SISummer11

In this article, Hargittai likens the digital divide continuum to the varied dimensions of literacy and concludes that addressing the digital divide requires refinement in the understanding of use and skill - and incorporating those varied uses and skills into educational curricula. She explains that "the history of literacy shows that our understanding of functional literacy has evolved considerably over time requiring flexibility in education policy to keep up with the changing landscape." Full Citation: Hargittai, E. (2003). The Digital Divide and What to do About It. In D. C. Jones (Ed.), New Economy Handbook. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

News Corp bought Myspace for $580 million only 6 years ago. They turned around and sold it to another company for $35 million, Specific Media. Justin Timberlake, who also now owns part of Myspace, is part of an attempted revitalization of the networking site. Another interesting note from the article--News Corp offered Myspace back to Tom and he turned them down.

Makes you wonder about the social media bubble or was it strategic errors when NewsCorp purchased MySpace and they concentrated less on the technology and more on generating revenue which didn't work out too well. They went from something like 70 % share of social media to 1/3 in about two years. At least SM didn't overpay.

Research Impacting Lives. Everyday. Making a difference in the world is no easy task, but it happens every day at the School of Informatics. Our world-class faculty use their diverse research backgrounds and passion for computing and technology to solve pressing problems facing our society today.

Pope Benedict XVI made history today when he tweeted for the first time. Benedict's tweet read: "Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI".

An interesting case of the big three search engines striking an agreement on structured markup data on web pages. If you really pay attention, you can watch the Internet evolve before your very eyes. (Internet Evolution sounds like a nice topic, huh?)

Here's a couple or articles/op-eds on the announcement of Schema.org. One posits it may be a movement toward monopolization of markup data by Google: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_schemaorg_really_a_google_land_grab.php ; the other that it's a boost for structured data: http://www.mkbergman.com/962/structured-web-gets-massive-boost/.

Thanks, Rebecca. The first document you listed made my head spin a little bit. I wasn't totally familiar with the importance of a competitor to W3C markup data (I just assumed that Google et al.'s innovation would mean progress), but the polemical suggestions of "land grabs" made me think... wow, this is something to really pay attention to. Now that I'm reading Amanda's latest posts on Google vs. Facebook in a business context, I'm wondering if the big three move to Schema.org represents something like a defensive strategy (maybe even a land grab!) against Facebook jumping into the market. Maybe social media can do a better job of searching the web for relevant documents - an operation, as I'm beginning to understand, depends so much on markup standards (it's news to me that so many different options exist). I'm not sure I really understand what's going on here... but thanks for pointing out the complexities!

Social informatics is not explicitly mentioned in this article. However, I think it gives us direct insight into crafting our own definition of the term and its application. Bates looks at the overall domain of information science, and how we, as members of that discipline, can break free of the idea (which may have changed a bit since its writing in 1999) that there's no content to LIS education and practice, just structure (i.e., the core of our profession is to organize other discipline's information). Most applicable to our discussion, at least in this point of the semester, seems this excerpt: "In comparison to other social and behavioral science fields, we are always looking for the red thread of information in the social texture of people's lives. When we study people we do so with the purpose of understanding information creation, seeking, and use. We do not just study people in general. The rest of the social sciences do various forms of that. Sometimes this can be a very fine distinction; other times it is very easy to see. In communications research, a cousin to our field, the emphasis is on the communication process and its effects on people; in information science we study that process in service of information transfer. For another example, there are social scientists today who are observing people doing collaborative work through new types of networked systems in the field of computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW) . The sociologist or social psychologist identifies and describes the network of relationships and the social hierarchy that develops under these circumstances. They may examine the impact of technology on those social relationships and on the work of the individuals involved. The information scientist, on the other hand, follows the information the way Woodward and Bernstein "followed the money" in their Watergate investigations. That's the red thread in the social tapestry. When we look at that social hierarchy, we ar

written in 2010, this author predicted popular trends for social media use in libraries in 2011. seems like the first (mobile apps) is accurate. also-twitter, google apps, and teaching social media

What the influential, hilarious, revolting message board teaches us about Internet culture.

This summarizes a recent academic study published by AAAI (the article contains a link to the full paper) in which the authors analyzed 6 million posts to the 4chan /b/ message board (6 million posts....the mind boggles) to see how anonymity and memes can create "internet culture." If there is such a thing. I'm not sure....

After some deliberation, I think I actually prefer 4chan to Facebook. Anonymity breeds freedom in a sense.

I saw this book listed somewhere (probably a library blog) a while back and it was recommended as a great primer on how technology and Internet learning is actually creating more class differentiation in this country rather than the opposite.

Maybe not directly related to SI, but it is worth questioning how technology is changing the role of libraries through a different lens than is normal for SCILS. Should librarians encourage social media for children (say, under 14?)... alternatively, how is social media forcibly reshaping libraries?

Okay, this might be taking social media to a whole new level...and I'm not sure it's such a good thing. If she read any of the posts from this class, she probably should have stopped at 150.

Well...it was ALL a hoax! I should've know! http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20070194-501465.html

I was quick to believe that a person would actually do this. I just shows that people will believe something just because it's online!

I remember reading about the competition between cities that wanted to be chosen for this project (one even changed it's name to Google). This story is short, talks about the high poverty level in Kansas City and the possibility of bridging the digital divide.