[Air-l] cfp: Internationalising Internet studies collection

[Gerard Goggin]

'Internationalizing Internet Studies'
Call for papers for a edited collection by
Gerard Goggin (University of Sydney) & Mark McLelland (University of 
Wollongong)

 From the mid-1990s onwards, the Internet has shifted fundamentally 
from its co-ordinates in English-speaking countries, especially North 
America, to become an essential medium in a wide range of countries, 
cultures, and languages. . However, communications and media 
scholarship, especially in the Anglophone world, has not registered 
the deep ramifications of this shift - and the challenges it poses to 
the concepts, methods, assumptions, and frameworks used to study the 
Internet.

The vast body of Anglophone scholarship into 'the Internet' is 
predicated on research on and about English-language websites by 
academics and other researchers working and publishing in English. 
Despite the fact that there is also a large body of work being 
produced by scholars in non-English-speaking cultures and locales, 
hardly any of this work is being translated and it has had little 
impact on theorization of the developing fields of Internet and web 
studies.

The purpose of this anthology, 'Internationalizing Internet Studies', 
is to acknowledge that Internet use and Internet studies take place 
'elsewhere' in various national and international contexts. We seek 
to uncover how non-Anglophone uses of the Internet might challenge 
certain preconceived notions about the technology and its social 
impacts as well as the manner in which Internet studies is taken up, 
valued and taught. Through bringing together researchers whose daily 
experience of the Internet is mediated through non-Anglophone 
languages and cultures as well as researchers situated within the 
Anglophone academy whose work focuses on cultures outside North 
America and Europe, we hope to promote the visibility of work already 
being done outside the Anglophone world.

Accordingly, we wish to gather together a distinctive collection of 
contributors who can illuminate the key features of the Internet's 
internationalization, surveying exemplary Internet language groups 
and cultures.
We are also interested in contributions that reflect upon this 
cosmopolitan turn in the Internet, and what it signifies for Internet 
studies.

Contributions would be welcomed, but are not restricted to, the 
following topics:

* non-anglophone language communities use of the Internet
* Asian countries and communities use of the Internet (especially 
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean)
* mobility and the Internet:  how the Internet is deployed by people 
on the move across borders
* use of the Internet by diasporic communities
* Internet use by minority language speakers in majority Anglophone 
and other language contexts
* Indigenous use of the Internet
* how particular Internet, mobile and wireless technologies have been 
shaped and are used by different language and cultural groups
* how does this change our understanding of Internet cultures and 
cultural histories?
* what the implications of internationalizing of the Internet for 
debates concerning cultural citizenship and media diversity?
* how is Internet studies responding to the internationalizing of the Internet?

Timeframe:

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to both editors 
outlining your proposed contribution to the edited collection by 31 
January 2006. We will advise acceptance by 1 April 2006.

We will be holding a workshop on 'Internationalizing Internet 
Studies' in Brisbane on 27 September 2006 immediately before the 
Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Annual Conference 7.0, and 
hope that we will be able to invite some contributors to participate.

About the Editors:

 From January 2006, Dr Gerard Goggin (g.goggin at uq.edu.au) will be an 
ARC Australian Research Fellow in the Department of Media and 
Communication, the University of Sydney. Recent books include Digital 
Disability (2003), Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia (2004) 
and Cell Phone Culture (2006).

Dr Mark McLelland (m.mclelland at uq.edu.au) is a Lecturer in the School 
of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of 
Wollongong. Recent Internet-related publications include Japanese 
Cybercultures (2003) and Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the 
Internet Age (2005).