Curating the Academic World of Collaborative Media

Dissertation: Beyond the Blog - examining the blog communities as materially afforded and socially constructed spaces

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:02:05 +0100

This dissertation examines weblog community as a materially afforded and socially constructed space. In a set of three case studies, this dissertation examines three separate weblog communities between 2004 and 2008.

By: Stephanie Hendrick, Faculty of Humanities, Institution for Language Studies, Umeå University, Sweden.

Access full-text version of this disseration here.

Abstract
This dissertation examines weblog community as a materially afforded and socially constructed space. In a set of three case studies, this dissertation examines three separate weblog communities between 2004 and 2008.

CASE STUDY I looks at knowledge management bloggers in order to better understand how bloggers form communities. In this case study, it will be shown that blogs group thematically and in temporal bursts. These bursts of thematic activity allow for movement in and out of a community, as well as act as a bridge between different weblog communities.

CASE STUDY II examines two pseudonymous bloggers in order to better understand how presentation and identity is understood in blogging. It will be shown in CASE STUDY II that social identity in weblog communities is negotiated through blogging practices such as transparency in writing and truthful presentation.

CASE STUDY III delves further into social identity by examining a community of academic bloggers and how traditional, institutionalized expectations influence social identity over time, and if this influence differs in the core and periphery of the community. It will be shown in CASE STUDY III that there is indeed a difference in how social identity is negotiated and performed between core and periphery members of a weblog community.

Finally, a model towards an integrated approach to researching blogs is put forth.

Keywords: weblogs, blogs, community, mediated discourse analysis, nexus analysis, social identity, network

Access full-text version of this disseration here.

Book: History of Participatory Media - Politics and Publics, 1750–2000

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:00:05 +0100

This book argues for a historical perspective on issues relating to the notion of participatory media. Working from a broad concept of media – including essays on the 19th century press, early sound media, photography, exhibitions, television and the internet – the book offers a broad empirical approach to different modes of audience participation from the mid 19th century to the present.

Anders Ekström, Solveig Jülich, Frans Lundgren, Per Wisselgren, eds. New York: Routledge, 2010. 192 pp.

Using the insights from the historical case studies, the book also explores some of the key concepts in discussions on the politics of participation, arguing for a theoretical perspective sensitive to the asymmetries that characterize the distribution of agency in the relationship between media and users.

Scholarly discussions on participatory media now occur in several fields. This book argues that all of these discussions are all too often obscured by a rhetoric of newness, assuming that participatory media is something unique in history, radical and revolutionary. By challenging the historiography implicit in this rhetoric, the book also engages in a discussion of issues of more general relevance to the multidisciplinary field of media history.

A review of this book: http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/89/1/148.extract

And the link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415880688/

CFP: Inclusive Design - Special Issue of The Design Journal (due March 7)

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:18:04 +0100

The Design Journal invites papers papers from a broad range of approaches in the areas of inclusive design theory, methodology and practice. Examples might include the role of inclusive design in social innovation and how inclusive design supports more appropriate design outcomes.

Abstracts due March 7, 2012. The Design Journal Inclusive Design: Call for Papers for Special Issue.

The twin issues of global ageing demographics and climate change can demand that people are more active in the design process, to limit poor design outputs (and therefore more waste of both energy and materials), as well as develop non artifact based solutions such as service-based designs. This can address the many challenges of physical ageing as well as the myriad of (dis)abilities found in populations. Inclusive Design with its people-centred practice offers a democratic form of design in which the voices and experiences of people, inspire, interpret and interact with the education, training and experience of designers. Yet what are the barriers to such partnerships? What are the conflicts and where are the convergences?

We invite papers from a broad range of approaches in the areas of inclusive design theory, methodology and practice. Examples might include, but are not limited to, the following:

Involving people in the process of inclusive design research and practice
How inclusive design supports more appropriate design outcomes
Inclusive design practice and research methods / approaches / techniques
Pedagogical issues related to inclusive design education and theory
Ethical issues related to inclusive design research and practice
The role of inclusive design in multi and interdisciplinary research.
The role of inclusive design in social innovation

Authors are requested to submit electronically, in MS Word, an abstract (1,000 words maximum) to the editorial assistant, Laura Marinello (thedesignjournal(at)lancaster.ac.uk), by 7 March 2012. Abstracts should have appropriate subheadings and make clear linkages with the theme of the special issue. Based on these abstracts, selected authors will be invited to submit a full version of a manuscript by the 12 June 2012. All papers will then undergo the standard double-blind review process.

Publication of the issue is expected in Spring 2013. Manuscripts should follow the guidelines for contributors.

We welcome informal enquiries regarding topics and submissions for this special issue. Interested authors should direct questions to one of the Guest Co-editors.

