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

信息政策已成为一个具有重大国家和国际意义的领域。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是通知美好社会的缩写：信息政策的新方向，旨在使信息政策准备好面对本世纪的挑战。Ingsoc被设计为一个由三部分组成的研究计划。第一部分是人口普查项目，将由一名博士生进行。定期全国人口调查的普遍做法可能会引起统计学家和社会科学家的兴趣，但它被艺术和人文学科忽视了。Ingsoc打算对这个关键的信息机构进行一种新型的阐释，询问它的起源、原理、伦理、接口和未来。它将特别感兴趣的是，从印刷格式向在线格式的迁移(已在2011年英国人口普查中部分实施)可能对公共政策意味着什么。这代表着信息政策研究的一个大胆的新方向。第二部分是一个“后备”项目。从电子出版到电子政务，一切似乎都在走向e，政治评论和权威人士也不例外。这个项目将由一名经验丰富的研究人员兼职进行，将考察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潜在专家的出现情况。他们能胜任取代‘第四遗产’的工作吗？在这个访问的时代，我们甚至还需要权威人士吗？这些重要但仍未得到解答的问题归根结底是关于如何确保社会上健康的信息流动。第三个Ingsoc项目将深入研究信息政策的理论基础。它将重温一些过去伟大的英国思想家，如T·H·格林、爱德华·凯德和约翰·斯图尔特·密尔，并询问他们的社会哲学对当今世界面临的关键信息问题意味着什么。这些问题包括信息自由、数字鸿沟、个人隐私保护、知识产权以及互联网监管和治理。这项基础性研究将由首席调查员每周一天进行，同时对整个项目进行监督，将确保Ingsoc的研究既深入又广泛。Ingsoc的总部将设在社会信息学中心，根据2008年的研究评估，该中心是爱丁堡纳皮尔大学的领先研究中心。它的目标是产生大量新的和重要的工作，包括一本书，一篇论文和一系列单独和联合撰写的主要研究文章。该小组还将通过国家和国际会议报告来传播他们的发现，不仅针对信息政策专家，而且针对更广泛的学术界。来自不同学科的专家以及来自学院以外的记者和其他人将在该大学进行客座演讲。为期36个月的方案将以一个多学科专题讨论会作为结束。所有这些都应有助于确保信息政策领域得到应有的承认。Ingsoc的主要调查结果还将通过一个充满活力的网站、报纸文章以及在可能的情况下进行公开辩论和在电台和电视上露面，积极地向政策制定者和公众宣传。通过这些实用的方式，Ingsoc可以使人们更广泛地认识到信息政策在发展美国著名专栏作家兼社会哲学家沃尔特·李普曼所说的“美好社会”(《美好社会的原则调查》，Little，Brown&Co.，1937)中的价值。

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).