Hello Zoho, Goodbye Bill

Colleague Maurice Vergeer pointed me in the direction of Zoho during the recent Etmaal conference in Amsterdam and our conversation on collaborative software. A week later I got around to scanning the Zoho site and my first impression is summed up in the title of this posting. I do think the range of items in the package – from simple note taking to team calendars, to spreadsheets to wikis, to chat, to planning, to (of course) word processing – provides a kind of online environment that can be shared is little less than astounding.

I'll be going through the individual packages in the coming couple of weeks to test my first impression further and to compare with what Google Docs offers. For now, let me just cite the following text from the FAQs on the Zoho site:

10. Do I still need Microsoft Office?
We like to tell people that it is entirely up to you. While we encourage everyone to work online; sometimes you need offline access or simply cannot work without your usual office tools. Zoho enables the best of both worlds since Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show support all the office formats including .doc, .xls and .ppt you can use both. While working with Zoho online you can take advantage of online collaboration with others and the mobility Zoho provides; while working offline, you can still us your MS Office tools. The good news is, we also have a plug-in (a small application you download from our site), that lets you create, edit and save your documents & spreadsheets directly to Zoho Writer/Sheet from within Microsoft Word/Excel. We also support "offline" mode in Zoho Writer so that you can work in your browser even when you are not connected to the Internet and later synch up with your online version when you are back online.

Scholarly Publishing in a Digital Age

The recent announcement, 12 February 2008, by Harvard University to require faculty to make copies of their publications available for placement on a server of the University in order to facilitate access has generated a large wave of interest in academia – not a tsunami but much more than a ripple in the pond. A range of comments have been posted on the announcement, some ecstatic (e.g., open access to scholarship 'just around the corner') and others emphasizing the limitations of the announcement ('only' involves the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and many options for faculty to circumvent the intent of the announcement). For reactions from a proponent of open access, see Michael Carroll's series of posts; see further article in Inside Higher Education.

The issue of open access to scholarship is part of a wider concern, publishing in the digital age, and last July a major report was released on a subdivision of this topic: University Publishing in a Digital Age. This well-documented and researched report suggests that the way scholars – and students – perform their work has changed radically during the past years: they "have increasingly begun to rely on electronic resources" for both teaching and research, and the authors of the report predict that the trends in place will solidify: "We believe the next stage will be the creation of new formats made possible by digital technologies, ultimately allowing scholars to work in deeply integrated electronic research and publishing environments that will enable real-time dissemination, collaboration, dynamically-updated content, and usage of new media" (p. 4). Basically, the report argues that universities should become proactive and experiment with a range of electronic publishing alternatives, that publishing in the widest sense of the word should remain an integrated component of the 'core business' of universities, together with teaching and research.

The report builds on a wealth of recent literature including:

• John B. Thompson, Books in the Digital Age (2005);
  
• Richard Abel & Lyman Newman, Scholarly Publishing (2002); (consult this bibliography of resources on publishing for details of this and many other materials);
  
• Clifford Lynch, "The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World," First Monday, Vol. 6, No. 6, 4 June 2001.
  
• Paul N. Courant, "Scholarship and Academic Libraries (and their Kin) in a World of Google," First Monday, Vol. 11, No. 8, 7 August 2006.
  

Particularly interesting in the report are the illustrations of innovation regarding open access that have been initiated in some fields, like those for economics (RePec) and anthropology (AnthroSource). Some of these innovations involve arrangements with (commercial) publishers to create portals of material available, usually on a subscription basis (e.g. AnthroSource), but sometimes with no restrictions (e.g. working papers in the RePec database). Some of the initiatives involve creation of electronic texts of books, like undertaken by the Humanities E-Book project of the ACLS. The material on this site is only available on an institutional subscription basis and, for all of its value, is of a much different magnitude (smaller) and quality (extensive metadata on entries) than initiatives like the intent of Google to create an electronic library with millions of volumes during the course the next decade. This Google project, Google Books Library Project, called by the New Yorker Google's Moon Shot in an article published in February 2007, involves collaboration with many of the major research libraries in the United States and Europe to scan their collections, page by page, book by book; see further http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html.

Google isn't the only actor in this arena: Amazon has digitized "hundreds of thousands of the books it sells (quote from above-mentioned New Yorker article); another project is called Universal Library, spearheaded by Carnegie Mellon; and, as would be expected, Microsoft is collaborating with a range of partners in the Open Content Alliance. This legion of initiatives does not reflect easy sailing for open access and no one should expect scholarship and the depositories of knowledge to become freely available anytime soon. Perhaps the central problem with this objective is called copyright, and the 'battle lines' between those promoting such initiatives and the protectors of copyright. These battle lines are anything but clearly drawn, however; libraries are sometimes siding with publishers, arguing against the conditions and procedures being applied by Google, and libraries outside the Anglo-Saxon world point to an English / American bias in the Google approach and, initiated by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, a counterweight was launched last year, called The European Library.

