Blogs and the US Presidential election

One view of the US presidential election was that "One blogger is worth ten votes - a voter with a weblog is ten times more powerful than a voter without a weblog, because there's more voting than just going in and flipping a lever." Dave Winer, Harvard University

However, it turns out that higher voter participation in the election was inversely related to the degree of Internet usage, or as the Register puts it, "How organized religion, not net religion, won it for Bush":

"Technophobes and luddites won the election for George W Bush in 2004, not technology-toting bloggers, by turning out the vote. The giant, self-congratulatory humpfest that is the blogger nation really didn't do much at all for the Democrats, despite Joe Trippi telling anyone who'll listen that the internet transformed politics. For voter turn-out was markedly higher in the states with the lowest broadband penetration.

Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and California have the highest broadband penetration and all went to Kerry. Meanwhile, Mississippi, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico have the lowest penetration and all went to Bush. But the rise in votes was proportionately higher in states where the internet doesn't reach so many people."

phishing attacks soar

See BBC News "Cyber criminals step up the pace " 6/12/04

"So-called phishing attacks that try to trick people into handing over confidential details have boomed in 2004, say security experts. The number of phishing e-mail messages stopped by security firm MessageLabs has risen more than tenfold in less than 12 months. In 2004 it detected more than 18 million phishing e-mail messages.

Other statistics show that in 2004 73% of all e-mail was spam and one in 16 messages were infected with a virus."

Microsoft get into Blogging

From BBC news, technology section:

"Software giant Microsoft is taking the plunge into the world of blogging. It is launching a test service to allow people to publish blogs, or online journals, called MSN Spaces"

It actually looks quite good, so worth considering if you are thinking of ever starting up a blog. Click here to access MSN Spaces

Why 2004 was the year of the blog

From BBC News , 1st Dec 2004:

"The term "blog" has been chosen as the top word of 2004 by a US dictionary publisher.
Merriam-Webster said "blog" headed the list of most looked-up terms on its site during the last twelve months. During 2004 blogs, or web logs, have become hugely popular and some have started to influence mainstream media. Other words on the Merriam-Webster list were associated with major news events such as the US presidential election or natural disasters that hit the US. "

..and to think at the beginning of this course almost none of you had ever heard of a blog!

Google scholar

Google are always looking for ways of developing new products. Their latest which is still in beta testing is Google Scholar.

"Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

This is really useful in that it enables you to search specifically for academic sources and references. This deals, at least partly, with the perennial problem of sorting out poor quality websites from good ones. At least with peer reviewed articles you know that a certain standard must have been obtained

Global Learn Day and Blogging

Sunday 21st November is "Global Learn Day VII" (presumably that is "global learning day" in UK English). Worth having a look at, but particularly interesting is their blogging page...

"For more information on why we feel that blogging is "The Next Killer App", please see these articles:
RSS: The Next Killer App For Education
Weblogs at Harvard
Blogging as a Course Management Tool
Finally, for more information about blogging, we encourage you to read what Stephen Downes has to say: Content Syndication and Online Learning"

Also interesting is the following statement at the top of their page:

"Blogging is temporarily suspended until we find ways to keep the spammers out." Seems to be a growing problem. If you want interaction and feedback you have to have a comment facility (which only one person on the course has tried using!) but if you have that then the link might be picked up by the spammers

Access to Sage Journals

You might remember I mentioned that Sage journals were providing free access to their online journals (which are particularly good for social science) until the end of October. I know that some of you made good use of them

Well SAGE Journals (http://online.sagepub.com/ ) are still available online for MMU staff and students, at least until the 5th of January 2005. This means that you can search and locate full-text articles in more than 350 journals. You must use the Athens login option to take advantage of this offer.

Article about Wikipedia

Last Monday I talked about the free software/open source movement in software and mentioned Wikipedia as an example. There is a good article about Wikipedia at Tech Central Station "The Faith based encyclopedia" which describes what it has achieved but also provide a critque of its limitations:

"As of November 2004, according to the project's own counts, nearly 30,000 contributors had written about 1.1 million articles in 109 different languages...."

"One person's "knowledge," unfortunately, may be another's ignorance. To put the Wikipedia method in its simplest terms:

1. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can submit an article and it will be published.
2. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can edit that article, and the modifications will stand until further modified.

Then comes the crucial and entirely faith-based step:

3. Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy..."

"...Take the statements of faith in the efficacy of collaborative editing, replace the shibboleth "community" with the banal "committee," and the surprise dissolves before your eyes. Or, if you are of a statistical turn of mind, think a little about regression to the mean and the shape of the normal distribution curve. However closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or semiliterate meddler..."

class presentations

The class presentations based on the progress you have made so far on your community project will be held as follows:

Monday Nov 22nd

9.00 am Gemma Twigg
9.30 am Julie Pennington
10.00 am Daniel Kierczuk
10.15 am Victoria Barton
10.30 am Luke Pearson

Monday Nov 29th

9.00 am Rahim Katawi
9.30 am Joanne Redding
10.00 am Shahena Jalil
10.15 am Chris Leighton
10.30 am Amanda Blume
10.45 am Marc Fennel

I have still not got presentation times for John Clarke, Philip Jackson and Gavin Owens - please contact me ASAP to arrange times.

Remember, the presentations should last no more than 10 minutes. You should either use powerpoint or paper on the projector. They should give some indication of:

- how you chose your groups to study (and any problems with this)
- your progress so for in researching these groups
- what you intend to go on to do

If possible, think of some way of having interactivity in the session (eg: asking questions of your audience, getting them to discuss some issue that arises out of studying an online community)

The presentation will count 10% of the overall mark for the online community assignment

dissertations on Ebay!

email from Bill Johnston to all staff...

The JISC Plagiarism Detection Service has recently alerted all colleagues to the increasing practice of selling dissertations on eBay.

One nice example currently being bid for is a dissertation on 'The Internet and Cyber-Plagiarism'! (It's carrying a grade of 72% and is on offer at £6.50. A bargain)

Well, I suppose it's one way to earn money from your old essays

Want Community? Go Online

Interesting article on online communities and social networking which reports a survey done for eBay - "Want Community? Go Online" by Pamela Parker (8/11/04):

"Nearly 40 percent of Americans say they participate in online communities, with sites around hobbies, shared personal interests, and health-related issues among the most popular. That's according to a survey conducted by ACNielsen and commissioned by eBay.

The survey was conducted in late September. Of 1,007 respondents, 87 percent say they are part of a community. Of those, 66 percent say they participate in shared personal interest sites. Next comes hobby sites (62 percent), health community sites (55 percent), public issues sites (49 percents), and commerce sites (47 percent). Others participate in social or business networking sites (42 percent), sports sites (42 percent), alumni sites (39 percent), or dating sites (23 percent).
"We are finding that affinity is quickly replacing proximity as the key driver in forming communities," said Bruce Paul, vice president of ACNielsen. "...

"Researchers note that among offline communities, only membership in religious congregations (59 percent), social groups (54 percent), and neighborhood groups (52 percent) are more common than participation in online communities (39 percent)

The study also shows that though 30 percent of online community members interact on a daily basis, only 7 percent of offline community members interacted that often. It also reveals that 47 percent of offline communities have an online component, such as e-mailing or chatting online."

