[digital transformation school]

The International School on Digital Transformation
July 25-30
Porto, Portugal
Extended deadline for applications: May 10

Applications are now open for the second annual International School on
Digital Transformation, to be held July 25-30, 2010, at the University of
Porto in Porto, Portugal. The School is accepting applications from advanced
students and recent graduates from around the world with an interest in
digital technology and the enrichment of civil society.

The International School on Digital Transformation is an intensive six-day
residential program, conducted in English and bringing together emerging and
established scholars and professionals from a variety of countries. During
the week, innovators in digital communications will serve as teachers and
mentors, presenting current projects and engaging in discussion. Presenters
and students will be regarded as peers during the School.

Students of the School will have the opportunity to develop and apply
research design skills to projects important to civil society. Consisting of
approximately 30 students and 15 faculty members, the School seeks to create
an atmosphere of scholarly collegiality, fostering dialogue among diverse
perspectives including those of design, policy, and research backgrounds.
The daily schedule will include time for presentations, workshop-style
collaboration, and informal brainstorming sessions among faculty and
students.

Read more »

[conference: foundations of information science]

Conference Date:
August 20-23, 2010

Deadline of Paper Submission:
May 20th, 2010

Notification of Acceptance:

 June 20th, 2010

Location:

Beijing

Continuing the series of FIS Conferences (Madrid 1994, Vienna 1996, Paris 2005) a new venue will be held in Beijing 2010. In our times, an increasing number of disciplines are dealing with information in very different ways: from information society and information technology to communication studies (and related subjects like codes, meaning, knowledge, and intelligence), as well as quantum information, bioinformation, knowledge economy, network science, computer science and Internet, to name but a few. At the same time, an increasing number of scientists in the East and the West have been engaged with the foundational problems underlying this development, to such an extent that the integration of disciplines revolving around information seems an idea whose time has come. A new science of information can be envisaged that explores the possibilities of establishing a common ground, of constructing a new scientific perspective that connects the different information-related disciplines and provides a new framework for transdisciplinary research.

Topics:

1.  The Impact of a New Science of Information on Society

2.  The Position of Intelligence Science in Information Science

       a. Information and Intelligence

       b. Intelligence Science as an Engineering Informatics in Information Science  

3.  The Role of Other Applied Information Science Disciplines (Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, Computer Mediated Communication, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Information and Communication Technologies and Society, Library and Documentation Science, …)

4.  The Basis of a New Science of Information

       a.  Feasibility of a single generic concept of information

       b.  Concepts, Principles, and Methodology of a “General Informatics” or “Theoretical Informatics”

       c.   Knowledge Structure of a Unified Theory of Information 

5.   Philosophy of Information

       a.   Information Ethics

       b.   Epistemology (Information and the Scientific Method, …)  

       c.   Ontology of Information   

       d.   Information and Philosophy of Science (Information and the System of Sciences – Transdisciplinarity – Consilience, …)

6.   Science of Information in Real-World Systems

       a.  Science of Information in Physical and Chemical Systems (Quantum Information, Molecular Recognition, …)

       b.  Science of Information in Living Systems (Biosemiotics, Systems Biology, Bioinformation, …)

       c.   Science of Information in Human / Social Systems

              i.  Science of Information in Human Cognition (Mind-Brain Theory, Consciousness, …)

              ii.  Science of Information in Human Communication (Linguistics, Social Networking,Communication Studies, …)

              iii.  Science of Information in Human Cooperation (Collective Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Advanced Intelligence, …)

7.   Science of the Information Society / Age (Information Society Theory, Internet Research, Social Informatics, New Media Studies, …)

Read more about the conference here.

[assistant prof. in victoria bc]

I would go for this position if only for the superb location near Victoria BC (it's actually on the Hatley Park National Historic Site):

Communication - Instructor or Assistant Professor

Royal Roads University

Location: British Columbia
Date posted: 2010-03-05
Royal Roads University, Limited Term Core Faculty, School of Communication and Culture within the Faculty of Social and Applied Sciences.

