Oxford Internet Institute - Blogs

Free Speech in Databases: Martians on Facebook

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:51:45 GMT

Rough Consensus on 22 February 2012 at 22:51PM

The European Data Protection Directive contains a list of seven principles governing recommendations on protecting personal data. One of them–’access’–includes the right to view data being held about us and correct them if they are wrong. The purpose of this is to ensure that data about me are not used in contexts that I do [...]

Where do Wikipedia edits come from?

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:56:00 GMT

Mark Graham on 17 February 2012 at 14:56PM

Our team recently decided to look at the origins of edits to Wikipedia articles. The results are striking. But given what we already know about the uneven geographies of Wikipedia are perhaps not that shocking. To make these maps we took quarterly data about the total number of edits (to all Wikipedia versions) to emerge from any territory (i.e. [...]

Open Education Resources webminar in the coming Open Education Week

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:48:27 GMT

Cristobal Cobo on 20 February 2012 at 19:48PM

A few weeks ago, we started with a new exciting project called OportUnidad (2012-2014) to promote the use, re-utilisation and promotion of Open Education Resources (OER) in Higher Education institutions in Latin America and Europe [visit the OII for more information]. This is an action-research project funded by ALFA III programmme. The first [...]

Join our team: Big Data Research Officer needed

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:21:51 GMT

Government on the Web on 18 February 2012 at 20:21PM

We are excited to announce an open position for a Big Data Research Officer, who will contribute to three exciting Big Data projects at the OII (Leaders and Followers in Online Activism, Big Data: Demonstrating the Value of the UK Web Domain Dataset for Social Science Research, and The Internet, Political Science and Public Policy). We are looking [...]

My talk schedule at the New York AAG conference

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:01:00 GMT

Mark Graham on 15 February 2012 at 15:01PM

The AAG Annual Meeting starts next week, and I wanted to quickly outline the talks and sessions I am presenting, organising, or co-authoring: Feb 23rd: "Uneven Geographies of Knowledge: The Internet and the Need for Broader Participation" 5pm-8pm at the Development Geographies Specialty Group pre-conference. Feb 24th: "The Technology of Religion: [...]

Catching up with Summer Doctoral Programme (SDP) Alumni

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:28:38 GMT

Editor's Blog on 15 February 2012 at 10:28AM

Yana Breindl attended the 2009 Summer Doctoral Programme in Brisbane. She is currently a Wiener-Anspach Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow at the OII, working on digital rights campaigning in Europe. Having already spoken about the SDP with Yana, we caught up with her for another chat… Ed: You are now a visitor at the OII! What’s it like [...]

Next Generation Users

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:24:34 GMT

OxIS Blog on 15 February 2012 at 09:24AM

Results from the 2011 wave of Oxford Internet Surveys show several notable trends. Mobile phones have become virtually universal and nearly half (49%) of users used them to access the Internet. In addition to mobile phones, almost one-third of Internet users had a reader or a tablet, and 59% had access to the Internet via one or more of these [...]

Open Educational Practices: Khan Academy, Udacity and MITx

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:33:33 GMT

Cristobal Cobo on 13 February 2012 at 11:33AM

(The post bellow is an excerpt)* Ehlers (2011) suggest that the Open Educational Practices (OEP) is seen is as a second phase of this open educational resources (OEP) movement, where organizations such as the International Council for Open and Distance Education, remarks the importance to “promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and [...]

Playing with New Toys

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:20:26 GMT

Rough Consensus on 13 February 2012 at 08:20AM

Last week, I found myself in Nuffield College, watching a bright-eyed lecturer, Ilmo van der Lowe, in fascination. Believe me when I say that I knew less about the topic, ‘co-rumination,’ than you did. But knowing Ilmo’s background in social psychology (a field in which I had received my bachelor’s degree), I had trekked over to glean what I [...]

Looking Back on Ten Years of the OII’s Summer Doctoral Programme

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:17:01 GMT

Editor's Blog on 7 February 2012 at 17:17PM

Every summer we invite a talented group of doctoral students from around the world to the OII for an exciting, challenging, open and intense fortnight of study with leading academics in the field: it’s the OII’s Summer Doctoral Programme! This year will see the tenth programme in the series, so we caught up with the SDP Director Dr [...]

Big Data: Demonstrating the Value of the UK Web Domain Dataset for Social Science Research

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:56:50 GMT

Government on the Web on 7 February 2012 at 14:56PM

Project Date: Feb 2012 - Aug 2013 Categories: Digital Era Governance Citizen-Government Interactions Experiment?: No [...]

A critique of the Economist's "#AfricaTweets" story

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:08:00 GMT

Mark Graham on 6 February 2012 at 22:08PM

The latest edition of the Economist contains an article titled “#AfricaTweets.” The piece contains a striking map that visualizes the “number of tweets” per country in the “top 20 African countries.” The only problem is that the article doesn’t do what it promises. My problem with the Economist’s article isn’t their whimsical (and quite [...]

Facebook’s IPO–Outsourcing the push to shrink privacy

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:43:22 GMT

Rough Consensus on 6 February 2012 at 10:43AM

Facebook has been accused of shrinking the public’s “right to be let alone.” Soon they will be able to call on shareholders to demand that the government leave Facebook alone. If you’re a privacy advocate, this is worrying. Facebook’s IPO will increase the number of voices shouting on their side when regulators [...]

