February 2004 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

February 2004 executive committee report
by Nancy Baym 17 Feb '04

17 Feb '04

February 16, 2004 Report of the a.o.i.r. executive committee Prepared by Nancy Baym AoIR Executive Committee President: Nancy Baym Vice-President: Matthew Allen Secretary: Ulla Bunz Treasurer: Benjamin Bates Open Seats: Radhika Gajjala and Annette Markham Appointed Seats: Monica Murero and Randolph Kluver Student Seat: Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl Past President (ex-officio): Steve Jones 2004 Conference Chair: Kate O'Riordan Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess AoIR Annual Chair: Mia Consalvo 1. Introduction & General (Baym) This is the place to find out what's going on in the association. It's long, it's not always thrilling, but it's always the best way for you to keep up so please read it! Our executive committee discussions are summarized in Ulla Bunz's section of the report, 2004 Conference Host Kate O'Riordan provides a Sussex overview in the conference chair report below, Charles Ess keeps us posted on ethics, and Mia Consalvo keeps us up to date on the Annual. All this and more! Read on... 2. Executive Officers' Reports 2.1 President (Baym) 2.1.1 First, I apologize for not posting a report in the last few months (not that I received a lot of inquiries as to its whereabouts!). We were in a minor lull through the holidays and are now back to multiple ongoing threads all day, every day. The main items on our agenda have been the 2004 conference in Sussex which is shaping up nicely (thanks in no small part to the work of Kate O'Riordan and Sheizaf Rafaeli), and getting ready to launch some initiatives (stay tuned for opportunities to get involved!). I've also been appreciating the quality (if occassional wackiness) of recent air-l discussions, which have reminded me of how important aoir is in providing an interdisciplinary and international space for people from diverse perspectives to discuss issues of common concern. Sometimes we talk past one another, but I think that more often we learn from one another. As always, if you have suggestions about how AoIR can improve your life as an internet researcher or have skills to offer the association, please let me know! 2.2 Vice President (Allen) 2.2.1 [Matt sent in no report, but has been actively participating in discussion on exec]. 2.3 Secretary (Bunz) 2.3.1 The exec committee continued to discuss an official proposal for hosting the AoIR 2005 conference. The proposal from another potential host was withdrawn. By unanimous vote (11/11) we voted *in favor* of the proposed host site. The 2005 location will be announced in Sussex. We are in dialogue with the proposed hosting site about further details. We are considering moving to a hired conference management team which would change hosting procedures. More information will be made available once guidelines have been formulated. If you are interested in the 2006 or 2007 conference organization, please get in touch with Nancy Baym any time. Also, the exec continued to discuss the issue of co-sponsorship and joint conferences for future conferences. Final conclusion was that overall we would prefer to continue as the sole association responsible for AoIR conferences though we are open to scheduling conferences back to back with related associations so as to facilitate travel and give people the opportunity to broaden their interests. - The exec discussed conference fees and membership fees, comparing standards in different disciplines and trying to combine conflicting goals (i.e., raising conference fees to keep the financial situation of the association in shape, while hoping to attract researchers from less affluent countries). At this point, no official change in either membership fees or conference fees was decided upon. It is possible that the conference fees for AoIR 2004 will be higher than in previous years, but we expect accommodations to be significantly cheaper, so that total cost should be the same or maybe even lower than for the Toronto conference. Along the same lines, we are considering setting up a support fund for graduate students and people from non-OECD countries. Conference funding issues in general and for Sussex in specific were discussed as well. - The exec discussed whether to continue with the Couch Award to be awarded during AoIR conference and decided in favor. - The exec discussed various hotel-sharing and cross-booking options for future conferences to offer accommodation at cheaper hotels without raising association default charges when not meeting a minimum requirement of rooms booked at the main conference hotel. It appears that two different models can be followed in Europe and in the US, and the exec is open to testing a new model at a future AoIR conference in Europe. - The air-qualitativemethods(a)aoir.org has been created. Contact Annette Markham for more information. - Jeremy Hunsinger prepared the online submission system, and members of the exec tested it. - The exec discussed AoIR's possible contributions to ASCUS (http://www.ascus.info/) in addition to just putting our logo on their site. We support their cause, but have no content to offer them at this time. - The exec is in the process of discussing the charges for what may become two new working groups. One will concern journals options and one will concern website options. Please watch for further information, as we will request input from both members and non-members in the near future. - Along with conference planner Kate ORiordan and program planner Sheizaf Rafaeli, decided to push the submission deadline back to February 15. - Jeremy Hunsinger reported various spam problems and access problems, but also reported that everything seems to be under control again. 