ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

The 26th Nordic Intercultural Communication (NIC) Conference

November 28 - 30, 2019

Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, Valmiera, Latvia

Deadline: October 7, 2019

https://va.lv/en [1]

Along with the extension of submission deadline till October 7, the NIC 2019 Organizing team has an honour to announce the conference's first key-note speaker Prof. Dr. Dominic Busch -- a Professor of Intercultural Communication and Conflict Research at Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany. The title of his keynote at the NIC 2019 will be "Intercultural Sustainability: In Search for Ethical Foundations in Intercultural Communication Research."

In his studies, Dominic Busch explores how ethical orientations of society are reflected in the academic research of intercultural communication. Following a discourse approach, notions of intercultural communication in research and practice is seen as discursive constructions. Building on these insights, Dominic Busch argues for a stronger reflection of differing ethical orientations, which influence intercultural research. More information about his work can be obtained from https://go.unibw.de/dominicbusch [2].

The 26th Nordic Intercultural Communication conference will be held in Valmiera - a more than 700 years old Hanseatic town located about 100km North-East of the capital Rīga. The conference language is English. This time the overarching theme of the conference is centred on exploring cultural diversity and intercultural sustainability. The conference predominantly but not exclusively addresses the intercultural communication challenges and opportunities as illuminated, for instance, by international migration and diversity. Unfortunate by-products of these processes often are anger, fear, and societal division. The conference seeks to foreground the understanding of ways in which communities could be both diverse and integrated. The specific emphasis is on the notion of joint living in instead of merely with diversity in a variety of realms, including the practices of everyday interaction, education, policymaking, language and communication training, media, and so forth. Contributions from seasoned scholars as well as from students and practitioners interested in the various aspects of culture and communication are encouraged.

The potential forms of participation include individual presentations of either fully developed papers or work in progress, as well as panels and workshops. The participants are encouraged to submit their conference papers to the Journal of Intercultural Communication. This peer-reviewed publication is an outgrowth of the activities of the NIC: https://www.immi.se/intercultural/ [3].

This call for papers is addressed to scholars and practitioners focusing on but not limited to the following themes:

• Culture, communication and civic participation
• Building trust in societies
• Methods and practices of communicating, cultivating, and negotiating cultural diversity
• Cultural diversity in relation to education and pedagogy, training and management
• Intercultural aspects of migration and diasporic life
• Language training and cultural diversity
• Personal relationships across culturally diverse contexts
• Media, cultural diversity, and sustainable communities
• Social policy responses to the turbulence of the modern world - values, action, and communication

During the conference, the 3rd ESPAnet Baltics annual meeting will take place. More about the organization itself can be found at https://blogg.hioa.no/espanet[4].

Individual paper proposals should follow the abstract format of approximately 500 words (including the title and reference information).

Panel proposals should also be approximately 500 words, including rationale, a list of proposed participants as well as their individual contribution.

The submission system is available at http://va.lv/en/nic-conference [5].

Submission deadline is extended till October 7, 2019. We look forward to seeing you in Valmiera!

The 26th NIC conference is organized by the Faculty of Society and Science at the Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with Valmiera City Municipality and the Latvian Platform for Development Cooperation (LAPAS). For further inquiry, you are welcome to contact the chair of the organizing committee Liene Ločmele at liene.locmele[at]va.lv.

Links:

------

[1] https://va.lv/en

[2] https://go.unibw.de/dominicbusch

[3] https://www.immi.se/intercultural/

[4] https://blogg.hioa.no/espanet

[5] http://va.lv/en/nic-conference

A special issue of Medijske studije / Media Studies Journal to be published in January 2020, MS Vol. 10 (2019) 20

Deadline: October 7, 2019

Edited by Maria José Brites (Lusófona University of Porto), Inês Amaral (University of Coimbra), Antonija Čuvalo (University of Zagreb)

Media generational identities are culturally, socially, economically and historically shaped. A single vision of generational identity is impossible.

