call for papers - Media, technology and the migrant family: Media uses, appropriations and articulations in a culturally diverse Europe

Media, technology and the migrant family: Media uses, appropriations and articulations in a culturally diverse Europe

Guest Editors: Cristina Ponte & Myria Georgiou

Within the Cost Action IS0906, Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies,
Working Group 4 focuses on Audience transformation and social integration. Two topics are in the core of its interests: public issues related with media roles and regulations, citizenship and social diversity in a complex and multicultural European space; and issues related to the sphere of contemporary families such as the roles of the media in relationships among family members. From this debate a shared research topic emerged: Media, technology and the migrant family: Media uses, appropriations and articulations in a culturally diverse Europe.

The blurring of boundaries between the public and private spheres and the shifts in societal and familiar spaces of communication and identity require an interdisciplinary agenda and research practice. While media and communications research on cultural diversity, transnational families, and media consumption within migrant households needs to be aware of and engage with research within family studies and ethnic and migration studies, these disciplines can also benefit immensely from media and communications’ research and analysis. Therefore, we would like this special issue to contribute to an interdisciplinary approach that cross-fertilises research from across social sciences and the humanities and draws particular attention to research on uses of media and ICTs among migrant families.

We invite submissions on the following themes:

• What is the role of the media in advancing or hindering the participation and/or integration of migrant families in local, national and transnational communities? How do different media (e.g mainstream media, diasporic media, ethnic media) participate in such processes?
• How does media consumption and appropriations of communication technologies contribute to integration and identity construction among transnational migrant communities?
• How do digital media impact on the way identity is constructed among transnational migrant communities?
• How do media roles change according to age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or religion? What role do media play in the intergenerational cultural transmission and in sustaining family ties within and across borders? How much does generation matter, and how much does generation matter in media practice and in transmitting/sharing culture(s) in the households? How do family relation dynamics surrounding media uses vary in the case of different media? (How does socio-economic status affect these dynamics? What do migrant families think about public service media? Do they use them? Why or why not? What are their expectations?

Please send articles of 8000 words max. (excluding references) to the special issue editors (cristina.ponte@fcsh.unl.pt & M.A.Georgiou@lse.ac.uk) with the subject line "COST WG4 special issue". Submissions (as Word attachments) should contain a page with the title of the presentation, the name of the issue Media, technology and the migrant family: Media uses, appropriations and articulations in a culturally diverse Europe and the name(s) and contact details for ALL authors and the article on a separate page (with no author identification so as to allow blind review).

For submission guidelines and rules for authors please visit:
http://www.obs.obercom.pt/index.php/obs/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

Deadline for submission of articles is March 31, 2012.

The articles will be blindly peer reviewed; participants will be notified of decisions by June 30, 2012. Accepted articles will be considered for the journal special issue to be published in the first semester of 2013.