From: Hands, Joss
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 15 November 2010 15:21
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Platform Politics, Call For Papers
Platform Politics - Call for Papers
A Multidisciplinary Conference in Cambridge, UK, 29-30 April, 2011
Wired recently announced the ‘death’ of the Web, based on the premise that
platforms are becoming the primary mode of access to the Internet. Platforms
are portals or applications that offer specific Internet services, frameworks
for social interaction, or interfaces to access other networked communications
and information distribution systems. Additionally the prevalence of mobile
computing and its operating systems, that prioritise Internet access via ‘apps’
not web browsers, is intensifying this transformation, and this model is now
being applied to tablet computing - and may well soon spread into general
computing and computer mediated communication. These platforms are able to take
advantage of the scale-free architecture of the Internet to built very large
user bases and communities of interest. However, unlike the world-wide-web,
these platforms are often proprietorial, have closed protocols and operate as a
kind of privatised public space. As such platforms themselves are becoming the
object and enabler of politics, but also new arenas of control. Therefore
network politics can be seen as pertaining not only to the question of content
(what questions, agendas and activities are taken up and promoted as
political?) but also to the role of platforms and apps as political ‘objects’
that shape the form and the structure of political mediation.
Such proprietorial platforms as Facebook and Twitter have been used in the
various modes of organization of political events, both on and offline, and
have been discussed with enthusiasm as new tools for stimulating the democratic
process, with electoral campaigns, and as organising tools to influence public
opinion and create pressure groups. At the same time the proprietorial nature
of these platforms and their role as an integral part of a ‘communicative
capitalism’ works to create a situation of great ambiguity and has not gone
unnoticed in either network theory or software development. There is, however,
an emerging movement of software development for activism, and
non-proprietorial social networking, that places at its core the values of
openness, decentralisation and not-for-profit projects - such as Diaspora and
Thimbl - that are emblematic of the alternative political economies of network
politics. So the question of how politics is increasingly processed through the
form of software and hardware design, as well as the hacking of closed
platforms and creation of peer-to-peer networks, is a pressing one. This
conference thus wishes to engage with the full range of these concerns and to
map out the place of software, hardware and online platforms, as a realm of
both control, but also as opportunity for radical political practices, in the
‘democratising’ of democracy, and in the challenge to the ‘interpassive’
political economy of communicative capitalism.
Hence, this conference is interested in such
questions as:
● What are the platforms on which network
politics takes place and what can we think of as political ‘action’ in this
context?
● What are the particular forms of platform
politics and how can we theorize such forms and practices?
● Can we extend critical theory into such new
modalities as media critique through software?
● How to think circuit bending, hardware hacking
and such practices as political?
● What are the future forms and new conceptualisations
of hacking that merit attention?
● Can we really conceive the ‘openness’ of FLOSS
(Free, Libre, Open Source Software) as a genuinely radical practice or
rather another circuit in the production of
communicative capital?
● Is it too late to ‘de-monetise’ social media?
We invite theoretical interventions, empirical papers, as well as case studies
from theorists, practitioners, and activists to engage with the question of
“platform politics”.
Speakers include: Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths College, University of London),
Michael Goddard (University of Salford), Tim Jordan (Open University/King’s
College, University of London), Dmytri Kleiner (Telekommunisten), Tiziana
Terranova (University of Naples, L’Orientale). Also with Greg Elmer (Ryerson
University) and Ganaele Langlois (University of Ontario Institute of
Technology) representing the Infoscape
Research Lab.
Please send your abstracts of up to 400 words by Tuesday 1 February 2011
to both organisers:[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] -
acceptances will be announced by Tuesday15 February 2011.
This conference is part of the project Exploring New Configurations of Network
Politics, funded by the AHRC and situated at Anglia Ruskin University,
Cambridge, UK. The project’s previous events have tackled methodological and
theoretical questions underpinning network politics, as well as new object
oriented approaches for interdisciplinary analysis.
More info on the project:
http://www.networkpolitics.org
Platform Politics, Call For papers PFD Version
-------------------------------------------------------------
Dr
Joss Hands
Senior
Lecturer, Communication, Film and Media
International
Links Tutor
Co-Director
ARCDigital
Anglia
Ruksin University
Cambridge
CB1 1PT
0845
1962254 (Int.+44 (0)1223 196 2254)
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