support ICA mobile communication interest group

Dear International Communication Association (ICA) friends,

We are making the move to establish an ICA interest group for mobile communication. To do this we need the digital signatures of 40 plus ICA members. If you are interested in supporting this move, please go to the following link, fill in the form with your name and affiliation (after reading the attached letter to make sure that you agree with it) and send it off. If we reach the required number of signatures, there will be an organizational meeting in Puerto Rico. We hope to see you there.

https://www.soscisurvey.de/igmobilecommunication/

Rich L.

PS: please note that you need to be an ICA member in order to give a valid signature.

CFP: Designing Mobilities 2015

Designing Mobilities 2015
London South Bank University, 14-15 April 2015

Organisers:  Justin Spinney (Cardiff); Suzanne Reimer (Southampton) and Philip Pinch (London South Bank University)

Call for Papers

Mobilities research has often focused on the micro-scale of hybrid bodies and spaces rather than larger systems of mobility. In particular remarkably little attention has been paid to design and the related business and regulatory functions that circumscribe the production of systems and experiences of mobility. Yet it is evident that the mobility objects that these systems produce—part of Latour’s (2008) ‘missing masses’—are central in shaping conduct and experiences. For example, everyday mobility objects materialize cultural and societal values in similar ways to built environments; play a central role in shaping experiences of mobility, subjectivities and social and cultural identities (for example ‘citizen’ or ‘mother’); and mediate interactions and conduct between other actors and environments. In this workshop we intend to explore the role of designers, consumer-facing business functions (such as consumer experience and marketing), and the regulatory, legal and normative frameworks that circumscribe these functions in co-producing these relationships. A whole host of questions arise from this proposition:

•    How do designers understand the desires and affordances of the mobile subject? How are notions of actual or aspirational use translated into product qualities? How do these shape product qualities and circumscribe use? How do consumer-facing business functions (marketing, sales, advertising, PR) shape the meanings of mobile objects and their qualities?

•    How do mobile objects shape the social identities, moral obligations and cultural practices of people on the move? How are specific technologies implicated in this? How does the use and representation of mobility objects shape conduct to produce social and cultural identities?

•    What understandings of practice and values underpin regulatory knowledges and design standards? How are such knowledges transmitted between actors, and to what extent are they transformed and interpreted by design professionals, consumer-facing business functions and policy makers in different local and national contexts?

•    How do design standards play out in everyday mobility to shape interactions between different styles of movement? To what extent are mobility objects imagined and designed to harmonise with multiple environments and modes of mobility? How are sensory, affective and visual regimes shaped by designers? What are the inter-linkages between different constellations of mobilities such as the design of HGVs, containerisation and palletisation?

•    What can a historical perspective on the design, manufacture and regulation  of mobility objects tell us about the emergence of practices, identities and norms?

In investigating such questions we seek to bring together academics and design professionals with a view to future collaboration in a two-day workshop. This will take place on April 14th and 15th 2015 at London South Bank University. We welcome abstracts of no more than 250 words to be submitted to the organisers (spinneyj@cardiff.ac.uk;S.Reimer@soton.ac.uk;pinchpl@lsbu.ac.uk) no later thanFriday 31st October 2014. 

CFP: Time Travelers: Temporality and Digital Mapping

Digital mapping, though generally conceived as a spatial activity, is as strongly grounded in time. With the digital era disintegrating representational fixity, scholars, adept at grappling with the spatial implications of digitality, continue to struggle to conceptualize and communicate the temporal consequences of maps that shift with each moment.

In this peer-reviewed collection we seek to take up Doreen Massey's (2005:107) still critical concern: how do we cope with the 'ongoing stories' in the world. Mapping has long wrestled with the difficulty of enrolling time into such narratives. This collection aims to examine how this is impacted by the presence of digital mapping technologies that, arguably, have disrupted our understanding of time as much as they have provided coherence.

We are looking for contributions that move beyond the descriptive to pay particular attention to what might be called the 'critical dynamics' of time. Examples of such approaches may include drawing on phenomenology and the body (Massumi, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl), theorizing play and ludic devices (Huizinga, Caillois), employing network/assemblage thinking (Latour, De Landa), reading such concerns through philosophers of technology (Stiegler, Simondon etc.). In each case contributions should focus on, or cross-cut between , digital maps, digital mapping or digital locative-media.

