June 2007 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

[AOIR 8.0] Vancouver Conference Update #3 (June 8, 2007) - Part 2
by Richard Smith 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

{part 2 of the rejected IR8 update} Items in this part: - program update - being carbon neutral - reusing badges Program This is NOT the detailed program with the crucial element that everyone is waiting for: "when do I present MY paper?" You're going to have to wait a bit for that. Mia is working as hard as she can and is trying line things up into themes and so on. As you can imagine, this is a tricky business. Anyone interested in helping her should pipe up. Everyone else could take a look at the draft program<http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=oudk1o6evtrviddgmqanmjgfes%2540gro…>. That's a google calendar "embed" and you can subscribe to it in your own calendar system, I think. Carbon neutral Yes, we have looked into it and it IS possible: you can arrive in Vancouver with a clear conscience. Or a clear conscience about your environmental impact, at least. There may be a link on the registration site where you can donate money to a good cause (planting trees, typically) and arrive relieved. And we all think better when our consciences are clear, right? If you haven't heard about this before, here's a story about it from Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2006/09/12/carbon-farming.html And if you want to start early: check out this story on wikipedia about personal carbon trading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_carbon_trading Re-Use (of Badges) Even better than reduce and recycle, we can re-use things. And what better thing to re-use at a conference than the badge holders? Those little plastic things on strings that accumulate in your closet and behind your office door and in a drawer of your desk. You know - I bet you have about a dozen of them somewhere, don't you? Well, the call is out - send them to me and I will use them at our conference. And you can feel even better about yourself (what with the carbon neutral donation and the reused badges, you're going to be getting quite full of yourself now, aren't you?). Here is what you do: grab as many as you can find, put them in an envelope, post them to me. Here is the address: Richard Smith SFU/CPROST 515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3 CANADA I already have about 50 of them (in just two envelopes, plus my own collection), so we are about 20 per cent there. Come on people, get behind it! At the very least, show up at registration with a badge hold already around your neck. Everyone who does that gets a kiss from me. Well, maybe not a kiss, but something nice. -- Richard Smith, Associate Professor School of Communication Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, CANADA V6B 5K3 Phone: 604 291 5116 Web: http://www.sfu.ca/~smith/ 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0 New book!: http://arago.cprost.sfu.ca/smith/mawc

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[AOIR 8.0] Vancouver Conference Update #3 (June 8, 2007) - Part 1
by Richard Smith 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

{The Air-L listserv software rejected your prolix conference chair last week, so here's another try - in two parts} Dear air-o-philes, Already a month has passed and I am writing to you again about things air-y. Not aery. Though that would be nice. Items in this update: 1. the hotel discounts (get 'em while you can) 2. the (early bird) registration is available: http://www.aoir.org/?q=conf Hotels If you haven't booked your hotel yet - and some people have, so don't think it is too early - now is the time to do it. Both hotels have online registration systems, perfect for an internet researcher. Two options are available: 1. Lovely hotel, someone else (or your grant) is paying: The Delta Vancouver Suites - $189, with complementary internet and right across the street from the conference venue. Mention "Association of Internet Researchers" to get the discount rate. Here is a link to more information on the IR8 wiki: http://wiki.aoir.org/index.php?title=IR8_Delta_Details 2. Pretty good hotel, but you are paying youself and are trying to save money : Ramada Downtown Vancouver - $79, with wireless internet included and a block and a half from the conference. Mention "AIR1563" to get the discount rate. Here is a link to more information on the IR8 wiki: http://wiki.aoir.org/index.php?title=IR8_Ramada_Details Both of these are nice hotels, and I have stayed in both of them myself. We only have limited numbers of rooms in each one, and these are very good rates, so book early. If you get turned down, let me know and I will try to negotiate a few more rooms. If you want something a little different, a funky little place out of the way - well... get online and start looking! Seriously, though, if you do want suggestions, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with. Registration Some people are keen to get not only their hotel sorted out but the conference fees paid, too. Good for you! We like that kind of organized, forward thinking kind of person. And we like to reward early payment with an "early bird" discount. Discount from what, you ask? Well, the fees *have* been set, and here they are: 1. Student (early bird): $185.00 2. Professional (early bird) $285.00 3. Student (regular) $215.00 4. Professional (regular) $335.00 As you can see, you save $50 by registering early! How cool is that? And think, with $50 you can buy a nice dinner in Canada. All the details on the registration site, being set up as I type this, by Alex Halavais, are available from the IR8 wiki: http://wiki.aoir.org/index.php?title=About_IR8.0 If you have any questions, by all means, let me know. At that site you will be able to register for the banquet and hopefully even donate money to make your trip "Carbon Neutral". We think of everything! Register now! http://www.aoir.org/?q=conf -- Richard Smith, Associate Professor School of Communication Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, CANADA V6B 5K3 Phone: 604 291 5116 Web: http://www.sfu.ca/~smith/ 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0 New book!: http://arago.cprost.sfu.ca/smith/mawc

