ΠΟΛΗ ΚΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΒΑΛΛΟΝ. ΕΦΑΡΜΟΣΜΕΝΗ ΚΑΙ ΚΛΙΝΙΚΗ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΟΛΟΓΙΑ
Προθεσμία: 15 Ιανουρίου 2010
Έναρξη 15 Μαρτίου 2010

Αντικείμενο————

• Επιστημονική εκπαίδευση και ανάπτυξη της ικανότητας παράλληλης ανάλυσης και μελέτης κοινωνικών και χωρικών – περιβαλλοντικών φαινόμενων
• Διεπιστημονική μεθοδολογία έρευνας με κύρια αναφορά σε κοινωνιολογικές, ψυχολογικές, οικολογικές – χωρικές και αισθητικές μεθόδους
• Ανάπτυξη της κοινωνικής εγρήγορσης για την κοινωνική συνοχή, εκπαίδευση για τη βελτίωση της περιβαλλοντικής συμπεριφοράς, ανάπτυξη του κοινωνικού κεφαλαίου με την εφαρμογή παρεμβατικών και κλινικών μεθόδων
• Εκπαίδευση στελεχών της διοίκησης, της αυτοδιοίκησης και των επιχειρήσεων σε θέματα αστικού χώρου και περιβάλλοντος.
• Συμβουλευτική για τοπικά κοινωνικά και περιβαλλοντικά θέματα

Προσφερόμενα Μαθήματα

Κοινωνιολογία του Αστικού Χώρου και του Περιβάλλοντος
Αντίληψη, Αισθητική και Διαμόρφωση του Χώρου και του Περιβάλλοντος
Κλινική Κοινωνιολογία
Ποιότητα Ζωής και Αποτίμηση της
Πολεοδομικές και Καλλιτεχνικές Παρεμβάσεις στον Αστικό Χώρο
Πολιτική Προστασία και Κοινωνικο-Πολιτισμικό Κεφάλαιο
Παρεμβατική Κλινική Κοινωνιολογία και Ψυχική Υγεία
Σχέδια και Προγράμματα Αειφορικής Αστικής Ανάπτυξης
Μεταπτυχιακή Διπλωματική Διατριβή

Classic video clip showed up on Twitter this week … perhaps Opinion Polls: Getting the results you want should be compulsory viewing for market researchers?

Finding your long lost family members, friends, Co-workers, or Classmates can sometimes be difficult depending on where you start, and how you search.

Searching for Family and Friends

There are 3 most important things you need to know before you start your search or journey, and also remember.

FIRST; You must not expect your journey or search to be easy if you are not willing to put yourself in a position to help them find you.  They may also be looking for you while you are searching for them.

SECOND; Never try to do everything yourself.  You will always need people to help you achieve your goals throughout your life, whether they are small or large.  Bill Gates is one of the wealthiest men in the world, and wouldn’t be where he is today if just a few people didn’t believe in his Microsoft idea years ago before Microsoft was ever born.

THIRD; You must also realize that contacting one person won’t connect you to your long lost loved ones.  Infact, you don’t always reach or get the person you want when you call a person’s house number.  And, most times, lots of funding is required when you’re trying to do everything on your own, and very little is needed when you allow others to help you.  Infact, I found it to be a lot easier doing it this way after creating a profile online in a Social Networking Community and started searching for my long lost family members.  Many of them I would’ve never found without their brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, husbands, or wives finding me and being connected to them through their own personal profile.  This Social Network Community saved me time and money, paid me during my search, and is now paying me to stay in-touch with my long lost and found family members, friends, co-workers, and classmates.

You can find more details about this community at the following site http://mailbox.eCa.sh/SocialNetworkCommunity

I went to a cracker conference last week where I heard Prof. Julian Cribbs describe climate change as the greatest communications challenge of all times.  We have to convince more than 6 billion people that there is a problem and what they should do about it.  When I graduated from University with a creative writing degree I thought I was destined for fluff.  As it turns out, communications is now a life or death proposition.

