February 2008 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Re: [Air-L] IR 9.0 Deadline extension
by Tuszynski, Stephanie 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

And here I was all set to join Rhiannon's revolution... the spoils of war without the bloodshed! (Thanks Brian!) Stephanie Tuszynski Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Theatre and Film University of Toledo

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Questions, questions...
by Brian Loader 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

Now about these colloqiums, panels and roundtables... FAQs 1. Can I send my proposal to that nice Program Chair chap and hope that he puts it on the system? Answer: No you must submit it yourself but if you have any problems or made a mistake please contact that very nice Charlie Breindahl person who (unlike the Program Chair who just talks about ICTs)is a wizard with the site - charlie.breindahl(a)gmail.com 2.If some colleagues and I are part of a panel proposal, can we also be part of a roundtable proposal? Answer: Yes probably. The rules are: one paper + one panel = fine One paper + one roundtable = fine one paper + two panels = fine (but any element may be rejected) One paper + one panel + one round table = fine (but any element may be rejected) more than one paper / unless there are _really_ compelling reasons second author is o.k.) / not so fine. You can be second author of anything over and above what you submit above. Obviously we are looking to provide high quality sessions with the widest possible contributions. 3. "Graduate students wishing to be a candidate for the Student Award must send a final paper by June 30, 2008". Does it mean that they do not have to submit abstract first and get accepted before submitting the full paper? Answer: Proposal/abstract should be submitted in the usual way. Full papers for Student Award by June 30, 2008. 4.Can you tell me how long panels and roundtables are scheduled to last and how many people are supposed to participate in each type of session? Answer: The sessions will be one and a half hours long. There is no fixed numbers but my experience is that together with a Chair/Moderator you should consider four to six participants. BUT please think about the needs of the audience who will want to participate in the discussions. I'm sure someone on the list (Barry Wellman?) can provide us with a social scientific law which demonstrates that academics will always talk for twice the allotted time given to them. Therefore leave plenty of time for interaction and debate. 5.i'm just writing up a panel proposal for the conference and am not sure of the word count. the call for papers suggests 600-800 words for information about the panel (not including paper abstracts). i'm wondering if this should include the information about presenters too? Answer: The poposal should list panel members. Very brief biogs with accompanying abstracts please. 6. Any information on the Doctoral Colloquium yet? Answer: We are delighted to announce that Professor Klaus Bruhn Jensen will be facilitating the Doctoral Colloqium on Wednesday 15 October. More details to follow on the list and website soon. OK that's it for now but please ask more questions if you are still unsure of anything. Brian Brian D. Loader Co-Director, Social Informatics Research Unit (SIRU), Department of Sociology, Wentworth College, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD Email bl506(a)york.ac.uk Tel: +44(0) 1904 432639 Fax: +44(0) 1904 433043

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Job ad: Research associate at NCeSS (re-advertisement)
by Yuwei Lin 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

*** Apologies for Cross-posting *** Research Associate Vacancy at NCeSS Hub (Re-advertisement) Closing date: 25/02/2008 Reference: HUM/70376 http://www.ncess.ac.uk/about_us/vacancies/ The primary objective of the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS) is to develop and promote the application of innovations in digital research infrastructure (commonly known as e-Infrastructure) for the benefit of economic and social scientists: see http://www.ncess.ac.uk. NCeSS comprises a coordinating Hub, based at the University of Manchester, and seven major research Nodes at other UK universities. The Hub wishes to appoint a Research Associate with a background in Economics, Econometrics, quantitative Social Science, or Computer Science combined with extensive experience of working with economic and social scientists. The post-holder will investigate how e-Infrastructure - networked, distributed, scalable computational tools and services - can encourage and assist economic and social researchers to use (and re-use) quantitative data in tackling their substantive research. This investigation will contribute to the ESRC's National Data Strategy, which aims to develop a world class social science data infrastructure capable of delivering all the data necessary to address current and future research needs in the social sciences. The post is tenable from the earliest possible date for two years. This is a re-advertisement and previous applicants need not re-apply. Salary: £26,666 to £32,796 p.a. Informal enquiries: Tel: + 44 (0) 161 275 1381 Email: rob.procter(a)ncess.ac.uk To request a hard copy of application form: Katy Middlebrough Tel: + 44 (0) 161 275 4723 Email: Katy.Middlebrough(a)manchester.ac.uk Please quote reference HUM/70376 Closing date: 25/02/2008 Interview date: w/c 03/03/2008 For full details of the post, and to download an application form, please visit http://www.ncess.ac.uk/about_us/vacancies/

