[csaa-forum] Call for Papers: Empowered Users, Objective Violence & the Governance of Participatory Media

[Fiona Martin]

Call for Papers
SWARM 2015 Symposium on Everyday Social Media

GTFO – Empowered Users, Objective Violence and the Governance of Participatory Media

Friday 4th September 2015
9.30am-2pm
University of Sydney

Deadline: July 3rd
Notification of acceptance: July 30th

Increasing online participation is now a political, cultural and economic goal for government, health, education, the media and creative industries. Yet the everyday violence and exclusion that plays out on social media and other participatory forums deters many from self-expression and interaction. It casts doubt on the capacity of institutions to facilitate effective public dialogue and raises doubts about the utility of speech codes and moderation frameworks. As part of the SWARM 2015 conference on online community management <http://swarmconference.com.au/> and Sydney Social Media Week, this symposium brings together academics and online media professionals working on innovative, systematic strategies to better govern social media participation, to tackle the abuse of speech rights online and support more inclusive user communities.

The symposium has a critical cultural concern with exploring factors in the design, conduct, management and regulation of participatory media environments that enable unruly and anti-social behaviours. In this it investigates not only visible hate speech and acts of censorship, but also what Žižek calls objective violence – symbolic aggression and the systemic, hidden relations of dominance and exploitation that underpin these.

We are seeking papers from any disciplinary background that raise new challenges for social media and online community governance and regulation, and propose new means of addressing them. In particular we'd welcome contributions that address:


·       Responses to cyberhate, doxxing and digilantism

·       The impact of pseudonymity and impersonation on self-expression

·       Abuse reporting

·       Critiques of Terms of Service, codes of conduct and online speech regulation

·       Computational moderation and the economics of participatory control

·       Verified users and other behavioural incentives

·       Co-creating standards for community governance

·       Tactical and proactive moderation

·       Porting or closing communities

·       User profiling and identity management

·       Platform design for self-moderating communities

The symposium will be hosted by the Department of Media and Communications and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences’ Everyday Social Media research group.  It will open with an invited speaker, then move to paper presentations and finish with a discussion panel. Papers will be considered for a themed journal edition.

Abstracts of 150-200 words should be submitted to Fiona Martin fiona.martin at sydney.edu.au<mailto:fiona.martin at sydney.edu.au> and Jonathon Hutchinson Jonathon.hutchinson at sydney.edu.au<mailto:Jonathon.hutchinson at sydney.edu.au> by 3rd July 2015 for consideration for inclusion in the symposium.  Contact Fiona if you require any further information on 0428 391 122.

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