Blog – Page 71 – New Media and Culture Certificate

by mburkert - March 11, 2015

Mellon Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Digital Humanities and Community Engagement

Lehigh University seeks applications for a two-year Mellon Postdoctoral Research Scholar in digital humanities and community engagement beginning August 2015. The annual salary is $50,000 with full benefits.

They seek a postdoctoral scholar well-versed in digital media, methods and technologies, with scholarly interest in one or more of the following areas: documentary studies (film or other), community engagement, urban studies and social justice. The scholar will pursue digital humanities scholarship, teach one undergraduate course each semester, contribute to workshops in partnership with the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, and work one-on-one to help faculty integrate digital media into their courses.

The goal is to drive expansion of an undergraduate humanities curriculum that engages the local community, equips more faculty with enhanced skill sets in digital humanities forms, amplifies undergraduate humanities research, and leads to the development of an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor in documentary studies.

The position is open to candidates with a Ph.D. received between August 2012 and August 2015. Lehigh University seeks scholars from a wide range of humanities disciplines as well as the humanistic social sciences.

To apply, please submit a cover letter, vita, dissertation abstract, project description, and contact information for three academic references who will be prompted via email to submit letters electronically. The deadline for receipt of all materials is March 15, 2015.

Please apply at: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/5320.

Inquiries should be directed to Professor Ed Whitley: edw204@lehigh.edu.

by mburkert - March 9, 2015

Oregon Programming Languages Summer School: “Types, Logic, Semantics, & Verification”

“Types, Logic, Semantics, & Verification”
June 15-17

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: MARCH 16, 2015

Everyday life is subject to the quality of computer and system software. The more our society depends on computing systems for critical aspects of economy, defense, and government, the more software correctness and reliability becomes crucial. The focus of this summer school is the mix or interplay of theory and practice in program verification. The main aim is to enable participants to conduct research in the area, thereby contributing to improve software quality.

The goal of this program is to provide a unique opportunity for participants to understand the current landscape in programming language research. We will present a range of material, from foundational work on semantics and type theory to advanced program verification techniques, to experience with applying the theory.

Lectures will include discussions of basic theoretical tools such as proof theory, type theory, category theory and their connection to programming language semantics. The lectures will describe how these ideas can be applied to yield proved-correct software by introducing students and researchers to the ideas of software verification. The lectures will also introduce the participants to the use of the proof assistant Coq in order to provide machine-checked proofs of program correctness.

At all times, material will be presented at a tutorial level that will help graduate students and researchers understand the critical issues and open problems confronting the field. The hope is that students will be able to apply what they learn at the school in their own research. They believe that by doing so the school will have a broad impact on the next generation of software, programming language and software engineering researchers in industry and academia.

The course is open to anyone interested. Prerequisites are knowledge of programming languages at the level provided by an undergraduate survey course. The primary target group is first- or second-year graduate students. Post-doc researchers and faculty members who would like to conduct research on this topic or introduce new courses at their universities are also welcome.

For more details on registration, scheduling, organizers, and speakers for the summer school, please visit the Oregon Programming Languages Summer School website here.

by mburkert - March 7, 2015

Job Opportunity: Postdoctoral Research Associate/Digital Humanities Princeton

Princeton University seeks candidates for an appointment as a postdoctoral research associate housed jointly in the Council for the Humanities and the Center for Digital Humanities. The successful candidate will spend half of their time developing a website for the Princeton and Slavery Project and the remaining half time will be devoted to the candidate’s own research project and to participating in the intellectual life of the University.

Candidates must have a Ph.D. in History or a closely allied field, with a demonstrated familiarity with 18th and 19th century American history. Appointment is for one year, with expectation of renewal for a second year pending satisfactory performance.

The website development project will require the postdoc to translate existing research into a dynamic visual form, and to collaborate with colleagues in other divisions of the University, including the University Archives, Art Museum and History Department.

Preference will be given to candidates who can create custom themes in Omeka/Neatline, a PHP based content management system, and who have demonstrated skills in PHP, CSS3, and HTML5.

To ensure full consideration, candidates are encouraged to submit complete applications by March 25, 2015.

In addition to their salary, postdoctoral researchers receive reimbursement (up to $2,000 per academic year) for research related expenses. Postdoctoral researchers are responsible for their own travel and moving arrangements and expenses, as well as for finding and paying for their housing at Princeton. Before their departure, they are required to submit a report on their scholarly activities at Princeton.

