Author: sam

Sam is owner of this blog and works as a senior lecturer in digital geographies.
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A dream of an algorithm – Agnieszka Zimolag

Photo by: Agnieszka Zimolag
Photo by: Agnieszka Zimolag

A compelling piece on the Institute of Network Cultures‘ “long forms” website by Agnieszka Zimolag entitled “A dream of an algorithm” explores “our” relation to “technology, or (to my mind) technics as the co-constitutional (and originary [not essential]) relation between what we call, in common sense terms, “the human” and”technology”.

Technology is my reflection. Just as if I never see myself unless I look in the mirror, the same goes for technology. Once I plug, once i turn on the devices, I look at my comforting reflection, I can finally become one with my own image. The perception of the self becomes a continuum, a reassurance of my own existence. Zimolag

It’s a beautiful essay and well worth reading/ looking at in full – the images are lovely and there’s some thoughtful prose reflecting upon this relation. I guess where I’d differ from Zimolag is her implied assertion that the technology, what it does/can do somehow comes after ‘the human’; that technology does something to “us” (humans) that alters us. I can see why, in the face of rapid technological change, we might figure things in this way. Nevertheless, I’m inclined to insist that there never was a “human” somehow separate from “technology”. We have an ‘aporetic origin’ in Derrida & Stiegler’s terms, we continually perform the coming to being of “the human”.

As I’ve observed elsewhere, the theory of technogenesis offered by a range of anthropologists and philosophers is the idea that humans and technology co-evolved together, that you do not get one without the other. Humans are irreducibly distinct because of the reflexive transmission of complex cultures made possible by technics and the ‘exteriorization’ of thought. Both Stiegler and Derrida argue that the mental interior is only recognized as such with the advent of the technical exterior: our conscious self-knowledge is only possible with the ability to exteriorize thought as a trace, commonly as language and gesture. Stiegler explains this aporia of origin as a paradox: ‘The paradox is to have to speak of an exteriorization without a preceding interior: the interior is constituted in exteriorisation’ (Stiegler, Technics and Time 1, p. 141).

Technics can be thought of as a technogenetic ‘double-bind’ between being both constitutive and a supplement of ‘the human’. The interior and exterior, and with them the contemporary understanding of the experience of being human and what we understand to be technology, are mutually co-constituted and continue to be so.

In opposing ‘technology’ and ‘the human’, the apparently immaterial ‘algorithm’ and apparently concrete human, we either oppose technically mediated experience to other forms of experience or we oppose our technical life to other, apparently ‘natural’, forms of exis- tence. Either way, we risk reasserting old, problematic binaries: human/technology and nature/society.

To bring this back to ‘algorithms’ and their devices, following Zimolag – they are not our ‘others’. these technologies discussed and depicted in Zimolag’s beautiful essay are materially of and with us, they are perhaps not so much the ‘reflection’ she asserts (above) but rather a mirror that we ourselves have crafted through which to look upon ourselves, but, precisely in doing so, the “we” is irrevocably altered to include the mirror. The knowledge born from coming to know our own images, in Zimolag’s metaphor, is irreducibly tied to technics.

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A lack of politics in the geographies of code/software?

An interesting provocation for those who feel wedded to the ‘digital turn‘ from Mark Purcell on his blog… in particular:

the work, in general, seems to be quite aloof, or detached, or trying to stay above the fray, to remain non-committal, as though that were the more professional, academic stance to take.  All this detachment seems to have produced an upshot that is something like: “with all the new technologies coming into our lives in the past 10 years or so, it is important to think through their implications instead of just adopting them uncritically.”

Perhaps those that do “geography o[f] software/ information/ geodata” would like to respond..(?) For me, I think, there is simply a difference in focus between Purcell’s locating of politics and, for example – his colleague at Washington, Sarah Elwood’s in relation to “geodata” (e.g.), i.e. perhaps the difference between a politics of production as such and a politics of implementation.

Nevertheless, Purcell’s point about commons and peer production in open source software is valid – perhaps those involved in recent conference sessions on geographies of software have addressed these issues in some way? (I don’t know, I wasn’t there…)

Read Mark Purcell’s full blogpost on his blog.