It is, of course, premature – if not foolhardy – to predict what will develop next in this long saga of open access to scholarship. A safe observation, however, is that the business of scholarly publishing is hardly standing still and some of the recent innovations (e.g., in the world of academic journals, the International Journal of Communication (IJOC) is particularly innovative and interesting) may pave the way for a shift in arrangements between author, reader, scholarly institution, and (commercial) publisher – in the direction of open access.

Internet searching: tools & skills

Questa distributed one of their periodic email newsletters this morning that included a link to a professional data mining company BrightPlanet. One of the documents on this site is a 67-page Guide to Effective Searching on the Internet. And one of the links in this document led me to the library of my alma mater, UC Berkeley, and a large assortment of materials prepared by the Berkeley library staff: Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial. This material contains overviews of search engine features, elaboration of Boolean functions, and suggestions on how and when to use meta search engines. Scanning the material, I felt it would be valuable for all of us in the seminar to examine it carefully and complete some of the tutorial exercises. I'll construct a homework assignment based on the material and distribute it before next Wednesday, with the intent to improve Internet searching strategies and, at the same time, help gather documentation for your seminar papers.

danah boyd: live

Journalists are notorious for reducing complexity to a misleading lead sentence or sound bite, and for that reason many persons with anything to say avoid such 'communicators' like the plague. Occasionally more space is provided and the interviewee has opportunity to express with subtlety and nuance the topic of concern. Discover magazine recently provided danah boyd with a full 14 minutes to talk about young people and social networking sites. The setting was a bar in Brooklyn and the format was conversational, except that there was only one person conversing – boyd; the interviewer's interventions were limited to a few introductory queries and nods of his head at strategic moments. In that span of time, though, boyd provides a panorama of the development of social networking sites in the U.S. and the place they seem to have in the lives of young people, integrated seamlessly into a style of communicating and networking that is forever in flux. The interview is a good 'trailer' for the extensive research she has done on Friendster and other SNSs; see her list of publications. After the Brooklyn bar introduction, perhaps a good place to continue the conversation in a more scholarly venue is at the site of JCMC, starting with her co-authored introduction to a theme issue on SNSs published last year. We'll be attending to some of this literature later in the semester, but for now there is no better entry point than this conversational bar-setting interview with danah boyd.

CIVICWEB III: Reflections on an exercise in blogging

This is the third of the planned trilogy of postings on a recent CIVICWEB conference and provides opportunity for reflection on both the event and the exercise in conferencing blogging. That the second posting has yet to be composed signals one of the core difficulties experienced: lack of time to properly prepare commentary on events. My first post was mainly a descriptive text of Coleman's keynote, based on his slides and my copious notes; the post lacks reflection, let alone criticism, of the presentation. The post also fails to provide information on the presentations by the two respondents and interventions from the floor, which immediately followed Coleman's talk. The post, as it now stands, provides an incomplete picture of that which transpired in what was, in fact, an intellectually stimulating session. The second post may surface in a few days, but the present material does injustice to the CIVICWEB event.

As it was, three of us involved in or related to the Ljubljana seminar were attending the event, and all three of us have posted material on the CIVICWEB conference: Maja Turnsek, Saso Slacek, and myself. We failed, however, to coordinate our contributions, leaving it to chance as to what we would cover and how. The result is that both Saso and I summarized Coleman's talk and neither of us addressed the contributions from the two respondents to the keynote. We made no arrangements regarding reporting on the afternoon parallel sessions or the plenary windup, meaning that nothing has been shared on those parts of the day. Furthermore, the entire CIVICWEB conference lasted three days; only Maja shared some material from Day 1. Nothing was posted about Day 3.

All of our postings are texts without any illustrative material: no videos, no photos, no slides, very few links. In these respects, our coverage is a far cry from the many conference blogs which are very much multimedia compositions. I did take a score of photos, particularly during the morning session, and may upload some of them at a convenient time. A good conference blog, however, integrates the material immediately and not over a period of weeks. There was a professional cameraman at work during the morning session, and he video-taped the keynote and respondents and took still shots of many persons then contributing to the discussion. This material has not (yet) been placed on the CIVICWEB site. I failed to ask how the material will be made available; I do hope it becomes accessible because the sessions merit a longer 'shelf life' than the event itself.

Much of the time at any conference involves informal exchange, mainly with persons one already knows. I did a reasonable amount of such exchange, including:

• Brian Loader and I talked shop about the journals that we respectively edit and I queried him about the recent decision taken by the publisher of iCS to increase the frequency of issues from 6 to 8 per year (which is a giant leap in editorial energy required).
  
• Peter Dalghren and I talked about our respective projects and mutual concerns about a new variant on an old theme, European public sphere.
  
• Victor Bohm (Central European University) and I considered the upcoming COST A30 event planned for Sarajevo and how organizational foibles could be addressed.
  
• Maja Turnsek and I spent time chatting about the virtues of Ljubljana, along with a revised draft of her PhD proposal.
  
