[Commlist] SACOMM 2022 conference cfp

CALL FOR PAPERS - SACOMM 2022 CONFERENCE

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*THEME: Unravelling Big Tech: Power and the Global South*

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*14-16 September 2022*

*University of the Witwatersrand, Braamfontein Campus*

*Johannesburg*

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*Call for Papers - Deadline 1 June 2022*

Big Tech - as the dominant companies in the information technology 
industry - have progressively transformed the digital space from a 
frontier for individual and collective experimentation into a territory 
where value is extracted from users, increasing corporate and state 
power, while offering minimal returns to the producers of this value.

We live in a time of stunning technological ingenuity.Big Tech 
conglomerateshave reconfigured how we conduct everyday life - e.g. via 
remote work cultures, online learning & educational tools, marketing, 
purchase and delivery services, self curatorship platforms, digital 
entertainment and artistic practices, information sharing, booking and 
travelling, autonomous gender expressions and new forms of (online) 
sexual citizenship. Media and technological convergence has blurred the 
lines between historically discreet concepts such as audiences vs 
participants, consumers vs creators, distributors vs users, curators vs 
observers. New online narrative visual modalities have challenged 
traditional storytelling conventions. Tremendous technological leaps are 
being made, but the economic and social benefits remain geographically 
skewed against countries in the Global South. The entrenched ubiquity of 
tech cartels have monopolised most forms of cultural production in ways 
which stifle innovations from the peripheries. Normative framings based 
on the trickle-down model - i.e. that increasing access and 
appropriation of technology would lead to radical developmental gains 
everywhere - have failed. In what ways can the global South contest and 
defy these limited normative framings? How can we instantiate alternate 
digital and online microcosms which inculcate a plurality of decolonial 
perspectives, innovative ideas, creativity and inclusivity? As scholars 
in the Global South, how can we conceptualise/theorise ways of 
mitigating this gap?

The conference invites research, reflection, and critique of the 
“Unravelling” of Big Tech: Can the Global South close the power gap?” 
How is the global South engaged in strategies of cultural production not 
governed by global North counterparts? We invite papers to respond to 
some of the following themes:

 1. Global South politics and Big Tech
 2. Afrotech and ‘afrofuturism’ (from periphery to centre,
    representation; technoculture, innovation, steAm, African culture,
    mythology, diaspora; cosmologies and spiritualities);
 3. Cyborgs and dystopia (surveillance, AI, power, control, ethics);
 4. Anthropocene and ‘technospheres’ (humans, tech, culture, arts,
    circular economy)
 5. Streaming, gaming and the self(ie) (sharing, streaming,
    binge-watching, subjectivity, individualism, alienation and so on)
 6. Journalism from the North to the South and the impact of Big
    Tech: Shutdowns, censorship, and safety of journalists, press freedom
 7. COVID 19 – enabler or destroyer of domestic space through Big Tech
    in the home (Netflix and chill culture/ the domestic and care/
    Youtube kids and watching without end)
 8. Cyberbullying, celebrity and consumption: spurred on by Big Tech
 9. Big Tech and images of the South: who lives here and who governs the
    gaze?
10. Gender work and Big tech: GBV/ gender identities and enabling/
    disabling access

*ABSTRACT SUBMISSION INFORMATION*

Abstracts should intellectually engage with, or be related to, at least 
one of the thematic areas aboveand correspond to one of six SACOMM 
streams listed below. When submitting your abstract, indicate the stream 
your abstract submission should be allocated to.

▪Media Studies and Journalism

▪Corporate Communication

▪Screen Studies

▪Communication Studies

▪Communication education and curriculum development (CECD)

▪Communications advocacy and activism (CAA)

Abstracts should be submitted using the abstract submission form, which 
can be downloaded 
fromhttps://sacomm.org.za/abstract-submission-form-sacomm2022 
<https://sacomm.org.za/abstract-submission-form-sacomm2022>and sent to 
the address:_#(_Dept-SACOMM2022 /at/ wits.ac.za) 
<mailto:(Dept-SACOMM2022 /at/ wits.ac.za)>,

Submissions which are not submitted on the correct form will not be 
accepted. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted.

*All abstract submissions should be addressed to: *

*Submission deadline: 1 June 2022*







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