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

Re: [Air-l] african internet research
by Lokman Tsui 22 Mar '02

22 Mar '02

Hi Robert, > Thank you very much for the info. You're welcome. > I'm mostly interested in the cultural differences and similarities between > African usage and Northern/Westerner usage. My thesis is about > nation-buliding and the diaspora on a West African listserv. I take more > of an anthropoligical approach to the subject. In that case, try the following link: http://www.westafricareview.com/war/vol1.1/bastian.pdf Misty Bastian, Nationalism in a Virtual Space: Immigrant Nigerians on the Internet. West Africa Review (1999). Also has references at the end. Cheers, Lokman Tsui - currently looking and applying for Ph.D National Taiwan University / Leiden University

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FW: Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) (fwd)
by Ellis Godard 22 Mar '02

22 Mar '02

-----Original Message----- Attention Faculty and Graduate Students: NSF-SPONSORED PROJECT OFFERS NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR ORIGINAL DATA COLLECTION! Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) is a new National Science Foundation-supported project that is designed to increase the speed and efficiency with which scientific advances can be applied to social problems. TESS accomplishes these goals by providing social scientists with two new opportunities for original data collection. First, TESS runs an ongoing national telephone survey to which researchers can add their own original questions. Second, TESS allows researchers to run their own studies on random samples of the population that are interviewed via the Internet. Technologically, TESS combines the proven power of computer- assisted telephone interviewing with the new possibilities of computer-assisted Internet interviewing. Each approach allows researchers to capture the internal validity of traditional experiments while realizing the benefits of contact with large, diverse subject populations. With these technologies, TESS gives a greater number of social scientists opportunities to collect original data tailored to their own hypotheses, and to increase the precision with which fundamental social, political and economic dynamics are measured and understood. HOW DOES IT WORK? Scholars across the social sciences compete for time on one or both instruments. A comprehensive, on-line submission and review process screens proposals for the importance of their contribution to science and society. The co-PIs, Diana Mutz and Arthur Lupia, assisted by a diverse team of leading scholars from across the social sciences, oversee the review process. Together, they base their evaluations on reviews solicited from two to three referees in the researcher's discipline. WHAT KINDS OF PROPOSALS ARE APPROPRIATE? The Internet-based and telephone-based data collection platforms will allow faculty and graduate student researchers to run novel experiments on representative samples drawn from the United States population in order to examine substantive and methodological hypotheses. Proposals may come from any substantive area within any discipline in the social sciences so long as they utilize experimental or quasi-experimental designs and make a significant contribution to knowledge. WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO APPLY? All faculty and graduate students at universities within or outside of the United States are eligible. HOW AND WHEN CAN I APPLY? TESS begins accepting proposals in January of 2002 and will review them on a continuous basis over the next four years. There are no limits on the number of times researchers may use TESS. In fact, we encourage researchers to build on their previous TESS findings for subsequent proposals. HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE? To facilitate a quick review process, proposal submission and review are handled on-line through our website, <www.ExperimentCentral.org/" target=_blank>http://www.ExperimentCentral.org/> www.ExperimentCentral.org. Proposals are limited to five pages to encourage fast turnaround. Because our data collection instruments are in the field on a continuous basis, accepted experiments can be moved into the field just as soon as previous experiments come off. WHO WILL BE COLLECTING THE DATA FOR TESS? Data collection for the telephone survey is carried out by the Indiana University Center for Survey Research. The Internet survey data is collected through Knowledge Networks, of Menlo Park, CA. These two organizations were selected to work with TESS because they are leaders and innovators in the world of survey research, and they are experienced in the implementation of experiments within surveys. They also have the capacity to gather and deliver data to researchers promptly, so as to facilitate a quick turnaround time for TESS researchers. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? Use of these instruments will be free to all social scientists whose proposals are accepted through the review process. This project is supported by funds from the National Science Foundation through a grant to Professors Mutz and Lupia. There are no additional costs borne by users, and no grant applications to write. WHERE DO I GO FOR MORE DETAILS? Our website, www.ExperimentCentral.org, answers common questions about the proposal submission and review process. For more information, contact us at TESS(a)ExperimentCentral.org. ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------

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internet histories?
by radhika gajjala 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

