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extension of the deadline for the submission of abstracts
by kerstin.radde＠zegk.uni-heidelberg.de 10 Jan '07

10 Jan '07

Dear list-members, due to editorial reasons we allow an extension for the submission of abstracts for the special issue of the "Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet" covering the topic "Virtual Worlds". New deadline is 31/1/2007. For further information see the attached Call for Papers below. Best regards and a Happy New Year from Heidelberg! Yours Kerstin Radde-Antweiler Dipl. Theol. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler SFB 619 Teilprojekt C 2 Institut für Religionswissenschaft der Universität Heidelberg Akademiestr. 4-8 69117 Heidelberg Tel.: +49-(0)6221-547482 Fax : +49-(0)6221-547424 Email: kerstin.radde(a)zegk.uni-heidelberg.de URL: http://www.rituals-online.uni-hd.de Call for Papers "Virtual Worlds" In the academic field of "Cultural Studies", like in other cultural and social disciplines, the relevance of the Internet as new media is constantly increasing. New areas of scholarly research are to be found on homepages, weblogs, in chat rooms, in newsgroups and in virtual 3D environments, where religious and spiritual topics are presented and incessantly negotiated. The Internet could be seen as a ?cultural context of its own right", as Christine Hine stated in her programmatic book "Virtual ethnography". In this respect it has become an important part of our cultural and scientific assets, heritage and memory. As such it also forms, modifies and creates new cultural structures. Therefore, the challenges of this media provide the scholar with materials in a still mainly unexplored field of research, demanding new scientific methods and methodologies in order to analyse the likewise new realm of religious beliefs and utterances in this virtual space. In the context of Internet Research, Virtual Worlds offer a new environment to meet, communicate and perform social and cultural activity in a virtual reality, irrespective of geographical and real-life body conditions. Examples for such Virtual Worlds - understood as digital spaces, occupied in large part by human controlled agents, known as avatars, participating in a collective virtual space? (Krausnick 2004) - are Active Worlds and The Palace - both in use since 1995 - and There since 1998. The most prominent and famous example is the privately-owned, subscription-based 3D application Second Life that went online for the public in 2003. An increasing number of residents use such environments not only as a kind of virtual playground but as an enlargement of their real-life possibilities. And this "virtual life" has to be taken seriously: The users are both socially and religiously very active and consequently transfer real-life activities into virtual space. For the next issue of the new Journal Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet (http://online.uni-hd.de) we are planning to edit a special edition with the working title "Virtual Worlds". The essays we are inviting should deal with the notions of cultural and / or religious activities in Virtual Worlds like Second Life and MMOGs such as Everquest, World of Warcraft, etc. Possible topics or foci of the special issue: 1) Religion and Rituals 2) Methodology 3) Offline-Online Relations Other topics that correspond to the subject of the issue are equally welcome. We encourage abstracts from all areas of research. Please send title and abstract (no more than 350 words) of your proposed paper as well as some short biodata of the author/s as email-text to Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (kerstin.radde(a)zegk.uni-heidelberg.de) by January 31st, 2007. Later submissions will not be accepted. A decision on the contents of the volume will be made on the basis of anonymous reviews of the abstracts, and all authors of abstracts will be informed by February 28th, 2007. Authors will have to be prepared to submit their finished papers (no more than 8000 words) by April 31th, 2007. Then, these will be reviewed and possibly returned to the authors with suggestions from the editors. It is planned to publish the volume by Mid 2007. Dipl. Theol. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler Centre for European Historical and Cultural Studies Institute for Religious Studies Akademiestr. 4-8 D-69117 Heidelberg Germany

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Subscribe FREE to Design Research News
by Ken Friedman 09 Jan '07

