[Air-L] CfP: Theorizing the Web 2012

PJ Rey pjrey.socy at gmail.com
Wed Jan 25 13:20:10 PST 2012


Theorizing the Web 2012

#TtW12

www.cyborgology.org/theorizingtheweb/2012/

Saturday, April 14th
University of Maryland

Keynote Session: “Social Media & Social Movements”
Andy Carvin (NPR; @acarvin) with Zeynep Tufekci (UNC; @techsoc)

Deadline for Abstracts: February 5th
Registration Opens: February 1st

Call for Papers:

Building off the success of last year’s conference, the goal of the
second annual Theorizing the Web conference is to expand the range and
depth of theory used to help us make sense of how the Internet,
digitality, and technology have changed the ways humans live. We hope
to bring together researchers from a range of disciplines, including
sociology, communications, philosophy, economics, English, history,
political science, information science, the performing arts and many
more. We especially encourage international perspectives. In addition,
we invite session and other proposals by tech-industry professionals,
journalists, and other figures outside of academia. Intersections of
gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability will not
be isolated in seperate panels; instead, we fully expect these issues
to be woven throughout the conference.

Submit abstracts online at http://tinyurl.com/TtW12.

Topics include:

    Citizen/participant journalism and media curation

    Identity, self-documentation and self-presentation

    Privacy and publicity on the Web

    Cyborgism and the technologically-mediated body (e.g., body modification)

    Political mobilization, uprisings, revolutions and riots on social
media (including the Arab Spring/Fall, Occupy)

    Repression and the Web: Surveillance, wire-tapping, anonymity, pseudonymity

    Code, values and design

    Epistemology of the Web: Wikipedia, Global Voices, “filter
bubbles” and the prosumption of information

    Theorizing whose Web? How power and inequality (e.g., the Digital
Divide) manifest on the Web

    Mobile computing, online/offline space

    Digital dualism & augmented reality; should the online/offline be
conceptualized as seperate or enmeshed

    Education, pedagogy and technology in the classroom

    What art/literature can offer research and theory of the Web

We plan to curate 7 open submission panels, 4 presenters each as well
as a couple invited panels and a keynote session on social media and
social movements with Andy Carvin (NPR) and Zeynep Tufekci (UNC).
Other events may be added before April.

The first Theorizing the Web conference happened last year. We decided
to do this because there often is not a place for scholars who are
theorizing about the Internet and society to gather and share their
work. The 2011 program consisted of 14 panels, two workshops, two
symposia (one on social media’s role in the Arab revolutions, the
other, on social media and street art), two plenaries (by Saskia
Sassen on "Digital Formations of the Powerful and the Powerless" and
George Ritzer on "Why the Web Needs Post-Modern Theory"), and a
keynote by danah boyd from Microsoft Research and NYU on "Privacy,
Publicity Intertwined." Presenters traveled from around the world
(including Hong Kong and New Zealand). The archive is available here.

There will be a new website with much more information coming January
2012. For further inquiries, email theorizingtheweb at gmail.com.

Call for Artists:

In addition to traditional presentations, the conference will feature
a variety of artistic and multimedia events. As such, we invite
proposals from artists for relevant works or performances in any
medium as well as for discussion of such pieces. We seek to display
art of all forms during the conference and after at a reception. This
could include, but is not limited to, paintings, sculpture, poetry,
fiction writing, digital art, and performance art.



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