[Air-L] CFP: Audience research into documentary and related media

[Craig Hight]

(Apologies for cross-posting)


CFP: Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies Special Issue: Audience research into documentary and related media

Expected Publication Date: November 2017 (Vol . 14, Issue 2)

Co-Editors: Craig Hight (University of Newcastle, AU); Kate Nash (University of Leeds, UK)

Participations is the online Journal devoted to the broad field of audience and reception studies. It aims to bring into dialogue work and debate across all fields involved in examining all areas of media and culture. Participations has pioneered a system of open refereeing for all contributions, designed to encourage open, critical debate among researchers. It can be found at www.participations.org<http://www.participations.org/>.

Call for Papers
Despite a long established and rich literature on documentary cinema and television, there is still comparatively little research which addresses issues in the reception of the range of content which might fall within the umbrella label of 'documentary media'.  This label encompasses celebrated exemplars in cinematic and televisual forms and more recently includes forms ranging across other media, and depending on who is defining the nature of documentary culture, includes everything from photography, drama-documentary, documentary animation (documation), hybrid televisual formats, online and interactive forms, and even documentary comics .
Documentary proper has tended, especially within film theory, to draw from an assumed distinctive relationship which audience have with mediations of reality. However, the complexity of forms which draw their rhetorical and affective power from documentary aesthetics and the assumptions they appear to engender is proliferating. Documentary, in its exemplars, assumes a knowing, reflective and literate audience. Other documentary-related forms are driven by more obviously entertainment-centred agendas. How do differently situated audiences negotiate this part of the contemporary mediascape?
The aim of this issue is to bring together work which interrogates from the side of reception how documentary is evolving, the implications of the proliferation of documentary and related forms, and the complexities inherent to how viewers of these forms are negotiating their meaning.

Possible questions to be addressed might include:

1.     What can audience research tell us about the nature of documentary and related media?

  1.  How can we characterise the nature, characteristics and contradictions of documentary engagement?
  2.  How do audiences define 'documentary' ?

4.     Are there different modes of reading associated with different media forms within the spectrum of documentary and related media?

  1.  How do audiences understand the nature of ethical practice within documentary and related forms?
  2.  How do audiences make use of social and political knowledge represented through documentary forms?

7.     How do viewers / users assess the nature and integrity of evidence presented in documentary and related forms?

  1.  Is the notion of indexicality still relevant for contemporary audiences?

9.     How do viewers read documation (animated documentary)?

10.  How important are paratextual material (including online commentaries), to documentary reception?

11.  How do viewers / users assess the issue of 'performance' in documentary and related media

12.  How do audiences read mockumentary?

  1.  How does involvement in video-making and similar amateur pursuits change perceptions of documentary as a form?

14.  How do audience understand how documentaries and related media are categorised and made 'findable' through digital distribution channels?

  1.  How do interactive technologies enhance, or problematize forms of engagement assumed with documentary forms?

Manuscripts can cover various media (e.g. cinema, television, theatre, podcasts, photography, online and interactive forms, apps, games, comics, etc.). The editors welcome theoretical essays as well as empirical studies from various methodologies.

Please send a 250 word abstract to craig.hight at newcastle.edu.au<mailto:jason.zenor at oswego.edu> by November 30, 2016. Please title the email "Participations Special Issue - your last name."

DEADLINES

Abstracts Due: November 30 2016

Decisions to Authors: December 30 2016

Full submissions: June 1 2017

Final drafts: September 1 2017

Publication: November 2017

Please see the submission guidelines for the journal
http://www.participations.org/submission_guidelines.htm