PhD conferred!

I made it! My PhD was officially conferred in November 2012, but I've been very slack in blogging about it, and have been working full-time during the day, and at nights, on weekends and in my spare time I've been celebrating, attending conferences, putting the finishing touches on a forthcoming article about youth research ethics, working on an edited collection I'm editing with my supervisor titled 'Mediated Youth Cultures', working on my own book proposal, and so on and so forth. I've also started blogging over on bradyrobards.com which is a bit more grown up (professional?!) than this blog, so no more posts here.

The reports from the PhD examiners were wonderfully constructive, supportive and were returned to me so quickly! They pointed out the wobbly bits, and gave me some excellent suggestions on how to tighten those sections up for the book. I had a few typos to correct (despite having proofed it what felt like thousands of times!) and an extra page to add in my methodology to clarify part of my research design. So the actual revisions probably took me half a day to do, but the advice on how to proceed in turning the thesis into a book will keep me going for a while. I'm so indebted to my two wonderful examiners, Prof. David Buckingham and Assoc. Prof. Annita Harris, not only for their thorough reading and feedback, but also for getting the reports back to me so quickly. This has been truly invaluable for the job search.

There are too many people to thank and acknowledge for their contributions to my work (and my life) throughout the PhD in a post like this, but I've had a crack at doing this some justice in the formal acknowledgements at the beginning of the thesis. I've taken the first 11 pages out of the thesis and put them up over here, including title, abstract, table of contents, and acknowledgements.

Where to next? For now I'm in a professional job at Griffith as a student advisor, helping students in the School of Humanities (Arts, Communications and Journalism) transition into life at university. It's a great job as I really enjoy working with students. I will have some more (long-term) job news to share shortly. Stay tuned!

Mediated Youth Culutres

I meant to post this at the end of May when this was first released, but better late than never! The special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies that I have been working on with my supervisor, Andy Bennett, is now online. This issue brings together 13 articles that make visible an international and cross-disciplinary research agenda concerned with mediated youth cultures: 

Contents:

1. "‘Connect and create’: Young people, YouTube and Graffiti communities" by Ben Light, Marie Griffiths & Siân Lincoln
2. "The pedagogy of regret: Facebook, binge drinking and young women" by Rebecca Brown and Melissa Gregg
3. "‘Individuality is everything’: ‘autonomous’ femininity in MySpace mottos and self-descriptions" by Amy Shields Dobson
4. "Leaving MySpace, joining Facebook: ‘Growing up’ on social network sites" by Brady Robards
5. "Female Pressure: A translocal feminist youth-oriented cultural network" by Rosa Reitsamer
6. "From Punks to Post-Hipsters: Exploring Subcultural Models Of A Youth Net-Radio Hierarchy" by Andrea Baker
7. "To Write Love through the indie imaginary: The narrative argument of a mediated movement" by Ryan M. Milner
8. "The Outlaws of Psytrance in the Time of the Vibe-Tribes" by Graham St John
9. "Breaking expectations: Imagined affinities in mediated youth cultures" by Mary Fogarty
10. "Sexting, Consent and Young People’s Ethics: Beyond Megan’s Story" by Kath Albury and Kate Crawford
11. "The landscape of keitai shôsetsu: Mobile phones as a literary medium among Japanese youth" by Kyoung-hwa Yonnie Kim
12. "A Generational Thing? The Internet and New Forms of Social Intercourse" by Fredrik Miegel and Tobias Olsson
13. "Mediating culture in transnational spaces: An example of young people from refugee backgrounds" by Raelene Wilding

My co-editor, Andy Bennett and I would like to thank all of the above contributors for their work. We would also like to thank the many reviewers who provided valuable, constructive feedback on earlier versions of these articles. We hope you enjoy!

a 2011 retrospective

What a year! I'm coming to the end of my one year full-time contract at Griffith now (filling in for Dr B while she was on research leave) and I'm heading back in to life as a sessional while I finish off my PhD. It was a busy year with its ups and downs, where I tried to develop my profile in a few areas for the job hunt ahead.

