Personal Updates and Moving During COVID-19

Wow! I did not realize how long it had been since I have written in this blog (not since December of 2019). A lot has happened to the world (and to me) since that time, so it’s worth beginning with a few updates:

• Earlier this year, I accepted an Assistant Professorship (tenure-track) at the University of Texas, Austin’s Journalism & Media School. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to continue doing research on global mis-/dis-information and political language in an esteemed and inviting department.

• I’m very close to defending! I will be defending in early August (a little over a week from now). My dissertation focuses on perceptions of U.S.-China trade from 2008 to 2018, and the role of news media and economic context in explaining people’s understanding of their local economy and national politics.

• A co-authored paper with fellow Ph.D student Jordan Sallis (the lead author, and a rising second-year) was accepted to AEJMC 2020 (which is virtual this as, like ICA 2020, and all other conferences).

• My long-time partner and I got engaged a few days ago!

My transition from Ph.D candidate to Assistant Professor this summer is consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic. From the largely virtual goodbyes (though I did see some folks in my last week) to the stressful packing and traveling process, moving during COVID-19 has been a uniquely stressful and anxiety-inducing experience.

Given the unique historical time point of my move (from Madison, WI to Austin, TX), I thought it would be worth recording my experiences here.

My COVID-19 Move Journal #1: Packing and Leaving Wisconsin

Packing and leaving Wisconsin was one of the saddest and most frustrating experiences I have had in graduate school.

Though we scheduled to have movers arrive on July 30th at 3:00 p.m., they did not arrive for another 28 hours, on July 31 at 7:00 p.m. Throughout this time (and now still), my partner and I had very little knowledge about why the movers took so long, but the broker we were working with emphasized how COVID-19 slowed down all the moves being scheduled (though it does not explain why we were lied to—there were several times where the broker or driver told us they would arrive “in 20 minutes” or “in two hours,” only for us to be told it would be “six hours from now” less than an hour later).

In any case, the movers did eventually arrive. It took about three hours to fully load the truck. During that time, my partner and I wore masks. About an hour into our packing, two neighbors who we did not know walked out of their apartment and saw us. Noticing that we were wearing masks, the two men began harassing and heckling us for wearing masks while we were moving. Leaning against their car (about 15 feet away from us), they repeatedly made sheep sounds (“Baaa”) and described us as “sheeple” and “idiots.” When we didn’t respond, they proceeded to loudly say that I probably couldn’t understand them. On several occasions throughout the move, for two full hours, these two individuals took immense pleasure in staring at us, calling us “libtards,” and continually bleating at us.

To say it was frustrating would be an understatement. It made an already incredibly bad moving experience so much worse. I was perpetually anxious to leave the house because every time I was within their field of vision, they would make comments (they were less vocal when they saw my partner, a white man who was also wearing a mask).

But it also made me think a lot about the state of my local civil society. In New York, and when I lived downtown in Madison, I had good relationships with my neighbors. However, at the time of the move, we had been living in our apartment for only a month (due to a leasing issue that is a whole story of its own). We didn’t know our neighbors well this time. But, I didn’t anticipate such disdain from a neighbor I didn’t know. These two individuals decided it was worth their time to make our moving experience worse, without knowing us, without ever having interacted with us, and without any consideration, seemingly, of social decency. If they disagreed with the mask policy, they could have just as easily minded their own business instead of bothering us.

It is interesting to think of masks as a political statement rather than a function of a health epidemic. And it is frustrating that strangers can resent you so much for wearing a mask that they would go out of their way to make your life worse.

What it is not, however, is surprising. Since March of this year, conservative politicians and opinion leaders (and President Trump in particular) have frequently framed people taking COVID-19 seriously as “harmful” to American society.

An example tweet describing Democrats as un-American

It’s worth noting that liberals also call conservative un-American, but (anecdotally speaking) liberals doesn’t seem to evoke “un-Americanness” as a critique as frequently as verified conservative accounts decry un-Americanness.

