It doesn’t really matter to me what the survey is about. The survey has two fatal flaws:

1. It uses clickbait marketing tactics to try to reach me.
2. It purports to compensate me by offering me a chance to win a gift card.

Both of these strategies are insulting and, inasmuch as “professionalism” means anything whatsoever, unprofessional.

Literature review: Clickbait is just a bunch of clichés, normally used in titles, that seek to generate phony desires to become a reader of some online article. The standard emotional logic is about generating a feeling of missing out or an epistemic lack — “XYZ happened, you’ll never guess what happened next!”

Here, then, are some phrases used in the survey messages that I consider clickbait: “Don’t miss your chance to take part,” “We have not heard from you yet!”, “AAA needs your help!”, “Please watch your inbox”…

It’s as if they want me to believe that there was an actual personal relationship here and not just the nth request to provide data to an organization that gouges its members on fees and rents its journal portfolio to Wiley-Blackwell… Not to mention that instead of just sending me one email about this survey, they sent me three.

This takes us right into spam territory. Listen, if I’d wanted to participate, I would have. Show some respect for my time and attention.

The question of respect brings me to the atrocious gift card lottery that is supposed to incentivize/compensate for my participation.

Look, we’re (ostensibly) professional social scientists here. That makes us experts in how to compensate people fairly for participation in research. If a student of mine proposed to compensate their research participants by giving each of them a lottery ticket, I would explain that that was ridiculous. But giving out a chance to win a gift card — which is exactly the same thing as giving me a lottery ticket, from my perspective as the recipient — is somehow considered appropriate in many university and scholarly contexts.

Back when I was in grad school, for instance, this was how the student health services people tried to get me to click on their survey link:

As an expression of our appreciation for your time and input, all students who complete the survey will be entered into a random drawing with a chance to win one of the following prizes:
1st prize – (1) iPad mini, 64GB tablet with Retina display (mfsr $599)
2nd prize – (1) Kindle Paperwhite 6″ reader (mfsr $139)
3rd prize – (10) $25 gift certificates at the University Bookstore

My disciplinary association, by contrast, is considerably more frugal:

In appreciation for your time, you will have the opportunity to enter a drawing for a chance to win one of ten $25 Gift Cards.

Let’s suppose there are 10,000 members (source) — $250 total in gift cards divided by 10,000 comes out to $0.025 per member.

So basically we are getting a little message here about what our time and attention is worth: 2.5 cents is considered is a fair average rate for survey-completion services.

Now they also mention that the survey should take five minutes to complete. From this, we can calculate the hourly rate that the AAA considers fair compensation for survey participation.

$0.025/5min = $0.005/min
$0.005/min * 60 min/hr = $0.30/hr

So here you have it, everybody: for our professional time and energy in contributing to the statistical data banks of our disciplinary association, we are being compensated at thirty cents per hour. That’s just slightly more than 4% of the current U.S. federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr).

At this point, it would be less insulting just to ask the research participants to participate gratis.

But this brings me to my real thought about this. Governance by survey is not a satisfactory form of participatory democracy. And it’s not fair to force a group of increasingly precarious professionals to pay a large annual tax to a disciplinary association that fundamentally has no form of participatory governance.

The word for what they do is rent-seeking.

And it is precisely because my disciplinary association is a large, opaque and self-interested entity, seeking primarily to reproduce itself as an organization rather than to help its members, that it resorts to this sort of casino-consumerist substitute for participatory input. It’s bad social science and it’s bad democracy. The irony, however, is lost on the organizers.

Here’s what the policy says:

Want to comment? Please be aware that only comments from current AAA members will be approved. AN is supported by member dues, so discussions on anthropology-news.org are moderated to ensure that current members are commenting. As with all AN content, comments reflect the views of the person who submitted the comment only. The approval of a comment to go live does not signify endorsement by AN or the AAA.

On the one hand, this only means that anthropologists who can’t afford the Association’s exorbitant annual dues are going to be further excluded from the Association’s public forums. (There are rumors that many anthropologists only pay the annual dues in years when they are attending the Annual Meetings, because otherwise membership confers few useful benefits.) I am certain that no one is going to be incentivized to join the AAA merely to write a comment on this site, which implies that policy constitutes a harmful form of economic exclusion within the profession without any identifiable upside.

But on the other hand — and even more importantly — this commenting policy just further emphasizes the Association’s paleolithic relationship to technology (cf. their latest tech fail), and in particular their weak grasp on the culture of web publicity. Websites like AN are public spaces. There are cultural norms about how online discussions work in such spaces. It flagrantly disrespects these norms to provide public commenting facilities — as on any blog-like site — and then to deliberately reject all comments by non-dues-paying members.

