[ecrea] CfP Internet, Participation, and Democracy: Opportunities for the Global South

Call for Papers

Internet, Participation, and Democracy: Opportunities for the Global South

Abstracts (300 words) are due February 12th

Please direct questions and abstracts to this email:
(mexsocwarwick /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(mexsocwarwick /at/ gmail.com)>


This one-day conference will be hosted at the University of Warwick, UK,
and will take place on March 17th


   The Internet is being used as a tool to fill the gaps on previous
structures of scrutiny, surveillance, authority and governance. The role
social platforms have played in social uprisings highlights the attempts
to exploit Internet affordances in order to trigger both the disrupting
power and the potential for organization of new media and communication
technologies. During the Arab Spring, Facebook and Twitter were used to
organize horizontally structured demonstrations, while in Iceland they
served as tools of engagement for the drafting of a new constitution.
Blogs are constantly being used as precarious ways to speak where human
right issues do not allow dissidence; organization to enact legitimate
forms of protest are now seamlessly made through social media;
traditional democratic processes have adapted to new technological
channels, while new democratic efforts have also arisen empowered by
digital tools. Bothanti-systemic and systemic political agendas are
being enabled and extended by Internet technology.

   We are interested in critical readings of these events; novel
approaches into the politics of the networks; challenges and
opportunities of the Internet as a tool for democratization,
participation and collective action worldwide and particularly in the
Global South.The conference Internet, Participation and Society is an
invitation to deal with new proposals and views of this field of
inquiry. It will bring together academics and civic society innovators
to discuss and analyse the disruptive impact of the Internet and more
importantly to hint to new ways in which it can be use to increase
public scrutiny and political engagement in the developing regions.

We particularly welcome papers on:


• Social media as organization tool

• E-democracy

• Political uses of social media in the global south

• Decentralized governance

• Political engagement

• Authority challenges

• Cartographic politics

• Disruption and disobedience via new media

• Open-source government

• Hacker culture and cryptopolitics


Relevant topics for the conference include, but are not limited to:


• How are social and economic organisations renewed by communication
technologies?

• How media actors and media technologies are changing relationship
between civil society and the state?

• What is the role of the media in promoting democratic governance?

• What kind of entities emerge from the encounter between traditional
politics and e-democracy?

• How are media strengthens democratic governance in the global south?

• How digital communications are challenging traditional and hegemonic
streams of information?

• What patterns of governance are being shaped by media technologies?

• Does new media creates its own set of inequality participatory
mechanisms?

• How to deal with the former problems arose by social media and other
Internet technologies?


Keynote speakers:

Prof. Christian Fuchs // University of Westminster, UK

Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo // University College London, UK

Dr. Joss Hands // University of New Castle, UK


We look forward to welcome you in Warwick


Warwick Mexican Society



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