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

Fri Mar 17 10:19:58 GMT 2017





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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