Call for Papers Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)

Research 2.0: Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds as Research Environments

Please visit the minitrack website for more details: http://www.ualberta.ca/~drathi/hicss-43/research2.0.html Part of the Track: Internet and Digital Economy

Paper Submission Deadline:June 15, 2009

The Web 2.0 environment offers many new opportunities for researchers undertaking both qualitative and quantitative research (e.g., increased potential for collecting data from online communities and social networks around the globe). However, these technologies can also be used by researchers to enhance the research process (e.g., facilitating research collaboration between project team members to develop tools and technologies to analyze data and write papers). Understanding the privacy and legal implications in both contexts – i.e., the implementation of the study, as well as the research process – is an area that warrants further exploration in a minitrack environment.

This minitrack invites papers on topics including (but not limited to):

Changing landscape for qualitative and quantitative research due to emergence of Web 2.0 and virtual worlds; Development of online research communities; Online collaborative techniques in Web 2.0 environments for advancing research methodologies; Use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies in data collection and analyses; Use of Web 2.0 platforms and virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) such as avatars, online communities, for conducting qualitative and quantitative research; Effectiveness of Web 2.0 for increasing participating rates in research (e.g., questionnaire response rates; online focus groups); Using user-generated content as a data source in research; Ethical and legal issues (e.g., privacy; copyright) in conducting qualitative and quantitative research in virtual environments; Use of social computing in building research communities; Role of social computing in the advancement of data collection techniques; New data collection approaches in Web 2.0 environments.

Minitrack Co-Chairs: Lisa M. Given (Primary Contact) School of Library and Information Studies International Institute for Qualitative Methodology (IIQM) University of Alberta Email: lisa.given@ualberta.ca

Dinesh Rathi School of Library and Information Studies University of Alberta Email: drathi@ualberta.ca