Category: Publication opportunities

CFP LusoFrance: Cultural Productions by and about the Portugues and Lusodescendants in France

CALL FOR ARTICLES
For a special issue of The InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies
“LusoFrance: Cultural Productions by and about the Portuguese and Lusodescendants in France”

Since the nineties, the Portuguese in France can no longer be considered an invisible minority (Albano Cordeiro, Jean-Baptiste Pingault). Although they have long been the focus of scholarly inquiry in sociology (e.g. Michel Oriol, Maria Do Ceu Cunha, Maria Beatriz Rocha Trindade, Albano Cordeiro, Christine Volovitch-Tavares, Irène dos Santos, Jorge de la Barre, Manuel Antunes da Cunha, Maria Baganha, etc.), political science, history (e.g. Victor Pereira, Cristina Clímaco) and linguistics (e.g. Michele Koven, Roselyne de Villanova), their cultural productions have remained understudied.

In order to explore the diversity of cultural productions of “Luso-France,” we wish to expand the field of cultural studies on the Portuguese diaspora in France in this special issue. To date, scholarship in this emerging area of inquiry has addressed literature (Ana Paula Coutinho, Isabelle Marques, Marie Isabelle Vieira, Martine F. Wagner), immigrant life stories (Elsa Lechner), film and documentary (José Cardoso Marques, João Sousa Cardoso), poetry (Dominique Stoenesco), drama (Graça dos Santos), the graphic novel (Michael Gott), and humor (Michèle Koven and Isabelle Marques). We seek papers that expand on this approach, welcoming work that explores how the cultural productions of the Portuguese in France can illuminate contemporary debates in Francophone, postcolonial and migration studies, and more specifically on issues related to national, transnational, diasporic, and ethnic identities, gender and sexuality, travel writing, (post)memory, history, and trauma. We invite original contributions with a multidisciplinary approach on the diverse genres of Portuguese and lusodescendants’ cultural productions in France (literature, migrant and life writing, film, poetry, theater, comics and graphic novels, humor, multimedia, music).

Unpublished and original papers in Portuguese, Spanish, English or French are welcome. Possible areas for consideration include, but are not limited to:
– Memories of o salto, clandestinity, border crossings, travel writing
– Exile, nostalgia, saudade
– Working lives of immigrants, labor bodies, disability
– Political engagement, écriture engagée, writing politics
– Representations of identity, hybridity, transnationalism, sexuality, LGBT
– Transgenerational memories, postmemory of the dictatorship and Portugal’s Salazar
– The Portuguese and lusodescendants in history, national, regional or local French history
– The status of women, women writing, gender
– The myth of return, return narrations, road movies
– Languages, dialects, multilingualism, lyrics, music, humor
– Images of the Portuguese in comics, photographic, film, digital representations

Submissions: All articles will be double-blind peer refereed. An invitation to submit a paper to the special issue in no way guarantees that the paper will be published; this is dependent on the review process. Prospective contributors should email all inquiries and submissions to the issue editors, Martine F. Wagner and Michèle Koven. Please send an abstract (400-500 words) with a bio-paragraph by June 30, 2015. Articles will be due by December 1, 2015.

Details: Manuscripts must be submitted electronically as word documents. When submitting your paper, please use the following checklist to match your submission with the editorial guidelines: 1. On a separate page, please include the following author’s information: name, address, and email address, professional affiliation, biographical note (maximum 150 words) 2. Title of the paper 3. Abstract (400-500 words), and Keywords (5-7 maximum, separated by commas) 4. Research Paper: a) Length: 20-25 pages maximum. This length includes only the text of the article and not the abstract, references, notes and appendices. b) Paper should conform to the MLA preparation guidelines for punctuation, spelling, capitalization, italics, abbreviations, headings, subheadings, quotations, numbers, tables, figures, citations, and references. c) Papers should use: double-spaced text – 12-point standard font -(Times, Times Roman)- 1 inch (2,54cm) margins (i.e., top, bottom, left, right) – italics, as needed, but no underlining – page numbers, in the upper right corner of the page header; – section headers, as needed- endnotes – any acknowledgements of persons, institutions, or granting agencies should be brief. – tables, figures and other artwork: Number tables, figures or illustrations consecutively throughout the text. Each should include a title. All labels on figures and illustrations must be typeset. Images must be accompanied with proof of copyright permission.

