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Re: [Air-L] Conducting qualitative research on Facebook
by Filippo Trevisan 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

Hi Virginia, Paul Reilly and I have two articles on the ethics of researching (and specifically quoting/not quoting from) public Facebook group pages that may be useful to you: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2014.889188 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2014.889188> http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1104373 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1104373> As others have said, context is key - both in terms of the potential sensitivity of the issues you are investigating and risk to (potentially unaware) participants. There are creative ways to convey results without necessarily quoting directly from Facebook posts and we discuss some of these in the article. Best, Filippo ——— Filippo Trevisan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor - School of Communication Deputy Director - Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP) American University 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC - 20016 Tel: +1 (202) 885 6930 Email: trevisan(a)american.edu <mailto:trevisan@american.edu> Web: www.filippotrevisan.net <http://www.filippotrevisan.net/> New book: “Disability Rights Advocacy Online: Voice, Empowerment and Global Connectivity <https://www.routledge.com/Disability-Rights-Advocacy-Online-Voice-Empowerme…>” NY: Routledge, 2016. All my publications: www.filippotrevisan.net/publications <http://www.filippotrevisan.net/publications> > > Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2018 10:37:30 +0100 > From: Dariusz Jemielniak <dariusz.jemielniak(a)fulbrightmail.org> > To: Sarah Quinton <sequinton(a)brookes.ac.uk> > Cc: Sharon Greenfield <s3417013(a)student.rmit.edu.au>, > "air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org" <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Conducting qualitative research on Facebook > Message-ID: > <CADeSpGU0f_wTuyo4KjQh367LNP2-7yAYa0rcLoD=b=SMiGA1KA(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > while agreeing with previous commenters, I would also like to add that > translating from another language often gives an additional layer of > security (it makes it more difficult to track the quotes back to the > original). If you're going to publish in English, as often is the case, > doing fieldwork in a different language adds to the safety. > > cheers, > > dj > > On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 9:52 AM, Sarah Quinton <sequinton(a)brookes.ac.uk> > wrote: > >> Hello Virginia >> >> You should check the QUT Ethics committee's policies as sensibly suggested >> by Sharon. >> >> You also might want to consider both the context of your research, i.e. the >> sensitivity of the phenomenon you are researching ( is it discussions about >> gardening or is it content about being a carer for someone with long term >> illness) and also the vulnerability of the Facebook participants you wish >> to include in the research ( obviously there are limits to what you can >> determine about these people's vulnerability but it is worth thinking >> about, is the group in any way self identifying as vulnerable or >> identified by others/researchers as vulnerable?). >> >> You may also wish to consider anonymising the content without fundamentally >> altering the meaning ( again depending on what you need from the data and >> how you will be analysing it) if you are thinking about reproducing it >> anywhere in your research, so that it is more difficult to trace back to >> the poster/originator through search engines. This is another approach to >> 'protecting' the Facebook participants. >> >> >> I am sure other members of AoIR will have valuable comments too. >> >> >> >> Sarah >> >> On 7 February 2018 at 05:59, Sharon Greenfield < >> s3417013(a)student.rmit.edu.au >>> wrote: >> >>> Hello Virginia, >>> >>> I would suggest reading up on Mary L Gray's many pieces on ethics in >> online >>> research. >>> In addition, what does the QUT Ethics Committee recommend? >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Sharon >>> >>> >>> On 7 February 2018 at 16:38, Virginia Balfour < >> virginiabalfour(a)hotmail.com >>>> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Hello >>>> >>>> I would value advice on the ethics of collecting data from an Open >>>> Facebook page and the best ways to mitigate them. >>>> >>>> My research is looking at an open Facebook page and it is likely that I >>>> will want to use data from conversations between commenters and >>> statements >>>> made by commenters as part of my research. While most observations will >>> be >>>> generalised and made anonymous, there may be some conversations where >> it >>> is >>>> pertinent to identify the commenters and/or identifiable comments. >>>> >>>> In particular I am interested in whether people think it is necessary >> or >>>> advisable to contact individual commenters to ask if their comments can >>> be >>>> used in the research? >>>> >>>> Are their any risk mitigation strategies that anyone has used in the >> past >>>> that they could recommend? >>>> >>>> regards >>>> >>>> Virginia Balfour >>>> >>>> QUT researcher. >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >>>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__aoir.org&d=DwICAg&c=U0G… >>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__aoir.org&d=DwICAg&c=U0G…> >>>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listserv.aoir.org_&d=Dw… >>>> listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org >>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listserv.aoir.org_listi…> >>>> >>>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >>>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.aoir.org_&d=DwICAg&… >>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.aoir.org_&d=DwICAg&…> >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__aoir.org&d=DwICAg&c=U0G… >>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listserv.aoir.org_&d=Dw… >>> listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org >>> >>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.aoir.org_&d=DwICAg&… >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> Dr Sarah Quinton FHEA MIDM >> Chair of Oxford Brookes University Research Ethics Committee >> Senior Lecturer in Marketing >> Marketing Department, >> Business School, Room CLC G.14 >> Oxford Brookes University >> Headington Campus >> Oxford. OX3 0BP >> +44 1865 485694 >> >> *Skype: sarah.quinton5* >> >> www.sarahquinton.co.uk >> www.twitter.com/quinton_digital >> >> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__uk.linkedin.com_in_sara… >> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__uk.linkedin.com_in_sara…> >> >> *Please note that from October 2017 Dr Karen Handley is now the Business >> Faculty Ethics Officer and she can be emailed at khandley(a)brookes.ac.uk >> <khandley(a)brookes.ac.uk> concerning PhD student or staff research ethics >> issues.* >> >> >> Recent publications: >> *Out Now*: Quinton, S., and Reynolds, R. (2018*),The Ethics of Online >> Research. *Ed Kandy Woodfield, The changing roles of researchers and >> participants in digital and social media research, chap 3, 53-78. >> >> >> Quinton, S., Canhoto, A., Molinillo, S., Pera, R. & Budhathoki, T. >> (2017). Conceptualising >> a digital orientation: antecedents of supporting SME performance in the >> digital economy, *Journal of Strategic Marketing*, 1-13. >> Quinton, S. and Simkin, L. (2016). The Digital Journey: reflected learning >> and emerging challenges, *International Journal of Management Reviews, * >> (forthcoming) DOI:10.1111/ijmr.1204 >> >> *Current research project* - Sharing photographs online and on social media >> by older people: a mitigator of social isolation and loneliness. Funded by >> the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, in partnership with The Open University. >> _______________________________________________ >> The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list >> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__aoir.org&d=DwICAg&c=U0G… >> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listserv.aoir.org_&d=Dw… >> listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org >> >> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: >> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.aoir.org_&d=DwICAg&… >> > >

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Researchers studying blended/hybrid synchronous learning?
by Lee, Mark 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

Dear colleagues, I am interested in connecting with folks who have an interest in researching learning designs and spaces for blended or hybrid synchronous learning, which essentially means teaching live classes involving a combination of face-to-face and online/distributed students. In this type of setup, technologies like video conferencing, web conferencing, virtual worlds, VR telepresence, telepresence robots, etc are used to bring the remotely located students into the on-campus classroom environment. If you or someone you know has done and/or is doing work relating specifically to this area, please reach out to me off-list. I am especially keen to find researchers in the UK and wider Europe who are publishing/have published in the area to join an international group I am forming to explore grant funding possibilities, among other things; however, I would welcome contact from, and discussions with, people anywhere in the world. Currently, I do not know of anyone from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or South America who has published on the topic of blended/hybrid synchronous learning. Kind regards, Mark J. W. Lee Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Charles Sturt University, Australia Visiting Faculty, Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Email: malee[at]csu[dot]edu[dot]au

