[Air-L] CfA: ICA pre-conference - The Political Power of IT Industries

[Roei Davidson]

Dear all,

Please consider submitting an abstract to the ICA 2025 pre-conference on
"The Political Power of Information Technology Industries" which will take
place June 12, 2025 at the University of Denver.

Full details below.

All the best,
Roei

Call for abstracts:
The Political Power of Information Technology Industries
ICA 2025 pre-conference

To be held at the University of Denver, June 12, 2025, 9:00AM – 4:30PM
Abstract submission deadline: January 31, 2025

*Call also available here*: https://t.ly/ZbeO5

Affiliated with the Communication, Law and Policy Division and the Media
Industries Interest Group of ICA

Sponsored by the Institute for Information Policy at Pennsylvania State
University and the
Underwood Institute

Co-Organizers: Roei Davidson, Amit Schejter, Krishna Jayakar

Scientific Committee: Roei Davidson, Krishna Jayakar, Brandie Nonnecke,
Rodrigo Cetina Presuel, Amit Schejter & Richard Taylor

The information technology (IT) industries occupy a powerful position in
society. They develop, operate and sell key data infrastructures and
devices that enable major social and political processes to take place
(Plantin et al., 2018). Ownership of these infrastructures gives them
“privileged access” (Srnicek, 2017, p. 44) to user activities and great
wealth. These provide them in turn with significant power that directly
impacts the political rights as well as conditions of people worldwide.
Within their infrastructures, these industries often operate as if they own
fiefdoms, enjoying broad powers to shape and restrict users’ behaviors, and
designing systems that grant users feudal power over others (Schneider,
2023).

In the past, the IT industries - including software, hardware, storage, and
internet platforms - were reluctant to participate in political life and
overtly exert power but rather turned to the construction of computational
devices and networks as alternative spaces for individual fulfillment
(Turner, 2006).  However, in recent years, IT firms (Dror, 2015) and
entrepreneurs (Creech & Maddox, 2022; Karppi & Nieborg, 2021) have been
more explicit in their public commitments and interventions. They have used
their access to data to promote particular political agendas and
“choreograph publics” (Murray & Flyverbom, 2021, p. 630) consonant with
both their narrow corporate interests and more general social visions. They
provide political campaigns with technical assistance (Kreiss & McGregor,
2018) and regulate political speech (Kreiss & McGregor, 2019). They have
influenced public policy domains such as education in ways that promote the
adoption of the systems they develop and the values they espouse (Davidson
et al., 2024; Sims, 2017; Tamir & Davidson, 2020). In some areas, such as
national security, the state has relied on IT firms to carry out core
political functions by proxy (Chachko, 2021; Feldstein, 2021). Prominent IT
executives and entrepreneurs claim the authority and jurisdiction to
participate in moral debates well beyond the confines of the industry
(Daub, 2020), and network celebrities connected with these industries do so
as well (Turner & Larson, 2015). Some industry personnel participate in
political activism leveraging their occupational identity and social status
as technology experts. In many of these cases, the industry’s power is not
only mediated by the socio-technical systems it develops but is also
applied using direct interventions (Eyal & Buchholz, 2010) which rely on
human interaction and social discourse. In reaction to these interventions
and the increased power of the industry more generally, governments (both
national and supra-national) have acted to curb industry power or shape it
for their own needs sometimes in a bid to deepen systems of political
control (Feldstein, 2021; Hutson, 2023). In addition, governments often
restrict foreign firms and maintain close ties with domestic ones (Huang &
Tsai, 2022).

Given the more proactive role the IT industries play in political life we
wish to ask in this pre-conference: How do the IT industries intervene in
political campaigns? How do these industries shape the public policy
process through lobbying, donations and consulting, both in relation to
media and internet policy and in relation to broader policy domains? How do
their products algorithmically affect the political process? What role do
industrial actors play in opposing, or supporting and sometimes leading
activist movements? How do industrial actors intervene in intellectual
debates? and how do governments respond to industry interventions and/or
co-opt the IT industries for their own purposes?

