IR14, the annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers in Denver CO USA, is upon us and, as you know, I was honored to serve as Chair of the Conference Theme, Keynote and Plenary Organization as well as early program development.
AoIR is one of the most productive communities of scholars researching everything one can think of related to digital and internet culture, and we are lucky to have many of our contributors, community participants and colleagues presenting their excellent research. For starters, Gabriella Coleman, a contributor to this community, will be giving the keynote address. Tarleton Gillespie, TL Taylor, Christina Dunbar Hester and Gina Neff will be participating as Plenary Speakers. There is an amazing array of interesting and timely research on digital culture being presented this year and below is a list of our community members and the various contributions they will make through roundtable and paper presentations.
Of the list below I’d like point to Tom Boellstorff’s panel on disability and the internet. For some time I’ve thought this topic to be incredibly relevant to anyone mindful of social justice and inclusion in the study and practice of digital culture and I’m very happy he organized it. I’m excited for all the panels and speakers and I encourage our readership to visit the conference website and look through the program to find our community members or others that might add to the very important work of understanding the increasing ubiquity of the digital in culture.
Culture Digitally Contributors Participating
- Brooke Erin Duffy on fashion and social media myths
- Hector Postigo on game commentary labor
- Thomas Malaby on games as technoliberal publics
- Casey O’Donnell on games studies, modding, and crowdsourcing
- Tom Boellstorff on disability and virtual worlds, as well as in a roundtable on the impact of Mark Poster’s work, which also includes Lisa Nakamura
- Sam Srauy, Gina Neff, Miles Coleman, Jessica Beyer, and Joshua McVeigh-Schultz on a panel about the politics of technology and cultural production
- Kate Miltner and Alice Marwick on a panel about hate in online environments
- Aphra Kerr, Alison Harvey, Tamara Shepherd and Casey O’Donnell on a panel about promoting indie game design
- Lee Humphreys on methods and the role of mobile technologies in public space
- Kevin Driscoll on live tweeting during presidential debates
- Daren Brabham on critical media design
- Megan Finn and Kate Crawford on invisible infrastructural labor
- Jan Fernback and Alice Marwick on the appropriation of privacy
- Adrienne Shaw on identity and the internet
- Gina Neff on big data and health online
- Mél Hogan, Jacqueline Wallace, ME Luka, Vicki Mayer and Mélanie Millette on a roundtable about academic production and social entrepreneurship
- John Banks on social media and game development
- Jean Burgess, Axel Bruns, Kate Crawford, Megan Finn, Andres Monroy-Hernandez and Leysia Palenon a panel about crisis communications and social media
- Burcu Bakioglu on the antisocial social web
- Tamara Shepherd on critical digital literacy in government policy
- Mel Stanfill on internet fandom, transmedia, and consumption
- Kathleen Kuehn on corporate resistance through consumer reviews