my old office

sometime in may 2006, my old office, located on the first floor of the communications building at the university of washington, looked like this:


it started with a NO IRAQ WAR sign.

sometime in 2003, i taped a NO IRAQ WAR sign to the hallway window of my office. within days, it was stolen. so i got another NO IRAQ WAR sign and taped it to the outside window of my office. within a day, it was taken down, torn into four or five pieces, and pushed under my door and into my office. so i got a third NO IRAQ WAR sign and taped it to the outside of my office. within a day, it was taken down and torn up, into dozens of pieces this time, and jammed under my door and into my office.

so i got a fourth NO IRAQ WAR sign. but this time, i taped it from the inside.


soon after, the stickers began to appear.

i put up the first few - war is terrorism. keep santa cruz weird. god bless the freaks.

within days, people, students i assume, began sticking stickers to my office window. stickers with all kinds of slogans - arms are for hugging. arthur magazine. keep abortion legal. chicago bulls. indian country. kexp. are you part of the problem or part of the solution? trust women.

one day, a UW student-athlete enrolled in my intro to communication class and playing on the football team asked me if i would stick a husky football sticker on my office window. "sure," i answered, "but it would be cooler if you did it."

miraculously - and beautifully - none of the stickers covered the NO IRAQ WAR sign.


about once a semester, i'd drag out some boxes, cover them in colorful tapestries, and offer free books, magazines, tapes, CDs, masks, canteens, candle-sticks, stickers, and other assorted freebies. above the colorful boxes, i taped a sign that said FREE STUFF. most of the stuff would disappear by the end of the day.





one time, i put out 10-15 years-worth of issues of journal of communication, a prestigious journal in the field of communication. no issues were taken. on the other hand, this wooden cow head mask got taken within minutes.


the last detail was a vertical column of print-outs of my gone series. starting with the resignation of tom delay, the gone series is an archive of politicians, mostly linked to george w. bush, who have recently resigned, been fired, or been thrown in jail.


back in may 2006, i began to print out the blog entries and tape them to the wall next to the window. if i had stayed at UW, the print-outs of the criminals would have taken over my office wall, window, and door.


last weekend, i traveled to UW for irina gendelman's dissertation defense. while on campus, i skipped down the hall to see my old office. it's much cleaner and more shiny. and it has less stickers.

critical perspectives on web 2.0

my short essay, "history, hype, and hope: an afterward," has been published in this month's issue of first monday. yeah!

the origins of this collaboration was a panel called "critical perspectives on web 2.0: surveillance, discipline, labor," organized by michael zimmer for the association of internet researchers conference in vancouver, canada in october 2007. our panel was well received and well attended ...



... so we decided to approach first monday about a special issue. they agreed; we worked hard to prepare our papers for publication; and yesterday, on the first monday of the month, first monday published our efforts:

Special issue: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
edited by Michael Zimmer

Preface: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
by Michael Zimmer

Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0
by Trebor Scholz

Web 2.0: An argument against convergence
by Matthew Allen

Interactivity is Evil! A critical investigation of Web 2.0
by Kylie Jarrett

Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation
by Søren Mørk Petersen

The Externalities of Search 2.0: The Emerging Privacy Threats when the Drive for the Perfect Search Engine meets Web 2.0
by Michael Zimmer

Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance
by Anders Albrechtslund

History, Hype, and Hope: An Afterward
by David Silver

since 1996 (!), first monday has been churning out goodness each month, and it's a delight to be a contributor to this journal. it's also a delight to publish with a free and open-access journal that is online, which, among other things, allowed me to embed a youtube video into my essay.


thanks to michael for organizing us, to my fellow contributors for making the special issue special, and to first monday for doing what they've been doing for over ten years.

three reviews of critical cyberculture studies

academic reviews of critical cyberculture studies, a book i co-edited with adrienne massanari, are beginning to appear. and so far they are positive!

in new media & society, the leading academic journal for new media/internet studies, stephanie boluk writes, "Whether one uses the term cyberculture, internet, digital or new media studies, David Silver and Adrienne Massanari's anthology Critical Cyberculture Studies provides a framework for discussion of these fields and an eclectic series of exemplars showing what sort of work is being done in this nebulously classified territory of research." (New Media & Society, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 1037-1039; whole review here.)

