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CfP: Boundaries, boundary concepts, and datafication (Digital Culture & Society)
by louisravn.cph＠gmail.com 24 Apr '26

24 Apr '26

*** apologies for cross-posting *** Dear colleagues, We warmly invite proposals to our Special Issue “Boundaries, boundary concepts, and datafication” in Digital Culture <https://digicults.org/> & Society. This special issue brings together articles that examine the relationship between boundaries and datafication practices through the use, critical evaluation, and reconfiguration of boundary concepts. It aims to advance systematic exploration of boundaries and boundary concepts in the context of datafication. It investigates the potentials and limitations of analytical concepts such as boundary objects, boundary work, boundary infrastructures, boundary organisations, and related terms as well as boundaries more broadly. The special issue will include empirical analyses, conceptual/theoretical reflections, and methodological explorations on the interplay between datafication and boundary dynamics. Schedule and Submission * Abstracts (max. 300 words) and short biographical note (max. 75 words) with specification of section: 31st May 2026 * Notification of authors/invitation to submit full/short paper: 15th June 2026 * Submission of full papers: 15th September 2026 * Publication of special issue: Spring 2027 Please send your abstract and short biographical note by 31st May 2026 to boundaryconcepts(a)gmail.com <mailto:boundaryconcepts@gmail.com> . Based on the abstracts, the editors will pre-select authors that will be invited to submit a full paper. All full papers will be double-blind peer reviewed. For more details, please see the full call for papers: https://www.sowi.uni-stuttgart.de/abteilungen/tu/aktuelles/CfP_Boundaryconc… All the best, Yana Boeva, Louis Ravn, and Sarah R. Davies (guest editors)

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CfA 4S Toronto: Technological Frontiers of Body & Land
by Jillian (Lee) Crandall 23 Apr '26

23 Apr '26

Dear Colleagues: We invite you to submit an abstract to our Open Panel <https://www.xcdsystem.com/4sonline/abstract/abstract.cfm> at the next 4S Annual Meeting in Toronto. *Title: *TECHNOLOGICAL FRONTIERS OF BODY AND LAND *ID* # 38 *Deadline: *April 30, 2026 *Organizers: *J. Lee Crandall, UC Berkeley (Geography); Ajung Ryoo, UC Berkeley (Anthropology) *Session Description* In this open panel, we seek to critically explore the concurrent forms and formations of technological “frontierism” on land and body. We will analyze the evolving role of technopower and technological experimentation on the long duree of frontierism as connected with settler colonialism. The technological frontier has long had implications on land and lives, including ontological questions concerning nature and the human. Re-mobilizing Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis” (1920), we posit that the frontier has always been technologically mediated in various forms of conquest and dispossession, enacting a strategic emptying-out of land through the “elimination of the native” (Wolfe, 2006). This process opens up a so-called blank slate on which a privileged group of “technologically advanced” settlers can remake the land and, in so doing, remake and cultivate themselves and future populations. Turner’s thesis remains highly relevant considering the confluence of Silicon Valley and the US federal government’s recent call to “reopen the frontier” to build new high-tech “freedom cities,” claiming to revitalize the American dream. Technological frontier imaginaries extend beyond Westward expansionism and Manifest Destiny, and bring curious political convergences of reactionary conservative and technologically progressive Silicon Valley mindsets toward jurisdiction-shopping and the acquisition of new territories (e.g. charter cities, network states) on which to experiment with new AI/drone/military/bio technologies. These efforts aim to contest and supersede not only the limits of economic and urban growth, but also limits of the body and life, by developing new eugenic and life-extending technologies. This interdisciplinary panel traces the “nexus[es] of power” (Ginsburg & Rapp 1995), “global assemblages” (Ong & Collier 2005) and mediating “surrounds” (Landecker 2016) that configure the concurrent technological frontiers, and questions the new ontological conditions and implications created by them (Haraway 1991). *Extra Details:* While Silicon Valley frontier logics are often centered on the United States, we are interested in submissions that consider technological frontiers of the body and land transnationally, taking into account the geographic specificities of legal, regulatory, political, and spatial constraints and affordances. Relevant paper topics might include, but are not limited to, research on: case studies of new-tech cities and technological frontiers; transhumanism, gene-editing, and technological experimentation on/for longevity; projects on space flight and space infrastructure. We are particularly interested in cultivating an inter/multidisciplinary panel. While much work has been done independently in the fields of geography, urban studies, anthropology, and feminist STS on geographic and bodily frontiers, fewer research has brought these trajectories together with multi/interdisciplinary perspectives. We see this cross-disciplinary conversation through an STS lens as the panel’s primary affordance, which will offer a unique contribution to our respective disciplinary fields. Please reach out to me with any questions, and we look forward to your submission. All Best, Lee -- Jillian (Lee) Crandall (they/them) PhD Student <https://geography.berkeley.edu/jillian-crandall>, Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley *Recent Publication*: Crandall, J. (2025). Plotting cryptoeconomic imaginaries and counterplotting the network state <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.peg.2024.100028>. Progress in Economic Geography, 3(1).

