Dr. Franz Beitzinger is researcher at the Council on Public Policy and lecturer at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Bayreuth. His research focuses on political economy theory.

Thomas Berker is associate professor at NTNU, Norway’s largest technical university. Recently, he has been involved in research on the use of ICTs in transnational knowledge work (EMTEL II, a research and training network funded by the European Commission) and on cultural and social aspects of energy use within built structures (SmartBuild, an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council). One of the issues common to these otherwise rather disparate research topics is “the everyday of technical infrastructures”. His interest in networks/assemblages is part of his efforts to get to grips with these inconspicuous, yet fundamental socio-technical structures, without which contemporary societies would collapse.

Robert van Boeschoten is a philosopher (Ph.D. on Marshall McLuhan, 1996) who has his interest in the cultural impact of media on our society at large, and particularly in organisations. His work is divided over two institutions; The polytechnic of Amsterdam (HvA) at the Interactive Media department where he teaches management and organisation, and The University for Humanistics (UvH) in Utrecht where he is coordinator and tutor for the part-time Ph.D. programme for applied philosophical research.

Megan Boler is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and earned her Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California. Her books include Tactics in Hard Times: Spaces and Practices of New Media (forthcoming MIT Press, 2008). Her essays have been published in such journals as Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and New Media and Society. In 2005 she was one of five external fellows invited to the Dartmouth Humanities Center Institute on Cyberdisciplinarity, and is the PI of a three-year funded study, “Rethinking Media, Democracy and Citizenship: New Media Practices And Online Digital Dissent After September 11.

Marianne van den Boomen has been working as editor, freelance journalist and web designer. She was involved with the early Dutch Digital City (1994), and published several articles and books about Internet culture (Leven op het Net: De sociale betekenis van virtuele gemeenschappen, Amsterdam 2000). Since 2003 she is employed at the Department of Media and Culture Studies (Utrecht University), where she teaches BA- and MA-courses in the program New Media and Digital Culture. She is currently working on her Ph.D., a philosophical inquiry into the role of metaphors in Internet ontology.

Katy Börner is an Associate Professor of Information Science in the School of Library and Information Science, Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Informatics, Core Faculty of Cognitive Science, Research Affiliate of the Biocomplexity Institute, Fellow of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology, Member of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory and Founding Director of the new Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University. Her research focuses on the development of data analysis and visualization techniques that support information access, understanding, and management. She is particularly interested in the study of the structure and evolution of scientific disciplines; the analysis and visualization of online activity; and the development of cyberinfrastructures for large scale scientific collaboration and computation.

Charli Carpenter is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Oregon and is the author of Innocent Women and Children: Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians. Dr. Carpenter’s current research focuses on the human rights advocacy network, investigating why certain issues but not others end up on the international agenda.

Matteo Cernison graduated in Communication Sciences at the University of Padova with a thesis on transnational Civil Society networks in the Mediterranean area. He collaborated with professors Padovani, Nesti and Tuzzi in research projects concerning women and media in Italy, eDemocracy in the European Union and European mobilizations for media justice and communication rights. At present he is mastering his knowledge in traditional social network analysis, issue networks on the Web and constructivism in International Relations.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and Visiting Associate Professor of the History of Science at Harvard AY2006-7. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT 2006) and co-editor of New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (Routledge 2005). She is currently working on a monograph entitled _Programmed Visions: Software, DNA, Race_ (forthcoming MIT, 2008).

Wayne Clements is a visual artist and writer living in London. In 2005 he completed a Ph.D. in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design. His research is into rules and instructions applied to text. His (non computer) poetry, visual work and prose are published in a number of magazines and books. His artworks are included on http://www.rhizome.org/ and http://www.runme.org/, repositories of online art, and presented in FILE Electronic Language International Festival, São Paolo, Brazil (2005 and 06); Rencontre Festival Paris/Berlin (2005); “RADICAL SOFTWARE”, Piemonte Share Festival, Torino, Italy (2006); and the Web Biennial 2007. un_wiki received Award of Distinction, Net Vision category, Prix Ars Electronica (2006).

