[Commlist] Call for Papers Special Issue Publizistik Counterpublics

following our ECREA pre conference last year, Christian, Erik and I are 
editing a special issue of the German journal Publizistik "From 
emancipation to disinformation? Public dissent and its evaluation in 
change". We would very much appreciate submissions from you as 
contributors to the pre con. The deadline for abstracts is November 30, 
2023. Full papers must then be submitted by April 30, 2024. There are no 
charges or fees for authors or publication.
You can find the call for papers here: 
https://link.springer.com/collections/jajfeabafh

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Special issue: From emancipation to disinformation? Public dissent and 
its evaluation in change

Submission deadline
    30 April 2024

 Once considered spaces and platforms of emancipatory and participatory 
discourse, in recent years, arenas of public dissent such as 
“counterpublics” and closely related “alternative media” have 
increasingly denoted right-wing to far-right communication. The special 
issue takes a long-term and comparative look at counterpublics and 
alternative media as their carriers in order to contribute to the 
understanding of recent transformations of the public sphere and to the 
reflection of current research. It analyzes both phenomena of 
counterpublics and alternative media as well as scholarly and social 
discourses about them.



For a long time, counterpublics were almost undisputedly leftist 
projects, both in terms of their own attribution and in academic 
research. Counterpublics were regarded as discursive arenas that allow 
members of subaltern or marginalized social groups to incent counter 
discourses, circulate alternate narratives, and to promote oppositional 
interpretations of social realities against a hegemony constituted by 
dominant publics (Fraser, 1990; Negt & Kluge, 1993; Squires, 2002; 
Warner, 2002). As such, counterpublics enable social actors to actively 
and autonomously bring visibility to their experiences, interests, and 
identities, to mobilize for their causes and not least to publicly voice 
dissent. In this regard, counterpublics help to reflect the societal 
status quo and can become indicative of existing social inequalities as 
well as the logics of inclusion and exclusion prevalent in dominant 
public spheres and to criticize their shortcomings (e.g., Jackson, 
Bailey, & Foucault Welles, 2020). In a similar vein, alternative media 
have long since been regarded important carriers and constituents of 
counterpublics and were regarded as closely linked to oftentimes 
progressive and typically (radically) pro-democratic social movements 
such as the Labor, feminist, or ecology movement (Atton, 2002; Bailey, 
Cammaerts, & Carpentier, 2007). Accordingly, research on counterpublics 
and alternative media focused mainly on progressive groups and their 
forms of communication.



Especially with the advent of the internet and social media and their 
principal potential to remove barriers for social and political 
participation, there were initially renewed high hopes regarding their 
emancipatory potential for public discourse. However, a shift took place 
both in self-attributions and through parts of the research. Instead of 
a public discourse freed of constraints of unequal power relations the 
optimisms regarding counterpublic spheres and alternative media have 
almost been reversed in recent years. In addition to or instead of 
left-wing media, conservative to extreme right-wing newspapers, TV 
offerings and social media channels increasingly refer to themselves as 
alternative media and claim to form counterpublics against a supposed 
left-wing hegemony (Freudenthaler, 2020; Schwarzenegger, 2021). 
Furthermore, a growing body of research on counterpublics and 
alternative media is focusing on the online communication of right-wing 
populist or fascist actors. Therefore, the same public arenas, 
practices, and communication strategies, once idealized as sentinel for 
democracy, voice and participation are increasingly suspicious regarding 
their contribution to societal polarization, spreading conspiracy myths 
and a manipulative undermining of democracy (Strömbäck, 2023). Against 
this backdrop, longitudinal and historical research contributes to 
contextualizing the phenomena and makes an important contribution to 
clarifying the controversial theoretical question of what can or should 
be understood as counterpublics or alternative media (Jackson & Kreiss, 
2023).

