[Commlist] CFP: Social Semiotics special edition: Political ideology in everyday social media use

*Social Semiotics Special Issue CFP: Political ideology in everyday 
social media use*

To be published in /Social Semiotics/, Taylor & Francis journal

Scholars have looked extensively at social media in terms of its 
potential to reinvigorate democratic participation and/ or bring new 
political voices into our civic sphere (Coffey and Woolworth 2004; 
Denisova 2019; Merrin 2019). But everyday social media use is less about 
voicing political views and more about engaging in the mundane, where in 
the matter of a few minutes we laugh along to memes and mash ups that 
ridicule the powerful, comment on shared music videos, read a food 
recipe and watch someone unbox a new pair of trainers. From the 
perspective of Critical Discourse Studies, social media brings the 
opportunity to look at the political and ideological in a different way. 
Here, we can critically consider how ideologies infuse the everyday and 
mundane forms of communication across and between platforms where we 
engage with and communicate about entertainment, family issues, 
celebrity and political gossip, transport, health, food, sport and 
leisure. In this special edition, we start from the perspective that 
this type of engagement is ideological, deeply inscribed with values and 
ideas. It is in everyday use where discourses are articulated, parodied, 
altered and/ or taken for granted. And it is this area our special issue 
critically explores.

Scholars have previously shown the need to look for the political and 
ideological in popular culture (Adorno 1991, Williams 1963). In Critical 
Discourse Studies, some recent special issues make the same case (Machin 
& Van Leeuwen 2016; Way 2019) based on the idea that it is in popular 
culture and the everyday where we most experience politics “as fun, as 
style, and simply as part of the taken for granted everyday world…. 
[though these] are infused by and shaped by, power relations and 
ideologies” (Machin 2013: 347). Our special issue differs from this 
previous work, looking specifically at social media. We consider how 
ideologies like neoliberalism, sexism, racism and populism (to name a 
few) are embedded in our everyday engagement with social media.

Papers are welcome which critically look at any social media platform 
and topic. Suggestions for critical reflection include:

Retail reviews

Food and restaurants

Film and television

Music videos

Diet and fitness

Sports

Travel destinations and tourism

Mash ups, memes, viral media about the powerful

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words in length, plus a short 
author biography to Dr Lyndon Way, Liverpool University at 
(Lyndon.way /at/ liverpool.ac.uk) and Professor Gwen Bouvier, Zhejiang 
University at (gwen.bouvier /at/ gmail.com) by 1 March2020. Notifications of 
acceptance will be sent out by 31 March2020.

Dates to remember:

1 March deadline for submitting abstract and biography

1 August deadline for submitting full-length paper for blind review

1 November submit final revised paper

January 2021 papers published

Please note than acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee 
publication. All submissions will undergo double blind peer review once 
completed articles are submitted.

References

Adorno, Theo. 1991. /The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass 
culture/, London: Routledge

Coffey, B., and S. Woolworth (2004), ‘Destroy the scum, and then neuter 
their families: The web forum as a vehicle for community discourse?’, 
/Social Science Journal/, 41(1): 1–14.

Denisova, Anastasia. 2019. /Internet Memes and Society: Social, 
Cultural, and Political Contexts/. Routledge: New York and London.

Machin, David. 2013. “What Is Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies?” 
/Critical Discourse Studies /10(4): 347– 355.

Machin, David and van Leeuwen, Theo (Eds). 2016.Multimodality, politics 
and ideology, /Journal of Language and Polit/ics 15(3).

Merrin, William. 2019. “President Troll: Trump, 4Chan and Memetic 
Warfare”. In /Trump’s Media War/ (Eds) Catherine Happer, Andrew Hoskins 
and William Merrin pp. 201-226. Palgrave Macmillan: Switzerland.

Way, Lyndon (Ed). 2019. The Politics of Sound: Intersections of Music, 
Discourse and Political Communication, /Journal of Language and Politics 
/18(4).

Williams, Raymond. 1963. /Culture and Society/, Harmondsworth: Penguin.


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