Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communications


The Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communication (SSSMC) is intended to facilitate the international advancement of cross-disciplinary mobile communication studies. It is intended to serve as a resource and to support a network of scholarly research as to the social consequences of mobile communication.




Tuesday, July 29, 2014

CeDEM Asia 2014

CeDEM Asia 2014, December 4-5th, 2014, Hong Kong
Extended Submission Deadline August 10th, 2014

The International Conference on e-Democracy and Open Government Asia 2014 (CeDEM Asia 2014) aims to bring together researchers, policy-makers, industry professionals, and civil society activists to discuss the role of social and mobile media in the future of citizenship and governance, and to discuss ongoing research, best practices, and emerging topics that aim to shape the future of e-government, e-democracy and open government, in Asia and around the world.
CeDEM Asia 2014 will be held at the City University of Hong Kong on December 4-5, 2014. The submitted papers will be subjected to a double-blind peer-review and accepted papers will be published in the open access conference proceedings. CeDEM Asia is a spin-off event of the renowned international conference series on e-democracy and open government taking place annually since 2011 at the Centre for E-Governance at the Danube-University Krems, Austria.

For more information and submission instructions, please visit:
http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem-asia-14

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

City Labs Workshop

CFP:  City Labs Workshop, Barcelona, November 10th 2014

In conjunction with the International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo 2014)
http://ibm.co/1j08AeL

IMPORTANT DATES
Paper submission deadline: Sept 22, 2014
Paper acceptance notifications: Oct 1, 2014
Camera Ready: Oct 5, 2014
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Social media and digital traces from sensor such as smartcards and mobile phones have played a key role in providing insights into people's activities, opinions and day-to-day lives. These detailed user-generated information streams offer a unique opportunity for cities to understand and engage their citizens. The research domain of smarter cities aims to monitor disruptive events (e.g., emergencies, Olympics), analyze social behaviour, identify citizens' sentiment and understand their interactions with services. On the other side, cities can use their understanding of the citizen to foster stronger relationships with the diverse communities in their constituencies. This understanding could be applied to mobilize people on important issues such as education, health care, political engagement and community awareness. Also, new digital fabrication tools have been recently used to generate adoptable, dynamic and interactive architecture able to evolve together with urban dwellers, and it has been shown that new Internet-of-Things devices could effectively capture physical observations to understand how cities and urban centers work. As a result, cities now provide a living lab where applied research can be carried out to understand citizen and services with a focus on collaborative, user-centred design and co-creation.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss and explore the research challenges and opportunities in applying the pervasive and social computing paradigm to understand cities. We are seeking multidisciplinary contributions that reveal interesting aspects about urban life and exploit the digital traces to create novel citizen-centric applications that benefit not only citizens, but also urban planners and policy makers. We believe this topic will attract researchers from communities ranging for computational science, to social science and urban design.

This workshop fosters discussions covering topics such as (but not limited to):
  • Use of social media to engage citizens, for example through gamification
  • Improving understanding of the city through mining social media
  • Disaster recovery and coordination using social media
  • Mobilizing the community through social media
  • Pervasive applications for user interaction and data collection
  • Enabling citizen and NGO initiatives through social media
  • Methodology for quality evaluation and validation of user generated content
  • Visualizations and interfaces to enable exploration of city data
  • Privacy and ethical concerns in citizen engagement
  • Internet of Things (IoT) for cities
  • Digital Fabrication tools for adaptable cities

SUBMISSIONS
In order to support submissions from various disciplines we will accept a number of options.
  • Long papers (no longer than 8 pages) and short papers (no longer than 4 pages) will be published along with the Springer proceedings of the conference.
  • Researchers wishing to submit to the conference but who do not wish to have their content published are welcome to submit position papers (no longer than 2 pages). These papers will not be published and therefore authors are free to submit this work elsewhere.
All contributions must be submitted as PDF format to the EasyChair submission system (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=citylabs2014). They should be formatted according to Springer LNCS paper formatting guidelines (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Elizabeth M. Daly, IBM Research, Ireland
Areti Markopoulou, IAAC/Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
Daniele Quercia, Yahoo Labs, Barcelona

