Organizers
Ben Light and Marie Griffiths -- University of Salford
Sian Lincoln -- Liverpool John Moores University
Steve Sawyer -- Syracuse University

Confirmed Speakers
Professor Susanna Paasonen
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies -- University of Helsinki
Grabbing by the eyeballs: affective intensities of online porn
Dr Kylie Jarrett
Centre for Media Studies – National University of Ireland Manooth
Managing the multiples:
understanding the power of google

There is still negotiation regarding the novelty of Web 2.0 and social media.  Yet, whether these arrangements are ‘new’ or recombinants/re-presentations of extant things, it is very much the case that in many societies, those that would not have engaged with such arrangements in the past are, and that different sites of such arrangements are becoming easier to connect with each other.  Thus, we are increasingly faced with the issue of having to navigate multiple places across and connected with the Internet.  Unsurprisingly, those in commercial and other formal organizations are also making these connections too.  This year we hope the workshop will tackle issues associated with the multi-sited nature of digital culture.  However, as usual, we intend for the workshop to be multi-disciplinary in nature, broad in the approaches participants take and issues they cover. If your work is about any aspect of digital culture, this is the workshop for you! The following are thus only indicative of potential topics that could be raised:

• What kinds of sites/spaces are being connected and why?
• How does identity feature in multi-sitedness?
• How does multi-sitedness feature in our knowledge and experiences of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and disability?
• What are the problems and benefits of convergence?
• What role are mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies playing in multi-sitedness?
• How are commercial and non-commercial artifacts, digital games/TV/Radio/newsprint for example, being situated within and across physical and virtual spaces?

Following from the first workshop we continue to see this workshop having three purposes. First, we seek to give voice and structure to existing digital media, ICT and technology related research which may not readily sit within conventionally accepted areas. Second, we wish to draw in research on new forms of digital technology, ICT, computing, organizing and social interactions. Third, we want to continue discussions regarding potential futures for ICT related research, which combine research as related to the evolving forms and functions of organizations and the changing boundaries and relations between these organizations and their social milieus.

Workshop Arrangements
The fee for presentation/attendance at the workshop is £80. This will cover refreshments and meals throughout the workshop and a dinner to be held on the evening of the 1 July.

There is no fee for PhD students, however they still need to register for the workshop. PhD student registration includes refreshments during the workshop but excludes attendance at the workshop dinner (This is subject to a £25 fee, payable upon registration).

You can register for the workshop at: https://shop.salford.ac.uk

The workshop is being held in association with the Innovation Bazaar details of which can be found here: http://www.isos.salford.ac.uk/innovation_bazaar.php

Location of the workshop
The workshop will be held at CUBE.

CUBE (Centre for the Urban Built Environment) is an architecture centre and a member of the Architecture Centre Network. Located in the city centre of Manchester on Portland Street, it occupies a 500m2 gallery and seminar space. The remit of CUBE is to create and promote understanding of the built environment through activities including exhibitions, events, debates, educational projects and publications.

If you experience any difficulties regarding the workshop arrangements, please do get in touch with Deborah Woodman: d.woodman@salford.ac.uk

Presentations Include:

• Vicki Trowler -- University of Cape Town -- South Africa
  Political promiscuity and multi-modality
• Phoebe Moore -- University of Salford -- UK
  Was it an internet election?
• Helen Keegan and Frances Bell -- University of Salford -- UK
  Multiple spaces and discontinuities as transformative tools
• Daniel Villar Onrubia -- University of Oxford -- UK
  Mobility -- personal learning environments -- and the use of space in higher education
• Carolyn Downs -- University of Salford -- UK
  Growing up in a virtual world: girls -- identity and facebook
• David Kreps -- University of Salford -- UK
  Grindr: immoderation vs sin in the global virtual gay bar
• Saeideh Hajinejad -- Stockholm University -- Sweden
  Gender representation of iranian youth on facebook profile pictures
• Isis Amelie Hjorth -- University of Oxford -- UK
  Analysing distributed agency in collaborative open source film making: towards a theoretical framework suitable for multisited ethnographies on networked creators and cultures
• Enas Al-Lozi and Anastasia Papazafeiropoulou -- Brunel University -- UK
  “And why would i participate?” a framework of value exchange and roles in digitally engaged communities
• Rachel mclean -- University of Bolton -- David Wainwright -- University of Northumbria and Jeff McCarthy -- Manchester Metropolitan University
  Football social media:  playing the game -- but where is the trust?
• Chris Bull -- Manchester Metropolitan University -- UK
  Multiplicity -- congruity and the development of e-gambling commerce in the uk
• Nic Crowe -- University of Brunel -- UK
  “We die for the glory of the emperor”: young people and ‘playing’ at war in on-line role playing games
• Ben Light -- University of Salford -- UK
  Missing cultures across video games: queers -- gaymers and the terms of their inclusion

