- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

still need some footballers
by Jeremy Hunsinger 16 Aug '07

16 Aug '07

It will be fun or at least interesting:) We could use 3 more likely fantasy footballers:) jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers http://www.stswiki.org/ stswiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ LI-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series

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Call for position papers: The ethics of data sharing in e-social science
by Annamaria Carusi 16 Aug '07

16 Aug '07

Title: The ethics of data sharing in e-social science Organisers: Annamaria Carusi and Marina Jirotka Oxford University Computing Laboratory and Oxford e-Research Centre Keynote speaker: Prof Elizabeth Buchanan, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Call for position papers The new possibilities for conducting social science research created by e-Social Science also bring with them a number of ethical challenges regarding data use and re-use, access, archiving and management. While e-social science tools and technologies are forging ahead, they are also creating gaps and indeterminacies where it is not clear what ethical procedures or actions are appropriate. There are also often tensions and contradictions between different legal and institutional requirements, standards and conditions which researchers are expected to meet. Disciplinary and personal ethics can be further factors which make this a complex arena of ethical judgement and action. This workshop aims to bring together researchers in e-social science who have experience of ethical issues that arise in the context of data sharing, or who have conducted research in this area. For full details please see http://ess.si.umich.edu/ Please note extended deadline for position papers up to 6 pages is now August 30th, 2007.

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Please suggest titles for the AOIR Book Exhibit
by Orion Anderson 16 Aug '07

16 Aug '07

TO ALL INTERNET RESEARCHERS WHO WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THEIR OWN BOOK INCLUDED--OR WHO WISH TO SUGGEST ANY OTHER BOOKS FOR INCLUSION at the BOOK EXHIBIT OF THE 8th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE ASSOCIATION OF INTERNET RESEARCHERS, coming up October 17-20, 2007: Please respond to the request below immediately, providing information on BOOKS YOU HAVE AUTHORED and/or any OTHER TITLES THAT YOU THINK ARE IMPORTANT FOR THE CONFERENCE AND WOULD LIKE TO HAVE INCLUDED IN THE AOIR BOOK EXHIBIT. _____________________________________________________ Dear Colleague, The 2007 meeting of the ASSOCIATION OF INTERNET RESEARCHERS will feature a book exhibit specially organized and managed by the LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. The exhibit will bring together recent and significant titles covering all things Internet, as well as titles on new media technologies and practices. The exhibit will contribute substantially to the intellectual value of our conference by providing a comprehensive collection of the latest publications. We seek your input to assist in developing an exhibit that will include books on the full range of topics. If you are an AUTHOR and wish to have your book included in the exhibit, please respond ASAP by e-mail to LSSBookExhibits(a)earthlink.net or fax it to 413-832-8145, providing the following information: (1) The title(s) of the book(s) you are recommending, and date(s) of publication. (2) The name(s) of the publisher(s). (3) (If you are an author): The name, telephone number and e-mail address of your contact at each publishing company. Please be sure to include your own name, telephone number and e-mail address with the information that you send to us, so we can follow up if we require additional information. If there are other titles that you wish to recommend for inclusion in the display, for each title simply provide the NAME OF THE BOOK, THE AUTHOR and the PUBLISHER. Please respond to this e-mail immediately, so that we can begin work to assure that the book(s) you have authored or recommended are included in the display. Thank you very much. With regards, Mei Ha Chan P. S. To obtain additional information on the book exhibit, authors or publishers may call me at 718-393-1075 . LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE BOOK EXHIBITS Mei Ha Chan E-mail: LSSBookExhibits(a)earthlink.net TEL 718-393-1075 FAX 413-832-8145 ______________________________________ Library of Social Science 92-30 56th Ave., Suite 3-E Elmhurst, NY 11373 T: (718) 393-1075 F: (413) 832-8145 Richard A. Koenigsberg, Ph. D., Director Mei Ha Chan, Associate Director Orion Anderson, Communications Director Richard Klein, Marketing Manager Website for LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE BOOK EXHIBITS: http://libraryofsocialscience.com/ 2006/2007 LSS BOOK EXHIBIT SCHEDULE: http://libraryofsocialscience.com/sched.html

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QUT iCi Guest Seminar - Mirjam Struppek - Friday 17th August
by Marcus Foth 15 Aug '07

