[Commlist] CFP ICA-Preconference: Comparative Privacy and the Literacies of a Networked Age: A Critical Approach

Lemi Baruh is writing this e-mail to provide an update on a previous 
ICA-Preconference CFP - Comparative Privacy and the Literacies of a 
Networked Age: A Critical Approach:
1) Given the uncertainties regarding the pandemic, our updated CFP 
reflects the potential availability of remote participation.
2) Additionally, we are happy to announce that the pre-conference 
participants will be invited to revise their manuscripts to be submitted 
to a special issue to be published in the open-access journal Social 
Media & Society [APC's will be waived for the special issue]. 3) A 
limited number of hardship waivers will be available for participants 
from developing/transitional countries, students, and early career scholars.
In light of these updates, we are extending the deadline for submission 
to the pre-conference to February 28, 2022, 23:59 GMT.

Submission link: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=cprn2022ica#

The updated CFP is below:

https://comparativeprivacy.org/2022-ica-preconference/

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Comparative Privacy and the Literacies of a Networked Age: A Critical 
Approach

Jointly organized by CPRN (Comparative Privacy Research Network, 
https://comparativeprivacy.org/) in collaboration with CEJEM (Research 
Network on Youth and Media) and hosted by the Center for Research on 
Economies, Societies, Arts and Techniques (CRESAT) with support from the 
Grand Est Region and the Greater Mulhouse Metropolitan Area
Endorsed by the following ICA divisions:  Communication & Technology 
Division, Communication Law & Policy Division, Children Adolescents and 
Media Division and by the French Society of Information and 
Communication Sciences (SFSIC)

NEW Deadline for Extended Abstracts: February 28, 2022, 23:59 GMT

OFF-SITE - | Université de Haute-Alsace, UHA’s Campus Fonderie - FSESJ 
(Faculté des Sciences Economiques Sociales et Juridiques), 16, rue de la 
Fonderie in Mulhouse

N.B. HYBRID FORMAT : A few selected presentations could be accommodated 
remotely, please contact the organizers with your submission number if 
this is your intention.

Registration Fee : 35 USD (via ICA)

Hardship Waivers : For participants from developing/transitional 
countries and students/early career scholars who have been accepted to 
present, a limited number of hardship waiver is available, upon 
application. They will be exempt from the registration fee and/or will 
be offered a round-trip train ticket from Paris to Mulhouse.

Conference date : May 25 - 9:30 - 17:00 - 2022
(Get-together May 24 20h)

Participants are invited to submit their revised work to a special issue 
in the open access journal Social Media + Society, following the 
pre-conference and on the topic of comparative privacy research (APCs 
will be waived for articles in this special issue). While presenting at 
the pre-conference does not guarantee acceptance of a paper in the 
special issue and non-participation in the pre-conference does not 
preclude submitting to the special issue, the pre-conference will serve 
as a good opportunity for prospective special issue authors to receive 
developmental feedback from the special issue editors.
Keywords: privacy, privacy literacy, digital literacy, cross-cultural 
studies, comparative studies, media education

Digital mediation of everyday life  (Couldry and Hepp, 2017) grows ever 
more pervasive. Many everyday actions, from shopping to chatting to 
entertainment or even political engagement, take place via increasingly 
ubiquitous digital technology, hinging on storing and calculating the 
traces of these actions. The capture of personal information and the 
datafication (Meijas and Couldry, 2019) of social behaviors are 
increasingly used for micro-targeting, predictive analytics, and 
generalized surveillance (Zuboff, 2019). In light of these developments, 
privacy has become an important object of study in various academic 
disciplines, including communication studies.
Whether conceptualizations view privacy as an end in itself or as a 
means to other ends such as autonomy and personal development (Rössler, 
2005), they tend to focus on the protection of the intrinsic personality 
of an individual against potential intrusions. Such intrusions can come 
from fellow peers, but also from institutions, especially those with 
mediatizing power (e.g., the press, social media platforms) and, of 
course, the state. Privacy in digital environments is inherently 
collective and dependent on the behaviors of others and institutional 
practices (Marwick and boyd, 2014) and based on the continuous 
negotiation of norms and rules for information disclosure and exchange 
(Petronio, 2002; Rey, 2012). Agency of the individual is limited by the 
vastness, interconnectedness, and opaqueness of data flows, and their 
subsequent capture and analysis (Baruh and Popescu, 2017).

