[ecrea] CFP- ICA Preconference: Taming and Nurturing the Wild Child: Government and Corporate Policies for New Media

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION (ICA) 2019

Washington, DC

PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP

May 24, 2019

Taming and Nurturing the Wild Child:

Government and Corporate Policies for Social Media

Call for Papers

The impact social media have had on social networking, political 
information, advertising and corporate communications make it hard to 
imagine that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp are less 
than a decade and a half old. In this short time frame, they have proven 
their potential time and again both for good and bad: while catalyzing 
pro-democracy movements worldwide, and promoting activism against sexual 
harassment, they have also become pre-eminent forums for the 
dissemination of misinformation and “fake news,” and for racist, 
xenophobic and misogynistic propaganda. While connecting people through 
building (and buttressing) social, business and political networks, they 
have also raised concerns regarding privacy and misuse of personal 
information.

Due to this explosive growth and the ensuing concerns, societies are 
struggling to fashion policy responses that will preserve social media’s 
vibrancy as spaces for unencumbered speech, while minimizing the 
potential harms from privacy violations, hate speech and the diffusion 
of misinformation into political discourse. Indeed, in some countries 
governments and civil society organizations have called for steps to 
address these abuses, yet in others, social media policy has become a 
pretext for governments to curb freedom of expression and muzzle 
critical voices.

We invite papers that examine policy responses to these developments. 
How can policy be developed, while protecting societal values such as 
freedom of speech and information? Policy is defined broadly, including 
government policies, regulations and laws and the policies of 
corporations including algorithmic screening of content and emergent 
norms (in the spirit of North/Williamson, who define governance as 
formal and non-formal rules of the game). We are also interested in 
analyses that address how the business model of social media (e.g., for 
profit, not-for-profit) interacts with alternative policy approaches. We 
particularly encourage international comparisons, including contrasting 
approaches to social media policy adopted by national governments. For 
example, what impact do the EU’s GDPR and the Chinese 2016 Cybersecurity 
Law, both which came into effect in 2018, have on social media?

Potential papers may address the impact of these policies on issues 
including but not limited to freedom of speech, democratic discourse, 
political activism, network security, national security and 
surveillance, commercial speech, privacy protections and transborder 
data flows.

This preconference workshop is jointly organized by the Institute for 
Information Policy 
<https://bellisario.psu.edu/research/centers/iip> (IIP) at Penn State 
University and the James H. and Mary B. Quello Center 
<http://quello.msu.edu/> at Michigan State University. Papers presented 
in the workshop will be considered for publication in the IIP’s Journal 
of Information Policy <http://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_JIP.html>. 
The Journal is an open access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, 
published by Penn State University Press and archived on JSTOR.

Abstracts of up to 500 words and a short bio of the author(s) should be 
submitted to (pennstateiip /at/ psu.edu) <mailto:(pennstateiip /at/ psu.edu)> 
by December 15, 2018. Please write IIP_SOCIALMEDIAPOLICY: YOUR NAME in 
the subject line. Presenters will be notified by January 12, 
2019 regarding acceptance. Accepted papers will need to be submitted 
by May 1, 2019.


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