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Deadline approaching for OII Summer Doctoral Programme 2009
by Vicki Nash 09 Feb '09

09 Feb '09

Dear colleagues, The deadline is approaching for this year's Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme to be held in Brisbane with the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT from 6th-17th July. The theme for this year's Programme will be 'Creativity, Innovation and the Internet'. Please note that new scholarship funding is now available: it will cover one full or two half scholarships (fees only) and will be awarded to support doctoral students who would not otherwise be able to attend. We're also delighted to announce that programme tutors will include Nancy Baym, Stuart Cunningham, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Brian Fitzgerald and Axel Bruns. Together with other participating tutors, these faculty members will lead a programme that will cover topics such as the growth and implications of user-generated content, citizen media and community journalism, and regulatory barriers to innovation online. The full list of tutors includes faculty from the OII and the Berkman Center, who have taught on the Programme since its establishment in 2003, and is still being updated. The application process closes on Monday 16 February 2009: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/teaching/sdp/Y2009.cfm Please do pass on this information to any students who might be interested. Best wishes, Dr Victoria Nash Director of Graduate Studies Oxford Internet Institute 01865 287231 www.oii.ox.ac.uk

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Twitter panel for AOIR 10.0
by Alice E. Marwick 09 Feb '09

09 Feb '09

Hi all, I am working with a few others on pulling together a Twitter panel for AOIR. If you're interested, please contact me offlist and I'll send you the details. Thanks! Alice -- Alice Marwick PhD Candidate, New York University Department of Media, Culture and Communication (206) 650-9109 alice.marwick(a)nyu.edu @alicetiara

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project b e a m - m e - up :: THE NOWHERE DANCE
by Charles Baldwin 09 Feb '09

09 Feb '09

PROJECT LAUNCH / a work in progress 2009/10 b e a m - m e - up ONLINE ART MAGAZIN with art, field studies and essays about space. http://www.beam-me.net We invite you to THE NOWHERE DANCE A performance at Alan Sondheim's Second Life exhibition "The Accidental Artist" Alan Sondheim: "We'll teleport people into an installation which has been constructed over a period of eight months. It represents nothing of architecture, fantasy, or surrealism; it's a space unlike anything in the real world. It's difficult to move through, a field of alien processes which has a life of its own. Sandy Baldwin and I will dance through and around it - on the ground, in the air, and on the ocean floor. Part of the dance will be based on learning to move around; part will be based on adding to the clutter." To access the performance site read more on: http://www.beam-me.net/news Date of the performance: Wednesday, Feb 11 USA West Coast Time: 8 AM / US East Coast Time: 11 AM Europe MEZ/CET: 5 PM / GB: 4 PM Asia: Mumbai, Bangalore: 9.30 PM / Shanghai, Beijing: 12 PM / Tokio: 1 AM __________________________________________________________________ on the project b e a m - m e - up: Our understanding of space is changing for generations. In the digital age we use terms like Cyberspace, Globalization and World Wide Web, even though we have hardly understood the old electro-spaces like power supply systems, telephone and broadcasting. By means of audio-visual transportation we conquer new spaces, which present themselves as both picture space and space of action, place of signs and of real presences. With the online project beam me up we invite artists and authors from different countries to concern themselves with space concepts in the form of art contributions and essays. Artists (realised and promised contributions) Angela Bulloch, London / Abhishek Hazra, Bangalore / Samuel Herzog, Z*rich / Hu Jie Ming, Shanghai / Esther Hunziker, Basel / jodi.org, Dordrecht / Knowbotic Research, Z*rich / Agnes Meyer-Brandis, K*ln / Alan Sondheim, New York / Monica Studer & Christoph van den Berg, Basel / Carlo Zanni, Milano / Li Zhen Hua, Beijing / More artist's contributions will be uploaded during the coming months. Curators / Authors Sarah Cook, Newcastle / Estee Oarsed, Bangalore / Stefan Riekeles, Les Jardins des Pilotes, Berlin / Annette Schindler, Basel / Zhang Lansheng, Shanghai / NN. USA / Reinhard Storz, xcult.org (project director) / The guest curators are designated to each invite two to three artists and authors.) Other scientific authors: Martin Brauen, NY / Christina Vagt, Berlin

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CFP: 2009 Summer Research Institute for Science of Sociotechnical Systems
by Andrea H. Tapia 08 Feb '09

