Communication and Digital Culture

Call for Papers

Digital Mainstreams/Digital Undercurrents

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
National Conference
San Francisco , CA
March 19-22, 2008

The Communication and Digital Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association is soliciting proposals for panels and individual papers that explore the concepts of “mainstream” and “underground” as they relate to popular culture in a network society.

For many individuals, the Internet has become a familiar feature of mainstream popular culture. At the same time, a great number of activities take place online that are decidedly outside of the mainstream, defining a range of mediated subcultural or countercultural practices. What defines the dominant, the minor, and the subversive in an age of a global, digital popular culture and an increasingly networked everyday life?

Possible topics include:

Blogging on the Fringe
Deviant Websites
Conspiracy Networks
Official vs. Unofficial Fandom
SecondLife Subcultures
The Digital Banal
“Convergence Culture”
Predatory Social Networking
Culture Jamming
“Virtual Communities” Revisited

Submit a 250 word maximum proposal to:

Mark Nunes, Chair
Department of English, Technical Communication, and Media Arts
Southern Polytechnic State University
Marietta , GA 30060-2896
mnunes@spsu.edu

Deadline for Submissions: November 30, 2007

Note: Communication and Digital Culture is a themed area. Submissions off-theme should be submitted to the Internet Culture Area Chair, Montana Miller, montanm@bgnet.bgsu.edu
See listing for Montana Miller under http://www.pcaaca.org/areas/areas.php