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Guest Editors’ Introduction: Text Annotation for Political Science Research
by Stuart Shulman 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

I think the Guest Editor's Intro, written by a computer scientist and political scientist, is well worth the read. http://www.jitp.net/files/v005001/JITP5-1_Editors_Note.pdf The ITP section of APSA (fast growing these days) just voted to adopt JITP as the official journal of the section at the recent APSA meeting. CONTENTS Guest Editors' Introduction Text Annotation for Political Science Research Page Range: 1 - 6 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802149590 Claire Cardie, John Wilkerson Text Annotation and the Cognitive Architecture of Political Leaders: British Prime Ministers from 1945–2008 Page Range: 7 - 18 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802149624 Stephen Benedict Dyson While differences in the personalities of leaders dominate popular discussion of politics, the systematic academic study of these factors has long been beset by problems of conceptualization and measurement—difficulties that have led many in political science to conclude that such studies are not worth the effort. In this light, one of the most exciting recent developments in political psychology has been the emergence of text analysis schemes, and accompanying automation software, that offer the possibility of treating what leaders say as indicative of how they think. In this essay, I consider a text analysis protocol designed to isolate the cognitive architecture of political leaders, in particular their characteristic information processing propensities, and apply the protocol to a comprehensive set of text: the universe of prime ministerial responses to foreign policy questions in the British House of Commons from 1945–2008. The resulting data, encompassing twelve separate prime ministers, shows that the technique can discriminate reliably between individuals and exhibits promising signs of validity. Keywords: Text annotation, political psychology, foreign policy analysis, British prime ministers CORPS: A Corpus of Tagged Political Speeches for Persuasive Communication Processing Page Range: 19 - 32 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802149616 Marco Guerini, Carlo Strapparava, Oliviero Stock In political speech, even if the audience is sympathetic to the speaker and does not need to be persuaded, it tends to react or respond to signals of persuasive communication (including an expected theme, a name, an expression, and the tone of the voice). In this article, we describe the creation of a corpus of political speeches tagged with audience reactions, such as applause, as indicators of persuasive expressions. We hypothesize that corpora of this kind can be usefully employed in the qualitative analysis of political communication. In addition, we present a corpus-based approach for persuasive expression mining that relies on techniques from natural language processing (NLP). We show how the approach can support the analysis of political communication, providing insights well beyond those of traditional word-counting analysis techniques. Keywords: Persuasion, natural language processing, political communication, corpora collection Classifying Party Affiliation from Political Speech Page Range: 33 - 48 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802149608 Bei Yu, Stefan Kaufmann, Daniel Diermeier In this article, we discuss the design of party classifiers for Congressional speech data. We then examine these party classifiers' person-dependency and time-dependency. We found that party classifiers trained on 2005 House speeches can be generalized to the Senate speeches of the same year, but not vice versa. The classifiers trained on 2005 House speeches performed better on Senate speeches from recent years than on older ones, which indicates the classifiers' time-dependency. This dependency may be caused by changes in the issue agenda or the ideological composition of Congress. Keywords: Machine learning, text classification, generalizability, ideology, evaluation Recognizing Citations in Public Comments Page Range: 49 - 71 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802153683 Jaime Arguello, Jamie Callan, Stuart Shulman Notice and comment rulemaking is central to how U.S. federal agencies craft new regulation. E-rulemaking, the process of soliciting and considering public comments that are submitted electronically, poses a challenge for agencies. The large volume of comments received makes it difficult to distill and address the most substantive concerns of the public. This work attempts to alleviate this burden by applying existing machine learning techniques to the problem of recognizing citation sentences. A citation in this context is defined as a statement in which the author of the public comment references an external source of factual information that is associated with a specific person or organization. The problem is formulated as a binary classification problem: Is a specific person or organization mentioned in a sentence being referenced as an external source of information? We show that our definition of a citation is reproducible by human judges and that citations can be detected using machine learning techniques with some success. Casting this as a machine learning problem requires selecting an appropriate representation of the sentence. Several feature sets are evaluated individually and in combination. Superior results are obtained by combining feature sets. Syntactic features, which characterize the structure of the sentence rather than its content, significantly improve accuracy when combined with other features, but not when used in isolation. Although prediction error rate is adequate, coverage could be improved. An error analysis enumerates short-term and long-term challenges that must be overcome to improve recall. Keywords: Citation analysis, public comments, e-rulemaking, text mining, information extraction, machine learning Good News or Bad News? Conducting Sentiment Analysis on Dutch Text to Distinguish Between Positive and Negative Relations Page Range: 73 - 94 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802154145 Wouter van Atteveldt, Jan Kleinnijenhuis, Nel Ruigrok, Stefan Schlobach Many research questions in political communication can be answered by representing text as a network of