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> *Call for extended abstracts for an edited collection
-¡©-
Please circulate
> widely*
Social Media, Politics and the State:
Protest, Revolutions, Riots, Crime,
and Policing in the Age of Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube.
Edited by Daniel
Trottier and Christian Fuchs
http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/CFP_SMPS.pdf
¡°Social media¡± is a new
> buzzword, marketing ideology and sphere of
imagination in which contemporary
> techno-optimistic and
techno-pessimistic visions are played out. Social media
> platforms like
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have made a considerable impact
> on
contemporary life. A growing corpus of research considers how these
>
platforms have affected marketing, identity construction, social
>
coordination and privacy. The scholarship that this collected volume
>
addresses looks at how state power and politics are both contested and
>
exercised on social media.
Because social media are saturated in
> contemporary life, they have
become a tool and a terrain for conflicts
> between states and a multitude
of organized and autonomous actors. Social
> media are celebrated for
¡°levelling the playing field¡± by empowering
> otherwise powerless actors.
The ¡®Green Movement¡¯ during the 2009 elections in
> Iran was globally
broadcast on Twitter. Marginalized political groups can now
> promote
their agenda on free and easy-to-use platforms. Even rioters and
> other
actors breaking the law can organize and discuss their exploits on
> these
platforms. Yet in practice, social media often lead to asymmetrical
>
power relations, as a result of asymmetrical relations of online
> visibility.
Studying social media politics, there are on the one hand
>
techno-optimistic approaches that claim that social media helps to
revive
> democracy (examples of such talk include the focus on ¡°Twitter
revolutions¡±,
> ¡°YouTube democracy¡±, or a ¡°Twitter public sphere¡±) and on
the other hand
> techno-pessimistic approaches that claim that social
media are a new threat
> to democracy (examples of such talk include focus
on the omnipresence of
> criminal threats, harassments, terrorism and
violent extremism on social
> media, the talk about ¡°Twitter and
Blackberry riots¡±, the stress on the end
> of political activism due to
the lack of real-life contacts between activists
> and citizens, the focus
on how the police and repressive regimes monitor
> social media in order
to repress political activism, etc).
The focus of this
> collected volume
is different in that it seeks contributions that give a
> realistic
assessment of the relationship between various forms of collective
>
action (e.g. the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, contemporary student
>
protests, contemporary social movements in Greece, Spain, and other
>
countries, Anonymous, WikiLeaks, various forms of terrorism, various
forms
> of crime, various forms of political activism, etc) and state
power (the
> police, various political regimes, intelligence, the
state-industrial
> surveillance complex, the neoliberal regime of
governance, etc) on social
> media.
In the Iranian protests in 2009 just like in the Arab spring,
> activists
have used social media as organizing and communication tool in
> their
protests and governments have tried to censor and monitor social media,
>
often with the help of surveillance technologies produced and exported
by
> Western companies. WikiLeaks has tried to make the power of state
actors
> transparent with the assistance of online leaking, and political
opponents of
> the project have answered with boycotts and large-scale
campaigns. Anonymous
> has advanced a networked form of political
hacktivism and is facing the
> criminalization of distributed denial of
service attacks and politically
> motivated cracking as well as
prosecution of some of its activists.
> Organizations concerned about
police brutality, including discriminatory and
> racist practices have
turned to social media in order to ¡®watch the watchers¡¯
> (regional
CopWatch branches on Facebook, leaking personal data about abusive
>
police officers to the public, drone and citizen journalism of police
>
activities during political protests). However, these very sites render
>
political activists visible to the police, and the police have developed
an
> interest in monitoring social media and using them as surveillance
tools.
>
Social media and mobile phones have been used as communication
tools in the
> London and Vancouver riots in 2011, to which the police
answered with an
> offensive of policing social media, developing new
social media surveillance
> tools, and publicly declaring the need for
laws and technologies that enable
> the control of riots, crime and
terror. Since the start of the global
> economic crisis in 2008, Europe
has experienced an electoral shift towards
> the right in many countries
and a growth of right-wing extremism and fascist
> activism that has
culminated in Anders Breiviks¡¯ mass killing of 69 people.
> The public and
the police have since asked if Internet- and social
> media-monitoring and
control can prevent such massacres, by detecting early
> warning signals
and help catch criminals and terrorists before they attack.
