DeepThought

Internet safety, Cyberbullying

2007-01-08T11:01:00.000Z

Well I thought it was a while since I posted - and it's longer than I thought - at least six months.

I've been really busy here in Lancashire, getting to know everybody in the local schools and education, as well as others at national and european levels. My particular interest has been that of cyberbullying, and I travel a lot - speaking to a variety of different audiences. As well as being on the DfES cyberbullying taskforce I am speaking at a few educational conferences soon. So if you want to hear what I have to say come along to say hello:

3rd annual 14-19 Child Protection Conference at Aston University on the 30th january
3rd Annual Protecting Children Update Conference, London, 27th february

Here at the Cyberspace Research Unit we have also been busy writing a new 'University Certificate in Child Safety on the Internet'. This is a 14 week distance learning module and the first of it's kind in the country. It's for teachers and other child service providers, so if you want more details let me know.

Back soon.

Denise

I loved this story so much I copied it word for word from No Man's Blog. Enjoy…

2006-08-15T08:56:00.000+01:00

Every person is a story that needs to be told

Every person is a story. We all carry an unwritten book about in us. Everything is to be found in our lives. We can just produce it. All things are found in everything. As people we are very similar to one another. The greatest drama passes you by without your seeing it.
(Svend Wiig Hansen, Painter of the Human Condition).

This is how I felt when I came across Grandpa YouTube (better known as Geriatric1927) - the new star on YouTube, 78 years old widower (Peter) from the UK midlands.

As YouTube evolved, we grew accustomed to think of it as a creative playground for the young, tech-savvy or the MySpace generation. With LonelyGirl and Brookers we sort of perceived it, just as any other web 2.0 phenomena, to be the the territory of 16-32 years old who come here to be cool and creative and do all kinds of lip-synching and mash-up wonders.

And then out of nowhere, came Peter, a 78 years old technology enthusiast, who proudly tells of IMing many friends on MSN Messenger and Skype prior to his YouTube experiment where he sits with his eyes closed and with great humility in front of the camera and "Telling it all" - recounting excerpts from his life story. He is close to tears telling about the thousands of support emails he receives and since I've read about him (via Steve Rubel), 6 hours ago, 52K more views added to his videos.

His video autobiographies been watched more than 200,000 times and if you want to get a sense of the power of WOM check out the stats on his profile - the growth is absolutely amazing - more than 1000 more views added in 30sec (!) with currently more than 9000 people subscribed to get his next video. Check out also the abundance of video responses (e.g.) his diaries sparked - he really managed to move a lot of people.

#4 - Most Viewed Channels (Today)
#17 - Most Viewed Channels (This Week)
#25 - Most Viewed Channels (This Month)
#1 - Most Subscribed Channels (This Week)
#1 - Most Subscribed Channels (This Month)
#7 - Most Subscribed Channels (All Time)
He, I believe, is going to teach us that all of us are heroes and have the power to change our communities, ourselves, and, ultimately, the world

Social Networking

2006-07-20T08:34:00.000+01:00

If there was a competition for internet buzzword of the year, then this year’s winner would probably be ‘social networking’. Briefly social networking (SN) is about using a variety of tools to connect to other individuals or groups. Recently SN sites have concentrated on ‘rich media’ tools by encouraging users to share their own content online, including blogs, photos, videos, music, and other digital files. This raises worries about the dangers associated with sharing personal information and online safety issues. Internet based SN sites are not new, but there has been an unprecedented response to them in the last year, with current figures for popular sites such as MySpace (93,800,857 registered members) and Bebo (22,000,000 registered members) rising daily. Alongside that increase have been several high-profile incidents relating to the safety of popular social networking sites. For example, a 14-year old girl is currently suing MySpace, alleging that she was sexually abused as the result of another user lying about his true identity. These incidents have raised questions regarding the measures that social networking sites take to protect users, specifically those who are under the age of 18. According to children's charity NCH, a third of children use blogs and social networking sites (reported on BBC Online ).

Jessi Hempel writes in BusinessWeek Online. July 14, 2006:

"Friendster's Patent Possibilities
When Friendster gets a patent on social networking ( No. 7,069,308 ), it's a sign it has gone completely establishment […] How can one patent personal connections and contacts?"

anti-social networks legislation

Congressman Fitzpatrick proposed new legislation in the US Congress to amend the Communications Act 1934.

