[Air-l] AoIR 8.0 Call for Papers

[Mia Consalvo]

ANNOUNCING THE NEXT AOIR CONFERENCE CFP!
[Please feel free to circulate widely]:
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Internet Research 8.0: Let¹s Play!
 
International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of
Internet Researchers
 
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
 
Workshops:             October 17, 2007
 
AoIR conference:       October 18­20, 2007
 
Deadline for submissions:  February 1, 2007
 
Let¹s Play
 
The Internet ­ better, internet/s - is at once part of the background hum of
the developed world and an exotic realm of fantasy and play. It is an
essential, mundane part of daily life, and simultaneously radical,
revolutionary, profane, and fun. Internet/s invite us to play. We surf,
blog, role play, and chat in the interest of work, learning, and play.
Serious technologies and applications invite playing around as a way to
learn how to use them. Playful applications take root in serious business,
as online chat becomes a business communication tool. Games find
applications in education, business, and war. Playful blogging evolves into
a social and political force to be reckoned with. We play with our identity
online, shaping current and future roles offline.  The play goes onŠ
 
Our conference theme of play invites empirical research and theoretical
reflection on how human beings ³seriously play² with one another on, via and
through internet/s, on local, regional, and global scales. We call for
papers that explore the intersection of the serious and the playful, the
sacred and the profane, the revolutionary and the mundane, and fantasy and
the reality.
 
CALL FOR PAPERS
 
We call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline,
methodology, and community, and from conjunctions of multiple disciplines,
methodologies and communities, that address the (playful) blurring of
boundaries online.  The following TOPICS are suggestions simply intended to
spark initial reflection and creativity:
 
- Mundanity implies normalcy, and thereby, the efforts to understand and
regulate online interactions in ways that are analogous to and consistent
with offline practices and norms (e.g., privacy protection, norms for
community interaction, efforts to regulate information flows involving
pornography, hate speech, etc.). As internet/s become interwoven with
ordinary life on multiple levels, in what ways do these alter ordinary life,
and/or how do prevailing community and cultural practices reshape and Œtame¹
such internet/s and the interactions they facilitate?
 
 
- Global diffusion: how do internet/s, as they exponentially diffuse
throughout the globe facilitate flows of information, capital, labor,
immigration ­ and play ­ and what are the implications of these new flows
for life offline?
 
- eLearning: how can such practices as distance learning and serious games
utilize the liminal domain (the threshold world of dream and myth, in which
important new skills, insights, and abilities are gained in the process of
growing up) to go beyond traditional ways of learning? Are they necessarily
better, or easier, to use or to learn from?
 
- Identity, community, and global communications: how will processes of
identity play and development continue, and/or change as the role and place
of the Internet in peoples lives shift in new ways ­ including the expansion
of mobile access to internet/s?
 
- E-health: what do new developments in sharing medical information online
and expanding telemedicine technologies into new domains imply for
traditional physician-centered medicine, patient privacy, etc.?
 
- Digital art: from downloading commercially-offered ringtones to
facilitating cross-cultural / cross-disciplinary collaborations in the
creation of art, internet/s expand familiar aesthetic experiences and open
up new possibilities for aesthetic creativity: how are traditional
understandings of aesthetic experience affected ­ and how do new creative /
aesthetic / playful possibilities affect human ³users² of art?
 
- Games and gaming: the average gamer in North America is now a
twenty-something whose lifestyle is more mainstream than adolescent. As
games and gamers ³grow up² ­ and as games continue their diffusion into new
demographic categories while they simultaneously continue to push the
envelopes of Internet and computer technologies ­ what can we discern of new
possibilities for identity play, community building, and so forth?
 
Sessions at the conference will be established that specifically address the
conference theme, and we welcome innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes
on that theme. We also welcome submissions on topics that address social,
cultural, political, economic, and/or aesthetic aspects of the Internet
beyond the conference theme - e.g., in CSCW and other forms of online
collaboration, distance learning, etc. 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 Œpaper.¹

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.
- PAPERS (individual or multi-author) - submit abstract of 500-750 words
- CREATIVE OR AESTHETIC PRESENTATIONS - submit abstract of 500-750 words
- PANELS - submit a 500-750 word description of the panel theme, plus
250-500 word abstract for each paper or presentation
- ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS - 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 OR submit
a roundtable proposal. You may be listed as co-author on additional papers
as long as you are not presenting them.

Detailed information about submission and review is available at the
conference submission website http://conferences.aoir.org [available
December 1, 2006]. All proposals must be submitted electronically through
this site.
 
PUBLICATION OF PAPERS
Several publishing opportunities are expected to be available through
journals, based on peer-review of full papers. The website 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, 2007.
 
 
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
Prior to the conference, there will be a limited number of pre-conference
workshops which will provide participants with in-depth, hands-on and/or
creative opportunities. We invite proposals for these pre-conference
workshops. Local presenters are encouraged to propose workshops that will
invite visiting researchers into their labs or studios or locales. Proposals
should be no more than 1000 words, and should clearly outline the purpose,
methodology, structure, costs, equipment and minimal attendance required, as
well as explaining its relevance to the conference as a whole. Proposals
will be accepted if they demonstrate that the workshop will add
significantly to the overall program in terms of thematic depth, hands on
experience, or local opportunities for scholarly or artistic connections.
These proposals and all inquires regarding pre-conference proposals should
be submitted as soon as possible to the Conference Chair and no later than
March 31, 2007.
 
 
DEADLINES
Submission site available: December 1, 2006
Proposal submission deadline: February 1, 2007
Presenter notification: March 31, 2007
Final workshop submission deadline: March 31, 2007
Submission for student award competition: June 30, 2007
Submission for conference archive: July 31, 2007

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, 2007 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.
Submission process: Submit full papers to aoir2007 at gmail.com by July 31,
2007. 
 
CONTACT INFORMATION
Program Chair: Dr. Mia Consalvo, Ohio University <consalvo at ohio.edu>
 
Conference Chair: Dr. Richard Smith, Simon Fraser University <smith at sfu.ca>
 
Vice-President of AoIR: Dr. Charles Ess, Drury University <cmess at drury.edu>
Association Website: http://www.aoir.org
Conference Website: http://conferences.aoir.org
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