[Commlist] CfP: TMG—Journal for Media History special issue on “TransmediaHistories”.

*CfP: /TMG—Journal for Media History/ special issue on “Transmedia 
Histories”. *

Deadline (Abstracts): May 31, 2025.

How can “transmedia” history be put into practice from empirical 
perspectives? Following on the successful conference“Transmedia History” 
<https://impresso.github.io/transmedia/>__organised by the Impresso 
project <https://impresso-project.ch>and the University of Lausanne’s 
History Department,/TMG—Journal for Media History /invites scholars to 
contribute to a special issue on Transmedia Histories.

Media history is composed of a myriad of parallel histories, which makes 
comparisons difficult. Research in the field has indeed long focused on 
single types of – often legacy – media or single institutions within 
their national contexts. In the mid-2000s, however, the transnational 
turn allowed for new trends in research objectives to emerge. Research 
scopes overcame previous temporal and spatial frameworks and thereby 
became less driven by institutional perspectives than by contents and 
their circulation. Moreover, this new focus on transnational 
perspectives enlarged its scope to encompass a wider range of topics 
within media history, such as technologies and communication. The 
development of the history of communication, cultural industries, 
techniques, and international relations all contributed to a form of 
decompartmentalisation that paved the way for a more comprehensive 
history of media systems. These new approaches were made possible most 
notably by mass digitisation of media sources and the improvement of 
their online accessibility to researchers. International research 
networks, such as the Transnational Radio Encounters 
<http://www.transnationalradio.org/>, have gathered around such 
transnational ambitions. The transnational turn was a major breakthrough 
that resulted in important publications (e.g. Mollier and Lyon 2012; 
Fickers and Johnson 2012; Badenoch, Fickers and Henrich-Franke 2013).

It remains, however, that research in media history continues to face 
borders it has not managed to cross yet: beyond geographical borders, 
those between media institutions and between different types of media 
(Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 134). This challenge gave the impulse for 
the establishment of the Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS) 
<https://emhis.blogg.lu.se/> network in 2013. In a milestone article 
published in 2017, Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgertdefined the 
concept of entangled media histories “as a means of better understanding 
the dynamic interconnectedness of media across semiotic, technological, 
institutional and political boundaries in history” (Cronqvist and 
Hilgert 2017, 130). Rather than accumulating histories of different 
media, they advocated for a focus on the elements that bridge them. 
However, *a lack of empirical studies persists*, primarily due to the 
enduring division of knowledge and the practical challenges associated 
with navigating separate, multilingual archives. These factors 
discourage research that moves beyond compartmentalised, sector-specific 
approaches. Exceptions notwithstanding, monomedia perspectives still 
dominate the field of media history and *too little research is being 
carried out on exchanges and cooperation between media*.

This special issue aims to extend those efforts and reflections by 
inviting papers that prioritise a transmedia approach. We seek to 
present research that explores media history through the simultaneous 
analysis of different media, thereby emphasising the significance of the 
media ecosystems in which they co-evolve. ‘Media’ is understood in a 
broad sense here. It includes traditional media (books, posters, press 
<https://tmgonline.nl/53/volume/24/issue/1-2>, cinema, radio and 
television), but also more recent historical examples such as video 
games and the Internet (e.g. streaming services, podcasts, online news). 
The targeted timeframe is extensive, though – per the scope of 
/TMG—Journal for Media History/ – a *historical perspective* has to be 
central. The special issue ultimately seeks to contribute to a 
decompartmentalised and interconnected history of media. The featured 
articles will not only place media history within a broader social, 
political, and cultural context but also foster a dialogue among them.

