Group items tagged

Was Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer actions malicious or do you feel he was only trying to get AT&T's attention for their own mistake? Should he be prosecuted for his actions?

That's an odd one, and really highlights the different notions of public and private spaces online. He went to some effort to get that information, so my kneejerk reaction is to say that what he did was wrong and that he should be prosecuted for it. It would certainly be unethical for an ethnographer to gather data that way, but should it be illegal? EFF calls those pages public, but I think "public" web pages are more like "public" spaces in a private building. He was clearly on their corporate premises, trying to sneak into hidden areas-he had to bombard the site with fake device IDs to get to them, and built a tool to do so. It may not be akin to breaking and entering, but what constitutes trespassing in a digital realm? If a physical office kept records in unlocked closets, would it be illegal to check all the doors in the waiting room, and take pictures when one opened? Or would we be up in arms about that office's recordkeeping practices? Ultimately, the main outcome I'd have hoped for would be requirements for corporations like AT&T to revise their security practices. What Auernheimer did was wildly unethical and without even the veneer of true white hat hacking, but I have no idea what to do with him.

A useful article. I pulled out this section: "This confirms the willingness of cultural heritage institutions to start using new media resources and the improvements in accessibility that these new media technologies can offer. This being said, the range currently available leaves one with the distinct impression that it has been developed on an ad hoc basis, with public sentiments perhaps more important than a considered strategy." I wonder how much the development of this media has incorporated general public sentiment as opposed to public input into how they would like the media to look or be used.

These projects are worth looking at, even if the documentation of the project is not always as extensive as we might want. (http://hennessy.iat.sfu.ca/making-culture-lab/collaborations/)

I haven't been able to find a free online copy of this yet. It looks very helpful. Has anyone else been able to secure one? The title reminds me of Patrica Lange's piece on YouTube and "publicly private" and "privately pubic" online spaces. Her application of the idea of "fractalized communities" has been very useful to my research on out-of-the-way online communities. Check that one out at http://uolibraries.worldcat.org/title/publicly-private-and-privately-public-social-networking-on-youtube/oclc/726935972&referer=brief_results

I have not been able to find one either, although I was able to find proof chapters of another two articles in the book.

An article to revisit the concepts of boundaries of communities

This article is written from the computer science perspective on how social sciences are used to analyze Human-computer-interactions (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Tthis article is talking about how ethnomethodology can help computer scientist to design systems allowing people to interact in groups through technology and computer networking. The article is concern on people's behaviors that takes them to interact with the technology and how they do it, some of these points can be stretched and transfer to understanding the behaviors of individuals that interact in digital communities. It continues talking about the influence of the participant in the design of the technology, which brings to my mind the discussion about how the data gathering and "aggregation of information" shape the actions, the behaviors and the data available, which at the same time can dictate how the technology is been developed

About People Research Publications Teaching Events Interactive Newsroom Get Involved Research The Berkman Center enjoys a global reputation for cutting-edge work centered on the relationships between the Internet, law, and society. Our mode - entrepreneurial nonprofit - embraces our pursuit of scholarly research in the manner and spirit of an academic think tank, anchored by the diverse collaborative and individual work of our faculty and fellows.

The Center for Media Justice presents some great material, particularly as an entry point to undergrads on concepts of media justice and examining the ways oppression operates in a digital sphere, troubling open internet and "closing digital divides" Great stuff!

The website contains the following statement under the heading "Intellectual Property and Ethical Issues": "Ethical considerations are handled primarily by individual depositors, based on (a) their arrangements with their primary consultants regarding consent and permission and (b) their concern for materials they do not wish to make public. While guidelines for ethical ethnographic research behavior have been around for many years, the methods of gathering permissions for recordings have varied widely in the decades since video technology has been employed as part of fieldwork" This seems to bring to light the concerns being presented when dealing with materials recorded over a large time period, where ethical considerations chanced considerably. This might be a good project to talk about when we are discussing the ethics of digitization.

