User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes

DISS

• Just as his business people have some ideas about what computers will mean for them that don't seem borne out by reality, and just as Stu Shulman suggested that computer use can turn into just another routine without stimulating further innovation, you need to be on your guard about getting survey answers that repeat myths rather than actual experience.
• BUT, will there be an issue about whether your respondent will be in a position to know this accurately, especially in a large organization. Even in a small one, would a department chair know all the uses made of ICTs by faculty? staff? students? Do we have to worry about this issue?
• The Transformation of the Web: How Emerging Communities Shape the Information We Consume, [1], These new paradigms obliterate the clear distinction between information providers and consumers. The lines between producers and consumers are blurred even more by services such as Wikipedia...

A noticeable proportions of the movements (~10%?) don't have phone contacts listed, only emails: for example, the "Amnesty International Pittsburgh Area", but also the brand new "Pittsburgh G-20 resistance project".

Methodology

Ragin

• Ragin, Constructing Social Research:1) social research - interplay between evidence and ideas 2) consists of a) analysis of a movement (involves its deconstruction into elements, also analysis of non-participants as well as particiapants) and b) synthesis of evidence (see which elements are similar) 3) analytic frame - key concept 4) four building blocs of social research: ideas, evidence, analytical frame, images 5) be selective in chosing your evidence 6) images a) are idealization of real cases (ideal types?) b) imply explanations c) are guides for further research 7) challenge of social research: clear specification of ideas, rigorus examintation of evidence, 8) in qualitative research, frames are flexible (can be changed) 9) qualitative research process: selecting cases and sites, use of sensitizing (early) concepts, claryfing cases and categories, 10) qualitative is about fewer, but enhanced data 11) Analytic induction - systematic examination of similarities that seeks to develop concepts or ideas (look for similarities, develop a subcategory for them from a higher category) 12) study of a single case 13) data condensers vs data enhancers 14) analytic induction and theoretical sampling

Tylor and Bogdan

• Steven J. Taylor, Robert Bogdan Introduction to qualitative research methods
  • Ch1. history. methodology
    • qualitative researchers are concerned with meanings people attach to their lives
    • qualitative research is inductive
    • qual met is holistic: people/settings/etc. are not reduced to variables but looked upon as a whole
    • qual res are concerned with how people think and act in their everyday lives
    • all perspectives are worthy of study (of judge but also of deliquent)
    • qual res emphasise validity (meaningfullness, relevance to empirical world)
    • qual res is flexible
  • sociological perspectives
    • phenomenological perspectives (phenomenology) - view human behavior as products of their definitions of their world. The task or research is to capture how people construct realities. Subperspectives:
      • symbolic interactionism: Charles Horton Cooley, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Robert Park, W.I. Thomas and others. Primary importance on the social meanings people attach to the world around them. Blumer premises: 1) people acts towards other people (things, etc.) based on the meanings those people (things, etc.) have for them 2) meanings arise in interaction (are not inherent to objects) 3) meanings are attached through interpretation
      • ethnomethodology - Harold Garfinkel. Refers to subject method of study: how people maintain the sense of external reality. Meanings are ambigious and problematic. Researchers analyze the ways people apply rules and understandings in specific situations to make them clear. Examine the common sense. Note that some researchers link et. to s.i., while others don't.
      • feminist research
      • postmodernism - reject the Enlight. faith in reason, rationality and progress. Challenges science, examines axioms. Popular withing philosophy (Foucault).

Sociological theory

Marcuse: Eros and civilization

• Herbert Marcuse, Eros and civilization: social meaning of biology - history of not class struggle, but fight against repression
  • He begins with the conflict postulated by Freud in Civilisation and Its Discontents between human instincts and the necessary repression brought on by the socially-acquired conscience (or superego). Freud claimed that the history of man is the history of his repression and that 'Our civilisation is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts.' Sublimation of sex produces the energy for progress, and the price of progress is the substitution of guilt for happiness. Freud thought that this was due to an inevitable biological clash between Eros and civilisation. Marcuse argues that 'the irreconcilable conflict is not between work (reality principle) and Eros (pleasure principle), but between alienated labour (performance principle) and Eros.' He believes that a socialist society could engender 'non-alienated libidinal work', 'a non-repressive civilisation based on 'non-repressive sublimation'. The argument depends on the theses that instincts are subject to historical modification and that repression is largely an historical phenomenon. Marcuse concludes that biological repression itself is not the problem but that our troubles stem from the additional 'surplus repression' produced by the specific historical institutions of our own period. The result is that Freud is converted in to a sort of eroticised Marx.[2]
  • Freud claimed that the human civilization was, founded on the suppression of instincts. Sex in any form produces the energy for progress and the price of it (since Enlightenment) always was loosing part of happiness to guilt. Freud thought that this was because of the inevitable biological clash between Sex and civilization. Marcuse sees Sex as part of civilization and argues that 'the conflict is not between work [life without leisure] and Sex [leisure and pleasure], but between performance and Sex.' Sex is allowed for managers, or for workers outside sex industry when not disturbing performance. Marcuse believes that a socialist society could be a society without needing the performance of the 'poor' and without suppression. For him biological repression itself is not the problem but the extra repression, coming from historical institutions of our own period. Marcuse unlike Marx doesn't use the abstract division Poor and Rich, but the Common Sense observation Older less flexible and Younger curious. [3]
  • Intro
    • The sacrifice has paid off well: in the technically advanced areas of civilization, the conquest of nature is practically complete, and more needs of a greater number of people are fulfilled than ever before. Neither the mechanization and standardization of life, nor the mental impoverishment, nor the growing destructiveness of present-day progress provides sufficient ground for questioning the “principle” which has governed the progress of Western civilization. The continual increase of productivity makes constantly more realistic the promise of an even better life for all.
    • Does the interrelation between freedom and repression, productivity and destruction, domination and progress, really constitute the principle of civilization? Or does this interrelation result only from a specific historical organization of human existence? In Freudian terms, is the conflict between pleasure principle and reality principle irreconcilable to such a degree that it necessitates the repressive transformation of man’s instinctual structure? Or does it allow the concept of a non-repressive civilization, based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations?
  • Chap.1
    • If absence from repression is the archetype of freedom, then civilization is the struggle against this freedom.
    • The notion that a non-repressive civilization is impossible is a cornerstone of Freudian theory.
    • Freud’s metapsychology is an ever-renewed attempt to uncover, and to question, the terrible necessity of the inner connection between civilization and barbarism, progress and suffering, freedom and unhappiness — a connection which reveals itself ultimately as that between Eros and Thanatos. Freud questions culture not from a romanticist or utopian point of view, but on the ground of the suffering and misery which its implementation involves.
    • Throughout the world of industrial civilization, the domination of man by man is growing in scope and efficiency. Nor does this trend appear as an incidental, transitory regression on the road to progress. Concentration camps, mass exterminations, world wars, and atom bombs are no “relapse into barbarism,” but the unrepressed implementation of the achievements of modern science, technology, and domination. And the most effective subjugation and destruction of man by man takes place at the height of civilization, when the material and intellectual attainments of mankind seem to allow the creation of a truly free world.
  • Chap.2
    • "the struggle for existence takes place in the world too poor for the satisfaction of the human need without constant restrain, renounciation and denial" (p.35) thus the need for work
    • Marcuse argues for fallacy: it's not scarcity per se, but organization of thereof (capitalism?). No distribution according to needs, but to power.
    • "Domination is excercised by a particular group or individual in order to sustain and enhance itself in a priviliged position."
    • Progress is a byproduct of preserving scarcity
    • stages of civilization implies social evolutionist view
    • "such restrictions of the instics might have been enforced by scarcity (...) but they have became a privilige and distinction of man"
    • "scarcity has been intensified by the hierarchical division of labor"
    • performance principle - economic stratification
    • little free time (alienated labor)
  • Ch10
    • In Marxist Utopia, will we be sex maniacs?