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Anthony Townsend, New York University
Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Laboratory
Colin Ellard, University of Waterloo
Dani Villatoro, IIIA - CSIC
Ed Manley, University College London
Enrique Friasmartinez, Telefonica
Giovanni Quattrone, University College of London
José Luis De Vicente, CCCB
Josep Perelló, University of Barcelona
Mar Santamaria, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Marcus Foth, Queensland University of Technology
Michael Smyth, Edinburgh Napier University
Mirco Musolesi, University of Birmingham
Miriam Roure, MIT
Neal Lathia, University of Cambridge
Oleg Pachenkov, European University at St. Petersburg
Olga Subiros, CCCB
Prodromos Tsiavos, UCL/GFOSS
Ramon Riberafumaz, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Raz Schwartz, Cornell Tech NYC
Rosta Farzan, University of Pittsburgh
Sarah Gallacher, Intel Collaborative Research Institute
Sascha Haselmayer, Living Labs Global

Sunday, July 13, 2014

CFP: Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government CeDEM 2015

Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government CeDEM 2015 Call for Papers
20-22 May 2015

The international Conference for e-Democracy and Open Government (CeDEM) brings together e-democracy, e-participation and open government specialists working in academia, politics, government and business to critically analyse the innovations, issues, ideas and challenges in the networked societies of the digital age.

The Centre for E-Governance at the Danube University Krems has been organising conferences on e-democracy and public administration since 2007: the E-democracy Conferences began in 2007, and the CeDEM, first presented in 2011, represents the development and continuation of the conference series. The CeDEM is also held biennially inAsia.

Papers are peer-reviewed in a double-blind process and, if accepted, published in the conference proceedings and are also available online according to Open Access principles. Workshops proposals, PhD colloquium papers and reflections that have been submitted and selected by the chairs are also published in the paper and online proceedings. Authors of the best peer-reviewed papers will be asked to re-submit their revised and extended papers for the autumn issue of the Centre for E-Governance’s Open Access eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government (www.jedem.org).

Since 2014, the CeDEM conference presents the author/s of the best paper with the “CeDEM Best Paper Award”. Papers are nominated for this award by the reviewers during the peer-review process, the best paper is then selected by the CeDEM’s track directors.

The CeDEM offers a PhD Colloquium in cooperation with the Danube University Krems’ Platform for Political Communication and netPOL (www.netpol.at). The PhD Colloquium provides PhD students the opportunity to present their work and gain feedback from experts as well as meet other PhD students. Students from any stage of their PhD are invited to submit their work and invited to apply for the “CeDEM PhD Colloquium Grant”.

The CeDEM also provides an Open Space, where participants can democratically choose and organise in a barcamp style their own presentations, workshops, birds of a feather, events, meetings etc..

Important Dates
  • Deadline for the submission of full papers, workshop proposals, reflections: 8 December 2014
  • Notification of acceptance: 9 February 2015
  • Camera-ready paper submission: 2 March 2015
  • Conference: 20-22 May 2015


Submissions
We invite individuals from academic and applied backgrounds as well as business, public authorities, NGOs, NPOs and education institutions to submit papers, reflections as well as workshop proposals to the topics addressed in the tracks. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches to the conference topics.
  • Research papers: 12 pages maximum (double-blind peer-reviewed);
  • Case studies/Project papers: 12 pages maximum (double-blind peer-reviewed);
  • Reflections: 6 pages maximum (selected by the chairs);
  • Workshops: 4 pages maximum (selected by the chairs);
  • PhD Colloquium papers: 3 pages maximum (excluding literature list; selected by the track directors of the colloquium);


Conference Chairs
Noella Edelmann & Peter Parycek (Danube University Krems, AT)


CeDEM15 Tracks

Track: E-Democracy and E-Participation
Chairs: Elin Wihlborg (Linköping University, SE), Mauri Kaipainen (Södertörn University, SE),
The explosion of social media is fuelling new and unanticipated directions in e-democracy and e-participation - from increased pressure for direct democracy through to new drives to engage citizens in service and/or policy co-design, co-delivery and co-evaluation. This session will explore the latest trends and ongoing challenges facing this evolving field, trying to outline the emerging traits of a new model of inclusive e-governance for local/territorial and global/virtual communities. We welcome papers presenting case studies and papers with a more theoretical focus, but encourage in particular authors to combine them for challenges analyses and elaborations on further developments. Typical issues might be, but are not limited to:
  • Sustainability of e-participation and citizen engagement; best practices and key factors for success; motivational factors and the impact of participation;
  • Participatory and communication platforms; ICT for e-participation; mobile media and new forms of participation; applications for citizens;
  • Citizens and government interaction, business and government interaction; different perspectives held by citizens, government, NGOs, NPOs, practitioners, service providers;
  • Citizen inclusion and digital divide: gender, age, education, etc.;
  • New approaches to direct democracy, new forms of democracy enhanced by ICT;
  • Inclusive e-governance in the context of Regional Smart Specialisation;
  • Living Labs and Social Innovation;
  • E-participation and cooperation for development;
  • Business and e-participation;
  • Critical perspectives: wrongdoings, bad and worst experiences, hype but not reality, fringe groups;


