Let's talk about AoIR.
Hi Pals, With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today. I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well. Some Big Questions I Have: 1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations? 2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures? 3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous? 4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies. 5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field? Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest. Fondly, T -- <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
well, for my part, I'll take some of the old with some of the new. I remember the conference being much more inquisitive, challenging, and playful; scholarly rigor was promoted, but not promoted above inclusion of different perspectives and even strangeness. There was always a risk for the first few years that a panel wouldn't work, or a paper wouldn't really be 'strong' but that risk hasn't gone away with the push toward longer submissions and more rigor, instead it has just been transformed into a more reviewed perspective. In the first few years, I remember having great fun making a list of likely topics, and the lists always had a few humorous ones, the lists were always aimed toward inclusion of topic and discipline, and in my mind they served as recruitment devices, but they also set the tone of the conferences as 'collegial, open, interesting'. I remember regretting the decision to see the topics go, but they were replaced with other ideas. I'm not sure they were better though, either the topics or the new modes of presenting the conferences ideas, both work. I think that for me, AoIR, unlike ICA and AoIR is and should be like friends and family, and future friends. That's been the spirit that i've always approached it with, and granted I know i've grated a few people over the years with my insistence on first names and similar things, but I do think we should be an organizations where a Master's student should be encouraged to talk to the most senior people in the field without recognizing the ever present academic star system and related matters. beyond those points... I think that AoIR has felt significant pressure in the last few years to create an identity for itself that competes with other organizations, but I'm not sure competition is really what we should be after. I think we should aim to be over-arching and umbrella-like, more than unique and separable. I'd rather the thought be promoted that Aoir is the organization that you come to when your discipline, or other conference isn't enough, when you can't get your ideas addressed completely, when you truly need people that are both disciplinary and interdisciplinary, who can be models for success, who can share histories and research projects which will enable future people to do better research, etc. mostly, i see professionalism as a problem centered on the control of knowledge as Ivan Illich taught us ever so long ago, i believe we do have to pay attention to our presentation and we might appear to be professional, but we don't have to BE professional, instead we can be friends and colleagues.
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it. My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient. If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted. I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.) Best, Alex On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.)
The template seemed to be very much oriented towards a more 'hard science' approach, and towards research which was already completed. Trying to jam more subjective research, or research to be completed in the period between abstract submission and the conference, into the format did not seem to work particularly well. On 30 May 2013 13:19, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all
correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed
in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com>wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all
correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed
in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
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Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
OK, so I want to separate the word-count issue from the template issue, because they are divisible and too easily conflated. TEMPLATE On the template issue: we've been through this once before, but the reason the template exists is to give some structure for proceedings. I made the argument--and have made the argument since I ran for VP--that I wanted what goes on at AoIR to reach a wider audience, and to spread beyond those who can attend the conference each year. Many of you running for Exec have expressed a similar interest, and have proposed various mechanisms for accomplishing this. For me, getting our work out in some form so that it was findable on the web was important. The template exists because to be able to find and use stuff in a collection, it is easier if there is some structural similarity--you know where to find the title, the author, etc. There is nothing, at least to my mind, that says "hard science" in that. Yes, there was a format for subtitles (in case it's not obvious from this email, I quite like subtitles), and tables, etc., but none of this required their use. Maybe the issue is APA for the citation style? I frankly couldn't care less about citation styles, and didn't pick it. This seemed to be the most common style used in most previous IR conferences, but that doesn't mean it should predominate. I don't see why it can't be "use whatever you want as long as it is findable"--APA was arbitrary. Perhaps that is what signals "hard science"? Would, by contrast, MLA or Chicago then signal "Humanities"? I think there is value in getting our work out there. I think asking people to share what they do at AoIR is valuable. I suspect that a number of others do too. But I think there should also be options for not sharing. It may be (with deep apologies to Suely and Andrew, who have invested a lot of time and effort here) that SPIR just isn't worthy of ongoing support. WORD COUNT On the word count issue: One of the reason I've separated these is that I've heard largely support for the longer limits, with a few grumblings about 1,200 being too short. We've had a number of restrictions in the past, ranging from 250 to 1000. What I've heard consistently during my 8 years on Exec is people saying that it's hard to judge work based on two or three paragraphs alone, and that this results a bad refereeing process. I think the 500 word limit favors those who can write good abstracts. I count myself in that number--my longer work may not be that great, but I write an awesome 500 word abstract. That said, there were no such limits on roundtables, and some of the proposals were quite short. We have allowed full papers for the last couple (three?) years, but the number of papers submitted was vanishingly small, and a nine-thousand word paper requires a disproportionate amount of reviewer time. REVIEWING Finally, on the issue of reviews, I want to thank those who volunteered to review this year. I'll note that many of you did not, meaning that (a) your expertise was missing when it came to assign reviews and (b) the reviewers who were assigned often had more reviews than we have assigned in the past. I agree we need to provide better guidance to reviewers, and some of you (reviewers and authors) will hear from me soon about helping shape that process. But the first step is to be willing to put time into reviewing. I just want to be very clear that there was a range of excellent reviewing and reviewing that could have been much better, from a range of early-career scholars and more experienced reviewers. Regardless of this, I think our reviewers deserve a significant amount of praise and respect for volunteering to review. Alex On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca> wrote:
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Good Day, I researcher in education and Internet in Colombia Can anyone tell me if there are scholarships for travel? and power particuipar speaker at the conference this year?? THANKS ¡¡ :::::::::::::::::
Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 11:00:22 -0700 From: halavais@gmail.com To: jhunsinger@wlu.ca CC: Subject: Re: [Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR.
OK, so I want to separate the word-count issue from the template issue, because they are divisible and too easily conflated.
TEMPLATE
On the template issue: we've been through this once before, but the reason the template exists is to give some structure for proceedings. I made the argument--and have made the argument since I ran for VP--that I wanted what goes on at AoIR to reach a wider audience, and to spread beyond those who can attend the conference each year. Many of you running for Exec have expressed a similar interest, and have proposed various mechanisms for accomplishing this. For me, getting our work out in some form so that it was findable on the web was important.
The template exists because to be able to find and use stuff in a collection, it is easier if there is some structural similarity--you know where to find the title, the author, etc. There is nothing, at least to my mind, that says "hard science" in that. Yes, there was a format for subtitles (in case it's not obvious from this email, I quite like subtitles), and tables, etc., but none of this required their use.
Maybe the issue is APA for the citation style? I frankly couldn't care less about citation styles, and didn't pick it. This seemed to be the most common style used in most previous IR conferences, but that doesn't mean it should predominate. I don't see why it can't be "use whatever you want as long as it is findable"--APA was arbitrary. Perhaps that is what signals "hard science"? Would, by contrast, MLA or Chicago then signal "Humanities"?
I think there is value in getting our work out there. I think asking people to share what they do at AoIR is valuable. I suspect that a number of others do too. But I think there should also be options for not sharing. It may be (with deep apologies to Suely and Andrew, who have invested a lot of time and effort here) that SPIR just isn't worthy of ongoing support.
WORD COUNT
On the word count issue: One of the reason I've separated these is that I've heard largely support for the longer limits, with a few grumblings about 1,200 being too short. We've had a number of restrictions in the past, ranging from 250 to 1000. What I've heard consistently during my 8 years on Exec is people saying that it's hard to judge work based on two or three paragraphs alone, and that this results a bad refereeing process. I think the 500 word limit favors those who can write good abstracts. I count myself in that number--my longer work may not be that great, but I write an awesome 500 word abstract. That said, there were no such limits on roundtables, and some of the proposals were quite short.
We have allowed full papers for the last couple (three?) years, but the number of papers submitted was vanishingly small, and a nine-thousand word paper requires a disproportionate amount of reviewer time.
