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CFP - EASST 2026, Krakow: Conceptualising "Waste" in the age of Digital Technologies and AI
by g. tavmen 05 Mar '26

05 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, I am organising a combined format open panel at the EASST 2026 conference in Krakow, Sept 8-11 titled "Conceptualising "Waste" in the age of Digital Technologies and AI". I invite you to send abstracts for a paper presentation as well as any other format beyond a traditional formats. Deadline is 9th March. This panel explores how digital and AI technologies, often promoted as efficient and sustainable, generate material, economic, labour and ecological waste. By examining global inequalities, political economy and creative reuse practices, we rethink “waste” in the context of digital technologies and AI going beyond e-waste. The aim of the panel is to broaden the notion of waste challenging essentialist approaches. In non-Western context, discard can also be a source of ‘making-do’ like in the case of so-called ‘frugal innovation’ that underpins Jugaad culture in India. In addition to the material waste disposed as a result of redundant infrastructures and hardware, we will also consider other forms of waste generated by the political economy of AI itself. For instance, the vast sums of venture capital invested in AI start-ups may represent not only financial waste but also the waste of time, labour, and resources, as a significant proportion of these ventures ultimately fail. In other words, such wasteful speculations end up ‘putting our economic/ecological’ future to waste. In summary, this panel seeks to consider digital (data) technologies from the perspective of waste in the pursuit of challenging dominant notions around it while also aiming to contribute to a roadmap for resilient futures. As well as traditional paper contributions, alternative formats of presentations are particularly welcome. Please see the conference website for more information on how to submit proposals: https://easst.net/conference/easst2026/programme/#18299 | | | | | | | | | | | Programme Programme | | | You can also contact me directly. Best wishes,Güneş Dr Güneş Tavmen Lecturer in Digital Infrastructures Department of Digital Humanities King’s College London

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WEBCAST MAR 5 – Telecom Act at 30: Universal Service as the North Star
by Joly MacFie 05 Mar '26

05 Mar '26

[image: ISOC LIVE] <https://isoc.live/20296> YOUTUBE <https://youtu.be/Mfougb0EDJQ> | REGISTER <http://youtube%20%7C%20register%20%7C%20add%20to%20calendar%20%7C%20permali…> | ADD TO CALENDAR <https://addcal.io/e/dj7e0qcjfb5v> | PERMALINK <https://isoc.live/20296> Today, Thursday, March 5, 2026, from 12:45pm – 4:45pm EST (17:45-21:45 UTC) the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society <https://www.benton.org/> will marking the 30th anniversary of the 1996 Telecommunications Act <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996> with an event ‘Telecom Act at 30: Universal Service as the North Star <https://www.benton.org/event/telecom-act-30-universal-service-north-star>‘ in Washington DC. Policymakers, advocates, academics, and industry leaders will convene to examine how the law, drafted at the dawn of dial-up internet, codified the national commitment to universal connectivity. Participants will explore how the act has shaped today’s broadband landscape and what universal service must mean in the next era of connectivity. AGENDA (to be announced) - -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -

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Final call for poster presentations for SMSociety 2026 in Glasgow
by Harry Dyer (EDU - Staff) 05 Mar '26

