[Air-L] Call for papers Convergence Journal // Special Issue on Expertise

[Edgar Gómez Cruz]

Apologies for cross-posting


*Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media
Technologies*



*Special Issue on Expertise and Engagement with/in Digital Media*

Vo1 21, no. 3 (August 2015)



Editors: Caroline Bassett, University of Sussex; Edgar Gómez Cruz,
University of Leeds; Helen Thornham, University of Leeds

In an digitally saturated environment digital media users of all kinds,
engaged in diverse areas of activity, are increasingly categorized in terms
of their ability to use - they are regarded as natives, non-users, experts,
literates, for instance. In these contexts the question (1) of how various
forms of digital expertise develop, and (2) of how understandings of
expertise come into being and come to operate, become increasingly
important. Digital expertise might appear to be simply descriptive (of a
particular capacity to use), or unproblematically normative (indicating an
elevated level of engagement that may be viewed as desirable), however
there are multiple understandings of what digital expertise ‘is’ (what kind
of skilled engagement with digital materials it
delineates/demands/entails), and multiple ways in which it is judged and
valued. Our contention is that these conceptions of expertise are
contextually produced; they intersect with various social categories and
discourses, and they come to operate in social contexts with some force.
Our starting point is that digital expertise is at once material and a
social construction.





The focus of the special issue is motivated by conceptual and critical
questions around the values and qualities and activities increasingly
claimed and collated with ‘expertise’: the recourse to authoritative voices
as embodying particular forms of  knowledge, the claims made around data
and information, the valuing of particular modes of expression, mediation
or participation over others: all of these locate and conceptualise
expertise – and consequently, knowledge, literacy, mediation, participation
– in particular ways. Who – or what – is a digital expert and what is
evidenced in the name of expertise, and who can be an expert and who
cannot; these issues signal new power relations that are emerging around
use, and for instance gender, knowledge, data and materials. As expertise
becomes increasingly conflated with experience, literacy or knowledge; as
expertise is seemingly evidenced in online co-created or curated content;
and as statements and mined data are used and claimed in new ways as
expert, what we mean by ‘expertise’ clearly needs investigation.



This special issue of Convergence seeks to bring together innovative
theoretical and methodological frameworks that explore the conception,
practice and creation of expertise in relation to digital technologies. We
invite contributions that engage with expertise addressing themes including
(but not confined to):



·         What is expertise in a digital environment and what does it look
like?

·         What new modes and practices of expertise are emerging, and what
kinds of cultural products result?

·         What are the implications of these new forms of cultural products
for communities and cultures?

·         How do cultures and communities become better enabled to engage
with, use, make sense of and even make digital media?

·         What is the relationship between expertise, experience, literacy
and knowledge?

·         How do digital transformations reconfigure expertise and what are
the implications of this for knowledge, literacy, use and experience?

·         Where is expertise located – i.e. is it bound up in the
conception of the user, or created and claimed alongside new data
configurations– and to what extent do such locations matter?



We are accepting abstracts for research articles of between 6000-9000 words and
for positional papers of between 1500-2000 words in length. Abstracts
should be of 500-750 words in length. Email abstracts to Edgar Gomez Cruz
e.gomez at leeds.ac.uk. The deadline for abstracts is January 17th 2014, and
the deadline for full submissions is 25th July 2014. Submissions should
follow the formatting guide of the journal Convergence (see
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/msg/conv.htm#MANUSCRIPTSTYLE).


All research articles will be peer reviewed.



*Submission* *d**etails:*



Abstract Deadline: 17th January 2014 e.gomez at leeds.ac.uk

Decision on Abstracts: 7th February 2014

Article Submission deadline: 25th July 2014 e.gomez at leeds.ac.uk

Final submission deadline/review process complete: December 2014

For publication in August 2015