CFP: Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government

Call for Papers
CeDEM 2015 - Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government
20-22 May 2015, Danube University Krems, Austria, www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

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";

Deadline for the submission of full papers, reflections: 8 December 2014
Further information on the conference: www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

CFP: What’s New about New Media? The Technology of Protest Past and Present

Symposium

“What’s New about New Media? The Technology of Protest Past and Present”

Department of History
Carleton University, Ottawa Canada
April 23-24, 2015

From the G8 demonstrations to the Occupy Movements, Idle No More, and revolutions in the Middle East, the last few years have witnessed a phenomenal upswing in the use of social media in popular protest. Social technology has played an important role in mobilizing grassroots opposition and, according to some scholars and pundits, it has served to politicize a broader base, bringing about greater participation in and new forms of civic action. Activists use platforms like Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to raise consciousness around lightning-rod issues. New technologies aid in the organization of demonstrations. They help mobilize emotions, map out logistics, and after all is said and done, they catalogue and document opposition success and further challenges. Social media’s democratizing potential is not without its detractors, however, and alongside concerns for the protection of privacy and surveillance, skeptics question whether networked publics really can serve as meaningful spaces of protest and opposition.

In lending shape to everyday opposition, cataloguing images of excess and exuberance, and circulating them in networked publics, there can be no doubt Web 2.0 is writing a history of the present. Yet aside from the thorny issue of impact, it is worth asking how new is new media in the way it shapes protest and opposition? This two-day symposium takes a longue durée approach to this question. It aims to bring together early modern historians with modernists and media/communications scholars to interrogate what is in fact new, different, and unique about how “old” and “new” media have structured, popularized, given voice to, and helped mobilize protest and opposition across time and space.

We will discuss pre-circulated papers of 15 pages in length. Each paper should demonstrate a conceptual engagement with the interplay of time and place-specific media and their relation to public sentiment and opposition. We will also have two keynote addresses, one from a communications scholar, the other from an historian.

Themes may include:

• vernacular forms of protest across time and media
• protest and public engagement, diverse publics, counterpublics
• protest and affect
• protest as performance, the staging of opposition, counter protest and solidarity
• visualizing, spatializing, or mapping violence, resistance, and identity
• media, self, and subjectivity – forging activist or oppositional selves
• networks of opposition and collusion
• rethinking the local, the regional, and the global
• mediatized protest: chronicle, archive, database, scrapbook
• media, protest, and public/social memory

Please forward a short CV and a 1-2 page paper abstract to the following address by December 15th, 2014.

CFP: EMERGINGDOCUMENTARY PRACTICES

CALL FOR PAPERS,PROPOSALS AND CREATIVE WORK


EMERGINGDOCUMENTARY PRACTICES

Symposiumand Exhibition

Temple University, Friday April 3, 2015

An interdisciplinary one-day symposium and exhibition about how emerging technologies are transforming nonfiction image-making practices in cinema, art and ethnography.

Deadline For Proposals: January 12, 2015.

The Department of Film andMedia Arts (FMA) at Temple University is delighted to host a one-day interdisciplinary symposium on Emerging Documentary Practices. The symposium is particularly focused on documentary forms that use interactivity, locative and mobile technologies in innovative ways to transform the concepts and practices of documentary cinema and media arts.

The symposium welcomes documentary practitioners from across fields of social sciences, humanities and arts, from ethnographers to eco-poets. Interweaving choices of content and of form, a new generation of practitioners is reaching across creative and scholarly disciplines. This symposium embraces this discourse on theoretical and practical levels. The conversions are presented concurrently with an exhibition of documentary works using interactivity and other innovative practices.

Each session will be launched with a 15 minute keynote. Each panelist will have the opportunity to present an elaborated 5 minute "proposition/question/provocation" to the panel to stimulate open conversation. Proposals will be peer reviewed.

The symposium is complemented by a multi-kiosk exhibition offering speakers and others opportunities to exhibit works in the curated, peer reviewed show. The kiosks that will be available for viewing on the day and throughout the week. Longer papers supporting the discussions may also be linked, and participants may later be invited for to offer submissions for publication. The symposium is sponsored by TempleUniversity's Department of Film and Media Arts, the Center for Humanities at Temple(CHAT) and Temple Libraries.

