- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Call for CSCW Workshop participants: Designing online experiments
by Katherine Ognyanova 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

*Designing online experiments: Citizen science approaches to research* (Our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call) CSCW 2016 Workshop http://cscw.acm.org/2016 Sunday, February 28th, 2016 San Francisco, CA, USA *WORKSHOP WEBSITE*: http://volunteerscience.com/workshop *SUBMISSION DEADLINE*: December 31, 2015 *ACCEPTANCE NOTIFICATIONS*: January 8, 2016 *APPLICATION*: Experiment proposal (500-750 words) + participant bio (200 words) *SUBMISSION*: Submit applications via email to j.radford(a)neu.edu *APPLICATION PROCESS*: New information technologies allow for new modes of data collection, provide unparalleled computational resources, and facilitate long-distance collaboration. Programs like Galaxy Zoo, Fold.It, and ReCAPTCHA demonstrate the power of recruiting online volunteers as participants and contributors to research. Platforms like Project Implicit, SciStarter, and Volunteer Science confirm that a wide range of social scientific research can be conducted with volunteers in online laboratories. This workshop will provide hands-on training on cutting-edge approaches to online experimentation. Participants will learn how to create experiments using the Volunteer Science platform (www.volunteerscience.com) Due to the applied nature of the training (workshop organizers and facilitators will work individually with each team), we can only accept up to 25 participants. In order to apply for the workshop, candidates should submit a brief proposal (500-750 words) describing the experiment they will develop during the training. Participants are encouraged to apply in teams of up to five members. Submissions should include a short (100-200 words) bio for each team member describing their relevant experience. Submissions will be evaluated by the organizers based on the nature of the proposed experiment: its feasibility, appropriateness for the platform, protection of human subjects, and scientific relevance. Participants who have some prior familiarity with experimental research frameworks and web design skills (JavaScript, HTML5, Flash) are preferred as they would be most likely to benefit from this workshop. *CONTACT INFORMATION*: For inquiries and additional information please contact Jason Radford at j.radford(a)neu.edu or Katya Ognyanova at cscw(a)ognyanova.net *WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS*: Andy Pilny, University of Kentucky Brian Keegan, Harvard University Brooke Foucault Welles, Northeastern University Chris Riedl, Northeastern University David Lazer, Northeastern University Jason Radford, University of Chicago Katherine Ognyanova, Rutgers University Leslie DeChurch, Georgia Institute of Technology Michael Macy, Cornell University Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University Waleed Meleis, Northeastern University -- Katherine Ognyanova, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Rutgers University School of Communication and Information 4 Huntington St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901 Web: www.kateto.net, Twitter: @ognyanova

1 0

Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award 2016
by Mark D. Johns 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

CALL FOR AWARD APPLICATIONS Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award 2016 Sponsored by the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research http://www.cccsir.com/ The Carl Couch Center issues an international call for student-authored papers to be considered for Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award. The Couch Center welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers that apply symbolic interactionist approaches to internet studies. According to basic symbolic interactionist premises, what we understand as self, identity, relationship, and cultural formations are constructed dialogically and interactively. While the works of George H. Mead, Georg Simmel, Erving Goffman and other leading symbolic interactionists have been integral to the study of social interaction, Carl Couch was among the first from this tradition to suggest the importance of engaging in the study of mediated interaction. It is critical that symbolic interactionists move boldly forward, beyond Couch's initial suggestion, to study what has become for many a dominant form of communication in their everyday life. Whether we research identities, emotion, memory, family, work, career, presentations of self, deception, love, loss or other areas, the impact of mediated communication is felt by those interacting within it. As internet-related media continue to influence our everyday interactions--not only with other people but also with technologies, devices, algorithms, platform parameters, and so forth--it becomes crucial for symbolic interactionists to attend to the role of these mediating factors in the interaction process. We encourage any paper that uses a symbolic interactionist approach in internet studies. We also encourage papers that explore the interface between deliberate social interaction and structured (or automated) interactions sponsored or enacted by various technological features, exploring not only how identities, relations, and social formations are negotiated through social interactions, but also how these interactions are mediated further through the use or capacities of various technologies. Papers will be evaluated based on the quality of (1) mastery of symbolic interactionist approaches and concepts, (2) originality, (3) organization, (4) presentation, and (5) advancement of knowledge. Those contemplating entering should note that an interactionist approach demands thoughtful analysis, and not mere description, of social interactions. Evaluation will be administered by a Review Committee of: Mark D. Johns, Luther College, Decorah, Iowa Camille Johnson-Yale, Lake Forest College, Illinois Lois Scheidt, Indiana University, Bloomington Competition is open to graduate or undergraduate students of all disciplines. Works that are published or accepted for publication are not eligible for award consideration. Entries should be in English and not exceed 30 pages (approximately 7500 words) in length, including references and appendices. Limit of one entry per student per year. The top paper will receive Couch Award to be presented at the 2016 meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (aoir.org) in Berlin, Germany. The top paper will be awarded a certificate and a cash prize of $300 US and the author will be invited to present their work at a session of the AoIR conference, October 6-8, 2016 in Berlin. Candidates should send a copy of their paper electronically, along with information concerning the location and level of their studies, to Mark Johns at mjohns(a)luther.edu Application deadline is May 15, 2016. Notification of award will be sent by June 15. Those with questions or comments about Couch Award application, please contact: Mark D. Johns Communication Studies Luther College, Decorah, Iowa Phone: 563-387-1347 E-mail: mjohns(a)luther.edu

