Are any of these distance learning programmes? On Sep 29, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Sarah Oates wrote:

First of all, I've just romped through your paper and you wrote that as an UNDERGRADUATE? Damn, you're good.

I hear your pain on the internet studies/grad thing -- sometimes these things are hard to find but I am sure this is the perfect list to ask -- here are some good ones out there that I know in the UK, try: Royal Holloway near London Leicester University is developing into a hot place to 'do' internet studies (always look for a place with at least 2 people ... they have 5 or 6) Oxford Internet Institute (OII) some folk at Leeds and Goldsmith's (London) London School of Economics, they're developing this area

our programme is great for abstract concepts/political communication and you could do a very fun MSc dissertation on this very topic ... I'm just now working with someone in Computing Science to tackle this sort of thing, see our programme at http://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/politicalcommunicationmscpgdip/

When I update my own webpage (www.media-politics.com) about this (good thing to put up), I'll Email back

SAO

Sarah Oates Professor of Political Communication School of Social and Political Sciences Adam Smith Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8RT

Email: sarah.oates@glasgow.ac.uk Website: www.media-politics.com <http://www.media-politics.com/> Telephone: (0)141 330 5124 The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401

________________________________

From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org on behalf of Devin Gaffney Sent: Wed 29/09/2010 17:52 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Graduate programs for "internet studies"?

Hey all,

I just finished an exhilarating undergraduate program that gave me enough flexibility in order to study the impact/efficacy of Twitter during the Iran Election(http://www.devingaffney.com/-iranelection-quantifying-online-activism ), but in order to pull it off, I had to really bend some of the institutions rules, and just barely got the necessary advisorship in order to study it in a reasonable way. I am looking to jump right back into school for the following academic year, and am trying to figure out which schools have which programs - it seems that the information/ websites for all the programs that do exist are well ensconced within their respective institutions websites, which tend towards labyrinthine. Does anyone have a good list of institutions (US/ elsewhere) where a Masters/PhD in fields either directly or otherwise closely related to "internet studies" (or "web science," or whatever term you use, as this even seems to be up in the air, as far as I can tell)? Obviously, there are places like Citizenlab, Berkman, and OII, which all seem to at least offer classes in some capacity, but are there any others i just haven't found?

Thanks much,

Devin Gaffney http://www.devingaffney.com <http://www.devingaffney.com/> _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http:// aoir.org <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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Hello Devin, You may also want to consider the somewhat nebulous, but interesting, world of "Information Schools." (Or: Schools of Information, Schools of Information and Library Science, or Informatics Programs....and more!) A list of some of these schools--though not all--can be found in the right hand column of http://ischools.org/. The kind of work you seem interested in doing would be a really good fit for many of those programs either at the Master's or PhD level. I would advise looking carefully look through both the faculty and students in each (though the websites often don't reflect what's actually happening in the program). There are also Sociology and Communication programs (I am guessing Polisci also) that have experts in areas you are interested in as well. Regards, Dan Dan Perkel Doctoral Candidate UC Berkeley School of Information, Berkeley Center for New Media http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dperkel On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 10:32 AM, Brabham, Daren C <dbrabham@email.unc.edu>wrote:

The School of Journalism & Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill offers an online M.A. in Technology & Communication: http://matc.jomc.unc.edu/ , as well as an online graduate Certificate in Technology & Communication (part of which can be rolled into the M.A.). The MATC is an online program, but it requires two brief residencies on campus (a two-day session in the summer before the program starts and a week-long session in the summer between the first and second year).

Also, many schools (including my alma mater, the University of Utah) offer considerable flexibility to craft your own path through the degree program. If these schools offer the courses and faculty in the areas you're looking for (as Utah does), you're in good shape to make that program very internet studies-focused.

db

--- Daren C. Brabham, Ph.D. Assistant Professor School of Journalism & Mass Communication University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Carroll Hall, CB 3365 Chapel Hill, NC 27599 (919) 962-0676 (office) (801) 633-4796 (cell) daren.brabham@unc.edu www.darenbrabham.com _______________________________________________ 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

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

We run the Master of Social Research (Social Science of the Internet) - http://adsri.anu.edu.au/study/ssi.php The focus on social science (economics, political science and sociology) and quantitative research methods is what distinguishes the ANU's Master of Social Research (Social Science of the Internet). Programs elsewhere often take a media or cultural studies perspective, or else focus on Internet governance. Canberra is a very nice place to live (the MSR is not currently available via distance, but our Graduate Certificate in Social Research is). Rob ------------------------------------- Dr Robert Ackland Fellow and Masters Coordinator, Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, The Australian National University e-mail: robert.ackland@anu.edu.au homepage: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/robert.php project: http://voson.anu.edu.au Information about the Master of Social Research: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/study/msr.php -------------------------------------

On Sep 29 2010, Devin Gaffney wrote:

...