This special issue welcomes different approaches to intergenerational and generational perspectives from various geographical landscapes. Moreover, it aims to discuss digital uses and digital competences within intergenerational and generational perspectives. The proposal is to assume as context the current digital media environment, which has shaped media history over the past decades. Non-Western voices covering generations, digital uses and competences are particularly welcome.

Historically, media were mostly considered as reinforcements of the generational gap, mostly in the family context. Though research by Livingstone and Haddon (2009) found that the intergenerational gap is diminishing in time, according to Bolin & Skogerbø (2013), the digital era is contributing to straight the generations. Čuvalo (2017) discerns shared media repertoires among the youngest, so-called digital generation or digital natives and the older generation of digital immigrants (Thomas, 2011). In this sense, there is the need to work closely on life course perspectives as a possible explanation of the diminishing or perpetuating of the generational gap (Amaral & Daniel, 2018). The context of digital literacy reinforced activities by civil society and schools and can bring some light to the discussion of this need (Brites, 2017). Furthermore, a generational perspective in scholar and familiar environments can empower the discussion.

There is a story to tell and gains to conquer from the historical reflection, although the real interconnection between the digital devices and the audiences is a recent issue. Research can benefit from a systematization from the past to the future and also in the current present.

All manuscripts should be submitted through the Open Journal System: https://hrcak.srce.hr/ojs/index.php/medijske-studije/index

Submission guidelines can be found here: https://hrcak.srce.hr/%E2%80%A6/%E2%80%A6/medijske-studije/about/submissions

The deadline for full articles is 7 October 2019.

QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Australia

Deadline: September 30, 2019

This is a unique opportunity for a PhD student to work with a world-leading team on a major Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, The Platform Governance Project: Rethinking Internet Regulation as Media Policy.

The project is led by researchers in the QUT Digital Media Research Centre, working in collaboration with an international team including University of Sydney, Duke University, and the University of Salzburg. You will be working with internationally renowned researchers such as Professor Terry Flew (current President of the International Communication Association) and Professor Nicolas Suzor (ARC DECRA Fellow).

We are seeking a PhD candidate whose work can situate digital platform companies in the shifting political economy of digital media, with particular reference to the changing nature of media industries and markets, issues around content governance, and the turn towards greater regulation of digital platforms as global tech giants increasingly dominate the internet.

You must have:

• Completion of Masters qualification or equivalent higher qualification in Media & Communications, Law, or other relevant social science discipline (e.g. economics, political science);
• Received first-class honours (H1) in fields as listed above.

You’ll receive:

• a living allowance for 3 ½ years indexed annually ($A27,496 in 2019). This scholarship can be used to support living costs.
• a total of $A3,000 (over a 3 ½ year period) to support other related research costs.
• additional research support for the attendance of conferences, symposia, industry events, and other activities related to the ARC Discovery-Project.

Applicants are advised to follow the required scholarship submission guidelines available at: https://www.qut.edu.au/research/annual-scholarship-round

For more information on the Digital Media Research Centre and the Creative Industries Faculty go to https://research.qut.edu.au/dmrc/%20and%20https://www.qut.edu.au/creative-industries/about

See also ‘DMRC Research Training’ here: https://research.qut.edu.au/dmrc/research-training/

For further information on this exciting opportunity, in the first instance please contact Professor Terry Flew t.flew@qut.edu.au

This scholarship will close on 30th September 2019.

Special Issue of Communication & Sport

Deadline: October 1, 2019

Communication & Sport is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a Special Issue on “Sport Communication and Social Justice.” Now in its seventh year, Communication and Sport (C&S) is a cutting-edge, peer-reviewed bimonthly journal that publishes research to foster international scholarly understanding of the nexus of communication and sport. C&S publishes research and critical analysis from diverse disciplinary and theoretical perspectives to advance understanding of communication phenomena in the varied contexts through which sport touches individuals, society, and culture. In 2018, Communication & Sport was the winner of the prestigious PROSE Award as the Best New Journal in the Social Sciences. Communication & Sport has a current Clarivate Analytics two-year impact factor of 2.395 and is ranked 14/83 (Q1) in the Communication and 17/50 in Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism categories, ranking above many longstanding legacy journals in both Communication/Media and Sport Studies. Detailed information about Communication & Sport may be found at: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/com.