1 0

James W. Carey Media Research Award 2016
by Mark D. Johns 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

CALL FOR AWARD APPLICATIONS James W. Carey Media Research Award 2016 Sponsored by the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research http://www.cccsir.com/ The Carl Couch Center invites nominations or self‑nominations for works to be considered for its annual James W. Carey Media Research Award. Welcome are works on topics that were central to Carey's scholarship. Submissions might focus on technology, time, space and communication, the nature of public life, the relation between journalism and popular culture ‑‑ among others ‑‑ taking these themes in new or different directions. Applications will be evaluated based on engagement with Carey's approaches and concepts, originality, and advancement of knowledge. Evaluation will be administered by a Review Committee of: Prof. Stuart Adam, Carleton University Prof. John Pauly, Marquette University Prof. Jeff Pooley, Muhlenberg College Prof. Linda Steiner, University of Maryland Both single and multiple authored works will be accepted. All submissions must be works that have been published or have been accepted for publication in a book or journal. To be considered for the 2016 award, works should have been published or accepted in 2015. Submitted works should be sent to Mark D. Johns, executive director of CCCSIR at the address below, according to the following directions: Works may be submitted electronically in plain text, Microsoft Word or PDF format. If a book is submitted, please send a copy of the table of contents and front matter electronically, along with a brief author statement (500 words maximum) describing how the book relates to Carey's thought. Then ask your publisher to furnish six (5) review copies for consideration by the committee. The application deadline is April 1, 2016. Notification of award application will be sent out by June 15. The Award winner will receive the Carey Award plaque to be presented at the winner's choice of the 2016 annual convention of the International Communication Association (ICA), Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), or National Communication Association (NCA). For questions and comments about the Carey Award, please contact: Mark D. Johns Communication Studies Luther College Decorah, IA 52101 USA E‑mail: mjohns(a)luther.edu

1 0

CFP ASIS&T 2016 Annual, Copenhagen, Oct 14-18, 2016
by Richard Hill 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

2016 Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology Copenhagen, Denmark | Oct. 14-18, 2016 https://www.asist.org/events/annual-meeting/annual-meeting-2016/\ Creating Knowledge, Enhancing Lives through Information & Technology Information science and technology shape, and are shaped by, decisions, practices and policies that impact people, groups, organizations, governments and societies throughout the world. The Annual Meeting (AM) of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) is a premier, peer-reviewed international conference that gathers scholars and practitioners from around the globe to share research, innovations, and insights regarding how information and technology mediate the creation and use of knowledge within and across cultures and enhance lives. Paper, poster, panel and workshop submissions that focus on the production, discovery, recording, storage, representation, retrieval, presentation, manipulation, dissemination, use, and evaluation of information and on the tools and techniques associated with these processes are welcome. The conference embraces plurality in methods and theories, and encompasses research and development from a broad spectrum of domains, as encapsulated in ASIS&T�s many special interest groups (SIGs). Important Dates: (all deadlines are midnight, Greenwich Mean Time) Paper Mentoring Service Submission of complete draft papers to the mentor service due: 10 March 2016 Mentors� feedback on drafts: 4 April 2016 Papers Submission of papers due: 17 April 2016 Notification regarding submitted papers: 23 May 2016 Submission of �revise & re-submit� papers due: 3 June 2016 Notification regarding �revise & re-submit� papers: 23 June 2016 Camera-ready accepted papers due: 25 July 2016 Panels and Workshops Submission of panels and workshop proposals due: 3 May 2016 Notifications regarding submitted panels and workshops: 15 June 2016 Camera-ready accepted panels and workshop descriptions are due: 25 July 2016 Posters Submission of posters due: 24 June 2016 Notifications regarding submitted posters: 30 July 2016 Camera-ready accepted posters are due: 10 August 2016 Submission site: https://www.conftool.pro/asist2016/ Final versions of accepted workshops and tutorials must be formatted according to guidelines provided at: https://www.asist.org/files/meetings/am16/AM16-Template-proceedings.pdf . Richard Hill Executive Director Association for Information Science and Technology 1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510 Silver Spring, MD 20910 FAX: (301) 495-0810 (301) 495-0900

1 0

Call For Papers: Special issue of journal Media Studies
by Stephen Owen 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

