[Commlist] Call for abstracts: Mobile technologies and public space in the wake of COVID-19 in China

You are warmly invited to submit a paper for Mobile Studies Congress 
2020 Conference to be held in Nottingham University Ningbo China on 
November 13-15, 2020 (the conference will be held in a blended format).

The outbreak of COVID-19 has changed our living and working. In all 
these changes, mobile technologies have been playing an increasingly 
important role. Mobile technologies have become more popular and 
powerful than any other media, bringing opportunities and challenges and 
to our society. As the first of its kind in the world, Mobile Studies 
Congress (MSC) aims to provide researchers and practitioners of mobile 
media and communication with a venue to exchange their observations, 
insights, findings and predictions.

The general theme of the inaugural congress is "Go Mobile, Stay 
Healthy". To examine the impact of the pandemic on mobile media and 
communication and the role of mobile in the fight against the pandemic, 
we invite you to contribute to the theme of mobile technologies and 
public space.
As COVID-19 continues to infect the world, digital technologies have 
been adopted largely in the combat against the virus and protect human 
beings. In China, the government relies on health code, a mobile app 
developed by two private companies Alibaba and Tencent for identifying 
the individual who has been infected with or exposed to COVID-19. The 
health code that gathers people's data, such as traveling, has been an 
essential measure for people’s freedom of movement in public space in 
China. In the session of mobile technologies and public space, we try to 
bring a critical engagement with the biopolitical stakes of technologies 
for combatting the pandemic. We try to make sense of how the techniques 
of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019) and algorithmic 
governmentality suffice the public interests in the wake of the COVID-19 
pandemic.

By bringing academic experts and practitioners together, we hope to 
bring public awareness on the ownership of the data of health code and 
call for a change of its design to facilitate a networked public sphere 
to avoid a digital leviathan.
Please find  the conference website here: 
https://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/humanities-and-social-sciences/international-communications/mobile-studies-congress-2020.aspx
 We invite presentations that expand our theoretical and empirical 
understanding of mobile technologies and public space.

Abstracts of contributions to the conference are expected by October 22, 
2020.

Please send your paper title and abstract (200-300 words) to Dr. Lei Hao 
( (lei.hao /at/ nottingham.edu.cn) )



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