[Air-l] Technical competence

[Cox]

The need for knowing about computer technologies in communications research
is becoming greater than the rudiments of web composition and traffic
analysis. Already, artificial intelligence is being applied to content
analysis, as in the case of a number of papers published on the Enron email
corpus. The skill sets involved fall outside those typically found among
communications researchers. A principle researcher in one of these Enron
studies is Andrew McCallum at UMass, who is a physicist iirc. Another
physicist, Andrew Smith, is responsible for the Leximancer tool mentioned
earlier by Thomas Koenig. Less abstract tools like structural equation
modeling are common now, and require competence in computer technologies
beyond SPSS. 

Whether these technologies should be incorporated in curricula is maybe not
the right question, as they are not the types of skills one gets in a course
or two. Perhaps the field should recruit from among information science and
computer science undergrads who come equipped with the skills already. 

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Elizabeth Van
Couvering
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 4:40 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Technical competence

But let's consider the recent issue of archiving websites -- clearly  
we need some kind of technical competence for that.  Ditto link  
analysis.  Ditto for reading others' papers and understanding whether  
they've used a correct or appropriate methodology.  For example, in  
understanding the so-called popularity of a website people should  
know to differentiate between 'hits' and 'pages' and 'visitors' and  
should be able to figure out whether robots have been excluded - to  
take a random example that demands a bit of specialised knowledge.  
Shouldn't this be the kind of thing we are considering for our students?

Elizabeth

On 6 Jun 2005, at 22:34, Paula wrote:

> Yes, I'd agree with this - it can be useful to understand something of
> how any particular technical medium is productive in online social
> formations, but find it far more useful to approach social software
> primarily from the point of view of the user. The users will always
> manage to exceed the developers' constructs anyway.
>
> Conversely, I find it really interesting how social softwares
> materialise the culture of their developers whilst users will often  
> try
> to use it according to the needs of a completely different culture.
>
> Paula
>
> Ledbetter, Andrew Michael wrote:
>
>
>> Long-time reader, first-time poster. :-)
>>
>> I agree, interesting question, and an important question. I think  
>> the (a) particular research question and (b) population under  
>> study significantly influence the level of technical competence a  
>> researcher would need. And we must not forget that the vast  
>> majority of web users, e-mail users, online gamers, etc. do not  
>> know much at all about UNIX, perl, Java, or probably even basic  
>> ideas about how the TCP/IP protocol operates. Given this, might  
>> there be occasions where lacking in-depth computer science  
>> knowledge might actually help a researcher approaching the  
>> Internet from a social science perspective, since they may be able  
>> to more easily view the technology through the users' eyes rather  
>> than the developers' eyes?
>>
>> In my own research, I find that my computer science background  
>> helps me understand the contours of how the nature of a technology  
>> encourages and discourages certain forms of social interaction...  
>> but I find that my social science background helps me far more in  
>> understanding how human beings appropriate the technology in their  
>> social interaction.
>>
>> Andrew
>> -------------
>> Andrew M. Ledbetter
>> Ph.D. student, University of Kansas
>> Department of Communication Studies
>> aledbett at ku.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>>
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Elizabeth Van Couvering
PhD Student
Department of Media & Communications
London School of Economics and Political Science
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/
e.j.van-couvering at lse.ac.uk


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