Blog

Copenhagen.
The final session of this first day of AoIR 2008 begins with James Owens, whose focus is on online news and democratic communities. Interactive technology enables the production of new social formations, but can also reproduce existing social formations; this can be related especially also to local community formations. James is interested in three Chicago-based Websites (of the Tribune, a citizen journalism site supported by the Tribune, and the local Indymedia site), and is interested here especially on whether such sites promote or prevent social fragmentation.

Copenhagen.
The next session at AoIR 2008 is on the civil society. Paul Nixon and Antje Greber are the first presenters, and begin by addressing the question of how to define civil society in the first place. This is related to traditional conceptions of the public sphere, of course. One definition is of civil society as aggregated interest formulation, accumulated in a community of associations.

In a democratic society, civil society and its organisations form the third sector (in addition to government and public administration, and for-profit businesses and corporations). This third sector also contrasts with the private sphere. There are also views by which in a corporative state, civil society organisations are providers of social services; additionally, civil society organisations allow for more particpation in the policy-making process, protest and monitoring, advocacy, community building and democratisaton, etc.

Copenhagen.
The post-lunch session here at AoIR 2008 starts with Paul Emerson Teusner, presenting on the presence of emerging religious movements in the blogosphere. How do authority rankings in the blogosphere affect the standing of such religious bloggers? Paul focusses here on a sample of 30 blogs in the Australian blogosphere, examined between July and October 2006.

This is backgrounded by the rise of Web 2.0 and its growth in user-led content production, of course, as well as by the merging of public and private spheres through social networking technologies. However, the effects of these phenomena are not so strongly felt in the religious blogosphere as yet - traditional religious authorities have not yet been replaced by any form of user-led religiosity, in other words. What is common to the blogs studied is an understanding that any culture war between Christianity and secularism has been lost, so the focus is not on missionary efforts but simply on developing a sustainable arrangement with the secular mainstream.

Copenhagen.
The first keynote speaker at AoIR 2008 is Mimi Ito, well-known from her work on mobile media. Today, she presents early results from a different research project, however, on youth participation in networked publics. This ethnographic research involved a significant number of interviews, group meetings, diary studies, and surveys, as well as observations of activities and outcomes. This, then, investigates activities as embedded in a broader network ecology.

Mimi points out the growing availability of tools for creating and modifying creative content, and to publish, share, and distribute such material, and how in the process professional and amateur media content creation are being 'munged' together. In the middle of scales from consumer to producer, from personal communication to mass media, and from gift, barter, and dialogue to commodity exchange there are plenty of interesting things happening - but how are youth learning, socialising, and communicating in such networked publics?

Copenhagen.
After some drama getting here (note to self: Qantas may be in trouble at the moment, but avoid Scandinavian Airlines like the plague), I'm now in Copenhagen, and we're about to start the programme proper of the ninth annual Association of Internet Researchers conference. Although the presentation by Dr. Hala-Seuss which runs in a parallel session was very tempting, I'm starting the day in a session on wikis. Timme Bisgaard Munk is the first presenter, presenting on his study of the Danish Wikipedia.

I'm spending the morning at the 2008 Arts Libraries Society of Australia and New Zealand conference, at the Queensland State Library. I'm afraid I'm only here for the opening keynotes (one of which I'm giving) - my hectic schedule for this week between overseas trips doesn't give me any more time to see what else is happening.

The first keynote speaker this morning is Kathryn Greenhill from Murdoch University, presenting on the possibilities of Second Life as a platform. She begins by taking us on a flight around Info Island - the central library island in Second Life - and follows this with a quick explanation of what Second Life is and how it works. The aim here, she notes, is immersion, not just information.

So, last Saturday I went to the Future of Journalism event in Brisbane (and spoke on one of the panels). Contrary to my usual practice, I didn't live-blog the event - panel-based events are notoriously difficult to blog. Here, then, are some reflections on what I saw - adding to comments already posted by Mark Bahnisch, Marian Edmunds, Cameron Reilly, and Bronwen Clune, among others.

The event began well, with Margaret Simons setting the theme with her usual insightful comments. Her observations about the troubled economic future for the journalism industry (and here, especially newspapers) are …