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.




Monday, March 28, 2016

one-year MSc ICT4D programme

The 2016 Development Informatics Scholarship - worth £17,000 - is available for developing country applicants to the one-year MSc ICT4D programme; creating ICT4D champions. 

Applicants apply first for the programme.  On receipt of an offer, they send a scholarship application statement by end April 2016.  The scholarship covers all tuition fees including overseas fieldwork.  Details at: http://www.seed.manchester.ac.uk/fees/postgraduate-taught-funding/idpm/


Thursday, March 24, 2016

CFP: LSE Media and Communications PhD Symposium 2016


Call for Papers: LSE Media and Communications PhD Symposium 2016

"Everyday politics and media and communications:
New approaches for theories and methods in the 21st century"

Abstracts deadline: Friday, 22 April 2016  |  Symposium date: Thursday, 30 June 2016, 9.00-18.00

The Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science invites submissions of abstracts for the 2016 PhD Symposium. This year's theme seeks to explore the multifarious forms of politics in everyday life, and to address questions of theory and method that current scholarship in media and communications confronts.

While 'politics' has long constituted one of the central themes in media and communications research, it has now assumed a renewed meaning that goes beyond partisan politics and ideological debates. With increasingly habitual political use of media, we are witnessing a broad range of practices: from community-building to mobilizing social movements, and from online collaboration and participatory culture, to the widespread visual forms of representations and narratives in global crises and struggles.

Roles of media in these diverse kinds of politics have been construed under varying frameworks and developed through a myriad of theories and methods from different disciplines of social science. However, in the 21st century when the definition of what we customarily call 'media' may have undergone a radical change with the advent of online digital media platforms, explorations of those roles encounter a key question: have current theoretical and methodological foundations in media and communications research captured the full range of both possibilities and challenges made available by the diverse developments in the field of information and communications technologies?

This one-day symposium seeks to provide a forum for PhD students to engage with questions of multiple forms of politics, theories, and methods in the field of media and communications. We cordially invite PhD students who critically reflect upon and explore these issues, as related to the topics that include (but are not limited to):
  • News, journalism, and political communication
  • Civic engagement, digital citizenship, and community-building
  • Agency, resistance and forms of protest
  • Digital collaboration and participatory culture
  • Big Data, algorithms, surveillance, computational politics, and networks
  • Media governance, regulation, and ethics
  • Shifting forms of media production and consumption
  • Representation of gender and identity
  • ICTs and development
  • Theoretical and/or methodological approaches in media and communications

Submissions can be works in progress, provocative ideas, or engaging questions, as well as completed research in the form of papers. The symposium is particularly geared towards PhD students in the early stages of their research. The emphasis will be on thoughtful discussion with fellow PhD students, along with feedback from leading academics from the Department. This year's keynote speech will be given by Professor Nick Couldry, the opening address will be given by Dr. Bart Cammaerts.

Please email an abstract with title (200-300 words) to: <Media.PhD.Symposium@lse.ac.uk> by Friday, 22 April 2016, with your name, university, department, year of study, and your email address. Those invited to present will be notified by the third week of May.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Call for Abstracts: #SCREENTIME: Technological Affordances and Constraints in Mediated Life

Call for Abstracts

#SCREENTIME: Technological Affordances and Constraints in Mediated Life
GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
Boston University
College of Communication

9am - 5pm
June 23, 2016

The graduate students of Boston University’s Division of Emerging Media Studies are calling for abstracts for their second annual Conference on Emerging Media.

#Screentime aims to explore the social, emotional, and civic implications of today’s media landscape. Social forces and technological elements are driving changes in this developing field of study. This conference is an opportunity to bridge diverse perspectives on the roles of users and technology in new media, and will lay the groundwork for future research.

Emerging Media Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field, and as such we welcome abstracts from a variety of perspectives and disciplines on a range of topics, including but not limited to:
  • Civility, sub-cultures, and online discourse
  • Uses and effects of mobile communication technologies
  • Digital distribution and industry disruption
  • Data mining of social networks
  • Emerging technologies’ effects on users
  • Video games and virtual worlds
  • Digital communication and public health

The conference is free of charge to both presenters and attendees. This conference is aimed at graduate students to showcase their research, and as an opportunity to network with peers.