2.4 Treasurer (Bates) 2.4.1 Just finished sending off renewal reminders. Trying to keep up. 2.5 Open Seats (Gajjala, Markham) 2.5.1 Gajjala: nothing much to report - scrambling to meet AOIR deadlines:) 2.5.2 Markham: Contributed to discussions related to current and future conferences, circulated the conference call for papers as widely as possible, focusing on non-academic fields of inquiry, continued to generate interest in the qualitative methods mailing list, and brainstormed with other members of the executive committee about matters related to the net presence of AOIR. 2.6 Appointed Seats (Murero, Kluver) 2.6.1 Murero: I was involved in giving final approvals for the keynote speakers' shortlist, within the conference committee, and on the basis of my previous experience in organizing Maastricht's conference have given suggestions to organizers about opportunities of sponsorships for the annual AoIR conference in Sussex. 2.6.2 Kluver: I have been participating in exec discussions thoughtfully, if not loudly! Nothing more to report. 2.7 Student Seat (Tkach-Kawaski) 2.7.1 * Drafting brief e-mail report to grad students through the grad student list (to go out in about two days). * Participating in discussions regarding the web-site. 2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl) 2.8.1 Hunsinger: I've been working peripherally on conference matters as necessary. charlie and I have been working very hard to manage spam and virus's and let me assure you that any spam or virus that seems to come from aoir.org most likely does not originate from our servers, likewise with spam. other than that, I've been participating in exec deliberations and other business. 2.8.2 Breindahl: Jeremy and I have spent lots of time fighting worm-generated mail. MIME e-mail is no longer posted directly to the list, but held in a queue for closer scrutiny. We strongly recommend posting in plain text. Took part in various executive committee discussions as usual. 2.9 Past-President (Jones): I've been working on getting bids from conference management agencies for the purpose of planning and executing future AoIR conferences. 2.10 2004 Conference Chair (Kate O'Riordan) 2.10.1 Internet Research: 5, 2004 Keynote Speakers We are very pleased to report that Sara Kiesler and Nina Wakefield have confirmed that they will attend as keynote speakers for IR:5. We look forward to their contributions to what promises to be an exciting conference. Submissions We have received over 360 abstracts in response to the call for papers. The programme chair Professor Sheizaf Rafaeli and a team of reviewers are currently working on these and we should be able to confirm papers and develop the programme in the coming months on the basis of this enthusiastic response. Registration Some budget details are still being ironed out, but we hope to have registration details online before Easter. Challenges and Help We are keen to encourage more volunteers to help with any aspect of the conference planning. Please contact us if you feel you could contribute. Volunteers for reviewing and other programme roles can contact the programme chair. Practical issues, contributions to the web site and onsite volunteers can contact the conference chair. Fund raising also continues to be a significant challenge. Thanks Many thanks to all the people who have contributed to the conference so far; especially those who continue to contribute to the conference planning list (aoir-meet) and those of you who have volunteered to help with the reviewing. Thanks also to the people at the University of Sussex who've put in so much hard work. I look forward to continuing to work with you all as the planning progresses. 2.11 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.11.1 The AoIR ethics working committee has discussed a recent case/study kindly provided by two AoIR members. Several lessons emerged from the case/study and our discussion - two of which bear mention here. One, significant problems can be avoided ahead of time if participants in a multi-disciplinary research project spell out and discuss in detail their methodological assumptions and ethical practices regarding publication of research data. (In the case we examined, two different disciplines involved in the research project, it turned out, had more or less opposite views on this point - leading to difficulties _after_ much of the project had been completed, IRB approval received, etc.) Two - our discussion further illustrated the differences among us with regard to what we mean by "case study" (!). For some of us (included Ess as a philosopher), a case study can remain relatively general: for others, a case study is necessarily much more finely detailed. The problem is that in this instance - as in previous cases brought to the committee for discussion - the understandable request for more detailed information put the authors of our case in the unpleasant position of having to say 'no' to such requests. For a host of reasons, including issues of professional courtesy and confidentiality, our colleagues were not able to provide us with additional information, leaving the committee's discussion somewhat stalled in mid-course. The lesson learned: our project of collecting case studies that would help provide a kind of positive analogue to case law (that might help researchers develop their proposals and negotiate with their IRBs or equivalent oversight authorities) will have to be modified. The good news: we can still solicit from AoIR members more general accounts of their experiences that focus on "Ethical tips / lessons learned" in developing research proposals and negotiating with ethical oversight authorities. On behalf of the committee - we look forward to receiving these from you! -- Charles Ess 2.12 AoIR Annual Editor (Mia Consalvo) 2.12.1: The first volume of the AoIR Annual is in the final stages of camera copy proofing, with the index now completed (thanks Leslie!) and final errors corrected. It goes to the printer February 20 for production. The second volume of the Annual is still in planning-- Matt and Mia are still reading through submissions- there were over 120 papers to consider, and due to a large volume of excellent manuscripts, decisions are difficult. We estimate that we will be notifying everyone by the end of this month (February 28)-- and sorry about that delay.