"to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.

33 Places to Hangout in the Social Networking Era

“Social networks have had giant growth spurts over the past couple of years, and it seems there's one for everyone: from dogs to moms to book-worms to shoppers. Social networks, I think, more than anything give people a place to belong and to hang out. Because of the drastic growth, popularity and craze these days, I created a list for people who have their odd MySpace or Bebo profiles but would like to seek further and discover new ones

Safety Tips for Social Networks

InternetSafetyZone ISZ is exploring several avenues including: a series of summer workshops aimed at identifying how children and young people aged 13-19 yrs make risk assessments about the disclosure of personal information based on their knowledge, use and understanding of web-based SN sites; a series of summer training days aimed at local and national educators/trainers; and a fact-finding exercise with leading industry, charity and government online safety practitioners

BBC NEWS -- July 4 -- The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) will run a series of workshops in UK for parents, children and teachers. Ceop said it was concerned that children were posting personal details and said one in 12 children met up with someone encountered first online.

Cyberspace Research Unit local campaign

2006-06-26T13:54:00.000+01:00

Here in the Cyberspace Research Unit at UCLAN we have a team of researchers with a range of expertise in teaching (children) and training (providers) in Internet safety. Indeed we are at present the UK node for the Home office/EU portal for Internet safety.

We host this UK website at http://www.InternetSafetyZone.co.uk

During the summer months we are planning a locally-based campaign in the Lancashire area about social networking technologies, aimed at both children and any interested groups that would have two strands. The first as a valuable educational tool; and the second, in publicising the information available on our site.

All of our presenters are fully CRB approved, and we would welcome the opportunity to visit and talk to anyone who wants to hear from us. So, f you (or any group or organisationat you know of) would be interested in a visit from the team here at CRU please let me know.
With kindest regards,
Denise

'You know you're lost in cyberspace'

2006-06-20T13:43:00.000+01:00

I felt I identified with this post from superspace24:-

You know you're lost in cyberspace when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 4.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.

7. You make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial "9" to get an outside line.

8. You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.

10. You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o'clock news.

11. Your boss doesn't have the ability to do your job.

12. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.

13. Every commercial on television has a website at the bottom of the screen.

14. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

15. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.

16. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)

17. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

18. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

19. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

20. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list AND NOW U R LOL at yourself.

I have to add one more...and this is true...

21. You are walking in the park with someone you met on the Internet and they call you 'dutypigeon'

Cyberspace Research

2006-06-14T08:30:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the delay since my last post but I have started a new job at the Cyberspace Research Unit at UCLAN and life has been a bit hectic – CRU are in the final stages of developing a site at InternetSafetyZone in their capacity as the UK node of the 'Safer Internet Plan', (developed in partnership with the European Commission and the Public Awareness sub group of the Home Secretary's Internet Task Force on Child Protection).

"One of the main messages of this site is the importance of communication and cooperation between parents and children in ensuring and enhancing a family's cyber wellness. It is possible to create open lines of communication with children and young people and to discuss a variety of seemingly challenging Internet related topics, whilst maintaining mutual respect for one another's perspectives.

The issue of Cyber wellness is an interesting one:

"Cyberwellness is a holistic term which encompasses not only concerns around safety and security online, but also considers people's psychological and emotional well being, along with stage of development with specific regard to the range of issues that may affect children and young people in their use of new mobile and internet technologies.
For children and young people this helping them to realise that when they use the internet and mobile technologies, they are sending, receiving and communicating in a public space. Cyberwellness is about learning the skills to use and communicate with these technologies properly, keeping safe and secure, learning how to publish, disclose and interpret sources of information online and how to respect other users.

My task, as an anthropologist, is to develop a qualitative strategy for evaluating the usability of the project’s website in addition to a more quantitative evaluation. So far I am catching up by reading all the project documentation – a happy task!!