15 Aug '07

Guest Seminar by Mirjam Struppek Interactionfield - Urban Space and Public Sphere and the New Media Date: Friday 17th August Venue: The Loft, Z2 Level 5, QUT Creative Industries Precinct Time: 5pm - 6.30pm Map: http://www.qut.edu.au/about/location/map_ciprecinct.pdf Please RSVP to courtney.oconnor(a)qut.edu.au http://qutedu.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5236926753 In an experimental timeframe of about ten years, interactive media installations and performances have emerged as a new art form in urban space. Screen Installations, Public Projections, Interactive Fassades and Shopwindows, Public Communication-Sculptures and Messageboards or Space Annotations, Psychogeographic Performances and Location-Based Mobile Games try to create create new visual experiences in an increasingly commercialised urban space. What has been learned from the investigation of the interconnectedness of urban public space, interaction and new media utilising the growing digital infrastructure and new wireless and wearable gadgets. What strategies and tools can be found to engage the audience, considering the character of an urban surrounding and desired type of interaction and personal or joint experiences. http://www.interactionfield.de/ http://www.urbanscreens.org/ SHORT BIOGRAPHY Mirjam Struppek works as urbanist, researcher and consultant in Berlin. She has lectured and published essays with a special focus on the livability of urban space, public sphere and its transformation and acquisition through new media. Since 2002 she is developing the online-information-platform interactionfield about the relation of interaction, new media and public space. In this context she organises the monthly lecture and discussion evening „Urban Media Salon“. She developed the first international conference Urban Screens in 2005 and is currently working on further implementing this concept of utilising outdoor screens for a sustainable urban society.. In 2003 she worked as Assistant in a gallery for still and motion pictures in Berlin. She is holding a degree with distinction in Urban- and Environmental Planning from University of Kaiserslautern and spent in 1999 two research semester at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Nagoya University, Japan. Please join the Urban Informatics facebook group: http://qutedu.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2493830797 -- Dr Marcus Foth Australian Postdoctoral Fellow Visiting Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation Queensland University of Technology (CRICOS No. 00213J) Creative Industries Precinct, Brisbane QLD 4059, Australia Phone +61 7 313 x88772 - Fax x88195 - Office Z6-511 m.foth(a)qut.edu.au - http://www.vrolik.de/publications/

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Zero Comments now available
by geert lovink 15 Aug '07

15 Aug '07

Dear all, I am proud to announce the appearance of my new book, Zero Comments, Blogging and Critical Internet Culture, the third volume in a series on critical Internet culture (after Dark Fiber and My First Recession). I got it in the mail on Friday, you can order it through Amazon but I am not sure if it has yet arrived in bookshops. The book contains eleven essays and an introduction that deals with Web 2.0 and Internet culture after its recovery of 9/11 and the dotcom crash. This is the table of content: Introduction: Pride and Glory of Web 2.0 Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse The Cool Obscure: Crisis of New Media Arts Whereabouts of German Media Theory Blogging & Building: The Netherlands After Digitization Indifference of the Networked Presence: On Internet Time Revisiting Sarai: Five Years of New Media Culture in India ICT After Development: The Incommunicado Agenda Updating Tactical Media: Strategies for Media Activism Axioms of Free Cooperation: Contesting Online Collaboration Theses on Distributed Aesthetics Introducing Organized Networks: The Quest for Sustainable Concepts And this is the original blurb that I wrote for the backcover: In Zero Comments Geert Lovink upgrades worn-out concepts and inquires the latest Web 2.0 hype around blogs, wikis and social network sites. In this third volume of his studies into critical Internet culture, Lovink develops a 'general theory of blogging.' Unlike most publications he is not focusing on the dynamics between bloggers and the mainstream news media. Instead of celebrating 'citizen journalism' blogs are analyzed in their 'nihilist impulse' to empty out established meaning structures. Blogs bring on decay of the 20th century broadcast media, and are proud of their in-crowd aspect in which linking, tagging and ranking have become the main drivers. The book also deals with the silent globalization of the Net in which no longer the West, but countries like India, China and Brazil are becoming main players in new media culture. It is not only the latest that Internet enthusiasts should focus on. Zero Comments upgrades concepts such as global Internet time, tactical media, the crisis of new media arts and the problematic relationship between architecture and the Net. The book ends with speculative notions on concepts such as organized networks, free cooperation and distributed aesthetics. Zero Comments contains two large essays, the extended chapter on blogging and my take on new media arts. The book has made an interesting three years journey. I started working on it in Brisbane in July 2003, then took it to Amsterdam and finished at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. I closed the manuscript eleven months ago, early September 2006. The book has won an honorable mention, the 2007 Ars Electronica Media Art Research Award, will come out this Fall in German (Transkript Verlag, Bielefeld) and in a shortened edition in Italian (with Bruno Mondadori). I am not sure yet if and where launches and presentations will be held. For now I am excited to hold it in my hand and flip through the pages. Let the Infrastructure do its work–and then you can have a read. Thanks for everyone who supported me in the writing and enjoy! With regards, Geert

