[ecrea] CFP Theorizing Media in Place/Nation Branding

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*CFP for Special Issue*

*Issue Theme:*Theorizing Media in Place/Nation Branding////

*Journal:*/European Journal of Cultural Studies/

*Date of Publication:*TBD

*Guest Editors:*Göran Bolin & Galina Miazhevich

Since the late 1990s, nation branding has attracted growing interest
from academics, professional consultants, and government actors.  The
ideas and practices of nation branding are frequently presented by
branding advocates as necessary and even inevitable in light of changing
dynamics of political power and influence in a globalized and
media-saturated world.  In this context, some have argued that nation
branding is a way to reduce international conflict and supplant
ethno-nationalism with a new form of market-based, national reputation
management.  However, a growing body of critical studies have documented
that branding campaigns tend to produce ahistorical and exclusionary
representations of the nation and advance a form of “commercial
nationalism” that is no less problematic.

Importantly, the critical scholarship on nation branding has relied
primarily on sociological and anthropological theories of nationhood,
identities, and markets.  By contrast, the particular role of the media
– as institutions, industries, systems, networks, digital platforms,
societal storytellers, cultural environments, and so on – has been
under-theorized in relation to nation branding.  The majority of the
existing literature tends to treat the media as “neutral” vehicles for
the delivery of branding messages to various audiences.  This special
issue seeks to problematize this overly simplistic view of the media and
aims to draw connections between nation branding and existing, as well
as new, theoretical conceptualizations of the media.

The issue invites contributions that connect the material and immaterial
dimensions of nation branding to specific theorizations of media,
conceived in a broad sense.  Some theoretical approaches and concepts
that are of interest include (but are not limited to):

-Media as systems and institutions

-Political economy of the media

-Cultural Studies / Reception Studies

-Normative theories of media and the public sphere

-Semiotics / Signs / Performativities

-Gendered and gendering media

-Media as discourses / texts

-Media as storytellers

-Media as materialities

-Media as technologies

-Networked media / data / protocols

-Media as environments and environments as media

-Mediatization of culture and society

The issue welcomes a variety of methodological perspectives and invites
empirical studies as well as theoretical essays.  However, all
contributions – regardless of their approach – must articulate and
theorize the various ways in which “media” are an integral part of
nation branding.  The essays may explore both the enabling and the
inhibiting potentialities of media as they perpetuate nation branding
ideas, images, ideologies, discourses, and practices.

Please send a 500-word abstract and a one-paragraph bio for each author
to the guest editors Göran Bolin ((goran.bolin /at/ sh.se)
<mailto:(______goran.bolin /at/ sh.se)>) & Galina Miazhevich
((gm223 /at/ leicester.ac.uk) <mailto:(gm223 /at/ leicester.ac.uk)>) by 31 October 2015.

Tentative Completion Timeline

·Abstracts due: 31 October 2015

·First paper drafts due: Summer 2016

·In person workshop of selected papers: Fall 2016

·Revisions and submission for anonymous review

·Final papers due some time in 2017



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