[ecrea] Special Issue CFP: Theorizing Media in Place/Nation Branding

This CFP may be of interest to some of you. Apologies for cross-posting and
please circulate.

CFP for Special Issue: Theorizing Media in Place/Nation Branding
Journal: European Journal of Cultural Studies
Guest Editors: Göran Bolin & Galina Miazhevich
Abstracts Due: October 31, 2015

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)) & Galina Miazhevich
((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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Nadia Kaneva, PhD
Associate Professor
Media, Film & Journalism Studies
University of Denver
Website: https://portfolio.du.edu/nkaneva

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