February 2022 - netsociety - server-nexa.polito.it

CfP Weizenbaum Conference 2022

by Kiyan Farmand

[cid:image001.png@01D81D0E.951AD160]<https://www.weizenbaum-conference.de/> [cid:image002.png@01D81D0E.951AD160] Call for Papers & Projects \ Weizenbaum Conference 2022 The Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society<https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/en/> is organizing its 2022 annual conference on the subject of "Practicing Sovereignty. Interventions for open digital futures" and invites interested scholars and artists to submit papers and abstracts for presentations and workshops. The conference will take place at the venue "Alte Münze" in Berlin on Thursday, 9 June and Friday, 10 June 2022. The premises of how ICT impacts societies worldwide have changed. Instead of further indulging in collective imaginaries of better, digitally mediated futures, today's narratives are dominated by worrying aspects of the digital transformation. Issues such as the increasing vulnerability and manipulation of individuals, the violation of fundamental rights through mass surveillance, and the digitally mediated undermining of democratic institutions and practices have become more and more threatening to an open and free society. Against this backdrop, the notion of "digital sovereignty" is currently witnessing an increasing interest. Being hotly debated for its implied potentials, but also for its shortcomings, the term denotes diverse concepts that negotiate competences, duties, and rights in the digital age. Questions of trust, confidence, and competence - intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic - contextualize digital sovereignty in a fundamental re-consideration of what has been known as democratic principles, civil rights, and national identities. The international conference and exhibition will investigate new opportunities for digital participation and policymaking and discuss alternative technological and social practices from various fields and disciplines. We frame digital sovereignty as a right to be claimed and a process constantly in the making, as a condition of the ability to critically partake in the digital transformation. The conference will provide a transdisciplinary platform for scholars, artists, activists, and human rights advocates who develop transformative practices spaces to foster digital involvement. Grassroots initiatives, community projects, and participatory practices in design, art and activism appear as collective counter strategies and bottom-up interventions that challenge the normalization of inequalities and insecurities and push back against threats to an open society. They lay the groundwork for new forms of agency, paving novel ways of practicing sovereignty - both in the sense of collective activities as well as in terms of public education and experimentation. To investigate the notion of digital sovereignty while respecting the plurality of its forms and approaches, the conference and exhibition offer four different tracks with shifting focuses: \ Digital sovereignty: terms, concepts, limitations \ Datafication and democracy \ Digital literacies and inequalities \ Digital sovereignty and scientific autonomy Digital sovereignty: terms, concepts, limitations As a central concept in current policy discourses, digital sovereignty addresses various challenges posed by the digital transformation. This track will address theoretical approaches in the current discourses on regulatory, technological, and civil society perspectives on digital sovereignty, and discuss approaches that are being negotiated. They range from a territorial viewpoint for digitally sovereign entities to an individual perspective of self-determination in everyday life and touch upon questions of autonomy, control, and authority. Contributions may include but are not limited to: \ Different (digital) ontologies and corresponding notions of sovereignty \ Relations between sovereignty and the digital \ Conceptual elements of how to analyze (digital) sovereignty \ Shifting power systems through the digital transformation of societies \ Public reflections of sovereign powers \ Alternative sovereignty concepts for democratic value Datafication and democracy How can we reimagine the politics of data? Automated decision-making, predictive policing, social scoring - computational datafication and automation are changing structures and procedures not only of private corporations but also of governments and public institutions. At the same time, people\s everyday lives become datafied lives. Digital means and tools empower them to demand access to government information (freedom of information, open government) and to actively partake in political decision-making. But they also burden citizens with responsibility: It is often up to the individual to resist and protest the collection and exploitation of their personal data by private corporations and intelligence agencies. With these new challenges and possibilities, liberal democracies seem to be at a crossroads: Are people becoming a mere datapoint in an opaque machinery of computation whose results and decisions we can neither comprehend nor challenge? Or can we, by new means of engagement and by redefining technical infrastructures as public infrastructures, strengthen democracy and advance social progress? Contributions may include but are not limited to: \ Changing structures in governments and public institutions through datafication \ Open government, open data, open source \ Public interest design \ Surveillance capitalism: data extractivism and the quantification of the individual \ Automated decision making vs. digitally aided sovereignty \ Ownership of digital infrastructure: private property and the public sphere Digital literacies and inequalities How can we grasp and trace the interrelations between social inequalities and digital divides? How can we develop new strategies for socio-technical public education that ensure equitable and democratic engagements with regulatory debates around technologies? Through the lens of a so called "third level