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This article ran recently on The China Beat, and is relevant to our interests in this field school for several reasons (at least). First, it recounts a panel on IT policy and technology in China called “Changing Social Configurations and New Media Technologies in China,” laying out some important issues for us to consider. Second, the article discusses a particular response to this panel by a scholar who appears to embrace the very perspective that the panel sought to subtly untangle, such that we get a glimpse into the complexity of the issues at play. Thirdly, and maybe most importantly for us, the author highlights how this all happens in the “public” of the blog environment, where interpretations by scholars are up for reinterpretation in dialogue with readers (whether those readers are other scholars or not). Well worth reading and thinking about as we prepare to talk about ChinaVine as an online interpretive project…
This article discusses the blurring of boundaries between the academic world and the lessening of the privledge of academic discourse. Merrill Kaplan gave an interesting talk at Western States this year where she briefly discussed the reprussions of doing ethnographic research online in communities where users might already be documenting themselves in the context of the practice of curating. When online users are already archiving their work and providing analysis, what is the relationship between this work and the work of an academic researcher? If the work of online users who are not academically trained is not up to academic standards is it more or less valuable than the work of an academic, especially if the members of the group identify more closely with the product of the insider instead of the academic. As more people have the ability to study themselves and present the information they collect to others, both within and outside of their group, what is the role of the researcher?