New media program/journal rankings
It occurred to me the other day that I know of no published rankings of new media programs around the world, nor of any ranking for journals which feature new media research. If rankings already exist, forgive this message...and please let me know where those rankings are... By rankings, I suppose I'm referring to reputational studies (e.g., "Which journals/post-graduate programs are the most highly regarded?"). I know of the National Communication Association's reputational studies of communication Ph.D. programs, which include a lengthy methodology and rationale with the results (http://www.natcom.org/nca/Template2.asp?bid=415 <https://www.umail.utah.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://www.umail.utah.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://www.umail.utah.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.natcom.org/nca/Template2.asp?bid=415> ), and I know there are various indices for journal rankings out there...but none are specific to new media (that I can find). I think rankings like these can have some benefit for disciplines. Establishing reputational rankings can help prospective graduate students find their place in a good program, can help faculty make tenure cases for their publishing record in new media journals, and so on. At the same time, reputational rankings can work to create infighting in a discipline (or, specifically, a professional association like AoIR), and, frankly, reputational rankings fail to really address the concept of "fit"--the fit between prospective grad student and graduate program, or the fit between manuscript and journal. So, realizing, of course, that any attempt to poll people or somehow measure "highly-regarded-ness" is extremely difficult and may even polarize people across agenda lines, I throw these questions out to the list as gently as I can: 1. If there are no existing rankings, is anyone out there interested in teaming up to take on this task? 2. What would a reputational study of programs and/or journals look like? What "stuff" about this discipline do people want to know...other than program and journal rankings? 3. What are the pros and cons of doing such a study? Do rankings work to stimulate programs/journals to become "better," or do rankings work to make invisible the many programs/journals that may not "make the cut" in the first broad sweep? And do rankings work to pin-down a discipline and solidify disciplinary boundaries, which may work against the project of interdisciplinarity? Would a ranking have any value? ...If anyone has thoughts on the issue, or is interested in exploring it with me (or without me), or knows of something like this that's already been done, shoot me an email: daren.brabham@utah.edu Thanks! --- Daren C. Brabham Graduate Teaching Fellow Department of Communication University of Utah 255 S. Central Campus Dr., Rm. 2400 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 phone: (801) 633-4796 web: www.darenbrabham.com <http://www.darenbrabham.com/>
doesn't matter what you do.... these 'rankings' will always be a fiction. Personally, I'd suggest that any program that purports to be high in some measurement is likely covering up some significant problem. Let's take Utah for instance... it is a good program, is it the best? who is going to rank higher and on what measurements? how do we craft it so Utah will appear more significant than say University of Virginia's Media Studies? or NYU....'s which program there, they must have 3-4 new media programs of one sort or another. If we consider the communications methodology, you will run into significant problems as some of our most productive members have been in non-communication fields. I ran into this issue a few years ago when i was writing a paper that I ultimately gave up on trying to map the then nascent field of game studies. If you want to give it a shot, go for it, but I'd say this is the sort of thing that should only be pursued by people with tenure who never want to leave their current tenured position. I certainly don't want to know journal rankings, I'm sure that knowledge has some utility, but it isn't the sort of utility that I think should be perpetrated upon junior and senior faculty who are trying to be solid scholars. Publishing in highly ranked journals is not in my opinion, the way to be the best scholar, it is the way to be the person that fits the journal's mould's best. Those are very different things. Sometimes good journals have great and meaningful scholarship that maps strongly onto meaningful indicators... sometimes not. I don't want to perpetuate the mythos of the 'top journals' so that it becomes something you need to include on your vita. For me, I'd be more interested in seeing whether people's research is cited in dissertations and master's theses. Publish it anywhere, let's see who finds it and finds it useful. On Nov 3, 2007, at 3:40 PM, Daren Carroll Brabham wrote:
It occurred to me the other day that I know of no published rankings of new media programs around the world, nor of any ranking for journals which feature new media research. If rankings already exist, forgive this message...and please let me know where those rankings are...
By rankings, I suppose I'm referring to reputational studies (e.g., "Which journals/post-graduate programs are the most highly regarded?"). I know of the National Communication Association's reputational studies of communication Ph.D. programs, which include a lengthy methodology and rationale with the results (http://www.natcom.org/nca/Template2.asp?bid=415 <https://www.umail.utah.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://www.umail.utah....
), and I know there are various indices for journal rankings out there...but none are specific to new media (that I can find). I think rankings like these can have some benefit for disciplines. Establishing reputational rankings can help prospective graduate students find their place in a good program, can help faculty make tenure cases for their publishing record in new media journals, and so on. At the same tim e, reputational rankings can work to create infighting in a discipline (or, specifically, a professional association like AoIR), and, frankly, reputational rankings fail to really address the concept of "fit"--the fit between prospective grad student and graduate program, or the fit between manuscript and journal.
So, realizing, of course, that any attempt to poll people or somehow measure "highly-regarded-ness" is extremely difficult and may even polarize people across agenda lines, I throw these questions out to the list as gently as I can:
1. If there are no existing rankings, is anyone out there interested in teaming up to take on this task?
2. What would a reputational study of programs and/or journals look like? What "stuff" about this discipline do people want to know...other than program and journal rankings?
