(pr) networks

APSA 2009 Paper: Hyperlink Analysis of the Anti and Pro Gun Control Advocacy Networks

2009-09-07T08:51:00.003-06:00

We currently have a working paper available in the APSA 2009 conference proceedings:

Devereaux, Z.P., Cukier, W., Ryan, P. M., & Thomlinson, N.R. (2009, September 5). Using the Issue Crawler to Map Gun Control Issue-Networks. APSA 2009: Toronto Meeting [Conference Paper]. Available at SSRN:

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1449612

We would appreciate any comments on the paper before we send it off to a journal for formal publication.

On another note, my blog activity has gone through the roof in the past few months for two reasons:

1) SSHRC season (everyone is looking for SSHRC advice):
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/10/phd-dissertation-proposal-sshrc.html

2) CPSA Paper on the "Canadian Gun Registry":
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2009/08/canadian-firearms-registry.html

Those two blog entries are now the most searched for on my site. Facebook policy is still popular too, but no where as near as these top two.

Lawrence Lessig on the Google Book Search Settlement - "Static goods, dynamic bads"

2009-08-11T06:34:00.001-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svytkew5qPI

Summer Updates

2009-08-06T20:12:00.005-06:00

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/

The Canadian Firearms Registry

2009-08-04T19:36:00.000-06:00

Well, we’ve started a bit of a political ballyhoo with some research at Ryerson. I want to affirm here from the beginning that I am an independent researcher, and my research is not out to target or support any single Canadian political party. I am simply a concerned Canadian citizen, and I do not share who I vote for (like most journalists) in order to be as objective as possible in my research.

Working with Wendy Cukier, Neil Thomlinson, and Zachary Devereaux (three Albertans in total on the article including myself!), we went looking to better understand the merits of the Canadian Firearms Registry and what we should do now that it is here, despite its costs running so high initially.

A link to the original newspaper coverage of our study is available here -- "Study shoots holes in $2B 'fabrication'" by Rob Linke:

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/703339

The main point of the article is that anyone who says the registry cost "$2 billion" is lying to the Canadian people and has not done their research. Officially, the registry has cost near to $1 billion over ten years (Auditor General of Canada, 2006).

Our paper at the Canadian Political Science Association (May, 2009) was cited in the article, and a copy of the paper can be found here:

http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2009/Ryan-Cukier-Thomlinson-Devereaux.pdf

Some pertinent details include the following:

1) The old registry system cost $30M / year (over ten years = $300M), which would not have had any of the benefits of the new system. The system was definitely in need of an upgrade, which the initial Progressive Conservative Party Bill C-17, a revised version of Bill C-80, under then Justice Minister Kim Campbell, was attempting to provide in 1991.

2) Police consistently maintained that the registry system is an important tool for police, who use it nearly 10,000 times a day according to Steven Chabot, President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (“Public safety will be at risk if gun registry is dismantled,” Toronto Star, 10 April 2009: A23).

3) Public health analysts maintain that gun-related deaths have decreased in Canada since the new Firearms Act became law (Snider et al., 2009; Cukier & Sidel, 2006).

4) Ian MacLeod is the author of the Ottawa Citizen article that describes how police had confiscated 3560 guns nationally in one year, which “would have been more difficult, if not impossible, to locate and confiscate” without the registry:

Source: MacLeod, I. (2009). 92 handguns collected in city since fall. Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved May 29, 2009, from http://www.ottawacitizen.com/handguns+collected+city+since+fall/1640924/story.html

I don’t know about you, but after doing my research, I was quite swayed to go with what doctors and the police think about the registry rather than the non-authoritative accounts.

Contextualizing Costs of the Registry

How can we contextualize the cost of the registry? How much should public safety cost? Yes, the registry went over cost like other IT endeavors – for example, the current Harper minority government’s support of Secure Channel – another $1 billion information technology “boondoggle” – that has gone mostly unnoticed [see: “Government to replace $1B online service ‘boondoggle’” (Ottawa Citizen, May, 2008)] -- but how much should the registry cost now that it is here? What do we do with it?

Here are some numbers to consider:

1) A Canadian Medical Association article placed the costs of gun death and injury in Canada at $6.6 billion (1993 Canadian dollar value) in 1991 (Miller, 1995).

2) The Geneva Small Arms Survey states that productivity losses due to firearms are $1.6 billion annually in Canada (Small Arms Study, 2006).

3) Comparison to other safety investments: A Coalition for Gun Control report “Continued funding for the Firearms Program is essential to public safety” (2004) provides the example that $400 million was used to fix a stretch of road in New Brunswick where forty-three lives were lost between 1996 and 2000. By comparison, Canada has more than one thousand gun deaths every year.

4) Per Capita costs of Other Government Programs: Legal Aid spending in Canada per year (2008, Thursday, July 31), which arguably is very low compared to other Western nations, totalled $583 million (02-03) and $659 million (06-07). The per capita cost was $18.59 (02-03) and $20.19 (06-07) (Tyler, 2008). By comparison, the gun registry costs every Canadian $2.81/year at its current cost.

5) Canada’s Passport Office costs $125 million a year (over ten years = $ 1.25 billion) to register travelers.

Lastly, I’ve also attached the estimated costs of registering guns today from the Canada Firearm Centre:

http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/est-pre/20052006/CFC-CAFC/CFC-CAFCr5602_e.asp#22

While the CFC has a budget of $82.3M a year, actually registering the guns is $15.7M, and scrapping the long gun registry would save $3M (according to some estimates). These costs are in fact lower now than the older registry.

However, the only people who seem to want to scrap these things are Conservative politicians linked with the gun lobby and a few rural MPs.

I want to hear more from other people about this, because I really do see the value of the registry at this point after doing the research, and I think citizens shouldn’t take it lightly that MPs Breitkreuz and Hoeppner are lying about public accounts in the House. A $1B error in fact…

All of my Albertan friends who own guns that I have talked to have say a registered gun can kill a moose just as easily as an unregistered gun – in other words, they feel that the registry did cost too much, but now that it’s here we should agree with the doctors and police who argue it is needed for public safety issues.

I was interested to see what happened to the story on-line a month afterward -- Here’s what others think about the story in the blogosphere:

> The reader’s comments on this article from MP Breitkreuz are interesting: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/257-tearing-down-the-long-gun-registry

> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=118&topic_id=235208

> http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

> http://www.gunpolicy.org/Topics/Gun_Rights.html

Lastly, just to alert some people to the potential consequences of independent research: Some anonymous user named “BigUglyMan” (no word of a lie) on the password protected “Gun Nutz” website profiled me as a “joker” and “a disciple of Wendy” within minutes of the original Rob Linke article being posted. Obviously, I don’t have a brain of my own to make up my mind about the gun registry, and I’m not a concerned Canadian citizen with a right to my own voice…

Michael Ondaatje’s words here are humourously poignant “I was always a private man. It is difficult to realize that I was so discussed” (The English Patient, p. 138), but I guess it comes with the territory of researching issues and networked politics. A member of my family joked that a gun registry is needed simply because people like that exist…

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments!

Peter

New JITP Publication on Political Blogging

2009-05-15T10:33:00.005-06:00

The Infoscape Research Lab has a new publication on Canada's political blogosphere in the Summer 2009 issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics:

"Blogs I Read": Partisanship and Party Loyalty in the Canadian Political Blogosphere. Greg Elmer, Ganaele Langlois, Zachary Devereaux, Peter Malachy Ryan, Fenwick McKelvey, Joanna Redden, and A. Brady Curlew.

http://www.jitp.net/m_archive.php?p=10

The JITP issue also has a rather balanced review of Jonathan Zittrain's book (it's tough on the work in some parts, but I might say fair overall from a quick read):

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.
Reviewed by Jeremy Malcolm

Update: Shane Schick Article on my Research

2009-05-09T08:15:00.004-06:00

Someone just sent this link to me from one of my interview respondents, Shane Schick. I must have missed its launch during my busy year-end activities in late 2008:

http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/shane/2008/03/10/what-literary-fiction-has-to-tell-us-about-the-it-industry/

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/031108-what-fiction-has-to-tell.html

http://www.cio.de/news/cio_worldnews/851826/

The dissertation is before my committee right now, and I will have an update on when final drafts can be sent to the respondents in the next few weeks for any last changes.

Until then,

Peter

Update: Infoscape Lab Canadian Federal Election Tracking

2008-09-15T21:21:00.004-06:00

The Infoscape Lab has been tracking the Canadian Federal election on-line in conjunction with CBC's Susan Ormiston on-line:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/campaign2/ormiston/

I do not plan to post anything more until after the election is completed because my work will mostly appear on the page above under lab director Greg Elmer's care or through the lab directly:

www.infoscapelab.ca

The lab's efforts are collectively aggregated in both places, so a third blog is a bit redundant until October 14, 2008.

Remember to get political folks.

Update: I'll be offline until the end of August

2008-08-06T13:28:00.003-06:00

Thanks to those who have sent in comments about my blog and questions wondering why I've stopped posting things over the past two months. I'll be off-line until the end of August working on my dissertation, so I'll post no new content until the Fall.

For now, here are some quick observations on Google Analytics blog tracking after not posting anything for a few months:

1) Direct and referring traffic to a blog drops off significantly on Google Analytics without increasing the content during a month.

2) Google search traffic goes through the roof though, and the most read story on this blog right now is the Bruno Latour lecture at U of T (posted below) because of this phenomenon. It seems people do a lot of searching for two main things listed on this blog: "Bruno Latour" and "Facebook".

3) Generally, for a blog like mine, it gets at least 150-200 hits a month even if no new content is placed on it.

I'll write more in month!

Cheers,

Peter

Jonathan Zittrain on Colbert

2008-06-18T10:19:00.002-06:00

Here's a link for Jonathan Zittrain's discussion of his book "The Future of the Internet" with Colbert:

http://www.spike.com/episode/27765/st/2994516

Also, here's his new blog for the book:

http://futureoftheinternet.org/blog/

Dissertation Update: Author Interview List Complete

2008-05-27T12:47:00.006-06:00

So, I’m in the final writing phase of the dissertation at this point. I’ll just be writing away to get the document finished this summer, and this update is meant to confirm my complete list of author interviews at this point, as promised for those on the project:

1. Elizabeth Bear, Author of Science Fiction and Fantasy (U.S.)
2. Greg Bear, Science Fiction Author and Sigma Group Consultant (U.S.)*
3. Julie E. Czerneda, Science Fiction and Science Education Author (Can.)
4. Cory Doctorow, Science Fiction Author and Activist (Can.)
5. Jack McDevitt, Science Fiction Author (U.S.)
6. Derryl Murphy, Author of Science Fiction and Short Stories (Can.)
7. Shannan Palma, Author of Fantasy, Fiction and Short Stories (U.S.)
8. Robert J. Sawyer, Science Fiction Author (Can.)
9. Karl Schroeder, Science Fiction Author (Can.)
10. Peter Watts, Science Fiction Author (Can.)

* Greg and Elizabeth are not related, for those that are wondering.

As you can see, I have quite a range of North American authors involved in the project, just like my ICT professional interviews. The Science Fiction community really helped out, and I do have even more of a mix when I include the survey sample.

I’ll keep my survey open if anyone would like to participate in that aspect of the project or if anyone else has some thoughts to add (and increase the sample size too) before my dissertation is completed: Survey.

I’ll shut down the survey at the end of July as I’m pretty sure I’ll just be revising the dissertation at that point, and hopefully getting it ready for defense before the end of the summer if all goes on schedule.

Also, I’m heading off to the Congress of the Humanities in Vancouver next week, and I’ll be presenting some of my early findings there to get some feedback on the project before it is formally completed.

Other than that, one of my interview respondents Shane Schick has written his own thoughts on this research already, and hopefully this will further generate interest in the project as it winds down:

1) A Local Link to his Article.

2) A Link in Germany: "http://www.cio.de/news/cio_worldnews/851826/"

Bruno Latour's Keynote at Reclaiming the World: the Future of Objectivity

2008-05-23T20:20:00.010-06:00

I just attended Bruno Latour's keynote address at “Reclaiming the World: the Future of Objectivity”.

It was a packed house at the U of T's Bahen Centre, and they will be putting a video recording of the event on-line shortly.

