First, one goal is to explore life as a “FOSS Academic” – someone who uses Free and Open Source technologies to do academic work. I’m hoping that my discussions of FOSS technologies in an academic setting help others – students, professors, university administrators – understand the benefits and values of FOSS in the academy. I’m not a developer, but I am a professor who’s been using FOSS to do his job for over a decade. I call this goal of exploring FOSS tools in the academy Goal 1.
Second, this blog has Goal 2: writing a book about a FOSS topic. After some consideration, I decided to write a book about Mastodon and the fediverse. The book is out now! Sometimes, the two topics will collide in a single post. My intent here is to be more open about my own research process and writing.
Now that the book is done, I guess soon I will make Goal 2 be about… another book! Stay tuned for more.
You can learn more about the goals of the blog in the introductory post.
As for me, I’m Robert W. Gehl, a professor of Communication and Media Studies at York University. My actual title is long: Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice. The long title basically means I do research and teaching at York. I’ve also been a Fulbright Canada Research Chair of Communication, Media, and Film at the University of Calgary. Besides my new Mastodon/fediverse book, I’ve written three books: Reverse Engineering Social Media, which won the Association of Internet Researchers Nancy Baym Book Award, Weaving the Dark Web, and Social Engineering (co-authored with Sean Lawson). I’ve also published over two dozen peer-reviewed journal articles in venues such as New Media & Society, Communication Theory, and Social Media + Society.
Me, typing furiously on some document in a coffee shop.
