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[ecrea] Movenet. Congress on Social Movements and NTIC / CFP

Thu Sep 25 23:41:20 GMT 2014



Movenet. Congress on Social Movements and NTIC / CFP

Activist use of the New Technologies of the Information and Communication (NTICs) is increasingly important for social movements and civil society. Experiences such as Movimiento Zapatista (1994) or Altermundista (1999), like many others which have followed, are a highlight example of social appropriation of NTICs. Protests like EDESA II (Philippines 2001), the Venezuelan contra-coup (2002), the student revolts against First Employment Contract in France (2005), the Icelandic rebellion (2008), the African-Arab Spring (2010 ), the various Occupy Camps in the Anglo world, unrest in UK or Geraçao À Rasca in Portugal (2011), the Mexican movement # Yosoy132 (2012) or, in the Spanish context, the movement for Dignified Housing (2006) and 15M (2011), demonstrate the key role that ICTs are assuming at the social movements operating worldwide.

Move.net tries to be a meeting point for share both reflections and theoretical analysis that helps to contextualize and figure out the social implication of the NTICs, as experiences and practices from the own activists that would allow understand the reality of the social use of technology. Move.net wish to promote proposals and projects that enhance this kind of social appropriation with emancipatory aims. This initiative comes from the collaboration between Universidad Pablo de Olavide and Universidad de Sevilla, its aim is to be a space for reflection and debate, approaching the theory and practice of the social and political uses of the technologies of communications. Move.net is an academic Congress, based on rigorous scientific investigations, and a public discussion space open to experiences and reflections that come from the social activism and general citizenship.

The event will take place on Universidad Pablo de Olavide and on Cooperativa Tramallol (Seville) on Thursday 5th, Friday 6th and Saturday 7th February 2015.

As a basic guide of the discussion we will focus on the next topics:

Technological Sovereignty: The emancipatory potential of new technologies comes often at odds with their dominance by large corporations and the legislative control of the states. Surveillance and control are a real risk for privacy and the users’ right of anonymity, in particular, for all of those social activists that would may suffer the repression by the powers they face. Despite these inherent risks, movements follow doing a disruptive use of the commercial technologies, but they also bet for the development of autonomous projects in technical innovation. Which are the risks and threats by the use of movements of technologies that have been made for oligopolistic companies? ¿What dangers have surveillance of the governments and large corporations for activism? Which will be the challenges of these initiatives for autonomous development of technological tools by social movements? Is it worth using outside disruptive technologies despite their risks?

Digital Rights: Nowadays Intellectual Property is being disputed by the new possibilities that come from the Internet. At the same time, new laws rise to protect and reinforce copyright, or to deal with new threat such as pedophilia or terrorism, and, so often, with other goals more spurious. While governments follow this path, user suffers serious lacks in the net neutrality and freedom of expression, meanwhile, the own access to the net has been reclaimed as a new civil right. How have to understand copyright in the new digital world? How to reconcile the remuneration of authors with the ease of digital copy? How adapt the industry to the new digital environment? The intellectual property rights, does suppose a threat to digital nets? To what extent should legislate? In what sense? Should it considered access as a new civil right?

Ciberactivism: Social movements use technology to do some tasks, as organization or communication (inside/outside), but these are used too in the political fight, adding to their repertory, actions which are virtually organized but implemented on the physic space, and sometimes, combined with actions on the Internet. Therefore, the Internet is not only a tool of struggle but, at times, it is the own battlefield or the object of the claim that guide collective action. Are effective actions that take place only in the virtual space? How they complement with the actions in the physic space? What relationships can be seen between classic activism and virtual? Which are principal innovations on real praxis that can show the cyberactivism?

Digital Democracy: The Internet is not only a struggle weapon, but turns into a symbol of new forms of participation and organization. The Internet allows a large scale horizontal communication, questioning the classical approach and opening new ways to critic about representative system inevitability. On the other hand, digital democracy is also a new use of the networks by classic politic parties, but without a real change onto their hierarchies or their proposals. Campaigns as the Obama reflect a contradiction between bigger citizenship’s participation that would may counter the influence power of large companies and the “Big Brother” that means the massive use of the surveillance techniques. How can NICs enlarge participation and improve democracy? But too, can they worsen the situation through finer propaganda techniques or to ease dissemination of populist discourses? Which are the risks of digital participation? How can complement politic representation and participation through NTICs?

Open Data: Philosophy and practice of open data pursue the openness of certain data, especially from governments and public bodies, for all citizens. Finally, these vindications have get the implementation of several transparency lesser laws. Once get to convince certain Public Administrations to free some data and facilitate their access emerge questions about their scope, utility of the data or the existence of public and reserved information. Are enough these transparency laws? What utility have the opened data for a effective government control by citizens? To what extent must maintain some data confidential?Are the leaks of information classified as secret in certain cases (wikileaks, Snowden, Falcini …) are legitimate? Can help digital networks to citizenship to control their governments or only serve to surveillance?

Digital Culture and Collective Memory: Culture on the Internet, its language, its memes and its myths are embedded on politic action of the social movements. These have the ability to move network’s cultural frame, adopting their language and their values. Anonymous masks, slogans as “Error 404: Democracy not found” or documents as “Open Code Manifesto” draw the weight of the network cultures (hackers, mass culture reappropriations, freak culture… etc.) on language and symbolic frameworks for mobilization. At time, the published information by the movements on the Internet not only helps for a quickly visibility, but also for conservation and diffusion of collective memory of the social struggles. Which are cultural referents used by cyberactivism? How does the cyberculture in discourse and political practices? What are the relationship between mass culture and popular culture on the new digital environment? How does the Internet contribute to maintain collective memory of social movements? Does exist the real risk of censorship on this kind of memories by large technological companies when the commercial services are used?

Critical Analysis of the Internet: Due to mutable nature of the Internet, endless open, it is ought to elaborate critical epistemologies that overcome capitalistic view. Fabrication of new conceptual tools is essential to see power relationships that are established in this new field. As quickly the Internet turns an important aspect on daily live, new forms of control arise, the “default power” on the more popular social networks is a good example. Therefore, the needs for new tools of analysis, that might break up the limits of the old ones, turns on a very urgent goal for understand the network and to carry out deeper studies on power, and his conformation, across the Internet. Without taking Luddite English though, Is the Internet a real sphere of social emancipation? Is emancipatory use of the NTICS idealized? Does exist a middle point between the Utopian technological determinism and the new Luddism to the critic reflection?
Follow this topic on Twitter with the hashtag: #InternetCrítico
Mass Media on the Internet: The Internet is, overall, a mass media. In it emerge initiatives to create own mass medias for the social movements that interact with traditional medias. New digital medias arise (Periodismo Humano, Indymedia, Madrilonia.. etc.); discussion and scope of the alternative medias on traditional format are reinforced (Diagonal); a new space is created based on the debete of the information of blogs and conventional media (Menéame); from traditional medias on crisis arise projects in which the own journalists seek their independence using the network (La Marea). In addition to this, on-line debate breaks on through the conventional mass media agendas and, sometimes, it can counter the enormous power of big corporative medias favoring a real turn on the public opinion (13M), this fact is giving to social movements a certain independence from institutional media.

Abstracts (around 300 words) are invited on these topics. Please, address your proposals to the e mail address (comunicaciones /at/ congreso-move.net). This should contain title, author, academic affiliation and email. Papers will be accepted in either Spanish, English, Portuguese or Italian. Selected papers will be published on the Congress Book.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS OCTOBER, 5TH, 2014.

More info on http://congreso-move.net/english/call-for-papers/




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