I had never heard of these sites before, and when I had a quick glance at them I did quite like the idea of them. The thought that there is website where you can post anything which will not be edited is quite a nice idea. I think many people, even in this country; do have worries about what news stories we hear about, and those that we don’t. On these sites, we have the potential can see a whole range of unedited stories. The interesting thing I found on the sites is that I had not heard about any of the news items posted. This really highlights to me the fact that the mainstream UK news really doesn’t give a broad reflection of news that is going on in the world.

I have to say I really did not like the ‘ Reddit’ site, mainly because it looked like a website full of junk and gossip, which I can get from reading a cheap magazine. I liked ‘Digg’ a bit more as it seemed to contain more political news which I am more interested in. Although I did like the idea of these social news websites, I think my expectations were quite high surrounding the contents of the news posted. I felt that the sites may have brought together a network of media savvy people who seek and share information about political scandal that those high up do not want the public to hear about. (I may be being slightly cynical of the media here!)

I think this idea of news being posted like this could really catch on. I think the social news sites do have at least the potential, to post great stories giving as different and interesting information on current affairs which we may not see on mainstream new. I think it gives freedom and power back in the public hands in terms of highlighting news that we wish people to hear about.

In terms of the future to journalism I think there could be an increase on this kind of unedited news. I have noticed that many TV new channels have increasingly sought to reflect the views  from the public. On news 24 they often ask the public to text in any stores and send in photos that they feel will be of interest to the channel. However for journalism and social research it does create many risks. The unedited version, I assume would not be checked in terms of their accuracy and source. This gives people a tremendous amount of power to abuse ‘social news’. It is difficult to see however, how we can strike a balance between the two.

Social networking sites are a hugely popular form of communication in the modern world. People use social networking sites for a whole range of activites from contacting people, sharing photos, expressing ideas and thoughts, and many more. I myself have a facebook which I use quite alot, I think it is a grat way to communicate to friends who you have not seen in a while or friends who live abroad or far away. Its a great way also to share your photos with a large group of people.

I discussed some of issues on the wiki realting to this topic, which I will reiterate here. One of the major worries over social networking sites is over privacy and how easily people can access your information. This is not something I feel is a major problem anymore, with people having the option to make their profiles private. Many social networking sites have reacted to these worries by introducing age rescrictions and tighter privacy options.

When first starting the Wiki I found it all quite confusing and complex. However, after a couple of weeks it seemed really easy to use and quite enjoyed reading other peoples contributions. I think if the Wiki was not a compulsory part of the course, I have to admit I think I would of shied away from using it due to my initals  fears of not getting the hang of it. I am really glad that it has been a assessed part of the course however, as it lets you share your reading with others. It also takes the pressure of as well as you are able to find out a bit more about the topics from other people readings.

I have quite mixed feelings about the ability to edit other peoples work. I think to be honest I have faith in what other people have looked at and like seeing what they have found. I think I like the blog idea better where you can comment on others work, instead of editing it. Maybe though if you see an error that someone has made e.g. the wrong date, it is better that it is edited for everyones benefit including the writer as it was most probably a typo or silly mistake.

In terms of long term use, Its a great thing to refer back to and can see it becoming useful to look back on for the it review and even other modules. I would find it interesting to know what others feel about the wiki, especially about the editing part.

Were I amoral, I would propose a social research project like this:

First of all, make participation in the study mandatory for completion of a course at University, or even more unethically – a high school class (i.e. where the subjects would be under 18 years of age).

So, you force them to participate. Then it might be useful (if designing an unethical study) to make the focus of the research particularly personal; say, the when and how of peoples first sexual experience.

Now, we have a group of minors, forced into a situation where they have to divulge personal information. It is highly unlikely that you would get accurate data if it were collected in a focus group format, so a questionare might be the go.

However, since were being unethical, lets make it so that after each subject fills in the questionarre, it is submitted to another classmate for approval; i.e. that they have answered the all of the questions, and that the answers are not obviously made up.

