A few things that ASIS&T@UBC folk might be interested in:

• The 2011 Access conference in Vancouver is over but notes are still available (I really wish I hadn’t missed this one).
• THATCamp Pacific Northwest will be held at the University of Washington, Bothell campus on Saturday, November 12, 2011. This is an unconference being organized around the theme of technology and social justice.
• OpenDataBC runs Hackathon events where people get together to work on code and test stuff for Open Data projects. On December 3, they’ll be participating in International Open Data Day, which also might be interesting.

Lots of things out there to get involved with.

We had a meeting today at SLAIS and we’ll be posting the official minutes at some point, but for now, here’s a quick recap.

Heather and Alex talked about the ASIS&T conference out in Pittsburgh earlier this month. Heather pitched for people to volunteer and otherwise participate in Research Day. We discussed our wildly successful Cool Tools events and when we’ll have the next one to welcome the new cohort showing up in January, as well as the possibility of selling TShirts as a fundraiser, since apparently we’re supposed to be raising funds so we can rent a bus some day. Some awesome road-trippish kind of day. There will be a TShirt design contest coming, with a deadline of January 7, 2011. More information as the posters get made.

There was also an election for the soon to be vacant (once Alex graduates) position of webmaster and Justin Unrau (that’s me) is now it.

by: Ro McKernan

Today was the final day of the 2009 ASIST Conference and it was sad to walk out of a session and see everything being all packed up.  The last two days were a whirlwind of sessions, if you haven’t checked out the conference backchannel do so and read the thoughts from the participants to get a sense of what people thought were the most salient points during each session (and other conference news). Very insightful.  It would be interesting to see if they organize the twitters a little more next year so that every session gets some coverage (although anything about social media may get flocked) as well as whether ASIST is going to work to preserve the tweets for their digital archives. Worthwhile stuff.

Other people have also been blogging about their conference experience.  Alan Cho put up a post about historians of information that can be found here: http://www.allanslibrary.com/2009/11/asis-and-historians-of-information.html.  If anyone else has blogged the conference, be sure to tag your blog posts with #asist09 for easier retrieval – tagging can be such a great tool!

Although the commute never got any better (today’s parking woes involved a ticket machine that did not dispense tickets … I think I paid thrice…) I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend the conference as a volunteer.  It truly was an amazing experience.

Next conference in Pittsburgh, PA – will you be there?

What a difference a day makes – I brought my power cord with me so I had juice in my laptop and was able to tweet with a frequency that would ordinarily have concerned me – I try not to normally overwhelm my followers – but there was so much information to share and so many mindblowingly insightful tweets to retweet that I am temporarily justified. #asist09

I went to many sessions today and I think I found my favorite (so far) …  Mike Crandell and Karen E. Fisher’s presentation “Free Access to Computers and the Internet at the Public Library”.  From the iSchool (is your school) at UW, they did a fabulous presentation about the research they’ve done (also in book form) and I hope that they develop a model to share with other libraries on how to identify the impacts of PACs (Public Access Computers) in their communities as I feel this would be a good tool to help us evangelize in these tough economic times.  The early finding that they shared with us (on a difficult to read slide – fix please <grin>) were that the top domains of PAC use are social inclusion, education, employment, health & e-government which feels right to me as I observe the patrons in my rural library.  I wish there was more research for public librarians (in general) at this conference …

There was no lunch today …  for a conference of nerds they sure aren’t feeding us.  I had crepes with some fellow attendees including the other student conference blogger (http://crywhite.blogspot.com/) at a wonderful crepe spot on Robson street (turn right).

By the end of the last session today – I was failing at understanding all the new information.  I think I can only absorb so much info in a single day so I left the conference for the day with much fonder memories and a history of tweets I will have to one day turn into a long form blog post, complete with high quality links…

And I also realized that no matter what I do, I always get turned around at skytrain stations and spend many minutes panicking when the parking lot looks completely different and unfamiliar until I realize I need to find the entrance and backtrack from that because the exit always exists you somewhere completely different.  It’s not me, its bad user design.

