karen louise smith

Colleagues from The New Transparency project including Kate Milberry, have produced the following video on (Un)lawful Access legislation which we expect is under development in Canada.

(un)LAWFUL ACCESS from The New Transparency on Vimeo.

Organized by Megan Boler and Matt Ratto, the DIY Citizenship conference was held this past weekend at the University of Toronto. It was a treat to have many scholars working in the fields which intersect with my own arrive in my own backyard. One of the highlights for me, was to hear of the parallels between Boler and Henry Jenkins’ work.

For several years, Boler has been studying political satire in both broadcast and web 2.0 culture. During a keynote, she explained the question always arises, if an audience of satire can become politically engaged in the more traditional sense. In another keynote address, Henry Jenkins outlined how fan culture and political engagement are blending. The example of the Harry Potter Alliance was provided to demonstrate how fans are mobilizing around the values which underpin the fictional series. Fair Trade chocolate, human rights and the Darfur crisis are relevant to Harry Potter fans who seek social justice both in the wizzarding and ‘real’ worlds. These presentations gave me a greater sense of how the ‘fun’ of cultural studies can blend with political engagement.

Currently, I am authoring a report with Brenda McPhail and Andrew Clement on the process we utilized to develop a consensus contribution to the federal government's consultation on the digital economy strategy in the spring of 2010. Dave Kemp pulled together this video which is potentially a very useful visual component for the piece.

At the University of Toronto, I am helping to organize a consultation to prepare a collaborative submission to the Federal Government's Consultation on the Digital Economy. We are holding a roundtable on June 14th

We are also organizing via a wiki and there are numerous ways to get involved:

1. Opinion gathering (via the wiki): Do you have prelminary thoughts and ideas which respond to the consultation topics? If yes, add them to our submission document. Comments are welcome from event participants as well as from individuals who may not be able to attend. Contributions to the submission document will close a day or so before the Roundtable day in order to consolidate the and reorganze the postings for discuss at the Roundtable.

2. Roundtable discussion (in-person, half day on June 14): You need to register separately for this roundtable discussion day on the Roundtable event sign up page. Scribes will record ideas and add them to the consensus document wiki during the event.

3. Submission finalization (via wiki)
a) Consolidated draft statement: to be posted after the event by Wed June 16
b) Your further comments and feedback: accepted until Mon June 21
c) Endorsement period: all participants who attend the event will be assumed to endorse the submission. If you choose not to endorse it, please let us know by removing your name from the endorsement page by Thurs June 24. If you object to particular numbered clauses of the statement, you can also note this on the endorsement page of the wiki.
d) Submission finalized, with endorsements and submitted: Mon June 28

I hope you will join the wiki or attend in person on June 14!

I am currently preparing an exploratory paper to submit to the Online Deliberation 2010 conference, to be held in Leeds, England. The conference is an opportunity to delve into in-depth, online conversations where policy or political issues are considered, compared and discussed. I plan to present the ethnographic methods which are appropriate to examine offline and online participation associated with Ontario bills.

To help me prepare my paper, I am also currently reading Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice, edited by Todd Davies and Seeta Peña Gangadharan (CSLI Publications, November 2009). The book compiles papers from a previous conference where I presented and it is available online under Creative Commons license.

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Recently, I have been putting a number of hours of work into the IDforum.ca website, through my research assistantship with the Performing Identities project.

Some notable recent accomplishments:

• The National public forum on EDLs
  On March 24th, 2009 we traveled to Ottawa, Ontario. Our research group worked with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Consumers Council of Canada, and the Council of Canadians to co-organize the National public forum on “enhanced” drivers licences, privacy and state surveillance under the new Canada-U.S. border regime.

  
  
  
  Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarianinblack/518920792/sizes/s/ See original Creative Commons license

Until Monday, the CRTC was accepting comments on traffic management (aka net neutrality). In preparing my comments, I edited the form letter made available through www.saveournet.ca. It was a very easy process to submit comments.

Save Our Net is an important grassroots initiative which is mobilizing Canadians to speak about the impacts of throttling and the importance of net neutrality. Members of Save Our Net include individuals, civil society organizations and ISPs supporting net neutrality. Comments are still being collected by Save Our Net if you missed the CRTC deadline.

Submitted comments to the CRTC:

Dear Commissioners:

Karen Smith PhD Student, Faculty of Information & Knowledge
Media Design Institute University of Toronto

I am at ChangeCamp (aka #ChangeCamp, @ChangeCamp) today at the M@rs center at U of T today. I will post more later.

My most recent post at metronauts.ca highlights an upcoming content-generation and research opportunity which promises to be very interesting. This initiative will make use of Metrolinx's online consultation mapping tool and remix screencast materials on the metronauts community blog with participant permission.

The Metronauts blog site has launched. I became involved in Metronauts through my participation at bar camp style events in Toronto and Hamilton. My first posting to the site is titled Buttons bells and bike racks. I will continue to cross post here.