June 2005 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Search opened - Assistant Professor of Communication
by Steve Jones 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

The Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago invites applications for the following anticipated position: Assistant Professor of Communication. A successful candidate must have interests in the study of new media, the internet, and/or communication technology, in some combination with the study of one or more of the areas in which the department has research strength. The candidate will also have an earned doctorate in Communication or a related field, strong promise of scholarly accomplishments and teaching success (at the undergraduate and graduate levels) appropriate for appointment as Assistant Professor, good prospects for external research funding, and demonstrated commitment to multidisciplinary scholarship. Located in the heart of Chicago, UIC is a Research I University with 16,000 undergraduates, 6,500 graduate and 3,000 professional students. The Department of Communication has 11 full-time faculty, approximately 100 undergraduate majors, and 25 M.A. students. The Department is developing a doctoral program focused on the relationship between technology and cultural and media studies. Subject to budgetary approval, the desired appointment is date for the position is August 16, 2006. Interested parties should send a full curriculum vitae, samples of relevant scholarly publications, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and four letters of reference to — Professor Steve Jones, Chair Communication Search Committee Department of Communication (MC-132) 1007 West Harrison Street The University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, IL 60607-7137 Applications should be received by October 15, 2005, to receive full consideration, although the search will proceed until the position is filled. Applications from women and minorities are particularly encouraged. The University of Illinois is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer.

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CFP - Workshop on Location-Awareness and Community
by Quentin (Gad) Jones 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

Call for Participation Workshop on Location-Awareness and Community Deadline: June 20, 2005 ECSCW 2005 9th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work September 18-22, 2005, Paris, France http://www.haifa.il.ibm.com/conferences/laac05/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION Several real-world tracking and positioning technologies, such as GPS, 802.11, Bluetooth and RFID tags, have become mature enough to be widely adopted and employed in systems linking information and communication to geographic places and people. The challenge is to better understand what can be presented to users in a useful and unobtrusive way. There are many examples of different approaches to this challenge. Key examples include systems that associate digital text to physical places enabling users to leave others, or themselves, relevant notes, recommendations and reminders. Several systems leverage location for mobile tour guides or to map users' activities or position. Location is also used to enhance remote awareness of others and to infer availability for communication. A major challenge with location-based systems is how to automatically learn and identify a user's position. Low-level sensor data must be filtered and abstracted to a meaningful granularity (e.g., GPS coordinates to "heading to the gym", or wireless LAN signals to "room 636"). GOALS and OBJECTIVES Many challenges remain to effectively leverage location awareness to support community. These problems span the social and the technical fields—tensions between privacy control and awareness, from raw data to effectively processed meaningful inferences. Thus, there is a wide range of areas for fruitful discussion. These include, but are not limited to, the following areas. Algorithmic: - Automatically learning and identifying a user's location in a meaningful way - Methods for labeling locations and sharing descriptions - Rich representation of locations; composed of geometric, social, and temporal properties Conceptual: - Place shape behaviour: how people describe places, whether their descriptions are relevant to others - How place types relate to people's desire for place-related awareness and communication with others - What information people are willing to share about themselves to enable place-related communication and awareness - Which lessons learned from online communities are applicable to non-virtual communities, particularly referring to identity and privacy Interaction Techniques / User Interface Design: - Models to ensure people's privacy in presence enabled systems - UIs for managing complex privacy information and preferences, particularly on mobile devices - Designs and implementations of mobile location-aware community information systems - Scalable visualizations of people- and place-centered systems - Creative location-relevant content WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION This will be a one-day workshop. Rather than just presentations on the position papers, we would like it to be interactive. The accepted papers will be distributed to the participants in advance. We hope to involve participants in a pre-workshop activity that will help everyone think about common data from their own diverse perspectives. During the day, we will have short, five-minute presentations for each participant to highlight the core ideas in their paper and how they relate to the workshop topic. The main part of the day will involve a design exercise, in mixed groups based on expertise. In this exercise, participants will work on different aspects of a specific scenario, revolving around our three main themes: Algorithmic, Conceptual, and Interaction Techniques/UI Design. The last part of the workshop will be dedicated to re-writing a "solution" for the scenario, using comments, observations, and technologies from all the participants. If people are willing, participants could all go out to dinner the previous night in order to get to know each other before the workshop. We expect about ten participants, but this could expand if more submissions are received. PARTICIPATION Participants will be selected on the basis of position papers submitted prior to the workshop. Proposals should be no longer than six pages in the ECSCW conference format and can address any one of our three themes (Algorithmic, Conceptual, Interaction Techniques/UI Design) individually, or any combination of them. Papers should be clear regarding which elements are conceptual or theoretical and what has been implemented/verified. Where relevant, details should be given about the type of community (e.g., work, leisure), and important contextual factors and social interactions supported. Position papers should explain how the author’s work relates to the workshop theme. We are particularly interested in seeing perspectives at a variety of levels, ranging from meta views to micro-scale analyses. Submissions should be sent to nmarmas(a)il.ibm.com by June 20, 2005. Position papers will be reviewed by the workshop organizers and notification of acceptance will be given by the first week of July. We encourage a wide range of participants from diverse backgrounds. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Natalia Marmasse, IBM Research Lab in Haifa Vladimir Soroka, IBM Research Lab in Haifa Quentin (Gad) Jones, New Jersey Institute of Technology Christine Halverson, IBM T.J. Watson Research Lab