They said there was no problem if I made an audio recording, so I've attached my handheld audio recording to this blog post in case anyone can't wait for the official video copy. It's a Latour bootleg! If they ask me to take it down for any reason, I will... But they gave me the green light in person, so here it is (see the attached 1 hour itunes/QuickTime M4a clip; it's about 22 MBs -- I hope the sampling frequency is audible and the file size isn't too large for folks):

* Bruno Latour Keynote

If you're up to date with Latour's work, there wasn't much new in his talk on political epistemologies. He mostly developed ideas from his two recent works Reassembling the Social and Making Things Public for a North American audience. He also provided numerous examples of new data visualization tools and projects such as:

1) http://www.demoscience.org/
2) http://mapofscience.com/

Perhaps the most interesting part of the talk for Latour fans were the reactions to it. For example, Ian Hacking critiqued Latour's work as being an "insane phenomenology" with too many examples and not enough of a through line. Others from the more traditional and perhaps not so cutting edge U of T crowd similarly critiqued Latour’s work for not going into enough depth to develop a sense of how new data visualization projects are in fact “new” or leading to a redesign of society that is different from classical epistemologies. Also, many did not understand how networked technologies provided any resistance to dominant epistemologies.

My thoughts on the topic would be that if people are not seeing in Latour's work that new data visualization tools are "new", then they should stop using them and see what happens to their research. I believe other network theorists, like Yochai Benkler for example, would definitely support Latour’s analysis. Google, the military, and other big industries are banking on these “new” visualization tools, so there must be some reason behind it. To spell it out explicitly, beyond Latour's justifications which you can hear in the audio recording or find in his works, I would say that “new” data visualizations are "new" because of:

1) Massive Public Data Interaction: Open data access allow individuals to interact with massive networks that were not publicly available and at scales that have never before been studied, at such an instant speed of investigation (e.g. Just watch CNN's coverage of the Presidential race).

2) Automated Political-Technological Agents: The amount of technological penetration in Western society also increasingly has technology making decisions for us in our research as politically invested agents with their own in-built epistemologies that reflect particular dominant political groups. These epistemologies must be questioned and understood, especially when they do not fit into traditional epistemologies or ways of knowing.

3) On-line Discourse Domination: Decision making processes are moving on-line, and if different cultures want to be invested in science and technological decisions of "objectivity", then they have to become a part of this game, which is increasingly exclusionary.

That's my quick take on the topic. I'll write more as debate arises or time allows me to offer up more insights.

Overall, I was happy to finally hear the work of someone I have been studying for the past five years in person, and his slideshow was definitely very impressive. One of the main things that will stick with me from the talk is how the Maps of Science group and other scientometric tracking projects are demonstrating that globally there are about 12 major research clusters in the new knowledge economy of any discipline. That’s a fairly powerful data visualization of the realignment of social agents.

Okay, that's my final word, for now...

More from MaRS

2008-05-14T22:35:00.002-06:00

Here are some more reviews from the MaRS event:

1) CBC Blog: http://www.cbc.ca/news/blogwatch/2008/03/blogs_and_politics_the_permane.html

2) Jesse Hirsch: http://www.jessehirsh.com/the-permanent-campaign-event-alpha-test-report

3) Maclean’s Kady O’Malley: http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/03/20/you-got-technology-in-my-politics-recapping-the-permanent-campaign-conference/

4) Greg Elmer: http://manu.rcc.ryerson.ca/~gelmer/?p=43

Dissertation Update: ICT Professionals Transcripts sent out for Approval

2008-04-28T21:16:00.009-06:00

This is just a quick update and teaser of things to come as my dissertation project winds down.

I have recently sent out e-mails to the ten ICT Professional interviewees with copies of the transcripts of their individual interviews. Similarly, all of the ten Author interview transcripts will be sent out before May 19th, 2008. So, over the next two weeks look for those in your e-mail box if you haven't received your copy yet. I have given these copies to my research participants via e-mail for their personal use and final approval.

If you have not heard from me by the end of May, please feel free to contact me, of course. I’m simply posting this reminder here in case anyone’s e-mail or contact information has changed, but I’m sure all of you will have heard from me by that point.

I will contact you all again once my research committee has approved a draft of my dissertation, at which time you will be able to see how I have used your work officially, and you can approve any final changes there before the dissertation is formally accepted. Once I have the dissertation formally accepted, I will post on-line a copy of the transcripts for those people who have given me permission to post them publicly as soon as possible.

Teaser List of the Ten ICT Professional Interviews

I’m posting here a bit of a teaser of the interesting conversation to come because all of my ICT Professional participants warmly approved the use of their names and use of interview transcripts in terms of Creative Commons and Open Access issues. What follows is a list of the ICT Professional interview respondents in alphabetical order by last name, but please note I will not be posting any of the interview transcripts until after my dissertation is formally approved; however, this does not stop the bloggers on the list from posting the copies I've forwarded to them (please do link back to this blog though, if you decide to post it):

1) Marc Donner - Engineering Director, Google *

2) Aimee Morrison - English and New Media Professor *

3) Michael Murphy - Radio and Television Arts Professor, CANARIE Researcher, and former Nortel employee *

4) James Norrie – Information Technology Management Professor and Program Director, Ryerson University *

5) Bill St. Arnaud - Computer Engineer and CANARIE Researcher *

6) Jonathan Schaeffer - Computer Science Professor *

7) Shane Schick - Editor of ComputerWorld Canada*

8) Hal Stern - Global Systems Engineering and previous Chief Technical Officer, Sun Microsystems *

9) Anastasios Venetsanopoulos - Computer Engineering Professor and Vice President Research and Innovation, Ryerson University *

10) Geoffrey Winthrop-Young - Media Theorist and Professor

* indicates a “traditional” ICT Professional by individual self identification.

You’ll see from this list that the term ICT Professional is defined broadly for this project, but all will be revealed in time as to why such decisions were made. Also, these names are just reflective of my research interviews, but I also have my online survey still available if people are interested in participating that way. There are many more surprises to come in terms of people who responded to the survey, and also people who responded to just general e-mails, such as Microsoft's Turner Whitted. You'll have to wait for the dissertation to be published to see what some of those individuals have to offer to the conversation, but my hope is that more dialogue can be carried on-line here as well.

So, please do wait for those exciting things, and I will definitely post the final Author interview list in the coming weeks as the Human Research Ethics permissions and other odds and ends get sorted out there.

Lastly, many people have contacted me and said that Professor Randy Pausch would have been a great interview for my project. If you haven’t heard of this man yet, his "Last Lecture" YouTube video can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Other interesting links people have asked me to post in terms of how Sci-Fi literature and ICT R&D crossover can be found here:

1) Science Fiction Citations: http://www.jessesword.com/sf

2) Technovelgy (Tech Novel Gee): http://www.technovelgy.com/

Please note, Sci-Fi is just one part of my dissertation research, and I do not limit this research to Sci-Fi literature only.

Growing Protests in Canada

2008-03-21T09:21:00.003-06:00

Most predictions are that protests will increase in the coming years in Canada and North America as the demographic shift of power from the retiring baby boomers to the millennial generation causes structural tensions in all sectors of society. For example, many university faculty members are increasingly concerned about the administrative change to favour contractual labour and sessional positions as retirements increase, versus the more permanent positions of tenured jobs. Along with that dominant issue are the other pressures of increased class sizes, and more expectations for publication and committee work being linked with those contracts. On the student side of the issue are increases to tuition fees, decreasing quality of education and higher student debt.

We are most likely starting to see the beginning of these structural tensions spilling into formalized protests from examples such as the following:

1) University of Toronto non-violent student sit-in over new 20% tuition fee hikes that captured the police violently removing students from outside the President’s office on campus (today):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ketNtnZQIwQ

2) York University Sweat Shop Policy sit in that was peaceful and successful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow9xDYGl_gI

3) York University protest over the Iraq war in 2005 that similarly captured police violently removing students from Vari Hall on video tape, and led to two students being sent to hospital: http://uppingtheanti.org/node/1119

Perhaps surprisingly, no large student groups at Ryerson have organized around the Chris Avenir case in a similar way, but this might best be explained by the fact that Ryerson student groups are still developing at the relatively young university.

Beyond student groups, one of the main issues in North America that we may see more protests developing around concerns the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) that the Infoscape Lab has found to be growing in the Blogosphere and on YouTube:

1) A media mash up by a Vlogger concerning the SPP that has become highly watched on YouTube can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDoaYILUMAs

2) Compare that story to CNN’s coverage of the same SPP story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU3e8luD2Iw

3) The Montebello Summit Protest and the use of Miami Police Tactics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

4) NAFTA-gate with Obama and Clinton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJJ88HTiX8

Fallout from Facebook Decision at Ryerson

2008-03-21T08:40:00.003-06:00

A blogger on the AoIR listserv posted this summary of the University's decision not to expel Chris Avenir, the Ryerson student who was up to be expelled for using Facebook:

http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/ryerson-facebook-study-group-student.html

Overall, the student won't be expelled, will receive zero for the assignment, and will have to take an Academic Integrity course: http://www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity/

Avenir is still going to appeal the decision, and as of yet, Ryerson has not made any formal announcements from its own university portal, and have not addressed if anything would happen to other students in the group.

For more see on the back story: http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/university-facebook-policies-breakfast.html

Tools from MaRS and other places

2008-03-18T17:55:00.008-06:00

Happy post-St. Patty’s Day to ye all,

I hope everyone is still feeling the luck of the Irish today, and are not too under the weather from the cheer last night.

I thought I’d just quickly post some new interesting tools coming down the pipe and also some other items that people might find interesting. First off, here are some of the tools that were demonstrated at the MaRS “Permanent Campaign” event that the Infoscape Lab attended today with Greg Elmer being the keynote:

1) aideRSS: http://www.aiderss.com/

This seems like a generally useful tool for those who read a large number of blogs. However, at the moment, aideRSS are keeping their ranking heuristics hidden, and they do not allow readers to set up their own advanced ranking methods. For instance, it would be useful for someone to just choose to read blogs that have a lot of comments, or that have a large number of blogs linking to them. It would also be useful for the aideRSS tool to present such information as comments and links in an easily readable manner along with the other statistics they offer. Test it out to see what I mean exactly, of course.

2) Blogscope.net: http://www.blogscope.net/

Blog surveillance technology from the U of T. These folks have even automated tone judgments of the postings on blogs in the beta version, which sounds pretty sketchy to me, especially since once again they do not share their heuristics for how they judge tone. Their plan so far is to also make it the blogger’s individual duty to de-list their personal information from their network tracking software, which profiles every blogger on the web. This could be potentially very controversial.

The company linked with Blogscope is: www.Sysomos.com

3) Iotum: http://iotum.com/

Free conference calls for everyone, using Facebook or otherwise. This might be useful, especially if they add video calls some day. It appears to be a step up from plain old Skype.

************************************************

Here are some other items not connected with the MaRS event, but connected with political tools in general:

1) Microsoft’s Blews: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/blews/blews.aspx

This software seems similar to the Blogscope.net platform above, but it appears to have a more elegant user interface. However, the team that has worked on it does not include any political scientists or sociologists, so I’m not sure how well it will target specific user needs to drill into political blogs and news ("blews") in the social media space.

2) Gapminder.org: Interesting use of data visualization software, and there is a TED video of Hans Rosling from the Gapminder.org group on their powerful use of data visualization here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI

3) Morningside Analytics: http://morningside-analytics.com/
John Kelly from Columbia University who was at the OII SDP this summer has officially launched his company with the help of Leonard Lidov, who is a Torontonian. Their business looks interesting, and I wish them well.

4) Michael Zimmer’s bibliography of ethical and privacy dimensions of web
search engines: http://michaelzimmer.org/2007/06/30/scholarship-on-privacy-and-search-engines/

More to come on the MaRS talk when I get a second to write in April.

The Breakfast Club 2.0: University Facebook Policies

2008-03-09T22:44:00.005-06:00

Here's a link to a Ryerson Student newspaper article on the changing Facebook policy that’s been circulating in the news and is currently a hot topic nationally and internationally:

http://www.theeyeopener.com/article/3816

I truly think it's going to be difficult for students to change the policy proceeding along the lines that this author is arguing. Students need to understand when on-line activity is "public" -- we've never been able to defame our bosses, openly cheat on examines and assignments, steal content and call it our own, and then document those crimes for all to see in an easily traceable manner back to the individual. Many of the acts they’re documenting here are the equivalent of cheating on an exam, and taking a picture of it, then showing it to the professor... How do they expect a school to react?

I think the school administration will definitely listen to arguments about voices of protest being stifled, academic freedom being infringed, and intellectual innovation issues along the lines of the Creative Commons movements, Open Source and other such things, especially if there are pertinent cases to draw upon. I think though what is more at issue in the above article is the draconian punishments that are being handed out, and the lack of using those opportunities to teach students about what does and does not cross respectable and lawful student or citizen activity. Completely destroying a student's life because they're exploring the possibilities of a new technology is different from using the moment to guide the student's poor decisions into a more productive activity within reasonable limits.

