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

** On behalf of Galina Miazhevich, 
(gm223 /at/ leicester.ac.uk)<mailto:(gm223 /at/ leicester.ac.uk)> **

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)<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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