[Air-L] Reminder: CFP for great ABS issue on the dark web and all that

[Barry Wellman]

Dear colleagues,

We'd like to send this reminder call as deadline is coming close by. 
(plus Happy Thanksgiving to those in the U.S.!)

Reminder CFP: The American Behavioral Scientist Special Issue on Social 
Platform Accountability in Global Perspectives (Deadline December 1, 2019)
Social Platform Accountability in Global Perspectives: Responsibility, 
Manipulation, and Control in Digital Social Spaces
Guest Editors:
K. Hazel Kwon (Arizona State University), khkwon at asu.edu
W. Wayne Xu (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), weiaixu at umass.edu
Barry Wellman (NetLab Network),wellman at chass.utoronto.ca
Description:
The American Behavioral Scientist (ABS, Impact Factor: 1.79, 
https://journals.sagepub.com/home/abs) invites submissions for a special 
issue on Social Platform Accountability in Global Perspectives: 
Responsibility, Manipulation, and Control in Digital Social Spaces.
Democratic potentials of social technologies have been under threat in 
recent years, along with an expanding spread of manipulative and extreme 
digital activities. Examples of such activities vary from self-motivated 
sharing of radicalized content to coordinated propagation of 
disinformation. Many countries have been struggling with the rise of these 
activities within their own sociopolitical contexts, attesting to the 
globally shared awareness of the lack of accountability and transparency 
in the current digital environment.
This special issue calls for conceptual and empirical understandings of 
social platform accountability in global perspectives. This issue broadly 
defines a social platform as a digital social space where online users 
interact with content and share their opinions or their own content with 
other users. Examples of social platforms may include mainstream social 
network sites, discussion forums like Reddit, online comment sections in 
news sites, anonymous communities like 8chan, and sites hosted in the dark 
web.
Conceptualizing social platform accountability requires understanding the 
roles of various stakeholders (e.g., users, the tech industry, activists, 
government, policymakers, etc.) as well as multifaceted related issues 
(e.g., user responsibility, content moderation mechanisms, political 
economic motivations underlying digital manipulation, ethical tensions 
between responsible control and censorship, etc.). Furthermore, 
sociopolitical contexts where society is situated may complicate the 
process of rationalizing and normalizing discourses surrounding social 
platform accountability within society.
Submission Topics:
This special issue invites scholarship that examines the causes and 
conditions that compromise or strengthen the accountability of social 
platforms. The special issue also seeks submissions from global scholars 
whose work may promote a comparative understanding of the topic. It 
welcomes various methodological approaches(qualitative, quantitative, 
computational, etc.) and theoretical perspectives (empirical, 
legal/ethical, historical, etc.).
Possible topics, but not limited to, may include:
1) a case study of media manipulation or extreme content sharing, which 
addresses causes and conditions that deteriorate the accountability of 
social platforms;
2) an international case study focusing on the national context that 
influences the politics of social platform accountability;
3) a theoretical discussion and/or historical review of social platform 
accountability;
4) a systematic assessment of content moderation mechanisms (algorithmic 
filtering, harnessing human labors, etc.) in digital social platforms;
5) a discussion of legal, ethical, and/or regulatory frameworks pertinent 
with social platform accountability;
6) a discussion of roles and/or interrelationships of different 
stakeholders (e.g., individual users, the tech industry, government, civil 
society, etc.) in making social platforms more accountable.
Submission Guidelines:
Submitted manuscripts must be in MS Word (.doc) format with a separate a 
title page that includes the title of the paper, full names, affiliations, 
email addresses, telephone numbers, complete addresses, and biographical 
sketches of all authors. Please send your submission via email to Hazel 
Kwon (khkwon at asu.edu)
The main texts should remove any indicator of authorship, and thus be 
ready for a blind, peer-reviewed process.
Manuscripts must adhere to the APA (6th ed.) style and should contain 
between 5,000 and 7,000 words, including a 250-word abstract with 5-6 key 
words, all references, and notes.
Manuscripts must contain original material that has not been previously 
published elsewhere or is not currently under consideration by another 
journal.
Submission Date:
The manuscript should be submitted by December 1, 2019. The first round of 
peer-reviews and decisions will be sent out by March 1, 2020, and the 
revision (if needed) and a final decision will be made by August 1, 2020. 
This special issue is expected to be published online in October/November 
2020, with hard copy published by the end of 2020.
Contact: If you have any question, please contact Hazel Kwon: 
khkwon at asu.edu

   Barry Wellman


   Step by step, link by link, putting it together--Streisand/Sondheim
       The earth to be spannd, connected by network--Walt Whitman
             It's Always Something--Roseanne Roseannadanna

             A day like all days, filled with those events
          that alter and illuminate our times--You Are There!
  _______________________________________________________________________
   Director, NetLab Network      			            FRSC
         Founder, International Network for Social Network Analysis
   NETWORKED: The New Social Operating System  Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman
   http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman            http://amzn.to/zXZg39
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Wellman
   _______________________________________________________________________