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PhD studentship UK based: Social Life of Methods (including digital data)
by Tim Jordan 04 May '10

04 May '10

Please feel free to suggest this to any promising prospective students. Cheers Tim Postgraduate Research Students Project: The Social Life of Methods Faculty of Social Sciences, the Open University in Milton Keynes Start date: 1 October 2010 Ref RD/MB/05 Salary: £13,290 p.a. The Department of Sociology invites applications for a University-funded PhD studentship for three years commencing October 2010. The Social Life of Methods (SLOM) is an interdisciplinary programme of research based in the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). Using theoretical ideas from science and technology studies (STS), anthropology, political economy and cultural sociology, SLOM analyses research methods, not simply as benign ‘tools’, but as performative agents of the social and of different kinds of social and cultural change Applicants are particularly welcome from students who wish to pursue research in any of the following broadly-defined areas: Methods as Devices, Objects or Technologies Visual Methods Methodological Challenges of Digital Data Methods and Social Transformation/Change For informal enquiries contact Dr Mark Banks m.o.banks(a)open.ac.uk. More specific details about research in the Faculty and Department can be found on the Faculty’s website: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences and the CRESC website; www.cresc.ac.uk. For detailed information and how to apply go to www3.open.ac.uk/employment and http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/phd, or email socsci-phd-applications(a)open.ac.uk quoting the reference number RD/MB/05. Closing date: 5pm on 27th May 2010, interviews will be held in Milton Keynes in mid June 2010. Further particulars are available in large print, disk or audiotape (minicom 01908 654901). We promote diversity in employment and welcome applications from all sections of the community. -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales, and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

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Call for Chapter Proposals - Networked Sociability and Individualism: Technology for Personal and Professional Relationships
by francesca comunello 04 May '10

04 May '10

FYI thank you! Call For Chapter Proposals *Networked Sociability and Individualism: Technology for Personal and Professional Relationships * To be published by IGI Global: http://www.igi-global.com *Editor*: Francesca Comunello Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy *Call for Chapters: * Proposals Submission Deadline: May 30, 2010 Introduction The rise of individualism has been recently described in terms of “networked individualism” or “individualized networking” (following Wellman and Castells). Instead of being organized in groups, our lives are articulated around multiple networks, while our forms of sociability are getting growingly increasingly privatized. The new patterns of sociability seem to be built on multiple me-centred networks: each person "becomes a communication and information switchboard, between persons, networks, and institutions" (Wellman, 2004). Far from proposing an atomized vision of individuals, these Authors underline the growing degree of responsibility people experience in their everyday activity of relationship management. The concept that better describes the forms of sociability we are experiencing is, in my opinion, Castells’ networked sociability. Digital technology is not determining this process: it is rather enabling each person to build and manage their own social networks, both on- and offline. The recent popularity of Social Network Sites (SNS) such as My Space, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. shows that there is a growing interest in articulating, making visible, and managing personal or professional relationships through technology-enabled environments. The phenomenon addressed is wider than Social Network Sites, and includes the wide variety of ways in which people are linked to each other. Objective of the Book In the proposed publication we will focus on a variety of Social Media and Computer-Mediated Communication environments, in order to underline the ways in which people articulate their social relations and the related individualized identity performances. In this book's analysis, Social Network Sites will play a major but not exclusive role. For a better understanding of the identity performances and of the ties’ strength, this book will not only focus on SNS, but rather consider the wider context, including the variety of ways in which people are linked to each other (a context where old and new media collide, and where mediated and face to face social relations are growingly integrated). Nevertheless, SNS are powerful playgrounds, both for the user and for the researcher. From a sociological point of view, one of the main point of interest of Social Network Sites, let alone their constantly growing popularity among internet users worldwide, is that they represent powerful environments to observe publicly articulated self presentation and identity performances: SNS make such processes visible, trackable, and, therefore, easy to study. Far from constituting an alternative or “virtual” world, social media are embedded in everyday life: using Social Network Sites, people connect to each other in ways they perceive seamless to face-to-face relations. Nevertheless, the above mentioned “trackability” enables people’s awareness (we are now more consciously engaged in our personal network management). This book will analyze the increased consciousness, fully exploring the technology and impact of our social networks in the current social atmosphere. Target Audience Academics: Scholars, Researchers, Students (Media Studies, Internet Studies, Education, Sociology, Psychology, etc.) Educators (Primary and Secondary School) Policy makers Consulting firms, marketing and communication experts Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following: Networked individualism and networked sociability: theoretical perspectives; Social Network Sites: data on adoption and use (worldwide); Personal profiles and identity performances in digital networked media (including comparative and cross-platform approaches); New forms of sociability, on- and offline (including comparative and cross-platform approaches); Social Network Sites and New Media Literacy; Social Media and privacy concerns; People's different usage patterns (varying according to sex, age, individual attitudes, platforms, etc.); People's attitude towards specialized platforms; (business and recruiting platforms, social media sharing sites, UGC environments, etc.); Emerging trends. Submission Procedure Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before May 30, 2010, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by June 30, 2010 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by October 30, 2010. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. Publisher This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference” and “IGI Publishing” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2011. * * *Important Dates* Proposal Submission Deadline: May 30, 2010 Proposal Acceptance Notifications: June 30, 2010 Full chapter Submission: September 30, 2010 Review Results to Authors: December 15, 2010 Revised Chapter Submission: January 30, 2011 Final Acceptance Notifications: February 15, 2011 Submission of Final Chapters: February 28, 2011 Final Deadline: March 30, 2011 Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document): Dr. Francesca Comunello Department of Communication and Social Sciences University of Rome, La Sapienza Tel. +39 06 49918374 Mobile +39 333 9567857 email: francesca.comunello(a)uniroma1.it

