Society is facing two major challenges: the digitization of all spheres of society and an increase in lifespans . In the latter case, progress has been remarkable. In Canada, for instance, life expectancy at birth reached 79.3 years for men and 83.6 years for women in the 2009 period (Martel, 2013. Progress has been comparable in the rest of the world with life expectancy increasing spectacularly since the 2000s (World Health Organization, 2016). On the basis of these challenges, how can we reconcile the demographic phenomenon of increased lifespans with the digitization of society? How can we ensure that digital innovations benefit everyone and especially older people?With regard to the connections between technology and older people, commentators often succumb to two misconceptions: for some of them, seniors have little interest in digital technologies and are thus reluctant to use them; for others, the main role of such technologies should be social and medical assistance, an attitude often accompanied by an association of old age with dependency and loss of autonomy . In this issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication, the goal is to move beyond such misconceptions in order to highlight the vast potential in seniors' everyday lives. This issue aims moreover to suggest new ways of considering the links between technology and seniors and to take the multiple facets of aging into account in an analysis of the uses of technology, the digital divide, and the influence of the sociocultural environment.The originality of the research presented in this issue resides in the fact that the authors seek to explore the practices of inclusion and exclusion of older people in our networked society and they do so from various vantage points ranging from North America to Africa by way of Europe and the island of Réunion.The article by Eszter Hargittai and Kerry Dobransky focusses on the digital divide related to internet use. Their study is based on a wealth of data gathered from 1,000 users, many of whom are in the 80-to 90-year-old range. It reveals that, among seniors, the adoption of the internet reflects societal tendencies observable in the rest of the population, with the use of digital technologies closely linked to level of education and socioeconomic status. The authors also demonstrate that, among older users, the age variable is negatively correlated with competency and that experience and autonomy are more likely to shape beliefs and perceptions on internet use.If more and more analyses highlight the existence of inequalities when it comes to the efficient and efficacious use of network computing, few of them focus on the connections between Deafhood, aging and technology use. The article by Véro Leduc
<p>The need for digital literacy is apparent in today’s workplace, driven by strong pressures for constant technological innovation. Previous studies have shown that although older workers make up (and will make up) a great proportion of the workforce, there persists an age-based digital divide in the workplace; and the outcome of such divide is quite negative: at the individual level, older workers feel they’re being marginalized and as such, become dissatisfied and disengage from their workplace; at the organizational level, a pool of skills and expertise is lost as a result of the older worker’s disengagement, putting at risk effective knowledge transfer and mentoring process. Hence, the importance of a deeper understanding of the contextual factors that may feed the <strong>‘</strong>grey digital divide<strong>’ </strong>in the workplace. The goal of this paper is to address such factors moving beyond the ageist claim that a worker’s chronological age is the driving force behind the <strong>‘</strong>grey digital divide<strong>’</strong>.</p>
Résumé L'expérience migratoire, loin de constituer la perte d'identité de l'immigrant, engendre souvent de puissantes formes de mobilisation culturelle et sociale. Cette mobilisation est de plus en plus visible de nos jours, en raison de l'accès facile aux différents moyens de communication. Les Somaliens au Canada, par leur utilisation quotidienne des vidéos, de la télévision et de la radio, tentent de maintenir leur identité culturelle. Les pratiques médiatiques de la communauté somalienne expriment la volonté de se créer un espace permettant à la fois de développer un point de vue négocié et critique sur sa représentation dans l'espace public canadien et de proposer une vision spécifique du monde vécu. Le processus de conception de cet espace correspond à la nécessité de créer des « traces » pour la reconstruction symbolique de la Somalie ravagée par la guerre depuis deux décennies.
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