June 2011 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Two academic posts at University of Stirling
by Graham Meikle 13 Jun '11

13 Jun '11

Dear all Some colleagues may be interested in these two new posts. The Division of Film, Media & Journalism at the University of Stirling is to appoint a senior figure in Journalism Studies at Chair/Reader/Senior Lecturer level and a Lecturer in Screen/Media Studies. The closing date for both is 8 July 2011. Full details are available here: http://www.hr-services.stir.ac.uk/vacancies/index.php Best regards, graham Dr Graham Meikle ---------------------- Senior Lecturer, Communications, Media & Culture, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland. T: +44 (0) 1786 466222 F: +44 (0) 1786 466855 E: <graham.meikle(a)stir.ac.uk> W: <http://www.fmj.stir.ac.uk/staff/graham-meikle/graham-meikle.php> -- The Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year 2009/2010 The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159.

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CfP - "Evaluation in the Media" - International Conference, Paris, March 15-16 2012
by Gustavo Gomez Mejia 10 Jun '11

10 Jun '11

Dear AIR-Lers, Here's a call for papers for a web-related conference which some of you may find of interest. Kind regards, Gustavo Gomez-Mejia CELSA Université Paris-Sorbonne ***Apologies for cross-postings*** EVALUATION IN THE MEDIA International Conference Paris March 15-16, 2012 http://www.evalmedia2012.fr/ Call for Papers CONFERENCE PRESENTATION The aim of international conference “Evaluation in the Media” is to question the role of the media in the process of evaluation; they form an integral part of what may be termed the “culture”, the “fever”, the “mania” and the “explosion” of evaluation procedures observed in developed countries since the 1970s. While recognising that evaluation procedures – and the role of the media therein – were not novel, this conference aims to explore how the evaluation process has became ever more linked to the media (press, radio, television, web) in contemporary society. The conference will stress mechanisms of evaluation based on quantification or “evaluative measures” such as: “rankings”, “winners”, “tops”, “lists”, “league tables”, “ratings”, “barometers”, “dashboards”, “benchmarks”. The conference will also pay attention to qualitative evaluation mechanisms that likewise flourish in the media: “prizes”, “labels”, “contests”, “rewards”, “trophies”, etc. By focusing on such traits, the conference hope to throw light on the rise of impersonal evaluation mechanisms, that exist alongside the traditional journalistic genres based on the expression of personal opinion (editorial, op-ed piece, criticism,...); the media appear to simultaneously fulfill the roles of producers and coproducers,of relays and critics. Four specific questions will be addressed. The first one is concerned with the origins, production processes and conditions – social, economic, journalistic, material, technical and legal – that underpin how the media become producers or co-producers of the evaluation process. Editorial and visual forms, ceremonies and events, and the communication processes in general that characterise evaluation mechanisms will be another theme of the conference. We consider here that these evaluation procedures are held not only to favour the production of “knowledge” but also to promote its dissemination and recognition. Media evaluation mechanisms also circulate more or less in various social spaces (media, political, economic, professional, civic, cultural, consumerist, ...). By analyzing the circulation of such evaluation mechanisms, the conference will attempt to shed light on both success and failures in the communicative process. Finally, the conference will address the effects of media evaluation. The proliferation of evaluation procedures leads to an increase in the instances, mechanisms and numbers of actors involved in the overall process. In this regard, the conference is open to any field as long as the approach is in line with the general scientific guidelines outlined previously. The following list is indicative, not exclusive: the areas covered will include higher education and research, regions, culture, education, health, web, brands, capital, finance, communication, tourism, wine, sports, media, business, etc. Proposals may come from the humanities and the social sciences: media studies and communication, semiology, sociology, history, political sciences, linguistics, economics, etc. PROPOSALS Submission deadline – June 24th, 2011 Scientific committee notification of acceptance – July 20th, 2011 Mailing address for submitting proposals – evalmedia2012(a)gmail.com Content and framework of proposals – Proposals will include a maximum 6 000 characters. They will be structured in four parts: a) argument, explaining the theoretical framework and approach of the problem b) methodological framework, presenting the empirical material and the methodology; c) originality, specifying the relevance of the proposal and d) bibliography, comprising the eight main references. Proposals should include the following: 1) title 2) first name, 3) name, 4) professional status, 5) institution, 6) country and 7) email (professional and/or private) Please note that full papers (between 30 000 and 40 000 characters) for accepted abstracts will have to be submitted to the scientific committee no later than November 30th 2011 for the publication of the conference proceedings. Languages of proposals – English or French Format of proposals – .doc Conference Organizing Committee Julie Bouchard (University Paris 13); Etienne Candel (University Paris Sorbonne – Celsa);Hélène Cardy (University Paris 8); Gustavo Gomez Mejia (University Paris Sorbonne – Celsa) Conference Scientific Committee Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz (University of Leipzig) ; Christine Barats (University Paris 5); Julie Bouchard (University Paris 13); Etienne Candel (University Paris Sorbonne – Celsa); Hélène Cardy (University Paris 8) ; Patrice Carré (Telecom ParisTech); Jean-Baptiste Comby (University Paris 3); Emmanuel Didier (EHESS) ; Brooke Duffy (University of Pensylvania); Michel Durampart (University of Toulon) ; Wendy Espeland (Northwestern University); Andreas Fickers (Maastricht University); Pascal Froissart (University Paris 8); Gustavo Gomez Mejia (University Paris Sorbonne – Celsa) ; Yves Jeanneret (University Paris Sorbonne – Celsa); Alice Krieg-Planque (University Paris 12) ; Sarah Labelle (University Paris 13) ; Joëlle Le Marec (University Paris 7); Guy Lochard (University Paris 3) ; Cécile Méadel (Mines ParisTech Graduate School); Claire Oger (University Paris 13) ; Stéphane Olivesi (University Lyon 2); Michael Palmer (University Paris 3) ; Frédéric Pierru (CNRS); Philip Schlesinger (University of Glasgow); Michel Sénécal (University of Quebec in Montreal); Emmanuël Souchier (University Paris Sorbonne – Celsa); Joseph Turow (University of Pennsylvania); Jacques Walter (University Paul-Verlaine) Guest Speaker Wendy Espeland, Northwestern University Conference Website: http://www.evalmedia2012.fr/

