Elephants and Murky Waters: Why We Need to Examine Multiple Social Media Sites In her recent post on the Cyborgology blog, Jenny Davis brought the pervasive use of Facebook as a study site back into conversation. In brief, she argued that “studying Facebook—or any fleeting technological object—is not problematic as long as we theorize said object”. The …
Continue reading Elephants and Murky Waters: Why We Need to Examine Multiple Social Media Sites
In exciting news, Mary L. Gray and I are kicking off a special section for IJoC that takes a critical look at big data: from the disciplinary perspectives and methods, to issues of access and epistemology. Please pass on to your networks, or even better, send us an abstract. Call for Papers “Big Data, Big …
Continue reading Big Data, Big Questions, or, Accounting for Big Data
This is about the fourth Olympics that's been trumpeted as the first one to embrace social media and the Internet -- just as, depending on how you figure it, it's about the fourth U.S. election in a row that's the first to go digital. It may be in the nature of new technologies that we …
Several SMC'ers are also alum of the Oxford Internet Institute's fabulously dynamic summer workshop for emerging scholars. Here's a taste of the sense of humor and, I'd argue, intellectual richness you'll find at OII (courtesy of 2012 SMC PhD intern, Shawn Walker!): The MethodsGuestTour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-c2AWWw65s&feature=youtu.be
Cross-posted from the Department of Alchemy blog. Last month, Ethan Zuckerman of the Center for Future Civic Media (MIT Media Lab) posted a great article on his blog called The Tweetbomb and the Ethics of Attention (constituting Part I to this story, so make sure you read it!), in which he calls into question the …
Continue reading The Ethics of Attention (Part 2): Bots for Civic Engagement
I’m not exactly sure when in the last few months I first noticed Google’s subway advertising campaign, but whenever it was, I was immediately confused. The ads relate to Google’s Good to Know initiative and focus on privacy, security and netiquette. More than anything, the ads reminded me of seemingly well-intentioned and yet always-already …
Continue reading Institutions, Infrastructure and Information
Seven miles off the English coast in the North Sea stands a steel and concrete platform that was, for a time, the world's most impractical data center. A pair of American entrepreneurs launched HavenCo in 2000 as a "data haven"--a place for gamblers, freethinkers, and dissidents to put their bits far beyond the reach of …
Mike Daisey lied to us – but how much you think he lied depends on how you think about ‘truth’. Some background: in his one-man show ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,’ and a highly popular This American Life episode, Daisey tells several stories about how Apple manufactures products in China. He presents …
2 March 2012 A Message to the “First Responders” in Gay Kids’ Lives: Why We Need to Ditch the Politics of Blame, Stop Talking About “Cyberbullying,” and Move Toward Sharing Responsibility for the Loss of Tyler Clementi By Mary L. GrayCross posted on HuffingtonPost; maryLgray.org; Cultural Digitally Senior Researcher Microsoft Research New England, Cambridge, MAAssociate Professor of …
Last week, Gawker received a curious document. Turned over by an aggrieved worker from the online freelance employment site oDesk, the document iterated, over the course of several pages and in unsettling detail, exactly what kinds of content should be deleted from the social networking site that had outsourced its content moderation to oDesk's team. …
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