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

[Brabham, Daren C]

I'll jump in and defend the longer word count for this year's submissions. I have reviewed for the conference several times and had always griped about how shoddy work slipped through because it was a "hot" or trendy topic. I grew tired of reading abstracts that promised to study some new flavor of the day (Second Life, Foursquare, Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street on Twitter, MOOCs - you name it) by "doing an analysis" of the phenomenon. Sorry, but I don't think it makes me a social science square to demand a bit more explanation of a method than "an analysis."

The purpose of academic research is to generate new knowledge, right? And we need to know that the new knowledge is being generated in the appropriate ways. You can't just "analyze" something...that analysis happens through some more precise procedures - critical discourse analysis, quantitative content analysis, ethnography, rhetorical criticism, Marxist cultural critique, lab experiments, whatever. Too many abstracts in previous years neglected even name-dropping these terms, which would have at least given some clue to the reviewer as to what the author was actually planning to DO to generate new knowledge.

I echo Tamara's point that one grows "weary of self funding" a trip to "the conference [because one's home department does not view an abstract-submission conference as worthy for travel funding or for getting tenure], 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." You all have seen the scattered, read-off-the-back-of-my-cocktail-napkin-from-last-night presentations at AoIR (and other conferences), and it is damn frustrating and insulting to folks in the room who scraped together some money to fly halfway around the world to listen to good research. I believe the new word count was trying to catch the good abstract-writers and the folks who have a knack for latching onto glittery, trendy topics and hold them to a higher standard of knowledge creation. And even though I think we could probably develop a more flexible template (or several approved template versions), this is what the template was trying to do too - that's what all the "method" and "findings" stuff is about.

Now, I'm all for the nontraditional, the transformative, and even the half-baked. Other organizations (say, the National Communication Association) have performance studies-type divisions that accept a wide range of submissions, even non-text ones, but all submissions adhere to a much deeper standard than just an abstract. There's some edgy work going on at NCA (though I have my own beef with that organization for other reasons!) that certainly breaks templates and genres but still manages to convey to reviewers that the work is well thought-out and will make a contribution to knowledge.

I think we already are quite flexible with the range of methods and theories and research we accept. Want to toss out the "findings" section in the template and write a great critical-cultural essay? Go for it. A qualified reviewer will totally get what you're doing and won't fault you for altering the template...seriously they won't, especially a critical-cultural scholar. But I'm guessing (and Hector and past program chairs - you can correct me on this if I'm wrong) that not enough people are volunteering to review papers. It's hard to be the lone researcher who studies X when no one in the reviewer pool studies X. Either more of us need to step up to review or we need to reach out and invite ad hoc reviewers from wildly different disciplines to review papers for our conference (not just a pool of other submitters).

Another idea: I like half-baked research, especially around the hot, trendy topics of the day. Why can't we have a "hot topics" panel or two at every conference where some folks - invited or competitively - jockey for a chance to offer first impressions of these new phenomena and sketch out bold agendas for research...which can then spur full papers to the next year's conference? So, like, with MOOCs or 3D printing or whatever it is that's hot this year, I'd rather hear a "Critical Reading and Agenda for Research on MOOCs" where people can talk frankly about the issues without having to prepare a full paper to talk on the topic. It could be a way our field plants early flags in these new landscapes as they emerge, in a more conversational way. I suppose Roundtable Discussions are what this kind of thing is for, but I've not seen a super awesome Roundtable yet....they seem more like rehearsed performances (panels, really) and not critical discussions. But I may not have attended the right ones.

Anyway...those are my thoughts on the conference template/word count stuff. I still think we're a group that welcomes different research perspectives and needs to stay that way. I'd hate to see AoIR turn into another ACM or ICA or NCA or whatever (no offense)...it should stay small, interdisciplinary, and loose in its boundary-making. But I do think we can step up the quality control a bit. We're at a point where many more people want to present at the conference than there are slots for them, so why not ask for the bar to be raised?

Final shout-out: Kudos to Hector for running a smooth CFP process (despite the expected hiccups with transitioning to a new template) and a smooth and relatively speedy review process. I feel like I was asked to review submissions that were much more in line with my expertise this year, when in many past year's it's felt like - for whatever reason - I was reviewing stuff that looked like Greek to me. Bravo on that, then.

db

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Daren C. Brabham, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication
Editor, Case Studies in Strategic Communication | www.csscjournal.org
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Carroll Hall, CB 3365
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
(801) 633-4796 (mobile)
daren.brabham at unc.edu | www.darenbrabham.com