You hear sirens blaring in your neighborhood and, naturally, you are curious about the cause of commotion. Your first reaction might be to turn on the local TV news or go online and check the local newspaper. Unfortunately, unless the issue is of significant importance, your initial search of these media will be probably be …
Two years ago, when I started working on issues related to human trafficking and technology, I was frustrated by how few people recognized the potential of technology to help address the commercial sexual exploitation of children. With the help of a few colleagues at Microsoft Research, I crafted a framework document to think through the …
Continue reading Addressing Human Trafficking: Guidelines for Technological Interventions
Image credit: Harvard Business Review. SMC Principal Researcher Kate Crawford reached the number-one slot on the "Most Read" list of the Harvard Business Review this week with her sharp and insightful blog post on the weaknesses of big data. Debunking the commonly held belief that "numbers speak for themselves" in large data sets, Kate brings …
Have you downloaded your Twitter archive? Would you like to? Do you want to talk about it? Nancy Baym and Jean Burgess are seeking to interview people about how their Twitter use has changed over time. We are seeking Twitter users in the Boston area who have or can get their Twitter archive (For instructions …
Sitting with a group of graduating high school seniors last summer, the conversation turned to college roommates. Although headed off to different schools, they had a similar experience of learning their roommate assignment and immediately turning to Facebook to investigate that person. Some had already begun developing deep, mediated friendships while others had already asked …
Continue reading Is Facebook Destroying the American College Experience?
(Or: Yale will be next.) Noted freedom of expression scholar Cherian George has been denied tenure by the Singaporean government against the wishes of his faculty. His error was explaining basic tenets of political philosophy in an editorial. I’m writing about it because this is an American problem. Like Prof. George, I am also a …
Continue reading Scholar of Internet Freedom Denied Tenure for Human Rights Advocacy
At the ASTD TechKnowledge conference, I was asked to reflect on networked learning and how tomorrow's workers will challenge today's organizations. I did some reflecting on this topic and decided to draw on two strands of my research over the last decade - startup culture and youth culture - to talk about how those outside of traditional …
A few weeks ago, while I was visiting a city in northern Mexico, I witnessed some of the drug-related violence people have been experiencing almost every day: several bodies were hung from a bridge and a number of shootouts were reported throughout in the city. As if that was not terrifying enough, I was not able …
Continue reading The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban Warfare
We get a lot of wonderful and interesting visitors here at SMC. Today, we had the pleasure of spending time with Jason Mittell, Chair of the Department of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College. SMC: So what brings you to MSR today? JM: Visiting with Nancy Baym, and chatting to just see how things work …
This past October, Mary was one of the plenary speakers at the Association of Internet Researchers IR13.0. Below is the text from her presentation. Suggested citation: Gray, Mary L. “ ‘CAUTION!! Boundary Work Ahead for Internet Studies ...or, Why the Twilight of the 'Toaster Studies' Approach to Internet Research is a Very, Very Good Thing”. Paper …
Continue reading CAUTION!! Boundary Work Ahead for Internet Studies
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