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.




Saturday, January 31, 2015

CFP: Big Data in Advertising

Journal of Advertising
Special Issue: Big Data in Advertising

Manuscripts are currently being solicited for an upcoming special issue of the Journal of Advertising (JA) dedicated to using big data in advertising research.

Digital environments such as the Internet, social media, mobile devices, wearable technology, and the Internet of things produce large data sets by recording, often in great detail, interactions between customers and the brand throughout various phases of the customer experience. These data sets create opportunities for advertisers, have the potential of disrupting aspects of the advertising industry, and become a goldmine of information for academics to test advertising theories.

The purpose of this special issue is to stimulate research into using these new data sources in advertising. More specifically, this issue aims to explore how big data contribute to theory building in advertising research. Multidisciplinary collaboration between advertising scholars and scholars from data-oriented fields is encouraged. Potential research topics that may be addressed include (but are not limited to):
  • Identifying customer insights using big data
  • New methods of measuring audiences using big data sources
  • Measuring and monitoring brand associations from social media
  • Data mining and text analytics in social media
  • Personalizing messages with big data
  • Testing advertising theories with big data sources
  • Integrated use of big data and small data
  • Optimizing the selection of media delivery channels and platforms
  • Using big data without violating customer privacy or ethical standards
  • Big data in qualitative advertising research



Submission Guidelines
Submissions should follow the manuscript format guidelines for JA at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ujoa20/current. Papers should be no longer than 30 double-spaced pages in length (including references, tables/figures, and appendices).

The submission deadline is January 31, 2016.

All manuscripts should be submitted through the JA online submission system, ScholarOne, at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ujoa, during January 1-31. Authors should select “SPECIAL ISSUE: Big Data in Advertising” as “Manuscript Type.” Please also note in the cover letter that the submission is for the Special Issue on Big Data. Manuscripts will go through a peer review process, and the special issue is planned to appear as the last issue of 2016.

Guest Editors
Hairong Li, Michigan State University
Edward Malthouse, Northwestern University

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

CFP: Princeton CITP Doctoral Workshop

Along with the Media Innovation Lab (MiLab), we’re excited to announce our inaugural Doctoral Workshop, to be held April 6th to April 8th at Princeton.

Participating doctoral students will be selected through a competitive review process and will receive support for travel and lodging up to $500 per attendee. Students are encouraged to submit dissertation-relevant work; abstracts and shorter proposals will not be accepted.

Research topics should focus on the interplay between information and communication technologies and the social, political, civic, and governmental spheres. We welcome applications from doctoral students doing relevant work in any discipline, including communication studies, computer science, economics, political science, and sociology. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following: citizen journalism; civic engagement and digital technology; e-voting security; internet governance; open government data; privacy technologies for democratic ends; social media and political expression; and state-sponsored internet freedom programs.

To be considered, please submit your manuscript, along with your CV and full contact information, to Laura Cummings-Abdo (citp@princeton.edu) and Meike Muller (meike.mueller@univie.ac.at) no later than February 1, 2015.

For more information, please see this call.

Monday, January 26, 2015

CFP: International Conference of Media Change


We are inviting proposals for the International Conference of Media Change SERIALIZATION LANDSCAPES: SERIES AND SERIALIZATION FROM LITERATURE TO THE WEB three-day conference that will take place from Tuesday 7th to Thursday 9th July 2015 at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Polo Didattico Volponi, Via Saffi 15 – 61029 Urbino (Italy).

The conference is organized by the Department of Communication Studies and Humanities, University of Urbino Carlo Bo in partnership with the Institute for Screen Industries Research – University of Nottingham and the Second cycle degree in Cinema, Television and Multimedia Production –University of Bologna.

The deadline for abstracts is Saturday 28th February 2015.
Please email a 300-word abstract (stating your name, email address and
institutional affiliation, maximum 4 keywords) to: info@mediachange.it

Possible themes include:
  • the experimentation of the serial form in theater’s scripts, comics, literature, videogames, videoclips, video art and advertising;
  • the relationship between the serial form and the serialization on the web, blogs, tumblr and social networks more in general (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.);
  • the television serialization as an organization mechanism of the narrative ecosystem experience;
  • production and consumption: serialization form, ways of production and user generated seriality;
  • serialization and the movies. Reboot or re-franchise? Chapters, series or sequels?
  • steps and processes of the serial product construction and fruition on the web: from series to web series.
Outputs
A dedicated edition of “Mediascapes Journal”, a double blind peer review journal.