Addresses for Correspondence

Jo-Anne Bichard, Guest Co-editor Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU, UK. Email: jo-anne.bichard(at)rca.ac.uk

Rama Gheerawo, Guest Co-editor Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU, UK. Email: rama.gheerawo(at)rca.ac.uk

CFP: Symposium on Design Theory & Design Research (Paris, due March 22)

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:11:12 +0100

This design research symposium aims to investigate and share design processes applied to the immaterial economy. How do new ideas, identities and systems, emerge by applying art and design processes to larger economic issues?

Short papers due March 22, 2012. Symposium on Design Theory & Design Research, Paris, June 1, 2012.

“Scaling up the Design Process: transformation, hybridization, innovation, new identities through design skills ” Art and design question individuals, groups, organizations, industries, communities, institutions, and change them through the creative process.

This design research symposium aims to investigate and share design processes applied to the immaterial economy. How do new ideas, identities and systems, emerge by applying art and design processes to larger economic issues?

Our 21st century economy is an economy of diversity and individual subjective preferences that reconstructs territories and meanings. The focus of this international research symposium is on sharing case studies, research, and insights into how innovative design processes and designers’ skills may help solve current problems and challenges of this immaterial economy.

This symposium aims to open new directions for design professionals and for design education, regarding organizational design, corporate transformations, experience industries, social responsibility, environmental and urban contexts. And finally, to develop new theories and models through scaling up research in art and design processes using different scientific perspectives.

Subthemes and tracks include:

Workshop 1: Experimentation and risk-taking skills for reinventing decision ecosystems and Corporate Social Responsibility for health systems, transportation systems, leisure, and public institutions;
Workshop 2: Visualization skills and integrative skills for developing plural identities and scenarios for brands and creative cities;
Workshop 3: Empathy skills and co-design, design thinking skills for changing attitudes of institutions in their relation to the outside environment, and service design;
Workshop 4: System skills and holistic skills, developing the awareness of all design stakeholders on the importance of measuring design value in economy and international competition, demonstrating the usefulness of existing design indexes such as World Design Capital criteria, DME Award, Designence Value Index(TM), National Design Competitiveness index… and developing new macro design evaluation methods in the immaterial economy.

Accepted formats include case studies, pedagogical experiences research, and social innovation projects.

Key dates

March 22 - Short papers (max. 3,000 words) submission deadline

April 12 - Acceptance decisions and feedback from symposium chairs

June 1 Symposium
- Morning: plenary session at Universite Pantheon Sorbonne
- Afternoon: parallel sessions at Ecole Parsons a Paris

Submissions should be addressed to: b.borjademozota(at)parsons.paris.edu.

Forum chairs: Brigitte Borja de Mozota (Ecole Parsons a Paris) & Bernard Darras (Universite Paris I) during Designer’s Days June 1st 2012, Paris, France.

CFP: The 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity (Glasgow, due March 9)

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:02:32 +0100

The 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity provides a forum to discuss the nature and potential of design creativity from theoretical, methodological and practical viewpoints. It will include panel discussions on the ‘directions for design creativity research’, and is an official conference promoted by the Design Creativity Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Design Society.

Full papers due March 9, 2012. Glasgow, Scotland 18th-20th September 2012.

http://www.icdc2012.org.uk/

The 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity (ICDC 2012) is now accepting full paper submissions. The conference will take place in Glasgow, Scotland 18th-20th September 2012, and will provide a forum to discuss the nature and potential of design creativity from theoretical, methodological and practical viewpoints. It will include panel discussions on the ‘directions for design creativity research’, and is an official conference promoted by the Design Creativity Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Design Society.

Scope
The topics and themes of the conference include but are not limited to the following:

Collaborative creative design
Cognition in creative design
Creative design processes, methods and techniques
Creative design styles and cultures
Design creativity support tools
Formal education in creative design
Global creativity and innovation
Measuring creativity and its impact
Social dimensions of creative design

Submissions
Papers should be submitted electronically through the conference CMS system and must not exceed 8 pages. Please adhere to the Instructions for Authors.

Due date for full paper submission: 9th March - Due date for paper acceptance notifications: 4th May - Due date for revised papers: 1st June - Conference: 18th-20th September.

All submitted papers will be peer reviewed by the International Programme Committee. Papers accepted and presented at the podium sessions will be edited into a book tentatively titled ‘Design Creativity 2012’. The most significant papers, after revision and extension, will be recommended for submission to a special issue of an international journal, which will be published in collaboration with this conference

http://www.icdc2012.org.uk

Aca-article: Reflections on academic video - The Case of Audiovisual Thinking

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:00:05 +0100

This article analyses the online publication Audiovisual Thinking, a forum for academic video.

By Thommy Eriksson, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden; Inge Ejby Sørensen, Copenhagen University.

Read the full article here. Published in seminar.net - International Journal of Media, Technology and Lifelong Learning.

