Internet Research 10.0- Internet: Critical was the title of the 10th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), "an international association for students and scholars in any discipline in the field of Internet studies." Internet: Critical was held October 7-10, 2009 in Milwaukee, WI. SLIS was well represented.

An excerpt from the conference website highlights this year's theme:

Internet: Critical will provide a space for interdisciplinary researchers to reflect on, describe, interrogate, challenge, and stake new claims to various critical Internet issues, including:

• critical moments, elements, practices
• critical theories, methods, constructs
• critical voices, histories, texts
• critical networks, junctures, spaces
• critical technologies, artifacts, failures
• critical ethics, interventions, alternatives

SLIS faculty members Susan Herring and Ron Day, SLIS alumna Ewa Callahan (Ph.D.'07), SLIS doctoral students Dan Kutz, Lala Hajibayova, Wayne Buente, and Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, and SLIS doctoral minor student (also Ph.D. student in Telecommunications) AstaZelenkauskaite contributed to the conference. Notes about their research contributions are included below.

• Convergent Media Computer-Mediated Communication - Panel (10/9/09)

Susan Herring was both the organizer and a presenter of this panel. She presented a theoretical overview of the concept of CMCMC, defining it, situating it in historical perspective, discussing its current importance, and classifying it into types. Following this, three presenters presented illustrative CMCMC case studies: 1) a study of comment threads posted in response to YouTube videos - by Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, 2) a study of text chat during the multiplayer first-person shooter game BZFlag - by Dan Kutz, and 3) a study of text messages posted from mobile phones to an Italian interactive television (iTV SMS) program - by Asta Zelenkauskaite.

• Towards a Critical Internet Theory 1 - Panel (10/8/09)

Ron Day spoke on the importance of cultural forms and social actions for understanding subjects and objects, including those taking place within 'the internet,' and the concept of 'the internet' as a cultural-social form. The purpose of the talk was to delineate the roles and methods of a conceptual-critical approach to studying 'the internet,' as distinguished from empirical or empirical-critical methods of analysis.

• Cultural Bias in Wikipedia Content on Famous Persons (10/9/09)

This paper was co-authored by Ewa Callahan and Susan Herring. Brief excerpts from their abstract:
… Wikipedia, although originally a U.S-based, English-language phenomenon, now has versions in many languages, with content and perspectives that can be expected to vary across cultures.
…In this study we ask: Are Wikipedia entries on famous persons different in English and Polish, and if so how? How neutral and balanced is the coverage in entries in each language?
…Taken together, the findings suggest that monolingual Polish and English readers would get different amounts and kinds of information about famous people through Wikipedia, and that both versions incorporate cultural biases to some extent…

• Nonstandard Typography and the Virtual Marketplace: Gender Expression in Italian iTV SMS - Panel (10/10/09)

This paper was co-authored by Susan Herring and Asta Zelenkauskaite. It was presented as a part of a panel "Language, Play and Performance" (in honor of Professor Brenda Danet, who had been a collaborator with Susan Herring.) Excerpts from the paper abstract:

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) language is a social and ideological construct. Historically, writing practices in social CMC environments reflect ideologies of freedom of (self-) expression, creativity, and play (Danet, 2001) that can be traced to the libertarian values of the early developers of the Internet. For contemporary users, the choice to use characteristic features such as emoticons (e.g., ☺), acronyms (e.g., LOL), and various kinds of abbreviation and nonstandard punctuation indexestheir membership in a broad community of CMC users, while group-specific practices index membership in specific CMC communities (Nastri, Peña, & Hancock, 2006). Participants who use language appropriate to the communication venue accrue social capital (e.g., social acceptability); in this sense, CMC environments are virtual “linguistic markets” (Bourdieu,1977) in which language use, including nonstandard typography and orthography, is the symbolic currency… This study analyzes gender variation in nonstandard typography—specifically, abbreviations and insertions—in mobile phone text messages (SMS) posted to a public Italian interactive television (iTV) program…

• Azerbaijani Online Community: Past, Present and Future (10/9/09)

Lala Hajibayova presented a paper that "discusses online representation of Azerbaijani Diaspora of post Soviet era. Diaspora websites, discussion groups and forums analyzed to see how critical historical moments of newly independent country manifested in its online representation."

• Influence of Cognitive, Social, and Psychological Factors for Digital Citizenship (10/9/09)

Excerpts from the abstract of the paper by Wayne Buente:

A recent Harris Poll indicated that 3 out of every four (77%) Americans are online (The Wall Street Journal, 2006). Whereas once, during the 1990s, concerns about a digital divide of technology "haves" and "have nots" were part of the U.S.'s policy agenda, it is no longer a significant public policy issue, garnering little attention by policy makers. Yet, for the scholarly community, the digital divide remains salient as a potent metaphor because it is a manifestation of continuing social and economic inequality. Nonetheless, this narrow conception of the digital divide needs to be reframed, or at least extended, so that our commitment to effective use of the internet, including literacy, skills, and regular access, can be advanced (Mossberger, 2009). The emerging concept of "digital citizenship" focuses our attention on the relevance of the web for providing access to political content and its relationship between social and economic inequality and political and civic participation in the American polis…

Posted Oct. 16, 2009