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IR 9.0 Deadline extension
by Brian Loader 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

I have now received a number of requests for an extension to the submission deadline for IR 9.0 - please don't send any more! Having informally agreed to these I am now formally extending the submission date to FRIDAY 22 FEBRUARY (please don't ask exactly what time lets just say Friday!! Actually where does Friday end?). Hope this helps everyone who wants to submit a proposal but is under time constraints. I will shortly be providing answers to all your other questions on the list. When I find all the answers... Keep those submissions coming in. Brian Brian D. Loader Co-Director, Social Informatics Research Unit (SIRU), Department of Sociology, Wentworth College, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD Email bl506(a)york.ac.uk Tel: +44(0) 1904 432639 Fax: +44(0) 1904 433043

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Re: [Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals
by Jason Wilson 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

Hi all, As someone involved with the journal danah singles out, I've responded to this on danah's blog, and reposted on a group blog I'm involved with. To cut and paste the response would be too large for the list's size limits. Suffice to say that I found this assessment of academic publishing as simplistic as I did the first time I heard these ideas, many years ago. I think anyone who is in new media studies, and who has had good experiences with academic publishing, should join this debate. It certainly feels important to me. Dr Jason Wilson Research Associate Queensland University of Technology Brisbane Australia j5.wilson(a)qut.edu.au jason_a_wilson(a)yahoo.com.au http://spooner.beds.ac.uk/nmrg http://gatewatching.org ----- Original Message ---- From: danah boyd <aoir.z3z(a)danah.org> To: aoir list <air-l(a)aoir.org> Sent: Thursday, 7 February, 2008 4:07:51 PM Subject: [Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals At AOIR this year, we heard a lot about open-access journals and the future of academic publishing. These talks were extremely well- received. At the same time, I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us came back home and continued to publish with the same respected journals that we've always published with. I've certainly seen a lot of CFPs from folks wanting to publish issues in locked-down journals. Today, an article of mine was finally published in Sage's Convergence series. I should be excited by this, but I'm actually quite depressed. While I'm lucky to be visible enough that some folks will find out about my article and ask me for a copy, most of the articles in that issue will barely get read because they are virtually inaccessible. Additionally, while scholars will ask me for my article, most policymakers and technologists will not, even though the article is probably more relevant to them than it is to you. I believe that the locked-down nature of this publishing regime silences academics while capitalizing off of our free labor at every turn. I think that this is unfair, unacceptable, and irresponsible. Thus, since I'm a blogger, I wrote a ranty blog entry about the topic: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/02/06/openaccess_is_t.html In said ranty blog entry, I laid out a set of steps for how to proceed to make change. For example, I think that all tenured faculty have a responsibility to stop publishing in locked-down journals and help build up the reputations of open-access ones. (I even believe that those who flout journal's restrictions by publishing their pieces on their websites are failing future generations by not pushing for change to happen.) I offer steps for scholars, libraries, universities, tenure committees, disciplinary associations, and scholars at all stages. In short, I'd like to see a boycott of locked-down academic journals. I think that it's particularly critical in our field since we are doing work that is relevant beyond the academy. I think that we need to stand in solidarity to stop this abuse of our labor and this silencing of our voices. Am I crazy? danah _______________________________________________ The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address. www.yahoo7.com.au/y7mail

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IR 9.0 Submission Deadline
by Brian Loader 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

For those of you who promised yourselves that you would get that proposal submitted for the IR 9.0 Conference:Rethinking Communities, Rethinking Place submitted by the end of the day I just thought I would help with a reminder. Just go to: http://conferences.aoir.org/ And click on the 'submissions site' link... Deadline is Friday 8 February. Brian Brian D. Loader Co-Director, Social Informatics Research Unit (SIRU), Department of Sociology, Wentworth College, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD Email bl506(a)york.ac.uk Tel: +44(0) 1904 432639 Fax: +44(0) 1904 433043

