Online Digital Platforms Research Articles

The Competition Economics of Digital Platforms

This article provides an overview of the competitive issues surrounding online platforms. The general theme is that while much has been made of the structural features of online platforms there is little hard evidence that these are durable monopolies. Nonetheless, there are concerns about the behaviour of large online digital platforms arising from their vertical integration, self-preferencing, killer acquisitions, and agglomeration. Developments in and relevance to ASEAN countries are discussed.

Geoinformation support of environmental safety while Arctic and Subarctic territories sustainable development

Article considers digital tools development results for geoinformation support of environmental safety while sustainable development of the Arctic and subarctic territories in the era of Industry 4.0 within adaptation to climate change and COVID-19 conditions. The study used methods of decision-making under uncertainty and digital tools of distributed platforms with new concepts of data acquisition and presentation. It is proposed to use open-source digital online platforms for geoinformation support of environmental safety within sustainable development of the Arctic and subarctic territories in the era of Industry 4.0 and simultaneous adaptation to climate change and COVID-19 conditions. There are considered examples of proposed digital platforms using. The results of the research can be used for managerial, scientific, educational and training purposes.

ONLINE DIGITAL PLATFORMS DURING COVID-19 IN EFL CLASSES: VISUAL IMPAIRMENT STUDENT’ PERCEPTION

ABSTRACT. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the government decided to implement work and learning from home. Teachers are expected to teach online. It also applied to teaching and learning English. Thus, Google Classroom, WhatsApp, and Zoom are commonly used as online learning platforms by EFL teachers and students during pandemic. The online digital platforms are also used as the main tool to provide teaching materials not only for the sighted student but also for Visual Impairment student (VIs). The present study is aimed at investigating how Visual Impairment student (VIs) perceive utilizing Digital Platforms in online learning, the barriers VIs faced in utilizing Digital Platforms, and the kinds of Digital Platforms that appropriate for Visual Impairment student (VIs). The study involved one Visual Impairment student (low vision) in one of the private universities of Makassar, South Sulawesi. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. It analyzed using descriptive qualitative research. The results of the study showed that Visual impairment has a positive response towards Google Classroom, WhatsApp, and Zoom in understanding the content, improving the ability to use various digital platforms in learning, presenting more interesting teaching materials, selecting of Digital Platforms by English Language skill, and hindering of utilizing Digital Platform. Even though slow-speed internet connectivity, take longer, and vague learning instruction was considered to be barriers in using Digital Platforms. Besides, Zoom is a digital platform that appropriates for VIs; Zoom is a video conferencing learning platform that offers VIs an opportunity to respond in real-time and there is a recording system that records the learning process from start to finish.

Impacts of Digital Marketing on the Pharmacies Community in Saudi Arabia and Determining the Future Model of the Industry: A Cross-Sectional Questionnaire-based Study

Abstract: Background: Pharmaceutical and telemedicine industries are now finding ways in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by adopting innovative and successful business models along with groundbreaking strategies using digital online platforms particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The present study analyzes the impacts and frequencies of digital marketing technology usage among pharmacies and customers. A crosssection study was carried out using a non-repeated random sampling technique and a standardized questionnaire survey was conducted employing online telephone interviews. Binomial, Chi-square, multinomial logistic regression and the multivariate statistics were applied on data sets to determine the comparison and relationship between variables and their categories. Results: These study findings revealed that customers used the web services tool of pharmaceutical companies significantly (p<0.05) more than other digital marketing or social media platforms. Approximately, 36 pharmacies agreed out of 51 to the fact that webinars are effective, efficient and resourceful for online engagement with all shareholders regarding the product. Conclusion: Most respondents recognized that social media chats are to be more operative and ferocious in terms of marketing communications. Key words: Digital Marketing, Pharmacy, Pandemic, Digitalization, Social Media.

Diagnostic Regions Attention Network (DRA-Net) for Histopathology WSI Recommendation and Retrieval.

