[ecrea] Call for papers: 'Platform Politics', a special issue of Culture Machine

*CALL FOR PAPERS *

*Platform Politics*

*Special issue of Culture Machine, vol. 14; http://www.culturemachine.net *

edited by Joss Hands (Anglia Ruskin University) Greg Elmer (Ryerson 
University) Ganaele Langlois (University of Ontario Institute of Technology)

This special issue of the peer-reviewed, open access journal Culture 
Machine on the concept of 'Platform Politics' will explore how digital 
platforms can be understood, leveraged and contested in an age when the 
'platform' is coming to supplant the open Web as the default digital 
environment.

Platforms can be characterized as resting on already existing networked 
communication systems, but also as developing discreet spaces and 
affordances, often using 'apps' to circumvent any need to access them 
via the Internet or Web. For this issue of Culture Machine we are 
seeking papers that explore the nature and distinctive aspects of the 
'platform': as something that can be positioned as more than just a 
neutral space of communication; and as a complex technology with 
distinct affordances that have powerful political, economic and social 
interests at stake. In this respect the platform constitutes a zone of 
contestation between, for example, different formations and 
configurations of capital; social movements; new kinds of activist 
networks; open source and proprietary software design. Platforms also 
constitute spaces of struggle between mass movements and governments, 
users and the extractors of value, visibility and invisibility: witness 
the various debates over the role of 'social media' in the Arab Spring, 
anti-austerity, student and occupy movements. Such struggles entail a 
compelling intersection between technology and design, capital, 
multitude, the democratization of technology and 'subversive 
rationalization'.

The platform represents not just a question of software and control, 
then; it also connects to wider social struggles in the sense that 
'platform'  can refer to a 'political platform', and can thus take on 
the agenda setting or framing role of political discourse more 
generally. Accordingly, this special issue will look to understand 
'platform politics' as a broad social assemblage, complex or form of 
life. Linking particular platforms across the molecular and molar, it 
will think about platform politics as a distinct new context of power 
operating at the intersection of technological development, software 
design, cognitive/communicative capitalism, new forms of social movement 
and resistance, and the attempts to contain them by the exiting 
democracies. As such, platform politics requires a distinct mode of 
engagement, which this special issue of Culture Machine will endeavour 
to encourage and provide.

We invite contributions on topics such as:

.             Protocols as machinery of the platform -- its common 
language, including ideas of control and/or the possibilities and 
limitations of open, non-proprietorial platforms.

.             The specific relationship between networks and platforms 
(including the discussion of whether the former are being subsumed by 
the latter), and distribution vs centralization/aggregation -- not least 
in terms of user created content and content management systems (code 
politics of algorithms, and the use of APIs).

.             The question as to whether a process of enclosure is 
taking place via the struggle over the creation and expropriation of 
'network value', or whether it entails a more parasitical engagement 
with, and enhancement of, the existing network architectures.

.             Visibility/invisibility: platforms as political spaces to 
be seen/heard, or indeed tactically escaped and eluded.

.             Resistance: how the above described issues relate to the 
potential for cultural, political, social and economic praxis, which in 
turns opens up a space from which to address recent global events. (See, 
for example, RIMs (Blackberry Messaging's) enclosure, which ironically 
creates spaces of resistance as well as disturbance and securitization.)

.             New software possibilities: for example, Drupal's opening 
up and democratization of content management, which perhaps creates a 
kind of 'platform commons'? The potential of 'Diaspora', the open source 
social network, to offer a viable alternative to proprietary social media.

.             The role of intrinsic network tendencies, as opposed to 
political and economic decision-making, taking in explorations of the 
relevance of graph theory, the role of power laws and the 
network-specific characteristics of 'communication power'.

Deadline for submissions of complete articles: 1st November 2012

Please submit your contributions including contact details by email to 
Joss Hands:

< (joss.hands /at/ networkpolitics.org)>

Culture Machine's Guidelines for Authors:

http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

All contributions will be peer-reviewed.