CFP: Special issue of New Media and Society

[ Call for Papers ]

Special issue of New Media and Society: Mobile Communication and the Developing World 

Rich Ling & Heather A. Horst, guest editors 

We are seeking papers for a special edition of the journal New Media & Society focusing on mobile communication and media, and its impact on the developing world. We are interested in papers that empirically describe the use of mobile practices as well as the convergence of mobile and other platforms in the developing world (e.g. Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe or other locations in the "global south"). Successful papers will examine the integration and use of mobile communication technology and its implications (both positive and negative) in individuals' lives. We are seeking papers that investigate the global as well as the local appropriations of mobile media use and its relationship to social change and/or development. Papers might address issues such as: 

• What are the social, cultural, gender related and political dimensions of mobile communication in the developing world? 
• What are the determinants, obstacles and implications of the adoption and use of mobile communications?
• What are the dimensions of inequalities and how does mobile communication address these inequalities?
• How does mobile communication facilitate activities such as care giving, coordination, social cohesion, money transfer, commerce, locally and globally? 

Submissions may be in the form of empirical research studies or theory-building papers and should be 5000 - 7000 words (in English). Papers must reflect new scholarship and not have been previously published (it is possible to submit revised conference papers). Authors interested in submitting to the special issue should send their 200-word abstract to either guest editor (Rich Ling or Heather Horst) on or before 1 March 2009. A sub-set of these abstracts will be selected for further development. Papers based on the abstracts that have been accepted for further consideration, will be due on 15 July 2009. Authors of papers selected for formal review may be invited to participate in a Pre-Conference Workshop at Association of Internet Research meetings on 7 October 2009 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA. 

About the editors of this NM&S special issue: 

Rich Ling (richard.ling@telenor.com) is a sociologist at Telenor's research institute located near Oslo, Norway, and a guest Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He has also been the Pohs visiting professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of the recently published book New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion as well as The Mobile Connection: The cell phone's impact on society, and along with Scott Campbell he is the editor of The Reconstruction of Space and Time Through Mobile Communication Practices. For the past fifteen years, he has worked in the research arm of Telenor and has been active in researching issues associated with new information communication technology and society with a particular focus on mobile telephony. 

Heather A. Horst (hhorst@uci.edu) is a sociocultural anthropologist at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. She is the co-author (with Daniel Miller) of The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication that examines the implications of mobile phones for development in Jamaica and is co-author with Mizuko Ito, et al. of a forthcoming book published by MIT Press, entitled Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media She received her Ph. D. in Social Anthropology from University College London. Before joining UCHRI, she worked as a research fellow at the University of the West Indies and University College London and a postdoctoral scholar at University of Southern California, and University of California, Berkeley where her focus has been on the appropriation of new media and communication technologies in Jamaica and the United States.