CFP IJOC Section on Net Neutrality

International Journal of Communication Call for Papers: Special Section on Net Neutrality
The Work of Internet Freedoms: Network Neutrality and the Labors of Policy Advocacy in the U.S.

Special Section Editors
Becky Lentz, McGill University
Allison Perlman, University of California, Irvine

Deadline for submissions:  August 31, 2015

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in February 2015 to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, and thus to secure Network Neutrality and the principle of nondiscrimination at its center, it delivered an important victory to the millions of people who had insisted that strong Network Neutrality protections were crucial for an open, democratic Internet. This victory owed in part to the tremendous outpouring of public support for Network Neutrality, which itself owed to the ongoing labors of community organizers, issue campaigners, funders, scholar activists, public interest lawyers and many others to make visible how issues of media policy fundamentally affect issues of social justice and political change.

For this special section of the International Journal of Communication, we seek articles that foreground the multiple labors involved in achieving policy victories like the Network Neutrality Order. In this section, we aim to make visible the often invisible work required to effect lawmaking, judicial rulings, and regulations in the public interest.

We specifically wish to publish historically and theoretically informed articles that are attentive to examples of multiple forms of advocacy work that include but are not limited to the following: strategic research, community organizing and mobilizing, popular education, issue campaigns, donor advising and support, lobbying, legal interventions, regulatory filings, and public education campaigns. Also of interest are historically and theoretically-informed papers on the political economy of policy advocacy, especially those attentive to the multiple forms of capital (financial, informational, reputational, cultural) required for advocacy work. Of particular interest is research that documents the multiple challenges involved in advocacy work on the Network Neutrality issue. In addition, we seek analyses of the materials and artifacts used in organizing, mobilizing, and lobbying for Network Neutrality, including studies of the rhetorical appeals and visual culture deployed by advocates.

We additionally seek theoretically informed analyses of how news sources—especially non-corporate, civil society outlets—reported on and framed the Network Neutrality issue, as a strategic feature of advocacy work.

Finally, we seek ideas for book reviews relevant to the topic of the special section (maximum 1,500 words including references; guidelines available).

Note: For this special section, we will not be seeking legal interpretations and policy analyses of the Network Neutrality debate itself; sufficient work already exists in this area in media and communication studies journals as well as law journals. Nor are we seeking normative papers advancing solutions to achieve Network Neutrality. Instead, our focus is on scholarship that foregrounds the varieties of work required to intervene on behalf of the public interest.

If interested, please submit full articles by August 31, 2015. Articles should be no more than 8,000 words (all-inclusive) and should follow the APA-6th Edition style guide. Articles should be submitted to the International Journal of Communication and specify “Net Neutrality Special Section” in your entry.  See author guidelines.

Please direct any questions about topics, formats, article length and expected submission standards to the special section editors Becky Lentz or Allison Perlman.  Be sure to specify “Net Neutrality Special Section” in your email subject line.

Call for Nominations: Communication Yearbook Editor

The International Communication Association Publications Committee is soliciting nominations for the editor of the Communication Yearbook (CY). Self-nominations are welcome. The appointment is for four years and begins in August/September, 2015.

Communication Yearbook will be published in four issues per year, with a rapid online publication model, and bound together as a final volume at the end of the year. Each volume will publish state-of-the-art essays and synthesis of scholarship. A new section to be developed by the future editor with the support of the ICA Board of Directors will include topical review essays of significant publications in the field.

It is both highly international and interdisciplinary in scope, with authors and chapters representing the broad global interests of the International Communication Association. The new editor of Communication Yearbook enjoys the opportunity to help shape the future of this important publication outlet, which will transition more formally into a journal format for Communication Yearbook 41-44 (2016-2019) enjoying the full electronic editorial support of a publisher.

