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CFP: Rethinking Makeover and Transformation short pieces from PhD students/early career researchers
by Deller, Ruth A 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

CFP: Forum pieces wanted from for special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Studies on 'Rethinking Makeover and Transformation' (open to postgraduate and early career researchers) We are editing a special edition of the International Journal of Cultural Studies with the theme of 'Rethinking Makeover and Transformation' and are interested in receiving short submissions (up to 1,500 words) from postgraduate and early career researchers for this journal. These articles should take the form of short case studies, with the aim of encouraging exchange and debate. We are looking for articles that engage with ideas of makeover or transformation outside of the more 'traditional' contexts. Topics might include, but are not limited to: * Technologies, remastering, reformatting and re-releasing albums, films and/or television shows * Transformations and rebranding of political or public figures * The power of spoofs/satire/etc to transform perceptions/readings of the 'original' texts * The 'ex-gay' or 'post-gay' movement and public debates over the possibility of 'transformation' * PR strategies and 'reforming' public image * Newspaper discussion of 'criminality' and 'reform' * Drag performances and transformation/makeover * The marketing of sport as a transformative experience * Restoration, makeover and transformation of heritage architecture * Makeover/transformation of the individual's online persona * Competing discourses of 'transformation' and 'acceptance' regarding 'unusual' bodies (e.g. TV programmes such as Katie Piper: My Beautiful Friends (Channel 4 2011) or Beauty and the Beast (Channel 4 2011/12) * Transformation narratives within horror films Submission information All pieces should be 1500 words, including references and bibliography (using the SAGE Harvard style: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/SAGE_Harvard_reference_st…) Please send full submissions, along with an author biography to both editors: Feona Attwood (feonaattwood(a)gmail.com<mailto:feonaattwood@gmail.com>) and Ruth Deller (r.a.deller(a)shu.ac.uk<mailto:r.a.deller@shu.ac.uk>) by Friday November 16, 2012.

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Programme and registration: ESA RN18 Conference "Communication, Crisis and Critique in Contemporary Capitalism"
by Christian Fuchs 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

European Sociological Association Research Network 18 - Sociology of Communications and Media Research October 18-20 University of the Basque Country, Bilbao The programme of the conference has been published: http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/BilbaoESA.pdf Keynote talk: Prof. Peter Golding (Northumbria University, UK) Why a Sociologist should take Communications and Media Seriously Abstract In the presentation of this paper, Peter Golding will reflect on why the study of communications and media demands the insights and methods of sociology. He will present reflections on how such key sociological concerns as inequality, identity, power, and change are at the heart of the questions we should be posing in addressing the nature and role of the media as institutions and communications as a social process. The paper will also address how far changes in the technologies of media and communications alter, or should alter, our approach to generating research and insight in this field. Participation registration is possible until September 23, 2012, via e-mail to christian.fuchs(a)im.uu.se (name, institutional affiliation). Conference fee: regular 50 Euros Members of ESA RN18: 35 Euros Payment: in cash at the registration desk in Bilbao You can become a member of ESA RN18 by joining the ESA and subscribing to the network RN18 - Sociology of Communications and Media Research: http://www.europeansociology.org/member/ ESA RN18 on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/esarn18 The Bilbao Conference on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/262224253895314/ Christian Fuchs --- Chair of ESA RN18

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Oxford "Big Data" Conference (20-21 Sept, Oxford)
by David Sutcliffe 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

Dear Colleagues, **** Only a few places left for the Oxford "Big Data" conference! (20-21 Sept, Oxford) http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp2012/ **** Keynotes: Nigel Shadbolt, Duncan Watts Most of today's social activities leave digital trails that can be collected in large and complex datasets - this 'Big Data' presents tremendous research opportunities, and has created a buzz in government, business, and academia. The Oxford Internet Institute (University of Oxford) will be holding a two day conference next week to examine the potentials and challenges of Big Data to inform policy debates and advance social science research (20-21 September 2012, St Anne's College, Oxford). It will also encourage discussion about Big Data across disciplinary boundaries. Topics include political campaigning, collective action and political dissent, sentiment analysis, prediction of large-scale social movements, Big Data in government and to inform public policy, social networks, and ethical and methodological challenges. There will also be sessions on the new research opportunities being opened up for social and political scientists, how to visualise Big Data, and new tools for social research. Details of the conference, including programme information and registration, are available at: http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp2012/ Contact: Pauline Smith, Events Officer Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford Tel: 01865 287210 ipp2012(a)oii.ox.ac.uk http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp2012/