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CfP Nations in Cyberspace
by Lilia Boliachevets 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

Dear All, Central European University’s Nationalism Studies Program is soliciting papers for a conference entitled “Nations in Cyberspace” to be held in Budapest on June 28-30, 2018. This conference aims to begin a conversation about systemizing scholarly approaches to cyberspace as a de-territorialized site where national narratives are constructed and reproduced. An emphasis will be placed on devising methodological best practices for researching and analyzing nationhood on the internet. Through digital media and distance-eclipsing technologies, memes and messaging apps, nationalism has taken on new life online. “Nations in Cyberspace” will gather scholars and graduate-level students to discuss how nationalist mobilization, transnational engagement and national identification is impacted by social media and other online forums. Framed by a keynote address from Robert A. Saunders (Ethnopolitics in Cyberspace: The Internet, Minority Nationalism, and the Web of Identity, 2010), the conference will tackle qualitative and quantitative methods for studying nationalism in cyberspace, the internet and diasporic or long-distance nationalism, neo-nationalist mobilization online, nation-states and the manufacture of cyber-nationalism, internet popular culture and banal nationalism, and related themes. We invite scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences to submit 300-word paper abstracts and short biographies to cybernationalism(a)ceu.edu by March 9, 2018. Please also fill out the Conference Form: https://docs.google.com/…/1kdVW1kMbr1mURx9kdTpQ7V5wNojpCgX…/ <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kdVW1kMbr1mURx9kdTpQ7V5wNojpCgXUwF1opFdeCM…>. All decisions will be announced on or before March 31. Final papers (of up to 4,000 words) are due by June 15. If you have any questions, please contact us at cybernationalism(a)ceu.edu. For more information and updates, please check the Nationalism Studies Program’s website ( https://nationalism.ceu.edu/ <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnationalism.ceu.edu%2F&h=ATOYi…>) or follow our Facebook page.

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Re: [Air-L] conducting qualitative research on Facebook
by Tremayne, Diana 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