A complete nomination package includes a letter of application from the candidate which should include a mission statement for the editorship; the candidate’s vitae; 2-3 letters of support from published scholars familiar with the candidate’s work, experience and suitability for the task of journal editing; and a letter of institutional support from the candidate’s home institution. Responsibilities are detailed in the ICA Publication Manual.

Editors of ICA publications should reflect and seek to enhance the diversity of the Association in terms of their interest areas, gender, ethnicity, and national origin.

Please send your nomination package at your earliest convenience to Michael Haley, ICA Executive Director. Review of packets will begin on 1 April 2015, and continue until the position is filled.

CFP JIIC issue: Memory, Culture and Difference

Journal of Intercultural and International Communication
Special issue: Memory, Culture, and Difference

Special issue editors:
Jolanta A. Drzewiecka, The E. R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University
Susan Owen, Communication Studies, University of Puget Sound
Peter Ehrenhaus, Communication and Theater, Pacific Lutheran University

Recent events highlight the continuing importance of memory and forgetting to negotiations of identities and allegiances cross cultural borders.

Most recently, the protests against the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and reactions to them, exposed different memories, forgetting, and willful ignorance of violence against African Americans. Last year, scholars working at the US Holocaust Museum concluded after long research that many more ordinary people participated in the genocide of Jews in many more sites and in mundane ways than had been previously thought. But this is not how Shoah is remembered. Such examples abound and highlight difference, hegemonic closure and contestation as key factors shaping memories.

Memories define who belongs and who does not, as well as who and what are worth remembering, and who and what are not. Creative, limited and purposeful, memory serves present needs and expresses points of contention, anxiety and negotiation within and among groups. Some memories attain cultural legitimacy and become interpretive frames through which groups shape their identities and their engagement in other cultural practices. There are memories that luxuriate in public repetition and affirmation by official commemorations. Other memories are forgotten and/or purposefully pushed away, ignored, and denied only to reemerge at cultural junctures for however brief contentious moments. At the same time, counter-memories hold tenaciously against prevailing versions of the past.

Memory has not been a key focus area for intercultural scholars, with some notable exceptions. Thus, this special issue will address intersections between and among memory, culture and difference. We seek submissions that explicate memory as a site of struggle, exchange, engagement, and contestation in ways that highlight intercultural communication. Submissions should propose theoretical innovations on the basis of critical and in-depth analyses written in an engaging style. They should address culture as a fluid zone of struggle over meaning and difference as relational and dynamic including race, ethnicity, gender, national, sexual orientation, class and other relations.

Submissions addressing the following and other topics are welcome:
Memories and group identities, belonging, and relations;
Communities of memory;
Place and emplacement of memories: museums, memorials, ruins and other memory sites;
Media representations (news and entertainment);
National, cosmopolitan, transnational, and diasporic memories: how memories circulate, intersect, and contest each other, how they are rearticulated, how they shape belonging within different scales (local, national, regional, global), how they reaffirm or contest these scales;
Relationships between history and memory;
Affect, power and ideology;
Technologies of memory;
Memories and their political uses;
Remembering, forgetting, amnesia;
Cultural trauma

Submission information
Manuscripts are due by June 1st, 2015. Manuscripts must be double-spaced throughout, prepared in accordance with APA 6th ed. and should not exceed 9000 words, inclusive of notes and reference matter. To facilitate the blind, peer review process, all identifying references to the author(s) should be removed. Manuscripts need to adhere to the instructions for authors for the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and uploaded to ScholarOne Manuscripts. We ask that submitting author(s) indicate on the title page “for consideration in the special issue on memory.” Direct inquiries regarding the special issue to Jolanta A. Drzewiecka, A. Susan Owen, and Peter Ehrenhaus at memoryspecialissue@gmail.com

CFP International Communication and Development

Call for papers
Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition 2016: Volume 9, Issue 1
International Communication and Development

Guest Editors:
Dr. Jean-Jacques Bogui
Dr. Carmen Rico
Dr. Christian Agbobli
Dr. Oumar Kane
(Université du Québec à Montréal)

In the late 1950s, a reflection on the potential of the media as a vector for development opened a communicational perspective on international development issues. For the proponents of this approach, it was enough to inject into the social body a certain amount of technical knowledge, which facilitated the flow of information causing a positive reaction of Third World populations to social, technological, and economic progress. Critics of this approach were numerous and took shape in the response of dependency theories. The emergence of international communication and development research field was partly the result of this heated debate.

