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Final Call for Papers and Shared Task Participation (CASE @ EMNLP 2022): Challenges and Applications of Automated Extraction of Socio-political Events from Text
by ali hürriyetoglu 17 Aug '22

17 Aug '22

Final Call for Papers and Shared Task Participation (CASE @ EMNLP 2022): Challenges and Applications of Automated Extraction of Socio-political Events from Text Apologies for cross-posting! ************************************************************************************ URL: https://emw.ku.edu.tr/case-2022/ Sep 7, 2022: Submission deadline on Softconf Jul 15, 2022: Latest ARR submission deadline for ARR Oct 2, 2022: Latest ARR commitment deadline Oct 9, 2022: Notification of Acceptance Oct 16, 2022: Camera-ready papers due Workshop dates: Dec 7-8, 2021 Location: Hybrid -> Abu Dhabi & Online Please see below for the important dates of the shared tasks. There are two options for submissions that are i) Softconf page of the workshop: https:// <https://www.softconf.com/m/icspcc2022> softconf.com/emnlp2022/case2022 and ii) ACL Rolling review (ARR): https://aclrollingreview.org/dates. ************************************************************************************ Nowadays, the unprecedented quantity of easily accessible data on social, political, and economic processes offers ground-breaking potential in guiding data-driven analysis in social and human sciences and in driving informed policy-making processes. Governments, multilateral organizations, and local and global NGOs present an increasing demand for high-quality information about a wide variety of events ranging from political violence, environmental catastrophes, and conflict, to international economic and health crises (Coleman et al. 2014; Porta and Diani, 2015) to prevent or resolve conflicts, provide relief for those that are afflicted, or improve the lives of and protect citizens in a variety of ways. Black Lives Matter protests (http://protestmap.raceandpolicing.com) and conflicts in Syria ( https://www.cartercenter.org/peace/conflict_resolution/syria-conflict-resol…) are only two examples where we must understand, analyze, and improve real-life situations using such data. Finally, these efforts respond to “growing public interest in up-to-date information on crowds” as well ( https://sites.google.com/view/crowdcountingconsortium/faqs) Event extraction has long been a challenge for the natural language processing (NLP) community as it requires sophisticated methods in defining event ontologies, creating language resources, domain specific grammars, developing Machine Learning models and other algorithmic approaches for various event-detection- specific tasks, such entity detection, semantic labeling, event classification and clustering and others (Pustojevsky et al. 2003; Boroş, 2018; Chen et al. 2021). Social and political scientists have been working to create socio-political event (SPE) databases such as ACLED, EMBERS, GDELT, ICEWS, MMAD, PHOENIX, POLDEM, SPEED, TERRIER, and UCDP following similar steps for decades. These projects and the new ones increasingly rely on machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), and NLP methods to deal better with the vast amount and variety of data in this domain (Hürriyetoğlu et al. 2020). Unfortunately, automated approaches suffer from major issues like bias, limited generalizability, class imbalance, training data limitations, and ethical issues that have the potential to affect the results and their use drastically (Lau and Baldwin 2020; Bhatia et al. 2020; Chang et al. 2019). Moreover, the results of the automated systems for SPE information collection have neither been comparable to each other nor been of sufficient quality (Wang et al. 2016; Schrodt 2020). SPEs are varied and nuanced. Both the political context and the local language used may affect whether and how they are reported. We invite contributions from researchers in computer science, NLP, ML, DL, AI, socio-political sciences, conflict analysis and forecasting, peace studies, as well as computational social science scholars involved in the collection and utilization of SPE data. Academic workshops specific to tackling event information in general or for analyzing text in specific domains such as health, law, finance, and biomedical sciences have significantly accelerated progress in these topics and fields, respectively. However, there has not been a comparable effort for handling SPEs. We fill this gap. We invite work on all aspects of automated coding and analysis of SPEs and events in general from mono- or multi-lingual text sources. This includes (but is not limited to) the following topics 1) Extracting events in and beyond a sentence, event coreference resolution, 2) New datasets, training data collection, and annotation for event information, 3) Event-event relations, e.g., subevents, main events, causal relations, 4) Event dataset evaluation in light of reliability and validity metrics, 5) Defining, populating, and facilitating event schemas and ontologies, 6) Automated tools and pipelines for event collection related tasks, 7) Lexical, syntactic, discursive, and pragmatic aspects of event manifestation, 8) Methodologies for development, evaluation, and analysis of event datasets, 9) Applications of event databases, e.g. early warning, conflict prediction, policymaking, 10) Estimating what is missing in event datasets using internal and external information, 11) Detection of new SPE types, e.g. creative protests, cyberactivism, COVID19 related, 12) Release of new event datasets, 13) Bias and fairness of the sources and event datasets, 14) Ethics, misinformation, privacy, and fairness concerns pertaining to event datasets, and 15) Copyright issues on event dataset creation, dissemination, and sharing. 