Additional information is available on the website: http://www.mediachange.it/

Kind regards
Giovanni Boccia Artieri [giovanni.bocciaartieri@uniurb.it]
Laura Gemini [laura.gemini@uniurb.it]
Erika D’Amico [erika.damico@uniurb.it]
University of Urbino Carlo Bo

Doctoral position in Media and Communication studies

Doctoral position in Media and Communication studies

We invite applications for a doctoral scholarship in media and communication studies, to start in the autumn 2015 at Lund University, Sweden.

Lund University is in the world’s top one hundred, with 60th place in the QS Ranking 2014/2015. It is the highest ranked university in Sweden QS Ranking 2014/2015.

Media and Communication Research at Lund University focuses on the study of media, society and culture. Our research addresses media and communication structures and processes in modern life. We research television, film, print media, advertising, social media and mobile technologies within the context of politics, society and culture. The department has international expertise in these areas: democracy, participation and social media, gender, health and society, audiences and popular culture, children and digital media. Courses are taught in both English and Swedish on a range of specialisms for undergraduate and postgraduate students. There is a lively research culture, with an established doctoral program, visiting researchers, regular international seminar series, conferences and events.

For full information and how to apply please visit: http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/erek/job/655503

Last Day of Applying 20th 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: IAMCR Audience Section

Please note that we are accepting proposals (both for papers and panels) in three languages: English, French or Spanish
Deadline: 9 February (only three weeks left!)


The IAMCR Audience Section invites papers that both reflect the conference theme and the Section's interest in new approaches to audience research in the context of a digital, global media environment.  The Section aims to reflect and encourage plural understandings of audiences for a range of media technologies, in diverse settings, reflecting the role of media in identity, everyday life and broader social and political engagement.

In relation to the Conference Theme we encourage submissions on the relationship between audiences and media that limit and/or enable audience empowerment. More broadly, in the context of major transformations in media, we seek to encourage reflection on the changing nature of audiences, innovations in ways of studying audiences across a range of media and contexts, and the extent to which traditional understandings of audiences as masses, publics and markets are being challenged by the fluidity and ephemeral nature of digital and mobile media experiences.

Suggested Paper or Panel Themes
In addition to the open call for papers, we would like to invite papers and proposals for panels which address the following themes:

Reinventing/transforming Audience Research:  Innovation of both a theoretical and methodological nature is an ongoing requirement for audience researchers if they are to keep pace with a rapidly changing media environment where audience(ing) takes multiple forms and resists easy categorization or investigation. We welcome proposals for papers that address new conceptual and practical approaches to studying audiences in new media worlds, that examine and highlight the complexity of audience data within converged, cross-platform media contexts, and that reflect on the emerging agenda for audience studies in a radically transformed media ecology. 

Claiming the Audience: Audience research extends beyond academia to include commercial, governmental and civil society bodies all of whom are interested in understanding audiences.  We welcome submissions that focus on the purposes, methods and value of non-academic audience research and on the relationship between academic audience research and that in other sectors.

Social media / Mass media audiences: Media consumption has drastically changed during the last decade, being the emergence of social media one of the more salient transformations. Even a growing part of the audience has shifted their attention to online worlds, conventional mass media are still a key factor to understand and explain any given media(ted) landscape. We are aiming for papers and panels studying the evolution of hegemonic and resistant strategies in social media by means of a comparison with the previous model. How and why some social media have turned into dominant spaces worldwide, while others have disappeared or readdressed their focus on regional, national or local areas? Which alternatives are offered to social media users if they do not want to follow the path described by global Internet corporations? To which extent are these corporations defining the concept itself of audiences?

