- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

web culture, geek culture, digital culture?
by Dr. Indira Guzman 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

Seems to me that this call for papers is a good one for such discussion. Please consider sending a paper to this minitrack of the big AMCIS conference CFP: IT Culture and Values: Occupational, Organizational and Societal AMCIS 2008 - Toronto, Ontario - 14-17 August 2008 Papers Due: March 3, 2008 Mini-track ID: AMCIS-MT-74-2008 Mini-track title: IT Culture and Values: Occupational, Organizational and Societal Track: Social Aspects of IS Conference web site: http://www.business.mcmaster.ca/amcis2008/callforpapers.htm Description: The goal of research on culture and IT is diverse in both context and method. Rather than focusing on cross-cultural studies that compare IT development and use in different countries, the focus of this mini-track is to provide a forum for research that seeks to understand the values and assumptions embedded in both the technology, and the human group served by the technology (i.e. the occupational group, the organization, the society). Recent articles (e.g. Leidner & Kayworth, 2006) continue to call for more attention to values and cultural assumptions associated with IT if we are to be successful in addressing various types of conflict. We would like to make AMCIS the main venue for reporting issues and research associated with occupational, organizational, and social cultural issues related to IT. Specifically, we would like to see a forum for exploration of changes in embedded values, assumptions and social change related to information and communication technologies. Even the concept of "IT culture" can be interpreted in many ways. We see this concept of "IT culture" as a complex organizational phenomenon that is suitable for an AMCIS mini-track. Suggested topics: * The IT culture, the information culture, the digital culture, the online culture, the geek culture, and culture in virtual environments * Organizational culture, information systems and management * IT cultural issues in organizations and in modern society, such as the "generational divide", and cultural change due to information and communication technologies * IT Culture and other issues such as education, security, change, etc. * IT culture and system conflicts within organizations and society * Impact of IT culture on occupational, organizational and societal use of IT * Occupational Culture, the IT workforce, end-user studies where culture matters * Methodological issues conducting IT culture research (i.e. case studies, ethnography, mixed methods) * An assessment of software for supporting culture studies * Ethnography and culture in virtual environments Papers Due: March 3, 2008 Notification of Acceptance: April 14, 2008 Camera Ready Copy Due: April 28, 2008 Mini-track Chair(s): Michelle Lynn Kaarst-Brown, Syracuse University, mlbrow03(a)syr.edu Indira R. Guzman, TUI University, iguzman(a)tuiu.edu Mini-track gmail account: amcismt742008(a)gmail.com A complete version of this CFP can be found here: http://www.business.mcmaster.ca/amcis2008/MT/amcis-pr-074-2008-File001.p df Please let us know if you have questions. Best wishes, Indira Indira R. Guzman, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Information Systems Assistant Professor of Business Administration TUI University; 5665 Plaza Dr. Cypress, CA 90630, U.S.A. Tel: 714.816.0366 or 1.800.375.9878 Ext.2026; Fax: 714.229.8934 iguzman(a)tuiu.edu | http://www.indiraguzman.com DISCLAIMER STATEMENT IMPORTANT WARNING: This message is solely intended for the use of the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged and/or confidential, the disclosure of which is governed by applicable state and federal laws. If you, the reader of this message, are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of the information contained in this message or any action taken or omitted in reliance thereon is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by calling (1-800-375-9878 or 714-816-0366) and destroy the related message. Thank You for your cooperation. ---------------

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Re: [Air-L] What is web culture?
by William Bain 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

Actually, Folks, on the toolshed comparison, it strikes me tha maybe the web is something like a big interstate motor pool. Some of the people who work there are dispatchers and also manufacture the vehicles keys and provide their gas. Different state governments draw up agreements on how the pool can be used, and also speed limits, rules of the road, etc. Dangerous drivers and unauthorised key and gas manufacturers are also dealt with by the state governments in terms of legal issues. Theres a good deal of competition for formulas for good gas, with disputes occasionally breaking out on who owns which formula, and whether you have to get your keys when you get your gas. There are ordinary drivers and specialised drivers, all interconnected by walkie-talkie as soon as the ignition of their vehicle is switched on. Different university departments in the pool train specialised drivers, some of whom remain in their departments or start new ones. In addition to driving themselves, the specialised drivers study various aspects of the pool and its employees. :-| good time (intended) to be had by all, needless to say....... Best regards, Will William Bain PhD Student Comparative Literature Department of Spanish Philology Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.