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Exciting course for postgraduate researchers: History of Geographical Thought and Philosophy

Here’s a wonderful thing – Christian Abrahamsson, based at U. Oslo,  is convening a course at Oslo for PGRs, with guest appearances from: Trevor Barnes, Innes Keighen, Frederico Ferretti and the inimitable Gunnar Olsson. This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone wanting to engage with geographical thought:

SGO9204 – History of Geographical Thought and Philosophy

Course content

The purpose of this course is to examine the historical and philosophical development of modern geography and geographical knowledge. The course will explore key discourses, debates, and controversies which shaped the modern discipline. A key aim of the course will be to place the development of geographical thought and practice within a broader societal and scientific perspective. The course will also put emphasis on the geographies of the history of geographical thought – i.e. in what ways have, for example, the Nordic welfare states affected geographical thought and practice?

Learning outcome

After the course the students will be able to understand:  On completion of the course, the postgraduate student will be able to describe and analyse their own research projects in relation to broader historical discourses and concepts. The postgraduate student will have acquired knowledge of how different theoretical perspectives and concepts can be brought to bear on their individual projects. They will also have knowledge of how geographers at various times have understood the relation between geographical thought and practice. The course will also give the students an understanding of how geographical scholarship has been related to and informed by larger societal and scientific processes – e.g. the importance of evolutionary theory for 19th century geographical thought. Finally the course will give the students a sense of how and where their own projects fit within the history of the discipline.

Admission

The course is open to applications from all interested Ph.D. students. PhD students at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo gain theory-points and register for the course in StudentWeb.

Interested participants outside the department shall fill out this application form.

The deadline for applications is 21st October 2016.

Prerequisites

Formal prerequisite knowledge

No requirements other than that the students have to be enrolled in a doctoral program.

Teaching

Lecturers: 

Dr Christian Abrahamsson, UiO

Professor Trevor Barnes, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Dr Innes Keighren, Royal Holloway, London

Dr Federico Ferretti, University College, Dublin

Professor Emeritus Gunnar Olsson, Uppsala University

 

Schedule: 

The course is going to be in room 211, Harriet Holters hus

Monday – Part 1: The History and Geography of Geographical Knowledge 

10.00-12.00: Introduction: Why do we need a history of geographical thought?, (Christian Abrahamsson)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Lecture: The historical geographies of geographical knowledge, (Christian Abrahamsson)

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Tuesday – Part 2: Geography, Enlightenment, Romanticism 

10.15-12.00: Lecture: Kantian and Humboldtian geographies (Federico Ferretti)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Discussion

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Wednesday – Part 3: Science and Explanation 

10.15-12.00: Lecture: Darwinian geography and the rise of geography as a university discipline (Christian Abrahamsson)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Lecture: Environmental determinism and the nation state (Innes Keighren)

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Thursday – Part 4: Contemporary Geography 

10.15-12.00: Lecture: Spatial science and the quantitative revolution (Trevor Barnes)

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Lecture: Geography, the cold war, planning, and the welfare state (Trevor Barnes)

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

Friday 

10.15-12.00: Discussion

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-15.00: Discussion

15.15-17.00: Discussion

 

 

Preliminary reading list

(will be subject to changes according to proposals from the lecturers.):

Geographical Traditions: Rethinking the History of Geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 20(4): 403-422. o

Mayhew “Geography’s Geneaologies”, and Withers “Geography’s Narratives and Intellectual History”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 1-50.

Innes M. Keighren, Christian Abrahamsson and Veronica della Dora, On canonical geographies. Dialogues in Human Geography 2(2012): 296-312

John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 51-136, 149-184, 217-227.

Neil Smith, ‘Geography as museum: private history and conservative idealism in Richard Hartshorne’s The nature of geography’, in Nick Entrikin and Stanley Brunn (eds) Reflections on Richard Hartshorne’s The nature of geography (1989) pp. 91-120.

Stuart Elden. 2008. Reassessing Kant’s geography. Journal of Historical Geography.

Robert B. Louden. Anthropology from a Kantian point of view: toward a cosmopolitan conception of human nature. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. Volume 39, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 515-522.

David Livingstone The Geographical Tradition, pp.102-138.

Nicolaas Ropke ‘Alexander von Humboldt and Revolution’, in Livingstone and Withers. Geography and Revolution, pp. 336-350.

Michael Dettlebach, “Humboldtian science,” pp. 287-304 in N. Jardine, J. Secord, E. Spary (eds), Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Marie Louise Prat. Imperial Eyes selections on Humboldtian Science and transculturation.