Some people were asking for some background on the Ryerson case, so here goes. Every university has a Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct, and here are some links to Ryerson's:

1) http://www.ryerson.ca/calendar/2007-2008/pg28.html
2) http://www.ryerson.ca/undergraduate/currentstudents/rr/pol61NonACCode.pdf

These codes serve as blanket liability protection for, among other things, cases when a student does something in public that makes his or her university look bad in some way and the university wants to distance themselves from the student (or expel the student completely). Some general examples of when this code might be used is if criminal behaviour occurs off of the campus or destruction of university property occurs while the student is not actively engaged in "academic" behaviour, which would be covered by the Student Code of Academic Conduct. Most professors list links to these codes on their course syllabi, but many students don't know what their actual rights are on campus because like the plagiarism policy, those sections are often glossed over. In truth, these codes also exist for Faculty, and students and instructors alike should know that they overlap in many ways to create community panopticon to favour the university administration, but at the other end of the spectrum they also protect all of the academic community.

All universities have been trying to reformulate these codes in light of the Web 2.0 challenges. At Ryerson in 2006, a business professor, was "owned" on YouTube, and the university admin moved fast to squash the video, which was taken off YouTube fairly quickly, but they never delivered any universal university statement about the event and they only dealt with the event internally to that business class from what I know. However, they have been working on this policy since that time.

Most recently, at Oxford students have been fined for posting incriminating pictures of "disorderly" behaviour on Facebook, and the university has warned students to set their settings to friends only privacy levels:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jul/17/digitalmedia.highereducation

In other words, the Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct has always had protections against any negative forms of university publicity which could affect the "value" and "reputation" of a university's degree conferring status. After all, who would want to go to a university where “x” happened? While that seems to be the line universities use in these cases, the code has obviously been abused in the past, and perhaps is being abused in these current cases.

I hope this background helps. I believe Ryerson’s code at this point is at a nascent phase, and if the university will ever be at a point where they will consider student input, it will be now.

Good to hear people are interested in these policy issues! I would definitely recommend writing your own response to the admin, and formulating how the code should be used if you want to change things now.

Here are two links to some previous posts on this topic from last year where I was harder on High School students for abusing Facebook for similar things, but having been familiarized with High School suspensions myself (for artistic reasons, of course), I believe university suspensions are of a whole different degree because they can affect a student for the rest of his or her life, whereas High School suspensions really never affect a person again afterward, unless of course, it’s The Breakfast Club:

1) Michael Geist:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/05/geist-on-facebook-in-toronto-star.html

2) Supplement:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/05/suspending-students-supplement.html

Infoscape Lab Covers the Alberta Election 2008

2008-02-22T10:43:00.004-06:00

For those out in Alberta, the Infoscape lab has started tracking Politics 2.0 for the Alberta Election:

http://www.infoscapelab.ca/node/376

There's not much of a story yet, but the election isn't over yet.

123 Meme: Archaeologies of the Future

2008-02-13T22:00:00.008-06:00

My first blog meme, coming from Joris van Hoboken in the Netherlands, then from Michael Zimmer in New Haven, and originating at Wired.

Here are the instructions:

We have been instructed to open the nearest book to page 123, go down to the 5th sentence and type up the 3 following sentences. Or else. The note also demands that we forward this stupidity onto five others.

So the book I have is Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future: The desire called utopia and other science fictions (2005), which is a primary work that I'm using for my dissertation. Perhaps, the blog memes will be discovered in some future archaeology. However, this section has very little to do with my work, other than questioning grand narratives. The section reads:

The society in question may in other words be in the condition of a biological sport, of a malformed organism, of a tetralogical formation of some kind which can scarcely yield any clues as to the healthy organism it replaces. The discipline of anthropology is in other words necessarily normative, and reestablishes the model of a norm even there where it is unthinkable: only Colin Turnbull, in The Mountain People, and Levi-Straus himself, in Tristes tropiques, have reflected on the frustration involved in coming upon a society not merely in decline but in utter collapse. Still, anthropology (and SF itself) have a conventional context with which to domesticate such phenomena, and it is that projected by the Second Law of Thermodynamics and indeed by Wells' Time Machine (if not by Spengler): namely the grand narrative of entropy and devolution.

Okay, I hope I don't annoy anyone I'm sending this meme to, but we're in good company for people who have potentially been annoyed if you see the names above. I'll send the meme overseas to Jaz in Australia, to Ireland to get some luck from Daithi, to California to get some sun from Cuihua Shen (please send some sun our way in snowy Toronto), to somewhere local to share that sun Greg Elmer, and last, to the bookish librarians. Happy meming on Valentine's Day!

Perhaps, the meme is waiting to see how long it takes for the same book passage to come up. A potential experiment: copy my passage and see if anything happens, if you like to end memes and dreams.

Communication and Culture Graduate Conference: Intersections 2008

2008-02-11T16:27:00.001-06:00

The new website is up for the current iteration of the York/Ryerson Communication and Culture Graduate Programme's Intersection Conference 2008, March 14-16 in Toronto: http://www.yorku.ca/cocugsa/conference.html

The conference is always a good time, and this year the conference received a record number of submissions. I'm biased, of course, from helping out at the conference over the past few years. However, the conference stands on its own merits without my bias, because it continues to grow each year. It is a great venue for seeing the interesting work that graduate students are doing in Communication and Culture research from around North America, and this year, the conference has gone global in the submissions it has received. I hope to see you there!

Ryan Bigge’s “Road-testing the $100 laptop's 'appropriate technology'”

2008-02-06T14:51:00.000-06:00

Ryan Bigge continues to write thought provoking and insightful inquiries into our current technological situation. His most recent piece in the Ideas section of The Toronto Star (January 20, 2008) is unique for his interesting use of journalism across media. See:

1. Bigge’s original article in The Star (with an extra movie clip on how to use the laptop):
http://www.thestar.com/article/295647

2. Bigge’s Blogge (Yes, that’s humour) -- Extra excerpts from his article which were not included in the print piece are included on his blog:
http://thebiggeidea.blogspot.com/2008/01/one-more-underperformer.html

Bigge’s story is about the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC). The charitable act of being able to purchase a laptop for $400, also provides a laptop for a child in a developing country. Despite the feel good nature of the project, I feel there are two further conversations that need to be opened up here:

1) About media use in general.
2) About the $100 laptop as a solution to the digital divide.

I’ll tackle the first item as follows: In the print version of his article, Bigge wasn’t able to fit his entire story, and so he includes extra excerpts on his Blog which add a more balanced tone to what originally read more like a McLuhanesque, techno-humanist piece in favour of the technology. The Blog remarks offer more of critical perspective to the piece with discussion of some of the issues the project has created and faced.

Another interesting point in terms of media is that the print format couldn’t offer a complete tutorial on how the laptop works, so the article provided a hyperlink to the digital video explanation starring Bigge himself (as seen at the link above). This coordination of media may in fact entice some of the techno-phobic into spending more time on-line because of the limitations and technical constraints of the print product. I know it worked for me.

This extra mediated experience only increases the use of our limited resources in terms of time and the resources of the natural environment, but offers a moment on which to comment during our current in-between media period, where we straddle several media options at once in the West. These coordinated media strategies are becoming more prevalent, and offer many narrative threads to trace for the interested, while also allowing more points of access to grab the attention of a potential audience.

I’ll develop this thought further as a part of my discussion on the $100 laptop. I was fortunate to get to visit the OLPC headquarters in Boston over the summer. Here’s some pictures from my visit:

1) One of the $100 Laptops (photographed at MIT):

2) Laptop display table at the OLPC HQ:

3) The Testing Lab at OLPC HQ:

When I read Bigge’s article, I had some rare quibbles with his description of the OLPC project based on my experiences during my own OLPC visit. As I said, I usually agree whole heartedly with Bigge, but here's a few things that I didn't find in either his article or Blog:

If one were to read only the print version of his work, Bigge seems to sit on the fence a bit when mentioning the problem of the new cheap laptop market that's formed because of Negroponte’s brainchild. In his piece, he mentions a bias for ‘appropriate technology’ that performs the logical tasks that a device should, without any useless or superfulous features that are currently being marketed. I've become a bit more Naomi Klein-ish about liberal markets since visiting the OLPC though, instead of just hoping technology will change the world. Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine talks about the entrenchment of neo-liberal markets during crises, like wars and natural disasters. Basically the idea is that when a crisis hits, big business moves in (e.g. Iraq and Haliburton).

I think something that could be added to her list is "the digital divide" crisis. Specifically, we can ask do agrarian societies need to be (or want to be) attached to the Internet?

Further, is an abundance of cheap laptops without a cradle to grave waste management solution just another environmental disaster waiting to happen? Like the billion cell phones dying in landfills, these $100 laptops aren't bio-degradable...

NB - Clarification from SJ's comment below: The OLPC Project is trying to make the laptops 100% recyclable and have a minimum impact on the environment, but they are still in the process of accessing how to ensure proper disposal according to the following site: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Environmental_Impact

I know it's all high and mighty of me writing this on my own computer, but when we were down at the OLPC they talked about how kids in the developing world were already using laptops (perhaps, not the OLPC laptops yet) in rare situations to make pornography (to make money), or selling them (for money), or hacking (for money), or being beaten by adults who would then steal the laptops (to again sell for money) – that’s just to name a few issues. Overall, in terms of liberalization, could these laptops just be a way of creating armies of third world call centre employees out of a young, cheaply trained labour force, while also taking time away from children's time learning skills they need to survive in a non-digital society? Think scary, Kittlerian style discourse networks here of the variety that occurred around the creation of the typewriter (and now, of course, the laptop).

During my visit to the OLPC, we had a number of problems on the technical side as well. For example, getting the laptops to work in the mesh network never occurred, and obviously Bigge’s own laptop all alone here in Canada will have problems linking to other mesh-network-ready computers since there are none (until other people purchase them).

Another problem during our visit included the laptop’s operating system freezing on a number of the computers we were testing. To their credit, the OLPC project admitted openly they were working on all of these issues, and the system Bigge demonstrates in his video is definitely a bit different from the one that I remember playing with. Hopefully the bugs have been worked out.

The one thing that I was hopeful about with the OLPC project was their commitment to on-going maintenance of the technology, and their focus on going to places and educating people about use and care of the laptop. However, without sustained money, the laptops do break and the issues listed above develop when there is no money to fix them. Several of my peers during the visit were emphatic about embedding the laptops in an educational environment to create a vital culture of care. Without a care network, if (or when) those developing regions become emblazoned with other problems, which they often do, the child cannot eat the laptop, which most would consider a more pressing need, but the laptop could instead be used by others to download bomb making instructions.

I thought I'd write and see what others thought, especially those who have connections to the OLPC project?

Specifically, I know that some other SDP-ers have blogged about this previously, and one of you has done the same as Ryan Bigge and contributed to the give-one-get-one campaign -- hopefull informed discussion can assuage such fears and issues as those listed above:

- Give-one-get-one: http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/11/21/give-one-get-one

- Law Professor Wendy Seltzer on the project (A comment in this post talks about Korean Laptop Boot Camps for helping Koreans get over Internet addiction): http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2007/11/14/one-laptop-per-child-plus-one.html

- Other links and pictures from people during the summer visit to OLPC:

1. http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/07/21/mit-one-laptop-per-child

2. http://www.lexferenda.com/25072007/closing-the-loop-zuckerman-and-best-on-africa-and-technology/

3. http://ictlogy.net/2007/07/

4. http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=66

Brushes with Fame

2008-02-04T00:20:00.000-06:00

Charlie Neeson was on The Colbert Report and challenged the Presidential Candidates to a poker match. I was fortunate enough to play poker against him at Harvard in the Summer of 2007 during the Oxford Internet Institute: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080125/nyf065.html?.v=101

Neeson uses poker as a teaching tool, and he is very much an interesting and charismatic professor.

Tariq Amin-Khan is a professor in the Ryerson Politics and Public Administration department, and he was recently on The Hour describing the situation in Pakistan, where he use to be a reporter: http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1889

Jean McNulty Talk: Getting a Job in the Public Service

2008-02-02T13:05:00.001-06:00

Veteran Public Servant and Communication Researcher Jean McNulty gave a free talk to Communication and Culture Graduate Students on the topic of ways to become employed in the public service on Tuesday, January 22, at Ryerson (11:00 to 12:30, VIC104). There was a good turnout of about 25 people, and McNulty gave personalized advice to each student present, as well as delivering a prepared talk. James Cairns and the Communication and Culture Graduate Student Association were instrumental in organizing the talk. Barbara Crowe, the York Director of the ComCult Programme, facilitated the discussion.

