Emerald Studies in Media and Communications

FUTURE CALL:

Interrogating Technologies of Control 
Editor: Noah McClain 


RECENT CALL:

Racializing Media Policy
Editors: Jason A. Smith ( Center for Social Science Research and George Mason University) and Richard T. Craig (George Mason University)

Email Submissions to Jason A. Smith (jsm5@gmu.ed) & Richard T. Craig (rcraig@gmu.edu).

Racialization is a term used within the social sciences to highlight the ways that social interactions become racial. This is an important concept in sociological and political science research when looking at structural mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequalities. The state, and its various organizational spaces of action, is often seen as a site for race to be enacted (e.g., Bracey 2015). Public policy sectors such as housing, taxation, and immigration, to name a few, have been ripe areas of research. However, media policy research has not effectively engaged with this critical conception. Media policy research has been driven by political economy perspectives within the field of Communications and Media Studies, and can benefit from an approach that analyzes it in relation to social science perspectives that focus on processes which constitute, or are constituted by, actors, groups, and organizations.

Racializing Media Policy seeks to fill this scholarly gap by providing case studies which focus on media policy issues in the United States through the lens of racialization. It will contribute to a growing body of media policy research within the Communications and Media Studies literature, as well as anchor the role of media policy in Sociological research – where it is lacking. It would also lend itself toward a growing body of work in the Sociology of Organizations which have begun to focus on “raced organizations” (Ray 2019; Wooten 2019) to understand how racial inequalities are embedded within organizational practices. 

Media policy locations within governmental structures are where decisions might be formally made, yet media policy locations also exist outside of these structures through the various non-governmental actors who seek to influence the making of media policy (Freedman 2008). Similarly, non-governmental actors might seek to influence the media landscape outside of regulatory spaces by calling for changes to the media landscape more broadly. In this volume our conception of media policy is both narrow and open to consider the actions that occur in multiple locations. We are open to contributions that look at official and non-official policy locations, but must center questions and analyses around media policy concerns. Media policy is not static, and research on its intersection with racialization requires scholars to consider the nuances of how power is exerted across organizational boundaries.

The volume is under contract with the Emerald series ‘Studies in Media and Communications.’ The series is sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.
Proposals of 750-1000 words: Submissions that are theoretical and/or empirical are welcomed, although we will give more weight to empirical submissions that can demonstrate the mechanisms of racialization throughout the media policy process. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches will be welcomed, as well as case study approaches which allow authors to connect to larger structural conditions within media policy debates.

Topics of interest for this volume might include, but are not limited to:
•Racialized allocation of resources that impact media access or content creation
•Lobbying efforts by actors to shape media policy decisions
•The role of federal agencies in policy formation and decisions
•The role of media activist groups who engage in media policy work/spaces
•A focus on traditional (print, radio, television) and new (internet, social) media issues
•Historical media policy issues analyzed through the lens of racialization
•Contemporary issues such as: Net Neutrality, Privacy, Telecom Development (5G), Broadband Access
•Tensions over media ownership
•Localized media policy decisions at the municipal/county or state level
•Discourses of policy debates
•Racialized outcomes of media policy decisions

Submissions should be sent to Jason A. Smith (jsm5@gmu.ed) and Richard T. Craig (rcraig@gmu.edu).
References
Bracey, G. E. (2015). Toward a critical race theory of state. Critical Sociology, 41(3): 553-572.
Freedman, D. (2008). The politics of media policy. Polity.
Ray, V. (2019). A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1): 26-53.
Wooten, M. E. (Ed.). (2019). Race, organizations, and the organizing process. Emerald.


Email Submissions to Jason A. Smith (jsm5@gmu.ed) & Richard T. Craig (rcraig@gmu.edu).


RECENT VOLUMES

Two Volumes
Theorizing Criminality and Policing in the Digital Media Age
Mass Mediated Representations of Crime and Criminality 
Editor: Julie B. Wiest

These volumes will include social science research that advances knowledge about the complex relationships between media and crime. Chapters will be divided into central focal areas within this literature to seek the widest breadth of current scholarship. In particular, studies are sought that examine: representations of crime and criminals in mass media; links between media representations of crime and related public beliefs and behaviors; the use of new/digital media in the commission/detection of crime or in the dissemination of crime stories; and advances in theory and/or methods relevant to studies of media and crime.

