Internet Studies

Managing the Shift to Next Generation Television

billdutton Arts and Humanities, Broadcasting, Digital Industries, Digital Policy, General Interest, Internet Studies, Political Implications, Shaping the Internet , , ,

Columbia University’s Professor Eli Noam was in Oxford yesterday, 17 October 2019, speaking at Green Templeton College about two of his most recent books, entitled ‘Managing Media and Digital Organizations’ and ‘Digital and Media Management’: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319712871. The title of his talk was ‘Does Digital Management Exist? Challenges for the Next Generation of TV’. Several departments collaborated with Green Templeton College in supporting this event, including the Oxford Internet Institute, Saïd Business School, the Blavatnik School of Government, and Voices from Oxford. 

Green Templeton College Lecture Hall

Professor Noam has focused attention on what seems like a benign and economically rational technical shift from linear TV to online video. Most people have some experience with streaming video services, for example. But the longer term prospects of this shift could be major (we haven’t seen anything yet) and have serious social implications that drive regulatory change, and also challenge those charged with managing the media. What is the next generation of digital television? Can it be managed? Are the principles of business management applicable to new digital organizations? 

The Principal of Green Templeton College, Professor Denise Lievesley opened the session and introduced the speaker, and two discussants: Professor Mari Sako, from the Saïd Business School, and Damian Tambini, from the Department of Media and Communication at LSE, and a former director of Oxford’s Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCMLP). Following Eli Noam’s overview of several of the key themes developed in his books, and the responses of the discussants, the speakers fielded a strong set of questions from other participants. Overall, the talk and discussion focused less on the management issues, and more on the potential social implications of this shift and the concerns they raised. 

Roland Rosner, Eli Noam, Bill Dutton, Mari Sako, Damian Tambini

The social implications are wide ranging, including a shift towards more individualized, active, emersive, and global media. There will be some of the ‘same old same old’, but also ‘much more’ that brings many perspectives on the future of television into households. The concerns raised by these shifts include threats to privacy and security to even shorter attention spans – can real life compete with sensational emersion in online video? Perhaps the central concern of the discussion focused around media concentration, and not only in cloud services, such as offered by the big tech companies, but also in national infrastructures, content, and devices. 

This led to a discussion of the policy implications arising from such concerns, particularly in the aftermath of 2016 elections, mainly around the efforts to introduce governmental regulation of the global online companies and governmental pressures on platforms to censor their own content. This surfaced some debate over the cross-national and regional differences in approaches to freedom of expression and media regulation. While there were differences of opinion on the need and nature of greater regulation, there did seem to be little disagreement with Eli’s argument that many academics seem to have moved from being cheerleaders to fear mongering, when we should all seek to be ‘thought leaders’ in this space, given that academics should have the independence from government and the media, and an understanding informed by systematic research versus conventional wisdom across the world. 

Eli Noam presenting his lecture on Digital Media Management

Eli is one of the world’s leading scholars on digital media and management, and his latest books demonstrate his command of this area. One of the speakers referred to his latest tome as an MBA in a box. The text has a version for undergraduate and graduate courses, but every serious university library should have them in their collection. 

Bill and Eli with Susanne, a former Columbia Un student of Eli’s, now at the OII and Green Templeton College, holding Eli’s new books

Notes: 

Eli Noam has been Professor of Economics and Finance at the Columbia Business School since 1976 and its Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility. He has been the Director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, and one of the key advisors to the Oxford Internet Institute, having served on its Advisory Board since its founding in 2001 through the Institute’s first decade. 

His new books on digital media and organizations have been praised by a range of digital and media luminaries, from Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, to the former CEO of Time Warner, Gerald Levin and former CTO of HBO, Robert Zitter. 

An interview with Eli Noam will be available soon via Voices from Oxford.

Society and the Internet for Courses

billdutton *OIINEWS, General Interest, Internet Studies, Research and Learning, Social Issues, Social Science Research , , , ,

The 2nd Edition of Society and the Internet (OUP 2019) is available in paperback and electronic editions for courses on the social aspects of the Internet, social media, computational analytics, and more. Information about the book is available online at: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/society-and-the-internet-9780198843498?cc=gb&lang=en& 

Please check this out if you are considering reading for your Spring courses, or simply have an interest in the many social issues surrounding digital media. From Manuel Castells’ Foreword to Vint Cerf’s concluding chapter, you find a diverse mix of contributions that show how students and faculty can study the social shaping and societal implications of digital media. 

Thanks for your own work in this field, at an incredible period of time for Internet and new media studies of communication and technology.

