[Air-L] Call for panel participants (ICA): big data, infrastructures, platforms

[Ragan Glover]

Call for panel participants

We are looking for participants for an International Communication
Association 2020 panel submission that will engage with the tension between
Open Science and big data use by infrastructures and platforms. ICA 2020
takes place in Gold Coast, Australia from May 21-25, 2020. More info
can be found
here. <https://www.icahdq.org/page/2020CFP>

Our proposed panel will focus on open communication, big data,
infrastructures, and platforms. While open communication initiatives value
transparency, collaboration, and public knowledge, these goals are often at
odds with capitalistic arrangements of big data collection. Scholarship
examining big data notes the issues of privacy and surveillance
(Andrejevic, 2007; Introna & Wood, 2004; Esposti, 2014); the concerns
related to data divides and asymmetry of access (Andrejevic & Gates, 2014);
and the dangers of utilizing opaque, inexplicable, and correlative big data
outputs for forms of so-called objective decision making (boyd & Crawford,
2012; Tenner, 2018). Likewise, the scholarship on platform infrastructures
suggests that while they deliver essential social / cultural resources,
they also prompt a recentralization of the internet that threatens to
funnel data into increasingly segmented silos (Plantin & Punathambekar,
2019; Srnicek, 2017). Noting this, Plantin, Lagoze, Edwards, and Sandvig
(2018) indicate that a “fraught relationship...currently exists between the
public-oriented Open Web and locked-in ‘walled gardens’” of platforms and
infrastructures (p. 301). To better understand this relationship, we are
looking for theoretical and methodological engagements with big data
platforms and infrastructures that specifically attend to the complexities
of closed and open access, digital inequalities and divides, and
affirmative attempts at open data usage.

If interested, please submit a 150-word abstract and presentation title via
email to Justin Grandinetti and Ragan Glover-Rijkse at jgrandin at uncc.edu
and rglove2 at ncsu.edu by October 1st for consideration. Please note—panel
submissions must adhere to ICA’s 2020 guidelines on gender balance,
institutional diversity, and international collaboration. We will consider
submissions and make decisions shortly thereafter.

Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to reading submissions!

Timeline:

   -

   October 1st: submit an abstract if interested in joining this panel
   -

   October 5th: we will contact selections for participation
   -

   November 1st: deadline for finalized 150-word abstracts, 400-word panel
   rationale, and 75-word panel description for conference program


References:

Andrejevic, M., & Gates, K. (2014). Big Data Surveillance:
Introduction. Surveillance
& Society,12(2), 185-196.

boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical Questions for Big Data:
Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon.
Information,
Communication & Society, 15(5), 662–679.

Esposti, S. (2014). When big data meets dataveillance: The hidden side of
analytics. Surveillance & Society, 12(2), 209–225.

Introna, L., & Wood, D. (2004). Picturing algorithmic surveillance: the
politics of facial recognition systems. Surveillance and Society, 2(2-3),
177–198.

Plantin, J., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure
studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media
& Society, 20(1), 293–310.

Plantin, J.-C., & Punathambekar, A. (2019). Digital media infrastructures:
pipes, platforms, and politics. Media, Culture & Society, 41(2), 163–174.

Srnicek, N. (2017) Platform Capitalism. Malden, MA: Polity.

Tenner, E. (2018). The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do. New
York, NY: Knopf, Borzoi Books.