[Air-L] CfP for Special Issue of Policy & Internet on Influencer Regulations

[Crystal Abidin]

Hello friends at AoIR! I hope everyone is keeping well as best as you can.

I am delighted to share a CfP for a Special Issue of Policy & Internet on
'Influencer regulations, Governance, and Social-cultural issues in the Asia
Pacific Region', co-edited by Crystal Abidin (Curtin), Jian Xu (Deakin),
and Jonathon Hutchinson (Sydney). This is a special call for papers on
Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand,
Pakistan.

Attached as .pdf, and in plain text below.

Please feel free to circulate among interested parties.
Thank you in advance + Take care,
/Crystal

*

Influencer Regulations, Governance and Socio-cultural Issues in the Asia
Pacific region

Special Issue of Policy & Internet

Co-edited by Crystal ABIDIN, Jian XU, Jonathon HUTCHINSON

Targeted CfP for papers on:
Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand,
Pakistan

Influencer and micro-celebrity research has become a popular
interdisciplinary research area across digital media studies and celebrity
studies in the past few years, including a growing interest in the Global
South (e.g. Abidin 2018, Abidin & Brown 2018, Hurley 2019, Hopkins 2019,
Lukács 2020) and their growth on platforms outside of Silicon Valley (e.g.
Guan 2020, Lin & De Kloet 2019, Song 2018). However, existing research in
the field has still primarily focused on influencers and their types of
labour (e.g. Abidin 2016, Duffy 2017, Duffy et al. 2021, Pham 2015, Raun
2018, Woodcock & Johnson 2019), their savvy around algorithms and machine
learning (e.g. Bishop 2019, Bishop 2020, Carah & Dobson 2016, Cotter 2018),
and various aspects of their follower relations (e.g. Berryman & Kavka
2017) and monetizing engagements (e.g. Gerhards 2019, Johnson & Woodcock
2019, Luvaas 2016, Zhang et al. 2019, Zou 2018), leaving the regulation and
governance of influencers still an under-researched topic from the
perspective of Social Science & Humanities (e.g. Chen et al. 2020,
Cunningham & Craig 2019) considering socio-cultural issues. (For studies on
Influencer governance from the perspective of Law, please see e.g. Goanta &
Ranchordà 2020).

In this Special Issue, we consider the regulation and governance of
influencers not only through the lens and framework of specific rules,
laws, policies, and regulations that set norms on the practices of
influencers, but also the broader social, cultural, moral, technical,
industrial, and political factors and restrictions to which Influencers are
subject in order to accumulate sustainable impact and income. Moreover, we
understand the governance of influencers as a process wherein multiple
stakeholders are involved in the influencer industry, including official
regulatory bodies, digital platforms, influencers and their agencies,
endorsed brands and fans, resolve conflicts over emerging problems to shape
the practices, ethics, economy and culture of influencers. The need to
examine these issues of regulation and governance is pertinent in the
Asia-Pacific region considering that it presently contains the world’s
largest population of active social media users, the most vibrant and
diverse digital economies and influencer cultures, as well as among the
most dynamic and complicated internet regulations and policies.

The Special Issue advocates for a ‘turn to regulation and governance’ of
influencer studies by taking influencers as a ‘new subject’ in the globally
booming digital economy and culture. We are interested in papers that
critically and subtly investigate various regulation and governing issues
on influencers in the Asia-Pacific region, including but not limited to
specific case studies of controversies, new enactments in regulation and
law, concerns around advertorial disclosure and tax transparency,
regulation and censorship of influencers’ content creation, platform and/or
state interventions into influencer management, influencer management
systems, and various socio-cultural concerns on the regulation of topics
pertaining to race & ethnicity, sex & sexuality, age & ageism, class &
inclusivity, ability & accessibility, etc. The Special Issue will
significantly contribute to the growing field of Influencer Studies,
especially in the Asia Pacific region. More broadly, it will also greatly
contribute to the studies of internet regulations and governance, digital
economy, digital culture and celebrity studies in the Asia Pacific and
beyond.

Policy & Internet is one of the most prestigious journals in the field of
internet and digital media studies, with a particular focus on the evolving
relationship between the internet, digital technologies and public policy.
It is an international multidisciplinary journal in a new and fragmented
field. The potential audience for the Journal is therefore very wide.
Please ensure that there is enough context to your argument that the paper
can have value for people outside of your specific field or geographical
region. Papers should be succinct, written in clear English, and closely
and critically argued. A word count between 6,000-8,000 words is ideal. We
are unlikely to accept papers that are mostly or entirely descriptive, or
that lack depth, substance, critical assessment and clear contribution to
the field. Papers in Policy & Internet are published Open Access. For
further information, please see
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/19442866

Expressions of interest via a 250-word abstract and 150-word bio for
contributions on Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar,
New Zealand, Pakistan are invited by 09 August 2021 to A/Prof Crystal
Abidin, Dr Jian Xu, and Dr Jonathon Hutchinson via email. The Editors will
shortlist and respond to all contributors in the following week. Full
papers are due in mid-November 2021.