digital divide" - a concept that addresses the capacity to achieve adequate outcomes and benefits from our digital actions - we can look beyond simplistic conceptions of access to technologies and information. This track will discuss digital literacies in a broader, socio-cultural sense as a creative, performative, and inherently political everyday practice and thus use digitality as a lens to discuss intersectional inequalities. With this, it will examine both the causes and consequences of power, privilege, and oppression in the digital realm, and feature theories, practices and tactics for addressing and countering the increasing amount of digital inequalities and disparities on a global level. Contributions may include but are not limited to: \ Digitalization and gender and intersectionality \ Gender-equitable design of digital or socio-technical systems \ In/visibility of oppressive forces in digital algorithms and products \ New strategies for socio-technical public education and public pedagogy \ Art, technology and exploit: exposing power inequalities through artistic practice \ Digital activism as digital empowerment of groups and individuals Digital sovereignty and scientific autonomy The digital transformation of scientific work comes with promises of faster collaboration, increased rigour and broader access to knowledge. At the heart of these scientific imaginaries are new digital infrastructures that connect researchers, organizations, and artifacts. However, today an increasing number of these infrastructures are developed and controlled by a handful of powerful technology firms and publishing companies. This development poses a threat to scientific autonomy, as such crucial infrastructures are shaped by the data imperative and extractive logics of platform capitalism rather than the needs of the scientific community. To contribute to the project of digital sovereignty, science needs to reclaim its autonomy in digitally networked environments first. The goal of this conference track is to bring together critical perspectives and generative proposals on the crisis of scientific autonomy in the digital condition. Contributions may include but are not limited to: \ Data repositories and preprint servers \ Tracking technologies and academic surveillance \ Predatory publishing \ Open science and open education \ Distributed trust technologies in science \ Digital metrics and evaluation tools Call for Papers This call for papers, projects and workshops invites scholars, artists, designers, activists, and civil society initiatives to submit papers and workshops to one of the four tracks. Inter- and transdisciplinary work is particularly encouraged. We are looking forward to many inspiring contributions! Submission Categories Papers Paper length should be between 2,500 and 3,000 words (including notes, excluding references) and follow the Word template<https://cloud.weizenbaum-institut.de/s/zCrzTEoSaeZKZx8> formatting. When using LaTeX, please adapt the formatting of the Word template. Please upload the paper in PDF format. As the paper will be reviewed in a double-blind process, please anonymize any information which could point to your authorship (including information in references and notes). Papers accepted in the review or revision process will be published as part of the conference proceedings. In addition, selected submissions will be given the opportunity to be published in a special issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society<https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/index> that will focus on the conference topics. Authors are expected to hold a 20-minute presentation of their submitted papers. Proposals for work-shops and project presentation The conference will provide space for workshops and project presentations in fields of scientific research and also for artistic research and projects, activism/hacktivism, design, or other interactive or participatory formats. Please submit a project proposal as PDF (max. 3 pages) including a description (max. 1,000 words) and, if applicable, images. If the proposal includes video or audio material, please provide within the pdf hyperlinks to a video/ audio hosting platform where the work can be accessed (e.g., Vimeo or platforms of educational institutions). The review process will be single-blind and include suggestions for revision considering the conditions of the conference site and schedule. The description will be published in the conference proceedings (a selection of descriptions also in the Weizenbaum Journal<https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/index>, s. above), combined with images and potential documentation material (depending on the individual project and to be discussed with the contributor). Procedures Step 1 Please submit a paper or abstract for workshop and project presentation by 15 February 2022 via Easy Chair<https://easychair.org/account/signin?l=t8m54s1csna8E0QoJ6qJg5>. The paper or abstract should indicate the conference track. Step 2 Submissions will be reviewed, and decisions of acceptance will be issued by 15 March 2022. Peer review of papers (double-blind) and abstract for workshop and project presentation (single-blind). Decisions of acceptance or revision will be issued by 15 March 2022. Step 3 After the potential revision the papers will be published in the conference proceedings. The conference proceedings will be published open access by the Weizenbaum Institute (providing DOIs). In addition, selected submissions will be given the opportunity to be published in a special issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society<https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/index> that will focus on the conference topics. Important Dates \ Deadline for submission: 15 February 2022 \ Notification for acceptance: 15 March 2022 \ Conference: 9/10 June 2022 Contact Information Mail conference(a)weizenbaum-institut.de<mailto:conference@weizenbaum-institut.de> URL https://www.weizenbaum-conference.de/ https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/ [cid:image003.jpg@01D81D0E.951AD160]

