[Air-L] Announcing the #AoIR2024 Plenary Panel: AoIR - THE ERAS TOUR

[Michelle, Association of Internet Researchers]

*AoIR: THE ERAS TOUR*

At #AoIR2024 in Sheffield, we will be celebrating AoIR’s 25th birthday. We
are delighted to announce this year’s plenary panel that we are
calling, *Reflections:
25 Years of (Ao) Internet Research*, also known as *AoIR: The Eras Tour*.
We’ve invited seven AoIR members to each represent a five-year period in
AoIR’s history, from its first conference in 2000, through to 2024 and
beyond. Each panel member will deliver a short provocation, and we will
then switch to a roundtable format, where panel members will answer
questions from our Chair, before opening up to questions from audience
members. The plenary panel will be followed by a drinks and finger food
reception. We look forward to seeing you on *Thursday, 31 October 2024 *for
what promises to be a wonderful celebration.

Happy 25th birthday, AoIR!

With love, the #AoIR2024 organising committee <3

*CHAIR | Helen Kennedy, Professor of Digital Society, University of
Sheffield (she/her). *

*2000-2004 | Nancy Baym, Senior Principal Research Manager, Microsoft
Research (she/her) + Steve Jones, UIC Distinguished Professor of
Communication, Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, University of
Illinois Chicago (he/him).*

*Nancy*: My research focuses on how people interpret new communication
technologies and incorporate them into their lives with what consequences
for themselves, societies, and technological development. I was a founding
member of AoIR, organized the first conference in 2000, and served as the
first Vice President and second President. I think of internet research
circa 2000-2005 as characterized by a focus on language, identity, and
community, all topics that remain crucially important as we consider the
infusion of large language models and other forms of AI into the internet.

*Steve*: I suppose the question then was whether there was a scholarly
space, for lack of a better term, for people who were studying internet and
internet related things. What triggered AoIR was that I noticed people I
knew from various disciplines all interested in what was happening with the
internet and all unable to find much interest in it from their disciplinary
colleagues. So I kind of put out a signal. Ever since I’ve wondered, is
there a field? Should there be? Has internet research permeated so
completely into existing disciplines as to make that moot?

*2005-2009 | Susanna Paasonen, Professor of Media Studies, University of
Turku (she/her). *I am interested in the value of sexual sociability
online, plus the different vulnerabilities and intimacies that emerge in
datafied culture. My first AoIR was in 2000 and I’ve since been program
chair for Milwaukee in 2009, served on the Exec 2015-17 and co-chaired the
doctoral colloquium five times altogether. My assigned era saw the
emergence of social media: this was no minor transformation, and to an
extent one that we’re still trying to get our heads around.

*2010-2014 | Limor Shifman, Professor in the Department of Communication
and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (she/her).* I am
currently studying how people from different cultures shape values through
what they do on social media. My first AoIR conference, aptly titled “Let’s
Play,” was in 2007 in Vancouver. It was formative for me in many ways. In a
nutshell, I will frame the era between social networking sites and social
media, zooming into the example of memes becoming “memes.”

*2015-2019 | **Ready for it?** Raquel Recuero, Associate Professor in the
Communication and Languages Department at the Universidade Federal de
Pelotas/Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (she/her).* *Look what
you made me do. *My work focuses on the challenges social media platforms
pose to public discourse, especially in Latin America. *Don't blame me!*
AoIR has been integral to my career with my first conference in Vancouver
(2007), and I have also served as an Open Seat on the Executive
Committee. *Wildest
dreams*. The era of full platform API access began in 2015, but subsequent
issues and the closure of these tools now raise concerns about the future
of internet research.

*2020-2024 | Crystal Abidin, Professor of Internet Studies, Curtin
University (she/her).* I broadly study influencers and social media pop
culture in the Asia Pacific region and why everyday people love and hate
them, but my research is also driven by what makes me happy and what makes
me angry – how can we Spark More Joy and how can we fight The Bad Guys? I
attended my first AoIR as a PhD student when it was held in my area of the
world in Daegu (2014) with many thanks to an invitation to join a panel by
Julian Hopkins, I served on the Exec for 4 years (2017–2021), and hope I
don't retire until after I attend the 50th anniversary conference of AoIR
<3. 2020–2024 was the era of What Is Even Happening: Pandemic, Infodemic,
Grief; Platforms, Deplatforms, Grief; Creators, Content, Grief; War,
Conflict, Grief; Automation, AI, Grief.

*Futures | Catherine Knight Steele, Associate Professor of Communication at
the University of Maryland College Park, Director of the Black
Communication and Technology Lab.* My work at the moment considers the
relationship between Black Joy and digitality, including work on
speculation, automation, and manifestations of pleasure and pain online. I
attended my first AoIR conference in 2010 as a graduate student studying
the blogosphere and Black feminism. Watching conversations about race at
AoIR move from somewhat passive apathy to more direct engagement on a
global scale, the future of the organization and of internet research more
broadly is dependant upon our willingness and insistence upon centering
these discussions in our work and bringing this critical eye into more
public dialogues about our digital futures.