What makes an academic blog “academic”?

Tonight’s thoughts are brought to you via a post by Ashley over at gnovis on the topic of information overload and blogging. We can all relate to Ashley’s thoughts. You fire up your blog, you throw your thoughts out into the interwebs, and before you know it you are part of a “revolutionary cultural movement” that seems sometimes to be moving, well, nowhere. You are latest victim of that increasingly popular topic: information overload (See Robot Foot and the recent NYT article).

Ashley confessed that the internet had become “something that has stopped [her] own creativity.” But where Ashley has started a new blog project as an answer to information overload, Brad, gnovis’ editor, posted a comment stating that he felt like the standards we set for posts have turned blogging into something of a chore. I can certainly relate to that. A little blog deamon sits on my shoulder all of the time, reminding me that “someone else has probably covered it.” That is probably true in the world of tech, and certainly in politics. Put the two together… and, well, pack your bags and go home. (Today I wanted to write about the DC Twitter feud, only to find that the Huffington Post had already got it, and, err, that it was 2 months old).

But what about academia? Ashley’s post, and Brad’s comment stirred some thoughts that have been lurking in an unpublished format, somewhere in my brain for several months now. Simply asked, what makes a blog “academic”? Compared to the rest of the blog-o-sphere, is academia a different beast? Does it exist outside of the information stream that can overload us? After all, it isn’t as driven by the news.

And so, Ashley, Brad (anyone!) I have a question: How high is the “bar” for an “academic blog”? (more…)

I recently gave a presentation on Agenda Setting Theory in a course on Communication Theories & Frameworks. It is a fairly straightforward theory that addresses the ways in which issues covered by the media influences public opinion, which in turn influences policy. All the same, I thought I would throw some artifacts online for prosperity and the next person who needs to explain how the media is responsible for everything.

Here is a video of my PowerPoint presentation:

Here is an overly designed handout that summarizes the theory and some of its applications.

In this presentation I played one of my favorite scenes from the West Wing, which should be enjoyed with or without this presentation. Enjoy!

What do LOLcats and silent film have in common? More than you might imagine.

This week gnovis, an academic journal focused on new media and technology, published its Spring issue. According to the editor, this issue is particularly “cute.” From his overview:

“wants moar: visual media’s use of text in LOLcats and silent film,” by Jed R. Brubaker, continues the trend of comparative historical analysis of media forms, but using texts that are infinitely more… well… cute. LOLcats, popular on the Internet since 2007, are photos of housecats with comical captions. Brubaker’s analysis compares the captions used in LOLcats to intertitles from the silent film era.

Yes, this is my first solo publication at the graduate level, and I am thrilled that it is on something that never fails to make me smile. (more…)

I am certainly going to argue that it is.

Fred Dervin and Yasmine Abbas are editing a book entitled “New technologies of the self, mobilities and (co-)constructions of identities.” Here is a snip of the synopsis:

The new interpersonal spaces created by web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies seem to correspond to the technologies of the self that Michel Foucault (1988) has addressed in his lectures at the Collège de France at the beginning of the 1980s. These new technologies enable the individual’s self to emerge publicly and to be worked upon with its “disciples”… With high speed Internet access and increasingly generous capacities of storage… the opportunities for staging the self have become unlimited.

An email in my inbox was sent from Fred Dervin today to let me know that Yasmine had posted the list of chapter authors on her blog. Not to hold you in suspense, I am on the list. My work on craigslist Missed Connections will join what now looks like a fascinating group of authors and topics (read about the book and topics here).

(more…)

Next week I will be presenting at quickanddirty IV, part of a the larger D.C. Queer Studies Symposium. The two-day symposium is on April 17th and 18th at the University of Maryland, and its FREE!

I am presenting craigslist and anonymous online behavior research as part of a session entitled Regulation, Surveillance, and Queer Challenges to the State (obviously composing the ‘regulation’ portion). But don’t come for me – The symposium is bringing in academics including Siobhan Somerville, Roderick Ferguson, and their inevitable groupies.

