Research seminar

ISOS research centre members are involved in hosting and participating in research seminars on an ongoing basis. Please see below some of the current and past sessions.

Charles Ess: Ethics and Politics of "Digital Selves" -

Charles Ess: Author of many books including recent titles such as ‘Digital Religion, Social Media and Culture’ and ‘Digital Media Ethics,' Professor Charles Ess, past President of AoIR and convener of and contributor to a host of other Conferences and workshops, Distinguished Research Professor at Drury University and Professor of Media Ethics at the University of Aarhus, describes his interests as Information ethics, computer-mediated communication, cross-cultural approaches, media theory, and the nature of the self / selves vis-à-vis the media.

Abstract: It is obvious in developed nations (and elsewhere) that "electric media" (so Walter Ong), most especially in the form of (so-called) digital media, continue to expand their role and presence into more or less every nook and cranny of our lives. Among the upshots are a range of (comparatively) new ethical and political issues, beginning with threats to earlier conceptions of individual privacy and including the emergence of "citizen journalists" as well as groups such as the Pirate Bay political party and Anonymous who promise (threaten) to dramatically reshape our political lives in putatively more democratic directions.

Still more foundationally, however: our basic notions of selfhood, identity, and moral agency are likewise transforming in collaboration with our uses of electric and digital media.

I will chart some of these transformations, drawing on Medium Theory and a range of contemporary developments, including indications of fundamental shifts in notions of privacy and property (e.g., as suggested by recent changes in privacy laws) in both "Western" and "Eastern" countries and traditions. The goal of the talk is to provoke reflection on the potential political futures these transformations suggest - specifically, whether in more democratic or non-democratic directions - in order to further inspire discussion and deliberation regarding choices of media usages more likely to foster the sorts of ethical and political futures we prefer.

When? Wednesday, May 9, 2012 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

Where? The Egg University of Salford MediaCity:UK Salford Quays, M50 2EQ

How to book? Visit http://charlesess.eventbrite.com/

Past seminars:

Innovation through Enterprise Cultural Heritage

Are you a small/medium sized enterprise or a museum looking for ways to innovate? Read this blog post summarising the main points of innovation through heritage seminar.

In the current economic climate, enterprises need to use all their potential sources of competitive advantage. The history and tradition of organisations can lift them above the crowd and Information Technologies can help with this. Enterprise Cultural Heritage management helps enterprises to develop systems for information and knowledge management that harnesses the benefits of organisation’s history, traditions, recipes, machinery etc.

This event is a culmination of a 2 year long project in 5 European countries which aims to develop free online training material – which is now freely accessible on the MNEMOS project website www.enterpriseculturalheritage.org - topics includes brand, change, heritage and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) management.

Date: 11th November 2011

Event Leaflet - download here

How & Why do we use interpretive and participative research methods?

Doing Interpretive research – Why & How?

Geoff Walsham is an Emeritus Professor of Management Studies (Information Systems) at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. In addition to his post at Cambridge, he has held academic posts at the University of Lancaster, UK where he was Professor of Information Management; the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and Mindanao State University in the Philippines. His teaching and research is focused on the question: are we making a better world with information and communication technologies? He was one the early pioneers of interpretive approaches to research on information systems.

Evaluating participative and systemic methods

Gerald Midgley is Professor of Systems Thinking at the University of Hull, UK. He also holds Adjunct Professorships at the University of Queensland, Australia; the University of Canterbury, New Zealand; and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. From 2003-2010, he was a Senior Science Leader at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (New Zealand), and from 1997-2003 he was Director of the Centre for Systems Studies in the Business School at the University of Hull. He has had over 300 papers on systems thinking and stakeholder engagement published in international journals, edited books and practitioner magazines, and has been involved in a wide variety of public sector, community development, technology foresight and resource management research projects.

Poster: Download and share the event poster
Presentation slides

Are we persuaded?

Claire Gauzente Professor of Marketing & Organisation Sciences Po Rennes – Institute of Political Sciences Rennes

Research on Search Engines

Claire Gauzente Professor of Marketing & Organisation Sciences Po Rennes – Institute of Political Sciences Rennes and Dr David Kreps

Photo: Professor Claire Gauzente and Dr David Kreps

Thursday: 28th April 2011

Search engines are the gateway to Internet resources. The study of the way users interact with such systems is important for many actors, and primarily web merchants and advertisers. Search engine results pages are thus a key element in the study of users’ online behaviour.

