Virtual worlds (VW) embody cultures, their artefacts, and their praxes; these new and old spaces of imagination and transformation allow humans to interact in spatial dimensions. Within these spaces, culture manifests with the creation, representation, and circulation of meaningful experiences.  But virtual worlds are not novel in that regard, nor should we make the mistake to assume that they are novel in themselves.  Virtual experiences have been around in some respect for hundreds of years, and virtual worlds based in information technology have existed for at least 40 years.  The current generation of virtual worlds, with roots over four decades old in studies of virtual reality, computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), sociology, cultural studies, and related topics, provide for rich and occasionally immersive environments where people become enculturated within the world sometimes as richly as the rest of their everyday lives.

We seek research that encounters and investigates cultures in virtual worlds in its plurality and in its richness. To that end, we invite papers covering the breadth of the topic of cultures in and of virtual worlds.

Some possible areas/approaches of inquiry:

• How culture of virtual worlds affect relationships
• VW interfaces and culture/s
• Hidden subcultures/communities in virtual worlds
• Ages and VW cultures
• Emic and etic experiences of virtual worlds
• Producing VW cultures
• Traditional cultural/critical studies inquiries of VWs
• Transnational or cosmopolitan cultures in/of VWs

While all forms of scholarship and research are welcome, we prefer theoretically and empirically grounded studies. We seek a Special Issue that exemplifies methodological pluralism and scholarly diversity. The use of visual evidence and representations is also encouraged.   We especially seek pieces that investigate virtual worlds that have received little scholarly attention.

Submission guidelines

This special issue is Guest-Edited by Jeremy Hunsinger (Virginia Tech) and Adrienne Massanari (Loyola University Chicago). Queries regarding the Special Issue should be directed to them at jhuns@– –vt.edu and amassanari@– –luc.edu. The Guest-Editors welcome contributions from both new researchers and those who are more well-established. Submitted manuscripts will be subject to peer review.

Length of papers will vary as per disciplinary expectations, but we encourage articles of around 7000 words (longer articles may be possible, if warranted). Short discussion papers of around 3000 words on relevant subjects are also welcomed as ‘Technical Notes’.

Detailed author submission guidelines are available online at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1361-4568&linktype=44.
Papers must be submitted via the journal’s online submissions system: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tham Please indicate that your submission is for the Special Issue on Culture in Virtual Worlds.

The special issue will be published in summer 2012.

Important dates:

November 11, 2011 Paper submission deadline

February 10, 2012 Author notification

May 5, 2012 Final copy due

Summer 2012 Publication

The talk is titled:

From COTS to Class:  the twice hidden curriculum of computer games or why I’d prefer to be playing dwarf fortress

Yesterday’s paper was:  Information Excess in the Age of Cyberinfrastructures:  on being governed

6:00am Woke up spontaneously

6:00am-around 7:15  checked email (which is work, checked security logs for systems that are mailed to me, scanned through server notices); read general email.  Found one more expression of interest for the Critical Theory of the Internet Project

7:15-7:30 ablutions

7:30 iron today’s shirt…  I’m traveling and while I’m not known to be a fancy dresser by any means, I do tend to make an attempt at a professional appearance.

7:45 go to take picture of hotel workspace…. and camera battery is dead.

7:50 … forgot to put collar stays in… collar floppy, hmmph, will get this sorted in a few seconds

8:00am breakfast at Coras.

8:06am still haven’t made it to breakfast… had an email request to add people to a departmental webpage, which i won’t do today, but when I am in the office because the particular university server the webpage exists on only does localnet webdav and http/https uploads.  It can be done remotely, but there is no rush for this task that I can see.

9:15 took a picture of my workspace in the hotel room.. this is a new computer, so… iphoto did not launch on insertion of sd card, launched iphoto, which is apparently a new version and want to upgrade my photo library… this could take some time.

workspace in hotel room

9:41  as most academics know… going to an academic conference is really no vacation, it is more like adding a temporary other job on top of your own job.  Mostly you spend time in little or sometimes big rooms rooms cramped with many people listening to other people present their ideas.  After those are done, then you do the same in the hallways, then you do the same at lunch, then dinner, etc.   Really when you visit a city for a conference, you see mostly hotel rooms and conference rooms.   I generally try to carve out some time for a walk around too, but it is anything other than tourism, it is basically work x 2.

