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CPROST is proud to announce that one of its researchers, Florence Chee, has been awarded a prestigious set of scholarships by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada and the National Institute for International Education of the Republic of Korea for study in Korea.

She will be carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in Korea on computer game players as users of an extant technological system. This will build upon her previous findings, incorporating a "top-down" look from government and industry perspectives and documenting the rapid change apparent in Korea's post-industrial society. She will conduct participant-observation of organizational settings and in-depth interviews and focus groups with stakeholders and policymakers discussing the visions of modernization by which Koreans have been mobilized to create a nationwide ICT infrastructure.

This will enable not only a comparative study of online game communities, but also qualitative and longitudinal inquiries into more meta-trends in technology and local contexts to build an increased understanding of cultural factors specific to Korea in the evaluation and implementation of technology and its associated societal consequences. She will attempt to link government initiatives, industrial relationships, and social history that have been instrumental in driving the frenetic pace of technology use-culture in contemporary Korea.

Professor Myung-Koo Kang, Director of the Department of Communication at Seoul National University has invited her to be a visiting researcher stay for Fall 2008. During this time, she will work closely with Professor Kang who is an expert in comparative political economy and other esteemed faculty at SNU.

She has been a research assistant on the Innovation Systems Research Network and AVED projects at CPROST, and completed her Master of Arts degree in the School of Communication in 2005. She has also worked at the New Media Innovation Centre in Vancouver, at NCompass Labs Inc (acquired by Microsoft) as an Instructional Designer. While working on her master's thesis, she was a visiting researcher with the Institute for Technological Innovation (ITI) in the Business Department at Sejong University, Seoul.

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