Social Networking

Social networking (SN) have provided an opportunity to facilitate strategic knowledge sharing across organizations and government agencies. The Human Capital Institute (HCI) and Saba partnered to better understand the use and potential of SN tools in the government workplace. The goal was to learn what SN tools are being used in government today, the effectiveness of SN for doing government work, future expectations and barriers for its use, and how agency type affects the use and opinions of SN.

Despite the political turmoil that had swept up the region over the past two years, the Arab world continued to make significant progress in the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) in 2011, taking big strides towards enhancing ICT infrastructure and performance. Driven by the GCC's remarkable mobile penetration figures, mobile phone subscriptions in the Arab world nearly matched the region's population – to reach 346 million as of end 2011.

In the fall of 2011, Danida commissioned a study with the objective of examining strategic opportunities for using ICT for promoting governance and democratization efforts within development assistance; and exploring opportunities for ICT in the present Danish portfolio of development programs and within the vision of the Strategy for Danish Development Cooperation. The study touches on a range of ICT technologies but its focus is the use of mobile phones, including voice calls, SMS Text, mobile internet, and social media.

The following paper will examine social media’s impact on collective action. It will begin with an outline of relevant models of the social movement theory. A description of the role that ICT play in collective action in accordance with these models follows and then continues with a close analysis of the impact social media has on collective action.

Communications technology has enabled new approaches to governance in which stakeholders across sectors and jurisdictions are engaged in consensus building and implementation processes. This paper explores some mechanisms through which online social networking may impact governance for sustainable development. Are social networking sites driving the transformation of the governance landscape or are they merely diverting vast amounts of time from addressing the difficult sustainable development challenges at hand?

In this paper, interest is in the rapid detection of disaster events such as tsunami, tornadoes, forest fires, and earthquakes. The detection system of disaster events is described and the way to detect a target event from Twitter data is also shown in this paper. The research examines three disasters during the same time period and compares Twitter activity and Internet news on Google. A significant result from this research is that emergency detection could begin using the microblogging service.

This paper explains the phase change – from "ICT4D 1.0" to "ICT4D 2.0" – and its implications. The background to these phases is reviewed, charting the logic and chronology of applying ICTs in developing countries. The implications of the phase change are then analysed. First, in terms of new technology and application priorities. Then, in relation to new models of innovation we may need to embrace: from laboratory to collaborative to grassroots innovation. Next, in relation to new implementation models for funding, managing, and applying digital technology.

This paper proposes a geo spatial information repository for initial condition reporting and updating to guide search and rescue operations and deployment of equipment with safety considerations for the rescuers in large scale disaster response scenarios.

This article attempts to quantitatively measure the various influences on mobile phone adoption at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Thailand. Based on an existing theoretical framework, adoption is modeled by fitting a logit model to a large sixcountry dataset. The study finds evidence for the importance of social influence in mobile adoption in two modes: one that exerts pressure on individuals to adopt, and another that helps to generate benefits via social networks that are tied in with economic and business networks.

This document provides a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences made to date in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and explores the potential of the participatory web to improve living conditions in developing countries and regions. The report specifically documents the social networking aspects of Web 2.0 solutions that offer people in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange, and notes the general challenges of low connectivity, low literacy rates, lack of media competence to use the web and well functioning models to provide and target information.