More than meets the eye

For the last year, along with readings in personal information management (PIM)  literature, I've been making my exploratory fieldwork in order to uncovered information artefacts at the office, at home and what mobile workers carry with them according to length of «stay away» and the kind of transportation used. One of the trickiest problems is getting to «see» what is sometimes invisible in different occasions. The other is gaining access to the places where those information artefacts are, since I have to «intrude» many times, on different occasions, to «record» them by means of photos, drawings, descriptions and/or recording conversations) .

When doing research is very important to assume nothing (easier said then done, cause we all have our world views). The way each individual uses information artefacts is very idiosyncratic and can contaminate our observations. The use I give to my information artefacts can not be transported to the people I'm studying. To explicit my own usage I've been also recording the artefacts I carry with me, in different occasions (first saw this on «what's in your bag» flickr group) and adding comments on my own usage behaviour. This is to say that I can not infer what people do with those artifacts just because the object is present. I have to know the how and why of that information artefact for that person, in that context.

A «simple» key chain can be much more than the eyes can grasp. In a collection of «The Near Field Communication Pool»(1) at flickr, related to RFID artefacts some of them look just like toys, but they allow information exchange by proximity or contact. One of the uses for that alike-key-chains is exchanging personal information with someone we meet. Very similar to exchanging business cards, except the exchange does not have physical visibility. This is something that might trick the observations and alerted me for the need to be alert for the presence of other toys in mobility contexts. First time I saw similar artefacts in use was in public transportation in Hong Kong (around 1997). Around the same time, I was using Amazon book store and found one inside one of the books I had ordered.

I'm closing down this stage of the research and initiating a new one.  For that I'll have to gain access to fair to high mobility workers of different business sectors that allow my presence in different contexts (office context and «on the go» context), during varying periods of time, distributed in a year period. Since I'm based in Portugal, and financial constraints limit my traveling (hence the variety and scope of the research), I'll have to limit my observations to Portugal. So if you feel you would like to be part of the study, can handle my presence during different times in an year, allow me to record the information artefacts you use and be willing to respond to some questions, I would be very glad to give more information and more details about the study. What's in it for you? Might not seem much what I have to offer, but you would be part of the research and, hopefully, with all the praxis I'll be gathering you (and/or your organization) would be contributing to the knowledge needed to advance support «from workers' mobility to information mobility» (and a front reservation seat when the research defense takes place ;)

The reason I'm posting in English is mainly for trying to connect to others that might be doing similar researches and/or have already done similar studies and want to share what worked and did not work in their design strategies or engage me in other conversations going on.

[Update, 29/Mar/2009]: More on NFC (Near-Field Communication): An Introduction to Near-Field Communication and the Contactless Communication API(2), by C. Enrique Ortiz (June, 2008). See table below, taken from this introduction on different technologies for NFC:

(1) Found this collection through Ton Zylstra photo in flickr.

(2) Found this on The Mobile Monday, after following VD call for the coming meeting of MoMo chapter in Portugal, on April 6th.

Studying technology at work

by Wanda Orlikowski (2007), Sociomateriality: A Practice Lens on Technology at Work, video and slide presentation on ICTs in the Contemporary World seminar. Main ideas from the lecture:

• Agency is an ongoin reconfiguration of the world
• reconfiguration of expectations and norms of work
• unanticipated consequences
• contradictory dynamics
• multiple realities

aggregating information in a timeline

Some time ago (can't seem to remember when), I've created an account in swurl. I was forgotten of that trial until I've received a warning by Google about a citation of B2OB. Went back to revisited that digital space and got surprised by my timeline containing different feeds, from different spaces I have out there. Unfortunately, having my research place (infotransitions)(*)  restricted means the feed can not be incorporated in swurl. Another thing that bugs me is that I can not incorporate feeds from my digital libraries (LibraryThing and CiteUlike). Nothing is perfect, even free stuff ;-)

It's amazing how the same bits of information gain such a different perspective through time, when seen in terms of aggregation from different places. «Seeing» is something we have to craft also. In research as I guess with many other activities, is very important, because what we develop can not be seen most of the time.

Sure there are formal places and events where we have to prove our accomplishments (milestones), and to produce products (papers, dissertations, thesis, presentations, communications, reports, etc), but sometimes it can be very frustrating to understand what one as been doing the rest (or the majority) of the time.