positive or negative relations between actors and issues such as conducted by semantic network analysis. This article presents a system for automatically determining the polarity (positivity/negativity) of these relations by using techniques from sentiment analysis. We used a machine learning model trained on the manually annotated news coverage of the Dutch 2006 elections, collecting lexical, syntactic, and word-similarity based features, and using the syntactic analysis to focus on the relevant part of the sentence. The performance of the full system is significantly better than the baseline with an F1 score of .63. Additionally, we replicate four studies from an earlier analysis of these elections, attaining correlations of greater than .8 in three out of four cases. This shows that the presented system can be immediately used for a number of analyses. Keywords: Sentiment analysis, valence, polarity, political communication, automatic content analysis, semantic network analysis Automatic Annotation of Semantic Fields for Political Science Research Page Range: 95 - 120 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802149640 Beata Beigman Klebanov, Daniel Diermeier, Eyal Beigman This article discusses methods for automatic annotation of political texts for semantic fields—groups of words with related meanings. This type of annotation is useful when studying political communication, such as legislative debate or political speeches. We present three types of automatic annotation: unsupervised clustering, dictionary-based approaches, and a method based on relevant experimental data. All methods are applied to analyzing Margaret Thatcher's political rhetoric. For this data, we find that unsupervised clustering is most useful for tracing topics; dictionary-based methods are most effective in a comparative setting; whereas the last method is the most promising for detecting off-topic, singular uses of semantic domains, which are often rhetorical tools used to achieve a political end. Applicability, strengths, and weaknesses of each method and of their combinations are addressed in detail. Keywords: Political communication, speech, rhetoric, semantic fields, topic, framing, clustering, lexical cohesion, Thatcher, Blair Workbench Note An Automated Approach to Investigating the Online Media Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections Page Range: 121 - 132 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802149582 Arno Scharl, Albert Weichselbraun This paper presents the U.S. Election 2004 Web Monitor, a public Web portal that captured trends in political media coverage before and after the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Developed by the authors of this article, the webLyzard suite of Web mining tools provided the required functionality to aggregate and analyze about a half-million documents in weekly intervals. The study paid particular attention to the editorial slant, which is defined as the quantity and tone of a Web site's coverage as influenced by its editorial position. The observable attention and attitude toward the candidates served as proxies of editorial slant. The system identified attention by determining the frequency of candidate references and measured attitude towards the candidate by looking for positive and negative expressions that co-occur with these references. Keywords and perceptual maps summarized the most important topics associated with the candidates, placing special emphasis on environmental issues. Keywords: U.S. presidential elections, media monitoring, Web mining, natural language processing, semantic orientation, keyword analysis Workbench Note Media Monitoring by Means of Speech and Language Indexing for Political Analysis Page Range: 133 - 146 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802149632 Iason Demiros, Harris Papageorgiou, Vassilios Antonopoulos, Andreas Pipis, Athena Skoulariki In this article, we describe a media monitoring system that we have developed and implemented for the Secretariat General of Communication and Secretariat General of Information in Greece (SGC-SGI). The system applies emerging technologies for audiovisual recording, speech recognition, language processing, multimedia indexing, and retrieval, all integrated into a large video and audio library that covers broadcast news and current affairs in Greek and English. It assists SGC-SGI in compiling information; annotating and analyzing news; and monitoring national, political, social, economic, cultural, and environmental issues concerning Greece in general. Keywords: Video annotation, speech recognition, multimedia information retrieval, e-government, political analysis, media content analysis Book Review The Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning, Randolph Kluver, Nicholas Jankowski, Kristen Foot, and Steven Schneider (Eds.) New York: Routledge, 2007, 279 pages Page Range: 147 - 148 DOI: 10.1080/19331680801979062 Arthur Sanders Book Review Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice, Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2007, 272 pages Page Range: 149 - 150 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802132612 Stephen Coleman Book Review Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture, Geert Lovink New York: Routledge, 2007, 344 pages Page Range: 150 - 151 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802042282 Kevin Wallsten Book Review Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment, Jack M. Balkin, James Grimmelmann, Eddan Katz, Nimrod Kozlovski, Shlomit Wagman, and Tal Zarsky (Eds.) New York: New York University Press, 2006, 276, pages Page Range: 151 - 153 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802042324 David S. Wall Book Review Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective, Manuel Castells, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Jack Linchuan Qiu, and Araba Sey Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007, 331 pages Page Range: 154 - 155 DOI: 10.1080/19331680802042373 Kenneth Rogerson -- Dr. Stuart W. Shulman Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of Massachusetts Amherst http://people.umass.edu/stu/ stu(a)polsci.umass.edu Editor, Journal of Information Technology & Politics http://www.jitp.net Director, QDAP-UMass http://people.umass.edu/stu/QDAP-UMass/ Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government http://www.umass.edu/digitalcenter/

