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CFP - 4S Open Panel #227: Computing Machinery Supply Chains Across Space, Time, and Method
by MC Forelle 06 Apr '26

06 Apr '26

Hello AOIR Community! It's been so exciting to see the fascinating open panels that folks are putting together. I wanted to share one more, for those of you interested in talking about computing machinery supply chains. Verónica and I especially eager to discuss methodological challenges or provide a space to workshop works in progress! *Panel 227 Computing Machinery Supply Chains Across Space, Time, and Method* *MC Forelle, University of Virginia; Ver**ónica Uribe del Aguila, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute* Over the past decade, the computing machinery industry—the sectors involved in designing, developing, manufacturing, and distributing physical hardware from industrial controllers to advanced AI processors—has faced several controversies. These have brought public attention to the environmental and economic impacts of their supply chains understood as extraction sites, factories, and trade agreements the industry depends on. The ripple effects of the chip shortage during the COVID pandemic, the US and EU’s Chip Act, and the rising tensions between China and Taiwan are examples of the computing machinery industry's infrastructural power, or the power to tear apart people’s lives while remaining invisible. STS scholars have long taken an interest in the global supply chains that comprise the computing machinery industry. They have paid attention to their materiality, geopolitical dynamics, and sociotechnical imaginaries to unpack how the industry's transnational configurations perpetuate troubling racial, colonial, neoliberal, and capitalist logic across different industries such as automotive, aerospace, agriculture and computing Itself. Building on this foundation, we invite submissions inquiring how computing machinery supply chains influence, expose, or otherwise involve other sectors of global industry through the lenses of political economy, critical geography and new materialism. We are particularly interested in historical and ethnographic perspectives that help us grasp the role computing technology plays in shaping the organization of industrial supply chains in different sectors. We will organize these sessions as a combined format panel. Therefore, we invite both full papers and works-in-progress. Full papers will be assembled into a traditional paper presentation session. Works-in-progress will be arranged into a workshop session for participants to share conceptual and/or methodological approaches and challenges and to collaboratively generate new avenues, techniques, and solutions. We ask that WIP submissions provide a clear description of the project in progress, its level of completion, and two or three questions for the session.

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Inviting submissions to 4S open panel on Mobile AI
by Adriana de Souza e Silva 06 Apr '26

06 Apr '26

Hi all, We are accepting submissions for an open panel Yifan Xu and I organized at the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) conference, which will happen this year in Toronto, October 7-10. The panel description is below. If you are interested in the topic and would like to participate, abstracts can be submitted here: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php Please reach out with any questions (a.desouzaesilva(a)northeastern.edu <mailto:a.desouzaesilva@northeastern.edu>). Best, _____________________________________ Adriana de Souza e Silva, Ph.D. (she/hers) Professor of Communication Studies Director, Center for Transformative Media <https://camd.northeastern.edu/center-for-transformative-media/> 2025-2025 University AI Faculty Fellow <https://learning.northeastern.edu/programs/ai-in-teaching-and-learning-fell…> Senior Editor, Mobile Media & Communication <https://journals.sagepub.com/home/mmc> Chair, ICA Mobile Communication Division <https://www.icamobile.org/> www.souzaesilva.com <http://www.souzaesilva.com/> Accepted Open Panels, Toronto 2026 246 Mobile AI in Urban Life: Power, Infrastructure, and Community Innovation Around the Globe Adriana de Souza e Silva, Northeastern University; Yifan Xu, University of Texas at Austin Urban STS; Information, Computing and Media Technology; Infrastructure For most people worldwide, artificial intelligence (AI) is experienced through mobile devices and the urban infrastructures they interact with in everyday life. This is called Mobile AI: AI embedded in smartphones, navigation apps, and smart transit systems. These systems transform the way people experience cities beyond individual app usage, structuring millions of micro-decisions that together govern the terms of social and economic participation, shaping how people communicate and move around in urban spaces. Navigation apps like Waze help users find new routes through neighborhoods, increasing unintended traffic congestion, while autonomous vehicles like Waymo rely on AI algorithms to determine geofenced service boundaries, invisibly shaping which neighborhoods gain access to driverless mobility technology. The increasing embeddedness of Mobile AI in everyday life raises fundamental STS concerns about how these technologies reshape power, human agency, mobility, and citizenship. In the majority of the world, where mobile connectivity is the primary form of digital access, Mobile AI is reshaping urban mobilities, social relationships, and resource allocation. Yet scholarship about AI remain dominated by U.S.-centric perspectives that focus on affluent communities, leaving what Irani (2019) calls “the other 90%” largely invisible. This panel addresses this gap by examining how Mobile AI unfolds in diverse urban spaces. We especially welcome submissions centering under-resourced communities whose technological practices challenge dominant narratives about AI innovation and expertise. Submissions might include, but are not restricted to, the following topics: Mobile AI infrastructures as governing force that structure opportunity and vulnerability, determining who can access services, earn a living, or participate in urban life; How communities engage in “infrastructuring from below”, appropriating AI tools to create opportunities previously unavailable to them (i.e., grassroots organizing, communication, or livelihood creation). Mobile AI’s integration into everyday urban life across geographical and economic contexts; Maintenance, repair, and care work sustaining Mobile AI infrastructures.