To Apply:

Applications are accepted online at https://jobs.princeton.edu , requisition #1500127 and should include:

(1) cover letter addressing qualifications for website design, along with title and brief summary of proposed research project;
(2) research proposal (five pages; 2,000 words), including a detailed description of project, timetable, explicit goals, and selected bibliography and supporting materials;
(3) curriculum vitae with list of publications;
(4) sample chapter (in English) of dissertation or other recent work;
(5) links to custom themes designed for Omeka, WordPress, or Drupal along with descriptions of how those themes were built; and
(6) Letters from three referees who are not current members of the Princeton University faculty.

Scholars with Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University are not eligible to apply. Appointments cannot be deferred to a later term.

Candidates must have completed all the requirements for the doctoral degree by September 1, 2015 (including the defense, viva voce, or final public oral examination), and preferably not earlier than June 1, 2012. Postdoctoral Research Associates may not pursue another degree while on this appointment, nor may they hold any other fellowships or visiting positions concurrently with their appointment at Princeton University.

Princeton University is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

This position is subject to the University’s background check policy. Princeton University is an equal opportunity employer and complies with applicable EEO and affirmative action regulations. You may apply online for job requisition #1500127 at: https://jobs.princeton.edu or for general application information and how to self-identify, see: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/dof/ApplicantsInfo.htm

by mburkert - March 7, 2015

Job opportunity: tenure-track assistant professor specializing in Digital Humanities at California State University, Northridge

California State University, Northridge seeks candidates for a tenure-track assistant professor specializing in Digital Humanities skills (e.g. Mapping, Network Analysis, Data Visualization, Data Mining, Data literacy, Digital Scholarly editing).

Secondary interests may include: Social Media Studies, Popular Cultural Studies, Computational Linguistics, Elementary Education, Russian Studies, Modern China Studies, Sustainability Studies.

A PhD awarded prior to August 19, 2015 is required.

The position will be housed in the Liberal Studies Program, and the successful candidate will be required to teach ITEP ((Integrated Teacher Education Program) courses in the candidate’s area of expertise from one of the ITEP disciplines (linguistics, humanities, natural sciences, mathematics, visual/ performing arts, or social sciences), as well as Popular Culture related courses on Social Media.

Evidence of teaching effectiveness required; publication desirable. Standard teaching load is 4/4, although competition-based reassigned time is normally available. Applicants should demonstrate a commitment to working at a Learning-Centered University with a diverse student population drawn largely from the Los Angeles area.

Please review full job announcement on the department website.

To Apply:
Send cover letter, CV, three letters of recommendation, brief writing sample (15-20 pages) or equivalent sample of scholarly digital work, abstract of a representative work (such as a book project or dissertation), a statement of teaching philosophy, and evidence of teaching excellence to Ranita.Chatterjee@csun.edu or Dr. Ranita Chatterjee, Liberal Studies Program, CSUN, Northridge, CA 91330-8338.

Primary consideration given to applications received by March 30, 2015.

CSUN is an EO/AA employer.

The full position announcement is available at: http://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/LRS-Faculty-Digital-Hum.pdf.

by mburkert - March 7, 2015

Boston College: One year Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities

The Institute for the Liberal Arts at Boston College invites applications for a one-year post-doctoral fellowship in Digital Humanities. They welcome applications from recent PhDs in any humanities fields who have expertise in digital approaches to scholarship, especially data mining, mapping and GIS, and/or visualization. The DH Fellow will teach one class per semester, will be available to consult with faculty on the use of digital technologies in their research projects, and will organize workshops for faculty and graduate students on DH topics.

Candidates should have received a Ph. D. in an arts or humanities discipline by August, 2015. They will be affiliated with the appropriate department at Boston College. Salary is $65,000 with a $5,000 research budget.

To Apply:
Please submit a letter of application, CV, article-length writing sample, statement describing experience with digital technology, syllabus for a digital humanities course at either the undergraduate or graduate level, and three letters of recommendation by March 30, 2015.

Applications should be submitted online at apply.interfolio.com/28956

The search committee is being chaired by Professor Mary Crane.

Boston College is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other legally protected status.

