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While cyberbullying has been recognized as a critically important social problem, a void remains regarding the role of digital media. To address this gap, we propose the social-ecological model of cyberbullying, an expanded model that builds on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (EST) and expands Swearer and Espelage's social-ecological model of bullying. A strength of the proposed model is the addition of the digital context as a new ecology in the everyday lives of youth, which is closely interconnected with all the other systems. Furthermore, the model incorporates digital-specific factors within each ecological system of the original EST model. This provides scholars with a holistic model that they can test, finetune, and expand. A practical implication of the model is that it can guide the creation and implementation of effective and age-appropriate cyberbullying prevention and intervention approaches because it considers in the chronosystem life phases, life transitions, historical events, and crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on a body of work over the decades that examines how East Yorkers give and receive support. We go beyond the earlier work taking into consideration communication technologies and how they play a role in the ways people exchange social support across the life course. We draw on 101 in-depth interviews conducted in 2013–2014 to shed light on the support networks of a sample of East York residents and discern the role of communication technologies in the exchange of different types of social support across age groups. Our findings show that not much has changed since the 1960s in terms of the social ties that our sample of East Yorkers have, and the types of support mobilized via social networks: companionship, small and large services, emotional aid, and financial support. What has changed is how communication technologies interweave in complex ways with different types of social ties (partners, siblings, friends, etc.) to mobilize social support. We found that communication technologies helped siblings and extended kin to increase the frequency of interaction and help exchange support at a distance. Communication technologies helped solidify friendship ties by providing a continuous flow of interaction. We draw implications for theories of social support and for social policy associated with interventions aimed at helping vulnerable groups cope in hard times such as the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tweet by Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano using Tarana Burke's phrase "me too" sparked a global movement. Despite the media attention #MeToo has garnered, little is known about how scholars have studied the movement. Through a synthesis review covering sources from 2006 to 2019, we learned that in this time period only 22 studies examined participation on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. We conclude that more research needs to be conducted, particularly to fill a gap in qualitative studies that directly engage individuals, to learn about their experiences with the movement. While #MeToo is a global movement, the omission of any reference to geography or a lack of geographic diversity suggests a narrow focus on scholarship based in the Global North. There is a need for more cross-cultural analysis to gain a better understanding of the movement as it evolves over time and moves into different spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As news headlines report on high‐profile online privacy breaches and the potential negative consequences for users, users are becoming concerned about their privacy. While much research has focused on the concerns of younger generations, few studies have investigated older adults, specifically those aged 65+ years. This study analyzes in‐depth interviews with 40 older adults living in East York, Toronto, Canada, to investigate their online privacy concerns and the strategies they use to mitigate these concerns. We find that East York older adults are mostly concerned about security privacy concerns followed by institutional privacy concerns and only minimally concerned about social privacy. The greatest concerns included information misuse by unknown others and unauthorized access to their personal information. We found that, for some older adults, their high privacy concerns precluded them from taking full advantage of the potential benefits of digital media. East York older adults varied considerably in their use of privacy protection strategies; some older adults used no strategies, while others were eager to protect their privacy using all strategies at their disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boulianne et al. find that posting to social media triples the likelihood of protest participation, but joining a social group on social media quintuples the likelihood of protest participation. At a time when society is increasingly becoming more digital and technology-driven, causing changes to the nature of work and workplace structure, the authors investigate concerns over how individuals perceive such changes: is computerization in the workplace helping or hindering jobs and wages? Supporting the self-interest hypothesis, findings show groups with low levels of human capital and who are working in poorer-paid jobs are much more pessimistic about the impact technology has on their jobs and wages, whereas younger, more educated, and higher-skilled workers are much more optimistic. Acknowledgement The 2020 Communication, Information Technology and Media Sociology (CITAMS) American Sociological Association special issue of I Information, Communication & Society i has greatly benefitted from many who are part of its invisible college. [Extracted from the article]