• Tobias Olsson shared his impressions of the differences between Information, Communication and Society (iCS) and New Media & Society (NM&S) (the former publishing more technically-oriented articles) and I admitted, after examining the last five years of articles published by both journals, not being able to discern difference in authors or subject matter (this was an informal exercise; the serious, systematic content analysis has yet to be performed).
  

Sometimes, as Stephen Coleman recommended at the end of his keynote, conference-goers meet and talk with persons outside their established circles, and this time during the CIVICWEB event I followed Coleman's advice and spent lunchtime conversing with Marion Duimel who is also from the Netherlands. As I then learned, she is a colleague of persons I know at the Social and Cultural Planning Office, and published two books last year, one in Dutch on the Internet and teenagers (with an English summary), and another on the Internet and senior citizens. I also learned that Marion has a workshop certificate in carpentry and is presently rebuilding her house, walls and all.

Bringing this effort at reflection to a close, I want to stress that the richness of the CIVICWEB event far outstrips this very modest effort at conference blogging. The experience convinces me how difficult – impossible – it is to provide documentation that matches quality events like this one. Conference blogging when done well may provide a window into the event, but will never replace actually attending and engaging in a good face-to-face encounter.

 

 

 

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Online resources at Poynter

On its masthead, the Poynter Institute claims to provide 'everything you need to become a better journalist'. Discounting the self-aggrandizement in the claim, Poynter Online does offer a wealth of resources, some of which have been mentioned in previous blog postings from seminar participants. One resource, deep in the site, is a list of bibliographies on a large range of topics, some of which relate to the seminar paper topics being prepared. See, for example, the bibliographies on:

• Citizen / public journalism
  
• New media
  
• Youth and the media

Deuze, Liquid Life and Media Work

Mark Deuze's book Media Work has been the focus of furor in the field since publication in October 2007. Deuze has been speaking to standing-room-only audiences across Europe and the first printing of the book was sold out in 6 weeks, which is exceeding unusual for an academic title; check Deuze's blog for details. The book and the author seem to have touched a sensitive chord, particularly among journalists and media students, and merits, if for no other reason, careful consideration.

In this posting I note a few 'first impressions' of the book and signal what I consider its Achilles Heel. To begin, Deuze grounds the work on a notion he borrows and elaborates from Zygmunt Bauman, liquid modernity, which Deuze rephrases as 'liquid life', described as "the increasingly fluid and unstable character of everyday lived experience" (2007: xi). Although this notion has an appealing ring, it would be erroneous to assume any particular newness or recency to the idea: it was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who, several hundred years B.C., suggested that all was in flux, in some form of constant movement and change, which seems strikingly similar to Deuze's formulation of liquid life. Deuze does not provide further historical elaboration of the term, resting instead on Bauman's thesis stemming from a work published in 2000. There is also no critical contest of the concept; instead, it is presented as the theoretical light for understanding contemporary media developments. This perspective may be valuable, but I would have preferred more elaboration and, especially, critical distance during its presentation.

The aim of the book is to "deconstruct what media work means in the four key media professions: advertising…, journalism, film and television production, and computer and video game development" (p. xii). Interestingly, other 'key' media professions are passed over: radio, the music industry, print publishing (magazines, books), media delivery industries like cable and satellite. I have no difficulty with selection from a wide array of candidate professions, but I would have welcomed clarification as to the reasons for this selection of four, which are in themselves heterogeneous conglomerates of media.

Immediately after announcing this focus Deuze indicates that "interviews were conducted by students in my classes, and in the classes of my colleagues and friends" (p. xii) in the following five countries: The Netherlands, Finland, New Zealand, South Africa. This is as close as Deuze comes to suggesting the sources of information for the task established, deconstructing what media work means; no research questions are formulated, no interview instruments (e.g., questionnaires, protocols) are included, no schema for analysis of the interviews is evident, and, most telling, no extracts from the interviews are integrated into the text – at least in an identifiable manner.

It is very difficult to discern, in other words, how information from the interviews informed the presentation in the central chapters devoted to the four media professions: advertising, journalism, film / television production, and computer /video games. Instead, throughout these and the other chapters in the book a wide range of literature is presented and discussed, providing what might be considered an extended review of the literature but without leading toward or informing an empirical study of the four professions and without exploring how these professions might differ along dimensions or between cultural settings. In these respects, the presentation is disappointing; there is a lack of differentiation and lack of comparison, there is limited concern with historical transformations in the four clusters of media professions.

Perhaps most disappointing from a research perspective, and what I consider the Achilles Heel of the book, is the lack of discussion about and suggestions for further empirical study. The conclusion chapter comes to a halt after enumeration of ten concepts based on Deuze's point of departure, suggesting that "a structural sense of constant change and permanent revolution is the strongest guide or predictor of the human condition in the digital age" (pp. 234-235). That starting point merits, it seems to me, empirical exploration rather than unquestioned acceptance. Through formulation and systematic exploration of a research agenda related to this point and the ten related concepts I would think assessment might be possible regarding the relevance of 'liquid life' as a viable theoretical notion for understanding contemporary media.

