The Communications Manager will work closely with the Research Hub management, staff, and affiliated researchers to develop and manage an integrated public presence, publicity and outreach infrastructure for the initiative. This will involve: 1) developing a PR strategy and public identity for the initiative as a whole, 2) acting as the editor and curator of the public online presence of the initiative (which includes a web site and an email newsletter), 3) managing contacts and communication for key research partners , constituencies, and press, 4) crafting and managing publicity, including helping to craft press releases, to the general public, 5) helping to coordinate partnerships with other research institutions, and 6) working with the overall DML Research Hub team to plan, coordinate, and organize various meetings, notably, the annual grantees meeting and conference. This position will report to the Director of the UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI).

Salary: $57,600 – $85,800
Work Schedule: 8-5, M-F
Contract Position.
Final candidate subject to background check.
Please attach your resume.

For more information, go to the UC Irvine jobs page, and click on “contracts.”

Next Generation Experience Design
Call for Papers
New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 2009 (2)
Special Issue

Guest Editors

Mark Blythe, University of York
Marc Hassenzahl, Folkwang University, Essen
Effie Law, University of Leicester

“In the old days and by the old days I mean two years ago…”
Eddie Izzard

Youtube, Facebook, Second Life, Wikipedia, Google Earth and even Google
itself are all less than a decade old and yet for many they are as taken
for granted and indispensable as books or pens and paper. It is not only
the pace of technological change which is unprecedented but also the
speed of distribution and acceptance. These technologies affect every
aspect of our lives: work, play, sex, politics and religion. Small
wonder then that studies of human computer interaction (HCI) have
adopted a term as wide as “user experience” to address their impact. HCI
has begun to consider such areas as: fun, enjoyment, beauty, aesthetics
and affect. As users become more concerned with the social and
environmental impact of their technologies “user experience” is being
conceived in still wider terms to include such topics as: ethics,
politics and sustainability.

“User experience” has become the default label for almost every study in
HCI. It appears to have replaced usability as a focus for interaction
design in both academia and industry. Courses in User Experience Design
are offered at many universities and job titles such as “User Experience
Engineer” are commonplace. Yet there are a very wide range of
methodological and theoretical approaches to user experience some of
which are radically opposed to one another.

A variety of methods and techniques have been developed from social
science disciplines such as psychology, which tend to break user
experience into component elements in search for general models and
rules. Others employ more holistic and situated approaches, taking
contextual factors into consideration. These two types of approaches
have their advantages and disadvantages – together they provide new
opportunities to transform HCI into the practice and science of
experience with technology.

This special issue will reflect the diversity of approaches to user
experience and explore the limits of current methods. We encourage
submissions of both empirical and theoretical work.

Possible topics include but are not limited to –

Fun, enjoyment and affect
Beauty and Aesthetics
Ethics and Religion
Human Computer Sexual Interaction
Green HCI and sustainability
Approaches from Cultural and Critical Theory

The deadline for submissions is the 20th of February. Submissions may
take the form of research papers or shorter technical notes and should
be submitted electronically at the Journal’s Manuscript Central site

http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tham

Important Dates:

Paper submission 20th February 2009
Notification of Acceptance 3rd April 2009
Final papers due 28th April 2009.

Informal enquiries may be sent to: mblythe@cs.york.ac.uk

For instructions for authors etc. see: http://www.informaworld.com/nrhm

This workshop aims to develop and bring together a community of researchers interested in discussing the manifold challenges and potentials of knowledge acquisition from the social web.

With the advent of the “Social Web”, a new breed of web applications has enriched the social dimension of the web. On the social web, actors can be understood as social agents – technological or human entities – that collaborate, pursue goals, are autonomous, and are capable of exhibiting flexible problem solving and social behavior. By participating in the social web, both technological and human agents leave complex traces of social interactions and their motivations behind, which can be studied, analyzed and utilized for a range of different purposes. The broad availability and open accessibility of these traces in social web corpora, such as in del.icio.us, Wikipedia, weblogs and others, provides researchers with opportunities for, for example, novel knowledge acquisition techniques and strategies, as well as large scale, empirically coupled “in the field” studies of social processes and structures.

