[ecrea] CfP Shaping Social Media Discourse: The Roles of People, Institutions, Algorithms, and Other Network Agents

CALL FOR PAPERS
Networks in the Global World (NetGloW’18)

July 4-6, 2018 | St. Petersburg, Russia
Deadline: January 15, 2018 (abstracts up to 300 words at 
http://ngw.spbu.ru/submission)

Please consider submitting your work to our session “Shaping Social 
Media Discourse: The Roles of People, Institutions, Algorithms, and 
Other Network Agents” at the conference “Networks in the Global World” 
taking place at Saint Petersburg State University (Russia), July 4-6, 2018.

In the rising climate of post-truth and polarization of public 
discourses, there is, arguably, more and more attempts to curate 
information flows and create calculated publics (Bruns&Burgess 2011) 
instead of spontaneously emerging ad hoc issue publics (Habermas 2006; 
Bruns 2011) in online communication. On the other hand, the number of 
network agents (Latour 2005) both grows in number and diversifies by 
type, and today not only ‘ordinary users’ and institutional accounts 
play new roles in network constitution. There are also the so-called 
algorithmic gatekeepers (Napoli 2015) – the SNS platforms, search 
engines, news aggregators, automated news production machines etc. – who 
reshape the communication flows and provide new rules of the 
communication game. Altogether, this may result into networked 
gatekeeping (Meraz&Papacharizzi 2013) where new patterns of dominance 
and oppression of may arise within curated and one-sided discourses; or, 
otherwise, new patterns of empowerment via discursive citizenship may 
emerge across countries.
This session focuses on the role of organized grassroots actors, 
institutional accounts, platform algorithms, and inherent discussion 
structures in the formation of today’s discourses in social media. What 
are the relations between structural position and discursive strategies 
of the discussion participants? Do efforts to shape the discourse really 
work? What roles media and institutions play in the formation of 
structure and substance of social discussions? How do algorithmic ‘rules 
of the game’ impact our network neighbors? Does social representation, 
or activity, or connectivity, or status (as measured by network 
structure parameters) matter for the discourse emerging in social media, 
and how exactly? Are left/right and other political divisions 
network-dependent? These and similar questions need to be addressed, and 
we welcome papers dealing with them, especially in comparative perspective.

For details, please, contact the session chair Svetlana S. Bodrunova at 
(s.bodrunova /at/ spbu.ru)

Looking forward to your paper proposals!

****
CONFERENCE INFORMATION

Website: http://ngw.spbu.ru/

Standard Fee: 50 EUR
MA and PhD Students Fee: 20 EUR
Workshop Fee: Participation in a workshop does not involve an additional 
fee.

The conference will feature a selection of workshops and round tables.
The number of presentations per person is not limited. Abstracts for 
each presentation are to be submitted separately, by filling in the 
submission form.

Funding:
The NetGloW organizers will cover accommodation of MA and PhD students 
who submitted the best abstracts.

Visa Support:
Registered authors coming from abroad will receive official Visa 
invitations and get other support in obtaining the Russian Visa from the 
NetGloW organizers.

The following keynote and invited speakers confirmed their presence at 
the conference:

Tom Snijders, University of Groningen
Peter Bearman, Columbia University
John Levi-Martin, University of Chicago
Sophie Mützel, University of Lucerne
Nina Kolleck, Free University of Berlin
Christof Parnreiter, University of Hamburg
Johan Koskinen, University of Manchester
IIna Hellsten, University of Amsterdam
Camille Roth, Sciences Po, Paris
Peng Wang, Swinburne University of Technology


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