Introduktion: Den digitala klyftan syftar på ojämlik tillgång till teknologi och försämrade hälsoskillnader, särskilt bland grupper med låg socioekonomisk status. Den digitala klyftan har en komplex påverkan på individers hälsa och välbefinnande, vilket medför ojämlikheter i tillgång till vård och hälsoutfall. Syfte: Denna litteraturstudie granskade den digitala klyftans inflytande på hälsoutfall inom grupper med låg socioekonomi Metoder: En litteraturstudie genomfördes med 12 vetenskapliga artiklar inom studiens syfte, genom sökningar i databaserna PubMed och CINAHL. Ramverket Digitala Regnbågen vägledde den tematiska analysen för att identifiera mönster och teman inom data i denna studie. Resultat: Studiens teman är: Effekten av den digitala klyftan på hälsa, inflytandet av socioekonomisk status på internetanvändning, inflytandet av socioekonomisk status på digital hälsolitteracitet och fördelar med internetanvändning. Resultaten avslöjar ojämlikheter i hälsoutfall, särskilt bland individer från grupper med låg socioekonomisk status. Skillnader i digital tillgång och användning förvärrar ojämlikheter i vårdtillgång, vilket påverkar livskvalitet, psykisk hälsa och välbefinnande. Socioekonomisk status påverkar internetåtkomst och användningsmönster. Dessutom påverkar socioekonomisk status förhållandet mellan digital litteracitet, internetanvändning och hälsoresultat. Internetåtkomst erbjuder fördelar som tillgång till hälsoinformation, telemedicinska plattformar och onlineresurser för förebyggande hälsa, särskilt under kriser som covid-19-pandemin. Slutsats: Kopplingen mellan den digitala klyftan, socioekonomiska skillnader och hälsoutfall visar hur begränsad digital tillgång förvärrar hälsoskillnader, särskilt bland grupper med låg socioekonomisk status. / Introduction: The digital divide refers to unequal access to technology and exacerbates health disparities, especially among low socioeconomic groups. The complex impact of the digital divide on people's health and well-being shows inequalities in healthcare access and outcomes. Aim: This literature study examined the impact of the digital divide on health outcomes among low-socioeconomic groups. Methods: A literature study was conducted with 12 scientific articles within the study aim, through searches in the databases PubMed and CINAHL. The Digital Rainbow Framework guided the thematic analysis to identify patterns and themes across the dataset in this study. Results: The study's themes are: The impact of the digital divide on health, the influence of socioeconomic status on internet use, the influence of socioeconomic status on digital health literacy, and internet usage benefits. Findings reveal disparities in health outcomes, particularly among low socioeconomic status groups. Disparities in digital access and utilization exacerbate inequalities in healthcare access influencing- quality of life, mental health, and well-being. Socioeconomic status significantly influences internet access and utilization patterns. Socioeconomic status influences the relationship between digital health literacy, internet utilization, and health outcomes. Internet access offers benefits such as health information, telemedicine platforms, and online resources for preventive health, particularly during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: The connection between the digital divide, socioeconomic disparities, and health outcomes shows how limited digital access worsens health inequalities, especially among low-socioeconomic groups.

The study set out to investigate the provision of sustainable internet access to public libraries in South Africa. The rationale of the study was to investigate how sustainable internet access can be provided to public libraries in South Africa and to determine how they have developed and are regulated. Internet access is a key driver in delivering information services to the users and a critical tool in facilitating information sharing regardless of platform and geographic location. Therefore, the level of information and communications technology (ICT) penetration in public libraries formed a critical part of the study as the provision of internet to these libraries depends on available ICTs. The study employed a survey design and used interview tool to collect data from nine participants. Questionnaire augmented interviews as they were used to collect data from 322 respondents. The study used the probability sampling technique to collect data from the participants. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the participants for the interview, whereas the stratified probability, proportional to size, and systematic techniques were also used to select respondents in the senior categories, namely heads of public libraries. This ensured a sample size of 331 out of a population of 1 621 selected for the study. The sample size consisted of nine directors and 322 head librarians. No sampling was done on the nine heads (directors) of provincial public libraries, as the nature of this population did not warrant further dissection due to its small size. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was used to analyse data. Questionnaires were analysed when they were returned and interviews were analysed when they were conducted. Written descriptions, tables and figures were used to present data in an elaborative manner. Data was also presented through frequencies and percentages. It emerged from the study that most public libraries (97%) were connected to the internet. The findings of the study showed that most public libraries (80%) were connected to the internet through the fixed lines and that each of the nine provinces had its own internet service providers (table 5.12). The study recommended fixed lines for internet access to be laid to all public libraries in South Africa and that a government agency be used as a dedicated internet service provider for public libraries across all the nine provinces. A further study was recommended about the application of an internet access model used by academic institutions to public libraries. / Information Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