This workshop aims to develop and bring together a diverse community of researchers interested in the social web by seeking submissions that are focusing on understanding and evaluating the role of agents, goals, structures, concepts, context, knowledge and social interactions in a broad range of social web applications. Examples for such applications include, but are not limited to social authoring (e.g. wikis, weblogs), social sharing (e.g. del.icio.us, flickr), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) and social searching (e.g. wikia, eurekster, mahalo) applications.

Deadline has been extended to May 16. Hopefully folks will blog it!
(via Anjo)

I would love to head out to Lausanne for the day and spend the rest of the weekend skiing. School’s out by then, but I’m afraid the Falcon 50 is scheduled for its annual, and I really can’t be bothered with commercial carriers these days.

Audio: IR9.0 (Copenhagen) CFP

Call for Papers

International and Interdisciplinary Conference
Association of Internet Researchers (A.o.I.R)
Copenhagen, Denmark, October 2008

Workshops / Doctoral Colloquium: October 15th, 2008
A.o.I. R conference: October 16–18th, 2008

Deadline for paper submissions: February 8th, 2008

Internet Research 9.0:
Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place
In the past few years, new forms of net-based communities are emerging, distributed on various websites and services, and making use of several media platforms and genres to stay connected. Now, as mobile and location-based technologies are reintroducing “place” as an important aspect in the formation of communal and social activities, it is time to consider and rethink the concept of online or virtual communities. Not forgetting the lessons we have learned from studying the early virtual communities, how do we describe, analyse, theorise and design the communities and social formations of the early 21st century? How do we address the blurring of boundaries between places and communities on- and offline.

We call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline, methodology, and community, and from conjunctions of multiple disciplines, methodologies and academic communities that address the conference themes.

Sessions at the conference will be established that specifically address the conference themes, and we welcome innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on those themes. We also welcome submissions on topics that address social, cultural, political, economic, and/or aesthetic aspects of the Internet beyond the conference themes. In all cases, we welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions as well as international collaborations from both AoIR and non-AoIR members.

Submissions
We seek proposals for several different kinds of contributions. We welcome proposals for traditional academic conference papers, but we also encourage proposals for creative or aesthetic presentations that are distinct from a traditional written ‘paper.â€

We also welcome proposals for ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS that will focus on discussion and interaction among conference delegates, as well as organized PANEL PROPOSALS that present a coherent group of papers on a single theme

Submission requirements
All papers and presentations in this session will be reviewed in the normal manner. Further information will be available via the conference submission website, accessible from January 2008 through the conferences.aoir.org website.

Format
– Papers (individual or multi-author): submit abstract of 600-800 words
– Creative or aesthetic presentations: submit abstract of 500-750 words
– Papel proposal: submit a 600-800 word description of the panel theme, plus 250-500 word abstract for each paper or presentation
– Round-table proposal: submit a statement indicating the nature of the roundtable discussion and interaction

Papers, presentations and panels will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer review, coordinated and overseen by the Program Chair. Each individual is invited to submit a proposal for 1 paper or 1 presentation. A person may also propose a panel session, which may include a second paper that they are presenting. An individual may also submit a roundtable proposal. You may be listed as co-author on additional papers as long as you are not presenting them.

Publication of papers
Several publishing opportunities are expected to be available through journals, including a special issue of Information, Communication & Society, based on peer-review of full papers. The final version of the website, available in early 2008, will contain more details.

Graduate students
Graduate students are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. Any student paper is eligible for consideration for the AoIR graduate student award. Students wishing to be a candidate for the Student Award must send a final paper by June 30, 2008.

Ph.D. students will also want to consider participating in the Doctoral Colloquium.
Following the very successful examples of previous Doctoral Colloquia, we will again aim to offer an all-day Doctoral Colloquium on October 15th 2008 (Wednesday) for Ph.D. students who wish to present their current work for critical evaluation by their peers and senior scholars. Submission and registration details will be available on the conference website () as soon as possible.

