[Commlist] Call for Papers - "Habitual New Media" - Journal of Communications and Languages

“HABITUAL NEW MEDIA”

Journal of Communications and Languages, nº 55, 2021.


https://www.icnova.fcsh.unl.pt/en/2021/03/08/call-for-papers-rcl-no-55-habitual-new-media-may-15-2021/ 
<https://www.icnova.fcsh.unl.pt/en/2021/03/08/call-for-papers-rcl-no-55-habitual-new-media-may-15-2021/>

https://www.fcsh.unl.pt/rcl/index.php/rcl/index 
<https://www.fcsh.unl.pt/rcl/index.php/rcl/index>

*
*

*“What it means when the media moves from the new to the habitual—when 
our bodies become archives of supposedly obsolescent media, streaming, 
updating, sharing, saving.”*

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, in ``Updating/to Remain the Same /(MIT Press, 
2016), argues that our media “become more important when they appear to 
be of no importance - when they move from the 'new' to the ‘habitual’”. 
Technologies such as smartphones are no longer surprising to us, they 
have been absorbed into our lives in such a way that “we become our 
machines: we transmit “live”, update, capture, share, connect, save, 
delete and track”(from the introduction).

Chun interprets theincorporation of social networks in our habits as a 
defining concept of the present. “Networks have been central to the rise 
of neoliberalism, replacing 'society' with groups of individuals 
(...)Habit is central to the inversion of privacy and advertising that 
drives neoliberalism and networks”. It is in this field, for example, 
that Natalie Bookchin's artistic work expands individual expressions 
that embody this paradoxical intimate exposure in the visual digital flow.


The issue of "habitus", as a concept like in Pierre Bourdieu, places it 
in a more general social context, foreshadowing and consolidating the 
influence and complexity of the media in our lives, making them as 
omnipresent as almost involuntary. Roland Barthes, in the face of 
photography, in his idea of the invisibility of the signifier, also 
reveals a notion of“habit”. Pedro Miguel Frade in “As Figuras do 
Espanto” (ASA, 1992) reminds us of a moment when photography was still a 
technology that caused strangeness, where thinking “the modernity of the 
gaze” was also a “continuous and cumulative effect” (p.7) of what tends 
to remain obscure. Cultural technologies can be paradoxically surprising 
when viewed from the perspective of novelty or persistence.


The collective awareness of the political uses of new “habitual” 
technologies precipitated the first digital social movements of the 21st 
century ten years ago, such as the “Arab Springs”, “M12M” in Portugal, 
“Movimiento 15M” in Spain, or “Occupy WS Movement '' from New York, USA 
(Castells, 2013). Smartphones, “internet cafes'' connected with digital 
social networks spread tweets, images and videos on YouTube, based on 
participatory structures, making them political and destabilizing a 
global order with their protests. These movements surprised and 
liberated digital practices, as the reactivation of Ivan Illich's 
concept of “vernacular” (Illich, 1980), by Peter Snowdon in “The people 
is not an image - Vernacular Video after the Arab Springs” (Verso Books, 
2020) that punctuateda moment in recent digitally mediated History. 
Since then, paradoxical digital lives have evolved and “habitual new 
media'' complexified.


However, with the pandemic moment, contemporary modes of existence have 
raised such mediations as globally evident. The weaknesses exposed in 
real and organic life now appear to be mediated in the coexistence, but 
also in communication and even in the hypothesis of contact, through 
digital existence and technological mediation of the “habitual new 
media”. In the context of the pandemic, “life on screen” becomes the 
canon of contemporary existence.




*This number seeks to collect contributions on:*

  * “habitual new media” cultural mediations, focusing on the individual
    or the small collective, which relate to this perspective of digital
    intimacy in the contemporary;
  * macro perspectives within the scope of Media Theories, on the
    relationship between progress and obsolescence of cultural
    technologies, or reflections on digital networks and their impact on
    the reproduction of control systems or the creation of resistance
    and solidarity movements;
  * critical perspectives on the impact of the current pandemic context
    on cultural media and mediations, within the scope of Cultural
    Analytics. (Manovich, 2020).
  * analysis of these themes in different segments and communities,
    particularly in minorities or vulnerable groups, and digital
    projects to overcome this context;
  * historical perspectives on cultural media and their relationship
    with the concept of “habit” and progress, such as photography,
    cinema, sound technologies or others, and moments of tension
    “between medias”;
  * artistic and creative practices that address these contexts, in
    visual arts, cinema but also sonic, multimedia or web art expressions;
  * digital ethnographies under these themes, focusing online experiences.
  * recent perspectives of the different digital social movements of
    2011, their mediations and their impacts, but also of recent digital
    social movements, anchored online, such as #metoo or #BLM, or #XR
    (Extinction Rebellion) and their digital practices or artivist
    expressions.

Articles can be written in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese and 
will be subjected to blind peer review. Visual essays will also be 
accepted. Formatting must be done in accordance with the journal’s 
submission guidelines and the submission via the OJS platform by *May 
15, 2021*.*No payment from the authors will be required.*

For inquiries, please contact editor Madalena Miranda: 
((miranda.madalena /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(miranda.madalena /at/ gmail.com)>)

Guidelines for submission and instruction for authors: 
http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/rcl/index.php/rcl/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions 
<http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/rcl/index.php/rcl/about/submissions%23onlineSubmissions>

*Visual essays format:*

Up to 12 pages. The essay can be entirely visual or combine image and 
text. The visual element of the essay must be an integral part of the 
argument or the ideas expressed and not serve as an example or 
illustration of them. It must also include an introductory text (150-300 
words) integrated with the essay and its relevance in the context of 
this issue. Particular attention should be given to the layout of 
images/texts: the essay should include a PDF file with suggested layout 
for 17 × 24.5cm and image resolution of at least 300ppi.

(Useful information: 
https://catoolkit.herts.ac.uk/toolkit/the-visual-essay/ 
<https://catoolkit.herts.ac.uk/toolkit/the-visual-essay/>)


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