The discussion of introducing the Internet at St. Joseph's Theological Institute in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa took place in 2002 and access to the Internet was introduced in 2003 via 70 computers which were housed in the library. Given that the Internet has emerged as an important learning tool at the tertiary level, the aim of the study was to investigate the use of the Internet by the students at St. Joseph's. The specific objectives of the study were as follows: to find out which students were using the Internet, to find out what students were using the Internet for, to find how often students used the Internet and when they used it, to find out the problems experienced by those students who used the Internet, to find out why certain students do not use the Internet, and lastly the study aimed to make recommendations concerning the use of the Internet by students. The survey research method was used and the data was collected through a self administered questionnaire. No sampling was done as the entire population of 188 students was surveyed. Sixty five students responded - a response rate of 34.6 %. Findings revealed that of the 65 students who completed the questionnaires 34 (52.3%) had used the Internet and 31 (47.6%) had not. Out of the 24 respondents who gave reasons for not having used the Internet, the majority 17 (70.8%) of respondents said that they had not received formal training and did not know how to use the Internet. The major problems facing the Internet users at St. Joseph 's were the shortage of computers mentioned by 13 (38.2%) respondents and computers being slow as indicated by 13 (38.2%) respondents. Six (17.6%) respondents also pointed to not having enough training in the use of Internet facilities. Recommendations concerning Internet use at the Institute were made and suggestions for further research put forward. / Thesis (M.I.S.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

Road accidents represent a serious social problem and are one of the leading causes of human death and disability on a global scale. To reduce the risk and severity of a road accident, a variety of new safety applications can be realized through wireless communications among vehicles driving nearby each other, or among vehicles and especially deployed road side units (RSUs), a technology known as a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). Most of the VANET-enabled safety applications are based on broadcasting of safety messages by vehicles or RSUs, either periodically or in case of an unexpected event, such as a hard brake or dangerous road condition detection. Each broadcast safety message should be successfully delivered to the surrounding vehicles and RSUs without any excess delay, which is one of the main functions of a medium access control (MAC) protocol proposed for VANETs. This thesis presents VeMAC, a new multichannel time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol specifically designed to support the high priority safety applications in a VANET scenario. The ability of the VeMAC protocol to deliver periodic and event-driven safety messages in VANETs is demonstrated by a detailed delivery delay analysis, including queueing and service delays, for both types of safety messages. As well, computer simulations are conducted by using MATLAB, the network simulator ns-2, and the microscopic vehicle traffic simulator VISSIM, in order to evaluate the performance of the VeMAC protocol, in comparison with the IEEE 802.11p standard and the ADHOC MAC protocol (another TDMA protocol proposed for ad hoc networks). A real city scenario is simulated and different performance metrics are evaluated, including the network goodput, protocol overhead, channel utilization, protocol fairness, probability of a transmission collision, and safety message delivery delay. It is shown that the VeMAC protocol considerably outperforms the existing MAC schemes, which have significant limitations in supporting VANET safety applications. In addition to enhancing road safety, in-vehicle Internet access is one of the main applications of VANETs, which aims at providing the vehicle passengers with a low-cost access to the Internet via on-road gateways. This thesis presents a new strategy for deploying Internet gateways on the roads, in order to minimize the total cost of gateway deployment, while ensuring that a vehicle can connect to an Internet gateway (using multihop communications) with a probability greater than a specified threshold. This cost minimization problem is formulated by using binary integer programming, and applied for optimal gateway placement in a real city scenario. To the best of our knowledge, no previous strategy for gateway deployment has considered the probability of multihop connectivity among the vehicles and the deployed gateways. In order to allow a vehicle to discover the existence of an Internet gateway and to communicate with the gateway via multihops, a novel data packet routing scheme is proposed based on the VeMAC protocol. The performance of this cross-layer design is evaluated for a multichannel VANET in a highway scenario, mainly in terms of the end-to-end packet delivery delay. The packet queueing at each relay vehicle is considered in the end-to-end delay analysis, and numerical results are presented to study the effect of various parameters, such as the vehicle density and the packet arrival rate, on the performance metrics. The proposed VeMAC protocol is a promising candidate for MAC in VANETs, which can realize many advanced safety applications to enhance the public safety standards and improve the safety level of drivers/passengers and pedestrians on roads. On the other hand, the proposed gateway placement strategy and packet routing scheme represent a strong step toward providing reliable and ubiquitous in-vehicle Internet connectivity.

