This is an announcement and description of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC). The journal is an electronic, scholarly journal, distributed over the Web and via Gopher. Included here are descriptions and calls-for-papers for six upcomiong special issues, submission guidelines, as well as the editorial policy and board members.
In the following are:
We are pleased to announce the establishment of a new scholarly publication,The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC). JCMC is a joint project of the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, and the Information Systems Division of the School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Editors are Margaret McLaughlin and Sheizaf Rafaeli. McLaughlin and Rafaeli are Co-Editors, with Fay Sudweeks, of the forthcoming Network and NetPlay: Virtual Groups on the Internet (AAAI/MIT Press).
Computer-mediated communication is an exponentially growing and constantly evolving phenomenon; as a subject of inquiry it encompasses the individual, group, organizational, social, and cultural levels of analysis. The computer as a medium fosters new forms and supports established modes of social interaction. It enables novel forms of creativity, and is used to express familiar messages. The computer-mediated communication network literally constitutes a new world, and as well a global oasis where many scholars are coming to tarry. We wish to form a scientific, refereed journal to serve these scholars.
The journal seeks to publish original essays and research reports on such topics as interpersonal and group processes in communication networks, issues of privacy, economics and access raised by the developing information infrastructure, instructional communication in distance learning, computer-supported cooperative work, and organizational and social policy issues occasioned by the new medium.
JCMC will be an electronic journal. Without compromising its scholarly nature, it will be distributed and become available electronically. The electronic form is intended to make the journal more accessible and affordable, emphasize its global appeal, and broaden the bandwidth in which its content is offered. The networked form will emphasize the dynamic nature of research, by accelerating the editorial and production process, and by encouraging reader-editor-reviewer-author interaction. Although electronic information services that focus on journalistic or cartographic approaches to CMC currently exist, our effort, we believe, is different. Here the purpose is to use the CMC process and medium as meeting grounds and outlet for scholarly work on the topic. Such work has been scattered in over half a dozen disciplines with no home of its own. We intend to build such a home.
JCMC will be distributed as a hypermedia document on the World Wide Web, and can also be accessed as plain text through gopher. Contributors will be able to include illustrative materials such as photographs, color graphics, sound clips, and short video clips, and as well to provide hyperlinks to related documents such as annotated bibliographies, archived data, and journals in cognate fields. Readers without access to Web browsers such as Mosaic, Lynx or Cello can retrieve articles and their associated binary files through ftp or a gopher server. Other features of the WWW version of JCMC will be a group annotations server for providing comments on articles, and keyword searches of current and archived texts. We hope to hold online miniconferences surrounding special issues as well.
We invite you to visit our sites on the World Wide Web: for the USC site go http://www.usc.edu/dept/annenberg/announce.html; for the HUJ site, go http://www.huji.ac.il/www_jcmc/announce.html.
For further information, send e-mail to mmclaugh@alnitak.usc.edu or sheizafr@shum.cc.huji.ac.il.
Under construction. Last update September 9, 1994.
Margaret L. McLaughlin, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California mmclaugh@alnitak.usc.edu Sheizaf Rafaeli, School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem sheizafr@shum.cc.huji.ac.il
Stephen D. O'Leary, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California soleary@alnitak.usc.edu
Zahid Ahmed, San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego ahmed@SDSC.edu Steve Acker, Center for Advanced Studies in Telecommunications, Ohio State University Acker.1@osu.edu James Beniger, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California beniger@alnitak.usc.edu Tora K.Bikson, The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica Frank Biocca, Department of Communication, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill fbiocca@gibbs.oit.unc.edu Christine Borgman, Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles iin4clb@mvs.oac.ucla.edu Anne Wells Branscomb, School of Law, Harvard University Noshir Contractor, Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign contract@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu Mary J. Cronin, University Librarian, Boston College Brenda Danet, Department of Sociology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem msdanet@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il John December, Computer-Mediated Communication Studies Center, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute decemj@rpi.edu William Dutton, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California william.dutton@brunel.ac.uk Howard Frederick, School of International Service, American University hfrederick@igc.apc.org Janet Fulk, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California fulk@bcf.usc.edu Linda Harasim, Department of Communications, Simon Fraser University linda_harasim@sfu.ca Teresa Harrison, COMSERVE, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute harrison@rpitsvm.bitnet Sirkka Jarvenpaa, School of Business