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IR15 Doctoral Colloquium Deadline This Week
by Kendall, Lori 07 Jul '14

07 Jul '14

Just a brief reminder that submissions for the IR15 Doctoral Colloquium are due later this week: July 11. See the Call for Submissions here: http://aoir.org/ir15-doctoral-colloquium-call-for-submissions/ Lori Kendall President, Association of Internet Researchers

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Register now for IR15 in Daegu
by Kendall, Lori 07 Jul '14

07 Jul '14

Registration for IR15: Boundaries and Intersections in Daegu is now open! Thanks to the hard work of our local hosts Prof. Han Woo Park, Prof. Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki and their conference team in Korea, as well as to our other generous sponsors and association members, we have been able to keep our pricing the same. As before, the preconference workshops and the conference banquet are included in your registration fee! Extra banquet tickets can be purchased at an additional fee. Workshop space and banquet seating is limited, though, so register early! Remember that if you are presenting at the conference, you need to register by the early bird deadline of August 31 (Daegu time). Even if you're not, register early to get the price break. We'll have more information about the conference coming soon, including information about hotel registration, the keynote and plenary panel, and more about travel and Daegu. For more information and to register - please check out the conference wesbite<http://ir15.aoir.org/?page_id=142>. Please note: If you previously registered for IR15 in Bangkok (and you received your refund), the updated registration system will warn you that you already registered for the event when you being the process of IR15 in Daegu. Please disregard this warning, and continue the registration. Everyone must re-register We look forward to seeing you in Daegu in October! Lori Kendall President, AoIR

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Teaching a new media & society class?
by Anthony Nadler 07 Jul '14

07 Jul '14

If you are teaching something along the lines of a “digital media and society” course this coming semester, would you be interested in sharing pedagogical resources and ideas with other instructors teaching similar classes? I’m helping organize an experiment (called Collaborative Online Network for College Teaching - CONNECT) seeking ways to encourage collaboration among instructors teaching similar courses across campuses. We’re hoping members will share assignments, class activities, recommended reading and other media, reading guides, etc. Some members might find even more ways to collaborate, such as arranging cross-campus student peer critiques or group project or participating in live online interactions with guest speakers. We’ll use a WordPress site for sharing files, an email listserv or Facebook group for messages, and arrange occasional opportunities for video conferences. The goal is to help members enhance their teaching and hopefully save some time with course prep (how much time do you spend looking for the right clips or news articles?). We’ll all talk about what would be helpful and participation will be flexible, but every member should be willing to: · S - Share your syllabus prior to the start of the semester · -Share favorite readings or assignments. · - Respond to requests for help and ideas from other members Please let me know if you might be interested in participating by emailing me at anadler(a)ursinus.edu. -- Anthony Nadler Assistant Professor of Media and Communication Studies Ursinus College

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Deadline Extension: Workshop on Semantics for Smarter Cities at ISWC 2014
by Tope Omitola 05 Jul '14

