March 2002 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Call for papers - quantitative studies of the web for JASIST.
by Thelwall, Mike (Dr) 11 Mar '02

11 Mar '02

CALL FOR PAPERS *********************************** JASIST Special Issue on Webometrics *********************************** Submission deadline June 30, 2003 The next Special Topics Issue of Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) is scheduled to come out in late 2004 on the topic of webometrics. The guest editors for this special issue will be Mike Thelwall of The University of Wolverhampton, UK, and Liwen Vaughan of The University of Western Ontario, Canada. Webometrics, the quantitative study of web phenomena, encompasses a variety of types of research, some of which date back to the early years of the Web although the widespread adoption of the term itself is relatively new. The dynamic, diversified and far-reaching nature of the Web provides a fertile ground for knowledge discovery. Frequencies and patterns of word and phrase usage on web pages can provide valuable information for search algorithms. The selective coverage of web sites by search engines reflects favour toward certain communities and bias against others. Use of query terms reflects issues of interest and concern to people. The size and structure of web sites around the world can provide extensive social, cultural, economic and political information. Web links, although individually less reliable sources of information than bibliographic citations, may reveal significant trends when aggregated over large areas of the Web. This issue will provide a forum for a broad spectrum of scholars to compile a body of research that begins to cement these emerging areas into a coherent field. It will also serve as a tribute to Tomas Almind who originated the term webometrics with Peter Ingwersen and who died in an accident before he could see the influence of his ideas. It is envisaged that future progress of webometrics will prove the Web to be one of the most valuable mainstream data sources for information science. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: * Structures, patterns and topologies of hyperlinks on the Web * Methodological issues pertaining to the use of search engines, crawlers, and other online tools for data collection * Motives for the creation of hyperlinks * Categorization of web page types and content. * Social, cultural, and linguistic factors in Web use * Frequency distributions of web query terms * The application of webometrics to information retrieval research * Web impact measurements * Mapping web communities and relationships * Applying and extending bibliometric and scientometric techniques onto the study of the Web The guest editors seek papers that address these and related topics. The quantitative orientation of Webometrics does not preclude the use of qualitative methods when appropriate. Inquires can be made to Mike Thelwall (m.thelwall(a)wlv.ac.uk) or Liwen Vaughan (lvaughan(a)uwo.ca) Manuscripts can be submitted in electronic form (Word or PDF) to either guest editor or in print form (four copies of full articles) to: Dr. Liwen Vaughan Faculty of Information and Media Studies University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, N6A 5B7 Canada Phone: (519) 661-2111 ext. 88499 Fax: (519) 661-3506 E-mail: lvaughan(a)uwo.ca The deadline for accepting manuscripts for consideration for publication in this special issue is June 30, 2003. Authors are requested to notify the guest editors of their intent to submit prior to submitting a paper. The guest editors will be happy to provide advice on the suitability of topics if needed. All manuscripts will be reviewed by a select panel of referees, and those accepted will be published in a special issue of JASIST. Original artwork and a signed copy of the copyright release form will be required for all accepted papers. A copy of the call for papers will be available on the World Wide Web as is further information about JASIST, at http://www.asis.org/.

1 0

Witchtrial
by Lachlan Brown 11 Mar '02

11 Mar '02

air-l(a)aoir.org Cc: mcrobbie@gold.ac.uk,d.morley@gold.ac.uk,n.rose@gold.ac.uk, p.gilroy@gold.ac.uk,s.lash@gold.ac.uk Subject: Witchtrial Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 19:57:05 -0500 Barry, It is true that ad-hoc, learnt and taught techniques of WorldWideWeb search, surveillance and internet investigation have become normalised, but they haven't been normal activities for very long, and they remain normal practises only among a few. Competence in these techniques or practices are unevenly distributed even among those of us 'in the know' of Internet and its cultures, and are uncanny, indeed worse than the uncanny, among those unfamiliar with the technology and its cultures. The fascination of the social geographer for physical, urban, social and human mapping and interrelations is familiar to me - I can be content with a map of a city or a mapping of human interraction for hours - but it might not be familiar to others, and one can forsee how, during a time of 'emergency' where 'public safety' concerns override all other concerns including birth rights, paranoia produced by these uneven distributions could be articulated, opportunely, to advance a particular career, political or personal agenda as a charge in public, a witchtrial, or, worse, imagine the case, imagine the consequence, of rumour, innuendo, defamation and lies, without a 'charge' ever being laid. I hope I have illustrated how. Lachlan Brown -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup Travelocity.com is giving away two million travel miles. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;3969773;6991039;g?http://svc.travelocity.com/…

