Differences & Repetitions

Earlier this summer Desiree Rowe and Ben Myers, whose podcast The Critical Lede I cannot say enough good things about, invited me to contribute to a journal forum they’re editing on “The Performative Possibilities of New Media.” Given my interest in the politics of scholarly communication, I immediately jumped at the chance to participate.

Composing the essay took a little longer than I’d expected, but I think I’ve got a respectable version of the piece now in hand. It’s called “Performing Scholarly Communication,” and it reflects on the origins and possible futures of academic periodical publishing.

This is where you come in. I’ve posted the draft essay to one of my project sites, The Differences & Repetitions Wiki (a.k.a., D&R^W), in the hopes those of you reading this might be kind enough to offer some feedback. You’ll find “Performing Scholarly Communication” on the site, along with other essays I’ve worked on over the years.  Don’t hesitate to comment anonymously — I’m completely cool with that — and definitely take some time to poke around a bit.  Oh, and by the way, the piece is pretty short, so it won’t take you very long to read.

I mentioned back in July that I’d be rebooting D&R^W, mainly as a result of the influx of advertising appearing on the original host site, Wikidot.  Well, this is it.  “Performing Scholarly Communication” marks the (dant-dant-daah!) GRAND OPENING of the new D&R^W, which links directly off of this blog.  Enjoy.

Thanks in advance, wise crowd, for reading and commenting on the draft of my piece. I hope you find something in there that intrigues you.

Wow! I’m happy to report that my home discipline, communication, is finally making some strides in terms of bringing its book and journal publishing policies into the 21st century.

Last week, the International Communication Association (ICA), in Conjunction with American University’s Center for Social Media, released its Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies devised a similar statement of best practices way back in 1993 (it updated the document in 2009), so needless to say I’m pleased to see ICA catching up at long last.

These types of policy statements are vitally important for media and communication scholars, and indeed for scholars more generally. As more and more of our work engages words, sounds, images, and other artifacts drawn from the popular media, we need to be reasonably assured that we can criticize and, where necessary, reproduce content protected by copyright, trademark, and other forms of intellectual property law. That’s exactly what these best practices statements do, in part by identifying a “community of practice” and carefully defining its — in this case, scholarly — customs. But it’s not only about “show and tell.” Reproducing copyrighted content in academic work is important to the scholarly process. How else would reviewers, other scholars, and anyone else who may happen to read our work assess the validity of our claims?

Academics routinely — and often unnecessarily, I might add — self-censor our work, for instance by opting to exclude images we’re analyzing for fear we’ll get sued by some deep-pocketed media giant. Heck, I’ve even done it myself. And that’s why I’m such a champion of these best practices statements. They may not give us carte blanche to use intellectual properties in our work however we may see fit. They do give us a useful set of guidelines for making informed judgments about how best to proceed in these matters, though, plus they underscore how our own practices are in solidarity with others.

The other bit of good news is that Boston College’s Charles (Chuck) E. Morris III has drafted a resolution calling on the National Communication Association (NCA) to revise its fees for licensing NCA-copyrighted material. In a preamble to the document, Chuck writes:

The resolution seeks to regulate the prohibitively expense copyright fees charged by Taylor & Francis [publisher of NCA journals] in conjunction with NCA. Particularly alarming is that while for more than a decade NCA Executive Directors, who contractually have the prerogative to waive or reduce fees, intervened to make reprinted NCA journal materials affordable for high quality anthologies/readers of pedagogical and scholarly value, the current NCA Executive Director, Nancy Kidd, has prioritized profit and is allowing a dramatically higher fee.

Basically, NCA jacked up its licensing fees about a year ago, a move that will price smaller publishers out of the business of republishing top-quality communication research. The change not only promises to whittle down the competition (leaving only giants like Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, and Sage standing), but it’s also inimical to the larger cause of scholarly communication. When Chuck writes that NCA is putting profits ahead of publishing, he’s exactly right.

