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Re: [Air-l] AIR 2007 in Vancouver or else
by GTa3411203＠aol.com 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

Has the board considered a rotational schedule where the conference would be held in the U.S. every other year? This is a practice that other associations use and one that benefits conference planners and members alike. I'm one of those people who is already looking at the 2007 and 2008 conference schedules to see what is being offered in anticipation of writing papers and making presentations. I imagine there are others reading this posting who are doing the same. -- Gail Gail Taylor, M.Ed. Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student U of I Urbana-Champaign

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Social-networking article (Facebook, MySpace, Xanga)
by GTa3411203＠aol.com 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

I teach undergrad students who are in training to be educators in K-12 schools. I keep an eye on several publications that are geared toward the interests of teacher practitioners. I came across an article "Social-Networking Web Sites Pose Growing Challenge for Educators" in the latest edition of Education Week. The article calls attention to the manner in which school districts are addressing legal concerns related to student usage of Facebook, and other Internet-based social-networking services such as MySpace and Xanga. It mentions issues related to regulating student on- and off-campus activities. Lots of attention is given to protecting student best interests. The article can be accessed online via the www.edweek.org web site. You will need a subscription to access the article. If you don't have one, you can register to get a free subscription which will give you access to the publication and limited access to complete copies of article. -- Gail Gail Taylor, M.Ed. Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Re: [Air-l] AIR in Vancouver in 2007?
by Suely Fragoso 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

Dear AIR-ers Canada is definitely easier to get a visa to than the US - as far as I am aware, nowhere is harder than US (on the other hand US often issues long term visas, what can be handy) Canada appeals and Europe appeals - but Scandinavia is extremely expensive for Southern Hemisphere citizens (not just distance-wise, but the cost of everything there is also heavy). Did I hear someone saying Italy last year or was it a dream? Sue >>> Ulla.Bunz(a)comm.fsu.edu 01/03/2006 13:31 >>> Canada as a north American venue has a lot of appeal for many of our members for various reasons, one of the more important ones being visa issues (most say it's easier to get visas for Canada than the US, and also some are uncomfortable with the fingerprinting procedure in the US and don't want to do that). I like the idea of having a conference in Vancouver, be it 2007 or afterwards. I also would like to see a conference in Europe again, maybe somewhere in Scandinavia. I know one city in a Scandinavian country had been under pretty serious discussion when I was still on the exec, but I do not know what has happened to that discussion since October. I think it would help if someone from the exec clarified whether there already is a definite location for 2007 or not, even if they don't want to reveal what that location is. Ulla Bunz _______________________________________________ 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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Virtual China research
by Lyn Jeffery 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

Hello -- My name is Lyn Jeffery. I'm a cultural anthropologist working for a small nonprofit technology forecasting group in Palo Alto, California, called the Institute for the Future (www.iftf.org) I've spent most of the last 20 years living in, working on, and thinking about mainland China. My dissertation research was on the emergence of Chinese capitalism, and I've also published in the area of urban anthropology of China. I speak and read Chinese. This year at IFTF I am leading a project on Virtual China -- trying to broadly map out what's happening in virtual Chinese environments, how Internet practices are changing daily life in China, and how it matters. The research will be ethnographic in nature, across virtual and physical spaces, and in China and the Silicon Valley. It will be, as all our work at IFTF is, somewhere in between academia and business. I look forward to learning from the list, to immersing myself of the literature on Internet research methods and theory, and to perhaps meeting some of you along the way. If you're interested further, please see our blog at http://www.virtual-china.org/ Best, Lyn Jeffery ________________________ Lyn Jeffery, Ph.D. Research Director Institute for the Future www.iftf.org AIM: LynatIFTF Skype: LynJeffery phone: 650-233-9577 124 University Ave. 2/F, Palo Alto, CA 94301 main phone: 650-854-6322 fax: 650-854-7850 ________________________

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Re: [Air-l] AIR 2007 in Vancouver or else
by Michel J. Menou 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

I too feel the location issue is better discussed in the general list. I have nothing against Vancouver, except that it may be far and expensive (travel wise) for many Europeans. But any location is likely to give relative advantage to some subset of the membership/attendees. If the rotation is meant to be once in "North America", once elsewhere, I'd like to remind that North America includes Mexico, from a strict geographic standpoint, and that the Caribbean is eventually as close (Puerto Rico having in addition special ties with the US, like the Virgin Islands). Both locations (Mexico and Caribbean) offer a lot of suitable resorts. And I certainly cross fingers for Italy to be selected some time soon as it is a paradise for thinking as well as feeding :-) Michel -- ================================================================= Dr. Michel J. Menou Consultant in ICT policies and Knowledge & Information Management Adviser of Somos@Telecentros board http://www.tele-centros.org Member of the founding steering committee of Telecenters of the Americas Partnership http://www.tele-centers.net/ B.P. 15 49350 Les Rosiers sur Loire, France Email: Michel.Menou(a)wanadoo.fr Phone: +33 (0)2 41511043 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ciber/peoplemenou.php ================================================================== -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/272 - Release Date: 01/03/2006

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"It can't be legal unless you pay for it"
by David Brake 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Recent discussion of the legality (or otherwise) of downloading audio reminded me of a recent news story here in the UK about a trading standards officer (locally-based business 'policeman') who found people selling discs with Firefox on it and complained to a representative of the Mozilla Foundation that "I can't believe that your company would allow people to make money from something that you allow people to have free access to." Copyleft and creative commons etc is evidently hard for many of the 'ordinary public' (or even supposed experts!) to understand... http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2051196,00.html P.S. For more free to download and use audio, check out http:// opsound.org/ --- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)