Hey all,

I just finished an exhilarating undergraduate program that gave me enough flexibility in order to study the impact/efficacy of Twitter during the Iran Election(http://www.devingaffney.com/-iranelection-quantifying-online-activism ), but in order to pull it off, I had to really bend some of the institutions rules, and just barely got the necessary advisorship in order to study it in a reasonable way. I am looking to jump right back into school for the following academic year, and am trying to figure out which schools have which programs - it seems that the information/ websites for all the programs that do exist are well ensconced within their respective institutions websites, which tend towards labyrinthine. Does anyone have a good list of institutions (US/ elsewhere) where a Masters/PhD in fields either directly or otherwise closely related to "internet studies" (or "web science," or whatever term you use, as this even seems to be up in the air, as far as I can tell)? Obviously, there are places like Citizenlab, Berkman, and OII, which all seem to at least offer classes in some capacity, but are there any others i just haven't found?

Thanks much,

Devin Gaffney http://www.devingaffney.com _______________________________________________ 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

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

Yes, well, we don't all have the good fortune to get into schools such as Berkeley after having chats with the advisors, eh? ;) But I agree - thinking about who you want to work with for a long period of time, and how they will let you grow in the academic arena, is quite important. Cheers, @SharonG On Sep 29, 2010, at 9:32 PM, danah boyd wrote:

Who do you admire? Who do you want to work with? PhD programs especially (less so for Master's) are all about your advisor and your committee, your ability to connect with your peers, and your ability go get a solid foundation in various intellectual traditions that you can bring to the table when talking about Internet dynamics. My advice to all potential grad students is to start by making a list of the scholars that you respect. Go to conferences in fields that you want to engage with (like AOIR) and meet people. Figure out who you think you could get along with. And then build out from there. Programs are important but less so than individual mentors that can help you through your intellectual inquiry.

If it helps at all, I wrote this long post for folks interested in going to grad school: http://www.danah.org/GradSchoolAdvice.html

Personally, I didn't know what an information school was when I applied to Berkeley. (Heck, I still don't.) But as soon as I met Peter, my beloved advisor, I knew that it was the perfect place for me. And I never would've imagined that learning about how information is organized by librarians would be at all relevant to my studies, but OMG has it been surprisingly useful. I should also note that what I admired about Peter had nothing to do with Internet studies. I admired his ability to think critically and turn any idea upside down to see it from a different direction. We talked Gramsci and the role of activism in scholarship. I taught him about the Internet; he taught me how to look at it critically. And he taught me the value of playing good cop/bad cop in academia. (May he RIP.)

When I went to grad school, I didn't need someone to teach me about the Internet; I needed someone to give me the room to study the Internet. It wasn't about the classes or the reading. It was about the critical thinking apparatus. And it was about having an advisor and a committee who provided the intellectual backbone to do new research.

So while there are great internet studies programs out there - and I encourage you to investigate them - don't limit yourself by topic. Focus on who you want to work with, who you want to learn from.

Good luck!

danah

On Sep 29, 2010, at 12:52 PM, Devin Gaffney wrote:

...

Hey all,

I just finished an exhilarating undergraduate program that gave me enough flexibility in order to study the impact/efficacy of Twitter during the Iran Election(http://www.devingaffney.com/-iranelection-quantifying-online-activism ), but in order to pull it off, I had to really bend some of the institutions rules, and just barely got the necessary advisorship in order to study it in a reasonable way. I am looking to jump right back into school for the following academic year, and am trying to figure out which schools have which programs - it seems that the information/websites for all the programs that do exist are well ensconced within their respective institutions websites, which tend towards labyrinthine. Does anyone have a good list of institutions (US/elsewhere) where a Masters/PhD in fields either directly or otherwise closely related to "internet studies" (or "web science," or whatever term you use, as this even seems to be up in the air, as far as I can tell)? Obvious ly, there are places like Citizenlab, Berkman, and OII, which all seem to at least offer classes in some capacity, but are there any others i just haven't found?