Abstract
As academics we study, research and teach audiovisual media, yet rarely disseminate and mediate through it. Today, developments in production technologies have enabled academic researchers to create videos and mediate audiovisually. In academia it is taken for granted that everyone can write a text. Is it now time to assume that everyone can make a video essay? Using the online journal of academic videos Audiovisual Thinking and the videos published in it as a case study, this article seeks to reflect on the emergence and legacy of academic audiovisual dissemination. Anchoring academic video and audiovisual dissemination of knowledge in two critical traditions, documentary theory and semiotics, we will argue that academic video is in fact already present in a variety of academic disciplines, and that academic audiovisual essays are bringing trends and developments that have long been part of academic discourse to their logical conclusion.

About the authors

Thommy Eriksson, of Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and Inge Ejby Sørensen, of Copenhagen University, are both bold pioneers in their diligent work presented in the paper “Reflections on academic video”. Their ambition is to establish an academic journal for visual publications, predominantly videos. They present us for the paradox that a substantial number of academics teach visual subjects, video analysis and video production, and yet rarely disseminate and mediate via audiovisual media. They argue that documentary theory and semiotics are two critical traditions in academia that will provide the conventional credentials for establishing a new academic genre. In the journal “Audiovisual thinking” we can follow an exciting new and path breaking way of academic discourse.Keywords: Audiovisual essays, online journal of academic video, convergence.

Aca-article: A Life Lived in (and not with) Media

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:00:06 +0100

This article proposes we begin our thinking with a view of life not lived with media, but in media. The media life perspective starts from the realization that the whole of the world and our lived experience in it are framed by, mitigated through, and made immediate by media.

Published in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Winter 2012, Volume 6 Number 1.

Authors: Mark Deuze, Department of Telecommunications, Indiana University; Peter Blank, Department of Telecommunications, Indiana University; Laura Speers, King’s College, London.

Access the article here, full version and open access: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/6/1/000110/000110.html

Abstract
Research since the early years of the 21st century consistently shows that through the years more of our time gets spent using media, that being concurrently exposed to media has become a foundational feature of everyday life, and that consuming media for most people increasingly takes place alongside producing media. Contemporary media devices, what people do with them, and how all of this fits into the organization of our everyday life disrupt and unsettle well-established views of the role media play in society. Instead of continuing to wrestle with a distinction between media and society, this contribution proposes we begin our thinking with a view of life not lived with media, but in media. The media life perspective starts from the realization that the whole of the world and our lived experience in it are framed by, mitigated through, and made immediate by (immersive, integrated, ubiquitous and pervasive) media.

EXCERPT

Media Life

In this article, we argue that an additional ontological turn should take place in the way we understand and use media. Media have become so inseparable from us that we no longer live with media, but in media. We bring together and evaluate fundamental media theories with specific reference to the so-called “media generation” to interrogate our argument of media’s ontological possibility, under several distinct terms: the (inevitable) disappearance of media from active awareness (invisibility), the productive approach to the lifeworld that media engender (creativity), the way people and institutions adapt to the criteria for mediated inclusion (selectivity), and the restructuring of social bonds in media (sociability). We conclude by locating the answer to the all-important “so what” question in considering life as a work of art in media.

Research in countries as varied as the United States, Brazil, South Korea, The Netherlands, and Finland consistently shows how through the years more of our time gets spent using media, and how concurrent use of multiple media has become a regular feature of everyday life. With close to two billion people using internet on a regular basis and well over four billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world (at the time of writing this piece), media can not just be seen as types of technology and chunks of content we pick and choose from the world around us — a view that considers media as an external agent affecting us in a myriad of ways. If anything, today we have to recognize how the uses and appropriations of media penetrate all aspects of contemporary life, how media are not just both artefacts and contents (as McLuhan envisioned), not just units consisting of queer couplings between hardware and software (as Ian Bogost and Levi Bryant suggest[1]), not even an infrastructural combination of their material conditions, what people do with them, and how all of this shapes and is shaped by people’s everyday social arrangements (as proposed by Leah Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone[2]). There is no external to the media in our lives. In this paper, we explore the implications of this premise.

The whole of the world and our lived experience in it can and perhaps should be seen as framed by, mitigated through, and made immediate by pervasive and ubiquitous media. This world is what Roger Silverstone (2007), Alex de Jong and Marc Schuilenburg (2006) label a “mediapolis”: a mediated public space where media underpin and overarch the experiences of everyday life. However, a paradox of pervasive and ubiquitous media is their increasingly invisibility; they are so embedded in our lives that they disappear, which would suggest we inevitably lose ourselves in media. “[T]he dominant information technologies of the day control all understanding and its illusions,” writes Friedrich Kittler in the foreword of his work on emerging media in the 19th century, and in the process “what remains of people is what media can store and communicate” [Kittler 1996, xl]. Media, in other words, make us lose ourselves. Quite literally, sometimes, as Kittler remarks in a 1998 speech in honor of British music theorist and composer Brian Eno: “music shows us that a culture is only as popular as it can lose itself in its own technologies” [Kittler 1998]. When media become both ubiquitous and invisible, we may very well be losing ourselves in our technology to the extent that it generates our lives on the basis of a specific set of rules, codes and protocols. As Brian Arthur states in his take on the evolution of technology: “this thing that fades to the background of our world also creates that world” [Arthur 2009, 10]. From a perspective that aims to resolve the false dichotomy between machines (cf. media) and humans (cf. life), we would prefer to argue that the thing is us as much as it is itself.

