tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25395189809465057872024-03-13T07:55:17.183-07:00ValidityMaja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-80522723017144341272009-03-01T02:08:00.000-08:002009-03-01T02:43:53.854-08:00Politics and Web2.0 Research Methods Workshop<span style="font-size:130%;">
<br /></span><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CMajci%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="Edit-Time-Data" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CMajci%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_editdata.mso"><!--[if !mso]> <style> v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} </style> <![endif]--><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="date"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:hyphenationzone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} h4 {mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0cm; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-outline-level:4; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:70.85pt 70.85pt 70.85pt 70.85pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} /* List Definitions */ @list l0 {mso-list-id:622349698; mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:-95397008 320001828 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187;} @list l0:level1 {mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-text:"\(%1\)"; mso-level-tab-stop:36.0pt; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-18.0pt;} @list l1 {mso-list-id:1383019676; mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:801041498 69468183 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187;} @list l1:level1 {mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-text:"%1\)"; mso-level-tab-stop:36.0pt; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-18.0pt;} @list l2 {mso-list-id:1384207798; mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:-2133302184 -384156636 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187;} @list l2:level1 {mso-level-start-at:2; mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-text:"\(%1\)"; mso-level-tab-stop:36.0pt; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-18.0pt;} @list l3 {mso-list-id:1994335432; mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:776999850 1522821920 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187 69468175 69468185 69468187;} @list l3:level1 {mso-level-start-at:4; mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-text:"\(%1\)"; mso-level-tab-stop:36.0pt; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-18.0pt;} ol {margin-bottom:0cm;} ul {margin-bottom:0cm;} --> </style><span style="font-size:130%;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.ncess.ac.uk/events/item/?item=207">Politics and Web2.0 Research Methods Workshop</a></span></b></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">
<br /></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">19 – </span></b><st1:date year="2009" day="20" month="2"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">20 February 2009</span></b></st1:date><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">, </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Manchester</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">It was organized by the <a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/">Infoscape Research Lab</a> at <a href="http://www.ryerson.ca/">Ryerson university</a> (</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Canada</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">) and the <a href="http://www.ncess.ac.uk/">National Centre for e-Social Sciences</a> at the <a href="http://www.manchester.ac.uk/">University of Manchester</a> (</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Similarly to my blogging on the CIVICWEB seminar I will briefly present some of the presentations and parts of discussion that I found interesting. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">I want to explicitly state, that this is not a direct speech from the participants, some things may have been left out, others overheard <span style=""> </span>so please take the conversations as of informative nature but not as suitable for quotations.
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<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.fdv.uni-lj.si/English/Teacher/Teacher.asp?id=221">Maja Turnšek Hančič</a> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Online deliberation analysis on YouTube <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">I talked about methodological problems in trying to employ online discourse analysis for video sharing environments, specifically YouTube. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/about_us/pages/staff.aspx">Andy Williamson</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Understanding social interactions within digital political spaces <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Andy is from <a href="http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/About_Us/">Hansard society</a> where they work very closely with government and research citizens engagement and political communication. They are interested at politically engaged people – how they use the internet. But beyond the engaged minority, they are also interested at how the re-engagement can happen. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">He stressed three points which I found interesting: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">(a)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">online engagement methods fail when organisations are risk averse – the public know how to recognize fake invitations.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">(b)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">how are e-democracy intitiatives democratic, if we exclude 60% people who do not have access to the internet? The is thus, how to get people online. “If we don't talk about that we have an elephant in the room and we can't just ignore it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">(c)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">old political thinking versus new political thinking - old political thinking is going online but it doesn’t change the old thinking of just delivering information. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">He talked about an example of Greenpeace which just did a campaign against the third Runway on Heathrow – they flooded 57 email services of MPs. Greenpeace thought it was a great success – but half of 57 Mps voted for the third runway. It didn’t convince them, it just caused them technical trouble. “One letter written by a letter is worth more than 10.000 pre-formed emailed ones. Greenpeace thus also still thinks in numbers and not quality.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">I thought it was interesting, from an ethical perspective, that he talked they as researchers have a special Facebook account <span style=""> </span>(not a personal one) which makes friends with Facebook UK MPs. More MPs are starting to be very active. The strategies are different, from: “I accept everybody” to “I accept only friends who I know are friends of campaign”. Hementioned also the growing use of Twittter. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">He also mentioned mass silent dance in </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"> which was coordinated through Facebook – the technology backed up mobile phones and word of mouth – “new tools for the same purpose”. Alan stressed that the technology doesn’t change mobilisation in its essence but changes the scale and the speed of mobilization. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://members.chello.nl/mr.vergeer/">Maurice Vergeer</a> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Features on political party websites <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Maurice presented the planned Comparative European New Media and Elections Project, which is organized by Maurice Vergeer, Carlos Cunha and Gerrit Voerman. <span style=""> </span>This is basically a follow up on the Internet and National Elections projects. They will analyze political party and candidate websites during European Parliament elections. <span style=""> </span>The focus will be on Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 features. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Methodological problems that Maurice discussed were: archiving, sampling (only bigger parties and only major candidates?) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Maurice presented some first results from secondary analysis of the data of previous research whose authors were kind enough to share the data with him: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Norris 2001, 2003 <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Jankowski et al. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Gibson & Ward <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">He tested for scaling using a factor analysis for dichotonomous variables and discovered there was only one dimension with Cronbach’s alpha 0,875) (Pippa Norris assumed two: information and communication), but he was puzzled by the meaning of these dimensions. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">It says that there is only one consistent dimension. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Some interesting questions were raised. Rachel Gibson asked to what depth do Maurice and his colleagues plan to go on analyzing Web2.0 features: only presence/absence or also more in depth.<span style=""> </span>Maurice answered that they hope that hey will manage to archive the material (e.g all YouTube videos) and the more in-depth analysis could be done later. He stressed that the first problem of international research or making comparative analyses is where to stop the dept of the coding book, so that it is still doable. Second problem are cultural differences: for example liberal party in </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"> is not comparable to the party which terms it self liberal in some other country. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/faculty/profiles/Elisa-Pieri/Cesagen/">Elisa Pieri</a> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">ID cards: A frame analysis of the debate in the </span></b><st1:country-region><st1:place><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">UK</span></b></st1:place></st1:country-region><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> printed media <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Elisa presented herself as coming from qualitative background – building on grounded theory. The research she presented is a part of the larger text-mining research. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">She talked about two understanding of frames: (a) frame as cognitive process versus (b) frame as strategic persuasive method<span style=""> </span>(Goffman versus Entman). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The case study focuses on public debate on National identity scheme in </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"> – creation of large database which will be shared by various governmental bodies and private organisations. The aim of her research was to investigate the debate on national newspapers and explore which kind of arguments are being used in support, opposition or just presentation of the scheme<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Sample: 280 newspaper texts, using LexisNexis <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">She identified various frames. ID scheme is framed as: not secure, lack accountability, compulsory versus based on choice, universal, tough on immigration, the imbalance between liberty and security, as being one in the series of government ailed projects etc. She furthermore focused on the “government is being tough on immigration” issue in this case study. She first identified how the question was identified in the original governmental document and then compared it to how newspapers reported on the National scheme. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">She discovered two ways of invertion of original frame “being tough on illegal immigration” (that of the document) in the newspaper articles: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(a) as being empty rhetoric, also through the use of satire, basically saying that it will not succeed in prevention of immigration and that it does not go far enough <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(b) as being an example of government extreme right ideology of reinforcing “Britishness” and controlling immigration. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">In the discussion Greg Elmer asked whether tags could be conceived as frames in themselves. And Elisa stressed that not every code could be a frame – e.g. prime minister tag would not be a frame. Frame is more crafting the argument. It is also broader. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/sociology/about/staff/gibson/">Rachel Gibson</a> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">News Blogs: Setting or following the agenda? <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Rachel talked about gainig interests in the question of blogs and news agenda after some “high profile scoops” have been reported heavily by mass media: <a href="http://mediamythbusters.com/index.php?title=Rathergate">Rathergate</a> 2004 & Trent Loft 2002 – blogs were leading the news agenda, either by discovering the news or making it more prominent.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The question is thus, can they be seen to challenge the dominance of mainstream media? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">She tried to answer this question thorugh social network analysis, using VOSON software – gives information on in- and out-bound links plus information collected from the websites themselves. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">5 seed sites in each category: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">mainstream news media (the guardian, the independent…<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">mainstream news media blog – a list of twenty important bloggers and of mainstream media blogs collected from that – plus the list of 76 news blogs in mainstream media – so the overlap from these two <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">indy blogs <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">She removed all sites that had less than 5 links which shows that the density of Indy blogs is much stronger than among mainstream media. The question posed later by Rachel was: how do we decide on how many links does the website has to have to others, so that we leave it “in the picture”? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The discussion later revealed around the main problem of social network analysis of hyperlinks: which seeds to take? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The second question was how to determine causality. And the consensus seemed to be, that the timeline should necessarily be taken into account. Here Maurice gave an important suggestion: blogs are RSS which is text and contains the date and in this way you don’t have to save pages to get information on the question who hyperlinked first, you just take it from the RSS. <span style=""> </span>Greg said that is exactly what they have been doing at InfoscapeLab. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.hanpark.net/">Han Wo Park</a></span></b></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Hyperlink network analysis of 2007 </span></b><st1:country-region><st1:place><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Korea</span></b></st1:place></st1:country-region><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> presidential<span style=""> </span>election<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Han presented two case studies and social network hyperlink analysis of websites and social networking sites: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(a) case study of 2007 presidential race within the Grand National Party <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(b) case study of a hyperlink network of 2007 presidential election <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The discussion followed the line of the discussion that started with Rachel’s presentation. Again, the necessity of going over descriptive analysis with social network analysis and finding the causality behind the visualizations was stressed by participants.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Some points from the final discussion on Thursday </span>
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Greg Elmer talked about how we as researchers get overwhelmed with complexity of Web2.0. We need to think of Web2.0 as a network phenomena. What ever there is, it is placed now on multiple platforms. We need to try and think conceptually the architecture of all these different platform. How, for example, are communication campaign networked across Facebook and other platform? At which platforms are YouTube videos present? Etc. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Elisa Pieri stressed the importance of going back to the theory we already know. We need to reflect more on the means of interpretation. It just could be, that we can understand all these new phenomena it in terms of theory that we already have. This is even more acute since the research is becoming increasingly more interdisciplinary. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Maurice stressed that<span style=""> </span>all standards of methodology still apply to Web2.0 methods: validity, reliability etc. But the specific questions of how for ex. to sample on Web2.0 may be quite difficult. We should be quite careful. Sampling in a network environment is even more difficult. He agreed that it is very important that we need to tackle the issue of the architecture. We should make an inventory of how to analyze and how to deal with that. He gave, what I think was a great advice: <span style=""> </span>if you do research on web2.0 from theoretical point of view, be modest, don’t be too ambitious not to get yourself involved with all the problems of networking etc. You don’t need to have the understanding of the architecture what is behind it. Why would you be entangled with it if you don’t need it? Do not go over the boundaries of your research project if it is not necessary for your research project. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">I added the question of difficulty with analyzing the multimodal content. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Greg furthermore stressed again that we need to do more longitudinal research, on one hand, and on the other, we need to find out ways how to analyze fast moving, quickly disappearing phenomena such as live discussions. Later the dimension of time was connected by Rachel to the dimension of space – with mobile phones this becomes even more complicated and mobile phones accelerate the dimension of time, since for example the political campaigners can publish from anywhere and at anytime. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The debate then developed into the question of how do we do that while at the same time still preserving the in-depth analysis and the insight we need to have while researching. The question of archiving and making public archives was the second major point that was introduced in the debate. This was then connected to the questions of ethics (whether private versus public, or is it better to define data as sensitive) and questions of proprietary laws (private, public, collective?) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/robert.php">Robert Ackland</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (VOSON) <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">His presentation was made through Skype. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">He presented <a href="http://voson.anu.edu.au/">VOSON</a>– social networking tool: mapping, social network analysis<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Similar tool to VOSON is <a href="http://www.govcom.org/Issuecrawler_instructions.htm">Issue Crawler</a> (Richard Rogers) and <a href="http://socscibot.wlv.ac.uk/">SocSciBot</a> (Mike Thelwall) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">VOSON comes from a different disciplinary perspective than Isssue Crawler and <span style=""> </span>and SocSciBot. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Network scientists: about measurement of properties of large scale networks and models <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Information scientists: a citation network – using regression and using hyperlinks <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Social scientists view the web as social organizational network, behavioural theory <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Differences among these three approaches are in web2.0 even greater. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Social network analysis recognizes that in a network we have a self organizing behaviour (e.g in-links into oneself), they put emphasis on need of sampling. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Robert vigorously defended the idea that social scientists should thus actively participate in the design of research tools. Specifically he talked about social network analysis (SNA). He proposed three potential approaches: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(a) data sharing deal with existing social networking sites (SNS) (e.g. <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a> or <a href="http://www.orkut.com/About.aspx">Orkut</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(b) to build SNA application within exiting SNS – users install your application – you can ask them to download the Facebook application and their data would be collected by researchers <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(c) build a new SNS or a “niche” SNS – not suitable for all research projects, but what about in cases of segment of population who are not necessarily be well represented in other SNS? – e.g. to research social inclusion among the elderly. Researcher and a partner organization (e.g. seniors lobby group) could build a SNS together. He made his own social network service for a test – built using <a href="http://drupal.org/about">Drupal</a> for ANU masters students <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/Davy.Weissenbacher/">Davy Weissenbacher</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.nactem.ac.uk/assist/slides/Davy.pdf">Text-mining Tools for frame analysis</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">But Davey did not talk about frame analysis. He generally presented the functioning of <a href="http://www.nactem.ac.uk/assist/slides/Davy.pdf">ASSIST project</a> which aims to deliver a service for searching and qualitatively analysing social sciences documents. NaCTeM is deigning and evaluating an innovative search engine embedding text mining components. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">5.000 documents come from LexisNexis. The search engine allows you to search this document. It looks for semantic content – it provides different information of the document – basically you can put in search word and then you get information on each document (e.g. author, location, persons described). Point: it differentiates within the document – it recognizes which part of the document for example is the name of the author. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">We can then process the data with different operators. For example I am interested in specific author and the research will focus on the metadata. Or I am interested in documents writing about a city eg. </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">London</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"> – all documents where city </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">London</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"> has been tagged as the main entity. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">All the codes are designed by computer. E.g. location – it takes the list of the dictionaries of all the cities in </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">. Other corpus is for example Wikipedia for celebrities. Other: Educational portal of University. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">There is, however, still a lot of “noise”. They plan to use machine learning techniques so that the computer will learn from the context that computer is able to differentiate e.g. title of newspaper from the city itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">They work also on sentiment analysis: possibilities for automatically computing the opinion of the author – the system will highlight sentences which use specific terms which show negative or positive words. It thus coloured the sentences as negative and positive (going from different shades of green to different shades of red). They analyze the syntax of the sentence and within it find different words with are associated with positive or negative. But again: the system counts high as positive, but not criminality as negative and then you get out:”high criminality =positive”. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Example: “Identity cards will intrude on our private lives, MPs and peers said last night.”<span style=""> </span>– coded as negative because of the word “intrude”. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The main problem is thus that the corpus should be build which takes into account all words and word combinations. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Maurice pointed to work on automatic content analysis by <a href="http://www.rsm.nl/portal/page/portal/RSM2/Programmes/Other%20Post-Experience%20Masters/Master%20in%20Corporate%20Communications/Our%20Curriculum/Academic%20Teaching%20Staff/Jan%20Kleinnijenhuis">Jan Kleinnijenhuis</a> and Wouter van Attenfeldt. They use the patient-agent relation within a sentence. It deals with the software which deconstruct sentences. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://manu.rcc.ryerson.ca/%7Egelmer/?page_id=2">Greg Elmer</a> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/files/MARSprezold.ppt">The Permanent Campaign <o:p></o:p></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Greg presented the Infoscape’s project: <a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/research">Code Politics</a>. This is a 3 year project, basically analyzing how can we study software code as a political phenomena. They have focused largely on online elections. Since 2004 </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Canada</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"> had 3 federal elections. Aim of the project was to develop: methods, tools, visualizations. One component of visualization of results is making it comprehensible to larger public. They focused on embedded research – not only empirical research and development on methods and analysis, but also engaging through the media and political process. They partnered with public broadcaster and worked directly with journalists, producers, reporters etc. to provide them with visualizations and data. They also meet with political bloggers and online campaigners to learn about their strategies.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Theoretically, Greg builds on the concept of the permanent campaign. Definition of permanent campaign (concept was coined by Patric H. Caddell) – a recognition that campaigns need to be better administered trough controlling the campaign and influencing mass media reporting. Reasons for emergence of the permanent campaign: <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 18pt;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(a) intensification of party politics, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">(b)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">rise of national campaigning, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">(c) emergence of 25/5 news cycle, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">(d)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">expansion of media spheres to network computing (citizen journalists also tend to be those who are the most politically partisan). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Components of the permanent campaign<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">If there is an ongoing state of preparedness – permanent campaign – there is greater readiness to have more personnel working for you. It needs to recognize that campaigns are networked – there is no one platform where candidates can go to launch their campaigns, but it is a platform of platforms. This also means integration of political strategies and tactics. This furthermore means redefinition of “campaign” period as a state of elections, crisis, controversies. The idea of permanent campaign is the important concept to see more fully which campaigns exist. Leadership campaign for example – like Obama’s . This provides one answer why he was so open. He had to build a network of supporters, his campaigners did not have those names and database that Hillary Clinton had from the beginning from democrats. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Greg focused on the work of bloggers within the permanent campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Who are they referring to? (answer: mostly other blogers with similar political views) Whom do they support? What are they talking about? (answer: mainly newspaper articles) How does their coverage differ from news coverage (do they talk about the same issues)? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Videoblogger or Vlogger: Where are the videos embedded? He provided some of the answers using the tools developed by Infoscape. One Powerpoint picture for example shows the results of top referrals to official Kevin Rud YouTube channel videos:
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirkmzvDzmf7ghyiVN3r7d317HLH-_-SM_dMRmkipeKqqZ9DCP-Dj28XVqwaFYDGoi_GPWiLNRFiQm8TSCF4pYkmTZQfgQ3zb0UYq6B1TdoHjM6Jbm6CYGgLSSNAxVlK5F2XAhAgRsmkYZL/s1600-h/za+blog+zbrisi.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 404px; height: 339px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirkmzvDzmf7ghyiVN3r7d317HLH-_-SM_dMRmkipeKqqZ9DCP-Dj28XVqwaFYDGoi_GPWiLNRFiQm8TSCF4pYkmTZQfgQ3zb0UYq6B1TdoHjM6Jbm6CYGgLSSNAxVlK5F2XAhAgRsmkYZL/s320/za+blog+zbrisi.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308160592809637906" border="0" /></a>
<br /><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Picture taken from Greg’s Power Point presentation uploaded at <a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/files/MARSprezold.ppt">Infoscape</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Who refers to them? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7mgxy1oWjGD8pn3xGaFXZWNHJKiVdzzSCLtYqZ0mKqKXe03YMwdHI0JqQ4hfKzo43GW4kkvl_6iTcZw8d1p2pkKt-e-AiPaocl_45GFSHGBt4dwGZ1r8fYh5WkIiiQV6bnekTTq4EviIb/s1600-h/za+blog+zbrisi2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 269px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7mgxy1oWjGD8pn3xGaFXZWNHJKiVdzzSCLtYqZ0mKqKXe03YMwdHI0JqQ4hfKzo43GW4kkvl_6iTcZw8d1p2pkKt-e-AiPaocl_45GFSHGBt4dwGZ1r8fYh5WkIiiQV6bnekTTq4EviIb/s320/za+blog+zbrisi2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308162005706177954" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:453pt;height:339.75pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Majci\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image003.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Picture taken from Greg’s Power Point presentation uploaded at <a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/files/MARSprezold.ppt">Infoscape</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/node/226">Fenwick McKelvey</a> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">An Overview of Blog Research <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Fenwick presented in detail the tools and methodology developed and used at Infoscape for researching and analyzing blogs. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Next to the possibilities already presented by Greg, Fenwisk talked more on how they hey were able to track discussions on leaders – who was getting more attention? And about which themes? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The Infoscape developed various <a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/methodology">methods</a> and <a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/taxonomy/term/32">tools</a>, those specifically designed for analyzing blogs are: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/taxonomy/term/56">BlogBuzz</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Majci/My%20Documents/prijave%20na%20konference/Manchester%202009/Blogometer">Blogometer</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">All blogs use RSS feeds – so they use RSS feeds as sources of data. They are scraping the content (and not navigational aspects). They decided to focus only on partisan blogs. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">They were able to determine what was the most discussed hyperlink in blogs and then also check that content.<span style=""> </span>They could also go back to the sources of the link of the post. They did this 3 times per week.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">The tools are divided into 4 categories: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Scrapers<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Data – data sets <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Analysis <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Visualizations<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">I was specifically interested in their work on <a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/videopolitics">party politics and YouTube.</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Youtube search scraper uses Youtube API to extract data. Once it has a list of key words it queries Youtube API on a set schedule. By comparing this list of videos week over week it can tract the changes over time. You are able to say this is the most popular video in this time span. You are able to make it temporal to see what videos are popular for what time. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">It archives the xml and the database. It works on key words. API uses tags, descriptions. When we extract that information from YouTube’s API it gives the number of views, comments, ratings, tags, the date, when it was uploaded and by whom – the ID of a person as a Google account. They have been able to see what videos have been going up and down in ratings. YouTube’s search engine itself namely returns as the most watched also the videos which are very popular, however, those videos could get these numbers a year ago and it is not necessarily that it has any recent views. They were manage to overcome this problem by analyzing the ratings on a weekly basis. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <h4 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.infoscapelab.ca/members">Ganaele Langlois</a> <o:p></o:p></span></h4> <h4 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Facebook and politics 2.0 <o:p></o:p></span></h4> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">She talked about research challenges in analyzing Facebook: it is a black-boxed architecture, has first-person perspective and previous scraping methodologies (e.g. hyperlink scrapes) not feasible. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Facebook has a html, but it also uses other languages, which makes it extremely difficult to analyze. Hyperlinking in the old-fashioned meaning doesn't really happen. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Three types of political activity on Facebook: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">a)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">users can state their political affiliation on their profile, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">b)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">can become fans or supporters of a politician's page, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="">c)<span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">users can create or join groups and event. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Ganaele created a robot that automatically scrapes Facebook, but Facebook has found a way to prevent it. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB">Greg & Ganaele then talked about their forthcoming article: Wikipedia Leaches – they are looking at where and how a particular phrase has been take up – it is not just hyperlinks that you can find networks, it is also text – they tried to figure out what are all the ways in which web objects are individually identifiable and what can we glean from that information and can we then use those unique identifiers to see that particular object where it is reproduced across the web. This is not only to recognize content but also to recognize ways in which content is circulated. You can for example take the ID of a particular video and determine how did that video become viral. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-34846610536381646622008-10-02T00:09:00.000-07:002008-10-02T00:27:06.950-07:00Virtual worldsI have given up on Second life after one or two trial, when I just wasen't in the mood to learn all about how it works.<br /><br />Victor Keegan reminded me in the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/02/virtual.worlds">Guardian article</a> that I shouldn't give up so soon. Referencing <a href="http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=2485">Kzero</a>, he talks about more than 30 virtual worlds out there.<br /><br /><br />I've tried to log on to <a href="http://www.twinity.com/en">Twinity</a>, but no success - it keeps denying my registration. Obviously I am just not wanted there - online virtual world thus yet again resembles offline world - with migration policy and customs breathing down your neck, trying hard to keep the unwanted out.<br /><br />But <a href="http://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/poco/keep+on+tryin_20109620.html">I will keep on tryin'</a>.<br /><br />****<br /><br />Corretion: I got in!<br /><br />??? So what now?Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-67453969894211561862008-08-27T08:20:00.000-07:002008-10-02T00:09:49.872-07:00Conversation visualisations<p class="MsoNormal">Reading through articles that analyze online conversations I found that next to well known social network analysis there are also several other ways to visualize and through visualisation analyse online conversations. </p> <a href="http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/turner.html">Turner, Smith, Fisher and Welsher (2005)</a> is a good example article where they use several different methods to visualize Usenet conversations (in time period from 2000 to 2004).<br /><br />First is a method called Treemaps developed by <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/">Shneiderman</a>.<br />Basically (if I understood it correctly) it transposes large trees into a smaller visualization - a box containing large numbers of boxes. Turner et al. (2005) used this method to depict hierarchies in Usenet according to two variables (thus two different sets of boxes):<br />-number of posts within a hierarchy (and within it newsgroups, threads),<br />-number of replies within a hierarchy<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/turner.5.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/turner.5.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/turner.1a.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/turner.1a.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>Similarly this method could be applied to visualization of conversations on globalism or similar issues on YouTube (the only problem is, that I have no idea how to employ it).<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal">An interesting employment of Treemaps is <a href="http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/index.cfm">Veskamp's Newsmap</a> where he creates a program that instantly visualizes current Google news according to type of news (e.g world, national, sports etc.) and for 11 different nations. </p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-77545254913625600472008-08-26T23:12:00.000-07:002008-08-26T23:26:09.687-07:00Turkish ban on YouTube liftedThe Guardian:<br /><h1 style="font-weight: bold;" id="heading-alone" class="article-no-standfirst"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/26/turkey.youtube"><span style="font-size:100%;">Turkish court lifts YouTube ban after online censorship protest<br /></span></a></h1>1. More and more cases of state censorship of YouTube posts are yet another case against optimistic claims regarding YouTube's potential for being a true Habermasian public sphere - free of political (and economic) restraints.<br /><br />2. This case also shows (yet again) that states are not powerless in the globalized internet world.<br /><br />3 On a bit more optimistic side, however, this case shows that there is a chance for civic actors to mobilize enough supporters and organize online protest tactics which seem to be working against online censorship of the state.Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-54125389794162074132008-07-15T12:46:00.000-07:002008-07-15T13:02:37.532-07:00Dryzek: Deliberative Democracy and BeyondIf I stated a couple of weeks ago that I was overwhelmed with literature on globalisation, this week the enthusiasm skipped back to deliberation. Fortunately for me I have such a cross-field topic for the PhD that it allows me to skip from one field to another as soon as I get tired of one (and that happens a lot! - too often, I would say).<br /><br />I started to read Dryzek's <a href="http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/PoliticalTheory/PoliticalPhilosophy/?ci=019925043X&view=usa">Deliberative Democracy and Beyond</a> today. Up to the page 30 it is excellent!<br /><br />I especially liked his critique of <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8386">Habermas (1996) </a>on the account of defending status quo and forgetting his roots in critical theory (pages 24 - 27). Go John! :)Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-50834289165765882862008-07-15T06:40:00.000-07:002008-07-15T07:13:23.932-07:00Copy-right Problems on YouTubeCopyright issues are starting to make problems for YouTube and even more important, for the privacy of users, since <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7506948.stm">Viacom is suing YouTube</a>.<br /><br />But the problem is present also in Slovenia, although in different form.<br /><br />About two weeks ago I watched one of the commercial television programs: A kanal (owned together with other Slovene commercial TV program POP TV by an American company: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Media_Enterprises">Central European Media Enterprises Group)</a> and they introduced a new show: <a href="http://24ur.com/tv-vsebine/kanal-a/">TV TUBA</a> (or TV Tube in English).<br /><br />In this show they publish short movies that users provide on the online video sharing portal owned by the same channel owner: <a href="http://frendiinflirt.24ur.com/">Frendi in flirt</a>. I was shocked to see that next to personal and originally produced videos, the first show aired mostly videos produced by other (mostly foreign) television channels which circle around emails and are available also on YouTube. I remember the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQt-h753jHI">signing lady from Bulgaria</a> for instance. So I mailed the postmaster of Frendi and Flirt an official email regarding their copy rights and complaining also about the fact that they do not inform video sharers that their videos could be published also on the TV show. I did not receive any answer, but the next time I watched the show I did not see any copyrighted material anymore (but I admit that I did not watch the whole show).<br /><br />I am not really sure on how to decide on copyrights regarding YouTube, where the users are those who publish copyrighted material. But I am sure that such material should not be used for an entertaining local TV show which brings money to the TV station.Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-15148404023475650772008-06-16T08:43:00.000-07:002008-06-16T08:45:43.465-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgasUyAcRwxKkjeuRvHUPlMgIXZYfi7TamUq_mLY38ZNm0rC1hBgtPbnIGGEHsALVXMSu1-x3o4eqYgp38B4FAii03VQnwYoQ-DCO9P7s624bEHYUvyOZQ9O7UvhUir2nvm7LwGp9CteteY/s1600-h/bandeau_gb.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 405px; height: 86px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgasUyAcRwxKkjeuRvHUPlMgIXZYfi7TamUq_mLY38ZNm0rC1hBgtPbnIGGEHsALVXMSu1-x3o4eqYgp38B4FAii03VQnwYoQ-DCO9P7s624bEHYUvyOZQ9O7UvhUir2nvm7LwGp9CteteY/s320/bandeau_gb.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5212505664031216098" border="0" /></a><br /> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span class="grostitre"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">The Reporters Without Borders list of nine things the Chinese authorities must do before the Beijing Olympic Games:</span></b></span><span class="texte-11"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">1. Release all journalists and Internet users detained in China for exercising their right to information.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">2. Abolish for ever the restrictive articles in the Foreign Correspondents Guide that limit the media’s freedom of movement and work.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">3. Disband the Publicity Department (the former Propaganda Department), which exercises daily control over content in the Chinese press.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">4. End the jamming of foreign radio stations.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">5. End the blocking of thousands of news and information websites based abroad.