[Air-L] MedieKultur: Call for papers: Media and Civic Engagement

[Ditte Laursen]

Call for papers: Media and Civic Engagement
Editors Stine Liv Johansen (guest editor, Aarhus University), Cecilie Givskov, Kjetil Sandvik, University of Copenhagen
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 1, 2013
Publication deadline: Spring 2014

Civic engagement as it concerns media can and should be understood in relation to a wide range of new, emerging media practices and uses of new and old media. Voters and politicians engage through and with social media, creating new possibilities for political dialogue and dissensus. Media has played a crucial role in the Middle East uprisings over the past few years, and various forms of digital activism are budding globally. Students use media to enhance their learning of traditional curricula at the same time as new fields of learning are emerging alongside media. Cultural production and cultural consumption converge through digital media. People use media as a motivating factor in sports and exercise. Meanwhile, consumers, visitors to museums, children, and the elderly are encouraged to engage with brands, cultural institutions, and one another through media of different sorts. These bottom-up processes all point towards new relationships between media producers and media users as well as towards new forms of media use and new conceptualisations of media content.

These developments raise a range of questions. What are the affordances of new and old media in relation to civic engagement? How do new media influence the emergence and structure of new and established public arenas? How do different media promote the emergence of new user groups and of new and/or revitalised engagements? What is the role of media regulation, censorship, etc. in relation to civic engagement? What are the methodological challenges for media and communication research? All in all, how do changing media landscapes provide new possibilities for people to interact through and with media, crossing national, social, and technological borders?

MedieKultur invites both theoretical and empirical articles on the theme of Civic Engagement. Research themes and questions may include (but are not restricted to):

 *   Participatory culture
 *   Media in relation to political uprisings
 *   Digital activism
 *   New possibilities for civic engagement and participation through new media
 *   New target groups - new ways of participating
 *   Young people’s engagement in education
 *   Media and civic engagement in relation to consumers, voters, audiences etc. - locally, nationally, and globally
 *   Digital crowd sourcing and cultural production
 *   New, old, social, and mobile media
 *   Theoretical and empirical analysis and discussions.

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>.