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New Online Social Network: BioMedExperts
by Gerry Mckiernan 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

***APOLOGIES FOR RECEIPT OF DUPLICATE POSTINGS*** Colleagues/ A Most Interesting New Social Network - BioMedExperts /Gerry Collexis Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: CLXS), a leading developer of high definition search and knowledge discovery software, today announced the debut of BioMedExperts (http://www.biomedexperts.com) -- the first online social network of its kind to improve collaboration among researchers and therefore advance medical science. Collexis launched the new service with more than 1.4 million pre-generated profiles of its expected users from across 120 countries and expects to grow by another two million profiles over the next few months. [snip] The ability for researchers to collaborate across scientific disciplines is becoming more and more critical,* said James Coffin, Ph.D., vice president and general manager of Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences. *By connecting biologists, chemists, clinical researchers and other scientists from across the globe, BioMedExperts can play a key role in enabling a new wave of modern science and have tremendous impact on progress in biomedical research.* The new service will allow life sciences professionals to connect with each other, share data, collaborate more efficiently and conduct deep research across thousands of sources. *Where first generation social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn require users to enter data, BioMedExperts is a life science open platform that goes to the next level - it continuously captures the research activity of experts worldwide, serving as a definitive source to identify relationships to others within the community, either by topic or geography,* said Bill Kirkland, CEO of Collexis. When researchers log on to the service, which is entirely free, they will have access to approximately 12 million pre-established network connections, automatically generated from more than 6 million scientific publications from 6,500 journals. BioMedExperts encompasses almost every published researcher in the biomedical sciences field worldwide. [snip] BioMedExperts includes tools that allow users to: Search the network of profiles and articles by expert name or keyword and analyze the profiles of more than 1.4 million scientists by expertise, region and more Customize their own profiles Communicate with other members of BioMedExperts - users can invite others to their own personal network and email experts from within the entire BioMedExperts community to cultivate and grow professional affiliations Set up article alerts - users can receive alerts on new articles by topic or by name (for example, users can easily track articles published by co-authors [snip] Kirkland added that BioMedExperts is the first in a series of professional social networks that the company plans to introduce over the next couple of years that utilizes the proprietary technology. [snip] [ http://news.morningstar.com/newsnet/ViewNews.aspx?article=/BW/2008011100523… ] A Screenshot / Lnks / More are available at [ http://scitechnet.blogspot.com/2008/01/biomedexperts-scientific-online.html ] BTW: Surely similar online social networking can be created from other (bibliographic) databases /sources [?] Any past/present/future projects that list members may be aware ? Thanks! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck(a)iastate.edu There is Nothing More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come Victor Hugo [ http://www.blogger.com/profile/09093368136660604490 ] Iowa: Where the Tall Corn Flows and the (North)West Wind Blows ... [ http://alternativeenergyblogs.blogspot.com/ ]

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TheGreatDebate: Social Networking Technologies Will Bring Large [Positive] Changes to Education
by Gerry Mckiernan 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

***APOLOGIES FOR RECEIPT OF DUPLICATE POSTINGS*** Colleagues/ "Since its inception The Economist has challenged readers to engage with the world's business, political, scientific, technological and cultural affairs and uncover the connections between them. We now challenge you to bring your knowledge to the floor of our online Oxford-style debates. Your participation shapes the contest and your votes decide the winner. " [ http://www.economist.com/debate/ ] The Third Debate In The Series Started January 15th 2008 [Today] Social Networking: Does It Bring Positive Change To Education?" Schedule of Events Jan 15th / Debate begins. Jan 18th / Rebuttals posted. Jan 23rd / Closing arguments. Jan 25th /Final winner announced. Moderator Robert Cottrell, Deputy Editor of Economist.com Robert Cottrell has been deputy editor of Economist.com for the past two years, and online editor of Intelligent Life magazine since its re-launch this year. He is based in New York. Speaker PRO Ewan McIntosh, National Adviser on Learning and Technology Futures for Learning and Teaching Scotland Writes for the Guardian newspaper and the BBC on social media and learning issues, speaks internationally and consults for organisations on how social media can be harnessed for to improve learning in the organisation. Speaker CON Michael Bugeja, Director of Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, ***Iowa State University*** Author of 21 books, with research often being cited by New York Times and International Herald Tribune to name a few, Dr. Bugeja was among the first to analyse the use of Facebook before many professors realised that most of their students were already registered and of Second Life before many students had ever heard of it. For Links and Etc. Visit : [http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/01/proposition-social-network…] Do Register and Do Vote !!! [As Often as Possible] [:-) Cheers ! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck(a)iastate.edu There is Nothing More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come Victor Hugo [ http://www.blogger.com/profile/09093368136660604490 ] Iowa: Where the Tall Corn Flows and the (North)West Wind Blows ... [ http://alternativeenergyblogs.blogspot.com/ ]