Noshir Contractor (http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/nosh) is a Professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Department of Psychology, the Graduate School of Library & Information Science, and the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Co-Director of the Age of Networks Initiative at the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Research Affiliate of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. His research program is investigating factors that lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically linked knowledge networks in a wide range of communities. He has been funded continuously for the past decade by major grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, as well as by NASA, the National Institutes of Health, Rockefeller Foundation and the European Union.

Florian Cramer, born 1969, studied Comparative Literature and Art History in Berlin, Konstanz and Amherst/Massachusetts, 1999-2004 junior lecturer in Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin, since 2006 course director of the Media Design M.A. programme at Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam; writer and essayist on literature, art, computing and Internet culture, http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70

Michael Dieter is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His thesis, entitled ‘Network Aesthetics,’ critically investigates key examples of locative media, viral artworks and retro-software modification from the perspective of post-structural theory and political philosophy. He is currently an editor of antiTHESIS, a fully refereed transdisciplinary journal of postgraduate research, and his recent publications have appeared in Cultural Studies Review and Media International Australia.

Sophia Drakopoulou is a lecturer in Media, Culture and Communication in Middlesex University. She’s also a Ph.D. candidate in the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College. Her research analyses the cultural significance of the private, virtual communicational spaces being created by the mobile phone and other radio based technologies. In particular her research is exploring Instantaneous Mobile Messaging as a social space and as a subversive practice. Sophia has been a member of the Cybersalon team since 1998 and has helped to organise and generate themes for Cybersalon events.

John Duda is a Ph.D. candidate at the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University, where he is working on a project tracking connections between autonomous political theory and anti-reductionist biologies. He also works as a media activist and computer programmer with various nodes in the global Indymedia network, and is a founder of Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, an infoshop and social center in Baltimore.

Kirsten Foot is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the reciprocal relationship between information/communication technologies and society. As co-director of the WebArchivist.org research group, she is developing new techniques for studying social and political action on the Web. She is particularly interested in practice-based theories of technology and the dynamics and politics of knowledge production in networked environments. She is the co-author of Web Campaigning (MIT Press, 2006).

Laura Forlano is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communications at Columbia University researching the socio-economic implications of the use of mobile and wireless technology. She is also board member and special interest group leader for NYCwireless (http://www.nycwireless.net), a non-profit organization that promotes the deployment of free public WiFi networks. Forlano received her B.A. in Asian Studies from Skidmore College and spent her junior year at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. She received a Diploma in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy and her Master’s in Science and Technology Policy from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.

Francesca Forno (Ph.D., Strathclyde University, 2003) is lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bergamo, Italy. Her main individual project has been a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the political and social conflicts that occurred in Italy from 1988 to 1997. More recently her attention has shifted towards the study and implications (theoretical, methodological and empirical) of certain new emerging forms of action, such as market-based mobilisations and political consumerism.

Matthew Fuller is David Gee Reader in Digital Media at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of ‘Behind the Blip, essays on the culture of software’, ‘Media Ecologies, materialist energies in art and technoculture’ and editor of the forthcoming ‘Software Studies, a lexicon’.

Kristoffer Gansing is a PhD Candidate in Media and Communication Science at K3 – School of Arts & Communication, Malmö University, Sweden. The working title of his dissertation is: “Local Media – Global Flows” – a practice-based media research project on the interaction between local, alternative media and new media through a series of collaborative case studies. Kristoffer Gansing is also co-curator of the media archaeology festival The Art of the Overhead.