Resistant audiences, critical audiences, networked audiences:  Central to the audience research tradition has been a commitment to examining forms of resistance and opposition exhibited by audiences. Much of the seminal work of audience studies was forged in a time of economic crisis through the 1970s and 1980s when forms of audience resistance revealed deep-seated social tensions and a charged political environment. Are similar patterns evident in the current global economic crisis? The locus of resistance has shifted from the ideal-interpretative to the material-productive. How does this affect the nature of resistance? How do audiences network and join forces in alternative interpretative communities? How is the resistant and critical audience manifest across today’s more complex media landscape? How do media organizations and professionals deal with the resistant and critical audiences? And how is resistance, at the level of the ideal-interpretative and the material-productive incorporated and transformed into compliance? We invite papers that look across the full spectrum of audience experience and examine diverse accounts of readings, modes of engagement and mediation of audience relationships with the wider society.

Youthful audiences:  Young people’s relationship with media has been the subject of both celebration of the potential for new forms of creative expression and anxiety with regard to the impact of powerful media on vulnerable audiences. In relation to new media forms, young people are frequently seen to be in the vanguard of new audience trends and emerging practices of consumption and engagement. Yet, research on children, youth and media remains under-developed, particularly within the field of audience studies.  Papers within this theme might address questions of access, consumption, risk and harm, identity and re-presentation among youthful audiences. New empirical research on children, youth and media across diverse cultural contexts is especially welcome. We welcome papers that explore audience experience from the child’s perspective, and that examine opportunities, risks, and challenges faced by children in the current media environment. Questions might include the extent to which media literacies are evident in children’s audience practices  or how agency supported or strengthened through civil society, educational or governmental action?

Active/passive audience practices: Audience studies have often implicitly centralized mediated experiences while at the same time contextualizing, qualifying and decentralizing the role of media in people’s everyday lives. This tension has lead to an over-emphasis on audience activity, both at the level of media consumption and media (self-production), while more passive and indifferent media uses and referential interpretations are under-theorized and under-researched. We invite papers that focus on the everyday passiveness of (some) media audiences and their acceptance of or indifference to the media frameworks that are offered to them. Moreover, we also call for papers that theorize or research the sometimes limited importance attributed to media in the everyday life of audience members.

Guidelines on Submissions
Individual papers and panels are possible, but all proposals must be submitted through the online Open Conference System at http://iamcr-ocs.org from 1 December 2014 – 9 February 2015. Early submission is strongly encouraged. There are to be no email submissions of abstracts addressed to any Section or Working Group Head.

The Audience section will accept abstracts in English, French or Spanish, and will arrange for presentations in the three languages as well.
It is expected that for the most part, only one (1) abstract will be submitted per person for consideration by the Conference. However, under no circumstances should there be more than two (2) abstracts bearing the name of the same applicant either individually or as part of any group of authors. Please note also that the same abstract or another version with minor variations in title or content must not be submitted to other Sections or Working Groups of the Association for consideration, after an initial submission. Such submissions will be deemed to be in breach of the conference guidelines and will be automatically rejected by the Open Conference System, by the relevant Head or by the Conference Programme Reviewer. Such applicants risk being removed entirely from the conference programme.
Upon submission of an abstract, you will be asked to confirm that your submission is original and that it has not been previously published in the form presented. You will also be given an opportunity to declare if your submission is currently before another conference for consideration.
Presenters are expected to bring fully developed work to the conference. Prior to the conference, it is expected that a completed paper will be submitted to Section, Working Group, Session Chairs, and/or Discussants

For enquiries or further information, please contact:
Section Head:
Peter Lunt
University of Leicester, Department of Media and Communication
pl108[at]le.ac.uk
Vice Chair:
Toshie Takahashi
School of Culture, Media and Society. Waseda University
toshie.takahashi[at]waseda.jp
Vice Chair:
Miguel Vicente
Universidad de Valladolid, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Jurídicas y de la Comunicación
mvicentem[at]yahoo.es / miguelvm[at]soc.uva.es 
Conference theme: “Hegemony or Resistance? The Ambiguous Power of Communication”
See the conference key dates and deadlines: http://iamcr.org/congress/montreal2015-keydates
See all Calls for Papers for IAMCR 2015: http://iamcr.org/congress/montreal2015-cfp
Visit the conference website: http://congresiamcr.uqam.ca


Sunday, January 18, 2015

CFP: Media Sociology Preconference 2015

Call for Papers: Media Sociology Preconference 2015
Venue: Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management (Chicago Campus)
Date: August 21, 2015

We invite submissions for a third preconference on media sociology to be held at Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management on Friday, August 21, 2015. (This is one day before the start of the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago.) To encourage the widest possible range of submissions, we have no pre-specified theme again this year and invite both theoretical and empirical papers on any topic related to media sociology. Submissions from graduate students and junior scholars are particularly welcome.

