Other SIG-III News
2021 International Paper Contest Results
SIG-III is pleased to announce the results of SIG-III International Paper Contest (IPC) 2021. This year, we received a good number of papers from Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Turkey. The competition was tough with two papers qualifying for third position!
SIG-III is, therefore, delighted to announce the winners as follows: -
First Place
- Sia Wan Qi, & Nurul Afiqah, M.E.S. Usage of SNS among Underprivileged Entrepreneurs: Effect of Social Capital and Attachment. Department of Library & Information Sciences, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology Universiti Malaya, Malaysia.
Second Place
- Amara Malik, Talat Islam and Khalid Mahmood. Information Sharing Behavior of Facebook Users in Pakistan: A Case of COVID-19. University of the Punjab, Lahore-Pakistan
Third Place
- Ghulam Murtaza Rafiq. Impact of Knowledge Sharing on Nurses' Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Effect of Innovation Behavior. Department of Information Management, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Khalid Mahmood, University of the Punjab, Lahore-Pakistan
- Nurul Afiqah Mohammed Ebnu Saifudin. Information Needs and Seeking Behaviour of Women Entrepreneurs: The use of Social Media. Department of Library & Information Sciences, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology Universiti Malaya, Malaysia.
Special thanks to the learned jury members who completed this evaluation task in a wonderful and timely manner. The diverse jury comprised of the following members in alphabetical order: -
- Iman Tahamtan (Iran)
- Jaya Raju (South Africa)
- Muzammil Tahira (Pakistan)
- Noorhidawati Abdullah (Malaysia)
- Shivanthi Weerasinghe (Sri Lanka)
- Zehra Taskin (Turkey)
- Nosheen Warraich (Pakistan, Chair IPC Jury 2021)
Congratulations to the winners!
2018 International Paper Contest Results
The 2018 International Paper Contest Committee is excited to announce the results of the 18th International Paper Contest held by the Association for Information Science & Technology’s Special Interest Group on International Information Issues.
The winners are as follows.
First Place: “Barriers to healthcare information access, use and exchange in rural settings” by Salman Bin Naeem and Rubina Bhatti(The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan)
Second Place: “The political information behavior of rural dwellers in Pakistan” by Muhammad Asif Naveed (University of Sargodha, Pakistan)
Third Place: “Institutions in transition to become blended librarians” by Israel Mbekezeli Dabengwa (National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe), Jaya Raju (University of Cape Town, South Africa), and Thomas Matingwina (National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe)
Thanks!
2018 IPC Committee
Devendra Potnis (Chair)
Ina Fourie
Shima Moradi
Saira Soroya
Nosheen Warraich
Shivanthi Weerasinghe
Results of the 2017 International Paper Contest
- First Place winner is Saira Hanif Soroya of the Department of Information Management, University of the Punjab, Lahore – Pakistan with paper titled “Subject -Based Reading Behavior Differences of Young Adults under Emerging Digital Paradigms.”
- Second Place winner is Masimba Clyde Muziringa, Medical Librarian at the College of Health Sciences Library, University of Zimbabwe, Harare – Zimbabwe with a paper titled “Impact of Research Evidence in Clinical Practice.”
- Third Place winner is Nosheen Fatima Warraich of the Department of information Management at the University of Punjab, Lahore – Pakistan with a paper titled “Attitudes and perceptions about Linked Data technologies: A survey of information professionals in Pakistan.”
The first-place winners will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the 2017 ASIS&T Annual Meeting taking place in the Washington DC area at the Hyatt Regency Hotel Crystal City VA, USA. In addition, the principal authors of each of the selected winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T.
We wish to thank all those who participated in the paper contest from across the globe, extend our hearty congratulations to the above winners and looking forward to a wonderful 2017 Annual Meeting in Washington D.C, USA.
Sincerely,
International Paper Contest Review Team
- Innocent Awasom
- Shimelis Assefa
- Premila Gamage
- Devendra Potnis
- Fatih Oguz
2016/17 SIG III Election Results
On behalf of the Nomination Committee, we are delighted to announce the 2016/17 SIG III elected officers:
CHAIR – Yao Zhang (University of South Carolina, USA)
CO-CHAIR – Ashraf Sharif (The Aga Khan University, Pakistan)
CHAIR-ELECT – Hassan Zamir (University of South Carolina, USA)
CO-TREASURER – Naureen Nizam (University of Toronto, Canada)
CO-TREASURER – Elena Murelli (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy)
SIG CABINET REPRESENTATIVE – Catherine Dumas (SUNY Albany, USA)
INFOSHARE OFFICER – Selenay Aytac (Long Island University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CO-CHAIR (2 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CO-CHAIR (2 positions) – Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (3 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (3 positions) – Devendra Dilip Potnis (University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (3 positions) – Premila Gamage (Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka)
WEBMASTER – Fatih Oguz (UNC Greensboro, USA)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER – Muhammed Sajid Mirza (International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan)
MENTORSHIP COORDINATOR – Jisue Lee (Florida State University, USA)
PAST CHAIR – Xiao Hu (University of Hong Kong, China)
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ASIS&T SIG-III Nominating Committee
Anatoliy Gruzd, Abebe Rorissa, Catherine Dumas
Annual Business Meeting @ the ASIS&T AM
We are going to have our SIG’s business meeting at the annual meeting in Copenhagen
Date: Oct. 18, 2016 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:15 to 3:30 pm
Location: Thames 2
The agenda is attached:
2016/17 SIG III Election Nomination
On behalf of the Nomination Committee, we are delighted to announce the 2016/17 SIG III nominated officers:
SIG CABINET REPRESENTATIVE – Catherine Dumas (University of South Carolina & SUNY Albany, USA)
CHAIR-ELECT –
CO-CHAIR-ELECT – Hassan Zamir (University of South Carolina, USA)
TREASURER – Naureen Nizam (Dalhousie University, Canada)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CHAIR (1 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA) ; Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (2 positions) – Fatih Oguz (UNC Greensboro, USA) ; Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA) ; Devendra Dilip Potnis (University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA); Premila Gamage (Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka)
INFOSHARE OFFICER – Selenay Aytac (Long Island University, USA)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER (2 position) – Muhammed Sajid Mirza (International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan)
MENTORSHIP COORDINATOR – Jisue Lee (Florida State University, USA)
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ASIS&T SIG-III Nominating Committee
Anatoliy Gruzd, Abebe Rorissa, Catherine Dumas
2016 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest Winners
By Innocent Awasom, International Paper Contest Chair, ASIS&T SIG-III
We had a busy year planning for the 2016 paper contest. Calls for proposals were sent out March 3rd, 2016 with a deadline of May 31st, 2016. With permission from the Chair, we included the papers received in 2015 for consideration alongside the 2016 papers. We had 5 papers from 2015 from India, Nigeria and Pakistan and 8 papers in 2016 from Algeria, Ethiopia, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zambia. The great team of jurors worked on a rubric that was used to grade the papers during the month of June and July. The results below were published on August 2nd, 2016.
First Place winners:
2016: Yared Mammo and Patrick Ngulube (Ethiopia) – Insights into e-information resources (e-journals) Access Models in Higher Learning Institutions in Ethiopia.
2015: Amjid Khan and Shamshad Ahmed (Pakistan) – Usage of E-Databases and E-journals by Research Community in Pakistani Universities: Issues and Perspectives
Second Place winners:
2016: Muhammad Arif and Saima Kanwal (Pakistan) – Adoption of Social Media Technologies and their Impact on Students’ Academic Performance: The only Way for Future Survival of Distance Education Students in Pakistan
2015: Hamza Musa and Zakari Muhammad (Nigeria) – Access to online Arabic information resources by the Academics in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and Bayero University Kano, Nigeria.
Third Place winners:
2016: Syeda Batool and Sheila Webber (Pakistan) – Mapping information literacy situation in primary schools: A case of Pakistan.
2015: Deep Jyoti Francis and Vineet Kumar (India) – Cricket and Copyright in Indian Courts: Commercial Interests or National/Public Interests.
The principal authors of each of the winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the 2016 ASIS&T annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. The winning papers will be considered for publication by Taylor & Francis’ International Information and Library Review (IILR). We thank Routledge/Taylor & Francis for their support of this program. Special appreciation to the jurors for the 2016 competition: Innocent Awasom (chair, USA), Maqsood Shaheen (Member, Pakistan) and J.K Vijayakumar (Member, Saudi Arabia).
InfoShare Awards for 2016
By Anindita Paul, InfoShare Officers, ASIS&T SIG-III
The Infoshare awards were announced in January 2016. The membership award which is for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year, is an opportunity for professionals, researchers and students to strengthen their relationship with ASIS&T. Thirteen nominations were received out of which 8 were professionals, 2 students and the rest 2 were transitional. One nomination was a renewal from last year. The nominees were from Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We are happy to announce that with the consent of the SIG-III officers and the budget allocation of this year, all of the applicants were awarded the Infoshare award, including the renewal applications from last year. The award winners are as follows:
- Azadeh Aletaha, Iran,
- Bashir Ahmed, Pakistan,
- Behjat Nezhadmohammad Namaghi, Iran,
- Claudio Gottschalg-Duque, Brazil,
- Iman Tahamtan, Iran
- Manjula Wijewickrema, Sri Lanka,
- Marzieh Siamak, Iran,
- Pari Hosseinzadeh, Iran,
- Sanam Ebrahimzadeh, Iran,
- Shima Moradi, Iran,
- Zaheer Ahmad, Pakistan,
- Jiban Pal, India,
- Girma Debele Dinegde, Ethiopia
InfoShare Awards for 2015
On behalf of all our fellow officers of the Special Interest Group for International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), we are pleased to announce the winners of the InfoShare awards for 2015.
Information professionals from developing countries, where the cost of ASIS&T membership would be a burden, are eligible to receive one year of membership. SIG-III officers vote on a roster of candidates nominated by ASIS&T colleagues or others. These memberships are funded by monies raised at the International Reception during the ASIS&T Annual Meeting. 2014 was a very successful year for the reception in Seattle and we are thrilled to be able to offer memberships to 5 outstanding professional candidates and 2 student candidates:
Professional members
Dwaymian Brissette, Jamaica
Elsabé Olivier, South Africa
Olufunmilayo Iyabo Fati, Nigeria
Shima Moradi, Iran
Vesna Vuksan, Serbia
Student members
Amjid Khan s/o Lakhkar Khan, Pakistan
Jiban K. Pal, India
Please welcome these new members into the ASIS&T community!
Nominations for ASIS&T SIG-III InfoShare Membership Award I — Students
The ASIS&T International Information Issues Special Interest Group (SIG-III) is pleased to announce that for 2015 we will be able to sponsor another group of deserving information professionals from developing countries for complimentary ASIS&T memberships (the financial burden of which would otherwise be prohibitive). We are soliciting nominations of candidates for the InfoShare Membership Award. The award will be given to master and/or PhD students.
Please include a one-page curriculum vitae and a one-page description of why this person is deserving of membership, including their willingness to promote ASIS&T within their networks and build relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations. Awardees will be decided by a vote of the SIG-III officers. All curricula vitae will be kept private, accessible only to SIG-III officers.
Each membership award will be for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year. Awardees will be asked to submit a report on their activities by next year’s Annual Meeting, which may include, but are not limited to:
- sharing ASIS&T publications that they receive (the Bulletin of ASIS&T and JASIS&T) with other colleagues
- promoting the SIG-III paper contest among their colleagues
- serving as a contact/coordinator for ASIS&T members traveling to their area who may be able to speak about ASIS&T and information science
- having the ability to strengthen the relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations, and
- sponsoring lectures on information science topics in their area on behalf of ASIS&T
Nominators can mentor the award recipients for the above activities.
We look forward to welcoming new members to ASIS&T from across the globe, especially from countries that have never been ASIS&T members or have limited ASIS&T membership. Women, minority, and candidates from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.
Please feel free to circulate the Call in your professional networks (e.g., your alma mater listservs, professional contacts at IFLA, OCLC, international organizations, practitioner groups, academic institutions, etc.). Please send your nominations of deserving candidates to Selenay Aytac (selenay.aytac@liu.edu) or Christine Hagar (christine.hagar@sjsu.edu).
The deadline for submitting nominations is December 31st 2014.
Thank you!
Selenay Aytac and Christine Hagar
InfoShare Program, SIG-III, ASIS&T
Nominations for ASIS&T SIG-III InfoShare Membership Award II — LIS Professionals
The ASIS&T International Information Issues Special Interest Group (SIG-III) is pleased to announce that for 2015 we will be able to sponsor another group of deserving information professionals from developing countries for complimentary ASIS&T memberships (the financial burden of which would otherwise be prohibitive). We are soliciting nominations of candidates for the InfoShare Membership Award. The award will be given to LIS professionals.
Please include a one-page curriculum vitae and a one-page description of why this person is deserving of membership, including their willingness to promote ASIS&T within their networks and build relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations. Awardees will be decided by a vote of the SIG-III officers. All curricula vitae will be kept private, accessible only to SIG-III officers.
Each membership award will be for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year. Awardees will be asked to submit a report on their activities by next year’s Annual Meeting, which may include, but are not limited to:
- sharing ASIS&T publications that they receive (the Bulletin of ASIS&T and JASIS&T) with other colleagues
- promoting the SIG-III paper contest among their colleagues
- serving as a contact/coordinator for ASIS&T members traveling to their area who may be able to speak about ASIS&T and information science
- having the ability to strengthen the relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations, and
- sponsoring lectures on information science topics in their area on behalf of ASIS&T
Nominators can mentor the award recipients for the above activities.
We look forward to welcoming new members to ASIS&T from across the globe, especially from countries that have never been ASIS&T members or have limited ASIS&T membership. Women, minority, and candidates from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.
Please feel free to circulate the Call in your professional networks (e.g., your alma mater listservs, professional contacts at IFLA, OCLC, international organizations, practitioner groups, academic institutions, etc.). Please send your nominations of deserving candidates to Selenay Aytac (selenay.aytac@liu.edu) or Christine Hagar (christine.hagar@sjsu.edu).
The deadline for submitting nominations is December 31st 2014.
Thank you!
Selenay Aytac and Christine Hagar
InfoShare Program, SIG-III, ASIS&T (Visit us at: https://www.asis.org/SIG/iii.
2014 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest Winners
The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) is pleased to announce the following winners of its 13th International Paper Contest:
- First Place Winner: Bhakti Gala for the paper on “Blogs, Bloggers and Scholarly Publications” (INDIA)
- Second Place Winner: Muhammad Javed Iqbal for the paper entittled “Scholars’ Perceptions about HEC Library Resources and Services: A Quantitative Study of User Satisfaction” (PAKISTAN)
The principal authors of each of the winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the 2014 ASIS&T annual meeting in Seattle, WA (USA).
The first place paper will be considered for publication by Taylor & Francis’ International Information and Library Review (IILR).
We thank the jurors for the 2014 competition: Maqsood Shaheen (Chair), Fatih Oguz (Member), and Alma Rivera (Member).
We also thank Routledge/Taylor & Francis for their support of this program.
2014/15 SIG III Election Results
On behalf of the Nomination Committee, we are delighted to announce the 2014/15 SIG III elected officers:
CHAIR – Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA)
CO-CHAIR – Nouf Kashman (McGill University, Canada)
CHAIR-ELECT – Xiao Hu (University of Hong Kong, China)
CO-CHAIR-ELECT – Yao Zhang (University of South Carolina, USA)
TREASURER – Naureen Nizam (Dalhousie University, Canada)
SIG CABINET REPRESENTATIVE – Catherine Dumas (SUNY Albany, USA)
NEWSLETTER EDITOR – Lama Khoshaim (Dalhousie University, Canada)
INFOSHARE OFFICER (2 positions) – Chris Hagar (San Jose State University USA)
INFOSHARE OFFICER (2 positions) – Selenay Aytac (Long Island University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CHAIR – Maqsood Shaheen (International Islamic University, Islamabad)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (2 positions) – J.K. Vijayakumar (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (2 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA)
WEBMASTER (2 positions) – Fatih Oguz (UNC Greensboro, USA)
WEBMASTER (2 positions) – Borchuluun Yadamsuren (University of Missouri, USA)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER (2 positions) – Muhammed Sajid Mirza (International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER (2 positions) – Anindita Paul (Indian Institute of Management, India)
MENTORSHIP COORDINATOR – Loni Hagen (SUNY Albany, USA)
Silent Auction at International Reception – ASIS&T 2014
- Half-circle shawl with sparkle–tencel and beads
- Long, dark teal alpaca scarf, traditional Shetland pattern
- Long merino-silk lace scarf
- Long mohair-silk lace scarf
SIG III Webinar: Not All MOOCs Are Created Equal: A Comparative Evaluation of Popular MOOC Platforms
ASIS&T Presents … |
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Not All MOOCs Are Created Equal: A Comparative Evaluation of Popular MOOC PlatformsWebinar Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 1:00pm-2:00pm (EDT)
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| System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 ServerMac®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newerMobile attendees Required: iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phone or Android tablet | ||||||||||||||||
Two years ago, Time magazine declared 2012 as “the year of the MOOC.” Since then, many Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have emerged promising to provide free or low-cost education to the masses through custom learning management platforms. Such abundance makes it difficult for educators who are considering entering into the realm of MOOCs to decide which provider or platform is best suited to the needs of their students. While each provider boasts grand claims, it is simply the case that not all MOOCs are created equal. Our presentation will critically examine several of the most prominent MOOC platforms to showcase principal features and weigh the positive and negative attributes of each. We will explore how the different MOOCs make use of course building software and learning analytics to allow instructors to engage with learners in a novel or unique way. Additionally, we will highlight the targeted learning style of each platform to help give potential instructors a sense of which MOOC is optimal for their course material and pedagogical style. Webinar sponsored by SIG/III – Call for Participation: Donate Items for the Silent Auction in Seattle, WA, 77th ASIS&T Annual Meeting 10/31 – 11/4 2014
It is not too early to start thinking about what you would like to donate to the silent auction held each year at SIG III’s International Reception. This event is always one of the highlights of the Annual Meetings.
The money that is raised by this event is used to help fund SIG III’s InfoShare project which awards 1-year ASIST memberships to InformationProfessionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would be a financial burden.
This year we are going to have a page on the SIG III website for you to showcase your items months in advance of the silent auction.
The first step in the process is to go to this formhttp://www.formpl.us/form/0B4nZCvpgLedRRlhjb3NWeVB2YUE/ and provide a description and an image of the item(s) you wish to donate. We plan to post some of these items and their pictures on the SIG III website around the end of August. We are looking forward to all of your wonderful donations.
For more information contact Catherine Dumas at cdumas@albany.edu
SIG III @ #ASIST14
Attending the ASIS&T 2014 Annual Meeting in Seattle this year? Mark your calendar to attend the following SIG-III events:
NOTE: Please see the conference programme to confirm the location for each of the event listed below.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 9AM-5PM
Workshop on Trust & Information Policy in the Age of Data
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/seminars_workshops_Information_Policy.html
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 7:00PM
Welcome Reception – Special Interest Groups and Chapters will be represented, giving members and potential members a fun opportunity to share ideas and get acquainted.
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/social.html#welcome
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1:30PM
Panel: Open Access: The Global Scene (co-sponsored SIG/IFP & SIG/III)
Shimelis Assefa1, Abebe Rorissa2, Krystyna Matusiak1, Daniel Alemneh3, Kris Helge3, Sam Hastings4
1University of Denver, United States of America; 2University at Albany, United States of America; 3University of North Texas, United States of America;4University of South Carolina, United States of America
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/abstracts/panels/90.html
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2:50-3:50PM
SIG III Business Meeting (All SIG members are welcome!)
Location: Madronna — First Room
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2:00PM
Panel: The Role of Social and other Media in the Unrests in Egypt, Turkey and Ukraine
Anatoliy Gruzd1, Selenay Aytac2, Nouf Khashman3
1Ryerson University, Canada; 2Long Island University, USA; 3McGill University, Canada
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/abstracts/panels/51.html
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2:00PM
Panel: How can information providers connect information resources to entrepreneurs to spur innovation in economic development?
Kendra Albright1, France Bouthillier2, Tao Jin3, Yao Zhang1
1University of South Carolina, United States of America; 2McGill University, Canada; 3Louisiana State University, United States of America
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/abstracts/panels/62.html
2014 Spring issue of the SIG-III Newsletter is now out!
We are delighted to announce that our 2014 Spring issue of the SIG III Newsletter is now out: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/newsletter
In this issue, you will find information about our long-standing initiatives such as the International Paper Award and Infoshare Awards as well as get a glimpse of some of our new initiatives.
2014 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest for Developing Countries
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its 14th competition for papers to be submitted for the 2014 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Sheraton Seattle Hotel, Seattle, WA, October 31- November 4, 2014. (http://www.asis.org/
Building from the overall conference theme, the theme for this year’s paper contest is: “Connecting Collections, Cultures, and Communities”. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. The maximum length for a paper is 10 pages, single-spaced. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. The SIG-III welcomes contributions from all areas of information science and technology. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following core areas:
Arts & Humanities; Bioinformatics; Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts; Classification Research; Critical Issues; Digital Libraries; Education for Information Science; Health Informatics; History & Foundations of Information Science; Human Computer Interaction; Information Architecture; Information Needs, Seeking and Use; Information Policy; International Information Issues; Knowledge Management; Library Technologies; Management; Metrics; Scientific & Technical Information; Social Informatics; and Visualization, Images & Sound.
Deadline for submission of full papers: Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2014, to Maqsood Shaheen at ShaheenMA@gmail.com, preferably as Microsoft Word or PDF attachments. For more information, please see http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/paper-contest
Publishing opportunities: Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the Taylor and Francis’s International Information and Library Review (IILR), subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
Announcement of the 2014 ASIS&T Sig-III InfoShare Award
The ASIS&T International Information Issues Special Interest Group (SIG-III) is pleased to announce that for 2014 we will be able to sponsor another group of deserving information professionals from developing countries for complimentary ASIS&T memberships (the financial burden of which would otherwise be prohibitive).
We are soliciting nominations of candidates for the InfoShare Membership Award. The award will be given to students (master and/or PhD) and professionals.
Please include a one-page curriculum vitae and a one-page description of why this person is deserving of membership, including their willingness to promote ASIS&T within their networks and build relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations. Awardees will be decided by a vote of the SIG-III officers. All curricula vitae will be kept private, accessible only to SIG-III officers.
Each membership award will be for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year. Awardees will be asked to submit a report on their activities by next year’s Annual Meeting, which may include, but are not limited to:
- sharing ASIS&T publications that they receive (the Bulletin of ASIS&T and JASIS&T) with other colleagues
- promoting the SIG-III paper contest among their colleagues
- serving as a contact/coordinator for ASIS&T members traveling to their area who may be able to speak about ASIS&T and information science
- having the ability to strengthen the relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations, and
- sponsoring lectures on information science topics in their area on behalf of ASIS&T
Nominators can mentor the award recipients for the above activities.
We look forward to welcoming new members to ASIS&T from across the globe, especially from countries that have never been ASIS&T members or have limited ASIS&T membership. Women, minority, and candidates from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.
Please feel free to circulate the Call in your professional networks (e.g., your alma mater listservs, professional contacts at IFLA, OCLC, international organizations, practitioner groups, academic institutions, etc.). Please send your nominations of deserving candidates to Devendra Potnis (dpotnis@utk.edu) or Selenay Aytac (selenay.aytac@liu.edu).
The deadline for submitting nominations is February 16, 2014.
Thank you!
Devendra Potnis & Selenay Aytac
InfoShare Program, SIG-III, ASIS&T (Visit us at: https://www.asis.org/SIG/iii.html)
Winner of the 2013 SIG Publication of the Year Award!
Thanks to Daniel’s great leadership, SIG III’s 30th Anniversary Commemorative Publication won the 2013 SIG Publication of the Year Award!
WINNERS OF THE 2013 ASIS&T SIG III INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST
The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) is pleased to announce the following winners of its 13th International Paper Contest:
First Place Winner:
Melody M. Madriad. A Study of Digital Curator Competencies: A survey of experts. (Philippines)
Second Place Winner:
Maryam Mousavizadeh, et al. Visualizing of the Structure of Subject Trends in Persian Articles Published During 2008-2012 in Information Organization Domain. (Iran)
Third Place Winner:
Ana Mae Kristine U. Hubilla. Information Seeking Behavior (ISB) of Technical Secondary Students: A Basis for a Model on Information Search Process. (Philippines)
The jurors for the 2013 competition included Maqsood Shaheen (Chair), Fatih Oguz (Member), and Alma Rivera (Member).
The principal authors of each of the three winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, November 1-5, 2013.
The winning papers will be considered for publication by Elsevier’s International Information and Library Review (IILR).
We thank the jury members for their hard work and our donors for their compassion which makes it possible to develop and sustain this international network of scholars in developing countries.
Maqsood Ahmad Shaheen
Chair, 2013 ASIS&T International Paper Contest
ShaheenMA@gmail.com
SIG III: Getting Published in Reputable International Journals and Other Publications
Webinar Date: Wednesday, September 4, 2013, 11:30pm-12:30pm (EDT)
The ASIS&T Special Interest Group for International Information Issues (SIG III) has conducted over a dozen annual international paper contests where winning papers are published in the International Information and Library Review. However, some papers that are worthy of being published in the journal, are never published. Authors of those papers are often interested in learning about the policies and procedures for getting their papers submitted, reviewed, accepted, and eventually published in reputable international journals.
In this webinar, three distinguished speakers, who are all current and/or past editors and/or members of editorial boards of a number of major international journals as well as other major publications, will address the following five broad questions and topics to provide webinar participants with an understanding of the process for evaluation and review of manuscripts:
- How do you identify prestigious journals and conferences?
- What fundamental characteristics of manuscripts and their contents would enhance the chance of their being accepted and, eventually, published? In other words, what are the characteristics of an ideal manuscript?
- What problems and pitfalls should authors avoid in getting their manuscripts ready for submission to scholarly journals and publications? That is, what makes a manuscript likely to be rejected by editors in the first or subsequent rounds of review and evaluation?
- Mentors and advisors often talk about finding a scholarly journal and/or publication that is a good fit for a manuscript and its contents. What does that mean and how can one tell?
- What additional advice would you give specifically for scholars and authors from developing countries, including, but not limited to, those for whom English is not their native language?
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| To submit your questions for the speakers (by Monday, September 2, 2013), please visit: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZJ9FXWF |
| Webinar Pricing and Registration |
ASIS&T members and non-members: Free  |
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After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. After the webinar broadcast, you will have unlimited access to the presentation. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 ServerMac®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newerMobile attendees Required: iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phone or Android tablet |
2013 InforShare Award Winners
We are proud to announce the winners of the InfoShare membership award for 2013. This year we are able to support 7 professionals and students from 5 different countries.
Awardees:
- Janakiraman Amirthalingam
- Mahmood Khosrowjerdi
- Yared Mammo
- Ibrahim Ramjaun
- Teklemichael T. Wordofa
- Fatima Zahra
- Maryam Zakerhamidi
SIG-III 2012 Business Meeting Minutes
Below are minutes from the 2012 SIG-III business meeting in Baltimore last month. This was such a great meeting! They are pretty thorough and I think Shimelis did a remarkable job in capturing the spirit and content of the meeting as the recorder. But please let him know if we missed any significant details or misconstrued anything.
- The 2012 SIG-III Business Meeting Minutes
The InforShare Program
InfoShare, a program sponsored by SIG III, awards one-year ASIST memberships to information professionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would be a financial burden. This paper provides detail information about the InfoShare program and analyse its impact and contribution interms of introducing ASIS&T to numerous information professionals around the world.
The InfoShare Program
By Abebe Rorissa, Davendra Potnis, and Fatih Oguz
The SIG-III Social Media
The paper from the SIG III Social Media squad discusses about the growing reliance on social media among scholars, and how SIG-III’s active online and social media presence further contribute to engage the broader ASIS&T community
- The SIG III Social Media
By Jennifer Yurchak, Anindita Paul, and Anatoliy Gruzd
SIG-III Events at 2012 ASIS&T Annual Meeting
Dear all,
If you are attending ASIS&T 2012 in Baltimore, please join us for the following SIG-III Events:
- SIG-III Events at 2012 ASIS&T Annual Meeting
SIG-III’s 30th Anniversary Publication
As part of the celebration of the 75th ASIS&T and 30th SIG-III anniversaries, we are putting together this special publication. Well, an anniversary is symbolic, but there is a very real feeling to it that makes us reflect on a variety of issues, including where we have been, and of course, maintaining the legacy of the SIG-III and shaping its futur. In this regard, current and past SIG-III Officers discuss a variety of issues commemorating the SIG-III’s 30th Anniversary.
asist-sig_iii_30th_anniversary_commemorative_publication-1982-2012 2
SIG-III’s 30th Anniversary Interviews: Cofounders’ Reflections
“If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Sir Issac Newton
In preparation of the 75th ASIS&T Anniversary and 30th Anniversary of SIG-III, Daniel Alemneh, Chair of SIG-III, interviewed SIG-III founders and pioneers Toni Carbo and Michel Menou in September 2012.
It is very fitting to open our interview (our “Cofounders Reflections”) with Sir Issac Newton’s famous saying. It is true that leadership qualities are instilled in almost every individual when they are born. But, opportunities for developing leadership skills are provided to everyone as they grow and mature. Taking advantage of these opportunities and learning from the experiences are truly what makes leaders in almost any field. In this regard, the interviews are really an opportunity to visit with the two SIG-III Co-founders, learn from their experiences, and capture their reflections, and make a lasting contribution to SIG-III and ASIS&T history.
- Link to interview with Toni Carbo:
–Text
Congratulation to the Winner of the ASIS&T SIG-III Twitter Draw!
To celebrate the official launch of ASIS&T SIG III’s Twitter account (@sig3i), this month we conducted a random draw among our Twitter followers. We are pleased to announce that the winner of our draw and recipient of the $50 Amazon.com gift card is Isabella Peters (@Isabella83) from Heinrich-Heine-Universität Duesseldorf in Germany!!!
Congratulation, Isabella!
We also invite everyone to follow our @sig3i account for the latest news and updates about the SIG as well as tweets about research, news & jobs for ASIS&T members from around the globe.
SIG-III announces 2012 International Paper Contest winners
SIG-III is pleased to announce winners for the 2012 (or 13th) International Paper Contest. This year we received 14 papers from all-across Asia and Africa. The first place award goes to Muhammad Sajid Mirza AND Dr. Khalid Mahmood, both from Pakistan. Their paper is titled “Electronic resources and services in Pakistani university libraries: A survey of users’ satisfaction.” As principal author, Muhammad Sajid Mirza will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T, as well as funding to travel to this year’s annual Meeting.
The second place award goes to Yahya Ibrahim Harnade, from Nigeria, and will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T. Yahya’s paper is titled: “Authorship Patterns in Engineering Education.”
Third place winner is Lallaisangzuali from India and the paper is titled: “Information Needs and Seeking Behaviour of Social Science Post-Graduate Students and Research Scholars of Mizoram University: A Case Study.”
We have a double fourth place winners this year. One of the fourth place winners is Irene Onyancha from Ethiopia and her paper is titled “Addressing Institutional Dementia in Africa: The case of the ECA Institutional Repository – A knowledge base on African socio-economic development.” The other fourth place winners are Ibrahim Usman Alhaji AND Yahya Ibrahim Harnade from Nigeri. Their paper is titled: “Basic Literature of Diabetes: A Bibliometrics Analysis of Three Countries in Different World Regions.”
Those winning papers and other submitted papers for the competition will be considered for publication by Elsevier’s International Information and Library Review: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-information-and-library-review/. The principal authors of each of the three winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a maximum of $2,000 to attend the 2012 ASIS&T Annual Conference.
Please join SIG-III in congratulating our 2012 Contest winners! We hope you will come meet them at the International Reception at this year’s ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, October 26-30, 2012: http://asist.org/asist2012/.
SIG-III May 2012 Newsletter published
We’ve published the SIG-III May 2012 Newsletter: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/drupal/newsletter. Here’s what is inside the May issue of SIG-III Newsletter: a message from the chair of SIG-III Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, a full recap of the SIG-III Business meeting and other activities, 2012 Infoshare award recipients, reports and spotlights on sample initaives and International collobrative projects of SIG-III Officers, a listing of upcoming events and activities. Our next issue will appear in September before the annual meeting, which will provide more details on 2012 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest winners and events that SIG-III is hosting at the annual meeting in Baltimore, MD.
Join SIG-III on Twitter at @sig3i
2012 InforShare Winners
We are proud to announce the winners of the InfoShare membership award for 2012. This year we are able to support 9 professionals and 3 students from 7 different countries.
Professional Members:
- Muhammad Sajid Mirza
- Maqsood Shaheen
- E. Ramesh
- Amjid Khan
- Ayman S. El-Dakroury
- Dinesh Chandra
- Kamani Perera
- Ana MarÃa Talavera Ibarra
- Najia Abdallaoui Maan
Student Memberships
- Claudia Bucceroni Guerra
- Muhammad Shafiq
- Shafiq Ur Rehman
Congratulations! And welcome to the ASIS&T community!
Announcement of the 2012 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest for Developing Countries
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its twelfth competition for papers to be submitted for the 2012 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Baltimore, Maryland, October 26-31, 2012. (http://asist.org/asist2012/)
Building from the overall conference theme, the theme for this year’s paper contest is:“Information, Interaction, Innovation: Celebrating the Past, Constructing the Present, and Creating the Future”. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following core areas:
- Intercultural Information Ethics: Critical reflection on the ethical challenges related to the global and cross-cultural production, storage, and distribution of information, as well as the ethical dimensions of the global development and implementation of information systems, infrastructures, and policies.
- Information Behavior: Information needs, information seeking, information gaps and sensemaking in various contexts including work, interests or every-day life activities by individuals or groups.
- Knowledge Organization: Indexing, index construction, indexing languages, thesaurus construction, terminology, classification of information in any form, tagging (expert, userbased, automatic), filtering, metadata, standards for metadata, information architecture.
- Information Systems, Interactivity and Design: How people use and communicate with information systems; the design, use and evaluation of interactive information technologies and systems, including interfaces and algorithms; search and retrieval, browsing, visualization, personalization.
- Information and Knowledge Management: Information and knowledge creation, transfer and use at the personal, group, organizational and societal levels. The management of the processes and systems that create, acquire, organize, store, distribute, and use information and/or knowledge. Selected papers will be published in the International Journal of Information Management.
- Information Use: How people re-purpose existing knowledge from a variety of sources (scientific, humanities, news, family, friends, colleagues), forms (articles, books, video, audio, tweets), locations (work, home, in transit) and mediums (cell-phones, PDAs, digital libraries) to advance knowledge, solve problems, improve information literacy, and learn.
- Information and Society: Economic, Political, Social Issues: Copyright issues, policies and laws; national and international information policies; privacy and security; economics of information, personal rights vs. freedom of information; surveillance; globalization and the flows of information; computerization movements; social informatics.
Selection Criteria
There will be up to three winners who will be selected by a panel of judges including: Maqsood Shaheen (IRC, US Embassy Islamabad), -Alma Rivera (Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México), and, Fatih Oguz (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
The judging criteria will be based on:
- Originality of paper in the developing world and global information ecosystem (originality of the project described, etc.)
- Relevance to the paper contest theme
- Quality of argument, presentation and organization
Eligibility & Information for authors
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2008-2011 contests are not eligible. The papers should be original, unpublished, and submitted in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information.
Award
The award for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, October 26-31, 2012..
Style
The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors. Detailed information is available under the heading, Guide for Authors at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622845/authorinstructions
Publishing opportunities
Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
ASIS&T Copyright Policy
ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author.
Deadline for submission of full papers: Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2012, to Maqsood Shaheen at ShaheenMA@gmail.com, preferably as Microsoft Word or PDF attachments.
2011 Paper Contest
Run annually by SIG-III, the International Paper Contest is a contest to which information professionals from developing countries can submit pieces of research not exceeding 5000 words which they have done.Up to six (6) winners are selected in each annual contest. The prize for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Meeting.The theme of the Paper Contest mirrors the theme of the ASIS&T Annual Meeting for any given year. The theme may be addressed at either the country or regional level issues. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme, such as, but not limited to the following (mainly adopted from the conference theme):
- Multilingual information systems
- Cross-language information retrieval
- Accessibility and cultural factors in system design and information services
- Cross-border data flows
- Open access and cultural diversity
- Information literacy and challenges of harmony versus hegemony
- The role of international organizations in building on diversity
- Digital inclusion
- Social networking in a linguistically and culturally rich environment
- Information behavior in diverse contexts
- Knowledge management in diverse contexts
- Information policy
Papers will be selected through a peer review process. The judging criteria will be based on:
- Originality of paper in the developing world environment (originality of the project described, etc.)