Livingston, D. N. (1992) “The Geographical Experiment: Evolution and Founding of a Discipline” The Geographical Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. 177-215.

Neil Roberts, “The Idea of Evolution in Geographic Thought”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.441-451.

James Moore. “Revolution of the space invaders: Darwin and Wallace on the Geography of Life”, in Livingstone and Withers. Geography and Revolution, pp. 106-132.

D.R. Stoddart, “Darwin’s Impact on Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 56 (Dec., 1966): 683-698.

Janet Browne, “Biogeography and empire,” pp. 305-321 in N. Jardine, J. Secord, E. Spary (eds), Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Bassin, M.: Imperialism and the Nation State in Friedrich Ratzel’s Political Geography, Prog. Hum. Geog., 11, 473–495, 1987.

Smith,W. D.: Friedrich Ratzel and the Origins of Lebensraum, Ger. Stud. Rev., 3, 51–68, 1980.

David N Livingstone, “Environmental Determinism,” in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.368-380.

Ellen Churchill Semple, Influence of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-geography. New York: Russell and Russell, 1911. A reprint is available in Human Geography: An Essential Anthology. Edited by John Agnew, David N. Livingstone, and Alistair Rodgers. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 252-267. An online e-reprint from Project Gutenberg can be found at http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/5/2/9/15293/15293.htm

Peter Kropotkin, selections from “Mutual Aid” in P. Appleman (ed), Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, pp 399-405 [1902].

Theodore M. Porter, How science became technical. Isis 100 (2009): 292-309

Davis, William M. 1899. The Geographical Cycle. Geographical Journal 14: 481-504.

Nick Spedding, “Landform”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 465-474.

Antony Orme. “The Cycle of Erosion” in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.465-491.

Barbara A. Kennedy. Inventing the Earth: Ideas on Landscape Development Since 1740. Blackwell, 2006,

Neil Smith, “Geography as a museum: Private history and conservative idealism in The Nature of Geography” in Reflections on the Nature of Geography, eds N. Entrikin and S. Brunn (Washington: AAG, 1989), 91-120.

Trevor J. Barnes and Matthew Farish, “Between Regions: Science, Militarism, and American Geography from World War to Cold War,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 96(4) (December 2006): 807-26.

David Harvey, “Owen Lattimore: a memoire” in Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp 90-107. [1983]

Nicholas Entrikin, “Region and regionalism”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 344-356.

Trevor Barnes, “Spatial Analysis”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp.381-392.

Peter Gould, “Geography 1957-1977: The Augean Period,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 69 (1979): 139-51.

Fred Schaefer, “Exceptionalism in Geography: A Methodological Examination,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 43 (3): (1953): 226-49.

Livingstone, David. 1992. “Statistics Don’t Bleed: Quantification and its Detractors” The Geographical Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. pp. 304-311.

Trevor Barnes, ‘Placing ideas: heterotopia, genius loci and geography’s quantitative revolution’, Progress in human geography 28 (2004) pp. 565-95

Stuart Lane, “Making mathematical models perform in geographical space(s)”, in John Agnew and David N. Livingstone. The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, pp. 228-245.

Michael J. Watts. 1968 and All That. Prog Hum Geogr June 2001 vol. 25 no. 2, pp.157-188.

William Bunge, “Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution” (1971), Selections

Trevor Barnes and Nik Heynen, A classic in human geography: William Bunge’s (1971) Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution. Progress in Human Geography. October 2011 35: 712-715.

Nik Heynen, “Marginalia of a revolution: naming popular ethnography through William W. Bunge’s Fitzgerald”, Social & Cultural Geography, 14 (2013): 744-751.

Yves Lacoste, “An Illustration of Geographical Warfare: Bombing the Dikes on the Red River, North Vietnam”, Antipode 5 (1973): 1-13

Gavin P. Bowd and Daniel W. Clayton, “Geographical warfare in the tropics: Yves Lacoste and the Vietnam War”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103(2013): 627-646.

 David Harvey, “On the history and present condition of geography: an historical materialist manifesto” in Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp 108-120 [1984].

Doreen Massey, “In what sense a regional problem?” in J. Agnew, D. Livingstone and A. Rogers (eds) Human Geography: an Essential Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp 398-413 [1979].

Wilbur Zelinsky, “The Strange Case of the Missing Female Geographer.” Professional Geographer, Vol. 25 (1973): 101-05.