Access the article here, full version and open access: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/6/1/000110/000110.html

New Book: Networks without a Cause - A Critique of Social Media (Geert Lovink)

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:00:06 +0100

With the vast majority of Facebook users caught in a frenzy of ‘friending’, ‘liking’ and ‘commenting’, at what point do we pause to grasp the consequences of our info-saturated lives? What compels us to engage so diligently with social networking systems? Networks Without a Cause examines our collective obsession with identity and self-management coupled with the fragmentation and information overload endemic to contemporary online culture.

By Geert Lovink. 220 pages, Polity Press, 2012. View on Amazon.

Geert Lovink: Critique of Social Media from network cultures on Vimeo.

With a dearth of theory on the social and cultural ramifications of hugely popular online services, Lovink provides a path-breaking critical analysis of our over-hyped, networked world with case studies on search engines, online video, blogging, digital radio, media activism and the Wikileaks saga. This book offers a powerful message to media practitioners and theorists: let us collectively unleash our critical capacities to influence technology design and workspaces, otherwise we will disappear into the cloud. Probing but never pessimistic, Lovink draws from his long history in media research to offer a critique of the political structures and conceptual powers embedded in the technologies that shape our daily lives.

New Book: Understanding Digital Humanities

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:41:49 +0100

http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=493310

The application of new computational techniques and visualisation technologies in arts and humanities are resulting in fresh approaches and methodologies for the study of new and traditional corpora. This ‘computational turn’ takes the methods and techniques from computer science to create innovative means of close and distant reading.

This book discusses the implications and applications of ‘digital humanities’ and the questions raised when using algorithmic techniques. Key researchers in the field provide a comprehensive introduction to important debates surrounding issues such as the contrast between narrative versus database, pattern-matching versus hermeneutics, and the statistical paradigm versus the data mining paradigm. Also discussed are the new forms of collaboration within arts and humanities that are raised through modular research teams and new organisational structures, ‘big humanities’, as well as techniques for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Contents

Introduction: Understanding the Digital Humanities; D.M.Berry
An Interpretation of Digital Humanities; L.Evans & S.Rees
How We Think: Transforming Power and Digital Technologies; N.K.Hayles
Digital Methods: Five Challenges; B.Rieder & T.Röhle
Archives in Media Theory: Material Media Archaeology and Digital Humanities; J.Parikka
Canonicalism and the Computational Turn; C.Bassett
The Esthetics of Hidden Things; S.Dexter
The Meaning and the Mining of Legal Texts; M.Hildebrandt
Have the Humanities Always been Digital? For an Understanding of the ‘Digital Humanities’ in the Context of Originary Technicity; F.Frabetti
Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon; M.Terras
Analysis Tool or Research Methodology: Is There an Epistemology for Patterns?; D.Dixon
Do Computers Dream of Cinema? Film Data for Computer Analysis and Visualization; A.Heftberger
The Feminist Critique: Mapping Controversy in Wikipedia; M.Currie
How to See One Million Images? A Computational Methodology for Visual Culture and Media Research; L.Manovich
Cultures of Formalization: Towards an Encounter Between Humanities and Computing; J.van Zundert, A.Antonijevic, A.Beaulieu, K.van Dalen-Oskam, D.Zeldenrust & T.Andrews
Trans-disciplinarity and Digital Humanity: Lessons Learned from Developing Text Mining Tools for Textual Analysis; Y.Lin

Call for Papers: New interaction orders, New mobile publics? (due Feb 24, 2012)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:30:09 +0100

We invite researchers, designers, technology developers, architects, urban planners, artists and urban communities to submit contributions that explore aspects of new and old ‘behaviour in public spaces’.

Abstracts due Feb 24, 2012. Workshop 13-14 April 2012 at Lancaster University, UK.

Introduction
Equipped with mobile technologies, people connect in ways that were unthinkable when Goffman wrote Behaviour in public spaces (1963) and William Whyte explored The social life of small urban spaces (1980). The momentous Arab Spring events, London riots and ‘2011 Occupy’ demonstrations are extreme examples that pose old questions about the ‘interaction order’ and its relation to social order and the public sphere in new ways.

On the one hand, mobile connectivity enables micro-coordination of increasingly mobile everyday lives, new modulations of co-presence, absent presence and present absence, and transformations of socio-material practices of availability, obligation, intimacy and strangerhood in public. Some of the social innovations involved also shape emergent new practices of mobilising people in protests and crises.

