1) Open 2) Semantic 3) Social 4) Mobile

Colleagues/

I have been invited to give a presentation at the University of Limerick, Ireland, in early June 2009 at a symposium focused on 'New Paradigms in Scholarly Research’.

I have chosen to address this theme with a presentation titled

Research and Scholarship In The 21st Century: The Paradigms They Are A-Changin' > Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile

I plan to focus on the four broad themes of 1) Open, 2) Semantic, 3) Social, and 4) Mobile.

Under each I plan to profile significant developments that relate to each, namely

__Open__
Open Access / Open Science / Open Source / Open Standards / Etc.

__Semantic__
Valued Added Content and Functionality Within Journals / Monographs / Other Publications

For Examples See My

"E Is for Everything: The Extra-Ordinary, Evolutionary [E-]Journal." The Serials Librarian 41, no. 3/4 (2002): 293-321.[http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/SLv41n3-4.pdf] [Last Article]

“Embedded Multimedia in Electronic Journals." Multimedia Information and Technology 25, no. 4 (1999): 338-343. [http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/Embed.pdf]

New Age Navigation: Innovative Information Interfaces for Electronic Journals"The Serials Librarian 45, no. 2 (2003): 87 - 123 http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/NewAge.pdf]

As Well As “Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article” that I recently profiled in my Scholarship 2.0 blog at [http://tinyurl.com/cyfe4f]

__Social__

Social networks / Social software / Web 2.0 / Etc.

__Mobile__

Mobile data access

Mobile data gathering

Incorporated mobile content within publications

See Also

‘Twitter Science / Publication / Conferences ?’ [http://tinyurl.com/db2827]

I would be most grateful to learn of particular/specific examples within each subtopic (within a research/scholarly environment) that you believe is specifically/particularly noteworthy to profile in my presentation.

Please submit your recommendations at A(s) Comment(s) On This Blog Entry.

Thanks A Million !

BTW: If There Are Any Colleagues In Ireland That Would Be Interested In Hosting/Sponsoring A Version of The Presentation, Please Do Contact Me (gerrymck@iastate.edu). In Addition To My Presentation At Limerick (June 9), I Plan To Visit Dublin (June 3-5) And Galway (June 6-7).

If A Formal Presentation Is Not Possible, I'd Love To Discuss The Issues With You Over A Pint Or Two ... [:-)]

Regards,

/Gerry

Related

The Paradigms They Are A-Changin' > Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile

http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/05/paradigms-they-are-changin-open.html

"F*ck where you at kid, it's where you from"

In Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, Jeff Chang chronicles the historical roots of contemporary hip-hop culture. Chang notes the decline of industrial America, the rise of crack, and the prevalence of urban street gangs as three major antecedents to hip-hop. To be sure, it wasn’t gangs themselves that gave rise to hip-hop; rather, the strong territorialism of street gangs directly translated into hyper-territorialism among MCs and DJs as hip-hop spread throughout New York City.

It’s not surprising that we continue to see this pattern today. From Nas repping Queensbridge, to T.I. repping Bankhead, to Trick Daddy repping Miami, to The Game repping Compton, to Bun B repping Houston, to Kanye repping Chicago, hip-hop is most definitely a regionalist genre—with representation spanning the entire U.S.

After watching Notorious, I started thinking more about regionalism in hip-hop—basically, why every rapper in the game tries to lay claim to either a major metropolitan region or an NYC borough. There’s a fundamental problem with this, however: Far too many rappers are grossly dishonest about their humble, urban roots. Take Biggie, for example. As in the movie, he claims to be from Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Brooklyn neighborhood not exactly known for safe streets. Well, Biggie actually grew up in Clinton Hill, a very nice and relatively affluent Brooklyn neighborhood. P. Diddy’s Wikipedia page (which his people most definitely edit on the regular) lists his “true” hometown as Harlem. But Diddy grew up in Mount Vernon, a pretty nice lower-middle class black suburb of NYC. My high school basketball team actually played them in the first round of the state playoffs a few times. What about Public Enemy, arguably one of the most politically charged hip-hop groups of all time? They are from NYC’s most famous suburb: Long Island. Younger rappers are also following this trend. Take Kid Cudi. He was born and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio, one of Cleveland’s most affluent (and integrated) suburbs. During his sophomore year, however, he moved to Solon, Ohio, a very nice suburb that contains the state’s best public school. A friend of mine from East Cleveland recently told me that Solon is the new suburban destination for affluent and upwardly mobile blacks. Yet, Cudi never reps Solon, or Shaker Heights for that matter. Nope, he reps Cleveland.

There are some exceptions in commercial hip-hop, most notably Wale who often reps Prince George’s County in suburban Washington DC. But these are few and far between; urban territorialism reigns supreme. Consider all of the beefs over residence: Fat Joe dissing 50 Cent for living in Connecticut, T.I. going to Texas to prove that Lil Scrappy wasn’t from the projects, Shawty Lo most recently questioning T.I.’s claim to Bankhead, etc. And these are just three in the last couple years that immediately come to mind.

It’s one thing for my classmates to say they are from Chicago when they grew up in Northbrook; but these rappers use their “hometowns” as claims to authenticity. It’s a little dishonest, in my opinion. I certainly don’t blame them. Just ask Rick Ross about the need to uphold a certain image to be commercially successful.

But, the suburban roots of some of our favorite (and, black) rappers makes Asher Roth’s claim to suburban supremacy that much more arrogant. The white suburbanites that Roth claims should be his base are literally and figuratively living alongside their favorite black rappers. Newsflash: black people live in the suburbs. And some of them grow up to be famous rappers.

Rakim once rapped “It ain’t where you from, it’s where you at.” But Mobb Deep’s lyric, “F*ck where you at kid, it’s where you from” is more relevant today. Yet when rappers discuss “where” they’re from, they rarely provide the full story. Far too often rappers mislead their audiences, claiming urban legitimacy when in actuality they lived a very suburban life.

Maybe we wouldn’t have to deal with white suburban supremacy from the likes of Roth if rappers were more forthright about their suburban roots.

Obsessed with what?

And the Oscar for best extra in a film goes to…

Race!

