[Air-L] CFP International Symposium: Towards an Ecology of Data. Political and Scientific Issues of Digital Data.

[jcplantin]

Dear AOIR members,

Here is a CFP for an upcoming symposium in Paris about the various issues
concerning data and research & politics. I hope it might be of interest for
some of you,

Best,
-- 
Jean-Christophe Plantin

Doctorant Contractuel
Sciences de l'information et de la communication
Université de Technologie de Compiègne
Laboratoire Costech/Equipe EPIN

Mob: + 33 (0)6 50 86 15 60
Blog: cartonomics.org
Twitter: @jcplantin <https://twitter.com/#!/jcplantin>




*Call for Paper*

*International Symposium*

*Towards an Ecology of Data.*

* Political and Scientific Issues of Digital Data.*

*February 14th, 2013*

*Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS (ISCC)*

*20 rue Berbier-du-Mets, Paris, France*





There is currently a growing number of data produced and disseminated in
professional, public and scientific spaces. These data come from various
sources: governments posting their operational data within Open Data
initiatives, companies opening non-strategic data, scientists increasingly
sharing banks of data, or Internet users.

Traditional ways of processing data seem insufficient in front of these big
data. This fact calls for new means of thinking how to extract, store
(grids, cloud computing ...), share, analyze and visualize data. The Web
2.0 related term “data science” (i.e. extracting, processing, analyzing
data) now concerns a large number of activities similarly facing large data
sets, such as scientific research or data journalism.

This symposium will cover the theoretical and practical implications of
social research based on data. It calls for critical works that identify
the quantitative leap induced by large masses of data available for social
sciences, and the related disciplinary and epistemological consequences,
e.g. notions of author or producer, public and private actors strategies,
citizen uses of data, emerging ecosystems of data processing, local
initiatives currently developing Open Data services and applications with
related business issues.

Epistemological reflections, work in progress and position papers are
welcome and can cover one of the following areas:



*1.     **Digital data and social sciences: History and Epistemology*

Large data corpora have been processed for a long time within scientific
practices: what is the precise nature of the qualitative leap brought by
current technologies? Does the presence of massive data change social
science practices? What are the needs, expectations, challenges and
emerging solutions? Do these new methods of processing digital data imply
epistemological changes?

*2.     **The politics of Open Data, citizen participation and local
eco-systems.*

In recent years, Open Data initiatives have been set off by both law
changes and actors’ specific demands. It aims to make public data available
and reusable. This movement raises many questions: Is it a public service
improvement, a regional development tool? What is the relationship between
supply and demand, top/down and bottom/up initiatives? Who are those who
really understand the data? Can these uses be interpreted as civic
empowerment or democracy renewal, as suggested by the proximity between
"Open Data" and "Open Government"? How can traditional participatory
democracy use these data? What are the possible links between public data
and already implemented territorial e-democracy practices?



*3.     **New sociotechnical mediations, training and professionalization.*

Which elements should compose the knowledge base necessary to understand
issues around these data? What are the new forms of mediation facilitating
citizen uses of released data and its applications? This third axis will
highlight, for each category of actors, the type of skills required to be
able to understand the data ecosystem in all its complexity, from technical
to political aspects. What are the solutions implemented by the various
professions facing this flow of data? What types of mediation would
increase effective ownership of released data by civil society? What are
the training needs to sustain and develop these efforts? How are these new
forms of data management skills reorganizing professions (particularly
journalism), companies and administrations involved in Open Data?



*Submission*

We welcome proposals based on current experiments, theoretical reflections
and comparative analysis. They can be written in English or in French.

Proposals should be 1000 words long, short bibliography included. Selected
contributions will be published in a special issue of a French-speaking
academic journal.



*Proposals should be sent to:*

Clément Mabi: clement.mabi at utc.fr and Jean-Christophe Plantin:
jean-christophe.plantin at utc.fr



*Deadlines*

• Deadline for submission of proposals: November 15th 2012

• Notification of acceptance: December 15th 2012

• Symposium: February 14th 2013



*Scientific Committee *

David Berry (Swansea University, College of Arts and Humanities)

Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay (CNRS-ISCC)

Clément Mabi (UTC-Costech)

Jean-Christophe Plantin (UTC-Costech)

Bernard Rieder (University of Amsterdam, Media studies department)

Valérie Schafer (CNRS-ISCC)

Laurence Smith-Monnoyer (UTC-Costech)

Bruno J. Strasser (Université de Genève & Yale University)

Stéphanie Wojcik (UPEC-Ceditec)