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New Ph.D.
by Chris Anson 16 Feb '04

16 Feb '04

Colleagues: We would greatly appreciate your response to just two questions about the program described below. Please go to the linked form to access the two questions; it will take you less than 60 seconds to respond. Many thanks! ----------------------

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Effects of email on Spanish
by Naomi Susan Baron 16 Feb '04

16 Feb '04

I have received a request from someone from Argentina who is interested in the effects of email on the Spanish language (written and/or spoken). If you have any ideas/research findings/references, please contact her off-list at "silvina scheiner" <silvina(a)scheiner.com.ar>. Thanks, Naomi Naomi S. Baron Professor of Linguistics American University Washington, DC 20016-8045

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Re: An Internet without Space
by gdtaylor 16 Feb '04

16 Feb '04

I have been following this discussion. I started using the Internet in 1988 before there was a World Wide Web. At that time, I was working for a government agency that had networked offices and dial-up modem capabilities that allowed me to connect to one of the few servers available at that time. This was at a point in time when servers were few-and-far-between and tended to reside on the campuses of major universities or federal government offices in the U.S. I have always appreciated the fact that President Clinton and Vice-President Gore promoted the idea of the Internet and World Wide Web being an information superhighway. I continue to maintain the viewpoint that the Internet and WWW are an information superhighway to this day. I have also been using relational databases since 1988, primarily for research purposes. I also tend to think of the Internet and WWW as being just a very large relational database. The various Internet search engines (e.g. Yahoo, Google) are the query menus that allow users to sort the database and locate information using search words or phrases. Gail -------------------------------------------- Gail D. Taylor, Graduate Teaching Assistant University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Human Resource Education "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." Charles Darwin

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RE: Oops there goes the thread RE: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space)
by Slater,D 15 Feb '04

