If you’ve been wondering what the man who popularised the term virtual community has been thinking about these days you should check out this post he wrote on the Annenberg Centre’s DIY Media blog. It outlines the potential importance of digital literacy for enabling political engagement. Well worth a look as is the weblog as a whole.
A while back I wrote about Questionpro as part of a posting about tools academics might find useful and (on my personal blog) as part of a roundup of online questionnaire tools. They do indeed have lots of features and a free academic trial but be warned - if you need to go back to the survey you used after the six month trial is over - even just to get at your existing data - you’ll have to pay. Not only that but you’ll have to give them your credit card details and agree to monthly payments (at least $15) which you will then have to remember to cancel when you’ve got what you need.
Admittedly all of this is documented on their site but it’s still annoying that they couldn’t cut me some slack to get at my data.
I hope someone out there can tell me of a service which is web-based, hosted, reasonably powerful and free for unlimited academic use…
David Brake
The British Academy has produced a report on Copyright and research in the humanities and social sciences which concludes inter alia while the law itself gives academics sufficient ability to use copyright work, “risk averse publishers, who are often themselves rights holders, demand that unnecessary permissions be obtained, and such permissions are often refused or granted on unreasonable terms” and “there are well-founded concerns that new database rights and the development of digital rights management systems (DRMs) may enable rights holders to circumvent the effects of the copyright exemptions designed to facilitate research and scholarship”.
Sonia Livingstone has asked me to pass this on. Please respond to her directly (as below) but it would be interesting if you could share your favourite new media papers here in the comments as well (and comment on my choices - at the bottom - if you wish):
My colleague Leah Lievrouw and I have been asked to develop and edit a major compilation of “classic” must-read articles in new media studies - a sort of “desert island” collection that will be published as a (rather hefty) four-volume reference.
Leah and I have made our own preliminary list. However, our experience with the Handbook of New Media has taught us that this field is a very big umbrella, covering everything from media law and regulation, to studies of communities and social networks, to education and the workplace, to digital arts and culture (and more). The challenge is to assemble a collection that fairly and comprehensively covers the field as we specialists understand it.
So, we are seeking your help! We’d love you to tell us about up to three nominations for journal or proceedings articles, key book chapters, or other publications of similar length that you would consider essential reads for anyone wanting to know what new media studies (broadly construed) is about.
These might be readings you always assign to students, items you consistently cite in your own work, or pieces that have made a difference in the way you think about and study new media yourself. We are particularly interested in items that have historical value, tend to be overlooked, or concisely capture a writer’s most important ideas. We’re also keen to make this an international list, since this is an international field. You may suggest your own publications, BUT we are more interested to know what or who has influenced you.
Leah and I will select the final list for the collection, but we will be happy to summarize and share everyone’s nominees after we get feedback, which itself should be a very interesting resource. We’d like your suggestions and ideas by October 1 if possible - we’re also eager to see if this exercise generates any discussion!
Thanks very much for your time and interest!
Sonia Livingstone - please reply to s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk
For myself (David Brake) I must admit I haven’t been as conscientious as I could be in keeping track of which papers and books I have found most useful or thought provoking but here are three that I thought were excellent and which others might not have run across:
Browne, K. D. and C. Hamilton-Giachritsis (2005) “The Influence of Violent Media on Children and Adolescents: A Public-Health Approach“, Lancet, 365 pp. 702-710.
A clear and concise overview of the extensive scientific debate on this contentious issue.
Bruckman, A. (2001) “Studying the Amateur Artist: A Perspective on Disguising Data Collected in Human Subjects Research on the Internet”. in Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiries, Lancaster, http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/ethics_bru_full.html
Nuanced discussion of different ways of ethically treating people whose texts and other works appear online ranging from full disclosure of their identities to complete concealment.
Crawford, A. (2002) “The Myth of the Unmarked Speaker” in Critical Perspectives on the Internet, (Elmer, G. ed.) Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., pp. 89-104.
An excellent and thoughtful debunking of the notion that text-based Internet communication eliminates status differentials because of the lack of visual or verbal cues.
I’ve been listening to an interesting BBC radio history series The Idea of a University and just heard about a satirical book (not seemingly still in print) “Redbrick and these Vital Days” by a Liverpool academic, E Allison Peers. It includes this marvellous descriptive passage about a typical day in the life of ‘Professor Deadwood’ (based apparently on the author’s view of Alan Dorward).
He has a leisurely breakfast at half-past-eight, followed by pipe and paper; reaches the University between ten and half-past; reads his letters and perhaps writes one; saunters into the Common Room for a cup of coffee; calls on a colleague, or the Bursar, or the Clerk to the Senate; returns to his room, glances through the latest issue of a learned review, has a few words with a pupil - and lo, it’s lunch-time. After lunch in the refectory, followed by a chat about the day’s news in the Common Room, he gives a lecture at half-past-two, and immediately afterwards hurries home lest he should be late for tea. After tea comes the day’s exercise (unless it happens to be a day when he has no lecture, in which case he plays golf in the afternoon) and after dinner he spends a couple of hours with a new book on his special subject (or a book from the circulating library on something else), after which, the paper again, a nightcap, and bed at eleven after a somewhat tiring but thoroughly well-spent day.
They don’t make jobs like that any more - do they?
P.S. It seems I am not alone in thinking that what I will be doing in part when I teach is what the founder of Keele University, Lord Lindsay, saw as the purpose of university education: “to enable everyone to read the Times intelligently”.