16) We encourage submissions of new system description papers on our available benchmarks (ProtestNews @ CLEF 2019, AESPEN @ LREC 2020, and CASE @ 2021). Please contact the organizers if you would like to access the data. The proceedings of the previous editions should be indicative of what we cover: ProtestNews @ CLEF 2019 (http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2380/) AESPEN @ ACL 2020 (https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2020.aespen-1/) CASE @ ACL-IJCNLP 2021 (https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2021.case-1/) **** Shared tasks **** Task 1- Multilingual protest news detection: This is the same shared task organized at CASE 2021 (For more info: https://aclanthology.org/2021.case-1.11/) But this time there will be additional data and languages at the evaluation stage. Contact person: Ali Hürriyetoğlu (ali.hurriyetoglu(a)gmail.com) Github: https://github.com/emerging-welfare/case-2022-multilingual-event Task 2- Automatically replicating manually created event datasets: The participants of Task 1 will be invited to run the systems they will develop to tackle Task 1 on a news archive (For more info https://aclanthology.org/2021.case-1.27/) Contact person: Hristo Tanev ( htanev(a)gmail.com) Github: https://github.com/emerging-welfare/case-2022-multilingual-event Task 3- Event causality identification: Causality is a core cognitive concept and appears in many natural language processing (NLP) works that aim to tackle inference and understanding. We are interested to study event causality in news, and therefore, introduce the Causal News Corpus. The Causal News Corpus consists of 3,559 event sentences, extracted from protest event news, that have been annotated with sequence labels on whether it contains causal relations or not. Subsequently, causal sentences are also annotated with Cause, Effect, and Signal spans. Our two subtasks (Sequence Classification and Span Detection) work on the Causal News Corpus, and we hope that accurate, automated solutions may be proposed for the detection and extraction of causal events in news. Contact person: Fiona Anting Tan (tan.f(a)u.nus.edu) Github: https://github.com/tanfiona/CausalNewsCorpus **** Deadlines for the Shared tasks **** ** Task 1 & 2: Training data available: The training data from CASE 2021 is used. New test data available: Sept 15, 2022 Test end: Sep 25, 2022 System Description Paper submissions due: Oct 2, 2022 Notification to authors after review: Oct 09, 2022 Camera-ready: Oct 16, 2022 ** Task 3: Training data available: Apr 15, 2022 Validation data available: Apr 15, 2022 Validation labels available: Aug 01, 2022 Test data available: Aug 01, 2022 Test start: Aug 01, 2022 Test end: extended from Aug 15 to Aug 31, 2022 System Description Paper submissions due: Sep 07, 2022 Notification to authors after review: Oct 09, 2022 Camera ready: Oct 16, 2022 *** Keynotes *** Three prominent scholars have accepted our invitation as keynote speakers: i) J. Craig Jenkins (https://sociology.osu.edu/people/jenkins.12) is Academy Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The Ohio State University. He directed the Mershon Center for International Security Studies from 2011 to 2015 and is now senior research scientist. ii) Scott Althaus (https://pol.illinois.edu/directory/profile/salthaus) is Merriam Professor of Political Science, Professor of Communication, and Director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. iii) Thien Huu Nguyen (https://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~thien/) is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Oregon. Thien is the director of the NSF IUCRC Center for Big Learning (CBL) at the University of Oregon. **** Submissions ***** This call solicits short and long papers reporting original and unpublished research on the topics listed above. The papers should emphasize obtained results rather than intended work and should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. The page limits and content structure announced at ACL ARR page (https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp) should be followed for both short and long papers. Papers should be submitted on the START page of the workshop ( http://softconf.com/emnlp2022/case2022) or on ARR page (TBA on the workshop website) in PDF format, in compliance with the ACL publication author guidelines for ACL publications https://acl-org.github.io/ACLPUB/formatting.html The reviewing process will be double-blind and papers should not include the author's names and affiliations. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. The workshop proceedings will be published on ACL Anthology. **** Organization Committee **** Ali Hürriyetoğlu (KNAW Humanities Cluster DHLab, the Netherlands) Hristo Tanev (Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission, Italy) Vanni Zavarella (Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, Italy) Reyyan Yeniterzi (Sabancı University, Turkey) Erdem Yörük (Koc University, Turkey) Osman Mutlu (Koc University, Turkey) Fırat Duruşan (Koc University, Turkey) Ali Safaya (Koc University, Turkey) Bharathi Raja Asoka Chakravarthi (Insight SFI Centre for Data Analytics, United Kingdom), Benjamin J. Radford (UNC Charlotte, United States) Francielle Vargas (University of São Paulo, Brazil) Farhana Ferdousi Liza (University of East Anglia, UK) Milena Slavcheva (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria), Ritesh Kumar (Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, India), Daniela Cialfi (The ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University, Italy) Tiancheng Hu (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) Niklas Stoehr (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) Fiona Anting Tan (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