Primary themes include:

• SPATIAL PRACTICES
  e.g. geo-spatial mapping and storytelling; actual and augmented sites of memory; spatial poetics;infrastructure, industrialization and climate change; actual and imaginary cities
• SOCIAL PRACTICES
  e.g. forging community; bringing diversity and indigenous voices;oral histories and imagined futures; performing and protesting through social media; user generated works.
• EMBODIED PERFORMANCE
  e.g. computer materiality and embodied actions of making, viewing; story-telling through web series, live feeds and digital happenings; practical implications of usin galternative and interactive software like Korkasow, Mozilla Popcorn, Zeega, or Moviestorm upon how stories are told and image edited; the body as a source of data; disembodiment and narrative fracture.

PROPOSAL INSTRUCTIONS

Proposals for participation, short papers (5 minute "proposition/question/provocation")and the digital exhibition of works on the dedicated kiosks should consist of a proposal statement  (max 500 words), a URL if available/relevant, and brief biographic statement (max 150 words).

Submissions should be sent in electronic form to:  edocs@temple.edu

Questions can be directed to FMA Faculty Organizers Roderick Coover and LeAnn Erickson

Conference registration will occur in February. Conference fee is $40 and includes lunch. The fee is waived for Temple students and faculty.

CFP: CeDEM15 Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government

The deadline for the submissions is nearing quickly (8 December 2014), so we kindly ask you to disseminate the CeDEM15 CfP in your networks, to your students (we have a PhD Colloquium and grants for them too), colleagues, etc. You are welcome to use the text below, forward the whole CfP or focus on your track in particular (copy & paste from the cfp)! Will you be submitting a paper?

CeDEM15 Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government
20 - 22 May 2015

 www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

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

Tracks at CeDEM15 include:

• E-Democracy and E-Participation
• E-Voting
• Bottom-Up Movements
• Social and Mobile Media for Public Administration
• Open Collaborative Government
• Democracy, Globalization and Migration
• Connected Smart City
• Open Data, Transparency and Open Innovation
• Technology and Architecture
• Self-governance in Complex Networks
• Rethinking Information Visualization for the People
• Freedom and Ethics in Digital Societies
• Design and Co-creation for E-democracy
• Citizen's Participation in Democratic Governance Processes through ICT in Africa
• Open Access

 ..... at CeDEM15 you can also submit papers for the:

•  PhD Colloquium
• Workshop Proposals
• Reflections
• Open Space

 .... and we are pleased to offer PhD students bursaries:

•  3 bursaries for the best PhD submissions: a 3-day conference fee waiver and accommodation at the Kolping Hotel (Krems) for the duration of the CeDEM15 conference
• 3 bursaries: a 3-day conference fee waiver http://bit.ly/1mqhBPV

 Our confirmed keynotes are:
 Alon Peled  (Hebew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
 Theresa A. Pardo (University at Albany, USA)
 Marijn Janssen (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
 Shauneen Furlong (University of Toronto and University of Ottawa, Canada)

 .... and finally:

•  Co-located with CeDEM15 will be the 4th SharePSI Workshop. Share-PSI 2.0 is a EU funded project for the exchange of experience and ideas around implementing open data policies in the public sector. Attendees of CeDEM 15 will be granted free entrance to the SharePSI public meetings and presentations. For more information about SharePSI see the projects website http://www.w3.org/2013/share-psi/

 Important Dates:

• Deadline for the submission of all papers, workshop proposals, reflections: 8 December 2014
• Notification of acceptance: 9 February 2015
• Camera-ready paper submission: 2 March 2015

CFP: Citizenship, Social Media, and Big Data

Social Science Computer Review Call for Submissions:
Special Issue on "Citizenship, Social Media, and Big Data"

Call for Papers:
The Internet and social media have become the primary outlets for many citizens to consume and share news and political information, express themselves politically, and engage in the political process.  Much of this online political behavior leaves digital traces that can be aggregated into large-scale data sets that provide scholars new opportunities to understand the nature of citizenship in an era of digital media.

