Readings for lecture 6

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The topic of this weeks lecture is journalism and citizen media. To prepare for the lecture, please read:

• Benkler, "The trouble with mass media" (chapter 6).(35 pages)
• Fallows, "How to save the news". The Atlantic, June 2010. (12 pages (in the original print magazine))
• Witt (2006), "Constructing a framework to enable an open source reinvention of journalism". (10 pages)
• Gillmor (2006), "We are all reporters now" (BBC News) (3 pages)
• Gillmor (2006), "Introduction" (11 pages) from his book "We the media: Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people".

35 + 12 + 10 + 3 + 11 = 71 pages

Notes:

- The text by Witt comes from the online (peer-reviewed) journal "First Monday" which publishes scholarly papers about the Internet (internet culture, the neworked information economy etc.).

- The chapter by Gillmore ("Introduction") will be uploaded to Bilda sometime tomorrow (Wednesday)

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Guest lecture 4 : Katarina Elevant (Thu Dec 2 at 14.00-15.00)

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Guest lecturer: Katarina Elevant, Meteorologist and Ph.D. student in Media technology

Title: Weather web 2.0 and collaborative observations of weather - a bottom-up practice for sustainability?

Place: Lecture hall D2 (14.00 - 15.00 - please be on time!)

Abstract:

Climate change is a manifestation of globalization of environmental problems. Future challenges thus include global perspectives and policies addressing growth and sustainability at the same time. Recent developments within communication technologies, raising mass communication to a global level, may be regarded as an opportunity for new practices.

Based on cases from Sweden and Sudan, Katarina will discuss possible bottom-up activities for sustainability, growth and equality. These activities are based on organized performances of citizens on a local level who at the same time contribute to the collection of climatic data requested by the global community.

How to prepare for the lecture:

Katarina suggests you read your Benkler - a book she is very familiar with herself. Furthermore, if you are interested in weather and/or weather services, please also visit www.shareweather.com.

Katarina would also like to encourage discussions on the following topics:

• What opportunities may arise due to changes in information ownership and shifts of power induced by transformations of markets for information services and due to new rules governing the networked information economy?
• Can traditionally marginalized groups be empowered and strengthened economically while offering services - collection of environmental data - of value to those who are in power?
• What can this mean for the future market for weather information services and weather information networks (owned by governments)? How will social media impact those markets and the roles of governments, service providers and individuals?
• Can we identify other cases where individuals may be empowered by new technologies as their knowledge may become regarded as a valuable resource and perhaps even a service with a price tag?

About Katarina:

This work is part of Katarina's Ph.D. studies at KTH/Media technology. She is a meteorologist with long practical experience of weather services and the market for weather-related services (media, transportation, energy, agriculture).

Prior to her becoming a Ph.D. student at KTH, Katarina started and ran two companies (Foreca Sverige AB and her own consultancy business), including marketing, sales, strategy and development of new weather services.

Currently, she aims at introducing weather web 2.0 services (see www.shareweather.com) as a practice within transportation and maintenance, for increased efficiency of the Stockholm transportation system. Additionally and with sustainability as an important driver, Shareweather may be applied to environmental data, contributing to increased knowledge of the impacts of climate change on for example agriculture.

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Cancelled guest lecture + new guest lecture this week

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This week's guest lecture unfortunately has to be cancelled due to Victor having a bad cold. However, I have a replacement guest lecture (see the blog post directly following this).

There will be some changes in this week's schedule though:

1) Victor was supposed to come in the morning (8-10) and I was supposed to give my lecture in the afternoon. The order will now be changed so that I will give my lecture in the morning (8-10) and our guest will come in the afternoon.

2) Our guest, Katarina Elevant, has an appointment and can not come between 13-15. She will instead give a 60-minute lecture between 14.00 - 15.00

Do note that these changes will not make their way to TimeEdit and the official schedule on the web. They are ONLY announced here on the blog!

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Rich pictures/sem assignment 6 presentation

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As you know, all 15 groups will present their results of the "rich pictures" (group assignment 6) exercise on Tuesday December 7 (12.30 - 15.00 in "Ljusgården"). Each group should prepare:

1. A poster (I will provide you with paper)
2. A short talk where you present your poster and lead the audience through your main ideas
3. A short document (4-6 pages of text + supporting pictures) where you document your social media solution ("Think of it as a way to document and present your project to people who will not have the opportunity to see you poster")

We have 2.5 hours (= 150 minutes) and 15 groups who will present their results. I suggest each group prepares a 5-minute presentation of their poster and prepare for answering questions from the audience for a few minutes after your presentation. Please practice the delivery of your presentation a few times to make it more professional and please also prepare for talking loud enough so that you can be heard by everyone!

