Call for papers - Networked Revolts

Online journal Re-public invites contributions for its upcoming special issue titled “Networked revolts”. The continuing uprisings spreading across North Africa and the Middle East have been inherently associated with the increasing entanglement of social media, or digital networks in general, with everyday life. The multiple uses of technologies –cell phones, Facebook, twitter, the Internet– by local participants and by global supporters and observers and the counter-measures of blocking access and shutting down communication channels by the toppled or still surviving governments have gained global attention and have already ignited a series of related debates. Are the social media causes or symptoms of the Arab revolts? How can we determine their degree of influence in the revolts?

The special issue will attempt to move beyond these debates and approach the Arab revolts by making no ontological distinction between the digital and the real. The primary aim is to address questions on the forms, the organisational structures of the revolts and new political possibilities that they have opened up though the prism of the digital networks that the revolts produced, or challenged, or transformed, or hacked.

Submissions may address some of the following themes in relation to the revolts:

* production of digital networks
* radical uses of corporate social media (facebook, twitter)
* bypassing government control of digital networks
* horizontal forms of digital network organisation

Essays should be approximately 1,500 – 1,800 words.

Please send your contributions in electronic format to:

e-mail: editors@re-public.gr

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2011

More information at http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=4193