The Social Science Computer Review calls for submissions to a special issue focusing on "Citizenship, Social Media, and Big Data".  The special issue is seeking full-length manuscripts that apply big data and a social scientific approach to explore how citizens use media, in particular social media, for political purposes.  The special issue is open to a variety of topics that include, but are not limited to, citizens' engagement with news and political information, the intersection of citizenship and journalism, political discussion and expression, as well as political participation, activism, and protest.  The special issue also welcomes manuscripts on topics related to the call that introduce new methods for analyzing big data.

Important Dates:
February 1, 2015: Submission deadline (full paper)
April 15, 2015: Authors notified of editorial decision
May 15, 2015: Revised manuscripts due
June 15, 2015: Authors receive 2nd round of comments from reviewers (if necessary)
July 15, 2015: Final version of manuscript due
September 15, 2015: Authors' approval of copyedited proofs due
November 1, 2015: Expected online publication date
April 1, 2016: Expected print publication date

Submission Process:
Manuscripts should be submitted via email before the indicated deadline above to homero.gil.de.zuniga@univie.ac.at
Please use subject SOCIAL SCIENCE COMPUTER REVIEW in the email.

About SSCR:
Social Science Computer Review (SSCR) is an interdisciplinary journal covering social science instructional and research applications of computing, as well as societal impacts of information technology.  It has an impact factor of 1.542 and was ranked 11 out 92 interdisciplinary social science journals in the 2013 Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Report.

About the Special Issue Editor:
Uni.-Prof. Dr. Homero Gil de Zúñiga holds the Medienwandel Professorship at University of Vienna, where he also directs the Media Innovation Lab (MiLab). His research addresses the influence of new technologies and digital media over people's daily lives, as well as the effect of such use on the overall democratic process.

CFP: #SMSociety15: Social Media & Society Conference

The 2015 Social Media & Society Conference (#SMSociety15)

July 27-29, Toronto

Call for Submissions

Academic research on social media is growing exponentially across various disciplines including: Communications, Information / Library Science, Computer Science, Business, Sociology, Education, Psychology, Health and others. The Web of Science alone indexed nearly 5,000 journal and conference publications over the last decade. This growing body of research revealed many interesting factors about social media platforms, their users, and a glimpse of our society at large. But are we any closer to understanding the broader implications of social media on our increasing networked society?

The 2015 Social Media & Society Conference (#SMSociety15) invites scholarly and original submissions that build on the previous work and critically evaluate the role of social media for social and political change, community engagement, marketing, new forms of governance, support of individuals and organizations in domains such as business, information, management, public administration, academia, health, and journalism (just to mention a few). We are also calling for submissions that develop and apply novel methods and theories to collect, analyze, and visualize social media data as well as those that discuss ethical and privacy implications of using big and small data. We welcome both quantitative and qualitative work in the broad area of Social Media & Society that crosses interdisciplinary boundaries and expands our understanding of the current and future trends in social media.

Whether you are just starting a new research project or ready to report on the final results, you will find that #SMSociety15 is a great venue for you! The 2015 conference invites a wide range of submissions:

• short papers on completed or well-developed projects (Due: March 2, 2015)
• work-in-progress paper abstracts (Due: April 10, 2015),
• panel discussions (Due: March 2, 2015)
• poster presentations (Due: May 1, 2015).

New to this year, we are also calling for proposals to host:

• half-day workshops (Due: February 2, 2015) on a well-defined area or technical tutorials that will examine a particular method or tool for the analysis of social media data in more detail

PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITIES
All accepted short papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings by the ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (ICPS). Authors of accepted top papers will be invited to submit their full papers to the special issue of the Information, Communication & Society journal (published by Taylor & Francis).

