Overline: SYMPOSIUM

Headline: THE 3RD KLASICA TAIPEI SYMPOSIUM: Digital Narratives in the Quest for Sustainable Futures

The international Knowledge, Learning, And Societal Change research Alliance (KLASICA) is very pleased to announce the dates and theme of the third KLASICA Taipei symposium. We very cordially invite researchers, policy makers, community activists, and practitioners, who are concerned with societal transformations to sustainable futures in accord with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to join us in this exciting and important symposium.

We invite submission of abstracts for papers or posters to be discussed in the symposium. The symposium will be limited to a maximum of 40 participants to foster mutual learning in which to produce new insights and approaches to the complex issues of sustainable futures. Therefore, the symposium will have a workshop format, rather than a series of presentations. 

We are particularly interested in:

• Narratives that refer or are linked to digital tools or practices and support or oppose movements toward specific aspects of sustainability that are salient in different contexts and cultures
• Analysis of the use and efficacy of digital tools (blogs, tweets, games, etc.) to mobilize or hinder social movements and collective behavior change toward sustainability
• Digital tools in formal education and informal learning venues to support development toward sustainable futures
• Evidence and insights from digital media on the description, perception, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as a global systemic risk and the relationship to local/regional responses to other challenges of sustainability.

The authors of up to six papers selected from those submitted in response to the call will be invited to give short framing talks to initiate discussion in the symposium. The selected papers will subsequently be part of a special issue of a journal, along with a summary of the discussions on the papers and posters.

Objectives:

• To enable greater understanding of the influence of narratives in collective behavior change to sustainable futures by providing a platform for collecting and analyzing the characteristics of digital and analog narrative expressions and their potential interaction.
• To identify how digital tools (including social media, online games, augmented and virtual reality, etc.) have been or could be used to understand and engage with social movements for collective behavior change and to explore their impact on public perceptions, as well as the ethical, security, and privacy concerns these tools provoke.
• To understand how in the context of the sustainability development goals (SDGs) and in the midst of the disruption and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital narratives can provide insights and positive visions for action to help address the systemic risks of unsustainable behavior.

Logistics: The 3 rd KLASICA symposium will be held online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The KLASICA symposium will involve plenary sessions as well as discussion-based sessions between participants. We will develop a program which will enable the discussions to be facilitated across time zones – more details of the program will be announced soon.

Organizers：Risk Society and Policy Research Center, NTU
Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS)