Informing the Good Society (InGSoc): New Directions in Information Policy

信息政策已成为一个在国家和国际上具有重大意义的领域。我们生活在信息时代，高科技和通信的爆炸性增长正在以多种方式改变我们的文化。需要就信息在社会中的作用做出正确的决定，这就是信息政策专业所要解决的问题。InGSoc是“为良好社会提供信息：信息政策的新方向”的缩写，旨在使信息政策做好准备，迎接本世纪的挑战。全球地理学会被设计为一个由三部分组成的研究方案。第一个组成部分是人口普查项目，将由一名博士生主持。定期进行全国人口调查的广泛做法可能会引起统计学家和社会科学家的兴趣，但它一直被艺术和人文学科所忽视。InGSoc打算对这个关键的信息机构进行一种新的阐述，询问其起源，原理，道德，界面和未来。它将特别感兴趣的是，从印刷形式到在线形式的迁移（在2011年英国人口普查中已经部分实现）可能对公共政策意味着什么。这代表了信息政策研究的大胆新方向。第二部分是一个“epunditry”项目。从电子出版到电子政府，一切似乎都在走向电子化，政治评论和专家也不例外。该项目将由一名经验丰富的研究人员兼职进行，将研究在报纸发行量迅速下降的背景下，博客作者和其他在线专家或准专家的出现。他们能胜任取代“第四等级”的工作吗？在这个信息时代，我们还需要专家吗？这些重要但尚未得到解答的问题最终是关于如何确保社会中信息的健康流动。InGSoc的第三个项目将深入研究信息政策的理论基础。它将重温过去一些伟大的英国思想家，像T。H.绿色，爱德华凯尔德和约翰斯图尔特密尔，并询问他们的社会哲学意味着什么，为关键的信息问题，面临着当今世界。这些问题包括信息自由、数字鸿沟、保护个人隐私、知识产权以及互联网监管和治理。这项基础研究将由首席研究员每周一天进行，同时监督整个项目，将确保InGSoc的研究既“深入又广泛”。根据2008年的研究评估工作，InGSoc将设在爱丁堡纳皮耶大学的主要研究中心社会信息学中心。它的目标是产生大量新的和重要的工作，包括一本书，论文和一系列主要的研究文章，单独和联合撰写。该小组还将通过在国家和国际会议上发言传播其研究结果，不仅针对信息政策专家，而且针对更广泛的学术界。来自一系列学科的专家，以及来自学院以外的记者和其他人，将在大学进行客座演讲。为期36个月的方案将以一个多学科专题讨论会圆满结束。所有这些都应有助于确保信息政策领域得到应有的承认。还将通过一个动态网站、报纸文章，以及在可能的情况下通过公开辩论和在电台和电视台露面，向决策者和公众大力宣传全球地理学会的主要研究结果。通过这些实际的方式，可以依靠InGSoc来更广泛地理解信息政策在发展美国著名专栏作家兼社会哲学家Walter Lippmann所称的“良好社会”方面的价值（《良好社会原则的调查》，Little，Brown & Co.，1937年）。

Information policy has become a field of great national and international importance. We live in the Information Age, and our culture is being transformed in numerous ways by high technology and the explosive growth of communications. Good decisions need to be made about the role of information in society and that is what the information policy specialism addresses. InGSoc, short for Informing the Good Society: New Directions in Information Policy, aims to make information policy ready to face the challenges of this century. InGSoc has been designed as a three-part programme of research. The first component is a population census project, to be conducted by a PhD student. The widespread practice of regular national population surveys may have interested statisticians and social scientists but it has been neglected by the arts and humanities. InGSoc intends to shed a new type of light on this key information institution, asking about its origins, rationale, ethics, interface, and future. It will be particularly interested in what the migration (already partially implemented in the 2011 UK census) from print formats to online might mean for public policy. This represents a bold new direction for information policy research. The second part is an 'epunditry' project. Everything seems to be going 'e', from electronic publishing to egovernment, and political commentary and punditry are no exception. This project, to be carried out on a part-time basis by an experienced researcher, will examine the emergence of bloggers and other online experts, or would-be experts, against the backdrop of rapidly declining newspaper circulations. Are they up to the job of replacing the 'fourth estate'? Do we even need pundits in this age of access? These important yet still unanswered questions are ultimately about how to secure a healthy flow of information in society. The third InGSoc project will dig down into the theoretical foundations of information policy. It will revisit some of the great British thinkers of the past, people like T. H. Green, Edward Caird and John Stuart Mill, and ask what their social philosophies imply for key information issues facing the world today. Those issues include freedom of information, the digital divide, the defence of personal privacy, intellectual property, and internet regulation and governance. This foundational study, which will be covered by the principal investigator for one day a week alongside oversight of the programme a whole, will make sure that InGSoc research is both 'deep and wide'. InGSoc will be based at the Centre for Social Informatics, Edinburgh Napier University's leading research centre according to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. Its goal is to produce a substantial body of new and important work, including a book, a dissertation and a series of major research articles, singly- and jointly-authored. The team will also disseminate their findings through national and international conference presentations, aiming not just at information policy specialists but at the wider academic community. Experts from a range of disciplines, and journalists and others from outside the academy, will give guest talks at the University. The 36-month programme will conclude on a high note with a multidisciplinary symposium. All this should help to ensure that the information policy field gains the recognition that it deserves. InGSoc's key findings will be also be aggressively promoted to policy-makers and the public through a dynamic website, newspaper articles, and, when available, public debates and radio and television appearances. In these practical ways, InGSoc can be relied upon to result in a wider appreciation of the value of information policy in the development of what the famous American columnist-cum-social philosopher Walter Lippmann called 'the good society' (An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society, Little, Brown & Co., 1937).