When I saw the preview, in the back of my mind, I heard the old, tired, played out trumpet call: “Come one. Come all. Come see who takes home the “gold.” Does Sharon keep the title of “Wifey” or will the challenger, “The Boogie-down Blonde,” take it when all the dust clears?” Yes, I am talking about Obsessed. My initial thought was, is this Spike Lee's Jungle Fever meets Curtis Hanson's The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: the new-age epic battle for the handsome, successful, delectable black man? Happy to say, I was wrong.

I think Steven Hill directed a more nuanced film than many people will give him credit for. Hill skillfully casts race as an extra in the film, not allowing it to steal the show. Now why do we have beautiful blonde versus bombshell black? Because no one would have went to see the movie if it wasn’t so. We only need to think back a few years to Hitch when the directors only casted Eva Mendes because they thought the movie would be a flop with a “true” dark on dark (code for black on black) romance storyline. I guess what I am trying to say is that one could reasonably argue that the movie would have been the same with or without Ali Larter as Kate. The only thing is nobody would know because no one would have waited in line for tickets if Kate was, to be stereotypical for a moment, Lakisha. People wanted to see how Sharon was going to handle the white girl being near her man and, of course, the fight scene. Thus, race was bait—something external to the movie. I think the “why” should be the real discussion surrounding Obsessed.

With that said, I would be remised if I didn’t ask about the relationship dynamics between Sharon and Derek from a gender perspective. Trust was a reoccurring issue in the movie. Did anyone else catch the level of distrust between them? Was Sharon right to demand that Derek not have a female assistant after her because she became the Mrs.? Was Derek wrong for getting out of character at work and offering a shoulder to lean on to Kate, regardless of her race (subsequent craziness notwithstanding)? Although a minor detail, the battle for trust in the relationship turned out to be a major part of the movie. A key part one may argue. Remember, this wasn’t Enemy of the State where Will Smith actually had an affair; there, the distrust was valid. But here, Sharon’s jealousy(?), insecurity(?), fears(?) got the best of her. But the other side of the coin is just as dirty: Derek’s lies of omission (rightfully so) got him into trouble throughout the movie. So, what was up with the relationship?

Again, I was happy that race was in the background and not beating me over the head at every stage of the game. The movie was more about a relationship between a married couple with a crazy psycho trying to bar her way in. I left the theaters pleasantly surprised. And like Jeremy said of Tupac Resurrection, this movie was definitely worth the $12.50.

Tupac: Resurrection > Notorious

But, Biggie > Tupac.

I finally got around to checking out the (aptly titled) Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious on my way back from Cleveland this weekend. Having read all the independent reviews, all the chatter from the blogosphere, and all the media hype, I can’t say I was expecting much. And, well, my low expectations were met.

I’ll spare you a review since the movie’s been out for a while, but my main beef was the film’s depiction of Biggie himself. It plays out like a 2-hour justification for Biggie’s decision to sell crack, abandon his kids, and abuse women. Spare me. I was so busy watching Biggie feel remorseful and repentant throughout the entire film that I forgot he was actually one of the greatest MCs of all time. Ok, I didn’t actually forget. But the film spent more time depicting the Lil’ Kim and Faith Evans courtships than Biggie’s actual career. In their quest to depict Biggie as a lovable “crack dealer gone good,” the filmmakers simply fail to highlight his unique talent.

We’d be naïve to think that Resurrection wasn’t a little, uh, overly sympathetic to Tupac and his various run-ins with the law. But Notorious is painfully biased. The kind of bias that makes you cringe a little. Or turn away. Or, in my case, fast forward through all the dialogue and just nod your head when Biggie’s music plays in the background.

After watching the film, I wondered two things: 1) If Resurrection were made with professional actors, instead of clips from Tupac interviews, would it have been as corny as Notorious?; and 2) How much better would Notorious have been if it were made in the pseudo-documentary style of Resurrection?

Can you imagine a Biggie biopic narrated with his own words? Or his own lyrics? We’d get exposed to every side of the lyrical genius: the good and the bad, the positive and the critical, the introspective and the self-indulgent. It would be a film that captured all of the nuance that defined his life. People live contradictory lives; sometimes they do things that make us feel sympathetic, other times they do things that demand scorn. A good film evokes real emotion—often, mixed emotions—and real criticism. Now that’s a film I’d shell out $10 for.

NFAIS Event: Social Media and the Future of Scholarly Communication / May 1 2009

Social Media and the Future of Scholarly Communication

Lyrasis Office / May 1 2009 / Philadelphia, PA

Before the invention of the printing press, scholarly communication was primarily facilitated through social dialog within local special interest groups. It was an interactive, dynamic process, with lively debates and immediate feedback. With the advent of books and journals, access to scholarly information became much broader geographically, but the communication process became less social, less immediate, and more static in nature.

Not so today! Information technology, the Web, and the introduction of social media have not only broadened the geographic scope of scholarly communication beyond that of the print environment, but have re-introduced social dialog and immediate feedback into the scholarly communication process on a global scale.

Scholars worldwide are embracing this change. But the organizations that have been primarily responsible for managing the flow of scholarly communication for the past three hundred plus years publishers, abstracting and indexing services, and librarians have not, for the most part, discovered how to interject their function and adapt their processes to the newly-emerging conversational communication process.

This meeting will provide a glimpse at how social media are beginning to transform the scholarly communication process and how content providers and librarians are using social media to meet the needs and expectations of 21st century scholars.

8:30am - 9:00am / Registration ; Coffee

9:00am - 9:15am: / Welcome ; Opening Remarks

Bonnie Lawlor, NFAIS Executive Director

Moderator: Maureen Kelly, Consultant, Content Kinetics

9:15am - 9:45am

Overview: Acceptance and Use of Social Media in Scholarly Communication

This session will provide an overview on how social media enhances the ability of researchers and scholars to collaborate successfully in global working environments. By facilitating the viral dissemination and awareness of available content and discussion participation, social media promises to heighten both use and visibility of authoritative material.

Steve Paxhia, author of the Gilbane research report, Collaboration and the Enterprise, will offer his perspective on the applicability of social media tools and networks to high-quality content such as scholarly articles, research data, etc.