Track: E-Voting
Chairs: Damian MacNamara (Dundalk Institute of Technology, IE)
Exploring a holistic approach to eVoting. Specifically, we aim to explore eVoting issues, gather perspectives and present practical solutions. Discussion of emerging technologies and their application to eVoting (kiosk and remote), often following outside-of-the-box thinking are particularly welcome:
  • Discussion of all forms of electronic voting: including, but not limited to, polling station, kiosk or remote voting by electronic means;
  • Interdisciplinary issues (e.g.  technology, law, politics and society) in the design and implementation of e-voting;
  • Presenting new ways of solving the voting paradigm: the unequivocal identification of the voter and the full anonymity of the vote;
  • Implementations, their legal, organisational and technical framework, project experiences;
  • Analysis of the interrelationship between the effects of e-voting on democratic institutions, processes and voter behaviour;
  • Conducting social and political analysis on the effects of electronic voting;
  • Practical experiences in implementing and conducting elections with electronic voting parts;
  • Discussion of security requirements and testing in accordance to international security standards i.e. Common Criteria or ITSEC;
  • Evaluation of e-voting: the effects and how to evaluate experiments;
  • Future trends;
  • Usability of e-voting: user interface evaluation and criteria for usability scales.


Track: Bottom-Up Movements
Chairs: Judith Schossböck (Danube University Krems, AT), Jakob Svensson (Uppsala University, SE)
Bottom-up, grassroot and social movements are increasingly using ICT and the internet to mobilise and coordinate their activities. This track looks at how new media facilitates, contrains, affords and influences
those movements, with particular view to collective action, peer production and new forms of activism in a networked society.
  • Online communities, innovation, bottom-up vs. top-down;
  • NGOs/NPOs in a connected society;
  • Online spaces for self-organisation and citizen engagement;
  • User generated content, peer production;
  • ICT and the revolutions: who are the good and the bad? The role of journalism, alternative media and the counter-public sphere;
  • Online activism, grassroots and their organization;
  • What happens after the online revolutions?


Track: Social and Mobile Media for Public Administration
Chairs: Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen (Danish Agency for Digitisation, DK), Peter Mambrey (University of Duisburg-Essen, DE)
Social Media integrate Web 2.0 technologies, content creation, and social interaction in the domain of Public Administration. It fosters innovations within the Public Administration to gain organizational benefits (reducing transaction costs, efficient dissemination, cooperative and cross-organizational work etc.) as well as communication and interaction towards the citizens (crowd sourcing including citizens, participatory budgeting, new online services, information campaigning etc.)
  • Social media and social networks in public administration and government: practical experiences, theoretical approaches, legal frameworks: country reports;
  • Information provision, new services, service delivery, and service quality;
  • Social media platforms and applications to foster the interaction between public administration and citizens: e-consultation, participatory budgeting, participatory city planning, online petitions;
  • Inclusion, accessibility, legal obstacles, do’s and don’ts, transparency and control: exploring the opportunities, risks and challenges of social media platforms and applications in the public administration.