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JITP 2010: The Politics of Open Source - Conference to Stream Live Via Panopto
by Stuart Shulman 04 May '10

04 May '10

http://politicsofopensource.jitp.net/ The Annual JITP thematic conference JITP 2010 will stream live this Thursday and Friday, May 6 & 7. The live stream is sponsored by Panopto.com and there will be link available at the conference Web site. The full program is online at: http://politicsofopensource.jitp.net/program ~Stu -- Dr. Stuart W. Shulman Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of Massachusetts Amherst 200 Hicks Way Amherst, MA 01003 http://people.umass.edu/stu/ stu(a)polsci.umass.edu 413-545-5375 Editor, Journal of Information Technology and Politics http://www.jitp.net Director, QDAP-UMass http://www.umass.edu/qdap/ Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government http://www.umass.edu/digitalcenter/

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Study participation appreciated
by Orchard, Lisa J. 04 May '10

04 May '10

Hello all, My name is Lisa Orchard and I am a Psychology PhD Student. I am currently conducting some research on the topic of personality differences in Facebook use. Facebook is recently undergoing some changes in the way it allows users to present themselves in their information page. From what I can gather, they aim to create more standardised profiles that can be linked between users in a community basis. Unfortunately, this impacts on my study in a large way, as one of the things I am looking for is individualism in profile set-up. I am now in a race against the clock to get as many participants as possible to complete my questionnaire study before the official change is made to all users. If you are a Facebook user, I am asking that you please spare some time to complete my study. It takes between half hour and an hour (averaging about 40minutes), as it was never meant to be an online survey in this manner. I appreciate that this is a lot to ask, but I hope you acknowledge the urgency in which I need to collect this data. The study has passed ethical clearance at the University of Wolverhampton. It can be accessed here: https://s-h9hr1-287862.sgizmo.com <http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/287862/facebook-use-and-profile-content> My research homepage can be found here: http://www.wlv.ac.uk/default.aspx?page=15944 <http://www.wlv.ac.uk/default.aspx?page=15944> Any questions can be sent personally to me: l.j.orchard(a)wlv.ac.uk <mailto:l.j.orchard@wlv.ac.uk> or to my Director of Studies: c.fullwood(a)wlv.ac.uk <mailto:c.fullwood@wlv.ac.uk> Please pass this on to anyone who may be able to help. I have tried to edit the questionnaire so that all users (including those with the new updated information pages) will be able to participate. Kind Regards, Lisa Orchard -- Scanned by iCritical.

