[ecrea] Call for papers: The Data Turn & Ethics - A Special Issue of the Russian Journal of Communication

Call for papers:

*The Data Turn & Ethics*

*/A Special Issue of the Russian Journal of Communication (Taylor & 
Francis)/*

*/Edited by Marina Shilina (Plekhanov Russian University of Economics), 
Robert Couch (Earlham College), and Andrea Catellani (Université 
catholique de Louvain)/*

Big data, like Russia, marks a new generator in the promises and perils 
of the digital – and social – revolution. Hidden algorithms, invisible 
software, and a trivially large scaling of real-time data processes are 
increasingly shaping our individual, interpersonal, organizational and 
international communication. Addressing the question – to be or not be, 
sentient data hubs and sentient human beings, we see ethics as point of 
bifurcation in this brave new world of machine-to-machine communication.

Smart data transforms our thinking and acting: decision-making processes 
follow in part computational quantity, quality, speed, and efficiency. 
Might data seed new solutions to massive information coordination and 
other stubborn problems of socialism? And capitalism? Who would be the 
next Rembrandt or Pushkin in art driven by data and data driven poetry?

Open data dystopia in governance, presumably, doesn’t mean open 
governance, and the bigger the data, the bigger risks as well. The same 
services that may profit organizations may also disrupt delicate social, 
cultural, political, economic ecosystems. Concerns about fake news and 
fake identities abound. Bots can be used to manipulate perceptions and 
numbers on social networks. Astroturfing campaigns can create alternate 
realities serving the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

Russia finds itself at the forefront of these global technological 
disruptions in a number of ways: in its historic alternative to the West 
responses to how information should be used to organize society, in its 
both providing and requiring traditional strengths in cybersecurity, 
computer programming, and strategic information services, and in its 
timeless capacity to be mind-boggling big, small, and normal, often all 
at the same time.

In light of these and other developments, the Russian Journal of 
Communication hereby issues a call for papers that intersect 
interdisciplinary approaches to big and open data, ethics and the 
Russian case.

/Abstracts for papers should be submitted by March 31, 2017; based on 
these abstracts, editors will contact prospective authors by April 10 to 
invite selected authors to prepare full papers for publication. 
Published paper length may be range between 2000 and 8000 words, 
including endnotes, although book reviews may be shorter. Final papers 
will be due on June 1, 2017. Please send inquiries and submissions to 
//(bigdatarjc /at/ gmail.com)/ <mailto:(bigdatarjc /at/ gmail.com)>/./

A by-no-means exclusive list of sample topics—ranging broadly across 
data ethics, governance, globalizations, transparency, privacy, and 
technology—follows:

1. Ethical standards governing data access, use, and distribution

2. Data potential and problems for communication issues at the heart of 
capitalism, socialism, and democracy

3. Comparative analysis of culturally-, historically-, 
politically-informed sources of and attitudes about sociotechnical change

4. Professional and organizational standards in different fields and 
safeguards governing data use

5. Potentials and problems following from informal trust networks and 
data practices

6. Algorithmic accountability, machinic (a)morality, and the humane use 
of data

7. Technological, social, and legal defenses against ethical data abuses

8. Data automation and surveillance, their consequences, and critics

9. The data mediated relationship between a consumer public and 
participatory governance, social mobilization, and activist organizations

10. Criticism of current, future, or historical data governance 
theories, models, and practices

11. Data transparency, privacy, ethics across business, professional 
communication, media, art, interpersonal, and international scales

12. Technological innovations and social impacts

13. Challenges presented by the industrial revolutions up to 4.0

14. Organizational and economic, social and cultural data driven changes

15. Critical intellectual, activist, government, managerial, 
professional, and other responses to these changes

16. The impact of these changes on class, ethnic, gender, and other 
questions of identity politics and power

And no doubt many others…


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