January 2019 – Colin Rhinesmith, Ph.D.

TPRC (the Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy) and the Benton Foundation announce the third year of the Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Award recognizing scholarship in the area of digital inclusion and broadband adoption.

Early Career scholars (those currently enrolled in a degree program or no more than five years from receipt of most recent degree) are invited to submit per the guidelines below. The winner of this special honor will be presented with a $1,500 cash prize at lunch during the TPRC47 conference and the TPRC Conference fee will be waived. The winner will be required to contribute a blog article based on the winning submission for publication on the Benton Foundation website.

Applicants are invited to submit any/all of the following for consideration: (1) an original empirically-based research paper pertaining to the area of digital inclusion and/or broadband adoption, (2) a policy proposal for digital inclusion and broadband adoption with a discussion of the justification, and/or (3) an essay on a topic dealing with digital inclusion and/or broadband adoption. Submissions must be less than 25 double-spaced, typewritten pages, inclusive of notes and bibliography and will not have been formally published in a peer review outlet prior to TPRC47.

Submissions must be received by May 31. The recipient will be chosen by a TPRC Board Committee. The winner will be informed by July 15 and the winner will be required to attend the conference and agree to work with Benton Foundation’s Executive Editor, Kevin Taglang, to produce the blog article for benton.orgby December 31, 2019. For questions concerning this Award, please contact Prof. Robin Mansell at r.e.mansell@lse.ac.uk

Submissions should be made through the TPRC Website at (www.tprcweb.com).

I’m looking forward to teaching Social Informatics again this semester at Simmons SLIS. I have added readings from Safiya Noble, Virginia Eubanks, and Sasha Constanza-Chock and other scholars to feature additional critical theoretical perspectives to the course.

Here is the link to the syllabus for this semester.

COURSE SUMMARY
“Social Informatics” refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization – including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change and the ways that the social organization of information technologies are influenced by social forces and social practices. This graduate seminar is for students interested in the influence of information technology in the human context, including cultural heritage, professional concerns, and social inequities. The course introduces some of the key concepts of social informatics and situates them into the view of varied perspectives including readers, librarians, computer professionals, authors, educators, publishers, editors, and the institutions that support them.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

Describe a variety of social, political, and economic contexts that shape information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their impact on society.
Demonstrate knowledge of social systems and how they interact with ICTs.
Discuss concepts that illuminate the intersections of race, class, gender, identity, ability, and ICTs.
Identify a range of ethical, legal, and policy issues that impact the design and use of ICTs.

The course syllabus is available under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Month: January 2019

Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Award at TPRC