[Commlist] Cfp "Data reflectivity" // Convergence

Cfp "Data reflectivity: new pathways in bridging datafication and user 
studies"

Special Issue of Convergence: The International Journal of Research into 
New Media Technologies (Sage)

Following more than a decade of work on the structural properties of 
datafication and platforms, more recent studies are focussing on how 
users decode, make sense, avoid or resist algorithmic data. These works 
have contributed to make the role of users visible and meaningful and 
show users' reflective engagement with technology. Linking platform 
perspectives dealing with questions of power, accountability and 
governance on a macro-level to users' everyday engagement with digital 
technology represents a fruitful path when aiming to understand complex 
user-data relations. This special issue aims to connect datafication 
studies with lived user experiences, inviting scholars to think along 
and reflect on the concept of data reflectivity in their contributions.

We understand data reflectivity as a synthesizing concept signalling the 
dualism inherent in data: on the one hand, data reflect human users in 
specific (datafied) ways aiming to structure user experiences. On the 
other hand, users have their own ways of engaging in, circumventing, or 
even rebelling against these data reflections, employing reflective 
strategies to manipulate and shape data for their own purposes. We 
encourage submissions that provide theoretical, methodological or 
empirical venues for better understanding the data/user nexus in 
relation to media, platforms, infrastructures and algorithms (in 
particular recommendation systems), metrics and analytics.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

·Conceptualisations of data reflectivity and the data/user nexus, the 
role of user reflectivity in the face of black boxing, obscurity, 
obfuscation, etc.

·User practices of algorithmic engagement and resistance, their relation 
to algorithmic imaginaries and literacies, and their implications for 
understanding the data/user relationship

·Theorizing the challenge of volatility: How to account for temporal 
variability of algorithmic systems in relation to users' algorithmic 
literacy? In other words, how to deal with algorithms as moving targets?

·New methodological venues for exploring the data/user relations, such 
as collecting "big" and "small" data, data donations, applying mixed 
methods in new ways etc.

·Examining the link between platform design and agency, reflectivity and 
literacy

·Empirical contributions engaging in questions such as: How reflective 
are users and what are the potentials and limitations of reflectivity 
for providing users with agency or literacy? What are users reflective 
or not reflective about in relation to data? What is the role of 
affective and tacit knowledge for data reflectivity?

Full call: 
https://ruc.dk/en/cfp-data-reflectivity-new-pathways-bridging-datafication-and-user-studies 
<https://ruc.dk/en/cfp-data-reflectivity-new-pathways-bridging-datafication-and-user-studies>

Deadline for abstracts (500 words, excluding references): May 26^th , 2023

Guest editors: Martina Skrubbeltrang Mahnke (Roskilde University, 
Denmark), David Mathieu (Roskilde University, Denmark), Joëlle Swart 
(University of Groningen, The Netherlands) and Pille Pruulmann 
Vengerfeldt (Malmö University, Sweden)

Contact information: (mahnke /at/ ruc.dk) <mailto:(mahnke /at/ ruc.dk)>

No author payments required using the Green Open Access option.

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