OSU CaTS presentations at ICA 2009

A list of OSU CATS presentations at ICA 2009, including times and abstract, is now available here. The complete ICA schedule can be found here. (If I've missed a presentation, please email the relevant info to me.)

HICSS Call for proposals

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)
Deadline: June 15, 2009
http://ekarine.org/news/hicsscommunities/
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/

NOTE: This conference tend to have a more applied focus and a more technical audience.

Following the success of similar minitrack from the past seven HICSS conferences, we invite submissions to the 2010 mini-track on social networking and communities.
We call for papers that address technology and information in support of communities at society, work, school and home, supporting interests of business, learning, society and play. We encourage papers from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.

HICSS conferences are devoted to advances in the information, computer, and system sciences, and encompass developments in both theory and practice. Invited papers may be theoretical, conceptual, tutorial or descriptive in nature. Submissions undergo a double-blind peer referee process and those selected for presentation will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Submissions must not have been previously published.

Conference details:
January 5 - 8, 2010 (Tuesday – Friday)
Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort and Spa
http://kauai.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/

Three upcoming conferences

2009 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom-09)
Vancouver, Canada, August 29-31, 2009
Submission Deadline: April 15th, 2009 (March 1st for panel proposals)
Conference web site: http://cse.stfx.ca/~socialcom09/

Social Computing can be broadly defined as computational facilitation of social studies and human social dynamics as well as design and use of information and communication technologies that consider social context. Social computing has recently become one of the central themes across a number of information and communication technology fields and attracted significant interest from not only researchers in computing and social sciences, but also software and online game vendors, web entrepreneurs, political analysts, digital government practitioners. The 2009 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing provides a key forum for researchers and industry practitioners to exchange information regarding advancements in the state of art and practice of social computing.

PRESENCE 2009: 12th Annual International Workshop on Presence
Los Angeles, California, USA,November 11-13, 2009
Submission deadline: July 1, 2009
Conference web site: http://ispr.info/conference

Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at the 12th Annual International Workshop on Presence, to be held in Los Angeles, California on November 11-13, 2009. Often described as a sense of "being there" in a mediated environment, telepresence is broadly defined as a psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience. It is a rich, fascinating subject of scientific investigation, artistic exploration and diverse application, with increasingly important implications for the ways in which people work, play and live, and technologies are developed.

PRESENCE 2009 is co-organized by the International Society for Presence Research (ISPR; http://ispr.info) and The University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT; http://ict.usc.edu).

6th Conference of the Media Psychology Division (German Psychological Society)
Focus-Theme: "New Media and Interactive Systems"
Submission deadline: April 1, 2009
University Duisburg-Essen, Germany, September 9th to 11th, 2009
Conference web sites: http://www.sozialpsychologie.uni-due.de/tmp (not working as of 2/26)

http://www.sozialpsychologie.uni-due.de/tgm (not working as of 2/26)

The 6th Conference of the Media Psychology Division (German Psychological Society) will take place from September 9 to September 11, 2009 at the University Duisburg-Essen (Campus Duisburg), Germany, chaired by Prof. Dr. Nicole Krämer. The division chairs as well as local chair and the Department for Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science cordially invite you to Duisburg.

This year´s focus theme is "New Media and Interactive Systems". By suggesting a focus theme we aim at concentrating results, advancing theoretical development in this area and fostering exchange with other psychological disciplines as well as with neighbouring disciplines. However, contributions on all areas of media psychology are welcome.

For the first time, the conference is to be held in English. We thus invite not only German media psychologists but also European and other international researchers to contribute. All contributions will be peer-reviewed. You can submit position and review papers (extended abstract of 1000 words each), research papers (300 word abstract including results) and posters (300 word abstract).

Contact
University Duisburg-Essen
Prof. Dr. Nicole Krämer
Social Psychology – Media and Communication
D-47057 Duisburg
eMail: nicole.kraemer@uni-due.de
Telefon: +49-(0)203-379-2482 / Fax: +49-(0)203-379-3670

Call for Nominations for the Herbert S. Dordick Dissertation Award

The Communication and Technology (CAT) division of the International Communication Association (ICA) invites nominations for the Herbert S. Dordick Dissertation Award. This award honors the memory of Prof. Dordick by recognizing annually the most outstanding dissertation on communication and technology produced in the preceding year. The award will be presented this coming year at the Business Meeting of the CAT division during the 2009 ICA conference in Chicago. The rules for nominating a dissertation are:

1. Any CAT-related dissertation completed (i.e., successfully defended) between Jan. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2008 is eligible for consideration. Dissertation authors need not be members of CAT division to be considered, but must be ICA members to accept the award.

2. Dissertations may be nominated by the author, dissertation advisor or a professional colleague. Full contact information of the author and the nominee must be provided, including name, phone number, surface mail address, and email address.