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CfP: HICSS Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies minitrack (due June 15, 2026; conference January 2027)
by Seth Lewis 23 Apr '26

23 Apr '26

Call for papers: HICSS Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies minitrack Location: Big Island of Hawaii, USA (at the Hilton Waikoloa Village) Conference dates: January 5-8, 2027 Deadline to submit full papers: June 15, 2026 Dear colleagues, We invite you to submit your research to the HICSS Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies minitrack. This minitrack focuses on the study of communication taking place on digital and social media. Communication is the making of meaning and culture among people, with growing interconnections with a world of human-machine interactions. In mediated form, communication can involve text, emoticons, audio, images, video, virtual or augmented reality, or any combination thereof. The minitrack welcomes research on all forms of digital communication, including interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication, as well as a wide variety of contexts for communication, such as news, politics, entertainment, education, social movements and activism, etc. Additionally, this minitrack attends to the emerging interplay of human-machine communication—as evident, for example, in recent developments of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and the tools they afford for conversation and communication. For further details about the minitrack and its aims, see https://CommunicationHicss.wordpress.com/ This minitrack is part of the Digital and Social Media track of HICSS. The HICSS-60 conference will be held January 5-8, 2027, at the Hilton Waikoloa Village, on the Big Island of Hawaii, USA. (For information about the conference, see https://hicss.hawaii.edu/) Submissions will be accepted until June 15, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. HST. To submit: https://hicss-submissions.org/ The minitrack is the successor of the Mediated Conversation minitrack, which itself was a successor of the Persistent Conversation minitrack (established by Tom Erickson and Susan Herring at HICSS in 1999). The original minitrack was focused on the novelty of conversational persistence. With the prevalence of mediated conversation in contemporary life and a much wider landscape of digital communication that has emerged in recent years, we are called upon to consider a broader field of issues. This minitrack brings together researchers and innovators to explore Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies and their implications; to raise new socio-technical, theoretical, methodological, ethical, pedagogical, linguistic, and social questions; and to suggest new methods, perspectives, and design approaches. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - Communication dynamics (from mass to interpersonal to other forms) that shape the development of digital media spaces and their role in public and private life - The role of artificial intelligence in communication, including in areas such as mediated conversation, news, and social media - Ethics of communication, digital conversation, and media technologies: e.g., privacy, safety, deception, freedom of speech, security, and information warfare - Human-machine communication and related forms of conversation (e.g., chatbots) - The role of conversation in understanding the interplay between media producers and media audiences - The dynamics and analysis of large-scale conversation systems (e.g., MOOCs and big data applications) - Methods for analyzing communication, mediated conversation, and media technologies: qualitative, quantitative, data analytics, etc. - Innovation in the intersections of communication, mediated conversation, and media technologies - Domain-specific applications, opportunities, and challenges of communication, digital conversation, and media technologies (e.g., in education, healthcare, social movements, government, citizen participation, management, and news media) - Studies of virtual communities and the discourses in digital spaces - Novel properties of platforms as they relate to communication/conversation dynamics - Power dynamics and conversational patterns among social media users - The role of communication, conversation, and media technologies in knowledge management and organizations - Conversation visualizations and analytics - The role of listeners, lurkers, and silent interactions Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies minitrack co-chairs: Seth C. Lewis (Primary contact) University of Oregon sclewis(a)uoregon.edu Gina M. Masullo The University of Texas at Austin Gina.Masullo(a)austin.utexas.edu Yoram M. Kalman The Open University of Israel yoramka(a)openu.ac.il -- Seth C. Lewis, Ph.D. Professor, Director of Journalism, and Shirley Papé Chair in Emerging Media School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon NEW BOOK: Journalism in the Age of AI<https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7447271181805780993/>, coming August 2026

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Mapping Culture using Complex Networks: Entangling Science and the Humanities
by Daniel Chavez Heras 23 Apr '26

