[Commlist] CFP special issue of Media and the Climate Crisis

https://www.nordicom.gu.se/sv/aktuellt/nyheter/call-papers-nordic-journal-media-studies-2021

*CALL FOR PAPERS: /Nordic Journal of Media Studies/ 2021*

*Title:* Media and the Climate Crisis

*Special issue editor:* Risto Kunelius (University of Helsinki), Anna 
Roosvall, (Stockholm University)

*Deadline for submission of extended abstracts:* May 1 2020

As a complex and systemic problem of collective action (in the 
Anthropocene), the climate crisis poses challenges on a new scale. They 
range from translating scientific knowledge to sustainable policy, from 
debating radical changes in energy supply and infrastructures to 
discussions of everyday consumer choices, from dialogues about identity 
and historical justice to the risks and scenarios of the future (which 
has gained ever more immediacy).

Towards the end of the 2010s, the gap between hopeful scenarios and the 
real trajectories of climate change became increasingly severe. 
Politically, the short-lived optimism of the 2015 Paris Agreement waned 
under the pressure. As a result, national decision-making structures are 
weakened by a conjuncture of political polarisation where climate 
policies intersect with issues of immigration, identity, and inequality 
both between and within countries. The ambitious target of limiting 
global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius seems to be slipping away – and 
the predictions of concerned scientists are increasingly pessimistic. At 
the same time, global media is filled with signs of the crisis: 
unforeseen fires, devastating floods and draughts – to name the obvious, 
dramatic examples – but also news of widening civic protests calling for 
climate action.

The climate emergency poses a fundamental challenge to the media, in all 
its contemporary plurality. The list of questions is long. How will the 
climate emergency shape the media institutions we inherited from 
carbon-driven modernity? What kind of professional practices and forms 
of reporting are needed? How will the new affordances of digital media 
networks enhance knowledge about the risks we face and help promote 
sharper critique of policies? What sort of opportunities for mediated 
activism for and against climate action will emerge? How will people use 
the wide array of media forms available today to make sense of their 
lives in the era of climate crisis? What is – or could be – the role of 
media studies in shaping this future?

The /Nordic Journal of Media Studies /is devoting its 2021 issue to 
cutting edge research tackling /the role of the media/ (from social 
media to professional journalism and from everyday communication to 
high-level power politics) and /the challenges of media research/ as a 
field /in the context of the climate emergency/.

We welcome contributions with themes such as (but not limited to) the 
following (in no particular order):

  * The role of time and temporality in climate communication
  * Potentials and pitfalls of transnational media
  * Visual communication and new forms of climate storytelling
  * Negotiating climate justice, global inequalities, and solidarity
  * Assessing different forms of knowledge and evidence (from complex
    models to indigenous knowledge)
  * Extreme weather and climate reporting
  * Translating between science, politics, media, and everyday practice
  * Dynamics of networked, connective action and political participation
  * Combating fake news in climate communication
  * The role of political polarisation and populism – and concepts of
    countering them
  * New alliances of coproduction in climate communication
  * Role of language, argumentation, and rhetoric in climate coverage
  * Comparative analyses of media reporting
  * Relationships between media and climate policy (political decision
    making)
  * The role of publics, audiences, and public opinion – and their
    measurement
  * Potentials and pitfalls of targeted, strategic communication

We welcome contributions offering new empirical insight into these and 
other crucial nodal points of analysing, understanding, and innovating 
on the role of different media. The /Nordic Journal of Media Studies/ is 
not committed to any particular methods, materials, or theoretical 
approaches. We welcome suggestions for both empirical work that focuses 
on key moments of the contemporary media system but also hope to publish 
critical theoretical work that may help us to reconceptualise the urgent 
challenges of communicating the climate emergency.

*1 April 2020: *Extended abstracts (1000 words), describing key 
questions, methods, data, and the phase in which the actual work  is in.

*1 May 2020: *Notification of accepted abstracts, with feedback from 
editors.

*15 September 2020: *Deadline for full manuscripts.

*Contact:*  Risto Kunelius, University of Helsinki. e-mail: 
(risto.kunelius /at/ helsinki.fi) <mailto:(risto.kunelius /at/ helsinki.fi)>

Anna Roosvall, Stockholm University, e-mail: (anna.roosvall /at/ ims.su.se) 
<mailto:(anna.roosvall /at/ ims.su.se)>

About the Journal

The Nordic Journal of Media Studies is a peer-reviewed international 
publication dedicated to media research. The journal is a meeting place 
for Nordic, European, and global perspectives on media studies. The 
editors stress the importance of innovative and interdisciplinary 
research, and welcome contributions on both contemporary developments 
and historical topics. The journal is open for theoretical contributions 
and empirical research, and combinations thereof. The editors also 
welcome critical approaches to media studies addressing questions of 
power, inequality, participation, and voice.

The Nordic Journal of Media Studies focuses on the interplay between 
media and their cultural and social contexts. We are interested in the 
media as industries and institutions of modern society, but also in how 
they are woven into the fabric of everyday life as mobile and 
interactive technologies. The emergence of new social networks, changes 
in political communication, intensified datafication and surveillance of 
human interaction, and new dynamics between media, popular culture, and 
commercial markets are important aspects of the changing relationship 
between media, culture, and society.

*Editorial process*

The Nordic Journal of Media Studies is published once a year and each 
volume focuses on a particular theme. An open call invites suggestions 
(extended abstracts) for contributions and, on the basis of this, 
invitations to write full-length articles are issued. All submitted 
articles are subject to double-blind peer review by two external reviewers.

Articles should not exceed 7,000 words, including references, and must 
contain an abstract of no more than 150 words. All articles submitted 
should be original works and must not be under consideration by other 
publications.

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