Ben: Thanks for sharing these sites related to how Internet-based communication venues are being used by people (and by professional media) wanting / needing to know about the California fires. I am sure you are right that a wave of studies will emerge around news and communication flow, and around the fusion of professional media with Internet sites for personal communication. I can imagine theoretical inspiration for such studies coming, in part, from the half-century-old Katz and Lazarsfeld volume Personal Influence as well as from the examination of the flow of news immediately after the JFK assignation. If there are any studies being prepared, I'd like to hear.... Nick Jankowski ************************************************************************************************* Visiting Fellow Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences 1019 AT Amsterdam, NL www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl ************************************************************************************************ At 04:45 AM 10/24/2007, you wrote:

I think in the next few months, we're going to see a whole lot of interesting research on the use of technology during the Great Californian Fire of 07.

I've been seeing some very interesting ways of using the internet to pass information between people who are there and people who want to know what's going on. Fark.com has had a series of massive (1000+ posts) threads about the fire (example: http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3155801) where people who are there pass on what ever info they have about evacuations and other important details.

Slashdot has a very interesting article with comments on how the evacuation shelters in San Diago are wifi enabled, allowing evacuees to set up blogs and use other internet tools to keep people appraised of their situation.

Another interesting article on the subject can be found at http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9802911-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webw... .

It's becoming apparent that these fires represent the largest civilian movement since the Civil War. It's already outsized Katerina it terms of people temporarily displaced from their houses. While the damage is going to be much less, it is very interesting to see how people are adapting technology very quickly for emergency use.

Ben Spigel Department of Geography The Ohio State University _______________________________________________ The Air-L@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

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