23 Apr '26

Dear AIR listers I am pleased to invite you to the below event next week. Please consider circulating this opportunity to your students and networks. 🗓️ 28 April 2026 16:30 to 18:00 BST 📍 King's College London, Strand Campus and 🌐 online Mapping Culture using Complex Networks: Entangling Science and the Humanities Wikipedia is one of the most remarkable collective efforts, where millions of anonymous editors work independently to build one of the most significant sources of knowledge humanity has ever created. Beyond the explicit knowledge presented in its articles, a vast amount of implicit learning emerges from the dense network of internal links connecting people, ideas, and works. This extensive network (~173 million connections in the English version) can be represented as a directed graph and has been used in several studies, ranging from computing semantic relatedness to natural language processing. In this talk, we present a mathematical approach to transform the directed network of internal links in Wikipedia into a weighted, undirected network that reveals and quantifies subtle connections among individuals, places, oeuvres, and ideas. Speaker: Gustavo Ariel Schwartz is a physicist and writer. After receiving his PhD in Physics from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 2001, he spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). He then moved to the Donostia International Physics Center (Spain) to continue his research. Since 2008, he has been a scientist at the National Spanish Research Council (CSIC), where he has conducted his research at the Material Physics Centre in San Sebastián. He has published more than seventy scientific articles. He has co-authored the theatre play, The Interview, which premiered in San Sebastián in 2013. He also co-edited the collective work #Nodos, in which nearly 90 scientists, writers, artists, and scholars from all over the world explore the possibilities of transdisciplinary knowledge. The English edition has been published by Intellect Press in the UK. In 2019, he published Creativium, a transdisciplinary project that analyses and portrays scientific creativity. Register in person (London): https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/mapping-culture-using-complex-networks-entangl… Register online if you are joining remotely: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/73e1647c-6395-4cd3-8895-4157dddd74… This event is organised by the Computational Humanities Research group<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/computational-humanities-research-group> in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. For questions, contact: Dr Daniel Chávez Heras<https://movingpixel.net/> Lecturer in Digital Culture and Creative Computing Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London

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CFP: Histories of publishing on media, for History of Media Studies
by Park, Dave 22 Apr '26

22 Apr '26

a continuación en español - History of Media Studies solicits proposals for a special section on the histories of publishing in the media, communication, and film studies fields. The focus of the special section is on the role of publishers—both commercial and nonprofit—in these fields’ development. We are keen to highlight the contributions of publishing houses and publication initiatives from around the world, including those beyond the Anglophone North Atlantic. Most existing histories of the media, communication, and film studies fields take the publication context of the works they survey for granted. The premise of the special section is that specific publishers—and the wider world of academic publishing—have made a difference in the development of local, national, and subfield traditions of scholarship. Very few works of dedicated history have attended to these publishing ventures. The special section will provide a forum for new accounts, in conversation with these fields’ intellectual and institutional histories. Proposals of around 1000 words, including references, should be sent to hms(a)mediastudies.press, with the subject line: Histories of Publishing. The deadline for submitting proposals is September 15, 2026. Please reach out to us at hms(a)mediastudies.press<mailto:hms@mediastudies.press> if you have any questions or ideas. Proposals may be submitted in English or Spanish, the two languages that History of Media Studies publishes. We expect most contributions to be research articles (generally 14,000 words or fewer), but we will also consider other formats, including research notes, commentaries, interviews/oral histories, overlay re-publications, and contextualized archival materials; please see our Author Guidelines for more details: https://hms.mediastudies.press/author-guidelines Suggested approaches include, but are not limited to: * case studies of media-related publishing houses * accounts of small and independent presses, as incubators of heterodox media scholarship * treatments of significant commercial publishers (e.g., Routledge) * studies of influential book series, including translation series * accounts of institutional publishing (e.g., UNESCO or CIESPAL) * histories of the publishing initiatives of scholarly associations, including association-affiliated journals * self-publishing and informal circulation in activist media scholarshi * the role of translation and translated editions * treatments of the relationship between books and journal portfolios