PACT Lab research on wireless technology activism is included in this forthcoming book on online social science research methods:

Hargittai, E. (ed.) (2009). Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Back Cover Description:
While the methods literature is extensive, rarely do authors discuss the practical issues and challenges they routinely confront in the course of their research projects. As a result, each new cohort is forced to reinvent the wheel, making mistakes that previous generations have already confronted and resolved. Research Confidential seeks to address this failing by supplying new researchers with the kind of detailed practical information that can make or break a given project. Written in an informal, accessible, and engaging manner by a group of prominent young scholars, many of whom are involved in groundbreaking research in online contexts, this collection promises to be a valuable tool for graduate students and educators across the social sciences.

We all know that the actual process of empirical research is a messy, complicated business that at best only approximates the models we impart to students. Research Confidential pulls back the curtain on this process, laying bare the sordid details of the research process, but doing so in a way that respects the ideals of social research and that provides useful lessons for young scholars. It should be required reading for our research methods courses.
--Michael X. Delli Carpini, Dean, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

A must-read for researchers embarking on new projects. Rather than the abstract descriptions of most methods textbooks, this volume provides rich accounts of the firsthand experiences of actual researchers. An invaluable resource of practical advice. Critically, it will make new researchers aware of the actual challenges that they are likely to face in their work.
--Christopher Winship, editor of Sociological Methods and Research and Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

Provisional Table of Contents

Doing Empirical Social Science Research
By Eszter Hargittai, Northwestern University

Spit, Sweat, and Tears: Gathering Biological Data in Naturalistic Settings
by Emma K. Adam, Leah D. Doane and Kathryn Mendelsohn, Northwestern University

Field Experiments: Clear and Convincing Evidence
By Devah Pager, Princeton University

Part of the Community: The Challenges of Balancing Participation and Research
By Laura Clawson, Dartmouth College

The Challenges of In-Depth Interviews with Disadvantaged Respondents
By Joan Walling, Azusa Pacific University

Surveying Bloggers Rigorously
By Gina Walejko, Northwestern University

Herding Cats Online
By Dmitri Williams and Li Xiong, University of Southern California

How Technical is Technological Research? Acquiring and Deploying Technical Knowledge in Social Research Projects
By Christian Sandvig, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

On Unexpected Events: Navigating the Sudden Research Opportunity of 9/11
By Karen Albright, Stanford University

WAT R U DOIN? Studying the Thumb Generation through Text Messaging
By Eszter Hargittai and Chris Karr, Northwestern University

Giving Mega Attention to Macro Research: The Rewards and Challenges of Quantitative Cross-National Data Collection and Analysis
By Nina Bandelj, University of California at Irvine

Secondary Analysis of Large Social Surveys
by Jeremy Freese, Northwestern University

Doing Archival Research: How to Find a Needle in a Haystack
By Jason Gallo, Northwestern University

More details are available at the University of Michigan Press web site.

The school will be an intensive six-day residential program, conducted in English and bringing together emerging and established scholars and professionals from around the world. During the week-long session, innovators in digital communications will serve as teachers and mentors, presenting their current projects and research and participating in discussions with advanced students and professionals beginning careers in the field.

The school will focus on:

• Democratic transformations of society through digital media
• Innovations in transparency and political participation using new online tools
• Grassroots civic activities using digital technologies
• Building effective communities with the Internet
• Reaching out to new users with mobile and online technologies
• Prospects for digital communication in developing regions
• Digital arts and culture in a globalized, online world

For more information:

http://digitaltransformationschool.org/2009/

The school is sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin and the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal via their CoLab.

He will also give the paper "Place Marketing the Reservation: The Tribal Digital Village", as part of the panel, "The New Media City" scheduled for Mon, May 25, 9:00am - 10:15am, Chicago Marriott / Miami Room, Chicago, IL.

Illinois Public Media

Christian Sandvig spoke today about the state of Internet infrastructure in the U.S. on Focus 580 with David Inge, a one hour radio call-in show on the NPR affiliate in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

The hour's call-in topic will be: Communication and Information Technology Infrastructure

Topics discussed:

• What do we mean by "broadband"?
• What kinds of "divides" are important when we think about Internet use? (income, race, rural/urban ...)
• About The RED Project -- a survey of Wi-Fi use.
• Is wireless Internet the future?
• Congestion in unlicensed wireless.
• Is decentralized wireless predictable or not?
• What's the difference between 3G and Wi-Fi?
• How does broadband policy in the US differ from other countries (esp. Europe)?
• What are the prospects for rural vs. urban communication infrastructure?
• Is rural infrastructure really more expensive? Does the government have to be involved?
• Is it reasonable to use the law to mandate that all buildings be broadband-ready?
• Are some broadband providers more reliable (or faster) than others?
• Why do people adopt broadband?
• How can local people get involved in broadband infrastructure in this area?
• Should broadband be a national issue or a local one?

Listen to the show:

RealAudio Archive
or download the mp3 file

Christian Sandvig (csandvig@illinois.edu)

Department of Communication Colloquium
Friday, April 17, 2:30 p.m., 106 Lincoln Hall

ABSTRACT

We are in an exciting transitional moment for anyone interested in television--such as the 98.9% of Americans who watch it. Despite larger screens, new formats, digital broadcasts, and a variety of alternative platforms and technologies, the audience for network television is in decline (dropping 10% last year). Yet screen time with video remains strong, it is just increasingly on a device fed by (or occasionally replaced by) computation and served by the Internet in some form. Consider only one example of this Internet encroachment: Web-based video watched on a computer (Hulu, YouTube). About half of all Internet users in the US have tried it, nearly 1 in 6 adults watch on a daily or weekly basis, and almost 1 in 3 young people do. As of December, more than 1 in 6 searches performed on the Internet are seeking video, almost all on YouTube. Other Internet encroachments and combinations abound, with varying success so far (Netflix/360, AppleTV, Mobile TV, and so on).