About the Special Issue

Sport has long been a conduit for societal debates on important and often contentious topics. In particular, media sport is a highly celebrated and influential constituent of popular culture that intersects with shifting political, economic, technological and cultural conditions (Whannel, 1992). This context creates tensions where mainstream media representations are framed around normative ‘accepted’ production practices by dominant organisations, which fosters an (in)visibility and marginalisation of non-normative groups around gendered, raced, disability and sexuality dynamics. These tensions are inexorably embedded in power, politics and issues of social justice.

At the same time – as Bell Hooks (1990) reminds us – marginality is not simply “a site of deprivation” but instead, it can also be “the site of radical possibility”. Here, leading athletes from traditionally marginalized groups have been able to seize on their visibility to highlight issues of inequality and discrimination through innovative, mediated and highly symbolic forms of protest, from Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s Black Power Salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest in 2016. Through social media, these iconic moments have started to transcend individual athletes’ activism and communities have coalesced around hashtags such as #takingaknee and the U.S. women soccer team’s high profile “Equal Play. Equal Pay” campaign.

While mainstream media organizations continue to play an important role in how these debates are framed, the emergence of new sport/digital media has the potential to disrupt dominant relations of power, offering renewed forms of ‘democratization’ and the prospect of meaningful change (Hutchins & Rowe, 2012, 2013; Wenner, 2015). Within a contemporary moment dominated by a highly commodified and corporatized media sport landscape, marginality can itself be re-fashioned as a commodity, centered on “celebritized” marginal subjects that can be exploited by media organisations and global sporting corporations for marketing and public relations purposes. For instance, consider the rainbow flag be-decked advertising campaigns from U.S. corporations Visa and Coca Cola that surrounded the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics following a repressive approach against LGBT rights activists by the Kremlin and Russian lawmakers.

Despite these memorable examples, discussions of activism, civic agency and social change have largely been the domain of the political sciences, sociology and political communication. Only relatively recently has the field of sport communication began to contribute to such debates, stimulated in part by the rapid expansion of digital and social media which has led to new ways of communicating in sporting cultures, a new visibility of cultural (counter / resistant) narratives, and mediated forms of democratic renewal. Importantly, following Dart (2012), this shifting sport media landscape has led to articulations of seemingly ‘old issues’ and cultural debates in new relatively distinct ways, bringing to the surface original critical questions in new emerging contexts. These are questions that focus on the nature of power, the way in which sport media serves to uphold, challenge, contest and negotiate dominant narratives within socio-political structures and the role and function of representation in effecting progressive social change.

In this special issue of Communication & Sport, we welcome theoretical and empirical inquiries that address the theme of “Sport Communication and Social Justice” by examining the following areas and other relevant topics:

• The emergence, resistance and contestation of new sport cultures via mainstream and alternative sport media platforms;
• The capitalization on – and exploitation of – marginalization and resistance in the context of a neo-liberalized enterprise sport media culture;
• The dynamics of public opinion and audience meaning-making with respect to sport, politics and social justice;
• The negotiation of identity politics in sport media representation; in particular, issues of (in)visibility (and resistance) of marginalized, non-normative groups who remain mostly under-represented in mainstream sport media (e.g. gender, race, disability, sexuality, etc.);
• The use of sporting platforms (media and sporting mega events) as a vehicle for social justice campaigns by activists, social movements, and other actors;
• The causes and consequences of athlete activism as symbolic protest;
• The role and function of sporting media representations (including self-representations and encounters between representations and reception practices) in addressing social justice issues;
• The role and function of non-mediated communication practices (interpersonal, group, organization) in effecting and generating social change in a sporting context.

