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Journal of Information Technology & Politics Volume 6, Issue 3 & 4
(2009)

Special Issue: “Politics: Web 2.0” Visit: http://shrinkify.com/144k
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FREE ISSUE ONLINE ONLY DURING APSA 2009

The Journal of Information Technology & Politics Volume 6, Issue 3 & 4
(2009). Special Issue: “Politics: Web 2.0.”

Guest Editor’s Introduction
“The Internet and Politics in Flux”
Andrew Chadwick

Research Papers
“Realizing the Social Internet? Online Social Networking Meets Offline Civic
Engagement”
- Josh Pasek;  eian more; Daniel Romer

“Typing Together? Clustering of Ideological Types in Online Social Networks”
- Brian J. Gaines; Jeffery J. Mondak

“Building an Architecture of Participation? Political Parties and Web 2.0 in
Britain”
- Nigel A. Jackson; Darren G. Lilleker

“Norwegian Parties and Web 2.0”
- Øyvind Kalnes

“The Labors of Internet-Assisted Activism: Overcommunication,
Miscommunication, and Communicative Overload”
- Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

“Developing the “Good Citizen”: Digital Artifacts, Peer Networks, and Formal
Organization During the 2003–2004 Howard Dean Campaign”
- Daniel Kreiss

“Lost in Technology? Political Parties and the Online Campaigns of
Constituency Candidates in Germany’s Mixed Member Electoral System”
- Thomas Zittel

“Internet Election 2.0? Culture, Institutions, and Technology in the Korean
Presidential Elections of 2002 and 2007”
- Yeon-Ok Lee

“The Internet and Mobile Technologies in Election Campaigns: The GABRIELA
Women’s Party During the 2007 Philippine Elections”
- Kavita Karan;  Jacques D. M. Gimeno; Edson Tandoc Jr.

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Call for papers

The Inaugural Interdisciplinary Conference of the Virtual Communication, Collaboration and Conflict (VIRT3C) Research Group at the University of Hull

VIRT3C@Hull 2010 Developing the Virtual Society: Conflict in Adoption of Collaborative Networks
19-20 March

Public Keynote speaker:

Geert Lovink [Institute for Network Cultures, Hogeschool Van Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam]

Keynote speakers:

Gabriella Coleman [Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU]

Mathieu O’Neil [Paris Sorbonne – Paris IV]

Our plenary theme is ‘Developing the Virtual Society: Conflict in Adoption of Online Collaborative Networks’. As virtual society develops, and peer technologies and practices pump in its heart, this conference brings together academics of all disciplines to discuss conflict in the adoption of collaborative networks. This is a time of confrontation between older forms of communication and organization and new ways of sharing, collaborating and acting collectively. We seek to explore conflicts emerging in the transition from, and resistance to, horizontal participatory networks, as well as conflict within collaborative networks. We welcome suggestions for panels and papers on any area relating to our theme, and particularly in the following areas:

• Network Theory
• P2P and FLOSS methodology adoption
• FLOSS methodology
• Open source conflicts and forking
• Adoption by NGOs and the developing world
• Adoption by social movements, hacktivism, cyberconflict
• Institutional resistance to networks
• Online P2P places and conflicts

We encourage especially contributions, including, but not limited to, politics, economics, computer science, business, psychology, sociology, and law.

With your abstract of no more than 300 words please include the following information:

Name, postal address, email
Institutional affiliation and position (if applicable)

Please send abstracts in Word or pdf format to the organisers at
athina.k@gmail.com
Provisional Deadline for abstracts: 15th January 2010

 

Network Security project award

The NPCU can announce a new £130,784 research grant award to Dr Ben O’Loughlin in collaboration with Linguamatics Ltd. The award, from the Technology Strategy Board (http://www.innovateuk.org/), will fund a 12-month pilot investigation of the use of blogs and twitter as a way of monitoring information infrastructures for early warnings of problems. Linguamatics are a text-mining company based in Cambridge, UK. Lawrence Ampofo, a PhD student in the department, will be a Research Assistant on the project.

