Linking up: AoIR 2.0

by Marcus Foth, Open Seat Representative, AoIR Executive

The AIR list has recently been preoccupied with an ongoing discussion regarding Web 2.0. But, perhaps it is time to take the next step? In an effort to ensure AoIR members have the greatest opportunity to network with each other, the opinion offered here is that all active AoIR members should be encouraged to make full use of the web 2.0 tools which they may already be using. Also, added value can be gained by knowing who uses what tool. What follows here is a list of suggested actions:

If you are on Facebook.com, please join the AoIR group. We continue to explore ways to make more and better use of this space. See the site below for further details.

If you are on Linkedin.com, please list “AoIR” or the “Association of Internet Researchers" under your associations, so your name is returned in search results and your colleagues can find you. That supports AoIR, as well as allows your profile to be readily located. After all, that’s the reason for joining an online networking service like Linkedin.com.

Also, if you have a personal website, please mention your AoIR membership and link to our website aoir.org.

The AoIR Executive is currently exploring additional ways to support connections between members. Examples of building linkages include tools such as: skype, facebook, delicious, msn, dopplr, linkedin, email, blogs, websites, eprints and other tools and services, for example via a members directory.

If you have any ideas you want to share about building out the AoIR network, please email them to Marcus Foth, Open Seat Representative, AoIR Executive.

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Bringing down the Moon: AoIR and the Future of Internet Studies

Bringing down the moon?
"Internet research" is a perhaps hopelessly ambitious task. It must almost always be wildly interdisciplinary and most often profoundly international in its scope and awareness. Our "target" is a set of ever-changing, new and renewing interactions and behaviors facilitated by a mind-blowing plethora of constantly evolving and dramatically expanding suite of technologies anchored in a growing web of computer and communication networks. To seek to know and say anything defensible and meaningful about "the Internet" thus reminds me of the hopes of both children and some religious ceremonies to "bring down the moon"--to somehow bring down to earth what otherwise seems impossibly distant.

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AoIR Spotlight: John Monberg

Assistant Prof in Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures

Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI

Denise N. Rall, PhD
To nominate a scholar for the Spotlight, email Denise

There are many exceptional academics within the AoIR membership. The AoIR Spotlight segment highlights a researcher outside of the AoIR Executive or AoIR founding members and comments on their scholarly contribution to internet studies and research. For ease of reading, the spotlighted scholar is referred to by first name, with all other authors cited in the usual manner.

John Monberg’s engagement with the field of technology fueled his Master’s and PhD research at the renowned Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in their Science and Technology Studies program, founded by Langdon Winner. Other academics, including George Marcus at MIT, and RPI scholars Michael Fisher and Kim Fortune played an important role in developing his interests. Other AoIR members, such as Prof Laura Gurak, are graduates of RPI and close colleagues of John.

John’s research interests are broadly based: exploring the emergent information technology-mediated publics; public policy implications of new media technologies- especially privacy, universal service, monopoly regulation and intellectual property; social theories of modernity; qualitative research methods.

This could seem an impossible task. However, John outlines his extensive research interests in a large online bibliography, Interactive Social Spaces (n.d.), which is divided into the following sections: Cultural Theory, Communication Theory, Social Theory STS Theory, and Political Theory. This bibliography includes literature that explores the following issues:

• the bases and logic of individualism and social-cultural solidarity
• the relationship between the structuring of world views and perceptions of space and time
• the structure of capital, government and civil society
• the representation of place, especially global cities, postsuburban cities and virtual spaces
• the debate surrounding the modernism/postmodernism transition

Here, John shows his fascination with the role of technological infrastructures, economic webs, multiculturalism, reflexivity, the role of the academy, and the spaces available for critique. Each of these segments reviews the literature germane to the mediation of technology within these particular knowledge domains. Familiar authors, such as Arendt, Habermas, Braudel, de Certeau, Latour, Feenberg, Winner and Goffman are well represented, as well as specialists on American cities and culture, such as Lewis Mumford, Grady Clay (1974), Joshua Meyerowitz (1985), Sal Restivo (1989), Robert Rotenberg & Gary McDonogh (1993), Saskia Sassen (2007) and many others. Taking such a broad approach to the interaction between technology, culture, politics and ‘space’ requires a true interdisciplinary approach. This is, as John notes, a difficult scholarly task:

