[Commlist] CFP: “Streaming Diversity?" Journal of Convergence special issue

Call For Papers: “Streaming Diversity? On and off-screen diversity in an 
era of automated media culture”

Abstracts due 22 Sept 2023

Special Issue of Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into 
New Media Technologies

Guest editors: Dr Maura Edmond, Dr Olivia Khoo, Dr Claire Perkins and Dr 
Verity Trott, from @Gender&MediaLab 
<https://twitter.com/gendermedialab> in the School of Media, Film and 
Journalism at Monash University, Australia.

Deadline for abstracts: *22 September 2023* | Expected publication date: 
August 2024

The unprecedented growth of video-on-demand streaming platforms has 
brought both new optimism and new complications to concerns around 
screen ‘diversity’. Without the limitations of linear television, 
streaming services have far greater capacity for producing and 
distributing more diverse screen content. Many of the streaming 
platforms have made high profile public commitments to diversity, such 
as Netflix’s ‘Inclusion Report’, introducing new policies and 
commissioning processes intended to support culturally diverse 
representation and content production. Large global SVODs and smaller 
region-specific and genre-specific platforms have also launched original 
series and commissioned content that has been widely marketed as and 
celebrated for its diverse representations. Together, this has created a 
popular impression that streaming platforms are improving diversity in 
terms of both representation and practical opportunities for screen 
creatives. This special issue of Convergence will critically explore the 
impacts of video streaming platforms on different dimensions of ‘diversity’.

Existing studies on diversity in the screen sector have consistently 
demonstrated long standing and entrenched inequality regimes affecting 
women and non-dominant groups, but there remains limited research on how 
this plays out at the streaming services specifically. Research on 
SVOD-related impacts have focused instead on understanding how major 
global companies like Netflix have interacted with existing local screen 
industries and production ecosystems, affected global distribution and 
content flows, and created overall regulatory imbalances. We are calling 
for papers that will examine the impacts of video streaming platforms 
that extend our understanding of diversity in an era of automated, 
on-demand video.

In keeping with the themes of this issue, we welcome proposals looking 
at streaming services and experiences outside US contexts.

Questions of interest include, but are not limited to:

- How is diversity represented and made discoverable via platform 
features such as the image tiles and categories used in catalogues?

- How do recommendation systems understand and operationalise ‘diversity’?

- What values and messages about diversity are being communicated by the 
content commissioned by streaming services?

- What are we to make of existing policies and practices intended to 
support diversity, equity and inclusion at the streaming platforms?

- What policy options are there for regulating ‘diversity’?

- How do audiences, users and communities engage with streaming 
platforms to discover, view or value ‘diverse’ content?

Please submit a 500-word abstract & 100 word bio by 22 September 2023 to:

(streamingdiversity /at/ gmail.com)

Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by 20 October 2023. Full 
articles will be due 01 March 2024

No payment from the authors will be required


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