Eurograd message

                REMINDER: Deadline for extended abstracts is June 15, 2022 – so only a few
days more than a week.


###

Dear colleagues,

for New Media & Society we are guest editing a special issue on "Automating
Communication in the Digital Society: Contexts, Consequences, Critique“.

The forthcoming publication aims to study how subjectivity, autonomy, agency,
and empowerment become defined and reconfigured in these novel human-machine
encounters. Because automation, and the related processes of digitization,
datafication, and algorithmization, are set to redefine most if not all
sectors of society, they have become a research interest across the academy.

We invite contributions that take issue with the conditions and consequences
of automation and offer critical perspectives on the transition of human
activity into machine operations. Extended Abstracts are due June 15, 2022.

Please see the call below and here:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/zemki/about-zemki/news/call-for-papers-for-speci
al-issue-automating-communication-in-new-media-society

Deadline for extended abstracts is June 15, 2022. Don’t hesitate to reach
out if you have questions.

Best,
Christian Katzenbach (Centre for Media, Communication and Information
Research, University of Bremen; Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet
and Society, Berlin)
Christian Pentzold  (Department of Communication and Media Studies,  Leipzig
University)

—


Call for Papers for Special Issue in New Media and Society

Deadline for Abstract Submission: June 15, 2022

Automating Communication in the Digital Society: Contexts, Consequences,
Critique

Special Issue Editors

Christian Katzenbach (Centre for Media, Communication and Information
Research, University of Bremen; Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet
and Society, Berlin)
Christian Pentzold (Department of Communication and Media Studies, Leipzig
University)

Automation has momentum. Automation is a defining feature of today’s
societies. Automation converts the production of content, the distribution of
information and messages, the curation of media use, and the governance of our
networked lives into machine operations. All of these areas are increasingly
shaped by algorithmically-driven processes and automated agents. They help to
automate the selection and filtering of news feeds and search engines, they
attribute relevance and popularity, perform content moderation and
fact-checking. Automated agents like social bots participate in organizational
communication such as customer service and, as a potential force of
manipulation, also seem to intervene in election campaigns. As of today,
innovations in smart companions and artificial intelligence are driven by
ambitions to delegate physical motoric functions, cognitive processes,
decisions, and evaluations to increasingly autonomous and capable technology.
This is not a one-way transfer from humans to machines. Rather, we also
witness environments where people come to act in an automatic fashion, where
human contributions feed into processes of automation and help to improve
them.

In consequence, the special issue of New Media & Society aims to study how
subjectivity, autonomy, agency, and empowerment become defined and
reconfigured in these novel human-machine encounters. We invite contributions
that take issue with the conditions and consequences of automation and offer
critical perspectives on the transition of human activity into machine
operations.

Because automation, and the related processes of digitization, datafication,
and algorithmization, are set to redefine most if not all sectors of society,
they have become a research interest across the academy. We are especially
interested in submissions that shed light across these themes:

Contexts: The ideology, infrastructures, and procedures around automatisation
have a long history of mechanical inventions that implicate expectations of
efficiency and enhancement but also engender fears of alienation and
inorexable domination. What are the dominating sociotechnical imaginaries
around automation? Inquiries into automation open up a broad array of topics
from the history of ideas around human capabilities and machine capacities via
political or economic arguments about the implications of automation on
prosperity or democracy up to ethical, legal, and technological challenges.
Hence, possible questions are: Can there be alternative visions for
automation? What is to be learned from historical moments of people protesting
and refusing the automation of labor and life?

CfP for a Special Issue: Automating Communication: Contexts, Consequences,
Critique 2

Consequences: Automating communication affects and involves a variety of
actors: when algorithms produce content this changes the effort and role of
journalists. So we for instance ask: How do media actors engage with
algorithmic content production? How does automated communication affect media
use and media effects? Are journalists “gaming” the algorithms of
platforms, and how? Who creates the tools and affordances that automate
communication—and under which conditions? What happens when low-wage
employees execute highly automated tasks, partly in order to mimic algorithms
and artificial intelligence (“fauxtomation”)? New and (semi-)automated
actors such as trolls, connected activists, and social bots alter the
strategies of campaigning and the way parties and other organizations plan
their activities. Who are these actors, and are they actors at all? Who can be
held accountable for automated communication? Does automated communication
cause dissonance and disrupt public spheres, and if so, how is this happening
and can automation be a cure as well? What are challenges and possible
solutions for regulation and media policy?

Critique: The story of automating communication can be told from two
perspectives: the few who are shaping, designing, programming and implementing
automation technologies, and the many who are using and become part of
automated communication. In this regard, automation raises questions of power
and power relations. Automating core features of democracy such as the
assignment of relevance and legitimacy to issues, actors, and specific
content, based on data and algorithms controlled and operated by a few private
companies challenges notions of transparency, due process, and legitimacy.
What are the regulatory measures to curb this power? And can automation
provide meaningful answers to social problems? What is the impact of the
increasing automatic detection of content deemed illegitimate (e.g., hate
speech, copyright violation, nudity) in social media and comment sections?
What is the role of datafication for automated and automating communication?

Studying automated communication often involves computational methods and
trace data. But qualitative methods such as ethnography, interviews or
observations can also help us to understand how automation comes about and
actors use or make sense of automated communication. Particularly research
focusing on social media platforms faces severe challenges of data access and
data management nowadays, dealing with data protection regulation, privacy
issues, and proprietary data. Analyses of automated actors, such as bots, rely
on black-boxed tools and call for interdisciplinary approaches. We thus also
invite submissions with a critical perspective on research methods and
research ethics.

Timeline

1,000 to 1,500 word abstracts should be submitted by June 15, 2022 via the
submission form at https://forms.gle/3Kxrf2wNrpqVaGno8. The abstract should
articulate: 1) the issue or research question to be discussed, 2) the
methodological or critical framework used, and 3) the expected findings or
conclusions. Feel free to consult with the Special Issue Editors about your
article ideas and potential angles or approaches.

Decisions will be communicated to the authors by September 15, 2022. Invited
paper submissions will be due March 1, 2023 and will be submitted directly to
the submission site for New Media & Society:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nms where they will undergo peer review
following the usual procedures of New Media & Society. Please note that the
invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee acceptance into the
special issue.

Contact

Christian Katzenbach, katzenbach@uni-bremen.de
Christian Pentzold, christian.pentzold@uni-leipzig.de





—
Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach

Professor of Media and Communication
Centre for Media, Communication & Information Research (ZeMKI), University of
Bremen
www.uni-bremen.de/zemki

Associated Researcher
Alexander von Humboldt Institut for Internet and Society (HIIG)
www.hiig.de
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