Then, we might conduct a focus group with members of the same peer group based around the data collected in the questionarres. It would be very unethical if anonimity was not catered for, especially when names are recognizable (since all the subjects would be in the same class at school).

In order to rectify this unethical study we might do the following:

Make participation voluntary

Don’t conduct this particular study with minors

Maintain anonymity of subjects

Make sure that not even the researcher would be able to match answers with subjects real identity. Obvoiusly make sure that the data is collected so as to provide an avenue for realistic assessment of the research goals, but it would be useful to provide as much anonimity as possible, so as to collect realistic data.

I was in a group who conducted a focus group aimed at learning about peoples habits/ perceptions of viral video’s and emails.

We worked together to develop a list of questions to ask the group. Here they are:

1. What is the first video you remember?
2. What’s your reaction to having one in your inbox?
3. When do you view them?
4. What do you do with them (i.e. fwd/delete) and why?

I was expecting the first question to be quite easy to answer. However, I was surprised when a respondent answered something to the effect of: ‘I dont remember which one is the FIRST one I remember. I remember a whole bunch, but I don’t know which one is the first one!’.

I thought the question would come across as a word-association type question, i.e. just say the first thing that comes into your head. However, it seemed to put everyone on the spot, and overall the first question didn’t go down very well.

You can have a look at the video to see what I mean, but overall, I think the most important lesson to be learnt here is that you need to phrase your questions carefully, and make sure they match with the level of moderation you are using as facilitator of the focus group.

I conducted two interview’s, both with male universtiy students aged in thier early 20’s. I was focusing on how students were using e-resources, such as online journal databases like jstor.

I thought of the information that I was hoping or expecting to obtain from the subjects, and then made a list of questions in an order that I thought would best conceal my intensions.  Here they are:

1. When did you start using these sources?

2. Who showed you how to use the sources?

3. How satified are you with the source?

4. Are you more likely to read more of one author if you source thier material from a physical book, compared with sourcing thier material online?

5. If you can’t find what you’re looking for online, what do you do[give up/go to a library]?

I found the interview process interesting. I think the following summs up what I learnt.

‘an evasive answer, is not a genuine reciprication…’ [May, T. (1998)  p.122]

Women, as interviewee, are more likely than men to develop the relationship with the interviewer. This means that, in a similar fashion to evasive answers being ingenuine, over enthusiastic responses might be just as inaccurate as under enthusiastic responses [ibid, p.124].

Basically, one needs to phrase your questions very carefully, so as not to lead reponses in a particular direction.

check out the mp3’s of my interview’s!

Thankfully, my Twitter account has been unsuspended. Hooray!

After being suspended I promptly contested the suspension through Twitter’s support page. To tell you the truth, I kind of had high expectations of Twitters support team. I told myself someone would fire back a message rather instantaneously and I would be back in business. However, this was not the case.

After a day of my request sitting there with the status informing it was yet to be assigned to a support person I decided I best submit another. This time I used the ’support’ email address. Almost another day passed until I heard anything from them. I rejoiced at the new message from Twitter in my inbox, but opening it revealed all they were telling me is that they were deleting my ‘duplicate’ request so that my initial request may be ‘processed’ faster. The message told me the suspension could be a minimum of 30 days. Wtf? Would someone just please respond. Acknowledge you’ve got my request, even.

On day three I began commenting on my initial message. Each day my comments would become increasingly urgent.

It was around day four that I forgot what they had told me about submitting multiple requests. I submitted a bunch more…with words like HELP, and I’ve been WRONGLY SUSPENDED in large capitals. I even started a temporary account called @HelpImSuspended. I used this to message BiZ Stone himself, message @spam to tell them I’m NOT spam and to plea to anyone at all that I’d been wrongly suspended!

Anyways. One of these methods must have worked, because a lovely Twitter employee named ‘Ginger’ messaged me back on the seventh day of my famine to let me know she had unsuspended my account – Hallelujah!

