Call for Papers: Canadian Journal of Communication

Special Issue on: Wireless Technologies, Mobile Practices

Mobile wireless devices such as handheld pdas, cellular telephones, and portable computers are part of a changing landscape of communications and culture. In the last decade alone, for instance, the use of cell phones has increased fourfold in Canada signaling a remarkable shift in the telecommunications industry, the convergence of a number of technologies onto a single platform, and new ways of conducting person-to-person communication and creating community. In addition to these devices, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth, WANS, and GPS comprise integrated segments of the new infrastructure of the so-called wireless world as well as an emergent vocabulary for citizens and consumers. The Canadian Journal of Communication invites submissions, in English or in French, for a forthcoming special issue on mobile communications and wireless technologies. We are interested in innovative, critical approaches that decipher a range of mobile technologies and practices in wireless contexts. Possible themes include:

Everyday uses: sharing our lives via the mobile (text, voice, video)

Civic engagement, activism and mobile technologies

Wireless services and emergency communication

Privacy, surveillance and mobile phones

Community Wireless Networks

Policy: CRTC regulations and spectrum policy

Mobility, Labour: new conditions of work

Shifting notions of space, place and time in a mobile world

Rhetoric and discourses on mobility and wireless worlds

Art, design and mobile technologies

Mobile genres and cellular convergence

Global and international perspectives on mobile technologies


Full-length papers (@ 7000-9000 words) should be submitted electronically following the guidelines laid out on the CJC submissions website ( http://www.cjc-online.ca/submissions.php ). Make sure to write in all caps "MOBILE" in the Comments to the Editor field, and to include it on the cover page of your article as well. Do not include your name on the cover page.

Deadline for papers is Sept. 1, 2007. Papers selected by the editors will then be sent for peer review for final decision.

Comments and queries can be sent to one of the special issue editors:

Dr. Barbara Crow, York University, bacrow@sympatico.ca

Dr. Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University, kim.sawchuk@sympatico.ca

Dr. Richard Smith, Simon Fraser University, smith@sfu.ca