Track: Open Collaborative Government
Chairs: Sylvia Archmann (EIPA, NL), Reinhard Riedl (Bern University of Applied Sciences, CH)
Collaboration across organizational boundaries can significantly increase the quality, the efficacy, and also the efficiency of government. However, it also faces many hindrances. In some situations the organizational reality reads "My agency is my castle". Particular objections exist against collaboration across different levels of government, and even more against collaboration between government and civil society or between government and industry. We are interested in research papers, which study the problems, present case studies, design innovation solutions, identify success and failure factors, or provide overviews of existing research results. Papers should highlight the role of information and communication technology, but they should equally discuss political, organizational, and/or cultural aspects.
Topics of interests include, but are not limited to:
  • Innovative collaboration platforms and tools;
  • The use of social media, collaboration, or decision making tools;
  • The implementation of cross-organizational collaboration or decision making processes;
  • Informal or formal collaboration between government and civil society, PPPs (private-public-partnerships), shared funding, etc.;
  • Evaluation methods for collaboration initiatives;
  • Success or failure criteria, empirical observations of success;


Track: Democracy, Globalization and Migration
Chairs: n.n.
This track focuses on democracies and democratic processes in an increasingly globalized world, clearly characterized by international migration. The following topics refer to different aspects of the complex interrelationships between democracy, globalization and migration being covered in this track:
  • Globalization and its impact on democracies and democratic processes
  • Impact of migration on democracies and democratic structures;
  • Metropolisation and democracies;
  • Transformation of political decision-making in a globalized world;
  • New political instruments in transnational settings (e.g. Open Method of Coordination);
  • Role of social media, e-participation, e-government for globalization and migration;
  • Migration and political participation in a globalized world;
  • The role of new media for democratic processes and political participation (e.g. „Arab Spring“ and the rise of democratic structures via Facebook);
  • Role of citizenship for globalization and migration processes;
  • Migration, globalization and the rise of nationalistic political movements;
  • Asylum, democracy and human rights;
  • Globalization and new media;


Track: Connected Smart City
Chair: Carolin Schröder (Technical University Berlin, DE), Julia Glidden (21c Consultancy UK), Norbert Kersting (University of Münster, DE)
This track provides a platform for the various living labs, initiatives and projects that work on or with concepts of "Smart Cities". It aims at sharing experiences as well as test results and to further investigate relations of innovative technologies and democratic societies.
Contributions are especially appreciated on the following topics: 
  • Becoming a smart city: Best practices, failures & practical challenges;
  • Successful technologies for encouraging citizen participation;
  • Successful technologies for integrating all dimensions of human, collective, and artificial intelligence within the city;
  • Smartness vs. Openness? Open data & Big data, Usability & Accessability, the internet of things and co-production;
  • Do smart cities need smart people? Relations of innovative technologies, democratic societies & concepts of "Smartness";


Track: Open Data, Transparency and Open Innovation
Chairs: Johann Höchtl (Danube University Krems, AT), Anneke Zuiderwijk (TU Delft, NL), Maximilian Heimstädt (Free University Berlin, DE)
Open data can provide a platform for many forms of democratic engagement: from enabling citizen scrutiny of governments, to supporting co-production of public data and services, or the emergence of innovative solutions to shared problems. This track will explore the opportunities and challenges for open data production, quality assurance, supply and use across different levels of governance. Key themes include:
  • Open data policy and politics: opportunities and challenges for governments; the global spread of open data policy; transparency and accountability, economic innovation, drivers for open data; benefits and challenges for developing countries
  • Licensing and legal issues: copyright vs. open licenses & creative commons; Freedom of Information and the ‘right to data’; information sharing and privacy.
  • Open data technologies: technical frameworks for data and meta-data; mash-ups; data formats, standards and APIs; integration into backend systems; data visualisation; data end-users and intermediaries;
  • Open innovation and co-production: open data enabled models of public service provision; government as a platform; making open data innovation sustainable; data and democracy; connecting open data and crowdsourcing; data and information literacy;
  • Evidence and impacts: costs and benefits of providing or using open data; emerging good practices; methods for open data research; empirical data measuring open data impacts.
  • Open data as a social movement: How can the global trend towards open data be conceptualized as a form of collective action? How do challengers and incumbents organize and change? How is the data branch embedded in the field of open movements?