If you’re an NCA member, you have until Tuesday, June 29th the add your name to the document. You can do so by contacting Chuck via email: morrisch@bc.edu. And hey — if you’re not an NCA member but you believe in the spirit of the resolution, why not go ahead drop Chuck a line anyway? I don’t know if he can add your name to the formal list of signatories, but it can’t hurt for him to be able to attest to support coming from beyond NCA.

Now, if only we could get NCA to adopt a best practices for fair use statement of its own. It’s an embarrassment, frankly, for the oldest and largest professional association for communication scholars in the United States to lag so far behind its peer organizations.

Just wanted to alert D&R readers to a great new blog called Money/Speech. Its author is my good friend Ron Greene, a leading researcher in the areas of rhetoric and cultural studies who teaches at the University of Minnesota. Ron’s been at it for less than a week, and already he’s posted more than I have in 2009. Looks like M/S (as I’m calling it) will be one of the more active additions to my blog roll.

Ron hasn’t yet composed a “manifesto” (or whatever you may call it) for his blog. But given the title and the first few entries, it’s pretty clear that M/S will develop ideas and themes Ron’s been advancing over the last several years in his (paper) published research. Much of it revolves around the notion of communicative capitalism, so I suspect D&R readers will find the site to be of great interest. Enjoy!

It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose.

By “it,” I mean signing up for Facebook. I’d held out for quite some time, my resolve bolstered by an informal straw poll I conducted this past January, in which my friends (not the Facebook variety) and interlocutors on D&R told me that I wasn’t missing much by avoiding the popular social networking site.

LIARS!!!!!!!!!! Apparently just about everyone I know, or have ever known, was already on Facebook, which makes me about the last person on earth to join. I suppose it’s worth narrating how I ended up there.

To put it as straightforwardly as possible, Twitter is the gateway drug for Facebook. Over the last year or so I’d incorporated various RSS news feeds onto my academic website, Bookworm, since I thought it might be nice to have some elements that updated constantly. I was never really satisfied with them, though, and so about a month or two ago, I made the fateful decision to join Twitter and place a badge on the site. I figured it might be a nice way to add real-time information about my research projects, conference presentations, publications, and so forth. And then something unexpected happened. People started following my Twitter feed, and eventually, I, theirs. It was riveting. One of my followers even proposed a picnic “Tweetup” to all his followers. Suddenly, I realized that virtual connections might indeed translate into “real world” ones.

I also blame Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point. I just started reading it in earnest the other night and became enthralled with his portrait of “connectors.” These are people who know people–lots of people. Connectors are able to move in and across many different social circles, because they tend to maintain what Gladwell calls “weak ties.” For them, connection is far more important than depth in a relationship, which allows them to stay in touch with a sprawling array of people. That sounded pretty Facebook to me.

So after much gnashing of teeth, I bit the bullet last night and signed up for Facebook. At 7:30 p.m., I registered. At 9:30 p.m., I had 17 friends. This morning, I have 28 and counting. I’m still not sure what to make of it all, honestly, but I’m intrigued to see how things develop. It’s been nice reconnecting with old friends, though I fear for Facebook becoming a major time-suck. This was confirmed not only by the two hours I spent online last night, but also by some of the comments my friends had left on my Facebook wall. They said things to the effect of, “welcome to the black hole” and “sucker!”

I’ll admit, I’m pretty awkward on Facebook right now. I can barely tell my profile page from my home page, and I have no idea what a zombie war is or why you’d want to fight one. I’m anxiously anticipating my colleague Ilana Gershon’s book, therefore, which will provide a road map (among other things) to interpersonal dynamics on Facebook. For now, though, I’m really just fumbling through. Please bear with me.

