[Air-L] FlowTV CFP: Social Media

[Jacqueline Vickery]

*FlowTV Special Issue
CFP: Social Media (05/18/09)
*
Social media have created new ways for individuals to communicate and share
information. Technologies such as blogs, Twitter, social networking sites
(e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, etc.), wikis, Second Life, digg,
Last.fm, FlickR, etc. have become increasingly pervasive. Social media are
being used by celebrities, athletes, journalists, politicians, TV
personalities, musicians, scholars, news organizations, businesses,
marketers, and more. How does the use of social media change the ways we
think about  identity, community, and interpersonal communication? In what
ways are social media being used for political purposes, for collective
action, and news aggregates? How does receiving a Twitter message on your
cell phone from Shaquille O'Neal or NPR's Scott Simon erode boundaries
between public and private or change conceptualizations of intimacy? Are
blogs and other social media challenging journalism's traditional
gatekeeping and agenda-setting functions? Should we be concerned about
issues of privacy and free speech? How are certain social media technologies
being gendered, classed, racialized, and policed? And as is the case with
all forms of media, we must be careful to ask who is denied access and to
what effect?

We are interested to hear what the Flow community thinks about social media
technologies: uses and users, popular discourses and rhetoric, and the ways
in which social media challenge concepts of identity, community, friendship,
public/private, creativity, surveillance, and more.

Please send submissions of between 1000-1500 words to Jacqueline Vickery (
jvickery183 at gmail.com) and Anne Petersen (annehelenpetersen at gmail.com) no
later than *May 18th, 2009*.  Flow has a longstanding policy of encouraging
non-jargony, highly readable pieces and ample incorporation of images and
video.  For examples, please visit FlowTV.org.

--
Jacqueline Vickery
Co-Coordinating Editor, FlowTV.org
Department of Radio-Television-Film
University of Texas - Austin

"Questioning the ostensibly  unquestionable premises of our way of life is
arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and
ourselves." Zygmunt Bauman