> Privacy and
civil society activists are the same time concerned that social
> media
policing and surveillance bring about a totalitarian society, in which
>
innocent citizens are criminalized and discriminated against, and in
which
> social media policing turns against civil society, minorities
(especially
> people of colour) and political activists, that conservative
law and order
> politics are advanced, and that a techno-deterministic
ideology emerges that
> overlooks the societal causes of crime and terror
and believes in a
> technological fix to societal problems that are rooted
in modern society¡¯s
> power structures.
We are explicitly neither interested in contributions that
> tell readers
which great opportunities or threats various forms of collective
> action
on social media pose, nor in contributions that focus on opportunities
>
or threats posed by various forms of state action on social media. We
are
> rather exclusively interested in contributions that address how
collective
> action and state power are related and conflict as two-sides
of social media
> power, and how power and counter-power are distributed
in this
> relationship.
We are compiling a collection of research papers that address
> one or
more of the following issues:
-Social media and the Arab Spring, and
> related regime conflicts
-Social media and the Occupy movement
-Social media
> and student protests / austerity protests
-Social media and riots / social
> unrest in urban areas
-Social media and political protests and
> activism
-Social media and marginal political groups
-Social media, right-wing
> extremism, and fascism
-Social media and religious violence
-Social media and
> organized crime
-Social media and policing
-Social media and police
> violence
-Social media and the state-industrial surveillance complex
-Social
> media and Anonymous
-Social media and WikiLeaks
In particular, we invite
> research that considers a) the two-sided nature
of power in relation to
> social media and politics, and that is b)
theoretically focused, c) critical
> in nature and d) empirically rigorous.
-All chapters should give attention to
> theoretical question that address
what political power is all about in
> general and today and how this
relates to social media:
What is the state?
> What is power? What is politics? What is the police?
What is surveillance?
> What is activism? What is civil society? How does
the relationship between
> collective action and state power look like in
modern society?
-Which
> critical theories that conceptualize these phenomena are there?
Which of
> these theories are feasible in the context of social media?
-How can the
> relationship of collective action and state power be
theorized and how does
> this relate to social media?
-What does it mean to study social media,
> politics and the state critically?
-How should the concepts of power and
> counter-power be theorized? How
can such a theorization be applied to social
> media?
-How can the power relations and asymmetries between collective actors
>
and state apparatuses be conceptualized, theorized, and empirically
studied
> in a realistic and dialectical way?
Final versions of chapters should be no
> longer than 8000 words,
including references and notes. We intend to submit a
> full proposal to
Routledge, who have expressed an interest in this
> collection.
We are currently seeking extended abstracts of 800-1200 words.
> Please
send extended abstracts, along with a brief bio to
>
[log in to unmask] no later than Monday, October 15th, 2012.
Tentative
> schedule:
Extended abstracts due: Monday, October 15th, 2012
Notification of
> accepted papers: Thursday, November 1st, 2012
First draft of chapters due:
> Monday, April 1st, 2012
Feedback on chapters returned: Monday, June 3rd,
> 2012
Final versions of chapters due: Monday, July 15th, 2012
In order to be
> considered, abstracts should adhere to the following
style (800-1200 words in
> total, please address each aspect separately
and include the specific
> headlines in your abstract):
a) Contribution Title
b) Full name of the
> author(s)
c) Institutional affiliation(s)
d) Postal address(es)
e) e-mail
> address(es)
f) Telphone number of the corresponding author
Structured
> Abstract
1 Purpose:
What are the overall task and research question the
> chapter addresses?
2 Scope:
What is the scope of the analysis (time period
> for the analysis,
geographical scope, which phenomena are included in the
> analysis, which
one excluded and why, which spheres of society and their
> interrelations
are taken into account (politics, state, economy, ideology,
> etc))?
3 Method:
Which theoretical approaches and empirical research methods
> are employed
for answering the research questions and attaining the chapter¡¯s
> task?
How does the chapter employ and apply critical social theories for
>
studying social media, politics, the state, power and counter-power? How
is
> the power relationship of collective actors and state power taken
into
> account?
4 Results:
What are the main results presented in the paper?
5
> Recommendations:
What are the main recommendations for society that the
> research allows
to draw from a critical and ethical perspective?
6
> Conclusions:
What are the main conclusions of the conducted research for
> politics,
society, academia, the research field of Critical Internet and
> Social
Media Studies, and the public?
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