BACKGROUND
The Social Media & Society Conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. Now, in its 6th year, the 2015 Conference will be held in Toronto, Canada from July 27 to 29, 2015. From its inception, the conference has focused on the best practices for studying the impact and implications of social media on society. Organized by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University, the conference provides attendees an opportunity to exchange ideas, present their original research, learn about recently completed and work-in progress studies, and strengthen connections with their peers. The 2014 conference hosted over 200 attendees, featured research from 238 authors across several fields from 21 different countries.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Social Media & Small Data

• Case Studies of Online Communities Formed on Social Media
• Case Studies of Offline Communities that Rely on Social Media
• Sampling Issues
• Value of Small Data

 Social Media & Big Data

• Visualization of Social Media Data
• Social Media Data Mining
• Scalability Issues & Social Media Data
• Social Media Analytics
• Ethics of Big Data

 Social Media Impact on Society

•  Private Self/Public Self
•  The Sharing/Attention Economy
•  Virality & Memes
•  Political Mobilization & Engagement
•  Social Media & Health
•  Social Media & Business (Marketing, PR, HR, Risk Management, etc.)
•  Social Media & Academia (Alternative Metrics, Learning Analytics, etc.)
•  Social Media & Public Administration
•  Social Media & the News

 Theories & Methods

•  Qualitative & Quantitative Approaches
•  Opinion Mining & Sentiment Analysis
•  Social Network Analysis
•  Theoretical Models for Studying, Analysing and Understanding Social Media

 Online/Offline Communities

•  Trust & Credibility in Social Media
•  Online Community Detection
•  Influential User Detection
•  Online Identity

 Social Media & Mobile

•  App-ification of the Society
•  Privacy & Security Issues in the Mobile World
•  Apps for the Social Good
•  Networking Apps

 PROGRAM COMMITTEE
 The list of the Program Committee members is available at https://socialmediaandsociety.com/?page_id=1346

 CONFERENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
 Anatoliy Gruzd
 Associate Professor, Ted Rogers School of Management
 Director, Social Media Lab
 Ryerson University, Canada
 Twitter: @gruzd

Research Position: New Project on Anti-Hatred Tweets

Research Position: New Project on Anti-Hatred Tweets

The Dangerous Speech Project <http://www.voicesthatpoison.org> works to find and test pro-speech methods for diminishing harmful speech - or its effects. It is directed by Prof. Susan Benesch <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/sbenesch> of American University and the
Berkman <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2014/03/benesch>
Center.

The successful candidate will work on a new two-year project to identify, collect, and analyze the effect of ‘counterspeech’ (speech rebutting hateful, hostile, or harmful Tweets), in collaboration with Prof. Derek Ruths <http://www.derekruths.com/> of McGill University, who directs
the Network Dynamics Lab <http://networkdynamics.org/> there.

The researcher will perform systematic content analysis to map hateful Tweets and responses to them, using both qualitative textual analysis and quantitative content and conversation analysis. Much of this work will be done in close collaboration with a computer science graduate student who
will be responsible for the development of automated detection and filtering tools. The successful candidate will be comfortable working closely with computational researchers, and with large datasets collected from online social platforms. Familiarity with data analysis tools (e.g. Excel, R, Python) and some knowledge of statistics are welcome but not required.

This position is ideal for junior scholars in Master's or PhD programs in Communication, Media Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Information Studies, and related fields who want to develop and hone their research skills. Candidates must be comfortable establishing research direction, asking questions, managing time, and pursuing the work with limited supervision. Strong skills in writing, organization, and academic research are essential. There may be opportunities for co-authorship of papers in peer-reviewed journals and presentations of findings at relevant

conferences.

The researcher will be paid $15-25 hourly, depending on qualifications, with flexible hours and no residency requirement. It may require occasional travel for 2-4 days, to meetings with project staff and academic conferences, with expenses paid by the project, which is funded through 2016.

To apply, please send an email to  sbenesch@cyber.law.harvard.edu

with the subject “RA Application” and include the following:

• CV or resume
• Writing sample (preferably a literature review or scholarly article)
• Links to online presence (e.g., blog, homepage, Twitter etc.)
• The names and email addresses of two employers or professors who we may contact as references
• A cover letter that includes citizenship/legal residency status, number of hours available to work per week, current city of residence, available start date, current student status, and any other practical consideration that may be important for us to know

We are committed to diversity in our team and strongly encourage people of color, of diverse gender identities, women, and LGBTQIA persons to apply.

