CFP: "Rethinking the distinction between old and new media"
Special Issue of Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
Guest editors: Frederik Lesage (Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Simone Natale (Loughborough University, UK)
Expected date of publication: August 2019
Since at least the early 1990s with the publication of groundbreaking works such as Manovich’s The Language of New Media, the rise of digital and online media into every facet of our lives has been conceptualized through distinctions between
“new” and “old” media. Yet, scholars have recently started to criticize such concepts, arguing that they are inappropriate to describe media change and that they do not help improve our understanding of the relationship between different media in contemporary
societies. Approaches to the biography and social life of media have examined how definitions of oldness and newness are attributed to technologies and artefacts throughout their lifetime, providing an interpretative model to rethink processes such as convergence,
media encounters, and the transformations that media technologies and practices experience throughout time.
This special issue will further advance these reflections. It aims to illuminate places, cases, and contexts where distinctions between old and new media break down, and to propose alternative theoretical frameworks that redefine media
change and the interaction between different media. Papers are invited that interrogate how changing definitions of old and new media inform the trajectory of specific media as well as their interrelations, moving away from rigid conceptions of oldness and
newness to emphasise, instead, the persistent changes that characterise our relationship with media objects and technologies.
Potential topics
The editors welcome contributions that explore questions such as:
Deadline for abstracts: 31th May 2018
Please send a 500-word abstract and a 100-word bio to the guest editors: [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to send full contributions by 31st October 2018
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Dr. Simone Natale
Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies
Loughborough University
Department of Social Science
Leicestershire
LE11 3TU
United Kingdom
Phone (work): (+44) (0) 1509223380
Institutional webpage:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/staff/natale-simone.html
Academia.edu:
https://lboro.academia.edu/SimoneNatale