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

First e-strike?
by George Floros 26 Aug '07

26 Aug '07

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/ibm_italy_strike/ IBM faces Second Life strike By Martin Banks Ever wanted to go on strike, be part of that feeling of solidarity on the picket line, but felt too cowardly to take the risk? September should see just the opportunity for you. That is when Rappresentanza Sindacale Unitaria IBM Vimercate (RSU), the official trade union representing IBM's 9,000 workers in Italy, is planning a most novel form of industrial action -- a strike on Second Life -- and it wants as many avatars as possible manning the picket lines. Details of what form the industrial action will take in this virtual world are scant at the moment, except that a Union spokesman has hinted that they are hoping Second Life avatars from around the world will participate. A statement sent to The Register by the RSU sets out the reasons for the industrial action as follows: It seems that the reasons for this first virtual strike are related to the renew of the internal agreement. While IBM is one of the company with major profits, its employees are receiving very few fruits of this big mountain of money. The internal climate is below all the IT industries (taking advantages for the famous IBM's competitor: HP), and the drop that overflowed the glass is the long and inconclusive negotiation for the internal agreement. While the works council, supported by the majority of IBM Italy employees, was asking for a small salary increase, IBM responded with the complete suppression of the "productive results benefit", with a loss for a single employee of €1000 per year. For a company that wants to lead the corporate social responsibility, this is really too much. IBM has a widely reported presence on Second Life which is now set to face, at the very least, a picket line of characters that come straight out of the darker recesses of wild imaginings. It will be interesting to see how it plays out should the strike take place. The RSU is obviously hopeful that IBM's local management will see things its way, and the action does raise some interesting considerations. Second Life is already being seen by many corporations as a good marketing and merchandising tool, but the union is seeing its potential slightly differently. "The high offices of the company are worried, because this action will turn on the lights on the project of creation of a global union alliance, that is engaging the unions from over 16 countries worldwide, including the new IT boundary: India," the statement said. What can be used to motivate people to buy products or services can, just as easily, be used to inform and motivate workers in a global economy that they can take global collective action. They could even test out industrial action tactics in relative safety. It could be a tantalising prospect for a committed union activist. It will be interesting to see what actual impact the virtual industrial action has in the real world, and how IBM handles it. UK Second Lifers with long memories may also be keeping a wary eye open for an appearance by the ultimate avatar for such situations -- The Iron Lady of Orgreave.

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World Information Access Project, 2007 Data Memos
by Philip Howard 26 Aug '07

26 Aug '07

Dear AIR: A series of short data memos from the World Information Access Project are now online at www.wiareport.org. Topics include - The World's Libraries Online The Urban Digital Divide I: Global Cities v. Regional Centers The Urban Digital Divide II: Rich v. Poor Cities National Dependency in the Information Age Has Privatization Contributed to the Relative Decline of Internet Hosts Africa? Muslim Political Parties Grow Online In addition, a there is *.pdf version of the briefing booklet we are sending out to journalists, academics and policy makers. It includes a particularly cool map "Wired Countries of the World" with a original comparative data about wired governments, political parties, libraries and civic groups in 190 countries. http://www.wiareport.org/wia_report_2007_map_only.pdf Many people from this list are already on the mailing list and will be getting a hardcopy of this map in the mail. But if this looks particularly interesting, send me an email and I'll happily make sure one is posted to you. Phil Dr. Philip N. Howard Assistant Professor Department of Communication University of Washington

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A tribute to Rhys Jones by his mates
by Martin Garthwaite 26 Aug '07

26 Aug '07

In an area of Liverpool (England) an 11 year old boy was gunned down and killed. His friends have built this web site in his memory. http://pic1.piczo.com/LovingMemoryOfRhys/?g=29378596&cr=1&nsrc=pph It's a particularly power site, given the tragedy, the age of the authors and the message it conveys. -- Martin Garthwaite PhD candidate, London Knowledge Lab www.lkl.ac.uk +447957 764819 Skype id mgarthwaite1330 MS IM marting(a)gmail.com

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final call for fantasy footbal
by Jeremy Hunsinger 25 Aug '07

25 Aug '07

we could still use two or three people, it is more fun than research Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron

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"Text Annotation for Political Science Research"
by Stuart Shulman 25 Aug '07

