[Air-L] CfP - CMSTW'2020, April 21-23, 2020, St.Petersburg, Russia

[Svetlana S. Bodrunova]

Dear AoIR members,
apologies for potential cross-posting.

Let me share a call for papers in the area of communication studies, 
including computational research in online communication and social 
media.

The 8th international conference 'Comparative Media Studies in Today's 
World' (CMSTW'2020) will gather the scholars from a wide range of 
disciplines to discuss the topic of the growing importance: 'Back to 
context? Media and communication research between big data and 
contextual meanings'. It will take place in St.Petersburg, Russia, on 
April 21 to 23, 2020.

Today, in the time of disruptive public spheres and loss of common 
reference fields based on mass communication, contextualization may be 
viewed as both the goal of public media and a freeze of hierachies and 
hegemonies. The national contexts are challenged by regional dynamics, 
transborder online diasporas, and superplatforms that unite 
communication and services. Understanding contexts becomes more and 
more of a challenge, also due to the fact that many of them are closed 
for exploration, like (partly) China or (almost completely) North 
Korea. While big data studies seemed one of the responses to this 
challenge, there is growing understanding that, without context, 'data 
lose its meaning and value' (boyd&Crawford, 2012). How do we recreate 
context in actual communication - and also in our research? What are 
the rigorous procedures of involving contextual knowledge into the 
research designs, without destroying the replicability of the studies? 
And, overall, what do we consider 'the relevant context'?

We offer a great lineup of keynote speakers, among them Mark Deuze 
(the Netherlands), Mark Graham (OII, UK), Kai Hafez (U of Utrecht), 
Claudia Mellado (Chile), and Natalia Zubarevich (Russia). Also, we 
will have a range of round tables on China/India, Arab countries, and 
Russia/post-Soviet states as contexts of public and online 
communication, with invited guests from Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, 
Russia and other countries.

Publishing opportunities include a collection of papers in the 
Routledge Advances in Internationalizing Media Studies (SCOPUS) and a 
best paper publication in Digital Journalism (SCOPUS Q1). Also, 
subject to submissions, a thematic issue in Digital Journalism may be 
considered for publication.

The forms of participation include individual papers (full papers, 
short papers, extended abstracts), panels (up to 4 papers), and 
workshops (up to 10 people). The submission guidelines will be 
published on cmstw2020.org on November 15, 2019.

THE DEADLINE FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS IS JANUARY 15, 2020; the notification 
of acceptance will come on February 10, 2020.

The organizing committee will help with housing and visa invitations. 
We also pre-order weather for you :)

Please follow us on cmstw2020.org and send your queries to 
cmstw2020 at spbu.ru -

- yours,
Svetlana Bodrunova


--
Svetlana S. Bodrunova, Prof., D.Polit.Sci.
Head, Center for International Media Research
School of Journalism and Mass Communications,
St.Petersburg State University

+7 921 933 02 14
s.bodrunova at spbu.ru, spasibo-tebe at yandex.ru