Yesterday I got a book in my mailbox. Entitled “Networked Publics“, the book is a result of the collaboration of 13 scholars, including me, at the Annenberg Center for Communication of University of Southern California. My contribution is the chapter on politics.

The book itself is available for purchase from Amazon.com.

Networked Publics
# Hardcover: 176 pages
# Publisher: The MIT Press (October 31, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0262220857
# ISBN-13: 978-0262220859
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Last Monday, Kevin Finneran, Editor in-Chief of Issues in Science and Technology, came to where I work (CSPO ASU) to give a workshop on how to write op-ed. It was a useful and enjoyable one-hour-and-half workshop.

Here are some tips from him as copied from my notes… plus some pics from google!

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Ten worst role models for writing op-ed (for general audience) (more…)

Since 2003 I no longer submitted any abstracts/proposals to any regular conferences, except if there’s a bigger purpose to attend besides the conference itself. I got tired with big conferences where everything is too big and vague, with too many parallel sessions. My first year of PhD studies, I still sent abstracts to compete for an acceptance though I only attended when funded. Later on, still during my grad student era, as soon as I published articles internationally, I started getting invitations to speak, which of course came with funding. And like a never-ending miracle, invitations keep coming. Weird, isn’t it? Think about it…. I never understand why I could be that lucky.
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Today is the first day of Spring Semester. I am excited to start my semester, however, my body is still in a different timezone. During the break, I went to bed at around 4 — 5 am. And started my day in the afternoon, as if I lived in Auckland or Casablanca or anywhere in the world with GMT +11 or GMT +12. Unfortunately, I live in GMT -7!
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It’s been too long, really. More than three years. At last, finally the book from our civic space project is out. I have my chapter there, Chapter 11, about civic spaces in Jakarta. Sadly, the book is too expensive for regular people to buy so only libraries (in developed countries) will have the book. I wish this kind of book can be cheaper. But I am trying to get my e-copy so I can put it online, just like what I have been doing with my other publications. Fingers crossed, I hope to get the file very soon.

update Dec 15, 2007: the chapter is already online here.

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Several days ago, I finished a final draft of an essay entitled “Networked Politics: Deliberation, Mobilization and Everything In-Between” to be published as a chapter in the Networked Publics book edited by Kazys Varnelis. The first draft was written with my co-author, Mark Kann, a senior poli-sci professor at USC. Now, after I rewrote it, it goes to the editor and we’ll see whether it needs some further revisions or not. Academic publishing, especially in North American setting, is a meticulous and very impractical business. It pursues quality to the max — not only quality of substance (research) but also of writing/style/grammar. It needs a year or more just to get one small piece to be published. Let alone the book. Every single piece goes through blind pe-er reviews, sometimes double, and it goes back and forth to you and the editor until everybody’s satisfied! Well, what can I do? I chose to be a scholar, nobody forced me to do this so I should follow the rules and so far I don’t get real troubles (yet) in publishing. And when I don’t want to conform with traditions and rules, I’ll just ramble freely in this blog, hehe.

So, it was a big relief that I finally finished. It’s a long essay and while being empirical, it’s a conceptual writing. Since it may put you to sleep easily, if I copy the whole essay, here I copy one section of it. It represents perhaps only 15% of the whole essay.
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My article entitled “Cyber-Urban Activism and Political Change in Indonesia” has just been published in Re:Activism issue of the Eastbound. (more…)

In the book reviews section on its September edition, Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies (RCCS) of the Department of Communication at the University of Washington published two reviews on the book entited Asia.Com: Asia Encounters the Internet. This book was published in 2003 by Routledge and edited by KC Ho, Randy Kluver, and CC Yang, and I contributed one chapter entitled “From Cyber to Virtual (and back again): Public Sphere, Civil Society and the Internet in Indonesia”. (more…)

Reporters Without Borders or Reporters sans frontières has just released a handbook for bloggers and cyberdissidents who want to protect themselves from recrimination, censors and surveillance. The handbook, partly funded by French government, is meant help cyberactivists with handy tips and technical advice on how to get round censorship and surveillance by strategizing the uses of blogs for various situations. (more…)