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Job Announcement - Colorado College
by CJ Pascoe 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

Hi all, My fabulous college is looking to hire an Assistant Professor of new media whose research addresses the theory and practice media, digital culture and technology. I've posted the job ad below. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me. Regards, CJ ___________________________________________ C.J. Pascoe Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Colorado College 719-389-6735 http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~cpascoe Colorado College invites applications for an Assistant Professor of New Media (tenure-track) from candidates across the liberal arts whose research addresses the theory and practice of media, digital culture, and technology. An ideal candidate will examine the interplay between society, technology, and art within a broad historical framework. Candidates should also focus on the impact of media and technology on ways of thinking, the production of subjectivity, and the interaction of community and aesthetics. The Assistant Professor of New Media will be housed in the recently- constructed interdisciplinary Cornerstone Arts Center. Given the primacy of the arts in the Cornerstone, it is important for candidates to demonstrate facility with current artistic theory and practice. As part of their professional responsibilities, candidates will be expected to actively promote the use of Cornerstone’s facilities, which include smart classrooms, digital computing labs, and publicly accessible, multi-purpose spaces designed to cultivate connections among artistic and critical practices. This task includes helping to develop an all-college program in Media Studies. Candidates should understand the demands particular to pedagogy in the liberal arts and the college’s commitment to critical thinking and writing across the disciplines. Although the position will emphasize theoretical approaches to the study of media, candidates with teaching experience in a creative field related to their area of research are encouraged to apply. Ph.D. required. For full consideration, applications and complete dossiers (curriculum vitae, three letters of recommendation, graduate transcripts, and teaching philosophy) should be submitted by January 15, 2011 to: Prof. Tom Lindblade Chair, Hiring Committee: Assistant Professor of New Media Colorado College 14 E. Cache la Poudre Colorado Springs CO 80903 Colorado College is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to increasing the diversity of the college community. Candidates who can contribute to that goal are particularly encouraged to apply and to identify the ways in which they would bring diversity to our community. Spousal split candidacies will be considered. Colorado College welcomes members of all minority groups and reaffirms its commitment not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, or disability in its educational programs, activities, and employment practices.

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Fwd: Call for Papers: TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies -- Out of the Ruins: The University to Come
by Steve Jones 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

