[ecrea] CFP Convergence special issue on Expertise and Digital Media

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media 
Technologies



Special Issue on Expertise and Engagement with/in Digital Media

Vo1 21, no. 3 (August 2015)



Editors: Caroline Bassett, University of Sussex; Edgar Gomez Cruz, 
University of Leeds; Helen Thornham, University of Leeds

In an digitally saturated environment digital media users of all kinds, 
engaged in diverse areas of activity, are increasingly categorized in 
terms of their ability to use - they are regarded as natives, non-users, 
experts, literates, for instance. In these contexts the question (1) of 
how various forms of digital expertise develop, and (2) of how 
understandings of expertise come into being and come to operate, become 
increasingly important. Digital expertise might appear to be simply 
descriptive (of a particular capacity to use), or unproblematically 
normative (indicating an elevated level of engagement that may be viewed 
as desirable), however there are multiple understandings of what digital 
expertise ‘is’ (what kind of skilled engagement with digital materials 
it delineates/demands/entails), and multiple ways in which it is judged 
and valued. Our contention is that these conceptions of expertise are 
contextually produced; they intersect with various social categories and 
discourses, and they come to operate in social contexts with some force. 
Our starting point is that digital expertise is at once material and a 
social construction.





The focus of the special issue is motivated by conceptual and critical 
questions around the values and qualities and activities increasingly 
claimed and collated with ‘expertise’: the recourse to authoritative 
voices as embodying particular forms of  knowledge, the claims made 
around data and information, the valuing of particular modes of 
expression, mediation or participation over others: all of these locate 
and conceptualise expertise – and consequently, knowledge, literacy, 
mediation, participation – in particular ways. Who – or what – is a 
digital expert and what is evidenced in the name of expertise, and who 
can be an expert and who cannot; these issues signal new power relations 
that are emerging around use, and for instance gender, knowledge, data 
and materials. As expertise becomes increasingly conflated with 
experience, literacy or knowledge; as expertise is seemingly evidenced 
in online co-created or curated content; and as statements and mined 
data are used and claimed in new ways as expert, what we mean by 
‘expertise’ clearly needs investigation.



This special issue of Convergence seeks to bring together innovative 
theoretical and methodological frameworks that explore the conception, 
practice and creation of expertise in relation to digital technologies. 
We invite contributions that engage with expertise addressing themes 
including (but not confined to):



·         What is expertise in a digital environment and what does it 
look like?

·         What new modes and practices of expertise are emerging, and 
what kinds of cultural products result?

·         What are the implications of these new forms of cultural 
products for communities and cultures?

·         How do cultures and communities become better enabled to 
engage with, use, make sense of and even make digital media?

·         What is the relationship between expertise, experience, 
literacy and knowledge?

·         How do digital transformations reconfigure expertise and what 
are the implications of this for knowledge, literacy, use and experience?

·         Where is expertise located – i.e. is it bound up in the 
conception of the user, or created and claimed alongside new data 
configurations– and to what extent do such locations matter?



We are accepting abstracts for research articles of between 6000-9000 
words and for positional papers of between 1500-2000 words in length. 
Abstracts should be of 500-750 words in length. Email abstracts to Edgar 
Gomez Cruz (e.gomez /at/ leeds.ac.uk). The deadline for abstracts is January 
17th 2014, and the deadline for full submissions is 25th July 2014. 
Submissions should follow the formatting guide of the journal Convergence

(see http://www.uk.sagepub.com/msg/conv.htm#MANUSCRIPTSTYLE).

All research articles will be peer reviewed.



Submission details:



Abstract Deadline: 17th January 2014 (e.gomez /at/ leeds.ac.uk)

Decision on Abstracts: 7th February 2014

Article Submission deadline: 25th July 2014 (e.gomez /at/ leeds.ac.uk)

Final submission deadline/review process complete: December 2014

For publication in August 2015



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