Further see the instructions for assignment 6 (Bilda/Documents/Seminar assignments). In those instructions, I promised to provide you with a document with further instructions at a later point in time. That time is now but I really have a lot of further instructions.

I instead suggest that you ask any questions you might have here, in the form of comments to this blog post. I will answer them to the best of my abilities. Please take into account that this is new territory for me too as this is the first time I use this exercise in a course.

Feel free to provide comments or even suggestions for answers to other students' inquiries if you think you have a good idea.

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Guest lecture 4: Victor Galaz (Thu Dec 2 at 8-10)

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Guest lecturer: Victor Galaz, Stockholm Resilience Center/Stockholm University

Title: Can information technology really help save the planet? Collective intelligence and supernetworks in global health governance

Place: Lecture hall D3 (8-10 - please be on time!)

Abstract:

The possible implications of abrupt climate change, "planetary boundaries", and the failure of international institutions to deal with multiple interacting global crises has gained considerable scientific and political attention during the last years. Few sustainability scientists have however elaborated another important global trend: the explosive evolution of, and cascading innovations in, information and communication technologies (ICT).

- What is the role of ICT in dealing with the repercussions of rapid global environmental change?

- How can ICT build resilience in global environmental governance?

[Please take a moment to think about these issues. What do you imagine or expect Victor to talk about? Can you in advance think of questions you would like to pose? / Daniel]

Literature:

Please prepare for the seminar by reading:

Galaz, V. (2009). "Pandemic 2.0: Can information technology help save the planet?". Environment magazine, Nov-Dec 2009.

About Victor:

Victor Galaz holds a Ph.D. in political science, and is currently working as a researcher and theme leader at the Stockholm Resilience Center (Stockholm University).

His current research interests are in resilience theory, governance theory, information technological innovations, epidemics governance, and applications of complexity theory on social systems.

Among his publications in English are articles published in the journals Public Administration, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Environmental Politics, Science, Ambio, Ecology and Society, Environment, and Governance. His work has been featured in international media such as Wired.com, The Guardian and New Scientist.

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How to save the news

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To prepare for this week's guest lecture, please read "How the save the news" about Google News (Atlantic Monthly, June 2010). Here is the introduction to the article:

PLUMMETING NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION, DISAPPEARING CLASSIFIED ADS, “UNBUNDLING” OF CONTENT—THE LIST OF WHAT’S KILLING JOURNALISM IS LONG. BUT HIGH ON THAT LIST, MANY WOULD SAY, IS GOOGLE, THE BIGGEST UNBUNDLER OF THEM ALL. NOW, HAVING HELPED BREAK THE NEWS BUSINESS, THE COMPANY WANTS TO FIX IT—FOR COMMERCIAL AS WELL AS CIVIC REASONS: IF NEWS ORGANIZATIONS STOP PRODUCING GREAT JOURNALISM, SAYS ONE GOOGLE EXECUTIVE, THE SEARCH ENGINE WILL NO LONGER HAVE INTERESTING CONTENT TO LINK TO. SO SOME OF THE SMARTEST MINDS AT THE COMPANY ARE THINKING ABOUT THIS, AND WORKING WITH PUBLISHERS, AND PEERING AHEAD TO SEE WHAT THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM LOOKS LIKE. GUESS WHAT? IT’S BRIGHT.

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Seminar assignment 5 (deadline Nov 28)

Lecture 5 (Nov 26) and seminar assignment 5 (Mon-Tue Nov 29-30) is based on this weeks readings. You can find the following documents in Bilda (Documents/Seminar Assignments):

- The seminar 5 assignment

- A template for your seminar assignment that you should all download and use

Since I didn't have time today and will not be a KTH at all tomorrow (Wednesday), you will unfortunately not have any examples of assignments from last year. I might remedy this on Thu-Fri (so please check back in Bilda or this blog post) - but it is not highly prioritized for me.

I suggest you download and read the seminar assignment instructions and have them at hand when you read this week's literature.

