REMINDER:
Deadline for abstract submissions ends on May 31st.
>
> Call for Papers:
>
> Digital Media Technologies Revisited: Theorising social relations,
> interactions and communication
>
>
>
> A two-day conference co-organised by the
>
> ECREA Digital Culture & Communication (DCC) section,
>
> the DGPuK Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) section and
>
> the DGPuK Media Sociology (MS) section
>
> with support from the Centre for Material Digital Culture (DMDC),
> University of Sussex, UK
>
> and the COST 298: Participation in the Broadband Society network
>
>
>
> Place: University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany
>
> Dates: Nov. 20-21, 2009
>
>
>
> Topic:
>
> This two-day conference on ?Digital Technologies Revisited? aims to
> understand contemporary developments in digital media and digital
> media theory by looking backwards as well as forwards. We set out
> to explore an in-between time: a time, when much of the hype
> concerning digital media has died down, much research material has
> been gathered and analyzed and quite a bit about the possibilities
> and limitations of digital media (especially in comparison to older
> media forms) has been understood.
>
> Far from a communication revolution, the media landscape has
> nonetheless changed substantially in recent years. In fact, we have
> undergone a process of diffusion and appropriation: digital media
> have become an important and ever-increasing part of our everyday
> lives. They suffuse our communication, information and
> entertainment spheres. Not surprisingly, the perceived connection
> between the internet and many areas of social life, from work to
> play, has steadily increased in recent years. However, even as
> digital media become pervasive, ubiquitous, common and mundane,
> innovation continues to become an integral characteristic of
> digital media forms, the proliferation of which is challenging to map.
>
> We would therefore like to return to earlier models and theories
> that attempted to explain new (digital) media in its ?first wave?
> forms. Additionally, we would like to address the question of what
> kind of alterations and additions can be used to adapt existing
> models and theories for current purposes (e.g. mediated person-to-
> person communication; para-social interactions with virtual agents;
> pseudo-social interactions with intelligent machines, etc.).
>
> The range of models and theories that can be used, re-visited, or
> adapted is wide (i.e. traditional communication studies models,
> cultural studies theories, sociology and others). We want to
> encourage papers that explore tensions between older and new
> approaches and older and newer ?new media? formations. Where has
> there been movement, where not, and are there in fact new theories
> emerging?
>
> The social world sits at the heart of these diverse concerns.
> Social relations, interactions and communication are at the heart
> of our questions. Within this focus, the possible range of theories
> and methods used, is wide. The following provides the range of
> angles that we propose:
>
> - HCI revisited:
> Human-computer-interaction was an early forerunner concerning
> questions of the relation between humans and computers (as well as,
> eventually, humans via computers). What do we know of these
> relationships by now? How do they differ from other human-object
> relationships? And how do developments in these fields continue to
> inform, intersect and diverge from the social life of digital media
> forms?
>
> - Virtual reality and AI re-thought:
> Virtual reality and AI frameworks are another reference point that
> dominated earlier cybercultural theory, and design. What was
> specific about these moments and intersections? Why have these
> frameworks become less used by technocultural theory (at least for
> more popular theorizations)? What has survived in terms of virtual
> reality and AI concepts in contemporary formations such as Web 2.0,
> Facebook and Second Life?
>
> - Disappearance of the machine ubiquity, ambience and similar
> approaches
> A more recent development has been around the merging of machines,
> and computational architecture with our environments. Thinking
> about pervasive computing, sense perception and intimate
> technologies are increasingly being used as frameworks for
> analysis. Where are they at in terms of the current state of
> development? And what consequences would these have for existing
> theoretical approaches (e.g. of appropriation of media
> technologies) and questions of power? What happens to ethical and
> political issues, such as privacy, monitoring, etc.? What does
> pervasive computing mean for our relationships with machines?
>
> - Identities 4.0?
> Identity was a much discussed topic in early web discourses. It is
> one that keeps returning in new disguises. Identity, it seems, has
> survived the ?post? in identity politics. However, the valences of
> identity are now much more negative than the more utopic versions
> that proliferated in early digital media cultures. Identity
> categories have proliferated, and the intersections of race,
> nation, class, gender, sexuality and belief play a part in
> generating insecurity and a lack of trust between citizens,
> denizens and racialized others, the adult world and ?youth?, or
> children and potential ?paedophiles?. Can early theorizations of
> identity and digital media be brought to bear on contemporary
> experiences and what would these look like?
>
> - Bodies
> Community, identity and the body were the tripartite features of
> digital media theory in the 1990s. Whist community has been
> reformulated as SL and social networking, and identity continues to
> return, the body has also become an increasingly urgent site of
> enquiry as convergences of informational and biotechnological
> practices of body knowledge become materialized through digital
> media practices. These intersections offer up questions about the
> precise contours of current biodigital identity in the form of
> intersecting DNA databases, personal genomes, and biometrics. What
> approaches and questions can address these informatic
> corporealisations and their intersection with everyday life worlds?
>
> - Mass media, journalism and public communication
> Since the mid-1990s, a broad corpus of theories on the production,
> dissemination, reception, and the public and/or personal impact of
> online mass media has evolved in the social sciences. How do
> journalists? routines change in online media? Does the public
> relevance of journalistic mass media decrease or increase in
> present and future times? How can the (societal) diffusion or
> (individual) appropriation of new media developments described or
> analyzed? What do mass media mean to the audience, and what are the
> present and future economic perspectives of online mass media?
>
> - COST 298
> Additionally, COST 298 members are invited to send separate
> abstracts for a COST panel. COST 298 is an Action within the
> intergovernmental framework for European Co-operation in the field
> of Scientific and Technical Research. In COST 298 European
> scientists from telecommunication research departments,
> universities and operators together with independent consultants
> collaborate in cross-disciplinary groups to analyze the social
> dimensions of people?s relationships to information and
> communication technologies. In the COST 298 panel, the same
> questions of older models and newer developments that guide the
> overall conference are asked more specifically concerning the
> broadband society. What have we learned in the last four years of
> the COST 298 network? Only COST 298 members will be eligible to
> apply for this panel.
>
>
>
> Please submit an extended abstract (700 words max.) by the 31st of
> May 2009 (and clearly stating which topic section you would like to
> submit this to) to:
>
> Prof. Dr. Maren Hartmann - University of the Arts (UdK) GWK -
> Mierendorffstraße 30 - 10589 Berlin - Germany - Phone: +49 30 3185
> 2943
> Email: (hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)
__________
Prof. Dr. Maren Hartmann
Juniorprofessur Kommunikationssoziologie/ Assistant Professor
Sociology of Communication
Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftskommunikation/ Communication for
Business and Society
Universität der Künste/ University of the Arts
Mierendorffstraße 30
D-10589 Berlin
Tel./Phone: +49 30 3185 2943
Email: (hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)
