The term "Internet governance" refers to a broad range of decisions--by governments, the private sector, and civil society--that affect the character of the internet.

The assigned article, "Internet Governance in Kazakhstan," (by Rachid Nougamanov) highlights some of the governance issues that might affect the opportunities that people have to carry out online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan. The article includes:  read more »

Please read this article for class and be ready to discuss it:

"What is the Internet (and What Makes it Work)?" By Robert E. Kahn and Vinton G. Cerf, 1999.

Note Room Change Below!!

Reminder: Our quiz on 5 May will be held in 221 Valikhanov Building. Don't miss it. There are no makeups if you miss this quiz except in cases of verified medical emergency.

Take a look at the Encyclopedia Britannica website and you may be surprised to find how much the site seems to mimic some aspects of the Wikipedia site.  read more »

• Both sites feature a relatively sparse layout with seemingly little attention paid to graphic design;

Remaining dates for NITs:

• 28 April: Collaborative and Open Source Production
• 30 April: Group project presentations (10 minute presentation by each group)
• 5 May: Quiz in room 221 Valikhanov

Collaborative Production and Open Source Production are important concepts for understanding new information technologies and their relation to social networks. For our purposes, we can understand these as closely related terms describing social arrangements through which groups of people work together in order to create something.  read more »

In many respects, the same fundamental characteristics that make NITs good at giving users the opportunity to produce information and to collaborate online also make NITs good at monitoring and tracking what users are doing online.

Remember the major characteristics of New Information Technologies. They are:  read more »

For Monday, please read the chapter on Internet Surveillance and Monitoring in the Digital Security and Privacy Report.

Looking for someone? Here is a handy GPS service to help you find them. Just punch in their phone number at this satellite tracking site.

The idea that we are living in a surveillance society is not new. George Orwell’s 1984, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, and Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 are just a few examples of novels that have addressed the theme. And since the discipline began, sociologists have been interested in how societies use surveillance as a means of social control.  read more »

For Wednesday, please read the Wired magazine article, The Surveillance Society.

Today in class we will have time to work on your project sites. Our focus today will be on building your community of readers by promoting your site. The internet is a big place and you will need to put some attention into building your profile in order to make it easier for people to find your site.  read more »

• From your WordPress dashboard, look at “blog stats” to get an idea of who is using your site.

In the "We Media" report, we have been reading about characteristics of a phenomenon they call "online participatory journalism." The focus of the report has been on the United States as well as a handful of other countries.

Your assignment for quiz #2 is to identify an example of online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan, to analyze it in relation to the arguments in "We Media," and to evaluate it in terms of how well it carries out the act of participatory journalism.  read more »

For next class, please read “Internet Governance in Kazakhstan,” pages 119 to 131 in the OSCE report, Governing the Internet. Note the link above is to the entire document, but you only have to read one chapter.

For Monday 7 April, please read the article "Citizen Journalism in Central Asia," also linked above.

For Wednesday 26 March, please finish the remaining chapters of "We Media" linked above.

In chapter four of We Media, “Rules of Participation,” the authors suggest that people who participate in online communities (or networks) do so in order to fulfill certain needs, which may include (among others):  read more »

• Building status or reputation
• Creating connections with other people (”networking”)
• Making sense or building understanding
• Informing and being informed
• Entertaining others and being entertained
• Creating

Post your links to your group projects and the names of your group members as a comment on this entry.

Your NITs final project assignment is to create and run a group weblog on a topic of your choice using Wordpress. Think of this as an opportunity to create an online publication on any topic that interests you.

Once your weblog is set up, each group member will be responsible for posting one entry to the weblog each week for the length of the project. (Each entry should be approximately two paragraphs of your own writing.)  read more »

In class today we will work with your Wordpress accounts to set up a group weblog site. Please go to your Wordpress dashboard. We will set up practice group sites in preparation for your final group projects.

For your group projects (due at the end of the term) you will form groups of between three and five students each. Your project will be to set up a group weblog which you will use to explore an issue of your choice (think of it as an online publication). More details will be posted later this week.

Tasks for today's practice weblog:  read more »

• Set up the group weblog

For Wednesday 5 March please read Chapter 3, "How Participatory Journalism is Taking Form," and Chapter 4, "Rules of Participation," in "We Media." Be sure to pay close attention both to the various participatory technologies discussed in the chapter and to the functions of participation presented.

