The September 11 Attacks on the US in the New Interactive Media Space in Estonia

This paper examines how Estonians dealt with the news concerning the September 11 attacks in the new electronic communication space of the Internet. This work will summarize people's discussions on the Internet relating to the September 11 attacks by outlining the different narratives that carried people's attitudes and knowledge. The paper aims to show that the Internet was used, not only as a medium for obtaining more information about the attacks, but also as a medium for discussion and crisis support. This research is based on: (1) a survey amongst Tartu University students and follow-up semi-structured interviews; (2) an analysis of the comment pages on Estonian electronic newspapers; and (3) an analysis of three chat logs from Estonian talkers.     

Diffusion of News of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001

We report findings here from an audience survey in New Mexico of the diffusion of a spectacular news event, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. This news event was perceived as very salient, and it diffused rapidly. The first terrorist attack occurred at 6:45 am (New Mexico time); within three hours almost all respondents had heard about the news event. Individuals reacted to this news in an emotional way, with many respondents praying, participating in a memorial event for the victims, contributing money and donating blood. The terrorist attacks also evoked a strong sense of patriotism. Compared to the news events studied in 52 previous investigations, the September 11 terrorist attacks caused stronger, and more emotional, audience reactions.     

Civic Actions after September 11: Exploring the Role of Multi-level Storytelling

Interpersonal and media storytelling were crucial to information dissemination about the September 11 tragedies. The storytelling processes through which urban residents are transformed into members of a broader community are illustrated by their connections to media and their participation in neighborhood discussions and community organizations after September 11. This study demonstrates how a communication infrastructure approach contributes to understanding participation in civil society after September 11.     

New Media/Internet Research Topics of the Association of Internet Researchers

This study summarizes prior reviews of new media and Internet research, and the growth of the term Internet in academic publications and online newsgroups. It then uses semantic network analysis to summarize the interests and concepts of an interdisciplinary group of Internet researchers, as represented by session titles and paper titles and abstracts from the 2003 and 2004 Association of Internet Researchers conferences. In both years, the most frequent words appearing in the paper abstracts included Internet, online, community, social, technology, and research. The 2003 papers emphasized topics such as the social analysis/research of online/Internet communication, community, and information, with particular coverage of access, individuals, groups, digital media, culture; role and process in e-organizations; and world development. The 2004 papers emphasized topics such as access; news and social issues; the role of individuals in communities; user-based studies; usage data; and blogs, women, and search policy, among others.     

Media Use During a Crisis

After learning about the crisis of September 11, Americans overwhelmingly turned to television for more information. However, people used multiple sources of information. The Web and e-mail appear to have played important but secondary roles to television and the telephone. Overall, the media functioned well in meeting the extraordinary demands for information and communication.     

The Persistence of Information Structures in Nordic Countries

This article examines to what extent the Nordic countries, which have been characterized as the world's leading information societies, show similar patterns of Internet use. The data consists of the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish sections of the European Social Survey 2002 ( n = 7539) and 2004 ( n = 7211). The similarities and differences in the Internet use are analyzed using sociodemographic and economic information. Temporal changes in the distribution of use between population groups and between countries are also examined. The findings indicate that there are clear disparities in the Internet use patterns, which have not evened out in the early 21st century.     

Globalization isn't New; Anti-globalization isn't Either: September 11 and the History of Nations

The September 11 attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center reveals, among other things, a colossal failure of intelligence and radical deficiencies in our understanding of communications in the modern world. The history of nations and the history of communications are continuous, though contradictory, since the eighteenth century, and those continuities and contradictions are revealed by way of analysis of September 11 and its aftermath.     

Conceptualizing and Measuring the Social Uses of the Internet: The Case of Personal Web Sites

The researchers working on information society measures have recently started to consider how people use the Internet not only as a tool but also as a platform for social relations. As the ultimate objective of information society measures is to provide reliable guidelines for social policy, finding criteria for separating “positive” uses of Internet from “negative” ones is an important task. This article employs the concepts of communicative and strategic action as defined by Habermas for that purpose. A general conceptual typology of three communicative and three strategic social uses of Internet is offered, which can be applied to measure uses of any of the Internet's interactive services. A specific empirical application to social uses of personal web sites demonstrates that the deduced measurement instruments achieve satisfying levels of validity and reliability.     