Steve Paxhia, Lead Analyst, Publishing Strategy & Technology Practice,The Gilbane Group

9:45am - 10:45am

Content-Rich Scholarly Social Networks

This session will highlight two new content-rich social networks that not only facilitate the scholarly communication process, but that also provide a wealth of authoritative content for researchers around the globe.

Jeff Boily, CEO, BioWizard / Lettie Conrad, Online Publishing/Product Manager, Sage Publications, Inc.

10:45am - 11:00am / Break and Networking Opportunity

11:00am - 12:00pm

The Use of Social Media by Publishers and Scholarly Societies

This session will highlight how innovative publishers and scholarly societies are actively using social media and social networks to enhance their readership and to increase the value of Society membership. They will discuss what they are doing and why, the results to date, the impact on their traditional publishing and society activities, and plans for future expansion, if any.

John Sullivan, Chief Information Officer, the American Chemical Society / Jason Wilde, Publisher, Physical Sciences, Nature Publishing Group

12:00pm - 1:00pm / Lunch

1:00pm - 2:00pm

Technology Resources for Building Social Networks and Incorporating Social Media

This session will provide an overview of what technology resources are available - not only to build social networks and incorporate social media into your organizations products and services, but also maximize the access and use of the content that will ultimately be created.

Dr. Bay Arinze, Professor of Management Information Systems, Drexel University and Founder and Senior Editor of MyNetResearch / Reynolds Guida, Director, Product Development, Thomson Reuters, Scientific and Healthcare Unit

2:00pm - 3:00pm

Social Media in the Library Environment

In this session and academic and public librarian will discuss how they are incorporating social media and social networks within their library in order to support faculty, students, and library patrons in general. They will discuss the media that are being used, the services that are being offered, the impact of theses services to date, and any plans, if any, for expanding the use of social media in the future.

Jill Hurst-Wahl, Instructor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University / Wayne Hay, IT Manager, Westchester Library System, New York

3:00pm - 3:15pm / Break and Networking Opportunity

3:15pm - 3:45pm

Challenges to Adopting Social Media

There are many challenges to adopting social media. Technology is one, but equal hurdles are offered by an organization's culture, legal issues surrounding privacy, content ownership, etc. This session will provide an overview of the barriers to adopting social media and user-generated content from an expert who has been responsible for helping organizations do just that.

Jay Datema, Founder, Bookism.org

3:45pm - 4:15pm

Closing Keynote: Social Media and the Future of Scholarly Communication

This session will provide a glimpse of the future of scholarly communication as shaped by social networks, new social media and other disruptive technologies that are changing how we create, use and access scholarly communication.

Darin McBeath, Director of Disruptive Technologies, Elsevier

4:15pm - 4:30pm / Discussion and Wrap-Up

Source

[http://www.nfais.org/events/event_details.cfm?id=55]

Registration [After April 10, 2009]

NFAIS Members / $345 ; PALINET Members / $365 ; Non-members / $395

[http://www.nfais.org/SocialMedia_RegForm.doc]

Thanks To Marydee Ojala / Editor, ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources For Information Professionals / For The Reminder !!!

Twitter Science / Publication / Conferences ?

Colleagues/

I Am Greatly Interested In Learning Of Any / All Formal (or Informal) Initiatives That Have Incorporated Twitter (Or Similiar Mobile Features And / Or Functionality) Within Science (And / Or Technology) Projects, Publications And / Or Conferences.

The Question Of The Day Is ...

To What Extent Has Mobile-Originated Content Been Formally And / Or InFormally Incorporated Into Conventional Scientific / Technological / Medical (STM) Activities / Practices / Venues.

Please Post Any / All Items Or Comments

As Comments On This Blog Entry.

Thanks For Your Assistance.

SEE ALSO

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/07/twitter-journals-journals-that-tweet.html]

[http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2009/05/scitechmed-journalspublications-on.html]

/Gerry

In "Our" Backyard

In “Our” Backyard?

So, who has the rights to the neighborhood? Who can come in? Who can’t? This seems to be the question behind such a sign. I found this looking at Model Minority. I am in some degree of agreement with the M. Dot; it is interesting that when one hears the words “gentrification” or “gentrifier” one automatically thinks of a white person—most often, young—slumming it in the hood or a newly defined revitalization area kicking the current, mostly low-income, minority residents out. We should look at how many different groups also act as gentrifiers. However, I am cautious here as well because I think that is wrong to only look at the income of the “intruders” either for that would lead one to the same mistake as universally blaming (young) whites. Scholars have placed levels of complexity on the matter, examining the exogenous forces at play: structural forces that create in-roads into certain neighborhoods and not others. Mary Pattillo is an excellent example of a scholar who looks at the entire process within the African American community. I would like to call the attention to the role specific institutions play, in this case, colleges and universities.

I am not quite sure how much this plays out in every city but I have noticed that some schools are now “working” with city and county officials to place certain inner city areas earlier in the queue for revitalization in a new way. As part of her analysis in Black on the Block, Pattillo speaks to the role the University of Chicago played in constructing the plans for revitalization of North Kenwood-Oakland. However, I am speaking to the issue of schools actually purchasing properties in inner-city neighborhoods and resurrecting the old buildings, turning them into dorms for their students. Again, this may not be a nation-wide phenomenon but I know that it is happening in Miami, for instance. The University of Miami has literally turned what used to be a half-way house that once contained twelve apartments into a 6 apartment “dorm” of sorts. It is painted green and orange with Sebastian the Ibis (the school's mascot) somewhere on the front. I have to admit, it is nicer than my dorm room here at Harvard: full kitchen, off-street parking, lawn area for BBQ, all surrounding by manicured hedges and palm trees.

As a burgeoning social scientist, I am not saying what follows is strict causality but as soon as the University of Miami stepped in, the entire neighborhood began its crazed condo-phase. Since the (re)introduction of the building, you cannot drive down a single street where a condo has been erected, two-by-two. Coconut Grove, the other side of the tracks (not Cocowalk), never had condos and was always predominately black and low-income. Single family homes, the projects, apartments (inhabited predominantly by those with Section 8 vouchers): yes. Condos: no.

From my limited knowledge, research that includes looking at students and gentrification has primarily focused on university and college students searching out for cheap rents in big and/or expensive cities. But for institutions themselves to purchase these properties specifically for housing thier students and adopt the “buy here/fix here/sell to those outside of here” stance, then we have a new player in the game of gentrification. Am I fishing? Is Miami an isolated case? Harvard and Allston. UPenn and Philly. What new layers of analysis are added to the discussion when we consider the role of institutions in more than thier policy influence?