Feb. 8, 2022

Fellowship vacancies at the University of Ottawa

by Florian Martin-Bariteau

Dear friends, We currently have six vacancies at the University of Ottawa and really appreciate if you could share this in your networks! The AI + Society Initiative<http://aisociety.ca/> is seeking: * a Scotiabank Postdoctoral Fellow in AI and Regulation to pursue an innovative research program focused on shaping the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) in a global context. https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/aisociety/scotiabank-postdoc-ai-regulation-2022 * a Scotiabank Postdoctoral Fellow in AI and Inclusion to pursue an innovative research program focused on reimagining how to design ethical and inclusive artificial intelligence (AI) systems. https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/aisociety/scotiabank-postdoc-ai-inclusion-2022 * an Alex Trebek Postdoctoral Fellow in AI and Environment to pursue an innovative research program focused on the social science aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to environmental sustainability. https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/aisociety/alextrebek-postdoc-environment-2022 * an Alex Trebek/CIHR Fellow in IA and Healthcare to pursue an innovative research program focused on the legal and ethical aspects of health-related artificial intelligence (AI). https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/aisociety/alextrebek-postdoc-cihr-fellowship-hea… In addition, I am also seeking : * an engaged and enthusiastic Research Fellow/Coordinator in technology, policy and society to collaborate with me and pursue a research program to make contributions to technology law, policy and ethics, with a focus on cybersecurity, cyberjustice and algorithmic systems : https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/opportunities/research-fellow-coordinator-techno… * an inspiring and energetic Administrative Coordination Assistant to provide general administrative, operational, and coordination support to the director of the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society, the AI + Society Initiative and the University Research Chair in Technology and Society, as well as some special projects, events and major initiatives : https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/opportunities/administrative-assistant-nr3-2022 Thank you again for sharing! And don’t hesitate to refer great candidates! All the best, Florian -- Florian Martin-Bariteau, LL.D. Professeur agrégé, Section de common law | Associate Professor, Common Law Section Chaire de recherche de l’Université en technologie et société<https://droittech.uottawa.ca/chaires/cru-technologie-societe> | University Research Chair in Technology and Society<https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/chairs/urc-technology-society> Directeur, Centre de recherche en droit, technologie et société<https://droittech.uottawa.ca/> | Director, Centre for Law, Technology and Society<https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/> Directeur, Initiative IA + Société<http://www.iasociete.ca/> | Director, AI + Society Initiative<http://www.aisociety.ca/> Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa 57 Louis Pasteur (FTX 367), Ottawa ON K1N 6N5, Canada Teams<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=fmartinb@uottawa.ca> | f-mb.org<http://f-mb.org/> | @f_mb<https://twitter.com/f_mb>

Feb. 2, 2022

Invitation | Workshop: Cultural Heritage Institutions from a Commons Perspective | 01.03.2022

by nina.hahne＠cais.nrw

Dear colleagues, CAIS cordially invites PhD students from all disciplines to participate in our upcoming workshop "Cultural Heritage Institutions from a Commons Perspective". The workshop will be held virtually on March 01 from 4-7 pm (CET). It is organized by Dr. Jörg Lehmann (University of Tuebingen), who is currently Fellow at our institution: <https://www.cais.nrw/en/fellows_en/fellow_lehmann_2021/> https://www.cais.nrw/en/fellows_en/fellow_lehmann_2021/ Please share this invitation with potential participants. Workshop: Cultural Heritage Institutions from a Commons Perspective Cultural Heritage Institutions have started digitizing their assets about twenty years ago. Since then, a range of legal problems accompanying digitization efforts have been identified, and usage scenarios have changed a lot. The cultural legitimacy of private corporations making use of these resources is challenged. This workshop takes an understanding of cultural heritage as a cultural commons as its starting point, presents the results of the ongoing research project entitled The Tragedy of the Cultural Commons focusing on cultural heritage institutions, identifies and discusses relevant legal questions that need to be addressed, and takes further research into perspective. Key Learnings: * Gain insight in current legal debates on copyrights, intellectual property rights, intangible cultural heritage, and regulations pertaining to access to cultural heritage * Deepened understanding of the recently developed cultural commons framework and the application of a systematic analytic approach to an existing research field * Comprehension of the interaction between legal norms and societal as well as technical developments * Getting an idea about how scientific debates are driven by new terms and concepts presented in the academic arena Confirmed Participants: <http://www.brettfrischmann.com/> Brett Frischmann, Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics, Villanova University, Pennsylvania, USA. <https://michaelmadison.net/> Michael J. Madison, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Future Law Project at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. <https://madelynsanfilippo.com/> Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo, Assistant Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Illinois, USA. To register, contact Dr. Jörg Lehmann ( <mailto:joerg.lehmann@romanistik.uni-tuebingen.de> joerg.lehmann(a)romanistik.uni-tuebingen.de) For more information visit: <https://www.cais.nrw/veranstaltungen-2/workshop-cultural-heritage-instituti ons/> https://www.cais.nrw/veranstaltungen-2/workshop-cultural-heritage-institutio ns/ Kind regards, Nina ------ Dr. Nina Hahne Referentin Vernetzung und Nachwuchsförderung (Inter)national Networks, PhDnet@CAIS Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) GmbH Universitätsstraße 104, 44799 Bochum Deutschland / Germany Telefon: 0234 / 54495451 <http://www.cais.nrw/> www.cais.nrw Sitz: Bochum - Amtsgericht Bochum HRB 16476 Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Michael Baurmann, Tim Pfenner

Feb. 2, 2022