David Garcia is Professor of Design for Digital Cultures at the Universtity of Portsmouth and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht. His work combined organizing exhibitions and large scale public events in the form of conferences, exhibitions and media experiments with writing and teaching. Initiator of Next 5 Minutes series of festivals on Tactical Media. Recent work includes : curating ‘Faith in Exposure’ ; exhibition Dutch Media Institute February (2007). Publishing Alternative Visions for Television. A chapter in Alternative Media.Published by Routledge: Feb 2007. Editing and writing “Uncommon Ground” new models for interdisciplinary collaboration . Published by BIZ April 2007. Launching “Tactical Media Files” archive for Tactical Media October 2007.

Paolo Gerbaudo was born in Piedmont, Italy., in 1979. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Media & Communications department of Goldsmiths College, University of London. His research explores the “communications geography” of social movements, analysing the interaction between the circulation of action-ariented information (pro-motion) and individual activists understanding of the space of action (orientation). He has been working as a media activist with the Netzfunk collective, and with popular media groups in Mexico and Honduras. He contributes as freelance journalist to Italian and English newspapers and journals, including “Il Manifesto”.

Michael Goddard is Professor of English, Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Lodz, Poland. He has published on Polish and international cinema, Deleuze’s aesthetic theories and radical Italian thought. Most recently he published an essay in Angelaki on the Slovenian contemproary music/art group Laibach/NSK and he has forthcoming essays on Polish and Hungarian cinema and media art. His translation of Franco Berardi’s essay “Schizo-Economy” will soon appear in Substance and he is collaborating with the latter on a book project. He is currently researching a book on the cinema of Raul Ruiz and conducting research into Central East European postmodern audiovisual cultures.

Olga Goriunova (RU) is a new media critic, curator and scholar, based in Moscow. She is a co-organizer of Readme software art festivals (Moscow, Helsinki, Aarhus, Dortmund) http://readme.runme.org; a co-organizer of software art repository Runme.org; currently teaching digital media arts and theory in Moscow City University. She is an author of numerous publications on digital art and aesthetics, software culture, Russian Internet, etc. She is completing her Ph.D. on “art platforms” in Media Lab, University of Art and Design Helsinki.

Dr. Iina Hellsten is currently a researcher at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), in the EU-project “Critical Events in Evolving Networks” (CREEN) where she studies hypes in the communication networks between the sciences and the mass media, in collaboration with theoretical physicists and information scientists. Her background is in journalism research, science communication, science dynamics, metaphor analysis, and Internet research. Her work has been published in e.g. Science Communication, New Genetics and Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, New Media & Society, First Monday, Science as Culture, Scientometrics, and Metaphor and Symbol.

John Johnston is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. He is the author of Carnival of Repetition, Information Multiplicity, and an edited book, literature, media, information systems, as well as a forthcoming book from MIT Press, The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI. His current interests include Media Theory, electronic textuality, contemporary science and technology, and postmodern cultural studies.

Leslie Kavanaugh is both an architect and a philosopher. She is a member of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. At present, she is an Assistant Professor of Architecture in the Department of Urban Architecture, at the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. She recently defended her dissertation entitled, The Architectonic of Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2007). Other recent publications include “On the Aggregation of Bodies and the Unity of Monadic Substances: The Problem of Cohesion” for the International Leibniz Conference Proceedings, Hannover; and “The Ontology of Dwelling: Heidegger and Levinas” in Hauptmann, Deborah (ed.); Bodies in Architecture (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006).

Graduated from St. Petersburg University, Olga Kisseleva belongs to the first generation of Russian intelligentsia after Perestroika, which helped to bring down the Berlin Wall and cast aside the iron curtain. From the middle of the 90s, on invitation of the Fulbright Foundation she found a roof for her work in the research group which dealt with the development of digital technologies. In 1996 she earned her Ph.D. and was invited to teach New Media and Contemporary Art in Sorbonne. Olga Kisseleva’s exhibitions include: Centre Pompidou (Paris), KIASMA (Helsinki), Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), National Centre for Contemporary Art (Moscow), ARC (Paris), Reina Sofia (Madrid), Art Institute (Chicago), Venice, Istanbul, Dakar, Tirana and Moscow Biennials

Valdis is a management consultant, researcher, trainer, author, and the developer of InFlow software for social and organizational network analysis [SNA/ONA]. Since 1987, Valdis has participated in over 500 SNA/ONA projects.