- Relevance to the Paper contest.
- Presentation and organization.
- Style. The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors. Detailed information is available under the heading, Guide for Authors.
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2006-2009 contests are not eligible. The papers should beoriginal, unpublished, and ONLY in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information. Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal. ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author
Announcement of the 2011 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its eleventh competition for papers to be submitted for the 2011 Annual Meeting, which will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 7-12, 2011. ( http://www.asis.org/asist2011/am11cfp.html )
Building from the overall conference theme, the theme for this year’s paper contest is:
“Bridging the Gulf: Communication and Information in Society, Technology, and Work”. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following core areas:
1. Intercultural Information Ethics: Critical reflection on the ethical challenges related to the global and cross-cultural production, storage, and distribution of information, as well as the ethical dimensions of the global development and implementation of information systems, infrastructures, and policies.
2. Information Behavior: Information needs, information seeking, information gaps and sensemaking in various contexts including work, interests or every-day life activities by individuals or groups.
3. Knowledge Organization: Indexing, index construction, indexing languages, thesaurus construction, terminology, classification of information in any form, tagging (expert, userbased, automatic), filtering, metadata, standards for metadata, information architecture.
4. Information Systems, Interactivity and Design: How people use and communicate with information systems; the design, use and evaluation of interactive information technologies and systems, including interfaces and algorithms; search and retrieval, browsing, visualization, personalization.
5. Information and Knowledge Management: Information and knowledge creation, transfer and use at the personal, group, organizational and societal levels. The management of the processes and systems that create, acquire, organize, store, distribute, and use information and/or knowledge. Selected papers will be published in the International Journal of Information Management.
6. Information Use: How people re-purpose existing knowledge from a variety of sources (scientific, humanities, news, family, friends, colleagues), forms (articles, books, video, audio, tweets), locations (work, home, in transit) and mediums (cell-phones, PDAs, digital libraries) to advance knowledge, solve problems, improve information literacy, and learn.
7. Information and Society: Economic, Political, Social Issues: Copyright issues, policies and laws; national and international information policies; privacy and security; economics of information, personal rights vs. freedom of information; surveillance; globalization and the flows of information; computerization movements; social informatics.
Selection Criteria
There will be up to six winners who will be selected by a panel of judges including: Maqsood Shaheen (IRC, US Embassy Islamabad), Johannes Britz (UW-Milwaukee), Maria Haigh (UW-Milwaukee), Hong Xu (University of Pittsburg), Catherine Johnson (Western Ontario), Anindita Paul (University of Missouri), and Borchuluun Yadamsuren (University of Missouri).
The judging criteria will be based on:
1. Originality of paper in the developing world and global information ecosystem (originality of the project described, etc.)
2. Relevance to the paper contest theme
3. Quality of argument, presentation and organization
Eligibility & Information for authors
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2007-2010 contests are not eligible. The papers should be original, unpublished, and submitted in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information.
Award
The award for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 7-12, 2011.
Style
The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors. Detailed information is available under the heading, Guide for Authors at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622845/auth…
Publishing opportunities
Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
ASIS&T Copyright Policy
ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author.
Deadline for submission of full papers: Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2011, to Maqsood Shaheen at ShaheenMA [at] gmail.com, preferably as Microsoft Word or PDF attachments.
Welcome to the SIG-III Blog’s new location!
Greetings everyone,
I would like to announce a change to the SIG-III Blog: it has moved. The new address is: http://sigiii.wordpress.com/
Due to server hosting changes at NEASIST, the SIG-III Blog has moved to its new location. Please update your links and RSS feeds. (Also, thanks to NEASIST for hosting the SIG-III Blog since 2006!)
This change has prompted the second appearance change in six months, but the new appearance retains all of the functionality of the old site — the prominent links to the “About us” section and RSS feeds in the upper right, the search bar underneath that, and the hierarchical post categories in the right sidebar. Beyond that, the new URL is the only other change.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Aaron Bowen
SIG-III Social Media Administrator
Upcoming conferences relating to international information
Image by Goodimages, used under the Creative Commons license.
I’d like to take a moment to alert our community about some upcoming conferences related to the field of international information. SIG-III Mentorship Coordinator Nasser Saleh sent me the information regarding the eiFl.net conference:
eIFl.net opens Call for Proposals public libraries in developing and transition countries.
eIFL.net is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals to spark the development of innovative public library services using technology in transitioning and developing countries.
The Public Library Innovation Program (http://plip.eifl.net ) will encourage public libraries to reach out to their communities, partnering with local government, business and other organizations to assess local needs and develop new services. Technology has transformed public libraries throughout the world, yet in many developing countries where the need is great, public libraries are under resourced.
This call is designed to gather great ideas that introduce technology to meet user needs and help members of the community improve their lives. Ten of the best proposals will be awarded up to $30,000 USD each for a one-year project.
Go to http://plip.eifl.net for the Call for Proposal, Application Form, Fact Sheet, FAQs and Press Release. A help desk will be available to prospective applicants plip [at] eifl.net.
This Call for Proposals opens on 16th November 2009 and closes 28th February 2010.
It will be open to applicants from the following countries: Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, People’s Republic of China, Colombia, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lesotho, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine (West Bank and Gaza), Poland, Guatemala, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Beyond that, there is the 5th Shanghai (Hangzhou) International Library Forum (SILF), and an IFLA Satellite Meeting on the theme of “The Global Librarian,” which will be held in Sweden. Both of these conferences will be held in August of this year. Here are the descriptions of each:
The 5th Shanghai (Hangzhou) International Library Forum (SILF) will be held on August 24~27 in Shanghai and Hangzhou.
The biennial forum, conducted in the era of quickened growth of information industry and globalized development of libraries, provides opportunities of brainstorming centering on the latest progress, innovative measures and future trends of library science and service. With the intensified coverage of media and wide recognition from the library circle, the convening of the forum, combining keynote speeches, plenary session and individual seminars, appeals to over 300 participants for participation at home and abroad, among who are IFLA senior officials, library directors, professionals and experts from the information sector, researchers and people from other fields.
Expo 2010 Shanghai China will take place between May 1 and October 31, 2010 in Shanghai with the theme of ‘Better City, Bette Life’. It would become a pageant for city life discussion, a symphony with the melody of technological innovation and cultural blending as well as a splendid dialogue between nations and cultures.
The forthcoming Forum coincides with World Expo and will include the 7th Chinese-Japanese International Seminar for the Librarianship.
Hangzhou is historical and cultural city reputed as ‘Paradise on Earth’. The host libraries are now extending warm welcome to domestic and overseas colleagues alike to join the academic exchanges while celebrating meanwhile Expo 2010 Shanghai China.
To facilitate in-depth discussions, subtopics are designed as follows,
I．Libraries and Multicultural Service
II. Libraries and Community Well-Being
III. Library Performance Evaluation
IV. Library Support for Innovation and Strategic Decisions
V. Library Service in Cloud Computing EraSubmitted papers shall be original research contributions or summaries of practical experience, which have not been published in any other periodicals or proceedings. Formats can be referred to at http://www.libnet.sh.cn/silf2010. Please submit the abstract to the Organizing Committee prior to March 15, 2010 and the full text before April 30, 2010. All the papers will be peer-reviewed by the Program Committee of SILF 2010 before the selected few get collected in the proceedings of the conference for official publication.
Conference Secretariat
Contact: Ms. Ren Xiapei or Mr. Zhou Qing
Address: 1555 Huai Hai Zhong Lu, Shanghai 200031, China
Email: silf2010 [at] libnet.sh.cn
Tel: +86.21.6445.4500 Fax: +86.21.6445.5006
Website: http://www.libnet.sh.cn/silf2010
New Professionals Discussion Group and Management of Library Associations Section
Boras, Sweden
August 9, 2010Theme: “The Global Librarian”
This satellite conference will be held immediately prior to the World Library and Information Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden, August 2010.
The IFLA New Professionals Discussion Group and the Management of Library Associations Section invite proposals for presentations. First time presenters and new professionals are encouraged to apply.
In order to meet publication deadlines (for inclusion on the IFLA website) proposals must be submitted by February 10, 2010.
Conference Themes and Focus:
New librarians are positioning themselves as library leaders in academia, libraries, and professional associations. This event aims to address key themes and leading trends to provide library services while changing attitudes and expectations on the way. The conference organising committee wishes to showcase examples of best practice in how to develop new leaders, services, and inclusion of new professionals in decision-making processes through both research based scholarly presentations and experiential and practical stories of successes and lessons learned. The organisers are particularly interested in receiving proposals for presentations on any of the following, or related, key themes and issues:• How to internationalize careers,
• New librarian paradigm,
• Mobile librarian,
• Real-time librarian, and
• Advocating for library associations to include new professionals in their agendaWe welcome and encourage proposals from first-time conference presenters, librarians, library school students, and information workers new to the profession.
Conference Location and Dates:
The conference will be held in Boras, Sweden. The conference venue will be the University of Boras which is conveniently located one hour by train from the WLIC venue, Gothenburg. More details will follow in the next few months. The satellite conference will start at 8:30 a.m. with registration, and will end at 4:30 p.m. with a networking session.Format & Structure:
The conference will be arranged to include keynote opening and closing speakers along with a mix of panel/plenary sessions.Conference Language:
The conference will be conducted in English. All papers and presentations will be required to be in English.
And as always, you can check out the International Calendar of Information Science Conferences (ICISC) for upcoming conferences across a broad range of Information Science-related topics.
Blog post contributed by Aaron Bowen
SIG-III wins SIG-of-the-Year award!
Image by Lulu_witch, used under the Creative Commons license.
I’m with the hamsters — we have reason to celebrate! I’m glad to announce that SIG-III has won the SIG of the year award for 2008-2009. The following is from yesterday’s official announcement from ASIS&T:
The 2009 SIG of the Year is SIG International Information Issues (SIG III). One of the jury members summed up the appeal of SIG III very well: “SIG-III has a well-established pattern of service to the international community as well as to the Society. Their membership makes up in enthusiasm what it may lack in size, and they have a large and very task-oriented executive committee. They communicate effectively with their membership through a bi-monthly newsletter, alternating with one to the executive committee. They bring new members into the association through their InfoShare program, and their paper competition is an excellent mechanism for bringing scholars to the conference who would be otherwise unable to attend. Their international reception is one of the highlights of the annual conference, and they make good use of the event as a venue for fundraising for their many awards. As a SIG, they have very high visibility and as a consequence they make all members, not just their own SIG, aware of ASIS&T’s potential role in international scholarship.” Unlike many other SIGs, III recognizes that the work of this society is not solely accomplished at this annual meeting, but consists of small activities throughout time and space and across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Congratulations to SIG III, and particularly to Aaron Bowen, chair, and all the other officers of SIG III, for being this year’s ASIS&T SIG of the Year.
Also, in an informal e-mail, SIG Cabinet Director KT Vaughan let me know that this is the fifth year straight our SIG has won this award. Thank you all for a wonderful and productive year!
With this announcement, I would also like to pose a challenge for you all. The challenge is two-fold:
One, I would like to call upon everyone to introduce the SIG to any of your colleagues interested in international information. In our current world of ubiquitous information, it is easy to have less familiarity with a body of research, with a current trend, or with a professional organization than we would like — being in the same boat myself, I’m all too familiar with this issue. I find that when I have a personalized introduction to a body of scholarship, trending topic, or professional society, I have more incentive to pay attention to it, and I remember more about it. With that in mind, I invite you to introduce SIG-III (and ASIS&T more broadly) to any of your colleagues who either aren’t yet familiar with the organization, or have only a passing familiarity.
Two, my fellow SIG Officers any myself would love to hear about your research and conference presentations. If you are publishing a paper or giving a presentation on an international information-related topic, tell us about it! We are always glad to know about our members research endeavors, and to facilitate connections between researchers where they have common research interests. You can let either me or incoming Chair Kate Johnson (cjohn24 [at] uwo [dot] ca) know about your work.
Beyond that, if you will be at this year’s ASIS&T Annual Meeting, I look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
ICTs and Development: March 11-12, 2010 in New Delhi
ICTs and Development: An International Workshop for Theory, Practice, & Policy. 11-12 March 2010 | New Delhi.
_______________________
Unpublished, original empirical papers are invited for the forthcoming international workshop on ICTs and Development: An International Workshop for Theory, Practice, & Policy to be conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India, during 11-12 March 2010.
The workshop aims to provide a forum for scholars to share their empirical research with academic experts, policymakers, and activists from the regional and international development community. Papers should examine how mobile phones, computers, and the Internet influence the empowerment of marginal individuals and communities, including whether ICTs create and enhance livelihood opportunities for people in the developing world.
Papers should be in the range of 5,000-8,000 words (including abstract and bibliography) and should include a clear discussion of the implications of the findings for development policy and/or practice.
No more than twelve papers will be selected by the workshop organizers for presentation.The first author of each paper chosen will be given air fare and lodging/meals.
The workshop is part of the project, ICTs and Urban Micro Enterprises: Identifying and Maximizing Opportunities for Economic Development, and is supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada.
The organizers are committed to finding an appropriate publication venue for all papers accepted for the workshop.
The conference website is here.
_______________________
Deadlines:
Submission of manuscripts: 1st October 2009
Announcement of results: 1st December 2009
Submission of final version of the paper: 1st February 2010
For submission of manuscripts and other enquiries, please write to ICTD2010 [at] gmail [dot] com
_______________________
Workshop Organizers:
Dr. P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Prof. Mark R. Levy
Michigan State University
International Reception Announcement
Image by Josh Bancroft, used under the Creative Commons license.
This year’s International Reception will be held on Monday, November 9, 2009, at 8pm. At the reception you will be able to meet and congratulate this year’s International Paper Contest winner and mix with colleagues from all over the world.
This year’s contest winner is Muhammad Rafiq, from Pakistan. His paper is titled “[The] LIS community’s perceptions towards open source software adoption in libraries,” and is set to be published in the September, 2009 issue of the International Information and Library Review, edited by Toni Carbo. Come meet with Muhammad Rafiq, and pick up one of the copies of IILR that Elsevier has generously donated to the event.
SIG-III will hold its annual InfoShare Silent Auction at the event. If you have items you would like to donate to the Silent Auction, please contact InfoShare Officers Abebe Rorissa (arorissa [at] albany [dot] edu) or Sarah Emmerson (saemmerson [at] yahoo [dot] com), and bring your items to the conference with you.
We will also have our annual Raffle Ticket Sale at the Reception. The prize in the Raffle is a gift basket put together by the local chapter of ASIS&T, with locally produced products and goodies. If you have something small and new that you could contribute for the basket, please contact Abebe or Sarah and bring it to the conference as well.
All proceeds from the Silent Auction and Raffle Ticket Sale will go to the SIG-III InfoShare Fund, which offers ASIS&T memberships to information professionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would otherwise be a financial burden.
Thank you for your support! Come enjoy yourself at the International Reception! International attire is encouraged!
Aaron Bowen
Chair, SIG-III
New SIG-III Newsletter published!
Image by Adrianne Lacy, used under the Creative Commons license.
The SIG-III Officers are pleased to announce the publication of the July, 2009 edition of the SIG-III Newsletter. The Newsletter is our formal record of the activities in which the SIG partakes, and the new edition represents the latest chapter in the chronicle of the SIG’s history. The contents of the new edition are
– ASIS&T Annual Meeting
– InfoShare Recipients
– International Reception
– International Paper Contest Results
– Published/Accepted International Paper Contest papers in IILR
– International Conferences Calendar in 2005 and 2009 — a comparison
– Updates to the SIG-III Website and Blog
– 2008-2009 SIG III Officers
– SIG III Listserv and Web Site
You may download it here, or visit the SIG-III homepage and click on “Newsletter” in the left-side nav bar.
Contributed by the SIG-III Officers
Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent
It’s a little over a month old, but I’ve not yet posted about the following report by Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Rob Faris, and John Palfrey, so I will do so now. It is titled Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent, and is published by Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society.
I’m being kicked out of my office this afternoon while some of my university’s tech people work on my Internet connection. While I am without my computer I will work on SIG-III’s annual report, but I hope to be able to steal a bit of time away to read this report as well. If you’ve read it and have any thoughts or reactions, leave a comment below — I’d love to hear what you think.
On the same topic, I’ll also point to Nasrin Alavi’s We Are Iran. As with Etling et al’s report, I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on Dr. Alavi’s book. She’s even put a sample chapter online as well.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
In the news this week: the Question Box
Image by SlinkyDragon, used under the Creative Commons license.
Ken Banks at IT World writes about the Question Box — a service allowing a person to ask a question through a telecom box placed in a village, and then receive a response from someone on the other end of the line who has a computer in front of him/her. Banks explains:
It works like this: A villager presses a call button on a physical intercom device, located in their village, which connects them to a trained operator in a nearby town who’s sitting in front of a computer attached to the Internet. A question is asked. While the questioner holds, the operator looks up the answer on the Internet and reads it back. All questions and answers are logged. For the villager there is no keyboard to deal with. No complex technology. No literacy issues. And during early trials at least, no cost. Put simply, Question Box, as it’s called, provides immediate, relevant information to people using their preferred mode of communication, speaking and listening.
You can see photos of the Question Box and of people using it on the Question Box Project’s Flickr photostream.
Banks also notes that the Grameen Foundation this week launched its AppLab initiative in Uganda. (AppLab stands for application laboratory, and is essentially a project to get people in different locales around the developing world building information access applications for mobile devices such as cellphones. Their about us page has more detail). Kiwanja posts an insider’s view of the project’s rollout in Uganda to his blog.
August message from the SIG-III Chair in July
Hello everyone,
Yes, I realize I’m very early with this message, but enough has been going on over the past week that I want to share it with you all now.
The most important piece of news is that we have three winners for the International Paper Contest. Please congratulate Muhammad Rafiq, Muhammad Arif, and Saima Kanwal on their winning papers! I have announced them over the SIG-III Blog.
This post provides the perfect transition to my next topic: the SIG-III Blog’s new look. You will see that I’ve updated the layout and graphical content of the blog. I’m very excited about its new appearance, and I hope you all will stop by, leave a comment on one of the posts, and/or subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed.
Last but not least, InfoShare Officer Sarah Emmerson and I have developed a Facebook page for the SIG, which will serve as a useful compliment to the blog. If you are on Facebook, we would love to have you join our group! You may find it here.
As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the weekend!
Aaron Bowen
Chair, SIG-III
Ajit Pyati, SIG-III Officer, in First Monday
SIG-III’s Ajit Pyati (above) has just published an article titled “Public library revitalization in India: Hopes, challenges, and new visions” in First Monday. Here is the abstract:
With India’s growing economy and status as an emerging world power, a new consciousness is developing in the country about the need to reinvest in public services. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is an advisory body constituted by the Prime Minister to provide recommendations for improving India’s knowledge infrastructure. As part of this Commission, a set of recommendations has been developed to improve India’s long neglected library system. This article explores the implications of these recommendations, with a specific focus on India’s public library system and the social development gains that are often associated with public libraries. The potential of India’s public libraries to serve as community information centres (CICs) is highlighted, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in implementing a new vision for public library revitalization. The article serves as an invitation for concerted action, reflection, and dialogue with regard to this important and pressing issue.
The full article may be found here.
Article by Ajit Pyati. Blog post contributed by Aaron Bowen.
We’re on Facebook!
Image by LaughingSquid, used under the Creative Commons license.
Just a quick announcement that InfoShare Officer Sarah Emmerson and myself have created a Facebook page for SIG-III. If you are on Facebook and are interested in international information issues, please join us!
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
SIG-III panels at the 2009 ASIS&T Annual Meeting
SIG/III will sponsor or co-sponsor four panels at the 2009 Annual Meeting:
* International Partnerships in Developing and Deploying Health Open Educational Resources
* International Implementation of Digital Library Software/Platforms
In addition to these panels, there are additional panels and contributed papers relating to different aspects of international information:
* Documentation and Communication in Aboriginal/Indigenous Cultures
* Nationality in information behavior: Comparing Koreans and Japanese
* Information Access across Languages on the Web: from Search Engines to Digital Libraries
Last but not least, we would love to see you at the 2009 International Reception!
Contributed by SIG-III Blog administrator
International Paper Contest winners
SIG-III is pleased to announce two winners for the 2009 International Paper Contest. The first place award goes to Muhammad Rafiq (pictured above), from Pakistan, who will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T, as well as funding to travel to this year’s annual Meeting. His paper is titled “[The] LIS community’s perceptions towards open source software adoption in libraries.”
The second place award goes to Muhammad Arif and Saima Kanwal, both from Pakistan as well. Their paper is titled “Acceptance of digital library among female students and effects of limited access of digital library on their performance in research work: a case of International Islamic University.” As principal author, Dr. Arif will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T.
Both papers will be considered for publication in the International Information and Library Review.
Please join me in congratulating our 2009 Contest winners! We hope you will come meet them at the International Reception at this year’s ASIS&T Annual Meeting.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
June message from the SIG-III Chair
Greetings everyone,
I just wanted to take a moment to update you all about what has been going on in SIG-III for the past two months. I (Aaron) have been working on the SIG-III website, examining each of the site’s pages for currency and focus. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve completed my refresh of the website, and each page that required revision (which translated to every page on the site except one) is up to date. You can see it here.
This however is only phase one of the project to redo the SIG’s website. I have begun a conversation with the SIG Advisory Committee on phase two, which consists of a redesign of the site’s graphical appearance. The Advisory Committee has offered some excellent ideas and suggestions for accomplishing this task, but they have also indicated a need/desire for some additional elements to the site to archive the history and activities of the SIG. At the Committee’s request, I have added a discussion item to the agenda for considering this archival project, and how to integrate it into the existing components of the site. I will keep you all posted of the results of this discussion – I mention it here because it is a discussion that needs to take place before I can pursue options for redoing the site’s graphical interface. (We need to know what elements out site will have and how they will be arranged before we can consider how they will appear graphically).
Beyond that, Hong Xu reports that the current International Paper Contest (for which she is Chair) has received eleven paper submissions. She will send them out to the Contest reviewers shortly, and the reviewers will begin the process of selecting a Contest winner. We should be able to announce a Contest winner in my next message!
Last but not least, I encourage you to contact me if you have any questions, or if you have facilitated or partaken in any activities on behalf of SIG. My fellow officers and I would love to hear about anything you have done as a SIG member!
Thank you, and enjoy the remainder of the week,
Aaron Bowen
Chair, SIG-III
Announcement of the 2009 International Paper Contest
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its tenth competition for papers to be submitted for the 2009 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 6 -11, 2009.
The theme of this year’s paper contest is: “Thriving on Diversity – Information Opportunities in a Pluralistic World”.
The theme may be addressed at either the country or regional level issues. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme, such as, but not limited to the following (mainly adopted from the conference theme):
* Multilingual information systems
* Cross-language information retrieval
* Accessibility and cultural factors in system design and information services
* Cross-border data flows
* Open access and cultural diversity
* Information literacy and challenges of harmony versus hegemony
* The role of international organizations in building on diversity
* Digital inclusion
* Social networking in a linguistically and culturally rich environment
* Information behavior in diverse contexts
* Knowledge management in diverse contexts
* Information policy
There will be up to six winners who will be selected by a panel of judges including Hong Xu (Chair), Jonathan Levitt (Co-Chair), Aaron Bowen, Nadia Caidi, Yunfei Du, Daqing He, Macia Lei Zeng.
Selection Criteria
Papers will be selected through a peer review process. The judging criteria will be based on:
* Originality of paper in the developing world environment (originality of the project described, etc.)
* Relevance to the Paper contest.
* Presentation and organization.
* Style. The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors.
The prize for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 6 -11, 2009.
Publishing opportunities
Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
Information for authors
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2005-2008 contests are not eligible. The papers should be original, unpublished, and ONLY in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information.
ASIS&T Copyright Policy
ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author.
Deadline for submission of full papers
Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2009, to hgxu [at] pitt.edu, preferably as Microsoft Word attachments.
Please check the SIG III website for more information about the SIG III International Paper Contest, including frequently asked questions, past CFPs and previous winners.
UNESCO and the Library of Congress partner to launch the World Digital Library
Image by takomabibelot, used under the Creative Commons license.
The following announcement comes from the Knowledgespeak newsletter:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and 32 partner institutions will launch the World Digital Library, a web site that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world, at UNESCO Headquarters on April 21. The site will include manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It will provide unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.
The launch will take place at a reception co-hosted by UNESCO Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura, and US Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington. Directors of the partner institutions will also be on hand to present the project to ambassadors, ministers, delegates, and special guests attending the semi-annual meeting of UNESCO’s Executive Board.
In addition to promoting international understanding, the project aims to expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, provide resources for educators, scholars and general audiences, and narrow the digital divide within and between countries by building capacity in partner countries.
The WDL will function in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and will include content in a great many other languages. Browse and search features will facilitate cross-cultural and cross-temporal exploration on the site. Descriptions of each item and videos with expert curators speaking about selected items will provide context for users, and are intended to spark curiosity and encourage both students and the general public to learn more about the cultural heritage of all countries.
The WDL was developed by a team at the Library of Congress. Technical assistance was provided by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Alexandria, Egypt. Institutions contributing content and expertise to the WDL include national libraries and cultural and educational institutions in Brazil, Egypt, China, France, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Current research on digital divides at the University of Washington
Image by Mulya_74, used under the Creative Commons license.
My friend and colleague Karine Barzilai-Nahon recently posted a synopsis of digital divide-related research at the Hawaii International Conference of System Sciences, or HICSS. She notes different papers on different aspects of the divide, as well as on telecenters and information and communication technologies, including a paper co-written my another of my collleague friends, Chris Coward. These papers all look very compelling, and will provide some interesting reading in the coming evenings.
Karine also notes the work of the Center for Information and Society, part of the University of Wasington’s Information School. I am particularly intrigued by the landscape study that she, Ricardo Gomez, and Rucha Ambikar did — their methodology is here, and the actual study is here.
(Disclosure: I should point out that I am an alum of the University of Washington, which is where I met both Karine and Chris. This is why I am as familiar with the UW’s work on the globalization of information as I am).
I am definitely excited about delving into this research, and to incorporating it into discussions of international information on this blog!
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
InfoShare winners announced!
InfoShare, a program sponsored by SIG-III, awards one-year ASIS&T memberships to information professionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would be a financial burden. InfoShare increases awareness of the importance of international cooperation, facilitates and enhances communication and interaction among ASIS&T members and colleagues worldwide, and provides a forum for exploration and discussion of international information issues. Recipients must reside in a country where there is no ASIS&T chapter, and may be practitioners, researchers, or students enrolled in an information science program. This year SIG-III is please to offer InfoShare awards to nine information professionals, two of whom are students. InfoShare Memberships: * Mumtaz Memon (Pakistan) * Maqsood Shaheen (Pakistan) * Hanane Boujemi Morocco) * Yuanxin Zhong (China) * Tara Mani Dahal (Nepal) * Abdul Waheed (Pakistan) * Tibebe Beshah (Ethiopia) Student InfoShare Memberships: * Sandra Miguel (Argentina) * Mae’n Al Assaf (Jordan) Please join SIG-III in congratulating our 2009 InfoShare winners! You are also welcome to check out the InfoShare section of our website — just click “InfoShare” in the left-side navigation menu.
2008-2009 SIG-III Officers
Just a quick note to announce the 2008-2009 Officers:
Chair: Aaron Bowen
Co-chair: Jonathan Levitt
Chair-elect: Kate Johnson
Co-chair elect: Daniel Alemneh
Immediate Past Chair: Yunfei Du
Communications Officer: Masqood Shaheen
Treasurer: Bahaa El-Hadidy
Program Chair: Ajit Pyati
SIG-III Blog Administrator: Aaron Bowen
Cabinet Representative: Toni Carbo
Alternate Cabinet representative: Yunfei Du
Webmaster: Aaron Bowen
Mentorship Coordinator: Nadia Caidi
International Paper Contest Chair: Hong Cui
International Paper Contest Co-chair: Jonathan Levitt
InfoShare Officers: Abebe Rorissa, Sarah Emmerson
Thanks to everyone for your service this year! Let’s make it a great one!
Aaron Bowen
SIG-III Chair
The Globalization of Search
Images by rustybrick, Bob Xu, and Colin Zhu,
used under the Creative Commons license.
This past September 16, Financial Times posted an article about the contest between search engines for dominance of Internet search traffic in different parts of the world. Whereas Google is dominant in North America, they have had trouble breaking into markets in other parts of the world. In China, for example, the majority of Internet search traffic goes to Baidu.com. Yahoo holds an advantage over Google in other parts of Asia, and (according to FT) Naver receives 60% of South Korea’s search traffic.
The article discusses how and why different search engines are able to establish dominance in different regions:
Some common themes lie behind these local success stories, internet veterans say: Google has played second fiddle to rivals who invested much earlier, perfected their technology to work with local languages and came up with innovations that Google is now having to copy.
These companies have since been able to consolidate their hold thanks to their well-known local brand names and a strategy that often relies on combining search with a range of other portal-like services to keep users on in-house sites.
Article by Richard Waters, Robin Kwong, and Robin Harding in Financial Times. SIG-III Blog post by Aaron Bowen
SIG-III sponsored events at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting
The following is a list of events that SIG-III has sponsored or co-sponsored for the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Columbus, OH, October 24-29, 2008.
Monday, October 27, 3:30 PM:
25 Years of SIG-III and the Future of International Information (III)
Panelists: Toni Carbo, Bharat Mehra, Yunfei Du and Aaron Bowen
Tuesday, October 28, 8:30 AM:
ICT-Mediated Diaspora Studies: New Directions in Immigrant Information Behavior Research
Panelists: Ajit Pyati, Clara Chu, Karen Fisher, Ramesh Srinivasan, Nadia Caidi, Danielle Allard and Diane Dechief
Tuesday, October 28, 10:30 AM:
Understanding Visual Search Tools through Users’ Reactions
Panelists: Efthimis Efthimiadis, Allison Druin and Andrew Large
Wednesday, October 29, 8:30 AM:
Global Perspective on Wikipedia Research
Panelists: Pnina Shachaf, Noriko Hara, Susan Herring, Ewa Callahan, Paul Solomon, Besiki Stvilia and Sorin Matei
Plus there is the International Reception, 8:00-9:30pm on Monday, Oct. 27. The reception is ASIS&T’s “special thank you recognizing those from other countries who help make the meeting a success.” At the reception, conference attendees will be able to meet the winner of the International Paper Competition and past winners who are at the conference, as well as participate in a silent auction to benefit SIG-III’s InfoShare program, a program to sponsor international members from developing countries to come to the Meeting. Further information on both the Paper Competition and the InfoShare program may be found on SIG-III’s website.
Contributed by the SIG-III blog administrator
2008 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest winners
The American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) is pleased to announce the following winners of its 9th International Paper Contest:
First Place Winner:
Maqsood Ahmad Shaheen. Use of social networks and information seeking behavior of students during political crises in Pakistan. (Pakistan)
Second Place Winner:
Neela J. Deshpande & S K Pathak. Use of electronic journals in astronomy and astrophysics libraries and information centres in India: A users’ perspective. (India)
Third Place Winner:
Manjunatha K. Technology and customer expectation in academic libraries: A special reference to technical/management libraries in Karnataka. (India)
Fourth Place Winner:
S. M. Pujar, R. K. Kamat, S. Y. Bansode, R. R. Kamat, & S. H. Katigennavar. Identifying and exploiting human needs for people centric evolving knowledge society: A case study of Indian ICT emergence. (India)
Fifth Place Winner:
Tariq Ashraf. Empowering people through information: A case study of India’s right to information act. (India)
Sixth Place Winner:
Pramila Dangwal. Information: By the people, for the people, for development. (India)
The principal authors of each of the six winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Columbus, Ohio, October 24-29, 2008. Congratulations to all winners!Contributed by the SIG-III Blog Admininistrator
The Libraries of Timbuktu
Image by ازرق, used under the Creative Commons license.
Not many outside central Africa are familiar with them, but the libraries of Timbuktu are an extensive wealth of knowledge and culture. From today’s Der Spiegel:
Fabled Timbuktu, once the site of the world’s southernmost Islamic university, harbors thousands upon thousands of long-forgotten manuscripts. A dozen academic instutions from around the world are now working frantically to save and evaluate the crumbling documents…
Albrecht Hofheinz, an Arabist from Oslo, estimates that there are up to 300,000 forgotten manuscripts in Mali. Insect bites have discolored the pages, he says. “The paper disintegrates, is destroyed by mold or eaten by termites.” Time is of the essence. Some of the volumes are being photographed using a digital photo studio provided by the University of Chicago. The first of the documents are expected to be available on the Internet by the end of the year.
This will be an excellent resource for scholars of Islam and of central Africa! I look forward to watching this work unfold and progress, especially since it is the result of years of effort.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Best practices for digital education: A case study of ICT in India
Image by Idiolector, used under the Creative Commons license.
Last month Leigh Linden published Complement or Substitute?, a useful study that goes beyond the question of whether information and communication technologies (ICT) can make a positive difference in education and asks instead how they may be best implemented to make such a positive difference. Writing about Linden’s research on the World Bank’s PSD Blog, Ryan Hahn offers the following summary:
Employing a pair of randomized evaluations of computer use in classrooms in Gujarat, India, Linden found that computers improve learning outcomes when they are used as a complement to the normal curriculum, rather than as a replacement for the standard offering. He also found that the weakest students benefitted most, as the computers allowed for further practice of material already covered in the classroom. Finally, Linden also found that the computers were about as cost-effective an intervention as girls scholarship programs, cash incentives for teachers, and textbooks.
Image by World Bank Photo Collection,
used under the Creative Commons license.
What would be interesting to see now is the extent to which cultural attitudes towards education in Gujarat inform the effective use of these ICT in the classroom. Would the results be different in another city or another country that possesses different attitudes towards education? How so? I would love to see this research project repeated in one or more locations in different parts of the world. I would love to see how the results change or don’t change in different global settings. If you know of any similar experiments, please point to them in the comments — I would love to hear about them and have a dialog about the strengths of different digital education programs in different parts of the world.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
A very cool use of Second Life
Image by kedguest, used under the Creative Commons license.
Today I ran across these two articles, one by Tom Peter in the Christian Science Monitor, and the other by Holly Jackson at CNet news. These articles note the use of Second Life as a venue for intercultural exchange, particularly at the virtual campuses different universities have set up in Second Life. (See for example the image of San Jose State’s virtual campus in the screenshot above). Peter says that
Around the world, universities, and even the US Department of State, are turning to online virtual worlds to create cultural exchanges. In these immersive, 3-D environments, users from around the globe can collaborate in ways that were previously impossible.
He also notes a group of university students in the United Arab Emerates who used Second Life to visit a virtual rendition of Darfur, make a pilgrimage to (virtual) Mecca, and interact with a group of Korean students to promote a cross-cultural exchange.
I find this a very worthwhile and exciting use of Second Life (or a second life clone such as IMVU, Gaia, or There). I believe such interaction will offer positive benefits as the world continues to grow interconnected and international projects such as Mainland Brasil(the Brazilian version of Second Life) continue to expand.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
The future of multi-lingual domain names
Image by twenty_questions,
used under the Creative Commons license.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted today to allow greater flexibility in how people and organizations choose domain names. In other words, websites will no longer be limited to the standard fare of commercial (.com), organizational (.org and.net), or national (.fr for france, .jp for Japan) domain names. The new system of allowing greater flexibility of how on names one’s website promises the introduction of personal names (.bowen for me), niche-specific names similar to the host of smaller domain names like .museum currently in existence, and of course product and brand names.
In addition to this greater general flexibility, ICANN affirmed a commitment to introduce Web addresses in non-Roman alphabets such as Cyrillic, Arabic, and Chinese, a move that has long been sought by different peoples around the world despite some fears that such action would lead to the “Balkinization” of the Internet. ICANN has been experimenting with these non-Roman addresses, and seems to see enough of a desire for such names to continue working on the technical challenges of implementing them.