3. What are the pros and cons of doing such a study? Do rankings work to stimulate programs/journals to become "better," or do rankings work to make invisible the many programs/journals that may not "make the cut" in the first broad sweep? And do rankings work to pin-down a discipline and solidify disciplinary boundaries, which may work against the project of interdisciplinarity? Would a ranking have any value?
...If anyone has thoughts on the issue, or is interested in exploring it with me (or without me), or knows of something like this that's already been done, shoot me an email: daren.brabham@utah.edu
Thanks!
--- Daren C. Brabham Graduate Teaching Fellow Department of Communication University of Utah 255 S. Central Campus Dr., Rm. 2400 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 phone: (801) 633-4796 web: www.darenbrabham.com <http://www.darenbrabham.com/>
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jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu ) wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
A rubric for what I carefully pay attention to: 1) Who is doing work that I like, can believe in, and can validate? 2) Are those people in a place where synergistic effects happen - where multiple really smart people get together and produce something amazing? 3) Where should our own work be sent in order for people who will be able to use it to get maximum exposure to it? A whole lot of things about different programs are driven by the individuals who are present in those locations: I don't think anyone would flinch if they were advised to try to get a position in a program where there's a Steve or a Susan or a Nancy or a Charles or a Matt or a Bonnie or an Annette (among a whole bunch of other folks...); some folks are able to very heroically drive successes around them, and seem to turn dross into gold on a frightfully regular basis. --elijah On Sat, 3 Nov 2007, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 16:05:28 -0500 From: Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> Reply-To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] New media program/journal rankings
doesn't matter what you do.... these 'rankings' will always be a fiction. Personally, I'd suggest that any program that purports to be high in some measurement is likely covering up some significant problem. Let's take Utah for instance... it is a good program, is it the best? who is going to rank higher and on what measurements? how do we craft it so Utah will appear more significant than say University of Virginia's Media Studies? or NYU....'s which program there, they must have 3-4 new media programs of one sort or another. If we consider the communications methodology, you will run into significant problems as some of our most productive members have been in non-communication fields.
I ran into this issue a few years ago when i was writing a paper that I ultimately gave up on trying to map the then nascent field of game studies. If you want to give it a shot, go for it, but I'd say this is the sort of thing that should only be pursued by people with tenure who never want to leave their current tenured position.
I certainly don't want to know journal rankings, I'm sure that knowledge has some utility, but it isn't the sort of utility that I think should be perpetrated upon junior and senior faculty who are trying to be solid scholars. Publishing in highly ranked journals is not in my opinion, the way to be the best scholar, it is the way to be the person that fits the journal's mould's best. Those are very different things.
Sometimes good journals have great and meaningful scholarship that maps strongly onto meaningful indicators... sometimes not. I don't want to perpetuate the mythos of the 'top journals' so that it becomes something you need to include on your vita. For me, I'd be more interested in seeing whether people's research is cited in dissertations and master's theses. Publish it anywhere, let's see who finds it and finds it useful.
On Nov 3, 2007, at 3:40 PM, Daren Carroll Brabham wrote:
It occurred to me the other day that I know of no published rankings of new media programs around the world, nor of any ranking for journals which feature new media research. If rankings already exist, forgive this message...and please let me know where those rankings are...
By rankings, I suppose I'm referring to reputational studies (e.g., "Which journals/post-graduate programs are the most highly regarded?"). I know of the National Communication Association's reputational studies of communication Ph.D. programs, which include a lengthy methodology and rationale with the results (http://www.natcom.org/nca/Template2.asp?bid=415 <https://www.umail.utah.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://www.umail.utah....
), and I know there are various indices for journal rankings out there...but none are specific to new media (that I can find). I think rankings like these can have some benefit for disciplines. Establishing reputational rankings can help prospective graduate students find their place in a good program, can help faculty make tenure cases for their publishing record in new media journals, and so on. At the same tim e, reputational rankings can work to create infighting in a discipline (or, specifically, a professional association like AoIR), and, frankly, reputational rankings fail to really address the concept of "fit"--the fit between prospective grad student and graduate program, or the fit between manuscript and journal.
So, realizing, of course, that any attempt to poll people or somehow measure "highly-regarded-ness" is extremely difficult and may even polarize people across agenda lines, I throw these questions out to the list as gently as I can:
1. If there are no existing rankings, is anyone out there interested in teaming up to take on this task?
2. What would a reputational study of programs and/or journals look like? What "stuff" about this discipline do people want to know...other than program and journal rankings?
3. What are the pros and cons of doing such a study? Do rankings work to stimulate programs/journals to become "better," or do rankings work to make invisible the many programs/journals that may not "make the cut" in the first broad sweep? And do rankings work to pin-down a discipline and solidify disciplinary boundaries, which may work against the project of interdisciplinarity? Would a ranking have any value?
...If anyone has thoughts on the issue, or is interested in exploring it with me (or without me), or knows of something like this that's already been done, shoot me an email: daren.brabham@utah.edu
Thanks!
--- Daren C. Brabham Graduate Teaching Fellow Department of Communication University of Utah 255 S. Central Campus Dr., Rm. 2400 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 phone: (801) 633-4796 web: www.darenbrabham.com <http://www.darenbrabham.com/>
_______________________________________________ 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/
jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu )
wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com
() ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
_______________________________________________ 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/
participants (3)
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Daren Carroll Brabham -
elw＠stderr.org -
Jeremy Hunsinger