One of the things that comes with interdisciplinary work is that a scholar’s reputation will be spread across a number of disciplinary conversations and therefore is less likely to attain a similar level of prominence as a body of work that is concentrated in one subfield. Another dimension to my work, including teaching, is understanding the methods and form that ethnographic user research takes in the academy as opposed to the corporate software community. Twenty years ago, the gap between ethnography and software was much wider than it is today, and the academy had a monopoly on ethnographic research. Today, user experience is much more central to corporate success, and more resources are being devoted to an emerging user research/user experience profession (John Monberg, via email, 9 December 2007).

In response to this divide between the cultures of academic and corporate ethnography, John currently sits on a committee dedicated to re-crafting a professional certificate and graduate degree to respond to the opportunities and needs of this new field. Some of the concerns surrounding this new field are reflected in Kevin Kearney’s comments, User-Contributed Content in Corporate Knowledge Sharing (2006). This is a field to watch.

Further, it should however be noted that John’s earlier research on the Calumet project is serves as a good example of how the broader conceptualizations between technology, people, space and place can come together in a single, yet multi-storied, or multi-sited ethnography. With this project, he takes earlier assumptions from STS about the political nature of technologies and explores changes to the Calumet region. As John states, the Calumet Region of Northwest Indiana and Southeast Chicago holds both the most diverse concentration of species in the United States and the largest concentration of industry in the United States (see Monberg, 2003). The transformation of this area from empty frontier to dense metropolis holds many lessons for technological transformation. He was able to track these changes through a multi-sited ethnography which grapples with issues posed by globalization, the crisis of representation, and further, a post-structuralist criticism of representation, which assumes that the increased (global) flows of culture, trade, economy, and ideas present a challenge, even a dismissal of, earlier notions of ethnography and its role in the academy (Rall, 2002).

It is noted that throughout his career, John insists that research methods must be reconfigured to suit the complexity and rapidity of the mediations between users, space and place, exchange and technologies, and how vital it is that research methods for internet studies and research stand on firm ground. He re-explores some of these issues in his recent article on “Science and Technology approaches to Internet Research” (2005).

In closing, John is a true 21st century internet scholar. In particular, his blog of choice, the Urban Communication Foundation, highlights the new directions in urbanization, for example, the launch of the Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series, published by the Architectural League of New York and co-edited by Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz and Mark Shepard, explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism. Other interesting projects abound on this blog.

In conclusion, the AoIR Spotlight seeks to applaud AoIR members for their contributions to internet scholarship. I hope that this brief commentary on John Monberg does justice to his work, but any misrepresentations or errors are solely mine. The spotlighted scholar is free to respond in the next issue of the AoIR Newsletter. Do continue to send nominations for other worthy contributors to the field of Internet Studies & Research.

Special AoIR/ICS issue with papers from the 2007 AoIR conference

Caroline Haythornthwaite & Barry Wellman

In March 2008, look for the special issue of Information Communication & Society (volume 11, number 2) which is dedicated to papers from the 2007 Association of Internet Researchers conference.

As the introduction says, “[i]t is fitting that AoIR and ICS come together. Both are children of the Internet age; both are interdisciplinary, international, multimethod, enterprising, and focused on new digital media.”

The issue was conceived as a new way of publishing AoIR conference papers after the decision to no longer pursue the AoIR Annual. As a regular issue of ICS, it will be available to a wider audience, in print and through the web. Thanks go to Brian Loader, ICS editor, for facilitating this opportunity.