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CFP: "Phantom Media: Theorizing the Technoscientific (Retro)Futures of Elusive Media Technologies" (at 4S)
by Jason Archer 06 Apr '26

06 Apr '26

Apologies for cross-listing: Please consider submitting an abstract for the following open panel (#206) @ 4S Toronto "Phantom Media: Theorizing the Technoscientific (Retro)Futures of Elusive Media Technologies" This panel invites papers that examine media technologies that strain, unsettle, or exceed the conceptual boundaries of traditional media theory. We are interested in work that engages with forgotten or marginal media technologies of the past, experimental and prototype media of the present, or speculative and imaginary media of the future — cases that resist stable ontologicalization and demand new theoretical vocabularies. Across these diverse temporalities, the panel asks: what happens to power, ideology, and material relations when media no longer clearly resolve into familiar distinctions between figure and ground, representation and artifact, interface and infrastructure? STS has long contested dualisms of human/nonhuman, subject/object, and material/immaterial in efforts to decenter normative power. Recent work in media studies and media archeology, in have expanded what counts as “media,” drawing attention to atmospheres, infrastructures, biotechnical organisms, and the senses. Both traditions call for continued engagement with emergent or neglected technologies — from volumetric displays, midair haptics, and experimental sensory interfaces to abandoned communication prototypes, speculative design fictions, and historically ephemeral apparatuses — that remain theoretically underdeveloped because they evade established analytical frames. These technologies operate through paradoxical logics: they make mediation felt while concealing apparatuses; they produce sensation without stable material supports; or they mobilize bodies, labor, and environments as part of the medium itself. Led by Jason Archer and Thomas Conner, this panel builds on our ongoing research on “phantom media” — media forms that generate sensory, social, or political effects while remaining materially unstable or ontologically unresolved. Rather than treating such instability as a failure or transitional phase, this panel approaches it as analytically productive. We encourage any submission type that foregrounds how media reconfigure relations of power by introducing new material conditions, redistributing agency between humans, more-than-humans, and technical systems, or naturalizing ideologies through their very disappearance as “media.” Abstracts (250 words) are due April 30, 2026 on the 4S website: https://www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions_toronto.php Questions? Your friendly hosts would love to answer them: Jason Archer, jearcher(a)mtu.edu, Thomas Conner, thomashconner(a)gmail.com. -- Jason E. Archer Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Technologies Department of Humanities <https://www.mtu.edu/humanities/> Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Culture and Technology <https://www.mtu.edu/circt/> <https://www.mtu.edu/circt/> Michigan Technological University Website: jasonearcher.com

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10th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH) @EMNLP: 1st CFP + Mentorship Programme
by Agostina Calabrese 04 Apr '26

