[Commlist] CfP: The 5th Symposium on Communication and the Public on“Social Media, Algorithms, and Journalism Innovations”

Call for Papers

The 5th Symposium on Communication and the Public

“Social Media, Algorithms, and Journalism Innovations”


Two sets of technological advances are shaping not only how information 
in a society is gathered, disseminated, received, and utilized, but also 
how we are related to one another in public and as publics. These are 
the advent of social media and the proliferation of algorithms. They are 
reshaping the profession of journalism, as well as the news media 
institutions that are built upon its promises and practices; they are 
also posting multifaceted challenges to our understandings and practices 
of public formation. How is journalism changing? What technology-driven 
innovations are emerging in news media and/or journalism? How are 
platforms affecting the circulation and composition of public 
information? How are these changes reshaping news and more broadly 
journalism? How are they eroding objectivity and factuality as not only 
the norms in journalism but also the criteria employed to constitute the 
shared information basis in public formation? How are they contributing 
to the rise of the discourses of “post-truth” and the emergence of 
varieties of publics? How do we understand the challenges and 
possibilities of the familiar models of publics in democratic theories, 
namely publics who are expected to be informed, participatory, 
deliberative, and/or empowered?


This conference invites submissions that examine some aspects of social 
media and algorithms in connection to the changing patterns of 
information production and flow. We encourage scholars to interrogate 
the assumptions of professionally produced and curated as well as 
empirically verified or verifiable information being a basis for 
democratic public formation. This includes interrogations of the complex 
relationships among decentralization and pluralization of information 
production and circulation, the emergence of varieties of publics, 
including the growth of counterpublics, and the rise of various 
anti-democratic impulses.


Possible paper topics may include, but are certainly not limited to, the 
following:

·        Conceptions and making of news for a social networking site

·        Algorithmically curated news presentations and public 
disaggregation

·        Critical assessments of automated journalism practices

·        Social media uses in news production

·        Social media as new and/or alternative news media

·        Application of data science in news curation

·        Visualizing data as a journalistic innovation

·        Contestations over objectivity, factuality, and the cultural 
authority of journalism

·        Algorithmic curation and the creation of echo chambers

·        Algorithmically curated information environments and the rises 
of nativism, xenophobic nationalism, authoritarianism

·        AI-assisted or AI-enabled authoritarian demagoguery


The call for submissions of paper abstracts of 800-1000 words is now 
open. Submissions should be emailed to (capsymposium /at/ 163.com) 
<mailto:(capsymposium /at/ 163.com)> by March 31, 2019. Authors will be 
notified of results by April 10, 2019.


The 5th Symposium on Communication and the Public: Social Media, 
Algorithms, and Journalism Innovations will be held at the College of 
Media and International Culture in Hangzhou on June 21 and 22. 
Organizers will cover accommodation and meals in Hangzhou.


All papers should be written and presented in English. Selected papers 
will be published as a special issue in/Communication and the Public/.


Please direct questions to any of the following organizers:

·        Zhongdang Pan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 
(zhongdangpan /at/ wisc.edu) <mailto:(zhongdangpan /at/ wisc.edu)>

·        Lu Wei, Zhejiang University, (drluwei /at/ zju.edu.cn) 
<mailto:(drluwei /at/ zju.edu.cn)>

·        Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania, (gyang /at/ asc.upenn.edu) 
<mailto:(gyang /at/ asc.upenn.edu)>


The symposium is organized by the College of Media and International 
Culture at Zhejiang University, in collaboration with the Department of 
Communication Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the 
Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.


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