This field of research has experienced a second wave due to work of the MacBride Commission initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The work of this committee focused on communication systems, such as the impact of international communication on national development and influence of transnational corporations in Third World countries. The oppressive cultural North/South relations resulting from the stranglehold of North media organizations over those of Third World has attracted attention. The commission called for a North/South dialogue to promote the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) and encouraged the promotion of alternative media as opposed to mass media. The 1980 MacBride report entitled Many Voices One World that resulted from the work of the commission crystallized debates and issues around the question of an information and communication order at the core of which were the international news agencies.

In the early 1990s, a new approach to the field of international communication and development emphasized the importance of telecommunications infrastructure in the development process. The World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva (Switzerland) in 2003 and in Tunis (Tunisia) in 2005 gave prominent attention to the question of the digital divide between the North and the South. Thus, an important debate appears in this field. On one hand, views based on econometric studies defend the thesis that there is a correlation between the rate of equipment telecommunications infrastructure and economic development, given that information and communication technologies are another chance to allow Third World countries to catch up with the West (leapfrogging). On the other hand, critics of a techno-deterministic utopia fiercely oppose this theoretical approach.

In the last few years we assisted to a broadening of the problematization with the inclusion of social and political aspects (sustainable development, gender issues, human rights, ICT and social movements, public sphere, governance, postcolonial studies, etc.).

This special issue dedicated to international communication and development will revisit this field of study. It will also address new approaches that have emerged in the context of globalization and emerging technologies. This special issue seeks theoretical, analytic, critical, empirical, and comparative submissions that specifically discuss, but are not limited to, the following topics:
-Information Technology and development
-Digital divide and digital solidarity
-Digital technologies and world conflicts
-Communication and international politics
-Globalization of information
-Communication and cultural diversity
-Imperialism and cultural domination

The Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition welcomes high-quality, original submissions on related topics to the above theme. Authors are strongly encouraged to contribute to the development of communication and media theories, report empirical and analytical research or present case studies, use critical discourses, and/or set out innovative research methodologies. The Journal is a bilingual (English and French) open-access online academic refereed publication that aims to advance research and understanding of communication and media in Canada and around the globe.

Deadline: March 15th, 2016
Submissions: Papers (5,000 to 7,500 words), review articles of more than one book (2,500 to 3,000 words), and book reviews (1,000 to 1,200 words).
Method:  All manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Word Document attachments, directly to Dr. Jean-Jacques Bogui.
Guidelines Available
Decision: April 30th, 2016
Publication: June 15th, 2016

CFP Multicultural Media and Immigrant Integration

CALL FOR PAPERS
Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition Vol 8, Iss 2 (2015) Multicultural Media and Immigrant Integration
Guest Editor: Dr. Rukhsana Ahmed, University of Ottawa

Multicultural media, also known as “ethnic media”, consisting of print, broadcast, and electronic media and intended for ethno-cultural communities, are important resources for immigrants. These diverse forms of media play an important role in meeting different information needs of immigrants.
For example, multicultural media are important sources of, and channels for the delivery of settlement, government, ethno-cultural, and home country news, information, and services for immigrants.

The proliferation of multicultural media during recent decades has produced much scholarly and journalistic works, which have focused on multicultural media’s function in helping immigrants adapt and adjust to the new host country and preserve their cultural heritage, as well as in contributing to their social isolation in the host country. The role of multicultural media in immigrants’ inclusion/segregation in the host society remains a growing concern among researchers and practitioners. With the changing media landscape through the rise of the Internet, the proliferation of digital media and the growth of mobile devices, as well as international migration increasing in scale, it has become all the more important for researchers and practitioners to further discuss, debate, and document different aspects of the role of multicultural media in the integration of immigrants.