05 Jul '14

APOLOGIES FOR MULTIPLE POSTINGS CALL FOR PAPERS: 5th Workshop on Semantics for Smarter Cities Call For Papers: http://blog.soton.ac.uk/s4sc/ collocated with the 13th International Semantic Web Conference – Riva del Garda, Italy, 20 October, 2014. **Best papers from the Workshop will be considered for publication in the forthcoming Semantic Web Journal Special Issue on “The Role of Semantics in Smart Cities”.** Important Dates (All deadlines are Hawaii time) **16.07.2014 – Extension of full paper submission deadline** 31.07.2014 – notification of acceptance 25.08.2014 – submission of camera ready version 20.10.2014 – Workshop date CityPulse-sponsored 300 EUR Prize will be awarded to the Best Demonstration paper or experiment. ————————————————————————————————————————- 5th Workshop on Semantics for Smarter Cities Call For Papers collocated with the 13th International Semantic Web Conference – Riva del Garda, Italy, 20 October, 2014. The world’s population is rapidly urbanizing. By 2005, the world’s population had increased to 6.5 billion, with about 50% living in cities. By 2025, UN projections show that the world population is expected to exceed 9 billion with roughly 75% expected to live in cities. This rapid urbanization is continuing to put tremendous pressure on traditional urban infrastructures, such as roads, water, and energy, and on societal institutions. This urbanization challenges require new approaches that will transform modern cities to comfortable, economically successful, and environmentally responsible habitats. We are also seeing a rapid rise in the connection and usage of billions of low-end and affordable smart devices to the Internet, i.e. the Internet of Things, and witnessing the expansion of the Web into more areas of our personal lives. These trends make possible a new generation of smart city applications and services, with new smart city applications emerging as more data from different sources (e.g. from utility services, transport services, environmental data, and from social sensing) become available. These smart city data are large in volume, multi-modal, vary in quality, formats, and representation forms. These data need to be processed, aggregated, and higher-level abstractions need to be created from these data to make them suitable for the event processing and , knowledge extraction methods that enable intelligent applications and services for smart city platforms. Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data together with data analytics solutions play a key role in providing inter-operability, association analysis, information and knowledge extractions, and reasoning about trust, privacy, provenance, and security in smart city frameworks. Scope and Objectives This workshop will explore the interfaces between the Web, the Web of Data, and the City Smart environment. It will further explore how the Web, and the intelligences built on top of, and around the Web, can make the notion of the Smart Connected City possible and realizable. The workshop aims to gather researchers, city departments, service providers, application developers, entrepreneurs, and citizens to present and debate Semantic Web technologies, Linked Data and data analytics and evaluations for smart city applications as well as impact of user engagements and social networks. The workshop will also focus on related standardization activities in W3C, IEEE and ETSI. It continues on from the successful earlier workshops on the same theme at AAAI 12 (http://research.ihost.com/semanticcities12/) IJCAI 13 (http://research.ihost.com/semanticcities13/) SemCity13 (http://aida.ii.uam.es/wims13/semcity.php) and AAAI 14 (http://research.ihost.com/semanticcities14/) Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 1. Semantic platforms to integrate, manage and publish smart city data Provenance, access control and privacy-preserving issues in open data Collaborative and evolving semantic models for cities. Challenges and lessons learned Semantic data integration and organization in cities: social media feeds, sensor data, simulation models and Internet of things in city models Big data and scaling out in semantic cities. Managing big data using knowledge representation models Knowledge acquisition, evolution and maintenance of city data Challenges with managing and integrating real-time and historical city data. 2. Process and standards for defining, publishing and sharing open city data Platforms and best practices for city data inter-operability Foundational and applied ontologies for semantic cities. 3. Robust inference models for semantic cities Large-scale stream reasoning Semantic event detection and classification Spatio-temporal reasoning, analysis and visualization. 4. City applications involving semantic models Intelligent user interfaces and contextual user exploration of semantic data relating to cities Use cases, including, but not limited to, transportation (traffic prediction, personal travel optimization, carpool and fleet scheduling), public safety (suspicious activity detection, disaster management), healthcare (disease diagnosis and prognosis, pandemic management), water management (flood prevention, quality monitoring, fault diagnosis), food (food traceability, carbon-footprint tracking), energy (smart grid, carbon footprint tracking, electricity consumption forecasting) and buildings (energy conservation, fault detections) 5. City as a Smart Utility Internet of Things Interaction paradigms in the Smart City Smart City operating systems Semantic Complex Event Processing City services discovery Service ranking, provenance, and data discovery Submission Types and Publication For providing a forum for sharing novel ideas, SSC’14 welcomes a broad spectrum of contributions, including for example: Full research papers Position papers Case studies Descriptions of experiments Evaluations How to submit Authors of accepted works are expected to attend the conference to present their work. The maximum length of: Short papers, up to 6 pages Full Research papers, up to 16 pages Position papers, up to 4 pages Case Studies papers, up to 16 pages Demo papers, and descriptions of experiments, including evaluation reports, (up to 16 pages). Submissions to the Demo track should describe what will be demonstrated (this may include screenshots and sample script for the demo). Authors are encouraged to include a link to where the demo (live or recorded video) can be found. Authors are advised to make clear in their submission: What is the research background and application context of the demonstration? What are the key technologies used, and how does the demonstrated system, application or infrastructure relate to pre-existing work? What will be the key concepts learnt by participants of the demonstration? ***CityPulse-sponsored Best Prize will be awarded to the Best Demonstration paper or experiment.*** Submissions must be in PDF formatted in the style of the Springer Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). For details of the LNCS style, see Springer’s Author Instructions. Paper submissions to be made electronically through the EasyChair submission system at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssc14 Important Dates (All deadlines are Hawaii time) 16.07.2014 – full paper submission deadline 31.07.2014 – notification of acceptance 25.08.2014 – submission of camera ready version 20.10.2014 – Workshop date Organizing Committee Payam Barnaghi, University of Surrey, UK Jan Holler, Ericsson, Sweden Biplav Srivastava, IBM Research, India John Davies, BT, UK John Breslin, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland Tope Omitola, University of Southampton, UK Advisors Manfred Hauswirth, National University of Ireland, Ireland Amit Sheth, Wright State University, USA Mark Fox, University of Toronto, Canada Ralf Tonjes, University of Applied Science Osnabrück, Germany Programme Committee Konstantinos Vandikas, Ericsson, Sweden Andreas Emrich, DFKI, Germany Benoit Christophe, Bell Labs – Nozay, France Cosmin-Septimiu Nechifor, Siemens, Romania Rosairo Usceda-Sosa, IBM Mirko Presser, Alexandra Institute, Denmark Alessandra Mileo, National University of Ireland in Galway, Ireland Herwig Schreiner, Siemens, Austria Vlasios Tsiatsis, Ericsson, Sweden Pirabakaran Navaratnam, University of Surrey, UK Sebastian Rios, University of Chile, Chile Robert Schloss, IBM T.J. Watson, USA Stefan Schulte, The University of Vienna, Austria Alistair Duke, BT, UK Freddy Lecue, IBM Monika Solanki, Aston University, UK Taha Osman, Nottingham Trent University, UK Pramod Anantharam, Knoesis, Wright State University, USA Spyros Kotoulas, IBM Research, Smarter Cities Technology Centre, Dublin, Ireland Jose Manuel Gomez Prez, iSOCO, Spain John Goodwin, Ordnance Survey, UK

