Access to Information and Social Justice

Access to Information and Social Justice
Author: Jamie Brownlee
Publisher: Arp Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781894037679

"This book combines the political and the practical aspects of Access to Information (ATI) and Freedom of Information (FOI) research. It covers ATI in relation to critical social science, investigative journalism, and social justice activism in Canada. It addresses recent political stories and issues uncovered by researchers, journalists and activists using ATI, including state surveillance, prison expansion, the close ties between oil companies and the federal government, and the Lac-Megantic rail disaster. Written by prominent journalists and academic researchers, each chapter also offers advice to those interested in using ATI in their own research, and the volume ends with a list of helpful tips for conducting ATI/FOI research."--

Information Technology and Social Justice

Information Technology and Social Justice
Author: Rooksby, Emma
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2006-10-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1591409705

The term digital divide is still used regularly to characterize the injustice associated with inequalities in access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). As the debate continues and becomes more sophisticated, more and more aspects of the distribution of ICTs are singled out as relevant to characterizations of the digital divide and of its moral status. The best way to articulate the digital divide is to relate it to other aspects of social and distributive justice, using a mixture of pre-existing theories within moral and political philosophy. These theories are complemented with contributions from sociology, communication studies, information systems, and a range of other disciplines. Information Technology and Social Justice presents conceptual frameworks for understanding and tackling digital divides. It includes information on access and skills, access and motivation, and other various levels of access. It also presents a detailed analysis of the benefits and value of access to ICTs.

Libraries, Human Rights, and Social Justice

Libraries, Human Rights, and Social Justice
Author: Paul T. Jaeger
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2015-06-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1442250526

Libraries, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Enabling Access and Promoting Inclusion examines the interrelationships between digital literacy, digital inclusion, and public policy, emphasizing the impacts of these policy decisions on the ability of individuals and communities to successfully participate in the information society. It is the first large-scale consideration of digital literacy and digital inclusion as policy problems and provides policy recommendations to promote digital literacy and digital inclusion. This book is intended to help librarians better understand and articulate their roles in promoting human rights and social justice, as well as to educate policymakers, government officials, professionals in other fields, and researchers in other disciplines about the contributions of libraries to human rights and social justice. It explores the intersections of information, human rights, and social justice from a range of perspectives and addresses the differing roles of library institutions (public, school, academic, and special libraries), library professionals, professional organizations, governments, and library patrons. Discussion focuses on the practical side of human rights and avoids most of the philosophical discussions of the term. Similarly, this book emphasizes the practical nature of social justice and the social and societal structures that foster equality. Related issues of digital literacy and digital inclusion are considered as essential to providing information in human rights and social justice contexts. Digital literacy, the ability to use the Internet to meet information, combines with access to the Internet in order to successfully apply the skills of digital literacy is discussed under the topic of digital inclusion. These topics are discussed through legal, policy, social, cultural, and economic lenses. Issues are examined both in terms of efforts to support equity in communities as a whole and the efforts intended to promote equity in specific disadvantaged or marginalized populations, such as the homeless, immigrants, people with disabilities, and the socioeconomically disadvantaged. Many examples of the issues discussed are drawn from the original research that the authors have conducted. The ideas and suggestions in this book should help members of the library community understand where their roles related to human rights and social justice originate, how they fit within the broader policy context, how to improve their related services and practices, and how to advocate for better support of these roles. The authors of this book have been involved in this research for many years and this breadth allows the book to offer comprehensive policy recommendations, solutions, and best practices for an area that is currently extremely fragmented. The writing is at a level to make it useful to undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and policy makers.

Social Media, Social Justice and the Political Economy of Online Networks

Social Media, Social Justice and the Political Economy of Online Networks
Author: Jeffrey Blevins
Publisher:
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-01-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781947602847

While social network analyses often demonstrate the usefulness of social media networks to affective publics and otherwise marginalized social justice groups, this book explores the domination and manipulation of social networks by more powerful political groups. Jeffrey Layne Blevins and James Lee look at the ways in which social media conversations about race turn politically charged, and in many cases, ugly. Studies show that social media is an important venue for news and political information, while focusing national attention on racially involved issues. Perhaps less understood, however, is the effective quality of this discourse, and its connection to popular politics, especially when Twitter trolls and social media mobs go on the attack. Taking on prominent case studies from the past few years, including the Ferguson protests and the Black Lives Matter movement, the 2016 presidential election, and the rise of fake news, this volume presents data visualization sets alongside careful scholarly analysis. The resulting volume provides new insight into social media, legacy news, and social justice.