I really believe that Twitter has been a useful tool for my project. It has allowed me access to participants I would have never otherwise had the chance to be in touch with. More importantly though, like many others, I have become quite reliant on Twitter as a stream of information and communication with particular friends, colleagues and scholars. A week without Twitter was not a minor deal in my life. Many of my friends joked about its insignificance. Rather, I was unable to consume information in the ways that I have become so accustomed.

But you know what the worst part about it all was!? After Twitter unsuspended my account….I thought that all the stuff I’d missed would just become visible in my homepage stream. This was not the case! Any tweets posted while I was suspended were not delivered. What’s more…any tweets directed at me (@alexdefreitas) during that time, were rejected! This was a big bummer. Especially because the day before I was suspended I had just sent a bunch of messages to potential new participants in my study.

So the answer to what one does when they are back after a week suspended from Twitter? Well, I manually went through all of the (important) profiles I follow and scrolled through catching up on what had been said. While time consuming, at least I could rest knowing that links shared….reports linked to…scholarly banter had not gone on without me.

Don’t underestimate the power of Twitter as a research tool. There are even conference workshops approaching that address microblogging like Twitter. I chose to use my personal account for my research as that is the way I would approach someone physically and ask them to take part in my study. I am not some far off researcher….just a person…another WiFi user. But I’m learning from the experience. My requests for people to participate started as a copy and pasted message. As it turns out…this is considered abuse of the @reply feature in Twitter’s terms and conditions. Now? well, I will have to make more of an effort to address people personally. This is fine, but it means the amount of people I can reach will drastically lower.

Needless to say. It’s been a fun experience this past year. Learning Twitter. Learning new cities. Learning ethnography. Justifying Twitter’s significance in the public realm and exploring the unseen ways we are going about our daily lives on mobiles and laptops. The more I think about it…the more I’m beginning to see first hand the ways in which the city is not a built, fixed, material thing….rather, a process, an experience…a performance.

SYNEDRIO-KOINONIOLOGIKIS ETERIAS-2009Πρόγραμμα του Συνεδρίου

2nd International Conference
«RISK SOCIETY: CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY”
Athens November 5-7, 2009

ΞΕΝΟΔΟΧΕΙΟ ΤΙΤΑΝΙΑ (Πανεπιστημίου 52)

I wake up this morning to my worst nightmare. My Twitter account has been suspended! WTF?

The long story is that I have been collecting relevant tweets on my RSS reader. When there are a few sitting there, I reply to them and invite the tweeps to participate in my study by chatting to me a bit. Well, after all the travel and chaos over the last few months I didn’t have 30 or 40 tweets to reply to….I had 200+.

There’s two things that could have happened here. One is that Twitter might have automatically suspended my account for too much activity in one day. That would be fair enough. I never send more than a few tweets on any given day (apart from yesterday!). The other is that someone I approached reported me, or marked my tweet as spam. If that’s the case, it’s pretty stink of them…because I’ve been super friendly and made a bunch of friends and followers through my research in these digital worlds.

Anyway. I would have normally tweeted about something like this….but I’ve been cut off! It’s an odd feeling. Look at the numbers of my followers and following. I didn’t realize how much I needed it until it was gone

I’ve sent the obligatory request to Twitter explaining to them that I think it was in error and I want my account back please, Mr. It’s only midday in LA right now….fingers crossed they can sort me out by this afternoon. Aarg.

This is where all the traditional ethnographers I know with their tape recorders and transcripts are smiling and quietly saying “I told you so”

Ποιοτικές Μέθοδοι των Κοινωνικών Επιστημών
Καθηγητής Σωτήρης Χτούρης

Υποχρεωτική Εργασία στις μεθόδους της ποιοτικής έρευνας

Άξονες ανάπτυξης του Οδηγού Συνέντευξης
Θέμα: Επάγγελμα Εργασία και απασχολήση των νέων σήμερα

Α. Επάγγελμα. Παραστάσεις του επιθυμητού επαγγέλματος . Οικογενειακά δίκτυα και άλλοι παράγοντες του βιωματικού κόσμου του νέου που επηρεάζουν την επιλογή του επιθυμητού επαγγέλματος Κύρος επαγγελμάτων και επιλογή

Β. Εμπειρία και γνώσεις για τον κόσμο της εργασίας. Αγορά εργασίας και οι νόμοι της. Γνώσεις – προκαταλήψεις και πολιτικές αντιλήψεις για την αγορά εργασίας
(Πριν και μετά την επιλογή του επιθυμητού επαγγέλματος).