Blogging literature ad nauseam

With some reservation I share this long list of literature on blogging, participatory journalism, citizen journalism, online community, and God knows what, found on what seems like a site mainly in Chinese: http://mbbs.techcn.com.cn/287645.html. Most of the first score of entries go directly to Amazon.com, but some of the entries at the end are to individual sites and blogs maintained by authors. There may be pickings here, particularly near the end….

 

 

 

http://www.hypergene.net/

We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People
by Dan Gillmor
More: Book web site, Online version of book, Author's weblog

The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect
by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil

Warp Speed: America in the Age of the Mixed Media Culture
by Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel

The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age
by Philip Meyer

Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers
by Pablo J. Boczkowski

The Creation of the Media
by Paul Starr

The Future of Media: Resistance and Reform in the 21st Century
by Robert McChesney (Editor)

What Are Journalists For?
by Jay Rosen
Author's webblog: PressThink

Beyond Spin: The Power of Strategic Corporate Journalism
by Markos Kounalakis, et al

Web Journalism: Promise and Practice of a New Medium
by James Glen Stovall

Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News
by David T. Z. Mindich

All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News
by James T. Hamilton

Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Media Elite
by Bernard Goldberg

News Values: Ideas for an Information Age
by Jack Fuller

The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril
by Leonard Downie Jr., Robert G. Kaiser

The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Political World
by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Paul Waldman

The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft
by Robert S. Boynton

Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism is Putting Democracy at Risk
by Davis Merritt

Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All
by Tom Fenton

Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places
by Derek M. Powazek
Author's Web site: Design for Community

Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities
by Amy Jo Kim

The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (revised edition)
by Howard Rheingold

Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability
by Jennifer Preece

Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety
by Steve Jones

Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community
by Rena M. Palloff, Keith Pratt

Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
by Sherry Turkle

Naked Conversations : How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel
More: Book weblog, Scoble's weblog, Israel's weblog

Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture
by David Kline, Dan Burstein, Arne J. De Keijzer (Editor), Paul Berger (Editor)
More: Kline's weblog, Book web site

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog
by Rebecca Blood
Author weblog: http://www.rebeccablood.net/

We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture
by Editors of Perseus Publishing, Rebecca Blood

We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs
by Paul Bausch, Meg Hourihan, Matt Haughey
Book weblog: http://www.blogroots.com/

Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs
by Biz Stone

Blogging America: Political Discourse in a Digital Nation
by Barbara O'Brien

Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
by Hugh Hewitt
Author's weblog: http://www.hughhewitt.com/

Blog Marketing
by Jeremy Wright

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel

Publishing a Blog with Blogger
by Elizabeth Castro

I Blog, Therefore I Am
by Book of Blogs Inc

Essential Blogging
by Shelley Powers (Editor), et al
Author weblog: Burningbird

Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content
by Biz Stone

Blog On: Building Online Communities With Weblogs
by Todd Stauffer

Running Weblogs With Slash
by Chromatic, et al

Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies
by Susannah Gardner
Author's weblog: http://www.buzzmarketingwithblogs.com/

Money For Content and Your Clicks For Free : Turning Web Sites, Blogs, and Podcasts Into Cash
by J. D. Frazer

Podcast Solutions: The Complete Guide to Podcasting
by Michael Geoghegan, Dan Klass
Authors weblog: Geoghegan, Klass

Secrets of Podcasting: Audio Blogging for the Masses
by Bart G. Farkas

Podcasting: Do It Yourself Guide
by Todd Cochrane
Author weblog: Todd's Spin on Life

Absolute Beginner's Guide to Podcasting
by George Colombo, Curtis Franklin

Podcasting For Dummies
by Tee Morris, Evo Terra

Podcasting Hacks
by Jack Herrington
More: Author's web site

How to Use Flickr: The Digital Photography Revolution
by Richard Giles
More: Author weblog, Author' Flickr photostream, Flickr Group dedicated to the Book

Whole Internet Guide to Podcasts And Internet Audio
By Kirk McElhearn, Richard Giles
More: Kirk's weblog, Richard's weblog, Jack's web site

Podcasting Pocket Guide
by Kirk McElhearn, Richard Giles, Jack Herrington
More: Kirk's weblog, Richard's weblog

Money For Content and Your Clicks For Free : Turning Web Sites, Blogs, and Podcasts Into Cash
by J. D. Frazer

Content Syndication with RSS
by Ben Hammersley
Author weblog: Dangerous Precedent

Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom
by Ben Hammersley
Author weblog: Dangerous Precedent

Syndicating Web Sites with RSS Feeds For Dummies
by Ellen Finkelstein

Practical RDF
by Shelley Powers
Author weblog: Burningbird

Beginning RSS and Atom Programming
by Danny Ayers, Andrew Watt

Hacking RSS and Atom
by Leslie M. Orchard

RSS and Atom in Action: Building Applications with Blog Technologies
by Dave Johnson

博客与相关网站

Participatory Journalism

Adrian Holovaty
Weblog by the editor of editorial innovations at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.