within presses * historical accounts of the political economy of publishing and its effects on the field * reflections on the role of editors and editing as mostly invisible intellectual labor * accounts of publishing initiatives beyond the Anglophone world, including in Latin America * female-run initiatives, editors, and publishers Please reach out to hms(a)mediastudies.press with any questions. History of Media Studies is a peer-reviewed, scholar-run, diamond OA journal dedicated to scholarship on the history of research, education, and reflective knowledge about media and communication—as expressed through academic institutions; through commercial, governmental, and non-governmental organizations; and through “alter-traditions” of thought and practice often excluded from the academic mainstream. The journal publishes high-quality, original articles, reviews, and commentary on the history of this inter- and extra-disciplinary area as it has intersected with other fields in the social sciences and humanities—and with social practices beyond the academy. ## español *History of Media Studies* (hms.mediastudies.press) acepta propuestas para una sección especial sobre la historia de la publicación en los campos de estudios mediáticos, comunicación y cine. La sección especial se centra en el rol de los editores—tanto comerciales como sin ánimo de lucro—que han influido en el desarrollo de estos campos. Estamos especialmente interesados en destacar las contribuciones de editoriales y de iniciativas de publicación que se han producido en estos campos alrededor del mundo, incluyendo aquellos más allá de las fronteras del mundo anglófono en el Atlántico Norte. La mayoría de las historias que existen sobre los medios, la comunicación y el cine asumen la publicación de sus trabajos de manera poco reflexiva. La premisa de esta sección especial es precisamente que determinados editores e iniciativas editoriales—y, en general, el ámbito de la publicación académica—han marcado la diferencia en el desarrollo de tradiciones locales y nacionales del campo de la comunicación y sus áreas de interés. Muy pocos trabajos se han centrado en la historia de estos procesos de publicación. Esta sección especial generará un foco para nuevos enfoques, dialogando con las historias intelectuales e institucionales de estas áreas de estudio en comunicación. Las propuestas, de en torno a 1000 palabras, incluyendo referencias, pueden ser enviadas a [hms@mediastudies.press](mailto:hms@mediastudies.press), con el asunto: Histories of Publishing/Historias de las publicaciones. La fecha límite para enviar las propuestas es el *15 de septiembre de 2026*. Por favor, contacte con nosotros (hms(a)mediastudies.press) si tiene preguntas o ideas al respecto. Aceptamos envíos tanto en inglés como en español, los dos idiomas en los que la revista *History of Media Studies* publica. Anticipamos que buena parte de las contribuciones serán artículos de investigación (generalmente en torno a 14000 palabras), pero consideraremos también otros formatos, incluyendo notas de investigación, comentarios, entrevistas o historias orales, re-publicaciones comentadas, y materiales de archivo contextualiados. Puede consultar más información en nuestras [Directrices para autores/as](https://hms.mediastudies.press/directrices-para-autores). Aunque no nos limitamos a ellos, sugerimos los siguientes enfoques: e * Estudios de caso de editoriales vinculadas con la comunicación y los medios * Historias de editoriales pequeñas o independientes, entendidas como incubadores de investigación heterodoxa sobre los medios * Análisis de editoriales signifivativas y comerciales (por ejemplo, Routledge o similares) * Estudios sobre series de publicaciones que hayan sido de relevancia, incluyendo series de traducciones * Análisis de publicaciones y/o editoriales institucionales (por ejemplo, UNESCO o CIESPAL) * Historias de las iniciativas de publicación de asociaciones académicas, incluyendo revistas vinculadas con estas asociaciones * Auto-publicaciones y circulación informal de textos vinculados con la investigación activista sobre los medios * Estudios sobre el papel de las traducciones y de las ediciones traducidas * Análisis de la relación entre los libros y las revistas dentro de iniciativas editoriales concretas * Análisis históricos de la economía política de la publicación y su influencia en el campo * Reflexiones sobre el rol de los editores y el proceso de edición como un trabajo intelectual invisible * Notas sobre las iniciativas de publicación más allá del mundo anglófono, incluyendo, pero sin limitarse a, Latinoamérica * Iniciativas editoriales y de publicación lideradas por mujeres Puede escribirnos a hms(a)mediastudies.press con cualquier pregunta. *History of Media Studies* es una revista revisada por pares y dirigida por académicos. Nuestro interés principal está en el pensamiento sobre la historia de la investigación, la educación y la reflexión sobre los medios y la comunicación, tal y como estas se han producido desde las instituciones académicas, desde organizaciones comerciales (gubernamentales o no), o desde los márgenes, a través las tradiciones alternativas de pensamiento que, a menudo, quedan excluidas de lo académico. La revista publica artículos originales de alta calidad, reseñas o comentarios sobre la historia de esta área; un área que se ha desarrollado frecuentemente en intersección con otros campos de las ciencias sociales, las humanidades, o con prácticas más allá de la academia.