These tweets, and my experience moving, reminded me a lot of sociologist Jeffrey Alexander’s social binaries. In The Civil Sphere, Alexander (2006) describes how people use binaries to identify which roles, relationships, and social structures are beneficial to civil society (logical, rational, independent, strong) and which are detrimental (illogical, irrational, dependent, weak). By applying these binaries, people make sense of which values or actions deserve to be celebrated (i.e., protected in the civil society) and which values or actions deserve to be ridiculed (i.e., rejected in the civil society). For these two men, me wearing a mask fell into the latter category, which warranted their harassment.

We expect these binaries in many aspects of politics. Certainly, political Twitter lives for this binary, as negative and controversial tweets tend to receive more attention on the social media platform, particularly among U.S. conservatives (Himelboim et al., 2014). However, I didn’t know how to make sense of when this binarization bleeds into our lifeworld; when two men are more interested in harassing you for a choice that has nothing to do with them than even minding their own business.

And sure, it’s easy to chalk it up to the two men being “stupid” or “idiotic,” but it doesn’t explain why and how they got to the point where they had no qualms harassing people they didn’t know.

In the days of COVID-19, we have reached a point where citizens (a more patriotic person might say, “fellow Americans”) treat mask-wearing (or not) as a visual symbol of “un-Americanness.” In the days of COVID-19, it is easier to harass someone you see as detrimental to society than engage in any constructive behavior. In the days of COVID-19, we rarely acknowledge that people live complicated and stressful lives (made all the more stressful with the pandemic), and are quick to cast the first stone.

My partner and I left our apartment quickly after the movers left. We didn’t want to be outside with people harassing us anymore. But the moment stayed with me, as a reminder of how quick we are to designate people we don’t truly know as “bad”—illogical, weak, and ignorant.

Frankly, I have no interest in continuing that cycle. People are too complicated to categorize them purely into “good” and “bad” binaries. If we are to survive this pandemic as a society (and it’s hard to say at this point whether that will happen), extending kindness during this stressful moment in history is essential.

To the two men, whoever you are: I hope you are safe and COVID-free. I know you can’t understand this, but I wore the mask for your protection, too, even if you hated me for it. And your harassment said a lot more about you than it did about me.

After the move, my partner and I went to a hotel to rest and recover before the start of our three-day drive down to Texas. In Dane County (and Hilton hotels) there is a mandatory mask requirement. At one point, we were in the elevator with an older couple who saw us and had an “oh s***, I need to put on my mask” moment. She apologies profusely while rummaging through her bag for her mask. I told her it was alright—mask-wearing is a new practice in our society, and we are all doing our best during these stressful times. The woman gave me a grateful look as she put her mask on. In that elevator, six feet away, she and I shared a moment of comfort and a mutual acknowledgment that, in the era of COVID, we are all simply trying to do our best.

Book Logging

Over the past year, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to take notes on what I read (mainly books, research papers, and academic articles). While doing my coursework, my reading strategy was haphazard and very course-dependent. Sometimes, I would take notes in-line. Other times, I would write them down on post-its or loosely organized sheets. This worked well enough for individual projects… but it is unruly as a long-term collection of notes.

Since my preliminary exams, I’ve been using a dedicated reading journal, which I highly recommend (all the pictures I use in this post come from that reading journal).

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An early entry of my book log, for Tomasello’s Becoming Human . I would write the page number on the far left side (highlighted by different chapters), and then the notes to the right. Sometimes, I’d include notes in different colors or post-it’s if I wanted to move concepts around.

At the beginning of my book is an Index, which lists the books or articles that I have reading, and the page I begin my notes for that book or set of articles.

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My Book Index, with some notes (in red).

Since last month, I’ve started using the book log strategy from the Bullet Journal site. I’m a fan of bullet journaling in general, and the original bullet journal method is great for those looking for a planner/to-do list/organization system (you can learn about the bullet journal rapid logging system here, and I highly recommend the 5-minute video tutorial here).

This system is originally made for books, but you can also use this system for journal articles you read in class or for a project.

