Research Perspectives on Social Tagging

Social tagging has emerged as one of the most popular social software tools available online. Originating from Del.icio.us, social tagging capabilities can now be found on a number of major music, news, video, and commercial websites, as well as on social network sites and enterprise systems. Although social tagging allows individuals to organize content utilizing user-generated vocabulary, the power of social tagging stems from the ability to view and share resources with other users of the system. Through the sharing of tags and resources, social tagging systems facilitate network connections and perhaps even the creation of communities. In this panel, an exciting group of young researchers will present their ongoing work on social tagging. This panel will present a variety of perspectives on social tagging ranging from qualitative ethnographic work to quantitative visualizations. Additionally, the panel will cover topics such as: the definition of a tag, the role that tags play in social network sites, as well as tags in corporate and organizational settings. The research and the varying methods presented in this panel will present viewers with an exciting array of perspectives on social tagging. Additionally, in order to further engage the audience, the panelists will also participate in a point-counterpoint discussion with the participants which will help illuminate both the advantages and disadvantages of social tagging, as well as further highlight the multiple perspectives and approaches available for continuing social tagging research

Towards a Postcolonial Information Studies

This panel will present several research efforts that sit at the intellectual convergence of post-colonial studies and information studies. Post-colonial studies provide a theoretical leveraging ground from which to consider themes of hybridity, multiplicity, globalization, transnationality, and alterity in relation to power and informational phenomena. From this view, efforts to bring together post-colonial perspectives to information studies encourage us to examine the historically contingent processes of the design, implementation, and use of information in global and multi-cultural contexts. As such, a post-colonial perspective can provide a lens from which to look at the way information and its artefacts travel and the implications for such migrations. However, these efforts are still nascent. This panel will be a collective opportunity to discuss the possible contours and boundaries of such an intellectual endeavor. As such, the panel will discuss some of the following questions: ??? What is the relevance of postcolonial approach to information studies? ??? What would and could a post-colonial information studies look like? ??? What are the theoretical assumptions, opportunities, and limitations of a postcolonial information studies approach? ??? What kinds of new research questions can be explored within a post-colonial information studies framework? ??? What kinds of new locations and sites of inquiry emerge within this framework? ??? What ethics and values guide a post-colonial information studies approach

Networks at their Limits: Software, Similarity, and Continuity in Vietnam

This dissertation explores the social worlds of pirated software discs and free/open source software in Vietnam to describe the practices of copying, evangelizing, and translation. This dissertation also reveals the cultural logics of similarity and continuity that sustain these social worlds. Taken together, this dissertation argues that the logics of similarity and continuity are expressions of Vietnam's distance from global networks. Vietnam is currently in a period of rapid economic transition and growing uncertainty. As the country continues to integrate into the global economy, information technologies like software take on new importance as icons of modern industry and economic development. Information technologies like software demonstrate connection to global networks and legitimize Vietnam's place among the global community. However, situated along the edge of global networks, Vietnamese feel the burdens of distance in part with their desires for membership to the global community. This dissertation identifies ideals of difference that affiliate pirated software and free/open source software in the global North with an activist ethos, replete with ideals of transgression and rupture. Such ideals however, are incongruent with the experience of life in the global South, along global edges. Instead, this dissertation argues that through logics of similarity and continuity in the social worlds of pirated software discs and free/open source software, Vietnamese make sense of their place along the edges of global networks. At the place of edges, difference is a burden to overcome not a value to realize and logics of similarity and continuity serve to recuperate distance and disconnection. Analogously, this dissertation identifies similar commitments to difference in networks theories that emphasize hybrid forms. This dissertation proposes the concept of limits to challenge the prism of difference in these theories. By introducing the language of limits, this dissertation reveals the struggles of integrating into global networks and challenges connectivity as an already accomplished fact. The language of limits brings into relief the forms of breakdown--material and cultural--that serve as barriers amid desires for connection and legitimation

Navigating multi-disciplinary spaces

We propose a roundtable discussion to report results of the first UC Information Studies Lab workshop and discuss implications with a broader audience. The workshop is conceived and organized by doctoral students for doctoral students from the three "iSchools" in the University of California system: UC Berkeley's School of Information, UC Irvine's Department of Informatics, and UCLA's Department of Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. The UC Information Studies Lab will host the doctoral workshop on January 22-23, 2009. This proposal includes details about the objectives of the workshop, motivation, work-to-date, and intended audience. We hope to report and discuss the planning, results and experiences from the workshop at the iConference

In Information's Shadow: Considering Failure as Noise, Misinformation, Error and Breakdown

This panel brings together several presentations on the topic of information failure, particularly through tropes of noise, misinformation, error, and breakdown. The four speakers will follow a "Pecha-Kucha" style of presentation (thirty slides at twenty seconds a slide) followed by group discussion. Leah Lievrouw will consider noise by linking recent discussions of big data with information systems theorists Bertalanffy, Shannon, and von Foerster. Colin Doty will discuss misinformation within recent debates over vaccine safety. Patrick Keilty will provide a textual analysis of Desk Set (1957) to demonstrate the way that error is gendered female in representations of technology. Lastly, Lilly Nguyen will provide a semiotic analysis of technological breakdown, drawing from ethnographic fieldwork of software in Vietnam.publishedye

MOESM2 of The epidemiology of subclinical malaria infections in South-East Asia: findings from cross-sectional surveys in Thailand–Myanmar border areas, Cambodia, and Vietnam

Additional file 2. Reasons why individuals were not included in the malaria surveys