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Save the Dates for 2011 MEA Convention in Canada!
by Janet Sternberg 03 May '10

03 May '10

Save the Dates: June 23-26, 2011 The Twelfth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada 2011 MEA Convention theme and details to be announced at this year's MEA Convention in Orono, Maine, June 10-13, 2010 http://www.media-ecology.org

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AoIR 11.0 conference submission notifications
by Mia Consalvo 03 May '10

03 May '10

hello all, For those of you who submitted a paper/panel/roundtable proposal to AoIR 11.0, I wanted to give you a quick update. We had originally listed April 28 as our notification date for all decisions. Unfortunately, we're having a bit of a delay for a couple of reasons-- first, the initial deadline for submissions was pushed back, giving reviewers less time to do the reviews, and our program chair, Torill Mortensen, less time to collate and make decisions based on those reviews. Second, this year we've had a large number of submissions that needed to be re-assigned at the last minute, because initial reviewers could not/did not complete their reviews. Please know that Torill is working intensely to make final decisions, and notices should be going out very soon. Thank you for your patience with the process- please contact me off list if you have more specific questions or concerns. all the best, Mia -- Mia Consalvo, President Association of Internet Researchers Visiting Associate Professor Comparative Media Studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 14N-226 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 USA consalvo(a)mit.edu 617.324.1868

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[MCJ] M/C Journal 'ambient' Issue Now Available
by Axel Bruns 03 May '10

03 May '10

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 5 May 2010 M/C - Media and Culture is proud to present issue two in volume thirteen of M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ 'ambient' - Edited by Luke Jaaniste Ambience is all around us. Wherever we are. Conditioned as we are as being-in-the-world, we are always surrounded. A surrounding that affords meaningful pathways and places of action and thought, that is intelligently geared up with us. The fundamental surroundings might be the earth itself, upon which multiple worlds, spaces, zones, nets, webs, districts, precincts and the like occupy our lives, as we occupy them. Ambience can be contrasted with salience. What is salient is what is of immediate interest and attention. Before us right now, taken up. Hopefully, dear reader, these words you are reading have particular salience for you. Right now. But when something is taken up in our field of attention and action, there is so much that remains, always already there, in the background, in the periphery, in the ether, in the air. So when Brian Eno famously coined the term 'ambient music' in the 1970s - and triggered off a whole raft of terms like ambient video, ambient art, ambient architecture, ambient tv, ambient media, ambient marketing, ambient journalism, ambient computing, ambient screens, ambient poetics and ambient literature - he was doing something a little odd. Making ambience salient. In his music and in his discourse about it. Ambience has been palpably in place, since the dawn of time, but as way of talking about the world is helps gear us towards the all-around and how so much of being human is conditioned and affected by our surrounds, in a age when place and place-making has changed in dramatic ways, locally and globally. In this issue, we ask: what ideas and interaction take place in ambience? =========================================================================== Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2010/11: 'deaf': article deadline 30 Apr. 2010, release date 30 June 2010 'waste': article deadline 25 June 2010, release date 25 Aug. 2010 'pig': article deadline 20 Aug. 2010, release date 20 Oct. 2010 'coalition': article deadline 15 Oct. 2010, release date 15 Dec. 2010 'doubt': article deadline 21 Jan. 2011, release date 23 Mar. 2011 'diaspora': article deadline 4 Mar. 2011, release date 4 May 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C Journal 13.2 is now online: <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>. Previous issues of M/C Journal on various topics are also still available. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit M/C Journal and M/C Reviews at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- All contributors are available for media contacts: mc(a)media-culture.org.au. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C Journal Vol. 13, No. 2 (2010) - 'ambient' Table of Contents http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/issue/view/ambient Editorial -------- The Ambience of Ambience Luke Oliver Jaaniste Feature -------- Ambient Thinking: Or, Sweating over Theory Alison Bartlett Articles -------- Ambient Anomie in the Virtualised Landscape? Autonomy, Surveillance and Flows in the 2020 Streetscape Bruce Arnold, Margalit Levin From TV to Twitter: How Ambient News Became Ambient Journalism Alfred Hermida Oblique Strategies for Ambient Journalism Alex Burns The Constant Murmur of Data Pau Waelder Populating the Ambient Space of Texts: The Intimate Graffiti of Doodles. Proposals Toward a Theory David Allen Ensminger “A little bit more mysterious…”: Ambience and Art in the Dark Natalia Radywyl Faith Tweets: Ambient Religious Communication and Microblogging Rituals Pauline Hope Cheong An Ambience of Power? Challenges Inherent in the Role of the Public Transport Transit Officer Christine Teague, Lelia Green, David Leith -- M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ -- Dr Axel Bruns http://snurb.info/ - http://produsage.org/ ARC Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation http://cci.edu.au/ Associate Professor, Media & Communication a.bruns(a)qut.edu.au Creative Industries Faculty, Z1-515, CIP Twitter: @snurb_dot_info Queensland University of Technology +61 7 31385548 Musk Ave, Kelvin Grove, Qld. 4059, Australia CRICOS No.: 00213J