Arguably new, agile, local and globally networked communities and ‘mobile publics’ are forming. On the other, worries over a loss of civility, community, privacy, and new forms of surveillance enabled by the ever closer intermeshing of digital technology and everyday ‘movement-spaces’ fuel fears over an erosion of civil liberties and ‘capital P’ politics.

Goffman’s insistence that ‘the interaction order’ is the performative locus of such utopian and dystopian transformations and his and Whyte’s attention to detail are the motivation for this two-day interdisciplinary workshop. We would like to bring micro and macro, theory and empirical research, everyday lived practice, design, policy and politics together through collaborative analysis of multi-sited, mobile, ethnographic or otherwise qualitative studies of behaviour in today’s public spaces, zeitdiagnostic theory and avantgarde design.

the ‘osmotic’ relationship between physical and virtual spaces, connectivity and mobility the social life of such spaces
emergent principles and practices of the 21st Century interaction order
augmented embodied and sensory phenomenology, material agency
links between the interaction order, public engagement, public space
tensions between mobile informationalized everyday lives and movement-spaces and principles of privacy and civil liberty, security, splintering and sorting of ‘access’
examples, practices and impacts of improvised communities and mobile publics, and collective intelligence
examples and methods of collaborative, experimental, radically careful and carefully radical design of new practices, technologies, forms of public engagement and spaces
reflections on the links between theory, empirical studies, design and politics in the broadest sense

Please send a 300 word abstract to p.feron(at)lancaster.ac.uk by 24th February 2012. Notification of Acceptance 9th March 2012.

There is a small amount of financial support available for travel. If funds are an obstruction, please contact p.feron(at)lancaster.ac.uk

Full program: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/new_interaction_order/

CFP: Internet and New Productive Paradigms - the STS Contribution (due March 1, 2012)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:16:19 +0100

The diffusion of the Internet shows the emergence of new and socio-technical arrangements that seem to call into question our traditional separation between production and consumption. Instead of taking the emergence of the new production paradigm as a matter of fact, the goal of this track is to describe and understand the practices and dynamics that characterize the socio-technical collectives behind the phenomena.

Abstracts due March 31, 2012. Thematic session at EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, SOCIAL WORLDS, the 4th National Conference of STS Italia (Italian Society of Science and Technology Studies).

The conference will be held in Rovigo from 21 to 23 June 2012, and will be organized in partnership with CIGA of the University of Padua (Centre for Environmental Law Decisions and Corporate Ethical Certification).

Brief
The exponential diffusion of the Internet on a global scale shows the emergence of new and socio-technical arrangements that seem to call into question our traditional separation between production and consumption. For many, we are witnessing the emergence and consolidation of a completely new production paradigm where production processes are decentralised, distributed among an undisclosed mass of actors often proactive, sometimes without a predictable path. The examples of this grow daily: Wikipedia, free and open source software and hardware, folksonomies, crowdsourcing platforms, online hacktivism, Do-it-Yourself communities, and so on.

New concepts have been developed in an attempt to capture these new practices and these new socio-technical arrangements: in the late 1970s, Toffler (1980) theorized the emergence of the prosumer, both producer and consumer of goods. This phenomenon of convergence between the producer and consumer has stimulated research to generate new concepts such as “wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006),” commons-based peer production “(Benkler, 2006),” produsage “(Bruns, 2008), and ideas like the Hacktivism (Auty, 2004) or Mash-ups technology (Hartmann et al. 2006).

At the same time, however, we are witnessing the emergence of criticisms that highlight that these innovative aspects are the perpetuation, more or less obvious, of the traditional capitalist logic. This seems to fuel disputes around the themese of control, surveillance, exploitation of intellectual property management, deskilling, etc. (Lash, 2002, Terranova, 2000, De Paoli and Storni, 2011)

Instead of taking the emergence of the new production paradigm as a matter of fact, the goal of this track is to describe and understand the practices and dynamics that characterize the socio-technical collectives behind the phenomena mentioned above, and discuss how they help us to rethink not only the traditional division of labour between production and consumption, but mostly what we mean with the terms work, production, consumption, and property (commons) in our information society.

In this sense to invite contributions and case studies in different areas to discuss, but are not limited to:

the role of STS in the study of new emerging practices in the information society;
how to rethink and/or deconstruct empirically the concepts of production, consumption, property, work and good: debates, controversies and new definitions;
doing and undoing the boundaries between production and consumption (or design and use);
new conceptions of labor and its distribution;
Do-it-Yourself and Do-it-with-Others: new practices?

Abstracts (in Italian or* English)* should be sent as email attachment (as MS word or Rich Text Format) to the track’s coordinators (and carbon copied to4convegnosts@gmail.com) by* March 1, 2012*. Abstracts with a maximum length of *500 words* should contain the title, author’s name, affiliation and contact details including e-mail.

