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Announcing an Updated AoIR.org website
by Jennifer Stromer-Galley 14 Jul '14

14 Jul '14

I am delighted to announce that the AoIR.org website has been updated. If you have a moment, point your browser to www.aoir.org<http://www.aoir.org> and take a look around. Please reply to me and share any reactions, concerns, or problems you identify. And, let me know if there's something that's not there that you wish were there. AoIR and our artifacts, conferences, and presence(s) you experience are done largely by the work of volunteers who care about our community and want to give time and enthusiasm. In this case, I have to thank Anna Hoffmann in particular for doing much heavy lifting to make this happen. I also thank Annette Markham for her guidance, insight, and design sensibilities in the creation of the new website. Two of my students at Syracuse University, Rhea Khanna and Twisha Rege, also did substantial work on the site. We solicited input from the community in an early version of the new design and their feedback was vital to helping us get a handle on what you want and need from the Web presence. Finally, three volunteers gave time in looking over the final website before the soft launch a few weeks ago. Many thanks to: Nele Heise, Uta Russmann, and Lynn Clark for finding typos, broken links, and other errors. Cheers, ~Jenny Associate Professor | School of Information Studies Vice President | Association of Internet Researchers Syracuse University 220 Hinds Hall Syracuse, New York 13244 t 315.443.1823 f 315.443.5673 e jstromer(a)syr.edu w www.stromer-galley.com w www.aoir.org ischool.syr.edu

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Critical digital literacy resources?
by Chris Werry 14 Jul '14

14 Jul '14

Hi, I'm hoping folks on the list have some suggestions for teaching critical digital literacy to first year students. I signed up to pilot the introduction of some critical digital literacy instruction in a first year writing class next semester. We'd only have 3-4 class sessions on the topic, so it's hard to know where to focus. The main goal is just to get students thinking more critically about their everyday use of digital media, but also provide some tips as they begin their academic careers. Any advice on tools, exercises, web resources, or thoughts on texts to use that dovetail with digital literacy issues? Any thoughts/advice greatly appreciated! Chris -- Chris Werry Department of Rhetoric & Writing Studies San Diego State University

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Open Call for Position Papers on MOOCs
by Yoram Kalman 14 Jul '14

14 Jul '14

I thought members of this list would be interested in an open [1]call for position papers on the opportunities and characteristics for European cooperation on MOOCs. One author of each of the best 10-15 position papers will be invited as keynote speaker to present their work at a special international conference on MOOCs to be held in Portugal in November 2014. All travel and accommodation expenses of the invited contributors will be covered by the HOME partnership according to standard European Commission rules. Experts coming from institutions that are already partners in the HOME project are excluded from this compensation allowance. Submission deadline: September 13, 2014. See this [2]pdf for full details. Yoram -- Yoram Kalman, PhD [3]www.kalmans.com Cell: +972 54 574 7375 References 1. http://www.openuped.eu/news/109-open-call-for-position-papers-on-moocs 2. http://home.eadtu.eu/images/News/Open_Call_Position_paper_MOOCs.pdf 3. http://www.kalmans.com/

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Vacancies in Media, Journalism and PR, Sheffield Hallam University
by Deller, Ruth A 14 Jul '14

14 Jul '14

(With apologies for cross-posting) We currently have four vacancies in the Department of Media Arts and Communications at Sheffield Hallam University that list members may be interested in: 0.5 FTE Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Sports Journalism (ACE 5116/13): http://www.shu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancies/academic/ace511613.html 1.0 FTE Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Public Relations (ACE 5117/13): http://www.shu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancies/academic/ace511713.html 1.0 Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Media (Theory) (ACE 5115/13): http://www.shu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancies/academic/ace511513.html 0.6 Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Media (Practice) (ACE 5114/13): http://www.shu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancies/academic/ace511413.html The deadline for all applications is midday, 29 August 2014. For enquiries, please contact: Geff Green (Deputy Head of Dept) Telephone 0114 225 6806 / Email G.C.Green(a)shu.ac.uk<mailto:G.C.Green@shu.ac.uk> Or Lily Canter (Subject Group Leader, Journalism) Telephone 0114 225 6813 / Email L.Canter(a)shu.ac.uk<mailto:L.Canter@shu.ac.uk> Patrick Wichert (Subject Group Leader, Media and Public Relations) Telephone 0114 225 6790 / Email P.Wichert(a)shu.ac.uk<mailto:P.Wichert@shu.ac.uk> -- Ruth Deller Programme Leader, UG Communications (Journalism, Media, PR) Room 9210 Cantor Building, Shefield Hallam University, UK r.a.deller(a)shu.ac.uk<mailto:r.a.deller@shu.ac.uk>, http://www.ruthdeller.co.uk<http://www.ruthdeller.co.uk/>, @ruthdeller<http://www.twitter.com/ruthdeller>