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Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it"
by Heidelberg, Chris 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Marjorie: I am using sense making theory in concert with McLuhan's theory on powerful media effects and expert theory in my research and it is quite interesting to hear the data that I am getting from the experts. The industry has managed to co-opt government officially globally and citizens simultaneously. It will be up to the academics to teach the truth. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Marj Kibby Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 5:11 PM To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it" The corollary of this is, of course, "I paid for it so it must be legal" I'm in the early stages of looking at the use of Russian MP3 sites, using sense making theory to examine how users rationalise their downloading. Marj Dr Marjorie Kibby, Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture Faculty of Education and Arts The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia Marj.Kibby(a)newcastle.edu.au +61 2 49216604

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Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it"
by Heidelberg, Chris 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Dan: Of course, you are correct, I forgot about the Sony case with cd's. I guess what I should have communicated is that I am waiting for the first Supreme Court case that rules against DRM in whole or at least in part because it limits fair use and copying for personal use as provided for under the Sony Betamax decision in 1984. It would appear that the electronics makers have capitulated to the entertainment companies by placing DRM in their new devices. TiVo, Sony and others have all fallen in line with policy. I would think that the companies that buck this trend and partner with the telecoms could defeat the entertainment lobby since the telecoms and even the utility company who will be entering the business soon have the money and the Congressional influence to successfully challenge the content lobby. By the way, is it safe to assume that DRM was held to be legal except for the Sony fiasco. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Dan L Burk Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:15 PM To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] "It can't be legal unless you pay for it" On 28 Feb 2006, Heidelberg, Chris wrote: > > I am > waiting for the first lawsuit that is filed in the U.S. against > digital rights management. Then you missed it -- actually, them. There have been at least two or three that I can think of offhand, in both federal and state court. DLB Dan L. Burk Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor University of Minnesota Law School 229 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA *************************************** Voice: 612-626-8726 Fax: 612-625-2011 bits: burkx006(a)umn.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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levels of jargon
by Barry Wellman 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

Someone responded to my "minimize jargon" post to this list yesterday with a query, saying "how do you know it is jargon?" (I paraphrase.) As I am teaching a writing workshop tomorrow, this caught my interest. My initial thoughts are that there are at a minimum 3 different kinds of writing. 1. Within your discipline (or sub-discipline) where commonly-known jargon is not permissible, but useful shorthands. For example, almost all of us should know what IM, CMC or CSCW are. In social network analysis, we all know what blockmodeling or degree are. 2. Across disciplines to intelligent readers, such as the Association of Internet RESEARCHERS: I would never use "blockmodeling" or "degree" without defining. Just as I would never use "performativity" or "performing gender". They are in-group terms. (Test for this: ask your [hetero?] partner tonight if s/he wants to "perform gender" and see what you get). OTOH, I would assume I could talk about regression coefficents or significance tests on this list, because they are common terms in all social sciences. AOIR has a special problem in this respect, because we reach into the humanities, which, for example, normally doesn't teach a basic stats course. (And of course, OTOH is a jargon term I assume is commonly understood.) 3. For intelligent readers in the general public -- basically those who read Harpers, LeMonde, etc. You really have to avoid jargon here. I've doing a fair amount of this writing. See my piece for "revolver" on my website and the recently coauthored Pew Internet report, "The Strength of Ties" (www.pewinternet.org) Trouble is, many of us don't recognize jargon when we "perform scholarly writing" ;-). This really hit home around Christmas, when after I had tried my best, the Pew folks edited my writing for the aforementioned general public. (BTW, Pew goes to a great deal of trouble to make stuff readable -- a 1.5 page press release which is all that many commentators [especially bloggers and news media] appear to have read; a 9 pp. summary, and then the fat report itself.) 4. Of course there is a 4th level, for the remainder of the general public. That is really hard. 5. Also hard is writing in a foreign language, and even harder, using foreign norms for constructing papers/chapters. Which basically means writing/thinking in American English.* I'm intrigued that a Portuguese university has invited me to teach in June a workshop on this stuff. (*Linguisitic imperialism is a whole other topic.) PS: An amusing piece of ageist writing is getting edited out of a paper that Jennifer Kayahara and I are writing, "Searching for Leisure". The editor has asked that we take out the term "MacGyver" on the grounds that young scholars would be unaware of that great 1985+ TV show where Richard Dean Anderson saved himself weekly from dire situations by do-it-yourself tricks. If you're under 40, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088559/ 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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Re: [Air-l] deconstructed and misconstrued
by Gilbert B. Rodman 02 Mar '06

02 Mar '06

At 3/2/2006 @ 10:07 AM, you wrote: >I've been deconstructed and miscontrued by a commentator on my "levels of >writing piece in the last digest. > >In it, I said "we reach into the humanities." >The commentator thought I meant "we" meaning me. > >Nope. I meant "We" (being AOIR) includes the humanities. > > >From being on the exec, I recall that the majority (perhaps the great >majority of AoIR members are in the social sciences. But that the >membership reaches into (includes) many humanities scholars. Actually, no, I knew you meant AoIR. That was my point. There are certainly enough humanities folks in the mix here -- and that shouldn't be a secret by now -- that we're not just a special outreach program of an association founded by old school quantitative researchers (especially since I suspect the likes of Steve Jones and Nancy Baym wouldn't recognize themselves in that light anyway) cheers gil

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