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  • 14.08.2020 07:14 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Internet Histories

    Deadline: September 1, 2020

    Muira McCammon and Jessa Lingel at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication are seeking abstracts for a forthcoming co-edited special issue with  Internet Histories. Details are below. Please note that if authors' abstracts are accepted and if their papers make it through the peer review process, no payment will be expected; there are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated with this special issue.

    What follows is a summary of the call, which can also be found at the following link: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/…ms/

    Rationale & Motivation

    This special issue explores internet histories through the lens of “platform death” as a way of understanding how digital communities grapple with absence, invisibility, and disappearance. Collectively, the contributions in this issue will address the cultural, geopolitical, economic, and socio-legal repercussions of what happens when various corners of the Internet fail, decline, or expire. As a point of departure, we assume that platforms can bring together a wide set of actors, from politicians to parents, teens to technologists, spies to free speech activists; they can serve as a stage where people gather, argue, develop personal relationships, and jockey for divergent futures (Marvin, 1988; Pearce, 2011; Baym, 2015; Lee, 2017; Gillepsie, 2018).

    But what becomes of platforms when they fade, fail, or fall from publi  favor? What can dead and dying platforms tell us about the internet’s growth and stagnation, its present and futures? We seek to complicate, document, and build on the narratives of platform change, collapse, death, precarity, and frailty that scholars (Gehl, 2012; Chun, 2016; Belleflamme & Neysen, 2017; Gomez-Meijia, 2018; Helmond & van der Vlist, 2019) and tech journalists (Kircher, 2016) have highlighted over the past two decades.

    Recent scholarship has focused on the rise and resilience of certain tech enterprises, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter (e.g. Burgess & Green, 2009; Vaidhyanathan, 2018; Jackson, Bailey, & Foucault Welles, 2020), but much of this research has privileged big platforms over the small, surviving digital communities over the dead, and Silicon Valley-born-and-bred design thinking over that birthed outside tech hot spots. Studies imagining the demise of Big Tech platforms (Ohman & Aggarwal, 2019) and tracing consumer resistance to digital media (Katz & Aspden, 1998; Portwood-Stacer, 2013) have largely ignored both the values and frailties of Small Tech in great depth. While historical and contemporary research has addressed the themes of digital departure (Wyatt, 1999; Baumer et al., 2013), disappearing mediums (Gehl, 2012; Suominen et al., 2013; Ballatore & Natale, 2016), and user mortality (Leaver, 2013), it has largely left the theme of “platform death” to the wayside. Another key absence in this literature is attention to platforms and communities outside the U.S. and Europe.

    With the above gaps in the literature in mind, the impetus for this special issue came from a forthcoming panel in the Communication History Division at the May 2020 International Communication Association’s Annual Conference, “Dead and Dying Platforms: The Poetics, Politics, and Perils of Internet History.” When organizing the panel, over 20 different scholars in six countries writing on the histories of specific, bounded platforms expressed interest. Though not all could be included in the final panel, many articulated a desire to contribute to a special issue, such as this one, focusing on the promises and perils of single platforms through the lens of Internet history. This special issue seeks to bring together diverse thinkers and scholars with expertise in a range of dead and dying platforms.

    Description of CFP Procedure

    We aim to bring together contributors active in the fields of history, communication, media studies, law, economics, psychology, internet studies, library and information science, queer theory, journalism studies, and related scholarly domains. The topic of contributions may include, but are not limited to:

    * The rise and fall of specific platforms, including discussions on the challenges, factors, and policies responsible for their decline – and rebirth.

    * Archival techniques and theoretical frameworks for resurrecting and reimagining dead platforms

    * Comparative investigations of platform precarity

    * Explorations of the laws, economic forces, and social trends that underlie the historical analysis of platforms that have survived to the present day

    * Memory narratives and counter-narratives of platform users, designers, and advertisers

    * Media refusal, disconnection and techno-skepticism

    * The offline repercussions and cultural reverberations of platform death

    * Rhetorics and metaphors of the describe platform death and failures of platform governance (i.e. kill switches)

    * The ethnographies, pre-histories, and afterlives of dying digital communities

    * Quantitative and qualitative methodologies that can operationalize platform collapse

    * Interconnections between the frailties of Small Tech and the failures of Big Tech

    * Ways in which the rise and fall of certain platforms are geographically asymmetrical and asynchronous

    * Media change, materiality, everyday experience, and nostalgia

    * The ontological and epistemological challenges of considering platforms as dead, dying, or alive

    * Historiographies of platforms created, used, and/or dismantled outside the United States

    * Studies of platforms whose deaths have not received significant Anglophone press coverage

    * Analysis of the implications of platform death for international and global discussions of Internet pasts and futures

    Although papers do need to be written in English, we especially welcome writing that explores platforms whose histories are rooted in understudied countries, areas, cultures, and digital communities. We particularly encourage submissions about platforms launched, used and/or remembered outside of Silicon Valley.