McNulty’s talk focused on five basic skills required for being employed in the public service:

1) Policy Knowledge: She advised that policy knowledge in a specific area is a good start, but not enough to get the job. Students should have knowledge in an upcoming area of need for the government. For example, a lot of environmental policy is being worked on currently at all levels of government, but if you want to work on telecommunication policy, currently there is only work federally in that area.

2) Industry Knowledge: Along with policy knowledge, students should have working knowledge of, or experience working or volunteering with, the groups that the policy will impact. Policy is written with citizens, interest groups, and industry in mind from all sectors, and knowledge is needed of these groups to write informed policy.

3) Proven Expertise in Applied Knowledge: Ways of demonstrating your applied knowledge include published papers, professional reports, conference presentations, or work consulting on research projects (both quantitative and qualitative analysis skills).

4) Administrative Experience: Administrative experience does not mean just secretarial work; administrative work means managing people, budgets, and organizing groups to work effectively. Any experience doing this in terms of conference organization, journal publication, or being an instructor or teaching assistant and leading tutorials are ways of demonstrating administrative experience. Also, non-partisan experience in administration is definitely important for the public service. Administrative experience will also demonstrate that you know how to work with other people, and can understand your role and place working in a hierarchy or bureaucracy.

5) Writing/Language Skills: Communication skills are one of the most important skills to hone to differentiate candidates within a pool of applicants. Writing demonstrates a person’s attention to design, grammar, and detail. Knowledge of the culture of the public service and an understanding of the jargon are also demonstrated through writing, so writing and communication skills are the dominant skill for presenting the above four required skills. If you desire to work federally, French language skills are also needed.

McNulty advised that these five complementary skills will be needed for most Junior Analyst or Internship positions. She said that the main ways to get a foot in the door are through applying to positions such as:

1) The Ontario Two-year Internship Program (due by Jan. 30th each year): www.gojobs.gov.on.ca

2) Federal Government Policy Leader Program (posted in September/October each year): http://jobs-emplois.gc.ca/srp-rpl-rlp/index_e.htm

3) Apply for Open Positions: Open positions appear throughout the year at the above websites as well.

4) Term or Contract Positions: Summer internships, short term contracts, and student co-op placements are all ways to get a start in the public service. Once you’re hired you will also have access to internal postings which are not opened to the public.

5) Consulting Firms: Decima, Bearing Point, Price Waterhouse, and other major firms also hire in these areas. Junior level positions can be a place to get a foot in the door. Look for communication positions or junior analyst positions.

6) Foreign Service: For those with an eye to traveling, you might want to learn more about writing the Foreign Service Exam. See:
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/department/service/apply-testing-en.asp

Remember: Make sure to thoroughly review the websites for any of the above places before applying or going for an interview.

Briefing Notes
In most of these positions, writing a briefing note will be a part of the interview. McNulty’s advice for writing the perfect Briefing Note includes:

1. Key Issue: Identify the Key Issue for the Government, and provide a limited number of options for dealing with the issue.

2. Options for Action: Itemize the options for action in detail, and describe each. Usually three or four options will be required at the most. (e.g.) 1) Immediate action items, 2) items that require more time or money, and 3) radical or extreme solutions that might require more investigation.

NOTE: You should check the "culture" and "format" of the place you are working for the options section of your Briefing Note, because some places will use old stand by options such as 1) Do nothing, 2) Wait and see, 3) Respond when action is required, etc. Other places may not use this language based on the work that is done and for stylization purposes. You can think of this as similar to New Journalism's turn away from the inverted pyramid style of writing news articles and press releases.

3. Recommended Option: Identify and explain the main recommendation.

4. Background: Provide background information on this recommendation, the history that has led to this issue arising, the parties affected by it, and sources where more information can be found on the issue.

These basic requirements should not be considered fixed in stone, and their order and structure can change depending on the issue being researched.

Links to McNulty’s Work

1) Mass Communication in Canada:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_2SQAAAACAAJ&dq=Jean+McNulty+Communication

Open CourseWare Consortium

2008-01-01T20:50:00.000-06:00

I recommend taking a peak at the Open CourseWare Consortium site to see some of the interesting courses available there. The site is useful to see what is happening in different disciplines around the world from instructors who have the time and ability to post their entire course content and lecture notes on-line, without having a negative impact on their careers.

Open CourseWare Consortium:

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/

MIT Open CourseWare:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm

Social Networking Technologies

2007-11-20T22:35:00.000-06:00

I've been developing a few lists of on-line tools for Informational Politics researchers and the Digital Humanities from various listservs that I'm on. Here are some recommendations for people to check out:

Oxford Internet Institute / Berkman Center Tools List:

1) Tools listed at the Oxford Internet Institute (July 2007): http://toujoursdeja.blogspot.com/2007/08/tools-for-humanities-researchers.html

Social Networking and Tracking Tools:

1) Infoscape Lab’s list of research centers and tools (including the Webivore): http://www.infoscapelab.ca/node/311
2) Pajek: http://iv.slis.indiana.edu/lm/lm-pajek.html
3) Builtwith.com: Identifies what codes are used in creating a website.
4) Trackmenot: http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot
5) TechPresident.com: offers some interesting visualizations.
6) Dapper: http://www.dapper.net/
7) Many Eyes: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
8) Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com/main/login
9) Tubemogul: http://www.tubemogul.com/
10) Issuecrawler: http://www.govcom.org/Issuecrawler_instructions.htm and their tool section --http://tools.issuecrawler.net/beta/
11) Presidential Watch: http://presidentialwatch08.com/index.php/map/
12) Web Scraping Tool: http://www.merchantos.com/makebeta/php/scraping-links-with-php/
13) Gregarius (Blog tracker): http://gregarius.net/

Digital Humanities

1) Textual Analysis Portal (TAPoR) of Tools: http://tapor.humanities.mcmaster.ca/
2) NORA: http://noraproject.org/
3) Mandala: http://mandala.humviz.org/

Concept Mapping Software: From the ComPrac Listserv

1) John D. Smith’s del.icio.us list: http://del.icio.us/smithjd/mindmap
2) Cmap: http://cmap.ihmc.us/
3) Explore Brain: www.thebrain.com
4) MindJet MindManager (compatibility with the MS office products):
http://www.mindjet.com/us/
5) Mindmeister: http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/1171895
6) PersonalBrain
7) Freemind

The Real News

Also, if you haven’t heard about this new media initiative check it out. They’re hoping to launch before the next Presidential election.

http://www.therealnews.com/web/index.php

POL507: Power and Change in Technological Society

2007-09-17T17:22:00.000-06:00

Please feel free to respond to your weekly tutorial questions at this site. Simply select the hyperlink for the "Comments" option at the end of this entry to post your response. Follow the instructions there, and you will receive a confirmation that your comment has been sent to the administrator (me, in other words).

If the answer is correct and well written, I will gladly post it for full marks. Remember to use APA or MLA style, and support your answer with statements from the original text where possible. Also, remember to bring a print copy to use in the tutorial seminar each week.

POG330 - Section One - Tutorial Seminar Questions

2007-09-08T12:55:00.000-06:00

Dissertation Progress...

2007-08-27T16:53:00.000-06:00

I have to say the North American Science Fiction community has been fantastic for helping my research to date. The following authors have all waived their anonymity for participating in my project, and have been great in offering further ideas for my research:

Julie E. Czerneda, Robert Sawyer, and Karl Schroeder, just to name a few...

Thank you all so much for your help!

Now, if only the ICT community and the "Literary" fiction community would be a bit more open, then I could wrap this dissertation up in the next few months -- here's to hoping people will take up the challenge!!

I'll begin to post excerpts of my dissertation as it is approved, or if I have any specific questions. As of right now, I have two main dominant questions that I'm tracking:

1) Does anyone know when the first paid cross over between literary authors and ICT R&D communities occurred?

2) Does anyone know of the best places to find figures on book sales in the Canadian and American publishing markets?

I know they're notoriously hard to find, unless you pay Bookscan, but I do have a few leads from the library on how much circulation books receive.

Other than that, I'll keep you informed of my progress!

Cheers,

(pr)

Congress of the Humanities 2007: CCA Conference

2007-08-25T00:37:00.000-06:00

I recently attended the CCA Conference 2007 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as a part of the Congress of the Humanities. The conference definitely demonstrated the vibrant nature of Communication scholarship in Canada. The field is alive and well. Most panels had an average of 15 – 20 people at each, despite having concurrent panels, and that was also with the competing nice weather during the latter half of the conference. A strong contingent from the York/Ryerson Joint Programme in Communication and Culture was also evident, which demonstrates the quality of research coming from our Programme. I jotted down some notes here on some highlights from some of the sessions I attended:

International Communication and Development: Beyond Mimicry?
Session 1: Communication : entre l’international et le local / Communication : Between the Global and the Local

Chair / Président(e) : Christian Agbobli

> David Harmes, Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture, Ryerson & York Universities
International Broadcasting and Political Development in Afghanistan: A Case for Diasporic Nationalism

David Harmes gave a great summary of Canadian efforts in Afghanistan to build radio communities. His firsthand experience on the ground there always offers an interesting and critical view into the Canadian militaries efforts there. He noted the efforts to help democratize the media there, and have voices from the local community use the airwaves to improve their lives, while very much under the threat of openly sharing who they are on the air.

> Gordon Gow, University of Alberta
Hi-Tech Dreams, Local Tech Realities: Achieving Socially Sustainable Tsunami Warning in Sri Lanka

Gordon Gow’s research was a highlight of the conference for me. His work is very practical and explained some of the main issues in building sustainable communication systems to support a Tsunami warning network in Sri Lanka. The project he was working on used a variety of international Internet, cell phone messaging services, and satellite services. Some of the issues the project faced included the fact that there was a limited budget and that many agrarian societies do not feel the need to maintain technology. The diffusion or monetization of the technology was not a priority for many of the communities.

He offered the example that many communities stopped using their communication devices after the batteries died, and they did not have money to buy new ones or did not know how to replace the old ones. One method that definitely helped people to protect themselves was through shared narratives of how to deal with a Tsunami (in other words, good old fashion word of mouth). On one island a narrative had been passed down through the generations that if the waves in the ocean started to pull back from the shore, then you should run for cover. Nearly everyone survived the Tsunami on that island, except for a mentally challenged hippopotamus. Meanwhile an island only a few miles away had a high death rate, and did not possess this shared narrative.

Needless to say, sometimes technologies are not the solutions required, and in communities of low technological uptake, they have been using stories to educate the people on how to prepare against potential Tsunamis and other natural disasters.

> Jeremy Shtern, PhD, Département de communication, Université de Montréal
Communication for Development as Subject for Global Public Policy, as Site of International Institutional Reform: The First Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Jeremy Shtern’s insights into the slow paced world of WSIS’s offspring the IGF were informative and helpful for understanding how the United States is still waffling on how to democratize the Internet internationally.

Political Economy of Communication, Cultural Industries and Public Policies
Économie politique de la communication, industries culturelles et politiques publiques

Chair / Président(e) : Abu Bhuiyan

> Jeremy Morris, PhD Student, Communications Studies, McGill University
MySpace.com: Political Economy and Social Network Sites

Jeremy continues to do some interesting stuff studying MySpace and other music sharing websites. I wish he’d do some more political economic studies of these sites, but he knows that. :-)

> Abu Bhuiyan, PhD Candidate, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University
Internet: A Global Public Good or an Enabler of Digital Divides?

He raised some pertinent questions about the Internet, but he tended to played fast and loose in diagnosing the digital divide by arguing that net neutrality issues could be solved by creating public transmission lines. Most people argued with him that public transmission lines had been lost a longtime ago to the service providers.

> Jaleen Grove, Independent Scholar, Ryerson University
The Impact of Illustrators’ Online Communities on Recent Visual Communication

This panel had a bit of everything: music, the Internet, and a return to static images. Jaleen’s work offered a great summary of illustration history, which many in the room may not have been familiar with, but were definitely educated about after they left.

Status of knowledge / Statut du savoir

Chair / Président(e) : Darin Barney

> Darin Barney, Professor, McGill University
You Asked for It, You Got It: The Politicization of Science and Technology in Canada

Barney's work was on the four main ways Science is under attack by the Conservatives in Canada. It is a part of a larger work that he is currently developing, and he looked at recent changes with NSERC and SSHRC among other things. Always an engaging speaker, and I definitely will have to track to the copy of this work afterward.