Foucault

• Michael Foucault
  • Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison studies how prisons specifically, but really all institutions of coercion schools, armies, etc.) developed. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc.
  • Just around the time of Damien's execution, though, an important series of challenges occurred. The crowds became increasingly unruly, sometimes chasing off the executioner and carrying the criminal away in triumph. Faced with this type of disobedience, the sovereign had to respond with ever-increasing displays of power, and the possibility of full rebellion came to hover over every punishment, Clearly, a new solution was needed. - consider Tilly, social movements
  • The solution was found in the new methods of production revolutionizing the Western world. The modern prison is an even more complete exercise of power than the spectacle of the gallows. The transition from torture to control as a means of punishment represents a massive shift in systematic uses of power and authority within society. Foucault analyzes the Industrial Revolution in terms of its production of "docile bodies" conditioned to their role in the rapidly technologizing society. Foucault calls this production the science of discipline; its main principles are spatialization, complete control of activity, repetition, detailed hierarchies, and normalizing judgments. All of these combine to create self-reinforcing systems of power and control. Each level looks to the one above it for knowledge or direction. The subject gaze of the lower also controls those above by reinforcing their role as knowledge providers. In this sense, powers is not simply the control exerted by elites upon the masses but a whole network of interlocking conditions and coercions; power is not directed by elites, flowing top to bottom, but is localized in institutions.
  • Foucault 'DP' begins in a way Hitchock would've be proud for: with the detaile description of an 18th century execution of Robert-François Damiens, "The flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs, and calves with red-hot pincers"
  • Humanist schemes such as Jeremy Bentham's `Panopticon' promised to end criminality and provide surefire ways of `grinding rogues good', but they were not acted upon. For example, in the modern prison there is no attempt to instill an automatic association between particular crimes and particular punishments. Incarceration has become the common answer to everything, varying in length but not greatly in character. Prison discipline has been drawn from a collection of diverse tactics rather than a single overarching rationality. It was through the disciplines of the barracks, the workshop, the schoolroom and the hospital, that the modern prison system became possible.
  • One important consequence of this fragmentary logic is that there is no serious possibility of the prison system reducing overall levels of criminality (it operates according to principles which ensure that it “…cannot fail to produce delinquents.”). Punishment is not geared towards the production of Bentham's new model citizens, it tends instead to function as a school for crime, taking in offenders and grinding out delinquents. Failure was built in from the start. But here Foucault asks an important question: what is served by this failure? He answers by pointing to the production of a seemingly marginal, but supervised milieu of criminals. Such delinquency allows illegality to be localized and it allows the criminal group to be used by the justice system in order to survey the entire social field. Criminality becomes an instrument of power. In addition, crime becomes gauged by degrees of anomaly and normality. The disciplinary society -- the school, the court, the asylum and the prison -- is set in a struggle against all forms of anomaly. Prison grinds society uniform.
  • Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle" punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But, he suggests that the shift towards prison which followed was the result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine".
  • Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and assymetrical that we call the disciplines. (p.222)
  • Foucault thus suggests that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern age - bodies which function in factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms.
  • These changes, where a coercive institution replaces the city of punishment, arose from a definite change in the mechanisms of power and technology. The emphasis on representations, coupling of ideas, and the person of the criminal gives way to one focused on the body and 'soul', on training mechanisms, on the manipulation of the individual. The goal is to generate an obedient subject who obeys and responds automatically. This does not require spectacle. It does, however require total power over that person, omnipresent and enforced automatically. This can and must be secret and private, although there is a risk that arbitrary despotism will return.
  • Question: in a society where power is less centralised, prisons are more likely to exist?
  • "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?" One of the central points of Foucault's discussion of the carceral system is that the form of discipline associated with the modern prison is not contained within prison walls, but derives from the society beyond those walls. The mechanisms of control, examination and classification operate within all the institutions that Foucault discusses. Indeed, power in its various forms flows through all of them. Prisons resemble these other institutions not just because they have similar architecture, but because they all fulfill similar functions.