08 Feb '09

Call for Participation: 2009 Summer Research Institute for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems: 11-15 June, 2009 At Syracuse University's Minnowbrook Conference Center, Blue Mountain Lake, NY Application screening begins 2 March, 2009 Eligibility: Doctoral students, Post-doctoral scholars and pre-tenure faculty at US-based institutions. Notification: Late March, 2009 Cost: Most will be covered for accepted participants Background --------------- A science of socio-technical systems is emerging from research in the fields of HCI, social computing, social informatics, CSCW, sociology of computing, and other domains. The Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST) is a new organization devoted to advancing research on socio-technical systems. Building on the success of the 2008 Summer Research Institute, the CSST will, again, be hosting a summer research institute for advanced doctoral students and pre-tenure faculty in summer, 2009. A primary goal of the institute is to build a new cohort of faculty and graduate students who are interested in research on the design and interplay of technology and humans at the level of individuals, groups, organizations, and larger communities. Examples of this kind of work include research on: * new forms of organizing (e.g., virtual organizations, massive online activities) * social computing (e.g., online communities, social network sites); * distributed work (e.g., collaboratories, virtual teams and organizations); * new technologies (e.g., recommender systems, prediction markets, ubiquitous computing); * novel forms of production (e.g., open source software, Wikipedia); * new forms of expression and entertainment (e.g., blogs, wikis, massive multiplayer online role-playing games); and * information and communication technologies for developing regions (e.g., cell phone-based applications to assist economic development, infrastructure development for local economic action). Institute faculty ------------------- With funding from the NSF, the institute will bring together a faculty of distinguished scholars in the domain of socio-technical systems with up to 30 campers, drawn from among advanced doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, and pre-tenure faculty conducting research on socio-technical systems. Steve Sawyer, Syracuse University, Director Tom Finholt, University of Michigan, Co-Director Mark Ackerman, University of Michigan Bill Dutton, Oxford University Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Corporation C. Suzanne Iacono, National Science Foundation Wendy Kellogg, IBM Wayne Lutters, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Tony Salvador, Intel Corporation Suzanne Weisband, University of Arizona Institute goals ----------------- The goals of the institute are to: * Expand on and strengthen connections among the cohort of researchers in this area, and build on the network of relations formed through the 2008 Summer Research Institute. * Guide the work of the new researchers by having experts in socio-technical systems research give advice. * Provide encouragement and support for the selection of socio-technical systems research topics. * Illustrate the interrelationship and diversity of the field of socio-technical systems research. How the institute will be conducted ------------------------------------------- The institute will be conducted as a residential program at Syracuse University's Minnowbrook Conference Center (www.minnowbrook.org <http://www.minnowbrook.org>) with morning small group sessions devoted to feedback on students' research, and evening group sessions consisting of presentations by the institute faculty (e.g., work in progress, instruction in new methods, instruction in new analytic techniques) and moderated discussions (e.g., on career development, how to obtain funding, publication strategies). Afternoons will be reserved for informal activities, such as group outings and picnics. Costs of participation, including travel, food and accommodations, will be covered. How to apply ---------------- The application process requires two parts: 1. A 300 word response to this question: *How does your research advance our scientific understanding of socio-technical systems?* A few references, particularly if they are not to your own work, may be helpful but are not required. 2. Your current curriculum vitae (as PDF or in a Word or WordPerfect format). Please send this response as an attachment in a common word processor format or as PDF of an email with the email subject being CSST'09 application to csst2009(a)syr.edu. Please ensure that you include your name, your current U.S.-based institution and affiliation, an email address, and your status (PhD candidate, post-doctoral scholar, pre-tenure faculty, or an explanation of some other status) along with the response. Please note that participation in this institute will be restricted to those doctoral candidates who have proposed their dissertation at the time of submission up through pre-tenure faculty who are at US institutions. This includes post-doctoral scholars who are not in tenure-track positions if they are less than five years from having completed their doctorate. ** Selection and notification ** Participants will be chosen by a committee of the institute director, associate director, and selected institute faculty. Selection will reflect these criteria: * Clear articulation of the research contribution to socio-technical systems (theory, practice or design) * Clear development of socio-technical concepts and principles relative to your research interests and contribution. Additional information: ----------------------- For further information please visit si.umich.edu/csstinstitute. _______________________________________________ CITASA mailing list CITASA(a)list.citasa.org http://list.citasa.org/mailman/listinfo/citasa_list.citasa.org

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Virtual ethnography and online fieldwork
by tboellst＠uci.edu 08 Feb '09