To be clear: you don’t charge people cash to comment on your articles, because they are already giving you something for free by writing their comments. To comment is to contribute. To comment is to create a space of exchange where otherwise you just have a one-way transmission into the digital void. It’s fair to ask people to create accounts before commenting, to cut down on abuse, but there’s little precedent for making it into a cash transaction.

If you want to have members-only web forums, the generic convention is to hide them behind a login screen for members, instead of coupling a public comment box to an anti-public message. Thus the current policy is both hostile to the digital public and out of touch with web culture.

In any event, it is a curious document. Here it is as of March 2016; I’ll highlight a few important passages.

Disclaimer and Waiver

As a condition of my participation in this meeting or event, I hereby waive any claim I may have against the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and its officers, directors, employees, or agents, or against the presenters or speakers, for reliance on any information presented and release AAA from and against any and all liability for damage or injury that may arise from my participation or attendance at the program. I further understand and agree that all property rights in the material presented, including common law copyright, are expressly reserved to the presenter or speaker or to AAA.

I acknowledge that participation in AAA events and activities brings some risk and I do hereby assume responsibility for my own well-being. If another individual participates in my place per AAA transfer policy, the new registrant agrees to this disclaimer and waiver by default of transfer.

AAA intends to take photographs and video of this event for use in AAA news and promotional material, in print, electronic and other media, including the AAA website. By participating in this event, I grant AAA the right to use any image, photograph, voice or likeness, without limitation, in its promotional materials and publicity efforts without compensation. All media become the property of AAA. Media may be displayed, distributed or used by AAA for any purpose.

By registering for this event, I agree to the collection, use, and disclosure of contact and demographic information. This information includes any information that identifies me personally (e.g. name, address, email address, phone number, etc.). AAA will use this information to: (a) enable your event registration; (b) review, evaluate and administer scholarships or other AAA initiatives; (c) market AAA opportunities you may potentially be interested in; and to (d) share limited information (e.g. title, company, address and demographic information) with third parties that perform services on behalf of AAA. AAA does not distribute email address or phone numbers to third parties or partners performing services on behalf of AAA. AAA may use this information for so long as AAA remains active in conducting any of the above purposes.

The bold points all seem to raise some questions:

• The passage explaining who owns/has copyright on the presentations is quite ambiguous. Copyright is reserved “to the presenter… or to AAA” — but which is it? Surely no one intends to contemplate giving the AAA any rights to their intellectual production, merely by virtue of giving a conference talk.
• The AAA requests that participants “assume responsibility for their own well-being.” But if some harm were to befall a participant at an AAA event, surely it would require actual investigation to ascertain the circumstances and allocate responsibilty, would it not? If, let’s say, the conference venue turns out to be unsafe in some fashion, surely that is not a priori the participants’ sole responsibility? The clause about responsibility is quite vague, but surely questions of legal liability for participants’ safety are something to be settled as they arise, rather than by this one-sided contract?
• The AAA seems to be treating us as potential marketing opportunities, which is frustrating because it seems to reinforce the overall “they are a corporation, we are consumers of services” framework. That’s not the framework I would prefer to see underlying a scholarly association. (And it’s shady to say, “Well you have no grounds to complain about our marketing tactics, because you did agree to this waiver.”)
• Finally and most importantly, the unlimited license to use photographs and other recordings is absolutely scandalous. It should go without saying that there are any number of circumstances why someone might want to participate in a scholarly meeting without having their picture splashed across the internet, ranging from cases of sexual harassment and stalking, to political activists who need privacy, to cultures with specific norms about controlling one’s likeness. A blanket license to take photographs, while advantageous to the association, is utterly anthropologically insensitive. They ought to have to ask for permission on a case-by-case basis (cf. informed consent in research).

These concerns seem in turn to raise some obvious (meta)procedural concerns. Who wrote this document? Who enforces it? How is it used in practice? Who reviewed it and signed off on it? I would be interested in knowing if any other scholarly associations have similar protocols, and if so, what their history is.

So here’s my question for you (assuming there are still people who have this blog in their blog readers): What is your assessment of the state of faculty democracy, in your personal experience? How would you describe the balance of power in your own institutions? What cases do you think are worth talking about? And what, if anything, do you think is worth reading on the topic?

Write a word in the comments, and we’ll see what we can collectively come up with!