Summer Updates

I have some time to blog again as all my projects seem to be in order for the moment. Hopefully, I’ll be able to return to once a month blogging in September if my ducks will stay in a line.

Here are some links to interesting items concerning Network Theory that I have been compiling over the last bit:

1) The World Class University Project at Yeungnam University

First off, Greg Elmer and the Infoscape Research Lab are partnering with other informational politics researchers on the World Class University Project to explore media information focusing on elections. Information about the project can be found here:

http://yeungnam.edublogs.org/about/


2) Canadian Political Science Association On-line Politics Papers

I was at the CPSA Annual Conference in Ottawa in May, and I attended the informational politics panels there. It was good to see that there were a few sessions at the CPSA, which is a new thing from previous years. It is a sign that interest is growing in the area, and informational politics research is not strictly a Communication scholars’ concern anymore.

Here are links to papers from those sessions:

> Raynauld, Vincent, Giasson, Thierry and Darisse, Cynthia

Constitution of Representative and Reliable Web-based Research Samples: The Challenges of Studying Blogs and Online Socio-Political Networks

Their paper is a great review of methodological problems for tracking “blogs”, and it was interesting to find out that the Quebec political blogosphere is rather small with only about 100-125 bloggers.


> Smith, Peter (Jay) and Chen, Peter John

A Canadian E-lection 2008? Online Media and Political Competition


> Bastedo, Heather, Goodman, Nicole, LeDuc, Lawrence and Pammett, Jon H.

“Facebooking” Young Voters in the 2008 Federal Election Campaign: Perceptions of Citizenship and Participation


> Milner, Henry

The Internet: Friend or Foe of Youth Political Participation



3) Internet Law and Politics Conference

Friend and Colleague Ismael Pena Lopez helped to organize an interesting Internet Law and Politics Conference.

> Link 1: http://ictlogy.net/20090706-5th-internet-law-and-politics-conference-iv-daithi-mac-sithigh-law-track-gather-up/

> Link 2:
http://ictlogy.net/20090720-live-blogging-and-conference-reviews/

Ismael also recently defended his dissertation – Congrats Dr. Lopez!

> Another SDP alumni Daithi Mac Sithigh blogged the Internet Law and Politics event:
http://www.lexferenda.com/07072009/idp2009-written-report-of-day-1/


4) Global-Village Theory

Another SDP alumni Cindy Shen posted a link to an interesting counter claim to the Global-Village Theory -- “E-mail Traffic Data Casts Doubt on Global-Village Theory”:

“If you think e-mail is making geographical distance less important, think again. A new analysis indicates that the opposite may be true”:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23717/


5) Richard Rogers at GovCom.org

Zach Devereaux posted some of Richard Rogers’s work from GovCom.org: http://www.govcom.org/publications.html


6) New Books

Here’s a new book on The Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning by Nick Jankowski and Kirsten A. Foot, among others: http://ipa.tamu.edu/projects/Elections.asp

Also, Manuel Castells has a new one out on Communication Power


7) Robot Aggregating Sites

Lastly, more robot sites are aggregating blogs these days – here’s one I stumbled upon in checking out links to my own work - I was wondering why traffic had actually picked up to my site recently even though I've had no time to post things:
http://www.networkedblogs.com/blog/prnetworks/