Γ. Επάγγελμα και εκπαίδευση
Σχεδιασμός, υποχρεώσεις και καταναγκασμοί στην διαδικασία της εκπαίδευσης.
Συνδυασμός εκπαιδευτικής διαδρομής και επιθυμητού επαγγέλματος.
Κατάσταση της σημερινής απασχόλησης και επιθυμητή διαδρομή

Δ. Κοινωνικό Κεφάλαιο και Κοινωνικά Δίκτυα των νέων. Εμπειρίες και ο ρόλος τους στην επιλογή του επαγγέλματος και της εργασίας. (Σύλλογοι, Ομάδες. Τοπικές δραστηριότητες ).

Ε.. Αξίες και στάσεις . Αξίες σε σχέση με τα επαγγέλματα και την εργασία. Στιλ Ζωής και αξίες που συνδέονται μαζί τους

Στ. Κοινωνικοί και οικονομικοί κίνδυνοι, που αναγνωρίζουν οι νέοι σε σχέση με το επάγγελμα και την εργασία. Υποκειμενικές/ συλλογικές στρατηγικές αντιμετώπισης τους.

By Stephanie Williams, MARC Public Affairs Specialist

What is the relationship between social research and public involvement? And are the two fields mutually exclusive? Not exactly.

For decades, social researchers have made careers and answered questions using quantitative and qualitative research methods. The designs are ideally carefully constructed to ensure that the results are representative of the population being studied and can be generalized to other areas or different circumstances.

Public involvement has long sought to link citizens to decision-making processes on a wide range of topics. Public involvement is many things — an exercise in community cohesiveness, an agent of cultural change, a way to break down barriers among stakeholders — but in and of itself, it is not social research.

But public involvement practitioners may benefit from looking at their methods through the lens of a social researcher. What population am I studying? How can I ensure the voices that need to be heard on this issue are included in the process? Can I make the assumption that people who are similar to my participants feel the same way about the topic we discussed? If the process intends to get a glimpse of a broader community’s feelings on an issue, calculated steps should be taken before the process begins to answer these questions.

By increasing their familiarity with social research practices, public involvement practitioners can broaden their scope of potential approaches to process development. The process itself will ultimately be cleaner and better planned. After all, sometimes when we need to do social research, we instead do public involvement, either because of limiting factors such as time or money, or because it’s what the client expects. As practitioners, we need to be clear enough on the relationship between these two fields to know what the project demands.

Militant Boy

STUDIES IN TRANSVERSALITY

Studies in Transversality: Militant Research
Hosted by Micropolitics Research Group

Tuesday October 13th
PUBLIC LECTURE by Colectivo Situaciones (Buenos Aires)
17.00 – 19.00
Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Goldsmiths College

Wednesday October 14th
PUBLIC SEMINAR with A Traversad por la Cultura (Madrid), Colectivo Situaciones (Buenos Aires), Euromayday Hamburg, S.a.l.e. (Venice), Universidad Nomada (Barcelona),  and many others.
14.00 – 19.00
RHB room 342 (in red brick main building), Goldsmiths College

Studies in Transversality is a series of encounters between researchers, cultural workers, and organisers who are concerned with the contexts and consequences of their practices beyond their respective fields of specialisation, and who wish to open new lines of subjectivation.  This session is the first of the year and brings together the practices of Colectivo Situaciones (Argentina), and a number of groups who are researching and organising around questions of creative labour, knowledge production and contemporary social movements in the UK and Europe today. Working through the notion of militant research, the session aims to examine the separations between university based academic research, cultural workers, and activists, the reason why these separations exist, and to share the working  methods of these groups.

