Please distribute widely.
FlowTV Special Issue
CFP: Social Media (05/18/09)
Social media have created new ways for individuals to communicate and
share information. Technologies such as blogs, Twitter, social
networking sites (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, etc.), wikis,
Second Life, digg, Last.fm, FlickR, etc. have become increasingly
pervasive. Social media are being used by celebrities, athletes,
journalists, politicians, TV personalities, musicians, scholars, news
organizations, businesses, marketers, and more. How does the use of
social media change the ways we think about identity, community, and
interpersonal communication? In what ways are social media being used
for political purposes, for collective action, and news aggregates?
How does receiving a Twitter message on your cell phone from Shaquille
O'Neal or NPR's Scott Simon erode boundaries between public and
private or change conceptualizations of intimacy? Are blogs and other
social media challenging journalism's traditional gatekeeping and
agenda-setting functions? Should we be concerned about issues of
privacy and free speech? How are certain social media technologies
being gendered, classed, racialized, and policed? And as is the case
with all forms of media, we must be careful to ask who is denied
access and to what effect?
We are interested to hear what the Flow community thinks about social
media technologies: uses and users, popular discourses and rhetoric,
and the ways in which social media challenge concepts of identity,
community, friendship, public/private, creativity, surveillance, and
more.
Please send submissions of between 1000-1500 words to Jacqueline
Vickery ((jvickery183 /at/ gmail.com)) and Anne Petersen
((annehelenpetersen /at/ gmail.com)) no later than May 18th, 2009. Flow has
a longstanding policy of encouraging non-jargony, highly readable
pieces and ample incorporation of images and video. For examples,
please visit FlowTV.org.