05 Mar '26

Dear AoIR community, This is a final call for poster submissions for the 2026 International Conference on Social Media & Society (#SMSociety), which will take place in Glasgow, Scotland, from July 13-15, 2026. The deadline for poster extended abstracts (1000-1500 words) is March 13, 2026 at midnight (Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time). Posters provides an excellent opportunity to share work-in-progress, postgraduate research, and early findings from ongoing projects in an interactive format that allows for discussion of emerging ideas, encourages feedback on your work, and allows you to connect with colleagues working on related topics. We encourage submissions from authors at various career stages, so do consider submitting before the deadline. The call can be found here: https://socialmediaandsociety.org/2025/call-for-submissions-smsociety-july-…. And details of how to submit an extended abstract for a poster presentation can be found here: https://socialmediaandsociety.org/submission-types-and-guidelines/ #SMSociety is a biennial gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. It is the premier venue for sharing and discovering new peer-reviewed interdisciplinary research on how social media affects society. #SMSociety provides participants with opportunities to exchange ideas, present original research, learn about recent and ongoing studies, and network with peers. The 2026 conference is co-organised by the Digital Cultures and Economies Research Hub at the University of the Arts London (UAL), the University of East Anglia (UEA), and the hosts at the Division of Urban Studies and Social Policy at the University of Glasgow. The conference's three-day program will feature panels and paper presentations, workshops, tutorials, networking events, and a poster session. In keeping with the conference's inter- and transdisciplinary focus, we welcome both quantitative and qualitative scholarly and original submissions that cross disciplinary boundaries and expand our understanding of current and future trends in social media research across many fields including (but not limited to): Communication, Computer Science, Critical Data Studies, Education, Journalism, Information Science, Law, Management, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Public Administration, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Urban Studies, among others. TOPICS OF INTEREST (the list is not exhaustive) * Affordances * AI and LLMs * Algorithms * Computational, digital and data methods * Creators and Influencers * Cyberbullying, Trolling and Antisocial Behavior * Digital Education * Digital Intimacies * Discourse and Public Opinion * Health and Wellbeing * Infrastructures, platformisation and datafication * Marketing and Promotional Social Media * Misinformation and Disinformation * Online and Offline Communities * Platform Cultures * Platform Governance and Regulation * Emerging and Established Social Technologies, Apps and Platforms * Politics, Policy, and Regulation * Privacy, Security and Trust * Social Media Cultures and Everyday Life * Use and Users * Vibes, memes and trends

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Call for Abstract (4S 2026): Technopolitics of Knowledge Mobilization in Datafied Societies
by Lucas Wong 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

Dear AoIR Community, We are organizing an open panel at the 4S 2026 (7-10 Oct in Toronto) titled “Technopolitics of Knowledge Mobilization in Datafied Societies.” The panel explores how platforms, data infrastructures, and AI reshape knowledge mobilization, public scholarship, and academic labour across different institutional and geopolitical contexts. Detailed panel description is included below. Interested participants are invited to submit a 250-word abstract through the official submission page: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php. The submission link will be open until the end of April. We warmly welcome submissions from scholars working across STS, platform studies, critical data studies, and related fields. All the best, Lucas L. H. Wong Hiu-Fung Chung Julie Yujie Chen Panel Abstract In the wake of debates over public values of universities, knowledge mobilization has become an institutional imperative worldwide. It is codified through cross-sectoral partnerships, entrepreneurial and incubation initiatives, and professionalized regimes of evaluation that emphasize accessible and assessable public impacts, key performance indicators (KPIs), and codes of professional conduct. Within these arrangements, digital platforms and automated technologies are often positioned as the crux of innovative public engagement in datafied societies, where data—its massive collection and expansive use—constitutes a dominant mode of societal ordering and politico-economic governance (Fourcade & Healy, 2024; Halpern & Mitchell, 2023). In the context of knowledge mobilization, data-driven systems reconfigure how knowledge is produced, circulated, and valued, introducing infrastructures of classification and metricization that define what counts as “good” public pedagogy. This open panel invites deeper dialogue between STS, platform studies, critical data studies, and open science to rethink the technopolitics of knowledge mobilization and to unsettle contemporary university-society relations. In dialogue with STS’s long-standing interest in the ordering effects of knowledge practices (Law & Mol, 2002; Jasanoff, 2004), the panel treats knowledge mobilization and public pedagogy as sites where governance, expertise, and publics are co-produced and contested rather than pre-given. In particular, we invite panelists to examine how pedagogical practices are ruled through and negotiated across multiple governing regimes, including universities, state power, and platform regulation across contexts, around the following questions: * How do algorithms, data infrastructures, and artificial intelligence (AI) reconfigure authority, credibility, expertise, and boundaries in public-facing scholarship? * What forms of improvisation, negotiation, repair, or refusal emerge as scholars navigate multiple ruling regimes? * How do data-driven platforms and universities reconfigure digital academic labour? * How do these dynamics unfold across diverse geopolitical and institutional contexts? Extra Details In this open panel, we invite scholars to collectively investigate “unruly pedagogies” as a heuristic for examining the technopolitics of knowledge mobilization in datafied societies across diverse sociocultural and political contexts. Informed by feminist and postcolonial STS, we conceptualize pedagogy as a necessarily contested political project that defines, confronts, and challenges technoscientific, professional, and algorithmic rules governing how scholarly knowledge should travel, appear, and perform (Haraway 1988; Harding 2008). Pedagogical practices become unruly not because they escape power, but because they inhabit frictions between institutional mandates, platform governance, and situated commitments to publics and critique. Unruly pedagogies matter because they relocate questions of credibility and authority into data infrastructures of evaluation and visibility. STS scholarship demonstrates that expertise is socially accomplished through boundary work and civic epistemologies rather than intrinsic authority (Gieryn 1983; Jasanoff 2005), and that infrastructures and classifications shape what becomes visible and actionable as knowledge (Star and Ruhleder 1996; Bowker and Star 1999). Open science research similarly emphasizes that “openness” is a sociotechnical and political project whose infrastructures, norms, and participation are unevenly distributed (Fecher and Friesike 2014; Levin and Leonelli 2017). Critical data and platform studies extend these insights by showing how platformization, datafication, and content moderation reformat authority across professional domains such as childcare, health, and education (van Dijck, Poell, and de Waal 2018; Gillespie 2018; Ruckenstein and Schüll 2017; Mascheroni 2020). Bringing these fields into conversation, the panel particularly welcomes empirically grounded contributions from diverse geographical and socio-historical contexts that examine, but are not limited to: * Sociotechnical systems, infrastructures, and public engagement * AI innovation, data infrastructures, and epistemic authority in knowledge mobilization * Dynamics between institutional governance, platform regulation, and academic freedom * Academic labor and digital platforms * Comparative and de-Westernizing perspectives on public intellectualism