What makes the book log system unique?

1. Chapter Index: Reading notes begin with a chapter index. This is usually the table of contents for a book. If I were reading articles for a class or research project, I would list all the articles here. I was somewhat irked with the time it took to write down all the chapters, but it has been absolutely worth it when I come back to old notes.

2. “Treading”: When I take notes and want to point to a specific part of the book, I write the page, paragraph, and line number down. (This is not quite the same as bullet journal threading, but it has a similar principle). As the blog post recommends, you can use a “^” arrow to indicate “same as previous” (like an “ibid.”).

3. Different bullets: Like rapid logging, the book log system several different “bullets” to indicate different types of notes and tasks. The ones they recommend are dashes for regular notes (this is the most common bullet for me), a quote for quotes, and a dot for tasks.

- dashes

“ quotes

• tasks

I added two (well, three) more to this list:

= for combining ideas

? for questions (I haven’t used this, but I imagine it would be useful in class or guided reading)

o     I use an open circle for incomplete tasks. I fill it in when the task is complete*

(* the only tasks I really have in my book log, however, is to add to my zettelkasten.)

These six “bullets” collectively constitute my key.

Book Logging Key

How do I use this system?

I begin by writing out my chapter index. Though the book log system recommends writing the chapter in as you read it, I actually wrote down all the chapters I was interested in at the beginning. When I take notes for a chapter, I write the first page of those notes on the far right.

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Some notes I took from my first attempt using a book log, while reading a research paper about Foxconn and targeted economic development (Mitchell et al., 2019).

Underneath the chapter index, I will have space to write some main points from the book. This typically includes a “purpose statement”: one sentence about why the author wrote the book or what the author hopes to accomplish with the book.

When I read a chapter, I write “CHAPTER #” and then take notes below that. I do my threading on the far right of the page (at the minimum, I usually write the page number). All my threads are highlighted so I can find them easily.

What if I’m reading a couple of articles?

I haven’t used this method as much for reading articles, but I imagine it would still be useful. I did read a set of articles about North Korea, and I found it was useful to read related pieces in 4-5 article batches. In this case, I treated each article as a “chapter.” I wrote an article index, with the “key points” section beneath. Like chapters, some articles are more or less useful than others. I also use the citation shorthand (AUTHOR, DATE) instead of the chapter number. I thread similarly, but I add a column number (page, column/paragraph, line).

For seminars, I would recommend treating each class session as a batch.

What do I take notes on?

Before I started using the book log system, but after I started taking notes in a book, I was asked to do a presentation on organizing your notes. One student had asked me “how do you know what to take notes on, instead of writing everything down?”

At the time, I gave a very lackluster answer: I followed my gut. I’ve been frustrated with that response ever since, which got me thinking about my note-taking process. And, of course, when I think, I read. Andrew Abbott’s book Digital Papers had a great chapter on Reading (Chapter 7). He describes several “modes of reading”: (1) narrative reading, (2) meditative reading, (3) scan reading, (4) mastery of argument reading, (5) party mastery readings.

This typology is great for thinking about what information you want to extract from reading—and what notes you want to take. I use my book log for meditative reading and when I am trying to understand (or “master”) the core argument of someone’s book or article. For this reason, having a “purpose” or “key points” section below my chapter index is really useful, and keeps my focus on the goal (comprehension).

In books, the first few chapters tend to be the most theory-laden, with the subsequent chapters or parts focusing on proof (either statistical, qualitative, case-based, or some combination thereof). I spend a lot of time on these earlier chapters and tend to write the most notes for them.

Going beyond the book

One of the things I’ve struggled with the most is how I translate notes in my book into a broader collection of “ideas” between multiple books. One of the ways that I do so is my combination bullet (=), which I use if what I’m reading reminds me of another author. These notes help me connect multiple authors or concepts in-the-moment; in other words, it’s great short-term.

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Some notes I took while re-reading Jeffrey Alexander’s The Civil Sphere. While reading, I connected some thoughts between Alexander and Parsons. You’ll also see that I wrote a quote down verbatim from chapter 3.