15 Feb '04

Ok, How about: Hello out there.... ? I honestly don't have a clue why I chose 'Hello thread', except maybe trying to avoid more twee collective identities; I also knew I was about to rant so wanted to be very clear that I was bemused by that specific thread, not by this generally rather interesting list. I suppose in hindsight it's interesting that it's a pretty non-spatial image. Totally agree that usenet type organization of communications is pretty much a thing of the past - it's all much more ephemeral and private conversation for most people. Even when I tried to set up a listserve for my current research team we had to have a think about it - the preference was for using plain old Outlook distribution lists, and storing messages individually. We only chose a listserve in the end because it archives all the emails, but not in threads. I've just started pondering the implications of the lack of interest in websites. Eg, here in Ghana it is all email and chat, plus VOIP. The only web use I come across is educational (finding course and searching for funding); porn; and some shopping (generally with stolen credit card numnbers) and some 'window shopping' on northern goodies. And some use of web for news, either readin glocal newspapers online, or consulting bbc.co.uk or cnn. But 'The Internet' is definitely not the WWW. WWW seems like a kind of adjunct to everything else - if you need some specific info or tool, then you go to the web. So, eg, the old idea of browsing or surfing has very little resonance here at all. don _______________________________________________ Don Slater Reader in Sociology, London School of Economics Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE Tel: +44 (020) 7849 4653 Fax: +44 (020) 7955 7405 http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/slater ______________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: Frank Schaap [mailto:architext@fragment.nl] Sent: 11 February 2004 21:14 To: air-l(a)aoir.org Subject: Re: Oops there goes the thread RE: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space) 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD "; 20 GOTO 10 Bruce Mason wrote: >>>>D.Slater(a)lse.ac.uk 11/02/04 11:54 AM >>> > >>Hello thread - <snip> > But on a different note, I'm intrigued by the greeting that Don has > used "Hello thread." One of the aspects on online communication I'm > fascinated by (and this is pertinent) is the way in which we > implicitly characterise the various media through speech behaviour. > I've not come across "Hello thread" so I'm wondering if it has a > history and also what it may imply (if anything) for the spatiality of > 'threads'. Indeed I wonder if 'thread' as a concept exists for younger > wired (in the broadest term) users. Well, I'm constantly amazed that many of my students, who I now suddenly realize are not just a couple of years but a decade younger than me (what happened?), know little more about the Internet than IM, e-mail, and have rather limited experience in surfing the web. They don't know Usenet, associate mailinglists with spam, and visit web-based forums that don't do threading. Of course, it doesn't help that there isn't a good Dutch translation for the word "thread". Frank. -- Barst [NL] http://fragment.nl/barst/ Fragments [EN] http://fragment.nl/ _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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RE: [Air-l] cms recommendations
by Kevin Tharp 14 Feb '04

14 Feb '04

Frank: You might also look at Plone (http://plone.org) Open source, extremely flexible, allows for nesting and layering of control. Supports wiki, blogs, calendars, and just about everything else because it has a community of programmers that donate to the site. Also, you can run it from Windows, Mac, or Linux. Doesn't take a programmer to learn how to do it all, but it would be helpful to have a programmer involved. They are just about to release a new release that integrates a lot of the things you will want right into the install package. Regards, Kevin W. Tharp -----Original Message----- From: Frank Schaap [mailto:architext@fragment.nl] Sent: Friday, 13 February 2004 08:23 To: air-l(a)aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] cms recommendations I realize this probably is a bit off topic, but then again, I wouldn't know a better place to ask this question off the top of my head. For a small project I'm looking for a content management system with the following characteristics: * open source/freeware * create/maintain a fair amount of static content * ability to create and navigate that content in sections/categories * but also provide news in a blog-like section * integrated image gallery * preferably integrated forum This will run on a FreeBSD server that supports MySQL, PHP and Perl. I'd prefer a dynamic system that generates pages on the fly from the db, but I can work with a system that generates static pages. I've got the project running with MovableType (except for the forum of course) but because of the large amount of static content, I'm now maintaining more than 30 page templates and that's only going to increase. I'm looking for something a bit more manageable :) Recommendations and advise welcome. Frank. -- Barst [NL] http://fragment.nl/barst/ Fragments [EN] http://fragment.nl/ _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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Re: cms recommendations
by hans＠fs.is.uni-sb.de 14 Feb '04

14 Feb '04

Frank, the tech people used for our site postnuke: http://sourceforge.net/projects/post-nuke/ see our site at: www.ctie.missouri.edu It is fairly simple to set up, works with PhP and MySql, can manage content quite easily, and has a variety of user rights .... However, to do exactly what we wanted it still needed coding and a fair amount of twicking. If you invest that time then it is fairly simple in the end. There are many add-on features like different discussionboards or calendar ... that can be very easily installed as modules and downloaded from user-sites. There is quite an amount of post-nuke style cms-systems out there as you can see at this list: http://www.opensourcecms.com/ This meta-site also uses post- nuke. We compared quite a bit and were running movable type etc. but found post- nuke the most suitable for our need (a lot of pages needed to be changed by a variety of people). Well, another solution could be tinderbox by Eastgate (commercial): http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ If you have a Mac, tinderbox is a personal content management system with web- publishing capability and features to integrate your existing blogging systems .... Let me or the list know, what you decided on and your experience with it. Johannes -- Johannes Strobel, ABD School of Information Science and Learning Technologies Religious Studies department University of Missouri at Columbia jse09(a)mizzou.edu www.crisscrossed.org crisscrossing.missouri.edu

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Graduate student globalization conference
by Daniel Menchik 13 Feb '04

13 Feb '04

I've attached the Call for Abstracts for a conference a workshop I'm associated with is hosting. Sorry for the late notice (we'll be reviewing submissions soon,) but I some AoIRers might still be interested. The papers from last year were generally quite strong, and feedback from the invited scholars is plentiful and constructive. Feel free to forward. Dan >>CALL FOR ABSTRACTS The Workshop on the Sociology and Cultures of Globalization at the University of Chicago proudly presents its sixth annual graduate student conference to be held at the University of Chicago on April 30th and May 1st. This years conference, entitled Mediating Scale: Localizing Transnational Processes, will address the issue of the geographical scales at which global processes manifest and instantiate. The conference is soliciting graduate student papers on topics related to globalization, broadly defined. The annual conference represents a larger effort to build an interdisciplinary focus on critical globalization studies by facilitating a dialogue between graduate students and established scholars in a variety of academic fields. The conference will consist of an opening session on Friday afternoon with a panel discussion with some of the leading scholars on issues of globalization. The primary focus of the conference, however, will be the Saturday presentations of graduate student papers, with the invited scholars serving as discussants for the students papers. INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS Please submit a one-page proposal by Monday, February 23, 2004. The proposal should include the title of paper; abstract of the paper (approximately 300 words in length); name of the author; institutional affiliation; and contact information (e-mail address, address, and telephone number). Please e-mail the abstract to: lizaw(a)uchicago.edu Receipt of all abstracts will be acknowledged. DEADLINES The closing date for submission of abstracts is Monday, February 23rd, 2004. Accepted papers will be notified on Monday, March 15th and a full draft of accepted papers will be due on Monday, March 29th. QUESTIONS should be directed to: Liza Weinstein at <lizaw(a)uchicago.edu> http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/scg/scg.html --- Daniel Menchik University of Chicago Sociology http://www.ssrc.org/programs/itic/ http://drdc.uchicago.edu/

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First use of opt-in mailing?
by Gina Neff 13 Feb '04

13 Feb '04

A historical question has come up on another list: when did companies first start offering webpage visitors "opt-in" options for emailing, that is, the boxes or other mechanisms that allowed people to opt in for mailing from other companies? > > Who was the first to use those little opt-in > checkboxes > > online? I know > > NetCreations started in 1996 or so, but I seem to > > remember doing stuff > > earlier. Does anyone have any firm dates? I have > > tried Google, WayBack, > > etc, and the earliest firm date I can find is a > general > > 1996. Thanks for any leads, Gina

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hallucinating cyberspace -origins
by Eero Tarik 13 Feb '04

13 Feb '04

Dr. Nils Zurawski wrote.... "Eero, <snip wisdom> ps. I hope to see you in Sussex, maybe for the roundtable on space for a longer discussion..." Nils, in the real physical world there is a simple, immutable law - the wife controls the husband's known universe :-) ...and I'm not sure she-who-must-be-obeyed would see the humour in this husband frolicking, at great expense, around the English countryside for a few days. However, I am sure one day your intrepid band of Internet Researchers will locate Adelaide on the map and come for a few lazy days of conferencing in our sun soaked environs and enjoy the world's best wine. p.s. don't come in February, 43 degrees C tomorrow ! regards, Eero Tarik

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