3. Nomination materials should include: (a) the author’s contact information, (b) proof of completion of the dissertation along with date, (c) a one-page abstract of the dissertation, (d) a 1-2 page statement describing the significance of the work and why it is deserving of the award, and (e) a representative chapter, selected sections of the dissertation, OR a paper distilling it, up to 30 (double-spaced) pages maximum, excluding references, tables, and figures.

4. The deadline for receipt of nomination materials is midnight of February 15, 2009 (Greenwich Mean Time). Submissions must be made electronically in PDF form to ica.cat08@gmail.com. (Free PDF converters are available on the web including at http://cutepdf.com or http://www.primopdf.com).

CIOS ranks OSU #2 in technology research

The Communications Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS) has ranked the School of Communication second in the nation for research in the technology area. The ranking is based on publications included in the ComAbstracts database.

Clear here to see the full list of ranked research schools. More information about the ranking process is here.

Guest blogging for Discovery Tech

A few months ago I received a note from a producer for Discovery Tech, a web site run by the Discovery Channel. She's start a guest blog, and wants to give student researchers an opportunity to tell the world about their work, what it's like being a student in this area, and so forth. She said she was open to single posts, or a regular series. You can see the blog here: http://blogs.discovery.com/guest_spot/. If you're interested, let me know and I'll see if she's still looking for people. -Kelly

CATS Program academic year 2008/2009

CATS Program academic year 2008/2009

All meetings take place at 12:30 p.m., room DB3150

• 01/16/09: Dr. Kelly Garrett “Online communication in the context of contentious politics”
• 01/30/09: Dr. Joyce Wang “The Dynamics of Media Use and Gratification”
• 02/13/09: Dr. Axel Westerwick “The influence of organizational communication strategies on the use of communication technology”
• 02/27/09: Dr. Young Mie Kim “The Internet and the Transformation of Democracy”
• 03/06/2009: Jatin Srivastava and Dr. Osei Appiah "Ads as bait: a 'foot in the door' strategy to gain audiences' attention to magazine articles"
  
• 03/13/09: Dr. Dongyoung Sohn “Interactivity, Expected Interactivity, and the Issues
  Remaining”
• 04/10/09: Dr. John Dimmick “The time-space diary”
• 04/24/09: Synergy meeting (based on presented and discussed topics)
• 05/15/09: ICA presentations (grad students)
• 06/05/09: Guest speaker (TBA)

Communication Technology Update vol 11

The newest edition of Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals (Eleventh Edition) from editors Grant & Meadows is now out. I am the author of the videogame chapter. Feel free to direct any/all comments, annoyances, and hate mail in my direction.

Delphi Survey from EU on Creative Content Industry

Since Dr. Dimmick participated in the June 2007 Delphi survey on the future of the creative content industry that the European Techno-Economic Policy Support Network conducted on behalf of the European Commission, we can see the results of the study.

The Delphi report as well as additional analytical reports from the project website.
are available to be downloaded from here:

http://epis.jrc.es/documents/Deliverables/EPIS%202-3-1%20Delphi%20Report.pdf

http://epis.jrc.es/Pages/deliverables.html

Here is what the survey is about from their own Executive Report:

In a nutshell the Delphi survey revealed a number of topics where experts have no consensus
about the likely development. They will serve as an input to the subsequent scenario development. Among these issues are
• Intellectual property rights (IPR), the relevance of current IPR concept under changing
conditions, new ways to protect IPR and the issue of technical protection means like DRM
systems.
• The structure of the Creative Content Sector is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation process. Of particular importance is the question how new, innovative enterprises that experts regard as the drivers of technological and business changes can be
supported in an environment that is currently dominated by a few globally active corporations.
• An open issue is the likely development and importance of virtual worlds (like second life)
and multiplayer online-games (like World of Warcraft).

The central result is the identification of five theses with a high relevance in all considered
dimensions (economic, techno-scientific, society, quality of life). These theses include:
• Most users are able to transmit and receive large amounts of media data (e.g. streaming
of high definition TV) from the Internet even at peak times of the day without recognizable
delay. The fact that this thesis is also considered to become reality quite soon (in 2014)
underlines the outstanding importance of widespread availability of a true broadband
infrastructure with seamless and universal access for all.
• Content creation for educational purposes (e-learning) reaches a 20% share of the entire
creative content market in Europe.
• Most media (including instructional software) used in education can be copied and redistributed without payment. Though judged as very relevant, there is a controversy if educational applications can profit from the ongoing transformation in the desired way because of the dominance of economic factors in the CC sector. In this respect this could be one of the priorities for future policy measures.
• A seamless exchange of audio-visual contents between mobile devices and personal
computers (regardless of the manufacturer) is routine. Interoperability and seamless
gateways are central requirements for universal and ubiquitous access, which is an often
unuttered assumption for the future success of media.
• Most media suppliers earn money by distributing content over the Internet even without
using Digital Rights Management. This thesis’ assessment is another evidence for the
central role of IPR and its protection (see above).

