[ More on SDP2008: Web Science .. it just keeps on coming. Hurrah for Web Science! OII DPhil student Christine Madsen writes about how the SDP helped her research on the impact of the digitisation of rare materials on scholarship in the humanities ... there's a bit on Tibetan exile communities at the bottom. ]
I have to admit I went into the OII’s Summer Doctoral Programme not knowing quite what to expect. To be honest, I was hesitant about applying because part of me just wanted to have a relaxing summer after a rather intense year. It was one of the best decisions I have made since I started my doctorate.
The SDP was pivotal in keeping me focused on my DPhil work, while still allowing me to experiment with new ideas. I participated just after my thesis proposal was accepted and while I was a bit earlier in my graduate career than many other participants, for me it was great timing. My SDP presentation was the first time I had presented on one of the core themes in my research to a diverse audience.
Books, wrapped, shelved (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives)
Rather than try to explain the breadth of my work, I took the opportunity to focus on one particular aspect of my work that I hope to continue after my DPhil as well. It felt a bit like stepping out on a limb – presenting this idea that is somewhat controversial to this amazing group of students, faculty, and Internet moguls from around the world – but the feedback I got that day and during the rest of the programme is still helping me craft my thesis today as I finish writing up.
I was also very lucky to receive one of the scholarships for the Web Science Research Initiative Exchange Programme. This was an amazing opportunity for me and a big part of the reason that I am still on schedule today. I spent the summer at Harvard, where I tested the framework I had designed for my case studies. The work I did that summer helped me to focus and refine my data gathering and analysis and it has kept me on track since.
Book, opened
My research is focused on the impact of the digitisation of rare materials on scholarship in the humanities and I did some fieldwork this November in the Tibetan exile communities in Nepal and Northern India. I was pressed for time, trying to fit a lot of site visits and interviews into the space of two weeks. The work I did during that summer on the exchange programme allowed me to have a fantastically successful trip.
Book, digitised
I had some concerns that SDP would be a distraction for me, but it was far from it. It helped me focus my work more, while allowing me to understand the breadth of the potential audience even more. Perhaps more importantly, I met a great group of people. I still stay in touch with the faculty and other students who helped me out then and continue to inspire and guide me today.
The Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamsala, India) maintains holdings of more than 100,000 manuscripts, xylographs (wood block prints), documents, illuminated manuscripts and microfilm records
We have just posted a new Policy Briefing written by our Visiting Associate Tony Wales, former General Counsel of AOL International, responsible for the company’s worldwide legal affairs outside the US.
It looks at socio-legal and regulatory issues arising from the UK Government’s Digital Britain report (June 2009) and Digital Economy Bill, which includes detailed provisions for enforcement action against unlawful filesharing (where Internet users share music, video and other entertainment content without the permission of the copyright holders) by imposing new policing obligations on ISPs and other online intermediaries.
The addendum provides a briefing on the sections of the Digital Economy Bill that propose measures to deal with unlawful filesharing, together with recommendations for amendments.
Not a very serious post, but it doesn’t happen very often:
Balliol College Dining Hall (1877), Senior Common Room (1966) and Igloo (15 January 2010)
I am guessing, from what Wikipedia has to report on igloos, that this represents the smallest of the three main types, that is: “a temporary shelter, usually only used for one or two nights. These were built and used during hunting trips, often on open sea ice.”
Nicely produced by the ‘SDP2009: Brisbane’ student group, a two-part video documentary of the Summer Doctoral Programme 2009.
Voiceover: “Viewers are advised that this presentation may contain no academic content, and may present participants in a semi-frivolous manner, with little regard for context. The following presentation may be devastatingly abstract.”
It’s fun, shows some of the social side of the Summer Doctoral Programme, and many marsupials. For the serious stuff, go to the Summer Doctoral Programme.
[ This week we ask Monica Bulger about her experiences at the OII as an SDP2008 (and Web Science exchange programme) student. She writes .. ]
On the first day of SDP 2008, Barbara Barbosa Neves delivered her presentation on Internet and social capital and, when an audience member suggested she look into Barry Wellman’s work, she replied, ‘Barry Wellman is my advisor.’
That’s when I knew this summer institute was going to be different.