Cheers,
Ro McKernan

Wow!  That was quite the first day for us at the ASIST 2009 conference.  This was my first time attending and I was given a wonderful opportunity to blog my experiences by the conference organizers (thanks Letisha!).  This year the conference is being held in beautiful Vancouver (can be seen through the raindrops if you squint) and the hotel is conveniently situated right next to the skytrain station.

Us volunteers (around 20 or so?) were given our marching orders then we were set loose to mingle.  I am very amazed at the awesome friendliness displayed by everyone.  Complete strangers, introducing themselves!  I can be shy – so if I look alone please introduce yourself (or if you want to say something on this conference blog – going to try for one post a day… input is always appreciated).

The lunch was entertaining and the plenary session by Tim Bray (@timbray) was very insightful.  Here of the highlights of what I though were some of the more poignant tweets:

@emmalawson: There’s no substitute for human judgement–@timbray

@bezanson: “This community isn’t that concerned about marketing” – Bray. Really? We should be!

@kjersti: Tim Bray: What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet… forever.

@asistpratt: Tim Bray, “The culture of online is epistolary…we are in a golden age of writing…a golden age of archiving and libraries.”

The twittering was fast and furious at times – everybody seems to have adopted the #asist09 hash tag and there is a list of ASIST twitterers compiled here if you want to follow everyone in one fell swoop (let me know if I’ve missed you or if you want off).  Many people were tweeting the individual sessions, its quite educational and informative to search back through the tweets (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23asist09)

Things to note beyond the official program:

Tweet-up
Monday 8p – 10p at Smiley’s Pub, Pender & Hornby http://tinyurl.com/y8t877o (too late at night for me!).

Sig Knit
(saw someone with a sign – can publish time and place …)

That CD in the conference tote – not a coaster – it seems to contain the full text of all the papers at the conference.  Should be good reading material for those times where you’re waiting for the next session.

Posted by: Rowena McKernan (romckernan@gmail.com)

If you’re interested in going to the upcoming ASIS&T conference in Ohio, check out this opportunity to volunteer to help out at the conference.

Note: The deadline to apply for this is coming right up! September 2, 2008. Read on:

Respond by September 2, 2008

To help ASIS&T student members who might not otherwise be able to participate in ASIS&T meetings, we provide  an opportunity to attend the sessions and network with other members in exchange for assisting us in running the meeting.  Students who have participated in our program have found the experience “terrific.”

How the Program Works

In exchange for complimentary registration, we’ll ask you to help us run the conference.  You’ll serve as a room monitor for about three sessions each day for three days.  In addition, you’ll help out either at our registration desk or conference headquarters for a 4-hour period on one day of the conference. We’ve listed below the activities that you are expected to perform as part of the program.

1. Monitoring Sessions

We’ll solicit your choices of sessions, by time period, and try to schedule you into the sessions you prefer wherever possible.  Monitoring involves assisting the speakers and moderators, checking for name tags at the door, ensuring that the necessary AV equipment is on hand, encouraging participants to complete evaluation forms, and generally helping makes the session go smoothly. (Additionally, you will be expected to SMILE AND BE FRIENDLY!)

2. Registration

Registration assistance involves facilitating the registration process, keeping a record of registrants, handing out materials, etc.

3. Headquarters

The Headquarters office is kept open throughout the meeting for the convenience of ASIS&T Committee members, members of the Board of Directors and members of the Conference Committees. Your function will be to ensure that everything runs smoothly and to assist where needed.

How to Participate

If you would like to be considered for this program, for the 2008 Annual, to be held October 24 – 29 in Columbus, OH.  Please forward your name, address, phone, fax and e-mail numbers to:

American Society for Information Science & Technology

ATTN.: ASIS&T 2008 Annual Meeting

1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510

Silver Spring, MD 20910

FAX: (301) 495-0810

e-mail: cjohnson@asis.org

There are a limited number of positions  available, and applications are considered on a first come/first served basis, so be sure to let us know of your interest by September 2, 2008.