09 Jan '07

Dear Colleagues, Design Research News is a free monthly email letter that provides information on design and design research to 7,000 subscribers around the world. The Design Research Society publishes the newsletter as a professional and educational service. Prof. David Durling of Middlesex University edits DRN. Prof. Ken Friedman of the Norwegian School of Management and Denmark's Design School edits book reviews. It is distributed through the UK academic email facility, JISCMAIL. Design Research News publishes information on: * conferences, * publishing opportunities, * funding, * competitions, * articles, * exhibitions, and * books for an international audience of experts in design research, design practice, and design education. DRN covers all areas of design. Fields and subject areas include industrial design, graphic design, product design, design history, philosophy of design, design theory, art, engineering, anthropology, architecture, systems design, design management, CAD, ergonomics, psychology, computer science, information design, informatics, design for development and many other subjects. Design Research News is NOT a discussion list. Only the newsletter is sent. To subscribe simply go to this URL: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/design-research.html and click on the line Join or leave the list (or change settings) Yours, -- Ken Friedman Professor Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language Norwegian School of Management Oslo Center for Design Research Denmark's Design School Copenhagen +47 46.41.06.76 Tlf NSM +47 33.40.10.95 Tlf Privat email: ken.friedman(a)bi.no

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IBM To Build Virtual Stores in Second Life
by alexandra boutros 09 Jan '07

09 Jan '07

thought this news article might be of interest to some on this list; IBM to Build Virtual Stores in Second Life AP http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/01/09/tech-ibm.html best, Alexandra Boutros Postdoctoral Fellow (FQRSC) Center for Religion and Media New York University 726 Broadway NY NY 10003 http://www.nyu.edu/fas/center/religionandmedia/ alexandra.boutros(a)nyu.edu

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Call for chapters: Designing the user experience of future peripatetic users: new HCI design challenges in Space
by A.C.Roibas＠bton.ac.uk 09 Jan '07

09 Jan '07

CALL FOR CHAPTERS Submission Deadline: April 15, 2007 Designing the user experience of future peripatetic users: new HCI design challenges in Space Introduction Travelling to the depths of Space is no longer a privilege of astronauts and scientists. Space Agencies are starting to allow those who have the means to afford it, provided that they fulfil a minimum set of physiological requirements to join the ventures into outer space. At the same time, companies are developing spacecrafts for civilian use and plan huge space stations capable of accommodating thousand of settlers. However, micro-gravity or reduced and enhanced gravity environments strongly influence the way users interact with technology. In other words, what works on earth does not necessarily perform in Space. As the age of space habitation dawns, we must work to find ways to transfer our technological advances on Earth to Outer Space The Overall objective of the Book This book aims to present significant projects carried out in academia, space agencies and in industry regarding the quality of the user experience with interactive systems in Space. The idea is to promote awareness of interdisciplinary work concerning methods and tools for HCI in Space in order to be ready for the future life beyond the terrestrial atmosphere and to share knowledge to develop innovative interactive systems on Earth. A crucial problem when designing HCI for Space systems refers to the validity of data gathering and the realism of user scenarios. Ethnographic on-site studies and evaluation methods show that some problems concerning the user behaviour and environment are only identified when capturing the rich texture of activity being performed in the field. The Target Audience Educators, and Researchers in HCI, managers of HCI projects working in Space and mobile industry (telecom companies, device manufacturers, service providers, game designers, etc.); industrial designers; new media trends sociologists; new media journalists; human factors practitioners; interface evaluators, information architects, designers and testers. The book is intended to provide valuable material to be used for research and teaching purposes (in any curricula including communication and information systems in its set of disciplines). This book is also intended to be useful for designers and engineers that need concrete materials to understand the user experiences in social practices and to evaluate the applications used and combined. RECCOMENDED TOPICS INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, THE FOLLOWING: Technological, cultural, political, philosophical, psychological and economic dimensions of future pervasive and interactive communication systems; New challenges in pervasive communication systems in Space: new users and uses, interoperability amongst interfaces, tangible computing, intelligent environments, context awareness, etc; Innovative research approaches for the creation of operationally relevant and realistic future scenarios; Taxonomy of radically new applications; Art expressions (e.g. locative art) in space and patterns for smart & malleable digital content; Advanced interaction models (immersive & intelligent environments, humanising interfaces, haptics, etc); Transferring interaction patterns between usage areas (e.g. games, Space industry, medical, etc); Advanced evaluation techniques for pervasive systems in Space. Participatory Design and other user-centered approaches focused on users' cultural, social, behavioural and ergonomic backgrounds. Challenges of analyzing and designing to support sociability in the Space; Emerging nomadic societies, communities and related socio-cultural trends; Assessment of the Perceived Quality of Experience through ethnographies, or other experimental evaluation techniques. Novel methodologies for services design. Book edited by Dr. Anxo Cereijo Roibás, University of Brighton; Scientific Board Dr. Patricia.M.Jones, NASA Loredana Bessone, ESA Dr. Aedo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Authors are invited to submit on or before February 1, 2006, a 2-5 page manuscript proposal clearly explaining the mission and topic of the proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by February 15, 2007 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter organizational guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by April 30, 2007. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. The book is scheduled to be published by Idea Group Inc., www.idea-group.com, publisher of the Idea Group Publishing, Information Science Publishing, IRM Press, CyberTech Publishing and Idea Group reference imprints. Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (World document) to: a.c.roibas(a)brighton.ac.uk