Verena Kuni is an art & media theorist, historian and critic (Dr. phil., M.A.). From 1996 to 2005 she was assistant professor in art theory, art history & media theory at universities & art academies in Germany and Switzerland. Since 1997 she holds guest lectureships and research cooperations with international institutions & organizations. She is a curator, a regular contributor to print & online media and hosts an art radio show on the free radio (GUNST). She is director of (www.interfiction.org). Current projects focus on media of imagination – imagination of media; philosophical toys; cyborg entomology; digital decay and D.I.Y. strategies in art, media & network cultures. http://www.kuni.org/v

Olia Lialina was born in Moscow in 1971 and finished Moscow State University in 1993 as a journalist and film critic. Mid 90s, Olia was one of the organizers of the Moscow experimental film club CINE FANTOM. Since 1999 she teaches at Merz Akademie (New Media Pathway). Furthermore, she is the author of Last Real Net Art Museum, First Real Net Art Gallery, and co-author of among others Zombie&Mummy episodes and the Frozen Niki blog. She writes on vernacular web, net art and new media.

Leah A. Lievrouw is Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, and the 2006-07 Sudikoff Fellow for Education and New Media. Her research and writing focus on the social and cultural consequences of new media and information technologies. Her publications include The Handbook of New Media (with Sonia Livingstone; updated student edition, Sage, 2006), Understanding Alternative and Activist New Media (in preparation, Polity Press), and Competing Visions, Complex Realities: Social Aspects of the Information Society (with Jorge Reina Schement; Ablex, 1987), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. From 2000 to 2005 she was also co-editor of the journal New Media & Society.

Jacob Lillemose is a freelance curator and critic, Ph.D. at the University of Copenhagen on a project entitled “Post-object Aesthetics”, contributing advisor to the Nordic edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, Chairman of the Board at Overgaden – Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen and leader of Artnode – Independent Platform for Computer Based Art.

Alan Liu is Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Wordsworth: The Sense of History (Stanford Univ. Press, 1989); The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004); and Local Transcendence: Essays on Postmodern Historicism and the Database (forthcoming, Univ. of Chicago Press). He is principal investigator of the UC Multi-campus Research Group, Transliteracies: Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading; principal investigator of the UCSB Transcriptions Project (Literature and the Culture of Information); and co-director of his English Department’s undergraduate specialization on Literature and the Culture of Information. His other online projects include Voice of the Shuttle and (as general editor) The Agrippa Files. Liu is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). He is Editor of the UC New Media directory.

Adrian Mackenzie (Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University) researches in the area of technology, science and culture using approaches from cultural studies, social studies of technology and critical theory. He has published work on technology: Transductions : bodies and machines at speed, Technologies, studies in culture & theory. London: Continuum, 2002; Cutting code: software and sociality . New York: Peter Lang, 2006, and a range of articles on media, science and culture. He is currently working on wirelessness.

Astrid Mager is a contract researcher at the Department of Social Studies of Science and lecturer at the University of Vienna. She finished her studies of Sociology with a master’s thesis in Science and Technology Studies and attended workshops by the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, where she became interested in mapping techniques and network thinking. She is currently working on the project “Virtually Informed – The Internet in the medical field” closely related to her dissertation. Her main research interests concern the sociology of technology and medical science, the Internet and it’s use(s) as well as knowledge politics on the Web.

Amir Maleki is part of the Social Science Group of Payame Noor University (PNU), Iran. He has graduated from Isfahan University (Iran) with PhD degree in Sociology and is Assistant Professor of Department of social sciences at Payam Nour University (Iran). He has been selected as a Head of the Department since 2006. His research interests are the sociology of values, Public Opinion, Globalization and Local Value, Methodology and social statistics. Currently, he is setting up a modified version of Modernization theory for explaining value change in developing countries.

