Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Issues of information quality and authenticity continue to grow in both new media and traditional media contexts as editorial control diminishes and disintermediation becomes more commonplace. This presentation considers an approach to exploring the authenticity of information through the lens of Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology (SMM). If the nature of information is viewed as a process or product of dialogue, which begins with the dialogue between the observer/writer and his topic, then engaging information users in SMM’s disciplined dialogue, when considering the authenticity of information, may enable them to assemble authentic and coherent narratives from disparate and even conflicting voices.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Within this paper, I address the problematic of authenticity as a marker of cultural identity by addressing the social and historical constructions of authenticity. From these constructions, I reveal the different investments a group or an individual may have in regards to authenticity. For example, I speak to the differences between being an “authentic” and “inauthentic” member of a culture throughout my discussion of historical constructions of authenticity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper is based on 90 in-depth interviews with persons who have used psychiatric medications to treat anxiety, depression, or bi-polar disorder. While any drug has potential consequences for the identities of their users, we maintain that psychiatric medications are qualitatively different from other drugs. In contrast to other medications, psychotropic drugs have as their purpose the transformation of people’s moods, feelings, and perceptions. These drugs act on—perhaps even create— people’s consciousness and, by definition, therefore, have a profound effect on their identities. As such, we find psychiatric medication an especially useful case for considering the powerful intersection between medications and selves. In this article our attention is drawn to the kinds of self feelings that both arise from the use of psychiatric medications and, in turn, influence the course of drug taking. In the data sections we attend to four fundamental self concerns that were routinely discussed during our interviews. To a greater or lesser degree, taking psychiatric medications required all the respondents in this study to think about (1) whether or not they were ready to cross what they view as a significant identity boundary, (2) what it means to feel like oneself, (3) where to find one’s “authenticity,” and (4) how to shape a valued social self.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For amateur musicians, the first trip to an instrument store can be enlightening. For others the trip can be alienating. For those steeped in rock culture and comfortable with demonstrating their technical knowledge, the experience can be a chance to solidify and demonstrate their identities as authentic musicians. Yet for others with different experiences, such as playing privately, knowing more about hip-hop than rock, or having classical training on the guitar rather than emersion in the rock music practice, the experience can be a struggle to comprehend the language and interactions of the environment. Finding themselves in this position, these musicians may defer to others to perform, speak and choose in their place. My interest in this paper has to do with how musical categories and technological knowledge are performed in the everyday setting of the music store in ways that are politically charged, lending some people considerable voice, presence and legitimacy and rendering other people silent, back-grounded and inauthentic. Through participant observation of three musical instrument stores, I construct an ethnography of the gendered and raced dynamics of rock music as they are constructed around the technologies used to make it.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: “When it comes to being a part of hip hop in a black community, it still feels like I'm on the outside looking in,” explains Dropjaw, a white rapper from Chicago’s underground hip hop scene. “I have to almost prove something to everybody. To be respected as an MC and an artist by black people is more of a challenge.” This project was fueled by a single question: How do white rappers create and maintain authenticity when they are deemed inauthentic by the standards of hip hop culture? Using data from an interview-based ethnographic study of 25 white rappers from Chicago, this paper investigates the complex interplay between culture and authenticity. Though the term authenticity is used often in the culture literature, here the concept is unpacked to examine the actual social mechanisms at work. In doing so, this paper offers a more nuanced understanding how outsiders select and reject culture to create authentic identities and cultural objects.