Critical Studies in Media Communication
Special Issue: Digital Labor, Below-the-Line
Submission deadline: January 12, 2015
Final drafts due: March 12, 2015
The work required to produce the web and to fill the media devices that increasingly occupy 21st century life is often difficult to see. With a click content appears, images proliferate, and text, sound and video streams across our screens. However, behind the screen exists a globally distributed network of people who toil to create, manage, distribute, promote and update digital content. Their labor reflects new modes of production and shifting divisions of labor that characterize media production in a digital economy.
For this special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication, issue editor Nina Huntemann seeks papers that explore digital media workers “behind the screen.” Submissions should advance scholarship about invisible labor in the digital media industries, and should principally consider the labor produced by those engaged in below-the-line work. Cultural producers in such positions might include social media interns, web content editors and copywriters, online community managers, video game playtesters, 3D animation modelers and riggers, texture artists, video loggers, and digital content asset managers.
In addition to workers involved in cultural production, this special issue also invites papers that consider the labor of those working to create and maintain the digital media infrastructure, such as hardware assembly line workers, miners in raw materials extraction, technical support staff (e.g. Genius Bar/Geek Squad), and security personnel at data centers.
The editor is particularly interested in manuscripts that consider the special issue theme at the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, nation/region, sexual orientation, class, and ability.
To discuss possible submissions, please email the issue editor Nina Huntemann
About the Journal:
Critical Studies in Media Communication (CSMC) publishes scholarship in media and mass communication written from a Cultural Studies and critical perspective. Research articles selected for publication make a substantial contribution to existing literature in media studies, provide novel theoretical insights that have the potential to stimulate further research, and serve as foundational contributions for debates within and beyond the field of communication. While each essay is well researched, primary emphasis is on the theoretical contribution the essay makes through the development of concepts, terms, and ideas that move the field in new and exciting directions.
Submission Details:
All manuscripts must conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition, 2010) and should not exceed 7,000 words including references, notes, figures, and tables. Shorter pieces will be considered. Essays significantly longer than 7,000 words may be returned.
All submissions should be made online at Critical Studies in Media Communication’s ScholarOne Manuscripts site. When submitting your manuscript, please indicate in the Cover Letter that your piece is intended for the Digital Labor special issue. Thank you.
A PDF of this call for papers available here