In posing these questions and related ones, we welcome theoretical and
empirical contributions that draw on diverse methodological approaches
(qualitative, quantitative, and computational) to interrogate these
industries’ political role around the world nationally and trans-nationally
in both democratic and authoritarian regimes.

Submission topics could include but need not be restricted to:

*Intellectual interventions such as lectures, media appearances, news
coverage, podcasts, blogging, social media, think-tanks, official
testimony, and industry research

*Political dimensions inherent to the design and functioning of IT
platforms and services

*Lobbying and other forms of participation in the public policy process

*Corporate, investor and worker activism

*Political donations

*Participating in and supporting political campaigns and other elements of
the formal political process

*Supporting, providing, or replacing state functions

*National and supra-national policy related to the IT industries

-------------------------------------------------

Workshop Organizers: Institute for Information Policy, Penn State.

Submissions: Interested scholars are invited to submit a 500-word abstract
by January 31, 2025.  Authors of selected papers and abstracts will be
notified by February 21, 2025.  Full papers based on invited abstracts are
due May 12, 2025.  Proposals and papers should be sent by e-mail to the
Workshop Organizers at pennstateIIP at psu.edu.  Inquiries should also be
directed to that address.

Registration Fee: There will be a $50.00 registration fee for participants
to cover the cost of food and refreshments during the Workshop. Limited
funding will be available to waive the registration fee of at least some
graduate student attendees who will be presenting at the pre-conference.

Following the pre-conference, authors will be invited to submit a full
paper for potential inclusion in a peer-reviewed special issue of the
Journal of Information Policy.


References

Chachko, E. (2021). National Security by Platform. Stanford Technology Law
Review, 25(1), 55–140.
Creech, B., & Maddox, J. (2022). Thus spoke Zuckerberg: Journalistic
discourse, executive personae, and the personalization of tech industry
power. New Media & Society, 14614448221116344.
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221116344
Daub, A. (2020). What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual
Bedrock of Silicon Valley. FSG Originals.
Davidson, R., Rein, N., & Tamir, E. (2024). The time-making capacity of the
technology industry and its consequences for public life. Journal of
Cultural Economy, 17(1), 55–72.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2261483
Eyal, G., & Buchholz, L. (2010). From the Sociology of Intellectuals to the
Sociology of Interventions. Annual Review of Sociology, 36(1), 117–137.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102625
Feldstein, S. (2021). The rise of digital repression: How technology is
reshaping power, politics, and resistance. Oxford University Press.
Huang, J., & Tsai, K. S. (2022). Securing Authoritarian Capitalism in the
Digital Age: The Political Economy of Surveillance in China. The China
Journal, 88, 2–28. https://doi.org/10.1086/720144
Hutson, M. (2023). Rules to keep AI in check: Nations carve different paths
for tech regulation. Nature, 620(7973), 260–263.
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02491-y
Karppi, T., & Nieborg, D. B. (2021). Facebook confessions: Corporate
abdication and Silicon Valley dystopianism. New Media & Society, 23(9),
2634–2649. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820933549
Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2018). Technology Firms Shape Political
Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With
Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle. Political Communication,
35(2), 155–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814
Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2019). The “arbiters of what our voters
see”: Facebook and Google’s struggle with policy, process, and enforcement
around political advertising. Political Communication, 36(4), 499–522.
Murray, J., & Flyverbom, M. (2021). Datafied corporate political activity:
Updating corporate advocacy for a digital era. Organization, 28(4),
621–640. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420928516
Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018).
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and
Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293–310.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553
Schneider, N. (2023). Afterlives of the Californian Ideology| Homesteading
on a Superhighway: The Californian Ideology and Everyday Politics.
International Journal of Communication, 17, 4255–4271.
Sims, C. (2017). Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of
Techno-Idealism. Princeton University Press.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity.
Tamir, E., & Davidson, R. (2020). The good despot: Technology firms’
interventions in the public sphere. Public Understanding of Science, 29(1),
21–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519879368
Turner, F. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the
Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University Of
Chicago Press.
Turner, F., & Larson, C. (2015). Network celebrity: Entrepreneurship and
the new public intellectuals. Public Culture, 27(1 75), 53–84.

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Roei Davidson <http://roeidavidson.com>, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Communication
University of Haifa