The call for contributions can be downloaded from http://www.stsitalia.org/conferences/STSITALIA_2012/STS_Track4.pdf

Further information on the conference on: http://www.stsitalia.org/?p=744&lang=en

CFP: Tangible Media and Tangibility (due March 31, 2012)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:08:58 +0100

What are the implications of the new tangibility for media-making? How does the tangible relate to conceptions of (media) materiality? What are the historical and archeological dimensions of the (new) tangibility of media?

Abstracts due March 31, 2012. NECSUS - European Journal of Media Studies.

The politics of tangibility surrounding media studies are constantly changing. Is film no longer a tangible medium due to the advent of digital capture and projection? Has television ever been a tangible format? How does one go about speaking of the tangible or intangible nature of new media, with its many virtual constructs?

At the same time that mass media are slipping into nebulosity they are also arguably more tangible than at any point before. Video games are becoming more tangible with the introduction of the sensation of touch. And today, one can carry the entire means of media production – through post-production to exhibition – in a back pocket.

What are the implications of this new tangibility for media-making? How does the tangible relate to conceptions of (media) materiality? What are the historical and archeological dimensions of the (new) tangibility of media?

From Lisa Cartwright’s consideration of the hands of the projectionist through Antonia Lant’s essay on haptical cinema to Jennifer Barker’s book The Tactile Eye – even through contemplations of the humanities in general as ‘soft’ sciences – we are interested in exploring the tangibility (or intangibility) of media studies in this special section of the Autumn 2012 volume of NECSUS. In addition to essays themed on tangibility NECSUS is also considering essays on a wide variety of issues related to media studies, in addition to reviews of all types (conferences, festivals, exhibits, books, websites, etc.).

We look forward to receiving abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short biography of no more than 150 words by 31 March 2012 at the following address: g.decuir@aup.nl.

NECSUS is an international, open access, peer-reviewed journal of media studies published by Amsterdam University Press in partnership with NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies). The journal is multidisciplinary and strives to bring together the best work in the field of media studies across the humanities and social sciences. We aim to publish research that matters and that improves the understanding of media and culture inside and outside the academic community. Find us online at: www.necsus-ejms.org

CFP: Ecological Humanities, Ecocinema and Ecomedia - M/C Journal (due Apr 27, 2012)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:01:16 +0100

This issue of M/C Journal calls for interdisciplinary and accessible discussions on the topic of ‘ecology’ from a natural sciences or humanities frame. Papers could engage with the emerging inter-disciplines of the ‘ecological humanities’, ‘ecocinema’ or ‘ecomedia’.

Article deadline: April 27, 2012

THEME ‘ECOLOGY’ for M/C Journal of Media and Culture

“Contemporary interest in the environment is based on highly mediated representation of its most appealing aspects and today’s symbolism is drawn from popular culture” (Bagust).

Ecology is not only a field of study, but a way of thinking, a conceptual mode that emphasises connectivity and conviviality. Donna Haraway has observed that “the world is a knot in motion”, and never has this been clearer than the present moment - a time when impending ecological crisis has forced the uncomfortable awareness of our dependence on an unstable environment and climate, possibly undermining the viability of human life. This uncertain ecological future has prompted the emergence of an array of inter-disciplines, new political, intellectual and cultural alignments that seek an understanding of the whole “organism-and-its-environment” (Rose & Robin). Ecology, at heart, is the study of life, and the interactions that sustain and enrich it.

This issue of M/C Journal calls for interdisciplinary and accessible discussions on the topic of ‘ecology’ from a natural sciences or humanities frame. Papers could engage with the emerging inter-disciplines of the ‘ecological humanities’, ‘ecocinema’ or ‘ecomedia’. Alternatively, papers may discuss Neil Postman’s notion of ‘media ecology’. Adopting a scientific framework, this term denotes the study of media as dynamic environments whereby, “new communications technologies may not wipe out earlier ones” as John Naugton argues, but alter the ecosystem so the old ones that do survive are those that are able to adapt. As a result, changes in the communications environment bring about cultural change.

We also welcome discussions on the question of what ecology means for the disciplines of media and cultural studies; papers that seek to perform the inter-connected “tasks of [re]situating humans in ecological terms and non-humans in ethical terms” (Plumwood) and attempt to highlight, as Val Plumwood does in her landmark Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason, how “anthropocentric perspectives and culture … make us insensitive to our ecological place in the world”.

Details

*   Article deadline: 27 Apr. 2012
*   Release date: 27 June 2012
*   Editors: Catherine Simpson and Kate Wright

Please submit articles through this website: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal

Send any enquiries to ecology@journal.media-culture.org.au

AAA Panel: Towards an Anthropology of Social Media (Nov '12, SF, US)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:55:52 +0100

Anthropologists are uniquely positioned to study the particularities of emerging media platforms and practices in global and transnational contexts. Yet an anthropology of social media must contend with the challenges of studying rapidly transforming global communication networks and social practices.

Jordan Kraemer and Charles Pearson are organizing this panel for the American Anthropological Association annual meeting this fall (11/14-11/18 in San Francisco). Please contact one of them if you are interested. Thanks!

