[Commlist] cfp: The Children Are Watching Us. Exploring Audiovisual Content for Children

https://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.it/news-call-for-papers-the-children-are-watching-us-exploring-audiovisual-content-for-children-6068.html

Comunicazioni Sociali — Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural 
Studies



The Children Are Watching Us. Exploring Audiovisual Content for Children

Edited by Raffaele Chiarulli, Armando Fumagalli, Eva Novrup Redvall

Audiovisual content for children and young people has always been a very 
important sector within the creative industries from an economic and 
social perspective. For this reason, early mass communication theories 
already addressed the not easy topic of the relationship between young 
people and the media, to which academic studies have continued to pay 
some attention, with increasing incidence in recent decades, evaluating 
it from various aspects. In fact, the media landscape in which we live 
offers the youngest viewers a wide range of products, which is even more 
difficult to monitor and circumscribe due to the way in which 
consumption times and practices have become jagged and fragmented, with 
the use of the newest and multiple technical devices.

Reflection on this subject has seen various approaches adding to each 
other over time, according to a multidisciplinary perspective that 
traditionally besides media studies, sees also psychology and pedagogy 
as fundamental, moving along an axis ranging from theories on media 
effects to media education. In search of interpretative and analytical 
grids, more research has thus been done trying to define the traits of 
film and TV genres dedicated to children and young people and their 
educational, informative or entertainment purposes.

Alongside these strands, according to very different perspectives, other 
strands have been developing. One of the most important of them is 
related with animation studies, which has also had the merit of 
disengaging the animation sector from the idea that it was a uniform 
genre, to be juxtaposed to the other classical genres in a systematic 
taxonomy. These approaches have made it possible to express, through 
narratological and aesthetic theories or from a historical point of 
view, a very complex reality, full of implications that are not only 
pedagogical and social but also attentive to authorial poetics, 
technological developments and market demands.

Finally, in academic studies on the relationship between audiovisual 
products and children and young audiences, particular attention has 
recently been given to the screenplay component (Redvall and Christensen 
2021), as the first moment of the creative process in which to meet the 
challenges of today's media market and a cross-media context, measuring 
against competition in terms of both content choices and storytelling 
methods.

Starting from these considerations, this special issue of Comunicazioni 
Sociali invites international scholars to submit theoretical reflections 
on the different narrative and aesthetic approaches and strategies 
related to products for children and adolescents, analyses of individual 
products, case histories or interviews with creatives and producers. We 
invite abstracts from different research perspectives (Animation 
Studies; Media Industry Studies; Sociology; Screenwriting Studies; Film 
and TV Studies and more) that address the following and/or other topics:



    The relationship between practice, theory and professional 
discourses about content and programs for children and young audiences.
    Understandings of childhood and notions of how to create quality 
content for children in film, public service television and other contexts.
    Animation Studies/animation practice as a recognizable knowledge area
    Animation’s interdisciplinary status
    Animation industries.
    The relations between literature for children and audiovisual products.
    Animation pedagogy and archives.
    Screenwriters with a focus on writing for children and young audiences.
    Historical as well as current case studies of individual creative 
processes for children and young audiences
    The teaching of how to create and write stories for children and 
young audiences in different contexts



Submission details

Please send your abstract and a short biographical note by February 10, 
2023 to:

(redazione.cs /at/ unicatt.it)

(raffaele.chiarulli /at/ unicatt.it)

Abstracts should be from 300 to 400 words of length (in English). All 
submissions should include: 5 keywords, name of author(s), institutional 
affiliation, contact details and a short bio for each author. Authors 
will be notified of proposal acceptance by March 3, 2023.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the 
full article, in English, by May 31, 2023.

Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and 
is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000-words (including references)

For editorial guidelines, please refer to the section “Guide for the 
authors” on the Comunicazioni sociali 
website: http://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.com

Contributions will be submitted to a double blind peer review process.

The issue number 3/2023 of “Comunicazioni Sociali” will be published 
in December 2023. It will be available in open access on the journal 
website.

“Comunicazioni Sociali” is indexed in Scopus and it is an A-class rated 
journal by ANVUR in: Cinema, photography and 
television (L-ART/06), Performing arts (L-ART/05), and Sociology of 
culture and communication (SPS/08).
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