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CFP: “The Post-Gamer Turn” Edited Collection
by Mahli-Ann Butt 17 Aug '22

17 Aug '22

Call for Papers: “The Post-Gamer Turn” Edited Collection Full CFP: https://postgamerturn.wordpress.com Book Editors - Mahli-Ann Butt [University of Sydney] - Amanda Cote [University of Oregon] - Emil Hammar [University of Tampere & University of Tromsø] - Cody Mejeur [University at Buffalo] Contact email: postgamerturn(a)gmail.com Project Synopsis This edited collection engages with the shifting understanding of “Gamers”/gamers/players in game culture, the games industry, and game studies – which Butt refers to as “the post-Gamer turn” (2022, p. 51) – to address the ongoing issues inherent in the use of a limited identity category. The post-Gamer turn does not signal the end of the “Gamer” identity but denotes a way of recognizing its promises as a sustained fantasy with real power and implications for who plays games and how. Engaging with the limits of the “Gamer” identity and questioning the boundaries of representation in games does not settle, solve, or supersede the concept of a “Gamer,” but instead reveals evolving relations between players and the games they play. Doing this work now is not only important as a matter of theoretical rigor, but also as a means for making game studies a more inclusive and vibrant scholarly community. Recognizing diverse perspectives on games, “Gamers”/gamers/players, and game studies is of urgent practical and political necessity. It has been nearly a decade since the events of Gamergate, where the tensions between “Gamers” and players were violently, publicly highlighted, and this edited collection asks what has changed in games and game studies with regard to conceptualizing players/gamers/”Gamers,” as well as where further change is needed. We invite submissions on a range of topics including but not limited to: - Ongoing challenges or changes in the “Gamer”/gamer/player relationship - Tensions between gaming counterpublics and hegemonic industry publics - Legacies and futures of the “Gamer” identity - Rethinking who or what counts in game definitions - The commodified “Gamer” identity at work in the industry - Alternative production strategies and approaches - Player community formation, regulation, contestation and sub/cultural capital - Entanglements of “player” and “non-player” practices - Intersectional identities, processes of identification, and embodied precarity - In-game representation, reception, and affect in gameplay - Social media and memes about “Gamers” - Challenging game studies’ disciplinary formation and field imaginary - Alternative/experimental approaches to researching, teaching, and playing games - Non-canonical research texts, e.g. paratexts, analogue, hybrid, mobile, casual games - Convergence media, technology, and cultures in the past and/or futures of play - The “becoming-environmental” threat of online harassment as related to games - Segments of “Gamers” with the global rise of fascism and reactionary elements - Difficulties of diversity work in game studies/industry related to “Gamer” identities - Transgressive play and non-hardcore/non-AAA gaming as resistance - The future of the Gamer in a world of climate change and societal crisis We list these potential topics as a way to inspire and welcome all submissions that highlight the longstanding contributions from feminist game studies and/or any work that challenges the dominant canonization of game studies as a discipline. We intend to publish the collection in English with an academic press, but wish to explicitly encourage submissions from culturally and linguistically diverse authors who may be non-academics, students, early career researchers, or established academics in any field. Workshop As part of the edited collection’s development, accepted contributors will be invited to present their chapters at a hybrid workshop hosted by the University of Sydney Games and Play Lab. This collaborative workshop will allow authors to share in-progress drafts and receive feedback from other contributors. Tentative Timeline - 31 Nov, 2022: Abstracts Due (500-800 words) - Feb 2023: Abstract Acceptances - April/May 2023: Contributor Workshop - Aug 2023: Full Chapters Due (6000-7000 words) - Oct 2023: Reviewer Feedback Returned - Dec 2023: Revised Manuscript Due - Feb 2024: Final Edits Due - Aug 2024: Publication -- Best wishes on behalf of the editors, Mahli-Ann DR MAHLI-ANN BUTT | she/her https://linktr.ee/mahliann <https://sydney.academia.edu/MahliAnnButt> Research Chair: Sydney Games and Play Lab <https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/our-research/research-projects/sydney-games-…> Board member: DiGRA <http://www.digra.org/>; DiGRA Australia <https://digraa.org/> THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY| Research Assistant Department of Media and Communications, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Project: Emerging Online Safety Issues <https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/our-research/research-projects/emerging-onli…> *I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, * *the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and work.* *I pay my respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.* *Sovereignty has never been ceded.*