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CFP for an edited collection of essays exploring SOCIALBOTS
by Maria Bakardjieva 14 Jul '14

14 Jul '14

Dear colleagues, Robert Gehl and I would like to invite you to consider contributing to our proposed edited collection exploring the technological, social, cultural, and ethical aspects of *socialbots*. Please see our Call for Papers below and do not hesitate to contact us with questions, or to discuss the idea further. Best, Maria --- Dr. Maria Bakardjieva Professor, Department of Communication and Culture University of Calgary, Canada --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert W. Gehl, University of Utah Maria Bakardjieva, University of Calgary *CFP FOR AN EDITED COLLECTION EXPLORING SOCIALBOTS* Many users of the Internet are aware of the existence of bots: automated programs that work behind the scenes to come up with search suggestions, check the weather, filter emails, or clean up Wikipedia entries. A new form of software robot has been making its presence felt in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter lately – the socialbot. Unlike more familiar bots, socialbots are built to appear human. While a weatherbot will tell you if it's sunny and a spambot will incessantly peddle Viagra, socialbots will ask you questions, have conversations, like your posts, retweet you, and become your friend. All the while, if they're well-programmed, you won't know that you're tweeting and friending with a robot. Socialbot makers have suggested or demonstrated many uses for these 'bots, including exposing security flaws in Facebook, healing social rifts, bringing brands to life, quelling dissent on the behalf of governments, creating the appearance of popular support for politicians, infiltrating activist networks, or correcting misinformation circulating online. Socialbots can automate friending, liking, and tweeting, playing the odds to gain followers. They are built out of datasets produced by social media users and thus reflect our social media use back on us. They exploit our penchant for "hot" profiles, the triadic closure principle, and our need to make an impression and to get feedback. But they also give us a neutral sounding board, a means to pass the day, and a new form of friendship. As a cutting-edge AI technology, socialbots are only the latest in a long line of mechanical and software-based creations that humans live, talk, work, love, and struggle with. From the Mechanical Turk to the Turing Test to ELIZA to Cleverbot, from robotic factory workers to emotionally-attuned customer service telephone systems, from Rossum's Universal Robots to Robby to HAL to Colossus to Data, AI presents us with a wide range of philosophical, ethical, political, and economic quandaries. Who benefits from the use of robots? Who loses? Does a robot deserve rights? Who pulls the strings of these 'bots? Who has the right to know what about them? What does it mean to be intelligent? What does it mean to be a friend? Can research be done to create these bots but still uphold the ideal of informed consent? As a way to explore these questions – and many others – we seek chapter proposals for an edited book. Potential topics could be: • Socialbots and artificial intelligence • Genealogies of bots on the Internet • Socialbots and big data • Utopian and dystopian socialbot futures • Uses of socialbots • Socialbots and politics • Socialbots and marketing • Socialbots and posthumanism • Human/machine relations • Political economy of socialbots • Sociable bots in popular culture • Ways to program socialbots • What socialbots tell us about social media • Socialbots and human sociality • Socialbots and anonymity • Socialbots and identity politics • Socialbots versus spambots We encourage proposals from people working in a wide range of fields, including communication, humanities, social sciences, computer science, software engineering, software studies, science and technology studies, philosophy, marketing, and media and cultural studies. We want accessible, well-researched chapters that not only inform others about these 'bots, but also establish socialbots as a new object of inquiry from many perspectives. We are currently talking with several academic publishers about this edited collection. TIMELINE • 500 word abstracts due to socialbotbook(a)robertwgehl.org: October 15, 2014 • Notification about abstract acceptance: November 15, 2014 • Full chapters due: March 15, 2015 EDITOR BIOS ROBERT W. GEHL www.robertwgehl.org | robert.gehl(a)utah.edu Robert W. Gehl is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, USA. His forthcoming book is Reverse Engineering Social Media: Software, Culture, and Political Economy in New Media Capitalism (2014, Temple). His work is at the intersections of science and technology studies, political economy, and cultural studies and explores network culture. He has published research that critiques the architecture, code, culture, and design of social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and blogs in Social Text, Lateral, The International Journal of Cultural Studies, New Media and Society, Television and New Media, Computational Culture, and First Monday. He is a member of the editorial board of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. His current project is a genealogy of software engineering. MARIA P. BAKARDJIEVA www.ucalgary.ca/~bakardji bakardji(a)ucalgary.ca Maria Bakardjieva is a professor in the Department of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary, Canada. She is the author of Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life (2005, Sage) and co-editor of How Canadians Communicate (2004 and 2007, University of Calgary Press). Maria held the position of editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication from 2011 to 2013. Her research has examined Internet use practices across different social and cultural context with a focus on the ways in which users understand and actively appropriate new media. Her work on the topics of Internet use in everyday life, online community, e-learning and research ethics has been published in numerous international journals and edited collections including Media, Culture and Society, New Media and Society, The Information Society, Philosophy and Technology, Ethics and Information Technology, Sage Benchmarks in Communication, Volume 4 and others. Her current projects investigate the social and political implications of social media and look at the interactions between traditional and new media with the objective to identify opportunities for broad democratic participation in the public sphere.

