[Commlist] CfA: ICA pre-conference - The Political Power of IT Industries

Call for abstracts:
The Political Power of Information Technology Industries
ICA 2025 pre-conference

To be held at the University of Denver, June 12, 2025, 9:00AM – 4:30PM
Abstract submission deadline: January 31, 2025

*Call also available here*: https://t.ly/ZbeO5 <https://t.ly/ZbeO5>

Affiliated with the Communication, Law and Policy Division and the Media 
Industries Interest Group of ICA

Sponsored by the Institute for Information Policy at Pennsylvania State 
University and the
Underwood Institute

Co-Organizers: Roei Davidson, Amit Schejter, Krishna Jayakar

Scientific Committee: Roei Davidson, Krishna Jayakar, Brandie Nonnecke, 
Rodrigo Cetina Presuel, Amit Schejter & Richard Taylor

The information technology (IT) industries occupy a powerful position in 
society. They develop, operate and sell key data infrastructures and 
devices that enable major social and political processes to take place 
(Plantin et al., 2018). Ownership of these infrastructures gives them 
“privileged access” (Srnicek, 2017, p. 44) to user activities and great 
wealth. These provide them in turn with significant power that directly 
impacts the political rights as well as conditions of people worldwide. 
Within their infrastructures, these industries often operate as if they 
own fiefdoms, enjoying broad powers to shape and restrict users’ 
behaviors, and designing systems that grant users feudal power over 
others (Schneider, 2023).

In the past, the IT industries - including software, hardware, storage, 
and internet platforms - were reluctant to participate in political life 
and overtly exert power but rather turned to the construction of 
computational devices and networks as alternative spaces for individual 
fulfillment (Turner, 2006).  However, in recent years, IT firms (Dror, 
2015) and entrepreneurs (Creech & Maddox, 2022; Karppi & Nieborg, 2021) 
have been more explicit in their public commitments and interventions. 
They have used their access to data to promote particular political 
agendas and “choreograph publics” (Murray & Flyverbom, 2021, p. 630) 
consonant with both their narrow corporate interests and more general 
social visions. They provide political campaigns with technical 
assistance (Kreiss & McGregor, 2018) and regulate political speech 
(Kreiss & McGregor, 2019). They have influenced public policy domains 
such as education in ways that promote the adoption of the systems they 
develop and the values they espouse (Davidson et al., 2024; Sims, 2017; 
Tamir & Davidson, 2020). In some areas, such as national security, the 
state has relied on IT firms to carry out core political functions by 
proxy (Chachko, 2021; Feldstein, 2021). Prominent IT executives and 
entrepreneurs claim the authority and jurisdiction to participate in 
moral debates well beyond the confines of the industry (Daub, 2020), and 
network celebrities connected with these industries do so as well 
(Turner & Larson, 2015). Some industry personnel participate in 
political activism leveraging their occupational identity and social 
status as technology experts. In many of these cases, the industry’s 
power is not only mediated by the socio-technical systems it develops 
but is also applied using direct interventions (Eyal & Buchholz, 2010) 
which rely on human interaction and social discourse. In reaction to 
these interventions and the increased power of the industry more 
generally, governments (both national and supra-national) have acted to 
curb industry power or shape it for their own needs sometimes in a bid 
to deepen systems of political control (Feldstein, 2021; Hutson, 2023). 
In addition, governments often restrict foreign firms and maintain close 
ties with domestic ones (Huang & Tsai, 2022).

Given the more proactive role the IT industries play in political life 
we wish to ask in this pre-conference: How do the IT industries 
intervene in political campaigns? How do these industries shape the 
public policy process through lobbying, donations and consulting, both 
in relation to media and internet policy and in relation to broader 
policy domains? How do their products algorithmically affect the 
political process? What role do industrial actors play in opposing, or 
supporting and sometimes leading activist movements? How do industrial 
actors intervene in intellectual debates? and how do governments respond 
to industry interventions and/or co-opt the IT industries for their own 
purposes?

In posing these questions and related ones, we welcome theoretical and 
empirical contributions that draw on diverse methodological approaches 
(qualitative, quantitative, and computational) to interrogate these 
industries’ political role around the world nationally and 
trans-nationally in both democratic and authoritarian regimes.