Manuscript Submissions

Manuscripts for the special issue should be submitted beginning June 3rd 2019 and before October 1st 2019 at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/commsport to facilitate full consideration. In the submission process, authors should highlight in their cover letter that the submission is for the “Sport Communication and Social Justice” special issue of Communication & Sport and choose “Sport Communication and Social Justice Special Issue” as the “Manuscript Type.”

Manuscripts should follow the Manuscript Submission Guidelines at https://journals.sagepub.com/home/com. All manuscripts will be subject to peer review under the supervision of the Special Issue Editors and Editor-in-Chief.

Expressions of interest, abstracts for consideration, and questions may be directed to the Special Issue Editors: Dan Jackson (jacksond@bournemouth.ac.uk), Emma Pullen (E.L.Pullen@lboro.ac.uk), Michael Silk (msilk@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Filippo Trevisan (trevisan@american.edu).

Deadline: December 1, 2019

Launch : Issue #1 - April 2020

• ZINES is an international peer journal dedicated to studies of amateur and do-it-yourself media of any kind, from fanzines to webzines, perzines to science zines, artzines to poezines, etc.
• ZINES is multi-disciplinary and opened to all scientific disciplines, from social sciences to medical sciences, art and design, media studies, etc. The first aim of the journal is to study the involvement of amateurs in the production of mediascapes, from printing form to cybermedia. It also addresses the impact of zine making for personal or collective sociabilization, especially in closed environments such as carceral or medical centres. The second aim is to examine the production of new form of communication by amateurs leading to the publication of media with a strong DIY ethos, including scholars who invent new forms of dissemination of scientific knowledge.
• ZINES accepts original contribution from academics, zine librarians and non-academic zinesters who want to share personal experiences or react to published papers. Articles published in ZINES are peer reviewed by scholars. The ZINES reviewers are assigned to articles based on their academic interests and scholarly expertise.
• ZINES accepts the following types of contributions: articles, book reviews, thematic reviews of zines, in-depth interview with zinesters. We also welcome thematic issue proposal or zine conference proceedings. We accept papers in English, French and Spanish. However, French and Spanish papers must include an extensive abstract (2 pages) in English presenting methods, main results and discussion.

Because zines are intimately anchored in personal bricolage, ZINES also encourages papers submitted in unconventional format (e.g. collages, paste-up or other innovative editing, etc.) providing that every paper submitted to ZINES will be evaluate by reviewers and must fit in the final printed format (21*21 cm).

Full paper submission: 1st December 2019.

Samuel Etienne, zinesjournal@gmail.com

Edward Brennan

This book explores the question of how society has changed with the introduction of private screens. Taking the history of television in Ireland as a case study due to its position at the intersection of British and American media influences, this work argues that, internationally, the transnational nature of television has been obscured by a reliance on institutional historical sources. This has, in turn, muted the diversity of audience experiences in terms of class, gender and geography. By shifting the focus away from the default national lens and instead turning to audience memories as a key source, A Post-Nationalist History of Television in Ireland defies the notion of a homogenous national television experience and embraces the diverse and transnational nature of watching television. Turning to people’s memories of past media, this study ultimately suggests that the arrival of the television in Ireland, and elsewhere, was part of a long-term, incremental change where the domestic and the intimate became increasingly fused with the global.

Monographic section of DÍGITOS JOURNAL (sixth issue)

Deadline: December 15, 2019

Monographic section coordinators: Raquel Tarullo (Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia del Noroeste de la provincia de Buenos Aires) Dra. Agnese Sampietro (Universitat Jaume I de Castelló)

