[Air-l] October 2003 executive committee report

[Nancy Baym]

October  , 2002
Report of the a.o.i.r. executive committee
Prepared by Nancy Baym

AoIR Executive Committee
President: Nancy Baym
Vice-President: Matthew Allen
Secretary: Ulla Bunz
Treasurer: Benjamin Bates
Open Seats: Radhika Gajjala and Annette Markham
Appointed Seats: Monica Murero and Randolph Kluver
Student Seat: Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki
Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl
Past President (ex-officio): Steve Jones
2004 Conference Chair: Kate O'Riordan
Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess


1.  Introduction & General (Baym)

This is the place to find out what's going on in the association. 
It's long, it's not always thrilling, but it's always the best way 
for you to keep up so please read it! Our 24/7 discussions of the 
month on the executive committee mailing list are summarized in Ulla 
Bunz's section of the report, 2004 Conference Host Kate O'Riordan 
provides a Sussex overview in the conference chair report below, and 
Charles Ess keeps us posted on ethics. All this and more! Read on...

2.  Executive Officers' Reports

2.1 President (Baym)

2.1.1  I'm thrilled to be taking over as president and want to thank 
the outgoing executive committee and everyone involved in making our 
Toronto conference a success. As this report is long enough already, 
I am posting more commentary under separate cover.

2.2 Vice President (Allen)

2.2.1  Matthew Allen completed his work as Program Chair for the 
conference, and
would like to thank all the presenters, participants, organisers and
volunteers who, truly, made it a great conference. He was honoured to have
worked with such a great band of scholars and found the program work to be
most enjoyable. Taking over as vice-president, Matthew will do some work on
reviewing the experience of 2003 and planning future conference approaches,
and developing some of the ideas proposed at the Internet Studies roundtable
concerning information sharing on courses of study in Internet Studies.


2.3 Secretary (Bunz)

2.3.1 In the past few weeks I've prodded repeatedly to make the t-shirts
happen, and chirped in on air-exec to advance members' interests. I've
also ordered awards five awards plaques and the gavel for Steve and
lugged them to Canada. At the conference I took 19 pages of notes that
I'm transforming into the minutes of the outgoing executive meeting, the
incoming executive meeting (both submitted to air-exec), and the general
meeting (submitted to air-l). I also chaired the editors roundtable and
gave a presentation. In addition I modeled the AoIR t-shirts and had an
awesome time meeting old and new friends.


This month on the Executive Listserve September 13 - October 25, 2003:
- The exec did last-minute scheduling for various meetings.
- The http://www.cafepress.com/aoir shop opened where you can purchase
air-wear, mugs, bags, and other goodies. The exec members were rather
excited about this and ordered lots of stuff!
- After much discussion about various options, Barry Wellman took on the
task of getting local t-shirts and shirts for the Toronto volunteers.
- The exec began discussing various possible program chairs for the 2004
conference in Sussex, England and sent out a call for nominations. In the
process the exec decided that in the future, neither the program nor the
conference chair should be an exec member at the same time, as this
creates conflict of roles. The exec also discussed the controversial
issue of whether one should give a relatively "young" (academically
speaking) person the program chair job to support new talent, or whether
one should give a more "old" (academically experienced) person this
task. Overall, there was a tendency toward the experienced person. The
exec also began discussing other means of organizing conferences.
- The exec rejected an offered partnership with another organization as
there didn't seem to be enough shared interests.
- Program chair Matt Allen shared with us last minute scheduling updates
such as memorial sessions for Rob Kling and Neil Postman, and other
panel rescheduling requested.
- The exec coordinated about who should get what kind of "thank-you"
gifts at the conference.
- Since the conference, we've mostly shared conference feedback with
each other and we welcome any more feedback from anyone.

Meetings of the General Meeting have been posted to air-l in a 
separate message.

2.4 Treasurer (Bates)

2.4.1 Dealing with conference registrations and membership renewals.

2.5 Open Seats (Gajjala, Markham)

2.5.1 Gajjala: The Postcolonial Feminists Meet Internet Studies 
precon workshop went off well. We had productive discussions. We plan 
to have follow-up panel(s) for Sussex. Thanks to all the people who 
participated and shared and thanks to the local organizers and 
volunteers at Toronto for making it happen. The blogging for this is 
continuing and anyone interested in joining should email me 
(radhika at cyberdiva.org).

During in-between panel session coffee breaks, there was discussion 
about increasing panels related to race, gender, sexuality, 
disability and so on. Tara Mcpherson, Michelle White, David Silver, 
Jillana Enteen, Jasjit Sangha and Trudy Rawlins among others had a 
few suggestions which I plan to follow up on.