REVIEWING
Finally, on the issue of reviews, I want to thank those who volunteered to review this year. I'll note that many of you did not, meaning that (a) your expertise was missing when it came to assign reviews and (b) the reviewers who were assigned often had more reviews than we have assigned in the past. I agree we need to provide better guidance to reviewers, and some of you (reviewers and authors) will hear from me soon about helping shape that process. But the first step is to be willing to put time into reviewing.
I just want to be very clear that there was a range of excellent reviewing and reviewing that could have been much better, from a range of early-career scholars and more experienced reviewers. Regardless of this, I think our reviewers deserve a significant amount of praise and respect for volunteering to review.
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca> wrote:
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
hi all, To weigh in on the template and reviewing: Template: 1. I am not a fan of templates generally, so having one at all is always a bit of trouble. I don't think it's really that hard to find author names on a paper or to have folks use different fonts or page widths. 2. The call this year said "Please note that your submissions must adhere to the template to be accepted". This is a bit off-putting, right off the bat. It immediately felt antagonistic, and made me feel that I was being judged first on how well I conformed to guidelines, and then only second on my ideas. 3. The template has guidelines for font choice, font size, an abstract (for an abstract!), headings, subheadings, charts, diagrams, references, images, and so on. Much of my time was spent deleting all of the stuff I didn't need to use. It also created an expectation in my mind (true or not) that this is what submissions are supposed to look like, that this is what they are supposed to include. I was trying to propose a roundtable and it didn't fit at all with the template. Somewhere else on the submission page (I forget where) I realized that roundtables didn't have to follow these guidelines, but I had already been put off by the formal structures. It wasn't about APA or MLA- it was the enforcement of a rigid structure that felt so anti-aoir. Reviewing: AoIR is not the only organization and/or conference to suffer from bad reviewing. The question is, if we are reviewing ourselves, why are we doing such a bad job at it? Are we overworked? Are we getting too many reviews? Are we having collective bad days? Are we being asked to review out of our depth? We really need to have a good discussion about this, because WE are the ones doing this to ourselves. Finally, I'd point out that reviewing scores me/us little or NO credits either in our university jobs, our daily life, or in general recognition other than a formal thank you somewhere in a program. I'm not suggesting reviewers be paid for their work, but maybe thinking about offering other kinds of recognitions (best review? best reviewer? top review mentors?) might help improve quality by encouraging us to spend more time on them. Mia On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com>wrote:
OK, so I want to separate the word-count issue from the template issue, because they are divisible and too easily conflated.
TEMPLATE
On the template issue: we've been through this once before, but the reason the template exists is to give some structure for proceedings. I made the argument--and have made the argument since I ran for VP--that I wanted what goes on at AoIR to reach a wider audience, and to spread beyond those who can attend the conference each year. Many of you running for Exec have expressed a similar interest, and have proposed various mechanisms for accomplishing this. For me, getting our work out in some form so that it was findable on the web was important.
The template exists because to be able to find and use stuff in a collection, it is easier if there is some structural similarity--you know where to find the title, the author, etc. There is nothing, at least to my mind, that says "hard science" in that. Yes, there was a format for subtitles (in case it's not obvious from this email, I quite like subtitles), and tables, etc., but none of this required their use.
Maybe the issue is APA for the citation style? I frankly couldn't care less about citation styles, and didn't pick it. This seemed to be the most common style used in most previous IR conferences, but that doesn't mean it should predominate. I don't see why it can't be "use whatever you want as long as it is findable"--APA was arbitrary. Perhaps that is what signals "hard science"? Would, by contrast, MLA or Chicago then signal "Humanities"?
I think there is value in getting our work out there. I think asking people to share what they do at AoIR is valuable. I suspect that a number of others do too. But I think there should also be options for not sharing. It may be (with deep apologies to Suely and Andrew, who have invested a lot of time and effort here) that SPIR just isn't worthy of ongoing support.
WORD COUNT
On the word count issue: One of the reason I've separated these is that I've heard largely support for the longer limits, with a few grumblings about 1,200 being too short. We've had a number of restrictions in the past, ranging from 250 to 1000. What I've heard consistently during my 8 years on Exec is people saying that it's hard to judge work based on two or three paragraphs alone, and that this results a bad refereeing process. I think the 500 word limit favors those who can write good abstracts. I count myself in that number--my longer work may not be that great, but I write an awesome 500 word abstract. That said, there were no such limits on roundtables, and some of the proposals were quite short.
We have allowed full papers for the last couple (three?) years, but the number of papers submitted was vanishingly small, and a nine-thousand word paper requires a disproportionate amount of reviewer time.
REVIEWING
Finally, on the issue of reviews, I want to thank those who volunteered to review this year. I'll note that many of you did not, meaning that (a) your expertise was missing when it came to assign reviews and (b) the reviewers who were assigned often had more reviews than we have assigned in the past. I agree we need to provide better guidance to reviewers, and some of you (reviewers and authors) will hear from me soon about helping shape that process. But the first step is to be willing to put time into reviewing.
I just want to be very clear that there was a range of excellent reviewing and reviewing that could have been much better, from a range of early-career scholars and more experienced reviewers. Regardless of this, I think our reviewers deserve a significant amount of praise and respect for volunteering to review.
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca> wrote:
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a
proposal in
this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our
digital
document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Mia Consalvo, Ph.D. Visiting Associate Professor Comparative Media Studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 14N-226 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 USA consalvo@mit.edu 617.324.1868
Mia, I love the idea of substantially honoring the work serious reviewers do by rewarding them at least with a solid line on their CV. Could we have something like an AoIR Conference Editorial Committee, just like we have an Ethics Committee? Where we could elect or appoint, say, six folks (grad students would be great) who would be "point people" for respective areas (say, identities and representation, communities and blah blah, interface and blah blah ) who could take on the heavy lifting of reviewing in their areas? Not instead of the blind reviews, but as a overseer over processes and someone to turn to when a reviewer says, "I'm really the wrong person to look at this.") Then, on a CV, under professional affiliations, a grad student could say, Association of Internet Researchers, Conference Committee Editorial Member--Race & Gender Area. Or like that.... T in areas where they have ? On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Mia Consalvo <consalvo@mit.edu> wrote:
hi all,
To weigh in on the template and reviewing:
Template: 1. I am not a fan of templates generally, so having one at all is always a bit of trouble. I don't think it's really that hard to find author names on a paper or to have folks use different fonts or page widths. 2. The call this year said "Please note that your submissions must adhere to the template to be accepted". This is a bit off-putting, right off the bat. It immediately felt antagonistic, and made me feel that I was being judged first on how well I conformed to guidelines, and then only second on my ideas. 3. The template has guidelines for font choice, font size, an abstract (for an abstract!), headings, subheadings, charts, diagrams, references, images, and so on. Much of my time was spent deleting all of the stuff I didn't need to use. It also created an expectation in my mind (true or not) that this is what submissions are supposed to look like, that this is what they are supposed to include. I was trying to propose a roundtable and it didn't fit at all with the template. Somewhere else on the submission page (I forget where) I realized that roundtables didn't have to follow these guidelines, but I had already been put off by the formal structures. It wasn't about APA or MLA- it was the enforcement of a rigid structure that felt so anti-aoir.
Reviewing: AoIR is not the only organization and/or conference to suffer from bad reviewing. The question is, if we are reviewing ourselves, why are we doing such a bad job at it? Are we overworked? Are we getting too many reviews? Are we having collective bad days? Are we being asked to review out of our depth? We really need to have a good discussion about this, because WE are the ones doing this to ourselves.
Finally, I'd point out that reviewing scores me/us little or NO credits either in our university jobs, our daily life, or in general recognition other than a formal thank you somewhere in a program. I'm not suggesting reviewers be paid for their work, but maybe thinking about offering other kinds of recognitions (best review? best reviewer? top review mentors?) might help improve quality by encouraging us to spend more time on them.
