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Welcoming our New Executive Committee
by Alexander Halavais 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Voting has now concluded for our next AoIR Executive Committee. I want to thank all the candidates for being willing to invest their time in the Association--while it's all of us who make it work, it takes a special level of commitment to being willing to serve as a member of the Exec. Also, I want to thank Elizabeth Buchanan and Charles Ess, both former members of the Exec who were kind enough to serve as external "scrutineers." For the 2013-2015 term: Vice Preseident: Jennifer Stromer-Galley Treasurer: Michael Zimmer Secretary: Andrew Herman Open Seat: Sun Sun Lim Open Seat: Annette Markham Open Seat: Kelly Quinn Graduate Student: Anthony Hoffmann In addition, Lori Kendall becomes our President, and I remain on the Exec as the Past President. Congratulations to all; we look forward to what you have in store for us! Best, Alex

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CFP: SIGCIS Workshop, Oct 13, 2013
by Andrew Russell 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Please distribute as appropriate - thanks! Andy ---------------------------------------- Old Ideas: Recomputing the History of Information Technology SIGCIS Workshop, October 13, 2013, Portland, Maine Call Deadline: June 30, 2013. Full details www.sigcis.org/workshop13. The Society for the History of Technology's Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society (SIGCIS – http://www.sigcis.org) welcomes submissions for a one-day scholarly workshop to be held on Sunday, October 13, 2013 in Portland, Maine. As in previous years, SIGCIS's annual workshop will occur immediately after the end of the regular SHOT annual meeting program, the details of which are available from http://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual_meeting.html. Information technologists have little time for old thinking, or for anything else old. Entrepreneurs seek the new new thing, computer scientists tackle the grand challenges of future computing, and management consultants chase the next fad. Scholars in the humanities, who are professionally skeptical about the nostrums of neoliberalism, the myth of progress, and the allure of the technological fix, can nevertheless exhibit a similar weakness for the shiny allure of new technologies. In short, information technology is rarely understood as something rooted in history. Its cultural associations are with the future, not the past. For the SIGCIS 2013 Workshop, we invite scholars to turn their attention to something different: old ideas and their relationship to information and computer technology. Perhaps to their overlooked charm, their enduring power, and their continuities with the putatively new. Such papers might • Reclaim from what was famously termed the ”enormous condescension of posterity” the ideas about information and information technology held by specific historical actors, explaining what they really thought they were doing and how the understood the world around them. • Demonstrate hidden historical continuities, by showing that technologies, ideas, or practices generally assumed to be of recent origin have a close relationship with those formerly known by different names. • Advocate explicitly or by example the relevance of less fashionable historical approaches, such as quantitative analysis, old-school Marxism, or micro-level studies of technical practice to understanding the history of information technology. • Explore connections between historical research on computing, and the burgeoning recent literature on software studies, game studies, platform studies, etc. produced by scholars in other areas of the humanities. • Place topics within the history of information technology into broader arcs of birth, aging, and death – whether of individuals, institutions, or social practices. • Illuminate the cultural work done to construct some things as old and others as new, and explain who is carrying out this work and why. If none of the above fit your work, even with some creative twisting, then despair not: we also accept new ideas! SIGCIS has a tradition of welcoming all contributions related to the history of computing and information, whether or not there is an explicit connection with the annual theme. Our membership is international and interdisciplinary, and our members examine the history of information technologies and their place within society from a variety of scholarly perspectives including the history of technology, business history, labor history, social history, the history of science, science studies, communications, gender and sexuality studies, computing, disability studies, and museum studies. Proposals for entire sessions and individual presentations are both welcome. We hope to run special sessions featuring dissertations in progress and other works in progress. The workshop is a great opportunity to get helpful feedback on your projects in a relaxed and supportive environment. All proposals will be subject to a peer review process based on abstracts. SIGCIS can usually make contributions towards the travel costs of graduate student presenters in need of assistance. Full details about the workshop, including submission formats and links for online submission, are at www.sigcis.org/workshop13. Details on the final program, registration, and other practical matters will be posted at the same address as they become available. Questions about the 2013 SIGCIS workshop should be addressed to Thomas Haigh (School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee), who is serving as chair of the workshop program committee. Email: thaigh(a)computer.org.

