[ecrea] Call for Paper: Social Networking in Cyber Spaces:European Muslim's Participation in (New) Media

The Gülen Chair for Intercultural Studies (Social and Cultural 
Anthropology KU Leuven), is organizing a two day international workshop. 
The details and guidlines for abstract submission is stated below. For 
more details and updates please visit our 
website,http://www.gulenchair.com/articles/call-for-paper-social-networking-in-cyber-spaces-european-muslims-participation-in-new-media. 
Please feel free to forward this e-mail to your networks.

Best.
Merve Kayikci
Ph.D Candidate in Anthropology
Interculturalism, Migration and Minority Research Center
KU Leuven, Belgium

                            Call for Paper: Social Networking in Cyber 
Spaces:                                 European Muslim's Participation 
in (New) Media
                                                28-29 May 2015

Gülen Chair for Intercultural Studies

KU Leuven University, Belgium
Keynote Speakers:

Vít Šisler - Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts at Charles 
University in Prague, Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of 
Religion, Media and Digital Culture, Managing Editor of CyberOrient, a 
peer reviewed journal of the virtual Middle East.

Heidi Campbell - Associate Professor at the Department of Communication  
and an Affiliate Faculty in the Religious Studies Interdisciplinary 
Program at Texas A&M University. She studies religion and new media and 
the influence of digital and mobile technologies on religious 
communities.[5] Her work has covered a range of topics from the rise of 
religious community online, religious blogging and religious mobile 
culture within Christianity, Judaism and Islam, to exploring technology 
practice and fandom as implicit religion and religious framings within 
in digital games.

Key words: Social Networks and Media, Social Movements, Networking, 
European Muslims, Transnationalism, Cyber Communities, iMuslims

The increasing growth of the Internet is reshaping Islamic communities 
worldwide. Non-conventional media and social networks such as Facebook 
and Twitter are becoming more popular among the Muslim youth as among 
all parts of the society. The new channels of information and news 
attract new Muslim publics in Europe. The profile of the people using 
these networks range from college students to Islamic intellectual 
authorities. Such an easy and speedy way of connecting to millions of 
people across the globe also attracts the attention of social movements, 
which utilize these networks to spread their message to a wider public. 
Many Muslim networks and social movements, political leaders, Islamic 
institutions and authorities use these new media spaces to address wider 
Muslim and also non-Muslim communities, it is not uncommon that they 
also address and reach certain so-called radical groups.

Much attention also has been given to the use of social media 
technologies and their ability to spark massive social change. Some 
commentators have remarked that these connection technologies, ranging 
from smartphones to Facebook, can cause revolutionary digital 
disruptions, while others have even gone so far as to suggest that 
social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter may have incited the 
Arab Spring. During the Arab Spring or Revolutions, the role of social 
media as an important and effective tool that had a political force to 
mobilize people, has been commonly acknowledged. Zeynep Tüfekçi of the 
University of North Carolina quotes that, "Social media in general, and 
Facebook in particular, provided new sources of information the regime 
could not easily control and were crucial in shaping how citizens made 
individual decisions about participating in protests, the logistics of 
protest, and the likelihood of success." However, many scholars argue 
today that the reason of the revolutions were not social media, they 
also commonly agree that information dispersion, whether by text or 
image, was pre-dominantly managed through social media. Hence similar 
arguments were made in part of the Gezi Protests that took place in 
Turkey, in the late spring of 2013, where the protesters declared 
themselves journalists as they spread images and information through 
social media; such information they claim was censored by the mainstream 
media.

While many researches have focused primarily on the Internet that has 
played a role in Muslim radicalization, there is less emphasis on the 
Internet that is also being utilized to encourage Muslims to advocate 
for gender equality, citizenship and human rights within an Islamic 
framework, more generally. The social, political and cultural 
participation of Muslims via Internet open new discussions topics and 
research areas on Muslims living in Europe. Discussions groups, Facebook 
communities and all other cyber activism are interlinked with the 
debates on public sphere and citizenship. The never ending space of 
cyber activism transform the old debates on Islamic knowledge, 
authority, citizenship, Muslim communities and networks. The way that 
this transformation comes out is that young Muslims who are familiar 
with online platforms, use these spaces to enter debates and get a be-it 
informal space to present and represent their identities, ideologies, 
aspirations and even solutions. These platforms can offer the periphery 
voices to raise their experiences with stereotypes and marginalization. 
According to some scholars, bloggers and internet forums challenge the 
traditional media landscape by contributing to public constructions of 
Islam. The cyber space not only offers internet-natives platforms to 
argue about social problems but it also allows them to ask questions and 
find immediate and updated answers to problems concerning their own 
religious obligations and ethical concerns. Social media provides 
information accessible to Muslims all over the world, who can connect. 
It also provides them spaces to argue about belonging to a minority 
religion of a country they are a citizen of, and how to balance their 
cultural-religious sensibilities with their citizenship duties.