9:44am  Right now, for instance I am in the hotel room teaching my class.  I’m in my hotel room primarily because i get free internet access from the lobby here, or I’d be in the lobby.  The conference hotels were more expensive than my hotel, are right next door, and want to charge around $15.00 per day per internet connection.  There are 3 hotels, and panels are scattered throughout them, so mostly… you can go to one panel, then you get caught in the hall and miss a panel, etc.

Oh my class… not digital humanities so much… it is interpretive policy analysis, taught online through our online master of arts in political science and our master of public and international affairs program.  Currently there are 45 unread posts that I should read and some of them will require response.

10:13 just read some of craig bellamy’s dayofdh .. yes i should be reading student material

10:16 verifying some travel plans for next week’s conference in Chicago

10:39 reviewing and editing my slides again…  i’ll do until i’m actually presenting them, once every few hours or so… this is not my best stack, or anything close, this is a new stack, and it will develop over time into a strong stack, but right now, i know them, i know they are mine, and i know how the talk is supposed to go.

11:10 met with Bart Scott from TAG for talk, went out for coffee, had several good conversation topics.

1. write daily
   1. finish the books that I have underway
      1. Handbook of social media
      2. unconnected
   2. get journal articles out the door
      1. science in second life series
      2. hacklabs series
      3. politics and policy series
   3. finish software/games projects under development
   4. submit grants in development, develop more grants
2. get healthy
   1. drink less, basically the idea is to cut out alcohol until i lose 30lb
   2. exercise more
      1. stretch daily
      2. run the april 16th fun run
      3. work up to 5k
      4. maybe take up aikido
   3. eat better food, cut out bar food, etc.
      1. i can cook and i was doing this pretty well in sept.-oct. then I stopped, but I’m working on it.
      2. less red meat, more fish
      3. eat more vegetables/fruits
      4. eat fewer processed foods, chips, etc.
3. watch less video/tv, and read more texts
4. cut back on social media and casual games.
5. make more friends, meet new people
6. travel more
7. generally I want to try to be a happier, kinder, more supportive person within the constructivist-pragmatist and cynical-cosmopolitian worldview that I live within, though I am usually happy and I already try to be kind, but I can try to be better, as can everyone.
8. smile more, last fall was tough for smiling, but really I’m alive and everything is pretty cool in my life, so I should enjoy it and smile a bit more.

so yeah, those are my goals for ought-11

SIr Ken Robinson being brilliant again, but with animation

Introduction
Jeremy Hunsinger and Matt Allen

Are Instant Messages Speech?
Naomi S. Baron

From MUDs to MMORPGs: The History of Virtual Worlds
Richard A. Bartle

Visual Iconic Patterns of Instant Messaging: Steps Towards Understanding Visual Conversations
Hillary Bays

Research in e-Science and Open Access to Data and Information
Matthijs den Besten, Paul A. David, and Ralph Schroeder

Toward Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Karen Baker, Florence Millerand, and David Ribes

From Reader to Writer: Citizen Journalism as News Produsage
Axel Bruns

The Mereology of Digital Copyright
Dan L. Burk

Traversing Urban Social Spaces: How Online Research Helps Unveil Offline Practice
Julie-Anne Carroll, Marcus Foth, and Barbara Adkins

Internet Aesthetics
Sean Cubitt

Internet Sexualities
Nicola Döring

After Convergence: YouTube and Remix Culture
Anders Fagerjord

The Internet in Latin America
Suely Fragoso and Alberto Efendy Maldonado

Campaigning in a Changing Information Environment: The Anti-war and Peace Movement in Britain
Kevin Gillan, Jenny Pickerill, and Frank Webster

Web Content Analysis: Expanding the Paradigm
Susan C. Herring

The Regulatory Framework for Privacy and Security
Janine S. Hiller

Toward Nomadological Cyberinfrastructures
Jeremy Hunsinger

Toward a Virtual Town Square in the Era of Web 2.0
Andrea Kavanaugh, Manuel A. Perez-Quinones, John C. Tedesco, and William Sanders

“The Legal Bit’s in Russian”: Making Sense of Downloaded Music
Marjorie D. Kibby

Understanding Online (Game)worlds
Lisbeth Klastrup

Strategy and Structure for Online News Production – Case Studies of CNN and NRK
Arne H. Krumsvik

Political Economy, the Internet and FL/OSS Development
Robin Mansell and Evangelia Berdou

Intercreativity: Mapping Online Activism
Graham Meikle

Internet Reagency: The Implications of a Global Science for Collaboration, Productivity, and Gender Inequity in Less Developed Areas
B. Paige Miller, Ricardo Duque, Meredith Anderson, Marcus Antonius Ynalvez, Antony Palackal, Dan-Bright S. Dzorgbo, Paul N. Mbatia, and Wesley Shrum

Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft
Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris

Trouble with the Commercial: Internets Theorized and Used
Susanna Paasonen

(Dis)Connected: Deleuze’s Superject and the Internet
David Savat

Language Deterioration Revisited: The Extent and Function of English Content in a Swedish Chat Room
Malin Sveningsson Elm

Visual Communication in Web Design – Analyzing Visual Communication in Web Design
Lisbeth Thorlacius

Feral Hypertext: When Hypertext Literature Escapes Control
Jill Walker Rettberg

The Possibilities of Network Sociality
Michele Willson

Web Search Studies: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Web Search Engines
Michael Zimmer

Appendix A: Degree Programs
Appendix B: Major Research Centers and Institutes

as described on the backmatter:

This handbook, the first of its kind, is a detailed introduction to the numerous academic perspectives we can apply to the study of the internet as a political, social and communicative phenomenon. Covering both practical and theoretical angles, established researchers from around the world discuss everything: the foundations of internet research appear alongside chapters on understanding and analyzing current examples of online activities and artifacts. The material covers all continents and explores in depth subjects such as networked gaming, economics and the law.

The sheer scope and breadth of topics examined in this volume, which ranges from on-line communities to e-science via digital aesthetics, are evidence that in today’s world, internet research is a vibrant and mature field in which practitioners have long since stopped considering the internet as either an utopian or dystopian “new” space, but instead approach it as a medium that has become an integral part of our everyday culture and a natural mode of communication.

(I don’t know if it was the first of the kind published, but I think it was the first done this way -jh)

Thanks  Pa^2 Patois

The politics of knowledge in the age of the internet is concerned with many overlapping elements.  From the reimagining of research in relation to the new infrastructures to the development of new technologies and their social, cultural, ontological, and epistemological implications, here the politics of knowledge centers around questions of information technology infrastructures in late capitalism, the control society, and reflexive modernization.   As these social and political theories operate across academic disciplines and organizational systems, new formulations of knowledge production arise such as transdisciplinary research.  Transdisciplinary research can be considered as a model for knowledge production that is still capable of recognizing the shared and processual nature of knowledge that operates contrarily to the objectified and commodified understanding of knowledge in late capitalism.  Using critical analysis centered in considerations of reflexivity and the control society, I argue for the possibility of alternative cyberinfrastructures for the e-sciences and virtual learning environments as systems of cultural reproduction.  These alternatives privilege constructions of science understood as creative, social, and processual following the findings of actor-network theory and the theories of Deleuze and Guattari.  Finally, I argue that we are co-constructing a politics of knowledge within and through the infrastructures that we are building, and within these politics there is a conception of the practices of science and research that could be informed by a reconsideration of social theories of technology and our contemporary social and political theory in relation to the development of future technologies and future ways of understanding those technologies.

The 11th Annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
October 21-23, 2010 University of Gothenburg/Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

The challenge of this conference is to find multiple avenues for participation and action towards a sustainable future. In a society increasingly aware of social and ecological imbalance, many people now see information and communication technologies as key technologies for solving problems associated with an unsustainable future. However, while information technology may solve some problems, it can magnify others. As pointed out by world forums such as the United Nations and the European Commission, use of ICTs contributes to the unsustainable consumption of energy and resources. Similarly, unequal access and exploitative practices remind us that IT is not a utopian answer to complex social problems. A sustainable future is not only about greening processes and products at any cost, but also entails social responsibility, cultural protection and economic growth. Therefore the conference has a multi-dimensional focus, where the Internet is seen as a possible liberating, empowering and greening tool.

The conference will focus on how the Internet can function as a conduit for the development of greater global equality and understanding, a training ground for participation in debates and cross-cultural projects and a tool for mutual action; in short a technology of empowerment. The flip-side of the internet as a tool for empowerment is the issue of exploitation. Exploitation of resources and people is what has led to the current crisis, and issues of exploitation are highly relevant online, from abuse of the commons to censorship, fraud and loss of privacy and the protection of the rights of the individual.

Sustainability, Participation, Action invites scholars to consider issues concerning empowerment and/or exploitation in relation to the Internet. We ask scholars to specifically consider issues concerning integrity, knowledge production, and ethics in relation to the Internet and sustainable development. How do we, as Internet researchers, regard our work in relation to the unsustainable current situation and the possibilities of a sustainable future? How far can we take the Internet, and with it, people, individuals, groups and societies in order to create an arena for participation and action, all key elements in imagining a sustainable future? How can we apply previous knowledge to serve future solutions?