Mildred Berman, “On Being a Woman in American Geography: A Personal Perspective,” Antipode, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1984): 61-66.

Linda McDowell and Doreen Massey, “A Woman’s Place?” pp 458-475 in J. Agnew, D. Livingstone and A. Rogers (eds) Human Geography: an Essential Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), [1984]

Robinson, J. (1994). White Women Researching/Representing Others: From Anti-apartheid to Postcolonialism? In G. Rose & A. Blunt (eds), Sexual/Textual Colonisations. London: Guildford. 197-226

Gillian Rose, “Feminism and Geography: An Introduction” and “Women and Everyday Spaces,” in Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 1-40.

Gillian Rose, “Geography as a science of observation: The landscape, the gaze, and masculinity”, in F. Driver and G. Rose (eds), Nature and Science, Historical Geography Research Series no. 28, pp 8-18.

Examination

Each participant is requested to submit a 200 word project description i) outlining their interest in the course ii) describing their own research. This need to be submitted two weeks before the start of the course, 7th November to katalin.godberg@sosgeo.uio.no.

The entire five-day event makes up the Ph.d.-course, with the equivalent of 6 credits. For approval, this includes writing a paper of minimum 4 000 words to be submitted by 8th January 2017. The paper will deal with some theme in the curriculum. The paper is to be sent to katalin.godberg@sosgeo.uio.no.

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“At play on the field of ghosts” – James Bridle on code/spaces of competitive sport

Reflecting upon the increasing instrumentation of the sporting field off play, for spectating, e.g. the ‘Hanwha chickens‘, and for the judgement of rules, e.g. ‘HawkEye’, James Bridle has written a nice piece on Medium about how the idea/ideal of ‘sport’ may be getting translated into something else…

This distinction between the actuality of the event and the fidelity of its recreation is narrow and could easily be dismissed as just another conjuration of spectacular TV coverage, were its remit limited to mere representation. But in the hyper-competitive domain of sports, lubricated with broadcasting and gambling dollars, recreation turns into prediction, and representation into judgement. The distinction between what is seen and what occurs becomes crucial.

More and more, the practice of human adjudication in sports is being crowded out by the supposed superiority of machine perception; a perception which is based on the recreation and prediction of real events, rather than their explicit witnessing. Since 2001, the Hawk-Eye computer system has become increasingly ubiquitous in major sporting competitions, combining machine vision with motion analysis to not only declare where precisely a ball touched or crossed a line, but where the ball would have gone if it were not rudely interrupted.

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Behaviourism, productivity & the ‘quantified self’

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Steven Poole, in the New Statesman, on “How the craze for Apple Watches, Fitbits and other wearable tech devices revives the old and discredited science of behaviourism“:

Arguably, this authoritarian strand of behaviourist thinking is what morphed into the subtly reinforcing “choice architecture” of nudge politics, which seeks gently to compel citizens to do the right thing (eat healthy foods, sign up for pension plans) by altering the ways in which such alternatives are presented.

By contrast, the Apple Watch, the Pavlok and their ilk revive a behaviourism evacuated of all social concern and designed solely to optimise the individual customer. By ­using such devices, we voluntarily offer ourselves up to a denial of our voluntary selves, becoming atomised lab rats, to be manipulated electronically through the corporate cloud. It is perhaps no surprise that when the founder of American behaviourism, John B Watson, left academia in 1920, he went into a field that would come to profit very handsomely indeed from his skills of manipulation – advertising. Today’s neo-behaviourist technologies promise to usher in a world that is one giant Skinner Box in its own right: a world where thinking just gets in the way, and we all mechanically press levers for food pellets.

Echoes a common trope of theorising “subjectiv(is)ation” as a process (often labelled “neoliberal”, for good value) that gets done to a being/person… which gets entangled in an all-encompassing ‘labour theory of value’ but that’s a longer discussion…

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HyperNormalisation – New Adam Curtis film

Several folk on Twitter last night pointed to the post below on the BBC website. Seems like Adam Curtis is doing a Zizek, at least in the vein of the Perverts Guide to Ideology…

HyperNormalisationAcclaimed filmmaker, Adam Curtis brings his new epic film, HyperNormalisation to BBC iPlayer this October. The film will premiere at 9pm on Sunday 16 October. 

HyperNormalisation tells the extraordinary story of how we got to this strange time of great uncertainty and confusion – where those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed – and have no idea what to do. And, where events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control – from Donald Trump to Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, and random bomb attacks. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening – but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.