Noortje Marres works as a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Sociology Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her current research focuses on climate change and the role of non-human entities as mediators of public involvement. In 2005, She received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam, for her thesis “No Issue, No Public: Democratic Deficits after the Displacement of Politics.” Her recent work has been published in Making Things Public (MIT Press, 2005), Reformatting Politics (Routledge, 2006) and Nongovernmental Politics (Zone Books, forthcoming). She is an editor of two Dutch journals, Krisis and De Gids.

Katja Mayer holds a MA from the University of Vienna, where she studied sociology, physics and social studies of science. Before starting to work as IT consultant, she was employed at Public Netbase Vienna, where she was responsible for content development, research and production of lecture series and exhibitions in the following fields: interfaces, robotics, virtual worlds, surveillance, and cultural intelligence. Currently she is working at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, on the “Performativity of Knowledge”, and she is writing her dissertation on „Affective Images: The Practice of Network Visualization“. Homepage: http://homepage.univie.ac.at/katja.mayer

Marga van Mechelen (dr. b. 1953) is a senior lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. She studied art history and philosophy of language at the universities of Nijmegen and Groningen. She is the co-founder of the Institute for Semiotics, Literature and Art, now part of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis of which she is a member. She publishes widely on conceptual, performance, installation and digital new media art since the late seventies and on issues concerning visual theory in general and visual semiotics and psycho-semiotics in particular. In 2006 her book about De Appel, the main European centre in the seventies for performance and installation art, was published (De Appel. Performances, installations, video, projects 1975-1983. Amsterdam 2006).

Ulises Ali Mejias is an educator and technocultural theorist whose research interests include networked sociality, the philosophy of technology, and learning design. He is a doctoral candidate at Teachers College (Columbia University), where he has taught a graduate seminar on the affordances of sociable web media. His dissertation, “Networked Proximity: ICT’s and the Mediation of Nearness” deals with the redefinition of social relevancy by digital media and explores the limits of the network as metaphor and model for organizing social realities. Previously, Ulises was Director of Learning Systems Design at eCornell, a Cornell University subsidiary. He blogs at http://ideant.typepad.com.

Stefania Milan is a Ph.D. candidate at European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Formerly a journalist with the international news agency Inter Press Service, Stefania is currently writing her Ph.D. on transnational mobilizations on communication and media justice. In particular, she looks at the aspect of “critical practices”, meaning social practices and tools in the field of communication, created autonomously from the state and the market, with the aim to empower citizens’ activities and networking. Her case studies are (for now) community media and radical tech collectives.

Anna Munster is a media theorist, artist and educator. Her book, Materializing New Media, was published in 2006 and examines embodiment and materiality in information aesthetics. She is an editor of the online fibreculture journal and has also been a facilitator for the fibreculture list. She works in multi-channel audiovisual installation and has created online art works such as “wundernet” (2001). Her current research investigates networked and dynamic media and visualisation and crowds, power and portable media. She is a senior lecturer at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia

Giorgia Nesti (Ph.D. in European and Comparative Politics) is Researcher in Political Science at the Department of Historical and Political Studies (University of Padova – Italy). Her research interests focus on European Policies for Telecommunication and Information Society, Europeanization and Public Administration.

