Dear colleagues, I am pleased to announce a new journal that would be of interest to those doing research in the cultural and socio-political dimensions of the Internet. Below you will find some more information on the journal, some indicative opening themes and a general call for papers. If you have an idea for a paper or you would like more information on the journal, we look forward to hearing from you. A founding editorial board is at the end of this message. (apologising for crosspostings) Katharine Sarikakis ************************ international journal of media & cultural politics New for the start of 2005, MCP fills a large gap in the current social sciences, media, communications and humanities range. The International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics is committed to analyzing the politics of communications and cultural processes. It addresses cultural politics in their local, international and global dimensions, recognizing equally the importance of issues defined by their specific cultural geography and those which run across cultures and nations. The content focus will be critical, in-depth analysis and engaged research of the intersections of sociology, politics, cultural studies and media studies with the aim of keeping academic analysis in dialogue with the practical world of communications, culture and politics. MCP aims to: · foster writing which seriously engages the politics of culture · focus on the nexus of communications, culture and politics · combine a sharp sense of topicality with quality peer-refereed academic research · respond rapidly to developing events · make space for new and marginalized voices and issues, worldwide · balance metropolitan and regionalist interests · eschew partisanship and offer conflicting opinion · combine writing by academics with work by practitioners, activists and artists · publish papers bridging the gap between theoretical & abstract knowledge and cultural & social practice · foster debate and dialogue through opinion sections, web forums and special events · address a wide readership in the social sciences, arts and humanities Opening editions include: Infantilizing culture: the collapse of media content? Could it really be that 'elitist' cultural pessimists of the twentieth century (like Adorno and Eliot) were embarrassingly accurate about the degradation inflicted on culture by media producers? Should we evolve social policies to treat some media output like cigarettes and junk food? Can local media systems resist? What are the implications for future political engagement when media content is at once youth-focused, consumerist, and escapist? Is it elitist and prejudiced to ask questions like these about quality? The death of the intellectual: can Beckham replace Sartre? Is the intellectual a historical phenomenon like the troubadour or the condottiere - or a vital cultural resource in the consumer world? What associations exist between intellectual labour and the West's domination of material resources and intellectual property? Will the West hear intellectuals from the rest of the world? Is there an intellectual response function to the newest 'Pax' Americana? Is there an intellectual common ground for Islam, Christianity and secularism? Why are the British as embarrassed by intellectuals as the French are by their talent for football? 'In here and out there' - the media, the centre and the regions How do the media define 'provinces' and 'regions', the 'centre' and the 'periphery'? How do the media drive the interests and values of some locations and suppress those from elsewhere? Is metrocentrism a major form of parochialism of developed media societies? What is the collective geographical subject of news producers, and who is defined through otherness? What are the demographics of inclusion and exclusion, and how do geographical identities relate to ethnicity, gender and class? How do national metrocentrisms map on to international media coverage, not least of the new category, 'asylum seeker'? Getting past 'post-feminism': the spectacle of the female body is as never before a standard component of the economies of tv, cinema, and the web, with even pre-teens now the target of legal as well as criminal image-producers across several media. What is the political meaning of these developments? In what ways may we comprehend alternative responses to female spectacle - for example, within some domains of Islam? Does the growth of spectacle of the male body 'equalize' the politics of the image or does it only make it easier to oppress women? Has the reach of techno-economic power made progressive sexual politics irrelevant? The media and the end of history - a view from several continents: if political action is based on historical consciousness, how do the media affect historical knowledge? Do they help to obliterate history? How much resistance can there be to powerful media-borne versions of history? Does the web liberate individuals from institutional oppression, or increase Western/Anglophone ownership of history? Does computer technology exile history by intensifying the present? Can communities reconstitute their own histories through museums, social action and specialized media? If so, will the result be history or heritage? MCP is now inviting the submission of papers that address the general aims of the journal or the proposed themes. Send your papers to k.sarikakis@coventry.ac.uk or commentaries to cbyerly@dsdial.net managing editor Katharine Sarikakis Coventry University, UK editors Neil Blain University of Paisley, UK Karen Ross Coventry University, UK commentaries and reviews editors Carolyn Byerly University of Maryland, USA John Sullivan Muhlenberg College, USA Karin Wahl-Jorgensen University of Cardiff, UK Founding Editorial Advisory Board Alina Bernstein, Tel Aviv University, Israel Craig Calhoun, New York University, USA Stella Chinyere Okunna, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria Melanie Cishecki, MediaWatch Canada Sean Cubitt, University of Waikato, New Zealand Yvonne Galligan, Queens University Belfast, N Ireland Christine Geraghty, University of Glasgow, UK Oliver Grau, Humboldt Universitaet Berlin, Germany Cees Hamelink, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Lena Jayyusi, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates Ros Jennings, University of Gloucester, UK Richard Keeble, University of Lincoln, UK Eileen Meehan, Louisiana State University, USA Noé Mendelle, Edinburgh College of Art, UK Vincent Mosco, Queens University, Canada Marian Myers, Georgia State University, USA Virginia Nightingale, University of Western Sydney, Australia Chris Paterson, University of San Fransisco, USA Caroline Pauwels, Free University Brussels, Belgium Lizette Rabe, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa Marc Raboy, University of Montreal, Canada Leslie Regan Shade, Concordia University, Canada David Rowe, University of Newcastle, Australia Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK Manjunath Pendakur, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, USA Anne S Walker, International Womens Tribune Centre Gideon de Wet, RAU University, South Africa Jan Worth, Northern Media School, UK published by Intellect (www.intellectbooks.co.uk)