The organization charged with the oversight of these domain names, ICANN maintains weak ties to the U.S. treasury Department — a fact that has long been a source of concern outside the United States regarding how the Internet is governed. ICANN last renewed ties with the Treasury Department in 2006, although the Treasury Department enjoyed far less control over the organization than in previous years. A source of much debate, the idea is to eventually make ICANN an independent organization free of ties to the U.S. Government. Currently the plan calls for independent governance in 2011.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Quick note: the blogosphere in Peru
Eduardo Avila at Global Voices notes the introduction of a blogging contest for Peruvian high school students, sponsored by the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences [es]. The project website is here [es].
Data on social networks in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.
This week’s Data chart of the week from Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li’s Groundswell project features use statistics of social networks in different regions. Commenting on this chart from Groundswell, Josh asks
Does Korea have the highest participation because of CyWorld, or because Koreans love to connect?
Why are Germany, and especially France, so low? Is it something about the way French people behave online, or is there an opening for a great French social network (or the French version of an existing one, like Facebook)?
The data from France is something I found particularly interesting. Given that the French blogosphere is active, I would be interested to know why the number of regular social network users in France is comparatively low. Josh finishes his post by asking for reader comments regarding their thoughts on how social network use will play out in the countries listed in the chart. I invite you to do the same below.
A portrait of libraries in Mexico
True it’s a couple of years old, but I just ran across Siria Gastelum’s portrait of Mexican libraries in Críticas Magazine. Describing the Red Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas (RNBP), Mexicio’s national public library system, Gastelum writes that
Established in 1983, the RNBP is run and funded by the federal government. The main office, in Mexico City, formulates all education and literacy programs for the entire network and provides each local library with its entire book collection, furniture, and equipment, as well as the outreach material and training for librarians. Local governments cover salaries for the personnel and allocate some extra funding, but there is no national standard when it comes to a public library budget.
Census statistics show that each public library in Mexico is visited by an average of 25 users a day, most of them students. Historically, the public library system has been linked to national education policies that make it mandatory for school children to visit libraries. However, this policy has transformed the library from a place to read for leisure to a place to get information only.
At first blush such a system certainly sounds different than a public library system in the United States. Whereas libraries in the U.S. would be more likely to favor localized policies regarding their collections and educational programs, Gastelum notes that the RNBP centralizes these functions in Mexico City. And whereas many libraries in the U.S. have taken efforts to promote themselves as a community plaza or gathering point as well as a library, Gastelum suggests the RNBP is specifically more of an information hub. The RNBP’s website doesn’t look like a website for a public library in the U.S. either — it is more of a place to find information about the system, rather than a place to search the system’s holdings or interact with a librarian.
What causes these differences? Gastelum quotes Katya Butrón at El Colegio de México, who says that “Most patrons have a negative perception of a library as an uncomfortable and uninviting space, a place for duty instead of pleasure.” Gastelum continues that
According to Butrón, attending a library is not part of Mexican culture. Even when the heavy governmental presence is not obvious for patrons, “the popular feeling is that libraries are just like any other of the many inefficient public services, ” she explains.
Authorities within the Mexican government are aware of this challenge, and have responded with a national literacy program (“Hacia un País de Lectores,” or “Towards a Country of Readers,” begun in 2001 by President Vicente Fox) and the construction of a new central library in Mexico City. This library, the Biblioteca de México José Vasconcelos, is in Gastelum’s words
…The “brain” or mother branch of all public libraries in Mexico. All the branches in the country’s 32 states will be connected electronically to this main branch, which hosts the country’s largest collection. Currently featuring half a million books, the building will eventually house 1.5 million volumes. Designed to serve 15,000 users a day, the 125,000-square-foot building by Mexican architect Alberto Kalach features 750 computers with free Internet access.
Images by joseluisl and rageforst, used under the Creative Commons license.
While this does sound like an enviable project, Butrón argues that a library like the Vasconcelos library represents the wrong approach to building a national interest in public libraries. She calls for a more localized approach, with more diversity of materials between different branch libraries within the system. The Digital Divide has also been a factor, with librarians in more remote parts of Mexico (and by extension less Internet access) saying a project like this does little to serve the needs of their patrons.
With this situation in mind, Gastelum calls for “a much needed dialogue” on the direction of librarianship in Mexico. She notes annual conferences put on by Asociación Mexicana de Bibliotecarios (AMBAC), Mexico’s equivalent of the American Library Association. Steven Kerchoff, Information Resource Officer for public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico and library advocate, notes that at these conferences
[Mexican librarians] talk about outreach, they talk about advocacy, how to promote their library services to users and to people who are in a position to make decisions about funding… Library advocacy has been a hot issue in the States for a while and it’s now becoming really important in Mexico.
Challenges like these will be a part of any dialogue on future directions for Mexican libraries (just like they will be a part of any dialogue on future directions for public libraries in many countries). Time will tell how these issues and the dialogue they create play out, but both Butrón and Hortensia Lobato, Vice President of AMBAC, are optimistic that Mexican libraries and librarians will continue to integrate themselves into the bedrock of Mexican culture, both as a place to find information, and as a place to strengthen a local community.
A global Internet video service
How do you say YouTube in French? Well, YouTube… but many would also be quick to note DailyMotion. Another Internet video platform, DailyMotion shares many similarities with youTube, but as Joy Marcus notes in an interview with beet.tv, some notable differences as well — notably its European roots and its international focus.
And in particular, she notes, DailyMotion is second only to YouTube in terms of worldwide Web traffic to Internet video sites.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Two library and technology projects in Guatemala
Going through the archives of the excellent Global Voices citizen journalism website, I saw this post by Renata Avila. Renata describes a pair of projects underway in Guatemala — one developing library services for children, and the other implementing technology in Guatemalan schools.
Somewhat similar to Chile’s BiblioRedes project, The library project is called Caldo de Piedra. In their words, they are
…A charity that manages and stocks children’s libraries. These libraries are operated by parents and the community in support of local public and private schools to help girls and boys discover that learning is part of their lives. We believe in education in its broadest sense, where books are at the heart of an array of creative and artistic projects that engage children in a love of learning.
Edulibre’s website is written in Spanish, but Renata provides a translation of their mission statement:
Edulibre is a project by volunteers, professionals and students wishing to improve the access to technology for elementary school kids. Each of them gives their time by helping in different areas of the non- profit project.
They also maintain an Edulibre blog here.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Sustainable electricity in rural India
Rocketboom, one of my favorite vlogs, did an interview with the founders of the Barefoot Foundation a few days ago. This is a great piece about bringing sustainable energy to villages in India. The Barefoot Foundation seems to take a microfinance-style approach, similar to that of the Grameen Foundation, of training a lady from a village to perform a service for the village, and thereby becoming a village leader. (Although I an unclear about the extent to which the “finance” part of microfinance applies in this case, as the founders do not discuss the finance model they use in this project).
Certainly villagers will be able to use this energy for lighting, air conditioning, and other household conveniences. But beyond that, they will also be able to use it to power radios and televisions, Internet access kiosks, and even net cafes. The potential for this project to, at least in part, facilitate information access in rural parts of India is immense, and I will be very interested to observe the development of this project in te coming months and years.Contributed by Aaron Bowen
A bit of international info humor…
Ok, maybe it’s not all that funny, but it did amuse me. John Yunker writes in Global by Design about Montenegro’s new top level domain name. (If you’re wondering, a top level domain name is the .com, .org, .net, etc. in a Web address). Montenegro’s domain name is .me. Yunker imagines some of the potential Web addresses people will create using .me:
– help.me
– buy.me
– gettoknow.me
A country has the option of selling its national domain name to foreign citizens if it chooses, and if Montenegro elects to sell access to .me, look for a land grab of investors creating Web addresses like this.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
From São Paulo and London with Love: Sex in the Blogosphere in Brazil and England
Raquel Pacheco, aka Bruna Surfistinha
China has Mu Mu and Muzi. England has Belle. Brazil has Bruna.
Similar to Mu Mu and Muzi, who I discuss in this post, Belle de Jour and Bruna Surfistinha are respectively a British and A Brazilian woman who blog about sex, thus presenting an opportunity for a three way comparison of cultural attitudes towards sex – both in general, and in the blogosphere specifically. The biggest difference to point out between them is that, whereas the Chinese bloggers were just Chinese citizens who posted sexual content to their blogs, Belle and Bruna are ex-prostitutes who were actively blogging during their tenures as a sex workers. But even taking that fact into consideration, both Belle and Bruna would write about themselves, their personal lives, and their boyfriends on their blogs, thus ensuring their blogs do not have a fundamentally different format from the Chinese blogs.
Belle
Subtitled The diary of a London call girl, Belle provides no real introduction to her blog, which suggests that it emerged somewhat spontaneously as a by-product of her profession. But on this blog, Belle chronicles different aspects of her life – primarily the sexual aspects, although she will occasionally include writings on other topics as well. In the (more complete) introduction to the U.S. release of a book version of her blog entries she published in 2005, she describes her move to London as a recent college graduate and the discovery of how hard it is in contemporary Western societies to bridge the divide between college degree and entry-level job. From there it’s a fairly typical road she follows – limited job prospects and the expense of living in London drew her first by accident and then by specific intention to the world of prostitution. The most interesting part of her entry into this world comes as the last sentence of her introduction in her book:
And it wasn’t too long after deciding to do it [become a prostitute] that I started keeping a diary
This diary of course turned into her blog.
Belle’s life seems to have changed since the days she was blogging about prostitution. On May 23 (Mai 23, as she writes it in French), she posted about getting a job and has since jokingly referred to herself as “Belle de Office.” She has also continued turning her blog into a commercial publishing venture. In addition to her first book, she has published this 2007 follow up. But she still writes about sex and different social attitudes towards sex on her blog, as well as providing different vignettes on her life, her friends, and her activities.
The main reason I bring Belle into my comparison is to provide a Western European perspective on sex blogging – what kind of content goes into it, what cultural factors affect or don’t affect it, and how readers respond to it. That said, culturally I find England to be the most similar to the United States of any European country. Having seen different parts of England with a British friend on one hand, and also having lived in both France and Greece and traveled to other cities in Europe on the other, I find it quite obvious which nation American revolted against in order to gain independence. I am not at all suggesting that British and American culture are the same, only that I find them closer to each other than I find comparisons between the cultures of America and other European countries. And as always, I invite discussion of this idea, either agreeing or disagreeing with me.
With this in mind, I find Belle’s blog the most culturally similar to a blog one would find in America. Her writings aren’t affected by the constant threat of government censorship the way Mu Mu’s are (and to which Muzi’s writings fell victim). (And no I’m not suggesting that censorship doesn’t exist in England – only that it doesn’t exist to the same degree that it does in China). Nor do Belle’s writings reflect any one pervasive element of British culture, the way Catholicism acts as a pervasive cultural element in Brazil, affecting Internet content and use, and occasionally make its way onto Bruna’s blog.
Belle also doesn’t explicitly discuss the use of technology or social media as a vehicle to make her online diary available to the world. I’m sure this absence is a result of multiple factors, ranging from what topics she feels are worth or not worth discussing, to the comparatively ubiquitous level of Internet connectivity in England as opposed to Brazil or China. (Drawing from data from the International Telecommunications Union and other sources, Internet World Stats reports 62.3% Internet penetration in the United Kingdom, as opposed to 22.8% in Brazil and 12.3% in China). My thought is that the relative ubiquity of Internet connectivity in England makes it more just an everyday feature of life – not the kind of cultural force it is in Brazil, where average netizens seem to dedicate much more explicit thought to the connection between their social interactions and the Internet. While it isn’t the focus of her blog, Bruna does talk a lot more about the explicit connection between the Internet and her diary chronicling her work in prostitution, as I discuss below.
Bruna
Like Mu Mu, Bruna made her major debut to American audiences through the New York Times. Larry Rother introduces her thus:
She goes by the name Bruna, the Little Surfer Girl, and gives new meaning to the phrase “kiss and tell.” First in a blog that quickly became the country’s most popular and now in a best-selling memoir, she has titillated Brazilians and become a national celebrity with her graphic, day-by-day accounts of life as a call girl here.
Bruna, whose real name is Raquel Pacheco, says in the article that her blog emerged as kind of an accident that just kept growing ad growing. “In the beginning,” she says, “I just wanted to vent my feelings… I wanted to show what goes on in the head of a program girl [the Brazilian term for a high class prostitute], and I couldn’t find anything on the Net like that. I thought that if I was curious about it, others would be too.” Since this beginning, her blog has become one of the most widely read blogs in Brazil and she has adapted some of her blog entries into a book titled The Scorpion’s Sweet Venom, which was first published in 2005 and has been released in two English editions, as well as a Spanish edition. A second book, titled What I learned from Bruna Surfistinha, is on the way. Like Belle, Bruna has turned her blog into a full blown commercial publish venture. Also like Belle, she no longer chronicles her sexual activities online, although she will still devote parts of her discussions to the general topic of sex.
But in addition to introducing Bruna, Rother’s article also points to the ongoing debate over social morality to which the presence of a person like Bruna has led. While it considers questions of what thoughts should or should not be allowed, who is and/or should be empowered to make such a decision, and what to do with conflicting views on the topic, this debate over social morality is different from the censorship debate in China. In China, Party officials are considering from an official point of view what the government should or should not allow in Chinese Internet content. In Brazil the debate does not spring from an official government stance on what should or should not be allowed in the Brazilian Internet space, but rather from different segments of Brazilian society debating with each other. A national government can be involved in a debate of this nature – see for example this report by Nicholas Kulish in the International Herald Tribune about the Bulgarian government cracking down on prostitution by punishing individuals willing to pay for sex from a prostitute rather than punishing the prostitute himself or herself, as well as this report by Henry Porter in The Guardian opposing government intervention of this nature in England. But in each of these cases, the government in question is responding to a social morality debate in which its citizens are engaged, not (as is much more the case in China) setting their own policy irrespective of what their citizens think.
So the social morality debate in Brazil of which Bruna’s fame is a product springs not from the Brazilian government, but rather from different social attitudes of Brazilian citizens. And these attitudes frequently revolve around sexual liberalization, traditional feminine roles in Brazilian culture, and the presence of the Catholic Church. As Rother says,
Carnival and the general sensuality that seems to permeate the atmosphere can give the impression that Brazil is unusually permissive and liberated, especially compared with other predominantly Roman Catholic nations. But experts say the real situation is far more complicated, which explains both Bruna’s emergence and the strong reactions she has provoked.
As a result, some Brazilians have applauded Bruna’s frankness and say it is healthy to get certain taboos out in the open… But others decry her celebrity as one more noxious manifestation of free-market economics and globalization.
Rother further quotes a host of voices on the different sides of the debate. He frames the debate by quoting Richard Parker, an anthropologist at Columbia University and author of Bodies, Pleasures and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil:
Brazil is a country of contradictions, as much in relation to sexuality as anything else… There is a certain spirit of transgression in daily life, but there is also a lot of moralism.
Rother then presents two voices, the first – Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer, a journalist and theologian at Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro – decring the presence of a person like Bruna in Brazilian society, and the second – Gabriela Silva Leite, a sociologist, former prostitute, and director of a prostitutes’ advocacy group – arguing that moral concerns such as those Bingemer espouses are exaggerated. Bingemer says that
This is the fruit of a type of society in which people will do anything to get money, including selling their bodies to be able to buy cellular phones… We’ve always had prostitution, but it was a hidden, prohibited thing. Now it’s a professional option like anything else, and that’s the truly shocking thing.
Leite replies that
It’s not a book like this that is going to stimulate prostitution, but [comment instead on] the lack of education and opportunities for women… I don’t think Bruna glamorizes things at all. On the contrary, you can regard the book as a kind of warning, because she talks of the unpleasant atmosphere and all the difficulties she faced.
Last but not least, Rother quotes Bruna herself on the debate over social morality:
Brazilian women have this sexy image, of being at ease and uninhibited in bed. But anyone who lives here knows that’s not true.
Carla de Meis, a medical psychiatrist at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro who has researched the mental health of Brazilian prostitutes, considers this debate in her own research. She points out in her article Subjectivity, Social Suffering, Liminality, and Suicide Among Prostitutes in Brazil that this debate is not just external, that a person can struggle with this question with respect to her own values and worldview. While the contrast is admittedly somewhat artificial, de Meis sets up a contrast between social roles in which a woman conforms to a societal definition of a dutiful wife and mother who honors her family, and in which she rejects family life to make a living through prostitution instead. de Meis notes that many of the prostitutes she interviewed for her research described making a wrenching decision when the elected to bypass the wife and mother role in favor of the prostitution role. She further notes that many prostitutes wanted to get out of their lives as prostitutes as quickly as possible and do their best to rid themselves of the stigma of having been a prostitute and live a life that more closely conforms to their society’s definition of a “good woman” (de Meis’ words).
Though this definition of a “good woman” – dutiful wife, honorable mother, moral woman, etc. – springs from multiple roots, de Meis and Parker both point to the presence of the Catholic Church as being a major factor reinforcing this role in Brazilian society. de Meis notes in particular Clara, a lady who wished to conform to her society’s definition of a moral woman and wanted to work her way out of prostitution to achieve that goal. As such, Clara differentiated herself from “real prostitutes” – women who willingly chose prostitution as a profession. According to de Meis:
Clara maintains that the real prostitutes are the women who begin early in life, explaining that those who begin later, as in her case, cannot adapt to it. She tells us that God curses prostitutes. However when I asked her if the curse of God would affect her she answered “No,” explaining that she pray every day and only works as a prostitute through extreme necessity. This would redeem her from the curse.
Regardless of whether one accepts Clara’s logic or not, her words demonstrate how deeply engrained Catholicism is in the Brazilian consciousness and social culture – even with the acknowledgement that many Brazilians are not personally religious.
As I noted in my discussion of social media in Brazil here, Catholicism is pervading the Brazilian sphere of social media as well. In this October 5 post Bruna offers two passages that touch upon religious themes. Writing about an interview she gave through an Internet chat service during a recent trip to the city of Salvador, she describes fielding a question from an “evangélico” – a person with an evangelical bend:
“As perguntas foram ótimas, mas cheguei na conclusão que eu posso estar onde quiser, em qualquer parte do mundo, que sempre terá algum evangélico com suas teorias macabras para cima de mim… Ele me perguntou se eu não tenho medo da morte… Afff. Sangue de Jesus tem poder ( é assim a frase?)!!! Amém.”
(I will e-mail some colleagues in Brazil to correct me, but in rough translation):
The questions had been excellent, but, as is the case anywhere in the world, there will always be some evangélico with macabre theories. I say this because the only question that left the focus [of the chat session] came from an evangélico… He asked me if I do not fear death… Afff. Sangue de Jesus tem poder (is this the phrase?)!!! Amen.
I do not know of an English equivalent of her last full phrase, “sangue de Jesus tem poder,” but if I read it correctly she is speaking in irony – in effect saying “oh dear God, what a ridiculous question” in response to the inquiry. (If any Brazilian or Portuguese readers can provide a translation, I would appreciate hearing from you). The translation aside, this exchange demonstrates not only the presence of Christianity in Brazilian society, but also the willingness to use the Internet as a forum to discuss it. And while Bruna seems to take an irreverent attitude towards its presence here, a little earlier in her post she describes her surroundings in Salvador as “the kind of life for which one would ask from God,” thus displaying a not-so-irreverent attitude towards religion in her post as well.
Diligent readers will point out the obvious problems with talking about the views and concerns of whole segments of the world’s cultures based upon just a few blogs from those cultures. This is an excellent point, and I do not seek to make any broad assumptions about a culture based solely upon the views of a few bloggers. With that in mind, I invite any commentary you have on the British, Brazilian, or Chinese segments of the blogosphere. I would love to read any discussion you would like to provide, as well as any examples of blogs or other Internet sources you know that support or refute my analyses. Thanks!
(The NY times requires a login to read their articles online. Creating a login and password for the NY Times is free and may be done here).
Work cited:
de Meis, C. (1999). Subjectivity, Social Suffering, Liminality and Suicide Among Prostitutes in Brazil. Urban Anthropology. V. 28:1. pp 65-101.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
What’s in a name?: Questions of privacy in a Chinese social network
Besides being accompanied by the above photo, which I find perfectly encapsulates the tension between recognition and anonymity among social networkers, Robert Ness’ post to Danwei.org this morning offers some of the best commentary I’ve heard on the right (or lack thereof) to be anonymous on the Internet in China. At issue is the real name system (实名制), or identity verification system. This is a system that requires someone wishing to join an online community to provide his or her real name and photo in order to join. Some like this system because (as they put it) it guarantees the authenticity of someone’s view points – members of an online community will know who said what. The systems proponents further argue that people will think twice before posting any potentially incendiary social or political commentary, as they will not be anonymous. By contrast, critics argue that this system represents Big Brother in action. Many of these critics further feel that the ability to post anonymously leads to discussion of taboo topics that would not be discussed if discussants could be personally identified.
Ness frames this debate in the context of the Chinese social network Zhanzuo.com — in Ness’s words, “one of several sites contending for the role of ‘China’s Facebook.’” The English version of the podcast interview with some of Zhanzuo’s regular networkers does a great job covering the different perspectives on this openness vs. privacy issue.
I confess I was interested in Zhanzuo for another reason as well. In order to reach out to social networkers, particularly on non-U.S. networks, I created profiles for myself on different networks active in different parts of the world (see my MySpace and Facebook, as well as my Orkut and Bebo). So naturally Zhanzuo was something I wanted to check out. I tried using Google translator to get around the language barrier, and to my surprise it wasn’t a total failure. I did get this far:
But when I created the profile I wasn’t able to type in the Roman alphabet, so I couldn’t give my real name. I threw in few random words in Chinese I copied and pasted from part of the page on the faint hope that I would be able to edit that bit of text into my real name once I was inside. Not surprisingly I was not able to do this – while I found the “edit my personal info” button, I was still unable to get the site to recognize my Romanized name. So my Zhanzuo profile is doomed.
But before the name verification authorities deleted my profile, I did try to add a little blurb about myself and the SIG-III blog, partly on the off chance that someone would see it before my profile disappeared, and partly just to see if I could do it. What happened was interesting. My attempts to post to the “about me” section were blocked, with (in Google translation) a rather Orwellian message:
your current state is: not yet audited by administrators, unable to use this function.
Block of the network to promote the real-name system, in order to pass audit, you must:
1. Upload your photos as a true portrait
2. Complete the true information (including name, department, etc)
Within 24 hours administrators will examine your images and information vetted through you can freely enjoy the fun of the block!
If Facebook, typically considered the standard bearer for authentic profile information in the U.S., ever tried anything like this, Facebook users would leave immediately. This amount of verification would never fly with a U.S. audience, thus marking a very significant difference between American social networkers and a certain percentage of Chinese social networkers. And while I wouldn’t presume to draw conclusions about broader social phenomena such as privacy in general and how attitudes towards privacy change by culture based solely upon an experiment like this, I did think my experience with Zhanzuo offered an interesting if incomplete window into attitudes towards privacy among Chinese netizens.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Sue O’Neil Johnson, 1939-2007
Sue O’Neill Johnson (playing the accordion)
It is with sadness that those of us in the SIG-III community learn of the passing of Sue O’Neil Johnson, one of our members who inspired all of us with her dedication to the field of international information and her commitment to information professionals around the world. A memorial service to celebrate her life will be held at 1:00 pm on Friday, October 5th at St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bethesda, Maryland.
ASIS&T has posted a touching account of her life. Two passages in particular offer thoughtful glimpses of her life:
Sue was also active in the American Society for Information Science and Technology. She was twice Chair of the International Information Issues SIG, which received SIG of the Year honors three years in a row, and she won the SIG Member of the Year Award in 2003. She also co-founded the ASIST international paper competition which brought travel grants, ASIST memberships, and publishing opportunities to dozens of information professionals in developing nations.
Besides her children, music, and tennis and golf, Sue’s other great interest was in traveling and seeing the world. Beginning with a memorable trip to Yugoslavia and France as a college freshman, Sue had visited some 33 countries (many more than once) and was on her fifth passport. Perhaps her favorite trips were to Provence in 1994, Paraiba, Brazil in 2004, and the old capitals of Japan in 2005, but, in truth, she really loved meeting and talking with different people just about anywhere.
Many of us in SIG-III have shared our personal reflections about Sue on the ASIS&T wiki.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Sex, Blogs, and the Great Firewall Part II – Sexuality and Subversion in China
Decisions about when and what to censor can rest on multiple different criteria such as the reputation of the author and the relative visibility of the offending thought – an op ed piece in a major newspaper will be read by more people than if it were in a fringe publication, and as such may be subject to more stringent regulation. But the primary criteria in deciding when and what to censor is (obviously) the overall content of the idea. And as is exemplified by official censorship in China, some topics stand a greater chance of being censored than others.
DeWoskin, who I cited in part one of this article, notes that political commentary will raise the ire of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors immediately, whereas personal, social or sexual content is much more of a gray area. She writes (p. 31) that
It was as if an unspoken compact had been reached between the government and its citizens: we do politics the old way; you do your lifestyles anyway you want.
A Chinese friend of mine in Seattle echoed this thought regarding internet content specifically: an Internet search for “democracy,” “Tiannamen Square,” or “Dali Lama” will return censored results, but a blogger like Mu Mu, about whom we were talking, could get away with posting sexual content about herself.
Mu Mu first appeared on the radar screens of Western media outlets in late 2005, when Howard W. French wrote his article A Party Girl Leads China’s Online Revolution. French introduces Mu Mu as a fascinating mixture of sexuality and political commentary:
On her fourth day of keeping a Web log, she introduced herself to the world with these striking words: “I am a dance girl, and I am a party member.”
“I don’t know if I can be counted as a successful Web cam dance girl,” that early post continued. “But I’m sure that looking around the world, if I am not the one with the highest diploma, I am definitely the dance babe who reads the most and thinks the deepest, and I’m most likely the only party member among them.”
Thus was born, early in July, what many regard as China’s most popular blog.
Sometimes timing is everything, and such was the case with the anonymous blogger, a self-described Communist Party member from Shanghai who goes by the pseudonym Mu Mu.
A 25-year-old, Mu Mu appears online… most evenings around midnight, shielding her face while striking poses that are provocative, but never sexually explicit.
She parries questions from some of her tens of thousands of avid followers with witticisms and cool charm.
Mu Mu has changed a bit since French introduced her. After French wrote his article her blog attracted a large amount of media attention from the West, causing her to shut the original version of it down. If you follow the link French provides, you receive the following error message, saying (in Chinese) that the page no longer exists. Mu Mu started blogging again after the media attention subsided a bit, and her blog has since been through two other incarnations: this one here, and the current version, which exists on two different sites here and here. She has also refrained from posting any semi-nude photos of herself recently, although she is still willing to post provocative photos, such as the depictions of Japanese soldiers in the following post, which I presume deals with perpetually strained Sino-Japanese relations. (If any SIG-III Blog readers speak Chinese and would be willing to confirm or correct this presumption, I would appreciate hearing your interpretation).
Mu Mu also said she “finds it hard to comprehend why her blog is so enticing to westerners,” according to Dave Lucas. Lucas has published an English translation of Mu Mu’s reaction to French’s article. In this reaction Mu Mu uses the Google translator to engage French in a discussion, in which (if I read the Googleified translation right) she says she is glad she is living at a time when China is increasingly socially liberal, points to the challenges of separating one’s personal life from one’s public life (which is why she chose to mix the two in her blog), and reaffirms her belief in the CCP.
Mu Mu is an example of a huge challenge for Chinese censors. Politically she claims to be on their side, but then she writes about being a party girl and partaking in a Westernized liberal lifestyle (and as I discuss below, the contention that Chinese censors only go after political discussion and generally leave social and sexual topics alone does not always prove accurate). From researching her, my impression is that she is very adept at being edgy bout not too edgy as to be shut down by Party censors. Her popularity in the Chinese blogosphere adds to the challenge. With a large following, her sudden absence at the hands of Party Censors would cause a considerable stir around the Chinese blogosphere. But the attention she received from Western media in late 2005 and 2006 threatened to create a politicized crisis between official censors and Western media outlets over freedom of speech issues. I believe this potential political situation is what cause Mu Mu to shut her original blog down as an act of self-censorship and only later begin blogging again when the attention from the West had subsided.
Do Party censors really overlook all this sexuality in China’s Internet sphere?
The short answer is no, although it remains true that the severity of any reaction by official censors varies widely. Simply put, these censors are far less equipped to comprehend and deal with censoring social topics such as sex than they are political topics such as democracy.
But there is evidence of CCP attempts to regulate online sexuality in China. Perhaps the most visible example is the CCP blocking the Japanese portal of Baidu.com, noted in these two reports. (Baidu, whose name is taken from a poem from the Song Dynasty, is not a well known company outside of China, but inside China it is fighting a gargantuan three-way battle with Google and Yahoo. And Baidu is winning – see reports here and here).
Chinese blogger Mu Zimei, reproduced in a report by Jeremy Goldkorn on a Sohu.com story about Mu
In the Chinese blogosphere, Mu Mu isn’t the only blogger blogging about sexuality in China. At the end of 2003 another young woman named Muzi Mei (Or Mu Zimei, Mu Zi Mei, or木子美) received a lot of media attention around the world for blogging the stories of her sexual encounters.
Hannah Beech of Time Magazine writes that
Li Li… isn’t averse to kissing and telling. For the past couple of years, Li has kept a blog–written under the pen name Muzi Mei–that has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it means staying faithful to one man… “I express my freedom through sex,” says Li, unapologetically. “It’s my life, and I can do what I want.”
Her blog has been translated into French and German (and she reports an English translation of some of her work, although I was unable to find her on Amazon in English).
She has had less success dealing with official censors than Mu Mu. While her blog was popular enough to give censors a daunting challenge in trying to counter the viral spread of her posts around the Internet, it now seems to be defunct. In the Time article linked above, Beech writes that
Despite government attempts to censor it, the sex diary is so popular that Li’s pen name is intermittently the most searched keyword on China’s top search engine.
An article by Hamish McDonald in the Sydney Morning Herald went even further, saying the rise of blogs exchanging views on Chinese politics is a direct descendant of blogs that deal with social issues in China. At one point McDonald essentially says that Mu Mu, with her mix of sexuality and politics, could never have existed without Muzi Mei having blogged about sexuality alone.
Muzi Mei was certainly aware of the censorship threat she faced, and took precautions to prevent her blog from being shut down. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Peter Goff says
For now, Muzimei is among those managing to sidestep [CCP censorship]. “I cannot go too far,” she said. “If my work was stopped that would be bad for me, bad for the development of the internet and free expression, and bad for China.”
Nonetheless she ran afoul of official censors. As Jeremy Goldkorn reports on Danwei.org,
Her online diary stirred up an online fuss which got the attention of the print media, but she was thrown off the gossip pages of the tabloids when [official censors] caught on to the action and issued some of ban on media coverage of her. She has been absent from the media since the first few months of this year [2004].
Goldkorn goes on to quote a 2004 story posted to Sohu.com that painted a very unflattering picture of her:
Muzi Mei, Li Li … she dresses gaudily, but even more gaudy is her thinking and her behavior. She frequently changes sexual partners and even brazenly describes the details of her encounters on the Internet, revealing or hinting at the real identity of the men she has known. All of this caused a great fuss in Chinese society in 2003.
The censoring of her blog may be permanent now. Whether it was a voluntary choice on her part or the result of official censorship, Muzi Mei’s blog seems to have disappeared. The last version of her blog cached on the Internet Archive was in January of 2007.
Mu Mu and Muzi Mei are just two prominent examples of a small but well known (to Chinese audiences at least) bloggers who have used the blogosphere to explore the nexus between sex, storytelling/information sharing, and Internet technology, all at the risk of being censored. Other examples come from a Cai Shangyao article in the Shanghai Star that covers Muzi Mei and Zhuying Qingtong, and Sister Lotus (also translated as Sister Hibiscus — now defunct blog here, reports here, here, here, and here). There is also the slightly different but related episode of a blogger named Hedgehog MuMu (no relation to the Mu Mu discussed above, according to Lonnie Hodge) participating in a blogger beauty contest only to be disqualified for posting nude photos of herself online. (Additional reports here and here).
That every one of these bloggers should face censorship for posting sexual content online demonstrates that Chinese censors can and will censor social as well as political content. Some astute readers may further assert that the political, social, and sexual spheres cannot be discretely separated from each other, and that posting sexual content online can be a form of political commentary. This is certainly true, and I do not at all seek to imply otherwise. This issue is, however, complex enough that it merits a full discussion that I will leave for another time. Beyond that I have additional thoughts that I will put into part III of this essay, which I will add soon. And as always, I appreciate and look forward to reading your reactions to my thoughts.
Work cited:
DeWoskin, R. (2005). Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Social media and the Internet in Brazil
Brazilians are passionate about the Internet, and all the social media applications the Internet has made possible. Internet use and social media are pervading a wide range of aspects of life in Brazil, such that even those who do not have Internet access or choose not to participate in social media are frequently aware that the Internet and all its related applications are being inextricably integrated into Brazil’s social fabric. The Wikipedia even lists a technical term for Brazilian appropriation of foreign Internet applications – the Brazilian Internet Phenomenon. And they are matching Americans with regard to time spent online. Telegeography, a telecom consulting firm, reported in 2004 that Brazilian Internet users had overtaken American Internet users in terms of hours online. I actually find their statistic of 12 million Internet users in 2004 inaccurate. Euromonitor International lists 22 million users in 2004 (Euromonitor International, 2006), and Internet World Stats and Caio Bonhila of the International Telecommunications Union list 39,140,000 and 40,800,000 respectively in late 2006/early 2007.
Likewise, many in Brazil are making extensive use of different Web 2.0/social media/social networking applications. My favorite bit of pop culture to come from the Brazilian Internet recently is this music video by Claudia Leitte:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBkMFVAuLPk]
It highlights the extent to which both YouTube and Second Life are becoming a part of daily existence for Brazilian Internet users. The success of YouTube has even prompted Universo Online, A Brazilian version of America Online, to produce a native Brazilian video sharing service, the Videolog. And earlier this year Linden Labs, the company that maintains Second Life launched the Mainland Brasilarm of Second Life, its first non-English language platform (Brasil is the Portuguese spelling of Brazil). Drawing from many Brazilian blogs, Jose Murilo Junior provides this excellent account of the opening of Mainland Brasil. He quotes Brazilian bloggers’ thoughts on the opening itself, on the marketing campaigns that accompanied the opening, on the presence of the Catholic Church in Mainland Brasil, and on the (inevitable) backlash that came with the hype surrounding the event. Two bloggers in particular are worth noting. Drawing from the March 2007 Second Life population data, a blogger named Aenea pointed out that Brazilians are the sixth largest group of active Second Life users, claiming 4.73% of active users around the world. She provides the following comparison of these numbers to other Sough American countries. And writing at the Mundo Linden (Linden World) blog, Debora Perenti writes that
The Catholic community and communications network “Canção Nova” will launch the second biggest Brazilian enterprise in Second Life. It is the first Christian world large scale initiative in Linden Lab’s virtual universe. The “Canção Nova Island” forms an archipelago of 25 islands which will turn into the biggest Brazilian (and Global) Christian center, and offers a communal space for relationships, events and business in Second Life, is already in an advanced stage of development and building. The project was already being discreetly executed about 3 months ago. A team of 15 people take care of the diverse aspects in the island, such as terraforming, infrastructure, code programming, multimedia development, along side of the space’s commercial and managerial demands.(Translation by Jose Murilo Junior)
The presence of the Catholic Church in Mainland Brasil is a huge example of the confluence between Web 2.0 applications and a longstanding institution that forms part of the social and cultural fabrics of the Brazilian people.
In addition to the Brazilian presence in Second Life, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians use the Orkut social network. Developed by Google, Orkut is an example of the Brazilian Internet phenomenon listed above – an American network, but more Brazilians than Americans using it. Jose Murilo Junior writes about Orkut as well – as he says,
In order to understand Google’s significance in South America’s biggest country it must be realized that today of the 20 million Brazilians with access to the Internet , approximately 17 million are in Orkut.