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Couch Award winners announced
by Mark D. Johns 10 Jun '11

10 Jun '11

Contact: Dr. Mark D. Johns, Executive Director Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research c/o Department of Communication Studies Luther College, Decorah, Iowa USA 52101 Tel: (563) 387-1347 email: mjohns(a)luther.edu Brownfield Winner of Couch Award CEDAR FALLS, Iowa -- The Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research (www.cccsir.com) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award. The Couch Award is presented annually and recognizes excellent student-authored papers. Kristi Brownfield, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is the First Place winner for her paper, "Shots to the canon: The emergence of interpretation in online fanvid discourse." Brownfield, an Illinois native, completed her undergraduate degree at Eastern Illinois University before moving SIUC, where she is a student of Associate Professor Jennifer Dunn. Ishani Mukherjee, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago is the Second Place winner for her paper, "'Third' space and the intersectionality of violence: Symbolizing community and performing identities in South Asian blog interactions against domestic abuse." Mukherjee is a native of Calcutta, India, and has earned degrees Jadavpur University in India and from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. At UIC she is advised by Professor Steve Jones. No Third Place award was selected this year. The Couch Center established the Couch Award in 2002 as the centerpiece of an extensive awards program. Winning papers apply symbolic interactionist approaches to internet studies as advocated by the late Dr. Carl J. Couch, long-time professor of sociology at the University of Iowa. Competition is open to graduate or undergraduate students of all disciplines, and winners are selected by a committee of university professors in communication studies and sociology from across the U.S. This year’s competition was rigorous, with a record number of entries received from students of all levels, from undergraduates through Ph.D. candidates, and were submitted by students from Europe, and Asia, as well as North America. Winners receive a cash award as well as the opportunity to present their papers at a national or international conference. This year’s awards will be presented at the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers in Seattle , October 10-13. The Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research is a non-profit organization established to promote the scholarship of the late Carl J. Couch and his academic associates. Couch is recognized as the founder of The New Iowa School in sociological and communication inquiry, and was a pioneer in the qualitative research of information technologies. The Center provides networking opportunities for students and scholars who conduct social and Internet research, inspired by Couch's work. - 30 -

