Seeing through the web: tools, practices, and impacts

Short description
The international conference on Web Studies is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed scientific gathering that investigates the World Wide Web as an object of inquiry. It conceives the Web as an expansive entity: an extended space that reaches every domain of life. Seen from different perspectives and disciplines, the components of the Web can be seized as data structures, algorithmic processes, visual surface, cultural uses, or artistic expressions.

WS.1 was initiated in 2010, at Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico). In 2018, the second edition is taking place in Paris (Université Paris 8, Archives Nationales, MSH Paris Nord). WS.2 not only tries to reinvigorate the outcomes of the previous edition, whose proposals tackled issues related to social media, political activism, and scientific archives, while also hosting the net art exhibition After the Net 3.0 (KURATOR, UK). For this renewed edition, it is our aim to assemble a prestigious international community now that the Web has grown and got established as a media and as a development platform.

Call for papers
WS.2 calls for communications, posters, demos, and artworks around the theme “Seeing through the web: tools, practices, and impacts”. We aim at observing the Web beyond the visible surface of the computer screen. The general goal is to identify and to discuss critically the tools that exist to produce and analyze the information available online and the practices that have emerged since the invention of the Web, their transformations and effects on the physical and unplugged world.

We believe this is also an opportunity to evaluate the impacts of the Web in other fields and areas: how the Web have shaped or affected the practices in social sciences, art, humanities, design, computing, and sciences. As we have seen, new technologies and standards have matured, while others remain to be fully implemented in Web browsers and devices: which tools do we have to explore new Web dimensions and directions? How these tools allow us to expand or rather restrain our understanding of the Web? How these tools support community, open, shared, and sustainable practices?

We are pleased to announce that this edition is in-cooperation with ACM SIGWEB.

Topics

Submission Types

• Short and Long Papers
• Posters and Demo
• Online Exhibition

Submission Format

Please use the ACM Master Template to prepare your proposal.

Important: At this first step you are required to submit as anonymous author for peer-reviewing. That is, leave in blank the Author and Affiliation text of the template. If your proposal is accepted, you will then prepare a final version with your full name and contact details.

Submission System

Please send your proposals via Easychair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=webstudies2

Review Process

All submissions will follow a blind peer-review process. At least two different members of the scientific committee will review each paper. The selection criteria is based on originality, accordance to the theme and topics, scientific/technical contribution, and clarity of presentation.

Authors will receive notification of acceptance on June 29th 2018. If your paper is accepted you will be solicited to prepare the camera-ready version for its publication.

Publication

ACM will publish the proceedings of Web Studies 2 in the ACM Digital Library within its International Conference Proceedings Series.

Accepted authors will be sent the ACM rights management form and complete instructions.

All rights management forms must be submitted and approved four weeks prior to Web Studies 2.

After completing their rights management form, authors will be emailed the correct rights text and bibliographic strip to place within their paper. Please inform authors that they must enter the text into their paper.

We are thrilled to announce a couple of confirmed keynote speakers:

• Vincent Puig, Executive Director, IRI Centre Pompidou, France.
Initiated in 2006 and directed by Bernard Stiegler, the Institut de Recherche et Innovation became an independent research association whose administrative board members are the Centre Pompidou, the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, Microsoft France, the Goldsmiths College, the University of Tokyo, Mines-Telecom, Ars Industrialis and France Télévisions. IRI primarily explores the field of digital studies and it has been producing tools with the intention of creating a hermeneutical and contributive Web. Mr. Puig has been co-director of IRI since 2006, and he was previously director of Scientific Valorization at IRCAM. Join his lecture about the Web-based tools developed at IRI http://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/category/outils/?lang=en_us

• The médialab, Sciences Po, Paris, France.
Founded in 2009 by Bruno Latour, the médialab was established to help social sciences and humanities take full advantage of the huge amount of data made available by digitization. Its three primary missions are methodology, analysis, and theory. The médialab has developed numerous tools that help organize, automate and visualize research on digital or scanned data. Join the team including Paul Girard and Mathieu Jacomy to discuss the digital methods and tools developed by the lab. http://tools.medialab.sciences-po.fr/

• Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems, USA.
Mark Bernstein is founder and Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems. He came to hypertext after a brief career in chemical research. He is designer and product manager of Tinderbox, a tool for making, analyzing, and sharing notes. He is publisher and product manager of Storyspace, the tool of choice for hypertext fiction writers. In 2001, he was nominated for the Engelbart Award and was program chair of the ACM Web Science conference in 2013.
http://www.eastgate.com/

Program

Papers will be organized around 8 sessions during the three days. Program TBA.

International Co-Chairs
• Everardo Reyes (Université Paris 8, France)
• Mark Bernstein (Eastgate Systems, USA)
• Giancarlo Ruffo (Università di Torino, Italy)

Local organization committee
• Everardo Reyes (Université Paris 8, France)
• Sarah Labelle (Université Paris 13, France)

Scientific Committee & Honorary Reviewers
• Caroline Angé (Université Grenoble Alpes, France)
• Julia Bonaccorsi (Université Lumière Lyon 2, France)
• Andrés Burbano (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
• Dana Diminescu (Télécom ParisTech, France)
• Florent Di Bartolo (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France)
• Johanna Drucker (UCLA, USA)
• Federica Frabetti (University of Roehampton, London, UK)
• Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
• Eric Hoyt (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
• Salvatore Iaconesi (Art is Open Source, Italy)
• Jacques Ibanez-Bueno (Université Savoie Mont Blanc, France)
• Manuel Lima (Google, USA)
• Nohemí Lugo (Tecnológico de Monterrey Querétaro, Mexico)
• Cristina Marras (CNR-ILIESI, Italy)
• María Elena Meneses (Tecnológico de Monterrey CCM, Mexico)
• Stuart Moulthrop (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA)
• Santiago Ortiz (Moebio Labs, USA)
• Jussi Parikka (Winchester School of Art/University of Southampton, UK)
• Emmanuel Pietriga (INRIA Saclay, France)
• Jean-Christophe Plantin (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)
• Piero Polidoro (LUMSA, Italy)
• Isaac Rudomin (Barcelona Supercomputer Center, Spain)
• Stéfan Sinclair (McGill University, Canada)
• Mirko Tobias Schäfer (Utrecht University & Utrecht Data School, Netherlands)
• Alise Tifentale (Cultural Analytics Lab / The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA)
• Matteo Treleani (Université de Lille 3, France)
• José Luis Vera (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Mexico)