AoIR is grateful each year for the hard work of the editors of our special conference issue of Information, Communication & Society. For #AoIR2017 our editors were Koen Leurs, Assistant Professor in Gender & Postcolonial Studies, Utrecht University, and Alison Harvey, Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of Leicester.
For the last 10 years, Information, Communication & Society has published a special issue including some highlights from the annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference. This, the 11th special issue, continues in the tradition of sharing rigorous, interdisciplinary, critical research from the event. #AoIR2017 was themed on ‘Networked Publics’ and took place from 18 to 21 October in Estonia in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. The conference was hosted by the programme chair Andra Siibak, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tartu, and facilitated by the Institute of Social Studies and the Centre for the Information Society. Held at the Dorpat Convention Center in picturesque downtown Tartu, the conference drew together attendees from a broad range of national, disciplinary, and methodological backgrounds, and we present here a selection of papers reflecting this broadness and diversity of internet research. Three hundred and thirty-eight participants from 29 countries participated in #AoIR2017, and the programme included the presentation of 129 papers, alongside 18 pre-constituted panels, 4 fishbowl sessions, 10 roundtables, an experimental session, 9 pre-conference workshops and a doctoral colloquium. The pre-conferences focused on topics ranging from visual social media research to digital methods to academic freedom to sessions dedicated to the experiences of early career researchers. This special issue is pleased to share the emphasis on the diverging and contradictory consequences of the formation of networked publics. We have chosen to focus in particular on studies of publics that scrutinize how they may exacerbate injustices or work towards social justice.
The #AoIR2017 issue can be accessed here.
We are happy to welcome back Alison Harvey along with Cornelius Puschmann, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, to edit the #AoIR2018 ICS Special Issue.
All AoIR Members have access to our previous special issues by logging into their membership and looking under the Members tab.