in journal of communication, a leading academic journals for communication and media studies, laura robinson notes, "This collection's wide-ranging contributions valorize critical cyberculture studies' openness and flexibility, whether construed as field, discipline, or interdiscipline. It welcomes into its fold an unusually broad and heterogeneous array of empirical objects, theoretical orientations, and analytical strategies. In its sheer scope, this 25-chapter compilation is unparalleled. Chapters range from institutional analysis of Internet architecture to feminist analysis of emergent transhumanist narratives, to sociological analysis of the role of the culture of independence in the dot-com era. It also addresses badly needed global studies of cyberculture in diverse regions of Asia, as well as Scandinavia. In sum, the volume tackles its themes from numerous angles." (Journal of Communication, Vol. 57, Issue 4, pp. 808-810; whole review here.)

and in the international journal of baudrillard studies, a "transdisciplinary publication dedicated to engaging the thought and writing of jean baudrillard," pramod k. nayar writes "Critical Cyberculture Studies opens up the field (despite Silver's cautionary note that it is only an "invitation to consider a few new directions"). Ranging across race theory to political economy, rhetorical and discourse analysis to cultural policy studies, the volume embodies a range of topics, approaches and agendas. We thus have an exploration of a commercial company (amazon.com) and state-run internet services (e-governance), the popular internet and militarization - all contributing to a comprehensive introduction to the new media. Where works like David Marshall's (New Media Studies), focused on one approach (cultural studies), the Silver-Massanari volume takes care to see that no one approach is valorized. In fact, one of the nice things about this volume is that it showcases many approaches (especially in section II) ... Critical Cyberculture Studies expands this work, moving from communication to community, postcolonial subjectivity, racial identities and technology to political economy and the nation-state. The volume is an extremely useful critical guide to future researchers in cyberculture and new media studies." (International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2; whole review here.)

thank you reviewers for considering and wrestling with the ideas and perspectives found within critical cyberculture studies.

barry wellman, that ain't right

in response to a recent thread about james watson, race, and racism on aoir-l, barry wellman, famous internet sociologist, wrote:

1. I think this list always needs to make a choice about whether to stay on topic (Internet Research -- both words are germane) or wander way off topic. (Dr. Watson). I value it for the former, and don't think this is the place for a general bull session. If others persist, I know that I will not want to read or participate, as many others have decided not to do before. (Step back and analyze who are the active published scholars in journals such as JCMC, ICS, NM&S, Info Sty, etc -- and who contributes here.)

2. But, as long as you got me going, to give my .02 re Watson, the world is filled with scientists (and politicians) making ex cathedra pronouncements about the things they don't know much about. Just like some professors I know ;-)

wow! fascinating for at least four reasons:

1. professor wellman has a long history of calling into question various topics on aoir-l, one of the largest and most interdisciplinary listservs for academics studying the internet. many of the topics he calls into question revolve around discussions of race. not cool.

2. professor wellman also has a long history of threatening to leave, or hinting that he may threaten to leave, aoir-l and aoir. interestingly, such threats often occur directly before or directly after aoir conferences. it's weird like that.

3. barry wellman equates internet research with being published in JCMC, ICS, NM&S, Info Sty. ok, first, some translation. JCMC = the journal of computer-mediated communication. ICS = information, communication and society. NM&S = new media and society. and Info Sty = um, i'm not sure what that is. second, what a limited perspective of a field that is growing all over the place.

4. barry says, "stop this discussion!" then barry says, "wait, wait - here's my opinion on this discussion!" that's called sending mixed messages. that's also just weird.

famous internet sociologist or not, such behavior just ain't right.

update: saturday afternoon, barry wellman attempted to comment on my blog but was unable to. instead, he emailed me the following message with the request to post his response. i grant his request.

David,

I have written a response to your blog. However, an adblock of Captcha is weirdly stopping my posting it. So I would appreciate it if you would post it. Thanks.

Barry Wellman

It would have been nice if David Silver had copied his blog post to me, rather than leave it for someone else to alert me to it.

He's right. I do wish the AoIR list would stay on topic, and I point it out when it's off topic. I mentioned some journals, but it was obviously a "for example" list. I don't think I should have mentioned 100s more.

David's also right: I have said "stay on topic" before to the Association of Internet Researchers list and will again. And I will probably again point out how few experienced Internet Researchers contribute to this list. Some have told me it is because of the relative absence of discussion of Internet Research. I am sad that David Silver wants this to be an unfocused bull session, or is he just continuing a long series of upsets with me?

