Special Features CFP: Social Media
Flow Editorial Staff

Please feel free to redistribute.

Social media have created new ways for individuals to communicate and share information. Technologies such as blogs, Twitter, social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, etc.), wikis, Second Life, digg, Last.fm, FlickR, etc. have become increasingly pervasive. Social media are being used by celebrities, athletes, journalists, politicians, TV personalities, musicians, scholars, news organizations, businesses, marketers, and more. How does the use of social media change the ways we think about identity, community, and interpersonal communication? In what ways are social media being used for political purposes, for collective action, and news aggregates? How does receiving a Twitter message on your cell phone from Shaquille O’Neal or NPR’s Scott Simon erode boundaries between public and private or change conceptualizations of intimacy? Are blogs and other social media challenging journalism’s traditional gatekeeping and agenda-setting functions? Should we be concerned about issues of privacy and free speech? How are certain social media technologies being gendered, classed, racialized, and policed? And as is the case with all forms of media, we must be careful to ask who is denied access and to what effect?

We are interested to hear what the Flow community thinks about social media technologies: uses and users, popular discourses and rhetoric, and the ways in which social media challenge concepts of identity, community, friendship, public/private, creativity, surveillance, and more.

Please send submissions of between 1000-1500 words to Jacqueline Vickery (jvickery183@gmail.com) and Anne Petersen (annehelenpetersen@gmail.com) no later than May 18th, 2009. Flow has a longstanding policy of encouraging non-jargony, highly readable pieces and ample incorporation of images and video.

Image Credits:
1. Social Media Mix