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Re: [Air-l] Technical competence
by Eszter Hargittai 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

Elizabeth, great question. I have thought about this often, especially when people post UNIX-based solutions to questions on this list. Someone mentioned that it may depend on your research questions and types of methodological approaches to your questions, I think this is likely correct in most cases. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that social scientists will have all sorts of technical skills nor must they depending on their research. For a group (ours here) that is supposedly in tune with inequalities and differences in access and use of IT, it's often interesting to observe how some people ignore the fact that differences in abilities are likely present among our members as well. And let's not simply blame the students (or profs). These issues are often structural. After all, most graduate programs are not equipped to train people well in both the social sciences and computer science. I'll take this opportunity to make a pitch for our interdisciplinary PhD program in the School of Communication at Northwestern. In our PhD program on Media, Technology and Society (especially the Technology and Social Behavior track) we offer training in both. In traditional social science PhD programs a student will usually not get course credit for taking a course in a CS dept nor will s/he know where to go (e.g. with which course to start) to get some such training. We approach this differently. A few years ago when I was running the computer orientation session for the incoming cohort in a Sociology dept almost none of the students had ever logged on to UNIX. So while it may seem like a joke to run a computer orientation program these days, it's not depending on what you cover and what may be helpful for students. I suspect this lack of experience with UNIX is quite representative of other cohorts in social science programs nowadays. So to tell such people to go use wget or perl is not going to be very helpful. Numerous universities don't even support UNIX access to general users anymore and you have to jump through hoops to get such an account. But how to get such an account when you don't even really know what it is? So I think it would be helpful if people were sensitive to these differences when suggesting solutions to questions. I think it's great that people suggest all sorts of approaches, but this "Mine is better than yours" approach based on operating systems doesn't necessarily seem productive or helpful to the person posing the query yet hopefully the goal (or at least one goal) of responding to questions on the list is to help out the person asking the question. And by the way, there is no reason to have to switch away from Windows even if you do use UNIX to some extent. If you do have a UNIX account, you can easily access it using a program such as SSH Secure Shell. Eszter PS. In case you're curious, I'm a former Mac user, currently on Windows, still using Pine for some email (a comment that will be meaningful to other Pine users and pretty meaningless to others, I realize), and running some programs in UNIX including some scripts I wrote - with help from others - in perl.

