The individual amateur photographer, accustomed to recording the private world in which they live-and distributing it to, say, friends or family through the innocuous family album or home VCR-may not always appreciate a would-be global audience with its myriad of somewhat treacherous political contexts. Videos of soldiers playing with guns are not altogether unusual in themselves-any more perhaps than videos of mechanics playing with cars-but what is unusual, is when the images are placed on systems such as Youtube, they become significant in new ways and blur the line between public and private as they may be applied to public debates unimaginable by the original creators. This is what happened with the Australian soldiers inIraq , and it is not the first time that the Western forces in the region have had to go on the defensive because of private images leaked by soldiers to the public through an otherwise tight media regime. There are in fact, surprisingly few restrictions placed on Australian soldiers in Iraq in terms of private photography, except in sensitive military operations or in Abu Ghraib prison. But when this private photography becomes public-which is increasing easy to do through systems such as Youtube and Flickr-then the context and thus the meaning of the images may change. Thus what were once naïve private images possibly taken for siblings or friends of high jinks with fellow soldiers become public, then they become reconstituted as images of the military's 'disciplinary malaise' and 'cultural insensitivity'. What were once casual snaps possibly only intended for sympathetic fellow travellers, they now become public images of broader military chauvinism and incompetence. When personal images are recorded and placed online they become public property and a 'media archive' ripe for picking should an event such as the death of Private Jake Kovco due to a mishandling of a weapon in a Baghdad barracks occur. Images can be taken from this archive and used in fresh media contexts on television and newspapers to support a number of political agendas. Increasingly, everyday people can record the world around them but what they see and record may be, for better or worse, of interests to the major broadcasters and print media. Take for example the story of 'Tammy' a 17 year Singapore girl who filmed herself having sex with her 21 year old boyfriend on her camera phone. As the story goes, the camera phone was stolen by a jealous rival and the video ended up on the Internet. The video became extremely popular and circulated around the world and the story became headline news in many of Asia's leading newspapers. This case may be extraordinary, but nevertheless young people are increasingly recording themselves in compromising positions and distributing it among their friends and other contexts in which they may not have complete control. Youtube, and a number of other online video distribution services, now allow video uploads directly from your mobile phone. Mob logs or systems that allow mobile phone users to upload images and videos are increasing popular, so much so that Textamerica, one of the largest moblogs already has half a million users. A brief search of Textamerica doesn't reveal too many risky or controversial images, partly because it has systems in place to prevent this occurring, but other systems are not so strict in policing their content.

Youtube has numerous easily found videos of people smoking joints and late night drunken parties. These videos could result in all sorts of embarrassment and recriminations should the authors be revealed in less tolerant contexts. There are videos of illegal car racing and other illicit activities that could be reconstituted in all sorts of campaigns and circumstances never imagined by the original producers. The more of the stuff there is, then the more that other media have to choose from to drive their message home to support a particular agenda. An increasing amount of all sorts of citizen made media is ending up in the main stream press, but as the Australian soldiers' case reveals, this is not always envisaged by the people who made it. Caution must always be exercised when uploading video to an online distribution services or distributing it among friend as the community that you envisage will be viewing it may be a lot less discrete or sympathetic that you initially imagined.

Technorati : australia, internet, iraq, newmedia, privacy, public, web2.0, youtube

Del.icio.us : australia, internet, iraq, newmedia, privacy, public, web2.0, youtube

Ice Rocket : australia, internet, iraq, newmedia, privacy, public, web2.0, youtube

The development of automatic data processing, which enables vast quantities of data to be transmitted within seconds across national frontiers, and indeed across continents, has made it necessary to consider privacy protection in relation to personal data. Privacy protection laws have been introduced, or will be introduced shortly, in approximately one half of OECD Member countries (Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and the United States have passed legislation. Belgium, Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland have prepared draft bills) to prevent what are considered to be violations of fundamental human rights, such as the unlawful storage of personal data, the storage of inaccurate personal data, or the abuse or unauthorised disclosure of such data.OnOn

On the other hand, there is a danger that disparities inationalegislationsnsns could hamper the free flow of personal data across frontiers; these flows have greatly increased in recent years and are bound to grow further with the widespread introduction of new computer and communications technology. Restrictions on these flows could cause serious disruption in important sectors of the economy, such as banking and insurance.
n OECD Member countries considered it necessary to develop Guidelines which would help to harmonise national privacy legislation and, while upholding such human rights, would at the same time prevent interruptions in international flows of data. They represent a consensus on basic principles which can be built into existing national legislation, or serve as a basis for legislation in those countries which do not yet have it.
The Guidelines, in the form of a Recommendation by the Council of the OECD, were developed by a group of government experts under the chairmanship of The Hon. Mr. Justice M.D. Kirby, Chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission. The Recommendation was adopted and became applicable on 23rd September, 1980 (link).