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A valuable addition to the discussion on IRBs
by Lois Ann Scheidt 15 Aug '07

15 Aug '07

I know there are lots more subtitles involved in Mary's research than this article outlines...and part of her work is online. This excerpt is taken from today's Inside Higher Education, summarizing some papers given at the Am Sociological Assoc meetings this week: * * * Mary L. Gray, an anthropologist at Indiana University at Bloomington, described her work in graduate school, which raised all kinds of red flags with her IRB at the time: She wanted to study the way gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth develop their identities in the rural Southeast, and she wanted to base her research on interviews with such youth, under the age of 18, without their parents' knowledge. Her project, she said, "had every imaginable red flag." With some regrets, she won IRB support by appealing to prejudice many have of the rural South. Although she had no evidence to make this claim, she argued that the situation in the rural South is "so awful" for the young people she was studying that she couldn't possibly approach their parents for consent. (Actually Gray believes that the situation for gay youth is more subtle and less uniform than she suggested, but she guessed it would work with the IRB, and it did.) Because the IRB was - like most IRB's - oriented around medical research, not social science, the focus was on potential harm that Gray could cause her research subjects in person. Gray reported that she received relatively little questioning or guidance from her IRB on one of her major areas of research: what the young people she studied wrote about themselves online. Gray developed her own ethics rules (she wrote to the subjects to ask permission), but she was struck by what was and wasn't considered important by the IRB. To the IRB, "distance read as objectivity" and so was by definition "good," she said. Never mind that what her subjects shared about themselves online was as important as the thoughts they shared in person. This points to Gray's broader critique of the IRB process. Social scientists frequently complain about IRB's failing to understand their studies, but Gray suggested it was time to move beyond the idea of just adding more social scientists to the panel. Rather, she said it was time to question certain underlying assumptions of IRB's and whether they even make sense for social science. It's not that Gray doesn't think there are ethical issues researchers must consider, but whether the medical model can ever work for projects that don't follow the pattern of having a hypothesis designed to lead to the dispassionate creation of generalizable knowledge. Gray said that "IRB fatigue" is discouraging researchers - especially graduate students - from even trying to get projects approved. * * * http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/14/soc

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Re: [Air-L] on the Wayback Machine (was public/private [part 1 of 2])
by Lois Ann Scheidt 15 Aug '07

