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CFP: 2nd International Workshop on Quality in Techno-Social Systems
by Dario Taraborelli 11 Jul '10

11 Jul '10

(apologies for cross-posting) Call for Papers 2nd International Workshop on Quality in Techno-Social Systems at the Fourth IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems SASO 2010 - September 28, 2010, Budapest, Hungary http://qlectives.eu/qteso Techo-social systems are ICT systems in which many people collectively coordinate and cooperate to achieve their goals without central control. These systems, for example Wikipedia, eBay, Web2.0 sites, social networks and peer-to-peer networks, have both self-organizing and self-adaptive aspects. In this workshop we aim to put the quality aspect of these complex systems into focus. Quality outcome can be produced by the individual users through selecting, producing and rating certain kinds of content. For example, trust and reputation may emerge among a community and be used to enhance quality. The workshop will consider mechanisms by which individual peers can be brought together automatically into collectives whose members share interests and agree about the evaluation of quality in the domain. The SASO conference focuses on how to make computer systems operate autonomously in a reliable, efficient and useful way with minimal user or operator intervention. The workshop addresses this very problem narrowing the focus down to techno-social systems. The question we ask is: how can one let a system self-organize to a high quality, desirable state, where users and their behavior form an integral part of the system (i.e., a techno-social system), and where self-organization at the system level has to be aligned with self-organization at the social level. The workshop is centered around the following technical issues: * incentive mechanisms for self-organizing and self-adaptive systems * evolving social interaction structures for quality * ranking, rating, reputation and recommendation in distributed systems * conflict and consensus detection, correction in distributed systems * realistic models of user behaviour and the dynamic social structures that they create * analysis of empirical and experimental data for quality * computational sociology of online communities * distributed social networks * quality metrics - how to measure in distributed systems Papers are welcome from the fields of theoretical and algorithmic foundations, algorithm design and simulation, as well as empirical data-sets collection, processing and validation. Audience The workshop is inherently interdisciplinary. Relevant areas include: sociology and psychology,in particular, the evolution of cooperation, opinion dynamics, the evolution of norms and trust relationships, etc; physics, in particular complex (social and technical) networks and models of the dynamics of group behavior; computer science, in particular P2P systems, data mining (ranking and recommendation), information retrieval, and distributed systems. Paper Submission Authors are invited to submit original unpublished papers that are neither accepted nor submitted elsewhere. All submissions will be carefully peer reviewed by the program committee. Inclusion in Proceedings The proceedings of all SASO workshops will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press as a bundle with the main conference proceedings, and made available as a part of the IEEE digital library. IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission: July 12, 2010 Acceptance Notification: August 6, 2010 Camera-ready version: August 20, 2010 Early registration deadline: August 13, 2010 Workshop: September 28, 2010 Author Guidelines Submissions should not exceed 6 pages and formatted according to the IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide and submitted electronically in pdf format. Please register as authors and submit your papers using the conference management system that will be linked at the http://qlectives.eu/qteso website well in advance of the submission deadline. Organization Comittee Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey, UK Mark Jelasity, Hungarian Academy of Science and University of Szeged, Hungary Tamas Vinko, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Program Committee Fred Amblard, Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, France Nazareno Andrade, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Alastair Gill, University of Surrey, UK David Hales, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Dirk Helbing, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Sergi Lozano, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Matus Medo, University of Fribourg, Switzerland Andrzej Nowak, University of Warsaw, Poland Johan Pouwelse, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Camille Roth, CNRS, France Dario Taraborelli, University of Surrey, UK Yi-Cheng Zhang, University of Fribourg, Switzerland -- Dario Taraborelli Research Fellow Centre for Research in Social Simulation University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH United Kingdom http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk http://nitens.org/taraborelli Editor, Review of Philosophy and Psychology http://www.springer.com/13164

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CIPR Grant for AoIR 11
by Elizabeth Buchanan 10 Jul '10