Can anyone share with me how many kinds of Internet Histories have been written, told, narrated - sources, citations etc? thanks, r ___________ Radhika Gajjala Bowling Green State University http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik http://www.cyberdiva.org http://lingua.utdallas.edu:7000/4425/ "I am not erudite enough to be interdisciplinary, but I can break rules" - Spivak, 1999. "Just bear in mind, darling: Write Mortal. Think Witch" - Endora from "Bewitched" _____ __________

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air-l posting policy
by Steve Jones 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

I think most everyone on air-l is aware of the degree to which many people tried to keep Lachlan on the list and tried to discuss matters with him both on and off list. Given the recent incidents surrounding his postings, the AoIR executive committee adopted the policy below (it will be posted on www.aoir.org and in our faq). I sincerely hope that we continue to operate as a pro-active, helpful and courteous list, in the spirit in which AoIR was founded. Thank you to everyone who has helped throughout air-l's history (poster, lurker or whatever), and most recently with handling the consequences of Lachlan's postings and with drafting the policy. Sj --------------------------- Air-l subscriber policy --------------------------- The Association of Internet Researchers is a scholarly association dedicated to the advancement of the cross-disciplinary field of Internet studies. It is a resource and support network promoting critical and scholarly Internet research independent from traditional disciplines and existing across academic borders. The association is international in scope. Air-l is the association's primary e-mail list. It is available via subscription to anyone, though subscriber approval by the list moderators is required in order to make it a forum with little to no spam or other off-topic messages. The AoIR mission statement (see http://aoir.org/faq.html) presents broad guidelines for what type of messages are appropriate. The AoIR executive committee seeks to ensure air-l is as supportive and welcoming a space as possible. To that end, the mission statement interpretation as it currently stands is: * AoIR rejects ad hominem personal attacks, unnecessary profanity or any other sort of flaming behavior. Strongly worded disagreements or rebuttals are appropriate where they don't cross the line into gratuitous abuse or four-letter diatribes. * While AoIR supports freedom of expression, it does not simply do so within the framework of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment or other countries' legal frameworks. AoIR (and particularly air-l) is an international association not bound by national law (except in the matter of its business affairs, as it is incorporated in the U.S.) and as a membership organization by its very nature is to at least some very small degree exclusive. AoIR does not discourage postings based on a subscriber's point of view so long as such posting is within the broad guidelines of discussion of Internet research. Those wishing to discuss other matters are encouraged to create their own forums online. * Off-topic posts are inappropriate: air-l is a group for Internet researchers to exchange information, engage in discussion, and provide support relevant to AoIR's mission. Any submission which is not of specific relevance to that mission is off-topic for the list. Messages of personal interest or personal responses to postings should be sent to individuals, not to the list. * Posts without a valid e-mail address attached will be rejected. The moderators are willing to anonymize messages, or approve posts from anonymous remailers, but the moderators must be able to contact the person who sent the post. * To post you must be subscribed to air-l. Subscription instructions are available at http://aoir.org/subscription.html * Cross-posting to more than 3 other addresses is not allowed. * Messages over 10k in size will be rejected. Binaries or uuencoded files are to be avoided on air-l. If you wish to present an image or other binary file, we recommend you make it available on the web and point people to the appropriate URL. * Excessive posting in html is strongly discouraged. Please set your mail clients to ascii text. * The AoIR executive committee reserves the right to change its interpretation of these guidelines at any time if they deem it necessary to maintain the integrity of air-l or to further the aims of AoIR. * In general postings to air-l will not be moderated. However, those who do not comply with the subscriber policy will be reminded of it, and may at any time be unsubscribed from air-l by the AoIR executive committee.

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Re: [Air-l] air-l posting policy
by radhika gajjala 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

this looks reasonable (to me - at the moment) - one more suggested addition - do you perhaps need to add some kind of a disclaimer or anything regarding the publicly available archives (they *are* public? ) and "copyright" ? thanks, r A

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plagiarism
by Bunz, Ulla K 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

