CFP Mobile phones in Asia

Call for papers: Special Issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

From SMS to Smartphones: Tracing the Impact of the Mobile Phone in Asia
Publication date: October 2013

The mobile phone has had a discernible impact on Asia, given its affordability, versatility and ubiquity as the key platform for computer-mediated communication. It has been widely deployed in virtually every aspect of everyday life, be it in commerce, politics, governance, education, religion, entertainment or recreation. The diversity and complexity of this fast-growing region has birthed innovative and ground-breaking applications of the mobile phone. While basic feature phones are already a mainstay in both rural and urban Asia, the smartphone is now rapidly diffusing through the region at a rate exceeding the rest of the world. Bringing the idea of the ubiquitous web to fruition, the smartphone’s heightened connectivity and thriving app market are enabling yet more revolutionary uses of the mobile phone. While the rising adoption of the smartphone burgeons with potential for civic action, commercial enterprise, employment and educational opportunities and social service provision, challenges are also emerging for consumers, industries and governments alike.

The early phase of mobile communication research was influenced by studies and theorization from North America and Europe. Spurred on by the wide diffusion of mobiles globally, research is now very much seeking to understand the international underpinnings of this form of mediated communication, especially as it increasingly blurs the lines between computers, Internet, and phones. Over the past decade, Asian research has been important in addressing the rapid diffusion, transformation, and shift in mobiles. Such research is growing, but is still relatively incipient. Against this backdrop, this special issue seeks to bring together the latest research findings, regional understandings, conceptualizations, and theories of the mobile in Asia. Article proposals are sought for topics including but not limited to the following:

*          does a digital divide exist in Asia with regard to mobile phone penetration and usage trends and if so, how can and should they be remedied?
*          what are the implications of the development of mobiles – especially smartphones and mobile Internet – for contemporary media in Asia?
*          how is the growing proliferation of the smartphone facilitating unprecedented forms and scales of communication?
*          how do issues of broad infrastructure provisions and market pricing influence the behaviour of mobile phone users?
*          how are the location based services offered by smartphones altering user behaviour and lifestyles?
*          how does mobile Internet use complement and possibly complicate fixed location Internet use?
*          what implications does the growth of smartphone apps have for the cultural complexion of Asian countries?
*          how is the mobile phone serving the needs of marginalised communities in Asia?
*          to what extent do smartphones and the behaviour which they enable test the boundaries of existing regulatory frameworks?
*          how does the rising ubiquity of the smartphone and by implication, that of always-on, always-available Internet access challenge prevailing theoretical frameworks relating to inter alia, technology acceptance, mobility, communication, social influence and identity?

Please submit an 800 word abstract and a 100 word biographical note to both special issue editors as an e-mail attachment no later than 30 June 2012.  Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by 15 July 2012 and invited to submit a full paper. Manuscripts should be no more than 8,000 words, including notes and references, conform to APA style, and submitted by 30 October, 2012.  All papers will be subject to anonymous peer review following submission.

Important dates
Deadline for abstracts                  30 June 2012
Decisions to authors                      15 July 2012
Full paper submission                   30 October 2012
Decisions                                          30 January 2013
Revised paper submission           30 April 2013
Final proofs                                      30 June 2013
Issue publication                            October 2013

Special issue editors
Sun Sun LIM, National University of Singapore, sunlim@nus.edu.sg
Gerard Goggin, University of Sydney, gerard.goggin@usyd.edu.au

CFP Connexions Journal

connexions • international professional communication journal | revista de comunicação profissional internacional places great emphasis on Special Issues as a unique means of promoting high-quality research in thematic areas related to international professional communication.

The journal is accepting proposals from Guest Editors for:
*Special Issue 2(2): December 2013
*Special Issue 3(2): December 2014
*Special Issue 4(1): June 2015
*Special Issue 4(2): December 2015
Issue 3(1): June 2014 will be composed of regular submissions.

Please send your proposals for Special Issues to Rosário Durão at   editor@connexionsjournal.org.

This page provides guidelines to help you organize proposals for Special Issues.

General requirements
*Special Issues are organized by a minimum of 2, and a maximum of 3 Guest Editors.
*Guest Editors are recognized experts in the area they are proposing for the Special Issue.
*Guest Editors are from different institutions and, preferably, countries.
*Special Issues reflect the international aims and scope of the journal. Therefore, Special Issues include a maximum of 3 papers from a particular country. Normally, the journal publishes 5 to 7 papers per issue.