In academic research, multiple literacies linked to digital media use 
coexist, like media literacy, social media literacy (Livingstone, 2014), 
algorithmic literacy (Dogruel et al., 2021), and data literacy 
(Pangrazio and Selwyn, 2018). Numerous studies on privacy have 
specifically focused on privacy literacy as a crucial factor that can 
help individuals to protect their privacy (e.g., Masur, 2020; Park, 
2014; Trepte et al., 2015). Privacy literacy is here often 
conceptualized as an extension of media literacy, a concept with a rich 
history (Corroy, 2016; Bosler et al., 2021). Educators and scholars have 
focused on digital and media literacy as a tool to reduce disparities 
(Bosler, 2018), promote safer mediated interactions, and engage 
citizenry—especially as societies have increasingly moved online. 
Privacy literacy, as a dimension of the larger umbrella of digital and 
media literacies, has become a key component to autonomy and democracy 
in the information society and increasingly emerges as an important 
avenue of privacy research (Masur, 2020).
Conceptualizations of privacy literacy continue to be 
contested⁠—especially when viewed from a global, comparative 
perspective. Conceptions of privacy, and by extension privacy literacy, 
hold deep cultural underpinnings (Wilhelm, 2021); yet, the 
multidimensionality and contextuality of privacy are still often 
underexplored in research that focuses on how privacy is valued, 
measured, and enacted. Some argue that privacy in itself is only an 
indicator for other endangered values and norms, and is simply 
representative of tactics to avoid them (van der Sloot, 2016). A 
comparative approach opens up new perspectives, beyond the Western 
history and understandings of privacy.
Despite its importance, comparative privacy literacy research is 
particularly challenging due to conceptual plurality and socio-technical 
developments. We ask to engage with this challenge. We seek to examine 
privacy literacy with a cross-cultural lens in order to illuminate 
potential blindspots regarding its conceptualization and 
operationalization, and to help guide research that will inform 
policymaking and empowerment efforts aimed at preserving autonomy and 
democracy in the digital age, including media education. Recent 
discussions around voluntary disconnection (Schwarzenegger & Lohmaier, 
2021; Kaun, 2021; Lomborg & Ytre-Arne, 2021; Markham, 2021) and digital 
sobriety (Flipo, 2020) highlight the need to reframe the public privacy 
debate beyond best practice of device and platform manipulation. They 
call for drawing in the bigger picture and collective destinies linked 
to privacy conceptions, to better understand the link between individual 
politics and public policies. A comparative angle can help further 
understand local contexts and positions towards these issues to avoid 
both ethno- and technocentrism.
Program: Drawing on previous and ongoing conversations and 
collaborations, this pre-conference aims to attend to privacy literacy’s 
critical comparative nature by bringing together scholars that examine 
the cultural, political, and otherwise contextualized aspects of privacy 
literacy. The ultimate goal is to enhance conversation in communication 
studies about the ways in which systematic comparative cross-cultural 
analyses of privacy literacy may be conceptualized, theorized, and 
operationalized in novel ways. This preconference will be organized in 
two parts: First, keynotes will provide inputs on the central issues and 
concepts involved such as privacy, comparative research, and media 
literacy. Secondly, interactive sessions will focus on three main 
aspects of comparative privacy literacy research, namely: 
conceptualization, operationalization, and collaboration. These sessions 
will bring together competitively selected presentations followed by a 
discussion on the challenges of conceptualizing and operationalizing 
critical privacy literacy from a cross-cultural perspective. The 
presentation sessions will be followed by group activities where 
participants will discuss solutions to particular challenges. This final 
session will take the form of a guided discussion in the larger group 
that will build on the diversity of the group in order to consider new, 
future-oriented research questions and forge future collaborations.

Submission: This pre-conference invites unpublished, innovative papers 
focusing on, but not limited to:
-	research on media/digital literacy and mediated communication, where 
knowledge or skills regarding privacy plays a role;
-	empirical studies focusing on privacy literacy in a comparative fashion;
-	current and new topics for literacies, including the digital ecology, 
sobriety, algorithmic and privacy literacies, as well as persistent 
areas of inequalities ;
-	challenges and opportunities represented by comparative approaches to 
studying privacy from a literacy perspective;
-	qualitative and/or quantitative methodological approaches to studying 
privacy and relevant literacies comparatively;
-	challenges and opportunities represented by comparative approaches to 
studying privacy and related literacies;
-	discussions of pertinent dimensions of comparative privacy research;
-	explorations of potential antecedents, mediators, and outcomes of 
privacy-related perceptions, decision-making, and behavior;
-	conceptualizations and interpretations of privacy and privacy outcomes 
in non-WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) contexts.

