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<b>Call for Papers</b>
<p><i>Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture</i>
<br>Special Issue, 39.3, 2006
<p><b>Question Time: Modalities of Knowledge in an Information Culture</b>
<p>Editors: Paul Atkinson, Simon Cooper & Sue Yell, Monash University
<p>This issue takes as its starting point the information gathering and
surveillance capacities of ICTS, and their applications in a range of institutions
and media genres. It invites papers to address the implications of these
capacities and their applications in an information culture. In what ways
does the current proliferation of television and radio questionnaires and
quizzes and of organisational audits (e.g. in universities, research assessment
exercises, publication outputs, student evaluations) contribute to a ‘flattening’
of knowledge? Does the design and performance of these programs and
audits reduce knowledge, agency and the conception of the future into a
choice between variables? Does the development and application of
new technologies capable of tracking and cataloguing social practices represent
a historically unprecedented compartmentalisation of knowledge? Is there
a privileging of only those events that can be captured by electronic databases
and the corresponding drive to find new means of inscribing social practices
and phenomena? Are there relations to be drawn between an apparent
flattening of knowledge and an apparent fashion for flattening organisational
arrangements (e.g. changing managerial structures)?
<p>Contributors are invited to address issues associated with these changes
to knowledge structures, in particular:
<br>· the link between media genres, communication technologies
and knowledge structures (including online databases and search engines
such as Google);
<br>· the proliferation of quiz shows as well as television and
radio programs that use quizzes as a means of interacting with their audiences;
<br>· new forms of auditing and testing and their role in surveillance;
<br>· the rise of the new audit culture as a means of assessing
academic and research activity (research assessment exercises in the UK,
New Zealand and Australia, publication outputs, and student evaluations).
<br>· The journalistic staples of newspaper polling and opinion
polls, etc.
<p>Southern Review invites contributions (4000-6000 words) on the theme
of “Question Time”. Papers may be submitted as attachments to an email,
and should be double-spaced in A4 format and accompanied by an abstract
(maximum 100 words). Referencing is author-date (notes for contributors
and full details of house style are available on request).
<p><i>The general aim of Southern Review, an interdisciplinary journal,
is to focus on the connections between communication and politics. Southern
Review is interested in communication and cultural technologies, their
histories, producers and audiences, policies and texts. It welcomes articles
that connect these areas either to arenas of legislative or parliamentary
politics, to governance of social organizations and the institutions they
constitute, or to broader negotiations of power.</i>
<p>paul.atkinson@arts.monash.edu.au
<br>simon.cooper@arts.monash.edu.au
<br>sue.yell@arts.monash.edu.au
<p>Full articles due: 31 August, 2006.
<br>
<p>--
<br>Dr Susan Yell
<br>Head, Communications & Writing
<br>School of Humanities, Communications & Social Sciences
<br>Monash University
<br>Gippsland Campus, Churchill, VIC 3842
<br>AUSTRALIA
<p>ph. 61 3 5122 6442 or 9902 6442
<br>fax 61 3 5122 6359 or 9902 6359
<br>email sue.yell@arts.monash.edu.au
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