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Readings for lecture/seminar 5

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This is what you should read to prepare for this week's lecture (Fri Nov 26) and the seminar 5 assignment (Mo-Tue Nov 29-30 - deadline Sun Nov 28). The assignment will be published soon, but I am away at a mini-conference at the moment so it will be slightly delayed.

As we all know by now, there is very little critique or thought about the possible negative impact of Internet/social media in Benkler's book, so this week's (relatively short) chapter in Benkler's book has been supplemented by various other texts. The readings can be divided into four parts:

1) What is the impact of the Internet/social media on our relationships with other people and on our (mental) health? Is the Internet a "sad, lonely world" or a "platform for human connections" - or both?

- Benkler (2006). "Social ties: Networkning together" (chapter 10) - 22 pages.

- Harmon (1998). "Researchers find sad, lonely world in cyberspace" (New York Times) - 4 pages.

2) What is the impact of Internet/social media on our thinking? Is Google "making us stupid"? Are we well-informed but also less able to think deep, complex thoughts?

- Postman (1990)."Informing ourselves to death" (transcribed speech given at a computer conference) - 8 pages.

[This paper later became a chapter in Neil Postman's book "Technopoly" (1993]

- Carr (2008). "Is Google making us stupid?" Atlantic monthly - 7 pages.

- Carr (2010). XXX. Please check back later for this (optional) chapter from Carr's book "The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains"! [Comment: Deleted as you have enough to read anyway]

3) What is the impact of Internet/social media on our social behavior? Will people become more inhibited if commercial/governmental surveillance and data mining increases? Will participation and making your voice heard (i.e. democracy) increase or decrease?

- Lundblad (2004). "Privacy in a noise society" (pdf file). Presented at the workshop "WHOLES: A multiple view of individual privacy in a networked world") 4 (dense) pages.

[This topic has been developed in Lundblad's Ph.D. thesis, "Law in a noise society"].

- Morozov (2010). "Iran: Downside to the 'Twitter revolution" (available in Bilda/Documents/Papers). Published in Dissent, Vol.56, No.4 (fall 2009), pp.9-14 - 4 pages

4) And, perhaps most provocative of all questions, is the Internet/social media sustainable in the long run? Will we face global climate change, energy and resource depletion issues during the 21st century that will force us to radically rethink our habits and our use of technology? These short texts point out some radically different possibilities for the future of the Internet/social media.

- Bardi (2009). "The spike and the peak" (pdf file). Posted to online discussion forum "The Oil Drum" - 4 pages.

- Pargman (2010). "Ubiquitous information in a world of limitations" [available in Bilda/Documents/Papers]. Presented at a workshop on "The culture of ubiquitous information" only last month - comments welcome! This text is also the basis for a proposed master's thesis topic, "ICT use in the post-modern city" - 16 pages.

- Greer (2009). "The end of the information age" (printer-friendly version). Posted to Energy Bulletin - 3 pages

- Greer (2009). "The economics of decline" (printer-friendly version). Posted to Energy Bulletin - 3 pages

[the texts by Greer are presumably part of his 2008 book "The long descent: A user's guide to the end of the industrial age"]

Greer makes a passing remark to the short 1909 story "The machine stops" by E.M. Forster (more well-know for "A room with a view" and "Howard's end"). This short story tells the tale of a point in the future where humanity has become totally dependent on our information and communication technologies (Artificial intelligence, Internet/video conferencing). You might consider reading a little fiction in you get tired of all the fact-filled short texts above.

Parts 1 (26 pages) + 2 (15 pages) + 3 (8 pages) + 4 (26 pages) = 75 pages. Will be complemented by an optional chapter from Carr's book (see above) that will be made available in Bilda.

This coming Friday we have both a lecture ("Critique", 8-10) and a guest lecture (13-15).

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Changes in the schedule

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There are three changes in the schedule during the last two weeks of the course (week 48-49).

Week 48

- The lecture on Friday December 3 (13-15) has been moved to Thursday December 2 (13-15).

Week 49

- The guest lecture that was cancelled this week (Friday November 19 at 13-15) has been moved/replaced by a guest lecture on Friday December 10 (13-15).

- The three seminar groups during week 49 had been conflated into only one occasion. This way we will all have the possibility to see the exciting results (posters) of all 15 groups. You will present your Rich Pictures on Tuesday December 7 at 12.30-15.00 in "Ljusgården".

Comment: Ljusgården is the very special large-ish "room" (half-open, half-enclosed space) right outside the seminar room E34. I wanted to have the space between 13-16 but it was booked from 15 so I had to schedule the presentations from 12.30 to be on the safe side (we definitely want to hear all the groups present).