> Meera Nair, Doctoral Candidate, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University
Fair Dealing: Resisting Monopolies of Knowledge

Nair offered a well-researched review of Fair Dealing laws in Canada. I wish she focused on newer versions of these laws, especially in terms of digital issues, like Bill C-60, but of course time limited the talk.

> Paul Tiessen, Professor, English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
Extending McLuhan: Sheila Watson and Media Theory in Canada, 1957 – 87

Tiessan’s work described the theme of amputation in Sheila Watson’s work, and provided a little known (by me) contrast to McLuhan’s work on the amplification of the human senses through technology.

Beyond those sessions, I attended my own, of course, which was another mixed bag that ended with my discussion of the developing "Narrative Network" theory, and the use of the spectrum to think through analytic problems. This paper is the developing methods section of my dissertation, and I think it was probably too abstract for the time of day that I presenting -- after lunch when everyone has the blood rush to their bellies:

Mouvements sociaux, médias, TIC et résistance / Social movements, media, ICTs and resistance

Chair / Président(e) : Dale Bradley

> Marian van der Zon, Instructor, Media Studies, Malaspina University College
Beyond Bridging: Community Creation through Micro-Radio

van der Zon's talking highlighted the activist nature of Micro-Radio, and offered a very practical how-to guide into this world.

> Dale Bradley, Professor, Communications, Popular Culture, and Film, Brock University
Hacking Craft: Design, Labour, and Resistance in the Open Source Software Movement and Morris’ Arts and Crafts Movement.

Bradley created a very laid back atmosphere for this panel, and his research on the Open Source Software movement provided some historical grounding for this panel. His looking back definitely complemented van der Zon's practical research and my leap into the theoretical stratosphere.

> Peter Malachy Ryan, PhD Candidate, Communication and Culture, York/Ryerson Universities
Network Aesthetics: Evaluating the Rhetoric of Distributed Structures

I usually feel that when I’m talking about theory that I’m far too abstract, and I have to cover too much information to properly engage with complex debates, so in this talk I came prepared with some diagrams and summaries. I had presented an earlier version of this paper in Ottawa at the Future of Communication Studies Conference, and I received some great feedback there. John Durham Peters argued at that time that he didn't see the power of narrative as being able to re-situate politics in the current digital age, calling that attitude "provincial". He saw Communication Studies becoming more rooted in the technological, with network-centric power continuing to take centre stage, and he looked to Germany for some of the more interesting research that is currently being done. In my research I am critical of Kittler's work, because I think the network can only take us so far. If people do care about the messages that are circulating on the network, there can be no consensual power. As such, I try to move away from Kittler's discourse networks to narrative networks, which focus on the subject and agency, without forgetting the materialities of the network.

Back On-line...

2007-08-19T16:41:00.000-06:00

Well, I’m back from two months of intensive work and travel. I started in Saskatoon for the Congress of the Humanities, then off to Edmonton for the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference, then to Victoria for the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, then to Boston for the Oxford Internet Institute held at Harvard University this year, and after a quick vacation in calm, sedate New York City, I’m finally back home in quiet, unpolluted Toronto (yeah, right).

Whew… I need a vacation from my vacation!

Well, my plan is take the next week and write one hour each day about these events from the large swath of notes I have. So to begin, here are some links to photos taken by other participants at these events:

PHOTOS

1) Oxford Internet Institute / Berkman Center Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/oiisdp/

2) Digital Humanities Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhsi/sets/72157600401919260/

Link to my SDP2007 Photos

2007-07-21T20:53:00.000-06:00

Dear all,

Here's an open link to my SDP 2007 Photos: http://ryerson.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38575&l=9a4ff&id=864420502

Cheers,

Peter

Guatemala Mining

2007-06-25T16:18:00.000-06:00

Congrats to Steven Schnoor for getting your engaging footage on CBC's "On the Map" with Avi Lewis:

http://www.cbc.ca/onthemap/fullpage.php?id=103

I wish they had developed this story a bit more though:

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/dawn/1033

Here's the YouTube Video (up to 45 000 views now) for those who haven't seen it yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q20YxkM-CGI

Infoscape Lab and YouTube Analysis

2007-06-15T16:16:00.000-06:00

Jean Burgess on the AoIR Listserv has put together a quick summary of people doing research on YouTube:

http://creativitymachine.net/2007/06/15/youtube-research-gazette/

Another good discussion on the "Layers of the Net" is also taking place. Here are some of the sources for the "original" discussion of the layers of the net (this list is pasted here more so I don't forget too):

1) Abbate's Inventing the Internet

2) M. A. Padlipsky's The Elements of Networking Style:
http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html

3) Yochai Benkler talks about a Physical, Logical and Content layer:
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php?title=11._The_Battle_Over_the_Institutional_Ecology_of_the_Digital_Environment

4) The 5 layer TCP/IP model is defined in the early 1970's at ARPA (Vint Cerf):

Cerf, V., and R. Kahn, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication", IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. COM-22, No. 5, pp 637-648, May 1974.

5) The 7 layer OSI model: http://www.comsoc.org/livepubs/50_journals/pdf/RightsManagement_eid=136833.pdf

Here's another book I should read too (from the AoIR list):

Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines, by Steve Talbott http://www.knowprose.com/node/17646

Congress of the Humanities 2007: Society for Digital Humanities Sessions

2007-06-06T20:16:00.000-06:00

At the Congress of the Humanities in Saskatchewan, I attended several sessions at the Society for Digital Humanities (SDH) conference: http://www.sdh-semi.org/conference2007.php. I was actually in Saskatoon to present at Canadian Communication Association sessions, but that didn't stop me from hitting the Digital Humanities and the Canadian Political Science Association conference before I presented later in the week at the CCA. I like to keep up on what is happening in those areas during my spare time, because my MA was in Humanities Computing and I'm now teaching in a Politics Department.

The SDH conference started earlier than the CCA conference, so I was able to see most of its presenters on the last day. The fact that there were no concurrent panels also helped.

Geoffrey Rockwell and Sean Gouglas (who was channeling Stéfan Sinclair because he was unable to attend) described some threats that are facing the Digital Humanities as a developing research field. Google was one of the more pressing threats that were mentioned on a few occasions. Google's ability to create textual tools and their massive server farm are making digitization projects question how to proceed into the future when GoogleBooks is pretty much taking on the project of digitizing everything; however, Google's commercialization imperative limits the tools they are developing, and how public's access to the digitized works are being filtered.

I'm more inclined to believe that this "crisis" narrative is the same one that is facing the Arts, Computer Sciences, and Information Studies, as well as many other newer disciplines and fields as a general malaise of the interdisciplinary shift in the university. The new media shift is placing all fields into technology's house, so to speak. I'm inclined to think what is unique about the Digital Humanities is the community of scholars and their tool platforms. The group of people are the discipline, and the social network is reflected in the tools they create and share -- perhaps the Digital Humanities is one of the first "new" disciplines that reflects the digital social network paradigm shift (like the Association of Internet Researchers), rather than the traditional physical space of a department in a university.

Also, for the moment, Google will most likely keep developing and mostly digitizing the commercial books as their focus, before targeting the Humanities in my opinion. They may have the storage capacity to digitize and save texts, but the process of digitizing books will slow them down for some time, despite their nifty digitizaing machines. Google Analytics may also be offering some textual analysis tools, but I believe the Digital Humanities will always need to develop their own set of tools and be critical of the commercial tools that exist.

Something else that differed in the Digital Humanities Conference from the CCA and CPSA was the fact that I did not hear any talk of supporting Net Neutrality here; however, the support for Open Source code and Open documents was apparent. Geoffrey Rockwell, indeed, ended his talk by emphasizing the opportunity to work with Google so that some the Digital Humanities might be able to coordinate tools that would help in the analysis of literary and artistic texts. This is something the other conferences would never consider.

Again, in contrast, the CPSA is still very traditional in its political science focus, and I saw no informational politics covered at the conference. There were scholars interested in IP Law and Net Neutrality, but this was more attached to SSHRC issues of developing research, not technologically themed papers. This looks like an opportunity for the CPSA to open up their doors to a new generation of research.

Other sessions at the SDH focused on new techniques of annotating texts using database techniques and how to prepare books for digitization. Geoffrey Rockwell's blog covers these sessions well. I found the Gouglas and Rockwell talk to be the most engaging in terms of my own research on narrative networks though.

Infoscape Lab Media Coverage

2007-06-03T23:11:00.000-06:00

The Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt included a nice section in the Saturday paper on the Infoscape Lab's findings from last week: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/220723

Suspending Students: Supplement

2007-05-09T09:28:00.000-06:00

I guess I could supplement my previous comment with an actual case of student free speech:

York settles with student who was banned over protest
By ELIZABETH CHURCH [Education Reporter]
The Globe and Mail [Toronto]
Tue 8 May 2007, Page A10
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070508.SETTLEMENT08/TPStory/
National

YouTube Revenue Sharing

2007-05-09T09:14:00.000-06:00

YouTube has started to offer revenue sharing with its prolific original content creators -- see the story here:
http://www.youtube.com/blog

Does this mean that Political Parties and Bloggers will now begin to make some money for their actions (or were they already a part of "YouTube's professional content partners")?

Geist on Facebook (in the Toronto Star)

2007-05-09T09:00:00.000-06:00

I agree with most of Micheal Geist's Toronto Star article http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1925/135/; however, I have to quibble with the point concerning the students being suspended. I think the point of their suspension was that their "conversation" was not out of earshot, and what a better time to let them know in life that on-line documents can easily be made public, unlike conversations (unless they are recorded). Also, we do not know the full extent of these students' school files, so that leaves the reason for their suspensions open to some speculation. My point is that all K-12 schools and universities have Student Codes of Conduct, and one of the key components is that students can not make their school look bad.

When I was in high school, I certainly remember students being suspended for things they said in conversations, especially if the school administration was in earshot. I can't see how this is any different, or how it should be a protected part of free speech, especially when education, in many ways, aims to foster civilized and respectful cultural behaviour acceptable for life and success beyond the walls of the institution. In this instance, a warning and an apology might have sufficed, but really the suspension is not something out of line with previous practices given that the students were on a network with the schools name on it. In fact, I can’t think of a better way for students to learn this lesson en masse than a harsh penalty being made to ensure that they understand what the limits and boundaries are of privacy, and also how principles are used to ensure a safe, secure, open and inclusive learning environment.

A story on this issue can be found here: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=479f0b59-d37a-4797-9aff-b99bf3957fec&k=65802

New Publications / Summer Plans 2007

2007-05-06T23:02:00.000-06:00

I’ve had some great news in the past few weeks. First off, I’ve had a few articles published:

1) Elmer, Greg, Peter Malachy Ryan, Zachary Devereaux, Ganaele Langlois, Fenwick McKelvey, and Joanna Redden. “Election Bloggers: Methods for Determining Political Influence.” First Monday (April 2007): click here.

2) Ryan, Peter Malachy. “Computer Geek Erotica: We know about the Red Pill, but was the Blue Pill Viagra?” Graduate Student Article Competition. Ryerson University, 2007: click here.

Also, my summer is shaping up to be quite full. I’ve been accepted to the following two summer institutes:

1) Oxford Internet Institute at Harvard Berkman Law School:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/teaching/sdp/

2) Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Victoria:
http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/institute/index.php

In other words, I’m going to be quite busy until the end of July. Of course, now that my Blog is back up and running, I'll write all about it.

Infoscape Lab

2006-05-06T23:05:00.000-06:00

In May 2006, I became a Research Associate at Ryerson University's Infoscape Lab: www.infoscapelab.ca

For most part, I stopped blogging at this time, because most of my public research information was collected and documented on the Infoscape Lab web site.

Research Contact Survey

2006-04-06T23:21:00.000-06:00

My formal dissertation research contact survey was completed in January 2006, but I am just beginning to circulate it on specific North American networks to make sure that it functions. If you know any professional authors or ICT R&D researchers who might be interested in this research, please forward this survey link to their attention:

https://www.runner.ryerson.ca/PRSurvey/survey.cfm

SSHRC Doctoral Proposal 2005

2006-02-06T23:26:00.000-06:00

A draft of my 2005 SSHRC Doctoral Proposal can be found here: click here

I came in 3rd on the SSHRC waiting list that year, but no more funds were made available. I post this proposal here so that people can have a better understanding of how my research has developed over the years, and also for those who are attempting to crack the SSHRC system. I hope this helps in both of those regards, but please be warned that this 2005 proposal brought me the closest I was ever to be, in terms of receiving a SSHRC award. I did receive Ontario Graduate Scholarships, but never a SSHRC. I guess there's always the SSHRC Post-Doc to try for!