Giddens

• Anthony Giddens
  • outsider to social theory
  • power:
    • In rules, Giddens emphasised the social constructs of power, modernity and institutions, defining sociology as "the study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three centuries."
    • Most directly then, space does more than provide the "settings of interaction" (Giddens, 1984); it itself is a fundamental constituent of knowledge/power regimes. The point to draw from these various comments is that in order to understand something like continuing education in the professions we have to map a geography of it as a set of social practices, a human geography in which power is created, enacted, altered. In Giddens’ view, the very framework of our social lives, modernity, is fundamentally shaped by different sense of space and time than in pre-modern times.
    • The study of power is not a secondary consideration for social science. Power is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person (theory of structuration)

Habermas and the Public Sphere

• lifeworld is the world as it immediately presents itself to us prior to scientific or philosophical analysis. It is an enviroment made by practices and attitudes, a realm of informal culturally grounded understandings and mutual acommodations. In the lifeworld, individuals draw from custom and cultural traditions to construct identities, negotiate situational definitions, coordinate action and create social solidarity.
• relation between the philosophy of law and political theory. Law, Habermas says, is the primary medium of social integration in modern society. Law, in the first place, is power: it is a coercive instrument, linked with violence, that extracts obedience and common behavior from its subjects because of its claim to the power of enforcement. But power alone does not grant law its legitimacy. It is also based on a normative claim. In modern society, law derives its validity from consent, the consent of the governed.
• power: Habermas's treatment of the role and meaning of the concept of "power", as it was elaborated in his two previous volumes, "The Theory of Communicative Action" and "Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action", has therefore undergone some significant changes in this book. The revised notion of "power" as a positive influence that is produced in communicative space, runs contrary to Habermas's original concept of "power" in his "Theory of Communicative Action" where power was understood as a coercive force that had to be avoided in order for the discursive situation to prevail.
• medium of law which gives legitimacy to the political order and provides it with its binding force. Legitimate law-making itself is generated through a procedure of public opinion and will-formation that produces communicative power.
• public sphere contrasts with the private sphere, and is the part of life in which one is interacting with others and with society at large. Much of the thought about the public sphere relates to the concept of identity and identity politics.
• The public sphere is the “place” where free citizens come

together to freely deliberate political thought, contemporary affairs, and public policy.

• history and 18th century successes
• decline As early as the 1960’s, Habermas asserted that the public sphere has undergone a

significant shift in its ability to provide an open forum for content-focused discourse and expressed his concern that mass-media was shaping the public opinion. In his magnum opus of Theory of Communicative Action (1984) he criticized the one-side process of modernization led by forces of economic and administrative rationalization. Habermas traced the growing intervention of formal systems in our everyday lives as pararell to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and culture of mass consumption. These reinforcing trends rationalize widening areas of public life, submiting them to generalizing logic of efficiency and control. As routinized political parties and interests groups substitute for participatory democracy, society is increasingly administered at a level remote from input of citizens. As a result, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating.

• In his view, the idea of the public sphere involved the notion that private entities would draw together as a public entity and engage in rational deliberation, ultimately making decisions that would influence the state. As a historical formation, the public sphere involved a "space" separated from family life, the business world, and the state.
• Democratic public life only thrives where institutions enable citizens to debate matter of public importance. He describes an ideal type of "ideal speech situation", where actors are equally endowed with the capacities of discource, recognize each other's basic social equality and in which their speech is completly undistorted by idealogy or midrecognition.
• Habermas is optimistic about the possibilty of the revival of the public sphere. He sees hope for the future in the new era of political community that transcends the national state based on ethnic and cultural likeness for one based on the equal rights and obligations of legally vested citizens. This discoursive theory of democracy requires the political community which can collectively define its political will and implement it as policy at the level of the legislative system. This political system requires an activist public spehere, where matters of common interest and political issues can be discussed, and the force of public opinion can influence the decision making process.
• public shpere and the net?

Auctions

• Auctions:
  • 3 community (group indentity - dress code - knowlege less for success, more for community feel), spontanity, stock market as the exception (buyers don't care about other buyers - duel market. Auctions that maximize fairness (English) are more common then those maximizing bids (English). Creating community is often the job of an auctioneer, with jokes, food, and such - otherwise buyers will be weary. Yet auctions may also increase social relations: selling something to a friend, if he is dissatisfied later, makes it less liekely he will be dissatisfied with the seller. Communal status may be more important then the fair value. Legitimacy: objects are reborn, gain new meaning bestowed by the community.
  • 4 going beyond economics. Social goals and meanings. Fairness is not an economic byproduct, it is a sociological goal from the start. More on legitimacy: Example: car selling (people not complaining about price dumping - auction legitimizes the price as well "we couldn't get more"). Legitimacy of a collective decisions. Justification: others are paying as much (legitimization of inflated price). Reporting of even minor flaws before the auction. Fair price and the pools: avoid bidding wars and underpriced items, buy worse items: "we are not stealing it - we know what's the fair price, we wont underpay but we wont overpay". What is fair differs and reflects the history of a community.

