[Commlist] Call for Papers, Transformation of the Public Sphere

please find below a Call for Papers for a workshop we are organizing at 
the Center of digital Change at the University of Hildesheim on 25/26 
April 2019 on "Transformation of the Public Sphere". The workshop will 
be the first of a series that focuses on the overall theme of 
"Transformations in the digital age" and is conceptualized and and run 
by an international network of researchers (inter alia: LUISS 
Universität Rom, Science Po, University Lugano, University Prag).

This workshop is intended to be international. Moreover, we got a 
financial support from the German Academic Exchange Servise (DAAD) in 
the program line for exchange with Southern Europe. This enables us to 
cover the travel and accommodation costs for active participants from 
Italy, Spain Portugal, Cyprus and Greece. For scholars from other 
countries we can cover the accommodation costs.

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Call for papers
International Workshop
Transformations in the digital age #1: Transformation of the public sphere
Hildesheim University, 25/26 April 2019
Conveners: Emiliana De Blasio and Michele Sorice (both: LUISS Rome), 
Marianne Kneuer and Wolf J. Schünemann (both: University of Hildesheim)
One of the main assumptions about the impact of Internet and social 
media points to a (more or less significant) transformation of the 
public sphere. The literature however provides us with competing views 
on the direction and the quality of this transformation: Against the 
backdrop of decreasing trust in the institutions and processes of modern 
democracies, digital technologies have repeatedly been loaded with hopes 
for increas-ing citizen engagement and participation through a broad 
range of democratic innova-tions. In this vein, social media would have 
a mobilizing and empowering impact ena-bling citizens to interact with 
each other or with politicians circumventing other institu-tionalized 
channels of communication including journalists as gate-keepers. In the 
best form, this could lead to broad and inclusive deliberation. On the 
other hand, such opti-mistic scenarios have been countered by more 
pessimistic outlooks like the fragmen-tation and atomization of the 
public sphere and the creation of filter bubbles and echo chambers. This 
perspective would include the discourse hegemony of some few as well as 
the potential of manipulation. Besides this normatively loaded debate, 
other open questions refer to aspects like the possibility of a 
transnational public sphere based on online-connectivity, the quality of 
public deliberation and new forms of net-worked publics.
Authors are invited to present theoretical and conceptual papers as well 
as empirical studies (a comparative perspective is welcome). Exemplary 
questions that could be addressed are the following:
 Is there an increase of deliberation through digital media? What are 
the findings on quantity and quality of online political deliberation?
 Public sphere is a concept related to rational argumentation. What 
does the increasing emotionalization of communication in social media 
mean for this ap-proach?
 Which consequences will the increasing blurring of public sphere and 
privacy have for politics and society? To which new forms of interaction 
and communi-cation does this lead?
 Which transformative effects can be observed on media systems, 
political news provision and consumption?
 Is there an increased fragmentation of the public sphere observable 
(filter bub-bles, echo chambers)? And what are the mechanisms of these 
filter bubbles and echo chambers?
 Which role has the demand of a high degree of transparency for the 
transfor-mation of the public sphere?
 Is there increasing transnational communication activity which might 
lead to the emergence of transnational (mini-)publics?
 Which effect do surveillance, security risks and manipulation do have 
on dem-ocratic publics in Europe?
The workshop shall be the start of a series of events on 
“transformations in the digital age”, organized by an international 
network of academic institutions, including LUISS University in Rome, 
Scienes Po in Paris, Hildesheim University, University of Perugia, USI 
in Lugano, the University of Urbino and the University of Prague. The 
first work-shop will take place at the Center for Digital Change at 
Hildesheim University on 25 and 26 April 2019. The workshop is supported 
by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) within the program 
framework “University dialogue with Southern Eu-rope”. Due to this 
support, all travel and accommodation expenses of active partici-pants 
from the following five countries will be covered: Cyprus, Greece, 
Italy, Spain and Portugal. For all other participants, accommodation 
expenses will be covered as well.
The deadline for proposals (including name, affiliation, email address 
and an abstract of max. 300 words) is 31 January 2019. Please send your 
proposals by email to the local organizers (see below).
The conveners plan to organize a publication (special issue). Therefore, 
we ask for full papers (no more than 50,000 characters), submitted by 12 
April 2019. The papers for the publication will be selected by the 
conveners.

Marianne Kneuer – (kneuer /at/ uni-hildesheim.de)
Wolf J. Schünemann – (wolf.schuenemann /at/ uni-hildesheim.de)


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