Brief synopsis: In Kansas, we are currently dealing with an interesting case of plagiarism at the high school level. In brief: a teacher busted a large number of her students cheating off the Internet on a paper assignment. As stated in her class syllabus or policy she failed the students. Administration stepped in, revoked her judgment and let the students pass. She quit her job. Questions: I'm wondering, how are you guarding yourselves against plagiarism? I know there are online services one (individual or university) can subscribe to in order to scan for generic phrases and thus, find plagiarism. But, are many of you using these services for entire papers? For short presentations? For oral reports? And, a related question: How do we teach our students about plagiarism and cheating off the Internet? How do we explain the difference between publicly available and well known information (which, by rule of thumb, does not need to be quoted), and a violation of intellectual property rights? I'm not talking about online databases or the CNN website, those cases are pretty obvious, but what about other Internet information venues, and when does a piece of information become "generally known" in the online environment? We had several inquiries on the list for the original sources of Internet myths. Do we need sources for those? Is it plagiarism if a student downloads such a myth? It wouldn't be if the story was passed on orally, right, or am I wrong there? I would love to hear advice, opinions, strategies, etc. on this! ulla ********************* Ulla Bunz University of Kansas Starting summer 2002: Rutgers University *********************

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RE: [Air-l] Lachlan Brown
by Blanchard, Anita L 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

A note about the word troll: A "troll" is a term used by virtual community users to describe someone who comes into a group and tries to stir things up by posting outrageous comments about the topic of the group, attacking group members and thus becoming the object of ire by the group. I learned of this term from interviewing participants of an athletic newsgroup/virtual community. They had several trolls (really and truly called trolls) who would post comments such as "women should not compete in sports"--clearly a comment made to draw attention, albeit negative. from the group. I am not sorry that our first troll is gone. I don't mind moderation: on ISWorld we recieve messages a few times a day as the moderators read and approve them. I like knowing that i'm now in "ISWorld mode" and will receive their emails. Of course, I am not a very active poster, and others may have different views about the moderation thing. I do think the whole idea of "trolling" is fascinating. Why do they do what they do? Why go into a group to rile folks up?! Although I could not interview my research group's troll (I asked, he would not firmly committ), I have talked with someone I know FtF about why he trolled a christian newsgroup: he said he thought he was doing the group a favor by making them think. I think there's quite a bit more to it than that. Anybody interested in a troll study?!?! Anita Anita Blanchard, Ph.D. Dept of Psychology UNC Charlotte Charlotte, NC 28221 704.687.4847 -----Original Message----- From: robert m. tynes To: air-l(a)aoir.org Sent: 3/20/02 7:49 PM Subject: Re: [Air-l] Lachlan Brown I find it a bit troubling. I'm not sure exactly why, but I do have a few reflections. Although I conceptually understand why Lachlan was booted, I don't feel comfortable with the decision. Maybe it appeared to swift, which, I know, is probably just my vantage point as a list member. (I've heard tell that Lachlan was warned off-list to settle down. And, he was openly admonished for making sexist statements and personal attacks, and for posting off-list e-mails. Nasty deeds, to be sure.) Maybe I would have felt better if he was warned publicly - on-list - so that it was obvious what might happen. There was no public debate about whether he should be yanked or not. The rule was "handed down". Now, I know this may sound like an attack on the powers above: it is not. All I'm saying is that now I know that there is power above. But that's not really the problematic part for me. Rather, I find it odd that Lachlan gets removed from the list for inflammatory postings and personal attacks, and yet there are no apparent repercussions for trashing him publicly, i.e. he's a *troll* and a *witch*. Is that fair? As scholars of social phenomenon, shouldn't we be a tad more aware of the social construction of online reality and our contribution to, and institutionalization of, deviance. Is Lachlan so awful that he deserves to becomes AOIR's subaltern Other? My e-mail is not meant to defend Lachlan (what would be the point of that, right?). I'm merely curious about what our meta-discourse is, and how we are governing it. -Robert Tynes _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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Re: Learning from Lachlan
by Bram Dov Abramson 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

