[bestbits] CfP Internet, Participation, and Democracy: Opportunities for the Global South

[Becky Lentz]

> *please circulate widely*
> 
> 
> Call for Papers
> Internet, Participation, and Democracy: Opportunities for the Global South
> Abstracts (300 words) are due February 12th
> Please direct questions and abstracts to this email: mexsocwarwick at gmail.com
> <mailto:mexsocwarwick at gmail.com>
> 
> 
> This one-day conference will be hosted at the University of Warwick, UK, and
> will take place on March 17th
> 
> 
>     The Internet is being used as a tool to fill the gaps on previous
> structures of scrutiny, surveillance, authority and governance. The role
> social platforms have played in social uprisings highlights the attempts to
> exploit Internet affordances in order to trigger both the disrupting power and
> the potential for organization of new media and communication technologies.
> During the Arab Spring, Facebook and Twitter were used to organize
> horizontally structured demonstrations, while in Iceland they served as tools
> of engagement for the drafting of a new constitution. Blogs are constantly
> being used as precarious ways to speak where human right issues do not allow
> dissidence; organization to enact legitimate forms of protest are now
> seamlessly made through social media; traditional democratic processes have
> adapted to new technological channels, while new democratic efforts have also
> arisen empowered by digital tools. Both anti-systemic and systemic political
> agendas are being enabled and extended by Internet technology.
>     We are interested in critical readings of these events; novel approaches
> into the politics of the networks; challenges and opportunities of the
> Internet as a tool for democratization, participation and collective action
> worldwide and particularly in the Global South. The conference Internet,
> Participation and Society is an invitation to deal with new proposals and
> views of this field of inquiry. It will bring together academics and civic
> society innovators to discuss and analyse the disruptive impact of the
> Internet and more importantly to hint to new ways in which it can be use to
> increase public scrutiny and political engagement in the developing regions.
>  
> We particularly welcome papers on:
> 
> 
> € Social media as organization tool
> € E-democracy
> € Political uses of social media in the global south
> € Decentralized governance
> € Political engagement
> € Authority challenges
> € Cartographic politics
> € Disruption and disobedience via new media
> € Open-source government
> € Hacker culture and cryptopolitics
> 
> 
> Relevant topics for the conference include, but are not limited to:
> 
> 
> € How are social and economic organisations renewed by communication
> technologies?
> € How media actors and media technologies are changing relationship between
> civil society and the state?
> € What is the role of the media in promoting democratic governance?
> € What kind of entities emerge from the encounter between traditional politics
> and e-democracy?
> € How are media strengthens democratic governance in the global south?
> € How digital communications are challenging traditional and hegemonic streams
> of information?
> € What patterns of governance are being shaped by media technologies?
> € Does new media creates its own set of inequality participatory mechanisms?
> € How to deal with the former problems arose by social media and other
> Internet technologies?
> 
> 
> Keynote speakers:
> Prof. Christian Fuchs // University of Westminster, UK
> Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo // University College London, UK
> Dr. Joss Hands // University of New Castle, UK
> 
> 
> We look forward to welcome you in Warwick
> 
> 
> Warwick Mexican Society




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