User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes: Difference between revisions

• Ragin, Constructing Social Research:1) social research - interplay between evidence and ideas 2) consists of a) analysis of a movement (involves its deconstruction into elements, also analysis of non-participants as well as particiapants) and b) synthesis of evidence (see which elements are similar) 3) analytic frame - key concept 4) four building blocs of social research: ideas, evidence, analytical frame, images 5) be selective in chosing your evidence 6) images a) are idealization of real cases (ideal types?) b) imply explanations c) are guides for further research 7) challenge of social research: clear specification of ideas, rigorus examintation of evidence, 8) in qualitative research, frames are flexible (can be changed) 9) qualitative research process: selecting cases and sites, use of sensitizing (early) concepts, claryfing cases and categories, 10) qualitative is about fewer, but enhanced data 11) Analytic induction - systematic examination of similarities that seeks to develop concepts or ideas (look for similarities, develop a subcategory for them from a higher category) 12) study of a single case 13) data condensers vs data enhancers 14) analytic induction and theoretical sampling

• Steven J. Taylor, Robert Bogdan Introduction to qualitative research methods
  • Ch1. history. methodology
    • qualitative researchers are concerned with meanings people attach to their lives
    • qualitative research is inductive
    • qual met is holistic: people/settings/etc. are not reduced to variables but looked upon as a whole
    • qual res are concerned with how people think and act in their everyday lives
    • all perspectives are worthy of study (of judge but also of deliquent)
    • qual res emphasise validity (meaningfullness, relevance to empirical world)
    • qual res is flexible
  • sociological perspectives
    • phenomenological perspectives (phenomenology) - view human behavior as products of their definitions of their world. The task or research is to capture how people construct realities. Subperspectives:
      • symbolic interactionism: Charles Horton Cooley, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Robert Park, W.I. Thomas and others. Primary importance on the social meanings people attach to the world around them. Blumer premises: 1) people acts towards other people (things, etc.) based on the meanings those people (things, etc.) have for them 2) meanings arise in interaction (are not inherent to objects) 3) meanings are attached through interpretation
      • ethnomethodology - Harold Garfinkel. Refers to subject method of study: how people maintain the sense of external reality. Meanings are ambigious and problematic. Researchers analyze the ways people apply rules and understandings in specific situations to make them clear. Examine the common sense. Note that some researchers link et. to s.i., while others don't.
      • feminist research
      • postmodernism - reject the Enlight. faith in reason, rationality and progress. Challenges science, examines axioms. Popular withing philosophy (Foucault).