Abstract:

Towards an Anthropology of Social Media

By the end of 2012, Facebook stands to have one billion global users, while two hundred million tweets (Twitter posts) are sent daily and YouTube users upload 60 hours of video each minute. Alongside these well-known online platforms, numerous smaller ones attract users in different regions across the globe and in many languages (such as RenRen in China or Orkut in Brazil).

So-called “social media” are emerging as an ubiquitous facet of everyday life for both anthropologists and people with whom we work. In contrast to this diversity of users and practices, however, popular discourse often portrays social media in binary terms. While some accounts warn that emergent media will further social isolation, others frame social media in terms of celebratory cyber-utopianism. In such enthusiastic narratives, social media provide a universally democratizing space for communication, offering users new means for civic participation while collapsing distinctions between producer and con sumer or local and global. Indeed, social media have even been heralded for eradicating modes of alienation.

Anthropologists are uniquely positioned to study the particularities of emerging media platforms and practices in global and transnational contexts. Yet an anthropology of social media must contend with the challenges of studying rapidly transforming global communication networks and social practices.

On one hand, since users may be radically distributed and place-ness may be difficult to locate or identify, how can we rethink single- and multi-sited methods to address the spatial dimensions of social media practices? On the other, what are the increasingly informational aspects of new modes of expression and circulation?

This panel will address the specificities and particularities of social media and emerging modes of production.

Whose sociality do social media represent, articulate, or facilitate?
How are certain forms of connectivity and interactivity privileged, and under what circumstances?
In short, what are the concerns and possibilities for an emerging anthropology of social media?

Community Media: A Good Practice Handbook (free download!)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:47:37 +0100

“The value of this publication lies in the fact that it highlights problems while at the same time offering possible solutions. It presents a useful empirical basis for replicating time-tested decisions about how community media can become an even more effective element of a free, independent and pluralistic media system of any democratic society. This book will be a useful reference to community media practitioners, policy-makers, researchers, community organizers, and other media development stakeholders.”

From the Foreword by Wijayananda Jayaweera, former Director, Communication Development Division/IPDC, UNESCO, Paris

Published by UNESCO and available free online at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002150/215097E.pdf

Among its activities to mark World Radio Day 2012, UNESCO has launched a new good practice handbook with case studies of community media from around the world. The publication draws on a diversity of experiences to provide inspiration and support for those engaged in community media practice and advocacy and to raise awareness and understanding of community media among policy makers and other stakeholders.

13 February has been proclaimed by UNESCO as a date to celebrate radio broadcast, improve international cooperation among radio broadcasters and encourage decision-makers to create and provide access to information through radio. Community Media: A Good Practice Handbook is a compilation of 30 community radio and other community media examples demonstrating successful approaches to strengthening public voice.

CFP: Research Symposium on Creative practice, complexity and the creative economy (due April 1)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:09:29 +0100

This symposium is an opportunity for us to share our findings but is also an opportunity to engage with other academics and practitioners doing research on the creative economy or on creative practice and using complexity methods.

Abstracts due April 1, 2012.

Research Symposium on Creative practice, complexity and the creative economy. 31 May 2012. Birmingham University.

This research symposium constitutes the closing event of the AHRC funded project ‘The role of complexity in the creative economies: connecting people, ideas and practice’ (AH/J5001413/1).

The symposium is an opportunity for us to share our findings but is also an opportunity to engage with other academics and practitioners doing research on the creative economy or on creative practice and using complexity methods. We would welcome paper proposals from academic and practitioners’ discussing their investigations and experiences of using complexity theory in their research on the creative economy or in their creative practice and the potential methodological challenges involved.

All interested scholars and practitioners are invited to submit, by email, an abstract for their proposed contribution to the symposium of around 1,000 words by no later than 1st April 2012 at: R.Comunian(at)kent.ac.uk

More information can be found on the project website:
http://www.complexity-creative-economy.net/final-research-symposium.html

CFP: Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art - A Humanist Inquiry into the Digital Age (due May 30)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:50:53 +0100

This conference welcomes abstracts on Electronic Literature in the U.S., Latin America and Europe, teaching Electronic Literature and Gender and Identity in Cyberspace.

Proposals due May 30, 2012.

Instituto Franklin - UAH, Alcalá de Henares, Spain, October 4th-6th, 2012.

Instituto Franklin–UAH organizes the First International Conference devoted to Electronic Literature and New Media Art. It welcomes abstracts of up to 300 words for papers, presentations of creative works and group panel sessions related (but not limited) to the three main areas of the conference:

Electronic Literature in the U.S., Latin America and Europe
Teaching Electronic Literature
Gender and Identity in Cyberspace

The languages of the Conference will be English and Spanish, although English will be the main language of communication.