 

Automatic analysis of formal channels (e.g. customer surveys and user feedback forms) using Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been successfully used by large organisations to identify issues reported with products and services. Informal online sources of information, such as blogs and twitter, give the potential for greater coverage of issues in near-real time. We will take NLP technology already proven in life science research and apply it to blogs and twitter for monitoring of digital services. Weak signals gathered from large numbers of users can suggest problems which do not show up as single point failures. We will also see if it is possible to catch cases where a rumour of a problem may exacerbate or even cause the problem itself.

2009-09-14: Web metrics workshop

To initiate the launch of several research activities involving web metrics and political behaviour (see newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/web-metrics), the NPCU is holding a one-day workshop on 14 September 2009 to launch our focus on web metrics. The purpose of the workshop is to establish a research theme of Web metrics and political behaviour that will enable both academics and practitioners to debate and to shape an interdisciplinary research agenda that will:

 

1) Examine the increasing degree to which Web metrics can be used to measure and potentially predict such political behaviour from election voting to terrorism.

2) Bring together the combined expertise and opinions of academics, government and private sector actors to advance research in this field and inform debate.

3) Attract further support and interest from other people to form a community that is at the forefront at the nexus of Web metrics and political behaviour.

Speakers include:

 

Simon Collister: Head of Consumer Digital, Weber Shandwick

 

Rob Pearson: Digital Diplomacy, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

 

Simon Bergman: Information Options

 

Carrie Baker and Dominic Campbell: FutureGov

 

Dr Maura Conway and Lisa McInery: Department of Law & Government, Dublin City University

 

Darren Lilleker: Department of Media and Communications, Bournemouth University

 

Claire Spencer: I to I Research

 

Journal of Information Technology & Politics special issue on "Politics: Web 2.0" published

Edited by Andrew Chadwick. Click here for the Taylor and Francis journal page. See below for the table of contents.

  • Introduction: The Internet and Politics in Flux - Andrew Chadwick
  • Realizing the Social Internet: Online Social Networking Meets Offline Social Capital? - Josh Pasek, eian more, and Daniel Romer
  • Typing Together? Clustering of Ideological Types in Online Social Networks - Brian J. Gaines and Jeffery J. Mondak
  • Building an Architecture of Participation? Political Parties and Web 2.0 in Britain - Nigel A. Jackson and Darren G. Lilleker
  • Norwegian Parties and Web 2.0 - Øyvind Kalnes
  • The Labors of Internet-Assisted Activism: Overcommunication, Miscommunication, and Communicative Overload - Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
  • Developing the “Good Citizen”: Digital Artifacts, Peer Networks, and Formal Organization During the 2003–2004 Howard Dean Campaign - Daniel Kreiss
  • Lost in Technology? Political Parties and the Online Campaigns of Constituency Candidates in Germany’s Mixed Member Electoral System - Thomas Zittel
  • Internet Election 2.0? Culture, Institutions, and Technology in the Korean Presidential Elections of 2002 and 2007 - Yeon-Ok Lee
  • The Internet and Mobile Technologies in Election Campaigns: The GABRIELA Women’s Party During the 2007 Philippine Elections - Kavita Karan, Jacques D. M. Gimeno, and Edson Tandoc, Jr.

Trophy photos from Afghanistan

A colleague has pointed out that photos of British troops killed in Afghanistan are appearing on jihadist websites. Click here, for instance, and scroll down. The original poster praises the 'mighty warriors of Taliban' and talks of their courageousness. He uses derogatory names and titles for the fallen British soldiers. When their names are written, they are proceeded with, “Allah's damned enemy X”. All others praise the work of the Taliban and pray for more death inflicted on the foreign troops. There is nothing too sophisticated here. But do the families of the dead troops realise these images are being used this way? Is this an occupational hazard of digital media to which everyone must adapt?