    Submissions & Time Schedule

    Abstracts (500 words maximum) should be emailed to deadplatforms@gmail.com by September 1, 2020. Any questions about the CFP can be sent to the co-editors, Muira McCammon (muira.mccammon@asc.upenn.edu ) and Jessa Lingel (jessa.lingel@asc.upenn.edu). Notification about acceptance to submit an article will be sent out by 1 October 2020. Authors of accepted abstracts are invited to submit an article by 1 February 2021.

    Final versions or articles are asked to keep within a 6,000 word limit.

    Please note that acceptance of abstract does not ensure final publication as all articles must go through the journal’s usual peer review process.

    — 1 Sep 2020: due date for abstracts

    — 1 Oct 2020: notification of acceptance

    — 1 Feb 2021: accepted articles to be submitted for review

    — Feb 2021-May 2021: review process and revisions

  • 14.08.2020 07:09 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    November 19-20, 2020

    Virtual conference (hosted by Malmö University, Sweden)

    Deadline: August 15, 2020

    https://mau.se/…ty/

    Notification of acceptance: 1 September 2020

    The Artificial Creativity conference aims to stir a discussion about the cultural, societal and ethical aspects of artworks featuring A.I. or robots engaged in creative production.

    We encourage submissions regarding ongoing research about creative embodied robots (i.e. robotic systems that use physical brushes, pencils, etc. to make their artefacts), but do welcome any inquiries concerning the use of A.I. and deep learning in the production of novel artefacts. The notion of a "robotic system" above may include different types of embodied agents such as an appropriated industrial arm, swarm, drone, etc.

    We also welcome submissions that critically challenge contested terms, such as "creativity", "artificial intelligence" and our playful conference title "artificial creativity".

    Possible topics include but are not limited to:

    • Creative robotics and/or A.I.
    • Ethical questions regarding authorship in computational art
    • The analysis of media discourses about creative A.I.
    • Human-robot collaboration in the process of cultural production
    • Robots and performative arts
    • Cultural imaginaries about creative artificial agents
    • Design approaches to creative robotics

    The keynote speakers are: Professor Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths University, UK), Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany), and Professor Mark Amerika (University of Colorado, US).

    The online conference will feature a virtual exhibition supported by Mozilla’s Hubs. Amongst other content, the exhibition will feature the latest works of the artist Justine Emard (France).

    The call for abstracts invites researchers from different areas of expertise, including but not limited to: creative arts research, humanities, human-robot interaction (HRI), art history, media and communication, ethics of technology, design anthropology, social sciences, gender studies, posthumanism, voice interface design, and science and technology studies (STS).

    The discussion around the Artificial Creativity theme will continue in a special issue in Transformations, an open access peer-reviewed journal, in 2021.

    Please submit a 500-word abstract (excluding references) to Dr. Bojana

    Romic: bojana.romic@mau.se before 15 August 2020.

    Please include:

    • The name(s) of the author(s)
    • The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s)
    • The e-mail address, and telephone number(s) of the corresponding author
    • Your time zone

    If using any pictures in your abstract, please do not include more than three. If you are experimenting with creative A.I. or robots and want to include some recordings to our virtual exhibition, please indicate that in the abstract. This, however, will not be a criterion for acceptance.

    The notification of acceptance is 1 September 2020.

    The Artificial Creativity conference is free of charge for all participants. It is hosted by the research lab Medea, School of Arts and Communication, and the Data Society research programme – all at Malmö University, Sweden. The conference has received generous support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden.

  • 14.08.2020 07:04 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    AnthroVision Journal special issue

    Deadline: September 7, 2020

    https://journals.openedition.org/…on/

    The AnthroVision Journal special issue on “Computer Vision” explores design, co-creation, and labour with image recognition technologies, and the shifting ontologies between knowledge and the senses using new digital tools. What methodological frameworks are there for anthropologists to work alongside engineers, designers and other professionals? We are seeking papers dealing with such issues, as well as, on the conditions of immaterial labour to create training sets.— Based off "Training Humans" by Dr. Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, the current practices for creating training sets for computer vision AI harkens back to the colonial era of anthropology: systems-based interpretations of discrete cultures and the positivistic apparatus of observational film. In particular, people of color, migrants, and low-wage workers are the most vulnerable targets of this visual taxonomy.

