The following notes were written by Charles Ess President of the Association for Internet Researchers (AOIR) and a Professor of Philosophy at Drury University and Aarhus University. On May 22nd. we hosted Charles Ess and Elizabeth Buchanan in a research seminar at the Information School in University of Washington. The topic was Internet and changes in Human Subjects but later it took the direction of ethics of research in an information age. I am thankful to Charles who accepted my invitation to upload his notes here. Hopefully it will create a discussion on the topic.

Notes By Charles Ess:

We began with an epistemological continuum – from “subjective” on the left to “objective” on the right. (These terms are in scare quotes because these distinctions derive from 19^th century assumptions about knowledge that no longer hold for important but complex reasons. Another story for another time.) To illustrate and provide examples of methodologies and/or disciplines that undertake research more affiliated with one side of the continuum than the other, I suggested:

But on top of this these, further, are the ethical frameworks that we most frequently bring into play – along with foundational assumptions regarding the nature of the self. 

So, we find (especially in the U.S. and the U.K.) on the right side of the line, a tendency towards utilitarianism – a kind of ethical “cost-benefit” analysis that, in language familiar to anyone who has read the relevant regulations and guidelines, seeks to minimize risk of harm to subjects – but justifies such risks in terms of the greater good, i.e., the potential benefits of such research for the larger community. 

At the same time, however, we also use (more especially in the Germanic countries, for example) deontologies that emphasize the (near-)absolute rights of human beings. These rights include the foundational rights that are protected under Human Subjects – i.e., rights to informed consent (respecting the basic right of consent essential to beings that are free), privacy and thereby anonymity and confidentiality. This ethical approach, moreover, is affiliated with a modern Western conception of the self as something of an “atomistic self” – the radical individual of modernity that begins with the Protestant Reformation and is articulated by such political philosophers as Thomas Hobbes. (For discussion, see Ess 2009a, ch. 6.)

Conceptions of Self/selves. Here’s where things start to get a little complicated. While utilitarianism tends to assume and be affiliated with a more atomistic conception of the self – deontologies extend at least through a kind of middle conception of the self, what we might call a communitarian conception, one that recognizes that the self is bound up in important ways with those around it, e.g., a close circle of family and friends:

Here, the NESH reference is to the Norwegian guidelines for Internet research. These guidelines explicitly oblige researchers to respect and protect not only the privacy, anonymity, and/or confidentiality of a given individual subject – but also those of his/her close friends and family. The intuition/assumption here is quite simple: publication of sensitive information about a given individual, e.g., as being HIV positive, will not only likely have very negative consequences for the individual, but also for his/her close circle of friends and family. Hence, there are deontologically-based requirements to protect these rights to privacy, etc., for both the individual subject and his/her immediate circle of close relationships.

This takes us still further to the left – to the sense of self as relational or, in slightly different terms, “smeared out.” This is a sense of self that is characteristic of many cultures and peoples around the world, including those countries shaped by Confucian traditions, as well as indigenous peoples, e.g., in Africa (see Paterson 2007), North America, the polar peoples, etc. My friend and colleague Henry Rosemont, Jr., uses the metaphor of the onion vs. the peach. The atomistic self is something like the peach-pit that underlies an external body: while the external body undergoes change and decay – the peach-pit remains the same through time. Relationships with others for such a self are always extrinsic: even if all such relationships are removed, the peach-pit will continue to exist. By contrast, the relational self is constituted by its diverse relationships with others – e.g., friends, family, the larger community, etc. – with each relationship analogous to a layer in the onion. Such relationships are intrinsic to such a self: remove the relationships – peel away every layer of the onion – and there is nothing left.

Such relational selves, finally, are affiliated – so far as I can tell, in every culture and tradition I have explored – with virtue ethics. Precisely because there is no self as “given” – i.e., the peach-pit that remains the same through time – our task as understood within virtue ethics is to become better, more excellent human beings: but this means, human beings characterized by their practices and habits, including the excellences or virtues, e.g., of patience, perseverance, humility, compassion, forgiveness, and so forth. In Confucian thought, as an example, the virtues or human(e) excellences brought to the forefront are those that contribute not only to the well-being of the individual, but also to community harmony.

