[Previous message][Next message][Back to index]
[Commlist] CfA: ICA pre-conference - The Political Power of IT Industries
Thu Oct 10 22:22:11 GMT 2024
Call for abstracts:
The Political Power of Information Technology Industries
ICA 2025 pre-conference
To be held at the University of Denver, June 12, 2025, 9:00AM – 4:30PM
Abstract submission deadline: January 31, 2025
*Call also available here*: https://t.ly/ZbeO5 <https://t.ly/ZbeO5>
Affiliated with the Communication, Law and Policy Division and the Media
Industries Interest Group of ICA
Sponsored by the Institute for Information Policy at Pennsylvania State
University and the
Underwood Institute
Co-Organizers: Roei Davidson, Amit Schejter, Krishna Jayakar
Scientific Committee: Roei Davidson, Krishna Jayakar, Brandie Nonnecke,
Rodrigo Cetina Presuel, Amit Schejter & Richard Taylor
The information technology (IT) industries occupy a powerful position in
society. They develop, operate and sell key data infrastructures and
devices that enable major social and political processes to take place
(Plantin et al., 2018). Ownership of these infrastructures gives them
“privileged access” (Srnicek, 2017, p. 44) to user activities and great
wealth. These provide them in turn with significant power that directly
impacts the political rights as well as conditions of people worldwide.
Within their infrastructures, these industries often operate as if they
own fiefdoms, enjoying broad powers to shape and restrict users’
behaviors, and designing systems that grant users feudal power over
others (Schneider, 2023).
In the past, the IT industries - including software, hardware, storage,
and internet platforms - were reluctant to participate in political life
and overtly exert power but rather turned to the construction of
computational devices and networks as alternative spaces for individual
fulfillment (Turner, 2006). However, in recent years, IT firms (Dror,
2015) and entrepreneurs (Creech & Maddox, 2022; Karppi & Nieborg, 2021)
have been more explicit in their public commitments and interventions.
They have used their access to data to promote particular political
agendas and “choreograph publics” (Murray & Flyverbom, 2021, p. 630)
consonant with both their narrow corporate interests and more general
social visions. They provide political campaigns with technical
assistance (Kreiss & McGregor, 2018) and regulate political speech
(Kreiss & McGregor, 2019). They have influenced public policy domains
such as education in ways that promote the adoption of the systems they
develop and the values they espouse (Davidson et al., 2024; Sims, 2017;
Tamir & Davidson, 2020). In some areas, such as national security, the
state has relied on IT firms to carry out core political functions by
proxy (Chachko, 2021; Feldstein, 2021). Prominent IT executives and
entrepreneurs claim the authority and jurisdiction to participate in
moral debates well beyond the confines of the industry (Daub, 2020), and
network celebrities connected with these industries do so as well
(Turner & Larson, 2015). Some industry personnel participate in
political activism leveraging their occupational identity and social
status as technology experts. In many of these cases, the industry’s
power is not only mediated by the socio-technical systems it develops
but is also applied using direct interventions (Eyal & Buchholz, 2010)
which rely on human interaction and social discourse. In reaction to
these interventions and the increased power of the industry more
generally, governments (both national and supra-national) have acted to
curb industry power or shape it for their own needs sometimes in a bid
to deepen systems of political control (Feldstein, 2021; Hutson, 2023).
In addition, governments often restrict foreign firms and maintain close
ties with domestic ones (Huang & Tsai, 2022).
Given the more proactive role the IT industries play in political life
we wish to ask in this pre-conference: How do the IT industries
intervene in political campaigns? How do these industries shape the
public policy process through lobbying, donations and consulting, both
in relation to media and internet policy and in relation to broader
policy domains? How do their products algorithmically affect the
political process? What role do industrial actors play in opposing, or
supporting and sometimes leading activist movements? How do industrial
actors intervene in intellectual debates? and how do governments respond
to industry interventions and/or co-opt the IT industries for their own
purposes?
In posing these questions and related ones, we welcome theoretical and
empirical contributions that draw on diverse methodological approaches
(qualitative, quantitative, and computational) to interrogate these
industries’ political role around the world nationally and
trans-nationally in both democratic and authoritarian regimes.