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SOCQUIT (Social Capital, Quality of Life & ICT) results conference
by Ben Anderson 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

Apologies for cross-posting. Begin forwarded message: > > From: <jeroen.heres(a)tno.nl> > Date: 6 June 2005 15:52:38 BDT > Subject: invitation for registration SOCQUIT conference > > Dear Madam/Sir, > Information- and Communication Technologies are changing society > and the everyday life. ICT policy and industry often assume that > this development will provide important opportunities to increase > quality of life and especially social relationships. The EU > project SOCQUIT (Social Capital, Quality of Life and IST) analyses > the effects of ICT on social capital and quality of life. > On behalf of the SOCQUIT consortium and France Télécom R&D I am > very happy to invite you to register for the conference "Social > Capital and Quality of Life in the Information Society", 29 and 30 > September 2005 in Paris where the SOCQUIT results will be presented. > http://www.eurescom.de/socquit/socquit-conference.htm > About the program: > At this conference experts from within and outside the SOCQUIT > project will show the recent insights about social capital and > quality of life and the way this is influenced by ICT. The > opportunities and threats of ICTs will be discussed based on > empirical results > from four case-studies carried out by SOCQUIT: > > - employment > > - the ageing society > > - local ICT initiatives > > - migrants. > > The implications of the results will be discussed together with > European policy makers as well as with representatives from ICT > industry. SOCQUIT will also demonstrate its decision support tool > enclosing the SOCQUIT findings and recommendations. This tool > facilitates the use of the SOCQUIT results by policy makers. > > Time and venue > > The conference will start Thursday 29 September at 9h00 and will > end Friday 30 September at 13h00. > The venue of the conference is: > Groupe Scolaire Saint-Nicolas > 6, rue Vaudétard > 92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris > Registration > > There are no costs involved for attending the conference, but as > the number of > available seats is limited registration is required. > Information about the conference including registration forms can > be found at: > http://www.eurescom.de/socquit/socquit-conference.htm

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life cycle of online discussions: references? (was: SW to store webpages)
by Kathy Mancuso 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

Do you mean Clay Shirky's article Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software, maybe? http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_user.html -- Katherine Mancuso academic, interrupted. new e-mails (don't use sc dot edu) personal: kmancuso at gmail dot com professional: katherine dot mancuso at emory dot edu Because long sig quotes are annoying, read mine below instead: http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe/writing/selflove.html Anthropologists and labor unions allied: http://AAAUnite.blogspot.com Orphan Films (22-26 March 2006, CFP): http://www.sc.edu/filmsymposium Social software research linkage: http://del.icio.us/museumfreak

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AOIR on AUT?
by Ellis Godard 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

This seems like an appropriate topic on which AOIR, as international and interdisciplinary as well as academic and open minded, should take a stand. What are the appropriate steps/procedure(s) thru which that could/would/should happen? http://ellisgodard.blogspot.com/2005/05/aut-is-out-of-line.html -eg

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RE: [Air-l] life cycle of online discussions: references? (was: SW tostore webpages)
by Rowin Young 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

