Electronic Tribes: The Virtual Worlds of Geeks, Gamers, Shamans, and Scammers

About the Contributors

Steve Abrams is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Interactive and Collaborative Technologies program in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, where he received his M.S. in 2004. He also received an M.A. in Communication , Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University in 2004. His dissertation research investigates sensemaking networks for managing innovation in distributed teams; details can be found at http:// www.ics.uci.edu/~sabrams. Tyrone L. Adams, Ph.D., is the Richard D’Aquin Endowed Professor of Journalism and Communications at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (Ph.D. and M.S., Florida State University; B.A., University of Florida). As coeditor of Electronic Tribes with Professor Stephen A. Smith, he found the writing and ideas presented in the essays to be of immense personal and professional value. He specializes in new media applications in interpersonal and organizational communication, and is a former President of the American Communication Association (2005–2006). He can be e-mailed at theswampboy@gmail.com and browsed at http://www.swampboy.com. Thomas W. Brignall III, Ph.D., is with the Department of Sociology at Lewis University. His research interests include racism, social movements, the social impact of technology, and globalization. He is currently involved with several studies measuring the erosion of public meeting spaces and the impact of virtual societies. He spent more than nine years in the computer industry while attending college and still About the Contributors 290 Electronic Tribes closely monitors new technological innovations. He can be e-mailed at tom@criticalsociology.com. David R. Dewberry is a Ph.D. Candidate in Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver. His research uses interpretive and critical perspectives to examine communication and rhetoric within and surrounding government and politics in traditional and mediated settings. He would like to thank Susan A. Sci, University of Denver, for her careful reading and thoughts on earlier drafts. Sandra C. Duhé, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Public Relations program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Associate Director of Communication at UL’s Center for Business and Information Technologies (Ph.D. and M.S., University of Texas at Dallas; M.S., University of Southwestern Louisiana; B.S., Louisiana State University). Prior to joining academia in 2004, she worked as a public affairs manager for three multinational corporations . Based on that experience, her interests lie in political economy, new media, and new science perspectives in corporate public relations. She can be reached at scduhe@louisiana.edu. Smaragd Grün is an active member of several online and meat-space slash-fiction communities. More than ten years ago, using this pseudonym , she began participating in the slash community, where she continues to seek innovative solutions to protect individuals while advocating community building, envelope pushing, and freedom of speech. She can be contacted at smaragdgrun@yahoo.com. Farooq A. Kperogi is a Ph.D. student in Communication at Georgia State University, Atlanta. He completed his M.S. in Communication at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and his B.A. in Mass Communication at the Bayero University, Kano, in Nigeria. He worked as a staff writer for a Nigerian weekly newsmagazine, as a reporter and later news editor for many Nigerian newspapers, as a researcher in a unit of the Nigerian Presidency called the Presidential Research and Communications Unit, and as a news writing instructor at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in Nigeria. His research interests, which are perpetually evolving, are new media; the intersection among media, religion, and national identity construction; and Diasporic identities in cyberspace. His chapter on Nigerian 419 e-mails, coauthored with About the Contributors 291 Dr. Duhé, is a small portion of his M.S. thesis, which explores the linguistic, rhetorical, and sociohistorical singularities that underpin the discursive practices of the scam e-mails. It lays bare the form and essence of the e-mails, illuminates their grammar of deception, and constructs a prototype of their discourse patterns. He can be reached at farooqkperogi@gmail.com. Leonie Naughton, Ph.D., is a Fellow in Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Author of That Was the Wild East: Unification, Film Culture, and the “New” Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), her work has been published widely in Australia and the United States, and is in translation throughout Europe. Her e-mail is leonienaughton@ozemail...