[Commlist] CfPs "Contentious Data: The social movement society in the age of datafication”

In these days of hardship and uncertainty, here comes a tiny distraction 
for academics.


Davide Beraldo and I (Department of Media Studies, University of 
Amsterdam) are happy to announce the call for paper for the Special 
Issue "Contentious Data: The social movement society in the age of 
datafication” we are guest-editing for the journal Social Movement Studies.


You can find the call following this link: 
https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/social-movement-studies-contentious-data/

We look forward to receiving your extended abstract by May 30th.

+++

Contentious Data:
The social movement society in the age of datafication

Datafication is changing the conditions under which contemporary social 
movements operate, opening up new terrains of contention. As a result, 
grassroots initiatives in the realm of data activism, data justice, 
algorithmic accountability and/or resistance to mass surveillance 
mushrooms in liberal and authoritarian regimes alike. These initiatives 
vary by scale, organizational forms, tactics, political visions and 
technological imaginaries. They may take data “as repertoires”, whereby 
data and data-based tactics are mobilized as constituents of innovative 
tactics, or “as stakes”, that is to say issues or objects of political 
struggle in their own right. However, they share an emphasis on the 
contentious politics of data.

While many instances of the contentious politics of data have come under 
the spotlight of specialists of digital politics and culture, social 
movement scholars are only starting to investigate the consequences of 
datafication on organized collective action. Yet datafication represents 
a paradigm change able to radically transform “social movement society”, 
urging social movements scholars to reflect on how it intersects with 
known social movement dynamics.

This Special Issue invites scholars of social movements and critical 
data studies to engage with i) case studies and ii) theoretical 
reflections illustrating the evolution of collective action vis-à-vis 
datafication. We are particularly interested in (interdisciplinary) 
theory development: fostering a dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, 
the Special Issue wants to bring the question of datafication -broadly 
defined -to bear on social movement scholarship, with the ambition of 
addressing what has been to date a “blind spot” in social movement 
literature, and cross-fertilizing disciplinary fields that have long 
remained disconnected.

Consequently, we welcome papers (max 8,000 words) engaging with the 
following:

    Unfamiliar empirical cases of: social movements’ critical 
engagement with the datafication agenda (e.g., Hong Kong activists 
dismantling lamp posts with surveillance cameras); creative 
incorporation of data-based practices and tactics in social movements’ 
repertoires (e.g., citizen-led collection of pollution data); social 
movements engaging in struggles around data issues (e.g., algorithmic 
accountability); examples of conflation between data as constituents of 
action repertoires and data as a contentious issue in its own right.

    Theoretical perspectives on, for instance, data activism, data 
justice, artificial intelligence, the relation between protest and 
social structures in the age of datafication, etc. as they intersect 
social movements and collective action processes, concepts, and research 
questions.

    Theoretical contributions on, e.g., the relation between data and 
the means-ends continuum in social movements, oriented to theory 
development in the field of social movement studies.

Submission Instructions

Interested authors should submit an abstract to Bukola Faturoti 
((b.faturoti /at/ herts.ac.uk)), no later than 30th May 2020. The Guest Editor 
is also available for discussion via email. Authors will be notified of 
the acceptance of their abstract no later than 15th June 2020.

The submissions deadline is 1st November 2020. All submissions will be 
subject to double-blind peer-review. Articles of up to 10,000 words 
(inclusive of footnotes) will be considered.

Deadline for final submission of papers is 3rd January 2021.


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