FORTHCOMING VOLUMES 

Messages and Meaning in Mass Media: Interpreting Production, Text, and Reception 
Editor: Ian Sheinheit

Messages and meaning in mass media: Understanding production, text, and reception breaks new ground in understanding media interpretively on three distinct but interrelated levels. Using diverse methods and empirical foci, the volume’s authors unpack the diverse, rich, and complex meaning systems within the mediated processes of production and reception as well as within the media text itself. By unpacking these three crucial, empirically overlapping but analytically distinct, media ‘moments’, the volume highlights, first, the fecundity of an interpretive theoretical lens, broadly defined, to the study of media, and, second, how production, text, and reception are linked and what this means for media and communication. Authors’ contributions show the importance of messages and meaning in mass media by looking at the, often overlapping, cases of activism, politics, and celebrity. Together these chapters provide insight into the ways in which the media and communicative landscape has altered, or not, in the 21st century. This volume is of interest to anyone who is concerned with the structural, cultural, and technological dynamics of mediated communication. Further, it contributes to media, critical, performance, and communication theory, as well as to the literatures on social movements, politics, news, new media, and culture.

Technology and Government
Editor: Lloyd Levine

Government has a notorious reputation when it comes to the purchase and use of technology. A quick search of the headlines of major newspapers will quickly yield a treasure trove of technology procurement gone wrong. Additionally, while the private sector seems to adopt and implement new technology seamlessly and quickly to deliver for customers, government seems to lag behind. This seems to apply to both internal use of technology as well as external, customer facing uses. This volume will examine why government fails at technology purchases, examine why government lags behind on innovation and implementation, provide a case study of governments that have done an excellent job of purchasing and using technology, and look at the challenges of providing digital government services when large percentages of the population lack digital connectivity due to the digital divide. It will also examine how changes in technology have forced changes in the way government operates. Research examines the effect of technology on transparency, political and/or administrative, and this can be about the disclosure of behaviors, or about more transparency in government due to the ability of government to put information on line where the public can access it directly; how technology has changed the way government, particularly local or state government provides services; and the way technology has affected communications between government and those the entity governs. 

Media, Development and Democracy: historical and current connections
Editor: Heloisa Pait

Connections between the emergence of national democracies, economic development, and the introduction of mass media have been studied for many decades, but there are still missing links in this complex web. This volume sheds light on questions including: what is the impact of State censorship and material restrictions on the press, in countries that have been witnessing continuous economic development? Do restrictions on the functioning of the media in the formative period of a nation have long-term impacts on economic development? Looking from a different angle, can a limited labor market, with few formal vacancies in competitive firms, make literacy less rewarding, discouraging private investment in education? How do low literacy rates influence political culture and the nature of the public sphere in a modern society? In this volume, we would like to examine the multiple relationships between economic development, adoption of new media, literacy and education, and democratic culture.

Geo Spaces of Communication: Research on Journalism, Media, and Digital Technologies
Creating Culture Through Media, Communications, Literature, Culture, and History  

Editorial Team includes: Sonia Virginia Moreira , John Baldwin, Laura Robinson, Juliana Trammel, Joe Straubhaar, and Jeremy Schulz

ESMC has launched a new initative led by Sonia Virginia Moreira (Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil) that capitalizes on her leadership of Colóquio Brasil-Estados Unidos de Estudos da Comunicação sponsored by Intercom. These volumes examines communication, media, literature, history, and journalism across the Americas and highlight scholarship from the 2020 Colloquium at UT Austin, Texas (USA) and the 2018 Colloquium in Joinville Santa Catarina (BRAZIL). 

Data Ethics and Digital Privacy in Learning Health Systems (LHS) for Palliative Medicine
Volume Editors: Virginia M Miori, Kyle Chalmers, and Daniel J. Miori 

This volume explores how Learning Health Systems (LHS) support medical decision making. Though algorithms are chosen to eliminate bias, we are left with unconscious bias present in data, due to lack of representation for marginalized populations. This is especially problematic in palliative care. Data ethics must also address the HIPAA Privacy Rule, that clearly establishes the standard to protect digitally held health care data. Medical practitioners lack historical foundations for decision making for patients in underrepresented populations. In addition, palliative patients are subject to uneven quality of care and an absence of treatment goals, due to a lack of advocacy and other challenges. This volume reviews the ethical foundations that drive our approach, data collection (public data, private data and data privacy), data stratification methodologies to support marginalized and intersectional populations, analysis techniques, algorithmic development to maintain privacy, survival analysis, result interpretation, LHS development, and LHS implementation. 


PUBLISHED VOLUMES SPONSORED BY CITAMS

Millennials and Media

The M in CITAMS@30: Media Sociology

Networks, Hacking, and Media--CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow

Media and Power in International Contexts: Perspectives on Agency and Identity 

e-Health: Current Evidence, Promises, Perils, and Future Directions 

Social Movements and Media

Brazil: Media From the Country of the Future 

ICTs and the Politics of Inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean 

[New] Media Cultures 

Digital Distinctions & Inequalities 

Politics, Participation, and Production 

Doing and Being Digital: Mediated Childhoods 

For full information on published volumes (volume editors, authors, etc) see here