04 Apr '26

10th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH) @EMNLP: 1st CFP *** First Call for Papers + Call for Mentors/Mentees *** We invite paper submissions to the 10th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH), which will take place on 24-29 October at EMNLP 2026. Website: https://www.workshopononlineabuse.com/cfp.html Important Dates * Registration deadline for mentorship programme: April 10, 2026 * Notification of mentor/mentee match: April 25, 2026 * Submission due: June 26, 2026 * ARR reviewed submission due: August 3, 2026 * Notification of acceptance: August 15, 2026 * Camera-ready papers due: September 10, 2026 * Workshop: 24-29 October 2026 Overview Digital technologies have brought significant benefits to society, transforming how people connect, communicate, and interact. However, these same technologies have also enabled the widespread dissemination and amplification of abusive and harmful content, such as hate speech, harassment, and misinformation. Given the sheer volume of content shared online, addressing abuse and harm at scale requires the use of computational tools. Yet, detecting and moderating online abuse remains a complex task, fraught with technical, social, legal, and ethical challenges. The 10th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH) invites paper submissions from a diverse range of fields, including but not limited to natural language processing, machine learning, computational social science, law, political science, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies. We explicitly encourage interdisciplinary research, technical and non-technical contributions, and submissions that focus on under-resourced languages. Non-archival papers and civil society reports are also welcome. Topics covered by WOAH include, but are not limited to: * New models or methods for detecting abusive and harmful online content, including misinformation; * Biases and limitations in existing detection models or datasets for abusive and harmful content, especially those in commercial use; * Development of new datasets and taxonomies for online abuse and harms; * Novel evaluation metrics and procedures for detecting harmful content; * Analyses of the dynamics of online abuse, its propagation, and its impact on different communities; * Social, legal, and ethical considerations in detecting, monitoring, and moderating online abuse. Special Theme: “Ten Years of WOAH: Reflecting on Progress and New Frontiers” In its 10th edition, WOAH highlights the theme “Ten Years of WOAH: Reflecting on Progress and New Frontiers”. Over the past decade, WOAH has become a central interdisciplinary venue for online harms research. As harms and enabling technologies have evolved, the field has moved beyond an early focus on textual hate speech and harassment to address more complex phenomena. Advances in AI and online ecosystems have expanded the scale and diversity of harms. Transformer models, multimodal platforms, and recommendation systems have contributed to the escalation of issues like misinformation, radicalisation, child sexual exploitation, identity-based abuse, algorithmic bias, privacy violations, and AI-mediated harms. Methods tackling this have evolved from monolingual lexicon-based approaches to deep learning, multilinguality, multimodality, interpretability, and interdisciplinarity. Despite this progress, fundamental challenges remain. There is limited consensus on what constitutes “harm”, how context and thresholds should be defined, or how harms vary across cultures and modalities. These ambiguities affect datasets and models, constrain comparability, and often marginalise affected communities. The past decade also calls for critical self-reflection. Research has frequently prioritised detection, high-resource languages, and narrowly defined phenomena over intervention, global perspectives, and systemic or structural harms, with insufficient attention to user agency, platform incentives, lived experience, and participatory approaches. Finally, ten years of work have underscored that interdisciplinarity is essential for addressing the sociotechnical nature of the phenomenon. Addressing future online harms will require deeper integration across NLP, ML, social sciences, law, policy, and HCI. WOAH 10 seeks to consolidate lessons from the past decade, identify enduring gaps, and connect research, practice, and policy to guide the next generation of work on online harms. [NEW!] Mentorship Programme In light of our theme of reflecting on the past decade, we as organisers have also taken time for self-reflection. While we emphasise the importance of interdisciplinary work, the increasing number of submissions (which we are extremely proud and happy about!) has required us to apply our submission guidelines more strictly. In recent years, these issues have been particularly relevant for submissions coming from outside the NLP community. This signals that, if we do not take action, we risk failing to promote the very diversity we aim to support. After listening to feedback from the community, we have decided to lower this barrier by launching the first-ever WOAH Mentorship Programme. Link to register as mentor: https://forms.gle/XaK8KBFomaWZZwG98 Link to register as mentee: https://forms.gle/AC5akVcdzsCvwqEo7 As a mentee, you will be able to propose your WOAH project idea and outline the type of guidance or supervision you are seeking. As a mentor, you will be expected to support your mentee by meeting at least three times during the project (at the beginning, midway, and towards the end). We encourage mentees to include their mentors as co-authors of their WOAH submission. Timeline: * Register for the mentorship programme by 10th April * Notification of mentor/mentee match by 25th April Submission Submission is electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system. Submission link: TBA The workshop will accept three types of papers. 1) Academic Papers (long and short): Long papers of up to 8 pages, excluding references, and short papers of up to 4 pages, excluding references. Unlimited pages for references and appendices. Accepted papers will be given an additional page of content to address reviewer comments. Previously published papers cannot be accepted. 2) Non-Archival Submissions: Up to 2 pages, excluding references, to summarise and showcase in-progress work and work published elsewhere. 3) Civil Society Reports: Non-archival submissions, with a minimum of 2 pages and no upper limit. Can include work published elsewhere. All submissions must use the official ACL style files<https://github.com/acl-org/acl-style-files>. Submissions that do not conform to the required styles, including paper size, margin width, and font size restrictions, will be rejected without review. All submissions should adhere to the workshop policies https://www.workshopononlineabuse.com/policies.html. WOAH Community We are excited to share the WOAH community Slack channel — a workspace for researchers interested in or working on understanding and addressing online abuse and harms! Join us here: https://join.slack.com/t/hatespeechdet-47d7560/shared_invite/zt-2a8d96j4z-g… Contact Info Please send any questions about the workshop to organizers(a)workshopononlineabuse.com<mailto:organizers@workshopononlineabuse.com> Organisers Agostina Calabrese, Cohere Thomas Davidson, Rutgers University-New Brunswick Christine de Kock, University of Melbourne Urja Khurana, Delft University of Technology Marta Marchiori Manerba, University of Turin Paloma Piot, Universidade da Coruña Zeerak Talat, University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.