To learn more about how BC supports diversity and inclusion throughout the university please visit the Office for Institutional Diversity at http://www.bc.edu/offices/diversity.

by mburkert - March 7, 2015

4S Open Panel CFP: The Epistemology of Code and Computation

Denver, Colorado 11-‐14 November 2015

Abstracts due March 29, 2015

Organizers: Evan Buswell, UC Davis (ecbuswell@ucdavis.edu), Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur (leeal@ucsiuniversity.edu.my)

Call for Submission:
In the mathematical and scientific community, computers appear not as a collection of applications but as tools for running computations to produce knowledge. In certain respects, then, code has taken the place of mathematics as the epistemic basis and the medium of expression of knowledge. While code can be reasoned about mathematically, such that the correctness of a given program can be mathematically established, this is rarely done in practice. This has led to a miscognition and misapplication of concepts such as “stochastic,” “analytics,” “probabilistic,” “modeling,” “optimization,” and others.

It is this panel’s goal to disrupt, dismantle, and dislocate these hyper-positvistic concepts, and to critically engage with the epistemological questions to which this computational shift gives rise. How do code and the results of computations figure into descriptions of knowledge? What role do code and computation play in the justification of knowledge? How are different practices of programming led to different epistemic commitments? What becomes hidden and what becomes visible with the emerging use of code in knowledge production? These questions have been approached by the disciplines of software studies, critical code studies, platform studies, game studies, information studies, and other areas. While this fragmentary disciplinization was historically useful, this panel feels it is crucial to break out of the constraints of these micro-disciplines to critically engage with the cross-cutting concerns raised by the arrival of epistemological computation itself.

Currently seeking papers in: the semiotics of code and computation; the epistemological use of code and computation; the connections between politics, economics, and epistemological coding; and the possible and impossible futures brought into existence by the relationship between code and epistemology.

Submit a paper abstract to:
https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ssss/4s15/and check the open panel box: “37. The Epistemology of Code and Computation”

Abstracts due March 29, 2015
You will be notified by May 24, 2015

For more information, including more details submission instructions, read the full posting here.

by mburkert - March 3, 2015

NMCC Class Spotlight: Habitual New Media

Habitual New Media (COLT 607)

This term Professor Colin Koopman (Philosophy) and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (2014- 15 Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics) have been teaching the seminar course Habitual New Media in the Department of Comparative Literature. This is course is intended to provide graduate students from a range of disciplines with an introduction to, and deeper engagement with, some of the major theoretical approaches to new media as an object of critical inquiry. In this course students survey emerging themes of inquiry gaining importance across a range of contemporary disciplinary formations including not only new media studies, but also science and technology studies, the history and philosophy of technology and science, and political philosophy and social theory.

Bonnie Sheehey (PhD candidate in Philosophy), and Professor Koopman, have both generously agreed to share their thoughts on the new media seminar from the perspectives of a student and as a teacher of the course (respectively).

Bonnie Sheehey

Bonnie Sheehey
PhD Candidate
Department of Philosophy

In COLT 607, “Habitual New Media,” professors Wendy Chun and Colin Koopman uniquely created a space for interdisciplinary inquiry into the ways in which new media invariably shape our present modes of habituation and the historical formation of our present selves. By weaving together a dynamic narrative through a critical engagement with theories of new media, the class was able to provide students from multiple disciplines with the opportunity to reflect on questions of temporality, sociality, and the possibility of political and ethical transformation in our networked spaces.

The course nicely culminated in the interdisciplinary symposium “Living Data: Inhabiting New Media” by bringing together a set of scholars interested in the question of living data. The class was especially significant insofar as it afforded me the chance to engage and converse with students of diverse disciplinary backgrounds for whom the questions and concerns of new media are vital, live, and timely.

Colin Koopman

Colin Koopman
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy

The course has been a fantastic interdisciplinary learning experience for everyone involved. From the start, the syllabus itself was interdisciplinary in that it combined the approaches of the two teachers: both Wendy Chun whose background is in literary and cultural studies (though as an undergrad she focused on computer hardware engineering) and my background in philosophy and theory (and though I didn’t study computers as an undergrad I was an early adopter of BBSs long before most of us used AOL to jump on the internet bandwagon).

An Interdisciplinary Approach:

A further interdisciplinary aspect of the course is the fact that it was offered in the Comparative Literature Department, thus pushing both of the professors outside of our normal expectations. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the students in the course have been very interdisciplinary. We are split about 50-50 between media studies students (from the SOJC) and humanities studies (from literary fields and philosophy). This has created a number of interesting sparks and provocations as we have together worked to translate vocabularies across disciplines as we interrogate the texts and debates under consideration in the course.

