ICTlogy

Leads: John Kelly, Jake Shapiro*

The blogosphere is an emerging online global community of enormous proportions. Blog search engines find blogs and posts for you, ranked by the blogger’s authority. But what is “authority,” really? Authority about what, and among whom? The blogosphere is a complex social network, in which people who share interests, affiliations, values and ideologies are more densely connected. This network can be mapped, to understand the emergent structure of who is online, what they care about, and where they get their information. The methods are hard-core statistical network science, the results are often subtle, qualitative insights into politics, culture and ideas. We take a closer look at the English language blogosphere, and a quick tour of others as well.

(*) though scheduled, Jake Shapiro could not come

Words found within five words of “security” in blogposts: Bush, energy, agency, border, immigration, internatl, vital, illegal, enforcement, Palestinian, documents, vital, basic, sensitive, archive, documents, fence, Islamic

Categorization of political blogs according to inbound and outbound links:

• Partisans: get and send links to the same “side”
• Watchdog: get the ideas of the “other” side and bring them to their “side”
• Lightning dog: contrary to the watchdog
• Anomaly: contrary to Partisans

In English language, blogs are mainly driven by USA politics, being technology a (surprisingly) rather minor issue (among biggest issues, of course).

Blogroll seems not to be a very accurate measure of a blogger’s network, as it is too static. Linking is a more actual, live measure of what they care about. Actually, blog measuring sites (Technorati, BlogPulse, etc.) do take this into account more than blogroll. Attentive Clusters are people linking to similar things (of course, crosslinking too).

Looking at outlinks from the blogosphere, The New York Times is the most linked and by difference (on aggregate terms), which supposes both an interest on formal brainfood and also a rol in highest traditional media information diffusion by blogs. And media lead the outlinks taking out blogs. Technology and so — remember: no blogs, now, only non-blog sites — go on second place getting links from blogs.

The intelligentsia looks more one to each other — regardless of what “side” they’re in — in linking patterns than they do with other bloggers from their “side”: they’ll link to news media, to scientific reviews, to “intellectual” blogs and sites on politics, etc. Each one with its own flavor, but their core is quite similar across political color.

The real interesting things in the blogosphere happen heither on the A-list bloggers — real hubs that congregate huge amounts of links — nor on the long tail of the power distribution, populated with micronetworks of very particular interests. Between these two extremes, among the few thousands to the few hundreds of links exchanged, analysis of networking patterns within the blogosphere begins to make sense.

My reflections

• How are links normalized in a blog? repeated links in same post don’t count? do they?What about comments? John Kelly just answers that comments are not counted in the analysis, even if they might bring some interesting light about networking between blogs.
• I share Ralph Schroeder‘s concerns about whether link measuring is a good method to arise some conclusions about how the blogosphere connects to each other and non-blogs media, as linking policies may vary a lot among different bloggers.

Readings

More info

• Citizen Kane? No, Citizens Gilmour, Shifferes and Kelly, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• OII Day 3, by Alla Zollers

Leads: Dan Gillmor, Steve Schifferes

From Lecture to Conversation, by Dan Gillmor

“Democratized” Media

Not in the sense of voting… but participation, production, access

Lots of data, previously unreleased, previously unrecorded, now come to light because there’s someone there, in situ, to collect them and share them in the shape of text, photo, video, etc. And all this data is (almost) immediately made public… enhanced and brought to you by RSS feeds.

Indeed, data is not only collected by treated, thus becoming information. Does this make of all of us journalists? people? academics? nonprofits? corporations? Steve Jobs posts Thoughts on Music instead of conceding an interview: is the he the journalist?

It is, indeed, the best time ever to be an entrepreneur journalist Same for nonprofits (under another model, of course), such as Global Voices.

Media remixability

Multimedia mashups are becoming more and more popular due to the ease to make them (and the impressive availability of huge amounts of content, I’d dare ask).

More and more, citizens are asked to contribute with their stuff to traditional media… but people also do it by themselves, and upload their stuff on the Internet, either in their own spaces or shared spaces provided by third parties.

Actually, people had done this before. But now its easiear, ubiquous.

Problems?