Web of Influence

I really must stop posting about Blogs, as I have bombarded you with articles and references over the last few weeks. However this article, "Web of Influence" by Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell is really good and if your were to read just one article about blogs, this should be it. Here are some extracts:

The blogging revolution is making its mark on the media, to be sure. But a real revolution does normally require people to get out of the house...

The Perseus Development Corporation, a consulting firm that studies Internet trends, estimates that by 2005 more than 10 million blogs will have been created...

The top five political blogs together attract over half a million visitors per day...

The Iranian blogosphere has exploded. According to the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education’s Blog Census, Farsi is the fourth most widely used language among blogs worldwide. One service provider alone (“Persian Blog”) hosts some 60,000 active blogs. The weblogs allow young secular and religious Iranians to interact, partially taking the place of reformist newspapers that have been censored or shut down. Government efforts to impose filters on the Internet have been sporadic and only partially successful...

An international protest campaign also secured the freedom of Chinese blogger Liu Di, a 23-year-old psychology student who offended authorities with her satirical comments about the Communist Party. Yet, even as Di was released, two individuals who had circulated online petitions on her behalf were arrested. Such is life in China, where an estimated 300,000 bloggers (out of 80 million regular Internet users) uneasily coexist with the government...

One should also bear in mind that the blogosphere, mirroring global civil society as a whole, remains dominated by the developed world—a fact only heightened by claims of a digital divide. And though elite bloggers are ideologically diverse, they’re demographically similar. Middle-class white males are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the blogosphere...

review of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People For the People

From the Guardian, November 6, 2004

Good review of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People For the People "by Dan Gillmor O'Reilly,

Gilmour is living what he talks about by makig the full book available online. Tio access it click here

Quotes from the review:

"When this book was in its earliest stages, the author, a respected Silicon Valley journalist, posted an initial outline on his weblog, asking for comments. He was besieged with emails offering suggestions and advice. More, in fact, than he could handle. Later, he posted draft chapters as they were finished. One reader, the publisher of a small newspaper in upstate New York, whom he had never met, sent back a draft chapter dripping with digital red ink, commenting: "The time is right; the subject is right. But your book deserves to be better than this."

For most journalists or authors the idea of putting yourself through this process, while trying to get a book out, seems about as smart as standing on a street corner with a sign round your neck saying: "Please poke me in the eye."

For Gillmor, however, it is a proof of his underlying thesis. Throughout this book, he argues that the growth of internet and related technologies is changing the balance of power between journalists and their readers; you can succeed in the coming decades only by acknowledging that shift in power and changing your behaviour accordingly. "Big media ... treated the news as a lecture. We told you what the news was. You bought it, or you didn't. You might write us a letter; we might print it ... it was a world that bred complacency and arrogance on our part. It was a gravy train while it lasted, but it was unsustainable

"Tomorrow's news reporting and production will be more of a conversation or a seminar. The lines will blur between producers and consumers, changing the role of both in ways we're only beginning to grasp. The communication network itself will be a medium for everyone's voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multimillion-dollar printing presses, launch satellites, or win the government's permission to squat on the public airways."

..............

"Gillmor's ultimate hope is that the result is going to be better for everyone. Journalism, politics and major corporations will all engage with this former audience in new ways to become more transparent and therefore trusted. The result will be better media and better democracy.
His fear, however, is that this won't happen, and based on a number of examples he gives, the future is more likely to live up to his fears than his hopes. "If today's Big Media is a dinosaur," he writes, "it won't die off quietly. It will, with the government's help, try to control new media, rather than see its business models eroded by it."

Read more here

Blog glossary

There is a very good Blog glossary at Samizdata.net. Seemingly endless lists of definitions of everything from Blogistan ("The totality of blogs; blogs as a community") to Blogorrhea ("An unusually high volume output of articles on a blog"), through to Blogroll ("A list of links in the sidebar of a blog, often linking to other blogs")... and that is just the 'B's' !

Bookmarklets

I don't know if you have ever heard of bookmarklets, but they are useful little javascripts that you attach to your favourites on Internet Explorer. They are simple, safe and free. Take a look at the Bookmarkets homepage. Of particular use is the page freshness bookmark which gives you the date that a webpage was last modified in a little pop-up window. This is useful in that when you are referencing a webpage, they frequently do not state when they were written. So when you are referencing such pages it is good practice to add the 'date last modified' to your reference

A good description of bookmarklets is available on the about.com webpage Bookmarklets for Power Users

critique of claim that the internet is reinvigorating civil society

"Progress doesn't just 'emerge', by championing spontaneous collectivism, internet geeks and gurus are giving up on human agency"


This is a good article in Spiked Online (22/10/04) by the prolific and controversial sociologist, Frank Furedi, which is a critique of the claim that the internet is reinvigorating civil society and a critique of two recent book articles:

'Prospects for a new public sphere', Peter Day and Douglas Schuler, in Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace, ed Peter Day and Douglas Schuler, MIT Press, 2004,

"Day and Schuler admit in Shaping the Network Society that 'it is too early to state with certainty that the initiatives we introduce here are representative of a transnational civil society movement', but they still claim that these initiatives are 'indicators of an emerging grassroots potential and openness to social change in the network society'. They also declare proudly that 'our goals are diffuse, impossible to specify precisely, and possibly contradictory' "

'We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People', Dan Gillmor, O'Reilly, 2004,

"Gillmor disparages the idea of the journalist as an authority on their subject, insisting that journalists should be self-deprecating by nature: 'I take it for granted...that my readers know more than I do - and this is a liberating, not threatening, fact of journalistic life. Every reporter on the beat should embrace this.' He goes on to explain that he welcomes corrections and feedback from his readers, and that 'being the least knowledgeable person in the room has its advantages; I always learn something'

While it's important for journalists to be open to criticism, Gillmor's suggestion that they should profess ignorance goes further than this. Conveniently for him, it absolves journalists from having any responsibility for getting their facts straight in the first place. But hard facts are not Gillmor's principal concern - instead, he revels in the unreflective immediacy of online reportage."


"....it is the same rhetoric used by the new anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation and anti-war movements to argue that their diffuse character and lack of clear principles are strengths rather than weaknesses - or, to use the technological argot, features rather than bugs. The term 'grassroots', used to convey the democratic credentials of these new social movements, fulfils a similar purpose to the term 'emergence'. It comes across as granting power to the multitudes, but is actually about relinquishing responsibility for ideas and actions and submitting to the spontaneous."

Ad agencies get on blogging bandwagon

From Agenda.Inc (Nov 1st)

"Web logs have had an astonishing season this year, enough to freckle the faces of bloggers who do not, as a rule, get much time outdoors. Although political blogs have received the most attention, advertising agencies and communications professionals are using blogs to create discussion.

"Blogs are in fashion, and it is easy to hop on the bandwagon and say that every company should have one. The questions any smart marketer should be asking are, 'Does this provide a platform to connect with their most relevant audiences and how will this address business objectives?"

RSS - Rich Site Summary

You may come across some technical terms whilst wandering around Blogs such as RSS or Rich Site Summary:

"RSS is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators. RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries"

For various other definitions and a good overview of blogs take a look at the About.com webpages. They are irritating in that there is a mess of advertising on their pages.

Whilst you are there it is also worth looking at about.com generally, they have useful sites on all sorts of topics from learning french to panic and anxiety disorders. The full listing of topics is on this index page

Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed

Interesting website "Those Dark Hiding Places" for providing ways of accessing the 'Hidden Web'.

