blogresearch

Hi Liz,
if I (Head of the Center for New Media, Danube University Krems, Austria) can be of any help for your application please let me know. I'm heavily interested in that research topic.
Also if a paper presentation at our conference http://blogtalk.net (it's a blend of scholarly and else conference) helps you're cordially invited to submit a proposal and come to Vienna.

Thomas

A sleepy shot at filling in at least these blanks... Probably the worst possible way to do this, but...

ITR: Microcontent Research Center Project Summary

This is a proposal to establish a Microcontent Research Center housed jointly at the Rochester Institute of Technology and SUNY-Buffalo. The center would sponsor, collect, and disseminate research on the topic of microcontent publishing--in particular, weblogs (or "blogs")--as tools for collaborative teaching, learning, and dissemination of scholarly and research-related informationresearch. It would sponsor regular workshops and colloquia on the topic of microcontent publishing in specific academic and pedagogical contexts, and would engage in collaborative activities with organizations in other countries currently pursuing related research (specifically Norway, Australia, and Japan).

The intellectual merit of the proposed activity is based in its exploration of a new publishing environment that shows signs of having a significant impact on scientific communication, education, and publication. The collaborative and knowledge-sharing impact of weblogs and similar personal publishing tools are quickly reshaping not just traditional journalism, but publications in a wide variety of scholarly fields. However, the sudden appearance and popularity of these technologies has resulted in somewhat of a research vacuum--very little systematic research is being done on the effects and impact of these technologies, and what little has been done has not been organized and made accessible to those most likely to benefit from it. Additionally, little support currently exists for the development of tools to improve the filtering, data mining, archiving, and distribution of materials published in these microcontent formats. Better understanding and management of this growing field of content publication will be increasingly important for scholars in all scientific disciplines.

Few scholars and scientists have addressed or explored the innovative and ?? nature of this novel and increasingly popular method of publishing and communication. The bibliography of related works that we have included lists only one peer-reviewed conference paper specifically on the topic [not sure what you mean here: blogs? research and blogs? collaborative micropublishing?], and a handful of magazine articles and books that address the topic somewhat tangentially. <p>
The PIs on this project bring an ideal mix of research and educational experience, as well as institutional affiliation, to the project. Dr.*Elizabeth Lawley has a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science, and teaches in a large Information Technology department with excellent laboratory facilities and commitment to undergraduate research. She brings knowledge of scholarly publishing, information organization & architecture, and extensive undergraduate and graduate teaching experience to the project. Alexannder Halavais, has extensive experience in studying collaborative online communication and publishing environments, including work that examines the effects of micropublishing on traditional journalism and methods of automatically analyzing content and hyperlink structures within collaborative micropublishing environments. They are joined by faculty at both institutions who represent the cutting edge in content analysis, social network analysis, [...RIT folks?...]

The broader impacts of the proposed activity lie in its examination of an important but until now overlooked communication and publishing environment. The potential of weblogs and other microcontent tools are only beginning to be addressed, and the proposed research center would bring together those scholars best able to explore the technology, as well as scientists able to develop tools that extend the power of current authoring and publishing environments. The proposed center would sponsor and collect research on use of weblogs in classrooms, use of weblogs by educators--for communication not just with their students, but with the larger academic community,--and use of weblogs by researchers.

By formalizing processes of discovery and interdisciplinary collaboration, the proposed project will provide a foundation of social and technological structures that will allow for greater integration of existing researchers, and a greater degree of inclusion among those scholars that--for reason of their geographic or social distance--would otherwise remain at the periphery of collaborative research endeavors. These tools, and the techniques that surround them, hold the promise of creating a bridge between research within the academy and social practices at large.

* I wasn't trying to demote you here :). I've always chafed a bit at the Dr. thing (less so at Prof.), and I removed yours for parity. I think it's clearer that way--and they'll have our c.v.s after all... But it's not a big deal to me if you'd prefer it that way.

This is good stuff. You've done a pretty good job of explaining the significance of microcontent from a research standpoint.

Alex, you mentioned geographic and social distance as obstacles to integration. Though it may be included in "social" I'd say cost is the killer feature here. Blogging would never have taken off the way it did were it not for its affordability. Even people with a budget (like researchers) would have experimented much less readily if the tool had carried a hundred-dollar price tag.

Also, here's an idea that just crossed my mind. The blogosphere is perhaps the most diverse existing group of people where there is a tangible "community" feeling. What do you think? What would be the implications of such diversity?