Niches of the News Media

For those interested in niche theory as it is applied to the media industry, or studies of news consumption examining new (e.g. internet, web-enabled phone, iPod) and traditional media (e.g. TV, radio, newspaper), Dr. Dimmick, John Feaster, and Greg Hoplamazian are currently involved in research in this area. Below is an abstract from their paper submitted to ICA in November. If you have any questions about the study, or niche theory more generally, please let us know!


The use of mobile and traditional media for information: News in time and space

Dr. John Dimmick, John Feaster, and Greg Hoplamazian

The study was supported by a grant from the Knight Foundation and the Shorenstein Center for the Press and Public Policy at Harvard University

News content, once restricted to purely paper formats, is now accessible through 24-hour news channels, constantly updated websites, text messages sent automatically to cell phones, and newspaper sources available in several formats (print, online, e-mail). This growth from one channel to many seems to suggest great competition between these available news media, each diminishing the consumer need for the other. However, research on media use displacement and offers conflicting results regarding the impact of novel media (for review see Cai, 2005). This study employs the theory of the niche (Dimmick, 2003) to examine competition and coexistence between traditional and mobile news media. A time-space diary method was used to capture paticipants' news consumption during an assigned 24-hour peroid. Results suggest that new media are occupying niche spaces where traditional media are either unavailable or inconvenient. These findings offer insight into how various news media are able to coexist by occupying distinct niches in the news domain. Media were differentiated by demonstrating superiority over competitors based on time of day, location, or content offered.

Movie Fans Recruited by Producers to Spread Online Buzz

Although Snakes on a Plane didn't do as well as all the media hype for it would have predicted, it was still an interesting piece of internet/movie lore, the first time it became very obvious how the rise of the internet could impact traditional media producing -- in this case, getting feedback from would-be fans (i.e. the potential consumer base) as to how the film should be structured. And apparently, they were the only ones really interested in seeing that movie.

So perhaps having such direct feedback from the masses doesn't guarantee a hit. The failure at the box office of SoaP has not deterred other Hollywood movie-makers to experiment with how to use the potential of the internet to their advantage. For the most part, these attempts have remained with the tried and tested method of marketing first created with The Blair Witch Project, which was the first movie to generate online hype or buzz. Since then, all major Hollywood movies, and basically all minor and independent ones, have created their own websites, to the point of advertising these URLs on their posters, TV ads and other traditional marketing techniques. For the most part, these online tie-ins have been rather pedestrian in how they have approached the potential of the internet -- they have treated the new mega-media more like an information source than an interactive medium.

There have been examples of more interactive sites, where directors and other creative talent will blog each day to let fans know about what is happening on set (how they find the time to do so is beyond my comprehension, having been on movie sets). Trailers and exclusive information may be released first online, and producers and studios may actively encourage feedback from the potential consumer base on what they are seeing in the promotion.

But these, still, are rather pedestrian in taking advantage of the full potential of the internet. With Web 2.0 the buzzword as to how the internet is now seen -- approaching a more dialogic nature as the traditional audience becomes its own media producer through websites, blogs, and YouTubing. Recognizing this rise in activity, some media producers are moving to co-opt it, by encouraging more participation from its fans -- Lost: The Experience and Heroes: Evolution are two examples where the producers created online-only content for fans of the TV shows to engage with. Heroes has even co-opted traditional fan activities of message boards and fan production under the aegis of NBC.

In the movie realm, a similar experience comes from the marketing design for the classified J.J. Abrams project "Cloverfield". Traditional film teasers have circulated, but teaser websites have also sprung up. What does a fake Japanese health drink company, Slusho!, have to do with a monster movie? No one is sure, but it has got the potential consumer base theorizing about what the monster is.

Yet it is the marketing campaign for The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins, that most exemplifies what the potential of the internet is for promotional purposes. Absolutely no aspect of the marketing campaign has been traditional. Any new images or information released has been online only -- and it has only been released after the fans -- the potential consumer base -- has engaged in either online or real world activities, where even the latter is influenced by online websites. Instead of just giving the consumer base information about the movie, the producers are asking people to play games and be rewarded with the information. It was in this method that we came to know what The Joker, arguable the most seminal DC supervillain, would look like.

The producers of The Dark Knight have created a truly interactive marketing campaign that utilizes much of the potential of the internet: interactivity, participation, consumer becomes producer, and instantaneousness. Whether or not this marketing campaign will ultimately benefit the movie remains to be seen. We shall know if the work of J.J. Abrams has succeeded sooner, as that movie premieres in January 2008, whereas Batman does not return to theatres until June 2008.

Also, it must be said, Batman already has his legion of fans -- this marketing campaign is not introducing people to something new, as was with case with Snakes, Blair Witch and the new "Cloverfield" project. But should these new movie project succeed, and should Heroes be kept alive with Evolution -- should the writer's strike force an early season finale -- then we can expect to see more of Hollywood utilizing these same tactics to market to a consumer base that is becoming increasingly sophisticated as to the full potential of the internet.