Dear all, Apologies for the late notice on this CFP, but this might be of interest to some of you. Kind Regards, Stephen Owen CALL FOR PAPERS Radicalization and Media Logic: Surveillances and Self-Mediatization in Social Media and Politics A special issue of Medijske studije/ Media Studies Journal to be published in Vol. 8, issue 15 (June 2017) edited by Dr Robert Imre, University of Newcastle, Australia and University of Tampere, Finland Dr Stephen Owen, University of New South Wales, Australia About the issue The current state of usage of social media platforms and various types of communication tools gives us a new form of political expression at all levels. Pressed to mediatize themselves, political actors of all kinds—protestors, official political/party representatives, individual issue-drivers, and political participants—are all increasingly driven to involve themselves in complex processes of self-mediatization. The corollary of this increase in self- mediatization is a deepening engagement with the surveillance assemblage through what is often experienced (or presented to users) as mundane aspects of social-surveillance. The posting of material to, or consumption of content on social media communications makes constant interaction with the platforms de rigueur—and often compulsive—and ensures that levels of monitoring are continuing to press for these political actors to self-mediatize and monitor each others social media status and content. The standardised architectures and designs of these social media platforms, as well as the various discourses pertaining to the correct uses of them, encourage particular presentations of self and content. As a new form of political participation these social media platforms guarantee a privileging of specific and particular kinds of persona constructs that inhibit politics at one level, while developing an ever-expanding surveillance at another level. As the surveillance assemblage becomes more entrenched the surveillance gaze upon the users of social media platforms is also more apparent. This universal surveillance assemblage perpetually adds layers of content to the social media ensemble, and creates a politics that can no longer exist, by definition, outside of the surveilled social media framing. This creates the illusion of universal participation while at the same time constricting political dialogue as the civilizing and restraining effects of the social media spotlight are brought to bear on each participant using these platforms. Given these constraints, this special issue seeks papers dealing with some of the affects/effects when dealing with the phenomenon of radicalization. Topics can include but are not limited to:  Left-Wing Radicalization and the media  Right-Wing Radicalization and the media  Social Media and Radicalization: theoretical views  Religious radicalization and the media  Radicalizing youth  Surveilling Radicals  Legitimacy of the state and/or radical causes  Media Regulation and Radicalization Information about the journal: Media Studies is an interdisciplinary journal published by the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science. The journal provides an international forum for the presentation of research and the advancement of discourse concerning media, communications, journalism, and public relations, within each field’s cultural, historical, political and/or economic contexts. The articles should not be published before (neither partially nor completely), nor currently be considered for publication by any other journal or book, nor should the submissions be a translation of previously published articles. The journal is indexed in the SCOPUS and ERIH Plus databases. For more see http://www.mediastudies.fpzg.hr Submission guidelines: Please send your abstract (500 – 700 words) and a short CV with contact information, to the guest editor and please make sure that it addresses the theoretical framework, method and (preliminary) conclusions. The deadline for abstracts is 1 December 2015 and authors will be notified by 20 December 2015. The deadline for full articles is 1 May 2016. Upon acceptance, manuscripts shall undergo a rigorous international double-blind peer review. Manuscripts should be written in English, using Times New Roman; size 12; 1.5 line spacing; all pages should be numbered appropriately. The main text of the article should be between 5,000 and 6,000 words (for more see Notes for authors at http://www.mediastudies.fpzg.hr) Please send your abstract or questions to the special issue editor: Robert Imre: Robert.Imre(a)uta.fi Stephen Owen: Stephen.Owen(a)unsw.edu.au --------------------------------- Ralf Hütter (Kraftwerk) - ‘The telephone is an antiquity — you never know who is calling, there is no image, it is an outmoded product which constantly disrupts work.’

1 0

CFP WWW'16 Workshop: 7th International Workshop on Modeling Social Media (MSM'2016) - Behavioral Analytics on the Web
by Christoph Trattner 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