Is Linkbait the new Classifieds?

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:53:46 GMT

Rough Consensus on 5 February 2012 at 21:53PM

The news has always been subsidized; it has never been a money maker. Print newspapers were mechanisms that bundled content and the lucrative parts – automotive, home and garden, classifieds – subsidized the difficult to monetize but incredibly socially valuable national and international news sections. According to a 2010 presentation [...]

Innovations in University Outreach: Join the Competition across Europe

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:23:31 GMT

William H. Dutton on 4 February 2012 at 18:23PM

European Competition for Best Innovations in University Outreach and Public Engagement As part of the EC-funded ULab project, the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford is organizing an online competition to identify the most innovative outreach and public engagement activities carried out by European Universities. Both individuals [...]

Single Issue Politics is Undermining the Internet

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:20:16 GMT

William H. Dutton on 4 February 2012 at 18:20PM

The worldwide diffusion of the Internet is one of the most promising technological developments of the 21st Century. Over 2 billion people use the Internet with large proportions of North America and West Europe online, but larger numbers of users – and growing fast – in such rapidly developing nations as Brazil, Russia, India and China, what I [...]

Photographs from the OxIS 2011 Report Launch (House of Commons)

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:04:46 GMT

OxIS Blog on 3 February 2012 at 16:04PM

Published by Grant Blank on 3 February 2012 It’s been a while since the OxIS 2011 Report has been published. But hey, it’s never too late to show you some pictures from the Launch! We want to take you back to October 2011. It was a cloudy Monday afternoon when the group of OII-ers led by Professor Bill Dutton and Dr Grant Blank headed [...]

Slow Down, Apple: How to Look at Technology in Education

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:15:40 GMT

Rough Consensus on 2 February 2012 at 14:15PM

Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_grey/5214909065/ On January 20th, Wired published an article reporting the results of a pilot study jointly conducted by Apple and Houghton Mifflin on the impact of iPads in a middle school classroom. The title (“iPad a Solid Education Tool, Study Reports”) reflected the optimistic and [...]

Cyber Negligence: Sending My Grandma to Jail

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:57:06 GMT

Rough Consensus on 1 February 2012 at 20:57PM

Attribution: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emmeline_Pankhurst_Arrested_1907-1914.jpg Confession time: Both my grandmother and I routinely fail to keep our home computer and web-browser security up to date. Are we bad ‘netizens’if we leave the keys in the ignition of our unlocked computer? Is it reasonable to complain about [...]

Open invitation to a workshop in Amman: Middle Eastern Participation and Presence in Wikipedia

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:50:00 GMT

Mark Graham on 1 February 2012 at 12:50PM

Your voice matters. Come and share your experience and opinions about Wikipedia with other Wikipedians, wiki producers, researchers, and representatives from the Wikimedia Foundation during a two-day workshop. The goal of the workshop is to talk about and understand the most significant barriers to participation in Wikipedia in the Middle East [...]

(Untitled)

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:18:00 GMT

Mark Graham on 1 February 2012 at 15:18PM

دعوة للمشاركة في ورشة عمل بخصوص ويكيبيديا تسرنا دعوتكم لورشة عمل بخصوص ويكيبيديا لمدة يومين و تضم ثلة من الباحثين و ممثلي مؤسسة وكيميديا، نتبادل خلالها الأفكار و الخبرات حول ويكيبيديا بمشاركة خبراء و منتجين و مهتمين بشأن ويكيبيديا. الغاية من هذه الورشة هي تبادل الآراء و فهم أهم العقبات و الحواجز التي تحول دون المشاركة في تطوير ويكيبيديا العربية. [...]

New Report: Information in the Physical Sciences

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:45:03 GMT

OeSS Blog on 31 January 2012 at 14:45PM

OeSS researchers, along with colleagues at LSE, UCL, and KNAW (Netherlands), were primary authors on a new report from the Research Information Network (RIN) on how researchers in the physical sciences find, use and share information. The report, Collaborative Yet Independent: Information Practices in the Physical Sciences presents seven case [...]

Digital Borderlands

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:36:00 GMT

Laura Mann on 31 January 2012 at 02:36AM

So I have not been good about following up on my last blog post (a post about the business side of the internet in East Africa will hopefully come shortly). In the meantime, I wanted to reflect on an OCAF talk I went to last week by Wolfgang Zeller, about the borderlands of 'sugango' (Sudan-Uganda-Congo) and how thinking about borders might help us [...]

New paper published: "Perish or Globalize"

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:21:00 GMT

Mark Graham on 30 January 2012 at 20:21PM

The latest issue of ACME: Journal of Critical Geographies contains a piece that I wrote about the Internet in the Thai silk industry. The title, abstract, and a link to the piece are below: “Perish or Globalize:” Network Integration and the Reproduction and Replacement of Weaving Traditions in the Thai Silk Industry The practice of handmade [...]

Government and IT report released

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:57:44 GMT

Government on the Web on 26 January 2012 at 16:57PM

Digital Era Governance The Government on the Web team is pleased to announce the publication of Government and IT—"a recipe for rip-offs": Time for a new approach: Further Report by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee. The report incorporates the Government's [...]