CfP: Authoritarianism 3.0. Arendt and Orwell in the Digital Age

Deadline: January 9, 2023

Authoritarianism 3.0: Arendt and Orwell in the Digital Age. Edited by Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Jasmin Dall’Agnola, and Josette Baer

Were Hannah Arendt and George Orwell right in their predictions of a totalitarian future forged by technology? How has the proliferation of recent technological innovations shaped the strategies of digital authoritarianism espoused by certain political regimes? The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted new questions for social scientists, urging them to investigate the power of technology to normalize mass surveillance. Scholars working on digital authoritarianism argue that non-democratic regimes are using new high-tech tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI), advanced biometrics, smart filtering, propagames and hacking spyware (e.g., Pegasus) to track dissident activity. So far, we know little about the way sophisticated technological infrastructure and AI technologies influence the monitoring and control of dissent. This special issue focuses on the advance of digital authoritarianism in Communist and post-Communist states (CPCS) in the third millennium.

We shall select seven key contributions for this special issue. Contributions can cover topics including but not limited to:

• The potential of China’s social credit system in other CPCS states
• China and Russia’s role in developing and promoting new digital norms
• The role of smart filtering and algorithm censorship on social media
• New mechanisms and instruments of state-led propaganda through online software (e.g. propagames, bloggers and trolls)
• State-based cyber hacking and information-distortion techniques
• Digitally enabled repression of critical voices in exiled communities
• AI, CCTV, facial-recognition technologies and drone surveillance

 

Please submit a title, a 250-word abstract together with a 100-word biographical statement to digitalauthoritarianism1984@gmail.com by January 9, 2023. Successful candidates will be notified by January 27, 2023.

We have a preliminary agreement with Communist and Post-Communist Studies, pending approval of the full proposal. Draft manuscripts will be reviewed initially by the guest editors prior to submission to the journal for peer review. Acceptance for the proposal does not guarantee acceptance for publication, which ultimately, depends on the outcome of peer review.

 

Timeline

09.01.2023:      Submission of a 250-word abstract, title and a 100-word bio to the guest editors

30.06.2023:      Submission of the final version of your article to the guest editors

31.08.2023:      Submission of your article to Communist and Post-Communist Studies for peer-review. Publication planned for Spring/Summer 2024