I wonder if my advisor as the perception of this information flow? Does he have that perception on the rest of his students? Would he benefit to implement such a timeline to follow students progress? Do others students also use digital spaces to make progress available to advisers? Do advisers feel the need to follow students progresses? What else do they use or need?... 

Anyway, for me this kind of integration is very useful for research (and reminding myself) cause it allows me to context information in time from different sources:

• data collection (situating dispositions for detecting data collection biases, weighting context of collection, leave trails for information ties to other studies/ readings/ reflections/ etc.)
• reflections (information environment, questions that remain to answer or that where forgotten, writing reflections unveil trails and relate to other reflections,....)
• readings (how readings in time affect and are affected by research phase)
• milestones (It's amazing the number of activities that underline these moments, specially regarding information behaviours... and so easily detected in the timeline)
• wish lists - books, gadgets, tools, events... and all the things we wish we could have to accomplish our goals/ task/ work/ etc.
• opinions (things that make us trigger and add other possible views on subjects, coming from different people, with so different world views that help me to think differently about my research subject)
• life (since we can not separate our research from our lives)
• Other uses: this can include Department where students are developing the research, detection of students phases, networking, ...

What else could I be using that would give better results?

(*) «transição de espaços informacionais» was the starting point of my PhD research as it emerged during my master's research work. Like a personal notebook, this space is restricted so I can mess around with my thoughts without the fear of misleading passing by strangers or concerns about my (lousy) writing skills.

Keep in mind before the change occurs

An interview following the research by HBS professor Boris Groysberg, Lex Sant, and Robin Abrahams, based on their case study "When Stars Migrate, Do They Still Perform Like Stars?" looks at the "portability" of performance and the likelihood that some positions may improve or diminish one's prospects for career advancement:

"What our research suggests is that portability isn't only determined by what industry you are in, or what particular company you work for, but it's also a result of how collaborative your job is. This suggests that workers who have already developed extensive firm-specific human capital (in the form of relationships or mastery of the firm's system and processes) should weigh the decision to change jobs carefully, because their major value is in the company they currently work for and the teammates they work with. If they do change jobs, they should make sure that the new employer is invested in their success and will give them the resources, and the time, to build the relationships that they need. (...) make sure your collaborative efforts take you outside your own team, and get you working across departments and with people outside the firm. These boundary-spanning relationships can help protect your portability—and your value in your current job."

It's never to much to say it again: don't believe in «stars» but I believe in the time it takes to build a productive «star team» because performance is so dependent on the relations we build through working (making things happen) together and learning our way around with that precise team of unique persons and experiences of life.

blogging research papers... and trails

Adding to Lilia's latest post on research papers on business blogging, 4 more references since 2007 that I think are worth exploring:

How Macromedia used blogs to build its developers' communities: A case study (2008) Jingli Cheng

Business organizations are using blogs as a conversational technology to help build a community of practice where knowledge exchange and sharing actively take place. This case study examines how Macromedia used blogs to build its developers' communities and become more organizationally effective. Four major types of interactions between the company employees and customers through the blogs are analyzed: socialization, information sharing, help seeking, and teaching and learning. Organizational factors that contributed to the success of such a strategy are also revealed in the study. A model is thus drawn to explain how blogs contributed to the organization's effectiveness by strengthening customer relations, product development, and innovation. Finally, practical suggestions are provided for companies that are considering adopting a blogging strategy for customer relations, product development, and community-driven innovation.

'Because I need somewhere to vent': the expression of conflict through work blogs (2008) James Richards:

"Employee resistance has traditionally been analysed as an activity that occurs in the work organisation. In recent years, new Internet communication technologies, such as blogs, have expanded the possibilities for employees to express conflict. This paper explores how these developments can add to our understandings of employee resistance to the labour process."

How social media is transforming employee communications at Sun Microsystems (2008) Paris Barker:

"Sun Microsystems' CEO challenged his Global Employee Communications team to build communities within the company with social networking technology. Wikis, blogs, Facebook fan pages, and six islands on Second Life are just a few of Sun's new social media tools that employees use to learn, boost innovation, connect with executives and each other - and spread the good word about Sun. To achieve this quickly, the communications team collaborated across organizational boundaries, tapped grassroots social media efforts in other parts of the company, focused on a manageable number of short-term projects, and showed a willingness to experiment."

