[ecrea] CFP - Public Lives/Private Platform: The Politics of Twitter

Public Lives/Private Platform: The Politics of Twitter
Symposium 23-24 May 2017, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

With the support of Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis & Netherlands 
Institute for Cultural Analysis

Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Jillian C. York (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Confirmed Speakers: Dipsaus Podcast, featuring Seada Nourhussen, Ebissé 
Rouw, Arzu Aslan, Anousha Nzume and Mariam El Maslouhi. Event curated by 
Nina Köll.

Confirmed Speaker: Flavia Dzodan– “Our Collective Unconscious of Violence”

Confirmed Speaker: Nora Reed

Speaking in 2013, Dick Costolo, then CEO of Twitter envisioned the site 
as “a very public, live, in-the-moment conversational platform” 
describing it as the “global town square.” With this concept, Costolo 
imagined the site’s users as producers, consumers and citizens 
participating in a digital commons. In the years that followed, Twitter 
drew criticism for its free speech absolutism, which while providing a 
space for marginalized voices, also left those populations vulnerable to 
harassment and abuse. In the aftermath of the Gamergate controversy, 
Twitter made small steps toward addressing abuse, giving users new tools 
to protect themselves. However, their commitment to free speech has 
created ever greater tensions within a virtual town square that 
replicates disparities in local, national and global power relations.

Twitter is at once the soapbox of the powerless and the platform of the 
powerful. It is the megaphone of the voiceless and an echo chamber for 
state and corporate speech. For instance, while Twitter has helped 
launch vital grassroots social movements like Black Lives Matter, it has 
also fomented the rise of the alt-right and the emergence of the world’s 
first Twitter President, who uses the microblog as a bully pulpit and 
policy platform. While it has suspended ISIS-affiliated accounts, it has 
verified those of high profile white nationalists. While it has given 
space to anonymous activists around the world, it has given new tools of 
surveillance to the states they agitate within and against. This crowded 
town square is moderated by complex algorithms, contradictory policies 
and competing regimes of public and private censorship.

How does Twitter’s shared town square invite us to rethink the 
theoretical and practical limits of free speech? Where is the potential 
for social and political change in a space that is at once public and 
privatised, civic and commercial? What can we do to help defend the 
space claimed by those most marginalized within this public square, 
alongside their more powerful antagonists?

These questions about the political life of Twitter affect every message 
that circulates within the square. Its 140 character limit has led to a 
seemingly infinite variety of expressive styles and forms of 
communication. Every few hours, thousands of hashtags rise and fall, 
trolls provoke, Trump boasts and bots tell jokes while corporate drones 
perform customer service before a global audience of millions. Amid the 
din, people make real connections, plant the seeds of social movements, 
supplement (and contradict) the official news, and build communities of 
support that extend beyond digital limits.

We call for researchers, artists and activists to reflect on how Twitter 
has expanded, complicated and advanced the concept of free speech. We 
are especially interested in explorations of Twitter’s potential as a 
site for social change, and of the unique forms of political and 
cultural expression that this space makes possible.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

*Twitter and activism
*Crowdfunding, signal boosting and support networks
*Citizen journalism
*Black Twitter
*Trans and queer identity on Twitter
*Twitter feminisms
*Twitter and disability
*Appropriation, intellectual property and mass media
*Diaspora politics and Twitter
*Occupy
*Black Lives Matter
*NoDAPL
*(In)visibility: anonymity, pseudonyms, doxxing, hacking, alt-accounts, 
verified accounts
*Twitter tactics: hashtags, subtweeting, retweeting, blocking, muting 
and more
*Call-out culture, shaming and pileons
*The politics of memes, trolling and satirical accounts
*Twitter linguistics
*Weird Twitter, irony and humour
*Twitter literary genres
*Twitter entrepreneurship and self-branding
*Twitter and academic life
*Twitter litter: sh*tposting, inside jokes and other detritus
*Temporalities of Twitter- reverse chron reading, news cycles and talk 
across time zones
*The post-human social network: bots and algorithms as content 
producers, zombie accounts, dead accounts
*Corporate Twitter, advertising and performative customer service
*Twitter diplomacy
*Trump and the Twitter presidency
*The “alt-right” and global ethno-nationalism
*Twitter and state violence: the CIA, Pentagon, IDF & more
*Twitter police: the tough business of Twitter rules
*Regimes of censorship

We will consider contributions in the following formats:

Research papers for 15-20 minute presentations
Workshop proposals
Performances
Journalistic and/or polemical presentations
Live remote Twitter presentations

Proposals should be no longer than 300 words and include a short bio 
with your Twitter handle and any other material that could support your 
idea.

Proposals should be submitted to (politicsoftwitter /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(politicsoftwitter /at/ gmail.com)> no later than March 20, 2017. 
Applicants will be notified by March 27, 2017. More information at 
https://politicsoftwitter.wordpress.com/

Symposium organizers: Jacopo Fiorancio, Nadia de Vries and Matt Cornell.

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