Claire’s research focuses on users’ and consumers’ attitudes toward search engine results pages SERP and the identification variables that are potentially moderating. It also tries to make a contribution to the study of the impact of qualitative SERP features (such as SERP writing or content) on users’ click behaviour.

The attitude toward sponsored links has been examined from a hierarchy-of-effects perspective (Gauzente 2009) and has also been explored in relation with user’s prior knowledge (Gauzente 2010). Current research explore how search results’ content (descriptive versus commercial) interact with rank position (first-rank vs. second-rank) and perceived behavioral control for internet searching (PBC) to influence users’ click behavior on sponsored results.

Additional moderating variables are also examined such as price consciousness and need-for-cognition. In both studies, the between-subjects design reveals that descriptive results are more clicked than commercial ones. First-rank position has an additive effect on click behavior. High-PBC individuals tend to adopt avoidance behaviors and to click on organic results, whatever the content adopted in sponsored results. Compensation effects between managerial variables and individual’s variables can occur (Gauzente & Roy, 2010, 2011). Further research needs to be pursued in order to deepen this initial knowledge (contact with Yahoo! France).

Download poster here

Privacy and Identity: Can We Govern Information in a Digital Society?

You are invited to attend this free seminar run by the Information Systems, Organisations and Society (ISOS) Research Group, University of Salford, in conjunction with the UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS).

Luke Church

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

Luke is currently interested in design of usable programming languages for dealing with 'emergent systems' and information driven governance. Luke consults internationally on privacy and programming language design. Luke is currently studying the User Experience of Complex Systems. More - www.lukechurch.net

Heath Bunting

Heath Bunting, credits himself as both co-founder of net.art and sport-art movements and is banned for life for entering the USA for his anti-GM work. Attempting to combine three obsessions, Buddhism, computer science, and network hacking, Heath embarked on The Status Project in 2005. Consisting of data drawn from everyday bureaucracies, for example the use of a television licence, rail card or mobile phone contract, through governmental databases and the Internet, these are then linked to each other according to their dependencies and overlaps to create status maps (see below). More - www.irational.org

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“The Battle of Britain: An information System won the war”

Having overrun the Low countries and France in 1940, Hitler prepared Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of the UK. This required air supremacy, and Goering told him that the Luftwaffe would destroy the Royal Air force in four days. This they fail to do. The outnumbered RAF scored a defensive victory in the Battle of Britain, Hitler cancelled Sea Lion and turned to invading the USSR.

The RAF’s victory was due to the action research in the pre-war summers which created the UK’s radar network. That research demonstrated exactly how to create any information system, setting a precedent which unfortunately has not been followed in subsequent work on computer-based systems.

This talk will describe the Battle of Britain information system and the fundamental nature of all information systems, which are often conceptualized only in terms of information technology. After 15 years as a manager in the synthetic fibre industry Peter Checkland joined the postgraduate Department of Systems Engineering at Lancaster University. There he led what became a thirty-year programme of action research in organizations outside the university. Initially the research theme was to examine the possibility of using the well-developed methods of systems engineering in management problem situations rather than in the technicallydefined problem situation in which the methods has been refined. This attempt at transfer failed, and the action research moved in a different direction. The work finally established Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) as an approach to tackling the multi-faceted problems which managers face; in doing this, it also established the now well-recognized distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ systems thinking. SSM is now taught and used around the world. Its development through action research is described in many papers and in five books: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (1981); Soft Systems Methodology in Action (with J. Scholes, 1990); Systems Information and Information Systems (with Sue Holwell, 1998); SSM: A 30-Year Retrospective (1999); Learning for Action (with John Poulter, 2006).

Peter Checkland’s work has been recognised in a number of awards: honorary doctorates from City University, the Open University, Erasmus University (The Netherlands), and Prague University of Economics, a Most Distinguished and Outstanding Contributor Award from the British Computer Society, the Gold Medal of the UK Systems Society, The Beale Medal of the OR Society, and the Pioneer Award of the International Council on Systems Engineering.

Location Based Services

Seminar speaker 1: Gareth Langley Stardotstar

Since the advent of mobile internet devices with integrated GPS technology, location based services have sprung up, in particular for the iPhone, but also for the Blackberry, Android, and other devices. Often incorporating mapping technologies that can help users to find, mark, explore and record precise locations, services such as Foursquare, RunKeeper, Layar and others allow users to access, explore and publish activities based upon their geo-location. Geo-social applications, focusing on the social-networking possibilities of location-based services, have also thrived.

