- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Re: [Air-l] Paper: Critical Information Studies
by Bram Dov Abramson 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org (15:03, 21.3.2006): >A copy of the paper is available at the link, too.........rf >http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002930.html > >AFTERWORD: CRITICAL INFORMATION STUDIES >A bibliographic manifesto > >Siva Vaidhyanathan > >This paper takes measure of an emerging scholarly field that >sits at the intersection of many important areas of study. >Critical Information Studies (CIS) considers the ways in which >culture and information are regulated by their relationship to >commerce, creativity, and other human affairs. CIS You know, this recalls the ongoing debate around WSIS re: an "information society" or, as many activists argue, a "communication society": http://www.digitalopportunity.org/article/view/65050 http://gaz.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/66/3-4/203 etc. And, for that matter, "Critical Communication Studies" (CCS), a term which features its own histories and communities: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22critical+communication+studies%22 cheers Bram

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Paper: Critical Information Studies
by Richard Forno 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

A copy of the paper is available at the link, too.........rf http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002930.html AFTERWORD: CRITICAL INFORMATION STUDIES A bibliographic manifesto Siva Vaidhyanathan This paper takes measure of an emerging scholarly field that sits at the intersection of many important areas of study. Critical Information Studies (CIS) considers the ways in which culture and information are regulated by their relationship to commerce, creativity, and other human affairs. CIS captures the variety of approaches and bodies of knowledge needed to make sense of important phenomena such as copyright policy, electronic voting, encryption, the state of libraries, the preservation of ancient cultural traditions, and markets for cultural production. It necessarily stretches to a wide array of scholarly subjects, employs multiple complementary methodologies, and influences conversations far beyond the gates of the university. Economists, sociologists, linguists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, communication scholars, lawyers, computer scientists, philosophers, and librarians have all contributed to this field, and thus it can serve as a model for how engaged, relevant scholarship might be carried out. CIS interrogates the structures, functions, habits, norms, and practices that guide global flows of information and cultural elements. Instead of being concerned merely with one's right to speak (or sing or publish), CIS asks questions about access, costs, and chilling effects on, within, and among audiences, citizens, emerging cultural creators, indigenous cultural groups, teachers, and students. Central to these issues is the idea of semiotic democracy¹, or the ability of citizens to employ the signs and symbols ubiquitous in their environments in manners that they determine.

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aoir & languages
by William Bain 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

On the discussion about languages and air-la that's recently started, I wonder if this might not be related to another issue that's occasionally been talked about, namely whether aoir needs a wiki. What occurs to me is that a language wiki dealing with technical terms might be in order. Technical terminology is bound to come up when posts get transferred (or translated) from air-la to air-l. Would it be of interest to have a wiki (a wiktionary? sorry) to deal with this issue? Further to this, Beverly Trayner wrote about a carnival of blog and it struck me that possibly as a simple trial air-l (or for that matter air-la or both) could for a limited period (a week? a few days?) accept posts in a number of languages, for example the working languages used by the European Parliament. This short period of "carnival" might show that there's really no need for the two lists (l and la) and also whether online dictionaries *specific* to aoir are of any real interest. Best regards, William Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Use Photomail to share photos without annoying attachments.

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Citation managers
by Axel Bruns 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Dear AoIRers, many thanks for your many replies on- and offlist to my query about citation managing tools, and my apologies for not having been able to get back to each of you directly. I'll post a summary of responses here on this list in a few days... -- Dr Axel Bruns a.bruns(a)qut.edu.au - http://snurb.info/ Media & Communication Musk Ave, Kelvin Grove, Qld. 4059, Australia Creative Industries Faculty Z2-202, CIP - (07) 3864 5548 Queensland University of Technology CRICOS No.: 00213J

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Re: [Air-l] AOIR in Toronto
by Bram Dov Abramson 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

>Remember first and foremost the conferences have been AoIR >conferences, and not 'locality' conferences, that is a confusion that >often causes misunderstandings. As we attempt to further our >internationalization, we will bring more people into AoIR and we'll >expand as appropriate, but in my minds the pragmatics of the >organization such as not going bankrupt come first I can see that this is a touchy subject, so I don't want to stir the pot -- but do want to suggest that (1) whether or not panels are held in non-English languages, and (2) whether or not translation is provided for those panels, might be two separate questions. To wit: in Toronto I recall attending a panel in French. All attending that panel understood French. A number of us later met up for drinks, if I recall correctly (disclaimer: I left pretty early). It was nice to hear about research going on in other places. That was one of the things I enjoyed about Toronto. The translation was, to be frank, not particularly useful at the French-language panels if I recall correctly -- I think barely anyone actually used the headphones. (I'm not talking about the keynote.) Conferences are partly about exchange and dialogue with colleagues who are otherwise remote. Where scholarship takes place internationally in a non-English language, and the conference is held in a place associated with that language, the conference has the potential of becoming an international hub for researchers with common interests and a common language. That can be rewarding for the international community of researchers which interacts in that language -- even where there is no translation service provided. Ultimately there are many parallel panels going on anyway! cheers Bram