The development of whole slide imaging techniques and online digital pathology platforms have accelerated the popularization of telepathology for remote tumor diagnoses. During a diagnosis, the behavior information of the pathologist can be recorded by the platform and then archived with the digital case. The browsing path of the pathologist on the WSI is one of the valuable information in the digital database because the image content within the path is expected to be highly correlated with the diagnosis report of the pathologist. In this article, we proposed a novel approach for computer-assisted cancer diagnosis named session-based histopathology image recommendation (SHIR) based on the browsing paths on WSIs. To achieve the SHIR, we developed a novel diagnostic regions attention network (DRA-Net) to learn the pathology knowledge from the image content associated with the browsing paths. The DRA-Net does not rely on the pixel-level or region-level annotations of pathologists. All the data for training can be automatically collected by the digital pathology platform without interrupting the pathologists' diagnoses. The proposed approaches were evaluated on a gastric dataset containing 983 cases within 5 categories of gastric lesions. The quantitative and qualitative assessments on the dataset have demonstrated the proposed SHIR framework with the novel DRA-Net is effective in recommending diagnostically relevant cases for auxiliary diagnosis. The MRR and MAP for the recommendation are respectively 0.816 and 0.836 on the gastric dataset. The source code of the DRA-Net is available at https://github.com/zhengyushan/dpathnet.

Prosecutor at the initial stage of criminal proceedings: finding ways to optimize activities in the light of digital technologies

This article is devoted to the problems of participation of the Prosecutor at the initial stage of criminal proceedings and the search for ways to optimize its activities in the light of the digital transformation of the Prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation, carried out in three main areas, namely high-tech supervision, digital infrastructure, and the environment of trust. The transition to high-tech supervision and the development of digital infrastructure should lead to work with a single electronic case on the basis of a single interdepartmental digital online platform. At the same time, a single interdepartmental digital online platform will ensure interaction both within the prosecutor’s office and the interaction of the prosecutor’s office with the investigation, inquiry, public, and court bodies. The conclusion is drawn that the digital transformation of the Russian prosecutor’s office optimizes the activities of prosecutors at the initial stage of criminal proceedings, but this should be preceded by legislative changes aimed at strengthening the role of the prosecutor in pre-trial proceedings. It also states the need to increase the availability of information to citizens about the activities of prosecutors and the state of legality in pre-trial criminal proceedings and expand the list of statistical data posted on the official website of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation.

The Culture of White Space: On The Racialized Production of Meaning

This article focuses on processes of meaning making in White spaces as the glue that holds their social structures together. Understanding White spaces and how they operate necessitates theoretical development from a cultural perspective. The authors’ research empirically engages with a wide range of White spaces—neighborhoods, subcultural scenes, craft breweries, online digital platforms, and academia, to name a few—and do so from a theoretical space where the two areas of sociology meet: race and culture. We engage with three key questions to theorize the culture of White space: (a) How do these White spaces work? (b) How are these White spaces challenged? (c) How do these White spaces change and/or reproduce themselves? From these engagements, this article develops a general approach to understanding White spaces through understanding their racialized processes of meaning making.

Investments in the Sharing Economy and their Impact on the Employment Structural Changes

The article examines topical issues related to structural changes in employment in the Russian economy, due to the intensive development of the sharing economy. Theaimof the study is to systematize disparate knowledge in assessing the impact of investments in the sharing economy on the employment structure, providing an understanding of the labor market, which is influenced by transformation processes in consumption patterns and factors of digitalization of the economy, as well as to develop recommendations for improving state policy in the field of employment. Based on themethodsof theoretical research (analysis and synthesis, generalization), the authors reviewed scientific literature and information from various sources, identified the main elements characterizing the model of collaborative consumption, considered by various researchers and online platforms. The study highlights the scientific concepts and approaches to the definition of the sharing economy, including the concept of a shared economy; collaborative economy as well as access-based consumption (to resources); network interaction; commercial exchange systems. Thenoveltyof the study lies in the fact that the authors show how investments in the further development of the infrastructure of the sharing economy, including the development of digital online platforms, lead to an increase in the number of employers and workers by removing barriers and reducing transaction costs. The authors proposerecommendationsfor solving employment issues: to form a system for measuring the sharing economy and accounting for it in official statistics; provide a regulatory framework for the functioning of digital platforms; ensure the privacy of personal data and the safety of citizens participating in the sharing economy. It wasconcludedthat the implementation of the proposed measures will have a positive impact on the Russian labor market and increase the investment attractiveness of the most important sectors of the sharing economy