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Help design an online bill of rights in a webinar tomorrow
by Sarah Ann Oates 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Come design a digital bill of rights at my webinar tomorrow 5 June #OnLifeEU<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23OnLifeEU> 11 am EST at http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/futurium/en/content/onlife-webinar-sarah… This is part of the OnLife Initiative, which brought together scholars to discuss academic work that links to policy needs for the digital future. What we came up with is the OnLife Manifesto: Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era. You can download it here: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/onlife-manifesto Now what we want to do is to try to engage a lot of people with these ideas and see if we can translate ideas (such as an online bill of rights!) into reality. The project is European; the ideas are global. You can logon and create your own policy futures and ideas. So this is a new idea for democracy by design -- input/ideas are encouraged (not to say critical). Sarah Sarah Oates Professor and Senior Scholar Philip Merrill College of Journalism 2100L John S. and James L. Knight Hall University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7111 phone: +1 301 405 4510 Email: soates(a)umd.edu

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LINK GEZIPARK
by ypd＠gmx.net 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

http://gezipark.nadir.org/index_tur.html http://gezipark.nadir.org/index_eng.html THIS MUST FUNCTION !

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Irfan Erdogan: A Report on the Situation in Turkey
by Pelin Göçmen 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Dear colleagues, Here is a report from our colleague Irfan Erdogan about the situation in Turkey. All the best, Pelin A Report on the Situation in Turkey Irfan Erdogan, erdogan.irfan(a)gmail.com, http://irfanerdogan.com/ I am writing this to inform you that people in over 65 cities of 81 in Turkey are demonstrating against the reactionary and oppressive regime of Tayyip Erdogan and his party. We have demonstrations even in the most reactionary cities in Turkey. People in every neighborhood in the cities are on the street. Police throw gas bombs at demonstrators, beat and arrest people. It is not like in the late 1960s, because people did not care about us much then. We students were demonstrating for independence and socialism then. Now everybody is on the street. Nobody cheered when we were demonstrating in the late 60s in Turkey. Now people are cheering and supporting the demonstrators. Today we have more people on the street in my neighborhood in Ankara than yesterday. Police are shooting gas bombs inside the houses because people are providing shelter for demonstrators who are escaping from gas and police beatings. Youngsters and people from every walk of life are on the street and want the Erdogan government to resign. Erdogan uses the classic rhetoric about demonstrators and he threatens them by saying that he can send one million supporters to the street (he means, to smash the demonstrations). He says: "I keep 50 percent of the population at home" (he means that he can use 50 percent of people who support him against the other people). His mindset and approach reminds me of Jay Gould who said once that he is not worried about demonstrations and labor strikes, because he can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half. For a lot of people, Erdogan is a reactionary dictator. In Turkey people are scared to say something against Erdogan. Television did not provide any news about the demonstrations except the television stations of the major opposition party and Turkish Labor party television, because mainstream media either support the administration or are scared of Erdogan's rage/wrath. People in Istanbul walked in front of the major television stations and announced that if they do not feature them in the news they will occupy the TV station. Then, TV stations started reporting, but in a highly distorted manner. After this incident, very few media personnel resigned from their posts in the TV channel. Erdogan scolded the Reuters journalist who dared to ask him a question that he did not like. The Internet is used for the most effective channel of communication and organization of the protests by everybody. Erdogan expressed his utmost anger against Twitter and social media. Everybody uses their mobile phone for communication and recording the events and putting/disseminating them on the Internet. Mainstream media started lying as usual. Two main labor unions in Turkey run by those who ask some meaningless concessions from the government try to stop workers to demonstrate, but workers are on the street, too. Demonstrations are rapidly spreading all over the country. Soon, I know, religious reactionaries (not all religious people are reactionary) will attack demonstrators. There is a high probability that we will witness a domestic/civil war in Turkey. I was at the center of the demonstrations in Ankara yesterday and the day before. Demonstrators do not do anything wrong, but police continuously shoot pressured water, gas and noise bombs at them and attack demonstrators. Police behave like they are fighting an enemy. They curse at and threaten people by e.g. saying: "get lost otherwise we arrest you and you know what we do when we arrest you." We know there are some progressive and conscientious people in the police force, but they are also under the threat of the empire of fear. But we will see a differing police behavior as the time goes by in the process. Now, there is an indiscriminate uss of gas bombs (CS gas). Your eyes get severely burned and you cannot breathe, you start coughing, and you feel dizzy if you are close to the fume. Also when it hits you or blows up beside you, you get shocked (I saw it). So far we have four killings and many wounded. As usual, they claim that demonstrators/provocateurs destroy and vandalize everything around. Yes we see a lot of destruction; in fact, it is started and done by plain-cloth police. How do I know: (1) this is a historical fact. (2) I know from the late 60s, because we could recognize the police then, but it is difficult to recognize them now. (3) How come there is no vandalism, destruction and terror where there is no police around? Here are few examples: I attend demonstrations at the center of the city where police provokes, attacks and where plain cloth police destroys everything aroun,d provoking some young people to do the same. My daughter and my wife and neighbors attend huge demonstrations in our neighborhood where there is no police presence yet: You can see no violence, no destruction and no vandalism in these demonstrations. -- Dr. Pelin ÖZTÜRK GÖÇMEN (PhD in Graphic Design Education) Gazi University, Turkey http://websitem.gazi.edu.tr/pgocmen * * *Çevreyi korumak için, gerekmedikçe bu e-postayı yazdırmayın.* Please consider the environment before printing this email.

