NetDynam 2.0

another link here to the blog page of the “information warfare monitor”, coming out of canada, and using the resources of three ‘independent’ research institutions.
it publishes short reports rather than papers, and links to other reprts, news articles and so on – all related to the way cyberspace is used as an arena for espionage and counter-intelligence… authors are affiliated with the named institutions, and so far i have not read any further than a couple of the posts to find out what if any political ideology they support. so far, nothing sticks out – but then, as i am left of centre it is no doubt going to be found wanting in some way by anyone on the right. i note that what i find neutral and mealy-mouthed is damned as ‘biased’ by conservatives the world over. go figure as they say.
anyway, looks like another good resource for web-based investigations.
on content this time, not expression. i.e. not related to interface functionality.

here’s an interesting lecture on endangered languages in the anthropological tradition, and of course, it gladdens me heart that dan stands up to the chomskian idea that there is some universal grammatical criteria for distinguishing human language – and thus distinguish humans from other species (thus we should be allowed to exploit these ‘lower’ species – this is my extension, not dan’s btw)

recent article in new scientist took my attention, a summary of recent uses and advances in using software to gauge public opinion on various matters using keywords and frequency of use. the claim being that blogs and tweets are able to predict business trends – not directly, but by ‘measuring’ a sort of underlying, pervasive, social attutude.
not convinced myself, but interested in the work being done, i followed the link to the 4th international AAAI conference on weblogs and social media.

still ignorant at the time of what AAAI stood for (the association for the advancement of artificial intelligence), i investigated and downloaded some of the papers and presentation on the conference site

a short scan through the abstracts convinced me that i was not really convinced at all of the usefulness of their work, it purporting to give insights into the workings of the brain and cognitive processes through research based on software-driven text analysis.

at the same time, the free papers are a great resource, and it also linked me to the previous site i posted where, like TED, some fascinating lectures can be viewed.

one of the lectures i’ve been watching recently on the video lectures site (see blogroll for link to their homepage) features a young eastern european guy who’s been working in conceptualising the dynamics of the web, the evolution of networks/ links, and how ideas or topics spread through networks.
it’s one of several on the topic of social media and theorising or graphically representing social networks, sentiment analysis, and so on. they are not as professional as those on TED, featuring presentations from conferences all over the world, and so to some extent you need to check out the ratings given by other viewers to determine whether the lecture is going to be rivetting or not…
a good resource anyway.

so, in the absence of any intervening comments, as usual, i am powering ahead

i’m posting this as a new post, instead of a comment, as it features old material relevant to the present project.

actually i went on a search for mike’s posting of the role and function matrix.

because one of the perspectives for entering the realm of affordances for users, is to look at what type of user (aka wordpress ‘role’) allows and constrains what blog activities, or, in other words, what acts are afforded these users.

it seems mike was a little ahead of us. no matter. i’m still catching up.

anyway, i think that the following post and its comments are certainly grist for this particular mill, and quite eminently quotable in parts. note mike’s disappointment with some of the affordances of the blue…thing…
see
the collaborative environment

well, i sort of bit the bullet and sent in an abstract for a paper at a local conference on multimodal discourse analysis taking place later this year. the focus of the paper is the affordances (or not) of the blogging medium, and i’ll use a couple of wordpress themes in the first instance to illustrate the potential channels made available for users – depending on knowledge experience and role ascription of course.

having done so, i now face the prospect of at least reviewing the copious literature on the topic and related areas, see for example (one of the speakers) john bateman’s extensive online bibliography, especially the link to the multimodal and computer-related list



so if any one of you is interested in contributing to the project, i’d be happy to collect comments, pointers, and so on to add to the substance of the presentation – and possibly, if i can, publish a paper on the topic. the presentation (if the abstract is accepted that is) will only be able to set out the main areas of interest of some sort of wobbly framework i have in mind, but if there is continuing interest, then a written paper in acknowledged collaboration with you, my colleagues here, might also be possible. with me, though, once the work is done, it is done. archived, and not thrown away, but enhanced and tarted up is sometimes not on the cards. however, in this case, i will need to do the work should the abstract be accepted and given continuing motivation, publishing is also a good *idea*.

here is the abstract for comments anyway:

Mediated personae: Towards a description of blog affordances.

The interweb is now populated by an intense variety of blogs allowing users an interactive facade which in the first instance mediates their communication with others and presents a persona to the wired world. The blog interface allows and constrains the type of interactive events afforded to users, and, depending on what role function each person is accorded, users may adjust the way the blog interface and their projected persona appears to the public.

In this paper I present the basis of a framework for the comparison and description of blog interfaces, and propose a means of categorising these communicative interfaces according to a number of different dimensions. For the purposes of the investigation on which the framework is based, these dimensions mainly refer to the textual and interpersonal/relational functions blogs may afford. The nature of the affordances which blogs provide is seen as a product of ways in which blog structure and management options allow or effect certain interactions for users, but moreover they can be used to channel and project certain identities for their administrators. In this sense blog structure is conceived as a matter of expression, with content the allowed or potential events that users may enact or interpret given the constraints of the medium.

The resultant set of dimensions is conceived of as a potential means for both analysing individual blogs, and providing cross-comparative material for classifying sets of blogs by function. The framework will be illustrated here by reference to a number of themes available in the WordPress blogging interface, analysing the ways in which each of their designs affords user activity.

[now TV channels are becoming reporting institutions.
the convergence is upon us, illustrated daily....]

Magnets can alter a person’s sense of morality, according to a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using a powerful magnetic field, scientists from MIT, Harvard University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are able to scramble the moral center of the brain, making it more difficult for people to separate innocent intentions from harmful outcomes. The research could have big implications for not only neuroscientists, but also for judges and juries.

see http://news.discovery.com/tech/magnet-brain-morality.html