New special issue of JOBEM: “Old Against New, or a Coming of Age? Rethinking Broadcasting in an Era of Electronic Media”

A little over a year ago, JOBEM editor Zizi Papacharissi approached me, R. Stuart Geiger (UC Berkeley) and Stacy Blasiola (University of Illinois at Chicago) with the idea of a JOBEM special issue hat would be edited and authored by graduate students. We were excited to accept the invitation and set out for the adventure. The …

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What does the Facebook experiment teach us?

I'm intrigued by the reaction that has unfolded around the Facebook "emotion contagion" study. (If you aren't familiar with this, read this primer.) As others have pointed out, the practice of A/B testing content is quite common. And Facebook has a long history of experimenting on how it can influence people's attitudes and practices, even …

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MSR Social Media Collective 2014 PhD internships now open

* APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 31, 2014 * Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for PhD interns to join the Social Media Collective for Summer 2014. We are looking primarily for social science/humanities PhD students (including communication, sociology, anthropology, media studies, information studies, science and technology studies, etc.). The Social Media Collective is a collection …

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Addressing Human Trafficking: Guidelines for Technological Interventions

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 …

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The Cost of Collaboration for Code and Art

Does collaboration result in higher quality creative works than individuals working alone? Is working in groups better for functional works like code than for creative works like art? Although these questions lie at the heart of conversations about collaborative production on the Internet and peer production, it can be hard to find research settings where you …

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“Socially Mediated Publicness”: an open-access issue of JOBEM

I love being a scholar, but one thing that really depresses me about research is that so much of what scholars produce is rendered inaccessible to so many people who might find it valuable, inspiring, or thought-provoking. This is at the root of what drives my commitment to open-access. When Zizi Papacharissi asked Nancy Baym …

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