Publication Date: July 24, 2024
Categories: Call for Papers, Public Communication, Publications

The journal Public Communication is an editorial project with a multidisciplinary foundation aimed at publishing research papers, theoretical essays, and critical notes.

Thematic Issue: DIGITAL CULTURE: MEDIATIZATION, SURVEILLANCE, AND PUBLIC SPACE
Editors: Silvia Valencich Frota (Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon) and Nuno Medeiros (Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon)
Languages: Portuguese; English; Spanish
Submission Deadline: September 1, 2024

Abstract
The transformations in culture, driven both by digital technology and the development of media and information and communication systems, represent one of the major challenges of modern societies. Understanding these changes and their often profound impacts becomes part of the daily life, not only of communication professionals but of all citizens. What challenges, risks, and opportunities arise? What new public spaces for interaction and socialization are being promoted? From a transdisciplinary approach, this thematic issue aims to reflect on the impact of these new technologies on a society characterized, on the one hand, by an abundance of information and data, and on the other, by a profound and widespread crisis of trust, with all the potential for rupture and instability associated with it.

Description and Context
Thinking about contemporary societies involves, to some extent, mapping, understanding, and analyzing the complex information and communication systems that simultaneously structure and are structured by them. This web of networks, with its multiple nodes and connections, enables and stimulates the circulation of data, ideas, objects, and people, transforming notions of space and time, intertwining and challenging them (Castells, 2009).

Communication is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, reaching the most minute spaces and practices of social life, from the most intimate sphere to the most publicly visible and disseminated. In this sense, the concept of mediatization, as proposed by Hjarvard (2013), seems timely in emphasizing the transformative capacity of social institutions promoted by (but also promoting) media development, which, in turn, become an institution per se.

The accelerated – and, despite the so-called digital divide (Furtado, 2012), presumably irreversible – process of digitalization is a relevant part of this scenario. Digital culture conquers territories and minds, but it is necessary to think beyond it. More than digital culture, it is important to understand, analyze, and reflect on the culture of the digital, i.e., the new values, worldviews, forms of relationship, and processes of meaning-making directly and indirectly promoted by digital technology, and the plural ways they inscribe themselves in – and inscribe – the social, cultural, economic, and political structures of human existence and interaction (Arditi & Miller, 2019).

In this dual inscription, a space of tension is engendered between cultures – and structures – of freedom, and cultures – and structures – of surveillance, both supported by a current scenario marked, among other defining traits, by hyperconnection, superdiversity, and the centrality of data in contemporary life and the issues that arise from it, particularly in terms of their public expressions. What new public spaces are possible? How are they characterized? What new opportunities and risks emerge? What new agents participate in them? What new power relations are established?

The power – and corresponding responsibility – of major technology platforms has been widely questioned, especially in debates about disinformation and regulation. However, there are many other emerging topics, such as the risks associated with the development of artificial intelligence, new forms of asymmetry and inequality and/or polarization and violence promoted by the algorithmic logic governing social networks, social disengagement, and the weakening of the effectiveness of relationships in fields such as labor or education, among others.

Objectives and Desired Approaches
Starting from an interdisciplinary dialogue involving diverse fields such as cultural and communication studies, sociology, literary studies, anthropology, political studies, economics, editorial studies, among others, the aim of this issue is to promote reflection on the impact of new information and communication systems on a society marked, on the one hand, by an abundance of information and data, and, on the other, by a profound and widespread crisis of trust, with all the potential for rupture and instability associated with such a scenario.

Possible Subtopics:

• Hyperconnection, superdiversity, and citizenship in the networked era
• Digital memory, the right to be forgotten, and the role of media
• Artificial intelligence, post-humanism, and technology
• Surveillance, discrimination, and algorithms
• Nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and globalization in/of media
• Nationalisms, identities, and citizenship in the digital age
• Decolonialism, alternative media, and representation
• Media, citizenship, and cultural production
• Trust, post-truth, and disinformation
• Infocracy, surveillance capitalism, platform capitalism
• Hyperculture, cyberculture, and the virtualization of reality
• Convergence, disjunction, and overlap between digital and print media
• Transmedialization, intermediality, and the media transposition of works

Bibliographic References:
• Arditi, D., & Miller, J. (eds.). (2019). The Dialectic of Digital Culture. Lexington Books.
• Castells, M. (2009). The Communication Power. Oxford University Press.
• Couldry, N. (2012). Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Polity Press.
• Furtado, J.A. (2012). Uma Cultura de Informação para o Universo Digital. Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.
• Han, B.C. (2022). Hyperculture: Culture and Globalization. Polity Press.
• Hjarvard, S. (2013). The Mediatization of Culture and Society. Routledge.
• Lemos, A. (2023). Cibercultura. Tecnologia e Vida Social na Cultura Contemporânea. Editora Sulina.
• Rabinovitz, L., & Geil, A. (eds.). (2004). Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture. Duke University Press.
• Santaella, L. (2022). Neo-Humano: a Sétima Revolução Cognitiva do Sapiens. Paulus.
• Zuboff, S. (2019). Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs.

IMPORTANT DATES
Call for Papers Opening: February 26, 2024
Submission Deadline: September 1, 2024
Publication Date: December 15, 2024

Submission of Articles:
Submissions should be made through the platform https://journals.ipl.pt/cpublica/index. Authors must register in the system before submitting an article; if already registered, simply log in and start the 5-step submission process.

Articles must be submitted using the pre-formatted model for submissions to Public Communication. For more information about submissions, please refer to the Information for Authors and Instructions for Authors.