The film shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West – not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves – have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us, we accept it as normal.

HyperNormalisation has been made specifically for BBC iPlayer. It tells an epic narrative spanning 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters. They include the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, the early performance artists in New York, President Putin, intelligent machines, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers – and the extraordinary untold story of the rise, fall, rise again, and finally the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi.

All these stories are woven together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created. Part of it was done by those in power – politicians, financiers and technological utopians. Rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, they retreated. And instead constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang onto power.

But it wasn’t just those in power. The film shows how this strange world was built by all of us. We all went along with it because the simplicity was reassuring. And that included the left and the radicals who thought they were attacking the system. The film reveals how they too retreated into this make-believe world – which is why their opposition today has no effect, and nothing ever changes.

Made me think of:

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CFP> “Countercultures of Data” – Special Issue of Philosophy & Technology

Another interesting CFP and goodness knows this needs doing(!) I look forward to seeing what comes of this, should be great!

CFP: “COUNTERCULTURES OF DATA” – SPECIAL ISSUE OF PHILOSOPHY & TECHNOLOGY

Call for Papers for Philosophy and Technology’s special issue on Countercultures of Data

Guest Editor – Anna Lauren Hoffmann, School of Information – University of California, Berkeley

Journal cover featuring white text on blue backgroundAbout the Issue
25 years ago, Sandra Harding–in her influential book Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives–detailed and extended critical debates surrounding knowledge production and practices in science and technology. Collectively, these “countercultures of science” confronted the “problematics, agendas, ethics, and consequences” of scientific and technological production head on. Today, these same perspectives offer insight into the realm of data science, as philosophers, scholars, and practitioners alike grapple with ethical questions in a world where discourse, design, and governance increasingly revolve around “big” data and quantifiable knowledge.

This special issue will bring together rigorous conceptual and theoretical perspectives on what might best be called–following Harding–emerging “countercultures of data.” In particular, this issue will further critical and philosophical thinking about the theories, methods, institutions, and technological arrangements that underwrite or support data science in various industries and forms. Combined, contributions to the special issue will put forward a more realistic assessment of possible futures for a data driven world.

We invite submissions related (but not limited) to:

– Race and Data Science
– Theories of Property, Labor, and Data
– Political Economies of Data
– Data and Imperialism
– Feminist Perspectives on Data Science
– Data, Bodies, and Disability
– Data, Infrastructure, and the Environment
– Data, Philosophy, and the Law
– Communities and Data
– Data and Queer Subjects
– Data and/as Human Subjects in Research
– Data Science and Epistemic Justice

Timetable for Submissions
October 24, 2016: Deadline for paper submissions
December 21, 2016: Deadline reviews papers
February 6, 2017: Deadline revised papers
2017: Publication of the special issue

Submission Details
To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the journal’s Editorial Manager http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/
The author (or a corresponding author for each submission in case of co- authored papers) must register into EM.

The author must then select the special article type: “COUNTERCULTURES OF DATA” from the selection provided in the submission process. This is needed in order to assign the submissions to the Guest Editor.

Submissions will then be assessed according to the following procedure:
New Submission => Journal Editorial Office => Guest Editor(s) => Reviewers => Reviewers’ Recommendations => Guest Editor(s)’ Recommendation => Editor-in-Chief’s Final Decision => Author Notification of the Decision. (The process will be reiterated in case of requests for revisions.)

About the Journal
The journal addresses the expanding scope and unprecedented impact of technologies, in order to improve the critical understanding of the conceptual nature and practical consequences, and hence provide the conceptual foundations for their fruitful and sustainable developments. The journal welcomes high-quality submissions, regardless of the tradition, school of thought or disciplinary background from which they derive. The journal’s Editor-in-Chief is Luciano Floridi (Oxford).

Contact
For any further information please contact: Anna Lauren Hoffmann – annalauren [at] berkeley [dot] edu

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CFP> Feminist Media Studies Special issue on Online Misogyny: Call for papers

I saw this on Twitter via Huw Davies last night. Looks like a really interesting call:

Feminist Media StudiesSpecial issue on Online Misogyny: Call for papers

Deadline: 1 October 2016

Edited by Debbie Ging and Eugenia Siapera

In recent years, online misogyny has become a major concern for women. As a new wave of feminist / female bloggers, journalists, activists and gamers have attempted to assert their presence on the internet, there has been a concerted backlash against both feminism and women generally. This special issue of Feminist Media Studies seeks to identify and theorise the complex relationships between online culture, technology and misogyny. How have the internet’s anti-woman spaces and discourses been transformed by the technological affordances of the internet and social media? How are they being articulated and reproduced in diverse cultural contexts and / or transnationally? Are they borne of the same types of discontents articulated in older forms of anti-feminism or to what extent do they articulate a different constellation of social, cultural and gender-political factors?

