February 2009 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Can Facebook Influence Stimulus Implementation? - Broadband Billionaires - Crowdsourcing the Broadband Stimulus
by Steven Clift 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Not sure. Follow along ... Broadband Billionaires - Crowdsourcing the Broadband Stimulus A place to share links, news items, and comments on the over $7 billion dollars we are providing with our tax dolllars/debt to improve broadband. We own this effort, let's influence it. Join from: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=133665270318 Spread the word. Steven Clift P.S. Something of note in Minnesota: http://mnbroadbandcoalition.com And a related resource: http://blandinonbroadband.org

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Liss Jeffrey obit
by Barry Wellman 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Liss Jeffrey who was heavily involved in organizing AoIR Toronto Internet Research conference some years ago died recently. A long and interesting obituary is in today's Toronto Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090223.OBJEFFREY23/TPSto… Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology University of Toronto 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 I regret that most of my thoughts are more than 140 characters long Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________

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research on birth week groups?
by danah boyd 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

A friend of mine is trying to find research on women who are part of "birth week" groups. I've heard a lot about these forming through Craigslist, but I don't know who is doing research in this space. Does anyone here know? I've included his full query below. --danah Begin forwarded message: > From: Ethan Zuckerman <ethanz(a)gmail.com> > > In the past few (several?) years, online support groups have emerged > for women who share a pregnancy due date. Some of these clubs are > regional; others are nationwide or worldwide, usually constrained by > language. Women participate because it's helpful to compare their > experiences to women at the same stage of gestational development. > > What's interesting to me about these groups is that they encourage > connect - sometimes deep emotional connection - between women who > don't share much in common in demograhic/psychograhic terms. These > groups are limited by gender, age and basic computer literacy, but > they appear to be - if only from anecdotes - more diverse than many > voluntary online associations. > > I'm interested in whether anyone has done either a detailed > ethnographic or a quantitative, survey-based study of one or more of > these communities. I'm especially interested in observations on > support relationships developing between women who differ in terms > of income, race and religion. > > -E

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Register Today to Get the Early Bird Rates for "YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States"
by Stuart Shulman 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Please join us at the 1st Annual Journal of Information Technology & Politics Conference, "YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States," taking place April 16 & 17, 2009 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This conference brings together social and computer scientists to examine the electoral impact of user-created YouTube content and to demonstrate new technical and analytic opportunities associated with new media technologies and politics. Register on or before January 31 and receive an Early Bird discount. http://www.umass.edu/polsci/youtube/ The conference is pleased to feature two keynote speakers: Day 1: Richard Rogers, Chair in New Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam. He is Director of Govcom.org, the group responsible for the Issue Crawler and other info-political tools, and the Digital Methods Initiative, reworking method for Internet research. Rogers is author of Information Politics on the Web (MIT Press, 2004), awarded the 2005 best book of the year by the American Society of Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T). Current research interests include Internet censorship, googlization, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the Web, as well as the post-demographics implied by recommender systems. Day 2: Noshir Contractor, Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the School of Engineering, School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, USA. He is the Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University. He is investigating factors that lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically linked social and knowledge networks in communities. Specifically, his research team is developing and testing theories and methods of network science to map, understand and enable more effective networks in a wide variety of contexts including communities of practice in business, science and engineering communities, disaster response teams, public health networks, digital media and learning networks, and in virtual worlds, such as Second Life. YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle is co-sponsored by the Departments of Political Science, Computer Science and Communication at UMass Amherst; the Center for Public Policy and Administration at UMass Amherst; Panopto; TubeKit; the National Center for Digital Government; the Qualitative Data Analysis Program; the Science, Technology and Society Initiative; the Journal of Information Technology and Politics; and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UMass Amherst and is supported by a grant from the Research Leadership in Action Program in the Office of Research and Engagement at UMass Amherst. Visit the conference website for more information: http://www.umass.edu/polsci/youtube/ Regards, Michelle Michelle Sagan Goncalves Conference Coordinator YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the US 126 Thompson Hall UMass Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 Telephone: + 1 413 577 2354

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birth week groups -- the other side
by Barry Wellman 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

Reading the very interesting post about birth week groups makes me wonder about the other side. Anyone else born about Sept 30, 1942? Should compare common experiences? This may become a whole new cohort effects research area. I'm humorous about this, but it would be fascinating. And to repeat, I think what Kathy told us is important. Barry Wellman, bottle-fed, crib-confined, totally non-organic _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology University of Toronto 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 I regret that most of my thoughts are more than 140 characters long Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________

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Country demographics on SNS
by Dr. Rasha Abdulla 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

> > Hi everyone, Does anyone know how to get some statistics on participants in a social network by country? I'm particularly interested in updated figures about how many Egyptians are on Facebook and MySpace, as long as how many worldwide members in terms of aggregate membership. Thank you. -- Rasha A. Abdulla, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Journalism and Mass Communication The American University in Cairo www.rashaabdulla.com

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Re: [Air-L] research on birth week groups?
by Katy Pearce 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

