Tag Archives: IR10

Public Sphere and Democracy (AoIR conference session)

  By netcrit | October 10, 2009 - 22:35 | See
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Willson: public sphere and protocol Notes that Habermas’s public sphere concept originally tied to physical space and embodied interaction; cites 1992 Habermas, however: uncouples the public sphere from space in this way. “Protocol is a language that regulates flow, directs netspace, codes relationships and connects life-forms” (Galloway) – protocol is both enabling and disabling – [ Foucault - power? protocol as language of power] Basically, paper presenting a nice comparison of H’s public sphere and G’s protocol as two ways of conceiving this space outside of the structures and forms of state and citizen interaction. Suggests code is a layer between structures of politics and participation. Jensen: Public Sphere 2.0 New data – internet as mediator. contrasts Public Sphere 1.0 – classic political citizenship, old media; Public Sphere 2.0 cultural citizenship, new media – Denmark as the case study; presents information showing different kinds of media use – [problem - claims that the Internet is media - is it?]; focus is on how people get the news – TV 1st, Internet 2nd. Presents usual kinds of ‘what people do online’ data; deploys the old media / new media divide consistently. Does this work? Perhaps not. Could the social media approach … Click to read more →

History of ‘new’ media (or the Internet is not ‘new media’)

  By netcrit | October 10, 2009 - 07:24 | See
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Blogging Keith Herndon’s paper on newspaper industries and the Internet (full disclosure; Keith is one of my graduate students) Keith’s research is important for providing the ‘long history’ of newspapers and electronic information technologies (note, print news was itself an information technology!). Notes the 1970s – emergence of commercial databases, and the electronic publishing paradigm. 1980s – attempts to establish videotext as viable business model – Knight-Ridder, Viewtron “primitive by today’s standards, but cutting edge at the time”. Fails – not adopted by “early technology adopters”. There were similar projects. These projects – both experience of them and failure – left newspapers wary about investing in electronic ventures and perhaps meant they were unprepared for Internet and, indeed, resistant of it. Resistant, in particular, of the telecommunications industry moving into this field which was seen as ‘belonging’ to the news; then also attempted to defend their interests by creating alliances with companies like Prodigy. This is why new media is not new; new media is a phrase that could easily describe events from 1970s onwards, not just the Internet. Moreover, the Internet disrupts what was already being done with ‘new media’. In the 1990s, as the INternet emerges as a … Click to read more →

Identity and the Internet: towards the Content-Generated User

  By netcrit | October 10, 2009 - 01:07 | Think
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Meditations sparked by AoIR conference session on State of Internet Studies panel (part of Internet: Critical, IR 10.0). Ess sums up the shift in thinking about identity (echoed by Consalvo): identity play, postmodern, end of meatspace in 1990s – it’s now clear that research into the Internet dominated by the Internet in Everyday Life paradigm. Consalvo comments neatly that educational uses of 2nd Life, etc, started with ‘let’s re-present the classroom – chairs, lecterns etc – in 2nd Life’ but now is considering the manner in which the alternatives (flying, etc) can become educationally useful. So there is something going on in our thinking about, and using the Internet, where we try to mirror ‘real life’ (and thereby define ‘real life’ by saying the Internet isn’t real life but simulates it), or we go through the mirror into a different, twisted place. Current dominant research and analysis probably rejects both of these alternatives, and yet do people using the Internet think as we do? Linking back to Buchanan’s comments on research ethics: agency of participants in research is crucial; and agency links to identity. Thinking… Discussions of user-generated content (UGC) construct the user in ways that assume a more traditional, … Click to read more →

Googlization of Everything… (keynote, AoIR Conference)

  By netcrit | October 9, 2009 - 04:06 | See
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‘The Googlization of Everything and the Human Knowledge Project’ Keynote presentation by Siva Vaidhyanathan Blogging, Tweeting and backchanneling… hm… Books about the Internet are a challenge because of the time from completion to publication and the speed of change in things Internet. How long can you go without using Google? – Some google product will influence most of your online activities. Despite the short time of the company’s existence it has a profound impact on our lives. Focus of concern is from the commencement of the Google scanning of millions of library books; worrying for Siva and, moreover, positive reaction from commentators (Kelly, Lessig) also worrying. Is this transformational? Why is it claimed to be? Does it realise librarians’ dreams for perfect digital information sharing? And yet it seems Google is positively viewed – partly because they give so much, and no money changes hands. We are not Google’s customers, however, we are their product. Google learns from us. Googlization – “processed, rendered and represented by Google” – knowledge, communication and us can be Googlized. [Link to the notion of content-generated user I am developing]. Note the massive array of applications and services within Google. Brin says : perfect search … Click to read more →