irislogging back on to mastodon today because i'm in a room of really cool feminists and we're thinking about how to use internet platforms differently for the purposes of disrupting hateful behavior and/or toxic social environments. mastodon came up in part because i like this space but also because it is a way into the F/LOSS community, which doesn't have the best, um, reputation for being inclusive, accepting of / safe for women. e.g., http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444811422887
we're here today for the 2017 Fembot Symposium (fembotcollective.org). we're thinking about what people affiliated with Fembot can do to use and contribute to the development of Mastodon as platform and community. one of our ideas is to create a conversation tag — #fembot — where we can seed and aggregate conversations/toots relevant to this distributed group that already exists on many platforms. this can also be means of finding new groups on here can that can be a challenge
We talked about the possibility of paying someone to help us develop an instance of mastodon for the #fembot community. This would be useful for a few reasons. It would provide us with a means of improving inter-community communication and information dissemination that we currently mediate through use of a listserv (ugh). It would also bring more cool people to mastodon who want to engage in critical projects, and it might lead to the seeding of Fembot with cool people existing here already.
#fembot grew out of marginalized spaces, and with the hands of people who were crafty, keen, and considerate with respect to accessibility and diy. There have definitely been lessons learned in that respect on how to attend to accessibility better, but from the onset the project was about trying to not privilege any one standpoint (from which a monopoly of power might develop). As a collective, we didn't want it to be exclusive and invite only; we wanted to mirror that ethos in our web presence.
From the point of view of peer review, #fembot wanted to radically shake up paradigms. We wanted to experiment with legitimizing different forms of publication, and playing with what it means to professionalize graduate students, junior scholars, etc. Carol Stabile talking right now about how peer review is a way of producing a structure of power. In the humanities it polices disciplinary boundaries & intellectual orthodoxy. "Traditional peer review is a cruel & abusive star chamber." - Stabile
The peer review system built into the platform for the #fembot Ada Journal tries to provide feedback in productive ways, even if not everything reviewed is published on the platform. Feminist peer review is clear and transparent as possible; adopted from Kathleen Fitzpatrick's process of review for her book (using Comment Press). In the long run, this platform/process provides graduate students w/ opportunities to develop skills & network applicable and useful outside academia. adanewmedia.org
Because we didn't know what we were really doing with #fembot, the early years (been around since 2009) were full of many experimental jaunts. The ways in which we benefit bear out in our international presence and global readership; but at the same time we know that one way in which we hope to improve upon on our humble beginnings: invite more people to contribute and edit ada journal for whom english is not their primary language.
Carol Stabile also making argument that #fembot needs to refocus & think about how we could work w/ other feminist publishers to improve upon how contributions circulate & speak to each other. Another thing we need to work on is the platform itself; Comment Press has exhausted its usefulness. It was an NEH project for whom funding ran out & we're feeling that. Moreover, we're increasingly needing to automate aspects of the review & publication process that contributes to production of analytics.
We also need to improve production and circulation of multimodal content. We also need to help in the training of people in the practice of peer review—learning how to be clear, concise, generous (!!!) in the process. People for a long time have been telling #fembot that this project is not worth money because "it just can't work." We know that this is just not true. The challenge moving forward is to find/produce infrastructure for all our great ideas that don't reproduce same old problematics.
We're talking now about different kinds of projects that can be incorporated into the Fembot project, and how the listserve we have can serve the needs of people who aren't interested in academic publishing. I suggested we try to facilitate open calls for public (in-group) discussion on timely topics happening at the intersection of feminism & technology; Roopika Risam suggesting we think about how #fembot might host salons to have these kinds of conversations within the community.
One of the things that I'm thinking about now is how this concept can be taken up by different people... On the one hand these kinds of calls can lead to productive interventions / learning opportunities for people within the community. On the other hand, these can also become spaces monopolized by one person's standpoint—when this happens, some people can be asked to do work inappropriate to the situation (e.g., teaching on the weekends when you're not volunteering to do so). #fembot
Listening to Bryce Peake break down his design and development process (in terms of critical #pedagogy) of MCS499 Media Anthropology and Ethnography (available here: https://www.academia.edu/31059782/MCS499_Media_Ethnography_and_Anthropology ) #fembot
great point from @BryceTheHuman — students didn't know that he was also required to conduct research outside of teaching, and some students appreciated that note on the syllabus because it helped explain his availability #fembot
so interesting to hear about the work students produce for the class, which is archived and accessible here https://medium.com/media-ethnography #fembot @BryceTheHuman
great question from @castabile: what makes assessment feminist? #fembot especially in an era when/where assessment is increasingly important in that it has long term impact and the consequences of poor assessment can be really damaging to a student
great follow up question from André Brock: what can we do to create feminist forms of evaluation/feminist evaluations? (not on here but on the bird site: https://twitter.com/docdre ) #fembot
One of the things I love about this syllabus is the evaluative matrix, which quantifies the work students need to do for a grade. Figuring out this kind of grading strategy is usually something I see faculty/graders figure out /after/ students have submitted their assignments and/or exams. #fembot
castabile@ibull wish I knew the answer to this. I know from political organizing that one person can change the dynamics of a social movement. On one hand, you don't want to shut people down. On the other hand, we have so few opportunities to work with each other and learn from one another ftf that it's frustrating to have to deal with someone else's agenda.
MOVED; formerly Twryst@ibull Hello!
I'm exceedingly interested in the intersections you're discussing, and would absolutely love to participate in the work of the Fembot Collective.
The potential for online spaces to facilitate healthy communities- focused on lifting each other up and fighting for a broader justice- is, in my eyes, equally as immense as its potential to foster communities of hatred and harassment.
I've submitted a nomination request to fembot collective; how else can I get involved in your work?
@twryst I'm listening to a talk right now so I'll respond more thoughtfully in a bit, but submitting a nomination request is a great start! :)