If anyone does know this reference (or other similar ones) please could they post replies on list, or copy me into them if you'd rather reply offlist - I'd be fascinated to see them. Thanks, Rowin > -----Original Message----- > From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-aoir.org- > bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of M.B.Gaved > Sent: 06 June 2005 11:07 > To: air-l > Subject: [Air-l] life cycle of online discussions: references? (was: SW > tostore webpages) > > hi all > > I'm wondering if anybody can help me with a reference, this current > discussion has got me thinking about the 'lifecycle' that mailing list > debates generally seem to go through. > > After a particularly fiery college mailing list debate, a colleague > mentioned he'd come across a paper somebody had written on the lifecycle > of mailing list discussions - it might have been specifically flamewars, > or perhaps just mailing list debates in general. It might have come from > IBM research labs? > > Can anybody point me at this or any other papers on the subject? > > all the best > > Mark > > -------------------------------------------- > Mark Gaved > KMi, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA > +44 (0) 1908 6 54513 > m.b.gaved(a)open.ac.uk > http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/mark/ > -------------------------------------------- > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org > [mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Thomas > Koenig > Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 4:34 AM > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Subject: Re: [Air-l] SW to store webpages > > > Jeremy Hunsinger wrote: > > > you might doubt it, but it is a fact of the interface and its > > limitations. you could disagree there, but then you would be sorely > > pressed when faced with the full powers of the unix command-line. > > 1) Are you aware that HTTrack also offers a command line interface for > Unix? > 2) I am a social scientist, as I (maybe wrongly) thought were most of > the people on this list. I am familiar with UNIX, which already seems to > > be kind of a rarity among social scientists. Most of us aren't and, I > might add, shouldn't. For most purposes WebCopier seems an entirely > sufficient tool. Why shouldn't it? Give me examples, where its > limitations pose a problem. > > > which is also one of the reasons a unix user can do more with wget > > than httrack can do, but there is plenty of evidence in that arena > > already. > > > If there is, why don't you refer to that evidence? I gave already > several sources, including the article by Kellogg, which concludes: > > "With little coding, HTTrack can be extended to meet immediate mirroring > > needs." > > > as for the explanation marks, it was turning very clearly into a troll > > > war. > > Now, who's the other troll besides myself? I really don't appreciate > this "dissent" equals "trolling" allegations. And I do think that the > metaphor of a troll has become overused in CMC. > > > little escalations such as the exclamation mark will be interpreted in > > > many ways, and i don't know your intent, but I do know that at least > > one person saw it as a slight. > > Well: If an exclamation mark is considered to be "an escalation", what's > > next? Banning of question marks? > > An exclamation mark might be ambiguous, although, I think, I clarified > now at length what I wanted to say. In contrast: > > "kindly leave your exclamation marks at home." > > is much less ambiguous in my view. It is clearly an imperative, which I > happen to disagree with. > > > let's not go there. > > Why not? Obviously, there is disagreement on this list about it, so the > only way to solve this disagreement seems to me to voice one's opinions. > > I, for one, think, that the approach to try not to offend anyone no > matter what, is a bad one, because it stifles discussions. That does not > > mean that one should not try to be courteous, one clearly should, but > academic deliberations live from dissent, which is bound to offend > those, whose primary goal is harmony. I personally am not willing to > phrase my postings in a way, so that I make sure that nobody gets > offended. I try to follow the rules offered by Joshua Cohen: > > > 1. Deliberations take place in an argumentative fashion, through the > > ordered exchange of reasons > > and information among counterparts that make proposals and submitt > > them to criticism. > > 2. Deliberations are inclusive and public, and all the potentially > > affected by their decisions must > > have equal oppportunities to paticipate and to decide in them. > > 3. Deliberations are free of inner coercions able to undermine the > > equal position of participants, and > > everyone must have the opportunity to be heard, to introduce new > > issues, to make proposals and to criticize > > them. The coercion without coercions of the best argument is the only > > rule for accepting or refusing an > > argument. > > 4. Deliberations are generally oriented to reach a rationally grounded > > > agreement, and can in > > principle be continued or resumed in any given moment, yet the need > > for decision demands them to have an > > agreed final point. > > 5. Political deliberations reaches all those issues that can be > > regulated on behalf of the public > > interest, but that is not to say that issues traditionally judged as > > 'private' must forcefuly remain out of > > discussion. > > 6. Political deliberations are also extended to the interpretation of > > needs and to changes in prepolitical > > attitudes and preferences. > > (Cohen, Joshua (1996), "Procedure and Substance in Deliberative > Democracy", in S. Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and > Difference. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Princeton: > Princeton University Press, pp. 95-119.) Habermas, in "Between Facts and > > Norms" (Faktizitaet und Geltung), quotes BTW the same rules. > > These rules were initially intended for political decision making, but > also seem appropriate for academic deliberations.. I don't see, that I > violated any of theses rules. > > Frankly, I even guess you and I would agree on most of these points and > on many other points. So, it's even more interesting to see, where we > disagree. > > Thomas, preffering Unix over Windows, but acknowledging that the latter > is the the OS of this decade. > > (BTW: I also switched from HighCom to Dolby for the same reasons) > > -- > thomas koenig, ph.d. > http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/ > > _______________________________________________ > The Air-l-aoir.org(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ > _______________________________________________ > The Air-l-aoir.org(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/

