I am pleased to announce that AoIR has now commenced the process of electing a new Executive Committee to take office in October of this year to serve until October 2011. We are seeking members’ interest in nominating for the new executive and providing notice for everyone of the voting timeline and procedures.

Here is an overview of the election timeline, procedures and positions for nomination, as determined strictly by the Association’s by-laws. Voting instructions will be provided later and separately.

**Please note the different timing for officers and other positions**

TIME FRAME OF THE ELECTION:
1. Call for Nominations: opens June 8, 2009

2. Nominations close for the 4 officer positions: July 15, 2009
Nominations close for the 1 grad student and 3 open seats on the executive: July 30, 2009

3. Ballot sent to members August 7, 2009

4. Voting begins: August 10, 2009
(Ballot-counter to be announced by 1. August, 2009)

5. Voting ends for 4 officer positions: August 24, 2009
Voting ends for 1 grad student and 3 open seats: September 7, 2009

The new committee is formally announced and assumes its duties at the end of the Annual General Meeting during the AoIR conference, 7-11 October 2009. (Specific time of the AGM to be announced soon.)

During the period of voting, a forum will be available for discussion with candidates. Candidates’ statements will also be made available with the ballot sent to members.

A QUICK ORGANIZATIONAL PRIMER:

The organizational structure of AoIR is simple. There are 4 officers, 3 open seat representatives, 1 graduate student representative and 2 appointed positions who together with the Immediate Past President make up the 11-member executive committee that runs the show. Elected officials hold their positions for two years. In this election, you are invited to nominate yourself or anyone else whom you think would do a good job, for any position other than the President - the current Vice President assumes the Presidency.

Here are brief descriptions of positions
1. President: the “CEO”, supervises the organization, performs certain legally required duties. [The Current VP becomes the President]

2. Vice President: “back up” for President, various duties as they arise; *becomes President after 2 years*

3. Secretary: Handles records and membership matters.

4. Treasurer: liaises with Secretary to maintain membership records; takes care of financial and related administrative duties (e.g., annual report to membership and U.S. tax authorities), including close attention to the annual Internet Research (IR) conference budget.

5. Graduate Student Representative: responsible for running graduate student activities (must be a grad student, but all can vote)

6-8. Open Committee Seats: Three open Seats on the Executive Committee
Represent membership of AoIR, contribute to decision making. Take responsibility for specific projects or activities to promote the association within their term.

9-10. Appointed positions to manage systems and email lists

11. Immediate Past President

Candidates should also familiarise themselves formal statement of duties and responsibilities in the Association’s by-laws.

NOMINATIONS AND ELECTION PROCESSES
Only a member of AoIR can run for a position, nominated by anyone. If nominated for more than one position a nominee must choose to run for one (and only one) position in this election. You may nominate yourself or another person (or people).

Self Nominations: Email AoIR Secretary Sabryna Cornish and indicate the position for which you are nominating and you will be added to the list of nominees. Please provide, in your nomination email a short candidate statement addressing the questions below.

Nominating Others: Email AoIR Secretary Sabryna Cornish with the name of the person you want to nominate, the position for which you are nominating this person, contact information for that person, and an indication of whether you know if this person would accept this nomination (if you don’t know, we’ll contact them and ask).

All candidates for election will be required to provide answers to the questions listed at the end of this email, have the answers posted to the AoIR election forum website, and participate in an online candidate forum.

In addition the Graduate Student candidates must confirm in their response that they comply with the by-laws: the Graduate Student Representative must be actively enrolled in a degree program at the time of nomination and election and intends to be enrolled for the coming northern academic year (defined to be September 2009-June 2010)

The voting system used by AoIR is one vote per member for each of the seven positions for election listed above. Votes are counted by a ballot counter who is a member of the Association but not a member of the executive. In the case of the four officers, the candidate with the highest number of votes shall be declared the winner; in the case of the open seats, the three candidates with the highest, second-highest and third highest votes shall be declared the winners of the open seats. In the case of the Graduate Student representative, the candidate with the highest number of votes shall be declared the winner

In the case of tied results for the officer positions, the winner shall be determined by the ballot counter, by drawing of lots, using a method that ensures each of the tying candidates has an equal chance of success and witnessed by at least 1 person independent of the association. In the case of tied results for the open seat positions, the drawing of lots shall be used only when there are more tied candidates than seats available.

QUESTIONS FOR CANDIDATES

1) What is your interest in this position?

2) What are your qualifications for this position (including prior experience and participation in AoIR)?

3) What are two or three short-term goals you would like to achieve through membership of the executive (include a rationale for each and how you would contribute to their achievement)?

4) What is your long-term vision for AoIR?

5) What else should voters consider when deciding whether or not to vote for you?

In answering the questions, please be concise and give information specific to the position for which you are nominating and which will permit voters to assess your case for election to that position.

In closing - please consider carefully contributing your time and energy to making AoIR even better in the upcoming years!

I would also encourage persons interested in running for a specific position to contact the current office-holder(s) with any specific questions, etc.

Looking forward to it! Many thanks in advance to all who will consider running and serving AoIR in this way.