Also, during Brunch on Sunday, several interesting panel ideas for 
Sussex were discussed (at our brunch table over coffee, omelettes, 
bagels, cream cheese, ketchup and jam (there was an occasional fruit 
consumed).

2.5.2 Markham: Radhika Gajjala and I, the two members occupying the 
role of "open seat" on the exec committee, met at the Toronto 
conference to discuss our goals and brainstorm ways that we can 
combine our resources to work toward our specific goals.

I also met with multiple association members to get an initial and 
grounded sense of what they envision the organization to be and what 
they wanted the organization to help them with.  To many members, I 
posed the question, "What sort of collaborative research agendas or 
big projects woud you like the association to facilitate?" Radhika 
and I intend to follow up on this informal information gathering with 
more formal requests for information from the membership.

2.6 Appointed Seats (Murero, Kluver)

2.6.1 Murero: After serving AoIR as conference chair in Maastricht 
(NL) I feel very honored to be appointed by the executive committee 
to cover the "appointed seat" for the next 2 years. I am sure I'll 
learn a lot, and have the honor to assist the association in 
continuing to grow and develop internationally. Please feel free to 
contact me anytime for any questions or suggestions at 
murero at eircom.net or monica.murero at infonomics.nl .

I also would like to sincerely thank and congratulate the former 
members of the exec committee, friends David Silver, Berry Wellman 
and Leslie Shade. The members of the new committee are a fabulous 
group to work with, under Nancy Baym's presidency. We have already 
started working on next year's conference!!!!!! As Romans used to say 
"dulcis in fundo" : I'd like to address a very sincere thank you to 
everyone who helped making AoIR 4 in Toronto a "broadband" reality.

2.6.2 Kluver: I am grateful for the opportunity to work with AoIR in 
the capacity of appointed member of the executive committee.  Special 
thanks to the Toronto organizers, who put together a great event, and 
Matt Allen, who put together a tremendous program!  I enjoyed seeing 
old friends and meeting new ones.  My goals for my time on the 
Executive committee are to participate in any way that I can to 
strengthen the organization and highlight its unique role in the 
academic community, and to strengthen collaborative research between 
other Asia-based Internet researchers and the vibrant research 
community that is AoIR.

2.7 Student Seat (Tkach-Kawaski)

2.7.1 First of all, I want to thank all the AoIR members
for their support of my election as grad rep. I am
very enthusiastic about taking this on and look forward
to working with my fellow graduate students and the
AoIR exec over the next two years. I also want to thank
Lisbeth Klastrup for forwarding various pieces of
information to me about the position and what has been
done to date.

About ten students attended the grad students' meeting
at AoIR 4.0 in Toronto, and I had the opportunity to
talk informally with about 10 or 12 students at other
times during the conference. During our formal meeting,
attendees indicated that they would like more dialogue
concerning a combination of methodological and academic
issues. We brainstormed a number of ideas, which I will be
researching in more detail over the coming weeks.

Jeremy has forwarded information to me concerning the
grad students list, and I will be attending to that
as well when I return to Japan (which will be October
28 or 29, depending on your time zone).

2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)

2.8.1 Hunsinger: helped with the last minute conference preparations
helped at the conference where needed
helped a bunch of people renew and register
helped charlie put up the papers
went to conference meetings
missed charlie at the conference
had a good time otherwise at the conference
and probably other things.

2.8.2 Breindahl: I have been busy updating the member's area with 
papers from the conference (still not quite finished). Also still 
fighting a tidal wave
of spam to our lists.

2.9 Past-President (Jones): I'm looking forward to helping AoIR in 
any way that I can and to seeing its new leadership move it forward.

2.10 2004 Conference Chair (Kate O'Riordan)

2.10.1 Location and context:
The University of Sussex is on the South Coast of the UK, in the
countryside of the Sussex Downs.  It is just outside the coastal city of
Brighton and Hove and very close to London. The University website is at
www.sussex.ac.uk.  We are really excited about the AoIR conference
coming here and faculty, and postgraduate students alike are involved in
the planning.

The City of Brighton and Hove is a centre for new media companies,
digital arts exhibition and training and community internet projects and
the University houses an innovation centre in partnership with local
businesses.  Digital media production and theory, internet studies,
learning technologies and programming are all significant parts of the
curriculum and departments across the arts and science schools have
interests in the AoIR organisation and conference.

Planning:
The conference planning is underway with capacity already booked and
campus accommodation on hold for September 19-22nd of 2004.  The
conference will be campus based and all the sessions, accommodation and
catering will be available on campus, although delegates will also have good
opportunities to visit Brighton.  I am working on the detailed budget at
the moment and I have already submitted a draft expenditure forecast to
the exec.