Deadline for Abstracts: May 1, 2016. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words. Papers will be peer reviewed. To submit, please send an e-mail of your abstract todemsconf@bu.edu. Include your name and institutional affiliation (department/university), program and year of study, research focus/interests, and contact information (email and phone number) with all submissions. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance on a rolling basis no later than June 1, 2016.

For additional information, visit, http://sites.bu.edu/demsconference/ (website will be updated with additional details in the coming weeks).

Monday, March 21, 2016

CFP: ICA Blue Sky Workshop


ICA Blue Sky Workshop
Social Media and Mobile Media as Survey Research Tools
Time:  June 13   Monday 9:30-10:45 a.m.  Hilton Hotel, Fukuoka
Organizer:  Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University, USA
louisah@bgsu.edu
Social Media and Mobile Media are penetrating into almost everyone’s daily lives and have become important media for survey research dissemination and data collection.  However, not many academic researchers received training on this or know how to utilize these media creatively to conduct their survey research to maximize response rate and response quality.  Methodological rigor affect data quality and validity.  This workshop provides opportunity for fellow survey researchers both in the industry and in academe to share their experience and develop roadmaps on how to establish best practices for using these media for survey research.  Participants should have experience in using mobile media and social media in collecting survey/experiment data or at least large scale survey research experience.
Each participant will share their experience on using mobile media and social media in collecting survey/experiment data, comparing the effectiveness of using these media vs. traditional surveys and innovative use of these media.  Several experts on this topic are invited to join the workshop so that they can share their experience and tips on using these media for survey data collection.
The ultimate goal of this session to facilitate the exchange of experience in using these media for collecting survey data to improve data quality and response rate of communication survey research in an age of social and mobile media.  We plan to ask the participants to prepare a written handout for their report and compile them online for others to use.
ICA attendees interested in attending this Blue Sky Workshop please RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fhoBi29k_YZzEXW_7V7_fFpPQ__Pi8sE5O5KOWKo7ig/viewform before May 1, 2016.
Introduction 9:30-10:15
Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University:  Overview of Social Media and Mobile Media as Survey Tools and Effect of Screen Size and User Response Entry Methods on Data Quality

Patrick Yuli Hsieh, Survey Methodologist, RTI International:  RTI’s Experience in Using Social and Mobile Media for Survey Research

Tetsuro Kobayashi, City University of Hong Kong:  Using Smartphone Applications to Record Basic Information Stored in Calling and Texting Logs.

Yuengang Xie, Shanghai Jiaotung University, China:  Mobile Phone Survey experience in China.  Xie is the Founder and President of the Public Opinion Association in China.
Report from Participants and Discussion 10:15-10:45

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Aisthesis and the Common: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere

Media@McGill International Colloquium
Aisthesis and the Common: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere
March 18-19, 2016
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
185, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest
Free and open to the public
Bilingual (French/English) interpretation available

Aisthesis and the Common: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere proposes an interdisciplinary investigation into contemporary art’s renewed engagement with the public sphere. Bringing together artists, designers, art historians, curators, philosophers and media studies scholars, the colloquium examines the place and role of aisthesis (ασθησις) -- the faculty of perception by the senses and the intellect -- in emerging models of the public sphere. With the working hypothesis that art offers a unique realm for the configuration of public spheres today, the colloquium asks: How is the public sphere rethought aesthetically (in terms of forms, media, materialities and sensibilities) in contemporary art? And how does an artistic public sphere succeed in permeating a political public sphere?

