International Journal of Communication – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

CFP Refugee Integration in a Sharing Economy

Call for proposals: Special issue on Refugee Integration in a Sharing Economy: Collective action, Organizational Communication and Digital Technologies for the International Journal of Communication (IJoC). Deadline for abstracts: July 30, 2020.

Issue editors Amanda Alencar and Yijing Wang (Erasmus University Rotterdam) are seeking papers that contribute knowledge to how collective action is enabled in a sharing economy in support of refugee integration in a diversity of contexts and situations. This includes but is not limited to voluntary contribution to refugee management and care at all different levels, from the public sector organizations to private firms, to civil society and refugee-led initiatives and networks.

Potential interdisciplinary questions which can be answered are:

1. How does enabling collective action in a sharing economy contribute to resolving the challenge of refugee integration?
2. In areas of limited statehood, which mechanisms help ensure effective governance of displaced populations in a refugee crisis?
3. What forms of organizational communication and action in terms of refugee integration stimulate the emergence of an ad hoc governance structure in the sharing economy?
4. How does media representation of collective action affect the planning and preparation at the state- and organizational-level in refugees’ receiving countries?
5. To what extent are digital technologies being developed and mobilized by different actors involved in an ad hoc governance of refugee populations?
6. How can the public, private and NGO sector work together to effectively boost economic opportunities to both refugees and host communities as well as social cohesion?

CFP Mobilities, Communication & Asia: Postmodern Frameworks

Call for articles for special issue “MOBILITIES, COMMUNICATION AND ASIA: POSTCOLONIAL FRAMEWORKS” of International Journal of Communication
Edited by Mohan J. Dutta & Raka Shome, National University of Singapore

We are inviting high quality papers on mobilities and communication from interdisciplinary scholars working in the Asian context.

The global movement of capital, commodities, and labor is constituted amid political and economic structures that render salient certain meanings of mobility while at the same time erasing other possibilities for interpreting mobility. Further, the global movement of capital, while enabling and encouraging mobility for some, also render many others immobile, disconnected/erased from the possibilities of movement. To that extent, mobility and immobility are not binaries but are interrelated—an interrelation that expresses and captures the numerous desires and violences of globalization. The figure of the migrant and the various processes of migration make these relations visible while rendering invisible other imaginations of migrancy. Linked to this are mediated and communication practices—such as technology, films, music, social media, remittances, cultural commodities, and more—that play an intrinsic role in shaping and informing various types of migratory movements or lack therefor. Additionally, the transnational migration of communication practices themselves constitute new forms of mobilities and immobilities, agency and identity formations, imaginations and desires.

Communication is central to these above-mentioned processes. For example, technology firms are constantly developing new communication language through software that requires a constant flow of transnational expert workers who are often treated in problematic ways (in terms of cultural recognition and wages) in “host” nations. Similarly, finance capital globally circulates through communicative values and processes (including migrant remittances to their nation of “origin’—a process itself underwritten by non-western values of domesticity and familiality). Transnational movements of celebrities and popular culture (for instance, in Asia) serve diasporic populations in many parts of Asia that have implications for their migrant experience as well as the production of a transnational Asian identity. Disempowered and often stateless migrants (for instance migrant Bangladeshi workers in Asia) connect to or engage their music in their diasporic situations —to produce some sense of cultural security in an otherwise coercive exploitative condition (lacking decent food, shelter, wages and more).

Relations of gender, sexuality, religion, class and nationality are central considerations in these phenomena since migration itself is often wrought with gender and religious violences, discrimination and exploration of poor laborers, and the devaluing of peoples of particular nations in global migratory practices (for instance, White Europeans or Americans are usually seen as “expatriates” while the word migration is reserved for mobilities of non-western peoples even within non-western ‘host’ nations).

Communication Studies as a formal field has hardly paid attention these issues—issues that require urgent exploration from a communication perspective. Such an exploration will further move the field of Communication Studies into considerations of the many dilemmas and challenges of the 21st century that are grounded in the politics of migration.

This edited Special Section seeks to comprehend such phenomena, with specific attention to Asia. It will examine the interplay of communication (broadly considered)—particularly mediated practices—and im/mobilities, attending to how the intersection between the two illustrate the movement of people, labor, representations, commodities, technology and more, across global circuits of culture, economy, and geopolitics.

Submissions will be limited to 6000 words, all-inclusive

We first solicit detailed abstracts of approximate 500-600 words. Due: April 31, 2017. Please send abstract to Mohan Dutta at cnmmohan AT nus.edu.sg

Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by May 31, 2017.

Final papers due: July 31, 2017 Please submit to Mohan Dutta at cnmmohan AT nus.edu.sg

Please follow the author guidelines prepared by the International Journal of Communication.

CFP IJOC (Un)civil Society in Digital China

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

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

This special section 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:
o 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?
o 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?
o 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?
o Under what circumstances might incivility online prove advantageous for political or social change?
o 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 section 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) for the conference is February 15, 2015.

Proposed Schedule for IJoC Submissions
Abstract Deadline July 1, 2015
Notice of Abstract Acceptance August 1, 2015
Full Paper Deadline January 1, 2016

Paper Guidelines
o Abstracts submitted for pre-screening should be less than 500 words. Please send your abstract to Min Jiang and Ashley Esarey.
o Submitted papers will go through double-blind peer review.
o The maximum word count is 9,000 words (including the abstract, keywords, images with captions, references, and appendices, if any). Submitted full papers are not guaranteed acceptance.
o Formatting of the special section follows Author Guidelines of the International Journal of Communication (IJoC). Articles will be returned to authors if not APA (6th edition) compliant.