[Commlist] 41st IVSA conference 2024 Veracruz CFP: Visual Accountability: Show, Don’t Tell

*Visual Accountability: Show, Don’t Tell*

2024 Veracruz, Mexico**

**

The International Visual Sociology Association invites submissions for 
its 41^st annual meeting that will take place at Universidad 
Veracruzana, in Xalapa, Veracruz México. We welcome submissions from 
across the social sciences in the forms of workshops, paper 
presentations and exhibition

Call For Proposals:

oAbstract submission deadline: *January 30 2024 *

oAbstract Submission 
Site:***https://easychair.org/account/signin_timeout?l=aPk4PIKGk3soWkMOA3kmyI 
<https://easychair.org/account/signin_timeout?l=aPk4PIKGk3soWkMOA3kmyI>*

*
*

oNotification to delegates: *February 20 2024*

oEarly bird registration: *March 31, 2024*

oPreliminary program publication: *April 15, 2024*

oRegistration deadline:*April 20^th , 2024 (final deadline)*

oConference sessions: *26-29 June 2024***

  More information is available here: 
https://visualsociology.org/?page_id=8614 
<https://visualsociology.org/?page_id=8614>


The 2024 IVSA conference is dedicated to exploring the concept of 
“*visual accountability*”or visually mediated practices of regulation 
and control. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, and accelerating through 
it, we identified a /shift in progress/whereby digital images took an 
increasingly central role in constructing, maintaining and transforming 
formal and informal processes of adjudicating /what counts/as true. What 
kind of images are considered /valid,/are allowed and accepted as-if 
true? How do they convince, and get authorized, and become usable? How 
are digital technologies influencing the impact of visuality vis-à-vis 
accountability?

Will visual accountability be used in ways that impact vulnerable 
individuals (See Neu 2006)?It is worth wondering how digital image 
sharing contributes to digital infrastructures and impacts practices of 
enacting certain truths in everyday life. Particular ways of looking 
that are honed online and emerge out of digital sociality, challenge 
visual sociology to devise new ways to dialogue with audiences across 
the academy, bring sociological understandings to the quotidian 
micro-level, and connect the practice of sociology to broader public issues.

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1990) posited that the power of photography 
is extrinsic to photography itself and gains currency by communicating 
within a system of values. When these pictures become mobile, together 
with the apps that allow their creation and circulation, they contribute 
to what Hjorth and Pink call a “social lubricant” (2014). In 2021, 
22-year-old Gabby Petito was reported missing in the USA: Her boyfriend 
was on the run. Cyber sleuths using Twitter and TikTok began to share 
information to build a timeline of Petito’s movements, zeroing in on the 
Instagram photos she had been posting up to the time she disappeared. 
One user noted her hair had dark roots in one photo and seemed to have 
been freshly dyed blonde in another; others examined the pictures and 
triangulated with dates to show this was an error. Lavrence and Cambre 
(2020) use the term, the“digital forensic gaze,” to describe ways of 
looking that mobilize veridical techniques when scrutinizing online 
images, as seen when people and groups mobilize online. In these kinds 
of contexts, such images are considered dubious until proven otherwise.

Meanwhile, seemingly moving in the opposite direction, institutions and 
corporations are using everyday images as evidence and are asking 
employees and others to “prove” their claims with photos. For example, 
in June 2022, the FedEx Corporation in the USA announced it would be 
offering “Picture proof of delivery” for packages released without a 
signature. Customers tracking packages will receive a photo showing its 
location. But what if the package is removed or the picture is 
manipulated? Whatmight be at stake in the gradual normalization of these 
practices? A sense of obligation to “show” not just “tell” has begun to 
permeate the professional sphere, and nascent practices of institutional 
requests for photographs from employees and other members has slowly 
been gaining legitimacy. What are the implications of these new 
practices for visual sociology? What kinds of literacies are required to 
navigate these emerging ocular regimes? How are people everywhere 
mobilizing images as testimony and using visual practices to stake their 
veridical claims?

*BEYOND THE THEME:*Abstracts may also address other topics relating to 
visual methods, theories, and the visual analysis of society, culture 
and social relationships, beyond the general conference theme.

*Possible topics include but are not limited to:*

·Images as legitimation

·Post-truth, trust, and verification

·visual methodologies and accountability

·visual theory and digital representation

·Public perception and deep fakes

·Activism, engagement and “situatedness”

·Visibility, invisibility and the edited image

·Digital sociality and performance

·Surveillance and sousveillance

·Seeing and being seen - social media

·Approaches to AI

**

	

·Photographs as “proof” in the everyday (work and social)

·Game playing, social interaction, and machine vision

·Re/Presentation saving face/losing face

·Digital crowds: sociological publics

·Hyper-scrutiny the 21^st century

·Surveillance-based social credit systems

·Visual ethics, collaboration & the researcher gaze

·Framing the digital gaze

**

*ABOUT IVSA & THE CONFERENCE*

“/The IVSA is a non-profit, democratic and academically oriented 
professional organization devoted to the visual study of society, 
culture, and social relationships. Our members represent a wide spectrum 
of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, education, visual 
communication, photography, filmmaking, art and journalism/” 
(visualsociology.org <http://visualsociology.org>).


Whilst strongly rooted in the discipline of sociology, the IVSA welcomes 
participation from a wide

range of disciplinary and artistic approaches. We also encourage those 
unfamiliar with visual methods and analysis to visually innovate and 
experiment in their respective areas of substantive specialization.

As well as panel sessions, the conference will include a student poster 
competition, research-creation exhibition, keynote address, and 
spotlight panels, “walking the city” experiences and workshops. The 2024 
Scholarly Awards will be announced and celebrated.

For more information about IVSA and conference guidelines, please 
visit:visualsociology.org <http://visualsociology.org>

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/visualsociology.org/ 
<https://www.facebook.com/visualsociology.org/>

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_ivsa_/ 
<https://www.instagram.com/_ivsa_/>

Twitter:https://twitter.com/VisualScholars 
<https://twitter.com/VisualScholars>

*CONTACT: Scientific 
co-ordinator:**(rhettalexandr.canojacome /at/ concordia.ca)* 
<mailto:(rhettalexandr.canojacome /at/ concordia.ca)>**

*Veracruz co-ordinator : **(pickupcw /at/ gmail.com)* <mailto:(pickupcw /at/ gmail.com)>**

*Research assistants:****(emiliamejillas /at/ gmail.com)* 
<mailto:(emiliamejillas /at/ gmail.com)>*; **(caeso03 /at/ gmail.com)* 
<mailto:(caeso03 /at/ gmail.com)>**

**

This event is being held through bi-lateral co-operation between Quebec, 
Canada and Veracruz, Mexico, we thank Concordia University, Montreal and 
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.


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