Key Concepts on Habitual New Media:
Some of the main concepts we have been focusing on include habits, conducts, and archives. These have been methodological entry points for us in exploring the ‘new’ domains as ‘new media’ and ‘big data’. My view is that information cultures and media ecologies are not only interesting in their own right, but they are also interesting sites for study because they challenge many of our inherited expectations about what is involved in seeking to understand critique these sites. For instance, what familiar habits of ‘reading’ are challenged when the texts one is engaging in are encoded digital files? What assumptions about ‘interpretation’ are disrupted when the texts one is reading refuse to sit still and present themselves as fixed and stable objects? What scholarly premises are pushed around when it begins to become clear that the work of critical inquiry can no longer proceed solely on the basis of interpretation? All of these questions are provoked by the very attempt to take seriously the presence of ‘media’ — a presence that is insisted upon by the attention we give to ‘new media’ even if these turn out to be indeed very ‘old media’ too.

Useful Resources from the Course:

Probably my own favorite readings in the course have been my co-teacher Wendy Chun’s book “Habitual New Media” (but we read the manuscript for it, as the book is still to be published) (you can hear a lecture by Wendy Chun about Habitual New Media here) and books coming out of German Media Archaeology, including Markus Krajewski’s “Paper Machines” and Cornelia Vismann’s “Files”.

To point to the latter, just because it may not be as familiar to people, the archaeologists of media offer a distinctive approach that emphasizes the technical, material, and practical side of familiar media objects like files. Vismann’s book shows how files structure our lives (just think of the logic organizing your laptop), but in ways that are not so ‘new’ as ‘new media’ would have us believe. Files have been with us for a long time as an organizational logic central to modern bureaucracies and even Roman law. Her book is a fascinating exploration of the actual formats, forms, and formations upon which our informational culture has been premised with its reliance on files.

Interested in taking an NMCC-affiliated course? Classes for spring 2015 are currently posted on the NMCC website. Check them out here!

by mburkert - March 2, 2015

February Prof Picks Feature: Daniel Steinhart

Daniel Steinhart
dsteinha@uoregon.edu

Assistant Professor
-School of Journalism and Communication
-Cinema Studies

As a film historian who is also interested in new media, I find myself torn between the past and the present. Perhaps to reconcile this split, I’m often on the lookout for ways to bring new digital tools to the research of media history. So I wanted to highlight two online resources that offer promising possibilities for this kind of work. The first is the Media History Digital Library, a searchable database of media periodicals. The second is Cinemetrics, an online application that helps measure the editing patterns of moving images. Both resources reflect my teaching and research pursuits: the study of the art and industry of cinema.

My primary research project investigates post-World War II Hollywood productions that were shot around the world. To understand how the film trade press was covering this phenomenon, I spent several months paging through every issue of Daily Variety from 1948 to 1962. The timing of my search turned out to be unlucky. About six months later, Daily Variety made all of its back issues available in a digitized archive, although for a considerable service fee. While the time I spent with the print issues gave me an invaluable sense of the day-to-day development of international production, this searchable database could have saved me many hours and helped me avoid inhaling an unknowable amount of library must.

Media History Digital Library:

An even more exciting development in the digitization of media periodicals can be found in the Media History Digital Library. Because the available publications are in the public domain, the collection is free and favors pre-WWII publishing runs. But the range of journals are wonderfully diverse: technical digests like Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, broadcasting magazines such as Radio Broadcast, and a handful of global film publications—a particularly exciting addition for anyone doing global media history.

The collection uses a search platform called Lantern, which allows you to explore a subject across the array of publications. I think most useful is that this search mechanism helps researchers not only consider oft-cited journals like the fan magazine Photoplay but also less studied publication such as Movie Makers, the organ of the Amateur Cinema League, which designed some lovely covers. Ultimately, these kinds of digital collections allow new media scholars to track the development of old technologies and see that concepts such as “convergence” and “remediation” have long been with us.

Analyzing Change of Pace in Movies: Cinemetrics:

In the courses I teach, I can show a striking contrast of work. Recently in my Contemporary International Art Cinema class, I screened a slow, meditative Iranian film called The Circle. That same week in my Global Hollywood class, I showed a fast-paced episode of the TV show Game of Thrones. What accounts for the difference in pacing of these two works?

