William H. Dutton

I’ve run across the promotional material for a new book by David Wright and Paul De Hert, Privacy Impact Assessment, Springer, Dordrecht, 2012. They argue that the book ‘is timely as the European Commission’s proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation would make privacy impact assessments mandatory for any organisation processing “personal data where those [...]

European Competition for Best Innovations in University Outreach and Public Engagement As part of the EC-funded ULab project, the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford is organizing an online competition to identify the most innovative outreach and public engagement activities carried out by European Universities. Both individuals and groups may apply for awards. [...]

The worldwide diffusion of the Internet is one of the most promising technological developments of the 21st Century. Over 2 billion people use the Internet with large proportions of North America and West Europe online, but larger numbers of users – and growing fast – in such rapidly developing nations as Brazil, Russia, India and [...]

The Advisory Committees to Ofcom have created a blog site to provide useful information of relevance to anyone with a serious interest in communication issues across the communities and nations of the UK and Northern Ireland. It is designed to inform members of the various advisory committees to Ofcom. It will accomplish this by using [...]

[The following is a penultimate version of my introduction to the 2011 report of the World Internet Project (WIP) Poland. I recommend the report to those interested in the WIP and the diffusion and impacts of the Internet in Poland and other European nations. The full report is available at: http://badania.gazeta.pl/PressOffice/PressKit.1625.po?category_id=1759] A transcription of the discussion [...]

News of the launch of ParentPort should be of interest to all following communication issues, as it aims to provide an integrated, single site, to help households complain about content or material they feel is inappropriate for children, such as by helping to direct them to the appropriate regulator. This complements initiatives by the largest [...]

The outpouring of tributes to Steve Jobs speaks to his enormous global impact. So many have rightly described him as a design and marketing genius, but he will and should be credited with a far greater role in literally – to paraphrase Alan Kay – inventing the future. He is among the key individuals who [...]

A Decade in Internet Time: OII-iCS Open Plenary Session in celebration of the Oxford Internet Institute’s tenth anniversary Thursday 22 September 2011 16:30 – 18:30 Location: Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre, Said Business School, Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HP. This public plenary panel is the centrepiece of the iCS-OII Symposium on A Decade in Internet [...]

I participated in a debate at the Oxford Union last year on the significance of informal learning. I argued that informal learning is a critical resource that is being utilized by networked individuals, and that networked institutions, like universities, need to understand how to capture the value of these informal practices. A nice summary and [...]

I worked with several colleagues at the OII (Victoria Nash, Monica Bulger, and Alissa Cooper) to pen responses to Jeremy Hunt’s Open Letter, requesting feedback of relevance to the new communications bill. They were submitted under my name as director of the OII, but also as a Co-Principal Investigator of the ESRC Seminar Series, entitled [...]