-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [AISWorld] 2nd CFP: Journal of Information Technology on Ethical Issues and Unintended Consequences of Digitalization and Platformization Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2021 17:20:14 +0000 From: Rossi Matti matti.rossi@aalto.fi To: Isworld aisworld@lists.aisnet.org
This is a 2nd call for papers for this special issue and we believe that it is very timely given the recent episodes concerning politics and Twitter and Parler and the role and power of these social networks, and the infrastructure that they rely on, in the society.
“Ethical Issues and Unintended Consequences of Digitalization and Platformization”
Special Issue Editors:
Matti Rossi, Aalto University – Finland (corresponding, matti.rossi@aalto.fi)
Christy M. K. Cheung, Hong Kong Baptist University – Hong Kong
Suprateek (“Supra”) Sarker, University of Virginia – USA
Jason B. Thatcher, Temple University – USA
Disruptive digital innovations do not come without pain – the disorder that they introduce can create negative externalities and unintended consequences for people, communities, industries and economies. In the worst case, there is disruption with little innovation. This can lead to job losses for individuals, loss of human dignity, negative health impacts, lost revenue for communities, obsolescence of industries and loss of the traditional values that underpin modern societies. Sarker et al. (2019) note that “humanistic concerns arising from the curtailing of human freedom and development, and from racism, sexism and commodification of the human body are overlooked for the apparent benefits that systems, including widely used search engines and medical databases, promise to deliver (Noble 2018; Wachter-Boettcher 2017). Indeed, there is a rising need for a thorough ethical interrogation of algorithms (O’Neil 2016) that underlie systems mediating many critical human activities, so as not to marginalize certain stakeholders, especially those ‘who are already in the margin’ (Noble 2018, p. 171).”
In this special issue, we take critical, yet constructive view of technological and social changes associated with “digital transformation” (Zuboff 2015, Wood et al. 2019, Larsson and Teigland 2020). We are interested in contrarian papers that reject the taken-for-granted assumptions of positive impacts of technology, as in cases of digital platforms, telework enabled by mobility, growth of the gig economy, fintech/blockchain, and so on, and investigate relatively unexamined platform externalities as a means to identify ways to resolve paradoxes, discontinuities and challenges posed by technology and the unintended consequences of technology applications. We also seek papers that shed light on the problems of information technology (IT)-enabled phenomena such as the implications of winner-takes-all platform economics; highlight the social, environmental and economic implications of blockchain and similar innovative digital technologies; or propose solutions that mitigate negative societal impacts of innovation (e.g., through leveraging the power social networks to disseminate information and strengthen democratic discourse).
We encourage the submission of manuscripts taking either of two stances:
1. Submissions considering a critical or dystopian view of the social, technological and moral implications of digitization and digital transformation. Here, “the dark side” – ethical Issues, unintended digitalization and other problematic aspects – of digitalization and platformization are front and centre the argument. An example may be Zuboff’s (2015, 2019) recent work on surveillance capitalism and her analyses of large-scale digitization “gone wrong”.
1. Submissions seeking to balance or reconcile “the dark side” and “the bright side” of digitalization and platformization. Here, analyses, exemplars and theoretical frameworks considered ethical issues and negative consequences explicitly, in addition to intended benefits of digitalization too often exclusively focused on. An example may be social media research: initial writings trumpeted the benefits of social media for building relationships, with later work highlighting problematic behaviours such as cyberbullying or doxxing.
In this special issue, we are open to all forms of inquiry, including surveys, experiments, case studies, design science projects and conceptual work that probe “the dark side”, ethical issues and unintended consequences of digitization, platformization and the rapid diffusion of digital infrastructures and digital work models based thereon.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Digital Taylorism and the race to the bottom for workers * Destruction of jobs by “botization” * Risks for society from fast-spreading false information * Systemic risks and vulnerability of digital platforms * Management incompetence in digital transformation * Risks of IoT and blockchain * Dark side and ethics of sharing economy and gig economy * Digital privacy and surveillance capitalism * Bias in algorithms and artificial intelligence * Digital inequity and digital divide between “the North” and “the South” * Fake news, misinformation, and disinformation in social media * Fake and biased online reviews and co-creation on digital platforms * The emergence of deep web/darknet marketplaces * Subjective well-being (e.g., FOMO and social media fatigue) * Cyberharassment, cyberbullying and cyberstalking
Submission Timetable Manuscripts will go through no more than two rounds of review.
§ Authors are invited to submit abstracts of papers aimed at the special issue directly to the special issue editors (via email) for early feedback.
§ First round submission: 1st June 2021
§ First round decision to authors: 1st Oct 2021
§ Special issue workshop at ICIS 2021 (TBA)
§ Second round submission: 1st Feb 2022
§ Second round decision to authors: 1st Apr 2022 (reject or accept w minor revision)
Editorial Review Board Margunn Aanestad, Agder University, Norway Alexander Benlian, TU Darmstadt, Germany Michelle Carter, Washington State University, USA Tommy Chan, Northumbria University, UK Mike Dinger, University of South Carolina-Upstate, USA Taha Havakor, Temple University USA J. J. Po-An Hsieh, Georgia State University, USA Hanna Krasnova, University of Potsdam, Germany Carmen Leong, UNSW Sydney, Australia Alvin Leung, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Juho Lindman, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Jani Merikivi, Grenoble Business School, France Daniel Pienta, Baylor University, USA Marten Risius, University of Queensland, Australia Markus Salo, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland Sebastian Schuetz, Florida International University, USA Carsten Sorensen, London School of Economics, UK Ali Sunayaev, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany Juliana Sutanto, Lancaster University, UK Manuel Trenz, University of Göttingen, Germany Xiao Xiao, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark JIT Submission Guidelines: https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/JIN
References Larsson, A., and Teigland, R. 2020. The Digital Transformation of Labour. Taylor & Francis. Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression. NYU Press. O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction. Broadway Books. Sarker, S., Chatterjee, S., Xiao, X., and Elbanna, A. (20019) “The Sociotechnical Perspective as an ‘Axis of Cohesion’ for the IS Discipline: Recognizing Its Historical Legacy and Ensuring Its Continued Relevance,” MIS Quarterly (43:3), 695-719. Wachter-Boettcher, S. (2017). Technically Wrong. WW Norton & Company. Wood, A. J., Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V., and Hjorth, I. 2019. "Networked But Commodified: The (Dis) Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy," Sociology (53:5), 931-950. Zuboff, S. (2015) “Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization”, Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Profile Books.
The cfp can be also found here: https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/JIT%20CFP%20SI%20Ethical%2...
Matti Rossi Professor of Information Systems Science Aalto University School of Business Department of Information and Service Management P.O. Box 21220, FI-00076 AALTO, Finland Visiting address Ekonominaukio 1 Room V209, Espoo https://goo.gl/maps/cniDWnZrAiy email: matti.rossi@aalto.fimailto:matti.rossi@aalto.fi Mobile: +358-50-3835503, Skype: motrossi
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