CfP Journal of Children and Media

Call for paper Journal of Children and Media for Special Issue, Volume 9 Issue 1, February 2015: Media and the Family. Guest Editor: Kristen Harrison, Department of Communication Studies and Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan; krishar@umich.edu. The child-media relationship is challenging to study comprehensively in part because much of it takes place within the context of the family home, intertwined with the daily rituals and interactions of family life. Research exploring children and media vis-à-vis the family context deepens our understanding of the significance of media in the daily lives of children, from birth until they leave the family home.

In 1980 James Lull published a typology of the social uses of television in the home, from structural (organization and regulation of family space and time) to relational (communication facilitation and avoidance, establishment of leisure norms, role enactment). A third of a century and the addition of several varieties of new in-home media later, there is a need to revisit what we know about the role of mass media in the family context. This special issue of the Journal of Children and Media is designed to give readers a heightened appreciation for the reciprocal relationships between the family context, media, and child/family interactions, habits, and rituals.

We seek empirical studies and theoretical essays that might include, for example, research on:

• Characteristics and influences of the constant TV household and/or TV in children’s rooms
• Background and foreground media influences on daily habits like sleeping, mealtimes, the completion of homework, and conversation
• Parental mediation of child media use/exposure as it plays out in the home context
• Parents, siblings, and other family members as co-audience members
• The role of media in structuring family space and time; family rituals around media
• Media as tools in the negotiation of family hierarchy (e.g., selection, punishment)
• The role of media use in displacing/stimulating activities that ordinarily take place in or around the home (e.g., face-to-face conversation, outdoor play)
• Differences in media characteristics and uses in the homes of diverse families of different socioeconomic means, cultural-religious-ethnic backgrounds, immigration status, or generational composition

Contributions to this special issue are welcomed from a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The guest editor is particularly interested in research that addresses contextual factors specific to the family home and the media-related activities that occur as part of everyday life. Both qualitative and quantitative data analytic approaches are invited.

Expressions of interest should be submitted to the guest editor as an e-mail attachment by no later than March 30, 2013. Please include a 500-word abstract, full contact information, and a biographical note (up to 75 words) on each of the authors. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by April 30, 2013 and will then be invited to submit a full paper to the guest editor. Manuscripts should be no more than 8,000 words, including notes and references, conform to APA style, and be submitted by September 30, 2013. All papers will be subject to anonymous peer review following submission.