There is a growing literature on teenage and young adult users' attitudes toward and concerns about online privacy, yet little is known about older adults and their unique experiences. As older adults join the digital world in growing numbers, we need to gain a better understanding of how they experience and navigate online privacy. This article fills this research gap by examining 40 in-depth interviews with older adults (65+ years) living in East York, Toronto. We found Westin's typology to be a useful starting point for understanding privacy attitudes and concerns in this demographic. We expand Westin's typology and distinguish five categories: fundamentalist, intense pragmatist, relaxed pragmatist, marginally concerned, and cynical expert. We find that older adults are not a homogenous group composed of privacy fundamentalists; rather, there is considerable variability in terms of their privacy attitudes, with only 13% being fundamentalists. We also identify a group of cynical experts who believe that online privacy breaches are inevitable. A large number of older adults are marginally concerned, as they see their online participation as limited and harmless. Older adults were also grouped as either intense or relaxed pragmatists. We find that some privacy concerns are shared by older adults across several categories, the most common being spam, unauthorized access to personal information, and information misuse. We discuss theoretical implications based on the findings for our understanding of privacy in the context of older adults' digital lives and discuss implications for offering training appropriate for enhancing privacy literacy in this age group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research has demonstrated a grey divide where older adults are less involved and skilled with digital media than younger adults, by treating them as a homogenous group, it has overlooked differences in their digital skills and media use. Based on 41 in-depth interviews with older adults (aged 65+ years) in East York, Toronto, we developed a typology that moves beyond seeing older adults as Non-Users to include Reluctants, Apprehensives, Basic Users, Go-Getters, and Savvy Users. We find a nonlinear association between older adults’ skill levels and online engagement, as many East York older adults are not letting their skill levels dictate their online involvement. They engage in a wide range of online activities despite having limited skills, and some are eager to learn as they go. Older adults often compared their digital media use with their peers and to more tech-adept younger generations, and these comparisons influenced their attitudes toward digital media. Their narratives of mastery included both a positive sense that they can stay connected and learn new skills and a negative sense that digital media might overwhelm them or waste their time. We draw conclusions for public policy based on our findings on how digital media intersect with the lives of East York older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the ruling of the European Court of Justice, the right to be forgotten has provided more informational self-determination to users, whilst raising new questions around Google's role as arbiter of online content and the power to rewrite history. We investigated the debate that unfolded on Twitter around the #righttobeforgotten through social network analysis. The results revealed that latent topics, namely Google's role as authority, alternated in popularity with rising and fading flare topics. The public sphere, or Öffentlichkeit, that we observed resembles the traditional one, with elite players such as news portals, experts and corporations participating, but it also differs significantly in terms of the underlying mechanisms and means of information diffusion. Experts are critical to comment, relay and make sense of information. We discuss the implications for theories of the public sphere and examine why social media do not serve as a democratising tool for ordinary citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do older adults mobilize social support, with and without digital media? To investigate this, we focus on older adults 65+ residing in the Toronto locality of East York, using 42 interviews lasting about 90 minutes done in 2013–2014. We find that digital media help in mobilizing social support as well as maintaining and strengthening existing relationships with geographically near and distant contacts. This is especially important for those individuals (and their network members) who have limited mobility. Once older adults start using digital media, they become routinely incorporated into their lives, used in conjunction with the telephone to maintain existing relationships but not to develop new ones. Contradicting fears that digital media are inadequate for meaningful relational contact, we found that these older adults considered social support exchanged via digital media to be real support that cannot be dismissed as token. Older adults especially used and valued digital media for companionship. They also used them for coordination, maintaining ties, and casual conversations. Email was used more with friends than relatives; some Skype was used with close family ties. Our research suggests that policy efforts need to emphasize the strengthening of existing networks rather than the establishment of interventions that are outside of older adults’ existing ties. Our findings also show that learning how to master technology is in itself a form of social support that provides opportunities to strengthen the networks of older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite evidence of an upward trend in the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs), current media discourse suggests that older adults (those 60-plus) lag behind in terms of engagement with digital technology. Through a survey and interviews with older adults, we investigate how this population views its own digital skills, barriers to digital literacy, and the social and institutional support system it draws on for help with technology. A lack of skills and limited social and institutional systems make it difficult for older adults to gain experience and comfort with technology. However, support systems, such as family and peers, can help mediate older adults' reluctance with technology. We propose a model with the aim of understanding the needs of older adults in gaining greater digital literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing research practices of historians, and to contrast their experiences of serendipity in physical and digital information environments.Design/methodology/approach In total, 20 historians in Southwestern Ontario participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed employing grounded theory. The analytical approach included memoing, the constant comparative method, and three phases of coding.Findings Four main themes were identified: agency, the importance of the physical library experience, digital information environments, and novel heuristic forms of serendipity. The authors found that scholars frequently used active verbs to describe their experience with serendipity. This suggests that agency is more involved in the