Administration, University of Texas at Austin and Marvin Bower Fellow, Harvard Business School sirkka_jarvenpaa@hbsqm1.hbs.harvard.edu Steve Jones, Department of Communication, University of Tulsa COMM_SJ@vax1.utulsa.edu Elihu Katz, Department of Communication, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Sara Kiesler, Department of Social Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University kiesler@andrew.cmu.edu Rob Kling, Department of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine kling@uci.edu Joe Konstan, Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota konstan@cs.umn.edu Cheris Kramarae, Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Leah Lievrouw, Department of Telecommunication and Film, University of Alabama llievrou@ua1vm.ua.edu Clifford Nass, Department of Communication, Stanford University nass@leland.stanford.edu Stephen O'Leary, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California soleary@almaak.usc.edu Jacob Palme, Department of Computer Science, University of Stockholm jpalme@dsv.su.se Diane Penkoff, Department of Communication, Purdue University penkoff@almaak.usc.edu Marshall Scott Poole, Department of Communication, University of Minnesota mspoole@maroon.tc.umn.edu Ronald E. Rice, Department of Communication, Rutgers University Lee Sproull, Department of Management and Information Systems, Boston University lsproull@bu.edu Charles Steinfield, Department of Telecommunication, Michigan State University Steinfield@tc.msu.edu Timothy Stephen, Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute stephen@vm.its.rpi.edu Fay Sudweeks, Key Centre of Design Computing, University of Sydney fays@archsci.arch.su.edu.au Alexander Voiskounsky, Department of Psychology, Moscow University vae@motiv.cogsci.msu.su Joseph Walther, Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University jwalther@nwu.edu Fred Williams, Center for Research on Communication Technology, University of Texas at Austin dcal010@bongo.cc.utexas.edu Terry Winograd, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University winograd@cs.stanford.edu Bob Zenhausern, St. John's University drz@sjuvm.stjohns.edu
Edited by Steve Acker, Center for Advanced Studies in Telecommunications, Ohio State University Acker.1@osu.edu
Deadline for Submissions: November 15, 1994
Description of the Special Issue: The special issue will explore the rationales for, impediments to, promise of, requisites for, and pragmatics of long-term, formal, institutional collaborations based in part on new media techologies. The issue will support policy, implementation, and design studies. Taken as a unit, the issue will explore how collaboration and competition are environmentally sensitive (i.e., differ depending on institutional context), whether collaboration is different from competition or simply a level of competition based on alliance, and how the design of the form of information and information networks affect collaborative processes. Direct inquiries to Steve Acker, Communication Department, 3016 Derby Hall/154 N. Oval Mall, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210-1339 USA or to Acker.1@osu.edu.
Edited by Joe Walther, Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University jwalther@nwu.edu
Deadline for Submissions: January 10, 1995
Description of the Special Issue: Interpersonal and identity processes in CMC: From its use in organizational coordination, to the provision of social support, to the maintenance of on-line relationships, the interpersonal character of interaction is a vital aspect of CMC. This issue is devoted to exploring how CMC in its various forms affects the way we portray ourselves, evaluate others, and sustain personal and professional relationships. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) theoretical treatments of self-presentation/person-perception processes; linguistic and paralinguistic strategies for affiliation, dominance, and control; the bases of social exchange in cyberspace; catalysts affecting the deployment of prosocial and antisocial interaction; the role of interpersonal relationships in media selection or composition; and other topics stressing the interactions of media and social knowledge. Original empirical investigations are especially encouraged. Direct inquiries to Joseph Walther, Northwestern University, 1815 Chicago Ave., Evanston IL 60208 USA or to jwalther@nwu.edu
Edited by Brenda Danet, Department of Communication and Journalism and Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem msdanet@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il
Deadline for Submissions: February 15, 1995
Description of the Special Issue: There is a surprising return to playful, expressive "orality" in digital writing, especially in synchronous modes like Internet Relay Chat and Muds or MOOs. People play with the computer keyboard, with typography and orthography, with their own identities, with language, and with cultural content of all kinds. Aspects of "performance" which we have associated in the past with genres of face-to-face communication such as oral storytelling, joke-telling, verbal dueling, etc., are flourishing on the Net. We find not only unscripted improvisational performance, but even instances of scripted performance. The special issue of _JCMC_ on Play and Performance will gather papers which engage in ethnographic description and interpretive analysis of playful phenomena and the emergent criteria by which individual and group performance is evaluated. Papers may focus on a single mode of CMC, or, for example, compare IRC with a Mud or MOO, or a synchronous mode on one of the commercial networks. Direct inquiries to Brenda Danet, Department of Communication & Journalism, Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel 91905 or to msdanet@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il.