In terms of teaching, I'm very happy with how all of my courses went in 2011. The teams involved in Youth & Society and Social Sciences in Australia did a fantastic job, and it was a pleasure working alongside my friends and colleagues: Adele, Bob, Chris, Raphael and Shanene. In Social Sciences in Aus, it was a great pleasure to use the new textbook 'Think Sociology', which I collaborated on with Dr B and a team of sociologists from around Australia. The smaller course Youth Culture and Subculture, which I delivered myself, was also a joy, and it was great to work with the third-years on their small-scale ehtnographies. This course is a tribute to Dr B's marvellous skills in designing an advanced course. It ran like a dream! In addition to positive anecdotal evidence and feedback from students, all our courses performed very well in their formal evaluations, ranking highly in comparison to other courses in the academic group.

Social Sciences in Aus team - Bob, myself, and Raphael (rent-a-fence not included)

My service in 2011 was dominated by my role as First Year Advisor to the School of Humanities, which was thoroughly enjoyable. From fielding timetabling questions before matriculation at the beginning of my contract through to helping students heading in to their second year with selecting majors right up until Christmas, it has been a very busy and rewarding role. I'm proud of the retention strategies we've implemented (with my colleague from Nathan campus, Wendy), along with the various steps we've taken to improve the first year experience in all three of our programs - the Bachelor of Communications, Bachelor of Journalism and the Bachelor of Arts.

I've met and built relationships with so many inspiring scholars over the past year, both nationally, at events like the Griffith Uni Cultural Research Postgraduate Symposium and the annual meeting of The Australian Sociological Association, and internationally, at my first Internet Researchers conference in Seattle, IR12.

Dr Erika in Seattle, with friendly cushion

New #ir12 buddies!

I'm very excited about progress made on two projects I'm working on with my supervisor Andy Bennett, the first being a special issue of Continuum on 'Mediated Youth Cultures' featuring thirteen thoroughly fascinating articles on topics including YouTube graffiti communities, MySpace mottos, youth net-radio, sexting, Japanese novels consumed on mobile phones, and transnational youth refugee networks. One of my own articles, titled "Leaving MySpace, joining Facebook: ‘Growing up’ on social network sites", will also be in the special issue. It has been such a pleasure working with Andy, the contributors and the external reviewers on this project. More on this when it is published hopefully in June. The other project is a book proposal for an edited collection on the same topic, again featuring an international assortment of fantastic scholarship, but the proposal is still under review so more on that front at a later date.

Anyway, this post is already a mile too long, but I shall end by saying that I've also made some solid progress on my thesis over what others call 'the break'. I've had a couple of things come out, and I've also got a couple of new journal articles in the pipes too, so I haven't had to sacrifice too much of 'my own' work/research given the above. In all, a productive year, I think!

you have mail!

I got some nice things in the mail this week. A hard copy the journal Sociology which includes an article I wrote with my supervisor Andy Bennett, 'MyTribe: Postsubcultural manifestations of belonging on social network sites', and an advanced copy of the introductory sociology textbook I've been working on, Think Sociology, published by Pearson Australia. Progress!

i've got a website!

...like, a real one. With my own domain name: bradyrobards.com. Eventually I want to incorporate my blog and this site, but I think I'll keep this 'candidature blog' separate for now. Also, building a blog into a website (probably using Wordpress, or something?) would require some time and effort, both of which are in short supply at the moment.

Thesis update: blerg.

Creative Communities 2: Day 2 & 3

The final two days of CC2 were as inspiring as the first. Mary Fogarty kicked us off on Wednesday, day 2, with a very accessible and thoughtful keynote on her doctoral research concerned with breaking. Mary brought together much of the thinking from the previous day, suggesting 'extended families' in various youth cultures as useful mechanisms for inclusion and community.

