[Air-L] PhD workshop - Researching the relational/sociable self: Methods, Privacy, Ethics

[Charles Ess]

Dear AoIRists,

I'm very pleased to call your attention to an upcoming PhD workshop on
"Researching the relational / sociable self: Methods, Privacy, Ethics" - to
be held at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo,
November 27-28, 2013. Please distribute this call to appropriate lists and
potentially interested PhD students.
We invite doctoral students from a range of disciplines – including media
and communication studies, information science, sociology, philosophy, and
political science – to participate in this interdisciplinary PhD course.

Faculty presenters / mentors include:
Charles Ess (Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo);
Hallvard Fossheim (Director of the Norwegian National Committee for
Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH) and
Professor II, University of Trømso, Norway);
Stine Lomborg (Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University
of Copenhagen, Denmark);
Annette Markham (Department  of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus
University, Denmark);
Espen Ytreberg (Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo)

*Background: *Especially over the last decade or so, both social science
and humanistic research have emphasized the emergence of “the relational
self,” as fostered by Internet-facilitated modes and venues of
communication – most especially social media.

Understanding how far our conceptions of selfhood may be changing in
Western societies – broadly, from more individual to more relational, and,
perhaps, from more rational to more emotive – is critical, especially as
these changes seem further tied to

   - changing circumstances of socialization and togetherness in everyday
   life, and interweaving of different networks of affiliation that is
   associated with networked media for personal communication (cf. Rainie &
   Wellman, 2012);
   - changing methodologies and approaches to research designed to better
   tease out and explore the multiple dimensions of relationality;
   - changing sensibilities and expectations regarding privacy and notions
   of *privatlivet* ["private life"] and the (proper) boundaries of our *
   intimsfære* (intimate sphere) (cf. Ess 2013), and thereby
   - possible coherencies and/or conflicts with current research ethics
   codes and law, e.g., expected changes in EU data privacy protection law
   that increases individual privacy protections, but may remain silent
   regarding privacy and other protections for close relationships such as are
   already encoded, for example in the NESH 2006 guidelines (Norway) as
   already more relationally oriented

Please see the course website,
<
http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/forskning/aktuelt/arrangementer/phd/2013/methods-privacy-ethics.html
>
for further details, including guiding questions, provisional schedule,
available ECTs and correlative requirements, and instructions for
submitting expressions of interest (due no later than October 26, 2013).

Many thanks in advance,
- charles ess

Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo