2009: Volume 2, Issue 1 -- Ethics, New Media, and Social Networks

2009: Volume 2, Issue 2 -- Veiling Differences: Mediating Race, Gender, and Nation

2010: Volume 3, Issue 1 -- International Perspectives on Network Neutrality

2010: Volume 3, Issue 2 -- Propaganda, Ethics, and Media

The last two decades have witnessed a rapid transformation of traditional media into new media that encompasses digital, computerized, and networked information and communication technologies. This shift has raised concerns and discussions around the positive and negative implications of the new media, and other issues such as: control of information, volume and speed of communication, Habermasian democratic public sphere, and the global influence of media conglomerates. Marshall McLuhan’s theoretical research on communication technologies has enriched the historical understanding of social change. He argued that the dominant medium in a given time relatively shaped the way we perceived and understood the world around it; hence, we cannot understand a given technological experience without studying its social setting.

Social networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, among many others, have evolved as a result of Web 2.0 concepts and new media technologies. Millions of people around the globe, through social networking (internal, external, or mobile), are recently building online local, regional, and global communities to communicate their shared interests and activities, disseminate information, and interact through a variety of web-based tools. The use of new media and social networks (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Habbo, Twitter, Nexopia) has implications for society, culture, and politics that has encouraged researchers to investigate a variety of related issues such as: social identity, privacy, distance learning, social capital, socio-psychological effects of the web, misuse of cyberspace, Diaspora, social status, and access to information. There have been also numerous incidents of misconduct that have led to negative and harmful situations, such as: political deception of constituents, suicide, libel and breach of privacy, cyber-crimes, and so on.

Ethics and responsibility are fundamental to the effective performance of communication. They should go hand-in-hand with the freedom of new media and social networking use. This issue will focus on the relationship between ethics, new media, and social networks, covering a variety of themes and cases from global and North American perspectives. It welcomes analytic, critical, empirical, or comparative submissions that discuss the most recent debates and discourses about, but not limited to, the following topics:

• ethical/unethical uses of social networks
• technoethics
• business ethics
• media codes of ethics
• privacy of information
• political marketing and the use of social networks
• government policies and regulations of the Internet
• diasporic communities on the web
• digital, electronic, and interactive media
• media digitization and convergence
• new media copyrights and intellectual property rights
• media and social change
• social, cultural, and political dimensions of new media

The Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition (http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/) welcomes high-quality, original submissions on related topics to the above theme. Submissions are expected to develop communication and media theories, report empirical and analytical research, present critical discourses, apply theories to case studies, and set out innovative research methodologies. The Journal is bilingual (English and French) open-access online academic refereed publication that aims to advance research and understanding of communication and media in Canada and around the globe.

Deadline: August 1st, 2009

Submissions: Papers (5,000 to 7,500 words), review articles of more than one book (2,500 to 3,000 words), and book reviews (1,000 to 1,200 words).

Method: All manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Word Document attachments, directly to Dr. Mahmoud Eid (meid@uottawa.ca).

Guidelines: Available at: http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/for-authors_e.html

Decision: September 30th, 2009

Publication: November 15th, 2009

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Canada is widely admired for its multiculturalism policy and its seeming resistance of overt, state-imposed measures of assimilation. Yet, in the post September 11, 2001 world, and with the long-standing debates on home-grown terrorism, an emerging notion of “cultural citizenship” has surfaced, highlighting the ambiguities of collective belonging in the Canadian multicultural context.

This issue of the Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition interrogates the constitutive role of mainstream media and popular culture in mediating constructions of Islam and Muslims in Canada. Specifically, the aim is to draw attention to contemporary portrayals of Islam and Muslims in relation to racial and engendered dynamics of Canadian nationhood and national belonging. In doing so, scholars and researchers are invited to explore and debate the following questions in their contributions:

• Do the communicative practices inherent in these forms of mediation activate myths and fictions of assimilation? If so, how is this accomplished?
• Do the mainstream media install and/or perpetuate a separate status for Muslims, thereby entrenching a “cultural divide” in Canadian society?
• How are the relational dynamics of these portrayals, especially between “helpless” Muslim women and “dangerous” Muslim men, rendered meaningful within the post 9/11 landscape?
• What are the implications for immigration, citizenship, and the realities of Muslims living in Canada?
• What are some of the complicating factors - for example, those who have converted to Islam - or popular/alternative campaigns contesting contemporary representations?

The Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition (http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/) welcomes high-quality, original submissions on related topics to the above theme. Submissions are expected to develop communication and media theories, report empirical and analytical research, present critical discourses, apply theories to case studies, and set out innovative research methodologies. The Journal is bilingual (English and French) open-access online academic refereed publication that aims to advance research and understanding of communication and media in Canada and around the globe.

Deadline: August 7th, 2009

Submissions: Papers (5,000 to 7,500 words), review articles of more than one book (2,500 to 3,000 words), and book reviews (1,000 to 1,200 words).

Method: All manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Word Document attachments, directly to Dr. Aliaa Dakroury (adakrour@connect.carleton.ca).