To begin class, look at the OhMyNews! and New York Times websites (linked above). Examine the sites looking for elements that seem to you more or less participatory. In a brief assignment entry (using the Create Assignment link above), point out at least three features of each, and tell whether you see them as more participatory or less participatory.

Some important ideas from our "We Media" reading assignment:  read more »

• Gatekeeper function of news media
• Hegemony of news media

Quiz Times and Locations:
Monday 25 February
Section 1 (10:00-11:15): #112 Valikhanov
Section 2 (13:00-14:15): #221 Valikhanov

Quiz #1 for New Information Technologies will be held on Monday 25 February at the times and locations posted above. The quiz will cover material from lectures, discussions, assignments and readings. Format will be a combination of fill-in and matching questions.

To begin our discussion of participatory journalism, please take 10 minutes at the beginning of class to write a brief entry (about two paragraphs) answering the question, "What is journalism?" In your response, you might consider things such as: why (or whether) journalism is important; how we rely on journalism (or not); who is a journalist, and why, and so on.  read more »

In class today, quickly look over all the student entries on community submitted on our course site by following the "NIT student submissions" link above. Pick out at least two entries that particularly interest you, and leave a substantive comment at each of those entries.

For Monday 18 February, please read chapters one ("Introduction to Participatory Journalism") and two ("Cultural Context: behind the explosion of participatory media")of "We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information," available at the links above.

Please create an account at Bloglines using the link above. As with Wordpress, you will probably have to use an email account other than mail.ru to set up the Bloglines account.

For your next Kjourn website submission, due Monday 11 February, please write a short reflection (about two or three paragraphs) describing a community you are part of. In your description, consider things like: How you became a member of the community; who are the members of the community; how you communicate or interact with one another, and so on.

These entries will be part of our discussion about networks and community.

Submit the assignment by following the Create Assignment link and selecting NITs: Website Submission in the Course Assignments box.

For next Monday, please read each of the short articles linked above.

After looking over the neweurasia.net and Teaching Online Journalism weblogs, write a brief (one or two paragraph) entry telling us something you observe or find interesting at one or another of the sites. Use the Create Assignment link to submit the entry, and select NITs: Website Submission as your assignment category.

For 4 February, please read Mark Glaser, "Your Guide to Blogging," and Jonathan Dube's "RSS for Journalists." Please also explore the Teaching Online Journalism weblog and the neweurasia.net weblog. All materials are linked above.

edited 29 January 17.30

Important!!! I see that some students are submitting comments on this entry. That isn't what I wanted. What I want you to do is to look at other students assignment entries (you can see them all on our course assignments page) and submit a comment directly on one of the student entries.  read more »

This is intended as an in-class assignment. If you do not finish in-class, however, please complete the assignment before the beginning of the next class session.

In class today we will begin the process of setting up a weblog at Wordpress.com. To begin, each student will set up an individual weblog. The purpose is to introduce you to the Wordpress system.

Wordpress will become the platform you will use for your group projects, but before you can run a group site with Wordpress, you need to know the basics of Wordpress individual sites.  read more »

In class we have been discussing the characteristics of New Information Technologies. Those characteristics help us both to be more specific about what NITs are and to identify why they might be important.

Your website submission assignment for this week is to identify one new information technology that you use and, drawing on one of the characteristics we have discussed, tell us what something about how that technology affects your life.  read more »

New information technologies (NITs) are digital, networked, interactive, socio-technical systems for gathering, producing, and distributing meaning, ideas, and knowledge. (These last three words can be used to stand for information, a problematic term we will explore further.)

Think of technologies (which I have referred to above as systems) as a combination of tools (the things we use to influence the world) and the knowledge through which we create and use those tools.  read more »

Today in class students will create accounts on our course website and have a brief introduction to using the site. We will also do our first Website Submissions assignment.

To register for the site:  read more »

1. Navigate to http://kjourn.net/groups/NIT/08spring (you should already be here)
2. Click on the "Register" link in the right sidebar

Welcome to the New Information Technologies course website. This site will be an important course resource. You will use it throughout the term to get information about assignments and scheduling, to find course notes and links to resources, and to submit course assignments. Get into the habit of logging into the site at the beginning of each class.