Despite growing social concern about online misogyny, discussion and debate of this issue has been primarily journalistic to date. Moreover, the focus has been strongly western-/anglo-centric, and has tended to revolve around certain ‘flashpoint’ events. There is a need, therefore, for greater representation of how this phenomenon operates globally across contexts from non-anglophone, technologically advanced cultures to countries in the Global South. It is important to ask, for example, how internet access and local gender landscapes complicate our understanding of this subject. In addition to the more high-profile, anonymous attacks covered by the western media, there are also reports of intimate partner and acquaintance abuse online, which often takes the form of ‘revenge porn’ or unauthorized distribution of sexts by men known to their victims. Moreover, misogyny can and does operate in the more formal contexts of the technology sector. All of these examples should alert us to the importance of progressing academic inquiry on this issue not from a point at which we assume online misogyny to be a stable, recognisable phenomenon but rather by inviting contributions that will expand current knowledge and understanding beyond western experiences, gender-political contexts and epistemological frameworks.

What is significant about all of these phenomena is their very real impact on the lives and safety of real women, as well as their success in deterring women from expressing their opinions or putting their work online. Despite this, online misogyny remains under-researched in academia (Jane, 2014). There have, however, been important activist interventions such as #everydaysexism and #freethenipple as well as a raft of feminist groups organizing online to highlight and challenge misogyny. Given that activists, journalists, gamers and filmmakers have effectively led this charge, we consider it important to ask whether these new, more popular expressions of digital feminism are reaching new audiences and shaping new publics, and what impact this might have on theoretical understandings of feminism. Moreover, while it is important to consider the new misogyny in relation to older theorisations of anti-feminism (Faludi, 1991; Kimmel, 1995; Messner, 1997), it is also crucial to build reflexive criticism into narratives that have hitherto excluded non-western cultures as well as other, related forms of online hate speech such as racism, homophobia and transphobia.

Online Misogyny aims to give this increasingly important area of enquiry the impetus, attention and theoretical cohesion it requires. The increasingly amorphous and anonymous nature of online misogyny and the fluid and dynamic nature of online communication pose considerable challenges for data capture and analysis, and we expect methodological innovation to be a key element of this special issue. We also hope to publish at least one contribution from an activist, artist or non-academic.

Possible topics in relation to this theme may include (but are not limited to):

  • Online misogyny and feminist media theorisations
  • Forms of online misogyny  (including threats, abuse, ‘revenge porn’, creepshots, sexting, slut-shaming, technology-enabled intimate partner and acquaintance violence, and others)
  • Sites and contexts of online misogyny
  • Discourses and visuality of online misogyny
  • Global contexts and online misogyny
  • Transnational travel / global pathways of misogyny
  • Online misogyny’s articulations with racism, homophobia and transphobia
  • Technological affordances: the role of algorithims, anonymity, governance, technical design, platform politics, etc.
  • Social, political and personal impact of online misogyny
  • Women’s / feminist responses to online misogyny
  • Performative responses to online misogyny
  • The role of social media corporations and community managers
  • Workplace and institutional misogyny: misogyny in the technology / gaming / journalism sectors
  • Legislation and corporate policy
  • Digitally networked publics: the impact of online misogyny on democracy and the public sphere
  • Online misogyny and the post-feminist context

Aims & Scope
Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new media technologies. The journal invites contributions from feminist researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual perspectives.

Peer Review Policy
All research articles in this journal undergo rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by at least two scholars.
Submission Instructions

Please submit a 350-word abstract as well as a short (1-page) CV to Debbie Ging (debbie.ging(at)dcu.ie) and Eugenia Siapera (eugenia.siapera(at)dcu.ie) by 1st October 2016. Authors whose abstracts are selected will be notified by 15th January 2017 and asked to submit complete manuscripts by 15th June 2017. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication of the paper, which will be subject to peer review.