Keynote speakers (via Skype): Jean-Luc Nancy Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
Rethinking the Common: Santiago Zabala Pierre Dardot
Sound Atmospheres: Frances Dyson Caleb Kelly
Sculpting the Common: Nadia Myre Romeo Gongora Marjetica Potrč
Sharing Space: Nermin Saybasili John Paul Ricco
Virtualized Spaces: Adriana de Souza e Silva Gerard Goggin
The Digital Common: Dominique Cardon Dietmar Offenhuber
Critical Cosmopolitanism: Nikos Papastergiadis Marsha Meskimmon

Registration, program, livestream: www.aisthesis.ca


CFP: Business Travel, Mobile ICTs and work-life balance

Business Travel, Mobile ICTs and work-life balance: Day Workshop and Research Network Building

FINAL CALL: A FEW REMAINING PLACES AVAILABLE (including travel bursaries for PhD students/early career academics)

We invite you to attend this free one day research event exploring opportunities for research on how the use of Mobile ICTs by business travellers affects their experience of work life balance.
Date: Wednesday 13th April 2016, 10am-4pm
Location: The Wesley (central London, near Euston Station - http://www.thewesley.co.uk/).
Event Organizers: Donald Hislop (Loughborough University) & Jon Beaverstock (University of Bristol)

The event is designed to be a forum for discussion of research issues and agendas between academics, and a range of industry and policy stakeholders (including train operating companies, and business travel management firms). The event has two distinct elements. Firstly, there is a seminar-based element involving presentations by a number of senior academics. Secondly, there will be a networking and research generation element to facilitate agendas for conducting future research on business travel, ICT and work-life balance. One key aim of the event is to begin developing collaborative approaches to research capacity building for future external funding opportunities and stakeholder engagement.
                                                                       
Confirmed Speakers include:
Dr Anna Aguilera, Ecole des Ponts, Paris, France, talking about Business travel, ICT and work-life balance: review and research agenda
Prof. James Faulconbridge, Lancaster University, talking about Demanding business travel
Prof. Glenn Lyons, University of the West of England, talking about Digital Age Rail Travel
Prof. John Urry, Lancaster University, talking about The new mobilities paradigm

To register for this free event, email one of the event organizers (d.hislop@lboro.ac.uk , jonathan.beaverstock@bristol.ac.uk). A small number of travel bursaries are available to help PhD early career research attend the event. 

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

CFP: Connected Life 2016

CFP: Connected Life 2016

University of Oxford, UK
June 20-21, 2016
http://connectedlife.oii.ox.ac.uk/2016conference/call-for-papers/

Connected Life 2016: Collective Action and the Internet is a two day-long conference, held at the University of Oxford on 20th and 21st June 2016, dedicated to igniting multidisciplinary exchanges and showcasing exciting Internet research. Building on the two successful previous conferences, Connected Life 2016 will foster collaborations within and beyond Oxford in pursuit of an enhanced understanding of the Internet and its multifaceted effects upon society.

We are grateful for the generous support of the Oxford Internet Institute, the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute and the ESRC.

Which topics do you cover?
The special theme for this year is Collective Action and the Internet. The Conference explores how the Internet affects different types of collective action; both in big social movements, such as the Arab Spring and the Hong Kong Protests, and in more everyday forms of collaboration. We take a broad view of this theme, understanding ‘collective action’ to mean collaboration, action and participation in any form or context – and are also interested in cases where it doesn’t come together. 

Within and beyond this, we welcome submissions on a wide range of topics (including but not limited to):
  • Politics and Public Policy – how do politicians make use of or thwart collective action?
  • International Relations – how does the internet enable people to collaborate across time and/or space?
  • Gender and Identity – how the internet affects self-actualisation (whether individual or collective).
  • Digital Humanities – how speeches can be analysed using computational methods.
  • Cybersecurity, Surveillance, and Censorship – how can individuals act collectively to challenge government monitoring.
  • Virtual Markets and Economies – how online platforms are enabling people to come together, thereby transforming economic practices/modes.
  • Social Networking – do social networks help like-minded people to find each other?
  • Mobile Technologies – do mobile technologies, as a specific platform, enable new forms of collaboration?
  • Communications, Media and Journalism – how social media and online interconnectivity is change reporting.
  • Big Data Methods – analysing and interpreting large quantities of rich online data.
  • Online Research Methods – such as agent-based modelling online communities.
  • Ethics around online activism – how should we understand responsibility in “leaderless” movements?