Audio Activism
Weblog and podcast by Brian Russell of Chapel Hill, NC.

Audioblogging 2.0
Communities of new audioblog posts and podcasts, by Harold Gilchrist.

BloggerCorps
"Connecting Bloggers and Activists."

Bloggerheads
On viral and weblog marketing by Tim Ireland.

Blogging, Journalism & Credibility
Weblog archive from a 2005 Harvard conference of the same name.

blogher
A network for women bloggers to draw on for exposure, education, and community.

Blogosphere
Weblog by Nicholas Jon on weblogging, new media.

BlogSavvy
By Australian blog consultant James Farmer.

The Blog Herald
Duncan Riley covers news, research and events of weblogging.

Blog Maverick
A weblog by digital maven and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

BuzzMachine by Jeff Jarvis
Weblog by the former president of Advance.net; now a new media consultant and critic.

Chapman Logic
By Eli Chapman: "Helping audiences entertain, inform and educate themselves since 1997."

Citizen Paine
Ari Soglin's insider view on citizen journalism.

Citizen Spin
By Matt Foster, a BBC journalist and broadcaster working mainly in radio

CJR Daily
Real-time media analysis from the Columbia Journalism Review.

CMS Wire
A web magazine dedicated to all things content management.

Common Sense Journalism
By Douglas Fisher: "From new media to old, much of journalism is just plain common sense."

CommonCraft
Weblog by social design consultant Lee LeFever.

The Community Engine
"Creating Effective Information Communities" by Bud Gibson.

Complete Tosh
By Neil McIntosh, assistant editor of Guardian Unlimited (UK).

Contentious
By Amy Gahran: "News and musings on how we communicate in the online age."

Corante: Rebuilding Media
Collaborative weblog by Vin Crosbie, Dorian Benkoil, Bob Cauthorn and Ben Compaine.

Corante: Podcasting
Collaborative weblog by Alex Williams, Jeff De Cagna, Matt May, Phil Yanov.

Creative Commons
Free to use copyright licenses.

Cyberjournalist.net
By MSNBC.com technology editor Jonathan Dube, sponsored by the Online News Association.

The Daily Peg
Weblog by Mike Orren, founder of Pegasus News, the citizen journalism project in Dallas, TX.

Dan Bricklin
Weblog by the co-creator of VisiCalc.

Dan Gillmor
By former San Jose Mercury News technology columnist and author of We The Media.

Dangerous Precedent
By journalist and technology book author Ben Hammersly.

Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation
Weblog by J.D. Lasica, author of a book by the same name.

Dave Winer's Scripting News
By the creator of UserLand Software.

davenetics
Dave Pell on politics, media and pop culture.

David Weinberger: Joho The Blog
By author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined; co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Debbie Weil
Business blog expert: speaker, marketing consultant & publisher.

Design for Community
Essays from Derek Powazek, author of book by same name.

Designing for Civil Society
David Wilcox on social software, technology, engagement, governance.

Digital Deliverance
Weblog by new media consultant and analyst Vin Crosbie.

Doc Searls
By co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto; senior editor of Linux Journal.

E-Media Tidbits
Collaborative weblog by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies about online media and journalism.

Evan Williams
By CEO of Pyra, the company behind Blogger.

First Draft
Weblog by Tim Porter, an editor, writer and journalism researcher.

Forrester Research: Charlene Li
Insights on technology developments in media & marketing

Hypergene MediaBlog
Weblog about participatory journalism by the authors of this paper, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis.

I Want Media
Media news, interviews and resources by Patrick Phillips.

I, Reporter
By Amy Gahran and Adam Glenn: "Inspiring, guiding, and educating citizen journalists and the news organizations that work with them."

Instant Messaging Planet
News and research on instant messaging.

Jason Kottke
Weblog about Web technology, media and network science.

J-Log
Journalism news and views from K. Paul Mallasch.

Joichi Ito
Weblog by the CEO of Neoteny, a VC firm.

Jupiter Research: David Card
Analyst covers the media and music industries.

Knowledge-at-work
Denham Grey on learning, community and social affordances for knowledge creation

Kuro5hin
Technology and culture, from the trenches.

Lloyd@work
"Trying to put theory into practice," by Lloyd Shepherd, Deputy Director of Digital Publishing at Guardian Unlimited.

The Long Tail
"Thoughts on a book in progress" by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine

Lost Remote: Where TV Finds the Future
Weblog by Cory Bergman, Director of Digital Media, KING/NWCN and Steve Safran, Director of Digital Media, NECN.

Marc Canter
Weblog by the founder of MacroMind and OurMedia.org.

Mark Deuze
Klog by journalism researcher at the Indiana University School of Journalism.

Martin Belam
Musings by "a new media geek at the BBC."

Master New Media
By Robin Good, an online publisher and new media communication expert.