Submission topics could include but need not be restricted to:

*Intellectual interventions such as lectures, media appearances, news 
coverage, podcasts, blogging, social media, think-tanks, official 
testimony, and industry research

*Political dimensions inherent to the design and functioning of IT 
platforms and services

*Lobbying and other forms of participation in the public policy process

*Corporate, investor and worker activism

*Political donations

*Participating in and supporting political campaigns and other elements 
of the formal political process

*Supporting, providing, or replacing state functions

*National and supra-national policy related to the IT industries

-------------------------------------------------

Workshop Organizers: Institute for Information Policy, Penn State.

Submissions: Interested scholars are invited to submit a 500-word 
abstract by January 31, 2025.  Authors of selected papers and abstracts 
will be notified by February 21, 2025.  Full papers based on invited 
abstracts are due May 12, 2025.  Proposals and papers should be sent by 
e-mail to the Workshop Organizers at (pennstateIIP /at/ psu.edu) 
<mailto:(pennstateIIP /at/ psu.edu)>.  Inquiries should also be directed to 
that address.

Registration Fee: There will be a $50.00 registration fee for 
participants to cover the cost of food and refreshments during the 
Workshop. Limited funding will be available to waive the registration 
fee of at least some graduate student attendees who will be presenting 
at the pre-conference.

Following the pre-conference, authors will be invited to submit a full 
paper for potential inclusion in a peer-reviewed special issue of the 
Journal of Information Policy.


References

Chachko, E. (2021). National Security by Platform. Stanford Technology 
Law Review, 25(1), 55–140.
Creech, B., & Maddox, J. (2022). Thus spoke Zuckerberg: Journalistic 
discourse, executive personae, and the personalization of tech industry 
power. New Media & Society, 14614448221116344. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221116344 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221116344>
Daub, A. (2020). What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the 
Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley. FSG Originals.
Davidson, R., Rein, N., & Tamir, E. (2024). The time-making capacity of 
the technology industry and its consequences for public life. Journal of 
Cultural Economy, 17(1), 55–72. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2261483 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2261483>
Eyal, G., & Buchholz, L. (2010). From the Sociology of Intellectuals to 
the Sociology of Interventions. Annual Review of Sociology, 36(1), 
117–137. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102625 
<https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102625>
Feldstein, S. (2021). The rise of digital repression: How technology is 
reshaping power, politics, and resistance. Oxford University Press.
Huang, J., & Tsai, K. S. (2022). Securing Authoritarian Capitalism in 
the Digital Age: The Political Economy of Surveillance in China. The 
China Journal, 88, 2–28. https://doi.org/10.1086/720144 
<https://doi.org/10.1086/720144>
Hutson, M. (2023). Rules to keep AI in check: Nations carve different 
paths for tech regulation. Nature, 620(7973), 260–263. 
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02491-y 
<https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02491-y>
Karppi, T., & Nieborg, D. B. (2021). Facebook confessions: Corporate 
abdication and Silicon Valley dystopianism. New Media & Society, 23(9), 
2634–2649. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820933549 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820933549>
Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2018). Technology Firms Shape Political 
Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With 
Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle. Political 
Communication, 35(2), 155–177. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814>
Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2019). The “arbiters of what our voters 
see”: Facebook and Google’s struggle with policy, process, and 
enforcement around political advertising. Political Communication, 
36(4), 499–522.
Murray, J., & Flyverbom, M. (2021). Datafied corporate political 
activity: Updating corporate advocacy for a digital era. Organization, 
28(4), 621–640. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420928516 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420928516>
Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018). 
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and 
Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293–310. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553>
Schneider, N. (2023). Afterlives of the Californian Ideology| 
Homesteading on a Superhighway: The Californian Ideology and Everyday 
Politics. International Journal of Communication, 17, 4255–4271.
Sims, C. (2017). Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of 
Techno-Idealism. Princeton University Press.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity.
Tamir, E., & Davidson, R. (2020). The good despot: Technology firms’ 
interventions in the public sphere. Public Understanding of Science, 
29(1), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519879368 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519879368>
Turner, F. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, 
the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University 
Of Chicago Press.
Turner, F., & Larson, C. (2015). Network celebrity: Entrepreneurship and 
the new public intellectuals. Public Culture, 27(1 75), 53–84.
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