** Please forward to anyone who might be interested ** -------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS 7th International Workshop on Modeling Social Media (MSM'2016) Behavioral Analytics on the Web to be held on April 12, 2016, Montreal, Canada co-located with ACM WWW 2016 http://www.kde.cs.uni-kassel.de/ws/msm2016/ -------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates: ================ ** Submission Deadline: Dec 22, 2015 (23:59 Hawaii Standard Time) ** Notification of Acceptance: Feb 2, 2016 ** Camera-Ready Versions Due: Feb 8, 2016 ** Workshop date: April 12, 2016 Workshop Organizers: ==================== Martin Atzmueller, University of Kassel, Germany: atzmueller(a)cs.uni-kassel.de Alvin Chin, BMW Group, USA: alvin.chin(a)bmwna.com Christoph Trattner, Know-Center, Austria: trattner.christoph(a)gmail.com For the 7th International Workshop on Modeling Social Media, we aim to attract researchers from all over the world working in the field of behavioral analytics using web and social media data. Behavioral analytics is an important topic, e.g., concerning web applications as well as extensions in mobile and ubiquitous applications, for understanding user behavior. We would also like to invite researchers in the data and web mining community to lend their expertise to help to increase our understanding of the web and social media. Thus, we invite submissions which may include the following topics, but are not limited to: * Behavioral analytics methods or frameworks for social media, big data and the web * Approaches for personalization and recommendations * Methods for social structure and community discovery * Methods for tie strength or link prediction * Methods for extracting and understanding user and group behavior * Methods for predicting user behavior * Methods for user modeling and profiling * Applications of behavioral analytics * Privacy and security in behavioral analytics * Applications of any of the above methods and technologies The goal of this workshop is to apply behavioral analytics approaches and algorithms on social media, big data and the web. Hence, the workshop aims to attract and discuss various novel aspects of personalization, recommendation, community discovery, profiling and prediction from social media. Submissions: We solicit full research papers (4-6 pages), and short papers (1-4 pages) both in the ACM conference paper style. Papers should be submitted in EasyChair to https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=msm16 Program Committee: ================== Alejandro Bellogin, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain Shlomo Berkovsky, CSIRO, Australia Robin Burke, DePaul University, USA Javier Luis Canovas Izquierdo, IN3 - UOC, Spain Guanling Chen, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA Stephan Doerfel, University of Kassel, Germany Ruth Garcia, Oxford University, UK Daniel Gayo-Avello, University of Oviedo, Spain Mouzhi Ge, University of Bolzano, Italy Michael Granitzer, University of Passau, Germany Bin Guo, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China Geert-Jan Houben, TU Delft, Netherlands Sharon Hsiao, Arizona State University, USA Andreas Kaltenbrunner, Barcelona Media, Spain Mark Kibanov, University of Kassel, Germany Bart Knijnenburg, University of California, Irvine, USA Simon Koo, Jesuit Liberal Arts College, Hong Kong, China Florian Lemmerich, University of Wuerzburg, Germany Harold Liu, Beijing Institute of Technology, China Kjetil Nørvåg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway Denis Parra, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Shaghayegh Sahebi, University of Pittsburgh, USA Philipp Singer, GESIS, Germany Alan Said, Recorded Future, SE Su Yang, Fudan University, China Shengdong Zhao, National University of Singapore, Singapore Arkaitz Zubiaga, University of Warwick, UK Proceedings: ============ Contributions will be included in the Companion volume of the ACM WWW2016 conference, which will be published by ACM and included in the ACM Digital Library. However, to make that happen at least one author of the accepted paper has to register. At the time of submission of the final camera-ready copy, authors will have to indicate the already registered person for that publication. Any paper published by the ACM, IEEE, etc. which can be properly cited constitutes research which must be considered in judging the novelty of a WWW submission, whether the published paper was in a conference, journal, or workshop. Therefore, any paper previously published as part of a WWW workshop must be referenced and suitably extended with new content to qualify as a new submission to the Research Track at the WWW conference. Submission guidelines: ====================== All submitted papers must * be written in English; * contain author names, affiliations, and email addresses; * be formatted according to the ACM SIG Proceedings template (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates) with a font size no smaller than 9pt; * be in PDF (make sure that the PDF can be viewed on any platform), and formatted for US Letter size; * occupy no more than six pages, including the abstract, references, and appendices. It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that their submissions adhere strictly to the required format. Submissions that do not comply with the above guidelines may be rejected without review. All submissions must be entered into the reviewing system: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=msm16 Contact: ======== Martin Atzmueller - atzmueller(a)cs.uni-kassel.de Alvin Chin - alvin.chin(a)bmwna.com Christoph Trattner - trattner.christoph(a)gmail.com Follow us on: ============= Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/527164050627185/ Twitter https://twitter.com/msm_workshop -- ------------------------------------------------------- Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Christoph Trattner BSc Know-Center Research Center for Big Data Analytics & Data Driven Business Graz University of Technology, Austria E-mail: ctrattner(a)know-center.at Tel: +43 650 2402801 Homepage: http://christophtrattner.info ------------------------------------------------------- New book: Mining, Modeling, and Recommending 'Things' in Social Media* by M. Atzmueller, A. Chin, C. Scholz, C. Trattner (eds.) http://link.springer.com/978-3-319-14723-9 -------------------------------------------------------