Thirty candidate papers were first selected by the AoIR Chair, Mia Consalvo, based on the abstracts submitted to the conference. The issue editors, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Chair of the AoIR Executive’s Publishing Committee, and Barry Wellman, an ICS editor, narrowed that list to 11 papers. Invitations were sent to authors to provide a full paper before the conference and, on a tight deadline, edit and return the papers shortly after the conference. Eight papers and their authors crossed the finishing line to create the special issue.

While one journal issue only begins to present the many topics and research projects reported on at the AoIR conference, this issue covers a lot of ground. Papers address readers’ responses to “old” media (radio, television and books) as presented through the Internet on websites and wikis; emerging media practices associated with cell phone use, multi-media production, Second Life, and animutations; and methods for approaching and analyzing online activities.

We highly recommend this issue and its contents, and look forward to being able to continue this new tradition with the ICS journal.

• Hiyam Hijazi-Omari & Rivka Ribak, “Playing with fire: On the domestication of the mobile phone among Palestinian teenage girls in Israel.”
• Ralph Schroeder & Matthijs den Besten, “Literary sleuths online: E-research collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki.”
• DeNel Rehberg Sedo, “Richard & Judy's Book Club and 'Canada Reads': Readers, books and cultural programming in a digital era.”
• Michelle Kazmer & Bo Xie, “Qualitative interviewing in Internet studies: Playing with the media, playing with the method.”
• Dan Li & Gina Walejko, “Splogs and abandoned blogs: The perils of sampling bloggers and their blogs.”
• Lori Kendall, “Beyond media producers and consumers: Online multi-media productions as interpersonal communication.”
• Smiljana Antonijevic, “From text to gesture online: A microethnographic analysis of nonverbal communication in the second life virtual environment.”
• Eszter Hargittai & Gina Walejko, “The participation divide: Content creation and sharing in the digital age.”

For details on Information, Communication and Society, click here.

PhD News

IR 8.0 Roundtable: Surviving Graduate School

One of the roundtables at this years conference, Internet Research 8.0, was Survivor: Graduate School which aimed at communicating tips for getting a successful graduate experience. Former graduate student representative Ted Coopman hosted the event with nine other AoIR members who are currently working on or have just finished their theses. Erika Pearson was kind enough to record the session for me as I was not able to attend and my intent with this short article is to pass some of the wisdom on to a wider audience.

Something that was underscored by a majority of the roundtable is the need for grad students to make “time to live”. Scheduling is not just about getting things done but also about being able to keep a balance in life between work and those things that simply make you smile. However, the commentators were not fully in agreement on how to put this theory in to practice. Some suggested to set goals and finish them, such as making sure you write 500 words before breakfast. Others thought it more important to know when to give it a rest. If you are not getting anything done, take a break and then get back to work when you feel rested. I assume this is something everyone has to figure out for themselves but whichever strategy you find useful the point is to reserve some time for other activities (or in-activities), and most importantly – not to feel guilty about it!

Another issue that many seemed to agree on is the importance of networking and collegiality. Networking basically means knowing who people are as well as making sure people know who you are. If you are working at home more than at your institution for example, make a habit of going there regularly if only to have a chat over lunch. Another important venue for networking is of course conferences such as Internet Research but some also mentioned email and mailing lists as great ways to keep in touch and stay in the loop. Further, collegiality puts emphasis on such networking being of a respectful and honest kind. In essence, if you consider others they are more likely to consider you. But keeping up with what other people are doing is not only an issue of social but also cultural capital as Bourdieu might have put it. One roundtable contributor pointed out that while some seminar or presentation might not seem directly related to your work it might still “strike a chord” once you take the time to engage in it and attention to other peoples work is thus rarely or ever useless. Another pointed out that collaborative work is very enriching and a third suggested that co-authoring can be a way to expand your area of competence without having to be an expert on everything.