This preconference is linked to an effort to strengthen media sociology within the ASA: After a long period of negotiation, the media sociology steering committee was able to broker a deal with the Communication and Information Technologies section (CITASA) at the end of 2014.  If all goes well in 2015, CITASA will be changing its section name to "Communication, Information Technologies and Media Sociology." The current section membership still needs to formally vote in favor of this change but we have been assured--based on the recent survey of current CITASA members—that this will most likely happen.

Media sociology has long been a highly diverse field spanning many topics, methodologies, and units of analysis. It encompasses all forms of mass-mediated communication and expression, including news media, entertainment media, as well as new and digital media. Outstanding research exists within the different subfields both within and beyond the discipline of sociology. Our aim is to create dialogue among these disparate yet complementary traditions.
Papers may be on a variety of topics including, but not limited to:
  • production processes and/or media workers
  • political economy (including the role of the state and markets)
  • media and the public sphere
  • mediatization
  • media content
  • the Internet, social media, cellular phones, or other technology
  • the digital divide
  • new uses of media
  • media globalization or diaspora
  • media effects of media consumption
  • identity, the self, and media

Invited Speakers
Last year’s preconference, held at the Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business at Mills College in Oakland, California, was again very well-attended and featured an invited keynote by Clayton Childress (University of Toronto – Scarborough) and a plenary panel addressing the theme, “Media Sociology as a Vocation” featuring Laura Grindstaff (UC Davis), Paul Hirsch (Northwestern University), Ron Jacobs (SUNY Albany), Paul Lopes (Colgate University), and Guobin Yang (University of Pennsylvania).

This year’s keynote speaker will be Tressie McMillan Cottom (Virginia Commonwealth University, starting fall 2015). There will again be a closing special plenary session. We will announce further invited speakers in due course.
Submissions
Submissions should include:
  • Separate cover sheet with: title, name and affiliation, and email address of author(s).
  • Abstract of 150-300 words that discusses the problem, research, methods and relevance.
  • Also include at least three descriptive keywords. Note: DO NOT put identifying information in the body of the abstract; only on cover sheet.
  • Use Microsoft Office or PDF format.

Send abstracts to casey.brienza.1@city.ac.uk. Please write “Media Sociology Preconference” in the subject line.

Abstract deadline is March 31, 2015.
Notification of acceptance will occur sometime in mid-April.
Contact Casey Brienza (casey.brienza.1@city.ac.uk) or Matthias Revers (matthias.revers@uni-graz.at) for more information about the preconference.


Wednesday, January 7, 2015

CFP: The Ideal City

Call for Abstracts for the conference: RC21. The Ideal City: between myth and reality – Urbino (Italy) – 27-29 August 2015

Smart participation: putting the social into urban innovation / STREAM A – Cities and innovation

A Smart City can be considered as a specific form of ideal city that emphasises the efficiency of infrastructures by using ICT: Many early models equal a smart city with the systemic integration of ICT in e.g. the energy or the mobility sectors – while not touching societal aspects. With that approach, they backed Crouch’s (2003) thesis that decisions on technical and technological development are (still) not being taken with participation of the broad population. Recently, smart city models consider the use of technologies not as an end in itself but as a means to “fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance” (Caragliu et al. 2009: 6).

In this session, participants gather to explore relations of participation and smartness in cities – and to discuss interdependency, as well as challenges for societies. Questions to be dealt with during this proposed session are:

  • Conceptual questions such as: How and to what extent could any concept of participation be included in smart city concepts? What is “Smart Participation”? This refers e.g. to different roles of individuals, stakeholder groups and society, different concepts of Smart Cities and Smartness, to general questions whether new forms and methods of participation evolve, or if participation in smart city development is democratic at all.
  • Practical questions such as: What are socio-cultural and political preconditions for smart(er) cities? What is a Smart Citizen in urban contexts? This refers e.g. to how and to what extent people and groups already participate in developing smart infrastructures and services, to actual scopes of action, to interdependencies between technical developments, urban spaces and democratic institutions.