Edited by Joe Konstan, Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota
Deadline for Submissions: March 15, 1995
Description of the Special Issue: This special edition will focus on the social, content, and technological issues of using information spaces in support of communication among users. Information spaces include Gopher, World-Wide-Web, and other systems that allow users to browse and affect information. These systems have been used to support communication in commercial ventures where users interact with businesses, in bulletin boards where users communicate through written messages, and in multi-user interaction environments including MUD games. JCMC seeks papers on the issues involved in the design and use of such systems. Empirical research and experience papers are particularly welcomed. Direct inquiries to Joe Konstan, Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota, 4-192 EE/CS Building, 200 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55455 USA or konstan@cs.umn.edu
Edited by Frank Biocca, Department of Communication, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill fbiocca@gibbs.oit.unc.edu
Deadline for Submissions: June 15, 1995
Description of the Special Issue: The issue will focus on theoretical and research issues related to designing virtual environments for optimal communication, and will also address the long term effects of VE on cognitive processing, especially as it pertains to information processing and cognitive styles (procedural changes or enhancements). Possible topics include:
Direct inquiries to Frank Biocca, Department of Communication, University of North Carolina, CB 3365, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3365 USA or to fbiocca@gibbs.oit.unc.edu.
Edited by: Charles Steinfield, Department of Telecommunications, Michigan State University
Deadline for Submissions: June 1, 1995
Description of the Special Issue: Papers are sought for a special issue of The Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication focusing on electronic commerce. By "electronic commerce" we mean the use of telecommunications networks for the purpose of linking organizations and/or individuals who engage in some form of computer-mediated commercial trading relationship. Buying and selling over such platforms as the Internet, online services like CompuServe, Prodigy, or America Online, new forms of electronic shopping under development by cable and telephone companies, private interorganizational networks using electronic data interchange (EDI), or other means of providing computer-mediated transactions over telecommunications networks are all valid examples of the types of electronic marketplaces in which we are interested. In particular, we are interested in furthering our understanding of how new forms of computer-mediated commerce are likely to influence individuals, organizations, industries, and/or buyer-seller relationships. Articles submitted to JCMC should make a contribution to knowledge in the field of computer mediated communication. Essays and/or research reports might address (but are not limited to) such issues as:
Inquiries should be directed to Charles Steinfield, Department of Telecommunication, Michigan State University , East Lansing, MI 48824 USA or to steinfield@tc.msu.edu.
Under Construction. Last update June 5, 1994.
Scope: Articles submitted to JCMC should make a contribution to knowledge in the field of computer mediated communication. No one discipline, and no single methodology is viewed as inherently superior. Research based in any of the social sciences is welcome.
Acceptable articles will most frequently join theoretical analysis with empirical investigation, and/or incorporate demonstration or simulation. Reviews, synthesis, and meta- analyses of prior research are also welcome. In all cases, the implications for future work should be discussed. Rigorous argumentation and presentation are expected. The use of abstracts, introduction and conclusion sections is encouraged. However, authors are encouraged to venture into using the wider bandwidth and removal of linearity constraints made available by JCMC's format. Innovative forms of expressing research, and/or linking members of the scientific community, are welcome.
Publication procedure: Articles submitted may be of any length. Articles may be written in any format. Articles may contain any combination of text, tables, graphics, animation, or audio component. JCMC editors will make every possible effort to accomodate presentation formats. Authors unfamiliar with non-text file formats or who are not familiar with methods for linking their documents to other materials may turn to the JCMC staff for assistance in incorporating pictures, sound clips, and links to other sources into their text.
However, clear, comprehensible, compact and considerate presentation are expected. These dimensions will be used as criteria in the review process.
The academic citation style used in JCMC follows the most recent APA Manual of Style. For citations to electronic documents, authors are encouraged to consult Xia Li and Nancy B. Crane (1993), Electronic Style: A Guide to Citing Electronic Information (Westport: Meckler.) In addition or instead, authors are encouraged to use HTML pointer structure to online reference lists, as such become available. JCMC will maintain a dynamic online, publicly available, bibliography list of its own.
Articles will be reviewed in a double-blind fashion, shielding authors' and reviewers' identities wherever possible. Acknowledgements will be sent by e-mail within a week of the date of submission. All articles will be reviewed by the editors and two referees. The advice of a third referree will be sought as warranted. The decision of the editors and the referrees' reviews will be returned by email unless the author requests response by surface mail at the time of submission.