• Herbert Marcuse, Eros and civilization: social meaning of biology - history of not class struggle, but fight against repression
  • He begins with the conflict postulated by Freud in Civilisation and Its Discontents between human instincts and the necessary repression brought on by the socially-acquired conscience (or superego). Freud claimed that the history of man is the history of his repression and that 'Our civilisation is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts.' Sublimation of sex produces the energy for progress, and the price of progress is the substitution of guilt for happiness. Freud thought that this was due to an inevitable biological clash between Eros and civilisation. Marcuse argues that 'the irreconcilable conflict is not between work (reality principle) and Eros (pleasure principle), but between alienated labour (performance principle) and Eros.' He believes that a socialist society could engender 'non-alienated libidinal work', 'a non-repressive civilisation based on 'non-repressive sublimation'. The argument depends on the theses that instincts are subject to historical modification and that repression is largely an historical phenomenon. Marcuse concludes that biological repression itself is not the problem but that our troubles stem from the additional 'surplus repression' produced by the specific historical institutions of our own period. The result is that Freud is converted in to a sort of eroticised Marx.[1]
  • Freud claimed that the human civilization was, founded on the suppression of instincts. Sex in any form produces the energy for progress and the price of it (since Enlightenment) always was loosing part of happiness to guilt. Freud thought that this was because of the inevitable biological clash between Sex and civilization. Marcuse sees Sex as part of civilization and argues that 'the conflict is not between work [life without leisure] and Sex [leisure and pleasure], but between performance and Sex.' Sex is allowed for managers, or for workers outside sex industry when not disturbing performance. Marcuse believes that a socialist society could be a society without needing the performance of the 'poor' and without suppression. For him biological repression itself is not the problem but the extra repression, coming from historical institutions of our own period. Marcuse unlike Marx doesn't use the abstract division Poor and Rich, but the Common Sense observation Older less flexible and Younger curious. [2]
  • Intro
    • The sacrifice has paid off well: in the technically advanced areas of civilization, the conquest of nature is practically complete, and more needs of a greater number of people are fulfilled than ever before. Neither the mechanization and standardization of life, nor the mental impoverishment, nor the growing destructiveness of present-day progress provides sufficient ground for questioning the “principle” which has governed the progress of Western civilization. The continual increase of productivity makes constantly more realistic the promise of an even better life for all.
    • Does the interrelation between freedom and repression, productivity and destruction, domination and progress, really constitute the principle of civilization? Or does this interrelation result only from a specific historical organization of human existence? In Freudian terms, is the conflict between pleasure principle and reality principle irreconcilable to such a degree that it necessitates the repressive transformation of man’s instinctual structure? Or does it allow the concept of a non-repressive civilization, based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations?
  • Chap.1
    • If absence from repression is the archetype of freedom, then civilization is the struggle against this freedom.
    • The notion that a non-repressive civilization is impossible is a cornerstone of Freudian theory.
    • Freud’s metapsychology is an ever-renewed attempt to uncover, and to question, the terrible necessity of the inner connection between civilization and barbarism, progress and suffering, freedom and unhappiness — a connection which reveals itself ultimately as that between Eros and Thanatos. Freud questions culture not from a romanticist or utopian point of view, but on the ground of the suffering and misery which its implementation involves.
    • Throughout the world of industrial civilization, the domination of man by man is growing in scope and efficiency. Nor does this trend appear as an incidental, transitory regression on the road to progress. Concentration camps, mass exterminations, world wars, and atom bombs are no “relapse into barbarism,” but the unrepressed implementation of the achievements of modern science, technology, and domination. And the most effective subjugation and destruction of man by man takes place at the height of civilization, when the material and intellectual attainments of mankind seem to allow the creation of a truly free world.
  • Chap.2
    • "the struggle for existence takes place in the world too poor for the satisfaction of the human need without constant restrain, renounciation and denial" (p.35) thus the need for work
    • Marcuse argues for fallacy: it's not scarcity per se, but organization of thereof (capitalism?). No distribution according to needs, but to power.
    • "Domination is excercised by a particular group or individual in order to sustain and enhance itself in a priviliged position."
    • Progress is a byproduct of preserving scarcity
    • stages of civilization implies social evolutionist view
    • "such restrictions of the instics might have been enforced by scarcity (...) but they have became a privilige and distinction of man"
    • "scarcity has been intensified by the hierarchical division of labor"
    • performance principle - economic stratification
    • little free time (alienated labor)
  • Ch10
    • In Marxist Utopia, will we be sex maniacs?