1 0

CFP: Towards Humane Technologies: Biotechnology, New Media, and Citizenship
by Phil Graham 10 Mar '02

10 Mar '02

1,500-8,000 word papers are invited for the following forum. Towards Humane Technologies: Biotechnology, New Media, and Citizenship Conference website http://www.uq.edu.au/gsm/biomediaindex.html You are invited to participate in Towards Humane Technologies, a unique international forum for discussion about the social, moral, and political implications of biotechnology research and commercialisation. The conference will be presented in an alternative format that foregrounds democratic participation rather than one way speeches from a select few. The conference will be held at The University of Queensland's Ipswich campus, 15-17 July 2002. Rationale: In the widespread debates about the future of biotechnology, many people feel that institutional and expert voices often overpower those of people who are personally and immediately affected by current technological developments, or the lack thereof. Such people include, for example, people with disabilities; people conceived through reproductive technologies; people who use reproductive technologies to conceive; farmers and graziers; scientists at the coal-face; government project and policy officers who promote and regulate the bioindustries; and community members who feel they have much to contribute to the debate yet feel they have no way to influence our technological direction. Yet in today's mass mediated arena we all have almost daily experiences of the widespread excitement and concern about new technologies and media forms, especially biotechnologies. It seems that the potentials for our new technologies are boundless, regardless of whichever attitude one takes towards them. Often they appear as inevitable, ubiquitous, agent-likealmost human. Too often, though, the human-ness of our new technologies gets ignored as we stand in thrall of their potentials, and their actualities. New media are always dependent on older media. Biotechnology is dependent on any number of media for its public propagation, acceptance, or rejection. These include, but are not limited to, ICT, mass media, and institutional media (the institutions of law, policy, and various other organs of public opinion). A "new media" perspective on biotechnology provides a more holistic way to understand the current issues surrounding the emergence of biotechnology and its attendant possibilities. In effect, a new media perspective allows us to map out and comprehend the extent to which developments in a field such as biotechnology can and do affect our lives, the lives of other species, and the world we live in. Citizenship is the process of engagement in such issues which is fundamental to healthy liberal democracies. It is in the spirit of citizenship that we take a new media perspective on biotechnological advances. Media in all forms are the means by which we move meanings and ideas from one context to another, across time and space. As such, an emergence of new media forms is always historically significant. Such emergences create possibilities for new forms of human relatedness; new ways of understanding what it means to be human; access to new meaning systems, new cultures, new beliefs, and new knowledges. So at least in a limited sense, we can also see biotechnologies and their associated practices as mediating practicesas biomedia. Biomedia provide new perspectives on what it means to be human, to be healthy, or even to be living; they move fundamental aspects of life from hitherto "secret" places into the realm of public space and commercial manipulation; they open possibilities for new knowledge about life; and they present new challenges to human understanding about what it means to be human and humane. Towards humane technologies is a forum for creating new understandings about these directions in our society. We want to ask important questions about what kinds of meanings are made and moved because of biotechnologies; about who gets to make the meanings that count; and about creating a forum for making meaningful contributions to the direction of our technological processes. That is something that cannot be done in isolation or ignorance. We invite you to join us in approaching biotechnology research and commercialisation as a challenge of citizenship in a new media environment. ...................................................................................................... Opinions expressed in this email are my own unless otherwise stated. If you have received this in error, please ignore and delete it. Phil Graham Senior Lecturer UQ Business School www.uq.edu.au/~uqpgraha ......................................................................................................