Submitted articles can be e-mailed to one or both editors, uploaded to our ftp site, or sent on MS-DOS formatted diskettes TO BOTH editors. We are working on making it possible to submit articles via www (Mosiac) as well. Submissions MUST be accompanied by a "cover note" e-mailed to the editors. Please e-mail (or include on diskette) an additional, separate notice describing in short (1) the submitted article, (2) the format(s) used in its presentation, and (3)providing e-mail and mailing addresses for author(s). The separate notice should explain and explicate hypertextual pointers, if such are included in the article. Use the ftp address to upload binary components for e-mailed articles. If the article contains any format that exceeds ASCII, please indicate reasons for choice of format. Authors are requested to correspond with the editors to coordinate special cases or other preferences. At present, JCMC will accept the following formats: ASCII, HTML, HTML+, Postscript, Tex, Latex, PcTex for text files; GIF, PCX, BMP, JPG, or TIFF for graphics; GL, AVI, or MPG animation files; and/or .WAV, .MIDI, or .AU audio formats. ASCII files, as well as Postscript, HTML and HTML+, and Tex flavors, can be e-mailed directly. Binary files, including all graphic pictures, may be uuencoded and mailed to the editors or ftp'd anonymously to our anonymous ftp server at noga.huji.ac.il (directory ibmpub).
The submission of an article to JCMC implies that the author certifies that neither the article nor any of its parts is copyrighted or currently under review for any refereed journal or conference proceedings. If the article, any portion of it, or any other version of it, has appeared, or is scheduled to appear in another publication of any kind, the details of such publication must be made known to the editors at the time of submission.
JCMC encourages use of hypertextual links. The above copyright notice DOES NOT apply to the incorporation of pointers to publicly available network sources. For example, an article may contain hypertextual pointers to items in art collections on the network, or to JCMC itself, or to bibliographies available on the net. Unfortunately, many networked resources are ephemeral. Authors should assume responsibility for attempting to use "fresh" and long-living pointers.
Obviously, submitted articles will not be returned. Authors should retain an original copy.
Articles and correspondence should be sent to the editors : Margaret L. McLaughlin, 344 Grace Ford Salvatori Hall, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1694 USA, telephone 213-740-3942, FAX 213-740-0014; or Sheizaf Rafaeli, Information Systems Division, School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905 ISRAEL, telephone 972-2-883106, FAX 972-2-881341.
Margaret L. McLaughlin (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign) is Professor of Communication, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and a member of the Extended Faculty of the Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society. She has served as Editor of Communication Monographs and Volumes 9 and 10 of Communication Yearbook. She was President of the International Communication Association in 1990-91. She has written, edited and co-edited several books, including Conversation: How Talk is Organized; The Psychology of Tactical Communication; and Explaining One's Self to Others: Reason-Giving in a Social Context. She is co- editor of the forthcoming Intimate Decisions: Accounting for Risk- Taking in Sexual Behavior and Courtship. She is also co-editor, with Sheizaf Rafaeli and Fay Sudweeks, of the forthcoming Network and NetPlay: Virtual Groups on the Internet (AAAI/MIT Press). Her interests include discourse analysis, group communication and computer-mediated communication. She is a contributor to Cybersociety, and teaches the course "Communication in the Virtual Group" at USC. Her current research includes a study of how artists use the World Wide Web to exhibit their work and communicate with other artists.
Sheizaf Rafaeli (B.A., Haifa University, M.A. Ohio State University, M.A., Ph.D., Stanford University) is a senior lecturer at the School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, where he has been head of the Information Systems area since 1986. His interests are in computers as media. He has published on this topic in journals such as Behavior and Information Technology, Communication Research, Computers and the Social Sciences, Computers and Human Behaviour, Journal of Communication, Information and Software Technology, and the Journal of Broadcasting. He authored software and books on graphics, electronic spreadsheets and statistical analysis, and is currently completing a book on information systems for the Open University. He is co-editor, along with Fay Sudweeks and Margaret McLaughlin, of the upcoming _Network and NetPlay: Virtual Groups on the Internet_. Sheizaf has served in visiting research and teaching positions at Ohio State University, Michigan State University, IBM, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan. Over the past ten years he has taught courses on computers as media, and the social implications of new communication technologies, as well as numerous Information Systems courses.
The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) is available on the World Wide Web, from our server in Jerusalem as
http://www.huji.ac.il/www_jcmc/jcmc.html
or from our server at USC as
http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/annenberg/announce.html
or by gopher as
gopher://cwis.usc.edu:70/11/University_Information/Academic_Departments/Annenberg/J_Computer-Mediated_Communication