Thursday, March 31

great list...

The most helpful people - ever! are the ones at the AOIR-mailinglist. No matter how strange or funny or whatever the question, they'll answer it, even pointing you to more appropriate places to ask it, but never directly criticise you...at least that's my impression from reading it now for a few months. I wonder why this list works so well and others don't...where does this feeling of community come from I sense in these mails?

Just read that, and I guess you'll know what I mean:
Assoc Prof Christian Nelson has been recently on this list. He's a
> great scholar of ethnomethodology. He offered a great reading list on
> ethomethodology. He has emailed this website in the last few months so
> check the archives for his email address.
>
> Cheers, Denise

Thanks for the promotion, Denise ;-) Unfortunately, I'm still an *assistant* professor ("Scholar in Residence" is Emerson's term for
"visiting assistant prof."). Whatever the case, I know a bit about ethnomethodological (EM) investigations into computer research. There
are two teams of EMists/CAists who frequently publish in this area: 1) Wes Sharrock, Graham Button, and Bob Anderson and 2) Paul Luff and
Christian Heath. Their work is mainly on HCI, so you could look up their work using the www.hci.bib seach tool. I think Sharrock et al.
have also done some work on software design in general--you could find out if they've done more general work using the EM/CA
(ethnomethodology/conversation analysis) bibliography maintained by Paul ten Have at http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/emca/resource.htm (there are
separate bibs for pre- and post-'89 works). In addition to this stuff, you should see Lucy Suchman's acclaimed EM work in the area of
computers and computer use. Finally, you may already be aware of CA work by Angela Garcia and (E.) Sean Rintel on the participation
structure of asynchronous chats and such. (Sean's work doesn't seem to be listed in ten Have's bib, so see Sean's CV at
http://www.albany.edu/~er8430/work.html). Don Winiecki has also done interesting CA work in the area--search the AIR-l list archives for a
list of his writing and a bib. he provided on the subject.

verschiedenes...

Just a few links that I came across recently:

A review of Nils Zurawaskis "Virtual Ethnicity" (German) by Andrea Stöckl.

An article by Lois: This paper is divided into two sections. In the first section I discuss adolescent diary weblogs their prevalence online, I situate them with their offline antecedents, and align them with offline and online performance including Langellier’s (1998) typography of personal narrative performance. The second section then uses content analysis in applying Langellier’s typology to the implied audience embedded in adolescent diary weblog posts. The content analysis of a small sample of adolescent weblogs finds that Langellier’s typography can be successfully applied to adolescent diary weblogs.

Und noch ein paar Zeilen aus einem Dokument, das ich von Markus geschickt bekommen hab:
Die erste Forscherin, die Fragen zur Online/ Offline-Realität und die Auswirkungen auf Identität und Realität untersuchte, war die Soziologin und Psychologin Sherry Turkle . Ihre Forschungen gingen über mehrere Jahre, in denen sie zahlreiche Online-Spieler in und außerhalb des Internets beobachtete und Einzelinterviews führte.

4.1. Das Internet als Forschungsfeld für die Ethnologie: Wie ist nun das Verhältnis der Ethnologie mit ihren Forschungsmethoden zum Internet zu betrachten? Nun, auf den ersten Blick erscheint das Internet wenig mit ethnologischer Forschung gemein zu haben. Im Internet herrschen keine Face-to-Face-Situation, wie sollen wir dann ”the native’s point of view” verstehen, wie uns Clifford Geertz (1984) anhielt, indem wir:

„mit dem Bauern auf dem Reisfeld [reden] oder mit der Frau auf dem Markt, weitgehend ohne strukturierten Fragenkatalog und nach einer Methode, bei der eins zum anderen und alles zu allem führt; wir tun dies in der Sprache der Einheimischen, über eine längere Zeitspanne hinweg, und beobachten dabei fortwährend aus nächster Nähe ihr Verhalten" (Geertz 1985, S. 38).