• Media overload
• Who to trust
• Need for media literacy, for both producers but, specially, for consumers

Basic Principles (for Audience)

• The audience should be skeptical… but just about everything
• but adjusting a “trust quotient” for each site
• Keep reporting
• Learn media techniques, not only technologycal, but also about media power, how to use it, etc. Training about principles, practices, ethics, law…

Basic Principles (for All Journalists, Pro and Amateur)

• Throroughness
• Accuracy
• Fairness
• Independence
• Transparency

Daily Us

• Popularity is not enough
• Reputation

My reflections

• Keeping on with the question whether i.e. bloggers are journalists… they might be somewhere within the range of being zero journalists to absolute journalists. Do they really need to adhere explicit manifestos about their ethics? always? never? only if they are really close to being “real” journalists? should it be kept implicit? expliciting it is just a means to try and shape oneself’s identity as journalist?
• Keeping on with the issue of the Daily Us and reputation… will academic blogs ever count (academically, scientifically)? will some kind of reputation system (à la hacker?) override/complement traditional peer review? there actually exists some kind of peer review on blogs through comments, pingbacks and trackbacks and blogrolls (and other “citation” systems), blog/website rankings, and so?
• will everyone be a prosumer by default and his respective “trust quotient” will draw the redline between amateurs and professionals?

Downloading Democracy, by Steve Schifferes

From 2004 to 2005 people audience for elections has trippled, over all due to increased broadband use at home, but also due to increased Internet use at work (something not specially prosecuted at the UK).

Another reason is that media have really covered the “online campaigns” (the BBC making the difference with other media.

The election audience is similar to the BBC News website audience, which is known to be different to other BBC platforms: Internet users are more interested in politics and current affairs. This could be due to the bias the Internet itself induces on users: medium to high class, young profile, etc.

And the consumption of politics information the do on the Internet is huge. Indeed, young viewers use the BBC web more but also use other news sources. They really go “out” of the established media and look for other voices.

But only a minotiry were mobilised to become political activists. Surprisingly, the bias of political blogs (they approach a determinate party’s discourse) is increasing. Thus, it looks like the web is positive for political engagement

My reflections

• the web is positive for political engagement… but it looks as it is not the traditional engagement parties expect people to take
• is this engagement more focused on concrete actions, issues… on organizing smart mobs?
• As an answer to the previous point, Steve Schifferes states that, at least from now, blogs and digital media are more likely to be reactive to (a) parties’ proposals and (b) traditional media coverage and information (in the form of adherence or criticism) rather and be more proactive and the origin of actions. This does not mean they cannot (are not) being proactive, but this is not the norm

Readings

More info

• Citizen Kane? No, Citizens Gilmour, Shifferes and Kelly, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• OII Day 3, by Alla Zollers

Student research seminar: Erica Johnson

As a first-year doctoral student, I’m still exploring my research area: blogs as a form of media influencing American democracy. I’m hoping that my presentation will allow me to get feedback on how to narrow down my research question, what methodology(-ies) to use, and how to avoid the “beginning stages” pitfalls that many of you have already experienced.

Political blogs: as a form of media, as an influence on American democracy. Political blogs as a form of political journalism during the 2004 debates; political blogs as politcial as agenda setters for the mainstream political press during the 2004 presidential debates.

Questions

• How to focus the scope of the work?
• How to select sources
• How to measure impact or consequences?

My reflections

• are blogs media? citizenship journalism?
• agenda (program setters) vs. agora (debate shapers)
• by politicians vs. about politics
• governments vs. parties
• parties vs. partisans
• partisans vs. press blogs
• partisans vs. independent A bloggers
• individual vs. collective/institutionally written
• study blogospheres / rings to avoid biases and/or strong correlations
• audience, citations
• Technorati, BlogSearch, BlogPulse, Alexa, PageRank

Student research seminar: Michael Zimmer

My presentation will include a quick overview of my dissertation research, as well as the “value-conscious design” methodology I am attempting to apply in order to pragmatically engage with the web search engine industry. I will also outline the “next steps” of the work, and my hope is that attendees can help me identify new avenues of exploration and solve some of the methodological and philosophical gaps in the project.

Faustian Bargain: privacy vs. better search, must provide information to participate. Then: how to design good technology with a value-conscious design, including moral and ethical values. Is this bargain acceptable? depends on efficiency, utility and relevancy.