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#occupygezi, #direnankara, #direngziparkı press release
by F. Mutlu Binark 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Dear All In Ankara the police opression and teargasing to the civilians still are continuing...Bsides sound bombs have been used in Ankara. I would like to share the press release of Alternative Informatics Assocation for more info: http://www.alternatifbilisim.org/wiki/Ana_Sayfa ALTERNATIVE INFORMATICS ASSOCIATION’S PRESS RELEASE On May 31 2013, state power /Turkish police has used disproportionate force against citizens protesting the the government’s decision to build a shopping centre at the expense of one of Istanbul’s most famous park Gezi Park. Freedom of assembly and the right to express an opinion is a component of the constitutional and fundamental human rights and freedoms. Turkish citizens have used this right peacefully. But İstanbul police use disproportionate force. This situation means the violation of the fundamental rights written at the Constitution. Also this situation is the violation of UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. We see that we are not living in a democratic society, we are living in a country that government uses tear gas against its citizens when they want to use their democratic rights. We condemn this violence. We announce to the public that at any kind of citizen response using tear gas is the signifier of the severity of a coercive and oppressive government. -- Prof.Dr. Mutlu Binark Baskent Universitesi Iletisim Fakultesi Radyo-Tv. ve Sinema Blm. Bagl�ca Kampusu Eskisehir Yolu 20.km. 06530 Ankara Tel: (312) 246 6652-53 Fax: (312) 246 66 57 www.yenimedya.wordpress.com www.dijitaloyun.wordpress.com alternatifbilisim.tv -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Open data access - Chinese weibo
by KW Fu 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Dear AOIRers, We are delighted to make open access our Chinese weibo data collected in 2012 (over 226 million Chinese microblogs). The dataset consists of a large amount of deleted and censored posts that are no longer available in the public domain. For ethical reason, all data are anonymized, i.e. real user and message id are replaced by pseudo ID. http://147.8.142.179/datazip/ "Weiboscope" is our project name and is a social media data collection, visualization, and analysis project developed by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). The project is funded by the HKU's Seed Funding Program for Basic Research. Please cite the below paper when using the data. King-wa Fu, CH Chan, Michael Chau. Assessing Censorship on Microblogs in China: Discriminatory Keyword Analysis and Impact Evaluation of the 'Real Name Registration' Policy. Internet Computing. IEEE. 2013; 17(3): 42-50. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MIC.2013.28 or http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2265271 (open access) I am glad to give more details about the open access in the forthcoming Chinese Internet Research Conference on June 15, 2013 at the Oxford Internet Institute. Conference site: http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/china-niw/ Regards, King-wa Fu, PhD Assistant Professor Journalism and Media Studies Centre The University of Hong Kong Tel: (852) 3917-1643 Fax: (852) 2858-8736

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What is a Roundtable, Anyway?
by Terri Senft 03 Jun '13