experience than previous conceptualizations of serendipity have suggested, and led us to coin the term “incidental serendipity.” Other key findings include the need for digital tools to incorporate the context surrounding primary sources, and also to provide an organizational context much like what is encountered by patrons in library stacks.Originality/value The increased emphasis on digital materials should not come at the expense of the physical information environment, where historians often encounter serendipitous finds. A fine balance and a greater integration between digital and physical resources is needed in order to support scholars’ continued ability to make connections between materials. By showing the active role that historians take in their serendipitous encounters, this paper suggests that historical training is critical for eliciting incidental serendipitous encounters. The authors propose a novel approach, one that examines verbs in serendipity accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the digital divide suggests that seniors continue to lag behind in access to the Internet, digital skills, and engagement in various online activities. Much of the research, however, gains insight from large-scale survey research and neglects to examine the challenges and opportunities that digital seniors, those who are connected, experience in their everyday use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). We employed the theoretical lens of ICT use in the context of everyday life to inform this study. Twenty-one digital seniors (60 +) took part in interviews about how ICTs influenced their routines and practices such as news consumption, library use, information seeking, and reading. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using grounded theory. Three key findings emerged. First, digital seniors are developing new practices and routines around their ICT use; these are novel and emerge out of ICTs’ affordances. Second, digital seniors are creatinghybrid practices, where they seamlessly combine traditional habits with new ones emerging from ICT use. Finally, digital seniors are recreating existing practices with digital means, i.e. the digital enhances or sometimes even replaces traditional practices. We find that agency is central to our understanding of digital seniors’ adoption and use of ICTs, they critically consider various options, and make choices around their preferences, convenience of use, and affordability. For digital seniors, ICT use is not a binary because they want to have the flexibility to choose for themselves under what circumstances and for what purposes the use of ICTs is appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To what extent does networked scholarship in the humanities parallel established models in the sciences? The present study examines the connections of a 7-year interdisciplinary, dispersed, collaborative network composed of 33 humanities scholars investigating the Hispanic Baroque. Our findings suggest that project membership leads to greater network density and integration, without necessarily increasing the level of in-depth collaboration typically found in the sciences. Hence, collaborative models in the humanities, while increasingly important, are distinct from their counterparts in the sciences. The study provides a more nuanced view of networked scholarship because it demonstrates that large-scale collaborative projects can yield a high level of integration of the overall network, while at the same time allowing for strong thematic clustering. This dual structural process is relevant because not all network members can form dense relations with one another. Furthermore, we identified that principal investigators showed different networking strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on Facebook has primarily focused on the benefits of social connectivity, paying little attention to the ways in which this social networking site complicates the termination of romantic relationships. The present exploratory study employs a mixed-methods approach to examine the breakup practices of young people on Facebook and to develop new scales for measuring surveillance of an ex and Facebook breakup distress. The aim of the study is to better understand the relationship between internet electronic surveillance and breakup distress. Findings show that content on Facebook can be a significant source of distress for individuals after a breakup. Young people who engage in higher levels of internet electronic surveillance experience more breakup distress. A methodological innovation of our study is the integration of narrative data obtained from in-depth interviews with survey results, highlighting how qualitative analysis can enrich quantitative studies examining social networking. We discuss implications for research into social relations, breakups, and social media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2017, the #MeToo movement garnered international attention when millions of people used it to share experiences of sexual violence via social media. Through an analysis of 570 tweets randomly and purposively sampled within the first 24 hours of the movement, we were interested in answering the following questions: (1) What emotions are present in #MeToo tweets?; and (2) What are the vernacular practices in the #MeToo movement, and how do they convey affect? Through applying Robert Plutchik (2000) structural model of emotion, we were able to identify a wider range of emotions evident in feminist hashtag campaigns than has previously been identified and analyse their varied functions. Furthermore, we show how the difficulty in narrating personal experiences of violence and sharing discernible emotions via this hashtag fed into four vernacular practices, which we argue stimulate affect. Thus, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of two often conflated concepts—emotion and affect—and their different roles within #MeToo. The article ultimately shows how a movement such as #MeToo can be highly affective, even when participants disclose very little emotion or detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. This paper aims to understand the adoption of e-books and e-readers by persons aged sixty and above. This includes an investigation into where seniors are in the stages of e-book adoption. Method. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews in a mid-size city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Analysis. Interviews were transcribed, and coded using grounded theory. Rogers's model of the innovation-decision process was used to inform the data analysis process. Results. The results show three key factors affecting adoption: longing for materiality, technology confidence, and technology exploration. While seniors are interested in ebooks and e-readers, see many benefits to their use, and are curious about how they function, the majority perceive this technology as being primarily appropriate for younger generations. Conclusion. The findings have implications for our understanding of the diffusion of innovations amongst the senior population and the development of services geared toward them. E-books and e-readers are technologies that could prove beneficial, aiding with issues related to both portability and convenience. However, e-books do not allow for the sharing of books that this population is accustomed to, and many of them are still on the fence about fully adopting this tool into their reading practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study relies on the 2010 Canadian Internet Use Survey to investigate differences in people's access to the internet and level of online activity. The study not only revisits the digital divide in the Canadian context, but also expands current investigations by including an analysis of how demographic factors affect social networking site (SNS) adoption. The findings demonstrate that access to the internet reflects existing inequalities in society with income, education, rural/urban, immigration status, and age all affecting adoption patterns. Furthermore, the results show that inequality in access to the internet is now being mimicked in the level of online activity of internet users. More recent immigrants to Canada have lower rates of internet access; however, recent immigrants who are online have significantly higher levels of online activity than Canadian born residents and earlier immigrants. Additionally, women perform fewer activities online than men. People's use of SNSs differs in terms of education, gender, and age. Women were significantly more likely to use SNSs than men. Interestingly, high school graduates had the lowest percentage of adoption compared to all other education categories. Current students were by far the group that utilized SNSs the most. Canadian born, recent, and early immigrants all showed similar adoption rates of SNSs. Age is a strong predictor of SNS usage, with young people relying heavily on SNSs in comparison to those aged 55+. The findings demonstrate that the digital divide not only persists, but has expanded to include inequality in the level of online activity and SNS usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of portable, networked and location-aware devices has drastically changed how the city is represented and interpreted in general and during specific events in particular by enabling new practices of digital curation and networked audience activities. These extend the urban realm from the physical into the virtual, which provides a space for global and dispersed, often naive audience activities. This article uses the case study of the Fiesta de Santo Tomás, which is an annual festival that takes place during the week leading up to Christmas in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, to illustrate how digital curation, (re)presentation and (re)interpretation of festive events occur in a hybrid urban space. By documenting the ways that the modern day version of this festival has made its way into the larger digitally mediated sphere of urbanism, the study looks at three groups of curators and how their ways of encoding the event provide a multiplicity of representations to be decoded by the members of the ephemeral networked audience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The privacy paradox describes people's willingness to disclose personal information on social network sites despite expressing high levels of concern. In this study, we employ the distinction between institutional and social privacy to examine this phenomenon. We investigate what strategies undergraduate students have developed, and their motivations for using specific strategies. We employed a mixed-methods approach that included 77 surveys and 21 in-depth interviews. The results suggest that, in addition to using the default privacy settings, students have developed a number of strategies to address their privacy needs. These strategies are used primarily to guard against social privacy threats and consist of excluding contact information, using the limited profile option, untagging and removing photographs, and limiting Friendship requests from strangers. Privacy strategies are geared toward managing the Facebook profile, which we argue functions as a front stage. This active profile management allows users to negotiate the need for connecting on Facebook with the desire for increased privacy. Thus, users disclose information, because they have made a conscious effort to protect themselves against potential violations. We conclude that there is a tilt toward social privacy concerns. Little concern was raised about institutional privacy and no strategies were in place to protect against threats from the use of personal data by institutions. This is relevant for policy discussions, because it suggests that the collection, aggregation, and utilization of personal data for targeted advertisement have become an accepted social norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to understand the adoption of e-books by academic historians for the purpose of teaching and research. This includes an investigation into their knowledge about and perceived characteristics of this evolving research tool. The study relied on Rogers's model of the innovation-decision process to guide the development of an interview guide. Ten semistructured interviews were conducted with history faculty between October 2010 and December 2011. A grounded theory approach was employed to code and analyze the data. Findings about tradition, cost, teaching innovations, and the historical research process provide the background for designing learning opportunities for the professional development of historians and the academic librarians who work with them. While historians are open to experimenting with e-books, they are also concerned about the loss of serendipity in digital environments, the lack of availability of key resources, and the need for technological transparency. The findings show that Rogers's knowledge and persuasion stages are cyclical in nature, with scholars moving back and forth between these two stages. Participants interviewed were already weighing the five characteristics of the persuasion stage without having much knowledge about e-books. The study findings have implications for our understanding of the diffusion of innovations in academia: both print and digital collections are being used in parallel without one replacing the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the changes in the social media which is said to be at a rapid pace because of updates on tools, features and policies. It identifies the elements of social media practices that are prevalent across platforms, users and cultures. It notes the qualities of social media and how it integrate other forms of computer-mediated communication such as direct messaging systems like electronic mails and blogging.