The motivations for engaging with this area and how I am doing this are multiple:

• As I have already discussed, during my ethonographic work on SingStar gameplay, the SingStar Anthems title was released with the strapline “Unleash Your Inner Diva!”. It has also been retitled by Fruit Brute as “SingStar Queer Edition“.
• Beyond that prompt, my later work on Gaydar (and my recent post here), highlights issues surrounding the commodification of difference viz social media. So I wondered how are LGBT people configured in digital games?
• In addition, I am aware of those digital games researchers who argue that: “There is little in the way of understanding elements of the gaming experience that are not limited to the actual playing of the game itself (Crawford and Rutter 2007: 273).  So how are LGBT players engaging with games beyond the screen?

Thus, given this context, my talk was concerned with the LGBT gaming experience in terms of such things as character representation, forum participation and how LGBT gamers/characters are dealt with by those in the digital games industry. In short, I discussed LGBT gaming on and beyond the screen. What I will quickly do now is run through the things I discussed - LGBT characters, heteronormativity in games, and LGBT gaming controversies.

Below I list some of the characters I discussed and give brief explanation of why they were included:

Character/s	Why included
	Dance Summit 2001: These characters are simultaneously labelled by Fruit Brute as drag queens and trannies. A forum comment points out that there is a difference between the drag queens and trannies.
	Soul Calibur IV: Voldor is ‘thrown out there’ as potentially gay.  But it’s also made clear he could just be into S&M. A response argues that he’s probably ‘just out there’. It is clear that some characters’ sexualities are contested
	Zelda Series: Tingle is introduced with much humour by Fruit Brute and configured as high camp. This spoke to me of a recognition of the resonance of gay stereotypes. Frute Brute also talks of Tingle as a reminder of a ‘Chicken Hawk’ who pounced on him the first time he went to a gay bar thus highlighting the intertexuality of gaming
	Resident Evil: This post made clear the presence of transvestitism in gaming.  Alfred Ashford dresses as his sister. Of course, I acknowledge there is no link between transvestitism and sexuality, but transvestites are included within the trans group of LGBT.
	Street Fighter: Again Zangief’s sexuality is contested but he is also drawn upon to highlight hypermasculine discourses viz Bears in the gay community.  Frute Brute also make clear the contradictions surrouding some Bears -- they are hypermasculine, yet also have the potential to be highly camp and effeminate.  Zangief sits in a bath during a game with two women and it is suggested that he is merely discussing hand bags with them.
	Super Mario Bros 2 (and beyond): Birdo/Birdetta is highlighted as a male to female trans character.  It is also the case that in later printings of the game’s guide booklet and later releases of the game Nintendo ‘corrected’ the error and discussed Birdo only as a female character.
	Streets of Rage 3: I included Ash as his playable character in the Japanese version of the game is highly camp (he has ‘slap combo’s, giggles girlishly and cries when he looses -- oh yes, and there’s the outfit).  However, beyond that, it’s interesting again that in the release of the game in the US and Europe, his character was not automatically playable (it’s possible to unlock him if you know how to).
	Fear Effect 2: This game includes two openly lesbian characters who were reportedly included by the games designer to hook in young boys.
	The Temple of Elemental Evil: In contrast to Fear Effect 2, this game included gay men and gay marriage on par with other relationships in the game.  A serious attempt at social inclusion was made.
	GTA IV: This game’s storyline required a character to ‘pretend’ to be gay, and post a profile on an internet dating site in order to entrap another character.  Further, later in the game, gay bashing occurs, but there is also the potential for the ‘gay basher’ to be killed for this.
	Bully: Scholarship Edition: This game allows for fluid (Bi) sexuality.  Moreover, points can be gained for kissing other boys.

Following this discussion, I moved on to run through my experience of playing the online version of the MB board game -- the game of Life. The premise of the game is to travel through life dealing with its ups and downs. I had found a story on the internet in which the game had been raised as problematic because it allowed a player to choose a spouse of the same sex. This was seen as a problem because it was a game for kids and it was felt that such a possibility with thus not appropriate. I thus decided to download and play the game. Sure enough, it was possible (as in the orginal board game) to choose a same sex spouse. However, from that point on the game was heteronormative. When I got married, an image of a man and woman appeared, when I became a grandparent, I was pictured with a woman. Only in the car was a pictured with a man and in the ‘photograph’ (as shown here) at the end of the game.  Funnily enough we only had boys!

