GIS) allows large data to be effectively processed, stored, analyzed, logically associated, and graphical displayed. Thus, GIS-based ATIS provides a convenient and powerful tool for storage and graphical representation of information, which can be useful users. Further, by availing the powerful GIS functionalities, a user can conceive a problem and allow the appropriate software to assist him in the decision-making process regarding optimum route selec...

Purpose-The purpose of this study is to investigate how the use of information technology (IT) and supply chain management initiatives (information sharing and collaboration) impact a company's performance in reverse logistics (RL). Design/methodology/approach-A survey based on a previous exploratory research and literature review was sent out to 600 US companies having substantial activities in RL. Issues addressed in the survey, such as IT types deployed, IT operational attributes, information sharing, and collaboration, involve multiple parties in multi-tier RL networks, extending beyond a simple buyer-supplier dyad. Findings-The results revealed that the type of IT used per se did not have a differential impact on a company's performance in RL. However, IT operational attributes positively affected RL performance and information sharing and collaboration are critical to RL performance. Practical implications-Investment in IT alone cannot improve a company's performance; managers should take full account of IT attributes when deciding IT in RL. IT operational attributes tend to support one another-an improvement in one would lead to improvements in the others. With no exception in RL, companies need to share information and collaborate with their partners. Originality/value-The paper reports an empirical survey of the IT use and collaboration practices in RL, and provides insights into the relationships and impacts of IT, RL operational attributes, information sharing, and collaboration on one another as well as on RL performance.

Communication between schools and families is essential for building trusting relationships that foster parental involvement. Technology offers the middle school parent the means to actively participate in the child's education without being visible in the school thus fostering adolescent independence in a supportive environment. New technologies continue to be introduced yet, this study reveals that parents and teachers are not taking full advantage of technologies to bridge the communication gap and build family-school partnerships. Both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies were used to gather data from teachers and parents of middle school children. This study examines the role of communications technologies in fostering parental involvement in middle schools and uncovers barriers that prevent usage of technology to promote communication.

Different institutions worldwide, such as economic, social and political, are relying increasingly on the communication technology to perform a variety of functions: holding remote business meetings, discussing design issues in product development, enabling consumers to remain connected with their families and children, and so on. In this environment, where geographic and temporal boundaries are shrinking rapidly, electronic communication medium are playing an important role. With recent advances in 3D sensing, computing on new hardware platforms, high bandwidth communication connectivity and 3D display technology, the vision of 3D video-teleconferencing and of tele-immersive experience has become very attractive. These advances lead to tele-immersive communication systems that enable 3D interactive experience in a virtual space consisting of objects born in physical and virtual environments. This experience is achieved by fusing real-time color plus depth video of physical scenes from multiple stereo cameras located at different geographic sites, displaying 3D reconstructions of physical and virtual objects, and performing computations to facilitate interactions between objects. While tele-immersive (TI) systems have been attracting a lot of attention these days, the advantages of enabled interactions and delivered 3D content for viewing as opposed to current 2D high definition video have not been evaluated. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of three different types of communication media on remote collaboration in order to document the pros and cons of new technologies such as TI. The three communication media include 3D video tele-immersive, 2D video Skype and face-to-face used in a collaborative environment of a remote product development scenario. Through a study done over 90 subjects, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different media and propose a scope for improvement in each of them.

The ability of communication technologies to favor certain societal concerns, such as privacy, is widely recognized. This paper argues a central factor in how a technology favors a societal concern stems from its institutional origin. A case study of the cookies technology, which allows web sites to maintain surveillance on their visitors, shows the differing influences of universities, firms, and consortia. Each of these institutions acted according to their own norms and processes and differentially shaped the cookies technology. The result suggests societal institutions act in a systematic and predictable fashion in shaping how communication technologies affect fundamental societal concerns.

This paper explores patterns of adoption and use of information and communications technology (ICT) by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the southwest London and Thames Valley region of England. The paper presents preliminary results of a survey of around 400 SMEs drawn from four economically significant sectors in the region: food processing, transport and logistics, media and Internet services. The main objectives of the study were to explore ICT adoption and use patterns by SMEs, to identify factors enabling or inhibiting the successful adoption and use of ICT, and to explore the effectiveness of government policy mechanisms at national and regional levels. While our main result indicates a generally favourable attitude to ICT amongst the SMEs surveyed, it also suggests a failure to recognise ICT’s strategic potential. A surprising result was the overwhelming ignorance of regional, national and European Union wide policy initiatives to support SMEs. This strikes at the...

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is currently used in language teaching as a bridge for the development of written and spoken skills . Restructuring classroom interaction with networked computers: effects on quantity and characteristics of language production. The Modern Language Journal 79, 457-476]. Within CMC technologies, one of the applications in language learning involves student participation in online discussion forums (DFs), which can be conductive to enhanced learning outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to analyze modal verbs, a characteristic of the language produced in asynchronous DFs and to confirm whether the conversational elements present in the written communication mode reflect the oral traits attributed to synchronous interactions. Our research is based on the analysis of a corpus of international forum interactions built up over several years. We compare the results of our analysis with those found in two other studies: Yates' examination [Yates, S.J., 1996. Oral and written linguistic aspects of computer conferencing: a corpus-based study. In: Herring, S. (Ed.), CMC: Linguistics, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. John Benjamin, Amsterdam, pp. 29-46] of modal auxiliary use in a corpus containing CMC, speech and formal writing, and Piqué et al.'s study [Piqué, J., Posteguillo, S., Andreu, J.V., 2002. Epistemic and deontic modality: a linguistic indicator of disciplinary variation in academic English. LSP and Professional Communication 2 (2), 49-65] of research articles as samples of written scientific discourse. Our analysis highlights the differences in the way that modal auxiliaries are used in text-based CMC. From our study, we can infer and understand some of the potential offered by computer-mediated learning tools which, in turn, will contribute to the knowledge required in the design and production of technology-mediated educational activities.