25 Aug '07

Call for Papers A special issue of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics "Text Annotation for Political Science Research" Text is an important data source for political science research. Large, digitized text collections are becoming increasingly common. Yet most political scientists have little familiarity with the language-processing methodologies available to support research using these collections. Specifically, we are interested in methodologies from the fields of information retrieval, natural language processing, and machine learning. These techniques facilitate the automatic searching, organizing, categorizing, and extracting of information from digitized text. At a high level, the goal of language-processing is to provide one or more semantic annotations on the text. The political science question of interest can then be explored using these annotations. Text annotation techniques vary not only according to the type of semantic annotation required, but also according to the degree of manual intervention involved in the annotation process: text annotation tasks can be accomplished entirely manually ( i.e., via human content coding), entirely automatically (e.g. via keyword-based search or text clustering algorithms), automatically after a manual training period (i.e. via "supervised" machine learning methods), or semi-automatically ( e.g. via "weakly supervised" machine learning methods that acquire automatic annotation systems from very small amounts of manually labeled text). Although the potential of text annotation methods for political science research is enormous, it is understandably difficult for researchers to know where to start. In addition, in contrast to other research methodologies in the social sciences, the criteria for evaluating social science results that rely on automatic text annotation systems are not widely known, accepted, or appreciated. Keyword searches, for example, are commonly used to trace changing political attention across time, but rarely is attention given to their reliability or accuracy, raising doubts about the validity of researcher inferences. The aim of the special issue is to solicit and publish papers that provide a clear view of the state of the art in text annotation and evaluation, especially for political science. How do the techniques map onto major questions addressed by political scientists? What kinds of problems have been addressed in existing work and what text annotation methods have proven most successful? Are standard statistical measures of accuracy, recall, and precision adequate for evaluating the performance of the text annotation technique, or are new evaluation procedures needed that simultaneously consider the social science question being investigated? Given these interests, we therefore encourage submissions in the following areas: • tutorial-style surveys of state-of-the-art techniques in human language technologies and text annotation; • surveys of the state-of-the-art in the application of language-processing techniques in the social sciences, particularly in political science; • comparisons of competing text annotation methodologies on the same corpus/corpora; • innovative evaluation and diagnostic methods; • studies of text annotation methods that try to limit the amount of costly, manually annotated data for training automatic annotators, e.g. active learning; • specific applications and evaluations of language-processing and text annotation techniques; • applications of the text-processing techniques on non-social science problems that point the way to innovative social science applications; and • surveys of the available language-processing tools and resources with guidance for when to use them. All submissions must be prepared according to the submission guidelines available at: http://www.jitp.net The initial submission is due by November 1, 2007 The guest editors for the special issue are: Claire Cardie, Professor Computer Science and Information Science 4130 Upson Hall Cornell University Ithaca NY 14853-7501 cardie(a)cs.cornell.edu John Wilkerson, Associate Professor Department of Political Science 101 Gowen Hall University of Washington Seattle WA 98195-353530 jwilker(a)u.washington.edu -- Dr. Stuart W. Shulman Director, Sara Fine Institute School of Information Sciences Director, Qualitative Data Analysis Program University Center for Social and Urban Research University of Pittsburgh

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number of "social networks"
by Barry Wellman 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

I think Emma meant "online social networks" in her recent post when she said "SNs". She's quoting Canter in Wired. Does anyone know his response rate, sampling frame, and basic stuff like that? I've worked with too many media sources to trust their stats unvarnished. I do trust Pew's though (thanks Ed L.) Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Room 418 Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-7162 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days _______________________________________________________________________

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Interpersonal Position
by Nancy Baym 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