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Invitation to Workshop: Gov Applications of Social Media Networks & Communities
by Derek Hansen 02 May '10

02 May '10

Please consider joining us for a workshop on Government Applications of Social Media Networks and Communities, as part of the University of Maryland's Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) annual symposium in College Park, Maryland on Friday, May 28, 2010. Details and registration are found at: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/soh/tutorials-workshops.shtml#W1 Please pass this along to your colleagues who may be interested in joining us. Sincerely, Derek Hansen, Marc Smith, Ben Shneiderman, and Jenny Preece ********************** When: Friday, May 28, 2010, 9:30am-4:00pm Where: CSIC Building, UMD, College Park Who: Government thought leaders, system developers, and agencies; industry partners, researchers, and students The HCIL Government Applications of Social Media Networks & Communities Workshop, as part of the 27th Annual Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) Symposium, will examine how social media can be systematically applied to increase civic participation on national priorities. Attendees will… • discuss interesting and ambitious ways that federal, state, and local governments are using social media in decision-making, healthcare/wellness, energy sustainability, education, disaster response, community safety, scientific research, etc. • explore how analytic tools like NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com/) can help systematically analyze social media initiatives and mine social media sites for useful information. • identify the unique challenges of using social technologies in a government context and design strategies and policies that help overcome those challenges Participants will include: • Vladimir Barash, doctoral student, Information Science, Cornell University • John Bertot, Professor, iSchool, UMD • Derek Hansen – Assistant Professor, iSchool, UMD and director of Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information (CASCI) • Scott Golder, doctoral student, Sociology, Cornell University • Bradford Hesse, Chief of the National Cancer Institute’s Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB) • Natasa Milic-Frayling, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge • Cynthia Parr, Director, Special Pages Group, Encyclopedia of Life, Smithsonian • Jenny Preece – Dean, iSchool, UMD. • Ben Shneiderman – Professor, Department of Computer Science, UMD, and founder of the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). • Marc Smith – Chief Social Scientist, Connected Action Consulting Group, director of the Social Media Research Foundation If you would like to join us, please contact Derek Hansen (dlhansen(a)umd.edu) There is a $75 registration fee for attendees that covers breakfast (beginning at 8:30am), lunch, and a snack. Make sure and join us for the HCIL Symposium, held the day before (see http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/soh/symposium.shtmlfor details).