First Days in My New Job

2006-06-02T11:25:00.000+01:00

Well I have arrived at the University of central Lancashire in Preston - I had really forgotten the hassle it can be when you start a new job - not with the people - but with travelling, parking, eating, internet access etc. I am driving everyday from Liverpool to Preston (I know...I know...) and I am managing to get lost less often.

More on the job soon when I have found my feet.

Guest Blogging at anthropologi.info

2006-05-25T09:09:00.000+01:00

Join me over the next few weeks as a guest blogger at anthropologi.info as I chart the changes in perspectives that have informed both my own work and anthropology as a discipline, and discuss the challenges currently facing anthropologists in cyberspace. The Internet has not changed anything. Instead we use the Internet to change the ways we do things. See my first post The Birth of a Cyberethnographer: The MU5 is to Blame

Linguistics, Culture and Subordinate Clauses

2006-05-20T06:53:00.000+01:00

An interesting story by Rafaela von Bredow at Living without Numbers or Time about a remote tribe whose language is totally unique:

"The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists.

Since 1977, Daniel Everett the British ethnologist at the University of Manchester has spent a total of seven years living with the Pirahãs. The small hunting and gathering tribe, with a population of only 310 to 350, has become the centre of a raging debate between linguists, anthropologists and cognitive researchers. Even Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Steven Pinker of Harvard University, two of the most influential theorists on the subject, are still arguing over what it means for the study of human language that the Pirahãs don't use subordinate clauses. Some of the peculiarities of the language are:

The Pirahã only use three pronouns.

They hardly use any words associated with time

Past tense verb conjugations don't exist.

There are no words for colours

The Pirahã do not use subordinate clauses.

The Pirahã appear to have no need for numbers.

The Pirahã do not have a creation myth explaining existence.

No-one paints or tells stories

"Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the PirahÃ’s idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He explains the core of PirahÃ’s culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now." The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the presence," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for abstract thought or complicated connections to the past – limiting the language accordingly.

It is very difficult to conceive of a world without numbers, without stories or even without art. But try to conceive of how full the present must be to leave no room for anything else in our lives.

A New Job

2006-05-18T11:42:00.000+01:00

I will soon be joining the Cyberspace Research Unit at the Department of Forensic and Investigative Science, UCLAN.

The Cyberspace Research Unit's missions are to:

empower children and young people with the tools, knowledge and skills they need to navigate safely in cyberspace

explore how criminals use the Internet and to examine the implications for investigative strategies.

See the InternetSafetyZone for an example of the work they do.

I am really looking forward to the challenge and to working with the team already there.

…coming…ready or not!!

Anthropology, Gardening, Balance and Life

2006-05-05T18:28:00.000+01:00

The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.
Vita Sackville-West, 1892 - 1962

Well the blog has been neglected for a few days. The weather is glorious and I have been in my garden with my hands deep in the rich soil – weeding, sowing, planting – no telephone, computer or internet (and I’ve left the marking for a rainy day!). This is how I retain my sanity – among the tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and peppers. My greenhouse was a birthday present a few years ago from beloved – last summer was ‘writing up’ summer and my planting was minimal – but this year I am on a mission. My Dad (74 this year) and I eagerly contest the first tomato, the first cougette, the longest cucumber, anything. So far I’m winning with a Hosta already in flower. He can never grow marrows from seed either!

The birds nesting under the eaves have returned to raise their chicks for the fourth year running, very industrious they are too. Their arrival at the nest with food is heralded by the chicks cheeping loudly. Every year I know they are growing because the sound gets louder and louder until suddenly one day they are gone, flown the nest. One of my ambitions is to catch them leaving.

The weather forecast gives rain over the weekend so I will be back at my computer, working on my ESRC grant application and marking, but until then…I have my garden.

Blogging and the Academy

2006-05-01T03:04:00.000+01:00

A conference was held at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society (sponsored by Microsoft!). Twelve papers are available for download and a webcast of the event is also available.

“Web logs ("blogs") are transforming much of American society, including government, politics, journalism, and business. In the past few years, blogs have begun to affect the delivery of legal education, the production and dissemination of legal scholarship, and the practice of law. We are delighted that over twenty of the nation’s leading law professor bloggers have agreed to join with us for the first scholarly conference on the impact of blogs on the legal academy.”