Mia
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com
wrote:
OK, so I want to separate the word-count issue from the template issue, because they are divisible and too easily conflated.
TEMPLATE
On the template issue: we've been through this once before, but the reason the template exists is to give some structure for proceedings. I made the argument--and have made the argument since I ran for VP--that I wanted what goes on at AoIR to reach a wider audience, and to spread beyond those who can attend the conference each year. Many of you running for Exec have expressed a similar interest, and have proposed various mechanisms for accomplishing this. For me, getting our work out in some form so that it was findable on the web was important.
The template exists because to be able to find and use stuff in a collection, it is easier if there is some structural similarity--you know where to find the title, the author, etc. There is nothing, at least to my mind, that says "hard science" in that. Yes, there was a format for subtitles (in case it's not obvious from this email, I quite like subtitles), and tables, etc., but none of this required their use.
Maybe the issue is APA for the citation style? I frankly couldn't care less about citation styles, and didn't pick it. This seemed to be the most common style used in most previous IR conferences, but that doesn't mean it should predominate. I don't see why it can't be "use whatever you want as long as it is findable"--APA was arbitrary. Perhaps that is what signals "hard science"? Would, by contrast, MLA or Chicago then signal "Humanities"?
I think there is value in getting our work out there. I think asking people to share what they do at AoIR is valuable. I suspect that a number of others do too. But I think there should also be options for not sharing. It may be (with deep apologies to Suely and Andrew, who have invested a lot of time and effort here) that SPIR just isn't worthy of ongoing support.
WORD COUNT
On the word count issue: One of the reason I've separated these is that I've heard largely support for the longer limits, with a few grumblings about 1,200 being too short. We've had a number of restrictions in the past, ranging from 250 to 1000. What I've heard consistently during my 8 years on Exec is people saying that it's hard to judge work based on two or three paragraphs alone, and that this results a bad refereeing process. I think the 500 word limit favors those who can write good abstracts. I count myself in that number--my longer work may not be that great, but I write an awesome 500 word abstract. That said, there were no such limits on roundtables, and some of the proposals were quite short.
We have allowed full papers for the last couple (three?) years, but the number of papers submitted was vanishingly small, and a nine-thousand word paper requires a disproportionate amount of reviewer time.
REVIEWING
Finally, on the issue of reviews, I want to thank those who volunteered to review this year. I'll note that many of you did not, meaning that (a) your expertise was missing when it came to assign reviews and (b) the reviewers who were assigned often had more reviews than we have assigned in the past. I agree we need to provide better guidance to reviewers, and some of you (reviewers and authors) will hear from me soon about helping shape that process. But the first step is to be willing to put time into reviewing.
I just want to be very clear that there was a range of excellent reviewing and reviewing that could have been much better, from a range of early-career scholars and more experienced reviewers. Regardless of this, I think our reviewers deserve a significant amount of praise and respect for volunteering to review.
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca> wrote:
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais < halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like
that
before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving
all
correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Mia Consalvo, Ph.D. Visiting Associate Professor Comparative Media Studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 14N-226 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 USA consalvo@mit.edu 617.324.1868 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- <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
Mia, Terri and all, I think this is really a great idea. I hesitate to add too much since I wasn't able to participate as a reviewer this time around. I think that recognizing our work as reviewers for conferences would do a lot toward giving the process more weight. Good reviews do take time and often there is the feeling that no one else can step up to do the work. If we have a sort of "Editorial Committee" people that volunteer to be on it could make and plan for the time the review will take. In some institutions this may even "count" during annual review - which for those of us on the tenure track treadmill always appreciate. Last year was my first Aoir Conference and I have to say it was a fantastic experience; so much so that I volunteered to be on the Ethics Committee! Kristene Unsworth, Ph.D. Assistant Professor The iSchool, College of Information Science and Technology Drexel University 3141 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 Tel: 215.895.6274 | Fax: 215.895.2494 ischool.drexel.edu -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Terri Senft Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 2:39 PM To: Mia Consalvo Cc: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; jhunsinger@wlu.ca Subject: Re: [Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR. Mia, I love the idea of substantially honoring the work serious reviewers do by rewarding them at least with a solid line on their CV. Could we have something like an AoIR Conference Editorial Committee, just like we have an Ethics Committee? Where we could elect or appoint, say, six folks (grad students would be great) who would be "point people" for respective areas (say, identities and representation, communities and blah blah, interface and blah blah ) who could take on the heavy lifting of reviewing in their areas? Not instead of the blind reviews, but as a overseer over processes and someone to turn to when a reviewer says, "I'm really the wrong person to look at this.") Then, on a CV, under professional affiliations, a grad student could say, Association of Internet Researchers, Conference Committee Editorial Member--Race & Gender Area. Or like that.... T in areas where they have ? On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Mia Consalvo <consalvo@mit.edu> wrote:
hi all,
To weigh in on the template and reviewing:
Template: 1. I am not a fan of templates generally, so having one at all is always a bit of trouble. I don't think it's really that hard to find author names on a paper or to have folks use different fonts or page widths. 2. The call this year said "Please note that your submissions must adhere to the template to be accepted". This is a bit off-putting, right off the bat. It immediately felt antagonistic, and made me feel that I was being judged first on how well I conformed to guidelines, and then only second on my ideas. 3. The template has guidelines for font choice, font size, an abstract (for an abstract!), headings, subheadings, charts, diagrams, references, images, and so on. Much of my time was spent deleting all of the stuff I didn't need to use. It also created an expectation in my mind (true or not) that this is what submissions are supposed to look like, that this is what they are supposed to include. I was trying to propose a roundtable and it didn't fit at all with the template. Somewhere else on the submission page (I forget where) I realized that roundtables didn't have to follow these guidelines, but I had already been put off by the formal structures. It wasn't about APA or MLA- it was the enforcement of a rigid structure that felt so anti-aoir.
Reviewing: AoIR is not the only organization and/or conference to suffer from bad reviewing. The question is, if we are reviewing ourselves, why are we doing such a bad job at it? Are we overworked? Are we getting too many reviews? Are we having collective bad days? Are we being asked to review out of our depth? We really need to have a good discussion about this, because WE are the ones doing this to ourselves.
Finally, I'd point out that reviewing scores me/us little or NO credits either in our university jobs, our daily life, or in general recognition other than a formal thank you somewhere in a program. I'm not suggesting reviewers be paid for their work, but maybe thinking about offering other kinds of recognitions (best review? best reviewer? top review mentors?) might help improve quality by encouraging us to spend more time on them.
Mia
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com
wrote:
OK, so I want to separate the word-count issue from the template issue, because they are divisible and too easily conflated.
TEMPLATE
On the template issue: we've been through this once before, but the reason the template exists is to give some structure for proceedings. I made the argument--and have made the argument since I ran for VP--that I wanted what goes on at AoIR to reach a wider audience, and to spread beyond those who can attend the conference each year. Many of you running for Exec have expressed a similar interest, and have proposed various mechanisms for accomplishing this. For me, getting our work out in some form so that it was findable on the web was important.
The template exists because to be able to find and use stuff in a collection, it is easier if there is some structural similarity--you know where to find the title, the author, etc. There is nothing, at least to my mind, that says "hard science" in that. Yes, there was a format for subtitles (in case it's not obvious from this email, I quite like subtitles), and tables, etc., but none of this required their use.
Maybe the issue is APA for the citation style? I frankly couldn't care less about citation styles, and didn't pick it. This seemed to be the most common style used in most previous IR conferences, but that doesn't mean it should predominate. I don't see why it can't be "use whatever you want as long as it is findable"--APA was arbitrary. Perhaps that is what signals "hard science"? Would, by contrast, MLA or Chicago then signal "Humanities"?