I am chairing a search for an Assistant Professor in Interpersonal Communication at the University of Kansas. I strongly encourage people looking at issues centered on personal relationships and new technology to apply, although a new technology angle is not a requirement. Please pass this along to any appropriate candidates you may know, and let me know of any one you think would be a good match whom I should contact directly. Feel free to contact me for further information! I'll also be happy to discuss this further with anyone who's interested at the AoIR meeting in Vancouver. Thanks, Nancy __________________________________ UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Assistant Professor Interpersonal Communication The UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS is seeking an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies for a tenure track position beginning in August 2008. Requirements include a Ph.D. or advanced ABD in Communication Studies or a related field, potential for an active research program in interpersonal communication as evidenced by graduate course-work, publications, and/or conference presentations in the field, and teaching experience as evidenced by courses taught. The successful candidate will teach graduate and undergraduate courses in interpersonal communication; conduct research in his/her area of expertise; and meet standard service and advising requirements. Candidates with ability to do advising, professional visibility, potential for procuring external funding, experience teaching interpersonal communication, and a strong record of scholarship and teaching are preferred, as are candidates whose interests are complementary to those of current faculty. Candidates with interests in new communication technologies, relational communication, and/or social science research methods are particularly encouraged to apply. First consideration will be given to applications received by November 2, 2007. Salary range is competitive. The successful candidate for the position should be eligible to work in the U.S. prior to the starting date of the position. Send a letter of application, statement of research program, curriculum vitae, three letters of reference, and if available, support materials including examples of scholarship and evidence of teaching excellence to: Dr. Nancy Baym, Search Committee Chair Department of Communication Studies University of Kansas 102 Bailey Hall 1440 Jayhawk Blvd. Lawrence, KS 66045-7574 Direct further inquiries to Dr. Nancy Baym, nbaym(a)ku.edu. Upon receipt of application materials, individuals will be sent instructions for completing required sections of an on-line Faculty Data Work Eligibility form. The University of Kansas is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. The University encourages applications form under-represented group members. Federal and state legislation prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, disability, and veteran status. In addition, University policies prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, marital status, and parental status.

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Re: [Air-L] air-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 44
by Matthew Riddle 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

Hi all, I just thought I would repost the message below about the Poke 1.0 research symposium, because it sounds really interesting, the deadline for registering is next week, and I'm going. :) I noticed some recent interest in Facebook here and thought some people may have missed the original post. Cheers, Matt On 29 May 2007, at 9:03PM, air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 11:15:00 +0100 > From: "Neil Selwyn" <N.Selwyn(a)ioe.ac.uk> > Subject: [Air-l] Facebook research symposium - London Nov 15th > To: <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> > Message-ID: <0CA6909EDE335041AE76D94C1A828B7F0139C7A9(a)M2.ioead> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > ** Apologies for Cross-posting ** > > > > > > Poke 1.0 - a Facebook social research symposium > > > > A half-day social research symposium organised by the London Knowledge > Lab, University of London, UK > > Thursday 15th November 2007 > > > > > > This social research symposium will allow academics who are > researching > the 'Facebook' social networking site to meet and exchange ideas. > Researchers are welcome from the fields of sociology, media, > communication & cultural studies, information science, education, > politics, psychology, geography and any other sphere of 'internet > research'. PhD and post-doctoral researchers are especially > welcome, as > are researchers considering Facebook as a potential area of research. > > > > It is intended that there will be five or six research papers > presented > as well as plenty of time for discussion and face-to-face networking. > Topics for discussion will include: > > > > * Empirical studies of Facebook users and Facebook uses; > > * Issues of ethics and access when researching Facebook; > > * Other methodological issues when researching Facebook; > > * The use of Facebook as a social research tool; > > * The future of Facebook research - emerging trends and practices. > > > > > > The symposium will be free of charge but spaces will be limited and > allocated on an RSVP first-come-first-served basis. If you wish to > attend then email Neil Selwyn (n.selwyn(a)ioe.ac.uk) to reserve a > place by > Friday 31st August 2007. > > > > If you wish to present a research paper then email an outline abstract > of 500 words to Neil Selwyn (n.selwyn(a)ioe.ac.uk) by Tuesday 31st July > 2007. Accepted presenters will be informed by Friday August 31st 2007. > > > > > > The symposium will take place between 13.00pm to 17.30 pm on Thursday > 15th November 2007 in the London Knowledge Lab (located in the > Bloomsbury/ Holburn area of central London). -- Matthew Riddle Research Associate University of Cambridge Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) 1st Floor, 16 Mill Lane Cambridge CB2 1SB Tel: +44 1223 765384 Fax: +44 1223 765505 http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/ Learn to dance in Cambridge: http://www.cambridgelindy.com/

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AMIS eGov Final Submission Deadline Reminder: 9/30/2007
by srbecker 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