1 0

RE: The Dire State of the AoIR List
by geert lovink 10 Mar '02

10 Mar '02

> From: Steve Jones <sjones(a)uic.edu> > In any event, my strong feeling has always been that the best lists > are self-organizing and self-sustaining. I would strongly prefer that > we refrain from filtering, making rules, etc., at the "executive" > level of AoIR, and allow the list to function as it will. This is a false contradiction. Moderating a list is an art in itself and is unrelated to censoring and only further enhances the capacity of a community to self-organize. Moderation, or I prefer the more precise term facilitation means that there is a person or group which is taking care of the direction of a list. This activity is absolutely unrelated to "rule making" or "censorship" and I really surprised to see that so many Internet researchers on AIR are still mixing up these two things. The general level of the AIR list has been low, really low, with the exception of a few treads (I really like the virtual community one). I am specially saying that because the intellectual level of the subscribers is so high. Internet researchers should have debates on really high level, in my view, knowing how to use the tools they are supposed to be an expert in. If I look at AIR and compare it to other lists, the result is really low, specially over theoretical and methodological issues. However, this is all REALLY easy to change. As long as this board keeps is its slack libertarian anything-goes and let-it-all-happen go-with-the-flow mentality, I don't see that many us will invent a lot of time and intellectual energy in this forum. This has got NOTHING to do with 'censorship' or 'moderation' of individual messages but everything with vision and a common passion to lift the general level of the conversation and information exchange. Like anything lists need to be taken care of, otherwise they decay and do not reach their full, critical potential. I would therefor propose that a small group start to take of the AIR list in order to give a direction. It's really worth because there is a lot of potential here and I sense from this debate that we are not really using it. Ciao, Geert

1 0

advice requested regarding web archiving programs
by nisaacson＠sociology.rutgers.edu 10 Mar '02

10 Mar '02

I'm hoping this people on this list might give me some advice. Briefly, I am a post-doctoral sexuality research fellow at the Social Science Research Council and I'm studying online sex education for adolescents. I am doing a survey of sex ed web sites and I'm looking for a good program in order to download and archive the sites. WebRecord Research Pro Version 2.0 had been recommended to me, but it is no longer available. I've looked at some others, but I wanted to know if anyone had any recommendations or thoughts on this topic. I'm using 5 different search engines to generate the web site list so I'm not really looking for a program that operates as a metasearch engine; I basically want to be able to archive the sites and perhaps do some simple searching offline although most likely I will code the sites while online. Thank you for your help. Nicky Isaacson Post-Doctoral Sexuality Research Fellow Social Science Research Council nisaacson(a)sociology.rutgers.edu

1 0

IDEAS 2002, interactive Digital Environments, Art & Storytelling
by Thom Kevin Gillespie 09 Mar '02

09 Mar '02

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ INDIANA IDEAS 2002, interactive Digital Environments, Art & Storytelling .................................................................. an Indiana-wide competition and juried show of interactive entertainment, 3D, 2D, aural, virtual, animated and still creative work April 20 (12 - 3 pm) and 21 (4-7pm) Radio & TV Center, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Cash prizes to be awarded in seven categories. Best Interactive/Live Performance (music, theater, VR) Best Game or Simulation Best Digital Environment (3D, worlds, CAVEs, sound installations) Best Gesture (animation, elegance and/or inventiveness ) Best Screenful ( 2D, scientific and/or data visualizations) Best Creative Computer Programming Submissions must be received by April 1, 2002 Opening reception Saturday April 20, 12 noon. .................................................................. For additional information: Thom Gillespie thom(a)indiana.edu 821-855-3254 Indiana University, dept. of Telecommunications www.mime.indiana.edu/ideas/showtime