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[Hybrid book launch on April 8] The Transsion Approach + Silicon Elsewhere
by LU, Miao 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

Dear all, We're happy to announce that the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong will hold a hybrid book launch on April 8, 2026 (16:00-17:30 GMT+8). We will launch two new books about Africa-China tech engagement--The Transsion Approach: Translating Chinese Mobile Technology in Africa (University of Illinois Press, 2025, https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c046926) and Silicon Elsewhere: Nairobi, Global China, and the Promise of Techno-Capital (University of California Press, 2026, https://www.ucpress.edu/books/silicon-elsewhere/paper) If you want to join us online, please register via this link: https://lingnan.zoom.us/meeting/register/_ooFXAYsSEacGD-8Y29rNQ. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you! Best, Miao _________________________ Dr. Miao Lu Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Studies Lingnan University, Hong Kong Recent Publications Lu, M. (2026). Infrastructuring the last mile: State, Chinese tech, and densification of Ghana's rural network<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517261421479>. Big Data & Society, 1-14. Lu, M. (2025). The Transsion Approach: Translating Chinese Mobile Technology in Africa<https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c046926>. University of Illinois Press (Geopolitics of Information Series). Lu, M. (2025). Connecting the last mile in Africa: A volumetric analysis of internet balloons and rural base stations.<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01634437251351791> Media, Culture & Society, 47(8), 1653-1673. Lu, M. & Xie, Z. (2025). Gaming the mobility regimes during COVID-19: Border-making and crossing between China and Africa<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2024.2449012>. Information, Communication & Society, 28(7), 1137-1156.