By Danny Sullivan, Editor-In-Chief
Traffick.com's Andrew Goodman wrote recently in an essay about meta tags, "If somebody would just declare the end of the metatag era, full stop, it would make it easier on everyone."

I'm happy to oblige, at least in the case of the meta keywords tag. Now supported by only one major crawler-based search engine — Inktomi — the value of adding meta keywords tags to pages seems little worth the time. In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead. And like Andrew, good riddance, I say! (October 2002)

Globalisation is a somewhat difficult concept to ground, but it is an important concept nevertheless for our understandings of the 'big picture' Internet. The term globalisation did (at least in the popular mind) come to the fore around the year 2000 (about the same time as the US led technology boom. And there was a lot of confusion during this period about what ‘globalisation' was and where it was leading us and who were the main instigators.  There were major protests against (a certain type of) globalisation all over the world from Seattle, to Geneva, to Washington, to London (and of course here in Melbourne).

 This is a video taken at the Seattle protest in 1999.

These shot were taken in Seattle in 1999 during the protest against the gathering of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Arguably it was within this anti-globalisation protest movement (that originated in Seattle in 1999) that the Internet was first adapted for political purposes (and it was where the Indymedia network came to the fore). The protests were primarily directed at the institutions that govern world trade and finance (WTO, WEF) and the new-structures of the so-called global economy (and the economy is of course one of the major defining factors of globalisation).

A global economy

Professor Richard Langhore states in his 2001 book ‘the Coming of Globalisation: its evolution and contemporary consequences'.

Since 1979, the turnover in foreign exchange markets has risen to $1.5 trillion each day, 12 times the level of 1979 and over 50 times that of world trade. The effects on societies and individuals can be either catastrophic or enriching, but the circumstances are equally volatile The Coming of Globalisation: Its Evolution and contemporary Consequences, Palgrave, New York, 2001, p.20

Is globalisation inevitable?

(Economic) Globalisation isn't inevitable; it has developed as the direct result of strategic choices by governments and corporations in the past thirty years. In Australia, globalisation was exacerbated by the Hawke/Keating Labor governments (1984-1996) who deregulated large portions of the economy, floated our currency and embraced the all-trade-is-good mantra of global economic policy. Most nations, including Australia, moved away from collective centralised economic planning and publicly managed state owned enterprises to liberal and laissez-faire policies and free trade. This resulted in the formation of a trans-national or 'global economy' that many critics claim only benefits private pursuits and global corporations.

There are probably no great surprises on this map of how the global economy is divided up in terms of wealth and countries. And you will find a fairy similar arrangement in terms of Internet usage.

The Network Society

This it is not the first time that the world has had a global economy; but as the renown sociologist Manuel Castells' claims, it is the first time that we have had a global economy that works in real-time. What he means by this is that the majority of the world's economic activity is now controlled by tens of thousands of flickering computer screens in the world's key financial hubs

The global economy is part of what he terms the 'the network society'. And a network society is characterised by:

 …the almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital and cultural communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and production. The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures. Both they and the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation. Our dependence on the new models of informational flows gives enormous power to those in a position to control them to control us. (from dust cover, Manual Castells Rise of Network Society, Vol 1, 1999).

This map was made in the early 1990s (and it is from Martin Dodge's and Rob Kitchin's ‘Atlas of Cyberspace)

And it is pretty clear where most of the Internet traffic was at that time and I'm not sure how much it is changed since this time.

And this is one of the most well-know visualisations of the Internet and was it was also made in the early 1990s

Post Industrailisation

There are of course, numerous continuities between the present historical period and past periods of globalisation. The free-trade movement emanating from Britain in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and Colonialism and Socialism were also times of globalisation. Before the First World War, Western Europe controlled most of the world's landmass, and after the Second World War, communism controlled two-thirds of the world's people.(From, Samuel. P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations, Touchstone Books, London,1998, p.84).