    Furthermore, platforms for training computer vision, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, are exploitative. Workers, based mainly in the global south, have just seconds to analyze each image in order to work at a pace that can profit them. This complicates the multi-sited entanglements of subjugation and exploitation between the observer and observed, laying the ground for examining the interrelations of epistemology, labour and AI bias.—How can anthropologists articulate ethical issues between knowledge formation, scientific institutions and neoliberalism. How do anthropologists find reflexive modes of analysis? Where are possibilities for future interventions?

    Send abstract to :

    jielianglin821(at)gmail.com

    and nadinewanono(at)gmail.com

    Abstract Deadline: Monday, September 7th.

    Abstract length: 500 words.

    Essay length: 6-7000 words

    https://journals.openedition.org/…ons

    Access and Licensing

    Publication in open access

    Publication costs

    Publication fees: no

    Submission fees: no

  • 14.08.2020 07:00 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Coventry University

    The Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) at Coventry University invites Expressions of Interest from prospective PhD students, with view to a starting date of September 2021 (submission deadline is Wednesday 30th September 2020): https://www.coventry.ac.uk/…es/.

    We are offering to support the development of PhD proposals for the AHRC M4C (Midlands 4 Cities) consortium fully funded bursary scheme (https://www.midlands4cities.ac.uk/…spx).

    These prestigious, competitive studentships offer a fee waiver and a maintenance grant for 3.5 years (full time) or 7 years (part time), as well as access to unparalleled training, additional funding and networking opportunities.

    Although we will support the development of your proposal we cannot guarantee your success. All applications are assessed by the consortium committee and it is a highly competitive process.

    You will need to make an application for PhD study via the Coventry University platform PGR+ (https://pgrplus.coventry.ac.uk/).

    In the section for the research proposal please state that this is an ‘EOI for M4C Studentship at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures’.

    * 1000 words (max) statement providing a short description of your planned PhD project, including key bibliographical/artistic references;

    * 500 words (max) explaining why you would like to do your PhD at the CPC (potential supervisory team members that might have attracted you to our Faculty Research Centre);

    * 500 words (max) resume, detailing your background (be it academic, professional, or both) and explaining why it is relevant to this project.

    In case you have previous experience which you deem relevant to the project (publications, artworks, etc), please feel free to add your CV and images of your work, if appropriate.

    Please note that the submission deadline is Wednesday 30th September 2020.

    The Centre for Postdigital Cultures

    The CPC investigates alternative forms for society in the 21st century. Exploring issues of collaboration, community, and the commons, the Centre facilitates new articulations of culture that call for a radical rethinking of the relationship between the human, technology, economy and the environment. Along with conventional arts and humanities methods, we support PhD projects adopting a range of mixed methods, including various practice-orientated methodologies, visual argumentation, case studies and ethnography.

    We encourage applications from suitably qualified candidates keen on developing a doctoral research in any of the following research areas:

    * Digital Arts, Humanities and Posthumanities

    * Affirmative Disruption and Open Media

    * Data Cities and the Politics of Care

    * Art, Space and the City

    * Immersive Cultures and International Heritage

    * AI and Algorithmic Cultures

    Further information about the Centre and our staff are available on our website (https://www.coventry.ac.uk/…es/).

    For an overview of our PGR offer please see our Study With Us pages (https://www.coventry.ac.uk/…dc/).

    Prospective PGRs are eligible for this studentship if based in the UK or EU and if they have an MA qualification (or nearing completion), or relevant professional experience.

    Please note that candidates who do not meet the eligibility criteria for M4C PhD funding scheme, but who are interested in PhD study at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, are encouraged to contact Prof. Mel Jordan (mel.jordan@coventry.ac.uk) and Dr. Miriam De Rosa (miriam.derosa@coventry.ac.uk). We welcome applications from all sectors of the community and we encourage those currently under-represented in the Centre to apply.

  • 14.08.2020 06:57 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    IT University in Copenhagen

    Extended deadline for application: now September 15, 2020*

    At the IT University in Copenhagen, a position as Assistant or Associate Professor in Digital Data Analysis and Computational User Studies is available. International applicants are very welcome to apply.