The Digital Services Act Package: Reflections on the EU Commission’s Policy Options

The forthcoming Digital Services Act package (DSA) is a legislative initiative to regulate online digital platforms, including online marketplaces, social media platforms, search engines, video gaming platforms and other information society services and internet service providers.As the first major piece of legislation for the sector since the e-Commerce Directive of 2000, it will define what the internet will be for years to come and impact internet governance not only in Europe, but globally.In addition to general rules applicable to all platforms, specific obligations will apply to ‘very large online platforms’ or ‘gatekeepers’.The initiative comes at the right time: COVID-19 is making obvious how much citizens, workers, consumers and businesses depend on digital services and online digital platforms.Online digital platforms enable web-based jobs or digital labour. This key aspect is not covered by the DSA package, it will be addressed through an ‘enhanced framework’ in 2021. Given the negative impact of platform work on labour conditions, security and worker protection, the DSA should not remain blind to the responsibilities platforms have towards the people they employ and leave this issue for later.

‘Personalised risk’ in paid care work and the impacts of ‘gig economy’ care platforms and other market-based organisations

Research has identified ‘personalised risks’ for workers due to changes in the public/private dimensions of care where workers are directly employed or engaged by care users in individualised care systems. Drawing on interviews with workers in Australia’s new individualised disability services market, the research explores personalised risk and the effects of involvement in personalised care relationships of market-based organisations, including online digital care platforms. It finds that rather than having a protective role, both digital platforms and employing organisations can increase risks for workers in individualised care relationships.

From the Western to the Kremlin and Back

In the last years the arrival of international OTT providers and the development of national online digital platforms have deeply changed the Russian television environment. The constant need of both national self-affirmation and new contents has led to the development of different paths of content creation. In particular, foreign ready-made contents follow three paths: adaptation, localization and ‘Russification’, depending on their genre. The ‘Russification’ process is the most peculiar one and consists in the re-creation of a foreign product with local resources. The article will give the reader some key-concept to understand some of the most popular ‘Russification’ attempts, from the very first (The Nanny) to the most contemporary (Adaptation).

Implementation of the Constitutional Obligation of the State to Ensure Access to Justice in the Context of Digital Technologies Development

The paper shows that ensuring access to justice is enshrined in the constitutions of most UN member states. The specificity of the Russian constitutional norm lies in the fact that ensuring access to justice for victims of crimes is imposed on the state as its duty. In criminal proceedings, this obligation is realized through the activities of the preliminary investigation bodies, the prosecutor, and the court. The author proposes measures aimed at building pre-trial proceedings that effectively ensure access to justice: refusal from the stage of initiation of a criminal case and indicating the preliminary investigation from the moment of registration of a crime report; empowering the prosecutor to initiate criminal proceedings, direct investigations and bring charges; expansion of judicial control in pre-trial proceedings; development of effective simplified and accelerated procedures in preliminary production; supplementing the grounds for termination of a criminal case, criminal prosecution by the inexpediency of criminal prosecution. It is shown that the introduction of digital technologies in the criminal process, including the establishment of digital interaction between state bodies and the population through a single secure digital online platform, should become an independent direction for improving pre-trial proceedings; creation of a mechanism for filing a crime report through a special online service; automatic registration of applications and determination of the direction of their movement using the capabilities of artificial intelligence; introduction of an electronic criminal case; use of semantic neural networks, computer vision, data clustering, etc. in the criminal process.

