Dear colleagues, please see below the call for panel abstracts for ICA 2024 at Gold Coast, Australia. Apologies for cross-posting! --- CFP: ICA 2024 PANEL SUBMISSION ‘CUMULATIVE PATTERNS AND EFFECTS IN ONLINE OPINION FORMATION’ We cordially invite those who study online discussions and opinion formation on social media to submit an abstract to the prospective panel for the ICA Annual conference of 2024 at Gold Coast, Australia, on June 20-24, 2024. The panel focuses on cumulative patterns and effects in online opinion formation and the factors that shape opinion cumulation, both discursive, structural, and contextual (including platform affordances and outer socio-political contexts). In our approach, we follow the concept of cumulative deliberation (Bodrunova 2021, 2023) that sees opinion formation on social media as primarily non-deliberative, and sees the latter more as normal than as negatively deviant from the classic views on public sphere. We also see the temporal dimension of opinion formation as crucial and focus on linking temporal patterns of opinion formation to patterns of user participation (including participation of political and media actors), polarization of views, discursive features of online talk, parasocial relations that emerge in time, dissipative and viral logics etc. We try to show that emergence of online influencing, majority/minority formation similar to ‘spirals of silence’, echo chambering and other effects are manifestations of the cumulative, rather than rational deliberative, nature of online opinions, and aspire to discussing the new socially-normative and democratic dimensions of the cumulative part of public deliberation. The topics for the panel are (not limited to) the following ones: • Detection of cumulative patterns in opinion formation: Methods and suggestions • Negativity vs. opinion cumulation: The effects of online (in)civility • Network structures and opinion cumulation: Is there an independent ‘network logic’? • Time in opinion cumulation: Discussion outbursts, polarization, reputation crises, cascades, and viral spread of information seen in time • Opinion cumulation vs. connective action: The thresholds – from protest spillovers to emergence of social action • Affect vs. opinion cumulation: Affective publics and their inner patterns • Normativity in cumulative deliberation: Distinguishing between natural user behavior and strategic distortions • Previously known as ‘the spiral of silence’: Effects and micro-effects in opinion cumulation • Cumulation of publics: From ad hoc discussion milieus to transnational diaspora • Contextual dependence of opinion cumulation: Comparing patterns of opinion emergence across media systems and cultures The abstracts of 150 to 200 words (in free format) should be sent to Svetlana Bodrunova (s.bodrunova@spbu.ru) by October 24, 2024; notifications on inclusion to the panel will be sent out by October 27. The abstract submissions should not be anonymized, as we will need your names for the inclusion into the panel submission. Please include your name, affiliation, and email into the submission and title your letter as ‘ICA 2024 panel abstract on cumulative effects in opinion formation.’ And good luck in your other submissions to ICA 2024! :) -- Svetlana S. Bodrunova, Prof., D.Polit.Sci. Head, Center for International Media Research School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St.Petersburg State University +7 921 933 02 14 s.bodrunova@spbu.ru, spasibo-tebe@yandex.ru