We welcome students and faculty from all disciplines, including but not limited to: business, computer science, history, international relations, literature, media and communications, politics and sociology.

What can I submit?
We are accepting submissions for two types of presentations:
1. Conference presentations
These are expected to last fifteen to twenty minutes each, with a further ten minutes for questions. Presentations will be organised into thematic sessions. Presenters are encouraged to use visual aids, and projectors will be available. Submissions should be in the form of either an abstract or blog post of 200-600 words. We encourage blog posts that can generate discussion before and after the conference; however, the choice of a blog post or traditional abstract will not affect acceptance. Talks that are suitable for shorter presentations may be selected as five minute Thunder Talks. Applicants will be notified of this upon acceptance. Prizes will be awarded for the best talks.
2. Poster and Visualisation Fair
This will run all day, with a dedicated session for questions held during and after lunch. Submissions should be in the form of either an abstract or blog post of 200-300 words. Time and space permitting, any sort of visual presentation is welcome (e.g. posters, videos, software, data visualizations). We will do our best to accommodate interesting work that fits with the conference theme.

Deadline
The deadline for submissions is April 3rd 2016.

What’s next?
Please submit here. All submissions will be double blind reviewed by a committee of students and faculty from the Oxford Internet Institute. Applicants will be informed of whether they have been successful in mid-late April. Registration to attend the conference will open in April. There will be a small registration fee, contributing to the refreshments and lunch on both days, and the drinks reception at the end of the first day.

We look forward to receiving and reviewing your submissions! If you have any questions, do not hesitate to email us at connectedlife@oii.ox.ac.uk.


Monday, March 14, 2016

CFP: Chapters for the edited volume From Here to Ubiquity

CFP: Chapters for the edited volume From Here to Ubiquity: Critical and International Perspectives on Mobile and Ubiquitous Media

What do we mean when we say we live in a world of “ubiquitous media”? The term has been deployed to characterize platforms such as television, social media, and mobile media; systems such as algorithms, apps, and augmented reality; concepts such as commerce and surveillance, and issues such as privacy, politics, and neocolonialism. Phrases like IoE (the “Internet of Everything”) are increasingly mentioned in academic and the popular press and framed as an inevitability. Universities have laboratories dedicated to the study of ubiquitous media, and marketing companies aggressively tout their ability to target consumers through a ubiquitous media presence (including one company simply called “Ubiquitous Media” which “specializes in targeting consumers throughout their daily routine”).

In short, the phrase “ubiquitous media” is, well, ubiquitous. There is little discussion, however, of what the term “ubiquitous media” actually means. Indeed, individual definitions of “ubiquitous media” are often assumed to be just a ubiquitous as media themselves and, as a result, there is no large-scale theoretical framework through which we can understand the term.

With this in mind, we welcome the submissions of chapter proposals for the edited volume From Here to Ubiquity: Critical and International Perspectives on Mobile and Ubiquitous Media. The purpose of this edited collection is to try to develop a clearer definition of, and theoretical grounding for, ubiquitous media by assembling a collection of chapters by established experts and emerging scholars from around the world. Chapters should critically and creatively interrogate “ubiquitous media” in the hopes of developing an overarching understanding of the meaning, processes, and ramifications of the term.

A portion of this volume will be dedicated to a specific exploration of mobile technologies as a key precursor – if not central element – of a ubiquitous media environment. This could include past and current mobile technologies, from pagers to PDAs, and cell phones to modern smartphones and wearables, provided they contribute to an understanding of ubiquitous media as both a technical and discursive reality for individuals around the world. Representing global perspectives is also central objective of this volume. An international perspective is important to the development of a comprehensive understanding of what “ubiquitous media” means and the prospectively heterogeneous implications of this development.

Possible approaches/frameworks for these investigations include:
  • Theories of ubiquitous media
  • Mediatisation
  • Political economy
  • Space, place and time
  • User-experience design
  • Business models and start-up culture
  • Financial/transactional data and services
  • App-centric media
  • Digital labour and work-life balance
  • Surveillance
  • Ubiquitous media and digital literacy
  • Ubiquitous media and narratives
  • Coding and platforms

No matter the approach, a critical and theoretical focus is key. Together, these works will offer a spectrum of perspectives on ubiquitous media.