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Call for studies for a meta-analysis (Deepfake vs. authentic video effects)
by Bumju Jung 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

Hello Aoir colleagues, My name is Bumju Jung (University of Southern California). Lynn Miller, Ph.D., and I are conducting a meta-analysis examining how deepfake videos, compared with authentic videos, shape credibility-related evaluations (e.g., perceived credibility, accuracy, authenticity, believability). First: Are we missing your study? If you have a study that matches the criteria below (published, in press, working paper, or unpublished), I would be grateful if you could contact me. This will help us ensure we do not miss your work and that we can accurately include and cite it in our meta-analysis. Unpublished and null findings are especially valuable for reducing publication bias. Second: If the paper or repository does not include complete statistics, it would be incredibly helpful to receive the minimum information needed to compute effect sizes, ideally: * Sample size per condition (deepfake/synthetic vs. authentic; N per cell) * Means and SDs for relevant outcomes (or equivalent statistics: t/F, SE, CI, etc.) When you do not need to send anything: If all necessary statistics are already available in the paper, appendix, OSF, or another repository, you do not need to forward numbers. A link or citation is enough (so we do not miss it). High-level inclusion criteria: * Experimental or quasi-experimental design * Video stimuli: deepfake/AI synthesized vs. authentic video comparison * Measures: perceived credibility/accuracy/authenticity/believability (or closely related outcomes) Please email me at bumjujun(a)usc.edu<mailto:bumjujun@usc.edu> Many thanks! Bumju Jung (he/him/his) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism University of Southern California

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Gender and Technology: An Introduction; now available in the United States
by Holly Kruse 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

