Upcoming
CIRC10: Social Media, Digital Entertainment, Governance & Social Movements
Ten years ago, when China’s Internet population totaled 22.5 million and Facebook and Twitter had not even been conceived, a group of researchers came together to organize a conference to study the Internet in China. By all indications even then, it was clear that China would have a major impact on the global digital economy. Ten years on, that foresight has been vindicated.
China today has the largest Internet population of any country and it has made its presence felt in the Internet space. In all aspects of the Internet – online gaming, micro blogging, search engines, ecommerce, content regulation, Internet governance, international domain names – China is both changing and being changed by the Internet. The annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) investigates these phenomena, asking probing questions into what, how, to what extent, and why these
changes are taking and have taken place.
Hosted by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, the 10th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference – CIRC10 – will be held on May 21-23, 2012, in Los Angeles, the world's entertainment capital.
CIRC10 will examine trends and themes as we explore the ways in which the Internet and other technologies interact with Chinese cultural and social life.
We welcome contributions from all and disciplines that seek to address these themes. This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars, analysts, industry leaders, journalists and legal practitioners from around the world to examine the impact of the Internet on Chinese societies, its social, cultural, political and economic aspects, as well as how China is changing the Internet.
Submissions may come from any discipline. Specific topics of interest include but are not limited to:
•Industry involvement – gaming, youth, social media; consumption patterns, online popular culture; China as original developer in gaming products;
•Governance issues – state regulation and content controls; e-government and m-government; civil society and Internet governance; China and global Internet governance;
•Online social movements – social media and grassroots activism; micro blogging and its impact across traditional Internet portals and start-ups over the new generation of Chinese “digital natives”;
•Ten years in retrospect – review of developments in digital/social media and prognoses for the future of the internet
We will accept three categories of English-language submissions:
•Full papers – these should be 20–25 pages long with a maximum of 10,000 words.
•Extended abstracts – these should be 750–1,000 words.
•Panel submissions – these should have a maximum of 2,000 words.
All proposals will be peer reviewed. Submissions should be sent via e-mail to
chinainternet10@gmail.com by Jan. 30, 2012. Please include your affiliation, title (include graduate student status if applicable), and contact information. If you are proposing a panel, please include that information for all panelists. Authors will be notified of acceptance by March 15, 2012.
Selected papers from the conference may be published in a conference volume or a special symposium issue of an academic journal. Participation in the conference neither guarantees nor compels publication of a paper.
A limited amount of travel funding will be available for promising young scholars. To indicate interest in the travel scholarship, please attach your CV along with the submitted abstract.
Graduate students may submit conference papers for the annual graduate student paper competition. Eligibility is limited to papers that do not include any faculty co-authors. submission-.
Conference cooperating institutions include:
The Intellectual Property Law Center at Drake University Law School; Institute for Pacific Asia at Texas A&M University; School of Journalism and Communication at Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University; Singapore Internet Research Center (SiRC) at Nanyang Technological University.
Past Conferences
Impact of New Media on the General Election
Date: 4 October 2011
Whether the general election in May deserved the ephithet of "Singapore's First Internet Election", there is no doubt that new media played a significant role in the way political parties and candidates communicated with voters, and the way citizens communicated with one another. The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) is bringing you a conference aimed at a more insigntful understanding of the impact of the Internet on the polls.
This one-day event showcased a multi-study project led by IPS that brings together researchers from the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and SIM University.
The studies focused on the impact of what is done online and offline by the different players (parties and candidates, bloggers, mainstream media, opinion makers; voters); the consequences to the voter (their political knowledge, the perception of candidates and parties; and their voting behaviour); and the role of technology (social media, mobile telephony). One highlight of the confernece was a nation-wide survey of voters that revealed how they use different media, from newspapers to television, blogs, facebook and Twitter. The survey also examined their political attitudes, their political activities duing the polls and their voting decisions.
For more information, click here.
Asia Pacific Internet Governance Forum 2011
Date: 16 & 17 June 2011
The second Asia Pacific Internet Governance Forum 2011 brought together 200 senior Government and private sector representatives as eall as the technical and academic community froma cross the region to exchange ideas and shape the future of internet governance in thsi part of the world. Among the wide-ranging topics under discussion were the accessibility to the internet, intellectual property issues and online security concerns.
For more information, please click here.
Youth Internet Governance Forum Camp Singapore 2011
Date: 16 to 18 June 2011
Venue: Nanyang Technological University
The camp attracted participants living in Singapore, with facilitation from NetMission Ambassadors mainly from Hong Kong who participated in the 2010 youth internet governance forum camp. There were enriching activities before, during and after the camp, and that participation is both a challenge to the youth to think critically about governing the internet in their age as well as learn to work together as different stakeholders.
For more information, please click here.
Strengthening ICTD Research Capacity in Asia (SIRCA) Final Conference
Date: Saturday, 16 April 2011 & Sunday, 17 April 2011
Venue: Millennium Hotel, Phuket
The SIRCA Programme is a capacity building initiative, primarily aimed at improving the social science research skills of emerging Asian scholars in the information and communications technology for development (ICTD) space. SIRCA is managed by the Singapore Internet Research Centre (SIRC), based at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada.
Objectives of the conference
a) Provide a platform for SIRCA Principal Investigators (PIs) to showcase current research;
b) Present framework for the next capacity building initiative, the "global grant"; and
c) Provide a forum for ICTD scholars to meet face-to-face, network and exchange ideas.
More information, please click here.