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Re: [Air-l] social class and online community, cont.(for Bonnie Nardi)
by Brenda Danet 08 Jan '07

08 Jan '07

Hi Bonnie: I studied two online groups on IRC populated almost entirely by working class people. This was not a study comparing groups of differing social classes, but rather, case studies initially of two quite similar groups (one had spintered off from the other), and later on, a more extended study of one of the groups. Both groups communicate(d) mainly via text-based images, not words. Typical occupations of ops (IRC operators, who run the channels), include: truck driver, waitress, house cleaner, hardware salesman, etc. I learned of these occupations and others from online interviews with ops. There is a chapter in my book Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online (Berg, Oxford, 2001) about these groups. The text and illustrations for this chapter are all online as the sample chapter, in the portion of my website devoted to Cyberpl@y. Go to http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/cyberpl@y/sitemap.html and click on "sample chapter." Since the publication of Cyberpl@y, I have published three more recent papers about one of the two groups, called "rainbow." (The other group no longer exists.) "Pixel Patchwork: 'Quilting in Time' Online,"<http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/textiles/textile_about.htm> <http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/textiles/textile_about.htm>Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture 1 (2), 2003: 118-143. <http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/%7Emsdanet/papers/patchwork.pdf>Pre-publication version, text only. "'If You Have a Lot of Clutter It Messes Up the Popup:' The Pursuit of Good Gestalts in an Online Folk Art," <http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/textiles/textile_about.htm>Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture, special issue on "Digital Textiles 1," Janis Jefferies, editor, 2 (3) 2004: 226-255. <http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/%7Emsdanet/papers/goodgestalts.pdf>Pre-publication version. "Ritualized Play, Art and Communication on Internet Relay Chat." In Eric Rothenbuhler and Mihai Coman, eds., Media Anthropology (2005), pp. 229-246. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.<http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/%7Emsdanet/papers/ritplay.pdf>. Pre-publication version. See also the rainbow website: http://www.mirc-rainbow.net/. Remarkably, this group, which was founded in May 1997, is apparently still going strong after nearly 10 years, despite a fair amount of turnover. If you want to know more about rainbow people, their social background, and what keeps them coming back to the channel, feel free to contact me privately.

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WWW2007 Workshop: Tagging and Metadata for Social Information Organization
by Golder, Scott A. 08 Jan '07