Papers discuss what is meant by ‘legal scholarship’and the value/use of blogs as an arena for ‘an informal and yet sophisticated discussion’ and ‘how blogging can advance our scholarship?’

I haven’t yet downloaded and read all of the papers but they certainly add to the debate around blogging. There was also a blog workshop at the WWW2006 conference with all papers online at Weblogging Ecosystem

These are mainly quantitative approaches to blog analysis but there are some interesting ones - Iranian and Chinese bloggers are both covered, and some papers show clear trends, for example about the relationship between social ties and continued blogging. In addition to a regular track of research presentations, this year's workshop also featured the first ever weblog research data release. This data release gave researchers access to 10 million weblog posts from July 2005. Many of the workshop papers used this data set in the presentation of their research results at the workshop. The plan is to compile the papers that focus on this data set into a book which will present an ‘exciting view of a specific period of blogosphere history’.

[The data release comprises a complete set of weblog posts for three weeks in July 2005 (on the order of 10M posts from 1M weblogs). This data set has been selected as it spans a period of time during which an event of global significance occurred, namely the London bombings.]

Park and write: Wanderingscribe

2006-04-28T07:46:00.000+01:00

I have just come across this story on the BBC of a homeless women who blogs about the experience of living in her car in London:

“It's a tale of our time - about being cut off from everything around you but still connected to people thousands of miles away.

A woman becomes homeless, so she gets into her car and drives. Except she has nowhere to go - so she stays in the car, with all her possessions heaped in the back, sleeping in the front seats, parking in secluded streets.

For eight months, no one notices her, because she makes sure she looks respectable, taking showers and even ironing her clothes in public places like hospitals. She has made herself invisible, out of touch from anyone she used to know - and keeping separate from other homeless people.

But this is the information age. And even though she doesn't speak to anyone, she can go into a library where she can access the internet and write an online journal - a homelessness blog - which she uses to describe all her unspoken experiences and feelings.”

An interesting and moving commentary on our times, how someone can be so isolated and yet so connected!

First Impressions – Harrogate International Centre – BSA Conference

2006-04-24T15:03:00.000+01:00

Well I attended the BSA conference this weekend at the Harrogate International Centre. I enjoyed the conference (more on my paper later), and Harrogate is still as beautiful as ever, but I’m not sure about the venue:

To me it seemed far too large for the number of people there, so it had an empty feel to it. The décor is super stainless steel and chrome with black glass walls around a curving central foyer that is probably 2-300 feet across. It felt a long way when I was trying to find the ladies! My problem here was the black glass walls – and my rapidly deteriorating eyesight. The signs were actually very small – and quite high up – when I finally found my way in I couldn’t find my way out again. Mind you all the staff I had dealings with were very helpful.

I particularly missed the opportunity to sit and have a proper lunch at proper tables – usually an excellent opportunity to eat, drink, renew old acquaintances and make new ones. BUT…all we had were bag meals and a few chairs and tables around the foyer and exhibition area. As a result people dispersed all over to find somewhere comfortable to sit and eat.

Because I went alone it was quite an isolating experience.

Conferences, Presenting Papers and Ideas

2006-04-19T16:26:00.001+01:00

I chose not to attend the ASA conference at Keele this year – instead I am going to the BSA conference at Harrogate this weekend. In part this is because I felt the need to network among sociologists as well as anthropologists, see John McCreery’s comments:

"the paper is a unwelcome obligation in the way of the real business of meetings, which is networking and job-hunting"

So reading How To Present A Paper - or Can Anthropologists Talk? had me nodding along in agreement at the wishlist:

Tell us your main points and findings before you start ("I will show that the Earth is flat" or so) and sum up your paper at the end.
Tell us why we should listen to you. Yes, it's interesting that you have studied childhood in India. But why can your research be interesting or relevant for us who are not specialists in your field? What new insights does your paper give regarding general theories in anthropology and being a human?
20 minutes are 20 minutes. Stop talking when your time is over. Check the length of your presentation a few days before the conference, so that you avoid struggling with the introduction few minutes before your time is over.
Don't read from your paper. Talk to and with your audience! By reading from your paper you show disrespect to your audience. This is the most important point and can't be stressed enough. Many speakers at conferences and seminars don't bother presenting their papers in a way that is understandable for us who came to listen.