I think there is value in getting our work out there. I think asking people to share what they do at AoIR is valuable. I suspect that a number of others do too. But I think there should also be options for not sharing. It may be (with deep apologies to Suely and Andrew, who have invested a lot of time and effort here) that SPIR just isn't worthy of ongoing support.
WORD COUNT
On the word count issue: One of the reason I've separated these is that I've heard largely support for the longer limits, with a few grumblings about 1,200 being too short. We've had a number of restrictions in the past, ranging from 250 to 1000. What I've heard consistently during my 8 years on Exec is people saying that it's hard to judge work based on two or three paragraphs alone, and that this results a bad refereeing process. I think the 500 word limit favors those who can write good abstracts. I count myself in that number--my longer work may not be that great, but I write an awesome 500 word abstract. That said, there were no such limits on roundtables, and some of the proposals were quite short.
We have allowed full papers for the last couple (three?) years, but the number of papers submitted was vanishingly small, and a nine-thousand word paper requires a disproportionate amount of reviewer time.
REVIEWING
Finally, on the issue of reviews, I want to thank those who volunteered to review this year. I'll note that many of you did not, meaning that (a) your expertise was missing when it came to assign reviews and (b) the reviewers who were assigned often had more reviews than we have assigned in the past. I agree we need to provide better guidance to reviewers, and some of you (reviewers and authors) will hear from me soon about helping shape that process. But the first step is to be willing to put time into reviewing.
I just want to be very clear that there was a range of excellent reviewing and reviewing that could have been much better, from a range of early-career scholars and more experienced reviewers. Regardless of this, I think our reviewers deserve a significant amount of praise and respect for volunteering to review.
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca> wrote:
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais < halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like
that
before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------- -----
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving
all
correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.) _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Mia Consalvo, Ph.D. Visiting Associate Professor Comparative Media Studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 14N-226 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 USA consalvo@mit.edu 617.324.1868 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- <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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
I think that it's great that we're having this discusson on the list. I've reviewed for the past eight or nine AoIR conferences, and I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on reviewing for this conference. I could be wrong. Still, I propose that for the next conference we craft clear guidelines for reviewers, so that reviewers are less apt, for instance, to expect a roundtable abstract to demonstrate the same level of theoretical development as paper proposals for a panel. Likewise, we could do our best to ensure that if we keep the SPIR template for submissions, reviewers are aware that not including a methodology or results section is totally fine if it's not appropriate for the paper that's being proposed. I'm willing to spearhead this effort at clarification. Holly
Hi, all. I wanted to mention that another of the organizations I'm active in, the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, which puts on the annual DH conference, recently experienced some growing pains around its conference submission and reviewing process. The conference has recently seen a dramatic uptick in submissions, from a much more diverse range of fields, methodologies, and parts of the world than in the past, and as a result recent conference program processes were beset by challenges in getting the right reviewers for the right proposals. And this produced a lot of hard feelings across the board: among authors who felt rudely treated, among reviewers who felt overtasked, and among program committee members who totally *were* overtasked. This year's program committee, led by Bethany Nowviskie, introduced a number of changes in the process, which Bethany detailed in a blog post: http://nowviskie.org/2012/cats-and-ships/. The most important of these changes may have been the bidding process, in which reviewers get to request particular abstracts to review (as well as marking those abstracts for which they are not qualified). I have served as a reviewer for the last several years and can say that the proposals I was asked to review this year were far more appropriate to my subfield than they had ever before been. The process also included a few other crucial changes: First, after a reviewer submitted her reviews, she was able to see the other reviews of those abstracts (though without reviewer names attached), and she could modify or add to her reviews in response. Second, after the review period was closed, authors were given the opportunity to respond to the reviews. And finally, the program committee was able to return to particular reviewers to ask them for clarification or reconsideration, before making a final decision. All of this, from what I've heard, made the committee's process more complex, but I did not see any complaints online about the process or its results this year, while recent years had produced lots of audible discontent. Bethany has promised to write some more assessing the results of the process; the conference is coming up, so perhaps that will be available soon. All best, Kathleen -- Kathleen Fitzpatrick // Director of Scholarly Communication Modern Language Association // mla.org // @kfitz On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Holly Kruse <holly.kruse@gmail.com> wrote:
I think that it's great that we're having this discusson on the list. I've reviewed for the past eight or nine AoIR conferences, and I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on reviewing for this conference. I could be wrong. Still, I propose that for the next conference we craft clear guidelines for reviewers, so that reviewers are less apt, for instance, to expect a roundtable abstract to demonstrate the same level of theoretical development as paper proposals for a panel. Likewise, we could do our best to ensure that if we keep the SPIR template for submissions, reviewers are aware that not including a methodology or results section is totally fine if it's not appropriate for the paper that's being proposed. I'm willing to spearhead this effort at clarification.
Holly _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Dear all, Some thoughts from a young(er), European member of the AOIR community (finishing my PhD soon, hopefully): I've been at three IR-conferences within the last five years, and I have also been at ICA, IAMCR, ECREA and other communication conferences. Every time I attended, the IR was the highlight of the conference year. I've talked to other young Internet researchers, and a lot of them feel the same.The reason for this is neither that IR presentations are more sophisticated than at other conferences, nor that it has the best social events (well, they are fine, but have you been to IAMCR in Braga or Istanbul? ;-) The AOIR gathers researchers from different fields (communication, social anthropology, sociology,…), who present very different types of projects and ideas, based on very different theoretical and methodological perspectives - it is definitely very diverse. But, unlike at ICA, ECREA, and IAMCR, I always felt that there is a common ground at the IR, a collective major question that inspires most of us, and is reflected by many of the presentations. In the end, it is all about understanding what "the Internet" is, how society shapes it, how it reflects society, and how society is shaped by it. My feeling is that everyone is working on this question, from their own, necessarily limited, perspectives. For the AOIR community, the Internet is not "only" "object" of research (to study something else), but the Internet is fascinating in itself. In my opinion, this is the USP of the AOIR, and this is what it makes a community. And researching the Internet (still) needs new, uncommon, surprising ideas and approaches. I found those inspiring ideas at the last AOIR conferences, and I hope I will continue to find them in the future. (Whatever that means for the current discussion on CfP and reviewing) Axel --- Axel Maireder, MA Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria http://homepage.univie.ac.at/axel.maireder
Thank you, Alex, for elaborating on this issue once again. A few comments just on the conference, rather than the broader set of questions Terri initially raised. I for one am OK with both the use of a template and the requirement to submit short papers, rather than only abstracts, for both individual papers and panel proposals. While the changes created extra work (and work is hard and annoying), I'm now glad that I have a nearly-finished short paper that will get published somewhere so people can read it, and like it or not, that will count as 'fully refereed paper in proceedings', which give me and my institutional those all-important brownie points. The roundtable and fishbowl formats left room for looser, more speculative or creative session formats. I reviewed several submissions. From my perspective as a reviewer, the short paper (rather than abstract) format made it easier to review them, without adding the burden of reading thousands upon thousands of words--it's much easier to get the gist of a paper if it has a bit more room for substance rather than meta-narrative; and it made it easier to separate submissions in terms of quality. I agree we could have done with clearer guidelines (customized to the new submission requirements, which in turn need to be matched to the criteria provided in conf-tool), but I for one exercised my best judgement on the relevance, interestingness, and rigour of the papers, not their technical compliance with the template. I also tried to mark across the range where appropriate. Having said that, using multiple reviewers usually does result in multiple perspectives. Cheers Jean On May 30, 2013, at 2:00 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
OK, so I want to separate the word-count issue from the template issue, because they are divisible and too easily conflated.
TEMPLATE
On the template issue: we've been through this once before, but the reason the template exists is to give some structure for proceedings. I made the argument--and have made the argument since I ran for VP--that I wanted what goes on at AoIR to reach a wider audience, and to spread beyond those who can attend the conference each year. Many of you running for Exec have expressed a similar interest, and have proposed various mechanisms for accomplishing this. For me, getting our work out in some form so that it was findable on the web was important.
