Call for Papers

Popular Communication Special issue: Piracy and Social Change
Co-editors: Patrick Burkart and Jonas Andersson Schwarz

The editors of Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture invite submissions for a special issue on the topic of piracy and social change.

Scholarship on piracy and pirates is changing, partly in recognition of the fact that “pirate” culture and everyday culture increasingly mix in popular communication. Piracy reflects social changes that transgress legally proscribed orders, while the “piracy” label is often used to shore up support for entrenched political and economic interests. For this special issue, we solicit contributions that take a novel and inquisitive approach to piracy and popular communication, while also mapping the current state of the field. Contributors can focus on one or more communicative aspects of piracy, such as pirate cultures, practices, politics, aesthetics, ethics, law and policy, and modernities.

The special issue endeavors to explore the linkages between practices that could be deemed “piratical” or transgressive and their contribution to social change or stasis. Submissions can focus on piracy and cultural production and consumption, politics, business and entrepreneurship, activism and hacktivism, and other topics presented from diverse intellectual, methodological and disciplinary affiliations and orientations.

Popular Communication provides a forum for scholarly investigation, analysis, and dialogue on communication symbols, forms, phenomena and systems within the context of contemporary popular culture across the globe. Popular Communication publishes articles on all aspects of popular communication, examining different media such as television, film, new media, print media, radio, music, and dance; the study of texts, events, artifacts, spectacles, audiences, technologies, and industries; and phenomena and practices, including, but not limited to, fan, youth and subcultures, questions of representation, digitalization, cultural globalization, spectator sports, sexuality, advertising, and consumer culture.

Submitted papers should be 6,000 words in length (inclusive of all elements). Some manuscripts may not be sent out for review if deemed inappropriate for the journal. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2014. Instructions for submitting your article can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hppc20/current