Abstracts of 300-350 words (for chapters of approximately 8,000 words) should be emailed to co-editors Dr. Michael S. Daubs at michael.daubs@vuw.ac.nz and Dr. Vince Manzerolle at vmanzero@uwindsor.ca by 1 April 2016. Authors of chapters selected for publication will be notified by 30 April 2016, with full chapter drafts due by 30 August 2016. 


Saturday, March 12, 2016

CFP: Special Issue on Social and Technical Trade-Offs

Big Data / http://www.liebertpub.com/big
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Social and Technical Trade-Offs

Guest Editors:
Solon Barocas / Princeton University
danah boyd / Data & Society and Microsoft Research
Sorelle Friedler / Haverford College and Data & Society
Hanna Wallach / Microsoft Research and UMass Amherst

Deadline for manuscript submission: September 15, 2016

This special issue on Social and Technical Trade-Offs aims to serve two main purposes:
  • To highlight exciting and novel work in machine learning, artificial intelligence, data mining, and data science that articulates, examines, challenges, and addresses the technical and social trade-offs involved in the analysis and interpretation of big data.
  • To pose practical, grounded, and socially-oriented challenges for researchers in machine learning, artificial intelligence, data mining, and data science to motivate and guide their research.

Working with “big data” isn't easy, especially when it involves social data. Researchers and practitioners must make hard choices when cleaning and processing data, grapple with biased data sets and missing data, and evaluate the social and technical trade-offs involved in analysis and interpretation. What are the ethical implications of these choices? What happens when we get it wrong? How can we prioritize reproducibility? What happens when biased data and imperfect methods are combined in unexpected ways? This special issue will examine the trade-offs that emerge from the interconnected nature of the social and technical decision-making that lies at the heart of big data.

We encourage submissions that focus on challenges and questions involving large-scale social data, and that are deployed (or are in the process of being deployed) in the real world.
  • Area of focus include (but are not limited to):
  • Surveillance and privacy
  • Healthcare, medicine, and public health
  • Criminal justice and policing
  • Education and learning
  • Disaster relief
  • Urban planning, housing, and infrastructure
  • Finance, scoring, and insurance
  • Public administration and public policy
  • Autonomous experimentation
  • Targeted advertising

Example questions that are relevant include (but are not limited to):
  • How should we strike a balance between model performance and interpretability?
  • How can we formalize social concepts in ways that are amenable to machine learning methods? How do these formalizations influence the choice of machine learning method?
  • How does uncertainty and noise inherent to real-world data sets affect the use of these data sets and the use of results obtained from them via machine learning methods?
  • How can we incorporate social and ethical considerations into our validation methods and choices? What are the social costs of errors or class imbalance and the distribution of those errors across populations? What are the social implications of prioritizing false positive rates vs. false negative rates?
  • When is it appropriate to collect additional data about minority or underrepresented populations? How should we address the need for balanced data sets without imposing a “diversity tax?” How should we weigh the social and financial associated costs and benefits?
  • What are the social consequences and tradeoffs involved in feature selection?

We encourage submissions from organizations that may do not typically write research papers. In addition to submissions from universities and corporations, we welcome submissions from government agencies, nonprofit organizations, startups, and foundations.

