FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 13 November 2006 M/C - Media and Culture http://www.media-culture.org.au/ is calling for contributors to the 'mobile' issue of M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ M/C Journal is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal. In 2007, M/C Journal celebrates its tenth year in publication. To see what M/C Journal is all about, check out our Website, which contains all the issues released so far, at <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>. To find out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/journal/submission.php>. Call for Papers: 'mobile' Edited by Larissa Hjorth & Olivia Khoo Convergence has become part of burgeoning mobile media. The mobile phone has come of age. As an integral component of visual media cultures, camera phone practices are arguably both extending and creating emerging ways of seeing and representing. In media footage of late, camera phones have been heralded as providing everyday users with the possibility of self- expression and voice in the once unidirectional model of mass media. In addition, the "exchange" and gift-giving economy underpinning mobile phone practices (Taylor and Harper 2003) is further enunciated by the camera phone's ability to "share" moments between intimates (and strangers) through various contextual frameworks and archives from MMS, blogs, virtual community sites to actual face-to-face digital storytelling. This is particularly the case in the Asia-Pacific region, where mobile practices in locations such as Tokyo and Seoul have brought about new forms of media use; for example, mobile phones are increasing being deployed to connect to, among other things, Web 2.0's burgeoning landscape of social software. In much of the rhetoric of current media criticism, users are being interpellated as prosumers (producers plus consumers), but what is the reality behind this so-called agency? Do users really feel empowered by the structures of immediacy connected to user-generated content (UGC)? Are they 'liberated' by the multi-media functions of the mobile phone or is the increasing convergence of mobile media causing more complications than pleasures? This issue of M/C Journal seeks papers exploring the role of convergent mobile technologies in the Asia-Pacific region. The issue aims to explore the socio-cultural particularities of various adaptations of mobile media, from case studies on mobile communication in the Asia Pacific, to cross- cultural analyses of the transborder flows of mobile media production, representation and consumption. Topics may include: - Convergent mobile technologies - The use of mobile technologies in the construction, regulation and upkeep of social software and virtual communities - Pervasive mobile gaming - Mobile communication case studies in the region - The role of co-presence and maintenance of intimacy and community through mobile communication - The "future" of mobile media - Creativity and mobile media; the aesthetics of mobile media - Critiques of prosumer rhetoric in mass media - Emerging forms of techno-nationalism and governmental policies around 'mobility' and digital convergent cultures - The changing role of temporality and spatiality in contemporary case studies of mobile telephony Submit your essays of 3000 words in length to the editors at mobile@journal.media-culture.org.au. Article deadline: 17 January 2007 Issue release date: 14 March 2007 M/C Journal was founded (as "M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture") in 1998 as a place of public intellectualism analysing and critiquing the meeting of media and culture. Contributors are directed to past issues of M/C Journal for examples of style and content, and to the submissions page for comprehensive article submission guidelines. M/C Journal articles are blind peer-reviewed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2007: 'adapt': article deadline 9 March 2007, release date 2 May 2007 'complex': article deadline 4 May 2007, release date 27 June 2007 'home': article deadline 29 June 2007, release date 22 August 2007 'error': article deadline 24 August 2007, release date 17 October 2007 'vote': article deadline 19 October 2007, release date 12 December 2007 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C - Media and Culture is located at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C Journal is online at <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>. All past issues of M/C Journal on various topics are available there. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- end Dr Axel Bruns -- General Editor editor@media-culture.org.au M/C - Media and Culture http://www.media-culture.org.au/