There were 29 of us, plus mentors and guest speakers, crowded into a single conference room at the Oxford Internet Institute for two weeks, about 6 hours per day. Our mentors included the developer of the World Wide Web, creators of e-mail, former Chief Scientist at DARPA, Internet privacy specialists, and founding members of the Web Science Research Initiative. The graduate students were from all over the world, representing several disciplines, including Computer Science, Law, Communication, Information Science, Political Science, Media Studies, Economics, and Education.
Exploring Balliol College library
An accomplished, precocious group that wasn’t afraid to ask questions, we quickly established a challenging, funny, and engaging rapport. Together, we presented, debated, ate, punted, picnicked, hiked, and studied. We explored Oxford together, often getting lost, and we also attempted to define Web Science and apply it to our research interests, often getting lost there, too.
Jonathan Zittrain leads an informal afternoon discussion on the Balliol College lawns
One afternoon early in the program, Jonathan Zittrain had an informal session on the lawn at Balliol. We discussed the ‘meta’ stuff of research presentations – how to engage our audiences during the first few minutes, how to field questions, how to manage audiences when discussions get contentious. Our conversation shifted to a discussion of challenges we faced in interdisciplinary research, and future directions of the Internet and technologies.
Despite its seemingly short timeframe, the SDP was a transformative experience for many of us. By design, the program prioritized in-depth feedback on our research from several specialists in the field, including our graduate student peers. Our work was the focus of the two-week program and we had many opportunities for direction and mentorship.
Most importantly, we built networks. We immediately friended each other on Facebook and started sharing photos. We used a backchannel during the presentations to keep abreast of each other’s different disciplinary interpretations and to share expertise, when appropriate. We ate lunch together every day, continuing our discussions with both peers and mentors. We met with our mentors formally and informally, which challenged us to advance our thinking. Many of us made contacts that led to jobs and additional funding.
Over the past year and a half since the SDP, I have had daily contact with the friends I made in Oxford. We share our research challenges and successes, ask each other questions, and keep each other updated on our lives. Several of us were awarded Web Science Research Initiative fellowships which allowed us to extend our research work and continue our collaborations at Oxford, University of Southampton, Harvard, and MIT.
Waiting for a group photograph
Our small group continues its impressive accomplishments: Elisabeth Staksrud has published three book chapters and journal articles about protecting children from pornography on the Internet, Christine Madsen traveled to Nepal to test her theories about the future of libraries, Sonny Zulhuda teaches courses on Internet law, Jennifer Barrigar published a chapter on Internet privacy, Matthew Weber recently returned from a research stint at Reuters in Oxford, and several of us have advanced to candidacy or completed our doctoral degrees.
A few of us returned to Oxford in March 2009 as part of the Web Science Research Initiative and then traveled to Athens to present at the Web Science Conference. Also in the Spring, Christian Pentzold and Malte Ziewitz organized a workshop in which scholars from around the world discussed the interplay between networked digital media and social order.
As Yana Breindl and Matthew Weber have already mentioned in their reflections [read Yana on the SDP2009 book, read Matthew on Web Science], through the OII’s Summer Doctoral Programme we found our disciplinary home.
Our group continues the debates and supportive discussions started on the backchannel of OII and lawns of Balliol.
Through the miracle of technology and a bicycle, we proudly present: the snow commute! Watch, watch as our brave cyclist bears gamely down through the frozen morning wastes of north Oxford to the Oxford Internet Institute.
One of the outputs of the 2009 Summer Doctoral Programme will be an edited book, written (and edited by) the student group. They have a publisher and a first draft already .. we talked to editor Yana Breindl about the project.
DS: I gather that SDP2009 co-convenor Marcus Foth sprang an instruction on the student group: to ‘create something lasting’ from your time together .. what was your initial reaction on hearing this?
YB: The now famous ‘Legacy project’ .. yeah, that was great fun! But to begin with, honestly, we first didn’t really know what was expected from us. With 28 students, not so easy to find a common project we all agreed upon. But quite rapidly, people brought up enthusiastic ideas and we soon faced the hard choice to decide which ones to drop and which ones to realise.
DS: So how did the idea for a book form? And was there a defining moment when you knew it would take off?
YB: The idea for a book actually came from Ralph Schroeder who put it forward during one of the student sessions ‘You should make a book!’ and everybody was straight away enthusiastic about it. You could feel the electricity in the air. A small delegation kept track of the idea and started to think about its concrete realisation.
