News: Announcements

April 11, 2011

As part of our TASCHA Talk series, George Sciadas will bring us on a guided tour of information society statistics and analysis. George will describe, synoptically, the evolution of quantitative research in ICTs from the early days and the preoccupation with access through major milestones such as the digital divide, e-commerce and the ICT sector, to its present state of affairs internationally. This domain provides the common ground for multi-disciplinary research including the quest for “impacts.”

April 2, 2011

Given the proliferation of public access venues, such as cybercafes, telecentres, and public libraries, in developing countries, it is important to understand what value and perceived costs users associate with using and having access to these venues. By employing benefit cost analysis (BCA) methodologies, this in-depth study will explore the costs and benefits of providing and using public access information and communication technologies (ICT).

April 1, 2011

In the early 2000s, Chile was considered a leader in Latin America in terms of its comprehensive and integrated national ICT policy, the Agenda Digital. Action lines included a campaign for digital literacy, networks of telecentres, access in schools, e-government initiatives, favourable import conditions for hardware, and an appropriate regulatory framework. Dorothea will discuss her recent paper, which draws on research that combined interviews with key civil servants leading each of the action lines at the national level with five months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with microentrepreneurs — from one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of the country — at the local level.

March 29, 2011

TASCHA researchers, Maria Garrido and Beth Patin, visited Chile in February to participate in fieldwork for their study investigating the role of telecentres and public libraries in disaster management. The visit included focus groups with public access venue users and staff, interviews with government officials, and visits to telecentres and public libraries affected by the 2010 earthquake and tsunami. Maria, Beth, and their partners from ATACH made many interesting preliminary observations about how these public access venues adapted and responded to local community needs following the disaster.

March 28, 2011

Maria Garrido and Beth Patin visited Chile in February 2011 for the first week of a month of fieldwork for a TASCHA research project investigating the role of telecentres and public libraries in disaster management. During the visit, Maria and Beth worked with representatives from ATACH, TASCHA’s Chilean research partner, conducting three focus groups with…

March 25, 2011

On March 3rd, Judith Yaaqoubi, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, discussed initial and revised instrument development for the Non-instrumental Uses in-depth study. Judith discussed the study’s background, as well as the structure of the study, the research questions that underlie it, and how they initially planned to collect data.

March 10, 2011

A research project focusing on community multimedia centres in Mozambique, RE-ACT, has adopted the Global Impact Study’s inventory data collection tools to build a list of public access ICT venues in the country. The project is led by Isabella Rega, who spent some time with TASCHA in September 2010 as a visiting scholar. Araba Sey recently visited some of the project’s researchers in Mozambique while doing field visits in Africa.

March 4, 2011

Global Impact Study research lead, Araba Sey, just spent one week in South Africa, to meet with the research team on the Mobile Internet in-depth study. During this visit, Araba had a chance to learn more about the public access to ICT landscape in South Africa, participate in research team meetings, and visit public access venues in both urban and non-urban areas of South Africa. Public access venues visited include cybercafes, public libraries, and schools.

February 22, 2011

On February 9, 2011, Global Impact Study Research Assistant, Michelle Fellows, presented a paper co-authored with Araba Sey at the 2011 iConference in Seattle, Washington. The paper, Loose Strands: Searching for Evidence of Public Access ICT on Development (pdf), uses a broad outcomes approach to review existing research on the impacts of public access to ICTs, including the extent to which public access ICTs are used and how they contribute to socio‐economic development.

February 15, 2011

TASCHA Talk: Drawing on his experiences in the academy, industry, and the philanthropic sector, Mohammed traces the trajectory of AnthroDesign from the intellectual adventure of a fledgling community of industry practitioners towards a key product-cycle domain as well as its re-absorption back into the academy as an area of study.