[ecrea] Call for Papers: Canadian Journal of Communication Special Issue: Democratizing Communication Policy in the Americas: Why It Matters

> Call for Papers: Canadian Journal of Communication
>
> Special Issue: Democratizing Communication 
> Policy in the Americas: Why It Matters
>
> Deadline for full papers December 15, 2009; publication date Fall 2010.
>
> Communication policy is an often important but 
> overlooked topic ? a blind spot - in much social 
> policy research and public discourse. Media and 
> telecommunications systems have become so 
> fundamental, ubiquitous and pervasive that we 
> often take them for granted as enablers, and 
> nothing more, of many other freedoms, rights, 
> and capabilities. Many do not realize the extent 
> to which policies concerning communication 
> resources are quite vulnerable to fluctuating 
> corporate and government interests.
>
> This ?knowledge gap? is what this special issue 
> of the CJC seeks to address: how do 
> communication policies affect economic, social 
> justice and human rights, and what are civil 
> society organizations in the Americas doing 
> about this? For example, how do the supposed 
> decline of traditional news media such as 
> newspapers, struggles over copyright, the 
> emergence of new ways of communicating online, 
> questions about who owns or controls the 
> internet, or access to the information we need, 
> relate to social policy concerns such as 
> sustainable development, immigration, 
> environmental degradation, labor rights, gender 
> equity, and other concerns across the Americas? 
> What do any of these struggles have in common 
> related to media, communication, and internet policies?
>
> With these ideas in mind, we seek two types of 
> submissions from concerned experts working 
> either in academic or non-academic settings in the Americas:
>
> ?   Policy Contexts (i.e., Enabling/Disabling 
> Legal and Regulatory Environments): Short 
> syntheses of the current state of play re 
> communication policy that includes attention to 
> the full spectrum of convergent policy issues 
> such as broadcasting, telecommunications, 
> information (i.e., intellectual property rights 
> and access to information laws), and internet 
> governance policies in each of the following 
> regions: North America (Canada and the U.S.); 
> Mexico and Central America; the Caribbean; 
> Spanish-speaking Latin America; and Brazil.
>
> ?    Civil Society Responses: Research 
> illuminating either failed (and why) or 
> successful (and how) civil society engagement 
> related any of the previously listed 
> communication and social policy areas in terms 
> of making policy making actors, processes or 
> institutions more transparent, representative, 
> and accountable to public vs. corporate 
> interests. Simply put, we seek to know why and 
> how communication policies matter to a variety 
> of social policy concerns and how civil society 
> actors are working to effect communication 
> policy change in a variety of contexts.
>
> For this special issue, and given our interest 
> in linking media and communications with social 
> policy more generally, we are also interested 
> primarily in research that is informed by 
> critical theory, social justice and/or human 
> rights frameworks and that features 
> praxis-oriented research capturing the various 
> challenges and/or opportunities for 
> public-interest oriented interventions in policy 
> making processes across the Americas.
>
> Full-length papers (@7,000-9,000 words) in 
> English or French should be submitted 
> electronically following the guidelines laid out 
> on the CJC submissions website 
> (<http://www.cjc-online.ca/submissions.php>http://www.cjc-online.ca/submissions.php). 
> Make sure to write in all caps "COMM POLICY" in 
> the Comments to the Editor field, and also to 
> include it on the cover page of your article as 
> well. Please do not include your name on the cover page.
>
> Comments and queries can be sent to one or both of the special issue editors:
>
> Dr. Leslie Regan Shade, Concordia University, 
> <(leslieshade /at/ gmail.htm)>(leslieshade /at/ gmail.com)
> Dr. Becky Lentz, McGill University, 
> <(becky.lentz /at/ mcgill.htm)>(becky.lentz /at/ mcgill.ca)

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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