The Spatial Causes of Racism

Nate Silver is definitely one of my favorite bloggers out there. He is the main voice behind FiveThirtyEight.com, a fantastic source for statistical analyses of political trends and voting patterns.

The above video is from a 9 minute presentation he gave at a TED conference this past February. During the talk, he discussed the topic of race during the 2008 election. More specifically, he asks the provocative question, “Can we predict racism?”

From a strictly statistical standpoint, the answer, apparently, is “Yes.” While he doesn’t get into the specifics of his methods, it looks like he ran a few linear regressions to look at the association between individuals admitting that race was a deciding factor in their vote and voting for McCain. In states like Arkansas and Tennessee, there was a very strong relationship between voting against Obama and saying that race mattered in that decision, suggesting racist voting patterns.

Around the 6 minute mark, he gets into a fascinating discussion of why this may be so. You can check it out for yourself, but the gist of his argument is that racist voters tended to live in mono-racial neighborhoods (i.e. didn’t live near any minorities). This social isolation predicts (statistically) racist voting.

In the social sciences, we typical discuss social isolation in terms of the urban poor. The general idea is that the urban poor tend to live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, and this spatial concentration, in turn, isolates these communities from mainstream resources, role models, and social networks.

Silver’s analysis is so fascinating because he applies this same concept to white, suburban neighborhoods. He compares the grid-style format of streets that typically defines a city to the cul-de-sac and dead-end model of suburban sprawl. He argues that the grid format of city blocks facilitates interaction among residents, while sprawl spatially disconnects residents from one another. In a sense, land-use patterns provide a spatial determinant for racism. In other words, the way your neighborhood was built may influence how you view people of different races and ethnicities.

I’m not convinced that we can actually predict racism, but I do agree that analyzing land-use patterns and more equitable, sustainable urban environments could make serious inroads in our fight against racism. Check out the video; there’s a lot of interesting questions to think about.

Some Call it Blight, Others Call it Art

The “four elements” of hip-hop include DJing, MCing, breaking, and graffiti writing. While Afrika Bambaataa claims a fifth element (a vaguely defined “knowledge and culture”), it is the four main elements that symbolize hip-hop’s history as a cultural form.

The last of these elements—graffiti writing—has certainly been the most politically charged. Politicians, police, and community activists alike continuously deride graffiti as neighborhood “blight.” They have a point: tagging destroys public property and is often linked to gang-related activity and violence. Targeted arrests for graffiti writing are part in parcel with the war on drugs, as both policies seek to eradicate loosely-defined (and often racially specific) “blight” from our urban streets.

Graffiti artists have a dramatically different take on their work. They see themselves as part of a cultural movement celebrating a dying art form. On the one hand, I agree with community activists that desire “clean streets.” Their efforts are admirable and well-meaning. However, I tend to side with the graf artists on this issue, albeit to a limited extent. While I can’t agree with tagging a public school, the art of subway graffiti is remarkably vibrant and rich. The aesthetic appeal and artistic style of subway graffiti, particularly in New York City, is undeniable.

Martha Cooper and Henry Chaifant’s Subway Art beautifully documented the burgeoning graffiti movement that took over New York City in the 1970s and ‘80s. Their seminal book of photographs and commentary spawned a generation of interest in graffiti and its relationship to hip-hop. To this day, hip-hop heads still reference this book.

The above video is the promo for their 25th Anniversary reissue set to drop soon. Graffiti has largely lost prominence in the new era of corporate hip-hop, much to our aesthetic detriment. While the tradition of breaking lives on in contemporary hip-hop dance crazes, the significance of graffiti art has noticeably waned. The rerelease of Subway Art may spark new interest in graffiti writing, but it may also bring up old debates about art, lawfulness, and public interest. Either way, it’s healthy to keep the conversation going.

Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media

University of Maine's criteria for New Media achievement serve as a model for faculty at other institutions.

Academia's goal may be the free exchange of ideas, but up to now many universities have been wary--if not downright dismissive--of their professors using the Internet and other digital media to supercharge that exchange, especially in the arts and humanities.

Peer review committees are supposed to assess a researcher's standing in the field, but to date most have ignored reputations established by blogging, publishing DVDs, or contributing to email lists.

In a signal that some universities are warming to digital scholarship, however, the winter 2009 issue of MIT's Leonardo magazine--itself a traditional peer review journal, though known for experimenting with networked media--has published a feature on the changing criteria for excellence in the Internet age.

To make its point as concretely as possible, the feature includes the recently approved promotion and tenure guidelines of the University of Maine's New Media Department, together with an argument for expanding recognition entitled "New Criteria for New Media."

Rather than throw time-honored benchmarks for excellence out the window, "New Criteria for New Media" tries to extend them into the 21st century. To supplement the "closed" peer review process familiar from traditional journals, .... [University Of Maine's ] criteria recognize the value of the "open peer review" employed in recognition metrics such as ThoughtMesh and The Pool.

>>>The Pool <<<

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/everyone-into-pool.html]

>>>ThoughMesh<<<

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/thoughtmesh-innovative-scholarly.html]

As the name suggests, open peer review allows contributions from any community member rather than a group of experts, and all reviews are public; when combined with an appropriate recognition metric, the result is much faster evaluations than possible via the customary approach.

"New Criteria for New Media" also urges academic reviews to reward collaboration in new media research; valuable roles include conceptual architect, designer, engineer, or even matchmaker (e.g., introducing two other researchers whose collaboration results in a publication).

Because the University of Maine hopes other institutions will adopt these criteria and adapt them to their own needs, it is releasing them under a Creative Commons (CC-by) license. [snip]

The new criteria have already been sought after by individual tenure candidates and cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

[http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i38/38a01001.htm]

You can find them in Leonardo's winter 2009 issue (vol. 42 no. 1)

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/feature.php?id=927]

Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media

Abstract

This paper argues for redefining evaluation criteria for faculty working in new media research and makes specific recommendations for promotion and tenure committees in U.S. universities.

