FCRP - Emergent Media

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Developing a Digital and Traditional Political Participation (DTPP) Scale for Youth: A Validity and Reliability Study
(College of Communication and Public Relations, NUPSPA, 2023) Kuș, Zafer; Bertani, Michele; Ivan, Loredana; Mert, Hilal
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a political participation scale for youth, considering both traditional and digital political participation (DTPP). The research was conducted using 458 participants from Turkey, Italy, and Romania, aged between 15 and 29 years. Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were performed to test the structural validity of the scale. EFA results illustrated that scale consisted of three factors and the total variance was 61.23%. These factors were labeled as “digital political support”, “traditional political support” and “digital political following”. During confirmatory factor analysis, the three-factor structure was tested, and the resulting model produced an acceptable goodness of fit The scale consists of 39 items and the reliability coefficients for each subscale vary from .92 and .95. The results show that the scale is valid and reliable to measure traditional and digital political participation of young people.
Involving Older People in Participatory Action Research: An Example of Participatory Action Design
(College of Communication and Public Relations, NUPSPA, 2018) Schiau, Ioana; Ivan, Loredana; Bîră, Monica
Participatory Action Research (PAR) has as a main goal the collaborative construction and production of meanings between the researchers and the participants. PAR has been largely used in the area of technology creation and appropriation involving end-users in different stages of technology designing process. However, research studies concerning older people and their use of technology employ PAR to a lesser extent. In the current paper we provide arguments for the value of different participative action approaches when studying technology appropriation by older people, and present an example of a participatory action design that we have implemented in three Romanian cities, with people 60+, to reveal the way older adults depict their experience in using Facebook. We used a five-step collaborative research design – (1) initial evaluation; (2) training session; (3) immediate evaluation; (4) group co-creation; (5) final evaluation – to reflect on the participants’ experience through groups techniques and participant observation notes. Results reveal the fact that one trainer per each participant, adapting the interaction to the participant’s individual needs, intergenerational trainer-trainee communication and patience, as well as proper timing of the organized sessions are key factors to foster participant engagement with social media. In addition, the proposed participatory action design proved to have some potential to empower older people in long time engagement with social media.
Older Adults and the Digital Divide in Romania: Implications for the Covid-19 Pandemic
(2021-10-31) Ivan, Loredana; Cutler, Stephen
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Romania invoked the 15th Amendment of the European Convention of Human Rights for emergency situations and issued an Emergency State Presidential Decree (first put into effect on March 16 and extended until May 15, 2020). This amendment allowed for exemptions from broad categories of human rights (e.g., the right to privacy and intimacy). Older people became the main target of the Romanian government’s plans for isolation. Using data from the Romanian National Institute of Statistics and data gathered prior to the COVID-19 pandemic from a longitudinal study on communication technologies used by older people in Romania (Loos, Nimrod, & Fernández-Ardèvol, 2018; 2020), we examine the digital inequalities faced by Romanian elders. The current study addresses the following specific research questions: (1) what digital opportunities and limitations were faced by the older population of Romania: e.g., online shopping, asking for help from various organizations using online platforms, using online medical assistance, etc., and (2) how did digital inequalities shape the lives of older people in Romania? Although the data do not reflect the situation of older Internet users during pandemics, we used the most recent and detailed data regarding Internet behavior of older adults in Romania. The current article discusses the opportunities faced by those who already had access and Internet skills when the pandemic started, and the limitations faced by older people who were less digitally skilled. With many of the daily activities moving online during this period, older adults with poor digital skills or no Internet access risked social isolation. Also, we consider policy recommendations to reduce digital inequalities that affect elders. Although we focus on Romania, the current study typifies vulnerabilities older people face in emergent economies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The impact of ‘technology generations’ on older adults’ media use: Review of previous empirical research and a seven-country comparison
(International Society for Gerontechnology, 2020) Ivan, Loredana; Loos, Eugene; Bird, Ioana
Background: In our information society, media use plays an important role. However, knowledge is lacking about whether specific birth cohorts show preferences for specific traditional or new media and whether technology generations can be identified across different countries. Objective: A cross-cultural research project was carried out with the aim of providing empirical evidence for the concept of ‘technology generations’ formulated by Sackmann & Weymann (1994; 2013) in relation to media use by older adults. The research questions focus on empirical evidence for the existence of technology generations related to media use and preferences. Methods: We tested differences in media use and media preferences (traditional versus new media) in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain, using commensurate samples consisting of Internet users aged 60 years and older at the time we started collecting data in 2016 (N=10527). We selected three technology generations: the ‘mechanical generation’ (age group of 78 and above), the ‘household revolution generation’ (age group of 68-77), and the ‘technology spread generation’ (age group of 60-67), and analyzed the differences in media use and preferences between these technology generations and across the seven countries. Results: Our cross-cultural data reveal differences between the technology generations, especially in terms of media use, but not in technology media preference (time spent using different media). We also found the effect of country of origin to be stronger than the effect of generation in explaining older adults’ preferences for traditional vs new media. Conclusions: The results point to the need for a more nuanced view of the concept of ‘technology generation’, i.e., one taking into account contextual aspects, such as country of origin, gender, level of education, working status and the interaction effect between country of origin and ‘technology generation’.

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