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Webstreams from ICT&Creativity Conference in Vienna now online!
by Laurent Straskraba 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

Dear all, I'd like to inform you that the webstreams from the WSIS Contributing Conference on ICT&Creativity, held in Vienna from 2-3 June 2005, are now online. Thanks to the organizers of the conference and Telekom Austria as the technical facilitator, people from around the world can watch what was being discussed at this important conference which can be described as "Linking the individual in the center of sustainable development with the potential benefits of ICT". To me, this approach is the basic layer of a sustainable future: it's about empowerment and capacity building where social development is a precondition to economic development and not so much the other way round. Please find the program of the conference at www.wsa-conference.org and the streams here: http://multimedia.telekom.at/portal/programmA.asp?id=246 Best regards, Laurent Straskraba --- Mag. Laurent Straskraba Information Society Researcher Board member of IT Business & Research in Europe http://www.itbeurope.org Information Society Representative United Nations Youth & Student Association of Austria http://www.afa.at post: Ontlstrasse 3, A - 4040 Linz, Austria / Europe mobile: +43.650.7711861 (GMT +1) e-mail: laurent(a)straskraba.net web: http://www.straskraba.net ---

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SW to store webpages
by Niels Brügger 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

Hi aoirs FYI - about software for archiving websites: In February this year I published a small book entitled 'Archiving Websites. General Considerations and Strategies' and in connection with the publication of the book a website has been established where it is possible to find the conclusions of the test, the detailed test results, recommendations for using the individual programmes, a detailed description of the test, and links to resources on net archiving. The website address is http://cfi.imv.au.dk/eng/pub/webarc. The book is free of charge, and as long as in print, copies of the book may be obtained by contacting cfi(a)imv.au.dk. Please specify complete address. An electronic version of the book can be obtained on http://cfi.imv.au.dk/eng/pub (for the purpose of citation please note that the printed and electronic versions are identical). The cover text reads; "This book treats the micro archiving of websites, i.e. archiving by researchers, students or others without special technical knowledge who, using a standard computer, wish to save a website for further study. The phenomenon is discussed from the standpoint that Internet research must be able to stabilise and save the object of its analysis. However, the Internet is endowed with certain fundamental media-specific dynamics that make stabilisation difficult. Based on an account and discussion of these dynamics (linked as they are to sender, text and recipient) the following double conclusion is reached. Firstly, unlike other well-known media, the Internet does not simply exist in a form suited to being archived, but rather is first formed as an object of study in the archiving, and it is formed differently depending on who does the archiving, when, and for what purpose. Secondly, this means that there is an element of subjective creation in the archived material, so that methodical deliberations are necessary — in other words, the answers to why and how the archived material has been created. These conclusions form the starting point for the last section of the book, which, based on comprehensive tests of archiving software, discusses in depth the elements that can be included in an archiving strategy.

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Re: [Air-l] SW to store webpages
by GTa3411203＠aol.com 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

I have been following this discussion and have not yet seen anyone raise a question relating to the legality of using this approach to capture web pages in support of academic research, in particular those web pages that are clearly identified as being copyrighted. Are you contacting the owner of the site to ask permission to create a copy of their documents for current and future use? If not, how are you justifying using this approach to duplicating the data? Fair use laws? How are you using the data after it has been captured? Are you extracting data to support point in time studies? Longitudinal studies? I have been on both sides of the house and have concerns both as the producer of electronic documents as well as user. I am also currently conducting an Internet-based study of organization practices that are being reported on web sites. My approach to doing research is quite the opposite. I am collecting data real-time by accessing individual web sites (200-plus) and assessing the available data on a given date in support of a point in time study. I am also using this as an opportunity to advance research practices in a manner that call attention to the dynamic nature of Internet web sites and some of the inherrent issues in taking this approach to collecting data in comparison to some of the more traditional methods that might be used when working with paper documents. I am interested in getting feedback on using this approach to doing research. Gail Taylor Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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