CFP: Technology and Emerging Media

CCA 2015 Annual meeting: Call for papers - Technology and Emerging Media

We invite you to submit a proposal (individual paper, panel or roundtable) to the Technology and Emerging Media (TEM) track within the next Canadian Communication Association conference that will take place on June 3-5, 2015 at the University of Ottawa, Ontario.

All participants in the TEM track will have the opportunity to submit a paper based on their presentation, for inclusion in the "TEM Proceedings" that are published online on the interest group’s website: http://tem.fl.ulaval.ca/ Detailed guidelines will be e-mailed  to TEM participants in due course.

The "Technology and Emerging Media" track covers works addressing a wide range of communication and media-related issues, with a focus on technology and technological innovation. Particularly relevant to the track are proposals addressing the following topics:

• Information and communication technologies, notably aspects of their design, diffusion, and uses;
• Digital media and related social phenomena;
• Issues related to recent technological developments in the field of communication: social media/social Web, mobile media, online games, and new diffusion platforms for traditional media.

Please note that in order for your proposal to be included in the TEM track, we ask that you select "technology and emerging media" as a topic on the submission form. Further details on the submission process can be found at: http://www.acc-cca.ca/submit

The Technology and Emerging Media section is now an official CCA interest group. If you are interested in joining the group, please send a note to: guillaume.latzko-toth@com.ulaval.ca to be registered to the TEM mailing list.

REMINDER: Deadline for submitting proposals to the CCA conference is: December 12, 2014. General call for papers: http://www.acc-cca.ca/callforpaper   

CFP: DATA POWER: a two-day, international conference

DATA POWER: a two-day, international conference
Date: Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd JUNE 2015
Venue: University of Sheffield, UK

Data make many promises. Through data, we can access opinions, feelings, behaviours, people, in real time, at great volume and at great speed. Tracking data is the holy grail. Data have the potential to transform all aspects of society, making all of its operations more efficient. Big data represent opportunities for social researchers to enhance understanding of human behaviour. The numbers speak for themselves.

But what is the cost of the data delirium (van Zoonen)? What kind of power is enacted when data are employed by governments and security agencies to monitor populations or by private corporations to accumulate knowledge about consumers in an increasingly ‘knowing capitalism’ (Thrift)? Because contemporary forms of data mining and analytics open up the potential for new, unaccountable and opaque forms of population management in a growing range of social realms, questions urgently need to be asked not only about who gets access to data and whose privacy is invaded, but also about control, discrimination, and social sorting – about data power. We also need to ask about the possibility of agency in the face of data power, of social groups sidestepping the dominating interests of big business and big government in our increasingly big-data-driven world.
This conference creates a space to reflect on these and other critical issues relating to data’s ever more ubiquitous power. Keynote speakers include these fantastic commentators on data power:

• Mark Andrejevic, Center for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, author of AOIR book award winner Infoglut (2013);
• Nick Couldry, London School of Economics, author and editor of 11 books & numerous articles, including ‘Big data from the bottom up’ (Big Data and Society);
• Kate Crawford, Microsoft Social Media Research Collective, author of numerous articles on big data and Understanding the Internet: Language, Technology, Media, Power (forthcoming) (participation to be confirmed);
• José van Dijck, Comparative Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, author of The Culture of Connectivity (2013);
• Alison Hearn, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, author of numerous articles on data, labour and subjectivity;
• Richard Rogers, Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam, author of ICA book award winner Digital Methods (2013);
• Evelyn Ruppert, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, author (with Engin Isin) of Being Digital Citizens (forthcoming) & editor of Big Data and Society;
• Joseph Turow, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennslyvania, author of The Daily You (2012), amongst many other publications.

Papers are invited on the following – and other relevant – topics:

• The political economy of data
• Data cultures (data and the cultural industries, data journalism)
• Data and the production of subjectivity and identity
• Theorising data
• The politics of data visualisation
• Data labour
• Emotional data
• The social life of data and data-driven methods
• The politics of open and linked data
• Data-driven governance, surveillance and control
• Data and discrimination
• The regulation of data mining
• Data citizens
• Resistance, agency, appropriation.

