CFM: Symbolic Interaction, Activism, and Social Movement
On June 14, 2025, the No Kings protests (No Kings) incorporated several dimensions associated with collective behavior, including the combination of coordinated activism and the dissemination of information. Organizers of No Kings used the networking capacity of social media to coordinate protests against Donald Trump's policies and actions. More than five million people participated in protests in about 2,100 cities and towns in the U.S. The protests were organized by the coalition of at least 200 progressive groups, utilizing, among other formats, the Internet to coordinate large-scale and decentralized collective action. Conceptually, activism consists of efforts to promote changes in social, political, or economic practices. Those identified as activists set out to achieve a common good. Such purposeful, organized, and sustained efforts over a period of time becomes a social movement. In regard to the dissemination of information as related to activism, those identifying themselves as activists have, historically, used various media formats to identify and promote their causes. Prior to the electronic age, for instance, activists made use of oral and print media, employing word-of-mouth, pamphlets, newspapers, and books. In the post-electronic age, current activists bolster their cause via use of digital media. Such use of media enhances the ability of activists to promote civic engagement and collective action quickly, on a broad scale, and with efficacy. Basically, social media provide free publicity for activists to promote their causes with free media accounts and easy entries to activism, simply by a click of the mouse. In effect, No Kings became a cause celebre as millions of protesters gathered in various urban and rural pockets of the country on relatively short notice. The protesters created dynamic, focused, and shared objectives that, taken together, provided the foundations of a social movement. Besides publicity and recruitment, social media also help with sustaining the momentum of a cause, by constantly providing updates (posts) of one's group and instructions for connecting with members of a group. In this manner, organizers of No Kings set out to entice interested individuals to participate, immediately, and efficiently, in collective action . The organizers provided comprehensive directories for interested individuals to either find a protest near them or to start a protest on-the-spot. Organizers also utilized the discursive feature of the Internet by providing easy-to-read guides for would-be protest organizers. The guides included strategies regarding promotion of a protest, scheduling speakers, contacting media, and employing security measures, among other useful information. The practical guides allowed many to organize a protest, regardless of their prior experiential involvement in social movements. Outside of the U.S., interested parties who received information about No Kings organized protests in their respective countries as well. One of the key themes that emerged from No Kings pertained to the global outreach of the Internet. Such an outreach has, historically, created a keen interest in universal civil engagement, or the promotion of human rights as a multinational appeal for social justice. For instance, prior to No Kings, the Black Lives Matter movement (2013) involved international support from protesters in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Relatedly, No Kings also appeared in 20 countries around the world, including those aforementioned. In countries with constitutional monarchies, No Kings was replaced by “No Dictators,” or “No Tyrants” to avoid confusion. Given the increased significance of activism and social movement in the digital age, Vol. 64 of Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Global Bi-Annual Book Series, published by Emerald Publishing in Leeds, United Kingdom, is devoted to the discussion of Symbolic Interaction, Activism, and Social Movements. Symbolic Interactionism has offered powerful insights into how activism and social movements are created and sustained through the everyday interactions and shared meanings that individuals construct. Symbolic interactionist studies have provided useful conceptual tools and fertile research in examining collective action and social organization. To follow this tradition, symbolic interactionist works that examine the use of digital technologies in activism and social movement are sought. Topics to be addressed include, but not limited to, Construction of activism Construction of social movements Activism and solidary relationships Social movements and charismatic relationships Activism and universities Digital activism Racial justice activism LGBTQ+ activism Climate change activism For all interested, please send an abstract of no more than 750 words to Shing-Ling Sarina Chen (sarina.chen@uni.edu) by September 1, 2025. If an abstract is selected for inclusion, the deadline of completing the manuscript is March 31, 2026. Thank you very much for your consideration. Looking forward to hearing from you. Shing-Ling Sarina Chen Studies in Symbolic Interaction
