Dear AIR-L moderators, I hope this message finds you well. I would like to kindly request the posting of a Call for Papers (CFP) to the AIR-L mailing list. The CFP is intended for the academic community of internet researchers and may be of interest to members of AoIR. Call for Papers - Digital Culture & Society (DCS): The Targeting State: AI, Surveillance, and Predictive Power Vol. 12, Issue 2/2026 Following the first issue of the 12th volume of Digital Cultures & Society on Critical AI: Rethinking Intelligence, Bias, and Control (eds. Reichert & Deiß) the second issue focuses on "The Targeting State: AI, Surveillance, and Predictive Power (eds. Reichert & Hussein). In migration enforcement regimes across the Global North, AI-driven systems are increasingly institutionalized as technical-media infrastructures. Cases like the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the U.S. exemplify the convergence of large-scale policing with advanced forms of automated data processing, machine learning, generative AI, and the strategic deployment of commercially sourced datasets. This issue examines the entanglement of artificial intelligence, surveillance infrastructures, and contemporary policing, bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives from critical AI studies, digital literacy, media archaeology, and political science. The contributors interrogate how algorithmic systems reconfigure the scale, scope, and operative logics of state power and conceptualize AI not merely as a tool of governance but as a constitutive element in the transformation of governmental rationalities, since AI-based policing systems are frequently trained on historically biased datasets, reproducing and intensifying racialized forms of discrimination and structural inequality. Hence, a central concern of the volume is the potential for critical interventions and media-political initiatives, exploring how practices such as counter-mapping and critical data activism might challenge or reconfigure these infrastructures of control. This issue welcomes contributions that engage questions of migration regulation, automated border enforcement, and the expansion of computational governance under contemporary capitalism. We are particularly interested in work that examines how AI systems operationalize exclusion through predictive profiling, detention infrastructures, and anticipatory policing. Authors may consider how digital bordering practices intersect with histories of colonial administration, neoliberal governance, and the management of surplus populations under global regimes of mobility control. We encourage submissions grounded in historical and digital materialism and dialectical materialist approaches that interrogate the political economy of data infrastructures and technological accumulation. How might algorithmic governance be understood not as a rupture from prior systems of domination, but as an intensification of capitalist relations through logistical optimization, extraction, and dispossession? We welcome analyses attentive to labour, class formation, platform economies, and the contradictions embedded within techno-solutionist state projects. The issue also invites engagements with abolitionist thought, Black geographies, and critical spatial theory. We are interested in scholarship that explores abolition geography as a framework for resisting predictive regimes and imagining alternative social relations beyond carceral data systems. Contributions may address the spatialization of surveillance, environmental racism, digital enclosure, and the production of calculable populations through state and corporate infrastructures.   When sending their initial abstract, authors should state to which of the following categories they would like to submit their paper: 1. Field Research and Case Studies 2. Methodological Reflections 3. Conceptual/Theoretical and Historical reflections 4. Entering the Field (see http://digicults.org for more information on this category) Deadlines and Contact Information: • Initial abstracts (max. 300 words) and a short biographical note (max. 100 words) are due on: 15th July 2026 • Authors will be notified by 20th July 2026, whether they are invited to submit a full paper. • Full papers are due on: 10th September 2026. Initial abstracts and full papers should be sent to the issue’s editors: Ramón Reichert (ramon.reichert@uni-ak.ac.at) Sagal Hussein (segal.hussein@gmail.com) Link to Vol. 12, Issue 1/2026 https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7854-3/digital-culture-society-d... References Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity Press. Eubanks, Virginia (2018). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson (2022). Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. London: Verso. Goodman, Adam (2020). The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McKittrick, Katherine (2021). Dear Science and Other Stories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Noble, Safiya Umoja (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press. Toscano, Alberto (2023). “Race and Real Estate.” Radical Philosophy, 2(15), 3–18. Thompson, Vanessa E. & Loick, Daniel (Hg.) (2022). Abolitionismus: Ein Reader. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Thank you very much for your time and support. Best regards, Ramón Reichert -- Dr. Ramón Reichert Institute of Art Sciences and Art Education Department of Cultural Studies University of Applied Arts Vienna Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7 A-1030 Vienna Website: https://www.dieangewandte.at/jart/prj3/angewandte-2016/main.jart?rel=de&rese... E-Mail: ramon.reichert@univie.ac.at Twitter: Ramón Reichert Senior Research Fellow, Center for AI, Society, and Critique (CASC) https://aisocietycritique.org/ University Lecturer, "Media Sociology", "Media Philosophy" Department Art & Education University of Art and Design Hauptplatz 6 A-4010 Linz University Lecturer, "Visual Studies", "Image Science", "Media Theory" University Mozarteum Salzburg Department Art & Education Alpenstraße 75 A-5020 Salzburg Co-Editor Journal "Digital Culture & Society": http://www.transcript-verlag.de/zeitschriften/digital-culture-und-society/ Expert evaluator European Commission: https://erc.europa.eu/ Reviewer European Research Council (ERC): https://ec.europa.eu/ Reviewer MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu Reviewer Theory, Culture & Society https://journals.sagepub.com/home/tcs Reviewer Federal Ministry of Education and Research: https://www.bmbf.de/ Reviewer Cognitive Studies | Études cognitives www: https://journals.ispan.edu.pl/index.php/cs-ec/ Current publications: "Autonomous occupation: Israel's AI-driven drone warfare and the digital architecture of authoritarian power." Dialogues on Digital Society, London: Sage Journals, 2025. Available online: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/29768640251381423 Austrian Postwar Cinema between “Restoration” and “Modernism” 1945-1955. In: Austrian Identity and Modernity. Culture and Politics in the 20th Century, Elana Shapira (ed.), Bloomsbury 2025. Website: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/austrian-identity-and-modernity-9781350441958/ Anna Näslund / Ramón Reichert (eds.) Digital Culture & Society (DCS) Vol. 10, Issue 1/2024 – Digital War: Media Strategies and Visual Politics during the Full-Scale Attack of Russia on Ukraine Website: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6868-1/digital-culture-society-d... Digital Warfare. The Russian Full Scale Invasion against Ukraine as Enacted on Telegram (2023). Available online: https://www.harun-farocki-institut.org/en/2023/12/10/digital-warfare-the-rus... Selfies. Selbstthematisierung in der digitalen Bildkultur (2023): http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-3665-9/selfies-selbstthematisieru... Residential Address: Feuerbachstraße 4/11 A-1020 Vienna Tel.: +43 699 171 88 401