[Air-L] Call for abstracts - Special Issue on Alt Tech Platforms - New Media and Society

[Eugenia Siapera]

Dear all,

We are delighted to announce a call for abstracts for a Special Issue on
Alt Tech platforms for New Media and Society.

More details below and in this link
<https://digitalpolicy.ie/call-for-abstracts-sp-on-alt-tech-platforms/>.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts!

Warmly, Eugenia and Marc

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*Alt Tech Platforms: Into the Mirror Worlds of Reactionary Digital Media*







*Deadline for abstract submission: November 30th*





*Guest editors: *

*Eugenia Siapera, University College Dublin*

*Marc Tuters, University of Amsterdam*



*Please send your abstracts to **AltTechNMS at gmail.com*
<AltTechNMS at gmail.com>



While much scholarly attention in recent years has been focussed on giant
social media platforms' responsibility to police their content, a
potentially more consequential development has been less well noticed: the
systematic creation of a whole set of parallel, though much less regulated,
online worlds. As platforms have taken a more aggressive stance towards
content moderation, following successive misinformation scandals,
‘deplatformed’ content producers have migrated to 'Alt-Tech' platforms
(Rogers, 2020), that have emerged as a critical infrastructure for
reactionary movements from the alt-right to anti-vaxers (Donovan et al.,
2019, Birchall & Knight 2023), whose politics are driven less by
politicians than by ‘media-of-one’ creators (DiResta 2024) and ‘ideological
entrepreneurs’ (Finlayson, 2023). In order to theorize these dynamics and
accurately track them in a fluid and changeable informational ecosystem, we
see the need for conceptual and methodological innovation.



Drawing from Naomi Klein's (2023) study of online political realignment in
the aftermath of the pandemic, this Special Issue uses the metaphor of
‘mirror worlds’ to consider how Alt Tech platforms seem to offer complete
worldviews, ranging from health and wellness to cultural criticism, films,
games and sport. Moreover, it is not uncommon to encounter modes of
argument in these mirror worlds that reappropriate aspects of ‘left theory’
(Di Leo & McClennan 2023) — despite their political objectives usually
being diametrically opposed. We propose the metaphor as a way to think
about specific Alt Tech platforms (including Gab, Rumble, 4Chan, Bitchute
and Telegram), to consider the dynamics that connect them to mainstream
media, to rethink the relationship between the fringe and mainstream (as
with the seeming transformation of Twitter/X into an Alt Tech platform
following its acquisition by Elon Musk) and to address new and understudied
developments (such as the weaponization of AI by extremists).[1] <#_ftn1>



At its core, the call responds to the challenge to ‘rethink’ and
‘re-contextualize’ political communication studies’ ‘functionalist’ legacy
of concepts to empirically study 'disrupted’ 21st C media environments
characterised by 'complexity and communication abundance' (Bennett &
Pfetsch 2018). To go beyond the linear transmission model of 20th C ‘legacy
media’, how do we rethink these disrupted public spheres in more
multi-directional, symbolic, ritualistic and above all materialist terms?
How do Alt Tech platforms mirror and distort the idealised Habermasian
rational public sphere? How are they reflecting back mainstream/liberal and
progressive idea(l)s, values, and forms of communication? How are the
technologies and infrastructures of Alt Tech constructed, mobilised and
used? What are the contours of the ‘mirror worlds’ they generate? What
tools, conceptual and empirical, do we need to capture these worlds?  And
what may be the socio-political repercussions of these ‘mirror-worlds’?



We invite contributions that address (but which are not necessarily
limited) to:



●      Theoretical approaches to Alt Tech, disrupted public spheres and
mirror worlds

●      Methodologies for tracing narrative flows within and between Alt Tech

●      Alt Tech platform walkthroughs and comparative studies

●      Alt Tech algorithms, users and publics

●      Cross platform ethnographies

●      Event-based case studies (e.g. Alt Tech & the 2024 UK anti-migration
riots)

●      Ideological entrepreneurs and new reactionary digital politics

●      ‘Follow the money’: political economic perspectives.

●      ‘Do your own research’: amateur, populist social theory

●      Alt narratives, beyond mis/disinformation, propaganda & FIMI

●      Alt Tech oppositional readings and debunking of mainstream media

●      Generative AI development and deployment in Alt Tech platforms



*Timeline*



●      November 30, 2024: Deadline for submissions

●      December 20,  2024: 10-12 abstracts selected for full submission

●      April 30, 2025: Deadline for full manuscript submission





*References*



Bennett, W. L., & Pfetsch, B. (2018). Rethinking political communication in
a time of disrupted public spheres. *Journal of communication*, *68*(2),
243-253.



Birchall, C. & P. Knight (2023). *Conspiracy Theories in the Time of
Covid-19*. Routledge



Di Leo, J & S. A. McClennen. (2023) *Left Theory and the Alt-Right*.
Routledge



DiResta, R. (2024) *Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality*.
Public Affairs



Donovan J, Lewis B, Friedberg B (2019) Parallel ports: Sociotechnical
change from the Alt-Right to Alt-Tech. In: Fielitz M, Thurston N (eds)
*Post-Digital
Cultures of the Far Right: Online Actions and Offline Consequences in
Europe and the US*. Bielefeld, Germany, Transcript, 49–65.



Finlayson, A. (2023). This is not a critique: Reactionary digital politics
in the age of ideological entrepreneurship. *Media Theory*, *7*(1), 28-48.



Klein, N. (2023). *Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World*. Knopf
Canada.



Rogers, R. (2020). Deplatforming: Following extreme Internet celebrities to
Telegram and alternative social media. *European Journal of Communication*,
*35*(3), 213-229.







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[1] <#_ftnref1> See for example
https://www.wired.com/story/neo-nazis-are-all-in-on-ai/