The late 19th Century form of globalisation was largest driven by Britain and it also had its defined new technologies, such as the Telegraph and the steamship. Our present global economy couldn't operate without certain economic and technological shifts; the most important shift for our purposes is generally known as ‘post-industrialisation'.

Australia, like all Western economies, has post-industrialised, meaning that the majority of employment and wealth generation is in knowledge production and consumption. This means that most people are employed in industries like banking, insurance, education, administration, call centres, tourism, media, and other industries that are more concerned with ideas and services, rather than manufacturing tangible goods and products.

Post-Industrialism emerged in the past three decades (parallel to globalisation) and is understood as a decline of labour-intensive manufacturing operations through new production efficiencies, automation, and the shift of manufacturing to low-wage developing economies (such as China, Brazil, and India). Popularly Post-Industrailisation is branded the ‘information economy' or even the ‘new economy' and is typified by a prevailing service sector and an expansion of industries that employ most citizens in knowledge production (ie. the media). And this has caused a massive decline in employment in the manufacturing sector (as a percentage of the workforce) and is also, as many argue, caused problems with legitimacy for Leftist and social democratic politics.

And this is a picture of a very famous Melbourne factory in 1906 called Foy and Gibsons on Smith Street, Collingwood. And it was at the time the largest factory in the Southern Hemisphere and was like a Myer or Coles' Variety Store, but the major difference was that it manufactured many of it goods on site.

This last Foy and Gibson's store closed down in the 1960s and most of the buildings are now apartments. And this is a story repeated in many inner-city districts of cities in the western world, where whole districts have de-industrialised and the factories have been converted to apartments (and the manufacturing jobs have been exported overseas). 

An industrial era factory in the US.

A global ideology?

Another important component of the globalisation process is the ascendancy of one major ideology after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. This ideology, driven by national governments, and a number of major corporations, is 'neo-liberalism'. This is an ideology that claims that markets are driven by their own discipline and this is said to be a 'natural' process and governments and communities should not interfere in this 'natural' process. For some, most notably the people that run our largest corporations, neo-liberalism seems to work, but for others, like people that believe in collective decision making, or people who create noncommercial culture, or people who work out side of the market sphere, it is dis- empowering. It is an ideology that is based on competition, individual consumption, and assumes that economic equality is self regulating, not something carefully managed.

(you can figure this cartoon out yourself)

The movement of people

Another component within the globalisation process (that is often conveniently overlooked) is the movement of people. Within the present global framework it is much easier for money and goods and services to move than it is for most people (or in other words it is possible for corporations to invest in nearly any part of the world and profit from the low wages of developing nations, but for low paid workers, it is very difficult to have any geographical mobility at all).

In recent years, migration has become a divisive political issue in Australia and other western countries partly because of the rise of the disaffected popular right in Australia, Europe, and the United States (that many claim that this is a consequence of the structural changes of economic globalisation).

Although the world may be opening up to free-trade and ideas and services (through such means as the Internet), its also closing for refuges,  guest workers, and other migrants.

Summary:

Capitalism has always been international and relied on internationalism to expand; however it is now largely accepted that this expansion has entered a new stage. Authors such as Richard Falk, Thomas Friedman and Manual Castells concur that the end of the east-west logic of the Cold War ended the eighty year ideological wrestle between centralised state economic planning and market driven models. Likewise, Eric Hobsbawn, in his masterful empirical history The Age of Extremes, claims that what we understand as the Twentieth Century ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.[1]

So what we are left with is a world with only one major superpower, one major economic ideology, one major political system driven by a laissez faire, post-industrial economy (typified and partly driven by the Internet) that is increasing the wealth gap between and within communities everywhere.

Globalisation or ‘globalism' circulates around the belief that complex interconnections are rapidly developing between societies, institutions, cultures, collectives and individuals worldwide. This is partly because if the Internet, but as the Internet can also foster a certain style of globalisation from below, it may also assist in a more positive style of globalisation. The Internet has been a catalyst for the rise of trans-national mechanisms of communication that have obviated the traditional national boundaries of political communication (for better or worse). This could result in a very different vision of what we today understand as the global (as long as the Internet remains on the global stage with its open publishing abilities, and as long as some of the barriers to access are overcome, and as long as progressive forces network globally, and not rabid dogs).

[1] Eric Hobsbawn, Age of Extremes: The short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, Abucus, London, 1994.