Hi everyone, I just wanted to (humbly?) let you know that my book Gender and Technology: An Introduction has now been published in the United States by Polity. From https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=gender-and-technology-an-i… <https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=gender-and-technology-an-i…>: Technology has advanced significantly over the past 200 years, but have ideas about gender and technology also changed over time? Are modern technologies gendered? In this comprehensive text, Holly Kruse explores how notions of gender and technology have been socially constructed. Organized historically, the book provides a broad overview of global developments in technology and how these technologies have been (ideologically) gendered. Focusing on communication and media technologies and analysing an array of household and workplace devices, the text examines the ways in which they have been considered "feminine" or "masculine". These associations, as the text reveals, often have little to do with the complexity of the technology. Rich with historical and contemporary examples – from bicycles and washing machines to the telegraph and the computer - Gender and Technology encourages us to take a closer look at how and why modern technologies are gendered. By understanding the origins of our ideas about gender and technology, we can see how they have and have not changed over time. This text is essential reading for undergraduates taking courses on gender and technology, and will be of interest to general readers who want to learn more about the historical relationship between gender and technology. REVIEWS "This beautifully written history of technology, presented through the lens of gender, offers an exceptional amount of information and insight. It will delight and inspire both experts and those new to the topic." Nancy Baym, Partner Research Manager, Microsoft Research "A masterclass in unpacking the taken-for-granted, this book traces how technologies are gendered - and how gender is technologized - in ways that shape everything from children's toys to our most intimate relationships with domestic space." Alice E. Marwick, University of North Carolina "Critically astute and wide-ranging, this engaging and accessible text reveals the centrality of gender politics within everyday technologies." Kylie Jarrett, University College Dublin Best wishes, and thanks for reading my post! Holly Holly Kruse, Ph.D. Professor Department of Communications Rogers State University 1701 W. Will Rogers Blvd. Claremore, Oklahoma 74017 holly.kruse(a)gmail.com or hkruse(a)rsu.edu https://hollykruse.com

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CFP for 4s Toronto: AI as a performative phenomenon
by JOBIN Anna 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

Dear AoIRistas, If you are researching the performativity of Artificial Intelligence or working on related work, please consider submitting a paper abstract to our Open Panel accepted to 4s Toronto. ***** CFP ***** TITLE: Artificial Intelligence as a performative phenomenon PANEL ABSTRACT: STS has shown that AI is never “agentic on its own” (Suchman 2023), “never pure” (Shapin 2010) and “never alone” (Mol 2002). The ubiquity of “AI” reshapes the world not because it acts by itself, but because it is a profoundly performative phenomenon. It circulates through politics, media, investment portfolios, art, and everyday practices. The performativity of AI shows in how discourses of intelligence, autonomy and efficiency are not merely descriptive but materially shape infrastructures, economies, regulation, and visions of the future. This panel starts from AI as a phenomenon with no clear boundaries, neither from a technical, social, nor definitional viewpoint but enacted through discourses, which give it meaning, legitimacy, social and material presence. To understand its performativity we must understand how discourses become action-ascribing, and how they translate into infrastructures and policies. In short, we are interested in what AI does to the social world, to institutions, to citizens, to bodies. We therefore ask: What makes AI discursively performative and materially consequential? How can we analyze its discursive power in ways that show the performativity and the “performation” (Callon 2006) of AI? Importantly, performative discourse does not operate as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but requires a material apparatus – that is, a set of arrangements, techniques, rules, and structures – to ensure the conditions of its realization. One possible focus hence lies on what this material apparatus is made of. How does it manage to transform expectations, reorganize resources, and alter social-cultural arrangements? Other contributions might examine what the performativity of AI mobilizes, highlights, hides or conceals. Although AI seems to operate across various societal arenas, the stories it tells (efficiency, growth, automation) appear strikingly homogeneous. What material, social, and ecological alternatives get sidelined when AI is performed through these dominant discourses, and what new assemblages might arise? ***** Submission link (panel 207): https://www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions_toronto.php * Submission due date: 30 April 2026 * Notification of Acceptance: 29 May 2026 * Conference: 4s Meeting, 7-10 October 2026, Toronto * Panel convenors: Anna Jobin, Jascha Bareis, Olivier Glassey, Christopher Salter and Philippe Sormani ***** _____ Prof. Anna Jobin | Asst. Professor Human-IST<https://human-ist.unifr.ch/>; <https://human-ist.unifr.ch/en/studies/master/digital-society-ma-minor-progr…> Study Advisor M.A. Digital Society<https://human-ist.unifr.ch/digitalsociety/> Institute HUMAN-IST | University of Freiburg, CH-1700 Fribourg anna.jobin(a)unifr.ch<mailto:anna.jobin@unifr.ch>