Matt Haughey
Weblog by the co-author of We Blog and creator of the community weblog MetaFilter.

Media Bloggers Association
"A non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting MBA members and their blogs, educating bloggers, and promoting the explosion of citizen's media."

The Media Drop
Tom Biro on the evolution of media.

MediaSavvy
Barry Parr's analysis of media news and research.

MediaShift on PBS
By Mark Glaser. "MediaShift is a weblog that will track how new media—from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism—are changing society and culture."

Meg Hourihan
By the co-founder of Pyra, the company behind Blogger, and co-author of We Blog.

MetaFilter
Community weblog, with topics that run the gamut.

Mitch Ratcliffe
Journalist whose blog covers business, technology and investing.

Morph
"A forum for new ideas and events related to digital media" by The Media Center @ The American Press Institute.

New Media Musings
By J.D. Lasica, senior editor for OJR.

Nick Denton
Weblog by the founder of Gawker and Gizmodo and former chief executive of Moreover Technologies.

Notes from a Teacher: Mark on Media
A blog by Mark Hamilton, former journalist and currently a journalism instructor in Vancouver, BC.

OLDaily
Short for Online Learning Daily, a research newsletter by Stephen Downes.

Om Malik's Broadband Blog
A senior writer for Business 2.0 magazine on digital lifestyles, voip and broadband.

The Online Collaboration Authority
An independent forum about online collaboration, Web conferencing and real-time live presentation technologies.

Online Community Report
Free e-mail newsletter about online group collaboration.

Our Media
Provider of free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software.

P2P Net
"The original daily p2p and digital media news site."

Paid Content
"The economics of content" by Rafat Ali.

PJNet
Public Journalism Network weblog by Leonard Witt, Kennesaw State University.

The Power of Many
Weblog by Christian Crumlish, author of a book by the same name.

PressThink
By Jay Rosen, Associate Professor at New York University's Department of Journalism.

RConversation
Musings and occasional rants by Rebecca MacKinnon, a recovering TV reporter-turned-blogger.

Robert Andrews
Journalist and Content Producer, fomerly with the BBC.

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
"How new technologies are modifying our way of life."

Romenesko
Poynter Institute weblog on media industry news, commentary and internal memos.

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey
"Decision-making tools for Media Pros"

Scobleizer
Weblog by Microsoft technical evangelist, Robert Scoble.

Scott Rosenberg
Weblog by Salon's managing editor.

ScreenCasts Online
"A hints and tips weblog which produces streaming or downloadable video tutorials."

Search Engine Watch
"Tips and information about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines."

The Shifted Librarian
Jenny Levine on "how the change from pursuing information to receiving information is and will be affecting libraries."

Sifry's Alerts
Musings by David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati.

Simon Waldman
By the Director of Digital Publishing for Guardian Newspapers, London (UK).

SJ's Longest Now
Weblog by Samuel Klein, an enthusiastic Wikipedian and one of the organizers of Wikimania.

Slashdot
News for nerds, stuff that matters.

Social Media
Weblog by consultants J.D. Lasica, Steve Rubel, Susan Mernit and B.L. Ochman.

SoulSoup
A weblog by Anol Bhattacharya about e-learning, usability, knowledge management and new media.

Steve Yelvington
Weblog by internet strategist for Morris Digital Works, the Internet division of Morris Communications.

Steven Berlin Johnson
Weblog by the author of Emergence.

Surfette
Weblog by Lisa Stone, journalist and orginator of BlogHer.

Susan Mernit
Writing and news about participatory journalism by digital media consultant, entrepeneur and writer.

Syndicator Blog
"The Syndicator follows trends and dollars in the shifting world of content syndication."

theory.isthereason
Kevin Lim on social technology.

Unmediated
A group reblog: "Tracking the tools that decentralize the media."

User Generated Content
By Derrick Oien, President and co-founder of Intercasting Corp. - a wireless startup.

We Are The Media
Collaborative weblog: The news source for video bloggers and grassroots media makers.

Weblogg-ed
"The Read/Write Web in the Classroom" by Will Richardson.

Research, Organizations, Publications

American Journalism Review
Published by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at The University of Maryland.

Center for the Digital Future
From The University of Southern California Annenberg School.

Columbia Journalism Review
Published by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

First Monday
Peer-reviewed journal on the Internet.

Journalism.org
Research, resources and ideas to improve journalism.

The Media Center @ API
"A nonprofit think tank committed to building a better-informed society in a connected world."

Online Journalism Review
Articles on new media by a staff at USC Annenberg.

Online News Association
Organization devoted to enhancing online news.

Pew Internet & American Life
Research and reports on the impact of the Internet.

PR, Marketing, Corporate Blogging

BlogWrite for CEOs
Debbie Weil on CEO Blogs, writing a thought leadership blog and the corporate blogging phenomenon

Church of the Customer
All about word of mouth, customer evangelism and citizen marketers, by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba

Marketing Technology
A blog on marketing technology and blogging communities from Niall Cook

Media Culpa
A blog about media and public relations by Swedish PR practitioner Hans Kullin.