A third issue that the roundtable brought up as a clear concern for grad students is publishing. Some emphasized the importance of starting to write early and trying to get published early. Submitting and revising articles is a learning process in itself and there is no reason to put it off. The table was not unanimous on this issue though since an extensive focus on publishing articles may lead you off track. Again then grad students need to find a balance, this time between completing the thesis and developing skills for writing good conference papers and articles. The roundtable also touched upon the issue of where to send your articles. While First Monday was mentioned as a viable option for those eager to publish it was also noted that you will benefit from publishing where your article will best be appreciated. It might be advisable then to first try the most prominent journals in your field and then if necessary work your way down from there.

Finally, when discussing the way to a pleasant and rewarding graduate experience it is important to remember that graduate programs work quite differently in different parts of the world. On this note some participants brought up the difficulties of getting published when English is not your first language. In such instances it was suggested that students get their papers reviewed by a translator before submitting thus (hopefully) relieving them of the first round of corrections after review.

Being only about a year in to my own PhD work I found this roundtable very valuable, and I hope I have managed to communicate some of the more relevant points to you. I would also like to thank Ted Coopman, Mark Bell, Sue Malta, Kris Markman, Erika Pearson, Raquel Recuero, Daniel Skog, Stephanie Tuszynski, Mary-Helen Ward and Homero Gil de Zuniga for sharing their hard (l)earned lessons with us. If you are looking for more tips you might want to have a look at Kamler and Thomson’s (2006) Helping Doctoral Students Write – Pedagogies for Supervision. As the title indicates this is actually a book intended for supervisors but according to Mary-Helen it is nonetheless very useful for grad students. And I think that’s it for now folks. Time for a break! ;)

Åsa Rosenberg, AoIR Graduate student representative
asa.rosenberg@sociology.gu.se

New Publications

Announcing The SAGE Handbook of E-Learning Research

Editors Richard Andrews and Caroline Haythornthwaite are pleased to announce the publication of the Sage Handbook of E-learning Research (Sage, London, 2007). As editors, we feel this marks a significant stage in the progression of work on e-learning as it represents a full volume devoted to research rather than the practice of online teaching and learning. The handbook addresses the need for a coherent view of what constitutes e-learning research, which we describe as research into, on, or about the use of electronic technologies for teaching and learning.

Drawing primarily on e-learning in the formal setting of higher education, the chapters in the handbook provide state-of-the-art reviews of research on learning in online contexts from multiple disciplinary perspectives, and with attention to the way information and communication technologies shape and are shaped by educational practice. The introduction draws on the literature on rhetoric, social informatics, computer-mediated communication, and technology co-construction to discuss this co-evolutionary process. The chapters that follow provide background and context for e-learning initiatives, theoretical underpinnings, policy practices, language and literacy challenges, and design issues.

As editors, we are already aware of areas that did not make it into this collection, and many more areas of e-learning that deserve attention and inquiry. Meantime, we feel confident that the work described in these chapters will help form a foundation for such work and provide input for the ongoing discussion of the research agenda for e-learning. We recommend this book and its chapters for those embarking on e-learning research and for those who want to gain an understanding of the current breadth of the field. We also recommend this book to those who are already contributing to the research on e-learning, with the hope that we will be able to engage in conversation and discovery with you about your work at sometime in the future.

HANDBOOK OF E-LEARNING RESEARCH
Edited by: Richard Andrews, Institute of Education University of London
Caroline Haythornthwaite, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
London: Sage

Table of Contents

Introduction
Richard Andrews and Caroline Haythornthwaite, Introduction to e-learning research

Contexts For Researching E-learning
Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Murray Turoff and Linda Harasim, Development and philosophy of the field of asynchronous learning networks
Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe, On computers and writing
Caroline Haythornthwaite, Digital divide and e-learning
Angela McFarlane, Learning and the world of games and play
Christopher Hoadley, Learning sciences theories and methods for e-learning researchers

Theory
Melody M. Thompson, From distance education to e-learning
Terry Locke, E-learning and the reshaping of rhetorical space
Andrew Whitworth, Researching the cognitive cultures of e-learning
Mike Sharples, Josie Taylor and Giasemi Vavoula, A theory of learning for the mobile age
Naomi Miyake, Computer supported collaborative learning

