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Registration for Small Media Symposium 2011 now open
by Klara Chlupata 20 Mar '11

20 Mar '11

Dear All: Registration for the Small Media Symposium to be held at the School of Oriental and African Studies on 8-9 April 2011 is now open. More information, including the draft programme, can be found online at smallmediainitiative.com. Please join us for what promises to be a good meeting on small media innovations and vulnerabilities with a closer look at recent developments in the Maghreb and Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. All my best, Klara Chlupata

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Video Vortex news
by Geert Lovink 20 Mar '11

20 Mar '11

Dear AiR-l members, last weekend we hosted the 6th Video Vortex conference, here in Amsterdam. Here some news and announcements from this growing online video network. VV 7 will be held in Zagreb, Croatia, hosted by the Contemporary Arts Museum in April-May 2012. There will be a VV Summer School on the Croatian island Vis in August 2010. This is part of an effort to establish an international VV online video masters degree. Blog reports of VV 6 are available on the INC website and the videos of the talks will be there shortly. http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/ As already posted on this list before the Video Vortex Reader II can be downloaded as a pdf here: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/vv-reader If you like to get the Video Vortex II reader, please let us know. For the VV6 occasion a third print run of the Video Vortex I was made (total is now 4750 copies). Of course the VV I reader can also still be downloaded as a pdf through the same page: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/vv-reader If you have a class or conference that focusses on online video you can order the necessary books. The readers are free and will be shipped to your school from Amsterdam. Please write to: books(a)networkcultures.org Urban Screens readers are also still there, as is Dmitri Kleiner's Telecommunist Manifesto. Having said that, this only works if you send us your (correct) postal address. Believe it or not but most people actually forget to do this... They think an email is enough. Yours, Geert

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development of the information society concept
by Sandra Braman 20 Mar '11

20 Mar '11

Petr, the history of the information society concept begins many decades earlier than you have placed it. The concept first appeared in Japan in the early 1960s when the notion of an information society -- joho shakai -- was introduced by a scholar. (The first book using the phrase in its title was in 1968, when Yoneji Masuda published INTRODUCTION TO AN INFORMATION SOCIETY.) The concept was then widely publicized in the Japanese mass media, and taken up vigorously by the Japanese government with an aggressive funding program to support the development of new information technologies, the uses of those technologies, and study the effects of those uses. It was AFTER the concept appeared in Japan that Daniel Bell's work introduced the concept to the English language world (though I believe he independently reached the notion). Subsequently, the concept was taken up in a wide variety of ways by scholars across disciplines and by governments for a variety of purposes, but to be accurate the story begins in the early 1960s. (I've a piece from the mid-1990s that documents some of this story and has citations that will lead you onward, if that's helpful -- Harmonization of systems, in the JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION.) Sandra Braman

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worm runner's digest
by Murray Turoff 19 Mar '11

19 Mar '11

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842961-1,00.html before you get all excited about the universal rejection journal, i highly recommend you look at the worm runner's digest which i used to read in graduate school and it went a long way to preparing me to be a true academic. it is about to change it's name to the journal of biological psychology to try an obtain the academic standing it truly deserves. Distinguished Professor Emeritus Information Systems, NJIT homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff Visiting Scholar Carlos III University, Madrid Spain Nov. 2010 - May 2011

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Keynote speakers IR-12-thanks
by Tom Boellstorff 19 Mar '11

19 Mar '11

Karine - Thanks for the shoutout - I'm so flattered to have been invited to IR-12 and am really looking forward to it! All the best, Tom > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:34:21 +0000 > From: Karine Nahon <karineb(a)uw.edu> > To: "air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org" <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> > Subject: [Air-L] Keynote speakers IR-12 > Message-ID: > <B91967BF185B4E4A9829E7DF244D411901175687(a)UWIT-MBX06.exchange.washington.edu> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Hello everyone, > > As you all heard from Lori Kendall, we have two wonderful keynote speakers in IR-12: Tom Boellstorff and Mike Monello. > More information about them can be found on the conference website - http://bit.ly/fSmTaW. > Best > Karine > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Dr. Karine Nahon - http://eKarine.org > Associate Professor > The Information School, > The retroV (Virality of Information) Group - http://retroV.org > University of Washington > Twitter - http://twitter.com/karineb > Office tel. - (206) 685-6668 > tom boellstorff + professor department of anthropology + university of california, irvine editor-in-chief + american anthropologist http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/boellstorff/boellstorff.php

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Re: [Air-L] digital society instead of info soc?
by Christian Fuchs 19 Mar '11