We invite articles that could fall within three promising research axes:

_1. Transmedia circulations, adaptations and reciprocal influences _

The aim of this strand of research is to identify and analyse various 
factors that facilitate the circulation of content and formats across 
media and/or that foster interactions between media:

  * specific actors or media professions such as news and advertising
    agencies, foreign correspondents, exiles and diaspora
    representatives active in various media, translators, arrangers,
    cross-border media;
  * spaces of circulation and exchanges that transcend traditional
    political and/or linguistic boundaries, such as fictional serial
    productions, co-productions, joint-broadcasts, technical cooperation
    associations in the telecommunications field, foreign-language press;
  * socio-economic factors like concentration and financial
    globalisation, liberalisation and deregulation, convergence and new
    consumption habits.
  * the rhythms and temporality of information, the modes of circulation
    (e.g. scissors-and-paste journalism), adaptations and
    reconfigurations (e.g. comics to radio)
  * the transmission of practices and the mobility of people or
    resistance to these phenomena, i.e. factors that hinder or trouble
    transmedia circulation (seasonal and geopolitical conditions, legal
    matters, censorship, etc.)

_2. Intersections, reconfigurations and new media genealogies_

The goal of this strand is to refine our understanding of how media 
define themselves in relation to each other and how – from a 
diachronic-historical perspective – once-new media were perceived, 
integrated, and critiqued. We aim to identify productions and 
documentary resources that reflect such intertwined relations, such as 
anticipation tales, criticism in the press, advertising productions, 
etc. Potential questions to be addressed are:

  * How did the advent of new media affect existing media? How were they
    perceived and narrated by other media?
  * How do media publicize, promote, and criticize each other’s content?
    What are motives and strategies?
  * What “media imaginaries” emerged and how did these perhaps shape new
    periodisations of media history?

_3. New approaches, resources and methods _

In what ways can the mass digitisation of archival collections and the 
advancement of computational analysis tools foster transmedia research? 
Computational research methods allow processing large volumes of data 
and in recent times also increasingly across languages and modalities 
(e.g. image, text, sound). Until recently, most projects that embraced 
data-driven approaches focused on a single media, mostly the press. 
Research now starts to explore how to set up the processing—and how to 
conduct the analysis—of transmedia data; projects in the likes of TwiXL: 
An infrastructure for cross-media research on public debates 
<https://twi-xl.humanities.uva.nl/>, Clariah Media Suite 
<https://mediasuite.clariah.nl/>and Impresso - Media Monitoring of the 
Past II <https://impresso-project.ch/>all welcomed this goal. The third 
axis of this special issue thus, a.o., seeks to

·identify new and/or digital approaches that facilitate and bolster 
comparisons.

·discuss methods which enable analyses of the circulation of contents 
and formats at scale, in order to enhance our understanding of 
information fluxes. We therefore look to understand the effects that 
such tools have on studying transmedia histories, based on concrete 
historical case studies.

We also welcome contributions utilizing a transmedia perspective which 
are beyond these thematic lines but are still complementary to the 
overall special issue.

In short, this special issue seeks to contribute to the clarification 
and development of a transmedia approach in the historical sciences. It 
aims to address transmedia from a *historical, long-term perspective* 
based on *concrete historical case studies *and*original research *and, 
more broadly, to *promote a decompartmentalised, entangled history of 
media*.

_Submission procedure and important dates_

*Abstract submissions are due on May 31, 2025*. They have to be in 
English and have present the main research question(s), academic 
literature, data, method and concrete historical case study the authors 
plan to use. Abstracts should not exceed 1500 words. Please submit your 
abstract and a short bio to all four guest editors at 
(transmediahistories /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(transmediahistories /at/ gmail.com)>.

Since this special issue follows from the Transmedia conference referred 
to above, it is addressed primarily – but not exclusively! – to those 
who presented there. Those scholars, who already submitted an abstract 
before, can either send in the same abstract, or send in an updated 
version. Either way, make sure it complies with the above instructions.

In *June*, we will inform the authors whether they are invited to submit 
a full article.

Selected authors shall be invited to submit an article of 6000-8000 
words (including notes). Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer 
review process. Deadline for the manuscript is November 1, 2025. Revised 
drafts are expected by March 1, 2026 (and, if necessary, a second round 
of rewriting and reviews in the ensuing months). Copy-editing will take 
place in the Fall. *The special issue will be published in January 
2027*. Publications are open access; no payment from the authors will be 
required.

If you have questions, please contact the editors of the special issue, 
Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz,François Vallotton, Martin Grandjean and Jesper 
Verhoefat (transmediahistories /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(transmediahistories /at/ gmail.com)>.

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