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PhD student positions at U of Calgary
by Maria Bakardjieva 14 Jul '14

14 Jul '14

Colleagues, Please consider distributing the following announcement among your Master's students and/or encourage potentially interested individuals to apply. Thanks! Maria ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Barbara Schneider <baschnei(a)ucalgary.ca> Date: Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 9:07 AM Subject: PhD student positions at U of Calgary To: CCA-LIST(a)lists.mcgill.ca Dear Colleagues Attached is an ad for two PhD student research positions at the University of Calgary in the Department of Communication and Culture for fall 2014. Application deadline is Aug. 4, 2014. Please forward to anyone who might be interested. Contact Megan Freeman <freemanm(a)ucalgary.ca> if you have questions. Thanks, Barbara Schneider Professor and Interim Head Department of Communication and Culture University of Calgary

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CFP: Special Issue of The Journal of Community Informatics
by Colin Rhinesmith 13 Jul '14

13 Jul '14

Call for Papers: The Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) Special Issue – Research Methods for Community Informatics The Journal of Community Informatics (JoCI) is seeking scholarly articles and notes from the field for a special issue on Research Methods for Community Informatics. Community Informatics is the study and the practice of enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). JoCI is an international journal that focuses on how researchers and practitioners work with communities towards the effective use of ICTs to improve their processes, achieve their objectives, overcome the “digital divides” that exist both within and between communities, and empower communities and citizens. This is possible in areas such as health, cultural production, civic management and e-governance, among others. JoCI is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, community informatics practitioners, and national and multi-lateral policy makers. JoCI is currently indexed in the IBSS and Google Scholar as well as several indexes of Open Access journals. Efforts are underway concerning additional scholarly indexing. More information regarding JoCI is available at http://ci-journal.net. The guest editors for the special issue are: Dr. Colin Rhinesmith (University of Oklahoma, USA), Dr. Mark Wolfe (University of Alberta, Canada), and Andy Bytheway (Retired Professor of Information Management at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa). Objective This special issue will focus on the methods used to investigate how ICTs can support local economic development, social justice, and political empowerment. Community Informatics (CI) is a point of convergence concerning the use of ICTs for diverse stakeholders, including community leaders and activists, nonprofit groups, policymakers, users/citizens, and the range of academics working across (and integrating) disciplines as diverse as Information Studies, Management, Computer Science, Social Work, Planning and Development Studies. This diversity brings with it a range of methodological approaches – and tensions – to the field of CI. The special issue seeks to both disentangle and organize the use of existing methods in CI research and to explore innovative new approaches used by researchers and practitioners in their work with communities. Topics This special issue seeks articles focused on methodological topics and issues related to community informatics research. We encourage contributions that come from a wide range of perspectives, including (but not limited to): Conceptual foundations. What are the pros and cons of positivist, interpretivist, and critical methods in the CI context? Data elicitation. What techniques are needed for reliable data to be collected in local communities, and what is the role of the cloud, “big data,” and data analytics in this context? Measures of success. What is the extent to which key variables and measures of CI investment success are actually understood? Ethics. How are research ethics understood in the context of CI work? Comparative analysis. How can shared local and global research resources be developed for comparative studies in different regions of the world? Cross-cultural studies. How are data elicitation techniques and methods used in a cross-cultural context? Extant theory. What is the applicability of other extant theories from related research areas (e.g., MIS, anthropology, science and technology studies, etc.) to the field of CI methodology? We also invite authors to submit “Notes from the Field” from CI practitioners and policy makers that describe relevant methodological topics and issues. Submission procedure and deadlines Full original and unpublished articles for this special issue should be submitted via the JoCI website. Authors are invited to submit full-length papers between 5000-7000 words and notes from the field between 3000-5000 words. All full-length research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Notes from the field containing insights and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers are also encouraged – these will not be peer-reviewed. All authors should provide a note to the editors via the website indicating their interest in having their submissions considered for the special issue on “Research Methods for Community Informatics.” Interested authors should consult the journal’s editorial policies and author guidelines for submissions at http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/information/authors. Full article draft submissions due: November 15, 2014. Notes from the field due: December 15, 2014. All inquiries should be directed to: Colin Rhinesmith, Guest Editor Email: crhines(a)illinois.edu (before August 1, 2014) / crhinesmith(a)ou.edu (after August 1, 2014) --- Colin Rhinesmith, Ph.D. Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~crhines