[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]

PDF (Subscribers)

[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]

PDF Plus (Subscibers)

[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]

See Also

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and_20.html]

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and.html]

See Also Also The ThoughMesh Version(s)

[http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/275.php]

University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |

New Media Department, University of Maine

Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria

New Criteria for New Media

Version 2.2, January 2007

Authors: Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Owen Smith in collaboration with Steve Evans and Nate Stormer.

ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today's universities.

Introduction

Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies[1], the Modern Language Association[2], and the University of Maine[3] recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century.

The following points summarize some of the key areas in which new media research departs from traditional academic scholarship, with the aim of providing a rationale for specific criteria for promotion and tenure detailed elsewhere.

New form and content

The differences between traditional and new media excellence lie in both form and content. The hard-copy format of traditional review documentation, such as photocopies or slides, is insufficient for evaluating new media work; screenshots do little justice to electronic projects based on innovative interactive or participatory design. As the MLA puts it, "evaluative bodies should review faculty members' work in the medium in which it was produced. For example, Web-based projects should be viewed online, not in printed form."[4]

Further complicating the evaluation of new media achievements is the fact that they are often interdisciplinary, as reflected by the current University of Maine New Media faculty, whose backgrounds range from engineering to computer science to fine art to photojournalism to literature.

For example, while art professors typically divide clearly into critical (Art History) and creative (Studio Art) faculties, new media's brief history often requires its practitioners to develop a critical context for their own creative work. This is why the majority of pre-eminent new media critics are also artists.[5] It is also why new media research spans numerous genres, from critical essays to political activism to community-building to software design.

Limitations of academic journals

These differences may require evaluators of new media artist-researchers to look beyond the usual standards applicable in other disciplines. As noted by a 2003 National Academies report:

Because the field of [Information Technology and Creative Practices] is young and dynamic, ITCP production is hard to evaluate. Traditional review panels...may be hampered by their members' ties to single disciplines and the absence of a time-tested consensus about what constitutes good work in ITCP and why. [6]

Ironically, the National Academies study found that the highest benchmark for success in traditional academic departments, publication in peer-reviewed journals, is less relevant to success in new media--and empirically less an accurate measure of stature in the field--than more supple or timely forms of intellectual exposition:

The gold standard for academia--and the criterion most easily understood by parties outside a given subdiscipline--is the so-called archival journal (often published by scholarly or professional societies) that involves considerable editorial selection plus prepublication review and revision, which function as a screening system for quality. But the long lead time for such publications poses problems for subdisciplines in which timeliness--quickly getting an idea into the field--matters.[7]

Leonardo magazine (MIT Press) is currently the only print magazine universally recognized as a peer-reviewed journal about new media. There are currently a handful of networked peer-reviewed journals devoted to new media, such as Leonardo's Electronic Almanac (Cambridge), Fibreculture (Sydney), and First Monday (Chicago).

Yet the field's most prominent print publishers and research archivists[8] have acknowledged a 15-25 year lag and limited exposure that makes print publications far less relevant for new media research. Although promising new paradigms for distributed publication are on the horizon, at the time of writing these systems are only in the planning stage.[9] Finally, as the MLA warns, participation in electronic scholarship should not place extra demands on a researcher[10]; an accomplishment in new media research should substitute for a print article or monograph, not merely supplement them.

Alternative Recognition Measures

Given the accessibility and timeliness required for new media research, the following measures of recognition should be prioritized in the evaluation of new media research candidates:

1. Invited / edited publications

Invitations to publish in edited electronic journals or printed magazines and books should be recognized as the kind of peer influence that in other fields would be signaled by acceptance in peer-reviewed journals.

2. Live conferences

The 2003 National Academies study concludes that conferences on new media, both face-to-face and virtual, offer a more useful and in some cases more prestigious venue for exposition than academic journals:

[The sluggishness of journal publications] is offset somewhat by a flourishing array of conferences and other forums, in both virtual and real space, that provide a sense of community and an outlet as well as feedback[11]....The prestige associated with presentations at major conferences actually makes some of them more selective than journals.[12]

New forms of conference archiving--such as archived Webcasts--add value and exposure to the research presented at conferences.

3. Citations

Citations are a valuable and versatile measure of peer influence because they may come from or point to a variety of genres, from Web sites to databases to books in print. Examples include citations in:

a. Electronic archives and recognition networks, such as the publicly accessible databases maintained by the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal), the V2 organization (Rotterdam), the Database of Virtual Art (Berlin), and the Media Art Net database (Karlsruhe).

b. Books, printed journals, and newspapers. These are easier to find now, thanks to Google Scholar, Google Print, and Amazon's "look inside the book" feature.

c. Syllabi and other pedagogical contexts. Google searches on .edu domains and citations of the author's work in syllabi from outside universities can measure the academic currency of an individual researcher or her ideas. In the sciences, readings or projects cited on a syllabus are likely to be popular textbooks, but in an emerging field like new media, such recognition is a more valid marker of relevance.

4. Download / visitor counts

Downloads and other traffic-related statistics represent a measure of influence that has gained importance in the online community recently. As a 2005 open access study[13] concludes:

Whereas the significance of citation impact is well established, access of research literature via the Web provides a new metric for measuring the impact of articles – Web download impact.

Download impact is useful for at least two reasons:

(1) The portion of download variance that is correlated with citation counts provides an early-days estimate of probable citation impact that can begin to be tracked from the instant an article is made Open Access and that already attains its maximum predictive power after 6 months.

(2) The portion of download variance that is uncorrelated with citation counts provides a second, partly independent estimate of the impact of an article, sensitive to another form of research usage that is not reflected in citations (Kurtz 2004).

5. Impact in online discussions

Email discussion lists are the proving grounds of new media discourse. They vary greatly in tone and substance, but even the least moderated of such lists can subject their authors to rigorous--and at times withering--scrutiny.[14] Measures such as the number of list subscribers, geographic scope, the presence or absence of moderation, and the number of replies triggered by a given contribution can give a sense of the importance of each discussion list.[15]

6. Impact in the real world

While magazine columns and newspaper editorials may have little standing in traditional academic subjects, one of the strengths of new media are their relevance to a daily life that is increasingly inflected by the relentless proliferation of technologies. Even counting Google search returns on the author's name or statistically improbable phrases can be a measure of real-world impact[16].