To help those writing SSHRCs, I guess I should let you know that I worked closely with a number of people who did receive SSHRCs and a few of my friends received CGSs as well. The keys to remember are to keep working at presenting "the complete package" of good grades, publications, conferences, and a well thought out committee of support. The proposal should also emphasize the need for your research in a well contextualized literature review; if you can get someone who has sat on a SSHRC committee before to look at your proposal, this is a great way to ensure a higher success rate. Also, another important item to emphasize is any collaborative aspects of your project -- who is working with you, and how many people will this research affect? Lastly, make sure your SSHRC forms and documents follow their latest standards -- they seem to change each year, and many schools offer workshops or advice each year on how to succeed at SSHRC and OGS applications. I recommend attending these workshops each year you apply because they offer insight into any standards that have changed.

Good luck in your SSHRC writing!!

PhD Dissertation Proposal / SSHRC Proposal

2006-02-01T16:40:00.000-06:00

The following documents are attached to help those working on PhDs, especially those in the Joint York/Ryerson Communication and Culture Programme (Toronto, Canada):

1) My Accepted Dissertation Proposal:

http://stw.ryerson.ca/~pryan/PR_SSHRC2005_D2.doc

This version does not have my appendices attached, but it should give you an idea of what a successful dissertation proposal looks like. This proposal is based on the standards posted here:

www.yorku.ca/comcult/downloads/Regs-Thesis-Dissertation.doc

You can also compare the proposal with my old 2005 SSHRC Plan of Study to see how it has evolved over the years.

2) My Most Successful SSHRC Proposal (Accepted for funding by SSHRC in April 2006, but no more funds were alloted that year -- I was third on the waiting list):

http://stw.ryerson.ca/~pryan/PR_SSHRC2005_D2.doc

Acknowledgements: I have to thank my dissertation committee for their feedback on these documents - Drs. Ruth Panofsky, Greg Elmer, and Kevin Dowler. Also, I have to thank those folks at the Infoscape Lab, and many of my peers in the ComCult Programme for their help. Laurie Petrou and Ganaele Langlois graciously shared their Dissertation Proposals with me, so I hope to keep this tradition alive by allowing my proposal to be viewed on-line.

Dissertation Committee and Proposal Advice

2006-01-01T15:56:00.000-06:00

Here's some quick advice for those finalizing their committees and completing their dissertation proposals.

A. Committee Selection

1) Supervisor:

Your supervisor should clearly be someone who can be a mentor and also an expert in your area of research. Your choice of supervisor requires you to be confident this person will champion you for years to come, as he or she will be writing letters of reference for you among other very important duties. Questions you might want to ask from the start:

1. Does your work offer a substantial contribution to, or overlap with, the supervisor's areas of interest?
2. Will this person write good letters of reference for you over the coming years?
3. Is this person a Full Professor or do they have a high standing in your academic community?

2) Other good advice that I received from peers includes making sure that your committee includes people that fill these roles:

1. Editor: The best editor of your work that you have ever had in any of your courses (e.g. grammar and style issues).
2. Cheerleader: Someone who will be a cheerleader of your work throughout the process.
3. Critic: Someone who will be a harsh critic (and generally you do not want this person as your supervisor; the 3rd reader is usually a good place to situate this person).

B. Dissertation Proposals

1) Make sure your committee is clear and in agreement on the length of your proposal. For example, there were two sets of documents in my doctoral programme that use to offer conflicting advice – one said the proposal had to be 10 pages and the other said 20 pages; however, here’s the current standards:

www.yorku.ca/comcult/downloads/Regs-Thesis-Dissertation.doc

Okay that's all I got for now, but I hope that helps! It definitely helped me at the time...

(pr)

So You Want to be a Straight “A” Student (Undergrad and Grad School)

2005-06-05T19:53:00.006-06:00

Another old blog post here -- this was originally meant for undergraduate students, but I've added some new items for grad students too.

******

At this point, when I’m asked by students who are wondering how they can become a straight “A” student, I can offer my own advice and the advice that I have collected from other graduate students and professors in my own climb to becoming an “A” student. I also have the research knowledge of some fairly good studies in the areas of integrated and holistic learning, and I hope that the following is worth something to any student or teacher reading this blog. Take the following advice for what it’s worth!

Much of university is learning the basic skills that you would need to succeed in any career and how to deal with stress around your individual problem areas of learning, because no one is a perfect learner (everyone has some weaknesses).

The following key skills are important for any professional’s success, and I have attached notes for each of them either in the following links and/or on the Ryerson Blackboard:

1) Passion: Dream BIG and be Passionate – What do you want to do?Find a subject area that you are passionate about, and would love to work on for many years to come. Some people find remembering what they enjoyed doing when they were younger often inspires a career at a later age. If you liked doing that activity as a kid, it's likely that you'll be interested in it for a long time (e.g. writing, building things, taking things apart, etc.).

If you already know what you like to do, then you’re ahead of the game and you just have to find a place that will help you do that. Why wouldn't you try researching the BEST place or school to do what you like doing and find out how to go there? If you are not interested in what you’re learning, then it will be hard to convince others that your work is interesting too.

2) Goal Setting: You won’t get anywhere without setting goals and checking them regularly. Did you succeed? Why or why not? Don’t get discouraged, just learn your areas of strength and weakness, and work to improve in the areas where you are weaker. Always follow up on assignments when you fall short of what you expected. Proactive students who visit their instructors well ahead of official assignment deadlines generally tend to be the straight A students because they receive valuable feedback before the assignment is even due. In other words, they are separating themselves from the pack and demonstrating that they are leaders to the key authority figure.

Whether your goal is applying to a university or completing a full degree, you can follow successful steps that others have used to get there before you. For example, don’t just apply to one job or one Grad School or one type of degree program; apply to non-profit, private, and public positions too. Take the best offer that is right for you; that way if the position of your dreams comes knocking on your door, you'll be ready to take it. Also, some people can learn on the job the skills that they need at work, so Grad School doesn't have to be the number one choice, and some jobs will pay you to go to Grad School – just do your home work and find out what is possible for the line of work you wish to explore.

Overall, the question is what do you want to do and where would you like to do it? Only you will know.

3) Find a Mentor:

* If you're going to Grad School, do this before you apply -- find a mentor and potential supervisor, even if it's on-line through e-mail and it's just a tentative arrangement.

Think about the following questions:

- Who in your field would you like to be?
- Can you work with that person?
- Can you at least talk to the person and learn what the skills, courses, and requirements are for that career?

Other considerations for Grad School:

- Do you have the necessary qualifications to apply to the program where that person is? If you do not, go talk to the program’s administration about applying for a qualifying year, or what you could do to make up for missed items – do not be disheartened if your application does not succeed at one school or another; often the same application package could be submitted with minor variations at the same school and get in the following year – it all depends on the pool of candidates that you are up against and how you compare to those other candidates based on your qualifications.

- Contact potential Grad Schools early so that they know you’re interested, and so you know what you need to get into that program. If you find a mentor or supervisor, they should be able to offer you advice on all of the following items:

- STATEMENT OF INTEREST: Make sure someone, perhaps one of your referees or your new supervisor, checks your statement of interest before your application is sent in. The document demonstrates the quality of your writing and details why you want to be in that particular program. It also demonstrates that you’ve read the program/school’s website at the very least, that you know specific faculty in the program/department, and that you already know about the field of study in question.

- PUBLISH FOR SCHOLARSHIPS: If you have anything that is publishable, then try to get it out to a Grad Journal at least. If you’re applying to MA programs having a publication will put you ahead of most of the pool of applicants.

- GETTING INTO A PHD PROGRAM: Many schools now expect students to have one published paper and/or one conference paper during the MA to get you in for a funded PhD program, and after that, at the PhD level one conference and paper each year, if possible is a guideline to differentiate yourself from your peers for the job market. The better quality of journal you can publish in during your PhD, the better your CV – quantity and quality will help, but focus on quality.

- COMPETING OFFERS: If more than one position comes to you after you apply, then you can always try to work one position against the other. For example, if you receive funding at one school and not another, then you can let the other school know about the competing offer and try to match it before you decline their offer.
NOTE: Your goal should be to have some funding while doing Grad School, but if money is not an issue for you because of family support, then you should count yourself as lucky.

4) Designing Thesis Committees:

If you are writing an undergraduate Honours Thesis or going to Grad School, you need to find people to fill the following roles on your thesis or dissertation committee, on top of your usual supervisor and other committee members who are knowledgeable in your area of study:

1. Editor: The best editor of your writing and essays (grammatically and stylistically) that you have had in any of your courses.

2. The Cheerleader: Someone who will think everything that you write is gold.

3. The Critic: Someone who will be hard on you, but hopefully offer constructive criticism rather than only negative feedback.

4. Networking / Job Market Pros: Preferably everyone on your committee should be tapped into larger academic job markets. Are your committee members well known in their fields? Have they published a lot? Do they know and have access to jobs or research positions in your area (even while you are completing your degree, for example Research Assistantship positions)?

5) Know your Learning Style:

- Do you learn better through visual, aural (by listening), or kinetic (by doing an activity) means?
- Does your professor’s teaching style match your learning style? If not, what can you change to increase your chances of success knowing your preferences?
- Are you taking notes in a method that matches your learning style? If not, what can you change to increase your retention of key materials?

6) Maintain Balance through Time Management and Organization:

Generally, I advise that -- if at all possible -- students treat school like work. In other words, have a 40 hour per week schedule, and stick to it. If you work 40 hours a week on school work, then you should still have time to do other pertinent things in your life for balance, including your social life, staying healthy and fit, eating well, and all of the other things that are necessary to succeed in life. Make sure NOT to get stressed out by maintaining an effective and balanced routine. If you are as professional at school as you have to be in a future career, then success should follow you -- and learning successful habits and behaviours will both literally and figuratively pay off. I say literally because there are many scholarships that can fund students, and I say figuratively because a university degree is far more of a benefit in life than just the money that it will help you to earn. UNLIKE MONEY, NO ONE CAN TAKE YOUR DEGREE AWAY ONCE IT HAS BEEN EARNED.

I hope that these general descriptions help you as guides to your academic success.

Beyond these general skills, one particular skill that you should know if you are a student in an Arts program is how to use a writing standard such as the Modern Languages Association (MLA) standard or the American Psychological Association (APA). I should note that every discipline has their own writing standards that their professionals (and students, of course) must know, and learning the MLA standard is a good start for students of all disciplines.

Please see the following sites for brief introductions to the MLA standard:

http://www.ryerson.ca/library/subjects/style/index.html

7) Study smarter, not harder: Learn methods to help streamline your work, and be strategic about your workload.

- Pace yourself: (e.g.) First study the structure of a textbook chapter quickly before reading the details... What are the key sections of the chapter? Read the bolded text, conclusion sections, and charts/graphs first -- can you understand the chapter from this fast skim or do you need to read everything to understand it? Study smarter not harder by assessing first the difficult parts of the chapter.

- Instrumentality: (e.g.) Can you work on developing your final assignment through other assignments in your current course?

- Travel: (e.g.) Can you gain credit for a course by doing extracurricular activities like attending a conference or a charrette?

- Thesis/Major Research Project: (e.g.) Can essays in your courses be used as chapters in larger projects? Yes. Many professors recommend using half of your required courses for your larger projects, and the other half to try new things and expand your knowledge area into places you haven’t been before.

8) CV / Resume: Keep a current CV and resume. Shop it around yearly to learn whether or not you can move to a higher paying job, or a job more commensurate with your abilities.

9) Peers: You will not view your peers as competition if you work with them, and learn from one another. Grad school is competitive as it is, so make sure to take time to create friends there who can help you along the way. As I said, most of this advice is garnered from other people who have helped me along the way.

10) Resources: Build up some resources to help you out if you forget your way -- here's some examples:

- A link to critical reading and writing skills:
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/kahane/368/advice_reading.html

- Advice for MA Defenses:
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/philosophy/nav04.cfm?nav04=15366&nav03=15302&nav02=12361&nav01=12323

11) Say Thanks! Always remember those who help you along the way, and do not forget to help others along the way too. No one does this alone! Also, remember to celebrate when you earn it…

Comprehensive Exams - Feedback from the Committee

2005-05-30T21:38:00.000-06:00

Again, this post was previously from my old web site in May 2005; this thread was one of the most viewed, so I thought I'd bring it back to life here.

