Call for Papers – Digital Culture: Promises and Discomforts
Digital Culture and Communication Section of ECREA Workshop
Bonn, 2-5 October, 2013
The ongoing mediatisation process is subject to social transformations as well
as technical innovation processes and creative practices. We endorse digital
technologies with the promises of a better way of life, solving our problems of
managing the world’s complexity, allowing better participatory policies and
helping us in our daily life. At the same time, however, we are confronted with
the fundamental problems of technological structures, such as the problems of
Internet surveillance, control and the unequal distribution of power on the
Web. Looking at digital cultures as a driving force of social change, we find
ourselves confronted with a variety of contradictory images of digital culture
and its possible futures.
In this workshop we want to critically discuss the promises and discomforts of
digital culture taking into account the tensions raised by different material
practices, understandings and social orders around the role of digital media in
performing social change. Special focus lies on the three aspects of Digital
Culture:
(1) Digital imaginations and narratives
The images of future are drawn in tecno-scapes, like in science-fiction films,
artificial intelligence designs, virtual worlds or metaverses. What kinds of
individuals, societies and environments are imagined through the growing
pervasiveness of Digital Culture into our lives? How digital imaginaries shape
our experience and relate to our ways of narrating ourselves and our creative
practices? What are the role of innovation, creative industries and urbanlabs
in the design of the future and in the different kinds of social intervention?
How digital imagination is performing new narrative forms as well as
transforming knowledge production and sharing?
(2) Digital Neighbourhoods and Citizenship
Among the existing networked digital technologies it is smartphones and tablet
computers, which are becoming increasingly popular at an extraordinary pace.
These devices not only make digital media applications truly ubiquitous but
also create an abundance of digital location-sensitive information, which
saturates local places, social relations, and the perception and organisation
of neighbourhoods. The concept of space turns into a mash-up of material and
digital places, creating new forms of the social while at the same time
renegotiating the cultural and political logics of local/global or
private/public. How does the use of digital media trigger new social phenomena,
such as altered forms and modes of communication, collaboration, consumption,
infrastructure, mobility or public service?
(3) Digital Engagement and Social Change
Digital engagement manifests itself in a broad range of digital practices.
People discursively engage through and with digital media and thus dissolve
spatial, temporal and social boundaries. Especially a few popular commercial
social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, are presumed to play a crucial role
in the process of social change by means of interaction and connectivity. On a
political dimension, citizens and activists voice their opinions, discuss
political issues, organize and mobilize for protest in new or alternative
public spheres. However, it remains unclear, whether and in which
differentiations digital media engagement affects established power relations
and thus promotes social change. Which diverse forms of political engagement
unfold in digital media environments? How can underlying technological and
power structures of media be rendered visible and to what extent do they affect
the possibilities and boundaries of digital engagement?
We welcome papers picking up any of the described issues and topics and we will
also consider contributions related with digital forms of social intervention,
art projects or urbanlabs proposals. Extended abstracts should be no longer
than 700 words, written in English and contain a clear outline of the argument,
the theoretical framework, methodology and results (if applicable).
Participants may submit more than one proposal, but only one paper by the same
first author might be accepted. Panel and paper proposals from PhD students and
early career scholars are particularly welcome.
All proposals should be submitted by April 19, 2013 to
ecreadigitalcult...@gmail.com. Notifications of acceptance will be
sent out after June 13, 2013.
Keynote Speakers:
Annette Markham (Umeå University, Sweden)
Jakob Svensson (Karlstad University, Sweden)
Venue:
The workshop will take place at the Department of Media Studies of the
University of Bonn, Germany, Poppelsdorfer Allee 47, 53115, Bonn. The Workshop
date is October 2nd – 5th, 2013.
Go to dccecrea2013.uni-bonn.de for more information on the workshop venue and
registration.
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