15 Aug '07

> But to complicate your argument below (and Hughie's in a separate > thread), a couple of thought experiments: > > Say I place content on a "publicly accessible" webpage without > creating any incoming links or notifying anyone. Web crawlers won't > find it. A search engine won't index it. While on the open and public > Internet, unless a random URL-generator happens to guess the precise > address of the page, no one will ever read it. Is this content "fair > game for researchers"? I don't profess to be a "hardware" or a "search engine" expert, but I can tell you that the above thought experiment only works if you have complete control of the hardware and software involved in the webpage. Many hosts webpages link to pages of folks hosted by their service. It's a term and condition of service...so it's not nearly as easy to be completely off the search engines as one may think. Beyond that point, for those of us that do "in the wild" research...how would we find your thought experiment if it's not indexed? I guess it would be possible to have a crawler that would randomly generate URLs and check their validity. That might be useful for some research question, but in that case I would assume the unit of analysis would be the URL, at most, and more likely it would be a proof of concept test of some kind - so no human subject would be involved. Now beyond that, I would argue that from a research perspective the blog was still open to study, if it can be found. I say that because the best terrestrial analogy I can think of to your thought experiment is someone who posted a broadsheet on a pole but with a cover over the broadsheet...lots of things could pull that cover off...the wind, rain, or a passing person who didn't like the color of the cover. In short, a person who would go to that much trouble to hide in plan sight...well it's still plan sight. I think that's part of why this "what if" game gets bogus, a person who would make an effort to do the above, isn't all that likely to be "real" and I study real people. "What if's" are valuable in these discussions but again we have to remember that we can dream up far more elaborate scenarios then we are ever likely to see in the wild. > Consider a different scenario: Walking down the street with a friend, > I comment on the fact my rent check bounced, and she offers > condolences. We're in public. We make the utterances loud enough that > someone next to us could easily hear it, but not loud enough that > someone across the street can. Now, this is a public utterance - we > didn't have the conversation behind locked (password-protected) > doors. Can this be archived for research? Better yet, can we setup > microphones to automatically record every conversation uttered in > public? Does the fact these conversations *can* be recorded and > archived mean they, by default, *should be*? I feel we're saying the > same about utterances on the Web - so what's the fundamental > difference from a user perspective between the street and the Web? > Both are a place where we engage in conversations and maintain > relationships.... > > I fear we're confusing what the Internet *is* and *is capable of* > with *how it is used*. Yes, comments left on a personal blog are open > for anyone to see. Yes, discussion board conversations can be > archived. But that's not, I suspect, going through the mind of many > casual users of this technology. It is a medium for communication, > for connecting with people. I leave messages on my neighborhood > parents discussion board because that's how I connect with that > community. I use my real name because I'm among friends. Does that > mean my comments are de facto fair game for any researcher who wants > to scrape the database? Actually I think the "confusion" is at a different level. Your second thought experiment gets at it fairly well. When I am designing research I can only know the "potential" harms, not the actual ones...potentials are before the fact, actuals are retrospective. Let's change your experiment a bit. You are home and in the shower getting ready to meet your friend. You think about the stuff you are going to tell them and you decide to mention your bounced check. And maybe it crosses your mind that you need to be careful where you say that so fewer people over hear. When you decide to tell your friend you don't know who is really around...or what someone who overhears might do with the utterance. You only know that you are going to do your best to make sure that you are careful. Same with research design and human subjects work. We have to learn from actual happenings but if we sit and do statistically, oh my a qualitative researcher just used the s-word, improbable "what-if's" then no research will happen at all. Personally I believe the following - - Research is never risk-free. Neither is life. If you are working toward absolute zero risk in your research you will either give up the pursuit, or build a protocal for your research that lies to you. Yes there are ways to protect YOUR subjects but most of them can "endanger" others in the process (more on this below). Merry Christmas that is not zero risk, it's just minimal risk for the research and probably a heck of a lot of your work that didn't buy anyone more "safety." All of the aforementioned "harm" and "protective" terms were used only as part of the discussion, because what is the real chance of harm from most of our research, one-in-a-million, one-in-a-billion, one-in-a-trillion? Medical experiments don't get to absolute zero risk...they just shift the potential risk - which may be minimal as well - from the researcher to the patient...unless something unexpected happens and then the risk is back on the researcher. And how do they "know" the potential risks? From computer simulations - based on facts known from old (and often questionable) human experiments, and/or from animal trials. So their "potential" risk knowledge comes from analyzing actual risk after a trial, not from "what if's." - I design research...I predict the potential harm from my "intervention" and I work to minimize the risk ("minimal risk" is the operative term). I do not mind read or assume my position as researcher places me in a superior position and that my subjects need special protections from me. Sorry folks but I truly find that last concept to be pretty funny. I am not injecting people with foreign substances, I look at artifacts they produced and placed online. Personally, I have never had a artifact's author/artist come back to me after I published and complain. I have had a single author question my use of his work without permission - I work with teens remember - and so we talked and by the end of the discussion he understood and told me he was pleased his work was in the paper he just thought he HAD to give permission first. Plus he found out by tracking his visitor logs and finding I had visited repeatedly, so it was not because of an unpleasant experience on his part. Now before I sound like a totally heartless researcher who only sees her subjects as things...when nothing could be further from the truth...if even one of the kids I work with were hurt by my research I would have a crisis of conscience. But again I am not God, I know that if I had done the best job I could do working through my research design and trying to predict all the potential harms likely to happen with my intervention then I have done everything I can do. Some years ago, I wrote a classroom paper that discussed why I don't pseudonymize my subjects in my chatroom research. The simple reason is that there is no way I could come up with nicknames that would cover the participants and not potentially deflect on to another chatroom user. I'm good but I'm not THAT good. So if I did pseudonymize I might protect my participants but in that one-in-a-billion case where someone was in harm's way from something I did...I might well have created the situation rather then hidden it. I'll let you "what if'ers" out there run that one through the filters. Lois

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Re: [Air-L] Public/ Private
by George Floros 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