J Intercultural Comm Res CFP

The Journal of Intercultural Communication Research (JICR), a publication of the World Communication Association focuses on quantitative, qualitative, critical, and rhetorical research related to intercultural and cross-cultural communication. JICR publishes manuscripts that report on the interrelation between culture and communication within a single nation/culture or across nations/cultures. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts via electronic attachment to be considered for publication in volumes 40-42 (2011-2013). Manuscripts should be submitted via Manuscript Central. Manuscripts should be no more than 25 Pages 12 pt., double-spaced, 1 inch margins), not counting references, tables or figures, and must conform to the requirements of the most recent Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA). Research on the use of human participants must have been conducted in compliance with acceptable nation or international standards. (e.g., regulations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) on voluntary participation, informed consent, deception, and debriefing. The manuscript should not have been published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. A detachable cover page should include the manuscript title, each author’s name mailing address, email address, telephone and fax numbers. Author identification should include each author’s current affiliation and address, highest degree earned, the institution granting the degree, and the year granted. A 50-100 word abstract and a list of keywords should follow the title page. Table and figures must be in APA style, and on separate pages and no included in the text. They should be understandable independent of the text, but their approximate position should be indicated in the text and they should be referred to in the text. Authors are responsible for supplying copies of figures in finished form suitable for reproduction.

Dr. Stephen Croucher (Editor) & Kelsey Duarte (Editorial Assistant)

CFP international political communication

Call for Chapter: International Political Communication edited volume

The impact and significance of global political communication has become unavoidable over the last decade as the war on terrorism played out on the international mass media. Much of the research in this area has been driven by data derived from western and developed countries. It is quite plausible that as the political, economic, and cultural milieu of a nation changes, the form of political communication that is possible there also changes. Considering the growing impact of new communication technology and globalization of media, it is very important for the field to begin looking at the ways in which political communication is divergent as well as comparable in different countries. This edited book will examine the interaction of media and politics in diverse countries by drawing on global scholarship in political communication.

We are soliciting chapters from scholars studying specific regions and countries. The chapters will be designed as case studies that detail the way politics is communicated and talked about through the media in these territories. Authors are asked to focus particularly on theoretical analysis as well as an assessment of the impact of communication technology advances and their impact on traditional modes of communication. One clear example of the change wrought by new technologies has occurred throughout the Middle East. In the case of the Arab Spring, the traditional models of top down communication were largely superseded by the mass use of the Internet and cell phones. Furthermore, the effect was heightened by a strong element of cross-fertilization of ideas across the region which was facilitated both through the Internet as well as Arabic language mass media. The influence of regional, common-language mass media in these protests was also an indication of the increasing influence of regional content providers as opposed to the traditional impact of English language transnational media.

The juxtaposition of these case studies sets the stage for learning from the way culture, history and media interact to create the particular manifestations of political communication in countries around the world. In addition, the volume is designed to examine the application and validity of popular media theories across different cultural and media contexts. In this case, the emphasis placed on theoretical analysis in the case studies will illuminate the way in which a theory that was created in a Western context can be applied and/or extended through its use in understanding an Asian or African location. In addition, readers would be introduced to theory being constructed in other regions of the world.

If interested, please submit an abstract (500 words) and CV by June 30, 2012. Completed chapters of 4000 – 5000 words will need to be submitted by September 30, 2012. Please send all abstracts and inquiries to Saman Talib at samantalib1@hotmail.com

CFP: New Media

Call for essays: Culture Theory and Critique special themed issue on The “Newness” of New Media

Editors: Ilana Gershon, Indiana University (igershon@indiana.edu) and Joshua A. Bell, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution (bellja@si.edu)

Outside of the West, communities have traditionally innovated and engaged different forms of media, whether using textiles, dog’s teeth, valuables or abacus. These myriad forms remain integral to the networks of communications and relations. Today the new media technologies of the Internet, mobile phones and social networking sites provide another venue for innovation and continuity. Within the Western context, historians of media have demonstrated how new media sparks exaggerated fears that intimate connections will be harmed when a technology is introduced. Thus part of the “newness” of new media is an often-repeated expectation that new forms of representation will disrupt established social organization. In this special issue, we hope to explore how the “newness” of new media is experienced outside of Euro-America, ranging from how communities have and are responding to the introduction of writing to the introduction of mobile phones and social networking sites. This has a strong historical component; many of our questions arise from the aftermath of colonial encounters. Two themes guide these ethnographic explorations: the “newness” of new media for dialogue and the “newness” of new media for representation.