19 Mar '11

Hello Petr, Thank you for this interesting question. Just some thoughts... My view is that in the EU policy strategies eEurope 2002, eEurope 2005 and iSociety 2010, the EU a) on the one hand stressed the importance of liberalized and commodified ICTs/digital economy and b) formulated a normative wish list of an inclusive, participatory European information society. It wanted to become "the world's most competitive" information sociey/economy until 2010 and failed in doing so. All three plans were basically neoliberal policy strategies, aiming at a largely commodified European information society. The normative vision of having an inclusive and participatory information society is contradicted by the focus on markets, competition, capital accumulation and commodification, but the European Union never realized this. This is my argument in this paper: * http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a919192441~frm=titl… * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCNi5reW8Jk * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbBH-tH-aI&feature=watch_response * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_M1_jnZxDg&feature=watch_response In the Digital Agenda 2020, the neoliberal dualistic strategy seems not to have changed. Ggoal: "The overall aim of the Digital Agenda is to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast and ultra fast internet and interoperable applications.". "sustainable information economy" = commodified, deregulated, privatized = contradicts the goal of "social benefits" for all With such policy visions, we will also in 2020 have a class-strucuted information society, not a participatory one. The new crisis of capitalism does not seem to have created many cracks, fissures and holes into the neoliberal policy vision. So there is no difference if the EU talks about "information society" or "digital society" - the ideology behind it (neoliberalism) has not changed. The question if there are small policy differentiations in the policy documents over the past 10 years is secondary, the primary issue is the larger concept of society framing it. Also one should once more question if we indeed live in an "information society" or "digital society" or any other prefixed society that implies the dominance of knowledge or ICTs. The prefixes "information", "digital", etc imply that IT and knowledge are the major characteristic of contemporary societies, which they are not. IT and knowledge constitute one of many aspects, we at the same time live in information capitalism, finance capitalism (as the finance crisis shows), hyperindustrialist capitalism (as the reliance on oil and nuclear energy and the Fukushima crisis show), a global war society/imperialistic capitalism (as the various wars fought by the West in the past 10 years show), etc. The claim that "information", "digitization" etc is dominant is simply wrong - first and foremost we live in a capitalist society, which is multidimensionally contradictory and many-faced. Best, Christian Fuchs -- Prof. Christian Fuchs Chair in Media and Communication Studies Department of Informatics and Media Uppsala University Kyrkogårdsgatan 10 Box 513 751 20 Uppsala Sweden christian.fuchs(a)im.uu.se Tel +46 (0) 18 471 1019 http://fuchs.uti.at http://www.im.uu.se NetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blog Editor of tripleC: http://www.triple-c.at Book "Internet and Society" (Paperback, Routledge 2010) Book "Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies" (Routledge 2011)

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seek textbooks about rumor and media
by jellicle Ye 19 Mar '11

19 Mar '11

Hi, I am seeking some textbooks about rumor and media. Many thanks. regards -- Ke Ye (Jellicle) The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China School of International Communications

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Draft Program for JITP 2011 - The Future of Computational Social Science - Early Registration for 2 More Days
by Stuart Shulman 19 Mar '11

19 Mar '11

The draft Program for JITP 2011 is complete. There will be changes, but the basics are in place for a very good meeting: http://www.umass.edu/jitp/agenda2011.pdf Early registration ends in 2 days. If you are planning to attend the conference, save yourself $50 and register by March 20. $50 for students and $75 for faculty: https://quikpayasp.com/umass/commerce_manager/payer.do?orderType=POLSCI ~Stu

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Assessing Progress Toward a 21st Century Right to Know
by Gavin Baker 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

OMB Watch today published an in-depth analysis of the Obama administration's progress on a wide-ranging set of open government recommendations. The recommendations were crafted by a diverse group of organizations and individuals as part of the 21st Century Right to Know Project, which was coordinated by OMB Watch in 2007 and 2008. The full analysis is available here: http://www.ombwatch.org/21strtkrecsassessment Here's an excerpt: "The Obama administration has shown exceptional enthusiasm in using Internet technologies to communicate with the public. The administration and agencies have unveiled myriad new or improved websites to expand access to government information, with more currently under development. These sites have emphasized engaging interfaces underpinned by open technologies. Agencies have expanded online opportunities for public participation and have grown significantly bolder in their use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, buttressed by new policy guidance to clarify their responsibilities in online environments." -- Gavin Baker

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Keynote speakers IR-12
by Karine Nahon 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

Hello everyone, As you all heard from Lori Kendall, we have two wonderful keynote speakers in IR-12: Tom Boellstorff and Mike Monello. More information about them can be found on the conference website - http://bit.ly/fSmTaW. Best Karine ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Karine Nahon - http://eKarine.org Associate Professor The Information School, The retroV (Virality of Information) Group - http://retroV.org University of Washington Twitter - http://twitter.com/karineb Office tel. - (206) 685-6668

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