IRIE
International Review of Information Ethics
Call for Papers for Vol. 15 (01/2011)
Ethics of Sharing
edited by Wolfgang Sützl and Felix Stalder
– Deadline for extended abstracts: January 31, 2011
– Notification of acceptance to authors: February 8, 2011
– Deadline for full articles: April 30, 2011
– Publication: July, 2011
Sharing has emerged as one of the core cultural and ethical values native to the networked environ-
ment. It is built both into the technical protocols that make up the Internet, and holds together distrib-
uted, mediated communities and organizations (even if they try to limit sharing to members inside the
organizations). In information ethics, sharing has implicitly been discussed in terms of privacy, intellec-
tual property, secrecy, security and freedom of speech, which together define the social character of
the information environment. But recent developments such as WikiLeaks have shown that there is a
need to go beyond discussing the legitimacy of access or restrictions. We need to address the motiva-
tions and ethical positions that compel people to share information, even at considerable risk to them-
selves. Has sharing of information a special virtue of the information society? How are choices of
sharing or withholding information justified? Is sharing subversive of the new global information re-
gime, or an integral aspect of it?
This issue of IRIE brings together contributions towards an ethics of sharing that embeds the techno-
logical potentialities in lived social experience. In our understanding, information ethics “deals with
ethical questions in the field of digital production and reproduction of phenomena and processes such
as the exchange, combination and use of information.”
The task is both descriptive – helping us understand the contemporary complexities of the ethics of
sharing as it emerges from practices across a wide range social and cultural contexts – as well as
normative – helping us to address blind-spots and clarifying possible ethical frameworks to address
unresolved issues. We seeks submission that might address, without being limited to, issues such as
- Sharing of information of different kinds, such technical, social and cultural information
- Sharing of resources, such as bandwidth and processing power
- Ethics of sharing across different cultures
- Values that facilitate sharing
- Ethics of Sharing in historical perspectives
- Values emerging from environments characterized by pervasive sharing
- Subjectivities of sharing Shifting boundaries between the personal/common
- Similarities and differences between the sharing of material and of information resources
- Ethical limits of sharing, in regard to other values
- Ethical economies of sharing
- Economies of sharing vs. economies of exchange
- Dangers of sharing
We aim at addressing this field from a cross-disciplinary and cross cultural perspective, thus we en-
courage submission from wide range of research disciplines and from Western and non-Western per-
spectives.
Guest Editors:
Dr . Felix Stalder <[email protected]>
Zürich University of the Arts
Research project “Media Activism” at the University of Innsbruck
Dr . Wolfgang Sützl <[email protected]>
Research Project “Media Activism” at the University of Innsbruck
Abstracts and Submissions
Potential authors are requested to provide an extended abstract (max. 1,500 words) by January 31,
2011. Abstracts may be submitted in the native language of the author though an English translation
of this abstract must be included if the chosen language is not English. IRIE will publish articles in
English, French, German, Portuguese or Spanish. The author(s) of contributions in French, Portu-
guese, or Spanish must nominate at least two potential peer reviewers.
Abstracts will be evaluated by the guest editors. The authors will be informed of acceptance or rejec-
tion by February 8, 2011.
Deadline for the final article (usually ca. 3,000 words or 20,000 characters including blanks) is April
30, 2011.
All submissions will be subject to peer review. Therefore the acceptance of an extended abstract does
not imply the publication of the final text by July, 2010, unless the article has passed the peer review
and revisions (if required) have been included in the text.
All submissions should be sent by email with ‘IRIE Submission’ in the header to:
[email protected]
For more information about the journal see: http://www.i-r-i-e.net