Message posted on 21/02/2020

CfP EASST/4S 2020: Online Campaigns and Digital Personhood in the Age of Datafication

Dear colleagues,

Apologies for cross-posting!

If you are planning to attend this year`s 4S/EASST conference in Prague, please consider submitting an abstract for our panel: Online Campaigns and Digital Personhood in the Age of Datafication. The conference will be held from Aug 18th to Aug 21st. The deadline is approaching!

Conveners:

Christian Ritter, Tallinn University

Rajesh Sharma, University of Tartu

Panel Abstract:

127. Online Campaigns and Digital Personhood in the Age of Datafication

This panel examines how influencers construct their identities on digital platforms. By posting selfies, memes, vlogs, emojis, and textual messages on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, influencers create complex online personas. For instance, diaspora activists, gamers, lifestyle vloggers, gender activists, leaders of religious communities, minority representatives, and political populists engage in large-scale campaigns on platforms to grow their following. Such campaign strategies are increasingly based on comprehensive expertise in platform metrics and exploit data analytics. Drawing on recent STS scholarship on technologies of the self, new materialist approaches, and intersectionality theory, this panel reassesses the rise of datafication in contemporary society. In the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, access to the APIs of popular platforms has been increasingly restricted for academic researchers, requiring new research methodologies.

The overall aim of the panel is to bring together STS scholars who explore the multiple entanglements of influencers with big data in their everyday lives. The panel thus invites papers assessing the datafication of online activities through the lenses of data ethnography or data analytics solutions, such as social network analysis and natural language processing (text analytics, sentiment analysis, topic modeling). Contributions to this panel could address the following questions: What strategies do influencers pursue for platform campaigns? How is agency distributed in the platform worlds of influencers? What understandings of algorithmic mediation do influencers cultivate? What epistemological practices do influencers develop to understand platform metrics?

Submission information:

Abstracts should not be longer than 250 words and can be submitted until February 29th via the conference website: https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ssss/prague20/

Please do not hesitate to get in touch, should you have any questions.

With best wishes,

Christian and Rajesh

Dr Christian Ritter Research Fellow and Lecturer

Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture (MEDIT)

Tallinna Ülikooli—Balti filmi, meedia, kunstide ja kommunikatsiooni instituut

Baltic Film, Media, Arts and Communication School

Tallinn University


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