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Need Your Help to Build Grassroots Polling Community
by Yosem Companys 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

Dear AIR friends, Since some of you may not know me personally, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yosem Companys (yes, this is truly my last name!), and I am a PhD student in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. As part of my studies, I have closely collaborated with my friend Ricardo Rossello who just obtained his Ph.D. in Bio-Engineering at the University of Michigan to create a new scientific method to enhance the value of polling. What we came up with is called *Bullitics*, which you can see at www.bullitics.com. This is *NOT* a faddish 2.0 site, but rather a patent-pending scientific method that we have developed after years of research to enhance the value of polling. What we are trying to do with *www.bullitics.com** *is *to build a non partisan grassroots online polling community to empower people to become their own pollsters and enable them to track the value of candidates and issues in real time*. As an example of how powerful the system could be, please read the results<http://www.raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=12231>of an early test we conducted on it in New Hampshire. *PLEASE HELP US*. You can help us by following the simple four steps: - *Register* at www.bullitics.com - *Submit your preferences and change them often *as political events change before and after Super Tuesday. The more you use the product, the better! - *Provide feedback *regarding your experience with the product. Recall, its just a beta --- most of the interesting things about the product will be surfacing later on, so please also check the site often for updates as we will be integrating these continuously over time. - *Forward to Ten Friends*! The more people use Bullitics, the more powerful the tool will be. In general, I think that we are all interested in making it easier for people to influence the political process and the political decisions that affect their lives. We hope that *www.bullitics.com** *serves as a small grain of sand that takes us in that direction. *WE TRULY APPRECIATE YOUR HELP*! With your help, we may improve the political process... Thanks, Yosem Companys and Ricardo Rossello P.S. Forward this email to your friends... and send any comments to ricky.rossello(a)gmail.com

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WikiCandidate 08
by Dmitry Epstein 06 Feb '08

06 Feb '08

Dear list members, My colleagues and I just launched a website (http://wikicandidate08.com <http://wikicandidate08.com/> ) intended to research the way in which people engage in political discussion online. It's called WikiCandidate. The site is the campaign website of a fictional presidential candidate running in the 2008 US election. It's intended to look and feel exactly like a real campaign website (our developers are getting there gradually, but things look similar already), with one exception: all the content on it is tied to a wiki engine and editable by users. Visitors to the site can write up and change this candidate's bio, issue stances, news from the campaign trail, etc. First and foremost, the WikiCandidate Project is supposed to be a fun website and an online community. In a presidential election, it's common for people to be disappointed in the choice of candidates. Each person running has some character flaw, holds a position on an issue you don't share, says something you wish they hadn't. So, we wondered, free of practical constraints like life history, party politics, and voting record, who is (and can there be) a perfect presidential candidate? It wasn't long before we realized there were some really interesting academic research questions that could be asked about this. And so we put together this website. We're not studying people our users like bugs or anything. We mostly want to see whether an effort like this can be successful, and how people discuss politics in this non-traditional forum. We'd love you to stop by, and if you like what you see, invite your readers to do the same. Thank you! Dima

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Most popular sites
by Peter Fischer-Nielsen 06 Feb '08

06 Feb '08

Dear all, What is your experience with alexa.com? Can it be used as a reliable tool for measuring for instance the most used religious sites world wide: http://www.alexa.com/browse/general/?&CategoryID=373&mode=general&R=True &Start=1&SortBy=Popularity Do you know of other and better ways? Kind regards, Peter Fischer-Nielsen PhD student, University of Aarhus, Denmark

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final call panel: science learning/education in virtual worlds
by Jeremy Hunsinger 06 Feb '08

06 Feb '08

This is one of the ideas that I've been working on for copenhagen, as it seems to be gathering a good bit of steam and funding. My perspective will be to look at the organizational and funding structures for science learning in virtual worlds, likely a network/ political economy analysis. If other people have papers or proposals, I'd love to see them so i could write up a panel. Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu ) Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron _______________________________________________ The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

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