Users have adopted a wide range of digital technologies into their communication repertoire. It remains unclear why they adopt multiple forms of communication instead of substituting one medium for another. It also raises the question: What type of need does each of these media fulfill? In the present article, the authors conduct comparative work that examines the gratifications obtained from Facebook with those from instant messaging. This comparison between media allows one to draw conclusions about how different social media fulfill user needs. Data were collected from undergraduate students through a multimethod study based on 77 surveys and 21 interviews. A factor analysis of gratifications obtained from Facebook revealed six key dimensions: pastime, affection, fashion, share problems, sociability, and social information. Comparative analysis showed that Facebook is about having fun and knowing about the social activities occurring in one's social network, whereas instant messaging is geared more toward relationship maintenance and development. The authors discuss differences in the two technologies and outline a framework based on uses and gratifications theory as to why young people integrate numerous media into their communication habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synchronous communication technologies facilitate coordination, afford social accessibility, and allow for flexible contact at a distance. The authors investigate the temporal structure of social accessibility, individuals' definitions of public and private time, and how social accessibility and privacy are negotiated. They examine university students' social accessibility in instant messaging with a multi-method study utilizing surveys, focus groups and interviews. Four key characteristics were identified: predictability, downtime, online concurrent IM activities, and multitasking. Private and public time blur seamlessly in IM, with students making themselves available as a function of social relationships and context. Negotiation of social accessibility is complex and often evolves over the development of a relationship. Three strategies are discussed that help students manage their availability in IM. Despite the lack of formal rules in the use of these strategies, participants have shared understandings of these practices, and the meaning they convey to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the body of research on the use and role of instant messaging (IM) in campus life, and how IM is a key part of university students' communication. IM is a synchronous form of communication, and its speed, availability information, and support for multiple conversations have made it appealing for young people. With university students, in particular, showing a heavy reliance on IM, researchers have shown great interest in how university students use IM and how it is integrated in their social and academic life. While studies are emerging in various disciplines, no attempt has been made to integrate the disparate findings and approaches. This article synthesizes key findings, provides a map of the literature, and discusses conceptual problems inherent in the study of IM and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) that will help researchers identify key areas of study and opportunities for future investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of the Internet has increased dramatically in recent years, with university students becoming one of the most dominant user groups. This study investigated how the Internet is integrated into university students' communication habits. The authors focused on how online (email and instant messaging) and mobile (cellphones and texting) modes of communication are used in the context of offline modes (FTF and telephone) to support students' local and distant social ties. Using a mixed methods approach that combined survey data from 268 Canadian university students with focus group data, a rich description was obtained of what modes of communication students use, how they integrate them to fulfill communication needs, and the implications of this integration for the maintenance of social ties. It was found that friends were the most important communication partners in students' everyday lives. Regardless of the type of social tie, instant messaging was used the most for communication. Because of their high cost, the cellphone and texting were used less. Increased distance between communication partners reduced communication - local communication was more frequent for both friends and relatives. While instant messaging and email were used less for contact with those faraway, the decrease was not as sharp as with in-person and telephone contact. In particular, instant messaging was used extensively for distant contact with friends - often daily. While online modes were used widely for local communication, it was evident that they also filled communication gaps with those faraway. Because they were inexpensive and readily available on campus, email and instant messaging were highly used by students and they facilitated a close integration of far-flung ties into university students' everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The platform economy is rapidly transforming the dynamics of the labor market. Optimists argue platform work functions as a social equalizer, opening opportunities for additional earnings for those who need it most. Pessimists suggest that the platform economy widens earning disparities by providing additional income to people who already have good jobs. We contribute to this debate by examining who participates in the platform economy and their motivation for participation, using a US nationally