Murat Akçayır’s research while affiliated with University of Alberta and other places

Digital literacy research and practice typically presume certain conditions, such as an urban orientation and adequate, affordable access to connectivity and devices. But these conditions are not universal; for example, people in small, rural/remote Indigenous communities may seek to balance connectivity challenges and digital innovations with land-based living specific to place and community. Drawing on efforts to broaden critical digital literacies to support Indigenous sovereignty, we consider how overlapping contexts of places, communities, and infrastructures intersect in the cocreation of appropriate digital literacy. Specifically, we discuss a series of virtually facilitated, participatory workshops that utilize “hacker literacies” and “infrastructure literacy” to reimagine connectivity infrastructure and demonstrate the potential of community networking in, with, and by rural/remote Indigenous communities. We also reflect on limitations of this work and identify lessons for future projects.

In Canada, residents of rural, remote and Northern communities generally pay more for slower, less reliable, and more expensive telecommunications services compared to southern and urban residents. This situation is particularly concentrated in small-population, rural Indigenous communities located in the Northern territories. Over the last several decades, many public policy initiatives have attempted to develop telecommunications services, including high-speed broadband, in these underserved areas. However, Northern input into these initiatives and their outcomes has been limited — despite increasing evidence of the benefits of place-based planning, monitoring and evaluation processes. In this context we examine a recent public consultation about telecommunication services in these regions, focusing on expectations submitted by individual Northerners and by intermediary organizations representing their interests. Our analysis reveals distinct but complementary functions expressed by these different kinds of intervenors, which we suggest policymakers could take into consideration when planning consultations involving rural and remote regions.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, access to adequate, affordable, reliable broadband has become essential to many aspects of modern life. However, while urban centers in Canada already benefit from high-speed broadband services, many rural/remote and Northern communities face increasingly concentrated spaces of exclusion associated with digital divides. Inequalities in broadband services in Northern Canada have long been recognized by the federal government, which has initiated policies, regulations and funding programs to support the deployment of better connectivity infrastructure and services. Historically, many of these initiatives reflect a top-down approach that fails to consider the diversity of the communities and regions they are designed to support. Here, we focus on a case study of a policy consultation held by the national telecommunications regulator in an effort to learn current issues and challenges in the North. Consistent with existing research, our findings revealed that the most frequently reported challenges are the high cost of access, slow speeds, and limited competition. We also point out fewer submissions from smaller rural communities and argue that policymakers and researchers should pay closer attention to place-based challenges identified in different types of communities, and adopt more precise engagement tools and processes to encourage input from community members.

This study presents a large-scale mapping review of how the literature on gambling identifies suggested solutions to prevent or reduce gambling harm and whose responsibility it is to implement them. The purpose of this is to provide a concise reference for stakeholders who must make critical decisions regarding the enhancement of consumer protection and harm minimization measures. Two databases, Scopus and Web of Science, were searched to identify relevant studies. The initial search yielded 5135 results, from which a total of 1292 empirical studies published between 2014 and 2018 were selected for analysis. Inductive content analysis was performed to identify suggested solutions reported in each study. The results indicate that commonly suggested solutions are the creation of educational and awareness programs (e.g., information on the risks of gambling, resources for help seekers, how games really work) and further restrictions on gambling advertising. We found that health service providers are mostly given the responsibility to implement various strategies, followed by policy makers. Numerous empirically proven suggestions for health service providers, policy makers, gambling industry operators, educational institutions, consumers, and families are discussed in detail.

The goal of the present systematic review is to identify emerging gambling problems and the harm minimization strategies proposed to address them. Our interdisciplinary research team conducted this systematic literature review in 5 nations between which there is significant gambling research exchange. A keyword search of the Scopus and Web of Science databases followed by filtering using inclusion criteria identified 1292 empirical gambling studies from peer-reviewed journals. The data obtained from the articles were analyzed using the content analysis technique. We then used a unique approach to identify relationships between harm minimization strategies and gambling problems. The findings reveal that the most frequently reported gambling problems are related to young gamblers, online gambling, electronic gaming machines, and children and adolescents (underage gamblers). Harm minimization strategies to address these included creating educational and awareness programs, further restrictions on gambling advertising, developing an intervention mechanism for online gambling, and remote gambling-related help (i.e., online counseling, online treatment).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the current academic research foci in peer-reviewed studies on gambling. The researchers used co-citation analysis as a bibliometrics method. All the gambling-related publications indexed in Scopus and Web of Science were identified, and their citation patterns were analyzed. Our dataset includes a total of 2418 peer-reviewed gambling studies published over the five-year period from 2014–2018. The VOSviewer tool was used to visualize bibliometric networks and reveal key clusters among the studies. The findings indicate that gambling researchers mostly cited authors from the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology, health science, and psychiatry. Only 2% of the cited authors were from other disciplines, such as those in the social sciences and humanities. The most frequently cited sources also reveal the same pattern: that gambling researchers mostly cited articles published in neuroscience, psychology, and health science journals. The publications reviewed deal mainly with the pathological and treatment aspects of gambling. We also discovered some unique patterns of citation and collaboration, focusing on topics such as videogames, social network games, family, business, and tourism.