We encourage contributions on a range of themes:
•    Rhythm (mapping and/or analysis of rhythm(s)
•    Inscription, folding or layering of temporality
•    'Real-time' data visualization
•    Playing with mapping time
•    Urban 'ghostings' or hauntings
•    Surveillant temporalities
•    The temporality of designing maps.
•    Present absences / absent presences
•    Methodologies of temporal recovery / analysis
•    Changing everyday digital mapping cultures
•    Political valence of temporal dynamics
•    'Capturing' and the flows of everyday life
•    Affective technologies and the half-second delay
•    (Digital) mapping moments or events
•    Fast/slow cartographies
•    Temporal dashboards
•    Play time
•    Attention, interest and changing modes of temporal production
•    Temporality at the interface: haptic and participatory presence
•    Interfaces and digital 'feeds' / content immediacy
•    The blackboxing of temporality
•    Futures and/or loss of futurity
•    Spatial stories and narrative cartographies
•    Embodied mapping practice
•    Temporality of creative processes
•    Designing time
•    Temporal complexities

We invite contributions from range of methodological, theoretical and practical vantage points, and are particularly interested in bringing together a variety of approaches, from junior and senior researchers, and from diverse disciplinary backgrounds.

Please send a full chapter of between 4000 and 8000 words (Chicago manual of style), with a short biography of 100 words by *18 December **2014* to: chartingthedigital@gmail.com. We use Easychair as our submission system:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=chatemp2014

For other inquiries please contact:  chartingthedigital@gmail.com.

CFP: MOBILE TRASH

CFP: MOBILE TRASH (JANUARY 2016)

EDITED BY MÉL HOGAN & ANDREA ZEFFIRO 

For this special issue of Wi: Journal of Mobile Media [wi.mobilities.ca], we are gathering contributions that address the idea of ‘mobile trash.’

The intention of this issue is to reconfigure the concepts of ‘mobile’ and ‘mobilities’ in relation to trash, by its various definitions and formations, from new materialism, feminism, media ecology, media archaeology, and queer frameworks.

We’re especially interested in short pieces (2500 words) and creative interventions that explore mobile trash as pollution, fumes, compost, satellites, e-waste, toxins, bodies, drones, viruses, hacks, landfill, etc. We welcome pieces that poetically engage the politics of trash and speak to its borders, transitions, movements, materialities, shifts, contagions, ecologies, permutations, mutations, and invisible transferences.

The online issue goes live January 2016 and will be accompanied by a print-on-demand issue.

If interested, please send us a 300 word abstract to: info@technotrash.org

Include your name, personal URL, and title of submission.

TIMELINE

/ Deadline for abstracts: Nov 1, 2014.

/ Notification: Feb 1, 2015.

/ Final submissions due: Sept 1, 2015.

/ Issue goes live: January 1, 2016.

Wi: journal of mobile media (pronounced wī) was founded in 2006 as in-house publication of the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN) and has since operated under the aegis of the Mobile Media Lab. The Lab has two nodes, one in Montreal (www.mobilities.ca) and one in Toronto (www.mobilemedialab.ca). Wi is an open- access peer-reviewed experimental journal. The mandate of the journal is to create an interdisciplinary international dialogue for scholars to explore the  “term” mobilities in all of its many manifestations, although the history of the journal indicates an emphasis on the connection of mobilities research to media studies, the media arts and communications. We are particularly interested in publishing works that use media (images, sounds, animations) as a major component of their articles, although this is not a requirement.http://wi.mobilities.ca/

message from Professor Barry Wellman (see "group" tag)

The Communication and Information Technology section of the American Sociological Association is having a membership drive, with Sept 20 the cut-off date. If you're an ASA member, section membership is free. Otherwise, it is low cost. Join us - we take mobile seriously.
See below for details
  Barry Wellman
 _______________________________________________________________________
  FRSC                        NetLab Network              INSNA Founder
                     Faculty of Information (iSchool)
  University of Toronto                          Toronto Canada M5S 3G6
  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman          twitter: @barrywellman
  NETWORKED:The New Social Operating System. Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman
  MIT Press            http://amzn.to/zXZg39      Print $15  Kindle $9
                 Old/NewCyberTimes http://bit.ly/c8N9V8
  ___________________________________________________

more information... see "group" tag

CFP: Mobile Communications in Developing Countries

Announcement and call for papers for 7th CMI Conference 2014

Title of conference: Mobile Communications in Developing Countries

Date: 17 - 18 November 2014

Venue: Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

The conference on ‘Mobile Communications in Developing Countries’ examines issues regarding the development of mobile ICT.  Issues bordering on, but not limited to mobile markets, regulations, business strategies as well as issues relating to the use of mobile communications for economic, social, and human development, will be discussed.

Participants will come from academia, business, and policy and regulation. The idea is to benefit from input from speakers and participants from developing countries as well as Europe and elsewhere.

