Gatekeeping/Information Control
Fighting for Which Future? When Google Met Wikileaks
The power struggles in the Internet are waged between conflicting sides, but framing them in terms of good against evil, anarchist versus conformist, freedom fighter against the power hungry is simplistic and ignores the complexity of these debates.
Going Viral – A New Book
Our first book ‘Going Viral‘ has just been published by Polity. What is the book about? We live in a world where a tweet can be instantly retweeted and read by millions around the world in minutes, where a video forwarded to friends can destroy a political career in hours or a cause for a […]
Power and Networked Social Movements
I presented a paper with Manuel Castells in the 13th annual meeting of AOIR (Association of Internet Researchers) from a study we are conducting regarding networked social movements. In April we presented some of the findings at the USC Annenberg School for the ANN-SONIC Fourth International Seminar. You can watch the video by clicking here, or you can read below for further explanation about the work and the dynamics of power among stakeholders.
About the Ephemeral Nature of Twitter
This week research conversation featured Kathy Gill who talks about Twitter and its integration in the classroom context, but her talk went into lessons learned from usage of Twitter by people and specifically by politicians. Gill’s motivation to research Twitter is derived from attempt to understand how technology impact society. While looking at the presentation […]
On Politics of Citations, Acknowledgements and Co-Authorships
Having Blaise Cronin, Dean of the School for Library and Information Science at Indiana University give a talk, was as usual an inspiring and intellectual experience. Did you ever wonder how the industry (in many cases but not always, a non-profit industry) of citations work? Who becomes a co-author on a masterpiece and who […]
Librarians and e-Government: Mixed Feelings?
Good papers were presented at the eGovernment track at HICSS-42. One particular paper that attracted my attention was the paper of John Bertot titled Emerging Role of Public Librarians as E-Government Providers. According to the paper libraries are becoming a central place for certain populations to access e-Government services. Some of these services you can […]
Some important references on freedom of information
This is the first post about freedom of information. Here are some important links to different reports about freedom of information. The next phase would be reading and analyzing these reports. So stay tuned: · Privacy International – Report about freedom of information around the world 2006 – http://www.privacyinternational.org/foi/foisurvey2006.pdf · UN – http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/26159/12054862803freedom_information_en.pdf/freedom_information_en.pdf · US […]
Network Gatekeeping Theory – what is it? how can researchers use it?
Gatekeeping theories have been a popular heuristic for describing information control for years, but none have attained a full theoretical status in the context of networks. Network Gatekeeping Theory defines basic concepts like gatekeepers, gatekeeping and gatekeeping mechanisms and gated. It helps understanding relationships among gatekeepers and between gatekeepers and gated, the entity subjected to a gatekeeping […]
Analysis of Network Gatekeeping in Seven Disciplines
Barzilai-Nahon Karine, 2009, “Gatekeeping: A Critical Review“, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 43, pp.433-478 This chapter on gatekeeping offers a systematic exploration of the main trends and analytical frameworks relating to gatekeeping in the literature from 1995 to 2007. The chapter looks at eight fields: library and information science (henceforth information science), […]