facility:oxford internet institute

L’Université d’Oxford recherche deux géographes assez trappus en stats et qui connaissent bien l’Afrique sub-saharienne... Dès fois, c’est tentant. La salaire est pas trop mal sans être non plus à tomber par terre, mais le programme est passionnant.

▻https://www.recruit.ox.ac.uk/pls/hrisliverecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.display_form

Oxford Internet Institute, 66 Banbury Road, Oxford

Grade 7: £29,541 - £36,298 p.a.

The research focuses on how new economic practices and processes are taking root in Sub-Saharan Africa as a result of changing connectivities. We plan to map formal and informal types of participation in ‘knowledge economies’ in order to investigate why certain places have sustained their dominance, why others have become more central, and why some places, practices, and initiatives have declined.

To do this we are seeking a researcher with experience in quantitative social research. The researcher will work on three stages of the project. First, collecting and bringing together all necessary data. While some of the data are readily available in existing and open datasets, others require the creation of custom scripts and data collection tools. Second, using GIS and statistical packages to comprehensively analyse the data. We plan to employ both inferential models and descriptive graphics and maps. Finally, broadly disseminating this work in a variety of open and accessible formats including a data-sharing tool, an interactive website, open reports, and peer-reviewed academic journal articles. The work will also be used as a base for detailed qualitative research performed by two other members of the research team.

The successful applicant will demonstrate an ability to carry out social and spatial statistical analysis, visualise results, write for both public and academic audiences, and work with an interdisciplinary team. We also welcome applications from candidates who are additionally eager to design a future research programme in order to extend the position.

http://cdn.theatlanticcities.com/img/upload/2013/02/05/times_square/largest.jpg

Sur le « pouvoir » des cartes : Dr. Mark Graham (PHD au OII, Oxford Internet Institute) explique comment l’Internet renforce les inégalités existantes dans le monde.

On these maps of digital information, a familiar trend is emerging. Some places are covered much more densely with information than others (Manhattan compared to upstate New York, Europe compared to Africa). But that information density bears no direct relationship to the density of human populations. And the gap between these two metrics provides a new way of looking at old questions of inequality.

Every technological innovation today around a new smart-phone app or web platform improving quality of life in cities comes with a caveat. What about the people who can’t access those tools? What about the people on the other side of the digital divide who lack access to home computers, Internet connections, unlimited data plans? These are the people who go “unmapped” in the geoweb.

Researchers like Graham struggle to measure this effect, in part because our concept of a static map is disappearing. Today, online maps are dynamic: They appear differently depending on when you view them, or where you view them from, or whether or not you’re logged into gmail while you do it. It’s increasingly hard, Graham says, “to get the sort of God’s eye view that you traditionally have when looking at a map of what’s out there and what’s being both produced and represented."

Graham and University of Kentucky researcher Mathew Zook (among the academics behind the excellent Floating Sheep blog) have been trying to find ways to capture what’s out there – or, at least, Graham says, “what’s codified, indexed and out there.”

►http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/02/how-internet-reinforces-inequality-real-world/4602

Zero Geography: AAG 2013 CFP: Digital Divides, Digital Domination, and Digital Divisions of Labour

via @fil qui prépare son voyage en californie

►http://www.zerogeography.net/2012/08/aag-2013-cfp-digital-divides-digital.html

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
9-13 April 2013
Los Angeles, CA

Organizers:
Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
Monica Stephens, Institute of Cartographic Design, Humboldt State University
Alan McConchie, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia

The Web is massively uneven in terms of participation and representation. A small number of people are both powerful gatekeepers and produce the bulk of content, while the voices of the majority are largely left out. These phenomena are not unique to the geoweb; geographies of information and knowledge have always been uneven and have always been produced by (and have been producers of) power and privilege.

Although many speculated that the Internet would offer the potential for reconfigurations of these patterns, we increasingly see that digital divides often just reproduce, replicate, and reinforce earlier offline geographies. This unevenness increasingly matters as online information augments and is woven into everyday life.

However, the particular asymmetries in the representation and production of spatial information on the geoweb remain opaque and often hidden. This session will focus on the geographies, networks, and power relations of the digital inequalities of the geoweb. We hope to attract research at a range of scales (from the household to the national level) and contexts. Possible topics could include:

– Gatekeepers of digital information
– Demographic or geospatial inequalities
– Invisible exploitation of virtual labor
– Quantitative studies of geoweb representation
– Qualitative studies and virtual ethnographies
– Studies of normative assumptions built into geoweb tools and platforms
– Studies of racialized, gendered, or otherwise exclusionary geoweb spaces
– Differences in internet accessibility (i.e. mappings of broadband or wireless penetration)

#Géographie #Cartographie #Visualisation #Représentation #Internet #Data #Digital-World #Monde-numérique