I will hand out (large) papers for your poster one week in advance of the presentation. You will hang your posters on the wall with adhesive tape.

Do note that I will also invite some people who do not attend the course (for example all the five guest lecturers as well as my colleagues at the Dept. of Media Technology) to attend the presentations of your Rich Pictures.

For further instructions, see the course webpage as well as the instructions that were handed out at the group formation exercise (in Bilda/Documents/Seminar assignments).

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Guest lecture 3: Axel Andén (Fri Nov 26 at 13-15)

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Guest lecturer: Axel Andén, Editor in chief at Medievärlden [Mediaworld]

Title: Media recovering from the real time shock

Place: Lecture hall E2 (13-15 - please be on time!)

Abstract:

How can journalists work in different ways, on different platforms and with different perceptions of time? What are the risks with these recent developments? Who is in power and where are they taking us?

[Please take a moment to think about these issues. What do you imagine or expect Axel to talk about? Can you in advance think of questions you would like to pose? / Daniel]

About Axel:

Axel Andén is Editor in chief at Medievärlden [Mediaworld], a publication covering the media industry. Medievärlden's owner, the Swedish Newspaper Publishers' Association, decided to close the printed edition of Medievärlden and go online-only from November 2009.

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No open laptops in the seminars!

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In the criteria for examination and grading for the course, I have written:

"I will try to take active participation at the seminars into account, i.e. the fact that you have contributed a lot (talked, asked questions and answered questions posed by others) at the seminars might make a difference if your final grade for the course hinges right in-between two different grades."

After seminar 3 this week, I feel that I have a good grasp of who is who (with ample help from your Pecha Kutcha photos).

I therefore feel very confident is saying that I took notice of the seminar contributions of persons A.M., E.B., K.P., N.L., P.W., R.A., R.G. and S.B.

However, I will go one step further in my "intrusiveness"/"laying down the ground rules to support your deep learning of course materials". I can't control your attention, and the fact you don't utter anything at all during the seminar is ok (some might feel shy or that their English is an impediment to full participation), but I actually feel secure in my judgement that if you have a laptop open and your nose in it throughout a two-hour seminar, I will judge you to be a notorious non-contributor to the seminar. Although your body is present and you get points for attendance, you are still not really "there" to the same extent as the other persons there and just as some persons are rewarded for active participation (see above), you will be penalized for active non-participation in the same way (i.e. it might make a difference if your final grade hinges between two grades.

Do note that I am talking only about the seminars here - you are free to surf as much as want on the lectures (just as you are free to not attend them at all). You are not particularly expected to contribute to the lectures except by (passively) listening - as apart from the seminars.

I don't know if this is a controversial decision, but I suspect it might be. I will therefore support my position with a couple of quotes from a book we'll encounter as course literature at a later point in the course:

"In [an] experiment, a pair of Cornell researchers divided a class of students into two groups. One group was allowed to surf the Web while listening to a lecture. A log of their activity showed that they looked at sites related to the lectures content but also visited unrelated sites, checked their e-mail, went shopping, watched videos, and did all the other things that people do online. The second group hear the identical lecture but had to keep their laptops shut. Immediately afterward, both groups took a test measuring how well they could recall the information from the lecture. The surfers, the researchers report, "performed significantly poorer on immediate measures of memory for the to-be-learned content." It didn't matter, moreover, whether they surfed information related to the lecture or completely unrelated content - they all performed poorly. When the researchers repeated the experiment with another class, the results were the same.

[...]

"Psychological research long ago proved what most of us know from experience: frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious. The more complex the train of thought we're involved in, the greater the impairment the distraction cause."

[...]

" 'the brain takes time to change goals, remember the rules needed for the new task, and block out cognitive interference from the previous, still-vivid activity." Many studies show that switching between just two tasks can add substantially to our cognitive load, impeding our thinking and increasing the likelihood that we'll overlook or misinterpret important information."

[...]

"What determines what we remember and what we forget? the key to memory consolidation is attentiveness. Storing explicit memories and, equally important, forming connections between them requires strong mental concentration, amplified by repetitions or by intense intellectual or emotional engagement. The sharper the attention, the sharper the memory"

Sources:

Hembrooke, H. and Singleton, L. (2003). "The laptop and the lecture: The effects of multitasking in learning environments". Journal of computing in higher education, vol.15. no.1 (september 2003), pp.46-64.

Trafton, J. and Monk, C. (2008). "Task interruptions". Reviews of human factors and ergonomics, vol.3, pp.111-126.

Jackson, M. (2008). "Distracted: The erosion of attention and the coming dark age". Amherst, NY: Prometheus.

Kendel, Eric. (2006). "In search of memory: The emergence of a new science of mind". New York: Norton.

Date for home exam is Sun Dec 12

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Several persons keep the pressure up and keep asking me about the date for the home exam (as they want to plan trips back home and need to know when not to go). There has been answers trailing in up until now so I have held a decision off until now.

The two top dates for having the exam is Mon-Tue Dec 13-14, but even though this is attractive to many, others have exams those days. My interest is also to choose a date when as many as possible (preferably all of you) can and will do the exam.

So, after a brief discussion with the 28 students in seminar group B yesterday, I have chosen Sunday December 12.

The exam will be made accessible for downloading in Bilda at 08.00 in the morning. You will have 24 hours to complete it and upload it to Bilda. Late exams can be uploaded to a "late exams" folder in Bilda but will be penalized for their tardiness.

Do note that you can upload a document (your exam) to Bilda and later replace it with a more recent version. For your information: if I find that you have uploaded two documents in Bilda, I will always throw away the older version (without looking at it).

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Seminar assignment 4 (deadline Nov 21)

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Lecture 4 (Nov 19) and seminar assignment 4 (Mon-Tue Nov 22-23) is based on this weeks readings. You can find the following documents in Bilda (Documents/Seminar Assignments):

- The seminar 4 assignment

- A template for your seminar assignment that you should all download and use

- Two (uncommented) assignments from last year ("09 Fors seminar assignment 4" and "09 CantuAlejandro seminar assignment 4").

Both the examples from last year refer to seminar assignment 4b as 4a is new for this year.

I suggest you download and read the seminar assignment instructions and have them at hand when you read this week's literature.

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Readings for lecture/seminar 4

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This is what you should read to prepare for this week's lecture (Thu Nov 18) and the seminar 4 assignment (Mo Nov 22 - Tue Nov 23):

- Benkler (2006), "Autonomy, information and law" (chapter 5) and "A culture both plastic and critical" (chapter 8) in Benkler (2006), "The wealth of networks".

- Jenkins (2008), "Quentin Taratino's Star Wars? Grassroots creativity meets the media industry". Chapter 4 from Jenkins, "Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide". This text can be found in Bilda/Documents/Papers

The seminar 4 assignment will primarily be based on Jenkins' text with Benkler as theoretical background/foundation.

Don't forget that we only have one lecture on Friday (8-10) as our guest lecture for this week has been cancelled/moved.

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Guest lecture next week cancelled/moved

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As I mentioned at the (guest) lecture yesterday, our next guest has had to cancel his visit to KTH and I have not been able to replace him with someone else on Nov 19 so the afternoon lecture (13-15) will be cancelled. Or perhaps it will be "moved" as I have found a new guest lecturer who instead will come during the last week of the course (most probably on Dec 10, I am negotiating date & time with him right now).

This is just one of several changes that will happen in December, during the last two weeks of the course. I will post information on this blog as soon as I have more information.

Also, except for the course ME2043, "Leadership in cross-cultural communication" which media management master's students take, there really is no other single course that a whole bunch of you studies, but rather many different courses that one or two persons take (according to the information you shared with me on the introductory lecture).

That means that I will only take the schedule of ME2043 into account when I change our schedule. I am aware that any changes will cause a problem for some of you (sorry about that), but hope that the the same changes will also be beneficial to an equal number of other students...

For your information, the last three guest lecturers (week 47-49) in the course are:

- Axel Andén - Swedish journalist and editor in chief of Medievärlden ("Media world")

- Victor Galaz - Researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center, working on organizational use of social media to track and manage contagious diseases globally

- Ted Valentin - Social media web developer ("king of Swedish map services") and serial entrepreneur

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Group B - seminar assignment 6 student groups

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These are the results of the group formation exercise. Please use Bilda to connect to each other (I believe you can find the mail addresses of other students through Bilda).

B1, "Seniors" (preliminary theme)

Xiqing D

Ida E

Xiaoyi L

Ender Y

Wenrong Z

B2, "Lone wolf"

Stefanie B

Vinay D

Niklas J

Emma L

Anne M

B3, "Fantasy"

Susanna B

Donna H

Joakim K

Lu L

Kaupo P

B4, "Experiences"

Erik B

Kateryna G

Andreas K

Ziyi X

B5, "Authenticity & anonymity"

Tatjana A

Robert B

Johan E

Martina M

B6 "Be yourself"

Yu C

Charlie T

Zi Y

Angelica K (has dropped the course)

Please read the instructions (Bilda/Documents/Seminar assignments) as well as the role of the group assignment in the examination of the course.

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Group C - seminar assignment 6 student groups

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These are the results of the group formation exercise. Please use Bilda to connect to each other (I believe you can find the mail addresses of other students through Bilda).

C1, "Creative people" (preliminary theme)

Rick A

Nhat L

Niklas P

José J (did not attend, has been added to C1 by me)

C2, "Identity play"

Linda B

Sebastian B

Daniel J

Kunthika M

Jiantong P

C3, "Lady Gaga"

Hannah F

Havva G

Weiqiang H

Johannes K

Henchong Z

C4, "Costume party"

Sara G

Ruud G

Oscar K

Gustaf L

Anass S

Please read the instructions (Bilda/Documents/Seminar assignments) as well as the role of the group assignment in the examination of the course.

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Group A - seminar assignment 6 student groups

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These are the results of the group formation exercise. Please use Bilda to connect to each other (I believe you can find the mail addresses of other students through Bilda).

A1, "Food" (preliminary theme)

Yucheng B

Richard G

Nadine N

Jan P

Pontus W

A2, "Proud outsiders"

Erik B

Xin G

Lina H

Martina K

Mohd R

A3, "Monsters"

Jonathan B

Marc C

Anna M

Jesper N

Teresia S

A4, "Fashion"

Erik B

Niklas H

Liang W

Xuan W

Please read the instructions (Bilda/Documents/Seminar assignments) as well as the role of the group assignment in the examination of the course.

Quite a few persons did not attend the seminar and are not in a group yet:

Joakim F

Johan G

Jonathan K

Andres M

Johan R

Philip U

As far as I can tell, these are all Swedish students. There are a couple of alternatives for you:

- One person could join group A4 (one slot free) and the rest can form a group with 5 persons

- Or better yet, you can form 2 groups with three persons each. If you then manage to poach (steal, recruit) a member from another group it is all for the best. The ideal is to form groups with 4-5 persons each. Also, I want mixed groups so you should then do your outmost to recruit a foreign student to each of the new groups!

Please read the instructions (see above) and talk to friends who attended the seminars to learn more about what you missed. Then stay behind tomorrow at my lecture during the break and on Friday when our guest lecturer takes a 15-minute break in his lecture.

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Seminar assignment 3 (deadline Nov 14)

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Lecture 3 (Nov 11) and seminar assignment 3 (Mon-Tue Nov 15-16) is based on this weeks readings. You can find the following documents in Bilda (Documents/Seminar Assignments):

- The seminar 3 assignment

- A template for your seminar assignment that you should download and use

- An example of a assignment from last year ("09 CantuAlejandro Seminar assignment 3.pdf") that I have commented.

I again suggest you download and read the seminar assignment instructions and have them at hand when you read this week's literature.

Here is some further advice to make your texts as good as possible:

• Go for depth before breadth (”I will mainly focus on…”). I know you can not cover all the literature in a few pages so it is often better to choose one aspect or question and delve into it rather than to try to provide an overview of the whole area or provide a broader - but more shallow - analysis of many different things.
• Benkler (and most other texts) are written with a primarily American perspective. Feel free to use examples or correlate with the situation in other countries from which you have relevant information or experiences.
• Feel free to change or adapt the title of your paper to something that better fits the topic and the contents of your paper. You all created many intriguing titles for last week's assignment; "Free your music", "Marketing in a nonmarket", "Working for free?", "Free software as social media", "The power of us", "Power to the people", "The value of value in an economy", "Information and its price", "To buy or not to buy?", "The costs of creation", "One small tweet, a giant step for mankind", "Distributed thought", "Web 3.0?", "Indonesian social media scene"

Vote for the date of the home exam!

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I am flexible as to the exact date of the home exam. There might be a few changes in the schedule for the last week (Dec 6-10), but any time thereafter is fine with me in the range of Dec 11 to Dec 22.