Alse See: Jerry Everand, Virtual States: The Internet and the Boundaries of the Nation State, Routledge, London, 2000.p45.

1. Why Blogs? Why is Blogging of Interest? 
2. Blog History?
3. Blog Technology
4. Blog Economics
5. Blogs; Social Aspects
6. Case Studies and Closing Comments

1) What is Privacy 

Privacy can simply be defined as the right to be left alone. 'It is a comprehensive right and it is the right most valued by a free people. It is a fundamental human right.  A society in whish there was a total lack of privacy would be intolerable; but then again a society in which there was a total privacy would be no society at all’ (the is a balance needed). Privacy is the right of people to make personal decisions regarding their own intimate matters, it is the right of people to lead their lives in a manner that is reasonably secluded from public scrutiny, and it is the right of people to be free from such things as unwarranted drug testing or electronic surveillance (edited from Answers.com http://www.answers.com/topic/privacy)

 What is information privacy? 

Information privacy is the ability of an individual or group to stop information about themselves from becoming known to people other than those they choose to give the information to. Privacy is sometimes related to anonymity although it is often most highly valued by people who are publicly known.

Privacy can also be seen as an aspect of security—one in which there are trade-offs between the interests of one group and another can become particularly clear. (edited from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy)

UN Declaration of Human Rights. 

The UN Declaration of Human Rights defined Privacy as this:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone had the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.  

Without Privacy 

Without privacy life would be hell. It would mean that you would be highly vulnerable to the control of others, you would lose your freedom which may lead to inhibition and tentativeness and you may be less spontaneous and you would be more likely to be manipulated. 

2) How might privacy change in the digital domain? 

The Internet threatens privacy in a number of ways, partly because it is possible to record everything that you do on line (partly through IP addresses). The government of Australia and the US and other countries regularly monitor electronic communication as do commercial companies such as Google, and Microsoft. Google monitors all its searches (which it uses in its advertising strategies) and Microsoft, particularly through its Hotmail system, monitors a great deal of the world’s email traffic. There is also an increasing trend for companies to monitor their staff’s email and web searching habits as well as monitor their staff through cameras and other such devices.

Echelon 

Two of the largest electronic surveillance initiatives originate in the US; a leader in the tactics of surveillance. The first is the Echelon system which is managed by the National Security Agency of the US. It is said to be capable of intercepting and decrypting almost any electronic message sent anywhere in the world via satellite. Microwave, cellular, and fiberoptic (so this is any message in the whole world between anyone!). And Echelon has come under intense criticism, especially from the European Union who have accused the US of using the Echelon system to spy on European corporation to gain commercial advantage for US corporations (and Echelon is said to operate in Australia through the US’s Pine Gap facility)

Carnivore 

The second electronic surveillance system is called Carnivore (it is a great name) and is used by the US FBI to monitor selective e-mail messages and other Internet traffic. The opponents of this system insist that the FBI should be required to get a court order before they tap someone’s email, as they need to with the telephone.

Arguments for Government Monitoring 

There are in fact a number of compelling reasons why a Governments need to monitor its people. 

There is Increased crime detection – Partly due to the placement of CCTV cameras, the success rate of conviction has increased as criminals are more likely to be convicted due to the ability to prove a suspect committed an offence.

Prevention of terrorism -. If communications between devices can be monitored, the activities of terrorists can be prevented before any terrorist attacks is carried out, and their networks can be disclosed by analysing the traffic flows in the networks.

Arguments against Government Monitoring 

And there are a number of arguments against government monitoring.  

Surveillance infringes on civil liberties – there is a lack of anonymity if facial recognition systems can be used, for example, to identify protestors in a demonstration.

CCTV cameras displace crime, rather than eliminate it – criminals move to areas where CCTV is not in place.

Due to the enormous manpower require to operate and monitor many surveylence systems, many crimes (even if recorded) go unnoticed for hours, days, or even months.

Monitoring can be used in committing crime, for example police officers have been caught using cameras to invade the personal privacy of women walking through airports.

Gathering data about many people in one place (the monitoring centre) provides a vulnerable source of data which would fuel illegal activities if its integrity was compromised.

The same technology used for disclosing networks of terrorists and criminals can be used by repressive regimes for finding dissidents and political dissenters.

 (edited from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy) 

Techniques for Manipulating Personal Information 

What are some of the techniques that governments and other institutions use to manipulate personal information? 