Media Insider: The Blog
By PR Newswire

Micro Persuasion
Steve Rubel, a PR strategist at CooperKatz & Company: "How weblogs and citizen journalism are impacting public relations."

Musings from POP! Public Relations
Jeremy Pepper's opinions and views on public relations, weblogs, the Internet and more.

PR Communications
John Cass writes about PR, marketing and the Internet

PR Opinions
Tom Murphy's thoughts and opinions on the Public Relations profession and industry

Seth Godin
Weblog by PR, marketing guru and author of Permission Marketing and Unleashing the Ideavirus.

Social Customer Manifesto
By Christopher Carfi : "There are no spectators anymore. Participate."

Strategic Public Relations
Focused on public relations strategy within integrated marketing communications.

Your Guide to Corporate Blogging
By Fredrik Wackå, a web communication advisor based in Malmö, Sweden.

Social Software, Knowledge Management

Clay Shirky
Essays about media, community, open source and more.

Corante: Many-to-Many
Collaborative weblog on social software.

Ross Mayfield
Weblog on wikis and weblogs for enterprise use by the CEO and co-founder of Socialtext.

Seb's Open Research
Weblog on the evolution of knowledge sharing by Sébastien Paquet.

总目录：

Weblogs and related web sites

• • Participatory Journalism
  
• • Research, Organizations, Publications
  
• • PR, Marketing, Corporate Blogging
  
• • Social Software, Knowledge Management
  
• • Podcasts
  

Books

• • Journalism
  
• • Online Community
  
• • Weblogs
  
• • Podcasting
  
• • RSS, ATOM, XML Syndication
  
• • Wiki
  
• • Knowledge Management
  
• • Network Theory
  
• • Copyright, Digital Rights
  
• • Other
  

Tools

• • Weblogging
  
• • Forums, Discussion Groups
  
• • Podcasting
  
• • Video Blogging
  
• • Photo Sharing and Photo Blogging
  
• • Screencasting and Sharing
  
• • RSS, Atom, XML Syndication
  
• • Social Bookmarking
  
• • P2P, File Sharing
  
• • Collaborative Publishing
  
• • Collaborative Writing and Editing
  
• • Print on Demand, Self-publishing
  

Brushfire in Academia: commercial publishing vs open access

A whirlwind of emotion, flaming, and argument is presently sweeping across the Association of Internet Researchers discussion list, Air-List, about open access publishing, launched by danah boyd who posted a manifesto denouncing 'locked down' publishing policy by commercial publishers like Sage and, in her case, a recently published issue of Convergence. The issues are multiple and the hues in the posts anything but grey; black and white dominate the positions taken by the score of contributors to the debate. I personally have much sympathy with the principles of open source as applied to publishing, but have little patience with simplification of issues to the 'good' and the 'bad', the 'right' and the 'wrong', the 'evil' and the 'righteous', which is all too frequently taking place in this current whirlwind. Still, I am and I feel all of us in the seminar should examine the postings on the air-list and boyd's blog carefully because they reflect important principles about scholarship, knowledge, and access to both. Thanks to this whirlwind and to boyd's manifesto, we all have – again – opportunity to examine the issues and formulate a personal stance…which is my intent in the coming days.

CIVICWEB 1: Coleman’s Vision

Introductory Note: This posting is an exercise in conference blogging intended for members of the Ljubljana seminar; the object of the exercise was a meeting of the EU 6^TH Framework project CIVICWEB, 4-5 February, held at the London Knowledge Lab. CIVICWEB involves researchers from seven EU Member States participating in a three-year investigation of young people, the Internet and civic participation. The first day was reserved for exchange with practitioners (which I did not attend); the second day involved some dozen academics invited to engage in discussion with the CIVICWEB project participants. I was one of the invitees.

The agenda for the second day focused on Research Perspectives and suggested a conventional format: a plenary session with a keynote presentation, followed by respondents, and then small group discussions. The quality of exchange throughout the day was exceptionally high. I came away feeling I had learned much. In this post I share excerpts from the keynote presentation delivered by Stephen Coleman. Reactions from the two respondents, Liesbet van Zoonen and Neil Selwyn, will be shared in a separate post. I won't include much detail from the afternoon discussion in which I participated, but will in a third and final post conclude with a few general remarks and anecdotal / personal observations related to the overall event.

Basic information on CIVICWEB and this meeting can be found at:

• The project website;
  
• The agenda for the second day;
  

Coleman's Vision and the Moral Narrative

Stephen Coleman's presentation, 'Young people, the internet, and citizenship', sketched what he called the moral narrative regarding the Internet and its contribution to solving the core contemporary problem with democracy: lack of citizen engagement. During the presentation, he suggested ways to move away from this narrative; in the third and final part of the presentation he postulated ten policy declarations that allow for an alternative approach.