08 Feb '09

This is my first post to this list, so hopefully I wont mess it up! As an utter newbie to this list, its interesting to see so many discussions of virtual ethnography, cyber anthropology, whatever you want to call it. I share Christines sense of being snowed under (I am enjoying very much being Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, but the workload is quite extraordinary, particularly when teaching three courses, as I am at the present!). However, I did want to take a couple minutes to respond to the postings about virtual ethnography and online fieldwork, particularly the recent posting from Don Slater. As is the case with Christine, Ive never yet had the honor of meeting Don, though his work has influenced mine greatly and I teach with it often. Dons impassioned posting is, as always, insightful, but theres a bit of the baby getting thrown out with the bathwater so to speak, and I want to make a case for not closing the door on certain kinds of ethnographic research topics and methods. Don is absolutely right when stating that: > 'virtuality', like the off-line/online distinction, is the variable social > accomplishments of particular actors, which might be performed differently in > different settings, or be largely absent and irrelevant (as in the Miller and Slater > Trinidad book). Online we encounter a range of social formations that vary in the ways they are linked up to actual-world contexts. Sometimes the link is quite direct, as in the case examined in the Trinidad book, or in my colleague Victoria Bernals work on Eritreans online, and so on. One of my graduate students, Robert Phillips, has just completed a fascinating dissertation on gay Singaporeans use of the Internet that fits into this rough genre of work as well. There are all kinds of social formations in between (though its too multidimensional for in between to really make sense). And then another genre or type of social formation that we can study ethnographically is online games or virtual worlds whose connection to the actual world is much more indirect in terms of reference or community. The majority of persons who participate in Eritrean diasporic websites are themselves Eritrean (though we dont know 100% for sure of course, and there are migrants, children of migrants, etc., that complexify designations like Eritrean). In a virtual world like Second Life, where Ive conducted a lot of ethnographic fieldwork, the connection to the actual world is more indirect. There are things like avatars with humanlike bodies, grass and water, social norms of facing someone you talk to, and a thousand other examples of indirect linkage, and some cases of residents who know each other in the actual world prior to involvement in Second Life (siblings, friends, spouses, etc.) or who meet in the actual world after becoming close in Second Life. But the majority of social interaction and meaning-making that takes place inworld is not directly predicated on actual-world sociality. If I and my friend Joe in Sydney have a conversation in Second Life one day, that conversation is predicated on us both having physical bodies, Internet access, and so on, but its not true that the content and meaning of the conversation (and our social actions inworld, etc.) is only comprehensible to a researcher if that researcher books flights to Los Angeles and Sydney so as to talk to us in the physical world. This has really interesting and I think significant implications for method as well as theory. As I discuss in Coming of Age in Second Life, having written two books on gay Indonesians Ive been fascinated to see both similarities and differences in how Ive had to conduct ethnographic research in physical-world and online contexts. The political dimensions to all of this are important, but I do think they are more complex than Don presents them (although we are basically in agreement): >I'd only add a political dimension to this: the northern academic presumption that >virtuality is an intrinsic property of some new machines acts to frame all research >within this analytic so that we are incited to study virtuality, or within the agenda >of virtuality, rather than to ethnographically discover how actors frame and >perform their use of these new machines (and rejecting the notion of virtuality is >just as ethnographically and analytically senseless). Having worked over the last >ten years in non-northern settings, and in development contexts, it became very >clear to me how politically important - and potentially neo-colonial - are the >framings and concerns that we might impose on other people and the technologies >we export to them: virtuality, and cognates such as cyberculture, are so clearly a >projection of internal northern debates about identity, community, connection, >reality, etc, articulated through specficially northern intellectual traditions such as >poststructuralism and performativity. Time to stop projecting our dramas onto >everyone else and start looking at what they are doing and saying. And we need to >do this not only in order to do better research but also in order to ensure that >alternative uses and understandings of new technologies are actually allowed to >emerge and be valorized. There are clearly issues of power involved here. There are absolutely issues of power here, but they are multivalent and complex. Having worked in non-northern settings for 17 years, I can state quite emphatically that virtuality and cognates like cyberculture are not so clearly a projection of internal northern debates. The potential for neo-colonial thinking runs both ways here. In fact, historically colonial thought worked in essence to preserve virtuality as the prerogative of the colonizer, through what Mamdani terms the spatial containerization of the native. In particular, a notion of virtuality was a threat to colonial power because it could lead to the imagined community (in Andersons classic phrasing) of nationalism that directly challenged colonial rule. (In this quick example the notion of virtuality isnt the same as in virtual world, but there is a shared history, and additionally I could talk about the fascinating ways persons in non-northern settings use online spaces, including creating their own virtual worlds!) So projecting of dramas can take multiple forms, and Don is certainly right we should be vigilant, but part of that vigilance is to not assume a single form of that drama, or that the category of internal northern is clearly definable -- particularly if it presumes an analogous internal non-northern. Ive certainly had many conversations over the years where gay Indonesians (that is, Indonesians using what at first glance appears to be the English term gay) find it interesting to discuss where the internal-ness of their sexual subjectivities begins and ends! To me the key thing is to keep the theoretical and methodological doors open as we research this broad, broad range of new ethnographic domains. Dons entirely right that Asserting 'virtuality' as a methodological or substantive presumption is not only daft and obscurantist, it also misses precisely what is interesting so the point is to explore the forms virtuality takes and follow that moving target. Dont assume it, but also dont assume its fake, a projection of northern academic fashion, etc. Don hits on precisely this point when stating that: >In my recollection, the only real difference between Christine's book and Danny >Miller and my book was that she constructively focused on fashioning the tools >needed if one does follow the actors into more online/bounded spaces; whereas >our book was more concerned to contest the universal applicability of virtuality as >a methodological framing, and we therefore (possibly) overstated continuities with >classical ethnography, as if the online settings (which we also looked at extensively >- Trinidadian websites and chat) made no difference methodologically. These are >merely differences of polemical intention and research pragmatics. In fact, I dont think Don and Danny overstated continuities with classical ethnography at all: I think their book is very well crafted theoretically and methodologically to respond to what they were looking at. Its that kind of sensitivity and flexibility that to my mind characterizes the best ethnographic work, whether I encounter it as Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, among the work of my colleagues working in Indonesia studies, or among my colleagues working in the ethnography of virtual worlds or other aspects of Internet culture. What seems clear to me is that there are many contexts in which researchers must explore various direct interfaces and interchanges between online and offline culture, which in some cases will demand meeting people in the physical world in addition to meeting them online. But it is also clear that there now are (and will continue to be in the future) contexts in which forms of society and culture appear online, in online games, virtual worlds, and other things too. These forms of society and culture are obviously shaped by physical-world societies and cultures in many ways, but the persons interacting within the online societies and cultures in question will in most cases meet few (or even none) of each other offline, and it does an ethnographic injustice to that situation to assume that all ethnographic research on online culture must include meeting ones interlocutors in the physical world. In some cases (and for some research questions) it will make sense, but in other cases it will not. Any approach can be done well or badly, and all have something important to contribute. All the best, Tom Boellstorff