1 0

CALL FOR ACM IUI 2016 DEMOS AND POSTERS
by Denis Parra 30 Nov '15

30 Nov '15

Apologies for cross-postings =========================== CALL FOR ACM IUI 2016 DEMOS AND POSTERS 21st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI’16) Sonoma, CA, USA March 7-10, 2016 Deadline: Dec 20, 2016 Notification: January 10, 2016 =========================== ACM IUI 2015 is the 20th annual meeting of the intelligent interfaces community and serves as a premier international forum for reporting outstanding research and development on intelligent user interfaces. ACM IUI is where the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community meets the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community. We are also very interested in contributions from related fields, such as psychology, behavioral science, cognitive science, computer graphics, design, the arts, etc. =========================== Demos =========================== The demonstrations track complements the overall program of the conference. Demonstrations show implementations of novel, interesting, and important intelligent user interface concepts or systems. We invite submissions relevant to intelligent user interfaces and which address, but are not limited to, the topics of the conference. All submissions are intended to convey a scientific result or work in progress and should not be advertisements for commercial software packages. The page limit for demo papers is 4 pages. Accepted demo papers will be published in the companion proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. =========================== Posters =========================== Posters provide an opportunity for sharing valuable ideas, eliciting useful feedback on early stage work and fostering discussions and collaborations among colleagues. We invite submissions on all topics of the conference. All submissions should convey a scientific result or work in progress that is not yet ready to be published as a full length research paper at a refereed conference. Submitting a draft poster along with your submission is not required but highly recommended. The page limit for poster papers is 4 pages. Accepted poster papers will appear in the companion proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. =========================== Submission Instructions ========================== Demo and poster submissions do not need to be anonymized. The page limit is 4 pages in HCI format. Submitting a draft poster along with your poster submission is not required but highly recommended. Submit your demos and posters at https://precisionconference.com/~sigchi/ =========================== Demo and Poster Chairs =========================== Nava Tintarev, University of Aberdeen, UK Matt Dennis, University of Aberdeen, UK Bongwon Suh, Seoul National University, Korea Contact: poster2016(a)iui.acm.org Denis Alejandro Parra Santander Profesor Asistente, DCC Escuela de Ingeniería, PUC Chile +56 (2) 2354-4442 http://web.ing.puc.cl/~dparra/

1 0

In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Scicence Hub
by Seda Gurses 30 Nov '15

