Call for panel participants We are looking for participants for an International Communication Association 2020 panel submission that will engage with the tension between Open Science and big data use by infrastructures and platforms. ICA 2020 takes place in Gold Coast, Australia from May 21-25, 2020. More info can be found here. <https://www.icahdq.org/page/2020CFP> Our proposed panel will focus on open communication, big data, infrastructures, and platforms. While open communication initiatives value transparency, collaboration, and public knowledge, these goals are often at odds with capitalistic arrangements of big data collection. Scholarship examining big data notes the issues of privacy and surveillance (Andrejevic, 2007; Introna & Wood, 2004; Esposti, 2014); the concerns related to data divides and asymmetry of access (Andrejevic & Gates, 2014); and the dangers of utilizing opaque, inexplicable, and correlative big data outputs for forms of so-called objective decision making (boyd & Crawford, 2012; Tenner, 2018). Likewise, the scholarship on platform infrastructures suggests that while they deliver essential social / cultural resources, they also prompt a recentralization of the internet that threatens to funnel data into increasingly segmented silos (Plantin & Punathambekar, 2019; Srnicek, 2017). Noting this, Plantin, Lagoze, Edwards, and Sandvig (2018) indicate that a “fraught relationship...currently exists between the public-oriented Open Web and locked-in ‘walled gardens’” of platforms and infrastructures (p. 301). To better understand this relationship, we are looking for theoretical and methodological engagements with big data platforms and infrastructures that specifically attend to the complexities of closed and open access, digital inequalities and divides, and affirmative attempts at open data usage. If interested, please submit a 150-word abstract and presentation title via email to Justin Grandinetti and Ragan Glover-Rijkse at jgrandin@uncc.edu and rglove2@ncsu.edu by October 1st for consideration. Please note—panel submissions must adhere to ICA’s 2020 guidelines on gender balance, institutional diversity, and international collaboration. We will consider submissions and make decisions shortly thereafter. Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to reading submissions! Timeline: - October 1st: submit an abstract if interested in joining this panel - October 5th: we will contact selections for participation - November 1st: deadline for finalized 150-word abstracts, 400-word panel rationale, and 75-word panel description for conference program References: Andrejevic, M., & Gates, K. (2014). Big Data Surveillance: Introduction. Surveillance & Society,12(2), 185-196. boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662–679. Esposti, S. (2014). When big data meets dataveillance: The hidden side of analytics. Surveillance & Society, 12(2), 209–225. Introna, L., & Wood, D. (2004). Picturing algorithmic surveillance: the politics of facial recognition systems. Surveillance and Society, 2(2-3), 177–198. Plantin, J., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293–310. Plantin, J.-C., & Punathambekar, A. (2019). Digital media infrastructures: pipes, platforms, and politics. Media, Culture & Society, 41(2), 163–174. Srnicek, N. (2017) Platform Capitalism. Malden, MA: Polity. Tenner, E. (2018). The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do. New York, NY: Knopf, Borzoi Books.