We invite your interest to explore our exciting new two year limited term position (at the Instructor or Assistant Professor level) at Royal Roads University (RRU). Located in beautiful, Victoria, BC our mandate is to solely offer professional degree programs with a focus on applied research. With a reputation for innovation, RRU is a leader in online delivery and primarily attracts learners who are working professionals.

The School of Communication offers three degrees in communication studies which are focused on the theory and practice of professional communication in a wide range of contexts including media, organizational and intercultural. We stress a critical-professional educational approach and we invite you to view our website for more details.

The successful applicant will have demonstrated teaching experience at undergraduate and the graduate levels in the field of communication studies, an ability to work as a team member within an interdisciplinary outcome-based curriculum, and administrative experience and abilities preferably in a University academic setting. The successful applicant will ideally have experience teaching communication theory at the undergraduate and graduate levels. A Ph.D. (or ABD) in communication or related fields in the social and applied sciences is required along with a broad theoretical understanding of communication. The following would also be strong assets in the position: applied research experience, an ability to employ adult learning and applied learning principles with mature learners, and experience in distance education teaching.

In addition to a collegial learning community, RRU offers a comprehensive compensation package to core faculty, with a salary based on rank, qualifications and experience. The term of this position is from 15 July 2010 - 15 July 2012.

For more information and to submit your application, please visit http://www.royalroads.ca/careers




 Note: Image from Royal Roads University.

[professorship communications: south korea]

Yeungnam University is now accepting applications for a full-time foreign-instructor (a native English speaker preferred) to be available March 1, 2010. Located on 900 scenic acres in Gyeongsan, 6 miles southeast of Daegu, Yeungnam University is a private university with a student enrollment of over 35,000.

1.   Job Title:  Assistant/Associate/Full Professor, depending on career specialty

2. Teaching Subjects
-      Mass Communication & Society, Research Method, Communication Theory, etc.

3. Period of Contract
-      March 1, 2010 to February 30, 2011 with the possibility of renewal

4. Teaching Loads & Semesters
-      9 credits per semester (Spring & Fall, 15-week semesters)
-      All classes should be taught in English

5. Requirements & Qualifications
-      Ph.D. preferred in Media & Communication
-      The applicant with a Master's degree should at least one-year of teaching experience at a university

l  Preferred qualifications:
-       An English-language teaching certificate (TESOL/TEFL/CELTA or equivalent) from a recognized provider.
-       A resourceful, innovative and dedicated professional who truly enjoys teaching.
-       An energetic, self-motivated team player with strong collaborative and communication skills.

6. Salary & Benefits
-       An annual salary of 31,161,000 to 40,341,000 Won (or more) for twelve months, commensurate with qualifications and experience.
-       Overtime pay: Overtime pay for teaching will be paid according to the University's standard rates in effect during the contract term of employment.
-       The Professor's health insurance will be covered by Yeungnam University's Medical Insurance Policy at the standard rate in effect during the contract term of employment
-       Pension Insurance Fees(Insurance Fund) will be paid by the professor according to the Pension Law(Act) Korea.
-       The University will allow the Professor to have maximum 8 weeks of vacation during the summer and winter vacation period.
-       All applicable taxes are to be paid by the professor according to the Korean Tax Law.
-       Housing: A university owned furnished apartment is provided. If no vacancies are available, you will be provided with a housing allowance of 450,000 KRW per month.
-       The University will provide one research office.

* Application & Deadline
  - Documents Required Before the Interview Date:
1)     A cover letter that outlines your teaching experience and range of teaching interests
2)     A statement of interest in and qualifications for teaching specific courses
3)     Two copies of detailed resume with photo (Please indicate month and year for your work experience and education.)
4)     A copy of passport photo page
5)     Two letters of recommendation
6)     The alien registration ID(It can be submitted later)
7)     Three passport sized photos
8)     Two evidences of career development
9)     Two copies of diploma (Bachelor, Master, and PhD).
10)   The two copies of certificate of grades(GPA on bachelor, master, PhD)