10 Jul '10

Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce the following grant opportunity for AoIR 11. Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee AoIR 11 Grant The CIPR will sponsor one student (undergraduate, graduate or post-doc) for the Gothenburg AoIR 11conference in the amount of $800 (US) The student’s research must focus on some aspect of information ethics or information policy, and internet studies, broadly conceived. The recipient must submit a proposal for a paper according to AoIR procedures. Once accepted, the following should be submitted to Elizabeth Buchanan at elizabeth(a)internetresearchethics.org Paper Abstract CV Brief statement describing how the paper will make an impact on the fields of information ethics, policy, and internet studies. Submissions should be received by 1 August 2010 Recipient will be notified by 30 August 2010 The recipient should acknowledge the CIPR grant at AoIR and in any subsequent presentations or publications. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. Best, Elizabeth Elizabeth Buchanan, Ph.D. Director Center for Information Policy Research School of Information Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 414.229.3973 Principal Investigator, Internet Research Ethics Commons internetresearchethics.org (NSF Project # 0924604) elizabeth(a)internetresearchethics.org

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A Must Read > EQ > Universities and Libraries Move to the Mobile Web
by Gerry McKiernan 10 Jul '10

10 Jul '10

Friends/ >>> IMHO > A Must/Must Read !!! <<< /Gerry EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine, Volume 33, Number 2, 2010 By Alan W. Aldrich Key TakeAways >>> Web-enabled smartphones (and their applications) have converged with cloud computing to change the ways people interact with each other and their environments. The academic community has only recently adopted mobile technology, and the few existing studies focus on one or two institutions rather than taking a cross-institutional view of mobile websites. The study reported here examined the mobile websites of large research universities and their libraries in the United States and Canada. Results found that few functions on university mobile websites clearly addressed educational needs, highlighting an opportunity to provide more educational links and applications. The convergence of web-enabled smartphones, the applications designed for smartphone interfaces, and cloud computing is rapidly changing how people interact with each other and with their environments. The commercial sector has taken the lead in creating mobile websites that leverage the capacities of smartphones, and the academic community has begun to follow suit. MIT and Stanford University launched mobile websites in June and October, 2008, respectively,1 with many more university mobile websites launched throughout 2009.2 Given this relatively recent adoption of mobile technology by the academic community, the handful of studies completed examine how people use academic mobile websites or identify what information/services they want to access via the mobile web and tend to focus on one or two institutions rather than a cross-section of mobile websites across multiple institutions. Cross-sectional studies identify the types of services commonly offered while allowing for comparisons between what is offered and what users want or need to access using the mobile web. The study reported in this article examines the mobile websites of large research universities and their libraries in the United States and Canada. The services available on different university and library mobile websites are compared and contrasted with the literature identifying what mobile web users desire. This analysis across multiple mobile websites provides universities and their libraries with an initial benchmark for comparisons with other institutions. Future research on the mobile web can identify trends and design issues that are currently only objects of speculation. [more] Source And Full Article Available At [ http://bit.ly/9ksEvw ] !!! Thanks To Gary Price / ResourceShelf / For The HeadsUp!!! EnJOY ! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 Follow Me On Twitter > http://twitter.com/GMcKBlogs >>> "The Future Is Mobile" >>> _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the old busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:…

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Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis
by Semenov Alexander 10 Jul '10

10 Jul '10

Hello everybody, I'm interested in qualitative text analysis of posts and comment treads in LiveJournal. I've found previous request on this topic in the aoir archieves, but it was 2 years ago ( http://listserv.aoir.org/htdig.cgi/air-l-aoir.org/2008-September/017172.html) >From one of the responses ( http://listserv.aoir.org/htdig.cgi/air-l-aoir.org/2008-September/017187.html) I've founded the following articles relevant to my interest: Harrison S (2004) 'Subverting conversational repair in computer-mediated communication: pseudo repair and refusal to repair in a hostile email discussion' in Mike Baynham, Alice Deignan and Goodith White (eds.) Applied Linguistics at the Interface, British Studies in Applied Linguistics Volume 19. London: BAAL Equinox, pp63-77 Harrison, S (2007) 'Transgressions, miscommunication and flames: problematic incidents in email discussions' in Mia Consalvo & Caroline Haythornthwaite, (Eds.) AoIR Internet Annual Volume 4, New York: Peter Lang, pp 105-117 Harrison, S (2008) 'Turn taking in email discussions' in Sigrid Kelsey and Kirk St.Amant (eds.) Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated Communication. Hershey, Pennsylvania: Information Science Reference Harrison S and Allton D (forthcoming - draft paper submitted) 'Apologies in email discussions' But I still have some questions: 1) Which method would you prefer for such kind of analysis: discourse analysis or conversational analysis? 2) Are there any other artcles about qualitative text analysis of blog posts and comment threads? Thanks in advance. -- Alexander Semenov. MA student Faculty of Sociology Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html Graduate Student in Sociology at State University - Higher School of Economics http://www.hse.ru/eng