Effects of Video-gaming: Research findings & intervention strategies: A symposium by Douglas Gentile and Kwon Jung-hye on 19 January 2011. For more information, please click here.
INET Conference
The Internet Society, in collaboration with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), held a regional conference in Singapore on 18 November, 2010. The Singapore Internet Research Centre was pleased to sponsor the event. For more information, please click here.
Fifth GigaNet Annual Symposium
The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GIGANET) seek submissions of research about Internet Governance to be presented at the Fifth GigaNet Annual Symposium on 13 September 2010, held one day before the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), in Vilnius, Lithuania. For more information, please click here or visit http://giga-net.org.
ICA 2010 in Singapore (22 to 26 June 2010)
This was the first time in seven years that the annual conference held in Asia. Thus, it was a great opportunity for scholars in the region to network with their colleagues from around the world, and for scholars from around the world to meet their colleagues in Asia's communication and media universities.
ICA 2010 Pre-conference, “Innovations in Mobile Use" 21st – 22nd June 2010 in Singapore.
The ICA 2010 Mobiles Preconference was held at the National Library from 21-22 June 2010. SIRCA organised a special session on 20 June 2010 for SIRCA grant awardees and mentors to meet and discuss research progress and publications plans as the projects reach completion. Information about the event can be found at the following website: www.sirca.org.sg.
Call for Young Scholar Awards: LIRNEasia dissemination event and tutorials Singapore: 21-22 June 2010. Applications for Young Scholar awards Fifteen Young Scholars from the Asia-Pacific region were selected to participate in tutorials and a research dissemination event held before the 2010 International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Singapore.Click here for more information.
Call for Papers: ICA 2010 Pre-conference, “Online Social Capital: An Agenda for Future Research".
Held in Singapore on 22nd June 2010, this preconference aimed to showcase new scholarly work examining definitional, operational and practical issues related to the study of new forms of social capital, with particular emphasis on case studies and applications beyond the US context.
The Institute for Journalism & Society (Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist University) and The Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong announced a call for papers to participate in their conference, The Changing World of International News in the 21st Century: The Impact of Digital Technology. This conference, took place from 14 to 16 April 2009 in Hong Kong, aimed to bring together academics, journalists and others interested in the profession to discuss the effects of digitisation – satellites, web technology, optic fibre and wireless – on international news. For more details, please click here.
Sixth Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference
The Sixth Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference "China and the Internet: Myths and Realities", hosted by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong on 13-14 June 2008. For more details, please click here.
The State of Play V – Building the Global Metaverse
Held in Singapore on 19-22 August 2007. The State of Play – Building the Global Metaverse 2007 ws the fifth annual conference on the future of virtual worlds. Organised by New York Law School in conjunction with Trinity University, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School and Nanyang Technological University (CAPTEL, Nanyang Business School and SiRC, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information). The conference invited experts across disciplines to discuss the transnational dimensions of the metaverse and the impact of virtual environment on Education, Law, Politics and Society. The hallmark of the conference was its multi-disciplinary perspective.
16th AMIC Annual Conference
The 16th AMIC Annual Conference held in Singapore, on the 25 - 28 June, 2007. The theme of the 16th annual conference was “Media Education and Development: The Quest for New Paradigms”. The key focus of this conference was the search for new paradigms of media education and development in a rapidly changing technological, policy and market environment. AMIC organized this conference in partnership with the Nanyang Technological University. This conference was opened to academics, media industry professionals, government agencies, policymakers, regulators, UN agencies, donors, research groups, civil society organizations, independent consultants and students. For more details, please click here.
ICA 2006 Preconference on Internet Governance: New Political and Regulatory Frameworks for Global Network Communication
The aim of this preconference was to form a network of scholars to monitor the progress of and to research Internet Governance, with a special emphasis on the international aspects. For more details, please click here to visit the conference website.
Fourth Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference
The Fourth Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference "Chinese Culture, Chinese Internet", hosted by the Singapore Internet Research Center in Singapore from the 21-22 of July 2006. The Call for Papers was being distributed and those interested sent a 1,000 word abstract to Singapore Internet Research Center by 1st of March 2006. Authors were notified of acceptance by 15th April 2006. For more details, please click here to learn more.
For programme schedule, please click here.
Third Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference: Digital Silk Road: A Look at the First Decade of China’s Internet Development and Beyond” 2005
The conference was cosponsored by the China Internet Project of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information at Nanyang Technological University, School of Journalism and Communication at Chinese University of Hong Kong and the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University. The conference was held from the 23-24 May 2005 at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
Second Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference: China's Digital Future 2004
China is experiencing a digital revolution. ICTs are already altering the course of China’s ongoing social and economic reforms. But the long-term impact of the Internet on the Chinese government, people, society and culture is not yet clear. Over 78 million Chinese now utilize the communication power of the Internet, and over 257 million have wireless phones. How will China’s rapidly expanding high tech industry and market affect global technological development and the world market? How does the Chinese government maintain a balance between control and growth of the Internet? How does the flexibility and pervasiveness of the new media alter the traditional information landscape? And what are the expansion, control and transformative effects of these technologies on China and its future? From April 30 to May 1, 2004, these questions were addressed at the China's Digital Future symposium at the University of California at Berkeley. The symposium featured presentations from Izumi Aizu, Lawrence Lessig, Xiao Qiang, Susan Shirk, and others.
This conference was organized and hosted by the Berkeley China Internet Project, the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the New Media Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Co-sponsors include the Intellectual Property and Communications Law at Michigan State University-DCL College of Law, the Singapore Internet Research Centre, and the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University. More information about the Conference is available here.