February 2003 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Methodological panel session
by Shelia Cotten 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

Hello. I'm thinking about organizing a panel session for AoIR 4.0 on Methodological Issues Associated With Doing Internet Research. If you're interested in being on the panel, please email me (cotten(a)umbc.edu) not the entire list, with a short abstract (200 words or less) of your research. Please contact me if you need additional information. Thanks! Shelia Cotten ****************************** Shelia R. Cotten, PhD Dept. of Sociology University of Maryland Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore, MD 21250 410-455-6330 cotten(a)umbc.edu

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Call - Job opening, Dir & Prof Communication & Culture, Sydney, Australia (fwd)
by Barry Wellman 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

fyi. sounds mighty nice now -- guaranteed: no ice chopping or snow shovelling. Barry ___________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 ------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Just Out ***** (1) _The Internet in Everyday Life_ Barry Wellman & Caroline Haythornthwaite, eds. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002 (2) _Social Structures: A Network Approach_ Barry Wellman & S.D. Berkowitz, eds. Toronto: CSPI Press, 2003 ___________________________________________________________________ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 16:28:12 +0100 From: Karl M. van Meter <vanmeter(a)iresco.fr> To: aimsoc(a)wanadoo.fr Subject: Call - Job opening, Dir & Prof Communication & Culture, Sydney, Australia Thanks to the International Sociological Association isa(a)sis.ucm.es Job opening Research Professor and Director Research Centre in Communication and Culture Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Technology Sydney, Australia Transforming Cultures is a newly established Key University Research Centre in Communication and Culture at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. UTS is seeking an internationally recognised scholar in the fields of Cultural and/or Communication research to act as the inaugural Director of the Centre. The Centre currently comprises four research nodes - Cultural History, Transnational Cultural Studies, Cultural Interaction and New Media, International Activism. The Director will be expected to develop a vision for the Centre's future which ensures that UTS continues to be recognised for its national and international capability in communication and cultural research, to develop links with the external community, to contribute to the Centre's work by conducting his/her own research, to lead the Centre's researchers in the conduct of their research, to foster postgraduate research education in the field, and to ensure that funding to support the Centre's work is secured. Requirements of the position include an established international reputation in the field of cultural and/or communications research, demonstrated research leadership capacity, especially in relation to leading cross-disciplinary teams, past success in attracting research funding, experience in working with external partners in government, industry or the community and the ability to oversee and monitor the successful running of the Centre. Closing date: 14 March 2003 Position description and selection criteria available from UTS website: http://www.uts.edu.au/div/hru/employ/ or by contacting Human Resources Unit phone 61-2-9514 1087 Contact person for further information: Professor Elizabeth Jacka, <liz.jacka(a)uts.edu.au> Joint 2002-2006 RC33 membership & full BMS subscription: 110 euros! Think about it! **************************************************************************** **** * Karl M. van Meter BMS, Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique * * vanmeter(a)iresco.fr (Bulletin of Sociological Methodology) * * tel/fax 33 (0)1 40 51 85 19 bms-aims(a)wanadoo.fr * * LASMAS-CNRS, RC33, Research Committee Logic & * * 59 rue Pouchet Methodology of the International * * 75017 Paris, France Sociological Association, rc33(a)ext.jussieu.fr* **************************************************************************** ****

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RE: [Air-l] IMPORTANT - AoIR conference submission clarification and extension
by Matthew Allen 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

Hi there you submit EITHER in a panel OR separately. - basically you have to choose and hopefully this ensures only very good panels are proposed, with good papers all through We have found previously that some panels really were not of strong quality and this is the way we are trying to ensure they improve - by making people responsible for organising their paper into a good panel or submitting it singly Best wishes Matt Allen

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CFP: Workshop on Web and Aging (HCII2003 - Crete, Greece)
by Panayiotis Zaphiris 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