Vanessa Foss

American Society for Info Science & Technology

Director of Membership & Meetings

As I’ve liveblogged here at CAIS 2008, typing away at the back of the room, no one has asked me what I was doing (although my fast-running fingers did cause a few fellow members of the audience to glance my way, mid-presentation). Today, after one of the presentations, that changed when someone noticed the screen on the laptop I had been typing on was displaying a blog post.

One of the professors in attendance at the conference asked me if I was blogging the conference, and after I answered yes, wondered aloud whether there were any ethical implications to the practice of immediately sharing online the content of conference presentations (which has become, in the last few years, a common information-sharing practice in both technology and libtech conference circles).

Her question, and the concern behind it, made me wonder whether any changes may be coming to the way information science and LIS researchers communicate with one another, as the phenomenon of liveblogging spreads from technology/libtech conferences to the more theoretical reaches of our profession.

How does liveblogging a conference presentation differ from publishing articles and letters about LIS (or in) LIS publications? If you are a presenter at LIS conferences, what do you think about an LIS student’s notes on your conference presentation being published via an LIS-related blog? If you are an LIS student or scholar, do you think this gives you more access, or faster access, to current theoretical discussions? What effect might this have on the profession as a whole, and on LIS theory in particular? Please feel free to share any thoughts you have about this topic by commenting on this post.

Eric S. Nyrose, MLIS University of Alberta; Alberta Bible College

[Please note: These are merely my notes on the presentation, taken live while the presentation was in progress and edited for sense afterwards. They are not a verbatim transcription of the presentation, and any errors are mine. Please contact the researchers directly for more information on their work. -- JRD]

Notes on the presentation:

Interdisciplinarity is very interesting to me, because I’ve been to conferences in Biblical scholarship, so I’m going to be really crossing boundaries here. I am going to be talking about the Bible. That probably doesn’t happen in these conferences very often and might not have ever happened before.

I did a research project on the research practices of first-year college students at Alberta Bible College, asking the students whether they used ‘wisdom’ in their searching. That wasn’t an unusual question for these students, because we use wisdom as a term regularly. But in LIS, ‘wisdom’ is not a recognized term.

What’s wisdom got to do with it?

If you look at the etymology of the word ‘philosophy’, there are two roots: “philos” (light) and “love”, so the  meaning of philosophy is “the love of wisdom”. The love of wisdom is so respected that a PhD is the highest degree we convey. So why is ‘wisdom’ not in our vocabulary? Perhaps it is because of the fear of mixing religious with non-religious scholarship. But we do use wisdom as a part of everyday life. Wisdom is all around us (Chicken Soup for the Soul and other “bathroom readers”). But, in formal education, the concept of ‘wisdom’ seems absent.

Wisdom is commonly discussed in a faith-based context. “Wisdom” and “foolishness” come into our discussions with our children; with my own children, I prefer to talk in terms of wisdom and foolishness instead of saying “that was smart” or “that was stupid”. In faith-based education, the idea of wisdom from ancient philosophy, and the idea of critical thinking from contemporary education, seem to be similar.

As I said, my background is Biblical studies. I started with Proverbs, because I call it the “bathroom reader” of the ancient Israelites. Solomon was said to have written more than 3,000 proverbs, or wise sayings. Solomon is said to have promoted a strong tradition of wisdom. A little later, confucius wrote his Analects. Both materialized in the context of faith and addressed morality. But they also addressed life and learning.

First I looked at conceptualized ‘critical thinking’ in LIS and other disciplines, and found that the word ‘wisdom’ wasn’t used anywhere. So I decided to look for synonyms for the concept of wisdom. Then I looked for concepts of critical thinking in both Proverbs (in Hebrew) and Confucius (in English translation).

Perhaps a return to some of these ancient religious ideas may help us to improve our teaching. There is a trend in this direction, including Maxwell (2005), Maxwell and Barnett (2007), Deane-Drummond (2007), and Targowski (2006). We need to change our education so that ‘problems of living’ are part of our teaching, in addition to ‘problems of knowledge’. Deane-Drummond wonders whether wisdom has been discarded because of its connection to religion.