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Two Digital Child PhD Scholarships at Curtin, EOIs closing this Friday!
by Tama Leaver 17 Aug '22

17 Aug '22

Hi Everyone, A reminder that we have two project-based competitive PhD scholarships open situated within Curtin's Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. These close in 2 days, so if you're interested, please submit your Expression of Interest, and if you know someone who might be interested, please let them know now! #1 "A critical analysis of algorithmic and datafied early childhoods" Working with Tama Leaver and Michele Willson. Open to domestic (so, Australian and New Zealand) applicants. Details: https://scholarships.curtin.edu.au/Scholarship/?id=5888 #2 "A socio-cultural inquiry into the child influencer industry" Working with Tama Leaver & Crystal Abidin. Open to Australian and International applicants. Details: https://scholarships.curtin.edu.au/Scholarship/?id=5897 If you're interested in either of these, please submit an Expression of Interest using the online form listed with the scholarship description ON OR BEFORE FRIDAY 18 AUGUST (in Perth time). I'm happy to answer any questions people might have by email, t.leaver(a)curtin.edu.au. Thanks, Tama -- Professor Tama Leaver (he/him) President, Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) http://aoir.org Professor of Internet Studies School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry (MCASI) Faculty of Humanities Curtin University GPO Box U1987 Perth WA Australia 6845 Ph: (+61 8) 9266 1258 Email: t.leaver(a)curtin.edu.au Web: www.tamaleaver.net Twitter: @tamaleaver <https://twitter.com/tamaleaver> CRICOS Provider Code: 00301J (WA)

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New CDT report: Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data, A Workshop Report
by Dhanaraj Thakur 16 Aug '22