Investigating the influence of employee blogging on IT workers' organisational citizenship behaviour (2008) Sung Tae Kim, Choong Kwon Lee, Taewon Hwang:

"Blogging is a dynamic, interactive medium for the communication between authors and readers. In spite of many stories of using blogs in corporate working environment, these stories are largely anecdotal and it is unclear whether this practice actually delivers positive benefits for companies. This study investigates the impact of blogging phenomenon on employees' behaviour in the e-global age and introduces cases to understand how corporations can improve their IT workers' Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) levels through employee blogging."

Long before blogs where widely used, one of the ways of finding research related to owns interest was following the citation of paper about the topic. After finding those trails, you had to go through library catalogs to locate the paper and then try to have access to the full content of the paper. Today, apart from following bloggers in our interest areas (antecipating published works), we can also follow more easily the trails of the production of researchers through their published work, and through them, discover other researchers that have built on their work.

Ex: If you follow one of the papers of Efimova and Grudin on employee blogging in GoogleSchoolar, you can easily discover other authors that used her work and discover more rapidly how to gain access to work that builts upon the paper. As said, following trails is not new. What is new is information behaviours to follow those trails.

Stages, Layers and Blog Networking Study

It's been awhile since I've been able to follow Lilia's research work (and talk, and discussion, and playing around with things, and... eating pastry and laying out on the grass in a sunshine day :).

The first results are surfacing on her blog with the transcripts of the interviews. Every transcript available had the previous consent of the participants in the study and allow for a richer collaboration with the researcher... and also, add more responsibility for been part of the research (more about use of labels for writing research).

Since I'm still using my neighbours wi-fi (Vodafone delivered the wi-fi modem but not the connect box - anyone working in Vodafone.pt that can help?) I'm just adding some quick notes.

Someone already mention and I also believe that it might be worth exploring the concept of stages by Goffman in the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Blogs add different layers and individuals «act» according to different stages (palcos, in Portuguese). Blogs can be very personal and reveal a lot about a person but they do not represent by themselves the identity of the owner. 

When I was trying to talk to Lilia over Skype I also suggested looking for some reference work about the way book authors might feel when they discover they have much more «followers» then they new about it. In general, maybe the act of maintaining a blog can be included in a wider category of «people who create» things. Objects that, after being created, persist and have a life of their own. Wonder if a blog, like a book or a vessel, can also be considered and treated like an immutable mobile. I wonder...

Note to self - relate perceived practices of social scientist with «real» working practices -  After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (2005), Law.

Photo by Lilia - final chapter [in the PhD]

Saberes e Competências Nacionais de Ciência e Tecnologia

Com a extinção do INETI e pulverização do pessoal e das equipas de investigação pelas mais diversas entidades nacionais (e até para o conhecido quadro da mobilidade!) do que era o maior laboratório de estado em Portugal, a plataforma DeGóis (Plataforma Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia) poderá ser uma forma de não se perderem os saberes e as competências de tantas pessoas que ao longo de muitos anos contribuiram para lhe dar corpo e projectar o nome INETI a nível internacional.

A criação de um CV pode ser feita por todos os investigadores, a título individual ou a título institucional. Neste último caso, as instituições que aderirem têm a facilidade de extrair relatórios com informação agregada (i.e. indicadores de publicações totais, distribuição das publicações por áreas, etc). A título individual, a grande vantagem reside no facto de manterem não só o vosso CV actualizado como integrado e pesquisável em rede.

Uma das funcionalidades que gostei particularmente consiste no relacionamento entre autores. Ou seja, a partir do momento em que é inserida a descrição de um artigo por um dos seus autores, os restantes passam a estar linkados (claro que para que tal aconteça é preciso que lá tenham criado o CV ;-)

Outras das funcionalidades reside na facilidade de consultar os indicadores, reflectindo o momento e com os dados existentes. Ou seja, nada de ficar à espera das delongas anteriores em que apenas se obtinham dados sobre produção científica com meses de atraso. Claro está, que estes elementos apenas reflectem o que lá estiver. Se o vosso não está por lá, só depende da vossa vontade individual (ou, de um alerta vosso para que a instituição de que fazem parte adira ao DeGóis).

Experiências com blogs em laboratorios

Coles, S. and Carr, L. (2008). Experiences with Repositories & Blogs in Laboratories. Third International Conference on Open Repositories 2008, 1-4 April 2008, Southampton, United Kingdom, p. 2:

"The system is completed by the data discussion/analysis and report generation processes. Blog technology (5) has been employed to facilitate discussion and collaboration with respect to repository data by enabling ‘live copy’ type of transfer of data from the repository to the blog space."