A central point: we in the “Western” cultures have been moving towards both this (for the moment, more “Eastern”) conception of the relational self for at least a few decades – and with it, towards a (re)new(ed) emphasis on virtue ethics. Very briefly: both environmental and feminist thought – e.g., as Carol Gilligan put it in 1982, the self as interwoven in a “web of relationships,” and as the two are brought together in the work of eco-feminist Karen Warren (1990) – thereby stress our interconnections with one another and larger communities. At the same time, virtue ethics is in the midst of a significant renaissance, as our experience with utilitarian and even deontological frameworks highlights important lacks or deficits that virtue ethics can overcome. As Rosalind Hursthouse puts it, for all of their strengths, neither deontology nor utilitarianism seem to address a number of topics required for a complete moral philosophy, including “moral wisdom or discernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept of happiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life, and the questions of what sort of person I should be . . .” (1999: 3). In supplementing utilitarianism and deontology in these ways, virtue ethics thus promises to thus work with these frameworks in complementary fashion.

While all of this pre-dates the emergence of the internet and the world wide web – the introduction and explosive diffusion of these technologies have accelerated this turn towards the relational self. Most briefly, in the phrase of Wellman and Haythornthwaite (2002), these technologies foster the emergence of the networked individual, i.e., an individual who is inextricably interwoven with both strong-tie and weak-tie relationships – numberings in the hundreds, if not the thousands – by way of networked computers and other forms of networked digital communications. More recently, i.e., loosely in conjunction with so-called “Web 2.0,” – i.e., applications that emphasize interactivity, whether in the form of Social Networking Sites and micro-blogging, and/or in the form of sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and others – what Axel Bruns calls the “pro/sumer” appears: such “pro/summers” are both active producers and consumers of self-generated content, in contrast with the more traditional (and comparatively more passive) consumers of professionally-produced mass media content (see Burnett, Consalvo, & Ess 2009). 

Finally, we can think of the self as engaged with Others via social networking sites, blogs, etc., as a “smeared-out” self. That is, via a Facebook or Twitter status update, chat possibilities, etc., at any moment in time, we exist as selves with hundreds, if not thousands of potential connections and interactions. These potentials are realized, however, a few or only one at a time – a friend comments on your status in FB or responds to a specific “tweet,” and you in turn may decide to respond, either with a further comment, a direct message, perhaps an email or perhaps a chat – or not at all. In this way, our self as a web of manifold but largely potential relationships is realized with just a few relationships, or perhaps only one relationship at a time. In this way, our sense of self as a relational self is “smeared-out” among a cloud of possible relationships.

This means at the same time, however, that what Anders Albrechstlund (2008) has helpfully identified as “lateral surveillance” becomes increasingly important – and increasingly the norm. It’s as if such a relational self is more dependent upon the recognition and reinforcement of the Others in its network in order to have a sense of its own reality and significance. And so we seek – perhaps crave – the recognition of Others, if only in the form of phatic communication (e.g., the quick “like” or comment response to a FB status, the quick poke or brief message, etc.) This lateral surveillance, as Albrechtslund points out, is a very old phenomenon among human communities, where such surveillance and communication help bind the community together.

At the same time, however, such a relational or smeared-out self, as so deeply interwoven with such networked communities, thereby practices and expects a very different sort of “privacy” than the atomistic self that has predominated in the modern west, especially over the last century or so (see Meeler 2008). At least, it appears that younger people seem to be much more willing to reveal what people in my generation would regard as extremely personal and thus extremely private sorts of information to others via CMC technologies: indeed, from the standpoint of such an atomistic self, such willful self-disclosure seems to run dangerously close to a kind of “big brother” surveillance society. For us – those of us presuming the modern atomistic self (as foundational to liberal, democratic societies) – this willful self-disclosure seems naïve, if not terribly dangerous.

But seen from the standpoint of the relational or smeared-out self – such self-disclosure is part and parcel of what Albrechtslund calls voluntary or participatory surveillance, forms of surveillance that include the lateral surveillance essential to such selves as interwoven with one another in extensive and complex webs of relationships.

