[Air-l] Blog Collection CFP

[Nancy Baym]

Call for Papers
Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs
ABSTRACTS DUE JUNE 30, 2003

Ed. by the University of Minnesota Blog Collective
Smiljana Antonijevic, Laura Gurak, Laurie Johnson, Jim Oliver, Clancy 
Ratliff, Jessica Reyman, Sathya Yesuraja

The editors invite submissions for a new online edited collection 
exploring discursive, visual, and other communicative features of 
weblogs. We are interested in submissions that analyze and critique 
situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and the weblog 
community. Although we are open to a wide range of scholarly 
approaches, our primary interest is in essays that comment upon 
specific features of the weblog and that treat the weblog as always a 
part of a larger community network.

Categories around which essays may cohere include:

* Social and Psychological Perspectives
* Visual Features, including Interface Design and Navigation
* Rhetorical and Linguistic Features of Weblog Discourse
* Pedagogical Implications
* Intellectual Property
* Race, Class, and Gender
* Intercultural Communication

Because blogs, like the Internet, have a global reach, we encourage 
an international scope as well.

Along with this being the first scholarly collection of its type 
focused on weblog as rhetorical artifact, we are also taking an 
innovative approach to publishing and intellectual property. Weblogs 
represent the power of regular people to use the Internet for 
publishing. The ethos of blogging is collaborative and values the 
sharing of ideas; bloggers are not dependent on publishers to get 
their words out. In the same manner, the editors of this collection 
will publish the collection
online. We will use a peer-review process to ensure scholarly 
quality. But like a weblog, the collection will be available to all, 
although authors will retain their own copyrights. We intend to 
obtain a version of a Creative Commons license.

The members of the collective welcome the opportunity to discuss the 
scope of the collection or directions for essays with prospective 
authors. We may be contacted at collection at intotheblogosphere.com

Abstracts of approximately 250 words should clearly identify the 
disciplinary focus as well as the specific case or artifact to be 
studied. Send abstracts via email by midnight, June 30, 2003. Our 
editorial collective will review the abstracts and make an initial 
selection. We will respond by early August. Full submissions of 
approximately 3,000 words will be due in November; these essays will 
be peer-reviewed.

-- 
Nancy Baym	http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
102 Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org