This special issue addresses these transformations with a long term and 
comparative perspective on public dissent and its expression in 
counterpublics and alternative media. Proposals can present theoretical 
works or studies drawing on, for instance, quantitative, qualitative or 
hermeneutic methods. Submissions may address, but are not limited to, 
the following topics:



- Conceptual and theoretical evolutions:

Submissions in this area may include new approaches to advancing 
theories of public dissent, counterpublics and related concepts such as 
alternative media. In particular, contributions are encouraged that 
classify and explain current upheavals of public dissent in hybrid media 
environments in a longitudinal or comparative perspective of past 
transformations. In this context, submissions can, for example, address 
the following questions: How can social theories be linked with 
approaches from communication and media studies? How must theoretical 
concepts be adapted to media and social changes? What heuristics are 
appropriate for the systematic analysis of current and past expressions 
of public dissent?

- Theoretical reflections:

Contributions may critically assess normative assumptions of research or 
analyze theories from a history of ideas perspective. For example, they 
may address the following questions: In how far are notions like 
counterpublic spheres or alternative media relative to their 
contemporary contexts, societies, media or political and economic 
systems and geographies? To what extent do academic concepts of 
counterpublics and alternative media contribute to essentializing or 
normalizing (implicitly or explicitly) a specific understanding of the 
public sphere, media organization, and also public dissent? To what 
extent is scholarly engagement with issues of counterpublics, 
alternative media, and public dissent – as public sphere theories in 
general – tied to specific, including normative value systems, and how 
much is it guided by whose critique and dissent one is dealing with? 
What role do ideology and ideology critique play in this? To what extent 
is scientific debate guided by who the bearers of criticism and dissent 
are? Is it important or possibly misleading if concepts are used too 
inclusively or too restrictively, e.g., can the public dissent of the 
radical left and the extreme right be described and analyzed with the 
same concepts? How can the antagonistic relationship of these disparate 
forms of counterpublics to dominant publics be conceptualized in a 
differentiated way? Do terms like counterpublic and alternative media 
need to be protected from being used to describe disinformation and 
propaganda media, and thus from being damaged? Is there a risk that 
criticism of alternative media and counterpublicity will also generally 
discredit and delegitimize the possibility of public opposition?

- Cases and examples of public dissent:

Contributions can be devoted to examples of (historical) forms of 
counterpublics and individual alternative media, focusing on the 
following questions, among others: How did different actors aim to 
establish (self-proclaimed) counterpublics and why did they see the need 
for it? What consequences did media and political change have on the 
emergence and development of counterpublics and alternative media? Which 
alternative media occurred and how did they evolve? What forms of 
counterpublics emerged in different political systems, e.g., in the 
Soviet Union and allied states against media under state and party 
control? What role did right-wing counterpublics play against an assumed 
left-wing hegemony in liberal democracies? To which understanding of 
(counter-)publics and (alternative) media did the protagonists refer? In 
how far can norms and practices of counterpublics be distinguished, 
e.g., regarding information or disinformation, propaganda or truth, 
conspiracy or enlightenment? In which respect did alternative media 
establish alternative practices of media production, distribution, and 
reception? To what extent did actors pursue strategies other than 
founding alternative media to create counterpublics, e.g., media policy? 
What is the role of trans- and international networking in the history 
of counterpublics and alternative media? What role did foreign media 
play in creating counterpublics, e.g., against the backdrop of wars, 
colonialism, imperialism, or the East-West conflict during the Cold War?

- Perceptions of and reactions to public dissent:

Submissions in this field can deal with the relationship of different 
societal actors to various forms of public dissent. Research may address 
questions such as: How did representatives of the state, political 
parties, established media, companies and business associations, trade 
unions or other interest groups perceive counterpublics or alternative 
media and how did they react to public dissent? How did they shape 
discourses about public dissent? What efforts of promotion, regulation, 
or suppression of public dissent occurred? What functions could a 
(partially controlled) opposition in the public sphere have for actors 
in power?