16 Aug '22

Hi all, I wanted to let you know about Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data: A Workshop Report <https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-08-15-FX-RAtD-workshop-repo…>, a new report that CDT released todaybased on a workshop we held earlier this year with researchers from academia, civil society, and journalism to examine three key questions concerning access to data held by social media companies: (1) What data do researchers want for public interest research; (2) how should researchers be vetted for data access; and (3) what methods should hosts use to provide access to researchers. The report describes key findings based on information from the workshop and makes recommendations to policymakers and social media companies, and others looking to enhance independent researchers’ access to data held by content hosts. The recommendations are: * Policymakers and hosts should help researchers understand what potential data is available. * Hosts should have established processes through which researchers can request access to non-public data or tools to make public data more accessible. * Hosts and policymakers should make accessing and using data for research in the public interest less expensive. * Policymakers should prioritize improving researchers’ access to public data through legislation. * Policymakers should prioritize access to advertising data. * When vetting is necessary, hosts or legislation should evaluate specific research projects and plans based on established, transparent criteria. Hosts that voluntarily provide data or legislation that requires hosts to provide data should not rely simply on whether a researcher falls within a particular category, such as academia. * Policymakers should strictly limit or eliminate the ability of commercial social media monitoring and marketing firms to collect and sell users’ data, even though some researchers rely on commercial sources to access data. You can read a Twitter thread about the report here <https://twitter.com/CenDemTech/status/1559543329444040706?s=20&t=hWWdMFPNoy…>. The executive summary is available here <https://cdt.org/insights/improving-researcher-access-to-digital-data-a-work…>(and here, in PDF form <https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-08-15-final-Researcher-Acce…>). In the coming weeks, CDT also plans to release another research report that examines other industries where companies share data through different mechanisms with researchers while also addressing concerns around privacy. That report will present lessons that social media companies can learn for sharing data with researchers. We’ll share it with you when it’s released as well. We hope Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data is useful to your work. If you have any questions or want to discuss more, please feel free to reach out. Regards, Dhanaraj -- *Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>* *E:* dthakur(a)cdt.org | *P:* +1 202 407 8849 | @thakurdhanaraj

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Open Rank (Assistant Professor/Associate Professor/Professor)
by Claudia Aragon 16 Aug '22

16 Aug '22

Good afternoon, The College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (the iSchool), invites applications for an open rank tenured or tenure track faculty position in the area of digital accessibility for people with disabilities. In particular, the iSchool seeks candidates from Information Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Human Centered Engineering, and related fields whose research focuses on populations with perceptual, motor, cognitive, language, or learning disabilities. Please see below for the full description of the posting. Interested applicants can apply directly from our website: https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/98686. The best consideration date is 11/1/2022. Thank you! -- Claudia Aragón | Faculty Affairs & Recruitment Specialist (she/her/hers) University of Maryland | College of Information Studies (iSchool) 4161 Fieldhouse Drive (Patuxent Building) | College Park, MD 20742 www.ischool.umd.edu | caragon(a)umd.edu

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[CFP] Third Annual Media Law & Policy Scholars Conference
by Jasmine McNealy 16 Aug '22