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Book announcement: Digital Solidarity Economy in Latin America
by Rafael Do Nascimento Grohmann 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

Dear colleagues, I'm delighted to announce the forthcoming book Digital Solidarity Economy in Latin America (Bristol University Press, October 2026), edited by me, Alessio Bertolini and Maria Belen Albornoz. Link: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/digital-solidarity-economy-in-latin-am… This book proposes the concept of the digital solidarity economy as a theoretical and political framework for understanding the experiences of workers and communities seeking to govern technologies from below in Latin America. Emerging from a workshop held in Quito, Ecuador, in 2023, which brought together collectives, cooperatives, policymakers, and scholars from across the region, the volume recovers the long history of Latin American struggles around the solidarity economy and alternative technologies, from CyberSyn in Chile to national informatics plans in the 1970s and 1980s, to the free software movements, arguing that contemporary collectives across the region are updating this tradition by building initiatives of digital solidarity economies. Through case studies and comparative analyses spanning multiple countries and sectors, the book articulates movements that do not always walk together: feminist economies, decolonial responses to digital colonialism, digital commons, platform cooperativism, and struggles for tech sovereignty, offering a reimagination of digital presents and futures rooted in the needs and values of Latin American people. Foreword by Nick Couldry. With chapters by Livia Ascava, Adam Badger, Alexandre Costa Barbosa, Julieta Grasas, Alexandra Belén Gualavisí, Hugo Jácome Estrella, Denise Kasparian, Eduardo Meneses, Cecilia Muñoz Cancela, Aline Os, Marcella Pazan, Lucy Pei, Julián Rebón, Daniel Santini, Jonas Valente, Betiana Vargas, Daniel Vizuete, among others. More soon! best, Rafael -- dr. Rafael Grohmann Assistant Professor of Media Studies Department of Arts, Culture and Media<https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/acm/rafael-grohmann> Faculty of Information<https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/rafael-grohmann/> University of Toronto Leader, DigiLabour<https://digilabour.com.br/> Research Associate, University of Oxford<https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/rafael-grohmann/> Founding Editor, Platforms & Society<https://journals.sagepub.com/home/PNS> Principal Investigator, Worker-Owned Intersectional Platforms (WOIP)<https://digilabour.com.br/worker-owned-intersectional-platforms-woip/> Co-Lead, Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF)<https://criticaldigitalmethods.ca/creative-labour-critical-futures/> Researcher, AI Policy Observatory for the World of Work<https://www.essex.ac.uk/research-projects/ai-policy-observatory-for-the-wor…> Senior Fellow, Massey College<https://www.masseycollege.ca/> Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society<https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/> <https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/>

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Ban Cookie Banners: A Case Study in Tech Regulation - Kate Klonick (paper summary)
by Joly MacFie 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

https://isoclive.substack.com/p/ban-cookie-banners-a-case-study-in Kate Klonick advances a clear and uncompromising argument: cookie banners should be abolished. The paper frames them not as a minor usability nuisance but as a systemic failure of modern technology regulation. Designed to enhance privacy and user autonomy, they have instead produced performative compliance, weakened the meaning of consent, degraded the user experience, and impeded more effective regulatory solutions. -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -

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New Historical X/Twitter Access Point Approved
by Stuart Shulman 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

Texifter has received approval from X to launch a fee-for-service academic and market research access point to the full public history of X/Twitter. The new access point, XSifter.com, will replicate and improve upon Sifter, a web service provided by Texifter from 2014-2018. We are finalizing the terms and moving toward a launch date later this spring. This is a three-month pilot. The total available data will be limited and Texifter cannot expand it. We anticipate a pre-sale of data blocks. The lowest price per unit will go to those who purchase the largest three-block subscriptions in advance of the start date. We envision pre-sale subscription blocks containing between 50,000 and 1,000,000 Tweets in fixed 28-day collection periods. Data blocks can be used for various projects until the four-week quota is exhausted. If the three-month subscriptions do not exhaust the quota by the launch of the pilot, we will offer one-time non-subscription sales. There are certain restrictions called for under the agreement. Research access to licensed data is limited to one year from the load date. Data will be stored and studied in DiscoverText. There are no raw JSON or CSV options. One of the reasons this agreement was approved is that Texifter uses the X/Twitter display inside DiscoverText to ensure deleted, suspended, and protected Tweets are not viewed. You can learn more about prohibited use cases targeting sensitive categories in the X documentation. Please book a meeting if you have questions or would like further discussions.