“Religion” may be taught in contemporary education settings, but it is taught within a positivist framework. Christian wisdom is mentioned, usually as it grows out of Jewish wisdom; Buddhist and Islamic wisdom are left out entirely, so I might have to address them later. Confucianism comes up, along with Jewish wisdom.

The concept of critical thinking comes up in LIS, but sometimes it is in a negative capacity:

Undergraduates not capable of critical thinking (Guardia, 1998). Herro (2000), Gibson (1995), Albitz (2007) discuss information literacy and its connection to critical thinking. Critical thinking is broader, more theoretical, but information literacy is required for critical thinking.

I’ll give you a couple of samples of Proverbs and Confucius. I’m a big fan of modern translations, because they didn’t speak in King James Shakespearean English back then, and neither do we. “Through these proverbs, people will receive instruction in discipline, good conduct, and doing what is right, just and fair. .. They will give young people knowledge.” Confucius: “The love of knowledge without love of learning sinks into presumption … Love of uprightness, without love of learning, sinks into harshness…”.

This highlights some of what I found in both sources that are common. We find the following common perspectives:

There are stages of critical thinking. Proverbs talks of those who reject or don’t understand wisdom, and those who accept wisdom and are therefore wise. Confucius wanted his students to desire to learn.

Critical thinking is active and disciplined. Both Confucius and Proverbs promote discipline; both self-discipline and correction from one’s mentor or instructor.

As wisdom grows there is more self-discipline. Wisdom is the acceptance of this discipline. There is also the concept of being with and listening to the right people and listening to their advice. I tell my daughters that all the time: never refuse advice. You don’t have to follow it, but don’t refuse it. You have to evaluate what you hear, think about it, and critically evaluate what you hear. “The prudent carefully consider their steps” (Proverbs 14:15).

It’s the idea of looking at the options and choosing the best one. It doesn’t mean being open to accepting anything, it means being able to make good judgements. Finally, creativity isn’t always brought up in critical thinking; creativity involves going outside of the box, but you don’t have to go outside the box to be creative. Sometimes it is about creatively challenging assumptions. Critical thinkers are aware of their context. Confucius didn’t distinguish between religion and philosophy. Solutions were worked out within a given framework.

Confucius discourages speculation, certainty, inflexibility, and self-absorption (thinking only his ideas are true). Proverbs addresses the mocker, the fool, and the simpleton, which are related to these four ideas.

The benefits of critical thinking/wisdom:

• empowerment, self-autonomy
• wisdom will bring a person success
• balanced recognition of the group as well as individuality

What do we do with all this? We found some interesting things in Proverbs, Confucius, and critical thinking literature. How can all this help us?

Several of the things taught in information literacy are “wise” — but not called “wisdom”. Perhaps they should be. The most significant thought I found is that ancient wisdom calls for the same integration in all of life. It’s not just something for ‘information seeking’ or ‘information literacy’. It’s something that pervades all of life and can inform all of life. Rather than separately looking for ‘wisdom’ in life and ‘critical thinking’ in education, Confucius would call for us to bring these together.

To truly be a wise person, it has to be something you practice in all of your life. Buying groceries is a place for critical thinking. An undergraduate deciding how to spend his never-enough money is also a place for critical thinking. When a student walks past a needy person asking for help, it’s a time to creatively think about how to respond to the homeless.

Timeliness is very important. We know that an information literacy lesson is more effective if the professor brings his class to the library at the moment when they need to start researching a paper, as opposed to having a generalized information literacy session at the start of the school year. Wisdom out of context, critical thinking separated from other contexts, is just as artificial-seeming as the separation of information literacy instruction from the need to start an assignment. Why should a student be taught to think critically while searching for information in the library, and then go out and behave foolishly in the evening? Critical thinking should be taught as something that permeates life.

At Alberta Bible College, we give students integrative assignments. First-year students spend a week living and working at a downtown ministry called Mustard Seed. Second year students work cross-culturally with First Nations people. Third year students continue to do cross-cultural work with people who speak other languages. Fourth year students try to produce a philosophy of where they’re going to “go from here”.

