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Seattle.
The next speaker in this session at AoIR 2011 is Susan Kretchmer, whose focus is on the continuing digital divide. The U.S. ranks surprisingly lowly on broadband Internet adoption; some 14 million Americans do not have access to broadband, and 100 million could have access but don’t use it because they can’t afford it or don’t realise the advantages. Rates are especially low amongst the most disadvantaged groups.

This is being addressed through the development of a National Broadband Plan by the FCC, under instructions by the Obama administration. This envisages the U.S. as a 21st century information society …

Seattle.
The next speaker at AoIR 2011 is Ericka Menchen-Trevino, whose focus is on media selection practices online. She begins by noting the concerns that people don’t necessarily gain a full understanding of current political trends online, if they flock only to those Websites which already speak to their political preferences; this may give them a fundamentally skewed perspective on politics. Additionally, of course, people may also avoid exposure to political news altogether – so there’s a two-dimensional framework here, from low to high political partisanship and from low to high interest in the news.

There is also selective exposure …

Seattle.
Well, the final day or AoIR 2011 is upon us, and I’m starting it in a panel on politics. We begin with Fa Martin-Niemi, whose interest is in knowledge-sharing in virtual spaces. Such spaces are filled with social networks, and people act differently as they participate in different social networks – sometimes deviantly to a lesser or greater extent. What are the implications for organisational knowledge spaces in this?

Extreme deviance, of course, is damaging to online social networks; there is also positive deviance, however, which can be beneficial (whistleblowing is one example – such deviance is honourable and …

Seattle.
Finally, we move on to the fabulous Steve Jones and his colleague Rich Wolf to finish this session (and day) at AoIR 2011. Steve notes the degree to which the mobile phone has become a coterminal device in our presence. Through a student project, Steve and Rich led the development of an app for observing and understanding the scaffolding of privacy, security, surveillance and connectiveness. The app provided a location-based as well as social network service for students on the University of Illinois-Chicago campus.

Rich says that this was using a REST-based architecture, in which clients request representations …

Seattle.
The next speaker in this bumper session at AoIR 2011 is Andrea Guzman, who’s interested in the media framing of mobile phones. She has worked through a range of media texts from the New York Times and the Washington Post in the years 2006 and 2010 which discuss such issues, focussing especially on articles which mention mobile phones in their lead paragraphs.

Where mobile phone uses by adults are discussed in such articles, they are framed most of all as a necessary tool for coordinating work, coordinating life activities, and living in modern society. They are portrayed as especially …

Seattle.
The next speaker in this AoIR 2011 session is Miao Feng, who asks about the privacy consequences of a site like Foursquare? Location-based services are nothing new, and address a local mass audience; what needs to be examined is how technology is diffused, what social change it promotes, and how it is culturally and socially negotiated.

Perceptions of personal computers since the 1980s were largely positive; such computers came to our houses as inevitable improvements to our lives. Perceptions of the Net turned from the overwhelmingly positive to a more speculative perspective; with location-based services, privacy concerns were …

Seattle.
The next speaker at AoIR 2011 is Adriane Stoner, whose focus is on the historical trajectory of mobile media development. There are three ideological themes which can be observed in the rise of all new media, as James Carey argued: capitalism, popular imagery, and universalism.

New media were often accompanied by the rise of a powerful capitalism – new media is economically powerful, and existing economic systems usually need to be reconstructed as a result of their emergency, as powerful new monopolies are naturalised. Popular imagery associated with new media points to the notion of the electronic sublime – …

Seattle.
The next speaker at AoIR 2011 is Meghan Grosse. She begins by pointing out how mobile devices have changed how we function in public and private spaces – not least also with the rise of apps, which have enabled us to personalise our mobile experience. The road here has been long; mobile phones have gradually added functionality, and the explosion in the range of apps has been a recent development which now no longer relies on hardware changes, but software development.

With the emergence of these tools also came the presumption that people should take advantage of these. These …

Seattle.
The final panel at AoIR 2011 for today begins with Guillaume Latzko-Toth, whose interest is in mobile devices and the notion of intimacy. By mobile devices, he means mobile digital information and communication devices: portable, hand-held devices through which media is accessed and collaboratively produced. Mobility doesn’t simply mean moveability or portability in this, but rather, this refers to devices which are used while the user is mobile. Such devices are digital and versatile; they are app-enabled.

By intimacy, on the other hand, Guillaume refers to the dimensions of proximity, contact, and privacy. Mobile devices are a technology of …

Seattle.
The Wednesday keynote at AoIR 2011 is by the abundantly energetic Tom Boellstorff, whose provocation to us is to rethink the digital. This is about both online and offline, and is interested in exploring emergent research areas. After all, what do we mean by digital: just the things we plug in, or the things which are online – or is there more to it? Part of the point here is also to reconnect the digital to indexicality – to return to the roots of the term ‘digit’.

Tom’s early work has been focussing on research into gay and lesbian …