Bamblog

Achtung - das Bamblog wird seit Mitte Oktober 2007 nicht mehr aktualisiert. Bitte besuchen Sie mein neues Weblog unter http://www.schmidtmitdete.de. Danke! - Please note that this blog is no longer active. You can find my new blog at http://www.schmidtmitdete.de. Thanks for visiting!

Just noticed that the GOR 2006 program is online, without links to the abstracts though. Bad news for me: I’m going to present on the second day, in session 16 (9-10.45) and session 19 (11-12.30) - that is the morning after the GOR party! Phew, this is going to be tough..

But anyway: A lot of the sessions sound very interesting, here are my two panels:

9:00-10:45 Session 16: Wikipedias & Social Software:

Sheizaf Rafaeli, Yaron Ariel, Tsahi Hayat : Wikipedians Sense of (Virtual) Community

Joachim Schroer, Guido Hertel : Wikipedia: Motivation für die freiwillige Mitarbeit an einer offenen webbasierten Enzyklopädie

Jan Schmidt : Social Software – Challenges for Online Research

Ton Zijlstra : Social Software: Helping Knowledge worker dealing with information overload

Dennis Mocigemba : Podcasting – Realization of an old Vision?

Actually, I’m a little surprised that my presentation (abstract at bottom of this post) made it to the final program; it was part of a session on "Social Software" we submitted, but wasn’t accepted as a whole. I knew from the mails with the conference organizers that Ton’s paper was invited, but thought mine hadn’t made the cut. Well, it’s nice to see I was wrong…

11:00-12:30 Session 19: Weblogs:

Manfred Leisenberg, Timo Timm: Automatische Trendanalyse mittels unbeobachteter neuronaler Netze auf der Basis von Weblogs

Madan Kumaraswamy: An Exploratory Study of Weblogs of South Indians

Ulrike Röttger, Sarah Zielmann (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft) : A comparison of CEO-Weblogs in Europe

Jan Schmidt : Weblogs as tool for online-based networking: Empirical findings for the german-speaking blogosphere

While my first presentation will be more theoretical/conceptual, the second (abstract here) will focus on empirical findings from the "Wie ich blogge?!"-survey. So it might actually be interesting to listen to both of them, since it will give you a sense of the "greater picture" of our research in Bamberg. This will also be an opportunity for me to actually write english papers on these topics, thus reaching out to a greater audience and to international perspectives. Another thing I’m looking forward (apart from other presentations and the socializing of course) is the pre-conference workshop on "Social network analysis and its application to Internet research", to be held by Prof. Dr. Chris Snijders (Eindhoven University of Technology). So I’m looking forward to an intense and interesting conference!

Abstract: Social Software – Challenges for Online Research

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their corresponding practices accelerate social change, because they decrease transaction costs for interaction and allow people to connect with others based on shared interests rather than on shared territory. As various scholars of the „Network Soociety“ (e.g. Manuel Castells or Barry Wellman) have pointed out, the way ICT are incorporated into professional and private activities leads to a fundamental shift in the mode of social integration.

Over the last years, a new set of software has emerged that contributes to this trend: „Social software“, broadly defined as web-based applications through which users collaborate on exchanging or collecting information. Tools like Weblogs, Wikis, Networking Platforms and Social Bookmarking Sites offer new possibilites for users to present and develop their identities as well as to share various resources in self-organizing networks. While some commentators already hail the advent of a „Web 2.0“ and predict a new Internet Boom, this paper will discuss some fundamental questions of how to analyse this rapidly changing and evolving field from a social science perspective. It will line out the similarities and differences of social software and previous online modes of interpersonal communication. To analyze and compare form, content and consequences of social software, a heuristic model of online use will be proposed including three structural dimensions which are constantly (re)produced in social action:

- Rules, that is generalized schemes and corresponding expectations that guide situational actions. They include adequancy rules (when to use which medium/application?) and procedural rules (how to use a given medium/application) for identity management, information management and relationship management.

- Relations, that is strong and weak ties between actors that form as a result of individual use. In the form of textual and social networks, relations function as ressources which constitute (partial) publics, channel attention and provide social capital.

- Technology, that is the code of social software tools itself. Through specific formats (like RSS or FOAF) and customizable „Application Programming Interfaces“ (APIs), social software code supports the (re-)combination of existing tools and functions to new applications and services.