Connected Life 2014 was a day-long student-run conference dedicated to sparking exchange between disciplines and showcasing emerging internet research. Bringing together participants and attendees from across the social sciences, Connected Life fostered collaborations within and beyond Oxford in pursuit of better understanding of the internet and its many effects.
It took place on 12 June 2014 at Balliol College, Oxford. We would like to thank all of our presenters, panelists, un-conference moderators and all other attendees for making this event a great success!
Programme
9:00 | Registration |
9:30 | Keynote Address
Dr Nick Anstead (@NickAnstead), Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), will be giving the keynote speech for Connected Life 2014. His talk will be focusing on the various exciting facets of connectedness and set the stage for thought-provoking discussions throughout the day. |
10:30 | Break and Refreshments |
10:45 | Presentation Round 1
Connected Life is a space for emerging researchers to present their work in an oral presentation. Each presentation will be 10 minutes, followed by a lively discussion. < Culture and identity >
< Governance >
< Education >
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11:45 | Presentation Round 2
< Empowerment and activism >
< Law >
< Digital divides >
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12:45 | Lunch |
1:30 | Poster and Visualisation Fair
Our conference features posters and visualisations across a wide range of emerging Internet research. While these are accessible all day, this session provides a dedicated space to discuss posters with the researchers individually.
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2:00 | Un-conference Round 1
In the un-conference session, moderators briefly outline a topical question of their research in order to provide a spring board for the group discussion. The aim of the un-conference sessions is to provide a forum for discussion about topics of general interest in a specific research area.
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2:45 | Un-conference Round 2
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3:30 | Break and Refreshments |
4:00 | Panel Discussion
During the last session of Connected Life, we will jointly explore the conference’s theme of Connectedness with panelists working in this area from very different points of view – including social networks research, digital governments, crowdsourcing, complemented with a privacy and philosophy perspective on connectedness. |
5:00 | Drinks Reception
We finish the day with a drinks reception, providing more opportunities to connect with other researchers in the field of Internet research, and will also announce the prizes for the three best oral presentations and posters! |
7:00 | End of the conference |
Organisers
Connected Life 2014 was run by MSc and DPhil students at the Oxford Internet Institute. All members of the 2014 Organising Committee are listed below.
Elizabeth Dubois, Lead Organiser
Elizabeth is an OII DPhil student. Her research focuses on the role of personal influence in political communication networks.
Ulrike Rauer, Lead Organiser
Ulrike is an OII DPhil student researching the influence of the Internet on healthcare provision and health outcomes.
Sarah Lefkowith, Marketing, PR, and Web Site
Sarah is an OII MSc student interested in knowledge, persuasion, and how the Internet and social networks affect online and offline behavior.
Mor Rubinstein, Marketing, PR, and Web Site
More is an OII MSc student whose interests are in Open Data and the usage of non-technical groups in open source communities.
Allison Mishkin, Event Management
Allison is an OII MSc student focusing on internet psychology, social media and identity formation, and children/adolescent’s technology use.
Khairunnisa Haji Ibrahim, Submissions Coordinator
Kairunnisa is an OII DPhil student interested in the digital representation of places and how these affect sense of place and place-making activities. She is also interested in the production, management, and consumption of user-generated content, crowdsourcing, and online mapping.
Partners
We are grateful for the generous support provided by the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute, the Oxford Internet Institute, and O’Reilly Publishers.
The Oxford Internet Institute
The Oxford Internet Institute was founded in 2001 as an academic centre for the study of the societal implications of the Internet. Grounded in a determination to measure, understand, and explain the Internet’s multi-disciplinary interactions and effects, our research projects bring together some of the best international scholars within a multi-disciplinary department at one of the world’s top research universities. We are committed to being an informed, independent, and nonpartisan source of the highest quality analysis and insight in all our research and policy-related activities. Find out more about the Oxford Internet Institute, including details of our faculty, postgraduate programs, and ongoing research, or contact enquiries@oii.ox.ac.uk for any questions.
The Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute
The Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute was established in 2010 to cultivate and support interdisciplinary research in Balliol College, straddling the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical and medical sciences. The Institute gives Senior Members and Graduate Students the opportunity to propose and develop advanced research that requires contributions from more than one discipline, has high potential impact, and may be radical or speculative. Participation from elsewhere in the University is welcome, but the research must be led by one or more Balliol Fellows, Lecturers, or Graduate Students.
The Institute supports both gestation projects and more fully-fledged projects. Good interdisciplinary research sometimes requires a period of open-ended exploration and time to build strong teams. Gestation projects therefore have relatively low barriers to entry and fairly modest cost allowing experiential freedom with low risk. They can also be more mature in conception or development, but simply small in scale or require only modest resources. Fully-fledged projects are more mature and oriented towards more sharply defined outcomes. They may require more resources, possibly leveraging the BII to attract external funding.
For more information, please see the BII website. A BII WebLearn site is available to logged-in users: you can ask to join by contacting the relevant lead investigator or by emailing bii@balliol.ox.ac.uk.
O’Reilly
The Connected Life Best Poster Award and Best Paper in Digital Social Research was generously sponsored by O’Reilly Publishers.
The O’Reilly Best Poster Award recognised the best poster or visualization presented at Connected Life 2014 while the O’Reilly Award for the Best Paper in Digital Social Research recognised a course paper from the Oxford Internet Institute’s “option courses” that best made use of digital research methods (such as coding, APIs, scraping, etc.) to answer a social science research question.
Follow them on Twitter: @OReillyUK