Ramzi Fawaz and Ben Richfield, two DC-based colleagues of mine, will also be presenting work. Congrats to you both.

The rest of you – go learn something! (Find out more at The D.C. Queer Studies Symposium website.)

UPDATE: DC Queer Studies blog posted an entry with more details. Read it here!

UPDATE #2: The New Gay is now running a promo for the symposium. Read that one here.

For everyone who has ever asked “Do craigslist missed connections actually work?” this video is for you.

The theorist in me has to point out that a missed connections attempts to reconstruct an interaction so that the other-half of the would-be connection will respond (think ‘intertextuality’ and ‘Kriteva’).

Or in other words, “Yeah, the odds are pretty low.”

So why not use YouTube to help you reconstruct the scene via video? (It might even go viral!)

But really, what is up with the pillow fight?

(via craiglist blog)

gnovis ran an article of mine today about a keynote delivered by THINKFilm’s Mark Urman at the URI conference last week, and the impact of digital distribution and net-neutrality on culture. You should all go and read it!

How is Urman shaping independent film? Well, I will leave that for my article on gnovis, but I will share a funny bit that I couldn’t quite fit in.

When URI’s Dr. John Leo was introducing Mark Urman to the stage, he stopped for a moment to ponder the name THINKFilm.

“Is that an acronym?”, he seemed to ask no one it particular.

Urman answered from his seat in the audience: “It’s a command!”

Go read the rest!

This is a well deserved thank you to the organizers of the Space, Place, and Imagination conference last weekend at the University of Rhode Island.

I will post more about the conference soon, but I wanted to post some resources for those who attended my presentation (thank you).

• Annoymously ISO Experience – The original article that kicked off this research, including the “I missed the connection with DC” post
• Theoretical (Missed) Connections (including Video) – These are my notes from when I originally posted the video I showed during my presentation. It’s a nice overview of my research, and it is set too good music no less.
• Responses to the Video – A lot of people had questions about the creation of the video, and there were some funny stories. You can read about how this video resulted in some unexpected missed connections of my own.
• Bridges between the Real and Digital World – During my presentation, I tried to argue that craigslist can actually shape the real world in ways that we might not expect. Here are two posts showing how this has happened, one about night clubs, and one featuring some incredible artists.
• The abstract for my presentation

If that list doesn’t satiate, site back and enjoy the film piece all over again!

I am off to the University of Rhode Island! This weekend I am presenting at the Space, Place and the Imagination conference. craigslist will be the subject of choice, and if you are feeling left out you can read the abstract here.

I will be on a panel featuring some really interesting analysis of identity in spaces. The other presenters are predominantly focused on literature, so I will have to report back once I hear their presentations, skim their papers, and realize its all over my head.

Because my presentation is based on an ongoing research project, I thought I would provide a creative summary instead of a already outdated 20 page paper. Click on the thumbnail, and take a peek.

UPDATE: The conference peeps called me today and asked if it would be okay to move my presentation to the session on “Hostile Spaces.” I paused for a moment, smiled while thinking about Disciplinary Regulation, and said “Absolutely.” This is going to be fun.

Ready for something amazing? This last Friday I got to see what other people think about craigslist for a change.

Civilian Art Projects held an opening reception for a show titled “craigslist” featuring work inspired by the site and its occupants (Read on Civilian’s website here, and Steve’s coverage, and awesome photos, here, and then my Flickr photos here).

The curatorial write up captured exactly what I have been arguing over the past year:

A curious outcome of our global internet society is that while we are more hyper-connected than ever, our identities have become increasingly malleable to the point of anonymity… Anonymity can bring out the adventurous side of people, particularly when it comes to exploring socially transgressive situations. In this exhibition, the artists take full advantage of this growing social identity phenomenon and investigate how anonymity generates a new kind of portraiture.

This was readily apparent in Jason Zimmerman‘s pieces. (more…)