Blogs

Up next at AoIR 2012 is Zizi Papacharissi, whose focus is on structures of affect and their connection to political engagement. What is the texture of feeling here – for example in the expression of sentiment on Twitter? In her talk here, Zizi will focus on the #egypt hashtag.

The next plenary session at AoIR 2012 starts with Daniel Miller, who describes enthnography as often grand in its ambitions, but sometimes a little parochial in its work – how do you go about developing some of the wider theory about technology and what it means to be human, for example? What needs to happen here is a move between the broad and the specific.

The post-lunch keynote at AoIR 2012 is by Liesbet van Zoonen, who begins with a recap of cultural theories of identity. These assume both individual and collective identities to be multiple rather than single, dynamic rather than static. Identity is something we do, not something we are. Research has been informed by these ideas, and we have a good understanding of how different groups use media to perform their identities. This has also been reflected in an understanding of diversity as a desirable goal for social policy.

The final plenary speaker in this opening session at AoIR 2012 is Susanna Paasonen, who highlights the question of what the object of Internet research really is. This has often been described in terms of loss – loss of material aspects of research objects – as well as gain – the benefits of disembodiment.

The next speaker at AoIR 2012 is Larissa Hjorth, whose focus is on how smartphones are shaping and shaped by women's roles and labour. They highlight the unbounded nature of the domestic, and the struggles of boundary making: smartphones are both empowering and exploiting gendered labour: they empower and constrain women's experiences.

The first AoIR 2012 plenary begins with Mary L. Gray, whose interest is in moving past technology-centric work in Internet studies. Rather, life is entangled with Internet technologies: the study of media should be used to draw out larger questions, and Internet research needs to be an interdiscipline concerned with boundary work.

And I've arrived at the 2012 Association of Internet Researchers conference – my annual pilgrimage to catch up with the family. We start with a quick burst of Ignite talks, which itself begins with John Carter McKnight. He notes the two fundamental axioms of video games studies: games teach, and games don't teach. The Red Cross has posed the question: Is there a way for first-person shooter games to include a more accuracy representation of international humanitarian law?

Well, as Tuesday's blogburst already indicated, I'm slowly progressing on my current travels. The event at the Copenhagen Centre for Communication and Computing was something of a preview for a panel on "Digital Data – Lost, Found, and Made" which is on the programme for the 2012 conference of the Association of Internet Researchers here in Salford; expect plenty of liveblogging from that conference to start tomorrow.

Before this conference and the Copenhagen event, though, I spent a few days in Helsinki, where I gave two guest lectures in the international Masters course – and I've neglected to post those lectures here so far. So, here they are. Unfortunately, my audio recorder ran out of batteries during the first lecture, so there are only slides for it - however, that lecture was a repeat of my SBPJor keynote in Brazil last October, so you can go to those slides for the audio.

Below are the two lectures:

The final speaker (that went fast) at the CCC Symposium is Annette Markham, who begins by posing the question "What counts as data?" An answer to that question might provide an opportunity to bridge 'big data' and qualitative research - because what counts as data also defines what is considered to be viable, credible, or interesting findings.

We continue at the CCC Symposium with the great Alex Halavais, who is interested in the first place in the hidden patterns in data, and the learning - the evolution of ideas - which might result from them. But how do we detect such learning, such change? One indicator could be the popularity of content or users - success may be measured in the amount of attention received, for example.