This special issue of the Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition aims to address opportunities and challenges that multicultural media represent for immigrant integration, from a multidisciplinary perspective, including communication, media studies, information studies, geography, political science, political economy, sociology, law, international relations, and other fields. To that end, the special issue will consider theoretical, analytic, critical, empirical, and comparative submissions on topics that include, but not limited to:
▪ challenges of multicultural media ▪ concepts and theories relevant to the study of multicultural media ▪ immigrants’ access to, and experiences with multicultural media ▪ multicultural media and immigrants’ civic engagement ▪ multicultural media and immigrants’ healthcare, socio-economic, and security issues ▪ multicultural media and social inclusion: sense of belonging and community building ▪ multicultural media uses and gratifications ▪ multiculturalism, integration, and social cohesion ▪ the role of multicultural media in immigrants’ integration into society

The Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition welcomes high- quality, original submissions on related topics to the above theme. Authors are strongly encouraged to contribute to the development of communication and media theories, report empirical and analytical research or present case studies, use critical discourses, and/or set out innovative research methodologies. The Journal is bilingual (English and French) open-access online academic refereed publication that aims to advance research and understanding of communication and media in Canada and around the globe.

Deadline: September 15th, 2015
Submissions: Papers (5,000 to 7,500 words), review articles of more than one book (2,500 to 3,000 words), and book reviews (1,000 to 1,200 words).
Method: All manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Word Document attachments to Dr. Rukhsana Ahmed.
Guidelines available
Decision: October 30th, 2015
Publication: December 15th, 2015

CFP Separately Together: Ethnographic Engagements of the City

Call for Chapters: Separately Together: Ethnographic Engagements of the City
Editors: Ahmet Atay, College of Wooster
Jay Brower, Western Connecticut State University

As communicative, cultural, and political space, cities present a confluence of racial, ethnic, national, sexual and socioeconomic experiences around which human communities take shape. This shaping forms a germinal point of mass cultural life.

City planners contribute to this process by deciding where buildings will go and neighborhoods rise, and, as constituent features, who we interact with, how we get there, and why we choose city life. Urban geography, then, becomes the framework around which expressions of complex human living constitute socially located performances generated by bodies in city space. Flowing from these experiences, boundaries and possibilities arise that define cultures of “the city.” In this edited book, contributors will focus on theorizing the notion of “the city” as a communicatively constituted cultural space. Submissions will develop situated, reflexive ethnographic examinations of “the city” that show the complex, multidimensional ways in which cities produce social meaning. Contributions that feature U.S. domestic and/or international city sites may explore, but are not limited to, the following areas of focus:
– Cities as organic space
– Experiences of class, race, nationality and diaspora
– Experiences of gender and sexuality with the city landscape
– Global cities and movement
– Cities in decay
– Cities and consumer culture
– City and the notion of differences
– Cities and borders (both physical and cultural)
– Mapping the city, visualizing space
– City and leisure
– City and environment
– City and technology/mechanization
– City and everyday life
– City and memory
– City and urban economics
– City and the production of economic class
– Urban lives
– City and travel/transportation
– Walking in the city
– City and labor history

Please send proposals of no more than 500 words to Ahmet Atay by April 1, 2015.

Chapter submissions of approximately 6,000 words in length will be submitted by August 1, 2015 with citations prepared in the MLA style. The editors will review submitted chapters. We welcome inquiries from authors.

CFP Theorizing Homogenizing Discourse: Japan

Call for Chapters
Theorizing Homogenizing Discourse: Japan, a Case Study

Anthology Editors:
Satoshi Toyosaki, Ph.D.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Shinsuke Eguchi, Ph.D.
University of New Mexico

Japan is heterogeneous and culturally diverse. However, Japan has socially, culturally, politically, and intellectually constructed and, some cases, insisted its distinct and homogeneous identity. Recently, such a national identity construction has been rightfully questioned and challenged by Japan’s culturally diverse groups and research activities. The primary focus of this anthology lies at the mysterious and discursive system that regenerates the illusion of Japan as a homogenous nation. We look for chapters that, first, investigate the discursive push-and-pull between the homogenizing and heterogenizing discourses at various cultural fronts, particularly from the critical intercultural communication perspective, and that, second, examine and critique those homogenizing discourses. We hope that this anthology helps theorize the complex push-and-pull of homogenizing and heterogenizing discourses focusing on their co-constitutive and responsive relations, instead of situating them simply as the oppositional.

