NCeSS event

Yesterday, I attended an awareness workshop of the National Centre for e-Social Science. Well attended and well informed, in general. I though that the LSE was well represented. Apart from myself, and that's just for another few months, there was someone from IT, a person from the Library and a guy from CARR. The largest contingent, by far. NCeSS is about the use of the grid, and related middleware (read: software applications) to enable social science research. The meeting was about, ehr, spreading the word. Here it is. Take a look at their website, there are interesting funding opportunities, for researchers at all stages of their careers.

Having been trained as a sceptic, I was eager to ask the so-what question. That is: if you have a research blog, like this, and a wiki, and you post your datasets online, and you're willing and able to use the Library for your data needs, why on earth would you need the grid. After receiving an answer, of sorts, I was persuaded. Possibly, it was the 'Portal', 'one-key access' and 'distributed computing' that convinced me. For now. I'll look into it over the next few weeks.

If anyone is interested in the topic, just drop a line and we can share some thoughts on a coffee.

more on Oz election and the Internet

A draft of Peter Chen's analysis of the use of the net during the 2004 Australian Federal Election Campaign is now available online.

At a first skim read, very interesting. Combines content analysis of candidates' sites with a sample survey of representatives and candidates, plus gavel-to-gavel background information. Will need to make time for closer reading now.

Higly recommended.

end of strike action

End of protest. It's amazing how little inclined I was to engage in more than abstention from activities, in the end. That might explain why strike action, abstention, resistance is the first step toward activism. Or not.

I then wrote an email letter to editors of Education magazines and newpapers denouncing the situation - the TES, Guardian Education, BBC education - in Britain, more in Italy. Nothing had and has appeared in the UK press, as far as I'm aware.

Anecdotally, I have received one polite response from the TES, no response from others, and my letter was deleted without having been read by Italian public service broadcaster, the RAI.

Which has not covered the issue, anyway, whatdyouthink? Is it not politically controlled? Hasn't a ton of research evidence demonstrated that PBS in Italy is under close political guidance? Isn't Italy the most heavily controlled society in Europe?

Back to the reslog primary concern, what was the import of the Internet in my decision to write? What the dynamics of the electronic exchange, once it reaches the magazines? What its effects? Open questions, still. But I'll post back any exciting, well, uhm, developments.

strike action

This blog joins the protest of Italian academics against the 'Moratti Bill'; the Bill introduces an intolerable element of uncertainty, and severely undercuts job security for research and didactic positions in the Italian academia.

The protest involves lessons being held in public squares, suspension of teaching, meetings with the public, and the strict observation of contractual rules by University teachers; this alone, if protracted, would grind the academic system to a halt.

The 'Moratti reform' is a long step towards a much needed restructuring of the Italian system; a long step in the wrong direction - ill-advised, overtly aiming at the commodification of knowledge, and ultimately undermining the individual freedom to purse creative research, independent of market needs.

As if the cut of research funding - approved by the Berlusconi government two years ago - had not made academic life enough of a misery.

Read more on the site of the Unita' newspaper (Italian, leftist), or look at a map of the protest.

new about new media

Once in a while I come across something that makes me think: new about new media. As I think very much with a 'politics' frame of mind, these examples might not convince the unconverted. Whatever.

This time it was The Public Whip, whereby Francis and Julian inform the average UK citizen on how their MPs are voting in the House of Commons, day in day out, aye and nay. They show rebellions, party discipline ratings, and attendance; there's a nice cluster, well, not, a MDS map showing where MPs sit in the HoC voting space.

Now, the closest approximation to that until recently was a (fantastic) tool called Tapir, developed by David Firth and Arthur Spirling at Warwick University, which extracts voting data from divisions. Or Phil Cowley's grinding work over he last few years to keep close track of MPs rebellions. Indespensable for academics.

But wait. The Public Whip is designed to be public, graphic, immediate, portable. Less accurate? Well, take a look for yourself at their FAQ. Not bulletproof, but very, very well thought through. New about new media.

australian elections and the web

Much less glamorous than the US election; but I promise it took place, some four weeks ago. For the election, Steve Ward, Rachel Gibson and I looked at how many candidates to the House of Representatives had websites, and what they were doing with them.

Quite a depressing enedeavour, as we found only 170 URLs, out of 1092 listed candidates. That makes it 16 % if you have no calculator in reach. Of course, if you limit the analysis to the three main parties (Lib, ALP and Nats), the percentage grows to a whopping - well, not - 46 %.

However, and this was the striking findings, only 10 % of total candidates actually had a working site - no 404, spoof, etc - behind the URL facade. The figure for main parties also suffered, from 46 % to 26 %.

Too early to draw conclusions though, we will look more closely at the data soon. Stay tuned for the results.

Another, separate project is looking at a wider array of political actors during the 2004 election, led by Maria Pieter Aquilia at SiRC, NTU, Singapore. This is part of the Internet & Elections project, which looks at election and the Internet in Europe, Asia and the US (now, that's more exciting). I am curious to examine their final figures for Senate candidates.

EP election and the web in Britain

Just finished putting the finishing touches to a research paper. The research looks at the use of the web by candidates, parties, media, government, pressure groups, and pant, pant, citizens at the 2004 European Parliament election. Or lack thereof, as it turned out.

Would you believe that general information was widely prevalent?
Or that very few engagement opportunities were provided?
But that, however, candidates did not do badly, when they bothered having a website?

Of course you would, as 'politics as usual' is alive and well in Britain. Would it be different in the States? Australia? Finland? Find out.

However, there were interesting aspects to the election, as well. This, broadly, was the dimensional structure of website features on offer in the electoral websphere, at least according to multi dimensional scaling and my interpretation:



The paper was first presented at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference. This was in Brighton, Sussex, in September 2004.

Janelle Ward and I are also working (well, we will be shortly) on an extension of that paper, to include all candidates and regional parties to the sample analysis above.

resarch data and safety

Short story about how ICTs impact on research work, data flexibility, remote access and safety. I left data back on my Australian trip, at ANU in Canberra. Data was stored in a computer, and I had to many committments to arrange for it to be tranferred before I left. And, the ACSR department moved offices over the last few months.

Coming back to England, oh joy, my laptop was stolen. With it, some of my data, the kind one cannot store on CD-RW. That is, the data I had 'lost' down under. Well, last week IT support at ACSR chased the data, retrieved the files, uploaded for me to download, which I did. Wihtin 24 hours. No data loss, no hassle, no distance. No theft. Call it self-reflexivity of the research endeavour.

first blog entry, I mean real one

Short story, I promise.

Wishing to respond to Stuart Shulman's entry, I had to get myself a blogger.com profile. Then, it became a three-click affair to create a blog, and start inundating pages with instant, well, not, thoughts. First thing that comes to mind here, as a researcher, is low entry cost, small transaction costs, co-optation, co-production, and a host of other terms related, which have been related I intend, to new media.

Actually I had, I have a small diary online, which I called res-log, where I would post news from a few research projects. Kudos to Stuart who got me blogging for good in the end. I named this blog accordingly, and wished the often-wished, wishy-washy wish that I'll be able to post routinely to the blog.

As this was meant to be a brief intro, then be it.

Regards to all listeners, be they near or far (a famus opening gambit in Italian radio in the 60s).

EP elections and the Internet

Over the last few weeks, Nick Jankowski and I have been drafting a proposal for a special issue of the Journal of Common Market Studies. The proposal is titled 'Internet and the 2004 European Parliament Election', and examines the structure for political action and information provision on Web sites produced by different types of political actors during periods the EP 2004 election. We shipped the proposal yesterday, finger crossed now.