The Impact of Additive Technologies on Determining the Tort Liability Model of an Online Platform Operator

In the paper, the author points out that humanity has moved into the era of information society, the era of digitalization, when the digitalization of all socio-economic relations becomes an inevitable global process radically changing the existence of man and even of man himself. In the sphere of Economics, the traditional borders between the producer, seller (intermediary) and consumer of goods are being erased, and the phenomenon of sharing economy is replacing traditional channels and supply chains, radically transforming socio-economic relations. New forms of collaboration between manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers are emerging, and a new technological infrastructure for such collaboration is actively developing, i.e. digital online platforms that act as one of the drivers of the fourth industrial revolution. The development of the three-dimensional printing technology allows any individual to participate in the creation of various material goods. Printing of material objects is based on a three-dimensional digital model, the digital equivalent of its physical embodiment. A serious legal challenge is the regulation of relations related to the circulation and use of three-dimensional models of objects of the material world, as well as liability for damage caused by a defect in the three-dimensional digital model.The paper contains a number of prognostic conclusions. If a defective three-dimensional digital model is purchased for a fee as a product (digital content) on the corresponding online platform, it is possible to impose tort liability on both the counterparty under the contract and the platform operator. Such liability must be strict, joint and several. A strict, joint and several liability model will serve as an incentive to ensure transparency in the field of digital turnover, as well as exert a preventive influence by deterring illegal behavior. If the identity of the seller of digital content is not established, only the platform operator will be held liable.If a defective three-dimensional digital model is placed free of charge on the hosting site, the creator of such a digital model will be held liable. The responsibility of a hosting provider that provides only a technical service for hosting content must be subject to the rules on the responsibility of the information intermediary.

A Review: Digital Archeology of the Modern American Libertarian Movement

Abstract The modern American libertarian movement began in the mid-1960s. The surviving written resources from this early era are vanishing, unless converted to digital format. This article provides background for the development of this movement and presents currently available online digital publication platforms. Along with some relevant publications in need of digital preservation.

Rethinking Abuse of Dominance in the Light of Causation

There have been substantial reforms in business models; companies that used to compete on prices to gain more consumers in the market is an old concept in the status quo. Business models have drastically changed from pure price to non-price competition where goods and services like social networking are provided free of cost to the users in the market. This non-price competition is often based on data privacy and online digital platforms. With the changing business models, competition authorities around the globe have also enhanced their tools to catch new anti-competitive practices which are detrimental to effective competition. Still, some competition tools need to be put on a highlight, and they need some new reforms to enable the companies to compete effectively on the market. Amongst those tools is the element of causation. Causation, which is supposed to link the dominant position of the company to its practices on the market, is missing and bewildered in the case-law of the EU. This thesis focuses on the element of causation, particularly in online digital platforms and data privacy cases. It will address why causation is required to link the dominant position of the company to its practice in new digital competition. More specifically, the thesis focuses on the importance of causation when a competition authority is dealing with Article 102 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (hereinafter: ‘TFEU’) data privacy cases. It is argued that causation should be the central element when dealing with Article 102 TFEU cases dealing with digital platforms and data privacy, and a causal link should be established to sanction the alleged practice of a dominant company.

Platform-Dependent Entrepreneurs: Power Asymmetries, Risks, and Strategies in the Platform Economy

Online digital platforms organize and mediate an ever-increasing share of economic and societal activities. Moreover, the opportunities that platform-mediated markets offer not only attract enormou...

