[Commlist] CFP Asiascape: Digital Asia Special Issue: Networked Agitprop

Call for Papers

Asiascape: Digital Asia Special Issue: Networked Agitprop

Keywords: Agitprop, Ideology, Networks, Propaganda, Protest, Visual 
Communication

The peer-reviewed academic journal Asiascape: Digital Asia (DIAS) < 
https://brill.com/view/journals/dias/dias-overview.xml 
<https://brill.com/view/journals/dias/dias-overview.xml> >is now 
inviting contributions for its 2026 themed issue on ‘Networked Agitprop 
in Asia’, edited by special issue editors Milan Ismangil and Florian 
Schneider.

Agitative propaganda, or agitprop, has long been a powerful tool for 
shaping public opinion, mobilizing movements, and cultivating 
ideological narratives. Originally describing the Soviet Union's methods 
of distributing propaganda to fuel revolutionary fervour, the term 
agitprop has recently resurfaced in popular usage. For instance, 
influential political streamer Hasan Abi titled his short-lived show 
“Agitprop,” aiming to “amplify the anti-capitalist message.” Today, 
agitprop has evolved beyond its traditional confines of propagating 
Communism, finding new energy and purpose within digital networks and 
grassroots activism.

The rise of digital technologies in Asia has revolutionized the form and 
function of agitprop, transforming it from a centralized form of 
propaganda into a dynamic phenomenon driven by an anonymous mass whose 
solidarity stems from digital networks (see Jodice 2022, Lee & Chan 
2018). Movements such as the 2015 Sunflower Protests in Taiwan, the 2020 
white paper protests in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), or the 
2025 protests against Martial Law in Korea and the Taiwanese movement 
the same year that aimed to recall unwanted politicians are all 
prominent examples. We can further consider everyday examples such as 
Morton (2023) who discusses a Japanese online agitprop poetry community. 
The role of the internet in social movements is not new; already 2011’s 
Arab Spring was hailed by some as the ‘Twitter Revolution’. Since then, 
the evolution of the internet and growing digital expertise amongst the 
population, not to mention the recent influence of generative AI, has 
led to different forms of integration of the digital with the offline. 
Two recent examples from the 2019 Hong Kong social movement are pertinent:

The proliferation of networked agitprop as discussed by Ismangil and 
Schneider (2023), wherein protesters create a visual commons online, 
which is then disseminated in offline protest spaces. The advent of 
generative AI has made this process even easier, as even non-artist can 
now contribute.
The use of protest-specific apps, wherein protesting becomes a part of 
everyday life through selective buy/boycotting applications on 
smartphones (Poon and Tse 2024).
Social media platforms and internet-based communication have become 
pivotal in disseminating visual propaganda, mobilizing protests, and 
shaping ideological narratives. For this purpose, this call for papers 
considers both top down and bottom-up efforts at agitprop. We invite 
interdisciplinary contributions that examine the intersection of 
agitprop, social media, and protests in Asia. Topics may include:

the role of visual and textual propaganda in grassroots movements,
the influence of digital networks on ideology formation,
comparative analyses of internet-driven agitprop techniques,
government use of (networked) agitprop to stir up nationalist sentiment, 
for example in India and the PRC.
the emergence of new actors in the agitprop space, for instance influencers.
This special issue aims to explore the ways agitprop adapts and thrives 
in the digital age, within the context of Asia. We hope agitprop can 
prove a fruitful concept for understanding a range of contemporary 
phenomena: efforts by established actors such as governments to 
formulate their own agitprop internally (consider China's 'Learning from 
Xi' app); bottom-up efforts at formulating counter ideologies; 
communicative interventions that are then categorized as election 
interference and social media manipulation; new influencer propaganda 
(Xu) and its role in commercial platform economies; and more. Framing 
these dynamics through the concept of agitprop promises to expand our 
understanding of digital strategic communication while tying these 
 contemporary efforts at propaganda and ideological framing into a 
longer historical and regional context.


Submission

Interested contributors should first send their title, abstract (150 
words), and short biography via email to the special issue editor, Milan 
Ismangil <https://www.uu.nl/staff/MSIsmangil 
<https://www.uu.nl/staff/MSIsmangil>>, by 15 July 2025. The editorial 
team will select contributions in August, and successful contributors 
should then prepare articles of 8,000 words, including notes and 
references, to be submitted through the journal’s editorial management 
system <http://www.editorialmanager.com/dias/default.aspx 
<http://www.editorialmanager.com/dias/default.aspx>> by 1 October 2025. 
No payment from the authors will be required. All papers will be fully 
peer-reviewed, and authors will receive the review decision by December 
2025, for potential publication in the early summer 2026.

Please see the instructions for authors 
<http://www.brill.com/files/brill.nl/specific/authors_instructions/DIAS.pdf 
<http://www.brill.com/files/brill.nl/specific/authors_instructions/DIAS.pdf>> 
for further information on the in-house style requirements. For further 
questions, and to submit abstracts, please contact the special issue 
editor at (milanismangil /at/ proton.me) <mailto:(milanismangil /at/ proton.me)>


References

Ismangil, Milan & Schneider, Florian (2023), 'Hong Kong's Networked 
Agitprop: Popular Nationalism in the Wake of the 2019 Anti-Extradition 
Protests'. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 52(3), 488-517.


Jodice, Noah (2022), 'The Precarity of Images: Sci-fi Worldbuilding and 
Its Uses in Agitprop'. MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture 4. Retrieved 
13 May 2025 from https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_illustration/4/ 
<https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_illustration/4/>


Lee, Francis L. F. & Chan, Joseph M. (2018), Media and Protest Logics in 
the Digital Era: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Oxford University 
Press.


Morton, Leith (2023), 'Contemporary Japanese Poetry and Politics: An 
Overview'. Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, 10, 83-109.


Poon, H. & Tse, T. (2024), 'Enacting Cross-Platform (Buy/Boy) cotts: 
Yellow Economic Circle and the New Citizen-Consumer Politics in Hong 
Kong'. New Media & Society, 26(5), 2971-2991.


Xu, Jian & Yang, Ling (2025), 'Celebrity Public Relations in China: 
Power, Politics and Pop Propaganda'. The China Quarterly, online first.

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