Internet Technologies

Geoff Leland from the University of Waikato is the next speaker in this session at ATOM2006. His research is into the media worlds of young teenagers in New Zealand - how do they perceive their own worlds? This work has taken place through the 1999-2005 period with some 2000 children in Hamilton and Christchurch, and Geoff argues that because of the fast pace of technological research such research needs to be continuous - findings even from only a few years ago are already outdated. Another reason for tracking changes is also that the New Zealand population profile is changing markedly through immigration and its accepting of humanitarian refugees (in stark contrast to Australia's inhumane asylum policy practices which ignore and breach international humanitarian conventions) - one school Geoff has worked with has some 18% Somali refugee children, for example.

Next up is Pam Hu from the Media Development Authority in Singapore - which is one of the best-connected nations in the world, of course (next to some countries in Scandinavia, as well as South Korea, and Japan - indeed, the entire country is a wireless hotspot...). The MDA is similar to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Singapore is looking to position itself as an East-West Media Gateway, involving media financing, production, aggregation, and distribution; this is done in part also through the Asia Media Festival (29 Nov. to 3 Dec. 2006), including film, television, and animation components, and Broadcast Asia (in June 2007). Singapore is also increasingly placing itself in international media projects to develop global awareness of what it has to offer. The Media Development Authority was established on 1 January 2003; it is charged with developing the Singaporean media industry and acts as a facilitator, promoter, and catalyst.

For those in the Brisbane area: I'll be on a panel at the Straight Out of Brisbane festival (SOOB) this Saturday afternoon, discussing "Media Futures". Below is the blurb for the event - see more details on the SOOB Website. My session also follows directly from the launch of radio station 4ZZZ's Convergent Community Newsroom, which involves my colleague Barry Saunders. Should be interesting!

Media Futures
Sat 19 Aug 1:00pm - 2:30pm :: SOOB Festival Club, 610 Ann St, Valley
Free

Tartu
Finally today we're in a summary plenary which brings together all the CATaC 2006 sessions we've seen. I'm not completely sure whether this is particularly bloggable, but I'll give it a go. Lelia Green notes that her session was focussing on the relationship of knowledge and the Net - knowledge and bird flu; knowledge of how to attack Websites in the course of information warfare; knowledge of health practices in specific communities, but shared online; and knowledge of how to repair cars as it is shared locally and successfully in Burundi as opposed to knowledge introduced by welfare agencies without a full consideration of all implications.

Dresden
The next panel is on the 2006 Football World Cup - it's a high density panel, so there will be some very short and fast presentations. Cornel Sandvoss notes that more nations partipated in the World Cup qualifiers than are members of the United Nations - clearly this is a highly international, global event which also evokes a good deal of national enthusiasm: even in the normally flag-shy Germany we do see small flags on people's cars at the moment. Behind modern, association football and its formation was the rise of industrialism which turned it from an unregulated village contest to an organised inter-city game, thereby also giving rise to professional football, of course. More recently, there was also the emergence of important international competitions.

Dresden
The next session is kicked off by George Barnett. He begins by noting the move from an industrial to an information economy which has now occurred in developed nations, and the simultaneous trend towards globalisation on a number of levels. There are a number of models for globalisation: a universal model which points to homogenisation or modernisation, in a diffusion model of knowledge and culture from Europe to other regions; a clustered model with the rise of regional clusters based upon economic, political and cultural similarities; and a hegemonic model with a concentration of economic, political and cultural power in few countries competing at the top of a hierarchy (this is based on work by Hargittai and Centeno). It is also possible to analyse patterns of competition which may occur in triadic or bipolar models, or to present a view by which hegemony competition is lacking because of a new American imperialism.

Dresden
It always surprises me that even brand-new convention centres are so poorly set up for the obvious, basic needs: power supply for delegates' laptops. Luckily I've been able to burrow into the underbelly of the conference hall floor, and found a socket - so the last couple sessions won't go unblogged.

This next session deals with the question of the network society and the theories surrounding it - still a somewhat underresearched area deserving further attention. 'Network research' is likened here to 'lunch' - a broad, perhaps overly broad area which needs to be better and more narrowly defined in order to be effectively studied. Network theory and network society theory need to be further and more effectively interconnected. Jan van Dijk starts off by outlining the claims of network theory and analysis about contemporary society: there is the observation that we are moving towards a network society (where according to Castells networks are already the basic units of society - and van Dijk suggests that perhaps individuals still remain the basic units but are increasingly linked by networks). So, in a network society the social relations are gaining influence as compared to the social units they are linking. Despite their articulation all social relations remain inextricably bound up with units.