Call for papers
International Workshop
30-31 March 2023
Venue: Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), Stellenbosch, South Africa
Hosted by
Sahana Udupa, University of Munich (LMU), Germany
Herman Wasserman, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Extended abstract deadline: 30 Nov 2022
Full papers due: 28 Feb 2023
This workshop aims to examine the cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp and its relationship with disinformation and extreme speech in a global perspective. Our objective is to contribute to disinformation and extreme speech scholarship by exploring the unique cultures, affordances and challenges of WhatsApp. Based on insights from different regions and diverse contexts of use, we aim to map the differences, similarities and connections globally, and highlight regulatory and methodological challenges that encrypted information services such as WhatsApp have raised for academic research and policymaking. WhatsApp’s popularity has been linked to low Internet connectivity and high data costs in the global South contexts but its uptake in different regions of the world, including parts of the global South, awaits systematic research around how distinct user practices, infrastructural conditions and political deployments have developed around the messaging service, and how such features have uniquely inflected disinformation and extreme speech environments.
The workshop will have five interrelated focal points: Culture, regulation, content, infrastructure and method. Questions we will be exploring include:
Cultures and contexts
Regulation
Content
Infrastructure
Method:
The types of problematic content we will be covering in the workshop include:
Extreme speech (derogatory, exclusionary and dangerous), Dis-/misinformation (including health misinformation, political disinformation, conspiracy theories, rumors and scams) and foreign influence operations.
We welcome a wide range of methods and approaches, including ethnographies, field experiments, online content analysis, political economy analysis, network analysis and NLP, and policy and regulation research.
The workshop will run over two days. To enable participants to learn from a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and methods, all sessions will be in plenary format.
We invite researchers to send extended abstracts (1200 words) to whatsappworkshop@ethnologie.lmu.de before 30 November 2022. Selected participants will be notified by 15 December 2022. Abstracts should contain a clear outline of the argument, theoretical framework, methodology, empirical findings, and a brief note on how your research links to the overall theme of the workshop. Please also include 3-5 keywords that describe your work, and a short bio (up to 100 words, stating affiliation). Full papers (6000 words) of selected submissions are due on 28 February 2023.
Attendance to this closed workshop is fully funded. Organizers will cover the costs of travel and accommodation. Submissions will contribute to a planned co-edited volume, and should therefore not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.