Summer school 'The Political Economy of ICT, Social networking' 2010, Denmark

The PhD summer school on the political economy information and communication technologies focuses on social networking in 2010.

Internet-based communities have existed for more than 20 years, but during the past few years, social networking has become widespread. Worldwide, people connect via the web and extend their social communities beyond what could ever have been realized without the web.

Till now, users of web-based social networking and communities have mainly used traditional computers with large screens. For many users the concept of social networking means always-on, which sets focus on the trend of being able to do social networking also on smart phones and other smaller screens.

The transition from the big screen to the small screen in relation to social networking and communities will be one of the issues examined at the PhD summer school. The summer school will concentrate on the interrelationships between the technological, economic, political, and cultural aspects of social networking.

Issues that will be dealt with at the summer school include:
User generated content and applications
Mobility and social networks
Privacy and trust in social networks
Standards and technical platforms
New services and applications for mobile devices facilitating
social networks
Business models for social networks
Regulatory aspects of social networks

The summer school is organized in cooperation with CTIF (Centre for TeleInFrastructure), the CAMMP project (Converged Advanced Mobile Media Platform), and is part of the activities of the Mobile and Wireless Cluster (KMT) located at CMI.

Aim and objectives of the summer school

The aim of the course is to refine the level of knowledge of the participating Ph.D. students on the economic and political structures and mechanisms affecting technology development in the information and communication technology (ICT) area. It also considers the impact of implementation and application of ICTs on the economy and broader social developments. It is a course in the political economy of technology development with a disciplinary point of departure in economics and social science. This theme is explored at a company (micro), sectoral (meso) and/or societal (macro) level.

This will depend on the specific topics chosen in the course. The course targets Ph.D. students with a technology background combined with an economics and/or social science approach and students with an economics and /or social science background focusing on technology development.

Organizer: Center for Communication, Media and Information technologies (CMI), Aalborg University, Denmark

Information and registration: http://phdsummerschool.nordict.aau.dk/
Program of summer school: http://phdsummerschool.nordict.aau.dk/program.html

The Political Economy of Information and Communication Technologies
Topic of 2010: Social Networking
New deadline for registration: 1 August 2010

Lecturers:
William Melody
Charles Steinfield
Ramjee Prasad
Knud Erik Skouby
Anders Henten
Reza Tadayoni

Dates: 22-27 August 2010
Place: Skagen, Denmark

The topic of the 2010 PhD summer school is Social Networking.