The Student Paper Award for the #AoIR2021 Virtual Conference goes to Nomy Bitman for her paper, “Rethinking Visibility, Personalization and Representation: Disability Activism in Social Media.” The paper was reviewed amongst the 75 accepted student papers and is regarded the most outstanding paper of those submissions for this year.
Specifically, we selected this paper because of its focus on the decision-making thought processes of disability social media activists who have concealable communicative disabilities. Through 31 in-depth interviews with people in this community, Nomy’s paper identified stages of activist performance of disabled identity while further revealing ableist assumptions behind forms of social media activism. We thought Nomy’s paper was methodologically rigorous, comprehensive and engaging with respect to the existing literature, and attentive to the voices of these marginalized communities.
You will be able to hear Nomy’s paper presentation in Playlist 8: Digital Activism and Resistance #1 here (https://members.aoir.org/AoIR2021Playlists) and meet her virtually during the conference.
We would also like to recognize, Katherine (Katie) Mackinnon’s paper, “Critical Care and the Early Web: Ethical Digital Methods for Archive Youth Data” with an Honorable Mention. You can find Katie’s presentation in Playlist 34: Research ethics (https://members.aoir.org/AoIR2021Playlists).
