[ecrea] CFP: Digital Images, Global Conflicts - special issue of Media, Culture and Society

*Call for Proposals: Digital Images, Global Conflicts*

*Special issue of /Media, Culture & Society/, October 2017. *

Guest editors: Bolette Blaagaard, Mette Mortensen, & Christina Neumayer

The role of images in conflicts (war, terror, riot, civic action, etc.)
has changed dramatically over the past decade due to globalization and
digitalization. The rapid and extensive dissemination of images from
conflicts results in an intensified struggle for gaining public
visibility and shaping public opinion, prompting competing narratives
and counter narratives, suppression, spin, and persistent allegations of
falsification and manipulation.

Different actors produce, circulate, and mobilize images across media
platforms and across national and regional borders. Mobile media have
enabled citizens, activists, whistleblowers, and insurgents to take and
disseminate images to document their experiences, sway public opinion,
contest the legitimacy of authorities, secure legal evidence, and appeal
for humanitarian relief. The news media still play an important role in
the display and dissemination of images of conflict, but they compete
with, utilize, and converge with social- and mobile media. The military,
which formerly controlled the flow of images from conflicts, has in
recent years developed strategies for coping with the user-generated
image flow.

For example, photographic images travelling through the digital media
ecology have recently marked a turning point in the debate surrounding
the migration crisis due to refugees from the war in Syria. Videos and
still images taken by people on the streets were routinely shown in
international news coverage of uprisings in the Middle East and North
Africa. Eyewitness videos of police violence in the USA have been
instrumental in attracting public attention and mobilizing civic action.
Selfies taken at sites of war or terror and memes ridiculing antagonists
show the intersection of popular internet culture and conflict. Images
of the arrest of University students and beating up of journalists in
India have produced international solidarity with the leftist and
liberals' struggle against a right-leaning nationalist government.

At this decisive moment for the role performed by images of and in
conflict, traditional approaches to studying conflict and images in
terms of propaganda, censorship, and news frames no longer suffice. This
special issue is devoted to developing empirical insights, theoretical
frameworks, and analytical concepts for understanding the circulation
and meaning-making of images from global conflicts in today’s connective
media culture.

We encourage contributions addressing such subjects as:

  * The transformed public visibility of conflicts and (possible)
    challenges and changes to traditional power balances in a globalized
    world.
  * The role played by images in (online) strategic communication, such
    as propaganda, campaigns, and recruitment by various groups and
    institutions involved in conflicts.
  * New genres for representing global, regional, and local conflicts
    proliferating on social media, such as selfies, memes, and their
    reconfigurations of traditional genres.
  * The role of visual icons in the age of mass production and global
    dissemination of images.
  * Convergence and competition between professional and
    non-professional approaches to documenting conflicts.
  * The transforming gatekeeping role of the mainstream mass media
    concerning conflict coverage.
  * New theories for understanding the changed role of visual
    representation of conflicts in the digitalized mediascape.
  * Analytical approaches to mobile media and networked dissemination of
    images of conflict.
  * Empirical investigations of local reactions and emotions sparked by
    images in the global media circuit

Please *submit proposals for articles of approximately 500 words* to the
editors of the special issue (blaagaard /at/ hum.aau.dk)
<mailto:(blaagaard /at/ hum.aau.dk)>, (metmort /at/ hum.ku.dk)
<mailto:(metmort /at/ hum.ku.dk)>, and (chne /at/ itu.dk) <mailto:(chne /at/ itu.dk)> no
later than *1 May 2016*.

A selection of authors will be invited to submit a full paper of max
8000 words. Please note that acceptance of abstract does not guarantee
publication, given that all papers will undergo peer review. For
questions, please contact the editors of this special issue.

*Timeline *
Deadline for abstracts: 1 May 2016
Notification to authors: 10 June 2016
Deadline for submission of full papers: 1 November 2016

More information about the journal: http://mcs.sagepub.com
<http://mcs.sagepub.com/>


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