Important dates:

Submission deadline for proposals: May 30th, 2012
Notification of acceptance: June 15th, 2012

The complete Call for Papers can be found on and downloaded from the Instituto Franklin website: http://www.institutofranklin.net/en/conferences/conferences/next-conferences/first-international-conference-electronic-literature-and

For further information, contact Esther Claudio Moreno at esther.claudio(at)institutofranklin.net

CFP: New media - changing media landscapes in Baltic countries (due April 1)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:42:06 +0100

We are pleased to announce an open call for papers for the international conference “New media: changing media landscapes” to be held at St.-Petersburg campus of Higher School of Economics, Russia, on September 27-28, 2012. The conference is aimed at bringing together academics and professionals in the sphere of new and convergent media.

Full papers due April 1, 2012.

It focuses on, but is not limited to the changes in the Baltic Sea region and covers a broad range of topics connected to the interplay of “new” and “old” media, including:

Technological trends driving media innovations
Strategies of media organizations in the new media age
Multichannel publishing: technology, economy, journalism
Methodology of new media content research and of audience research in the new media age
New media as an extension of the public sphere

Keynote speakers: Leif Dahlberg, KTH; Gunnar Nygren, Södertörn university; Olessia Koltsova, HSE (St.Petersburg); Ilia Kiriya, HSE (Moscow)

The program committee accepts papers describing results of original empirical or methodological research or of practical experience. Young scholars are encouraged to apply; non-paper participation is possible after registration. A limited number of skype-presented papers will be accepted. There is no conference fee.

Program committee: Leif Dahlberg, KTH; Christer Lie, KTH; Olessia Koltsova, HSE (St.Petersburg); Sergey Davydov, HSE (Moscow); Ilia Kiriya, HSE (Moscow); Gunnar Nygren, Södertörn university; Elena Degtereva, Södertörn university; Aurika Meimre, Tallinn university

Important deadlines:

Start of submission: February 6, 2012
Deadline for papers: April 1, 2012
Abstract acceptance notification: May 1, 2012

Abstracts and further questions should be sent to Ilia Kiriya, HSE (Moscow) ikiria(at)hse.ru

CFP: Mediated Practice - Insights from STS, Critical Theory and Media Theory (due March 11)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:33:37 +0100

The aim of this EASST panel is to explore how ideas approaches and perspectives might travel more effectively across science and technological studies, media studies and cultural studies.

Abstracts due March 11, 2012.

Joint meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) 2012: October 17-20, 2012, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark.

Work in STS, media theory and critical theory intersects through a focus on mediated practices. Furthermore, science and technology studies and humanities based studies of media and culture (including film, art, literature, music) have common interests in representations, meaning systems, social and institutional aspects of science, media and culture, and the politics and ethics of interventions in these domains. We often draw upon overlapping perspectives and theories, which are however deployed in different ways by scholars of science, and scholars of media and culture. The aim of this panel is to build on precedents (Thacker’s Biomedia, van Dijck’s ImagEnation, etc.) and to further explore these overlaps and divergences, and the ways in which concepts, ideas approaches and perspectives might travel more effectively across science and technological studies, media studies and cultural studies.

We invite papers that show how a notion developed in one field can be used in the other, either via analysis of examples, by adopting a hybrid approach, or by theoretical reflection.

Papers for the panel could broach the topics:

Relations between ideas of medium and technologies in STS and media/critical theory.
Analyses of visual, textual, and audio objects that use acombined approach from STS and media/critical theory.
Different ideas of agency (for example, in the context of authors and artists as well as social actors).
Different understandings of interpretation as an act, practice and process.
The relation between local and situated meanings on the one hand and general and abstract terms on the other, and issues of circulation of meaning in mediated settings.
Approaches to contextualised ethics and socio-political responsibility or intervention that draw on STS and media/critical theory.

Please submit your abstract electronically via http://www.4sonline.org/meeting, and make sure to suggest that your paper will fit into open panel no 46: Mediated practices.

The deadline for abstract submissions is March 11.

Panel organisers:
Anne Beaulieu (University of Groninghen)
Annamaria Carusi (University of Oxford / NTNU)
Aud Sissel Hoel (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU))
Sarah de Rijcke (University of Leiden)

Journal: Born Magazine - exploring literary arts and interactive media

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:10:35 +0100

Born Magazine is an experimental venue marrying literary arts and interactive media. Original projects are brought to life through creative collaboration between writers and artists.

http://www.bornmagazine.org/

Born is an all-volunteer project that brings together writers, artists, and others from diverse fields to create storytelling artworks. Our name reflects the creative process nurtured by collaboration and the bringing together of traditional and new forms of art and literature, diverse media, and emerging technologies.

OFFLINE PROJECTS - Born’s collaborative art shows feature interactive storytelling installations created by contributors from diverse fields brought together for the event. Collaboration not only defines the creation of each artwork, but also the audience’s active involvement in the storytelling experience of each piece.

ONLINE PROJECTS - Born Magazine is a quarterly publication that brings together creative writers and interactive artists to create experimental, media-rich literary arts experienced only through the Web.