[Air-L] Call for Papers, International Conference “Criticism and circumvention of control and surveillance on the Internet”

Tue Jun 15 06:49:14 PDT 2021

Dear colleagues,

I hope you are well. Please find below, and at this URL
https://www.resistic.fr/index.php/2021/06/02/call-for-papers-international-conference-criticism-and-circumvention-of-control-and-surveillance-on-the-internet/,
a Call for Papers for the final symposium of the ResisTIC project, to be
held March 31 and April 1, 2022 in Paris. The deadline for abstract
submission is September 1, 2021.

We are looking forward to your submissions!

All best
Francesca for the ResisTIC team

--------

*Call for Papers *
*International Conference “Criticism and circumvention of control and
surveillance on the Internet”*

The team of the ResisTIC project (“The Net Resisters: Criticizing and
escaping digital coercion in Russia”, funded by the French National Agency
for Research-ANR / resistic.fr), releases a call for papers for the
international conference “Criticism and circumvention of control and
surveillance on the Internet”. Selected contributions will address the
resistance and adaptation strategies that Internet users deploy to counter
new national and international web regulations, the social practices and
techniques for circumventing digital constraints, and the reconfigurations
of politics as they are challenged by contemporary information and
communication technologies.

Deadline for abstract submission: September 1, 2021.

In recent years, digital freedoms and their evolutions have enjoyed
substantial attention, both in authoritarian or “illiberal” contexts and in
liberal democracies. In several countries, tensions are growing as on one
hand, Internet users aspire to enjoy digital freedoms relating to freedom
of expression and association, and on the other hand, States and other
actors develop national Internet framing policies. These are officially
justified by reasons of digital networking security, by commercial
strategies of private companies, by arguments of modernization of state
apparatuses and by claims of autonomy and independence of national
Internet, most often labeled as “digital sovereignty”. Internet users face
potentially paradoxical situations such as the development of the web (and
the explosion of online content), on the one hand, and on the other, the
strengthening of power balances that are increasingly unfavorable to public
freedoms.

In this context, the conference focuses on Internet users’ resistance and
adaptation strategies to new national and international, public and
private, regulations. Indeed, geographical and digital territories
worldwide take shape as “laboratories” of practices and techniques of
digital resistance, which are circulated via online interpersonal
exchanges, but also by means of training sessions, conferences, forums.
These sharing practices and circulations are particularly active at the
time of conflicts and uprisings (as many works exploring the Arab
revolutions, or conflicts in Belarus, Lebanon, Hong Kong, or Egypt, have
demonstrated). This conference has the ambition to contribute, examining
different cases, countries and regions, to a reflection on the
reconfigurations of politics as they are challenged by contemporary
information and communication technologies.

This conference aims to showcase and discuss contributions focused on the
following issues:

- Analyses, based on case studies, of the nature of online repression and
constraint strategies. These involve a whole range of actors and practices,
that originate in institutions but also in private and extrajudicial
dynamics aimed at maintaining order and justice (e.g. vigilantism).
- The arts of resistance and circumvention developed by web professionals
(hackers, service providers, engineers, experts, etc.) faced with the new
legal and technical regulations on the Internet. Contributions in this area
will allow us to examine technical innovations and peculiar uses of the
Internet and its material infrastructures that make it possible to bypass
or fight against institutional constraints.
- Practices and techniques deployed to counter repression, in particular
the appropriation of circumvention tools, their use and their promotion by
Internet users (journalists, publishers, digital entrepreneurs, activists,
citizens, etc.). We will be particularly interested in the sites where
knowledge about these techniques and tools is shared and transmitted:
online groups, training courses, primers and handbooks, hackathon-type
events or conferences. The aim here is to analyze how these actors
appropriate circumvention devices and techniques on the Internet, as
compromises that make it possible to resist constraints while remaining
present and active in the public space.
- The uses of law in digital arenas, both in terms of how law is spoken
about and represented, and the legal struggles in the field of digital
freedoms. Contributions will, on the one hand, be able to address the
problem of conceiving new legal rules aimed at strengthening the so-called
“digital sovereignty” of the State, and, on the other hand, they could
describe the hardships that people have to face within particular legal
systems when they face legal action for their online activities, or in
turn, initiate lawsuits against the state. Contributions may also address
the cases of misuse or creative use of digital laws (e.g., creative
exploitation of legal “vacuums” and other examples of dynamic relationships
between code and law).
- Strategies for “escaping through exile” new forms of online coercion.
Contributions will focus on the strategies of Internet and web
professionals (hackers, technical staff of NGOs and opposition parties) and
of other actors in the public space (journalists, publishers, activists,
etc.) who choose to leave their country to develop digital practices from
abroad. Contributions may also focus on the migration of Internet
infrastructures (e.g., relocation of servers).

