Special Issue of Information Communication and society

Deadline: May 31, 2019

Published in 2020 (online); 2021 (print)

Edited by Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Tonny Krijnen and Paul G. Nixon

From Trump’s discourses to the everyday life performances in digital platforms, from representation of LGBTQ+ in TV programs to pornography, the relation between gender, sexuality and media is ubiquitous and strongly embedded in everyday life. The definitions of gender and sexuality are in constant flux with the media playing a key role in shaping, articulating, representing and performing these definitions.

The current, general openness and debate on gender and sexuality is built upon the struggles of many groups and individuals to bring these issues into the mainstream. Issues that have important influences on the ways in which we live our lives and view those of others.

Because of political and cultural changes, questions connected to sexual identity and gender are constantly under attack, whilst opposite tendencies of reconfirming patriarchal scripts and resisting challenging, and redefining these paradigms are simultaneously present.

Considering gender and sexuality as social and cultural construction, this special issue aims to explore issues able to focus on the contemporary social changes that are connected to gender and sexuality in and through media. The articles will be concerned, on the one hand, with exploring aspects of the changing social and sexual landscape, on the other hand, on the ways in which media seem to stubbornly recycle gender and sexual stereotypes. How do these two tendencies relate to one another? How do contemporary gender ideologies influence media perspectives and practices? Do mediated representations reinforce, echo, or challenge social hierarchies based in differences of gender and sexuality? How do new media technologies feed into discourses on gender and sexuality?

Potential papers could explore new researches at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory and the nuances of contemporary sex and gender scripts as they are played out in popular media looking at both the more traditional and normative interpretation of gender and sexuality as well as texts that challenge and therefore move beyond the heteronormative and sexist.

We are looking for contributions that analyse media both in terms of representation and agency and that will be able to reflect different cultural conditions and experiences, contrasting perspectives in terms of analytical orientation, and geographically dynamic subjects.

Possible topics could include:

• adapting and resisting gendered and sexed identities
• forging new normative gendered identities
• dating and hook up apps
• use of social networking sites, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
• rebranding feminism
• pornography
• datafication of gender and sexuality
• representation of gender and sexuality in popular media
• gender and media production
• gender, sexuality and technologies, technology of pleasure, sex bots.

Please submit your 300 word abstract along with the author’s bio (100 words) and author’s full contact details before 31 May 2019.

Please upload you abstract using this link: https://www.dropbox.com/request/OXDnBkBIewJldq14OZIi

Please direct enquiries to Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Tonny Krijnen and Paul G. Nixon

• marco.scarcelli@gmail.com
• krijnen@eshcc.eur.nl
• p.g.nixon@hhs.nl

Publication schedule:

• 31 May 2019: Deadline submission abstracts
• 30 June 2019: Decisions on abstracts
• 1 February 2020: deadline full paper submission
• 1 February - 15 April 2020: Peer reviewing
• 22 April 2020: Comments to authors
• 8 May 2020: Deadline submission revisions
• 21 May 2020: Final decisions