Policy
Virgil E. Varvel, Rae-Anne Montague & Leigh S. Estabrook , Policy and e-learning
Gráinne Conole, An international comparison of the relationship between policy and practice in e-learning
Michelle M. Kazmer, Community-embedded learning
Konrad Morgan and Madeleine Morgan, The challenges of gender, age and personality in e-learning

Language and Literacy
Janina Brutt-Griffler, Bilingualism and e-learning
Carol A. Chapelle, Second language learning and online communication
Illana Snyder, Literacy, learning and technology studies
Zhao Yuan, Problems of researching e-learning: the case of computer-assisted language learning

Design Issues
Bronwyn Stuckey & Sasha Barab, New conceptions for community design
Wynne Harlen and Susan J. Doubler, Researching the impact of online professional development for teachers
Ellen Roberts & Jane Rostron, Exploring e-learning community in a global postgraduate programme
Andrew Burn, The place of digital video in the curriculum.

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Digital Contagions. A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses by Jussi Parikka:
(New York: Peter Lang, 2007).

Digital Contagions is the first book to offer a comprehensive and critical analysis of the culture and history of the computer virus phenomenon. The book maps the anomalies of network culture from the angles of security concerns, the biopolitics of digital systems, and the aspirations for artificial life in software.

The genealogy of network culture is approached from the standpoint of accidents that are endemic to the digital media ecology. Viruses, worms, and other software objects are not, then, seen merely from the perspective of anti-virus research or practical security concerns, but as cultural and historical expressions that traverse a non-linear field from fiction to technical media, from net art to politics of software. Jussi Parikka mobilizes an extensive array of source materials and intertwines them with an inventive new materialist cultural analysis.

Digital Contagions draws from the cultural theories of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Friedrich Kittler, and Paul Virilio, among others, and offers novel insights into historical media analysis.

Jussi Parikka teaches and writes on the cultural theory and history of new media. He studied cultural history at the University of Turku, Finland, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. You can visit Parikka's homepage or see more about the book here.

4th Prato Conference on Community Informatics
by Dr. Michel J. Menou

On November 5-7, 2007, the 4th community informatics conference was held at the Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy, hosted by the Centre for Community Networking Research, Monash University, with the support of Turabo University Puerto Rico, the School of Information and Library Sciences, University of Illinois-Champaign, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and the Swedish International Development Agency IT
support program. Support from the Swedish institutions assisted in particular with the attendance of delegates from Peru and Mozambique while various delegates contributed towards the attendance of a number of other people.

People from over 22 countries attended, ranging from Finland to New Zealand, with a fair number from Latin America. All participants demonstrated their keen desire to share their work in community informatics, and to engage with, and learn from, people from other regions of the world.

The conference was also the occasion of the launching of the International Development Informatics Association, which saw a fascinating and illuminating exchange of ideas from both developed and
developing countries.

The number of PhD students in attendance has also increased compared to previous editions, adding to the usefulness of the conference as a place to exchange ideas, meet younger scholars and practitioners, and network.

The conference was very successful not only for the quality of scholarly communications and professional networking but not less significantly in strengthening and expanding a vibrant social group.

Click here for more information

The 5th conference will be held October 27- 30, 2008 with the first day reserved for intensive workshops and other activities. The conference theme and other information will be released shortly.

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Assistant Professor of Global Communications - Salary: $50,000 to less than $60,000 Institution: American University of Paris Location: France Date posted: 12/21/2007

The Department of Languages and Communication at Prairie View A&M University invites applications for two tenure-track Assistant Professor in Communication positions beginning Fall 2008 in Interpersonal Communication and Media Production which include courses in Web Design, Photojournalism, TV Production, and Broadcast Writing and one full-time non-tenure track instructor position in Communication to a departmental undergraduate student body of over 400.