Information/details

• Whilst we welcome papers of all kinds, please note that this conference focuses on critical questions about data’s power. Papers which do not address critical, social questions will not be accepted.
• Submit 250 word paper proposals to data-power-conference@sheffield.ac.uk<mailto:data-power-conference@sheffield.ac.uk>by 16th January 2015. Decisions will be communicated by 30th January 2015.
• The conference fee is £120 waged (approx. $190 / 150 euro, £80 unwaged/student (approx. $130 / 100 euro).
• The conference will launch the special issue of The European Journal of Cultural Studies edited by Mark Andrejevic, Alison Hearn and Helen Kennedy, entitled ‘Data Mining and Analytics’.
• DATA POWER is hosted by the University of Sheffield’s Digital Society Network, and the Department of Sociological Studies, both in the Faculty of Social Sciences.
• The Steel City of Sheffield is one of the UK’s largest cities, close to the Peak District National Park in the heart of England, and with a fantastic cultural and creative life.

CFP: iACToR’s 20th Annual CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy & Social Networking Conference

iACToR’s 20th Annual CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy & Social Networking Conference

20th Anniversary Conference

June 29 – July 2, 2015
University of California San Diego
La Jolla, California

Visit our website: http://www.interactivemediainstitute.com/cypsy20/

Important Dates:
Abstract Deadline – December 1, 2014
Early Registration Ends – March 15, 2015

Call for Presentations

The 20th Annual CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy & Social Networking Conference (CYPSY20) will take place on June 29 – July 2, 2015 in San Diego, California. Jointly organised by the Interactive Media Institute, in collaboration with the Virtual Reality Medical Institute and International Association of CyberPsychology, Training, & Rehabilitation (iACToR), the conference is an international networking and sharing platform for researchers, clinicians, policymakers and funding agents to share and discuss advancements in the growing disciplines of CyberPsychology and Social Networking. To submit your abstract, please visit our website www.interactivemediainstitute.com/cypsy20.

This year’s conference will also feature the workshop Social Media: Psychological Research Methods and Therapeutic Applications. You can find more details at our website.

For further information, please contact the Conference Coordinator, Chelsie Boyd, at cybertherapy@vrphobia.com. Because of the international nature of CYPSY20 and the expanded focus of its theme, we recognize the importance of extending our invitation to participants around the world interested and dedicated to enhancing public awareness of how technology can overcome obstacles and increase access to top quality healthcare for all citizens.

Encouraged topics include but are not limited to:

• Virtual Reality
• Advanced Interaction Training
• Games for Health
• Telehealth & Telepresence
• Videoconferencing
• Robotics
• Brain Computer Interfaces
• Cognitive & Physical Rehabilitation
• Wearable Computing
• Non-invasive Physiological Monitoring Devices
• Positive Technology
• Social Networking in Healthcare
• Information Technologies
• Social Implications of Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Neurorehabilitation
• Mobile Healthcare
• Wireless Healthcare
• Cyberbullying
• Health Applications
• Healthy Ageing
• Edugames
• Technology for Therapy
• Serious Games
• Apps for Kids

The submission deadline is December 1, 2014.

See Presenter Information at http://www.interactivemediainstitute.com/cypsy20/ for logistics.

Create your own reality!

Professor Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, Ph.D., MBA, BCB, BCN
Conference Co-Chair & Organizer
Interactive Media Institute
Virtual Reality Medical Institute

Professor Dr. Giuseppe Riva, Ph.D.
Conference Co-Chair
Istituto Auxologico Italiano

Professor Dr. Mark D. Wiederhold, M.D., Ph.D., FACP
Conference Co-Chair
Virtual Reality Medical Center

Professor Dr. Stephane Bouchard, Ph.D.
Scientific Chair
Universite du Quabec en Outaoais

Dr. Willem-Paul Brinkman, Ph.D.
Scientific Chair
Delft University of Technology

Dr. Jose Gutierrez Maldonado, Ph.D.
Scientific Chair
Universitat de Barcelona

Professor Dr. Pedro Gamito, Ph.D.
Website Chair
Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias

CFP: Computer Culture Area (SWPACA)

Computer Culture Area
36th Annual Southwest Popular / American Culture Association Conference
February 11-14, 2015
Hyatt Regency, Albuquerque, NM
www.southwestpca.org

*PROPOSAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE (EXTENDED):* Saturday, November 15, 2014

Proposals for papers are now being accepted for the area of Computer Culture, as one of the many areas within the 36th annual conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA). Please consider submitting.

