1998年7月，中国科学技术名词审定委员会提出Netizen正式的中文翻译：网民。我们那时沉浸在新技术工具带来的解放允诺的欢愉，还没特别注意到有关身分与权利的字眼”市民”被接到网络后面具有深刻的政治意涵与责任。就如同我们错失互联网兴起至今的种种事情一样，我们要求过、也实践过媒介多样性、多种来源的自由写作与讨论，期望新场景：那里将没有老套的记者、评论家、主持人和垄断频道里的陈词滥调，那里有另一种社会。但今日，我们得到的却只有谷歌、脸书、推特和微信。
1998年也是中国兴起免费电子邮箱的一年，1999年中国公司（包含腾讯）推出了即时通讯软件，个人账户也逐步兴起。2008年发布的第21次互联网调查报告显示，中国网民总数开始超过美国。2019年初，中国网民数量已8亿多（较08年增长了近4倍），微信每天有450亿次信息发送，中国短视频APP日均使用时长达到了6亿小时，支付宝全球用户数超10亿，淘宝年度活跃消费者达到6.54亿。千禧年后，网络功能从搜索逐渐转变为社交，也开启了用户生产内容时代，从“伊妹儿”、QQ、博客、论坛到微博、微信、快手、抖音……社交平台嬗替着，从无名者到“网红”， “水军”、 “刷手”……“网民”群体不断更名。网民既是内容提供者、付出的情感工作者，也是主要劳动力和消费者。
在全球的图景中，第一个起源于反全球运动的草根媒体“独立媒体中心”于世纪之交在西雅图成立，呼喊着“成为媒体”，把参与性媒体视为激进民主的核心。如今公共性萎缩为人人皆有的“自媒体”，网络曾赋予虚拟社会公民的一切主动、激昂的希望（独立媒体、网络行动主义），如今都可以被变成帮独角兽赚钱的自动上传资料员。相对于市民，网民的权利存在你根本不会看的各种权限申明与法律条款上（有时候还根本没有）。“脸友”和”微友“是我们社会，时时刻刻24/7，努力地自我塑像（autoicon）。
很多人担忧、不满却不知向谁抗议。我们并不清楚自己如何造成当今现象的？反思这股怨怼（或者满意）应该要开始了（尽管晚了太久）：我们应当将”网络社会与文化”认真地当做研究对象，而不仅仅是生活背景，不仅仅只是表达愤慨与不满。我们要对个人账户（金融、社交、消费……）进行社会与政治经济的分析，将长期以来文化研究低估的技术理论与历史问题重新上线。
在过往三届年会，我们连结了各国专家学者与行动者，开展了当前网络社会的理论批判与行动网络。第四届网络社会年会将以“网民21：超越个人帐户”（Netizen 21: Beyond personal account）为题于2019年11月22-24日，在杭州中国美术学院召开。21意指中国21年来网络使用者的认同与文化变迁，21也指本世纪正在发生与接下来的故事。中国美院跨媒体艺术学院网络社会研究所将邀请来自美国，德国，荷兰，瑞士，意大利，澳大利亚以及亚太地区包含中国的学者，报告全球最新研究心得，与对中国网络社会的提问。
除了学者专题演讲，本届年会也向全世界青年学者与行动者公开征稿，维持“青年圆桌论坛”传统，以研究、实践、行动、交流为主。会后将集结主题演讲与论坛发表文章出书，由中国美术学院出版。
“网民21青年论坛”进行以下四个主题类别的征稿，这四个主题也是年会主题演讲的主题。
主题一：当代网络社会的精神生活
“Panel 1: Spiritual Life in Network Society”
正如齐美尔捕捉了19世纪大城市生活的面貌－－繁忙而孤单的人在流行中找寻认同与独立，我们现在急需捕捉“信息资本主义社会”的症状，包含了正在失去灵魂的情感工作知识工作阶层知产阶级（cognitariat）以及生存在零工经济与网上的流众（precariat)的整体处境。深陷于社会加速的”当下时态萎缩”中的我们，该如何重思自身、所属文化及其再现与世界的关系？
主题二： 媒体考古学 “
Panel 2: Media Archeology”
就当代媒体研究而言，新媒体老旧不堪，对社交媒体的批评多来自民间作者（好的新闻记者，或与硅谷甚密却还带点批判风味的老嬉皮，少数的黑庞克们）。学术生产与理论已经被抛得远远，软体研究还没真正浮出台面，从麦克卢汉宣言式与表演式的告白，到Fuller等人倡议的研究取向——邪恶媒体（evil media），一种无关观者想法而可以自我启动的媒体——我们找到了突破的可能吗？媒体考古学是方向之一？从对天涯、榕树下的回顾，我们可以理解微信朋友圈、快手？抑或相反，对当下之分析才能知晓过去的意义，如马克思说的：“人体解剖对于猴体解剖是一把钥匙。低等动物身上表露的高等动物的征兆，反而在高等动物本身巳被认识之后才能理解。”那互连网一开始，我们错失与误解了什么？
主题三： 社交媒体政治经济批判
“Panel 3: Political Economy Criticism of Social Media”