To this end, we call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline, methodology, and community, and from conjunctions of multiple disciplines, methodologies and academic communities that address the conference themes, including papers that intersect and/or interconnect the following:

Internet and an equal and balanced society
Internet as an arena for participation
Internet as a tool and arena for action
Internet and an informed knowledge society
Internet and a green society
Internet and e‐commerce, dematerialization and transportation
Internet and security, integrity and surveillance
Internet and a healthy society
Internet as an arena for cultural expressions, and source of a culture of its own.

Sessions at the conference will be established that specifically address the conference themes, and we welcome innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on those themes. We also welcome submissions on topics that address social, cultural, political, legal, aesthetic, economic, and/or philosophical aspects of the Internet beyond the conference themes. In all cases, we welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions as well as international collaborations from both AoIR and non‐AoIR members.

SUBMISSIONS
We seek proposals for several different kinds of contributions. We welcome proposals for traditional academic conference PAPERS and we also welcome proposals for ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS that will focus on discussion and interaction among conference delegates, as well as organized PANEL PROPOSALS that present a coherent group of papers on a single theme.

DEADLINES
Call for Papers Released: 24 November 2009
Submissions Due: 21 February 2010 (Details here)
Notification: 21 April 2010
Full papers due: 21 August 2010

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
All papers and presentations in this session will be evaluated in a standard blind peer review.

Format
PAPERS (individual or multi-author) – submit abstract of 600-800 words
FULL PAPERS (OPTIONAL): For submitters requiring peer review of full papers, manuscripts of up to 8,000 words will be accepted for review. These will be reviewed and judged separately from abstract submissions
PANEL PROPOSALS – submit a 600-800 word description of the panel theme, plus 250-500 word abstract for each paper or presentation
ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS – submit a statement indicating the nature of the roundtable discussion and interaction
Papers, presentations and panels will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer review, coordinated and overseen by the Program Chair. Each individual is invited to submit a proposal for 1 paper or 1 presentation. A person may also propose a panel session, which may include a second paper that they are presenting. An individual may also submit a roundtable proposal. You may be listed as co-author on additional papers as long as you are not presenting them.

PUBLICATION OF PAPERS
Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of the journal Information, Communication & Society, edited by Caroline Haythornthwaite and Lori Kendall. Authors selected for consideration for submission to this issue will be contacted prior to the conference.

All papers submitted to the conference system will be available to AoIR members after the conference.

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
On October 20, 2010, there will be a limited number of pre-conference workshops which will provide participants with in-depth, hands-on and/or creative opportunities. We invite proposals for these pre-conference workshops. Local presenters are encouraged to propose workshops that will invite visiting researchers into their labs or studios or locales. Proposals should be no more than 1000 words, and should clearly outline the purpose, methodology, structure, costs, equipment and minimal attendance required, as well as explaining relevance to the conference as a whole. Proposals will be accepted if they demonstrate that the workshop will add significantly to the overall program in terms of thematic depth, hands on experience, or local opportunities for scholarly or artistic connections. These proposals and all inquiries regarding pre-conference proposals should be submitted as soon as possible to both the Conference Chair and Program Chair and no later than March 31, 2010.

FEE WAIVER
In order to increase the diversity of participation in the AoIR annual Internet Research (IR) conferences, the Association of Internet Researchers will make available up to three conference fee waivers per year. The number of fee waivers will depend first of all upon the ability of the conference budget to sustain such waivers (a judgment to be made by the AoIR Executive Committee upon the advice of the AoIR Treasurer and the local organizing committee) as well as upon the quality of the applications for fee waivers.

Applications for fee waivers are invited from student or faculty authors whose paper or panel proposals have already been accepted via the AoIR IR conference reviewing process. All applications should be directed to the Vice-President of AoIR, and must be received by June 30 of the conference year. Late applications cannot be considered. More information and submission guidelines will be published in a separate announcement.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Program Chair: Torill Elvira Mortensen, Volda University College, Norway. torill.mortensen@gmail.com
Conference Co-Chairs and Coordinators: Ann-Sofie Axelsson, Chalmers University of Technology and Ylva Hård af Segerstad, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Important Dates

Submissions Due 21 February 2010

Notifications of Acceptance 21 Apr 2010

Abstract Revisions Due7 May 2010

Full Papers Due 21 August 2010

Pre-Conference Workshops 20 Oct 2010

Main Conference 21-23 Oct 2010