Oral Histories of your Family: Questions I Failed to Ask With age, I’ve become more aware of the questions I should have asked my parents and grandparents. Like many others, I was interested in my family’s history. For example, I have long treasured my “Aunt Ann’s” family bible with key dates and events recorded in … Continue reading Oral Histories of your Family
Friends and Colleagues
Call for Nominations for ICT Communication & Technology Awards
Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to be chairing the Awards Committee of the ICA Communication and Technology (CAT) Division and would like to draw your attention to the call for nominations for two awards: (1) the Frederick Williams Prize for Contribution to the Study of Communication and Technology and the (2) Herbert S. Dordick Dissertation … Continue reading Call for Nominations for ICT Communication & Technology Awards
Should Elites Get Off Twitter?
Should Elitists Get Off Twitter? An opinion piece in the Financial Times by Janan Ganesh (2022) argued that the real reason to get off Twitter was that it “reeks of low status”. Stay on it long enough and you can “catch” its tone of “domestic mediocrity”. Even elites who use this micro-blogging site should beware … Continue reading Should Elites Get Off Twitter?
An ICA Tribute to Elihu Katz
Unparalleled Contributions of Elihu Katz to Studies of Communication Inspired members of the International Communication Association (ICA) are organizing a preconference on the ‘legacies’ of the American-Israeli sociologist, Elihu Katz. This promises to be a fitting and most deserved tribute to his contributions to multiple academic fields, and certainly to the field of communication. My … Continue reading An ICA Tribute to Elihu Katz
Social Intelligence
Social Intelligence: Fascinating progress in a new approach to understanding public issues. In research on governmental and management use of computing in the 1970s, I found that some of the most consequential management information was gained by mining operational data (Dutton and Kraemer 1978; Kraemer, Dutton, and Northrop 1981). For example, there was a complaint … Continue reading Social Intelligence
Debbie Dunkle: The Loss of a Mentor and Friend
Amid the remembrances of 9/11 in the US and the death of Elizabeth II in the UK, I’ve received news about the death of a wonderful friend and colleague, Debbie Dunkle. At seventy-seven years of age, Debbie had a wonderful life in Southern California and a fantastic career, but I was no less deeply saddened … Continue reading Debbie Dunkle: The Loss of a Mentor and Friend
Time Management in Academia
I was in an online workshop for early career academics at the July 2022 Social Media & Society conference @SocMediaConf. One of the key questions was around time management. As a senior (old) academic, I can’t say I have solved that problem - at all, but I have some tips helpful to my own decision-making. … Continue reading Time Management in Academia
Volker Schneider: a Professor’s Professor
I’ve returned from a Festschrift for Prof. Dr. Volker Schneider, who has moved to an Emeritus Professorship at the University of Konstanz in 2020. While a celebration of his retirement was delayed repeatedly by the pandemic, his colleagues moved ahead with an edited collection of papers for his Festschrift around the politics of the complex … Continue reading Volker Schneider: a Professor’s Professor
Raising Awareness of Social Media for Positive Social Change
My colleagues and I involved with the World Internet Project (WIP) are looking for some inspiring initiatives in the use of the internet and social media for effecting positive social change. A thesis by Ms Emilia Askari in the College of Education at Michigan State University alerted me to this potential, and discussions within WIP … Continue reading Raising Awareness of Social Media for Positive Social Change
Brent Hillyard, 1947-2022
John Brent Hillyard, July 18, 1947 to March 10, 2022 Brent, a month older than me, was my friend throughout grade school and high school in St Joseph. We lost touch after our first years in college around 1970. We reconnected in the last year and the last year of Brent’s life, after I tracked … Continue reading Brent Hillyard, 1947-2022