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Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture

Call for papers for a thematic issue on Student and University Radio

Guest Editor: Salvatore Scifo


University radios, also called student, college and campus radios, depending on the local cultural and social contexts were they have developed, have been a tier of broadcasting and/or narrowcasting stations that have become a regular feature in campuses across the Americas, Northern Europe and Australia. In some cases they are also local community radio stations that serve the communities that live in the surrounding areas and playing a role in training future broadcasters, widening the access to the media and a space for activism and social movements.
In the last decade, these media have been developing at a fast pace also in Southern Europe, Asia and Africa and adapted dynamically, often with scarce resources, in the convergent media landscape where they have experimented the integration with web-based forms of radio broadcasting and podcasting.

Student Radio and radio stations based in universities have been already around for almost 50 years, with some early experiences tracing this even back to the early days of radio and the experimental broadcast of the 1920s. Even though those stations are, and  have always been, placed in the same premises where media studies are taught and researched, this is a under-developed area of research and there are limited research resources available in this area.

Interactions is looking for original, research-based papers that will contribute to broaden the theoretical and empirical perspectives on media led by students, or where students are the main volunteer basis and target audience, by calling for contributions from a broad range of approaches including Radio Studies, Media Practice, Media History, Community and Alternative Media and Cultural Studies.

Interactions welcomes analyses of local, regional and national case studies, and international comparative research, as well as contributions on media practice, audience studies and ethnographic studies of these media.

Topics addressed in the papers could include, but are not limited to,
•    Country or regional student radio histories
•    Student radio practice
•    Student radio as a community and alternative radio
•    Ethnographic studies of student/university radio
•    Student radio and social movements
•    Student radio, culture and society
•    Student media in the context of digital and web-based media
•    Student media audience and reception studies

Applicants may submit abstracts of no more than 300 words to the Issue’s Guest Editor Salvatore Scifo at [log in to unmask] 
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Thursday 30 September 2010. Submission of full papers will be by Monday 28 February 2011.

Further information on submission and on previous issues of Interactions can also be obtained by visiting journal’s webpage on Intellect’s website at:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=165/

Interactions recognises the interdisciplinary nature of the fields of media, communication and cultural studies and we therefore encourage diverse themes, subjects, contexts and approaches; empirical, theoretical and historical. Our objective is to engage readers and contributors from different parts of the world in a critical debate on the myriad interconnections and interactions between communication, culture and society at the outset of the twenty first century.

It is our intention to encourage the development of the widest possible scholarly community, both in terms of geographical location and intellectual scope and we will publish leading articles from both established scholars and those at the beginning of their careers.

Particular interests include, but are not limited to, work related to Popular Culture, Media Audiences, Political Economy, Political Communication, Media Institutions and Practices, Promotional Culture, New Media, Migration and Diasporic Studies.

Principal Editor
Anthony McNicholas
University of Westminster
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Associate Editor
Tarik Sabry
University of Westminster
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