- Public dissent and references to history or memory:

What is the role of history and memory for and in counterpublics and 
alternative media? To what extent is their own history or the history of 
the social movements they are close to a resource for identity work and 
self-positioning of alternative media and counterpublics? To what extent 
do protagonists of public dissent deal with their own past and genealogy 
or their personal relationship to the mainstream? To what extent are 
historical connotations and meanings appropriated or reinterpreted 
across political camps? What are examples of how history and memory 
serve as a basis for argumentation, a point of reference or 
strategically used strawmen in alternative media communication and for 
the constitution of counterpublics?



Submission requirements

1. Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words of length (excluding 
references). Abstracts can be submitted in German or in English and 
should be sent to the special issue guest editors 
((venema /at/ uni-leipzig.de)) until November 30, 2023. An additional file 
should include title, four to six keywords, name of author(s), 
institutional affiliation, and contact details for each author. Authors 
will be notified of proposal acceptance/rejection until December 15, 2023.

2. If the proposal is accepted, author(s) will be asked to submit the 
full article, in German or English, by April 30, 2024. Submitting a 
manuscript will be taken to imply that the manuscript has not been 
published elsewhere or in another language and has not been and will not 
be submitted to another journal simultaneously. The manuscript must be 
sent in an open format (i.e., docx file) and as a PDF to the editorial 
office of Publizistik. Manuscripts must not exceed 70.000 characters 
(including spaces, references, and figures/tables). Please make sure 
that your manuscript adheres to the submission guidelines that can be 
found on the Publizistik website: 
https://www.springer.com/journal/11616/submission-guidelines

3. Contributions will be submitted to a double-blind peer review 
process. All submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by one external peer 
reviewer, one editor, and one special issue guest editor. Authors will 
be notified of the reviews and the decision (accept/revise/reject) by 
End of July, 2024. The special issue will be published as issue 2 of 
Publizistik in May 2025. If you have any questions, please contact the 
special issue editors at (venema /at/ uni-leipzig.de), 
(christian.schwarzenegger /at/ uni-bremen.de), (ekoenen /at/ uni-bremen.de)



Timing for this special issue

November 30, 2023 Deadline for the submission of abstracts (500 words)

December 15, 2023 Feedback on abstract – Invitation to submit a full paper

April 30, 2024 Submission deadline for full papers

End of July 2024 Reviews and decision (accept/revise/reject)

October 15, 2024 Submission deadline for revised versions

January 15, 2025 Final versions ready

May 2025 Publication special issue



References

Atton, C. (2002). Alternative media. Sage.

Bailey, O., Cammaerts, B., & Carpentier, N. (2007). Understanding 
alternative media. Open University Press.

Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the 
critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 12(25/26), 56–80. 
https://doi.org/10.2307/466240

Freudenthaler, R. (2020). Which online counter-publics on Facebook are 
fostering agonistic respect? An assessment of counter-publics debating 
Germany’s refugee policy. Javnost – The Public, 27(3), 247-265. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2020.1804121

Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M., & Foucault Welles, B. (2020). 
#HashtagActivism. Networks of race and gender justice. Mit Press.

Jackson, S. J. & Kreiss, D. (2023). Recentering power: conceptualizing 
counterpublics and defensive publics. Communication Theory, online 
first. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtad004

Negt, O., & Kluge, A. (1993). Public sphere and experience: Analysis of 
the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere. University of Minnesota Press.

Schwarzenegger, C. (2021). Communities of darkness? Users and uses of 
anti-system alternative media between audience and community. Media and 
Communication, 9(1), 99–109. 
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i1.3418

Strömbäck, J. (2023). Political Alternative Media as a Democratic 
Challenge. Digital Journalism, online first, 1-8. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2023.2178947

Squires, C. R. (2002). Rethinking the black public sphere: An 
alternative vocabulary for multiple public spheres. Communication 
Theory, 12(4), 446–468. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2002.tb00278.x

Warner, M. (2021). Publics and counterpublics. Princeton University Press.


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