[Apologies for cross postings. Please, re-distribute] ____________________________________________________________ Call for Participation Workshop on Web and Aging Crete, Greece, June 25, 2003 Workshop Web site: http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~zaphiri/Workshop/ at HCII 2003: 10th International Conference on Human - Computer Interaction Crete, Greece, June 22-27, 2003 http://www.hcii2003.gr ____________________________________________________________ OVERVIEW ======== A significant increase of the older population has led to various studies investigating the effect of age in utilizing the Web as an information resource. A report by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2001 stated that the estimated change in the total size of the worlds elderly population between July 1999 and July 2000 was more than 9.5 million people, growing at an average of 795,000 people each month. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Recent research shows that more older adults are beginning to incorporate Web use in their daily activities, mainly because the Web presents an opportunity for them to maintain a high quality of life. However, as a robust body of research shows, various issues arise when older adults use the Web. FOCUS AND AIMS ============== The main objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers, academics and practitioners from various disciplines who are interested in web usability and ageing. Methodologies, theories, products and design guidelines as well as case studies that investigate these issues will be presented. Furthermore, through the presentations and discussions out of this workshop a taxonomy of issues and methods related to web usability for the ageing population will be proposed and formulated. SUGGESTED TOPICS ================ 1. Information architecture and the older user. 2. Empirical studies on web usability and older users. 3. Analytic studies & computational modelling of the older web user. 4. Social aspects of web and aging SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS ======================= Each participant is asked to submit and present a short 2 page long position paper. Electronic submission is required: email a PDF or word file to zaphiri(a)soi.city.ac.uk. Submissions should be formatted according to the guidelines at http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/macros-link.html. If any of these requirements are a problem for you, please contact the workshop organizers. Also, if you have any questions, just ask! Note: To maximize interaction and an informal atmosphere, attendance will be limited to 30 participants, selected on the basis of refereed submissions. If you wish to attend but are not submitting a paper, please send a one-page statement of interest by the submission deadline. IMPORTANT DATES AND DEADLINES ============================= * Deadline for the submission: April 15, 2003. * Notification of acceptance/rejection: May 5, 2003. REGISTRATION =============== Information about registering for the workshop and/or the HCII conference are found at the conference website at: http://www.hcii2003.gr/conf-registration.asp DISSEMINATION ================= We will contact relevant publishers and editors of prominent journals for the possibility of publishing expanded versions of the position papers as a special issue or an edited volume. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE ==================== Panayiotis Zaphiris Lecturer The Centre for HCI Design City University, London UK http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~zaphiri/ zaphiri(a)soi.city.ac.uk Sri H. Kurniawan Lecturer Department of Computation UMIST, Manchester UK http://www.co.umist.ac.uk/department/staff_details_ac.php?staff_id=SHK s.kurniawan(a)co.umist.ac.uk R. Darin Ellis Associate Professor Institute of Gerontology Wayne State University, MI http://www.iog.wayne.edu/iog/people/ellis/ rdellis(a)wayne.edu

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Forward: US public turns to Europe for news
by meiwu＠umac.mo 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

A footnote to the interesting debate of the Internet and war on this list. WM ----- Forwarded by MeiWu/UMAC on 02/26/03 12:12 PM ----- Jan Servaes <freenet002(a)pi.be> To: ECCR Mailing list <eccr(a)listserv.vub.ac.be> Sent by: cc: owner-eccr@listser Subject: [eccr] US public turns to Europe for news v.vub.ac.be 02/25/03 04:21 PM US public turns to Europe for news ---------------------------------- The threat of war in Iraq is driving increasing numbers of Americans to international news websites in search of the broader picture. According to the internet audience management and analysis company Nielsen NetRatings, traffic to the UK's biggest news sites, BBC News Online and Guardian Unlimited, has increased dramatically over the past year. Many of these new users are from the US. Jon Dennis, deputy news editor of the Guardian Unlimited web site said: "We have noticed an upsurge in traffic from America, primarily because we are receiving more e-mails from US visitors thanking us for reporting on worldwide news in a way that is unavailable in the US media." The American public is apparently turning away from the mostly US-centric American media in search of unbiased reporting and other points of views. According to the statistics, much of the US media's reaction to France and Germany's intransigence on the Iraqi war issue has verged on the xenophobic, even in the so-called 'respectable' press. Mr Dennis said: "American visitors are telling us they are unable to find the breadth of opinion we have on our website anywhere else because we report across the political spectrum rather than from just one perspective. Source: http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story576.html - Journalism.co.uk ---------------- ECCR-Mailing list --- To unsubscribe, send an email message to majordomo(a)listserv.vub.ac.be with in the body of the message (NOT in the subject): unsubscribe eccr --- ECCR - European Consortium for Communications Research Secretariat: P.O. Box 106, B-1210 Brussels 21, Belgium Tel.: +32-2-412 42 78/47 Fax.: +32-2-412 42 00 Email: freenet002(a)pi.be or Rico.Lie(a)pi.be URL: http://www.eccr.info ----------------