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Last call for registration to The Digital Conference (KCL) for paper presenters: 8th March
by g. tavmen 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, This is the last reminder to register for The Digital Conference 2026, for paper presentation before the deadline, 8th March. The participants who are not presenting can register until 1st May. The conference theme, Digital Humanities Today: Critical Inquiry With and About the Digital, foregrounds discussion, debate, and exchange across disciplines. Please note that there will be no keynote lectures; instead, the programme is designed to centre collective inquiry through panels, presentations, and conversations. 📍 Dates: 23–26 June 2026📍 Location: Bush House, King’s College London 📝 Registration:Please click here or use this link to register for the conference: https://estore.kcl.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/academic-faculties/faculty-… | | | | | | | | | | | Digital Humanities Today: Critical Inquiry with and about the Digital | ... King's College London >From the 23-26 June 2026, the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London will host an internation... | | | The webpage for The Digital Conference is now live up here: www.kcldigitalconference.com | | | | The Digital Conference 2026 @ King's College London | | | Dr Güneş Tavmen Lecturer in Digital Infrastructures Department of Digital Humanities King’s College London

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New open access titles in Science Technology and Society
by Bahar Celik Muller 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

***Apologies for cross posting*** We are delighted to share latest open access titles from BUP's Science, Technology and Society list: * The App Economy - Making Sense of Platform Power in the Age of AI, By Konrad Kollnig<https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/monobook-oa/book/9781529247725/97…> * Revealing Relations - Knowledge Infrastructures for Liveable Futures, By Anne Beaulieu<https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/monobook-oa/book/9781529231540/97…> Please feel free to share these titles with your network and your students. Our aim is to ensure that the vital work of our authors reaches the lecturers, researchers and policymakers who can use it to drive meaningful, real-world change. You can request access to all Science, Technology and Society<https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/collection/SOC-Collection?bot=bot…> titles from BUP as part of our Sociology Collection<https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/subject/SOC-Collection?utm_source…> via your institution’s library. We offer EBA options and tiered pricing on our collections tailored to smaller organisations and their libraries. For more details, institutions can contact our team at bup-digital(a)bristol.ac.uk. You may also be interested in our Sociology journals<https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/page/journals?utm_source=listserv…>, including the open access Global Social Challenges Journal<https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/gsc/view/journals/gscj/gscj-overv…>. Publish with us: If you are writing in this field, consider publishing your work with an ethical university press. To discuss your publishing projects, please contact our editor pul.stevens(a)bristol.ac.uk. Bahar Muller Senior Marketing Executive New books Asian Crucible<https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/asian-crucible?utm_source=signat…> by Nick Bisley The Green Handprint at Work<https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/professional-business/the-green-handpr…> by Barbara Kump and Babette Brinkmann Nature’s Boardroom: Giving Nature a Voice and a Vote<https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/professional-business/natures-boardroo…> by Simeon Rose Liberation and Corruption: Why Freedom Movements Fail<https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/liberation-and-corruption…> by Peter Hain Reckoning: Creating Positive Change Through Radical Empathy<https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/reckoning?utm_source=sign…> by Terri Givens Keep up with all our news and get a 25% discount on ALL Bristol University Press and Policy Press books by signing up to our newsletter<https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/signup-bup-pp?utm_source=signature&utm…>. Follow us on all social channels: Bluesky<https://ow.ly/8Eo050UfPKH> | Bluesky (Journals)<https://ow.ly/gNXc50UfPKG> | Instagram <https://ow.ly/GFZB50UfPKB> | LinkedIn<https://ow.ly/CXSX50UfPKF> | Threads <https://ow.ly/hONt50UfPKE> | Facebook<https://ow.ly/GFZB50UfPKB> | X (Twitter)<https://x.com/BrisUniPress> Our charity for 2026 is One25. Find out more and donate here.<https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/charity?utm_source=signature&utm_mediu…>