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New MA/MSc Digital Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London
by Noortje Marres 09 Jun '11

09 Jun '11

*Apologies for cross-posting* *Please pass on to anyone who might be interested* Digital Sociology: A new MA/MSc Programme at Goldsmiths, University of London This innovative one-year MA/MSc brings together the disciplines of sociology and computing to equip students for the analysis of digital social life. The programme combines practice-based technical skills with social methods and sociological thinking to enable graduates to play leading roles in the emerging field of digital sociology. Digital Sociology offers a comprehensive training programme of advanced courses across the two leading departments of Sociology and Computing at Goldsmiths. It has been specifically designed to facilitate the integration of social research methods and sociological thinking with creative computing techniques and approaches. The programme includes a guaranteed internship and a major practical project supervised by leading experts in computing and social research. Its objective is to cross perceived digital and analogue divides in the study and elaboration of social life. The MA/MSc Digital Sociology will start late September 2011. It is offered jointly by the Department of Sociology and Computing, and hosted by the Centre for Creative and Social Technology (CAST). Applying There is no official deadline for applications. We accept a maximum of 20 students on the MA/MSc programme and will continue to accept applications until the course is full. More information: http://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-msc-digital-sociology/ Contact: Noortje Marres (Sociology, course convenor) n.marres(a)gold.ac.uk Chris Brauer (Computing, course leader) c.brauer(a)gold.ac.uk

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Play a new online game to help science
by Derek Hansen 09 Jun '11

09 Jun '11

AIR-Lers, A group of us at UMD have created a new online game in the "games with a purpose" tradition called Odd Leaf Out. It helps us improve computer vision algorithms used in mobile apps like Leafsnap, which helps people identify a tree by taking a picture of a leaf from the tree. Feel free to join the fun here: http://biotrackers.net/odd_leaf_out/game.php Feel free to email me directly with any comments you have about the experience, or better yet provide them in the space provided after you finish a game. Feel free to play as much as you want and spread the link around. Thanks! Derek Hansen Assistant Professor Maryland's iSchool

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Call for papers/book chapters
by Donald Heider 09 Jun '11

09 Jun '11

Call for papers/book chapters - 2nd notice The center for Digital Ethics & Policy at Loyola University Chicago (digitalethics.org) will be holding a Digital Ethics Symposium on October 28th, 2011. We are looking for papers on digital ethics which would first be presented at the symposium, with the best of those then included in an edited volume on digital ethics. Authors of accepted papers will be eligible for up to $400 in travel funds to be able to attend the Chicago symposium. The author(s) of the top student paper will be eligible for up to $1,000 in travel funds. The paper might be on topics such as privacy, anonymity, griefing, free speech, intellectual property, hacking, scamming, surveillance, information mining, transparency, digital citizenship, or anything else relating to ethical questions and digital technology. Abstracts are due by midnight CST on June 30th, 2011, should follow APA or MLA style and be no longer than 500 words, not including references. Send your submission in a MS Word document attachment to contact(a)digitalethics.org, and please write Digital Ethics Symposium submission in the subject line. You can send questions to the same email address.

