Calls for papers

 

Calls for Papers

 

 MIA 147 (May 2013)

 

Lifestyle Media and Social Transformation in Asia 

Theme Editors: Fran Martin, Tania Lewis and John Sinclair

If there is one trend that could be said to characterise Asian late modernities, it is the shared experience of hyper-accelerated social, cultural and economic transformation. Consumer culture is playing an increasing role in countries once dominated by socialism. Neo-liberal economic and social policies increasingly are being adopted by authoritarian statist regimes, with liberalisation processes restructuring national economies and, to varying degrees, transforming state structures. More and more, governments in Asia are addressing their citizens as individualised, sovereign consumers with reflexive ‘choices’ about their lifestyles and identities. One of the correlates of these processes of (neo)liberalisation has been the emergence of new formations of consumption-oriented middle classes with lifestyle aspirations that are shaped by national, regional and global influences. How are everyday conceptions and experiences of identity and citizenship being transformed by emerging and rearticulated cultures of modernity across the region? 

This issue will examine the growing role of lifestyle media and culture in Asia, drawing upon the insights of existing research on lifestyle culture and consumption but extending its focus by relocating such concerns within the context of Asia and within a trans-national comparative frame, thus shifting the study of lifestyle away from the Western-centric approach that has dominated the field to date. 

The editors welcome the submission of abstracts proposing papers dealing with the following texts and concepts in Asian contexts (including but not limited to Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines):

• lifestyle media, from fashion magazines to makeover TV to internet style guides

• food, celebrity chefs and the cultivation of taste

• the role of lifestyle experts and cultural intermediaries in Asian lifestyle media from ‘supernannies’ to dating advisers to style gurus 

• transnational media and the emergence of regional style cultures

• green consumption and the LOHAS movement in Asia

• new identities in lifestyle and consumer cultur

• constructing lifestyles in home design and real estate marketing

• the place of religion in life advice media

• health and fitness discourses in lifestyle media

• travel advice and lifestyle tourism

• historical accounts of the development of lifestyle media in Asia

 

Please submit 200-word abstracts to Dion Kagan: dkagan@unimelb.edu.au.

Abstracts due 15 April, 2012

Final articles (5000 words maximum) will be due 15 August 2012

 

 

Abstracts due 30 April, 2012
Final articles (5000 words maximum) will due 15 August 2012

 

 

 

 

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MIA 146 (February 2013)

Investigating Public Service Media as Hybrid Arrangements

Theme Editors: Maureen Burns and Gay Hawkins

 

Searching for the ‘core’ of public service media, trying to define them against their ‘others’ or even locating them within a Habermasian public sphere can often obscure the flexibility and multiplicity of public service media practices and their dynamics of ongoing transformation. Instead, in this issue we understand public service media as increasingly being organised as a series of hybrid arrangements that function at any given time according to diverse technologies, politics, people and economies. In order to tease out the specificities of these arrangements, this issue will aim to undo some familiar dichotomies through which public service media have been defended, such as state versus market, public versus private and national versus international, and the issue will thus focus on three themes:
 
• Hybrid economic arrangements (e.g. public/commercial; exclusivity/dispersal): Economic arrangements that include funding, content sales, the building of markets/ publics and distribution methods are hybrid in public service media. What does it mean to speak of the public service media as a brand, and of content as a commodity, in the same breath as speaking of public service goals and ideals? In this theme, we call for papers that address the multiple ways in which public service medias have combined commercial and public activities in hybrid arrangements, and whether this rethinking of economic hybridity can help to redefine public service media.
 
• Hybrid political and technological arrangements (e.g. national/ international/global; regional/national; broadcasting/narrowcasting): In this theme, we rethink intranational, transnational and global approaches as hybrid arrangements to manage the tensions of producing global media within the constraints posed by national remits. How might we use these hybrid arrangements to rethink public service medias? And how are nations constructed within various public service media environments?
 
• Hybrid audience arrangements (e.g. citizen/consumer; immediate/archival; producer/consumer): This theme will investigate the ways in which public service media imagine hybrid imaginings of audiences, and will examine the practices and contributions of members of audiences/markets/publics to the refiguring of public service media. In this theme, papers will examine instances of hybridity that arise when public service media strive to retain their heritage brand values while encouraging dialogic interaction.
 
Abstracts that address one of the three themes should be sent to Gay Hawkins at g.hawkins@uq.edu.au or to Maureen Burns at mburns2@uq.edu.au.
 