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Book reviewers wanted!
by Sun Sun LIM 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

* Apologies for cross-posting * Dear colleagues, Greetings from the Editorial Board of the new journal Mobile Media and Communication, published by SAGE (http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal202140) As Reviews Editor, it's my pleasure to invite you to be a book reviewer for the journal. Beginning with the journal's second issue, to be published in April 2013, every issue will feature two to three reviews. Many exciting titles relating to mobile media have been published in the last couple years, waiting to be critically examined by scholars such as yourselves. Please send expressions of interest and a brief biography, indicating your areas of expertise and interest to mobilemcreviews(a)gmail.com<mailto:mobilemcreviews@gmail.com> We also welcome PhD candidates. We look forward to hearing from you! Best regards, Sun ___ Sun Sun LIM, PhD Reviews Editor, Mobile Media & Communication Associate Professor & Deputy Head Department of Communications & New Media National University of Singapore

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UK Gov consultation on digital consumer rights
by Ren Reynolds 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

[usual if this is a re-post, don't think my other email is registered here] The UK Government’s Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) launched a consultation titled “Consultation on enhancing consumer confidence by clarifying consumer law”. The deadline for the consultation is 5 October 2012. The consultation proposes a range of options that seek to harmonise UK consumer law. What marks this out for digital industries such as social media, cloud computing, computer games, music services etc is that as part of the consultation the UK Government is proposing options for a set of consumer rights designed specifically for ‘Digital Content’. In short the proposal is to bring UK / European notions of consumer rights to the digital arena i.e. putting in place statutory notions of quality and rights such as return. The consultation makes direct or side reference to famous cases such as Amazon removing 1984 from Kindles and Sony forcing patches on users that stopped PS/3's running linux. Some of the proposed options would mean that companies would not simply have these rights. What's more the consultation makes is clear that the rights apply to all companies selling to the UK (wherever they are based) and they cannot be contracted out of. tVPN have created a short summary of the consultation here: http://www.virtualpolicy.net/ukcontentrights.html We are very interested in hearing from legal and other academics who would be interested in contributing to a joint response - see the link above for details. ren Ren Reynolds FRSA Founder: the Virtual Policy Network www.virtualpolicy.net --8<-- web: www.renreynolds.com Think Tank: www.virtualpolicy.net blog: terranova.blogs.com Skype: RenZephyr http://www.linkedin.com/in/renreynolds

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New Research Podcast: 3620
by Kevin Gotkin 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

The doctoral students of the Annenberg School for Communication announce the launch of a new podcast, 3620. 3620 is a research podcast that aims to: 1) Use audio to remind us why we do what we do as researchers and scholars, 2) Deepen and enrich our work, 3) Tell interesting stories, 4) Explore digital scholarship. The podcast is produced each Monday by graduate students and each episode will be between 10 and 20 minutes long. To get a sense of what we're up to, check out our first episode, "Sound Check." You can visit our site<http://podcast.asc.upenn.edu/>, find us on iTunes<http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/3620podcast/id556254604>, or look for us on Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/3620Podcast>. We're eager to hear feedback from you, whether you have thoughts about the episodes or want to propose an idea for a future show. Please email me, Kevin Gotkin, at kgotkin(a)asc.upenn.edu<mailto:kgotkin@asc.upenn.edu> with comments/questions. -- Kevin Gotkin Ph.D. Student Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania Tel: (551)427-7907

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AAG 2012 CFP: Tools and Tales of Social and Spatial Network Analysis
by Joe Eckert 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

