I’d never been to Spain...

I’d never been to Beemster but I kind of liked the tulips...

Since the events of the last post, it’s been quite a few new experiences. All of them firsts for me. I really love this.

May 9: I met Profs. Elly Konijn and Johan Hoorn and their family for a trip to Beemster to her brother’s tulip farm and other enjoyable sights. Beemster is on a polder outside Amsterdam. The polders are the farmlands below sea level on former lakebeds. I’d read about the polders, and the dikes that surrounded and allowed them to be drained and remain dry, but to be honest I never really understood it.  But after a short car ride and a stop to rent bicycles, we embarked out on the dike that defines an edge of the polder and it all made sense. The dike is only about 4 meters high, but it is broad enough for a road and an aqueduct through which the water is still pumped. Along the dike you look down into flat valleys on either side. These are polder lands, with small canals within them for drainage and irrigation.

Elly’s brother maintains the family’s tulip farm which was almost in full bloom, a little later in the year than normal because of the long, cold winter we’ve had. But this dry and mostly-sunny day was made for visiting the tulip beds! It is breath-taking. They do not harvest the tulips, they cut off the flower-tops and let the bulbs mature. Later in the summer the bulbs will be harvested and sold. Elly told stories of growing up, cutting off the flowers, and later, pulling up and cleaning the bulbs. Machines do that now, and Elly does research.  

Charming towns, lunch cafes, horse stables, we biked all day. Elly and Johan’s daughters thought I biked too slowly. But they forgave me when, over dinner, I asked them to teach me more Dutch. They could not believe my ridiculously stupid pronunciation, and they made bizarre faces to help show me how one’s mouth is shaped to make the right sounds. I have never had better language teachers.

I’ve never been a Lutheran but I kind of liked the pulpit...

May 13: Back in Amsterdam the following Monday, at the invitation of Dr. Mirjam Vosmeer I lectured to an undergraduate course in the University of Amsterdam’s Aula--a former Lutheran church and a grand building. It still looks more like a church than a lecture hall, and the speaker addresses the congregated students from the pulpit. I noted that it is quite common in my lectures for there to be very long silences when I ask students a question, but it would be reassuring that this time it would be due to extended periods of silent devotion and personal reflection.  I think the lecture went fine.  One of the students emailed me afterwards, which is a good sign.

Monday afternoon I went back to the VU to visit the Communication Science department. Some of these folks are old friends now, who I have known since they were graduate students, and it is nice to see how their interests and careers are evolving. I started a research talk by presenting the results from I’d been involved with in Israel, since last time I spoke at this department was in 2009 when that project’s data had not yet been analyzed. I spoke of other research as well, but at the end we sat around and speculated about untested new ideas. We clarified, inquired, compared, and refined some of these ideas, and it was stimulating and enjoyable to be welcomed to think out loud with a group of talented scholars. We had a nice dinner together, too.

Well I'd never been to Spain, but I'd been to California...

 Early the next morning I flew to Barcelona where it was raining on deplaning and rained for the better part of two more days. It is a beautiful city nevertheless, and I got to see parts of it walking and other parts riding a part-subway/part-train to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I was invited by Prof. Charo Lacalle who leads her research group in semiotic analyses of online group discussions and media convergence.  Other communication researchers at UAB are using experimental approaches to identify sex bias in journalism staffing. There are fewer experimental researchers there than there are at home or at ASCoR, and I had been asked to focus on methodology as well as conclusions.

I think my presentations provided a  contrast to many of their approaches in that respect. Wednesday I spoke about the last 5 years of my research and its focus on Web 2.0. Thursday I spoke about the last 22 years of my research: relational communication online more generally. Friday I spoke about a topic I have not discussed with an audience before: The complications of doing technology-based research and its great potential for premature conclusions. We reviewed the cues-filtered-out research and its research artifacts, the initial dismissal of electronic propinquity theory, and the temptation to infer that effects that occur in technological environments are due to technology and not more universal in nature.

The city itself was beautiful: Tall, stately buildings and broad boulevards near the hotel where I stayed, with squares at every intersection and parks or restaurants down the median of many streets. I squeezed in a little sightseeing, to the gothic quarter where old alley-sized streets seemed at the same time charming and mysterious. I expected secretive characters to glance furtively then avert their gaze as they traversed these passages.  Buildings by the architect Gaudi were exercises in anti-architecture, and the Casa Batllo I toured makes one a fish in an ocean of flowing structural and interior design.