Gaming clubs

Fans, fandom:

• Scott Thorne, Gordon C. Bruner - 'An exploratory investigation of the characteristics of consumer fanaticism ' - Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal - [4] [5]
• Matthew Hills - Fan Cultures - general overview of fans and fandom [6] fan cultures book

SF

• Camille Bacon-Smith - Science Fiction Culture [7] book science fiction culture

Comics

• Premo Steele, Cassie - Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers - [8]
  • whether one is a Fanboy or a True Believer, the preferred hangout is the specialty store. Here, as they talk shop, the culture proliferates. They debate among themselves, spread news about the industry, arrange trades, discuss collectibles, and attach themselves to their particular mainstream.
  • Comic store is the most important site for the comic culture. They serve as a kind of cultural clubhouse where fans can spend time being themselves among themselves and other like-minded individuals.
  • Born from the changs in comic distribution they became increasingly popular since 1980s, by the begining of 1990s selling over 80% of comics.
  • They sell other items of interest to fans.
  • Despite all the merchanside, many regulars find that the real reason for patronizing those estabilishments is interaction with people there, including other customers and employees. In this way, the comic store is a centre not only for commerce, but also for culture.
  • Sometimes I think I come here just to talk to my friends instead of to buy comics,” one of Daydreams' regular customers said about the store
  • American society does not respect comics. Supportive environment - reaffirmation.
  • It is not uncommon to find employees having long conversations with customers about...
  • Finding fellowship at the comic shops is important part of their popularity and success.
  • p.8 - female customers
  • For visitors, it can be an alien world. Sense of awe for some newcomers. Moment of epiphany (especially for those already interested in a hobby - note T&B comment on many fans not realizing there is a large fandom out there). The discovery of the comic shop can rekindle childhood interests in adults. Later: Although the store may function as a clubhouse for regular readers, for others it is intimidating and they may find it difficult to get involved (females).
  • Darcy? Sullivan suggests that the comic book store is "a fundamental part of the way in which [fans] interact with the medium"
  • The shop's clientele is limited to a very exclusive group of people. It makes it a cultural place in a way that a general audience store can never be, but prevents many people from becoming a part of that culture.
  • different customers [9]
  • Extreme difficulty in finding the comics without a comic shop, but still managable: comic book culture existed before the comic shops.

Community

• Community: As Jenkins (Henry Jenkins in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture[10]) suggests, fans are not a community in a traditional sense. For Rheingold, a community is any cooperative group of people and, according to him, “every cooperative group of people exists in the face of a competitive...
  • • • Henry Jenkins: example of a complete membership [11]
        • ethnographic account of the media fan community drawing on the works of Michel de Ceteau (model of "poaching," in which an audience appropriates a text for itself).
        • ...considers fandom status as a new form of community, one formed by relations of consumptions and categories of taste. Filk music.
• Jeffrey A Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans, [12] - black superhoroes book
• P.Zinkiewicz, S. Smith, Sense of Community in Science-Fiction Fandom, Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 105-117,
• Henry Jenkings, Media studis: A Reader:
  • Fandom constitutes an alternative social community.[13]

Anime

• Fred Patten, Carl Macek - Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews - manga/anime fans [14] book anime and manga

CCGs

• J. Patrick Williams, Consumption and Authenticity in the Collectible Games Subculture: collectible games (cardgames), choice, self-identity, commodification online

RPGs

• Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games
• [15] [16] Gary Fine 1983, book, store and players: [17]
  • books citing Fine: Sara Delamont - Fieldwork in Educational Settings: Methods, Pitfalls and Perspectives - [18]
• The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic - [19] - Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic
• K Lancaster - The Journal of Popular Culture, 1994 [20]
  • Specialty game and hobby stores thrived

Comp games

• computer games - gender differences - Sheri Graner-Ray, Sheri Graner Ray, Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market [21]
• computer games - customners come into store with opinions - Alan Gershenfeld, Mark Loparco, Cecilia Barajas, Game Plan: The Insider's Guide to Breaking in and Succeeding in the Computer and Video Game Business [22]
• game designers, playing game as a kids - career in the industry - Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, Steven Hoffman - Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping, and Playtesting Games - [23]
  • There are about 5,000 non-chain game hobby stores in US[24] - small stores privately owned and run by people who love the games (and/or comic books)
  • Hobby games are the domain of males in their teens or twenties who play religiously every week or more. In general these games are extremly complex and and it is not unusual for fans to spend hundreds of dollars a year getting supplements, cards, figuringes or rulebooks for a single game. Hobby games fall into three main categories: roleplaying games, minature games and trading card games.
• Cybercafes and Cybergames: Virtual and Non-Virtual Spaces for Identity Construction and Social Development - Frank L. Samson - identity construction (online gamers): study of computer and boardgames centers: usually attracted younger student patrons during the early afternoon through late afternoon hours while the late night crowd tended to be much older, ranging from late teens through twenties, thirties, and seemingly middle-aged patrons (see Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet).

Other

• Kurt Lancaster - Warlocks and Warpdrive: Contemporary Fantasy Entertainments with Interactive and Virtual Environments [25]

Keywords:

• hobby+games+community

Rule: skepticism of technological revolutions

• James B. Rule, Debra L. Gimlin, Sylvia J. Sievers, Computing in organizations: myth and experience, Transaction Publishers, 2002

ISBN 0765801418, [26]

His argument is that people (managers...) have certain positive myths (unfounded expectations) that adopting computer technology will always greatly help them; thus they adopt it without sufficient study with predictable effects of disillusionment. A very interesting observation is that many decision makers (and regular members) tend to overemphasize the impact of computerization; this is certainly a point I want to remember for the final conclusion of my thesis, and for when we consider the possible bias of respondents. He writes on p.119 that "initial adoption of computing appears decisively unrevolutionary" (with the exceptions of a very few organizations which indeed can be drastically transformed - would they be the "interesting outliers" we mentioned?); on p.127 he notes that the changes in organizations will be gradual and slow. I do agree with him - I've always thought that people tend to overstimate the potential of technology in social change (in the short run - years or decades; people also tend to underestimate them in the longer run - ex. several decades). Rule finds, however, (p.125-127) that there seem to be a common pattern that computing technology broadens the vision of organizations (and of their decision-makers), and allows them to do things previously thought impossible, or at the very least, be more efficient and innovative (although he notes, and I certainly agree, that this doesn't translate to "more wise"). He also argues that many studies of the impact of computerization on social change suffer from what I would call spurious effects - in other words, that scholars claim that computers caused change X, when in fact there are other plausible explanations, which enthusiasts of computer technology ignore as possible variables. Overall, while to a certain extent Rule is a skeptic, he is more of a comparative skeptic: i.e. he opposes the use of the term "revolution", by arguing that changes will be slow, but does admit that communication technologies do, over time, result in important changes.

