[Air-L] CFP Journalism Theory Practice and Criticism, special issue on The Objects of Journalism

[Nancy Baym]

Call for papers Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism

Special issue The Objects of Journalism: Media, Materiality and the News

Guest editors: C.W. Anderson (heychanders at gmail.com) & Juliette De Maeyer
(jdemaeyer at gmail.com)

Submission deadline: September 30, 2013 (abstracts) and January 15, 2014
(completed papers)

Studying the ³objects of journalism² involves looking at the role of
actual things in the journalistic production process. Without denying the
existence of overarching economic, organizational, ideological, symbolic
or cultural forces, the approach advocated in this special issue explores
the material objects, sometimes seemingly innocuous or univocal, that are
involved in news production, reception and distribution. Drawing on the
conversations that took place during the 2013 ICA Pre-Conference « The
Objects of Journalism: Media, Materiality and the News », this special
issue is an attempt to further uncover and problematize the concrete
materiality of journalism. Doing so requires us to think afresh about the
ontologies of journalism studies, our research methods and the specific
problems we decide to investigate.

The special issue welcomes papers that:

* Emphasize the socio-historical depth of journalistic objects, allowing
us to think about up-to-the-minute aspects of modern newsmaking without
being stuck in the contemplation of their alleged novelty. Examples might
include papers examining digital artifacts (such as lines of code,
hyperlinks, databases, APIs, CMS, algorithms, softwares, etc.) and
discussing them in the context of other non-digital artifacts.
* Provide critical reflection for choosing this modus operandi over other
classic journalism studies approaches, and distinguish how specifically a
material approach to journalism studies might relate to other disciplines
or fields that have already embraced a « material turn ».
* Tackle philosophical and theoretical questions involving ³new
materialist² ontologies and epistemologies, and attempt to integrate
practices in journalism with already existing thinking on assemblage
theory (DeLanda), actor-network theory (Latour) or object-oriented
ontology.
* Rethink methodologies ‹ how do we understand what it means to do a
materially-minded ethnography? Content analysis? Social network map? Have
our methods always been material in this way? Or is there something new
here?
* Perspectives ‹ whether theoretical, sociological, cultural, economic, or
historical ‹ that dispute the advisability or existence of a material
turn. In other words, we encourage papers that dispute the thrust,
premises or underlying assumptions of the special issue.
* Any other topics of relevance to the general theme of the special issue.

Prospective authors should submit an abstract of approximately 300 words
by email to both C.W. Anderson (heychanders at gmail.com) and Juliette De
Maeyer (jdemaeyer at gmail.com). All submitted abstracts will be reviewed by
the special issue editors.  Successful authors will be invited to submit a
full manuscript according to the journal¹s Notes for Contributors
<http://www.uk.sagepub.com/journalsProdDesc.nav?prodId=Journal200905&ct_p=m
anuscriptSubmission&crossRegion=eur>. All papers will be subjected to peer
review.

Timeline
Deadline for abstracts: September 30, 2013 ; deadline for submission of
articles: January 15, 2014
Publication: 2014