representative sample. Our findings offer support for both perspectives. Those who participated in labor-exchange platforms were more likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds. By contrast, those who participated in online selling platforms were more likely to come from more affluent backgrounds. When we further examined different types of platform work, we found that different types of platform work were performed by different demographic and social groups. In addition, participation in some platform work, such as rideshare driving and house/laundry cleaning, is motivated out of necessity, while other platform work, such as selling used goods and performing online tasks, is generally used to supplement incomes. Distinct occupations tend to benefit different social groups in different ways and, taken together, disadvantaged groups are less likely to perform types of platform work that would improve their economic position and reduce income disparities. This tends to offer more support for the pessimist's perspective. We conclude that the platform economy is strongly segregated by occupation and it should be examined as a set of distinct occupations rather than a homogenous industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on social media tends to focus on individual or group-level characteristics, neglecting to consider the influence of relational and cultural variables. To fill this void, we collected social network data in Israel (N = 492) and Canada (N = 293) to investigate the effect of individual, relational, and cultural variables on the frequency of communication via instant messaging (IM) and the multiplexity of communication topics. We found that geographic distance continues to matter in interpersonal contact in spite of heavy reliance on digital tools for connectivity. Similar patterns of association were discerned in both countries for propinquity, the use of IM, and closeness. We discuss the findings in terms of theories of networked individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. The purpose of this paper is to explore social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming.Design/methodology/approach A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyse data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the four online platforms is nested within the top-level case study. Casino Royale was conceptualized as a cultural product (the book), its derived products (e.g. movies, theme songs), as well as a keyword in blogs. A qualitative, inductive, and context-specific approach was chosen to identify commonalities in tagging practices across platforms whilst taking into account the uniqueness of each platform.Findings The four platforms comprise different communities of users, each platform with its own cultural norms and tagging practices. Traditional access points in the library catalogues focused on the subject, location, and fictitious characters of the book. User-generated content across the four platforms emphasized historical events and periods related to the book, and highlighted more subjective access points, such as recommendations, tone, mood, reaction, and reading experience. Revealing shifts occur in the tags between the original book and its cultural derivatives: Goodreads and library catalogues focus almost exclusively on the book, while Last.fm and WordPress make in addition cross-references to a wider range of different cultural products, including books, movies, and music. The analyses also yield apparent similarities in certain platforms, such as recurring terms, phrasing and composite or multifaceted tags, as well as a strong presence of genre-related terms for the book and music.Originality/value The layered and nested case study approach presents a more comprehensive theoretical viewpoint and methodological framework by which to explore the study of user-generated metadata pertaining to a range of related cultural products across a variety of online platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the field of digital inequality continues to expand in many directions, the relationship between digital inequalities and other forms of inequality has yet to be fully appreciated. This article invites social scientists in and outside the field of digital media studies to attend to digital inequality, both as a substantive problem and as a methodological concern. The authors present current research on multiple aspects of digital inequality, defined expansively in terms of access, usage, skills, and self-perceptions, as well as future lines of research. Each of the contributions makes the case that digital inequality deserves a place alongside more traditional forms of inequality in the twenty-first century pantheon of inequalities. Digital inequality should not be only the preserve of specialists but should make its way into the work of social scientists concerned with a broad range of outcomes connected to life chances and life trajectories. As we argue, the significance of digital inequalities is clear across a broad range of individual-level and macro-level domains, including life course, gender, race, and class, as well as health care, politics, economic activity, and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduction. This paper explores serendipity in the context of everyday life by analyzing naturally occurring accounts of chance encounters in blogs. Method. We constructed forty-four queries related to accidental encounters to retrieve accounts from GoogleBlog. From among the returned results, we selected fifty-six accounts that provided a rich description including a mention of an accidental find and a fortuitous outcome. Analysis. We employed grounded theory to identify facets of serendipity and to explore their inter-connections. Results. Based on the literature and the data analysis, we developed a model in which the find brings together all the facets of the serendipitous encounter. A person with a prepared mind (Facet A) realises the relevance of the find in the act of noticing (Facet B). The find is what people encounter by chance (Facet C) and what leads to a fortuitous outcome (Facet D). The find is the essence of the re-telling of the story, which involves reframing the encounter with the find as serendipitous. Conclusions. Understanding everyday serendipity will allow for the effective support of serendipity in information technology. Our results suggest information systems should focus on enhancing the facets of noticing and prepared mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]