Fake News Nation – a new book by Aspray and Cortada is out!

billdutton Cybersecurity, Digital Policy, General Interest, Internet Studies, politics, Social Issues, Uncategorized , ,

I’d like to recommend to you a new book, entitled Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Information about the book is at: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538131107/Fake-News-Nation-The-Long-History-of-Lies-and-Misinterpretations-in-America

As I noted in my endorsement of this book: “James W. Cortada and Willam Aspray’s brilliantly selected and crafted case studies are must-reads because they bring historical insight to issues of fake news, disinformation, and conspiracy theories of our digital age.”

 

Society and the Internet, 2nd Edition

billdutton *OIINEWS, Cybersecurity, General Interest, Internet and Everyday Life, Internet Studies, news, Political Implications, Social Issues , , , , ,

It is such a pleasure to see the publication today of the second edition of Society and the Internet by Oxford University Press. My co-editor, Mark Graham, and I worked long and hard to assemble a wonderful set of authors to build on the first edition. The success of the original volume led to this new edition. The pace and scale of changes in the issues surrounding the Internet led to almost a completely new set of chapters. Information about the 2nd edition is available on the OUP web site for the paperback edition here, and the hardback here.

Society and the Internet, 2nd Edition

Our thanks to OUP and the many professional staff who helped us produce this new 2nd edition, and particularly to my friend Steve Russell for the brilliant art work on the cover. Thanks as well to the OII, which inspired our lecture series that led to these volumes, and OII colleagues who launched much of the research that informs them. I hope you can read the acknowledgements in full as we owe thanks to so many individuals and institutions, such as MSU’s Quello Center, which together with the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre, supported my own contributions to this second edition.

We owe incredible thanks to our colleague Manuel Castells for his insightful foreword and all the authors of the book’s 24 chapters. These colleagues endured our many requests and most importantly accepted our call to contribute to what we hope will be a perfect reader for courses on Internet studies, digital technology and society, new media, and many other courses dealing with society and the Internet. The authors include junior and senior researchers from around the world. To all, we send our appreciation. No more deadlines, we promise. The authors are:

Maria Bada, Cambridge Cybercrime Centre
Grant Blank, University of Oxford
Samantha Bradshaw, University of Oxford
David A. Bray, People-Centered Internet
Antonio A. Casilli, Paris Institute of Technology
Manuel Castells, University of Southern California
Vint Cerf, Google
Sadie Creese, University of Oxford
Matthew David, Durham University
Laura DeNardis, American University, Washington, DC
Martin Dittus, University of Oxford
Elizabeth Dubois, University of Ottawa
Sandra González-Bailón, University of Pennsylvania 
Scott A. Hale, University of Oxford
Eszter Hargittai, University of Zurich
Philip N. Howard, University of Oxford
Peter John, King’s College London 
Sílvia Majó-Vázquez, University of Oxford
Helen Margetts, University of Oxford
Marina Micheli, European Commission
Christopher Millard, Queen Mary University of London
Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan
Victoria Nash, University of Oxford
Gina Neff, University of Oxford
Eli Noam, Columbia Business School 
Sanna Ojanperä, University of Oxford
Julian Posada, University of Toronto
Anabel Quan-Haase, University of Western Ontario
Jack Linchuan Qiu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center
Bianca C. Reisdorf, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Ralph Schroeder, University of Oxford
Limor Shifman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ruth Shillair, Michigan State University 
Greg Taylor, University of Oxford
Hua Wang, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Barry Wellman, NetLab
Renwen Zhang, Northwestern University

So, if you are seriously interested in the societal implications of the Internet and related social media and the mobile Internet, please consider this reader. You will see a variety of methods, data, and theoretical perspectives in play to address important issues in ways that challenge conventional wisdom and punditry about the Internet. You can get a paperback edition from OUP here or from your favourite bookstore.

Society and the Internet’s 2nd Edition

billdutton General Interest, Information Communication and the Social Sciences, Internet and Everyday Life, Internet Governance, Internet Studies, news, Political Implications, Shaping the Internet, Social Informatics, Social Issues , , , , , ,

The 2nd Edition of Society and the Internet should be out in July 2019. You can access information about the book from OUP here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/society-and-the-internet-9780198843504?lang=en&cc=de

With the academic year fast approaching, we are hoping that the book will be useful for many courses around Internet studies, new media, and media and society. If you are teaching in this area, Mark and I hope you might consider this reader for your courses, and let your colleagues know about its availability. Authors of our chapters range from senior luminaries in our field, such as Professor Manuel Castels, who has written a brilliant foreword, to some promising graduate students.

Society and the Internet
2nd Edition.

How is society being reshaped by the continued diffusion and increasing centrality of the Internet in everyday life and work? Society and the Internet provides key readings for students, scholars, and those interested in understanding the interactions of the Internet and society. This multidisciplinary collection of theoretically and empirically anchored chapters addresses the big questions about one of the most significant technological transformations of this century, through a diversity of data, methods, theories, and approaches. 

Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives, Internet research can address core questions about equality, voice, knowledge, participation, and power. By learning from the past and continuing to look toward the future, it can provide a better understanding of what the ever-changing configurations of technology and society mean, both for the everyday life of individuals and for the continued development of society at large. 

This second edition presents new and original contributions examining the escalating concerns around social media, disinformation, big data, and privacy. Following a foreword by Manual Castells, the editors introduce some of the key issues in Internet Studies. The chapters then offer the latest research in five focused sections: The Internet in Everyday Life; Digital Rights and Human Rights; Networked Ideas, Politics, and Governance; Networked Businesses, Industries, and Economics; and Technological and Regulatory Histories and Futures. This book will be a valuable resource not only for students and researchers, but for anyone seeking a critical examination of the economic, social, and political factors shaping the Internet and its impact on society.

Available for Courses in 2019

Quello Center Advisory Board

billdutton award, Internet Studies, MSU, Outreach, Quello, Quello Center, Uncategorized , , , ,

Great first meeting as a new member of the Quello Center Advisory Board, 9 May 2019.  It was a great opportunity to thank Gary Reid, who is retiring, for his contributions to the Center, and to see members of the Board, who continue to contribute to the Center’s success.

Merit Innovation Award to the Quello Center at MSU

Wonderful to see the growing range of research activities, anchored in some major projects, including the award winning ‘Michigan Moon Shot Project’ being conducted with Merit Network. This project began when I was still at the Center, but it has surpassed all expectations in overcoming the challenges of academic-practitioner collaboration in developing such a large scale project. I’ll post a photo of the award, which is well deserved and fun. The Center is also continuing a set of lectures and roundtables, bringing in a number of absolutely major authorities, such as Professor Laura DeNardis, a member of our Quello Advisory Board. 

The second half of the meeting was anchored around a roundtable discussion of emerging issues. Not surprisingly, key technical innovations seemed to draw the greatest attention, including advances in AI, IoT, and 5G, but members of the Board were refreshingly skeptical of much of the hype, such as that surrounding 5G. Discussion also moved to the growing focus on ethical questions about what should be done with AI and related technologies, and how to grapple with the so-called ‘techlash’ that has replaced the euphoria over the Internet and related ICTs. 

My sense was that the rise of new regulatory initiatives, driven largely by this techlash, will bring debate right to the heart of the Quello Center – which was born around the discussion of policy and regulation. 

Congratulations to Professors Johannes Bauer, the new Director, Laleah Fernandez, Assistant Director, and Keith Hampton, Research Director, for sustaining and building on the strength of the Quello Center.

Nominate an Early Career Research to Become a TPRC Junior Fellow

billdutton Broadcasting, Cybersecurity, Digital Policy, Information Communication and the Social Sciences, Internet Governance, Internet Studies, Political Implications , , , ,

The TPRC is seeking to select up to 6 TPRC Junior Fellows – early-career researchers engaged in research on the Internet, telecommunication and media policy in the digital age. Please nominate individuals whom you think might make outstanding fellows. Those who have wond student paper awards at the TPRC conference as well as those who served Benton Award winners could be candidates, but we are open to anyone you feel to have the potential to do outstanding research on key issues for the TPRC, and engage other early-career researchers in our activities.

The TPRC Junior Fellows Program was designed in part to award excellence but also tobring new members into the TPRC community. Those appointed will be honoured and serve as ambassadors for TPRC, working pro bono and appointed to two-year terms by the Board. Junior Fellows will be emerging scholars with good connections to their peers, including but not limited to successful TPRC paper presenters and alumni of the Graduate Student Consortium and Benton Award.

TPRC hopes that Junior Fellows will help broaden the TPRC community, and improve the participation of underrepresented groups, such as young academics, certain disciplines not traditionally involved in telecom research who are engaged in new media and digitial policy, and those engaged in new research areas, as well as those who bring greater diversity to our community, including women, minorities, and under-represented groups.

The TPRC Board anticipates that Fellows will disseminate information about TPRC on their personal networks, and identify and engage 1-1 with prospective attendees and encourage them to participate in TPRC. In return, TPRC will recognize Fellows on the TPRC web site, and publicly welcome new appointees during the conference, and provide material and mentoring to support their outreach mission. Of course, the Early Career Fellows will be able to list this service on their resumes. Each Fellow will have a designated Board liaison, who will check in periodically to discuss support needed and progress made. TPRC will aim to support your career.

Desiderata

We’re looking for people that meet as many of the following criteria as possible. None of them are required qualifications; we don’t expect that anyone will check all the boxes.

  • From under-represented groups, including women and minorities
  • Working in new research areas and those under-represented at TPRC
  • Academic talent and promise
  • Good network of contacts, e.g. active on social media
  • Able and willing to advocate for TPRC

For information about the TPRC, see: http://www.tprcweb.com/

If you have ideas, you may contact me on this site, or by email at william.dutton@gmail.com