[Air-L] CFP: Platform Surveillance (Special Responsive Issue of S&S)

[Monahan, Torin]

Call for Contributions: Platform Surveillance

A special responsive issue of Surveillance & Society
http://www.surveillance-and-society.org<http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/>

edited by David Murakami Wood and Torin Monahan

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/announcement/view/255

Responsive issues are a new initiative by Surveillance & Society to deal with urgent current global priorities and transformations. They present a larger number and range of contributions than for a typical issue but each contribution is typically much shorter (around 2500 words), more current and polemical, and written to a tighter deadline. The idea is that the issue will serve as a concise guide to a particular debate or development. Our first responsive issue was on ‘Surveillance and the Global Turn to Authoritarianism’,https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/issue/view/authority.

This issue of Surveillance & Society calls for short contributions from scholars analyzing the surveillance dimensions and politics of large-scale digital platforms. Recently, the profound influence digital platforms has been thrust—once again—into the public imaginary with controversies surrounding issues as diverse as Facebook’s data-sharing practices, censorship on Chinese social media, and cities’ profligate courtship of Amazon’s second headquarters, but surveillance-driven digital platforms possess the capacity to remake social, economic, political and cultural life in multiple arenas, typically without significant public awareness or debate.

This responsive issue will feature papers that grapple with different dimensions or types of platform surveillance. Contributions can focus on:

  *   specific platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitch, Uber, Airbnb, etc.)
  *   domains (e.g., policing, transportation, education, etc.)
  *   concepts and technologies (internet of things, smart cities, blockchain, the cloud etc.)
  *   practices (e.g., cultural production, consumption, appropriation etc.), or
  *   politics (ideologies, democracy, cooperativism, utopianism, etc.)

However, the emphasis should be on the surveillance functions and ramifications of digital platforms. We are especially interested in submissions that acknowledge the social, political and economic importance of platforms and do not fall back on simple technological determinist arguments (whether for or against).

Submissions will be considered in a two-stage review process.

1. In the first instance, we invite brief proposals in the following format:

  *   Name(s)
  *   Affiliation(s)
  *   Contact e-mail
  *   Platform or Theme to be covered
  *   Brief abstract (150 words)

The deadline for proposals is October 24th 2018 to: dmw at queensu.ca

<mailto:dmw at queensu.ca>
<mailto:dmw at queensu.ca>The editors will then generally select one proposal per platform or theme (there may be exceptions for proposals which cover different aspects of a specific platform) and get back to the chosen authors by October 31st 2018. At this stage we may ask authors to adjust, narrow or expand their focus a little depending on other proposals.
2. Selected contributors should deliver papers of around 2500 (to a maximum of 4000) words by November 30th 2018. These should be uploaded to the website as any normal submission. See here: http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/information/authors

Papers will be mutually reviewed by another author in the same issue, so authors will be expected to review one other paper from the issue. This process will be complete by January 14th 2019.

Any revisions will be expected by February 7th 2019.

Issue publication:  February 2019

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/announcement/view/255


Torin Monahan, Ph.D.
Professor
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Communication
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
www.torinmonahan.com<http://www.torinmonahan.com/>

Co-Director, Surveillance Studies Network<http://www.surveillance-studies.net/>
Editor-in-Chief, Surveillance & Society<http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/>

Recent Publications:
Monahan, T. 2018. Ways of Being Seen: Surveillance Art and the Interpellation of Viewing Subjects<http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/Monahan_Ways-of-being-seen.pdf>. Cultural Studies 32(4): 560-581.
Monahan, T. 2018. Algorithmic Fetishism<http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/Algorithmic_fetishism.pdf>. Surveillance & Society 16(1): 1-5.