I will admit a little difficulty finding food, as the many restaurants near the hotel did not offer much English (why should they?), and I was effectively ignorant. I have to thank Deborah Castro Mariño for helping me learn to navigate the trains and campus, and for good company. I am a fast learner but an apprehensive one. Where I come from, when one hears Spanish, there’s Mexican food nearby and I know what to do, but Spanish food has nothing in common. I should never have assumed it would—but I did, that’s how conditioned I am. But maybe my stereotyping was made worse in that the terrain and suburbs (as seen from the train) looked JUST liked Southern California to me. Rolling hills or low mountains with green foliage and houses abutting them; fruit trees, palm trees, and an occasional cactus; and low houses with red Spanish-tile roofs, one with a swimming pool in a back yard. The scenes reminded me of the Hollywood Hills, or old Orange County, once one leaves the city center.

Altogether it was a great trip to Barcelona and I’d like to go back. I’m grateful to the Spanish Fulbright inter-country lecturing program that helped all this to happen in no small measure.  I remain cognizant of how lucky I am to have opportunities like these – which, to be honest, blow my mind when I think about it -- and people treat me very nicely wherever I go, sometimes shyly so. It surprises me when younger scholars are reticent with me, but I suppose being on the Fulbright list inflates one’s reputation. I remember when I was a grad student who could not believe it when I would encounter some eminent authors at a conference, and was too tongue-tied to say anything to them. I know how it is and I still get nervous around great intellects in our field sometimes. The great ones are kind and open, and continue to teach me how to behave.

Back to Amsterdam to start packing for Paris.

Sarah defending

Last week I spent an exhilarating day at the VU University Amsterdam, the other major university in this city beside the University of Amsterdam. My first stop was to meet Peter Kerkhoff, the chair of Communication Science. We spoke about different approaches to the field, and he gave me his sense of how the two departments of communication complement one another. It reminds me in a sense of the two departments to which I belong back home, the Communication Department and the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. Each approaches communication phenomena in somewhat different directions, as also seems to be the case at the two universities here. There are interesting points of overlap but even more interesting points of distinction that add vibrancy to the field. There and here.

  

My next stop was to meet Prof. Bart van den Hooff who had arranged for me to give a research talk in the business school at the VU. We first discussed the possibility a year ago at the International Communication Association conference last May, and I have been looking forward to it for some time. My research has intersected with that of scholars in organization studies on and off throughout the years, including a period when I was very active with the Academy of Management. Some of my recent projects involving Web 2.0 and how user-generated comments affect perceptions of people and products touches on some of the interests here, as it is a topic in a growing number of communication, advertising, and organization studies programs around the world. There were enough of us there that noon who have been studying online communication for long enough, that interesting questions arose about how similar some of the challenges facing social media use and research these days are to issues we used to ponder regarding virtual communities, USENET news groups, and other self-organizing groups of ad hoc collaborators.

The most enchanting part of the day came next when I got to participate in the doctoral dissertation defense of Sarah van der Land. A dissertation defense in the Netherlands is quite different than it is in the US.

In the US, we read the dissertation and convene for a defense, and although these events are by tradition and regulation open to the public, it is more frequently the case that only the doctoral candidate and the committee alone conduct the defense. The committee asks probing questions of the candidate, often quite difficult ones. This isn’t to torture the student one last time; it’s an important “teachable moment”. When you do research, you have to make choices about how to do it, and the choices often have implications for your ability to answer certain questions and sometimes to bury problems that may not have been anticipated which can threaten the validity or utility of a research project. So a dissertation defense in the US tends to be oriented toward seeing if the student can see the problems and what she thinks about them. It is a foreshadowing of the kinds of challenges a young scholar will encounter from journal reviewers and other critics of one's research that are crucial to the quality of the scientific process. So we press. The relative privacy of the American dissertation defense facilitates asking hard questions which are difficult enough to answer without having to worry about the opinions of onlookers and well-wishers.

In the Netherlands and other places the dissertation defense has the potential to explore these kinds of issues also, but the event is far more formal, less interactive, and extraordinarily more public.

The first step is that the promoters (advisors) and examining committee meet in closed session without the student. The co-promoters last week were Dr. Alexander Schouten and Dr. Frans Feldberg. The main promoter, who must be a full professor, was Prof. Marleen Huysman. (Please note we address faculty members who are still assistant or associate professors as Dr., reserving the title Professor for full professors. More on that later.) Professor Huysman and I also wore full academic regalia, as did Professor Elly Konijn, and the Dean of the College who ran the even from that point onward. The assistant and associate professors dressed in dark suits and ties or dresses. 

The Dean opened our meeting with a reading from the Bible, a custom at the VU given its historical religious affiliation. Then he asked us if we thought the dissertation was worthy of defense, which we all had previously indicated was the case, and affirmed once again to him. He reminded us of the protocol for entering the room, asking questions to the candidate, donning and removing one’s hat (for men), and the strict one hour time limit we would face. He made sure he knew who each of us was on the committee and had his information correct about our names, titles, and affiliations. I was the senior visiting professor from afar, so I would be given the honor of asking the first question.

