William H. Dutton

Whichever Estate: Exactly Right

Mitt Romney has been accused of a number of gaffes, but one seems a bit unfair, as he spoke of ‘… some in the Fourth Estate, or whichever estate, who are more interested in finding something to write about …’.* Well – Candidate Romney is not the only person to wonder what to call the new role of the Internet and social media in creating an estate of the 21^st Century that is every bit as important as the press since the 18^th Century. I’ve called it the Fifth Estate, and a piece of mine with others was published today about the interrelationship between the Fourth and Fifth Estate in Britain. Hope you have a chance to read it and put a name to this new estate of the Internet realm. See: http://www.ijis.net/ijis7_1/ijis7_1_newman_et_al_pre.html  So it is exactly right to recognize an estate other than the Fourth.

*Quoted from Chris McGreal, ‘Rivals seize on candidate’s string of gaffes’, The Guardian, 1 August 2012, p. 17.

While I’ve been studying the Internet, it has somehow ‘passed a tipping point’ for online learning! At least that is the claim of a number of really ambitious projects in e-learning, including EdX at Harvard-MIT and Coursera at Stanford-Pennsylvania. There is a very clearly argued and supportive piece on the promise of these initiatives on BBC News Online by Sean Coughlan, where I am about the only skeptic. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18191589

Well, have I been scarred by my experience in trying to teach an online course over several years, or by the earlier push for online education around the time of the dotcom crash? Has access to the Internet and the availability of online materials really reached a tipping point when the early visions can be realized?

I am not a luddite in this area, having focused on this promise for some time, such as with a book with Brian Loader.* However, I fear that some enthusiasts today are not focusing on the ability of EdX for example to raise 60M in grants and other support to provide a ‘free’ service. Others will not be able to use this business model. That said, I am delighted to see new developments in this area, and hope they succeed.

*Dutton, W. H. and Loader, B. D. (2002) (eds.), Digital Academe: New Media and Institutions in Higher Education and Learning, London: Taylor & Francis/Routledge.

As a part of the 10 year anniversary celebrations of the OII, the publishers of iCS, Taylor & Francis Routledge, have provided free access – until the end of the year – to the special issue of the journal which includes a selection of some the excellent papers which were presented last Autumn. They include articles by Leah Lievrouw, David Karpf, danah boyd and Katie Crawford, Eszter Hargittai and Eden Litt, Megan Lindsay and Judy Krysik, Laura DeNardis, Lance Bennett and Alex Segerberg, and Astrid Mager. To take a look and access the articles go to  http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rics20/current

In addition, for those who did not attend the plenary session, the following talks are online:

Bill Dutton, Opening to the Plenary Session  http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20110922_375

Vint Cerf presentation at the Plenary Session  http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20110922_376

Wendy Hall  http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20110922_377

Eli Noam http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20110922_379

Andrew Graham http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20110922_380

Question and Answer http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20110922_381

Dame Stephanie Shirley http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20110922_382

Wonderful to see a strong conference being organized in Bangkok, Thailand, that is focused on Internet Studies. See: http://www.internet-studies.org/ As the center of gravity of Internet use has shifted to Asia, and the rapidly developing nations of the global South, it is good to see research developing in parallel that is multidisciplinary and linked with research around the world. It is being organized by the Academy of Taiwan Information Systems Research and sponsored by National Taipei University, National Taiwan University, Chinese Culture University, and Tamkang University. The organizers write that this ‘… conference provides a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange research results and share development experiences on internet study.’ From the perspective of the Oxford Internet Institute, it is of course wonderful to see the continuing diffusion of Internet Studies.

I’ve certainly been involved in research on the role of new information and communication technologies in shaping local and urban communities, such as with my work on Wired Cities from the late-1970s, when interactive cable communication was expected to support local and interactive communication in ways that would support community. Later I was involved with research on Santa Monica, California’s first electronic city hall, the Public Electronic Network (PEN), and I’ve followed work on information technology and communities since. However, in current discussions of future cities and superfast broadband and cities, I don’t have a clear sense of the dominant perspectives on the societal implications of new technologies. Are they similar to before, but with new technologies, or is there a different perspective on the role of new technology in communities?

I’d welcome tips on where to look, recent work, etc.

A recent story based on Ofcom research indicates that fewer people in the UK are concerned or worried about the Internet than you might expect, based on journalistic coverage, and that concern has abated somewhat over the years. Other research, such as the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS), supports this observation.

There are several reasons for this. One and I think the most important is that the Internet is an experience technology. As people get experience online, they become less concerned. Those who are most concerned about the privacy and other implications of the Internet, have never used it. And this is not to say that users have a blind level of trust – they do not. Very few people totally trust the Internet or any other source of information, and a certain level of skepticism is good. The other is the degree to which the press and many other pundits simply take the exceptional cases as typical. Most people, most of the time, are reasonably careful about what they post, and how they protect the security of their systems and the privacy of what they regard as truly personal information. That does not mean that everyone reads the privacy policy of every service provider, just as they often ignore the small print of insurance, bank, and credit card policies. They have a learned level of trust in particular providers.