1 0

Re: metadiscussion, part 1,000,000
by Jonathan Sterne 09 Mar '02

09 Mar '02

Hi All, I know I made this point before, but one small thing that we could do on the list is to limit the percent of quoted text in a reply. Make it 50% or something. If you go over that, the list automatically bounces your message. I've seen this clear up other lists very nicely. It just means if you accidentally quote the entire digest in your reply, you'll get a friendly bounce message (someone would have to write it, obviously) reminding you to please delete all the unneeded quoted material and resend. Most people learn after one or two bounce messages. I imagine the same thing could be done with various forms of non-ascii text. As for personal content, I disagree that this is a list purely for the distribution of information. The "chatty" part of it is as essential as the many forwards we get. If fact, I'm more likely to read a post that is part of a discussion on this list than a forwarded message from someone I don't know. Serious researchers are not robots, and part of the point of having a list like this is to build relationships with one another. I've seen much worse behavior at academic conferences than the so-called "flaming" that goes on here. Lists are for people to talk with one another. By the way, while I agree that it would be nice for internet researchers to have lots of technical knowledge, we should be careful not to fetishize it. There's some great scholarship on television by people who can't make TV programs, and some great histories written by people who haven't made any. Best, --J

1 0

Re: [Air-l] v work
by Helena 09 Mar '02

09 Mar '02

Hej Lars, Her cigaretlinket jeg talt om her forleden. Jeg haaber du har dine horeboffer med (gud, hvorfor kan man ikke skrive o paa dette tastatur!?) See you late... H On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, computer fine arts wrote: > > > xena > http://www.computerfinearts.com/xena/ > > pecker > http://www.computerfinearts.com/pecker/ > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > * recommended: DSL+, quicktime, Explorer 5+, Netscape 6+ > -------------------------------------------------------------- > > > : <computerfinearts> > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Air-l mailing list > Air-l(a)aoir.org > http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l >

1 0

A list that better fulfills an internet research mission.
by Tom Diffenbach 08 Mar '02

08 Mar '02

I'm Tom Diffenbach, a political consultant specializing in dynamics of action, not an academic, and also a person who has owned, operated, used, and studied websites and lists for years. I value aoir for its resources and also as a case study of sorts. At times I observe recognizable behaviors in this list and wait to see if anyone mentions them. One recent example was the discussion of some not-so-important subject (I already forget:) during the holidays. This fits a pattern of lists cycling thru a period where everyone, including those who at the moment perhaps don't have anything to contribute academically or professionally, get to share a comment or two. It helps to rejuvenate a list but also contributes at least temporarily to reducing the quality of its content. Currently the "rules or no rules" discussion so common to lists is on our front burner. I recall one medical-legal list where a "no rules" attorney insisted on posting occasional crude humor arguing that it was welcomed (or at least not objected to) by many. Soon after, he created a somewhat competing list where he was very much the rule-maker and disqualified his humorous type of posts from his list to maintain its professionalism. That might suggest to you what this political consultant see as a prospect that aoir should consider: that serious professionals on this list, openly or quietly, will find or start a similar list. The issue isn't so much whether there should be rules but whether an internet researcher can find a list that better fulfills an internet research mission. With respect, Tom

4 3

digests and kill files (was: The Dire State of the AoIR List)
by Bram Dov Abramson 08 Mar '02

08 Mar '02

denise.argent(a)ntlworld.com: >my secondary method works better.......i check who has posted the message, >and based on prior readings from them i'm sometimes guilty of just deleting >them...unless i'm in the mood to be amused, annoyed or entertained and >then...I just might read them Like most air subscribers I read the above message as part of a digest, which got me thinking ... has anyone seen any individual or organisation get into providing digesting services? Example: the digest-service offers air-l, perhaps on my request. Thus instead of subscribing to air-l I'd subscribe to the digest-service's version of air-l. (And, I guess, the digesting-service would help me subscribe to air-l as a receive-no-messages subscriber in order to allow me to post.) I say this, of course, because it seems like the unbundling of list-management and digest-management might be a positive thing. For example, it would make sense for digest-managers to develop a capability for personal kill-files, which is currently incompatible with a digest. And which, as traffic on this list grows, would be increasingly handy. (It would also help e-mail lists from becoming dinosaurs next to the really great functionalities being integrated into Web-based boards. Which, for those who like how e-mail works and how digested e-mail lists work, might be a happy thing.) cheers Bram --

2 1