Digital technologies are used in various local government activities. Adopting suitable digital technology strategies could enhance service efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. The challenges of technology adoption among local governments, however, are also evident. One of the major challenges is capacity, including the lack of knowledge or awareness of how to balance the local government’s resources and the strategies that need to be implemented. This challenge also forms a research gap. The study aims to consolidate the understanding of local government digital technology adoption strategies via the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). It analyses the adoption opportunities, challenges, and strategies through the lens of people, processes, and technology frameworks. The results show that: (a) Strategies concerning the people aspects include building a platform for public participation, employees’ skills, and decision-makers' positive mindset development. (b) Strategies concerning the process aspects include recognizing the players’ roles, having a clear aim and procedure, proper regulation, and receiving user input. (c) Strategies considering the technology aspects include understanding the effect of the technology, technological preparedness, and convenience adoption. The findings inform local government policymakers in digital technology adoption and transformation endeavors.

Emerging media afford netizens the opportunity to participate in critical civic discourse by collaboratively constructing and sharing previously inaccessible information across multiple platforms. This paper examined the communicative behaviors constituting the recent phenomenon of cyber vigilantism (human flesh search) in China, particularly how emerging media have been appropriated for online searches to hunt for personal information about social deviants to restore public morality. Our findings suggest that the identification of corrupt officials and circulation of their private data online amplified attention on their abuse of power and pressured the authorities toward greater accountability. Blogs, forums, and social networking sites helped support the expression of alternative public opinions. Novel mash-ups further stimulated the transmediation of political parodies that challenged state discourse across video-sharing sites. This article concludes with implications and recommendations for critical and comparative research toward a broadened and culturally nuanced notion of civic participation.

We are witnessing the growth of a distinct sub-field focusing on new media and religion as the relationship between the two is not just important, it is vital. I discuss in this article how this vitality is both figurative and literal in multiple dimensions. Mediated communication brings forth and constitutes the (re)production of spiritual realities and collectivities, as well as co-enacts religious authority. In this way, new mediations grounded within older communication practices serve as the lifeblood for the evolving nature of religious authority and forms of spiritual organizing. Further research to identify diverse online and embodied religious communication practices will illuminate a richer understanding of digital religion, especially as a globally distributed phenomenon.

Recent debates on the use of technology in classrooms have highlighted the significance of regulating students’ off-task and multitasking behaviors facilitated by digital media. This paper investigates the communication practices that constitute professorial authority to manage college students’ digital distractions in classrooms. Findings from interviews with American professors illustrate how they constitute their authority through distinct communication strategies including the enactment of codified rules, strategic redirection, discursive sanctions, and deflection. Furthermore, results highlight the multiple constraints and tensions in instructor communication to manage digital distractions in everyday and routine interventions. Insights generated in this paper contribute to deepening understanding of the (re)construction of contemporary pedagogical authority in times of digital hyperconnectivity, as well as its adaptions and challenges.

In light of expanding epistemic resources online, the mediatization of religion poses questions about the possible changes, decline and reconstruction of clergy authority. Distinct from virtual Buddhism or cybersangha research which relies primarily on online observational data, this paper examines Buddhist clergy communication within the context of established religious organizations with an integrationist perspective on interpersonal communication and new and old media connections. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Buddhist leaders in Singapore, this paper illustrates ways in which priests are expanding their communicative competency, which we label ‘strategic arbitration’ to maintain their authority by restructuring multimodal representations and communicative influence. This study expands upon previous research by Cheong et al. (in press, Journal of Communication) and finds that constituting Buddhist religious epistemic authority in wired organizational contexts rests on coordinating online–offline communicative acts. Such concatenative coordination involves normalizing the aforementioned modality of authority through interpersonal acts that positively influences epistemic dependence. Communicative acts that privilege face-to-face mentoring and corporeal rituals are optimized in the presence of monks within perceived sacred spaces in temple grounds, thereby enabling clergy to perform ultimate arbitration. However, Buddhist leaders also increase bargaining power when heightened web presence and branding practices are enacted. The paper concludes with limitations and recommendations for future research in religious authority.