kyounghee HAZEL KWON
"Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion" -Francis BaconArchive for my textbook about the Internet
Cyberattack and individual freedom of expression online
Had a chance to listent to NPR about CYXYMU. It’s a quite intersting topic, offering a chance to think about cyberattack and the viability of freedom of expression online.
http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/07/is_cyxymu_the_first_digital_refugee
Soft discussions on folksonomies
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-21.html?_r=1
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january06/guy/01guy.html
http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html
and what I found on the distribution of bookmarking frequency in Delicious regarding the torture-related issues….is consistent with their discussions!
Web Site Story – CollegeHumor video
Fun parody of West Side Story in the Web era!
Persian blogosphere
A recent project by Harvard Berkman center shows a wonderful visualization of Iran’s blogsphere. As observed in the current protest against the election, Iran has often been on the table when it comes to the political impact of web 2.0. This project not only nicely delineates the maps of blogosphere but also shows that not all of Iranian blogs are about opposite politics. They actually preset a mixture of different views and different genres of interests. As the project concludes, Iran’s blogosphere is one of the good examples how a variety of perspectives can spell out voices openly even under a relatively repressed political system. I love this website quite much, although I do have a question remaining regarding the process of data collection – Whenever I try to do something with hyperlinks, I face a difficulty of cut-off points. Also, in an attempt to extract Korean protest websites, I saw many were actually blocked to approach so that couldn’t extract the links. I can’t help asking how they deal with the ambiguity and barriers accompanied during data collection…
Link to the mapping: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public/interactive_blogosphere_map
Link to the description of the project:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public
Growing up Online
Preparing the course about the Internet next semester, I encountered this documentary, which I think very recommendatory. It includes balanced perspectives between the for and the against of youth being exposed to the Internet. The issues of social isolation, privacy, subculture, and virtual identity are reflected seriously yet without the pedantic attitude, which I like the most about this film. I’m thinking to show this one to my students this fall, the young adults who have been growing up online thus deserve at least a chance to reflect themselves with respect to this new tech environment.
Twitter covered in Times
Conan also talks about tweets. My fave Anderson Cooper also does.
This week, Time covered the twitter boom in a front page. Enjoy~!
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html
Craiglist’s murder: watching CBS 48 hours
One moment, a narrative goes something like this; this is not the problem of the Internet. The issue is about human psychology and behavior.
This recent sensational news gives me a lot of thoughts regarding the recurrent debate about online relationship and online crime. However, ultimately, as the narrative said, it is not the problem of the technology itself, I believe that negative consequences are a part of undeniable process for users to social lyconstruct the values and meanings of the technology. This incident is definitely a tragedy, yet at the same time, a bitter-sweet reality alludes that the issue could be “contributory” to guide the Internet culture into a safer way through un-coercive approaches such as rising citizen engagement to prevent the Internet from this sort of tragedy again or policy intervention under citizen’s realization and consensus about the necessity. So many social artifacts have double edges. Transportation, knives, guns, music…, all these products have helped improve human life condition, while it is also de facto that users have abused them in terrible ways. Going through both positive and negative subsequences, the artifacts have been shaped, I believe, to be best suitable into a particular society.
I believe that the Internet is no different in this sense. It’s been only a decade. Still, compared to the previous anxieties, concerns, and fear, the Internet, in general, has been mature not that badly. Craiglist incident is one of side products, and as other side effects have done, it may arise awareness and caution about the potential danger of the technology. With the autonomous awareness, our society is agile enough to put effort for intervention.
First time use of Netlogo
Thesedyas, I play with Netlogo, the basic program for ABM. As a novice in this area, I have a lot to learn. Netlogo is the one Dr. Tutzauer recommended me try. It is seemingly easy to manage, but in practice, you may want to spend quite a deal of time to be accustomed to this tool.
I wanted to model the diffusion of ideas within a network with this program, but couldn’t get it done in a way that I ultimately wanted to. Instead, I got the most basic outcome, which shows simply the effect of network density on difussion of ideas. The red node symbolizes those who are influenced by a proposed idea and the gray node indicates those influenced by a objectionist’s idea. Two visuals are the example showing the difference in diffusion rate when there were variations in network density. As seen below, even if the opinion leaders are many, the diffusion process is contrained if network is loosely connected. On the other hand, even if the opinion leaders are not many, the people who are influenced by the ideas increase more greatly if the network is denser. (Figure 1 is low density network, resulting less than 100 people influenced by each idea. Figure 2 is higher density, resulting almost twice more people influenced by each idea.)
Hi, I'm Hazel. I'm a PhD candidate in the dept. of Communication at the SUNY-Buffalo.
My heart moves when I appreciate an artwork that sheds the beauty of blanks. I'm also fascinated by what Mother Nature shows us.
However, what pounds on my heart the most is a scholar's wholehearted work that reflects his conscience, passion, and insight into the world we live in. That's why I chose to be a social scientist, neither an artist nor a park ranger.