Wie können wir dies im Internet tun, dort passiert doch alles auf elektronischem Weg? Genau dies ist der spannende Punkt, hier kann die Ethnologie und ihre Werkzeuge greifen. Die elektronischen Daten werden von Menschen eingegeben, hinter E-Mail Adressen, Chat- und Foreneinträgen, Agieren auf Webseiten, Verfassen von Online-Artikeln, Erstellen von Visuellen Dateien usw. stehen immer real existierende Menschen und Gemeinschaften, die diese Daten lebendig werden ließen. Es gibt auch im Internet einen Bauern auf dem Reisfeld, den wir aus nächster Nähe beobachten können. Betrachten wir das Internet als Feld, schließt es der Ethnologie völlig neue Bereiche der Forschung auf: Das Internet eröffnet einen neuen Kulturraum, innerhalb dessen der sich unterschiedliche Gemeinschaften gebildet haben, deren Strukturen und Kommunikation den schon bestehenden ähneln, es haben sich aber auch Gemeinschaften gebildet, die in völlig neuer Art und Weise kommunizieren. Vor dem Hintergrund der Welt als globales Dorf, sind solche neue Forschungsgebiete von großem Interesse. Durch das Internet wird der Zugang von potentiellen zu untersuchenden Gemeinschaften oder Individuen erleichtert: Man hat die Möglichkeit, eine große Anzahl von Individuen mit unterschiedlichen soziodemographischen und kulturellen Hintergrund zu erreichen.
Das Werkzeug der Ethnologie, die Ethnographie, impliziert ein besonderes Forschungsprogramm, welches auf die Untersuchung fremder Welten abzielt, d.h. andere Kulturen von innen heraus versuchen zu verstehen, „the native’s point of view“ (Geertz, 1984) zu ergreifen, um noch einmal mit Clifford Geertz´ mehr denn je aktuellen Worten zu sprechen. Aufschlussreich für die Ethnologie ist es, zu untersuchen, welche Veränderungen die Netzkommunikation mit sich bringen kann. Gerade für die Ethnologie sind die neuen Kommunikationsformen spannend und interessant, da viele neue Fragen aufgeworfen werden, die die Veränderung der sozialen Beziehungen betreffen

Online Community Report

hier finden sich auch noch eine Menge an interessanten links zum Thema virtual communities.

...und noch ein paar links...

Hier werden ein paar Aspekte von Rheingolds The Virtual Community: Finding Connection in a Computerized World, London: Secker & Warburg.skizziert. Find ich etwas schwer verständlich, könnte aber vielleicht noch von Nutzen sein, wenn wir Rheingolds' Ideen darstellen wollen.

Hier findet sich noch eine superkurze Zusammenfassung von Cyberville and the Spirit of Community, ein älterer Artikel (94):
Scime sets out to compare the requirements of a community according to contemporary communitarians, in particular Amitai Etzioni, with the claims made by Howard Rheingold about what exists in 'cyberspace'.
---
Könnte eventuell noch in Beziehung zu Rheingold spannend sein, aber ehr nicht!
---
Sollten wir klar machen, ob und welchen Unterschied es gibt zwischen Online Communities und VC und Communities of Practice?

Vielleicht noch was über Politik?
Weblogs occupy an increasingly important place in American politics. Their
influence presents a puzzle: given the disparity in resources and organization vis-à-vis
other actors, how can a collection of decentralized, nonprofit, contrarian, and discordant
websites exercise any influence over political and policy outputs? This paper answers
that question by focusing on two important aspects of the “blogosphere”: the distribution
of readers across the array of blogs, and the interactions between significant blogs and
traditional media outlets. Under specific circumstances – when key weblogs focus on a
new or neglected issue – blogs can socially construct an agenda or interpretive frame that
acts as a focal point for mainstream media, shaping and constraining the larger political
debate.
Quelle

Dann gibts noch die Virtual Communities Conferences mit einem Berg von Papers und Präsentationen...

noch mehr links zum vortrag

Ein Summary of Constance Porter's article, "A typology of virtual communities".

