February, 2009

Noticed — No Comments
13
Feb 09

Paul Jones on WUNC

My mentor, former boss, co-adviser and friend Paul Jones will be the guest on WUNC’s (NPR) “The State of Things” on Monday, February 16.  Paul writes:

I’ll be on WUNC’s The State of Things on Monday February 16 at noon (EST). I’ll probably be talking with Frank Stasio about: ibiblio.org !!!!!

And upcoming things from or involving me and ibiblio:

Don’t miss it!  WUNC will be streaming the show in Real, MP3, and a host of other formats.  Big congrats to Paul!

Noticed / Research — No Comments
13
Feb 09

CFP: 2009 Summer Research Institute for Science of Sociotechnical Systems

I attended the CSST Summer Research Institute in 2008 and found it to be a tremendously rewarding experience.  I met lots of new people, received a lot of feedback on my dissertations ideas, and enjoyed a week’s break from the scorching NC summer!  It looks like the 2009 CSST, to be held in the Adirondack Mountains, will be just as amazing.  Find the full CFP at the AOIR listserv archive.

A science of socio-technical systems is emerging from research in the fields of HCI, social computing, social informatics, CSCW, sociology of computing, and other domains. The Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST) is a new organization devoted to advancing research on socio-technical systems. Building on the success of the 2008 Summer Research Institute, the CSST will, again, be hosting a summer research institute for advanced doctoral students and pre-tenure faculty in summer, 2009. A primary goal of the institute is to build a new cohort of faculty and graduate students who are interested in research on the design and interplay of technology and humans at the level of individuals, groups, organizations, and larger communities. Examples of this kind of work include research on: * new forms of organizing (e.g., virtual organizations, massive online activities) * social computing (e.g., online communities, social network sites); * distributed work (e.g., collaboratories, virtual teams and organizations); * new technologies (e.g., recommender systems, prediction markets, ubiquitous computing); * novel forms of production (e.g., open source software, Wikipedia); * new forms of expression and entertainment (e.g., blogs, wikis, massive multiplayer online role-playing games); and * information and communication technologies for developing regions (e.g., cell phone-based applications to assist economic development, infrastructure development for local economic action).

Again, I can’t recommend this institute enough.  If you have any questions feel free to drop me a line.

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12
Feb 09

Pew Internet: Twitter and status updating

As of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others.

Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34. Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter. The decline is even more stark among older internet users; 4% of 55-64 year olds and 2% of those 65 and older use Twitter.

via Pew Internet: Twitter and status updating.

Noticed / Software — 1 Comment
5
Feb 09

Freedom in the Chronicle

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog writes about Freedom today:

Fred Stutzman, a Ph.D. student and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, may not have had Rousseau in mind when he created the “Freedom” application. But he does believe that to escape the siren song of social media, scholars might need to freely impose restrictions on themselves. “When there’s wireless everywhere,” he told The Chronicle, “how do we really escape the Internet?”

Mr. Stutzman’s answer is to relinquish one’s right to surf the Web to the supervision of a sort of robotic schoolmarm. Freedom is a shareware application that users instruct to disable their computers’ network adapters for a fixed period of time, leaving them unable to browse the Internet for up to eight hours.

Mr. Stutzman created Freedom as a tool for researchers and writers such as himself who, like many Internet users, have become so restless that they must exile themselves from cyberspace in order to concentrate on their work. “As a doctoral student, it’s something that we’re all familiar with,” he said. “Anybody who needs to do long writing or Internet research … it’s hard to draw the line between work and time-wasting.”

Freedom’s current version is 0.4.1, and you can download it here for free (thanks to iBiblio for the hosting!).  I also enjoy reading feedback or feature requests on blogs and Twitter, or you can email me privately.  Windows users, I’m sorry, but there are no plans to develop a Windows version.

Noticed / Research — No Comments
5
Feb 09

Legal Analysis of Social Marketing

Bill McGeveran has posted a draft legal analysis of social marketing, to appear in the University of Illinois Law Review.  Bill writes:

I’ve completed a manuscript for my newest journal article, which began life as some posts (starting here) musing about the legal implications of Facebook’s then-new advertising programs, including Facebook Beacon, which notified users’ friends of their purchases.

The abstract:

“Social marketing” is among the newest advertising trends now emerging on the internet. Using online social networks such as Facebook or MySpace, marketers can send personalized promotional messages featuring an ordinary customer to that customer’s friends. Because they reveal a customer’s browsing and buying patterns, and because they feature implied endorsements, the messages raise significant concerns about disclosure of personal matters, information quality, and individuals’ ability to control the commercial exploitation of their identity. Yet social marketing falls through the cracks between several different legal paradigms that might allow its regulation — spanning from privacy to trademark and unfair competition to consumer protection to the appropriation tort and rights of publicity.

This Article examines potential concerns with social marketing and the various legal responses available. It demonstrates that none of the existing legal paradigms, which all evolved in response to particular problems, addresses the unique new challenges posed by social marketing. Even though policymakers ultimately may choose not to regulate social marketing at all, that decision cannot be made intelligently without first contemplating possible problems and solutions. The Article concludes by suggesting a legal response that draws from existing law and requires only small changes. In doing so, it provides an example for adapting existing law to new technology, and it argues that law should play a more active role in establishing best practices for emerging online trends.

This article along with James Grimmelman’s recent Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy, are must reads for scholars interested in the legal implications of information sharing in online social networks.  Both are wonderful contributions from some very right-headed scholars.

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4
Feb 09

OII Launches New Journal

Via Paul DiMaggio, news that the Oxford Internet Institute has launched a new journal, Policy and Internet.  The journal is open-accessed, and they are currently accepting submissions for the first volume.

The Policy Studies Organization (PSO), the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), and Berkeley Electronic Press are proud to announce Policy and Internet: the first major peer-reviewed journal investigating the implications of the Internet and associated technologies for public policy. The Internet is now the most important international medium of communication and information exchange, embedded in interactions between citizens, firms, governments and NGOs, and bringing with it new practices, norms and structures. The societal shift enabled by the Internet has major implications for public policy in all sectors, requiring rigorous empirical investigation, theoretical development and methodological innovation across academic disciplines. Policy and Internet is the first journal to fill a crucial gap in policy knowledge and research. It will be the premier venue for scholars and researchers to set the public policy agenda in the digital era.

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3
Feb 09

The DTH visits Online Social Networks

The Daily Tar Heel visited my class last evening:

Instead of using Facebook to avoid studying, students in Fred Stutzman’s “Online Social Networks” course are making it the basis of their class.

Stutzman, a Ph.D. student in the School of Information and Library Science, is studying social technology and writing his dissertation on programs such as Facebook.

Now he is sharing that knowledge with a diverse group of about 15 students, including undergraduates, international students and older adults returning to college.

His dissertation covers how people who are transitioning between stages of life use social networks to get personal support, expand friendships and incorporate those connections into daily life.

Very cool!  In other news, I’ll be uploading slides from this course to Slideshare.  Feel free to follow along.

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