[Air-L] CFP: Convergence Special Issue on “Digital Placemaking”

[Erika Polson]

CFP: Convergence Special Issue - “Digital Placemaking”
Guest editors: Germaine Halegoua (University of Kansas, USA) and Erika
Polson (University of Denver, USA)

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: December 31, 2019
Deadline for Full Papers: May 1, 2020
Expected date of publication: April 2021

We invite submissions for a special issue of Convergence: The International
Journal of Research into New Media Technologies on the topic of Digital
Placemaking. As digital and physical environments converge, each
increasingly producing the norms and parameters of the other, it is
important to consider how the drive to create and control a sense of place
remains primary to how social actors identify with each other and express
their identities, and how communities organize to build more meaningful,
connected spaces. Instead of depleting a sense of place, the ability to
forge attachments to digital media environments and through digital
practices enables people to emplace themselves and others. The increasing
mobility of people, goods and services, information, and capital contribute
to the impression of a world in flux where the “space of flows” dominates
the “space of places,” while at the more personal scale, multiplying public
and private uses of digital media have produced varied discourses on the
potential for these practices to dissociate or liberate users from
co-present environments. The implication of these perspectives is that our
collective sense of place has been disrupted, leaving people unsure of
their belonging within conditions and boundaries that seem increasingly
fluid. While it is imperative to attend to the shifting social, economic,
and political conditions that give rise to such concerns, it is also
necessary to recognize the many ways people actually use digital media to
negotiate differential mobilities and become placemakers.

This special issue introduces and critically examines the concept of
“digital placemaking” as practices that create emotional attachments to
place through digital media use. As populations and the texts they produce
become increasingly mobile, such practices are proliferating, and a
striking array of applications and uses have emerged which exploit the
affordances of mobile and digital media to foster an ability to navigate,
understand, connect to, and gain a sense of belonging and familiarity in
place. Papers are invited to investigate the concept of “digital
placemaking” as both a theoretical and applied response to the spatial
fragmentation, emerging virtual and physical environments, and community
reorganizations thought to have accompanied the speed and scale of
globalization.

The editors welcome contributions that explore questions such as:

● How do people employ digital media to create and negotiate a new sense of
place within rapidly changing media landscapes and socio-spatial exchanges?
● How does digital placemaking as a research approach or theoretical
framework uncover novel socio-cultural-technical practices and
understandings of sense of place?
● How are boundary crossing and place transgressions implicated in tensions
related to tourism, gentrification, migration, and emerging media?
● How can scholars investigate digital placemaking to reflect nuances of
interrelated online and offline practices?
● What are key characteristics and configurations of digital placemaking
within particular communities or institutions?
● How can digital placemaking be employed as an innovative approach to
studying digital media technologies and practices?
● What does a focus on digital placemaking help us understand about issues
including:  mobile rights and risks associated with migration and diaspora;
creative tactics within social and mobile media regarding tourism and
travel; the design of physical places and experiences; and contested
mobilities based on social power and access to digital infrastructures?
● How does the concept or framework of digital placemaking uncover tactics
and forces that coordinate, govern, and express mobilities within digital
infrastructures and imaginaries?

We are open to a range of approaches in exploring this concept, and
particularly welcome submissions that address locations and digital
placemaking practices in the global south.

TO SUBMIT: Please send a 500-word abstract and a 100-word bio to the guest
editors at grhalegoua at ku.edu and epolson at du.edu by December 31, 2019
Authors of accepted abstracts will be contacted in early January and
invited to submit full contributions by May 1, 2020.

-- 
Erika Polson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Media, Film & Journalism Studies
University of Denver