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Re: [Air-l] Re: How anti-Iraq war protesters employed technology
by Ildiko Kaposi 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

Dear Art, Forgive me if my question sounds naive, but how can you make sure that only the right kind of people become involved in the organising you describe? Do people check new members out face to face, or does perhaps the movement operate on an invitation-only basis? Ildiko ps. FYI: I'm not white, I'm Hungarian. >>> amcgee(a)virtualidentity.org 02/26/03 02:38 AM >>> > As a follow up of this discussion, I wonder if anybody has > got any sources to point to as to the organization of > anti-war demonstrations via the internet? I do, but I can't disclose them, because they're not public. While the activity you see above board and featured in the mainstream media is highlighting those activities where white people predominate, there is a major undercurrent of organizing activity amongst people of color, especially in the United States, that is a part of a meta-dialogue which ties together the organizing that was done pre-911 for the World Conference Against Racism and feeds into the growing demand for Reparations for Black African-descendents in the U.S. and elsewhere. Much of this work does not occur in full view of the public because of it's sensitive nature. It manifests itself in the larger public activities, but it's not something you can just signup to an email list to join in on. People of Color, and especially Black people, having a 500 year legacy of genocidal-like policies to deal with, are less interested right now in drawing the biggest crowd, and more concerned with being able to trust, develope lasting political relationships, and build movements. Long after the white folks go home or get bored with anti-war work, people of color will continue to be racially profiled and have their humanity assaulted on a daily basis. While white folks act like we just hit a crisis, Black people and other people of color in the U.S. knew there was a crisis back in November of 2000 when the ghost of American Apartheid reared it's ugly head, again. The missing element in all the so-called analysis thus far is that while we have more speed and breadth, we have little depth. There are more people on the streets now, but is this actually building a long-term movement for social justice, one that will go beyond dealing with the current fascist leader of the U.S. and deal with the ongoing injustices which started with the birth of modern Capitalism. As any idiot knows, Globalization didn't start with NAFTA, the WTO, the World Bank, or any other multilateral institution, it started with the Atlantic Slave Trade. Black bodies are the original commodities of the global market. Have the postmodern theoreticians, anarchists, cyberfeminists, and academics learned nothing from the legacy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other grassroots organizing movements? Let's take all this newfangled technology, remove our heads from our asses, and start using it to build and nurture real communities, the places where if a bullet hits you, you can't just press the "new game" button. Things were fucked up before September 11th, they were fucked up after September 11th, and they'll continue to be fucked up, war or no war, until people start thinking and working together in a more systemic and long-term manner. Art _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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Re: How anti-Iraq war protesters employed technology
by Art McGee 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