Insofar as any of this is true, then we can expand our diagram still further:

It can be said here, finally, that these transformations are part and parcel of a larger transformation and convergence that seems to be taking place between “Western” and “Eastern” cultures. That is, on the one hand, the phenomenon of lateral surveillance suggests a move towards a more Eastern sense of the self as a relational self – and with it, a lack of insistence on the kind of privacy affiliated with the modern Western atomistic self, especially over the past century or so (ref to first definition of privacy as a legal right). On the other hand, young people in Eastern cultures – specifically Japan, China, and Thailand – have increasingly come to insist on a more Western-style sense of individual privacy, much to the consternation of their parents (Ess 2005). 

Along these same lines, as I have discussed earlier, Soraj Hongladarom has offered a model of a Buddhist empirical self, one that resembles the classical modern Western self that justifies and legitimates liberal democracies. This Buddhist cousin to the Western individual would thereby move Thailand, for example, towards a more democratic, liberal society: but at the same time, this Buddhist concept remains distinctively Buddhist, reflecting the Theravadan Buddhism that defines over 90% of Thais. What emerges here, then, is a pluralistic conception of self – and with it, both ethics and politics. That is, while we may agree in both West and East on a relational self, affiliated with virtue ethics, and justifying a liberal democracy – how these shared norms and beliefs are applied, interpreted, and understood in say, the U.S. vis-à-vis Thailand, will remain distinct in ways that directly reflect and reinforce the foundational values, etc., that define each set of cultural traditions (Hongladarom 2007). Such a pluralism, I have argued, is crucial to any global ethic that seeks not only to establish a shared sense of norms, etc., but also preserve the irreducible differences that define individual and cultural identities (Ess 2005, 2006, 2009b).

In these and other ways, then, it appears that there is a growing convergence towards a more shared, global sense of self – and with it, what will likely be a shared sense of ethical norms, values, practices, etc. that will constitute a pluralistic and global information ethics, including internet research ethics as one particular component (Ess 2006, 2007). That is, as we converge towards more relational senses of self, this sense of self will bring in its train an increased emphasis on the sorts of virtue ethics appropriate to such selves. 

This leads us to the diagram in its final form:

Acknowledgements. My profound thanks to Karine Barzilai-Nahon, Alpha DeLap, Bob Mason, and Tanya Matthews for their invitation and delightful hospitality during our two days of workshops at the University of Washington. Many thanks as well to the participants, especially in Friday’s workshop, for their contributions, insights, and enthusiasm. Particular thanks go to Lori Miller, Director of the UW GenOM Project, for the question about virtue ethics that sparked this effort at response. 

References

Albrechstlund, Anders. 2008. Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday, vol. 13, no. 3 (March 3, 2008). <http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949>

Burnett, Robert, Consalvo, Mia, and Ess, Charles. 2009. The Blackwell Handbook of internet Studies. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ess, Charles. 2005. ‘‘Lost in translation’’?: Intercultural dialogues on privacy and information ethics (Introduction to special issue on Privacy and Data Privacy Protection in Asia), Ethics and Information Technology 7 (1): 1–6.

Ess, Charles. 2006. Ethical pluralism and global information ethics.  Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 8, Number 4 (November): pp. 215-26.

Ess, Charles. 2007. Bridging Cultures: Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Unity and Diversity Online. Introduction to special issue, Information Ethics, International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction 3 (3 –July-September, 2007), iii-x.

Ess, Charles. 2009a. Digital Media Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Ess, Charles. 2009b. Floridi's Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current Perspectives, Future Directions. The Information Society,25 (3),159-168.

Hongladarom, Soraj. 2007. Analysis and Justification of Privacy from a Buddhist Perspective. In S. Hongladarom and C. Ess (eds.), Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives,108-122. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Meeler, David. 2008. Is Information All We Need to Protect? The Monist , vol. 1, no. 1 (January 2008), pp. 151–169.

National Committees for Research Ethics in the Sciences and the Humanities (NESH), Norway(2003). Research Ethics Guidelines for Internet Research. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from <http://www.etikkom.no/English/Publications/internet03/view_publikasjon>

Paterson, Barbara. 2007. We Cannot Eat Data: The Need for Computer Ethics to Address the Cultural and Ecological Impacts of Computing. In S. Hongladarom and C. Ess (eds.), Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives, 153-168. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Warren, Karen. 1990. The power and the promise of ecological feminism, Environmental Ethics 12: 2 (Summer), 123-146.