Rogers: diffusion of innovations

• Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, [27]
• how new ideas spread via communication channels over time. Such innovations are initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome this uncertainty, most people seek out others like themselves who have already adopted the new idea. Thus the diffusion process consists of a few individuals who first adopt an innovation, then spread the word among their circle of acquaintances--a process which typically takes months or years. But there are exceptions: use of the Internet in the 1990s, for example, may have spread more rapidly than any other innovation in the history of humankind. Furthermore, the Internet is changing the very nature of diffusion by decreasing the importance of physical distance between people
• p.xx - the diffusion of innovations is essentially a social process in which subjectively perceived information about a new idea is communicated from person to person.
• p.35 - diffusion is a special type of communication concerned with the spread of messages that are perceived as new ideas
• p.36 - innovation characteristics: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, observability
• p.36 - most individuals evaluate the innovation not on a basis of scientific research but through subjective evaluation of near peers who have adopted the innovation (role models). The more similar those role models are to the observer, the greater their effect.
• p.37 - adopter categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards
• p.38 - there are optional (by individuals), collective (by a group) and authority (by leaders) innovation decisions
• p.91 - sociological research stresses how social relationships are involved in the person-to-person spread of new ideas. Example: McAdam works on spread of protesting and organizing techniques via the Freedom Summer
• p.294 - the innovativeness/needs paradox and the strategy of least resistance: groups that are in most need of innovation often are the last to adopt it (digital divide). Change agents often chose the targets that are most likely to adopt a given innovation (elite clients).
• p.404 - an organization is a stable system of individuals who work together through a pattern of regularized human relationships to achieve common goals through a hierarchy of ranks and a division of labor.
• p.405 - a virtual organization is a network of geographically-distant employees linked by electronic communication
• p.414 - a champion is a charismatic individual who supports the innovation, helping to overcome indifference or resistance to innovations. They can come from the top, middle or bottom of an organization, in all ages and with differing degrees of official power. Anti-champions exist (p.37 - opinion leaders - individuals able to informally influence others)
• p.434 - innovation in organization: (1) initiation (information gathering/agenda setting and planning/matching) and (2) implementation (redefining/restructuring, clarifying and routinizing)

Qualitative

User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes/Qualitative

Social movements

• User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes/SocMov

Web participation and media - Shulman

• [28]
• Schlosberg David ; Stephen Zavestoski ; Stuart W. Shulman. “Web-Based Technologies, Participation, and the Potential for Deliberation”. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Volume 4, Issue 1 December 2007 , pages 37 - 55
• there is little diff between paper and electronic comments
• there is a major difference between people who use form letters with little modifications and who write their own comments; the latter are much more deliberative. There are technologies promoting both deliberative and non-deliberative comments.
• conclusion: how technology is designed, and the needs of those designing it, have much impact on the scope of delibration

The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

• Philip N. Howard , The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam ([29])
• [While mobile phones are used] the major (and perhaps the only meaningful) forum for civic debate in most Muslim countries today is online

Classics on technology (communication, transportation)

• Marx: Communist Manifesto -> speaks of the "immensely facilitated means of communication" and "the improved means of communication" ([30])
• Durkheim: The Division of Labor in Society -> "Moral density cannot therefore increase without physical density increasing at the same time". ... "[This] occurs in three main ways:" 2) Urbanization and 3) "...there is a nmber and speed of the means of communication and transmission. By abolishing or lessening the vacuums separating social segements, those means increase the density of the society. Moreover, there is no need to demonstrate that they are the more numerous and perfect the higher the type of the society." pp. 200-203
• Weber: Economy and Society -> "Among essentially technical factors, the specifically modern means of communication enter the picture as pacemakers of bureaucratization." (p. 973) ... "...extremly important conditions in the fields of communication and transportation..." (p. 224)

Envisioning real utopias

• Erik Olin Wright (14 June 2010). Envisioning real utopias. Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-618-7. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
  • introduction: Real Utopias Project (seems notable)
  • p.37: eleven criticisms of capitalism
    • "Capitalist class relations perpetuate examinable forms of human suffering"
    • "Capitalism blocks the universalization of conditions for expansive human flourishing"
    • "Capitalism perpetuates eliminable deficits in individual freedom and autonomy"
    • "Capitalism violates liberal egalitarian principles of social justice"
    • "Capitalism is inefficient in certain crucial respects"
    • "Capitalism has a systematic bias towards consumerism"
    • "Capitalism is environmentally destructive"
    • "Capitalist commodification threatens important broadly held values"
    • "Capitalism, in a world of nation states, fuels militarism and imperialism"
    • "Capitalism corrodes community"
    • "Capitalism limits democracy"
  • Theory of historical trajectory