Lilly Nguyen is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. Her broader research interests include network culture and emergence, information flow, and adaptation. Her current research work looks more specifically at alternative new media, social tagging and artistic artifacts, and informational forgetting and social exclusion. She received her BA in Political Economy from UC Berkeley and her MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jana Nikuljska did her undergraduate studies in Psychology, continuing upon graduation toward a Master’s in Communication and Cultural Studies, which will be completed in early summer of 2007. She is a co-founder of the Macedonian Communication Association (first of its type in Macedonia), where she acts as the Executive Director, and is an active member of the American Communication Association (ACA). Ms. Nikuljska works as Teaching Assistant and Course Coordinator at the Faculty for Communication and Media at the European University, Republic of Macedonia, working on three courses: History of Mass Communication, Semiotics and Computer Mediated Communication and CyberCulture. She also acts as Assistant to the Dean and General Secretary to the Faculty’s Educational and Scientific Council. Her interests include Computer Mediated Communication, the Internet, CyberCulture, Network Culture, etc.

Nancy Nisbet is a multidisciplinary artist with a practice that weaves connections between the political, the technological and the personal. She is well known for her interest in radio frequency technology (RFID) and is the author of several essays on art and technology. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally and she speaks on issues of art in connection with resistance, surveillance, human rights, RFID technology, and identity. Nancy Nisbet is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History & Visual Art at The University of British Columbia. Nancy received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (2000).

Claudia Padovani is researcher of political science and international relations at the Department of Historical and Political Studies the University of Padova, Italy. She teaches international communication and institutions and governance of communication, while conducting research on the global and European governance of the information and knowledge society. She is particularly interested in the role of civil society organizations and transnational social movements as stakeholders in global decision-making processes. From this perspective, she has followed closely the WSIS process has written extensively on the experience. She is a member of the International Association for Media and Communication Research International Council (IAMCR), the European Council of the World Association for Christian Communication and the international Communication Rights in the Information Society campaign (CRIS).

Jussi Parikka is visiting research fellow at Humboldt University, Berlin (Department of Media Studies.) His book Digital Contagions: An Archaeology of Computer Viruses is forthcoming from Peter Lang publishing. See homepage at http://users.utu.fi/juspar

As a student in the Textile Art Department of the Visual Arts Academy, Cluj, Romania, Tincuta Parv used to create textile sculptures and mobile installations. In the institutional vacuum of the Eastern European changing system, she became more and more aware of the cultural and social aspects accompanying the creative acts. After earning a Master degree in Cultural Anthropology (with a focus on Visual Anthropology and a thesis on Romanian Documentary in the ’50s and ’60s), she is now completing a Ph.D. thesis in Art and Arts Sciences at Paris 1 University – Pantheon Sorbonne. Dealing with arts and techno-sciences, her Ph.D. research emphases on the critical problems related to the works dealing with techno-scientifical aspects. She lives and works in Paris and Cluj.

Elena Pavan is a Sociology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Trento, Italy. Her main interests are on human rights, especially in the field of communication, on social movements and social networks. She is currently working on Internet Governance issues and on the involvement of civil society in global processes and international arenas. In her degree thesis she reviewed the international debate on the right to communicate, from NWICO to present days, investigating conceptual and strategic reasons for the shift towards an idea of communication rights. She is a member of the Italian chapter of CRIS Campaign and works for its youth and issue crawler section.

Bernhard Rieder studied Communications, History and Philosophy in Vienna and Paris and has worked as a Web developer since 1996. He recently defended a Ph.D. Thesis in Information and Communication Science at Paris 8 University, set at the interstice of communication, technology studies and software design. Main research interests include technology / culture hybridity, information ethics and the epistemology and methodology of software production. He is currently a Teaching and Research Assistant at the Départment Hypermédia at Paris 8 University and teaches Internet studies at the American University of Paris.

Claire Roberge has been studying communication developing its interdisciplinary possibilities, particularly since the 90s’ interrogations about globalization in many disciplines. How a locality communicates, considering cultural diversity with exterior forces or spaces in minor and major transnational situations, is a major research interest she wishes to further explore. She completed her PhD at McGill University in the Art History and Communication Studies department and started a post-doctoral research with Saskia Sassen furthering her theorization.