"Although many popular search engines boast about their ability to index information on the Web, more of it (dynamically-generated pages, certain file formats, and information held within numerous databases) has become invisible to their searching spiders. Much of the Web is hiding information from us, but we can access this hidden content!...

"Because much of this information is not accessible to many general search engines' software spiders, we need to look for specific search tools that will lead us to this hidden content. Some of these tools include directories, searchable sites, free Web databases, and a few general and many specialized search engines."

Definitely worth a look at

Is it all over for blogs?

Article on the future of blogging by technology analyst Bill Thompson in BBC online, Friday, 8 August, 2003:

"It seemed to me that the number of useless postings and blog entries was starting to increase and there was less and less there that was really of interest ...

"Perhaps the blogs, after a brief time when they were seen by some as a wholly new wave of internet development, are losing their appeal. In fact there have been bloggers and blogging tools available since 1997 when the term was coined by Jorn Barger.

But blogging has been mainstream for two years - how many days can someone keep on posting to their LiveJournal site, or visiting Blogger to add more details about their cat's mysterious illness? Or it may be that the blogs are going through the same thing as UseNet, the internet's original bulletin board system....."

Problems for Blogs and jobs

Blogger grounded by her airline

By Jo Twist BBC News Online science and technology reporter

"A US airline attendant is fighting for her job after she was suspended over postings on her blog, or online diary. Queen of the Sky, otherwise known as Ellen Simonetti, evolved into an anonymous semi-fictional account of life in the sky. But after she posted pictures of herself in uniform, Delta Airlines suspended her indefinitely without pay. Ms Simonetti was told her suspension was a result of "inappropriate" images. Delta Airlines declined to comment. "

Jeffrey Matsuura, director of the law and technology programme at the University of Dayton, said personal websites can be hazardous for both employers and their employees.

"There are many examples of employees who have presented some kind of material online that have gotten them in trouble with employers," he said. It was crucial that any policy about what was and what was not acceptable was expressed clearly, was reasonable, and enforced fairly in company policy. "You have to remember that as an employee, you don't have total free speech anymore," he said.

"This blogging thing is obviously a new problem for employers and they need to get a policy about it. If I had known it would cost me my job, I would not have done that."

Full story at BBC News Online

Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital?

Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital? Social Networks, Participation, and Community Commitment

BARRY WELLMAN, ANABEL QUAN HAASE, JAMES WITTE, KEITH HAMPTON
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, Vol. 45 No. 3, November 2001 436-455


This article concludes that:

" People’s interaction online supplements their face-to-face and telephone communication without increasing or decreasing it. However, heavy Internet use is associated with increased participation in voluntary organizations and politics. Further support for this effect is the positive association between offline and online participation in voluntary organizations and politics. However, the effects of the Internet are not only positive: The heaviest users of the Internet are the least committed to online community. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the Internet is becoming normalized as it is incorporated into the routine practices of everyday life."

"There are no single Internet effects. In this era of spatially dispersed community, the Internet fills needs for additional interpersonal contact that supplement in-person and telephone contact. At a time of declining organizational participation, the Internet provides tools for those already involved to increase their participation. Yet, at a time when networked individualism reduces group social cohesion, extensive involvement with the Internet apparently exposes participants to situations that weaken their sense of community online."

Virtual community: no ‘killer implication’

Virtual community: no ‘killer implication’
ANDREW FEENBERG & MARIA BAKARDJIEVA
new media & society Vol6(1):37–43 2004

"Online sociability is a fact of everyday life. According to a Pew Internet & American Life Project report (2001), 84 percent of all American internet users contacted an online group at least once and 79 percent of these users remained in regular contact with at least one group.

Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined community: ‘All communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined’. Anderson argues that
communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.... recently, the internet has exploded with imagined communities that are based on the swift interactive exchange of electronic text."

Types of online community studies

• Online forums - found to be often instrumental or inconsequential. "They give rise to specialized relationships, not all embracing solidarities. They are driven by fleeting interests, not unconditional commitments."
• Local communities online - studies which examine the ways in which existing local communities employ the internet to discuss relevant local issues and to build stronger bonds among citizens and neighbours
• Online communities as a business prospect - business organisations who want to use online community to stimulate team work and productivity,or to make money in other wasy (eg online gaming communities)

The article concludes that "civic life and political involvement in most Western societies have not experienced quite as significant a boost as some optimistic forecasters expected. So far the
internet has not had the large-scale democratizing consequences that was envisioned. On the other hand, the atomizing and isolating effects that were feared by pessimistic observers appear greatly exaggerated. Most of us know people who regularly frequent a professional or hobbyist virtual group, deriving ample benefit and pleasure from participation without shutting themselves off from face-to-face meetings, parties and occasional drinks in good company"

Two findings:

• studies of the origin and functions of online groups demonstrate the remarkable power of the medium to enable new forms of sociability.
• studies that enquire into the motives for joining and contributing to these groups demonstrate consistently that online participation offers unique opportunities for actively and interactively pursuing identity-related projects that used to be impossible, and even inconceivable.

The online world have found new ways for people to express situated personal experiences, needs and problems. This in turn undermines the distinction between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ life

"Online groups are indeed a qualitatively new medium. It is time for researchers to realize that they must position themselves as participants in the process of development by placing their results at the disposal of the online communities that they study."

Communities of Care and Caring: The Case of MSWatch.com

Communities of Care and Caring: The Case of MSWatch.com
ROBERT WEIS et al, Journal of Health Psychology, 1359–1053(200301)8:1]
Vol 8(1) 135–148; 029449


Abstract

Can a health-care website stimulate its members to become a ‘community of care and caring’, facilitating both medical ‘information’ and personal ‘support’? This study of MSWatch.com, a website designed for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients, provides conceptual distinctions about ‘ties’ to a ‘community’ and raises questions about communications designed to serve patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

An online survey of members of the website shows that members tend to:

(1) make use of both its health-care information (care) and support (caring) functions, especially the former;
(2) evaluate the website more highly overall if they make use of both information and support; (3) use the website the most during early stages of the disease; and
(4) enhance their ties to the virtual community through using communication information and support

In 1997 nearly half of US users spent some time looking for health information on the Internet, in year 2000 nearly 60 percent reported using the Internet to get medical information.

the MSWatch website had 16,416 members and a total of 943 users responded to the survey.

The study makes a distinction between 'care' and 'caring' components of the discussion board:

• Care - crucial information about treatment. Communication that provides information (e.g. about treatment options) – top down
  
• Caring - moral support at a time when victims and their families need it most. communication that contributes to building relationships between people, ie ‘support’ Bottom up

Self-help groups have become an increasingly important component of health care -‘supporting’, encouraging, caring and nurturing.

'Virtual community care' - Internet is profoundly and irreversibly revolutionizing patient–physician relationships and sees the creation of Internet-based partnerships between physicians and patients.

The Bridging and Bonding Role of Online Communities

"The Bridging and Bonding Role of Online Communities"
Pippa Norris, Press/Politics 7(3) Summer 2002

Summary of article:

"Many believe that any erosion in the traditional face-to-face sociability and personal communications or Gemeinschaft in modern societies represents a threat to the quality of civic life, collaborative social exchanges, and the community spirit. Whether the Internet has the capacity to supplement, restore,or even replace these social contacts remains to be seen. As an evolving medium that is still diffusing through the population, it remains too early to predict the full consequences of this technology. Nevertheless, the Pew survey evidence among existing users allows us to explore whether those Americans who are most active in online groups feel that it widens their experience of community (by helping them to connect to others with different beliefs or backgrounds) or whether it deepens their experience (by reinforcing and strengthening existing social networks). The analysis suggests that in general, the Internet serves both functions, although the strength of this effect varies in important ways by the type of online group in America.