Attention in media research and informatics has focused on this transition as promising decentralized cultural production and daring changes in the form of video content even beyond dancing puppies and laughing babies. Despite this enthusiasm for decentralization, in distribution and structure the "mass" media remain, although the mass may be a different one. Specifically, the necessity for expensive Content Delivery Networks implies that "The New Television" must be advertising-supported and driven by remarkably invasive profiling technology (cf. the Phorm scandal). At the same time, the structure of persistent Internet bottlenecks in North America suggest a new landscape of widespread video gatekeeping, viewer monitoring, and censorship that is quite opposite the expectations of many users.

The normative problems and social goals related to media also endure, but industrial and technological transitions in video distribution are stealthily renegotiating long-stable social commitments about them. These shifts have the potential to transform how society organizes news, entertainment, education, and culture on "the first screen" -- the manifestation of media technology that most people in the world spend the most time with.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Christian Sandvig is Associate Professor in Communication, Media Studies, the Coordinated Science Laboratory, and an affiliate of the Illinois Center for Wireless Systems. In 2002 he was named "next-generation leader in technology policy" by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2006 he received the NSF CAREER award in Human-Centered Computing.

• classroom use of modified versions of commercial games and simulations
• multimedia blogging "treasure hunts" to find out about technology infrastructure
• use of blogs, the Web, and other technologies to produce "paperless courses"
• collaborative wiki writing as a way to learn about concepts as a group

For more information:

I-Te@ch volume 3 PDF: I-Te@ch 2009
PACT Lab Member Bios: Emily Shaw, Christian Sandvig

Related courses:
Communication Technology and Society (CMN 280)
Play and Technology (INFO 490 / CMN 496)
Unorthodox Research Methods (MDIA 590 / CMN 529)

See AoIR, Matt Crain (bio).

Matthew Crain

This article examines the logic, scope, and implications of the influx of private equity takeovers in the United States media sector in the last decade. The strategies and aims of private equity firms are explained in the context of the financial landscape that has allowed them to flourish; their aggressive expansion into media ownership is outlined in detail. Particular attention is paid to the public interest concerns raised by private equity media ownership relating to the frenzied nature of the buyout market, profit maximization strategies, and the heavy debt burdens imposed on acquired firms. The article concludes with discussion of the challenges posed by private equity to effective media regulation and comparison of private equity and corporate media ownership models.

Full text online, see:

Crain, M. (2009). The Rise of Private Equity Media Ownership in the United States: A Public Interest Perspective. International Journal of Communication, 3. http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/381

Also see: Matt Crain (bio)

Christian Sandvig, Communication
Matt Crain, Institute of Communications Research
Emily Shaw, Library and Information Science

This talk will discuss the Tribal Digital Village (TDV), a successful community-based project to provide wireless Internet to remote Indian reservations in California. This example will be used as a way to reflect upon the recent broadband stimulus initiative proposed by the Obama administration. By examining some of the hard problems facing rural communities unserved by broadband we will consider the public policy implications of the stimulus and the challenges of its implementation.

Note: This talk will be broadcast as a LIVE LEEP session. See instructions at the bottom of this message.

About the Speakers:
Dr. Christian Sandvig is an Associate Professor of Communication and a Research Associate Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Illinois Center for Wireless Systems. He studies communication technology and public policy. In 2002 Sandvig was named a "next-generation leader in science and technology policy" in a junior faculty competition organized by Columbia, Rutgers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2006 he received the Faculty Early Career Development Award from the US National Science Foundation (NSF CAREER).

Matt Crain is a doctoral student at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Matt is interested in the changing structures and technologies of the media and communication industries and the regulatory systems that shape them. He teaches courses in media literacy and digital media at Illinois and has presented research on media ownership and video web logging at Academic Research for Media Reform and the Chicago Ethnography Conference respectively. Matt holds a master's degree in new media studies from DePaul University and a bachelor's degree in multimedia production from Bradley University. His research article "The Rise of Private Equity Media Ownership in the United States" recently appeared in the International Journal of Communication.

Emily Shaw holds the M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois. She is currently pursuing a Certificate of Advanced Study in digital libraries from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Her research interests include electronic publishing, the creation and use of digital libraries for information storage and sharing, the social uses of unlicensed spectrum, and information and communication services and usage in underserved communities in the U.S. abroad. She received a B.A. in Anthropology from Barnard College in New York and has taken an anthropological approach to her studies of communication and information science since completing a thesis investigating the social uses of instant messaging programs among college students.

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CII Speaker Series LIVE Broadcast!
Good news for LEEP students and other off-campus community informatics fans: We will be broadcasting the following CII Speaker Series events via the Moodle Auditorium. This will give you an opportunity to participate in the event in real time and ask questions by sending a chat to the moderator.

Upcoming LEEP broadcast:

February 25 - After the windfall: Sustainable broadband
infrastructure in the long view
Christian Sandvig, Emily Shaw and Matt Crain

To access the live session space, follow this link: http://courses.lis.uiuc.edu/mod/gslisircchat/view.php?id=23150 or login to the course site from www.lis.uiuc.edu, scroll down and choose Auditorium under GSLIS Community located on the right hand side of the page.

If you do not have a GSLIS login id and password and would like to participate, contact Kristin LoDolce at klodolce@illinois.edu to set up temporary access by the Friday prior to the event.

For tips on how the Live Session works, see the Help Desk LEEP Live Session Tutorial: http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/itd/tutorials/LiveSession/.

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This event is part of the community informatics initiative -- http://www.cii.uiuc.edu/