Communities and the Web

What is a social network? How does an online community differ from a real world community? See also: Anne Hornsby, 'Surfing the net for community: a Durkheimian analysis of electronic gatherings' ch.3 in Peter Kivisto (ed.) Illuminating Social Life (3rd ed 2005). Libr ref HM51KIV. Graham Crow and Catherine Maclean, 'Community' in Geoff Payne (ed.) Social Divisions (2nd ed. 2006) HM821PAY.

Networks 3: Social Structures

A brief look at the post-industrial, network society, freed from manual labour and liberated from place.

COMP6049 Approaching Surveys - Purpose, Paradigms Protocols and Pragmatics

An introduction for students intending to design and conduct a survey. This is the prelude to a practical group activity.

Privacy and Electronic Communications

slides for a class which explores professional, ethical and legal issues surround the use, storage and transmission of electronic communications and data. Follows on from previous class which looked in greater detail at the Data Protection Act

Maps, figures and photos for theses

This PowerPoint outlines the main points that you need to consider when adding figures to your thesis, including resolution, file format and copyright.

E-government / E-democracy

In what ways does the web change the ways we interact with government and change the ways we engage in politics?

How to convert a Word file to PDF using Adobe Acrobat on an iSolutions workstation.

This PowerPoint provides a step-by-step guide to the process of converting a document (such as your thesis) from Word to PDF.

Social Networks and Actors

A discussion about Actor Network Theory

Open Hypertext

Lecture Notes on Open Hypertext

Spatial and Temporal Hypermedia

Overview of early work on Spatial and Temporal hypermeida

INFO2009 example questions

example of questions covering legal topics

COMP6043 Surveys

Overview of Surveys and Survey Systems. Class exercise sheet, to use to think about survey design example question types from survey monkey, plus set of example survey questions

COMP6043 Conducting Interviews

Slides which take students through the interview process, mediated through the presentation of published papers which use interview data

The Politics of Privacy

In 'Privacy and Politics', Kieron O'Hara discusses the relation of the political philosophy of privacy to technical aspects in Web development. Despite a vigorous debate, the concept remains ambiguous, and a series of types of privacy is defined: epistemological, spatial, ideological, decisional and economic. Each of these has a different meaning in the online environment, and will be defended by different measures. The question of whether privacy is a right is raised, and generational differences in attitude discussed, alongside the issue of whether privacy should be protected in advance, via a consent model, or retrospectively via increased transparency and accountability. Finally, reasons both theoretical and practical for ranking privacy below other values (such as security, efficiency or benefits for the wider community) are discussed.