[Air-L] The Communication Review Call for Papers: “Twitter Revolutions? Addressing Social Media and Dissent”

Tatiana Omeltchenko to3y at virginia.edu
Mon Apr 5 16:11:21 PDT 2010


The Communication Review special issue:

“Twitter Revolutions?  Addressing Social Media and Dissent”
 Volume 14, Issue 2 (2011)

Guest Editor: Christian Christensen, Uppsala University, Sweden

Contact
Christian Christensen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Media & Communication Studies
Department of Informatics and Media
Uppsala University, Sweden
christian.christensen at im.uu.se

“The Internet, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have reconstituted,
especially among young people, how social relationships are
constructed and how communication is produced, mediated, and received.
They have also ushered in a new regime of visual imagery in which
screen culture creates spectacular events just as much as they record
them.  Under such circumstances, state  power becomes more porous and
less controlled (…) Text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,  and
the Internet have given rise to a reservoir of political energy that
posits a new relationship between the new media technologies, politics
and public life (…) State power no longer has a hold on information,
at least not the way it did before the emergence of the new media with
its ability to reconfigure public exchange and social relations while
constituting a new sphere of politics.” (Giroux, 2009)

Recent events in Iran – and in other locations such as Moldova,
Georgia, Egypt, Palestine and China – have stimulated a great deal of
discussion on the use(s) of social media for the purposes of political
dissent and activist organization, as well as in impacting public
opinion on matters of national and international security. What the
Iranian case has added to the discussion – crystallized in the above
quote from Giroux – is supposed evidence of the powerful role of
social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in
facilitating dissent during times of conflict and suppression.
However, the aftermath of the June 2009 Iranian elections also
provided ample evidence of the inverse: how the use of social media by
anti-government activists, as well as access to highly sophisticated
monitoring hardware and software on the part of the Iranian
authorities, rationalized processes of state surveillance and
repression.  A great deal of discourse – often revolving around sexy
phrases such as “Twitter Revolutions” or “The YouTube War” – has
posited the central role of technology in anti-government protests or
acts of dissent, only for critical questions to be raised shortly
afterward regarding the actual level of use and impact of such
technologies.

Welcoming a variety of methodological, theoretical and disciplinary
perspectives, the purpose of this special issue of The Communication
Review will be to publish papers which:

1.	address the relationship between social media, dissent and
political action from a variety of (critical) perspectives, avoiding
excessively techno-deterministic and/or techno-utopian frameworks;
2.	focus upon the use of newer forms of social media (for example,
Twitter, Flickr and YouTube); and,
3.	place particular emphasis on research addressing the use of social
media in relation to dissent and/or political action from a diversity
of national/regional contexts.

Deadlines

•	Deadline for extended proposal submission: June 1, 2010
•	Notification of proposals selected for full paper submission: June 30, 2010
•	Deadline for full paper submission (selected proposals only): November 1, 2010

Proposal process

Authors are asked to submit an extended paper proposal of
approximately 750 words to Christian Christensen
(christian.christensen at im.uu.se) by June 1, 2010. The proposal should
address the main conceptual, theoretical and methodological
underpinnings of the article, as well as what the piece will add to
our understanding of the relationship between social media and
dissent/political action. The proposal should be sent as a two page
Word document: (1) a cover page with paper title, name, professional
rank, institutional affiliation and contact information, and (2), the
proposal on the following page(s), with no indication as to author
identity/identities or affiliation(s).

Proposals will be reviewed and a select number of authors will be
asked, on the basis of their proposals, to submit full papers. The
full papers of approximately 7000-8000 words will be due on November
1, 2010. Please note that a request to submit a full paper is not a
guarantee that the full version will be published. All full papers
will go through peer-review, and it is on the basis of these reviews
that the articles to be published in the special issue will be
selected.

For further information regarding The Communication Review, please
see: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713456253~db=all




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The Communication Review
A Quarterly Publication by Taylor&Francis

University of Virginia
401 Cabell Hall, PO Box 400866
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4866
Phone: 434-243-4330
Fax: 434-243-8869
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713456253~db=all



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