*CFP* "MISCOMMUNICATION: ERRORS, MISTAKES, AND THE MEDIA", BOOK CHAPTERS

Mistakes and miscommunications occupy a special place in media theory, and for the field of media archaeology in particular, posing a range of important questions. What happens to discourse when media machines do not operate in the way they were intended? What happens when communication systems break down and start to deliver misleading information? What are the conditions for the error in 21st century media? And what can attention to the possibilities for the experience of miscommunications tell us about 21st century media and culture in general?

These questions pose a problem for media archaeology and identify a need for this field to be expanded beyond its own paradigm to uncover the ways in which errors and miscommunications address historical and contemporary cultural techniques. This book invites contributions that investigate new methods, topics and themes around the idea of miscommunication at the interface of media archaeology and fields of cultural studies, art history, philosophy, film studies, sound studies, and conflict studies, where an investigation of errors, mistakes and falsity can provide new ways to understand creative and epistemological processes. We argue that the potential for mistakes in any communication system creates a specific agency – an ‘energy of delusion’ in the worlds of Viktor Shklovsky, or as Umberto Eco describes it a ‘force of falsity’ – that awaits its reconsideration in the 21st century.

This book aims to provide an opportunity to rethink media and communication theory – as well as philosophies of mediation – by asking, what happens when communication systems break down? What are the new political economies of noise? What happens when political communication becomes non-dialectical? How can we rethink digital media theory by looking at mistakes in programs? Break-downs, mistakes, hacks, and quick fixes, might allow us to reconsider questions relating to media determinism – these phenomena open up lines of flight and show us the potential for users to find a way to live with programs. They give us a way to rethink pessimistic versions of post-history by showing the points at which systems can be changed. An exploration of miscommunication also offers a new way to think about the conditions of contemporary political communication and the exploitation of information systems.

We are currently inviting authors to submit chapter proposals related to these broad aims and at least one of the themes below:

• Media Archaeology of Mistakes/Miscommunication 
• Non-dialectic media: Rethink contemporary media beyond the dialectical model of communication 
• Errant research methodologies in media studies 
• Noise and media: (a) Exploring the aesthetics of noise; (b) thinking about noise as productive 
• Errors and glitches: in video games; art; music/sound art 
• Post-truth communication 
• Rethinking the post-digital 
• Miscommunication and mistakes on social media
• Media philosophical description of errant communication 
• Aesthetics of imperfection 
• Gender as miscommunication 
• Digital death as mistake in continuity of communication 
• Textuality, technology and miscommunication 
• Intentional miscommunications: frauds, forgeries, fakes 
• Crisis/disaster/war miscommunications 
• Waste and leakage 
• Misinterpretation 
• Creativity as miscommunication 
• Madness, lunacy, and miscommunication

Abstracts of 300 words (excluding references) are invited for chapters of between 6,000-8,000 words. Along with your abstract, please include a brief biographical note of around 100 words. Abstract should be submitted to m.korlokova@gre.ac.uk and timothy.barker@glasgow.ac.uk by 1st October 2018.

Important dates:

1 October 2018: Submission of abstracts

15 October 2018: Notification of abstract acceptance

1 March 2019: Full chapter submission due

15 March – 1 June 2019: Chapters sent out for review and authors asked to revise texts, if required.

1 August 2019: Final chapters ready for publication

Editors:

Maria Korolkova (University of Greenwich) and Timothy Barker (University of Glasgow)