Conference Objectives

The main objectives of this conference are:

• To discuss the developments of ICTs, mobile communications, and media
• To discuss sector specific uses of mobile communications, e.g. e-payment, e-health
• To highlight the current challenges encountered in the uptake of mobile broadband in developing countries and its impact on ICT development
• To explore ways in which ICTs and mobile technologies are used and assessed in diverse fields of education, health care, governance, businesses, social networks, banking & finance
• To assess recent methods that enhance access to mobile communications, education, health services, government services, business services such as distance education, computer-based communication methods, telemedicine, e-commerce, face booking

Who Should Attend

Faculty, Teachers, Researchers, Policy makers and Regulators, Health practitioners, Business professionals, ICT practitioners, Instructional designers, Media specialists and producers, Distance learning directors, Technology & Service providers.

Topics will include – but not limited to the following

• ICT for development
• Mobile for development
• Mobile broadband
• Information Systems
• Role of Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
• Application of Information Systems in government and businesses
• Age and gender issues in the use of Information Systems
• Digital library, distance learning, e-learning systems & technologies
• E-health & e-governance
• Databases, storage & retrieval systems (e.g. cloud computing)
• Cyber-security – governance, risk & compliance (GRC), cyber-crime
• E-commerce & e-banking in developing economies
• Social media & social networks
• Social engineering challenges and counter measures
• ICT policy & regulatory environment
• Media policy & regulatory environment

Important dates

Deadline for abstracts: 22 September

Notification of acceptance: 29 September

Deadline for Full Papers: 10 November

Submit your abstract / paper to: cmi@cmi.aau.dk

Hosts

CMI, Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark and Ghana Telecom University College, Accra, Ghana

Price: 100 €

CFP: ACM ITS 2014 Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces

Social ITS: Tutorial and Workshop on Theories and Applications of Social Science for Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces

In conjunction with ACM ITS 2014
Dresden, Germany
November 16, 2014

http://its2014socialscienceforis.weebly.com

Important Dates

• Submission Deadline:  September 5, 2014, 5pm PDT
• Notification to Authors:  September 23, 2014
• NEW EVENT FORMAT:  Tutorial (½ day) + Workshop (½ day):  November 16, 2014

Social ITS Tutorial + Workshop Theme

There is an increasing trend in the human-computer interaction (HCI) and interactive tabletop and surfaces (ITS) communities towards the application of social theories describing human and social behaviour into our technology designs. For example, social theories that describe how people utilize different spatial distances to engage in different types of interactions with others, how collaborative and communication practices are employed in face-to-face environments, have been appropriated by ITS researchers to create new forms of interactive surface interactions in a variety of contexts.

In this combined tutorial and workshop venue, we review and discuss social science theories relevant to the design of interactive surfaces. We aim to facilitate knowledge exchange on the inherent challenges of applying social theories to build systems, and to establish a community of practice to help develop effective strategies for successfully applying social theories to the design of Interactive Surfaces.

The tutorial component will focus on social theories related to, but not limited to:

• Group communications
• Proxemics theory foundations
• Public and personal space
• Territoriality theories and research
• Lessons learned, new ideas, and insights about the ways social theories (that were developed in a different context than HCI) to interaction design of interactive surfaces

The workshop component will focus on:

• Feedback and thoughts gathered from discussions during the tutorial session
• Overview of participants’ work related to applications of social theories
• Workshop activities will include:
• Identifying challenges and topics of interest
• Discussion of lessons learned
• Creation of an overview on applying social theories in the ITS context

Submissions

We invite researchers to submit position papers of up to 4 pages in the SIGCHI Extended Abstract format (http://www.sigchi.org/publications/chipubform) that describe original research and outline the interest and experience in applying social science theories to the design of interactive surfaces. Selected submissions will be made available to workshop participants prior to the workshop on the workshop website (http://its2014socialscienceforis.weebly.com).

Supplementary materials (e.g., videos) can be submitted in the form of a Youtube, Vimeo, or Dropbox link, and will also be made available on the workshop website. If there is sufficient coherence in the workshop discussions, authors will be invited to work towards a summary article about the workshop outcome, resulting in a possible publication.

Please submit your position paper by September 5, 2014, 5pm PDT to:  n.marquardt@ucl.ac.uk

Organizers

Stacey D. Scott – University of Waterloo, Canada
Victor Cheung – University of Waterloo, Canada
Jo Vermeulen – Hasselt University, Belgium
Nicolai Marquardt – University College London, United Kingdom

For more details, we refer to the Social ITS Tutorial+Workshop’s website:
http://its2014socialscienceforis.weebly.com