<radhika(a)cyberdiva.org>: >golly - looks like I've missed some real fun stuff (I think I got derailed >because of a bouncing account). > >and who decides this "broad range" might i ask? The list manager(s). To whom it is up to try and implement whatever collaborative decision-making processes they feel is appropriate, works well, etc. And at which they can even do a great job. List managing is, as you know, an artful process. Deciding to abdicate all list management responsibility to the listserver software is one kind of decision, in which case list operations very much depend on how the software was designed. Generally I think that list management is a combined human-machine task: some tasks you automate inside the machine (software design), some you maintain a set of human procedures for, some you have human moderators deal with on the fly and invent ad-hoc ways of dealing with. Sometimes on this list we've talked about altering machine procedures, like rejecting all messages in which more than half of lines begin with a caret, implementing kill-files inside digests (well, that was me), etc. Sometimes on this list we've talked about altering human procedures, like drawing up codes of conduct, excluding trolls, etc. Just where on the human-machine spectrum each list's management falls is, clearly, up to the list managers. Learning, teaching, researching about how to improve, fine-tune, recalibrate that process to achieve desired outcomes is surely a kind of Internet research. cheers Bram ps on trolls: Guillaume Latzko-Toth, who I think is still on this list, gave an interesting paper at the Lawrence Kansas AIR which (iirc) talked about the rise of software-agent trolls inside IRC, much more sophisticated than the USENET agent-trolls which I think still roam to and fro. A really neat topic for research: what happens when human and non-human trolls interact, I wonder? Do they? pps: This time I forgot to cut out the quoted digest before sending, ironically. While it may be harder to implement new list management ideas than turn on already-existing ones, some of the already-existing ones seem to work just fine: >Subject: Request to mailing list Air-l rejected >From: air-l-admin(a)aoir.org >Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 13:16:01 -0500 (EST) > >Your request to the Air-l mailing list > > Posting of your message titled "Re: Learning from Lachlan" > >has been rejected by the list moderator. The moderator gave the >following reason for rejecting your request: > >"Your message was too big; please trim it to less than 10 KB in size. > >kindly trim your post down to size" > >Any questions or comments should be directed to the list administrator >at: > > air-l-admin(a)aoir.org

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Internet Histories
by Merav Katz 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

Hi Radhika, I paste here my preliminary list re: Internet Histories. I'm no sure though how many kinds have been written so far... History of the Internet Abbate, Janet. Inventing the Internet, Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1999. Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Naughton, John. A brief history of the future: the origins of the Internet, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999 Segaller, Stephen. Nerds 2.0.1 : a brief history of the internet, New York : TV Books, 1998. History of the World Wide Web Berners-Lee, Tim with Mark Fischetti. Weaving the Web : the original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor, San Francisco : HarperBusiness, 2000, c1999 Gillies, James & Robert Cailliau. How the Web was born : the story of the World Wide Web, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000 Social-Cultural History of the Internet Gattiker, Urs E., Mahwah, N.J. The Internet as a diverse community : cultural, organizational, and political issues, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001 Greg Hearn, Tom Mandeville and David Anthony. The communication superhighway : social and economic change in the digital age / St Leonards, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 1998 Gray Young (ed.). The Internet, New York : H.W. Wilson, 1998 David Porter (ed.). Internet culture, New York : Routledge, 1997 Poster, Mark. What's the matter with the Internet? Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2001 Slevin, James. The internet and society, Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2000. Grossman, Wendy, From anarchy to power : the net comes of age, New York ; London : New York University Press, c2001 Understanding the Web : social, political, and economic dimensions of the Internet / edited by Alan B. Albarran, David H. Goff. Ames : Iowa State University Press, 2000 Linten, Allison J. The Internet : a bibliography with indexes / Allison J. Linten. Huntington, N.Y. : Nova Science Publishers, c2000. Barrett, Neil. The state of the cybernation : cultural, political and economic implications of the Internet / Neil Barrett. London : Kogan Page, 1996 Fractal dreams : new media in social context / edited by Jon Dovey. London : Lawrence & Wishart, 1996 The World Wide Web and contemporary cultural theory / edited by Andrew Herman & Thomas Swiss. New York : Routledge, 2000 Miller, Riel. The internet in twenty years : cyberspace, the next frontier? / [by Riel Miller]. [Paris] : OECD, c1997 ------------------------ Merav Katz Doctoral Student Graduate Program for History and Philosophy of Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

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Re: Lachlan Brown
by Bram Dov Abramson 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

Steve Fox (NLG): >One thing out of this that I find extremely interesting, though, is how >the online community governs itself? How does this governance work >through our collective perceptions of the community, and can online >communities "survive" without a structured model of governance? (1) ... without a structured model of something, anyway. You call it "governance". Others may like "gardening". (2) Whether or not there *is* a structured model of governance depends on the analyst. Structure is always there, anyway. It's really imho a question of two things, understanding what structures are going on (research) and figuring out what structures you want to see going on given your goals, hopes, ethics (policy). unusually prolific (I'll stop now), Bram

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