Thanks much,

Devin Gaffney http://www.devingaffney.com _______________________________________________ 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

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

------

"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria

_______________________________________________ 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

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

There is no doubt that I've been extremely fortunate and I regularly thank my lucky stars for all of the amazing opportunities that I've had, especially coming from the background that I came from. I'm currently doing fieldwork in Tennessee and am reminded every day of how lucky I have been. But please don't take this as me saying that it's only about the top schools. When I went to Berkeley, the iSchool was brand new. No one knew how it was going to play out or if the people coming out of it would get jobs. I went there because of Peter who I drove to California to meet because my undergrad advisor recommended that I do so after I dropped out of my first grad school program. Yes, it was Berkeley and there's no doubt that's an amazing school. But there were also many things that weren't ideal, starting with the fact that I couldn't take the core sociology or anthropology courses because I wasn't one of their elite students. If I could do it again, I would've loved to have gone to a program where I could've taken the core series in soc or anthro. But what mattered most - and the reason that I have zero regrets - is having a supportive advisor. And I say this having lost my advisor to brain cancer part way through my degree. Grad school can be a painful process and it's complete hell if you and your advisor don't get along. Yes, going to a good school helps but I've also watched friends graduate from top schools only to have their advisors write them negative letters when they go onto the market. Talk about the kiss of death. But a good advisor will look out for you, will push you to think deeply, will call up colleagues to help open doors for you, will make sure that you have the support you need to finish. Sometimes, that good advisor is at a top tier school. And sometimes not. But that person is critical for both your sanity and your success. Besides, this is internet studies. The internet may not be a great equalizer, but it's a fantastic platform for you to make your voice heard loud and proud. Keep in mind that I say this as someone who knows she has enemies in academia, folks who disapprove of my path and my approach to research. I know there are folks who are critical of my blogging and even more critical of my quirks. I know that there are scholars who refuse to let their students cite my work and others who have written me off for choosing a non-traditional path post-PhD. What you may need may look very different than what i decided to do. I've had great opportunities because of the Internet, but I've also had to read detailed descriptions of how I should be raped. No matter what, you have to choose a path that makes sense for you and realize that different paths have different costs and benefits. But above all, choose a path that will make you happy. Cuz academia just ain't worth it if you're miserable. danah On Sep 30, 2010, at 1:23 AM, live wrote:

Yes, well, we don't all have the good fortune to get into schools such as Berkeley after having chats with the advisors, eh? ;)

danah asks good questions ("who do you admire? who do you want to work with"?) While I agree that the answers she gives can and sometimes do work in ideal circumstances, when I work with BA and MA students applying to PhD programs in either English or digital studies I generally counsel against this approach, always leaving room for exceptions. The problem is that it is so usual for professors, especially "hot" professors, to switch schools, often several times. I know very few PhD students, in fact, who made it through a 5 or 6 or 7 year program ending up with the same committee they thought they'd start out with, in part because the 3 faculty they started out with are no longer all there. If your advisor leaves, then what? At a school like Berkeley or Yale or Columbia there are likely to be quite a few other professors you can work with. But it too often happens that people go to a small unviersity to work with one person, who leaves, resulting in a student being stranded in a program for which they have no investment. Also, there is no guarantee that the faculty member you've chosen will agree to work with you, despite your having "gone there to work with them"; among other things, faculty are quite limited in the number of PhDs they can directly supervise. Your academic hero refuses you: what then I'm not saying advisors don't matter; I'm saying everything matters. What I tell PhD students is that they need to try to be clear, in a very iterative fashion (thinking about the future again and again as it gets closer, & realizing you can't solve all the problems all at once, or know who or what you will want to be), about what they hope the degree will do for them. In my home discipline, English, it is fairly clear that the goal is to become a tenure-track English professor, and even within that goal there are many subdivisions it's critical to consider (19c American? poetry? novel? etc.), but that goal is absolutely critical to keep in mind throughout the process of choosing a school if that's what you want. At the top of English, for example, if you were choosing between Berkeley and Oregon or Michigan (picking names out of hat), there is just the raw fact a Berkeley PhD looks better on your cv *from the elitist perspectve of the top schools* for hiring purposes. If that's what you want, you have to pick Berkeley. I'm not saying it needs to be what you want--I'm saying it's good to be as clear as possible about what you want. Then there are definitely places that earn their kudos a little regardless of personalities; MIT's Media Lab would stand out, where it can be pretty clear whether that's a place you'd like to try to go, somewhat without regard to which people you want to work with. But In this sense it is at least critical to ask the question: what do I like about the program, other than the advisor? if my advisor leaves, will i still be happy? who will i work with? usually, a better answer to these questions than "one person I want to work with" is "a strong faculty with multiple members whose interests intersect with mine." As to subject matter, I think there is conceptual reason why there may always be, with some exceptions, an advantage to doing internet + something else. Think of it this way: many good History PhDs talk about digital and internet phenomena in great detail. A History PhD with a specialization in internet technology or something can go very far *within the academy* -- since that is the administrative reason PhD programs exist and can be brought into being, which is not to say they don't have other uses--whereas a PhD in Internet Studies ends up being more constrained. The History PhD who knows a ton about microcomputer development will be a real competitor for a professor job in an Internet program. The Internet Studies PhD who knows a lot about the history of microcomputers will have a very tough time in History Departments. So the History PhD has two sandboxes to play in while Internet Studies has only one. The intellectual version of this is: the very strength of the argument for the internet's influence is its pervasiveness in every aspect of our lives. That being the case, "Internet Studies" risks tasking "every aspect of our lives" as its subject matter; and while that is always an important thing to keep in mind, it is also not something one regular reads in job descriptions. Just my .02 from longer in more trenches than I could ever have imagined... dg/vcu On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 12:32 AM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> wrote:

Who do you admire? Who do you want to work with? PhD programs especially (less so for Master's) are all about your advisor and your committee, your ability to connect with your peers, and your ability go get a solid foundation in various intellectual traditions that you can bring to the table when talking about Internet dynamics. My advice to all potential grad students is to start by making a list of the scholars that you respect. Go to conferences in fields that you want to engage with (like AOIR) and meet people. Figure out who you think you could get along with. And then build out from there. Programs are important but less so than individual mentors that can help you through your intellectual inquiry.

If it helps at all, I wrote this long post for folks interested in going to grad school: http://www.danah.org/GradSchoolAdvice.html

Personally, I didn't know what an information school was when I applied to Berkeley. (Heck, I still don't.) But as soon as I met Peter, my beloved advisor, I knew that it was the perfect place for me. And I never would've imagined that learning about how information is organized by librarians would be at all relevant to my studies, but OMG has it been surprisingly useful. I should also note that what I admired about Peter had nothing to do with Internet studies. I admired his ability to think critically and turn any idea upside down to see it from a different direction. We talked Gramsci and the role of activism in scholarship. I taught him about the Internet; he taught me how to look at it critically. And he taught me the value of playing good cop/bad cop in academia. (May he RIP.)

When I went to grad school, I didn't need someone to teach me about the Internet; I needed someone to give me the room to study the Internet. It wasn't about the classes or the reading. It was about the critical thinking apparatus. And it was about having an advisor and a committee who provided the intellectual backbone to do new research.

So while there are great internet studies programs out there - and I encourage you to investigate them - don't limit yourself by topic. Focus on who you want to work with, who you want to learn from.

Good luck!

danah

On Sep 29, 2010, at 12:52 PM, Devin Gaffney wrote:

...

Hey all,

I just finished an exhilarating undergraduate program that gave me enough flexibility in order to study the impact/efficacy of Twitter during the Iran Election( http://www.devingaffney.com/-iranelection-quantifying-online-activism), but in order to pull it off, I had to really bend some of the institutions rules, and just barely got the necessary advisorship in order to study it in a reasonable way. I am looking to jump right back into school for the following academic year, and am trying to figure out which schools have which programs - it seems that the information/websites for all the programs that do exist are well ensconced within their respective institutions websites, which tend towards labyrinthine. Does anyone have a good list of institutions (US/elsewhere) where a Masters/PhD in fields either directly or otherwise closely related to "internet studies" (or "web science," or whatever term you use, as this even seems to be up in the air, as far as I can tell)? Obvious ly, there are places like Citizenlab, Berkman, and OII, which all seem to at least offer classes in some capacity, but are there any others i just haven't found?

Thanks much,

Devin Gaffney http://www.devingaffney.com _______________________________________________ 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

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

------

"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ http://www.danah.org/ @zephoria

_______________________________________________ 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

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

-- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Elke Greifeneder <elke.greifeneder@googlemail.com> wrote:

I am working on how to collect purposeful data in digital library evaluations.

(Side note: For many of my colleagues, this would probably be program evaluation or assessment and not research. It's usually not a terribly important distinction but some people insist on making it.)

My question is whether this produces representative data?

I do a lot of quantitative work, much of driven by survey data, so my response is framed by those sensibilities. In much of my work, the questions of representativeness and generalizability are closely linked to the phenomenon I am studying. Representativeness denotes a context i.e. In *what way* is the sample representative/not representative of the population? Since you could answer that question in an infinite number of ways (gender, age, location, SES, education level, etc.), you should limit your inquiry to those characteristics which you know or suspect to be important to the specific phenomenon you are studying. So you have to figure out the personal characteristics that are important to your study and if your sample differs from your population in significant ways. And you know your phenomenon and population better than anyone else here so you're in the best position to know the key characteristics for your study. To be completely honest, the fact that you're asking the question indicates to me that you have at least a suspicion that your sample may not be completely representative of your population. Often there is nothing you can to do to directly address that problem but sometimes you can even then you can note it as a potential limitation and use some caution in generalizing your findings. Kevin