Track: Technology and Architecture
Chairs: Vasily Bunakov (STFC Scientific Computing, UK), Keith Jeffery (Keith G Jeffery Consultants, UK), Maria Nikolova (New Bulgarian University, BG)
In the open government / democracy arena, the technology determines what is possible towards meeting the requirements and expectations of end-users. The technology provides capability for the end-user to find data, use data and publish data. It also provides capabilities for inter-user communication, discussion, decision-making and participation. The architecture ensures that the technology conforms to an overall plan so making it comfortable for the end-use to utilise across various purposes that users may have. The use cases and the evaluation of technology application provide justification for new technological developments as drivers of social change. Key themes of this track include:
  • Various technical issues and new technological developments; use cases for technology application;
  • Rights management, information law and relevant business models for operating technical solutions;
  • Information and knowledge modelling, standards and specifications that enable sensible information sharing, interpretation and use by citizens, governments and other parties;
  • Information management policies, business cases and architectures for the release of governmental, archival, cultural heritage, research and other public sector information in public domain;
  • Release of business information that is of a public interest (consumer behaviour, economical projections etc.): policy making and technical solutions for it;
  • How the technology or proposed system assists the end-users to meet their needs, enable their actions, or bring their attention to new ideas.


Track: Self-governance in Complex Networks
Chair: Josef Hörmandinger (Salzburger Landtag, AT)
Dirk Baeker and his model of media development as applied to the media and means of governance reach from the rule of law via social market economy to societal self-governance in the smart crowd. The prior medium is not outdated and disappears, but continues to exist and takes up the function of a support-pillar for thenew medium to work.
  • The function of "power" (Luhmann) vs. emergent decision making in the Democracy (McCarthy/Saitta);
  • Integration of "micro contributions" in the sense of "dialogue" (Vilém Flusser) into governance processes;
  • Integrating decisions made by society into the democratic process, e.g. balancing the call for more participation with the call for true representation in parliaments (participation-representation dichotomy), investigating new models of representation (Liquid D. Systemic Consenting) for their integrative potential;
  • How to make decision-making in nonlinear emergent systems society) smart AND legitimized;
  • "Feed-back-loops", within Viable Systems (Stafford Beer), their recurrence, contribution and meaning to the emergence of systems and the self-organization of society and political systems in the sense of "The Cybernetic State" (Javier Livas-Cantú);

Track: Rethinking Information Visualization for the People
Chairs: Michael Smuc (Danube University Krems, AT), Florian Windhager (Danube University Krems, AT)
From its early days to its current mass application as statistical charts or interactive infographics, information visualization has been striving for academic elaboration and the broadening of its target audiences. With specific regard to both of these aspects, the track is looking for contributions where information visualization meets political data and content in the public communication domain. Submissions may focus on case studies, evaluations, as well as conceptual or theoretical contributions on translational work between these fields (cf. Danziger, 2008; Zambrano & Engelhardt, 2008);
  • Optimization of representations to provide insights into complex subject matters;
  • Non-expert audiences, casual infovis contexts and strategies for visual literacy development;
  • Transparency of design choices for visual representations (cf. Doerk et al, 2013)
  • Developments in the emerging field of data journalism or other public communication domains;


Track: Freedom and Ethics in Digital Societies
Chair: Peter Kampits (Danube University Krems)
The promise of freedom of the internet has been broken by the public authorities. For quite a while the “internet” has not been taken seriously, because the consequences of its use have been regarded as harmless. The internet has now definitely stepped out from this harmless position. This track takes a closer look at the problem of security and freedom in the internet from an ethical point of view.
  • Technology and responsibility: rational technology assessment;
  • Internet: the enlargement or the illusion of freedom;
  • The power of the internet;
  • The disappearance of reality in the cyberspace;
  • Knowledge versus information;
  • From homo sapiens to homo digitalis;


Track: Design and Co-Creation for E-Democracy
Chairs: Bert Mulder (The Hague University of Applied Sciences, NL), Martijn Hartog (The Hague University of Applied Sciences, NL), Fiorella De Cindio (University of Milan, IT), Montathar Faraon (Södertörn University, SE)
Digital solutions for e-democracy have been developing for two decades. Although currently e-democratic solutions are often incidental, ad hoc and project based, it may be assumed that they will become pervasive with the on-going adoption of the Internet by citizens and governments. A functional e-democracy will not be supported by a single digital solution, but rather by a large number of difference e-democratic platforms and solutions. What is the character of such an ‘ecology’ of digital democratic solutions? What are its requirements and its architecture?
With growing adoption of e-democratic solutions the quality of design, the design process and the designer becomes a concern. Although several authors have been writing about design and democracy (notable Sclove and Bonsieppe) current developments requires wider attention and a more structural treatment. Are current design methods appropriate for all situations? Should designers of democratic solutions have a good context of the domain before designing their solutions? What are the competencies designers need when designing for democracy?
This track invites scientific authors, practitioners and professionals designers / developers to reflect on the strategic role of design for (e-)democracy by discussing design theories and methods for co-creation and e-democratic solutions:
  • Design theories, methods and frameworks for e-democracy and e-governance;
  • Designing qualities, processes and criteria;
  • Challenges of participatory and co-design;
  • The necessity of new competences for designers;