These submissions might be:
  • Papers that describe and evaluate new and/or existing methods that balance social and technical factors in decision-making using or surrounding big data.
  • Papers that describe trade-offs that emerged during the design and implementation of big data systems in industry, government, or nonprofit settings.
  • Position papers that highlight sociotechnical challenges that need to be overcome in order to make methods that are suited to responsibly solving large-scale social challenges.
  • Big Data is a highly innovative, peer-reviewed journal, provides a unique forum for world-class research exploring the challenges and opportunities in collecting, analyzing, and disseminating vast amounts of data, including data science, big data infrastructure and analytics, and pervasive computing.
  • Advantages of publishing in Big Data include:
  • Big Data is indexed in Thomson Reuters Emerging Sources Citation Index
  • Attractive open access options
  • Fast and user-friendly electronic submission
  • Rapid, high-quality peer review
  • Maximum exposure: accessible in 170 countries worldwide

Deadline for manuscript submission: September 15, 2016.  Submit here: http://www.liebertpub.com/manuscript/big

Please address any questions to: bd-tradeoffs@lists.datasociety.net

Big Data is a highly innovative, peer-reviewed journal, provides a unique forum for world-class research exploring the challenges and opportunities in collecting, analyzing, and disseminating vast amounts of data, including data science, big data infrastructure and analytics, and pervasive computing.

Advantages of publishing in Big Data include:
  • Big Data is indexed in Thomson Reuters Emerging Sources Citation Index
  • Attractive open access options
  • Fast and user-friendly electronic submission
  • Rapid, high-quality peer review
  • Maximum exposure: accessible in 170 countries worldwide

Friday, March 11, 2016

CFP: Chapters for the edited volume From Here to Ubiquity

CFP: Chapters for the edited volume From Here to Ubiquity: Critical and International Perspectives on Mobile and Ubiquitous Media

What do we mean when we say we live in a world of “ubiquitous media”? The term has been deployed to characterize platforms such as television, social media, and mobile media; systems such as algorithms, apps, and augmented reality; concepts such as commerce and surveillance, and issues such as privacy, politics, and neocolonialism. Phrases like IoE (the “Internet of Everything”) are increasingly mentioned in academic and the popular press and framed as an inevitability. Universities have laboratories dedicated to the study of ubiquitous media, and marketing companies aggressively tout their ability to target consumers through a ubiquitous media presence (including one company simply called “Ubiquitous Media” which “specializes in targeting consumers throughout their daily routine”).

In short, the phrase “ubiquitous media” is, well, ubiquitous. There is little discussion, however, of what the term “ubiquitous media” actually means. Indeed, individual definitions of “ubiquitous media” are often assumed to be just a ubiquitous as media themselves and, as a result, there is no large-scale theoretical framework through which we can understand the term.

With this in mind, we welcome the submissions of chapter proposals for the edited volume From Here to Ubiquity: Critical and International Perspectives on Mobile and Ubiquitous Media. The purpose of this edited collection is to try to develop a clearer definition of, and theoretical grounding for, ubiquitous media by assembling a collection of chapters by established experts and emerging scholars from around the world. Chapters should critically and creatively interrogate “ubiquitous media” in the hopes of developing an overarching understanding of the meaning, processes, and ramifications of the term.

A portion of this volume will be dedicated to a specific exploration of mobile technologies as a key precursor – if not central element – of a ubiquitous media environment. This could include past and current mobile technologies, from pagers to PDAs, and cell phones to modern smartphones and wearables, provided they contribute to an understanding of ubiquitous media as both a technical and discursive reality for individuals around the world. Representing global perspectives is also central objective of this volume. An international perspective is important to the development of a comprehensive understanding of what “ubiquitous media” means and the prospectively heterogeneous implications of this development.
Possible approaches/frameworks for these investigations include:
  • Theories of ubiquitous media
  • Mediatisation
  • Political economy
  • Space, place and time
  • User-experience design
  • Business models and start-up culture
  • Financial/transactional data and services
  • App-centric media
  • Digital labour and work-life balance
  • Surveillance
  • Ubiquitous media and digital literacy
  • Ubiquitous media and narratives
  • Coding and platforms

No matter the approach, a critical and theoretical focus is key. Together, these works will offer a spectrum of perspectives on ubiquitous media.

Abstracts of 300-350 words (for chapters of approximately 8,000 words) should be emailed to co-editors Dr. Michael S. Daubs at michael.daubs@vuw.ac.nz and Dr. Vince Manzerolle at vmanzero@uwindsor.ca by 1 April 2016. Chapters selected for publication will be notified by 30 April 2016, with full chapter drafts due by 30 August 2016.