Hello friends at AoIR, My long-time collaborator and trusty friend, Dr Natalie Pang, and I are seeking three more papers for a Special Issue of *Journal of Sociotechnical Critique*. Please see the CfP below and attached. Thanks for your consideration + Take care, /C * *Targeted Call for Papers* Internet Popular Culture and (Everyday) Politics: Methodological & Ethical Critiques from Southeast Asia Issue editors: Crystal Abidin & Natalie Pang Outlet: *Journal of Sociotechnical Critique* *Looking for papers grounded in the contexts of Thailand, Vietnam and Timor-Leste* We are in the midst of together a special issue on how scholars conduct research on (everyday) politics in Southeast Asia via networks of internet popular culture, and are looking for three further contributions focused on Thailand, Vietnam, and Timor-Leste. This may include artifacts, networks, groups, and cultures that are specific to Southeast Asian online practices, and that seek to represent, advocate for, provoke, or question how citizens ‘do’ politics online. New generations of scholars who work with digital media are often assumed to be as familiar with internet artifacts, social media platforms, and digital cultures as their research participants. Yet this familiarity does not necessarily grant smooth entrées, flawless interactions, effortless participation and clean-cut conclusions. Our methodological considerations, fieldwork flaws, and the dilemmas when managing contentious data often take a backseat for polished public-facing research articles. In the Southeast Asia region in particular, these behind-the-scenes minutiae of everyday decisions are all the more under-valued when researchers have been taught, conditioned, or cautioned to tiptoe around the OB (out-of-bound) markers implicitly policed by states and governments. The combination of media regimes with limited press freedoms, the frequent employment of sedition acts against citizens, and the need to be strategic to secure state and industry funding for research has also pressured or motivated scholars to calculatively obscure some research anecdotes in favour for a smoother publishing journey and/or posterity. As such, we wish for this issue to serve as a sounding board and collection of reflections on what is really looks like to conduct research on everyday politics online in the Southeast Asian region, while navigating innovative media methods, negotiating inter-disciplinary gatekeeping, demands of publishing in tiered journals and the tensions around legitimizing one's methodological choices. In this issue, we invite scholars to reflect on the methodological and ethical processes and critiques of conducting research on internet popular culture and (everyday) politics in the contexts of Thailand, Vietnam or Timor-Leste, paying special attention to a decolonizing perspective. We invite contributions that critically explore any of the following angles: ● how theoretical concepts and research practice mutually and reflexively inform each other; ● the interpretive flexibility and ethical choices that surrounds the application and usage of ICTs and digital networks to pursue research - for instance, getting interviewees to share their encounters and reflections on laws on fake news in various societies require the deployment of different strategies; ● how the hyphen in ‘socio-technical’ manifests in their own work. This refers to research that moves away from technological deterministic assumptions and conclusions but is also careful not to substitute “one form of determinism (technical) with another (social) (Williams and Edge, 1996)”. Further prompts for consideration include: ● What does it really look like to research (everyday) politics online in your country fieldsite? ● How is internet popular culture invoked in these situations? ● Under what socio-cultural, political, and ethical regimes do scholars have to operate to do your research? ● What interesting findings emerged from your data that will likely be difficult to publish about? ● What does ethical research look like in your fieldsite? *Instructions* If you are interested to submit a paper to this special issue, send us an email with the proposed title and a 300-word abstract of the paper at your soonest convenience. We can be contacted at crystal.abidin[at]curtin.edu.au and natalie.pang[at]nus.edu.sg Selected contributors will submit papers of between 2000-4000 words each (including references) for peer review. Three external reviewers will be responsible for collectively refereeing the SI and the introduction, to get the big picture of the collection, to speak to the merit of each article, and also to each article’s merit within the SI. Other papers in the SI are currently in progress towards internal review, but deadlines for these three additional contributions are negotiable with the Editors. *References & Resources* Kling, R. (2000), "Learning about information technologies and social change: the contribution of social informatics", The Information Society, Vol. 16, pp. 217-32. Kling, R. (1996b), "Hopes and horrors: technological utopianism and anti-utopianism in narratives of computerization", in Kling, R. (Ed.), Computerization and Controversy, 2nd ed., Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 40-58. Karin Garrety & Richard Badham (2000) The Politics of Socio-technical Intervention: An Interactionist View, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 12:1, 103-118, DOI: 10.1080/095373200107265 Williams, R. and Edge, D. (1996), "The social shaping of technology", Research Policy, Vol. 25, pp. 856-99, available at: www.rcss.ed.ac.uk/technology/SSTRP.html ––––––––––––––––––– Associate Professor Crystal Abidin, PhD wishcrys.com Principal Research Fellow & ARC DECRA Fellow, Internet Studies, Curtin University Programme Lead of Social Media Pop Cultures, Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University Affiliate Researcher, Media, Management and Transformation Centre, Jönköping University Exec, Association of Internet Researchers ABC Top 5 / Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia / Pacific Standard 30 Under 30 Books: Mediated Interfaces (2020) <https://wishcrys.com/mediated-interfaces-bloomsbury/> Instagram (2020) <https://wishcrys.com/instagram-polity/> Microcelebrity Around the Globe (2018) <https://wishcrys.com/microcelebrity-around-the-globe-emerald/> Internet Celebrity (2018) <https://wishcrys.com/internet-celebrity-emerald/> Recently published: Refracted Publics for Under The Radar Studies (Social Media+Society) <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120984458> Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok (Cultural Science Journal) <https://culturalscience.org/articles/10.5334/csci.140/> Influencer Wars and Productive Disorder (Peter Lang) <https://wishcrys.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/abidin-2020-l8r-h8r.pdf>