User-Centric Technology Design for Nonprofit and Civic Engagements

User-Centric Technology Design for Nonprofit and Civic Engagements

Author: Saqib Saeed

Publisher: Springer Science & Business

Published: 2014-04-26

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 3319059637

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Due to the increased global political importance of the nonprofit sector, its technological support and organizational characteristics have become important fields of research. In order to conduct effective work, nonprofits need to communicate and coordinate effectively. However, such settings are generally characterized by a lack of resources, an absence of formal hierarchical structures and differences in languages and culture among the activists. Modern technologies could help nonprofit networks in improving their working. In order to design appropriate technological support for such settings, it is important to understand their work practices, which widely differ from traditional business organizations. This book aims to strengthen the body of knowledge by providing user studies and concepts related to user centered technology design process for nonprofit settings. The examination of ethnographic studies and user centered evaluation of IT artifacts in practice will further the understanding of design requirements of these systems. This book includes chapters from leading scholars and practitioners on the technology design process examining human centered factors. The chapters will focus on developed and developing countries as they both have unique issues in technology design. The book will be useful or of interest to academics from a range of fields including information systems, human computer interaction, computer supported cooperative work and organizational science as well as for government officials and governmental organizations.


Media Today

Media Today

Author: Joseph Turow

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 1136278966

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"Turow’s Media Today: Mass Communication in a Converging World, now in its fifth edition, chooses [a] cutting-edge option. This is a student-friendly publication, offering aids such as definitions of key terms, colourful infographics, case studies and end-of-chapter review questions. There’s a companion website, too, and a password-protected website for instructors."—Philip Kemp, Times Higher Education Media Today uses convergence as a lens that puts students at the center of the profound changes in the 21st century media world. Through the convergence lens they learn to think critically about the role of media today and what these changes mean for their lives presently and in the future. The book’s media systems approach helps students to look carefully at how media is created, distributed, and exhibited in the new world that the digital revolution has created. In this way, Media Today goes beyond the traditional mass communication textbook’s focus on consuming media, to give students an insider’s perspective on how media businesses operate. How exactly does Google profit from web searches? What will a magazine look like five years from now? Informative and engaging, Media Today, Fifth Edition, is characterized by its focus on: Convergence: In addition to separate chapters on the Internet and the Video Games industry, coverage of convergence and its impact is incorporated into every chapter. Consumer Education: Media Literacy questions ask students to consider their roles as a media consumer and potential media creator. Comprehensive Media Industry Coverage: Historical timelines in the print book and on the companion website track the development of each media industry, giving students an overview of a particular industry at a glance. Contemporary, Student-friendly Examples: New culture and media boxes help students think about the impact of media industries on their own lives and globally. Joseph Turow—who has been teaching Intro to Mass Communication for well over a decade—demonstrates the many ways that media convergence and the pervasiveness of the Internet have blurred distinctions between and among various media. From newspapers to video games or social networking to mobile platforms, Media Today prepares students to live in the digital world of media.


Innovative Technologies for Enhancing Knowledge Access in Academic Libraries

Innovative Technologies for Enhancing Knowledge Access in Academic Libraries

Author: Masenya, Tlou Maggie

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2022-06-24

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1668433664

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An increasing number of academic libraries worldwide are adopting innovative technologies in creating, organizing, storing, managing, disseminating, preserving, and enhancing access to their vital knowledge in order to adapt to the changing library environment and to stay relevant in the digital world. This transition necessitates a need for best practices and reimagined strategies of implementing innovative technologies to ensure sustainable knowledge access and increase knowledge sharing. Innovative Technologies for Enhancing Knowledge Access in Academic Libraries aims to provide best practices, innovative strategies, theoretical frameworks, conceptual frameworks, and empirical research findings regarding the application of emerging and innovative technologies in managing, preserving, and enhancing knowledge access in academic libraries worldwide. Covering a range of topics such as artificial intelligence, knowledge organization, records management, and library services, this reference work is ideal for librarians, researchers, scholars, practitioners, academicians, instructors, and students.


Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals

Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals

Author: August E. Grant

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1134987722

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Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals has set the standard as the single best resource for students and professionals looking to brush up on how communication technologies have developed, grown, and converged, as well as what’s in store for the future. The 15th edition is completely updated, reflecting the changes that have swept the communication industries. The first five chapters offer the communication technology fundamentals, including the ecosystem, the history, and structure—then delves into each of about two dozen technologies, including mass media, computers, consumer electronics, and networking technologies. Each chapter is written by experts who provide snapshots of the state of each individual field. Together, these updates provide a broad overview of these industries, as well as the role communication technologies play in our everyday lives. In addition to substantial updates to each chapter, the 15th edition includes: First-ever chapters on Big Data and the Internet of Things Updated user data in every chapter Projections of what each technology will become by 2031 Suggestions on how to get a job working with the technologies discussed The companion website, www.tfi.com/ctu, offers updated information on the technologies covered in this text, as well as links to other resources


What Is a Game?

What Is a Game?

Author: Gaines S. Hubbell

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-02-28

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 147666837X

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What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail. This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.


Invocational Media

Invocational Media

Author: Chris Chesher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-10-19

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1501363611

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Invocational Media critiques the sociotechnical power of digital technologies by introducing the concept of invocational media. What is an invocation? Ask your voice assistant and it will define it for you. It is a media artefact that responds to many invocations such as seeking the weather forecast, requesting any song you can name, or turning on the lights, almost magically. This contemporary manifestation of the ancient practice of invocation gives an immediate response to your call in a way that Chris Chesher argues is the characteristic power of all computers, which he redefines as invocational media. This book challenges the foundations of computer science by offering invocation as a powerful new way of conceptualising digital technologies. Drawing on media philosophy, Deleuze, Guattari, Heidegger, Latour, Austin, Innis and McLuhan, it critiques the representationalism of data processing, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Invocational media seem to empower individuals, but necessarily subject users to corporate and government monopolies of invocation. They offer many 'solutions', but only by reducing everything to the same kind of act. They complicate agency in their indifference as to whether invokers are human or non-human. With robotics they invoke material form to act physically and autonomously. People willingly make themselves invocable to surveillance and control by creating their own profiles and marking themselves with biometrics. This ground-breaking book will change how you think about digital media by showing they are, in fact, invocational media.


It's Complicated

It's Complicated

Author: Danah Boyd

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2014-02-25

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0300166311

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Surveys the online social habits of American teens and analyzes the role technology and social media plays in their lives, examining common misconceptions about such topics as identity, privacy, danger, and bullying.


Assistive Technologies in the Library

Assistive Technologies in the Library

Author: Barbara T. Mates

Publisher: American Library Association

Published: 2011-03-03

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0838992676

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This sensitively written and practical guidebook will be an indispensable resource for ensuring that a library’s offerings are accessible to everyone.