[Air-L] Call for Papers, Internet Policy Review: "Doing Internet Governance"

[Francesca Musiani]

Dear AoIR colleagues,

Please find below and at this link http://policyreview.info/node/382 a call
for papers for the Internet Policy Review that may be of interest for many
of you. This CfP follows up to the similarly-titled panel that Dmitry
Epstein, Christian Katzenbach and I organized at IR16 in Phoenix.

Kind regards
Francesca

--
Special issue on 'Doing internet governance: practices, controversies,
infrastructures, and institutions'

*Call for papers of the Internet Policy Review*
TOPIC & RELEVANCE

Internet governance is gaining attention in the post-Snowden era, which
increased distrust of formal government institutions and their ‘dangerous
liaisons’ with the private sector. User-driven, technology-embedded,
decentralised approaches keep on seeing the light: in contracts, currency,
privacy protection, just to name a few. Politics and traditional purveyors
of authority negotiate ways of readjusting to the changing environment.
Thus, investigating the “ordering” (Flyverbom, 2011) and governing
processes as they relate to the network of networks is both timely and
important.

Traditionally, when talking about Internet Governance researchers and
practitioners refer to the new organisations and institutions that have
been explicitly established to regulate, discuss, and negotiate issues of
internet governance (e.g. ICANN, WSIS, IGF). Recently, authors have
criticised this institutional focus, arguing the need for a more
comprehensive conceptualisation of internet governance (DeNardis, 2012;
Eeten/Mueller, 2013; Musiani, 2014; Hofmann et al., 2014). Among these
recent developments, a small set of publications has drawn on perspectives
from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to rethink and substantiate
questions of ordering and governing the net. These contributions highlight
the day-to-day, mundane practices that constitute internet governance, take
into account the plurality and ‘‘networkedness’’ of devices and
arrangements involved, and investigate the invisibility, pervasiveness, and
apparent agency of the digital infrastructure itself (Musiani, 2014).
Internet governance, in this view, is not only negotiated in dedicated
institutions; the doing of internet governance more broadly consists in
practices and controversies of the design, regulation, and use of material
infrastructures. In this way, STS-informed perspectives are increasingly
instrumental for challenging and expanding our understanding and for
informing our examination of ordering and governing processes in the
digital realm.
SCOPE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

This special issue seeks to nurture this nascent interest by pioneering a
conversation on the governance of digitally networked environments from an
STS-informed perspective and, more broadly, from perspectives that
highlight the role of design, infrastructures, and informal communities of
practice in governance.

First, this issue will touch upon how the norms shaping the provision,
design and usage of the internet are negotiated, de- and re-stabilised, and
subject to controversies. Second, it will open up new, STS-informed
perspectives on digital uses and practices, delving into the variety of
ways in which they may be an integral part of today’s internet governance
-- not only because such practices reflect belonging and commitment to a
community, but because they allow issues of sovereignty, autonomy and
liberty to come into play. Finally, expanding the notion of governance in
internet governance through the conceptual tool-set of STS may open this
field to meaningful contributions from scholars studying constitutional
aspects of technology design and use, which are typically excluded from
traditional internet governance literature.
FOCUS OF THE PAPERS

We invite papers that share a strong conceptual interest in understanding
processes of ordering and governing the internet as a core infrastructure
of our daily lives. More focused paper topics may include, but in no way
are limited to, the following:

   -

   *Internet governance theory*: how can STS inform theoretical
   perspectives on internet governance?
   -

   *Controversies*: how do socio-technical internet-related controversies
   reveal tensions and critical junctures of internet politics?
   -

   *Privatisation*: what are the practices of internet governance
   privatisation? What does it mean for the internet as a socio-technical
   phenomenon?
   -

   *Unintended consequences*: what are the examples of unintended
   consequences of technology regulation and design that affect the openness,
   security, and stability of the internet?
   -

   *Re-intermediation and delegation*: what are the forms of
   re-intermediation of the “decentralised” system that is the internet? How
   can we study them?
   -

   *Participatory governance*: how can STS help unpack the practices of
   “multistakeholderism” and their potential effects (or lack thereof)?
   -

   *Infrastructures and architectures as governance arrangements*: how can
   STS-informed approaches help us unveil the power and control structures
   embedded in internet architecture?

Submissions must be in clearly-written English. The *Internet Policy Review*
is an open access, short-form journal. Full papers are requested to be
around 30,000 characters (5,000 words) in length, to encourage concise and
parsimonious discussion of core issues.
SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS

   - Dmitry Epstein, Department of Communication, University of Illinois at
   Chicago (dmitry at uic.edu)
   - Christian Katzenbach, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet
   and Society (katzenbach at hiig.de)
   - Francesca Musiani, Institute for Communication Sciences,
   CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne/UPMC; *Internet Policy Review* academic editor (
   francesca.musiani at cnrs.fr)

IMPORTANT DATES

*12 November 2015:* Release of the Call for papers

*25 January 2016*: Deadline for expression of interest and abstract
submissions (500 word abstracts) via the form on the IPR website.

*15 February*: Feedback / Invitation to submit full text submissions

*25 April*: Full text submissions deadline. All details on text submissions
can be found under: http://policyreview.info/authors

*13 June*: Comprehensive peer review and feedback

*11 July*: Re-submission deadline

*5 September*: Publication of the special issue


-- 
Francesca Musiani
Researcher, ISCC-CNRS <http://www.iscc.cnrs.fr/> | Associate
researcher, CSI-MINES
ParisTech <http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/>
Co-Chair, ESN-IAMCR <http://iamcr.org/s-wg/cctmc/esn> | Outreach officer,
GigaNet <http://giga-net.org> | Member, ComNum
<http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/commissions/numerique>
On the Web <http://www.csi.mines-paristech.fr/People/musiani/> | On Twitter
<https://twitter.com/franmusiani>