03 Jun '13

Dear Huatong, First, I want to say THANK YOU for writing your earler email, and sending it to the AoIR List. It takes one sort of courage to show one's rejection notice to a group. It takes courage of an entirely different order to say, "Yeah, that I wrote that rejection," to that same group, especially when the rejection is under dispute. This is the AoIR I know and love: not just intellectually badass, but so kind and decent we make other professional organizations look like Slytherin House. I thought about ending my note here, but I am going to say more, for one reason only: so that this reviewer-reviewed exchange be available as a case study of sorts when AoIR drafts its next set of submission guidelines, and trains the next round of reviewers. I think, for me, the big question here is: What precisely do we mean by "roundtable"? A few times now, I've heard people talk about the fact that they don't want to see presentations that amount to mere description of phenomena, especially stuff that is "hot." I can understand this when it comes to evaluating panel proposals, and I agree that on a panel, individual presenters should be reasonably expected to make their critical lenses and methodological framings explicit. Although there are disagreements in our group regarding the "findings and conclusions" mandates, I think we all agree that to evaluate a panel, one needs to get a sense of what thought traditions the presenter is pulling from, and how they went about getting the information they are going to be analyzing/assessing/commenting on/playing with, etc. However-- I've always thought the chief question driving assessment of ROUNDTABLES shouldn't be, "Are the theories and methods clear?" but rather, "Is this conversation being proposed one our organization needs to be having right now? To me, what makes a roundtable different from a panel is the explicit tabling of certain formal elements like method (and to some extent theoretical framing)for a bit, until discussion is had. This *is not* because we can't cook up theory/methods rhetoric to support our inquiry, but because we FIRST want to sit in a room and listen to one another. >From my perspective, last year's Other Ethics roundtable was very successful precisely because it took this format last year. Respondents spoke from experience about their struggles negotiating "border cases" that ranged from self-injury, to sexual advances, to IRB fails, to open access publishing--the list went on. The common thread that connected us was that we *didn't* have clear answers. Many of the people who participated in that roundtable were on the AoIR Ethics Committee, but (from an organizational standpont) what was most exciting about that roundtable was that it inspired audience response to the point where the Committee got a bunch of new, amazing, committee members. To me, this is a successful roundtable. In your note, you state, "I reviewed many cross-cultural studies that picked up their sites randomly without justification." As someone who has read perhaps one trillion student papers in global media studies, I very much feel you on this, and I'm so glad you raised this with my proposal. In the case of our group, many of my participants, especially those living in India, and the one respondent who is Iranian-American living in England, were interested in addressing their own experiences--using themselves as 'case studies' if you will. I suppose in terms of method, they'd be analyzing their phenomenological and somatic responses to different deployments of the term 'slut' within cross-cultural internet exchanges. >From a theoretical position, we'd be talking standpoint theory, and theories of affect. Some of the sex workers (particularly those from Thailand) would also be speaking from experience, albeit in places narrated through the voice of a well-known American sex work activist/ethnographer with whom they have close working relationships.There, we'd be dealing with theories of epistemology, as well. But in the case of a ROUNDTABLE, all this seems red-herringish.Here, it seems to me the question is not, "How did you pick your sites/case studies/respondents/sample," but rather, "what uniquely qualifies the individuals you've named to sit at this roundtable?" Said differently, "How will this combination of voices make the conversation qualitatively different than some folks who read about this phenomenon last week and want to talk it over because it's hot?" In my descriptions, I thought I made the credentials of my participants clear but perhaps not. I could definitely have done more in that direction. In fact, an ancillary question worth asking a roundtable proposal might be, "Has the proposer demonstrated that the people participating in this roundtable have the expertise and/or experience (not the same thing) necessary to discuss this phenomena in a compelling light? Writing of your own past experiences with marginalization, you explain how challenges from those outside your discipline " taught me how to negotiate in a milieu of diverse perspectives, learn to be open-minded, and not to be offended by the face value of the words; of course it helped me improve my project eventually." Frankly, I think that's more an astonishing testament to you as a person, than to the system as it is currently set up. Of course learning can happen in set-up you describe, but for most people, *especially* those beyond the PhD, there is just too much face-saving going on in formal panel presentations for real out-of-discipline learning to transpire. In your note to me, you wonder, "Isn’t one part of the joys of attending this kind of interdisciplinary conferences is to have our ideas challenged by people who share research interests in similar topics but employ different research methodologies? I give an emphatic YES, here, but want to suggest something that might seem counter-intuitive to many: I know there are benefits to having one's rigor called to question in formal panel settings, but I think MORE real learning happens in roundtable moments when we willfully enter a discussion arena admitting we are at a crossroads in our thinking. When I deliver my formally constructed, tightly argued premise to those in and outside my discipline, the same old same old happens. HOWEVER, when I tell colleagues I am soliciting new ways to approach a phenomenon with which we find myself in struggle, amazing things happen. This is why I submit my work to panels (knowledge contribution) and actually attend roundtables (learning in action.) Okay, I think this is more than enough on my end. One last thing, though: You and I are *definitely* going to be having drinks at some point in Denver. Everyone is all welcome to join us! I think I'm going to wear a fancy dress. Fondly, Terri -- <http://goog_689013053/> <http://goog_689013053/> -- <http://goog_689013053> <http://goog_689013053> Dr. Theresa M. Senft Global Liberal Studies Program School of Arts & Sciences New York University 726 Broadway NY NY 10003 home: *www.terrisenft.net <http://goog_689013053>** *(needs a serious updating) facebook: www.facebook.com/theresa.senft twitter: @terrisenft