****

Well, I passed the exam, and my oral component was waived :-)

So, hopefully, that means the examples I'm providing are good ones!!

For those interested in some of my committee's feedback, please see the following (again, "****" means that material has been excised for privacy and research considerations):

Comprehensive Examinations: Peter Ryan

MAJOR GENERAL
This is an excellent overview of the field, particularly given the constraints of a half-course format. It touches on the main areas of research, as well as indicating the tensions and conflicts that have arisen historically between the different approaches to communications research. The contrast between American and Canadian research, as formulated by Babe (and despite its noted shortcomings), provides a useful starting point for students to recognise the ways in which formulations of communication are linked in many cases to specific conditions that mediate their development, and the inclusion of the Mattelarts provides a much-needed European perspective as well. This is excellent for overcoming the parochialism often associated with conceptions of the field’s development. ****

If there is one area that might be criticised, it would be Peter’s formulation of communication as message production. In following Babe in this respect there is no doubt that Peter is in good company, but we might argue that this conception is unduly restrictive, and tends to leave unquestioned the basic linear model formulated by Lasswell in politics and Shannon and Weaver in information theory. It is not at all clear why communication should be restricted to this particular formula (important as it is historically), and indeed many of the models Peter would include in the syllabus do not necessarily construe communication in terms of messages. This would be the case particularly with poststructuralist and recent post-hermeneutic media theories, as well as the political economy upon which much of the course leans. The course could be an opportunity to critique this notion.

Despite this issue, the course is well-formulated and well-grounded in a sophisticated and substantive understanding of the main lines of inquiry in the field and their historical and epistemological relationships, and thus demonstrates Peter’s excellent grasp of communications research.

A key aim of a comprehensive examination is to demonstrate that one is prepared to teach university survey and other courses in the field. Peter’s answer demonstrates a clear ability to do just this. His response shows that he has mastered the literature in communications studies and is capable of developing what would be an excellent course of study.

MAJOR SPECIFIC
Peter does a good job of indicating what the key authors in this area define as a network society and its distinction from previous or other types of societies. It is clear that Peter has an excellent knowledge and understanding of a wide range of complex literature on this topic. The question itself is rather complicated, and Peter has managed to organise the material into a framework that treats its different facets in a reasonable manner. The answer appears to head off in several directions, but this can be attributed to the difficulty of addressing the number of issues raised by the question. In the end, Peter finds a way of commenting on the various points. In particular, there is a good balance between positive and negative critiques and formulations of current social configurations as they are mediated by new technologies, and there are excellent thumbnail sketches of different perspectives. It is noteworthy that Peter stakes out a position in the end, and does so with analytical tools that emerge from an author with whom he disagrees. This shows an interesting sophistication that can rework notions derived from opposing perspectives without dismissing them out of hand, as is often the case where political differences are at issue.

We would have wanted Peter to return to issues raised in the introduction with regard to the positions of both Kittler and Foucault, and their differences. With respect to notions of network and structuration (especially, say, in systems views like Luhmann), there are interesting questions raised regarding conceptions of subjectivity and agency. Peter gestures toward these at the beginning of his answer, but he fails to return to a discussion of the implications of his sketch for the role of humans in a technologically mediated world characterised as the network society. This perhaps takes the question beyond the parameters of political economy that it emphasises, but Peter’s answer shows that he has a superb understanding of the different and conflicting positions of these approaches.

Peter’s answer is comprehensive and highly articulate. It demonstrates a mastery of the relevant literature and presents a clear and defensible argument. Peter has a deep knowledge of network theory.

****

Humanist Discussion: Visualization and Narrative

2005-05-06T23:47:00.000-06:00

An interesting thread came up on The Humanist listserv around the topic of Visualization and Narrative. People were discussing the following books:

> Edward Tufte: Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/index

> Computers, Visualization, and History: How New Technology Will Transform Our Understanding of the Past
Authored by: David J. Staley

Here's my two cents on the topic:

1.
In a timely addition to this debate concerning the power of words and images, a recent neuroscience study out of California has found that words and pictures are both similarly attached to just one tiny, individual neuron, in what appears to be a clustering of meaning surrounding any single concept. Please see: Jay Ingram (of the Discovery Channel) in The Toronto Star’s “The Brain’s Jennifer Aniston Cell” (Saturday, July 2nd, 2005). Ingram writes, “the human brain entrusts the job of remembering the faces and names of people to single brain cells.” Specifically, the California study looks at how pictures and words (verbal and non-verbal) -- regardless of the size/intensity/perspective of their delivery -- fired one individual neuron in the brains of epileptic participants involved in the research. The study used well known words and images associated with celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston or Will Smith. To note, this single neuron theory is called the “Grandmother cell” theory.

So, perhaps the case is that words and pictures are equal, according to the physical structure of the brain’s memory at least; however, the use of the remembered signs depends on the context of how each sign is perceived. As well, recall depends on the training and preference of those who perceive the same signs. In many cases, researchers found if one’s visual processors did not exist, or were damaged, or had not been "trained" well, then other parts of the system make up for the shortcoming (some respondents to this thread have already suggested this possibility).

2.
To add to this dialogue on visualization and narrative, when Gerda, Eric, and Chris stated that words say more than pictures, what might ideographic or pictorial languages such as Chinese or Japanese demonstrate, especially when an extra layer of metaphor is often added in poetic works written in these languages because the ideographs themselves have meanings other than that of a single word’s meaning? Also, Chinese characters and Japanese Kanji’s meanings depend on their contexts and positions in sentences for all levels of meaning (1. pictorial, 2. metaphoric, and 3. literal) -- how might such signs be processed by the mind?

In the Microsoft Information Age, the return to pictorial/ideographic interfaces might suggest that a picture can say just as much OR more than a word can… Think of a no smoking sign or a happy face emoticon; why wouldn’t that sign say just as much as, or MORE THAN, the single word “happy”? A sign is a sign is a sign, and differing values can be assigned to a sign by any individual that uses a particular sign (whether it is a verbal utterance, a non-verbal picture, or a non-verbal discursive word).

I’m still brain-storming and considering these issues, and I’m very interested in what others have been writing in this thread!

Lastly, please feel free to add these texts to the growing list for interesting points on visualization and images:

1. West, Thomas G. Thinking like Einstein: returning to our visual roots with the emerging revolution in computer information visualization. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004.

West’s book explores the late-blooming visual thinker’s life and achievements, researching the claim that the wiring of Einstein’s brain is what helped him become the greatest physicist of the last century.

2. Waisanen, John T. Thinking Geometrically: Re-visioning Space for a Multimodal World. Jennifer Daryl Slack, Ed. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2002.

Waisanen’s book is a lament for the loss of visual training based in traditional tools such as the pencil and drawing on paper at universities, because of the change to using computer technologies. His work mostly concerns Engineering students, but he does consider the Arts and Humanities aspects as well. He argues that both skills provide differing perspectives and tactics for developing well-rounded visual thinkers.

Cheers,

(pr)

Comprehensive Exams: A Sample Answer

2005-05-06T21:44:00.000-06:00

This posting has a link for those who would like an example of a Comprehensive Exam answer; the following example is how I chose to answer my Major General Exam question #1: click here

Comprehensive Exams Questions - The Actual Questions

2005-05-06T21:37:00.000-06:00

The Actual Exam Questions

The following questions are the actual questions that my committee gave me for my examination:

Joint Graduate Programme in Communication & Culture

PhD Qualifying Examination

Candidate: Peter Ryan

Major Field: Technology and Practice

Minor Field: Media and Culture

Examiners: ****

Date of Exam: May 17, 2005

This is a 72-hour take home exam.

There should be no footnotes unless a direct quote is used. There should be a bibliography of all sources consulted only while writing the exam (not the list of sources used while preparing for the exam).

Answers are not to exceed ten (10) pages, typed, double spaced, for each answer.

Return a copy of your answers to each examiner ****

Answer one (1) question from each part.

A. Major General

1. What materials would you choose to teach in an introductory Communications course geared toward first-year graduate students? Specifically, why would you choose those materials and how would you organize them for study? Discuss in terms of areas of controversy and the strengths and weaknesses of various schools.

2. The domain of Cultural Studies is often generalized to research concerning how meaning is constituted within various texts, practices, and ideologies. What roles do consensus and dissent play in forming understanding of the definition of Culture from a Cultural Studies perspective? How do Cultural Studies theorists define Culture differently from other disciplines such as Communications, Literary Theory, Political Economy, and Sociology, which often are associated with Cultural Studies in interdisciplinary projects?

3. How does Habermas take up the work of the earlier members of the Frankfurt School in his definition of communicative action? Please define key terms where necessary and provide a structured, well-researched chronological response to this question based on various readings of Habermas’s public sphere and modernity.

B. Major Specific (Technology and Practice)

1. In many Political Economy critiques of technological shifts a recent distinction from previous communication technology epochs is that of “the network society.” How does neo-liberal Political Economy structure technological practices in the twenty-first century? Further, how does “the progress narrative” figure in neo-liberal ideology concerning technological changes in the twentieth century?

2. How would you characterize the present technological epoch given that some theorists describe the information age sometimes as 1) a continuation of modern formations, 2) postmodern in the terms of Frederic Jameson, or 3) hypermodern as an extension of modernity just at a faster pace? Please fully explain what these terms signify for differing theorists in the twentieth century.

C. Minor (Media and Culture)

1. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is often described as an influential work in both the areas of contemporary art and technology. How does Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow provide a critique of modern reason during World War II in comparison with, and contrast to, such early works of Science Fiction as Dracula or Frankenstein from the Romantic period? The texts that you choose to explicate your interpretations of Gravity’s Rainbow are based entirely on your own selection criteria; however, you must use at least five other texts of literary theory from the latter half of the twentieth century in your answer.

2 In the area of North American Literary Studies, what positions have North American authors occupied in challenging cultural, economic, and political hegemonic powers? Do you view North American Literary Studies as a colonial creation within the academy that represents US domination on the continent within a NAFTA context? If not, what other factors do you see contributing to such a field as “North American Literary Studies”?

3 Broadly, how is technology used as a theme in Canadian and American fiction of the latter half of the twentieth century? How would you describe the linkage between fiction and technological change?

Comprehensive Exams Questions

2005-05-06T21:32:00.000-06:00

Designing Comprehensive Exam Questions

The following posting is for those of you who are interested in how Comprehensive Exam questions get designed by a committee. In my programme, the candidate proposes the questions, and then their committee chooses and crafts the final questions, which are given to the candidate at the exam.

A draft of my proposed questions are as follows belows. To note, sections with "****" are excised for privacy concerns or because the material is a part of my future research:

Suggested Doctoral Comprehensive Exam Questions
March 6th, 2005 – Draft II
Peter Ryan

Personal Writing Option: Take Home Exam, in Two Parts.

Tentative Dates of the Exam:

1. Major: Monday, May 16th, 2005 (or Monday, May 31st, 2005)
2. Minor: Thursday, May 19th, 2005 (or Monday, June 7th, 2005)

****

Exam Questions Suggested Guidelines:

“In both formats, students will be given a choice of questions to answer: 2 of 5 for the major (which would normally be divided into 3 general questions and 2 questions specific to the major field) and 1 of 3 for the minor.”

Note:

1) I have provided more questions here just to get feedback at this point.
2) The Major General Questions are based on the PhD Core Course ****, the Core Course in Communication Studies ****, and the Core Course in Cultural Studies ****.
3) The Major Specific Questions are based on the PhD Foundation Course in Technology and Practice ****.
4) The Minor Questions are based on my Media and Culture foundation courses and electives.

I. MAJOR (Five Questions in Total – 48 hours to complete)

A. General -- 3 Questions --

Please answer one of the three following questions within 10 – 15 pages maximum. Use MLA style for citations, formatting, and works cited.

Suggested Reading List: Approximately 25 Texts for the Major.

1. If a Canadian canon of Communication Theory was to be formed for the last half of the 20th century and it had to contain the work of at least 10 core scholars, what theorists and texts would you argue should be included on the list? Why would you choose those theorists and their representative texts? Please support your choices and define key terms where necessary.

2. What materials would you choose to teach in an introductory Communications course geared towards first-year graduate students? Specifically, why would you choose those materials and how would you organize them for study?

3. The domain of Cultural Studies is often generalized to research concerning how meaning is constituted within various texts, practices, and ideologies. What roles do consensus and dissensus play in forming understandings of the definition of Culture from a Cultural Studies perspective? How do Cultural Studies theorists define Culture differently from other disciplines such as Communications, Literary Theory, Political Economy, and Sociology, which are often associated with Cultural Studies in interdisciplinary projects?