The first theme explores the ways new media is understood to change how dialogue and dissemination are intertwined. In Speaking Into the Air, John Durham Peters argues that in the Western context, people historically feared new media because every new medium alters a precarious balance between dialogue (dyadic conversational turn-taking) and dissemination (broadcasting). As new media becomes incorporated into daily life, each technology becomes valued accordingly. People see each new technology as changing how dialogue or dissemination take place, which introduce new possibilities and new risks to communication. In this issue, authors ask: how are the ways people’s historically situated understandings of how dialogue and dissemination should be interwoven affecting how people responded to new media? How are people’s epistemological assumptions and social organization shaping how they incorporate particular communicative technologies?

The second theme examines how new media become grounds by which communities can challenge misrepresentations, and assert their identities. If new media enable new forms of collaboration and participation, how then have they enabled communities to manage more effectively how their representations travel? How has this shifted historically from colonial to postcolonial moments? What new forms of creative play have emerged in the process, and how have older forms been extended? If the materiality of media matters as argued by Webb Keane and others, how have these new media forms altered or continued existing representational economies? Whose networks are being extended or cut in the process? To what extent is new media understood as re-structuring previously established forms of exchange and knowledge circulation? How have these evolving relationships shifted the ways in which scholarship is being, and or should be done? We welcome essays that address either of these themes.  The questions are not meant to be proscriptive, however, and we welcome queries about possible article content and submissions from graduate students.

Completed essays need to be submitted by June 1, 2012 at which time the editors will make initial decisions. The length of final essays are to be 5,000-7,000 words including notes and please follow the citation style found here.

Send abstracts and essays to Ilana Gershon (igershon@indiana.edu), Joshua A. Bell (bellja@si.edu) or Jennifer Heusel, editorial assistant (ctcjourn@indiana.edu).

Culture, Theory and Critique is a refereed, interdisciplinary journal for the transformation and development of critical theories in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to critique and reconstruct theories by interfacing them with one another and by relocating them in new sites and conjunctures. Culture, Theory and Critique‘s approach to theoretical refinement and innovation is one of interaction and hybridization via recontextualization and transculturation.

CFP Cutting Edge Technologies in Higher Ed

Call for book proposals
CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION series

Book proposals for inclusion in the series Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education are solicited. We hope you will consider submitting one.

Editorial Objectives
The objective of this series is to provide new research on important emerging technologies in higher education, including both teaching and administrative applications from a variety of methodological approaches. The series encompasses both theoretical and empirical developments and provides evidence from a range of disciplines throughout the world. It seeks to reflect on and shape current higher educational policies and practices regarding new technologies.

Topicality
The ability to identify and exploit new technologies in higher education is increasingly important as competitive and cost factors are impacted in an increasingly globalized arena. Today’s learners are digital natives who thrive in technologically mediated environments and interfaces. Organizations in the second decade of the 21st century are increasingly flat without the top-down structure of the past. Per force, they require staff who are adept in new modes of technology-supported collaboration. This series endeavors to assist higher educational institutions to stay on the cutting-edge of technological innovation.

More details are available at:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/books/series.htm?id=2044-9968 .

To discuss a book concept you can contact Charles Wankel, the series editor, at wankelc@stjohns.edu , Skype: mgtprof , or phone: 1-908-218-5646.

Submission of a book proposal should use the attached form, perhaps saved as a PDF. It should be sent to both Charles Wankel wankelc@stjohns.edu , Chris Hart (Emerald Education Editor) chart@emeraldinsight.com , and Thomas Dark tdark@emeraldinsight.com .

CFP Cultural Mapping

Call for Submissions: Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry

Cultural mapping, which spans many academic disciplines and methodologies, is informed by the observation that cultural phenomena are distributed spatially and that people experience the symbolic resources of their communities in spatial terms. While cultural mapping is firmly grounded in the world of academic disciplines and inquiry, it has a pragmatic dimension as well. In the Creative City Network of Canada’s Cultural Mapping Toolkit, for example, Cultural Mapping is defined pragmatically as “a process of collecting, recording, analyzing and synthesizing information in order to describe the cultural resources, networks, links and patterns of usage of a given community or group.” Cultural mapping is generally regarded as a systematic tool to identify and record local cultural assets—and these assets are thought of as “tangible” or quantitative (physical spaces, cultural organizations, public forms of promotion and self-representation, programs, cultural industries, natural heritage, cultural heritage, people, and resources) and “intangible” or qualitative (community narratives, values, relationships, rituals, traditions, history, shared sense of place). Together these assets help define communities in terms of cultural identity, vitality, sense of place, and quality of life.