• Michael Foucault
  • Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison studies how prisons specifically, but really all institutions of coercion schools, armies, etc.) developed. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc.
  • Just around the time of Damien's execution, though, an important series of challenges occurred. The crowds became increasingly unruly, sometimes chasing off the executioner and carrying the criminal away in triumph. Faced with this type of disobedience, the sovereign had to respond with ever-increasing displays of power, and the possibility of full rebellion came to hover over every punishment, Clearly, a new solution was needed. - consider Tilly, social movements
  • The solution was found in the new methods of production revolutionizing the Western world. The modern prison is an even more complete exercise of power than the spectacle of the gallows. The transition from torture to control as a means of punishment represents a massive shift in systematic uses of power and authority within society. Foucault analyzes the Industrial Revolution in terms of its production of "docile bodies" conditioned to their role in the rapidly technologizing society. Foucault calls this production the science of discipline; its main principles are spatialization, complete control of activity, repetition, detailed hierarchies, and normalizing judgments. All of these combine to create self-reinforcing systems of power and control. Each level looks to the one above it for knowledge or direction. The subject gaze of the lower also controls those above by reinforcing their role as knowledge providers. In this sense, powers is not simply the control exerted by elites upon the masses but a whole network of interlocking conditions and coercions; power is not directed by elites, flowing top to bottom, but is localized in institutions.
  • Foucault 'DP' begins in a way Hitchock would've be proud for: with the detaile description of an 18th century execution of Robert-François Damiens, "The flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs, and calves with red-hot pincers"
  • Humanist schemes such as Jeremy Bentham's `Panopticon' promised to end criminality and provide surefire ways of `grinding rogues good', but they were not acted upon. For example, in the modern prison there is no attempt to instill an automatic association between particular crimes and particular punishments. Incarceration has become the common answer to everything, varying in length but not greatly in character. Prison discipline has been drawn from a collection of diverse tactics rather than a single overarching rationality. It was through the disciplines of the barracks, the workshop, the schoolroom and the hospital, that the modern prison system became possible.
  • One important consequence of this fragmentary logic is that there is no serious possibility of the prison system reducing overall levels of criminality (it operates according to principles which ensure that it “…cannot fail to produce delinquents.”). Punishment is not geared towards the production of Bentham's new model citizens, it tends instead to function as a school for crime, taking in offenders and grinding out delinquents. Failure was built in from the start. But here Foucault asks an important question: what is served by this failure? He answers by pointing to the production of a seemingly marginal, but supervised milieu of criminals. Such delinquency allows illegality to be localized and it allows the criminal group to be used by the justice system in order to survey the entire social field. Criminality becomes an instrument of power. In addition, crime becomes gauged by degrees of anomaly and normality. The disciplinary society -- the school, the court, the asylum and the prison -- is set in a struggle against all forms of anomaly. Prison grinds society uniform.
  • Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle" punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But, he suggests that the shift towards prison which followed was the result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine".
  • Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and assymetrical that we call the disciplines. (p.222)
  • Foucault thus suggests that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern age - bodies which function in factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms.
  • These changes, where a coercive institution replaces the city of punishment, arose from a definite change in the mechanisms of power and technology. The emphasis on representations, coupling of ideas, and the person of the criminal gives way to one focused on the body and 'soul', on training mechanisms, on the manipulation of the individual. The goal is to generate an obedient subject who obeys and responds automatically. This does not require spectacle. It does, however require total power over that person, omnipresent and enforced automatically. This can and must be secret and private, although there is a risk that arbitrary despotism will return.
  • Question: in a society where power is less centralised, prisons are more likely to exist?
  • "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?" One of the central points of Foucault's discussion of the carceral system is that the form of discipline associated with the modern prison is not contained within prison walls, but derives from the society beyond those walls. The mechanisms of control, examination and classification operate within all the institutions that Foucault discusses. Indeed, power in its various forms flows through all of them. Prisons resemble these other institutions not just because they have similar architecture, but because they all fulfill similar functions.

• Anthony Giddens
  • outsider to social theory
  • power:
    • In rules, Giddens emphasised the social constructs of power, modernity and institutions, defining sociology as "the study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three centuries."
    • Most directly then, space does more than provide the "settings of interaction" (Giddens, 1984); it itself is a fundamental constituent of knowledge/power regimes. The point to draw from these various comments is that in order to understand something like continuing education in the professions we have to map a geography of it as a set of social practices, a human geography in which power is created, enacted, altered. In Giddens’ view, the very framework of our social lives, modernity, is fundamentally shaped by different sense of space and time than in pre-modern times.
    • The study of power is not a secondary consideration for social science. Power is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person (theory of structuration)

• lifeworld is the world as it immediately presents itself to us prior to scientific or philosophical analysis. It is an enviroment made by practices and attitudes, a realm of informal culturally grounded understandings and mutual acommodations. In the lifeworld, individuals draw from custom and cultural traditions to construct identities, negotiate situational definitions, coordinate action and create social solidarity.
• relation between the philosophy of law and political theory. Law, Habermas says, is the primary medium of social integration in modern society. Law, in the first place, is power: it is a coercive instrument, linked with violence, that extracts obedience and common behavior from its subjects because of its claim to the power of enforcement. But power alone does not grant law its legitimacy. It is also based on a normative claim. In modern society, law derives its validity from consent, the consent of the governed.
• power: Habermas's treatment of the role and meaning of the concept of "power", as it was elaborated in his two previous volumes, "The Theory of Communicative Action" and "Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action", has therefore undergone some significant changes in this book. The revised notion of "power" as a positive influence that is produced in communicative space, runs contrary to Habermas's original concept of "power" in his "Theory of Communicative Action" where power was understood as a coercive force that had to be avoided in order for the discursive situation to prevail.
• medium of law which gives legitimacy to the political order and provides it with its binding force. Legitimate law-making itself is generated through a procedure of public opinion and will-formation that produces communicative power.
• public sphere contrasts with the private sphere, and is the part of life in which one is interacting with others and with society at large. Much of the thought about the public sphere relates to the concept of identity and identity politics.
• The public sphere is the “place” where free citizens come

together to freely deliberate political thought, contemporary affairs, and public policy.

• history and 18th century successes
• decline As early as the 1960’s, Habermas asserted that the public sphere has undergone a

significant shift in its ability to provide an open forum for content-focused discourse and expressed his concern that mass-media was shaping the public opinion. In his magnum opus of Theory of Communicative Action (1984) he criticized the one-side process of modernization led by forces of economic and administrative rationalization. Habermas traced the growing intervention of formal systems in our everyday lives as pararell to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and culture of mass consumption. These reinforcing trends rationalize widening areas of public life, submiting them to generalizing logic of efficiency and control. As routinized political parties and interests groups substitute for participatory democracy, society is increasingly administered at a level remote from input of citizens. As a result, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating.

• In his view, the idea of the public sphere involved the notion that private entities would draw together as a public entity and engage in rational deliberation, ultimately making decisions that would influence the state. As a historical formation, the public sphere involved a "space" separated from family life, the business world, and the state.
• Democratic public life only thrives where institutions enable citizens to debate matter of public importance. He describes an ideal type of "ideal speech situation", where actors are equally endowed with the capacities of discource, recognize each other's basic social equality and in which their speech is completly undistorted by idealogy or midrecognition.
• Habermas is optimistic about the possibilty of the revival of the public sphere. He sees hope for the future in the new era of political community that transcends the national state based on ethnic and cultural likeness for one based on the equal rights and obligations of legally vested citizens. This discoursive theory of democracy requires the political community which can collectively define its political will and implement it as policy at the level of the legislative system. This political system requires an activist public spehere, where matters of common interest and political issues can be discussed, and the force of public opinion can influence the decision making process.
• public shpere and the net?

• Auctions:
  • 3 community (group indentity - dress code - knowlege less for success, more for community feel), spontanity, stock market as the exception (buyers don't care about other buyers - duel market. Auctions that maximize fairness (English) are more common then those maximizing bids (English). Creating community is often the job of an auctioneer, with jokes, food, and such - otherwise buyers will be weary. Yet auctions may also increase social relations: selling something to a friend, if he is dissatisfied later, makes it less liekely he will be dissatisfied with the seller. Communal status may be more important then the fair value. Legitimacy: objects are reborn, gain new meaning bestowed by the community.
  • 4 going beyond economics. Social goals and meanings. Fairness is not an economic byproduct, it is a sociological goal from the start. More on legitimacy: Example: car selling (people not complaining about price dumping - auction legitimizes the price as well "we couldn't get more"). Legitimacy of a collective decisions. Justification: others are paying as much (legitimization of inflated price). Reporting of even minor flaws before the auction. Fair price and the pools: avoid bidding wars and underpriced items, buy worse items: "we are not stealing it - we know what's the fair price, we wont underpay but we wont overpay". What is fair differs and reflects the history of a community.

Fans, fandom:

• Scott Thorne, Gordon C. Bruner - 'An exploratory investigation of the characteristics of consumer fanaticism ' - Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal - [3] [4]
• Matthew Hills - Fan Cultures - general overview of fans and fandom [5] fan cultures book

SF

• Camille Bacon-Smith - Science Fiction Culture [6] book science fiction culture

Comics

• Premo Steele, Cassie - Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers - [7]
  • whether one is a Fanboy or a True Believer, the preferred hangout is the specialty store. Here, as they talk shop, the culture proliferates. They debate among themselves, spread news about the industry, arrange trades, discuss collectibles, and attach themselves to their particular mainstream.
  • Comic store is the most important site for the comic culture. They serve as a kind of cultural clubhouse where fans can spend time being themselves among themselves and other like-minded individuals.
  • Born from the changs in comic distribution they became increasingly popular since 1980s, by the begining of 1990s selling over 80% of comics.
  • They sell other items of interest to fans.
  • Despite all the merchanside, many regulars find that the real reason for patronizing those estabilishments is interaction with people there, including other customers and employees. In this way, the comic store is a centre not only for commerce, but also for culture.
  • Sometimes I think I come here just to talk to my friends instead of to buy comics,” one of Daydreams' regular customers said about the store
  • American society does not respect comics. Supportive environment - reaffirmation.
  • It is not uncommon to find employees having long conversations with customers about...
  • Finding fellowship at the comic shops is important part of their popularity and success.
  • p.8 - female customers
  • For visitors, it can be an alien world. Sense of awe for some newcomers. Moment of epiphany (especially for those already interested in a hobby - note T&B comment on many fans not realizing there is a large fandom out there). The discovery of the comic shop can rekindle childhood interests in adults. Later: Although the store may function as a clubhouse for regular readers, for others it is intimidating and they may find it difficult to get involved (females).
  • Darcy? Sullivan suggests that the comic book store is "a fundamental part of the way in which [fans] interact with the medium"
  • The shop's clientele is limited to a very exclusive group of people. It makes it a cultural place in a way that a general audience store can never be, but prevents many people from becoming a part of that culture.
  • different customers [8]
  • Extreme difficulty in finding the comics without a comic shop, but still managable: comic book culture existed before the comic shops.

Community

• Community: As Jenkins (Henry Jenkins in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture[9]) suggests, fans are not a community in a traditional sense. For Rheingold, a community is any cooperative group of people and, according to him, “every cooperative group of people exists in the face of a competitive...
  • • • Henry Jenkins: example of a complete membership [10]
        • ethnographic account of the media fan community drawing on the works of Michel de Ceteau (model of "poaching," in which an audience appropriates a text for itself).
        • ...considers fandom status as a new form of community, one formed by relations of consumptions and categories of taste. Filk music.
• Jeffrey A Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans, [11] - black superhoroes book
• P.Zinkiewicz, S. Smith, Sense of Community in Science-Fiction Fandom, Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 105-117,
• Henry Jenkings, Media studis: A Reader:
  • Fandom constitutes an alternative social community.[12]

Anime

• Fred Patten, Carl Macek - Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews - manga/anime fans [13] book anime and manga

CCGs

• J. Patrick Williams, Consumption and Authenticity in the Collectible Games Subculture: collectible games (cardgames), choice, self-identity, commodification online

RPGs

• Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games
• [14] [15] Gary Fine 1983, book, store and players: [16]
  • books citing Fine: Sara Delamont - Fieldwork in Educational Settings: Methods, Pitfalls and Perspectives - [17]
• The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic - [18] - Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic
• K Lancaster - The Journal of Popular Culture, 1994 [19]
  • Specialty game and hobby stores thrived

Comp games

• computer games - gender differences - Sheri Graner-Ray, Sheri Graner Ray, Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market [20]
• computer games - customners come into store with opinions - Alan Gershenfeld, Mark Loparco, Cecilia Barajas, Game Plan: The Insider's Guide to Breaking in and Succeeding in the Computer and Video Game Business [21]
• game designers, playing game as a kids - career in the industry - Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, Steven Hoffman - Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping, and Playtesting Games - [22]
  • There are about 5,000 non-chain game hobby stores in US[23] - small stores privately owned and run by people who love the games (and/or comic books)
  • Hobby games are the domain of males in their teens or twenties who play religiously every week or more. In general these games are extremly complex and and it is not unusual for fans to spend hundreds of dollars a year getting supplements, cards, figuringes or rulebooks for a single game. Hobby games fall into three main categories: roleplaying games, minature games and trading card games.
• Cybercafes and Cybergames: Virtual and Non-Virtual Spaces for Identity Construction and Social Development - Frank L. Samson - identity construction (online gamers): study of computer and boardgames centers: usually attracted younger student patrons during the early afternoon through late afternoon hours while the late night crowd tended to be much older, ranging from late teens through twenties, thirties, and seemingly middle-aged patrons (see Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet).

