Just got word that the paper on Twitter use during the 2010 Swedish elections (co-authored with Hallvard Moe) has been published online. Of course, you need to subscribe to the journal in question in order to read the piece – or you can get your hands on the pre-print version, available here. Hope you like it!
Waking up this morning, I was greeted with great news – a paper on ethical and methodological issues I co-wrote with Hallvard Moe had been accepted for publication in Nordicom Review. The paper, entitled Methodological and ethical challenges with large-scale analyses of online political communication, emanates from our ongoing project on political Twitter use in the Scandinavian region. This publication marks a nice opportunity for us to provide other interested researchers with some insights into the issues we continuously face when doing research on social media and sets of “big data”. A pre-print version of the paper is available here.
Yesterday, I got back home from the 12th Internet Research conference. Just in time to see one of my favorite guitarists Kurt Rosenwinkel play a show here in Uppsala, by the way. Following last years conference in Gothenburg, IR12 was held in Seattle – a city I had never visited before. I quite liked the city, as it seemed to have all the positive qualities of a big US city, it seemed like a little more “intimate” place. Before the conference started I had some time to check out the surroundings together with some friends who were also in town for the same reason I was. The four of us also make up the members of rockband extraordinaire, The AOIR Heads, as can be seen here (what?). On a more serious note, my presentation (slides available here) on use by social media by SJ, the national Swedish train operator went very well, as you might be able to tell from the picture above (found here). It was part of a panel on “Social media and Crisis communication” that also featured Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Kate Crawford and fellow OIISDP-er Frances Shaw. Good fun and good presentations all round!
A paper that I co-wrote with, among others, Stefan Hrastinski and Jenny Eriksson Lundström, was published in this month’s issue of First Monday. While I think the paper turned out good and interesting, what is perhaps even more interesting is the semi-Swedish coat of arms (or something like that) that is currently featured on the First Monday web site. For the purposes of documentation, it is also featured in the screen shot above. Viking research?
I’m at the University of Akureyri in Iceland for the NordMedia 2011 conference. This truly is a beautiful country – I could tell from flying in from Reykjavik. With both of my presentations done, I’m looking forward to my flight home tomorrow… It feels like I haven’t been home for ages. If you ever visit Akureyri, be sure to visit the restaurant Rub 23 – and don’t be afraid to try the sushi pizza (actuallt quite good and not at all as weird as it sounds).
My vacation in Tarragona, Spain is winding down. Just as I was about to head off to the NordMedia 2011 conference (by way of Sweden), I was informed that my co-authored paper “Studying political microblogging. Twitter users in the 2010 Swedish election campaign” had been accepted for publication in New Media & Society. Good news indeed – I’ve mentioned before that this particular journal was one of my inspirations for pursuing a career in research, and so, I was very satisfied with these news. The paper was co-written with Hallvard Moe and is the first publication to come out of our ongoing project regarding political Twitter use in the Scandinavian countries.
My two weeks at this year’s Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme are coming to an end. And yes, it has been quite a fortnight as they say here in the UK. While it has been very interesting to meet and discuss with other doctoral candidates with similar research interests as myself, it has been equally intellectually stimulating to hear about other research projects, unrelated to my thesis. In short: there’s a lot of interesting research going on… Aside from the scholarly side of things, the social events have been equally fun and rewarding. All in all, time and money well spent. I hope to see my fellow cohort friends at future conferences – perhaps at IR12 in Seattle this year? Oh, and if you do come, don’t forget to bring the Pimm’s!
Just arrived in Helsinki for participation ECIS 2011. Last year, I had the opportunity to attend the ECIS doctoral consortium when it was hosted in South Africa – this year, the conference is in Finland… A little bit closer to Sweden. My presentation was originally scheduled for the session starting at 11.00 today. However, since my flight arrived in Helsinki at 10.35, my presentation was moved to what might be called the “graveyard shift”, saturday morning at 08.30. Oh well, can’t win ’em all, I guess
Noam Chomsky delivering the closing adress at ICA 2011. To sum up, you might say that Chomsky has essentially given the same speech for 40 years now. It’s a good speech though – and, unfortunately, continuously necessary.
I’m at Arlanda Airport, waiting for my flight to Boston, by way of Reykjavik. The last couple of days have been interesting – the ashcloud generated by the icelandic volcano Grímsvötn has kept me on my toes as to whether or not I would be able to get to Boston and the ICA conference. As of today, most flights seem to be operating, while there are some delays… Hopefully, I’ll be able to make my transfer at Keflavik airport and make it in time to Boston.