Submission topics could include but need not be restricted to:
*Intellectual interventions such as lectures, media appearances, news
coverage, podcasts, blogging, social media, think-tanks, official
testimony, and industry research
*Political dimensions inherent to the design and functioning of IT
platforms and services
*Lobbying and other forms of participation in the public policy process
*Corporate, investor and worker activism
*Political donations
*Participating in and supporting political campaigns and other elements
of the formal political process
*Supporting, providing, or replacing state functions
*National and supra-national policy related to the IT industries
-------------------------------------------------
Workshop Organizers: Institute for Information Policy, Penn State.
Submissions: Interested scholars are invited to submit a 500-word
abstract by January 31, 2025. Authors of selected papers and abstracts
will be notified by February 21, 2025. Full papers based on invited
abstracts are due May 12, 2025. Proposals and papers should be sent by
e-mail to the Workshop Organizers at (pennstateIIP /at/ psu.edu)
<mailto:(pennstateIIP /at/ psu.edu)>. Inquiries should also be directed to
that address.
Registration Fee: There will be a $50.00 registration fee for
participants to cover the cost of food and refreshments during the
Workshop. Limited funding will be available to waive the registration
fee of at least some graduate student attendees who will be presenting
at the pre-conference.
Following the pre-conference, authors will be invited to submit a full
paper for potential inclusion in a peer-reviewed special issue of the
Journal of Information Policy.
References
Chachko, E. (2021). National Security by Platform. Stanford Technology
Law Review, 25(1), 55–140.
Creech, B., & Maddox, J. (2022). Thus spoke Zuckerberg: Journalistic
discourse, executive personae, and the personalization of tech industry
power. New Media & Society, 14614448221116344.
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221116344
<https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221116344>
Daub, A. (2020). What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the
Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley. FSG Originals.
Davidson, R., Rein, N., & Tamir, E. (2024). The time-making capacity of
the technology industry and its consequences for public life. Journal of
Cultural Economy, 17(1), 55–72.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2261483
<https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2261483>
Eyal, G., & Buchholz, L. (2010). From the Sociology of Intellectuals to
the Sociology of Interventions. Annual Review of Sociology, 36(1),
117–137. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102625
<https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102625>
Feldstein, S. (2021). The rise of digital repression: How technology is
reshaping power, politics, and resistance. Oxford University Press.
Huang, J., & Tsai, K. S. (2022). Securing Authoritarian Capitalism in
the Digital Age: The Political Economy of Surveillance in China. The
China Journal, 88, 2–28. https://doi.org/10.1086/720144
<https://doi.org/10.1086/720144>
Hutson, M. (2023). Rules to keep AI in check: Nations carve different
paths for tech regulation. Nature, 620(7973), 260–263.
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02491-y
<https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02491-y>
Karppi, T., & Nieborg, D. B. (2021). Facebook confessions: Corporate
abdication and Silicon Valley dystopianism. New Media & Society, 23(9),
2634–2649. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820933549
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820933549>
Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2018). Technology Firms Shape Political
Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With
Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle. Political
Communication, 35(2), 155–177.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814
<https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814>
Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2019). The “arbiters of what our voters
see”: Facebook and Google’s struggle with policy, process, and
enforcement around political advertising. Political Communication,
36(4), 499–522.
Murray, J., & Flyverbom, M. (2021). Datafied corporate political
activity: Updating corporate advocacy for a digital era. Organization,
28(4), 621–640. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420928516
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420928516>
Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018).
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and
Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293–310.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553>
Schneider, N. (2023). Afterlives of the Californian Ideology|
Homesteading on a Superhighway: The Californian Ideology and Everyday
Politics. International Journal of Communication, 17, 4255–4271.
Sims, C. (2017). Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of
Techno-Idealism. Princeton University Press.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity.
Tamir, E., & Davidson, R. (2020). The good despot: Technology firms’
interventions in the public sphere. Public Understanding of Science,
29(1), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519879368
<https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519879368>
Turner, F. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand,
the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University
Of Chicago Press.
Turner, F., & Larson, C. (2015). Network celebrity: Entrepreneurship and
the new public intellectuals. Public Culture, 27(1 75), 53–84.
---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------
[Previous message][Next message][Back to index]