Online participation has the capacity to deepen linkages among those sharing similar beliefs as well as serving as a virtual community that cuts across at least some traditional social divisions."

The relationship between online and offline communities: the case of the Queer Sisters

The relationship between online and offline communities: the case of the Queer Sisters
Joyce Y.M. Nip

Media, Culture & Society 2004 SAGE Publications Vol. 26(3): 409–428

This article is a case study (1999-2000) of a bulletin board on the world-wide web and the women’s group who founded it in Hong Kong, the Queer Sisters. It found that the community formed on the bulletin board differed significantly from the original Queer Sisters over major goals and norms. The main difference being that the online community was much more about developing and maintaining personal relationships, whilst the original group was much more committed to political activism

The article applies 'Medium theory' in which technology is seen as an important context in which communication takes place

• considers technology as a shaper of the communications environment.
• The new environment created by communications technology is considered a more important influence than the content transmitted by the technology.
• contends that the type of media and patterns of use encourage certain behaviours, social interactions, social identities and structures of social life
• Applied to the Internet, interconnectivity and interactivity are considered to reconfigure time and space, and in turn this reconfigures the individual and networks of relationships.

"Whether online communities qualify as genuine communities is an issue of disagreement. Instead of going into arguments, it is more important to recognize the existence of the new forms of human association on the Internet. One may judge not whether something is or is not a
community, but rather the degree to which something is a community."

Health Groups on the Internet

For the online community report that you have to do, some of you may be looking at groups based around chronic disease. There is an interesting article on BBC online, 17/10/04, "Warning on internet health advice"

"People with chronic disease should think twice before relying on the internet for health advice, research suggests. A University College London study found many would be in a better condition if they had simply listened to their doctor's advice.

The study found interactive computer tools do improve medical knowledge. But there was no evidence they change behaviour positively, and some that they left people in worse health.
The UCL team reviewed the effect of interactive web tools - known technically as Interactive Health Communication Applications (IHCAs) - on people with long-term conditions such as diabetes and asthma. In total they looked at 28 studies covering 4,042 participants.

Lead researcher Dr Elizabeth Murray said she was surprised that the tools seemed to boost medical knowledge, but, if anything, have a negative effect on the users' health.

Dr Murray said one reason for this apparent paradox may be that titbits of information may lull users into a false sense of security. Thus they become less motivated to control their condition in the way they would be if faced with a blunt instruction from a doctor. Alternatively, users may become so steeped in information that they make treatment choices on their own, contradicting advice from their doctors.

The UCL team defined an IHCA as a computer-based information source combined with one or more additional services, such an on-line support group, chat room or tailored advice based on data provided by the user"

Inside the ivory tower

Interesting Guardian article "Inside the ivory tower" by Jim McClellan, 23-09-04

"Blogging is allowing academics to develop and share their ideas with an audience beyond the universities, but not everyone is convinced...."

And not unlike this blog:

"University tutors are also experimenting with blogs as teaching tools, using them to disseminate links and information to classes, sometimes as places where students can collaborate on group projects.

blogs as an object of academic study

There is an interesting collection of articles about blogging at the University of Minnesota called "Into the Blogosphere".

"This online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities...."

Particularly relevant articles include Culture Clash: Journalism and the Communal Ethos of the Blogosphere ,Weblog Journalism: Between Infiltration and Integration, and Blogs as Virtual Communities...

Anonymous Work Blogs Blogring

Another sub-genre of blogs are those which are written by people at work, but anonymously as they tend to be very disparaging (or just honest) about the everyday practices that they observe. The Anonymous Work Blogs Blogring which lists such blogs is constructed on good old blogger technology (like my blog) and are mainly UK based. The vary from Diary of a Fast Food Life based at a UK branch of Burger to A Policeman's Blog .

There are a series of interviews with ananoymous workplace bloggers at the Guardian Online Blog

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

It really is worth having a look at Wikipedia the free, online community developed encyclopedia. For example, if you search for "blogs" it comes up with an extensive and well organised report on the history of blogs, the various types (personal, political, corporate,collaborative etc), plus extensive links.

Here is a sample section about warblogging:

"Through 2003, weblogs gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping or spinning news stories. The triggering event was the sudden emergence of an opposition to the Iraq war which was not rooted in the traditional anti-war left. The blogs which gathered news on Iraq, both left and right, exploded in popularity, and Forbes magazine covered the phenomenon. The use of blogs by political candidates, particularly Howard Dean and Wesley Clark cemented their role as a news source, while the increasing number of experts who blogged, including Daniel Drezner and J. Bradford DeLong gave the blog world a cachet among regular journalists. The Adam Smith Institute's entering of the blogosphere helped blogs become a regular stop of UK politicians and opinion-formers. Blogs also arose amongst soldiers serving in the Iraq war. Such milblogs have become the modern version of a war correspondent.

The Iraq War was the first "blog war" in another way - bloggers in Baghdad gained wider readership, and one published a book of his blog. Reading the thoughts of people who were "on the spot" provided a counterpoint, if not a counterweight, to official news sources. Blogs were often used to draw attention to obscure news sources, for example posting links to the traffic cameras in Madrid as a huge anti-terrorism demonstration filled the streets in the wake of the M11 attacks. Bloggers would often provide nearly instant commentary on televised events, which became a secondary meaning of the word "blogging," such as "I am blogging Rice's testimony," i.e. "I am posting my reactions to Rice's testimony to my blog as I watch it."

HACKING THE SYSTEM TO BYTES: THE INTERNET IN SOCIAL STRUGGLE

For an analysis ofpolitical blogs, in particular, anti-capitalist blogs which draw upon the expertise of a subculture of politically-minded computer ‘hacktivists’, take a look at:

"New media and internet activism: from the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to blogging", new media & society, Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, Feb 2004; 6: 87 - 95.

"In opposition to the capitalist strategy of globalization-from-above, subcultures of cyberactivists have been attempting to carry out globalization from- below, developing networks of solidarity and propagating oppositional ideas and movements throughout the planet. Against the capitalist international of transnational corporate-led globalization, a ‘Fifth
International’ of computer-mediated ctivism is emerging ......"

" bloggers have demonstrated themselves as technoactivists favoring not only democratic self-expression and networking, but also global media critique and journalistic sociopolitical
intervention....."

"many group blogs exist, such as American Samizdat, Metafilter and BoingBoing, in which teams of contributors post and comment upon news stories, events, and issues of the day. One of the most important is the everexpanding series of international Indymedia sites, erected by activists for the public domain to inform one another both locally and globally...."

"Post-11 September, with the wars upon Afghanistan and Iraq, the phenomenon of ‘Warblogging’ arose to become an important and noted genre in its own right....One blogger, the now famous Iraqi Salam Pax , gave outsiders a dose of the larger unexpurgated reality as the bombs exploded overhead in Baghdad."

Nick Coleman: Blogged down in Web fantasy

For an entertaining rant against what he calls "blog mush", read "Blogged down in Web fantasy" by veteran journalist Nick Coleman in the US journal, the Star Tribune, September 29, 2004.

