[Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR.

[Axel Maireder]

Dear all, 

Some thoughts from a young(er), European member of the AOIR community (finishing my PhD soon, hopefully): I've been at three IR-conferences within the last five years, and I have also been at ICA, IAMCR, ECREA and other communication conferences. Every time I attended, the IR was the highlight of the conference year. I've talked to other young Internet researchers, and a lot of them feel the same.The reason for this is neither that IR presentations are more sophisticated than at other conferences, nor that it has the best social events (well, they are fine, but have you been to IAMCR in Braga or Istanbul? ;-)

The AOIR gathers researchers from different fields (communication, social anthropology, sociology,…), who present very different types of projects and ideas, based on very different theoretical and methodological perspectives - it is definitely very diverse. But, unlike at ICA, ECREA, and IAMCR, I always felt that there is a common ground at the IR, a collective major question that inspires most of us, and is reflected by many of the presentations. In the end, it is all about understanding what "the Internet" is, how society shapes it, how it reflects society, and how society is shaped by it. My feeling is that everyone is working on this question, from their own, necessarily limited, perspectives. 

For the AOIR community, the Internet is not "only" "object" of research (to study something else), but the Internet is fascinating in itself. In my opinion, this is the USP of the AOIR, and this is what it makes a community. And researching the Internet (still) needs new, uncommon, surprising ideas and approaches. I found those inspiring ideas at the last AOIR conferences, and I hope I will continue to find them in the future. (Whatever that means for the current discussion on CfP and reviewing)

Axel


---
Axel Maireder, MA
Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/axel.maireder