[Air-L] CfP: Special Issue - Digital Mediation and Urban Spatialities

[Soma Basu (TAU)]

TUNI Luottamuksellinen - Confidential (3Y)


Call for Papers

Special Issue: Digital Mediation and Urban Spatialities in Contemporary India

Contemporary urbanization in India is increasingly shaped by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), with initiatives like Digital India aiming to “transform the entire ecosystem of public services through the use of information technology…with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy” (Government of India, 2019). The Digital India Act, under its 2026 Goals, envisions making India “a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025-26” and a “Significant Trusted Player in the Global Value Chains” (MEITY, 2023). Central to this digital vision is the integration of data-driven, interoperable urban governance frameworks.

These developments mark a shift in how urban spaces are imagined, navigated, and governed. As Datta (2023) notes, ICTs manifest new ways of inhabiting cities—what she terms “digitalisation-as-urbanisation.” The Smart Cities Mission exemplifies this shift, triggering spatial transformations, from public space redesign to automation of governance and territorial information systems. The pandemic further intensified these trends, becoming a “digital pivot” marked by mobility-regulating technologies such as contact tracing apps and e-passes, shaping urban space through data trails and digital surveillance (Hall, 1996; Scott, 1998).

These digitally mediated infrastructures reduce complex socio-spatial processes into legible data categories. As Hanseth and Lundberg (2001) argue, such data regimes build on older material infrastructures in complex ways. Meanwhile, critiques of cyberspace as a “virtual public sphere” (Wellman, 2004; Dutton, 2013; boyd, 2010) often rely on spatial metaphors that, as Graham (2018, 2019) contends, obscure the materialities of internet geographies and place-making.
We invite original research articles, theoretical reflections, and case studies that critically examine the evolving nature of urban spatialities in India in light of digital mediation, infrastructures, and networks. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  *   Digital affordances and spatial imaginaries
  *   Data infrastructures, governance, and territorial information systems
  *   Smart cities and the politics of automation
  *   Surveillance, regulation, and digital mobility
  *   Post-pandemic urban spatialities and “digital pivot” moments
  *   Digitality and the making/unmaking of public space
  *   Actor-networks and place-making in digitally mediated cities
  *   Critical perspectives on platform governance and urban planning
  *   Internet geographies and materiality of digital infrastructures
Submission Guidelines:
Prospective authors are invited to submit abstracts of no more than 300 words by July 15, 2025, to digitalmediationindia at gmail.com<mailto:digitalmediationindia at gmail.com>. Full papers (6,000–8,000 words) will be invited following abstract review. Final submissions will undergo a double-blind peer-review process.

The special issue is scheduled for publication in a peer-reviewed journal focusing on South Asia and published by Brill, a leading academic publisher. Full journal details will be announced upon final confirmation.

Timeline:

Abstract Deadline: July 15, 2025

Notification of Acceptance: August 7, 2025

Full Paper Submission: October 7, 2025

Publication (Expected): July, 2026


For any queries regarding this special issue, please contact the guest editors at: Avishek Ray (avishekray at hum.nits.ac.in<mailto:avishekray at hum.nits.ac.in>) and Soma Basu (soma.basu at tuni.fi<mailto:soma.basu at tuni.fi>).