Social Media - Social Memory. Remembering in digitally networked times

'Social Media - Social Memory. Remembering in digitally networked times'
Special Issue of Media, Culture and Society (MCS)

Guest editors:
Christian Pentzold (Chemnitz University of Technology / Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Berlin)
Christine Lohmeier (University of Munich)

Media, Culture & Society editors:
Emily Keightley (Loughborough University)
Philip Schlesinger (University of Glasgow)


Media and memory are often closely intertwined. From the very start of human culture, media have been employed to fix, share and store expressions and impressions of individual and collective experiences. Taking this continuing twin relation as its point of departure, this special issue seeks to showcase empirical research that studies the interplay of contemporary media, social change and acts and artifacts of memory.

The editors are seeking contributions that investigate commemoration, remembrance and memory work as an essential thread in the social and material patterns of modern culture.

We are especially interested in empirically grounded submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

-       What can we learn about the interplay of individual and collective memory
and the affordances of a media ecology that is more and more digitally networked and increasingly mobile and locative?
-       How may we conceptualize and investigate memory taking account of the dynamics of digitisation, networking and mediatization?
-       Which methods and approaches are most appropriate for the study of memory work and digital and connective media?
-       How are memories materially and semiotically mediated?
-       How does memory travel? How can we conceptualise and study memory work in quotidian mobilities as well as in a range of contexts such as transcultural/transnational western and non-western movements, post-colonial contexts, diasporas and the general flows of peoples, goods and ideas?
-       What are the dynamics of (counter-)hegemonic discourses of memory in current mediascapes?
-       What can we learn about how mediated memories are realised in respect of power, class, ethnicity, religion and gender?

Please submit an 800 word abstract and a 100 word biographical note to both guest editors, Christian Pentzold and Christine Lohmeier, as an e-mail attachment (.rtf, .doc, .pdf) no later than 16 November, 2012. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by the end of November 2012. Manuscripts should be no more than 8,000 words, including notes and references, be in conformity with Media, Culture & Society style guidelines and should be submitted by 1 May, 2013. For specific manuscript submission guidelines, please go to:http://mcs.sagepub.com/

Important dates

Deadline for abstracts              16 November 2012
Full paper submission               1 May 2013
Revised paper submission        31 August 2013
Issue publication                       Summer 2014

If you have any queries, please contact the guest editors:

Christian Pentzold, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Berlin / Chemnitz University of Technology,
christian.pentzold@phil.tu-chemnitz.de

Christine Lohmeier, University of Munich,
christine.lohmeier@yahoo.co.uk