30 Nov '15

Hello everyone, I am forwarding this initiative by Marcel Mars and others following the recent court case initiated by Elsevier against LibGen and SciHub. I am unfortunately not following these developments closely enough but I believe strongly that it is of interest to Air peeps and other academic communities. Please do consider spreading their message further even if you don’t agree but think that this is something we should be discussing and engaging in actively. Best, Seda # In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub In Antoine de Saint Exupéry's tale the Little Prince meets a businessman who accumulates stars with the sole purpose of being able to buy more stars. The Little Prince is perplexed. He owns only a flower, which he waters every day. Three volcanoes, which he cleans every week. "It is of some use to my volcanoes, and it is of some use to my flower, that I own them," he says, "but you are of no use to the stars that you own". There are many businessmen who own knowledge today. Consider Elsevier, the largest scholarly publisher, whose 37% profit margin[^1] stands in sharp contrast to the rising fees, expanding student loan debt and poverty-level wages for adjunct faculty. Elsevier owns some of the largest databases of academic material, which are licensed at prices so scandalously high that even Harvard, the richest university of the global north, has complained that it cannot afford them any longer. Robert Darnton, the past director of Harvard Library, says "We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices."[^2] For all the work supported by public money benefiting scholarly publishers, particularly the peer review that grounds their legitimacy, journal articles are priced such that they prohibit access to science to many academics - and all non-academics - across the world, and render it a token of privilege[^3]. Elsevier has recently filed a copyright infringement suit in New York against Science Hub and Library Genesis claiming millions of dollars in damages.[^4] This has come as a big blow, not just to the administrators of the websites but also to thousands of researchers around the world for whom these sites are the only viable source of academic materials. The social media, mailing lists and IRC channels have been filled with their distress messages, desperately seeking articles and publications. Even as the New York District Court was delivering its injunction, news came of the entire editorial board of highly-esteemed journal Lingua handing in their collective resignation, citing as their reason the refusal by Elsevier to go open access and give up on the high fees it charges to authors and their academic institutions. As we write these lines, a petition is doing the rounds demanding that Taylor & Francis doesn't shut down Ashgate[^5], a formerly independent humanities publisher that it acquired earlier in 2015. It is threatened to go the way of other small publishers that are being rolled over by the growing monopoly and concentration in the publishing market. These are just some of the signs that the system is broken. It devalues us, authors, editors and readers alike. It parasites on our labor, it thwarts our service to the public, it denies us access[^6]. We have the means and methods to make knowledge accessible to everyone, with no economic barrier to access and at a much lower cost to society. But closed access’s monopoly over academic publishing, its spectacular profits and its central role in the allocation of academic prestige trumps the public interest. Commercial publishers effectively impede open access, criminalize us, prosecute our heroes and heroines, and destroy our libraries, again and again. Before Science Hub and Library Genesis there was Library.nu or Gigapedia; before Gigapedia there was textz.org; before textz.org there was little; and before there was little there was nothing. That's what they want: to reduce most of us back to nothing. And they have the full support of the courts and law to do exactly that.[^7] In Elsevier's case against Sci-Hub and Library Genesis, the judge said: "simply making copyrighted content available for free via a foreign website, disserves the public interest"[^8]. Alexandra Elbakyan's original plea put the stakes much higher: "If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge." We demonstrate daily, and on a massive scale, that the system is broken. We share our writing secretly behind the backs of our publishers, circumvent paywalls to access articles and publications, digitize and upload books to libraries. This is the other side of 37% profit margins: our knowledge commons grows in the fault lines of a broken system. We are all custodians of knowledge, custodians of the same infrastructures that we depend on for producing knowledge, custodians of our fertile but fragile commons. To be a custodian is, de facto, to download, to share, to read, to write, to review, to edit, to digitize, to archive, to maintain libraries, to make them accessible. It is to be of use to, not to make property of, our knowledge commons. More than seven years ago Aaron Swartz, who spared no risk in standing up for what we here urge you to stand up for too, wrote: "We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access. With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?"[^9] We find ourselves at a decisive moment. This is the time to recognize that the very existence of our massive knowledge commons is an act of collective civil disobedience. It is the time to emerge from hiding and put our names behind this act of resistance. You may feel isolated, but there are many of us. The anger, desperation and fear of losing our library infrastructures, voiced across the internet, tell us that. This is the time for us custodians, being dogs, humans or cyborgs, with our names, nicknames and pseudonyms, to raise our voices. Share this letter - read it in public - leave it in the printer. Share your writing - digitize a book - upload your files. Don't let our knowledge be crushed. Care for the libraries - care for the metadata - care for the backup. Water the flowers - clean the volcanoes. ---- [^1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502, http://svpow.com/2012/01/13/the-obscene-profits-of-commercial-scholarly-pub… [^2]: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-p… [^3]: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121017558785551.html [^4]: https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-tears-down-academias-illegal-copyright-pay… [^5]: https://www.change.org/p/save-ashgate-publishing [^6]: http://thecostofknowledge.com/ [^7]: In fact, with the TPP and TTIP being rushed through the legislative process, no domain registrar, ISP provider, host or human rights organization will be able to prevent copyright industries and courts from criminalizing and shutting down websites "expeditiously". [^8]: https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-shutdown-of-libgen-bookfi-and-sci-hub… [^9]: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt If you want to disseminate further: on twitter it says: http://custodians.online 4LibGen&Sci-hub: share this letter, read it in public, care for the libraries, water the ❀❀❀❀❀, clean the volcanoes. on facebook: "http://custodians.online In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-hub Share this letter - read it in public - leave it in the printer. Share your writing - digitize a book - upload your files. Don't let our knowledge be crushed. Care for the libraries - care for the metadata - care for the backup. Water the ❀❀❀❀❀ - clean the volcanoes." if you want to check few more variations or add your own, please: https://textb.org/t/bullhorn/

1 0

Call for Book Chapters: "Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Cases and Challenges”
by Michael T Zimmer 30 Nov '15