Os autores fornecem o esquema do protótipo e a fase em que se inserem os blogs (diversos detalhes do prototipo encontram-se mais facilmente visiveis nos slides que acompanham a apresentação). Dos elementos fornecidos, destaquei os seguintes pontos fortes e pontos fracos:

• Pontos fortes: reutilização dos dados noutros projectos que se vão construindo sobre o conhecimento anterior (acumulado), pesquisa cumulativa de dados e informação contextualizada, facilidade de encontrar dados e informação que de outra forma estariam dispersos pelos vários computadores pessoais de cada elemento da equipa, fomenta a noção de que o trabalho de investigação não é solitário e que se constrói em colaboração

• Pontos fracos: resistência às mudança nos processos de trabalho e no sistema de publicação científica, restrições no acesso e na utilização de aplicações blog, grande diversidade de formato de ficheiros utilizados ao longo do processo de investigação

Bloggers em Portugal , literacia e desafios na «sociedade da informação»

Na recente Newsletter n. 33 da Obercom, fiquei a saber que acabou de ser publicado um estudo realizado em Portugal para tentar descobrir quantos eram os bloggers (peço desculpa, mas recuso-me a utilizar a palavra «bloguers») em Portugal.

Pena só agora esta informação ser divulgada, com dados que se reportam a 2006. Como se pode facilmente perceber, e após o grande crescimento registado em 2007, estes elementos já pouca utilidade trazem a quem pretende utilizar os dados. Na história dos blogs, reflectem uma realidade distante. Um dos problemas com que nos deparamos nos estudos das «novas tecnologias», é que elas deixam de ser «novas» muito rapidamente.

Uma vez que a abordagem escolhida tomou os blogs como ferramentas, a realidade de 2006 está já muito distante da que temos hoje (simplificação das ferramentas, entrada de novos players no mercado português, disponibilização de interfaces linguisticos, integração com outras ferramentas publicação, etc). As próprias utilizações dadas aos blogs, são mais variadas dos que as que estão descritas do estudo. Nnão encontrei em nenhum local do relatório a referência aos blogs colaborativos. Em 2006 já muitos casos existiam (no sector da educação abundavam exemplos de utilização em diversos níveis educativos). Pena esta questão não ter sido antecipada para o questionário. É diferente eu responder que mantenho 6 blogs, ou que tenho 2 blogs e que participo/colaboro em 4. Outra situação pode ser a de quem respondeu que não tinha nenhum blog mas que colaborava nalgum.

Quanto à «blogosfera» não consegui detectar indícios para que se pudesse chegar a alguma conclusão (voltarei a ler o relatório mais atentamente). Como se define e com que indicadores se caracteriza essa «esfera»? Nem sequer sei se é uma questão pertinente. Da mesma forma que posso escrever um livro ou apenas lê-los, e não ser pertinente se pertenço à «livroesfera» ou deixo de pertencer. Parece-me mais relevante e pelos dados apresentados é possível, retirar algumas conclusões quanto a questões de literacia para a «sociedade da informação».

Como foi hoje e também diz respeito à «sociedade da informação», deixo aqui ficar o link para o estudo da APDSI, apresentado hoje de manhã, sobre "Os desafios da economia da informação» caracterizando o sector da informação, o mercado dos produtos e serviços, investimento, emprego, produtividade e distribuição do rendimento [se a aplicação de leitura para o documento não for detectada automaticamente pelo vosso sistema, escolham abrir em acrobat reader, PDF].

First Monday dedicada à Web2.0

Zimmer, M. (2008). Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. First Monday, vol. 13(3), editorial:

"Web 2.0 represents a blurring of the boundaries between Web users and producers, consumption and participation, authority and amateurism, play and work, data and the network, reality and virtuality. The rhetoric surrounding Web 2.0 infrastructures presents certain cultural claims about media, identity, and technology. It suggests that everyone can and should use new Internet technologies to organize and share information, to interact within communities, and to express oneself. It promises to empower creativity, to democratize media production, and to celebrate the individual while also relishing the power of collaboration and social networks.