Josh Gunn over at The Rosewater Chronicles has an excellent post about the various critical personae one might encounter in the process of double-blind academic peer-review. He classifies them (us?) as “gushers,” “assassins,” “turf pissers,” and “empaths.” My favorite characterization (although probably my least favorite type of reviewer) has to be the “naysayer,” whom Josh describes like this:

The Naysayer: Nothing of quality or interest has ever been published in the field, and your essay is no exception. Communication Studies is a sub-par and parasite field, and your essay continues this horrible, alien existence. The Naysayer wanted to be a philosopher or studied comparative literature, but reluctantly took a position in Communication Studies out of necessity. S/he is bitter about being in Comm, and will take it out on you—especially if you take up concepts from high theory or philosophy.

I’m sure anyone who’s been through the gauntlet of double-blind peer review has encountered at least one cranky naysayer in her or his lifetime, and probably one or more of the other characters as well. I only wish there were more gushers and empaths out there. Too often, I find, academic peer-review seems as much about hazing as it does about ideas and execution–and I say that as someone who’s enjoyed reasonably good success at getting published.

Anyway, be sure to check out Josh’s post and the lively discussion that follows. Great stuff.

I recently left a comment on Sivacracy responding to a post about Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, The Tipping Point. My remark was pretty snarky, admittedly. I said this: “Isn’t The Tipping Point a readerly, if watered-down, version of Everett Rogers’ The Diffusion of Innovations–a book that’s been out for decades?” I still stand behind the spirit of comment, at least, insofar as I believe Rogers said essentially what Gladwell is now often credited with saying (and Gabriel Tarde before Rogers….You can see where this is going.). By the same token, I regret having too quickly dismissed Gladwell’s work and contributions.

Perhaps what impresses me most about Gladwell’s writing is his ability to make the history of the idea of communication engaging to popular audiences. Take his piece on “The Spin Myth,” for instance, in which he tells fascinating stories about the role the late public relations doyen, Edward L. Bernays, played in shaping perceptions about media influence. Then there’s the video I’ve embedded above, in which Gladwell shares a series of parables about the food industry’s discovery of diversity-in-taste (spaghetti sauce is the operative example). This is no small matter. What Glaldwell is addressing are the epistemological assumptions individuals and groups bring to bear when making judgments about right and wrong, good and bad, tasty and displeasing, and more. He is also offering some intriguing commentary on personal influence and group dynamics, two longstanding issues in communication theory.

All that to say, having taught about the intellectual history of communication, I can appreciate the work that must go in to making his stories and lectures as captivating as they are. And while I wish his work were more critically inclined, I can’t really hold that against him. After all, who am I to criticize an apple for being an apple, and not an orange?

In other news, after weighing the decision, I’ve decided not to join Facebook after all. I still may sign up one day, but as I said earlier, it’s hard enough for me to keep the lights on here at D&R. Another online commitment (to whatever extent Facebook is a commitment) would just be too much right now. I’m not sure if anyone had designs on friending me, but if you were, sorry to let you down.

Also, in case you’re wondering, I’m going to leave the design of D&R as it is for the foreseeable future. Ron tells me it’s a bit busy, and I agree. But until I can get the issue with my old design template resolved, I don’t want to change the site again. I worry that folks might come looking for D&R and think they’ve stumbled on some other blog.

Wow, what a weekend it’s been! This Saturday, a great group of graduate students in my department hosted the third-annual Midwest Winter Workshop (a.k.a., MW3–you know something’s significant when it warrants an acronym). The event brought together faculty and grads from some of the most stellar communication programs across the region. This year the participants hailed from the University of Illinois, Indiana University, the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin. In years past, the event attracted folks from as far away as Pittsburgh and North Carolina.

The MW3 began with three back-to-back plenary addresses on Saturday morning, which focused on the theme of publics. The featured speakers were U of I’s Cara Finnegan, who made the case for better historicization of “visual culture”; UMN’s Ron Greene, who stressed the analytic importance of the category “communicative labor” in discussions of public activism; and IU’s Phaedra Pezzullo, who explored the rhetorical processes through which deadly environmental hazards in and beyond the workplace have been rendered normal or everyday, and hence not worth publicizing. Needless to say, all three talks sparked lively discussion that lasted throughout the day.