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webinar Where languages collide: How multilingual literacies make social media real
by Fred Dervin 09 Jun '11

09 Jun '11

Where languages collide: How multilingual literacies make social media real 14 June 2011, University of Luxembourg and broadcast live Media and more specifically social media exist in and through multiple languages - in keyboarding, texting, dubbing, subtitling, translating, gaming and in many other ways of media interaction. Multilingualism is key when participating in (social) media. Media literacy is build from various languages and contexts of language use. * How do social media rely on multiple languages ? * Is there media literacy without multilingualism ? * How do users bridge languages and contents in multiuser contexts ? * How does media literacy construct language identities ? An interactive debate with two leading researchers in the area of multilingualism and media literacy will address recent findings and discuss examples collected from the multilingual audience preparing and attending the webinar. Invited speakers Claire Kramsch is Professor of German and Education at UC Berkeley http://german.berkeley.edu/people/showprofile.php?id=7 Pilar Lacasa is Professor at University of Alcalá http://uah-gipi.org/ingles/gipi.htm The interactive debate is moderated by Gudrun Ziegler, Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg http://multi-learn.uni.lu Register now for free: webinar.luxembourg(a)gmail.com

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CFP: NeMLA Panel on Children's Periodicals--Digital and Otherwise
by Patrick Cox 08 Jun '11

08 Jun '11

Panel: “Fun With a Purpose”: Periodical Pedagogy and Early Edutainment 43nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) March 15-18, 2012 Rochester, New York – Hyatt Rochester Host Institution: St. John Fisher College Panel Description: Children’s periodicals published in the US over the last 300 years provide a wealth of textual and visual insight into US culture, pedagogy, and conceptions of childhood. The movement of traditional paper magazines to websites, and the appearance of periodicals with entirely digital existences, both enrich and complicate this genre. This panel will engage with this under-examined body of texts in their most salient mode: as pedagogy. Children’s magazines have been used as instructional tools with subject matter spanning literacy, manners, morality, crafts, citizenship, “mental hygiene,” and beyond, transmitting enduring lessons in an ephemeral format. By packaging their lessons in an entertaining and disposable blend of fiction, non-fiction, images, activities, games, jokes, and riddles, these magazines can be considered a print medium precursor to “edutainment” or, as the motto of *Highlights for Children* calls it, “Fun with a purpose.” This panel is open to explorations of particular mechanisms, contents, and contexts of periodical pedagogy past and present, including examinations of child-readers’ participation in, subversion against, or re-creation of, that pedagogy. Possible topics from all disciplines may include: - histories or analysis of particular children’s periodicals - pedagogies in periodicals (ideological, curricular, religious, etc.) - convergences of traditional magazines and digital media - pedagogy, periodicals, and power - magazines produced by children - fiction and poetry in magazines - use of periodicals in classrooms - transnational periodicals - accidental pedagogy - production, distribution, and circulation of pedagogy - cross-cultural comparisons of periodical pedagogy - marginalia and ephemera - pedagogy in the home (or doctor’s office waiting room) - periodical pedagogy as pop culture - children’s responses to and uses of magazines Please send 500-word abstracts to Patrick Cox at ptcox(a)camden.rutgers.edu by Sept 30. Thanks. -- Patrick Cox PhD Student 2010-2011 David K. Sengstack Fellow Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/ 2010 ChLA Hannah Beiter Graduate Student Research Award Recipient https://email.rutgers.edu/mailman/listinfo/exploring_childhood_studies <https://email.rutgers.edu/mailman/listinfo/exploring_childhood_studies> http://camden-rutgers.academia.edu/PatrickTCox/Blog "In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer." --Albert Camus "Don't let your studies interfere with your education." --Colonel Henry Rutgers "the jUdges of nOrmalitY are present everywhere." --Foucault, of course

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urlte.am to back up URL shorteners
by gus andrews 08 Jun '11