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Blizzard backtracks on real names
by Richard Forno 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Regarding real names in forums 07/09/2010 09:47:41 AM PDT http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1 Hello everyone, I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums. It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name. I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature. In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning. Mike Morhaime CEO & Cofounder Blizzard Entertainment

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Re: [Air-L] Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis (gus andrews)
by Theodore Plothe 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Gus, I look forward to reading you dissertation later, and I may take advantage of some of your references for a phenomena I have discover in my investigation of NFL Players and Twitter. I have a number of coda that use constructed dialogue, and thus will be implementing Gricean methods into my analysis. In a previous life as a linguist, I was a cognitive discourse analyst, most of research was in semantics through that scope. Now a communications nerd, I find myself still drawing upon linguistic principles and research. Until next time, Theo

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Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis
by André Brock 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Alexander, IMHO, i prefer discourse analysis for my own work on blogs/comments (i actually use a variant of Critical Discourse Analysis). I argue thusly because, like others have mentioned, you need to contextualize the discourses you examine - not only in terms of medium and medium-induced conventions - but also WRT culture, gender, nationality, sexuality, and race (there's more, but you already know that). While content analysis can, in fact, be contexualized to include sociopolitical influences on discourse, discourse analysis (to me) seems to be a much more robust interpretive technique for understanding what discoursants bring to bear as they discuss things near and dear to their heart. just my two cents... André Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 04:23:57 +0400 > From: Semenov Alexander <semenoffalex(a)googlemail.com> > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Subject: [Air-L] Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: > discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis > > > Hello everybody, > I'm interested in qualitative text analysis of posts and comment treads in > LiveJournal. I've found previous request on this topic in the aoir > archieves, but it was 2 years ago ( > > http://listserv.aoir.org/htdig.cgi/air-l-aoir.org/2008-September/017172.html > ). > > But I still have some questions: > > 1) Which method would you prefer for such kind of analysis: discourse > analysis or conversational analysis? > 2) Are there any other artcles about qualitative text analysis of blog > posts > and comment threads? > > Thanks in advance. > > -- > Alexander Semenov. > MA student > Faculty of Sociology > Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) > http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html > > Graduate Student in Sociology at > State University - Higher School of Economics > http://www.hse.ru/eng > > > -- Andre Brock Assistant Professor - Library and Information Science/POROI University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242

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Qualitative studies of blogs
by Kathryn Grafton 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Hi Alex (and list ... this is also my first reply) - I am a PhD candidate in Language and Literature at the University of British Columbia, Canada (about to defend at the end of the month), and part of my work focuses on book blogs and online reading communities. I also just taught a course on blog studies. There are a number of qualitative studies of blog posts and comments from the perspective of new rhetorical genre theory. You might think of genre theory as a kind of discourse analysis. Here are some examples (many from a new edited collection, Genres in the Internet): Grafton, Kathryn. "Situating the Public Social Actions of Blog Posts." Genres in the Internet: Issues in the Theory of Genre. Eds. Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein. Benjamins, 2009. 85-111. Grafton, Kathryn, and Elizabeth Maurer. "Engaging with and Arranging for Publics in Blog Genres." Linguistics and the Human Sciences 3.1 (2007): 47-66. Maurer, Elizabeth. "'Working Consensus' and the Rhetorical Situation: The Homeless Blog's Negotiation of Generic Evolution and Innovation." Genres in the Internet. Eds. Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein. Benjamins, 2009. McNeill, Laurie. "Teaching an Old Genre New Tricks: The Diary on the Internet." Biography 26.1 (2003): 24-47. McNeill, Laurie. "Brave new genre, or generic colonialism? Debates over ancestry in Internet diaries." The Internet and the Theory of Genre. Eds. Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein. Benjamins, 2009. 143-162. Miller, Carolyn, and Dawn Shepherd. "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Eds. Laura J Gurak, et al., 2004. Miller, Carolyn, and Dawn Shepherd. "Questions for Genre Theory from the Blogosphere." The Internet and the Theory of Genre. Eds. Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein. Benjamins, 2009. Puschmann, Cornelius. "Lies at Wal-Mart: Style and the subversion of genre in the Life at Wal-Mart blog." The Internet and the Theory of Genre. Eds. Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein. Benjamins, 2009. 49-84. Rak, Julie. "The Digital Queer: Weblogs and Internet Identity." Biography 28.1 (2005): 166-82. And this is another qualitative study of posts (ethnography): Schoneboom, Abigail. "Diary of a Working Boy: Creative Resistance among Anonymous Workbloggers." Ethnography 8.4 (2007): 403-23. Finally, if you haven't seen it, you might also find the online collections, Into the Blogosphere, productive for your work: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/ Best, Kathryn > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 04:23:57 +0400 > From: Semenov Alexander <semenoffalex(a)googlemail.com> > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Subject: [Air-L] Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: > discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis > Message-ID: > <AANLkTikdvKQOqUC2K3_WBIyu5x_FMlOVJHoHqAETbthm(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Hello everybody, > I'm interested in qualitative text analysis of posts and comment treads in > LiveJournal. I've found previous request on this topic in the aoir > archieves, but it was 2 years ago ( > http://listserv.aoir.org/htdig.cgi/air-l-aoir.org/2008-September/017172.html) > >From one of the responses ( > http://listserv.aoir.org/htdig.cgi/air-l-aoir.org/2008-September/017187.html) > I've founded the following articles relevant to my interest: > > Harrison S (2004) 'Subverting conversational repair in computer-mediated > communication: pseudo repair and refusal to repair in a hostile email > discussion' in Mike Baynham, Alice Deignan and Goodith White (eds.) > Applied Linguistics at the Interface, British Studies in Applied > Linguistics Volume 19. London: BAAL Equinox, pp63-77 > > Harrison, S (2007) 'Transgressions, miscommunication and flames: > problematic incidents in email discussions' in Mia Consalvo & Caroline > Haythornthwaite, (Eds.) AoIR Internet Annual Volume 4, New York: Peter > Lang, pp 105-117 > > Harrison, S (2008) 'Turn taking in email discussions' in Sigrid Kelsey > and Kirk St.Amant (eds.) Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated > Communication. Hershey, Pennsylvania: Information Science Reference > > Harrison S and Allton D (forthcoming - draft paper submitted) 'Apologies > in email discussions' > > But I still have some questions: > > 1) Which method would you prefer for such kind of analysis: discourse > analysis or conversational analysis? > 2) Are there any other artcles about qualitative text analysis of blog posts > and comment threads? > > Thanks in advance. > > > -- > Alexander Semenov. > MA student > Faculty of Sociology > Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) > http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html > > Graduate Student in Sociology at > State University - Higher School of Economics > http://www.hse.ru/eng > -- Kathryn Grafton grafton(a)interchange.ubc.ca ><><><><><><><><>>> The very word "genre" sticks out in an English sentence as the unpronounceable and alien thing it is. -- Northrop Frye