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Research on critical evaluation of internet information?
by Fiona Bradley 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

Is anyone aware of recent research on criteria to evaluate online information, especially if aimed at resarchers and students? For many years, libraries have been providing guides to evaluating information on the Internet that asks students to look at the URL (is it .com or .gov? is it a personal or organiation site?), the published date, the existance of an author byline etc as critiera to evalute online information. These criteria are perhaps becoming a little too simplistic now to really evaluate a site and in many cases can be misleading – especially with the rise of academic blogging, online datasets, preprint archives, association sites etc which fall out of these boxes. I'm having difficulty finding critiera that goes beyond looking at the URL, authorship and page design and which looks at appraising all types of information whether printed or online, and evaluating the quality of peer review, accuracy of datasets and statistics and so on. Is anyone aware of work in defining evaluation criteria that can be used by researchers, academics and students? I am aware of some studies of critiera for consumer health sites but I'm more interested in appraisal for the purposes of citing information in research or student papers. thanks, Fiona Bradley Information Services Librarian University of Technology, Sydney

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Ontario Digital Economy Conference -- October 1, 2 and 3, 2008
by Bermonte, Anne (MGS) 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

During October 1, 2 and 3, the Ministry of Government Services, in collaboration with the Ministries of Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Small Business and Consumer Services, Northern Development and Mines and Industry Canada's FedNor will be hosting Ontario's Digital Economy Conference at the Deerhurst Resort in Muskoka, Ontario. The 3-day conference will focus on the transformation of Ontario's economic, social and environmental future through the adoption and use of broadband technology, and innovative applications and products. I'm attaching a link to the conference website for additional information. Some of the featured speakers are: * Robert Bell (Executive Director and Co-Founder, Intelligent Community Forum, New York) * Mayor Brenda Halloran (Mayor of Waterloo) * Dr. Ed Brown (CEO, Ontario Telehealth Network) * Rob Dowler (Corporate Chief Strategist, Province of Ontario) * Doug Cooper (Country Manager, Intel Canada) * Stuart MacDonald (CEO, TripHarbour.ca) * Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian Science Fiction Author) * Lev Gonick (Founder, Chair Emeritus of OneCommunity and CIO of Case Western) * Brian Beaton - K-Net I hope that a number of you in the research community will be able to join us in beautiful Muskoka for this exciting and informative conference. Further information, including a preliminary program, registration and further details are available at: http://www.thedigitaleconomy.ca Anne Bermonte Senior Policy Analyst Ministry of Government Services

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Akamai's State of the Internet
by jeremy hunsinger 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/ 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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25 New Media Researchers invited to attend PICNIC'08
by Anne Helmond 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

