[csaa-forum] 'Eco-media' 2nd call: due 1 Aug

[Gerard Goggin]

REMINDER

Call For Papers:
 
Media International Australia' Issue no. 127, May 2008
 
Special Theme:  "Eco-Media"
 
Theme editors: Kitty van Vuuren and Libby Lester
 
2006 was a red-hot year for the environment. Few Australians were left
untouched by water restrictions and the worsening drought. Al Gore's An
Inconvenient Truth was a box-office hit. The British Government's Stern
Report warned of dire economic consequences caused by global warming.
Westpac Bank promoted its pro-environmental credentials with a TV ad.
Rupert Murdoch admitted that climate change was a fact. And Prime
Minister John Howard promised to deliver clean coal technology and
nuclear power. 2006 marked a year when the environmental 'crisis'
returned to the headlines with a vengeance. 

The headlines, combined with our personal encounters with the 'worst
drought in a thousand years', have produced a flurry of claims and
counter claims in the public sphere, and brought home the fact that
nature can't speak for itself. Robert Cox, author of Environmental
Communication in the Public Sphere (2006), asserts that the way we
communicate with one another about the range of issues labelled as
'environmental' affects how we perceive both the issues and ourselves,
and therefore our relationship with the natural world. In his 1999 book
Image Politics, US scholar Kevin DeLuca asserts that the crisis of
nature is also a crisis of reason and a crisis of the subject. Our
activities are eroding the certainties of western epistemology: reason
and rationality, science and technology, and the sovereignty of the
individual; and giving way to the structure of feeling known as
'post-modern', understood as the fragmentation of all kinds of identity;
a lack of belief in any foundation, or grand narrative; a recognition of
difference; an awareness of limits, including the limits of reason;
valorisation of the local in the face of globalism; a change in material
conditions; time-space compression; the displacement of nation-states by
trans-national corporations; and the rise of image and micro-politics.
 
This themed issue will bring together the work of emerging and
established scholars on the relationship between nature, culture and
media within the context of media and cultural studies traditions. The
theme 'Eco-Media' will be the first special issue that MIA, in its
30-year history, has devoted to this topic.
 
Papers may address topics such as:
 

* Environmental journalism
* The rise and fall of the environment as an issue in the media
* The framing of environmental issues in the public sphere
* The use of images and photography in promoting environmentalism
and sustainability
* The use of media by environmental groups, pro-development
interests and other contenders in the debate
* Effects of the media's political economy on environmental
reporting
* The role of alternative and independent media in addressing
environmental issues

 
Papers should be approximately 4-5000 words and comply with the MIA
style guide, available at
<<http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/mia/index.html>http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/m
ia/index.html>. 

Further information is available from Dr Kitty van
Vuuren <k.vanvuuren at uq.edu.au> or Dr Libby Lester
<Libby.Lester at utas.edu.au>.
 
Abstracts should be sent to the theme editors by 1 August 2007.
 
Following proposal assessments, papers for refereeing will be required
by 1 November 2007, with any revisions to be completed by 15 February
2007 for publication in May 2008.
 
About the journal:
 
Media International Australia (MIA) publishes new scholarly and applied
research on the media, telecommunications, and the cultural industries,
and the policy regimes within which they operate
(<http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/mia/index.html>http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/m
ia/index.html).
 
MIA was founded by Professor Henry Mayer in 1976. It was published by
the Australian Film, Television and Radio School until 1997, when it
moved to the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy at Griffith
University. At that time, it was merged with the Centre's journal,
Culture and Policy. From 2004, it became a publication of the School of
EMSAH and the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, at The
University of Queensland. In 2005 the Henry Mayer Lecture was
established in memory of the journal's founder.
 
Broadly inclusive and inter-disciplinary, the journal welcomes the
writing of history, theory and analysis, commentary and debate. While
its primary focus is Australia, the journal also aims to provide an
international perspective.


Dr Kitty van Vuuren 
UQ Postdoctoral Fellow 
Book Review Editor, Media International Australia 
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies 
The University of Queensland 
Brisbane QLD 4072 Australia 
Tel: 61 7 334 67409 
Fax: 61 7 336 57184 
Email: K.vanvuuren at uq.edu.au 
Internet: www.cccs.uq.edu.au 
Media International Australia list of books available for review is now
online! See <http://emsah.uq.edu.au/mia/reviews.html>