David's "many of the topics he calls into question revolve around discussions of race. not cool" is an uncalled for innuendo and factually untrue. (Do I have to point out I have paid my "race" dues since the 1950s.) The Watson discussion had nothing to do with Internet Research, and I said so. Just as when David wanted to make political manifestos early in the days of AoIR, I wondered if that was the right locale for it.

However, David is right that as long as I had the floor re Watson, I did give my very brief .02. As I think David would agree, making political pronouncements is seductive and easy; it's certainly easier than doing systematic research.

I find this a sad post from David. I won't continue. Back to Internet Research.

Barry Wellman

blogging as research activity

each year, USF faculty are required to submit an academic career prospectus, or ACP. the first part of the prospectus asks faculty to evaluate their teaching, research, and service goals from the previous year. under research, i included the following paragraph:

I am particularly satisfied as I look back on my last research goal – to continue using my blog to contribute to academic communities and conversations. During the last year, I have tried my best to blog my academic and professional talks, leaving behind a hyperlinked, words-and-images post that serves as a bibliography for future reading and, more importantly, affords others the opportunity to comment and converse publicly. I have worked hard to blog academic conferences (talks I hear, talks I give, topics covered, topics not covered) I attend including, this year, the Illinois School Library Media Association’s (ISLMA) annual conference, the LaborTech 2006 conference, the Beyond Broadcast conference, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference, and, most recently, the Media in Transition 5 conference. Believing that pedagogy is best when collective, I blogged my syllabi, some of my lectures, and some of my lesson plans. Finally, I blogged about USF events that engaged me academically, intellectually, and emotionally – Paul Farmer's talk, Election Night 2006 (organized by Professor Corey Cook), and the School of the Americas Watch Halloween Dinner (organized by USF students).

the september project comes alive

during september, the september project comes alive.

what: the september project is a grassroots effort to encourage free and public events in all libraries in all countries.
when: most events occur during the month of september. some events take place in october, november, and just about every month of the year.
where: september project events have occurred and continue to occur in over 900 libraries in 30 countries.
why: because we believe now's the time to gather publicly and share ideas about issues that matter. and because we love libraries.

as i shared with ACRLog, the september project has no political agenda. however, it is, of course, political. these days, to exercise any form of public discourse is political. to publicly assemble is political. to organize anything free is definitely political. to talk about issues that matter - to talk about the war, to talk about human rights, to talk about the Earth - that's political. in our times, any idea that encourages us to be citizens rather than consumers, any activity that encourages peace rather than war, is highly political.

on sunday, i fly to salt lake city to be part of the university of utah's september project. the events are being organized by marriott library in collaboration with the tanner humanities center, the hinckley institute of politics, and the associated students of the university of utah (students as co-sponsors! yes!). events include a "september speak out" in front of marriott library, a talk titled "why i blog and why you should blog" by myself, and a talk titled "democracy as an ongoing project: threats and challenges to democratic governance in the US" by alexander keyssar, professor of history and social policy at harvard university’s kennedy school of government. if you live nearby, please join us!

the september project began in 2004 which means this is the fourth september project. judging from images we've already received, this year's events are powerful, important, and quite beautiful.

the images below are clickable. click them if you're curious.

building a free library

this afternoon i set up a free library outside of my office on campus.

i began with a book case - a nice, wooden, somewhat solid two-shelver - that's been with me for years, moving from apartment to apartment without ever feeling at home. i placed it directly outside of my office.


i filled it with books - books i'll never read, books i've read that i'll never read again, books that i've received for RCCS that have never found reviewers, books that sarah no longer wanted. for good measure, i also added some academic journals that i'll surely never read and a few years worth of the nation.


students love music so i added about thirty CDs from my personal stash - CDs i used to love but no longer listen to, CDs that suck, CDs that friends burned for me sometime in the past. i also included some classics - wilco's summerteeth, the long winter's when i pretend to fall, and the flaming lips' soft bulletin - that sarah had copies of, thereby making them redundant.


finally, i posted the library rules.


i've done experiments like this before - see "purge" and this facebook photo album, both from spring 2006 - and my once-belongings disappeared quickly and often completely. but i've never encouraged people to leave stuff behind. this time, i hope students, staff, and faculty will not only snag a few books and a CD but also leave stuff behind. after all, libraries, like love, are best when you give and get.

tenure track job in communication studies at usf

last week, i blogged about a tenure track job in media studies at USF. here is another tenure track job - in the department of communication studies - at USF. for more information, contact marilyn delaure, the chair of the search committee.