Wellman, Barry, and Haythornthwaite, Caroline (eds.). 2002. The internet in Everyday Life. Oxford: Blackwell.

I couldn't help noticing the main obstacles that accompany the process of setting a policy. Here are some of them:

1. Multiple stakeholders with different interests (yes, we can call it politics!). In this particular committee there are 43 member states that are formal members with voting rights. Obviously each state has different interest. It was interesting for me to see the role that non-state members, organizations (companies, Non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations etc...) play in this process. Not formally of course. Formally, they had the right to bring their voice to the table and also participated actively in panels and keynote talks. Actually the powerful actor in the process that was able to change decisions behind the scenes was not a formal delegate. Additionally the difference between delegates who were politicians (elected positions) vs. experts/scientists (nominated positions) was clear.

2. Non-continuation of same stakeholders as time progresses - 'it does not comply with previous agreements from the past' was one of the strongest arguments made by delegates who followed the process from the beginning. Only one or two were such delegates. Actually most of the participants participated in few events but definitely not in all of them, and therefore had little to say when such an argument was raised. These few 'seniors' delegates not always choose to remind participants about past agreements which causes many concepts to be re-opened for negotiations although there were settled in the past.

3. The power of administrators in drafting resolutions is mainly by setting the boundaries and frames of the discourse. It leaves almost no room to the delegates (the countries) to add meaningful issues to the agenda. Therefore, usually participants concentrate on arguing about words here and there, sometimes even about a letter (see the story of the 's' below). I am not inventing the wheel here. Max Weber talked about the power of bureaucracy and administrators 150 years ago. Administrators stay longer than participants, and consequently are able to impact processes more efficiently.

4. Multiple parallel processes - Not only the number of stakeholders is a challenge, but also the number of forums. The issue of the information society is addressed in so many different forums. For example the UN task force, WSIS (world summit of the information society) I and II, G-8 DOT Force and innumerable meetings. What is achieved in one place does not necessarily hold in the other and vice versa. Confusion is the name of the game in conditions like that where the actors, forums and platforms for discussion are switched all the time.

5. 'fake' stakeholders - some participants are 'shadow actors'. By this I refer to actors that do not appear during the discussions and show up in the end for the debates and voting on the drafts. For example, one delegate (I will keep the name of the state with me not to cause a diplomatic incident) appeared only in the last two days and was mainly situated there not to discuss and come to an agreement, but to make sure that he can say NO to certain issues and to try to take certain issues out of the agenda of future meetings.

6. Non-accurate or up-to-date data - One thing that is not missing in such a process is data. And lots of data. Everyone has data and one can here often statements like 'we found that mobile technology is the only panacea to digital divide', 'telecenters are vanishing', 'Least developed countries comprise less than 1% of users in the world'. By the way, I don't agree with the first and second statements, but this is not the essence of the issue. When not everyone are experts (see item 1 above) influencing through numbers is an easy task.

7.       Focus of issue - a big challenge. Information society is broad topic and one probably wonders who determines the focus - would it be on broadband? Mobile technology? Collaboration? or maybe other things. Some are determined by external events which request attention, and by former processes. But in many cases see no. 3 for the answer. It is really about the administrators, e.g., the secretariat of the commission who decides the frame of the issues. Peter Bachrach wrote in the 70s about the power of agenda setting in policy-making.

8. Problematic interpretation of data - It sounds almost like a tautology - by saying the word interpretation, one can assume that some problematic flavor comes with it since it is rare to have all people agree to a particular interpretation. Here are two for example: 'Access is not an important issue when talking about poverty' or 'the regulator should intervene more'. Discussing only interpretations without understanding the data behind the interpretations does not help reaching a resolution.

9. From mandate to action - The word MDG (Millennium Declaration Goals) was mentioned in the discussions 100 times. I couldn't help wondering - how many people know what is MDG? What real impact does it have on the daily life of you, me and the societies surrounding us? And what does it mean that only 6 more years remain to achieve these goals? (I even imagined a curse falling on universe once we reach the d-day without achieving the MDG goals). How many out of all these crafted policies lead to tangible results? I wouldn't like to sound pessimistic.

