Call for Contributions: Search Engines and Society Annual Conference (SEASON 2026)
April 30
On behalf of the Search Engines and Society Network (SEASON), we invite submissions for the 2026 edition of the Search Engines and Society Annual Conference (SEASON 2026), to be held at HAW Hamburg, Germany, from 15–17 September 2026.
Following the success of SEASON 2025, which brought together an engaged and diverse international community of researchers, practitioners, and students, SEASON continues as a dedicated conference series for critical and interdisciplinary research on search engines and their societal implications.
SEASON explores the multifaceted role of search engines in today’s culture and society. The conference fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration to deepen our understanding of search engines as cultural, societal, political, and technical artifacts, as well as their role in everyday practices.
We invite submissions for:
- Long presentations
- Short presentations
- Interactive sessions (e.g., panels and workshops)
- Posters
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Social and cultural aspects of relevance
- Epistemic implications of search engine use
- Search engines and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Search engines and information disorders (e.g., disinformation, data voids)
- AI and changing patterns of search engine use
- Search engines and environmental crises
- Political economy of search
- Accountability and responsibility of search engine providers
- Search engine bias and fair search
- Ethical and affective dimensions of search
- Media and information literacy
- Search engines in everyday life and educational settings
- Search engines and specific communities
- Methods and data collection for search engine research
- Comparative and historical studies of web search
- Approaches to opening the “black box” of search engine rankings
We welcome conceptual and empirical contributions from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including the humanities, social sciences, and technical disciplines. Interdisciplinary approaches, work in progress, submissions from practitioners, and student contributions are especially encouraged.
Click here to learn more, or here to submit your proposal. The submission deadline is April 30, 2026.