And immediately after he makes this statement he pulls together literature from around the Brazilian blogosphere outlining a tension between Brazilian authorities seeking Orkut patron information on people suspected of being involved in foul play and Google’s unwillingness to turn over information it believed should remain confidential. In addition to discussions of censorship and comparisons of Brazil’s government to the governments of China and Iran (both of whom have asked Google for information on Internet users), some of the discussion focused on an extremely frightening prospect for many Brazilians – that Google might elect to close Orkut to Brazilian social networkers rather than turn over data to the Brazilian government. Luckily for Brazilian Orkut users this course of action never became reality, and Orkut is still freely accessible in Brazil. This amalgamation of blogosphere chatter culminates in Murillo Junior’s thought that
All sides should keep in mind that the case can be an opportunity bringing important insights about how to deal with identity in the web environment. Brazilians are ready (eager?) to explore these possibilities. It would be important also that Google Brazil’s team should be prepared to think and move with respect for local cultural sensibilities while dealing with the implications created by such a huge experiment in social networking. It is obvious that ‘adsense’ sales people are not prepared to understand the deep issues that will keep emerging from the incredible digital laboratory spontaneously generated by social networking. Google’s one-size-fits-all approach may just not fit everywhere, every time.
I’d be interested to know any or your thoughts on the extent to which a social network or other Web 2.0 application can be imported from one “local cultural sensibility” into another one, contrasted to the extent of localization that must occur to make a social networking service palatable to a culture different from the one that produced it.
Citizen journalism blog reactions to violence in Brazilian cities
As is evident from Murillo Junior’s sources, the Brazilian blogosphere in general is vast and covers many different topics, from people’s daily lives, to blogs discussing specific topics. (In fact in terms of breadth and topics, the Brazilian blogosphere isn’t too different from the blogosphere in America, although the content posted to Brazilian blogs will have its own distinct cultural characteristics). Though they are by far not the only blogs to discuss these topics, I have run across two blogs in particular that highlight issues within Brazilian politics and rising violence in Rio de Janeiro. Written in both Portuguese and English, the political blog, Brazil Political Comment, is managed by a consultant in São Paulo named John Fitzpatrick, and (in its own words) offers “opinion and analysis of the Brazilian political and business scene.”
A starker example of a social justice blog, Rio Body Count chronicles the numbers of dead and wounded in Rio between February and September of 2007. For the past year to year and a half, Brazil’s major cities – Rio and São Paulo in particular, but other cities as well – have been hit by a severe spike in violence and gang-related activity. There are multiple causes of this spike, but in particular ethnic tensions and a wide gap between wealthy and poorer people (combined with a perception that this gap is widening even further) have fueled this rise of violence. An October 6, 2006 article by Ralph Hoppe in Der Spiegel called São Paulo: Laboratory of Violence provides easily the most graphic but detailed and informative picture of São Paulo’s heightened level of violence I have seen:
The criminal underworld in Sao Paolo wields a power that rivals the Brazilian government’s. It organizes deadly violence but serves as a welfare state, while the city’s wealthy have withdrawn into luxury neighborhoods and feel safe only when they travel by helicopter. Is Sao Paolo a forerunner of the 21st-century metropolis?
For Sao Paolo, 2006 is the year of violence. Never before have there been such intense and protracted battles between gangsters and the police, concentrated attacks that paralyzed the giant city for days… All this violence amounted to a challenge to the Brazilian government by the criminal underground. According to people in the favelas, it was high time. Sao Paolo proper has 10 million inhabitants; it’s the sixth-largest city in the world, the largest in the southern hemisphere. In this chaos of wealth and sordid misery, gleaming skyscrapers and gray huts, the criminal underground has issued its call to arms, and the upper classes have retreated deeper and deeper into enclaves of wealth…
Since this year’s civil war, though, the [“Primeiro Comando da Capital” or “First Command” – the main criminal gang operating in São Paulo] builds internal coherence through fear and trust… and the message of the violent “demonstration” was simple: This city is ours.
Rio witnessed a similar spike in violent crime in 2006 and 2007. Groups like Rio Body Count have used different means, including their blog, to convey a message of opposition to violence of this nature. Accessing the site on September 19 of this year and using Google translator, one passage on the site reads
At the beginning of the project, the shock was gigantic… [An average of ten] died per day, and the people had started to debate on the violence, on the real necessity to decide everything with more violence. Many blogs had appeared to debate the subject, others had deepened the speech, similar projects to the Riobodycount had been initiated in other States of Brazil, and the numbers had been growing each time more…
This violence, peaceful protests against it, and police actions to counter it also entered the mainstream media and made it onto citizen journalism blogs. Roger Cohen wrote about the current violence in Brail and its causes in the New York Times, and on the French citizen journalism site AgoraVox, J.N. Paquet had this report on the Rio de Paz (“River of Peace”) movement placing 3,000 black bags filled with sand on Copacabana beach in Rio to represent the 3,000 people killed in their state during the first half of 2007. He includes the following picture of the Rio de Paz cemetery:
Alan Mota at OhMyNews, a Korean citizen journalism site, wrote about a police reaction to the rise in violence, which involved coordinated efforts by 25,000+ police officers across Brazil and yielded over 2,000 arrests.
Other Brazilian uses of social media
Like any outlet for citizen journalism, Brazilian sites cover many topics – the blog reactions to violence discussed above being just one (rather grim) example. Also writing in OhMyNews, Antonio Carlos Rix covered the Eu-Reporter (“I Reporter”) site, which he describes as “a collaborative section at the famous Brazilian print newspaper and online newspaper O Globo.” Rix also points to two articles by OhMyNews reporter Ana Maria Brambilla, one about citizen photojournalism in Brazil, the other about professional relationships between citizen journalists.
Concerning corporate blogs in Brazil, Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research shares his experiences from a conference in São Paulo:
CEOs here want to blog. I met with CEOs of companies large and small, and this question kept coming up. “How much time does it take?” “What if someone criticizes us?”… I was intrigued that this idea was so popular. I think businesspeople in Brazil are more used to taking risks.
And beyond citizen journalism and the blogosphere, Richard MacManus writes about a host of Brazilian Web 2.0 applications that have emerged within the past two years. He covers, among others, Videolog.tv, theYouTube clone I mentioned above, the Gazzag and Wasabi social networks, the BlogBlogs and OverMundo blogging services, and the Flogão photo sharing service.
So in short, Brazilian social media applications and social media users are extensive and growing, and they use these media platforms to discuss a wide range of topics. As Internet connectivity and Internet use continue to expand in Brazil, the numbers of Brazilians using these applications to put their voices on the Web will do nothing but increase – and, I predict, increase rapidly.
Work Cited:
Euromonitor International. (2006). International Marketing Data and Statistics 2007. 2nd ed, v. 2. London, U.K: Euromonitor International Plc.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
The African blogosphere – more extensive than you might think
South Africa seems to have a ton of social networking services – see Uno de Waal’s blog post listing some of them. Yet aside from South Africa, I only know of one other African-born social network, mykenyanspace.com, and even this network is not actually hosted in Kenya. Apparently it is hosted in the U.S. and directed to Kenyans – see a description of it here. (Of course if there is a large African social network that I am somehow missing exists, let me know! Add a comment!)
It may be tempting to conclude that this absence of social networking is a product of fewer resources, fewer Internet connections, and less training with the use of technology, but reality is more complicated than this. It is true that each of these factors has hindered the development of social media in Africa, but in spite of these factors many Africans have begun experimenting with social connection tools. My observation is that while social networking is still limited in Africa, the African blogosphere is really taking off. The number of African bloggers may still be small compared to the total populations of nations in Africa, but the African blogosphere is extremely vibrant and active, and seems to be growing at an exponential pace.
There are some excellent pan-African blogging tools that have been deployed within the past year. For example, Afrigator is an excellent blog aggregator indexing over 1000 blogs on Africa. Muti is similar to Digg, where news stories are promoted or demoted by Muti readers. News and African culture blogs such as African Path have begun reporting throughout Africa, and special interest news sites such as Pambazuka report on different topics (in Pambazuka’s case, social justice in Africa). Last but not least, Hash, a blogger at White African, one of the best blogs on technology in Africa I’ve encountered, discusses African Signals a podcast on African information and development issues he recently started, as well as AfriGadget, a site dedicated to the use of technology (including simple technology – not always computer based) to solve problems that different communities in Africa face.
(As an aside, Ndesanjo Macha, a citizen journalist for the Global Voices project, conducted an excellent interview with Joshua Wanyama, a co-founder of African Path. Many of Wanyama’s thoughts on the African blogosphere and the future of blogging in Africa are worth quoting at length:
I anticipate a rise of blogging. Citizen media will continually grow. I think we will start seeing a more concerted effort to provide expertise in an area or a model that can allow for bloggers to earn an income by sharing their knowledge. More than that, blogging allows anyone to leverage their knowledge and potentially create a reputation that can give them a better chance at landing a prime job, improving your business or creating a following that can lead to political positions.
I also think a move to mobile technologies will improve the offerings for bloggers. Cell phones are really the access points for information in Africa. There exists some opportunity for entrepreneurs who can develop systems to serve content from news and blogging software to mobile phones in a package. I think we will keep seeing pilot programs and finally real products that will offer such services…
Africans should really care about blogging. Other than localized newspapers, one can’t access news generated by Africans featuring issues specific to them. We need that. Blogging provides access to alternative sources of news and stories that are important to Africans.
The need for African news generated by Africans goes back to creating our own identity and stories. When a western media house reports, on Africa, it is all blood, gore, famine, crime and other negative images. For them, a positive image is tourism. Africans have a lot more than just these issues. We need to hear about a farmer who has created a better way of tilling the land that has enabled the village to have a surplus of maize, or the lady who built a company employing 20 people from good fiscal management and hard work. These are the stories that make Africa wonderful. The hope that all Africans have in abundance is lost in the media and this leads to a negative connotation and identity for Africans. We have to take back our stories for future generations will love to hear what we had to say and actually see it as our own perspective and none other.)
On the topic of who narrates African stories (Africans themselves or others writing about Africa), Afrigator draws from blogs all over the world writing about Africa. Gargoyle on the other hand is a blog search engine that indexes African blogs specifically. The South African Mail & Guardian observes that Sokari Ekine’s widely read, pan-African blog Black Looks “is – unfortunately – one of the handful of African blogs to turn up in the top 10 (sometimes top 15) blogs in a Technorati search of their blog directory when using the search word ‘Africa.’”
Responding in particular to the Mail & Guardian’s observation, Ndesanjo Macha writes about Gargoyle, an African response to the Technorati blog search engine. He quotes Mike Stopforth’s positive reactions to Gargoyle:
It’s frighteningly quick. Warranted, I’m on a 1Mbps ADSL line at home, but if this is how fast Gargoyle can deliver meaningful (and quality) results, it’ll be my very first stop when searching within the SA blogosphere – something I’ve needed to do before and will most certainly need to do in future…
It’s not pretty, but that will come. It has the bells and whistles – an RSS feed for every search as an example, a feature I simply love (from an online reputation management perspective).
This site could very quickly become the standard alternative (or augmentation) to Technorati indexing for African bloggers. Well done on what seems to be a very solid platform.
In sum, the African blogosphere is generating a lot of activity. But in addition to the pan-African blog tools, individual African nations – Kenya and South Africa in particular, but others as well – are generating a lot of blogosphere and social media content. I will write about individual parts of Africa in a later post!
Posted by Aaron Bowen
The African blogosphere part II – Kenya
Kenya provides a great individual case study of the African blogosphere, as there has been a lot happening there in terms of developing Internet access and localized Kenyan content in 2007. Despite halting progress, The Kenyan government is working on securing more widespread Internet access through an undersea fiberoptic cable, and has received money from the World Bank to facilitate this connection (Duncan, are there any more details you can provide?)
In addition to this online community and aggregator, the Kenyan blogosphere is extensive and vibrant. Started July 5, 2004, the Kenyan Blog Webring is a portal to the Kenyan blogosphere with an impressive breadth of coverage and a vibrant community comprised of individual bloggers. Ndesanjo Macha, a citizen journalist for the Global Voices project, offers an excellent summary of KBW’s activities and role in giving Kenyans a voice online. He writes that
Since its birth, KBW has been able to bring to a global audience gigabytes of voices, opinions, news, knoweldge and debates from the Kenyan blogosphere.
Writing on his own personal blog, KBW administrator Daudi Were declared 2007 to be “the year of emergence,” where KBW solidified its position as an Internet institution in Kenya. He says,
The most frequent support question we would be asked in the Admin Team during the first two years was, “Why should I start a blog?” or “What is a blog?” or variations on that theme.
In the last year we mainly get asked, “I have a blog, how do I join the webring?” or “How do I get your aggregator to syndicate my content?” or variations on that theme. They “why” and “what” questions are decreasing, the “how” questions are increasing.
That is a good sign and KBW members have played a big role in convincing Kenyans to blog. These days when someone asks me why they should blog I simply point them to the KenyaUnlimited aggregator. I can almost guarantee you that they will read something that they either agree with whole heartedly or disagree with completely, that fuels an urge in them to get to a keyboard and start typing to contribute to the debate.
In response, Sokari from Black Looks adds her thanks that KBW has played the role that it has played for the past three years.
Beyond the KBW itself, certain individual blogs offer a constantly updated view of the Kenyan blogosphere and/or current issues facing the Kenyan people. In response to a perception that Kenyan government officials have begun trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the Kenyan people – a perception fueled by such events as police raids of Kenyan media outlets last year and police force directed at protesters protesting and attempt by the Kenyan parliament to award themselves pay raises, as well as protests against a law to restrict media freedom proposed by the parliament – Ory Okolloh and a blogger who goes by the name of “M” started Mzalendo, a watchdog blog that publishes updates on the activities of the Kenyan parliament. This project grabbed attention around the Internet, from the BBC to Ethan Zuckerman’s widely read blog. In fact Mzalendo received enough media attention both in Kenya and around the world that at least one Kenyan official has used the site to explain his rationale in voting as he did in parliament.
And no, not all blogs in Kenya are about technology, Internet access, and current issues. Hash, a blogger at White African, one of the best blogs on technology in Africa I’ve encountered, lists KenyanMusings as a blog of interest. KenyanMusings is a blog kept by a 25 year old lady in Nairobi who writes about her daily life, much the way a young blogger in Milwaukee or Tulsa might. Reading through her blog I found a lot of fluff, but I found her writing to be an interesting street-level view of life in Nairobi – similar to many of my friends blogs here in the U.S., but with a definite African perspective added to the mix.
This blogosphere activity has spawned a Kenyan information technology group, BarCamp Kenya, which has weekly meetings to discuss information and technology related issues and maintains a blog called Skunkworks. Google has taken notice of this activity, and had one of their employees featured in a BarCamp Kenya discussion.
Other types of Kenyan Internet community services are also developing themselves. Hash writes about Mashada, an online community, message board, and blog aggregator based in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi. As Hash says,
…This is one of the best community sites coming out of Africa today. It’s got a very healthy community of active users that make it their daily destination for conversation and news.
As Daudi Were noted, 2007 has been (and continues to be) a year of massive growth for the Kenyan blogosphere. And as it continues to grow in coming years, so will its ability to tell the stories of Kenyans to a global audience.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Global social networking
Did you know that Americans do not have the largest social networking communities in the world? According to market research by Ipsos, America comes in fifth place in terms of number of people connected to a social network – South Korea comes in first. According to Ipsos,
Leading all other markets in its love affair with social networking is South Korea, as half (49%) of all adults in this country have visited at least one of these websites in the past, while over half of all online adults have visited a social networking website in the past 30 days… In comparison, about one in five American adults (24%) have ever visited a social networking website.
The chart they include is the best part of this announcement. It points to South Korea and Brazil as being the most active social networkers, with China and Mexico closer to the U.S. but still more active than American social networkers. (additional reports about these findings here, here, and here).
Furthermore, According to research by comScore, a company that measures Internet use statistics, different services gain and maintain popularity in different regions of the world. While social networking in the U.S. is dominated by MySpace and FaceBook, Latin and South America (Brazil in particular) primarily use Orkut, and the Asia/Pacific region uses Friendster first and foremost, and Orkut as a numerically solid alternative. As the comScore press release notes,
MySpace.com (62 percent) and Facebook.com (68 percent) attract approximately two-thirds of their respective audiences from North America. That said, each has already amassed a large international visitor base and both appear poised to continue their global expansion. Bebo.com has a particularly strong grasp on Europe, attracting nearly 63 percent of its visitors from that region, while Orkut is firmly entrenched in Latin America (49 percent) and Asia-Pacific (43 percent). Friendster also attracts a significant proportion of its visitors (89 percent) from the Asia-Pacific region.
And ironically, all the companies in the comScore study are American. Some have just wound up being more popular in other countries besides America. But are there social networking services born in other countries, which cater to people in those countries? Absolutely.
Danah Boyd has provided a (partial) list of foreign social networks, as well as the languages in which they are published and the number of profiles each has. She lists
– Cyworld (Korea)
– QQ (China). Here is a link to the English version of QQ, which has a South African web address and a much cleaner appearance than the Chinese site.
– Hevre (Israel)
– Lunarstorm (Sweden). British version here.
– StudiVZ (Germany). StudiVZ has mirror sites in French, Italian, and Polish, as well as a Spanish language version targeting South America, but no English version.
Her commenters have listed still more services – one pointed in particular to this list, which lists many non-American services. All told I’ve looked at perhaps 30 to 50 non-American social networking services, some of whom claim tens of millions of users.
And yes, foreign social networks can look different from American ones, and people of different nationalities may use them differently from people in the U.S. or discuss topics that wouldn’t reach an American audience. For example Hevre, an Israeli site, looks like this:
La Zona, a music industry oriented social network maintained by MTV Latin America, looks much closer to American social networks than Hevre does, but even then (to my mind at least) this site has a distinctly more Latin American appearance than a U.S.-based social network.
In terms of how people in different countries use social networks differently than people in the U.S., Forrester Research’s Vice President and Principal Analyst Charlene Li wrote a report on Mixi that noted certain cultural differences in how Japanese people network with each other. I found these characteristics of particular interest:
– Invitation-only participation. Most of the Mixi users I spoke with said that they use Mixi only to connect with their friends. The most used feature – the “diary”. They update their own and frequently check their friends’ diaries. While essentially a blog, many users don’t consider it one, as it’s really only for their friends.
– Anonymous profiles. As a rule, the Japanese don’t use their real names on their profiles. While this is also often true in North America, I found it interesting that users made it a point to tell me that they didn’t use their real names. Also, very few of the Mixi users I spoke with said that they had ever interacted with people they did not know, the complete opposite of the behavior usually found on MySpace.
– Heavily mobile-based. Several users told me that text messaging updates actually facilitated participation as they were more comfortable writing than engaging in face-to-face conversations.
– Structure. Unlike MySpace, Mixi is highly structured with minimal ability to change the layout. The users I spoke with liked the structure, as it created certainty about how users were to interact with each other.
Writing in the International Herald Tribune, James Shih echoes Charlene’s thoughts about the structure of Mixi in this article. He notes that
MySpace, for example, has often been described as a “free-for-all” in which members can easily create multiple profiles, add their own programming and post other kinds of media, like pictures, music and videos… Mixi of Japan, however, has a much more structured approach. A person can join only if invited by current members. Personal profiles are based only on text, except for three photos (premium service allows more). Surprisingly, users do not seem to mind. In fact, most members do not post pictures of themselves, opting instead for photos of celebrities, scenery or pets.
This article continues by discussing Cyworld, which it says blends elements of virtual worlds (such as Second Life) with social networking:
Cyworld is yet another story. Personal profiles are dominated by the Miniroom, a 400- pixel-by-200-pixel space that users can decorate with digital furniture, wallpaper and other objects, much as they would decorate real rooms. An avatar, or a character representation referred to as Minime, is also in the room, and the user can change Minime’s clothes, hair and facial expression. In fact, users pay real money to buy the various virtual objects to spice up the lives of their Minimes.
By comparison to Japanese Mixi users, Chinese people are more willing to network with people they do not personally know – in fact they are even more willing to do this than American social networkers are. This chart from the eMarketer report I linked to above indicates that Chinese people are far more outgoing when it comes to social networking than their peers in Europe and the U.S., and the report itself adds that
Among adult Chinese broadband users, 80% had discussed hobbies or interests online via a social network, and 78% had used a social network to meet new people. Less than half of users in most other markets surveyed said they had used a social network for either of those purposes.
The internationalization of social networking has caught the attention of American services as well. MySpace in particular has branched out to other countries. They have dedicated this entire page to their global network, and generated media buzz such as this Victoria Shannon article in the Herald Tribune. But as to how successful these transplanted networks will or will not be among different demographic segments of the world’s population, Bob Ivins of comScore has the most pertinent observation. He notes that
A fundamental aspect of the success of social networking sites is cultural relevance… Those doing well in certain regions are likely doing an effective job of communicating appropriately with those regions’ specific populations. As social networking continues to evolve, it will be exciting to see if networks are able to cross cultural barriers and bring people from different corners of the globe together in fulfilling the truest ideals of social networking.
So I’ve just thrown a bunch of information at you. Now it’s your turn – I’d love to have your thoughts as a comment. Have you encountered the international sphere in your own social networking activities? If so, did you encounter any cultural differences you found particularly striking? If you met someone from a different country through your network, did s/he talk about his/her home country? If so, what did s/he say?
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Why should we talk about (international) social networking?
There’s been an ongoing discussion about whether social networking is a passing fad or a form of connection that is here to stay – and if it is here to stay, how pervasive or inconsequential it will be, and what it will look like as social networking applications continue to develop and reinvent themselves.
The single most significant expression I’ve seen of this outstanding question comes from a discussion on the ACRLog, the blog of the Association of College and Research Libraries. In discussing David Bickford’s assertion in this thread that the 1970s notion of library service done over CB radio was a passing fad, Marc Meola asks if Web 2.0 services such as social networking are a fad or something that is here to stay. Two people responded that certain aspects of Web 2.0 are fads while other aspects will stick around. But a recently minted librarian named Michael C. Habib commented that
MySpace and Facebook are 2.0 as it gets and it would be hard to argue that they have only been picked up by tech geeks. Those services also incorporate blogging, commenting, and photo sharing. Wikipedia, E-Bay, and Craigslist are also 2.0 as it gets. These are just a couple of examples, but the idea is that 2.0 is already mainstream and well entrenched in peoples daily use of the internet. Sites like Flickr might point to a newer breed of 2.0 technologies, but 2.0 is here to stay.
Agreeing with Habib, I wrote that
As the introduction of the Internet to a mass audience in the 1990s showed, it is in a library’s interest to pay attention to disruptive technologies. I would rather be guilty of paying attention to a fad than missing out on the “next big thing” — and 2.0 continues to demonstrate day by day that it is anything but a passing fad.
Other voices have echoed this thought when discussing social networking services explicitly. Forrester Research’s Vice President and Principal Analyst Charlene Li famously described social networking as being “like air.” Jenny Levine at the Shifted Librarian wrote in March of this year that
Hopefully it is becoming clearer that we [as LIS professionals] need to pay attention to virtual worlds because they are going to be a part of our collective, professional future. It’s up to each of us individually how much of a role it will play in our personal lives, just as we make decisions about books, television, the internet, parties, movies, parties, etc. are, but between Sony’s plans, the BBC’s forthcoming online children’s world, Second Life, There, and other virtual spaces, we’re seeing further illustrations of why librarians need to understand how cultures and interactions work in these spaces for our professional lives.
I believe the same to be true about blogs and networking services like FaceBook as well. These applications are affecting and will continue to affect the world of information in new and significant ways, thereby impacting the work we do as library and information professionals. And given that Internet-based information is borderless (with the exception of certain countries where a national government seeks to censor Internet information, a topic I will discuss in a later post), the different forms of social networking services are taking root all over the world.
Writing from Bangladesh, Mahfuz Sadique produced one of the best introductions to the global blogosphere I’ve ever read. He touches on the most significant themes I have seen discussed in foreign blogs, particularly blogs in the developing world. These themes include Internet access, instruction in using a blog platform to generate content, the size of the blogosphere in a given nation compared to the total population of the country, the socioeconomic backgrounds of blog readers in the country, issues of local language and blogging in local languages and non-latin scripts, and localized content such as citizen journalism (and how this content affects traditional journalistic reporting and potentially invokes censorship on the part of a national government. Sadique paints a picture in which many challenges remain in terms of growing the Bangla blogosphere and using it to produce useful content that can inform Bangladeshis and foreigners alike about life in Bangladesh. But he also notes the blogosphere growth that has occurred in Bangladesh, and such successes as opening up the blogosphere to the Bangla language:
Only around one per cent of people in Bangladesh currently have access to the internet. As a result, before the blogging boom, the national presence on the web… had been sparse… However, since blogging has become a popular pastime, the entire Bangladeshi presence on the landscape of the internet has changed. In the beginning Bangladeshi bloggers had to write in English because of technological barriers. But with the incorporation of Unicode (which is an acronym for a standardization of symbols, Universal Code, which recognizes Bengali characters) into various blog-hosting sites, the number of Bangla blogs has risen exponentially. This was best demonstrated by a blog hosted by a Danish-Bangladeshi site, Somewhere in, when it launched an exclusively Bengali blog platform site — ‘Badh Bhangar Aawaj’. According to Hasin Hayder of Somewhere in, ‘there are around 5000 bloggers continuously writing’. The figures are staggering; since it started, a little over a year back, more than 31,000 articles and 350,000 comments have been posted. The ability to blog in Bangla seems to have liberated Bangladesh from its initial online inhibitions.
Because of thoughts like this in the blogosphere, and the fact that the blogosphere continues to foster active participation and discussion around the world, I believe it is important for us in the library profession to have an understanding of how people use these services, and what types of information they use the services to communicate. Certainly there exist considerable challenges for bloggers and social networkers in many countries, such as those Mahfuz Sadique touched upon. But given that people around the world are using social networking services to connect, network, communicate, and share information on global issues and events, library and information professionals have an interest in examining this trend towards internationalization, and considering where and how they may play a role in this international conversation. Given that social networking services will continue to become a prominent means by which people around the world exchanging information, library and information professionals have an interest in monitoring and understanding this global trend.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
What do we mean by social networking?
I am not asking for a comprehensive definition. I have yet to come across any definition that does anything more than offer an understanding of social networking in the broadest possible terms. On August 6 of this year for example, the Wikipedia defined social networking as a service that “focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.” I don’t disagree with any of that, but it doesn’t by itself offer me a greater understanding of what a social networking service is. The Wikipedia staff doesn’t find it adequate either, and have flagged the article as being in need of expansion and of additional material to support the ideas in the article.
I ask this question more to define some boundaries on what Amanda and I (your blog moderators) are proposing for discussion. Common understandings of social networking services hold that services like FaceBook and MySpace fall into the rubric of social networking, and I believe this is what the SIG-III officers had in mind when we came up with the idea of having this discussion.
I have since expanded the scope of this discussion to include the blogosphere as well. Like the networking services listed above, the blogosphere meets the criteria of the Wikipedia’s broad definition of social networking. (And yes, so do image sharing services such as Flickr, video sharing services such as YouTube, and virtual worlds such as Second Life. I have chosen to focus on blogs and FaceBook/MySpace-style services for discussion on the SIG-III blog, but I would be remiss if I failed to note other applications and services that have networking aspects as well). With this in mind, we welcome your ideas on our discussions of internationally focused blogs and networking services, but please do not feel limited by this focus. Please comment on any post you like, and if you would like to contribute an entirely new thought or post, please send it to me at sigiiiblog [at] gmail.com.
Beyond that, here are some more comprehensive definitions of social networking – all open to discussion, debate, and critique. In March of this yeah, Danah Boyd offered the following description of a workshop she put together with Nicole Ellison and Scott Golderat the 3rd Annual Communities and Technologies Conference. In their description they loosely considered social software to “include social network sites (e.g., Cyworld, MySpace, orkut, and Facebook), contemporary online dating services (e.g., Friendster, Spring Street Personals, Match.com), blogging services (e.g., LiveJournal, Xanga, Blogger), tagging tools (e.g. del.icio.us, Digg) and media sharing sites (e.g., YouTube, Flickr).” Then in June, Danah offered a definition of social networking specifically:
To count as a social network site, the site MUST have 1) a public or friends-only profile system; 2) a publicly articulated list of “Friends” who are also on the system (not blogrolls). Friends must be visible on an individual’s profile and it must be possible to traverse the network graph through that list of Friends. If the site does not let you “comment” on Friends’ profiles, please indicate that. This is not necessary although it is a common component. I’m not interested in dating sites, community sites, or blogging tools that do not have public profile + friends that are displayed on profiles.
Socialmedia.biz further describes some of the primary characteristics of social networking services:
1. Communication in the form of conversation, not monologue. This implies that social media must facilitate two-way discussion, discourse, and debate with little or no moderation or censorship. …
2. Participants in social media are people, not organizations. Third-person voice is discouraged and the source of ideas and participation is clearly identified and associated with the individuals that contributed them. Anonymity is also discouraged but permissible in some very limited situations.
3. Honesty and transparency are core values. Spin and attempting to control, manipulate, or even spam the conversation are thoroughly discouraged. …
4. It’s all about pull, not push. … In social media, people are in control of their conversations, not the pushers.
5. Distribution instead of centralization. … Social media is highly distributed and made up of tens of millions of voices making it far more textured, rich, and heterogeneous than old media could ever be (or want to be). Encouraging conversations on the vast edges of our networks, rather than in the middle, is what this point is all about.
And concerning the blogosphere specifically, Paul, a blogger at a South African blog called Chilibean, echos the first and second of Socialmedia.biz’s points. He writes that “a blog is a conversation. Blogs are structured to facilitate interaction between the blogger and the blog’s readers and use simple tools like RSS feeds, comments and trackbacks to keep those conversations going. Blogging lends itself to informality because of the emphasis on the expression of an authentic voice as an essential element of a blog.”
So if you have any thoughts on the nature of social networking as I have presented it here, please leave a comment. Otherwise, I’ll be posting more about the international face of social networking later this evening or tomorrow.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Welcome to the SIG-III blog
The Special Interest Group for International Information Issues (SIG-III, part of the American Society for Information Science and Technology) maintains this blog as a means for communicating with members, colleagues, and others interested in international information issues — in other words the global flow of information, and how people from different countries and cultural backgrounds think about and use information differently.
I (Aaron Bowen, your blog administrator) regularly post articles on different aspects of this topic — current news on information access and use in different countries, as well as related social issues such as globalization, the digital divide, and censorship. Specific examples of these articles include social networks in different countries and how people use them differently, or censorship and subversion on the Web in modern China. In addition to facilitating blog discussion on international information issues, SIG-III members have a live discussion of them every year in the Global Information Village Plaza, part of the ASIS&T Annual Meetings.
Each header on each post is a hyperlink. Clicking it will take you to a page with the original post and all discussion comments that have been added.
We welcome your views! While we reserve the right to remove posts we deem to be spam or malicious in nature, we do not place restrictions on what you may post and we welcome all ideas. Thanks for taking a look at the blog and for contributing your thoughts!
5th Global Information Village Plaza – MySpace, OurSpace: a discussion of social media in the international sphere
Welcome to the Global Information Village Plaza, or GIVP, space on the SIG-III blog. The 2007 GIVP discussion focuses on social networking in international contexts — for example, how social networking services differ by country, and how people from diverse cultural backgrounds use social networking services differently. We’ve posted a number of topics and questions below to spark discussion:
What do we mean by social networking and why talk about it?
Global social networking — Did you know that Americans do not have the largest social networking communities in the world?
The African blogosphere – more extensive than you might think
The African blogosphere part II – Kenya. Don’t look now, but the Kenyan blogosphere is vibrant and growing.
Social media and the Internet in Brazil
Sex, Blogs, and the Great Firewall Part I – Censorship Censorship and subversion on the Web in modern China
Sex, Blogs, and the Great Firewall Part II – Sexuality and Subversion in China. Sex in the Chinese blogosphere — and what official censors think of it.
What’s in a name? Questions of privacy in a Chinese social network
From São Paulo and London with Love. Sex in the Blogosphere in Brazil and England.
Role of information professionals in helping patrons assess trust?
ASIST 2006
General Discussion
- Educate and give information about security and privacy problems to patrons;
- Learn more about trust ourselves;
- try to understand patrons perspective, cultural and otherwise;
- People need to be wary of sources — check facts, even of sources you think are trusted;
- In creating information systems, ensure information is secure;
- “Librarian’s like to search and everyone else likes to find”. As librarians we are inclined to find the most accruate, timely information. However, depending on information need, a thorough, exhaustive search is not always necessary. This method may wind up pushing people away (e.g. Wikipedia for quick and dirty information about a topic;response: most patrons can find the quick and dirty information, so if they come to information professionals, it is our responsibility tin enculcate idea that accuracy is important
response: leads to a marketing opportunity for us to teach patrons the value of quality informationresponse:Credibility is decreased if don’t give patrons the correct answer from the start
response: is it our responsibility to find the best information or train patrons to find and assess information (i.e. self-reliance and responsiblity). We have to stop picking on/dismiss Google and give patrons tools to find good informationresponse: key is to instill awareness of assessing a quality information source - Is information good information or the best information?
Example: when buying a car, consult Consumer Reports but another person will only want to be sure front seat is comfortable.
response: speaks to information needs and fundamentals of a reference interview
response: patrons may avoid a librarian who spends too much time finding the *perfect* piece of informationresponse: Democracy of trust is exemplified with Google’s popularity. The more people use a source, the more it is trusted
Does trust differ with international professionals?
What is trust?
- Freedom of information
- Information should be free flowing in the world
- In developing countries, people trust the people that they know. Not used to searching for information in formal information sources. Tend to ask people that we know, even with the knowledge that they may not be the expert or an authority.
response: as a librarian, tend to think about trust in terms of information sources we consult, but not as often if the information sources are trustworthy to the patronresponse: Brown found that scientists would consult colleagues rather than search for information in journals or databases.
Government censorship
Should a government be allowed to (try to) censor information that its citizens receive? Are there circumstances under which this practice should be considered explicitly acceptable or explicitly unacceptable?
Government surveillance
Is it acceptable for a government to monitor channels of digital information, including personal information, that pass within its borders? If a government has a legitimate interest in doing so, how may it build trust among its citizens that it is not unnecessarily monitoring their communications or collecting their personal information? When should a government have its powers in this regard limited?
In the case of the current wiretapping operatings in the U.S. (outlined in this article by Dan Mitchell in The New York Times), to what extent should people around the world be concerned that the U.S. Government may be monitoring their Internet communications?
(The NY times requires a login to read their articles online. Creating a login and password for the NY Times is free and may be done here).
e-commerce and data mining
Should online retailers or search engines be deterred from mining usage data from their websites, or from monitoring trends in how Internet users are using the Internet as a whole? Are there benefits to allowing an online retailers or search engine to mine data? If so, how far should these sites be allowed to go in terms of collecting personal data? When should they be required to stop?
Here are some articles relating to this discussion:
Wakefield, R., and Whitten, D. 2006. Examining User Perceptions of Third Party Organization Credibility and Trust in an E-retailer.Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, v. 18: 2.
Clark T. H. and Ho G. L. Electronic intermediaries: trust building and market differentiation, in 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, IEEE, 1999, Hawaii.
Which aspects of trust are most significant?
Even a casual review of the literature on trust reveals a cacophony of issues on the subject. From the list below, which one to three issues would you consider most significant
– to you as an information professional
– to you as a consumer of information
when evaluating a website? Why?
– The privacy policy maintained by a website that asks for personal information
– The presence of a logo from a third party organization certifying a site is trustworthy, such as Verisign
– The interests of an electronic retailer in mining data on the information behavior of visitors to its own website
– The interests of an electronic retailer in monitoring data on the information behavior of Internet users in general
– The influence of the blogosphere on a public’s willingness to trust a piece of information
– The environment rich with personal data created by social networking sites such as MySpace, Xanga, Friendster, or LinkedIn
– How perceptions of trust change from culture to culture
Here are some articles relating to this question:
Shanker, L. 2006. In Google we Trust. First Monday, v. 11: 4.
Wakefield, R., and Whitten, D. 2006. Examining User Perceptions of Third Party Organization Credibility and Trust in an E-retailer.Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, v. 18: 2.
Holland C. P. and Lockett A. G. Business trust and the formation of virtual organizations, in 31st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE, 1998, Hawaii.