Deadlines
Submission site available: January 10th, 2008

Paper proposal submission deadline: February 8th, 2008

Presenter notification: March 31, 2008

Workshop submission: March 31, 2008

Submission for student award competition: June 30, 2008

Submission for conference archive: July 31, 2008

Submission of full papers
Full papers and a conference registration by at least one of the paper authors must be in place by July 31, 2008 for papers to be presented.

Formatting: Please submit papers in PDF with simple formatting, using sans serif font and in-text referencing. If you can’t submit in PDF, use DOC or RTF format. Further details regarding submission of full papers will be sent to the authors upon acceptance

Contact Information
Program Chair: Dr. Brian Loader, University of York, UK

Conference Chair: Dr. Lisbeth Klastrup, IT University of Copenhagen

* Wikimedia Communities – Interesting projects and particularities within the communities (we explicitly invite you to present your local Wikimedia project’s community!); policy creation within individual projects; conflict resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity; multilingualism, languages and cultures; social studies.

* Free Content – Open access to information; ways to gather and distribute free knowledge, usage of the Wikimedia projects in education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality and usability; copyright laws and other legal areas that interfere with Wikimedia projects.

* Technical infrastructure – Issues related to MediaWiki development and extensions; Wikimedia hardware layout; new ideas for development (including usable case studies from other wikis or similar projects).

The International Communication Association meeting is in San Francisco this year, for May 24-28. The deadline for proposals for the conference is Nov 1, but I’m hoping to finalize a proposal this weekend. If you are interested, send me your 150-word abstract now. That’s right, go to your mail client and send me 150 words on your paper. Unless “now” is after Friday, October 27. Then, you are likely too late.

(Last minute? Who? Me?)

Nolan and Hunsinger are heading up a new journal, Learning Inquiry that–at least if the call for papers is any indication–is open to some of the more liberal definitions of where and how learning happens: “The journal is a forum centered on learning that remains open to varied objects of inquiry, including machine, human, plant and animal learning as well as the processes of learning in business, government, and the professions, both in formal and informal environments.”

I definitely plan to send a manuscript in to the journal here at some point. I suspect a good chunk of my readers might also find the journal to be of interest as a place to read and a place to write.

CALL FOR AWARD APPLICATIONS

Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award

Sponsored by the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research
(http://www.cccsir.org/)

The Carl Couch Center issues an annual call for student-authored papers to be considered for Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award. The Couch Center welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers that (1) apply symbolic interactionist approaches to Internet studies, (2) demonstrate interactive relationships between social interaction and communication technologies as advocated by Couch, and/or (3) develop symbolic interactionist concepts in new directions. Papers will be evaluated based on the quality of (1) mastery of Symbolic Interactionist approaches and concepts and Couch’s theses, (2) originality, (3) organization, (4) presentation, and (5) advancement of knowledge.

Competition is open to graduate or undergraduate students of all disciplines. Works that are published or accepted for publication are not eligible for award consideration. The top three papers will receive Couch Awards to be presented at the 2006 meeting of the National Communication Association (NCA) in San Antonio, Texas. The top paper will be awarded a certificate and a cash prize of $300 US, runner up will receive a certificate and a cash prize of $200 US, and a third
paper will receive a certificate and a cash prize of $100 US. All three authors will be invited to present their work at a session of the NCA conference, November 16-19, 2006.

Those interested should send a copy of their paper, with a 100-word abstract, electronically to Mark Johns at johnsmar@luther.edu Submission deadline is May 1, 2006. Notification of award will be sent by June 15.

Those with questions or comments about Couch Award application, please contact:

Mark D. Johns
Dept. of Communication Studies
Luther College
Decorah, IA 52101
Tel: (563) 387-1347
E-mail: johnsmar@luther.edu

This is an initial tender of interest, but would anyone like to collaborate on a panel on blogging, wikis, and their relationship to laws that have traditionally been the purview of “the press”: libel, shield laws, etc.? Any “blawg” types out there who are doing work in this area? Email me, or leave a comment and if there is some critical mass, we can put something forward!

