One of the most interesting insights from my ongoing research on the use of Twitter for activism in the Libyan uprising of #feb17 is that the actual movers and shakers of the rebellion can be identified using the notion of the bow tie structure of web-based directed networks. This figure that I am working on shows how tweeters that feed the #feb17 network with info tend to be activists, while those who simply receive without taking an active part tend to be news organizations and governments. While network analyses based on simple metrics for network flow will indicate that, for example, CNN or the BBC are important “actors” in the discourse, they get their prominent position mainly through the fact that they are tweeted about. These are preliminary results, but still.

I was interviewed by the local TV4 station about the recent debate (here and here, 2nd one roughly translated) in Sweden concerning effects of “violent computer and video games” on children.The clip is in Swedish. My basic point is that screen media are stigmatized by previous debates and moral panics, making it harder for video games than i.e. books to be recognized for their positive sides.

I got the good news this morning that the The Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority will fund my new project for two years. The study, Understandings of Online Victimization: A comparison of social media discussions, news reports and court proceedings, aims to identify and analyze differences in how the subject position of online victims is constructed in various domains.

This project is focused on online crimes, i.e. crimes that take place within the digital domain, or at least rely on an internet connection between victims and perpetrators in order to be carried out. Acts of, for example, paedophilia may be documented and posted online, digital tools may be used in trafficking, robberies may be coordinated through the internet, etc. But the main interest here is victims of those crimes that have their basis within the sphere of the digital media (identity theft, cyberstalking, cyberbullying/harassment, e-fraud, phishing, skimming etc.). There are of course no definite borders here since acts of, for example, “real-life” bullying may be extended into the online context and vice versa. This project, however, will put the understandings of the victimization taking place online at the center of attention, and address the extensions of these processes into other domains when needed. The goal is to gain knowledge about how online victimization is understood, in order to provide results that can be compared to how victimization in relation to other types of crimes (offline crimes) have been understood.

Every context where understandings of victims or victimhood are formed offers the opportunity to analyze stories and narratives of, as well as about, what it means to be a victim. The aim of the project is to analyze the vocabularies of victimization through which subjectivities of victims of online crimes are managed in the definitional realms of, first, participatory social media, second, news reporting, and third, court proceedings. The overarching goal of the research is to thereby assess if, how, and to what extent these discourses differ from or overlap with one another. A specific focus is on comparing social media discourse on the one hand, with the more traditional domains of news reporting and court proceedings on the other.

Photos from my talk at Le Web ’11 are now up at http://fp.mu/8h_LA3.

I am giving a talk today at Le Web ’11 in Paris. It is part of the Ignite session which means that I am doing a quick 5-minute presentation with automatically advancing 15 second slides. I will combine sociological theories with observations from location based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook places. The whole thing will be streamed live here.

I have recently had two new texts published in Swedish. One is in a book about doing youth projects online, from The Swedish National Board of Youth Affairs. It can be downloaded from here, and my contribution is on pages 7-15. The other is the Swedish version of the chapter on text analysis in a methods book edited by Ann-Mari Sellerberg and Katrine Fangen. It is available now from Studentlitteratur, I’m chapter 16.

Our article on social networks and discourse relating to the #WikiLeaks hashtag on Twitter is now out in New Media and Society. Find it here.

A 24 minute video of my talk on “Media Places as Hybrid Practice” from the Media Places conference in HUMlab in December 2010 is now available online. Watch it here.