"This study explores the usefulness of Community Information Centres (CICs) amidst growing ubiquity of mobile phones. It examines how CICs can play a complementary role to personal mobile phones, specifically in facilitating access to information that translates into social and economic progress. Th
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is study was guided by an Integrative Model of Digital Engagement and Impact (IMDEI) employing selected constructs from three dominant theories namely the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Through a quantitative research design, 500 respondents from 10 CICs were surveyed with 451 valid responses returned. SPSS and SmartPLS software version 25.0 were used to process and analyse the data collected. The findings indicate that although mobile phones are suitable for simple tasks, complicated tasks are better performed in CICs, suggesting a complementary nature of the two (2). The study recommends that future telecentre initiatives adopt models of co-location, which are so far lacking in the Ghanaian case. Moreover, the paper discusses the implications of increased information availability, which allows CICs to widen the scope of services and involve more citizens in their operations, thereby enhancing involvement in activities. The research also discusses the implications of universal service on a wider scale, challenging the adequacy of current service definitions to cater to the needs of heterogeneous communities. The paper concludes that CICs remain an indispensable facility for equitable information access and a source of empowerment, but their success hinges on user participation, adequate policies, and deliberate technology integration. The paper argues for a balanced approach that utilises both mobile technology and CICs to maximize community development and engagement. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the role of information access in community development in an increasingly digitalised world." (Abstract)
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"Research on motivations for news consumption has primarily focused on uses and gratifications (U&G) from both conventional and new media. However, there is a gap regarding age perspectives in this field. This study aims to address this gap by examining whether differences and similarities exist in
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the motivations for news consumption among the citizens of 23 European countries. Analyzing data from 45,073 respondents, the study finds significant variations in motivation across age groups, particularly in informational, learning, entertaining, and social gratifications. Interestingly, there are no age-based differences in motivation driven by civic duties. Furthermore, the study shows that country differences do not significantly influence the relationship between age and motivation. The results add valuable insights into both academics and practitioners in the field of news of consumption and expand knowledge of the current literature." (Abstract)
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"In Major Theories of Media Effects, six major theories of media effects are thoroughly analyzed and then evaluated to construct a picture of the current state of knowledge about the scholarly field of media effects. These six theories are cultivation, agenda setting, framing, uses and gratification
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s, social learning, and third person effect. Each of these six theories is examined in detail using fourteen analytical dimensions organized into four categories: how the theory was originally conceptualized, its original components, patterns of empirical testing of its claims, and how the theory has developed over time. The theories are then compared and contrasted along five evaluation dimensions (scope, precision, heuristic value, empirical validity, and openness), plus one summary evaluative dimension that compares their overall utility to generating knowledge about media effects." (Back cover)
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"The impact of mass media on individuals and society is to a great extent based on human emotions. Emotions, in turn, are essential in understanding how media messages are processed as well as media's impact on individual and social behavior and public social life. Adopting an interdisciplinary appr
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oach to the study of emotions within a mass media context, the Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media addresses areas such as evolutionary psychology, media entertainment, sociology, cultural studies, media psychology, political communication, persuasion, and new technology. Leading experts from across the globe explore cutting-edge research on issues including the evolutionary functions of mediated emotions, emotions and media entertainment, measurements of emotions within the context of mass media, media violence, fear-evoking media, politics and public emotions, features, forms and functions of emotions beyond the message, and provide the reader a glimpse into future generations of media technology." (Publisher description)
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"Understanding Media Users discusses approaches to audiences which maintain that viewers actively interpret content, a perspective to be distinguished not only from structuralist media theory but from passive audience “effects studies.” Effects studies consist of research conceptually articulate
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d from a predominantly US behaviorist perspective. In these accounts, akin to “bullet” or “hypodermic needle” theory of media content’s mechanically pushing viewers’ behavior, events on screen are a two-dimensional cause of three-dimensional consequences. Media stimulate a passive response not mediated by viewer reflection. Active audience theory has been consistently criticized as indeterminate (Roscoe et al., 1995). What do we mean when we (favorably) characterize an audience as “active”? In answering this question we can turn to the philosophical psychology of phenomenology and its literary offspring, reader reception theory. Here, interest focuses on the media user’s activity of “reading” screen narrative. Research perceives the audience’s making sense of content as a structured cognitive – sometimes very expressive – process. Emphasizing the viewer’s achievement in making a program intelligible, such hermeneutic (Devereux, 2003: 96) media analysis asks the question: what are the enabling conditions of successfully coming to understand screen text? In answering we focus upon cross-cultural consumption of television or Internet. Taking phenomenology on board, media user theory enables the multisite research exemplars set out in this book. We can integrate active audience theory’s political emphasis on audience perceptions of their “positioning” by the screen and philosophy’s account of the cognitive activity with which “readers” meet such alignment of viewers by texts. This reading process is hermeneutic – media users render cellphone and cyberspace narrative meaningful." (Introduction, page 3)
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"The internet in the Arab World: Egypt and beyond is the first book to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the status of the internet and its uses and effects in Egypt and the Arab world. Tackling the issue in a systematic, scientific manner, this book also examines Islamic online communic
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ations, online censorship, and internet use by the civic society as an alternative channel for its mostly oppressed voices." (Back cover)
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"El consumo de televisión se ha convertido en una actividad cotidiana para millones de personas. Pero, ¿qué sabemos acerca del telespectador? ¿Cómo se le ha investigado? ¿Qué adjetivos se le han asignado? ¿Qué finalidades ha tenido su estudio? Éstas son las preguntas que intenta responder
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este libro. En él, se recogen las diferentes corrientes que han definido el estudio de la audiencia de televisión a lo largo del siglo XX tanto desde la perspectiva más académica (efectos, usos y gratificaciones, y estudios culturales) como desde la comercial (estudios de medición). Ahora bien, es la necesidad de encontrar nociones y herramientas para abordar el presente lo que guía este recorrido por el pasado. De este modo, plantea cuestiones como la vigencia del concepto de masa, a pesar de la cada vez más extendida idea de una audiencia activa, o la necesidad de ir más allá en el ámbito de los estudios culturales, frente a las numerosas -y a veces hasta encarnizadas- críticas que éstos están recibiendo. Aceptada la idea de que una manera de investigar es también una manera de observar el mundo, que propicia unas explicaciones y excluye otras, en esta obra también se reflexiona acerca del papel del investigador." (Descripción de la casa editorial)
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