For the long-term, I rely on my zettelkasten, which I’m hoping to talk about in my next blog post.

Research Pipeline: Tracking Your Papers

One of the most important things you have to do as an academic is keep track of your projects—and, by extension, your papers. Like many researchers, I get interested in a lot of projects and (dare I say it) I tend to over-commit (*unsurprised gasp*). But keeping track of my projects helps me be realistic about what I can accomplish and what I have on my plate.

The most common way to track your projects is to use a “research pipeline” (also known as a publication pipeline). This metaphor is extremely useful: between when you conceptualize the project to when you publish the paper is a whole mess of steps including (but not limited to): data collection, data analysis, writing the paper, and revisions (and revisions, and revisions, and revisions). By breaking up your project into steps that build on each other, it makes producing research and writing up your results more manageable.

These steps are not always linear. When you receive a revise and resubmit a full paper, reviewers may ask you to redo a part of the analysis. The manuscript itself may even go through several complete rewrites before it is accepted to a journal. And book projects may have entirely different pipelines.

A simplified “rule of thumb” for your publication pipeline is the 2-2-2 (two in development, two in data analysis, and two under review; though I’ve seen variants with different 2’s).

However, as many articles have pointed out, there are lots of intermediary steps that should be recognized. Suggestions range from anywhere between seven and eleven (or more). My pipeline has 9 steps.

In 2019, these were my steps: (1) literature/planning, (2) collect data, (3) compile data, (4) data analysis, (5) draft paper, (6) full paper, (7) conference/under review, (8) R&R, (9) accepted!

In 2020, I modified my steps slightly: (1) idea nursery, (2) data plan/IRB, (3) data collection, (4) data analysis, (5) draft paper, (6) near completion, (7) under review, (8) R&R, (9) accepted!

The main changes are in the first half of the pipeline. I expanded out my “literature/planning” step into two steps: the idea nursery (which I read a lot of literature to understand the question’s domain) and the data planning (where I think about what data layers and analyses I need to answer the research question I’m interested in). The data planning is critical for me: different projects demand different types of data plans. Survey experiments and semi-structured interviews, for example, must go through IRB approval. In projects relying on a large text dataset, I have to think about how I want to construct my corpus.

After this, my steps are fairly consistent: collect the data (i.e., execute the data plan), analyze the data, draft the manuscript, complete the manuscript (“near completion” was a better descriptor for me than “full paper”), submit the paper to a publication (or conference), receive and complete an R&R (if submitting to a publication), and getting the paper accepted. When a paper under review is rejected, I move it back to the “near completion” stage (or earlier if I need to do more).

For projects that I want to shelf, I treat the back of my page as a literal “shelf.” In 2020, I split my shelf into a “short term shelf” (things that I want to pick back up within the year) and a “long term shelf” (things that I want to go back to, but probably not for some time).

How do I keep track of the pipeline?

I’ve used a variety of different strategies to try and keep track of my papers. First, I used to list them all on a sheet of paper and cross out the paper when it had been accepted. This was a good first step, but it didn’t really help me understand the stage my paper was on.

Now, I use a physical pipeline with post-it notes. I got inspiration from this bullet journal spread, which uses a similar strategy (there are 12 steps in this pipeline). The original spread has a color-coded system (green for dissertation, orange for side projects, and yellow for postdocs), but I am more haphazard.

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My 2019 Pipeline! Thanks for helping me keep track of this year’s papers!

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Moving my post-it’s to my 2020 pipeline!

May of my projects turn into multiple papers. For each project, I have a 2-6 letter key (“SP” or “Debate” or MCRC”). Papers are indicated with an additional word. For example, my paper on Russian IRA disinformation in the news was “SP News”. My paper on cross-platform Russian disinformation was “SP 3media”.

Each paper is indicated with a post-it note. I like to keep track of papers rather than projects because my projects are prone to branching into multiple papers. When I complete a step, I move the post-it for that paper to the next stage. However, I can also go backward: when I have to redo some analysis for a paper, I move my post-it from “Under Review” back into “Data Analysis” (or even “Data Collection”).