Would you like to attend the PICNIC conference, but your university refuses to finance your ticket unless you are the keynote speaker? If you are an academic researcher, scientist, or all-round investigator we have exactly 25 passe partout tickets (value 1245 Euro) available for those with an enquiring mind. What do you need to do to qualify for a completely free pass to PICNIC08? First, make sure you have an updated profile on the PICNIC network (free). Include information about your work in the profile, with a link to further information. Then send an email (picnicresearchers [at] gmail.com) to describe what part of PICNIC interests you most. How does this relate to your own work? Stick to one page max (A4), and if you like you can add one picture (for instance a graphic that illustrates your work). What can you win? "Tickets for PICNIC'08. The full thing: access to the PICNIC conference, the specials, the parties, the award ceremonies, everything! In addition, you will be invited to a special breakfast research seminar to meet with the other researchers. This informal gathering, titled 'Enquiring Minds' will take place on Wednesday morning September 24, Westerunie 9-11, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Deadline for applications is Wednesday, 17 September 2008. More info: http://www.picnicnetwork.org/page/25870/en

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Re: [Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 50, Issue 10
by Gary Hall 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

For more on conspiracy theory, you could see Clare Birchall's Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip (London: Berg, 2006). There is also her essay in Culture Machine, Vol. 6, 2004: 'Just Because You're Paranoid, Doesn't Mean They're Not Out to Get You'. It's online at: http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/12/11 Gary -- Gary Hall Professor of Media and Performing Arts School of Art and Design, Coventry University Co-editor of Culture Machine http://www.culturemachine.net Director of the Cultural Studies Open Access Archive http://www.culturemachine.net/csearch Co-founder of the Open Humanities Press http://www.openhumanitiespress.org My website http://www.garyhall.info Gary air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org wrote: > Send Air-L mailing list submissions to > air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > air-l-owner(a)listserv.aoir.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Air-L digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Conspiracy Groups (CJ Pascoe) > 2. Re: Conspiracy Groups (Erika S. Poole) > 3. Re: Conspiracy Groups (Holly Kruse) > 4. Re: Conspiracy Groups (KMV) > 5. Re: Conspiracy Groups (Nishant Shah) > 6. another web-based research/citation manager (jeremy hunsinger) > 7. Re: New AoIR website (Dominik M. Rosenauer) > 8. Collating and sharing blogging-related references (David Brake) > 9. Re: Collating and sharing blogging-related references > (jeremy hunsinger) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:54:17 -0600 > From: CJ Pascoe <c.j.pascoe(a)coloradocollege.edu> > Subject: [Air-L] Conspiracy Groups > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Message-ID: <60C91EB2-1C01-48DB-89B4-6AE56A57B3DF(a)coloradocollege.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes > > I'm hoping that the combined wisdom of this list can point me in the > correct direction. One of my undergraduate students is writing her > senior thesis on American 9/11 conspiracy theory groups. I can help > her with a general sociological framing of these groups, but I'm not > sure where to direct her in terms of literature on new media and > conspiracy groups (apart from a good This American Life episode from > National Public Radio). Do any of you have suggestions for specific > articles/books on conspiracy theory groups and their use of new media? > > Thanks, > CJ > ___________________________________________ > C.J. Pascoe > Assistant Professor > Department of Sociology > Colorado College > > Phone: 719-389-6735 > Web: http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~cpascoe > Dude Book: http://ucpress.edu/books/pages/10671.html > Digital Youth: http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:57:37 -0400 > From: "Erika S. Poole" <erika(a)cc.gatech.edu> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Conspiracy Groups > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Message-ID: <48C87B11.8060108(a)cc.gatech.