By privileging new media research with direct effect on local or global communities, the university can remain relevant in an age where much research takes place outside the ivory tower.

8. Net-native recognition metrics

Peer-evaluated online communities may invent their own measures of member evaluation, in which case they may be relevant to a researcher who participates in those communities. Examples of such self-policing communities include Slashdot, The Pool, Open Theory, and the Distributed Learning Project.

The MLA pins the responsibility for learning these new metrics on reviewers rather than the reviewed.[17] Given the mutability of such metrics, however, promotion and tenure candidates may be called upon to explain and give context to these metrics for their reviewers. Again, efforts to educate a scholar's colleagues about new media should be considered part of that scholar's research, not supplemental to it.

9. Reference letters

Letters of recommendation from outside referees are an important compensation for the irrelevance of traditional recognition venues. Nevertheless, it is insufficient merely to solicit such letters from professors tenured in new media at other universities, since so few exist.

More valuable is to use the measures outlined in this document to identify pre-eminent figures in new media, or to require new media promotion and tenure candidates to identify such figures and supply evidence that they qualify according to the criteria above.

[1] The ACLS recommends "policies for tenure and promotion that recognize and reward digital scholarship and scholarly communication; recognition should be given not only to scholarship that uses the humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure but also to scholarship that contributes to its design, construction, and growth....

We might expect younger colleagues to use new technologies with greater fluency and ease, but with tenure at stake, they will also be more risk-averse....

Senior scholars now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to take certain risks, first among which is to condone risk taking in their junior colleagues and their graduate students, making sure that such endeavors are appropriately rewarded."

"Our Cultural Commonwealth," report by the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 29 July 2006,

[http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm[, accessed January 2, 2007.

[2] "Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship." December 2006 report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion,

[http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion] accessed January 2, 2007.

[3] "The Commission encourages each department on campus, as well as the University as a whole, to examine promotion and tenure criteria to recognize and reward innovative uses of technology in teaching, research and service....the University needs to consider the criteria and standards used in the promotion and tenure process.

The Commission encourages each department and the University as a whole to consider whether faculty efforts in this area are recognized, valued, and/or encouraged." November 2003 report of the University of Maine Commission on Information Technologies, accessed at

[http://www.umaine.edu/documents/CIT.pdf] on May 2, 2004.

[4] MLA Committee on Information Technology. "Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages." 20 May 2000. ADE Bulletin 132 (2002): 94–95. 82, mirrored at

[http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital], accessed 2 January, 2007.

[5] A brief sampling of new media theorist-practitioners includes Simon Biggs (Cambridge University), Matthew Fuller (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam), Mary Flanagan (Hunter), Alexander Galloway (NYU), Kenneth Goldberg (Berkeley), Eduardo Kac (Art Institute of Chicago), Natalie Jeremijenko (UCSD), Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (Karlstad University, Sweden), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Randall Packer (American University), Richard Rinehart (Berkeley), and Jeffrey Shaw (ZKM).

[6] National Research Council, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 8-9.

[7] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.

[8] These estimates are from MIT's Roger Malina (Director of Leonardo magazine) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation's Alain Depocas (Director of the Centre for Documentation + Research), and are mirrored at

[http://cordova.asap.um.maine.edu/wiki/index.php/Standards_of_Recognition]

[9] The Interarchive project is a possible model for distributed publication; see

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive]

[10] "Change in favor of a more capacious conception of scholarship, which we strongly endorse, should not mean ever-wider demands on faculty members, most especially those coming up for tenure and promotion." MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 21.

[11] National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 8-9.

[12] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.

[13] Tim Brody and Stevan Harnad, "Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact",

[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10647/], accessed 5 March 2005.

[14] This recent

[http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0504/msg00051.html]

rejoinder by Morlock Elloi on the list exemplifies the expectations of such online forums:

> If you have any past publications that might help me understand your point of view, I would gladly read them.

While I understand that in paidspeakerworld the weight of the argument is computed as (volume of publications) x (number of speeches), on nettime and elsewhere closer to reality arguments stand for themselves.

[15] Electronic and email texts also have a currency acknowledged by leading institutions in the field. As of December 21, 2005, one of the premiere bibliographic indices in new media, the Langlois Foundation's CR+D database, included the following indexation for "Jon Ippolito":

* Author of 10 documents
* Subject of 48 documents
* Participant to 21 events
* Organizer of 2 events

Of the 10 documents by the author indexed, 1 is from an email list and 2 are parts of Web sites. In the case of artist and critic Alexander Galloway, the relevance of his online texts is even more striking: although by 2005 he was the author of several journal articles and an important book from MIT Press, the two documents that represented his writing in the CR+D database were both from email lists.

[16] A statistically significant number of Google returns, eg > 30, may be a necessary but insufficient condition for confirming global impact.

[17] "In evaluating scholarship for tenure and promotion, committees and administrators must take responsibility for becoming fully aware both of the mechanisms of oversight and assessment that already govern the production of a great deal of digital scholarship and of the well-established role of new media in humanities research.

It is of course convenient when electronic scholarly editing and writing are clearly analogous to their print counterparts. But when new media make new forms of scholarship possible, those forms can be assessed with the same rigor used to judge scholarly quality in print media. We must have the flexibility to ensure that as new sources and instruments for knowing develop, the meaning of scholarship can expand and remain relevant to our changing times." MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 46.

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html]

University of Maine || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | Version 3.0

New Media Department, University of Maine

Promotion and Tenure Guidelines

Addendum: Criteria by Category

Version 3.0

ABSTRACT: This document provides concrete guidance for evaluating faculty in the University of Maine's New Media Department. The outline follows the official University of Maine template for promotion and tenure activity reports, citing examples of the kinds of new media accomplishments that qualify for each category. Because of the rapid pace of innovation in electronic formats, this list must remain partial, since it is impossible to predict what new recognition mechanisms may be relevant a few years from now.

[snip]

II. RESEARCH AND SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES

Good collaborators are critical to thriving research ecosystems. Candidates are encouraged to list any collaborative roles they have played in publications and other activities, such as conceptual architect, approach designer, release engineer, or matchmaker (eg, introducing two other researchers whose collaboration results in a publication). Each new media department may choose to weight these various roles according to its own priorities.