16 Aug '22

Hello All, We invite you to submit an abstract for the Media Law & Policy Scholars Conference (MLPSC 2023)<https://mlpsc.org/>, which will take place online on January 12 & 13, 2023. MLPSC is not like other big conferences you may normally attend. It is an interdisciplinary, paper workshop. The goal is to provide advice and support for works-in-progress that deepens their intellectual and theoretical impact. We interpret media law and policy broadly, welcoming scholars from around the world who study free speech, free press, access to information, intellectual property, data privacy, internet governance, emerging technologies and other related communication law and policy issues from a variety of theoretical perspectives and methodologies. Our goal is to include scholars and practitioners from law, journalism & communication, philosophy, political science, information systems, sociology, history, business and myriad other disciplines. The MLPSC format pays tribute to the intellectually engaging and rewarding experiences we have had at conferences like We Robot, Privacy Law Scholars Conference and the Law & Society Association. At MLPSC, authors do not present their papers. A discussant introduces and leads discussion on the paper. Everyone responds in a dialogue about the work. We don’t convene panels or have other “talking head” sessions—everyone gets to contribute to a robust and intellectually engaging conversation intended to help authors move their papers forward and to spur research ideas and questions for further study. SUBMITTING AN ABSTRACT Should you wish to have your paper considered for workshopping, please submit an anonymized extended abstract of no more than 1,000 words through the EasyChair portal by September 5, 2022<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mlpsc23>. You will need to provide a working title and 5 keywords. In addition, you'll be asked to provide author names, titles, affiliations and contact information. We will announce accepted abstracts on September 23, 2022. Email us<mailto:MLSC@jou.ufl.edu> if you encounter any problems. PROPOSING A PROVOCATION SESSION – MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON! New this year! MLPSC will be hosting several “provocations” sessions. These are roundtable sessions designed around a theme with the goal of brainstorming research ideas, meeting fellow scholars, seeding research collaborations and thinking deeply about timely topics in our field through audience participation and free-flowing discussion. Provocation sessions should include a minimum of two discussion leaders and a maximum of four discussion leaders. Proposals that include graduate student, early career or international colleagues are strongly encouraged. Diversity of panelists and disciplines will be considered when evaluating provocation proposals. PAPER SUBMISSION Workshop versions of accepted draft papers will be due Friday, December 16, 2022 @ midnight EDT. Because MLPSC is built around workshopping papers, we reserve the right to cancel your workshop if the paper draft is not provided sufficiently in advance for meaningful evaluation by participants. PREPARING FOR MLPSC Conference participants will be expected to register and to read the papers in advance. Papers will be introduced with only a few brief remarks so as to maximize time for rigorous discussion. Authors whose papers are accepted for workshopping are expected to actively participate in at least two other authors’ workshop sessions. Attendees should kindly calendar at least one full day of preparation time in advance of MLPSC. CODE OF CONDUCT To facilitate open and spirited discussion in an inclusive environment, we have adopted the following Code of Conduct<https://docs.google.com/document/d/17vGOkemjhBUWKgvLmtRuI6C8CJY5CIK8UgedYWc…>. As outlined, photography, recording and use of social media to discuss conference presentations are not permitted. By submitting your abstract, you agree to abide by this Code of Conduct.

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Program/registration - SFB1187 Annual Conference, 'Testing in the Wild' - September 19-21, 2022 University of Siegen, Germany/online
by Sam Hind 16 Aug '22

