Critique, Democracy, and Philosophy in 21^st Century Information Society.
Towards Critical Theories of Social Media.
The Fourth ICTs and Society-Conference.

Uppsala University. May 2^nd-4^th, 2012.

A unique event for networking, presentation of critical ideas, critical engagement, and featuring leading critical scholars in the area of Critical Internet Studies and Critical Studies of Media & Society.

Call for Abstracts

Announcement and Call-Flyer PDF

Confirmed Keynote Speakers
* Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University, Canada): Great Refusal and Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About the Internet.
* Charles Ess (Aarhus University, Denmark): Digital Media Ethics and Philosophy in 21^st Century Information Society
* Christian Christensen (Uppsala University, Sweden): WikiLeaks: Mainstreaming Transparency?
* Christian Fuchs (Uppsala University, Sweden): Critique of the Political Economy of Social Media and Informational Capitalism
* Graham Murdock (Loughborough University, UK): The Peculiarities of Media Commodities: Consumer Labour, Ideology, and Exploitation Today
* Gunilla Bradley (KTH, Sweden): Social Informatics and Ethics: Towards a Good Information Society
* Mark Andrejevic (University of Queensland, Australia): Social Media: Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0
* Nick Dyer-Witheford (University of Western Ontario, Canada): Cybermarxism Today: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in 21^st Century Capitalism
* Peter Dahlgren (Lund University, Sweden): Social Media and the Civic Sphere: Perspectives for the Future of Democracy
* Tobias Olsson (Jönköping University, Sweden): Social Media Participation and the Organized Production of Net Culture
* Trebor Scholz (New School, USA): The Internet as Playground and Factory
* Ursula Huws (University of Hertfordshire, UK): Virtual Work and the Cybertariat in Contemporary Capitalism
* Vincent Mosco (Queen’s University, Canada): Marx is Back, but Will Knowledge Workers of the World Unite? On the Critical Study of Labour, Media, and Communication Today
* Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Vienna University of Technology, Austria): Potentials and Risks for Creating a Global Sustainable Information Society

Conference Topic

This conference provides a forum for the discussion of how to critically study social media and their relevance for critique, democracy, politics and philosophy in 21^st century information society.

We are living in times of global capitalist crisis. In this situation, we are witnessing a return of critique in the form of a surging interest in critical theories (such as the critical political economy of Karl Marx, critical theory, etc) and revolutions, rebellions, and political movements against neoliberalism that are reactions to the commodification and instrumentalization of everything. On the one hand there are overdrawn claims that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, mobile Internet, etc) have caused rebellions and uproars in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, which brings up the question to which extent these are claims are ideological or not. On the other hand, the question arises what actual role social media play in contemporary capitalism, power structures, crisis, rebellions, uproar, revolutions, the strengthening of the commons, and the potential creation of participatory democracy. The commodification of everything has resulted also in a commodification of the communication commons, including Internet communication that is today largely commercial in character. The question is how to make sense of a world in crisis, how a different future can look like, and how we can create Internet commons and a commons-based participatory democracy.

This conference deals with the question of what kind of society and what kind of Internet are desirable, what steps need to be taken for advancing a good Internet in a sustainable information society, how capitalism, power structures and social media are connected, what the main problems, risks, opportunities and challenges are for the current and future development of Internet and society, how struggles are connected to social media, what the role, problems and opportunities of social media, web 2.0, the mobile Internet and the ubiquitous Internet are today and in the future, what current developments of the Internet and society tell us about potential futures, how an alternative Internet can look like, and how a participatory, commons-based Internet and a co-operative, participatory, sustainable information society can be achieved.

Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to:

* What does it mean to study the Internet, social media and society in a critical way? What are Critical Internet Studies and Critical Theories of Social Media? What does it mean to study the media and communication critically?
* What is the role of the Internet and social media in contemporary capitalism?
* How do power structures, exploitation, domination, class, digital labour, commodification of the communication commons, ideology, and audience/user commodification, and surveillance shape the Internet and social media?
* How do these phenomena shape concrete platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc?
* How does contemporary capitalism look like? What is the role of the Internet and social media in contemporary capitalism?
* In what society do we live? What is the actual role of information, ICTs, and knowledge in contemporary society? Are concepts like network society, information society, informational capitalism, etc adequate characterizations of contemporary society or overdrawn claims? What are the fundamental characteristics of contemporary society and which concept(s) should be used for describing this society?
* What is digital labour and how do exploitation and surplus value generation work on the Internet? Which forms of exploitation and class structuration do we find on the Internet, how do they work, what are their commonalities and differences? How does the relation between toil and play change in a digital world? How do classes and class struggles look like in 21^st century informational capitalism?
* What are ideologies of the Internet, web 2.0, and social media? How can they be deconstructed and criticized? How does ideology critique work as an empirical method and theory that is applied to the Internet and social media?
* Which philosophies, ethics and which philosophers are needed today in order to understand the Internet, democracy and society and to achieve a global sustainable information society and a participatory Internet? What are perspectives for political philosophy and social theory in 21^st century information society?
* What contradictions, conflicts, ambiguities, and dialectics shape 21^st century information society and social media?
* What theories are needed for studying the Internet, social media, web 2.0, or certain platforms or applications in a critical way?
* What is the role of counter-power, resistance, struggles, social movements, civil society, rebellions, uproars, riots, revolutions, and political transformations in 21^st century information society and how (if at all) are they connected to social media?
* What is the actual role of social media and social networking sites in political revolutions, uproars, and rebellions (like the recent Maghrebian revolutions, contemporary protests in Europe and the world, the Occupy movement, etc)?
* How can an alternative Internet look like and what are the conditions for creating such an Internet? What are the opportunities and challenges posed by projects like Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, Diaspora, IndyMedia, Democracy Now! and other alternative media? What is a commons-based Internet and how can it be created?
* What is the role of ethics, politics, and activism for Critical Internet Studies?
* What is the role of critical theories in studying the information society, social media, and the Internet?
* What is a critical methodology in Critical Internet Studies? Which research methods are needed on how need existing research methods be adapted for studying the Internet and society in a critical way?
* What are ethical problems, opportunities, and challenges of social media? How are they framed by the complex contradictions of contemporary capitalism?
* Who and what and where are we in 21^st century capitalist information society? How have different identities changed in the global world, what conflicts relate to it, and what is the role of class and class identity in informational capitalism?
* What is democracy? What is the future of democracy in the global information society? And what is or should democracy be today? What is the relation of democracy and social media? How do the public sphere and the colonization of the public sphere look like today? What is the role of social media in the public sphere and its colonization?

The conference is the fourth in the ICTs and Society-Conference Series (http://www.icts-and-society.net). The ICTs and Society-Network is an international forum that networks scholars in the interdisciplinary areas of Critical Internet Studies, digital media studies, Internet & society studies and information society studies. The ICTs and Society Conference series was in previous years organized at the University of Salzburg (Austria, June 2008), the University of Trento (Italy, June 2009) and the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Spain, July 2010).

About Uppsala, Uppsala University and the Department of Informatics and Media

Uppsala University (http://www.uu.se) was founded in 1477 and is the oldest university in the Nordic countries. Every year 45 000 undergraduate and graduate students enroll for classes. Uppsala is an academic and students-oriented city with old academic tradition.

The Department of Informatics and Media (http://www.im.uu.se) is a newly established institution at Uppsala University. Its research focuses on understanding and designing digital media in the information society. Among its educational programmes is a new master’s programme in Digital Media & Society that will start in August 2012.

Early May is a particularly nice time to come and visit Uppsala. It is the time of spring festivities and the awakening of nature and the city. The end of April has since medieval times been a time of celebrating the spring, especially in Eastern Sweden. Uppsala and especially Uppsala’s students have participated in this tradition, especially on the last of April (“sista april”, Valborg, http://www.valborgiuppsala.se/en) that features various celebrations and special activities all over the town.

