CALL FOR PAPERS: Governing the Digital Commons
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)
January 6-9, 2026
Hyatt Regency Maui
In modern sociotechnical systems, digital commons, as the co-production of data or knowledge and community via networked systems, are increasingly prevalent and visible. Along with the people and digital resources produced, governance regarding participation, access, and use of data and knowledge is necessary to foster engagement. Such commons governance is polycentric, with many centers of decision-making, addressing both dilemmas associated with underlying knowledge resources and dilemmas associated with shared communication and coordination strategies needed to produce effective governance itself.
From platforms dedicated to crowd-sourcing and online creation communities—including MTurk, Upwork, Wikipedia, and FoldIt—to emergent subcommunities dedicated to everything from social movements to niche hobbies, via Facebook Groups or specific Toks, modern networked interactions produce significant information resources as digital commons. This mini-track will explore community governance of innovation and creativity, immaterial resources long associated with intellectual property from an interdisciplinary perspective. Case studies across a broad range of social, cultural, and economic contexts are invited; empirical documentation of knowledge commons governance, dilemmas, and shared resource management in communities may be informed by institutional theory, such as the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) or Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) frameworks. The mini-track also welcomes critiques and theorization regarding data and knowledge commons in the digital economy.
Potential governance topics include:
- Collective action problems in the modern digital economy
- Community management of deepfakes, misinformation, and online manipulation
- Crowd sourcing
- Data governance and protection
- Digital ownership
- Knowledge commons
- Online collaboration and creation communities
- Peer production
- Social norm formation, such as around privacy, security, or community expectations
- Subcommunities on online platforms
Keywords: Governance, Platforms, Data, Knowledge Management, Collective Action
Track: Internet at Work and Play
Mini-track: Governing the Digital Commons
Mini-track chairs: Madelyn R. Sanfilippo, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, Katherine J. Strandburg
Submission deadline: June 15, 2025 | 11:59 pm HSTS
Submit here: https://hicss.hawaii.edu