Call for Papers – Netnocon 2027 – Sydney, Australia June 9 – 11, 2027

Conference Theme: Riding Digital Waves

Location: Western Sydney University (1PSQ, Parramatta Square), Sydney, Australia

Netnocon 2027, our fifth annual international conference, will take place in Sydney, Australia—marking the very first time the global netnography community gathers outside of Europe. Hosted at Western Sydney University’s state-of-the-art 1PSQ building in Parramatta Square, our venue sits at a dynamic intersection of deep Indigenous heritage, global cultures, and cutting-edge urban innovation. Surrounded by vast horizons and ocean currents, Sydney offers a symbolic setting for our 2027 theme: Riding Digital Waves.

The 2027 theme invites researchers and practitioners to explore what it means to navigate, survive, and thrive amidst the fast-moving currents of digital transformation. Where others see an overwhelming deluge of data or automated algorithmic noise, netnography teaches us how to find the rhythm, meaning, and human connection beneath the surface.

Riding digital waves is not merely about passively floating on the informational stream or being swept away by technological tsunamis. It demands active engagement, critical immersion, reflexive positionality, and a grounded human sensibility. As artificial intelligence, autonomous agents, predictive algorithms, and ubiquitous platforms reshape the fabric of daily life, netnographers are uniquely positioned to investigate how humans (and post-humans) experience, adapt to, resist, and shape these flows.

We invite netnographic explorations that dive beneath the surface to investigate:

• Human Sensibility and Ethics: Maintaining empathy, care, reflexivity, and ethical principles while navigating high-tech and AI-driven field sites.
• Immersion and Engagement: How researchers and participants deeply immerse themselves in changing digital spaces, subcultures, platform vernaculars, and synthetic environments.
• Cultural and Technocultural Swells: The socio-cultural, political, and consumer dynamics unfolding across our varied cultural landscapes.

Netnocon is a collaborative, open, and intellectually generous space where researchers come together to think, question, and share. The conference welcomes work at all stages of development and from all career levels, across academic disciplines and geographic regions, encompassing empirical, conceptual, and methodological contributions.

Topics of Interest

Submissions must center on or incorporate netnography. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• AI, Synthetic Culture, and Agentic Tech: Netnographic studies of generative AI, consumer AI agents, digital assistants, algorithm-driven subcultures, and human-AI co-creation.
• Human Sensibility & Ethical Currents: Ethics, privacy, consent, and researcher positionality in automated or AI-integrated environments.
• Immersive & Sensory Netnographies: Embodying digital research, sensory ethnography, immersion journals, virtual/augmented spaces, and metaverse environments.
• Digital Currents, Activism, & Subcultures: Online movements, consumer resistance, fandoms, niche subcultures, and collective action navigating platform shifts.
• Algorithmic Labor & Platform Economy: Digital nomadism, creator economies, influencer dynamics, and the lived realities of platform work.
• Cultures of Care & Wellbeing: Digital health contexts, techno-care, online support systems, and mental health communities.
• Techno-Animism & Speculative Futures: Technospirituality, post-humanist, and more-than-human approaches to digital cultural life.
• Auto-netnography and researcher reflexivity
• Hybrid Methodologies: Combining in-person ethnography with netnography
• Methodological Comparisons: Netnography vs. digital, virtual, or computational ethnographies
• Multimodal Data Analysis: Text, image, audio, video, and algorithmic data pipelines
• Longitudinal Netnography: Tracking digital cultural shifts across extended timeframes
• Team & Interdisciplinary Netnography: Scaling collaborative digital qualitative research
• Intersectional & Critical Approaches: Gender, race, class, and diversity in technocultural research

Submission Formats

Authors are invited to submit through the Conference Submission System at  https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/81730/submitter in one of two formats:

1. Abstracts: Up to 500 words (single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt, up to 5 keywords, references, and up to one figure/table).
2. Full Papers: Up to 10 pages (single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt, inclusive of references, figures, tables, abstract, and up to 5 keywords).

Submission Guidelines

All submissions must be anonymized for double-blind peer review. Files must be under 10 MB. References must follow APA style, and submissions should adhere to the APA Inclusive Language Guidelines.

Final abstracts and papers need to list all author names and affiliations. Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication while being evaluated for this conference.

At least one author will have to register for the conference for accepted abstracts and papers to be included in the conference proceedings. Authors of accepted full papers who only want the abstract to be included in the conference proceedings should notify the conference organizing committee by February 17, 2027 through an email sent to: info@netnocon.org.

Special Issue Opportunity

Please check the conference website in late 2026 for announcements regarding journal special issues affiliated with Netnocon 2027.

Important Dates

• August 17, 2026: Paper submission site opens
• October 1, 2026: Early bird conference registration begins
• December 1, 2026: Paper submission site closes (deadline for abstract/paper submission)
• February 1, 2027: Reviews sent to authors and notification of abstract/paper acceptance
• March 4, 2027: Deadline for at least ONE author to register for the Conference
• April 9, 2027: Early bird conference registration ends
• May 9, 2027: Registration closes

Netnocon 2027 Scientific Program Chairs

• Prof. Robert Kozinets, University of Southern California
• Prof. Rossella Gambetti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
• Dr Ulrike Gretzel, University of Southern California
• Assoc. Prof. Nicole Bridges, Western Sydney University
• Assoc. Prof. Birgit Muskat, Australian National University

We look forward to exploring cultural crossroads and netnography together in Sydney!

Netnocon 2027 reveal video