Critical Theory and Digital Technologies
Digital technologies emerged and formed their own interactive networks of communication in the 20th century, but it wasn’t until the beginning of the 2000s that they went beyond research centers and specialized companies to reach people’s everyday life, including in the Global South. Today, the largest corporations are those focused on digital platforms, work is mediated by apps, and predictive analytics shapes and intensifies the financialization of economy. Moreover, multiple digital media began to percolate through the domains of art and culture, so that human interactions gained new forms and new environments, such as social networks, which fuse people’s professional, personal and public lives. Social networks have also been occupying a central role in politics all over the world, from social movements to electoral campaigns.
Many scholars have delved into the relation between digital technologies and contemporary societies, aiming to critically examine the assumption and the consequences of the former’s expansion. Among the topics analyzed by contemporary critical theories are: the conditions of production of new technologies, the nexus between technology and capital, the economic and social consequences of digitization, the ways in which digital objects transform our subjectivities and world views, and the issues digitization pose to the emergence and functioning of communities and public spheres. In addition, scholars from all over the world have been unravelling the militarized, racist and sexist aspect underlying digital devices, from facial recognition software to algorithms for credit analysis.
This call is opened for articles and book reviews that critically and theoretically assess the social aspects that underpin the emergence and consolidation of digital technologies. We welcome analyses that come from a wide range of disciplines, such as philosophy, history, media studies, sociology and anthropology. We encourage the submission of essays that engage with the following topics:
- Platforms, precarization and digital labor
- Transformations and conflicts in digital public spheres
- Digital art movements, trends in production and commercialization
- Contradictions and effects of digital financialization
- Political economy of data
- Big data, algorithms and knowledge production
- Videogames, influencers, online communities and digital entertainment
- Internet and everyday life
- Data science, nature and sustainability
- Gender and race inequalities in digital devices
- Augmented reality, artificial intelligence and their social effects
NEW Submission deadline: 11 March 2022
Editors: Ana Flávia Bádue (The Graduate Center, CUNY), Fernando Bee (University of Campinas)
For more information check our guidelines for authors and of formatting/style, quotations, and references.
