Please find below a CFP for a EU COST conference, to be held in Moscow, 23-25 May 2007: Politics Online: Comparative Perspectives, Theories & Methodological Innovations Feel free to redistribute as you deem appropriate, and apologies for any cross-posting. Best, Nick Jankowski ********************************************************************** Visiting Fellow Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences nickjan@xs4all.nl www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl *********************************************************************** Politics Online: Comparative Perspectives, Theories & Methodological Innovations Contributions are invited for two conference sessions devoted to recent theoretical developments in online politics and methodological innovations for investigating these developments. Politics Online should be conceived broadly to include both traditional politics such as top-down government-driven activities as well as bottom-up citizen-based initiatives. Session 1: Comparative Perspectives For Session 1, comparative contributions as well as single-country case studies are invited, independent of geographical region. These papers may be either primarily theoretical or empirical studies. The site of the conference in Moscow provides opportunity to explore developments regarding online politics in post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and other CIS countries as well as China and Southeast Asia from the perspective of comparative post-communism. Contributions from elsewhere including North America, Western Europe and other regions are also welcome. Suggested topics for Session 1 include: * use of mobile telephones (e.g., SMS exchanges) and e-mail during election campaigns, political and social movement actions; * web presence (websites and blogs) by political actors; * online discussion and chat forums oriented towards politics, public affairs and social movements; * Internet censorship and authoritarian measures regarding new media; * online privacy; * theoretical conceptualizations (such as social-shaping of technologies). Session 2: Methodological Innovations For Session 2, we invite methodologically-oriented papers concerned with conducting research in the online environment. As with the papers for Session 1, online politics should be seen as encompassing traditional political communication as well as citizen and social movement oriented political initiatives. Suggested methodologically oriented topics include: * comparative online research; * content and discourse analysis techniques for studying political websites; * ethnographic exploration of online political engagement; * link analysis; * mixed-method research designs. The sessions are planned as part of a larger EU COST Action 298 conference, to be held 23-25 May 2007 in Moscow. This conference, entitled The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected: The user and the future of information and communication technologies, is hosted by the Institute of the Information Society, Moscow, Russian Federation. For further details, see the conference site <http://conference.cost298.org/>http://conference.cost298.org. These two sessions about online politics are co-organized by COST Action A30, which is concerned with establishing a new media research agenda for East and Central Europe. For further details, see <http://www.cmcs.ceu.hu:8080/cmcs/a30cost/>http://www.cmcs.ceu.hu:8080/cmcs/a30cost/. Interested persons are encouraged to contact the session organizers as soon as possible regarding ideas for papers. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 10 January 2007. Authors will be notified by 31 January regarding acceptance. Full papers are to be submitted no later than 15 May 2007. Plans are being made for a journal theme issue and submissions will be considered for inclusion. The sessions are co-organized by: * Miklos Sukosd (Central European University), Chair, COST Action A30: <mailto:sukosdm@ceu.hu>sukosdm@ceu.hu * Nicholas Jankowski (Virtual Knowledge Studio, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), COST Action A30, Working Group 1 leader: <mailto:nickjan@xs4all.nl>nickjan@xs4all.nl * Chantal de Gournay (France Telecom R&D), COST Action 298, chantal.degournay@orange-ftgroup.com Please send abstracts to: * Miklos Sukosd, Chair, COST Action A30: <mailto:sukosdm@ceu.hu>sukosdm@ceu.hu * the organizational address for the conference: <mailto:costconference@fub.it>costconference@fub.it.