I found an article by Williams et al (2017) useful when looking at similar issues relating to Twitter data. There might be some overlap with your research. Here is the full info: Matthew L Williams, Pete Burnap, Luke Sloan. Towards an Ethical Framework for Publishing Twitter Data in Social Research: Taking into Account Users’ Views, Online Context and Algorithmic Estimation. Best wishes Diana Tremayne Carnegie School of Education Leeds Beckett University, G07 Carnegie Hall, Headingley Campus, Leeds, LS6 3QQ, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)113 812 8652 Email: d.tremayne(a)leedsbeckett.ac.uk Twitter: @dianatremayne ________________________________________ From: Air-L <air-l-bounces(a)listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org <air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org> Sent: 07 February 2018 08:52 To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: Air-L Digest, Vol 163, Issue 7 Send Air-L mailing list submissions to air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to air-l-request(a)listserv.aoir.org You can reach the person managing the list at air-l-owner(a)listserv.aoir.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Air-L digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Call for Abstracts -- Special Issue on Apps and Infrastructures (Fernando van der Vlist) 2. ICA Preconference: Crowdsourcing as a Content Analysis Tool (Lei Guo) 3. CFP EASST18 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - (Ra?l Tabar?s) 4. CFP EASST18 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - (Ra?l Tabar?s) 5. Postdoc position for PERVADE: Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research (Michael T Zimmer) 6. CFP for a Philip K Dick anthology (hyperborean7) 7. Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at Monash University Malaysia - Two Openings (Julian Hopkins) 8. Conducting qualitative research on Facebook (Virginia Balfour) 9. Re: Conducting qualitative research on Facebook (Sharon Greenfield) 10. Re: Conducting qualitative research on Facebook (Sarah Quinton) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2018 15:43:42 +0100 From: Fernando van der Vlist <fernando.vandervlist(a)gmail.com> To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Call for Abstracts -- Special Issue on Apps and Infrastructures Message-ID: <CAJSK3-JVcPMDsiZYQRMYLd7FuQFXQkKxYYPr54ZD4xQSL3L_bQ(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Dear all, We invite submissions for a special issue of Computational Culture on "Apps and Infrastructures", edited by Carolin Gerlitz, Anne Helmond, David Nieborg, and Fernando van der Vlist. Please find the call for abstracts below. 750 word abstracts are due by April 1, 2018. More information is available at http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events/. Queries to the editors can be addressed at apps.infrastructures(a)gmail.com. Best regards, Carolin Gerlitz (University of Siegen) Anne Helmond (University of Amsterdam) David Nieborg (University of Toronto) Fernando van der Vlist (University of Siegen and University of Amsterdam) -- # CALL FOR ABSTRACTS # APPS AND INFRASTRUCTURES # A special issue of Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies # Edited by Carolin Gerlitz, Anne Helmond, David Nieborg, Fernando van der Vlist ## OUTLINE Apps have become an important new cultural, technical, and economic software form. Most of today?s apps are designed to run on smartphones and other mobile devices and provide functions previously possible with other software forms (Morris and Elkins, 2015). However, they represent new ways in which software artefacts are developed, tested, packaged, promoted, distributed, monitored, monetised, downloaded, integrated, updated, stored, accessed, archived, interpreted, and used. To foreground the relational and material dimensions of apps, research should not only account for them as discrete media objects, but needs to approach apps as part of their multiple infrastructures and environments including app stores, development platforms, advertising technologies, analytics tools, and cloud services, among others. App stores set the conditions for users and developers to distribute, browse, promote, monetise, rate, and download apps developed for Apple?s iOS, Google?s Android, or other mobile operating systems. Developers draw on a variety of both official and third-party developer tools, including developer pages and reference documentation, application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), integrated development environments (IDEs), and dedicated programming languages. Such resources are commonly employed in order to build, test, and monitor apps whilst appropriating the features and constraints of particular platforms and devices, thereby participating in the re-interpretation and re-evaluation of platform features and data. Furthermore, apps may also utilise a device?s built-in sensors for continuous data collection of movements, practices, and environments whilst being wirelessly connected to the cloud or other infrastructures, without the user necessarily knowing exactly when, how, or where (Mackenzie, 2010). Approaching apps from an infrastructural perspective allows attending to the various socio-technical actors, layers, and inscriptions that inform app development, distribution, and usage in situated, distributed, and often dissimilar ways. Within such stacked intermediary infrastructures, platform logics of negotiation among heterogeneous stakeholders are multiplied and nested. This raises questions about the material and technological boundaries of apps and the subsequent need for methodologies to study apps? socio-technical assemblages on multiple scales, attending to inbound and outbound data flows, governance and power, valuation, their political economy, and material semiotics. Previous research on apps -- initially emerging at the intersection of mobile studies and media studies -- considered mobile apps as a form of mobile or location-based media transforming and generating new forms of communication and sociality, places, and publics through the affordances and practices associated with mobile artefacts (Goggin and Hjorth, 2014). While these studies raised general questions about the boundaries of apps, attention was primarily directed to apps as compartmentalised software applications and their relations with affect, bodies, and locales (Farman 2012; Matviyenko et al., 2015; Morris and Elkins, 2015). A second strand of app research has moved beyond such a single app focus and directed primary attention to the materialities and infrastructures of apps by engaging with their data cultures, material connections, political economic underpinnings, and ecologies (Albury et al., 2017; Farman, 2015; Goldsmith in Goggin and Hjorth, 2014; Horst, 2013; Nieborg, 2017; Wilken, 2015). This special issue of Computational Culture welcomes proposals and projects from scholars and practitioners from across different disciplines interested in the advancement of app studies at the intersection of apps and infrastructures. Studies of mobile apps, platform native apps, and web browser apps or extensions are particularly encouraged. We specifically seek articles that bring together conceptual work with a technically and empirically grounded perspective, addressing the methodological challenges associated with the critical study of apps and their intricate relations to other software, platforms, and infrastructures. Contributors are encouraged to move beyond studies of single apps and their users in favor of approaches that explore apps as material artefacts alongside the infrastructures, political economy, and environments in which they are embedded and situationally enacted. We thus encourage interdisciplinary contributions that traverse boundaries between the fields of software studies, platform studies, cultural and media studies, science and technology studies, as well as political economy and data critique. ## TOPICS AND PROJECTS MIGHT INCLUDE * The relations between apps and their wider material and infrastructural environments, including app stores, development platforms and toolkits, analytics tools, advertising technologies, and cloud services. * The methodological and empirical challenges associated with the critical study of apps, including concerns about accessibility to mobile app backends and the limits of data retrieval through APIs or scraping methods as used in web research. * Studies of apps as articulations of technicity (e.g., how they are designed, built, maintained, and updated) and the data cultures they produce (e.g., what data do they collect or require). * Detailed empirical and critical studies exploring apps? data cultures, usage tracking, technical dependencies and app permissions, sensor technologies, and wireless access points. * Inventive methods to conceptualise how apps are located or situated, given they are utilising a mobile device?s built-in sensors as well as accessing other resources from remote cloud infrastructures. * Studies of the political economy of apps (e.g., how apps are valued and monetized), the role of industry partnerships and third parties (e.g., how apps are re-interpreted or extended), and the politics of operability (e.g., how apps negotiate among stakeholders or interests). * Explorations of the techno-economic relations between the web and app ecosystems, including the dependencies of apps on web platforms and cloud services, as well as the regulations and limits of app development by device manufacturers and mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. * Explorations of the ways and mechanisms through which multiple apps are interconnected, forming collections, ecologies, and chains of apps in specific practices (e.g., task and content automation). * Media archaeologies exploring historical constellations of apps and their wider material and infrastructural environments and other historical approaches to app research. * Explorations of app stores as the primary environment or infrastructure for mobile apps, including contributions focusing on non-Western apps and app stores, apps? update cultures, and their development cycles. * The ways in which different material and infrastructural environments, such as app stores, cater to distinct mobile operating systems, devices, and geographic regions. * Critical artistic interventions and research software tools that repurpose the affordances of apps, app stores and other native environments, and explore their data cultures. ## SCHEDULE 750 word abstracts should be emailed to apps.infrastructures(a)gmail.com by April 1, 2018. Any queries can be addressed to the editors at apps.infrastructures(a)gmail.com. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Computational Culture Editorial Board and the special issue editors. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by May 1, 2018 and invited to submit full manuscripts by September 15, 2018. These manuscripts are subject to full blind peer review according to Computational Culture?s policies. The issue will be published in March 2019. Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of interdisciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural computational objects, practices, processes and structures. -- http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events/ ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2018 09:49:09 -0500 From: Lei Guo <guolei1985(a)gmail.com> To: Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] ICA Preconference: Crowdsourcing as a Content Analysis Tool Message-ID: <CAERtBjNtk7QrRCRPrbP+rWa=TYsajrkt4AbTuHgd3bw223iv=g(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" ICA Preconference: Crowdsourcing as a Content Analysis Tool May 24, 13:00 - 17:00 Hilton Prague Crowdsourcing is a popular method in computer science for categorizing and classifying text and objects. This preconference introduces crowdsourcing for communication researchers as an emerging content analysis method. Rather than rely on a few human coders to carry out a content analysis, the crowdsourcing approach outsources coding tasks to numerous people online (e.g., multiple people code the same item), and applies an aggregation policy to make a decision on a given item. Through a hands-on workshop and research presentations, this preconference explores: 1) Different crowdsourcing platforms to carry out a project. A demonstration will be given to show how to use two different crowdsourcing platforms: Amazon?s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a well-established service, and Crowdflower, an emerging service. In the hands-on workshop, attendees will set up their own project on one of the platforms, and be guided in the steps, from set-up to extracting and analyzing the crowdworkers? results. 2) Crowdsourcing as a method that is both cheaper and more efficient than manual content analysis. Can it also be as valid and reliable? Research presentations on both ?crowdcoding? and traditional manual coding will be given, as well as a discussion about cost structure and features to ensure quality results. The Speakers/Panelists include: Hajo Boomgaarden, Professor of empirical social science method, University of Vienna Brendan Watson, Assistant professor of journalism, Michigan State University Lei Guo, Assistant professor of emerging media studies, Boston University Margrit Betke, Professor of computer science, Boston University Kate Mays, Ph.D. student in emerging media studies, Boston University This is a half-day preconference. For questions, contact Dr. Lei Guo ( guolei(a)bu.edu) To register, follow this link <http://www.icahdq.org/event/PC24_Crowdsourcing>. ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2018 16:31:54 +0100 From: Ra?l Tabar?s <faraondemetal(a)gmail.com> To: openmanufacturing(a)googlegroups.com, air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org, EASST membership <membership(a)easst.net> Subject: [Air-L] CFP EASST18 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - Message-ID: <CAHy3Epg3X-fKdjAypknmDYjqqJ2e_idk_uM9h_H21g7u7_ya-Q(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Dear all, -Just a friendly reminder few days before the deadline- Please consider to submit paper proposals to our panel "Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy" at next EASST18 conference that will be held in Lancaster. The event will be held from 25-28 of July and will bring together a lot of STS and SSH scholars. The call will be open till the 14th of February of 2018. A description of the panel is included below. Feel free to contact us in case of any doubt. Papers can be submitted here->https://nomadit.co.uk/ easst/easst2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6189 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - Short abstract Open design and manufacturing paradigms have been recently embraced for promoting technological appropriation as well as enablers for transforming traditional fabrication. In this panel we explore the role that these concepts can have in a post-industrial society. Long abstract With the popularization of the Web 2.0 paradigm, digital platforms have become cultural intermediaries in a growing technology mediation environment that has been framed by various scholars as "platform economy". This recent phenomenon has favored the establishment of different "black box" systems that impede us from discovering the inner workings of these new socio-technological brokers. Different self-organized communities and grassroots initiatives have simultaneously appeared thanks to the Internet and the emergence of new makerspaces that have a subset of digital fabrication tools. These groups promote citizen empowerment through technological appropriation and rely on digital commons such as open designs, software and knowledge. In this sense, especially relevant has been the emergence of new discourses aligned with these non-proprietary technologies like open design and manufacturing, which are conceived to promote a radical change in the fabrication towards a more sustainable relationship between production processes and goods. How can digital platforms be designed in order to facilitate encounters between people, things and environments within open design & manufacturing? How can we understand the impact of such digital platforms on society? In this panel we would like to invite authors to analyze the emergence of these phenomena and critically examine the opportunities, contradictions, challenges and tensions that this combination of new tools and mindsets bring for technological appropriation in a post-industrial society. We welcome submissions that can explore alternative paths for R&D systems and innovation policies but also for reconfiguring design and production processes. -- ------------------------------ All the best, Ra?l @faraondemetal http://es.linkedin.com/in/rtabares <http://blogs.tecnalia.com/inspiring-blog/author/raultabares/> ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2018 16:36:05 +0100 From: Ra?l Tabar?s <faraondemetal(a)gmail.com> To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org, eurograd(a)lists.easst.net Subject: [Air-L] CFP EASST18 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - Message-ID: <CAHy3EpjQ9fdoCWcmfU-isym6hqbCpqdFVrJVRkcGkcOwNfE20A(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Dear all, Please consider to submit paper proposals to our panel "Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy" at next EASST18 conference that will be held in Lancaster. The event will be held from 25-28 of July and will bring together a lot of STS and SSH scholars. The call will be open till the 14th of February of 2018. A description of the panel is included below. Feel free to contact us in case of any doubt. Papers can be submitted here->https://nomadit.co.uk/ easst/easst2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6189 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - Short abstract Open design and manufacturing paradigms have been recently embraced for promoting technological appropriation as well as enablers for transforming traditional fabrication. In this panel we explore the role that these concepts can have in a post-industrial society. Long abstract With the popularization of the Web 2.0 paradigm, digital platforms have become cultural intermediaries in a growing technology mediation environment that has been framed by various scholars as "platform economy". This recent phenomenon has favored the establishment of different "black box" systems that impede us from discovering the inner workings of these new socio-technological brokers. Different self-organized communities and grassroots initiatives have simultaneously appeared thanks to the Internet and the emergence of new makerspaces that have a subset of digital fabrication tools. These groups promote citizen empowerment through technological appropriation and rely on digital commons such as open designs, software and knowledge. In this sense, especially relevant has been the emergence of new discourses aligned with these non-proprietary technologies like open design and manufacturing, which are conceived to promote a radical change in the fabrication towards a more sustainable relationship between production processes and goods. How can digital platforms be designed in order to facilitate encounters between people, things and environments within open design & manufacturing? How can we understand the impact of such digital platforms on society? In this panel we would like to invite authors to analyze the emergence of these phenomena and critically examine the opportunities, contradictions, challenges and tensions that this combination of new tools and mindsets bring for technological appropriation in a post-industrial society. We welcome submissions that can explore alternative paths for R&D systems and innovation policies but also for reconfiguring design and production processes. -- ------------------------------ All the best, Ra?l @faraondemetal http://es.linkedin.com/in/rtabares <http://blogs.tecnalia.com/inspiring-blog/author/raultabares/> ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2018 17:17:40 +0000 From: Michael T Zimmer <zimmerm(a)uwm.edu> To: List Aoir <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Postdoc position for PERVADE: Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research Message-ID: <682694BE-6E16-47BC-A8D9-FB14EC68EE2D(a)uwm.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear colleagues: I am hiring a Postdoctoral Research Assistant to work on the PERVADE: Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research project! This is a 12-month position, with possible renewal for a 2nd year. Details below. Please circulate and apply! -Michael Zimmer Position: Postdoctoral Research Assistant Project: PERVADE: Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research Faculty Advisor: Dr. Michael Zimmer The School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is accepting applications for a Postdoctoral Research Associate to work with Dr. Michael Zimmer on the NSF-funded PERVADE: Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research project (https://pervade.umd.edu/) The position will be under the supervision of Dr. Michael Zimmer, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Information Policy Research. Along with continuing their own research agenda, the Postdoctoral Research Associate will work alongside Dr. Zimmer and other PERVADE team members to pursue various aspects of the larger project, including empirical investigations of computational researchers working with pervasive data sets, user communities impacted by pervasive data, and regulators responding to ethical issues with big data research. The postdoctoral position is designed for recent PhDs who are engaged in research on data ethics, internet research ethics, or other areas aligned with the objectives of the PERVADE project. Recent PhDs in information ethics & policy, critical information studies, internet studies, social media, and digital privacy are also encouraged to apply. Experience with empirical methods is required; experience with either qualitative or quantitative methods of inquiry is welcome. Ideal candidates will have a strong publication record and demonstrated success working on teams. The postdoc is a full-time, 12-month position starting August 20, 2018, with possible renewal for a 2ndyear. The Postdoctoral Research Associate will receive a salary of USD $48,900 per year plus benefits, access to travel funds, and office space in the Center for Information Policy Research. The stipend and benefits eligibility are subject to UW System policies. Applicants who do not yet hold a PhD but expect to have it by August 2018 will be asked to provide a letter from their home institution corroborating the degree award schedule. Verification of completion of degree will be required before the start date. Applications should include a letter of interest, CV, a writing sample, and the name and contact information of three references. All materials should be sent in a single PDF file to Dr. Michael Zimmer (zimmerm(a)uwm.edu<mailto:zimmerm@uwm.edu>) by April 1, 2018. For more information, please contact Dr. Michael Zimmer (zimmerm(a)uwm.edu) UWM is an AA/EEO Employer -- Michael Zimmer, PhD Associate Professor, School of Information Studies Director, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm(a)uwm.edu t: @michaelzimmer w: www.michaelzimmer.org ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2018 20:39:41 -0500 From: hyperborean7 <hyperborean7(a)gmail.com> To: Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] CFP for a Philip K Dick anthology Message-ID: <5a7a58de.c3dce90a.67bdf.196e(a)mx.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 A Philip K Dick Anthology ? ?Entering the Uncanny Worlds of PK Dick? (call for contributors) Philip K Dick?(PKD) is arguably the most critiqued, celebrated, imitated, commodified science fiction writer of all time. He is certainly one of the most enigmatic literary figures of the 20th Century.? No matter how one positions the writer, his stories continue to inspire new interpretations and elaborations across a broad range of genres and media. In hundreds of stories, long and short, he wove philosophy, psychoanalysis, religion and spirituality, communication theory and medium theory, genetic and social engineering, and post-humanism, among other things.? PKD certainly had a philosophical bent, but he was also a consummate prankster ? a kind of post-modern speculative absurdist. Like any good writer he played with words, ideas, metaphors and images. However, the worlds he envisioned ? his alternate, counter-factual histories and hyper-technological futures seem to quickly settle into the psyche as these vaguely familiar, almost mundane places splitting at the seams with all manner of techno-human monstrosity. What often appear at first pass to be the most outlandish and impossible futures soon become strangely (and often uncomfortably) familiar to the contemporary reader. ? A lesser-known aspect of PKD's prolific output concerns his habit of playing with the ontological possibilities bound up in human interactions with sophisticated technology, drugs, and communication media of various kinds that seem always on the cusp of reality. Sometimes both figure and ground, these technological objects and artifacts constitute PKD's mise en scene and push his plot lines. Hiding in plain sight they form his ambient surround ? often primary causal mechanisms, the underpinning and backgrounding of?the dystopian worlds he envisioned. Aside from a handful of works, PKD's oeuvre draws out the contours of a recurring and darkly playful theme that considers what it means to be human, including the fate of the individual (and the fate of human civilization) in a world of ubiquitous surveillance, paranoia, and hyper-commodification.? Indeed, more than ever, our contemporary world is replete with ?Dickian? characters, tropes and themes. ? With 12 to 14 chapters planned, some of the general topics, themes driving this call include: memory, identity, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, simulations and simulacra, autonomy, panopticism, surveillance and control, augmented brains, minds and bodies, urban, institutional and environmental destruction and decay, alternate realities, alternate worlds, counterfactuals and alternative facts.? For more specific ideas and prompts, the remainder of this call includes a list of working titles, section headings and other signposts that may become part of the anthology.? Settled or in-flux, part or whole, all are open to negotiation, elaboration, etc.: ??? IM/MATERIAL ONTOLOGIES, ENVIRONMENTS, SYSTEMS AND CULTURES Flat ontologies. OOO, inverted, reversed, and otherwise