Call for papers: Asiascape: Digital Asia Anniversary Issue

The Shape of the Asiascape: Ten Years of Digital Asia Research

The peer-reviewed academic journal Asiascape: Digital Asia (DIAS) is now inviting contributions for its 2023 anniversary special issue, “The Shape of the Asiascape: Ten Years of Digital Asia Research”. This anniversary issue will take stock of advances and trends in research about digital Asia. It asks what a decade of Asiascape research has revealed about dynamics in the region and its varied digital societies. Are there national or regional Internets that form an ‘Asiascape’, and how do they differ from the ‘global’ Internet? Does ‘digital Asia’ truly exist, and if so: in what guises? By revisiting the current state-of-the-field, the short (4,000-word) contributions to this special issue will examine the multi-disciplinary, regional, and transnational concerns that have shaped Asiascape’s diverse research programmes. Collectively, they will ask how digital Asia features in contemporary discussions, whether in a mainstream, scholarly, or tech journalism context. Looking forward, the contributions will identify potential blindspots in the scholarship and propose ways forward for the next decade of multi- and interdisciplinary digital Asia research.

For this special issue, we welcome submissions from researchers from the social sciences, computer sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as from multi- and interdisciplinary backgrounds, who explore the socio-political, economic, aesthetic, philosophical, or cultural dimensions of the digital in Asian societies. Possible topics for submissions include (but are emphatically not limited to) empirical and theoretical explorations of the following (in alphabetical order):

• Digital folklore (amateur culture, memes, DIY, etc.),
• Digital labour, production, and consumption,
• Digital spaces and architectures,
• Digital surveillance and sous-veillance,
• Discourses and contestations in, and about, ‘digital Asia’,
• International and transnational digital dynamics,
• Misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracies,
• Networks and interfaces,
• New digital screen cultures and practices,
• Platform power and the cultural impact of digital infrastructures,
• Political and economic interactions in national digital ecologies,
• Politics and culture of play and games,
• The digital dimensions of activism and social movements.

Interested contributors should first send their title, abstract (150 words), and short biography to the journal’s managing editor, Dr. Florian Schneider, by 14 February 2022. The editorial team will select contributions by 1 March, and successful contributors should then prepare articles of 4,000 words, including notes and references, to be submitted through the journal’s editorial management system by 1 May 2022. Please see the instructions for authors for further information on the in-house style requirements. For further questions, please contact the managing editor at f.a.schneider@leidenuniv.nl.