Information Society - News and Publications

Alison Harcourt (ISN) has been awarded a Jean Monnet Chair in the information society by the European Commission (2005 - 2008). As a part of the award, she will be organising a seminar series on the information society.

Jonathan Schroeder (ISN) has been awarded an ESRC seminar series inVisio: International Network for Visual Studies in Organization(s). Jonathan Schroeder was co-applicant together with partners at the universities of Surrey; Bath; Manchester; and Royal Holloway. Further information on seminars and award

Oliver Fueg’s poster talk 'Coalition Networks: A Conceptual Reorientation in the Study of Policy Networks' was delivered at Harvard on June 13th at the conference 'Networks in Political Science'. He will also be speaking at the 4th UK Social Network Conference on the 18th of July in London.

An AHRC Fellowship under the Creative and Performing Arts Scheme (£230,000) was granted in March 2008 to ISN member H. Glendinning.

Gabriella Giannachi (ISN) becomes a partner in an EPSRC funded cluster led by S. Benford (Mixed Reality Lab) called New Research Processes and Business Models for the Creative Industries.

Alison Harcourt (ISN), Oliver Fueg (ISN), Raf Fatani (ISN) and Peter Humphreys (ISN) ran a panel on International Regulatory Competition in Communications at the 2008 PSA Conference. Oliver Fueg. "What’s In Being Vulnerable?
Explaining Child Protection Measures Against Harmful Audiovisual Content in the EU and the US"; Alison Harcourt "The institutionalisation of soft law in the EU: the case of information society policy"; Peter Humphreys ( Manchester) "An examination of the preservation of cultural toolkits at the national level: The French and UK cases" and Raf Fatani " International agreements in internet regulation and constraints on national policy-making".

Special issue of the Journal of Consumer Policy: Issues in Law, Economics and Behavioural Sciences. Volume 31, No. 1. March 2008. Edited by Alison Harcourt (ISN) and Stephen Weatherill with submissions from Amandine Garde (ISN) and Oliver Fueg (ISN). This Special Issue of the Journal of Consumer Policy brings together edited versions of papers presented at the ISN workshop The Consumer, the European Union, and Media Law held at the University of Exeter on 19 March 2007.1 The interdisciplinary workshop brought together two themes relating to European media law and regulation: First, it identified European Union (EU) rules and their effect on consumers and public interest regulation and, second, it assessed the level of consumer participation in EU policy-making. Our questions in this issue are several. In connection with the first theme, we ask whether the drive for industrial competitiveness prejudices consumer input and the protection of the public interest. Is EU regulation eroding national laws aimed at providing minimum protection for public viewing or is it maintaining sufficient standards for regulation which can be supplemented by national law? The second theme asks how clearly is the consumers voice heard in policy-making. Is consumer participation in policy making lessened due to a weakness in the EU institutional framework (the so-named “democratic deficit”) or is the consumer voice strengthened through forms of soft governance, such as industry/civil society partnership, input by European and international civil society fora and improvements in institutional requirements for consultation? Are there means to strengthen these mechanisms?

Journal of Consumer Policy: Issues in Law, Economics and Behavioural Sciences. Volume 30, Number 3 / September, 2007 by Jonathan Schroeder (ISN), Detlev Zwick, and Janice Denegri-Knott. It is argued that the connectivity of the networked market permits market participants to perceive causal relationships between consumer behaviour and its effects on others. The thesis is put forward that the globally networked markets of the information age give birth to new cognitive structures that underlie consumers’ novel sense of responsibility, aid the re-orientation of consumers’ self-interest, and inculcate in consumers what historian Thomas Haskell calls humanitarian sensibility. Drawing from interviews with individual online investors, a model of the market is presented that posits the market as a source of social consciousness and moral decision-making. Furthermore, it is illustrated that individual online investors often incorporate such sensibilities into their consumer decision-making. Based on these results, the authors propose a corrective to the current trend among economists, social scientists and consumer researchers to conceive of the market as a threat to consumer autonomy, social and moral responsibility and an enlightened citizenry. Instead, it is asserted that the market has many faces, one of which, specifically the globally networked market, provides possibilities to recognize and perform consumption as a critical, moral and socially conscious political act.

Ethics of Representation: Marketing, Communication and Identity project. Jonathan Schroeder (ISN) and Janet Borgeson (ISN). In this project, we investigate marketing communication’s role in "the taken-for-granted political and ethical practices of envisioning others." We focus on theoretical and ethical issues pertaining to representations of identity, in that represented identities profess to express something true or essential about those represented.

‘Snapshot Aesthetics and Strategic Brand Communication’ project. Jonathan Schroeder (ISN). The snapshot, a straightforward, generally unposed photograph of everyday life, has emerged as an important style in contemporary marketing communication. This project investigates what I call snapshot aesthetics and the growing use of snapshot-like imagery in marketing and online communication.

Globalization and Regulatory Change in Audiovisual Regulation in Canada, France, Germany, UK and USA. Alison Harcourt (ISN), Peter Humphreys (ISN) and Tom Gibbons (ISN). Funded by the ESRC. Globalisation of markets is often regarded as encouraging competition between States that are eager to attract investment within their regulatory jurisdictions. It is not clear, however, whether the effect is a 'race to the bottom', whereby States remove any regulation that deters such investment, or an effort to drive regulatory standards upwards. To test these opposing views in the field of media regulation, Alison Harcourt, Tom Gibbons and Peter Humphreys, are currently investigating the strategies adopted by five States (Canada, France, Germany, UK and USA) to protect pluralism and cultural diversity in the media. The policy implications will be to indicate how, if at all, it may be possible to hold the cultural policy line in a globalizing and high-tech audiovisual marketplace, what are the appropriate levels of harmonization vis a vis subsidiarity at the EU level, and what are the conditions under which different forms of self-regulation may be preferable to hard law.

Gabriella Giannachi’s Second Life Observatory Gabriella documents performance work in SL.

'Presence' project. Exeter University, Stanford University and University College London Principal Investigator: Nick Kaye; Co-Investigators: Michael Shanks, Gabriella Giannachi, Mel Slater (AHRC 2005-2009). Debates over the nature of the actor's presence have been at the heart of key aspects of theatre practice and theory since the late 1950s. More recently, 'performance' and 'presence' have become key concepts in other academic disciplines. This project will bring together leading researchers from Theatr Studies, Computer Science and Archaeology, in collaboration with internationally known performers and artists, to advance an understanding of the performer's presence in live, electronically mediated and simulated performance.

Gabriella's Giannachi’s observatory of art dealing with climate change.

Tom Postmes and Jessica Salvatore's 'The formation of social identity in online communities' project. Social networks are generally acknowledged to be crucial determinants of personal, social and organizational success. It is now customary to acknowledge their value with an economic metaphor as "social capital." The analysis of such networks has traditionally taken as its starting point the links that exist between individuals (e.g., the number of contacts or messages they send each other, or the closeness of the relationship to each other). Surreptitiously, this notion of networks as inter-individual systems of affiliation and influence introduces a meta-theoretical assumption into the study of communities: communities are founded on the basis of relations among individuals. This project takes a closer look at this somewhat individualistic and interpersonal assumption, and juxtaposes it with inferences that can be drawn from social identity theory and from the recently developed Interactive Model of Identity Formation (IMIF, Postmes, Swaab, & Haslam, 2005) in particular. The project consists of a large number of newly founded online discussion fora which are followed over time from inception. The research questions are: when and how does a sense of online community develop, and which factors (interpersonal relations, contextual influences, configuration of communication technology, etc.) can predict this development? The study will have a quasi-experimental design, which allows us to test specific (rival) predictions. This project is a key component of a larger project (4 years, funded by the ESRC) examining "The individual in the group: Social identity and the dynamics of change." Reference: Postmes, T., Haslam, S. A., & Swaab, R. I. (2005). Social influence in small groups: An interactive model of social identity formation. European Review of Social Psychology 16, 1-42.

Giannachi’s dialogue with Egenis artist in residence Deborah Robinson on the theme of science pinhole photography. Deborah Robinson's photographs record "the overlooked, underside, of science". By placing a pinhole camera on a laboratory bench for a very long exposure, she captures "the chance elements, such as traces of human activity, in a clinical space"...'

