The journal Policy & Internet will be holding its third
conference (co-convened by the OII, in collaboration with the
Internet & Politics ECPR SG) next 25-26 September in Oxford,
on the subject of crowdsourcing. We are currently calling for
abstracts.
Conference:
http://ipp.oii.ox.ac.uk/
Call:
http://ipp.oii.ox.ac.uk/2014/call-for-papers
Abstract deadline: 14 March 2014.
Location: Thursday 25 - Friday 26 September 2014, Oxford
Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
Convenors: Helen Margetts (OII), Vili Lehdonvirta (OII), David
Sutcliffe (OII), Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon (Annenberg, UPenn),
Andrea Calderaro (EUI).
Contact:
policyandinternet@oii.ox.ac.uk
** Rationale **
Crowdsourcing - the provision of goods by large numbers of
people contributing via an online platform - is used to generate
and sustain policy ideas, labour markets, business investment,
charitable donations, knowledge commons (such as Wikipedia),
cultural goods and artefacts, libraries, government
transparency, public management reform, education, scientific
development and the institutions of democracy itself. This
pattern of technology-enabled institutional change, where a
known few are replaced by an indefinite many, has deep and
diverse implications for government, business, civil society,
democratic life and public policy-making. Researchers and
policy-makers have barely begun to examine the opportunities and
challenges that the crowdsourcing model presents.
The Internet, Politics, Policy 2014 conference is dedicated to
facilitating discussion on crowdsourcing across disciplinary
boundaries. The conference calls for papers on the observed and
potential implications of crowdsourcing for politics, policy and
academic practice. Perspectives are welcomed from across
science, social science and the humanities as well as from
academic and policy-making communities. We aim to identify both
what is novel in crowdsourcing, and the ways it enables and
extends existing social and political processes.
** Topics **
The conference aims to attract papers from a range of
disciplines analysing crowdsourcing-related phenomena. We
welcome both theoretical and empirical papers reporting original
research on crowdsourcing and related concepts such as
microwork, peer production, human computing, co-creation, open
innovation and e-government. We particularly welcome comparative
approaches and papers drawing on new empirical findings and
novel research methods.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
How is crowdsourcing changing politics?
Topics of interest include citizen participation in government
and the political process, and online collective action.
Uses of big data in evidence-based
public policy, including probabilistic, and conditional and
predictive policy-making and the use of social media data for
government self-improvement.
Online labor markets, new organizational
forms, and the blurring of boundaries between work and play,
as well as the economics of crowdsourcing more generally.
Co-production and co-creation of public
policy, through (for example) the use of feedback facilities,
rating, ranking and reputation applications.
Crowdsourcing for conflict management,
peace building and humanitarian intervention, including crisis
mapping.
Crowdsourcing for educational,
scientific and technological development, such as citizen
science, crowd-funding, massive online open courses, and the
methodological, epistemological and ethical issues involved.
New methods for analyzing crowdsourcing,
such as computational social science and big data analytics,
including sentiment analysis, topic classification, sampling
from social media platforms, and inferring from socially
generated data to the wider population.
Ethical issues arising from the use of
such methods, such as de-anonymisation, privacy, and
inequalities created by the use of predictive analytics in
decisions concerning individuals.
When crowds turn into mobs: online hate
groups, organized cyberbullying, their dynamics and effective
policy responses.
Perspectives from any academic discipline are welcomed,
including: political science, economics, law, sociology,
medicine, information science, communications, philosophy,
computer science, physics, psychology, management, organization
science, geography and humanities. Papers should attempt to
frame their object of study in relation to established concepts
and theories. 'Crowdsourcing' need not be the central concept in
a paper as long as it deals with the issues and topics
identified in this call.
** Proposal submission **
* Paper proposals
Paper proposals should consist of a title and a 1,000-word
extended abstract that specifies and motivates the research
question, describes the methods and data used, and summarises
the main findings. Abstracts will be peer reviewed, and the
authors of accepted proposals are expected to submit full papers
prior to the conference. Applicants will have the opportunity to
co-submit their paper to the journal Policy and Internet, which
will operate a fast-track review process for papers accepted to
the conference.
Paper submissions can also be considered for a Best Paper Award
(sponsored by the journal Policy and Internet). The prize will
be awarded at the closing session of the conference. As the
paper is intended to be published in a future issue of the
journal, authors should indicate whether they would like their
paper to be considered for the prize.
* Poster proposals
Posters should summarise in a visually engaging manner the
purpose, methods and results of an original piece of research.
All accepted submissions will be considered for a Best Poster
Award. The prize will be awarded at the closing session of the
conference.
IPP2014: Crowdsourcing for Politics and Policy
http://ipp.oii.ox.ac.uk/