- DHSI 2018 Conference & Colloquium
- Special Issue on Reframing ‘Fake News’: Architectures, Influence, and Automation
- Conferece: We Robot 2018: “Bits and Bones”
- CFP: Digital Work and Labor in the New Economy
DHSI 2018 Conference & Colloquium
Monday, June 4, 2018 – 3:00am to Friday, June 15, 2018 – 3:00am
Proposals are now being accepted for presentations at the DHSI Conference & Colloquium, to be held in June 2018 alongside classes at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria. Open to all, the DHSI Conference & Colloquium offers an opportunity to present research and projects within an engaging, collegial atmosphere. Participation comes free with DHSI registration, and contributors not planning to register for a DHSI course can join for a modest participation fee of $150 CDN.
Submissions are peer-reviewed, with participants subsequently invited to contribute to a DHSI-themed special issue in an open-access journal. Presenters will also have the option to see their presentations recorded, so that their work might be preserved and further disseminated.
We invite proposals of 300-500 words for these presentations. Proposals may focus on any topic relating to the wider Digital Humanities. Submissions are welcome from emerging and established scholars alike, including faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, early career scholars and humanities scholars who are new to the Digital Humanities; librarians, and those in cultural heritage, alt-academics, academic professionals, and those in technical programs.
Submissions are welcome across a number of formats. In your abstract, please indicate which format you would prefer, but note that, due to scheduling requirements, not all preferences can be accommodated.
Full-length Presentation (June 9-10)
Contributors have 20 minutes to complete their presentations, which will form part of themed sessions hosted throughout a “conference-like” event scheduled during the weekend. Please also note that we are not in a position to accommodate requests by presenters who wish to present on a specific date.
Short Paper Presentation (June 4-8 & 11-15)
Contributors have 5 or 10 minutes to complete their presentations, which will be scheduled at evening sessions during DHSI’s two main teaching weeks. Presenters can indicate which week(s) they will be attending DHSI.
Posters & Digital Demonstrations (June 8)
Contributors display A1 landscape posters at a conference reception, jointly hosted with the Digital Library Federation. Alternatively, contributors may opt to demo digital projects at the reception. Digital project presenters are required to bring their own laptops.
Please submit proposals using https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dhsi2018. Submission should include the title of the submission, the name(s) and affiliation(s) of contributor(s), and a 300-500 word abstract. DHSI attendees with a preference for a particular week should be sure to indicate so in their submissions (see http://dhsi.org/schedule.php). The deadline for submissions is January 5th, at 8:00pm PST (UTC-8). Submissions will be peer-reviewed, with authors being notified by early 2018.
For more information, contact James O’Sullivan (james.osullivan@ucc.ie(link sends e-mail)) and/or Lindsey Seatter (lseatter@uvic.ca(link sends e-mail)).
ABOUT DHSI
The Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria provides an ideal environment for discussing and learning about new computing technologies, and how they are influencing the work of those in the Arts, Humanities and Library communities. The Institute incorporates intensive coursework, seminar participation, and lectures. During DHSI, we share ideas and methods, and develop expertise in applying advanced technologies to our teaching, research, dissemination, and preservation. For more information see www.dhsi.org.
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Call for Papers: Policy and Internet Special Issue on Reframing ‘Fake News’: Architectures, Influence, and Automation
Policy and Internet, the first major peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary journal investigating the impact of the Internet on public policy, is inviting submissions for a special issue on “fake news” to be published in September 2018. The paper submission deadline is 31 October 2017.
Outline
The relevance of ‘fake news’ as it concerns platforms, data, and politics is rising across the internet-related disciplines. Before solutions are further engaged with, however, we feel that a special call is warranted to assemble a collection of cross-disciplinary research to better frame the underlying problems. This special issue seeks to explore key factors (e.g., design choices, data practices, or other policy/regulatory factors) that increase the susceptibility of modern information environments to dis/misinformation, external manipulation, and artificial discourse shaping.
Research involving politics, society, and ethics that clarifies the factors underpinning ‘fake news’ can help to shape the future regulation of political campaigns, information privacy, and strengthen the democratic function of the Fourth Estate, while reinforcing meaningful public discourse in a globalised digital world.
With that goal in mind, this special issue seeks to publish a collection of innovative cross-disciplinary work that will shed light on the social, technological, economic and political factors that enable or encourage the creation, circulation and consumption of fake news : 1) the role of platforms and their architectures and interfaces; 2) the role of data collection and data use for influence operations; and 3) the role and regulation of ‘artificial amplification’ and automated systems.
Areas of Interest
Research is invited from across the social, cultural, and information science disciplines, as well as from the digital humanities and any other relevant disciplines. Given the focus of this journal, all submissions should have clear policy relevance, and would ideally make clear the policy implications of the research presented.
Work aligning with one or more of the following areas is invited for consideration:
Architectures and Interfaces
- Designs and technologies that increase the susceptibility of information environments to ‘fake news’
- The role of measurement systems and social ‘attention metrics’
- Economic incentives related to content delivery and recommendation
Data in Influence Operations
- Strategic applications of data for behavioral (re)targeting and influencing
- Assessing success: the use of data in impact evaluation methodologies
- The future of data collection: scenarios for protection and cross-jurisdictional enforcement issues
Automation and Regulation
- Degrees of automation: classification and impact of ’bots’ and non-human actors
- Processes of amplification in coordinated influence campaigns
- Policy scenarios under different regulatory environments and geopolitical contexts
If you have any questions about the fit of an article for the issue, please contact the Guest Editors at: j.albright@columbia.edu
Paper Submissions
Authors are invited to submit full papers of between 6-8,000 words though the journal’s online submission form by 31st October 2017. Submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed by three reviewers. We recommend that submitting authors refer to our publication guidelines before submission. Any queries about the submission process should be directed to the journal’s managing editor: david.sutcliffe@oii.ox.ac.uk
We Robot 2018 Call for Papers
“Bits and Bones”
We invite submissions for the seventh annual robotics law and policy conference—We Robot 2018—to be held at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California on April 12-14, 2018. In past years, the conference has been held at University of Miami School of Law, University of Washington School of Law, Stanford Law School, and Yale Law School. The conference website is http://www.werobot2018.com.