Case studies, comparative studies or reflection papers that address one or several of the questions above are welcome. The session will be organised as a round table session with ca. four presenting scholars (10 min each) while answering two to three questions relevant to all four papers. Audience is invited to actively join in.

Organizer: Carolin Schröder (Center for Technology & Society, Technische Universität Berlin, DE)

Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 31 January 2015
Further information on the submission process and the conference: http://www.rc21.org/en/conferences/urbino2015/


Monday, January 5, 2015

CFP: When Apps Go Bad


Call for Participation: When Apps Go Bad: Exploring the Unintended Socio-Political Impact of Locative Media
Workshop at ACM CHI 2015
Seoul, Republic of South Korea
18th April 2015

Submission deadline EXTENDED: 19th January 2015
Notifications: 13th February 2015
Full details: http://www.whenappsgobad.org
Contact: chi2015@whenappsgobad.org<mailto:chi2015@whenappsgobad.org>

In this workshop, we aim to explore the issues surrounding instances when locative social apps, map mashups and data visualisations “go bad”.

Given the proliferation of locative tech, urban informatics, ubicomp, crowdsourcing and recommender systems, we are beginning to see cases of how well-intentioned interactive software can sometimes generate problematic socio-political commentary or outcomes. Recent cases of this have, for instance, resulted in the stigmatisation and marginalisation of communities, the labelling of city neighbourhoods as ‘no go’ zones, and the reinforcement of stereotyping and profiling.

We want to understand how this happens and what previous research and theoretical work exists to inform us of the mechanisms and impacts of this. The aims of this workshop are to bring together the HCI community to discuss examples of apps and related media “going bad”, what existing work has been done to counter these, and to explore what else could be done to raise awareness or to provide practical and theoretical guidelines in this design context.

This 1-day workshop will convene academics, designers, developers and scholars to explore, discuss and challenge locative media and its often-unintended problematic socio-political impact. We invite 2-4 page position papers that offer perspectives on the workshop themes. Broadly, these are: i) problematizing existing apps; ii) applications and appropriation of existing theory and methods; iii) and the creation of socio-politically sensitive design ideas.

Example submissions may focus, for instance, on:
  • Critiques or post-mortems of existing systems that inadvertently marginalise people or places.
  • Examinations of privacy, surveillance and profiling within the design of locative media.
  • Explorations of the societal impact of community technologies.
  • Problematizing systems through design fiction or adversarial design.
  • Sensitive design of applications that make use of open data sets or community representations, such as crimes/offender data.
  • Applications of socio-politically sensitive design in urban informatics.
  • Theoretical and conceptual submissions drawing on literature from relevant disciplines such as critical cartography, political geography, neogeography and the geoweb.
Papers will be selected based on relevance and strength of potential to raise discussion. At least one author of each accepted position paper must register for the workshop and for at least one day of the conference. Submit position papers (2-4 pages, in ACM SIGCHI Extended Abstract format) by email to chi2015@whenappsgobad.org<mailto:chi2015@whenappsgobad.org>

For more information, visit the workshop site http://www.whenappsgobad.org or contact chi2015@whenappsgobad.org<mailto:chi2015@whenappsgobad.org>

Organisers: Tom Feltwell, Shaun Lawson (University of Lincoln) John Vines (Newcastle University), Chris Speed (Edinburgh University), Marian Dörk (Potsdam University),  Phillip Brooker (University of Bath), Peta Mitchell (QUT)

CFP: Emerald Studies in Media and Communication


Call for Submissions 2015

Emerald Studies in Media and Communication

Sponsored by CITASA

Initial Submissions Due: Monday February 23, 2014 midnight GMT By email to editorial@emeraldmediastudies.com

The 2015 Editorial Team of *Emerald Studies in Media and Communication* sponsored by CITASA is inviting submissions of original, unpublished papers for two volumes to be published in late 2015 and early 2015. The deadline for submissions is Monday February 23, 2014.

Volume 10: Digital Distinctions & Inequalities

We welcome submissions on any facet of digital inclusion, digital inequality, digital differentiation, and/or digital divides writ large. We are interested in these topics as they relate to any communication platform, populations, and kinds of production/consumption of digital media, information technologies, social inequalities, etc.

Volume 11: New Media Cultures

We welcome submissions on any facet of culture and [new] media. Submissions may explore any aspect of culture, communication, and [new] media broadly defined. Themes that come to mind are the interplay between [new] media and any of the following: culture, communication, technology, convergence, the arts, cultural production, cultural change in the digital age—and of course anything else [new] media or communication or culture scholars find intriguing.

Please see emeraldmediastudies.com <editorial@emeraldmediastudies.com> for more information about the calls, series, editors, guidelines, etc.
The series welcomes work from a variety of perspectives from media scholars working in the social sciences, humanities, and related fields such as media studies, information studies, STS, and communication. Submissions may be empirical, theoretical, methodological, or synthetic statements of significant developments in the field. Empirical submissions may make use of any method or approach. Contributions on a wide variety of topics on new media, ICTs, communication, and related themes are welcome from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

​Submission Overview
Submissions should be 6,000-12,000 words in length inclusive of abstract, references, and notes. British or American spelling may be used. While no special formatting is requested at the outset, upon acceptance authors must format their manuscripts in accordance with the series' guidelines. Contributions will be peer-reviewed through editorial screening and anonymous refereeing by external reviewers. See submission guidelines for details.

For more information, please email: editorial@emeraldmediastudies.com.

CFP: Making Sense of Microposts Workshop


the 5th Making Sense of Microposts Workshop (#Microposts2015) at WWW 2015

http://www.scc.lancs.ac.uk/microposts2015

18th/19th May 2015
Florence, Italy

To foster collaboration between Computer Science and Social Sciences, and continue to encourage contribution from the latter domain to improve on 'Making Sense of Microposts', there will be a special track dedicated to Social Science papers at #Microposts2015.

THEME: Big things come in small packages
The #Microposts workshops aim to bring together researchers from multiple disciplines to debate current, leading edge effort toward analysing and understanding Microposts - "information published on the Web that is small in size and requires minimal effort to publish (e.g. a Tweet, Facebook share, Instagram like, Google +1)". Although individual Microposts are small and therefore typically focus on a single thought, message or theme, collectively they provide a rich source of information and opinion about a range of topics. The workshop aims to continue to provide a forum to enable discussion and hence, improve understanding of social and cultural phenomena that influence the publication and reuse of Microposts; to assess different approaches to gleaning the information content of Micropost data; and discuss application of this knowledge content in a variety of contexts,
including emergency response, crowd and event tracking, mass communication, opinion mining and sentiment analysis. Enabling the understanding and application of Microposts requires techniques and tools that function at scale, and that are able to handle the very high rate at which Microposts are published.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
The special Social Sciences track at #Microposts2015 will focus on topics including, but not exclusive to, first:
Social & Web Science Studies
  • Collective awareness
  • Education & citizen empowerment, data journalism
  • Civil action, media & politics
  • Political and polemical aspects of Microposts
  • Ethics, legal and privacy issues
  • Psychological profiles and psychological aspects of Micropost-based interactions
  • Cultural, generational and regional differences in access and use
  • Inequality in access and use of digital, social media
  • Emerging social and communication dynamics resulting from Micropost-based services
Additionally, the topics below, detailed in the CfP for the main track, include topics of interest to the Social Sciences community, regarding obtaining understanding about, discovering knowledge content of, add application of Micropost data:
  • Emergent semantics
  • Data mining from Microposts
  • Opinion mining, sentiment and sentic analysis
  • Network analysis and community detection
  • Influence detection and social contagion modelling
  • Prediction approaches
  • Linking Microposts into the Web of Linked Data (i.e. entity extraction and URI disambiguation)
APPLICATIONS:
  • Collective intelligence, user profiling, personalisation & recommendation
  • Business analytics & market intelligence
  • Event & topic detection and tendency tracking
  • Microposts as second screen to television
  • Geo-localised, Micropost-based services
  • Public consensus & citizen participation
  • Security, emergency response & health
  • Effortless posting and wearable devices on communication
  • Linking social and physical signals for, e.g., crowd tracking

CFP: Media(tions), Mobilities and Culture

Communication & Society Journal
Vol. 28: “Media(tions), Mobilities and Culture”

Call for papers
Full articles due 30th March, 2015

It is now open the submission period of proposals for Communication & Society Journal, vol. 28, dedicated to the theme “Media(tions), Mobilities and Culture”. Communication & Society is a bilingual journal (published in Portuguese and in English) and is edited by Communication and Society Research Centre (University of Minho). This volume in particular is coordinated by Emília Araújo, Denise Cogo and Manuel Pinto.

Full articles should be submitted in Portuguese or in English. Authors are responsible for the translation into the second language. The submission of the manuscript in the second language can be done only after the acceptance notification.

Deadline for proposals submission (full articles): 30th March 2015

Publication: December 2015

Detailed call for papers (both in Portuguese and in English) is available online: http://www.comunicacao.uminho.pt/upload/docs/dcc/rcc_chamada_de_artigos_28.pdf

Journal Editor, Moisés de Lemos Martins


Balancing Business Innovation with Data Protection? Regulating the Digital Age

http://www.fljs.org/content/balancing-business-innovation-data-protection
Haldane Room, Wolfson College
Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD

The proliferation of information communication technologies in the form of social networking, cloud computing and the like over the past decade represents the single largest challenge to the protection of personal data. Efforts to implement effective regulation to match the pace of technological and social change, such as the current reform of the EU data protection package, are faced with the question of how to strike a balance between the protection of personal data and the promotion of the European Union as a world leader in the digital economy.

The recent ruling of the European Court of Justice in what has become known as the ‘right to be forgotten’, for example, has raised pressing practical questions about how companies such as Google will deal with the additional regulatory burden placed on them while continuing to drive innovation in the field of information communication technologies.

This workshop, convened by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in association with MacQuarie University, Sydney, will investigate whether it is possible for regulators and companies to strike a balance between business innovation and data protection in the Digital Age. Academics, regulators, and practitioners will address a number of questions raised by these issues, including:
  1. What are the major patterns of data use in the digital advertising economy and what are the implications of these for regulation?
  2. In what ways can the so-called ‘co-regulation model’ empower and protect consumers?
  3. Is ‘co-regulation’ a viable option or will it lead to regulatory capture?
  4. Can privacy-enhancing technologies improve the accountability and transparency of companies’ practices in the context of self-regulation?
Confirmed speakers include Dr Christopher Kuner (Copenhagen), Prof.
Christopher Millard (QMUL), Prof. Christopher Marsden (Sussex), and Steve
Wood (UK ICO).

Workshop attendance is free, but registration is required for catering purposes, http://www.fljs.org/content/balancing-business-innovation-data-protection. The programme can be also downloaded through this link.

The organizing committee gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Macquarie University and Oxford Regulation Discussion Group for this workshop.

For further details, please email Dr Asma Vranaki at asma.vranaki@qmul.ac.uk

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Philosophy of emerging media: Understanding, appreciation, application
James E. Katz (Eds.)

Description
The term "emerging media" responds to the "big data" now available as a result of the larger role digital media play in everyday life, as well as the notion of "emergence" that has grown across the architecture of science and technology over the last two decades with increasing imbrication. The permeation of everyday life by emerging media is evident, ubiquitous, and destined to accelerate. No longer are images, institutions, social networks, thoughts, acts of communication, emotions and speech-the "media" by means of which we express ourselves in daily life-linked to clearly demarcated, stable entities and contexts. Instead, the loci of meaning within which these occur shift and evolve quickly, emerging in far-reaching ways we are only beginning to learn and bring about. 



This volume's purpose is to develop, broaden and spark future philosophical discussion of emerging media and their ways of shaping and reshaping the habitus within which everyday lives are to be understood. Drawing from the history of philosophy ideas of influential thinkers in the past, intellectual path makers on the contemporary scene offer new philosophical perspectives, laying the groundwork for future work in philosophy and in media studies. On diverse topics such as identity, agency, reality, mentality, time, aesthetics, representation, consciousness, materiality, emergence, and human nature, the questions addressed here consider the extent to which philosophy should or should not take us to be facing a fundamental transformation.


Citation:
Floyd, J. & Katz, J. E. (Eds.) (2015). Philosophy of emerging media: Understanding, appreciation, application. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.