[Air-L] CfP Special Issue: ‘Pop Politics on a Mutable Screen’

[Cristina Miguel]

Dear all,

I am happy to share the Call for Papers for the Special Issue: ‘Pop Politics on a Mutable Screen’ on Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook (https://www.intellectbooks.com/northern-lights-film-media-studies-yearbook).

Special Issue: ‘Pop Politics on a Mutable Screen’

The contemporary challenges facing the political culture are to be seen as risks to the well-being and proper functioning of democratic systems. A functioning democracy requires that the role of the media, as vehicles of political socialization, but also as instruments of participation and public opinion, be taken into account. Consequently, the media are seen as both parts of the problem and part of the solution. The scope of the Special Issue, ‘Pop Politics on a Mutable Screen’, attempts to broaden the vision of political communication beyond hard news and to consider that the messages received by the audience increasingly include soft news and media associated with entertainment and popular culture. From cinema and television to video games, through the different social platforms and the figure of the prosumer.

For this thematic issue, we invite theoretical and empirical contributions that explore how technological change affects and is affected by political communication processes and what characteristics make up the politainment. We would like to explore a wide range of topics involving political communication, entertainment, digital engagement, platformization, infotainment, screen time and alternative forms of communication as their central themes.

Manuscripts that address some of the following thematic lines will be accepted, although the editors will be open to accepting and/or discussing any submission within the spirit of this call for papers:

• Audiovisual content platforms with politainment formats, selective consumption, and social audiences.
• Viral political content distributed through social media and platforms.
• Gamification, politicking and digital games with political content.
• Myth and ideology in contemporary video games
• Ideological polarization, political spectacularization and hate speech through the reception of information on social networks.
• Social algorithms in personalized information dissemination of spectacular political content.
• Complexity and political discourses in entertainment contexts.
• Mobilization and democratic constraints in the new digital ecosystem of the ideological polarization
• Strategic use of entertainment in social networks for online campaigning and political engagement.
• Democratic consequences and citizen perception of politainment.
• The role of the prosumer of political infotainment on the internet.
• Characteristics, transmedia narratives and formats of the new political fiction in cinema and television.
• Political storytelling: storytelling by politicians for strategic purposes.
• Music entertainment to generate engagement among social audiences and other uses of music by political parties.
• New strategies in digital campaigns, disguised advertising through infotainment, and gate-watching techniques to generate campaign content.
• Political personification of politics and appearance of the political figure in unusual media and formats.
• Representation of politicians in political infotainment content.
• Emergence of political movements in new media.
• Technification of politics.
• Political ethics in infotainment.

This guest issue thus explores new lines of work, perspectives, strategies and positionings, and reflects on the possibilities they offer for defining future theoretical, methodological, and active pathways within a communicative field characterized by its continuous evolution in an increasingly uncertain and changing context, but in which the figure of the media and the prosumer is positioned as key elements for the democratization of politics.

Abstracts of 400–500 words, together with a brief biographical note, should be submitted by 1 October 2022. Please email these directly to belen.puebla at urjc.es<mailto:belen.puebla at urjc.es> and sgomez at uva.es<mailto:sgomez at uva.es>
Full papers of 6500–7000 words are due on 15 December 2022.

Best wishes,

Cristina Miguel

Senior Lecturer
University of Gothenburg