This conference is grounded in a multidisciplinary perspective (sociology,
science studies, political science, geography, anthropology, law) and
encourages the presentation of empirical approaches and innovative and
hybrid methodologies.

Key dates

Until September 1, 2021: Proposal submissions in French or English, to be
deposited on the website :
https://resistic.sciencesconf.org/user/submissions, including a title, a
summary of approximately 500 words, 5 to 10 keywords, key bibliographic
references, surname and first name of the author(s), their affiliation,
email, and address of the home institution (info : resistic at sciencesconf.org
)
September 30, 2021: Date of notification of acceptance or refusal of
communications
Until February 15, 2022: Submission of complete articles (5000 to 8000
words)
March 31 and April 1, 2022: International conference in Paris

Organizing committee : The ResisTIC project team

Olga Bronnikova (University Grenoble Alpes, ICLEA4/CESC)

Françoise Daucé (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, EHESS)

Ksenia Ermoshina (Centre for Internet and Society, CNRS)

Valery Kossov (University Grenoble Alpes, ICLEA4/CESC)

Benjamin Loveluck (i3-SES, Telecom Paris, IP Paris)

Francesca Musiani (Centre for Internet and Society, CNRS)

Bella Ostromooukhova (Eur’Orbem, Sorbonne Université)

Perrine Poupin (Eur’Orbem, Sorbonne Université)

Anna Zaytseva (University Toulouse Jean Jaurès, LLA Creatis)

Scientific committee

Mahsa Alimardani (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, United
Kingdom)

Séverine Arsène (SciencesPo Medialab and The Chinese University of Hong
Kong, China)

Gabriele Balbi (Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland)

Luca Belli (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Stanislav Budnitsky (Indiana University-Bloomington, United States)

Polina Kolozaridi (Higher School of Economics Moscow, Russian Federation)

Marcus Michaelsen (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Stefania Milan (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Félix Tréguer (CERI, SciencesPo, France)

References

Deibert, R. J. (2013), Black Code. Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side
of the Internet (expanded ed.). Toronto: Signal

Friedewald, M., Burgess, J. P., Čas, J., Bellanova, R., & Peissl, W. (dir.)
(2017), Surveillance, Privacy and Security. Citizens Perspectives, London
and New York: Routledge

Isin, E. F., & Ruppert, E. (2015), Being Digital Citizens, London and New
York: Rowman & Littlefield

Kohl, U. (dir.) (2017), The Net and the Nation State. Multidisciplinary
Perspectives on Internet Governance, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press

Liang, F., Das, V., Kostyuk, N., & Hussain, M. M. (2018), “Constructing a
data‐driven society: China’s social credit system as a state surveillance
infrastructure”, Policy & Internet 10(4), p. 415-453

Milan, S., 2013, Social Movements and Their Technologies: Wiring Social
Change, Londres, Palgrave Macmillan

Mueller, M. (2017), Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization,
and Cyberspace, Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press

Soldatov, A., & Borogan, I. (2015), The Red Web. The Kremlin’s Wars on the
Internet, New York: PublicAffairs

Tesquet, O. (2020), À la trace. Enquête sur les nouveaux territoires de la
surveillance, Paris: Premier Parallèle

Tufekci, Z. (2017), Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of
Networked Protest, New Haven, Yale University Press

-- 
Francesca Musiani, Ph.D.

Chargée de recherche | Associate Research Professor, CNRS
<http://www.cnrs.fr>
Directrice adjointe | Deputy Director, Centre for Internet and Society
<https://cis.cnrs.fr> (UPR 2000 & GDR 2091 CNRS)
Chercheuse associée | Associate Researcher, i3-CSI
<http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/>, MINES ParisTech
Global Fellow, Internet Governance Lab <https://internetgovernancelab.org>,
American University

I'm involved in: CPT-IAMCR <https://iamcr.org/s-wg/section/cpt> | Internet
Policy Review <https://policyreview.info> | RESET
<https://journals.openedition.org/reset/> | ISOC France
<https://www.isoc.fr> | ResisTIC <https://www.resistic.org>

On the Web <https://cis.cnrs.fr/francesca-musiani/> | On Twitter
<https://twitter.com/franmusiani>