But Web 2.0 also embodies a set of unintended consequences, including the increased flow of personal information across networks, the diffusion of one’s identity across fractured spaces, the emergence of powerful tools for peer surveillance, the exploitation of free labor for commercial gain, and the fear of increased corporatization of online social and collaborative spaces and outputs."

software social

Danah Boyd (2007). The Significance of Social Software. BlogTalks Reloaded: Social Software Research & Cases (ed. Thomas N. Burg and Jan Schmidt), Norderstedt, pp 15-30:

"When I think of the term „social software,” I still want to roll my eyes but when I think of the radical shifts that have happened in design process, flow of information, and interaction paradigms under the movement connected with the term, I can’t help but smile. These shifts are quite significant both for the tech sector and for the millions of people who are engaging with these technologies. (...) I’m always amazed at how people are unable to learn from the failures that are happening right now. Still, while we celebrate all of what is new, let us not forget the significance of what is old. In this way, we can build on the shoulders of giants rather than reinventing the wheel."

... e para que um passado bem próximo não fique esquecido, existe uma compilação completa do BlogTalks Reloaded. Muito material para reflexão, em que novo e velho co-existem na medida do seu contributo para ilucidar a compreensão de fenómenos complexos, sem estarmos a re-inventar a roda.

Livre acesso também aos dados

O conceito de livre acesso já não é novo, mas a ciência aberta e o livre acesso aos dados em fase de recolha ainda não tinham aparecido por aqui - OpenSourceScience:

"Democratizing science means creating practices and institutions that are transparent, accessible, and accountable to the general public. In addition to being rigorous, we OpenSourceScience strive to make science popular, relevant, and participatory."

Algumas questões que se prendem com o livre acesso aos dados, no caso das ciências sociais, prendem-se com a protecção dos sujeitos e com a salvaguarda dos seus direitos, nomeadamente de privacidade.

Imaginem que se garantia às pessoas entrevistadas o anonimato por forma a que elas se sentissem mais confortáveis para responder às questões colocadas (caso das entrevistas gravadas para posterior transcrição) e que depois as disponibilizavamos de forma aberta?

Ou seja, para que a ciência possa também ser Open Source Science torna-se necessário repensar os protocolos de recolha de dados, entre muitas outras questões. Para além da maior delas: a cultura científica e a coexistência de diversas gerações de investigadores a que correspondem diversas culturas e diversas formas de estar.

Living Labs e mobilidade

Próximo evento do Living Labs vai ser em Guimarães, no Centro Cultural Vila Flôr, a 21 e 22 de Maio (2ª a 3ª feira).

Dentro dos vários tópicos de investigação existentes, estou especialmente interessada nas diversas abordagens às questões que tocam na mobilidade (trabalho, colaboração, acesso, infraestruturas). Numa das páginas do Living Labs Europe, [não] encontram o mWatch Europe 2006 (Survey of Mobile Readiness in European Cities and Regions, [apenas o formulário para encomendar :-( ] em pdf), e o respectivo mapa com algumas das cidades europeias, segundo o Mobile Readiness Index:

Para mim tem especial interesse devido ao meu envolvimento no projecto SINCT (e porque é o pano de fundo disto ;-)

Ciência Partilhada, Livre Acesso e Blogs

Ferramentas que aumentam a dinâmica da publicação, tal como os blogs, trazem novas realidades no campo da ciência e da investigação, enriquecendo artigos e publicações que se tornam documentos vivos. Notícia a ler na integra:The New Science of Sharing

"(...) rapid, iterative, and open-access publishing will engage a much greater proportion of the scientific community in the peer-review process. Conventional paper-based scientific journals, meanwhile, will be augmented by dynamic publishing tools such as blogs, wikis, Web-enabled RSS feeds, and podcasts that turn scientific publications into living documents. Projects such as MIT's OpenWetWare are already doing this."

origem da «Information Society»

Estava a ler um artigo extraído de um livro, sobre a origem da expressão «information society» e achei que devia deixar aqui ficar outro elemento (registado anteriormente aqui) que dá conta de que esta expressão foi inicialmente utilizada no Japão, muito antes da referência que é feita por Sally Burch (2005), The Information Society /the Knowledge Society, in Word Matters: multicultural perspectives on information societies (coord) Alain Ambrosi, Valérie Peugeot e Daniel Pimienta, C & F Éditions:

"In 1973, United States sociologist Daniel Bell introduced the notion “information society” in his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society [1], where he formulates that the main axis of this society will be theoretical knowledge and warns that knowledge-based services will be transformed into the central structure of the new economy and of an information-led society, where ideologies will end up being superfluous."

