hi of interest to many here: Call for Papers Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture Special Issue, 36.2, 2003. The Geopolitics of Electronic Messaging Editors: Mary Griffiths and Susan Yell mary.griffiths@arts.monash.edu.au sue.yell@arts.monash.edu.au Monash University, Gippsland Campus "The Geopolitics of e-Messaging" invites theoretically informed discussions of the social and political outcomes of P2P electronic communications, and case studies of the dynamics of governing new publics and the spaces of private communication. Email, webmail, voicemail, text messaging, ICQ, pxt, chat forums, digital television messaging, discussion boards, and now, wireless communications form distinctive protocols, and different capacities in users. New geographies of space and politics are made possible. But, not all that results from the increase in the kind and volume of communication is beneficial. The pressure on many users is to be always available and immediately responsive. Organisational communications may improve but increased surveillance is the corollary. At home and work, time is needed to manage "legitimate" electronic messages and users also deal with unsolicited spam, and with scams, and viruses. Many find themselves, either willingly or involuntarily, in new and compelling sets of relations with others. New etiquettes of interaction are emerging. The "free" space of limitless communication shows signs of shrinking back to more private and customised domains. For example, online communities now use gating technologies to secure themselves from all but identifiable messages. Individuals are increasingly using filters, junk folders and different accounts for protection of privacy. What is being gained or lost by these developments? Is an organised retreat from the exigencies of the most demanding and clamorous aspects of e-messaging starting? Can the new gated communities be thought of as publics? Do they provide evidence of undemocratic tendencies? What can be produced by the crossing of traditional communicative borders? What are the skills, capacities and literacies which are being formed by different messaging technologies? What counts as "nuisance mail" and how is it being dealt with? How are subjectivities being constructed and governed by compulsory participation in online work and educational communities? How are nations, communities, institutions, businesses and individuals managing the virtual spaces of electronic messaging across physical frontiers? Which technologies are being favoured to help sort and filter messages, and protect the privacy of the user? Conversely, why have weblogs, the privatised acts of publicity and broadcasting, become so popular? Full articles due: April 30, 2003. cheers adrian miles -- + MelbourneDAC2003 digital arts and culture conference [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/] + interactive desktop video developer [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/] + hypertext rmit [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au] + InterMedia:UiB. university of bergen [http://www.intermedia.uib.no]