The first system is called Data Merging and this is when a number of databases, say a database with your drivers licence details is merged with a database about your car registration. Or it is when a database with your University subjects is merged with the Department of Immigration. Or it is when the Department of Immigration and Centrelink link up (so you can’t get unemployment benefits when you are holidaying in Thailand).

Say for example, that you give information about your income and credit history to a bank in order to secure a loan. The you give information about your age and medical history to an insurance company to purchase life insurance. You then give information about your views on certain social issues to a political organisation that you wish to join. Each of these organisations can be said to have a legitimate need for this information to make certain decisions about you — insurance companies have a legitimate need to know about your age and medical history before agreeing to sell you life insurance and lending institutions have a legitimate need to know about your income and credit history before agreeing to lend you money to purchase a house or car.

And insofar as you voluntarily give these organisations the information requested, no breach of your privacy has occurred. Now suppose that without your knowledge and consent, information about you that resides in the insurance company’s database is transferred and merged with information about you that resides in the lending institution’s database or in the political organisation’s database.

Even though you voluntarily gave certain information about yourself to three different organisations, and even though you voluntarily authorised each organisation to have the information, it does not follow that you authorised any one organisation to have some combination of that information. When organisations merge information about you in a way that you did not specifically authorise, you lose control over the way in which that information about you is exchanged.

Yet this is precisely what happens to much of the personal information that businesses and organisations gather and store electronically” (edited from Herman H Tavani, Ethics and Technology: Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communicatation Technology, Wiley, 2004 p.127.)

(and this can happed when a company goes broke or is bought by another company; the data files can become one and be used in way that you didn’t originally intend).   

And Data Merging is part of the impetus behind the proposed Australia Identification Card system where many government databases could become one uber database and link all government services through the one card and the one database (so the Australia Card System isn’t just about a small plastic card that we might be forced to carry, but it is also about a very large, and very expensive, and very vulnerable national database).

The second system is called Data Matching and this is when information on a discrete database is used to match similar records on another database. Such as the Taxation office matching banking records or matching Australian Stock Market holdings to taxation claims or the ASIO matching data against suspect banking transactions that may signal terrorist activities. The criticisms of this is similar to data merging as you gave information to one department or organisation to be used in one context but you didn’t give permission for that information to be used in another context (Herman H Tavani, Ethics and Technology: Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communicatation Technology, Wiley, 2004 p.127.)  

This is similar to data merging and one of the most famous cases was in the US when biometric identifiers were used at the Superbowl in 2001. Facial recognition software was used to scan the faces of individuals entering the stadium. The digitised facial images were then instantly matched against images in a centralised database to suspected criminals and terrorists”. (Tavani p.130).

 And the final system is called Data Mining and this is the technique most favoured by the Private Sphere. Private companies, such as Microsoft, can use the Information that they gather through systems such as Hotmail to uncover social trends that places them in a better position to market goods and services to people (like Google that uses targeted adds). If a company can understand broad commercial and social trends, through data mining large volumes of information, then they have a great competitive advantage over other companies. 

And although data mining is not concerned about individual records, it can be used to make important decisions about those individuals (ie. Hotmail could be used to discover the sexual habits of young people or the political beliefs of young people that could be used against then as a group). Or say data mining techniques could be used to discover implicit patterns of behaviour of young people via using Microsoft Messenger, sold to the ANZ bank, and used to discriminate against giving loans to you (even though you yourself may not identify with the majority habits of this group).

3) How does the Internet threaten privacy?

Cookies and Spyware 

And Cookies and Spyware, that nearly all desk top PCs have installed upon them usually without the permission of the user, send information back to various companies who can use it to better understand your web browsing activities (or for malicious purposes). And theage.com.au installs an cookie on you machine that The Age uses to uncover the browsing habits of it readers so that it can better target its online advertising to them (and some online advertising companies can access cookies from more than one web site, thus cross referencing them to gain a greater insight to your browsing habits).

Workplace Monitoring 

A trend that we have seen in recent years is for businesses to monitor their employees through various tactics. They may monitor their employees through CCTV cameras, or through monitoring the alarm system to see what time they arrive at work, or they may monitor their email to make sure that no trade secrets are being let out of the company, or they may monitor their web-browsing habits to make sure that no illicit sites or non-work-related sites are visited. Most large organisations, including most universities, have policies in place to govern the use of the internet and email and have systems to monitor its use.  