Access to Information, Technology, and Justice

Access to Information, Technology, and Justice
Author: Ursula Gorham
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2017-06-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1442270314

Over the past fifteen years, the dramatic increase of online self-help legal re-sources, information, and tools specifically developed for use by low-income individuals without legal counsel has been promoted as one way to help those individuals who are caught in this “justice gap.” Unfortunately, however, opportunities arising from the Internet and related information and communication technologies do not accrue to everyone equally as physical, intellectual, and social barriers to information persist. Access to Information, Technology, and Justice: A Critical Intersection, as the first ever book length examination of the use of technology to expand access to justice in the United States, highlights an emerging paradox wherein the technological transformation that has created an increasing array of legal self-help resources and services is also creating barriers to access for disadvantaged individuals. Those who cannot read, those who do not speak the English language, those who are unfamiliar with the law, and those with limited digital literacy skills all find themselves at a fundamental disadvantage. The legal community has only begun to examine whether these resources and services are, in fact, meeting the needs of struggling self-help users. This book builds upon existing work in this area by undertaking an in-depth exploration of how information and communication technologies are changing – and failing to change – the legal in-formation landscape for those who most need this information. Drawing upon the ongoing collaborative efforts of legal aid organizations, libraries, courts, and non-profit organizations, this book provides a framework for removing barriers to equitable access to legal information, with the ultimate goal of encouraging continued discussion and action.

Progressive Community Action

Progressive Community Action
Author: Bharat Mehra
Publisher: Library Juice Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2015-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781936117659

Social justice in library and information science (LIS) seeks to achieve action-oriented, socially relevant impacts through information work. This edited volume includes papers that explore intersections between critical theory and social justice in LIS while focusing on social relevance and community involvement to promote progressive community-wide changes. Contributors include LIS researchers, practitioners, educators, social justice advocates, and community leaders who identify theories, methods, approaches, strategies, and case studies that apply these intersections in mobilizing community action to deliver tangible community building and development outcomes. The frame of study is inclusive of (though not limited to) academic, public, school, and special libraries, museums, archives, and other information-related settings. An international context of analysis is included along with a focus on social impact and community involvement in LIS practice and research, education, policy development, service design, and program implementation.

Digital Dead End

Digital Dead End
Author: Virginia Eubanks
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2012-09-21
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262294699

The realities of the high-tech global economy for women and families in the United States. The idea that technology will pave the road to prosperity has been promoted through both boom and bust. Today we are told that universal broadband access, high-tech jobs, and cutting-edge science will pull us out of our current economic downturn and move us toward social and economic equality. In Digital Dead End, Virginia Eubanks argues that to believe this is to engage in a kind of magical thinking: a technological utopia will come about simply because we want it to. This vision of the miraculous power of high-tech development is driven by flawed assumptions about race, class, and gender. The realities of the information age are more complicated, particularly for poor and working-class women and families. For them, information technology can be both a tool of liberation and a means of oppression. But despite the inequities of the high-tech global economy, optimism and innovation flourished when Eubanks worked with a community of resourceful women living at her local YWCA. Eubanks describes a new approach to creating a broadly inclusive and empowering “technology for people,” popular technology, which entails shifting the focus from teaching technical skill to nurturing critical technological citizenship, building resources for learning, and fostering social movement. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition.

Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice

Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
Author: Ingrid Robeyns
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2017-12-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783744243

How do we evaluate ambiguous concepts such as wellbeing, freedom, and social justice? How do we develop policies that offer everyone the best chance to achieve what they want from life? The capability approach, a theoretical framework pioneered by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s, has become an increasingly influential way to think about these issues. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined is both an introduction to the capability approach and a thorough evaluation of the challenges and disputes that have engrossed the scholars who have developed it. Ingrid Robeyns offers her own illuminating and rigorously interdisciplinary interpretation, arguing that by appreciating the distinction between the general capability approach and more specific capability theories or applications we can create a powerful and flexible tool for use in a variety of academic disciplines and fields of policymaking. This book provides an original and comprehensive account that will appeal to scholars of the capability approach, new readers looking for an interdisciplinary introduction, and those interested in theories of justice, human rights, basic needs, and the human development approach.

Technology, Activism, and Social Justice in a Digital Age

Technology, Activism, and Social Justice in a Digital Age
Author: John G. McNutt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2018-07-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0190904011

Technology, Activism, and Social Justice in a Digital Age offers a close look at both the present nature and future prospects for social change. In particular, the text explores the cutting edge of technology and social change, while discussing developments in social media, civic technology, and leaderless organizations -- as well as more traditional approaches to social change. It effectively assembles a rich variety of perspectives to the issue of technology and social change; the featured authors are academics and practitioners (representing both new voices and experienced researchers) who share a common devotion to a future that is just, fair, and supportive of human potential. They come from the fields of social work, public administration, journalism, law, philanthropy, urban affairs, planning, and education, and their work builds upon 30-plus years of research. The authors' efforts to examine changing nature of social change organizations and the issues they face will help readers reflect upon modern advocacy, social change, and the potential to utilize technology in making a difference.