08 Jun '11

So here's a project which should be tremendously useful to Internet researchers, just announced by Jason Scott, a "rogue archivist activist": URLTE.AM. The project will apparently be making backups of every URL coded for by a URL shortener, thereby keeping track when links go dead and expire. Between this and archive.org, a lot less Internet history should be lost. >From the description at urlte.am: "Welcome to the URLTeam website. The URLTeam is the ArchiveTeam subcommittee on URL shorteners. We believe that they pose a serious threat to the internet's integrity. If one of them dies, gets hacked or sells out, millions of links will stop working. Thus we preemptively release backups, because URL shorteners are too busy to make backups themselves. Releases Every 6 months or so we release a torrent of all backed up files. When a new torrent is released, you can simply delete the old torrent and download the new files to the same location. Your BitTorrent client will figure out which files have changed and will redownload them, even if you weren't finished yet on the previous torrent. The latest torrent was released on May 31th, 2011: urlteam.torrent - List of files - Readme The next release is planned around December 2011. Data format All data files in the torrent are simple text files compressed using LZMA2/xz. The text file format is very simple: Each line contains one mapping in the following format: Shortcode, pipe (Ascii 0x7C), long URL, line feed (Ascii 0x10). The file is sorted by shortcodes using the following order: Shorter shortcodes come before longer ones Decimal digits Lowercase letters Uppercase letters ASCII value Depending on the URL shortener there might be multiple long URLs for one shortcode. There are some tools for working with the files on GitHub. Q&A Can you do a backup of shortener XY please? Maybe. Some shorteners are very fast at banning scrapers which makes it impossible to do a backup in an efficient way. Contact us and we will look into it. What about 301Works.org? They help URL shorteners with backups. Unfortunately they rely on the cooperation of URL shorteners, and many of the biggest URL shorteners refuse to cooperate. Furthermore, they don't plan on releasing any data files to the public. We do however greatly value their work and when selecting which URL shorteners we will scrape next we concentrate especially on those that don't cooperate with 301Works. Since March 2011 we are actively uploading data from non-cooperating shorteners to the 301Works archive. While those files are not available for download (they contain the same data as our torrents anyway) you can watch our progress here. I like what you do. Can I help? Sure thing. We can always use people who help with scraping. Or programmers. We could also use a fast server with lots of space for storing the data and seeding the torrents. Anyhow, if you want to help, please contact us. What's with all those weird directory and file names in the torrent? It's hard to organize that stuff into files so that each individual file is only a few hundred megabytes in size. Because we want to accomodate people with inferior operating systems we also need to assume a case insensitive file system." Gillian "Gus" Andrews Postdoctoral Fellow, Google Academic Research Grant Anthropology in Education Teachers College, Columbia University http://gandre.ws

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CfP: Journal of Communication special issue "Social Media and Political Change"
by Tom Boellstorff 08 Jun '11

08 Jun '11

Dear all: I was asked to post this CfP for a special issue of the Journal of Communication special issue on "Social Media and Political Change." The link with details is below! All the best, Tom Boellstorff >> Dear Dr. Boellstorff: I'm a fan of your "Coming of Age in Second Life" book and have used it in my classes. I'm editing a special issue of the Journal of Communication. The theme for the issue is "Social Media and Political Change", and our call for papers is here and I've pasted it below as well: >> >> http://faculty.washington.edu/pnhoward/publishing/jofcspecialissue.html >> >> I'm eager to have some submissions from anthropologists, working internationally, on some of the same questions tackled in communication research. If you, your colleagues or the students working with you are developing manuscripts on these themes I'd welcome your submissions. As you may know, this is the flagship journal for the discipline and one of the few with crossover appeal. If know of any advanced graduate students with good observations from relevant field sites please do share the link--a pub in this journal could be appealing because it would open up another large chunk of the academic job "market" to them. Please let me know if I can tell you more about our plans for the special issue, and feel free to forward this across your professional network. >> Sincerely, >> Phil >> Dr. Philip N. Howard >> Associate Professor >> Department of Communication >> Jackson School of International Studies >> Information School >> University of Washington tom boellstorff + professor department of anthropology + university of california, irvine editor-in-chief + american anthropologist http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/boellstorff/boellstorff.php

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