Theses deal with opportunities of e-government, possible changes in the society after implementation of e-government projects, provision of high level electronic public services (EPS) which are recommended by the EU program documents. They also analyse supply and demand of e-government services in the society, level of society satisfaction by e-government services, influence of e-government to the sphere of rapidly developing and improving technologies. Theses present and analyse samples of e-government services of foreign countries which enable to assess shortcomings of services, future perspectives of other countries. Theses analyse e-government situation in Lithuania.

Throughout the Europe, special attention is paid to the development, provision and design of electronical services. Experience of foreign countries proposes that e-education plays a significant role both in social development and the development of country or its regions in economical, cultural and other aspects. Goal of work: to analyze the influence of the provided services of e-education to the social development in the municipal level.

Thesis ((M.A. (Information Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / This study investigated the users‟ perspective of the role played by public libraries in bridging the digital divide in the rural-urban communities with specific reference to Ngaka Modiri Molema District libraries, in the North-West Province, South Africa. The research methodology utilized in this study is a descriptive survey in design and quantitative in nature, through a questionnaire as a data collection tool, distributed to hundred (100) library users selected through quota, convenience and accidental sampling methods. Twenty (20) library users belonging to each of the five public libraries in the district participated in the study. It is revealed that public libraries in the Ngaka Modiri Molema District are playing a significant and crucial role in bridging the digital divide. This is due to the fact that the library users have indicated that they are able to conduct research, send and receive e-mails; they are able to type their personal and academic documents and even play computer games with the library computers and the internet. Based on these findings, this study recommends that district municipalities and the provincial government should continue to provide the public libraries with computers connected to the internet to all the libraries in Ngaka Modiri Molema District and to train the public librarians to be able to impart computer skills to the communities. Public librarians should also initiate computer orientation courses to provide basic skills to those who are computer illiterate in the communities.

The use of computers equipped with Internet access by students during face-to-face (F2F) class sessions is perceived as academically beneficial by a growing number of students and faculty members in universities across the United States. Nevertheless, some researchers suggest unstructured computer use detached from the immediate class content may negatively influence student participation, increase distraction levels, minimize recall of recently presented information, and decrease student engagement. This study investigates graduate students' beliefs about computer use with Internet access during graduate face-to-face lecture classes in which computer use is neither mandated nor integrated in the class and the effect of such use on student recall. Methods include a 44-item questionnaire to investigate graduate students' beliefs about computers and two experiments to investigate the influence of computer use during a lecture on students' memory recall. One experimental group (open laptop) used computers during a lecture while the other (closed laptop) did not. Both groups were given the same memory recall test after the lectures, and the resulting scores were analyzed. Two weeks later, a second phase of the experiment was implemented in which laptop groups were reversed. Results from the first experiment indicated no statistically significant difference in recall scores between the open laptop group (M = 54.90, SD = 19.65) and the closed laptop group (M = 42.86, SD = 16.68); t (29) = -1.82, p = .08 (two tailed). Conversely, the second experiment revealed statistically significant differences in scores between the open laptop (M = 39.67, SD = 15.97) and the closed laptop group (M = 59.29, SD = 26.88); t (20.89) = 2.37, p = .03 (two tailed). The magnitude of the difference in mean scores (mean difference = 19.62, 95% CI: 2.39 to 36.85) was large (eta squared = 0.17). Multiple regression analysis suggests two factors accounted for 10% of the variance in recall scores: (1) students' beliefs about distractions from computer use, and (2) beliefs about the influence of computer use on memory recall. Based on survey findings, participants (N=116) viewed computers and Internet access in graduate classes as helpful academic tools, but distractions from computer use were major sources of concern for students who used computers in graduate classes and those who did not. Additionally, participants believed academic productivity would increase if instructors integrated computer use appropriately in the curricula. Results of the survey and experiments suggest unstructured computer use with Internet access in the graduate classroom is strongly correlated with increased student distractions and decreased memory recall. Thus, restricting unstructured computer use is likely to increase existing memory recall levels, and increasing unstructured computer use is likely to reduce memory recall. Recommendations include changes in the way students use computers, pedagogical shifts, computer integration strategies, modified seating arrangements, increased accountability, and improved interaction between instructors and students.