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Call for Abstracts - Future Directions for Critical Data Center Studies - 4S Meeting Toronto
by Sandrine Lambert 22 Apr '26

22 Apr '26

Dear colleagues, Please find below and via this link<http://chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglhttps://static1.squarespace.…> the call for contributions for our open panel on Future directions for critical data center studies. This panel will take place as part of the 4S conference<https://www.4sonline.org/about_the_conference_toronto.php>, which will be held in Toronto from October 7 to 10, 2026. A 250-word abstract (in English) is expected by April 30 and should be submitted directly via the 4S meeting platform<https://www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions_toronto.php> (open panel). We look forward to reading your submissions, --- Sandrine Lambert Postdoctoral Fellow / Chercheuse postdoctorale Sociology & Anthropology Department | Milieux<https://milieux.concordia.ca/about/> Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology | Ethnography Lab<https://www.ethnographylabconcordia.ca/> Concordia University, Montreal sandrinelambert.com<https://www.sandrinelambert.com/> Please share the call or submit an abstract (250 words) for our accepted Open Panel (216) on Future directions for critical data center studies! Due date: April 30, 2026. Within a mere decade, data centers (DCs) went from being a marginal research topic to becoming a significant object of inquiry for social scientists – to the point that some have announced “critical data center studies” as a proper field (Edwards et al., 2024). As scholarship on DCs has reached a critical mass, and as its relevance is renewed with each new facility that materialises in the trail of global fervor for generative AI, we invite STS-minded scholars to discuss future orientations on DCs scholarship. Topics that can inform this discussion include, but are not limited to: 1/ Resisting DCs: With an increased visibility, DCs are facing stronger resistance from communities that have to live with them. If DCs are described as “extractive” (Brodie, 2025), do we fight them the same way we would fight a mine or a pipeline? In practice, do DC-related protests resemble NIMBYism, or broader, more collective action? 2/ The governance of DCs: The political economy of data center production has yet to be thoroughly documented, when even its main actors remain in the shadows (Greene, 2022). How do public actors at different scales of government manage to regulate the construction and extension of DCs? What could alternative models of digital infrastructures production backed by local public actors look like? Much like other infrastructures, digital or analog, DCs have increasingly been enmeshed in a process of financialisation: what are the actors and tools of this process? What are the consequences for DCs (size, location, overall characteristics) and for the surrounding areas? 3/ New methodological approaches to DCs: Early scholars of data centers have called for a wider use of ethnography and multimodality to apprehend this research object (Ortar et al., 2022). How has this call been answered so far, and what future perspectives can we draw from here? Scholarship on data centers is highly interdisciplinary, with academics coming from media studies, geography, urban studies, or anthropology. A shared inclination for STS, and a strong attention to the materiality of these infrastructures are probably the most common denominator among these authors. The annual 4S conference is therefore a highly relevant venue to discuss these issues. Panel convenors: · Sandrine Lambert, Concordia University, sandrine.lambert(a)mail.concordia.ca<mailto:sandrine.lambert@mail.concordia.ca> · Julia Frotey, INRS, julia.frotey(a)inrs.ca<mailto:julia.frotey@inrs.ca> · Morgan Mouton, INRS, morgan.mouton(a)inrs.ca<mailto:morgan.mouton@inrs.ca> · Émilie Sinclair, INRS, emilie.sinclair(a)inrs.ca<mailto:emilie.sinclair@inrs.ca> --- Sandrine Lambert Postdoctoral Fellow / Chercheuse postdoctorale Sociology & Anthropology Department | Milieux<https://milieux.concordia.ca/about/> Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology | Ethnography Lab<https://www.ethnographylabconcordia.ca/> Concordia University, Montreal sandrinelambert.com<https://www.sandrinelambert.com/>

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DeepLearn 2026: early registration April 25
by David Silva - IRDTA 22 Apr '26