About Militant Research
Militant research is a concept-tool that works on the premise that all interpretation of the world is linked to some kind of action. Related to practices of co-research and institutional analysis, militant research proposes that all new knowledge production affects and modifies the bodies and subjectivities of those who have participated. Rather than use research as a tool to categorise and separate knowledge from practice, militant research operates transversally, becoming part of the process that organises relationships between bodies, knowledge, social practices and fields of action.

See Marta Malo de Molina’s two recent articles on militant research at: http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/malo/en#redir
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0707/malo/en

Colectivo Situaciones is a collective based in Buenos Aires. Emerging from Argentina’s radical student milieu in the mid 1990s, they have developed a long track record of intervention in Argentine social movements, including work with the unemployed workers’ movement of Solano, HIJOS, the organization of the children of the disappeared during the dictatorship and Creciendo Juntos, an alternative school run by militant teachers. Their books and pamphlets are dialogues with social movements, activists and many other groups, and explore the question of power, tactics of struggle, and how to think about revolution today. In addition to their publishing work, they are also working in a collectively run, alternative school. In a note printed on the back of many of their books, they describe their work as follows: 

…we intend to offer an internal reading of struggles, a phenomenology and a genealogy, not an “objective” description. It is only in this way that thought assumes a creative, affirmative function, and stops being a mere reproduction of the present. And only in this fidelity with the immanence of thought is it a real, dynamic contribution.

For published texts in Spanish and English, see:
http://www.situaciones.org
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/colectivosituaciones/en
http://info.interactivist.net/node/5490
http://www.constituentimagination.net
http://www.commoner.org.uk/index.php?p=15

About Micropolitics Research Group
The Micropolitics Research Group investigates the forces and procedures that entangle artistic production and the flexible subjectivities of its producers into the fabric of late capitalism. Based primarily in London, the group carries out analysis of issues ranging from the production of subjectivity in creative work, diplomacy, institutional analysis, radical pedagogy and concrete situations of free labour, ‘carrot work’, and creative industry.

Directions:

Goldsmiths College, University of London, Lewisham Way, New Cross, SE14 6NW
New Cross or New Cross Gate RAIL, or buses: 21, 53, 453, 171, 172, 36, 436
Directions and Campus Map: http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/   
http://www.gold.ac.uk/media/campus-map.pdf  

This event is supported by: London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange, Goldsmiths Department of Art Research Support Award, and Goldsmiths College Research and Knowledge Transfer Award

–
Stevphen Shukaitis
Autonomedia Editorial Collective
http://www.autonomedia.org
http://info.interactivist.net

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

This short paper discusses ethical issues as embedded in a TV reality show format that provides the [ill-designed] imagined setting for a social psychology-informed research project looking at group dynamics and performance under stress. The core principles of informed consent, briefing and debriefing, backup, coercion and incentives are applied to the experiment.
You find the PDF below and for download on Slideshare where you can also get a presentation transcript. Creative Commons Licence applies, attribute please. And if you like it: quote, embed – and question it

Supposedly I am an apprentice of sorts. During my undergraduate studies someone once told me that the PhD is like undertaking an academic apprenticeship (and Google confirms that this is quite an established concept (see Green, 2005: 50)). Sure, I guess that sounds about right, but if this is indeed the case, I’m yet to figure out to whom I am an apprentice – who my guide/instructor/wise mentor/Mr Miyagi is. My supervisors/advisors I hear you say? – not in my experience. While I have been envious of those I’ve met along the way who research and publish alongside their advisors, that’s not my own experience at all. I’ve met people from MIT’s SENSEable City Lab , and a host of other schools that are dedicated to researching in the specific area of the PhDs – again, not my own experience at all.  I’m just here, rather blindly foraging on my own, given a couple of years, and expected to have it all together and figured out before the scholarship runs dry.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m doing this. I will get there. I rejoice the days I feel as though this thing is moving forwards….and I can’t bear to look back on months that pass and nothing seems to have changed. I am indeed grateful for the funding my school has given me….and when you think about it….I really have one of the more desireable ‘jobs’ around. I enjoy that feeling of my mind twisting and I love going to ‘work’. After all, I’m the one always telling people to do what they love (and quit if you don’t!) – and I can’t wait to get back to tutoring.

