[Air-L] MedieKultur: Call for papers: Technology, power and the political economy of new media

[Ditte Laursen]

Call for papers: Technology, power and the political economy of new media
Editors Rasmus Helles (guest editor) and Anne Mette Thorhauge, University of Copenhagen
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MARCH 10, 2013
Publication deadline: Fall 2013


Recent developments in digital communication technologies have challenged commonly held notions of media systems and the power and production relations that they involve. The networked, global nature of new media challenges has established regulatory frameworks for mass- and interpersonal communication, and displaces previously well-known markets and business models. For example, the introduction of new platforms (smartphones, tablets) not only makes content available to consumers in new ways, but also undermines existing constellations between actors at different points in the chain from content production to consumption. Network-providers and platform-owners (Apple, Facebook) become distributors of content, and thereby marginalise the established position of retailers. The digitisation of content therefore amounts to an introduction of new types of gates and gatekeepers (Spotify, Facebook, Google etc). While many of the new actors in media markets have been discussed in terms of their potential for empowering users, democratic innovation or market failure, few studies have addressed the dynamics of their emergence in a manner that traces the development of new institutional actors in the media sector and its implications for media development.

Accordingly, the aim of this special issue is to promote critical discussion about the intersections between technology, power and political economy, based on systematic theoretical and empirical analyses.



Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

–    new vocabularies of power

–      old mass media in new media environments

–      new communication technologies and political and regulatory bodies

–      social media, democracy and political power

Please note: Although we organize most of our articles into special issues, we encourage your contributions and will happily find a place for articles of high quality regardless of topic.

Link to full call for papers<http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur/announcement>.