[ecrea] CFP: Digital Circulation: The Digital Life of Things and Media Technologies

CALL FOR PAPER - Special Issue

"Digital Circulation: The Digital Life of Things and Media Technologies"

Tecnoscienza: Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
http://www.tecnoscienza.net/index.php/tsj/announcement/view/19

Deadline for abstract submissions: June 15th, 2015.

As Arjun Appadurai highlighted about 30 years ago, things make sense
through a process of circulation between worlds, history and social
contexts. Far from flattening the meanings and materialities involved in
the circulation of things and objects, contemporary media-driven society
added new layers of complexity to the social life of digital things. The
circulation of such objects represents a crucial dimension of digital
media technologies and  digital things – files, standards, data and
codes – can be seen as having biographies and life trajectories,
travelling across different spaces and being governed by specific
politics.

The role of digital media technologies in shaping collective flows has
been highlighted by several perspectives, such as STS, media studies,
cultural anthropology, consumer studies and cultural studies. In fact,
studying digital materialities and infrastructures is a way to
comprehend how contemporary social and cultural flows are actually
embodied in everyday life and human relationships. Yet, there is need
for a more multifaceted understanding of the specificity of digital
things and their biographies. What happens if we focus on the objects
that circulate through digital networks rather than on the
infrastructure constituted by such networks?

Focusing on the digital circulation and the life of digital things has
several further implications: the political economy of digital
circulation is also part of power struggles in the digital realm, as the
regulation of the trajectories of digital objects is framed by
institutions and political actors; many of the supposed “revolutions”
enabled by digital media technologies refer to some kind of circulation,
as in the case of peer-to-peer networks, social networking sites or
digitization of cultural items; social and collective practices on the
Internet rely heavily on metaphors of circulation in terms of exchange
and social relationships.

This special issue of Tecnoscienza. The Italian Journal of Science &
Technology Studies will address the multiple implications of the
circulation and the digital life of things, inviting contributions
exploring this idea empirically, theoretically and historically from
different conceptual perspectives and disciplines. With this special
issue we also aim at recalibrating current discussions at the
intersection between media studies and STS by using the digital
circulation and life of digital things as an entry points to understand
politics and materialities of digital networks. We are interested
especially, but not exclusively, in contribution that consider the
following themes:

Biographies and social histories of digital objects
Technologies of circulation: standards, formats and infrastructures
Politics and conflicts around and beyond digital things
Historical trajectories of media and technologies for circulation
Cultural, social and symbolic dimension of digital circulation in
different spaces
Digital past and futures circulating in the imaginary of media
technologies
Dematerialization of cultural practices and consumption
Permaebility and impermeability of the social spheres where digital
things circulate
Circulation as translation across different environments
Boundaries, frontiers and restrictions in digital circulation
Digital objects as commodities and piracy
Circulation as a metaphor and paradigm to understand digital media
Circulation as digitization of old and analog media
Political economies of digital circulation

Deadline for abstract submissions: June 15th, 2015.

Abstracts (in English) with a maximum length of 500 words should be sent
as email attachments to (redazione /at/ tecnoscienza.net) and carbon copied to
the guest editors. Notification of acceptance will be communicated by
June 30th 2015. Full papers (in English with a maximum length of 8,000
words including notes and references) will be due in October 15th 2015
and will be subject to a double blind peer review process. We expect to
publish the special issue in June 2016.

For information and questions, please do not hesitate to contact the
guest editors:

Gabriele Balbi, (gabriele.balbi /at/ usi.ch)
Alessandro Delfanti, (adelfanti /at/ ucdavis.edu)
Paolo Magaudda, (paolo.magaudda /at/ unipd.it)




---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chauss�de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------