[Air-l] AoIR Presidential Thoughts

[Nancy Baym]

Hello,

At our General Meeting in Toronto I did not give any sort of 
innagural address. I would like to offer a few thoughts here. I hope 
you will take some time to think about these issues and engage in 
their discussion on list or with me.

I was struck (again) in Toronto at the extent to which, in a 
remarkably short time, this association has come to be an institution 
suspiciously similar to other academic associations. Sitting in 
panels, it was almost hard to remember how recently the very idea of 
this conference seemed like an overly-ambitious dream or how, less 
than four years ago, I was making arrangements for our first meeting 
in Kansas and wondering if anyone outside the midwestern United 
States would come. We have now had over 1,000 individuals come to our 
four meetings, and we have nearly 2,000 subscribers to air-l. Our 
first Internet Research Annual, bringing together selected papers 
from the first three conferences, will be released in a few weeks and 
reviewing for the second annual will begin shortly. In addition, a 
number of books have already been published or are being planned 
based on panels and collaborative research projects that grew out of 
our conferences, and many research papers have been published in 
journals. Our ethics working group has created a guide that is being 
used by many scholars and increasing numbers of institutional review 
boards. Being able to help make all this happen has easily been the 
most rewarding enterprise of my professional life. I've also been 
amazed and deeply personally rewarded by the extent to which we have 
created a community of friends as well as colleagues. I think I speak 
for many repeat attenders when I say that people who were just names 
to me before our first meeting are now among my dearest friends and 
that one regret of our meetings is that I don't have time to get to 
know all those other interesting looking people walking around.

That said, the association's rapid growth and the increased 
expectations people have of us present a number of challenges and 
issues, particularly given our status as an all-volunteer 
association. Like my predecessor in this role, Steve Jones, I believe 
that my role, and the role of the executive committee in general, is 
to facilitate the association's organic growth based on the 
interests, desires, needs, and energies of the members. I do not have 
a strong agenda I wish to impose on you. I hope all of us will be 
engaged in making AoIR what we want it to be, recognizing that there 
are some tensions which may ultimately be unresolvable. In 
Interpersonal Communication Theory, we talk about "relational 
dialectics," the idea that all relationships involve continuous 
efforts to find satisfactory points of balance between competing 
demands (for instance, the desires that our conferences include 
scholars from more and more disciplines yet have fewer simultaneous 
sessions). I hope that AoIR can find balance points that work for 
most of us, but acknowledge that some will always want more or less 
of something than others do, and that no approach will ever satisfy 
everyone.

One challenge we face is the expectation that we should always be 
doing more and exploring areas we haven't. In essense, the challenge 
here is to take full advantages of the scarce resources we do have 
and to find new resources in order to create what we want to have. 
People point out on occassion that as an internet association, we 
should do more with the internet. Ideas range from overhauling the 
web site, to creating new online spaces, to creating complex 
databases of internet research, publications, and so on. There is 
indeed a tremendous amount of unrealized potential. There are also 
right now exactly two people who are doing all of our web work, and 
they are both in the midst of writing Ph.D. dissertations. We have 
had some successes in this area, most recently the list of AoIR 
bloggers compiled by Jeremy Hunsinger and Thomas Burg, and the List 
of Lists compiled by Jeremy, Ulla Bunz, David Silver, and Matt Allen. 
What we have not had, thus far, are the financial resources to pay 
people to do these things nor the volunteers it would take to create 
as many of these resources as we want. One way to reach our online 
potential is to charge considerably more for membership and 
conference fees so that we can pay for initiatives like these. 
Another is for more people who can make these things happen and are 
willing to see them through to volunteer. Perhaps the most exciting 
possibility would be if people who have great ideas (and skills) for 
novel and beneficial ways to use the internet could partner with us 
in seeking grant funding to make those ideas happen. There are 
doubtless other possibilities as well, and we will be putting 
together at least one working group to guide us in thinking through 
these issues in the coming months. Your thoughts and energies are 
welcome. If you have the energy to build resources, don't ever be shy 
about coming to us with your ideas.

Another challenge seems to me to be our greatest strength, which is 
interdisciplinarity. We have a dialectic between wanting to be 
exposed to and informed by different ways of approaching the topics 
we care about and at the same time wanting others' work to conform to 
the standards by which we assess work in our home disciplines. We all 
need to rise to the challenge of presenting our ideas in ways that 
will be compelling to those who are not grounded in our traditions 
while at the same time reaching the standards of our traditions. Part 
of our challenge as readers and listeners is to find the strengths in 
work that comes from traditions we don't share. I hear a consistent 
desire from all ends of the methodological spectrums that, regardless 
of its tradition, work should offer its audience theoretical 
significance beyond the case or project presented. One direct way in 
which you can influence what counts as "quality" at our conferences 
is to serve as a reviewer next year, and I hope more and more of you 
will do so.

Yet another issue is what we can do to bring more people in from 
underrepresented parts of the world, particularly those areas where 
the likelihood of being able to afford our conference is minimal. One 
of the great promises of the internet is the ability to link people 
globally in the face of great challenges -- indeed I saw at least one 
panel talking about the ways in which the internet allows grassroots 
movements in poor nations to expand their resources through 
affiliation with one another -- yet making this happen in an 
association such as ours is far from easy (or cheap). This connects 
more broadly to the issue of recruitment. My general feeling is that 
there are so many targets for recruitment (based on methodology, 
discipline, race/ethnicity, stature, etc) that recruitment is best 
left to our members to call on those they wish were here to join us. 
However, I think it is imperative that we do what we can to lessen 
the financial barriers to participation in AoIR for those who would 
like to join us but cannot afford to. Any inspirations you have on 
how we might be able to do this while still breaking even on our 
conferences (which are expensive to run) would be most appreciated.

The last issue I'll raise here is that of what benefits we need to 
provide in order to make more people and institutions who are 
interested in AoIR take the leap and become paid members. Dialectic = 
I want to get more, I don't want to pay for it! As you know, air-l is 
offered free to everyone. Right now about 1/4 of air-l subscribers 
are members of the association. Paid members currently get access to 
the archives of conference papers and discounts on several journals 
and Routledge's Cyberculture book series. Related to this is whether 
or not we should have a journal of our own, which would entail higher 
membership fees and an editorial board (and editor) willing to do 
editing. Another possibility is to charge somewhat more for 
membership and include subscriptions to one or several of the 
existing journals that are relevant to internet research (examples 
include those to which our members currently receive discounts, such 
as IcS, NM&S, TIS, Cyberpsychology and Behavior, and so on). A third 
possiblity is to leave things as they are now and offer our members 
discounts on a range of journals without building them into the 
membership fee. We will be putting together another working group to 
look at these and other possibilities and make recommendations to us. 
Again, your opinions on journal preferences (or lack thereof) and 
benefits in general are welcomed.

These are by no means the only issues before us, and I am interested 
to hear your thoughts on what else you would have us consider as well 
as your thoughts on any of those I have raised. In my time as a 
steward of this association, I invite all of you to think about what 
this association does or has the potential to do for you, and what 
you can do for the association to make it better.

Thank you,

Nancy

-- 
Nancy Baym 	http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS 66045-7574, USA
Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org