[Air-L] Let's Talk About AoIR (Michael Petit)

[Michael Petit]

Hello Everyone,

I can't speak to how the template affected the composition of proposals
submitted, but I can attest to its effect on at least one of the
reviewers, who wrote the following about mine:

“While each abstract has strong elements, they are each far shorter and
less developed than the short papers using the required SPIR template.
While the SPIR template was quite demanding, it was nevertheless a
template that every other paper and panel I’ve reviewed stuck to. [
]
While I feel something of a pedant reinforcing a template so at odds with
the conference themes [of appropriation and resistance], to be fair to
everyone who did use the template, these abstracts all need development.”
Reject.

Based on past experience (this would have been my 7th AoIR), this panel
would have been accepted, but apparently theoretically-engaged work  from
a humanistic perspective that follows the methodologies of the humanities
is much less welcome on the basis of the SPIR template. (I'm also
wondering why some proposals (such as mine) were assigned 4 reviewers
while others had only 2, but perhaps this is a separate issue.)

Fiona writes that she did not submit a proposal this year because she
found the template foreign to the ways in which she conducts and reports
her research. But she also writes that she'll be attending AoIR to discuss
the issues this thread has raised. I would very much like to contribute to
those discussions, but unfortunately, like many, I do not have
institutional funding to attend without being on the program. I won't be
there.

I hope those who attend find the conference interesting. I felt I had
developed an intellectual home at AoIR, but the algorithmic thinking that
underpins the template and the way this conference is being organized has
given me second thoughts.

-- 
Michael Petit, PhD
Director, Media Studies and the Joint Program in New Media Studies
Department of Arts, Culture & Media
University of Toronto Scarborough
Toronto, ON M1C 1A4
416.287.7164