Gefen, D., Rose, G.M., Warkentin, M., Pavlou, P.A. 2005. Cultural Diversity and Trust in IT Adoption: A Comparison of Potential e-Voters in the USA and South Africa. Journal of Global Information Management, v. 13: 1.
How do we measure trust?
How can a person’s trust in information best be measured?
Here is an article to help guide discussion:
Manchala D. W. Trust metrics, models and protocols for electronic commerce transactions, in 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, IEEE, 1998.
How do we define trust?
What are the key elements of any definition of trust? Also, why talk about it? Why should we as information professionals take an interest (or not take an interest) in discussing trust in information?
Here is an article discussing how trust may be defined:
Grandison, T., and Sloman, M. 2001. A Survey of Trust in Internet Applications. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials.
2018 International Paper Contest Results
The 2018 International Paper Contest Committee is excited to announce the results of the 18th International Paper Contest held by the Association for Information Science & Technology’s Special Interest Group on International Information Issues.
The winners are as follows.
First Place: “Barriers to healthcare information access, use and exchange in rural settings” by Salman Bin Naeem and Rubina Bhatti(The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan)
Second Place: “The political information behavior of rural dwellers in Pakistan” by Muhammad Asif Naveed (University of Sargodha, Pakistan)
Third Place: “Institutions in transition to become blended librarians” by Israel Mbekezeli Dabengwa (National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe), Jaya Raju (University of Cape Town, South Africa), and Thomas Matingwina (National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe)
Thanks!
2018 IPC Committee
Devendra Potnis (Chair)
Ina Fourie
Shima Moradi
Saira Soroya
Nosheen Warraich
Shivanthi Weerasinghe
Results of the 2017 International Paper Contest
- First Place winner is Saira Hanif Soroya of the Department of Information Management, University of the Punjab, Lahore – Pakistan with paper titled “Subject -Based Reading Behavior Differences of Young Adults under Emerging Digital Paradigms.”
- Second Place winner is Masimba Clyde Muziringa, Medical Librarian at the College of Health Sciences Library, University of Zimbabwe, Harare – Zimbabwe with a paper titled “Impact of Research Evidence in Clinical Practice.”
- Third Place winner is Nosheen Fatima Warraich of the Department of information Management at the University of Punjab, Lahore – Pakistan with a paper titled “Attitudes and perceptions about Linked Data technologies: A survey of information professionals in Pakistan.”
The first-place winners will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the 2017 ASIS&T Annual Meeting taking place in the Washington DC area at the Hyatt Regency Hotel Crystal City VA, USA. In addition, the principal authors of each of the selected winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T.
We wish to thank all those who participated in the paper contest from across the globe, extend our hearty congratulations to the above winners and looking forward to a wonderful 2017 Annual Meeting in Washington D.C, USA.
Sincerely,
International Paper Contest Review Team
- Innocent Awasom
- Shimelis Assefa
- Premila Gamage
- Devendra Potnis
- Fatih Oguz
2016/17 SIG III Election Results
On behalf of the Nomination Committee, we are delighted to announce the 2016/17 SIG III elected officers:
CHAIR – Yao Zhang (University of South Carolina, USA)
CO-CHAIR – Ashraf Sharif (The Aga Khan University, Pakistan)
CHAIR-ELECT – Hassan Zamir (University of South Carolina, USA)
CO-TREASURER – Naureen Nizam (University of Toronto, Canada)
CO-TREASURER – Elena Murelli (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy)
SIG CABINET REPRESENTATIVE – Catherine Dumas (SUNY Albany, USA)
INFOSHARE OFFICER – Selenay Aytac (Long Island University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CO-CHAIR (2 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CO-CHAIR (2 positions) – Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (3 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (3 positions) – Devendra Dilip Potnis (University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (3 positions) – Premila Gamage (Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka)
WEBMASTER – Fatih Oguz (UNC Greensboro, USA)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER – Muhammed Sajid Mirza (International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan)
MENTORSHIP COORDINATOR – Jisue Lee (Florida State University, USA)
PAST CHAIR – Xiao Hu (University of Hong Kong, China)
***************************************************
ASIS&T SIG-III Nominating Committee
Anatoliy Gruzd, Abebe Rorissa, Catherine Dumas
Annual Business Meeting @ the ASIS&T AM
We are going to have our SIG’s business meeting at the annual meeting in Copenhagen
Date: Oct. 18, 2016 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:15 to 3:30 pm
Location: Thames 2
The agenda is attached:
2016/17 SIG III Election Nomination
On behalf of the Nomination Committee, we are delighted to announce the 2016/17 SIG III nominated officers:
SIG CABINET REPRESENTATIVE – Catherine Dumas (University of South Carolina & SUNY Albany, USA)
CHAIR-ELECT –
CO-CHAIR-ELECT – Hassan Zamir (University of South Carolina, USA)
TREASURER – Naureen Nizam (Dalhousie University, Canada)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CHAIR (1 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA) ; Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (2 positions) – Fatih Oguz (UNC Greensboro, USA) ; Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA) ; Devendra Dilip Potnis (University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA); Premila Gamage (Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka)
INFOSHARE OFFICER – Selenay Aytac (Long Island University, USA)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER (2 position) – Muhammed Sajid Mirza (International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan)
MENTORSHIP COORDINATOR – Jisue Lee (Florida State University, USA)
***************************************************
ASIS&T SIG-III Nominating Committee
Anatoliy Gruzd, Abebe Rorissa, Catherine Dumas
2016 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest Winners
By Innocent Awasom, International Paper Contest Chair, ASIS&T SIG-III
We had a busy year planning for the 2016 paper contest. Calls for proposals were sent out March 3rd, 2016 with a deadline of May 31st, 2016. With permission from the Chair, we included the papers received in 2015 for consideration alongside the 2016 papers. We had 5 papers from 2015 from India, Nigeria and Pakistan and 8 papers in 2016 from Algeria, Ethiopia, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zambia. The great team of jurors worked on a rubric that was used to grade the papers during the month of June and July. The results below were published on August 2nd, 2016.
First Place winners:
2016: Yared Mammo and Patrick Ngulube (Ethiopia) – Insights into e-information resources (e-journals) Access Models in Higher Learning Institutions in Ethiopia.
2015: Amjid Khan and Shamshad Ahmed (Pakistan) – Usage of E-Databases and E-journals by Research Community in Pakistani Universities: Issues and Perspectives
Second Place winners:
2016: Muhammad Arif and Saima Kanwal (Pakistan) – Adoption of Social Media Technologies and their Impact on Students’ Academic Performance: The only Way for Future Survival of Distance Education Students in Pakistan
2015: Hamza Musa and Zakari Muhammad (Nigeria) – Access to online Arabic information resources by the Academics in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and Bayero University Kano, Nigeria.
Third Place winners:
2016: Syeda Batool and Sheila Webber (Pakistan) – Mapping information literacy situation in primary schools: A case of Pakistan.
2015: Deep Jyoti Francis and Vineet Kumar (India) – Cricket and Copyright in Indian Courts: Commercial Interests or National/Public Interests.
The principal authors of each of the winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the 2016 ASIS&T annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. The winning papers will be considered for publication by Taylor & Francis’ International Information and Library Review (IILR). We thank Routledge/Taylor & Francis for their support of this program. Special appreciation to the jurors for the 2016 competition: Innocent Awasom (chair, USA), Maqsood Shaheen (Member, Pakistan) and J.K Vijayakumar (Member, Saudi Arabia).
InfoShare Awards for 2016
By Anindita Paul, InfoShare Officers, ASIS&T SIG-III
The Infoshare awards were announced in January 2016. The membership award which is for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year, is an opportunity for professionals, researchers and students to strengthen their relationship with ASIS&T. Thirteen nominations were received out of which 8 were professionals, 2 students and the rest 2 were transitional. One nomination was a renewal from last year. The nominees were from Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We are happy to announce that with the consent of the SIG-III officers and the budget allocation of this year, all of the applicants were awarded the Infoshare award, including the renewal applications from last year. The award winners are as follows:
- Azadeh Aletaha, Iran,
- Bashir Ahmed, Pakistan,
- Behjat Nezhadmohammad Namaghi, Iran,
- Claudio Gottschalg-Duque, Brazil,
- Iman Tahamtan, Iran
- Manjula Wijewickrema, Sri Lanka,
- Marzieh Siamak, Iran,
- Pari Hosseinzadeh, Iran,
- Sanam Ebrahimzadeh, Iran,
- Shima Moradi, Iran,
- Zaheer Ahmad, Pakistan,
- Jiban Pal, India,
- Girma Debele Dinegde, Ethiopia
InfoShare Awards for 2015
On behalf of all our fellow officers of the Special Interest Group for International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), we are pleased to announce the winners of the InfoShare awards for 2015.
Information professionals from developing countries, where the cost of ASIS&T membership would be a burden, are eligible to receive one year of membership. SIG-III officers vote on a roster of candidates nominated by ASIS&T colleagues or others. These memberships are funded by monies raised at the International Reception during the ASIS&T Annual Meeting. 2014 was a very successful year for the reception in Seattle and we are thrilled to be able to offer memberships to 5 outstanding professional candidates and 2 student candidates:
Professional members
Dwaymian Brissette, Jamaica
Elsabé Olivier, South Africa
Olufunmilayo Iyabo Fati, Nigeria
Shima Moradi, Iran
Vesna Vuksan, Serbia
Student members
Amjid Khan s/o Lakhkar Khan, Pakistan
Jiban K. Pal, India
Please welcome these new members into the ASIS&T community!
Nominations for ASIS&T SIG-III InfoShare Membership Award I — Students
The ASIS&T International Information Issues Special Interest Group (SIG-III) is pleased to announce that for 2015 we will be able to sponsor another group of deserving information professionals from developing countries for complimentary ASIS&T memberships (the financial burden of which would otherwise be prohibitive). We are soliciting nominations of candidates for the InfoShare Membership Award. The award will be given to master and/or PhD students.
Please include a one-page curriculum vitae and a one-page description of why this person is deserving of membership, including their willingness to promote ASIS&T within their networks and build relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations. Awardees will be decided by a vote of the SIG-III officers. All curricula vitae will be kept private, accessible only to SIG-III officers.
Each membership award will be for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year. Awardees will be asked to submit a report on their activities by next year’s Annual Meeting, which may include, but are not limited to:
- sharing ASIS&T publications that they receive (the Bulletin of ASIS&T and JASIS&T) with other colleagues
- promoting the SIG-III paper contest among their colleagues
- serving as a contact/coordinator for ASIS&T members traveling to their area who may be able to speak about ASIS&T and information science
- having the ability to strengthen the relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations, and
- sponsoring lectures on information science topics in their area on behalf of ASIS&T
Nominators can mentor the award recipients for the above activities.
We look forward to welcoming new members to ASIS&T from across the globe, especially from countries that have never been ASIS&T members or have limited ASIS&T membership. Women, minority, and candidates from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.
Please feel free to circulate the Call in your professional networks (e.g., your alma mater listservs, professional contacts at IFLA, OCLC, international organizations, practitioner groups, academic institutions, etc.). Please send your nominations of deserving candidates to Selenay Aytac (selenay.aytac@liu.edu) or Christine Hagar (christine.hagar@sjsu.edu).
The deadline for submitting nominations is December 31st 2014.
Thank you!
Selenay Aytac and Christine Hagar
InfoShare Program, SIG-III, ASIS&T
Nominations for ASIS&T SIG-III InfoShare Membership Award II — LIS Professionals
The ASIS&T International Information Issues Special Interest Group (SIG-III) is pleased to announce that for 2015 we will be able to sponsor another group of deserving information professionals from developing countries for complimentary ASIS&T memberships (the financial burden of which would otherwise be prohibitive). We are soliciting nominations of candidates for the InfoShare Membership Award. The award will be given to LIS professionals.
Please include a one-page curriculum vitae and a one-page description of why this person is deserving of membership, including their willingness to promote ASIS&T within their networks and build relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations. Awardees will be decided by a vote of the SIG-III officers. All curricula vitae will be kept private, accessible only to SIG-III officers.
Each membership award will be for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year. Awardees will be asked to submit a report on their activities by next year’s Annual Meeting, which may include, but are not limited to:
- sharing ASIS&T publications that they receive (the Bulletin of ASIS&T and JASIS&T) with other colleagues
- promoting the SIG-III paper contest among their colleagues
- serving as a contact/coordinator for ASIS&T members traveling to their area who may be able to speak about ASIS&T and information science
- having the ability to strengthen the relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations, and
- sponsoring lectures on information science topics in their area on behalf of ASIS&T
Nominators can mentor the award recipients for the above activities.
We look forward to welcoming new members to ASIS&T from across the globe, especially from countries that have never been ASIS&T members or have limited ASIS&T membership. Women, minority, and candidates from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.
Please feel free to circulate the Call in your professional networks (e.g., your alma mater listservs, professional contacts at IFLA, OCLC, international organizations, practitioner groups, academic institutions, etc.). Please send your nominations of deserving candidates to Selenay Aytac (selenay.aytac@liu.edu) or Christine Hagar (christine.hagar@sjsu.edu).
The deadline for submitting nominations is December 31st 2014.
Thank you!
Selenay Aytac and Christine Hagar
InfoShare Program, SIG-III, ASIS&T (Visit us at: https://www.asis.org/SIG/iii.
2014 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest Winners
The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) is pleased to announce the following winners of its 13th International Paper Contest:
- First Place Winner: Bhakti Gala for the paper on “Blogs, Bloggers and Scholarly Publications” (INDIA)
- Second Place Winner: Muhammad Javed Iqbal for the paper entittled “Scholars’ Perceptions about HEC Library Resources and Services: A Quantitative Study of User Satisfaction” (PAKISTAN)
The principal authors of each of the winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the 2014 ASIS&T annual meeting in Seattle, WA (USA).
The first place paper will be considered for publication by Taylor & Francis’ International Information and Library Review (IILR).
We thank the jurors for the 2014 competition: Maqsood Shaheen (Chair), Fatih Oguz (Member), and Alma Rivera (Member).
We also thank Routledge/Taylor & Francis for their support of this program.
2014/15 SIG III Election Results
On behalf of the Nomination Committee, we are delighted to announce the 2014/15 SIG III elected officers:
CHAIR – Shimelis Assefa (University of Denver, USA)
CO-CHAIR – Nouf Kashman (McGill University, Canada)
CHAIR-ELECT – Xiao Hu (University of Hong Kong, China)
CO-CHAIR-ELECT – Yao Zhang (University of South Carolina, USA)
TREASURER – Naureen Nizam (Dalhousie University, Canada)
SIG CABINET REPRESENTATIVE – Catherine Dumas (SUNY Albany, USA)
NEWSLETTER EDITOR – Lama Khoshaim (Dalhousie University, Canada)
INFOSHARE OFFICER (2 positions) – Chris Hagar (San Jose State University USA)
INFOSHARE OFFICER (2 positions) – Selenay Aytac (Long Island University, USA)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST CHAIR – Maqsood Shaheen (International Islamic University, Islamabad)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (2 positions) – J.K. Vijayakumar (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia)
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST JURY MEMBER (2 positions) – Innocent Awasom (Texas Tech University, USA)
WEBMASTER (2 positions) – Fatih Oguz (UNC Greensboro, USA)
WEBMASTER (2 positions) – Borchuluun Yadamsuren (University of Missouri, USA)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER (2 positions) – Muhammed Sajid Mirza (International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan)
COMMUNICATION OFFICER (2 positions) – Anindita Paul (Indian Institute of Management, India)
MENTORSHIP COORDINATOR – Loni Hagen (SUNY Albany, USA)
Silent Auction at International Reception – ASIS&T 2014
- Half-circle shawl with sparkle–tencel and beads
- Long, dark teal alpaca scarf, traditional Shetland pattern
- Long merino-silk lace scarf
- Long mohair-silk lace scarf
SIG III Webinar: Not All MOOCs Are Created Equal: A Comparative Evaluation of Popular MOOC Platforms
ASIS&T Presents … |
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Not All MOOCs Are Created Equal: A Comparative Evaluation of Popular MOOC PlatformsWebinar Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 1:00pm-2:00pm (EDT)
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| System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 ServerMac®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newerMobile attendees Required: iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phone or Android tablet | ||||||||||||||||
Call for Participation: Donate Items for the Silent Auction in Seattle, WA, 77th ASIS&T Annual Meeting 10/31 – 11/4 2014
It is not too early to start thinking about what you would like to donate to the silent auction held each year at SIG III’s International Reception. This event is always one of the highlights of the Annual Meetings.
The money that is raised by this event is used to help fund SIG III’s InfoShare project which awards 1-year ASIST memberships to InformationProfessionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would be a financial burden.
This year we are going to have a page on the SIG III website for you to showcase your items months in advance of the silent auction.
The first step in the process is to go to this formhttp://www.formpl.us/form/0B4nZCvpgLedRRlhjb3NWeVB2YUE/ and provide a description and an image of the item(s) you wish to donate. We plan to post some of these items and their pictures on the SIG III website around the end of August. We are looking forward to all of your wonderful donations.
For more information contact Catherine Dumas at cdumas@albany.edu
SIG III @ #ASIST14
Attending the ASIS&T 2014 Annual Meeting in Seattle this year? Mark your calendar to attend the following SIG-III events:
NOTE: Please see the conference programme to confirm the location for each of the event listed below.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 9AM-5PM
Workshop on Trust & Information Policy in the Age of Data
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/seminars_workshops_Information_Policy.html
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 7:00PM
Welcome Reception – Special Interest Groups and Chapters will be represented, giving members and potential members a fun opportunity to share ideas and get acquainted.
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/social.html#welcome
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1:30PM
Panel: Open Access: The Global Scene (co-sponsored SIG/IFP & SIG/III)
Shimelis Assefa1, Abebe Rorissa2, Krystyna Matusiak1, Daniel Alemneh3, Kris Helge3, Sam Hastings4
1University of Denver, United States of America; 2University at Albany, United States of America; 3University of North Texas, United States of America;4University of South Carolina, United States of America
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/abstracts/panels/90.html
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2:50-3:50PM
SIG III Business Meeting (All SIG members are welcome!)
Location: Madronna — First Room
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2:00PM
Panel: The Role of Social and other Media in the Unrests in Egypt, Turkey and Ukraine
Anatoliy Gruzd1, Selenay Aytac2, Nouf Khashman3
1Ryerson University, Canada; 2Long Island University, USA; 3McGill University, Canada
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/abstracts/panels/51.html
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2:00PM
Panel: How can information providers connect information resources to entrepreneurs to spur innovation in economic development?
Kendra Albright1, France Bouthillier2, Tao Jin3, Yao Zhang1
1University of South Carolina, United States of America; 2McGill University, Canada; 3Louisiana State University, United States of America
http://www.asis.org/asist2014/abstracts/panels/62.html
2014 Spring issue of the SIG-III Newsletter is now out!
We are delighted to announce that our 2014 Spring issue of the SIG III Newsletter is now out: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/newsletter
In this issue, you will find information about our long-standing initiatives such as the International Paper Award and Infoshare Awards as well as get a glimpse of some of our new initiatives.
2014 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest for Developing Countries
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its 14th competition for papers to be submitted for the 2014 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Sheraton Seattle Hotel, Seattle, WA, October 31- November 4, 2014. (http://www.asis.org/
Building from the overall conference theme, the theme for this year’s paper contest is: “Connecting Collections, Cultures, and Communities”. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. The maximum length for a paper is 10 pages, single-spaced. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. The SIG-III welcomes contributions from all areas of information science and technology. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following core areas:
Arts & Humanities; Bioinformatics; Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts; Classification Research; Critical Issues; Digital Libraries; Education for Information Science; Health Informatics; History & Foundations of Information Science; Human Computer Interaction; Information Architecture; Information Needs, Seeking and Use; Information Policy; International Information Issues; Knowledge Management; Library Technologies; Management; Metrics; Scientific & Technical Information; Social Informatics; and Visualization, Images & Sound.
Deadline for submission of full papers: Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2014, to Maqsood Shaheen at ShaheenMA@gmail.com, preferably as Microsoft Word or PDF attachments. For more information, please see http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/paper-contest
Publishing opportunities: Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the Taylor and Francis’s International Information and Library Review (IILR), subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
Announcement of the 2014 ASIS&T Sig-III InfoShare Award
The ASIS&T International Information Issues Special Interest Group (SIG-III) is pleased to announce that for 2014 we will be able to sponsor another group of deserving information professionals from developing countries for complimentary ASIS&T memberships (the financial burden of which would otherwise be prohibitive).
We are soliciting nominations of candidates for the InfoShare Membership Award. The award will be given to students (master and/or PhD) and professionals.
Please include a one-page curriculum vitae and a one-page description of why this person is deserving of membership, including their willingness to promote ASIS&T within their networks and build relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations. Awardees will be decided by a vote of the SIG-III officers. All curricula vitae will be kept private, accessible only to SIG-III officers.
Each membership award will be for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year if the new member proves to be a strong advocate for ASIS&T in their home country during the course of the year. Awardees will be asked to submit a report on their activities by next year’s Annual Meeting, which may include, but are not limited to:
- sharing ASIS&T publications that they receive (the Bulletin of ASIS&T and JASIS&T) with other colleagues
- promoting the SIG-III paper contest among their colleagues
- serving as a contact/coordinator for ASIS&T members traveling to their area who may be able to speak about ASIS&T and information science
- having the ability to strengthen the relationships between ASIS&T and the national/regional organizations, and
- sponsoring lectures on information science topics in their area on behalf of ASIS&T
Nominators can mentor the award recipients for the above activities.
We look forward to welcoming new members to ASIS&T from across the globe, especially from countries that have never been ASIS&T members or have limited ASIS&T membership. Women, minority, and candidates from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.
Please feel free to circulate the Call in your professional networks (e.g., your alma mater listservs, professional contacts at IFLA, OCLC, international organizations, practitioner groups, academic institutions, etc.). Please send your nominations of deserving candidates to Devendra Potnis (dpotnis@utk.edu) or Selenay Aytac (selenay.aytac@liu.edu).
The deadline for submitting nominations is February 16, 2014.
Thank you!
Devendra Potnis & Selenay Aytac
InfoShare Program, SIG-III, ASIS&T (Visit us at: https://www.asis.org/SIG/iii.html)
Winner of the 2013 SIG Publication of the Year Award!
Thanks to Daniel’s great leadership, SIG III’s 30th Anniversary Commemorative Publication won the 2013 SIG Publication of the Year Award!
WINNERS OF THE 2013 ASIS&T SIG III INTERNATIONAL PAPER CONTEST
The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) is pleased to announce the following winners of its 13th International Paper Contest:
First Place Winner:
Melody M. Madriad. A Study of Digital Curator Competencies: A survey of experts. (Philippines)
Second Place Winner:
Maryam Mousavizadeh, et al. Visualizing of the Structure of Subject Trends in Persian Articles Published During 2008-2012 in Information Organization Domain. (Iran)
Third Place Winner:
Ana Mae Kristine U. Hubilla. Information Seeking Behavior (ISB) of Technical Secondary Students: A Basis for a Model on Information Search Process. (Philippines)
The jurors for the 2013 competition included Maqsood Shaheen (Chair), Fatih Oguz (Member), and Alma Rivera (Member).
The principal authors of each of the three winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, November 1-5, 2013.
The winning papers will be considered for publication by Elsevier’s International Information and Library Review (IILR).
We thank the jury members for their hard work and our donors for their compassion which makes it possible to develop and sustain this international network of scholars in developing countries.
Maqsood Ahmad Shaheen
Chair, 2013 ASIS&T International Paper Contest
ShaheenMA@gmail.com
SIG III: Getting Published in Reputable International Journals and Other Publications
Webinar Date: Wednesday, September 4, 2013, 11:30pm-12:30pm (EDT)
The ASIS&T Special Interest Group for International Information Issues (SIG III) has conducted over a dozen annual international paper contests where winning papers are published in the International Information and Library Review. However, some papers that are worthy of being published in the journal, are never published. Authors of those papers are often interested in learning about the policies and procedures for getting their papers submitted, reviewed, accepted, and eventually published in reputable international journals.
In this webinar, three distinguished speakers, who are all current and/or past editors and/or members of editorial boards of a number of major international journals as well as other major publications, will address the following five broad questions and topics to provide webinar participants with an understanding of the process for evaluation and review of manuscripts:
- How do you identify prestigious journals and conferences?
- What fundamental characteristics of manuscripts and their contents would enhance the chance of their being accepted and, eventually, published? In other words, what are the characteristics of an ideal manuscript?
- What problems and pitfalls should authors avoid in getting their manuscripts ready for submission to scholarly journals and publications? That is, what makes a manuscript likely to be rejected by editors in the first or subsequent rounds of review and evaluation?
- Mentors and advisors often talk about finding a scholarly journal and/or publication that is a good fit for a manuscript and its contents. What does that mean and how can one tell?
- What additional advice would you give specifically for scholars and authors from developing countries, including, but not limited to, those for whom English is not their native language?
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| To submit your questions for the speakers (by Monday, September 2, 2013), please visit: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZJ9FXWF |
| Webinar Pricing and Registration |
| ASIS&T members and non-members: Free |
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After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. After the webinar broadcast, you will have unlimited access to the presentation. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 ServerMac®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newerMobile attendees Required: iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phone or Android tablet |
2013 InforShare Award Winners
We are proud to announce the winners of the InfoShare membership award for 2013. This year we are able to support 7 professionals and students from 5 different countries.
Awardees:
- Janakiraman Amirthalingam
- Mahmood Khosrowjerdi
- Yared Mammo
- Ibrahim Ramjaun
- Teklemichael T. Wordofa
- Fatima Zahra
- Maryam Zakerhamidi
SIG-III 2012 Business Meeting Minutes
Below are minutes from the 2012 SIG-III business meeting in Baltimore last month. This was such a great meeting! They are pretty thorough and I think Shimelis did a remarkable job in capturing the spirit and content of the meeting as the recorder. But please let him know if we missed any significant details or misconstrued anything.
- The 2012 SIG-III Business Meeting Minutes
The InforShare Program
InfoShare, a program sponsored by SIG III, awards one-year ASIST memberships to information professionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would be a financial burden. This paper provides detail information about the InfoShare program and analyse its impact and contribution interms of introducing ASIS&T to numerous information professionals around the world.
The InfoShare Program
By Abebe Rorissa, Davendra Potnis, and Fatih Oguz
The SIG-III Social Media
The paper from the SIG III Social Media squad discusses about the growing reliance on social media among scholars, and how SIG-III’s active online and social media presence further contribute to engage the broader ASIS&T community
- The SIG III Social Media
By Jennifer Yurchak, Anindita Paul, and Anatoliy Gruzd
SIG-III Events at 2012 ASIS&T Annual Meeting
Dear all,
If you are attending ASIS&T 2012 in Baltimore, please join us for the following SIG-III Events:
- SIG-III Events at 2012 ASIS&T Annual Meeting
SIG-III’s 30th Anniversary Publication
As part of the celebration of the 75th ASIS&T and 30th SIG-III anniversaries, we are putting together this special publication. Well, an anniversary is symbolic, but there is a very real feeling to it that makes us reflect on a variety of issues, including where we have been, and of course, maintaining the legacy of the SIG-III and shaping its futur. In this regard, current and past SIG-III Officers discuss a variety of issues commemorating the SIG-III’s 30th Anniversary.
asist-sig_iii_30th_anniversary_commemorative_publication-1982-2012 2
SIG-III’s 30th Anniversary Interviews: Cofounders’ Reflections
“If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Sir Issac Newton
In preparation of the 75th ASIS&T Anniversary and 30th Anniversary of SIG-III, Daniel Alemneh, Chair of SIG-III, interviewed SIG-III founders and pioneers Toni Carbo and Michel Menou in September 2012.
It is very fitting to open our interview (our “Cofounders Reflections”) with Sir Issac Newton’s famous saying. It is true that leadership qualities are instilled in almost every individual when they are born. But, opportunities for developing leadership skills are provided to everyone as they grow and mature. Taking advantage of these opportunities and learning from the experiences are truly what makes leaders in almost any field. In this regard, the interviews are really an opportunity to visit with the two SIG-III Co-founders, learn from their experiences, and capture their reflections, and make a lasting contribution to SIG-III and ASIS&T history.
- Link to interview with Toni Carbo:
–Text
Congratulation to the Winner of the ASIS&T SIG-III Twitter Draw!
To celebrate the official launch of ASIS&T SIG III’s Twitter account (@sig3i), this month we conducted a random draw among our Twitter followers. We are pleased to announce that the winner of our draw and recipient of the $50 Amazon.com gift card is Isabella Peters (@Isabella83) from Heinrich-Heine-Universität Duesseldorf in Germany!!!
Congratulation, Isabella!
We also invite everyone to follow our @sig3i account for the latest news and updates about the SIG as well as tweets about research, news & jobs for ASIS&T members from around the globe.
SIG-III announces 2012 International Paper Contest winners
SIG-III is pleased to announce winners for the 2012 (or 13th) International Paper Contest. This year we received 14 papers from all-across Asia and Africa. The first place award goes to Muhammad Sajid Mirza AND Dr. Khalid Mahmood, both from Pakistan. Their paper is titled “Electronic resources and services in Pakistani university libraries: A survey of users’ satisfaction.” As principal author, Muhammad Sajid Mirza will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T, as well as funding to travel to this year’s annual Meeting.
The second place award goes to Yahya Ibrahim Harnade, from Nigeria, and will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T. Yahya’s paper is titled: “Authorship Patterns in Engineering Education.”
Third place winner is Lallaisangzuali from India and the paper is titled: “Information Needs and Seeking Behaviour of Social Science Post-Graduate Students and Research Scholars of Mizoram University: A Case Study.”
We have a double fourth place winners this year. One of the fourth place winners is Irene Onyancha from Ethiopia and her paper is titled “Addressing Institutional Dementia in Africa: The case of the ECA Institutional Repository – A knowledge base on African socio-economic development.” The other fourth place winners are Ibrahim Usman Alhaji AND Yahya Ibrahim Harnade from Nigeri. Their paper is titled: “Basic Literature of Diabetes: A Bibliometrics Analysis of Three Countries in Different World Regions.”
Those winning papers and other submitted papers for the competition will be considered for publication by Elsevier’s International Information and Library Review: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-information-and-library-review/. The principal authors of each of the three winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a maximum of $2,000 to attend the 2012 ASIS&T Annual Conference.
Please join SIG-III in congratulating our 2012 Contest winners! We hope you will come meet them at the International Reception at this year’s ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, October 26-30, 2012: http://asist.org/asist2012/.
SIG-III May 2012 Newsletter published
We’ve published the SIG-III May 2012 Newsletter: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/drupal/newsletter. Here’s what is inside the May issue of SIG-III Newsletter: a message from the chair of SIG-III Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, a full recap of the SIG-III Business meeting and other activities, 2012 Infoshare award recipients, reports and spotlights on sample initaives and International collobrative projects of SIG-III Officers, a listing of upcoming events and activities. Our next issue will appear in September before the annual meeting, which will provide more details on 2012 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest winners and events that SIG-III is hosting at the annual meeting in Baltimore, MD.
Join SIG-III on Twitter at @sig3i
2012 InforShare Winners
We are proud to announce the winners of the InfoShare membership award for 2012. This year we are able to support 9 professionals and 3 students from 7 different countries.
Professional Members:
- Muhammad Sajid Mirza
- Maqsood Shaheen
- E. Ramesh
- Amjid Khan
- Ayman S. El-Dakroury
- Dinesh Chandra
- Kamani Perera
- Ana MarÃa Talavera Ibarra
- Najia Abdallaoui Maan
Student Memberships
- Claudia Bucceroni Guerra
- Muhammad Shafiq
- Shafiq Ur Rehman
Congratulations! And welcome to the ASIS&T community!
Announcement of the 2012 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest for Developing Countries
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its twelfth competition for papers to be submitted for the 2012 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Baltimore, Maryland, October 26-31, 2012. (http://asist.org/asist2012/)
Building from the overall conference theme, the theme for this year’s paper contest is:“Information, Interaction, Innovation: Celebrating the Past, Constructing the Present, and Creating the Future”. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following core areas:
- Intercultural Information Ethics: Critical reflection on the ethical challenges related to the global and cross-cultural production, storage, and distribution of information, as well as the ethical dimensions of the global development and implementation of information systems, infrastructures, and policies.
- Information Behavior: Information needs, information seeking, information gaps and sensemaking in various contexts including work, interests or every-day life activities by individuals or groups.
- Knowledge Organization: Indexing, index construction, indexing languages, thesaurus construction, terminology, classification of information in any form, tagging (expert, userbased, automatic), filtering, metadata, standards for metadata, information architecture.
- Information Systems, Interactivity and Design: How people use and communicate with information systems; the design, use and evaluation of interactive information technologies and systems, including interfaces and algorithms; search and retrieval, browsing, visualization, personalization.
- Information and Knowledge Management: Information and knowledge creation, transfer and use at the personal, group, organizational and societal levels. The management of the processes and systems that create, acquire, organize, store, distribute, and use information and/or knowledge. Selected papers will be published in the International Journal of Information Management.
- Information Use: How people re-purpose existing knowledge from a variety of sources (scientific, humanities, news, family, friends, colleagues), forms (articles, books, video, audio, tweets), locations (work, home, in transit) and mediums (cell-phones, PDAs, digital libraries) to advance knowledge, solve problems, improve information literacy, and learn.
- Information and Society: Economic, Political, Social Issues: Copyright issues, policies and laws; national and international information policies; privacy and security; economics of information, personal rights vs. freedom of information; surveillance; globalization and the flows of information; computerization movements; social informatics.
Selection Criteria
There will be up to three winners who will be selected by a panel of judges including: Maqsood Shaheen (IRC, US Embassy Islamabad), -Alma Rivera (Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México), and, Fatih Oguz (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
The judging criteria will be based on:
- Originality of paper in the developing world and global information ecosystem (originality of the project described, etc.)
- Relevance to the paper contest theme
- Quality of argument, presentation and organization
Eligibility & Information for authors
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2008-2011 contests are not eligible. The papers should be original, unpublished, and submitted in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information.
Award
The award for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, October 26-31, 2012..
Style
The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors. Detailed information is available under the heading, Guide for Authors at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622845/authorinstructions
Publishing opportunities
Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
ASIS&T Copyright Policy
ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author.
Deadline for submission of full papers: Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2012, to Maqsood Shaheen at ShaheenMA@gmail.com, preferably as Microsoft Word or PDF attachments.
2011 Paper Contest
Run annually by SIG-III, the International Paper Contest is a contest to which information professionals from developing countries can submit pieces of research not exceeding 5000 words which they have done.Up to six (6) winners are selected in each annual contest. The prize for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Meeting.The theme of the Paper Contest mirrors the theme of the ASIS&T Annual Meeting for any given year. The theme may be addressed at either the country or regional level issues. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme, such as, but not limited to the following (mainly adopted from the conference theme):
- Multilingual information systems
- Cross-language information retrieval
- Accessibility and cultural factors in system design and information services
- Cross-border data flows
- Open access and cultural diversity
- Information literacy and challenges of harmony versus hegemony
- The role of international organizations in building on diversity
- Digital inclusion
- Social networking in a linguistically and culturally rich environment
- Information behavior in diverse contexts
- Knowledge management in diverse contexts
- Information policy
Papers will be selected through a peer review process. The judging criteria will be based on:
- Originality of paper in the developing world environment (originality of the project described, etc.)
- Relevance to the Paper contest.
- Presentation and organization.
- Style. The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors. Detailed information is available under the heading, Guide for Authors.
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2006-2009 contests are not eligible. The papers should beoriginal, unpublished, and ONLY in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information. Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal. ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author
Announcement of the 2011 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its eleventh competition for papers to be submitted for the 2011 Annual Meeting, which will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 7-12, 2011. ( http://www.asis.org/asist2011/am11cfp.html )
Building from the overall conference theme, the theme for this year’s paper contest is:
“Bridging the Gulf: Communication and Information in Society, Technology, and Work”. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme from a global and/or international perspective. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following core areas:
1. Intercultural Information Ethics: Critical reflection on the ethical challenges related to the global and cross-cultural production, storage, and distribution of information, as well as the ethical dimensions of the global development and implementation of information systems, infrastructures, and policies.
2. Information Behavior: Information needs, information seeking, information gaps and sensemaking in various contexts including work, interests or every-day life activities by individuals or groups.