10. Changes take time - Time reaches policy makers more slowly. While the discussions are important, some of them were already resolved or discussed in depth in academia and industry. The cross-fertilization among sectors is scarce unfortunately.

11.   Reaching Consensus vs. Majority/Minority Vote- Finally, some resolutions are achieved by consensus, which sounds great unless you have for example a veto person, someone whose role is to say NO in any case and exploit the fact that this is a consensus process (see item 5). Also when the gaps among the stakeholders are large choosing the consensus way is not ideal.

I would like to exemplify some of above obstacles in policy making via a story about a request of mine to add an 's' to the resolution. Yes, it is only about adding one letter, an 's'. I requested to change all the concepts in the resolution from digital divide (without an 's') to digital divides (with an 's'). In academia there is a big resentment and debate for years of whether to use the concept digital divide that implies dichotomous meaning of have and have-not access vs. digital divides which reflects more a continuum of inequalities and not only access. Here is an article as a background about this. Obviously many member-states objected the idea with four main arguments. One said 'only in WSIS 2003 we recognized a gender divide as part of the digital divide, so how can we talk about so many meanings of divides' which makes me wonder if one makes a mistake should he/she continue to make the same mistake only because the mistake occurred in the past and this is what one did since then? Bordieua called it habitus. Another person said 'the concept of digital divides (with an 's') reflects only an international gap. This was a bad interpretation of the data that they had in front of them. A third person just said No, because the request was made by a state that had a political dispute with the state that he/she represented. A fourth person objected the idea because in previous meetings the concept was agreed upon and all the stakeholders should stick to what was agreed upon in the past. And finally the chairman tried to compromise saying no to adding the 's' in this resolution, but will consider it positively in future resolution' (remember item 10 and 11 above - changes take time and consensus may create challenges). The story of the 's' is a story of obstacles that stand in the way of making a change in policy.

The UN

I will end this post by saying that maybe it is time to move from an 'information society' to a 'wisdom age' where information would be used wisely according to individuals and communities needs and not only according to the needs of countries' politicians and administrators.

I was really impressed by Talal Abu-Ghazaleh statement in the UN Commission for Science and Technology for Development. While most of the speakers in the the opening ceremony were very ceremonial, he was provocative. He kindly gave me his speech and allowed me to post it here. Here it is:

"1. Allow me to start by admitting that I come from business, and for the developing world - proudly so. Thanks for inviting me in both capacities.

2. To begin with we do not live in one world. The divide, in more than one way, is our major challenge. A WSIS in Geneva and in Tunis I spoke of the unfair race between Lions and Gazelles. The gap between the developed and the developing seems to grow rather than to narrow.

3. Accordingly, we need to develop different paradigms for the developed and for the developing and to be courageous about it. Yes, there are variations in each of the two worlds. But they have one thing in common: being on one side or the other of the dividing line.

4. We need to admit that we, all of us, failed to achieve the MDGs and to stop searching for fractional successes. If so, let us all go back to scratch board and draft new MDGs. We should not give up.

5. "ICT for Development"? Yes. Yet I also believe that "ICT Development" itself is a prerequisite for "ICT for Development".  Let us emphasize both tracks-interrelated as they are. I call on UNCTAD leadership to take the lead on this.

6. Infrastructure development in all its aspects must be a priority, for the developing world of course.

7. Information Technology is moving faster than Telecom technology development. A failure by business. Industry needs to accelerate telecommunications technology development to catch up. I call on ITU leadership to take the lead on this and to get business in full gear.

8. Braodband potential is underutilized - for the benefit of the developing of course. Much more needs to be done - by business too under ITU leadership.

9. I call on governments and intergovernmental organizations to engage business as full and equal partners with equal responsibilities. Business is the major creator of knowledge and wealth. Business role is crucial for all purposes. Business should be seen as more than a subject or a tax payer for government.

10. The financial crisis attack has been reasonable absorbed. We now face the much more serious economic crisis attach. he first is like a hurricane. The second is like and epidemic.