Wiedermal eine Definition des Begriffes VC:

an aggregation of individuals or business partners who interact around a shared interest, where the interaction is at least partially supported and/or mediated by technology and guided by some protocols or norms. (1)

Hauptziel des Artikels ist es, ein "classification system for virtual communities" zu entwicklen:

1. Definition of virtual community: Porter's definition of virtual community is different in that it recognizes that communities bring together individuals and/or business partners (in most prior definitions, commercial partners are a forgotten entity).

She acknowledges that virtual communities could be completely virtual or only partially so.... allows for fluidity of relationship

Porter also acknowledges that virtual communities have roles, protocols, policies and/or norms, as do RL communities (3).

2. Typology of virtual communities: Porter contends that the typology of virtual communities has also been poorly defined in the past. She proposes that an effective typology would include both member-initiated communities and organisation-sponsored communities (3). Virtual communities would then be organized based on the general relationship orientation of the community, eg. social, government etc.

3. Strength of typology
Porter then rambles on about how to recognise whether your definition of a community is a good one. (pp.8++)
(Quelle)

Wichtig noch für die Diskussion über den Unterschied zwischen VC und ftfC:
One thing that I picked up from this reading was that virtual communities co-exist and overlap with RL communities: now this is something that Eugene Thacker has written about in referring to 'networks, swarms and multitudes'. (for all those doing NET35) Not only do virtual communities co-exist alongside other virtual communities, but they often overlap with each other and with RL communities.

Wednesday, March 30

unterschied VC ftfC

Rheingold (1993) includes 'communion' as an essential element, while Fernback and Thompson (1995) warn that virtual communities might lead people 'to forget what it means to form a true community'. They seem to suggest that off-line communities are closer, more committed, and provide greater reciprocity than any on-line association can provide. Rheingold also raises the importance of a physical meeting - the online relationship alone is not enough. Wellmann and Gulia (1997) suggest that the warm, supportive village with which virtual communities are contrasted do not exist in the modern Western world, and quite possibly never did.
Quelle

Konzept - VC-Präsentation

[sorry for those of you who don't read German, but as the talk is in German and I'm not working on my own...it's really much less effort...all the links are in english anyway]

Definition
VC

siehe hier
und vor allem auch hier

(Geschichte des Konzeptes ist doch nur langweilig, oder?)

Unterschied VC und "face-to-face-Communities"(ftfC)


Beispiele
Blogs als VC (siehe hier für eine Diskussion ob Blogs VCs sind)

Bilder

Visualisation of Blogspace

und Lilia hat in einem ihrer Artikel auch ein paar nette Network-Graphiken

und außerdem:
Aldo de Moor hat ein Blog zum Thema VC...das wär vielleicht auch noch interessant:
rezente Debatten um VC - einiges dazu lässt sich sicher in Aldo's Blog finden.


Virtual Community Attraction:Why People Hang Out Online

Virtual Community Attraction:Why People Hang Out Online
...a link from Chana again...definition of virtual communities...

more VC-related-literature

..from Chana:
Virtual Society: Technology, Cyberbole, Reality (edited by Steve Woolgar) ISBN:
Online communities, designing usability, supporting sociability, Jenny PreecePublisher: Wiley, 2001
Communities of practice, Learning, Meaning and Identity, Etienne Wenger, Cambridge university Press 1998
Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William M. Snyder
Life on the screen, Sherry Turkle, Touchstone, 1997

The Community Planning Handbook Nick Wates
Paperback - (1 January, 2000) 240 pages



· The Social Life of Information
by John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid

Publisher: Harvard Business School Pr; ISBN: 0875847625; (February 2000)



· Computers as Theatre,Wokingham: Addison-Wesley

Laurel, B 1992



· Cybersociety 2.0: revisiting cmc and community

Jones, SG, 1998 Thousands Oaks



· The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
by Lawrence Lessig


· Community Organizing and Community Building for Health
Meredith Minkler (Editor)

Paperback - (July 1997) 416 pages

· The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenberg - Ch. 1-2 (handout)

· The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold - Ch. 1-2 (paperback) ( online version available )

thanks again!

Visualization of Blogspace

Visualization of Blogspace - just a few nice pictures that we might be able to use for our VC-talk...

She's done it!