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CFP for DISC 2014 (Daegu, Dec. 2014)
by Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki 12 Jul '14

12 Jul '14

*** Sorry for cross-posting *** Dear Colleagues, Daegu is *the* destination for conferences this year! Please consider submitting an abstract for DISC 2014, to be held in Daegu, December 11 to 14, 2014. Deadline for abstracts: September 5, 2014 CFP for the Conference: http://www.slideshare.net/hanpark/disc-2014-cfp-v3 Methodological Workshops will be held during the conference as well: http://asia-triplehelix.org/DISC2014 Personal Note: The methodological workshops at DISC 2013 were outstanding. Special note: Cash awards for outstanding papers. Plus, publication opportunities in the following journals: TFSC (Technological Forecasting and Social Change) accepted Special Issue on DISC 2014. http://www.journals.elsevier.com/technological-forecasting-and-social-chang… The JCEA (Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia) is also organizing another Special Issue. Here is DISC 2013 special issue. http://eastasia.yu.ac.kr/documents/currentissue.html Looking forward to seeing you there. Best regards, Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki (Member, International Advisory Board, DISC 2014) (Associate Professr, University of Tsukuba, Japan)

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call for delegate, Downscaling Culture Conference
by Dorottya Cserző 11 Jul '14

11 Jul '14

Downscaling Culture Revisiting Intercultural Communication Cardiff University, Wales, UK 18-19 September 2014 Call for delegates In this two-day conference we would like to address culture and intercultural communication from a micro-perspective. Commonly the linguistic study of intercultural communication is concerned with analysing miscommunication between speakers from two or more different 'cultures', defined predominantly as large-scale nation and language communities. A downscaled notion of culture challenges this perspective and encourages a fresh look at local cultures: subcultures, small groups, families, communities of practice; every group of persons who use common signs to create meaning-making ensembles of signs that relate to their life-world. The papers in this conference will focus on such downscaled notions of culture, as well as revisit the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of intercultural communication studies. Participants from across the world present their research on various topics, including food talk, charity discourse, educational policies and world Englishes. A full programme can be viewed on the conference website<http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/newsandevents/events/conferences/downscaling…>. We are pleased to announce the following distinguished speakers: Dr Shobha Satyanath, University of Delhi, India Professor Srikant Sarangi, Aalborg University, Denmark Dr Frances Rock & Amal Hallak, Cardiff University, UK Dr Tereza Spilioti, Cardiff University, UK The registration fee is ?30.00, which includes a conference pack, refreshments, tea, coffee, water and cold lunch for two days. Registration is open until the 26th August 2014. Registration forms can be downloaded from our website and should be emailed to the organising committee at downscalingculture(a)cardiff.ac.uk<mailto:downscalingculture@cardiff.ac.uk>. Please feel free to get in touch with us should you have any queries. Jaspal Singh, Argyro Kantara, Dorottya Cserző??

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CALL FOR NOMINATIONS> The 2013 Social Informatics Best Paper Award
by Howard Rosenbaum 11 Jul '14

11 Jul '14

Call for nominations for the 2013 Social Informatics Best Paper Award The Special Interest Group for Social Informatics (SIG-SI) of the Association for Information Science and Technology and the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics (RKCSI) are seeking nominations for an award for the best paper published in a peer reviewed journal on a topic informed by social informatics during the 2013 calendar year. The author or authors will present their paper at the 10th Annual SIG-SI Symposium on Saturday, November 1, 2014 and receive a $1,000 cash award at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) in Seattle in November, 2014. Nominations letters should be sent to Howard Rosenbaum (hrosenba(a)indiana.edu) or Pnina Fichman (fichman(a)indiana.edu) by August 15, 2014 and must include a full citation, a brief explanation for the nomination, and a copy of the article. Self nominations are acceptable. Winners will be notified by August 30, 2014. For more information about the Special Interest Group for Social Informatics (SIG-SI): http://asistsigsi.wordpress.com For more information about the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics (RKCSI): http://rkcsi.indiana.edu Pnina Fichman and Howard Rosenbaum School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University

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