Segundo os dados de que disponho, a expressão Information Society, é atribuída a Yoneji Masuda (em Japonês Joho Shakai), tendo sido usado em Inglês pela primeira vez numa conferência em que o autor participou nos Estados Unidos. O primeiro livro editado que o terá utilizado no título, remonta a 1968, com o livro Joho Shakai Nyumon (Introdução à Sociedade da Informação), vidé Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism (1999), pp.9-10

Para discussão mais aprofundada sobre a sociedade da informação bem como as diversas linhas de investigação existentes, ver Duff, Alistair S. (2000). Information Society Studies (Routledge Research in Information Technology and Society). London: Routledge:

"Ito's research establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the invention of the term 'information society' occurred in Japan and not in the USA. The first Japanese use of the term was in 1964, fully six years before the earliest date given by those claiming American provenance." (p.4)

FAQ: Blogs Organizacionais

Critérios para se considerar um blog como «blog organizacional», segundo Kelleher, T., and Miller, B. M. (2006). Organizational blogs and the human voice: Relational strategies and relational outcomes. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 1:

"Blogs organizacionais têm que obedecer a três critérios. Serem 1) mantidos por pessoas que os alimentam num contexto official ou semi-official de uma organização, 2) serem endossados de forma explícita ou implícita por essa organização, e 3) mantidos por pessoa percebida pelo público como estando afiliada a essa organização." [tradução livre. Para citação, consultar o artigo original]

Como se pode perceber, e apesar de o B2OB estar directamente relacionado com muitas das actividades que desenvolvo no meu quotidiano profissional (nomeadamente ser o meu laboratório de teste para o interesse dos blogs no contexto organizacional), este blog não é um «blog organizacional», apesar de algumas pessoas da organização em que trabalho terem conhecimento dele e de eu já aqui ter colocado de forma explícita a minha afiliação com o INETI.

ambientes colaborativos de trabalho e vida digital

Dois relatórios que ainda não tinha aqui colocado (o primeiro sobre novos ambientes e práticas de trabalho colaborativos, da União Europeia, e o segundo sobre vida digital, da ITU):

• Collaboration@Work: The 2006 report on new working environments and pratices (2006) from EU, com descrição de projectos a decorrer nesta área, onde se incluem 8 projectos com participações de empresas e/ou instituições de investigação Portuguesas (ver também Glossário com termos sobre ambientes colaborativos elaborado pelo mesmo grupo de trabalho):

  "This year again, the report on new working environments and practices illustrates developments towards new information and communication technology supported working environments and processes. It gives a view on collaboration in the working environment, in Europe and in the world."

• Digital Life (2006) from ITU (Portugal aparece mencionado nas páginas 9, 30, 77 e 80):

  "The report includes chapters on enabling digital technologies and lifestyles, digital business, digital identity, as well as comprehensive statistical tables covering over 200 economies [não incluídas no relatório em acesso livre]."

Encontro Informal de Blogues e Estudo sobre Informação

Obrigado a ContraFactos pela indicação do estudo na sequência do Encontro Informal de Blogues. Trouxe muita matéria para reflexão resultado do intercâmbio de ideias com as diversas Pessoas e Blogues que a Sociedade de Geografia acolheu. Por agora fica o estudo: How Much Information?

"This study is an attempt to estimate how much new information is created each year. Newly created information is distributed in four storage media – print, film, magnetic, and optical – and seen or heard in four information flows – telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet. This study of information storage and flows analyzes the year 2002 in order to estimate the annual size of the stock of new information contained in storage media, and heard or seen each year in information flows. Where reliable data was available we have compared the 2002 findings to those of our 2000 study (which used 1999 data) in order to identify trends – recognizing that 1999-2002 were years of relatively low economic activity."

Blogs - publicações individuais enquanto ferramenta de pesquisa online

Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool de Torill Mortensen & Jill Walker (2002), em versão pdf.

Por forma a contextualizar o trabalho no âmbito da investigação de Tecnologias da Informação e da Comunicação (TICs em português) ver o volume com a edição completa das várias abordagens Researching ICTs in Context, resultado da conferência com o mesmo nome que teve lugar a 8 de Abril de 2002, em Oslo (versão pdf).

Weblog (Wiki) da revista electrónica Information Research

A Revista internacional electrónica Information Research (Information Research) também tem um Weblog (Information Research Weblog). De acordo com as suas características (não pertence a um indivíduo mas sim a uma comunidade de indivíduos que aí colocam as suas opiniões centradas no tema principal da revista - Information Research) deveria ser um Wiki.