Consent of the Networked

• Rebecca MacKinnon (31 January 2012). Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. Basic Books. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-0-465-02442-1. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
• Chapter 1: Consent and Sovereignty, p. 3-14. Themes: 1984; transnational organizations challenging nation states; democracy online.
• p. 12 Quotes Manuel Castells: while online insurgent communities have scored some victories, those may not be permanent, as power holders will try to "enclose free communication in commercialized and policed networks"
• Chapter 2: Rise of the Digital Commons, p. 15-28. Themes: digital commons - how Internet of today is the creation of many individuals; the "technical commons" - importance of code (Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, open standards, free licenses); activism (examples from the Arab Spring)
• p. 17 Quotes Yochai Benkler: Internet is the product of "commons-based information production, of individuals and loose associations producing information in non proprietary forms"
• p. 25-27: notes that the power to shape the Internet rests significantly with those who write code, and those people represent both the activist digital commons, as well as for-profit companies. Also, not all commons contributors share Western ideals (pro-government hackers of Russia and China, for example). Further, the need to protect the digital commons is still not well understood by the majority of the populace.
• Chapter 3: Networked Authoritarianism, p. 31-50. Themes: China censorship
• p. 32-33 Tank Man is not known in China, nor are the information about persecution of many journalist. State is successful and suppressing much information.
• p. 35 Only about 1% of Chinese users use tools to bypass censorship
• p. 42-43, citing Min Jiang. Notes that while there are many dangers for free speech in authoritarian states, the Internet does give people "vastly more room [to dissent] than ever before". [But only if they chose to exercise that right...]
• p. 49-50: why Internet did not weaken the Chinese regime, or how the Chinese Communist Party skillfully used it to prop itself.
• Chapter 4: Variants and Permutations, p. 51-71. Themes: censorship elsewhere; the importance of "corporate collaboration" - businesses voluntarily helping the governments with censorship (also a big part of the Chinese model); Western companies selling censorship/activist tracking technology worldwide; how "good" censorship still has collateral damage effects (OpenNet Initiative); employment of pro-government paid or nationalistic activists online;
• p. 53 citing Philip N. Howard that technology design can actually involve political strategy and be part of a nations' constitutional moment." Howard argues that technology is not a sufficient, but a necessary factor for change.
• Chapter 5: Eroding Accountability, p. 75-86. Themes: attempts to introduce policies in US and elsewhere that give government more powers over the Internet (SOPA/PIPA); Wikileaks
• p. 86: "We have a problem: the political discourse in the United States and in many other democracies now depends increasingly on privately owned and operated digital intermediaries". They are not responsible to public, and often buckle to government pressure.
• Chapter 6: Democratic Censorship, p. 87-98. Themes: more on government pressure on the private sector to self-censor itself and/or cooperate with the government; more on collateral damage caused by privacy-invading heavy handed legislation.
• Chapter 7: Copywars, p. 99-111. Themes: on politicians paying more attention to corporate interests than individuals freedoms and privacy; on how heavy handed approach to copyright clashes with Internet; on how authoritarian states use copyright to curtail freedoms and argue that they just do the same things that "the free and democratic West" does;
• p. 100-101, talking about a US Congress hearing: "politicians throughout the democratic world are pushing for stronger censorship and surveillance by Internet companies to stop theft of intellectual property. They are doing so in response to aggressive lobbying by powerful corporate constituents without adequate consideration of the consequences for civil liberties, and for democracy more broadly."
• Chapter 8: Corporate Censorship, p. 115-130. Themes: more on corporate cenorship; Apple as the Big Brother; net neutrality - how companies can restrict access to specific type of content, and how does that affect our freedoms.
• Chapter 9: Do No Evil, p. 131-148. Themes: more on corporation cooperation with the governments, including authoritarian regimes (the case of BlackBerries and the Middle East; a case of Yahoo cooperating with the Chinese government and resulting in sentencing of a blogger Shi Tao for 10 years); Microsoft; Flickr; the privacy failure with Google's Buzz service); privacy and Facebook
• p. 136: "It had taken two years of being pummeled by Congress, human right groups, the media and shareholders before Yahoo finally shed its head-in-the-sand, lawyer-driven posture and actually took moral responsibility for what had happened."
• p. 141: "...it is also a fact that neither Flickr nor any other commercially operated service is required to uphold the First Amendment for American users of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights, which guarantees the right to free expression, for its global users."
• p. 148: Companies are at best "benevolent dictatorships", creating and enforcing whatever rules they want, and customers are bound by the rarely-read, complex terms of service.
• Chapter 10: Facebookistan and Googledom, p. 149-165. Themes: privacy on Facebook and Google+; corporate motivations; activism dedicated to making social networks more responsible; Hobbsian approach (we trade freedom for security) contrasted with Locke's (consent of the governed); companies like Facebook are not responsible to their users, they are not real public spaces, yet they are too important to be ignored by activists who have no choice but to use them to get their message out.
• p. 158: [Just like in China] "decisions at Facebook are made by a group of managers who insist they are acting in users' best interests." [It] Their claims that all is fine as long as majority of users are satisfied "is standard authoritarian fare" [...] "that Hobbes used to justify the need for the enlightened monarchy". "Zuckenberg and company may have deployed tools that people are using around the world in pushing for democracy but they are no democrats."
• p. 163: "In the end, a decision was made at the highest levels of the [Google] company that in order to make Google Plus a commercially successful platform, a real-name identity would need to be enforced."
• Chapter 11: Trust but Verify, p. 169-186. Themes: more on government collaboration with regimes and profit overriding social issues; on government regulations of companies aimed at making them respect human rights; on parallels with forcing corporations to respect the natural environment (corporate social responsibility), Global Network Initiative (founded by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and shunned by Facebook, Twitter and hardware companies...).
• p. 172: "Government regulation of companies to compel the protection of citizen rights is essential, particularly when there is a substantial body of evidence that the companies in question may not be willing or able to protect citizen rights of their own accord."
• p. 186: "If most Internet-related companies cannot even step over what many people in the human rights community consider to be a low bar [signing the GNI], this does not bode well for the human future of human rights and civil liberties in the Internet age."
• Chapter 12: In Search of the "Internet Freedom" Policy, p. 187-202. Themes: what is "Internet freedom"; contradictions: 1) US is spending money to help activists get around censorship, which for the most part is a result of the employment of US-produced software and 2) the ideas of online activists often clash with the policies of invigilation/national security, and trade promotion/copyright interests; on Internet Freedom policies in Europe, and clashes between governments and activists.
• Chapter 13: Global Internet Governance, p. 203-219. Themes: UN is not a reliable organization for protecting Internet rights; politics of West-dominated ICANN and the implications for the rest of the world (ICANN is under the ultimate oversight of US); ICANN and the problems with insufficient grassroots representation; Internet Governance Forum - an attempt at democratic decision which is however biased towards governments; bottom line - netizzens are not properly represented neither at ICANN or at IGF.
• page 213: "Why should people who are not network engineers care about these seemingly obscure issues of Internet governance? Most of the world's Internet users have never heard of ICANN, the DNS, or RIRs, or any of the global power struggles taking place within and around these and many other acronyms. The outcome of these power struggles, however, will affect the extent to which dissent and unpopular speech - or any speech that displeases powerful governments or large brand-name corporations-can have safe passage and a safe home on the Internet."
• Chapter 14: Building a Netizen-Centric Internet, p. 221-250. Themes: need to make people more involved into the Internet issues - transform passive users into active netizens; examples of netizen groups, including Wikipedia; activist project aimed at evading surveillance and censorship (software and hardware); Internet activist in politics (Pirate Party, Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet); the need to take action - it is our responsibility to protect our rights on the Internet.
• p. 233: argument that tools must be widespread to be really effective; see Ethan Zuckerman's "cute-cat theory of digital activism".