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digital research tools wiki
by jeremy hunsinger 08 Feb '09

08 Feb '09

http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/ seems to have some interesting things that people might find useful

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Information: Interactions and Impact (i³) - Submission Deadline Extension to 22 February 2009
by Kate Friday 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

***Apologies for Cross-posting*** Information: Interactions and Impact (i³) Conference The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, 22-25 June 2009 ***Extension of submission deadline to 22 February 2009*** The organisers would like to thank all those authors, in more than 10 countries, who have already submitted proposals for papers at this year's i3 conference. We have had a number of requests for a short extension to the deadline. We also know that the weather conditions in the UK have disrupted normal working patterns for many people over the last week. We will be pleased therefore to accept submissions up to 22 February. Full details of the conference themes and how to submit proposals for full papers, short papers and round tables are available on the i3 website http://www.i3conference2009.org.uk Dorothy Williams, i³ Conference Director On behalf of the i³ Conference Organising Committee Kate Friday Research Student Department of Information Management Aberdeen Business School, The Robert Gordon University http://www.i3conference2009.org.uk

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#ir10 is proposed as tag for upcoming confernece
by jeremy hunsinger 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

SInce many of us are already using it and since it follows from previous conferences, we should as well just set it now. #ir10 on twitter, blogs, etc. etc unless there is reasoned dissent? Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Virginia Tech Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee http://wiki.tmttlt.com http://www.tmttlt.com Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student. -George Iles

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In Search of Wiki References
by Mauricio Vasquez 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Greetings members of Air-L, I am currently researching Wiki technology adoption and am interested in collecting meaningful studies about Wikis regardless of the field in which they have been published. I have already collected some bibliography, but I suspect I may be missing some important publications. I would very much appreciate any references you can share with me. Shortly after, I will post a summary of all your generous contributions. Thank you, Mauricio Vasquez

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SAW 2009 new deadline: Feb 17 (3rd Ws. on Social Aspects of the Web)
by Dominik Flejter 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