About 1000 years before the common era, Solomon began a wisdom tradition. A few hundred years later, Confucius taught his followers wisdom. Both of these thinkers improved their societies. Today we have rejected this kind of wisdom teaching, which integrates with all areas of life. We need to add to our ‘knowledge’, ‘wisdom’.

Future Research:

A colleague of mine has done a lot of work in transformational learning. I like the idea of transformational literacy. I wonder if ‘critical thinking’ is broadened to ‘wisdom’, perhaps ‘information literacy’ can become ‘transformational literacy’.

Question from the Audience: I would have defined wisdom as ‘discernment’ and ‘judgment’ a week ago. Abut a couple of days ago, I was introduce to Confucianism, which introduces the idea of ‘moral judgment’, which we also get from Proverbs. Do you see ‘moral judgment’ as an element of critical thinking? I wonder if that’s where the tension is in bringing the concept of ‘wisdom’ to academia?

Answer: I think so, because of our desire for intellectual freedom, and freedom from religion, which was one of the things people were seeking in the New World. We don’t want to judge anyone’s morality. But I think critical thinking relates to morality, and it might be related to Internet searching. There are some bizarre ideas available out there, and that might relate to morality.

Question from the Moderator: Have you looked at how many universities are teaching critical thinking or ‘wisdom’? We tend to teach information literacy within a silo. We don’t have as a goal that every undergraduate will graduate with information literacy as a toolkit, but they do have writing across the curriculum. So the idea of embedding something across the curriculum is already accepted.

Answer: I’m at a small college, so the faculty all sits down together and talks about how it crosses over. It might just be a factor of size.

Marina Pluzhenskaya, Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax, NS)

[Please note: These are merely my notes on the presentation, taken live while the presentation was in progress and edited for sense afterwards. They are not a verbatim transcription of the presentation, and any errors are mine. Please contact the researcher directly for more information on his work. -- JRD]

Introductory remarks from the Moderator: Her PhD is from the University of Illinois. Her teaching at Mount Saint Vincent has so far encompassed Management Information Systems.

Notes on the presentation:

Interdisciplinarity is a very popular topic right now for researchers. It’s not new; but disciplines go through different stages. sometimes they want to “socialize”, sometimes they want to reflect in themselves. Since the late 1960s we have been going through a stage of introspection.

Researchers often talk thinking they are talking about the same thing, so I’d like to start with a definition. Berger writes that a discipline is a ‘specific body of teachable knowledge’ (Berger, 1972). I’d like to talk about the difference between multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. There is some confusion about this. The majority of authors agree that interdisciplinarity implies a connection between the disciplines.

So why examine LIS interdisciplinarity? We have noted that many presenters here have used or made connections with other disciplines. Sometimes researchers aren’t aware of that fact, but LIS is very, very interdisciplinary. I’d like to present a study to demonstrate what I’m talking about. I’ll start from the beginning.

“A Fairy Tale:

Once upon a time there lived a beautiful maiden named Librairan-Ship. She met a Price Charm-IS and they fell in love. Many times their love has been tried, but, finally, they got married (some LIS scholars called it “perfect marriage”). So they lived happily ever after, right? No — wrong.”

You have heard people talk about the “L-word”, “iSchools”, etc. I’m not judging anything. There were massive discussions in the 1980s about what AND means. Postings on JESSE still include ongoing discussions on the issue of disciplinary self-identification.

Is disciplinary identity important? Yes, because when there are ongoing discussions about the meaning of a discipline, it means that something needs to be clarified about the discipline.

Librarians are known as multidisciplinarians — they have to deal with all knowledge domains. Information science is also interdisciplinary: information is a basic notion; information is ubiquitous. Quoting Capurro and Hjorland, 2003: “Tracing the influence of this term and the very complex net of disciplines connected with it is indeed difficult.”

LIS schools are/were interdisciplinary. Library schools didn’t have PhD’s in the beginning; but as the discipline evolved, they realized that they had to teach management, education, literature, and now there are other, newly relevant disciplines: psychology, philosophy, and communication.