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Call for Conference Locations
by Kendall, Lori 03 Jun '13

03 Jun '13

Please share widely... Call for Proposals to Host the Internet Research (IR) conferences in 2015 and 2016. The Executive Committee of the Association of Internet Researchers is seeking statements of interest for hosting the annual meeting of the Association in October of 2015 and 2016. The Internet Research conference draws an international group of researchers and practitioners to present and discuss work at the cutting edge in understanding the social and cultural aspects of the internet. Organizations or consortia who may be interested in hosting the conference should contact Lori Kendall at vp (at) aoir.org. We will provide a guide to a full proposal for those invited to apply. At this stage, we seek an indication of interest and intent. We are most likely to entertain applications for North American locations for 2015 and elsewhere for 2016, but all strong proposals are welcome. Hosting AoIR provides visibility to your institution and city from researchers from around the world, drawing a group of well-known scholars to your city during the period of the conference and providing lasting connections. Geography still matters in an internet age, and hosting Internet Research represents one way of locating important centers of innovation in social computing. The most recent conference was held in Salford, UK and the upcoming conferences will be held in Denver, USA and Bangkok, Thailand. (See the full list of locations at http://aoir.org/conferences/past/.) We generally seek hosting cities that are reasonably accessible by international visitors, and provide a range of lodging, dining, entertainment and cultural attractions within reasonable proximity of the venue. The venue should provide a central hall and breakout meeting rooms for a minimum of 400 attendees, as well as the necessary infrastructure for presentations and high-speed wireless internet access. There are generally 7-8 concurrent presentation rooms over a period of 3 days, plus a day of 3-6 preconferences. The conference generally provides some form of onsite refreshments during the day (snacks, coffee, and in many cases lunch), as well as a banquet and receptions. The Association generally handles registration, and will (with the aid of a program chair) provide assistance with the infrastructure for the peer review and the publication of selected papers. Officers of AoIR serve on the organizing committee and are involved closely with the planning and execution of the conference. The local hosts are responsible for coordinating all on-site arrangements, contracts, transportation, arrangements with local hotels or other lodging, technology, supporting staff for the event. The hosts should be willing and able to mobilize local support for the conference, including volunteers, fund-raising, and cost-sharing. At this time, we are seeking brief letters of interest. For those sites the Executive Committee feels are suitable for the upcoming conference, we will provide organizers with instructions for a full proposal, and are happy to work with them to provide a strong proposal. At this time, please provide some indication of what you could offer in terms of hosting. In particular: 1. Who makes up your group, who the proposed local chair would be, and your connection to internet research and AoIR. 2. Information about the venue, including recent conferences held there. We have, in the past, held AoIR in hotels and conference centers, as well as university and research campuses. Please give some indication of the layout of the facility and its proximity to lodging and dining (including less expensive options), as well as to its suitability for a conference like Internet Research. 3. Proposed dates. IR is generally held in early October, and usually over a Thursday-Saturday, with pre-conferences on a Wednesday, though there is some flexibility. It is helpful if we are able to avoid conflicts with other major conferences of interest to attendees. 4. What makes your city and venue particularly attractive to the Internet Research community? The committee will review letters of interest as they are submitted, through the end of July 2013. Best, Lori Kendall (AoIR Vice President)

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HICSS 47 deadline June 15
by Haythornthwaite, Caroline 03 Jun '13

03 Jun '13

Rapidly approaching -- 2 minitracks for your papers -- as well as the sun, surf and intellectual entertainment of Hawaii in January! Social Networking and Communities http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_47/track/dsm/DSM-Communities.pdf Social Media and Learning http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_47/track/dsm/DSM-Learning.pdf Looking forward to receiving your papers -- NB. all submissions go to the HICSS system, and the deadline is firm. http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_47/dsm.html /Caroline Caroline Haythornthwaite SLAIS, The iSchool@UBC c.haythorn(a)ubc.ca

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