Posts tagged social media

Book: Producing the Internet – Critical Perspectives of Social Media

Should contemporary media culture be understood as a culture that offers unprecedented freedom for producing participators – so-called “produsers”, or should it rather be understood as a culture in which various forms of user participation in fact are conditioned, or even manufactured, by organized, professional producers?

The contributions to this book add to our critical understanding of these new forms of media. They all draw on various theoretical concepts – such as producers, community, and participation – used when analysing media culture. But they also share a critical interest in problematizing and analysing the forms of power built into this culture.

Editor: Tobias Olsson

Publisher: Nordicom, 2013

Read more: http://www.nordicom.gu.se/?portal=publ&main=info_publ2.php&ex=378&me=13

Selected chapter titles:

  • Social Media and Capitalism
  • Dirty Work. Why Journalists Shun Reader Comments
  • Transmedia Storytelling and a Young Audience. Public Service in the Blogosphere Era

CFP: Making Sense of Converging Media (Finland, due April 28)

The MindTrek conference explores the emerging and frontier-breaking applications of new media in everyday contexts of leisure, business and organizational life, with tracks on Social Media, Ambient & Ubiquitous Media, Business & Media, Human-Computer Interaction, Open Source, and Digital Games.

Due April 28, and May 10, 2013. Extended deadline June 2, 2013 Read more.

October 1-4, 2013, Tampere, Finland.

MORE – The MindTrek Association hosts MindTrek as a yearly conference, where the Academic MindTrek conference has been a part of this unique set of events comprising competitions, world famous keynote speakers, plenary sessions, media festivals, and workshops since 1997. It is a meeting place where researchers, experts and thinkers present results from their latest work regarding the development of Internet, interactive media, and the information society.

Full call available at http://www.academicmindtrek.org/

New book: Media, Society, World – Social Theory and Digital Media Practice

In the recently launched podcast series New Books in Communications, Nick Couldry’s book Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice is discussed.

BOOK SUMMARY – In Media, Society, World, Couldry provides a sweeping synthesis of his important media theory over the last decade. Couldry reassesses his work on media rituals, media power, and the “hidden injuries” of representation in light of cross-cultural diversity as well as the sudden eruption of social media. The book argues convincingly that these theories remain relevant to a social media age, in a rich, chapter-by-chapter engagement with contemporary social theory. Couldry makes a cogent case for a “practice approach” to media studies that treats a wide range of social activity—and not just production or consumption—as media-related and worthy of study. The book is concerned with big themes—social order, justice and power—but also furnishes a toolkit of mid-range theories that deserve to be applied, and wrestled with, in empirical research. Media, Society, World provides a nuanced verdict on the prospects of digital democracy, advances a de-territorialized notion of “media cultures,” and furnishes a theory of media power through a highly original rethinking of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. The concluding chapter asks readers to engage with a literature—and a set of questions—that media scholars rarely address: media justice in the context of moral and political philosophy. The book is a major statement from the leading media theorist working today.

Author: Nick Couldry, Professor of Media and Communications, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths University of London

Publisher: Polity Press, 2012

PODCAST – New Books in Communications features discussions with communication scholars on their recently published books.

New book: Tweets and the Streets - Social Media and Contemporary Activism

Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the “indignados” protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest.

Author: Paolo Gerbaudo, Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London.

Publisher: Pluto Press.

Read more about this book: http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745332482

MORE - Gerbaudo argues that activists’ use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a “cyberspace” detached from physical reality. Instead, social media are used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space and are turned by protest organises into means to ‘choreograph’ the assembling of individualised constituencies around “occupied” places such as Cairo’s Tahrir Square or New York’s Zuccotti Park. An exciting and invigorating journey through the new politics of dissent, Tweets and the Streets points both to the creative possibilities and to the risks of political evanescence which social media brings to the contemporary protest experience.

CFP: Social Media, Journalism and Communication Practitioners - International Symposium (abstracts due May 15)

Scholars debate on how journalism as a profession is changing and about the impacts of new technologies such as social media. This international symposium explores this issue.

Abstracts due May 15, 2012.