Both early career and senior scholars are welcome.


Organizers:
Local team members France, Mulhouse, CRESAT, Université de 
Haute-Alsace ●	Sabine Bosler is an assistant professor in information 
and communication sciences at UHA (CRESAT) and has written her PhD 
thesis on comparative digital culture and media education in a 
french-german context and is currently contributing on developing 
comparative approaches in communication science.
●	Carsten Wilhelm is associate professor in information and 
communication sciences at UHA (CRESAT) and researches the use of digital 
media and digital culture comparatively in various projects.  Co-founder 
of the CPRN Comparative Privacy Research Network with Kelly Quinn and 
Dmitry Epstein, he is currently co-coordinator of the French GENIC 
research group on ethics in Digital Research, and member of the AoIR 
ethics working group.

●	International team members
●	Dmitry Epstein is a researcher of internet governance and policy at 
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. For the past two years, he has 
been working on questions of digital privacy, focusing on comparative 
research across cultural and political boundaries.
●	Philipp K. Masur is an Assistant Professor in the Department of 
Communication Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. 
His research focuses on privacy and self-disclosure, persuasion and 
social influence on social media, media literacy, and communication and 
well-being.
●	Kelly Quinn is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of 
Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, has an 
interdisciplinary research focus on new media and how it intersects with 
such diverse areas as the life course, privacy, social capital, and 
friendship. Her recent studies have centered on the processes by which 
individuals conceptualize and navigate their privacy online.
●	Lemi Baruh is an Associate Professor at the Department of Media and 
Visual Arts, Koc University (Turkey). Lemi does research in 
Communication and Media, focusing on surveillance and social psychology 
of privacy and disclosure.
●	Christoph Lutz is an Associate Professor at the Department of 
Communication and Culture and at the Nordic Centre for Internet and 
Society, BI Norwegian Business School (Oslo). His research interests lie 
in the area of digital technologies and include social media, online 
participation, privacy and digital inequalities. In addition, Christoph 
is interested in digital labor, the sharing economy and social robots.


Keynote speakers will be announced on our website : 
https://comparativeprivacy.org/

SUBMISSION AND SELECTION PROCESS

Authors should submit an extended abstract of 800 words (not including 
references, figures, and tables) to:
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=cprn2022ica#

By January 31 February 28, 2022.

The extended abstracts should include the main idea/argument, research 
questions, a short literature review and/or theoretical perspectives, 
information on methodology and empirical findings (if applicable). We 
welcome different approaches, including discussions of literature, 
concepts and theories, historical perspectives, and empirical analyses.

All submitted abstracts must include name, affiliation and contact 
details. Decisions on acceptance of the extended abstracts will be made 
by February 28 March 15, 2022.

Authors of accepted abstracts are expected to attend the preconference 
and present in person.

Date of the preconference: Wednesday, May 25th 2022 9:30am to 5:00pm

The conference will be held in a hybrid format to accommodate travel 
restrictions should they apply.

Location/Venue: Mulhouse, France (2h30 from Paris by high-speed train)
(all registered participants will be provided with guidelines for travel 
to Mulhouse from Paris)

Registration Fee
35 USD / for registered participants, speakers and attendees.
Fee includes: participation in the conference, lunch and coffee.
The preconference is open to both ICA and non-ICA members. Attendees 
will need to create a profile to register.

Sponsorship / Division/Interest Group Affiliation
This preconference has received endorsements from the ICA Communication 
and Technology, Communication Law and Policy and Children Adolescence 
and the Media divisions, as well as the French Society of Information 
and Communication Sciences (SFSIC).