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Google's privacy
by J. J. 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users. In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." None of the 22 other surveyed companies -- a group that included Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL -- sunk to that level, according to Privacy International. from: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/06/11/google.privacy.ap/index.html Jarek

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Registration for IR8.0 now open
by Alex Halavais 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

Hello, all, Registration is now open for Internet Research 8.0: Let's Play at the following URL: http://www.aoir.org/?q=conf We've opened later than we did last year, and so we have also pushed the "early bird" deadline, for reduced registration fees, back to July 14. If you have any difficulties or questions when registering, please do not hesitate to drop me a note at help(a)aoir.org. See you in Vancouver! Alex -- -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //

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Re: [Air-l] women bloggers - data
by Jan Schmidt 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

Hi Paul, hi all, to add some empirical date to this interesting discussion: As others have pointed out already, women are not underrepresented in the blogosphere per se, but in the blogosphere that is most visible, that is the a-list and/or blogs which might be cited by journalists as "typical blogs". I've done some research on the German blogosphere which has a similar structure of attention/publicity as other blogospheres: There is a relatively small group of blogs that get a lot of visits/links (a-list), and the long tail which goes down to blogs with only a few, if any, readers. In a large-scale quantitative surveys I've conducted in 2005, there were about 45% women and 55% men among active bloggers; a content analysis done by colleagues of mine (who drew a random sample of german-speaking blogs) had even higher figures for female bloggers (about 65%). We recently checked the german a-list by looking at the 180+ blogs which made the "Deutsche Blogcharts" in 2006 (http://www.deutscheblogcharts.de; a top 100 list based on Technorati-Data, i.e. measuring popularity through inbound links). Of those, 61 % are run by individual male bloggers, 13% by individual female bloggers, 23% are group blogs (of which, again, 25 percent are run by a group of men and 71 percent by a mixed-gender group); 3 percent didn't give any information on the gender of the author. So women are highly underrepresented in this highly visible segment of the german blogosphere. We haven't looked in detail into the topics these top-blogs cover, but I'd say that a higher share of men than of women is blogging about topics that might attract more readers (e.g. IT, media, reflections on the state of the blogosphere itself, ...), thus giving these male blogs a higher visibility - and, subsequently, shaping the "public image" of blogs! The discourses about the potentials of blogs as well as banalization discourses both within and outside the blogosphere are implicitly gendered, I'd argue - see also the seminal Herring et al 2004 [http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html] As a last remark: Interestingly we found in a study of a popular german-speaking blog hoster (www.twoday.net) that centrality WITHIN this particulaer platform blog community correlates with gender: Highly central blogs on the platform are more likely to be run by women, and they tend to be of an "public online-journal style" (rather than focussing on political commentary or filtering). Right now, these findings have only been published in german - but in case you're interested in copies, just send me a private E-Mail. Best, Jan Has anyone on this list come across data or reflections on the apparent under-representation of women in the blogosphere? paul teusner fishers, surfers and casters - http://teusner.org/ bio - http://paulteusner.org/ -- Jan Schmidt Obere Sandstr. 9 96049 Bamberg +49 (951) 500 9014 +49 (177) 520 5199 jan.schmidt(a)bnv-bamberg.de http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress -- Jan Schmidt Obere Sandstr. 9 96049 Bamberg +49 (951) 500 9014 +49 (177) 520 5199 jan.schmidt(a)bnv-bamberg.de http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress

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itu publishes wsis golden book
by Jeremy Hunsinger 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

from http://i-policy.typepad.com/informationpolicy/2007/06/ wsis_golden_boo.html More than 375 submissions were made to the Golden Book by governments, international organizations, NGOs, companies and individuals, describing their work towards promoting ICT activities. ITU estimates that the activities announced during the Tunis Phase to promote WSIS goals represented a total value of at least € 3.2 billion (US$ 3.9 billion). Governments committed to implement projects for some € 1.9 billion, representing nearly two-thirds of estimated total value of all commitments, while international organizations pledged to carry out activities for around half that amount, i.e. 0.83 billion Euros. Business entities announced plans to realize projects for around 0.35 billion Euros and civil society projects amount to least 0.13 billion Euros. http://www.itu.int/wsis/goldenbook/Publication/GB-final.pdf jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series

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Re: [Air-l] female bloggers: studies
by elw＠stderr.org 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

> Thanks for the links. I'm having trouble locating the first article. Can you > tell me what J&MC stands for? J&MC = journalism and mass communication quarterly not a familiar journal to me either - but a google on the title of the article was very productive. :-) --e

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Women bloggers
by T. Kennedy 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

Here's a start: Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs Susan C. Herring, Inna Kouper, Lois Ann Scheidt, and Elijah L. Wright, Indiana University at Bloomington http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html Numerous collection of posts on "where are the women?" question found on Clancy Ratcliff's blog post: http://culturecat.net/node/637 Nancy - good recap of the key issues of women & blogging. Tracy ******************************************** Tracy L. M. Kennedy PhD Candidate - Department of Sociology Graduate Fellow - Knowledge Media Design Institute Research Coordinator - NetLab - Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 725 Spadina Ave. Toronto, ON M5S 2J4 tkennedy(a)netwomen.ca www.netwomen.ca www.kmdi.utoronto.ca/collaborative Virtual Research Assistant - Centre for Digital Media Great Northern Way Campus 555 Great Northern Way Vancouver, BC V5T 1E2 Research Director Netwomen Consulting ********************************************

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Re: [Air-l] women bloggers (Paul Teusner)
by Julian Hopkins 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

You may well have come across this, but just in case: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html Herring, Susan C., Inna Kouper, Louis Ann Scheidt, Elijah L. Wright. "Women and children last: The discursive construction of weblogs". Ed. Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs. 2004. 11 Nov. 2006 http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html. A brief analysis I did of a blogger-meet (http://www.julianhopkins.net/index.php?/archives/13-BUM-2007-the-online-eve nt....html ) also suggests that 'SoPo' (socio-political) bloggers are maybe dominated by men. Though as others have pointed out, what constitutes a 'blog' is up for questioning, and most blogs are not the 'A-list', or SoPo, type. This blogger (http://blogger-research.blogspot.com/2006/11/blogging-asia-windows-live-rep ort.html) analyses a report done for Microsoft, based on their 'MSN Live' service, this suggests that most Asian bloggers are female - but there are many methodological problems with this report. Cheers, Julian ++++++++++ Blog: www.julianhopkins.net Skype: julhop IM: jfprhopkins(a)hotmail.com ***************************** Message: 1 Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:36:30 +1000 From: "Paul Teusner" <paul.teusner(a)rmit.edu.au> Subject: [Air-l] women bloggers To: <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> Message-ID: <000b01c7aaf7$653effa0$2fbcfee0$@teusner@rmit.edu.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" G'day everyone, Has anyone on this list come across data or reflections on the apparent under-representation of women in the blogosphere? paul teusner fishers, surfers and casters - http://teusner.org/ bio - http://paulteusner.org/

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Re: [Air-l] women bloggers
by Marcela Musgrove 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

There was a whole conference on it called Blogher the past few years... On 6/10/07, Paul Teusner <paul.teusner(a)rmit.edu.au> wrote: > G'day everyone, > Has anyone on this list come across data or reflections on the apparent > under-representation of women in the blogosphere? >

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