- charles ess
Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University, Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA

Professor MSO (med særlige opgaver),
Department of Information and Media Studies
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

President, Association of Internet Researchers
Co-editor, International Journal of Internet Research Ethics

Co-chair, CATaC conferences

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. — Analects 13.23

The new informational website for Internet Research 10.0 is now up, and it includes the Call for Papers, duplicated below. Note the rapidly approaching deadline of February 1.

Internet Research 10.0 - Internet: Critical

The 10th Annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)

October 7-11, 2009

Hilton Milwaukee City Center

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

As the Internet has become an increasingly ubiquitous and mundane medium, the analytical shortcomings of the division between the online and the offline have become evident. Shifting the focus to the fundamental intermeshing of online and offline spaces, networks, economies, politics, locations, agencies, and ethics, Internet: Critical invites scholars to consider material frameworks, infrastructures, and exchanges as enabling constraints in terms of online phenomena.

Furthermore, the conference invites considerations of Internet research as a critical practice and theory, its intellectual histories, investments, and social reverberations. How do we, as Internet researchers, connect our work to social concerns or cultural developments both local and global, and what kinds of agency may we exercise in the process? What kinds of redefinitions of the political (in terms of networks, micropolitics, participation, lifestyles, resistant or critical practices) are necessary when conceptualizing Internet cultures within the current geopolitical and geotechnological climate?

To this end, we call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline, methodology, and community, and from conjunctions of multiple disciplines, methodologies and academic communities that address the conference themes, including papers that intersect and/or interconnect the following:

• critical moments, elements, practices
• critical theories, methods, constructs
• critical voices, histories, texts
• critical networks, junctures, spaces
• critical technologies, artifacts, failures
• critical ethics, interventions, alternatives.

Sessions at the conference will be established that specifically address the conference themes, and we welcome innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on those themes. We also welcome submissions on topics that address social, cultural, political, legal, aesthetic, economic, and/or philosophical aspects of the Internet beyond the conference themes. In all cases, we welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions as well as international collaborations from both AoIR and non-AoIR members.

SUBMISSIONS

We seek proposals for several different kinds of contributions. We welcome proposals for traditional academic conference PAPERS and we also welcome proposals for ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS that will focus on discussion and interaction among conference delegates, as well as organized PANEL PROPOSALS that present a coherent group of papers on a single theme.

DEADLINES

Call for Papers Released: 17 November 2008

Submissions Due: 1 February 2009

Notification: 15 March 2009

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

All papers and presentations in this session will be evaluated in a standard blind peer review.

Format

• PAPERS (individual or multi-author) - submit abstract of 600-800 words
• FULL PAPERS (OPTIONAL): For submitters requiring peer review of full papers, manuscripts of up to 8,000 words will be accepted for review. These will be reviewed and judged separately from abstract submissions
• PANEL PROPOSALS - submit a 600-800 word description of the panel theme, plus 250-500 word abstract for each paper or presentation
• ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS - submit a statement indicating the nature of the roundtable discussion and interaction

Papers, presentations and panels will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer review, coordinated and overseen by the Program Chair. Each individual is invited to submit a proposal for 1 paper or 1 presentation. A person may also propose a panel session, which may include a second paper that they are presenting. An individual may also submit a roundtable proposal. You may be listed as co-author on additional papers as long as you are not presenting them.

PUBLICATION OF PAPERS

Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of the journal Information, Communication & Society, edited by Caroline Haythornwaite and Lori Kendall. Authors selected for submission for this issue will be contacted prior to the conference.

All papers submitted to the conference system will be available to AoIR members after the conference.

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

On October 7, 2009, there will be a limited number of pre-conference workshops which will provide participants with in-depth, hands-on and/or creative opportunities. We invite proposals for these pre-conference workshops. Local presenters are encouraged to propose workshops that will invite visiting researchers into their labs or studios or locales. Proposals should be no more than 1000 words, and should clearly outline the purpose, methodology, structure, costs, equipment and minimal attendance required, as well as explaining its relevance to the conference as a whole. Proposals will be accepted if they demonstrate that the workshop will add significantly to the overall program in terms of thematic depth, hands on experience, or local opportunities for scholarly or artistic connections. These proposals and all inquiries regarding pre-conference proposals should be submitted as soon as possible to both the Conference Chair and Program Chair and no later than March 31, 2009.

CONTACT INFORMATION

• Program Chair: Susanna Paasonen, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
• Conference Co-Chairs and Coordinators: Elizabeth Buchanan, Michael Zimmer, UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies and Center for Information Policy Research; Steve Jones, University of Illinois-Chicago

Update (20 November 2008): The CFP for Internet Research 10.0 has now been released.

A call for papers will be issued soon. For now, be sure to mark the date on your calenders for Internet Research 10.0:

Internet: Critical
7-11 October 2009
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Venue: Milwaukee Hilton City Center

Themes:
critical moments, elements, practices
critical theories, methods, constructs
critical voices, histories, texts
critical networks, junctures, spaces
critical technologies, artifacts, failures
critical ethics, interventions, alternatives

Programming:
Susanna Paasonen, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

Local Committee:
Elizabeth Buchanan and Michael Zimmer, UW-Milwaukee; Steve Jones , UI-Chicago

For more information: cipr (at) uwm.edu