=========================================================================== CALL FOR PAPERS =========================================================================== 3rd Workshop on Social Aspects of the Web (SAW 2009) in conjunction with 12th International Conference on Business Information Systems (BIS 2009) Poznan, Poland April 28, 2009 http://bis.kie.ae.poznan.pl/12th_bis/wscfp.php?i=34&ws=saw2009 =========================================================================== Deadline extended to: February 17, 2009 =========================================================================== In recent years, the Web has moved from a simple one-way communication channel, extending traditional media, to a complex "peer-to-peer" communication space with a blurred author/audience distinction and new ways to create, share, and use knowledge in a social way. This change of paradigm is currently profoundly transforming most areas of our life: our interactions with other people, our relationships, ways of gathering information, ways of developing social norms, opinions, attitudes and even legal aspects, as well as ways of working and doing business. The change also raises a strong need for theoretical, empirical and applied studies related to how people may interact on the Web, how they actually do so, and what new possibilities and challenges are emerging in the social, business and technology dimensions. Following the two previous events, the goal of the 3rd Workshop is to bring researchers and practitioners together to explore the issues and challenges related to social aspects of the Web. TOPICS OF INTEREST * People on the social Web * Individuals on the Web (identity, privacy, incentives, activity models, trust and reputation, ...) * Communities on the Web (roles, leadership, social norms and conflicts, types of communities, ...) * Collaboration on the Web (content and data development and maintenance, decision taking ...) * On-line and off-line life (mixed interaction models, on-line vs. off-line communities, ... ) * Business activities in the social Web (sales, exchanges, word-of-mouth, recruiting, marketing, ...) * Data and content on the social Web * Social content organization (tagging, classification, recommendations, collaborative filtering, ...) * Content dynamics (content flow and evolution, mashups, comments, collaborative creation, ...) * Semantic social Web (standards, annotation of social content/data, ontology learning, ...) * Data and social network portability (standards, policies, technologies, licenses, ...) * Social software and services * Specific types of social software (social networks, blogs, wikis, resources sharing, ...) * Development (architectures, technologies, platforms, infrastructures, ...) * Adoption (critical mass problem, socio-technical gap, data and social network migration, ...) * Alternative user interaction models (games, mobile, mixed reality, ...) * Social software in the enterprise (knowledge management, CRM, collaborative software, ...) * Business models of social services (pricing, cost models, customer relation, content acquisition, ...) * Mining the social Web * Mining user-generated content (opinion, comments, rankings, forums, ...) * Mining the social graph (collaborative filtering, social network analysis, ...) * Mining activity patterns (access, used features, participation, interactions, ...) * Entity-centric content integration (on people, experts, objects, companies, locations, ...) * Social Web mining in business (for marketing, products design, customer support, ...) SUBMISSION * Long papers: max. 12 pages * Work-in-progress reports: max. 6 pages * Demo papers: max. 4 pages Papers must be submitted in PDF format according to Springer LNBIP template available from http://www.springer.com/east/home/computer/lncs?SGWID=5-164-7-487211-0. Submission system is available at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=saw2009. Papers approved for presentation at SAW 2009 will be published in BIS 2009 workshop proceedings, as a volume in Springer's Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series. WORKSHOP FORMAT All authors of accepted papers as well as other participants will be asked to read accepted papers abstracts before the workshop (papers will be available on-line in advance) to facilitate discussion. Workshop participants will be also invited to take part in the BIS conference and other BIS workshops. IMPORTANT DATES * February 17, 2009 - submission deadline for papers (extended) * March 9, 2009 - notification of acceptance/rejection (new date) * March 22, 2009 - submission of final papers (new date) * April 28, 2009 - the workshop ORGANIZERS * Poznan University of Economics, Department of Information Systems (http://kie.ae.poznan.pl/) CHAIRS * Dominik Flejter * Tomasz Kaczmarek * Marek Kowalkiewicz PROGRAM COMMITTEE * Krisztian Balog, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands * Simone Braun, FZI Karlsruhe, Germany * John Breslin, DERI, NUI Galway, Ireland * Tanguy Coenen, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium * Sebastian Dietzold, University of Leipzig, Germany * Davide Eynard, Politecnico di Milano, Italy * Dominik Flejter, Poznan University of Economics, Poland * Adam Jatowt, Kyoto University, Japan * Tomasz Kaczmarek, Poznan University of Economics, Poland * Marek Kowalkiewicz, SAP Research Brisbane, Australia * Marcin Paprzycki, Polish Academy of Science, Poland * Willy Picard, Poznan University of Economics, Poland * Katharina Siorpaes, STI, University of Innsbruck, Austria * Jie Tang, Tshingua University, China * Celine van Damme, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium * Valentin Zacharias, FZI Karlsruhe, Germany =========================================================================== -- Dominik Flejter < http://dominik.flejter.net/ > Poznan University of Economics Department of Information Systems < http://www.kie.ae.poznan.pl/ > SAW 2009 Co-chair

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