Thank you.

P&I SI co-editors,

A/Prof Crystal Abidin, Curtin University, crystal.abidin[at]curtin.edu.au

Dr Jian Xu, Deakin University,  j.xu[at]deakin.edu.au

Dr Jonathon Hutchinson, University of Sydney, jonathon.hutchinson[at]
sydney.edu.au

References

Abidin, Crystal. 2016. "Visibility labour: Engaging with Influencers'
fashion brands and #OOTD advertorial campaigns on Instagram." Media
International Australia 161(1): 86-100.

Abidin, Crystal. 2018. Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online.
Bingley, UK: Emerald

Publishing.

Abidin, Crystal, and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds). 2018. Microcelebrity Around
the Globe: Approaches to cultures of internet fame. Bingley, UK: Emerald
Publishing.

Berryman, Rachel & Misha Kavka. 2017. "'I guess A lot of people see me as a
big sister or a friend': The role of intimacy in the celebrification of
beauty vloggers." Journal of Gender Studies 26(3): 307-320.

Bishop, Sophie. 2019. "Managing visibility on YouTube through algorithmic
gossip." New Media & Society 21(11-12).

Bishop, Sophie. 2020. "Algorithmic Experts: Selling Algorithmic Lore on
YouTube." Social Media + Society 6(1)

Carah, Nicholas and Amy Dobson. 2016. "Algorithmic hotness: Young women’s
“promotion” and 'reconnaissance' work via social media body images." Social
Media + Society 2(4).

Chen, Shing-Ling S., Zhuojun Joyce Chen, & Nicole Allaire. 2020. (Eds.)
Legal and Ethical Issues of Live Streaming. Washington, DC: Lexington
Books.

Cotter, Kelley. 2018. "Playing the visibility game: How digital influencers
and algorithms

negotiate influence on Instagram." New Media & Society 21(4): 895-913.

Cunningham, Stuart and David Craig. 2019. "Creator Governance in Social
Media Entertainment." Social Media + Society 5(4).

Cunningham, Stuart and David Craig. 2021. "Creator Rights and Governance",
Chapter 14 in Creator Culture, edited by Stuart Cunningham & David Craig.
New York: New York University Press.

Duffy, Brooke Erin. 2017. (Not) getting paid to do what you love: gender,
social media, and

aspirational work. New Haven: Yale University Press

Duffy, Brooke Erin, Annika Pinch, Shruti Sannon, Megan Sawey. 2021. "The
Nested Precarities of Platformized Creative Labor." Social Media + Society
7(2).

Gerhards, Claudia. 2019. "Product placement on YouTube: An explorative
study on YouTube creators' experiences with advertisers." Convergence
25(3): 516-533.

Goanta, Catalina & Sofia Ranchordà. 2020. (Eds.) The Regulation of Social
Media Influencers. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Guan, Zexu. 2020. "Chinese beauty bloggers: Amateurs, entrepreneurs, and
platform labour."

Celebrity Studies, 12(2): 326-332.

Hopkins, Julian. 2019. Monetising the Dividual Self: The Emergence of the
Lifestyle Blog and Influencers in Malaysia. New York: Berghahn Books.

Hurley, Zoe. 2019. "Imagined affordances of Instagram and the Fantastical
Authenticity of Female Gulf-Arab Social Media Influencers." Social Media +
Society 5(1).

Johnson, Mark R. and Jamie Woodcock. 2019. “'And Today’s Top Donator is':
How Live Streamers on Twitch.tv Monetize and Gamify Their Broadcasts."
Social Media + Society 5(4).

Lin, Jian, and Jeroen De Kloet. 2019. "Platformization of the Unlikely
Creative Class: Kuaishou and Chinese Digital Cultural Production." Social
Media + Society 5(4).

Lukács, Gabriella. 2020. Invisibility by Design: Women and Labor in Japan’s
Digital Economy. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Luvaas, Brent. 2016. Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging.
London: Bloomsbury Press.

Pham, Minh-Ha T. 2015. Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet: Race, Gender,
and the Work of Personal Style Blogging. Durham, North Carolina: Duke
University Press.

Raun, Tobias. 2018. "Capitalizing intimacy: New subcultural forms of micro-
celebrity strategies

and affective labour on YouTube." Convergence 24(1): 99–113.

Song, Hojin. 2018. "The making of microcelebrity: AfreecaTV and the Younger
Generation in Neoliberal South Korea." Social Media + Society 4(4).

Woodcock, Jamie and Mark R. Johnson. 2019. "The Affective Labor and
Performance of Live

Streaming on Twitch.tv" Television and New Media 20(8): 813-823.

Zhang, Xiaoxing, Yu Xiang, and Lei Hao. 2019. "Virtual gifting on China’s
live streaming platforms: Hijacking the online gift economy." Chinese
Journal of Communication 12(3): 340-355.

Zou, Sheng. 2018. "Producing Value Out of the Invaluable: A
Critical/Cultural Perspective on the Live Streaming Industry in China."
TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 16(2): 805-819.