4. How does Habermas take up the work of the earlier members of the Frankfurt School in his definition of communicative action? Please define key terms where necessary and provide a structured, well-researched chronological response to this question based on various readings of Habermas’s public sphere and modernity.

B. Specific (to Field): Technology and Practice – 2 Questions --

Please answer one of the following questions within 10 – 15 pages maximum.
Use MLA style for citations, formatting, and works cited.

Suggested Reading List: Approximately 25 Texts for the Major.

1. In many Political Economy critiques of technological shifts a recent distinction from previous communication technology epochs is that of “the network society.” How does neo-liberal Political Economy structure technological practices in the 21st century? Further, how does “the progress narrative” figure in neo-liberal ideology concerning technological changes in the twentieth century?

2. How would you characterize the present technological epoch given that some theorists describe the information age sometimes as 1) a continuation of modern formations, 2) postmodern in the terms of Frederic Jameson, or 3) hypermodern as an extension of modernity just at a faster pace? Please fully explain what these terms signify for differing theorists in the 20th century.

II. MINOR (Three Questions in Total – 24 hours to complete)
Media and Culture: 20th Century North American Literature

Please answer one of the following questions within 10 – 15 pages maximum. Use MLA style for citations, formatting, and works cited.

Suggested Reading List: Approximately 20 Texts for the Minor.

1. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is often described as an influential work in both the areas of contemporary art and technology. How does Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow provide a critique of modern reason during World War II in comparison with, and contrast to, such early works of Science Fiction as Dracula or Frankenstein from the Romantic period? The texts that you choose to explicate your interpretations of Gravity’s Rainbow are entirely based on your own selection criteria; however, you must use at least five other texts of literary theory from the latter half of the twentieth century in your answer.

2. How does Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle challenge traditional definitions of the Science Fiction genre (or speculative fiction genre)? Critiques of strict genre boundaries often demonstrate challenges to modern academic disciplinary categories. Do you believe that Science Fiction is a market construction or a useful term of critical analysis? Please use examples of contemporary literary theory to explicate your position.

3. In the area of North American Literary Studies, what positions have North American authors occupied in challenging cultural, economic, and political hegemonic powers? Do you view North American Literary Studies a colonial creation within the academy that represent US domination on the continent within a NAFTA context? If not, what other factors do you see contributing to such a field as “North American Literary Studies”?

4. Broadly, how is technology used as a theme in Canadian and American Fiction of the latter half of the twentieth century?

Comprehensive Exams

2005-05-06T21:26:00.000-06:00

For my first post on this web site, I will begin with an e-mail I sent at 5 AM in the morning after my recently completed Comprehensive Exams to my exam committee. This was previously posted on my old web site in June 2005.

******

I thought this might be a good beginning point for people interested in the actual writing of the comprehensive exams, and surprise – that’s what my blog will be primarily concerned with: my dissertation research.

To note, a lot of the following e-mail is exaggerated for comedic effect (which I hope is obvious), but much of it rings close to the truth.

I guess for a little setup, I should inform you that I wrote a three day (72 hour), take-home Comprehensive Exam composed of three questions: 1) a Major General, 2) a Major Specific, and 3) a Minor Specific question. Each question had to be answered in a 10 page space. I’ll attach the exact exam questions, answers, and responses from my committee later – these documents will be edited for areas that are particular to my future research, and will be especially refined for purposes of intellectual copyright.

Without further ado:

************

Dear all,

Just some quick notes:

1) Concerning my finished exam materials:

I’m pretty happy with how the actual finished product turned out, given the time constraints. I look forward to your comments on my efforts!

2) Concerning the process of writing the exam (written at 5 AM Thursday Morning, trying to get some of this excess energy out):

Well, to tell you truthfully, I have to send these exams off to you now, or I fear I’ll have a heart attack (and I don’t have a defibrillator readily at hand in such an event). Mainly, I have to send them off because I haven’t been able to sleep for the past two nights, and that’s not without wanting to, having the time, or for lack of trying!

Needless to say, these aren’t excuses for the quality of work that’s submitted here… this is just an account of my surroundings and experiences over the past few days from someone who usually has what would be considered a fairly “normal” and routinely structured life.

Although this test was not as bad as some have said (I should probably wait to hear of my success before making such claims), I would like to share some of the experiences that I’ve had in the last week or so leading up to, and including, the writing of these exams, just because I hope you’ll find them as humorous and truly bizarre as I do.

For someone whose life has been organized to have as little stress as possible since I left my crazy 24/7 commuting publishing job in Japan, and my previous equally stress-filled restaurant manager job in Edmonton, where I usually slept in a booth at least twice a week; this experience has not been the three day fun-filled paradise getaway for which I hoped (no, that comes now that I’m done J).

I prepared over the past four months as best I could for the one thing that I truly detest in life: an exam. Alas, my fellow PhD students were correct to warn me that the “COMPS” are truly a psychological test when there is a 72 hour deadline waiting for you like a brick wall, and the student is writing on the way towards that wall at 100 miles/hour.

First of all, I did get sick, like everyone predicted – a week before to be exact (as did everyone else in my house – so I don’t think it was nerves or a stressed immune system), but then I eventually got over it four days before the exam. Next were the nightmares of my fingers melting off, and me waking up sweating because I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to type for the exam. Also, there were frequent dreams of my teeth falling out – I’m not sure what those were about, but they truly rattled me, and I’m someone that enjoys having nightmares because I think they’re usually extraordinary experiences that don’t happen every day. This is still before the exam too…

Once the exam arrived at 9 AM on Tuesday morning (May 17th) my indigestion started, and for the next two days it has persisted – thank God for Tums… I had never even had indigestion before in my life, so I wasn’t sure if Tums actually worked, never having used them. Lo and behold they do! They probably ended up saving me a lot of discomfort and annoyance while writing! I guess the indigestion didn’t help with my sleep problems, but the pounding heart certainly didn’t either – these two stress symptoms made my late night dementia quite fun. Lastly, the burst water pipe in our washroom didn’t help matters either, with our oh-so-kind landlord visiting on Wednesday to help me out (making a noisy symphony for two hours).

Again, this is coming from someone who thinks they know how to handle stress – having a yoga instructor for a fiancé usually helps toward this end!! Honestly, I haven’t been this stressed since those days of corporate management -- and thank all that is blessed, these exams are now over!!

My systems are shutting down now… I’ve CC’d my fiancé on this e-mail, so she knows that she can come home now J -- yeah!! And the only thing that I’ll be stressed out about after this is if I ever have kids – dissertation defense, bah – I’ve already defended a thesis and it was a cake walk… J

Thanks again – all of you – for your advice, help, and support on these exams!!!

Cheers and have a great long weekend,

Peter

PS – As you can see from this note, answering the exams questions was not my problem… editing them down to 10 pages was, but I took Dr. Panofsky’s instructions -- that just as long as the answers weren’t over 20 pages I should be fine -- as a good warning/guideline for my two longer answers in the Major Specific and the Minor. Deep down inside I know they could both be edited a little more, but I actually like them how they are (after 3 edits each)! I hope you do too…

PS2 – any mistakes or illogical arguments found in my exam responses are entirely my dog Bear’s fault. Bear kept telling me to write strange arguments about cats and squirrels during the wee hours of morning, and he’s not too good at editing or typing either… However, he did keep me company many of the nights that I studied for these exams, and I must give him credit for that!

PS3 – I can’t wait to take all of these books back to the library and finally have a clean room again…

My First Blog Post Finally Recovered: Why I Blog

2004-01-01T11:07:00.002-06:00

I’ve been meaning to re-post this final popular entry from my old blog on the topic “Why I Blog”, and I’ve finally got around to recovering it completely. I’ve even updated it at this point, and I think it’s rather interesting that I’ve come to terms with my old blog through recovering and putting it to rest about the time that my dissertation is starting to be wrapped up.

In short, the main reasons that I blog are as follows:

* To archive effective research and teaching resources that I come across
* To openly share my research because it is publicly funded
* To network with other scholars from around the world with similar research interests
* To connect with potential research subjects since my research has an on-line component
* To explore this relatively new medium via formal practice and engagement with the technology and the social agents who use it
* To present alternative views on political issues and critically question events that the mainstream media often ignores

I have found that blogging has been a great asset for all of these above reasons. Overall, it has allowed me to connect with many people that I would have possibly never come into contact with before, and has enhanced all aspects of my life through honing my technology and research skills, as well as frequently providing me with academic opportunities and employment contacts. After using a blog for a few years now, I truly think people can ill afford not to use such a valuable tool in today’s networked world to communicate with people, especially if your career requires you to connect with others.

For another example of the uses of a Blog: In the Google Analytics age I’m able to even quantify some of this value in that my blog has attracted regularly between 300-400 unique visitors each month, from countries around the world, including (in order of most unique views):

1. Canada
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Ireland
5. Thailand
6. India
7. Australia
8. Palestinian Territory
9. Philippines
10. Japan
11. France
12. Netherlands
13. Turkey
14. Singapore
15. Malaysia
16. South Africa
17. Sweden
18. Nicaragua
19. Guatemala
20. Germany
21. Finland
22. Russia
23. Indonesia
24. Venezuela
25. Ukraine
26. Vietnam
27. Spain
28. Slovenia
29. Poland
30. Algeria
31. Bahrain
32. Italy
33. South Korea
34. Iran
35. Jordan
36. Norway
37. Mexico
38. Brazil
39. Portugal
40. Nigeria
41. Egypt
42. Botswana
43. Ghana

I’ve only been using Google Analytics since January, so at this rate I’ll hopefully have had a visitor to my site from every country on the planet by the end of the year (hey, you gotta have goals, even if they don’t necessarily have any substance behind them). I’m confident that I’ll at least be able to get New Zealand, Greenland, Iceland, and China added to the list shortly, but really that’s just my virtual ego talking. :-)

Jokes aside, the Google Analytics tracking tools are interesting in how they present the blogosphere as a large lurking space; Bloggers tend to link and comment on one another’s work, but the predominant Internet behaviour for the average Internet user is not to interact or leave a proclaimed trace, instead voyeurism rules. In other words, without the Internet Protocol address tracking of Google Analytics, or a similar tool, I might not know how useful to others particular blog entries are, beyond word of mouth feedback, personal e-mails, blogger links and comments posted on the blog. However, even without these tools, the blog is useful for archiving and networking, of course.

The Google Analytics tools simply help a blogger, or any writer for that matter, begin to identify how to craft better stories that others might be interested in. For instance, the top blog entries that people have been reading on this blog are listed as follows:

1. Facebook Policies:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/university-facebook-policies-breakfast.html

2. My Dissertation Proposal:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/10/phd-dissertation-proposal-sshrc.html

3. ICT Tools:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/tools-from-mars-and-other-places.html

4. Comprehensive Exam Questions:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/05/comprehensive-exams-questions-actual.html

5. Getting a Job in the Public Service:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/02/jean-mcnulty-talk-getting-job-in-public.html

danah boyd's insight that she found any topic she wrote on Facebook would start to attract attention to her blog is quite evident in the above list. These insights into what kind of information people are looking for can only help to improve a researcher’s abilities to craft and engage with pertinent social issues that can affect others in a public space.

You don’t have to take my word for it though; here are some other bloggers thoughts on why they blog which I have found quite eloquent:

* Stefan Sinclair: http://stefansinclair.name/node/83
* Ismael Pina Lopez: http://ictlogy.net/20070729-oii-sdp-2007-epilogue-last-thoughts-about-web-sciences-and-academic-blogging-or-why-did-not-academia-came-up-with-wikipedia-and-some-acknowledgments-too/
* Daithí Mac Síthigh has a bit of a humourous take on Blogging: “I use it as a shoebox, as a sandpit, and for various research-related purposes. My non-law interests include politics, music, baseball, radio, libraries and more - all get the occasional mention. I also post speeches, papers and presentations, where possible.”
* danah boyd's warning "Blogging isn't safe": To limit my enthusiasm for blogging though, I think boyd's warning about the potential pitfalls to blogging is a good balance here.

Thinking through boyd's arguments, I know that I am definitely constructing a particular social space in my work that focuses on the following themes: post-secondary education, ICT tools, innovation, narrative analysis, social networks and politics. Beyond those few topics, I don't let much of my personal life appear on these pages, because I hope to focus the discussion on public matters, without having too much crossover with my private life (although the two are, of course, linked intimately). Generally though, I hope that others do find this blog useful (within safe limits, of course), because I know I sure have!

Okay, from now on, I will be posting only on my dissertation research as I get to work wrapping that up over the next few months.