September 25-26, 2020

National Research University ‘Higher School of Economics’, Moscow, Russian Federation

Deadline: February 15, 2020

This conference provides a forum for researchers who seek to analyze, challenge, and rethink the concepts of “platform imperialism” in the age of hybrid warfare.

Basically, we are interested in the exchange of opinions on the following issues:

(1)The distribution of global power in terms of the domination over the global platform market by the West (predominantly, the US: e.g., Google, Facebook, Youtube) and control over regional platform markets by China (Baidu, QQ, etc.), Russia (VK, Yandex, etc.), Korea (Cyworld), and so on.

(2) The possibility of the stabilization of meanings (the propaganda of specific power narratives) by means of controlling digital platforms and of increasingly digitized "legacy media""; the possibility of control over the production of knowledge in the interests of those controlling digital markets (global and regional); and social consequences of the stabilization of global and regional hegemonic configurations.

(3) The possibility of resistance to hegemonic narratives by means of information wars, their hybridization, the destabilization/schizophrenization of stable meanings, and social consequences of these destabilizing developments.

Finally, it would be interesting to consider the following question:

(4) Do we really live in the age of digital/platform imperialism, or should we characterize the current state of globalization in alternative terms?

All theoretical perspectives are welcome; case studies comparing the representation of issues across platforms would be of particular interest.

Keynote speakers:

• Dr. Oliver Joseph Boyd-Barrett, Bowling Green State University, Ohio (USA)
• Dr. Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies (UK)
• Dr. David Miller, University of Bristol (UK)

The conference languages are English and Russian.

Abstracts of 250-300 words (excluding bibliography) of single papers should be sent by email as a Word document attachment to olga.baysha@colorado.edu .

Please include name, affiliation, email address and paper title in the body of the email.

Deadlines:

• February 15, 2020 – Deadline for submitting individual abstracts
• April 1, 2020 – Notification of papers acceptance

Queries about the conference and abstracts should be sent to Dr. Olga Baysha at olga.baysha@colorado.edu