The Center for the Study of Citizenship at Wayne State University presents its

Sixteenth Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies: Technology and Citizenship

Note revised date!! March 21 - 23, 2019

Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

Technology—the use of it, exposure to it, protection from it, and even the absence of protection from it—has direct influence on the access people do, or do not have to the full rights and benefits of citizenship. For example, advances in health care technology have long had direct implications for citizenship, with access to medical interventions in birth and death at the center of debates over the rights of the unborn and the dying.

The revolution in information technology and advent of social media raises a different set of issues in the study of citizenship. Widespread use of social media has disrupted and displaced the public sphere, reshaping how citizens engage each other, transforming how they exercise their rights as citizens by doing such things as recording police encounters or mobilizing to protest or raising awareness of issues. Social media use has also been shown to be susceptible to exploitation and a spread of misinformation that undermines the meaningful exercise of citizenship rights.

Also among the many questions raised for citizenship studies by uses of technology: What have been the consequences and what are the implications of advances in artificial intelligence for how the boundaries of citizenship are drawn? How are rights, obligations, and privileges shaped by uses of different kinds of information technologies such as mass media, print media, and social media? In what ways does citizen access to infrastructure technologies such as electricity, sanitation, or transportation shape experiences of freedom and public power? How do uses of computing, information, and infrastructure technologies affect not only citizens’ relationship to public power but also the ways societies constitute and conceive of both the state and the citizen?

Accepted Papers

Here is a link to a list of Accepted Papers to be presented at the 16th Conference as of November 20, 2018.

Speakers

Keynote and Plenary Speakers to be confirmed.

Registration

Registration to attend this event is available here. All conference attendees and speakers need to register through this site.

Presenters must be registered by 1/18/2019 to qualify for the Early Registration rate, and by 2/28/19 for their papers to be included in the conference program book.

Who can submit an abstract/paper for the academic conference?

This academic conference gives the opportunity to academics, practitioners, consultants, scholars, researchers and policy makers with different backgrounds and experiences, to present their papers in the conference and to discuss their experiences, new ideas, research results, as well as any practical challenges encountered and/or the solutions adopted during their work.

The conference committee highly encourages doctorate (PhD) and postdoctoral students to present their research proposals, literature reviews, findings, or issues in this conference with a special registration rate. Case studies, abstracts of research in progress, as well as full research papers will be considered for the conference program for presentation purposes. Undergraduate students may present at the conferences if (a) his/her research is funded by an organization/institute, and/or (b) supervised by the member or faculty, and/or (c) co-authored by a Master's (or higher) student.

More Information

To view the Call for Papers, click here.

To submit an abstract, click here.

For more information about getting to the conference and accommodations, please check our FAQ.

Important Dates