Begin forwarded message: > > TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies > CALL FOR PAPERS > Out of the Ruins: The University to Come > > Guest Editors > Bob Hanke (York University) and Alison Hearn (University of Western Ontario) > > TOPIA 27, Fall 2012 > > This special issue of TOPIA seeks contributions (articles, offerings, review essays and book reviews) that reflect on the contemporary university and its discontents. Fifteen years after the publication of Bill Readings’ seminal book The University in Ruins and in the wake of the UK government’s new austerity budget, Nick Couldry and Angela McRobbie proclaim the death of the English university. In Italy students demonstrating against the Bologna Process protect themselves from police with giant books. On the heels of severe budget cuts and increasing privatization in the California state system, protesting students occupy university buildings, while in British Columbia and Quebec hundreds of students gather for rallies against spiraling student debt and increasing corporate influence on campus. Everywhere university systems are being eviscerated by neoliberal logics asserting themselves even in the face of economic recession. After decades of chronic under-funding and restructuring, public universities have ceded the university’s public role in a democracy and embraced “academic capitalism” as a “moral” obligation. Acting as venture capitalists, they pressure academics to transfer and mobilize knowledge and encourage research partnerships with private interests; acting as real estate developers, they take over neighbourhoods with callous disregard for established communities; acting as military contractors, they produce telecommunications software and light armoured vehicles for foreign governments; acting as brand managers, they open branch plant campuses around the world and compete for foreign students who can be charged exorbitant fees for access to a “first world” education. With tuition fees and student debt on the rise, academic labour is tiered, cheapened and divided against itself; two-thirds of classes in U.S. colleges and universities are taught by faculty employed on insecure, non tenure-track contracts. The casualization of academic labour and a plea for sustainable academic livelihoods were at the core of the longest strike in English Canadian university history. As collegiality, academic freedom, and self-governance recede from view, the university remains a terrain of adaptation and struggle. > > We will need all the conceptual tools that cultural studies can muster to analyze the changing university as the foundation for our academic callings and scholarly practices. In addition to external influences such as globalization, technoscience, corporatization, mediatization, and higher education policy, internal managerial initiatives, bureaucratization, deprofessionalization, structural complicity between administration and faculty, and intellectual subjectivities must also be analyzed. All of us, no matter what our political position, must take the time to reflect on the broad questions raised by these changes. Is the site of the university worth struggling over or re-imagining? Can the neoliberal university be set against itself? Is it time for reform or exodus? What other practices of knowledge production, interpretations, modes of organization, and assemblages are possible? This special issue is designed to reflect upon, analyze and strategize about the past, present and future of the university. > > In addition to these matters of concern, possible topics to further dialogue and enable further study include but are not limited to: > analyzing and assessing the crisis of the public university > implementing globalizations: theory, rhetoric and historical experience > continuity and transformation in national academic cultures > the position and role of the arts, humanities and social sciences > university leaders and university making > managerial theory/practice, academic ethics, and the symbolism of university finance > university-private sector intermediaries and initiatives; “innovation” and “creativity” as alibis for academic capitalism; knowledge “transfer” and “mobilization” > marketing, media relations and the promotional condition of the university > space, time, speed and rhythm in the network university > the professor-entrepreneur, research practice, and the imperative to produce > academic labour, tenure, stratification and precarity > faculty governance, unions and institutional democracy > the indebted, student-worker and the decline of academic study > scholarly disciplines and territories, infrastructure, information practices, communication and publishing > the scholarly community of money: grant agencies, writing, committees and adjudication > media/cultural production and critical/radical pedagogy > the development of knowledge cultures and the expansion of the commons > the university in relation to nearby communities and wider social movements > resistance, common and counter-knowledge, alternative educational formations > remaking the public university in Canada and in other national contexts > Submissions > > To view the author guidelines, see http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/topia/about/submissions#authorGuid… . > To submit papers (with titles, abstracts and keywords) and supplementary media files online, you need to register and login to the TOPIA website at http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/topia/user/register. > > The deadline for submissions is February 15, 2012. Peer review and notification of acceptance will be completed by May 15, 2012. Final manuscripts accepted for publication will be due July 5, 2012. Comments and queries can be sent to Bob Hanke bhanke(a)yorku.ca or Alison Hearn ahearn2(a)uwo.ca. > > For more information about TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, visit http://www.yorku.ca/topia/ . > > http://bhanke.apps01.yorku.ca/ > Department(s) of Communication Studies, Humanities, Political Science > Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies > York University >

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(Fabelier Workshop) Ethnographic Approach to millions of nodes - Twitter API Hands-on
by Antoine Mazières 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

Hi all, Joaquin Keller ( @joaquinkeller ) will present a workshop on the Twitter API, oriented to digital humanities potential uses. This workshop will happen on march 23th, 7pm at Fabelier's Lab, at the Center of Interdisciplinary Research, Paris, France. (http://fabelier.org/where) The idea is to catch the stream of all tweets (~ 100 millions daily) and process them to extract the hashtag #zeitgeist, ie the most popular hashtags of the moment. This program consisting of few dozen lines of python will be modified during the workshop to filter out and processing the tweets according to the attendants suggestions. If you have any expectations or wishes about such a workshop please let us know (https://groups.google.com/group/fabelier) Please read/write our wiki to know better what you need to do in order to prepare for the workshop. (http://fabelier.org/wiki/doku.php?id=twitter_api) All best, Antoine Mazières http://ant1.cc/ _________________ (FRENCH) Joaquin Keller (@joaquinkeller ) animera un atelier sur l'API Twitter, orienté sur les usages potentiels que pourraient en avoir les "digital humanities". L'Atelier aura lieu le mercredi 23 mars à 19H à Fabelier (http://fabelier.org/where)

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Seeking info about famous internet people *not* from North America
by Sue Thomas 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