Publication
Participants are invited to submit their revised work to a an upcoming 
call for papers for a special issue in for the open access journal 
Social Media + Society, following the pre-conference and on the topic of 
comparative privacy research (APCs will be waived for articles in this 
special issue). While presenting at the pre-conference does not 
guarantee acceptance of a paper in the special issue and 
non-participation in the pre-conference does not preclude submitting to 
the special issue, the pre-conference will serve as a good opportunity 
for prospective special issue authors to receive developmental feedback 
from the special issue editors.
References cited :

Baruh, L., & Popescu, M. (2017). Big data analytics and the limits of 
privacy self-management. New Media & Society, 19(4), 579–596.
Bosler, S. (2018). L’éducation aux médias en Allemagne: Quelles 
singularités ? [Media education in Germany : which singularities ?]. 
Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, 
14, Article 14. https://doi.org/10.4000/rfsic.4129
Bosler, S., Féroc Dumez, I., Labelle, S., Loicq, M., & Seurrat, A. 
(2021). Questionner les politiques publiques en éducation aux médias et 
à l’information [Questioning public policies in media and information 
literacy]. Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la 
communication, 22 (Special issue). https://doi.org/10.4000/rfsic.10939
Corroy, L. (2016). Education et Médias. ISTE Editions Ltd. 
http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=6482551
Couldry, N., & Hepp, A. (2017). The mediated construction of reality. 
Polity Press.
Dogruel, L., Masur, P. K., & Jöckel, S. (2021). Development and 
validation of an algorithm literacy scale for Internet users. 
Communication Methods & Measures. Advance Online Publication. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2021.1968361
Flipo, F. (2020). L’impératif de la sobriété numérique. L’enjeu des 
modes de vie [The imperative of digital sobriety. The challenge of 
lifestyles]. Éditions Matériologiques
Kaun, A. (2021). Ways of seeing digital disconnection: A negative 
sociology of digital culture. Convergence, 13548565211045536. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565211045535
Livingstone, S. (2014). Developing social media literacy: How children 
learn to interpret risky opportunities on social network sites. 
Communications, 39, 283-303. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2014-0113. 
Lomborg, S., & Ytre-Arne, B. (2021). Advancing digital disconnection 
research: Introduction to the special issue. Convergence: The 
International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 
135485652110575. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565211057518
Markham, A. (2021). The ontological insecurity of disconnecting: A 
theory of echolocation and the self. In A. L. A. Chia, A. Jorge, & T. 
Karppi (Eds.), Reckoning with social media. Rowman & Littlefield.
Marwick, A. E., & boyd,  danah. (2014). Networked privacy: How teenagers 
negotiate context in social media. New Media & Society, 16(7), 
1051–1067. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814543995
Masur, P. K. (2020). How Online Privacy Literacy Supports Self-Data 
Protection and Self-Determination in the Age of Information. Media and 
Communication, 8(2), 258–269. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v8i2.2855
Masur—2020—How Online Privacy Literacy Supports Self-Data Pro.pdf. (n.d.).
Mejias, U. A., & Couldry, N. (2019). Datafication. Internet Policy 
Review, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1428
Pangrazio, L., & Selwyn, N. (2018). ‘Personal data literacies’: A 
critical literacies approach to enhancing understandings of personal 
digital data. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818799523
Park, Y. J., & Jang, M. S. (2014). Understanding privacy knowledge and 
skill in mobile communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 38, 296–303. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.041
Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of Privacy: Dialectics of Disclosure. 
SUNY Press.
Rey, B. (2012). La privacy à l’ère du numérique  [“Privacy in the 
digital age “]. Terminal, 110, 91–103. https://doi.org/10.4000/terminal.1242
Rössler, B., & Glasgow, R. D. V. (2005). The value of privacy (English 
ed). Polity.
Schwarzenegger, C., & Lohmeier, C. (2021). Creating opportunities for 
temporary disconnection: How tourism professionals provide alternatives 
to being permanently online. Convergence, 13548565211033384. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565211033385
Trepte, S., Teutsch, D., Masur, P. K., Eicher, C., Fischer, M., 
Hennhöfer, A., & Lind, F. (2015). Do People Know About Privacy and Data 
Protection Strategies? Towards the “Online Privacy Literacy Scale” 
(OPLIS). In S. Gutwirth, R. Leenes, & P. de Hert (Eds.), Reforming 
European Data Protection Law (Vol. 20, pp. 333–365). Springer 
Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9385-8_14
van der Sloot, B. (2016). Privacy as a Tactic of Norm Evasion, or Why 
the Question as to the Value of Privacy is Fruitless. 121–126. 
https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/13407
Wilhelm, C. (2021). Approche socio-culturelle et comparative des 
représentations du numérique. Vie privée et « hygiène de vie numérique » 
en Allemagne [A socio-cultural and comparative approach to 
representations of digital technology. Privacy and ‘digital hygiene’ in 
Germany]. Interfaces numériques, 10(2) 
https://doi.org/10.25965/interfaces-numeriques.4589
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a 
human future at the new frontier of power (First edition). Public Affairs.

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