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New book: Internet Vulgarities in China — Cultures, Governance and Politics
by Jian Xu 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, We are thrilled to announce the publication of the edited book Internet Vulgarities in China: Cultures, Governance and Politics, edited by Jian Xu (Deakin University) and Dino Ge Zhang (City University of Hong Kong). The book has been published by Routledge as part of its Asian Visual Cultures series. https://www.routledge.com/Internet-Vulgarities-in-China-Cultures-Governance… The book is the first comprehensive study to critically examine the cultures, governance and politics of internet vulgarities in Chinese society. Comprising twelve chapters, the authors present empirically rich case studies to explore the nature, regulation and evolution of the internet cultural products, vernacular internet cultures and subcultural online communities which have been officially deemed ‘vulgar’ by the state, official media and policy documents. >From ‘vulgar’ online music, internet literature, memes, web dramas, influencers, video games to online fandoms, this timely book demonstrates that the disciplinary power of China’s ‘anti-vulgarity’ campaigns stems from the state’s strategic use of the ambiguous concept of ‘vulgarity’ to judge and regulate the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of popular digital media cultures. This process of turning language into law—a form of ‘linguistification of rule’—functions as a key technique of digital and cultural governance, ensuring that these cultures evolve in accordance with the ideological, moral and cultural values of the party-state. The book will make a significant contribution to the fields of China’s digital media studies, popular culture studies, internet and cultural governance. It is an essential resource for scholars, researchers and students seeking a critical understanding of China’s digital media cultures and its governance and politics. Table of Contents Chapter 1 (Introduction): Judgement of ugliness: The politics of ‘anti-vulgarity’ in China’s media and cultural governance — Jian Xu & Dino Ge Zhang Part I: Internet Cultural Products Chapter 2: Messy realities and power secrecy: Contested and persistent presences of vulgarities in the governance of Chinese web novels — Renren Yang Chapter 3: Legitimising musical taste: ‘Vulgar internet songs’ from ‘Mice loves rice’ to PG-One — Nathanel Amar Chapter 4: Boy’s love as ‘vulgar’ culture? The discourse of anti-boys’ love and the cis-heteronormative governance against BL-adapted web dramas in China — Liang Ge, Tingting Hu and Ziyao Chen Chapter 5: Vulgar spirits of games and play from state to society: An alternative history of videogames in China — Dino Ge Zhang & Jing Sun Part II: Vernacular Internet Cultures Chapter 6: ‘Toxic Chicken Soup’ as a genre: The dialectics of hope and its governance on We Media — Shaohua Guo Chapter 7: Ball-ache, dick hair and serial cunt words: The role of vulgarity in Chinese internet language — Gabriele de Seta Chapter 8: Negativity as vulgar? The rise of self-mockery culture and its governance — Junqi Peng Chapter 9: In search of the opposite of the canonical: eGao Red Classics and its regulation — Qian Gong Part III: Subcultural Online Communities Chapter 10: Vulgarising a subaltern taste on Chinese social media: The rise and fall of hanmai rap and social shake dance — Jiaxi Hou Chapter 11: Eroticised internet celebrity and vulgarity in China: The case of Aoi Sola — Jamie Coates Chapter 12: ‘Chasing idols in a rational way’: Governing toxic ‘fan circle’ culture in China — Jian Xu & Ling Yang >>>>>>>>>>>>> Best regards Jian Xu Associate Professor in Communication Deakin University, Australia Profile: https://experts.deakin.edu.au/40550-jian-xu Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free.

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