[ecrea] CfP "Theorizing the Web 2012", University of Maryland, 14 April 2012

*Preliminary CfP: Theorizing the Web 2012*
#TtW12

Saturday, April 14th
University of Maryland

Keynote Session:
"Social&  Social Movements" - Andy Carvin (NPR; @acarvin) in conversation with Zeynep Tufekci (UNC; @techsoc)

Deadline for Abstracts: February 5th
Registration Opens: February 1st


Call for Papers:

The goal of the second annual Theorizing the Web conference is to expand the range and depth of theory used to help us make sense of how the Internet, digitality, and technology have changed the ways humans live. We hope to bring together researchers from a range of disciplines, including sociology, communications, philosophy, economics, English, history, political science, information science, the performing arts and many more. In addition, we invite session and other proposals by tech-industry professionals, journalists, and other figures outside of academia.
Submit abstracts online athttp://tinyurl.com/TtW12.

Topics include:

- Citizen/participant journalism and media curation

- Identity, self-documentation and self-presentation

- Privacy and publicity on the Web

- Cyborgism and the technologically-mediated body (e.g., body modification)

- Political mobilization, uprisings, revolutions and riots on social media (including the Arab Spring/Fall, Occupy)

- Repression and the Web: Surveillance, wire-tapping, anonymity, pseudonymity

- Code, values and design

- Epistemology of the Web: Wikipedia, Global Voices, "filter bubbles" and the prosumption of information

- Theorizing whose Web? How power and inequality (e.g., the Digital Divide) manifest on the Web

- Mobile computing, online/offline space

- Digital dualism and "augmented reality"

- What art/literature can offer research and theory of the Web

- Intersections of gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability with respect to any of the above topics


We plan to curate 7 open submission panels, 4 presenters each as well as a couple invited panels and a keynote session on social media and social movements with Andy Carvin (NPR) and Zeynep Tufekci (UNC).
Other events may be added before April.

The first Theorizing the Web conference happened last year. We decided to do this because there often is not a place for scholars who are theorizing about the Internet and society to gather and share their work. The 2011 program consisted of 14 panels, two workshops, two symposia (one on social media's role in the Arab revolutions, the other, on social media and street art), two plenaries (by Saskia Sassen on "Digital Formations of the Powerful and the Powerless" and George Ritzer on "Why the Web Needs Post-Modern Theory"), and a keynote by danah boyd from Microsoft Research and NYU on "Privacy, Publicity Intertwined." Presenters traveled from around the world (including Hong Kong and New Zealand). The archive is available at:http://www.cyborgology.org/theorizingtheweb/2011

There will be a new website with much more information coming January 2012.
For further inquiries, (emailtheorizingtheweb /at/ gmail.com).


Call for Artists:
In addition to traditional presentations, the conference will feature a variety of artistic and multimedia events. As such, we invite proposals from artists for relevant works or performances in any
medium as well as for discussion of such pieces. We seek to display art of all forms during the conference and after at a reception. This could include, but is not limited to, paintings, sculpture, poetry, fiction writing, digital art, and performance art.