[ecrea] CFP: The Digital Everyday: Exploration or Alienation?

CFP: The Digital Everyday: Exploration or Alienation? - May 5th 2017**

This international conference aims at exploring the digital everyday, 
understood as the transformation of everyday life practices brought 
about by digital technology. From how we buy, walk around, get a cab, 
love, break up, go to bed, meet new people and sexual partners to the 
way we rate services, turn on the fridge, exercise and eat, social 
media, apps, and Big Data are reshaping some of the most basic 
activities in our lives.

The conference will examine these digitally enabled transformations by 
looking at a number of domains affected by these shifts, for instance: 
of work and leisure, of friendship and love, of habits and routines. We 
will also explore a number of overarching dynamics and trends in the 
digital world that contribute to these transformations, including: 
processes of digital individualisation and aggregation; the elisions of 
spatial and temporal barriers; trends towards quantification and 
datafication; and the dialectic between control and alienation.

We invite participants from various intellectual traditions and streams 
of research including media studies, sociology, psychology, information 
science, computing and anthropology. Together, we will explore a number 
of key questions. How, for example, is digital transformation affecting 
everyday life? To what extent is this process one of increasing 
individualisation of social experience? Or might there be something more 
complex happening? What are the new psychological and social pathologies 
that result from the digital transformation of everyday life and from 
processes of datafication and quantification? Is digital technology 
allowing for new forms of control over our everyday life or is it 
increasing alienation, making us overly dependent on infrastructures 
beyond our grasp? Is digital technology contributing to extending our 
freedom to choose, or is it stifling us with an overabundance of 
options? Is it guiding us towards who we ‘really’ are or want to be, or 
is it plunging us into a hall of mirrors that only reinforces our 
isolation and narcissism? Is it facilitating exploration, serendipity 
and curiosity, or is it installing us into a pre-programmed and 
predictable world, into a filter bubble where choices can be more easily 
measured and manipulated?

Proposed paper abstracts may address the following topics: 
transformations of work patterns; changes in everyday life routine 
(sleep, meals, etc.); fitness and sport activity; love and sexual 
interactions; friendship and acquaintanceship; consumption and 
entertainment; sense of place and time; transportation and tourism; play 
and leisure.
The conference will comprise two plenary sessions and 4 breakout panels, 
and will host internationally acclaimed scholars as keynote speakers.

The conference will take on Saturday, 6th May 2017.
Abstract are due by 31 January 2017.
Abstracts should be 250 words maximum, and include the author(s) name 
and position, and a short title. They should be submitted via EasyChair 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=digitaleveryday17
Acceptance notices will be given on 28 February 2017.
Extended abstracts of 1,500 words are due on 15 April 2017 to be sent 
(digitalculture /at/ kcl.ac.uk) <mailto:(digitalculture /at/ kcl.ac.uk)>


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