twisted and turned ontologies and epistemologies.? Environments and/as Anti-environments. ? Maps and Mappings: map=/= territory, etc. Universes, alternate Universes.? Multiverses. ? Fixity and Fluidity across territories, borders, boundaries and interfaces. ? Tendrils and tensions between materiality and virtuality. ? ON REPLICANTS, REPLICANS, PRE-PERSONS, PRE-COGS Proto-humans, trans-humans, post-humans.? Im/migrants, ?illegals,? undocumented, blacklisted, banned, ?invalids,' etc. ? Linear and non-linear lives/narratives, Fluid lives, Liminal lives, and After-lives. ? Inscribed, ascribed, achieved identities. Descriptions and Prescriptions. Feminism/Anti-feminism. ? Demi-Gods and Goddesses, Spirituality, Simulacra and the Sublime. ? Existential Vertigo, Existential Dread, Existential Crises, etc.. ? Fakes, Fakers, ersatz people, spaces and places, simulacra (police/men, women, animals, leaders, organizations, environments etc). ? I thou / I it: humanization, dehumanization, rehumanization ('more human than human,' etc) ?? MEDIATED MEMORY/MEMORY AS MEDIATION, MEDICATED MEMORY: NOSTALGIA, HALLUCINATION, COUNTERFACTUALS AND FUTURE HISTORIES Mind readers, Dream readers, Life Readers (reality genres, blogging, vlogging, life-logging, consumption, monetization and commodification of human experience, ubiquitous consumption, hyper-commerce, etc). ? Enabling and debilitating Drugs and Media (c.f. the daily dose, ?Chew-Z,? Penfield Mood Organs and other such things) ? Big Data, meta-data, analytics, Voight-Kampff Empathy Tests, ?. ? Spirituality in/as Materiality. Totems, tokens and taboos. Ghost in the Machine. Affective machines. ? IDIOS KOSMOS - KOINOS KOSMOS? Consciousness, dual and multi-consciousness, false-consciousness and meta-consciousness. ? Propagating, expanding, shrinking subjectivities and epistemologies (c.f. ?Now Wait for Last Year? and other such stories).? Objectified subjectivity. ? In/tolerance of Mystery.? Closure and dis-closure.? Suspension of belief and dis-belief. ? Notations and Denotations.? Signifiers, floating signifiers, etc. ? Post-fact (counter-fact, alternative fact, etc). ?? AUTONOMY AND CONTROL: Puppets, Puppet Masters, Masters and Slaves ? Parts, pieces and wholes. ? Privacy, freewill (technological, ontological, epistemological affordances and constraints). ? Planned-Spontaneity and de-control (c.f. 'controlled decontrol of the emotions'). ?AI AVERSION AND ATTRACTION Resistances, Rebellions, Acquiescence, Acceptance, ?the Urge to Merge,? (or, how to stop worrying and learn to love the algorithm). ?? CHAPTER PROPOSALS For full consideration send working titles and 200-250 word chapter abstracts, including author/s name/s and affiliation/s to robert_macdougall(a)curry.edu before March 1st 2018. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert MacDougall Professor, Communication/Media Studies Coordinator, Video Game Studies Concentration Curry College, Hirsh Communication Center/Hafer 101 1071 Blue Hill Avenue, Milton, MA? 02186-2395 ?  ------------------------------ Message: 7 Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2018 11:55:35 +0800 From: Julian Hopkins <julian.hopkins(a)monash.edu> To: air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at Monash University Malaysia - Two Openings Message-ID: <CACKM46Zbi2h9q8HUsc87rnw8L5WuY907O9yKgZtC_4rQA3fkMg(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Dear All, Monash University Malaysia is a campus of Monash University, and our staff and students are part of a global academy with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research (THES 2017 ranking was 80). Our school has opened a position for a Senior Lecturer / Lecturer in Communication: http://careersmanager.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/574384/cd946-senior-le… Candidates with a demonstrable interest in digital media and culture are encouraged. There is also a position for Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies open: http://careersmanager.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/572307/cd883-senior-le… The position is based on a five-year renewable contract with ex-pat benefits such as support for child tuition and relocation where relevant. Thanks, Julian --- *DR JULIAN HOPKINS* Lecturer in Communication Undergraduate Coordinator School of Arts & Social Sciences Building 2, Level 6, Room 16 (2-6-16) Monash University Malaysia Jalan Lagoon Selatan 47500 Bandar Sunway Selangor Darul Ehsan Malaysia T: +60 3 5514 4920 E: julian.hopkins(a)monash.edu W: sass.monash.edu.my <http://www.sass.monash.edu.my/> *Your reaction is more important than who is right.* ------------------------------ Message: 8 Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2018 05:38:31 +0000 From: Virginia Balfour <virginiabalfour(a)hotmail.com> To: "air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org" <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Conducting qualitative research on Facebook Message-ID: <VI1PR0202MB2976902F27439B437CFB6CE8ABFC0(a)VI1PR0202MB2976.eurprd02.prod.outlook.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hello I would value advice on the ethics of collecting data from an Open Facebook page and the best ways to mitigate them. My research is looking at an open Facebook page and it is likely that I will want to use data from conversations between commenters and statements made by commenters as part of my research. While most observations will be generalised and made anonymous, there may be some conversations where it is pertinent to identify the commenters and/or identifiable comments. In particular I am interested in whether people think it is necessary or advisable to contact individual commenters to ask if their comments can be used in the research? Are their any risk mitigation strategies that anyone has used in the past that they could recommend? regards Virginia Balfour QUT researcher. ------------------------------ Message: 9 Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2018 16:59:01 +1100 From: Sharon Greenfield <s3417013(a)student.rmit.edu.au> To: Virginia Balfour <virginiabalfour(a)hotmail.com> Cc: "air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org" <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Conducting qualitative research on Facebook Message-ID: <CAOy35yZy-brFK_+EodOkxuMhrNpGkc8A6XFN+qP8pXGaQ_DCCw(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Hello Virginia, I would suggest reading up on Mary L Gray's many pieces on ethics in online research. In addition, what does the QUT Ethics Committee recommend? Cheers, Sharon On 7 February 2018 at 16:38, Virginia Balfour <virginiabalfour(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > Hello > > I would value advice on the ethics of collecting data from an Open > Facebook page and the best ways to mitigate them. > > My research is looking at an open Facebook page and it is likely that I > will want to use data from conversations between commenters and statements > made by commenters as part of my research. While most observations will be > generalised and made anonymous, there may be some conversations where it is > pertinent to identify the commenters and/or identifiable comments. > > In particular I am interested in whether people think it is necessary or > advisable to contact individual commenters to ask if their comments can be > used in the research? > > Are their any risk mitigation strategies that anyone has used in the past > that they could recommend? > > regards > > Virginia Balfour > > QUT researcher. > _______________________________________________ > The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > <http://aoir.org> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ > listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > <http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org> > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ > <http://www.aoir.org/> > ------------------------------ Message: 10 Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2018 08:52:56 +0000 From: Sarah Quinton <sequinton(a)brookes.ac.uk> To: Sharon Greenfield <s3417013(a)student.rmit.edu.au> Cc: Virginia Balfour <virginiabalfour(a)hotmail.com>, "air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org" <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Conducting qualitative research on Facebook Message-ID: <CAOOrgh4eDD8M-NW0mgXQUB6U8raDDxnK8qBR8BANKUoG0nzGRw(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Hello Virginia You should check the QUT Ethics committee's policies as sensibly suggested by Sharon. You also might want to consider both the context of your research, i.e. the sensitivity of the phenomenon you are researching ( is it discussions about gardening or is it content about being a carer for someone with long term illness) and also the vulnerability of the Facebook participants you wish to include in the research ( obviously there are limits to what you can determine about these people's vulnerability but it is worth thinking about, is the group in any way self identifying as vulnerable or identified by others/researchers as vulnerable?). You may also wish to consider anonymising the content without fundamentally altering the meaning ( again depending on what you need from the data and how you will be analysing it) if you are thinking about reproducing it anywhere in your research, so that it is more difficult to trace back to the poster/originator through search engines. This is another approach to 'protecting' the Facebook participants. I am sure other members of AoIR will have valuable comments too. Sarah On 7 February 2018 at 05:59, Sharon Greenfield <s3417013(a)student.rmit.edu.au > wrote: > Hello Virginia, > > I would suggest reading up on Mary L Gray's many pieces on ethics in online > research. > In addition, what does the QUT Ethics Committee recommend? > > Cheers, > Sharon > > > On 7 February 2018 at 16:38, Virginia Balfour <virginiabalfour(a)hotmail.com > > > wrote: > > > Hello > > > > I would value advice on the ethics of collecting data from an Open > > Facebook page and the best ways to mitigate them. > > > > My research is looking at an open Facebook page and it is likely that I > > will want to use data from conversations between commenters and > statements > > made by commenters as part of my research. While most observations will > be > > generalised and made anonymous, there may be some conversations where it > is > > pertinent to identify the commenters and/or identifiable comments. > > > > In particular I am interested in whether people think it is necessary or > > advisable to contact individual commenters to ask if their comments can > be > > used in the research? > > > > Are their any risk mitigation strategies that anyone has used in the past > > that they could recommend? > > > > regards > > > > Virginia Balfour > > > > QUT researcher. > > _______________________________________________ > > The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list > > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > > <http://aoir.org> > > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ > > listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > <http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org> > > > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > > http://www.aoir.org/ > > <http://www.aoir.org/> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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/ > -- Dr Sarah Quinton FHEA MIDM Chair of Oxford Brookes University Research Ethics Committee Senior Lecturer in Marketing Marketing Department, Business School, Room CLC G.14 Oxford Brookes University Headington Campus Oxford. OX3 0BP +44 1865 485694 *Skype: sarah.quinton5* www.sarahquinton.co.uk www.twitter.com/quinton_digital http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sarahquinton <http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sarahquinton> *Please note that from October 2017 Dr Karen Handley is now the Business Faculty Ethics Officer and she can be emailed at khandley(a)brookes.ac.uk <khandley(a)brookes.ac.uk> concerning PhD student or staff research ethics issues.* Recent publications: *Out Now*: Quinton, S., and Reynolds, R. (2018*),The Ethics of Online Research. *Ed Kandy Woodfield, The changing roles of researchers and participants in digital and social media research, chap 3, 53-78. Quinton, S., Canhoto, A., Molinillo, S., Pera, R. & Budhathoki, T. (2017). Conceptualising a digital orientation: antecedents of supporting SME performance in the digital economy, *Journal of Strategic Marketing*, 1-13. Quinton, S. and Simkin, L. (2016). The Digital Journey: reflected learning and emerging challenges, *International Journal of Management Reviews, * (forthcoming) DOI:10.1111/ijmr.1204 *Current research project* - Sharing photographs online and on social media by older people: a mitigator of social isolation and loneliness. Funded by the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, in partnership with The Open University. ------------------------------ Subject: Digest Footer _______________________________________________ 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/ ------------------------------ End of Air-L Digest, Vol 163, Issue 7 ************************************* To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go to:- http://disclaimer.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/disclaimer/disclaimer.html

