Special Issue of Medien Journal, Zeitschrift für Kommunikationskultur, Issue 2020/02

Deadline: December 15, 2019

It is a commonplace that media play an important role in young people’s socialisation processes. This is even more relevant for the digitized media environment in contemporary societies. In addition to traditional media such as journals, books, and television, digital media play an increasingly important role within the media menus of children and adolescents. Several studies show that even the youngest click through the apps on their parents’ smartphones, long before developing reading and writing skills. Computer games and social media have a significant value in adolescent peer groups. The smartphone acts as indispensable companion throughout the day. Moreover, mediatization of childhood and youth also goes hand in hand with the commercialisation and commodification of youth: children and teens not only act as a central target group of (digital) marketing strategies, but their digital devices and applications figure as important consumer goods and consequently, youth itself is intensively commodified too.

The use of digital media therefore has diverse and manifold consequences for young people’s communication, their ways of learning, personal relationships, construction of identity, and formation of youth cultures. However, the extent to which media are used in a constructive way varies by context: Studies reveal that the practices and literacies of young people depend above all on the formal education of their parents. Hence, children and youths from backgrounds with a higher level of formal education have better preconditions than those who come from less highly educated backgrounds.

We call for contributions that approach the topic area from different perspectives and disciplines. Both empirical and theoretical papers are welcome.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Youth culture and digital media
• Commercialization and mediatization of childhood and youth
• How young people view the impact of digitalization
• Digital media usage within family contexts
• Changes of media practices over the course of time
• News and media consumption among young people
• Social media and youth identity
• Media literacy of children and adolescents
• Digitalization and its consequences for media education and media ethics
• Responses of media production and cultural industries to digital youth culture

Criteria for submission:

The text must not be previously published elsewhere.

Manuscripts submitted to Medien Journal should not be published elsewhere until the peer review process has been finished.

Papers should be 20.000 to 30.000 characters.

Submissions must contain an abstract (10 lines) and a brief biographical note on each author (max. 3 lines).

Submissions must be anonymous versions of the article and include an extra title cover page (with name and contact details) for the double-blind peer review process.

The papers have to be submitted in English – submissions must follow APA style guides (see www.apastyle.org) and the author guidelines of the Medien Journal: https://ejournals.facultas.at/index.php/medienjournal/about/submissions

Deadline for submission: Dec. 15th, 2019

Please submit your full papers in the form of a Word document via e-mail to christian.oggolder@aau.at

For any questions please contact the editors:

• Dr. Tanja Oblak Črnič, University of Ljubljana, tanja.oblak@fdv.uni-lj.si
• Dr. Christian Oggolder, University of Klagenfurt, christian.oggolder@aau.at
• Dr. Caroline Roth-Ebner, University of Klagenfurt, caroline.roth@aau.at