  - Deadline: Dec. 30, 2009
  - E-mail: feel0932@hanmail.net (You can apply by E-mail.)
- Mailing Address:

Miss Kyeong-Ha Nam
A secretary to the Chair of Department of Media & Communication
YeungNam University,
214-1, Dae-dong, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea
Zip Code 712-749

[colour matters...even in the twitterverse]

New Box UK Study Finds Twitter Users of Both Sex More Likely to ‘Follow’ White Women



Between June and October of 2009 London-based digital agency Box UK (http://www.boxuk.com) conducted two sequential social experiments to test how Twitter users reacted to being followed by strictly controlled test accounts. The results strongly suggest that given a choice of following black and white people of either sex, Twitter users are more likely to ‘follow’ white women, and least likely to follow black women.


This distribution also holds when the data is sub-divided into male followers and female followers for each account, showing that both sexes are most likely to follow White Female or Ambiguous accounts, and least likely to follow Black Females. We can also deduce that on average, female twitter users are 30% less likely to follow a request from a stranger, than a male twitter user.

“While it may be rather premature to conclusively argue that white women get more followers on Twitter than non-white women or men, we do know that a digital divide does exist and that certain groups of people tend to explore new applications with greater speed and enthusiasm. Without wading into a debate on technology users, more information on the aggregate of Twitter users is necessary to come to any real conclusions about their use of technology,” says Dr. Tina Basi a sociologist specializing in ethnography for design.


Basi, who previously worked with Intel’s Digital Health Research Group argues that, “perhaps what the data is pointing to, is that our relationship, as users, with new social media remains somewhat perplexing. We are still struggling with using Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, as ways of engaging and connecting with others, and instead, fall back on using them to simply keep tabs on others. The internet, as a medium, still holds the spectacle of say film or television, and seeing someone on your screen attaches a celebrity like status to them. The lack of reciprocity for some of the Twitter accounts created in this experiment, might better reflect our assumptions about celebrity and tendency toward voyeurism, as opposed to forming any real argument about Tweeters.”


Twitter is an increasingly important platform for conducting social experiments, with its ability to tap-into and measure human communication and behaviour on a massive scale. As the platform grows, we expect to see businesses and academics harnessing this capability to ‘invisibly’ survey the real behaviour and reactions of people, enabling a new wave of social research and customer intelligence.

Read more about the methodology and report here.






Image from Dan Zambonini's post on the report findings.

[american army takes on some web 2.0 ideas]

"Join the Army, where you can edit all that you can edit.

In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life.

The program uses the same software behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and could potentially lead to hundreds of Army guides being “wikified.” The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals.

“For a couple hundred years, the Army has been writing doctrine in a particular way, and for a couple months, we have been doing it online in this wiki,” said Col. Charles J. Burnett, the director of the Army’s Battle Command Knowledge System. “The only ones who could write doctrine were the select few. Now, imagine the challenge in accepting that anybody can go on the wiki and make a change — that is a big challenge, culturally.”

In recent years, collaborative projects like the Firefox Internet browser or Wikipedia pages have flourished with the growth of the Internet, showing the power of thousands of contributors pulling together.

Not surprisingly, top-down, centralized institutions have resisted such tools, fearing the loss of control that comes with empowering anyone along the chain of command to contribute.

Yet the Army seems willing to accept some loss of control. Under the three-month pilot program, the current version of each guide can be edited by anyone around the world who has been issued the ID card that allows access to the Army Internet system. About 200 other highly practical field manuals that will be renamed Army Tactics, Techniques and Procedures, or A.T.T.P., will be candidates for wikification.

As is true with Wikipedia, those changes will appear immediately on the site, though there is a team assigned to each manual to review new edits. Unlike Wikipedia, however, there will be no anonymous contributors.

Many in the Army have been suspicious about the idea, questioning if each soldier — specialist or not — should have an equal right to create doctrine, Colonel Burnett said.

“We’ve gotten the whole gamut of responses from black to white,” he said, “ ‘The best thing since sliced bread’ to ‘the craziest idea I have ever heard.’ ”

The colonel said that he was hopeful that by reaching out to the 140,000 members of the Army’s online forums, he would be tapping the kind of people who would be comfortable collaborating on the Web.

