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The conference is part of a bigger Research Initiative dealing with Wikipedia:

Besides setting up a network for critical Wikipedia research with its own mailing list and organizing two events early 2010 in Bangalore and Amsterdam (to start with), the aim is to gather materials for a Wikipedia Research Reader that will be published in the INC Reader series late 2010

Research and editorial group: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (Amsterdam), Nathaniel Tkacz (Melbourne), Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Margreet Riphagen (Amsterdam), Juliana Brunello (Amsterdam), Serena Westra (Amsterdam)

more information…

We are seeking submissions from academics, practitioners and PhD students for a conference at the Monash University Centre, Prato Italy (near Florence). The Centre for Community Networking Research, Monash, in conjunction with the Community Informatics Research Network, has held many highly successful events since 2003 in Prato, as well as associated workshops over the years, in the UK, France, and Portugal.

The conference has an increasing representation of delegates from Francophone and Spanish-speaking countries, and we welcome your attendance. While the official conference language is English, if there are sufficient papers for either language, specific sessions will be arranged.
The Prato campus provides an exceptional environment for academics, students, practitioners or policy-makers to exchange ideas. We emphasize participatory processes in the conference. The Centre is just off the main piazza of a small Tuscan town and is close to Italian transport hubs.

Previous events

Expressions of interest up to 500 words via conference website by 1 April 2010

more: http://cirn.wikispaces.com/prato2010

more: http://thememorybank.co.uk/2010/02/06/an-anthropology-of-the-internet-2/

Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older. Even as blogging declines among those under 30, wireless connectivity continues to rise in this age group, as does social network use. Teens ages 12-17 do not use Twitter in large numbers, though high school-aged girls show the greatest enthusiasm for the application.

more at: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx

The Crisis that began in 2007 continues to convulse the world. Labelled by some as merely a recession, yet it is associated with dramatic changes in national and global power. Others frame the Crisis as merely a consequence of over-promoting a narrow range of financial transactions associated with subprime mortgage instruments. These were indeed overly aggressively oversold by deregulated bankers, but this was likely only an important trigger of the Crisis, not the primary cause.

more: http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/announcement/view/4

For half a century communication researchers have been putting to the test theories of mass media effects on public opinion. However, the blogosphere‘s ability to influence public opinion is not yet backed by consistent empirical evidence or an account of the relevant practices.

Similar to the situation in Austria,  Israeli political blogging is ignored by national commercial mass media. As a result, case studies from the Israeli blogosphere provide us with a rare opportunity to isolate the resulted influence of blogging efforts and learn about the ways that blogging shapes public opinion. The research presented in the talk is based on an ongoing ethnography of the Israeli blogosphere conducted as a participant observer since 2004, observing  the formation of the Israeli „A-list“ political blogs as a discourse that emerged from scattered personal journals, and tracing the activities during two election campaigns (municipal and national).

Carmel Vaisman is a communications scholar and freelance journalist based in Israel with a research focus on Internet culture and digital folklore. She explored issues of identity and agency in her PhD thesis entitled „Israeli girls and digital subcultures: language, gender and playfulness on blogs“. Institutionally, Carmel Vaisman is affiliated to the Department of Communication at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

4. Februar 2010, 20:15h am Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft der Universität Wien
Schopenhauerstrasse 32, 1180 Wien; Hörsaal 2, 2. Stock
Der Vortrag ist in englischer Sprache ohne Übersetzung.

Eine Veranstaltung der Gruppe Internetforschung an der Universität Wien

Ankündigung als PDF zum Download

• how do the forms of personal expression to be found in social media translate into news discourse?
• what authority or status as knowers is given in the news to voices from various social media?
• how are specific kinds of social media typically made use of within news discourse?
• how are journalisms ethical frameworks applied to these media?
• to what extent is social media content decontextualised from its online social context when used by journalism?
• are social media texts produced within news organisations also used in news texts?

Papers should be 5000-7500 words in length and submitted electronically to the guest editor, Donald Matheson, at donald.matheson@canterbury.ac.nz. Deadline for completed manuscripts is 20 November 2010. The issue is scheduled for publication in the second half of 2011. Authors are welcome to contact the guest editor to discuss proposed papers or related matters.

More: http://www.cios.org/www/ejc/calls/socmedia_news.htm

more: http://www.ict-conf.org/

Call for Papers: http://www.ict-conf.org/cfp.asp

Deadline for full paper submission: February 28th, 2010.
What kind of academic field do we need to meet the challenges of the information age?

Many different research approaches have emerged over the last decades that aim at explaining, shaping, and forecasting social change related to an increasing penetration, miniaturization, and convergence of ICTs.

tripleC suggests the designation of this research area as ICTs-and-Society to indicate its broad perspective. The term ICTs itself is broad enough to capture Internet, Web, Web 2.0, Social Media, Social Networks, new mobile technologies, ambient technologies, etc. Society too, can refer to society at large, or to certain aspects, of society, such as economy, ecology, politics, culture, etc., and includes both individuals and organizations.

However this research area is defined, and from which disciplinary background it is viewed, there are several shared problems, since ICTs-and-Society is not (yet?) an established discipline. “Disciplines share central themes, shared terminology with (assumed) common definitions, a canon of literature considered essential. There are agreed-on methodologies, theoretical structures, and evaluative criteria to assess research [...]” (Baym 2005, 230). Internet or ICT-research therefore is more like an organization with a core problem. For Shrum (2005, 274) it is an “indiscipline” where “[e]veryone is welcome, no matter what your perspective, no matter whom you cite, no matter what method you choose for your research.” Researchers such as Hunsinger (2005), Fuchs (2008), Hofkirchner et al (2007), suggest that ICTs-and-Society research should be considered as a transdiscipline.

Transdisciplinarity and Transdisciplines
There is still no common understanding of the term transdisciplinarity, especially regarding theoretical foundations, methodologies used, or evaluation criteria. Many scholars agree that transdisciplinary research transgresses not only disciplinary boundaries, but those of academia in general and thus should include stakeholders in the research process. Nevertheless, all acceptations of transdisciplinarity include the concept of integrative research concept based on cooperation, with greater or lesser emphasis on theory vs. the pragmatics of problem-solving. The fact that “ICTs-and-Society” involves the disciplines of information and computer science, economics, sociology and political science, psychology and philosophy and perhaps more suggests that ICTs-and-Society is a transdisciplinary field of research par excellence.

The Special Issue of tripleC
In this special issue of tripleC we are seeking answers to the following questions in the areas of ICTs-and Society and ICTs-and-Society as a transdiscipline:

• Is ICTs-and-Society a research field? If not, should it be?
• What is current practice and methodology?
• What are the main questions and challenges?
• Which topics does it cover?
• What kind of models of ICTs, Society and Transdisciplines are most appropriate?
• How can ICTs-and-Society be located in the academic landscape?
• What kinds of interdisciplinary and/or transdisciplinary theory, empirical research, epistemology, and ethics are needed for ICTs and Society?

These questions are not intended to be exclusive, but as suggestions of topics of general interest. Their answers could lead to a new understanding of the field as such. It will allow for an assessment of its future perspectives as well as concerns of how it should emerge. It will help to answer the question of its possible impact on future programs, on education of students and early stage researchers.

In summary, this special issue of tripleC calls for high quality research papers from any theoretical, professional, or disciplinary perspective that offer innovative analysis that promote and provoke further debate about ICTs-and-Society as a subject of study.

More: tripleC – Cognition, Communication, Co-operation: Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society