Mobilisation and activism that are deployed on digital spaces have opened a spectrum of possibilities for people who are trying to find their participation place on social media. Whether social media promote political participation and mobilisation, creating new spaces of political expression and debate or, on the contrary, they have just motivated slacktivism, is still under discussion (Breuer & Farooq, 2012; Morozov, 2011). On one side, the ones with a technoptimistic view (Waisbord, 2015, p.76) consider that social media have facilitated the debate about political agenda issues to those who didn’t have access to these topics before (Howard et al., 2011; Shirky, 2011; Zuckerman, 2014). On the other side, there are authors who affirm that digital participation demands a minimal effort compared to the one that mobilisation requires in the real world. Moreover, authors with a more pessimistic position argue that these digital practices are carried out in an easy and comfortable manner, and this panorama is congruent with the almost null effects and consequences that these practices bring to the offline world of politics (Fuchs, 2017; Gladwell, 2010). However, not all the political participation activities can be evaluated following the same scheme: thus, some of these behaviours can be observed as participation patterns that generate mobilisation and activism that can influence the political decisions that are made in the formal spaces of power, others just circulate outside of these spaces (Christensen, 2011).

Beyond these discussions, digital context allows a wide spectrum of different performances to the vehiculization of activism and mobilisation. On one hand, social media promote the visibilization of struggles that used to be tied to traditional media interests; then, they bring together the participation of global communities with similar identity interests; and last but not least they contribute to a sweeping and continually changing range of tools, resources and symbols that give activists new ways of telling their struggles. Thus, content is tailored according to the objective pursued, and this flows throughout digital spaces, creating new and innovative digital formats of struggles, that are alluded as new forms of citizenship in an environment of constant and fluid interaction (Papacharissi, 2015). If in the urban space of streets and squares, poster, graffiti, banners, balloons, hypes, bonds, t- shirts, umbrellas, scarves and bandanas are the symbolic expressions of activist groups and communities, social media promote and collaborate with this scenario but not only with their reproduction (Martín Rojo, 2012, 2016), but also the digital architecture of these platforms support the creation of other and new symbols that, with traditional manifestations, are part of the storytelling of collective and organization struggles.

Thus, we ask: Which are the symbols of digital activism? How are symbols of mobilisation and participation expressed on social media? Which are the roles of these symbols? Are they new forms of political expressions of a digital citizen? How do these symbols interact with the offline symbolic representation? This special issue proposes to analyse the use of these and other symbols in digital activism and mobilisation through interdisciplinary perspectives: linguistics, communication, political science and sociology. The proposed approach is to study the symbols that are deployed on the digital scenario, its relationship with the symbolic resources that occur in the urban space and the role of these digital performances in the reproduction and resignification of these urban manifestations.

Besides, the dialogue and encounter of both these symbolic sets in the stories that circulate on digital platforms and their effects in the real world can be another approach to the topic of this issue. The cases of study can include research about offline reproduction symbols (banners, mobilisation symbols, slogan circulation, campaign posters) and online ones (hashtags, images, videos, memes) that are spread in any type of mobilisation: gender collectives, feminist organizations, workers organizations, students unions, environmental activism, religious groups, independentist movements, human rights organizations, political mobilisation, organizations in defence of immigrants and refugees, cultural, ethnic or linguistic minorities, political activism in electoral campaign periods, among others. Taking this as a starting point, we accept articles that address the theme of symbols in digital context as deployment and/or promotion of digital activism, as well as symbolic manifestation in the urban space and its flows through digital spaces in potential interactions with the new resources and tools that social media allow.

Dígitos will give priority to articles addressing the following topics:

• The reproduction in digital spaces of mobilisation symbols that are used in the offline world and the urban space

• The role of hashtags on mobilisation promotion

• The use of memes on digital mobilisation

• Methodological approaches to the study of mobilisation symbols in the digital space

• Theoretical notions about the use of symbols for digital mobilisation and activism

• The reproduction of symbols in digital spaces as a mobilisation strategy

• The media coverage of mobilisation and activism on social media

• Strategies in the use of symbols in digital spaces

• Visualization strategies in political and social mobilisation on social media

Open Section: articles on any topic related to the magazine’s general field of study (digital communications).

Reviews: critiques of research articles and doctoral theses in the field of digital communications published during the last few years.