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Preliminary Call for Papers MEA Convention June 23-26, 2011 University of Alberta, Canada
by Janet Sternberg 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Preliminary Call for Papers The Twelfth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association June 23-26, 2011 University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada http://www.media-ecology.org "Space, Place, and the McLuhan Legacy" Deadline for submissions: November 1, 2010 In 2011, the University of Alberta will host the Herbert Marshall McLuhan Edmonton Centenary in celebration of the birth of the influential scholar and public figure in Edmonton, Canada, on July 21, 1911. As part of the centenary festivities, the Media Ecology Association will be holding its annual convention in the city of Edmonton to provoke academic dialogue and raise public awareness of media ecology and the relevance of McLuhan's body of work to today's media-rich urban landscapes. McLuhan gave much attention to the changing environment of the city in the wake of technological change. As he stated in an article published in Canadian Architect in June 1961,"[t]oday the entire human community is being translated into 'auditory space,' or into that 'field of simultaneous relations,' by electric broadcasting. It behooves the architect and town planner, above all, to know what this means" (p. 52). For McLuhan, the city is a "technological composite," a patchwork of media and technologies built up over time and space. In this context, new technologies may be imagined as "punctuations" in our historical landscape, inaugurating irreversible cultural, social, and economic changes. Locating the MEA convention in the heart of Edmonton's urban centre will provide an occasion to reflect on the significance of this Western Canadian city in shaping McLuhan's early explorations of perspective as a fundamental artistic and communicational principle. The 12th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association invites papers, panels, creative projects, and other proposals exploring space, place and city in the context of the McLuhan intellectual legacy. How might media ecology inform today's architecture and city planning? What is the relationship between urban and virtual media realities? What is the meaning of the city in the "global village"? How do new media technologies intertwine, intersect and reform today's urban landscapes? A suite of themes have been developed for the Centenary, presented in the form of five probes or heuristics, which McLuhan often used in his teaching and public addresses: Media as extensions of the human senses; Media as "punctuations" in history (bias of time, bias of space); Figure and ground as a means of achieving a deep understanding of changes in perception occasioned by new media; The city as a technological composite; The city as classroom. Convention submissions that reflect on these and related themes drawn from McLuhan's legacy of thought are welcome. Submissions on any topic of interest to Media Ecology are also encouraged. Electronic submissions of papers and session proposals are preferred and should be sent by November 1, 2010, to Marco Adria <marco.adria at ualberta.ca>, Director, Graduate Program in Communications and Technology, University of Alberta, 10230 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, AB, Canada T5J 4P6. A maximum of two submissions per author will be accepted. Authors who wish their papers to be considered for the Top Paper or Top Student Paper award must indicate that on their submissions. All submissions will be acknowledged. Campus housing will be available. Tours of historic sites associated with the McLuhan legacy in Edmonton will be offered. Inquiries may be addressed to the Convention Coordinators: Marco Adria (marco.adria at ualberta.ca) University of Alberta Catherine Adams (cathy.adams at ualberta.ca) University of Alberta Additional details will be forthcoming at http://www.media-ecology.org

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Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis
by gus andrews 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

Alex, I'm the one whose post about conversation analysis and online texts you found from two years ago :) My dissertation is now in the final stages of revision; I successfully defended earlier this year. A relatively final draft can be found online at http://www.studyplace.org/wiki/User:Gusandrews/SearchProject/1208chapters . My dissertation's findings actually suggested a revision to some fundamental assumptions about CA; namely, Sacks et al.'s "speaker-selects-next" mechanism for orderly turn-taking. Rather, because there is so little pressure to respond online, the mechanism seems to be speaker-selects-previous. Harrison, Marcoccia, and Ornberg came to similar conclusions (see my bibliography, http://www.studyplace.org/wiki/User:Gusandrews/SearchProject/1208chapters#9… ) I posit that this may be the case in face to face communication as well. (I should note that I am working in anthropology at a school of education, with an eclectic committee, and I may be unaware of other similar claims made elsewhere in conversation analysis, so if I'm stating something which has already been determined it's out of my limited knowledge.) I think Natalya said it well -- what you hope to accomplish should determine which methodology you use. CA is useful if you're doing anything which involves turn-taking, sense-making, and maintaining order. It was of some use with my blog comment threads; it would also be useful in chat, threaded email, or possibly even @responses in Twitter. It couldn't explain everything I was seeing, though, so I dropped back to rely on some other, more rudimentary linguistic tools. I talked a lot about the phatic and indexical functions of language. If you're not looking at how people talk *with* each other or at sequential responses, CA is going to be not so fruitful. Discourse analysis, as I understand it, serves better for understanding cultural context. Regards, Gillian "Gus" Andrews

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