Call for Papers: Crisis, Conflict, and Cultural Relations in Media Environments

In the wake of current cultural, social, and political happenings and due to the ongoing global COVID-19 related health crisis, the role of new media technologies is heightened. The current global pandemic created new cultural and political conflicts, presenting new issues, heightening some of the oppressive structures, and creating newer troubles for members of marginalized communities. As a result, people are turning to media technologies to escape reality, to find solutions, and to create new online communities to belong. Digital communication connects residents of different countries in an invisible web of entanglement that creates a layered global identity beyond the confines of national borders. Our collective ideas of our past, our perceptions of the present, and projections for the future are influenced by our constantly changing information and communicative environment. This book takes a broad theoretical and applied perspective to describing conceptual links among conflict, crisis, and cultural relations in a mediated world.

This call invites abstracts for an edited book that takes qualitative, interpretive, and critical and cultural perspectives in examining the reciprocal relationship among new media, culture, and crisis in the context of communication.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

1. Social media in personal and relational crisis

2. New media technologies in the context of COVID-19 and other health crises

3. Political conflicts and social media

4. New media, isolation, and loneliness

5. Social media as a sight of conflict

6. Global conflicts and mediated connectivity

7. Crisis in online communities

Abstracts are due by October 15, 2020, with a word length of no more than 300 words, along with pertinent references, contact information, and a short biographic blurb of 300 words. Full-length manuscripts are due on March 1, 2021, with a word length of no more than 5,000-7,000words and in APA style, including references, endnotes, and so forth. Please email your abstracts as Word documents to Ahmet Atay(aatay@wooster.edu) for an initial review.