Journal URL: http://revistadigitos.com

Author registration for sending article or review proposals: http://revistadigitos.com/index.php/digitos/user/register

Author guidelines for Dígitos: http://revistadigitos.com/index.php/digitos/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

• Article length: 3.000-10.000 words (for the Monograph and Open Section)
• Review length: 800-1500 words

CICANT - Un. Lusófona, Lisbon

Deadline: October 31, 2019

COFAC, Cooperativa de Animação e Formação Cultural crl, hereby opens a competition to recruit a PhD researcher, corresponding to position 49 of the Single Remuneration Table, under the terms of the applicable legislation, with an Open-Ended Employment Contract, within the scope of programme contract between Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., and the above mentioned Cooperative, supported by national funds inscribed in the budget of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) – and carried out in the Research Unit CICANT – Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture and New Technologies.

1 – Main Duties

CICANT – Centre or Research in Applied Communication, Culture and New Technologies aims to recruit a Coordinating Researcher for its “Media, Society and Culture” area. The work plan to be carried out aims to:

• Contribute to the implementation of ongoing projects in the unit in the field of media literacy;
• Foster publication in reference journals in the field of the results of the research;
• Foster the creation and reinforcement of a R&D team in the area of media literacy;
• Foster the integration of the unit in national and international forums of the field;
• Foster links and joint projects with different public and private entities operating in this field;
• Foster the organization of scientific events which contribute to the increased awareness of the unit in this field and to knowledge sharing and creation.
• Ensure a new impetus for the area as well as its international development fostering, namely and in line with the unit’s strategic plan, the supervision of within the scope of the European programme H2020. The goal is to recruit a researcher with an excellent publication rate and management of projects in this field of communication studies, with proven experience in leadership and management, in particular at international level.

Keywords: Media Literacy; Media Technology; Society and Communication

More information here.

Application deadline: October 31, 2019

Routledge Media Companions Series

Deadline: October 14, 2019

Editors: Professor Mia Lindgren, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia and Associate Professor Jason Loviglio, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA

We are calling for abstracts for the new Routledge Companion to Radio Studies, to be published in 2021.

This Routledge Companion to Radio Studies will be a valuable reference source for the expanding field of radio, audio and podcast study. It will bring together 40-50 original essays to conceptualise the multidisciplinary field of radio studies. We welcome entries from early career researchers to emeriti scholars using theories and methods from media studies, historical studies, politics, communication, journalism, sociology and anthropology. We are looking for work that spans national boundaries and historical periods to present a coherent argument for understanding radio as a synecdoche for and a key agent in the creation of the last hundred years of technological, psychological, and cultural innovation and experience.

We are looking for abstracts that correspond to the themes below. We are especially interested in comparative work that generates insights and questions through historical and national juxtaposition. However, deep dives into particularly compelling objects of study are also welcome.

Understanding radio - multidisciplinary approaches to studying radio, audio and podcasting.

Radio Histories. Chapters addressing radio’s improvisational and reflexive history; its national address and international reach; its democratic promise and utility for propaganda, its technological appeal and affective tug, along with other tensions and contradictions.

Radio Publics and Markets. Chapters considering radio’s role, historically and today, in constituting new publics and new markets and with the disruptions and innovations that ensue.

Formats, genres and aesthetics. Chapters focusing on the development of specific radio forms as well as those that investigate radio’s role in remediating and being remediated by other media.

Case Studies: Radio Voices, Cultures, and Identities. We invite case studies of specific radio programs, stations, performances that illuminate issues of voice, culture, and identity. While the specific objects may not be universally known or distributed, we hope that they will touch on questions and themes that are broadly engaging and applicable.

Podcasting. Chapters exploring innovations in podcast programming and practice, as well as those that explore emerging industrial process and relationships in podcasting. We especially welcome abstracts for chapters that explore podcast programs, reception, and production outside the West and in languages other than English.

Industries, Technologies and Platforms. We invite chapters that focus on technological developments, industrial practices, and corresponding policies within the industries related to podcasting, radio broadcasting, and related sound-based media.

