Call for papers
Convergence: The International Journal of
Research into New Media Technologies
Vol 18, no 1, February 2012
Special Issue on Virtual Worlds as Sites for Social and Cultural Innovation
Guest editors: Louise Phillips and Sisse
Siggaard Jensen, Communication Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark.
Deadline for submission of research articles: 1 February 2011
Convergence invites contributions for its
forthcoming special issue on ?Virtual Worlds as
Sites for Social and Cultural Innovation?. There
is a growing recognition of the importance of
virtual worlds as environments that carry the
potential for social and cultural innovation by
making possible new forms of social
relationships based on communication among
avatars. We seek papers from across the
humanities and social sciences that present
distinctive theoretical and empirical analyses
of virtual worlds and deal systematically and
critically with their possibilities and
limitations in relation to social and cultural
innovation. We particularly welcome papers that
are themselves innovative in their research
practices and that reflect carefully on their
use of theories and methodologies including
efforts to rework theories and methodologies
developed for the study of other media.
Papers may, in principle, apply any relevant
conceptualisation of processes of social and
cultural innovation, they may focus on any space
that is widely categorised as a virtual world in
the context of a discussion of contested
definitions of virtual worlds, and they may
report on attempts to produce innovation such as
simulation or experiments in virtual spaces.
Possible topics include (but are not restricted to):
- Meaning-making and sense-making processes in and/or about virtual worlds
- Co-design and user-generated content
- Entrepreneurship, market dynamics and management
- The construction and communication of
knowledge in and/or about virtual worlds
- Conceptions of space, place and/or body and/or identity
- Social experimentation and the establishment
and maintenance of social practices and rules of social conduct
- Learning and knowledge construction in higher education
- Emerging fields and new forms of expression and/or dissemination
We are hoping with this issue both to develop
the emergent multi-disciplinary field of study
on virtual worlds and to feed into the wider
body of research about digital communication and culture.
Deadline for submission of research articles: 1 February 2011
Please send all submissions to Associate
Professor Louise Phillips
(<mailto:(louisep /at/ ruc.dk)>(louisep /at/ ruc.dk)) ? as
attachments in Microsoft Word. Please include
the author's or authors? surname(s) in the
subject line, and full contact details for the
author(s), as well as information on the current
affiliation or position of the author(s), both
in the attachment and the accompanying email.