Here is a flavour:

"A lot of the attack against the mainstream media is coming from bloggers, which is like astronomers being assaulted by people who swear that aliens force them to have sex with Martian.....

Blogs, are to journalism what ticks are to elephants. Ticks may make the elephants nuts, but that doesn't mean they will replace them...

Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world....."

Weblogs as a Bridging Genre

Another interesting article "Weblogs as a Bridging Genre " (2005 forthcoming), and website - blognininja

"This paper presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of 203 randomly-selected weblogs, comparing the empirically observable features of the corpus with popular claims about the nature of weblogs, and finding them to differ in a number of respects. Notably, blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, and oriented towards external events, and underestimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, intimate forms of self-expression. Based on the profile generated by the empirical analysis, we consider the likely antecedents of the blog genre, situate it with respect to the dominant forms of digital communication on the Internet today, and suggest possible developments of the use of weblogs over time"

Blogging & the US election

BBC News Online's Kevin Anderson is keeping a weblog about the forthcoming US presidential election on 2 November. In his latest blog he reflects on the impact of blogging on " msm" (mainstream media). Here is an edited version of it:

"bloggers love to heap contempt of the Mainstream Media, or the MSM, as they call us.
Conservative bloggers really had a party trashing Dan Rather and CBS for basing a story about President Bush's military record on false documents......

I'm a little, but not all that surprised, that the MSM is a little tetchy about bloggers. For years, I've had to deal with folks treating me as somehow less of a journalist because I publish on the internet. Somehow, pixels aren't as honest as print. But I always cut the newspaper folks some slack. I started off as one of them, and I knew that some of the mudslinging came from fear.

As a recent New York Times piece on bloggers pointed out, DailyKos and another blog, schaton, together have more readers than the Philadelphia Inquirer. Ouch.

I'm a bit surprised journos have not embraced blogs, their own and others. Again I understand. The MSM is just beginning to get two-way media. It all used to be one way. We told you the truth, and that is definitely truth with a small "t", and we occasionally heard back from you, letters to the editor, calls of complaint, that kind of thing. But a lot of journalists still aren't all that into audience participation. For me, that's what I love about the internet is that it's really a conversation, and I think the better for it."

Weblogs and the epistemology of the news...

Useful (if overlaid with unecessary academic jargon) article for the blogging assignment:
Weblogs and the Epistemology of the News: Some Trends in Online Journalism,
DONALD MATHESON, New Media & Society 2004 6: 443-468

"This article explores one possible direction in which Anglo-American news journalism is evolving on the internet, using as its focus the growth of news weblogs since 1998. Online journalism is regarded by many commentators as a site where outmoded and unsatisfactory news reporting traditions might be revised and renewed...."

Blogging goes to work article

From The Economist , Mar 11th 2004

This article looks at whether blogging might be useful in business:

"Will blogging—the practice of maintaining an online diary, or weblog—revolutionise journalism? Do the world's bloggers really constitute a “second superpower”, the only force on earth capable of keeping America's neo-imperialist government in check? Or is the blogging craze just an example of sound and fury signifying nothing—a re-run of the late-1990s fad for personal websites, only with easier-to-use publishing software?....."

The article goes on to look at Socialtext who make a corporate version of a wiki—a web page that can be edited by any reader (the word means “quickly” in Hawaiian):

"Wikis offer a middle ground between e-mail and a conventional web page, which makes them useful for collaborative projects, particularly those involving far-flung teams. Rather than maintaining multiple copies of a document and sharing ideas by e-mail, a wiki allows members of a team to pool their thoughts more easily. Wikis are not particularly new, but are now beginning to demonstrate the potential to replace other forms of groupware."

Free online access to Sage publications until Oct 31st

Sage Publications has a range of online journals which are very useful for social scientists. Until October 31st 2004 they have given free access to these journals. To get access click here .

For example, if you put in the search terms "online communities", hits include:

Joyce Y.M. Nip, "The Relationship between Online and Offline Communities: The Case of the Queer Sisters", Media Culture Society, May 2004; 26: 409 - 428

Sarah Flicker, Dave Haans, and Harvey Skinner, "Ethical Dilemmas in Research on Internet Communities", Qual Health Res, Jan 2004; 14: 124 - 134.

Hans Pruijt "Social Capital and the Equalizing Potential of the Internet", Social Science Computer Review, May 2002; 20: 109 - 115.

Those are in the first 10 hits of 1978 found!

Powerpoint on the Digital Divide

The powerpoint presentation I would have used as part of last Monday's session is available to download. Just click on the link that is on the course web page about the digital divide. I hope to be with you in person, next Monday, all being well...

Researching an online community (1)

I thought I’d give some advice on how to go about finding a suitable online community to research

Read through the course page on identity and community to be aware of what you are looking for and the theoretical issues that you need to address. In particular what is meant by “community”, how the concept of “social capital” is used, and what ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ ties are

Some issues:

• Online groups need a social context to be meaningful - shared values, interaction, time shared

• networks can extend beyond usual geographic boundaries

• online links enables collaboration, but more effective with people you already know face to face (strong v weak ties)

• do you get a careful debate online or a meaningless din?

• social capital could be the prerequisite for rather than the consequence of effective Internet activity.

• can virtual communities fill the gap left by the decline of traditional face-to-face communities?

• is the Internet is a complement to frequent FTF contact, or a substitute for it ?

• do not assume that all online groups are cyber-communities, many are just ‘drive by’ places where there is little or no attachment to other members

I will raise more issues relevant to your online community assessment in the class session I give on this. My next post will discuss how to find a relevant online community and what you should do then

Dislocation - to the class, and to my kneecap

I managed to dislocate my kneecap whilst lugging timber around this afternoon (Sunday), preparing for the bonfire we always have in deepest Chorlton. I managed to push the kneecap back into position and crawl back to the house (it must be that film about survival in the Andes that did it), but I am now all bandaged up and on crutches after a visit to A&E.

I have an appointment at the fracture clinic first thing tomorrow so will not be able to give the lecture tomorrow in GM3.37 But, hey, this is a course about Cyberspace, so that shouldn't be too big a loss. Read the notes on the digital divide and start thinking about the Blogging exercise and the online community project. Make sure you read my Blog as I have added a fair amount of stuff, and as I am now immobile, I will probably add lots more I will get in touch with you individually about meeting up with you about the course work. You can always contact me by email too

Lineage - the world's most popular interactive online game

To give some idea of the popularity of online games, take a look at Lineage which is the most popular single interactive online game in the world right now, ahead of Sony's Everquest and Electronic Arts' Ultima Online. In Lineage, gamers playing princes, wizards and elves fight one another to the death in mini-armies or clans, headed by guild masters, to gain control of the castles that dot the virtual world

"Two million people, out of a population of 46 million, have active Lineage accounts. And when day turns to evening, close to 100,000 Koreans can be found glued to computer terminals around the country, playing the game simultaneously. School kids in Seoul routinely doze through classes after playing all night. Parents either don't know or can't stop them."

see "Where Does Fantasy End?", TIME Magazine, June 4, 2001, VOL.157 NO.22

Malaysia backtracks on its bloggers

Here is a good example of how Blogs can enter the world of politics and censorship. This story, "Malaysia backtracks on its bloggers", from the online Asia Times, gives an example from Malaysia:

"The recent reaction by authorities to disparaging comments posted on a popular weblog here reflect contradictory attitudes toward the creation of a more liberal society and appear to have dented Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's reformist credentials in the eyes of some Malaysians.