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > You might be interested in the book "The Age of Anxiety: Conspiracy > Theory and the Human Sciences" > edited by J. Parish and M. Parker. > > Best of luck! > > Erika Shehan Poole > PhD student, Human-Centered Computing > Georgia Institute of Technology > http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~erika > > > CJ Pascoe wrote: > >> I'm hoping that the combined wisdom of this list can point me in the >> correct direction. One of my undergraduate students is writing her >> senior thesis on American 9/11 conspiracy theory groups. I can help >> her with a general sociological framing of these groups, but I'm not >> sure where to direct her in terms of literature on new media and >> conspiracy groups (apart from a good This American Life episode from >> National Public Radio). Do any of you have suggestions for specific >> articles/books on conspiracy theory groups and their use of new media? >> >> Thanks, >> CJ >> ___________________________________________ >> C.J. Pascoe >> Assistant Professor >> Department of Sociology >> Colorado College >> >> Phone: 719-389-6735 >> Web: http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~cpascoe >> Dude Book: http://ucpress.edu/books/pages/10671.html >> Digital Youth: http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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/ >> > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:05:31 -0500 > From: Holly Kruse <holly-kruse(a)utulsa.edu> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Conspiracy Groups > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Message-ID: <E424E5DD-4ACD-4E94-924C-BD1D16EDE0B5(a)utulsa.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed > > Mark Fenster's _Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American > Culture_ has just come out in a revised edition that deals with 9/11 > conspiracy theories. The original included analysis of the > alt.conspiracy Usenet newsgroup. Here's the link: > > http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/f/fenster_conspiracy.html > > > >> I'm hoping that the combined wisdom of this list can point me in >> the correct direction. One of my undergraduate students is writing >> her senior thesis on American 9/11 conspiracy theory groups. I can >> help her with a general sociological framing of these groups, but >> I'm not sure where to direct her in terms of literature on new >> media and conspiracy groups (apart from a good This American Life >> episode from National Public Radio). Do any of you have >> suggestions for specific articles/books on conspiracy theory groups >> and their use of new media? >> >> > > > Holly > > ----- > Holly Kruse > Faculty of Communication > The University of Tulsa > 800 S. Tucker Drive > Tulsa, OK 74104 > 918-631-3845 > holly-kruse(a)utulsa.edu or holly.kruse(a)gmail.com > http://personal.utulsa.edu/~holly-kruse > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:14:57 -0700 > From: KMV <cuuixsilver(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Conspiracy Groups > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Message-ID: > <a4123b700809101914q3eef7956g9f2c1e91db136959(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > In 2006 V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam had an even called > Tangent Conspiracy. As part of That, Florian Cramer gave a great talk about > the connection between the web and conspiracies. The video is archived > here: > http://www.v2.nl/portal2004/events/channel/item.sxml?uri=urn:v2:portal2004:… > > He talks about the web as inherently paranoid, about hacker culture and > conspiracy theories, and a historical survey of some representative > conspiracies, and mentions 9/11. It might be helpful as an example of a > different way of framing. > > Also, I believe Brian Massumi has done some useful writing about 9/11 > paranoia generally: "Fear (The Spectrum Said)" *positions: east asia > cultures critique* 13.1 (2005) 31-48 -- > http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/positions/v013/13.1massumi.html > > and this: > "Potential Politics and the Primacy of Preemption" Theory and Event 10:2 > http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2massumi.html > > You need access through a library or university though. > > Best, > > Kim > > On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 6:54 PM, CJ Pascoe > <c.j.pascoe(a)coloradocollege.edu>wrote: > > >> I'm hoping that the combined wisdom of this list can point me in the >> correct direction. One of my undergraduate students is writing her senior >> thesis on American 9/11 conspiracy theory groups. I can help her with a >> general sociological framing of these groups, but I'm not sure where to >> direct her in terms of literature on new media and conspiracy groups (apart >> from a good This American Life episode from National Public Radio). Do any >> of you have suggestions for specific articles/books on conspiracy theory >> groups and their use of new media? >> >> Thanks, >> CJ >> ___________________________________________ >> C.J. Pascoe >> Assistant Professor >> Department of Sociology >> Colorado College >> >> Phone: 719-389-6735 >> Web: http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~cpascoe<http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/%7Ecpascoe> >> Dude Book: http://ucpress.edu/books/pages/10671.html >> Digital Youth: http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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/ >> >> > > > >

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Re: [Air-L] Conspiracy Culture
by Bertha Chin 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