Dear all Can anyone help me with this please? I'm looking for stories about people who have become well-known due to their involvement with the internet and who are NOT NORTH AMERICAN! I'm finding it incredibly difficult, and I don't know whether it's because I'm looking in the wrong places or whether the US and Canada really do dominate big name cyberculture. I'm looking for people outside North America who have become famous or successful in net-related R&D or business or government or law, or be influential thought-leaders, authors and critics, or are notorious for net exploitation or crime, or are fictional or gaming cyberspace characters, or online religious leaders etc etc. I have a few in mind already, of course, but my list is very short. So, who is your country's Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Tim O'Reilly? Your Howard Rheingold or Stewart Brand or Kevin Kelly? Your Steven Johnson or Henry Jenkins? (You will have noticed btw that these are also all white men, with the possible exception of Jobs, who is half-Syrian). Who are your internet criminals and what did they do? Do you know of any well-known stories or urban legends about the net which may or may not be true? Does your country use the internet in a very culturally-specific way? Apart from individuals themselves, I'm also interested in culture-specific stories such as haunted mobile phones in Malaysia or Chinese RPGs based on the Monkey tales. I'm sorry this is vague but hope you get the drift. Please send thoughts, links and ideas for reading matter to sue.thomas(a)dmu.ac.uk Don't worry if the sources are not in English. I have access to some translation resources. NB You might be quoted in a book or paper but full attribution will be given. Many thanks Sue _________________ Professor Sue Thomas Faculty of Humanities/Institute of Creative Technologies Clephan 1.01d De Montfort University The Gateway Leicester LE1 9BH, UK e: sue.thomas(a)dmu.ac.uk t: @suethomas w: Nature and Cyberspace: stories, memes and metaphors http://www.thewildsurmise.com <http://www.thewildsurmise.com/>

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Seeking members for proposed ECREA temporary working group "Information Technologies and Social Networks"
by Jacob Groshek 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

Dear AoIR members, ECREA is now in the process of accepting proposals for temporary working groups that could become divisions of the organization in the future. My colleague, Dr. Payal Arora, and I have drafted such a proposal entitled "Information Technologies and Social Networks." We are currently seeking potential members that might be interested in joining this group. A working version of the mission statement for this proposed working group is pasted below. The Chair position has yet to be finalized but we have contacted a leading scholar in this area, and are very hopeful for a positive response. If you have interest in joining this potential group, please respond to this email before March 15. Inquiries can be sent to me or Payal. Thank you, Jacob Groshek and Payal Arora -- Dr. Jacob Groshek Research Chair, CTEC division / AEJMC Assistant Professor Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication Erasmus University Rotterdam Rotterdam, the Netherlands (+31)-010-408-8627 office (+31)-062-304-2346 mobile groshek(a)eshcc.eur.nl http://www.jgroshek.com MISSION STATEMENT ECREA Information Technologies and Social Networks Temporary Working Group CHAIR TBD VICE-CHAIR Payal Arora, Ph.D Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam Website: http://payalarora.com/ VICE-CHAIR Jacob Groshek, Ph.D Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam Website: http://www.jgroshek.com/ MISSION Contemporarily, social networks have become synonymous with online media spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like. There is considerable emphasis on the technical novelty of these spaces, placing secondary the human nature of such virtual domains. Thereby, the Information Technologies and Social Networks temporary working group of the ECREA defines its objective as being a forum to share and shape research on technologies and networks through an interdisciplinary, historical and comparative perspective. This section brings together the relatively nascent fields of social informatics, new media studies, and human geographies with the classic disciplines of anthropology, sociology, economics, psychology and political science. The emphasis is on empirical to theoretical work on social collectivity, connectivity, and creativity through and with technologically-mediated spaces. This group will primarily promote the European perspective and research on these issues in response to the current dominance of North American scholarship in this vital area. The intersection of information technology and social networks has gained considerable attention from the recent political uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, highlighting the role of Twitter and Facebook in these struggles. Historically, patterns of innovations and application have emerged time and again, approached often through a utopian or dystopian lens. Now, euphoric visions of these online social networks have been argued as key tools in precipitating positive social effects of democratization and egalitarianism in society. Naysayers propagate an opposite perspective of these tools as having decimated age-old relationships and ties that are fundamental to stronger social ties. This section aims to move beyond these dichotomies and focuses on research within Europe that delves deeply into its complex socio-cultural and political dimensions and its rootedness historically and spatially. Special attention will be paid to the offline and online ties and the fluidities and constructions of relationships as they influence one another. Timely topics in Europe such as migration, citizenship, online activism, populism, virtualization of museums, distance education and more will be encouraged as they relate to social networks through a range of information technology tools and spaces. Specifically, we aim to do the following through this section: 1. To provide a forum for researchers to share and partner on research concerning information technologies and social networks 2. To develop a rich corpus of literature that is particularly European centric 3. To build an online and offline collaboration amongst practitioners and researchers through encouraging theory studies that can be significant for policy and practice 4. To eventually develop as an ECREA section of excellence and expertise within Europe on this subject 5. To liaise with other sections within the ECREA wherever possible. 7. To capitalize on online networks to gain visibility and participation across academic institutions as well as create a listserve to sustain these activities 8. To partner in constructing workshops that address specific strategies in understanding and using such networks to further practice in academic, governmental and corporate settings. 9. To develop and promote a high quality peer-reviewed journal to more formally contribute to the body of knowledge presented and discussed within the working group Overall, this section will serve as a critical starting ground for connecting with scholars within Europe on this topic of interest for joint conferences and publications of high quality.

