-------- Forwarded Message --------
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%20Issues%20Digitalization%20rev07.pdf
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.fi<mailto:matti.rossi@aalto.fi>
Mobile: +358-50-3835503, Skype: motrossi
_______________________________________________
AISWorld mailing list
AISWorld@lists.aisnet.org