[Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR

[Tamara Peyton]

I've been a quiet yet active member of AOIR since 2003 and have watched it
develop over that period. I, too, recently noticed a distinct influence of
formalization and "scientification" of the conference, and have had more
theoretical pieces rejected for the annual conference on a few occasions
 because they weren't "empirically grounded" (direct quote).

I see this discussion as exemplifying the ongoing tensions within our
Internet studies community. I "read" the template this year as signifying a
shift to a more formal approach similar to ACM, a huge organization that is
frequented, in part, by a lot of iSchool folks, and one could argue that
iSchools have become one of the more prominent places for Internet Studies.
So I actualy liked having the template, though I too puzzled over how to
fit our panel paper (which yes it got rejected) into it, given we didn't
have "findings" so much as general discussions of the impact of a
phenomenon. Yet, because AOIR has typically been low profile in respect to
iSchools and because AOIR hasn't annually produced printed proceedings, the
AoIR community and organization has an inferior or even non-existent
reputation in iSchools. As someone who has recently made the switch between
sociology/media studies into the ACM /iSchool world, I can tell you that I
cannot get any funding whatsoever to go to AoIR because it is seen as the
least worthy of environments, mocked as one of those "lazy abstract-only
playground venues" (direct quote from another uni's iSchool faculty). And
this despite the fact that I know firsthand that AoIR is arguably THE best
place to get a collection of top notch Internet Studies work seen and
discussed!

My point? The attempts to formalize and add more rigour to AoIR is
something I think is a worthy cause. I get weary of self funding myself to
go to the conference, only to see people slap-hazardly throwing together a
presentation at the last minute based on a tiny abstract they wrote 9-12
months earlier. At the same time, as others have already more cogently
pointed out, we have to be careful that our attempts to increase the
quality of our community's output doesn't squeeze out the more
experimental, last minute or provocative theory work, activist work, etc.
How to do so is what we're apparently grappling with now.

What could we do? Perhaps have university "ambassadors" for various venues
that champion the association within areas typically neglectful of AOIR?
Have specific meta-areas/meta-keywords that are standardized and
self-selected by authors to papers so that the experimental, activist or
theoretical papers get reviewed as a group and are reviewed only by
like-minded reviewers who volunteer for those meta-areas?

I do volunteer for reviews and I actually did 15 (!!) of them this year,
with scores across the range depending on the internal merit of the piece
as presented. To those who suggest we should do more and be more active, I
have to say that I would love to but given the fact that my department will
not support me in the attempt, I have had to sadly work towards conferences
and venues with a higher "rep", in and outside of the ACM world (e.g. ASA
and ICA annual confs).

-- 
Tamara Peyton
College of Information Sciences & Technology
The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA  16802
 tamara at psu.edu <typ5121 at psu.edu>  / http://about.me/tamarapeyton   /
@pstamara