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book announcement
by Charles Ess 10 Mar '11

10 Mar '11

Dear AoIR-ists, Mia Consalvo and I are *extremely* proud and pleased to announce the publication of the Handbook of Internet Studies from Wiley-Blackwell - first of all, because the volume features the impressive work of many AoIRists. The book is an introduction to the field and assessment of current research in Internet Studies, providing history and context as well as commentary and debate about where the field is heading and what key issues must be addressed in future work. The volume is comprehensive in scope, addressing the development of internet studies in areas including the history of the field, methods for interdisciplinary study, youth and teens online, politics, health communication, games and virtual worlds, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, social networks, and much, much more. The list of contributors is even more impressive-- we have contributions from Maria Bakardijeva, Naomi Baron, Nancy Baym, Sandra Braman, Janne Bromseth, Niels Brügger, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Elizabeth Buchanan, Heidi Campbell, Laurel Dyson, Lorna Heaton, Steve Jones, Lori Kendall, Sonia Livingstone, Marika Lüders, P. David Marshall, Susanna Paasonen, Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Jenny Sundén, TL Taylor, Barry Wellman, Deborah Wheeler, and Alexis Wichowski. For more information about the book, please check the Amazon page at: <http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Internet-Studies-Handbooks-Communication/dp/ 1405185880/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299561410&sr=1-1-fkmr0> We congratulate these scholars and researchers for what we find to be definitive contributions to internet studies as an emerging field. We also see the book as a distinctive and, we think, eloquent artifact of AoIR, as it documents and demonstrates the kinds of collaboration, critical dialogue, and collegial support fostered by AoIR as crucial conditions for the interdisciplinary and international work required for internet studies. We are very grateful indeed to our contributors and all who help make AoIR work in these ways for making this volume possible. Enjoy! - charles and Mia charles ess Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab Helsingforsgade 14 8200 Århus N. Denmark mail: <imvce(a)hum.au.dk> tel: (+45) 8942 9250 Professor, Philosophy and Religion Drury University, Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

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Re: [Air-L] ***SPAM*** Re: book announcement
by Scott MacLeod 10 Mar '11

10 Mar '11

BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; } Dear Sylvie, Alan and AoIR (sorry for the curious code at the top of this email - not sure why this occurs), In response to this thread, here's the WUaS Library Resources' wiki subject page at World University and School (WUaS) - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources [1] . WUaS is like Wikipedia with MIT OCW. WUaS plans to facilitate linking all online libraries, especially academic ones, with significant web content (eventually in ALL languages). This may eventually articulate, for example, with the Digital Public Library of America (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/newsroom/digital_public_library) [2] project, which friends at Harvard and elsewhere are focusing on developing. This doesn't provide access to copyrighted books at present, but the future of this is unclear. With skillful planning, collaboration, and all of us working together, an online, free, university library will emerge here, in the aggregate. World University and School focuses on great universities' open course ware for its academic content, listed here: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#University_course_listings, [3] for example. And the WUaS Subjects' page facilitates open, people-to-people teaching and learning, for example, here - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects [4] - all the while developing an academic standard based on MIT OCW, Berkeley Webcast, Yale OYC, etc., eventually for free online degrees. See the FREE Harvard doctoral degree in education on the WUaS Courses' page, for example. World University and School as wiki hopes to open up university discourse, for all. Here's a Facebook group if you're interested in more information - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141 [5] - and wish to collaborate. Best, Scott Scott MacLeod World University and School http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University http://scottmacleod.com [6] On Wed 09/03/11 7:29 AM , Alan Sondheim sondheim(a)panix.com sent: Or even make papers available for free; some of the cosmologists I read (an area I'm interested in) make their work, even their technical work that's been peer-reviewed, available on their websites. And of course with things like ITunesU and the initiatives from MIT, Stanford, Links: ------ [1] http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources [2] http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/newsroom/digital_public_library) [3] http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#University_course_listings, [4] http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects [5] http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141 [6] http://scottmacleod.com

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i have to share.... [aka: why we need to introduce fun talks to our conferences]
by danah boyd 10 Mar '11