Time Plan

February 29^th, 2012, 17:00, Central European Time (CET): Abstract Submission Deadline
Until March 11^th, 2012: information about acceptance or rejection of presentations
March 30^th, 2012, 17:00, CET: registration deadline
May 2^nd-4^th, 2012: Conference, Ekonomikum, University of Uppsala, Kyrkogårdsgatan 10, Uppsala

Abstract Submission

a) For submission, please first register your profile on the ICTs and Society platform:
http://www.icts-and-society.net/register/
b) Please download the abstract submission form:

http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/ASF.doc

, insert your presentation title, contact data, and an abstract of 200-500 words. The abstract should clearly set out goals, questions, the way taken for answering the questions, main results, the importance of the topic for critically studying the information society and/or social media and for the conference.
Please submit your abstract until February 29^th, 2012, per e-mail to Marisol Sandoval: marisol.sandoval@uti.at

Organizer
Uppsala University, Department of Informatics and Media, Kyrkogårdsgatan 10, Box 513, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden http://www.im.uu.se
Contact for academic questions in respect to the conference:
Prof. Christian Fuchs, christian.fuchs@im.uu.se , Tel +46 18 471 1019
Contact for questions concerning conference organization and administration:
Marisol Sandoval, marisol.sandoval@uti.at

Co-organizers:
* ICTs and Society Network http://www.icts-and-society.net
* European Sociological Association – Research Network 18: Sociology of Communications and Media Research, http://tiny.cc/hpdao
* tripleC – Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, http://www.triple-c.at
* Unified Theory of Information Research Group (UTI), Austria, http://www.uti.at
* Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, http://www.imv.au.dk/en/studies/
* Institute for Design & Assessment of Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Austria http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/
* Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, Sweden,
http://hj.se/en/about-the-university/information-material/campus-in-360-degrees/school-of-education-and-communication.html

Conference Board and Organization Committee
Charles Ess, Aarhus University
Christian Christensen, Uppsala University
Christian Fuchs, Uppsala University + UTI Research Group
Göran Svensson, Uppsala University
Marisol Sandoval, Unified Theory of Information Research Group
Sebastian Sevignani, Unified Theory of Information Research Group
Sylvain Firer-Blaess, Uppsala University
Thomas Allmer, Unified Theory of Information (UTI) Research Group
Tobias Olsson, Jönköping University
Verena Kreilinger, Unified Theory of Information Research Group
Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Vienna University of Technology + UTI Research Group

Registration and Conference Fee
Registration will open in early 2012 and more information about how to make payments will follow.
Registration fees:
Regular conference fee, including the conference dinner: 130 € or 1200 SEK
Regular conference fee, excluding conference dinner: 85 € or 780 SEK
Student conference fee, including the conference dinner: 110 € or 1000 SEK
Student conference fee, without conference dinner: 60 € or 550 SEK

Hotel Booking
More information about hotels in Uppsala will follow.

Welcome to Uppsala in Spring 2012!

Published in: tripleC (cognition, communication, co-operation): Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 7 (2): http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/150/128