11. I know that many will disagree with me. The solution is not in avoiding protectionism, but is rather in a balance between liberalization and  protectionism. Let us admit that this is what the developed countries are doing now.

12. Innovations in the IT were accelerated by business profit motivation. The freedom in cyberspace encouraged greater investment in IT. There, the world is yours.

13. Telecom is to be credited for its role as a medium for the interent. Yet telecom should become more of a free space in itself rather than just a free space for IT. Governments and Business should jointly work towards jointly work towards that goal.

14. I foresee a telecom revolution similar to that in IT, making telecom universally free in access and free in cost! Only that can lead us to the realization of the so-called "death of distance" dream!

15. In this world of short-terminism, we lost sight of the fact that IP, innovation and R&D are the major weapons of economic power and competitveness. We need to go back to basics. We need to motivate profit motivation for innovation in all fields.

16. We need to search for answers why didn't "mobile telephony" become the "telephone", just like how "e-mail" becomes the "mail".

17. At "Unesco vision 2025" forum, two weeks ago, I called for action oriented mandates by international organizations parallel with policy formulation. In the developing world, we need implementation sponsorships more than advice.

18. Thankd you UNCTAD. Distinguished colleagues I salute you for your tolerance. Remember idiots may be right, sometimes, as Churchill once said.

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Geneva, May 25, 2009, UNCTAD

The first thought that crossed my mind when I prepared myself to the meeting is that being a scholar and representing a country at the same time may pose a challenge. What if the stance I will need to represent is against my opinions? I try convincing myself that this is a commission on a professional subject and therefore the political forces are rather minor. Although, I am a great believer that politics is everywhere (I promise to update in the next posts whether I felt stretched as a scholar or not).

According to the official documents main topics that will be discussed in this meeting are twofold:

1. "To discuss development-oriented policies for socio-economic inclusive information societies, including access, infrastructure and an enabling environment. It will also discuss the building of Indigenous capabilities in science, technology and innovation, which are essential for the achievement of both short- and long-term development goals."

2. The Commission will review the progress made in the implementation of and follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) outcomes at the regional and international levels. "

It makes me excited and disappointed at the same time. I am always happy to know that topics and challenges in the information society are being discussed at high-level of policy-makers forums. But then, how can one possibly cover these two topics in five days? My skeptical inner voice says that basically it is analogous to solve all the problems of the world in five days.

Another question that I ask myself is how much the "rich" countries will be committed to an agenda that is focused on development in developing countries. It is an important question.  Once a venue becomes identified only with 'less-strong politically' countries (and it doesn't matter whether objectively they are or they are not), the discourse and discussion becomes local and silo making it difficult to solve anything.

Here is the link to the agenda of the Commission some documents about the content. I will update daily from there.

Specially, I am interested to understand the latent interests of the different actors coming to that event. For example I already learned that since it is a UN event only representatives of countries vote, putting other bodies like NGOs at a disadvantage in the process. I am not sure that such an exclusive process leaves hope for an inclusive solution. Stay tuned.

Code 2 - Lessig

Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace turns 10 this year (see an update version of the book that is interactive with users - Code: Version 2.0). The Cato Institute hosted a debate about the book for this occation. Below you can find Declan McCullagh's article which criticizes Lessig's approach and the response fromJonathan Zittrain, Adam Thierer and Lessig himself.

Lead Essay

• What Larry Didn’t Get by Declan McCullagh

Responses

• How to Get What We All Want by Jonathan Zittrain
• Code, Pessimism, and the Illusion of “Perfect Control” by Adam Thierer
• Continuing the work of Code by Lawrence Lessig

Virality of Networks

One of the hottest topics currently under investigation is in the area of virality and campaigns, or the role of the Internet in political campaigns. Here are several articles from a conference titled "You Tube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States" -

 Bob Boynton Going Viral

Kevin Wallsten "'Yes We Can': How Online Viewership, Blog Discussion, Campaign Statements and Mainstream Media Coverage Produced a Viral Video Phenomenon

LaChrystal Ricke A New Opportunity for Democratic Engagement: The CNN-YouTube Presidential Candidate Debates

Hillary Savoie YouTube, Community, and Me: The New Media Balance Between Self and Community

You can find the full list of articles and posters here: http://youtubeandthe2008election.jitp2.net/frontpage

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 doesn't? What can we learn from the acknowledgments about the politics of creating a masterpiece? Who are those inventors and who are the informal collaborators that usually are not mentioned formally and vanish as time passes? These and some more related topics were discussed in his talk (His powerpoint can be download here). I will try to bring some of them with my comments.