Track: Citizens’ Participation in Democratic Governance Processes through ICT in Africa
Chairs: Günther Schefbeck (Austrian Parliament, AT), Johnstone Baguma – Kumaraki (Toro Development Network, UG), Wilfred Warioba (Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance, TZ)
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offer concrete opportunities for local and national governments to improve their performance in terms of transparency, participation and decentralization (Guchteneire and Mlikota, 2008). Many other scholars globally, have echoed related statements previously. However, the greatest challenge is that many are anecdotal and coming across empirical case studies to support such conclusions becomes difficult. For instance, this track will present evidence-based experiences of ICT-enabled, citizen-led democratic engagements for good governance in the Eastern and Southern African regions. The track will provide more normative than positive knowledge to practitioners, public sector, service providers and academic researchers. With comparison to other initiatives in Africa and the developing world, submissions should focus, for example, on:
  • How simple, affordable, and cost effective ICT tools are used to activate and facilitate local citizens’ participation in governance issues;
  • Electronic virtual platforms for citizens’ participation and  e-participation;
  • Model discussions of how local citizens’-led advocacy forums, Voluntary Social Accountability Committees (VSACs), human rights networks and other initiatives in the region are using these platforms;
  • Initiatives that use the ICT tools convergence approach, that combine online social, broadcast media and mobile technology to mobilize local citizens for offline physical meetings, to democratically engage local and central government leaders;
  • Improving accountability for essential service delivery at the grassroot level;


Track: Open Access
Chair: Federico Morando (Nexa Center for Internet & Society, IT), n.n.
Open Access is a concept that applies to both scientific publications and other entities, including related scientific data, that are freely accessible and reusable. The Berlin Declaration, one of the milestones of the Open Access movement, states that Open Access contributions must satisfy two conditions: that “(...) a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works (...)” is granted by the author(s) and rights holder(s) of such contributions and that “A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (...)” supported by institutions that seek to enable “open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving”.
The track welcomes any innovative contribution concerning Open Access. The focus of the track, however, is on emerging models grounded on
cooperation, defragmentation of resources, knowledge sharing and non-rivalrous reuse of significant amounts of content, with the aim of paving the path toward the idea of a “networked science”. In particular, the track  welcomes papers on:
  • Robust methodologies that are able to provide empirical evidence about the benefits of Open Access;
  • Proposals concerning the use of open access repositories for innovative purposes, such as new forms of research assessment and evaluation;
  • Open scientific data, i.e., scientific data whose usage is unrestricted, or placed under use terms that guarantee the free access and reuse of data, possibly with some constraints on legal and ethical grounds (combining the Open Access and Open Data paradigms).


PhD Colloquium
Chairs: Peter Parycek (Danube University Krems, AT), Christina Hainzl (Danube University Krems, AT)
The CeDEM offers a PhD Colloquium in cooperation with the Danube University Krems’ Platform for Political Communication and netPOL (www.netpol.at). The Doctoral Colloquium provides PhD students the opportunity
to present their work and gain feedback from experts as well as meet other PhD students. Students from any stage of their PhD are invited to submit their work in relation to any of the conference topics.
PhD students can apply for a bursary. 

Friday, July 11, 2014

CFP: Connecting (Epistemic) Cultures and (Intellectual) Communities


Call for Papers and Participation

The 10th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium: Connecting (Epistemic) Cultures and (Intellectual) Communities

Sponsored by:  ASIS&T SIG Social Informatics and the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University

Saturday, November 1st, 2014, 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Sheraton, Seattle Hotel, Seattle Washington, USA

Organizers:

Pnina Fichman, Indiana University (fichman@indiana.edu<mailto:fichman@indiana.edu>)
Howard Rosenbaum, Indiana University (hrosenba@indiana.edu<mailto:hrosenba@indiana.edu>)
School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington

This year we are celebrating a decade of successful and vibrant SIG-SI Research Symposia. Since 2004, established scholars, young researchers and doctoral students interested in the study of people, ICT and work and play have gathered at the SIG-SI ASIS&T Annual Research Symposium to share their work and ideas. Approximately 100 papers, posters and panels have been presented and for the past three years, we have given awards for the best papers published by Social Informatics (SI) faculty and students in the preceding years. This year we gather to celebrate a decade of intellectually challenging and engaging work in SI and hope that you will join us. Our goal remains the same: to disseminate current research and research in progress that investigates the social aspects of information and communication technologies (ICT) across all areas of ASIS&T.