Finally, I moved on to discuss other aspects of homophbia as related to gay gamers.  I discussed two recent cases of profile blocking in the Microsoft XBOX live gaming community. In the first case (May 2008), a gay gamer who had chosen the gamertag theGAYERgamer was blocked due to complaints by others in the XBOX live gaming community -- Microsoft felt the tag broke their rules viz offensive tags.   In the second case (February 2009) a lesbian gammer was barred because she had stated that she was a lesbian in her profile. Microsoft reportedly said that other gamers were offended by this.

 So what can we make of this…  Well of course, my thoughts on this aren’t very well formed just yet, but a number of things do seem to be emerging. What personally surprised me the most was the extent to which LGBT issues/characters are engaged with in digital games, however superfically, seriously or instrumentally. Even given there is a large amount of guessing and labelling of characters (leading to the status of certain characters being contested), it is also clear that the full gambit of LGB and T are included.

It is also clear that LGBT characters are included in periferal ways and as integral to the game.  They can have ludic and narrataive value. Moreover, as with other aspects of digital gaming we see intertextuality -- comparisons are made between Tingle and Chicken Hawks, hidden characters in games are equated with the hidden nature of the LGBT community at particular points in time and in particular spaces. We also see that gay gamers experiences of gaming spaces beyond game play can be ‘safe’, considered and humourous (as in gaygamer.net) but also subject to homophobia -- as in the XBOX live community (I have thought about this and despite Microsoft’s attempts at explaining themselves, I do see the recent activity as homophobic. Even though I understand somewhat their attempt at crafting a policy to facilitate the enjoyment of everyone -- it clearly uninformed and discriminates against gay and lesbian players).

Although my thoughts are only preliminary, it seems to me this is a fruitful area requiring more research, even though for those who identify as LGBT (including me), sexuality does not necessarily figure in gameplay and our experiences on or beyond the screen. 

As an aside, for those interested Jenny Sundén at the Royal Institute of Technology is undertaking work on the queering of world of warcraft, there is a good LGBT gamer entry in Wikipedia and the Humplex site has some interesting flash games with borrow from mainstream games such as resident evil (note this site contains material which could be categorised as pornograhpic and which some might find offensive).  If you know of anyone working in this area, please do let me know.

Access All Areas? The Evolution of SingStar from the PS2 to PS3 Platform  - Despite many challenges to technological determinism it is fair to say that technological development is often still presented to, and by, those in organisations and society as inevitably good.  The internet is positioned as affording access to a range of information and services that can qualitatively improve our every day lives.  Whilst this clearly can be acknowledged as the case, we also know that the internet can raise difficulties and even disadvantages.  Understanding this interconnected complex domain of sociotechnical experience precludes broad generalizations and requires recognition of the nuances that surround specific sets of sociotechnical assemblages.  By drawing upon Dutton’s (2005) reconfiguration of access arguments we investigate the use of digital games within recreational environments. The ideas in this paper are based upon two intersecting ethnographies and a qualitative non-participant field study of the console based game, SingStar. Through this approach we demonstrate that the sociotechnical choices associated with different versions of the game have constructed a reconfiguration of access to SingStar that critiques the automatic association of new versions of technology with improvement and examines the ways in which non-use and, in effect, non-access could similarly alter and even extend a game play experience. More broadly, studying the evolution of what was, in effect, a ‘stand alone’ digital game to a network enabled version demonstrates how a move to becoming an internet based platform may restrict rather than enable access.  Utilising an entertainment oriented activity and technology to examine the issues that underlie Dutton’s rubric of ‘access’ also permits intersecting consideration of the respective roles that developer, user, non-user and technology have in the mediation of social experience.

You can find a copy of the paper here (aoirv7 )- admittedly we need to work on it some more. Comments welcome!

Meanwhile, I need to get home, get packed and go for a guitar lesson….

Anyway, who knows if I’ll keep this up, it’s taken me about half an hour to write this post!

The SingStar Abba Tracklist for PS3 (supposedly): Chiquitita, Ring Ring, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight), SOS, Take A Chance On Me, Summer Night City, Dancing Queen, Super Trouper, Does Your Mother Know, Thank You For The Music, Fernando, The Day Before You Came, Happy New Year, The Name Of The Game, Head Over Heals, The Winner Takes It All, I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do, Under Attack, Knowing Me Knowing You, Voulez Vous, Mamma Mia, Waterloo, Money Money Money, When All Is Said And Done, One Of Us.

What more could you ask for?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