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Teaching Participatory Design…a PDC2014 Workshop
by Maurizio 03 Jul '14

03 Jul '14

Apologies for cross-posting, I thought it could be of interest for many of you... Best regards M. --- The goal of the “*Teaching Participatory Design*” full-day workshop is to create a place where people can share plans and questions about the practice of teaching Participatory Design (PD). Through this workshop we aim to create a context for all of us to talk about how we design and set up courses, what challenges we face and how we solve them. The workshop is for people who are interested in the way people teach as well as in what is taught and what resources are gathered to aid the process. During the workshop, we will explore in an interactive manner how constructivist approaches to teaching can support the teaching and learning of participatory design in academic and non-academic contexts. We will also discuss experiences in using recent material such as the PD Handbook. We hope that this dialogue can become a regular part of PDC! For more information on the workshop: http://teachingpdworkshop.wordpress.com/ The workshop is scheduled for *Sunday 5th October, 2014* <http://pdc2014.org/index.php/workshops/workshops-sunday-5th-oct>. For more information about the *Participatory Design Conference* visit: http://pdc2014.org The 2014 PDC <http://pdc2014.org/> will be a platform to connect ‘in person’ with designers, researchers, artists, practitioners and other related people, to engage in fruitful dialogues, to participate in numerous activities such as tutorials, workshops, doctoral consortiums, participatory art encounters, paper presentations as well as game viewing and exquisite dinning. All in all you are looking forward to an unforgettable conference experience with many new insights and connections.

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Short-term visiting research fellowships at University of Canberra, Australia
by Deborah Lupton 02 Jul '14

02 Jul '14

Dear all I have some funding to cover travel and accommodation costs for visiting fellows who would like to spend some time in Canberra, Australia, working with me on a project sometime in the next year. I can fund visits for periods of up to 2 months. We would work together on either formulating a research project application for funding from a major funding body or on initiating a collaborative writing project with the aim of producing joint publications. My university profile gives some details on the topics I am working on. I would welcome ideas for collaborative research on any of these topics: http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/arts-design/communications-staff/media…. Please note that my interests and expertise are in qualitative and critical theory research. Please contact me by email if you are interested in discussing this opportunity further. There is no deadline ... Cheers Deborah

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Gender and Online Activism Articles
by jose marichal 02 Jul '14

