Tag: Electronic Journal of Communication

CFP Risk, Crisis, Emergency & Disaster: On Discourse, Materiality & Consequentiality of Communication

Call for submissions:
ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, SPECIAL ISSUE:
Risk, Crisis, Emergency, and Disaster: On discourse, materiality, and consequentiality of communication
Edited by Mariaelena Bartesaghi
University of South Florida

Risk, crisis, emergency, and disaster are phenomena increasingly at the forefront of contemporary life. As communication scholars, we appreciate how these terms underscore and complicate the nexus of the material — as threats to life, habitat, and social system– and the interpretive, as terms that constitute, assess, and in turn convey messages about actionable information in moments of uncertainty. Yet these terms are used somewhat synonymously and index processes of decision and sense making that are often referred to transparently as well as from post facto standpoints.

Research addressing risk and crisis is often dependent on analyses of post facto accounts, when the outcome of the episode is already known. Systematic studies of communication during emergency, crisis, and disasters are relatively few, thus obscuring the “in the moment” negotiations of those making sense of emergent situations, under conditions when timeliness may have life or death implications. Terms like “risk” or “disaster” in risk and crisis communication appear as if transparent, with seemingly agreed upon ontologies of what constitutes these constructs. This appearance is misleading, for risk and disaster are already evaluations, that is, they are post facto accounts, justifications of outcomes, or prescriptions for future planning. They are semantically tied endpoints rather than processes or dynamics and thus implicate the question “What went wrong?”

In this special issue, we focus instead on risk, emergency, crisis, and disaster as emergent, contingent, and shifting in the very communication intended to define, address, and manage them. In so doing, we invite authors to consider the way, in the words of Karl Weick, “small events can have disproportionately large effects” as those who are responsible for responding, managing, negotiating, and communicating under conditions of ambiguity orient to and arrive at definitions of the situation as they attempt to act within it.

Possible topics for manuscripts include:
• studies of spoken and written discourse related to risk assessment, management, and decision making
• analyses of the dynamics of policy making
• negotiation of meaning among experts, stakeholders, and/or decision makers in knowledge production about crises, disasters, risks, and/or emergencies
• discourse analysis of documents, frameworks, and policies related to risk, crisis, emergency, and/or disaster
• organizational sensemaking studies
• case studies of crisis/risk/emergency/disaster discourse or interaction in the moment

Send completed manuscripts (8,000 words max, plus references) to the issue editor Mariaelena Bartesaghi by January 10, 2016. Send queries to the same email address.
Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines set forth in the APA, 6th Edition.

These fictions we call disciplines

An article growing out of research started as a Fellow at the Collegium de Lyon in 2009 has just been published:

Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2012). These fictions we call disciplines. Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication, 22(3-4). Available from: http://www.cios.org/www/ejcmain.htm

Abstract: Accepting that disciplines are social constructions implies expanding current practice in four directions: incorporating disciplinary history, cognate disciplines, international variations, and rival subdisciplines. Intercultural Communication serves as a concrete case study for how these implications play out. Consideration of the broader impact of these issues on the future of social construction research leads to concluding discussion of the characteristics required of more adequately prepared scholars.

Here’s a quote relevant to my work with the Center for Intercultural Dialogue:

“There can be no more literal form of alien knowledge than that produced by foreign scholars. Their research agendas have different histories, so they have developed different traditions of investigation, whether methods, theories, or topics. One result is that foreign research can be difficult to understand, requiring time and effort spent developing familiarity with the vocabulary used and assumptions made. Yet the result repays the time and effort: just as looking at the past reveals paths not taken, so does looking at research conducted in other countries.”

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

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CFP Culture, Technology, Globalization

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS — Special Issue: Culture, Technology and Globalization in the Information Age
Issue Editor: Shaheed Nick Mohammed, Pennsylvania State University at Altoona

Culture as lived experience and academic concept exists and evolves under the pressure of global trends in the modern information age. Outdated notions of culture as a set of parochial markers of identity lose their relevance in a world where identities are not only hybrid, but also fluid and (often deliberately) constructed from multiple competing influences. Technologies of the information age enable cultures to exist outside of the confines of geography, history and politics traditionally associated with cultural emergence and maintenance. These technologies foster transnational and diasporic communities, enabling traditional migrants to reconstruct the traditions of home wherever they may wander. At the same time, these technologies also enable non-traditional groups with members of diverse geographic and historic backgrounds to evolve into their own “cultures” that feature membership, participation, mythology and lore in evolving forms.

The Electronic Journal of Communication invites papers on the multiple intersections of Culture, Technology and Globalization in the Information Age for an upcoming special themed issue to be published in early 2013.   Manuscripts may take a variety of empirical or theoretical perspectives; topics may include, but are not restricted to, the following areas:
*  virtual diasporas,
*  identity and technology,
*  hybridity and group/identity construction,
*  “culture” in the Information Age,
*  ethnogenesis and imagined communities.

Regardless of the specific topic, special emphasis should be placed on fundamental social changes that arise from the increasingly important role of information technologies in defining and transforming human culture.  For the full call, see here.  Address all manuscripts and queries to Shaheed Nick Mohammed. Authors who would like to discuss paper ideas are encouraged to contact the editor.