Perfect search:

• provide results that suit the context and intent of the search query
• User satisfaction and loyalty
• Increased revenues, due to better fitting ads with context

Perfect reach: process and understand all the information of the world

Perfect recall: understand what you want, give you what you want

Threat to Spheres of Mobility: search engines are the latest tech medium to support physical intellectual and digital mobility

What’s next

• Need answers to the “nothing to hide” argument
• Need FoxNews sound bites…
• Initiate empirical examination of uses, harms & effects: perform Eszter Hargittai-type user studies, collaborations
• Engage with technical design community

My reflections

More info

• SDP2007 Presentation: The Quest for the Perfect Search Engine, blogpost by Michael Zimmer
• Dissertation abstract
• Research blog
• Values in Technology Design
• Value Sensitive Design Research Lab
• Values in Computer and Information System Design Graduate Student Workshop
• Quest for the Perfect Dissertation, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• Perfect Search and the Perfect Presentation, by Joris van Hoboken

Lead: Sunshine Hillygus

Political scholars have long recognized that information and communication technologies have fundamentally altered how candidates run campaigns–websites, online fundraising, and email communication have become integral to political campaigns. Often, however, these new technologies are viewed as a supplemental communication tool for conducting “politics as usual” — presumed to change the style of political campaigns, but not the basic structure of political interaction. I argue that new technologies have changed not only how candidates communicate with voters, it has also changed the substance of that communication. The explosion of information about individual voters and the diversification and fragmentation of the communications environment have influenced candidates’ ability and willingness to campaign on divisive wedge issues. And whereas the introduction of previous communication technologies, especially television, was used to expand and broaden the audience receiving a campaign message, technologies today are used to narrowly communicate these targeted messages to smaller and segmented audiences. These changes in candidate strategy and campaign tactics have potentially detrimental consequences for political inequality, electoral accountability, and democratic governance.

Overview

• Impact on media: changes informat, nature of news, increased competition, 24h news cycle
• Impact on public: people who use Internet for politics are already politically interested, increases engagement among those interested, increased info sources widened gap in political knowledge
• Impact on politicians: changed how to communicate with the politically interested, changed how raise money, change how make it into political news
• IT has changed who politicians talk to and what they are willing to say: i.e. while the number of unique issues mentioned in candidate speeches are more or less stable, on party platforms the number of issues dealt with is 2.5 times higher

The persuadable voter

[see readings] Who is persuadable electorate? How do candidates attempt to sway them?

Three myths about American Politics

• American voters are polarized along partisan and ideological lines
• The persuadable voters are uninformed, unengaged, and not policy-motivated
• Candidates talk about divisive issues as part of a “base mobilization” strategy

IT and Campaign Strategy

• Candidate strategy depends on information about voters, i.e. will not risk taking a stand on a political issue unless they know how the public will react
• Hyperinformation environment enables candidates to microtarget different messages to diferent voters

While there are almost no moral issues on TV (political) advertising, figures of moral issues go up to 9% of total advertising when done by direct mail.

In mail messages, candidates (i.e. Bush vs. Kerry) don’t usually talk about the same issues. And even if they do, they don’t send them to the same target.

Steps in Microtargeting Process

• Electronic registration files
• Match data from consumer databases, membership lists, etc.
• Survey in state sampled from database
• Statistical model to predict who will vote and how; segment voters into target groups
• Personalize campaign appeals to different target groups

Consequences of New Campaign Strategies

• Fragmentation of campaign policy agenda
• Polarization of candidates
• Exacerbation of political inequality
• Superficial politics
• Potential crisis in governance