Lunch was followed by the first round of break-out sessions, in which groups of 20 or so gathered to talk about specific themes. I had the good fortune of landing in the “Media and Counterculture” group, where I was joined by U of I’s James Hay and Spencer Schaffner, U of W’s Rob Howard, and by a talented group of grad students from across the six participant institutions. I talked about The Century of the Self, one of my favorite documentaries (and something I’ve posted about previously), as well as some books I’ve been reading that have provoked me to begin digging deeper into the intellectual-historical roots of oppositionalist discourses in cultural studies. (If you’re interested, the books are Rachel Bowlby’s Carried Away, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter’s A Nation of Rebels, Preston Shires’ Hippies of the Religious Right, Joseph Turow’s Niche Envy, and Fred Turner’s absolutely brilliant tome, From Counterculture to Cyberculture.) As a whole, the group tried to get at what it means to be “counter” and whether or not the term is politically serviceable in contemporary times.

Thereafter, even smaller groups convened to workshop graduate student writing and research. These break-outs, which were student-led, gave each participant the opportunity to receive feedback on his or her work from a cohort of grad students, in dialog with two faculty members. Personally, I enjoyed not only learning about Erik Johnson (NU), Michael Lahey (IU), Kim Singletary (NU), and Jeff. St. Onge’s (IU) work, but also learning, through it, more about the kinds of questions their respective graduate programs are focusing on right now. We covered everything from Google Street View and the racial politics of high fashion to audience labor and emergent constraints on political activism in the United States. Whew!

Practically every faculty member I spoke to during the weekend commented on how much she or he enjoyed every aspect of the MW3. Especially welcome was the opportunity to interact with incredibly bright students from outside of one’s home institution. I also heard several colleagues mention how much they appreciated the opportunity to get to know fellow faculty in a smaller, more personable setting than your usual large-scale academic conference. I couldn’t agree more.

The MW3 was real gem, and that was due to all the students who made it happen. They’re a remarkable bunch who deserve heaps of praise. And here I feel compelled to single out the IU Department of Communication and Culture’s own Jeff Motter. He helped conceive of the first MW3 three years ago, when it was hosted at U of I, and both this year and last, he shouldered a major share of the responsibility in organizing the event here at IU. Kudos, Jeff, and thank you for such a memorable weekend.

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times via Sivacracy, to which I can only feebly respond, “yikes!”

The all-you-can-eat packages of voice, video and Internet services offered by phone and cable companies may be convenient, but they represent a potentially significant threat to people’s privacy.

Take, for example, Time Warner Cable, which has about 2 million customers in Southern California. The company offers a voice-video-Net package called “All the Best” for $89.85 for the first 12 months.

But for anyone who has the wherewithal to read Time Warner’s 3,000-word California privacy policy, you discover that not only does the company have the ability to know what you watch on TV and whom you call, but also that it can track your online activities, including sites you visit and stuff you buy….

You can read more here.

…I’m especially intrigued by the “worth a second look” book review section, and by the fact that they’re publishing under Creative Commons licenses. Check it out!

—————————————————————————–
The International Journal of Communication (IJoC) is now officially launched. Volume 1, 2007, including scholarly articles, book reviews and features, is available to any interested reader, free of charge –- just go to the website, http://ijoc.org, and register.

Our inaugural contents include articles by scholars from Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Scotland, Great Britain and the U.S. Book reviewers assess works published in the U.S. as well as Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain. Lawrence Grossberg inaugurates a series we hope to expand, briefly discussing books that deserve a second, or even a first look. Our feature section opens with a series of essays written in honor of our late colleague and friend, Roger Silverstone, and goes on to include an interview with theorist Fritjof Capra, a preview of global Hollywood in 2010 by Toby Miller, and an illuminating excursion into the thickets of Fair Use.

