Nordicom Review Special Issue (open access)

Deadline for abstract submissions: November 15, 2019

Deadline for full paper submissions: April 19, 2020

The purpose of this special issue of Nordicom Review is to showcase the need to include social class as a central category in media and communications research, as well as to analyse how it intersects with other social dimensions such as race, gender, sexuality, age etc.

Social class underlies many debates within contemporary media and communications research. It is implicitly featured in debates about algorithmic targeting, digital surveillance and social sorting. It is also featured in debates about political communication, fake news and polarisation, as well as in relation to issues of media representations and media use. Social changes and phenomena in urgent need of attention such as increasing economic and cultural inequality and the rise of populist political movements are related to media and communication systems, while also being closely related to issues of class. Especially from a Nordic perspective, social class is more than ever a category that is needed in media research. The persistence of the idea of a Nordic exceptionalism and a Nordic (media) welfare state, against a reality of increasing social inequalities, makes it urgent to include a theoretical perspective on social class in analyses of the role and functioning of the media in the Nordic countries.

Contributions to the Special Issue should address one of the many areas in which social class is crucial for our understanding of media and communication. We welcome contributions that deal with social class in any media forms and genres, and that address social class from either the perspective of production, text or reception. Authors are free to adopt and/or develop any of the established theoretical notions of social class. The focus on the Nordic (media) welfare state means that contributions that highlight issues of social class in the Nordic region – in a single country or comparatively – are especially welcomed.

Contributions that provide opportunities for international comparisons are also welcome.

The deadline for full paper submissions is 19 April 2020.The preliminary time of publication is winter 2020/2021. The selection of papers to be published will take place according to the following three-step procedure:

Step 1: Authors are requested to submit the title and abstract (600 words max. incl. references) of their papers along with five to six keywords and short bios (150 words max. for each author) to the Special Issue editors. The deadline for submission of full abstracts is 15 November 2019 and the authors will be notified of the eventual acceptance by the end of December 2019 at the latest.

Step 2: If the abstracts are accepted, authors will be requested to submit full papers (7,000 words max. inclusive of any front or end matter) anonymised for double-blind review and formatted according to the Nordicom Review guidelines. The deadline for submission of full anonymised papers is 19 April 2020, after which a double-blind peer review will take place. Please note that if the submitted papers are incompatible with the earlier/accepted abstracts or are of insufficient academic quality, the Special Issue editors reserve the right to reject such papers in line with Nordicom Review’s editorial policy.

Feedback from reviewers will be sent to authors by the end of June 2020 at the latest. The deadline for submission of revised manuscripts is 30 September 2020.

For more information, please visit https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/latest/news/call-papers-class-inand-media