For a several decades now, a group of film historians have been asking a similar question about changes in the pace of movies over time. These researchers aimed to back up our intuitive feel for a film (e.g., fastness vs. slowness) with some quantitative data on editing rates. The old method for determining the frequency of edits (i.e., shot changes) was to manually count the number of shots in a film with a tally clicker and then divide that total into the film’s running time. This was a less than exact method, but it could give you a rough idea of a film’s average shot length (ASL).

CinemetricsTool — Cinemetrics Tool: “Essentially a stopwatch for edits, the tool is available in both online and downloadable versions.”

To generate a more accurate count of editing rates, the online application Cinemetrics allows researchers to calculate ASLs in real time. Essentially a stopwatch for edits, the tool is available in both online and downloadable versions. The program also turns your findings into graphs, which serve as handy visuals for getting a sense of editing patterns.

Determining the ASL of a single film, however, won’t tell you much. The real insights from ASLs come once you begin to assemble a database of films to see how editing can change over the course of a filmmaker’s career, across national cinemas, and throughout decades. Cinemetrics does just this by allowing researchers to publish their findings on the site. The current database includes 14,975 entries. Determining editing patterns certainly isn’t the endpoint of aesthetic analysis, but it can be one piece in building a more precise history of the style of not only film but also TV and new media.

CinemetricsGraph — Graph of Cinemetrics: The Cinemetrics database currently boasts 14,975 entries!

Are you a UO faculty member interested in getting involved with NMCC and/or being our next Prof Picks feature? Please contact us.

by mburkert - February 28, 2015

February Shelfie Feature: Alec Tefertiller

Alec Tefertiller
PhD candidate, Media Studies
School of Journalism and Communication

Discovery of NMCC:

I discovered the New Media and Culture certificate prior to enrolling at UO this past Fall, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. As a media studies student who is particularly interested in media convergence, I was excited about the opportunity to collaborate with students around campus. One of the things that drew me to Oregon was the wide range of scholarly pursuits available across campus. The New Media and Culture Certificate seemed like a great way to tap into that community.

I am always amazed by the points of intersection I find between my research interests and those of others working in completely different departments. I am a big fan of collaboration, because I feel like we all have something unique to bring to the table. You may have forgotten more about computer programming than I will ever know, but you have no idea how audiences work. I bring audience motivations to the table, and you bring computer programming.

Useful Resource for new media students:
The Digital Scholarship Center:

This past term I have been in the Digital Scholarship class with John Russell in the library’s Digital Scholarship Center, and it’s like my world has expanded to 243% it’s previous size. I’m learning methods and approaches I had no idea existed. I thought I was going to get some useful tools to help me with what I am doing; instead, it’s transforming my approach entirely.

You can learn more about credit course opportunities at the Digital Scholarship center here. The DSC also welcomes proposals for workshops or credit courses that meet the digital scholarship needs of students or faculty. Contact Karen Estlund (kestlund@uoregon.edu) or John Russell (johnruss@uoregon.edu) with ideas.

Wordcloud generated in DSC course showing recent Twitter activity regarding SlingTV, a new streaming cable service.

Recent Research:
Currently, I am interested in streaming media, in particular streaming content providers such as Netflix and Sling. While these services deliver what we would think of as traditional media content, like television shows and films, their delivery stream is very different. It’s really shaking up the industry, as we now have new categories of consumers, such as “cordcutters” and “cordnevers,” along with new concepts, such as “bingewatching” and “connected viewing.” I’m interested in understanding how these new concepts are changing our notion of media attendance.

One thing I’ve learned in my research is that consumers are intentional about distribution window selection when it comes to when they first experience a film. With so many homeviewing options, from Redbox, Vudu, Amazon, and on to Netflix, we don’t go to movies unless they provide particular content that seems to fit the theatrical experience. I want to understand the implications of these shifts in consumer attitudes for content producers, in particular independent artists. The good news is that artists now have a host of lowcost digital tools, crowdfunding, and distribution options they can utilize to create and release their works. I want to understand how these opportunities are manifesting themselves in the real world.

