The European commission's online public databases

In the context of its role in providing the day-to-day administration of the European Union, the European Commission is responsible both for stimulating the development of interactive electronic information services in Europe and for providing public online databases of information on the Union's activities. Following a brief survey of the background to the Commission's activities, this article outlines the Union's current telecommunications policy and the ongoing transition towards closer integration of the various telecommunications networks in Europe. It then describes the various practical arrangements for obtaining access to the Commission's online services, presents two of its programmes, which are intended to stimulate the professional use of electronic information services, and lists the various databases that it provides for public access.     

Militant Distribution: Votes for Women and the public sphere

The late nineteenth century American mass circulation press developed a style of ‘new journalism’ that gave rise to celebrity journalism. It is widely accepted that this new approach to reporting replaced news values with entertainment as a consequence of the need to cater to the tastes of a mass readership and this is seen to explain the incredible innovations that occurred in the press in the US at the time (Ponce de Leon; Roggenkamp; Tebbel; Turner; Schudson Discovering the News). This article questions this version of American press history by arguing that those papers also had to appeal to the politics of poor immigrants and the working class and that the conventions associated with celebrity overlapped and often coincided with a ‘radical’ populist campaigning style of reporting that was as important (and at times, more important) to building and sustaining mass readerships.     

Measuring newspaper readership: A qualitative variable approach

Abstract

Newspaper readership is usually measured by a single variable such as frequency of use, amount of use, etc. This article argues that readership cannot be fully described by a single measure and suggests treating it as a latent variable reflecting the time, frequency, and completeness of readership on both Sundays and weekdays. This study uses data from 101 newspaper markets in the US. The latent variable can be either quantitative or qualitative. Factor analysis is used to define the quantitative variable and latent class analysis, the qualitative variable. The relationship between the approaches is studied with principal components analysis, profiling, and hierarchical linear models. The two approaches are shown to produce complementary conclusions when relating readership to demographics and content interests. Media consumption studies can examine both qualitative and quantitative latent variables and thereby enhance the interpretability and the scope of the results.     

The diffusion of public eServices in European cities

Using a novel dataset on the diffusion of public eServices at the city level in EU 15, this paper contributes to extant empirical literature in three ways. First, it extends the coverage of public eServices beyond eGovernment, investigating four service categories: Infomobility, eProcurement, eGovernment and eHealth. Second, it provides information for both a cross-country and cross-municipality comparison. Third, on the methodological side, it also extends the literature on composite indicators at a municipal level. Cities exhibiting the highest diffusion of public eServices are found to be medium-large, highly endowed with well-educated human capital, and characterised by a lively industrial atmosphere favoured by a reasonable number and variety of production and service activities. The relative performance of the European cities helps identify plausible directions to be taken for policies aimed at favouring the diffusion of public service innovation in Europe.     

From public sphere to public screen: democracy,activism, and the "violence" of Seattle

The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens' movement for democratic globalization. With the tactical exploitation of television, the internet, and other technologies, Seattle also witnessed the enactment of forms of activism adapted to a wired society. In the wake of Seattle, this essay introduces the “public screen” as a necessary supplement to the metaphor of the public sphere for understanding today's political scene. While a public sphere orientation inevitably finds contemporary discourse wanting, viewing such discourse through the prism of the public screen provokes a consideration of new forms of participatory democracy. In comparison to the public sphere's privileging of rationality, embodied conversations, consensus, and civility, the public screen highlights dissemination, images, hypermediacy, publicity, distraction, and dissent. Using the Seattle WTO protests as a case study and focusing on the dynamic of violence and the media, we argue that the public screen accounts for technological and cultural changes while enabling a charting of the new conditions for rhetoric, politics, and activism.     

Accounting for losses: The great Detroit newspaper war

This article discusses different accounting treatments of investment expenditures as evidence of financial losses that justify a finding that a newspaper is failing under the Newspaper Preservation Act. It then analyzes the accounting practices used by the Detroit Free Press to show operating losses and the implications of those practices to public policy decisions.     

The future ain't what it used to be: Forecasting the impact of ICT on the public sphere

The American baseball play Yogi Berra once observed that “The future ain’t what it used to be”. Berra's colourful expression states a fundamental truth: the future as we perceive it today is, more often than not, not how it was perceived in the past. The proof is in the chequered history of forecasting in every field from politics to technology. e-Government and e-democracy are no exceptions. In this article we examine the problem of inaccurate forecasting of the impact of ICT in the public sector. To do this, we use a typology of forecast failure and then use this typology to examine three case of inaccurate forecasts of the impact of e-government and e-democracy over the past 25 years and ask why these predictions were wrong. Drawing on the lessons from these examples and others, we propose a series of steps/actions that can help to reduce the probability of such errors occurring in the future.     

"公共领域"在传媒时代存在的可能性

“公共领域”的概念是哈贝马斯在《公共领域的结构转型》一文中率先提出的。哈贝马斯本人对于“公共领域”的发展持悲观态度，原因是他认为在泛传媒时代，“公共领域”的构成要素趋于瓦解。本文从具体的时代背景出发，试图论证在泛传媒时代“公共领域”的构成要素并非如哈贝马斯所说的那样会趋向瓦解。     

The Jasper dragging death: Crisis communication and the community newspaper

This essay examines approximately 1 1/2 years of opinion page content in The Jasper NewsBoy concerning the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in June of 1998. The manner of Byrd's murder horrified much of the nation and galvanized public discussion about race relations. The NewsBoy's coverage was an important part of the community's response to the crisis, which ranged from prayer vigils to town hall meetings. This paper sketches a brief outline of the crisis as it unfolded to provide a context for the papers role, followed by an analysis of the NewsBoy's opinion section based on Fishman's methodology for examining crisis communication events. By combining elements of civic journalism and crisis communication, the newspaper helped the town stage a successful image restoration campaign.     