Życie Wirtualnych Dzikich

Dariusz Jemielniak's Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia is the newest book on Wikipedia, published in Poland in 2013 and with an English edition forthcoming in 2014. The title of the Polish edition, Życie Wirtualnych Dzikich (lit. Life of the Virtual Savages), comes from one of the seminal works of ethnograpical research, the The Sexual Life of Savages by Bronisław Malinowski, and as the title implies, is a work of virtual ethnography. It is also a work in sociology of organizations, as this is the author's professional area of expertise, and as such, an extensive treatment of topics such as Wikipedia's governance and culture.

Jemielniak starts his work dispelling some myths about the collective intelligence, with an insightful critique of works such as Andrew Keen's Cult of the Amateur. It is here that we first see the author's dedication to the project; he is an experienced Wikipedian (User:Pundit), with quite a few hats, including the administrator's and bureaucrat's on Polish Wikipedia. This is one of the main factors distinguishing this work from most of the existing treatments of Wikipedia. While most of the small group of authors who published books about Wikipedia are also Wikipedians, and some of them (such as User:John Broughton of Wikipedia – The Missing Manual or User:Andrew Dalby of The World and Wikipedia fame) sport longer career with a higher edit count, Jemielniak is both the first administrator in that group, and the first writer to focus on more than just English Wikipedia (a major theme of his work is a comparative analysis of English and Polish Wikipedia). As such, this work offers a number of unique insights, and is a valuable companion to the existing literature on Wikipedia.

Following the brief introduction, the book covers Wikipedia history, culture, governance and policies, a chapter that is required for the outside public, but will contain few revelations for readers of the Signpost or the Wikimedia Research Newsletter, who are likely quite familiar with issues such as the gender gap in Wikipedia, or incidents such as Roth's letter to Wikipedia, to name just two of the items in history of Wikipedia covered in this chapter. That said, a number of incidents related to Polish Wikipedia may be of interest, as Jemielniak's discussion of them may likely be the first time they are mentioned in an English language publication. In particular, an incident in which Jemielniak himself influenced the Polish Wikipedia's Manual of Style, by arranging to have an expert issue a language opinion, which was then used as a reliable source, is quite interesting. Sadly, although Jemielniak is usually very good with providing links to various pages, this particular incident, discussed on pages 43 and 44 of the Polish edition, is not supported by any source within the book.

Jemielniak, while clearly an invested member of the Wikipedia community supportive of the project's mission, is not beyond criticizing a number of Wikipedia's elements. His constructive if critical remarks begin in force with the book's second chapter, dedicated to hierarchy and roles. Early on, he points to the question of editor's equality, noting that Wikipedians are hardly equal, with the poor treatment of IP editors being most visible. The inequality does not ends there, with the number of edits, awards, and electable roles determining the position and status of more advanced editors. In a dedicated subchapter he points to the inefficiently of the Wikipedia:Request for adminship procedure, which he discusses in the context of hierarchy and power: Wikipedia may have relatively low hierarchy of power, but editors are not equal, and the fissure between regular editors and nearly-irremovable, effectively elected-for-life admins is quite significant. He recalls a number of RfAs which were clearly a "free for all", noting that they become circuses where policies like Wikipedia:Civility or Wikipedia:No personal attacks seem to be put on hold, as the discussion became a social ritual of "humiliate the candidate", becoming the last moment when the "regular editors" can express their dissatisfaction with the admin caste, otherwise seen as immune to their concerns or criticism. Recalling his own experience with the imperfect administrator's recall procedure, he notes that "adminship is no big deal - up to the point one risks it being taken away" (p.82), observing that despite the myth to the contrary, adminship is perceived in the community as a very, very big deal indeed. Declaring the notion of an administrative cabal laughable on surface, he points out that there is a grain of truth to it - admins talk to one another, including privately, "secretly" and off wiki, and they act, more or less consciously, as a part of a group that holds power over regular editors. Jemielniak argues the notion of editor equality is a subconscious, invisible and unrealistic pillar of Wikipedia, one that when conforonted with the reality of editors not being equal leads to problems and growing divisions within the community. Thus the inequality between editors, which in the "ideal Wikipedia" would not exist, subconsciously annoys editors, and is significantly responsible for the problems with retention of editors, electing new administrators, and cohesion of the community, of whom a significant portion entertains some notions of the existence of a "real cabal". In this, his research fits into the wider paradigm of scholarly literature concerned with social inequality, and with its common conclusion that inequality is the major cause of vast majority of problems in human society.

