Digital Culture

Call for Papers:  Representation of race, ethnicity and culture in digital games

Asia Pacific Media Educator (Volume 26:1, June 2016) will explore the issues of race, cultural diversity, cross-cultural representations and inter-cultural dynamics in digital games.  This thematic issue will address three topic areas:
1) Representation in digital games:
Games like the Global Conflict series have been used to simulate the media’s role in fostering understanding and awareness of racial and ethnic conflicts.  One such example is Global Palestine in which Israeli students play as Palestinians, and Palestinian students play as Israelis.  What is the future of such games that deliberate on issues of political conflicts driven by race and ethnicity? Can games be used to foster cross-cultural understanding and enhance tolerance/acceptance of diversity in race and religion?  How do digital games incite racial hatred?  Besides entertainment, what other functions do games play in contemporary multicultural societies?

2) Discourse on race and culture in teaching journalism:
How can media academics recognise and respond to the discourse about race, religion, ethnicity and politics in digital games? What are the educational trends in teaching about multiculturalism in games? How are the issues of cultural diversity in digital games discussed in media studies and journalism courses?  What are the innovative practices in teaching cultural diversity with digital games?

3) Development of multicultural digital games
While the majority of high-profile titles are developed and distributed from the US and Japan,  the drive to reduce production costs has meant that development is frequently outsourced to countries  such as Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. However, while game development is increasingly becoming a global enterprise, questions remain over the extent to which this diversity of production is reflected in the game content.

Commentaries and Q&As
This thematic issue also welcomes commentaries and book reviews, which take the form of Q&As with the book authors.  Book reviewers should inform the guest editors the books to be reviewed and whether the book authors are contactable for a Q&A. 

Deadlines are as follows:
Abstract for consideration:  30 September 2015
Paper for double blind peer review: 30 November 2015
Peer review period: November – December 2015
Submission of final paper:  15 January 2016

The word lengths for full papers are:
• Commentaries (3000 – 3500 words)
• Research papers (6000 words max including references)
• Book reviews (Q&A with book author) (1500 words max)

This issue will be guest edited by Dr Mark Finn (Swinburne University of Technology) and Dr Wajeehah Aayeshah (Charles Sturt University). 
Please email abstracts and paper to wajeehah@gmail.com, and copy to the Editor-in-Chief, Dr Eric Loo (University of Wollongong) at:  eloo@uow.edu.au

By tradition, cognitive science uses the computer metaphor and
psychological models that attempt to explain human complexity isolating the subject of sociocultural plot. Breaking with cartesian dualism, we invite the reader to consider the virtual-real continuous, in which the self is constituted as a discursive construction, social and narratively structured that emerges and
develops in sequences of dialogical action established by partners located in time and space. Accordingly, we address aspects of communication and interaction on subjective relationships and intimacy we have with others while navigating on the
internet. Paradoxically, in digital culture, fiction and non-fiction walk intertwined, supporting our practices with resources that allow us to compensate for the lack of a physical body. Basing on these assumptions, we investigated how the
continuities and discontinuities occur in discursive ways in which people relate to themselves while transits on virtual and physical scenarios. For that, we turn to the ethnographic method. More specifically, we used: video version of the classic A
Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; interview protocol about personal continuity interrelated to the film, the self and Orkut, and clippings Orkut profiles of respondents. Three subjects participated in the study: one male and two females,
aged between 20 and 30 years. Paying attention to the pragmatic aspect of the utterance or speech, we chose the enunciation because it reveals the voices of the "I" positions that connects the agent of speech to the audience in communicative
practices of sustaining themselves. In the analysis, we grouped the responses according to the content that corresponded, in this case, to the "I" positions in the narrative act. Thus, we identify two levels of analysis: in the first one, the subject
is engaged in a process of authorship, in the second one, the subject acts as if he/her were another. In such circumstances, the positions taken by the subject allow him/her to move through the imagination, as though in space, in accordance
with changes in situation and time. By this study, we concluded that: 1) affinities, likes and interests are anchors that people use at virtual world to bring them what they know of the physical world, 2) the number of singularities (other "I" s) are
interconnected to affinities, likes and interests, whose associations are located in the virtual environment on the links (symbolic places) between profiles and communities (writing, photos, images, audio, video), as well as between users and
developers (aid terms , security center, etc.), 3) people do not connect to the internet just because they are geographically distant, but mainly because they seek answers, seek to establish that the communicative ties closer together; 4) while
communicating, the user may oppose the idea that others have of him/her, if different from the others, although simultaneously is engaged in groups that make he/she similar to and different from each other as a communal.

"Bild och natur" is an anthology edited by Peter Bengtsen, Max Liljefors and Moa Petersén. Ten researchers from the Division of Art History and Visual Studies at Lund University, Sweden, have contributed chapters.

The ten texts (seven in Swedish and three in English) explore how nature has been visually depicted throughout history. From medieval church paintings to contemporary computer games and street art, from art photography to genetic diagrams – in these varied and fascinating images, nature is given a face, becomes concrete. The chapters in the book address these different images of nature and show that they are also multifaceted portraits of ourselves.

"Bild och natur" was published with generous support from The Gyllenstierna Krapperup's Foundation and The Elisabeth Rausing Memorial Foundation.