The University at Albany, SUNY, seeks an experienced journalist and promising scholar to fill a tenure-track assistant professor position in its interdisciplinary Journalism Program. Successful applicants' preferred area of expertise is New Media, including multimedia journalism, new media studies, videography, visual culture, digital publishing, and citizen journalism.

The Art and Communication departments at Wheaton College invite applications for a full-time tenure-track Assistant Professor in New Media, commencing July 1, 2008.

The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) invites applications for a tenure-track position at all ranks in all areas of Security and Risk Analysis (SRA). Highly qualified candidates at assistant professor rank will be considered for a PNC Career Development Professorship. Candidates are especially encouraged to apply who conduct interdisciplinary research with a broad and integrated view of SRA.

The School of Communications of Quinnipiac University seeks candidates for a tenure-track appointment at the assistant or associate level in the area of interactive communications to start August, 2008. The successful candidate, with expertise in the area of interactive communication, will make major contributions to our graduate program in this area; he or she will also contribute to other concentrations in the curriculum, such as, journalism, public relations, media production, or media studies, depending upon experience and research/creative interests.

Deputy Head of Communications in the Communication and Information Directorate: The post is seven months maternity cover, starting February 1st 2008, for the Deputy Head of Communications position within the Communications Team. The post is one of the two grade E posts in the Communications Team who will work closely with the Head of Communications, with a particular responsibility for the management and strategic development of the ESRC's press and PR activity and internal communications. The successful candidate will be expected to be a media spokesperson for the ESRC, promote strategic communication across the organisation and support the day-to-day delivery of the corporate communications strategy and internal communications.

To see more details on these openings and more jobs, click here.

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Introduction:
The Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) is an entirely volunteer run organisation. Its primary resources are: its members, the general email list (air-l), the website (aoir.org) including conference papers, wiki, members directory and other participatory tools and resources, information about the annual conference (conferences.aoir.org), the Aoir working groups, the four AoIR annuals, and the executive

Resource Guide:
List Serv
The air-l list serv is open to both members and non-members and is where the main life of AoIR occurs, in between the annual conferences - generally friendly and a great source of information.
http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Web Site
The website (ww.aoir.org) has content that is open to members and non-members, general resources and information about the organisation is open to all. Content varies according to how much people are putting into the site. Currently we have the following:
• air-l email list
• AoIR Wiki
• Members Directory
• Scholarly Resources
• AoIR Conferences
• Internet Research Annual
• AoIR Publications

The AoIR wiki is also open to all internet research scholars.

Scholarly Resources
These are divided into:
• Individual Articles and Papers
• Books, Journals and Bibliographies
• Email Lists and electronic forums
• Websites and Webliographies

AoIR conferences
The heart and soul – (after the list serv) - we are on our 9th!
AoIR 9: Rethinking Communities, Rethinking Place, ths Conference is in October in Copenhagen. More information here.

AoIR Research Annuals
The four AoIR annuals were produced from the conferences and are published by Peter Lang as the Internet Research Annuals (volumes 1-4). These were edited by the Exec and conference organisers each year.

AoIR web site publications are currently:
• The AoIR Ethics Guide, the fruits of the first Ethics Working Group, written in 2002 under the leadership of Charles Ess
• The AoIR List of Lists, a collaborative effort of the Executive in 2003, to bring together a list of many useful email lists

Links to all of these resources are available on the website: www.aoir.org

The Executive Committee:
This is the primary decision-making body of the Association of Internet Researchers. Its primary role is to ensure the continued viability of the Association, advance the interests of members and of Internet research in general. The Committee is elected every two years, with the previous Vice-President becoming President.

The current Executive is:

• President - Charles Ess
• Vice-President - Mia Consalvo
• Treasurer - Monica Murero
• Secretary - Sabyrna Cornish
• Graduate Student - Åsa Rosenberg
• Open Seats (3) - Axel Bruns, Heidi Campbell, Marcus Foth
• Past President - Matthew Allen
• Systems Officers (2) - Alex Halavais, Holly Kruse

The roles remain the same but anyone in the membership can be elected - so take part and help contribute

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