Catching the Wave: German Media on September 11

This paper describes reactions in the German publication Der Spiegel to the attacks of September 11. The paper starts by describing the live reporting in the German media and then analyzes the Der Spiegel edition of September 15. The aim is to give an idea of how European journalists handled the situation and how different conclusions developed.     

Live Television's Disaster Marathon of September 11 and its Subversive Potential

Television's coverage of the tragic events of September 11 can be viewed and understood as a paradigmatic disaster marathon. The salience of the attack's visual images, their exclusivity on the screen for a protracted period, and the invisibility of their perpetrators enhanced the attack's effectiveness. The paper highlights a number of problems that the September 11 disaster marathon poses to the profession of journalism and to society, and points out possible remedies for the future. It ends with a short discussion of the ways in which television's coverage of the event both resembled and differed from the media-event model, and of theoretical aspects of its unique dimensions as a disaster marathon.     

The Consequences of Information: Institutional Implications of Technological Change,by Jannis Kallinikos. Cheltenham,UK: Edward Elgar, 2006. $35.00 paper/$95.00 cloth. ISBN 978-1-84720-500-1 paper/978-1-84542-328-5 cloth

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been mandated to “acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word. …” With this authority the department has taken advantage of continuing advances of communications and computer technologies by initiating several programs related to the electronic dissemination of agricultural information. For example, the Foreign Agricultural Service has begun testing the release of agricultural trade leads through the University of Nebraska's AGNET computer‐based network. The Agricultural Marketing Service disseminates updated market data on more than 150 farm commodities over its leased wire market news network; the system has 140 terminals linked by some 14,500 miles of leased wires. Additional projects described in the article include a pilot project to deliver market news information to farmers via public television, programs testing the electronic marketing of livestock, and the electronic mail network operated by the department's Office of Governmental and Public Affairs.     

Examining the Effectiveness of Support for UK Wave Energy Innovation since 2000. Lost at Sea or a New Wave of Innovation?

Patients and carers now have unprecedented access to health information via specialist journals and the popular media, while the worldwide web has revolutionised public access to clinical information. Levels of patient demand for information about health have grown and there is evidence to suggest that patients wish to receive more information than is sometimes currently provided by clinicians. In secondary care, some specialisms have more readily adopted the use of information communication technologies (ICT) in clinician/patient communication than others. This paper focuses on clinicians' perceptions of client Internet use for psychiatric conditions and studies the influence this has had on the consultation process in the United Kingdom. The research method consisted of a postal questionnaire distributed to the members of the Women in Psychiatry Group on the register of the Royal College of Psychiatry. Telephone interviews were conducted, employing the critical incident method, as well as a brief additional questionnaire. The data show that psychiatrists who used the Internet discerned client usage more readily. Where the client sought to discuss information acquired electronically with the consultant this tended to extend the consultation period, but a number of psychiatrists reported a greater sense of partnership as a result. The paper explores consultant perceptions of client motivations for Internet use and the perceived advantages and disadvantages for both client and psychiatrist. Overall, the psychiatry profession appears to be following the lead of clients in the use of ICT. Policy recommendations are offered with respect to the provision of profession-validated information on the Internet and psychiatrists' training in IT.     

Preface

This issue of the journal Prometheus includes an edited collection of papers by communication and media scholars from around the globe treating the social and societal aspects of the use of telecommunication and mass media tied to the tragic events that occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001.     

ICT Research,the New Economy,and the Evolving Discipline of Economics: Back to the Future?

Economics-related ICT research has moved from the fringes of the discipline to penetrate all of its branches. It is, therefore, not a separate economics subdiscipline. It is also unlikely to become part of an “ICT or Internet research” proto-discipline. Instead, it should be seen as only one part of a bigger agenda toward a proper “information and knowledge economics” and possibly a future proto-discipline of a “unified theory of information and knowledge” or a meta-discipline of information sciences.     