> As a follow up of this discussion, I wonder if anybody has > got any sources to point to as to the organization of > anti-war demonstrations via the internet? I do, but I can't disclose them, because they're not public. While the activity you see above board and featured in the mainstream media is highlighting those activities where white people predominate, there is a major undercurrent of organizing activity amongst people of color, especially in the United States, that is a part of a meta-dialogue which ties together the organizing that was done pre-911 for the World Conference Against Racism and feeds into the growing demand for Reparations for Black African-descendents in the U.S. and elsewhere. Much of this work does not occur in full view of the public because of it's sensitive nature. It manifests itself in the larger public activities, but it's not something you can just signup to an email list to join in on. People of Color, and especially Black people, having a 500 year legacy of genocidal-like policies to deal with, are less interested right now in drawing the biggest crowd, and more concerned with being able to trust, develope lasting political relationships, and build movements. Long after the white folks go home or get bored with anti-war work, people of color will continue to be racially profiled and have their humanity assaulted on a daily basis. While white folks act like we just hit a crisis, Black people and other people of color in the U.S. knew there was a crisis back in November of 2000 when the ghost of American Apartheid reared it's ugly head, again. The missing element in all the so-called analysis thus far is that while we have more speed and breadth, we have little depth. There are more people on the streets now, but is this actually building a long-term movement for social justice, one that will go beyond dealing with the current fascist leader of the U.S. and deal with the ongoing injustices which started with the birth of modern Capitalism. As any idiot knows, Globalization didn't start with NAFTA, the WTO, the World Bank, or any other multilateral institution, it started with the Atlantic Slave Trade. Black bodies are the original commodities of the global market. Have the postmodern theoreticians, anarchists, cyberfeminists, and academics learned nothing from the legacy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other grassroots organizing movements? Let's take all this newfangled technology, remove our heads from our asses, and start using it to build and nurture real communities, the places where if a bullet hits you, you can't just press the "new game" button. Things were fucked up before September 11th, they were fucked up after September 11th, and they'll continue to be fucked up, war or no war, until people start thinking and working together in a more systemic and long-term manner. Art

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Re: ISPs, state action, and public forums
by Bram Dov Abramson 26 Feb '03

26 Feb '03

Sandra brought out some interesting points -- three threads, I think -- on ISPs and e-mail: >ISPs now function as quasi-public forums because >they are fundamental to the ways in which we >communicate via the internet. As quasi-public >forums, constitutional standards must be met in >order to restrict speech. I'm arguing that public >forum analysis must be applied to ISPs. This, too, >has been raised in court but earlier on, before >terms of service began to become harmonized with >each other, and before the internet had become >so significant as a medium of public communication. 1) Parenthetic, maybe, but we're talking about two separate services, right? There's Internet access. And then there's Internet e-mail. As is traditional to telecom (cf PSTN), the commercial ISP model evolved around a bundled service offering -- most Internet access customers expect to get both the basic connectivity, and then the e-mail service on top. As is not traditional to telecom, Internet connectivity is a more successful service than any of the applications built on top of it. But that's the magic of the Internet. (Both Internet access and Internet e-mail is itself a bundle, of course -- Internet access usually including simple IP routing and ICANN-compatible DNS, e-mail usually including at least POP and SMTP. Latour enthusiasts, insert quote here on material things being actor-networks and choosing to talk about things being a matter of choosing where the buck stops, or where the analytic line is drawn.) I underline the distinction in this conversation because as users we want, and as researchers we think we see the benefit in, being able to mix and match those services. I buy residential Internet access from the same company that sells me cable TV, but I don't buy my primary inbound e-mail service from that company -- although they bundle such a service with what I'm already paying for. The value of non-ISP-dependent e-mail, or at least e-mail addressing, exceeds the extra resources it costs me to get it, in other words. (This opens into thinking about the pros and cons of bundled e-mail having become part of the ISP model -- what sorts of e-mail services might have become standard if nobody expected to already have paid for basic e-mail whenever they paid for Internet connectivity? But that's a separate, and kind of nebulous, conversation, full of what-ifs.) 2) So let's say, as it sounds like you're suggesting, that e-mail, or maybe entire classes of Internet application ("media") including but not limited to e-mail, are "public" in the way that the PSTN is public. This is sounding a lot like common carrier obligations. Not necessarily, you say; there are some alternatives: >- forming groups of users (such as all libraries, >or all universities) large enough to negotiate preferred >terms of service with ISPs (in the way that large >business-oriented buildings get their own terms). > >- identifying protection of free speech as a market >niche for an ISP that will choose to market itself >that way. (with the problem, as we've recently seen, >that such an ISP must have its own backbone or >there is the possibility of being shut down by the >backbone operator). > >- education of users to generate a shift in public >attitude regarding what is acceptable in ISP >terms of service and acceptable use policies. ... all of which work. One halfway step that has probably been bounced around -- half way, that is, between the legal remedy of common carrier obligations (but isn't that heavyhanded?), and the market remedy of just do it (but are there political-economic forces which make just-do-it not viable?) is to link this debate with the one on ISP obligations over content -- where they originate or terminate illegal content, are they liable? -- and carve out a common-carrier-like status armed with a precise definition of what it means to be such a common carrier. ISPs who chose to adhere to this status, and not discriminate between packets, would by definition be protected from liability; ISPs who chose to discriminate between packets would, similarly, not be protected from liability. There are a bunch of problems with that halfway step. For Internet access, defining non-discrimination is hard, but I think that's a solvable (assuming ongoing tuning) problem. Whether the model transfers well to the various components of e-mail service, I don't know. And, in any case, it's not obvious that the just-do-it remedies aren't workable -- or, at least, can't be made workable in the presence of other ways of dealing with things like, say, public funding. So, in the meantime, I very much agree on the education part, or at least on putting out there the idea that depending on one's Internet access provider for primary inbound e-mail may one day make one unhappy, and that the terms of service for one's e-mail service may one day make one unhappy, too. On the other hand, agreeing with that means that I disagree that it's useful, right here, right now, to saddle the Internet with the legal status that the PSTN has, as a public communications service with a complicated machinery of stabilizing factors that the state puts into place. Or does "public forum" sidestep those implications? 3) Finally: >David Silver comments that many folks he knows are opening >yahoo or other accounts separate from those they hold >at universities and/or their employers and/or with smaller >ISPs because of fear that political speech during these >times may be restricted in those other venues. and >-- but to bring the conversation back to where it >started, which was the assumption of individuals >who are politically active that switching to AOL or Yahoo >in hopes of finding a more open speech environment >-- this remains an unfounded assumption. I think that, for many, this is as much about e-mail addresses' signifying power in the, uh, discursive construction of organizational identity, as with the institutional power to curtail e-mail speech tout court. Certainly, that's my case. The reason I use this e-mail address and not that of my employer is because, as they say, my opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, and nobody should be given the impression that it isn't so. Now, in my own case this is a bit more acute than in that of, say, university-attached folks, because my employer is a communications regulator whose legal status is that of an administrative tribunal (ie a court), and giving false impressions of partiality aren't such a good idea. To whatever degree, though, this is certainly a motivator for many: the question of *which* e-mail provider is downstream from the question of simply finding a third-party provider in the first place. cheers Bram