GWR funded project ‘Performing the Archive’, led by Jones (Bristol) and ISN member Kaye from Exeter.

Blast Theory, SICS - Swedish Institute of Computer Science, HUMLE and ICE Laboratories (coordinating partner), the Interactive Institute, Play Studio & Zero Game Studio, the University of Tampere, Hypermedia Laboratory, Nokia Research, the University of Nottingham, Mixed Reality Lab, Fraunhofer Institute, FIT, Sony NetServices and Gotland University. Scientific co-ordinator: Steve Benford (IPerG is an Integrated Project (FP6-004457) funded under the European Commission's IST Programme).

The IPerG project investigates the design of pervasive games as well as concepts for their marketing and commercial exploitation. It builds IT platforms for pervasive gaming and tools to create and evaluate such games. Using the jointly developed platforms and methodology, the project will showcase different genres of games.

Steve Benford is PI in the EPSRC funded project Participate in collaboration with Blast Theory, BBC, Microsoft Research, BT, University of Bath, University of Nottingham's Mixed Reality Lab, DTI, Science Scope.

As part of her research into art | science Gabriella Giannachi responds to Deborah Robinson's pinhole camera work on science labs (work in progress) Molecular Laboratory: Representations of Time. D. Robinson's work was exhibited in March at the ICIA [link]. A further exhibition will follow in August 2007 at the Exeter Phoenix [link]. Documentation of work in progress will appear on the AiR Egenis Online Dairy. [link] For more information follow this link Documentation | Molecular Laboratory: Representations of Time.

Graham Bowley (2006) "The high priestess of internet friendship", published October 27 2006 on www.FT.com . 'In January 2003, Danah Boyd moved to San Francisco just as a new internet phenomenon was taking off: online social networking sites. They were virtual meeting places where people could log on to their computer, meet friends and talk. San Francisco was at the heart of this boom. Boyd, who had studied how internet users represent themselves to others online for her masters degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was intrigued. She went into cafes in the city’s Mission and SoMa districts, where people were sitting chatting on their laptops, and asked why they used these new sites. She published her findings on her blog and they became the basis for the PhD she started later that year at the University of California at Berkeley...'

Gabriella Gianacchi (2006) 'Exposing globalisation: biopolitics in the work of Critical Art Ensemble' Contemporary Theatre Review 16:1: 41-50. 'I am very naïve. When I first encountered the word globalisation I felt an instant gratification. As an Italo-German, resident in the UK, I thought that a word had finally been invented to describe the condition of my, literal, multicultural upbringing. Finally, I thought, we would no longer need to describe ourselves, and our cultural, economic and political background, in terms of nationhood, but rather we could all participate to this new multicultural, or even intercultural society. Little did I know that globalisation, a complex concept as well as an economic and social reality, has as much in common with capitalism’s means of production as with either multiculturalism or interculturalism, and that any shift towards globalisation can also imply exclusion, segregation and even some degree of "natural" selection. So, before engaging with theatre’s response to "globalisation", I think that it is crucial to excavate not only what is commonly intended by the actual term, but also to recall the hidden, and yet fundamental connections between globalisation, biopolitics and what is often described as "life itself"...'

Alison Harcourt (2006) Meeting at the SouthWest Office, Brussels.

Susan A. Banducci, Claes De Vreese, Holli Semetko and Hajo Boomgarden (2006) "The News Coverage of the 2004 European Parliamentary Election Campaign in 25 Countries" European Union Politics Volume 7, No. 4: 477-504. 'The 2004 European parliamentary (EP) elections were an unprecedented exercise in democracy, with more than 350 million people in 25 countries having the opportunity to vote. The elections took place only weeks after the accession of 10 new member states to the European Union – the largest enlargement ever. Most voters in both the old EU-15 and the 10 new member states experience politics primarily through the media. Particularly in the case of low-salience, second-order elections, most of what citizens know about the campaign stems from the media (Bennett and Entman, 2001; see also Eurobarometer 162)...'

For further details of ISN projects, events and activities, please follow this link .