When some providers have been too lax in protecting the privacy of consumer data, it is most often the users of the Internet who blow the whistle and generate media coverage. So the Internet has become one of the most important mechanisms to ensure that Internet companies are held accountable for their behavior. That is another reason why users are less worried than the admittedly entertaining and worrisome press coverage would have us believe.

See: http://www.itproportal.com/2012/04/02/ofcom-uk-citizens-less-concerned-about-dangers-of-the-internet/

I spoke this morning (14 March 2012) at the OUP’s Journals Day conference, giving a talk entitled ‘Digital Academe: A Perspective from Digital Social Research‘.  My colleague, Eric Meyer at the OII followed me with a report on his research on digital research in the humanities and physical sciences, which featured a great set of case studies from diverse fields that illustrate the diversity across disciplines. I was pleasantly surprised to see:

First, the entire conference was very much dealing with online media, social media, and getting editors and authors into the conversation in cyberspace. For example, the conference ended with a panel discussing initiatives in the use of social media to complement particular refereed journals.

Secondly, I heard many discussions and questions that take for granted the complementarity of online and social media with refereed journal publication. There were very few concerns raised about reputation, or competition between these media, but some very reasonable questions about the return on investment — what are the costs in time and effort to take part in the competition for attention in the online world, and does this have an impact on readership, subscriptions, and other goals of the journals?

Oxford University Press publishes a large number of academic journals – at least 238, as that is what they offer in a single package to libraries, so seeing this progressive thinking about the online media as complements to refereed journals, rather than threats, is heartening.I felt like I was preaching to the converted.

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.
Competition submissions must be for an activity that has been initiated and sustained at any university or higher education institution within the 27 EU member states, including projects that might have involved collaboration with institutions outside the EU. The entry can be from one or a number of cooperating universities.

The three winning entries will each receive a 5000 EUR prize for their institution as well as funding for a representative to attend the award ceremony at the University of Oxford on 8 June 2012.

The closing date for entries is the 15 March 2012.

For more information see www.engageawards.org.

The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies is now available in print and OUP has created a Website for the book: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199589074.do  You can find Chapter 1, the introduction, on line and available free, if you’d like an overview of the Handbook. See: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199589074.do#.UQ6iIOg7i_E  It was published in late January 2013.

The first paragraph of the preface reads:

“Internet Studies is one of the most rapidly developing interdisciplinary fields of the early 21^st Century. With the increasing significance of the Internet, and the range of issues surrounding its use and governance, the field is on a course to continue expanding in its range and diversity through the coming decades. Despite the pace of change, it is a time to take stock of this emerging field, examine current approaches to study of the Internet, and reflect on the field’s future. This was the key motivation behind this handbook.”

It has been published initially in hardback, but OUP usually bring out paperback versions of their handbooks in due course after first publication in hardback, I am hoping that is the case with The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies.  Also the handbook will be uploaded to Oxford Handbooks Online (www.oxfordhandbooks.com), an online resource to which many institutions subscribe, and this should enable greater access to the material. So, I hope that for most people seriously interested in Internet Studies, that library acquisition and online access should enable access to the material, particularly if we can make the case for the paperback edition. I am very optimistic about the book’s reception, and therefore its eventual availability in paperback.

Andrea Kavanaugh from the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech will be visiting the OII on Monday 5^th March and will be giving a talk between 14:00 and 15:00 in the Meeting Room at 1 St Giles. If you would like to attend, please drop an email to: events@oii.ox.ac.uk

Andrea’s talk will be entitled: ‘Participation in the Town Square in the Era of Web 2.0’. It is a unique case study of using computational approaches – eResearch – to enhance community discussion. Here is a brief abstract:

Collective decision-making is central to the quality of life in communities, towns, and city neighbourhoods throughout the US whether it is routine and long term planning or timely and critical follow up to crises. How can social software together with network analysis and data mining help to harness and model these myriad online resources and social interactions to support and foster broader and more diverse civic participation in America’s communities? We envision a single unified and comprehensive site – what we are calling a Virtual Town Square based on an automated, continuous aggregation of locally relevant online content generated elsewhere by others with aggregated and built-in social interaction and discussion. Our research objectives are to: 1) design, build and investigate a virtual town square (VTS) for geographic communities; 2) model communication behaviour and effects related to the use of social software, including VTS, by diverse users (e.g., civic participation, social interaction, political/collective efficacy); 3) conduct computational analyses on complex data derived from content in VTS and related uses of social software to identify and analyze implicit social and information networks, and to track and model the flow of information throughout the community.

Andrea Kavanaugh

A Fulbright scholar and Cunningham Fellow, Andrea Kavanaugh is Senior Research Scientist and Associate Director of the interdisciplinary research Center for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her research lies in the areas of social computing and communication behavior and effects. Dr. Kavanaugh leads research on the use and social impact of information and communication technology funded primarily by the National Science Foundation. Prior to joining the HCI Center in 2002, Dr. Kavanaugh served as Director of Research for the community computer network known as the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) from its inception in 1993. She holds an MA from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in Environmental Design and Planning (with a focus on the telecommunications sector) from Virginia Tech.  She served on the Board of the International Telecommunications Society (2002-08) and currently serves as Treasurer (formerly Secretary) on the Board of the Digital Government Society (DGS). More detail at http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/kavanaugh; she can be reached at kavan@vt.edu.