Michelangelo -Capella Sistina

Just to give small examples - Michelangelo's genesis on the ceiling of the Capella Sistina, was the work of many apprentices and students under the mentoring of Michelangelo. Today, 500 years later, can we name even one of them? why no credit was given to them, although they took part in creating this masterpiece? Who was Robert Boyle's mysterious partner, that we know was the technician of most of his inventions? why he was never credited? Who should be credited for the invention of cloning Dolly? The technicians that worked on Dolly complained that their contribution is ignored.

Here are some statistics before analysis and speculations:

According to ISI data, published papers which involve multiple authors, specifically 50, 100 and 200 authors have increased tremendously from1981. I would have a wild guess, that if you check social science vs. exact science, you would find that these numbers applies mainly to exact science.

Can anyone imagine Foucault's book "The Archeology of Knowledge" written by 50 different people simultaneously? And indeed most of the examples Blaise gave were from the exact and life sciences.

Is there a connection between the number of authors and the number of acknowledgments? Take a look at the two tables for example taken from JACS (Journal of the American Chemical Society).

Two parallel trends -  the number of multi-author papers has increased and so the number of acknowledgments. Looking only at this table, one cannot conclude whether the increase in acknowledgments is bigger than the increase in the number of authors.

BTW, while most of the acknowledgments deal with thanks to financial supporters, and help in tools and technology in JACS, this changes when moving to other disciplines.

So the next figure below shows that the number of acknowledgments did increase more than the average number of authors.

So does it mean that people became more polite now and they mention anyone who saw even one word of their manuscript? or does it mean that the increase in the number of authors during the years should have been higher and maybe some of these acknowledgments should have been co-authors? so not politeness, but political consideration of reducing potential conflicts with co-workers?

But there are few problems with acknowledgments. Nobody remembers them, they are not recorded anywhere in a systematic way, and in the academia there is no system of incentives that will acknowledge the acknowledgments. So it is more profitable and worthwhile for a colleague to be cited than be mentioned in the acknowledgment. With citations researchers are being more evaluated. More citations more status. Blaise gave a wonderful example that when we use someones' publications to develop an idea or to describe the literature we cite them, and therefore they are being rewarded. But if we ask a colleague to help us with a statistical analysis, and this colleague might even spend hours and hours the maximum we would do in the profession is to acknowledge them, not even one citation as a cure.

So if the world is going toward interdisciplinarity - maybe it is time to create also a system that will acknowledge the acknowledgments and by this reduce the politics behind them?

Blaise gave the example of Rob Kling. If you look at the following figure you will see that Rob Kling collaborated mostly with people who were in his environment (UCI), not necessarily people he preferred to work with. When he moved in 1996 to Indiana he stopped working with most of his UCI colleagues.

network density

e-Government track HICSS-42

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 see in the following figure taken from the article:

One of the main findings of the article is that, the demand for e-government services in libraries pose challenges. Suddenly librarians are requested to do things they were not trained for. For example, help filling up a driving license form, a birth certificate, helping with medical records etc...  Add to that the belief that many librarians share about their "neutral" role, and consequenly the article shows that librarians in some cases may serve as an obstacle to e-government deployment in Libraries. I thought one way to interprete their reluctance can be through Network Gatekeeping Theory . Gatekeepers have different rationales for gatekeeping and so librarians - it looks like one of these is the attempt to preserve their culture, the librarian's culture. E-government activities may be grasped as a threat to their training, to their neutral professional stance. Also, from a power perspective, some of them do not have enough skills to help users/patrons. That makes them feel uncomfortable and maybe afraid to be reflected externally as non-professionals or technically not-competent.

BTW - It was nice to learn that there are 17,000 public libraries in the US (which is more than the number of McDonalds branches in the US).