The template exists because to be able to find and use stuff in a collection, it is easier if there is some structural similarity--you know where to find the title, the author, etc. There is nothing, at least to my mind, that says "hard science" in that. Yes, there was a format for subtitles (in case it's not obvious from this email, I quite like subtitles), and tables, etc., but none of this required their use.
Maybe the issue is APA for the citation style? I frankly couldn't care less about citation styles, and didn't pick it. This seemed to be the most common style used in most previous IR conferences, but that doesn't mean it should predominate. I don't see why it can't be "use whatever you want as long as it is findable"--APA was arbitrary. Perhaps that is what signals "hard science"? Would, by contrast, MLA or Chicago then signal "Humanities"?
I think there is value in getting our work out there. I think asking people to share what they do at AoIR is valuable. I suspect that a number of others do too. But I think there should also be options for not sharing. It may be (with deep apologies to Suely and Andrew, who have invested a lot of time and effort here) that SPIR just isn't worthy of ongoing support.
WORD COUNT
On the word count issue: One of the reason I've separated these is that I've heard largely support for the longer limits, with a few grumblings about 1,200 being too short. We've had a number of restrictions in the past, ranging from 250 to 1000. What I've heard consistently during my 8 years on Exec is people saying that it's hard to judge work based on two or three paragraphs alone, and that this results a bad refereeing process. I think the 500 word limit favors those who can write good abstracts. I count myself in that number--my longer work may not be that great, but I write an awesome 500 word abstract. That said, there were no such limits on roundtables, and some of the proposals were quite short.
We have allowed full papers for the last couple (three?) years, but the number of papers submitted was vanishingly small, and a nine-thousand word paper requires a disproportionate amount of reviewer time.
REVIEWING
Finally, on the issue of reviews, I want to thank those who volunteered to review this year. I'll note that many of you did not, meaning that (a) your expertise was missing when it came to assign reviews and (b) the reviewers who were assigned often had more reviews than we have assigned in the past. I agree we need to provide better guidance to reviewers, and some of you (reviewers and authors) will hear from me soon about helping shape that process. But the first step is to be willing to put time into reviewing.
I just want to be very clear that there was a range of excellent reviewing and reviewing that could have been much better, from a range of early-career scholars and more experienced reviewers. Regardless of this, I think our reviewers deserve a significant amount of praise and respect for volunteering to review.
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhunsinger@wlu.ca> wrote:
I think the problem in part is that it was a template that said it was for a paper, and not a template that said it was for a proposal or abstract. This combined with the required length, added considerably to the lack of clarity. I think we need to go back to the 'those that need to submit full papers for them to count, can submit full papers' but those papers are not automatically submitted for publication, and the other track should be a simple 500 word abstract, or longer panel abstract. the clarity of the two track system was again slightly problematic, but it was inclusive in ways that this system is not
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com> wrote:
It would be helpful, at least to me, if folks could be more explicit about *what* they objected to in the template. There were no content restrictions. Yes, there were spaces for citations, subtitles, and for a title, but if these were omitted, they were omitted.
I am well aware of the power of defaults, but I'm missing what it was about this particular template that makes it difficult. (Yes, I've heard from folks that the word-count was restrictive, but that isn't directly a template issue.)
Best,
Alex
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Feona Attwood <f.attwood@mdx.ac.uk> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
Dr. Theresa M. Senft Global Liberal Studies Program School of Arts & Sciences New York University 726 Broadway NY NY 10003
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Alex, My objections (which I've already articulated in the past) weren't with the template, but with the set out on the AoIR 13 Conference page, which laid at the paper proposal guidelines as follows: - Description/summary of the work's intellectual merit with respect to its findings, its relation to extant research and its broader impacts. - A description of the methodological approach or the theoretical underpinnings informing the research inquiry. - Conclusions or discussion of findings. ------------------------------------------------- Conclusions? Findings? In a paper proposed in January and delivered in October? You don't need to be a Foucault scholar to understand how that forecloses all sorts of projects, including ones that are activist, performance-oriented, involve collaboration with communities in flux, and so forth. Last year during a plenary talk for this very organization, I asked when we would hear from the Roland Barthes of Internet Studies. Under this sort of structure, I don't even think McLuhan would stand a chance. Thinkers this interesting just don't even want to play in the "Live Act my Finished Paper" sandbox. __________________________________________ Now, to the oft-suggested idea that interesting thinkers take their work to the preconference/workshop/roundtable/fishbowl/hamster wheel margins: I am actually okay with this. In fact, I tried it this year. I begin with the guidelines as stated. ROUNDTABLE and FISHBOWL PROPOSALS – submit a statement indicating the nature of the discussion and form of interaction, and listing initial participants. Below are the responses I received for a proposal for a roundtable on the deployment of the term "slut" online, that pulled together a group of internationally recognized experts on teen sexuality education, global sex work, anti-racist activism, gaming cultures, and law. Roughly 80 percent of these individuals had never been to an AoIR conference before. Comments for the authors ------------------------ Review 1 In theory, a panel on this topic could be quite interesting but there is only an abstract provided, not a full proposal using the template, and it says very little about exactly what the panel will contain or its specific relevance to AOIR - it's just a very underdeveloped proposal. Review 2 I absolutely feel like a conversation about the role of social media in framing and negotiating sexual recognition and subjectivity NEEDS to be at IR14.0. My only concern: the connections between U.S./North American practices and other(ed) global practices seems tenuous and a bit unclear through the discussion. I would encourage participants to work on bringing these ties to the forefront to frame the discussion a bit more clearly. Review 3 The various phenomena you chose to discuss are very interesting and significant for various areas; however, I'm concerned that your proposal still stays on the surface level, focusing on describing the phenomena but not interpreting them. I'd like to know what sets of theories you are going to use to frame your discussion, and how you will do that. I'm also interested in learning how you would approach these phenomena with a cross-cultural angle. For example, how did you get the cross-cultural data? What sampling procedures are you going to use here? _____________ Now, I can see one reviewers mistaking my roundtable submission for a panel, but two out of three doing that? I'm just so confused, and clearly so is everyone else. The bottom line, and what I would really like to know, is whether this is an organization that is more interested in the margin, or the center? I'm not sure the answer can be both, and I'm not sure I want that decision made by ConfTool or whatever it is we are using. Control society and all that. With love in my heart (really), Terri <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 ______________________
Joining in for a kick at the can. Like some others who have commented, I have been around AoIR for years and have been accepted at every IR to which I made a submission, including this year. I happen to have a large research project (for one scholar) on the go with lot of survey and interview data collected and analyzed over the past couple of years. Although it was time consuming, I was able to formulate an argument, demonstrate its merits, describe the methods and discuss the findings in 1200 words. In fact, when I finished, I realized that I had effectively written the 15-minute presentation (our panel has four presenters). But what if these guidelines had been in place in 2005, or 2008 or even 2012? In February of those years, I had ideas, I had an argument (sort of), I might even have had some raw data or was in the process of collecting some. There's not a chance in hell I would have been able to come up with a short paper that would pass muster. To this end I would like to pick up and quote from one of Terri's posts in the thread: Conclusions? Findings? In a paper proposed in January and delivered in October? You don't need to be a Foucault scholar to understand how that forecloses all sorts of projects, including ones that are activist, performance-oriented, involve collaboration with communities in flux, and so forth. It seems to me that the short paper format is neither fish nor fowl. You either accept abstracts and take some chances on ideas in progress. Sure some papers will fizzle but others will soar. Or you ask for full papers and those you accept get published in an Annual Proceedings. If AoIR found that very few full papers were being submitted, then the solution is to get rid of the full paper submission. As for the disciplinary focus, if it has been decided that IR conferences are going to be traditional social science conferences that accept only empirical research, then say so and drop the claim to interdisciplinarity. If not, then these guidelines needs to be revisited and revised. best Rhiannon Rhiannon Bury Associate Professor Women's and Gender Studies Athabasca University rbury@athabascau.ca
I'll add my $.02. Like others, I found the 1,200 word limit a bit... odd. Abstracts are 250-500 words. Articles are 6,000-8,000 words. 1,200 words is part of the netherspace in between. 1,200 is basically a lengthy blog post. I, for one, have two home disciplines, each with its own conference norms. In political science (APSA), they just ask for an abstract, and they don't use peer reviewers. That puts a lot of authority in the hands of the elected leadership. It also lets authors propose a research puzzle that they expect to complete over the next 8-10 months. In communication (ICA), they ask for a full paper, and they do use peer reviewers. That puts power in the hands of the active membership. It ensures well-done research, and opens up the opportunity for conference proceedings, but also limits the pieces that can be contributed. For this year's AoIR, I basically took a powerpoint talk that I've given a few places and turned it into a 1,200 word short-paper. It was good to get it down on paper, but also felt underdeveloped compared to the papers I'm used to writing. Like Luis, I think this was embedded in the word limit, rather than the style template. I'm still new enough to AoIR that I can't say for sure what I think the community *should* be. I'm still acclimating and forming impressions of the community. But, FWIW, I much prefer the APSA model. I like conferences to be an opportunity to interact with works-in-progress. And if I have a piece that's already polished and complete, I'd rather send it to a journal than a conference. Looking forward to Denver, Dave On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 5:49 PM, Rhiannon Bury <bury417@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Joining in for a kick at the can.
