Archive for the 'Social Issues' Category



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 [...]

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 [...]

Symposium  to  be  held  at   University  of  York,  UK   18-20 July  2012 Call  for  Papers: http://www.york.ac.uk/satsu/news-events/ics/ The   ubiquitous   social   and   cultural   adoption   of   social   media,   such   as   Twitter,   Google,   Wikipedia,  YouTube  and  Facebook  can  be  seen  to  present  a  significant [...]

[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 [...]

ESRC Seminar Series: ‘Digital Policy: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights’ (RES-451-26-0849) 2011-13 ‘Digital Literacy and Self-Regulation Online: Insights for Policy’ Friday November 18 2011, University of Leicester, UK (Hosted by the Department of Media and Communication) This seminar explores different understandings and roles of digital literacy and issues of online self-regulation. It works against the background [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

May I draw your attention to a recent article in the Journal of Information Technology that presents a framework I’ve developed for conceptualising the social and technical choices shaping the next generation of research: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jit/journal/v26/n2/full/jit20112a.html If you would like an offprint please contact enquiries@oii.ox.ac.uk giving your name and postal address. The paper draws on research [...]

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 [...]