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[Commlist] CFP: Understanding the Metaverse

Mon Dec 19 20:57:46 GMT 2022




/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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