10 Mar '11

At the Digital Media & Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks (5 minutes, slides auto-forward). One of our speakers failed to show up (which we later learned was because he was ill). Lacking a presenter and not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do Powerpoint Karaoke. In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before. While the entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4 As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent the entire five minutes crying with laughter. Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex? Ignite talks were the highlight of the conference. And Alex's rendition of one topped all charts. People were excited and energized. Shaking up the speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference. I know many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR). Can I strongly encourage you to shake it up some? I mean, we're academics... we all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted time. But constraints have value. And they add value. They force people to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they present information. And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving them a sampler of awesome research. And even when they don't like one talk, they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on. If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML. But please, for the fun of all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule? <grin> danah

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Re: [Air-L] book prices
by Jonathan Sterne, Dr. 10 Mar '11

10 Mar '11

Hi Everyone, I've been reading this discussion with interest. The future of publishing is an ongoing discussion in many fields. Lots of people are coming up with new models and alternative publishing arrangements. AoIR ought to consider at least officially endorsing some of the better electronic journals related to Internet Studies so that assistant profs can use that endorsement in their tenure dossiers. But ultimately, it will be organized people who change things. Publishers add value through paying for labor, and the main problem with open access for now is precisely that. Someone has to copyedit, lay out and proof materials as well as maintain the site. Once people figure out robust and sustainable funding models, this will be even more viable than it already is. Of course, for nonprofit university presses, income from journal publishing subsidizes book publishing, which in most cases is a big financial loss for the press. So those of you in book fields should be a little circumspect about celebrating the death of the journal. But Wiley and Blackwell are for-profit publishers. Their handbooks (and Oxford's) follow a business model. Publishers approach authors whom they believe to be leaders in a field (or who want to be and are up and coming) to edit the handbook. The editors are told that the handbook will be a way to bring a field forward, collect the latest and greatest scholarship and help define the field. Then, the editors generate lots of value for the press by bringing in friends and colleagues with the opportunity to be part of a field-defining conversation (or in some cases calling in favors). The collection is made, published, authors are paid a nominal fee and asked to sign away their rights with an incredibly restrictive author's agreement, and then the book is published. These publishers hope to sell to libraries first and then piece them out in electronic form for a period of years, which is probably one of the reasons for the ridiculous agreements contributors are asked to sign. This all works great for the publisher, but as of yet, the "field defining" part hasn't happened in a lot of places. the books need to be read to have their effect, and the fact that they are only available in DRMed online versions or in libraries means even in bookish fields, they appear to be having less impact than was promised. How do I know? I've been asked by publishers more than once to edit a collection like this (I declined) and have contributed to a few so I've seen both sides of it. Now, I'm not innocent here -- this discussion led me to go looking and I see Amazon is listing the hardback version of my forthcoming Sound Studies Reader at $125, but at least the softcover will be cheaper. And I'm actively working to change how I deal with this in new ventures (I wasn't as attentive to these things when Routledge and I negotiated several years ago--and I will raise the issue with them). I've written a lot about authors' rights on my blog -- see http://superbon.net/?p=1681 for example (and read Ted's article that I've linked to!) and would encourage people who care about these things to educate themselves, and make things like the contributor's contract a political issue -- which it already is. Obviously, those of us with tenure have to be the ones to do some of the heavy lifting. Best, --Jonathan -- http://sterneworks.org http://mcgill.ca/ahcs http://media.mcgill.ca

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Call for reviewers
by violah 10 Mar '11

10 Mar '11

As my edited book entitled "Virtual Community Participation and Motivation: Cross-Disciplinary Theories" got all the manuscripts. I got several chapters to be reviewed. I need about 10 reviewers who could contribute to the book by doing the review in one month. Each reviewer needs to review two chapters. The review deadline would be 10th April. Any one who are interested in reviewing two chapters for the book are welcome to contact me at the following two email address: Hongleili(a)gmail.com / H.Li(a)swansea.ac.uk. Please do not reply to this email directly because I normally use this email address to receive listserv messages. Here is the address for the details of the book. http://www.igi-global.com/authorseditors/authoreditorresources/callforbookc… Regards, Honglei -- Dr. Honglei Li -------------------------------------------------------- Lecturer in Information Systems School of Business and Economics Swansea University Singleton Park Swansea SA2 8PP Wales, UK Phone: +44 01792 295680 (O) +44 0787 2653330 (M) E-mail:HongleiLi@gmail.com; H.Li(a)swansea.ac.uk Homepage: http://www.swan.ac.uk/staff/academic/BusinessEconomics/lihonglei/http://swa…

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