Chana switched to writing in english - finally! Great to be able to read another blogger interested in similar stuff...although actually I'm still not quite sure what her project is all about, but I guess we'll all find out soon.

Looking for a London Blogger...

I'm looking for a London-Blogger who'd enjoy going to the following lecture (at the Institute of Education, University of London) and blog about it...I'm sure there's one out there!

Tuesday 17th May 5.30-7.00, Room 639
“Hello newbie! **big welcome hugs** hope u like it here as much as i do!” An exploration of teenagers’ informal on-line learning communities
Julia Davies, Sheffield University

The seminar are free and open to the public. For directions to the Institute of Education, see www.ioe.ac.uk There is a map on the home page in the lower left hand corner.

Tuesday, March 29

Conferences

I've been in Geneva and Plymouth for the last few days...one for "work" the other for pleasure: the European Burma Network met in Geneva and interesting it was to participate too...and to Plymouth I just went to see my boyfriend...but now I'm back and there's lots of interesting stuff in my inbox...just now I'm wondering to which of the thousands of conferences (a slight exaggeration there...) I should go - and which one I can actually afford...so FYI, there's the "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde's"-conference and a workshop there is led by Alexander Knorr...here's the Call for Papers.

Than through Seb I found a conference in Milan which sounds very interesting, but admission is closed already...and then there's one in Innsbruck - which I have to go to really, cause it's so near, and, yes of course the topic is interesting too.

Tuesday, March 15

"Wenn Information und Kommunikation jedes Maß übersteigen, wird es für die Lebensführung zur Pflicht, sie zu reduzieren und den Raum der Reflexion wiederzugewinnen." (in: Wilhelm Schmid: Schönes Leben S 137)

[a rough translation: If information and communication get too much: reduce them so that you've got more time for reflecting stuff... ]

Grundsätzlich ist es nicht mehr wichtig, Wissen zu haben, sondern zu Wissen, wo es zu haben ist,...sodann den Mut zur Auswahl zu haben...

[choose wisley...]

About the Master in Science and Technology Studies

About the Master in Science and Technology Studies
sounds very interesting indeed....

A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research

A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research
...it's an old article, but might come in handy when talking aobut VC.

Monday, March 14

Globalisation, THE

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Prof. of Anthropology at the Univ. of Oslo) provides a chapter (mostly it's the introduction) per published book on his website...
Here's the introduction to "Globalisation", and here the summary of "Tyranny of the Moment".

Afghan Warrior: Afghanistan's first blog

Afghan Warrior: Afghanistan's first blog has made it's way into the blogosphere. The response is really overwhelming and people are glad to get some first hand news from Afghanistan. It seems its just what everyone has been waiting for so long. I wonder, how Waheed will cope with all the expectation, and am curious to hear more about Afghanistan.

Friday, March 11

Austrian Burma Center

The Austrian Burma Center, is a recenty founded NGO working on Human Rights in Burma. We're trying to raise the awareness of Burma's issues in Austria and therefore also have got a homepage. I am the "webmistress" :-) and would appreciate any comments (or help!)

Thursday, March 10

Virtual Communities

One of my seminars this semester is called: "Von Parallelen Welten: Doppeltes Bewusstsein, CyberSchamanismus & digitale Rituale". As Cybershamanism and the like isn't really what I'm interestd in, I decided to give a presentation on Virtual Communities, as that's a possibility to pass that course too.

The aim of this post is just to collect a few interesting links and see what I can come up with in connection to that topic:

There's the online-version of Virtual Communities
...and a book-review

Over at Communigations there's a post about meeting Howard Rheingold.

Lots of stuff on virtual communities is to be found here

Virtual Communities - Public Relations Building:
Virtual communities differ from traditional communities in that formation does not occur because of common location, but because of a common interest. Such a foundation demonstrates that communities can exist through mediated communication. A theory has thus arisen that virtual communities are providing the means to greater community participation - through gaining information people are able to participate fully as citizens (Hartley, 2002: 231-232).

Wednesday, March 9

Blogging Books

Warning! This might be a somewhat cryptic entry for those not familiar with anthropology...