Call for papers

Canadian Association for Information Science/L’Association canadienne des sciences de l’information (CAIS/ACSI)

2006 Annual Conference

June 1 – 3, 2006, York University, Toronto

Information Science Revisited: Approaches to Innovation

With focus on innovative research and on information science as an evolving field, the conference will provide information scientists with a forum for presentation on three areas that form the conference program theme:

1. System design and evaluation: Information retrieval, interface design, system effectiveness and efficiency, information architecture, cost analysis.

2. Information and users: User studies, information literacy, economic and political factors, government initiatives, information communities.

3. Analysis and organization of information: Informetrics and Webometrics, informatics, metadata, classification, information science theory.

Conference proposal submission: Proposals for CAIS/ACSI 2006 should include a title, be no more than 500 words long, and specify how they relate to one of the areas within the conference program theme. Proposals with clearly articulated theoretical grounding and methodology, and those that report on completed or ongoing research will be given preference. Diverse perspectives and methodologies are welcome. Proposals may be submitted in English or French. Doctoral candidates are especially invited to submit proposals for the conference. Highest ranked papers will, with permission of the authors, be published in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science / La revue canadienne de l’information et bibliothéconomie with their abstracts appearing in the proceedings.

Deadline for proposals is January 16, 2006. Proposals, including the name(s) of the author(s), complete mailing and e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers, should be sent electronically in Word or Rich Text Format to Dr. Haidar Moukdad, CAIS/ACSI 2006 Program Chair at cais2006@cais-acsi.ca

Conference proposals will be refereed by the Program Committee. Authors will be notified of the Committee’s decision no later than February 20, 2006. Papers to appear as full-text in the electronic proceedings must be submitted no later than April 20, 2006. With permission of the authors, abstracts of all papers presented at the conference will also be published in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science / La revue canadienne de l’information et bibliothéconomie.

The CAIS/ACSI 2006 conference will be held June 1-3, 2006, and is part of the annual Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which runs from May 27 to June 4, 2006 at York University, Toronto, Ontario. Please see the Federation Web site at http://www.fedcan.ca/congress2006 for registration and accommodation details.

Sponsored by the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research

The Carl Couch Center issues an annual call for student-authored papers to be considered for Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award. The Couch Center welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers that (1) apply symbolic interactionist approaches to Internet studies, (2) demonstrate interactive relationships between social interaction and communication technologies as advocated by Couch, and/or (3) develop symbolic interactionist concepts in new directions. Papers will be evaluated based on the quality of (1) mastery of Symbolic Interactionist approaches and concepts and Couch’s theses, (2) originality, (3) organization, (4) presentation, and (5) advancement of knowledge. Evaluation will be administered by a Review Committee of four:

Dr. Mark D. Johns, Luther College, Decorah, IA, Chair
Dr. Katherine M. Clegg Smith, Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Lori Kendall, SUNY-Purchase, New York
Dr. Jodi O’Brien, Seattle University

Competition is open to graduate or undergraduate students of all disciplines. Works that are published or accepted for publication are not eligible for award consideration. Entries should not exceed 30 pages (approximately 7500 words) in length, including references and appendices. Limit of one entry per student per year.

The top three papers will receive Couch Awards to be presented at the 2005 International Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The top paper will be awarded a certificate and a cash prize of $300, runner up will receive a certificate and a cash prize of $200, and a third paper will receive a certificate and a cash prize of $100. All three authors will be invited to present their work at a session of the A.o.I.R. conference, October 5-9, 2005.

Applicants should send a copy of their paper electronically to Mark D. Johns at johnsmar(at)luther.edu . Application deadline is May 1, 2005. Notification of award will be sent by June 15.

Those with questions or comments about Couch Award application, please contact:

Mark D. Johns
Dept. of Communication Studies
Luther College
Decorah, IA 52101
Tel: (563) 387-1347
E-mail: johnsmar(at)luther.edu

COMPUTERS, FREEDOM, AND PRIVACY CONFERENCE PANOPTICON APRIL 12-15, 2005 WESTIN HOTEL, SEATTLE, WA

The 15th annual conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy takes place from Tuesday, April 12th, to Friday, April 15th, 2005, in Seattle, Washington.

