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July 18th, 2003 Wolfson College Oxford University |
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Preparing
Your Thinkpiece
A number of you are developing short thinkpieces
for the workshop. Ideally, they will
not be read verbatim during the workshop, but be casually reviewed by other guests
in the week leading up to our meeting.
These should be between 800 and 1,000 words, no
more than 5 pages in length, and sent to me by email by the end of the day on
Friday the 11th of July.
GOALS.
This workshop has three goals. First,
we will critically assess the role of new media in
local, state, national and multi-national development work. Second, we will draw
lessons from specific development projects in which new media and Internet
communication tools have played a key role.
Third, we will generalize from lessons from specific development
projects and strategize about how these lessons can be transported to other
parts of the world.
QUESTIONS.
These goals have inspired a large number of questions. These questions can help you fill out your
thinkpiece, which should be grounded in a case study of some kind. Some of the questions are enunciated in the
original prospectus for this conference (Prospectus) and others are phrased in the agenda for the day
(Agenda).
Additionally, there is a good book on research methods, called
Constructing Social Research, which argues that there are four basic kinds of
questions in the social sciences. Even
though these questions are generically phrased, they are short and sweet enough
to inspire some good concluding paragraphs to your thinkpiece. (Basic
Questions).
FOCUS. Try to pick a single case study – assess one
country’s experiences, evaluate one IT4D project, describe one development
policy problem, or critique the evolution of one development policy solution.