Social scientists are increasingly interested in innovative organizational forms made possible with new media, known as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice, depending on the discipline. Some organizational forms can be difficult to study qualitatively because human, social, cultural, or symbolic capital is transmitted over significant distances with technologies that do not carry the full range of human expression that an ethnographer or participant observer hopes to experience. Whereas qualitative methods render rich description of human interaction, they can be unwieldy for studying complex formal and informal organizations that operate over great distances and through new media. Whereas social network analysis renders an overarching sketch of interaction, it will fail to capture detail on incommensurate yet meaningful relationships. Using social network analysis to justify case selection for ethnography, I propose `network ethnography' as a synergistic research design ...

Network Ethnography and the Hypermedia Organization: New Media, New Organizations, New Methods

Introduction: the hypermedia campaign 1. Political communication and information technology 2. Producing the hypermedia campaign 3. Learning politics from the hypermedia campaign 4. Organizational communication in the hypermedia campaign 5. Managed citizenship and information technology Appendix: Method notes on studying information technology and political communication.

New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen

Stimulated by recent high-profile incidents, concerns about business ethics have increased over the last decade. In response, research has focused on developing theoretical and empirical frameworks to understand ethical decision making. So far, empirical studies have used traditional quantitative tools, such as regression or multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), in ethics research. More advanced tools are needed. In this exploratory research, a new approach to classifying, categorizing and analyzing ethical decision situations is presented. A comparative performance analysis of artificial neural networks, MDA and chance showed that artificial neural networks predict better in both training and testing phases. While some limitations of this approach were noted, in the field of business ethics, such networks are promising as an alternative to traditional analytic tools like MDA.

Comprehensive bibliography

Technological determinism is common among journalists when reflecting on changes in their profession; several studies show that journalists ascribe great power and independent agency to technology. There are at least two reasons for the persistence of technological determinism as an explanatory factor among journalists vis-a-vis their own work: first, technology is a highly integrated and therefore very tangible part of the everyday working life of journalists; and second, the technological paradigm for explaining change in journalism has deep historical roots. It is argued that analysing journalism as labour presents a way to address both the integration of technology in the everyday working practices of journalists, and the history of the inter-relations between journalism and technology. It is further argued that journalism studies as a field has not paid much attention to journalism as labour.This article is concerned with the second part of this programme for research, i.e. the historical analysis of...

Technology and journalism-as-labour: Historical perspectives:

Two decades have passed since the publication of The Visible Hand, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s, magisterial account of the rise of the modern business enterprise in the United States. Although Chandlers pathbreaking work has been widely hailed as a landmark in business history, only rarely has anyone considered systematically its influence on the large body of historical scholarship on related topics. This essay is intended to help fill this gap. It is divided into two sections. The first section reviews Chandlers argument, touches on the relationship of Chandlers oeuvre to his personal background, and locates The Visible Hand in the context of American historical writing. The second considers how three groups of historians have responded to Chandlers ideas. These groups consist of champions who creatively elaborated on Chandler's intellectual agenda; critics who probed anomalies between Chandler's argument and their own research; and skeptics who rejected Chandlers analysis outright.

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Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s, The Visible Hand after Twenty Years

News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897

"News Over the Wires" tells the story of the development of the news wire service as a business operation strategically positioned between the telegraph industry and the press. This unique history of telegraphic news gathering and news flow evaluates the effect of the innovative technology on the evolution of the concept of news and journalistic practices. It also addresses problems of technological innovation and diffusion. Menahem Blondheim's main concern, however, is the development of oligopoly in business and the control revolution in American society. He traces the discovery of timely news as a commodity, presenting a lively and detailed account of the emergence of the New York Associated Press (AP) as the first private sector national monopoly in the United States, and Western Union as the first industrial one. The book assembles, in a narrative parade of personalities and episodes, a wide-ranging body of primary sources, many of them previously untapped. It reconstructs the career of AP's maverick manager, Daniel H. Craig, and highlights his achievements as one of the most creative and effective, if least appreciated, of America's great system builders. The Associated Press and Western Union provide a novel perspective on processes of modernization and national integration in America. "News Over the Wires" demonstrates the significance of the monopolistic structure of the news business and its important impact on economic development, on the political process, and on social integration in general.

While never formally recognized as a school of thought in its time, the work of a number of University of Toronto scholars over several decades ? most notably Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan ? formulated a number of original attempts to conceptualize communication as a phenomenon, and launched radical and innovative conjectures about its consequences. This landmark collection of essays re-assesses the existence, and re-evaluates the contribution, of the so-called Toronto School of Communication.While the theories of Innis and McLuhan are notoriously resistant to neat encapsulation, some general themes have emerged in scholarly attempts to situate them within the discipline of communications studies that they helped to define. Three such themes ? focus on the effects and consequences of communications, emphasis on communications as a process rather than as structure, and a sharp focus on the technology of communication, or the ?medium? ? are the most fundamental in characterizing the unique perspective of the Toronto School. This collection not only represents a crucial step in defining the ?Toronto School,? it also provides close analysis of the ideas of its individual members.

Menahem Blondheim

Papers

News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897

News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897

The Toronto School of Communication Theory: Interpretations, Extensions, Applications

10. The Global Village, the Nation State and Ethnic Community: Audiences of Communication and the Boundaries of Identity

Copperhead Gore: Benjamin Wood's Fort Lafayette and Civil War America