[ecrea] CFP: Social Media and the Transformation of Public Space

Sent on behalf of Jose van Dijk and Thomas Poell

Further information at:
http://acgs.uva.nl/news-and-events/news/news/news/content/folder/2013/11/social-media-and-the-transformation-of-public-space.html 



Social Media and the Transformation of Public Space
June 18-20, 2014 – University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (funded by the 
Royal Netherlands Academy of Science)
Organizers: José van Dijck & Thomas Poell
Confirmed speakers: Lance Bennett, Tarleton Gillespie, Alfred Hermida, 
Hallvard Moe
The quick rise of social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube 
and LinkedIn, is fundamentally affecting the balance between personal 
(private) space, community (public) space, and corporate (commercial) 
space. These platforms allow, on the one hand, for mass participation in 
public discourse, providing users with new means of expressions and 
connection. In this light, it has been argued that social media bring 
about a democratization of public life: facilitating novel forms of 
political contestation, more participatory types of journalism, and 
direct interaction between citizens and political and cultural elites. 
On the other hand, social media, through their technological 
architectures, steer how users interact with each other. They penetrate 
deeply in the dynamics of everyday life, reshaping people’s informal 
personal interactions, but also affecting institutional structures and 
professional routines. In this process, both public and private 
communication becomes entangled with social media’s commercial 
mechanisms, transforming the political economy of the media landscape. 
In combination, these developments force all societal actors, including 
the mass media, civil society organizations, and state institutions, to 
reconsider and recalibrate their position in public space.
This conference explores the potentially contradictory cultural and 
techno-commercial mechanisms introduced by the rise of social media 
platforms. The organizers invite research from different perspectives 
and traditions to reflect on this issue. First, we invite work that 
interrogates how both formal institutions (news, public broadcasting, 
law and order, etc) and informal organizations (activists, communities) 
adopt and adjust to social media. What new cultural and political 
practices are articulated in these processes? Second, we encourage 
technological perspectives: presentations of scholarship examining which 
mechanisms of selection and which logics of knowledge production are 
embedded in the platforms’ technologies. Third, the conference solicits 
economic and political perspectives: how do social media affect the 
operations and economies of media production? And how do these 
technologies affect power relations between different social actors?
The main question driving this conference is how social media, looked at 
from different angles and scholarly approaches, are transforming 
concepts of public space or “publicness”. More particularly, we will ask 
how social media are involved in the transformation of particular 
domains, including news production, public broadcasting, activism, and 
law and order. Examples of possible topics follow below.
Public space
- Social media and new practices of identity and citizenship -

Social platforms and shifting norms and logics of knowledge -

Fluctuating dynamics of public debate -

Redistribution of political, economic, and cultural power through social 
media -

Facebook and the reconceptualization of publicness
News
!

Crowdsourcing journalism !

Algorithmic selection and circulation of news ! User-generated content 
as news source !

Business models for online news ! Social media and data journalismPublic 
broadcasting
!

YouTube’s role in public broadcasting ! Twitter as a real-time rating 
service !

The participation paradigm in television ! PSB ‘public’ values and the 
use of social media !

“Social TV”: the integration of social media and television.
Activism
!

Leadership and the online organization of protest ! Connective processes 
of mobilization !

Social technologies and changing repertoires of contention ! Viral 
protest videos !

Real-time protest communication ! Twitter and alternative journalism
Law and order
!

Challenges of viral mobilization ! Security and surveillance versus 
accountability !

Data collection and new methods of surveillance ! “Policing” social 
media platforms !

Crowdsourcing civilian prosecutors
Submit an Abstract
!

Presentations of original research will be 10-15 minutes long and will 
be held in panels; panels have 4 speakers max. and will last an hour and 
a half. We invite 400-word abstracts, and select presentations on the 
basis of their quality. Each proposal should contain a 100-word bio of 
the presenter.
!

Proposals for full panels of four speakers are also welcome; they should 
include a description of the panel in approximately 400 words, and short 
(100 word) abstracts and bios for each speaker. A proposal for a full 
panel ideally also includes a moderator.
!

Papers: We aim to publish a selection of the best papers on the theme of 
the conference in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal or as a 
book collection. Papers should be max 7,500 words (including 
references). Full papers are due May 31, 2014. Please indicate in the 
abstract of your presentation or panel whether you plan to submit a full 
paper!
!

Proposals for presentations or full panels should be sent in a PDF or 
Word format as email attachments to (asmc14-fgw /at/ uva.nl) no later than 
Friday, March 7, 2014. From October 2013, we will be evaluating 
submissions on a rolling basis and will respond to every proposal.
!

The fee for registration will be 50 euro to cover all conference 
documentation, refreshments, lunches and administration costs. 
Registration will open in March 2014.


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