Timelines:

Chapter entries should be concise (around 4,000-5,000 words). All contributions should be new pieces: we will not publish reprinted material

• Abstract (approx. 300 words) and author bio (100 words) due Monday 14 October 2019 (email both Mia Lindgren mlindgren@swin.edu.au and Jason Loviglio loviglio@umbc.edu)
• Author confirmation 30 November 2019
• Chapter due 30 April 2020

Comunicar Journal

Deadline: February 28, 2020

Thematic Editors

• Dr. Bartolomé Rubia Avi (University of Valladolid, Spain)
• Dr. Jennifer C. Greene (University of Illinois, USA)
• Dr. Iván M. Jorrín Abellán (Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA)

Scope

This special issue analyses the transformations in educational and social interactions, and concomitantly in research, that have been generated by advances in digital technologies in the fields of Education and the Social Sciences. Today, our educational and social spaces are inhabited by digital technologies that can record people’s macro actions, as in political demonstrations or mobs, alongside micro-processes, such as reading or writing. These technologies can digitally capture people’s opinions and knowledge claims, the intersections of people’s public and private lives, and the dynamics of social and material consumption, including the dynamics of movement, mobility, and displacement. In research, classic data collection tools –direct observation, video recordings, open– and closed-ended questionnaires, interviews– can now be supplemented or even replaced by digital technology that is able to capture key social and cognitive processes that are integral to meaningful education and social well being.

The digitization of educational and social science data collection and analysis has been developing for more than 20 years, accompanying the Web 2.0 development processes. But, the extension of the Semantic Web and the new Big Data systems have significantly advanced the process of configuring profiles as ways to document educational and social trends. In schools, this process is helping to generate new ways of understanding the creation of technological resources; and enabling dynamics inside and outside the classroom that have catalysed changes in pedagogical methodologies, educational proposals, as well as new forms of evaluation. Thus, learning processes continue to be regulated by teacher-led activities, yet also by student-led activities, enacted through the use of digital resources in students’ private spaces both inside and outside the school. So today, researchers can develop teacher training programs in digital applications that acknowledge the value of student learning both in the classroom and in the spaces created by where the student lives, travels, and plays. This has also led to a new way of investigating educational and social processes, because the use of automatic information inevitably leads us to quantitative analyses that can complement or converge with qualitative research processes.

These recent technology developments can offer important contributions to research, along with significant threats. Regarding contributions, new digital technologies can enable a process of analysis and interpretation that is closer to the actual experiences of people in a given educational or social setting. These technologies can address the question: In digital networks, how purposefully or "quasiunconsciously" do people participate in the social processes of work, notably in interaction, communication, collaboration, coordination, shared or group work, interdependencies, and social engagements. Regarding threats, on the other hand, the loss of anonymity in social actions, and therefore also in educational ones, opens up the possibility of observing human and social action from the position of a kind of "Orwellian Big Brother". In a way where the unconscious action of people can serve to identify vital processes, intentions and human interactions that can be interpreted in a deeper way than was usual before the digital and technological era.

Therefore, for this special issue of the Journal ‘Comunicar’, we invite contributions from people working with digital technology in the domains of Education and Social Science. We welcome contributions that thoughtfully engage the debate on how to constructively analyse and use the potential of developing technologies both in our fields and in our research.

Descriptors

• Data analysis from the digital technology perspective in Education and Social Sciences.
• Research from mixed perspectives mediated by digital technology.
• Research designs in technological environments with a mixed methods approach.
• Mixed methodologies as a basis for social analysis in the framework of Big Data.
• Mixed research models in the fields of Educational Research and Social Sciences.

Questions

• How have research models in education changed with the integration of technology?
• What has technology contributed to our knowledge of social processes and how?
• What research in technologies uses mixed designs and how are those inquiry processes planned?
• Is digital technology having an impact in the mixed-methods paradigmatic framework?
• How do mixed design research models influence the definition of social research where digital technology is the basis of human interaction?
• What kind of rationality in interpretation processes can be developed with the mediation of digital technology and "Big data"?