I just found a post on blogging books (or books blogging?) - and am wondering what blogging our not-yet-finished works could do to the discussion about the author-reader-relationship in anthropology .

And then I wondered if I should blog about it - but then I'm lacking the time necessary to write something "proper", have to leave for Uni soon...and THEN I thought:

"well, why not just put it there and sneak up at the thought later? "

Well....because on the one hand I think it's a very worthwhile thing to think about and I guess there are some discussions ahead of us that'll get us quite a bit further in my field.

On the other hand I want to contribute to it...properly...and someone could just run off with my ideas and present them as theirs...

"my ideas" I say - they are just flashes in my mind I guess, nothing more yet. Anyway, I was really wondering why Alex and Kerim haven't posted or written or whatever about it before, as I consider them much senior to me in anthropology.

And I guess my personal answer to the question: "Why do academics blog and how can they not be afraid of people taking advantage of them and "borrowing" their ideas?" is, that I just want the debate to go on, or to start even - and: just now I haven't much to loose too.
:-)

Maybe I got them thinking...

Sunday, March 6

A few austrian blogs I discovered recently

Had a funny experience yesterday when looking at a blog: I discovered the author just lives round the corner! Guess I've to visit him soon...
:-)

Another interesting one is The Aardvark Speaks : Horst Prillinger's weblog...go and read it, it's great fun and well written too!

Muslimischer Feiertag [Im Moloch Kairo]

Die Zeit, a very well known German newspaper, has been linking to Blogs for quite some time now. One of these Blogs is called "Im Moloch Kairo". A german woman going to Kairo to study arabic there is describing her impressions...and is heavily criticised for it.

"Aber was für eine Enttäuschung! deine Geschichten könnten sich auch in jeder deutschen Großstadt abspielen - es fehlt an jeglichem Kairo-Flair! Versuch doch bitte ein bißchen mehr auf deine Umgebung einzugehen ..."

People are asking why "Die Zeit" links to it, and the author seems to constantly have to defend her point. [Herrgott, das ist ein Webtagebuch. Das es Zeit.de verlinkt hat ändert an dieser Tatsache auch nichts.] For that she's also defined (using Wikipedia) what a blog is for "... andere Blogger teilen auf ihrer Webseite Einzelheiten aus ihrem privaten Leben mit." "...Weblogs sind vergleichbar mit Newslettern oder Kolumnen, jedoch persönlicher - sie selektieren und kommentieren oft einseitig."

I guess the upshot is, that this blog is an interesting read because of it's comments - where quite good discussions come up about how many have got internet-access in egypt etc.
"The other" isn't really talking back yet, but there are definitely some people reading it, who are half-egyptian and are looking at thinks from quite a different angle.

Saturday, March 5

Daisy Duke Needs a Blogger

Daisy Duke Needs a Blogger ... another one about Promotional Blogging..."CMT has put together a job: get paid $100K to daily blog about the Dukes of Hazzard. "

Categories on Blogger

Ted wrote sth. about technorati and delicious tagging and some way of getting categories working for blogger.... I'm just desperately trying to find out if I can get it working for me too...so far it's been a bit of a fight...
:-(

Categories:

Wednesday, March 2

Do blogs offer a plattform for the "ideal speech situation"? XI

5.1.2.) Absence of power differences
- is the second condition for the ideal speech situation
- the author argues that control over the communication by the weblog author diminshes power differences.
Although someone might be excluded from the commnication in someones else's blog, they can start their own blog and wirt there. Power difference is btw. author & reader but as everyone can be an author easily this difference ceases to exist. Given that everyone taking part in the conversation is also publishing themselves the "absence of power differences" is met.

LSE & Blogging

Look at that! They're discussing Blogging at the LSE, can't believe it! (although Blogging doesn't get off too well). Anyway, never thought that at such a prestigious place they'd talk about mudane stuff like blogging. *smile*

"Skripten"

Skripten, is my new blog, where I'll post this terms lectures - at least if I get round to it. It's in German, I don't want to bother with translating the whole stuff.
andrea[dot]handl[at]gmail[dot]com

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