Mary Fogarty, getting down low

Creative Communities 2: Day 1

This week the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research hosted the second annual Creative Communities conference on the Gold Coast at Crowne Plaza. The theme of the conference this year is 'Culture, Identity & Inclusion'. Here are some thoughts and responses to Day 1 of the conference.

thought bubble: humanities podcast

Let me introduce you to the work of Dr Ann Jones, who puts together a monthly podcast called 'Think Bubble'. Ann asks what is going on in the humanities in Australia, and each month she talks to researchers on her program. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. From issues of language and place through to research on new media, this podcast is a nice little bite-size way to be exposed to some research we might not otherwise hear much about.

I came across the podcast because Ann asked to interview me for the program, which I was more than happy to do. You can find that interview in the current episode. This will conclude the shameless self promotion for this evening. Thank you Ann!

sudden realisations

At 7PM on a Sunday evening, I'm sitting here at my desk preparing for the 8AM Monday lecture of doom. This semester I ended up lecturing into three courses - two with 8AM starts! - for the first eight weeks of the semester. Fortunately, beloved convenor of these three courses who is currently on research leave has left me with copious notes for at least one course, the 8AM Monday one. So I'm sitting here, studying the slides and going over the readings when it hits me...

SIX MONTHS TO GO!

Or thereabouts. Until my scholarship expires, that is. [Note: 'Sudden-ness' of sudden realisation is actually overstated in this particular telling of the story.] So here are the options ahead:

1. Work like crazy to get my thesis done within the three years (cannot believe it has been three years..);
2. Apply for a scholarship extension, giving me until August 2011;
3. Get a job at the end of my scholarship and muddle through with a vague 'early 2011' submission.

All of these potential options will depend entirely upon how I'm travelling come January. I'm going to aim for 1, hope for 2 and take 3 if something comes up. How does that sound? Okay good, back to work.

posgraduate symposim

Following on from the success of our Postgraduate Symposium last year, we're repeating the event this year. Essentially it's a full day, funded event where postgrads can present whatever they're working on in a friendly and open environment. Last year we had a few first-time presenters which was great, and quite a few people used the platform to test out some ideas they were planning on presenting at a bigger conference.

Many thanks to the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research (GGRS) for funding, and to my fellow organising committee members for all their hard work: Anne Ferguson, Raphael Nowak, Shanene Ditton, Adele Pavlidis, Haya Cohen, Christopher Driver, Patrick Mitchell and Dr Sarah Baker (our academic rep.). Hopefully it'll be a great event! While it's only aimed at local (Griffith) postgrads at this stage, if anyone else would like to come along please let me know!

Call for Papers

‘Mediated: Identity, Subjectivity & Creativity’

‘In the case of identity, as in other cases, the catchword of modernity was creation; the catchword of postmodernity is recycling’ 

(Bauman 1996: 18).

The Griffith Centre for Cultural Research (GCCR) is hosting Griffith’s second annual Cultural Research RHD Symposium, organised by postgraduates for postgraduates. The full-day symposium will include multiple themed sessions where students will present papers-in-progress and a keynote presentation from Professor Graeme Turner, a leading figure in the development of cultural and media studies in Australia. Amongst other responsibilities, Graeme Turner is a professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies and is the President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

There is no cost associated with attending. We are inviting RHD students attached to the GCCR or the School of Humanities, along with invited external participants, to submit abstracts for consideration in the program. The event is also open to interested staff and students. The theme for the symposium will be ‘Mediated: Identity, Subjectivity & Creativity’. We are seeking papers on a wide range of topics from students in various disciplines: from sociologists to creative arts practitioners; from writers to historians. We seek to offer an open and inclusive academic space for emerging scholars to share and develop their work, contributing to a broader discussion on contemporary negotiations with subjectivity, identity and creativity.

