AoIR 2005

I'm very happy to report that an update of my paper from last year's AolR conference, "Wikinews: The Next Generation of Online News?", has now been published as the lead article in Scan Journal. I was able to find some more recent statistics, which unfortunately confirm the trends I'd already seen at the end of 2005: Wikinews is stagnating, both in terms of new contributors and as far as content creation is concerned. In my opinion, this is due to a misinterpretation of the Neutral Point of View doctrine, which here leads to a counterproductive aversion to any kind of discussion of news and current events. (And let me be absolutely clear: I'm not arguing against NPOV as such here - Wikipedia's current events section does very good work covering the news, for example, so it can work very well in a news context.) Anyway - read the article in Scan Journal! Here's the issue announcement by editors Chris Atton and Graham Meikle:

There is only one set of sessions at AoIR 2005 this Sunday morning, almost as something of an afterthought (and a few people have already left for the airport, also having to negotiate the traffic disruptions caused by the Chicago Marathon this morning). Which is a bit of a shame, seeing that the session I'm attending now contains this year's winners of the Carl J. Couch Center Internet Research Award, that is, the three best student papers submitted for the conference.

Ericka Menchen Trevino: What Motivates Bloggers?

Ericka Menchen Trevino from the University of Illinois at Chicago, this year's first-placed entrant, is the first speaker. Her study investigates the motivations of bloggers, and she begins by noting that some of the things being said about blogging now were said less than a decade ago about plain old homepages as well. However, blogs of course are updated relatively regularly, which means that there is a certain level of commitment to them even if hosted blogs have made it very easy to create a blog.

I came a little late to this next session at AoIR 2005 - we've already started a presentation on photoblogging by Eric Meyer, Howard Rosenbaum, and Noriko Hara from Indiana University.

Eric Meyer, Howard Rosenbaum, and Noriko Hara: Trends across Photoblogging Sites

The purists' definition of photoblogging is as chronological blogging using photos; photoblogs.org distinguishes clearly between photoblogs and galleries, but in practice that division isn't as clear: various approaches to Flickr use, for example, blur the line. Some people do use Flickr as a kind of photoblogging, which also enables tagging and commenting on photos, for example.

My first session on this second day of the Association of Internet Researchers conference 2005 in Chicago is on the 'Internal Dynamics of Online Spaces'.

Janet Armentor-Cota: Uses of Web Chat

Janet Armentor-Cota from Syracuse University is the first speaker, presenting on the dynamics of a Web chat community. The paper she presents here is coming out of her dissertation, and looks at a Northeast (U.S.) romance chat room. Web chat, of course, is usually real time, multi-participant, and consists of messages of short length, with almost constant traffic around the clock. Web chat is also a multimedia phenomenon and can incorporate images and audio and video streams. So, how do processes and structures of multimedia technologies organise the chat space, and what processes occur here?

The next session at AoIR 2005 is on 'Emerging Research Methods for Analysing Civic Engagement'. Kenneth Farrall from the University of Pennsylvania makes a start. His paper is co-authored with Michael delli Carpini.

Kenneth Farrall: Web Graph Analysis

Kenneth begins by outlining perceptions of the Internet as alternatively a tool for revitalising democracy, or for furthering its decline. There are various approaches to analysing its role in this, from content analysis and user surveys to social network analysis, which appears to be a very useful technique for analysing user engagement in the Internet. But such analysis is difficult in an Internet context as social network associations online are highly fluid, and Kenneth suggests that content analysis may be useful to address such problems. 

The first of the afternoon sessions this Thursday at AoIR 2005 is on 'Participation and Trust in Online Communities'. Andrew Cox from the University of Sheffield is the first presenter. 

Andrew Cox: The Parameters of an Online Community

Andrew's work looked at the links and knowledge sharing amongst people working in different organisations and across different organisational jurisdictions - in this case, the Web developers working for universities. There are a number of online spaces available to them, some used, some not, as well as various conferences. in the UK, they continue to use listservs as a key tool, and in the U.S., the main equivalent uwebd is also listserv-based, and has seen a continuing importance (even though we might consider mailing-lists as a somewhat old-fashioned CMC tool by now). There has been some decrease in list membership in recent years, however, declining by some 5% per annum since 2003. It is also interesting that some 25% of list members have turned off mail delivery of the list (presumably accessing the list via the Web?). And there is ongoing churn of members (new members joining, old members dropping out). List traffic is around 120 per month, and again this has declined gradually in recent years.

Well, the 2005 Association of Internet Researchers conference is finally underway. We start the Thursday morning 'Civic Engagement' session at with a paper by Irene Ramos-Vielba on the use of political blogs in Portugal and Spain, and their potential contribution to democracy.

Irene Ramos-Vielba: Political Blogs in Spain and Portugal

Blogs have of course be recognised in the Anglo-Saxon context already, so how does this play out elsewhere? Are blogs creating an authentic political sphere for deliberation and political action? Journalism and politics are of course two of the key fields which have been affected by blogs as they comment on and promote discussion on political issues - but what is the contribution made? A polarisation between civil pessimists and civil optimists has now perhaps been overcome - we are no longer prediction either a utopia or dystopia that is likely to be brought about by blogs. Rather, what emerges is perhaps an additional political sphere which allows for communal and multidirectional exchange, and may enhance the democratic process.