[ecrea] CFP Special Issue of Convergence Gamifying News

*CONVERGENCE**
**The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies*

*Special Issue CFP*
*Gamifying News: Playful approaches to public engagement*

*Guest Editors: Raul Ferrer-Conill (Karlstad University, Sweden), 
Maxwell Foxman (Columbia University, USA), Janet Jones (London South 
Bank University, UK), Tanja Sihvonen (University of Vaasa, Finland), and 
Marko Siitonen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)*

Gamified and playful output that interacts with users (no longer 
audiences) is used pervasively to engage publics with the news 
agenda.Much of what is now communicated at a societal level has been 
subverted by the mechanics of social interaction and game-play, 
challenging legacy publishers and broadcasters to engage anew with their 
audiences, especially millennials, a generation accustomed to digital 
interactivity. The quality of public discourse needs to be scrutinised 
in the context of the take-up of these new technologies and new formats 
of journalistic distribution.Digital and AI (artificial intelligence) 
hasthe power to reinvent engagement with the public sphere through 
playful, social and immersive encounters, with the potential to both 
enhance and to diminish the importance of the content.  As such, 
‘newsgames’, classified as a broad body of work produced at the 
intersection of videogames and journalism [1],present possibilities and 
limitations as they emerge as a more prominent platform.This special 
issue seeks to interrogate these trends by examining the growth of 
‘newsgames’ and playful approaches to journalism.

As a natural continuation of the long-term trend of seeing ‘news as 
entertainment’, playful content, distributed virally, can easily 
influence political discourse and election outcomes, marginalising 
conventional gatekeepers. In addition, news consumers, in a post-trust 
age, are less likely to adhere to a traditional understanding of 
journalistic quality, struggling with the difference between algorithmic 
and editorial content.This special issue aims to further explore and 
investigate these and other interrelated factors, and how they relate to 
a ‘fractured’ public sphere. An increase in online sources and 
commentary; the diminished status of the ‘expert’; the prevalence of 
self-affirming online communities slaved to the algorithmic logic of 
social media, alongside increased scepticism of established news media, 
all contributeto a shift in the way the public engages with news.

The editors welcome submissions exploring these areas but not limited to:

·Playful perspectives on journalism

·Game mechanics, interactive newscasting, and playful affordances

·The growing influence of viral newsgames and their role of reinforcing 
public opinion

·Challenges to journalistic ‘professionalism’ and ethical considerations 
regarding the gamification of news

·Trust in content that has been authenticated through the social sphere 
bypassing traditional news media

·Growth of news personalisation and the dramatisation of journalism

·Innovations in performance and modes of address to drive political 
engagement

·Factual storytelling in immersive virtual environments (IVEs)

·Attraction to news as spectacle and entertainment

·Affective and emotional journalism, and what that might mean for news 
reception

·The playful public sphere and (re)conceptualizations of publics

·Historical analyses of gamified and playful journalism

·Cultural components of play and journalism

·Critical approaches to gamifying the news

·News and artificial intelligence

·Fake news and information pollution as ‘dark play’

*Please send proposals of no more than 500 words 
to**(gamifyingnews /at/ gmail.com)* <mailto:(gamifyingnews /at/ gmail.com)>***by 
September 7, 2018. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by 
October 8, 2018 and invited to submit full manuscripts by April 2, 2019.*


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