The Program Committee is now accepting proposals for conference sessions and speakers for CFP2005. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2004

CFP serves as an internationally recognized forum for the members of the technical, government, hacker, legal, business, education, media, cyber-rights, and non-profit communities to address cutting edge technical, business, legal and cultural issues. Programs, topics, and speakers from prior years†CFP conferences can be found at www.cfp.orgThe CFP2005 program committee welcomes proposals on all aspects of technology, freedom and privacy. We are particularly interested in receiving proposals that ask the hard questions about privacy and freedom in emerging surveillance societies, and challenging those assumptions. For example, how much surveillance is too much? When does surveillance cease making us more secure and begin to change the fabric of society?

The theme of the 15th CFP is PANOPTICON. Over time, and particularly recently, surveillance of ordinary citizens has increased to dramatic levels. Not only are governments watching more aspects of their citizens’ lives, but those in the private sector are increasing surveillance of people as well. Often lost in the race to “increase intelligence” are discussions about different approaches to address problems like the threat of terrorism that are equally or more effective, but do not involve extensive and constant surveillance.

In addition to topics directly related to the PANOPTICON theme, other areas of interest include:
1. domestic and international travel issues
2. communications surveillance
3. children and young adults growing up in a surveillance society
4. social networking
5. the flourishing of free speech (i.e. blogging) in spite of increased watchfulness
6. RFIDs and other emerging technologies
7. Intellectual property issues

We are seeking proposals for tutorials, plenary sessions, and birds-of-a-feather sessions. We are also seeking suggestions for speakers and other relevant topics not listed above. Sessions should present a wide range of thinking on a topic by including speakers from different viewpoints. We particularly welcome proposals for non-traditional presentations – those that utilize drama, %u201Cmock trials,%u201D interactivity, the performing arts, and audience participation.

Submit CFP2005 Proposal
Before submitting a proposal, please review the submission guidelines.
Select the type of proposal you would like to submit:

. tutorial
. plenary session
. birds-of-a-feather session
. speaker suggestion
. topic or activity suggestion

Submit your proposals on our web form All submissions must be received by December 31, 2004. The CFP2005 Program Committee will notify submitters of the status of their proposals by January 20, 2005.

Emergence: Complexity & Organization (E:CO) is an international and interdisciplinary conversation about human organizations as complex systems and the implications of complexity science for those organizations. With a unique format blending the integrity of academic inquiry and the impact of business practice, E:CO integrates multiple perspectives in management theory, research, practice and education. E:CO is a quarterly journal published in print and online by The Complexity Society, the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, and the Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity in accordance with academic publishing standards and processes.

Full online access to the latest special double issue of E:CO (issue 6, numbers 1 & 2) is available free here.

(via Patti)

CALL FOR PAPERS
The Sixth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association
June 22-26, 2005
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, New York City

The Biases of Media

Media are often criticized for the biases of their content, but media
ecology is also concerned with the intellectual, emotional, temporal,
spatial, political, social, metaphysical, and epistemological biases
associated with different forms of communication and different types of
technology.

We welcome submissions relating to the convention theme, “The Biases of
Media,” as well as to any topic relevant to the field of media ecology.
Make us a proposal we canâ€t turn down, in whatever format best showcases
your submission, including complete papers, abstracts, proposals for
discussion panels and workshop sessions, and short film and video works.
Complete papers may be entered for the Top Paper Award or the Linda
Elson Scholar Award (for Top Student Paper). Please indicate award entry
on submissions.

Send one copy of submission by email or regular mail to either:

Janet Sternberg
Dept. of Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University
Bronx, NY 10458-9993
718-817-4855 voice | 718-817-4868 fax
netberg@compuserve.com

or

Lance Strate
Dept. of Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University
Bronx, NY 10458-9993
718-817-4864 voice | 718-817-4868 fax
strate@fordham.edu

Submission deadline extended to December 15, 2004

———————————–
Media Ecology Association
http://www.media-ecology.org
———————————–