Richard Rogers is Head of New Media at the University of Amsterdamand Director of the Govcom.org Foundation, the group responsible for the Issue Crawler network mapping software. His is author of Information Politics on the Web (MIT Press, 2004), editor of Preferred Placement: Knowledge Politics on the Web (Jan van Eyck, 2000) and author of Technological Landscapes (Royal College of Art, 1999). The topics of his current research projects include Internet censorship, U.S. media reform and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

Warren Sack is a media theorist and software designer. He has exhibited work at the ZKM|Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York City; and, on the Artport website of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Warren earned his B.A. from Yale College and his Ph.D. from the MIT Media Laboratory. He currently teaches in the Digital Arts & New Media M.F.A. program and in the Film & Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tony Sampson is an academic and writer based at the University of East London. He has presented and published material on digital culture internationally. He is currently co-editing The Spam Book: On Viruses, Worms and Other Anomalies of Digital Culture with Jussi Parikka (Hampton Press, Alternative Communications Series, 2008) and writing a book entitled Virality: How Networks Become Viral in which he uses event and assemblage theory to challenge essentialist versions of network culture.

Mirko Tobias Schaefer studied theater, film and media studies and communication studies at Vienna University (A) and digital culture at Utrecht University (NL). He was organizer and co-curator of [d]vision – Vienna Festival For Digital Culture. Mirko received a magister in philosophy from the University of Vienna. Since February 2003 he is working as a junior teacher/researcher at the University of Utrecht at the Institute for Media and Re/presentation. He is currently writing his dissertation on “Bastard Culture! Competent Users, Networks and Cultural Industries”. Mirko lives in Rotterdam (NL) and Vienna (A).

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schulz is Junior Professor for Strategic Communication Planning at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, Germany. He received his doctoral degree from the Humboldt Universität in Berlin. He works on decision-making processes in communication planning as well as in executive communication.

Yukari Seko is currently completing a master’s degree in Communication and Culture at York University. Her master’s thesis examines how vulnerable individuals disclose their self-destructive desires through monological and dialogical practice of weblogging (blogging). Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, she has conducted a series of researches about the suicidal and self-injury (SI) related weblogs (blogs) that analyze how the suicidal and “SI” bloggers constitute their identities through computer-mediated discourse. A part of her thesis was presented at the 7th international conference of the Association of Internet Researchers in September, 28, 2006.

Dr. Ramesh Srinivasan is Assistant Professor of Information Studies – University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), holds a M.S. Degree from MIT’s Media Laboratory and a Doctorate degree from Harvard, and has focused his research globally on the development of information systems within the context of culturally-differentiated communities. He has studied how an information system can be developed to engage communities to develop their socioeconomic, educational, and cultural infrastructures. This has included an analysis of how the cultural practices specific to communities can manifest themselves into an information system’s architecture, particularly with respect to how it represents, categorizes, and disseminates the information it stores. This research allows one to uncover mechanisms by which local visions and practices can converge with international development initiatives. His research has spanned such bounds as Native Americans, Somali refugees, Indian villages, Aboriginal Australia, and Maori New Zealand. These projects have been described in publications ranging from cultural studies journals to more technical venues.

Founding President of Evolve Strategies and the Evolve Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm (which supports efforts to increase citizen participation in government), Rob Stuart is a famous “early adopter” who’s been leading the way in Internet media and network strategy for numerous political and advocacy organizations since 1995. He is a speaker on networks, new media technology, civic engagement and effective philanthropy. His focus is to deepen and widen the capacity of cause oriented groups and campaign to use technology that motivates and engage those who are sympathetic to their efforts. Rob had a successful career as a public interest advocate and led campaigns for several landmark pieces of environmental and consumer protection legislation in New Jersey. He was a Paul Robeson Scholar at Livingston College and graduated with Honors in Political Science from Rutgers University.