Indigenous Authorship on Open and Digital Platforms: Social Justice Processes and Potential

Online digital platforms can increase access to educational opportunities for marginalised students, authors and communities, but digital platform design can further marginalise Indigenous knowledge because such platforms are structured according to western epistemological assumptions. They do not accommodate for Indigenous or alternative knowledge frameworks. In addition, the premium placed on openness by certain platforms and licenses contradicts the approaches preferred by Indigenous knowledge authorities who tie the sharing of some types of knowledge to the identity and authority level of the intended audience. Knowledge in this context is not understood as discrete units of information that can be abstracted from their communities, easily shared on public platforms, but rather as sensitive materials that can only be shared by recognized knowledge authorities for specific purposes. The processes by which Indigenous knowledge authorities engage with knowledge sharing on digital platforms comprise a complex landscape in which social justice concerns come into play. This paper discusses how, within institutional design contexts, open educational practice (OEP) by Northern Australian Indigenous authors can enable different forms of social justice and work incrementally towards achieving greater recognition of Indigenous intellectual sovereign acts with due respect to the wider significance of Indigenous Sovereignty (Rigney 2001). It examines three sets of Indigenous open resources to gauge the extent to which open digital platforms allow for the expression of Indigenous knowledge authority, one necessary feature for achieving social justice in the Australian context. It examines the resources using Fraser’s social justice framework (2005) as modelled by Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotters’ (2018) and Lambert’s (2018) approach to educational resources, and how design decisions can result in greater justice in knowledge affirmation and transformation but originate in offline decision making.

A Meta-Analysis of User Perception and Use of Online Digital Platforms in Kenya: Evidence from E-citizen Platform, Kenya

This paper sought to establish the effect of user perception on use of online digital platforms in Kenya with evidence from e-citizen platform in Kenya. This paper conducted a desktop analysis of published papers on user perceptions and the adoption of e-citizen platforms in Kenya. The results revealed that user perception has a significant effect on the adoption and use of online digital platforms. The findings further showed that in various ways that user perceptions especially on digital platforms security and privacy, usefulness, ease of use, complexity, speed, efficiency, and affordability among others significantly influenced the adoption and use of e-citizen platforms in Kenya.&#x0D; There is a need for awareness campaigns among the target users. Because of various experiences the user have had with other online platforms, implementers of new platforms have a role to play in changing the use perceptions that targeted user may have due to previous interactions. The increase in the cases of cyber-crimes where malicious people have access to people's personal data has eroded many people's confidence and trust in the online platforms, hence it is a responsibility of the government to guarantee users of these online platforms of their security and privacy to increase adoption and use.

‘Our dream is simple: Peace, safe and freedom’: Regime-critical activism and artistic expression by Syrians in Denmark and Sweden

Abstract This article seeks to understand mediatized dynamics of regime-critical activism and cultural performances by Syrians in Europe. The focus of this research is on the Öresund-region between Denmark and Sweden. Sweden was the first country in Europe to give immediate permanent residence to Syrian refugees. It initially received most of the Syrian refugees in 2015. After the arrival of large groups of Syrians at Malmö station in that year, a growing network of volunteers responded to the influx of refugees. Syrians started to build relationships with local activists and have since joined in organizing publicly mediated events, creating a new landscape for creative industries and performance arts in the region. Applying a protest communication ecology approach, I use a wide definition of media which includes the aesthetics of street demonstrations, performance arts and music, mediated and communicated through digital online platforms. I apply an adjusted concept of communitas, including digital media and online communication as analytical concept to observe and describe not only how communitas is re-formed between Syrian refugees after arrival but also how it emerges between Syrians and local hosts.

We-Governance and the Block of COVID-19

We developed a new platform governance model which better enables the digital platforms to participate in the social governance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is optimal that citizens voluntarily and simultaneously comply with and help spread government’s initiative to isolate the virus, such as maintaining social distancing, staying at home, paying attention to personal hygiene, among others. Therefore, we-governance, characterized by citizens as government partners in group decision making and especially policy implementation via online social media platforms, becomes much more important than that in normal days. Using a unique database of government accounts from a large online short-video platform in mainland China, we show that the level of we-governance negatively predicts the intensity of COVID-19 transmission in Chinese cities. Overall, the joint response of governments and the public through online digital platforms can help solve the social issues better.