There are many disparate opinions of LIS as a discipline: They include ‘LIS is a meta-discipline’, ‘LIS is an interdisciplinary field of study with strong epistemic connections and other knowledge domains’, ‘LIS lacks its own methodology’, ‘LIS disintegrates as a discipline’, ‘LIS is an importer rather than exporter’, and even ‘It is not a discipline or field of study’.

I have looked at educational units, curricula, publications, etc. to try to determine the extent and character of interdisciplinarity in LIS.

First, I looked at LIS schools’ faculty members: 736 have advanced degrees, in 56 ALA-accredited schools. 463 of them held degrees in LIS (63%). Some have masters’ degrees in LIS and PhDs in other disciplines. The majority of schools have more than 80% of their faculty with PhD’s. What are their knowledge domains? The majority came to LIS from arts and humanities, education, and social sciences. Computer science comes in fourth.

So it looks multidisciplinary. Is it interdisciplinary? The next step is analyzing publishing, because publishing is sometimes the most visible scholary activity. I used citation analysis, via Web of Knowledge, because it crosses disciplines and it’s familiar to LIS scholars.

Limitations: It’s difficult to define the discipline of individual articles. So instead of trying to find a way to come up with perfect sampling, I decided to analyze the publications of all 736 scholars at all library schools. We also know there are many reasons for citing, including self-citing and negative citations. But it doesn’t matter, because in this research, if someone in one discipline cites someone in another disciplines, that’s good enough for my purposes, it means they have some significance that is recognized.

This study covered 11 years, starting in 1995, because that is where things began to change significantly within the LIS discipline.

Stage 1:

Studied all full-time LIS faculty members, 1995-1005.

Stage 2:

Journal Library & Information Science Research, 1994-2004. I traced the disciplines of all the citations.

Questions:

What disciplines is LIS connected with? What disciplines are cited by LIS, and what disciplines cite LIS? What are the advantages and shortcomings of the process of identifying those connections through citations?

The professions, social sciences, multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary studies, education, communication, and, surprisingly, the basic sciences. The connection between basic sciences and LIS is not very obvious.

The ratio for citations from LIS to other professions, vs. from other professions to LIS, is 8:1 for LIS disciplines, but for references, the ratio is 6:5, very close. LIS cites other disciplines much more frequently than other disciplines cite LIS: it is not reciprocal.

The disciplines most cited by LIS authors [in order of most to least cited] are sociology, education, psychology, medicine, computer science, interdisciplinary, management, government, marketing, and communication. The disciplines which cite LIS most often [in order of most to least citing] are education, psychology, medicine, computer science, marketing, interdisciplinary, communication, and sociology.

So apparently LIS has connections with other disciplines. LIS attracts researchers from a variety of disciplines and there is cross-citing between LIS and other disciplines. Interestingly, LIS cites sociology most often, but sociology borrows from LIS the least. That is interesting and we don’t know why that happens.

LIS is still basically an ‘importer’ of other disciplines’ research. There are connections between disciplines that cite one another, but the limited scope of this study makes it difficult to draw conclusions.

What is the Significance?

LIS professionals are supposed to understand what’s going on with all disciplines. We are supposed to help researchers and educators from every knowledge domain, so we must understand those connections. I believe creating knowledge is important, and we need to understand the cognitive commonalities among the disciplines. LIS schools, as professional schools, must be open to all new trends, so we need to understand what is going on in other knowledge domains that are related to LIS.

Further Research

I would like to add more research, and some subjective data. I’ve been interviewing faculty members for several months now.

Question from the Audience: I found this quite interesting. I’m curious about the table that showed that in 1998 LISR publishing ‘something’ that was of great interest to other disciplines.

Answer: To answer that question, I will have to talk to the authors. Sometimes another discipline will read an LIS publication because they look into it thinking that they might find something interesting in relation to their work, and they discover a wealth of information that is productive for them. Sometimes they know someone within the LIS profession, and that influences them to look into a particular publication.

Question from the Audience: Did you look into indexing of LIS literature, to see whether other disciplines have access to our literature, because LIS is considered a specialized field?

