Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 303 pp. $60 hbk., $20 pbk. Forecasts that the Internet heralds a world of more democracy and less poverty seem as inflated as dot.com stocks. This rosy view has electronic voting, political chat rooms, and email access re-engaging apathetic publics in politics. Digital technologies redress economic disparities, and the benefits of the Internet percolate down to transform poor societies. Equally exaggerated is the gloom of naysayers. The Internet Age has done little to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, the information haves and havenots, cyber-skeptics contend. Indeed, digital technologies could create new inequalities and reinforce the dominance of power elites. In her new book, Digital Divide, Pippa Norris, associate director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, steps into this fusillade of cyber-hyperbole, lowers the decibel with a well-written and thoughtful examination of Internet use and access in 179 countries and dissects the claims and counter-claims. Her research and findings place her on middle ground, somewhere between current reality and optimism. The Internet era seems to be changing "politics as usual" in a number of countries, expanding and loosening information about governments and politics, allowing the entrance of new political players, and fostering international movements on the environment, women's rights, and other issues across borders. The disappointment is that digital technologies are activating the already politically active and passing up the disengaged and uninterested. A major challenge to digital democracy is the gulf between the United States, Scandinavia, and other early Internet adopters and the rest of the world. That gap is now so wide that at the turn of the century, more than three-quarters of the online community lived in the developed world. Internet use tracks the path of economic and technological development. But that situation could begin to change, Norris says. The Internet is in its technological adolescence. Costs of access are falling. And governments can make a difference if policymakers take the initiative. We have the historical patterns of other communication technologies to study. Norris examines theories of technological diffusion and points out that the American response to the Internet is more akin to the rapid spread of televisions and VCRs than the slower adoption of telephones and radios. American dominance could recede as Internet access grows worldwide. Contrary to what officials of the Bush Administration contend, Norris finds that the digital divide between rich and poor within the United States remains substantial. Europe mirrors that trend. In the long run, the Internet could become more accessible to the excluded: lower income families, minorities, and women. …

Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide

Community engagement as a public mission of higher education is widely accepted in South Africa. This is articulated in White Paper 3 on the transformation of higher education and in institutional policies that promote different forms of community engagement. However, compared to the traditional roles of teaching and research, community engagement remains contested. It is most often viewed as voluntary and perhaps even peripheral. Given the serious social disparities in South Africa, community engagement needs to be invigorated and placed on par with the teaching and researching roles of universities. Furthermore, it should not only involve collaborative knowledge production, but should combine epistemological and ontological dimensions and involve holistic human development capable of dealing with social disparities A combined epistemological-ontological conception of community engagement is developed in this study and interventions are proposed at three levels. First, university induction programs, which tend to prioritize the teaching and researching roles of faculty members, should consider community engagement as equally important. Second, just as the teaching and researching roles tend to be well planned and/or incentivized, so too should community engagement. Third, community engagement should adopt a mode 2 knowledge production lens where community members reflexively produce knowledge together with faculty members and contribute to holistic human development. Finally, strategies are suggested to embed an epistemological-ontological conception of community engagement.

The public mission of universities in South Africa: community engagement and the teaching and researching roles of faculty members

Community engagement has become a key pillar of Higher Education that is intricately linked to the traditional academic roles of teaching and research. Meaningful collaboration with relevant external stakeholders that addresses critical socio-economic and developmental challenges in society is of strategic interest to many Higher Education Institutions. However, building significant and sustainable relationships between universities and external stakeholders is a complex task that is fraught with tensions that impede the achievement of set goals. A desktop documentary analysis was conducted using a literature review to examine these tensions with the objective of shedding light on how they impede institutionalisation of community engagement within universities. The article also identifies likely future trends in community engagement in the Higher Education sector, with particular emphasis on the impact of technology.

/pdf/university-community-engagement-current-tensions-and-future-1ca5p9ib6w.pdf

University-Community Engagement: Current Tensions and Future Trends

.................................................................................................................. III DECLARATION ............................................................................................................. V ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................... XIV CHAPTER 1: ..................................................................................................................

Community members' perceptions of higher education institutions' community engagement projects : the case of the WIN platform of the North-West University

Submitted in fulfillment of requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Food and Nutrition, Durban University of Technology, 2017.

https://openscholar.dut.ac.za/bitstream/10321/2672/1/GROBBELAAR_HH_2017.pdf

Development of a community engagement capacity building programme within a social justice framework for Consumer Science Food and Nutrition students at the Durban University of Technology

This article analyses the definition and understanding of the concept community engagement as one of the focal areas of Higher Education Institutions in South Africa. It captures the importance of a proper approach towards community engagement and contributes towards a practical method to guide the reader through the complex interaction between academic societies and communities. The article included recent anthropological and management research results to construct the working environment in which community engagement take place. It also describes the detail processes and practical methods to direct academic role players who act as community engagement facilitators. The reader will establish a better understanding of the community, its traditions and its culture as a holistic platform for understanding African communities. The proposed guidelines should enable community engagement facilitators to plan and execute community engagement initiatives effectively.

Community Engagement by Higher Education Institutions--A Practical Model and Guidelines.

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Community Engagement by Higher Education Institutions--A Practical Model and Guidelines.