[Commlist] Call for Paper proposals: ECPR Panel on 'Social Movements and Digital Organizing'

Please see below for the Call for Paper proposals for a panel on ‘Social 
Movements and Digital Organizing’ which will take place at the next ECPR 
conference in Innsbruck (26-28 August 2020) as part of the section on 
“Current Research and Challenges on Political Participation and 
Mobilization”.  Please send me your paper proposals (up to 500 words) to 
(A.Kavada /at/ westminster.ac.uk) <mailto:(A.Kavada /at/ westminster.ac.uk)> by *10 
February* *2020*. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any 
questions.


**

*Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), 
Innsbruck, 26-28 August 2020*

*Panel Title: **Social Movements and Digital Organizing*

*Chair*: Anastasia Kavada (Reader in Media and Politics, School of Media 
and Communication, University of Westminster)

*Discussant*: Alice Mattoni (Associate Professor, Department of 
Political and Social Sciences University of Bologna)

*Abstract: *

Internet use is thought to have changed the organizational dynamics of 
social movements. This panel will take stock of changes and continuities 
in social movement organizing through both a historical analysis, 
looking back at 20 years of digital organizing, and a focus on emerging 
platforms and trends.

The panel invites papers that critically examine the relationship 
between digital media and different organizing models, posing important 
questions around the politics and ideology that informs the use of such 
media and their technical design. Research in this area has investigated 
whether and how the use of digital media fosters more decentralized and 
horizontal forms of organizing. It has also questioned the meaning of 
the term ‘organization’, asking whether it needs to be expanded to 
encompass more informal and unofficial practices of organizing that 
happen without social movement organizations or other institutions of 
collective action. It has also explored how digital communication 
practices can produce new organizations from below, as well as hidden 
hierarchies and power asymmetries that belie the purported drive towards 
horizontality. A key issue in this respect is how the values, goals, 
knowledge and experience of different collective actors affect practices 
of digital organizing.

The panel welcomes papers that focus on the role of digital media in 
mobilizing audiences and in creating communities of hope and 
indignation. Apart from Twitter and Facebook, that have received 
significant academic attention in recent years, the panel warmly invites 
papers that also investigate more private channels of communication, 
including internal email lists and instant messaging platforms like 
Telegram and Whatsaapp. It also encourages papers that look at the 
communication ecology of social movements or that may focus on one 
platform but locate its use within this ecology.

Yet beyond the functions and practices of digital media, this panel also 
asks critical questions around the significance of these changes (and 
continuities) in social movement organizing. Why do such changes matter? 
Research has investigated whether digital media use is facilitating the 
prefigurative politics of certain movements, helping activists to enact 
in the present the more democratic forms of organizing that they would 
like to see in the future. Other research has looked at the impact of 
such media practices on the mobilizing potential of social movements, on 
the speed of action and its impact on public opinion and policy makers, 
as well as on its potential to escape the restrictions of more 
authoritarian regimes. The panel invites papers that advance our 
understanding of why and how digital organizing matters for collective 
action, aiming to make a critical contribution to this field of research.

*Please send your proposed paper title, keywords (max. 8) and a 500 word 
abstract (toA.Kavada /at/ westminster.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(A.Kavada /at/ westminster.ac.uk)>by 10 February 2020.*


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