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AOIR in Toronto
by Barry Wellman 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Re Alexis Kusis' comments about AoIR in Toronto. a) There were more than one American on the Executive Committee. b) The change in conference organizer had very little to do with the question of language. It had a lot to do with leadership. c) Other facts are not as I, or people working with me, remember them. I don't think it is appropriate to say more about an unhappy past experience. Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network _____________________________________________________________________

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Citation Managers - Alternatives to Endnote/CiteULike/... ?
by Axel Bruns 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Dear AoIRers, I'm wondering if any of you can suggest useful alternatives to research citation manager tools such as Endnote or CiteULike. My approach to research is to store key quotations from a source alongside the bibliographic reference, but none of the standard tools I have come across seem to do this particularly effectively (e.g. in Endnote, the best available workaround appears to be to create an additional field for quotes in the bibliographic record, but this is clunky and doesn't work very well with multiple quotes stored against the same record). My preferred workflow would be a two-step process: 1. Create a primary bibliographic record for the source, e.g. [2] Graham Meikle. _Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet_. New York: Routledge, 2002. 2. Create (multiple) quotations as secondary records stored against the primary one, e.g. [2.1] "People who hope to draw attention to issues can use the Net in a host of ways, but few are effective without the eventual participation of the older media." (5) [2.2] "One way to measure the success of many of the projects . is to ask how effectively they can use the Net to force their cause onto the agenda of the mainstream media." (8) etc. Are there any tools (preferably open source, possibly Web-based) which do something along these lines ? Obviously I'm also keen on functionality to convert references automatically into a number of referencing styles (MLA, APA, etc.). Failing this, the best alternative I can see is to use a tool such as CiteULike for the primary references, and create an additional database which stores quotations against the CiteULike references, but this seems kludgy at best. Hopefully there's a better solution ? Any suggestions would be appreciated, and if there's any interest I'll post a summary of what I find... -- Dr Axel Bruns a.bruns(a)qut.edu.au - http://snurb.info/ Media & Communication Musk Ave, Kelvin Grove, Qld. 4059, Australia Creative Industries Faculty Z2-202, CIP - (07) 3864 5548 Queensland University of Technology CRICOS No.: 00213J

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World Internet Access Report 2006 - cost of online access in global cities
by Philip Howard 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

I'm part of a project that has just done an online pub called the World Internet Access Report 2006. The goal is to get us beyond the World Bank / Davos 'Internet penetration' indicators of IT and development. There's a short piece comparing cost of 1 hour cybercafé access in world's 24 largest cities....and all the raw data is there. www.wiareport.org phil Dr. Philip N. Howard Assistant Professor Department of Communication University of Washington

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Re: [Air-l] AoIR in Latin-America
by egeorge＠uottawa.ca 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

Hi all, I was member of the steering committee of the conference in Toronto and responsible of the proposals made in French. I totally agree with the opinion of Alex Kuskis. I will only add that I remember some remarks of several members of this list -- from the USA but also from English Canada -- who were very negative with the idea to have a bilingual or multilingual conference. Best Wishes Éric ---------------------------------------------- Éric GEORGE (http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~egeorge/) ---------- In my recollection the inclusion of French presenters in Toronto worked reasonably well, given the association's executive attempts to subvert the bilingual French and English presentations they had initially agreed to. As a member of the Toronto organizing committee, I recall that we felt it important for AIR to grow internationally by recognizing the bilingual nature of their Canadian conference host country. With the help of people like David Mitchell, former editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication, we secured Canadian government funding for translation services and the call for papers was duly issued in French and English. There were a sufficent number of French-speaking scholars to assess French-language proposals. Cyber-philosopher Pierre Levy was secured to present one of the keynotes and all seemed well with the world. Then, a few months before the conference, the Toronto organizers were instructed by the AIR executive to cancel the French sessions and return the government funding offered for translation purposes. The Toronto conference chair refused and was deposed by the executive group, who installed a number of recently-involved locals more amenable to their wishes. Needless to say, those of us who had worked on the conference for 2 years were devastated, but managed to get the French sessions held anyway by arranging for set-up and support. The Francophone scholars who were aware of what had happened were upset, but thanked the deposed organizers. This heavy-handedness caused considerable bad feeling and set back AIR in this part of Canada, where several people have expressed a disinclination to be members until AIR becomes more than tokenly international. I air this dirty laundry now (pun intended) because of our Vancouver colleagues expressed desire to hold the conference, the discussions about AIR in Latin America, and language on the Internet. Now, I would never expect my native language of Latvian to be accommodated by AIR (nor the Croatian that someone mentioned), but when the conference is held in countries where major world languages such as Spanish or French are spoken, and when local organizers are willing to go the extra distance to secure funding, translation and organization, leaving it to the executive to just show up, why would the association continue to insist on its anglo-centrism? The executive who decided that English was to be the association's working language in all matters was almost all-American, and all English-speaking, except for one token member. Is that reflective of an association that purports to be international? ......................Alex Kuskis ***********************

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Re: [Air-l] AoIR in Latin-America
by geert lovink 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

hi, i was a bit surprised about your remark on the aior as the list and organization is so deeply anglo-centric. there are NEVER any postings on that list in languages other than english. so what does that 'regardless of language' means to you? there are hardly any lists, sites, blog or journals that are poly-lingual. best, geert

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