University of San Francisco
Department of Communication Studies
Interpersonal Communication (tenure-track):

The Department of Communication Studies at the University of San Francisco invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Interpersonal Communication to begin in Fall 2008.

Teaching responsibilities will include the introductory course "Communication and Everyday Life" (a theory-based introduction to interpersonal communication) and additional upper level courses in the candidate’s areas of expertise, such as, Interpersonal Communication, Communication and Technology, Organizational Communication, Communication and Aging, Communication and Culture, Language and Social Interaction, Discourse and Power, and Intercultural Communication. The teaching load at USF is two courses per semester with an additional course every fourth semester (2-2-2-3 over 2 years).

Qualifications: University teaching experience, evidence of a strong commitment to teaching, evidence of scholarship, an earned doctorate by Fall 2008, experience and willingness to work in a culturally diverse environment, and an understanding of and commitment to support the mission of the University are required. The candidate will be expected to develop a significant, independent and ongoing research program.

Applicants should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, graduate transcripts, brief description of research plans, copies of recent publication(s) and/or research paper(s), statement of teaching philosophy, evidence of teaching ability including copies of official teaching evaluations, and three letters of recommendation to:

Communication Studies Search Committee
c/o Marilyn DeLaure, Search Committee Chair
Department of Communication Studies
University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton Street
San Francisco, CA 94117-1080.

Applications must be received by October 1, 2007 in order to ensure full consideration.

The University of San Francisco is a Jesuit Catholic university founded in 1855 to educate leaders who will fashion a more humane and just world. Candidates should demonstrate a commitment to work in a culturally diverse environment and to contribute to the mission of the University.

USF is an Equal Opportunity Employer dedicated to affirmative action and to excellence through diversity. The University provides reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants with disabilities upon request.

beyond broadcast @ MIT

beyond broadcast took place saturday in frank gehry's wonderful strata building at MIT. it was organized by three entities - MIT's comparative media studies, harvard's berkman center for internet & society, and yale's information society project - and was sponsored by the center for social media. the conference was convened, according to the web site, to explore "how participatory culture is putting the tools of media creation and critique in the hands of citizens themselves." with over 400 people in attendance, ranging from media artists, media activists, academics, bloggers, and industry people, expectations were high.

conference keynote speaker henry jenkins got things started right. smart, engaging, energetic, and funny, jenkins is a joy to behold and when it comes to ideas, the guy is on fire. drawing from convergence culture as well as his career's worth of work on fan culture, jenkins bounced from big idea to big idea, reminding us - a bit too optimistically for my tastes - that the kids are alright.

the talk included the seemingly requisite feed into second life. however, in a very unparticipatory culture move, questions and comments from second lifers went largely ignored. it seems to me that if conference organizers are going to arrange feeds into second life, they really should design feeds out of second life. without such interaction, the second lifers become observers, not participants. for me, that's sort of creepy. for a conference on participatory democracy, that's just wrong.

john palfrey, executive director of the berkman center for internet and society, followed jenkins with a brief yet insightful overview of politics and the internet. this was, perhaps, the most traditionally academic segment of the conference, with palfrey offering ideas regarding participatory democracy, economic democracy, and semiotic democracy. (todd mundt provides an excellent overview of john's talk here.)

but then things dimmed. the first panel, "participatory culture," was dull at best. elizabeth osder, senior director of product development at yahoo, said little, if anything, besides reminding the audience that yahoo owns flickr, delicious, and now mybloglog. kenny miller, executive vp and creative director at MTV, said even less and said it in a much less organized way. fortunately, the third panelist, arin crumley, one half of the creative team behind the film four-eyed monster, saved the panel. fed through a stream from LA, arin recounted his and his partner susan buice's experiences with, on the one hand, the traditional film festival circuit, and, on the other hand, posting parts of the film to blogs and myspace. arin's energy and ideas woke up the crowd.

unfortunately, however, the excitement was short-lived as the panel moderator, reason magazine's jesse walker, largely shut out both the first life and second life audience from the Q and A and instead used the time to ask his own questions. the only exciting - not to mention telling - part of the Q and A was when an online participant's question made it to the stage: "how do panelists," the questioner asked more or less, "see the needs of advertisers matching the needs of users?" elizabeth either understood the question and deferred or did not understand the question and was mum; kenny said, "great question," and answered that ultimately it's up to users. ok. as a user who creates plenty of user-generated content, i've got an idea - how about not matching my content to advertising? how about letting me converse and create without constant reminders and nudges to consume? it was strange, and depressing, that a large auditorium filled with really smart people could not even conceive of an advertising-free participatory culture.