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Flow Conference 2010 - call for responses
by Alexander Cho 02 May '10

02 May '10

*The Flow Conference 2010 will take place from September 30 to October 2 at the University of Texas-Austin. The Flow Conference is UT's biannual conference on television and new media. *As you may know, FlowTV is about dialogue; instead of panels, papers and plenary discussions, we build roundtables structured around topics you want to discuss. Please visit http://flowtv.org/?page_id=4986 to see the topic questions. We invite you to submit your response.* *Please submit a **150-word abstract to flowconference2010(a)gmail.com by June 11, 2010*. In the subject line of the email, please put the title of the roundtable to which you are responding. Be sure to also include your full name, e-mail address, and affiliation in the body of the e-mail. *For more information about the conference, please visit: http://www.flowtv.org -- Alexander Cho Co-Coordinating Editor, FlowTV.org Doctoral Student University of Texas at Austin Department of Radio-TV-Film

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CFP: Iraq - Between the Present and the Future
by Lina Khatib 01 May '10

01 May '10

Call for Papers Iraq: Between the Present and the Future Themed issue of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication Themed Issue Editor: Lina Khatib (Stanford University) Papers are solicited for a themed issue of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication on “Iraq: Between the Present and the Future”. The purpose of this themed issue is to tease out the cultural, intellectual, artistic, social, and political dynamics in Iraq today and the future vision for those dynamics. The issue aims to understand the challenges and prospects facing Iraq’s present and future on those fronts, while seeking to ground this understanding in an analytical reflection on Iraq’s recent history. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the country has been invariably seen as a victim of Western imperialist aggression, as a prospective democratic state in the making, as the homeland of traumatized peoples on the verge of a civil war, and as a hub of transnational terrorist activities. Discourse on Iraq has been mostly consumed with security issues, hard politics, and economic issues. Literature on how those elements have impacted people’s everyday lives, Iraq’s artistic scene, its cultural milieus and its intellectual arenas deserves to be expanded. Within this framework, this themed issue seeks answers to questions such as: - How have Iraqis co-opted, dissented, and/or resisted Iraq’s political, economic, social and security challenges in their everyday lives? - How has this been mediated in Iraqi art, films, media, and other communication and cultural arenas? - How are ethnic and sectarian tensions being handled in the public sphere and in everyday life and what are the developments in this respect that are being overlooked but which deserve attention? - How can Iraq recover from the trauma of destruction of much of its material culture? - How is Iraq dealing with a traumatic memory that intersects with a traumatic present? - What role have Iraqi (and Arab) intellectuals played in the formation of Iraq’s present? - What is the position of artists, journalists, educators and activists towards the challenges facing Iraq today and what is their vision for its future? - What are the main spaces for dialogue emerging in Iraq that may play a role in shaping a brighter future for the country? - What are the cultural practices through which power is expressed? - How and where is politics performed on the level of the everyday? Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines including geography, international relations, media and communication studies, cultural studies, memory studies, gender studies, sociology, history, anthropology, archaeology, and politics are invited to present innovative responses to those questions in the form of full length articles, shorter reflective essays and critical reviews. Deadline for submission of proposals: 15 May 2010. Notification of acceptance of proposals: 30 May 2010. Deadline for submission of manuscripts for accepted proposals: 1 November 2010. Expected publication date of accepted articles: May 2011. Proposals for articles and reflective essays should be about 500-600 in length. They must clearly describe the proposed approach, and explain the contribution that would be made to the themed issue. Articles should be 6000-7000 words long and include an abstract of not more than 150 words that clearly defines the nature of the article. Reflective essays should be 1500-3000 words and reviews 1000-1500 words. Up to five keywords should be included to identify articles and reflective essays. Please email the proposal to Dr Lina Khatib, co-editor of Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication: lkhatib(a)stanford.edu Please note that all articles will be subject to our peer review process and that the Editors retain the discretion at all stages of the publication process to accept or reject an article. MEJCC is a peer-reviewed journal published by Brill: http://www.brill.nl/mjcc Dr. Lina Khatib Program Manager Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law Stanford University http://cddrl.stanford.edu/people/linakhatib/

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