3. Knowledge Organization: Indexing, index construction, indexing languages, thesaurus construction, terminology, classification of information in any form, tagging (expert, userbased, automatic), filtering, metadata, standards for metadata, information architecture.
4. Information Systems, Interactivity and Design: How people use and communicate with information systems; the design, use and evaluation of interactive information technologies and systems, including interfaces and algorithms; search and retrieval, browsing, visualization, personalization.
5. Information and Knowledge Management: Information and knowledge creation, transfer and use at the personal, group, organizational and societal levels. The management of the processes and systems that create, acquire, organize, store, distribute, and use information and/or knowledge. Selected papers will be published in the International Journal of Information Management.
6. Information Use: How people re-purpose existing knowledge from a variety of sources (scientific, humanities, news, family, friends, colleagues), forms (articles, books, video, audio, tweets), locations (work, home, in transit) and mediums (cell-phones, PDAs, digital libraries) to advance knowledge, solve problems, improve information literacy, and learn.
7. Information and Society: Economic, Political, Social Issues: Copyright issues, policies and laws; national and international information policies; privacy and security; economics of information, personal rights vs. freedom of information; surveillance; globalization and the flows of information; computerization movements; social informatics.
Selection Criteria
There will be up to six winners who will be selected by a panel of judges including: Maqsood Shaheen (IRC, US Embassy Islamabad), Johannes Britz (UW-Milwaukee), Maria Haigh (UW-Milwaukee), Hong Xu (University of Pittsburg), Catherine Johnson (Western Ontario), Anindita Paul (University of Missouri), and Borchuluun Yadamsuren (University of Missouri).
The judging criteria will be based on:
1. Originality of paper in the developing world and global information ecosystem (originality of the project described, etc.)
2. Relevance to the paper contest theme
3. Quality of argument, presentation and organization
Eligibility & Information for authors
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2007-2010 contests are not eligible. The papers should be original, unpublished, and submitted in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information.
Award
The award for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 7-12, 2011.
Style
The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors. Detailed information is available under the heading, Guide for Authors at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622845/auth…
Publishing opportunities
Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
ASIS&T Copyright Policy
ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author.
Deadline for submission of full papers: Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2011, to Maqsood Shaheen at ShaheenMA [at] gmail.com, preferably as Microsoft Word or PDF attachments.
Welcome to the SIG-III Blog’s new location!
Greetings everyone,
I would like to announce a change to the SIG-III Blog: it has moved. The new address is: http://sigiii.wordpress.com/
Due to server hosting changes at NEASIST, the SIG-III Blog has moved to its new location. Please update your links and RSS feeds. (Also, thanks to NEASIST for hosting the SIG-III Blog since 2006!)
This change has prompted the second appearance change in six months, but the new appearance retains all of the functionality of the old site — the prominent links to the “About us” section and RSS feeds in the upper right, the search bar underneath that, and the hierarchical post categories in the right sidebar. Beyond that, the new URL is the only other change.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Aaron Bowen
SIG-III Social Media Administrator
Upcoming conferences relating to international information
Image by Goodimages, used under the Creative Commons license.
I’d like to take a moment to alert our community about some upcoming conferences related to the field of international information. SIG-III Mentorship Coordinator Nasser Saleh sent me the information regarding the eiFl.net conference:
eIFl.net opens Call for Proposals public libraries in developing and transition countries.
eIFL.net is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals to spark the development of innovative public library services using technology in transitioning and developing countries.
The Public Library Innovation Program (http://plip.eifl.net ) will encourage public libraries to reach out to their communities, partnering with local government, business and other organizations to assess local needs and develop new services. Technology has transformed public libraries throughout the world, yet in many developing countries where the need is great, public libraries are under resourced.
This call is designed to gather great ideas that introduce technology to meet user needs and help members of the community improve their lives. Ten of the best proposals will be awarded up to $30,000 USD each for a one-year project.
Go to http://plip.eifl.net for the Call for Proposal, Application Form, Fact Sheet, FAQs and Press Release. A help desk will be available to prospective applicants plip [at] eifl.net.
This Call for Proposals opens on 16th November 2009 and closes 28th February 2010.
It will be open to applicants from the following countries: Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, People’s Republic of China, Colombia, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lesotho, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine (West Bank and Gaza), Poland, Guatemala, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Beyond that, there is the 5th Shanghai (Hangzhou) International Library Forum (SILF), and an IFLA Satellite Meeting on the theme of “The Global Librarian,” which will be held in Sweden. Both of these conferences will be held in August of this year. Here are the descriptions of each:
The 5th Shanghai (Hangzhou) International Library Forum (SILF) will be held on August 24~27 in Shanghai and Hangzhou.
The biennial forum, conducted in the era of quickened growth of information industry and globalized development of libraries, provides opportunities of brainstorming centering on the latest progress, innovative measures and future trends of library science and service. With the intensified coverage of media and wide recognition from the library circle, the convening of the forum, combining keynote speeches, plenary session and individual seminars, appeals to over 300 participants for participation at home and abroad, among who are IFLA senior officials, library directors, professionals and experts from the information sector, researchers and people from other fields.
Expo 2010 Shanghai China will take place between May 1 and October 31, 2010 in Shanghai with the theme of ‘Better City, Bette Life’. It would become a pageant for city life discussion, a symphony with the melody of technological innovation and cultural blending as well as a splendid dialogue between nations and cultures.
The forthcoming Forum coincides with World Expo and will include the 7th Chinese-Japanese International Seminar for the Librarianship.
Hangzhou is historical and cultural city reputed as ‘Paradise on Earth’. The host libraries are now extending warm welcome to domestic and overseas colleagues alike to join the academic exchanges while celebrating meanwhile Expo 2010 Shanghai China.
To facilitate in-depth discussions, subtopics are designed as follows,
I．Libraries and Multicultural Service
II. Libraries and Community Well-Being
III. Library Performance Evaluation
IV. Library Support for Innovation and Strategic Decisions
V. Library Service in Cloud Computing EraSubmitted papers shall be original research contributions or summaries of practical experience, which have not been published in any other periodicals or proceedings. Formats can be referred to at http://www.libnet.sh.cn/silf2010. Please submit the abstract to the Organizing Committee prior to March 15, 2010 and the full text before April 30, 2010. All the papers will be peer-reviewed by the Program Committee of SILF 2010 before the selected few get collected in the proceedings of the conference for official publication.
Conference Secretariat
Contact: Ms. Ren Xiapei or Mr. Zhou Qing
Address: 1555 Huai Hai Zhong Lu, Shanghai 200031, China
Email: silf2010 [at] libnet.sh.cn
Tel: +86.21.6445.4500 Fax: +86.21.6445.5006
Website: http://www.libnet.sh.cn/silf2010
New Professionals Discussion Group and Management of Library Associations Section
Boras, Sweden
August 9, 2010Theme: “The Global Librarian”
This satellite conference will be held immediately prior to the World Library and Information Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden, August 2010.
The IFLA New Professionals Discussion Group and the Management of Library Associations Section invite proposals for presentations. First time presenters and new professionals are encouraged to apply.
In order to meet publication deadlines (for inclusion on the IFLA website) proposals must be submitted by February 10, 2010.
Conference Themes and Focus:
New librarians are positioning themselves as library leaders in academia, libraries, and professional associations. This event aims to address key themes and leading trends to provide library services while changing attitudes and expectations on the way. The conference organising committee wishes to showcase examples of best practice in how to develop new leaders, services, and inclusion of new professionals in decision-making processes through both research based scholarly presentations and experiential and practical stories of successes and lessons learned. The organisers are particularly interested in receiving proposals for presentations on any of the following, or related, key themes and issues:• How to internationalize careers,
• New librarian paradigm,
• Mobile librarian,
• Real-time librarian, and
• Advocating for library associations to include new professionals in their agendaWe welcome and encourage proposals from first-time conference presenters, librarians, library school students, and information workers new to the profession.
Conference Location and Dates:
The conference will be held in Boras, Sweden. The conference venue will be the University of Boras which is conveniently located one hour by train from the WLIC venue, Gothenburg. More details will follow in the next few months. The satellite conference will start at 8:30 a.m. with registration, and will end at 4:30 p.m. with a networking session.Format & Structure:
The conference will be arranged to include keynote opening and closing speakers along with a mix of panel/plenary sessions.Conference Language:
The conference will be conducted in English. All papers and presentations will be required to be in English.
And as always, you can check out the International Calendar of Information Science Conferences (ICISC) for upcoming conferences across a broad range of Information Science-related topics.
Blog post contributed by Aaron Bowen
SIG-III wins SIG-of-the-Year award!
Image by Lulu_witch, used under the Creative Commons license.
I’m with the hamsters — we have reason to celebrate! I’m glad to announce that SIG-III has won the SIG of the year award for 2008-2009. The following is from yesterday’s official announcement from ASIS&T:
The 2009 SIG of the Year is SIG International Information Issues (SIG III). One of the jury members summed up the appeal of SIG III very well: “SIG-III has a well-established pattern of service to the international community as well as to the Society. Their membership makes up in enthusiasm what it may lack in size, and they have a large and very task-oriented executive committee. They communicate effectively with their membership through a bi-monthly newsletter, alternating with one to the executive committee. They bring new members into the association through their InfoShare program, and their paper competition is an excellent mechanism for bringing scholars to the conference who would be otherwise unable to attend. Their international reception is one of the highlights of the annual conference, and they make good use of the event as a venue for fundraising for their many awards. As a SIG, they have very high visibility and as a consequence they make all members, not just their own SIG, aware of ASIS&T’s potential role in international scholarship.” Unlike many other SIGs, III recognizes that the work of this society is not solely accomplished at this annual meeting, but consists of small activities throughout time and space and across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Congratulations to SIG III, and particularly to Aaron Bowen, chair, and all the other officers of SIG III, for being this year’s ASIS&T SIG of the Year.
Also, in an informal e-mail, SIG Cabinet Director KT Vaughan let me know that this is the fifth year straight our SIG has won this award. Thank you all for a wonderful and productive year!
With this announcement, I would also like to pose a challenge for you all. The challenge is two-fold:
One, I would like to call upon everyone to introduce the SIG to any of your colleagues interested in international information. In our current world of ubiquitous information, it is easy to have less familiarity with a body of research, with a current trend, or with a professional organization than we would like — being in the same boat myself, I’m all too familiar with this issue. I find that when I have a personalized introduction to a body of scholarship, trending topic, or professional society, I have more incentive to pay attention to it, and I remember more about it. With that in mind, I invite you to introduce SIG-III (and ASIS&T more broadly) to any of your colleagues who either aren’t yet familiar with the organization, or have only a passing familiarity.
Two, my fellow SIG Officers any myself would love to hear about your research and conference presentations. If you are publishing a paper or giving a presentation on an international information-related topic, tell us about it! We are always glad to know about our members research endeavors, and to facilitate connections between researchers where they have common research interests. You can let either me or incoming Chair Kate Johnson (cjohn24 [at] uwo [dot] ca) know about your work.
Beyond that, if you will be at this year’s ASIS&T Annual Meeting, I look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
ICTs and Development: March 11-12, 2010 in New Delhi
ICTs and Development: An International Workshop for Theory, Practice, & Policy. 11-12 March 2010 | New Delhi.
_______________________
Unpublished, original empirical papers are invited for the forthcoming international workshop on ICTs and Development: An International Workshop for Theory, Practice, & Policy to be conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India, during 11-12 March 2010.
The workshop aims to provide a forum for scholars to share their empirical research with academic experts, policymakers, and activists from the regional and international development community. Papers should examine how mobile phones, computers, and the Internet influence the empowerment of marginal individuals and communities, including whether ICTs create and enhance livelihood opportunities for people in the developing world.
Papers should be in the range of 5,000-8,000 words (including abstract and bibliography) and should include a clear discussion of the implications of the findings for development policy and/or practice.
No more than twelve papers will be selected by the workshop organizers for presentation.The first author of each paper chosen will be given air fare and lodging/meals.
The workshop is part of the project, ICTs and Urban Micro Enterprises: Identifying and Maximizing Opportunities for Economic Development, and is supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada.
The organizers are committed to finding an appropriate publication venue for all papers accepted for the workshop.
The conference website is here.
_______________________
Deadlines:
Submission of manuscripts: 1st October 2009
Announcement of results: 1st December 2009
Submission of final version of the paper: 1st February 2010
For submission of manuscripts and other enquiries, please write to ICTD2010 [at] gmail [dot] com
_______________________
Workshop Organizers:
Dr. P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Prof. Mark R. Levy
Michigan State University
International Reception Announcement
Image by Josh Bancroft, used under the Creative Commons license.
This year’s International Reception will be held on Monday, November 9, 2009, at 8pm. At the reception you will be able to meet and congratulate this year’s International Paper Contest winner and mix with colleagues from all over the world.
This year’s contest winner is Muhammad Rafiq, from Pakistan. His paper is titled “[The] LIS community’s perceptions towards open source software adoption in libraries,” and is set to be published in the September, 2009 issue of the International Information and Library Review, edited by Toni Carbo. Come meet with Muhammad Rafiq, and pick up one of the copies of IILR that Elsevier has generously donated to the event.
SIG-III will hold its annual InfoShare Silent Auction at the event. If you have items you would like to donate to the Silent Auction, please contact InfoShare Officers Abebe Rorissa (arorissa [at] albany [dot] edu) or Sarah Emmerson (saemmerson [at] yahoo [dot] com), and bring your items to the conference with you.
We will also have our annual Raffle Ticket Sale at the Reception. The prize in the Raffle is a gift basket put together by the local chapter of ASIS&T, with locally produced products and goodies. If you have something small and new that you could contribute for the basket, please contact Abebe or Sarah and bring it to the conference as well.
All proceeds from the Silent Auction and Raffle Ticket Sale will go to the SIG-III InfoShare Fund, which offers ASIS&T memberships to information professionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would otherwise be a financial burden.
Thank you for your support! Come enjoy yourself at the International Reception! International attire is encouraged!
Aaron Bowen
Chair, SIG-III
New SIG-III Newsletter published!
Image by Adrianne Lacy, used under the Creative Commons license.
The SIG-III Officers are pleased to announce the publication of the July, 2009 edition of the SIG-III Newsletter. The Newsletter is our formal record of the activities in which the SIG partakes, and the new edition represents the latest chapter in the chronicle of the SIG’s history. The contents of the new edition are
– ASIS&T Annual Meeting
– InfoShare Recipients
– International Reception
– International Paper Contest Results
– Published/Accepted International Paper Contest papers in IILR
– International Conferences Calendar in 2005 and 2009 — a comparison
– Updates to the SIG-III Website and Blog
– 2008-2009 SIG III Officers
– SIG III Listserv and Web Site
You may download it here, or visit the SIG-III homepage and click on “Newsletter” in the left-side nav bar.
Contributed by the SIG-III Officers
Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent
It’s a little over a month old, but I’ve not yet posted about the following report by Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Rob Faris, and John Palfrey, so I will do so now. It is titled Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent, and is published by Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society.
I’m being kicked out of my office this afternoon while some of my university’s tech people work on my Internet connection. While I am without my computer I will work on SIG-III’s annual report, but I hope to be able to steal a bit of time away to read this report as well. If you’ve read it and have any thoughts or reactions, leave a comment below — I’d love to hear what you think.
On the same topic, I’ll also point to Nasrin Alavi’s We Are Iran. As with Etling et al’s report, I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on Dr. Alavi’s book. She’s even put a sample chapter online as well.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
In the news this week: the Question Box
Image by SlinkyDragon, used under the Creative Commons license.
Ken Banks at IT World writes about the Question Box — a service allowing a person to ask a question through a telecom box placed in a village, and then receive a response from someone on the other end of the line who has a computer in front of him/her. Banks explains:
It works like this: A villager presses a call button on a physical intercom device, located in their village, which connects them to a trained operator in a nearby town who’s sitting in front of a computer attached to the Internet. A question is asked. While the questioner holds, the operator looks up the answer on the Internet and reads it back. All questions and answers are logged. For the villager there is no keyboard to deal with. No complex technology. No literacy issues. And during early trials at least, no cost. Put simply, Question Box, as it’s called, provides immediate, relevant information to people using their preferred mode of communication, speaking and listening.
You can see photos of the Question Box and of people using it on the Question Box Project’s Flickr photostream.
Banks also notes that the Grameen Foundation this week launched its AppLab initiative in Uganda. (AppLab stands for application laboratory, and is essentially a project to get people in different locales around the developing world building information access applications for mobile devices such as cellphones. Their about us page has more detail). Kiwanja posts an insider’s view of the project’s rollout in Uganda to his blog.
August message from the SIG-III Chair in July
Hello everyone,
Yes, I realize I’m very early with this message, but enough has been going on over the past week that I want to share it with you all now.
The most important piece of news is that we have three winners for the International Paper Contest. Please congratulate Muhammad Rafiq, Muhammad Arif, and Saima Kanwal on their winning papers! I have announced them over the SIG-III Blog.
This post provides the perfect transition to my next topic: the SIG-III Blog’s new look. You will see that I’ve updated the layout and graphical content of the blog. I’m very excited about its new appearance, and I hope you all will stop by, leave a comment on one of the posts, and/or subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed.
Last but not least, InfoShare Officer Sarah Emmerson and I have developed a Facebook page for the SIG, which will serve as a useful compliment to the blog. If you are on Facebook, we would love to have you join our group! You may find it here.
As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the weekend!
Aaron Bowen
Chair, SIG-III
Ajit Pyati, SIG-III Officer, in First Monday
SIG-III’s Ajit Pyati (above) has just published an article titled “Public library revitalization in India: Hopes, challenges, and new visions” in First Monday. Here is the abstract:
With India’s growing economy and status as an emerging world power, a new consciousness is developing in the country about the need to reinvest in public services. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is an advisory body constituted by the Prime Minister to provide recommendations for improving India’s knowledge infrastructure. As part of this Commission, a set of recommendations has been developed to improve India’s long neglected library system. This article explores the implications of these recommendations, with a specific focus on India’s public library system and the social development gains that are often associated with public libraries. The potential of India’s public libraries to serve as community information centres (CICs) is highlighted, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in implementing a new vision for public library revitalization. The article serves as an invitation for concerted action, reflection, and dialogue with regard to this important and pressing issue.
The full article may be found here.
Article by Ajit Pyati. Blog post contributed by Aaron Bowen.
We’re on Facebook!
Image by LaughingSquid, used under the Creative Commons license.
Just a quick announcement that InfoShare Officer Sarah Emmerson and myself have created a Facebook page for SIG-III. If you are on Facebook and are interested in international information issues, please join us!
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
SIG-III panels at the 2009 ASIS&T Annual Meeting
SIG/III will sponsor or co-sponsor four panels at the 2009 Annual Meeting:
* International Partnerships in Developing and Deploying Health Open Educational Resources
* International Implementation of Digital Library Software/Platforms
In addition to these panels, there are additional panels and contributed papers relating to different aspects of international information:
* Documentation and Communication in Aboriginal/Indigenous Cultures
* Nationality in information behavior: Comparing Koreans and Japanese
* Information Access across Languages on the Web: from Search Engines to Digital Libraries
Last but not least, we would love to see you at the 2009 International Reception!
Contributed by SIG-III Blog administrator
International Paper Contest winners
SIG-III is pleased to announce two winners for the 2009 International Paper Contest. The first place award goes to Muhammad Rafiq (pictured above), from Pakistan, who will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T, as well as funding to travel to this year’s annual Meeting. His paper is titled “[The] LIS community’s perceptions towards open source software adoption in libraries.”
The second place award goes to Muhammad Arif and Saima Kanwal, both from Pakistan as well. Their paper is titled “Acceptance of digital library among female students and effects of limited access of digital library on their performance in research work: a case of International Islamic University.” As principal author, Dr. Arif will be awarded a two-year membership to ASIS&T.
Both papers will be considered for publication in the International Information and Library Review.
Please join me in congratulating our 2009 Contest winners! We hope you will come meet them at the International Reception at this year’s ASIS&T Annual Meeting.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
June message from the SIG-III Chair
Greetings everyone,
I just wanted to take a moment to update you all about what has been going on in SIG-III for the past two months. I (Aaron) have been working on the SIG-III website, examining each of the site’s pages for currency and focus. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve completed my refresh of the website, and each page that required revision (which translated to every page on the site except one) is up to date. You can see it here.
This however is only phase one of the project to redo the SIG’s website. I have begun a conversation with the SIG Advisory Committee on phase two, which consists of a redesign of the site’s graphical appearance. The Advisory Committee has offered some excellent ideas and suggestions for accomplishing this task, but they have also indicated a need/desire for some additional elements to the site to archive the history and activities of the SIG. At the Committee’s request, I have added a discussion item to the agenda for considering this archival project, and how to integrate it into the existing components of the site. I will keep you all posted of the results of this discussion – I mention it here because it is a discussion that needs to take place before I can pursue options for redoing the site’s graphical interface. (We need to know what elements out site will have and how they will be arranged before we can consider how they will appear graphically).
Beyond that, Hong Xu reports that the current International Paper Contest (for which she is Chair) has received eleven paper submissions. She will send them out to the Contest reviewers shortly, and the reviewers will begin the process of selecting a Contest winner. We should be able to announce a Contest winner in my next message!
Last but not least, I encourage you to contact me if you have any questions, or if you have facilitated or partaken in any activities on behalf of SIG. My fellow officers and I would love to hear about anything you have done as a SIG member!
Thank you, and enjoy the remainder of the week,
Aaron Bowen
Chair, SIG-III
Announcement of the 2009 International Paper Contest
The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is pleased to announce its tenth competition for papers to be submitted for the 2009 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 6 -11, 2009.
The theme of this year’s paper contest is: “Thriving on Diversity – Information Opportunities in a Pluralistic World”.
The theme may be addressed at either the country or regional level issues. Papers could discuss issues, policies and case studies on specific aspects of the theme, such as, but not limited to the following (mainly adopted from the conference theme):
* Multilingual information systems
* Cross-language information retrieval
* Accessibility and cultural factors in system design and information services
* Cross-border data flows
* Open access and cultural diversity
* Information literacy and challenges of harmony versus hegemony
* The role of international organizations in building on diversity
* Digital inclusion
* Social networking in a linguistically and culturally rich environment
* Information behavior in diverse contexts
* Knowledge management in diverse contexts
* Information policy
There will be up to six winners who will be selected by a panel of judges including Hong Xu (Chair), Jonathan Levitt (Co-Chair), Aaron Bowen, Nadia Caidi, Yunfei Du, Daqing He, Macia Lei Zeng.
Selection Criteria
Papers will be selected through a peer review process. The judging criteria will be based on:
* Originality of paper in the developing world environment (originality of the project described, etc.)
* Relevance to the Paper contest.
* Presentation and organization.
* Style. The international paper contest committee requires that submissions follow the International Information and Library Review instructions to authors.
The prize for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIS&T. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIS&T membership. In addition, depending on SIG III fundraising for this competition, the first place winner will be rewarded a minimum of $1,000 toward travel, conference registration, and accommodations while attending the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 6 -11, 2009.
Publishing opportunities
Submitted papers will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process, for that journal.
Information for authors
Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of, and resides in a developing country are eligible. Winners in the 2005-2008 contests are not eligible. The papers should be original, unpublished, and ONLY in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery, and use of digital information.
ASIS&T Copyright Policy
ASIS&T will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its web site or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author.
Deadline for submission of full papers
Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 5,000 words, by May 31, 2009, to hgxu [at] pitt.edu, preferably as Microsoft Word attachments.
Please check the SIG III website for more information about the SIG III International Paper Contest, including frequently asked questions, past CFPs and previous winners.
UNESCO and the Library of Congress partner to launch the World Digital Library
Image by takomabibelot, used under the Creative Commons license.
The following announcement comes from the Knowledgespeak newsletter:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and 32 partner institutions will launch the World Digital Library, a web site that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world, at UNESCO Headquarters on April 21. The site will include manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It will provide unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.
The launch will take place at a reception co-hosted by UNESCO Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura, and US Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington. Directors of the partner institutions will also be on hand to present the project to ambassadors, ministers, delegates, and special guests attending the semi-annual meeting of UNESCO’s Executive Board.
In addition to promoting international understanding, the project aims to expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, provide resources for educators, scholars and general audiences, and narrow the digital divide within and between countries by building capacity in partner countries.
The WDL will function in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and will include content in a great many other languages. Browse and search features will facilitate cross-cultural and cross-temporal exploration on the site. Descriptions of each item and videos with expert curators speaking about selected items will provide context for users, and are intended to spark curiosity and encourage both students and the general public to learn more about the cultural heritage of all countries.
The WDL was developed by a team at the Library of Congress. Technical assistance was provided by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Alexandria, Egypt. Institutions contributing content and expertise to the WDL include national libraries and cultural and educational institutions in Brazil, Egypt, China, France, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Current research on digital divides at the University of Washington
Image by Mulya_74, used under the Creative Commons license.
My friend and colleague Karine Barzilai-Nahon recently posted a synopsis of digital divide-related research at the Hawaii International Conference of System Sciences, or HICSS. She notes different papers on different aspects of the divide, as well as on telecenters and information and communication technologies, including a paper co-written my another of my collleague friends, Chris Coward. These papers all look very compelling, and will provide some interesting reading in the coming evenings.
Karine also notes the work of the Center for Information and Society, part of the University of Wasington’s Information School. I am particularly intrigued by the landscape study that she, Ricardo Gomez, and Rucha Ambikar did — their methodology is here, and the actual study is here.
(Disclosure: I should point out that I am an alum of the University of Washington, which is where I met both Karine and Chris. This is why I am as familiar with the UW’s work on the globalization of information as I am).
I am definitely excited about delving into this research, and to incorporating it into discussions of international information on this blog!
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
InfoShare winners announced!
InfoShare, a program sponsored by SIG-III, awards one-year ASIS&T memberships to information professionals in developing countries for whom the cost of membership would be a financial burden. InfoShare increases awareness of the importance of international cooperation, facilitates and enhances communication and interaction among ASIS&T members and colleagues worldwide, and provides a forum for exploration and discussion of international information issues. Recipients must reside in a country where there is no ASIS&T chapter, and may be practitioners, researchers, or students enrolled in an information science program. This year SIG-III is please to offer InfoShare awards to nine information professionals, two of whom are students. InfoShare Memberships: * Mumtaz Memon (Pakistan) * Maqsood Shaheen (Pakistan) * Hanane Boujemi Morocco) * Yuanxin Zhong (China) * Tara Mani Dahal (Nepal) * Abdul Waheed (Pakistan) * Tibebe Beshah (Ethiopia) Student InfoShare Memberships: * Sandra Miguel (Argentina) * Mae’n Al Assaf (Jordan) Please join SIG-III in congratulating our 2009 InfoShare winners! You are also welcome to check out the InfoShare section of our website — just click “InfoShare” in the left-side navigation menu.
2008-2009 SIG-III Officers
Just a quick note to announce the 2008-2009 Officers:
Chair: Aaron Bowen
Co-chair: Jonathan Levitt
Chair-elect: Kate Johnson
Co-chair elect: Daniel Alemneh
Immediate Past Chair: Yunfei Du
Communications Officer: Masqood Shaheen
Treasurer: Bahaa El-Hadidy
Program Chair: Ajit Pyati
SIG-III Blog Administrator: Aaron Bowen
Cabinet Representative: Toni Carbo
Alternate Cabinet representative: Yunfei Du
Webmaster: Aaron Bowen
Mentorship Coordinator: Nadia Caidi
International Paper Contest Chair: Hong Cui
International Paper Contest Co-chair: Jonathan Levitt
InfoShare Officers: Abebe Rorissa, Sarah Emmerson
Thanks to everyone for your service this year! Let’s make it a great one!
Aaron Bowen
SIG-III Chair
The Globalization of Search
Images by rustybrick, Bob Xu, and Colin Zhu,
used under the Creative Commons license.
This past September 16, Financial Times posted an article about the contest between search engines for dominance of Internet search traffic in different parts of the world. Whereas Google is dominant in North America, they have had trouble breaking into markets in other parts of the world. In China, for example, the majority of Internet search traffic goes to Baidu.com. Yahoo holds an advantage over Google in other parts of Asia, and (according to FT) Naver receives 60% of South Korea’s search traffic.
The article discusses how and why different search engines are able to establish dominance in different regions:
Some common themes lie behind these local success stories, internet veterans say: Google has played second fiddle to rivals who invested much earlier, perfected their technology to work with local languages and came up with innovations that Google is now having to copy.
These companies have since been able to consolidate their hold thanks to their well-known local brand names and a strategy that often relies on combining search with a range of other portal-like services to keep users on in-house sites.
Article by Richard Waters, Robin Kwong, and Robin Harding in Financial Times. SIG-III Blog post by Aaron Bowen
SIG-III sponsored events at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting
The following is a list of events that SIG-III has sponsored or co-sponsored for the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Columbus, OH, October 24-29, 2008.
Monday, October 27, 3:30 PM:
25 Years of SIG-III and the Future of International Information (III)
Panelists: Toni Carbo, Bharat Mehra, Yunfei Du and Aaron Bowen
Tuesday, October 28, 8:30 AM:
ICT-Mediated Diaspora Studies: New Directions in Immigrant Information Behavior Research
Panelists: Ajit Pyati, Clara Chu, Karen Fisher, Ramesh Srinivasan, Nadia Caidi, Danielle Allard and Diane Dechief
Tuesday, October 28, 10:30 AM:
Understanding Visual Search Tools through Users’ Reactions
Panelists: Efthimis Efthimiadis, Allison Druin and Andrew Large
Wednesday, October 29, 8:30 AM:
Global Perspective on Wikipedia Research
Panelists: Pnina Shachaf, Noriko Hara, Susan Herring, Ewa Callahan, Paul Solomon, Besiki Stvilia and Sorin Matei
Plus there is the International Reception, 8:00-9:30pm on Monday, Oct. 27. The reception is ASIS&T’s “special thank you recognizing those from other countries who help make the meeting a success.” At the reception, conference attendees will be able to meet the winner of the International Paper Competition and past winners who are at the conference, as well as participate in a silent auction to benefit SIG-III’s InfoShare program, a program to sponsor international members from developing countries to come to the Meeting. Further information on both the Paper Competition and the InfoShare program may be found on SIG-III’s website.
Contributed by the SIG-III blog administrator
2008 ASIS&T SIG-III International Paper Contest winners
The American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) is pleased to announce the following winners of its 9th International Paper Contest:
First Place Winner:
Maqsood Ahmad Shaheen. Use of social networks and information seeking behavior of students during political crises in Pakistan. (Pakistan)
Second Place Winner:
Neela J. Deshpande & S K Pathak. Use of electronic journals in astronomy and astrophysics libraries and information centres in India: A users’ perspective. (India)
Third Place Winner:
Manjunatha K. Technology and customer expectation in academic libraries: A special reference to technical/management libraries in Karnataka. (India)
Fourth Place Winner:
S. M. Pujar, R. K. Kamat, S. Y. Bansode, R. R. Kamat, & S. H. Katigennavar. Identifying and exploiting human needs for people centric evolving knowledge society: A case study of Indian ICT emergence. (India)
Fifth Place Winner:
Tariq Ashraf. Empowering people through information: A case study of India’s right to information act. (India)
Sixth Place Winner:
Pramila Dangwal. Information: By the people, for the people, for development. (India)
The principal authors of each of the six winning papers will be awarded a two-year individual membership to ASIS&T. In addition, the first place winner will be awarded a minimum of $1,000 to attend the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Columbus, Ohio, October 24-29, 2008. Congratulations to all winners!Contributed by the SIG-III Blog Admininistrator
The Libraries of Timbuktu
Image by ازرق, used under the Creative Commons license.
Not many outside central Africa are familiar with them, but the libraries of Timbuktu are an extensive wealth of knowledge and culture. From today’s Der Spiegel:
Fabled Timbuktu, once the site of the world’s southernmost Islamic university, harbors thousands upon thousands of long-forgotten manuscripts. A dozen academic instutions from around the world are now working frantically to save and evaluate the crumbling documents…
Albrecht Hofheinz, an Arabist from Oslo, estimates that there are up to 300,000 forgotten manuscripts in Mali. Insect bites have discolored the pages, he says. “The paper disintegrates, is destroyed by mold or eaten by termites.” Time is of the essence. Some of the volumes are being photographed using a digital photo studio provided by the University of Chicago. The first of the documents are expected to be available on the Internet by the end of the year.
This will be an excellent resource for scholars of Islam and of central Africa! I look forward to watching this work unfold and progress, especially since it is the result of years of effort.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Best practices for digital education: A case study of ICT in India
Image by Idiolector, used under the Creative Commons license.
Last month Leigh Linden published Complement or Substitute?, a useful study that goes beyond the question of whether information and communication technologies (ICT) can make a positive difference in education and asks instead how they may be best implemented to make such a positive difference. Writing about Linden’s research on the World Bank’s PSD Blog, Ryan Hahn offers the following summary:
Employing a pair of randomized evaluations of computer use in classrooms in Gujarat, India, Linden found that computers improve learning outcomes when they are used as a complement to the normal curriculum, rather than as a replacement for the standard offering. He also found that the weakest students benefitted most, as the computers allowed for further practice of material already covered in the classroom. Finally, Linden also found that the computers were about as cost-effective an intervention as girls scholarship programs, cash incentives for teachers, and textbooks.
Image by World Bank Photo Collection,
used under the Creative Commons license.
What would be interesting to see now is the extent to which cultural attitudes towards education in Gujarat inform the effective use of these ICT in the classroom. Would the results be different in another city or another country that possesses different attitudes towards education? How so? I would love to see this research project repeated in one or more locations in different parts of the world. I would love to see how the results change or don’t change in different global settings. If you know of any similar experiments, please point to them in the comments — I would love to hear about them and have a dialog about the strengths of different digital education programs in different parts of the world.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
A very cool use of Second Life
Image by kedguest, used under the Creative Commons license.
Today I ran across these two articles, one by Tom Peter in the Christian Science Monitor, and the other by Holly Jackson at CNet news. These articles note the use of Second Life as a venue for intercultural exchange, particularly at the virtual campuses different universities have set up in Second Life. (See for example the image of San Jose State’s virtual campus in the screenshot above). Peter says that
Around the world, universities, and even the US Department of State, are turning to online virtual worlds to create cultural exchanges. In these immersive, 3-D environments, users from around the globe can collaborate in ways that were previously impossible.
He also notes a group of university students in the United Arab Emerates who used Second Life to visit a virtual rendition of Darfur, make a pilgrimage to (virtual) Mecca, and interact with a group of Korean students to promote a cross-cultural exchange.
I find this a very worthwhile and exciting use of Second Life (or a second life clone such as IMVU, Gaia, or There). I believe such interaction will offer positive benefits as the world continues to grow interconnected and international projects such as Mainland Brasil(the Brazilian version of Second Life) continue to expand.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
The future of multi-lingual domain names
Image by twenty_questions,
used under the Creative Commons license.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted today to allow greater flexibility in how people and organizations choose domain names. In other words, websites will no longer be limited to the standard fare of commercial (.com), organizational (.org and.net), or national (.fr for france, .jp for Japan) domain names. The new system of allowing greater flexibility of how on names one’s website promises the introduction of personal names (.bowen for me), niche-specific names similar to the host of smaller domain names like .museum currently in existence, and of course product and brand names.
In addition to this greater general flexibility, ICANN affirmed a commitment to introduce Web addresses in non-Roman alphabets such as Cyrillic, Arabic, and Chinese, a move that has long been sought by different peoples around the world despite some fears that such action would lead to the “Balkinization” of the Internet. ICANN has been experimenting with these non-Roman addresses, and seems to see enough of a desire for such names to continue working on the technical challenges of implementing them.
The organization charged with the oversight of these domain names, ICANN maintains weak ties to the U.S. treasury Department — a fact that has long been a source of concern outside the United States regarding how the Internet is governed. ICANN last renewed ties with the Treasury Department in 2006, although the Treasury Department enjoyed far less control over the organization than in previous years. A source of much debate, the idea is to eventually make ICANN an independent organization free of ties to the U.S. Government. Currently the plan calls for independent governance in 2011.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Quick note: the blogosphere in Peru
Eduardo Avila at Global Voices notes the introduction of a blogging contest for Peruvian high school students, sponsored by the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences [es]. The project website is here [es].
Data on social networks in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.