Several hundred people attended the conference ”The Internet as Playground and Factory“ that took place from November 12th-14th, 2009, and was organized by Trebor Scholz and his colleagues at the New School in New York City (see http://www.digitallabor.org).
The topic of the conference was that on the Internet, and especially on what is by some termed web 2.0, social software, or social networking sites, play and labour tend to converge and how this play-labour convergence should be assessed.
Numerous scholars, activists, and artists presented their works in 20 sessions. The presented works can be situated within an emerging transdisciplinary field that transgresses the boundaries between the social sciences and computer science and that has been labelled with terms such as ICTs and society, social informatics, information society studies, Internet research, or new media & society (compare: Christian Fuchs. 2008. Introduction to the special issue on “ICTs and society: PhD students’ transdisciplinary research projects. tripleC 6(2): i-viii, http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/80/74)
The methods used in the scholarly works that were presented can in my opinion be roughly divided into three types: First, the narrative style: scholars who used this method based their presentation on the discussion of concrete examples for the Internet as playground and/or factory and tended to discuss quotations from various theories and approaches. This was the most frequently employed method of analysis. Second, theory construction: some of the participants tried to construct new theories of Internet labour and/or Internet play that are grounded in existing theories and go beyond these theories. Third, empirical research: others presented results of case studies that were conducted by employing data analysis or empirical social research. Also any kind of combination of these methods could be found at the conference.
“The Internet as Playground and Factory” has shown that the field of ICTs and society is continuously growing in size and importance, that this field has also created a multiplicity of critical approaches, and that it is important and promising that critical Internet studies are further pursued and advanced.
If the Internet is a playground and/or a factory and what kind of Internet is desirable are highly normative and political questions that were at the heart of the discussions at the conference. This political dimension is also related to the question to which extent the contemporary Internet is or is not a democratic space, which democratic and anti-democratic potentials are inherent in the interrelation of the contemporary Internet and contemporary society, and which strategies for political transformation make sense and should be employed in this context.
In my opinion, three positions on these questions could be identified in the presentations and discussions at the conference. These positions partly overlap, are partly complementary, but to a certain extent also stand in contradiction to each other.
Representatives of the first position hold that there is a symmetric exchange between users and Internet companies so that the latter make money profits and in exchange provide benefits in the form of free access for users to technologies that allow information sharing, communication, and community building. The Internet is conceived in this position as being a participatory system because it allows users to become information producers and to create and share user-generated content. Representatives of the second position tend to argue that the Internet is not a truly democratic or participatory space, but has deficiencies and is shaped by asymmetric power structures. However, there would be democratic projects and potentials of the Internet that allow envisioning the realization of an alternative, people-centred Internet. The representatives of this position are thus rather optimistic and argue that projects such as for example peer-to-peer platforms, open access, open content, free software, open source, alternative online media, digital art projects, cyberprotest, public online media, public access projects, etc are likely to bring about positive changes. Representatives of the third position see the Internet as being shaped by asymmetric power relations. They tend to argue that there are positive potentials and projects for an alternative participatory Internet, but that the contemporary Internet is largely shaped by powerful actors, especially corporations, that derive material benefits at the expense of Internet users, commodify the Internet, exploit Internet users, and appropriate the Internet commons. Categories employed in this context include exploitation, class, capitalism, alienation, enclosure, appropriation, or expropriation. The political implication of this position is that political movements and organizations are needed that bring about wider transformations of society so that a commons-based and participatory Internet becomes possible.
These three positions on the one hand partly overlap or are simultaneously present in approaches, and on the other hand are to a certain degree opposites that result from different political and theoretical positions. Opposites need not and cannot always be overcome, it is possible that they stand side by side and create productive tensions that advance the overall field. This requires to acknowledge that there are certain commonalities and to agree that there are disagreements.
Overall, the conference “The Internet as Playground and Factory” has shown that Critical Internet Studies is alive and well and is a subfield that is growing in size and importance of the transdiscipline ICTs and society. The practical hope for the future is that Internet scholars will continue to work in the critical spirit that has shaped this conference and thereby will try to contribute to bring about a participatory Internet in a participatory society.

Conference links:
Conference web site: http://www.digitallabor.org
Twitter: http://twitter.com/idctweets
Conference Twitter hashtag: #IPF09
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/newschool/collections/72157600533401886/
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/user2103510/videos/sort:date
Conference video streams: http://streamingculture.parsons.edu/
Mailing list: http://digitallabor.org/discussion

The Social Theory Research Network is one of 31 research networks of the European Sociological Association. It has approximately 200 active members. Whereas the other research networks’ task is to deal with specialized subfields of sociology, the mission of the Social Theory Network is to develop “concepts of orientation and outlining what can be called ‘conditional ontologies’ giving social research conceptual background”.

The research network’s Social Theory Conference on “Social Theory and the Sociological Discipline(s)” took place at the Innsbruck School of Political Science and Sociology on September 11-13, 2008. Organizer Frank Welz formulated the basic questions of the conference in the opening session: What is the role of transdisciplinarity in sociology? Is there still a general framework or discourse in sociology? Is a common or unified sociology possible? Is a common vocabulary possible or can it be developed?

