Special issue of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique

http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/announcement/view/17


Interrogating Internships

Edited by Nicole S. Cohen (University of Toronto Mississauga), Greig de 
Peuter (Wilfrid Laurier University), Enda Brophy (Simon Fraser University)

When publisher Condé Nast cancelled its internship program in October 
2013, the response was mixed: many cheered the end of a program that 
asked debt-laden youth to labour for free, while others lamented the 
closure of one of the only routes into media work. When depicted in the 
mainstream media, internships are surrounded by an aura of glamour: 
rapper Kanye West did a stint at luxury designer Fendi, Lady Gaga 
arranged one at designer Philip Treacy, and Hollywood portrayed the 
phenomenon in the movie The Internship. The gloss is fading, however: 
digital electronics manufacturer Foxconn was caught employing student 
interns on dubious terms on its assembly lines; former interns launched 
a successful class-action suit against Fox Searchlight Pictures; and 
Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the 
Brave New Economy (Verso, 2011) was vital in pushing internships into a 
critical spotlight internationally. Within just a few years, internships 
have become a high-profile subject, garnering media attention, 
catalyzing activism, provoking government action, and sparking lawsuits 
against massive corporations.

Although internships are prevalent in communication, cultural, media, 
and entertainment industries, scholarly literature on internships from 
communication and cultural studies remains limited. This special issue 
of tripleC seeks to situate internships within the labour turn in 
research in communication studies and beyond. The issue will interrogate 
some of the multiple articulations between and among internships, 
capitalism, communication, and culture. Employers in the media and 
cultural sectors are regularly singled out as playing a key role in 
perpetuating the normalization and intensification of unpaid or low paid 
intern labour, illuminating the interplay of glamourous occupations, the 
reserve army of labour, and discount wages. For many young people, 
internships provide an initial encounter with and formative experience 
of the capitalist labour market, yet the relationship between 
internships and the category of exploitation is not necessarily 
straightforward. And many youth are shut out of internships altogether, 
highlighting the way class divisions structure entry into communication 
and cultural industries. Internships are also an emerging trope in 
popular media culture, with television shows ranging from Girls to 
Gallery Girls pointing to the gendered dimension of internships. And, if 
internships are in the international spotlight today, it is thanks to 
growing intern labour activism and the way interns and their allies have 
turned their communicative capacities to alternative ends, raising 
awareness through DIY video-making, engaging in creative online protest 
and campaigns, and effectively naming-and-shaming intern employers via 
social media.

Internships are an entry point for interrogating contested conditions of 
life and labour in communicative capitalism at a time when precarity is 
an overarching structure of feeling. So, we invite articles, reports, 
interviews, and pieces that develop key concepts from academics, 
activists, and interns (current and former) on issues including but not 
limited to:
* the political-economic context of the spread of (unpaid) internships
* the relationship of internships to student debt and youth unemployment
* social exclusion based on class, race, and gender and intersectional 
analysis of the social relations of internships;
* the production of meaning, e.g., discourse analysis of media coverage 
of intern issues, everyday talk of internships (‘paying your dues,’ 
‘getting a foot in the door’);
* representations of internships in popular media culture;
* government regulation, policy proposals, legal issues, and 
class-action law suits;
* ‘passionate labour,’ governmentality, self-exploitation, working for 
exposure, network sociality, and reputational economies;
* case studies of internships within and/or across particular sectors of 
the arts, media, and cultural industries (e.g., journalism, fashion, film);
* historical perspectives on internships in the communication and 
cultural industries;
* intern activism within and beyond the union movement; strategies, 
tactics, and organizing models;
* critical and contextualized biographical accounts of internship 
experiences;
* the role of education institutions in the intern economy;
* genealogy of the term ‘intern’;
* elite internships and access;
* theoretical key concepts for interrogating internships, such as 
exploitation, youth, and intersectionality, etc.

Length:
* Peer-reviewed academic articles: 5,000-8,000 words not including 
references
* Interviews, reports from organizations, non-academic articles: 
1,000-2,500 words not including references
* Key concept entries: 1,000-2,000 words not including references

Publishing Schedule:

Jan. 15, 2014: deadline for proposals (300-500 word abstract)
Feb. 1, 2014: notification of acceptance (scholarly articles still 
subject to peer review)
June 1, 2014: deadline for first drafts
Aug. 1, 2014: editorial feedback provided
Oct. 1, 2014: final drafts submitted
Nov. 1, 2014: publication of special issue

Please send queries and abstract proposals (including title, abstract of 
around 300-500 words, affiliation, contact data, brief biographical 
note) via email to the 3 co-editors:

Nicole S. Cohen
Institute of Communication, Culture and Information Technology
University of Toronto Mississauga
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Greig de Peuter
Department of Communication Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University
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Enda Brophy
School of Communication
Simon Fraser University
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About the journal:
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique is a non-profit open 
access journal focusing on the study of media, digital media, 
information and communication in contemporary capitalist societies. For 
this task, articles should employ critical theories and/or empirical 
research inspired by critical theories and/or philosophy and ethics 
guided by critical thinking as well as relate the analysis to power 
structures and inequalities of capitalism, especially forms of 
stratification such as class, racist and other ideologies and capitalist 
patriarchy. The journal is especially interested in how analyses relate 
to normative, political and critical dimensions and how they help 
illuminating conditions that foster or hinder the advancement of an 
inclusive, just and participatory information society. It publishes both 
theoretical and empirical contributions as well as reflections and book 
reviews.

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