Call for Papers, Iowa Journal of Communication

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Call for papers: Iowa Journal of Communication

Special issue: Games and Culture: Asia-Pacific perspectives

As a cultural genre, online gaming has been one of the most dynamic in the world. Within a relatively short period of time, online gaming has become a major entertainment tool for fun, but it has also become another channel for human relationships as part of people’s actual lives. The vast popularity of online games around the world has closely coincided with the widespread proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which have facilitated communication and interaction at an unprecedented level. Through games as well as related activities, youth have used these technologies to nurture friendships through their engagement in online games, instant messaging, blogging, and the like, which assist them in constructing their own tightly-knit communities.

Therefore, the booming online gaming market should be seriously examined in its own socio-cultural circumstances and context vis a vis the global game industry. Primarily due to the accelerated pace of development, the academic research on online games, however, has been correspondingly sparse and limited in scope, with domestic literature tending towards either the celebratory emphasis of positive business development or the problematics of regulation and media effects oriented concerns, such as violence and addiction. While such research comprises important contributions to the emergent scholarship on online gaming, lopsided accounts tend to foreground the readily empirical observations and aggregate data to the exclusion of other possible macro factors such as globalization, intercultural communication, transnationalization of the gaming industry, and micro, more private but resonant problems in family or social life of those concerned.

As a region, the Asia-Pacific area is characterized by diverse penetration rates of gaming and broadband technologies. Two defining locations, Asia (including South Korea and China) and North America, are seen as both online gaming centers and the largest markets to which the world looks towards as examples of the future-in-the-present. Ever since Nexon, a Korean games corporation, introduced the world’s first graphic massively multiplayer online game with ‘Kingdom of the Winds’ in 1996 and two exceedingly popular online games thereafter (Lineage I and II), Korea has played a central role in the PC-based online game market and digital economy. In China, online games are also becoming social spaces, where new social relations, community networks, and a new type of life are formed.

In this special issue to be published in September 2010, we seek to exchange our scholarship on the politics of game play and its associated cultural context by focusing on the burgeoning Asia-Pacific region. Harboring global gaming production and consumption sites such as China, Korea, and the U.S., the region provides a wealth of divergent examples of the role of gaming as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Welcoming a range of presentations, from micro ethnographic studies to macro political economy analyses and beyond, this special issue will provide an interdisciplinary model for thinking through the politics of game production, representation and consumption in the region.

Suggested paper topics discuss games in terms of one of the following areas:

• History of the growth of online gaming as a global industry, discourse, and media product
• Critical interpretation of emerging local game industries in Asia and/or North-America
• Online games and globalization/regionalization
• Convergent technologies and the impact on established modes of game play
• Government regulations and types of game play
• Game fandom and free labor
• Gaming as social technology/media
• A culturally specific aesthetic to the production and consumption of certain games
• New media and experimental gaming
• Gendered consumption and production of games

Deadline for this special issue of Iowa Journal of Communication: 15^th March, 2010. Author(s) should submit all inquiries, expressions of interest and papers to Dal Yong Jin (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; djin@kaist.ac.kr; djin@gmail.com).

All submissions are peer reviewed by two scholars. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically in Word or Word Perfect format and conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association and should not exceed 9,000 words in length.

China rejects rhetoric on internet addiction

This is an interesting development coming out of China:

China's health ministry has turned down the country's rhetoric on internet addiction, and has warned against "boot camp" style approaches for habitual web abusers.

The ministry has issued guidelines for "inappropriate use of internet" saying there was no precise definition of internet addiction, state news agency Xinhua reports.

There are at least a couple of good things coming out of this. Not only is it cracking down on the quackery of the net addiction treatment industry that is proliferating rapidly in China, but it's also (and more importantly) questioning the rhetoric behind addiction, what it is, and whether or not it is appropriate to apply in the case of digital lifestyles. A few researchers like Peele, Alexander, Schaler, recently Clark, have critiqued the cut and paste nature of addiction diagnosis and treatment, including 12-step.

