[Air-L] ICA Preconference Workshop - Government and Corporate Policies for Social Media

[Richard Denny Taylor]

  Colleagues,

 

I am pleased to share with you the following announcement.  Apologies for
multiple postings.  Richard Taylor

 

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION (ICA) 2019

Washington, DC

 

PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP

May 24, 2019

 

Taming and Nurturing the Wild Child:

Government and Corporate Policies for Social Media

 

Call for Papers

 

The impact social media have had on social networking, political
information, advertising and corporate communications make it hard to
imagine that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp are less
than a decade and a half old. In this short time frame, they have proven
their potential time and again both for good and bad: while catalyzing
pro-democracy movements worldwide, and promoting activism against sexual
harassment, they have also become pre-eminent forums for the dissemination
of misinformation and "fake news," and for racist, xenophobic and
misogynistic propaganda. While connecting people through building (and
buttressing) social, business and political networks, they have also
raised concerns regarding privacy and misuse of personal information.

 

Due to this explosive growth and the ensuing concerns, societies are
struggling to fashion policy responses that will preserve social media's
vibrancy as spaces for unencumbered speech, while minimizing the potential
harms from privacy violations, hate speech and the diffusion of
misinformation into political discourse. Indeed, in some countries
governments and civil society organizations have called for steps to
address these abuses, yet in others, social media policy has become a
pretext for governments to curb freedom of expression and muzzle critical
voices.

 

We invite papers that examine policy responses to these developments. How
can policy be developed, while protecting societal values such as freedom
of speech and information? Policy is defined broadly, including government
policies, regulations and laws and the policies of corporations including
algorithmic screening of content and emergent norms (in the spirit of
North/Williamson, who define governance as formal and non-formal rules of
the game). We are also interested in analyses that address how the
business model of social media (e.g., for profit, not-for-profit)
interacts with alternative policy approaches. We particularly encourage
international comparisons, including contrasting approaches to social
media policy adopted by national governments. For example, what impact do
the EU's GDPR and the Chinese 2016 Cybersecurity Law, both which came into
effect in 2018, have on social media? 

 

Potential papers may address the impact of these policies on issues
including but not limited to freedom of speech, democratic discourse,
political activism, network security, national security and surveillance,
commercial speech, privacy protections and transborder data flows.

 

This preconference workshop is jointly organized by the Institute for
Information Policy (IIP) at Penn State University and the James H. and
Mary B. Quello Center at Michigan State University. Papers presented in
the workshop will be considered for publication in the IIP's Journal of
Information Policy. The Journal is an open access, peer-reviewed,
scholarly journal, published by Penn State University Press and archived
on JSTOR. 

Abstracts of up to 500 words and a short bio of the author(s) should be
submitted to pennstateiip at psu.edu by December 15, 2018. Please write
IIP_SOCIALMEDIAPOLICY: YOUR NAME in the subject line. Presenters will be
notified by January 12, 2019 regarding acceptance. Accepted papers will
need to be submitted by May 1, 2019.