[Commlist] 'Internet Musicking: Popular Music and Online Cultures' Conference CfP

*Internet Musicking: Popular Music and Online Cultures*

*Call For Papers*

A free academic conference sharing new research into cultural practices 
of music taking place online

21–22 May 2022

Department of Music, University College Cork (Ireland) & Online

::: https://internetmusicking.com <https://internetmusicking.com> :::

Over the last few years, music researchers have paid increased attention 
to the internet and its effects on cultural life. For example, edited 
collections on digital culture, virtuality, and social media have 
emerged alongside landmark research projects that seek to understand how 
the internet shapes the cultural production of music. Meanwhile, 
interdisciplinary inquiry has addressed internet-based cultural 
practices of popular music, critically examining the tension between 
creative platform uses and the political economy of an increasingly 
privatised internet.

Given the intensification of the internet as a site for cultural 
activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, online popular music 
communities have recently been transformed and new online practices have 
emerged. Popular musicians and industry personnel are adapting to a 
quickly shifting landscape for cultural production and promotion via 
social media, while listeners, viewers, and fans share, curate, and 
comment on music across the globe. Video and communication platforms 
have captured the imagination of participants worldwide, with musical 
and multimodal self-expression broadcast across the social web. These 
developments, however, are contextualised by profit-driven corporate 
entities that reframe cultural producers as ‘content creators’ and other 
participants as consumers, followers, or subscribers. Concerns about 
personalisation algorithms, surveillance strategies, and data security 
are escalating in sites of popular music culture. The widespread use of 
the web in the developed and the developing world has undoubtedly 
altered everyday cultural practices, although between the poles of 
technological determinism and cyberutopian narratives of 
democratisation, there is still much detail to be sought.

This conference invites contemporary research into cultural practices of 
popular music taking place online. The phrase ‘internet musicking’ takes 
Small’s term – and developments of it – to address all social activities 
involving music on the internet. The conference is particularly (though 
not exclusively) interested in spotlighting previously undocumented uses 
and experiences of music online. It is designed to generate discussion, 
identify major issues, and develop a diverse network of scholars to be 
formalised in subsequent activities and events. We invite submissions on 
topics including (but not limited to):

• social media musicking: sharing, curation, and platform interactions

• viral new media and musical memes

• music and internet socialities: (imagined) communities of practice, 
networked individualism, and online music sub/countercultures

• genres of popular music and their online mediations

• non-musical expressions of online popular music cultures, such as 
dance and games

• ‘the I in Internet’: popular music and identity, otherness, queering 
practices, and resistance

• online music and cultural economies: datification, platformization, 
surveillance, and attention

• music and cultural industry agents in the context of Big Tech

• global participation in music culture, digital divides, and issues of 
internet access

Deadline for abstract submissions:*20 December 2021*

https://internetmusicking.com/submit <https://internetmusicking.com/submit>

For full details, please head to https://internetmusicking.com 
<https://internetmusicking.com>. The conference is committed to ensuring 
a diversity of views along with a code of conduct following the REACH 
Inclusive Conference Guide.**The organising committee is Raquel Campos 
Valverde (King’s College London), Steven Gamble (University College 
Cork), and Jason Ng (University College Cork).

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