OPEN CALL

ABOUT

The Internet has brought significant change to all sectors of society and digital technologies are regarded as a key driver for ensuring future prosperity. At the same time, personal liberties and societal cohesion are threatened while traditional institutions, government structures, companies, and media often struggle to adjust. Therefore, governing new media and new technologies will be key for the next decade and the policy frameworks will have to be built now.  

We are looking for best practices and case studies in Asia showing how to manage digital transformation with smart policies that enable development, improved communication, access to information and education, new economic empowerment, and greater political participation, while at the same time reducing the negative effects of this transformation on social cohesion, privacy, and democratic principles.

AREAS OF INTEREST

Authors are invited to explore Asian approaches to topics such as

1) Innovation

How can we allow innovation to flourish but at the same time protect users and citizens? How can we ensure that economies evolve in the age of globalisation and digitalisation so that it creates value for everyone? How could we foster a innovation ecosystems and cooperation between them worldwide? How could we strengthen entrepreneurship, the vc landscape and the commerzialization of excellent research? How will the future of work look like? What are best practices to prepare the workforce? What does this mean for the education system more generally (digital literacy)? How could we foster innovation in the health sector? What is the role of private internet companies and social media platforms and what are mechanism to hold them accountable?

2) Media Platforms

How can we govern new media and new technologies? How can we ensure that facts are the foundations for decision making? What are different approaches from the region to regulate social media (political adds, hate speech)? How could we deal with the tendency of polarization of discourses in social media? How should we deal with the current social media business models that are affecting the right of privacy (free service for massive private data collection, e.g. Facebook, Google, Amazon)?

3) Tech/infrastructure

How could we strengthen/maintain trust in tech in our societies in general? How can we enforce ethical AI and who should be responsible for a ethical reflected development and application of AI algorithms? How could/should we cooperate to enforce ethical AI? How can Social Sciences help with the design of algorithms? How should ethical auditing mechanisms for algorithmic decisions be defined?

4) Social cohesion

How can we address digital divides (socio-economic divide, spatial divide, generational divide)? How can we reduce power imbalances and guarantee a fair access to digital technologies? What does digital literacy mean and how can we improve it? What are measures to counter hate speech and fake news?

5) Biocyber

How can we protect healthcare infrastructure against cyberthreats (who should be responsible here)? How could we balance the need for innovation with the protection of privacy in the field of e-health ? How could we built a safe and fair platform to share data in the health sector?

6) GovTech and Innovation

How could we strengthen the digitalization of the public Sector? How could we foster a GovTech Ecosystem? How could we built up a tech-gov-network? How could we improve the digital literacy of the public sector (probably also the political sector)?

OUR OFFER TO YOU

• We offer an honorarium of SGD 1300
• We invite 8 authors to a conference in Berlin to present their case studies and best practices to German decision makers (all costs covered by KAS)
• Your contribution will be published and distributed through Digital Asia Hub and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung

TIMELINE

• Abstracts of 750 words are due by 15 May 11:59 pm anywhere in the world
• The review process will be fast-tracked
• Invitation to submit the final paper and invitation to Berlin will be sent out by 5 June 2020
• A first draft should be submitted by 1 August 2020
• Final papers are due by 1 September 2020
• The conference in Germany is planned to take place in Berlin on 9. & 10. November 2020 (depending on the developments around the corona virus outbreak)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINE

• Length of abstract: 750 words
• Article should have 3.500 – 5.000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography
• The decision of the review committee will be final with regard to accepting the publication    

Please submit your abstracts by 30.4. 2020 to Katharina Naumann (katharina.naumann@kas.de)

For enquiries, please contact Katharina Naumann (katharina.naumann@kas.de)