“Our motto is, ‘If you ever thought what would I do if the Army let me write doctrine, now is your chance,’ ” he said."

Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/14army.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

[journal of community informatics: new issue]

Vol 5, No 1 (2009)

Table of Contents

Editorial

Editorial: Building the Broadband Economy from the Bottom Up: A Community Informatics Approach to BB and Economic Development	HTML
Michael Gurstein

Points of View

Moving Community Informatics Research Forward	Abstract HTML
Aldo de Moor

Articles

Community Inquiry and Collaborative Practice: The iLabs of Paseo Boricua	Abstract HTML
Ann Peterson Bishop, Bertram (Chip) C. Bruce

Assessing the geodemographics of the People's Network in public libraries in Shropshire.	Abstract HTML
Adrian Oliver Barlow

The role of Social Entrepreneurs in Deploying ICTs for Youth and Community Development in South Africa	Abstract HTML
Chijioke J Evoh

The Effect of Formal and Informal Social Capital on Diffusion of Wireless Encryption Practices: A longitudinal case study	Abstract HTML
Sorin Adam Matei

ICTs and Community Participation: An Indicative Framework	Abstract HTML
Dhanaraj Thakur

Notes from the field

Communities, Technologies and Participation: Notes from C&T 2009	Abstract HTML
Joe McCarthy

Reports

Role of ICTs in Indian Rural Communities	Abstract HTML
Siriginidi Subba Rao

[new teaching resource: online learning communities]

Of interest to educators: a new release from IGI Global (they published a paper, "Transliteracy as a Unifying Perspective," written by The Transliteracy Research Group - of which I am a part).

Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery
ISBN: 978-1-60566-780-5; 354 pp; August 2009
Published under Information Science Reference an imprint of IGI Global

http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?id=34727

Edited by: J. Ola Lindberg, Mid Sweden University, Sweden and Anders D. Olofsson, Umea University, Sweden


DESCRIPTION

In today's society, the professional development of teachers is urgent due to the constant change in working conditions and the impact that information and communication technologies have in teaching practices.

Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery features innovative applications and solutions useful for teachers in developing knowledge and skills for the integration of technology into everyday teaching practices. This defining collection of field research discusses how technology itself can serve as an important resource in terms of providing arenas for professional development.

****************************************

TOPICS COVERED

• Collaborative online professional development
• Computer-supported collaborative learning
• Education delivery
• Knowledge management in education
• Models of online communities
• Online learning communities
• Online pedagogy design and development
• Pedagogies afforded by technology
• Teacher professional development
• Virtual environments

For more information about Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery, you can view the title information sheet at http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/pdf/34727.pdf

To view the Table of Contents and a complete list of contributors online go
to http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=34727&v=tableOfContents.

You can also view the first chapter of the publication at http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/excerpts/34727.pdf


Some other texts also on pedagogy and online learning communities that may be of interest (but note, some might require institutional access):

• Barriers to online teaching in post-secondary institutions: can policy changes fix it?
• Shift happens: Online education as a new paradigm in learning
• Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: designing and delivering e-learning
• Online learning as information delivery: Digital myopia

[new media digest]

Want to do some thinking? Follow these links:

• Neuroplasticity: we can rewire the brain with the power of thinking and technology. Read Norman Doidge's The Brain that Changes Itself. A documentary will be aired on the 30th of July on CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2008/brainchangesitself/
  
• Some suitable trending twitter topics today (nice alliteration eh?):
  

Apollo 11

Moon

Neil Armstrong

• Exercise, community participation and higher literacy skills mean less chance of cognitive decline with age. Read about the study here.
• Time people are spending on Facebook is up 700%
• Businesses going *online* and having a FB profile or tweeting isn't necessarily (the right kind of) participating...but putting thought into why the business is online and actually connecting with the audience/client is key. Read more about social business design.