30 Nov '15

Call for Book Chapters: "Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Cases and Challenges” Editors: Michael Zimmer and Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda Publisher: Peter Lang: Digital Formations (Steve Jones, series editor) Synopsis: The Internet and related social media technologies and platforms have opened up vast new means for communication, socialization, expression, and collaboration. They also have provided new resources for researchers seeking to explore, observe, and measure human opinions, activities and interactions. Increasingly, social media tools are used to aid traditional research: subjects might be recruited through Facebook or Twitter, surveys are administered and shared online, and data is often stored and processed on social and collaborative Web-based platforms and repositories. Social media has also emerged as a preferred domain for research itself: ethnographies take place within massively online social environments, entire collections of Facebook profile pages are scraped for data analysis, and public Twitter streams are routinely mined for academic purposes. Process data such as timestamps or logs are allowing researchers to model usage across time and space employing new computational methods. In short, academic research has begun to fully embrace what Maria Azua describes in her book, “The Social Factor: Innovate, Ignite, and Win through Mass Collaboration and Social Networking,” as “the social age,” the leveraging of the Internet and pervasive connected devices to enhance communication, information exchange, collaboration, and social interactions. As a result, researchers studying the internet find themselves immersed in a domain where information flows freely but potentially bound by contextual norms and expectations, where platforms may oscillate between open and closed information flows, and where data may be user-generated or proprietary. They are confronted with new economies of attention, where algorithms, memes and crowdfunding play a role in what is made visible on the Internet. As in its offline counterpart, Internet and social media-based research raises critical ethical issues of risk and safety to the human subject. The many disciplines already long engaged in human subjects research (such as medicine, anthropology, psychology, communication) have long-standing ethical codes and policies intended to guide researchers and those charged with ensuring that research on human subjects follows both legal requirements and ethical practices, and ethical review boards are charged with approving, monitoring, and reviewing research involving humans to ensure the rights and welfare of the research subjects are protected. But in the so-called “social age” – where individuals increasingly share personal information on platforms with porous and shifting boundaries, the aggregation of data from disparate sources is increasingly the norm, and web-based services, and their privacy policies and terms of service statements change too rapidly for an average user to keep up – the ethical frameworks and assumptions traditionally used by researchers and review boards alike are frequently challenged and, in some cases, inadequate. Researchers using the Internet as a tool or a space of research – and their ethical review boards – are confronted with a continuously expanding set of ethical dilemmas: What ethical obligations do researchers have to protect the privacy of subjects engaging in activities in “public” Internet spaces? Which national or international ethical standards apply when researching global networks, communities, or information flows? How is confidentiality or anonymity assured online? How is and should informed consent be obtained online? How should research on minors be conducted, and how do you prove a subject is not a minor? Is deception (pretending to be someone you are not or withholding identifiable information) in online spaces a norm, or a harm? Is “harm” possible to someone existing online in digital spaces? What are researchers’ obligations in spaces which are governed by platform providers? How should contend with inequalities in data access and uncertainties about data provenance and quality? In recent years, a growing number of scholars have begun exploring this new domain of Internet research ethics, numerous scholarly associations have drafted ethical guidelines for Internet research, and government regulatory authorities are starting to confront the myriad of ethical concerns Internet-based research brings to light. “Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Cases and Challenges” will provide a necessary update to this existing scholarship in four critical ways: • First, as Internet tools and platforms continue to evolve at a rapid pace, we will seek to include brief case studies highlighting unique uses — and related ethical concerns — of the current state-of-the-art technologies and platforms, including new social media platforms like Vine and Tinder, cloud and distributed computing, wearable devices, health tracking applications, and so on. • Second, we will strive to expand the disciplinary terrain impacted by Internet-based research, expanding the investigation of research approaches within the social sciences to include computer science, medicine, engineering, and business, resulting in a more inclusive umbrella of domains that must confront the challenges of Internet research ethics. • Third, we will strive for a more global approach to the challenges of Internet research ethics, soliciting contributions from researchers in diverse regulatory environments, as well as those dealing with the complex ethical dimensions of researching platforms and users that cross borders. • And fourth, we will also pay attention to the new ‘players’ in the domain of internet research ethics, such as platform providers and other commercial data owners who might engage in their own research, frequently disrupting traditional mechanisms of ethical review. Submissions: We envision two kinds of submissions for “Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Cases and Challenges”: - New Cases in Internet Research Ethics: We seek to include brief case studies highlighting unique uses — and related ethical concerns — of current state-of-the-art technologies and platforms within research contexts. Case studies can be descriptive and illustrative, and don’t necessarily need to resolve the ethical concerns. Cases could be examples from one’s own research, or an overview of various related projects in the field. Examples from industry, government, and academia are welcome. Topics for cases include, but are not limited to: • Social network analysis • Meta-data and log analysis • Digital ethnography • Mechanical Turk • Library of Congress Twitter archive • Mobile applications • Wearable computers • Facebook Emotion Contagion debate • Apple HealthKit • Internet shaming - New Challenges in Internet Research Ethics: Complementing the inclusion of various emerging cases, the 2nd part of the volume will provide broader discussions of new challenges in Internet research ethics. These chapters will tend to be more normative and analytical, engaging with the conceptual dimensions of Internet research ethics. We especially seek examples that consider a global perspective. Topics for discussion of challenges include, but are not limited to: • What constitutes a human subject? • What is the nature of Informed consent in online environments? • Issues of privacy and anonymity • Tracking & location privacy • Citizen science & crowdsourcing data collection • Information security • Data sharing & openness • Transnational information flows • Internal and industry-sponsored research Submission details and timeline: Potential contributors are invited to submit a 2-3 page chapter proposal to InternetResearchEthicsBook(a)gmail.com by December 1, 2015, detailing the chapter’s contribution and fit with the book, and the structure of the proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by January 15, 2016 as to the status of their proposal and sent formatting requirements. Full chapters should be 5,000-8,000 words in length (case studies may be shorter) and are due on May 1, 2016. After a round of editorial reviews, final revised manuscripts will be due on August 15, 2016. Editors: Dr. Michael Zimmer School of Information Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Dr. Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Institute for Web Science and Technologies at Koblenz University Publisher: The book will be published within the Peter Lang “Digital Formations” series, edited by Dr. Steve Jones (UI-Chicago). Target publication date is late 2016/early 2017. -- Michael Zimmer, PhD Associate Professor and PhD Program Director, School of Information Studies Director, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm(a)uwm.edu w: www.michaelzimmer.org

1 2

Second call for CSCW2016 workshop: Toward a typology of participation in crowd work
by Karin Hansson 30 Nov '15

