Call for Papers for a Special Issue
Information Access and Control in an Age of Big Data
Submission Deadline for Papers: June 1, 2015
Guest Editors
Edward L. Carter, J.D. LL.M., Associate Professor, Brigham
Young University
Laurie Thomas Lee, Ph.D., Professor, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln
Overview
In a keynote address at a 1996 conference on information
policy sponsored by the U.S. government, scholar and analyst William J. Drake
said, “The new information infrastructure can and should be designed to balance
the needs of all parties with direct stakes in it: large corporate suppliers
and users, the public sector, the non-commercial sector, small and large
businesses, and individual users.”[1] However,
Drake warned that conflicting interests and competing international models of
information access and control could impede the achievement of this vision. He
suggested that use patterns and government regulation should be monitored and
managed as technological advances caused changes in mass communication.
Given the impact of Big Data and technological advances in
the nearly 20 years since Drake’s comment, Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly proposes to publish a special issue on “Information Access and
Control in an Age of Big Data.” The editorial team of Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly believes this research has the potential to make an
important contribution to the literature appraising the current state of
information and communication technology, consumer and audience behavior, and
policy and law, as well as to provide a platform for development of future
research in journalism and mass communication.
Papers
We invite contributions to a special issue of Journalism
& Mass Communication Quarterly that will address access to and control of
information in an age of Big Data. We encourage submissions that approach this
topic from an inclusive range of fields and research methodologies within
journalism and mass communication and also from other disciplines, with a focus
on the implications of the topic to media and society. Papers may offer
insights about technological, behavioral, policy, legal and other issues.
Possible topics might include, among others, the so-called right to be
forgotten on the Internet; social media and privacy; the implications of Big
Data for journalism and mass communication; government and corporate
surveillance; technology solutions to protect confidentiality in
reporter-source relationships; access by news media and other individuals to
digital records of government and other institutions; the response of
journalism, public relations and advertising to challenges and opportunities in
the current environment; search engine optimization and reputation management;
intellectual property and freedom of expression; data protection; and the right
of publicity. This special issue lends itself to research from a variety of
cultural and international perspectives, and therefore papers with
international and intercultural approaches are particularly encouraged. We
welcome both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the topic.
Details of Paper Content, Length, and Due Date
Papers will undergo blind peer review. Those selected for
publication will then enter the editorial publication process, resulting in
publication online in January 2016 and in print in Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly in summer 2016. The deadline for full paper submissions
is June 1, 2015 at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmcq.
Authors are requested to submit manuscripts in APA Style, 6th
Edition. Manuscripts in other citation styles will be considered in initial
review. Other manuscript submission details for Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly are available at http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal202061/manuscriptSubmission.
Further Information
For questions regarding this special issue, please contact
the guest editors:
Edward L. Carter, Brigham Young University, ed_carter@byu.edu
Laurie Thomas Lee, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, llee1@unl.edu