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Call for papers: harmful policing and digitalisation
by Merel Driessen 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

Dear Internet and digital Research community, After two symposiums on artificial intelligence, Dutch Surveillance Studies is organizing a third symposium: ‘Harmful Policing’. Although police violence is often viewed as a physical force, the increased digitization of policing produces new forms of harm. By focusing on the relationships between physical and digital policing practices, this symposium elucidates the interplay between technology, policing and harm. The symposium takes place November 10th 2026 at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Scholars, activists, experts by experience and practitioners are welcome to apply! Abstract applications will close on 01-06-2026. The symposium is also a prelude to an international exhibition on building public truths and fatal police violence in het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, opening in March 2027. Further information and instructions regarding application can be found in the attached PDF or on our website.<https://dutchsurveillancestudies.org/2026/03/13/call-for-papers-symposium-h…> Warm regards, Jair Schalkwijk Merel Driessen Marc Schuilenburg Dutch Surveillance Studies Erasmus School of Law

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CFP: Conspiracy Theories in the Wake of Disaster
by Zachary M Loeb 01 Apr '26

01 Apr '26

Greetings, I believe this CFP may be of interest to some members of AoIR. Please let me know if you have any questions. Best, Zachary Conspiracy Theories in the Wake of Disaster deadline for submissions: May 15, 2026 In late September, 2024, Hurricane Helene made landfall in the continental United States, churning its way up the Atlantic seaboard. The storm devastated North Carolina with massive rainfall and flooding of towns such as Asheville. All told, the damage from Helene totaled over 50 billion dollars and the loss of entire communities. But Hurricane Helene inadvertently produced another storm in its wake, a deluge of conspiracy theories about the “true” cause of the hurricane and about the response from the Federal government. Even as the Biden administration rushed to respond to the destruction, conspiracy theories began circulating on X.com<http://x.com/> (formerly Twitter) about Biden ignoring the destruction due to senility, about the government using the hurricane as a pretext for nefarious deeds, and, perhaps most bizarre of all, about Federal agencies using secret weather technology to steer the hurricane into conservative parts of the country to dampen electoral turnout. Donald Trump, then candidate for president, circulated some of these conspiracy theories himself on Truth Social, claiming that President Biden steered disaster aid to illegal immigrants, among other lies. (Waldman and Aton, 2024). The spread of these conspiracy theories forced the Federal Emergency Management Agency, long a villain in conspiracy theory discourse, to publish a fact-checking website to deal with public outrage (FEMA.gov<http://fema.gov/>). These false claims hindered disaster relief efforts and impacted the 2024 elections as Americans responded in outrage to perceived incompetence by the Biden administration (Gollom, 2024). The story of Hurricane Helene’s aftermath is not new. Conspiracy theories circulate in the wake of disasters because these events are such traumatic and sensational eruptions in media coverage that alternative narratives about their “true” causes are almost inevitable. If disasters are events that render the unthinkable thinkable (Cerulo, 2006), then conspiracy theories twist this revelatory moment into a warped attempt to think about something else. They provide a context for disaster that provides a distorted simulacrum of an explanation of the destruction and death and loss by offering a convenient villain whose shadowy machinations are to blame for the tragic event. They turn what could be explained as an unfortunate but "normal accident” (Perrow, 1999), into proof of nefarious agents. Shifting the focus from the human role in creating and exacerbating disastrous conditions (Erikson, 1995), to a way of blaming a secretive cabal. And because many disasters are caused by human error or negligence or complicated historical trajectories, conspiracy theories may seem plausible even when they are not. Conspiracism offers a satisfying explanation for the spectacle of destruction, rooted in narratives about evildoers who cause such pain and anguish (Rice, 2020). While at the same time providing a comforting assurance that the skeptics, unlike the supposed experts, are the ones who know the real explanation for what has happened (Murphy, 2006; Buhs, 2009). Such conspiracy theories are detrimental because they produce suspicion, fear, and anger toward the very agencies responsible for responding to these disasters, while undermining efforts