karen louise smith

Last week I handed in a paper on actor-network theory (ANT) and the possibilities of critical and politically engaged research involving the internet. For now, it is my ANT opus.

In completing my research one of the most interesting pieces I came across was by Noortje Marres. She deployed software called an Issue Crawler to use hyperlinks as a was to trace and describe a political issue network concerned with the ownership of the Development Gateway website.

If you have access through a university/institutional library you can see:

Marres, N. (2004). Tracing the trajectories of issues, and their democratic deficits, on the Web: The case of the Development Gateway and its doubles. Information Technology & People, 17(2), 124-149.

If you prefer information in gateless cyberspace, please see http://movies.issuecrawler.net/