The 3L Mantra to live by!

What a wonderful day to see 2 of my Masters students get their thesis published as papers in one of my favorite journals - First Monday . This journal is one of the first open access journals dedicated solely to the study of the Internet. It has published excellent and pioneering texts from several renowned scholars such as Howard Besser, danah boyd, John Seely Brown, Edward Castronova, Paul Duguid, Nathan Glazer, Eszter Hargittai, Lev Manovich, Helen Nissenbaum, Trevor Pinch, and Richard Wiggins. So proud of Jessica Verboom , and Kristina Sedeke , both wonderful young scholars and practitioners. So the first paper by Jessica Verboom , ' Museum 2.0: A study into the culture of expertise within the museum blogosphere' is on how museums are addressing the rise of social media and how this challenges the notion of expertise in the art world. The abstract below gives a glimpse of what its about: Abstract While studies on popular culture have a more vast understanding of...

General Electric Panel Helsinki Finland June 26 2013 (WCSJ) Just got back from Helsinki after speaking on the GE sponsored panel on energy at the  World Conference of Science Journalists 2013 ( click here for the live video recording of our panel talk ). And yes, before you even go there, it is true that I'm not an expert on energy. In fact, ask me a question on wind turbines or solar energy or whether or not fracking is good or bad for the environment, and I would just advise you to Google these issues instead. So where do I fit in on a panel with Haydn Rees, the managing director of Clarke Energy or Rhys Owen, Deputy Editor of Global Water Intelligence or Tom Freyberg, the Chief Editor of WWi Magazine? Simply put, there is no escaping the conversation of social media infiltration into all corporate spheres, including that of the energy world. In a forum such as this where science journalists are confronted time and again with the hype on citizen scientists ...

Next week my colleague Filip Vermeylen and I are heading to Zurich for a speaking engagement on art expertise in the digital age. This  colloquium is being organized by the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA), Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich and the Centre of Cultural Law (ZKR) at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Looking forward to what apparently is going to be a very 'Swiss' experience as the talks will be in German, English and French with simultaneous translations!  Besides, this could not have come at a better time as we just published a paper in the Information, Communication and Society Journal that speaks directly to this topic. Basically, the premise for our talk is based on the fact that at this point, few challenge the fact that recent developments in the art world are hugely impacting the process of knowledge construction in the arts and the valorization process in the art market. According to some observers, the digital...

A new paper (PDF) that I co-authored with Sorina Itu on the analysis of serious games usage by INGOs as a means to foster virtual activism has just been published in the International Journal of Game-Based Learning . Sorina Itu deserves significant credit for this as she embarked on gathering data on which this paper is based on. Basically, this is about the battle between educators and entertainers specifically when it comes to gaming. This paper argues that the edutainment battleground has expanded to include actors outside formal schooling agencies, namely International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) . These actors employ digital games with the aim to educate and activate towards specific social causes. These serious games are viewed to have tremendous potential for behavioral change through their interactive and persuasive aspects. This paper examines serious games deployed by certain prominent INGOs and analyzes the educative aspects of such new media platforms....

Nimmi Rangaswamy from Microsoft Research Labs India and I have been working on creating momentum in shifting the focus of ICTs for International Development (ICT4D) research towards a broader and less utilitarian perspective. Over the years, it has been interesting to see how Nimmi and I through our independent anthropological fieldwork were coming to a similar conclusion on the need to pay attention to "leisure" behavior of Internet users in emerging markets if we are to genuinely understand the multiple dimensions of new media practice in the global South. For instance, her research with Kentaro Toyama on cyberkiosks revealed the following: From field ethnography, we find that urban youth slang and speech styles do not lag behind in villages. Neither do communication styles and channels. Instant messaging is immediately embraced by younger kiosk operators. Fan clubs of matinee idols bring in youth fashion and trends along with film m...

I am co-organizing a conference with Wouter Been and Mireille Hildebrandt from the Faculty of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam on The Shape of Diversity to Come: Global Community, Global Archipelago, or a New Civility? The Call for abstracts is open (Deadline October 21st 2012) Check out the website for more details: Keynote speakers Julie Cohen is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. She recently published Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code and the Play of Everyday Practice (Yale University Press, 2012). Chandran Kukathas is author of The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (Oxford University Press 2003). Kukathas is currently chair of Political Theory at the London School of Economics. Emmanuel Melissaris is Senior Lecturer in Law at the LSE Department of Law. He is the author of a recent work on legal pluralism and legal theory Ubiquitous Law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism (Ashgate, 2009). Jos de M...

A joint paper with Filip Vermeylen is out in the Information, Communication and Society Journal. This is part of a larger research effort to understand the impact of digitalization and globalization on the art market as we compare the art worlds of Mumbai, Amsterdam and New York. While I bring the new media angle to this with a special focus on how emerging markets are capitalizing on virtual platforms to reinvent and structure themselves through strategic information indexing online, possibly creating new post-colonial art spaces, Filip is taking on a more economic and historical angle to see how these markets are shifting and decentralizing from the typical Western to a more Postmodern frame. PAPER TITLE:  THE END OF THE ART CONNOISSEUR? EXPERTS AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN THE VISUAL ARTS IN THE DIGITAL AGE (download PDF) ABSTRACT:  In this digital age, declarations surface of the death of the expert and the democratization of information. Crow...