Category: libraries

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Great opportunity > Internship with the Social Media Collective (Microsoft)

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Via Nancy Baym:

Call for applications! 2018 summer internship, MSR Social Media Collective

APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 19, 2018

Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for advanced PhD students to join the Social Media Collective (SMC) for its 12-week Internship program. The Social Media Collective (in New England, we are Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, and Mary Gray, with current postdocs Dan Greene and Dylan Mulvin) bring together empirical and critical perspectives to understand the political and cultural dynamics that underpin social media technologies. Learn more about us here.

MSRNE internships are 12-week paid stays in our lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During their stay, SMC interns are expected to devise and execute their own research project, distinct from the focus of their dissertation (see the project requirements below). The expected outcome is a draft of a publishable scholarly paper for an academic journal or conference of the intern’s choosing. Our goal is to help the intern advance their own career; interns are strongly encouraged to work towards a creative outcome that will help them on the academic job market.

The ideal candidate may be trained in any number of disciplines (including anthropology, communication, information studies, media studies, sociology, science and technology studies, or a related field), but should have a strong social scientific or humanistic methodological, analytical, and theoretical foundation, be interested in questions related to media or communication technologies and society or culture, and be interested in working in a highly interdisciplinary environment that includes computer scientists, mathematicians, and economists.

Primary mentors for this year will be Nancy Baym and Tarleton Gillespie, with additional guidance offered by other members of the SMC. We are looking for applicants working in one or more of the following areas:

  1. Personal relationships and digital media
  2. Audiences and the shifting landscapes of producer/consumer relations
  3. Affective, immaterial, and other frameworks for understanding digital labor
  4. How platforms, through their design and policies, shape public discourse
  5. The politics of algorithms, metrics, and big data for a computational culture
  6. The interactional dynamics, cultural understanding, or public impact of AI chatbots or intelligent agents

Interns are also expected to give short presentations on their project, contribute to the SMC blog, attend the weekly lab colloquia, and contribute to the life of the community through weekly lunches with fellow PhD interns and the broader lab community. There are also natural opportunities for collaboration with SMC researchers and visitors, and with others currently working at MSRNE, including computer scientists, economists, and mathematicians. PhD interns are expected to be on-site for the duration of their internship.

Applicants must have advanced to candidacy in their PhD program by the time they start their internship. (Unfortunately, there are no opportunities for Master’s students or early PhD students at this time). Applicants from historically marginalized communities, underrepresented in higher education, and students from universities outside of the United States are encouraged to apply.

PEOPLE AT MSRNE SOCIAL MEDIA COLLECTIVE

The Social Media Collective is comprised of full-time researchers, postdocs, visiting faculty, Ph.D. interns, and research assistants. Current projects in New England include:

  • How does the use of social media affect relationships between artists and audiences in creative industries, and what does that tell us about the future of work? (Nancy Baym)
  • How are social media platforms, through their algorithmic design and user policies, taking up the role of custodians of public discourse? (Tarleton Gillespie)
  • What are the cultural, political, and economic implications of crowdsourcing as a new form of semi-automated, globally-distributed digital labor? (Mary L. Gray)
  • How do public institutions like schools and libraries prepare workers for the information economy, and how are they changed in the process? (Dan Greene)
  • How are media standards made, and what do their histories tell us about the kinds of things we can represent? (Dylan Mulvin)

SMC PhD interns may also have the opportunity to connect with our sister Social Media Collective members in New York City. Related projects in New York City include:

  • What are the politics, ethics, and policy implications of artificial intelligence and data science? (Kate Crawford, MSR-NYC)
  • What are the social and cultural issues arising from data-centric technological development? (danah boyd, Data & Society Research Institute)

For more information about the Social Media Collective, and a list of past interns, visit the About page of our blog. For a complete list of all permanent researchers and current postdocs based at the New England lab, see: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/newengland/people/bios.aspx

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The unacknowledged (professional) expense of books

These are just some rough thoughts…

Reading is a significant part of academic life. Staying up-to-date with debates, excavating the lineage or context for certain arguments or ideas, diving into new areas – all these things, and more, more or less require us to regularly read… journal articles, books, book reviews, and perhaps (increasingly) blogs and other online texts.

The thing is… most of those texts are free to access, for academics, through institutional access (we can login through Athens or Shibboleth). The exception (most of the time anyway) is books. While universities remain committed to stocking their libraries there are, of course, limits to what can be bought. We often want to foray into very particular areas that other colleagues or students won’t and so we cannot reasonably expect the university to pick up the tab, especially when budgets are only being reduced.

This leaves many (especially early career) academics in a quandary. Resort to the increasingly creaky inter-library loans system (and then probably have to break copyright by photocopying substantial portions of a book), or buy a book with your own money. Inter-library loans is an excellent system and I have no wish to denigrate it – it’s just sometimes you need to keep a copy of the whole book and copyright doesn’t allow for this (and photocopies can be unsatisfactory too).

Now, I know that academics are certainly not badly paid (and I do not wish to moan about that), but those of us early in our careers are not wealthy by any means. Many colleagues, I am aware, give themselves a book budget and prioritise – some simply splash out. Nevertheless, this is a professional expense – we arguably need the books to inform our research (the aspect of our jobs most highly prized by our employers and government) but we must cover it out of our ordinary remuneration. This may well be the case for other professions too(?)

Until I had a family I did not think about this. I didn’t buy every book I fancied but there were book purchases most months. Now, with a tighter belt, there isn’t the room for this in my family’s budget. I was lucky to receive a small start-up pot when appointed to my post and I have used a little bit of that to pay for some essential books (I don’t think that’s what it was for!). I have also made use of the SCONUL system to join other universities’ libraries to broaden the range of books to which I have access.

Nevertheless, and I really do not wish to whinge, but the fact remains that academic books can be really expensive (e.g. Routledge and Ashgate routinely publish hardback-only editions and they cost £60+ per book) and we have to meet that expense ourselves.

I’d be interested in what others think…