16 Aug '22

Dear Air-L list members SFB1187 Media of Cooperation is excited to announce the program for its annual conference, Testing in the Wild, held at the University of Siegen, Germany and online, September 19-21, 2022. For full details including schedule, panel abstracts >>> https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/de/annual-conference-2022/ For on-site registration >>> email info(a)sfb1187.uni-siegen.de<mailto:info@sfb1187.uni-siegen.de> Zoom links for online participation will be provided at the link above. <https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/de/annual-conference-2022/> ---------------------------------------------------------------- <https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/de/annual-conference-2022/> Keynotes Markus Krajewski (University of Basel, Switzerland): Perpetual Beta: Genealogies of Permanent Testing Noortje Marres (University of Warwick, UK): Towards the test society: On the un-doing of experimental accountability. ---------------------------------------------------------------- About the conference The objects, means, and situations of testing have multiplied rapidly in the digital age. Practices of testing have become ubiquitous. They have moved beyond the spatial and institutional confines of scientific laboratories (testing hypotheses), classrooms and exam halls (testing students), consumer organizations (testing products), and inspection agencies (testing systems and protocols) into the wild of everyday digital lifeworlds. Human beings and technological systems are today both subjects and objects of continuous testing. Paradigms such as A/B testing, machine learning, and test-driven development infuse a logic of testing into the creation, construction and maintenance of digital systems. Digital devices are equipped with ever more sensors that facilitate the monitoring of our health, behavior, and performance, directing our sensibilities towards new modes of data-based sense-making, evaluation, and justification. Platforms incentivise consumers to become critics by testing and reviewing products in public. In parallel, grassroots testing through ‘unboxings’ and ‘teardowns’ have become genres of user-generated content in themselves. Away from online platforms, users grapple with products delivered with rudimentary manuals or generic support, and whose functionality is expected to be extendable, adaptable, and fixable in the wild. Variations of updates are rolled out to select publics in order to test their respective acceptance within, or across, targeted demographics. Testing and evaluating digital products and services ‘on the fly’ has not only become concurrent with ordinary use, but part of it. Practices of testing commonly rely on data: its collection, processing, circulation, (re)presentation, justification, and analysis. In fact, datafication and testing co-evolve. The proliferation of testing in the wild and associated controversies can be observed at various levels. On the one hand the intentional organization, analysis and discussion of tests and their results based on data remains relevant and has been controversially discussed in recent years, either with respect to the Covid-19 pandemic (Schnelltests, 7-day incidence rates, intensive bed capacity etc.), climate change (ice core tests, gtCO2, RCPs etc.), or financial crises (banking ‘stress tests’, REAs, leverage ratios etc.). On the other hand the everyday, continuous, and casual capture of data through digital media has led both to practices of self-tracking as well as critiques of a growing and pervasive monitoring and exploitation of users through corporate data practices. Countering this, initiatives and policy makers test alternative measures, platforms, and standards to develop digital services that offer enhanced and/or protected user experiences, from routing data through secure pathways, ensuring data ‘portability’, or by restricting data collection altogether. In other respects, the likes of cryptocurrencies and other cryptographic innovations face increasing scrutiny as reckless social, financial and ecological experiments. As the earth system is itself being put to the test by the sum and history of human practices and their consequences, new methods for testing, evaluating, and critiquing the impact of data practices and digital infrastructures are urgently required. Against the background of the new ubiquity of testing the 2022 annual conference of SFB1187 Media of Cooperation invites contributions that engage with practices of testing in, of and with digital devices and digital environments in the wild. ------------------------------------------------------------------- - Research Associate SFB1187 Media of Cooperation @mediaofcoop<https://twitter.com/mediaofcoop> | University of Siegen, DE sam.hind(a)uni-siegen.de<mailto:sam.hind@uni-siegen.de><Mailto:hind@locatingmedia.uni-siegen.de> https://samhind.com/ <Mailto:hind@locatingmedia.uni-siegen.de> Recent articles Automotive parasitism: examining mobileye's 'car-agnostic' platformisation https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221104209 Making the car 'platform ready': how big tech is driving the platformization of automobility https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221098697 Machinic sensemaking in the streets: more-than-lidar in autonomous vehicles https://bit.ly/3l5UewA

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Conference Video Link for IAMCR 2022 pre-conference: Digital Governance and Transcultural Communications
by Yik Chan Chin 15 Aug '22

15 Aug '22

Dear Colleagues, Please find the webpage of the "IAMCR 2022 pre-conference: Digital Governance and Transcultural Communications" which summerises the main points of each speaker at: https://xwcb.bnu.edu.cn/sn/ln/132189.html At the bottom of the webpage, you can also find the recorded video link of each panel. Thank you for your interest. Best wishes, Yik Chan New Articles: Yik Chan Chin, Zhao Jingwu (2022 forthcoming), Governing Cross-Border Data Flows : International trade agreements and their limits, MDPI Laws. Yik Chan Chin, Arhan Park, Ke Li (2022) A Comparative Study on Disinformation Governance in Chinese and American Social Media Platforms, Policy & Internet, 1–21.https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.301. Muller, Milton & Yik Chan Chin (2022)Editorial: Platform governance by competing systems of political economy: The United States and China. Policy & Internet, https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.306, Special Issue on “Comparative Internet Governance Studies”. Chin, Yik Chan and Li, Ke, (2021) A Comparative analysis of Cyber Sovereignty Policies in China and the EU. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3900752 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3900752 Chin, Yik Chan (2020) ‘Internet governance in China: the network governance approach’ In Dragan Pavlićević and Zhengxu Wang (eds.) Social Relations and Political Development in China: Change and Continuity in the ‘New Era’, London: Routledge: page 134-153. Chin, Yik Chan (2018) Legitimation of Media Regulation in China, Chinese Political Science Review, 3(2), 172-194. --------- Dr. Yik Chan Chin Associate Professor School of Journalism and Communication Beijing Normal University Beijing, P. R. China 215123 Email: yik-chan.chin@bnu.edu.cn；yikchanchin@gmail.com https://xwcb.bnu.edu.cn/as/ap/114761.htm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yik_Chan_Chin http://ssrn.com/author=1377946 https://bnu.academia.edu/YikChanChin https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u41w5b4AAAAJ&hl=en