This message is being sent on behalf of Dr. Hans J Scholl. _______________________________________________________________________ Call for Volume Chapters and Reviewers Submission Deadline September 30, 2007) Electronic Government: Information, Technology, and Transformation (Volume Title) To appear as a volume within the Advances in Management Information Systems (AMIS) series published by ME Sharpe, Armonk, NY. AMIS is a series of research monographs devoted to the principal aspects of information systems with Dr. Vladimir Zwass as the series editor. AMIS is intended to become a lasting record of both the knowledge about organizational information systems and of research methods for creating new knowledge. For more information about the AMIS monograph series, please visit http://www.mesharpe.com/amis.htm. As the volume editor, I would also like to invite you to join the reviewer team, which will meet the highest standards of academic peer reviewing. Please send contact information and a short statement of interest regarding either one or both (submission and reviewer team membership) to me (jscholl(a)u.washington.edu) Thank you! For further details please see http://faculty.washington.edu/jscholl/CfP_AMIS_e_Gov.html Since EG is a relatively new domain of study, the first contribution of this volume is to serve as a springboard and a steward for developing and demonstrating principles, accepted standards, and exemplars of disciplinary (e.g., IS), multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and perhaps transdisciplinary EG. The second envisioned contribution of this volume would aim at sharpening and accentuating the various topical orientations within EG through review and representation of unique and exemplary research contributions. The third (and implicit) contribution of this volume would lie in furthering the development of a worldwide academic scholarship in EG. For this volume theoretical, empirical, quantitative, or qualitative research contributions are sought. Inquiries are welcome regarding any submission- or review-related question. Please send your inquiries and submissions electronically to Dr. Hans J Scholl AMIS EG Volume Editor University of Washington jscholl(a)u.washington.edu The deadline for submitting a manuscript to the AMIS volume on EG is September 30, 2007. However, we encourage you to submit your manuscript earlier and will send it out for review immediately upon receipt. Again, please find further details under http://faculty.washington.edu/jscholl/CfP_AMIS_e_Gov.html -- Samantha Becker MLIS Candidate | Graduate Assistant The Information School University of Washington 206-221-6444

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Fwd: Number of SNSs users are active in.
by Ed Lamoureux 24 Aug '07

24 Aug '07

sorry bounced the first one./.. included the report. my bad http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/198/report_display.asp Begin forwarded message: > From: Ed Lamoureux <ell(a)bumail.bradley.edu> > Date: August 24, 2007 11:10:21 AM CDT > To: Association of Internet Researchers <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Number of SNSs users are active in. > > I can't produce evidence FOR a number, but can offer some against > the notion of 5 . . . > the January 07 Pew piece on teens and social networks doesn't even > find 5 that are used by teens enough to report them: > Over 1/2 of those surveyed (who have filled out an online profile) > did so on myspace or facebook. And of the sites listed for those > who used social networking sites, 85% used my space, 7 % > facebook . . . > > tough to figure another 3 sites that many use. > HOWEVER . . . it's certainly possible that canter included flicker/ > twitter . . . throw in one web blog . . . and maybe that's how he > got there? > > OR > maybe he calls blogs social networks > On Aug 24, 2007, at 9:51 AM, Emma Duke-Williams wrote: > >> I've just been reading Wired's article about SNS for Students and >> Marc >> Canter was quoted as saying that the average user was active in 5 >> Social Networks. I wasn't entired sure if they meant "5 communities" >> or "5 websites", but, given that they then went on to list 5 sites, I >> guess it was the latter. >> (http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/ >> student_networks >> ) >> >> I've found (I think!) Canter's blog ( http://marc.blogs.it/) but >> can't >> seem to find anything about the numbers of active networks. >> >> I was rather surprised to read the 5, clearly the definition of >> "active" could vary, I'm sure my MySpace account that I signed up for >> ages ago doesn't count, but I wouldn't call myself active on Facebook >> either (login perhaps once a fortnight, don't actively add friends, >> delete requests from those I don't recognise etc). >> >> I'm also assuming that he's not counting things like forums, which >> are, in effect, a community, but again, I could be wrong. >> >> Does anyone else have any evidence (published or anecdotal) to >> support >> or otherwise Canter's claim? >> >> Emma >> >> >> -- >> Blog: http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/ >> _______________________________________________ >> The Air-L(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/ > > Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. > Associate Professor, Multimedia Program > and Department of Communication > Co-Director, New Media Center > 1501 W. Bradley > Bradley University > Peoria IL 61625 > 309-677-2378 > <http://slane.bradley.edu/com/faculty/lamoureux/website2/index.html> > <http://gcc.bradley.edu/mm/> > AIM/IM & skype: dredleelam > Second Life: Professor Beliveau > > > Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Multimedia Program and Department of Communication Co-Director, New Media Center 1501 W. Bradley Bradley University Peoria IL 61625 309-677-2378 <http://slane.bradley.edu/com/faculty/lamoureux/website2/index.html> <http://gcc.bradley.edu/mm/> AIM/IM & skype: dredleelam Second Life: Professor Beliveau

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