Topics/research sites/areas of interest include, but are not limited to, gender/sex, LGBTQQ, Japanese regions, Gaijin identity, multiracial/national Japanese, Zainichi-identities, media, sport fandom, tourism, foreign labor, and anti-/pro-Japan rhetoric. Research sites (data sources) can be both Japan-domestic and international. We are working toward making a persuasive proposal for this anthology. In so doing, we seek exciting chapter contributors, innovative research projects, and theoretically rigorous chapters. For more details, please don’t hesitate to contact us at the aforementioned email addresses. Please send us your 200-word abstract that identifies your research goal(s), data/artifacts, and methodological approach(es) by March 15th, 2015. Your abstract needs to be saved in MS word format and sent to both Satoshi Toyosaki and Shinsuke Eguchi. The anticipated timeline for a complete manuscript is July 31, 2015.

CFP (Un)Civil Society in Digital China

Call for Proposals
(Un)civil Society in Digital China
Special Issue for Publication in the International Journal of Communication

Editors
Min Jiang (Ph.D.), Associate Professor of Communication Studies, UNC Charlotte, USA
Ashley Esarey (Ph.D.), Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Alberta, Canada

Rationale
Civil society’s role in furthering democratization and the development of a public sphere has long attracted scholars whose work has traced the historical roots of civil society in China and celebrated its emergence offline and online. While decades of economic reforms have empowered myriad civil society organizations, volatile contention has arisen among social groups along ideological, class, ethnic, racial and regional fault lines. Uncivil exchanges, amplified by the Internet and social media, often work at cross purposes and fail to produce consensus or solutions to public problems. These disputes, and the underlying social/political/cultural schisms, threaten to undermine constructive citizen engagement and the promise of civil society in China. They also challenge the notion of a unified civil society standing in solidarity against a monolithic, authoritarian state.

Consider the following examples:
–   The Internet flame war between Han Han and Fang Zhouzi that delegitimized the notion of “public intellectual” in China
–   Left-Right debate amongst China’s intellectual communities that spill over into street brawls
–   Vigilantism and breaches of privacy (i.e. instances of “human flesh search engine” and the Guo Meimei Red Cross scandal)
–   Online conflicts between “haves” and “have-nots” amidst extreme inequality
–   Virtual contention between Han and ethnic minorities over the status of Tibet and Xinjiang
–   Racial discourse on mixed-race Chinese and immigrants
–   Clashes over Taiwan’s “sunflower movement” expressed on the Internet
–   Divergent online opinions about the “umbrella movement” in Hong Kong

This special issue invites contributors to unpack the multilayered, multidimensional reality and contradictions that define the Chinese Internet, focusing on the big-picture ramifications of online contention. With a population of nearly 650 million, Chinese Internet users are more diverse than the tech-savvy, liberal elites who first went online two decades ago. The groups active online today include politically conservative, nationalistic, apathetic, and even reactionary individuals. They also evince complicated attitudes towards the state, business and other demographic segments. The complex make-up of Chinese civil society and the nature of its self-representation thus challenge, on the one hand, an idealized notion of civil society that is independent from the private sphere, government and business, and on the other, the implicit assumption prevalent in Chinese Internet studies of a liberal subject demanding social justice, media freedom and political reform.