to understand the decisions that have been made over decades (if not centuries) that generated the risks that eventually turned into disasters. And in the age of social media, conspiracy theories can circulate with incredible speed and scope, fueled by recommendation algorithms and the attention economy which ensures that the most sensational content is incentivized (Valaskivi, 2022; Popken, 2018). While thinking about worst case scenarios plays an important role in disaster preparedness (Clarke, 2006; Thomas, 2021; Wuthnow, 2010), events such as Hurricane Helene demonstrate that today even as organizations like FEMA try to manage crises on the ground they find themselves bogged down combatting conspiracy theories online. Conspiracy Theories in the Wake of Disaster will combine conspiracy theory research with disaster studies to launch a new horizon for research focused on the relationship between disasters and conspiracy, which we see as an understudied and fruitful area of study. Contributions can include multiple authors from various disciplines and methodological approaches, including work from sociology, history, communications, philosophy, information studies, data science, and other relevant disciplines, and we are especially interested in approaches from science and technology studies, extremism and conspiracism studies, and disaster studies. Abstracts of 250-300 words and biographical statements will be due by May 15th, 2026. Please send materials to both Matthew N. Hannah at matthew.hannah(a)wisc.edu<mailto:matthew.hannah@wisc.edu> and Zachary Loeb at zloeb(a)purdue.edu<mailto:zloeb@purdue.edu>. While we are still working on identifying a press, but we are currently in discussion with editors about publishing the book. https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/03/02/conspiracy-theories-in… Possible topics of interest include: * Hurricanes, conspiracism, and recovery efforts * Wildfire and water/forest management conspiracy theories * Mysterious technologies as cause of disasters * Analysis of social media discussions following disaster (Telegram, X, Truth Social) * Conspiracy theories about Federal disaster agencies such as FEMA or NOAA * Disaster preparedness efforts and public conspiracism * Anthropogenic disasters (Fukushima, 3-Mile Island) and conspiracy theories * False-flag operations and disasters (September 11) * The impact of conspiracism on civil society in the wake of disasters * Geoengineering and disasters * Climate change conspiracy theories References Aton, Scott, and Adam Waldman. 2024. “Trump’s Strategy: Turn Hurricane Lies into Election Victory.” E&E News by POLITICO, October 11. https://www.eenews.net/articles/trumps-strategy-turn-hurricane-lies-into-el…. Buhs, Joshua Blu. Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Cerulo, Karen A. Never Saw it Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. Clarke, Lee. Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. Gollom, Mark. 2024. “Rampant Conspiracy Theories Are Hindering Hurricane Relief Efforts, Say Officials.” CBC News, October 9. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hurricane-helene-misinformation-1.7346969<https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hurricane-helene-misinformation-1.7346969>. Erikson, Kai. A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. “Hurricane Rumor Response.” FEMA.Gov. 2025. January 11. https://www.fema.gov/disaster/recover/rumor/hurricane-rumor-response<https://www.fema.gov/disaster/recover/rumor/hurricane-rumor-response>. Murphy, Michelle. SIck Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Perrow, Charles. Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1999. Popken, Ben. 2018. “As Algorithms Take over, YouTube’s Recommendations Highlight a Human Problem.” NBC News. Accessed May 12, 2022. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/algorithms-take-over-youtube-s-re…<https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/algorithms-take-over-youtube-s-re…>. Rice, Jenny. Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric, and Acts of Evidence. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2020. Thomas, Lindsay. Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National Security after 9/11. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2021. Valaskivi, Katja. 2022. “Circulation of Conspiracy Theories in the Attention Factory.” Popular Communication 20 (3): 162–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2022.2045996<https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2022.2045996>. Wuthnow, Robert. Be Very Afraid: The Cultural Response to Terror, Pandemics, Environmental Devastation, Nuclear Annihilation, and Other Threats. Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2010. Zachary Loeb Assistant Professor Purdue University Department of History, Beering Hall 6116 672 Oval Drive West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 zloeb(a)purdue.edu

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