Abstracts due 15 April, 2012
Final articles will be due 15 July 2012
 
 
 
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MIA 145 (November 2012)

Rethinking ethnography: Implications of the Digital for Contemporary Ethnographic Practice


Theme Editors: Larissa Hjorth, Heather Horst and Jo Tacchi

Over two decades since the ‘ethnographic turn’ in media and cultural studies, ethnography has grown to encompass many different approaches and definitions within numerous fields – cultural, media, internet and games studies. Traditionally a hallmark of research in disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, ethnographic approaches have expanded across a variety of disciplines to study online communities, mobile and social media to media production and game design. Ethnography has been useful for conceptualising and analysing the often uneven and messy role of ‘participation’ from various perspectives (i.e. players, users, producers) and attendant cultural practices across online and offline spaces.
    With the increasing presence of media practices in contemporary society, ethnographers have turned their gaze to the symbolic and cultural dimensions of digital media and technologies. Ethnographic approaches have helped to understand the dynamic cultural and social dimensions of media practice. Moving beyond hyperbolic discussions of ‘the new’ and rigid distinctions between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’, scholars utilise ethnographic approaches to develop nuanced understandings of cultural practice, cultural artefacts, rituals, language, play, sociality, civic engagement and a range of other areas that span the range of experiences of digital media and technologies in everyday life.
    This special issue seeks to reflect upon the changing nature of the ethnographic approach and its impact upon the study of various forms of digital media. We seek papers from scholars in a variety of disciplines that seek to not only address ethnographic practice now but also to contextualise this phenomenon in terms of broader media and historical shifts both within the Asia-Pacific region and internationally. We seek various disciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural case studies on rethinking ethnography and engagement with the following questions. What are the promises and limits of ethnography and the ethnographic approach? How are ethnographic traditions being (re-)shaped by the interdisciplinary approaches?

Please submit 250-word abstracts to Heather Horst (heather.horst@rmit.edu.au) and Larissa Hjorth (larissa.hjorth@rmit.edu.au) by 30 March 2012.

Final papers (5000 words maximum) are due 30 May 2012.

Media International Australia publishes new scholarly and applied research on the media, telecommunications, and the cultural industries, and the policy regimes within which they operate. Broadly inclusive and interdisciplinary, the journal welcomes the writing of history, theory and analysis, commentary and debate. While its primary focus is Australia, the journal also aims to provide an international perspective
 

 

General Articles

In addition to its quarterly themed sections, each issue of MIA also contains several peer-reviewed general articles, dealing with issues relevant to the journal's constituency.

The journal's editor, Professor Sue Turnbull, is now calling for general articles on a diverse range of areas, including:

  • cultural and media policy
  • media industries
  • internet, online gaming and online media
  • cultural and creative industries
  • the media and society
  • Indigenous media and arts issues
  • television, radio and film
  • new media and new technology
  • media regulation
  • cultural institutions and education
  • globalisation and networks

Please contact Susan Jarvis, Production Editor, Media International Australia, at: s.jarvis@griffith.edu.au

or

Professor Sue Turnbull, Editor, Media International Australia, at:  sturnbul@uow.edu.au

 

Themed Issues

MIA is also calling for proposals for themed issues to be published in 2013. We are particularly interested in areas where new and dynamic research is occuring and in subjects of contemporary relevance.
 

Submitting a Theme Issue Proposal

The MIA Board is keen to encourage proposals for themed issues on topics that will be of interest and value to the journal’s readership.
MIA has a broad remit across the field of media and communications in Australia and welcomes papers with an international focus. Once submitted, proposals are reviewed by the Board as a whole. While some submissions may be accepted as they stand, in some cases modifications may be required. Occasionally, the Board may determine that a proposal is not suitable for MIA. 

Editors

MIA prefers proposals that come from two or three editors, as this ensures a division of labour and a fall-back position if, for any reason, one editor has to drop out at some time during the process. 

Proposal

The proposal should consist of a submission of about 500 words, which explains what the issue will be about, looks at why this topic is of relevance and importance, and outlines the key issues to be addressed, together with a list of possible contributors (at least six) and short abstracts of their proposed papers.

Call for Papers

Once the proposal is accepted and a possible publication date established, MIA would normally include a call for papers in a relevant issue to attract more submissions to the issue.  Should the theme issue editors not be able to include all such submissions (for reasons of length), such papers may be included in the general papers section of subsequent issues of MIA.

 

 

Please contact MIA's Editor, Professor Sue Turnbull, to discuss possible proposals at:  sturnbul@uow.edu.au
or send proposals to:
 
Susan Jarvis,
Production editor, Media International Australia, at s.jarvis@griffith.edu.au

 

 

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