Seventh International Conference on Real-Time Intelligent Systems (RTIS 2025) Macau Millennium College, Macau October 13-14, 2025 Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology November 05-06, 2025 Ho Chi Minh. Vietnam https://www.socio.org.uk/rtis Authors can participate in Macau or in Vietnam. The International Conference on Real-time Intelligent Systems (RTIS) has travelled from Beijing, China (2016), to Macau. The seventh edition will take place at the University of Macau, Macau and at the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology, Ho Chi Minh, in Vietnam. Over the past few years, real-time intelligent computing has revolutionised the human lifestyle. Research on real-time intelligent systems is multi-disciplinary, exploiting concepts from diverse areas such as big data processing, computational intelligence, location-based services, recommendation systems, and multimedia processing. In today’s highly dynamic environment, analysing data in real-time is necessary to understand how systems process data, reason the outputs, and anticipate trends in intelligent computing. To this end, this conference will serve as a platform to manifest the ongoing research in the field. Thus, RTIS welcomes theoretically grounded, methodologically sound papers that address aspects related to the following topics. CALL FOR PAPERS (Virtual/Physical) Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining Streaming data, streaming engines Trace-based intelligent real-time services Adaptive vision algorithms Location-based services Intelligent Robotic Systems Collaborative Intelligence Data capture in real-time Data quality and cleansing Intelligent Data Analysis Intelligent Database Systems Knowledge representation and reasoning Intelligent information fusion Large Language Models, cognitive methods, sequential inference, data mining, pattern/behavioral analysis Big Data systems and applications for high-velocity data Intelligent Information Systems Privacy and security in Intelligence Software Engineering Solutions Intelligent Soft Computing Real-time multiprocessor systems Internet of Things Architectures for Intelligence Real-time distributed coding Smart services and platforms Real-time modelling user information needs Wireless Communication Real-time intelligent communication Real-time intelligent network solutions Mobile Smart Systems Broadband Intelligence Cloud Computing and Intelligence Collaborative Intelligence Analysis in domains such as energy, sensors Decision support systems in real-time Multi-agent Intelligent Systems Multilingual information access Recommendation systems Real-time intelligent alert systems Real-time remote access systems Intelligent Transportation Systems Autonomous systems (incl. autonomous vehicles and drones) Distributed systems Cloud/edge computing/fusion Defence/security, robotics, aerospace, intelligent transportation Mining/Manufacturing Environmental monitoring Critical Real-time Applications Real-time noise removal systems Event-driven analytics Intelligent Fuzzy Systems Machine translation in real-time OLAP for real-time decision support Crowdsourcing and crowd intelligence AI in Agriculture Smart Agriculture Systems User experience in Real-Time Systems Anomaly Detection Predictive Maintenance Image and Video Recognition Natural Language Processing Vulnerability Management Healthcare Customer Analytics Submission, proceedings Papers must be submitted online through OpenConf. Author instructions and LaTex2e (preferred) and Word macro files are available on the submission page. Submitted papers should be at most 14 pages (long papers) and 8 pages (short ones), including figures, tables and references (in the Springer template). Authors of accepted papers are required to transfer their copyrights. For a paper to appear in the proceedings, at least one of the authors MUST register for the conference by the camera-ready submission deadline with a full registration. Springer’s Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems (LNNS) (https://www.springer.com/series/15179) will publish the accepted papers and be indexed in SCOPUS, EI Compendex, INSPEC, WTI Frankfurt eG, zbMATH, and SCImago. All the papers published in the series are submitted for consideration in the Web of Science. Important Dates Submission of Papers: August 25, 2025 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: September 20, 2025 Camera-ready: October 05, 2025 Registration: October 05, 2025 Conference Dates: October 13-14, 2025 General Chair Simon Fong, University of Macau, Macau Program Chairs Pit Pichappan, Digital Information Research Labs, India Zehan Tan, Macau Millennium College, Macau Program Co-chairs Kenneth Chan, Macau Millennium College, Macau Duong Van Hieu, Tien Giang University, Vietnam Ricardo Rodriguez-Jorge, Technological Centre Ceit, Spain Dion Goh, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Contact: stm@socio.org.uk
participants (2)
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ijwa@dline.info -
Sarina Chen