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Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at Monash University Malaysia - Two Openings
by Julian Hopkins 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

Dear All, Monash University Malaysia is a campus of Monash University, and our staff and students are part of a global academy with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research (THES 2017 ranking was 80). Our school has opened a position for a Senior Lecturer / Lecturer in Communication: http://careersmanager.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/574384/cd946-senior-le… Candidates with a demonstrable interest in digital media and culture are encouraged. There is also a position for Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies open: http://careersmanager.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/572307/cd883-senior-le… The position is based on a five-year renewable contract with ex-pat benefits such as support for child tuition and relocation where relevant. Thanks, Julian --- *DR JULIAN HOPKINS* Lecturer in Communication Undergraduate Coordinator School of Arts & Social Sciences Building 2, Level 6, Room 16 (2-6-16) Monash University Malaysia Jalan Lagoon Selatan 47500 Bandar Sunway Selangor Darul Ehsan Malaysia T: +60 3 5514 4920 E: julian.hopkins(a)monash.edu W: sass.monash.edu.my <http://www.sass.monash.edu.my/> *Your reaction is more important than who is right.*

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CFP for a Philip K Dick anthology
by hyperborean7 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

A Philip K Dick Anthology – ‘Entering the Uncanny Worlds of PK Dick’ (call for contributors) Philip K Dick (PKD) is arguably the most critiqued, celebrated, imitated, commodified science fiction writer of all time. He is certainly one of the most enigmatic literary figures of the 20th Century. No matter how one positions the writer, his stories continue to inspire new interpretations and elaborations across a broad range of genres and media. In hundreds of stories, long and short, he wove philosophy, psychoanalysis, religion and spirituality, communication theory and medium theory, genetic and social engineering, and post-humanism, among other things. PKD certainly had a philosophical bent, but he was also a consummate prankster – a kind of post-modern speculative absurdist. Like any good writer he played with words, ideas, metaphors and images. However, the worlds he envisioned – his alternate, counter-factual histories and hyper-technological futures seem to quickly settle into the psyche as these vaguely familiar, almost mundane places splitting at the seams with all manner of techno-human monstrosity. What often appear at first pass to be the most outlandish and impossible futures soon become strangely (and often uncomfortably) familiar to the contemporary reader. A lesser-known aspect of PKD's prolific output concerns his habit of playing with the ontological possibilities bound up in human interactions with sophisticated technology, drugs, and communication media of various kinds that seem always on the cusp of reality. Sometimes both figure and ground, these technological objects and artifacts constitute PKD's mise en scene and push his plot lines. Hiding in plain sight they form his ambient surround – often primary causal mechanisms, the underpinning and backgrounding of the dystopian worlds he envisioned. Aside from a handful of works, PKD's oeuvre draws out the contours of a recurring and darkly playful theme that considers what it means to be human, including the fate of the individual (and the fate of human civilization) in a world of ubiquitous surveillance, paranoia, and hyper-commodification. Indeed, more than ever, our contemporary world is replete with ‘Dickian’ characters, tropes and themes. With 12 to 14 chapters planned, some of the general topics, themes driving this call include: memory, identity, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, simulations and simulacra, autonomy, panopticism, surveillance and control, augmented brains, minds and bodies, urban, institutional and environmental destruction and decay, alternate realities, alternate worlds, counterfactuals and alternative facts. For more specific ideas and prompts, the remainder of this call includes a list of working titles, section headings and other signposts that may become part of the anthology. Settled or in-flux, part or whole, all are open to negotiation, elaboration, etc.: IM/MATERIAL ONTOLOGIES, ENVIRONMENTS, SYSTEMS AND CULTURES Flat ontologies. OOO, inverted, reversed, and otherwise twisted and turned ontologies and epistemologies. Environments and/as Anti-environments. Maps and Mappings: map=/= territory, etc. Universes, alternate Universes. Multiverses. Fixity and Fluidity across territories, borders, boundaries and interfaces. Tendrils and tensions between materiality and virtuality. ON REPLICANTS, REPLICANS, PRE-PERSONS, PRE-COGS Proto-humans, trans-humans, post-humans. Im/migrants, ‘illegals,’ undocumented, blacklisted, banned, ‘invalids,' etc. Linear and non-linear lives/narratives, Fluid lives, Liminal lives, and After-lives. Inscribed, ascribed, achieved identities. Descriptions and Prescriptions. Feminism/Anti-feminism. Demi-Gods and Goddesses, Spirituality, Simulacra and the Sublime. Existential Vertigo, Existential Dread, Existential Crises, etc.. Fakes, Fakers, ersatz people, spaces and places, simulacra (police/men, women, animals, leaders, organizations, environments etc). I thou / I it: humanization, dehumanization, rehumanization ('more human than human,' etc) MEDIATED MEMORY/MEMORY AS MEDIATION, MEDICATED MEMORY: NOSTALGIA, HALLUCINATION, COUNTERFACTUALS AND FUTURE HISTORIES Mind readers, Dream readers, Life Readers (reality genres, blogging, vlogging, life-logging, consumption, monetization and commodification of human experience, ubiquitous consumption, hyper-commerce, etc). Enabling and debilitating Drugs and Media (c.f. the daily dose, ‘Chew-Z,’ Penfield Mood Organs and other such things) Big Data, meta-data, analytics, Voight-Kampff Empathy Tests, …. Spirituality in/as Materiality. Totems, tokens and taboos. Ghost in the Machine. Affective machines. IDIOS KOSMOS - KOINOS KOSMOS Consciousness, dual and multi-consciousness, false-consciousness and meta-consciousness. Propagating, expanding, shrinking subjectivities and epistemologies (c.f. ‘Now Wait for Last Year’ and other such stories). Objectified subjectivity. In/tolerance of Mystery. Closure and dis-closure. Suspension of belief and dis-belief. Notations and Denotations. Signifiers, floating signifiers, etc. Post-fact (counter-fact, alternative fact, etc). AUTONOMY AND CONTROL: Puppets, Puppet Masters, Masters and Slaves Parts, pieces and wholes. Privacy, freewill (technological, ontological, epistemological affordances and constraints). Planned-Spontaneity and de-control (c.f. 'controlled decontrol of the emotions'). AI AVERSION AND ATTRACTION Resistances, Rebellions, Acquiescence, Acceptance, ‘the Urge to Merge,’ (or, how to stop worrying and learn to love the algorithm). CHAPTER PROPOSALS For full consideration send working titles and 200-250 word chapter abstracts, including author/s name/s and affiliation/s to robert_macdougall(a)curry.edu before March 1st 2018. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert MacDougall Professor, Communication/Media Studies Coordinator, Video Game Studies Concentration Curry College, Hirsh Communication Center/Hafer 101 1071 Blue Hill Avenue, Milton, MA 02186-2395