Like some others who have commented, I have been around AoIR for years and have been accepted at every IR to which I made a submission, including this year. I happen to have a large research project (for one scholar) on the go with lot of survey and interview data collected and analyzed over the past couple of years. Although it was time consuming, I was able to formulate an argument, demonstrate its merits, describe the methods and discuss the findings in 1200 words. In fact, when I finished, I realized that I had effectively written the 15-minute presentation (our panel has four presenters). But what if these guidelines had been in place in 2005, or 2008 or even 2012? In February of those years, I had ideas, I had an argument (sort of), I might even have had some raw data or was in the process of collecting some. There's not a chance in hell I would have been able to come up with a short paper that would pass muster. To this end I would like to pick up and quote from one of Terri's posts in the thread:
Conclusions? Findings? In a paper proposed in January and delivered in October? You don't need to be a Foucault scholar to understand how that forecloses all sorts of projects, including ones that are activist, performance-oriented, involve collaboration with communities in flux, and so forth.
It seems to me that the short paper format is neither fish nor fowl. You either accept abstracts and take some chances on ideas in progress. Sure some papers will fizzle but others will soar. Or you ask for full papers and those you accept get published in an Annual Proceedings. If AoIR found that very few full papers were being submitted, then the solution is to get rid of the full paper submission.
As for the disciplinary focus, if it has been decided that IR conferences are going to be traditional social science conferences that accept only empirical research, then say so and drop the claim to interdisciplinarity. If not, then these guidelines needs to be revisited and revised.
best
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Bury Associate Professor Women's and Gender Studies Athabasca University rbury@athabascau.ca _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Dave Karpf, PhD Assistant Professor George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs www.davidkarpf.com davekarpf@gmail.com Author of *The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy<http://www.amazon.com/The-MoveOn-Effect-Unexpected-Transformation/dp/0199898383/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_1> *(Oxford University Press)
I'll jump in and defend the longer word count for this year's submissions. I have reviewed for the conference several times and had always griped about how shoddy work slipped through because it was a "hot" or trendy topic. I grew tired of reading abstracts that promised to study some new flavor of the day (Second Life, Foursquare, Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street on Twitter, MOOCs - you name it) by "doing an analysis" of the phenomenon. Sorry, but I don't think it makes me a social science square to demand a bit more explanation of a method than "an analysis." The purpose of academic research is to generate new knowledge, right? And we need to know that the new knowledge is being generated in the appropriate ways. You can't just "analyze" something...that analysis happens through some more precise procedures - critical discourse analysis, quantitative content analysis, ethnography, rhetorical criticism, Marxist cultural critique, lab experiments, whatever. Too many abstracts in previous years neglected even name-dropping these terms, which would have at least given some clue to the reviewer as to what the author was actually planning to DO to generate new knowledge. I echo Tamara's point that one grows "weary of self funding" a trip to "the conference [because one's home department does not view an abstract-submission conference as worthy for travel funding or for getting tenure], only to see people slap-hazardly throwing together a presentation at the last minute based on a tiny abstract they wrote 9-12 months earlier." You all have seen the scattered, read-off-the-back-of-my-cocktail-napkin-from-last-night presentations at AoIR (and other conferences), and it is damn frustrating and insulting to folks in the room who scraped together some money to fly halfway around the world to listen to good research. I believe the new word count was trying to catch the good abstract-writers and the folks who have a knack for latching onto glittery, trendy topics and hold them to a higher standard of knowledge creation. And even though I think we could probably develop a more flexible template (or several approved template versions), this is what the template was trying to do too - that's what all the "method" and "findings" stuff is about. Now, I'm all for the nontraditional, the transformative, and even the half-baked. Other organizations (say, the National Communication Association) have performance studies-type divisions that accept a wide range of submissions, even non-text ones, but all submissions adhere to a much deeper standard than just an abstract. There's some edgy work going on at NCA (though I have my own beef with that organization for other reasons!) that certainly breaks templates and genres but still manages to convey to reviewers that the work is well thought-out and will make a contribution to knowledge. I think we already are quite flexible with the range of methods and theories and research we accept. Want to toss out the "findings" section in the template and write a great critical-cultural essay? Go for it. A qualified reviewer will totally get what you're doing and won't fault you for altering the template...seriously they won't, especially a critical-cultural scholar. But I'm guessing (and Hector and past program chairs - you can correct me on this if I'm wrong) that not enough people are volunteering to review papers. It's hard to be the lone researcher who studies X when no one in the reviewer pool studies X. Either more of us need to step up to review or we need to reach out and invite ad hoc reviewers from wildly different disciplines to review papers for our conference (not just a pool of other submitters). Another idea: I like half-baked research, especially around the hot, trendy topics of the day. Why can't we have a "hot topics" panel or two at every conference where some folks - invited or competitively - jockey for a chance to offer first impressions of these new phenomena and sketch out bold agendas for research...which can then spur full papers to the next year's conference? So, like, with MOOCs or 3D printing or whatever it is that's hot this year, I'd rather hear a "Critical Reading and Agenda for Research on MOOCs" where people can talk frankly about the issues without having to prepare a full paper to talk on the topic. It could be a way our field plants early flags in these new landscapes as they emerge, in a more conversational way. I suppose Roundtable Discussions are what this kind of thing is for, but I've not seen a super awesome Roundtable yet....they seem more like rehearsed performances (panels, really) and not critical discussions. But I may not have attended the right ones. Anyway...those are my thoughts on the conference template/word count stuff. I still think we're a group that welcomes different research perspectives and needs to stay that way. I'd hate to see AoIR turn into another ACM or ICA or NCA or whatever (no offense)...it should stay small, interdisciplinary, and loose in its boundary-making. But I do think we can step up the quality control a bit. We're at a point where many more people want to present at the conference than there are slots for them, so why not ask for the bar to be raised? Final shout-out: Kudos to Hector for running a smooth CFP process (despite the expected hiccups with transitioning to a new template) and a smooth and relatively speedy review process. I feel like I was asked to review submissions that were much more in line with my expertise this year, when in many past year's it's felt like - for whatever reason - I was reviewing stuff that looked like Greek to me. Bravo on that, then. db --- Daren C. Brabham, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication Editor, Case Studies in Strategic Communication | www.csscjournal.org University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Carroll Hall, CB 3365 Chapel Hill, NC 27599 (801) 633-4796 (mobile) daren.brabham@unc.edu | www.darenbrabham.com