*Apologies for cross posting....* * Call for Papers: Tools and Tales of Social and Spatial Network Analysis Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 9-13 April 2013 Los Angeles, CA Organizers: Joe Eckert, Department of Geography, University of Washington Monica Stephens, Department of Geography, Humboldt State University Networks are a long-standing staple of spatial analysts. Social network analysis (SNA), on the other hand, is underexplored in geography while gaining notoriety in other disciplines of social science (e.g., sociology, information studies, epidemiology, organizational studies). One way in which these networks form is through digital interactions between users of social media platforms. Drawing from work from internet geographers (Zook, Graham, etc...), we know that these interactions are in turn informed and created within contexts of physical space. We seek scholars that are using spatially grounded qualitative and quantitative network analysis to ask, "how do we bring social network analysis methods and theory into conversation with geographic theory and spatial analysis?" Work undertaken by analysts using geographic information systems (GIS) and social network analysis (SNA) are parallel in many ways, including shared analytical techniques and vocabulary. However, while both seek explanations for the relationships among entities; geographers seek spatial context, whereas social network analysts seek a social context. We feel that these two modes of analysis richly complement one another, and geographers might be well served by examining the ways in which networks of place interact with digitally enabled social networks. We seek papers that meet this broad theme, but offer the following questions to consider: - In what ways are digitally enabled networks created via the spaces in which platform users physically inhabit? - How are digital enabled networks both implicitly and explicitly spatial? Do the digital traces of our lives left as user-generated content speak to the ways in which we experience and create space? -Which SNA tools are useful for spatial analysis, which spatial tools are useful for SNA? - How can theoretical work on network theory be brought to bear on empirical practices of social network analysis? - How might social network analysis further nuance different conceptualizations of network theory? - How can geographers methodologically examine bipartite (2-mode) spaces? How can we understand this in GIS? - How can GIS or geographic analysis begin to examine triadic structures in social data? - Is GIS or other geospatial analysis complicit in the construction of social network space? Could it be? Should it be? We welcome studies that explore any of these issues, or any that more broadly address themes of social network analysis, network theory, and the urban networks that comprise the digital. Please send your 250 word abstract to the organizers, Monica ( Monica.Stephens(a)humboldt.edu) and Joe (jeckert1(a)uw.edu) by September 28, 2012. We will inform authors with successful submissions on October 5, 2012. This session will be part of #GEO/CODE 2013: Geoweb, Big Data and Society organized by the New Mappings Collaboratory ( http://newmaps.as.uky.edu/geocode-2013-geoweb-big-data-and-society-call-cal… ).*

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The 8th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium (SIG SI): Social Informatics: Past, Present and Future
by Fichman, Pnina 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

Please join us in Baltimore! The 8th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium (SIG SI): Social Informatics: Past, Present and Future. Saturday, October 27, 2011, 8:30-12:30 PM Organizers: Howard Rosenbaum & Pnina Fichman (Indiana University) Schedule: 8:30-8:45 Introduction Howard Rosenbaum - Comments on the History of Social Informatics 8:45-10:00 Papers J. P. Allen (University of San Francisco) A Business Reform Agenda for Social Informatics Andrew Cox (University of Sheffield) Turning to practice in social informatics Kristin Eschenfelder and Andrew Johnson (University of Wisconsin – Madison and University of Colorado at Boulder) Governing the Data Commons: Controlled Sharing of Scholarly Data Sean Goggins and Christopher Mascaro (Drexel University) Context Matters: The Experience of ICTs, Physical, Informational and Cultural Distance in a Rural IT Firm Grant Leyton Simpson (Indiana University) Projects and Objects: Points of Contact between Textual Studies and Sociotechnical Investigations Lori Hoeffner (Adelphi University) The Current State of Social Informatics: A Domain Analytic Perspective 10:00-10:20 Break (light refreshments) and Poster Session 10:20-11:35 Papers Noriko Hara and Pnina Fichman (Indiana University) Frameworks for understanding knowledge sharing in open online communities: Boundaries and boundary crossing Beth St. Jean, Katie Shilton, and Brian Butler (University of Maryland - College Park) Self-Tracking is Social: Toward a Model of the Technologically-Mediated Information Behavior of Self-Trackers Ying Sun and Joseph A Meloche (University at Buffalo, the State University of New York and North Carolina Central University) A Q Methodological Study on What is Important to Support Collaboration in Web 2.0 Lysanne Lessard (University of Toronto) Reframing the socio-‐technical problem: A way forward for Social Informatics (s) 11:40-12:30 Best Paper Awards and Presentations

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Wolfram Alpha's Facebook personal social data analysis tool
by Bloch, Naomi 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

Wolfram Alpha's new "Personal Analytics for Facebook" feature (http://www.wolframalpha.com/facebook/) might be a useful teaching tool for some on this list. For a decent summary, see: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/30/3280277/wolfram-alpha-facebook-personal-a…. Best, Naomi Bloch Phd student, Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Photo characteristics/ Photo selection behaviour/Visual Markers on SNS
by Eftekhar-Khansari, Azar 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

Hello everybody, Does anybody know about any recent research on Photo characteristics/ Photo selection behaviour/Visual Markers on SNS? I am currently doing my PhD research on Social Networking sites specifically Facebook. Looking forward to hearing from you soon Thank you very much Best Wishes Azar Eftekhar PhD Student of Cyberpsychology University of Wolverhampton -- Scanned by iCritical.

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