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CFP EASST18 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy -
by Raúl Tabarés 06 Feb '18

06 Feb '18

Dear all, Please consider to submit paper proposals to our panel "Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy" at next EASST18 conference that will be held in Lancaster. The event will be held from 25-28 of July and will bring together a lot of STS and SSH scholars. The call will be open till the 14th of February of 2018. A description of the panel is included below. Feel free to contact us in case of any doubt. Papers can be submitted here->https://nomadit.co.uk/ easst/easst2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6189 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - Short abstract Open design and manufacturing paradigms have been recently embraced for promoting technological appropriation as well as enablers for transforming traditional fabrication. In this panel we explore the role that these concepts can have in a post-industrial society. Long abstract With the popularization of the Web 2.0 paradigm, digital platforms have become cultural intermediaries in a growing technology mediation environment that has been framed by various scholars as "platform economy". This recent phenomenon has favored the establishment of different "black box" systems that impede us from discovering the inner workings of these new socio-technological brokers. Different self-organized communities and grassroots initiatives have simultaneously appeared thanks to the Internet and the emergence of new makerspaces that have a subset of digital fabrication tools. These groups promote citizen empowerment through technological appropriation and rely on digital commons such as open designs, software and knowledge. In this sense, especially relevant has been the emergence of new discourses aligned with these non-proprietary technologies like open design and manufacturing, which are conceived to promote a radical change in the fabrication towards a more sustainable relationship between production processes and goods. How can digital platforms be designed in order to facilitate encounters between people, things and environments within open design & manufacturing? How can we understand the impact of such digital platforms on society? In this panel we would like to invite authors to analyze the emergence of these phenomena and critically examine the opportunities, contradictions, challenges and tensions that this combination of new tools and mindsets bring for technological appropriation in a post-industrial society. We welcome submissions that can explore alternative paths for R&D systems and innovation policies but also for reconfiguring design and production processes. -- ------------------------------ All the best, Raúl @faraondemetal http://es.linkedin.com/in/rtabares <http://blogs.tecnalia.com/inspiring-blog/author/raultabares/>

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CFP EASST18 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy -
by Raúl Tabarés 06 Feb '18

06 Feb '18

Dear all, -Just a friendly reminder few days before the deadline- Please consider to submit paper proposals to our panel "Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy" at next EASST18 conference that will be held in Lancaster. The event will be held from 25-28 of July and will bring together a lot of STS and SSH scholars. The call will be open till the 14th of February of 2018. A description of the panel is included below. Feel free to contact us in case of any doubt. Papers can be submitted here->https://nomadit.co.uk/ easst/easst2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6189 - Open design & manufacturing in the platform economy - Short abstract Open design and manufacturing paradigms have been recently embraced for promoting technological appropriation as well as enablers for transforming traditional fabrication. In this panel we explore the role that these concepts can have in a post-industrial society. Long abstract With the popularization of the Web 2.0 paradigm, digital platforms have become cultural intermediaries in a growing technology mediation environment that has been framed by various scholars as "platform economy". This recent phenomenon has favored the establishment of different "black box" systems that impede us from discovering the inner workings of these new socio-technological brokers. Different self-organized communities and grassroots initiatives have simultaneously appeared thanks to the Internet and the emergence of new makerspaces that have a subset of digital fabrication tools. These groups promote citizen empowerment through technological appropriation and rely on digital commons such as open designs, software and knowledge. In this sense, especially relevant has been the emergence of new discourses aligned with these non-proprietary technologies like open design and manufacturing, which are conceived to promote a radical change in the fabrication towards a more sustainable relationship between production processes and goods. How can digital platforms be designed in order to facilitate encounters between people, things and environments within open design & manufacturing? How can we understand the impact of such digital platforms on society? In this panel we would like to invite authors to analyze the emergence of these phenomena and critically examine the opportunities, contradictions, challenges and tensions that this combination of new tools and mindsets bring for technological appropriation in a post-industrial society. We welcome submissions that can explore alternative paths for R&D systems and innovation policies but also for reconfiguring design and production processes. -- ------------------------------ All the best, Raúl @faraondemetal http://es.linkedin.com/in/rtabares <http://blogs.tecnalia.com/inspiring-blog/author/raultabares/>

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ICA Preconference: Crowdsourcing as a Content Analysis Tool
by Lei Guo 06 Feb '18

06 Feb '18

ICA Preconference: Crowdsourcing as a Content Analysis Tool May 24, 13:00 - 17:00 Hilton Prague Crowdsourcing is a popular method in computer science for categorizing and classifying text and objects. This preconference introduces crowdsourcing for communication researchers as an emerging content analysis method. Rather than rely on a few human coders to carry out a content analysis, the crowdsourcing approach outsources coding tasks to numerous people online (e.g., multiple people code the same item), and applies an aggregation policy to make a decision on a given item. Through a hands-on workshop and research presentations, this preconference explores: 1) Different crowdsourcing platforms to carry out a project. A demonstration will be given to show how to use two different crowdsourcing platforms: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a well-established service, and Crowdflower, an emerging service. In the hands-on workshop, attendees will set up their own project on one of the platforms, and be guided in the steps, from set-up to extracting and analyzing the crowdworkers’ results. 2) Crowdsourcing as a method that is both cheaper and more efficient than manual content analysis. Can it also be as valid and reliable? Research presentations on both “crowdcoding” and traditional manual coding will be given, as well as a discussion about cost structure and features to ensure quality results. The Speakers/Panelists include: Hajo Boomgaarden, Professor of empirical social science method, University of Vienna Brendan Watson, Assistant professor of journalism, Michigan State University Lei Guo, Assistant professor of emerging media studies, Boston University Margrit Betke, Professor of computer science, Boston University Kate Mays, Ph.D. student in emerging media studies, Boston University This is a half-day preconference. For questions, contact Dr. Lei Guo ( guolei(a)bu.edu) To register, follow this link <http://www.icahdq.org/event/PC24_Crowdsourcing>.

