Welcome to the Data-stories Conference 2019! Thanks for submitting your paper proposal, we’re looking forward to receiving your abstract!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Data-stories: New Media Aesthetics and Rhetorics for Critical Digital Ethnography

In 2002, in The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich provocatively argued that the internet’s logic of database would supplant novelistic and cinematic narrative as the dominant mode of cultural expression. In the two decades that followed his prediction, we have witnessed, if not the end of narrative, dramatic transformations in the modes, practices, circuits and subjects of its production.

The aim of this conference to be held in Volos, Greece from Friday May 31, 2019 to June 2, 2019 at the Rooftile and Brickworks Museum N.& S. Tsalapatas is to reflect on these shifts, with a focus on their ramifications for both analyzing contemporary culture and producing resonant cultural reportage and critique.

For some, these changes have indeed been cataclysmic, resulting in the decline of both fictional and non-fictional modes of narration. Journalistic writing appears in listicle (list + article) form or is generated via algorithm. Fan fiction riffs on and scrambles the original work apparently to the point of no return. We are incessentantly remixing photos, videos, classic films, sitcom TV and bits of text into memes, GIFS, trailers and, yes, stories. Many lament that no one reads books, from literature to scholarly monographs, from ‘cover to cover’ anymore.

At the same time, many others, whether for pedagogical, therapeutic or political reasons, have embraced the new possibilities of self- and cultural-expression offered by easy-to-use digital tools and expansive networked connectivity. ‘Digital storytelling’ is a keyword of an empowerment paradigm that proactively encourages media content production in order to promote audibility and visibility for socially marginalized users - from children to refugees - and, by extension, validate their experiences and diversify the voices heard in the public sphere. These tools also open possibilities for the reorchestration of the ethnographic archive into new configurations of image, sound and text, capable of generating innovative sensorial experiences and reaching broader audiences.

Our aim in this conference, though, is neither to confirm the end of narrative, nor to celebrate its democratization, but to critically examine the new forms, genres and practices of narration emerging on social media platforms, smartphone apps, websites, games, etc. as a fundamental contribution to critical digital ethnography and, more generally, to the agenda of experimental humanities. We are keen to identify, explore and eventually employ in strategic ways in our own cultural production some key dimensions of this new narrativity, characterized by 'database narrative' (derivative, modular user/fan-produced micro-narratives), non-linearity (navigation and interface as syntax), seriality, the predominance of image- and video-centered narrative genres, hashtag as event, social forms of reading and writing, curation as composition, locative media, game as narrative and narrative games, etc.

This conference itself is, thus, composed of two organically interrelated strands. A first that is reflexive and interpretative, which asks in an age where “to be” is “to publish” what new forms of subjectivity, social networks, witnessing, modes of local and global belonging and ways of placing oneself – and being placed -- in time and space are coming into being. How do these practices reproduce, (re)form and/or challenge dominant cultural narratives? What are the politics of these new forms of narration: how do they connect to the contemporary economies and structures of work, play and power that shape and are shaped by platform capitalism and networked publics?

The second is performative and communicative and reflects an attempt to innovate on non-fiction modes of narration in the age of the digital database. In the conference we plan to showcase new modes of ethnographic storytelling that creatively deploy the ethnographic archive beyond the classic outputs of the monograph, the academic article and even the ethnographic film. We are also interested in exploring the turn to ‘multimodal ethnography’ in relation to digital media. Finally, we want to consider the possible contribution of these new narrative strategies to our pedagogy. How might experimenting with data-stories contribute to a rethinking of the anthropological ‘laboratory’ as a site in which the distinctions of teaching and research, student and professor, university and local community are productively blurred.

**Possible topics for papers include: **

*rhetorics, authorship, platforms

- database and narrative, database narrative
- transmedia storytelling, participatory culture
- social media storytelling (networked narrative, Instagram stories, Twitter fiction)
- narratives and algorithms (Facebook albums, automated journalism)
- gaming as narrative, procedural rhetoric, narrative games, machinima
- collaborative writing on social media platforms, collective reading sites, social annotation, social bookmarking
- fan fiction

*aesthetics, performance

- image/video-narratives (GIF, meme, selfie, vlogs, Facebook live, Snapchat/Instagram stories, profiles, trailers)
- spatiality (interface, navigation, locative media, geotagging)
- temporality (television seriality, hashtag as event, loops, timeline, image/chat archive, connective memory, digital memory/forgetting)
- participatory viewing, cosplay, ARG

*politics, economy, social movements

- feminist, queer, anti-racist witnessing/activist digital narratives, politics of exposure, privacy and publicity
- digital economy (free digital labor, affective labor, fan labor, prosumption)
- digital storytelling movement in historical and critical perspective (NGOs, 'refugee crisis', digital literacy as curricular reform, narrative therapy)

*ethnographic methods, pedagogy, experimental humanities

- multimedia ethnography (podcasts, sound/video walks, interactive documentary, locative mapping)
- multimodal ethnography and new media studies
- open/social media fieldnotes, visual/audio fieldnotes
- educational storytelling (explainers, vlogs, gaming)
- digital storytelling in the college classroom

NB:  

1) There is NO registration or attendance fee.

2) This will be more of a 'confestival' featuring, along with theoretical talks and invigorating round tables, a live digital music concert, an ARG game and multimedia screenings.

3) We strongly encourage young scholars to apply !


Organizing Committee

- Penelope Papailias, University of Thessaly, Conference Director
- Petros Petridis, University of Thessaly
- Constantinos Diamantis, Freie University Berlin & University of Thessaly, Conference Coordinator
- Eleni Tsatsaroni, University of Thessaly
- Nikos Paschoulis, University of Thessaly

Academic Committee

- Mitsos Bilalis, University of Thessaly
- Nikos Bubaris, University of the Aegean
- Despina Catapoti, University of the Aegean
- Maria Cecire, Bard College, Director of Experimental Humanities
- Larissa Hjorth, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Co-founder, Digital Ethnography Research Centre
- Steffen Köhn, Freie University Berlin, Program Coordinator of MA in Visual and Media Anthropology
- Agata Lisiak, Bard College Berlin
- Penelope Papailias, University of Thessaly, Director of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology
- Petros Petridis, University of Thessaly
- Christos Varvantakis, Goldsmiths, University of London
- Eleana Yalouri, Panteio University, Director of the Laboratory of Anthropological Research