CfP: Politics of ICT

Here's one of the calls of the Graz conference on critical issues in STS that I posted here a while back. Sounds great for people who conduct research into algorithms, big data, development processes of surveillance technology, and the like. The deadline for abstracts is approaching soon, but here it is:

The politics of ICTs

(Doris Allhutter & Astrid Mager, Institute of Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) emerge along with hegemonic discourses, socio-political cultures, everyday practices and identities. Search engines, social media, wikis, open access portals, semantic software, surveillance tools, and code in a wider sense, are created not only by programmers and technical people, but also negotiated in wider society. Policy makers, law, media discourses, economic rationales, cultural practices, computational infrastructures and algorithmic logics are all taking part in the negotiation of ICTs. At the same time, they also create, stabilize and change cultural meaning, socio-political relations and materiality. ICTs and social power relations thus co-emerge.

Our panel welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers on practices of software design, power relations and material dimensions, socio-political implications of ICTs. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• How are ICTs negotiated in design practices and wider socio-political frameworks?
  What actor-networks, practices and arenas are involved in the creation of ICTs?
• How are norms, values, and hegemonies inscribed in algorithms, code and software?
• How are power relations enmeshed in such infrastructural materials?
• What politics (e.g. gender relations, race biases, commercial dynamics, ideologies) do ICTs carry?
• How can we investigate the micro-politics of artefacts?
• What social, political, economic, cultural implications and challenges do ICTs cause?
• How can we open up, investigate and renegotiate the politics of ICTs?
• How can we work towards value-sensitive design and responsible innovation in ICTs?

Further details on the abstract, deadline (31 January 2014), conference venue etc. may be found on this website: http://www.ifz.tugraz.at/ias/IAS-STS/Upcoming-Activities/STS-Conference-Graz-201

(via EASST Eurograd)