Building on the success of past years, the symposium includes members of many SIGs and defines “social” broadly to include critical and historical approaches as well as contemporary social analysis. It also defines “technology” broadly to include traditional technologies (i.e., paper), state-of-the-art computer systems, and mobile and pervasive devices. Submissions may include empirical, critical and theoretical work, as well as richly described practice cases and demonstrations.
We are particularly interested in work that assumes a critical stance towards the Symposium’s theme but are also soliciting research on other related social informatics topics. We encourage all scholars interested in social aspects of ICT (broadly defined) to share their research and research in progress by submitting an extended abstract of their work and attending the symposium. Papers that take social informatics further in theoretical conceptualization or empirical grounding are of particular interest to SIG-SI this year as we celebrate a decade of Symposia in ASIS&T.

This year’s conference theme is “Connecting Collections, Cultures, and Communities.” In keeping with this theme, the symposium is also soliciting work that focuses on the question of understanding and analyzing connections between social informatics and cognate epistemic cultures and intellectual communities from a social informatics perspective. Some of the questions we ask include:

  • What are the social and technological forces that enable and constrain connections between SI and cognate intellectual communities?
  • What are some of the ways in which we can begin to establish and maintain connections among SI and cognate epistemic cultures and intellectual communities?
  • What can a social informatics approach tell us about the nature of the boundaries among SI and cognate epistemic communities?
  • What are the challenges and opportunities of engaging in SI work?

The schedule for the workshop will involve the presentations of papers and the best social informatics paper awards for 2013 (call to follow). We expect an engaging discussion with lively interactions with the audience.
Deadlines:

August 9, 2014: Submit a short paper (2000 words), a poster (500 words), or a panel (1000 words) by email to Howard Rosenbaum (hrosenba@indiana.edu<mailto:hrosenba@indiana.edu>) and Pnina Fichman (fichman@indiana.edu<mailto:fichman@indiana.edu>).

September 2, 2014: Author notifications (in time for conference early registration (NOTE: this timeline may be adjusted when the registration dates are announced).

Fees:

To be determined

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

CFP: Intersections of gender, development and mobile technology

CALL FOR PAPERS

We invite researchers working in the field of mobile communication and gender in the developing world to submit an abstract for consideration for a volume whose current  working title is Intersections of gender, development and mobile technology: social context and relations of power  planned for submission to the Routledge series Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality. The deadline for abstract submission is September 30th, 2014 (please see guidelines below). Once decisions have been made regarding abstract selection, those who submitted abstracts will be informed in a timely manner and the editors (Caroline Wamala, Laura Stark) will then write the book proposal to the publisher on the basis of the accepted abstracts.

If Routledge accepts our proposal, our target deadline for completion of full chapters is December 31st, 2015. However, this deadline will depend on the publisher’s timetable. A workshop may also be organized for authors to meet and discuss their research if funding becomes available.

THEME:

Mobile technologies such as mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, and note books have revolutionized our way of life. How we communicate, relate and organize our way of living has been impacted and aided by the proliferation of these devices. In order to narrow the socioeconomic disparities between countries and regions, the use of information communication technologies (ICTs), mobile technologies included, continue to be championed by development efforts, and access to timely information enabled through ICTs is said to promote socio-economic well-being. Communication technologies that are mobile in character have enlarged development prospects due to their widespread adoption among even the poor in so-called developing countries. Mobile phones enable communication and information exchange in the remotest parts of the globe, and have consequently become synonymous with the discourse on poverty reduction and economic growth.

The proposed volume focuses on the changing intersections between technology, gender and other categories of social and cultural power difference (age, race, ethnicity, class, caste, religion, etc.), and asks how these intersections can inform development discourse, practice and research. The theoretical underpinnings of the volume engage with the intersectionality paradigm in teasing out the complexities involved in using mobile technologies for development purposes, and the concept of development is problematized through analysis of empirical materials.

