Digital Journalism
Special Issue Call for Papers: Journalism History through Digital Archives
Deadline: 15 September 2017
http://explore.tandfonline.com/pages/cfp/rdij-special-issue-journalism-history
While analytical methods have been steadily developing in relation to research on journalism in its various live digital forms (e.g. news websites, twitter, and Facebook) there has been less focus on developing research on and related methodologies for journalistic productions accumulating in digital archives. While such inventories hold great potential for researchers of journalism history they also pose a set of challenges.
The amount of material raises questions of selection, data clean-up, meta-data availability and the ensuing possibilities of search and analysis. Linked to this, the possible malleability of access, retrieval and analytical procedures is challenging, as this requires new digital skills, products and collaborations. Yet, the amount of material and avenues of access and analysis simultaneously open a range of possibilities for investigating vast amounts of data across former barriers (e.g. media platforms or archives) and this allows for re-visiting of old questions as well as developing new ones.
Against the background of such wider issues this special issue elicits papers that do journalism history through digital archives in various geographical, cultural and temporal contexts. While such ventures necessarily raise theoretical and methodological questions the call is for contextual reflections rather than generic discussions of the potential and problems of digital archives. Following this, submissions can — but do not have to — engage with journalism history projects
- across media platforms and/or (former) technologies
- across long time periods, geographies, cultures and/or archives
- that draw on layout and textual forms (in a wide sense of that term)
- that correlates with other types of (public) digital data (e.g. migration, BNP etc.)
In relation to the journalism history projects papers may in various degrees reflect on
- methodological and theoretical issues
- the politics of archiving
- computational analysis in relation to contextual and qualitative studies.
- issues arising from collaborative research across disciplinary and institutional boundaries
- research infrastructures for the utilization of digital archives
- the constitution of archived digital objects and its relations to the historical artifacts and what this means for the writing of journalism history
Submissions
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to guest editor Henrik Bødker (hb@cc.au.dk) no later than September 15, 2017. Selected authors will be invited to contribute by January 15 (2018). A maximum 8,000-word paper (including references, tables, etc.) will be considered for publication, subject to double blind peer-review.
Timeline:
Abstracts to guest editor: September 15, 2017
Authors notified: October 1, 2017
Full papers for peer review: January 15, 2018
Reviews to authors: March 15, 2018
Revised full papers: April 15, 2018
Editorial information
Guest Editor: Henrik Bødker, Aarhus University (hb@cc.au.dk)
http://explore.tandfonline.com/pages/cfp/rdij-special-issue-journalism-history
