Thursday 25 February 2016

CALL FOR PAPERS


CFP: Journal of Media Watch
Deadline: February 29, 2016
Issue Theme: Mutualisation of News and Engaging Media
www.mediawatchglobal.com

In 2010, the former editor of Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, showed the world about the power of publicness through his twitter posting revolting against the court injection on Guardian to report on the dumping of toxic chemicals by the company ‘Trafigura’. Trafigura became viral in twitter; the result is more vigorous news stories and personal comments that could have possibly escaped from the newspaper pages. Calling this as ‘Mutualisation of News’, Rusbridger underlined the collaboration of professionals and non-professionals in the dissemination of news. From a carefully filtered and controlled letters to editor, the role of readers or news consumers have traversed such distance that news are no produced by a collaborative effort. The Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ is a typical example of how the laymen or those having a journalistic flair or at least an opinion work together to build an interactive or collaborative news platform, a completely different experience social media platforms provide.
As mutualisation gears its definition to wider spectrum, this issue of The Journal of Media Watch looks at the possibilities of using this concept in the developing world for journalism and news media. Journalism pays sustained attention to the coverage of ideas, policies, programs, activities and events dealing with the improvement of the life of people.
As far as thedeveloping world is concerned, media plays a pivotal role in keeping any eye not only on the government policies, but the larger human and societal developmental issues in the country. However the media in the developing world, both press and electronic, in entangled in the serious competition amidst the clutter where they consider political tussle and power struggle as the prominent grey matter to boost their readership or viewership. Though the 24 hour news channels ‘report’, these are often news pieces ‘to inform’ rather than ‘to change’. This is same with the revolution of e-papers as well; print shifted to online that eased readability for larger users, but added nothing to the wide opportunities that the online platform provide news media. The role of people in this process is limited to sharing the news links and posting comments only to the selective news allowed by the newspaper. The downturn for journalism in developing countries lies here, while exciting opportunities are wide open. If in 1969, George Varghese, a prominent journalist in The Hindustan Times could make revolutionary changes through his fortnightly column, ‘Our Village Chatera’ depicting the life in the village of Chatera that opened the windows towards the rural life of India, in this era where technology has put forward immense opportunity for journalists to embark on ‘reporting for changes’, we cannot see such advancements in journalism.
News is now a collaborative effort, and with developmental reports, it is even more demanding. Many a times reporters need to get various insights into the wider spectrum of an issue which is possible only through considering audience’ or reader’s point of view. On this special issue Journal of Media Watch invites empirical and objective research papers on the following topics:
§  Mutualization of news                    
§  Engaging news media
§  Community journalism                                           
§  Collective media ownership
§  Prosumers                                                              
§  Shared media platforms
§  News plurality                                                        
§  Paywall and Firewalls                     
§  Hyperlocal media                                       
§  Diversity innovations          

Dr. Sony Jalarajan Raj
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Media Watch
Department of Communication
7-166C, 10700-104 Avenue
MacEwan University, Edmonton, AB, Canada, T5J 4S2
Email: sonyjraj@gmail.com
Tel: 001-587-778-2426

E-mail your submission to
sonyjraj@gmail.com
mediajournal@ymail.com
mediawatchjournal@gmail.com