When a paper is accepted, I write the paper down in my last box (“Accepted!”) and throw away the post-it note for that paper. I like the permeance of writing the accepted/in-press/published paper down. I’ll also put a little exclamation mark for accepted papers that are single-authored or first-authored.

In conclusion: tracking your research/publication pipeline is really useful for understanding what stage your project is at. I encourage reviewing your pipeline at least once a month and updating the pipeline yearly (especially if you’re still trying to figure out the most optimal steps in your pipeline… which may change as your research interests change).

Preparing for 2020!

It’s December, which is when we tend to think about what we’ve done this year and what we hope to do for next year. For me, that reflection includes updating my personal organizing and scheduling system (e.g., planners, calendars, bullet journals, organizers).

Organizing has been essential to maintaining a consistent workflow throughout my academic career. It’s a living system—I continually revamp it to make sure I’m getting the most out of it. Right now, I’m using a “paper-dominant hybrid system”: my scheduler, to-do list, reading notes, and zettelkasten are in print, but I maintain a digital calendar, a citation system, and mind-mapper.

Organizing systems are as varied as academic scholars. This makes sense: your system should serve your needs. But regardless of whether it’s digital or physical, multi-platform or all in one place, it behooves scholars to have a system that isn’t a pile of scraps or things you write on your hand. Trust me when I say: there is too much to remember in grad school for you to “have it all in your head.” If you don’t write things down or record it, things will inevitably slip from your mind.

For that reason, I'm hoping to spend my next few blog posts talking about how I organize my academic life (from day-to-day scheduling to keeping notes that will last a decade). I’ll also talk about how I’m updating my 2019 system for the new year.

But before I proceed, here are a couple of disclaimers/considerations:

1. No organization system is perfect forever. In the planner community, the term “planner peace” refers to having a system you are completely satisfied with. While this sounds awesome, realistically, you won’t find a system that completely fits you for your whole life. Your planner system will change as you and your career changes—but this is how it should be, because what you need from your organizing system will change.

2. Maintenance is key. A good organizing system relies on regular maintenance. That might involve setting aside time weekly to update your citations, review your planner/calendar, or to clean your to-do list. As diverse as organization systems are, they all still require maintenance.

3. The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Few of the days I schedule and organize go exactly as I anticipated. Even if I write a daily to-do list, I rarely complete it. Don’t be hard on yourself when your plans go out the window for a day (or longer). Don’t feel bad if you have to forgo your organizing system for a bit when things get hectic.

4. Don’t mistake planning for doing. Planning out your day is not the same as actually doing what you planned. Don’t make planning busy-work to avoid the real work you have to do.

The Hidden Conference Cost of doing Interdisciplinary Work

Hello blog!

Long time no chat. May was entirely lost in the black hole that is the end of the semester and the start of “academic conferencing.” In the past month, I attended the International Communication Association’s conference (ICA 2019; what I would consider the “main” conference of my primary field, Mass Communication) and a workshop at the the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics conference (NAACL NLP+CSS 2019). I have a nice break through the remainder of June and July, and then in August I have one more conference (Association in Education for Journalism and Mass Communication, AEJMC 2019).

Which brings me to my topic of the day: the cost of attending conferences to stay up to date on interdisciplinary scholarship.

Realistically, I work in three intersecting fields (four, if you include my computational stuff separately): Mass Communication, Political Science, and Linguistics. Removing a component of the trifecta is not possible; it would mean fundamentally misunderstanding my research agenda.

There are a lot of benefits and problems to doing interdisciplinary research, which many other scholars have spoken on. I love interdisciplinary work, personally, because that’s where all the enjoyable little questions are. And, as valuable as specialization can be, most research questions can be studied in many ways, depending on the department/discipline you end up in. A question about political language may produce different results if studied in Sociology, Psychology, and Political Science. So, to me, the rigorous thing would be to do interdisciplinary research—to be specific in your question, broad in where you look for theory, and concrete in your study’s operationalization and methodology.

