Call for papers: Researching cross-media communication. Methodological approaches.

Submission deadline: October 1, 2015
Publication deadline: Spring 2016

Editors: Tem Frank Andersen (guest), Kjetil Sandvik, Anne Mette Thorhauge

While the concept of cross-media communication has most commonly been used to refer to media institutions and their communication strategies, the focus of this issue of MedieKultur will be on the user perspective proper and will pose the question: what are the methodological frameworks needed in order to study uses across media?

The rapid spread of the Internet and mobile media during the last two decades has generated great hopes and deep worries – in the public debate, as well as in research. Following from this, international media and communication research is currently engaged in a longer and deeper process of examining and assessing the cultural consequences of networked communication, as well as communication across media and media platforms. This issue of MedieKultur joins this process, addressing the ongoing transformation of the media environment and inviting articles dealing with methodological perspectives on these changes in communication flows and practices worldwide. Audience and reception studies have traditionally asked not only what these media do to users, but also what users do with media: how do people use, interpret, and otherwise engage in different types of media?

An important aspect of grasping the user perspective today is to consider the diverse modes of engagement and various degrees of participation and produsage taking place – by individual users and also via user networks in which media content is shared, distributed, commented on, edited and added to. Another aspect of this is how to study users’ understanding (or lack of understanding) of the digital tracks they leave and how they reflect on this aspect of cross-media communication that makes users visible and available across media: do they merely experience a freedom to express themselves, or do they also reflect on the aspects of power, surveillance and even exploitation when it comes to intellectual property ownership, free labour, etc., which are part of networked communication systems?

These various aspects of cross-media communication present both theoretical and analytical, but especially methodological, challenges to the field of media and communication studies, and this issue of MedieKultur welcomes contributions that focus on such approaches.