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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