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ASIS&T AM 08 - New submission deadline
by Richard Hill 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

Due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in the United States, the ASIS&T 2008 Annual Meeting Program Committee has extended the deadline for panel, paper, and poster proposal submissions to Friday, January 25, 2008. For your convenience, all submission links are available at http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM08/am08cfp.html. If you have any questions, please contact any member of the Program Committee. NEW DEADLINE for Panel and Contributed Paper Proposals is January 25, 2008 Dick Hill _____ Executive Director American Society for Information Science and Technology 1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510 Silver Spring, MD 20910 FAX: (301) 495-0810 (301) 495-0900

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FW: NCeSS/OII Survey on ICTs in Social Research
by Eric T. Meyer 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

To AoIR, Please consider participating in the survey announced below on academic uses of ICTs in social research. Also, please distribute to other appropriate lists (without spamming the entire world, that is.) Thanks, Eric Eric T. Meyer, Ph.D. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK e-mail: eric.meyer(a)oii.ox.ac.uk Web: http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/meyer/ > [Apologies for any duplicate mailings] > > The Oxford Internet Institute (OII), in collaboration with the UK's > National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS), would like to invite you to > take part in a short (20 minute) survey. The survey focuses on the role > of information and communication technologies such as the Internet in > social research. > > The survey is designed to be completed whether or not you use digital > particular tools as it is a means to gain an understanding of the > centrality of a variety of tools to social research. The findings will be > useful in directing future capacity building for the social and economic > sciences. > > Even if you aren't currently using research tools, we encourage you to > complete the survey. The survey will be even shorter in this case, as it > will skip a number of the questions based on your answers. > > http://survey.oii.ox.ac.uk/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=NCeSS_Survey_2008 > > If you know of individuals or e-mail lists that may be interested in these > issues, please feel free to forward this e-mail along. We are seeking a > wide range of respondents. > > Thank you very much for your time and help on this project. If you have > any questions or concerns, please contact us at survey(a)oii.ox.ac.uk. > > Sincerely, > > William H. Dutton and Eric T. Meyer > Oxford Internet Institute > University of Oxford > > e-mail: survey(a)oii.ox.ac.uk > > If you do not already receive regular updates from the OII and would like > to join one of the OII 's mailing lists, please subscribe online at > http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/mailinglist/ or email enquiries(a)oii.ox.ac.uk > >

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Re: [Air-L] What is web culture?
by Greg Williams 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

I'm more of a lurker here but I thought I might try to weigh in on this "web culture" thing. Pardon any incoherence, it's been a long week and this is mostly stream of consciousness. As I understand it, "web culture" is a misnomer. The term seems to have been created to describe that slightly different way things seem to occur online when compared to related offline experiences, but I think this is all barking up the wrong tree. Cyberspace (in this instance, AKA the Web, the Internet) is a virtual world extension; it's an extension of our real world. Saying that there is a unique culture in cyberspace is the same as claiming that there is a unique culture in your toolshed. Culture is something produced, carried, consumed, displayed, etc, by the people that occupy a space, not the space itself. Therefore, there isn't a "Web culture", but the cultures of the people interacting with one another within the Web. They may have different tools available to communicate and share that culture, but I don't think that those tools beget a culture in their own right. e.g. "Web culture" didn't produce LOLcats, "bored teen culture" (or something like that) did. The ease of sharing LOLcats online is what made them popular. Hope this helps... Greg Williams e-: greg(a)lexiphanic.com P.S. Apologies if I'm on the wrong track! :)