Regardless of who my teacher may be, I’ve been spending the meantime learning to take baby steps of my own. If I could have explained to you what my research was about at the beginning of the year (some of the dusty corners of this blog probably still do to some extent), it would be nothing at all like what I would tell you now. Most significantly of late, I’ve been teaching myself the ways of the ethnographer. You don’t learn this stuff in the undergraduate courses at university, maybe not even in a condensed year of Master’s research. The further I walk down this road, the more , for the most part, things begin to make sense – but time moves quickly in digital realms (Did you see what a central role Twitter played on the red carpet of last night’s MTV VMAs!?).

From early proposals with the intention of sitting in WiFi parks, approaching laptop users, then interviewing them and pressuring them to further communicate with me and provide me with things like photographs – my ethnography quickly led me online, into digital worlds and spaces already quite familiar to me where communications seem to occur more naturally. Unlike the social scientist who visits foreign civilisations and new worlds, my research space felt normal – a part of my existing everyday life. I needed a way to separate my ‘life’ from my ‘research’, or at least, a methodology that was sympathetic to my embedded position. It became less about arriving at a particular outcome, and more about exploring the ways in which I was  trying to get there. The real work lays in now understanding the effectiveness of my methodology as a tool for understanding social/spatial relationships as they might relate to existing theoretical currents – perhaps illuminating some potential shortcomings and/or suggesting a minor change or two.

I’m not sure where I was going with this post other than to point out the changes that take place as one goes about social research. Good social research. Messy social research. My ethnographic stroll has meant that I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time just ‘being’ in online public spaces as much as physical material ones. I realise that many people would disagree. Others perhaps don’t know it yet, but certain social media, especially Twitter, are very much like the more traditional conceptions of a public space. I’m not sure the academic literature has gone there at all yet. Indeed, it is talking and listening in public spaces that are perhaps the oldest form of democracy. These things are not disappearing, or a dying art. They are very much alive – the job of the ethnographer might be to show this to the others.

Slowly, I am learning the great art of ethnography. An ethnography that is by no means established; rather, one that is evolving and seems to provoke me as much as I attempt to shepherd it.

the point on the map this post is coming at you from

A bunch of Twitter third party applications already contain information on user location, but it is about to get a lot more interesting as Twitter prepare to release an API that can include latitude and longitude in every tweet. The feature will be optional, and of course, there will undoubtedly be cries over privacy concerns, but it’s set to make the Twitter service a lot more interesting (if not, even more exploitable by companies seeking to advertise location-based etc).

My PhD project has been experimenting with ways of using tweets and twitpics as a means of understanding human lives as they are performed in public spaces, both digitally and physically. While it has its limitations, an online style ethnography, approaching participants in this way through social media allows for a far wider range of spaces to be explored. Rather than sitting in a WiFi park or cafe approaching users with laptops, I have been chatting to users on iPhones and PDAs, on beaches, up mountains, and in back alleys all using open WiFi as a means to get online…sometimes for an instant, sometimes for an entire day. There is no way that my measly PhD budget would have ever permitted that kind of travel physically! I think that the culture of Twitter allows for some urgency in responses too. Twitter users are far more likely to ‘tweet’ back quickly compared to sending an email or Facebook message for example.

Additionally, the photograph itself provides an entry point into a discussion with participants concerning their personal experience of the place they discovered WiFi and the image often hints at their surroundings. Sometimes these hoptspots are open public spaces that encourage gathering of WiFi users and non-users alike. Other times the web connection is a welcome, albeit unexpected encounter. In either case, my research has been most interested in the immediate surroundings….the physical space the WiFi was being used, the potential space facilitated by access to digital realms, and how these spaces might alter the ways people move about and engage with their urban surroundings.