This week’s Data chart of the week from Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li’s Groundswell project features use statistics of social networks in different regions. Commenting on this chart from Groundswell, Josh asks
Does Korea have the highest participation because of CyWorld, or because Koreans love to connect?
Why are Germany, and especially France, so low? Is it something about the way French people behave online, or is there an opening for a great French social network (or the French version of an existing one, like Facebook)?
The data from France is something I found particularly interesting. Given that the French blogosphere is active, I would be interested to know why the number of regular social network users in France is comparatively low. Josh finishes his post by asking for reader comments regarding their thoughts on how social network use will play out in the countries listed in the chart. I invite you to do the same below.
A portrait of libraries in Mexico
True it’s a couple of years old, but I just ran across Siria Gastelum’s portrait of Mexican libraries in Críticas Magazine. Describing the Red Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas (RNBP), Mexicio’s national public library system, Gastelum writes that
Established in 1983, the RNBP is run and funded by the federal government. The main office, in Mexico City, formulates all education and literacy programs for the entire network and provides each local library with its entire book collection, furniture, and equipment, as well as the outreach material and training for librarians. Local governments cover salaries for the personnel and allocate some extra funding, but there is no national standard when it comes to a public library budget.
Census statistics show that each public library in Mexico is visited by an average of 25 users a day, most of them students. Historically, the public library system has been linked to national education policies that make it mandatory for school children to visit libraries. However, this policy has transformed the library from a place to read for leisure to a place to get information only.
At first blush such a system certainly sounds different than a public library system in the United States. Whereas libraries in the U.S. would be more likely to favor localized policies regarding their collections and educational programs, Gastelum notes that the RNBP centralizes these functions in Mexico City. And whereas many libraries in the U.S. have taken efforts to promote themselves as a community plaza or gathering point as well as a library, Gastelum suggests the RNBP is specifically more of an information hub. The RNBP’s website doesn’t look like a website for a public library in the U.S. either — it is more of a place to find information about the system, rather than a place to search the system’s holdings or interact with a librarian.
What causes these differences? Gastelum quotes Katya Butrón at El Colegio de México, who says that “Most patrons have a negative perception of a library as an uncomfortable and uninviting space, a place for duty instead of pleasure.” Gastelum continues that
According to Butrón, attending a library is not part of Mexican culture. Even when the heavy governmental presence is not obvious for patrons, “the popular feeling is that libraries are just like any other of the many inefficient public services, ” she explains.
Authorities within the Mexican government are aware of this challenge, and have responded with a national literacy program (“Hacia un País de Lectores,” or “Towards a Country of Readers,” begun in 2001 by President Vicente Fox) and the construction of a new central library in Mexico City. This library, the Biblioteca de México José Vasconcelos, is in Gastelum’s words
…The “brain” or mother branch of all public libraries in Mexico. All the branches in the country’s 32 states will be connected electronically to this main branch, which hosts the country’s largest collection. Currently featuring half a million books, the building will eventually house 1.5 million volumes. Designed to serve 15,000 users a day, the 125,000-square-foot building by Mexican architect Alberto Kalach features 750 computers with free Internet access.
Images by joseluisl and rageforst, used under the Creative Commons license.
While this does sound like an enviable project, Butrón argues that a library like the Vasconcelos library represents the wrong approach to building a national interest in public libraries. She calls for a more localized approach, with more diversity of materials between different branch libraries within the system. The Digital Divide has also been a factor, with librarians in more remote parts of Mexico (and by extension less Internet access) saying a project like this does little to serve the needs of their patrons.
With this situation in mind, Gastelum calls for “a much needed dialogue” on the direction of librarianship in Mexico. She notes annual conferences put on by Asociación Mexicana de Bibliotecarios (AMBAC), Mexico’s equivalent of the American Library Association. Steven Kerchoff, Information Resource Officer for public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico and library advocate, notes that at these conferences
[Mexican librarians] talk about outreach, they talk about advocacy, how to promote their library services to users and to people who are in a position to make decisions about funding… Library advocacy has been a hot issue in the States for a while and it’s now becoming really important in Mexico.
Challenges like these will be a part of any dialogue on future directions for Mexican libraries (just like they will be a part of any dialogue on future directions for public libraries in many countries). Time will tell how these issues and the dialogue they create play out, but both Butrón and Hortensia Lobato, Vice President of AMBAC, are optimistic that Mexican libraries and librarians will continue to integrate themselves into the bedrock of Mexican culture, both as a place to find information, and as a place to strengthen a local community.
A global Internet video service
How do you say YouTube in French? Well, YouTube… but many would also be quick to note DailyMotion. Another Internet video platform, DailyMotion shares many similarities with youTube, but as Joy Marcus notes in an interview with beet.tv, some notable differences as well — notably its European roots and its international focus.
And in particular, she notes, DailyMotion is second only to YouTube in terms of worldwide Web traffic to Internet video sites.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Two library and technology projects in Guatemala
Going through the archives of the excellent Global Voices citizen journalism website, I saw this post by Renata Avila. Renata describes a pair of projects underway in Guatemala — one developing library services for children, and the other implementing technology in Guatemalan schools.
Somewhat similar to Chile’s BiblioRedes project, The library project is called Caldo de Piedra. In their words, they are
…A charity that manages and stocks children’s libraries. These libraries are operated by parents and the community in support of local public and private schools to help girls and boys discover that learning is part of their lives. We believe in education in its broadest sense, where books are at the heart of an array of creative and artistic projects that engage children in a love of learning.
Edulibre’s website is written in Spanish, but Renata provides a translation of their mission statement:
Edulibre is a project by volunteers, professionals and students wishing to improve the access to technology for elementary school kids. Each of them gives their time by helping in different areas of the non- profit project.
They also maintain an Edulibre blog here.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Sustainable electricity in rural India
Rocketboom, one of my favorite vlogs, did an interview with the founders of the Barefoot Foundation a few days ago. This is a great piece about bringing sustainable energy to villages in India. The Barefoot Foundation seems to take a microfinance-style approach, similar to that of the Grameen Foundation, of training a lady from a village to perform a service for the village, and thereby becoming a village leader. (Although I an unclear about the extent to which the “finance” part of microfinance applies in this case, as the founders do not discuss the finance model they use in this project).
Certainly villagers will be able to use this energy for lighting, air conditioning, and other household conveniences. But beyond that, they will also be able to use it to power radios and televisions, Internet access kiosks, and even net cafes. The potential for this project to, at least in part, facilitate information access in rural parts of India is immense, and I will be very interested to observe the development of this project in te coming months and years.Contributed by Aaron Bowen
A bit of international info humor…
Ok, maybe it’s not all that funny, but it did amuse me. John Yunker writes in Global by Design about Montenegro’s new top level domain name. (If you’re wondering, a top level domain name is the .com, .org, .net, etc. in a Web address). Montenegro’s domain name is .me. Yunker imagines some of the potential Web addresses people will create using .me:
– help.me
– buy.me
– gettoknow.me
A country has the option of selling its national domain name to foreign citizens if it chooses, and if Montenegro elects to sell access to .me, look for a land grab of investors creating Web addresses like this.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
From São Paulo and London with Love: Sex in the Blogosphere in Brazil and England
Raquel Pacheco, aka Bruna Surfistinha
China has Mu Mu and Muzi. England has Belle. Brazil has Bruna.
Similar to Mu Mu and Muzi, who I discuss in this post, Belle de Jour and Bruna Surfistinha are respectively a British and A Brazilian woman who blog about sex, thus presenting an opportunity for a three way comparison of cultural attitudes towards sex – both in general, and in the blogosphere specifically. The biggest difference to point out between them is that, whereas the Chinese bloggers were just Chinese citizens who posted sexual content to their blogs, Belle and Bruna are ex-prostitutes who were actively blogging during their tenures as a sex workers. But even taking that fact into consideration, both Belle and Bruna would write about themselves, their personal lives, and their boyfriends on their blogs, thus ensuring their blogs do not have a fundamentally different format from the Chinese blogs.
Belle
Subtitled The diary of a London call girl, Belle provides no real introduction to her blog, which suggests that it emerged somewhat spontaneously as a by-product of her profession. But on this blog, Belle chronicles different aspects of her life – primarily the sexual aspects, although she will occasionally include writings on other topics as well. In the (more complete) introduction to the U.S. release of a book version of her blog entries she published in 2005, she describes her move to London as a recent college graduate and the discovery of how hard it is in contemporary Western societies to bridge the divide between college degree and entry-level job. From there it’s a fairly typical road she follows – limited job prospects and the expense of living in London drew her first by accident and then by specific intention to the world of prostitution. The most interesting part of her entry into this world comes as the last sentence of her introduction in her book:
And it wasn’t too long after deciding to do it [become a prostitute] that I started keeping a diary
This diary of course turned into her blog.
Belle’s life seems to have changed since the days she was blogging about prostitution. On May 23 (Mai 23, as she writes it in French), she posted about getting a job and has since jokingly referred to herself as “Belle de Office.” She has also continued turning her blog into a commercial publishing venture. In addition to her first book, she has published this 2007 follow up. But she still writes about sex and different social attitudes towards sex on her blog, as well as providing different vignettes on her life, her friends, and her activities.
The main reason I bring Belle into my comparison is to provide a Western European perspective on sex blogging – what kind of content goes into it, what cultural factors affect or don’t affect it, and how readers respond to it. That said, culturally I find England to be the most similar to the United States of any European country. Having seen different parts of England with a British friend on one hand, and also having lived in both France and Greece and traveled to other cities in Europe on the other, I find it quite obvious which nation American revolted against in order to gain independence. I am not at all suggesting that British and American culture are the same, only that I find them closer to each other than I find comparisons between the cultures of America and other European countries. And as always, I invite discussion of this idea, either agreeing or disagreeing with me.
With this in mind, I find Belle’s blog the most culturally similar to a blog one would find in America. Her writings aren’t affected by the constant threat of government censorship the way Mu Mu’s are (and to which Muzi’s writings fell victim). (And no I’m not suggesting that censorship doesn’t exist in England – only that it doesn’t exist to the same degree that it does in China). Nor do Belle’s writings reflect any one pervasive element of British culture, the way Catholicism acts as a pervasive cultural element in Brazil, affecting Internet content and use, and occasionally make its way onto Bruna’s blog.
Belle also doesn’t explicitly discuss the use of technology or social media as a vehicle to make her online diary available to the world. I’m sure this absence is a result of multiple factors, ranging from what topics she feels are worth or not worth discussing, to the comparatively ubiquitous level of Internet connectivity in England as opposed to Brazil or China. (Drawing from data from the International Telecommunications Union and other sources, Internet World Stats reports 62.3% Internet penetration in the United Kingdom, as opposed to 22.8% in Brazil and 12.3% in China). My thought is that the relative ubiquity of Internet connectivity in England makes it more just an everyday feature of life – not the kind of cultural force it is in Brazil, where average netizens seem to dedicate much more explicit thought to the connection between their social interactions and the Internet. While it isn’t the focus of her blog, Bruna does talk a lot more about the explicit connection between the Internet and her diary chronicling her work in prostitution, as I discuss below.
Bruna
Like Mu Mu, Bruna made her major debut to American audiences through the New York Times. Larry Rother introduces her thus:
She goes by the name Bruna, the Little Surfer Girl, and gives new meaning to the phrase “kiss and tell.” First in a blog that quickly became the country’s most popular and now in a best-selling memoir, she has titillated Brazilians and become a national celebrity with her graphic, day-by-day accounts of life as a call girl here.
Bruna, whose real name is Raquel Pacheco, says in the article that her blog emerged as kind of an accident that just kept growing ad growing. “In the beginning,” she says, “I just wanted to vent my feelings… I wanted to show what goes on in the head of a program girl [the Brazilian term for a high class prostitute], and I couldn’t find anything on the Net like that. I thought that if I was curious about it, others would be too.” Since this beginning, her blog has become one of the most widely read blogs in Brazil and she has adapted some of her blog entries into a book titled The Scorpion’s Sweet Venom, which was first published in 2005 and has been released in two English editions, as well as a Spanish edition. A second book, titled What I learned from Bruna Surfistinha, is on the way. Like Belle, Bruna has turned her blog into a full blown commercial publish venture. Also like Belle, she no longer chronicles her sexual activities online, although she will still devote parts of her discussions to the general topic of sex.
But in addition to introducing Bruna, Rother’s article also points to the ongoing debate over social morality to which the presence of a person like Bruna has led. While it considers questions of what thoughts should or should not be allowed, who is and/or should be empowered to make such a decision, and what to do with conflicting views on the topic, this debate over social morality is different from the censorship debate in China. In China, Party officials are considering from an official point of view what the government should or should not allow in Chinese Internet content. In Brazil the debate does not spring from an official government stance on what should or should not be allowed in the Brazilian Internet space, but rather from different segments of Brazilian society debating with each other. A national government can be involved in a debate of this nature – see for example this report by Nicholas Kulish in the International Herald Tribune about the Bulgarian government cracking down on prostitution by punishing individuals willing to pay for sex from a prostitute rather than punishing the prostitute himself or herself, as well as this report by Henry Porter in The Guardian opposing government intervention of this nature in England. But in each of these cases, the government in question is responding to a social morality debate in which its citizens are engaged, not (as is much more the case in China) setting their own policy irrespective of what their citizens think.
So the social morality debate in Brazil of which Bruna’s fame is a product springs not from the Brazilian government, but rather from different social attitudes of Brazilian citizens. And these attitudes frequently revolve around sexual liberalization, traditional feminine roles in Brazilian culture, and the presence of the Catholic Church. As Rother says,
Carnival and the general sensuality that seems to permeate the atmosphere can give the impression that Brazil is unusually permissive and liberated, especially compared with other predominantly Roman Catholic nations. But experts say the real situation is far more complicated, which explains both Bruna’s emergence and the strong reactions she has provoked.
As a result, some Brazilians have applauded Bruna’s frankness and say it is healthy to get certain taboos out in the open… But others decry her celebrity as one more noxious manifestation of free-market economics and globalization.
Rother further quotes a host of voices on the different sides of the debate. He frames the debate by quoting Richard Parker, an anthropologist at Columbia University and author of Bodies, Pleasures and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil:
Brazil is a country of contradictions, as much in relation to sexuality as anything else… There is a certain spirit of transgression in daily life, but there is also a lot of moralism.
Rother then presents two voices, the first – Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer, a journalist and theologian at Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro – decring the presence of a person like Bruna in Brazilian society, and the second – Gabriela Silva Leite, a sociologist, former prostitute, and director of a prostitutes’ advocacy group – arguing that moral concerns such as those Bingemer espouses are exaggerated. Bingemer says that
This is the fruit of a type of society in which people will do anything to get money, including selling their bodies to be able to buy cellular phones… We’ve always had prostitution, but it was a hidden, prohibited thing. Now it’s a professional option like anything else, and that’s the truly shocking thing.
Leite replies that
It’s not a book like this that is going to stimulate prostitution, but [comment instead on] the lack of education and opportunities for women… I don’t think Bruna glamorizes things at all. On the contrary, you can regard the book as a kind of warning, because she talks of the unpleasant atmosphere and all the difficulties she faced.
Last but not least, Rother quotes Bruna herself on the debate over social morality:
Brazilian women have this sexy image, of being at ease and uninhibited in bed. But anyone who lives here knows that’s not true.
Carla de Meis, a medical psychiatrist at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro who has researched the mental health of Brazilian prostitutes, considers this debate in her own research. She points out in her article Subjectivity, Social Suffering, Liminality, and Suicide Among Prostitutes in Brazil that this debate is not just external, that a person can struggle with this question with respect to her own values and worldview. While the contrast is admittedly somewhat artificial, de Meis sets up a contrast between social roles in which a woman conforms to a societal definition of a dutiful wife and mother who honors her family, and in which she rejects family life to make a living through prostitution instead. de Meis notes that many of the prostitutes she interviewed for her research described making a wrenching decision when the elected to bypass the wife and mother role in favor of the prostitution role. She further notes that many prostitutes wanted to get out of their lives as prostitutes as quickly as possible and do their best to rid themselves of the stigma of having been a prostitute and live a life that more closely conforms to their society’s definition of a “good woman” (de Meis’ words).
Though this definition of a “good woman” – dutiful wife, honorable mother, moral woman, etc. – springs from multiple roots, de Meis and Parker both point to the presence of the Catholic Church as being a major factor reinforcing this role in Brazilian society. de Meis notes in particular Clara, a lady who wished to conform to her society’s definition of a moral woman and wanted to work her way out of prostitution to achieve that goal. As such, Clara differentiated herself from “real prostitutes” – women who willingly chose prostitution as a profession. According to de Meis:
Clara maintains that the real prostitutes are the women who begin early in life, explaining that those who begin later, as in her case, cannot adapt to it. She tells us that God curses prostitutes. However when I asked her if the curse of God would affect her she answered “No,” explaining that she pray every day and only works as a prostitute through extreme necessity. This would redeem her from the curse.
Regardless of whether one accepts Clara’s logic or not, her words demonstrate how deeply engrained Catholicism is in the Brazilian consciousness and social culture – even with the acknowledgement that many Brazilians are not personally religious.
As I noted in my discussion of social media in Brazil here, Catholicism is pervading the Brazilian sphere of social media as well. In this October 5 post Bruna offers two passages that touch upon religious themes. Writing about an interview she gave through an Internet chat service during a recent trip to the city of Salvador, she describes fielding a question from an “evangélico” – a person with an evangelical bend:
“As perguntas foram ótimas, mas cheguei na conclusão que eu posso estar onde quiser, em qualquer parte do mundo, que sempre terá algum evangélico com suas teorias macabras para cima de mim… Ele me perguntou se eu não tenho medo da morte… Afff. Sangue de Jesus tem poder ( é assim a frase?)!!! Amém.”
(I will e-mail some colleagues in Brazil to correct me, but in rough translation):
The questions had been excellent, but, as is the case anywhere in the world, there will always be some evangélico with macabre theories. I say this because the only question that left the focus [of the chat session] came from an evangélico… He asked me if I do not fear death… Afff. Sangue de Jesus tem poder (is this the phrase?)!!! Amen.
I do not know of an English equivalent of her last full phrase, “sangue de Jesus tem poder,” but if I read it correctly she is speaking in irony – in effect saying “oh dear God, what a ridiculous question” in response to the inquiry. (If any Brazilian or Portuguese readers can provide a translation, I would appreciate hearing from you). The translation aside, this exchange demonstrates not only the presence of Christianity in Brazilian society, but also the willingness to use the Internet as a forum to discuss it. And while Bruna seems to take an irreverent attitude towards its presence here, a little earlier in her post she describes her surroundings in Salvador as “the kind of life for which one would ask from God,” thus displaying a not-so-irreverent attitude towards religion in her post as well.
Diligent readers will point out the obvious problems with talking about the views and concerns of whole segments of the world’s cultures based upon just a few blogs from those cultures. This is an excellent point, and I do not seek to make any broad assumptions about a culture based solely upon the views of a few bloggers. With that in mind, I invite any commentary you have on the British, Brazilian, or Chinese segments of the blogosphere. I would love to read any discussion you would like to provide, as well as any examples of blogs or other Internet sources you know that support or refute my analyses. Thanks!
(The NY times requires a login to read their articles online. Creating a login and password for the NY Times is free and may be done here).
Work cited:
de Meis, C. (1999). Subjectivity, Social Suffering, Liminality and Suicide Among Prostitutes in Brazil. Urban Anthropology. V. 28:1. pp 65-101.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
What’s in a name?: Questions of privacy in a Chinese social network
Besides being accompanied by the above photo, which I find perfectly encapsulates the tension between recognition and anonymity among social networkers, Robert Ness’ post to Danwei.org this morning offers some of the best commentary I’ve heard on the right (or lack thereof) to be anonymous on the Internet in China. At issue is the real name system (实名制), or identity verification system. This is a system that requires someone wishing to join an online community to provide his or her real name and photo in order to join. Some like this system because (as they put it) it guarantees the authenticity of someone’s view points – members of an online community will know who said what. The systems proponents further argue that people will think twice before posting any potentially incendiary social or political commentary, as they will not be anonymous. By contrast, critics argue that this system represents Big Brother in action. Many of these critics further feel that the ability to post anonymously leads to discussion of taboo topics that would not be discussed if discussants could be personally identified.
Ness frames this debate in the context of the Chinese social network Zhanzuo.com — in Ness’s words, “one of several sites contending for the role of ‘China’s Facebook.’” The English version of the podcast interview with some of Zhanzuo’s regular networkers does a great job covering the different perspectives on this openness vs. privacy issue.
I confess I was interested in Zhanzuo for another reason as well. In order to reach out to social networkers, particularly on non-U.S. networks, I created profiles for myself on different networks active in different parts of the world (see my MySpace and Facebook, as well as my Orkut and Bebo). So naturally Zhanzuo was something I wanted to check out. I tried using Google translator to get around the language barrier, and to my surprise it wasn’t a total failure. I did get this far:
But when I created the profile I wasn’t able to type in the Roman alphabet, so I couldn’t give my real name. I threw in few random words in Chinese I copied and pasted from part of the page on the faint hope that I would be able to edit that bit of text into my real name once I was inside. Not surprisingly I was not able to do this – while I found the “edit my personal info” button, I was still unable to get the site to recognize my Romanized name. So my Zhanzuo profile is doomed.
But before the name verification authorities deleted my profile, I did try to add a little blurb about myself and the SIG-III blog, partly on the off chance that someone would see it before my profile disappeared, and partly just to see if I could do it. What happened was interesting. My attempts to post to the “about me” section were blocked, with (in Google translation) a rather Orwellian message:
your current state is: not yet audited by administrators, unable to use this function.
Block of the network to promote the real-name system, in order to pass audit, you must:
1. Upload your photos as a true portrait
2. Complete the true information (including name, department, etc)
Within 24 hours administrators will examine your images and information vetted through you can freely enjoy the fun of the block!
If Facebook, typically considered the standard bearer for authentic profile information in the U.S., ever tried anything like this, Facebook users would leave immediately. This amount of verification would never fly with a U.S. audience, thus marking a very significant difference between American social networkers and a certain percentage of Chinese social networkers. And while I wouldn’t presume to draw conclusions about broader social phenomena such as privacy in general and how attitudes towards privacy change by culture based solely upon an experiment like this, I did think my experience with Zhanzuo offered an interesting if incomplete window into attitudes towards privacy among Chinese netizens.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Sue O’Neil Johnson, 1939-2007
Sue O’Neill Johnson (playing the accordion)
It is with sadness that those of us in the SIG-III community learn of the passing of Sue O’Neil Johnson, one of our members who inspired all of us with her dedication to the field of international information and her commitment to information professionals around the world. A memorial service to celebrate her life will be held at 1:00 pm on Friday, October 5th at St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bethesda, Maryland.
ASIS&T has posted a touching account of her life. Two passages in particular offer thoughtful glimpses of her life:
Sue was also active in the American Society for Information Science and Technology. She was twice Chair of the International Information Issues SIG, which received SIG of the Year honors three years in a row, and she won the SIG Member of the Year Award in 2003. She also co-founded the ASIST international paper competition which brought travel grants, ASIST memberships, and publishing opportunities to dozens of information professionals in developing nations.
Besides her children, music, and tennis and golf, Sue’s other great interest was in traveling and seeing the world. Beginning with a memorable trip to Yugoslavia and France as a college freshman, Sue had visited some 33 countries (many more than once) and was on her fifth passport. Perhaps her favorite trips were to Provence in 1994, Paraiba, Brazil in 2004, and the old capitals of Japan in 2005, but, in truth, she really loved meeting and talking with different people just about anywhere.
Many of us in SIG-III have shared our personal reflections about Sue on the ASIS&T wiki.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Sex, Blogs, and the Great Firewall Part II – Sexuality and Subversion in China
Decisions about when and what to censor can rest on multiple different criteria such as the reputation of the author and the relative visibility of the offending thought – an op ed piece in a major newspaper will be read by more people than if it were in a fringe publication, and as such may be subject to more stringent regulation. But the primary criteria in deciding when and what to censor is (obviously) the overall content of the idea. And as is exemplified by official censorship in China, some topics stand a greater chance of being censored than others.
DeWoskin, who I cited in part one of this article, notes that political commentary will raise the ire of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors immediately, whereas personal, social or sexual content is much more of a gray area. She writes (p. 31) that
It was as if an unspoken compact had been reached between the government and its citizens: we do politics the old way; you do your lifestyles anyway you want.
A Chinese friend of mine in Seattle echoed this thought regarding internet content specifically: an Internet search for “democracy,” “Tiannamen Square,” or “Dali Lama” will return censored results, but a blogger like Mu Mu, about whom we were talking, could get away with posting sexual content about herself.
Mu Mu first appeared on the radar screens of Western media outlets in late 2005, when Howard W. French wrote his article A Party Girl Leads China’s Online Revolution. French introduces Mu Mu as a fascinating mixture of sexuality and political commentary:
On her fourth day of keeping a Web log, she introduced herself to the world with these striking words: “I am a dance girl, and I am a party member.”
“I don’t know if I can be counted as a successful Web cam dance girl,” that early post continued. “But I’m sure that looking around the world, if I am not the one with the highest diploma, I am definitely the dance babe who reads the most and thinks the deepest, and I’m most likely the only party member among them.”
Thus was born, early in July, what many regard as China’s most popular blog.
Sometimes timing is everything, and such was the case with the anonymous blogger, a self-described Communist Party member from Shanghai who goes by the pseudonym Mu Mu.
A 25-year-old, Mu Mu appears online… most evenings around midnight, shielding her face while striking poses that are provocative, but never sexually explicit.
She parries questions from some of her tens of thousands of avid followers with witticisms and cool charm.
Mu Mu has changed a bit since French introduced her. After French wrote his article her blog attracted a large amount of media attention from the West, causing her to shut the original version of it down. If you follow the link French provides, you receive the following error message, saying (in Chinese) that the page no longer exists. Mu Mu started blogging again after the media attention subsided a bit, and her blog has since been through two other incarnations: this one here, and the current version, which exists on two different sites here and here. She has also refrained from posting any semi-nude photos of herself recently, although she is still willing to post provocative photos, such as the depictions of Japanese soldiers in the following post, which I presume deals with perpetually strained Sino-Japanese relations. (If any SIG-III Blog readers speak Chinese and would be willing to confirm or correct this presumption, I would appreciate hearing your interpretation).
Mu Mu also said she “finds it hard to comprehend why her blog is so enticing to westerners,” according to Dave Lucas. Lucas has published an English translation of Mu Mu’s reaction to French’s article. In this reaction Mu Mu uses the Google translator to engage French in a discussion, in which (if I read the Googleified translation right) she says she is glad she is living at a time when China is increasingly socially liberal, points to the challenges of separating one’s personal life from one’s public life (which is why she chose to mix the two in her blog), and reaffirms her belief in the CCP.
Mu Mu is an example of a huge challenge for Chinese censors. Politically she claims to be on their side, but then she writes about being a party girl and partaking in a Westernized liberal lifestyle (and as I discuss below, the contention that Chinese censors only go after political discussion and generally leave social and sexual topics alone does not always prove accurate). From researching her, my impression is that she is very adept at being edgy bout not too edgy as to be shut down by Party censors. Her popularity in the Chinese blogosphere adds to the challenge. With a large following, her sudden absence at the hands of Party Censors would cause a considerable stir around the Chinese blogosphere. But the attention she received from Western media in late 2005 and 2006 threatened to create a politicized crisis between official censors and Western media outlets over freedom of speech issues. I believe this potential political situation is what cause Mu Mu to shut her original blog down as an act of self-censorship and only later begin blogging again when the attention from the West had subsided.
Do Party censors really overlook all this sexuality in China’s Internet sphere?
The short answer is no, although it remains true that the severity of any reaction by official censors varies widely. Simply put, these censors are far less equipped to comprehend and deal with censoring social topics such as sex than they are political topics such as democracy.
But there is evidence of CCP attempts to regulate online sexuality in China. Perhaps the most visible example is the CCP blocking the Japanese portal of Baidu.com, noted in these two reports. (Baidu, whose name is taken from a poem from the Song Dynasty, is not a well known company outside of China, but inside China it is fighting a gargantuan three-way battle with Google and Yahoo. And Baidu is winning – see reports here and here).
Chinese blogger Mu Zimei, reproduced in a report by Jeremy Goldkorn on a Sohu.com story about Mu
In the Chinese blogosphere, Mu Mu isn’t the only blogger blogging about sexuality in China. At the end of 2003 another young woman named Muzi Mei (Or Mu Zimei, Mu Zi Mei, or木子美) received a lot of media attention around the world for blogging the stories of her sexual encounters.
Hannah Beech of Time Magazine writes that
Li Li… isn’t averse to kissing and telling. For the past couple of years, Li has kept a blog–written under the pen name Muzi Mei–that has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it means staying faithful to one man… “I express my freedom through sex,” says Li, unapologetically. “It’s my life, and I can do what I want.”
Her blog has been translated into French and German (and she reports an English translation of some of her work, although I was unable to find her on Amazon in English).
She has had less success dealing with official censors than Mu Mu. While her blog was popular enough to give censors a daunting challenge in trying to counter the viral spread of her posts around the Internet, it now seems to be defunct. In the Time article linked above, Beech writes that
Despite government attempts to censor it, the sex diary is so popular that Li’s pen name is intermittently the most searched keyword on China’s top search engine.
An article by Hamish McDonald in the Sydney Morning Herald went even further, saying the rise of blogs exchanging views on Chinese politics is a direct descendant of blogs that deal with social issues in China. At one point McDonald essentially says that Mu Mu, with her mix of sexuality and politics, could never have existed without Muzi Mei having blogged about sexuality alone.
Muzi Mei was certainly aware of the censorship threat she faced, and took precautions to prevent her blog from being shut down. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Peter Goff says
For now, Muzimei is among those managing to sidestep [CCP censorship]. “I cannot go too far,” she said. “If my work was stopped that would be bad for me, bad for the development of the internet and free expression, and bad for China.”
Nonetheless she ran afoul of official censors. As Jeremy Goldkorn reports on Danwei.org,
Her online diary stirred up an online fuss which got the attention of the print media, but she was thrown off the gossip pages of the tabloids when [official censors] caught on to the action and issued some of ban on media coverage of her. She has been absent from the media since the first few months of this year [2004].
Goldkorn goes on to quote a 2004 story posted to Sohu.com that painted a very unflattering picture of her:
Muzi Mei, Li Li … she dresses gaudily, but even more gaudy is her thinking and her behavior. She frequently changes sexual partners and even brazenly describes the details of her encounters on the Internet, revealing or hinting at the real identity of the men she has known. All of this caused a great fuss in Chinese society in 2003.
The censoring of her blog may be permanent now. Whether it was a voluntary choice on her part or the result of official censorship, Muzi Mei’s blog seems to have disappeared. The last version of her blog cached on the Internet Archive was in January of 2007.
Mu Mu and Muzi Mei are just two prominent examples of a small but well known (to Chinese audiences at least) bloggers who have used the blogosphere to explore the nexus between sex, storytelling/information sharing, and Internet technology, all at the risk of being censored. Other examples come from a Cai Shangyao article in the Shanghai Star that covers Muzi Mei and Zhuying Qingtong, and Sister Lotus (also translated as Sister Hibiscus — now defunct blog here, reports here, here, here, and here). There is also the slightly different but related episode of a blogger named Hedgehog MuMu (no relation to the Mu Mu discussed above, according to Lonnie Hodge) participating in a blogger beauty contest only to be disqualified for posting nude photos of herself online. (Additional reports here and here).
That every one of these bloggers should face censorship for posting sexual content online demonstrates that Chinese censors can and will censor social as well as political content. Some astute readers may further assert that the political, social, and sexual spheres cannot be discretely separated from each other, and that posting sexual content online can be a form of political commentary. This is certainly true, and I do not at all seek to imply otherwise. This issue is, however, complex enough that it merits a full discussion that I will leave for another time. Beyond that I have additional thoughts that I will put into part III of this essay, which I will add soon. And as always, I appreciate and look forward to reading your reactions to my thoughts.
Work cited:
DeWoskin, R. (2005). Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Social media and the Internet in Brazil
Brazilians are passionate about the Internet, and all the social media applications the Internet has made possible. Internet use and social media are pervading a wide range of aspects of life in Brazil, such that even those who do not have Internet access or choose not to participate in social media are frequently aware that the Internet and all its related applications are being inextricably integrated into Brazil’s social fabric. The Wikipedia even lists a technical term for Brazilian appropriation of foreign Internet applications – the Brazilian Internet Phenomenon. And they are matching Americans with regard to time spent online. Telegeography, a telecom consulting firm, reported in 2004 that Brazilian Internet users had overtaken American Internet users in terms of hours online. I actually find their statistic of 12 million Internet users in 2004 inaccurate. Euromonitor International lists 22 million users in 2004 (Euromonitor International, 2006), and Internet World Stats and Caio Bonhila of the International Telecommunications Union list 39,140,000 and 40,800,000 respectively in late 2006/early 2007.
Likewise, many in Brazil are making extensive use of different Web 2.0/social media/social networking applications. My favorite bit of pop culture to come from the Brazilian Internet recently is this music video by Claudia Leitte:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBkMFVAuLPk]
It highlights the extent to which both YouTube and Second Life are becoming a part of daily existence for Brazilian Internet users. The success of YouTube has even prompted Universo Online, A Brazilian version of America Online, to produce a native Brazilian video sharing service, the Videolog. And earlier this year Linden Labs, the company that maintains Second Life launched the Mainland Brasilarm of Second Life, its first non-English language platform (Brasil is the Portuguese spelling of Brazil). Drawing from many Brazilian blogs, Jose Murilo Junior provides this excellent account of the opening of Mainland Brasil. He quotes Brazilian bloggers’ thoughts on the opening itself, on the marketing campaigns that accompanied the opening, on the presence of the Catholic Church in Mainland Brasil, and on the (inevitable) backlash that came with the hype surrounding the event. Two bloggers in particular are worth noting. Drawing from the March 2007 Second Life population data, a blogger named Aenea pointed out that Brazilians are the sixth largest group of active Second Life users, claiming 4.73% of active users around the world. She provides the following comparison of these numbers to other Sough American countries. And writing at the Mundo Linden (Linden World) blog, Debora Perenti writes that
The Catholic community and communications network “Canção Nova” will launch the second biggest Brazilian enterprise in Second Life. It is the first Christian world large scale initiative in Linden Lab’s virtual universe. The “Canção Nova Island” forms an archipelago of 25 islands which will turn into the biggest Brazilian (and Global) Christian center, and offers a communal space for relationships, events and business in Second Life, is already in an advanced stage of development and building. The project was already being discreetly executed about 3 months ago. A team of 15 people take care of the diverse aspects in the island, such as terraforming, infrastructure, code programming, multimedia development, along side of the space’s commercial and managerial demands.(Translation by Jose Murilo Junior)
The presence of the Catholic Church in Mainland Brasil is a huge example of the confluence between Web 2.0 applications and a longstanding institution that forms part of the social and cultural fabrics of the Brazilian people.
In addition to the Brazilian presence in Second Life, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians use the Orkut social network. Developed by Google, Orkut is an example of the Brazilian Internet phenomenon listed above – an American network, but more Brazilians than Americans using it. Jose Murilo Junior writes about Orkut as well – as he says,
In order to understand Google’s significance in South America’s biggest country it must be realized that today of the 20 million Brazilians with access to the Internet , approximately 17 million are in Orkut.
And immediately after he makes this statement he pulls together literature from around the Brazilian blogosphere outlining a tension between Brazilian authorities seeking Orkut patron information on people suspected of being involved in foul play and Google’s unwillingness to turn over information it believed should remain confidential. In addition to discussions of censorship and comparisons of Brazil’s government to the governments of China and Iran (both of whom have asked Google for information on Internet users), some of the discussion focused on an extremely frightening prospect for many Brazilians – that Google might elect to close Orkut to Brazilian social networkers rather than turn over data to the Brazilian government. Luckily for Brazilian Orkut users this course of action never became reality, and Orkut is still freely accessible in Brazil. This amalgamation of blogosphere chatter culminates in Murillo Junior’s thought that
All sides should keep in mind that the case can be an opportunity bringing important insights about how to deal with identity in the web environment. Brazilians are ready (eager?) to explore these possibilities. It would be important also that Google Brazil’s team should be prepared to think and move with respect for local cultural sensibilities while dealing with the implications created by such a huge experiment in social networking. It is obvious that ‘adsense’ sales people are not prepared to understand the deep issues that will keep emerging from the incredible digital laboratory spontaneously generated by social networking. Google’s one-size-fits-all approach may just not fit everywhere, every time.
