<nettime-ann> cfp: Special Issue on Co-Creative Labor

[Ned Rossiter <n.rossiter@ulster.ac.uk>]

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Call: Special Issue on Co-Creative Labor

Call for Papers: International Journal of Cultural Studies

Special Issue on Co-Creative Labor

Guest Editors:
Mark Deuze (Indiana University, US & Leiden University, Netherlands)
John Banks (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

Scholarship on the production side of new or converging media  
industries is scarce, but growing as the prominence of cultural  
production in a worldwide 'experience economy' increases, next to  
global concerns about the changing nature of work and labour in the  
media and creative industries specifically, and creative labor in  
general. Media professions as varied as public relations, marketing  
communications, advertising, digital game development, fashion, movie  
and television production have only rarely been studied at the level  
of work and labor relations. Post-disciplinary research and debates  
are now emerging about the nature, characteristics and practices of  
work and labor relations in the context of networked and global media  
industries.

Consumers increasingly participate in media production as co-creators  
of content and experiences. Transformations in the relations among  
media producers and consumers, as well as between professionals and  
amateurs may indicate a profound shift in which our frameworks and  
categories of analysis (such as the traditional labor theory of  
value) that worked well in the context of an industrial media economy  
are less helpful than before. Does recent work grounded in neo- 
Marxian theories of immaterial labor, affective labor, free labor,  
and precarious labor for example help us to analyze and unpack the  
changing conditions and definitions of work? What are the  
implications of a potentially radical unsettling of the assumed  
division of labour between professional, expert media producers and  
amateurs, volunteers, or citizen-consumer collectives?

These transformations may be understood as part of a shift from a  
closed expert system towards more collective innovation networks,  
across which expertise becomes distributed. How are these labor  
relations between professionals and amateurs negotiated? Are emerging  
consumer co-creation relations a threat to the livelihoods,  
professional identity, and working conditions of professional  
creative workers? Can this phenomenon be explained as the  
exploitative extraction of surplus value from the work of media  
consumers, or is something else potentially more profound and  
challenging playing out here? Indeed, are these emerging phenomena  
best understood as a form of labor?

For this special issue we hope to bring together research from a  
variety of disciplines and perspectives that ambitiously aims to come  
to grips with the conditions and opportunities of consumer co- 
creative practices. Co-creative media production practice is perhaps  
a disruptive agent of change that sits uncomfortably with our current  
understandings and theories of work and labor.
We thus invite papers that describe, explain, interrogate,  
contextualize and thus further our understanding of the changing  
nature of media work in the context of co-creative media production  
practice.

Call for Papers

This special issue on Co-Creative Labor strives to bring together  
scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, addressing general or  
particular concerns about the conditions and changing nature of (new)  
media work and co-creative labor in different areas of the creative  
industries. The issue calls for papers that focus on rich empirical  
and/or theoretical work in or across three key domains of research on  
co-creative labor and cultural production:

New Media, Cultural Production, and Work

A first domain of research would focus on historical contexts and  
critical discussions of the role of media work in contemporary  
society. Key concepts used in the field-new media, digital culture,  
work, culture and creative industries, media professions-should be  
highlighted and clearly articulated with co-creative practices old  
and new.

Media Professions

In a second domain we are looking for investigations of key media  
professions – journalism, game development, television and motion  
picture production, advertising, public relations and marketing  
communications, popular music, fashion –in terms of the changing  
nature of work in these professions, focusing on the convergence of  
the roles of professionals and amateurs and the implications for  
professional and/or organizational identity, and the management of  
creativity in a context of the signaled shift towards co-creative labor.

Convergence Culture and Free Labor

A third area of research would focuses more explicitly on what  
industry observers coin as “user-generated content”, “consumer co- 
creation” or “citizen media”, and by the academy as “commons-based  
peer production” (Benkler), “free labor” (Terranova) and “convergence  
culture” (Jenkins).

We are specifically looking for submissions of original research  
including, but not limited to:
- Case studies of media companies adopting co-creative labor practices;
- Case studies of specific co-creative communities and their  
relationships with media producers;
- Content analyses of co-creative labor in the production of culture;
- Mapping of ethical, political, economical and cultural changes and  
challenges of co-creative labor;
- Quantitative and/or qualitative empirical work on the production,  
content, and/or consumption of co-created media messages;
- Research focusing on co-creative labor in the context of specific  
media industries;
- International comparative work on co-creative labor in media  
production.

Of course, this call is not exclusive, and we very much look forward  
to working with any authors on paper proposals or extended abstracts  
on related issues. We particularly want to encourage graduate  
students to submit work in progress.

Timetable

The special issue will appear as 12(2) of 2009. The deadline for all  
full paper submissions is: 30 August 2008. All submissions will be  
anonymously reviewed by at least two referees. Deadline for revised  
manuscripts is 7 November 2008. Final editorial decisions will be  
made by late November 2008. Submitted manuscripts should not exceed  
7,500 words (including main text, abstract and keywords, plus  
references and endnotes).

Contact

Please submit papers, extended abstracts, or expressions of interest  
to Mark Deuze (mdeuze at indiana.edu).
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