First published article in Internet Policy Review

I have my first article published in a distinguished academic journal – it is not an academic article but an op-ed in Internet Policy Review about Iceland’s Cyber-policy that I was asked to write during my last stay as a research fellow at the Humboldt Institute of Internet and Society in Berlin this spring.

I am ecstatic to have been selected on my own merit as one of their three yearly fellows and spent the spring on-off in Berlin speaking to likeminded people, hoarding books at Dussmann’s and writing from a horizontal position. It was truly a life changing experience.

My op-ed is called Securing Iceland’s digital future: a call for political action and it addresses the gap we’re experiencing in Iceland between recent actions to improve Iceland’s technical competency vs. the inaction that still dominates Iceland’s social and personal technical competencies. The Icelandic government, RÚV and University of Iceland have not been working according to the country’s Cyber-strategy and the social aspects of digital competency have been left out.

I’m shamelessly lobbying the University of Iceland to establish exchange study agreements with social-tech departments at foreign universities so we can seek knowledge abroad that is not taught at the UI. Secondly I hope that the university will increase its course offerings and apply for more professors to teach for a semester or shorter courses through Fulbright. I have great hopes that I won’t have to continue going abroad for all of my relevant PhD courses but instead the right opportunity will materialize locally 😀

RÚV gets fair criticism for failing its role as critical infrastructure, its presentation of information and service towards digital users is sub-par. The deliberate decision to exclude TV and radio news from their News tab is one of the worst accessibility decisions I’ve ever seen made by a media outlet. And I have a list of things that are wrong with the site from a usability and tactical standpoint. Note that you had to seek under Fjölmiðlanefnd to find the mandate for RÚV, the web’s editorial policy and missing and their accessibility policy is severely lacking.

Furthermore their refusal to give the main evening TV and main 12:20 noon radio news permanent spots or links under News is baffling and extremely unfriendly for digital users. It is not acceptable to guide people to click on TV and then scroll a while in “recent clips” to find the MAIN EVENING NEWS. News is news whether it is video, radio or text and it is pure interface insanity that RÚV has decided not to offer links to radio and TV news content under the heading NEWS. Instead you’ll find random news in English and Polish mixed with the Icelandic clips and news.

The information organization on RÚV.is is mildly put: unsatisfactory.