[Air-L] CFP - mini track digital citizenship and activism - ECEG 2013, Como, Italy, June 13-14

[Jakob Svensson]

The mini-track on Digital Activism and Citizenship at the 13th European 
Conference on eGovernment ECEG 2013 Como, Italy, June 13-14th might be of 
interest for AoIR members. Feel free to circulate it among your collegues



The long-raging debate over the potential of the Internet and new media to 
invigorate citizens’ participation in politics is not a matter of 
theoretical speculation any more, but an acutely practical affair. Nowadays, 
when citizens want to voice their opinions and define their political 
identities they increasingly do so on social networks online. Slowly but 
surely, these environments exhibit exciting new possibilities for 
mobilization, organization and discussion, offering citizens new channels 
for speaking and acting together and thus lower the threshold for political 
participation. This, in turn, changes the power dynamics of participation. 
However, some have questioned the notion of social networking platforms as 
tools for social change and/or horizontal power structures, in particular in 
relation to issues of surveillance, data privacy and corporate ownership of 
social networks. Also very few movements have succeed through mediated 
activism alone.
Hence, on the one hand we are witnessing how increasing access to the 
internet has resulted in an array of new strategies and success stories for 
contemporary activism, in particular with regards to mobilisation. On the 
other hand, we are still groping in the dark when it comes to understanding 
the place of digital activism in the shifting landscapes of power. For this 
mini-track we invite scholarly research to shed light on these issues.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):
Contemporary activist and citizenhsip practices
Power and participation among activists and citizens using online platforms
Networked individualism and collective action
New discourses of activism and citizenship
Intersections of offline and online participation
Issues of surveillance and privacy in online participation 


Submission details

All submission types require a 300-500 word abstract in the first instance, 
to be received by 22 November 2012. Please read the guidelines at  
http://academic-conferences.org/abstract-guidelines.htm
Only accepted by online form submission at  
http://academic-conferences.org/eceg/eceg2013/eceg13-abstract-submission.htm


Jakob Svensson, Ph. D.

Director HumanIT (www.kau.se/en/humanit)
Ass. Prof. in Media and Communication Studies
Karlstad University
65188 Karlstad - Sweden

+ 46 (0) 54  700 1893
jakob.svensson at kau.se