This year’s conference theme is:

*Many Faces, Many Voices: Intersecting Borders in Popular and American Culture*

COMPUTER is broadly defined as any computational device, whether smartphone or abacus, and any form of information technology, including the origins of concepts of interactive text, which may predate computational devices as traditionally conceived.

CULTURE is rooted in the concept of cultural meaning. We ask not just operational questions such as, "How do people communicate using computers?" but questions of meaning such as, "What does it mean when people communicate using computers instead of using pre-computer approaches to communication?" Along these lines, we are interested in communication as well as creative practices/applications and how computer technologies shape them.

"Computer Culture" can be understood in a variety of ways:

• the culture of the computer, that is, as computers interact with each other, what culture do they have of their own?
• the culture around the computer, that is, (sub)cultures associated with the production, maintenance, use, and destruction of computers
• the culture through the computer, that is, explicit treatment of how computer mediation influences cultural phenomena that exist or has existed in forms that did not involve computer mediation, and what these influences mean
• the culture by the computer, that is, the ways in which new (sub)cultures or (sub)cultural phenomena have arisen because of computers and understandings of these given awareness of the nature and/or workings of computers

Example questions associated with Computer Culture would include, but not be limited to:

• What implications are there because of the powerfulness of (computer/information) technology, and are these implications beneficial, detrimental, inevitable, or avoidable?
• What are the cultural origins of computers, computer/information technologies, and practices associated with them? What is the descriptive and prescriptive outlook for the conditions of those cultural forces associated with those cultural origins?
• How do cultural forces (such as changes from one generation to the next, trends in education or society, or other cultural phenomena) impact (and are impacted by) computer/information technologies/market-forces, and what do these impacts (in either direction or both) mean?

Paper topics might include (but are not limited to) those that address:

• issues of (re)presentation through computers (website analysis and design),
• methods of discourse involving computers (blogging, Twitter, social networks, viral video, live feeds),
• theories focused on the relationship between computers and culture, uses of computers in particular contexts and the impacts thereof (computers and pedagogy, online literary journals, etc.),
• the relationship between computers and cultural forces (such as news, politics, and terrorism),
• security/privacy/fraud/surveillance and computers (online security issues, spam, scams, and hoaxes),
• creative practice, web art, generative and digital art, virtual performance,
• the self, the “second self,” identity formation/negotiation, anonymity
• “cyberkids,” internet youth cultures
• data visualization and digital geographies
• hashtag thinking, communities, data organization and archives

While we will consider any relevant paper, we have a preference for those that involve transferable methodological approaches. This is an interdisciplinary conference, and other conference attendees would benefit from being able to adapt your research methods to their future research.

Scholars, teachers, professionals, artists, and others interested in computer culture are encouraged to participate.

Graduate students are also particularly welcome with award opportunities for the best graduate papers. More information about awards can be found at

http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/

Specifically, we would like to highlight the following award opportunities:

• The "Computer Culture and Game Studies Award"
• The "Heldrich-Dvorak Travel Fellowships"

Given how papers may often fall into multiple categories, there may be other award opportunities listed at http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/ which would be appropriate for your paper.  (However, each presenter may only apply for one – not including the Travel Fellowships, which can be in addition.)

If you wish to form your own panel, we would be glad to facilitate your needs. This conference is a presentation opportunity.

Visit  <http://www.journaldialogue.org/>http://journaldialogue.org <http://www.journaldialogue.org/> for information about the organization's new, peer-reviewed journal, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy.

Please pass along this call to friends and colleagues.

For consideration, *submit 100-200 word abstracts and proposals for panels by Saturday, November 15, 2014* to the conference’s electronic submission system, which can be found at: http://conference2015.southwestpca.org/