Roland Robertson gave the main plenary talk, which covered the topic “Glocality and the Transdisciplinarity of Sociology”. Robertson is one of the sociologists that have coined the term globalization. His specific interpretation is that globalization processes are always accompanied by local adaptations and changes (localization). Therefore he speaks of glocalization. Robertson argued that sociology in a way has always been transdisciplinary and a meta-discipline because it covers various issues, which are subject of other disciplines, in their societal context. The intensified glocalization of the world would have brought about a need to overcome disciplinary fragmentation and to enter into a transdisciplinary dialogue in order to understand global society.

Besides Robertson’s call for a transdisciplinary sociology and the overall task of the conference, most of the presented papers dealt with very specialized topics that are relevant for subfields of sociology and social theory, but ignored the larger context of sociology and society as a whole and the academic world as a whole. Therefore the impression one could get was that many of the participants aim at a fragmentation of sociology into many different subfields such as gender sociology, economic sociology, sociology of education, sociology of law, urban sociology, political sociology, sociology of health, sociology of ethnic relations, racism and anti-Semitism, etc. Although specialization clearly is necessary in order to explain society, the question of how all these phenomena have become connected and are united on a meta-level, which is important for explaining what many now see as a global society, in which all phenomena have become networked and influence each other, should not be ignored. Social theory is a terrain that can deal with these questions.

The study of ICTs and society might be a paradigmatic case for the emergence of and the need for transdisciplines in the “global network society”. In my talk on “Critical Social Theory in the Age of the Internet”, I pointed out that the very topic of ICT&S research, the interrelationship of ICTs and society, social groups, and individuals, is one that cannot be studied by one discipline alone, but that requires the engagement of scholars from at least sociology, philosophy, media and communication science, and computer science. The subject matter of ICT&S is transdisciplinary in itself, it transcends the boundaries between the social and the engineering sciences.

Why is social theory important? Social theory produces a constitutive knowledge of the world that allows asking basic questions about the state of society and about the directions it could develop. The immanent diversity of social theory allows researchers and citizens to develop different understandings and different issues of society and to see how not only knowledge, but also interests are differing. Social theory allows us to ask new questions about the world and to use basic categories for developing understandings of the world. Social theory offers understandings and interpretations of society, social change, and societal causality. Social theory directs attention to certain issues and can help people organizing their experiences of the world and enabling useful responses to the world. Social theory in a transdisciplinary field like ICT&S allows making use of a contextual meta-knowledge about the relation of ICTs and society. People are trying to find ways of thinking about the world and its changes (such as the emergence of the Internet, globalization, etc) and ways of how to build the future of the world. Social theory can guide us in asking questions and trying to find potential answers about the state of the world.

Two sessions at the Innsbruck conference dealt with the role of critical theory in contemporary society. In my opinion critical social theory is necessary today in order to not remain fixed on knowledge that shows how society is, but deals with potential alternatives and how society could be. Critical theory therefore would be inherently normative, political, and would deal with basic questions of domination and power in society. In a transdisciplinary field like ICT&S, critical theory would be needed as complement and correction to empirical research, engineering, and design studies, because the latter three would typically operate in an instrumental way that is corrupted by dominant interests so that the focus is on technological rationality, technological fixes to societal problems, uncritical optimism about the potentials of technology for society, and economic and dominant political interests. Critical theory would remind us that there are huge problems in contemporary society, that technology alone is no solution, but frequently part of the problems, and that there is a need for imagining alternative futures, which requires a more philosophical meta-knowledge that engages with political questions.

Overall, the Innsbruck conference has shown that critical thinking and transdisciplinarity are important issues of contemporary sociology. But these issues are facing problems in their realization, talking about transdisciplinarity is in most cases easier than practicing it. Nonetheless a first starting point for alternative futures, also in academia, is a reflexive discussion about issues, which has taken place in Innsbruck.

Links:

ESA Social Theory Conference Innsbruck

ESA Social Theory Network 

European Sociological Association