Some good reads:

Useful Resources on New Media and Digital Culture:

Understanding Media Marshall McLuhan

Connected Viewing: Selling, Streaming, & Sharing in the Digital Era Ed. by Jennifer Holt & Kevin Sanson

Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home Barbara Klinger

The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More Chris Anderson

The Circle, Dave Eggers

What’s on your shelf? Interested in being the next NMCC Shelfie feature? Contact us!

by mburkert - February 26, 2015

CFP for Special Issue of TCQ: Technical Communication and Video Games

Technical Communication Quarterly Special Issue
Vol 25, Number 3 (Fall 2016)
Games in Technical Communication

Deadline: March 30, 2015

Guest editors: Jennifer deWinter (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) and Stephanie Vie (University of Central Florida)

As Jeffrey David Greene and Laura Palmer (2012) have argued, the “rich history of documentation and enormous growth in gaming” means that “technical communication and game documentation belong together” (pp. 7-8). More broadly, Julia Mason (2013) noted that technical communication and games overlap in the areas of interface design, information management, and systems development (among others). And in the recent edited collection Computer Games and Technical Communication (2014), deWinter and Moeller collect sixteen essays together that examine workplace production, fan production, manuals, testing, and teaching within this intersection. The call for more research is clear. Thus, Technical Communication Quarterly invites contributions for a special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly on video and computer games entitled Video Games in Technical Communication that explore this important intersection, specifically focusing on industry production, technical documents for internal and external use, and player involvement in document use and generation.

Games are both technical and symbolic. The gaming industry pushes technological innovation through complex dialectics amongst large and small game developers, hardware developers, distributors, consumers, hackers, congress people, journalists, ESRB raters, parents, IP lawyers, and many others besides. Further, computer games are symbolically communicative, relying on written, verbal, visual, algorithmic, audio, and kinesthetic information to convey information. Technical communication scholars are uniquely poised to investigate this intersection between the technical and symbolic aspects of the computer game complex.

TCQ seek proposals for manuscripts of 6,000-8,000 words (25-33 double-spaced pages, including references and notes) that attend to the intersection of games and technical communication.

Contributors are encouraged to consider the following possible four areas of interest when composing their proposals (however, other areas are welcome):

Production

● What types of documentation support computer games as technical artifacts?

● How do documentation practices in the computer games industry relate to technical communication as a field?

● Who are the actors in game-based documentation (technical writers, fans, game developers, etc.) and how do they shape the intersection of games and technical communication?

● How might race, gender, age, and sexual orientation play out in the computer game complex as they particularly intersect with documentation?

● How does the increasingly globalized production and circulation of computer games affect documentation practices? How might national markets and globalized markets work in conjunction or against one another complicate the types of communication that occur? What might technical communicators need to do to navigate the dynamic workplaces engendered by these tensions?

Game Culture and Documentation

● What types of manuals and supporting literature exist for games? What are the material and economic conditions within which these are created? Who creates these documents?

● How can games be used to teach procedural approaches to complex activities (in lieu of manuals, for example)?

● How does modding culture affect technical communication in games? How might the field of technical communication analyze and respond to modding?

● How are communities created and maintained in online environments (i.e., fan cultures, fan walkthoughs, communities managers, social game spaces, and so forth)? What types of documentation supports or arises in response to the technical and social exigencies of gaming communities?

User Testing and Play-testing

● What are the similarities and differences between usability testing and playtesting?

● How might experience design, narratives, art games, and the like affect user testing and playtesting? How might the field of technical communication respond to these new demands and what might we learn from them?

● What can technical communication as a field learn from playtesting?

Research Methods & Ethics

● What methodologies can researchers employ at the intersection of games studies and technical communication? How might these methodologies account for the complexities of production, global circulation, and participatory consumption?

● What are the ethical considerations concerning ownership, power, participatory culture, and content that researchers in technical communication should consider in game studies?

In addition to academic articles, we would consider contextualized interviews with a practicing technical communicator in the game industry. If you are interested in pursuing this option, then for your proposal, please include the name, position, and duties of the person that you want to interview along with a rationale that addresses what the TCQ readership would gain from a conversation with your proposed expert-practitioner.

Please send proposals of 500-750 words to Stephanie Vie, and Jennifer deWinter by March 30, 2015. Submissions should include full contact information for all proposed authors; collaboratively authored proposals are welcome. TCQ also welcomes email inquiries from potential contributors and from people who would like to serve as reviewers for this special issue of TCQ. Authors will be invited to submit full drafts of accepted articles by July 15, 2015.

For those interested in contributing book reviews on games and technical communication, please contact the guest editors directly by March 30, 2015 at the email addresses listed above.