Dear Colleagues,
Leslie Shade and I would like to invite
recommendations for media (videos, films, blogs,
or other multimedia and popular education media)
to be considered for review in a forthcoming
2010 special issue of the Canadian Journal of
Communication - Democratizing Communication
Policy in the Americas: Why It Matters
<http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/announcement/view/151>http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/announcement/view/151.
See CFP below for more information.
For consideration, send your recommendations
either to me
(<(becky.lentz /at/ mcgill.htm)>(becky.lentz /at/ mcgill.ca))
or to Leslie
(<(leslieshade /at/ gmail.htm)>(leslieshade /at/ gmail.com))
by January 1st, 2010. PLEASE place in your
Subject line the following: Recommendation for
Media Review in CJC Issue on Democratizing
Communication Policy in the Americas.
Thank you,
Becky Lentz and Leslie Shade
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) <http://(leslieshade /at/ gmail.com)>
Dr. Becky Lentz, McGill University,
<(becky.lentz /at/ mcgill.htm)>(becky.lentz /at/ mcgill.ca) <http://(becky.lentz /at/ mcgill.ca)>