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Re: [Air-L] With Friends Like Facebook ....
by Vidar Falkenberg 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

Den 18.01.2008 kl. 00:43:53 skrev <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org>: > There is also the utility - at least on rare occasion - of people > discovering and forestalling Bad Things - e.g., a school shooting - by > poking around on FB and MS profiles ... Hi Charles, I enjoy (and feel slightly uncomfortable with) the current air-list discusssion on Facebook. I don't know if this was the example you referred to, but last week a possible school tragedy in Norway was announced on YouTube: http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/01/14/523729.html Of course, we can't know if it would have happened, but as they say in the article - they didn't believe that at that small school in Finland either: http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2007/11/07/517492.html I hope you are OK and don't miss 'rugbrød' too much. /Vidar

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nice list of datasets
by Jeremy Hunsinger 17 Jan '08

17 Jan '08

http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on-the-web.html jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu ) wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series

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Re: [Air-L] What is web culture?
by Jose Abdelnour-Nocera 17 Jan '08

17 Jan '08

Hofstede's work has often been misused as a way to understand culture in the context of CMC and online behaviour. His national culture dimensions are too broad and high level to understand the complexity of 'web culture'. There are many different levels at which cultural reproduction, transformation and construction occur on the web, especially in on-line communities. These are some of many papers about online communities and CMC that show how Hofstede's dimensions fail to explain accurately on line / cmc behaviour based on the nationality of users. In all of them, authors tend to provide only conjectures about why certain behaviour did not correspond to that 'prescribed' by a particular national culture dimension. CALHOUN, K. J., TENG, J. T. C. & CHEON, M. J. (2002) Impact of national culture on information technology usage behaviour: an exploratory study of decision making in Korea and the USA. Behaviour & Information Technology, 21, 293 - 302. EL-SHINAWY, M. & VINZE, A. S. (1997) Technology, culture and persuasiveness: a study of choice-shifts in group settings. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 473-496. In my earlier life I did an attempt to make sense of cultural construction in IRC communities from a qualitative social psychology perspective Here it is http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2002.tb001 46.x I am aware this only addresses one aspect of web culture...but I thought it might help. Cheers, José Dr. José Abdelnour Nocera Senior Lecturer Institute for Information Technology Thames Valley University Room TC371 St Mary's Road, Ealing - London W5 5RF Tel [work] +44(0)2082800251 / [home] +44(0)1908648376 Fax +44 (0)7006015408 http://itcentre.tvu.ac.uk/~jabdelno/ -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Callahan, Ewa S. Prof. Sent: 17 January 2008 00:49 To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] What is web culture? Hi all, Culture is a concept, so we can describe it the same way we describe cultures in general (in terms of values and artifacts) although it is rather like describing human (or world) culture. The Web in itself presents a variety of different spaces, each of them with its own set of characteristics. Is bloggers culture the same as Facebook culture? There is probably some overlap, but number of people will embrace one, but not the other. As someone pointed out, Web is an artifact, although we can still talk about the culture of Internet users, who are similar to other cultural groups that are identified on the bases of the activities they do (a specific music culture, soccer culture etc) rather than national/ethnic upbringing. Additionally, if we consider web an artifact, than we have to keep in mind that its content is created by people of different cultural (national/ethnic) backgrounds that will be reflected in the web content and interaction. Someone mentioned once to me that the Web user culture can be described in the terms of Hofstede's cultural dimensions (low power, high individualism, masculine, etc.) but I have never found an actual citation to that research. If anybody seen a study discussing web culture from this perspective, please let me know. Best, Ewa Callahan Assistant Professor of Communications Quinnipiac university -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Hall, Richard H. Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 1:14 PM To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] What is web culture? 1) How would you define web culture? 2) How is it unique, in comparison to other cultures? 3) What are some good/classic resources on the web describing and defining web culture? ... Thanks ... Richard -- Richard H. Hall Professor and Program Director, Information Science and Technology Missouri S&T http://mst.edu/~rhall _______________________________________________ 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/ _______________________________________________ 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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