The abusive comments, made by a visitor to the popular Screenshots blog managed by Jeff Ooi, an e-business consultant and columnist for a business journal, drew flak from government officials for insulting Islam Hadhari, which the government is trying to promote as a progressive understanding of Islam, in light of money politics within the ruling party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). The allegations of money politics and vote-buying claim that candidates at the party's Supreme Council election had given huge sums of money to delegates in order to secure support.

Deputy Internal Security Minister Noh Omar has warned that authorities could take action against Ooi under the feared Internal Security Act (ISA), which provides for indefinite detention without trial...."

Icerocket - blog search

An up-and-coming search engine called Icerocket has started to provide a specialist Blog search:

"Blake Rhodes, CEO of IceRocket, notes on his blog “Hopefully by now everyone knows what a blog is, it’s a personal weblog where people can express their thoughts and views, an online diary of sorts. 2005 will be the year of the blog, mark my words, many people are just finding out about them and soon everyone will be blogging. We felt it was about time that a search engine created a section specifically for searching Blogs, so we did it.”

IceRocket’s Blog Search index works from a database of RSS feeds from blogs only. When asked what made IceRocket get into blog searching Rhodes told the Search Engine Journal “It is something we have been planning for a while now. Both Mark and I love Blogs, we recently launched an official IceRocket blog (BlogIceRocket.com) and of course Mark has his blog (Blogmaverick.com). As I have said before 2005 will be the year of the blog and we felt someone needed to provide a blog search.”

Source: Search Engine Journal, 7/10/04

"They read it on a blog and they think it's true"

One of the hazards of the 'blogosphere' is that conspiracy theories and rumours can take on a life of their own. Take this example, reported in the Detroit Free Press, "A conspiracy to get Bush? No, just blog legend", Friday, October 8, 2004:

"The fast-growing universe of political blogs is taking a hit to its credibility over a flap involving a few dozen misprinted absentee ballots in a tiny Michigan community.

In one precinct in the city of Alma (population 9,275) in rural Michigan's Gratiot County, 69 absentee ballots were misprinted so the arrows didn't line up properly next to the places to vote for President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry. The problem was immediately discovered, says the Michigan Secretary of State's Election Division. The 69 bad ballots were reprinted and redistributed and steps were taken to make sure that those 69 ballots could not be counted should someone find and turn one in.
No other place in the state had the problem.
So that's the end of the story, right? Nope.

Enter the blogosphere. Someone in Alma got hold of one of the misprinted ballots, scanned it and posted it on the Net and -- faster than you can say conspiracy -- it was picked up and run by blogs all over the world. Many of the blog postings and comments voiced outrage and urged people to protest, claiming the problem was a political dirty trick to make Kerry votes count for Bush...."

New media and internet activism

There is a good article available through Ingenta -

"New media and internet activism: from the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to blogging",
by Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, in new media & society, Vol6 (1): 87–95, 2004

"The examples in this article suggest how new media developments in
technoculture make possible a reconfiguring of politics and culture and a
refocusing of politics on everyday life. In this conjuncture, the ideas of Guy
Debord and the Situationist International are especially relevant, with their
stress on the construction of situations, use of technology, media of
communication, and cultural forms to promote a revolution of everyday life,
and to increase the realm of freedom, community, and empowerment."

The Baghdad Blogger

The classic example of a political blogger - Salam Pax from Baghdad:

From the Globeandmail.com, Canada, wed Oct 6th 2004, "A weblog's trip to fame" :

"Two years ago, Salam Pax was in his parents' house in suburban Baghdad, preparing for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. On Sept. 7, he wrote the following entry on his weblog: "I'm preparing my emergency lists these days -- any suggestions are welcome. At the moment I have: Candles Alcohol (maybe red wine?) Good books Crunchy munchies. I think that will get me thru [sic] the bombing quite nicely."

Pax's droll, incisive and increasingly frustrated bulletins soon became an international phenomenon. Every day, thousands of people visited what became known as the Baghdad Blog (http:dear_raed.blogspot.com) to read daily updates by this mysterious young man. The topics he wrote about, in fluent English, ranged from the CDs in his collection (Bjork, David Bowie and Coldplay are favourites), to open criticisms of both Saddam's regime and the U.S.-led coalition troops.

After his identity was revealed by a Guardian journalist (there was speculation he was a CIA agent or a Baath Party plant), Pax parlayed his writing into a book of collected blogs, a bi-monthly column for The Guardian and an on-going stint as a video reporter for Newsnight, the current-affairs TV program on BBC Two.

At first, the blog was simply a way for Pax to keep in touch with his friends Raed, who had moved from Baghdad to Jordan to study for his master's degree in architecture, and Ghaith, known only as "G" in the blog, who disappeared after refusing to do military service. The three had graduated from architecture school together in Vienna. And like many of the diatribes, which have become such a hot phenomenon on the Web, Pax's first few blogs were filled with banter and banalities that would hardly interest anyone outside the trio.

As the situation in Iraq became more heated, however, Pax decided he should start documenting the events that were happening around him, such as the feverish stockpiling of food in the weeks before the invasion, fluctuations in the value of the dinar and the fear that surrounded him. He soon began commenting on bits of news he was reading and the blog became steadily more political. As an English-based Iraqi who had spent many years abroad, a homosexual and an atheist, Pax wrote with an outsider's view that helped his Western readers relate.

"My man Salam," William Gibson, the Vancouver-based, sci-fi author wrote on his own blog. "I'm a total fan. Tells it like he sees it, and sees it like I can't."

"It worries me," says Pax, who stopped writing his blog last May. "I don't want people to come looking for answers. I have no idea what's happening in Iraq these days . . . Believe me, I am more confused about what Iraqis want these days than you are, and I'm an Iraqi."

"We are trying to get on with our lives. I hate it when people say to me 'You Iraqis are doing nothing for yourselves, you expect people to do everything for you.' No, we're not. We're really trying as hard as we can. The thing is, we lost a government. There are no laws. We need basic support."

He spares no vitriol for the U.S. troops. But for all the continuing violence and hatred and misunderstanding and uncertainty, Pax still says the U.S. invasion was worth it.

"We have hope now. It used to be Saddam, the son of Saddam, the son of the son of Saddam for the rest of your life. Now you actually have hope for something better if we can get our act together and work out our differences. . . .

"Life does go on and you have to hope that some day we'll have our country back."

Bill Gates backs blogs for businesses

BBC News , 21 May 2004

Blogs are good for business, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has said.

In a speech to an audience of chief executives, Mr Gates said the regularly updated journals, or blogs, could be a good way for firms to tell customers, staff and partners what they are doing.
He said blogs had advantages over other, older ways of communicating such as e-mail and websites.
More than 700 Microsoft employees are already using blogs to keep people up to date with their projects.

International Conference on Communities & Technologies

Just to indicate how the issue of online communities and c0mmunities online is of increasing interest and importance, take a look at the issues being covered at the Second International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2005) being held in Milan, Italy, 13-16 June, 2005; http://www.cct2005.disco.unimib.it/

The relationship between communities and technology is an increasingly important research topic as the number of communities turning to technology for online and face-to-face support grows. The Second InternationalConference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2005) conference provides a forum for stimulating and disseminating research about all facets of community and technology support for communities.