本研究所欲探討的主題，為國內 ISP 業者降低客戶流失率所採用的做法。由於目前ISP業競爭十分激烈，各業者為了爭奪市場，常常以低價，乃至於不計成本的做法爭取客戶。然而這些虧本爭取的客戶若不能有效的留住，之前的投資可為白白浪費。因此，如何能夠有效的降低客戶流失率，是ISP業者非常重要的課題。 降低客戶流失的可行手段之一，是提高服務品質，讓客戶滿意於供應商的服務而樂於長期使用。另一種方式則是產品之鎖定機制 (Lock-in) 的運用，使客戶一旦購買某一項服務，因受到產品機制的鎖定而提高轉換成本，而不願轉換 ISP。一旦ISP能夠以適當有效的做法降低客戶流失率，就能以各種即使沒有利潤乃至於虧損的做法先吸引客戶進門，再由後續的服務回收應得的利潤。也唯有如此，ISP業者才能在嚴酷的競爭中存活。 本研究透過瞭解 ISP 產業之特性與類型；對台灣的十一家具有代表性之ISP業者，調查與整理其服務品質，以及所使用的產品鎖定機制；探討服務品質高低與市場佔有率之關係，以及不同類型之 ISP 所採用之做法的差異，並給予不同的改進建議。主要的研究結論如下： ◆ 高品質的服務有助於大型ISP業者維持市場佔有率，同時對於中小型業者的市場佔有率提昇有所助益。反之，低服務品質對於ISP維持市場佔有率有不利的影響。 ◆ 同時有助於吸引新客戶與維繫舊客戶的服務要素，以及可直接增加營收，或是減少成本的服務要素，為ISP優先重視之項目。 ◆ 服務品質領先之業者與落後者的差異，主要為交易中的服務要素。 ◆ 大型與中小型ISP在服務品質有差異之項目上，大型業者具有絕對領先優勢。兼營IDC業務之ISP與純ISP，在服務品質有差異之項目上，兼營IDC之業者具有絕對領先優勢。 ◆ 簡單之產品鎖定機制最受到ISP業者的歡迎。

This study presents a quantitative investigation of the influence of various social factors – including finances, secondary school attended, resources available, culture, and family support – on the perceptions of success (in terms of academic performance and skills gained) of adult learners who are using online learning as the primary educational medium. The research was conducted with 100 students of The International Hotel School in South Africa. A quantitative research methodology was followed and a survey questionnaire was used as the data collection method. The data from closed-ended questions was analysed using Statistical Analysis System (SAS), with the data from open-ended questions being used to aid in the interpretation of the information organised quantitatively. Findings suggest that certain social factor constructs namely: finances, secondary school preparation for tertiary education, and internet accessibility, significantly impact the perceptions the students have on being successful in online learning. Some recommendations that spring from the study are to provide more funding to students, better access to more suitable resources and providing students with unlimited access to the internet for longer periods of time. It is also recommended that a follow-up study with a larger and more varied sample (possibly including public sector tertiary education students), and more questionnaire items per social factor is necessary to cast further light on the impact of social factors on adult students’ online learning experiences. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (With specialisation in Adult Education)