Editors June Wang (City University of Hong Kong) and Julia Tomassetti (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia) are seeking contributions towards a Special Issue on ‘The Internet-Outernet Interface’, to be published in the journal Global Media and China.

The platform has been examined as many things. These include emergent economic models (Pickren 2018; Srnicek 2017; Sundararajan 2016), new labour governing systems (Fuchs 2010; Wang and Tomassetti 2024; Weil 2014), urban planning and governance repertoires based on the techno-utopian narratives of smart cities (Ash, Kitchin, and Leszczynski 2018; Graham 2005; Vanolo 2008). As van Dijck convincingly argues, while platforms can indeed be seen in each of these contexts, the critical aspect lies in a better understanding of the "inextricable relations between online platforms and social structures" of the "platform society" (van Dijck, Poell Thomas, and de Waal 2018). This proposed special issue is an effort with focused attention to the internet-outernet interface (Bratton 2015; Galloway 2012) for that purpose.

The term "interface" here does not refer to "something that appears before you but rather a gateway that opens up and allows passage to some place beyond" (Galloway 2012:30). In this special issue, we adopt the mindset of thresholds to read interface (Bratton, 2015), which structures flows transcending various spheres of the internet and the “outernet” (Terranova 2004). The interface works not only to enact, channel and discipline (im)mobilities of data and information, as media infrastructure studies usually deal with, but also those of people, products, venture capital and standards concerned by human geographers. This collection will investigate both digital and physical interfaces, and, more importantly, explore and unravel the mutual constitution of both. Their interruption into and entanglement with each other will provide a more holistic understanding of the platformised landscape of our world.

Positioned in this intellectual landscape, this themed collection call for paper that delve into the intertwined digital and physical interfaces to understand how they are formed and how they enact, channel, and discipline the relays of data, people, venture capital and ideas. The focus is on how the logic of platforms reconfigures governing blocs, establishes and disseminates new values for commodities (including human subjects), and reshapes the constitution of the industrial value chain (Mann 1984).

Timeline:

·   Submission of abstract (300 words): 15 January 2025

·   Notification of abstract acceptance:  30 January 2025

·   Submission to full papers for internal review: 01 June 2025

·   Submission to the journal: 01 Aug 2015

Please submit your abstract to June Wang (June.wang@cityu.edu.hk) and Julia Tomassetti (jtomassetti@swin.edu.au).

For details, visit https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/DCfDiBZvYvorvAbZr_-0cQ