Jeremy stated > luckily, in science, it doesn't matter if I or you are conscientious, > what matters is that we publish and share our findings. over time, > those findings will either be used and shown useful or not, or > forgotten. > most research on human behaviour is > only reproducible in the abstract and then likely only in statistical > relations. reproducibility as such is not what makes something > science or scientific, or even worthwhile. in fact, i'd argue that > finding a reproducible thing... most of the time has nothing to do > with science per se, but quite alot more to do with organizational > theory, but that's a whole other set of arguments. well then we'll leave at this ; I got a deja-vu feeling from this dialogue, it's eerily reminiscent of the clash between the viewpoints of the 70's and 90's in psychiatric research. I considered some points self-evident because of the historical outcome in my field but I suppose other viewpoints can be useful as well in other fields. I don't have this option where I stand. Nor would I like using this line of thought, come to think of it. George

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Re: [Air-L] public/private
by 'Gail Taylor 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

In following the discussion, I'm not finding distinctions are being made with regard to research that is being conducted in public and private spaces on the Internet. Some researchers are conducting research on web pages that are publically available and password protected. Are you finding that institutions are more tightly regulating research that is being conducted on password protected pages in comparison to others that are publically accessible? Just curious due to a personal interest in the manner in which Internet-based processes are being regulated by business entities, including academic institutions. --------------------------------------- Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant Library & Information Science Research Assistant "Technology enables man to gain control over everything except technology." -- Unknown

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Call for Workshop Proposals: GROUP 2008
by Cliff Lampe 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

Apologies for any cross-posting Greetings- The text below announces a workshop at the ACM-GROUP conference that may be of interest to AoIR participants. Scott Counts from Microsoft Research and I are trying to put together a discussion of social computing, specifically bringing together researchers from different fields in this area. We plan to discuss big research issues in social computing, the different homes in which social computing research is being done (and whether more can be done to find a cohesive publication venue), and the interdisciplinary nature of work in this area. ACM-GROUP takes place in lovely Sanibel Island, FL in November. We think those of you interested in the development of "ICT research" as a field would gain from and offer to a lot from this workshop. Hope to see you in Florida! Call for participation: Overview The term social computing is used regularly to describe research projects, technology systems, conference sessions, and even research groups, but what are the research questions and strategies that will help move forward a deep understand of social computing? The commonalities - the causes, effects, and motivations- in the human and technological factors underlying social computing systems are the big issues we are searching for with this workshop. Social psychological processes of online groups, crowd behavior in large online forums, social organization structures in online games, identity and deception in online dating sites, and creating and enforcing norms in media-poor environments are examples of work in this purview. How can we pull together a research effort effective and large scale enough to really address these and similar phenomena? Attempting to identify and define research directions in social computing implies a somewhat larger goal, which is to take a step toward solidifying social computing as a distinct research area, with common methods, theories, and publication outlets. Many researchers are addressing questions in this area, yet often under the rubric of other disciplines. In order to take a step to bring this field into its own, we hope this workshop will begin to address the difficulty in unifying the diversity of people working in the area. Thus, an additional goal for the workshop is to bring together researchers that might not normally interact and may bring very different perspectives, but that nonetheless are studying similar phenomena. Finally, we hope to use this workshop to contribute to a roadmap for more organized research, funding, and publication activities going forward. Proposals Proposals to participate in the workshop should focus on one of the three topic areas below (or combinations thereof). Given the nature of the workshop goals, note that we anticipate a focus on theory and method over system demonstration. 1. A research issue central to the idea of social computing that illustrates how social science theory is embedded in technical systems 2. An area of study critical to ongoing research in social computing 3. A method for studying social computing. Proposals should not focus on an implementation of a system. Attendees will be accepted to the workshop based on 2 page position statements on the meaning of social computing and the research issues they see most cogent to the area, as couched in one or more of the above topic areas. A focus on how the ideas expressed can help establish social computing and carry it forward is encouraged. These position papers will be assembled and distributed to attendees before the conference, with the expectation that readers will read and comment on them before arrival. Position statements and attendee bios will be made available through a groupware application. Each attendee will be expected to comment on at least one other position paper. In addition, we will recruit and present position papers from researchers representative of these fields who were unable to attend the workshop. Using phone and email interviews, we'll query leading researchers in a variety of disciplines on their perspectives on social computing, and make these available through the groupware before the conference begins. Deadlines Deadline for submissions will be September 15. We will screen submissions for quality and relevance to the workshop. Announcements of acceptance will be sent on October 1. The ACM GROUP conference starts on November 4, 2007 (which is the day the workshop takes place). Conference webpage: http://www.acm.org/conferences/group/conferences/group07/ Workshop webpage: http://research.microsoft.com/~counts/group07/

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