Questions for contributors:
–   What are the characteristics of Chinese civil society? What is its potential or limitations? Does the proliferation of the Internet in China necessarily empower civil society in China? Is the opposite possible?
–   Is civil society always civil? Can it be uncivil, fractious and even reactionary? How does the Chinese Internet amplify or mitigate (un)civil tendencies? To what extent is online public debate or collective action becoming more fragmentary, working at cross purposes, or resulting in “echo chamber” effects and polarization? Do nationalistic, jingoistic and even reactionary forces overwhelm and dominate “civil” discourse?
–   Are the “uncivil” tendencies of the Chinese Internet inevitable in a society composed of increasingly diverse groups? To what extent do commercial and state institutions influence uncivil tendencies online through intervention or even manipulation? What roles do powerful Internet businesses and elite personalities play?
–   Under what circumstances might incivility online prove advantageous for political or social change?
–   What evidence do we have for (un)civil society in China? Examples might include the formation of informal groups and formal organizations, discourses, and their intersection with collective action, social movements, and other social behavior.

Contributions to this special issue will map a spectrum of key actors, issues, and orientations of a contentious civil society that has been submerged under a larger body of research on China and established democracies that assume state-society confrontation and fail to explore intra-societal tensions. Collectively, the contributions promise to produce a theoretically-interesting and empirically rich body of work that expands and deepens Chinese Internet research dominated by work focused on such topics as Chinese Internet censorship and propaganda, online activism, civic associations, deliberation and online culture. Insights generated from this special issue will in turn inform and advance research on civil society by debating its essence and examining the conditions conducive or unfavorable to its growth, with implications going beyond China. Although contributions will emphasize what polarizes Chinese society and sometimes seem to tear it apart, we welcome contributions that analyze the prospects for rising above incivility, bridging sociopolitical schisms, and building consensus without compromising self-expression and personal security.

Affiliated Conference:
We encourage interested contributors to attend the 13th Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) that includes as its theme “(un)civil society in digital China.” The conference will be held at the University of Alberta, Canada on May 27-28, 2015. The deadline for submitting paper abstracts (400 words) is February 15, 2015.

Proposed Schedule
Abstract Deadline Jul 1, 2015
Notice of Abstract Acceptance Aug 1, 2015
Full Paper Deadline Jan 1, 2016
Reviews Deadline Mar 1, 2016
Revisions Deadline May 1, 2016
Finalized Paper Jul 1, 2016

Paper Guidelines
–   Submitted papers will go through double-blind peer review.
–   The maximum word count is 9,000 words (including the abstract, keywords, images with captions, references, and appendices, if any).
–   Abstracts submitted for pre-screening should be less than 500 words.
–   Submitted full papers are not guaranteed acceptance.
–   Formatting of the special issue follows the general guidelines of the International Journal of Communication (IJoC).

CFP Communication Yearbook 40

Communication Yearbook 40
A Publication of the International Communication Association
Editor: Elisia L. Cohen
Deadline: February 15, 2015
NOTE: Deadline extended to March 1, 2015

CY 40 is a forum for the exchange of interdisciplinary and internationally diverse scholarship relating to communication in its many forms. Specifically, we are seeking state-of-the-discipline literature reviews, meta-analyses, and essays that advance knowledge and understanding of communication systems, processes, and impacts. Submitted manuscripts should provide a rigorous assessment of the status, critical issues and needed directions of a theory or body of research; offer new communication theory or additional insights into communication systems, processes, policies and impacts; and/or expand the boundaries of the discipline. In all cases, submissions should be comprehensive and thoughtful in their synthesis and analysis, and situate a body of scholarship within a larger intellectual context. For CY 40, the editorial board also welcomes essays that advance knowledge and understanding of communication research methodologies and applications.

Details
*Submit manuscripts electronically via a Word attachment to Elisia L. Cohen, Editor
*Submissions for CY 40 will be considered from January 1, 2015 through February 15, 2015
*Use APA style, 6th edition
*Include a cover letter indicating how the manuscript addresses the CY 40 call for papers
*Prepare manuscripts for blind review, removing all identifiers
*Include a title page as a separate document that includes contact information for all authors
*Following Communication Yearbook’s tradition of considering lengthier manuscripts, initial manuscript submissions may range from 6,500 to 13,000 words (including tables, endnotes, references).
*Incomplete submissions not adhering to the above journal guidelines will be returned to authors for revision.

For more information about CY 40 or this call for submissions, please contact Dr. Elisia L. Cohen, Editor, Communication Yearbook.