We Robot fosters conversations between those who research, design, or influence the legal and social structures in which robots operate and those that design, build, and deploy robots. We encourage contributions resulting from interdisciplinary collaborations, such as those between roboticists, legal, ethical, economic, social science and policy scholars.
Qualified submissions include scholarly paper abstracts, detailed outlines of robotics demos, and expressions of interest in being a discussant. Other creative proposals are welcome. We Robot favors proposals (written scholarship and relevant demos) that are a collaboration between law/policy scholars and technologists. This year we are particularly interested in submissions exploring the interface between the digital and physical world.
Scholarly Papers
Scholarly papers are academic works presented by a discussant instead of the author(s). Topics of interest for the scholarly paper portion of the conference will tend to focus on the interaction between robots and social structures and include, but are not limited to:
- The interface between the digital and the physical.
- Positive or negative impacts of robotics on vulnerable populations.
- Inclusion and diversity in the field of robotics and robotics law and policy.
- Law/policy considerations in the evaluation or enhancement of security and safety in publicly accessible or public facing robots.
These are only some examples of relevant topics. We are very interested in papers on other topics driven by actual or probable robot deployments. The purpose of this conference is to help set a research agenda relating to the deployment of robots in society, to inform policy-makers of the issues, and to help design legal rules that will maximize diversity and minimize exclusion arising from the increased deployment of robots in society. Papers are selected on a blind basis by an interdisciplinary program committee.
Demonstrations
Proposals for demonstrations may be purely descriptive and designer/builders will be asked to present their work themselves. We’d like to hear about your latest innovations, what’s on the drawing board for the next generations of robots, or about legal and policy issues you have encountered in the design or deploy process.
Discussants
We also invite expressions of interest from potential discussants. Every paper accepted will be assigned a discussant who will present and comment on the paper. Because it is an expectation at We Robot that our audience is in fact a larger group of participants who have read the papers as a precondition of attendance, these presentations will be very brief (no more than 15 minutes) and will consist mostly of making a few points critiquing the author’s paper to kick off the conversation. Authors will then respond briefly (no more than 5 minutes). The rest of the session will consist of a group discussion with the discussant acting as a moderator, whose role is to encourage and promote diverse, inclusive, and active participation from our audience.
Scholarly Paper Prizes
The program committee will select an “Overall Best Paper” and a “Best Paper” submitted by an early career academic. The prize for each award is $2,000. Scholarly papers are only eligible if submitted in a timely fashion (see timeline below) and “early career academic” is defined as a scholar with a full-time appointment but less than three years teaching experience as of the abstract submission deadline.
How to Submit Your Proposal – Abstract Submission Deadline is November 6, 2017
- Abstracts/Proposals are due by 5pm Pacific Time on November 6, 2017 *
- Submissions will be reviewed and notifications of acceptance will be delivered on December 11, 2017
- Final papers (or definitive deliverable if a project) are due no later than March 1, 2018
Call for Papers: Digital Work and Labor in the New Economy
Call for Papers to be published in Research in the Sociology of Work
Editors:
Anne Kovalainen, University of Turku
Steven Vallas, Northeastern University
In recent years, digital technologies have enveloped virtually all forms of economic activity. Smart phones have carried the demand for labor into almost everyone’s pocket or purse. The platform economy has remade the structural contexts in which transport work, cleaning, and casual work as a whole are performed. Careers are now established or maintained (or derailed) via LinkedIn. And the job search process has rendered the paper resume a quaint relic from the past. All this signals a profound transformation in the very underpinnings of economic life. Yet sociological studies of work and technology in the digital age have seemed to lag far behind these accelerating trends. How has the digital revolution begun to blur the distinction between work and non-work? Why have high tech jobs remained such a heavily gendered and racialized terrain? What is the nature of the jobs that digital technology now demands, variously termed “immaterial labor” and “cognitive capitalism”? How much of the labor force is likely to be engulfed by the “gig economy” –and how might this sector be shaped to suit human needs? To pose these questions is to declare that systematic, critical research on digital work and labor is sorely needed, especially in an era when AI, robotization, and automatic guided vehicles are waiting in the wings.
This special issue of Research in the Sociology of Work welcomes papers that investigate or critically examine the linkages between work, economic institutions, and the digital revolution. We especially welcome papers that address such issues as these (among an array of many other, kindred themes):
- The role of culture in the design and use of digital technologies at work
- How on-line technologies are recasting labor market institutions
- The dynamics and unanticipated consequences of technological change
- The work situations and cultures of workers in high technology settings
- How technology alters control and surveillance over human labor
- The nature of the “on-demand” economy
- The relation between digital technologies and the global dispersion of work
- The uses of information technology by social movement activists
Deadline for submission: January 15, 2018.
Guidelines for submission: Papers should run roughly 10-12k words, including references and tables. Submissions (or questions) should be sent electronically to the editors at rsw.editor@gmail.com. More information about RSW can be found here.