The main doubt was not whether it would take off or not but whether it would be a collection of papers like a special Journal issue or whether it would be a book. Once Daniel got the confirmation from Peter Lang in October, we knew: it would be a book!
DS: Were any other ideas discussed, apart from the book?
YB: Yes. We actually formed three ‘legacy project’ teams: one for the book; a second in charge of making a survey about our favourite journals and PhD habits with the aim to transform the results in a network map showing the links among us; the third group was in charge of the video project that ended up in a 10 minute video of the summer school, featuring interviews with all students (unfortunately we didn’t have enough time for the tutors), a snoring koala and heaps of kangaroos!
DS: Could you tell us a bit more about the book?
YB: The title is ‘Nexus: New Intersections in Internet Research’ and will be published by Peter Lang in the course of 2010. We absolutely wanted all 28 SDP09 students to contribute, with one major challenge: finding a middle ground with 1-3 co-authors as we teamed up in 12 groups.
The themes covered are rather extensive, ranging from linguistic interactivity on Wikipedia to networked marketing exploring the discourses in the monetization of Malaysian blogs and passing by a public sphere interpretation of the China-Taiwan cyberconflict. All the topics covered are at the cutting edge of current Internet research
DS: You all first met in July 2009, and chapter drafts were delivered in January: that’s pretty fast! How are you finding the job of Editor?
YB: Well, I’m not the only editor! Daniel Araya has done an amazing job in finding us a publisher in less than 2 months and Tessa Houghton is taking the lead for the third section of the book. So it’s really a team work. Tremendously exciting as the whole project is taking shape in a couple of months. The motivation was so high after SDP09 that we had to transform it rapidly into a concrete book project. Now, we’re impatiently waiting for the first drafts to come in. Fingers crossed!
DS: And .. any words or advice for SDP2010 applicants?
YB: Be creative and spontaneous! It’s not because the program will be dense and of outstanding quality that you shouldn’t have fun! For me the essential point I take back from SDP09 is that I found my academic community there. Besides the book project, several of us are collaborating on other projects, meeting again at conferences and keeping in touch over the Internet.
It’s an outstanding experience as you’ll meet amazing people and be confronted with exciting ideas – it’s very intense but only lasts 2 weeks… so enjoy every second of it!
So, it turns out that everything I had written about this video is on a different laptop: so I shall just say … Happy Christmas from the Oxford Internet Institute!
Video: 1 St Giles, Oxford (8 Feb 2008)
Audio: 1 St Giles, Oxford (17 Dec 2009)
And so I got to thinking: ‘would people like to know something about the work that goes into the home page photographs?’ I suppose if you want to maintain the magic that our homepage photos ‘just happen like that’, then don’t read on.
The first thing people ask about this particular photograph is: ‘what is it?’
Well, it’s a snow-covered field at night: that’s what the Dreaming Spires look like after dark, nestling in the Thames Valley. Looking a little like Mordor, or Ruskin’s nightmare, but I think also, quite beautiful? Anyway: it’s snow. On a moonlit evening on Harcourt Hill in South Oxford (Harcourt Hill on Google Maps).
The photograph originally looked like this:
The first step was to reduce the purple, and to make it much more blue: much more cold. I guess dark blue is a pretty familiar colour for Oxford things (and therefore ideal for the OII Journal Policy and Internet’s call for papers; now doubling as its conference call): but how do you make dark blue look interesting?
I thought the lone car at the end of the lane looked a little too: well, sinister (left, in original). So the (photographer’s) car was cropped out.
And the last of many other fiddly touches … the stars. They are possibly the best bit of the whole image, but they were terribly faint in the original. I didn’t want to suggest anything as crass as ‘just add new ones’ (ie how would you ensure a perfectly random distribution across the sky?). So instead, two of them were very slightly brightened .. pixel by pixel. But not too bright. You have to look for them.
You can see them shining about a third of the way across the final image.
Whether this has taken all the magic out of the image, or perhaps created some, I don’t know: but there were are! An Oxford snowscape, and a call for papers.
We are pleased to say that Marcus Foth and Jean Burgess (Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology) will be involved in the 2010 OII Summer Doctoral Programme. They are familiar faces .. firstly as SDP2004 students, and more recently as hosts of the SDP2009 in Brisbane.