During this workshop we want to address the politics of identity 
construction and representations of Muslims in Europe through having a 
look at the updated mediascape based on but not limited by following 
headlines:

1.    Muslim networks and movements in Western Europe : Formation of 
transnational communities

There are current debates about the links Muslims in Europe have with 
Muslims around the globe, and whether these links create a separate 
global Muslim identity in contrast to an integrated European identity. 
There is also the debate as to whether such links create a passage to 
radicalism. This section focuses on how Muslims in Europe “link” with 
other Muslims and Muslim groups across the globe. It looks into how 
Muslim networks across the globe influence Muslims in the West in terms 
of integration, social-political participation, education, etc. It also 
looks into how these groups influence each other, and how they reflect 
on issues concerning Muslim in Europe and across the globe.

On a second level it ask the following questions; how do communication 
technologies create a new transnational Muslim community? How are 
transnational Muslim communities regardless of ethnic differences 
created through the use of mass media and social media? How is Islamic 
discourse spread through mass media, how is an Islamic thought developed 
and dispersed through social (mass) media? How do virtual communities 
bring about social change? What are the dynamics between Muslim 
intellectuals, mass media, and knowledge dispersion? What are the 
relationships between diaspora’s and online networking?

   2. Social networking and Muslims in the West

This section focuses on how Muslims connect online to learn more about 
their religion, for online dating/marriage, to share experiences of 
stereotyping/victimization/racism/islamophobia, to present/represent 
their ideology. It also looks into how through social media, Muslims 
create a space of debate, construct and share 
aspirations-imaginaries-products. How is consumerism among Muslims 
affected by shared images on these networks? How does the common sharing 
of certain video’s and texts, create a global common culture among 
Muslim youth?

   3. (Social) Media and Participation: Muslims in Europe

This section focuses on how social media and the press influences 
political tendencies of Muslims in Europe. How do Muslims construct a 
sense of belonging and political responsibility in Western Europe, and 
does social media and the press have an effect on these phenomena? How 
does media create a common sense of awareness and how does this 
awareness in the global and local scene have an impact on their social 
participation? How do Muslim charity organizations function within the 
sphere of media and social media?

Tuition Fees

Presenters and participants are expected to pay the costs of their 
travel and accommodation. The organizers have a reduced prize from hotel 
‘La Royale’ in Leuven.

The tuition fees to attend the workshop will be arranged as follows:

Speakers and delegates: 50€

The registration fee includes a conference dinner and refreshments.

Outcome

A proceedings book of the workshop with ISBN code will be printed and 
distributed in advance of the workshop itself.

Within six months à maximum 1 year of the event, an edited book will be 
produced and published by the GCIS with Leuven University Press, 
comprising some or all of the papers presented at the Workshop, at the 
condition that they pass a peer review organized by the publisher. The 
papers will be arranged and introduced, and to the extent appropriate, 
edited, by scholar(s) to be appointed by the Editorial Board.

Copyright of the papers accepted to the Workshop will be vested in the GCIS.

Selection Criteria

The workshop will accept up to 20 participants, each of whom must meet 
the following requirements:

- have a professional and/or research background in related topics of 
the workshop;

- be able to attend the entire programme.

Since the Workshop expects to address a broad range of topics while the 
number of participants has to be limited, writers submitting abstracts 
are requested to bear in mind the need to ensure that their language is 
technical only where it is absolutely necessary and the language should 
be intelligible to non-specialists and specialists in disciplines other 
than their own; and present clear, coherent arguments in a rational way 
and in accordance with the usual standards and format for publishable work.

Timetable

   1. Abstracts (300–500 words maximum) and CVs (maximum 1 page) to be 
received by 10th January 2015.
   2. Abstracts to be short-listed by the Editorial Board and papers 
invited by 20th January 2015.
   3. Papers (3,000 words minimum – 5,500 words maximum, excluding 
bibliography) to be received by 10th March 2015.
   4. Papers reviewed by the Editorial Board and classed as: Accepted – 
No Recommendations; Accepted – See Recommendations; Conditional 
Acceptance – See Recommendations; Not Accepted, by 20th March 2015.
   5. Final papers to be received by 15th April 2015.

Workshop Editorial Board

Leen D’Haenens, KU Leuven

Johan Leman, KU Leuven

Merve Reyhan Kayikci, KU Leuven

Saliha Özdemir, KU Leuven

Workshop Co-ordinator

Merve Reyhan Kayikci, KU Leuven

Saliha Özdemir, KU Leuven

Mieke Groeninck, KU Leuven

Venue

KU Leuven University

The international workshop is organized by KU Leuven Gülen Chair for 
Intercultural Studies. It will be entirely conducted in English and will 
be hosted by KU Leuven Gülen Chair in Leuven.

Papers and abstract should be sent to Merve Reyhan Kayikci:

(mervereyhan.kayikci /at/ soc.kuleuven.be)

For more information plz contact:

Merve Reyhan Kayikci

KU Leuven Gülen Chair for Intercultural Studies

Parkstraat 45 - box 3615

3000 Leuven

---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chaussée de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------