[Commlist] CFP: Digital Platforms and Agency

Call for Abstracts:*Digital Platforms and Agency*
Special Section of Lateral

https://csalateral.org/upcoming/#digital-platforms-agency 
<https://csalateral.org/upcoming/#digital-platforms-agency>

How do digital platforms shape our agency, and how do we shape digital 
platforms in turn? What is the role of digital platforms in forming our 
social, cultural, and political practices?  How and whom do digital 
platforms (dis)empower? This special section of Lateral invites scholars 
from diverse fields to advance critical cultural inquiry at the 
convergence of platforms and agency on digital, networked, and/or new media.

A digital platform is a standard which facilitates computational 
interactions between users and systems, according to Ian Bogost. 
Ubiquitous but self-effacing, platforms increasingly mediate the 
constitution and expression of consciousness. Troubling clean divisors 
between humanity and technology, platforms pose a challenge to 
monolithic, individuated, and humanist notions of agency that the field 
of cultural studies is uniquely poised to address.

Thus, this section calls for scholars to attend to the ways in which 
platforms differentially amplify, accelerate, diminish, and subvert the 
agency of users, systems, and communities. We see this work following 
Beth Coleman’s characterization of networked agency as “the disruptive 
technology of our time” which troubles clean divisors between 
human/nonhuman, virtual/actual, and individual/system. This section will 
deepen Coleman’s provocation by demystifying discrepancies of access, 
leverage, and capacity that characterize the emergence of platforms 
within our stratified political system.

We seek a diverse collection of essays that reflect the 
interdisciplinarity of cultural studies and platform studies. We 
encourage submissions from myriad traditions and approaches including 
media studies, political economy, performance studies, communication, 
composition, science and technology studies, gender studies, sociology, 
computer science, and more.

Please send all submissions and inquiries 
(todigitalplatformsandagency /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(digitalplatformsandagency /at/ gmail.com)>.

Potential authors should submit a 500-word abstract by*June 30, 2023*to 
co-editors Elaine Venter and Reed Van Schenck to be considered for 
publication.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the editors by August 30, 2023. Final 
submissions for publication of 5,000–9,000 words expected by March 1, 
2024. All submissions will undergo a double-anonymous peer review 
process according to journal policies. No Article Processing Charge or 
any other payments from authors will be required.


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