Impact of new technologies and social networks on a secondary education theatre project

This paper describes the potential impact of social media and new technologies in secondary education. The case of study has been designed for the drama and theatre subject. A wide set of tools like social networks, blogs, internet, multimedia content, local press and other promotional tools are promoted to increase students’ motivation. The experiment was developed at the highschool IES Al-Satt located in Algete in the Comunidad de Madrid. The students included in the theatre group present a low academic level, 80% of them had previously repeated at least one grade, half of them come from programs for students with learning difficulties and were at risk of social exclusion. This action is supported by higher and secondary education professors and teachers who look forward to implanting networked media technologies as new tools to improve the academic results and the degree of involvement of students. The results of the experiment have been excellent, based on satisfactory opinions obtained from a survey answered by students at the end of the course, and also revealed by the analytics taken from different social networks. This project is a pioneer in the introduction and usage of new technologies in secondary high-schools in Spain.

Efficiency analysis of information technology and online social networks management : an integrated DEA-Model assessment

This paper analyses the relationship between productive efficiency and online-social-networks (OSN) in Spanish telecommunications firms. A data-envelopment-analysis (DEA) is used and several indicators of business ?social Media? activities are incorporated. A super-efficiency analysis and bootstrapping techniques are performed to increase the model?s robustness and accuracy. Then, a logistic regression model is applied to characterise factors and drivers of good performance in OSN. Results reveal the company?s ability to absorb and utilise OSNs as a key factor in improving the productive efficiency. This paper presents a model for assessing the strategic performance of the presence and activity in OSN.

Online Media and Crisis? of Advertising Media Planning

Nowadays, online media represent a great choice for advertising. From de advertising media planning, new media give new ways to reach the consumers, but they also add more complexity. The communication capacity of online media and the greater use of that media by part of the users open up the debate about the necessity of rethinking the approach of the ‘traditional’ advertising media planning, which structure and work processes were developed when media were offline. So, this article gives a panoramic view about the influence of new media in advertising media planning. To do this, in first place, describes the current scenario, analyzing the penetration and advertising expenditure in Internet. Also, it shows the main online media according to their proximity to the offline advertising media planning conception. In second place, this article addresses the current challenges at measuring new media as a symptom of the impulse at the change of model. Finally, the article ends up showing some trends that are presented as drivers of change. However, after this analysis, comes up the point that those aspects would not change the essence of advertising media planning, so it is questionable if we can speak of a crisis or, instead, if new media are showing the necessity that media planning have to be involved with this new scenario.

The social emergency; studies in sex hygiene and morals,

Mode of access: Internet.

Making media work in space: An interdisciplinary perspective on media and communication requirements for current and future space communities

As humans expand into space communities will form. These have already begun to form in small ways, such as long-duration missions on the International Space Station and the space shuttle, and small-scale tourist excursions into space. Social, behavioural and communications data emerging from such existing communities in space suggest that the physically-bounded, work-oriented and traditionally male-dominated nature of these extremely remote groups present specific problems for the resident astronauts, groups of them viewed as ‘communities’, and their associated groups who remain on Earth, including mission controllers, management and astronauts’ families. Notionally feminine group attributes such as adaptive competence, social adaptation skills and social sensitivity will be crucial to the viability of space communities and in the absence of gender equity, ‘staying in touch’ by means of ‘news from home’ becomes more important than ever. A template of news and media forms and technologies is suggested to service those needs and enhance the social viability of future terraforming activities.

Political discourse, media and translation

This volume addresses the role played by translation in international political communication and news reporting and brings to light the usually invisible link between politics, media, and translation. The contributors explore the interrelationship between media in the widest sense and translation, with a focus on politics texts, institutional contexts, and translation policies. These topics are explored from a Translation Studies perspective, thus bringing a new disciplinary view to the investigation of political discourse and the language of the media. The first part of the volume focuses on textual analysis, investigating transformations that occur in translation processes, and the second part examines institutional contexts and institutional policies and their effects on translation production and reception.

Social movement studies, Social movement studies, and the challenges of Parochialism:a rejoinder to Poulson, Caswell and Gray

In this short rejoinder, I briefly contextualise and discuss the implications of Poulson, Caswell and Gray's article for Social Movement Studies. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Privacy and the City:user identification and location semantics in location-based social networks

With the advent of GPS enabled smartphones, an increasing number of users is actively sharing their location through a variety of applications and services. Along with the continuing growth of Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs), security experts have increasingly warned the public of the dangers of exposing sensitive information such as personal location data. Most importantly, in addition to the geographical coordinates of the user’s location, LBSNs allow easy access to an additional set of characteristics of that location, such as the venue type or popularity. In this paper, we investigate the role of location semantics in the identification of LBSN users. We simulate a scenario in which the attacker’s goal is to reveal the identity of a set of LBSN users by observing their check-in activity. We then propose to answer the following question: what are the types of venues that a malicious user has to monitor to maximize the probability of success? Conversely, when should a user decide whether to make his/her check-in to a location public or not? We perform our study on more than 1 million check-ins distributed over 17 urban regions of the United States. Our analysis shows that different types of venues display different discriminative power in terms of user identity, with most of the venues in the “Residence” category providing the highest re-identification success across the urban regions. Interestingly, we also find that users with a high entropy of their check-ins distribution are not necessarily the hardest to identify, suggesting that it is the collective behaviour of the users’ population that determines the complexity of the identification task, rather than the individual behaviour.

Cuba’s Role in Venezuela’s Control of the Internet and Online Social Networks

The arrival of Cuba’s Information Technology (IT) and Communications Minister Ramiro Valdés to Venezuela in the Spring of 2010 to serve as a ‘consultant’ to the Venezuelan government awakened a new reality in that country. Rampant with deep economic troubles, escalating crime, a murder rate that has doubled since Chávez took over in 1999, and an opposition movement led by university students and other activists who use the Internet as their primary weapon, Venezuela has resorted to Cuba for help. In a country where in large part traditional media outlets have been censored or are government-controlled, the Internet and its online social networks have become the place to obtain, as well as disseminate, unfiltered information. As such, Internet growth and use of its social networks has skyrocketed in Venezuela, making it one of Latin America’s highest Web users. Because of its increased use to spark political debate among Venezuelans and publish information that differs with the official government line, Chávez has embarked on an initiative to bring the Internet to the poor and others who would otherwise not have access, by establishing government-sponsored Internet Info Centers throughout the country, to disseminate information to his followers. With the help of Cuban advisors, who for years have been a part of Venezuela’s defense, education, and health care initiatives, Chávez has apparently taken to adapting Cuba’s methodology for the control of information. He has begun to take special steps toward also controlling the type of information flowing through the country’s online social networks, considering the implementation of a government-controlled single Internet access point in Venezuela. Simultaneously, in adapting to Venezuela’s Internet reality, Chávez has engaged online by creating his own Twitter account in an attempt to influence public opinion, primarily of those who browse the Web. With a rapidly growing following that may soon reach one million subscribers, Chávez claims to have set up his own online trench to wage cyber space battle.