The mini-track on Digital Activism and Citizenship at the 13th European Conference on eGovernment ECEG 2013 Como, Italy, June 13-14th might be of interest for AoIR members. Feel free to circulate it among your collegues The long-raging debate over the potential of the Internet and new media to invigorate citizens’ participation in politics is not a matter of theoretical speculation any more, but an acutely practical affair. Nowadays, when citizens want to voice their opinions and define their political identities they increasingly do so on social networks online. Slowly but surely, these environments exhibit exciting new possibilities for mobilization, organization and discussion, offering citizens new channels for speaking and acting together and thus lower the threshold for political participation. This, in turn, changes the power dynamics of participation. However, some have questioned the notion of social networking platforms as tools for social change and/or horizontal power structures, in particular in relation to issues of surveillance, data privacy and corporate ownership of social networks. Also very few movements have succeed through mediated activism alone. Hence, on the one hand we are witnessing how increasing access to the internet has resulted in an array of new strategies and success stories for contemporary activism, in particular with regards to mobilisation. On the other hand, we are still groping in the dark when it comes to understanding the place of digital activism in the shifting landscapes of power. For this mini-track we invite scholarly research to shed light on these issues. Topics may include (but are not limited to): Contemporary activist and citizenhsip practices Power and participation among activists and citizens using online platforms Networked individualism and collective action New discourses of activism and citizenship Intersections of offline and online participation Issues of surveillance and privacy in online participation Submission details All submission types require a 300-500 word abstract in the first instance, to be received by 22 November 2012. Please read the guidelines at http://academic-conferences.org/abstract-guidelines.htm Only accepted by online form submission at http://academic-conferences.org/eceg/eceg2013/eceg13-abstract-submission.htm Jakob Svensson, Ph. D. Director HumanIT (www.kau.se/en/humanit) Ass. Prof. in Media and Communication Studies Karlstad University 65188 Karlstad - Sweden + 46 (0) 54 700 1893 jakob.svensson@kau.se