“为什么马克思是对的？”（Terry Eagleton，why marx was right）听起来像老派的辩驳？马克思一直都在，而鲜少人当真。我们每日辛勤地在键盘上分享美食猫咪与感情，自愿无酬地工作，所以应该对微信/脸书发起工资求偿诉求吗？还是要努力学习网红和直播主，成为这世代文化创意工作者的楷模？实现了点对点的交易，文化生产者与无偿劳动者的生存与认同焦虑就解决了吗？人们为何愿意付网路费用却不喜欢为内容付钱？我们为何轻易接受内容给所有人看但盈余被少数人拿走？或更直接地问：脸书跟微信如何赚钱？劳动价值在其中如何计算？
主题四：平台资本主义
“Panel 4: Platform Capitalism”
我们的工作、生活，甚至情感交流，都被掌握技术工具的中介者（mediators）所占有了。平台就是媒体、市场与公司，并作为统治者，观看着透明笼子中人类现在与未来的生活。平台接管了社群制造，埋葬了独立媒体，安利化博客、工具化了网民。在全面的社会加速中，我们必须越跑越快才能停在原处。漂泊狂想曲（precarious rhapsody）可以成为“共鸣”吗？线上社群能够成为像合作社一样的存在吗？社会运动可以超越魔兽的公会力量？社交媒体的深渊无法跨越？平台合作主义或组织化网络是一条出路嘛？
征稿公告：
Call for Papers of Netizen 21 提交要旨
- 年会论坛举办时间：2019年 11月 22-24日（周五、六、日）
- 征稿主题与语言：符合年会主旨，以及四个主题范畴之一，以中国网络社会、媒体与文化经验研究为主，中英文皆可。
- 摘要投稿截止期限：延長至 2019年 8月 31日
- 年会举办地点：中国美术学院南山校区（杭州市上城区南山路218号）
- 审查结果通知：延長至 2019年 9月 15日
- 论文全文截稿：2019年 11月 10日
- 征稿论文类别：学术论文、行动实践报告，需是中国本土经验研究。
- 报名邮箱：inetworksociety@gmail.com
- （信件标题注明“Paper for Netizen 21 ” ：”（四大）主题名称” ）
请提交：
（1）姓名、论文类别、论文题目；200字之内个人简历。
（2）摘要及关键字：摘要（500字为度，宜包含问题意识、研究方法、预期发现等），并提供3-5个关键字。
（3）可用中文或英文投稿、年会论坛宣读发表。但发表后出版，必须提供完整的中文稿件。
注意事项
1. 论文全文请依学术格式写作，以APA6为标准。
2. 论文发表期间之住宿、交通，由发表人自理，主办单位不代予安排。
3. 个人论文未依时限缴交全文者，主办单位得取消参与资格。
4. 论坛内容将全文集结正式出版，论文发表人不须缴交发表费，主办单位亦不提供发表人任何稿费，与会者之研究发表成果能广泛传播，以资证明。
5. 任何相关事宜皆可来电邮询问。
主办单位：中国美术学院 跨媒体艺术学院 网络社会研究所
Call for Papers of Netizen 21: Beyond Personal Account
After participatory culture and web2.0, once again individuals meet for various proposes in different assemblage forms like reddit, 4chan and “friendship” on Wechat and Facebook. We are willing to provide all details of our life, pictures, and GPS locations. Our solitude is designed thus it matters a lot whatever form the togetherness is. We all learn how to be a collective “autoicon”, like the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham now still sitting in a cabinet with glass window, attracting tourists who visit University College London. Perhaps, we are much unluckier since the internet is our life; this life and afterlife are all transparent. Human becomes branches of media conversely. Around the world there are near 51 billion people “voluntarily” give out their data to database encrypted with algorithm where only few authorized persons have full access.
In the previous Annual Conference of Network Society, “Forces of Reticulation” (2016), “Another Walk with Lefebvre: Critique of Urbanism and Everyday Life in the Algorithmic Age”(2017), and “Intelligent Urban Fabric”(2018), INS connects worldwide scholars and activists to construct criticism toward current network society and explore a network of practices together. Entitled “Netizen 21: Beyond Personal Account”, The Fourth Annual Conference of Network Society is going to explore the history of network society in China over the past two decades. Here, “21” refers to both the 21 years since the term “Wang Ming (网民)” (Netizen) being coined, and internet users in the 21st century.
In the middle of 1990s, China officially connected to the international internet and internet giants were just fledgling business then. With the first wave of dot-com bubble, netizen become a popular term whose definition seemed quite simple according to the Cambridge Dictionary: a person who use internet. As we always celebrate the promise made by new technologies, people at that time had not yet recognized the political connotation and responsibility in the word “citizen” coined with “net”. In July 1998, China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST) gave “Netizen” its official Chinese translation “Wang Ming (网民)”. (While in Taiwan and Hong Kong, it is usually translated as “Wang Yo (网友)” which means friends on the internet literally.) Around 2000s, Tencent QQ, blog and forum turned the main usage of internet in China from searching into socializing. It raised the curtain of an era of user-generated content. In the following ten years, one significant change is that the mobile internet access outstrips those from personal computers. The pace and intensity of all internet usage dramatically increased. The way users receive information shift form text reading to live streaming and even short video watching (e.g. TikTok and Kwai) that fills up every idle moment. Through this process, the commonality in early network community is gradually replaced by self-performance of individuals. The network that once empowered citizens in cyberspace with passion and proactivity (which could be found in independent media and network activism), now becomes channels uploading data automatically for unicorns to make money. The more instantly information spreads, the more completely time and space are compressed. Our life time shrinks; always-online social media is somewhere without society. Eventually, in accelerating society, netizens end up as personal accounts whose owners are exhausted and distracted.
Since 2008, the number of Chinese netizens has surpassed the American ones. Therefore, it is impossible to neglect China while conducting research about network society. It could even be said that China has become the world’s most fierce battlefield between network technologies and the society. We need more theoretical perspectives to see through Chinese phenomena and further to tell a global story using local language.
Facing the 21-year history, The Fourth Annual Conference of Network Society is constituted of four panels:
“Panel 1: Spiritual Life in Network Society”
Georg Simmel draws the life in 19th century big city: busy yet lonely people looking for a sense of identity and independence through fashion. Today, it is our turn to capture the symptoms of “society of informational capitalism” which includes “cognitariat” and “precariat”. The former are intellectual labours who lose their soul and the later survive through gig economy. Trapped in the “shrinking of present tense” in a accelerating society, how should we think about ourselves, the culture we belong to, and the relationship between its representation and the world?
