From Friending to Gaming: Game Culture on Social Network Sites

Here is the final session of the conference. What a light way with a serious subject to end a very full AoIR IR11. I wonder how people have the time for this, and I wonder what the effect would be if I tried one or more of these?

Moreover, I wonder too what extent people who research the area of gaming in turn play games? That seemed answered at one point.

Perhaps I should try one of these?

Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, and Attribution

e-Research is the distributed and collaborative use of digital tools and data in the production of scientific knowledge. Interesting definition; wonder who developed it? Some really interesting researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute. Eric T. Meyer, Ralph Schroeder, and Lucy Power.

Discussion of accessing files from Friendfeed, specifically about Friendfeed groups that can be highly specific. Seems like a powerful opportunity to develop a communication network.

I want their work around e-Research; was told it was online (search for Eric T. Meyer).

Christiano Orsi Pio (originally was from Brazil) is now speaking about Corporate portals as tools for information sharing within organizations. Hmm, I have used many a corporate portal, and while some are fantasic, those are among the more expensive ones. Interesting  that his research showed more struggles with small organizational adoption than large ones using portals.

Roger Altizer from Entertainment Arts and Engineering at the University of Utah (the Master Games Studio) is speaking on Sustaining Participation through citation, or gaming attribution. My first game-based presentation I have attended. Struggling to keep up with aspects (names, companies, etc.). Well, as there were so many presentations at ir11 about games, glad I have finally been able to make at least one of them.

When Internet is not Sustainable Platform for Knowledge Sharing: The (Rise and) Fall of Google Lively is the final paper in the session by Isto Huvila. I have heard of this, though never saw it before the screenshot that Isto just showed. Interesting research around how a virtual world chat space ended and what the fans and users did, at first to protest and then beg and finally to move to other locations.

Nancy Baym: This Song’s for You (Keynote)

Nancy Baym  is about to deliver the final keynote for AoIR IR11. Rather humorous, and from sitting in the next to last row (like the Church of the Internet), I can see and hear computers and Twitter back-channel specs so much that I wonder how much Nancy is being listened to. I Tweeted about this as a matter of fact.

This interactive audience and keynote would make for an amazing performative study.

Anyway, I am Tweeting about this along the way, and will leave most of my comments there.

Approaches to Internet Research (& My Paper)

This is the session where I will also present my paper, Public Transformations: Adult Learners Who  Use Social Media to Express and Understand Their Identities as Developing Researchers.

Alas, the room was just changed, and I fear many people do not know it was changed as not everybody looks on the notification board or follow Twitter. That is ok, we will go with the flow.

As my paper is not about liveblogging, and I need to get into the frame for this presentation, I will not liveblog my own session, sign off, and focus on my research at hand.

Constructing Narratives of Self and Community in the Age of the Internet

Glad I was able to make the first session this morning; thankfully today began at 9:00 instead of the 8:30 yesterday.

This morning’s session is about digital storytelling, something I have never been able to get my mind around as a research methodology / process / strategy.

Much of this work started and was supported from the California-based Center for Digital Storytelling. It was intended to give a voice to the author by the use of computer tools. It is a method and a movement and can be understood as a distinct media genre.

The identity of the narrator is present in the story, and this was individualistic but prescriptive, being used to represent the self. It has developed into something that is moving to institutional use. It originally helped to create communities through capturing the lives of individuals. This moving from the development from narrativing selves  to narrating community signaled a shift from individual to the institutional to capture life by telling stories.

Mediatized stories and narratives of media ambivalence as identity markers are both concepts discussed by presenters.

One of the classic works in this area is Story Circle, which is about digital storytelling throughout the world.

With changes in Web 2.0, digital storytelling continues to change dramatically.

Interesting affordances for self-representation comparing digital storytelling and Facebook. #ir11

Ahh, now onto community identity construction through apologetics; religious use and how constructed narratives are established to form and support communities.

The last presenter is not using slides. Seems fitting for a presentation on stroytelling, though it is rather heavy theory and I am struggling to keep up as I do not have a widde background in this. Would have been nice to have a visual agenda of the argument at least, and I am right now lost.

Nice discussion about this storytelling.

I asked a question — have you studied any communities or use of digital storytelling to control populations, rather than just continue to promote community or continue emphasizing mainstream religions or communities, rather than something that may not be as widely accepted (such as a cult or terrorist cell). Alas, only based on “good community.”