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
salvatore.scifo AT communitymedia.eu
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
mcnichc AT wmin.ac.uk

Associate Editor
Tarik Sabry
University of Westminster
sabryt AT wmin.ac.uk