“Panel 2: Media Archeology”
“New media” seems old-aged to contemporary media study. Criticism of social media largely comes from authors outside the academy like some outstanding journalists, old hippies who are close to the Silicon Valley but in a critical distance, or few hackactivists. The production of academic research and theory is left far behind; software study has not yet dominated the stage. From Marshall McLuhan’s performative and manifesto-like confession, to the research approach proposed by Matthew Fuller et al.——evil media, a self-driven media that has nothing to do with the spectator——have we found the possibility to overcome? Is media archeology a way out? Could we understand how Wechat Friends’ Circle and Kwai work as we see Tianya Club or Rongshuxia (Tianya is an internet forum and Rongshuxia is a portal site of internet literature. Both were founded in late 1990s in China.)? Or maybe we should think conversely that only through the analysis of the current we would realize the meaning of the past. As Marx said: “Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known.” Then, what did we miss and misunderstand when the internet emerged?
“Panel 3: Political Economy Criticism of Social Media”
“Why Marx was right?” (Title of Terry Eagleton’s 2011 book) Does it sound like a cliché-ridden rebuttal? Marx is always there, yet few take it serious. Every day we diligently share our food, cat and affair, voluntarily doing an unpaid job. Therefore, should we accuse Facebook and claim for our wages? Or, should we learn from Chinese internet celebrities and Kwai live streamers as a model of creative worker in this generation? Does the realization of P2P transaction an antidote to the survival issue and identity crisis of cultural labor? Why are people willing to pay for the internet access but not the content they find on the internet? Why do we easily accept that all contents should be open to everyone but the benefits are taken by a minority? Perhaps, the question should be asked in a more direct way: how do Facebook and WeChat make their money? and how does the labor value be calculated?
“Panel 4: Platform Capitalism”
Our work, life and even relationship are dominated by mediators that control the technology. The platform is the media, market and corporation. Besides, as a dominator, it watches the now and future life of humans housed in a transparent cage. The platform takes over the reins of community building, buries independent media, Amwayizes blogosphere, and instrumentalizes netizen. In an accelerating society, we have to run faster in order to stand at the same place. Could “precarious rhapsody” become a kind of resonance? Could online community become something like a cooperative? Could social movement surpass the power of fans’ union of World of Warcraft? Is it impossible to cross the social media abyss?
Besides the invited keynotes, we call for young scholars and activists worldwide to submit papers on the four panel topics. “Young Scholars’ Forum” welcomes you to present your latest research and practice and interact with international scholars participating the annual conference. At the same time, we are excited to announce that the Chinese edition of Social Media Abyss: Critical Internet Cultures and the Force of Negation, written by our friend Geert Lovink, is going to be published in China. It may be the most important book on the possibility of organization and socializing that we have kept exploring since the beginning of 21st century.
Topics of interest for submission: Empirical research paper or practice report of Chinese local context under the four panel topics.
- Spiritual Life in Network Society
- Media Archeology
- Political Economy Criticism of Social Media
- Platform Capitalism
Submission guideline:
- Please submit your paper or report to inetworksociety@gmail.com
- Submission email title: “Paper for Netizen 21: the topic you would like to submit to”
- Submission email should include:
– name of the author(s)
– category of the paper: research paper or practice report (choose one)
– abstract within 500 words and 5 keywords
– language of presentation: Chinese or English (choose one) - The paper should follow APA 6 format.
- The paper should be written in Chinese or English. For those who submit English abstracts, please provide Chinese edition after the conference for publication usage.
Abstract submission deadline: August 20, 2019
Abstract acceptance notification: September 10, 2019
Full paper submission deadline: November 10, 2019
Conference date: November 22-24, 2019
Conference venue: Nanshan Campus, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China
Important information for submitter:
- The organizer will not provide accommodation and transportation fee during the conference days. Please arrange for your visit beforehand.
- For submitters who fail to send the full paper before deadline (November 10), the organizer could cancel their chance to present and publish the paper.
- There is no registration fee for the conference. The content of the conference will be assembled in the full text for the official publication so that the latest findings and results can be widely spread. No further payment for the paper will be offered.
- Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us via email: inetworksociety@gmail.com
Conference organizer:
Institute of Network Society (INS), School of Inter-Media Art, China Academy of Art