I’d be interested to know any or your thoughts on the extent to which a social network or other Web 2.0 application can be imported from one “local cultural sensibility” into another one, contrasted to the extent of localization that must occur to make a social networking service palatable to a culture different from the one that produced it.
Citizen journalism blog reactions to violence in Brazilian cities
As is evident from Murillo Junior’s sources, the Brazilian blogosphere in general is vast and covers many different topics, from people’s daily lives, to blogs discussing specific topics. (In fact in terms of breadth and topics, the Brazilian blogosphere isn’t too different from the blogosphere in America, although the content posted to Brazilian blogs will have its own distinct cultural characteristics). Though they are by far not the only blogs to discuss these topics, I have run across two blogs in particular that highlight issues within Brazilian politics and rising violence in Rio de Janeiro. Written in both Portuguese and English, the political blog, Brazil Political Comment, is managed by a consultant in São Paulo named John Fitzpatrick, and (in its own words) offers “opinion and analysis of the Brazilian political and business scene.”
A starker example of a social justice blog, Rio Body Count chronicles the numbers of dead and wounded in Rio between February and September of 2007. For the past year to year and a half, Brazil’s major cities – Rio and São Paulo in particular, but other cities as well – have been hit by a severe spike in violence and gang-related activity. There are multiple causes of this spike, but in particular ethnic tensions and a wide gap between wealthy and poorer people (combined with a perception that this gap is widening even further) have fueled this rise of violence. An October 6, 2006 article by Ralph Hoppe in Der Spiegel called São Paulo: Laboratory of Violence provides easily the most graphic but detailed and informative picture of São Paulo’s heightened level of violence I have seen:
The criminal underworld in Sao Paolo wields a power that rivals the Brazilian government’s. It organizes deadly violence but serves as a welfare state, while the city’s wealthy have withdrawn into luxury neighborhoods and feel safe only when they travel by helicopter. Is Sao Paolo a forerunner of the 21st-century metropolis?
For Sao Paolo, 2006 is the year of violence. Never before have there been such intense and protracted battles between gangsters and the police, concentrated attacks that paralyzed the giant city for days… All this violence amounted to a challenge to the Brazilian government by the criminal underground. According to people in the favelas, it was high time. Sao Paolo proper has 10 million inhabitants; it’s the sixth-largest city in the world, the largest in the southern hemisphere. In this chaos of wealth and sordid misery, gleaming skyscrapers and gray huts, the criminal underground has issued its call to arms, and the upper classes have retreated deeper and deeper into enclaves of wealth…
Since this year’s civil war, though, the [“Primeiro Comando da Capital” or “First Command” – the main criminal gang operating in São Paulo] builds internal coherence through fear and trust… and the message of the violent “demonstration” was simple: This city is ours.
Rio witnessed a similar spike in violent crime in 2006 and 2007. Groups like Rio Body Count have used different means, including their blog, to convey a message of opposition to violence of this nature. Accessing the site on September 19 of this year and using Google translator, one passage on the site reads
At the beginning of the project, the shock was gigantic… [An average of ten] died per day, and the people had started to debate on the violence, on the real necessity to decide everything with more violence. Many blogs had appeared to debate the subject, others had deepened the speech, similar projects to the Riobodycount had been initiated in other States of Brazil, and the numbers had been growing each time more…
This violence, peaceful protests against it, and police actions to counter it also entered the mainstream media and made it onto citizen journalism blogs. Roger Cohen wrote about the current violence in Brail and its causes in the New York Times, and on the French citizen journalism site AgoraVox, J.N. Paquet had this report on the Rio de Paz (“River of Peace”) movement placing 3,000 black bags filled with sand on Copacabana beach in Rio to represent the 3,000 people killed in their state during the first half of 2007. He includes the following picture of the Rio de Paz cemetery:
Alan Mota at OhMyNews, a Korean citizen journalism site, wrote about a police reaction to the rise in violence, which involved coordinated efforts by 25,000+ police officers across Brazil and yielded over 2,000 arrests.
Other Brazilian uses of social media
Like any outlet for citizen journalism, Brazilian sites cover many topics – the blog reactions to violence discussed above being just one (rather grim) example. Also writing in OhMyNews, Antonio Carlos Rix covered the Eu-Reporter (“I Reporter”) site, which he describes as “a collaborative section at the famous Brazilian print newspaper and online newspaper O Globo.” Rix also points to two articles by OhMyNews reporter Ana Maria Brambilla, one about citizen photojournalism in Brazil, the other about professional relationships between citizen journalists.
Concerning corporate blogs in Brazil, Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research shares his experiences from a conference in São Paulo:
CEOs here want to blog. I met with CEOs of companies large and small, and this question kept coming up. “How much time does it take?” “What if someone criticizes us?”… I was intrigued that this idea was so popular. I think businesspeople in Brazil are more used to taking risks.
And beyond citizen journalism and the blogosphere, Richard MacManus writes about a host of Brazilian Web 2.0 applications that have emerged within the past two years. He covers, among others, Videolog.tv, theYouTube clone I mentioned above, the Gazzag and Wasabi social networks, the BlogBlogs and OverMundo blogging services, and the Flogão photo sharing service.
So in short, Brazilian social media applications and social media users are extensive and growing, and they use these media platforms to discuss a wide range of topics. As Internet connectivity and Internet use continue to expand in Brazil, the numbers of Brazilians using these applications to put their voices on the Web will do nothing but increase – and, I predict, increase rapidly.
Work Cited:
Euromonitor International. (2006). International Marketing Data and Statistics 2007. 2nd ed, v. 2. London, U.K: Euromonitor International Plc.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
The African blogosphere – more extensive than you might think
South Africa seems to have a ton of social networking services – see Uno de Waal’s blog post listing some of them. Yet aside from South Africa, I only know of one other African-born social network, mykenyanspace.com, and even this network is not actually hosted in Kenya. Apparently it is hosted in the U.S. and directed to Kenyans – see a description of it here. (Of course if there is a large African social network that I am somehow missing exists, let me know! Add a comment!)
It may be tempting to conclude that this absence of social networking is a product of fewer resources, fewer Internet connections, and less training with the use of technology, but reality is more complicated than this. It is true that each of these factors has hindered the development of social media in Africa, but in spite of these factors many Africans have begun experimenting with social connection tools. My observation is that while social networking is still limited in Africa, the African blogosphere is really taking off. The number of African bloggers may still be small compared to the total populations of nations in Africa, but the African blogosphere is extremely vibrant and active, and seems to be growing at an exponential pace.
There are some excellent pan-African blogging tools that have been deployed within the past year. For example, Afrigator is an excellent blog aggregator indexing over 1000 blogs on Africa. Muti is similar to Digg, where news stories are promoted or demoted by Muti readers. News and African culture blogs such as African Path have begun reporting throughout Africa, and special interest news sites such as Pambazuka report on different topics (in Pambazuka’s case, social justice in Africa). Last but not least, Hash, a blogger at White African, one of the best blogs on technology in Africa I’ve encountered, discusses African Signals a podcast on African information and development issues he recently started, as well as AfriGadget, a site dedicated to the use of technology (including simple technology – not always computer based) to solve problems that different communities in Africa face.
(As an aside, Ndesanjo Macha, a citizen journalist for the Global Voices project, conducted an excellent interview with Joshua Wanyama, a co-founder of African Path. Many of Wanyama’s thoughts on the African blogosphere and the future of blogging in Africa are worth quoting at length:
I anticipate a rise of blogging. Citizen media will continually grow. I think we will start seeing a more concerted effort to provide expertise in an area or a model that can allow for bloggers to earn an income by sharing their knowledge. More than that, blogging allows anyone to leverage their knowledge and potentially create a reputation that can give them a better chance at landing a prime job, improving your business or creating a following that can lead to political positions.
I also think a move to mobile technologies will improve the offerings for bloggers. Cell phones are really the access points for information in Africa. There exists some opportunity for entrepreneurs who can develop systems to serve content from news and blogging software to mobile phones in a package. I think we will keep seeing pilot programs and finally real products that will offer such services…
Africans should really care about blogging. Other than localized newspapers, one can’t access news generated by Africans featuring issues specific to them. We need that. Blogging provides access to alternative sources of news and stories that are important to Africans.
The need for African news generated by Africans goes back to creating our own identity and stories. When a western media house reports, on Africa, it is all blood, gore, famine, crime and other negative images. For them, a positive image is tourism. Africans have a lot more than just these issues. We need to hear about a farmer who has created a better way of tilling the land that has enabled the village to have a surplus of maize, or the lady who built a company employing 20 people from good fiscal management and hard work. These are the stories that make Africa wonderful. The hope that all Africans have in abundance is lost in the media and this leads to a negative connotation and identity for Africans. We have to take back our stories for future generations will love to hear what we had to say and actually see it as our own perspective and none other.)
On the topic of who narrates African stories (Africans themselves or others writing about Africa), Afrigator draws from blogs all over the world writing about Africa. Gargoyle on the other hand is a blog search engine that indexes African blogs specifically. The South African Mail & Guardian observes that Sokari Ekine’s widely read, pan-African blog Black Looks “is – unfortunately – one of the handful of African blogs to turn up in the top 10 (sometimes top 15) blogs in a Technorati search of their blog directory when using the search word ‘Africa.’”
Responding in particular to the Mail & Guardian’s observation, Ndesanjo Macha writes about Gargoyle, an African response to the Technorati blog search engine. He quotes Mike Stopforth’s positive reactions to Gargoyle:
It’s frighteningly quick. Warranted, I’m on a 1Mbps ADSL line at home, but if this is how fast Gargoyle can deliver meaningful (and quality) results, it’ll be my very first stop when searching within the SA blogosphere – something I’ve needed to do before and will most certainly need to do in future…
It’s not pretty, but that will come. It has the bells and whistles – an RSS feed for every search as an example, a feature I simply love (from an online reputation management perspective).
This site could very quickly become the standard alternative (or augmentation) to Technorati indexing for African bloggers. Well done on what seems to be a very solid platform.
In sum, the African blogosphere is generating a lot of activity. But in addition to the pan-African blog tools, individual African nations – Kenya and South Africa in particular, but others as well – are generating a lot of blogosphere and social media content. I will write about individual parts of Africa in a later post!
Posted by Aaron Bowen
The African blogosphere part II – Kenya
Kenya provides a great individual case study of the African blogosphere, as there has been a lot happening there in terms of developing Internet access and localized Kenyan content in 2007. Despite halting progress, The Kenyan government is working on securing more widespread Internet access through an undersea fiberoptic cable, and has received money from the World Bank to facilitate this connection (Duncan, are there any more details you can provide?)
In addition to this online community and aggregator, the Kenyan blogosphere is extensive and vibrant. Started July 5, 2004, the Kenyan Blog Webring is a portal to the Kenyan blogosphere with an impressive breadth of coverage and a vibrant community comprised of individual bloggers. Ndesanjo Macha, a citizen journalist for the Global Voices project, offers an excellent summary of KBW’s activities and role in giving Kenyans a voice online. He writes that
Since its birth, KBW has been able to bring to a global audience gigabytes of voices, opinions, news, knoweldge and debates from the Kenyan blogosphere.
Writing on his own personal blog, KBW administrator Daudi Were declared 2007 to be “the year of emergence,” where KBW solidified its position as an Internet institution in Kenya. He says,
The most frequent support question we would be asked in the Admin Team during the first two years was, “Why should I start a blog?” or “What is a blog?” or variations on that theme.
In the last year we mainly get asked, “I have a blog, how do I join the webring?” or “How do I get your aggregator to syndicate my content?” or variations on that theme. They “why” and “what” questions are decreasing, the “how” questions are increasing.
That is a good sign and KBW members have played a big role in convincing Kenyans to blog. These days when someone asks me why they should blog I simply point them to the KenyaUnlimited aggregator. I can almost guarantee you that they will read something that they either agree with whole heartedly or disagree with completely, that fuels an urge in them to get to a keyboard and start typing to contribute to the debate.
In response, Sokari from Black Looks adds her thanks that KBW has played the role that it has played for the past three years.
Beyond the KBW itself, certain individual blogs offer a constantly updated view of the Kenyan blogosphere and/or current issues facing the Kenyan people. In response to a perception that Kenyan government officials have begun trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the Kenyan people – a perception fueled by such events as police raids of Kenyan media outlets last year and police force directed at protesters protesting and attempt by the Kenyan parliament to award themselves pay raises, as well as protests against a law to restrict media freedom proposed by the parliament – Ory Okolloh and a blogger who goes by the name of “M” started Mzalendo, a watchdog blog that publishes updates on the activities of the Kenyan parliament. This project grabbed attention around the Internet, from the BBC to Ethan Zuckerman’s widely read blog. In fact Mzalendo received enough media attention both in Kenya and around the world that at least one Kenyan official has used the site to explain his rationale in voting as he did in parliament.
And no, not all blogs in Kenya are about technology, Internet access, and current issues. Hash, a blogger at White African, one of the best blogs on technology in Africa I’ve encountered, lists KenyanMusings as a blog of interest. KenyanMusings is a blog kept by a 25 year old lady in Nairobi who writes about her daily life, much the way a young blogger in Milwaukee or Tulsa might. Reading through her blog I found a lot of fluff, but I found her writing to be an interesting street-level view of life in Nairobi – similar to many of my friends blogs here in the U.S., but with a definite African perspective added to the mix.
This blogosphere activity has spawned a Kenyan information technology group, BarCamp Kenya, which has weekly meetings to discuss information and technology related issues and maintains a blog called Skunkworks. Google has taken notice of this activity, and had one of their employees featured in a BarCamp Kenya discussion.
Other types of Kenyan Internet community services are also developing themselves. Hash writes about Mashada, an online community, message board, and blog aggregator based in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi. As Hash says,
…This is one of the best community sites coming out of Africa today. It’s got a very healthy community of active users that make it their daily destination for conversation and news.
As Daudi Were noted, 2007 has been (and continues to be) a year of massive growth for the Kenyan blogosphere. And as it continues to grow in coming years, so will its ability to tell the stories of Kenyans to a global audience.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Global social networking
Did you know that Americans do not have the largest social networking communities in the world? According to market research by Ipsos, America comes in fifth place in terms of number of people connected to a social network – South Korea comes in first. According to Ipsos,
Leading all other markets in its love affair with social networking is South Korea, as half (49%) of all adults in this country have visited at least one of these websites in the past, while over half of all online adults have visited a social networking website in the past 30 days… In comparison, about one in five American adults (24%) have ever visited a social networking website.
The chart they include is the best part of this announcement. It points to South Korea and Brazil as being the most active social networkers, with China and Mexico closer to the U.S. but still more active than American social networkers. (additional reports about these findings here, here, and here).
Furthermore, According to research by comScore, a company that measures Internet use statistics, different services gain and maintain popularity in different regions of the world. While social networking in the U.S. is dominated by MySpace and FaceBook, Latin and South America (Brazil in particular) primarily use Orkut, and the Asia/Pacific region uses Friendster first and foremost, and Orkut as a numerically solid alternative. As the comScore press release notes,
MySpace.com (62 percent) and Facebook.com (68 percent) attract approximately two-thirds of their respective audiences from North America. That said, each has already amassed a large international visitor base and both appear poised to continue their global expansion. Bebo.com has a particularly strong grasp on Europe, attracting nearly 63 percent of its visitors from that region, while Orkut is firmly entrenched in Latin America (49 percent) and Asia-Pacific (43 percent). Friendster also attracts a significant proportion of its visitors (89 percent) from the Asia-Pacific region.
And ironically, all the companies in the comScore study are American. Some have just wound up being more popular in other countries besides America. But are there social networking services born in other countries, which cater to people in those countries? Absolutely.
Danah Boyd has provided a (partial) list of foreign social networks, as well as the languages in which they are published and the number of profiles each has. She lists
– Cyworld (Korea)
– QQ (China). Here is a link to the English version of QQ, which has a South African web address and a much cleaner appearance than the Chinese site.
– Hevre (Israel)
– Lunarstorm (Sweden). British version here.
– StudiVZ (Germany). StudiVZ has mirror sites in French, Italian, and Polish, as well as a Spanish language version targeting South America, but no English version.
Her commenters have listed still more services – one pointed in particular to this list, which lists many non-American services. All told I’ve looked at perhaps 30 to 50 non-American social networking services, some of whom claim tens of millions of users.
And yes, foreign social networks can look different from American ones, and people of different nationalities may use them differently from people in the U.S. or discuss topics that wouldn’t reach an American audience. For example Hevre, an Israeli site, looks like this:
La Zona, a music industry oriented social network maintained by MTV Latin America, looks much closer to American social networks than Hevre does, but even then (to my mind at least) this site has a distinctly more Latin American appearance than a U.S.-based social network.
In terms of how people in different countries use social networks differently than people in the U.S., Forrester Research’s Vice President and Principal Analyst Charlene Li wrote a report on Mixi that noted certain cultural differences in how Japanese people network with each other. I found these characteristics of particular interest:
– Invitation-only participation. Most of the Mixi users I spoke with said that they use Mixi only to connect with their friends. The most used feature – the “diary”. They update their own and frequently check their friends’ diaries. While essentially a blog, many users don’t consider it one, as it’s really only for their friends.
– Anonymous profiles. As a rule, the Japanese don’t use their real names on their profiles. While this is also often true in North America, I found it interesting that users made it a point to tell me that they didn’t use their real names. Also, very few of the Mixi users I spoke with said that they had ever interacted with people they did not know, the complete opposite of the behavior usually found on MySpace.
– Heavily mobile-based. Several users told me that text messaging updates actually facilitated participation as they were more comfortable writing than engaging in face-to-face conversations.
– Structure. Unlike MySpace, Mixi is highly structured with minimal ability to change the layout. The users I spoke with liked the structure, as it created certainty about how users were to interact with each other.
Writing in the International Herald Tribune, James Shih echoes Charlene’s thoughts about the structure of Mixi in this article. He notes that
MySpace, for example, has often been described as a “free-for-all” in which members can easily create multiple profiles, add their own programming and post other kinds of media, like pictures, music and videos… Mixi of Japan, however, has a much more structured approach. A person can join only if invited by current members. Personal profiles are based only on text, except for three photos (premium service allows more). Surprisingly, users do not seem to mind. In fact, most members do not post pictures of themselves, opting instead for photos of celebrities, scenery or pets.
This article continues by discussing Cyworld, which it says blends elements of virtual worlds (such as Second Life) with social networking:
Cyworld is yet another story. Personal profiles are dominated by the Miniroom, a 400- pixel-by-200-pixel space that users can decorate with digital furniture, wallpaper and other objects, much as they would decorate real rooms. An avatar, or a character representation referred to as Minime, is also in the room, and the user can change Minime’s clothes, hair and facial expression. In fact, users pay real money to buy the various virtual objects to spice up the lives of their Minimes.
By comparison to Japanese Mixi users, Chinese people are more willing to network with people they do not personally know – in fact they are even more willing to do this than American social networkers are. This chart from the eMarketer report I linked to above indicates that Chinese people are far more outgoing when it comes to social networking than their peers in Europe and the U.S., and the report itself adds that
Among adult Chinese broadband users, 80% had discussed hobbies or interests online via a social network, and 78% had used a social network to meet new people. Less than half of users in most other markets surveyed said they had used a social network for either of those purposes.
The internationalization of social networking has caught the attention of American services as well. MySpace in particular has branched out to other countries. They have dedicated this entire page to their global network, and generated media buzz such as this Victoria Shannon article in the Herald Tribune. But as to how successful these transplanted networks will or will not be among different demographic segments of the world’s population, Bob Ivins of comScore has the most pertinent observation. He notes that
A fundamental aspect of the success of social networking sites is cultural relevance… Those doing well in certain regions are likely doing an effective job of communicating appropriately with those regions’ specific populations. As social networking continues to evolve, it will be exciting to see if networks are able to cross cultural barriers and bring people from different corners of the globe together in fulfilling the truest ideals of social networking.
So I’ve just thrown a bunch of information at you. Now it’s your turn – I’d love to have your thoughts as a comment. Have you encountered the international sphere in your own social networking activities? If so, did you encounter any cultural differences you found particularly striking? If you met someone from a different country through your network, did s/he talk about his/her home country? If so, what did s/he say?
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Why should we talk about (international) social networking?
There’s been an ongoing discussion about whether social networking is a passing fad or a form of connection that is here to stay – and if it is here to stay, how pervasive or inconsequential it will be, and what it will look like as social networking applications continue to develop and reinvent themselves.
The single most significant expression I’ve seen of this outstanding question comes from a discussion on the ACRLog, the blog of the Association of College and Research Libraries. In discussing David Bickford’s assertion in this thread that the 1970s notion of library service done over CB radio was a passing fad, Marc Meola asks if Web 2.0 services such as social networking are a fad or something that is here to stay. Two people responded that certain aspects of Web 2.0 are fads while other aspects will stick around. But a recently minted librarian named Michael C. Habib commented that
MySpace and Facebook are 2.0 as it gets and it would be hard to argue that they have only been picked up by tech geeks. Those services also incorporate blogging, commenting, and photo sharing. Wikipedia, E-Bay, and Craigslist are also 2.0 as it gets. These are just a couple of examples, but the idea is that 2.0 is already mainstream and well entrenched in peoples daily use of the internet. Sites like Flickr might point to a newer breed of 2.0 technologies, but 2.0 is here to stay.
Agreeing with Habib, I wrote that
As the introduction of the Internet to a mass audience in the 1990s showed, it is in a library’s interest to pay attention to disruptive technologies. I would rather be guilty of paying attention to a fad than missing out on the “next big thing” — and 2.0 continues to demonstrate day by day that it is anything but a passing fad.
Other voices have echoed this thought when discussing social networking services explicitly. Forrester Research’s Vice President and Principal Analyst Charlene Li famously described social networking as being “like air.” Jenny Levine at the Shifted Librarian wrote in March of this year that
Hopefully it is becoming clearer that we [as LIS professionals] need to pay attention to virtual worlds because they are going to be a part of our collective, professional future. It’s up to each of us individually how much of a role it will play in our personal lives, just as we make decisions about books, television, the internet, parties, movies, parties, etc. are, but between Sony’s plans, the BBC’s forthcoming online children’s world, Second Life, There, and other virtual spaces, we’re seeing further illustrations of why librarians need to understand how cultures and interactions work in these spaces for our professional lives.
I believe the same to be true about blogs and networking services like FaceBook as well. These applications are affecting and will continue to affect the world of information in new and significant ways, thereby impacting the work we do as library and information professionals. And given that Internet-based information is borderless (with the exception of certain countries where a national government seeks to censor Internet information, a topic I will discuss in a later post), the different forms of social networking services are taking root all over the world.
Writing from Bangladesh, Mahfuz Sadique produced one of the best introductions to the global blogosphere I’ve ever read. He touches on the most significant themes I have seen discussed in foreign blogs, particularly blogs in the developing world. These themes include Internet access, instruction in using a blog platform to generate content, the size of the blogosphere in a given nation compared to the total population of the country, the socioeconomic backgrounds of blog readers in the country, issues of local language and blogging in local languages and non-latin scripts, and localized content such as citizen journalism (and how this content affects traditional journalistic reporting and potentially invokes censorship on the part of a national government. Sadique paints a picture in which many challenges remain in terms of growing the Bangla blogosphere and using it to produce useful content that can inform Bangladeshis and foreigners alike about life in Bangladesh. But he also notes the blogosphere growth that has occurred in Bangladesh, and such successes as opening up the blogosphere to the Bangla language:
Only around one per cent of people in Bangladesh currently have access to the internet. As a result, before the blogging boom, the national presence on the web… had been sparse… However, since blogging has become a popular pastime, the entire Bangladeshi presence on the landscape of the internet has changed. In the beginning Bangladeshi bloggers had to write in English because of technological barriers. But with the incorporation of Unicode (which is an acronym for a standardization of symbols, Universal Code, which recognizes Bengali characters) into various blog-hosting sites, the number of Bangla blogs has risen exponentially. This was best demonstrated by a blog hosted by a Danish-Bangladeshi site, Somewhere in, when it launched an exclusively Bengali blog platform site — ‘Badh Bhangar Aawaj’. According to Hasin Hayder of Somewhere in, ‘there are around 5000 bloggers continuously writing’. The figures are staggering; since it started, a little over a year back, more than 31,000 articles and 350,000 comments have been posted. The ability to blog in Bangla seems to have liberated Bangladesh from its initial online inhibitions.
Because of thoughts like this in the blogosphere, and the fact that the blogosphere continues to foster active participation and discussion around the world, I believe it is important for us in the library profession to have an understanding of how people use these services, and what types of information they use the services to communicate. Certainly there exist considerable challenges for bloggers and social networkers in many countries, such as those Mahfuz Sadique touched upon. But given that people around the world are using social networking services to connect, network, communicate, and share information on global issues and events, library and information professionals have an interest in examining this trend towards internationalization, and considering where and how they may play a role in this international conversation. Given that social networking services will continue to become a prominent means by which people around the world exchanging information, library and information professionals have an interest in monitoring and understanding this global trend.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
What do we mean by social networking?
I am not asking for a comprehensive definition. I have yet to come across any definition that does anything more than offer an understanding of social networking in the broadest possible terms. On August 6 of this year for example, the Wikipedia defined social networking as a service that “focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.” I don’t disagree with any of that, but it doesn’t by itself offer me a greater understanding of what a social networking service is. The Wikipedia staff doesn’t find it adequate either, and have flagged the article as being in need of expansion and of additional material to support the ideas in the article.
I ask this question more to define some boundaries on what Amanda and I (your blog moderators) are proposing for discussion. Common understandings of social networking services hold that services like FaceBook and MySpace fall into the rubric of social networking, and I believe this is what the SIG-III officers had in mind when we came up with the idea of having this discussion.
I have since expanded the scope of this discussion to include the blogosphere as well. Like the networking services listed above, the blogosphere meets the criteria of the Wikipedia’s broad definition of social networking. (And yes, so do image sharing services such as Flickr, video sharing services such as YouTube, and virtual worlds such as Second Life. I have chosen to focus on blogs and FaceBook/MySpace-style services for discussion on the SIG-III blog, but I would be remiss if I failed to note other applications and services that have networking aspects as well). With this in mind, we welcome your ideas on our discussions of internationally focused blogs and networking services, but please do not feel limited by this focus. Please comment on any post you like, and if you would like to contribute an entirely new thought or post, please send it to me at sigiiiblog [at] gmail.com.
Beyond that, here are some more comprehensive definitions of social networking – all open to discussion, debate, and critique. In March of this yeah, Danah Boyd offered the following description of a workshop she put together with Nicole Ellison and Scott Golderat the 3rd Annual Communities and Technologies Conference. In their description they loosely considered social software to “include social network sites (e.g., Cyworld, MySpace, orkut, and Facebook), contemporary online dating services (e.g., Friendster, Spring Street Personals, Match.com), blogging services (e.g., LiveJournal, Xanga, Blogger), tagging tools (e.g. del.icio.us, Digg) and media sharing sites (e.g., YouTube, Flickr).” Then in June, Danah offered a definition of social networking specifically:
To count as a social network site, the site MUST have 1) a public or friends-only profile system; 2) a publicly articulated list of “Friends” who are also on the system (not blogrolls). Friends must be visible on an individual’s profile and it must be possible to traverse the network graph through that list of Friends. If the site does not let you “comment” on Friends’ profiles, please indicate that. This is not necessary although it is a common component. I’m not interested in dating sites, community sites, or blogging tools that do not have public profile + friends that are displayed on profiles.
Socialmedia.biz further describes some of the primary characteristics of social networking services:
1. Communication in the form of conversation, not monologue. This implies that social media must facilitate two-way discussion, discourse, and debate with little or no moderation or censorship. …
2. Participants in social media are people, not organizations. Third-person voice is discouraged and the source of ideas and participation is clearly identified and associated with the individuals that contributed them. Anonymity is also discouraged but permissible in some very limited situations.
3. Honesty and transparency are core values. Spin and attempting to control, manipulate, or even spam the conversation are thoroughly discouraged. …
4. It’s all about pull, not push. … In social media, people are in control of their conversations, not the pushers.
5. Distribution instead of centralization. … Social media is highly distributed and made up of tens of millions of voices making it far more textured, rich, and heterogeneous than old media could ever be (or want to be). Encouraging conversations on the vast edges of our networks, rather than in the middle, is what this point is all about.
And concerning the blogosphere specifically, Paul, a blogger at a South African blog called Chilibean, echos the first and second of Socialmedia.biz’s points. He writes that “a blog is a conversation. Blogs are structured to facilitate interaction between the blogger and the blog’s readers and use simple tools like RSS feeds, comments and trackbacks to keep those conversations going. Blogging lends itself to informality because of the emphasis on the expression of an authentic voice as an essential element of a blog.”
So if you have any thoughts on the nature of social networking as I have presented it here, please leave a comment. Otherwise, I’ll be posting more about the international face of social networking later this evening or tomorrow.
Posted by Aaron Bowen
Welcome to the SIG-III blog
The Special Interest Group for International Information Issues (SIG-III, part of the American Society for Information Science and Technology) maintains this blog as a means for communicating with members, colleagues, and others interested in international information issues — in other words the global flow of information, and how people from different countries and cultural backgrounds think about and use information differently.
I (Aaron Bowen, your blog administrator) regularly post articles on different aspects of this topic — current news on information access and use in different countries, as well as related social issues such as globalization, the digital divide, and censorship. Specific examples of these articles include social networks in different countries and how people use them differently, or censorship and subversion on the Web in modern China. In addition to facilitating blog discussion on international information issues, SIG-III members have a live discussion of them every year in the Global Information Village Plaza, part of the ASIS&T Annual Meetings.
Each header on each post is a hyperlink. Clicking it will take you to a page with the original post and all discussion comments that have been added.
We welcome your views! While we reserve the right to remove posts we deem to be spam or malicious in nature, we do not place restrictions on what you may post and we welcome all ideas. Thanks for taking a look at the blog and for contributing your thoughts!
5th Global Information Village Plaza – MySpace, OurSpace: a discussion of social media in the international sphere
Welcome to the Global Information Village Plaza, or GIVP, space on the SIG-III blog. The 2007 GIVP discussion focuses on social networking in international contexts — for example, how social networking services differ by country, and how people from diverse cultural backgrounds use social networking services differently. We’ve posted a number of topics and questions below to spark discussion:
What do we mean by social networking and why talk about it?
Global social networking — Did you know that Americans do not have the largest social networking communities in the world?
The African blogosphere – more extensive than you might think
The African blogosphere part II – Kenya. Don’t look now, but the Kenyan blogosphere is vibrant and growing.
Social media and the Internet in Brazil
Sex, Blogs, and the Great Firewall Part I – Censorship Censorship and subversion on the Web in modern China
Sex, Blogs, and the Great Firewall Part II – Sexuality and Subversion in China. Sex in the Chinese blogosphere — and what official censors think of it.
What’s in a name? Questions of privacy in a Chinese social network
From São Paulo and London with Love. Sex in the Blogosphere in Brazil and England.
Role of information professionals in helping patrons assess trust?
ASIST 2006
General Discussion
- Educate and give information about security and privacy problems to patrons;
- Learn more about trust ourselves;
- try to understand patrons perspective, cultural and otherwise;
- People need to be wary of sources — check facts, even of sources you think are trusted;
- In creating information systems, ensure information is secure;
- “Librarian’s like to search and everyone else likes to find”. As librarians we are inclined to find the most accruate, timely information. However, depending on information need, a thorough, exhaustive search is not always necessary. This method may wind up pushing people away (e.g. Wikipedia for quick and dirty information about a topic;response: most patrons can find the quick and dirty information, so if they come to information professionals, it is our responsibility tin enculcate idea that accuracy is important
response: leads to a marketing opportunity for us to teach patrons the value of quality informationresponse:Credibility is decreased if don’t give patrons the correct answer from the start
response: is it our responsibility to find the best information or train patrons to find and assess information (i.e. self-reliance and responsiblity). We have to stop picking on/dismiss Google and give patrons tools to find good informationresponse: key is to instill awareness of assessing a quality information source - Is information good information or the best information?
Example: when buying a car, consult Consumer Reports but another person will only want to be sure front seat is comfortable.
response: speaks to information needs and fundamentals of a reference interview
response: patrons may avoid a librarian who spends too much time finding the *perfect* piece of informationresponse: Democracy of trust is exemplified with Google’s popularity. The more people use a source, the more it is trusted
Does trust differ with international professionals?
What is trust?
- Freedom of information
- Information should be free flowing in the world
- In developing countries, people trust the people that they know. Not used to searching for information in formal information sources. Tend to ask people that we know, even with the knowledge that they may not be the expert or an authority.
response: as a librarian, tend to think about trust in terms of information sources we consult, but not as often if the information sources are trustworthy to the patronresponse: Brown found that scientists would consult colleagues rather than search for information in journals or databases.
Government censorship
Should a government be allowed to (try to) censor information that its citizens receive? Are there circumstances under which this practice should be considered explicitly acceptable or explicitly unacceptable?
Government surveillance
Is it acceptable for a government to monitor channels of digital information, including personal information, that pass within its borders? If a government has a legitimate interest in doing so, how may it build trust among its citizens that it is not unnecessarily monitoring their communications or collecting their personal information? When should a government have its powers in this regard limited?
In the case of the current wiretapping operatings in the U.S. (outlined in this article by Dan Mitchell in The New York Times), to what extent should people around the world be concerned that the U.S. Government may be monitoring their Internet communications?
(The NY times requires a login to read their articles online. Creating a login and password for the NY Times is free and may be done here).
e-commerce and data mining
Should online retailers or search engines be deterred from mining usage data from their websites, or from monitoring trends in how Internet users are using the Internet as a whole? Are there benefits to allowing an online retailers or search engine to mine data? If so, how far should these sites be allowed to go in terms of collecting personal data? When should they be required to stop?
Here are some articles relating to this discussion:
Wakefield, R., and Whitten, D. 2006. Examining User Perceptions of Third Party Organization Credibility and Trust in an E-retailer.Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, v. 18: 2.
Clark T. H. and Ho G. L. Electronic intermediaries: trust building and market differentiation, in 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, IEEE, 1999, Hawaii.
Which aspects of trust are most significant?
Even a casual review of the literature on trust reveals a cacophony of issues on the subject. From the list below, which one to three issues would you consider most significant
– to you as an information professional
– to you as a consumer of information
when evaluating a website? Why?
– The privacy policy maintained by a website that asks for personal information
– The presence of a logo from a third party organization certifying a site is trustworthy, such as Verisign
– The interests of an electronic retailer in mining data on the information behavior of visitors to its own website
– The interests of an electronic retailer in monitoring data on the information behavior of Internet users in general
– The influence of the blogosphere on a public’s willingness to trust a piece of information
– The environment rich with personal data created by social networking sites such as MySpace, Xanga, Friendster, or LinkedIn
– How perceptions of trust change from culture to culture
Here are some articles relating to this question:
Shanker, L. 2006. In Google we Trust. First Monday, v. 11: 4.
Wakefield, R., and Whitten, D. 2006. Examining User Perceptions of Third Party Organization Credibility and Trust in an E-retailer.Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, v. 18: 2.
Holland C. P. and Lockett A. G. Business trust and the formation of virtual organizations, in 31st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE, 1998, Hawaii.
Gefen, D., Rose, G.M., Warkentin, M., Pavlou, P.A. 2005. Cultural Diversity and Trust in IT Adoption: A Comparison of Potential e-Voters in the USA and South Africa. Journal of Global Information Management, v. 13: 1.
How do we measure trust?
How can a person’s trust in information best be measured?
Here is an article to help guide discussion:
Manchala D. W. Trust metrics, models and protocols for electronic commerce transactions, in 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, IEEE, 1998.
How do we define trust?
What are the key elements of any definition of trust? Also, why talk about it? Why should we as information professionals take an interest (or not take an interest) in discussing trust in information?
Here is an article discussing how trust may be defined:
Grandison, T., and Sloman, M. 2001. A Survey of Trust in Internet Applications. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials.