Public talk: Nicole Ellison

Nicole Ellison
Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media
Michigan State University

Initiating, Maintaining, and Cultivating Social Relationships via Social Media

Dr. Ellison will give an overview of her recent research focusing on the ways in which online tools enable individuals to initiate, maintain, and develop social relationships. Specifically, she will describe three recent papers. The first describes changes in the structure and social practices associated with social network sites since 2007 and proposes an alternative definition of SNSs. The second explores the relationship between Facebook use and social capital among a sample of adults. This work identifies specific ways in which individuals cultivate social capital on Facebook by investing in their network. Finally, she will present a brief overview of recent qualitative work that explores self-presentational patterns among online daters and investigates differences between acceptable and unacceptable profile discrepancies.
Bio
Nicole Ellison is an associate professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. Her research explores issues of self-presentation, relationship development, and identity in online environments such as online dating and social network sites. Nicole received her Ph.D in Communication Theory and Research from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in 1999. Currently she is exploring ad-hoc collaboration in social network sites, for a project funded by the National Science Foundation, and the potential for social media interventions to address college access issues, especially for low-income and first generation college students. Her previous research has examined the formation of virtual communities, self-presentation in online dating profiles, and the ways in which telecommuters use information and communication technologies to calibrate the permeability of their work/home boundaries, as explored in her 2004 book, Telework and Social Change. Her work has been published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Communication Research, and the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Representative publications can be found here: https://www.msu.edu/~nellison/pubs.html.
All are very welcome.

Wednesday, 7th of December
14:00 – 15:30
IT University Room 4A22

Poster is available as a PDF

 

Internet Hoaxes and fake lesbians

The recent revelations of two prominant lesbian internet activists as being men have understandably created a media storm. Damascus Gay Girl is now only available for invited readers, after it was revealed as a hoax over the days between June 6th and June 13th. The Wikipedia entry dedicated to the blog is interesting reading, rich on references.

I have written more about this on my own blog, mainly with the focus of internet hoaxes.

This event is however ripe with other topics. There’s the online identity issue, the need to check your sources, both for journalists and for us regular readers, the very interesting concept “Münchausen by Internet” used to describe another hoax, and the gender and LGBT issues, just to mention a few.

public lecture: Andrew Feenberg “Agency, Citizenship, and Technology”

Title: Agency, Citizenship, and Technology
Date: Monday, May 30
Time: 10:30-12:00
Place: Auditorium 2, IT University,
Rued Langgaardsvej 7, 2300 Copenhagen S

In the public lecture “Agency, Citizenship and Technology” Andrew Feenberg addresses issues of public participation in technological development, design and policy, and raises questions about the possibilities and challenges of democratizing technology. Starting with a discussion of the relationship between technology and society from a philosophical perspective, he goes on to engage actual cases and strategies of public involvement in technical design and decision-making.

Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication of Simon Fraser University. He is the author of Transforming Technology, Questioning Technology, Alternative Modernity, Heidegger and Marcuse, and Reason and Experience, co-author of When Poetry Ruled the Streets, and co-editor of Technology and the Politics of Knowledge, Modernity and Technology, and The Essential Marcuse. He has taught at Duke University, San Diego State University, the University of Paris, and the University of Tokyo.
more on Andrew Feenberg’s website

download poster

Talk: Gender-Technology Relations: Exploring Stability and Change

Wednesday 4 May at 1 pm. in room 2A08 (ITU)

Hilde G. Corneliussen will present her forthcoming book, Gender-Technology Relations: Exploring Stability and Change (Palgrave Macmillan, Autumn 2011).

Norway scores high on international gender equality measures, but similar to the trend found in other western countries, also in Norway the number of women in computing is low. It has often been claimed that ‘nothing has changed’ for women in computing, ‘despite three decades of efforts to improve things’. Is it true that ‘nothing has changed’, or are there other ways of seeing the situation? Through a varied empirical material Corneliussen explores how perceptions of gender-technology relations have developed since the early 1980s until today.

Hilde G. Corneliussen is associate professor in Digital Culture at Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen. Her research interests include gender and technology, computer history, computer education and computer games. She is co-editor of Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft® Reader (MIT Press, 2008).

Corneliussen is visiting ITU as part of the Nordic Digital Culture Network for student and faculty exchange between Digital Culture programs in the Nordic countries.

http://www.nordicdigitalculture.net/

PhD course: Citizenship in the Digital Republic

There is a PhD course entitled “Citizenship in the Digital Republic”, taking place May 30 – June 1, 2011, at the IT University of Copenhagen. The lecturers are: Prof. Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University), Prof. Peter Dahlgren (Lund University), Prof. Maria Bakardjieva (University of Calgary), Associate Professor Lisbeth Klastrup (IT University of Copenhagen), Assistant Professor Bjarki Valtysson (IT University of Copenhagen).
The themes comprising the course take up the concept of citizenship in four distinct contexts:

• public participation in technological development, design and policy;
• digital media technologies and civic engagement;
• digital media and citizenship in everyday life
• digital media and cultural institutions

The course is relevant to PhD students in the areas of communication, interaction design, digital media, social studies of technology, political communication, Internet studies.

You can find more information about the course on the IT University-website