08 Jan '07

WWW2007 Workshop: Tagging and Metadata for Social Information Organization Call For Papers and Participation http://www2007.redlog.net/ Background User-generated content has transformed the web. This new content - including video, blogs, photos, etc. - is often also organized collaboratively, using tags, or keywords, supplied by users. Tags are useful entry points into exploring the content by searching, filtering, navigating, and so on. Collaboratively tagging content sources allows them to be used for knowledge and information sharing and constitute a kind of social interaction, and the relations between keywords can be used to create associations in topic networks. As the services supporting tagging grow, questions of scale become pertinent. From a social standpoint, as communities grow, changes (similarity, trust, etc.) make successful interfaces for small groups ineffective for large ones, making new designs necessary. From a technical perspective, growth of data sources presents new opportunities for semantics and data mining. In this workshop, we hope to bring together researchers and practitioners from a variety of disciplines and engage them in discussion about tagging, especially how it fosters social information organization and collaboration, and how to leverage the explosive volume of metadata. Topics of Interest We hope to bring together researchers as well as practitioners to explore social, design and computational aspects of tagging and social information organization. The topic space is wide, but the following are some of the areas of special interest: # Semantics. Ontology and hierarchy creation; Semantics issues in cross-system tagging; Standardization efforts. # Cognition. The cognitive aspects of categorization; Organizing and retrieving tagged objects. # Social networks. Social sharing; Relationship building; Ratings systems and collaborative filtering; Identity management self-presentation; Tagging in blogs, wikis, etc. # Usability and Interfaces. Search navigation, browsing and filtering; Novice users and tags; Evaluating existing tagging environments and user behavior; Motivations for tagging. # Multimedia. Tagging multiple kinds of media; tagging across media types; Tagging at varying scales; Non-text-based annotations and tags. How to Submit Submissions will be managed using the EasyChair conference management system. Go to http://www.easychair.org/WWW2007Workshops/ and create an account, then choose the track for this workshop. Papers must be submitted in PDF format, and in the style as WWW2007 papers. See the WWW2007 submissions page (http://www2007.org/submission.php) for templates and info. Papers will be reviewed by the Program Committee and an appropriate set of submissions will be accepted. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their work at the workshop. The workshop proceedings will also be made part of the WWW2007 CDs, which will be distributed at the conference. Workshop Format The schedule of the workshop is designed to be as interactive as possible, and will include paper presentations and moderated discussion. Under consideration are breakout sessions and possible guest speakers. 1. Paper/Area Discussions. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their work, with an emphasis on discussion with the attendees. Accepted papers will be grouped into coherent topic groups so topics may also be discussed at a more general level. 2. Breakout sessions. Breakout sessions will allow attendees to engage in small-group, deeper discussion about particular areas. Design exercises or other prompts may stimulate discussion. 3. Moderated Discussion. As a way of bringing closure to the workshop day, the co-organizers will solicit questions from the attendees and moderate discussion among them. Key Dates & Contact Info # Mon 12 February 2007 - All papers must be submitted via Easychair by this date. # Fri 16 March 2007 - Authors will be notified whether submissions have been accepted or not. # Fri 30 March 2007 - Camera-ready copies of accepted papers are due. # Tue 8 May 2007 - Workshop will be held at WWW2007 in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Organizers # Scott Golder, HP Labs. http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Scott_Golder/ # Frank Smadja, RawSugar. # Program Committee: * Lee Iverson, University of British Columbia * Emanuele Quintarelli, Reed Business Information * Vova Soroka, IBM Haifa Research Lab * Andrew Tomkins, Yahoo! Research * Jennifer Trant, Archives & Museum Informatics

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PhD seminar: deleuze, ethnography and technology
by smork＠itu.dk 08 Jan '07

08 Jan '07

Dear listmembers The IT University of Copenhagen has a PhD seminar in May that might be of interest to some of you working with Gilles Deleuze, ethnography and technology. Please distribute to PhD candidates at your institution that you think might be interested. The program is here: http://www1.itu.dk/sw55657.asp Best, Søren Mørk Petersen PhD Candidate

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CfP: Media Events, Globalization, and Cultural Change
by Ralf Bendrath 08 Jan '07

