AoIR2020 Flash Point Symposium
AoIR is excited to introduce our first Virtual South American event! The 2020 AoIR Flash Point Symposium, will be held virtually on 3-4 September 2020. 
The theme of the conference, Digital Transformations: Polarization, media manipulation, and resistance, seeks to discuss political polarization and media manipulation, focusing on their effects on young democracies of Latin American and Brazil in the context of digital transformations. Most Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, have a history of several years of violent dictatorships. Much of these periods were marked by censorship and mass media manipulation. In recent years, social media brought the opportunity for people to organize themselves around political participation, offered them more information and the tools to make public demands directly to congressmen and congresswomen. However, social media have also played an important role in the crisis these young democracies face today, as it also provides a space for hate speech, intolerance, and extremization. At the same time, a myriad of social media practices that revolve around digital transformations and expressions promote different, positive agendas, covering a broad range of everyday activities, sociabilities and subjectivities in various platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc. The #AoIR Flashpoint Symposium 2020 welcomes contributions that address the themes above, including but not limited to the following questions:
- How digital media impact polarization and democracy in Latin America?
- How has digital media manipulation been involved in the recent elections in these countries and impacted political participation in these countries?
- What forms of resistance come from these digital contexts?
- What is resistance and how it can be connected to these questions?
- Has social media been fueling political polarization?
- How polarization impacts political conversation in these contexts?
- How are these contexts connected to disinformation?
Proposals for papers/posters should be in the form of an extended abstract with 1500 words containing title, the research question, theoretical background, methods and results. Submissions will go through a double-blind review, so please, send the archive anonymized. Information about the authors and affiliation should be in the email. Submissions will be recommended for (1) paper sections or (2) poster sections. There will be a special poster section for undergraduate students.
Submissions will be accepted in ENGLISH, PORTUGUESE or SPANISH. Presentations can also be done in ENGLISH, PORTUGUESE or SPANISH.
Please visit the symposium website for any additional information.
Please email symposia @ aoir [dot] org with any questions.
Location
Online
Key Dates
3-4 Sept 2020 – AoIR Symposium