Hi everyone! I'd like to make a few suggestions and perhaps add some ideas to the discussion: _1) About the new template:_ If I may talk for us in South America and specially in Brazil... Event though I think the new "short paper" (for us it is actually an extended abstract) is better than 500 words to allow you to argue a bit more about your research, the new model made hard for us to get funding to attend the conference because there is no full paper option. Before, we could submit full papers (and we actually did and the review process to get published in SPIR was *awesome*). *Suggestion:* I know this will sound very ACM/AAAI/IEEE etc.but... Why don't we create short/full paper proposals? Short papers are ideal for folks who have ongoing research and want to discuss it (maybe without publication) and full papers for those other folks (like me) who need to present something more complete in order to get funding. Also perhaps a way to differentiate roundtables and panels would be the format of papers (and the completeness of the research): roundtable = short papers; panel= full papers. We can also have different types of proposal for other things that contemplate other types of discussion. SPIR could continue on publishing full papers and the proceedings, short ones. _2) About reviews:_ Although I wasn't a reviewer this year and I think people are really generous to volunteer (I forgot to volunteer - shame on me!), it is pretty much a fact by now that while some reviews were awesome, some were not so good. My panel got through, but with odd reviews that only focused on one or two of our six papers. This seems to point out that reviewers are having some difficulties in understanding what they are evaluating (not one paper, but a panel of six) and how they should do it (perhaps the system we used is somewhat flawed). Also, my students that got rejected, like many people in this list, got complete opposite reviews with also complete opposite marks (like 90 and 24, for example). And I felt it was very discouraging for them (as for everyone else) to submit again because the process was so weird. It is normal to get rejected. But at least it seems fair to have *some* coherence in the rejection/approval process. *Suggestion:* We can create reviewer guidelines for different types of proposals. I also like the bidding process someone suggested and the idea of creating a program committee or something in order to credit properly the people who are doing the hard work. Maybe create meta reviewers would also help the conflicts (and I think someone already suggested this). _3) About AOIR__Conference_ That said, I would like to point that I *love* AOIR conferences. I've been to several others and still think we get more discussion and more debate with our papers in IR than in any other. Also, it is very much likely to find similar works and people with similar interests. However, I also feel that in the last conferences the abstract model was too short and many very very early works that perhaps were not yet polished enough to be presented were accepted. I think we need better ways to select good work (which doesn't mean it has to be finished) and the "short paper" was a step towards it. The conference, for me, is about a discussion, about exchanging ideas and we need good work to inspire them. *Suggestion*: If people feel the conference is becoming too broad, maybe we should think about creating tracks that represent the lines of research/objects of our associates. That would also help more focus on the discussions and would also help the reviewers to know what to expect and how to evaluate papers from each track. We could have, for example, a methodological discussion track. Sorry for the long email. :) Best, Raquel
aside from the conference and submission system, are there other significant cultural/structural questions that we should think about in regards to AoIR? or is the conference the main issue? I think one of the issue is that the conference has become the main issue, and the list has basically changed from a fairly dynamic one, to a fairly circumscribed announcement list with a little discussion instead of being, as it once was, a sort of intellectual heart that drives the conference. So for me, I'd say list-culture and perhaps other AoIR media cultures need some intervention to transform them toward a more integrative and enabling structure. That's always been one of my concerns though... I'm wondering what non-conference related matters are out there?
Perhaps that is the very thing we should talk about - is the mailing list still the best environment for discussion, or has it become largely a technology (in academia anyway) of information? I'm on a bunch of academic mailing lists, but the conversation is usually CFPs, job ads and sometimes requests for help. Discussion is rare - and Air-L is one of the most 'discuss-y' of those I'm on even then. I discuss things all the time pertaining to AOIR... face-to-face, on Twitter... on Facebook... on blogs (or via reading others' blogs)... in forums... and in email too - but less so. Email once felt like a dynamic medium, now it doesn't really. I'm not saying we 'take it all to Twitter' or blogs, that'd be madness, as I think the list is still incredibly useful but maybe we ought to think about whether our discussion can thrive elsewhere as well? -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy hunsinger Sent: 31 May 2013 16:14 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR. aside from the conference and submission system, are there other significant cultural/structural questions that we should think about in regards to AoIR? or is the conference the main issue? I think one of the issue is that the conference has become the main issue, and the list has basically changed from a fairly dynamic one, to a fairly circumscribed announcement list with a little discussion instead of being, as it once was, a sort of intellectual heart that drives the conference. So for me, I'd say list-culture and perhaps other AoIR media cultures need some intervention to transform them toward a more integrative and enabling structure. That's always been one of my concerns though... I'm wondering what non-conference related matters are out there? _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
I agree there are other possibilities than email for discussion, though a few have been tried in the past to greater and lesser degrees for the organization. we also have the irc channel, we used to have and probably still have a full jabber system, the video system we used to have is gone though, but there are other capabilities we could use like twitter, facebook, zotero, and other tech. but i'm also wondering about the other issues people might see. On May 31, 2013, at 11:19 AM, "Deller, Ruth A" <R.A.Deller@shu.ac.uk> wrote:
Perhaps that is the very thing we should talk about - is the mailing list still the best environment for discussion, or has it become largely a technology (in academia anyway) of information? I'm on a bunch of academic mailing lists, but the conversation is usually CFPs, job ads and sometimes requests for help. Discussion is rare - and Air-L is one of the most 'discuss-y' of those I'm on even then.
I discuss things all the time pertaining to AOIR... face-to-face, on Twitter... on Facebook... on blogs (or via reading others' blogs)... in forums... and in email too - but less so. Email once felt like a dynamic medium, now it doesn't really. I'm not saying we 'take it all to Twitter' or blogs, that'd be madness, as I think the list is still incredibly useful but maybe we ought to think about whether our discussion can thrive elsewhere as well?
