[Air-L] Call for Papers: ICA 2017 Preconference

Anna Litvinenko anna.litvinenko at fu-berlin.de
Mon Nov 7 02:40:28 PST 2016


Dear administrator, 

 

I would like to kindly ask you to include our Call for Papers for the ICA
2017 Preconference in the ECREA-Mailing list (please find the posting
below). 

 

Thank you very much in advance!

 

With best wishes, 

 

Anna Litvinenko, PhD

 

Institute for Media and Communications Studies

FU Berlin

Garystrasse 55

14195 Berlin

Office: +49-30-838-55448

Mobile: +49-1578-5352927

 

 

POSTING: 

 

 

Call for Papers: ICA 2017 Preconference

The Consequences of the Internet for Authoritarian Politics: Comparative
Perspectives

Time & Venue

Date: May 25, 2017

Time: 9 am - 5 pm

Location: San Diego Hilton Bayfront (onsite, conference hotel of the ICA
annual conference 2017)

 

Rationale

Over the past decade, a vibrant body of academic literature has emerged on
the political consequences of the Internet for non-democratic politics.
However, the majority of extant studies have focused on phenomena of
political communication in one authoritarian regime only. By contrast, very
few studies have aimed at comparing empirical findings from across different
authoritarian contexts. Against this backdrop, this preconference explicitly
aims at providing a forum for scholars from across the globe to discuss, and
develop, comparative perspectives on the consequences of the Internet for
authoritarian politics.

 

In order to pursue this goal, we have invited a number of well-respected
scholars in the field to contribute to the event. Invited speakers include
Muzammil Hussain (University of Michigan, USA), Paolo Mancini (University of
Perugia, Italy), Sarah Oates (University of Maryland, USA), and Katrin
Voltmer (University of Leeds). In order to supplement the preconference
program, we would like to invite at least three types of additional
submissions. Firstly, we explicitly welcome submissions that compare
empirical data across different authoritarian contexts. Secondly, we are
also interested in papers that present empirical findings from only one
country, but that, at the theoretical level, explicitly aim at embedding
them into a wider regional or global context. Such theoretically informed
comparisons can be achieved, for instance, by referring to the lively recent
debates around new types of responsive and competitive authoritarianism, or
to the literature on authoritarian institutions. As a third type of
submission, we also invite purely theoretical contributions.

 

Moreover, as a number of scholars have recently lamented, extant research on
the conference topic has largely focused on either how oppositional
activists leverage new digital tools to challenge authoritarian rule or how
authoritarian elites suppress and censor online dissent. Against this
backdrop, we are particularly keen to also discuss questions around how
authoritarian elites pro-actively deploy the Internet to expand their
communicative power. Why, how, and with what consequences, for instance, do
authoritarian leaders across the globe reach out to their citizens via
social networks? Why do they open up virtual participatory spaces that host,
for example, online polls, online petitions, or virtual deliberative forums?

 

The topic of the preconference is situated at the intersection of two
divisions of the ICA, the Political Communication and the Global
Communication & Social Change divisions, which are cosponsoring the event.
At a more abstract level, a key goal of the preconference is thus also to
bring together scholars from these two communities, encouraging intellectual
exchange across manifold disciplinary and methodological borders.
Participants who would not like to contribute but would still like to attend
the event are welcome to sign up on the ICA registration website as audience
members. The participation fee, which is being charged to cover the two
coffee breaks, is 50 USD.

 

The conference is organized by the Emmy Noether research group "Mediating
(Semi-)Authoritarianism: The Power of the Internet in the Post-Soviet
World," of Freie Universitaet Berlin. All news regarding the conference,
including its finalized program, will be published on the research group's
website,
<http://www.mediating-authoritarianism.net/ica-2017-pre-conference/>
http://www.mediating-authoritarianism.net/ica-2017-pre-conference/. 

 

For additional information, please contact Anna Litvinenko (
<mailto:anna.litvinenko at fu-berlin.de> anna.litvinenko at fu-berlin.de) or
Florian Toepfl ( <mailto:f.toepfl at fu-berlin.de> f.toepfl at fu-berlin.de).    

 

Please email submissions - which can be of any format, from extended
abstracts (800 words) to full papers (up to 10,000 words in length) - to our
student assistant Daria Kravets ( <mailto:daria.kravets at fu-berlin.de)>
daria.kravets at fu-berlin.de). 

 

The deadline for submission is December 11, 2016. Notifications of
acceptance will be sent out before January 1, 2017.

 

 




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