[Air-L] Targeted CfP for Special Issue of Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

[Crystal Abidin]

Hello friends at AoIR,
My long-time collaborator and trusty friend, Dr Natalie Pang, and I are
seeking three more papers for a Special Issue of *Journal of Sociotechnical
Critique*. Please see the CfP below and attached.
Thanks for your consideration + Take care,
/C

*

*Targeted Call for Papers*

Internet Popular Culture and (Everyday) Politics: Methodological & Ethical
Critiques from Southeast Asia
Issue editors: Crystal Abidin & Natalie Pang
Outlet: *Journal of Sociotechnical Critique*

*Looking for papers grounded in the contexts of Thailand, Vietnam and
Timor-Leste*

We are in the midst of together a special issue on how scholars conduct
research on (everyday) politics in Southeast Asia via networks of internet
popular culture, and are looking for three further contributions focused on
Thailand, Vietnam, and Timor-Leste. This may include artifacts, networks,
groups, and cultures that are specific to Southeast Asian online practices,
and that seek to represent, advocate for, provoke, or question how citizens
‘do’ politics online. New generations of scholars who work with digital
media are often assumed to be as familiar with internet artifacts, social
media platforms, and digital cultures as their research participants. Yet
this familiarity does not necessarily grant smooth entrées, flawless
interactions, effortless participation and clean-cut conclusions. Our
methodological considerations, fieldwork flaws, and the dilemmas when
managing contentious data often take a backseat for polished public-facing
research articles.

In the Southeast Asia region in particular, these behind-the-scenes
minutiae of everyday decisions are all the more under-valued when
researchers have been taught, conditioned, or cautioned to tiptoe around
the OB (out-of-bound) markers implicitly policed by states and governments.
The combination of media regimes with limited press freedoms, the frequent
employment of sedition acts against citizens, and the need to be strategic
to secure state and industry funding for research has also pressured or
motivated scholars to calculatively obscure some research anecdotes in
favour for a smoother publishing journey and/or posterity. As such, we wish
for this issue to serve as a sounding board and collection of reflections
on what is really looks like to conduct research on everyday politics
online in the Southeast Asian region, while navigating innovative media
methods, negotiating inter-disciplinary gatekeeping, demands of publishing
in tiered journals and the tensions around legitimizing one's
methodological choices.

In this issue, we invite scholars to reflect on the methodological and
ethical processes and critiques of conducting research on internet popular
culture and (everyday) politics in the contexts of Thailand, Vietnam or
Timor-Leste, paying special attention to a decolonizing perspective. We
invite contributions that critically explore any of the following angles:
●     how theoretical concepts and research practice mutually and
reflexively inform each other;
●     the interpretive flexibility and ethical choices that surrounds the
application and usage of ICTs and digital networks to pursue research - for
instance, getting interviewees to share their encounters and reflections on
laws on fake news in various societies require the deployment of different
strategies;
●     how the hyphen in ‘socio-technical’ manifests in their own work. This
refers to research that moves away from technological deterministic
assumptions and conclusions but is also careful not to substitute “one form
of determinism (technical) with another (social) (Williams and Edge, 1996)”.

Further prompts for consideration include:
●     What does it really look like to research (everyday) politics online
in your country fieldsite?
●     How is internet popular culture invoked in these situations?
●     Under what socio-cultural, political, and ethical regimes do scholars
have to operate to do your research?
●     What interesting findings emerged from your data that will likely be
difficult to publish about?
●     What does ethical research look like in your fieldsite?

*Instructions*

If you are interested to submit a paper to this special issue, send us an
email with the proposed title and a 300-word abstract of the paper at your
soonest convenience. We can be contacted at crystal.abidin[at]curtin.edu.au
and natalie.pang[at]nus.edu.sg

Selected contributors will submit papers of between 2000-4000 words each
(including references) for peer review. Three external reviewers will be
responsible for collectively refereeing the SI and the introduction, to get
the big picture of the collection, to speak to the merit of each article,
and also to each article’s merit within the SI. Other papers in the SI are
currently in progress towards internal review, but deadlines for these
three additional contributions are negotiable with the Editors.

*References & Resources*

Kling, R. (2000), "Learning about information technologies and social
change: the contribution of social informatics", The Information Society,
Vol. 16, pp. 217-32.

Kling, R. (1996b), "Hopes and horrors: technological utopianism and
anti-utopianism in narratives of computerization", in Kling, R. (Ed.),
Computerization and Controversy, 2nd ed., Academic Press, San Diego, CA,
pp. 40-58.

Karin Garrety & Richard Badham (2000) The Politics of Socio-technical
Intervention: An Interactionist View, Technology Analysis & Strategic
Management, 12:1, 103-118, DOI: 10.1080/095373200107265

Williams, R. and Edge, D. (1996), "The social shaping of technology",
Research Policy, Vol. 25, pp. 856-99, available at:
www.rcss.ed.ac.uk/technology/SSTRP.html


–––––––––––––––––––

Associate Professor Crystal Abidin, PhD

wishcrys.com

Principal Research Fellow & ARC DECRA Fellow, Internet Studies, Curtin
University

Programme Lead of Social Media Pop Cultures, Centre for Culture and
Technology, Curtin University

Affiliate Researcher, Media, Management and Transformation Centre,
Jönköping University

Exec, Association of Internet Researchers

ABC Top 5 / Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia / Pacific Standard 30 Under 30



Books:
Mediated Interfaces (2020)
<https://wishcrys.com/mediated-interfaces-bloomsbury/>

Instagram (2020) <https://wishcrys.com/instagram-polity/>

Microcelebrity Around the Globe (2018)
<https://wishcrys.com/microcelebrity-around-the-globe-emerald/>

Internet Celebrity (2018) <https://wishcrys.com/internet-celebrity-emerald/>



Recently published:

Refracted Publics for Under The Radar Studies (Social Media+Society)
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120984458>
Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok (Cultural Science Journal)
<https://culturalscience.org/articles/10.5334/csci.140/>

Influencer Wars and Productive Disorder (Peter Lang)
<https://wishcrys.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/abidin-2020-l8r-h8r.pdf>