[ecrea] Northern Lights 2017: CFP Political communication

Call for submissions to Northern Lights, Volume 15 - Theme issue on:

Political communication in networked societies
Volume editors: Eli Skogerbø and Risto Kunelius

Politics and political communication take place in an increasingly 
networked, multi-level environment. At the same time, small and large 
societies alike share major political challenges. Topics such as 
migration, terrorism and climate change are increasingly discussed on 
global media networks and through personal and social media, creating 
new connections, new constellations of actors and new dynamics in our 
systems of political communication. Northern Lights invites papers that 
tackle these changes and challenges in political communication from 
diverse perspectives and with different methods.

Political processes and decision-making demand political communication. 
Whether we refer to politicians, organised interests, journalists, 
citizens or other actors, political communication is important for 
attitude formation, knowledge and action. Over the past decades, the 
number of researchers has increased; the research field has expanded 
thematically and methodologically; and a range of new and old media 
forms and formats have become objects of study. While there is 
substantial knowledge of how some of the new social media have been 
integrated into political communication, there are fewer studies of how 
the hybridization of the public sphere has an impact on political 
governance.

Politics is about the governance of society, cooperation and conflict, 
values and interests. Political communication, accordingly, refers to 
any use of symbols to act politically and to influence governance. 
Traditionally, research on political communication has often been tied 
to national elections and election campaigns. It has provided in-depth 
analysis of the relationships among elite political actors inside the 
political system. However, as changes in the communication landscape 
enable new issues and actors to play new roles, we need to pay more 
attention to the affordances of the networked, intensively-connected 
environment, its emerging logic, encounters, and communication 
practices. Of particular interest today are studies of non-elected 
political actors and the different strategies, ways and registers with 
which they communicate to gain influence over political outcomes. 
Whereas political communication has often concentrated on the triangle 
of politicians, journalists and citizens/audiences, we open this volume 
to studies involving a wider set of political actors and interests - 
including, e.g., bureaucrats, communication advisors, leaders of 
corporations and organisations, and citizens' groups.

We encourage articles that study political communication at all levels 
of politics - from the local to the regional and global levels. Of 
particular interest are comparative studies over time, across political 
systems, or between levels of politics.

Research topics may include but are not restricted to:
. Political actors and communicative forms: What new kinds of political 
actors are emerging in the wake of the hybridization of public spheres? 
How do different actors communicate? What does the abundance of channels 
mean for the contact between actors and citizens? How do different types 
of actors benefit or suffer from the changes in media technologies and 
structures?
. Political journalism: How does the emerging communicative abundance 
shift power relations between elite sources and journalists? What are 
the emerging trends in professional political journalism? Are new 
developments articulated in different ways in different contexts and 
regions?
. Political content: What formats and genres are political? How are 
different formats and genres adapted to networked politics? What is the 
impact of particular political issues - such as immigration, the 
environment, or security/terrorism - on the forms and dynamics of 
political communication? How are issues politicised in the transnational 
and hybrid public sphere?
. Political processes: What signifies political communication in 
networked societies?  What is the significance of "connective action" 
(Bennett & Segerberg 2013) for political communication? Is there a new 
role for "affective publics" (Papacharissi 2014) and emotions in 
political processes? Does the "hybrid media system" (Chadwick 2013) mean 
shifts in communicative power? How are communication strategies in 
election campaigns changing? What new roles do social movements play in 
particular political processes - and how do they function?
. Mediation and mediatization of politics: A wide body of recent 
literature has been working on the mediatization of politics - also in 
relation to new media. How does mediatization research contribute to the 
understanding of the structural and institutional changes in media and 
politics and, thus, in political communication?


	



Please send an extended abstract of 500-600 words to volume editor 
Professor Eli Skogerbø ((eli.skogerbo /at/ media.uio.no))
Deadline for abstract submission: 1 April 2016
Notification to authors: 15 April 2016
Final article submission: 1 September 2016
Publication: Spring 2017
Additional information about the journal is available on the Intellect 
Press website: 
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=143/view,page=2/











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