22 Apr '26

****************************************************** 13th INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL ON DEEP LEARNING DeepLearn 2026 Orléans, France July 20-24, 2026 https://deeplearn.irdta.eu/2026/ ****************************************************** Co-organized by: University of Orléans Centre Val de Loire Doctoral College Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice – IRDTA Luxembourg/London ****************************************************** Early registration: April 25, 2026 ****************************************************** SCOPE: DeepLearn 2026 will be a research training event with a global scope aiming at updating participants on the most recent advances in the critical and fast developing area of deep learning. Previous events were held in Bilbao, Genova, Warsaw, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Guimarães, Luleå, Bournemouth, Bari, and Porto. Deep learning is a branch of artificial intelligence covering a spectrum of current frontier research and industrial innovation that provides more efficient algorithms to deal with large-scale data in a huge variety of environments: computer vision, neurosciences, speech recognition, language processing, human-computer interaction, drug discovery, biomedicine and healthcare, medical image analysis, recommender systems, advertising, fraud detection, robotics, games, business and finance, biotechnology, physics and astrophysics, biometrics, communications, climate sciences, geographic information systems, signal processing, genomics, materials design, video technology, social systems, earth and sustainability, mathematical proofs, etc. etc. The field is also raising a number of relevant questions about efficiency and robustness of the algorithms, explainability, transparency, interpretability, risks and safety, as well as important ethical concerns at the frontier of current knowledge that deserve careful multidisciplinary discussion. Most deep learning subareas will be displayed and main challenges identified through 16 four-hour and a half courses, 2 keynote lectures, 1 round table, and a hackathon competition among participants. Renowned academics and industry pioneers will lecture and share their views with the audience. The organizers are convinced that outstanding speakers will attract the brightest and most motivated students. Face to face interaction and networking will be main ingredients of the event. It will be also possible to fully participate in vivo remotely. ADDRESSED TO: Graduates, postgraduates and industry practitioners will be typical profiles of participants. However, there are no formal pre-requisites for attendance in terms of academic degrees, hence people less or more advanced in their career will be welcome as well. Since there will be a variety of levels, specific knowledge background may be assumed for some of the courses. Overall, DeepLearn 2026 is addressed to students, researchers and practitioners who want to keep themselves updated about recent developments and future trends. All will surely find it fruitful to listen to and discuss with major researchers, industry leaders and innovators. VENUE: DeepLearn 2026 will take place in Orléans, located in the heart of the Loire Valley, which was declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site in 2000. The venue will be: University of Orléans Faculty of Law, Economics and Management 11 rue de Blois 45100 Orléans, France https://www.univ-orleans.fr/en STRUCTURE: 3 courses will run in parallel during the whole event. Participants will be able to freely choose the courses they wish to attend as well as to move from one to another. All lectures will be videorecorded. Participants will be able to watch them again for 45 days after the event. An open session will give participants the opportunity to present their own work in progress in 5 minutes. Also companies will be able to present their industrial developments for 10 minutes. The school will include a hackathon, where participants will be able to work in teams to tackle several machine learning challenges. Full live online participation will be possible. The organizers highlight, however, the importance of face to face interaction and networking in this kind of research training event. KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Yingbin Liang (Ohio State University), Convergence Theory: How Fast Do Discrete Diffusion Models Generate? Le Song (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence), Towards AI-Driven Digital Organism: A System of Multiscale Foundation Models for Biology PROFESSORS AND COURSES: Nitesh Chawla (University of Notre Dame), [intermediate] Synthetic Data Generation and Learning from Imbalanced Data: From SMOTE to LLMs Jianfei Chen (Tsinghua University), [intermediate] Efficient Large Model Training and Inference Yuejie Chi (Yale University), [introductory/intermediate] Statistical and Algorithmic Foundations of Reinforcement Learning Bo Han (Hong Kong Baptist University), [introductory/intermediate] Trustworthy Machine Learning from Data to Models Jiawei Han (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), [intermediate] Structure-Guided, Theme-Based Knowledge Discovery with Large Language Models Mingyi Hong (University of Minnesota), [intermediate] Modern Optimization Algorithms for Large Language Models Cho-Jui Hsieh (University of California Los Angeles), [intermediate/advanced] Optimizers for Large Language Model Training Furong Huang (University of Maryland), [advanced] Generative AI Agents Tara Javidi (University of California San Diego), [intermediate] Active Physical Intelligence: Integrated Multimodal Sensing, Controlled Inference, and Spatio-Temporal Attention Yan Liu (University of Southern California), [intermediate] Time Series Foundation Models: From Forecasting to Reasoning Zhijin Qin (Tsinghua University), [intermediate/advanced] Token-Based Semantic Communications Aarti Singh (Carnegie Mellon University), [intermediate] Human Centered AI: Challenges and Opportunities Suvrit Sra (Technical University of Munich), [introductory/intermediate] Introduction to the Theory of Learning with Transformers Ivor Tsang (A*STAR Centre for Frontier AI Research), [introductory/intermediate] Long-Horizon Agentic Intelligence Ming-Hsuan Yang (University of California Merced), [advanced] Recent Advances in Multimodal Understanding and Generation Tong Zhang (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), [introductory/intermediate] Reinforcement Learning for Large Language Models OPEN SESSION: An open session will collect 5-minute voluntary oral presentations of work in progress by participants. They should submit a half-page abstract containing the title, authors, and summary of the research to david(a)irdta.eu by July 12, 2026. INDUSTRIAL SESSION: A session will be devoted to 10-minute demonstrations of practical applications of deep learning in industry. Companies interested in contributing are welcome to submit a 1-page abstract containing the program of the demonstration and the logistics needed. People in charge of the demonstration must register for the event. Abstracts have to be submitted to david(a)irdta.eu by July 12, 2026. HACKATHON: A hackathon will take place, where participants can voluntarily work in teams to tackle several machine learning challenges. They will be coordinated by Professor Sergei V. Gleyzer (University of Alabama). The challenges will be released 2 weeks before the beginning of the school. A jury will judge the submissions and the winners of each challenge will be announced by the end of August 2026. The winning teams will receive a modest monetary prize and the runners-up will get a certificate. SPONSORS: Companies/institutions/organizations willing to be sponsors of the event can download the sponsorship leaflet from https://deeplearn.irdta.eu/2026/sponsors/ ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Karim Abed-Meraim (Orléans, local co-chair) Sergei V. Gleyzer (Tuscaloosa, hackathon chair) Meryem Jabloun (Orléans, local co-chair) Carlos Martín-Vide (Tarragona, program chair) Santiago Montes (Tarragona, webpage) Sara Morales (Luxembourg, finances) Florian Nowicki (Orléans, social networks) Philippe Ravier (Orléans, local chair) David Silva (London, organization chair) REGISTRATION: It has to be done at https://deeplearn.irdta.eu/2026/registration/ The selection of 6 courses requested in the registration template is only tentative and non-binding. For logistical reasons, it will be helpful to have an estimation of the respective demand for each course. Since the capacity of the venue is limited, registration requests will be processed on a first come first served basis. The registration period will be closed and the on-line registration tool disabled when the capacity of the venue will have got exhausted. It is highly recommended to register prior to the event. FEES: Fees comprise access to all program activities and lunches. There are several early registration deadlines. Fees depend on the registration deadline. The fees for on site and for online participation are the same. ACCOMMODATION: Accommodation suggestions are available at https://deeplearn.irdta.eu/2026/accommodation/ CERTIFICATE: A certificate of successful participation will be delivered indicating the number of hours of academic activities (40). This should be sufficient for those participants who plan to request ECTS recognition from their home university. QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: david(a)irdta.eu ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Université d’Orléans Collège Doctoral Centre-Val de Loire Universitat Rovira i Virgili Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice – IRDTA, Luxembourg/London