My reflections

• Everybody’s seen Minority Report and the personalized ads that appear on the film, or knows about RFID based advertising. Is it a good or a bad thing that the information I really care of (provided my profile is accurately defined) reaches me directly, personally?
• Put it in other words: why Amazon’s suggestions based on pattern recognition are seen as “good” and why such (same?) politics are “superficial politics”? Sunshine Hillygus states that the problem is that even if you’re interested in major issues (Economy, Social Security, etc.) the politicians are prone to touch specific buttons (i.e. Gay Marriage) to win your vote. On the other hand, she hardly criticizes (and I agree) that the problem appears when your unable to zero to the core discourse/ideology of the candidate, as he seems to be a mosaic of microideologies with no strong backbone.
• Can we find a middle place between personalized superficial messages and metaphysical, theoretical, handbook politics? Maybe this middle place is having a coherent candidate with strong and structured believes, and then “granuralize” them so that specific messages — still, coherent with the “big” discourse — get to the potential voter according to his interests. According to Sunshine Hillygus is that this customized message normally hides a lack of backbone, of real discourse besides the populist one. Information Technologies should help on “granularize” information and political proposals while not “distract” neither the voter nor the candidate from policy making (and not politics selling).

Readings

More info

• Sunshine Hillygus on Internet and Campaigns, by John Palfrey
• OII Day 2, by Alla Zollers

Leads: John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, Rob Faris

Over the past five years, the incidence of Internet filtering has expanded from a small number of states, including China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to well over thirty countries worldwide. While Internet filtering and content restrictions continue to grow in scope, scale and sophistication, censorship of the Internet broaches many unanswered questions, touching on legal, political, economic, social and ethical issues.

Critics of filtering focus on the frequent collateral damage, the suppression of free speech as an infringement on human rights, the often tenuous legal status of filtering and the potential for negative impacts on economic and human development. For others, filtering is seen as an appropriate remedy for Internet content that is distasteful, disruptive, harmful or illegal.

The influence of Internet censorship on democratic processes, access to information and technological growth is complex. It undoubtedly has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world. At the same time, filtering practices raise questions about how citizens relate to the states in which they live – states that are ordinarily neither transparent about how these filtering regimes work nor accountable for the problems inherent in the way they are carried out today.

We take a look at recent trends in international filtering and put on the table a number of questions of policy and practice.

Joris van Hoboken introduces the session with a — for me — terrific question: How Internet Filtering is affecting access to knowlege?

What

• Discovering what Web sites (compare with Internet) are filtered on demand or indfluence by public authorities
• Discovering/developing means of circunvention and assessing effectiveness, e.g. Psiphon

Why test

• Comparing Internet to traditional media: State censorship — and circumvention — is a venerable tradition; e.g. Soviet content blocking and samizdat. But, what’s different about the Internet? What’s the same? Prominent of geographic boundaries; testing “the Internet is revolutionary” hypothesis
• Censorship is bad; human rights are good (“access to knowledge”): underscoring state filtering around the world can help reduce it; studying filtering and circumvention can assist people who want to circumvent
• Censorship is bad when done without “due process”; too easy for state (or private parties controlling the technical means) to abuse

How

• Technical enujmeration: “20 questions”: come up with a list of web sites or web URLs to test;
• Contextual studies

Challenges

• One of the biggest challenges is the political, ethical charge of such studies, that make them no neutral. Solution is twofold: don’t do any research at all, or just disclose and put crystal clear, very transparent, what your background and your believes are, so that you don’t get cheated when reading the output data of the research results.

My reflections

• Besides focusing on content — right to communicate, expression, etc. — if we focus on the carrier, the technology, and its socieconomical possibilities — again, besides human rights, democracy, and so on — it is possible that Internet Filtering does not only provide a means to keep voices shut, but to keep control over the international economy’s gate, such as Ancient Europe’s monopolies on naval trade.
• Related to this question, Daithí Mac Síthigh points me to Harold Innis, and I quote Daithí (thank you!): he’s a Canadian (died 1952) who did some interesting early work on the history of communications and control; it’s very relevant for ‘new’ media. There are various elements – one is an analysis of time-based vs space-based media and the types of control it favours (“Bias of Communications”) and a more detailed, political study (“Empire and Communications”).

Readings

More info

• Internet Filtering, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• OII Day 2, by Alla Zollers
• Internet Filtering Session at the SDP 2007, by John Palfrey
• OpenNet Initiative web site
• OpenNet Initiative: Internet Filtering Map, post in this blog
• Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, audio podcast (time: 1:08:57) at MediaBerkman
• Jørgensen, R. F. (Ed.) (2006). Human Rights in the Global Information Society. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• The connection between cute cats and web censorship, by Ethan Zuckerman