From Social Butterfly to Urban Citizen
A HCSNet Workshop on Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic Engagement

Call for Papers

From Social Butterfly to Urban Citizen –
A HCSNet Workshop on Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic Engagement

Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove Campus, Brisbane, Australia

June 19th, 2009     Workshop position papers due
June 26th, 2009     Author notifications sent
July 13th/14th, 2009    Workshop

http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/node/2943

This workshop brings together people from a diverse range of disciplines to discuss social and mobile technologies and how they can be studied, designed and developed further to support local participation and civic engagement in urban environments.

Web applications such as blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing sites, and social networking systems have been termed ‘Web 2.0’ to highlight an arguably more open, collaborative, personalisable, and therefore more participatory internet experience than what had previously been possible. Giving rise to a culture of participation, an increasing number of these social applications are now available on mobile phones where they take advantage of device-specific features such as sensors, location and context awareness. This workshop will make a contribution towards exploring and better understanding the opportunities and challenges provided by tools, interfaces, methods and practices of social and mobile technology that enable participation and engagement. It will bring together a group of academics and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines such as computing and engineering, social sciences, digital media and human-computer interaction to critically examine a range of applications of social and mobile technology, such as social networking, mobile interaction, wikis (eg., futuremelbourne.com.au), twitter, blogging, virtual worlds (eg, hub2.org), and their impact to foster community activism, civic engagement and cultural citizenship.

Audience

We hope to attract a multidisciplinary range of HCSnet members and colleagues working in areas such as user experience design, human-computer interaction, digital media, social sciences and computing and engineering. The topic and themes to be explored are timely, relevant and significant to the research work of many academics in Australia and overseas who are looking at ways to help engender a culture of local and national participation and engagement. Many colleagues find that the underlying systems architecture and principles that have given rise to participatory culture in many social and lifestyle domains should be examined with a view to reappropriate them to foster civic engagement and a revival of citizenship.

Event Format

The workshop will be held over two days, on Mon 13th and Tue 14th July 2009, at the Creative Industries Precinct of Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane. Participants will be given the opportunity to present their work with a view to stimulate an informed debate. The workshop will allow plenty of time for both breakout and plenary discussions.

Submissions

We are calling for 300-500 word position statements expressing the interest in the workshop or abstracts of proposed presentations from prospective participants. Queries can be sent via email to Marcus Foth at m.foth [AT] qut.edu.au. Please submit your abstract online by 19 June 2009 at http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/node/add/submission/2943

Note that, although attendance at the workshop is free, membership of HCSNet and registration for this workshop are required in advance of the event. Registration deadline: Friday 3rd July 2009

Travel Bursaries

HCSNet will fund a number of travel bursaries of $300 each to help cover the costs of travel and accommodation for participants from outside the Brisbane and South East Queensland area. HCSNet has also approved a Student Support Grant to enable students to participate. The provision of a submission as described above is a prerequisite for funding. If not all participants can be covered, funding grants will be allocated based on the relevance of your abstract to the workshop theme; also, students and early career researchers will have priority.

Organisers

Dr Marcus Foth, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Martin Gibbs, University of Melbourne
Dr Christine Satchell, Queensland University of Technology