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CfA 4S Toronto 2026 | From Bubbles to Rubbles: Ruins in the Age of AI
by RELLA, LUDOVICO 22 Apr '26

22 Apr '26

[with apologies for cross-posting] Dear colleagues, We warmly invite you to submit an abstract to our panel at the next 4S Annual Meeting in Toronto, October 7-10, 2026. P199: From Bubbles to Rubbles: Ruins in the Age of AI Submission link: https://www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions_toronto.php Panel ID: 199 Deadline: April 30, 2026 Organizers: Benedetta Catanzariti (University of Edinburgh) and Ludovico Rella (Durham University) Panel description: Since the public release of ChatGPT, generative AI has entered an accelerated phase of sociotechnical consolidation, marked by the rapid expansion of computational infrastructures, large-scale capital investment, complex debt and financing arrangements, and intensifying present and anticipated energy demands. The scale of these investments, the reliance on leveraged capital, and the increasingly circular financial and infrastructural entanglements among ostensibly competing actors have unfolded alongside growing public skepticism regarding the material and social returns of AI projects. This conjuncture has led commentators to frame generative AI in terms of speculative excess and the possibility of an AI ‘bubble.’ From an STS perspective, however, the question is not only whether such a bubble will burst, but how AI infrastructures reinforce or precipitate particular political-economic arrangements, ecological burdens, and forms of technological dependence. What kinds of infrastructural ‘ruins’ - data centers, energy systems, extractive supply chains, financial instruments - might be left behind if large-scale AI investment contracts? Conversely, if expansion continues, what enduring social, energy, and environmental footprints will be stabilized? Which actors across hardware and software industries, finance, states, and local communities will benefit or bear the costs of these trajectories? And how might the dynamics of the AI bubble be mobilized as an analytic lens for imagining alternative technological paths, governance regimes, and infrastructural futures beyond extractive and growth-oriented models? This panel invites contributions that engage with these questions and critically examine generative AI as a contested sociotechnical formation. This panel seeks abstracts (no more than 250 words) on topics including (but not limited to): * Ruins of cloud infrastructures and data centers * Energetic, ecological, and social afterlives of AI systems * Material residues (chips, minerals, water, labor) * Infrastructural failures and breakdown * Resistance, refusal, and post-cloud futures * Methods for studying decay, maintenance, and infrastructural ruins We look forward to receiving your submission. Please feel free to get in touch should you have any question! All the best, Benedetta & Ludovico

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Reminder - CFP RESET – “Content creators”. Capturing the economic, social, and material realities of creation on digital platforms – Proposal Deadline: May 4, 2026
by Quentin Gilliotte 22 Apr '26