A. Publications

1. Books/Monographs:

Networked or rich-media publications such as extended blogs, DVDs, or CD-ROMS should be included if they constitute a sustained investigation of a particular topic.

2. Refereed Journal Articles:

In a new media context, a "closed peer-review" article includes invited contributions to edited print journals and networked journals. The format of these contributions may go beyond the form of a written essay to include podcasts, videoblogs, and other forms of archival media.

An "open peer-review" article includes contributions to self-policing publication networks, where the quality or relevance of contributions are subject to community debate and evaluation.

3. Chapters of Books/Monographs (please indicate if invited or juried):

Essays or chapters in edited volumes are more important in new media than the sciences, for these edited volumes establish standards for discourse in emergent subdisciplines of new media.

This category should also include invited contributions to edited, single-issue networked publications.

4. Edited Volumes:

This category includes coordinating or managing a multi-user discussion list, whether accessible via email or Web.

This category also includes the conception, design, engineering, and/or editing of organized media collections, including film festivals , networked databases , and publications.

5. Technical Reports/Book Reviews:

This category includes networked reports and reviews.

6. Other Publications (e.g. editorials, working papers, etc.):

This category includes essays published to email lists, including all contributions to discussions sparked by the publication of that essay.

B. Creative Activities, Exhibitions, and Performance Related Activities (please indicate whether regional, international, national, solo, group, invited or juried):

1. Exhibitions:

This category includes networked exhibitions hosted by brick-and-mortar institutions or independent organizations , and can include online exhibitions as well as physical installations.

a Participating

b. Curated

2. Performance Related Activities:

This category includes political design, social software, and interactive performance.

3. Creative Writing and Poetry:

This category includes literature in all its forms, both analogue and digital, in print or online.

C. Professional Presentations and Posters (please indicate if regional, national, or international):

1. Conferences and Discussions organized

Researchers in new media at this point in its development are actively filling in gaps in the awareness of new media's own history, a critical vocabulary, and other intellectual frameworks already in place in other fields. The new media program recognizes the value that organizing private and public events have for the field as a whole and, when local, for our students.

2. Presentations

As studies of new media have argued, presenting research at prestigious conferences can be more important than publishing it.

While there is no substitute for in-person gatherings, teleconferences are gradually becoming an important venue for conference presentations, though they vary in degree of formality and organization.

[snip]

IV. SPECIAL RECOGNITION/AWARDS/HONORS RECEIVED
A. Press

Given the limitations of publishing new media research in academic journals, recognition from the press in the form of articles or interviews about a researcher's work can be a valuable indicator of influence.

1. Print and broadcast press

This category includes outside sources such as general-interest newspapers, radio or TV spots, and specialized journals or magazines.

2. Electronic press

This category includes articles in online journals as well as blogs,

B. Citations

Only general citations go here; citations to document the relevance and achievement of specific projects should accompany the entries on that research above.

1. Print citations

Although they are not as timely as electronic citations, citations in books on new media can suggest a measure of a researcher's influence and relevance to the field.

2. Electronic citations

One measure of influence in academia can be suggested by citations in other university syllabi. (See the breakdown in PART 3.)

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/promotion_tenure_redefinitions.html]

The Coming Revolution In Scientific Journal Publishing > Semantic Publishing

Semantic publishing: the coming revolution in scientific journal publishing / Shotton, David / Learned Publishing, Volume 22, Number 2, April 2009 , pp. 85-94(10) / Publisher: Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers.

Abstract:

Recent developments in Web technology can be used for semantic enhancement of scholarly journal articles, by aiding publication of data and metadata and providing 'lively' interactive access to content. Such semantic enhancements are already being undertaken by leading STM publishers, and automated text processing will help these enhancements become affordable and routine. Publisher, editor, and author all have primary roles in that process; an incremental approach is needed. Publication of data and metadata to the Web make possible added-value 'ecosystem services'; semantic publishing will bring substantial benefits to scholarly communication.

DOI: 10.1087/2009202

Preprint Available At

[http://imageweb.zoo.ox.ac.uk/pub/2008/publications/Shotton_Semantic_publishing_evaluation.pdf]

OECD White Paper: We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables

Paris, 20th April 2009,

OECD has released a white paper, We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables, which examines the problems with current data discoverability and citations and the remedy in creating industry standards for bibliographic dataset metadata and linking.

Written by Toby Green, Head of Publishing at OECD and an expert in data publishing, the paper details the problems with user ability to locate and reference online data. Datasets are a significant part of the scholarly record and being published much more frequently but with widely inconsistent metadata, links and citations.

The paper proposes bibliographic metadata standards that could be implemented to provide users and librarians with data that is as accessible and as easy to find and catalogue as written works like journal articles and book chapters. By following existing scholarly metadata standards, datasets can easily utilise the existing discovery channels that are used by e-journals and e-books, including library systems, cross reference linking, publishing platforms, and search engines.

The paper provides straightforward standards that 'publishers, librarians and data providers can implement to improve the accessibility and usage of important datasets, both the data that underlies scholarly works and data in that is published in its own right.

To access the white paper, We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables, which includes a summary of the standards proposed and an annex with the detailed proposal visit

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/603233448430]

For further information please contact Toby Green at toby.green@oecd.org.

Source

[http://tinyurl.com/curzzk]

Adventures In Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements Of A Research Article

Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article

David Shotton, Katie Portwin, Graham Klyne, Alistair Miles

Image Bioinformatics Research Group, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Scientific innovation depends on finding, integrating, and re-using the products of previous research. Here we explore how recent developments in Web technology, particularly those related to the publication of data and metadata, might assist that process by providing semantic enhancements to journal articles within the mainstream process of scholarly journal publishing.

We exemplify this by describing semantic enhancements we have made to a recent biomedical research article taken from PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, providing enrichment to its content and increased access to datasets within it. These semantic enhancements include provision of live DOIs and hyperlinks; semantic markup of textual terms, with links to relevant third-party information resources; interactive figures; a re-orderable reference list; a document summary containing a study summary, a tag cloud, and a citation analysis; and two novel types of semantic enrichment: the first, a Supporting Claims Tooltip to permit “Citations in Context”, and the second, Tag Trees that bring together semantically related terms.