A Perth academic called Professor John Weckert argues that work place monitoring achieves very little and that it is better to instil a culture of trust in the workplace. He argues that a workplace is much more efficient where there is trust and if workers are heavily monitored, then they will simply do what they are told and what go beyond this and show initiative. (How does the boss monitor you?)

4) What are some of the laws within Australia to protect privacy? 

What are some of the laws that protect your privacy in Australia and particular your information privacy?  The main ones that concern us are in the Privacy Act of 1988 and particularly the National Privacy Principles (NPP). There is no constitutional right to privacy in Australia, such as in France, and there is a patchwork of state and federal laws protect privacy. 

National Privacy Pronciples (NPPs)

NPP1 – Collection:  Only collect personal information that is necessary for performance of functions

NPP2 – Use and Disclosure: Use and disclose personal information only for the primary purpose for which it was collected or a secondary purpose the person would reasonably expect. Use for other secondary purposes should have the consent of the person

NPP3 – Data Quality: Requires personal information is accurate, complete, and up to date

NPP 4 – Data Security: Take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure

NPP 5 – Openness: Organisations must be open about how they handle personal information. Must have clearly expressed policies on management of personal information and provide the policies to anyone who asks

NPP 6 – Access and Collection: Individuals have a right to seek access to their personal information and have it corrected if it is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date

 nNPP 7 – Identifiers: Government identifiers  eg. Tax file, Medicare, and Drivers License, can only be used for purpose for which thet were issued (and should now be used by private sector)

Further Reading

1. The Australian Privacy Principles (1988)
2. The Privacy Foundation
3. The Federal Privacy Commissioner 
4. John Weckert, 'Trust Corruption and Surveillance in the Electronic Workplace' Information Age, 2002
5. Victorial Law Reform Commisson "Workplace Privacy"
6. Rodger Clarke (ANU) "Australia Card"

Every wondered why it is a bad idea for your boss to monitor you at work? Ever wanted to hone your arguments against monitoring (to take on your boss)? Good old fashioned trust is the most productive form of 'monitoring' at work it seems. Here is an article from Professor John Weckert, from the Centre of Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, at Charles Sturt University in Western Australia (from 'Information Age' 10 August, 2002)

There is little doubt that trust is important. A group, whether an organisation or a society, can achieve much more with it than without it. Things are more efficient where there is trust. Where there is lack of trust there must be surveillance, filling out of documents and keeping of records, which is all largely unproductive work. Societies function better the more trust that there is, and without any trust could not function at all.

The Abstract

Abstract -It is important that your final abstract clearly describes the essence of your work in your paper. Below is a sample of an abstract that clearly states the purpose of the paper and summarizes the content. Please follow the sample to create a clear description of your work for better recognition within the indexes.

SAMPLE ABSTRACT

This paper introduces the Chaos Theory as a means of studying information systems. It argues that the Chaos Theory, combined with new techniques for discovering patterns in complex quantitative and qualitative evidence, offers a potentially more substantive approach to understanding the nature of information systems in a variety of contexts.  Furthermore, the authors hope that understanding the underlying assumptions and theoretical constructs through the use of the Chaos Theory will not only inform researchers of a better design for studying information systems, but also assist in the understanding of intricate relationships between different factors.

First, the authors describe what the paper is about. (This chapter introduces the Chaos Theory as a means of studying information systems.)

They summarize the content of the paper. (It argues that the Chaos Theory, combined with new techniques for discovering patterns in complex quantitative and qualitative evidence, offers a potentially more substantive approach to understanding the nature of information systems in a variety of contexts.) 

Then, they explain their purpose or objectives for writing the paper. (Furthermore, the authors hope that understanding the underlying assumptions and theoretical constructs through the use of the Chaos Theory will not only inform researchers of a better design for studying information systems, but also assist in the understanding of intricate relationships between different factors.)

Note: Your abstract does not necessarily need to be three sentences like the sample above – but it will need to be between 50-200 words, nor does it need to be worded the same way. Use your own words, but capture the idea behind this sample abstract.

Robert Verberg

Delft University of Technology

Caslon Analytics is an Australian internet research, analysis and strategies consultancy. We advise on electronic publishing, commerce, marketing and regulation. Our services include privacy audits, regulatory advice and market feasibility studies. We have met the needs of businesses, governments and individuals in Australia and overseas.

Also, another tutorial if you still don’t get it.