(I originally sent my response directly to Ethan and danah, so here it is for everyone.) danah and Ethan, I'm not familiar with any studies except for this one: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/w-cif012209.php , but I can tell you that in my personal experience, LiveJournal is where a lot of this is happening. I myself was in a birth week (and month - months appear to be more common, FWIW) group and continue to be involved in it. We're now all swapping teething remedies. There is particular kinship with "birthday buddies." It was my experience that when one joins one of the open/common LJ groups (like pregnancy, pregnant, or parenting101), it is expected that one shares her name, age, due date and other details. Then a mod or a member of the month group will private message or send a comment inviting the user to join "November2008" or whatever. Also, it is expected that community members will post their "birth story" within a few days of giving birth. After those are posted, invites to "birthday week buddy" groups are send privately or via comments. I see every few weeks a post in the general groups that says "Hey, we just started a August2009 group!" It is absolutely the case that these groups vary in demographics and attitudes toward childrearing (although I'd venture a guess that these groups skew more crunchy. Parenting101 is a very popular, albeit snarky, group though that has its subcommunities of (self-proclaimed) boobnazis (breast is best and if you don't agree, we hate you), co-sleepers, anti-vaccination people, etc.)). The month groups are generally friendly and more supportive and as Ethan speculates, more about developmental and medical questions (i.e., how did your baby's 2-month vaccinations go? Or did your OB give you this test?). Demographically, all these communities skew YOUNG. I, at 30, feel like the oldest by far. Most seem to be in their late teens and early 20s. As such, financial issues and custody/relationship/how parents react to the news issues are a bit different than the ones that I discuss with my "real life" parent friends. For example, I posted a question the other day about opinions regarding a stroller accessory and was quickly flamed for owning a stroller deemed too expensive. Then there was a flame war about how that stroller, while expensive has a lifetime guarantee, was easily found on Craig's List, etc. But there is definitely a lot of good feedback given to the younger mothers when asking questions about budgeting, what is really essential and the like. And yes, friendships emerge and appear to be very different from "real life" friendships. Some of them are maintained through the community itself and others occur through comments that move into be-friending on private journals (i.e., "Looks like we both do cloth diapers and have boys. Friend eachother?") I hope that this was helpful. If anyone is interested in discussing further or offlist, I'd be happy to. And yes, I probably spend way too much time there. I like to crowdsource my baby questions though. J Thanks, Katy Message: 4 Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:59:38 -0500 From: danah boyd <aoir.z3z(a)danah.org> Subject: [Air-L] research on birth week groups? To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <1694AFEA-E805-487C-8016-AC5B162487EB(a)danah.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes A friend of mine is trying to find research on women who are part of "birth week" groups. I've heard a lot about these forming through Craigslist, but I don't know who is doing research in this space. Does anyone here know? I've included his full query below. --danah Begin forwarded message: > From: Ethan Zuckerman <ethanz(a)gmail.com> > > In the past few (several?) years, online support groups have emerged > for women who share a pregnancy due date. Some of these clubs are > regional; others are nationwide or worldwide, usually constrained by > language. Women participate because it's helpful to compare their > experiences to women at the same stage of gestational development. > > What's interesting to me about these groups is that they encourage > connect - sometimes deep emotional connection - between women who > don't share much in common in demograhic/psychograhic terms. These > groups are limited by gender, age and basic computer literacy, but > they appear to be - if only from anecdotes - more diverse than many > voluntary online associations. > > I'm interested in whether anyone has done either a detailed > ethnographic or a quantitative, survey-based study of one or more of > these communities. I'm especially interested in observations on > support relationships developing between women who differ in terms of > income, race and religion. > > -E

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internet and homelessness
by Laszlo Ropolyi 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

Dear AoIR-ers, I would like to thank everybody for the valuable and sensible comments and suggestions on the internet and homelessness links. They were encouraging and useful - I will inform all of you if I will have a contribution to the problem. Thanks again, Laszlo Laszlo Ropolyi Dept. History and Philosophy of Science Eotvos University Budapest, Hungary

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internet literacy.
by Peter Timusk 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

I am more of a computer science student/scholar but got started with books on Internet studies in the 76.9 range and the social impact of computers books. So I am recommending a textbook from computer ethics. I would also recommend giving students technical internet publishing skills by having a secondary book on HTML or CSS or other technical writing. This is so that students can be productive with the Internet as I imagine much future communications your students do will involve web publishing. Ian Graham has written for Wiley on HTML writing. His tutorials on HTML at the University of Toronto's web space could be used by those students who can not buy the second book. Here is a book from the 76.9 range Author Rosenberg, Richard S. Title The social impact of computers / Richard S. Rosenberg. Publisher Amsterdam ; Boston : Elsevier Academic Press, c2004. Edition 3rd ed.

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Re: [Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 55, Issue 24
by Jenny Ryan 20 Feb '09

20 Feb '09

Hello aoir-world! I've been subscribed to this list for some time now, but have yet to introduce myself. I've been enjoying the conversations about virtual ethnography, and more recently the use of wikis in qualitative research. I personally have used wikis effectively for research purposes - primarily to organize and share information and resources with fellow researchers. Last year, when I published my master's thesis online, I considered putting it in wiki format and allowing my participants to edit and add to the narrative. Actually, this may inspire me to actually put that plan into action... I'm dabbling in programming and recently launched a wiki, Webnographers.Org, for resources pertaining to virtual ethnography. Over the past couple of years, I have conducted several virtual ethnographies based on observation, interviews, and survey responses on online diary communities and social networks. I would love to connect to more people interested in this field- not limited to anthropologists, of course! On a more philosophical level, I suppose, I'm fascinated by the mirror-nature of the internet and its relationship with our cultural programming. On a political level, I follow free speech and internet policy news (primarily through twitter). J'adore twitter. I'm currently awaiting word from six ph.d programs, for the most part in California. In the interim, does anyone have advice for me wrt publishing my thesis as a book? It is an ethnography of MySpace, Facebook, and Tribe.net ( www.thevirtualcampfire.org) I would like to work on a version more suitable for general audiences- more stories, less history... though the history of media is paramount to its future... Also while I'm on the topic, check out Future Folk Records ( http://www.futurefolkrecords.com) Lots of free futurey folk music friends!. Be well, Jenny ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~ "To define is to kill. To suggest is to create." -Stephane Mallarme http://jennyryan.net http://thevirtualcampfire.org http://webnographers.org ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~

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