In addition, we have published downloadable spreadsheets containing data from within tables and figures, have enriched these with provenance information, and have demonstrated various types of data fusion (mashups) with results from other research articles and with Google Maps. We have also published machine-readable RDF metadata both about the article and about the references it cites, for which we developed a Citation Typing Ontology, CiTO

[http://purl.org/net/cito/]

The enhanced article, which is available at

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000228.x001],

presents a compelling existence proof of the possibilities of semantic publication.

We hope the showcase of examples and ideas it contains, described in this paper, will excite the imaginations of researchers and publishers, stimulating them to explore the possibilities of semantic publishing for their own research articles, and thereby break down present barriers to the discovery and re-use of information within traditional modes of scholarly communication.

Citation: Shotton D, Portwin K, Klyne G, Miles A (2009) Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article. PLoS Comput Biol 5(4): e1000361. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000361

Source

[http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000361]

See Also

Creative ways to semantically enrich an Open Access PLoS research article

[http://everyone.plos.org/2009/04/27/creative-ways-to-semanticallyenrich-an-open-access-plos-research-article/]

Asher Roth is the Anti-"White Guilt"

Remember when white rappers needed black legitimacy to be cool? Well those days are over, thanks to a young rapper from Pennsylvania named Asher Roth. For those that live under a rock of sorts, Roth is the (next) great white hope for white kids that love hip-hop. Or, more accurately, he’s the (next) great white hope for media giants and merchandisers looking to cash in on the newest form of white pride.

You can argue this phenomenon has already happened before, say, circa 1998. A brazen young Marshall Mathers took no prisoners as he radically changed the way we produce and consume hip-hop. Eminem’s trailer trash shtick was gloriously wed with a lyrical gift, producing an in-your-face, white-ethnic-braggadocio-but-with-black-friends type of style. The dude’s angst and lyrical mastery transcended the traditional categories of hip-hop music. But, importantly, we respected him as a hip-hop artist because black folks (Dr. Dre, Proof) vouched for him. It’s not a coincidence that Dre made a cameo in his first single off The Slim Shady LP.

Part of this was a marketing ploy—he had the black guy seal of approval, and therefore we could accept him as legitimate hip-hop. But a large part was also based on respect for a culture founded, promulgated, and dominated by black folks. When he murdered (lyrically) Jay-Z on “Renegades,” it was not a triumph of white over black, but rather a carefully managed balancing act between coming to grips with his whiteness and accepting his drive to be the best emcee in the game. What I mean is that Em wasn’t going to hold back and patronize black emcees, but he was also deftly aware of his whiteness. Later, Em played a key role in the commercial rise of 50 Cent, for a while dominating the airwaves with the Dre-Em-50 trifecta. He had successfully “darkened” himself, so to speak, and we stopped talking about him as a white emcee, but rather as a great emcee. In other words, in a culture dominated by African-Americans, Eminem showed deference and respect as he balanced his unique racial identity with his equally unique skill as a rapper.

Asher Roth, by striking contrast, wants nothing to do with this contrived legitimacy. On the one hand, you gotta respect the kid’s moxie. His disregard for the black-guy seal of approval seems to suggest that hip-hop has become youth culture, not black culture. And his whiteness should not, by itself, be damaging to his career as an emcee. There is a sophisticated argument about race and the transmission of culture buried somewhere in here. Potentially, hip-hop, unlike rock music, may resist being co-opted by whites and instead fuse into a racially heterogeneous youth culture (with racially homogenous roots, of course). What if hip-hop took this trajectory of racial diversity? Maybe this cultural form would stop being used as a proxy for racism, as critics would no longer be able to blame the music for perpetuating a dysfunctional black culture. I don’t know, maybe I’m just an idealist like that.

Yet, that is not the case. Interestingly and quite arrogantly, Roth is harnessing a shtick of white privilege as he claims the authenticity of the...erm…suburbs. You know, because suburban kids can’t relate to hip-hop in its contemporary form. Why? Well, that’s a little unclear. Roth’s basic claim is that white kids in the suburbs have been consuming hip-hop for years, but have never had some one they can relate to, some one to represent them and their voices. You know, because white folks can’t relate to black folks. And, of course, because only white folks live in the suburbs. Comparing Eminem to Roth, the blog No Trivia wrote it better than I could have: “But Eminem’s use of his whiteness came from a desire to prove himself in spite of the unfortunate reputation of white rappers that came before him, not some strange sense of privilege because he’s the person actually buying rap CDs.”

In the most blatant example of white supremacy in hip-hop, Roth is absolutely obsessed with his whiteness. He doesn’t problematize his whiteness, like when Em forced us to re-think what it means to be white in his deeply personal discussions of growing up poor. No, instead Roth wants us to realize that we should like him because, well, he’s white and privileged just like us! His most recent song leak (which you can download here) details the trials and tribulations of being the next great white rapper and the subsequent comparisons to Eminem. Simultaneously, Roth reminds us that while he is no Eminem (he is from privilege and proud of it), he is unabashedly white (and therefore more relatable than those black rappers we thought we liked). Quoted in a recent New York Times piece, Roth explains the difference: "Culturally, Em was almost a black guy. My background is more stereotypically white." That's just great, Asher. How astute. It’s one thing to be aware of your racial identity; it’s an entirely different thing to embrace a privileged identity as your claim to superiority in a culture dominated by minority artists.

In an article from 2005, Brother Ali poignantly discussed white fans’ relationship to underground white rappers. "One of the hardest things we're dealing with now is the underlying feeling of white supremacy among fans who feel they are a part of hip-hop, but are listening to and prefer mostly white MCs," says Brother Ali. "They believe that Aesop Rock is better than independent artists who are Black and mainstream artists like Ludacris. These MCs are doing a lot with hip-hop artistically that they have learned from Black people, but [their fans] don't want to hear from the old-school originators because they believe it's the white MCs who created the styles they like. This isn't an underground-versus-mainstream thing—it's a racist thing." My emphasis.

Race and hip-hop is a difficult subject to parse out, and I don’t mean to make any sweeping statements here. What I do know, however, is that Roth’s brazen racial supremacy is a unique development in hip-hop. And I hope it ends soon.