But there are substantial professional costs to doing interdisciplinary work. A Google Scholar search of “interdisciplinary research difficulties” will yield more than enough articles to give you a sense of how much the academy has struggled to deal with interdisciplinary scholars (I choose the word “deal” carefully… rarely do I feel as if the academy “supports” interdisciplinary work).

One of those weirdly silent struggles is the cost of attending oh-so-many conferences. In an ideal world, I’d like to submit to conferences for all the fields I participate in (ICA/AEJMC for Mass Comm, LSA for Linguistics, APSA/MPSA for Political Science, NAACL/CoLing for Computational Linguistics). There conferences are important for many reasons. They help you connect with others to find jobs (a super important thing for any graduate student), they expose you to the latest studies and results in the field, and they help you connect with other people who are doing similar work to you.

But each conference can cost a substantial amount of money to attend. Below are the registration cost of the seven conferences I noted above, and a few others:

Conference	2019 Location	Regular Reg	Student Reg
AEJMC	Toronto	$ 215	$ 125
APSA	Washington D.C.	$ 160	$ 125
CoLing	Santa Fe	$ 715	$ 500
ICA	Washington D.C.	$ 300*	$ 165
IC2S2	Amsterdam	345 €	195 €
ICCSS	Amsterdam	450 €	350 €
LSA	NYC	$ 86	$ 90
NAACL	Minneapolis	$ 595	$ 295

(* ICA has tiered prices depending on where your institution is located. These are U.S. prices, Tier A.)

For each conference, you also need to account for hotel and airfare, at minimum. The best conferences are the ones that are proximity close (the location of NAACL, in Minneapolis, was a huge reason why I submitted a paper to begin with), but you are typically looking at between 300 and 500 dollars for a round-trip flight to somewhere-in-the-U.S. (aka: Chicago or DC). Conference hotels usually charge between 175 and 250 per night (graduate students bring down the cost substantially by staying with other graduate students). If you are a lucky young scholar like I am, you will have tt professors who will assist with food and drink for a good portion of the trip, but this is obviously not always the case.

All in all, you can be spending somewhere between 500 and 1000 dollars for each conference you attend. This cost increases considerably for non-(U.S. and European) scholars, who have to not only fly in from another country ($$$ international flights anyone?!) but also apply for visas, an increasingly daunting task (most of my conferences are in the U.S., which makes me double-privileged as a scholar in the States).

If you’re a scholar working in two disciplines, that’s twice the conferences you may need to pay for. Or, you’ll have to sacrifice attending certain conferences in one year to attend another. For a young scholar, particularly one doing interdisciplinary research, not attending a conference means missed opportunities to meet people, connect about research, and find future avenues of collaboration.

Given this, we need to start thinking about the conference model, and how that limits young scholars who cannot normally afford to attend so many conferences. Alternative ways to participate, cheaper locations (and cheaper hotels), and having more included in a registration can go a long way.

Interview with Cap Times

This past week, I interviewed with Capital Times in Madison to talk about a recent co-authored study about Russian propaganda in U.S. news media.

I'm glad that the writer, Lisa Speckhard, did a great job capturing my greatest concern with Russian influence and disinformation. We know that the Russians are not going to stop trying to infiltrate U.S. public discourse. They haven't stopped since WWII, and I doubt they ever will.

What we can do is ask ourselves (1) where are they likely to make their way into American political discourse and (2) what can we do [on our end] to stop it.

Journalists are in a special space, as gatekeepers of information, to both prevent and perpetuate Russian propaganda from amplifying. As we learned through this study, this gate is not impervious... especially now that there are so many gates.

In order to keep our public discourse "pure" (that is, not unknowingly manipulated by foreign influences), we need to be self-reflexive, vigilant, and careful. I am continually reminded of this when news organizations reach out to members of our team asking about various articles that have included IRA-linked tweets. We need more news organizations like this and like Slate, who continue to be critical of their journalistic routines.