The International Journal of Communication is an interdisciplinary journal that, while centered in communication, is open and welcoming to contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that meet at the crossroads that is communication study.

We are interested in scholarship that crosses disciplinary lines and speaks to readers from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. In other words, The International Journal of Communication is a forum for scholars when they address the wider audiences of our many sub-fields and specialties, rather than the location for the narrower conversations more appropriately conducted within more specialized journals.

Visit the journal website, register and engage with our authors and contributors –- IJoC offers readers the opportunity to comment on articles and join in dialogue and debate with authors and other readers –- and submit your own work to us, via the online submission system.

We hope you are as excited and pleased as we are at the start of this new venture in scholarly publishing!

Manuel Castells and Larry Gross
Editors

Yes, indeed, it’s been awhile. The last couple of weeks have gotten away from me, owing largely to the US Thanksgiving holiday (a much-needed break) and to the National Communication Association (NCA) conference, which took up most of the preceding week. Now we’re in the last week of classes here at Indiana University, with final exams looming just around the corner. I’m still amazed at how quickly the semester’s blown by.

I’m writing largely to report on the NCA convention, and more specifically on the interesting roundtable on academic publishing and intellectual property (IP) that I mentioned in an earlier post. The session, which was organized by Mark Hayward, a really bright and interesting graduate student from my alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill, brought together IP scholars, academic book and journal publishers, and an audience of interested parties. The panelists included, on the “academic” side of things, Mark, Kembrew McLeod, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and me, and from the world of publishing, Taylor & Francis’ Tracy Roberts and NYU Press’ Eric Zinner. Together, we tried to hash out the past, present, and future of scholarly publishing within the framework of intellectual property concerns.

Some highlights–and I’ll stress that this is what I heard, not necessarily what each of the participants actually said: Mark expertly introduced the panel, noting how graduate students often find themselves in quite a predicament, given that many feel as though they lack the leverage to insist on reasonable copyright provisions when they’re just beginning to get their feet in the door of academic publishing. Kembrew suggested that NCA and other professional associations should formulate “best practices” statements to guide what can and cannot be incorporated into scholarly publications and how (and here, song lyrics were of particular concern). Siva, for his part, offered an impassioned and insightful history of fair use in the US and how it pertains to academic publishing, and made a plea for the use of Creative Commons licensing of academic books and journal articles.

Tracy and Eric’s contributions were equally enlightening. Tracy enumerated T&F’s “retained rights” provisions, which helped to demystify the company’s attitude toward journal publishing, IP, and authors (though I still wish T&F would scale back its 18-month embargo period, which restricts when authors can place PDFs of their published articles on personal websites). Eric, meanwhile, said something that delighted me. He said that much of the hullabaloo (my word) about academic publishing and IP was just that–hullabaloo, especially since the profit margins in academic book publishing in particular tend to be quite slim. He wasn’t arguing that academic books should cease being copyrighted, though he did note that suing an academic author or press for copyright infringement probably wouldn’t yield much in terms of financial compensation–and with that, he seemed to be suggesting that academic publishers should take a more open stance on the issue of authors’ appropriating copyrighted materials in published work.

I’ve shared much of what I said at the convention on D&R over the past couple of months: that academic publishing may well be headed in some nasty directions, given the looming threat (and even implementation) of unnecessarily restrictive digital rights management schemes and related changes; and that academic authors and publishers, collectively, need to recover our common ground, and perhaps more important, to respect one another’s good will a great deal more. And, yes, I really mean that for both sides of the publishing world.

P.S. I should add that our panel was programed opposite another quite intriguing panel in which the participants read and discussed rejection letters they’d received from academic journals. I’d have loved to have sat in on that session, since I gather most of the people involved have gone on to produce some of the most ground-breaking work in the field of communication studies.