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This study considers whether the use of the neighborhood-focused social networking web application, Nextdoor, might in certain instances rise to the level of community development envisioned over 25 years ago by "community networking" (ComNet) scholars. In the 1980s and 1990s, academics and journalists recognized the potential of "electronic community networks," or ComNets, to help people connect with their geographic communities and help struggling communities with civic and economic development. Those early ComNets were described as helping residents to "get together" to tackle neighborhood issues from the grassroots. Through a case study drawing from interview data and participant observation, this study looks at how residents in a metropolitan US city and a nearby suburban area might, or might not, be using Nextdoor in these developmental ways envisioned by the ComNet literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates team teaching models of new media convergence curriculum at a small, undergraduate journalism program. In the models, degrees of faculty collaboration vary depending on course level and goal. Students in first-year, basic journalism classes benefited from a lower level of collaboration than those in second-year classes where advanced cross-platform, integrated knowledge, and skills were needed. We suggest that team teaching and teaching media convergence go hand-in-hand; however, a successful program depends on administrative support and the willingness of instructors to collaborate and learn new skills and knowledge across media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author analyzes two comics from a Nokia Corp.'s "White Paper," which explains new features available for the latest mobile handsets. These comics clearly articulate how the functionality of many advanced mobile phones can in fact reduce the user's ability to interact with and affect change in the world, even though the comics' narrative makes the opposite claim. At the end of the article, the author considers some of the broad implications of mobile information and communication technologies and discuss areas of research and practice that need to be addressed by scholars, educators, media producers and technology designers. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) White Paper applies a notion of rights divorced from political or democratic theory and legal definitions of citizens' human rights in its attempt to convince corporations to adopt Nokia's DRM technologies in order to control how certain digital cultural texts can be used. The rights of citizens are essentially reversed in the discourse of the DRM.