When the time came for us to go into the great hall where the defense was taking place, we were summoned by the Beadle who escorted us into the hall and then left. This is an officiant who also wears formal academic regalia and carries a staff with bells. As the faculty entered everyone in attendance—about 100 people as far as I could tell—rose to their feet. It should always be like this, shouldn't it? We enter wearing our caps and gowns, and everyone rises upon our entrance? Pretty cool.

The defense began with Sarah van der Land’s 10 minute presentation about the research. Her research focused on the use of avatars in virtual group collaboration, and her ingenious presentation. included a video of avatars in virtual space; her own avatar narrated a part of the presentation as it flew through the virtual air and exhibited other behaviors. Unfortunately, the 10 minutes the candidate was allotted for all this came to an end with a sentence or two unfinished, but she was stopped. It is that formal. 

The committee members then joined the dean on the stage where (we removed our hats and) took our seats. I was introduced and I began my question as I had been instructed, by saying, “By the authority of the Rector Magnificus and according to my right,” i.e., the right I have as holder of a PhD, “I would like to ask the esteemed candidate a question. Two questions. My first question is, will you please finish the remaining sentences of the presentation you had begun?” She did, and I think she appreciated the opportunity to finish, which I was only too happy to provide. 

My next question had to do with the various capacities that avatars can exhibit and which of those she felt were the most important for virtual collaboration. My question was rather elaborate and took a minute or two to ask. The candidate answers at some length, following her initial response which is to say, “Learned opponent, thank you for the stimulating question.” She clarified the question, and then addressed it in a variety of ways using much of the 10 minutes allocated to her for answering.

The next committee member was my friend Professor Elly Konijn of the VU Communication Science department. Professor Konijn began her question with a compliment about the innovative and original work that the dissertation studies represented. Her question was much longer, allowing the candidate to give a more focused in her response.

 

After this, the next committee member, Dr Robin Teigland from the Stockholm School of Economics, asked a question or two, as did the next two members. We still had time to go and began a second round of questions. Yet before we got too far, the Beadle reappeared an announced loudly, “Hora est.” The hour is finished. The committee members rose (and the men replaced their hats), and the audience rose as we left the auditorium to return to the anteroom for another closed session.

The dean asked each of us whether our questions had been answered satisfactorily and if we recommended that the candidate be awarded her degree of doctor. Each of us could have said simply yes or no, but being academics of course we had to comment. But at the end of all the talking it was unanimous that the candidate should receive the degree. At that point, the actual diploma was brought out, and her promoter, Prof. Huysman, signed it. 

Then, Sarah was called into the room with her assistants who took their seats at the far end of the table from the Dean. The dean told her that she had defended herself satisfactorily and was being awarded the doctoral degree. At that point the diploma was handed to her for signature as well. But it was not over yet. The diploma was returned and enclosed in a tube, and once again the Beadle led us to the main hall where the diploma could be presented. 

Everyone rose, we sat, and Dr. Alex Schouten made a proclamation describing Sarah's accomplishments and his appreciation for the process they underwent as they had worked together on the dissertation. He himself was so excited that the switch between English and Dutch somewhat accidentally. The diploma was awarded, and there was great jubilation.

Afterwards, we walked to the university’s botanical garden where a lovely reception was held. Friends, family, the committee, and other well-wishers enjoyed food and champagne to celebrate together.

After a time I left with colleagues from the business school for a dinner out where we got to reflect on the day, discuss research, and get to know each other better. Afterwards, in the rain, I returned by subway to Centraal Station and Geldersekade having had a fulfilling and enjoyable day at the VU. 

All things considered, this is a great way to conduct a dissertation defense, especially if you are a committee member and not the candidate.

Koninginnedag Amsterdam 2013 op 30 april

The Queen signs the abdication.
It is televised in Dam Square. 

Yesterday was Queen's Day. It is always a national holiday celebrating the Queen's birthday. This was historically different: At 10 a.m. Queen Beatrice abdicated the throne...

And her son, Willem Alexander, next in line in the House of Orange, became the King. There has not been a king since 1890 and so this is a first in everyone's lives.

The party started the night before. Then on Koninginnedag, I was one of about 25,000 people outside the Royal Palace at Dam Square. Inside the palace the abdication was signed and later the royal family came out on the balcony to greet and speak to the people. 

You can find me in any of the pictures or broadcasts you may have seen; I was wearing an orange baseball cap that says, "Holland." 

The monarchy in the Netherlands appears to have mostly a representational function. It seems to me that one of the most important things they do is have birthdays so that everyone can love them and love being alive. 

Enjoy the pictures!