[ecrea] Call for Papers, Internet Policy Review: "Doing Internet Governance"

  Special issue on 'Doing internet governance: practices, controversies,
  infrastructures, and institutions'

*Call for papers of the /Internet Policy Review/*


    TOPIC & RELEVANCE

Internet governance is gaining attention in the post-Snowden era, which
increased distrust of formal government institutions and their
‘dangerous liaisons’ with the private sector. User-driven,
technology-embedded, decentralised approaches keep on seeing the light:
in contracts, currency, privacy protection, just to name a few. Politics
and traditional purveyors of authority negotiate ways of readjusting to
the changing environment. Thus, investigating the “ordering”
(Flyverbom, 2011) and governing processes as they relate to the network
of networks is both timely and important.

Traditionally, when talking about Internet Governance researchers and
practitioners refer to the new organisations and institutions that have
been explicitly established to regulate, discuss, and negotiate issues
of internet governance (e.g. ICANN, WSIS, IGF). Recently, authors have
criticised this institutional focus, arguing the need for a more
comprehensive conceptualisation of internet governance (DeNardis, 2012;
Eeten/Mueller, 2013; Musiani, 2014; Hofmann et al., 2014). Among these
recent developments, a small set of publications has drawn on
perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to rethink and
substantiate questions of ordering and governing the net. These
contributions highlight the day-to-day, mundane practices that
constitute internet governance, take into account the
plurality and ‘‘networkedness’’ of devices and arrangements
involved, and investigate the invisibility, pervasiveness, and apparent
agency of the digital infrastructure itself (Musiani, 2014). Internet
governance, in this view, is not only negotiated in dedicated
institutions; the doing of internet governance more broadly consists in
practices and controversies of the design, regulation, and use of
material infrastructures. In this way, STS-informed perspectives are
increasingly instrumental for challenging and expanding our
understanding and for informing our examination of ordering and
governing processes in the digital realm.


    SCOPE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

This special issue seeks to nurture this nascent interest by pioneering
a conversation on the governance of digitally networked environments
from an STS-informed perspective and, more broadly, from perspectives
that highlight the role of design, infrastructures, and informal
communities of practice in governance.

First, this issue will touch upon how the norms shaping the provision,
design and usage of the internet are negotiated, de- and re-stabilised,
and subject to controversies. Second, it will open up new, STS-informed
perspectives on digital uses and practices, delving into the variety of
ways in which they may be an integral part of today’s internet
governance -- not only because such practices reflect belonging and
commitment to a community, but because they allow issues of sovereignty,
autonomy and liberty to come into play. Finally, expanding the notion of
governance in internet governance through the conceptual tool-set of STS
may open this field to meaningful contributions from scholars studying
constitutional aspects of technology design and use, which are typically
excluded from traditional internet governance literature.


    FOCUS OF THE PAPERS

We invite papers that share a strong conceptual interest in
understanding processes of ordering and governing the internet as a core
infrastructure of our daily lives. More focused paper topics may
include, but in no way are limited to, the following:

  *

    *Internet governance theory*: how can STS inform theoretical
    perspectives on internet governance?

  *

    *Controversies*: how do socio-technical internet-related
    controversies reveal tensions and critical junctures of internet
    politics?

  *

    *Privatisation*: what are the practices of internet governance
    privatisation? What does it mean for the internet as a
    socio-technical phenomenon?

  *

    *Unintended consequences*: what are the examples of unintended
    consequences of technology regulation and design that affect the
    openness, security, and stability of the internet?

  *

    *Re-intermediation and delegation*: what are the forms of
    re-intermediation of the “decentralised” system that is the
    internet? How can we study them?

  *

    *Participatory governance*: how can STS help unpack the
    practices of “multistakeholderism” and their potential effects
    (or lack thereof)?

  *

    *Infrastructures and architectures as governance arrangements*: how
    can STS-informed approaches help us unveil the power and control
    structures embedded in internet architecture?

Submissions must be in clearly-written English. The /Internet Policy
Review/ is an open access, short-form journal. Full papers are requested
to be around 30,000 characters (5,000 words) in length, to encourage
concise and parsimonious discussion of core issues.


    SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS

  * Dmitry Epstein, Department of Communication, University of Illinois
    at Chicago ((dmitry /at/ uic.edu) <mailto:(dmitry /at/ uic.edu)>)
  * Christian Katzenbach, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet
    and Society ((katzenbach /at/ hiig.de) <mailto:(katzenbach /at/ hiig.de)>)
  * Francesca Musiani, Institute for Communication Sciences,
    CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne/UPMC; /Internet Policy Review/ academic editor
    ((francesca.musiani /at/ cnrs.fr) <mailto:(francesca.musiani /at/ cnrs.fr)>)


    IMPORTANT DATES

*12 November 2015:* Release of the Call for papers

*25 January 2016*: Deadline for expression of interest and abstract
submissions (500 word abstracts) via the form on the IPR website.

*15 February*: Feedback / Invitation to submit full text submissions

*25 April*: Full text submissions deadline. All details on text
submissions can be found under: http://policyreview.info/authors

*13 June*: Comprehensive peer review and feedback

*11 July*: Re-submission deadline

*5 September*: Publication of the special issue



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