There's also "Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to The X-Files" by Peter Knight. Bertha > Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:54:17 -0600 > From: CJ Pascoe <c.j.pascoe(a)coloradocollege.edu> > Subject: [Air-L] Conspiracy Groups > To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org > Message-ID: <60C91EB2-1C01-48DB-89B4-6AE56A57B3DF(a)coloradocollege.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes > > I'm hoping that the combined wisdom of this list can point me in the > correct direction. One of my undergraduate students is writing her > senior thesis on American 9/11 conspiracy theory groups. I can help > her with a general sociological framing of these groups, but I'm not > sure where to direct her in terms of literature on new media and > conspiracy groups (apart from a good This American Life episode from > National Public Radio). Do any of you have suggestions for specific > articles/books on conspiracy theory groups and their use of new media? > > Thanks, > CJ > ___________________________________________ > C.J. Pascoe > Assistant Professor > Department of Sociology > Colorado College > > Phone: 719-389-6735 > Web: http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~cpascoe > Dude Book: http://ucpress.edu/books/pages/10671.html > Digital Youth: http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu > > > > >

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ASIST> Schedule for 4th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium
by H Rosenbaum 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

We are pleased to announce the schedule for "4th Annual SIG SI Social Informatics Research Symposium "People, information and technology: The social analysis of computing" Saturday, October 25, 2008, 8:30 AM-12:30 PM Hyatt Regency Columbus, Ohio This symposium precedes the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Early registration ends on 9/12. We hope you will join us for a morning of outstanding papers and posters, join us for the networking lunch and and stay for the SIG-USE session to follow. The keynote address will be given by Dr. Mark Ackerman, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and School of Information University of Michigan [Note: because of the busy schedule we encourage you to arrive at the Symposium by 8:15!] 8:20: Welcome: Howard Rosenbaum and Kalpana Shankar, Indiana University - co-organizers 8:30 Eric Meyer, Oxford Internet Institute, UK The Role of e-Infrastructures in the Transformation of Research Practices and Outcomes 8:50 Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson, Creative Practices Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, AUS Research in action: taking an articulation approach to examine the roles of information technologies and human interaction in academic practice 9:10 Frank Lambert School of Library and Information Science, Kent State University The social shaping of an online community information provider 9:30 Emilee Rader School of Information, University of Michigan Group Information Repositories as Social Systems 9:50 Ying Ding, SLIS, Indiana University Modeling Social Tagging: Upper Tag Ontology (UTO) 10:10 Break 10:20 Mike Tyworth, Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology and Steve Sawyer, IST, Syracuse University Social Informatics and the Social Analysis of Computing 10:40 Kristene Unsworth Information School, University of Washington Information use, sharing and surveillance: the role of the citizen- informer in the war on terror 11:00 Ken Fleischmann College of Information Studies, University of Maryland Social Analysis of Transparency in Virtual Worlds: Ethical Imperatives for Simulation Design 11:20 Inna Kouper, SLIS, Indiana University The composite model of critical discourse analysis: Examining mutual shaping of people, information, and technology through discourse 11:40 Steven Paling, SLIS, University of Wisconsin-Madison Toward a Theory of Technological Transformation in Artistic Genres 12:00 Keynote address: Mark Ackerman, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and School of Information University of Michigan 12:30 Networking lunch with SIG-USE Posters Kathryn Clodfelter SLIS, Indiana University Innovation, ICTs, and Inequality: The U. S. National Information Infrastructure (NII) and Community Networks Guillermo A. Oyarce, University of North Texas, Eduardo Aguado-López, Nelson Arteaga-Botello, Rosario Rogel-Salazar, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Méjico Using REDALYC and its human networks in Latin America, Spain and Portugal to understand the role of information in ICT adoption Jay Paraki, International Institute For Knowledge Management International Institute for Knowledge Management Maria Souden University of Michigan School of Information Information Work in the Chronic Illness Experience Mike Tyworth, Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology Social Shaping of Police Technology

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histories of African Internet? - call for chapter
by Gerard Goggin 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

Dear air-listers, Mark McLelland and I are finalizing contributors for a collection on 'Internet Histories', developed from our workshops on this topic: http://www.capstrans.edu.au/about/projects/internet-histories.html We would like to commission a chapter on the histories of the African Internet, and would welcome expressions of interest, or suggestions. Please just email Mark McLelland ( Mark McLelland <markmc(a)uow.edu.au>) or myself with details. Thanks and best wishes, Gerard Goggin \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Gerard Goggin Professor of Digital Communication & Deputy Director Journalism and Media Research Centre University of New South Wales Sydney 2052 NSW Australia http://jmrc.arts.unsw.edu.au/ e: g.goggin(a)unsw.edu.au w: +61 2 9385 8532 f: +61 2 9385 8528 m: +61 428 66 88 24