This paper discusses the privacy implications of multi-media communications systems by examining how privacy issues arise and are dealt with by the researchers who are simultaneously developing and using such systems. While several design principles are emerging from this process that can guide future developments, it is argued that greater attention to privacy concerns will be needed as these new communications technologies are applied more widely.

The demand for geocoded (geographical, spatial) data will considerably grow for the next years. One driving force is the Internet, which allows the user to visit all spots on the Earth if their data is digitally stored and web-accessable. Another request for digital landscapes and city models comes from the communication technology to provide transmitters at the right spots and therefore to overcome 'dead areas' of mobile communication. In near future mobile phones evolve to Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) offering the power of local information systems to allow for navigation, routing, visualization of 3D location data, queries of shop offers etc. Further examples could easily be cited, but would overload this abstract. Photogrammetry as a science and technology of acquisition and processing of photographically (currently evolving in opto-electronically generated) images for determination of form, shape, position or characteristics of arbitrarily features is the answer to generate virtual cities and landscapes. This paper features photogrammetry according to its products and integrates it in an interactive multimedia environment.

Recent discussions of the Internet have touted “virtual community” and a capacity to enhance citizen power in democracies. The present essay (a) calls for a more rigorous understanding of community; (b) suggests that relationships forged with the aid of electronic technology may do more to foster “categorical identities” than they do dense, multiplex, and systematic networks of relationships; and (c) argues that an emphasis on community needs to be complemented by more direct attention to the social bases of discursive publics that engage people across lines of basic difference in collective identities. Previous protest movements have shown that communications media have an ambiguous mix of effects. They do facilitate popular mobilization, but they also make it easy for relatively ephemeral protest activity to outstrip organizational roots. They also encourage governments to avoid concentrating their power in specific spatial locations and thus make revolution in some ways more difficult.

This paper describes the concept of sensor networks which has been made viable by the convergence of microelectro-mechanical systems technology, wireless communications and digital electronics. First, the sensing tasks and the potential sensor networks applications are explored, and a review of factors influencing the design of sensor networks is provided. Then, the communication architecture for sensor networks is outlined, and the algorithms and protocols developed for each layer in the literature are explored. Open research issues for the realization of sensor networks are also discussed. Ó 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

... P. Sooraj is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]. in. Pratap KJ Mohapatra is a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. ...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider factors affecting the effective utilisation of information and communication technology (ICT) and the adoption of more sophisticated ICT solutions in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Lagos, Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a case study approach. Semi‐structured interviews in 25 SMEs were used as tools for data collection.FindingsThe paper identifies eight key factors that affect the effective utilisation and adoption of more sophisticated or advanced ICT solutions in Nigerian SMEs.Research limitations/implicationsThe data for this research are drawn from a particular region in Nigeria, therefore, the findings are not generalisable to SMEs in other regions. Also, the data are collected from various industry sectors hence, it is not possible to have sector‐specific conclusions.Practical implicationsEffective utilisation of sophisticated ICT solutions in SMEs has great impact on SMEs' competitiveness. Al...

This paper presents findings from an initial analysis of new non-tariff trade cost estimates and their determinants, based on a bilateral database of comprehensive trade cost maintained by ESCAP. Results of the non-tariff policy-related trade costs modeling exercise strongly suggest that improving port efficiency (liner shipping connectivity) and access to information and communication technology facilities is essential to reducing trade costs.

With the development of new information and communication technologies (ICT), above all computers and the internet, new forms of online commerce have emerged. The gambling industry began using the power of the rapidly developing virtual market by offering its services in online casinos. The phenomenon of online gambling has encouraged researchers to direct their work into various areas, including the

Summary The main aim of this study was to asses and to compare the attitudes and satisfaction of university students toward two different teaching-learning systems they were involved in. One system is the traditional teacher-student meeting at classroom and the other is the distance learning by mean of communication technologies The Open University's "Ofek" project is a recent example of synchronous tutorial distance learning The research included 49 students, who took at least one advanced "Ofek" on-line class. All students are in an advanced stage of their studies in the field of social studies Independent one-sample t-test suggests that students would rather prefer studying through "Ofek", t (49) = 3.81; p< 0.01. Regarding frontal tutorials, students pointed out that the quality of teaching is not standardized and they were stress about succeeding in taking notes

Purpose – To develop a testable model for girls’ career choices in technology fields based on past research and hypotheses about the future of the information technology (IT) workforce. Design/Methodology/Approach – Review and assimilation of literature from education, psychology, sociology, computer science, IT, and business in a model that identifies factors that can potentially influence a girl’s choice towards or against IT careers. The factors are categorized into social factors (family, peers, and media), structural factors (computer use, teacher/counselor influence, same sex versus coeducational schools), and individual differences. The impact of culture on these various factors is also explored. Findings – The model indicates that parents, particularly fathers, are the key influencers of girls’ choice of IT careers. Teachers and counselors provide little or no career direction. Hypotheses propose that early access to computers may reduce intimidation with technology and that...

The design of portable low cost systems for remote monitoring of patients with chronic diseases is one of the most important fields in telemedicine and telecare. Using Bluetooth communication technology, which can be added to some medical equipment, may enhance the efficiency of patient monitoring. In this paper a low cost, secure portable system with wireless transmission is presented to monitor vital parameters such as heart rate, O 2 level ...etc. Transmitted data is archived and visualized both on a mobile phone and on a central server.