<nettime-ann> CFP: M/C Journal 'vote' Issue - article deadline extended to 31 October

["M/C - Media and Culture" <mc@media-culture.org.au>]

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Dear friends of M/C - Media and Culture,

as the Australian federal election campaign has now officially begun, we
thought we'd get in on the action and extend our article deadline for the
M/C Journal 'vote' issue to 31 October. Please consider submitting an
article (not necessarily specifically on Australian politics, but on
'vote'-related topics wherever you may encounter them)!

Our call for papers is below:



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 14 Oct. 2007

                          M/C - Media and Culture
                     http://www.media-culture.org.au/
            is calling for contributors to the 'vote' issue of

                                M/C Journal
                   http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

M/C Journal is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal
between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed
journal. In 2007, M/C Journal celebrates its tenth year in publication.

To see what M/C Journal is all about, check out our Website, which contains
all the issues released so far, at <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>.
To find out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit
<http://journal.media-culture.org.au/journal/submission.php>. 

                          Call for Papers: 'vote'
                          Edited by Graham Meikle

Please select from the following options. Click here. Press start. Call the
number you see on-screen. Push the red button. Is this correct? Press one.

We all vote all day long. From ATMs to phone jail, from Digg to Slashdot,
from restaurant menus to speed dating - expressing a preference is a
constant obligation.

Except, perhaps, in elections. In 2007, Australia faces a federal election
likely to be fought around issues of inclusion and exclusion, of 'values'
and 'identity'. But compulsory voting will again mask the scale of
electoral disillusionment that makes people elsewhere stay at home on the
day. In the 2005 UK general election, Tony Blair's Labour Party got 35% of
the vote - but 39% of eligible voters didn't bother to show up. In 2006,
Taylor Hicks won the fifth season of American Idol in a finale that drew
almost 64 million votes - more than the 62 million George W. Bush managed
in the 2004 election. But between hanging chads and hacking Diebold
machines, perhaps American Idol just has the better technology.

The Idol franchise, along with Big Brother and other reality shows, are at
the forefront of exploiting the convergent media environment, in which
registering a preference by SMS is cast as 'people power'. But is this any
more empowering than using a jukebox? And does this same question apply to
national elections? Most studies of the media have assumed a paradigm in
which information flows from the few to the many. But more and more this
pattern is reversed, as the many get to send the information to the few -
we click here, we press hash, we push the red button. We vote.

What does it mean to vote in the twenty-first century? Is McDonald's the
only kind of franchise that matters any more?

This issue of M/C Journal invites articles that respond to any and all
connotations of the word vote.

If you need help, you can press the star key at any time, or contact the
editors: vote@journal.media-culture.org.au.

Submit papers of 3,000 words in length to the editors at
vote@journal.media-culture.org.au.

Article deadline:     31 October 2007
Issue release date:   12 December 2007

M/C Journal was founded (as "M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture") in 1998
as a place of public intellectualism analysing and critiquing the meeting
of media and culture. Contributors are directed to past issues of M/C
Journal for examples of style and content, and to the submissions page for
comprehensive article submission guidelines. M/C Journal articles are blind
peer-reviewed.

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Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2007:

'vote':    article deadline 31 October 2007, release date 12 December 2007

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M/C - Media and Culture is located at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>.
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M/C Journal is online at <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>.
All past issues of M/C Journal on various topics are available there.
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end


                                                     Dr Axel Bruns

--
 General Editor                              editor@media-culture.org.au
 M/C - Media and Culture                http://www.media-culture.org.au/
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