22 Apr '26

*CALL FOR PAPERS - Special Issue : “Content creators”. Capturing the economic, social, and material realities of creation on digital platforms* *Reminder - Reset (Recherche en Sciences Social sur Internet - Social Science Research On Internet)* Dear members of the Association of Internet Researchers, We are delighted to announce the publication of a call for papers for the journal Reset (*Recherches en Sciences Sociales sur Internet*), entitled: *“Content creators”. Capturing the economic, social, and material realities of creation on digital platforms* Proposals are expected by *May 4, 2026*, and first versions of the selected submissions must be submitted by *November 23, 2026*. You can find the full call, available in French <https://journals.openedition.org/reset/6801> and English <https://journals.openedition.org/reset/6822>, on the journal’s website. French version: https://journals.openedition.org/reset/6801 English version: https://journals.openedition.org/reset/6822 This special issue, coordinated by Quentin Gilliotte (Carism, Université Panthéon-Assas), Marion Michel (Carism, Université Panthéon-Assas), and Phoebé Pigenet (Carism, Université Panthéon-Assas), seeks to bring together contributions that engage with one or more of the following areas: - 1. Social and Professional Trajectories of Content Creators - 2. Make a Living in the Content Creation Market - 3. Creative Production and Formatting Under Constraints Article abstracts (maximum 4,000 characters) are expected in Word format or equivalent by *May 4, 2026*. They should be sent to the following four addresses: - journal.reset(a)gmail.com - quentin.gilliotte(a)gmail.com - ppigenet(a)gmail.com - marion.michel(a)sciencespo.fr The proposal (abstract), written in English or French, must include: - the research question, - the methodology used (including details on materials and corpora), - the theoretical framework employed, - the expected findings or current results It should emphasize the scientific contribution of the proposed article in light of the existing literature and the call for papers, and should be accompanied by a short bibliography. Finally, please note that the journal RESET also welcomes, in its Varia <https://journals.openedition.org/reset/3228> section, all research in the humanities and social sciences dealing with digital technology as either an object or a method of research. No submission fees, publication fees, or APCs will be required from authors. Please feel free to circulate this call within your networks! We look forward to reading your proposals, Have a very nice day, *The coordinating committee* Quentin Gilliotte Marion Michel Phoebé Pigenet Quentin Gilliotte --- Chaire de Professeur Junior - Media et méthodes numériques (MediaM) Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, Carism, 87 rue Notre Dame Des Champs - 75006 PARIS Chercheur associé au Cerlis, Université Paris-Cité +33 6 98 01 82 28 quentin.gilliotte(a)gmail.com Dernières publications : Gilliotte, Quentin. (2026). « Innover sur YouTube : comprendre les reconfigurations de l’information politique par l’étude des trajectoires ». *Les Cahiers du Journalisme*, vol. 3, n°2 <https://cahiersdujournalisme.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/R01_Vol3N2_Gill…> Beaudouin, Valérie, Olivier Beraud Martin, Eric Dagiral, Quentin Gilliotte, et Christophe Prieur. (2025). <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2025-4-page-47?lang=fr>« <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2024-4-page-89?lang=fr&tab=texte-integ…>Apprendre, se divertir, résoudre des problèmes avec des vidéos de savoirs et de savoir-faire Une analyse quantitative des pratiques de visionnage <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2025-4-page-47?lang=fr> » <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2024-4-page-89?lang=fr&tab=texte-integ…> . *Réseaux*, 252(4), 47-108. <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2025-4-page-47?lang=fr> Gilliotte, Quentin et Guittet, Emmanuelle, 2025. <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-revue-francaise-de-socio-economie-2025-1-page-…> « <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2024-4-page-89?lang=fr&tab=texte-integ…>Une cartomancie à « deux vitesses » Inégalités économiques et professionnelles chez les travailleurs et travailleuses du tarot en ligne <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-revue-francaise-de-socio-economie-2025-1-page-…> » <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2024-4-page-89?lang=fr&tab=texte-integ…> . *Revue Française de Socio-Économie*, 2025/1 n° 34. <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-revue-francaise-de-socio-economie-2025-1-page-…> Gilliotte, Quentin, et Dominique Pasquier. 2024. « Travailler à sa chaîne. Les vidéastes des plateformes face à leurs sources de revenus ». *Réseaux* 246-247(4‑5):89‑126. <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-reseaux-2024-4-page-89?lang=fr&tab=texte-integ…> Dufour, Swan, et Quentin Gilliotte. 2024. « Le YouTube contestataire. Saisir l’informalisation par les vidéos de « décryptage » de la réforme des retraites. » *Questions de communication* (46). <https://shs.cairn.info/revue-questions-de-communication-2024-2-page-217?lan…>

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28 April: “How Government Control of Media Influences Large Language Models” by Prof. Margaret E. Roberts
by Ülker Sözen 22 Apr '26

22 Apr '26

“The Many Faces of Digital Authoritarianism" Lecture Series by the ECPR Research Network on Digital Authoritarianism <https://ecpr.eu/group/digital-authoritarianism> presents: *“How Government Control of Media Influences Large Language Models” by Prof. Margaret E. Roberts (Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego)* Date and time: 28 April 2026, Tuesday 15:00-16:30 CET (14:00-15:30 UK Time) Moderator: Dr. Ülker Sözen (University of Passau & Leipzig University) Find the Zoom link here: https://ecpr.eu/news/news/details/920 You can register the series here: https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PanelDetails/17995 This lecture draws on the research produced by Hannah Waight, Eddie Yang, Yin Yuan, Solomon Messing, Margaret E. Roberts, Brandon Stewart, and Joshua Tucker. Millions of people around the world query large language models for information. While several studies have compellingly documented the persuasive potential of these models, there is limited evidence of who or what influences the models themselves, leading to a flurry of concerns about which companies and governments build and regulate the models. We show through six studies that government control of the media already influences the output of large language models via their training data. To understand the specific mechanism of how government control can influence LLMs, we begin with a case study of China's media. The combination of influence and persuasive potential suggests the troubling conclusion that states and powerful institutions have increased strategic incentives to leverage media control in the hopes of shaping large language model output. *Margaret E. Roberts* is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. She co-directs the China Data Lab at the 21st Century China Center. She is also an affiliate at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Her research interests lie in the intersection of political methodology and the politics of information, with a specific focus on methods of automated content analysis and the politics of censorship and propaganda in China. ----------- Dr. Ülker Sözen Postdoctoral research fellow (DFG 2022-2026, Gerda Henkel Foundation 2024-2027) Chair of Development Politics, University of Passau Institute for the Study of Religions, Leipzig University IRGAC associate member, University of Potsdam

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