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UMass Amherst: Associate/Full Professor of Race, Media, and Communication
by Burcu Baykurt 15 Aug '22

15 Aug '22

Hi all, Excited to share this job ad for Associate/Full Professor of Race, Media, and Communication <https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/37294639/associate-full-professor-of-race-me…> in the Department of Communication at UMass Amherst. I’m one of the search committee members, so please feel free to reach out if you have any questions! See details below. All the best, Burcu *Job Description* The Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst seeks to build on our 50-year tradition of critical and community-engaged media and communication research with this hire in the area of race, media, and communication studies. We are looking for an Associate / Full Professor with a record of intellectual leadership and engaged scholarship examining the politics of race in media and communication, communication and racial justice, and/or race and representation in popular culture. We seek a colleague who can advance our department's mission to center issues of racial justice in communication research, collaborate with our diverse and international faculty and students, and extend our core strengths in critical cultural studies and media and communication studies. The Department of Communication is one of the most internationally diverse faculty in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Of particular interest are candidates who draw from critical bodies of theory and epistemologies of Black, Latino/a/x, Asian, Indigenous, and Ethnic Studies when studying media, communication, and racial politics in the United States. We also welcome candidates who draw from intersectional perspectives of feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory and those who study racial politics in a transnational perspective. We are open to diverse methodological approaches and community-engaged scholarship. Particular areas of expertise may include (but are not limited to) the following: · Race and representation in film, television, and social media · Systemic racism in media, creative, and tech industries · Racial equity and critical data studies · Racial justice narratives, digital activism, and strategic communication of social movements · Black digital cultures, creativity, and media-making · Queer and transgender politics of race · Race and Blackness in performance studies · Race and racial discrimination in health communication · Mediated solidarities, joy, and conflicts between/among communities of color · Racially targeted disinformation, hate, and digital harms · Race and mediated communication in geopolitics · Postcolonial and decolonial studies, and transnational and diasporic media · Critical approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion in media and communication studies *Requirements* The candidate is expected to have a Ph.D. in Communication or related fields. This is a mid-career or senior-level position, and the candidate will be reviewed for tenure during their first year of appointment. They are expected to have at least 5 years of experience in a tenure-track professorship post in Communication or related fields, with a record of excellence in research, teaching, and outreach. A successful record of leadership in grant-funded projects is desirable. *Additional information* The position will begin on Sept. 1, 2023. Applicant instructions Candidates should submit the following materials: 1. Cover letter addressed to Dr. Jonathan Corpus Ong, Chair of the Search Committee, Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 2. CV. 3. Three writing samples. 4. Evidence of teaching effectiveness. 5. Names and contact information of three academic references. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to write a tailor-fit statement about their experiences with and expectations from university diversity and inclusion initiatives and submit this to the Chair prior to the campus visit. Shortlisted candidates will also be asked to provide materials that demonstrate the candidate's eligibility and qualifications to show they meet the criteria and the standards for tenure at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. https://www.umass.edu/provost/resources/all- resources/academic-personnel/policy-and-labor-contracts/academic-personnel-policy-red The review of applications will begin on October 20, 2022, and will continue until the position is filled. For inquiries about the post and the application process, contact Search Committee Chair Dr. Jonathan Corpus Ong at jcong(a)umass.edu.

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PhD tuition waiver opportunity
by Tim Neff 15 Aug '22

15 Aug '22

Hi all, University of Leicester has some tuition fee waivers to offer PhD students working on Media and Communications projects. Here are the details: https://le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/funded-opportunities/cssah-fw-media Please feel free to circulate. Thank you! Best, Tim Neff Lecturer in Journalism University of Leicester timothy.neff(a)leicester.ac.uk<mailto:timothy.neff@leicester.ac.uk>

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