30 Nov '15

Second call for papers CSCW2016 workshop, February 28 Toward a typology of participation in crowd work Deadline for paper submissions December 7 http://ttpcw.blogs.dsv.su.se/ <http://ttpcw.blogs.dsv.su.se/> The development of technologies and practices of broad public participation are changing the notion of the public. As the use of participatory and social media has become widespread in society and enabled a more collaborative information production, the potential for a transformation of production relations through crowd-based activities affect many aspects of life. There are new potentials for transformative developments in government, work life, science, and emergency response. However, these new platforms for participation have not solved many of the pre-crowd problems regarding participation, such as lack of representativeness and flawed deliberative processes. Therefore it is important and relevant to look at the power relations within crowd production and to examine how different tools handle participatory processes in the crowd. This workshop examines different types of participatory process, in crowd work such as crowdsourced policymaking, crisis management, citizen science and paid crowd work, among other, focusing on relations and power dynamics within and beyond the crowds. We welcome researchers from a diversity of disciplines and perspectives to formulate a typology of participation in crowd work. Typologies of participation In the wider field of participation, in areas like participatory planning, design or participatory research, the power relations in the participatory setting are seen as central for the outcome of the participation. However, we haven’t seen a more structured overview of typologies of participation indicating levels of power and agency in the context of crowdwork. For this workshop, we therefore invite participants to look more closely at different types of participation within crowdwork, and at different levels of interaction. Possible sites of analysis could be the interaction between crowd workers, the participation in the work by different stakeholders, the potentially privileged levels of interaction with the data, or tensions in the agency of the crowdworkers in relation to the task. What types of ontologies exist in different types of crowdsourcing contexts, and how do these ontologies reflect one or more epistemologies? How is this expressed in the relations between the crowd and the sourcer, or in how different interfaces and tools support different roles and different modes of crowd participation? What are the relations between different attitudes towards knowledge and the social relations in the crowdsourcing process? What are the implications for power relations between different modes of participation? If we learn more about how participation in crowd work can be described in terms of power and relations, we might get a better understanding of how participation can be articulated, how different tools for crowd participation can be developed, and how the different perspectives and stakes in crowd work might be harmonized, or at least clarified. Suggested subthemes and topics Controlling economic structures in crowd work • Controlling levels of; access; transparency, secrecy, closeness, connectedness, alienation • Relation between crowd work control dynamics and power relationships outside the technology framework. • Differentiations in entry and exit points to the platform Intersecting belief systems in crowd work • Norms about crowds, collaboration and democracy • Balance between exclusive groups and democratic publics • Stakeholders’ different cultural assumptions • Tensions between individual scoring systems and collective sharing processes Community support in crowd work • Communication needs within the crowd • Available avenues of communication to support community • Apprenticeship models • Relations between the crowd and the “sourcers” • Navigating intersecting communities in crowd setting • Relations between different types of stakeholders in the crowd setting Going from crowd to public • Publics as performative states; co-constitution an interdependence • Ethics and power relations in crowd sourced research • The power relations between the designer/inventor and the crowd • Quantified selves, data sources or co-researchers Workshop activities This one-day workshop will explore the topics in mini presentations and brainstorming sessions. The objective with the workshop is to develop a typology of participation in crowd work based on an overview of the field. Furthermore, selected contributions from the workshop will be considered for a special issue in a HCI journal. Submission Participants are selected based on their submitted position-papers. The maximum length of a paper is 2,000 words. Deadline for submissions is December 07. Send submissions and inquiries to: crowdtypologies(a)gmail.com <mailto:crowdtypologies@gmail.com> Organization The workshop builds on four earlier successful workshops: Back to the Future of Organizational Work: Crowdsourcing Digital Work Marketplaces, Structures for Knowledge Co-creation between Organizations and the Public hosted at ACM CSCW 2014, The Morphing Organization – Rethinking Groupwork Systems in the Era of Crowdwork hosted at ACM GROUP 2014, and Examining the Essence of the Crowds: Motivations, Roles and Identities at ECSCW 2015. (2) This workshop is organized by: Karin Hansson PhD, the Department of Computer & Systems Sciences at Stockholm University. Michael Muller, PhD, the Cognitive User Experience group of IBM Research, Cambridge MA USA Tanja Aitamurto, PhD, Deputy Director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the School of Engineering at Stanford University. Ann Light, Professor of Design and Creative Technology at the University of Sussex and leader of the Creative Technology Group. Athanasios Mazarakis, PhD, Web Science at Kiel University. Neha Gupta, PhD student at the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, UK. Thomas Ludwig, Ph.D. student at the Institute for Information Systems at the University of Siegen, Germany. More information about the workshop and the organizers can be found on the website: http://ttpcw.blogs.dsv.su.se/ <http://ttpcw.blogs.dsv.su.se/>

1 0