Initial abstracts (max. 250 words) and a short biographical note (max. 100 words) due: March 15, 2022
Digital Culture & Society, Vol. 8, Issue 1/2022: Coding Covid-19: The Rise of the App-Society
This special issue of Digital Culture & Society – edited by Julia Ramírez Blanco, Ramón Reichert, Francesco Spampinato – deals with the concept of code in relation to the Covid-19 crisis. Code is intended both as a computer-based language to program software or apps and as a functional and visual language for organising administrative processes, visualising information, performing behaviour control, and reinforcing shared imaginaries based on surveillance and dread. This issue departs from the idea that both forms of coding have become dramatically intertwined during the pandemic and are structuring a new way of being in and seeing reality. This volume aims to explore the new forms of data-driven surveillance and representation of the pandemic evolution at the level of real-time epidemiology, sensor technologies, science policies, push media, and the heterogeneous counter-discourses that try to subvert them.
Topics can include but are not limited to:
- Big Data and datafied society
- Real-time epidemiology: nowcasting
- Health informatics: active and passive monitoring devices
- The aesthetics of data visualisations
- Visualisations and collective memory
- The acceleration of digitalization
- The emergence of the app-society
- Infographics and visual information
- Artistic interpretations of pandemic algorithms
- Statistics’ rhetorics of objectivity
- Socio-economic inequalities and disaster capitalism
- The psychological impact of codification
- Technopolitics and digital disobedience
- Discrediting codes: conspiracy storytelling
When submitting an abstract, authors should specify to which of the following categories they would like to submit their paper:
- Field Research and Case Studies (full paper: 6000-8000 words). We invite articles that discuss empirical findings from studies that examine surveillance and political economies in digital visual culture. These may e.g. include studies that analyse particular image platforms; address nudging and incentive aesthetic strategies; scrutinise whether and how algorithmic personalization produces specific consumer subjects, etc.
- Methodological Reflection (full paper: 6000-8000 words). We invite contributions that reflect on the methodologies employed when researching data-driven and algorithmic surveillance and networked images. These may include, for example, critical evaluation of (resistance) discourses of transparency or obfuscation, algorithmic black boxing, and their implicit epistemologies of the visible; discussion of new or mixed methods, and reflections on experimental forms of research.
- Conceptual/Theoretical Reflection (full paper: 6000-8000 words). We encourage contributions that reflect on the conceptual and/or theoretical dimensions of surveillance, capitalism, and images. This may include, for example, the relationship between scopic and silent forms of power and control; critical evaluation of different concepts such as surveillance capitalism, platform capitalism, algorithmic governmentality, etc.; the tensions between the aestheticization of capitalism and anaesthetization of images in data-driven media environments (e.g. due to filtering, platform censorship, calm technologies, etc.).
- Entering the Field (2000-3000 words). This experimental section presents initial and ongoing empirical work. The editors have created this section to provide a platform for researchers who would like to initiate a discussion about their emerging (yet perhaps incomplete) research material and plans, as well as methodological insights.
Please send your abstract and a biographical note to: ramon.reichert@univie.ac.at, julia.ramirez.blanco@gmail.com, francesco.spampinato@unibo.it (eds.), Visit the Digital Culture & Society CfP for more information.