Cultural mapping, then, is a theoretically informed research practice and a highly pragmatic planning and development tool.  But cultural mapping can also be viewed as a form of cultural production and expression. Mapping can itself be cultural—that is, animated by artists and artistic approaches to mapping collective and competing senses of place, space, and community. The Folkvine project in Florida (and the work of the Florida Research Ensemble generally); the memory mapping work of Marlene Creates and Ernie Kroeger; the storymapping of First Nations experiences in small cities documented by the Small Cities CURA; Map Art and Diagram Art from the Surrealists to the Situationists to the work of contemporary artists; Sound Mapping, sonic geographies, and acoustic ecology research: these alternative approaches to mapping culture and community are helping to expand and refine the possibilities for mapping as a form of cultural inquiry.

The editors of Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry seek submissions that address cultural mapping in all its forms and applications. Abstracts and inquiries should be sent by March 30, 2012 to Dr. W.F. Garrett-Petts, Faculty of Arts, Thompson Rivers University: petts@tru.ca

Editors for the refereed book publication (to be published jointly by the Centro de Estudos Sociais at the University of Coimbra, Textual Studies in Canada and the Small Cities Community-University Research Alliance): David MacLennan, W.F. Garrett-Petts, and Nancy Duxbury.

Centro de Estudos Sociais: www.ces.uc.pt

The Small Cities CURA: www.smallcities.ca

CFP Futures of Communication

CFP: Futures of Communication

communication +1 invites submissions for its inaugural issue, entitled Futures of Communication

We seek works that will pronounce or propose futures for the study of communication by pushing beyond the borders of established research programs.  To that end, this issue intends to feature writings that promise to raise new questions about communication as well as suggest lines of inquiry rethematizing communication as constitutive of our social being in all its articulations.

Our hope is to encourage interdisciplinary perspectives that foreground mediation as the primary area of analysis. Exploratory studies or reflections on emergent theories and practices regarding mediation are particularly welcome.

Please submit a proposal of 500 words or less by March 2nd, 2012 to [communicationplusone at gmail.com]. Final drafts will be due June 15th, 2012, with an expected publication in August.

Although there is no set word limit, suggested length for the final submission is between 4500 and 7000 words.

For more information about the journal please visit scholarworks.

For questions about the journal or the CFP, please write us at  [communicationplusone at gmail.com]

Public Anthropology book competition

The California Series in Public Anthropology is continuing its International Competition in 2012. It seeks proposals for short books oriented toward undergraduates that focus on how social scientists are facilitating social change. We are looking for accessible, grounded accounts that present compelling stories, stories that inspire others.

The proposals should describe a book that will be relatively short – around 100 pages – with a personal touch that captures the lives of people. The core of the book should involve stories of one or more social scientists as change agents, as making a difference in the world.

The University of California Press in association with the Center for a Public Anthropology will award publishing contracts for up to three such book proposals independent of whether the manuscripts themselves have been completed. The proposals can describe work the author wishes to undertake in the near future.

Interested individuals should submit a 3-4,000 word overview of their proposed manuscript detailing (a) the problem addressed as well as (b) a summary of what each chapter covers. The proposal should be written in a manner that non-academic readers find interesting and thought-provoking.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS MARCH 1, 2012

Submissions should be emailed to: bookseries@publicanthropology.org with the relevant material enclosed as attachments.

Naomi Schneider and Rob Borofsky, Co-Editors, California Series in Public Anthropology

The Center for a Public Anthropology is a non-profit organization that encourages scholars and their students to address public problems in public ways.

Comm Yearbook CFP

CALL FOR PAPERS

Communication Yearbook 37
A Publication of the International Communication Association
Editor: Elisia L. Cohen

CY 37 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.
Details
*       Submit manuscripts electronically via a Word attachment to Elisia L. Cohen, Editor, at CommYear@uky.edu
*       Submissions for CY 37 will be considered from October 15, 2011 through February 15, 2012
*       Use APA style, 6th edition
*       Include a cover letter indicating how the manuscript addresses the CY 37 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 journal guidelines will be returned to authors for revision.
For more information about CY 37 or this call for submissions, please contact Dr. Cohen at commyear@uky.edu