To be successful this field requires multidisciplinary research effortsinvolving researchers from different fields of applied computer science (Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval, Human ComputerInteraction, Information Systems), the social sciences (Economics,Management Science, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, Ethnography,Linguistics, Cultural Studies, Economics) and many application areas, such as Education, Business, Medicine and civic engagement.

Communities are social entities whose participants share common goals,needs, interests, and practices: they constitute the basic units of social experience. For a number of reasons, researchers are increasingly interested in the topic of communities.

First, within a global knowledge-based society,communities play a pivotal role. Problems such as new forms of politicalparticipation and civic engagement, maintenance of cultural identity, or theintegration of minorities need to be tackled on the community level.

Second, communities also re-shape the processes of learning and sharing knowledge in and among organizations, formal and informal groups. The Internet and the Web make communication possible across national boundaries and between cultures in ways that could not happen before. Furthermore, mobile devices, particularly advanced phone technologies, promise to open the Internet to people who have been denied access for financial, technical and cultural reasons. For information technologies to support communities research is needed to understand the social, technical and usability needs of participants.

Many topics need to be addressed including: trust-building, maintaining social relations, social capital, visualization of social relationships, matching participants, bridging between physical and electronically-mediated interaction, cultural needs.

The conference offers an opportunity to present and discuss empirical and conceptual research. Topics covered include, but are not restricted to, the following subjects:

Social science approaches to communities and technologies:

* models and theories
* online communities and organization theory
* communities and social network analysis
* ethnographic studies of virtual communities

Social dimensions of community technologies:

* privacy and security
* empathy and trust
* participation and non-participation
* community learning

Local communities and social capital:

* technologies and social capital development
* community informatics / digital cities
* case studies of community building and development
* cross-cultural communities
* communities and NGO's
* local, rural and regional communities

Communities in organizations and business:

* communities and business models
* consumer communities and electronic commerce
* online consumer and brand communities
* communities and knowledge management

Communities and innovation:

* communities of practice and communities of interest
* communities and innovation
* open source communities
* epistemic communities and technology development

Technologies for community support:

* virtual, networked and mobile community formation and development
* novel forms of technology support
* design and development methods
* technical architectures
* interoperability among community systems
* virtual community support for education, business, government, civic activities, etc
* light-weight technologies
* visualization

"there is no more knowledge; there is only information"

Interesting article by Mark Edmunson, "All Entertainment All the Time" in the Poets and Writers Review. It offers interesting insights into higher education in America (and here). For example, he shows how the Web has changed the way students research and think:

"Now that computers are everywhere, each area of inquiry in the humanities is more and more defined by the computer’s resources. Computers are splendid research tools. Good. The curriculum turns in the direction of research. Professors don’t ask students to try to write as Dickens would were he alive today. Rather, they research Dickens. They delve into his historical context; they learn what the newspapers were gossiping about on the day that the first installment of Bleak House hit the stands. We shape our tools, McLuhan said, and thereafter our tools shape us.

Many educated people in America seem persuaded that the computer is the most significant invention in human history. Those who do not master its intricacies are destined for a life of shame, poverty, and neglect. More humanities courses are becoming computer-oriented, which keeps them safely in the realm of cool, financially negotiable endeavors. A professor teaching Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” which depicts the exploitation of young boys whose lot is not altogether unlike the lot of many children living now in American inner cities, is likely to charge his students with using the computer to compile as much information about the poem as possible. They can find articles about chimney sweepers from 1790s newspapers; contemporary pictures and engravings that depict these unfortunate little creatures; critical articles that interpret the poem in a seemingly endless variety of ways; biographical information on Blake, with hints about events in his own boyhood that would have made chimney sweepers a special interest; portraits of the author at various stages of his life; maps of Blake’s London. Together the class might create a Blake—Chimney Sweeper Web site: www.blakesweeper.edu.

Instead of spending class time wondering what the poem means, and what application it has to present-day experience, students compile information about it. They set the poem in its historical and critical context, showing first how the poem is the product and the property of the past—and, implicitly, how it really has nothing to do with the present except as an artful curiosity; and second how, given the number of ideas about it already available, adding more thought would be superfluous.

By putting a world of facts at the end of a key-stroke, computers have made facts, their command, their manipulation, their ordering, central to what now can qualify as humanistic education. The result is to suspend reflection about the differences among wisdom, knowledge, and information. Everything that can be accessed online can seem equal to everything else, no datum more important or more profound than any other. Thus the possibility presents itself that there really is no more wisdom; there is no more knowledge; there is only information. No thought is a challenge or an affront to what one currently believes."

Robin Hamman

I am hoping that Robin Hamman will be coming to give a talk later in the term. Robin runs cybersoc.com which is "an online resources for social scientists and internet professionals interested in the study of cyberculture, cyberspace, computer mediated communication and online communities"

Robin currently works as a Community Producer at the BBC and his written several articles on online communities. His most recent is a talk he gave "Global Networks act local" at a conference in Warsaw. He makes the argument that "instead of using the internet to act globally, many users today are more interested in using the internet to make new local connections or to supplement existing communication between themselves and people they are already familiar with"

He refers to the BBC'c "Where I Live" websites as an example of the Internet being used for local information and reinforcing local ties. Another local example would be Manchester Community Information Network (MCIN) of which I am chair. More about MCIN later, but just to observe that it has established 13 local 'community wide webs' in Manchester, based round geographical areas (eg: Cheetham info) or communities of interest (eg: the deaf community gateway)

blogs v old media

Article in the Guardian today by Victor Keegan discussing the merits of blogging in comparison to traditional journalism.

"CBS's admission that its story of George Bush's special treatment when with the Texas air national guard was deeply flawed is being seen as a key victory for the new "blogging" community of the internet against old media.

This is mainly true. Although papers such as the Washington Post were on the case, the retraction would not have happened when it did but for the efforts of an army of bloggers - writers of online journals - in exposing the documents as fraudulent, including some who authoritatively questioned the authenticity of the documents almost as they were released....."

Technorati

Technorati is a website that monitors weblogs - currently more than 3 million. It also ranks the top 100 blogs. It also has an "Election 2004 watch" link. It also has an interesting 'blogging basics' page in the form of an FAQ. For example, here is ist comparison of blogging and journalism:

What's the relationship between blogging and journalism?

"Weblogs are different from traditional media. Bloggers tend to be more opinionated, niche-focused, and partisan than journalists, who strive for editorial objectivity. Blogs encourage dialog with readers, which is why many traditional journalists now also have blogs. The relationship between blogging and journalism can be characterized as symbiotic rather than competitive. Bloggers are often sources for journalists, and many blogs contain commentary and riffs on what journalists wrote that day. Frequently newsmakers use blogs to respond to what journalists write about them. And by linking to traditional media, weblogs can introduce new readers to journalists and their publications. "

weblogs and established media

Relationship of weblogs to the established media

A list of reasons why weblogs are innovative and do things that established media (particularly conventional journalism) cannot necessarily do, is available on a weblog, the BuzzMachine, produced by Jeff Jarvis, who concludes that weblogs are complementary to established media, not a replacement:

"1. Weblogs are meant to be read. The first, best thing a reporter, editor, publisher, producer can do is read weblogs -- not write them, read them. We in established media have had printing presses for hundreds of years. Now it's everybody else's turn. Now the people formerly known as "they" have a voice and we should listen. We should put the spotlight on "them" and stand back. See what we will learn.