    The candidate should have a relevant background in computational social science methods, digital data analysis and quantitative methods applied to digital user studies. Moreover, strong qualifications in computational research methods applied to the analysis and design of digital platforms and interactive technologies or relevant experience in data-aware design are important for this position. To be considered, candidates should be able to demonstrate research and teaching qualifications in two or more of the following areas:

    - Computational methods applied to the understanding of digital platforms and users’ practices

    - Data visualization and visual data exploration

    - Digital social sciences applied to online platforms

    - Data-aware design and data analytics applied to the design of digital technologies

    At the Digital Design Department, we have a broad understanding of digital technologies and digital platforms. In the context of this position, we seek candidates who have strong interest and experience in working with an interdisciplinary approach. We seek candidates who use digital technologies and computational methods to investigate online societal and human dynamics.

    A good candidate is someone who is interested in people and their interplay with digital technologies but also motivated to describe the impacts and consequences digitalization may have on society at large. She/he is also interested in the intersection of data and design and in strengthening the computational research carried out within the Digital Platforms and Data research group.

    For full position announcement, please see: https://candidate.hr-manager.net/…d=5

  • 14.08.2020 06:55 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Freie Universität Berlin

    We are looking for a post-doc (100% TV-13 L) to work in a project on the reception and acceptance of COVID-related public information despite polarization. Design and run a three-wave panel survey with experimental modules with us! The contract will run until 31.12.2021. The position is situated at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science at the Free University in Berlin. Very good knowledge of German and experience in survey research are required.

    Deadline: August 31, 2020

    31.08.2020.

    https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/polwiss/forschung/systeme/empsoz/news/stellenausschreibung_rapid-covid.html

    Please feel free to contact: David Schieferdecker (d.schieferdecker@fu-berlin.de)

  • 14.08.2020 06:53 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Teaching Media Quarterly

    Deadline: October 6, 2020

    Since the global pandemic altered higher education as we once knew it, academic institutions have called upon instructors to transform face-to-face courses into effective remote learning experiences--often with very little guidance and, for so many contingent faculty, by dint of unpaid and precarious labor. Like instructors in other fields, media instructors are often left on their own to sift through their experiences and research to decipher what methods are best, all while managing challenges of living, let alone working, during a pandemic. Yet media instructors have also long made pedagogical use of the affordances of media technologies--digital and otherwise--which places us in a unique position as we adjust to hybrid, remote and online teaching.

    Teaching Media Quarterly is seeking submissions of lesson plans not only to address the dearth of published resources for online and remote critical media education but also to provide a platform to celebrate and share the excellent pedagogical work happening within our field as we adapt to the pandemic era. The editorial board is interested in lesson plans addressing questions such as the following: How are you adjusting critical media content for remote and online learning? What activities--synchronous and/or asynchronous--have you developed to engage students during this time? How are you supporting research remotely? Facilitating discussion and group activities online? What lessons and activities have you developed to cope with the digital divide among students? How are you addressing the politics of the pandemic in your critical media courses?

  • 14.08.2020 06:49 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    November 6-7, 2020

    Rhode Island, Rhode Island (USA)

    Deadline: September 7, 2020

    While we are in the midst of the global health pandemic, with the consequent economic crisis and increased calls for social justice, the Northeast Media Literacy Conference would like to invite the media education community to submit academic presentations on the effect of the pandemic on best practices as well as the impact of the physical isolation and remote engagement on the future of media education.

    We define media education as including any learning process (formal/informal/connected learning/third space) that involves either analyzing media or/and producing media. In contrast to educational technology, online or blended learning, we look for proposals highlighting the process of media practice to enhance learners’ abilities to access information and tools; analyze media representation, revealing the power dynamics behind systems, structures and concepts; create meaningful media messages; reflect on media use; be socially responsible and advance society toward the common good.

    We welcome proposals, using qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, and critical cultural approaches, from multidisciplinary educators around the world who have experience in teaching media education during this pandemic. Following a peer reviewed process, the accepted proposals will be scheduled to engage in a real time video conference presentation as an intercultural dialogue. The dialogue would be the basis of a larger discussion at the conference regarding the future of media education as a result of the pandemic. Presenters will be encouraged to submit full papers as chapter proposals (4,000-6,000 words including references using APA style) of an upcoming edited book. All submissions must be original work and have not been previously published. (Note: acceptance to the conference does not guarantee acceptance as a chapter for the edited book).