We caught up with Marcus and Jean, and wondered first: why were they keen to host SDP2009?
MF: Our experience as student participants in the SDP2004 in Oxford was so useful with long-lasting networks formed, that we were keen to participate in another SDP. I managed to do that by helping out with the SDP2007 at Harvard, but we also wanted to reciprocate some of these benefits by hosting our very own SDP.
It was a lot of work and effort, but well worth it, since we tremendously enjoyed interacting with just under 30 brilliant students from all over the world for two weeks, and a stellar cohort of tutors and faculty. So it was a win/win situation.
DS: The 2009 theme was ‘creativity’ .. how did that work?
JB: At a basic level, the theme ‘Creativity, Innovation and the Internet’ was designed to fit with the location – since the SDP was being hosted at the QUT Creative Industries Faculty. The idea was that ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’ are hot-button issues, both intellectually and in policy terms, where issues like intellectual property and DRM, user agency, international development, online social networking, infrastructure and policy converge; and that it could cover interdisciplinarity and methodological innovation as well: we had tutors from law, sociology, media and communication, policy, the visual arts, and cultural studies.
DS: You mentioned that you were both present at SDP2004 as students: How do you think the group has changed (if at all) since then?
MF: I remember that the SDP 2004 was structured into groups of students with a local tutor mentoring each throughout the program according to their expertise and interests, and that Jean and I were left in the ‘Miscellaneous’ group that didn’t fit in nicely with pure Law, Political Economy, or Policy Studies.
Humanities, Arts, New Media, and ICT / Human-Computer Interaction are definitely playing a major part in the family of Internet Research, and so broadening the field by allowing for these cross-disciplinary exchanges makes it all the more interesting and impactful. The 2009 cohort was definitely very diverse, and we encouraged this cross-disciplinary dialogue.
DS: Do any memories stand out from SDP2004?
MF: Vicki, Ralph, Bill, and the wonderful people at the OII that had to put up with us crazy folks. The sandwich lunches. The Harry Potter atmosphere sitting at the high table for breakfast. The oath as part of the admission to the Bodleian library. Our well-guided excursion to Stonehenge and Bath.
JB: As Marcus says, the Oxford experience itself is of course quite wonderful. Apart from that, what stands out is the sheer intellectual intensity of the experience, and the creation of friendships and working relationships that will (I hope) last a lifetime. I know a large number of our group are still in touch and/or have worked together.
DS: And the best of SDP2009?
JB: The constant parade of high-quality tutors we had coming through each day, and above all the quality of the students’ presentations and contributions to discussion. I can’t wait to see what they all do next! It was also fascinating to observe the bottom-up emergence of a live backchannel used for the purposes of scholarship, social coordination and hilarity – collective creativity in action. And from an entirely selfish point of view, having the opportunity to experience the SDP twice – once as a student and once as a host!
DS: One of the stated objectives of the SDP is that it is ‘multidisciplinary’ .. is there anything you have learnt / come across that you wouldn’t have done otherwise, as a result of your involvement?
MF: I wouldn’t know what single-disciplinary research is…
JB: Marcus is right to point out that much of the collaborative and team-based research activity here at QUT is ‘always already’ multi- or inter-disciplinary. Likewise, the SDP has always been multidisciplinary, and this is indeed one of its strongest points – and absolutely necessary given that almost any topic in Internet research you can name inevitably requires you to learn about new domains of knowledge that you might not have encountered before.
DS: And so: the obvious question .. why should students apply?
MF: The SDP is a unique opportunity to interact with highly gifted students from diverse backgrounds being tutored by senior researchers in the field. It offers a chance to broaden one’s disciplinary horizon, bounce ideas off each other, and form a continuing network of peers. The combination of disciplinary excellence and social embeddedness makes it a very prolific and fun environment with lasting memories.
JB: I think that sums it up!
DS [+OII]: Thank you for the chat! Hopefully see you in Oxford next summer …
Policy and Internet, a new peer-reviewed journal from the OII, calls for papers reporting on innovative research into any aspect of the implications of the Internet for public policy
Deadlines: 20 Nov 2009, 22 Jan 2009 and 12 March 2010 (for 2010/11 entry)
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