EPIC Podcasts available

From the American Anthropological Association's blog:

The Brand Show recently posted three podcasts featuring anthropologists involved in the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference. Give them a listen:

• The Past, Present and Future of Ethnography in Business (feat. Martha Cotton)
• The Rise of Ethnographic Insight in Enterprise (feat. Ken Anderson)
• A New Perspective on Consumer Research May Give a Leg Up to Brands (feat. Gillian Tett)

New book out: Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific

Just got my copy of a new book from Routledge, "Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific" edited by Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan. Dal Yong Jin and I wrote the first chapter in Part I titled, "The Politics of Online Gaming," where we explored the geo-political, economic, cultural and social dimensions of Korea's creative industries in the form of online gaming.

You will also find contributions from...
Sam Hinton, Peichi Chung, Benjamin Wai-Ming Ng, Jun-Sok Huhh, Melanie Swalwell, Dean Chan, David Surman, Christian McCrea, Theodor G. Wyeld / Brett Leavy / Patrick Crogan, Ingrid Richardson, Holin Lin / Chuen-Tsai Sun, Larissa Hjorth / Bora Na / Jun-Sok Huhh

Description of the book:
This collection explores the relationship between digital gaming and its cultural context by focusing on the burgeoning Asia-Pacific region. Encompassing key locations for global gaming production and consumption such as Japan, China, and South Korea, as well as increasingly significant sites including Australia and Singapore, the region provides a wealth of divergent examples of the role of gaming as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies of specific games and gaming locales to macro political economy analyses of techno-nationalisms and trans-cultural flows, this collection provides an interdisciplinary model for thinking through the politics of gaming production, representation, and consumption in the region.

Anyone interested in the latest research on gaming culture, particularly in the Asia-Pacific should take a gander through these pages.

You can get your own hardcopy of the book from Routledge here>>
Or, you can get a Kindle edition from Amazon here>>
Or, the library, like SFU here>>

Genome BC Launches New Online Newsletter for Social Scientists and Humanists

Some often mused that while hyper-specialization leads to some very interesting discoveries, the divorcing of ethics, morality, or culture from the study of 'real science' is ultimately not for the greater good. William Leiss' work comes to mind.

All the more reason it's nice to see initiatives like this come to fruition.

New from Genome BC:
This is a resource for social science and humanities researchers interested in the societal issues associated with genomics science and technology, and features articles on BC researchers and projects of interest as well as providing details of funding ...opportunities, upcoming conferences and events, both nationally and internationally, and much more.
Each issue will relate to a different theme.

This (first!) issue is on the environment. Access the pdf here>>

CMS job opening for tenured faculty position

Via Henry Jenkins...

Note application deadline of November 1, 2009:

MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies seeks applications for a tenured position beginning in September 2010. A PhD and an extensive record of publication, research activity and leadership are expected. We encourage applicants from a wide array of disciplinary backgrounds. The successful candidate will teach and guide research in one or more of the Program's dimensions of comparativity (historical, methodological, cultural) across media forms. Expertise in the cultural and social implications of established media forms (film, television, audio and visual cultures, print) is as important as scholarship in one or more emerging areas such as games, social media, new media literacies, participatory culture, software studies, IPTV, and transmedia storytelling.

The position involves teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, developing and guiding collaborative research activities, and participating in the intellectual and creative leadership of the Program and the Institute. Candidates should demonstrate a record of effective teaching and thesis supervision, significant research/creative activity, relevant administrative experience, and international recognition.

CMS offers SB and SM programs and maintains a full roster of research initiatives and outreach activities [see http://cms.mit.edu] The program embraces the notion of comparativity and collaboration and works across MIT's various schools and between MIT and the larger media landscape.

MIT is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.

Applications consisting of a curriculum vita, a statement of teaching philosophy and experience, a statement of current and future research plans, selected major publications, and names of suggested references should be submitted by November 1, 2009 to:

Professor William Uricchio
Director, Comparative Media Studies
MIT 14N-207
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

Postdoctoral fellowship opportunity at ANU

Here's a good opportunity to do some postdoctoral research in Canberra:
The Korea Institute, Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific, is offering a two-year research fellowship focusing on any one of three possible fields of investigation: 1) the politics of Korea, with a focus on contemporary developments; 2) the economics of Korea including Korea’s global involvement in multilateral issues; or 3) the security of the Korean peninsula with an East Asia context.

The successful applicant will be eligible for a salary package of $53,935 to $68,413 pa, plus 17% superannuation. The closing date for applications is 1 October 2009.

For further details of the position and how apply, please refer to the following page: http://jobs.anu.edu.au/PositionDetail.aspx?p=823