Answer: That is true of many disciplines. When we say “researchers”, they are very, very different — just as students have different learning styles, researchers have research styles. They approach things from their own perspective. Some feel comfortable within their core discipline and they continue to read in depth in their own discipline. Others are more task-oriented, and they might be willing to cross borders more frequently. Some of them are aware that they’re crossing those boundaries, others don’t think this matters.

Question from the Audience: Is it a size issue? How many LIS programs are doing active research, vs. education PhD’s doing active research?

Answer: There are layers and layers of interdisciplinarity. There are gaps between the disciplines. During the period of time I studied, I could not find any publications for some very bright researchers, because they were close to their retirement and not publishing anything further. There are times when we produce knowledge, and there are times when we absorb knowledge. This is not just a problem of interdisciplinarity. The disciplines are interconnected, and sometimes it’s just “pure business”. It’s hard to tell.

Question from the Moderator: Are you planning to see if scholars are searching in the relatively new federated search engines that search across indexes? It might influence their results, especially things like Google Scholar.

Answer: As I’ve interviewed people, I’ve asked them how they decided someone’s research was relevant. Sometimes the brightest researchers in the sciences start thinking, for instance, about education, and they turn into “undergrad students” because their knoweldge of something like educational psychology is very basic.

Haidar Moukdad, Dalhousie University

[Please note: These are merely my notes on the presentation, taken live while the presentation was in progress and edited for sense afterwards. They are not a verbatim transcription of the presentation, and any errors are mine. Please contact the researcher directly for more information on his work. -- JRD]

The BBC forum is a form of public opinion. I’ve been looking into this in terms of politics; it’s also related to freedom of speech across the world. Some people are freer than others in expressing their opinion. People also use these forums as information sources. And if you read newspapers on the Internet, almost all of them provide some option for users to provide feedback on an article. The BBC is a little different, which I’ll talk about.

I’m going to talk about the BBC World Service and specifically the Arabic BBC Service. They are a trusted source in the Arabic world. My topic is specifically about Arabic chat rooms and how listeners to the BBC Arabic service views them.

The BBC forums are specifically related to the BBC radio programmes. The radio programmers ask people for their opinions ahead of the broadcast and then discuss them during the broadcast. The language used is entirely Arabic, including the radio programme itself of course. Listeners are mostly from the Arab world, but through the Internet it can be heard all over the world.

The forum is moderated; if something violates the rules, it will be deleted, if it’s nasty or flaming or anything like that. Typical topics are social, political, entertainment, and so on.

The BBC broadcasts in a large variety of (43) languages. You can see that Arabic is broadcast in both Africa and the Middle East. There is a news feedback forum in each language as well.

Objectives/Research Questions

• What do Arab listeners of the BBC think of chat rooms and their effects on their societies?
• For what purposes do these listeners enter these rooms and how do they use them?
• Are there any differences of opinions based on sex or country of origin?

Of course there are differences in what’s allowed in different regions or countries. The radio programmers ask people for opinions on different topics, so that influences people’s participation in these.

Method

The topic was posed in August of last year. They gave about 1-2 weeks before the radio programme for people to contribute and then they had the programme on air. There were 94 contributions. They’re still there — you can see them, 7 or 8 years later. This was just last year. The contributions are categorized by sex, country, positive and negative opinion. I should say that as you know, there’s no way to tell whether someone is being honest about their sex or their country, but I have to go with what I have there.

The main page of the BBC Arabic website shows what their articles are about. The main topic today, as you can see, is about cigarettes, another is about Jewish minorities in the Arab world, another one is about another topic. Here’s the screen about Internet chat rooms. The description discusses the topic and invites users to contribute what they think. On the left it shows the guidelines for contributions and you can see that the space has been closed for now.

In looking at contributions by country and sex, you can see some are living outside the Arab world. The majority came from male listeners or users of the website (77 vs. 17 female). I also looked at differences between countries regarding their opinions of chat rooms. It’s not really representative, i.e., Bahrain only has one contribution and it’s negative. It’s almost 2:1 negative to positive opinions overall, though.