Time‐Intensive Information Technology and Human Welfare in Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the scope for developing countries to benefit from the Internet in non‐synchronous ways that is, in cases where some delay is involved in the delivery of information, as compared with the real‐time alternative used in developed countries. The first part of the paper draws on insights from Becker and others, to argue that poor people in poor countries are wont to exchange (relatively abundant) time for reductions in the cost of Internet use. The second part of the paper then examines whether such time‐intensive products actually exist and to the extent they do, how the required degree of cost reductions are effected in practice. I conclude that time‐intensive Internet technology represents a highly promising opportunity for developing countries to close the digital divide, an opportunity that warrants serious academic scrutiny.     

网络时代信息推送的社会影响与监督管理

信息推送在电子商务、在线影视、数字图书馆中应用广泛.热门软件信息推送的功能有娱乐、新闻和电子商务等.由于企业和网民的价值取向问题,低俗文字、负面新闻、花边事件蜂拥而至.这些不良信息影响社会风气,影响网民价值观,加重网络犯罪,激化社会矛盾.法律、法规和自律公约是监督的依据.根据监管中存在的问题提出改进建议.     

Asia's Leap into E-commerce: Analysis of Developments in Some Countries

The Internet is creating a global digital economy with new opportunities. Developing countries have to catch up with the developed world by establishing the required information infrastructure to overcome the dangers of isolation and polarisation. The growth path is through the development of IT industries and greater application of IT in society. These IT industries must be compatible with local conditions and conducive to industrialisation.     

互联网思维在学术期刊经营发展中应用的思考

【目的】寻找适合学术期刊市场化改革的思维理念,以促进学术期刊经营发展。【方法】 在挖掘互联网思维本质的基础上,从市场化运作的角度分析如何在学术期刊工作流程中应用互联网思维。【结果】互联网思维的本质是以用户为中心,最大化甚至超额地满足用户的需求,同时将用户所需要承担的成本降到最低直至免费。采用学术期刊市场化运作时,在选题策划、编辑加工、出版传播、增值服务各环节都应该围绕互联网思维的本质及其衍生出来的特征思考解决问题。【结论】互联网思维可以作为学术期刊市场化改革的思维理念,应充分理解互联网思维本质,并将其应用到学术期刊工作的整个流程中,从而促进期刊的经营发展。     

Analysis of single comments left for bioRxiv preprints till September 2019

IntroductionWhile early commenting on studies is seen as one of the advantages of preprints, the type of such comments, and the people who post them, have not been systematically explored.Materials and methodsWe analysed comments posted between 21 May 2015 and 9 September 2019 for 1983 bioRxiv preprints that received only one comment on the bioRxiv website. The comment types were classified by three coders independently, with all differences resolved by consensus.ResultsOur analysis showed that 69% of comments were posted by non-authors (N = 1366), and 31% by the preprints’ authors themselves (N = 617). Twelve percent of non-author comments (N = 168) were full review reports traditionally found during journal review, while the rest most commonly contained praises (N = 577, 42%), suggestions (N = 399, 29%), or criticisms (N = 226, 17%). Authors’ comments most commonly contained publication status updates (N = 354, 57%), additional study information (N = 158, 26%), or solicited feedback for the preprints (N = 65, 11%).ConclusionsOur results indicate that comments posted for bioRxiv preprints may have potential benefits for both the public and the scholarly community. Further research is needed to measure the direct impact of these comments on comments made by journal peer reviewers, subsequent preprint versions or journal publications.     

Political persuasion on social media: A moderated moderation model of political discussion disagreement and civil reasoning

Abstract

Social media and news use arguably contribute to the prevalence of contentious politics because individuals may express dissent through their social networks as they consume news. This study seeks to test whether individuals might be more open to political persuasion in this context, especially if they are exposed to political disagreement or discuss politics in a civil manner. Relying on survey data from the UK, results based on a moderated moderation model show that (a) social media news use predicts political persuasion on social media (direct effects) and, (b) discussion disagreement and civil reasoning moderate this relationship in two-way and three-way interactions.