Jeremy Hunsinger Communication Studies Wilfrid Laurier University Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Virginia Tech Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -Jules de Gaultier () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments
I agree with Feona regarding the proposal format. This year I submitted a paper proposal to AoIR for the first time, and I think the format forced me to make choices about my paper that made it seemed less theoretically nuanced than it actually is. I don't know exactly how it was done in the past, but I would feel much more comfortable submitting to AoIR in the future if I could submit full papers. Of course some reasonable standardization (font size, page limit, citation format, etc.) would be fine, but full paper submissions or something close to it would be ideal. Luis - - - - - Luis E. Hestres Ph.D. candidate | School of Communication | American University More about me at luishestres.com (http://luishestres.com/) or LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hestres) | Follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/luishestres/) | My SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1820222 "Theoretical critiques are like sociopaths: Their aggressive drives are rarely balanced by constructive instincts." -- From "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory" by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Sociological Forum 14(1), 1999 On Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Feona Attwood wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 (http://www.facebook.com/theresa.senft) twitter: @terrisenft _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org (mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org) mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org (mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org) mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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As a content analysis scholar :) I see different threads emerging here. One is about the changes in the submission format, which apparently both submitters and reviewers found unhelpful on some points. I think it's definitely worth thinking about -- and given the openness and commitment of the AoIR community I think that will be taken on board. I see two other, more fundamental questions. First, is the annual conference now over-capacity and is it time for the grass-roots to start to form regional groups? I, for one, would really welcome this. I think one of the problems of the conference is the huge interest in the field and how effectively AoIR has harnessed that energy. It just won't fit in one annual conference any more. I got rejected last year (there! it's out there!) but when I saw the program I could see how much was crammed into the conference. There are just so many scholars who can benefit from going to the conference -- people like me who started in the pre-internet era and are trying to study it as well as 'digital natives'. And I think there is a enormous amount of value in the interchange between those two groups. Second, here's the tougher questions. Academic conferences work in a particular way -- they tend to consolidate disciplines and their networks. This is a good thing, but it can also become a relatively narrow way of exchanging information in the internet era. So is the AoIR conference supposed to be a traditional academic conference, a hybrid of traditional academic conference proceedings and new ways of presenting information, or some altogether new way of sharing and expanding knowledge? Are we too wedded to 'traditional' ways of doing things? For example, why not put paper proposals up on line and have the list and/or some other constituency vote on them? OK, that may be freaking some people out but I think it might be time for a serious reflection on gatekeeping -- as well as the incredible amount of free labor that goes into reviewing proposals. All that being said, the AoIR list is the single most valuable resource in my internet research. So it's amazing even as it faces these new challenges. 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@umd.edu ________________________________________ From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] on behalf of Luis Hestres [luishestres@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 1:27 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR. I agree with Feona regarding the proposal format. This year I submitted a paper proposal to AoIR for the first time, and I think the format forced me to make choices about my paper that made it seemed less theoretically nuanced than it actually is. I don't know exactly how it was done in the past, but I would feel much more comfortable submitting to AoIR in the future if I could submit full papers. Of course some reasonable standardization (font size, page limit, citation format, etc.) would be fine, but full paper submissions or something close to it would be ideal. Luis - - - - - Luis E. Hestres Ph.D. candidate | School of Communication | American University More about me at luishestres.com (http://luishestres.com/) or LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hestres) | Follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/luishestres/) | My SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1820222 "Theoretical critiques are like sociopaths: Their aggressive drives are rarely balanced by constructive instincts." -- From "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory" by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Sociological Forum 14(1), 1999 On Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Feona Attwood wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 (http://www.facebook.com/theresa.senft) twitter: @terrisenft _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org (mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org) mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org (mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org) mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
+1 to open review and freaking people out--together or separately. If there are others who want to see what we can do on this front, I'd be interested in talking with you. It may not work for everyone, but I'd at least love to see a track that is open-reviewed. - A On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Sarah Ann Oates <soates@umd.edu> wrote:
As a content analysis scholar :) I see different threads emerging here.
One is about the changes in the submission format, which apparently both submitters and reviewers found unhelpful on some points. I think it's definitely worth thinking about -- and given the openness and commitment of the AoIR community I think that will be taken on board.
I see two other, more fundamental questions.
First, is the annual conference now over-capacity and is it time for the grass-roots to start to form regional groups? I, for one, would really welcome this. I think one of the problems of the conference is the huge interest in the field and how effectively AoIR has harnessed that energy. It just won't fit in one annual conference any more. I got rejected last year (there! it's out there!) but when I saw the program I could see how much was crammed into the conference. There are just so many scholars who can benefit from going to the conference -- people like me who started in the pre-internet era and are trying to study it as well as 'digital natives'. And I think there is a enormous amount of value in the interchange between those two groups.
Second, here's the tougher questions. Academic conferences work in a particular way -- they tend to consolidate disciplines and their networks. This is a good thing, but it can also become a relatively narrow way of exchanging information in the internet era. So is the AoIR conference supposed to be a traditional academic conference, a hybrid of traditional academic conference proceedings and new ways of presenting information, or some altogether new way of sharing and expanding knowledge? Are we too wedded to 'traditional' ways of doing things? For example, why not put paper proposals up on line and have the list and/or some other constituency vote on them? OK, that may be freaking some people out but I think it might be time for a serious reflection on gatekeeping -- as well as the incredible amount of free labor that goes into reviewing proposals.
All that being said, the AoIR list is the single most valuable resource in my internet research. So it's amazing even as it faces these new challenges.
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@umd.edu ________________________________________ From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] on behalf of Luis Hestres [luishestres@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 1:27 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR.
I agree with Feona regarding the proposal format. This year I submitted a paper proposal to AoIR for the first time, and I think the format forced me to make choices about my paper that made it seemed less theoretically nuanced than it actually is. I don't know exactly how it was done in the past, but I would feel much more comfortable submitting to AoIR in the future if I could submit full papers. Of course some reasonable standardization (font size, page limit, citation format, etc.) would be fine, but full paper submissions or something close to it would be ideal.
Luis
- - - - - Luis E. Hestres Ph.D. candidate | School of Communication | American University More about me at luishestres.com (http://luishestres.com/) or LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hestres) | Follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/luishestres/) | My SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1820222 "Theoretical critiques are like sociopaths: Their aggressive drives are rarely balanced by constructive instincts." -- From "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory" by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Sociological Forum 14(1), 1999
On Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Feona Attwood wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Terri. I know lots of people have had similar feelings and feel awkward about how to express it.
My feeling is that the new format for submitting proposals seems to signal a real shift in style. I haven't come across anything like that before, not even for really dull conferences and I didn't put a proposal in this year because I couldn't work out a way to fit what I do into that kind of format. It seems designed to filter out anything imaginative, innovative, speculative or original. The papers I reviewed in that format were really difficult to read; the format had squashed all the life out of them. I had felt very enthused after last year's conference which seemed very lively and friendly - and then really deflated by the submission process this year. I'm hoping it was an experiment that won't be continued. I'm still planning to attend this year but I can't imagine submitting anything again if this is the new direction AoIR is taking. Feona
On 30 May 2013, at 15:27, Terri Senft wrote:
Hi Pals,
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm asking because after this round of conference proposal reviews, I feel personally and professionally a bit disconnected from this group these days. This freaks me out a bit, because I've always thought of AoIR as my intellectual home. I am wondering if this is just me (which would be fine!), or if others are in struggle as well.
Some Big Questions I Have:
1. Who are we, personally and professionally? What makes us the same as organizations like ICA or ACM? What makes us different from these organizations?
2. How do we perform our identity at our annual conference? How is it reflected in the way we phrase our calls for submissions? How is it reflected in submission procedures?
3. How do we want to define "rigorous scholarship" in our organization? How do we want to deal with scholarship that strikes us as urgent, necessary or fresh, but not sufficiently rigorous?
4. Is there even an "us" anymore? Can positivists, activists, and artists really sit in the same room and discuss 'internet studies'? My answer used to be affirmative, but that was before internet studies was as ubiquitous as literature studies.
5. Should the desire for a conference that showcases professionalization trump a desire for a conference that encourages its youngest scholars and its most senior ones to take risks, make mistakes and push the boundaries of the field?
Okay, that's plenty to start. As they say in AA, take what you want and leave the rest.
Fondly, T
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 (http://www.facebook.com/theresa.senft) twitter: @terrisenft _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org (mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org) mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS. There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org (mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org) mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone. // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.)
On 2013-05-30 10:27, Terri Senft wrote:
With the encouragement of Andrew and Alex, I wanted to approach the list regarding some questions I have about culture of the Association of Internet Researchers today.
I'm more than a little bit dismayed that all of the (public) responses to Terri's very broad questions about AoIR have focused entirely on the conference. Is that some quirk or oddity perhaps related to the timing of the questions and other recent posts related to the conference? Or is this evidence that for many people the conference *is* AoIR? I hope the former and not the latter as that would be quite limiting and very disappointing for those of us who rarely or never are able to attend the conference. Kevin
participants (22)
-
Alexander Halavais -
Axel Maireder -
Brabham, Daren C -
Dave Karpf -
Deller, Ruth A -
eduardo erazo acosta -
Feona Attwood -
Holly Kruse -
Jean Burgess -
Jeremy hunsinger -
jeremy hunsinger -
Jeremy hunsinger
-
Kathleen Fitzpatrick -
krguidry＠mistakengoal.com -
Luis Hestres -
Mia Consalvo -
Raquel Recuero -
Rhiannon Bury -
Sarah Ann Oates -
Sky Croeser -
Terri Senft -
Unsworth,Kristene