Betina Szkudlarek is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Organisation and Personnel Management at the Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University. Her main research interests, in the broad field of cross-cultural management, focus on intercultural training and intercultural communication. In her Ph.D. research she uses Actor-Network Theory to look at the phenomenon of cross-cultural re-entry training for intercultural sojourners. Next to her Ph.D. activities Betina is working as an intercultural trainer, mostly in the NGO sector.

Clifford Tatum is a Ph.D. student in Communication at the University of Washington, where he is also an instructor in the University Honors program. His dissertation research focuses on the use of information and communication technologies in collaborative knowledge production. Clifford’s other research interests include online collective action, the Internet as a diasporic medium, and the intersection between urban culture and Internet culture.

Tiziana Terranova is currently a visiting professor in Sociology of Communication at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ thanks to a research grant ‘Rientro Cervelli’ by the Italian Ministry for University and Research. She is the author of Corpi nella Rete (Bodies in the Net, Costa & Nolan 1996) and Network Culture (Pluto Press, 2004).

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar, is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004). Vaidhyanathan has written for many periodicals, including American Scholar, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Magazine, MSNBC.COM, Salon.com, openDemocracy.net, and The Nation. After five years as a professional journalist, Vaidhyanathan earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison , Columbia University, and is currently an associate professor of Culture and Communication at New York University and a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Konstantinos Vassiliou is a Ph.D. student in Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University whose main axes of interest are new media culture, the avant-garde and postmodern studies.

As a professional in IT and business consulting with a technological background Alice Verheij is currently working as an independent interim (project) manager with clients in education, hi-tech and professional services industries and international banking. Her professional history covers: Technological innovation and research, Project management (IT and infrastructure), Training and coaching, IT and business consulting, Change management. Areas of interest are IT, business management, innovation and social networking. Furthermore, she is a self-educated professional on academic level, experienced writer and speaker. Currently Alice is preparing a promotional research project on the structures, influences, limitations and challenges concerning organizations and networks involved in social care for gender dysphoric people in the Netherlands.

Kim De Vries earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst in English, focusing on rhetoric and
composition. After just about 30 years of school she is Director of Composition at Cal. State University Stanislaus and is a staff writer at http://www.sequentialtart.com. In her spare time, she drinks too much coffee, reads books and comics, gardens, hangs out with family, and writes about whatever strikes her fancy. Lately this includes global rhetorics, digital culture, online communities/networks, and identity studies.

Claus Wageman is a research assistant at the European University Institute in Florence and also works as a methodological tutor for the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (University of Florence) and as a lecturer for New York University. He took his Ph.D. from the EUI Florence, after studying at the University of Constance and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. His research interests include methodological questions (comparative methods and QCA techniques) and several forms of political participation (unconventional participation, political parties, interest groups).

Descending from a long line of Marxist educators and activists, Montreal-based Kenneth C. Werbin works as a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. Also a part-time lecturer, Kenneth participates as an organizer and moderator for the University of the Streets Public Dialogue Series in Montreal, coordinating a discussion series on ‘Technology, Culture, and Power.’ Kenneth is also a researcher with the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (http://cracin.ca) where he is investigating the ‘third-spaces’ that emerge around Canadian-government sponsored community-networking initiatives.

Dr. Wheeler holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Her areas of research include information technology diffusion and impact in the Arab World; Gender and international development; and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She has published widely on the Internet and its impact in the Arab World including most recently a book The Internet in the Middle East: Global Expectations and Local Imaginations in Kuwait (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). Dr. Wheeler has extensive travel and research experience in the Middle East including extended stays in Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Wheeler is an international consultant and has most recently completed work for the United Nations Development Program and the Digital Opportunity Trust focusing upon using information technology in boosting human development. Dr. Wheeler is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD.

Homa Zanjanizadeh is part of the Faculty of Literatures and Humanity Science, Social Science Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran.

Dr. Natascha Zowislo is a post-doctoral researcher (Habilitation) in political sociology at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Mannheim, Germany, and her Master of Arts from The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC.