In lots of different departments at the University of Bergen there are students writing bachelors and masters theses about social media and digital culture – and they’re often quite lonely, not aware of each other, and often don’t have much support from their professors, who may not be very interested in digital culture. I’d love to get these students together!
Yesterday, after the book presentation, I met two of these studetns. Kristine Ludvigsen is studying pedagogy and finishing her Master’s degree on learning in Second Life. She had lots of questions about how to think about ethics in an online environment – she had permission from all her informants, but as the interviews had taken place in Second Life, sometimes other people had turned up in the middle of an interview – or someone simply walked past in the background. Her final paper is going to be a video paper, so she was wondering whether she could use material in the video paper despite there being someone in the background of the image who had’t formally given permission? I think it depends on the situation – but it does show the trickiness of online work. Kristine has already looked at the AoIR’s ethics guidelines: I think she’d find Charles Ess’s new book Digital Media Ethics useful – I only just saw it this morning and will certainly buy a copy. Charles Ess has worked on ethics on the internet for years.
I also met Carl Christian Gr¯ndahl, who left a comment here the other day and just finished his master’s degree at the Department of Administration and Organization Theory. He’s put the thesis online – it’s titled Om nye mediers betydning for politisk aktivitet og deltagelse – en teoretisk dr¯fting og et casestudium. I haven’t read it yet but it’s certainly about an interesting topic.
It’s great that there are more and more students writing about the web and about social media – and at such diverse departments too. I’m thinking it’d be great to gather all these masters students together – both Kristine and Carl Christian mentioned that not many people in their departments are really very interested in social media and they missed having more people working on it around them. I’m sure our students doing their masters’ in Digital Culture would also benefit from seeing how people in other fields are approaching digital culture and social media. My plan is simply to have people meet up for an informal lunch at one of the campus cafeterias – say once a month – and have a chance to exchange ideas, brainstorm problems and so on. We could do more formal feedback groups if there were interest in it.
I’m planning on contacting the professors in various departments to ask them to let me know about social media/web/digital culture students – but if you are or know of a University of Bergen student working on these areas, leave a comment here or send me an email (jill.walker.rettberg@uib.no) so I can get in touch with them!
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Digital kultur/UiB
Vil gjerne samle bachelor og masterstudenter rundt om på UiB som skriver om sosiale medier! http://is.gd/pcH5
Omer Rosenbaum
Hi Jill
It’s a great coincidence to discover your blog (and you ofcourse) on that same day that I finish my data collecting of my thesis on politics and social media in Sweden.
Åsmund Garfors
RT @jilltxt Do you know a student at UiB writing an MA/BA thesis on social media/digital culture? ..get them all together! http://is.gd/pcH5
Jill Walker Rettberg
Congratulations, Omer! And good luck on the analysis of your data – let us know when you’ve finished!
Omer Rosenbaum
As a blogger and professor don’t you find it difficult to finish the discussion part in your researches?
I mean this is the part where you reflect on the research, which can be equivalent to blogging in some ways. but while blogging is an endless writing, research must come to an end.
Anyway, next week I am starting the best part which is “Discublogging” and then you might come across it (I intend to apply to Ph.D. at Bergen).
Kristine Ludvigsen
I also found this aticle useful:
Playing a Good Game: Ethical Issues in Researching MMOGs and Virtual
Worlds (Heidi A. McKee & James E. Porter)
http://ijire.net/issue_2.1/mckee.pdf
Alex
Hi Jill,
today I watched your video about blogging on the virclass-website, and you convinced me! I never blogged before, but I plan to start it now 😉
jill/txt » social media study group
[…] On Thursday at 1:15 pm we’re gathering masters and PhD students (and other researchers) who are writing about social media at the coffee bar at the University Library here in Bergen – look for a gang of social media types sitting round a table with a little sign saying “Social Media!” This first time we’ll mainly just try to get to know each other and talk about what we’re all working on – and of course figure out what the best way to proceed would be. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I think a lot of people are working on social media in very different departments without really knowing that there are other people out there. If you’re in Bergen and interested, do come. And if you know someone who should come, please let them know about it! Filed under:General — Jill @ 10:45 [ ] […]