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">6. Suspend the “11 Commandments of the Internet,” which lead to content censorship and self-censorship on websites.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">7. End the blacklisting of journalists and human rights activists, which prevents them from visiting China.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="spip"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">8. Lift the ban on Chinese media using foreign news agency video footage and news reports without permission.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">9. Legalize independent organisations of journalists and human rights activists.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=22673">http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=22673</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=22673"></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-51706976584023854872008-06-16T07:52:00.000-07:002008-06-16T08:29:33.245-07:00Blogger arrests<span style="text-decoration: underline; font-family: arial;"></span><a href="http://www.wiareport.org/"> World Information Access </a>has published a <a href="http://www.wiareport.org/index.php/56/blogger-arrests">Report on bloggers being arrested</a> all around the world.<br /><br />The study is interesting both because of the results and the methodology.<br /><br />First, methodologically they used content analysis of media published incidents of arrested bloggers:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Using Google and LexisNexis as search engines, we found 64 blogger arrest incidents discussed in various news articles, blogs, scholarly articles and informational Web sites. We organized the incidents by blogger name, country, date of arrest, reason for arrest and time in jail. "</span> (http://www.wiareport.org/index.php/56/blogger-arrests, 16. 6. 2008).<br /><br />Of course they recognized the fact, that there are many incidents that go unpublished, so that these results can not be held representative of what is actually happening and where, but still the results can be of informative nature.<br /><br />Another thing that is interesting about their methodology is the fact that they openly published their data set - allowing other researcher to analyze the data or/and to continue adding their own data. I know this is quite common for publicly funded research in the field of surveys, but it is still very rare in cases of content analysis.<br /><br />The most significant result of the research are the stated reasons for arrest: exposing corruption or human rights violation, posting comments about political figures, posting comments about public policies, using blogs to organize or report on social protests, violating cultural norms and other (other is what is not of a political nature).<br /><br />The numbers are not so important though - since the method relies only on incidents reported by the media - the increase in year 2007 for example could be due to the actual increase in arrests, it could be due to the heightened media attention to these incidents (media starting to view blogs as important means for public speech), it could be due to the rise in online media reporting (the fact that in some localities the media started to report extensively online only recently), due to the archival lost in previous years or due to other unknown factors hidden in the Google search engine and LexisNexis search engines (it still amazes me, with how much ease researchers use word search engines, without knowing how exactly and from where did these search engines provide the outputs. Does Lexis Nexis cover Slovene media for example? I don't know - I don't have access. But even if it would - what did they do regarding the language? Did they search only in English? If so - where is this stated and what possible implications for the whole results can this have?).<br /><br />Anyway, this was one of the rare social scientific reports that are published by the media as "sheer gold" (see <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7456357.stm">BBC</a>), and are available for public scrutiny. For this, and their simple, but informative and publicly accessible coding scheme, I have to give them credit.<br /><br />It would be good if they continued the research with a much larger basis of local researchers - perhaps bloggers who would do it voluntarily - who can follow their local media and update the data regularly. But of course, this is an enormous project (nevertheless, it is not impossible - why do we have the internet for?).<br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Majci/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg" alt="" />Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-43086617477656248052008-06-03T00:11:00.000-07:002008-06-03T01:08:28.836-07:00I'm backHopefully this time without such a long break (yeah, yeah - like one of the new years resolutions).<br />What have I been up to? Mostly working. On my PhD proposal, on the Civicweb interviews with the producers, before that on the paper with Nick on methods for researching YouTube for the Web2.0 conference.<br /><br />1. PhD proposal - I finally sent in the the "damn thing" (as my dear friend <a href="http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/page-1467">Janne</a> would say). I am not sure wheater I am pleased with it or not, but I suppose it is a base to start working on. I discovered that I became overwhlemed with literture on globalisation - at the begining it all seemed much too much, but now I can't stop reading. Especially I suggest:<br /> <a href="http://books.google.si/books?id=gfJmfEGV-bgC&dq=hay+2007+why+we+hate+politics&pg=PP1&ots=8yKqsLj4B6&sig=6rqOPl47sYdzmHuDfMwmQiI5LEE&hl=sl&prev=http://www.google.si/search%3Fsourceid%3Dnavclient%26ie%3DUTF-8%26rlz%3D1T4SKPB_enSI271SI272%26q%3DHay%2B(2007).%2BWhy%2Bwe%2Bhate%2Bpolitics%253F%2B&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail"><em>Hay (2007). Why we hate politics?</em> </a>Really, really excelent book.<br /><br />2. <a href="http://www.civicweb.eu/">Civicweb</a> interviews with producers of sites - not quite finished yet.<br /><br />3. <a href="http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/politics-web-20-paper-download/Turnsek_and_Jankowski_Social_Media_and_Politics.pdf">Paper with Nick</a> on how to research content on YouTube at <a href="http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/politics-web-2-0-conference/">Politics Web 2.0 Conference</a> - it opened a Pandora's box of questions I have to find answers to in the next couple of months: How to sample - which topic to choose? What's up with videos - are pictures for ex. rational argumentation? What about the language - if I am already studying international or global publics, is English really enough? And all great participation numbers! Number of visits, number of posts, number of ratings and most importantly number of hits from other online sources? Are they really an indicator of "publicness" in terms of public consequences? Loads of work still awaits!Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-42660054099304480982008-04-05T06:28:00.000-07:002008-04-05T06:42:58.937-07:00And we're there! - WEB3.0?It was only a matter of time before someone starts talking about Web3.0 after the hype of Web2.0 usage.<br /><br />We had a discussion on Web2.0 at the Digital Studies online seminar this week and one of the consensus was that there is something on Web2.0 but that it is not defined at all and has become a hype, a buzz word. Especially <a href="http://vobicojb.blogspot.com/2008/03/bled-everything-20.html">Igor Vobič</a> was quite critical of the concept - and I quite liked his comparison that web2.0 has replaced the "e"- hype (e-democracy, e-particpation etc.).<br /><br />Well - according to the author of UTube blog (which is quite revealing) Edward Lee, we are heading to the <a href="http://theutubeblog.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/04/what-is-web-30.html">era of Web3.0</a> - it is supposed to be characterized by "umbundlness" and "embedeness" - with total flow from one information and mode to another.Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-40921914759092416022008-02-27T02:25:00.000-08:002008-02-27T02:43:53.732-08:00Hargittai.2007.Whose Space?I've read the article that was suggested by Nick for the <a href="http://digitalstudiesseminar.blogspot.com/">New Media and Society</a> lecture today:<br /><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Hargittai. E. 2007. Whose Space? </span><br /><br />And since I am in the process of analyzing what kind of research has been done on web.20 for a proposed article for <a href="http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/politics-web-2-0-conference/">Web2.o conference in London</a>, I will share my notes in the form as I have made them.<br /> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">1. Research: <a href="http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/hargittai.html">Hargittai. E. 2007. Whose Space?</a> Differences among users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vol. 13 (1). Article 14. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">2. Application: SNS <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">3. Aim: To see whether there are any systematic differences among users and non-users of sites despite a familiarity with them <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">4. research design: causal (but no hypotheses posed) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">5. Theory: Some aspects of identity formation online versus offline (Turkle, 1975, Herring, 1993, Boyd 2001, Smith & Kollock, 1999) are mentioned. Mostly the author builds upon the notion of the digital divide, where not the question of access to the internet is addressed, but the question of what kind of uses are dividing different internet users on the basis of their socioeconomic status and social contexts of use. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">6. Sample: mostly 18-19 year old college students of the </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="" lang="EN-GB">University</span></st1:PlaceType><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> of </span><st1:placename><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Chicago</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> (rated as one of top 10 national universities as regards ethnic diversity): 1060 first-year students. Final response rate: 82% based on all the students enrolled in a specific obligatory course in the first year of graduate studies., 56 % female. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">7. Method: <span style=""> </span>“Paper” survey<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>regression analysis <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">8. Main results: Ethnicity is not a causal factor for overall SNS use, but it is for disaggregated uses of specific SNS services. Women are more likely to use SNS than men. Those living at home are less likely to use SNS than those living with roommates or alone. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Conclusions the author makes: 1. Students with varying background select different services, potentially limiting the extent to which they will interact with a diverse set of users. 2. Students who have more resources (soc. Context of use and experience) are spending more time on these sites and have more opportunities to benefit from them. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <br /> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">9. Ethical considerations: anonymity of respondents was assured, but no ethical considerations were provided by the author <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">10. Positive aspects: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">This is certainly a well-needed research – to investigate the demographics of SNS users. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">The author used regression analysis with which she checked whether the analyzed differences were statistically significant. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">11. Negative aspects<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Although the data on demographics of SNS users were needed for an overall descriptive knowledge of who uses these sites, there are some problems that have come to my mind with this research. The first of the problems considers methodology, others are conserned with theoretical foundations of the research and conclusions the author draws from the research. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">First is the problem of sample – although students of a specific university are a valuable ofline and especially easy to collect sample with great response rate the problem I see is that students are a special category – as the author suggests – most of which do use SNS and any substantial conclusions regarding the overall demographics of SNS sites are to be avoided. This could be seen from the fact that overall SNS use id not determined by ethnicity, since all of the units in the sample are students (also suggesting the lack of explanative power of ethnicity). Furthermore, taking the sample of students resulted into a too small number of non-users of SNS, therefore failing to answer the question of differences among users and non-users. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Second, although the aim of the author is to specifically analyze demographics of users, there are no specific theoretical variables that would really explain why users with different ethnic background use different SNS services and why there are no differences among SNS uses overall. The author suggest that the reason may be that offline connections influence which SNS services a user will use, but there are no variables included in the survey that would test this implicit hypothesis. Overall, having only demographic variables does not really explain any causal relations, it is just a first step in research and more often than not it leaves us with questions and speculations that should necessarily be researched more into depth in the<span style=""> </span>future research. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Third, just as the author did not include any variables about the offline network, she did not include any questions of motivation for participation or reasons for non-participation at the sites. The author thus fails to answer the main question she poses – how do users differentiate from non-users – although this is due mostly to the sample, it is highly unlikely that the answer would be found in “rough” variables such as ethnicity or how many hours per day and where an individual uses the internet. Furthermore, no theoretical discussion is present on possible reasons of assumed differences among users and non-users. The aim of the research thus lacks in ambition: the author only wants to see whether there are any differences which will be left to explain in future research. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Fourth, main conclusions made on use of SNS, are based on the pre-dispositions that SNS sites have positive benefits and that people interact with other ethnical groups when they are on the same SNS service. As far as I know, none of these predispositions have been tested, nor does the author provide any literature review of previous research on these presupposed benefits. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">I conclude that this research is extremely needed step in analyzing demographics of SNS users, nevertheless it is helpful only as an informative case – the question of why are there differences in SNS services use has not been researched and should be explored more in depth in the future. The same is true for the question of who are the non-users and why? <o:p></o:p></span></p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-61991038088334953172008-02-26T23:31:00.000-08:002008-02-26T23:37:24.612-08:00Where is Slovenia? - again<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLSrUQwW1P1scgVkP19sU-8kXvVOqMpbGkpZp7jrsvcgqQOSzDzFUtt7mnkPkolB_oR8BS3Aobm68azFPYoVzntNCXzfi-cUplwXirnLY1sTP4yyrRcrOqsvZL0ehQmEyEWtOCM_DFj20Z/s1600-h/h_4_RESEAUX+X1I1.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLSrUQwW1P1scgVkP19sU-8kXvVOqMpbGkpZp7jrsvcgqQOSzDzFUtt7mnkPkolB_oR8BS3Aobm68azFPYoVzntNCXzfi-cUplwXirnLY1sTP4yyrRcrOqsvZL0ehQmEyEWtOCM_DFj20Z/s400/h_4_RESEAUX+X1I1.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171560638717935682" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Looking at this very interesting picture of social network sites provided by <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/web/infog/0,47-0@2-651865,54-999097@51-999297,0.html">Le Monde</a> I can't help wondering which colour Slovenia would be. It would probably be purple for Facebook.Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-86008121117761538622008-02-26T08:02:00.000-08:002008-02-26T08:22:26.516-08:00Kosovo for slippersThe last days were full of mass media reports on a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3D5VWZoKWBYXE">YouTube video: Kosovo za patike</a>.<br />If at the YouTube they have baned it for younger than 18 - it could be full seen from our commercial TV:<br /><a href="http://24ur.com/naslovnica/novice/crnakronika/20080225_3118360_60101688.php#video_60101688">Svet na Kanalu A</a><br /><br />During the time of riots in Belgrade against the independence of Kosovo two young girls went to a shopping spree - robbing from stores that have been assaulted by rioters. Little did they know (ok they've figured it out in between) that there was an unknown individual filming their adventure. And the video ended up on YouTube where it got extreme attention. They got arrested thanks to the video.<br /><br />This reminded me of a conversation we had the last Wednesday with <a href="http://hermogen.blogspot.com/">Sašo</a> and <a href="http://vobicojb.blogspot.com/">Igor</a> at the pub after the New Media and Society lecture :). Sašo was just telling how internet is an extremely well suited tool for a peer-to-peer surveillance - just as in the time of Hitler Germany "normal" people were the ones doing the surveillance and not the Gestapo. This is a prime example of Sašo's point. Ironically - I am doing it right now :).<br /><br />I am not shure, but I think that the phenomena is termed little brother effect. Does anyone know more on this?Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-1971949996472404082008-02-26T07:43:00.000-08:002008-02-26T08:01:35.884-08:00CensorshipA link to an article was added by one of the <a href="http://aoir.org/">AoIR</a> members to the discussion group on how the Pakistani government managed to shut out about two thirds of the global internet population from YouTube for a while:<br /><h1 style="font-weight: bold;" _extended="true"><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/25/pakistan.youtube/index.html"><span style="font-size:100%;">Pakistan move knocked out YouTube</span></a></h1>I just finished reading an article: <a href="http://gaz.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/69/1/29">Blogging down the dictator by Kuliova and Perlmutter</a> - they describe what role did only one blog had in the recent Kyrgyzstan revolution and compare it to samizdat publishing back in USSR. The main reason for the blog being successful was the fact that authorities could not hack into it - they claim it was because it was on an USA based server. Well, this recent incident once again shows that authorities are getting a lot smarter - getting even better results than they wanted.<br /><br />The other main point that should be taken from this is the fact that even though states are struggling hard to border the internet, it just doesn't work that easily.Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-70693602464601614792008-02-12T01:10:00.000-08:002008-02-12T02:02:28.107-08:00SAFE INTERNET USEIt is a <span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" >Safer Internet Day</span> today. Slovene media are full of advice and reports on safe.si campaign. From <a href="http://213.250.55.115/Ris2007/default.asp?kaj=3&id=2008020605292553">the Slovene ombudsman, </a>to other organizations , safer internet is being promoted.<br /><br />Eupean Commission funds the <a href="http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/en/pub/insafe/index.htm#node">Insafe</a> campaign. Today they have a global <a href="http://blog.eun.org/SID2008/">blogathon</a>, opened by <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/reding/index_en.htm">Commissioner Reding</a>, where they aim for posts from different countries, starting in Australia and going West. I will wait for Slovenia to comment.<br /><br />Although I agree with the ideals of promoting safer internet, I am a bit worried that it can unleash a sort of moral panic and moralistic discourse on internet, causing parents to interpret the main message of the campaign into <span style="font-style: italic;">"the safest internet use is no use at all"</span>. At least the video <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K29gxG8urPY">advertisement</a> made for safe internet use is a "bit" exaggerated.Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-89340977490083092812008-02-11T00:35:00.000-08:002008-02-11T00:57:01.889-08:00THE CABLESThinking about the cable situation in Mediterranean Sea and the consequent internet disruptions in Middle East and India<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7228315.stm">( </a><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7228315.stm">BBC )</a> reminded me of situation when my father accidentally shut out half of the municipality from cable TV. He was closing behind in the hunters lounge when he saw a cable that he didn't know what it was for. So he just plugged it out. It took a whole day for cable people to find out the cause of the malfunction. Fortunately for my father the eager soap and sport fans didn't find out at all.<br /><br />This brings me back to the net - I realized that it is still extremely embedded into offline reality - cutting two cables and everything goes crazy in India and Middle East! It made me wondering about the fragility of our real world which depends on the net so much.<br /><br />Well... I have to chase off my apocalyptic nightmares and have faith in the system. Back to the PhD! ( Still, will it do me any good in case of cables being shut down permanently? Probably not, but in that case neither will most of my education or anything else for that matter - raising goats sounds a much better solution).Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-16514388322202481312008-02-08T07:10:00.000-08:002008-02-08T07:24:48.959-08:00CIVICWEB III<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">2. Monday, 4<sup>th</sup> of February: CIVICWEB practitioners meeting: small group discussion <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">After first presentations we had small groups discussion. In the group I participated in, there was a discussion among two practitioners: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Matija Hiti, </span><st1:place><a href="http://www.vijavaja.com/enter/index.php"><st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Vijavaja.com</span></st1:city></a><span style="" lang="EN-GB">, </span><st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Slovenia</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Carlijn Wiebenga, </span><st1:place><a href="http://www.coolpolitics.org/"><st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Coolpolitics</span></st1:city></a><span style="" lang="EN-GB">, </span><st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Netherlands</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">&<span style=""> </span>four academics: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="">Dr. Fredrik Miegel, Sweden<span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">Dr. Victor Bohm, Hungary<span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Francesco Fabro, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Italy</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">and me, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Slovenia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">. <o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">(And surprisingly most of the talking was done by the practitioners :)<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">We had a discussion among two ways of starting politics, one is bottom up political talk within everyday conversations, but most of the time not going anywhere (Vijavaja.com), the other is a sort of top-down mobilizing effort (Coolpolitics).</span><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Matija was working in a company that produced websites and in the meanwhile started one of the first online communities in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Slovenia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">: Vijavaja.com. Their goal is to enable people to meet friends. If there are any political discussions at vijavaja.com, they are spontaneous. <span style=""> </span>The discussion might have political consequences but according to Matija, someone else has to take care of it. The benchmark is for advertising: number of visitors. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Carlijn from Coolpolitics thought that the social effect of their website would be a lot more difficult to benchmark than for advertising.<o:p><br /><br /></o:p>At vijavaja.com they organize not only online, but offline meetings also, after a while the online spilled into offline. Vijavaja.com functions mostly as an interactive space, the producers do provide their own content, but is in in a traditional form, it is for example in form of funny tests or tests how two people match. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Friderik steped into the discussion with a note that probably the most popular site is file sharing site, it has actually no civic intent at all, but as sharing became an important political topic it too was transformed. With the new law a new political party was established: the <a href="http://www2.piratpartiet.se/international/english">Pirate party</a> – an offspring of Pirate site. This is the fast growing party in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Sweden</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">. People actually do vote for them. Youth section is the third largest of political parties in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Sweden</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">. Matija knew about the site and confirmed that the site is well known. Participants on the vijavaja.com <span style=""> </span>community know for the party and would according to him vote for it if they had the chanche. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Matija presented his view on how, why and where to use different interactive tools. <span style=""> </span>It foremost depends on the goals of the site and on the teams that will be working on the sites. According to him there are four stages of website/community development: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <ol style="margin-top: 0cm;" start="1" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">pure text <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">trying to engage user to engage, but not user to user, but to the content, for example questionnaires, tests etc. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">forums, blogs, which allow some kind of asynchronous communication <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">real life: chat rooms. <o:p></o:p></span></li></ol> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">He stressed that producers too often try to jump over the first or the second level and the lack of the first two levels actually determines that the forum will never work out well. You need a critical mass to come to your website, to know the content first. He stated it rather poetically:<span style=""> </span>you have to live with the website to know when the proper time for what is. According to him the users are usually the ones who give you the signal to start with something new. It is not necessary, of course, that the website goes through this process, Matija finger pointed to YouTube as an example, but added that this is one case in a million. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Similarly Carlijn pointed out that</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> </span><span style="" lang="EN-GB">in Coolpolitics they decided they could only do forums close to elections when there is really close to something to talk about. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p>As vijavaja.com exists already for 5 years, Coolpolitics is has fairly recent site – 8 months (before that they had a static one with which they were not satisfied). They started to work more on their online presence because of several reasons: because everybody is online, to reproduse the content, it is a good way to archive everything that they do. They are not satisfied with their current mobilisation: through TV shows and a magazine, which they consider still to be a podium debate. </span><span style="" lang="EN-US">Carlijn</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> </span><span style="" lang="EN-GB">expressed the faith that getting online will help them to become more interactive. Before the website was only just to support other projects, now they are making it into a project on it self.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Vijavaja.com is a peculiar site, since it closed its doors for new users bacuse the number of users got too large, to handle. Matija expressed this as “Sweet problems” – having too much users. On the other side Coolpolitics reaches for as large number as possible, using offline postcards that are disseminated around bars and places for youth. Next to that they use mass media. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Matija advised that the best thing in mobilizing is not to try to <span style=""> </span>build your own community, but to go and reach the existing online communities. He presented an example when there was a call for bone marrow volunteering and the response from the community was tremendous. <span style=""></span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-10778367768762226742008-02-08T06:48:00.000-08:002008-02-08T07:24:07.721-08:00CIVICWEB II<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Monday, 4<sup>th</sup> of February: CIVICWEB practitioners meeting: presentations by producers of civic websites <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">It was extremely interesting to hear practitioners’ points of view on youth and how to mobilize them, since most of them are doing this for their living. All three presenters at the first discussion were girls, talking on the content and efforts made by their organisations’ websites. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Carlijn Wiebenga<span style=""> <a href="http://www.coolpolitics.org/"> </a></span></span><st1:place><a href="http://www.coolpolitics.org/"><st1:city><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Coolpolitics</span></st1:city></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">, </span><st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Netherlands</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;">Mireia Sabartes<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.cnjc.cat/cnjc/ca/el-consell.html">Catalan National Youth Council</a>, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;">Spain</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;"> + </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.xarxajove.net/frontoffice/ini.php">Xaraxajove,cat</a> (website for information on social life for youth) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;">Jessica Wright<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><a href="http://www.unicef.org.uk/youthvoice/index.asp">Youth Voice</a>, UNICEF</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Since Jessica’s presentation was the most thorough, I am publishing only on Youth Voice. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Most of the ways of participation at Youth Voice are offline. They do, however have some interactive “stuff”: quizzes, videos, you can download banners to put on Facebook or similar. They have a mailing list of 1700 people who have joined for newsletter. <span style=""> </span>What was of special interest to me was that they also have a <a href="http://www.myspace.com/unicefyouthvoice">Myspace page</a>: they partnered with Myspace when it created Myspace Impact – for NGOs to get involved with Myspace community. They have a <a href="http://www.unicef.org.uk/youthvoice/news_item.asp?id=116">Bebo profile and Facebook</a> as well. Furthermore, they did a blog with a young person in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> with a HIV.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">The discussion following the presentations was quite interesting, I managed to note down some of the questions from the audience and answers by all three participants <i style="">(I want to explicitly state, that this is not a direct speech from the participants, some things may have been left out, others overheard, so please take the conversations of informative nature, but not as suitable for quotations.)<o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Q: When young people give you an opinion, do you do something with it - get it to authorities? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;">Catalan National Youth Council</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">: In National Youth Council you can not put any comments, but in xerxia you can put comments. National youth council is on organisations, if you are only an individual, it doesn't really count, it is only through organisations. The main point is that young people talk and work together. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Youth Voice, UNICEF: We have online actions, we created friendly versions of e-democracy initiatives, to send a mail to MP.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Cool politics: Cool politics is not a single issues movement; we try to promote citizenship, so we don't do that. We are not a lobby at all. We think politics is just a small part of citizenship. But we would like young people to discuss online. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Q: How were your projects set of? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Youth Voice, UNICEF: In UNICEF we had an education team. People realised there was a gap there, intially they had just one person which became a team. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Coolpolitics: Coolpolitics was organised by the director, he studied political science, his way of thinking is that young people are interested it is just not presented in a right way. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Q: How are you funded?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Coolpolitics: First four years we applied for different projects. For<span style=""> </span>example, if<span style=""> </span>you do a debate on environment, you go to environmental clubs. Also to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Holland</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> fundations, international development agency and the lottery. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Youth Voice, UNICEF: We are partly financed by prime minister the rest from other organisations. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;">Catalan National Youth Council</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">: From Catalan parliament. But you can't decide how many money you can put in each project.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Q: I think you (presenter from </span></b><st1:country-region><st1:place><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Spain</span></b></st1:place></st1:country-region><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">) said you don't bealive in forums. Could you elaborate on it?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;">Catalan National Youth Council</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">: I myself have never been in one. What happens is that people push for a forum and I tried to do it, but it just doesn’t work.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Youth Voice, UNICEF: The international UNICEF has a youth forum which works brilliantly so we tend to send people there. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Q: I would be interested to know how your funding evaluates the outcome, does it stress for outcomes, do you need to adjust your goals? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Coolpolitics: If we get too influenced, young people will not believe us anymore, so we demand total freedom. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Q: Have you got any mechanisms for taking decisions from young people about your websites? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Coolpolitics: Every year we have one or two students who do a research. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Youth Voice, UNICEF: We try to involve young people all the time. Users can consult at the website youth advisors directly. I personally have been travelling through schools and ask them what the want from the site. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial;">Catalan National Youth Council</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">: We have a really good webmaster and you can send him your requests and he will do it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-90060562929723499832008-02-08T05:21:00.000-08:002008-02-08T06:20:26.643-08:00CIVICWEB I<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> </span></b><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Introductory note: <o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">I agreed to blog on the seminar I attended as the researcher in Civicweb: CIVICWEB, from 4<sup>th</sup> to 5<sup>th</sup> of February in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> organized by the project leaders: </span><a href="http://www.childrenyouthandmediacentre.co.uk/projects.asp?Completed=no&TableName=&RowID=6&ResearchProjectsID=40"><strong><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-weight: normal;font-family:Arial;" >Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, </span></strong><st1:place><st1:placetype><strong><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-weight: normal;font-family:Arial;" >Institute</span></strong></st1:placetype><strong><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-weight: normal;font-family:Arial;" > of </span></strong><st1:placename><strong><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-weight: normal;font-family:Arial;" >Education</span></strong></st1:placename></st1:place></a><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">.</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"> The incentive came from Nick, as he discovered that conference blogging is a <a href="http://digitalstudiesseminar.blogspot.com/2008/02/blogging-as-profession.html">popular thing to do</a>, and conference blogs are becoming a new blog genre with conventions and <a href="http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001253.html">guidance</a> on how to do it. <span style=""> </span>Since I planned to start bloggin again, and Nick has been trying to persuade me on it for some time now, it also became one of the first tasks for my new Validity blog. The conference lasted for two day, but since Nick has already published information on the second day aimed at academics, I will publish more extensively on the first day: meeting with practitioners. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">More on Civicweb project and the seminar: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul style="margin-top: 0cm; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://www.civicweb.eu/">Civicweb website</a></span> </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://digitalstudiesseminar.blogspot.com/2008/02/civicweb-1-colemans-vision.html">Nick’s post on the second day of the conference</a> <o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt; text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Thoughts on blogging a conference <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">This definitely was not my conference. Don’t get me wrong, this has nothing to do with the content of the conference, I just had an overspill of logistic problems. I somehow managed to delete/corrupt my wireless days before, but of course remembered that I will need it only on Sunday – a day before the departure. (Then I tried to fix it and ruined my cable connection also, which took me couple of hours to fix.)<span style=""> </span>Publishing a blog from the conference thus was out of the question since they only had wireless for public use. To make the long story short, my hand-bag was stolen with my passport, credit cards, telephone and money with it the night before my plane left. I have learned that for every foul act of one person there is an effort of much more good people needed to correct it. So, thanks to Tadej, my friend, the Slovene embassy, and people from Travel Care of Gatwick Airport I got home on the same day I had it planned, it just took me a lot longer, was much more expensive, and almost gave me a heart attack or a nervous breakdown (the last two are exaggerations, but you probably can imagine, how it feels to be without a penny in a foreign country depending only on the kindness of others).<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">I am not sure I would publish the blog simultaneously even if I had the wireless – it really took me a lot of time to edit and multitask the text with all the links to other information. But probably with experience it gets a lot easier. <span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;"><o:p> </o:p>The lessons I can get out of the experience of blogging on conferences: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <ol style="margin-top: 0cm; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);" start="1" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Make sure you have your internet connections all sorted before you go anywhere. <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Take good care of your personal belongings! <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Arial;">Blogging on conferences is a difficult and at least at the begging time-consuming task, but an extremely useful way for making notes with links on presenters and presentations. <o:p></o:p></span></li></ol> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(51, 255, 255);"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"></span></p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-13019611508029180302008-02-08T04:28:00.001-08:002008-02-08T04:28:57.871-08:00Why Validity?<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">First, I like the ring the words leaves in my ears – it sounds like a gentle triangle sound. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Second, it reminds me of Trinity and the Matrix, one of my favourite movies. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Third, I like the concept in research – there are no proofs of validity beyond theoretical thought and deliberative consensus among researchers. Having a blog on my own research and my thoughts may contribute to its validity. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2539518980946505787.post-68850491560981559422008-02-08T04:13:00.000-08:002008-02-08T04:27:30.876-08:00MORE ABOUT ME<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">I am<span style=""> </span>a young researcher at the <a href="http://www.fdv.uni-lj.si/">Faculty of Social Sciences</a>, </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="" lang="EN-GB">University</span></st1:PlaceType><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> of </span><st1:placename><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Ljubljana</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> where I graduated at the Media and Communication Studies. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">I am writing (or trying to write) a PhD on internet, globalisation, public participation... <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">I work as one of the researchers at the 6th framework project: <a href="http://www.civicweb.eu/">CIVICWEB</a> on young people, internet and civic engagement. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">After my first trials in blogging: <a href="http://sub-political.blogspot.com/">Subpolitical</a> and exercise in collecting mails: <a href="http://maja.turnsek.googlepages.com/home">E-mail Watch</a>, I start once again with a blog. This time I decided it will be more on me, the interesting findings I stumble across when surfing around the net and the problems I encounter when thinking about globalisation, internet, the public, civic, political…<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p>I have to thank for this second as well as the first blog to my co-supervisor professor Nick Jankowski who leads the New Media and Society seminar at the </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="" lang="EN-GB">University</span></st1:PlaceType><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> of </span><st1:placename><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Ljubljana</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">, who gave me of a little “push” and convinced me to start blogging (again). Well, this time I will stay around (at least this is sort of a new years resolution). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">I do have a life beyond academia. Most evenings I dance tango at our <a href="http://www.tangoslovenija.si/">Tango Bar</a> and help with teaching at <a href="http://www.100tango.si/?gclid=CNzN4O-3944CFQjllAodaD-jIQ">100% Tango</a> dance school. I’ve met Peter there. My plans for life are to get married, write a PhD, dance tango and live happily ever after. Sounds simple. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Maja Turnšek Hančičhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17478204223152482021noreply@blogger.com0