Dear all, Please consider submitting an abstract to the ICA 2025 pre-conference on "The Political Power of Information Technology Industries" which will take place June 12, 2025 at the University of Denver. Submission deadline: January 31, 2025. Full details below. All the best, Roei _________________________ Call for abstracts: The Political Power of Information Technology Industries ICA 2025 pre-conference To be held at the University of Denver, June 12, 2025, 9:00AM – 4:30PM Abstract submission deadline: January 31, 2025 *Call also available here*: https://t.ly/ZbeO5 Affiliated with the Communication, Law and Policy Division and the Media Industries Interest Group of ICA Sponsored by the Institute for Information Policy at Pennsylvania State University and the Underwood Institute Co-Organizers: Roei Davidson, Amit Schejter, Krishna Jayakar Scientific Committee: Roei Davidson, Krishna Jayakar, Brandie Nonnecke, Rodrigo Cetina Presuel, Amit Schejter & Richard Taylor The information technology (IT) industries occupy a powerful position in society. They develop, operate and sell key data infrastructures and devices that enable major social and political processes to take place (Plantin et al., 2018). Ownership of these infrastructures gives them “privileged access” (Srnicek, 2017, p. 44) to user activities and great wealth. These provide them in turn with significant power that directly impacts the political rights as well as conditions of people worldwide. Within their infrastructures, these industries often operate as if they own fiefdoms, enjoying broad powers to shape and restrict users’ behaviors, and designing systems that grant users feudal power over others (Schneider, 2023). In the past, the IT industries - including software, hardware, storage, and internet platforms - were reluctant to participate in political life and overtly exert power but rather turned to the construction of computational devices and networks as alternative spaces for individual fulfillment (Turner, 2006). However, in recent years, IT firms (Dror, 2015) and entrepreneurs (Creech & Maddox, 2022; Karppi & Nieborg, 2021) have been more explicit in their public commitments and interventions. They have used their access to data to promote particular political agendas and “choreograph publics” (Murray & Flyverbom, 2021, p. 630) consonant with both their narrow corporate interests and more general social visions. They provide political campaigns with technical assistance (Kreiss & McGregor, 2018) and regulate political speech (Kreiss & McGregor, 2019). They have influenced public policy domains such as education in ways that promote the adoption of the systems they develop and the values they espouse (Davidson et al., 2024; Sims, 2017; Tamir & Davidson, 2020). In some areas, such as national security, the state has relied on IT firms to carry out core political functions by proxy (Chachko, 2021; Feldstein, 2021). Prominent IT executives and entrepreneurs claim the authority and jurisdiction to participate in moral debates well beyond the confines of the industry (Daub, 2020), and network celebrities connected with these industries do so as well (Turner & Larson, 2015). Some industry personnel participate in political activism leveraging their occupational identity and social status as technology experts. In many of these cases, the industry’s power is not only mediated by the socio-technical systems it develops but is also applied using direct interventions (Eyal & Buchholz, 2010) which rely on human interaction and social discourse. In reaction to these interventions and the increased power of the industry more generally, governments (both national and supra-national) have acted to curb industry power or shape it for their own needs sometimes in a bid to deepen systems of political control (Feldstein, 2021; Hutson, 2023). In addition, governments often restrict foreign firms and maintain close ties with domestic ones (Huang & Tsai, 2022). Given the more proactive role the IT industries play in political life we wish to ask in this pre-conference: How do the IT industries intervene in political campaigns? How do these industries shape the public policy process through lobbying, donations and consulting, both in relation to media and internet policy and in relation to broader policy domains? How do their products algorithmically affect the political process? What role do industrial actors play in opposing, or supporting and sometimes leading activist movements? How do industrial actors intervene in intellectual debates? and how do governments respond to industry interventions and/or co-opt the IT industries for their own purposes? In posing these questions and related ones, we welcome theoretical and empirical contributions that draw on diverse methodological approaches (qualitative, quantitative, and computational) to interrogate these industries’ political role around the world nationally and trans-nationally in both democratic and authoritarian regimes. Submission topics could include but need not be restricted to: *Intellectual interventions such as lectures, media appearances, news coverage, podcasts, blogging, social media, think-tanks, official testimony, and industry research *Political dimensions inherent to the design and functioning of IT platforms and services *Lobbying and other forms of participation in the public policy process *Corporate, investor and worker activism *Political donations *Participating in and supporting political campaigns and other elements of the formal political process *Supporting, providing, or replacing state functions *National and supra-national policy related to the IT industries ------------------------------------------------- Workshop Organizers: Institute for Information Policy, Penn State. Submissions: Interested scholars are invited to submit a 500-word abstract by January 31, 2025. Authors of selected papers and abstracts will be notified by February 21, 2025. Full papers based on invited abstracts are due May 12, 2025. Proposals and papers should be sent by e-mail to the Workshop Organizers at pennstateIIP@psu.edu. Inquiries should also be directed to that address. Registration Fee: There will be a $50.00 registration fee for participants to cover the cost of food and refreshments during the Workshop. Limited funding will be available to waive the registration fee of at least some graduate student attendees who will be presenting at the pre-conference. Following the pre-conference, authors will be invited to submit a full paper for potential inclusion in a peer-reviewed special issue of the Journal of Information Policy. References Chachko, E. (2021). National Security by Platform. Stanford Technology Law Review, 25(1), 55–140. Creech, B., & Maddox, J. (2022). Thus spoke Zuckerberg: Journalistic discourse, executive personae, and the personalization of tech industry power. New Media & Society, 14614448221116344. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221116344 Daub, A. (2020). What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley. FSG Originals. Davidson, R., Rein, N., & Tamir, E. (2024). The time-making capacity of the technology industry and its consequences for public life. Journal of Cultural Economy, 17(1), 55–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2261483 Eyal, G., & Buchholz, L. (2010). From the Sociology of Intellectuals to the Sociology of Interventions. Annual Review of Sociology, 36(1), 117–137. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102625 Feldstein, S. (2021). The rise of digital repression: How technology is reshaping power, politics, and resistance. Oxford University Press. Huang, J., & Tsai, K. S. (2022). Securing Authoritarian Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Political Economy of Surveillance in China. The China Journal, 88, 2–28. https://doi.org/10.1086/720144 Hutson, M. (2023). Rules to keep AI in check: Nations carve different paths for tech regulation. Nature, 620(7973), 260–263. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02491-y Karppi, T., & Nieborg, D. B. (2021). Facebook confessions: Corporate abdication and Silicon Valley dystopianism. New Media & Society, 23(9), 2634–2649. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820933549 Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2018). Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle. Political Communication, 35(2), 155–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814 Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2019). The “arbiters of what our voters see”: Facebook and Google’s struggle with policy, process, and enforcement around political advertising. Political Communication, 36(4), 499–522. Murray, J., & Flyverbom, M. (2021). Datafied corporate political activity: Updating corporate advocacy for a digital era. Organization, 28(4), 621–640. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420928516 Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553 Schneider, N. (2023). Afterlives of the Californian Ideology| Homesteading on a Superhighway: The Californian Ideology and Everyday Politics. International Journal of Communication, 17, 4255–4271. Sims, C. (2017). Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism. Princeton University Press. Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity. Tamir, E., & Davidson, R. (2020). The good despot: Technology firms’ interventions in the public sphere. Public Understanding of Science, 29(1), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519879368 Turner, F. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University Of Chicago Press. Turner, F., & Larson, C. (2015). Network celebrity: Entrepreneurship and the new public intellectuals. Public Culture, 27(1 75), 53–84. -- Roei Davidson <http://roeidavidson.com>, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Communication University of Haifa