02 Jul '14

Dear AoIR colleagues, Thank you for your suggestions for useful articles on Gender and Online Activism. because there has been a great deal of interest from many of you for a compilation of the articles, I decided to send it to the entire list... Thanks again for your generosity :) jose *Gender and Online Activism Articles of Interest* Issue of CyberOrient on Gender and Activism in the Middle East Editorial Arab Women’s Changing Identities, Activisms and Resistances in a Changing Region Sahar Khamis http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8882 Articles Gendering the February 20th Movement: Moroccan Women Redefining: Boundaries, Identities and Resistances Houda Abadi http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8817 Sowing the Seeds of The Message: Islamist Women Activists Before, During, and After the Egyptian Revolution Mona Abdel-Fadil http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8854 The Saudi Blogosphere: Implications of New Media Technology and the Emergence of Saudi-Islamic Feminism Philip Tschirhart http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8864 Women and Media: Libyan Female Journalists from Gaddafi Media to Post- revolution: Case Study Fatima El Issawi http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8865 “My Life is More Important Than Family Honor:” Offline Protests, Counter-Cyberactivism, and Article 308 Sarah A. Tobin http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8875 Comments Social Media As an Opportunity to Bahraini Women Nada Alwadi http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8815 Gender articles in APC website repository [ http://www.apc.org/en/pubs/research] Gender discussion in "Take Back the Tech" [https://www.takebackthetech.net] The Naked Body of Alia: Gender, Citizenship, and the Egyptian Body Politic Sara Mourad smourad(a)asc.upenn.edu http://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/22/0196859913508782.abstract Collective Action and Web 2.0. An Exploratory Network Analysis of Twitter Use During Campaigns Elena Pavan http://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.2383/75766 A chapter on Gender in Jesse Daniel’s Cyber Racism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009) <https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742561588> about gender and online activism. Stine Eckert extended dissertation abstract: http://stineeckert.com/current-projects/ Eckert, S., & Steiner, L. (2013). “(Re)triggering backlash: Responses to news of Wikipedia’s gender gap”, Journal of Communication Inquiry 37(4), 284-303 Abstract: http://jci.sagepub.com/content/37/4/284.abstract Eckert, S., & Steiner, L. (2013). “Wikipedia’s Gender Gap”. In Armstrong, C. (Ed.), Media Disparity: A Gender Battleground. (pp. 87-98) Lexington Books. http://www.amazon.de/Media-Disparity-A-Gender-Battleground/dp/0739181874 General Gender and Activism Work Chovanec, M. (2009). Between hope and despair: Women learning politics. Halifax, NS: Fernwood. Crass, C. (2013). Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategies (p. 295). PM Press. *Specific Gender and Online Activism Articles* Irving, C. J., & English, L. M. (2010). Community in Cyberspace: Gender, Social Movement Learning, and the Internet. Adult Education Quarterly, 61(3), 262–278. doi:10.1177/0741713610380448 http://bakerinstitute.org<http://bakerinstitute.org >/news/the-arab-awakening-and-the-internet/ "Unveiling the Revolutionaries: Cyberactivism and Women’s Role in the Arab Uprisings” Here is a nice article from 2004, which might be relevant: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J041v16n03_11 Laurie M. Phillips dissertation on It Gets Better project <http://gradworks.umi.com/35/94/3594199.html> Apologies for self-promotion, but have you seen this piece I co-authored with Sophia Maalsen http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-5871.12023/abstract “Political Opportunities and Strategic Choices: Comparing Feminist Campaigns in Morocco and Iran” Co-authored with Valentine Moghadam in Mobilization: An International Journal 15 (3): 267-288, September 2010. “Iran’s Reformist and Activists: Internet Exploiters” coauthored with Babak Rahimi in Middle East Policy Journal, Volume XV, Spring 2008, Number 1, pp. 46-59 Commentary & Critique section of the forthcoming Feminist Media Studies journal (14.3), which is due out online in July. has a special issue on online feminist activism and privilege. “Political Opportunities and Strategic Choices: Comparing Feminist Campaigns in Morocco and Iran” Co-authored with Valentine Moghadam in Mobilization: An International Journal 15 (3): 267-288, September 2010. ----------------------------Translated into Persian and published in Iranian Feminist School: http://www.iranianfeminschool.info/spip.php?article6574 “Iran’s Reformist and Activists: Internet Exploiters” coauthored with Babak Rahimi in Middle East Policy Journal, Volume XV, Spring 2008, Number 1, pp. 46-59 Reprinted in Arseh Sevom online Magazine: http://www.arsehsevom.net/zine/?p=44 “Political Opportunities and Strategic Choices: Comparing Feminist Campaigns in Morocco and Iran” Co-authored with Valentine Moghadam in Mobilization: An International Journal 15 (3): 267-288, September 2010. ----------------------------Translated into Persian and published in Iranian Feminist School: http://www.iranianfeminschool.info/spip.php?article6574 “Iran’s Reformist and Activists: Internet Exploiters” coauthored with Babak Rahimi in Middle East Policy Journal, Volume XV, Spring 2008, Number 1, pp. 46-59 -- _______________________________________________________________________________________ josé marichal, ph.d. | professor of political science <http://about.me/marichal> department | california lutheran university 60 w. olsen road | #3800 | thousand oaks, ca 91360 #marichal on Twitter