To begin, the moral narrative is also a technological narrative and involves four potentials of the Internet to provide a 'cultural fix' for the ails of society. Basically, the narrative suggests that there is, thanks to the Internet, an abundance of and access to information; that the conventional restraints of time and space have been reduced in an Internet environment; that interactivity within such an environment is prelevant and more similar to the communicative situation of the telephone than the television; and, finally, the Internet provides a capacity for horizontal social network configurations, much different from the like traditional production belt of mass media.

Coleman emphasized that he was not suggesting we should subscribe to this narrative, and did not elaborated it because he felt that it might help to solve problems of civic engagement, but because he felt we should be aware of its features and limitations. He suggested two major limitations: (1) that the narrative is primarily about values; it is not empirical and it is not descriptive of the 'real world'; (2) the narrative reflects an unsubtle and undifferentiated way of looking at the Internet.

Coleman suggested moving away from this approach and proposed consideration of three issues: (1) that we explore how this narrative is applied to young people and internet; (2) that we examine how people are actually using the Internet; and (3) that specific policy principles are proposed in relation to political participation. These three points constitute the outline of Coleman's presentation.

Before commencing on this agenda, he addressed several stereotypical formulations of 'youth'. One of these, that youth are apathetic, is particularly contentious, misleading, and important to dispute. These are the three points of presentation. Another stereotype suggests that the young are distracted. Some form of distraction and displacement does seem to be taking place, that there is some form of cultural migration, from voting booth to queuing for a pop idol.

The summary view from governmental authorities, reflected in UK governmental reports, suggests that participation of the young is desired, but on the terms of the authorities. This view is poignantly reflected in the image of boy scouts 'doing citizenship' at a mock UN convention. Basically the proposed solution in these reports involves a managerial fit between the present undesired low level of youth participation in politics. Coleman cites long passages from recent reports including a UK Green Paper on e-democracy. In that report young people are noted as the least likely to be civically engaged, but they do use the Internet, and some relationship is assumed between the first, level of civic participation, and the second, use of ICTs.

Illustrations of youth and the Internet

As indication of how people use the Internet, Coleman suggested looking at two kinds of e-participation reflected in managed and autonomous projects.

Examples of managed projects include:

• www.headsup.org.uk/content/
  
• http://www.studentvoice.co.uk/
  
• http://www.wimps.org.uk/ (where is my public servant, WIMPS)
  

All three of these projects are highly managed.

Examples of autonomous projects are:

• http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org.uk/
  
• www.freewebspace.biz/GeorgeFox
  
• http://www.educationet.org/
  

Managed projects have much better resources; autonomous generally are run on a shoestring and have little connection with authority.

Basic characteristics of these two types of projects are:

Managed

• Connecting young people to political institutions
  
• Being heard
  
• Regulated speech
  
• Accept government funding
  
• Apprentice citizens
  

Autonomous

• Peer to peer networks
  
• Taking action
  
• Democratic control
  
• Fiercely independent from government
  
• Contested citizenship
  

There is, Coleman stressed, overlap between the above lists of characteristics.

A task in all of this is devising policy principles for youth e-citizenship. Some of the questions that can be asked are:

• Integrating managed and autonomous models?
  
• Is there a role for governments in promoting youth e-participation?
  
• If government resources are being made available, on what basis should this be?
  

Regarding the Internet, there is some confusion about what is special in the 2.0 version. Coleman is not convinced, in other words, that
Web 2.0 is distinct from the original model of the internet. This point aside, we know little about how youth are using the Internet generally, and particularly with regard to citizenship.

Ten Polity-oriented theses
Coleman suggested ten policy-oriented statements that could serve as a guide for future projects and directions for engaging youth in civic life.

1. Government is willing to fund, but not to directly manage or interfere with, common online spaces in which young people are free to express themselves as citizens, and about the terms of citizenship.
   
2. Online democratic spaces for young people shall include horizontal channels of interaction, through which networks and collective associations can be formed, as well as vertical channels, providing dialogical links to various institutions….
   
3. It us to young people to set the terms of their own political debate, without any external censorship.
   
4. E-citizen involves both free expression and consequential political engagement. Young people are not to be expected to participate unless the terms of influence are explicitly outlined.
   
5. Opportunities and resources will be provided to ensure that young people encounter others with whom they might disagree strongly….
   
6. Encourage young people to mobilize online to contest social injustices and broaden the political agenda in any way that the see fit.
   
7. E-citizenship doesn't exclude everyday political experience, and intersections between popular culture and power with affect life and lifestyle.
   
8. Use digital tech innovative with a view to utilizing expanding democratic features (problems with proprietary software)
   
9. [not noted]
   
10. E-citizenship policy determined in collaboration with official policy makers….
    

These points suggest a declaration of principles that might avoid the trap of the moral narrative features presented earlier. The issue, according to Coleman, is to think about the alternatives and to consider where we are now and where will (want to) be in 5 to 10 years. This is not, he says, a normative outline, but a guideline for policy formation based on examination of projects like those presented and without the moral narrative of technology as fix for societal problems.