Date:                  Thursday, November 4, 2010

Location:           Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus

Cost:                  Nil

Keynote:            Prof. Graeme Turner

Lunch:               Provided

Dinner:              At delegate’s expense

Abstracts are due September 24 and should not exceed 200 words.  Abstracts should be emailed to Brady Robards (b.robards@griffith.edu.au) in a standard .doc or PDF format.  Successful contributors will be notified via return email by October 8.  All staff and students interested in attending the symposium (open to Honours, Masters and PhD students) are invited to register their interest by September 24 with Brady at the above address.


[Link]

the facebook effect, David Kirkpatrick

I had heard some references being made recently (on the blogs of Michael Zimmer and danah boyd, especially) about David Kirkpatrick's new book, 'The Facebook Effect'. Specifically, some of the statements made by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO) along the lines of 'you have one identity' were somewhat alarming, especially for those of us working in the terrain of identity studies, interested in how users of social network sites are performing a sense of self online. I'm currently revisiting how Goffman's dramaturgical framework might be (re)applied to identity performance on social network sites (building, perhaps on this wonderful essay by Trevor Pinch), so an insight into Zuckerberg's philosophy on identity was pretty interesting. Thus, I rushed (read: clicked) to fishpond.com.au to order my copy of the book yesterday, and it arrived today. I've spent large chunks of the day enthralled. The history of the site is one thing, but the insights into the people that built it are another. Very interesting stuff.

Here is the paragraph Zimmer and boyd were referring to, and the section which (for my current piece of writing) is the most resonant:

"You have one identity," [Zuckerberg] says emphatically three times in a single minute during a 2009 interview. He recalls that in Facebook's early days, some argued the service ought to offer adult users both a work profile and a "fun social profile". Zuckerberg was always opposed to that. "The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly," he says.

He makes several arguments. "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity," Zuckerberg says moralistically. But he also makes a case he sees as pragmatic - that "the level of transparency the world has now won't support having two identities for a person." In other words, even if you want to segregate your personal from your professional information you won't be able to, as information about you proliferates on the Internet and elsewhere. He would say the same about any images one individual seeks to project - for example, a teenager who acts docile at home but is a drug-using reprobate with his friends. (Kirkpatrick 2010: 198)

IMHO, there are lots of problems with this line of thinking. This philosophy resists a whole movement in identity theory (and postmodernism) that frames identity as dynamic, fluid and multi-faceted. Identity cannot truly be successfully pinned down, even though we're always trying to do just that. Goffman explains that we perform different versions of self depending on the context we find ourselves in and the audience we find ourselves performing to. Granted, online social spaces problematise these dimensions of context and audience, but you only need to be confronted a Friend request from parents or co-workers or clients or students on Facebook to know that audience, context and (yes) multiplicity in identities is still such an important consideration.

Stay tuned for more. No time for fun speech bubbles today. I'm in srs bsns mode.

revisitations

I'm working on a piece of writing at the moment that is straying into some territory that I dealt with in my honours dissertation, what seems like an age ago (2007). So, I decided to pull the old beast out and see if any of it might translate over. And then I calmly put it back into the filing cabinet drawer and locked it away, hopefully never to be seen or heard from again.

I know lots of people have this experience with old writing (or any kind of work, perhaps..) especially as students or people still learning their craft. I had a similar kind of experience when I discovered some old first-year essays while helping my parents to move a few months ago, but that was slightly different. That was more nostalgic. My run-in with the honours dissertation could be more aptly described as horrific. It read like I was a Neanderthal belting around in a dark cave looking for a light switch. The continuity between paragraphs was atrocious, my expression was 'experimental' at best and the literature I was engaging with looks like it was just whatever was laying around at the time.

I think partly I have improved slightly, but it's also partly about the way my style has developed I suppose. As in, I'm getting close to actually working out what my style of writing and my approach to research might be. And that stuff in the honours dissertation is not it! I wonder if I'll look back on my PhD thesis in five or ten years time and be similarly horrified? The scary part is that as I send stuff out into the inter-nether, I won't be able to just lock it away in the filing cabinet if (read: when) I turn around and don't like it anymore. Also, how long does the 'Oh I was young and foolish!' thing work for?

[Actual depiction of honours dissertation- stock from mjranum]

diaspora: leave fb day

Amidst growing concerns over privacy on Facebook (does that sound like the intro to a news story or what?!) people all over the shop are heading for the hills! (See what I did there: switched it up with ridiculous expressions, keeping it real, taking it to the next level..) So, leave Facebook day is May 21. Read more about it on Tama Leaver's blog, which is, incidentally, pretty much a one-stop-shop for new media news for me lately. If you haven't already, I'd suggest subscribing. Essentially, this is about awareness raising. Remember when petrol prices sky-rocketed a few years back (they had to upgrade the signs to support surpassing the $1 point) and there was that 'nobody buy petrol on this one particular day' initiative? I think it was meant to scare the oil companies, but I'm pretty sure it didn't work. Fuel was $1.33 on my way to work this morning. Similarly, I don't think leave Facebook day will cause Facebook to collapse or for Mark Zuckerberg to denounce his privacy is dead rhetoric, but this initiative is about discourse building. It's about letting people know that the way we think about privacy is changing right now, and our actions (or complacency) will shape privacy policies of tomorrow. Of course this is part of a much larger shift in privacy concerns, but that's for another discussion.

So: May 21. Will you be leaving Facebook in a privacy-fueled rage? Or will you quietly deactivate your account for a day, and then race back to it at midnight to see if you've missed anything? I'm going to play the social scientist card and observe with pen and pad, although I do enjoy flirting with the 'deactivate my account' button. If you haven't already, you should click it and find out who Facebook thinks will miss you the most, complete with a cute picture of you and said Friend!

This might be a long-term alternative: diaspora. User-controlled, open-source, privacy-aware, node-centric alternative to Facebook. Ready for exodus? Maybe not yet. It's a new project, with some great potential. It's certainly something I'll be following over the next six months or so!

we're living in the good old days

This article, '5 reasons the internet could die at any moment' got me thinking. The research I'm doing now is so anchored to a particular context and a particular period of time in 'internet history' (the social network site boom) that I often feel like I've got the blinkers on. I'm sure this is symptomatic of PhD projects in general, of course - the whole thing is often about narrowing down and maintaining a focus. Despite all this, one of the things I get asked about most often is 'where to next' for social network sites and the internet in general. It's such a good question (once you get beyond the crystal ball jokes) and my answers are always so vague!

I think it's important not to get too bogged down in the pessimism. Yes, Facebook is surely trawling our data for little (read: vast sets of) gems to sell to marketing agencies, and sure, concerns over privacy are going to continue to be central in our discussions of these spaces. At the same time though, let's not lose sight of the great potential we're in the process of realising here: our ability to (re)connect, to share, to laugh at each other and to make our weird, fascinating little lives quite visible. This has always been the gift of the internet, but only in the last five years or so have so many people had the access. While discourses about an obligation to remain connected and always online will certainly persist, my hope is that with time people will be able to fine-tune their management of social media. I have a friend at the moment, for instance, that is on a 'media diet'. This entails only checking Facebook once a week, and trying to limit checking her email to twice a day - at 9AM and 4PM. I think strategies like this are neat, but I'm also conscious of the fact that for some its an unrealistic exercise. I for one lack that kind of discipline. There's a more organic and gradual alternative, I think, that most people I speak to seem to be finding. I'm also optimistic that new forms of online sociality will continue to appear and disappear, and make a come-back and then be shut down.. and then made into a movie. Remember MySpace? Ah, those were the days. Some of my recent interviewees are still on MySpace, by the way! It's very hip with the younger kids: 15 and 16 year-olds, especially. I'm writing a paper about this at the moment, actually: something along the lines of 'MySpace is for kids and Facebook is for adults: rites of passage in digital participation'. Tentative title!