Gareth Langley is co-founder of boutique digital agency Stardotstar. The Manchester based company creates delightful interactive content, tools and toys that improve people's lives, with agency work this year alone including Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Open University, The Institute of Physics, BBC and Channel 4. Aside from the day job, Stardotstar create their own IP, earlier this year devising, building and releasing their first iPhone app: Nosey Parker - closer, cheaper, safer parking across the UK. In his talk Gareth will tell the story of Nosey Parker: a tale that includes inspiration, perspiration, sabotage and Twitter! He'll also share the company's learnings, including how being promoted by Apple, being Guardian App of the Day, in What Car? magazine and (even!) Men's Health affected sales in the infamous App Store.

Seminar speaker 2: David Kreps, ISOS Research Centre

Grindr : Immoderationvs. Sin the Global Virtual Gay Bar

David Kreps takes us into the world of the Geo-social networking application Grindr, a.k.a. ‘gay GPS,’ aimed at the gay male community, and boasting over a million users worldwide in Summer 2010, who use the application to identify other Grindr users nearby, exchange messages, publish their exact location to each other using mapping services, and ‘hook up’. Using to Foucault’s History of Sexuality, the presentation explores beyond the censure of non-procreative sexual behaviour inspired by the Christian era, to consider such activities from a Classical pagan perspective. In today’s society, where excess seems intrinsically encouraged by the economic model of consumer capitalism, is ‘metropolitan gay culture’ yet another obsessive behaviour? Is Grindr contributing to the economic impulse for immoderation amongst gay men, or helping society in a post-Christian era move on from the whole question of Sin?

Download Location Based Services leaflet

“Key Research Methods” - Research Master Class

You are invited to attend this free event that is being run by the School of Business and Creative Technologies at the University of Bolton, in conjunction with the UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS).

Programme:

13:00 Opening remarks – Professor Elias Siores, Director of Research & Innovation, University of Bolton.

13:15 Professor Cathy Urquhart, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School ‘ The Myths of Grounded Theory’

14:15 Afternoon refreshments

14:45 Professor Trevor-Wood Harper, Manchester Business School University of Manchester ‘Action Research: More learning from Action and applying original thinking...’

15:45 Closing remarks – Professor David Wainwright, President of UKAIS

16:00 Refreshments and networking

Notes from the 12th November Master class on UKAIS SlideShare

Seminar leaflet

Download the research methods seminar leaflet

' Being ' Techno - fixed ' : The experience of surveillance and punishment by speed camera ' .

Seminar by Dr Helen Wells
University of Keele

While the use of technology to monitor and punish suspected ‘risky’ populations is likely to increase, the experience of being on the receiving end of such surveillance and enforcement has received relatively little attention. This paper presents research that considered one particular criminal justice ‘techno-fix’—the speed camera - from the perspective of those who encounter the technology as offenders. The controversy surrounding the enforcement of speed limits can, it is suggested, partly be understood via an approach that centralises the speed camera technology itself.

Enforcement by this means is commonly described by drivers as being ‘unfair’ and ‘unjust’ despite the surveillance technology apparently offering the potential to generate entirely ‘fair’ experiences through the elimination of the discrimination associated with human enforcement. The paper proposes that this sense of unfairness results from a conflict between the ‘respectable’ identities we apply to ourselves, and the ‘offender’ identity which the disciplining state attempts to apply to us through the use of camera-based surveillance and enforcement. This sense of injustice is fertile ground for resistance which may actually contribute to existing processes of discrimination and 'othering' amongst surveilled populations.

Seminar brochure

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Innovation and Value Creation in Creative Industries

Seminar by Dr Lorraine Warren, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, School of Management, University of Southampton

Seminar abstract:

The creative industries are engines of innovation that contribute to regional and national innovation systems in diverse ways, ranging from entirely new ideas to support for existing R&D and new designs for existing products and services. Typically, actors from various disciplines and domains convene for the duration of one-off projects, where new knowledge is created, exchanges and circulated, often producing a spectrum of value beyond the initial premise of the project. This seminar presents an analysis of a project, Sensory Threads, specifically a conceptualisation of the deeper dynamics underlying the shaping, sharing and articulation of value in creative technological development processes.