Access to location coordinates would provide the opportunity for a far more rich set of data. Geographers love maps graphs and all manner of illustration. Location specific data might add another dimension to my understanding of public space. Taking an image of a space that is often out of context….and associating it with a definite point – on a map. Imagine that…I could have some maps in my dissertation!

Quite the combination …

The release:

Does Facebook usage contribute to jealousy in relationships?

New Rochelle, NY, August 6, 2009—The more time college students spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to feel jealous toward their romantic partners, leading to more time on Facebook searching for additional information that will further fuel their jealousy, in an escalating cycle that may become addictive, according to a study reported in CyberPsychology & Behavior, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/cpb

Amy Muise, MSc, Emily Christofides, MSc, and Serge Desmarais, PhD, from the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada), surveyed young adults involved in romantic relationships and found that those who spent time on social networking sites such as Facebook may be exposed to information about their partners that makes them jealous, leading them to spend more time involved in online surveillance and to uncover even more jealousy-provoking information.

The Rapid Communication, entitled “More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy?” describes a vicious cycle in which Facebook usage and feelings of jealousy become intertwined and have a negative influence on behavior and relationships. Some participants in the study described their increasing use of Facebook as “addictive.” The authors recommend further research to explore this feedback loop and to determine whether a similar relationship between online social networking and jealousy toward a partner affects older adults as well.

“This research on university age individuals is an excellent starting point to begin asking additional questions on how this new forum might be impacting the dynamics of adult relationships and other social processes,” says Professor Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, Editor-in-Chief of CyberPsychology & Behavior.

 

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CyberPsychology & Behavior is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly in print and online that explores the psychological and social issues surrounding the Internet and interactive technologies. A complete table of contents and free sample issue may be viewed online at www.liebertpub.com/cpb

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com), is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology and Alternative and Complementary Therapies. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm’s 60 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available at www.liebertpub.com

„Statistics makes me cry“ – how many times have I seen this over the past months? Too often, I decided Friday night, when I submitted the last piece of coursework for the Research Skills and Survey Methods Master’s course (DT840 / DTZY840 at the Open University which is a compulsory course for the MSc in Human Geography Research Methods, MSc in Management and Business Research Methods MSc in Psychological Research Methods, MSc in Research Methods for Educational Technology MSc in Social Research Methods, MSc in Technology Strategy Research).

With only the exam to go, in October, I felt it is time to write a brief review and summarise the sources I have been using in order to make this least of inspiring courses more useful. Good news first: the course contributed significantly to me growing up as an independent student who critically evaluates sources. I also learned to make hard choices: do I need to gain marks only or will I need to understand the concepts in depth? And hence, perhaps disagree with the course authors which may make me loose marks on the short term but gain on the long term, in future projects. Sadly, it seems, students still have to make such kind of choices, in my case that included discussing with the staff tutor a change of the allocated associate lecturer.

The bad news: at more than GBP1300 you expect a minimum of quality of teaching material – prepare yourself for disappointment, unless you spend a little more on secondary literature and some additional time on the internet. Make the most of it – and enjoy the inspiration that comes with leaving the tightly demarcated patch called „you won’t need to know this for the next paper, exam etc“. There is no rule that says you cannot grow more independent before having finished your PhD.

So, above, in a separate post I will publish a list of resources I have been using with comments and links, hoping you will find it useful or add whatever you think should be added.

And before I forget: my deepest thanks to Dr Andy Field who helped me see the usefulness of statistics, who made me laugh and who made me believe that also writing a statistics book can be real fun (according to all the photos he included and all the references to the 1970 and 1980s). No doubt, he’s heard that before. And he’s been officially rewarded for his teaching talent. I don’t take enthusiastic lecturers for granted, as you may have noticed…