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Call for Abstracts -- Special Issue on Apps and Infrastructures
by Fernando van der Vlist 06 Feb '18

06 Feb '18

Dear all, We invite submissions for a special issue of Computational Culture on "Apps and Infrastructures", edited by Carolin Gerlitz, Anne Helmond, David Nieborg, and Fernando van der Vlist. Please find the call for abstracts below. 750 word abstracts are due by April 1, 2018. More information is available at http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events/. Queries to the editors can be addressed at apps.infrastructures(a)gmail.com. Best regards, Carolin Gerlitz (University of Siegen) Anne Helmond (University of Amsterdam) David Nieborg (University of Toronto) Fernando van der Vlist (University of Siegen and University of Amsterdam) -- # CALL FOR ABSTRACTS # APPS AND INFRASTRUCTURES # A special issue of Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies # Edited by Carolin Gerlitz, Anne Helmond, David Nieborg, Fernando van der Vlist ## OUTLINE Apps have become an important new cultural, technical, and economic software form. Most of today’s apps are designed to run on smartphones and other mobile devices and provide functions previously possible with other software forms (Morris and Elkins, 2015). However, they represent new ways in which software artefacts are developed, tested, packaged, promoted, distributed, monitored, monetised, downloaded, integrated, updated, stored, accessed, archived, interpreted, and used. To foreground the relational and material dimensions of apps, research should not only account for them as discrete media objects, but needs to approach apps as part of their multiple infrastructures and environments including app stores, development platforms, advertising technologies, analytics tools, and cloud services, among others. App stores set the conditions for users and developers to distribute, browse, promote, monetise, rate, and download apps developed for Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, or other mobile operating systems. Developers draw on a variety of both official and third-party developer tools, including developer pages and reference documentation, application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), integrated development environments (IDEs), and dedicated programming languages. Such resources are commonly employed in order to build, test, and monitor apps whilst appropriating the features and constraints of particular platforms and devices, thereby participating in the re-interpretation and re-evaluation of platform features and data. Furthermore, apps may also utilise a device’s built-in sensors for continuous data collection of movements, practices, and environments whilst being wirelessly connected to the cloud or other infrastructures, without the user necessarily knowing exactly when, how, or where (Mackenzie, 2010). Approaching apps from an infrastructural perspective allows attending to the various socio-technical actors, layers, and inscriptions that inform app development, distribution, and usage in situated, distributed, and often dissimilar ways. Within such stacked intermediary infrastructures, platform logics of negotiation among heterogeneous stakeholders are multiplied and nested. This raises questions about the material and technological boundaries of apps and the subsequent need for methodologies to study apps’ socio-technical assemblages on multiple scales, attending to inbound and outbound data flows, governance and power, valuation, their political economy, and material semiotics. Previous research on apps -- initially emerging at the intersection of mobile studies and media studies -- considered mobile apps as a form of mobile or location-based media transforming and generating new forms of communication and sociality, places, and publics through the affordances and practices associated with mobile artefacts (Goggin and Hjorth, 2014). While these studies raised general questions about the boundaries of apps, attention was primarily directed to apps as compartmentalised software applications and their relations with affect, bodies, and locales (Farman 2012; Matviyenko et al., 2015; Morris and Elkins, 2015). A second strand of app research has moved beyond such a single app focus and directed primary attention to the materialities and infrastructures of apps by engaging with their data cultures, material connections, political economic underpinnings, and ecologies (Albury et al., 2017; Farman, 2015; Goldsmith in Goggin and Hjorth, 2014; Horst, 2013; Nieborg, 2017; Wilken, 2015). This special issue of Computational Culture welcomes proposals and projects from scholars and practitioners from across different disciplines interested in the advancement of app studies at the intersection of apps and infrastructures. Studies of mobile apps, platform native apps, and web browser apps or extensions are particularly encouraged. We specifically seek articles that bring together conceptual work with a technically and empirically grounded perspective, addressing the methodological challenges associated with the critical study of apps and their intricate relations to other software, platforms, and infrastructures. Contributors are encouraged to move beyond studies of single apps and their users in favor of approaches that explore apps as material artefacts alongside the infrastructures, political economy, and environments in which they are embedded and situationally enacted. We thus encourage interdisciplinary contributions that traverse boundaries between the fields of software studies, platform studies, cultural and media studies, science and technology studies, as well as political economy and data critique. ## TOPICS AND PROJECTS MIGHT INCLUDE * The relations between apps and their wider material and infrastructural environments, including app stores, development platforms and toolkits, analytics tools, advertising technologies, and cloud services. * The methodological and empirical challenges associated with the critical study of apps, including concerns about accessibility to mobile app backends and the limits of data retrieval through APIs or scraping methods as used in web research. * Studies of apps as articulations of technicity (e.g., how they are designed, built, maintained, and updated) and the data cultures they produce (e.g., what data do they collect or require). * Detailed empirical and critical studies exploring apps’ data cultures, usage tracking, technical dependencies and app permissions, sensor technologies, and wireless access points. * Inventive methods to conceptualise how apps are located or situated, given they are utilising a mobile device’s built-in sensors as well as accessing other resources from remote cloud infrastructures. * Studies of the political economy of apps (e.g., how apps are valued and monetized), the role of industry partnerships and third parties (e.g., how apps are re-interpreted or extended), and the politics of operability (e.g., how apps negotiate among stakeholders or interests). * Explorations of the techno-economic relations between the web and app ecosystems, including the dependencies of apps on web platforms and cloud services, as well as the regulations and limits of app development by device manufacturers and mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. * Explorations of the ways and mechanisms through which multiple apps are interconnected, forming collections, ecologies, and chains of apps in specific practices (e.g., task and content automation). * Media archaeologies exploring historical constellations of apps and their wider material and infrastructural environments and other historical approaches to app research. * Explorations of app stores as the primary environment or infrastructure for mobile apps, including contributions focusing on non-Western apps and app stores, apps’ update cultures, and their development cycles. * The ways in which different material and infrastructural environments, such as app stores, cater to distinct mobile operating systems, devices, and geographic regions. * Critical artistic interventions and research software tools that repurpose the affordances of apps, app stores and other native environments, and explore their data cultures. ## SCHEDULE 750 word abstracts should be emailed to apps.infrastructures(a)gmail.com by April 1, 2018. Any queries can be addressed to the editors at apps.infrastructures(a)gmail.com. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Computational Culture Editorial Board and the special issue editors. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by May 1, 2018 and invited to submit full manuscripts by September 15, 2018. These manuscripts are subject to full blind peer review according to Computational Culture’s policies. The issue will be published in March 2019. Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of interdisciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural computational objects, practices, processes and structures. -- http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events/

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