I’ve had some experience of conference presentations in various parts of the world with poor presentations that had left me bored and fidgety. Hence I have already decided NOT to write a paper, but instead, to write a presentation around my topic ‘Order and Disorder in the Virtual City’. My intention is that a fruitful and enlightening dialogue will emerge that will clarify some of my ideas – resulting in a more rounded and polished paper that will address some important issues. (Well that’s the plan, but more on execution and outcome next week!).

Internet Nicknames – what’s in a name?

2006-04-18T07:45:00.000+01:00

Using nicknames on the Internet is an interesting phenomenon that prompts all kinds of questions: who uses a nickname? Why is a particular nickname chosen? and how? Using a nickname often prompts others to suppose that the user wishes to be anonymous. According to Danet (1996) choosing an Internet nickname achieves two different goals:

- To hide the real identity
- To draw attention to the virtual identity

However, my own research suggests that Danet's explanation is no longer appropriate. Internet nicknames are highly personal and are often used all over the internet. Think about it: according to google 'Denise Carter' generates at least 4,860,000 hits (yes I am number one!). Yet my internet nickname 'dutypigeon' generates only 23 (and I am numbers 1-22!). by following these 'dutypigeon' links it is possible to identify me as Denise Carter. I am more traceable through my Internet nickname than through my formal given name.

Nicknames, being chosen rather than given by parents are often thought to reflect a person's identity better than the formal name. Yet, is this true of Internet nicknames? My own nickname, 'dutypigeon' was deliberately chosen to reflect neither age, sex, nor gender (this was a result of my early reading around the Internet and identity, particularly Turkle and Stone). It was also part of an old family joke in that when answering the telephone we would often say things like: 'Trafalgar Square, dutypigeon speaking', or, 'War department, do you want to fight?'.

Choosing an internet nickname is more serious a task than one might realise, and the names chosen tend to fall into various categories, fourteen of which were identified by Bechar-Israeli (1995). Asking other people why they chose their Internet nickname has revealed some strange reasons, especially when newbies are trying to logon to a new website and often have to think of a name really quickly (I know of one person who could only think of their dog's name!). the important thing to remember as a cyberethnographer is that anonymity does not mean an absence of identity, and so nicknames still need changing to protect my respndants. Indeed, trying to decide what to change weird and wonderful nicknames to, when writing up my research was a more difficult task than I had envisaged!

Meeting one of my virtual community members face-to-face caused much merriment among my family when I was addressed as dutypigeon. Thinking about it later, it was really no different from being called mum by my son or Denise by my beloved. After all - I inhabit many cages.

UPDATE 27/05/06
I have recently put a sitemeter on my blog and have been extremely interested to learn that this is the most popular comment - and is generally arrived at after using a search engine with the term 'Internet Nicknames'. I have often thought about writing a paper on Internet nicknames as I have a lot of data from my research, if anyone is interested and would love to discuss it please leave a comment.

Deep Thought – Is there life after a PhD?

2006-04-15T16:28:00.000+01:00

Many of you will have been there… studying for your PhD in Anthropology, examining ‘other’ cultures and generally having deep and meaningful discussions about life, the universe and everything. Problematically the answer to what to do afterwards is not easy to find – although hopefully the problem can be solved in a shorter timespan than Deep Thought managed – here are some ‘Shallow Thoughts’ of what to do after your PhD in Anthropology:
1. Reaquaint yourself with your family, but be especially careful of partners/spouses/parents/friends/children who have aged five years since you last noticed them.
2. Get drunk (it doesn’t matter if you have a headache tomorrow)
3. Clean the fridge
4. Clean the house
5. Have sex (not necessarily in this order!)
6. Read something NOT published by Routledge, Sage, Berg, etc.
7. Change your email signature to include ‘Dr’
8. Switch the computer off before 5pm every day
9. Lie in every Sunday
10. Give birthday/christmas presents WITHOUT lecturing people about ‘gift exchange’
11. Move textbooks into spare bedroom
12. Accidentally leave your latest published article on the coffee table for when your mother-in-law visits