Other

• Kurt Lancaster - Warlocks and Warpdrive: Contemporary Fantasy Entertainments with Interactive and Virtual Environments [24]

Keywords:

• hobby+games+community

• James B. Rule, Debra L. Gimlin, Sylvia J. Sievers, Computing in organizations: myth and experience, Transaction Publishers, 2002

ISBN 0765801418, [25]

His argument is that people (managers...) have certain positive myths (unfounded expectations) that adopting computer technology will always greatly help them; thus they adopt it without sufficient study with predictable effects of disillusionment. A very interesting observation is that many decision makers (and regular members) tend to overemphasize the impact of computerization; this is certainly a point I want to remember for the final conclusion of my thesis, and for when we consider the possible bias of respondents. He writes on p.119 that "initial adoption of computing appears decisively unrevolutionary" (with the exceptions of a very few organizations which indeed can be drastically transformed - would they be the "interesting outliers" we mentioned?); on p.127 he notes that the changes in organizations will be gradual and slow. I do agree with him - I've always thought that people tend to overstimate the potential of technology in social change (in the short run - years or decades; people also tend to underestimate them in the longer run - ex. several decades). Rule finds, however, (p.125-127) that there seem to be a common pattern that computing technology broadens the vision of organizations (and of their decision-makers), and allows them to do things previously thought impossible, or at the very least, be more efficient and innovative (although he notes, and I certainly agree, that this doesn't translate to "more wise"). He also argues that many studies of the impact of computerization on social change suffer from what I would call spurious effects - in other words, that scholars claim that computers caused change X, when in fact there are other plausible explanations, which enthusiasts of computer technology ignore as possible variables. Overall, while to a certain extent Rule is a skeptic, he is more of a comparative skeptic: i.e. he opposes the use of the term "revolution", by arguing that changes will be slow, but does admit that communication technologies do, over time, result in important changes.

• Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, [26]
• how new ideas spread via communication channels over time. Such innovations are initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome this uncertainty, most people seek out others like themselves who have already adopted the new idea. Thus the diffusion process consists of a few individuals who first adopt an innovation, then spread the word among their circle of acquaintances--a process which typically takes months or years. But there are exceptions: use of the Internet in the 1990s, for example, may have spread more rapidly than any other innovation in the history of humankind. Furthermore, the Internet is changing the very nature of diffusion by decreasing the importance of physical distance between people
• p.xx - the diffusion of innovations is essentially a social process in which subjectively perceived information about a new idea is communicated from person to person.
• p.35 - diffusion is a special type of communication concerned with the spread of messages that are perceived as new ideas
• p.36 - innovation characteristics: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, observability
• p.36 - most individuals evaluate the innovation not on a basis of scientific research but through subjective evaluation of near peers who have adopted the innovation (role models). The more similar those role models are to the observer, the greater their effect.
• p.37 - adopter categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards
• p.38 - there are optional (by individuals), collective (by a group) and authority (by leaders) innovation decisions
• p.91 - sociological research stresses how social relationships are involved in the person-to-person spread of new ideas. Example: McAdam works on spread of protesting and organizing techniques via the Freedom Summer
• p.294 - the innovativeness/needs paradox and the strategy of least resistance: groups that are in most need of innovation often are the last to adopt it (digital divide). Change agents often chose the targets that are most likely to adopt a given innovation (elite clients).
• p.404 - an organization is a stable system of individuals who work together through a pattern of regularized human relationships to achieve common goals through a hierarchy of ranks and a division of labor.
• p.405 - a virtual organization is a network of geographically-distant employees linked by electronic communication
• p.414 - a champion is a charismatic individual who supports the innovation, helping to overcome indifference or resistance to innovations. They can come from the top, middle or bottom of an organization, in all ages and with differing degrees of official power. Anti-champions exist (p.37 - opinion leaders - individuals able to informally influence others)
• p.434 - innovation in organization: (1) initiation (information gathering/agenda setting and planning/matching) and (2) implementation (redefining/restructuring, clarifying and routinizing)

User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes/Qualitative

• User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes/SocMov

• [27]
• Schlosberg David ; Stephen Zavestoski ; Stuart W. Shulman. “Web-Based Technologies, Participation, and the Potential for Deliberation”. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Volume 4, Issue 1 December 2007 , pages 37 - 55
• there is little diff between paper and electronic comments
• there is a major difference between people who use form letters with little modifications and who write their own comments; the latter are much more deliberative. There are technologies promoting both deliberative and non-deliberative comments.
• conclusion: how technology is designed, and the needs of those designing it, have much impact on the scope of delibration

• p.2-3 - transparency fosters trust and networking in businesses;
• p.9-10 - business releases information risking competitors knowing it to foster free innovation
• p.11-13 - collaboration WAS small scale; it is large scale now
• p.15 - as with any revolutions, the demands on individuals, organizations and nations will be intense
• p.18 - wikinomics is a new art of science of collaboration. It means more than just a new way to create documents. A wiki is more than software; is a metaphor for a new era of collaboration and participation. With peer production we will harness human skill, ingenuity and intelligence more efficiently and effectively" then before
• p.19 - the new Web (Web 2.0) is abbout communities, participation and peering.
• will we look at this decade as a turning point in our history?
• principles of wikinomics:
  • being open - to talent pool outside organization, to sharing previously secret information with others (for example, to facilitate the creation of standards)
  • peering - moving away from the hierarchical structure towards a more horizontal form. There is still variance in authority, and underlying structure, those peer netwerks are quite different from traditional bureaucratic hierarchies
  • sharing - of intellectual property, free licences, pharmaceutics, software, contributing to the commons is not altruism but creates vibrant fundations accelarting growth and innovation everywhere,
  • acting globally -
• previous technology driven revolutions took more than a acentury to unfold. Today - law of accelarating returns
• disruptive technology
• a new kind of economy where firms coexist with millions of individuals who collaborate through various networks and create value
• organizations who don't adapt - who don't embrace collaboration - will perish (p.33)
• p.37 - "Net Generation" - baby boom echo - for whom web is a glue that binds their social networks. MySpace, Facebook, Technorati, flickr, they are the future leaders ... p.59 they have a very strong sense of common good and collective social and civic responsibility
• p.52 more than half of US teens (57%) are content creators ([28]), 2005 data, compared to 44% adults (2004 data) [29]; rougly twice as many teens have posted written material (32% to 17%)
• new web - from newspaper to canvass
• folksonomy - tagging - could people tag and rate government pages?
• p.46 people are increasingly in command
• they compare TakingITGlobal to UN due to size and membership, note they meet world leaders
• p.240 - workplaces are being reformed; we are shifting from closed and hierarchical workplaces with rigid employment relationships to increasingly self-organized, distributed, and collaboarative human capital networks that draw knowledge and resources from outside of the organization
• p.252 - bottom up approach: John Seely Brown, former chief scientist of XEROX, notes "A lot of corporations are using wikis without the top management even knowing it". It usually starts with the organization IT department, and migrates to other places. In Dresden Kleinwort - a German bank - after few months of wiki pilot program, they have dominated the company's intranet, cut down e-mail volume by 75% and meetings by 50%. Tantek Celik, Technocrati's chief technologist, states that in five years "knowledge of wikis will be a required job skill".
• it used outside IT sector - from banks (DT) through universities ()
• it is unorthodox and usettling to the older generations
• Intellipedia - trusting our security to such a new way of thinking
• the creation of adhocracies will become a norm (p.265)
• the revolution will be gradual. Shifts in organizational paradigms are slow (p.266)
• co-innovate with citizens, share resources that were guarded,

Other stuff: Copenhagen Consensus, Tobin tax