7th September 2012, North Holmes Campus, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

About the call
Social media, and the Internet in general, are having dramatic impacts on journalism (Deuze, 2007; Sarrica, 2010). Traditional practices of newsgathering, verifying stories and reporting are transforming and with that the profession itself is perceived to be changing fundamentally. Web 2.0 Internet technologies are viewed to have changed “newsroom culture and the professionals involved” and they “challenge perceptions of the roles and functions of journalism as a whole” (Deuze and Paulussen, 2002, p. 216). But scholars continue to debate exactly how journalism as a profession is changing and about the impacts of new technologies such as social media (Lasorsa et al., 2012). Discussion on the impacts of these technologies have centred on three main issues: changes in relationship with the audience, changing journalistic practices and changes in professional values and the profession as a whole. This international symposium explores these and related issues.

The conference is open to academics as well as industry practitioners.

Papers/presentations are invited in the general subject area of social media. Suggestions include, but are not limited to:

  • Comparative study of social media use
  • Impact of social media on audience relationship
  • Changing journalistic practices
  • Purposes of social media use
  • Attitudes towards social media
  • PR professionals and social media
  • Patterns of social media usages
  • Impacts of social media on journalistic values
  • Influence of social media on communication practices

Best papers from the symposium will be published in a special edition of a refereed journal.

Please send 250 word abstracts to agnes.gulyas(at)canterbury.ac.uk

Aca-article: Internationally Distributed Living Labs and Digital Ecosystems for Fostering Local Innovations in Everyday Life

In this paper, we propose a Digital Ecosystem architecture, which combines the social media and Internet-of-Things.

Authors: Tingan Tang, Zhenyu Wu, Kimmo Karhu, Matti Hämäläinen, Yang Ji. Published in the Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence.

Open-access article: http://ojs.academypublisher.com/index.php/jetwi/article/view/jetwi0401106115

Abstract
There are an increasing number of information sources and services around us enabling new ways of interacting with our everyday environment. Examples include intelligent devices, sensors embedded in the environment and the emerging Internet-of-Things. Simultaneously users are becoming increasingly involved as information providers and consumers by means of Web 2.0 and social media. While these areas have gained a lot of attention recently and while the research on Digital Ecosystems has also dealt with these phenomena separately there seems to be need for research on the rich and complex ecosystem combining the sensor-based information sources with Web 2.0 and mobile services. In this paper, we propose a Digital Ecosystem architecture, which combines the social media and Internet-of-Things. The architecture is the fruit from the international collaboration between two long-term university Living Lab projects in Finland and in China. It aims at fostering student innovations in their everyday campus lives. We discuss the experiences learnt in the context of this international collaboration and the implications to Digital Ecosystem research.

Keywords: Living Labs, Digital Ecosystems, Internet of Things, Ubiquitous Computing, Web of Things, Social Media

CFP: Policy and Internet - Special Issue on Online Collective Action and Policy Change (due March 31)

This issue of Policy and Internet calls for academic papers reporting novel empirical research on how online collective action drives policy change, in any of its ramifications.

Paper deadlin: March 31, 2012. ‘Policy and Internet’  Special Issue on “Online Collective Action and Policy Change”

Policy and Internet, the first major peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary journal investigating the impact of the internet on public policy, is inviting submissions for a special issue on ‘Online Collective Action and Policy Change’, to be published in January 2013 (paper deadline: 31 March 2012). The journal is edited by the Oxford Internet Institute (University of Oxford) for the Policy Studies Organization (PSO). Please find more information at: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news/?id=595

The Internet has created a new interface between collective action and policy making: it opens new channels for social coordination and mobilisation, and it offers multiple platforms from where to influence public opinion and policy makers. The recent wave of protests that has swept authoritarian regimes like Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, but also western liberal democracies like Greece, Spain, and the UK, offers new empirical evidence of the impact that online interactions and information exchange can have on policy making.

In addition to these recent instances of contentious politics, advocacy and grassroots groups are increasingly using online technologies to empower local communities and direct change in the policies that most affect them. And issues at the heart of online governance, like Internet regulation, are motivating many collective efforts directed to shaping file-sharing policies, free software, or digital communication rights.

This special issue calls for academic papers reporting novel empirical research on how online collective action drives policy change, in any of its ramifications. This includes topics such as:

  • The coordination of protests and mobilisations using online technologies, and their impact on public opinion and policy making.
  • The mechanisms through which online collective action grows and diffuses, and how or when they trigger a policy reaction.
  • The impact of online activity on issue salience, and the responsiveness of policy makers.
  • The interplay between online collective action and the offline policy cycle, or how policy makers deal with new sources of instability and disruption.

This list of topics is not exhaustive, and other questions related to online collective action and its impact on policy making will be considered. Please contact the guest editors Andrea Calderaro (andrea.calderaro(at)eui.eu) and Anastasia Kavada (a.kavada(at)westminster.ac.uk) if you have any queries about how your paper might fit in the issue.

