[Commlist] CFP: Understanding the Metaverse

/This is an invitation to submit an abstract to our open panel on 
'Understanding the Metaverse: theoretical, empirical and critical 
challenges for a new(?) internet age' at the upcoming STS conference in 
Graz. Contributions by media and communication scholars are warmly 
welcome. /You can find our call below or on the conference website 
(listed as B.4) here:/
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//https://stsconf.tugraz.at/calls/sessions-in-digitalisation/ 
<https://stsconf.tugraz.at/calls/sessions-in-digitalisation/> /
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/The deadline for submitting an abstract is January 30, 2023, and the 
conference itself will take place on 8-10 May. /
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/We're hoping to have a nice critical discussion on what the Metaverse 
is or might be as well as how to research this emergent phenomenon.
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/Best,/
/Chris Hesselbein, Paolo Bory, and Stefano Canali/
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The ‘metaverse’ is currently posited as ‘the next chapter for the 
internet’ (Zuckerberg 2021), as can be witnessed from the rapid adoption 
of the term by technology consultants and industry professionals. After 
previous buzzwords (e.g., ‘cyberspace’, ‘Web 2.0’) that sought to 
capture socio-cultural imaginations and mobilize financial resources, 
the term ‘metaverse’ is now being deployed to steer the future of the 
Internet and the production of digital technologies and infrastructures 
towards the creation of an immersive world. Older multimedia platforms 
(e.g., Second Life) and current gaming platforms (e.g., Roblox) are used 
as illustrations that the metaverse is already here, while 
simultaneously statements abound that the metaverse will arrive soon or 
that it will never become a reality. What is clear, however, is that 
venture capitalists and big tech companies are committing their 
technological, economic and political power to making the metaverse a 
reality, as seen from Facebook’s recent rebranding to Meta and 
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, as well as their 
development of headsets with which ‘users’ will enter the metaverse and 
purportedly spend ever more of their professional, social, and leisure time.

Unsurprisingly, scholars have met this wave of enthusiasm, hype, and 
wild speculation with a considerable degree of wariness and scepticism. 
Techno-optimistic imaginaries of virtual worlds and their purported 
blurring of ‘offline’/‘online’ spaces and practices have, after all, 
rarely lived up to their promise of revolutionizing access to 
information, decentralizing power, ‘democratizing’ society, and freeing 
us from the limitations of embodiment and social identity.

This panel seeks to provide a starting point for scholarly approaches to 
studying, conceptualizing, and critiquing the metaverse. We encourage 
(but are not limited to) submissions that focus on the following topics:

  * What new technoscientific imaginaries, narratives, and futures are
    being envisioned as well as embedded in the metaverse? How are older
    technoscientific imaginaries and myths (e.g., cyberspace,
    cyberlibertarianism, and disembodiment) being reproduced, revised or
    subverted through media/promotional discourses as well as in
    currently emergent metaverses?
  * How are the structural, political, and material conditions of the
    metaverse informed by the convergence of digital infrastructures
    (e.g., 5G, IoT), large (platform) corporations (e.g., Meta,
    Microsoft, Epic, Intel), digital devices (e.g.,VR/AR headsets), and
    their respective uses, interests, and goals?
  * How are centralized, commercialized, platform-driven models of the
    metaverse in tension with other techno-hypes, such as
    cryptocurrencies, blockchains, Web3, NFTs, that are purportedly
    challenging old barriers to access, power, and ownership? How do
    these tensions play out on the level of technological
    standardization, interoperability, and protocols?
  * What are the various methodological opportunities, challenges, and
    constraints for conducting qualitative/quantitative research and
    studying technoscientific practices of/in the Metaverse? What new
    research methods, types of data, and research protocols will be
    necessary, and what role can the digital humanities and other fields
    such as critical data studies and cultural analytics play?
  * How do discourses of disembodiment prevalent within technology
    companies contrast with the persistence of physical embodiment? How
    might the metaverse inform new sensoria, subjectivities, and
    embodiments as well as the performance of social identities and
    interactions?


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