Deadline for Abstracts: 30 June 2017
Deadline for Submissions: 30 September 2017
Publication of the Issue: March 2018

The journal Media and Communication hereby announces a thematic issue (to be published in 2018) dedicated to the topic of media history and democracy. Democracy, in its many guises, has long been an influential concern for media historians. The emphasis on democracy in this thematic issue is intended to link up with media histories that take on the intersection of democracy and media as understood through any one of a number of lenses. The issue of democracy brings this thematic issue in contact with numerous approaches to media history. Authors will find connections to be made between democracy and concerns for: history of technology, social history, cultural history, political history, the history of social networks, intellectual history, and more. Democracy need not be conceptualized as a formal political system for this thematic issue, and many authors may find it fruitful to consider the multifarious aspects and meanings of democracy as they reflect on how they might draft a submission to this thematic issue. Media and Communication is an international journal, and we are particularly interested in programming a thematic issue that features historical scholarship from around the world, including manuscripts that address transnational communication flows. This thematic issue of Media and Communication would be a good match for articles addressing the following topics:

– The history of democratic ideals in the development of media technology;
– Considerations of democratic formations as they relate to journalism history and historical understandings of the role of journalism;
– Histories of media as they relate to political activism;
– The history of alternative and independent media outlets as they relate to democratic processes;
– The history of public service broadcasting and its applications worldwide or transnationally;
– Histories of media reform movements;
– Treatments of the history of literacy and its political meanings;
– Internet histories as they relate to citizenship or democracy;
– The historical roles of interpersonal communication and social networks as they relate to democracy;
– The history of media policies and regulation designed to arrange for (or thwart) democratic communication;
– Historical themes concerning the relationship between capitalism and democracy.
Continuer la lecture →