[cfp: democracy and communication]

Call for Papers: Canadian Journal of Communication

Special Issue: Democratizing Communication Policy in the Americas: Why It Matters

Deadline for full papers December 15, 2009; publication date Fall 2010.

Communication policy is an often important but overlooked topic ­ a blind spot - in much social policy research and public discourse. Media and telecommunications systems have become so fundamental, ubiquitous and pervasive that we often take them for granted as enablers, and nothing more, of many other freedoms, rights, and capabilities. Many do not realize the extent to which policies concerning communication resources are quite vulnerable to fluctuating corporate and government interests.

This "knowledge gap" is what this special issue of the CJC seeks to address:

how do communication policies affect economic, social justice and human rights, and what are civil society organizations in the Americas doing about this? For example, how do the supposed decline of traditional news media such as newspapers, struggles over copyright, the emergence of new ways of communicating online, questions about who owns or controls the internet, or access to the information we need, relate to social policy concerns such as sustainable development, immigration, environmental degradation, labor rights, gender equity, and other concerns across the Americas? What do any of these struggles have in common related to media, communication, and internet policies?

With these ideas in mind, we seek two types of submissions from concerned experts working either in academic or non-academic settings in the Americas:

• Policy Contexts (i.e., Enabling/Disabling Legal and Regulatory Environments): Short syntheses of the current state of play re communication policy that includes attention to the full spectrum of convergent policy issues such as broadcasting, telecommunications, information (i.e., intellectual property rights and access to information laws), and internet governance policies in each of the following regions: North America (Canada and the U.S.); Mexico and Central America; the Caribbean; Spanish-speaking Latin America; and Brazil.
  

• Civil Society Responses: Research illuminating either failed (and why) or successful (and how) civil society engagement related any of the previously listed communication and social policy areas in terms of making policy making actors, processes or institutions more transparent, representative, and accountable to public vs. corporate interests. Simply put, we seek to know why and how communication policies matter to a variety of social policy concerns and how civil society actors are working to effect communication policy change in a variety of contexts.
  

For this special issue, and given our interest in linking media and communications with social policy more generally, we are also interested primarily in research that is informed by critical theory, social justice and/or human rights frameworks and that features praxis-oriented research capturing the various challenges and/or opportunities for public-interest oriented interventions in policy making processes across the Americas.

Full-length papers (7,000-9,000 words) in English or French should be submitted electronically following the guidelines laid out on the CJC submissions website (http://www.cjc-online.ca/submissions.php). Make sure to write in all caps "COMM POLICY" in the Comments to the Editor field, and also to include it on the cover page of your article as well. Please do
not include your name on the cover page.

Comments and queries can be sent to one or both of the special issue editors:

Dr. Leslie Regan Shade, Concordia University, leslieshade@gmail.com
Dr. Becky Lentz, McGill University, becky.lentz@mcgill.ca

[interdisciplinary papers]

The online conference on the Future of Scientific Publications resumes with an new paper by Roberto Casati "On Publishing", now available on http://www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub. In his paper Roberto Casati discusses the social significance of publication in the life of a scientific knowledge object (SKO). The importance of publication is made evident by the complex issue of unpublication (the strong version of retraction whereby a SKO is completely destroyed). Unpublication is a tempting option in the electronic world. He argues against the viability of unpublication, both on practical and on principled grounds related to the cascading entitlements of published paper.

There is also a paper by Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute on "Sifting through the online web of knowledge" at: http://www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub. Their essay examines how researchers gain access to knowledge at a time when scholarly communication and materials are increasingly moving online. This topic has so far mainly been discussed in terms of journal publication and readership. Here a broader view is taken, including a variety of areas where knowledge production and dissemination is broader than journal publications and includes data and tools. A second reason to take a broader view extends the horizon still further, since scientific communication and collaboration are not just undergoing change within the research community, but also depend on wider changes such as the use of search engines and how they affect what can be found online generally. New search behaviours are particularly evident among a new generation of scholars and potential scholars. Hence we will look at changes in research as well as in the realm of online knowledge more broadly.

Have a look at the papers: www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub.




Via an e-mail from the interdisciplines.org list.