The European Community:

Recently the European Community formed a Single European Market, and is moving closer to some form of political union. Interest in the European Community has increased dramatically, placing increasingly heavier demands on library reference departments to acquire materials. The author located over 200 recently published reference titles in paper format treating the European Community. The most comprehensive of these items, those dealing either with the European Community as a whole or the Single Market, are reviewed. Selected items not reviewed are included in a separate list.     

网络平台与新闻媒体:影响力的转移

当前,新闻媒体的经营危机已经众所周知.2016年美国总统大选后,新闻媒体真正的存在危机已经变得越来越明显,那就是影响力的丧失.虚假新闻增多、信任度下降和利润急剧下滑都是新闻媒体丧失影响公共舆论和政策能力的表现.不过,影响力就像能量一样只会转移而不会消失.新闻媒体丧失的影响力转向了网络平台.网络平台不仅可以支配美元,而且支配他们服务的全球受众的注意力,不过从现在看,网络平台似乎还不太情愿接管这种影响力转移.     

"政治家办报"思想的常与变

作为党性原则的重要组成部分,"政治家办报"思想体现了党对新闻工作者的政治要求,反映着政治与新闻的特殊关系.本文从分析历史语境的角度,在还原毛泽东提出"政治家办报"的背景之基础上,考察其思想脉络和主要所指;并沿着我国社会主义改革和发展轨迹,梳清邓小平、江泽民、胡锦涛等历届党的领导人在继承"政治家办报"思想的同时,赋予其时代创新元素和不同政治承载;坚持"政治家办报"思想,为全球化语境下营造有利的国际舆论环境提供一种新的思路.     

Networked counterpublics and discursive contestation in the agonistic public sphere: political jamming a police force Facebook Page

Drawing from agonistic public sphere perspectives, this study examines the jamming of the Hong Kong Police Force Facebook Page by users from its establishment in October 2015 to March 2016. 203 posts accounting for 96,791 comments were analyzed using a mixed-method approach. Findings showed that the early posts were heavily jammed with three types of counterpublic comments: (1) calls for justice regarding alleged police brutality during the Umbrella Movement one year prior, (2) emotional statements with impolite tone, and (3) accusations of comment deletions by the Page administrators. But, the relative intensity of the three types of counterdiscourses diminished over time. Moreover, despite the extensive use of embedded YouTube videos as counterdiscourses in the comments, there were few URL linkages to Hong Kong's dynamic counterpublic sphere. This study highlights the opportunities and constraints of Facebook's technological architecture for activists and networked counterpublics to challenge dominant discourses in situ.     

Examining libraries as public sphere institutions: Mapping questions,methods, theories,findings, and research gaps

It is common in the literature to see libraries characterized as public sphere institutions, but the exact processes by which libraries support and engage in the public sphere remain under-explored. Based on a systematic review of the research literature on libraries as public sphere institutions, this study maps the questions, methods, theories, and findings of those scholars and librarians who have examined this topic. This research finds that discussions of libraries as public sphere institutions orient around five themes: Community, management and funding, institutional structures and practices, new tools and services, and knowledge organization. Compared to existing research, more focused and stringent research designs are necessary to enhance the understanding of libraries as public sphere institutions. A focused research program can create theoretical and actionable knowledge for knowledge-based policies, strategies, and activities at the international, federal, state, and community levels.     

A public value perspective for ICT enabled public sector reforms: A theoretical reflection

The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical discussion of information system adoption in the public sector (often referred to as e-government) and to contribute to the debate by offering a public value perspective. The paper points to the public value paradigm as an alternative approach to studying ICT-enabled public sector reforms. This paradigm, we argue, proposes an alternative way of framing the nature of the problems faced when ICT enabled public sector reforms are initiated and studied. The public value perspective proposes a new and richer context in which to study and research these phenomena. It also calls for the redefinition of the ways we assess e-government in the context of public sector reforms. It is therefore seen as vital to evaluate the socio-political impact of ICT adoption in the public sector.     

The impact of legacy systems on digital transformation in European public administration: Lesson learned from a multi case analysis

Legacy systems have continued to pose a major challenge to digital transformation efforts in public administration. A comprehensive review of literature suggests seven levels of complexity in transforming legacy systems, including, being a stand-alone system, being part of a larger system, and data incompatibility, each depicting unique criteria and challenges. Nonetheless, very little is known as to what degree these complexities implicate the implementation of digital transformation efforts in public administration (PA). To address this gap, this research conducted an analysis on four cases of digital transformation in three European PA settings (i.e., Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK). The findings revealed complexities that pose the key challenges to systems interoperability and integrability, which are crucial in any digital transformation project. In addition, a comprehensive understanding of the systems to be transformed, the policies which they are serving, and the broader PA setting in which they are implemented were deemed central to succeeding in digital transformation efforts.