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New book: Society and the Internet
by Mark Graham 02 Jul '14

02 Jul '14

*Dear colleagues, I’m happy to announce that a new book edited by Bill Dutton and myself is now out: Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives <http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199662005.do> How is society being shaped by the diffusion and increasing centrality of the Internet in everyday life and work? By bringing together leading research that addresses some of the most significant cultural, economic, and political roles of the Internet, this volume introduces students to a core set of readings that address this question in specific social and institutional contexts. * The reader has been created * to supplement upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses that seek to introduce students to scholarship focused on the implications of the Internet for networked societies around the world. The chapters of the reader are rooted in a variety of disciplines, but all directly tackle the powerful ways in which the Internet is linked to political, social, cultural, and economic transformations in society. This book will be a starting point for anyone with a serious interest in the factors shaping the Internet and its impact on society. The book begins with an introduction by the editors, which provides a brief history of the Internet and Web and its study from multi-disciplinary perspectives. The chapters are grouped into five focused sections: (I) Internet Studies of Everyday Life, (II) Information and Culture on the Line, (III) Networked Politics and Government, (IV) Networked Businesses, Industries, and Economies, and (V) Technological and Regulatory Histories and Futures.* *We're also able to give people codes that offer a discounts on the list price (see the codes at the following link <http://www.zerogeography.net/2014/06/the-society-internet-book-is-now.html>). Meaning that you can get the 390 page paperback for only £17.49 in the UK and $32 in the US. I hope this becomes a useful teaching and reference tool for anyone thinking about the collisions and co-constructions of the Internet and society. * Best, Mark **** Chapter List Below **** *Manuel Castells: Foreword * *William H. Dutton and Mark Graham: Introduction Part I. Internet Studies Of Everyday Life 1: Aleks Krotoski: Inventing the Internet: Scapegoat, Sin Eater, and Trickster 2: Grant Blank And William Dutton: Next Generation Internet Users: A New Digital Divide 3: Bernie Hogan And Barry Wellman: The Conceptual Foundations of Social Network Sites and the Emergence of the Relational Self-Portrait 4: Victoria Nash: The Politics of Children s Internet Use 5: Lisa Nakamura: Gender and Race Online Part II. Information And Culture On The Line 6: Mark Graham: Internet Geographies: Data Shadows and Digital Divisions of Labour 7: Gillian Bolsover, William H. Dutton, Ginette Law, And Soumitra Dutta: China and the US in the New Internet World: A Comparative Perspective 8: Nic Newman, William H. Dutton, And Grant Blank: Social Media and the News: Implications for the Press and Society 9: Sung Wook Ji And David Waterman: The Impact of the Internet on Media Industries: An Economic Perspective 10: Ralph Schroeder: Big Data: Towards a More Scientific Social Science and Humanities? Part III. Networked Politics And Governments 11: Miriam Lips: Transforming Government by Default? 12: Stephen Coleman And Jay Blumler: The Wisdom of Which Crowd? On the Pathology of a Digital Democracy Initiative for a Listening Government 13: Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon: Online Social Networks and Bottom-up Politics 14: Helen Margetts, Scott A. Hale, Taha Yasseri: Big Data and Collective Action 15: Elizabeth Dubois And William H. Dutton: Empowering Citizens of the Internet Age: The Role of a Fifth Estate Part IV: Networked Businesses, Industries AND Economies 16: Greg Taylor: Scarcity of Attention for a Medium of Abundance: An Economic Perspective 17: Richard Susskind: The Internet in the Law: Transforming Problem-Solving and Education 18: Laura Mann: The Digital Divide and Employment: The Case of the Sudanese Labour Market 19: Mark Graham: A Critical Perspective on the Potential of the Internet at the Margins of the Global Economy Part V. Technological And Regulatory Histories And Futures 20: Eli M. Noam: Next-Generation Content for Next-Generation Networks 21: Christopher Millard: Data Privacy in the Clouds 22: Laura Denardis: The Social Media Challenge to Internet Governance 23: Yorick Wilks: Beyond the Internet and Web* ------------------------------------------ Dr Mark Graham Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford Research Fellow Green Templeton College University of Oxford Visiting Research Associate School of Geography and the Environment University of Oxford oii.ox.ac.uk/people/graham <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/graham> | geospace.co.uk <http://www.geospace.co.uk> | Information Geographies <http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk> | wikichains.org <http://www.wikichains.org> | @geoplace <http://twitter.com/geoplace> | zerogeography blog <http://www.zerogeography.net/> <http://twitter.com/geoplace>

