[Air-L] Reminder: CFP for JCMC special issue on Sensor-mediated Communication

Wed Mar 30 11:11:20 PDT 2022

Hi everyone,

We're seeking submissions for a special issue of JCMC on Sensor-mediated
Communication: Sensing, Mobilities, and Power. The deadline for extended
abstracts is April 15.

More information can be found here
<https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/pages/sensors-cfp> and below. Please forward
to anyone who might be interested. I'm happy to answer any questions about
the call or theme as well.

Thank you!
Germaine

Sensor-mediated Communication: Sensing, Mobilities, and Power

Guest editors:

Didem Özkul, Bilkent University (Turkey) - didem.ozkul at bilkent.edu.tr

Germaine R. Halegoua, University of Michigan (USA) - halegoua at umich.edu

Lee Humphreys, Cornell University (USA) - lmh13 at cornell.edu

Rowan Wilken, RMIT (Australia) - rowan.wilken at rmit.edu.au

Sensors are everywhere. They monitor environments and measure a multitude
of environmental characteristics such as air quality, temperature, noise,
humidity, and radiation (Gabrys, 2019; Starosielski, 2021). They attempt to
detect, compute, and communicate context (Beigl, 2005). They are
increasingly embedded in urban infrastructures, offices, objects, and
homes. With our smartphones and watches, we also carry sensors with us or
on us. Many smartphones are equipped with proximity sensors, ambient light
sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes, barometers, biometric sensors, face or
fingerprint scanners, heart rate monitors, and sensor receivers like GPS
and GNSS. These sensors ‘sense’ and process information and mediate many
physical and virtual interactions in public and private spaces. As a
result, sensor-mediated communication has become routinely integrated into
our daily lives.

>From self-tracking apps to self-driving cars, sensing technologies power
automated decision-making systems and influence social practices around
health and wellness, navigation and transportation, climate and energy use,
commerce and consumption, sociality and engagement, and urban governance.
Despite the growing prevalence of sensors and citizen-sensing projects
(Gabrys, 2016), and the value placed on the data acquired through their
use, academic interest in researching their societal, behavioral, and
ethical implications is only recently gaining momentum. Even with key
contributions that define contemporary societies as “sensor societies”
(Andrejevic & Burdon, 2015), and as attributes of the “quantified self”
(Lupton, 2016) become foundational to an increasing number of everyday
interactions, sensor-mediated communication has remained a relatively
under-researched topic. With current crises of mobilities such as climate
change, mass migrations and deportations, and pandemics, mobile forms of
sensing and sensor-mediated communication and interaction have gained
salience as smartphones, Internet of Things devices, and technologies for
‘always-on’, passive data collection are increasingly utilized for
controlling and governing communities, societies, and populations.
Therefore, we believe that it is time to critically reflect on and
empirically analyze sensor-mediated communication practices and their
societal and ethical implications.

With our special issue on sensor-mediated communication, we open up a
critical discussion at the intersections of computer-mediated communication
(CMC), critical data studies, surveillance studies, infrastructure studies,
and media and communication studies. We invite empirical papers that
address emerging debates regarding sensors and sensor-mediated
communication, sensor data practices, and their societal implications for
measuring, seeing, and knowing bodies, mobilities, environments, and the
data they produce.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic with its increased uncertainty and anxiety
around public health and contagion has created new urgency around sensors
and the ways in which they mediate communication and interaction practices,
this special issue focuses on issues of ethics, surveillance, technology
design and use that may precede the pandemic yet contextualize current
discourses and decisions around sensing technologies and sensor data. Our
focus includes not only the commonplace use of smart(phone) sensors, such
as apps for parents to track their children, or apps for care for the
elderly and disabled, but also (and most importantly) the broader uses of
sensors and scanners in cities, by platforms and governments, in robotics,
drones and satellites, and through other forms of mobile and remote
sensing.

What does it mean to think about sensing technologies and practices as
computer-mediated communication? How can mediated communication foreground
investigations of sensing technologies that reveal organizational, cultural
and structural mechanisms at work? This might include questions around
power, mobilities, and capitalism as sensing and scanning technologies are
increasingly embedded in mediated-communication practices of everyday life
including personal, wearable, and “smart” devices. In response to these
questions, we invite empirical papers that examine practices, processes,
power, and ethics as they relate to sensors and sensor-mediated
communication and interaction.

Multidisciplinary papers and papers from a variety of theoretical and
methodological perspectives are encouraged but must focus on sensors and
their societal implications from a computer-mediated communication
perspective.  Articles for this special issue are expected to contribute to
and extend existing CMC debates through a focus on critical questions
related to CMC and how our field can examine the impacts and roles of
communication technologies and mediated-communication through various
aspects of sensors and scanners, i.e. sensor-mediated communication. Journal
of Computer-Mediated Communication only publishes original research
articles and meta-analyses of prior research. Therefore, all submissions
are required to have a section that describes and discusses the research
process and/or methods.

Important dates:

   -

   Extended abstracts submission (1,500 words): 15 April 2022
   -

   Notification: 15 May 2022
   -

   Full papers submission (maximum 9,000 words): 31 September 2022
   -

   Final acceptance: January 2023
   -

   Provisional publication: March 2023

Guidelines:

Please submit an extended abstract of no more than 1,500 words (including
references) that states the paper’s main argument, methods, and scholarly
contribution. The abstract should clearly explain how the full submission
will contribute to the aims of this special issue. Please email extended
abstracts to didem.ozkul at bilkent.edu.tr with cc to all other editors:
halegoua at umich.edu, lmh13 at cornell.edu, rowan.wilken at rmit.edu.au by 15 April
2022. Abstracts should be accompanied by a short biography for each author
(approx. 200 words).

Positively reviewed abstracts (notification by 15 May 2022) will be invited
to submit full papers by 31 September 2022. All manuscripts must be
submitted online through MANUSCRIPT CENTRAL
<https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jcmc> (
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jcmc).

Invited submissions will undergo a blind peer-review process following the
usual procedures of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The special
issue will be published March 2023. Please note that manuscripts must
conform to the guidelines for Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Please see Author Instructions for more information:
https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/pages/General_Instructions. In case of
further questions, please contact the guest editors.

References:

Andrejevic, M. & Burdon, M. (2015). Defining the Sensor Society. Television
& New Media. 16(1), 19-36.

Beigl, M. (2005). Ubiquitous computing: Computation embedded in the world.
In G. Flachbart & P. Weibel (Eds.), Disappearing Architecture: From Real to
Virtual to Quantum (pp. 52-59). Basel: Birkhauser.

Gabrys, J. (2016). Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the
Making of a Computational Planet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press.

Gabrys, J. (2019). How to Do Things with Sensors. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.

Lupton, D. (2016). The Quantified Self. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Starosielski, N. (2021). Media Hot & Cold. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.

-- 
Germaine R. Halegoua (she/her)
Associate Professor
University of Michigan