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Re: [Air-l] tracking software for computer use research
by Robert Hassan 25 Feb '03

25 Feb '03

Mark, There is an article you may find useful in Educational Technology & Society 4(3) 2001, called 'Web Browsing, Mobile Computing and Academic Performance' by Grace-Martin and Gay. They discuss how users are tracked, etc. You can find the article on PDF at http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_3_2001/grace_martin.pdf Regards Robert

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Re: E-mail versus Web Time/Behavior
by Eszter Hargittai 25 Feb '03

25 Feb '03

The General Social Survey Internet module has some related questions such as - For about how many mins or hrs a week do you use your home computer for each of the following: .. sending or receiveing email .. - same for work computer - same for other computer Then there are questions about how many email messages does the user send and receive from all computers and how many are personal one-on-one vs. sent to/from members of a group/e-list. Then there are separate questions about time spent on the Web NOT email. You can access the GSS data here: http://www.webuse.umd.edu/ . I also collected data about email time vs Web (not email) time in my study. I had a short blurb about this in a piece: "Respondents were asked how much time they spend on the Web each week excluding e-mail use, that is, time spent specifically for browsing information online. Web use ranges from just a few minutes to over 30 hours weekly (see Table 1 for details). About half of the respondents use the Web more than they use e-mail, 18.5 percent use the two types of online services the same amount and the rest do more e-mailing than Web browsing in a typical week." from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_4/hargittai Eszter --- http://www.eszter.com http://www.esztersblog.com _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Introducing My Way - http://www.myway.com

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