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/

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

http://revistacomsoc.pt/

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

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.