[Synopsis] This book is a critical and ethnographic study of camgirls: women who broadcast themselves over the web for the general public while trying to cultivate a measure of celebrity in the process. The book's over-arching question is, "What does it mean for feminists to speak about the personal as political in a networked society that encourages women to 'represent' through confession, celebrity, and sexual display, but punishes too much visibility with conservative censure and backlash?" The narrative follows that of the camgirl phenomenon, beginning with the earliest experiments in personal homecamming and ending with the newest forms of identity and community being articulated through social networking sites like Live Journal, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. It is grounded in interviews, performance analysis of events transpiring between camgirls and their viewers, and the author's own experiences as an ersatz camgirl while conducting the research.

This study (and its author) is mentioned in this week's reading 'Digital Ethnography : An Examination of the Use of New Technologies for Social Research' by Dhiraj Murthy. Dissertation Remarks and Synopsis (from Theresa Senft's website) http://www.terrisenft.net/diss/synopsis.php#remarks

Explore this place! This is a searchable collection of links to tools to help researchers conceive a project, collect data, organize and analyze it (including sections on mapping and data visualization), write, and publish. It is organized into intuitive categories based on what you want to do. Within each category, you can order the results by cost, platform, etc. This would be a great place to find tools for the toolplay workshops.

From their description of the project "Bamboo DiRT is the tool-centric node in what its developers hope will be a growing ecosystem of specialized directories that can achieve sustainability by combining topical focus with seamless data exchange where appropriate." I could see how this resource would be helpful if you were thinking about how far you needed to go with the data you have collected.

This tool seems pretty simple. It is a audio voice recorder that lets you annotate an event. But apparently, you can use it on your smartphone and it time stamps the recording. http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/rehearsalassist/wiki

From website: "This portal is a gateway to the cultural materials of Plateau peoples that are held in Washington State University's Libraries, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections (MASC), the Museum of Anthropology and by national donors. The collections represented here have been chosen and curated by tribal consultants working in cooperation with University and Museum staff." The About section has a good description of the curation process. In summary, the digital collection allows annotation and content submission by registered tribal members and organizations; also allows visitors and guests to leave text, audio, and video comments on content. The Tribal Links section for each category connects the historical content to contemporary cultures. Content controls allow participants to flag content as sensitive; presumably there is non-public content that is somehow managed. Here is a record that has some annotation by tribal organization: http://plateauportal.wsulibs.wsu.edu/html/ppp/display.php?tid=2&cid=4&fid=147&pgst=0 Metadata seems to include geospatial metadata that allows mapping of buildings, etc. From what I understand, the software used to support this collection is based on an Australian project with similar approach. Unfortunately, not much on the site about the software tools. I will try to locate and add the Australian project and related documentation. Is this digital ethnography? It seems to approach it; but limited markup by tribal members and organizations gives limited view of offline implications of online data.

This article is of interest (http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2012/04/27/twitter-and-disaster-resilience-lessons-from-qldfloods-and-eqnz/) I would be interested in taking the map of twitter usage or during as disaster and the doing ethnographic follow up after the factor the see how this resource was used. This might build a better picture of how to use social media during disasters/similar problems.

How very interesting. Could be a really valuable read. I'm very curious how their method/methodology changes from other content analysis work in online spaces. If they take into account the unique context of blog comments (trolls, etc.).

By revealing the social networks present within the urban environment, Invisible Cities describes a new kind of city-a city of the mind. It displays geocoded activity from online services such as Twitter and Flickr, both in real-time and in aggregate. Real-time activity is represented as individual nodes that appear whenever a message or image is posted. Aggregate activity is reflected in the underlying terrain: over time, the landscape warps as data is accrued, creating hills and valleys representing areas with high and low densities of data.

Might be interesting to download the software and see what comes of this multimodal effort...takes geocoded activity from social media and "maps" it to an "immersive three dimensional space." While not ethnographic in any proper/traditional sense, this tool foregrounds questions about community, public-ness, social practice, and digitally-enabled culture...

Great title. Not a very useful link.

the "iWant" tool does not appear to work...nor is it very clear how it works. But, I think it is indicative of the kinds of data mining/harvesting approaches people are taking when it comes to "public" streams of discourse/conversation/knowledge that Twitter represents.