Guidelines: Available at: http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/for-authors_e.html

Decision: October 30th, 2009

Publication: December 15th, 2009

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The idea of “network neutrality” has become one of the most prominent policy concerns for lawmakers, telecommunications industries, media reformers, and communication scholars. In short, neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers should afford equal interconnection among content providers and users of the network, so that those who control access to the network do not censor lawful content or enact discriminatory routing of content. The outcome of this debate has significant implications for the participatory-democratic nature of the Internet, the free flow of information and speech, user’s privacy rights, Internet governance, efficacy of independent media, and political participation, as well the continued vitality of libraries and educational systems. Given these stakes, network neutrality may well be the telecommunication policy issue of the 21st Century.

In North America, battles over network neutrality have already emerged in Canada and the United States. While mobilization for network neutrality has been slower in Canada than in the United States, in the last year alone activism has taken many forms, including online and offline actions and politicizing a range of citizens and policy-makers. Canada’s media regulator, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), has issued a call for network neutrality and is holding a public hearing on issues related to traffic management in July 2009. Proponents of network neutrality in the United States scored their biggest victory to date when President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which included language supporting neutrality principles as part its Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. Nevertheless, any subsequent legislation seeking comprehensive enforcement of network neutrality will surely face intense opposition.

This issue will spotlight international perspectives on network neutrality that encompass such themes as empire, network economics, technological innovation, telecommunication regulation and corporate control. Any analytical approach is welcome, including comparative studies, telecommunication policy analysis, media studies, ethical examination, political economic critique, as well as others. Potential topics could include, but are not limited to the following:

• public awareness and activism about net neutrality
• ethical perspectives on network neutrality
• neutrality as a telecommunication policy norm
• network neutrality and Internet governance
• the relationship of network neutrality to other areas of communication law
• consumer disenfranchisement/power without network neutrality
• media ownership and network neutrality
• industry trends that may undermine, or support neutrality
• technologies that may undermine or support network neutrality
• examination of the relationships between competing broadband networks
• media discourses on network neutrality
• network neutrality and impact on library and education sector
• network neutrality and impact on independent media sector

The Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition (http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/) welcomes high-quality, original submissions on related topics to the above theme. Submissions are expected to develop communication and media theories, report empirical and analytical research, present critical discourses, apply theories to case studies, and set out innovative research methodologies. The Journal is bilingual (English and French) open-access online academic refereed publication that aims to advance research and understanding of communication and media in Canada and around the globe.

Deadline: March 15th, 2010

Submissions: Papers (5,000 to 7,500 words), review articles of more than one book (2,500 to 3,000 words), and book reviews (1,000 to 1,200 words).

Method: All manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Word Document attachments, directly to Dr. Jeffrey Layne Blevins (blevins@iastate.edu) or Dr. Leslie Regan Shade (lshade@alcor.concordia.ca).

Guidelines: Available at: http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/for-authors_e.html

Decision: April 30th, 2010

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A key distinction between ordinary persuasion and propaganda would be the hiding of sources or other key information that would hinder a target audience’s ability to assess the truth of the messages disseminated, including impressions formed by imagery. Following theoretical and practical approaches, potential submissions to this issue could include, but are not limited to the following topics:

• Leaks from anonymous sources, protecting a government department’s reputation or furthering its goals in some other way.
• Influence by ownership, advertisers or other key people to further special interests without the connection being revealed.
• Systematic bias regarding selection of images of political or other figures, or experts chosen for talk show panels.
• Biases in determining a newsworthiness agenda.
• The propaganda of non-coverage of events.
• Fake credentials for creating belief-worthiness of false or tendentious stories.
• Video News Releases under the guise of genuine journalistic productions.
• Staged press conferences where party-faithful plant questions and are called on to save a leader in difficulty.

Other submissions of interest would be those examining the difficulties and responsibilities of conveying pertinent information from an area of conflict to people, often in distant areas, whose judgment could end or continue that conflict. Discussions of the kinds of pressures encountered and possible methods of dealing with them could serve as suitable subjects for examination. Finally, submissions focusing on recent prominent cases could include problems of controlling propaganda through law and public opinion; such as, hate propaganda and stereotyping through the CRTC or the FCC, press councils or advertising authorities, or human rights commissions or the Criminal Code.

The Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition (http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/) welcomes high-quality, original submissions on related topics to the above theme. Submissions are expected to develop communication and media theories, report empirical and analytical research, present critical discourses, apply theories to case studies, and set out innovative research methodologies. The Journal is bilingual (English and French) open-access online academic refereed publication that aims to advance research and understanding of communication and media in Canada and around the globe.

Deadline: September 15th, 2010

Submissions: Papers (5,000 to 7,500 words), review articles of more than one book (2,500 to 3,000 words), and book reviews (1,000 to 1,200 words).

Method: All manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Word Document attachments, directly to Dr. Randal Marlin (marlin@ncf.ca).

Guidelines: Available at: http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/for-authors_e.html

Decision: October 30th, 2010

Publication: December 15th, 2010