For #AoIR2018, the Association of Internet Researchers is pleased to again partner with Internet Policy Review on a special issue of the best internet policy-related papers from the conference. Internet Policy Review is an interdisciplinary open access journal focusing on internet norms, standards and regulation, with a specialisation on European discussions.

We first partnered with IPR for a special issue from the #AoIR2017 conference. An issue on Networked Publics that emerges from this partnership will launch in the first quarter of 2018, under the guest editorship of William H. Dutton. More details soon!

Researchers interested in having their #AoIR2018 proposal considered for the Internet Policy Review special issue on Transnational Materialities – to be published in March/April 2019 – are invited to add a note to that effect when submitting their final, accepted contribution. Additionally, the editors of the journal will extend invitations to the authors of a select number of accepted #AoIR2018 proposals on relevant topics around the time of the conference. Invited authors will be asked to submit a full-length journal article, developed from their conference paper to the journal editors.

Engaged Students Learning and Wikipedia – Developing Information Literacy and Finding a Purpose
Zachary J. McDowell, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
University of Illinois at Chicago

danah boyd (2014) points out in “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens,” students are being told to “avoid Wikipedia” and do their own research. This is particularly troubling when, as a recent study by the Stanford History Education Group stated, “young people’s ability to reason about the information on the Internet can be summed up in one word: bleak.” More recently, boyd wondered whether media literacy might have backfired, and that the critical lens that we tried to instill in them might have helped confuse information value in a post-factual, fast-paced, digital world. boyd is right: if students’ takeaway from the lessons of critical information literacy is that they need to just “do research” but “avoid Wikipedia” then we might need to redefine our approach.
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