Paper Submissions
The online submission deadline for papers is 31 March 2012. Please indicate in the cover letter that the paper is intended for the special issue ‘Online Collective Action and Policy Change’. Authors are advised to consult the journal’s Guide for Authors before submitting their paper.

Guest Editors
- Andrea Calderaro (PhD, European University Institute)
- Anastasia Kavada (PhD,  University of Westminster)

New Book: Net Smart - How to Thrive Online (by Howard Rheingold)

In this book, cyberculture expert Howard Rheingold shows us how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully. To be published March 23, 2012.

Published by the MIT Press. View on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262017458/apophenia-20

Book description

Like it or not, knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient to personal success in the twenty-first century. But how can we use digital media so that they make us empowered participants rather than passive receivers, grounded, well-rounded people rather than multitasking basket cases? In Net Smart, cyberculture expert Howard Rheingold shows us how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully.

Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time. Rheingold outlines five fundamental digital literacies, online skills that will help us do this:

  • attention
  • participation
  • collaboration
  • critical consumption of information (or “crap detection”)
  • network smarts.

Rheingold explains how attention works, and how we can use our attention to focus on the tiny relevant portion of the incoming tsunami of information. He describes the quality of participation that empowers the best of the bloggers, netizens, tweeters, and other online community participants; he examines how successful online collaborative enterprises contribute new knowledge to the world in new ways; and he teaches us a lesson on networks and network building

Rheingold points out that there is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. If we combine our individual efforts wisely, it could produce a more thoughtful society: countless small acts like publishing a Web page or sharing a link could add up to a public good that enriches everybody.

Found on Twitter via @zephoria

Dissertation: Beyond the Blog - examining the blog communities as materially afforded and socially constructed spaces

This dissertation examines weblog community as a materially afforded and socially constructed space. In a set of three case studies, this dissertation examines three separate weblog communities between 2004 and 2008.

By: Stephanie Hendrick, Faculty of Humanities, Institution for Language Studies, Umeå University, Sweden.

Access full-text version of this disseration here.

Abstract
This dissertation examines weblog community as a materially afforded and socially constructed space. In a set of three case studies, this dissertation examines three separate weblog communities between 2004 and 2008.

CASE STUDY I looks at knowledge management bloggers in order to better understand how bloggers form communities. In this case study, it will be shown that blogs group thematically and in temporal bursts. These bursts of thematic activity allow for movement in and out of a community, as well as act as a bridge between different weblog communities.

CASE STUDY II examines two pseudonymous bloggers in order to better understand how presentation and identity is understood in blogging. It will be shown in CASE STUDY II that social identity in weblog communities is negotiated through blogging practices such as transparency in writing and truthful presentation.

CASE STUDY III delves further into social identity by examining a community of academic bloggers and how traditional, institutionalized expectations influence social identity over time, and if this influence differs in the core and periphery of the community. It will be shown in CASE STUDY III that there is indeed a difference in how social identity is negotiated and performed between core and periphery members of a weblog community.

Finally, a model towards an integrated approach to researching blogs is put forth.

Keywords: weblogs, blogs, community, mediated discourse analysis, nexus analysis, social identity, network

Access full-text version of this disseration here.

New Book: Networks without a Cause - A Critique of Social Media (Geert Lovink)

With the vast majority of Facebook users caught in a frenzy of ‘friending’, ‘liking’ and ‘commenting’, at what point do we pause to grasp the consequences of our info-saturated lives? What compels us to engage so diligently with social networking systems? Networks Without a Cause examines our collective obsession with identity and self-management coupled with the fragmentation and information overload endemic to contemporary online culture.

By Geert Lovink. 220 pages, Polity Press, 2012. View on Amazon.

Geert Lovink: Critique of Social Media from network cultures on Vimeo.

With a dearth of theory on the social and cultural ramifications of hugely popular online services, Lovink provides a path-breaking critical analysis of our over-hyped, networked world with case studies on search engines, online video, blogging, digital radio, media activism and the Wikileaks saga. This book offers a powerful message to media practitioners and theorists: let us collectively unleash our critical capacities to influence technology design and workspaces, otherwise we will disappear into the cloud. Probing but never pessimistic, Lovink draws from his long history in media research to offer a critique of the political structures and conceptual powers embedded in the technologies that shape our daily lives.