The Value of Academics Working with Government: Lessons from Collaboration on Cybersecurity William H. Dutton with Carolin Weisser Harris Six of the benefits of academics collaborating with government include realising the value of: 1) complementary perspectives and knowledge sets; 2) different communication skills and styles; 3) distributing the load; 4) different time scales; 5) generating … Continue reading Six Benefits of Academics Working with Government
Outreach
Reading and Endorsing ‘Elements of Style’
Reposting from 2018 Looking into one of my College’s hallway recycling bins, as one does, I found a fourth edition paperback of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Arguably, for my generation, as Strunk died the year before I was born, this has been one of the most useful and inspiring books for any … Continue reading Reading and Endorsing ‘Elements of Style’
Online Micro-Choices in Remote Seminars, Teaching, and Learning
Online Micro-Choices Shaping Remote Seminars, Teaching, and Learning The move to online education has been a huge shift, dramatically hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic and the existence of technical options, such as online meeting platforms like Zoom and Teams. For decades, handwringing and resistance over moves toward more online instruction, seminars, and lectures has collapsed … Continue reading Online Micro-Choices in Remote Seminars, Teaching, and Learning
Engaging Academia in Cybersecurity Research
Engaging Academia in Cybersecurity Research Across most academic fields, researchers are increasingly focused on outreach to relevant practitioner and policy communities. It can sharpen their sense of the key questions but also enable their research to have greater application and impact. In contrast, within the field of cybersecurity, policy and practitioners from governmental, non-governmental organizations … Continue reading Engaging Academia in Cybersecurity Research
Communicate! Reach Out, Inform, and Entertain
Communicate! Reach Out, Inform, and Entertain Way too much talk, research, and handwringing are all about how to stop people from seeing or believing disinformation, such as the latest conspiracy theories. But pushing governments and platforms or anyone to censor information is not only ineffective in the digital age, but also likely to be dysfunctional … Continue reading Communicate! Reach Out, Inform, and Entertain
Self-Preservation of Your Work
Self-Preservation of Your Work For decades I have been concerned over the fragility of information and whether ephemerality or the transitory nature of information and communication is just an inevitable feature of the digital age. I therefore frequently look back at a talk I gave on the Internet to a conference of historians held in … Continue reading Self-Preservation of Your Work
Publication of A Research Agenda for Digital Politics
A Research Agenda for Digital Politics The publication of my most recent edited book, A Research Agenda for Digital Politics, is available in hardback and electronic forms at: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/a-research-agenda-for-digital-politics-9781789903089.html From this site you can look inside the book to review the preface, list of contributors, the table of contents, and my introduction, which includes an outline of the … Continue reading Publication of A Research Agenda for Digital Politics
Stop Professionalizing Our Internet
In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, with so many organizations and activities moving online, I’ve seen a remarkable push to ‘professionalize’ [for want of a better word] everything online. You might think that is a good thing, but to me, it is undermining, if not destroying, the free and open culture of the Internet. … Continue reading Stop Professionalizing Our Internet
Poster-first Presentations: The Rise of Poster Sessions on Academic Research
Times have changed. In the early years of my career as an academic, the poster session used to be sort of a second class offer for presenting at an academic conference. That is no longer the case. Newer generations of academics are trained and attuned to creating posters and infographics to explain and communicate their … Continue reading Poster-first Presentations: The Rise of Poster Sessions on Academic Research
Rethinking Consumers in the Digital Age and Their Role in Shaping Policy, Regulation and Practice
A personal response to Communications Consumer Panel consultation of 25 April 2019 Bill Dutton 12 May 2019 I was a former member and Chair of the Advisory Committee for England, and have followed the Consumer Forum for Communications (CFC) for years. Having returned from working in the US for four years, I’ve also attended the … Continue reading Rethinking Consumers in the Digital Age and Their Role in Shaping Policy, Regulation and Practice