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Suggestions for literature on adoption of technology as background for our study of mobiles in Myanmar
by Rich Ling 02 Jul '14

02 Jul '14

Dear all, Along with colleagues from Nanyang Technical University, I am starting an ethnographic study of the adoption and diffusion of mobile phones in Myanmar. The study is also being supported by Telenor. Myanmar is one of the last countries in the world without a well developed mobile communication network (the others are North Korea, Cuba and Eritrea). We are starting to put together the literature review and we are interested in gathering suggestions. We are using Jonathan Donner's lives and livelihoods idea to frame the work. Beyond that I would like to get the wisdom of the crowd regarding the articles and books that examine the question of introducing new technology to a society and tracing the social consequences of the technology. I think, for example, of Cottrell's Death by Dieselization or perhaps Sharp's Steel Axes for Stone-age Australians. I know that neither of these two articles are about ICTs and that both are as old as dust, but they focus on socio-technical transitions and their social consequences. What are the other articles and books in this genre that might help us focus on the transition from face to face interaction to mediated communication? Thanks in advance. Rich Ling

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Open access publishing: New Living Book about Life on Animal Experience
by Joanna Zylinska 01 Jul '14

01 Jul '14

Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce the publication of Animal Experience, a 25th book in its open access Living Books About Life series. ANIMAL EXPERIENCE, edited by Leon Niemoczynski and Stephanie Theodorou (both at Immaculata University, US) http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Animal_Experience The property of emotion, in both human and nonhuman species, implies a level of internal conscious experience which supports and includes related cognitive activity. Insight into animal emotion can be useful for understanding the evolutionary development we share with animals in terms of the common "brain-mind." This book explores the nature and meaning of the emotional lives of nonhuman animals, focusing on how those lives are communicated to other living creatures (such as human beings) via affective states. Through a comprehensive selection of essays and videos from both science and philosophy, the editors re-examine how human beings interact with, and relate to, other living creatures that are capable of experiencing emotional lives. They also address what impact a better understanding of the emotional lives of animals might have upon animal welfare and upon our deeply embedded beliefs concerning the nature of animal minds in general. *** LIVING BOOKS ABOUT LIFE http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org Living Books About Life (http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org) was launched by Open Humanities Press (OHP) (http://openhumanitiespress.org) in October 2011. Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and edited by Gary Hall, Joanna Zylinska and Clare Birchall, Living Books About Life is a series of curated, open access books about life -- with life understood both philosophically and biologically -- which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. Produced by a globally-distributed network of writers and editors, the books in the series repackage existing open access science research by clustering it around selected topics whose unifying theme is life: e.g., air, agriculture, bioethics, cosmetic surgery, electronic waste, energy, neurology and pharmacology. Peter Suber, Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge, said: ‘This book series would not be possible without open access. On the author side, it takes splendid advantage of the freedom to reuse and repurpose open-access research articles. On the other side, it passes on that freedom to readers. In between, the editors made intelligent selections and wrote original introductions, enhancing each article by placing it in the new context of an ambitious, integrated understanding of life, drawing equally from the sciences and humanities’. By initially creating twenty one ‘living books about life’ in just seven months, the series represents an exciting new model for publishing, in a sustainable, low-cost, low-tech manner, many more such books in the future. These books can be freely shared with other academic and non-academic institutions and individuals. New books have been added to the series since 2011. Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, commented: ‘This remarkable series transforms the humble Reader into a living form, while breaking down the conceptual barrier between the humanities and the sciences in a time when scholars and activists of all kinds have taken the understanding of life to be central. Brilliant in its simplicity and concept, this series is a leap towards an exciting new future’. One of the most important aspects of the Living Books About Life series is the impact it has had on the attitudes of the researchers taking part, changing their views on open access and raising awareness of issues around publishers’ licensing and copyright agreements. Many have become open access advocates themselves, keen to disseminate this model among their own scholarly and student communities. As Professor Erica Fudge of the University of Strathclyde and co-editor of the living book on Veterinary Science, put it, ‘I am now evangelical about making work publicly available, and am really encouraging colleagues to put things out there’. These ‘books about life’ are themselves ‘living’, in the sense they are open to ongoing collaborative processes of writing, editing, updating, remixing and commenting by readers. As well as repackaging open access science research -- together with interactive maps and audio-visual material -- into a series of books, Living Books About Life is thus involved in rethinking ‘the book’ itself as a living, collaborative endeavour in the age of open science, open education, open data, and e-book readers such as Kindle and the iPad. Tara McPherson, editor of VECTORS, Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, said: ‘It is no hyperbole to say that this series will help us reimagine everything we think we know about academic publishing. It points to a future that is interdisciplinary, open access, and expansive.’ Funded by JISC, Living Books About Life is a collaboration between Open Humanities Press and three academic institutions, Coventry University, Goldsmiths, University of London, and the University of Kent. Books: * Animal Experience, edited by Leon Niemoczynski and Stephanie Theodorou (both at Immaculata University) * Astrobiology and the Search for Life on Mars, edited by Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths, University of London) * Bioethics™: Life, Politics, Economics, edited by Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths, University of London) * Biosemiotics: Nature, Culture, Science, Semiosis, edited by Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan University) * Cognition and Decision in Non-Human Biological Organisms, edited by Steven Shaviro (Wayne State University) * Cosmetic Surgery: Medicine, Culture, Beauty, edited by Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University) * Creative Evolution: Natural Selection and the Urge to Remix, edited by Mark Amerika (University of Colorado at Boulder) * Digitize Me, Visualize Me, Search Me: Open Science and its Discontents, edited by Gary Hall (Coventry University) * Energy Connections: Living Forces in Creative Inter/Intra-Action, edited by Manuela Rossini (td-net for Transdisciplinary Research, Switzerland) * Extinction, edited by Claire Colebrook (Penn State University) * Human Genomics: From Hypothetical Genes to Biodigital Materialisations, edited by Kate O’Riordan (Sussex University) * Life in Code: and Software: Mediated Life in a Complex Computational Ecology, edited by David M. Berry (Swansea University) * Medianatures: The Materiality of Information Technology and Electronic Waste, edited by Jussi Parikka (Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton) * Nerves of Perception: Motor and Sensory Experience in Neuroscience, edited by Anna Munster (University of New South Wales) * Neurofutures, edited by Timothy Lenoir (Duke University) * Partial Life, edited by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (SymbioticA, University of Western Australia) * Pharmacology, edited by Dave Boothroyd (University of Kent) * Symbiosis, edited by Janneke Adema and Pete Woodbridge (Coventry University) * Another Technoscience is Possible: Agricultural Lessons for the Posthumanities, edited by Gabriela Mendez Cota (Goldsmiths, University of London) * The In/visible, edited by Clare Birchall (University of Kent) * The Life of Air: Dwelling, Communicating, Manipulating, edited by Monika Bakke (University of Poznan) * The Mediations of Consciousness, edited by Alberto López Cuenca (Universidad de las Américas, Puebla) * Ubiquitous Surveillance, edited by David Parry (University of Texas at Dallas) * The Unborn Human, edited by Deborah Lupton (University of Sydney) * Veterinary Science: Animals, Humans and Health, edited by Erica Fudge (Strathclyde University) and Clare Palmer (Texas A&M University) W: http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org Open Humanities Press is a non-profit, international Open Access publishing collective specializing in critical and cultural theory. OHP was formed by academics to overcome the current crisis in scholarly publishing that threatens intellectual freedom and academic rigor worldwide. OHP journals are academically certified by OHP’s independent board of international scholars. All OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published under open access licenses, and freely and immediately available online at http://openhumanitiespress.org. -- Professor Joanna Zylinska Department of Media and Communications Goldsmiths, University of London http://www.joannazylinska.net Curator of Photomediations Machine http://www.photomediationsmachine.net

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