Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0
The emergence of web culture continues in the North of England with next week’s inaugural Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0 conference, hosted by the University of York and focusing largely on the emerging culture around social media and its implications for the social sciences.
MIT’s Web Science Research Initiative,
augmented by the participation of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is also seeking
to stake out a number of new disciplines in this emerging field, so
it’s great to see some alternatives to the WSRI already springing up.
The 2-day event has been organised by a cross section of the
university’s social informatics, sociology and communications
departments. The conference programme includes the controversial Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur) and BBC Backstage’s Ian Forrester.
Curiously, sessions on Flickr, Facebook etc. don’t include
representatives of those services. this may provide a useful
alternative perspective to the proceedings…alternatively, perhaps the
University simply couldn’t attract the necessary heavyweights or wished
to keep an academic focus to the event.
Nevertheless, I’m looking
forward to seeing where the conference may lead and welcome its
emergence right here in the UK 🙂 You can find out more at the conference blog and on the conference’s Upcoming listing.