[ecrea] Call for chapters for a Nordicom book on teletext

Call for Chapters for a Nordicom book on teletext





We invite colleagues to submit a proposal for a chapter contribution to 
an edited book on teletext published by Nordicom.



Edited book topic and scope



This edited book will take the ‘forgotten’ medium of teletext as an 
innovative inroad to understand the way in which ‘new’ media 
developments - identified as digitization, convergence, hyper-mobility 
and social media - impact on and are appropriated by ‘old’ media. We 
invite contributions from colleagues specialized in media and ICT 
history, media and ICT policy, technology and society, media and 
language, and other relevant fields to help fill the extensive gap in 
academic knowledge on the development and the current and future status 
of teletext as a medium for communication, and contribute to a research 
framework fit to analyze the impact of the new on the old.



Utilizing free distribution capacity in terrestrial broadcast networks 
in the 1970s, teletext was the result of experiments that started with 
subtitle services. Teletext has enjoyed huge and continued success in 
countries all over Europe, including Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, the 
Nordic countries and the UK. Indeed, teletext’s popularity with 
audiences survived the arrival of internet, digitization, mobile and 
social media. It appears these new media even helped to secure 
teletext’s continued success e.g., in several countries teletext pages 
are very popular on the internet, and the teletext mobile media app is 
the most popular (and most downloaded) app of Flemish public service 
broadcasting (PSB). This huge success with European audiences contrast 
sharply with the neglect of teletext by academic researchers. At best it 
is mentioned ‘in passing’, as by-product of traditional broadcasting 
services, considered on its way out with the rapid introduction of new 
hyper-mobile, social and other text-based digital services. Even major 
works on European broadcasting history tend to neglect this part of the 
institutional and journalistic development.



As a media technology and service, teletext provides a prime case to 
understand pressing questions regarding media change. Technologically, 
teletext represented a ‘pull’ service within what was at the time the 
‘push’ domain of broadcasting. In a sense, teletext represented a 
pre-runner to the world wide web. This is the case content-wise, since 
teletext made news and other informational services available ’on 
demand’. The technical restrictions regarding the number of characters 
and lines for each teletext page led to a special journalistic style: 
brief, ‘dry’, to the point, similar to today’s RSS feeds and Twitter. 
Policy-wise, teletext services in many countries became controversial as 
they represented an expansion for the often publicly funded, public 
service broadcasters into an area many saw as the territory of newspaper 
publishers. In several European countries (e.g. Germany) the fight over 
the organization of teletext services proved an omen for long-lasting 
debates between PSB and commercial competitors that marked especially 
the first decade of the 2000s. Elsewhere, in the 1990s, teletext became 
a probe into the digital future, as broadcasters envisioned a 
convergence between broadcasting and the internet, and moved to exploit 
the commercial potential of teletext. During this period, teletext 
became the centre of attention for some regulatory agencies, e.g. in 
Norway, as it represented an “acid test” for the future of PSB.



Range of potential contributions



To fill the academic blind spot, the edited book will deal with this 
forgotten topic by inviting contributions that can be historical and 
diachronic as well as national and international comparative studies. We 
expect the edited book to contain 12 to 16 chapters, together with an 
editors’ introduction.



Questions that can be tackled include:



- Under what institutional, political, technological and economic 
circumstances did teletext develop in different countries, and how can 
we understand its success or lack thereof?

- How did teletext content develop in different contexts – from the 
instant news provision, via classified ads, to “chat room” services – 
and how can we understand the genres and styles of teletext?

- How can the relative ‘policy silence’ and limited industrial interest 
throughout the history of teletext - as against its continued success 
with users - be explained, and what can it tell us about how certain 
media developments manage to attract policy and industrial attention and 
others remain in the background?

- How can an analysis of the historical development inform an 
alternative history of the development of other media such as internet 
that can question dominant views on these histories?

- How can we understand teletext’s current success in a world of 
digital, hyper-mobile and social media, and what lessons can we learn 
from this about dynamics of media change in general?

- In what ways do new media developments impinge on the possibilities 
and uses of teletext, and how does the morphing of teletext to fit new 
media platforms (like smart phone apps and websites) change our 
impression of continuity and disruption in technological developments 
from an historical perspective?

- How can we develop a conceptual and methodological framework to 
analyze the impact of new media developments on existing media in a 
diachronic and transnational perspective?

- What can an analysis of the history of this medium tell us about 
current issues and debates about the introduction of new media and their 
impact on existing media?



Instructions for contributors



Abstract of 750 words explaining the topic, theoretical framework and 
empirical work/case of your proposed chapter as well as a 100 word 
author’s bio are expected no later than January 15, 2014 and should be 
sent to (info /at/ teletext-research.eu)



Authors will be informed of acceptance no later than February 15. Full 
manuscripts are to be completed by June 15, 2014. Manuscripts should be 
between 6000 and 8000 words and must follow APA. They will be submitted 
to double blind peer review. Expected time of completion of the book is 
early 2015.



For further information, please write to (info /at/ teletext-research.eu)



We look forward to receive your abstracts.





Hallvard Moe (University of Bergen, Norway) and Hilde Van den Bulck 
(University of Antwerp, Belgium)











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