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:
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.
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)
