Internet Research Team

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IRT Conference Abstracts

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  • #15563
    Gregory T. Donovan
    Participant

    Hi Everyone – I thought it might be fruitful to start a thread where those of us giving internet research-related presentations at conferences could share our abstracts. Maybe there’s a better way to organize this? For now, I’ll kick things off in this thread with a presentation Kiersten and I will be giving next weekend at Northwestern’s InfoSocial Conference. I’d love to read what other’s are presenting!

    TITLE:
    Doing Participatory Research and Pedagogy in Proprietary Educational Environments

    AUTHORS:
    Gregory T. Donovan & Kiersten Greene

    ABSTRACT:
    The ubiquity of proprietary technologies embedded within informational modes of pedagogy and research unsettles industrial understandings of privacy and property within educational environments. As educational institutions commit a growing portion of shrinking budgets to proprietary software and outsourced ICT services, their informational infrastructure intertwines with corporations from Google and Blackboard to IBM and Apple. We offer a multi-disciplinary analysis of this proprietary infrastructure, drawing on our respective dissertation research in the fields of Urban Education and Environmental Psychology, to articulate issues of privacy and property experienced by young people and teachers in these educational environments. We begin by summarizing the findings from two independent cases: The MyDigitalFootprint.ORG Project and The NYC Teacher Blog Project. Our first case, MyDigitalFootprint.ORG, is a participatory action design research (PADR) project interested in the concerns of young people developing in proprietary information ecologies. This project began by interviewing young people ages 14-19 in New York City to identify shared online privacy, property, and security concerns. A collective of youth co-researchers was then assembled to further research and take action in response to these concerns through the development of a youth-based open source social network. Through this PADR project, young people participated in investigating and reconfiguring how information is experienced in their everyday environment. Our second case, The NYC Teacher Blog Project, aggregates, stores, and anonymizes the blog posting of New York City teachers for qualitative analysis in order to examine the tension between the realities of everyday pedagogical practices and the tacit privatization of educational policy. Whether at the federal, state, or local levels, teachers’ opinions, local knowledge, and expertise count for naught in the policymaking process as K-12 public school teachers are provided little if any voice in the construction of education policy. The traditional isolation of the teaching environment has provided teachers with little opportunity to connect, reflect, or engage with this process. Yet, as our everyday information infrastructure grows so to do opportunities for teacher expression and research. Blogs have proven an enduring aspect of this infrastructure by providing a space where teachers can reflect, connect, and share local knowledge. We conclude our review of these two cases by discussing strategies for reworking educational boundaries, relationships, and flows towards the privacy, property, and participation concerns of young people and teachers. With the MyDigitalFootprint.ORG Project, we look specifically at the open source software and PADR methods employed to engage young people as producers of social media and participants in social research, rather than as social media consumers and social research subjects. With the NYC Teacher Blog Project, we look specifically at how its partnership with the OpenCUNY Academic Medium, a student-based open source medium at the CUNY Graduate Center, afforded both methodological and epistemological breakthroughs around teacher privacy and property in educational environments.

    (Full InfoSocial program here: http://comm.soc.northwestern.edu/mts-conference/program/ )

    #26166
    Collette Sosnowy
    Participant

    Thanks Gregory! A brilliant idea. If we get a few more, I can migrate them over to the blog, but this seems to be a good place for them now. Anyone else?

    #26167
    Collette Sosnowy
    Participant

    The IRT panel was accepted by the CUNY IT conference at John Jay on Nov 29-30! (http://www.centerdigitaled.com/events/CUNY-IT-Conference-2012.html)

    Title: Digital Tools: Opportunities for Research & Access

    Presenters:
    (all from the Graduate Center)
    Sonia K. Gonzalez, Public Health Program
    Kiersten Greene, Urban Education Program
    Shawnta Smith, Mina Rees Library
    Collette Sosnowy, Environmental Psychology Program

    Moderator: Jessie Daniels, Ph.D., Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center, Public Health Program

    Friday, Nov 30, 1 pm, Location TBA

    Abstract:

    Four members (three doctoral students and a librarian) of the Internet Research Team at the Graduate Center (an informal working group of students, faculty, and staff) will showcase the ways they incorporate digital technology in their work using the vehicles of blogging and social networking, with a focus on methods, research, and ethical considerations. A guiding question for this panel centers on discussion of Internet research and how it enhances existing scholarship while also opening doors to new ways forward for academic research. Sonia K. Gonzalez challenges assumptions made by health providers and researchers that mobile devices and new technology are viable ways to reach vulnerable young people of color about sexual and reproductive health issues. Kiersten Greene explores blogs as a forum in which K-12 teachers in New York City share first-hand local knowledge of their daily work, and, by extension, potential suggestions for future school reform and policymaking. GC librarian Shawnta Smith will discuss how information hubs such as libraries use digital technology, from social networking to online exhibitions, to shape library practice and expertise in support of academic research. Lastly, Collette Sosnowy examines the intersection of bodies and technology and engages questions about why bloggers choose to write for an online audience, how they engage with each other, and how blogging reflects their roles as patients in current healthcare practices.

    We hope many of you will attend!

    #26168
    Gregory T. Donovan
    Participant

    Here’s another abstract from a panel and workshop I organized with the Public Science Project this past Friday at Rutgers’ Representing the City: Technology, Action, and Change Symposium. We presented alongside the MIT CoLab, OpenPlans, Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy. The abstract for our panel/workshop is below, and the full program can be found here: http://policy.rutgers.edu/news/events/representing-the-city.php

    TITLE:
    Affording the ‘Right to Research’: Doing Critical PAR with Open Source Technologies

    PRESENTERS:
    Gregory T. Donovan and Maria Torre

    ABSTRACT:
    In this workshop participants will be introduced to doing critical participatory action research (PAR) with open source technologies. Three PAR projects currently being carried out by the Public Science Project will be profiled with specific attention to the different ways open source technologies are being utilized to afford greater public participation in collaborative research and analysis. Workshop participants with laptops or web-enabled smart phones will be able to participate in practices of distributed data collection, collective data analysis, and online mapping while the workshop organizers discuss how these practices are socially coordinated and technologically facilitated. The workshop will conclude with a discussion of how to how to evaluate the methodological, ethical, and political appropriateness of various open source technologies for specific PAR projects.

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