2. Weblogs add information. Established media are in the information business. And weblogs bring in more information, often from new sources. If the big guys learn how to take advantage of that, then weblogs will not replace them; they will enhance them. That is why I am trying to bring blogs to towns, so citizen journalists can gather information no institution can afford to gather on its own (especially these days).

3. Weblogs bring perspective. See the Howell Raines post below. We, the people, formerly known as the audience, want to express our opinions and know the opinions of those talking to us. Weblogs allow anyone to become a pundit.

4. Weblogs target. They are a great way to reach and serve specific audiences with content -- and advertising (and to find out what those audiences want to know).

5. Weblogs capture buzz. If you want to know what the people are saying and thinking, you can (a) hire a company to perform very expensive surveys and focus groups and hope they're right, (b) go to the nearest Dennys and eavesdrop and hope you like patty melts, or (c) read weblogs. Weblogs are good at capturing and predicting buzz.

6. Weblogs produce story ideas. I know of one reporter on one paper -- Maureen Ryan at the ChiTrib -- who is dedicated to finding great stories online. There should be more. And, for that matter, every reporter should be mining weblogs for ideas. They're there to be had, ripe for the plucking. Just go get them.

7. Weblogs find (and filter) news. Remember agents? Those little virtual PacMen (well, actually, they used to bring to mind the Scrubbing Bubbles commercial) were supposed to go out into the vast, wired world and and find news and other good stuff for you. Science fiction, it was. Agents died. But weblogs live. Weblogs -- and their agents, aka their readers, that is, real people -- fan out and find all kinds of wonderful stuff.

8. Weblogs fact check our ass. It's wonderful to have this world of natterers and naysayers out there, for they will fact-check (and even copy-edit) blogs and newspapers, magazines, and broadcast. That is a good thing. That adds to the credibility of all media. If Howell Raines (see above and below) had heard what people were saying about him and his paper before his own staff screamed it in his ear, he might have held onto his job.

9. Weblogs add speed. During the war, no single media outlet, print or broadcast, or online, could keep up with the news-gathering power of Command Post. I didn't say reporting. I said gathering. The weblogs brought together the best of reporting from every available outlet -- all around the world -- with incredible, impressive speed. That's valuable. A wise news organization will harnass that. Come the next war (God forbid) I'd license not only AP content but also Command Post links.

10. Weblogs breed talent. And, lo, Denton begat Gawker and Gawker begat Spiers and Spiers begat TheKicker. I just recommended another blogger to a magazine editor looking for new talent. And there are more where they came from (just ask Denton). A wise editor should be looking to bloggers to find new and fresh (not to mention cheap) voices. Mind you, some people are better at writing for blogs than for print; they thrive in the immediacy and may wilt in the smokehouse of editing. But there is great talent to be found here. All you have to do is read.

11. Weblogs experiment. Weblogs find new ways to use photos and audio and I've played with video weblogs. Weblogs will innovate and if we watch, old media can learn new tricks.

12. Weblogs are cheap. You want to find an easy, inexpensive, fast, geek-free, hassle-free way to publish and manage content? It's here. It won't put out the New York Times Online. But it will put out breaking news or reports from correspondents in the field or, soon, reports from the Little League game.

13. Weblogs interact. Once old-media people (as opposed to an old media people) have read weblogs and learned from them and milked them for news and perspective and buzz and talent and then started weblogs themselves, there's one, last, most important value be be derived from having and reading weblogs: They will help you gain an entirely new relationship with the people we used to call the audience, the folks we are trying to serve. We talk to them and now they talk back and not just to yell at us now but to say something. We get to know them; they get to know us. That's new. That's exciting."

Source: BuzzMachine - http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2003_10.html#004900

Weblogs and journalism

In relation to the weblog assignment, take a look at Rebecca Blood's
Weblogs and journalism in the age of participatory media, July 2003

This also links to a section on Weblog Ethics, where she comes up with 6 standards that weblogs should follow:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true


2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.


3. Publicly correct any misinformation.


4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.


5. Disclose any conflict of interest.


6. Note questionable and biased sources.

How Real Are Internet Friendships?

Another article by Jeremy Stangroom, this time in the sophists philosophy forum, "How Real Are Internet Friendships? 06/02/04 which points out that it is both easier to deceive other people on the internet than in face-to-face contact, but that also it can release us from some of the distortions of face-to-face relationships

"It does seem to be true that we can have a certain kind of confidence in people we meet in person which is not available in online relationships. Particularly, the opportunity for gross deception is minimised in a face to face situation....it is very easy to deceive people on the internet by inventing wholly imaginary personas - something which it is much more difficult to achieve in the non-virtual world"

But also....

"non-virtual relationships are subject to kinds of distortion which are largely absent from internet relationships......For example, as a consequence of what psychologists call a ‘positive halo effect’, attractive people are considered more intelligent, more moral, better adjusted, nicer, more sexually responsive and more competent than their less attractive fellows. And, of course, it isn’t only attractiveness that influences the judgements we make about people. We also take our cues from, amongst other things, age, sex, racial characteristics, style of dress, accent and social class"

How civility can be lost in cyberspace

In interpreting the difference between online and offline communities we also need to consider the way in which we use email. Jeremy Stangroom, in "How civility can be lost in cyberspace.", "TPM Online, Word of Mouse Issue 24", makes the following points about the difference between offline and online communication due to the informality and speed of email :

"First, email is pretty much instantaneous. Therefore, it is just more likely with email that things will be said in haste which would not have been said had more time been taken for reflection.

Second, the internet facilitates relatively anonymous communication. Consequently, in our virtual lives, we’re more likely to be interacting with people we’ve never met, we’re never going to meet, and whom we don’t know anything about. In such a situation, there is more chance that we will treat them as though they are not quite fully human subjects.

Third, internet communication involves geographical distance, which removes many of the barriers to aggressive behaviour which exist in the non-virtual world. Not least, you’re not likely to get hit for sending someone an abusive email, whereas this is certainly a possible response to abuse in a face-to-face situation"

spam update

"The volume of spam shows little sign of diminishing. MessageLabs scans 65 million e-mails a day and in August found 84% of them were spam."
Source - BBC News, Wed. 8/09/04

If you look at the MessageLabs website they give a daily update on levels of spam. Today, for example (11/09/04) spam is running at 80% of all email messages

Powerpoint presentations

Most of you will most likely use Powerpoint presentations for the class presentation part of your second assignment. It is a useful skill to acquire but you should be aware of some of its drawbacks. It is estimated that PPT is used in some 30 million presentations each day and is certainly in danger of being over used.

Powerpoint can be distracting and coercive. As the lights dim for the presentation, any little interaction that remains between the speaker and the audience disappears. It makes it far too easy for both parties to stop paying attention. (Politics of PowerPoint, John Saunders, 21/11/03)

At just over 200 words, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in which he defined what the American Civil War was about, is rated as one of the great feats of concise speech-making. If you want to see what the Gettysburg Address looks like on PowerPoint have a look at a version on PPT by Peter Norvig. Especially good is the introduction:

"Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we? Oh - is it ready? OK, here we go....",

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation, Peter Norvig

For a list of articles discussing the impact of PowerPoint, look at the Powerpointless website