The inspiration for this volume comes from new trends observed at the Mobile Communications for Development (M4D) conference held in Dakar, Senegal in April 2014. At the first M4D conference held in 2008, issues related to society and gender were barely on the agenda and only a few voices were raised in skepticism of the dominant climate of techno-optimism. Just six years later, the mobile-for-development field has come a long way. Both researchers and practitioners, often for different reasons, attend closely to the implications of gender and are taking a more critical view of the transformative capabilities of mobile telephony. They are also calling for more sensitivity to the socio-cultural and political contexts of behaviors linked to mobile use, as well as the social consequences of that use.

There is a growing sense that well-being and empowerment, two concepts central to current development discourses, need to be examined from more nuanced perspectives, with greater attention to their internal contradictions. For example, increased benefits through mobile health interventions measured in physical health may come at the cost of social or cultural disempowerment, when for instance HIV patients who come to prenatal clinics are treated badly by community healthcare workers, or when outreach efforts enhance the authority of the mother-in-law over the reproductive rights of her daughter-in-law within the home. While mobile phones are said to provide women with feelings of safety and security both at home and in public because they are tools for women and other vulnerable groups to alert others for help if needed, they have also been shown to lead to physical abuse of women when information in the hands of women can be perceived as a threat to men’s decision-making positions in the home. In addition, just as other technologies have contributed to the expression of hegemonic as well as subordinate masculinities, we hope to receive contributions that highlight how the engagement with mobile technologies in everyday communication practices reinforce, challenge or even subvert contextual expressions of masculinities. Development interventions may entail costs and risks for users other than those which are measurable by quantitative means. Questions need to be asked whether some targeted beneficiaries are empowered while others are disempowered, and we need to forge a more holistic view of well-being. This has led both researchers and practitioners in the field of mobiles-for-development to call for a more profound and rigorous examination of howdifferent dimensions of social life are intertwined, and how forms of differentiation create complex systems of oppression.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION OF SERIES:
Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality is committed to the development of new feminist and profeminist perspectives on changing gender relations, with special attention to:

  • Intersections between gender and power differentials, based on age, class, dis/abilities, ethnicity, nationality, racialisation, sexuality, violence, and other social divisions
  • Intersections of societal dimensions and processes of continuity and change: culture, economy, generativity, polity, sexuality, science and technology
  • Embodiment: Intersections of discourse and materiality, and of sex and gender
  • Transdiscipilinity: intersections of humanities, social sciences, medical, technical and natural sciences
  • Intersections of different branches of feminist theorizing, including: historical materialist feminisms, postcolonial and anti-racist feminisms, radical feminisms, sexual difference feminisms, queerfeminisms,cyberfeminisms, posthuman feminisms, critical studies on men and masculinities
  • A critical analysis of the travelling of ideas, theories and concepts
  • A politics of location, reflexivity and transnational contextualizing that reflects the basis of the series framed within European diversity and transnational power relations


GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACT

Please send a 1-page abstract of your proposed chapter to both Caroline Wamala (caroline.wamala@kau.se) and Laura Stark (laura.stark@jyu.fi), in which the following information is clearly stated (this information will help us to make a more convincing case for the book’s merits to the publisher):

  • the main research question(s) of your proposed chapter, please limit these to three questions, and state them in the form of concrete, specific question(s).
  • your source data and methods
  • the geographical scope of your data and analysis
  • to what current discussions do your research findings contribute, with what research literature does your chapter engage?
  • in keeping with the themes of the Routledge series in which our volume will be published, how does your chapter topic/theme relate to Masculinity and feminist studies and intersectionality? How will it advance our knowledge in these areas?


ABOUT THE EDITORS:

Caroline Wamala is senior lecturer at the Department of Gender Research, Karlstad University. She is also the Director for the HumanIT research centre also at Karlstad University. Her research is situated within the field of gender and technology focusing on how ICTs contribute to the construction and expression of gender, as well as the other way round.

Laura Stark is Professor of Ethnology at the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has been the director of the multi-researcher research project Mobile Technology, Gender and Development in Africa, India and Bangladesh funded by the Academy of Finland 2010–2013.