Paper proposals are invited for ADDA 5, to be held in Tilburg, The Netherlands 21-23 May 2025. Following successful editions in Valencia (2015), Turku (2017), Florida (2021) and Klagenfurt (2023), ADDA 5 will be organized by Tilburg University’s Department of Culture Studies in MindLabs, a digital knowledge hub in the city center.  

The ADDA 5 conference theme is discourse and digital infrastructures. If the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tech underscores anything, it's the imperative to analyze discourse through its material dimensions of platformed interfaces, cultures, ideologies, and - of course - algorithms. ADDA 5 aims to unite scholars interested in the social production of meaning across digital platforms and attention economies. How do ongoing processes of platformization and appification enable, shape, reimagine and constrain digital discourse infrastructurally? How do digital infrastructures across the globe impact the production, dissemination, and consumption of discourse? How do such infrastructures render people and ideas (in)visible? ADDA 5 will offer a platform for scholars to present cutting-edge research on the infrastructure/agency nexus and critically engage with the materiality and sociopolitical dimensions of digital discourse.  

The convenors are proud to announce the following keynote speakers: 

• Alexandra Georgakopoulou, King’s College London, Great Britain 
• Taina Bucher, University of Oslo, Norway 
• Britta Schneider, European University Viadrina, Germany 
• Payal Arora, Utrecht University, the Netherlands 

Conference topics

Digital infrastructures and digital discourse, conflict dynamics, attention economies, ideology and digital discourse, directive power of digital infrastructures, algorithmic power, fake news, influencer culture, digital discourse & politics, platformed interaction, digital propaganda, digital commodification, nationalism, provincialism, parochialism, (uses of) digital heritage, AI resistance and uptake, genre stretching and bending, transcontextual analysis online, and any other relevant topics related to digital discourse analysis.

ADDA 5 panels

• Panel 1: Influencer Discourse: Navigating the Spectrum from Positive to Negative Impact
• Panel 2: From raising awareness to propaganda: influencing culture(s) on social media
• Panel 3: Structuring queerness, queering structures: social media and LGBTQ+ identities
• Panel 4: Imagining Visual Style: Prompts, Products, and Practice as Discursive Layers of AI Image Generation
• Panel 5: Pragmatics of Language Variation in Digital Discourse
• Panel 6: Mental Health Narratives in Digital Spaces: Platform-Specific Discourses and Interactions
• Panel 7: Pathologising identities online: tactics, effects and counteraction

More detailed information about the ADDA 5 panels is available on Diggit Magazine.

Submission guidelines 

ADDA 5 invites proposals for individual presentations (oral or poster) and work-in-progress talks. To submit a proposal for an individual presentation or work-in-progress talk, please use the EasyChair submission url and be attentive to the different deadlines ADDA 5 employs. The deadline for panel proposals has passed. Proposals for individual presentations (oral or poster) that should be associated with one of the ADDA 5 panels can be submitted until January 10, 2025.

Individual presentations (oral or poster) (deadline: January 10, 2025)

Individual presentations (20 minutes + Q&A) are part of themed sessions (methodology, concepts, fields). Poster presentations are more informal formats where the researcher talks the audience through their research (as visualized on a poster). Proposals for individual papers (no more than 250 words) must indicate a preference for an oral or poster presentation by selecting the appropriate option in the EasyChair submission form. Poster presenters must be present to discuss their work during the dedicated session. Each participant can only be a presenting author once at the conference for either a paper or a poster. So you can be author on multiple papers, but you will not be accepted to present more than once. 

Work-in-progress talks (deadline: January 10, 2025)

Proposals for work-in-progress talks or sandbox sessions are invited, where participants can test and discuss emerging ideas, analytical techniques, or preliminary findings. These sessions offer an interactive, informal format with 15-minute presentations followed by 15 minutes of discussion. When submitting your proposal (up to 250 words) via EasyChair, please select the appropriate box if your proposal falls into this category.

All proposals, will undergo a double-blind peer-review process, based on the following criteria:

• topical relevance and originality 
• clarity of argumentation 
• structural organization of the submission 
• theoretical and methodological precision 
• for panels: coherence of the proposal  

Decisions about acceptance/rejection will be communicated by early 2025. Following formal acceptance, the responsible (presenting) authors must register participation.  

We look forward to welcoming you to Tilburg.