I therefore invite you to express your preferences in the form of a vote. Or rather two votes; one for when you would prefer to have the exam, and another for dates which are really bad for you (perhaps because you have another exam). The links to these votes will be distributed by mail through Bilda.

The vote will be open until Sunday and I will make a decision next Monday (Nov 15).

The exam will be made available at 08.00 in the morning and you have 24 hours to do the exam (deadline for uploading it to Bilda is 08.00 the next day).

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Readings for lecture/seminar 3

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This is what you should read to prepare for this week's lecture (Thu Nov 11) and the seminar 3 assignment (Mo Nov 15 - Tue Nov 16):

- Benkler (2006), "Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere" (chapter 7 in Benkler (2006), "The wealth of networks"). While the whole chapter is of interest, the lecture and the seminar assignment will primarily treat the second half of the chapter, i.e. pp. 241-272.

- Ramos (200X), "Linked: The new science of networks" (a really good, short and concentrated introduction to network theory in the form of a review of the book "Linked" by Barabási (2002)).

- Shirky (2003), "Power laws, Weblogs and Inequality".

Don't forget that we have a second (guest) lecture on Friday.

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New deadline for seminar assignments

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Some people have asked for a later deadline for the assignments, and since I will not spend all of my Sunday reading your texts, you will all have a new deadline from this coming Sunday (Nov 14).

The new deadline for assignment 3 (and all later assignments) is Sunday at 20.00 in the evening.

/Daniel

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Guest lecture 2: Håkan Selg (Fri Nov 12 at 13-15)

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Guest: Håkan Selg, Senior Research Scientist at the Swedish IT-User Center at Uppsala University

Title: Social Software: Actors, motives and effects

Place: Lecture hall E3 (13-15 - please be on time!)

Abstract:

Håkan will discuss:

- Social software, its origins and driving forces

- The dynamics of the interplay between technology, communications tools and popular culture

- The impact on attitudes and values inherent in the industrial society

- Challenges from a business perspective

Håkan's recently published report (only in Swedish) is available in the Bilda/Documents/Guest lectures folder. Translated to English, the report is called " 'gives you access to networks you didn't know you had': On professional usage of social media and other digital channels".

[Please take a moment to think about these issues. What do you imagine or expect Therese to talk about? Can you in advance think of questions you would like to pose? / Daniel]

About Håkan:

Håkan is a Senior Research Scientist at the Swedish IT-User Centre, Uppsala University. He has long experience as an analyst in the field of applied sciences, particularly in the diffusion, use and impacts of new technologies. Håkan's focus has during the last decade been Internet technologies, patterns of usage and impact on established organisations.

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Grading, exam etc.

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I have updated the criteria for examination which can be found here. Please read this webpage very carefully as it hopefully answers many of the questions you might have. If there is something you don't understand or something you want to ask, please primarily do so in the form of comment to this blog post - your question (and my answer) is probably of interest also to others!

(Someone who is very details-oriented might notice that there are some subtle differences in the criteria on the webpage (above) compared to what was written in the instructions to seminar assignment 1. It is the webpage that you should care about. In short: I decided to rebalance and upgrade the importance of the seminar assignments compared to the final exam.)

Do note that the static course homepage is very sparse to say the least and it will not be further updated during the course. This blog is where the action is.

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Readings for lecture/seminar 2

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I promised to get back with some further instructions for what to read in the first part of Benkler's book (chapters 1-4, pages 1-127).

You should in principle read everything, but pages 99-122 can be read more briefly.

In general, the course book (Benkler) might be supplemented by other literature resulting in a maximum of ~100 pages of text to read per week. This week it's around 105 pages.

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Seminar assignment 2 (deadline Nov 7)

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Lecture 2 (Fri Nov 5) as well as seminar assignment 2 (Mo-Tue Nov 8-9) will be based on the first part of Benkler's book (chapters 1-4). This part of the book is, truth be told, rather dry and I will post some further instructions about parts of chapters that you can read more cursorily (hopefully on Monday or Tuesday this week).

Right now, you can find the following documents in Bilda:

- The seminar 2 assignment

- A template you can download and use when you write the assignment

- An example of an assignment from last year ("09 HoyosMorales Seminar Assignment 2.pdf"). His text was good and I have also included my comments in the document itself.

All these three documents are to be found in the folder Bilda/Documents/Seminar assignments.

A suggestion is that you download and read the instructions as soon as possible and keep them at hand when you read chapters 1-4 in Benkler's book.

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