In a subsequent chapter, discussing the conflict resolution, Jemielniak notes that conflicts are at least as common as collaboration, and offers an insightful analysis of the "Gdanzig vote". Outside a number of observations about this particular, peculiar moment in Wikipedia history, he offers a number of broader observations, such as that despite Wikipedia:Consensus claim to the contrary, established consensus is nearly impossible to change. Organizations (and people in general) are inimical to change, and on Wikipedia experienced Wikiedians who have already discussed a topic once are rarely fond of returning to it, thus they are likely to torpedo any attempt to reignite a discussion. This in effect disfranchises new editors of the right to change the existing status quo, and ensures that the Wikiepdia's bureaucratic environment continues to fossilze in the current state. Another interesting critique of the Wikipedia dispute resolution is that reaching consensus through constructive discussions, influencing others and mediating a middle ground, is often a myth: conflicts can are too often won not by the most eloquent editor with best sources, but by the most stubborn ones, who outlast any opposition; he terms this a "domination model of conflict solving" (p.122-123) (in which this reviewer is reminded of this interesting wiki essay); he also describes a "stalemate model", in which a simmering conflict continues for a long time, sapping editors' energy and producing nothing but mostly useless archives of talk page rants, going in circles. Jemielniak does not deny that friendly and constructive collaboration does occur, but he draws attention to the "hidden truth" of Wikipedia - that this ideal way is not the only way that disputes are solved around here.

Following that, Jemielniak makes an interesting observation of particular interest to researchers: that the entire topic of social control on Wikipedia is significantly under-researched. To address this, in a dedicated chapter Jemielniak discusses the topics of control on Wikipedia, comparing Wikipedia's transparency to a Panopticon, enhanced with the "end of forgetting" paradigm: a society where everyone can observe everyone else, one in which information almost never disappears, is easily findable again, and thus where mud sticks forever. This influences Wikipedians' behaviour in numerous ways, for example leading experienced editors to use a new form of speech, one which has to account for the fact that anything they say may one day be used against them in some wiki court of wikilaw. Other social norms concern topics such as when and where to reply to other editors, norms which interestingly have evolved differently on Polish and English Wikipedia (although those particular standards may merge back over time with the spread of the new echo extension).

Later Jemielniak discusses the topics of privacy, and the "anti-expert" attitude on Wikipedia, starting with a case study of the wiki-classic Essjay controversy. He notes that this attitude is required for Wikipedia to function as an open project; if editors arguments were given weight based on their real life achievements, this would alienate a vast majority who are not officially recognized as experts. An interesting point being made in this chapter is that editors trust not so much other editors as they trust the Wikipedia system and procedures (which through its Panopticon social control and other mechanisms is designed to keep the troublemakers at bay), and that the byproduct of the trust in the system is how we can assume good faith. In a more general context, Jemielniak makes a valuable observation that through Wikipedia, we are seeing a very interesting redefining of the very essence of what it means to be an expert, and the related mode of knowledge production, at least in the open source community.

The second to last chapter discusses the ever-favorite topic of Jimbo Wales, often called the benevolent dictator of Wikipedia. Jemielniak sees him as once having a potential to become a real dictator of the project, but who has forsaken this path, both through conscious decisions and through mistakes in exercising his power at the wrong time and fashion. Interestingly, Jemielniak notes that Wikipedia, despite the the official claim that it is not a democracy, has numerous democratic elements, often supported by Wales, and this vision of the Wikipedia governance, incompatible with leadership of a dictator, constitutional monarch, or such, significantly contributed to the marginalization of Jimbo's official influence (not denying his extensive charismatic authority).

The last chapter focuses on the interesting dynamics between the Wikimedia Foundation, local chapters and the community. Here, in discussing the extensive bureaucracy of this project in the final chapter, Jemielniak's work is yet another in a long chain of works which clearly points out to the ridiculousness of Wikipedia's claim that it is "not a bureaucracy". Of course, as he admits, Wikipedia is far more than just a simple bureaucracy, as it has elements of anarchy, adhocracy and several other models; he himself calls it a heterarchy, which he defines as a "meritocratic adhocracy with a dispersed power structure" (p.259). Besides the discussion of bureaucracy, this is perhaps the most innovative piece of the book, and also one of most interest to a casual Wikipedian reader, as here Jemielniak touches upon a number of issues that have never before been discussed in detail, nor in an academic, analytic fashion. Some of the most interesting observations concern the often problematic relations between the Foundation and the chapters, the professionalization of the Foundation and the chapters, the Foundation organizational and managing strategy, lasting communication problems between the Foundation and the community, and the rather negative perception of of the Foundation, vocally expressed by at least some dissatisfied members of the community. In his concluding remarks for this chapter, Jemielniak also concludes that the most active members of the Wikipedia community can be seen as a social movement activists, whose ideals are related both the those of the FLOSS and free culture movements, as well as Wikipedia itself.

The book closes with a more theoretical discussion of whether the Wikipedia model of organization is that of freedom and liberty, or social control, and a more developed analysis of how Wikipedia is transforming our governance and knowledge creation, with an interesting analysis of why certain traditional groups (such as experts) can feel endangered by the project, and perceive it as a threat to their continued existence.

In the end, this is an excellent ethnographical and organizational analysis of the Wikipedia project, and a valuable addition to the (still tiny) library of core texts on Wikipedia.