    To submit a proposal, please complete this proposal by September 7. Notifications will be sent by October 1. If you have any questions or would like to brainstorm an idea, feel free to reach out to the associate editors:

    Usha Raman, University of Hyderabad, India usharaman@uohyd.ac.in

    Igor Kanižaj, University of Zagreb, Croatia ikanizaj@fpzg.hr

    Grace Choi, Columbia College Chicago, U.S.A. grchoi@colum.edu

    For more information: http://www.northeastmedialit.com/

  • 14.08.2020 06:45 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Frontiers in Communication

    Deadline: October 10, 2020

    https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/15553/evidence-based-science-communication-in-the-covid-19-era

    For science communication to be effective and inclusive, we need to understand and apply what works and why. Decades of social and behavioural science research provides us with a breadth of relevant evidence, alongside decades of lessons learned from experimenting with certain approaches in practice.

    The coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 was a drastic reminder about the importance of science communication. Policy-makers and researchers, communication practitioners and affected citizens have seen that measures to contain the spread of the virus will only be socially accepted if the communication between such stakeholders is effective. Weighing economic interests against public health concerns, and safety issues against data privacy concerns, has required regulatory trade-offs under conditions that have been described as ‘post normal science’. That is, the situation has called for urgent decisions with values in dispute while the stakes are high and facts uncertain.

    These reflections are deeply embedded in the bigger picture of discussing the overall goals and taken-for-granted practices of science communication. In particular, the pandemic has provided a stark reminder of how important it is for science communication to more effectively put public interests at the heart of how scientific knowledge is produced, shared, and applied.

    Initiatives such as the "Science of Science Communication" (SOSC, https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23674/communicating-science-effectively-a-research-agenda) and "Evidence-based Science Communication" (EBSC, https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00078) aim to combine professional experience from practice with the best available evidence from systematic social research, suggesting ways to address research/practice disconnects. Submissions will be expected to explicitly engage with specific aspects of the arguments/findings presented in SOSC and/or EBSC publications (with quotations/citations for particular aspects).

    This Research Topic will address questions associated with the development and application of SOSC and EBSC in two consecutive Research Topics. This first Research Topic provides a space for theoretical, conceptual and methodological challenges and solutions to be discussed. A second Research Topic, coming soon, will gather together case studies and synthesis reviews of SOSC and EBSC in action. Contributions to the first series of articles (the ‘Debate’) are particularly welcome on the following topics:

    • General conceptual aspects of effective knowledge exchange between research and practice
    • How issues of social inclusion (broadly defined, including dimensions such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, social class and intersectionality) can be addressed more effectively with SOSC/EBSC
    • How and why to effectively integrate theoretical or empirical evidence into practice
    • How science communication research can effectively address evidence needs that are being encountered in practice, including reviews or commentaries highlighting research gaps from a communication practice point of view
    • Ways of determining the practical relevance of different types of science communication evidence and advice, including the role of issues such as methodological rigor and generalizability
    • Systemic barriers to SOSC/EBSC such as closed access publishing and institutional competition criteria for career promotion
    • Models for co-creating evidence between science communication research and practice, such as funding schemes incentivising collaborative research
    • How evidence can be used to determine and compare the effectiveness of different activities in practice
    • How evidence can be used to reflect on, critically assess and compare established and potential communication goals
    • Arguments for / against integration of SOSC/EBSC within research funding programs, especially including those primarily aimed at natural, physical, engineering or medical sciences
    • Ways for research funding organisations to specify the communication goals for funded research projects and/or institutional funding, including monitoring of the compliance with these prescriptions
    • Arguments for / against (and ways to implement) research-funding organisations to determine and/or specify the communication competency among applicants, for instance by means of accreditation / certification
    • Reflection on a potential lack of methodological expertise in science communication to design robust social research, and the related implications
    • Opportunities and challenges for teaching and training of science communication, including the role of social science methods in curricula and the nature and extent to which evidence comprises the content of science communication curricula (as compared to anecdotal advice).

    The accepted abstracts will be shared among the authors of the special issue to encourage cross-references and collaboration.

    Learning from best practice: Contributions from science communication practitioners are particularly encouraged. We would highlight the submission option of 'Perspective' articles, which can be short (e.g. 500-700 words) and do not require academic citations.

    Submission Deadlines:

    Abstracts until 10 October 2020;

    invited manuscripts until 22 February 2021

  • 14.08.2020 06:40 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Stuart N. Brotman

    The COVID-19 pandemic has expanded the online world of work at home to record levels. Our most personal and confidential data is being collected from multiple digital devices and stored, disseminated, and sold to governments and commercial organizations, often without our knowledge, consent, or control. We are all now in privacy’s perfect storm, which includes recent efforts by the European Union and in the United States to set new legal boundaries. Stuart N. Brotman offers a thoughtful guide to achieving better digital privacy protection in these turbulent times.

    His book, Privacy’s Perfect Storm: Digital Policy for Post-Pandemic Times, is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939282489.

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