Thematic Editors Profile

Dr. Bartolome Rubia-Avi, University of Valladolid (Spain)

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4963-4552

PhD from University of Valladolid (Valladolid-Spain) specializing in Curricular Design and Educational Research and Associate Professor in the Department of Pedagogy of that University, specializing in Educational Technology. Previously, Dr. Rubia-Avi graduated from the University of Granada in Philosophy and Educational Sciences. He is a member of the Intelligent & Cooperative Systems Research Group at the University of Valladolid (GSIC-EMIC: www.gsic.uva.es). This group is comprised of teachers and researchers who focus their work in the field of Technology for Education, basically within the framework of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) studies. He is currently Director of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Research in Education (CETIE-UVA http://www.cetie.uva.es). He is also a founding member of the Educative Technology Network (RUTE), a Spanish association that brings together teachers, researchers and people close to the world of educational technology for schools. In this network, he served a board member from its foundation until 2012. His work has focused on the use of technology in collaborative learning environments, developing, within his research group, more than 40 European, National and Regional projects in this field. He has also worked on different research projects on educational innovation in university education, especially in the process of evaluating such experiences. He is currently focusing on the following topics: Technologies for body cognitive learning; Analysis of cognitive styles and their involvement in learning; Emotional education in disadvantaged educational contexts.

Dr. Jennifer C. Greene, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (USA)

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7244-7819

Jennifer C. Greene is a professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her BA in psychology from Wellesley College and her PhD in educational psychology from Stanford University. Prior to Illinois, Greene held faculty positions at the University of Rhode Island and Cornell University. Greene’s work focuses on the intersection of social science methodology and social policy and aspires to be both methodologically innovative and socially responsible. Greene’s methodological research has concentrated on advancing qualitative and mixed methods approaches to social inquiry. In the field of evaluation, she has contributed both theoretical and practical scholarship in democratic and values-engaged approaches to evaluation. Greene has held leadership positions in the American Evaluation Association and the American Educational Research Association. She has also provided editorial service to both communities, including a sixyear position as co-editor-in-chief of New Directions for Evaluation, and current positions as an associate editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and series co-editor for the series Evaluation and Society. Her own publication record includes a co-editorship of the Sage Handbook of Program Evaluation and authorship of Mixed Methods in Social Inquiry. Greene is the past president of the American Evaluation Association (https://education.illinois.edu/faculty/jennifer-greene).

Dr. Iván-Manuel Jorrin-Abellan, Kennesaw State University (USA)

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8549-5924

He is Professor of Educational Research in the Department of Secondary and Middle Grades Education, at the Bagwell College of Education. He’s a passionate learner who loves teaching, research and innovation. He has expertise in qualitative research methods with extensive experience teaching and researching innovative uses of technology in Education. He has worked for twelve years (2001-2014) at the Intelligent & Cooperative Systems Research Group at the University of Valladolid (Spain), where He got him Ph.D in Educational Technology. Within this transdisciplinary team formed by engineers, computer scientist and educators, they developed a number of innovative technologies to support teachers in the complete lifecycle of collaborative learning environments. In 2009 after a two-year Fulbright scholarship at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, He founded the Center for Transdisciplinary Research in Education (CETIE) at the University of Valladolid. In 2014 He was hired by Kennesaw State University (Ga) where He has recently developed the Hopscotch Model; a theoretical model and a webtool based on Google technologies, to help novice researchers generate qualitative research designs. (http://facultyweb.kennesaw.edu/ijorrina/)

Guidelines for authors and submission of contributions

Editorial guidelines are available at: http://www.revistacomunicar.com/index.php?contenido=normas&idioma=en

Contributions to the Special Issue should be submitted through the OJS platform: https://revistacomunicar.com/ojs

Deadlines

Initial date for proposal articles: 2019-09-01

Deadline for submission of articles: 2020-02-28

Date of publication of this issue: Preprint: 2020-07-15

Printed edition: 2020-10-01

Journal website: http://www.revistacomunicar.com