call for papers: New technologies and News

New technologies and News: Convergences and Divergences

A special issue of 'Scan', edited by Chris Atton & Graham Meikle

The study of news has always been central to the study of the media. But while the rise of new technologies such as the Net, mobile phones and digital TV has attracted enormous scholarly interest and has reinvigorated the field, there has not as yet been as much research on news and these new technologies as there might be. Some recent research has emphasised online journalism as a set of professional practices developed from existing journalistic philosophies and routines, though often privileging the dialogical nature of the medium to generate news agendas with media audiences (Deuze and Dimoudi, 2002). Other work emphasises journalism as a set of deprofessionalised practices that privilege grassroots 'native reporting' as a distinctive feature of an 'alternative journalism' (Atton, 2003). Such research highlights the potential of new
technology use to enable new configurations of news production, distribution and reception; new modes of authorship and audiencehood; new kinds of producer and consumer. This special issue of 'Scan' invites
contributions that are able to push forward our thinking about the modalities of news production and reception. We are particularly interested in papers that combine theory and practice to critically explore the claims made for the various manifestations of these practices.

Who uses online news? What do they use it for? How is credibility judged? To what extent are relationships changing between reporters and readers, between news outlets and consumers, in a media environment that can be customised? How significant are participatory news and discussion projects such as Indymedia (http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml), Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org), OhmyNews (http://english.ohmynews.com/) or Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/)?

What of news values and news content? What contributions are made to the discussion of news by online art and satire projects such as Tenbyten (http://www.tenbyten.org), News Reader (http://turbulence.org/works/twotxt/nr-index.htm) or The Onion (http://www.theonion.com)? And what of blogging? The blog may be just as much the province of the professional journalist as the amateur and, indeed, the much-vaunted 'independence' of blogs is often curtailed by a reliance on dominant news agendas and framing mechanisms (Haas, 2005).

Answers on a postcard to...

Chris Atton
Napier University, Edinburgh

Graham Meikle
Macquarie University, Sydney

Submission dates and guidelines
Completed papers should be sent to the issue editors by 30 April 2006.
Refereeing and revisions to be completed by 31 May 2006, for a June 2006
launch.

Maximum length is 6,000 words.

'Scan' (http://www.scan.net.au) is a refereed quarterly online journal
of media arts and culture, hosted by the Media Department at Macquarie
University, Sydney.

References
Atton, Chris (2003) 'What is "Alternative" Journalism?', Journalism:
Theory, Practice and Criticism 4(3): 267-272.

Deuze, Mark and Dimoudi, Christina (2002) 'Online journalists in the
Netherlands: Towards a profile of a new profession', Journalism: Theory,
Practice and Criticism 3(1): 85-100.

Haas, Tanni (2005) 'From "Public Journalism" to the "Public's
Journalism"? Rhetoric and reality in the discourse on weblogs',
Journalism Studies 6(3): 387-396.