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Digital Intimacies: General Registration Open.

Digital Intimacies takes place Wednesday 5th to Friday 7th December at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Now in its fourth year, the conference continues to bring scholars of digital culture together from across Australia and beyond, across disciplines including media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology and gender studies. This year’s symposium is convened by Amy Dobson and Tama Leaver, and is hosted by Curtin University’s Centre for Culture and Technology and the discipline of Internet Studies in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry.  

Now that all the presenters are registered, a limited number of places at Digital Intimacies are available for other people who would like to attend the symposium. If you would like to attend, please register at this link:  https://payments.curtin.edu.au/DIGIINTIMACY_181205

The registration costs are as follows: Waged: $120 Unwaged: $60

The current conference schedule is available here: https://digint18.tumblr.com/post/179546302624/schedule.

VENUE & TRANSPORT

The conference will be held in buildings 502A.101 and 502A.102 on the main campus of Curtin University. 

BY CAR:

The closest car parks to buildings 502A.101 and 502A.102 at Curtin are D3, D5 and D6 and C6. See the Curtin campus map for locations of the buildings and car parks on the west side of the campus. 

Directions: The entrances closest to the Symposium buildings are Kent Street or Manning Road. When entering at Kent Street onto Beazley Avenue, turn right at the first roundabout onto Townsing Boulevard and then first left into the D3 carpark. Continue to the end of that road and turn right into the car parks. The venue is at the southern-most end of the D3 carpark. When entering from Manning Road, turn left at the first roundabout, and right at the second roundabout you can park in any of these carparks D6, D7, C5 or C6.  The venue is at the northern end of those carparks.

PARKING:

You can register your vehicle with CellOPark before you arrive for the conference, as there will be a fee to park your car in the campus car parks of up to $6 per day. You can download the app directly to your mobile device and pay by credit card. Alternatively you can pay as you go when you arrive on campus at one of the CellOPark machines located in the car parks. 

BY TRAIN AND BUS:

You can plan your journey using the Transperth Journey Planner and enter ‘Curtin University Bus Station’ as your End point. The Conference buildings are a 3-5 minute walk from the bus station. There are accessible pathways throughout the University. 

USING PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN PERTH:

Using a SmartRider Card is the cheapest and most convenient way to ride on all Transperth services. The card fits into your wallet and is reusable, letting you top-up with additional funds as you need. For more information visit the Transperth website: SmartRider. You can buy cash tickets from ticket machines at train stations and ferry jetties, and from bus drivers. For more information visit the Transperth website.

TAXIS:

Taxi services in Perth: 

To book a Taxi Service in Perth with a fixed fare, go to Ingogo.com.au.  Swan Taxis – swantaxis.com.au  Black and White Cabs – blackandwhitecabs.com.au  Maxi Taxi Perth – maxitaxiperth.com.au  Uber is also available in Perth. 

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Digital Intimacies 4, 2018 Conference Schedule

Conference hashtag: #digint18

Wednesday, Dec 5th 

9.00: Welcome.

9.15-10.30 Keynote: Jessica Ringrose  #INeedFeminism and Queering Instagram: Exploring the Affective Counter Publics, Trans-Platform Vernaculars and Posthuman Pedagogies of Youth Digital Gender Activisms

10.30-11.00 Morning Tea

11.00-12.40: Session 1, Care, support, distress. [Chair: Son Vivienne.]

Paul Byron: Who cares? Everyday intimacies and digital support

Dominic Yeo: Silent cries for help in Facebook: Examining the intimate voices of troubled youths through their anonymous distress communication on social media

Amy Dobson: Reading Public(s of) love and care?(Over)sharing, (non)agency, and queer(er) world building on social media

Ingrid Richardson & Larissa Hjorth: Digitally Mediated Intimacies, Companion Animals, and Careful Surveillance

12.40-1.30 Lunch

1.30-3.10: Session 2: Datafied Bodies. [Chair: Shaka McGlotten]

Belinda Middleweek: ‘Intimate Others’ and ‘seamful’ engagements: An ethnographic study of sex robot enthusiasts in The Doll Forum

Misha Kavka: The Intimate Syntaesthesia of Mukbang

Brady Robards and Ben Lyall: Confessional data selfies and intimate digital traces

Son Vivienne: Code-switching genders in practice and theory

3.10-3.40 Break

3.40-5.00 Session 3: Gender Performativity and Porousness. [Chair: Amy Dobson]

David Myles, Jean Burgess, Martin Blais: Gay Dating App Reviews and Their Potential for Understanding Sexuality & Gender Performance Online

David Farrugia: Masculinity, Homosocial Camaraderie and Value Creation on the Digital Gaming Platform Twitch

Madison Magladry: Fitspiration or Fitsploitation? Postfeminism, Digital Media and Authenticity in Women’s Fitness Culture

5.00 (-7.30ish): Welcome Drinks, The Creative Quarter

 Thurs Dec 6th

9.30-10.30 Keynote: Shaka McGlotten "Streaking" 

10.30-11.00 Morning Tea

11.00-12.40: Session 4, Platformed Intimacy & Influence(rs). [Chair: David Farrugia]

Tama Leaver: Virtual Influencers and Real Connections

Indigo Holcombe-James: It ‘folds up space’: cultural platforms and practices of intimate connectivity on Instagram

Emily van der Nagel: Sunset posts and the intimate strategies of platforms

Crystal Abidin: Squishy babies, Soft dads, and Exploding ovaries: Brand biographies and ‘fan mothering’ practices around celebrity babies

12.40-1.30 Lunch

1.30-3.10: Session 5, Morality and Spirituality. [Chair: Tama Leaver] 

Duc Dau: Texts, Paratexts, and Digital Christian Spaces of Intimacy

Matthew Wade: Platform Advocacy for Life Itself: Intimate narratives of moral worthiness in crisis crowdfunding, and some implications of commodifying ‘virtue’ in times of suffering

Earvin Cabalquinbto: “Visa is expensive but if it’s the love of your life then it’s worth it, right?”

Elaine Xu: Networked Intimacy in Online Illness Narratives and Charitable Fundraising

3.10-3.40 Break

3.40-5.00: Session 6.  Relational Connections and disconnections. | [Chair: Jessica Ringrose] 

Katie Ellis: #hotinawheelchair: reclaiming the stare

Kyra Clarke: Messaging, Flirting? Exploring digital representations of intimacy in teen film

Josie Reade: Keeping it raw on the ‘gram: Intimacy beyond the highlight reel

5.00 (-7.30ish): Book Launches—Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media (launched by Jessica Ringrose) and Going Postal: More than ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ (launched by Baden Offord), Creative Quarter.

 Friday Dec 7th

10.00-11.40 Session 7. Digital childhoods and youth. [Chair: Brady Robards]

Donell Holloway: Digitally embodied interactive play: Social robots and children

T.J. Thomson: Instagram and AU Youth Privacy

Kate Mannell: ‘We called the group #cookie’: Mobile group chats as ritual interaction among young adults

[?] Alice-Maree Raitt: Sponsorship & YouTube; How Intimacy is affected when Microcelebrities make sponsored content. 

Nawaz Kochra and Mathew Martin: Communication of Digital Intimacies and Entertainment in the Usage of Dating Applications in Mobile Phones

11.40-12.00 Wrap Up/ Close 

12.00 - 1.00 Lunch

1.00 - 5.00 Meetings rooms available for group discussions, planning, writing, etc. [Ideas/plans for these will be discussed on day 1 of the conference.]

(Papers: 25 mins = 15-20 mins presentation + 5-10 minutes discussion.)

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[Call for Papers] Digital Intimacies 4: Porousness & Permutations

Digital Intimacies 4: Porousness & Permutations

December 5, 6 & 7, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

Digital Intimacies is now in its fourth year and continues to bring scholars of digital culture together from across Australia and beyond, across disciplines including media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology and gender studies. This year’s symposium is convened by Amy Dobson and Tama Leaver, and is hosted by Curtin University’s Centre for Culture and Technology and the discipline of Internet Studies in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry.  

As social media open up intimate lives and practices to public and semi-public gazes, we are in the midst of important cultural contestations over the meaning of intimacy.  How intimacy plays out in, and in relation to, the digital has become a prominent concern in scholarship of digital cultures, as well as in broader public debate. Intimacy is generally understood as to do with the ‘personal’ and with ‘closeness’ — as describing feelings or relationships that are most ‘inward to one’s personhood’ (McGlotten, 2013). But, as much queer and social theory tells us, intimacy is also socially and culturally constructed and sanctioned, defined by institutions, laws, and social and cultural norms and practices. Norms around various kinds of intimacies and intimate practices involving media increasingly play out online, and via social media platforms. Digital platforms are structured by a ‘like’ economy (Gerlitz and Helmond, 2013), by drives towards the quantification of self (Lupton, 2016), and algorithms, as well as algorithmic ‘imaginaries’ (Bucher, 2018; Carah and Angus 2018). Digital intimacy has been described in this context as a new kind of social capital (Lambert, 2016), as well as new media ‘genre’ (Raun, 2018). Practices of certain kinds of intimacies via the digital are increasingly seen as vital to ‘successful’ and economically productive use of social media, especially for cultural intermediaries and ‘internet celebrities’ (Abidin, 2018). Simultaneously, many forms of intimacy and communication are being encoded, aggregated, analysed and commercialized as forms of big data, provoking difficult and unsettling questions about new forms of surveillance, influence, and control, as well as distinct lack of transparency around new practices and forms of governance, made publicly visible around recent Cambridge Analytica scandals (Andrejevic, 2013; Leaver, 2017). 

We are calling for paper abstracts on the themes of digital media, digital cultures, and intimacy, with particular interest in porousness and permutations of every kind; that is, papers that map the flow between boundaries – shifts and permeations of  practice and understanding towards new forms, new configurations, and the unsettling existing norms in unexpected and as yet unnamed ways.

Within these broadly understood boundaries of digital culture(s) and digital intimacies we invite particular exploration of: * how existing structures, boundaries and norms of intimacy are constituted, reconstituted and made porous in terms of identities, practices and platforms; * how practices of intimacy via the digital can be challenged, changed and new permutations emerge in terms of the social, cultural, and political;  * how ‘digital disruption’ (of various sorts) shapes, configures, constitutes and impacts intimacy of every kind.

The single stream symposium will formally run for two days, December 5 and 6. Following the successful implementation at last year’s symposium, an optional third day for more focused workshopping, writing, and project planning, driven by the intersections made visible during the two conference days, will be available of December 7th for those who wish to participate. 

Keynote speakers: Professor Jessica Ringrose from University College London and Associate Professor Shaka McGlotten from Purchase College. 

Please submit abstracts of around 250-300 words,  to [email protected] by June 30, 2018.extended until Friday, 6 July.  We will send notifications of acceptances out by the end of July. 

We are hoping to make this a low-cost event, especially for students, but there will be a small registration fee to cover costs.

#digital intimacies #call for papers #cfp #perth #australia #december 2018