[Commlist] Call for papers: Lifestyle politics and social media activism

We warmly invite you to submit your proposals for the special edition of 
/Critical Discourse Studies /on the topic of lifestyle politics and 
social media activism.

It has been argued that social media has transformed civic debate and 
participation and now form a fundamental part of all forms of political 
action or protest, whether at a more formal level or more like 
grassroots activism. For this special edition of /Critical Discourse 
Studies/, we are looking for papers that carry out detailed analysis of 
instances of social media protest, activism or civic participation.  
Critical Discourse Studies seeks to draw out discourses embedded in 
instances of communication, which serve to maintain forms of 
inequalities and oppression, and which legitimize the ideas, values and 
aims of the powerful and privileged.  We want to include papers that 
interrogate the claims made across or within hashtags in relation to 
matters of inequality or injustice, in regard to how actual concrete 
issues are represented, the identities of participants, causalities, 
solutions, etc.  While some scholars celebrate the potential of social 
media to bring injustices to public attention, to what extent are these 
represented in ways where actual issues, processes and those involved 
are made clear?  Or to what extent do such things become abstracted and 
obscured, in the fashion of lifestyle politics, which concerns other 
scholars?

It has become common to find trending social media hashtags where users 
express their feelings about current social and political issues.  This 
has taken the form of significant events such as #BlackLivesMatter and 
#MeToo.  Others include #WeStandWithUkraine, or #OneLove, supporting 
LGBTQ+ rights during a major football tournament and #MahsaAmini, which 
supported women living under the Iranian government.  It also takes the 
form of what can be called 'cancel culture' or 'vigilante culture', 
where hashtags become sites where users shame and rally against persons 
viewed to have committed a perceived moral transgression.  For example, 
in the case of the legal case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in 
2022, record numbers of social media users posted opinions in relation 
to issues such as abuse in relationships, feminism and the nature of 
celebrity.


Deadlines:

  * Submit abstract and title     15 Jan 2026
  * Submit first draft                 30 Jul 2026
  * Reviewing period
  * Resubmission                      1 Nov 2026

No payment from the authors will be required.

Contact and submissions to:
Gwen Bouvier, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
(_gwen.bouvier /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(gwen.bouvier /at/ gmail.com)>_
Sergei A. Samoilenko, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
(_ssamoyle /at/ gmu.edu) <mailto:(ssamoyle /at/ gmu.edu)>_



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