after a much needed coffee break (during which i met rick burnes, part of the team behind the terrific and free mapping tool atlas), we reconvened for the second panel which featured jennifer harris (from the center for digital democracy), tad hirsch (MIT media lab), and chuck defeo (e-campaign manager for bush/cheney 2004). jennifer offered a brief yet on target reminder that all the nastiness found in old media (consolidation, commercialization, consumerism) is found, naturally, in new media. tad provided an overview of some of the really interesting projects he's working on - sort of an annotated resume. and chuck explained the importance of social media in the political process in general and republican political process in particular. i had mixed feelings regarding chuck. on the one hand, it was great to have a conservative voice among a sea of traditional liberals; on the other hand, saying that people like bush and cheney want "conversations" and "feedback" and "user-generated content" is just plain false. the best part of the panel was near the end when jennifer, perhaps channelling the frustration felt by many of us, had enough of chuck and tore into his argument. finally, a little conversation.

the panel's moderator was drew clark, from the center for public integrity, and he did his best to give the speakers ample time, entertain questions from the physical audience, and integrate questions from the online participants. the most telling question was also the most disturbing - something like "all this activism is great and all, but what are the business models?"

can you stand it?

can you imagine asking a question like that to, oh, say, the brave people who took a stand at stonewall? can you imagine approaching the freedom riders and asking them, "um, what is your business model?" how about the abolitionists? or the suffragists?

since when did democratic movements require business models? and while we're here, since when did marketing gurus become our go-to guys for democracy? maybe we need less conferences about web 2.0 and more conferences about activism 1.0 - good old fashioned people-powered movements, in the streets not on our screens.

the day's highlight was lunch - not because of the tasty sandwiches but because of my company: barbara abrash, director of public programs for the center for media, culture, and history at NYU and a member of the center for social media. at lunch, barbara told me about a project she's working on that examines documentary films and the communities that form around them. she mentioned one example - a documentary film about children with cancer. the filmmakers (and pbs?) got together with organizations like the lance armstrong foundation to foster dialogue. dialogue about america's number one taboo subject: death. dialogue about the grief experienced by the children, their families, and their friends. dialogue about early detection and prevention of cancer in general and cancer in children in particular. what barbara has been studying are the networks - online and offline - that form around such powerful films. having sat through a few hours of talks about technology, i was moved by barbara's discussion of people. talking to barbara made me think that perhaps in our mad dash towards everything 2.0, we've lost sight of the more human elements.

i'd never been to MIT, and i was growing impatient with the conference's level of discourse, so i skipped the afternoon working group sessions and walked aimlessly around campus. the best part was stumbling upon a huge auditorium packed with over 500 high school students competing in the harvard-mit math tournament! the kids were psyched to be there and i could literally feel their excitement. i stayed for a while - just to feed off of some of the buzz that was missing at my own conference.

about two hours later, the conference reconvened, this time to share the fruits of the working groups' collective intelligence. the ideas were good - some great, some inspired - but without any coherence or links between them.

the conference ended with a "wrap up" by david weinberger. as a leading proponent of everything-as-conversation, david surprised me by conversing very little about the ideas expressed in the conference. instead, he talked a lot about the complexity of the concept of "ours."

i have been attending conferences for the last twelve years and the majority are, unfortunately, uneventful and uninspired. i wanted beyond broadcast to be different. and, with heavy hitters like harvard, yale, and MIT as organizers, i expected it to be different.

i don't regret attending beyond broadcast and i hope the organizers, with help from the center for social media, will continue to plan future conferences. at the same time, i hope they think hard about what works and what doesn't, who attends and who doesn't, who participates and who doesn't. but perhaps more importantly, we - we who care about these issues, we who care about democracy - need to think hard about these questions. gone are the days when we turn to harvard, MIT, and yale for answers. these are the days when we turn to each other.

congratulations kelly quinn

this fall, kelly quinn becomes assistant professor of american studies at miami university. of all the professors i know, and i know a lot, kelly quinn's the best. congratulations miami university. congratulations q dawg.