08 Jan '07

-------- Original Message -------- MEDIA EVENTS, GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURAL CHANGE Friday 6th July - Saturday 7th July 2007, University of Bremen (Germany) Call for Papers Organiser: Media Sociology Group of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) and Psychology and Public Opinion Section (PPO) of the IAMCR Conference team: Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp, Friedrich Krotz Media Events have become an important area of international media and communication studies research. The international conference "Media Events, Globalization and Cultural Change" will articulate these discussions. Topics of the conference are: - Defining and theorising media events - Exploring processes of ritualization, as worked out in and around media events - Empirical studies on media events, their globalization and change - Studies on the relation of media events and (global) popular culture - Analysing media events production and consumption - Everyday appropriation of media events - Transnational media flows, global media events and the global public sphere - Ritual media events and the changing nature of religion - The role of digital media (the internet, weblogs etc.) within media events Invited Keynote speaker include - Daniel Dayan, - Eric Rothenbuhler and - Ingrid Volkmer. For the complete call and more information please visit the conference website at: http://www.media-events-bremen07.org Please send your abstracts (not more than 300 words) to mediaevents(a)uni-bremen.de by Sunday 31st March 2007 or contact: Nick Couldry: N.Couldry(a)gold.ac.uk Andreas Hepp: Andreas.Hepp(a)uni-bremen.de Friedrich Krotz: Friedrich.Krotz(a)uni-erfurt.de -- Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp University of Bremen - Faculty of Cultural Studies Institute of Media, Communication & Information Enrique-Schmidt-Strasse, SFG 4320 D-28359 Bremen, Germany Phone: +49 (0)421 218-3046 Fax: +49 (0)421 218-7574 http://www.imki.uni-bremen.de/ http://www.medien.uni-bremen.de/

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Pew Internet Report: Social Networking Websites and Teens
by Richard Forno 08 Jan '07

08 Jan '07

Happy New Year, all. -rf Report Press Release 1-7-07 http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/134/press_release.asp Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview 1-7-07 http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/198/report_display.asp Link to Full Report 1-7-07 http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_SNS_Data_Memo_Jan_2007.pdf

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Call for AOIR 7.0 Panelists on Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
by Michael Zimmer 07 Jan '07

07 Jan '07

With the submission deadline for AOIR 7.0 approaching (Feb 1), I'm seeking colleagues to join a proposed panel on "Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0". A *draft* panel description is posted below, trying to fit with the conference theme of addressing "the (playful) blurring of boundaries online." Please e-mail me off-list if interested at michael.zimmer(a)nyu.edu. Will need a 250-500 word paper abstract prior to deadline. Thanks! -michael. ----- Michael T. Zimmer Doctoral Candidate, Culture and Communication, New York University Student Fellow, Information Law Institute, NYU Law School e: michael.zimmer(a)nyu.edu w: http://michaelzimmer.org Draft panel proposal: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 Web 2.0 represents a (playful) blurring of the boundaries between Web users and producers, consumption and participation, authority and amateurism, play and work, data and the network, reality and virtuality. The rhetoric surrounding Web 2.0 infrastructures presents certain cultural claims about media, identity, and technology. It suggests that everyone can and should use new Internet technologies to organize and share information, to interact within communities, and to express oneself. It promises to empower creativity, to democratize media production, and to celebrate the individual while also relishing the power of collaboration and social networks. Websites such as Flickr, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, MySpace, and YouTube are all part of this second-generation Internet phenomenon, which has spurred a variety of new services and communities – and venture capitalist dollars. But Web 2.0 also embodies a set of unintended consequences, including the increased flow of personal information across networks, the diffusion of one’s identity across fractured spaces, the emergence of powerful tools for peer surveillance, and the fear of increased corporatization of online social and collaborative spaces and outputs. In Technopoly, Neil Postman warned that we tend to be “surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines and are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in them. Which means we become blind to the ideological meaning of our technologies” (1992, p. 94). As the power and ubiquity of the Web 2.0 infrastructure rises, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to recognize its externalities, and easier to take the design of such tools simply “at interface value” (Turkle, 1995, p. 103). Heeding Postman and Turkle’s warnings, this panel will work to remove the blinders of the unintended consequences of Web 2.0’s (playful) blurring of boundaries and critically explore the social, political, and ethical dimensions of Web 2.0.

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