Males were more than 2:1 negative in their opinion of chat rooms; women were 7:1; more men were neutral than women (7 men, 1 woman). That could be because there were many fewer contributions from women.

I was very curious about this topic. A lot of research has been done in North America on the use of chat rooms; we know in our field that a lot of things have been done about gender in terms of information, communication, design, etc. In the Arab world this hasn’t been explored very much, so it was interesting to find out what they thought, not just by numbers and so on.

As a sample of opinions, a female from Iraq says that she is completely against chat rooms because they damage social values especially if they’re used by people of low moral values. But if it’s used as a civilized source it’s a good thing to have. But no chat rooms.

This is a male from Egypt; he’s all for chat rooms, but they have to be moderated to prevent chaos. This is based on experience of various chat rooms.

MSN had to close chat rooms all over the world because there were a lot of cultural and linguistic problems. You’ll notice that there are filters for certain words, etc., and there are differences even within English in terms of spelling between America and Canada; a word that is legitimate in French might be filtered in America.

This woman from Syria says everything starts at home; if someone behaves at home, they will behave in chat rooms whether they are male or female. Censorship doesn’t make any difference if people are upstanding.

This male from Kuwait says they are useful to meet people from different cultures, but if used for cynical purposes they are destructive.

Conclusion

I had a pretty good idea of what I would encounter because of other topics I’ve explored in this arena before, such as politics. The Internet is very popular in the Arab world, but to a different degree because of access reasons, etc. In some countries they have little access, in some they have a lot. That could reflect either positively or negatively on their opinions. The Arab world is mainly conservative, although there are some more liberal areas. People who have emigrated to other countries might have different opinions as well.

Generally they thought that chatrooms have a detrimental affect on society, on individuals, etc. People are very cautious about that. There is a difference between male and female; more research has to be done to see if there is a correlation between sex and opinion of chat rooms, but from what I could see there is a difference and a higher percentage of women with negative opinions of chat rooms. It could be related to access level to the Internet or familiarity with the use of the Internet compared to male contributors. I would assume the more familiar you get with it the more positive opinion you might hold.

It would be interesting to compare these results to different cultures or different countries, and to see if there is a shift in opinion after someone emigrates or goes to another country.

Question from the audience: Do you have any information about what people think in general of chat rooms?

Answer: It’s a mess. There are some places where it’s nasty, and other places where it’s moderated and more civil. It depends on the subject. Many people use chat rooms to meet people from around the world, they might want to emigrate or meet people from other countries and explore.

Question from the audience: Have you compared this to non-Arab opinions about chat rooms? I’m wondering if all this negativity might be related to people’s behaviour in chat rooms.

Answer: Sometimes the BBC will take the same topic and post it elsewhere. I looked at French and English as well. It seems to me that among English speakers, there was a similar topic and many people had a more positive opinion of chat rooms in general even though they knew the same level of nastiness and chaos exists. It could be because of the openness of the society, or moral issues, etc. English speakers seem to be more positive about it.

Question from the audience: Could cultural factors play a role? In Arabic cultures, as far as I know (and please correct me if I’m wrong here), there tends to be an emphasis, in conversation, on interpersonal relationships, on expressing respect for the person you are speaking to, etc. These non-textual, conversational elements are left out of online/chat discussion.

Answer: Yes, that could be a factor. Arabic cultures tend to be more community focused and have more emphasis on the wellbeing of the group, and that could be a factor as well.

Question from the audience: There seems to be some confusion in the presentation about chat rooms vs. this opinion posting area on the BBC website. I’m not clear on what the statistics apply to, because one chart says “Use of chat rooms…”

Answer: It should say “Opinions about use of chat rooms…” It was a topic about chat rooms that was posted by the BBC. The demographics were for how people answered the question, not whether or not they had used chat rooms themselves. So there is no way to know whether the people answering the question had used chat rooms or not. One person said, “I used one once, I’m never going back”.

Question from the audience: Was this a popular topic on the BBC website?

Answer: It was average, possibly a little below average, in terms of number of forum participants. Political topics, and religion-related topics, tend to have a lot more participation.