ready for conference

I'm in Brisbane. Super-tired, very jet-lagged, yet ready for the pre-conference doctoral colloquium tomorrow and for the intensive conference-program on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Too many hours travelling surely marks body and mind. I'm dizzy, time for bed (although it's only 8.50 pm). Early morning tomorrow.

revision-time

I'm re-writing my thesis-article #2. I submitted it to Journal of computer-mediated communication, and received the reviews a couple of months ago. One of the reviewers writes that I need a stronger theoretical framework and more compelling research questions. I thought I had a theoretical framework and rather interesting research questions! Actually I do see that the reviewer has a point, and I am after all happy to be invited to resubmit. I think I know what do to with the article, and I have tried to clarify the theoretical framework and rephrased the research question.

can you be too reflexive?

Last week we had an interesting seminar for those who are writing contributions to the anthology with the Turkleish working-title Livet i og utenfor skjermene (Life on and off screens). My contribution will be the chapter "Digitale arenaer og subjektivitet: selvets retorikk i endring" ("Digital arenas and subjectivity: changing rhetorics of the self", I've written about it earlier). Interestingly the anthology will present a few differing perspectives about the self, which I think is a good thing.

The comment that I most appreciated to my contribution was a question by Knut Ove Eliassen who questioned whether reflexivity is only a good thing, or rather, can you be too reflexive? I might have misunderstood his question and comments, but indeed he made me think. I introduced my brief presentation with a few typical photos published online, and I included some which clearly illustrate that young people put a lot of effort into their self-presentations and also that they have internalised genre-conventions from other media forms (e.g. advertising and pornography). The basic question however, concerns more than just these extreme cases and naturally also more than just online representations of self. Are we becoming too obsessed with our represented self, with how we appear, and couldn't this be connected to the reflexive self? It is interesting that the reflexive self is generally interpreted as a good thing, almost as a virtue.

Brisbane

Three weeks left and I will be on my way to Brisbane. First, the aoIR-conference that I'm very much looking forward to. And then I'm staying for three more months visiting the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. Lasse will be joining me for the last couple of months, and Nina comes to visit me for a couple of weeks as well. I'm somewhat anxiously searching for a place to stay, though several places have a minimum lease for six months. I guess it will all work out fine, it's just that I'm a worrying kind of person.