Themes and content:
These have not been finalised but I would like the theme to be focused
around ubiquitous and embedded communication technologies in practice and
theory. I look forward to working with colleagues to develop this further.

AoIR conferences have always been show-cases for established and
emerging expertise in Internet research and the conference content will
as always, be owned by the members of the organisation.  I look forward
to helping to organise the framework for this to happen again.

Challenges and Help:
Fund raising will be a major challenge!
In addition to this issue I would also welcome suggestions and support
around the development of the planning and I look forward to working
with the programme chair and other members of AoIR and the University of
Sussex on this.


2.11  AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair)

2.11.1  The AoIR ethics committee was well represented at the AoIR 
4.0 Preconference Workshop on Internet Research Ethics.  Committee 
members Jeremy Hunsinger and Michele White served as presenters and 
Klaus Bruhn Jensen and Leslie Tkach Kawasaki helped facilitate 
discussion.  We also heard from Keren Rice (Social Science and 
Humanities Working Committee, Interagency Advisory Panel on Research 
Ethics, Canada) who gave us a Canadian perspective on research
ethics - and from Elizabeth Buchanan, editor of  the forthcoming volume,
Readings in Virtual Research Ethics: Issues and Controversies, who gave us
an excellent overview of U.S. IRB / human subjects protection issues and
resources.

 From my perspective, the workshop was useful not only as it provided a
conversation space in which questions and useful resources were shared, but
also because the presentations and discussions helped us move forward a bit
in appreciating additional complexities in discerning the appropriate
response in the face of various ethical issues encountered in research -
including:

* how our re-presentation of computers, screens, avatars, etc., may work to
incline us towards spatial frameworks and embodied models of self-identity
online, even when dealing with humanities-based research methods, thereby
inclining us towards Human Subjects protection models, rather than models
perhaps more appropriate to humanities' methodologies (thank you, Michele!);

* how advances in technology make the very notion of privacy on the Internet
a highly questionable one (if you haven't seen Jeremy Hunsinger's slides on
this point, look them up on the AoIR conference website - and be afraid; be
very, very afraid...);

* however far IRBs in the U.S. context and their equivalents around the
world, and researchers may have come in acquiring resources and insights
into dealing with various ethical issues (Keren Rice, Elizabeth Buchanan) -
and while many that now crop up have a certain familiarity to them - there
is still plenty more to do, e.g.

     # as IRBs and their equivalents beyond the U.S. experience increasing
pressure from their institutions to protect their legal backside (a
technical term, I believe),

     # as IRBs and their equivalents beyond the U.S. raise new questions that
force us to reexaming prevailing definitions of basic ethical notions such
as "harm" (e.g., is issuing informed consent _itself_ possibly capable of
inflicting some sort of 'harm'?) and

     #  as researchers move into new territories that have little or no
ethical counterparts in either previous online research guidelines and/or in
offline analogues - e.g., the example given to me by a conference
participant of a research project that involved not only recording online
behavior but also using video to record face-to-face interactions.  The
latter moves us firmly _outside_ the venues we have been considering and
likely has very different codes and traditions to take into account: how do
we responsibly conjoin these two together?

In any case, we are hoping these conversations continue.

As well, AoIR members will have seen that I've issued a request for accounts
of researchers' encounters with IRBs and/or their equivalents outside the
U.S.  The hope is to collect enough case studies here both for discussion
and so that we can refer future queries to these as something of the
equivalent of precendent.

In addition, we're hoping to start documenting where the AoIR guidelines are
already being used by researchers and/or their institutional oversight
authorities.

So keep those cards and letters coming...: <chess at itu.dk>

Next-to-finally: because of the usual attrition on the committee, we will
consider adding a few more new members this year, especially with an eye
towards international representation.  If anyone would like to be
considered, they should contact me.

Finally, it seems clear from AoIR 4.0 that the interest in ethics is only
growing stronger.  As I've noted on the list, this year alone will see the
publication of at least three volumes dealing with Internet research
ethics - and I know that additional conferences and publications are in the
works.  In particular, there seems to be a growing awareness that one's
methodology involves specific ethical commitments and issues: to choose a
methodology is to choose an ethics, and vice-versa.  So I'm hoping to
organize one or more panels next year at AoIR 5.0 that will provide us with
a variety of approaches to matters ethical - including, for example, a panel
on the ethics/methodology interface; one on dealing with IRBs and their
equivalents - especially for new researchers; and perhaps one reviewing
recent literature on Internet Research Ethics.

If anyone is interested in these - and/or has other ideas - please let me
know.
-- Charles Ess, chair
AoIR ethics working group
email: chess at itu.dk