[ecrea] Cfp: Northern Lights on New Media Talk

Northern Lights - published by Intellect Press



Call for Papers: Volume 12 - Themed volume on:

New media talk



(Volume editor: Professor Anne Jerslev)



‘If all else failed, there was talk’, Paddy Scannell observes in his 
Television & New Media article about Big Brother (2002). In many ways 
this observation is emblematic of what is going on in the new media 
landscape of today. Mediated talk seems to be flourishing and talk which 
was formerly primarily non-mediated has now entered the public mediated 
space in the form of different kinds of participatory activities - on 
Facebook and Twitter, on discussion forums, online chat rooms, blogs, 
etc. New media technologies enable new possibilities for ‘face-to-face’ 
talk and provide platforms for new kinds of talk; online small-talk and 
chat, postings and comments on commentary sites and social networking 
sites, confessional first-person close-ups talking directly to the user, 
and sms-comments to a political talkshow are all examples of 
communication enabled by new media. Correspondingly, viewers are invited 
to participate in all kinds of programs on different media platforms by 
uploading opinions, talking back, gossiping, chatting online, making 
their own talk-videos, etc. Not to forget how mediated talk constructs 
sociability and influences non-mediated sociability.



The abundance of new digital communication tools and new ways of 
inviting consumers to participate in the production of media content 
produce talk everywhere. The question is what kinds of talk are 
generated in this new media ecology? How and to what extent are new 
forms of talk enabled by the development of new communication platforms? 
What forms of public talk are made possible – and in what ways have 
traditional talk genres like the talk show, the interview and the 
conversation developed with new possibilities for interaction and 
participation?



In reality television mundane sociable talk has served crucial 
functions: as a social glue between participants, as a barrier against 
boredom and as a vehicle for emotional outbursts. The talk about 
programs has become integral to programming strategies in the new 
digital media landscape. Programs are constructed in order to generate 
talk and migrate across platforms; at best the rapid spread of talk 
about an uploaded video on YouTube can transform it into an event, a 
scandalous news item turns into a topic of instant gossip.



This volume of Northern Lights endeavours to look into new media talk 
and hence to follow up on preceding media talk books from Paddy 
Scannell’s 1991 Broadcast Talk volume to Sonia Livingstone’s and Peter 
Lunt’s Talk on Television, audience participation and public debate from 
1996, Andrew Tolson’s Television Talk Shows and Media Talk from 2001 and 
2006 respectively and Ian Hutchby’s Media Talk: Conversation Analysis 
and the Study of Broadcasting from 2006 – besides a host of other books 
and articles about talk shows, interviews, mediated debates, 
confessional talk, everyday talk and so on. Thus, talk is here 
understood in a broad meaning of the term.



Moreover, the title “New Media Talk” should be understood in two ways: 
as “talk in new media” and as “new forms of media talk”. In other words, 
this volume of Northern Lights focuses on the importance of new media 
for the development of forms and functions of different kinds of talk 
and the changes brought about to talk-genres and talk-forms in both 
‘new’ and ‘old’ media.



Research topics may include (but are not restricted to):

· Discussions on the Internet related to different genres and media, 
including film

· Changes in broadcast talk genres influenced by new media

· Twitter talk and Facebook talk

· The use of sms-talk in different program contexts

· Anonymous discussion contra discussion by named participants on the 
internet

· Celebrity gossip

· Reality television talk and gossip

· Video conferences and the construction of presence

· Skype talk as face to face communication

· Live talk and the construction of presence in talk genres

· Talking heads in new media

· Sociability and talk in new and old media



Send abstracts of 3-400 words to Professor Anne Jerslev (volume editor): 
(jerslev /at/ hum.ku.dk)

Deadline for abstract submission: May 1st 2013.

Notification of authors: 25 May 2013

Final article submission: 1 October 2013.

Read more information about Northern Lights, including style guide for 
authors, at http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=143/









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