Anyway, I was talking about this stuff with my first-years last week and I thought it was great when someone said something along the lines of 'I remember the days when I used to get texts from people, now I have to use Facebook! What ever happened to the old days of texting?!' Ah, those were the days. I can't wait to get to the point where we look back on Facebook as that tranquil, golden period in our lives where the pace was slower and the world seemed like a less threatening place.

call for papers: continuum

Conventionally speaking, the study of youth cultures and their associated practices has been focused around the notion of the youth cultural group as a locally situated, physical entity. In recent years, however, research has pointed to the impact of digital media technologies on young people, their cultural practices and forms of interaction. In particular, it has been noted how more recently introduced communication technologies, notably the internet and the mobile phone, have opened up new, often ‘virtual’ spheres of interaction between young people. This in turn begs new questions about the nature of youth culture in the early 21st century. This special edition of Continuum will consider the impact of new communication technologies on youth culture and the way the latter have altered and enhanced the forms of interaction underpinning youth cultural practice.

Papers are being sought in the following areas:

• Mediated youth identities
• Engagement with online social spaces (social network(ing) sites, online games and other virtual environments)
• Youth engagement with peer-to-peer file sharing
• ‘Trans-local’ youth cultural formations 
• Access to sport and extreme sport (Roller Derby, breakdancing, martial-arts, etc.)
• Risk-taking behaviour (chemical cultures, piracy, etc.)

Abstracts of approximately 300 words should be submitted to b.robards at griffith.edu.au no later than 14th May 2010. Authors are invited to contact Andy Bennett (a.bennett at griffith.edu.au) to discuss their approach in advance of submitting abstracts. Successful authors will be asked to submit a full paper, which will be subject to a blind refereeing process.

Please feel free to distribute widely! A PDF version of this CFP can be found here.

quaint

“One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real.” -- William Gibson in Jefferson Hack, via wearethedigitalkids, via something changed.

fb bigger than google in U.S. this week

Egads! I hadn't really thought about this possibility before, but Facebook pipped Google at the post this week in the States. Things can only go downhill from here, right?

structures of participation in digital culture

I've just finished my book review of this charming little volume of essays. It's from 2007, edited by Joe Karaganis. One chapter is written by a favourite scholar of mine, danah boyd. I've also found a few new favourite scholars inside! Stand-outs include T.L. Taylor on player participation in game culture, Mizuko Ito on the rise of Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card culture in Japan and Ravi Sundaram on the culture of the copy and piracy in India. You can download it for free if you're interested.

It's great when you read something (or a collection of somethings in this case) that give shape and articulation to an idea you've been jabbing at subconsciously for a while, but never found a way to express properly. The true value of digital culture and (for my work) the internet is not just that we can chat with strangers on the other side of the planet or that we can do our banking from a phone while standing next to the ATM at the pub or even that we can share our lives with family and friends that we'd otherwise have contact with only rarely. The true value here, it seems, is that digital culture makes our world visible, accessible and open to participation. /end rant. (I'll link my review when/if the journal I sent it to publishes it).

the future of internet studies

It took a few weeks to dawn on me after reading it the first time (thank you Mr. Muir), but this really resonates with me:

If there is one reason things "digital" might release humanism from its turtlenecked hairshirt, it is precisely because computing has revealed a world full of things: hairdressers, recipes, pornographers, typefaces, Bible studies, scandals, magnetic disks, rugby players, dereferenced pointers, cardboard void fill, pro-lifers, snowstorms. The digital world is replete. It resists any efforts to be colonized by the post-colonialists. We cannot escape it by holing up in Berkeley waiting for the taurus of time to roll around to 1968. It will find us and it will videotape our kittens.

It's not "the digital" that marks the future of the humanities, it's what things digital point to: a great outdoors. A real world. A world of humans, things, and ideas. A world of the commonplace. A world that prepares jello salads. A world that litigates, that chews gum, that mixes cement. A world that rusts, that photosynthesizes, that ebbs. The philosophy of tomorrow should not be digital democracy but a democracy of objects.

I think the author, Assoc. Prof. Ian Bogost is absolutely right. And I'm excited by the prospects.