[Commlist] CFP: Convergence Special Issue on “DigitalPlacemaking”

CFP: Convergence Special Issue - “Digital Placemaking”
Guest editors: Germaine Halegoua (University of Kansas, USA) and Erika 
Polson (University of Denver, USA)

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: December 31, 2019
Deadline for Full Papers: May 1, 2020
Expected date of publication: April 2021

We invite submissions for a special issue of "Convergence: The 
International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies" on the 
topic of Digital Placemaking. As digital and physical environments 
converge, each increasingly producing the norms and parameters of the 
other, it is important to consider how the drive to create and control a 
sense of place remains primary to how social actors identify with each 
other and express their identities, and how communities organize to 
build more meaningful, connected spaces. Instead of depleting a sense of 
place, the ability to forge attachments to digital media environments 
and through digital practices enables people to emplace themselves and 
others. The increasing mobility of people, goods and services, 
information, and capital contribute to the impression of a world in flux 
where the “space of flows” dominates the “space of places,” while at the 
more personal scale, multiplying public and private uses of digital 
media have produced varied discourses on the potential for these 
practices to dissociate or liberate users from co-present environments. 
The implication of these perspectives is that our collective sense of 
place has been disrupted, leaving people unsure of their belonging 
within conditions and boundaries that seem increasingly fluid. While it 
is imperative to attend to the shifting social, economic, and political 
conditions that give rise to such concerns, it is also necessary to 
recognize the many ways people actually use digital media to negotiate 
differential mobilities and become placemakers.

This special issue introduces and critically examines the concept of 
“digital placemaking” as practices that create emotional attachments to 
place through digital media use. As populations and the texts they 
produce become increasingly mobile, such practices are proliferating, 
and a striking array of applications and uses have emerged which exploit 
the affordances of mobile and digital media to foster an ability to 
navigate, understand, connect to, and gain a sense of belonging and 
familiarity in place. Papers are invited to investigate the concept of 
“digital placemaking” as both a theoretical and applied response to the 
spatial fragmentation, emerging virtual and physical environments, and 
community reorganizations thought to have accompanied the speed and 
scale of globalization.

The editors welcome contributions that explore questions such as:

● How do people employ digital media to create and negotiate a new sense 
of place within rapidly changing media landscapes and socio-spatial 
exchanges?
● How does digital placemaking as a research approach or theoretical 
framework uncover novel socio-cultural-technical practices and 
understandings of sense of place?
● How are boundary crossing and place transgressions implicated in 
tensions related to tourism, gentrification, migration, and emerging media?
● How can scholars investigate digital placemaking to reflect nuances of 
interrelated online and offline practices?
● What are key characteristics and configurations of digital placemaking 
within particular communities or institutions?
● How can digital placemaking be employed as an innovative approach to 
studying digital media technologies and practices?
● What does a focus on digital placemaking help us understand about 
issues including:  mobile rights and risks associated with migration and 
diaspora; creative tactics within social and mobile media regarding 
tourism and travel; the design of physical places and experiences; and 
contested mobilities based on social power and access to digital 
infrastructures?
● How does the concept or framework of digital placemaking uncover 
tactics and forces that coordinate, govern, and express mobilities 
within digital infrastructures and imaginaries?

We are open to a range of approaches in exploring this concept, and 
particularly welcome submissions that address locations and digital 
placemaking practices in the global south.

TO SUBMIT: Please send a 500-word abstract and a 100-word bio to the 
guest editors at (grhalegoua /at/ ku.edu) <mailto:(grhalegoua /at/ ku.edu)> and 
(epolson /at/ du.edu) by December 31, 2019
Authors of accepted abstracts will be contacted in early January and 
invited to submit full contributions by May 1, 2020.


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