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PhD Scholarships with the Smart Services CRC - Brisbane, Australia
by Axel Bruns 12 Sep '08

12 Sep '08

G'day ! Now that the new Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre has been officially launched, we've begun to recruit for PhD students who'll be based with the Queensland University of Technology node of the CRC in Brisbane, Australia. This is an excellent opportunity to work with major Australian industry partners and key researchers in the Creative Industries and Business Faculties at QUT. If you're interested, get in touch now; if you know of anyone who may be interested, please spread the word! PhD Scholarships in Audience and Market Foresight with Smart Services CRC ========================================================================= The Smart Services CRC is a $120 million, commercially focused collaborative research initiative, developing innovation, foresight and productivity improvements for the services sector. Services are the largest sector of the economy representing approximately 80% of Australia's GDP and 85% of employment. Within the services industries Smart Services' initial programs will be customer-focused with outcomes translatable across the whole services sector. Initial research outcomes and demonstrators will principally be associated with the digital media, finance and government sectors. In order to achieve these goals, Smart Services CRC will be supporting research higher degree students at PhD and Masters level through scholarships, top-ups and in-kind support for research, travel, conferences etc. As a partner in Smart Services CRC, the Queensland University of Technology is offering scholarship packages for 2009. Research higher degree students with CRC scholarships will have access to the full range of resources offered by QUT (access to equipment and facilities, Grants-in-Aid, teaching opportunities etc.), as well as the opportunity to work with leading industry partners in the media, finance and government sectors on projects of direct real-world relevance through Smart Services CRC. The Audience and Market Foresight program is researching how audience and industry use of media is changing in the context of market and audience fragmentation, as well as underlying drivers such as user-created content, increasing use of social media, and the proliferation of mobile communications tools and devices. Led by the Creative Industries Faculty and the Faculty of Business, the Audience and Market Foresight program provides the opportunity to work collaboratively with industry partners such as Fairfax Digital and Sensis on aligning research activity with industry goals and strategies in the emergent digital media environment. The following topics are of interest to supervisors in the Audience and Market Foresight research project team: Professor Terry Flew (Creative Industries Faculty, QUT) 1. Audiences and markets for online and mobile media; 2. Digital futures for news media; 3. Mobile and digital media content production. Dr. Axel Bruns (Creative Industries Faculty, QUT) 1. Drivers and motivations for users to participate in social media Websites; 2. Future developments in online social media and social networking; 3. Business models for social media sites. Dr. Christy Collis (Creative Industries Faculty, QUT) 1. Emerging uses and users of locative mobile media; 2. Audiences and markets for online, mobile, and cross-platform media. Dr. Edwina Luck (School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Faculty of Business, QUT) 1. Future drivers of participation within virtual social media; 2. The role of 'electronic word-of-mouth' in product and service marketing; 3. Hyper-targeting and advertising within virtual social networks. Dr. Larry Neale (School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Faculty of Business, QUT) 1. Network and device convergence; 2. Future entertainment business models; 3. Delivering digital customer service. Smart Services CRC is a research and development partnership between 12 major industry players and six Australian universities, funded by the private sector and governments under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centre program. Its aim is the creation of research-enabled commercial outcomes for its partners. For more information on the Smart Services CRC, go to http://www.smartservicescrc.com.au/AboutUs.html. For more information on scholarships at QUT, go to http://www.rsc.qut.edu.au/studentsstaff/scholarships/. Information for prospective research students in the Faculty of Business can be found at http://www.bus.qut.edu.au/research/. Information for prospective research students in the Creative Industries Faculty can be found at http://www.creativeindustries.qut.edu.au/research/future-student/. -- Dr Axel Bruns http://snurb.info/ Senior Lecturer, Media & Communication a.bruns(a)qut.edu.au Creative Industries Faculty, Z1-515, CIP Skype: LexaSnurb Queensland University of Technology +61 7 3138 5548 Musk Ave, Kelvin Grove, Qld. 4059, Australia CRICOS No.: 00213J

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