*CFP* "TRUTH OR DEAR: TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE AND POWER IN THE DIGITAL ERA", SPECIAL EDITION DIGITAL CULTURE AND EDUCATION

The ‘truth’ has been much contested lately. While much has been made of ‘fake news’ and its impacts and implications, little has to date been made of the theoretical, ontological, and epistemological implications that arise. Digital platforms are creating communities that are using online affordances to challenge claims to truth, knowledge, and power by various establishments. This has manifested itself not only in the rise and re-emergence of rather extreme fringe communities such as the alt-right (Daniels, 2018) and ‘Flat Earthers’ (Dyer, 2018), but also in also in the use of social media by traditionally maligned communities such as LGBTQ youth (Gray, 2009, Jackson et al., 2017), asexual communities (Carrigan, 2011), or PoC communities (Florini, 2014). 

This complicated landscape prompts a number of broad question about the ontological and epistemological potential of the internet in a ‘post-truth’ era, such as who gets to have truth? Whose truths are reflected online and offline? What truths are preferred? To which truths should education align itself and why?

It is increasingly clear that there is a need for research that addresses and unpacks the potential of the internet to provide a space in which to challenge established norms in an engaged way. As Emejulu & McGregor (2016, 12) points out in their call for radical digital literacies in education that there is a need for educational practices and research which explore “the process by which individuals and groups work together to build and maintain alternative communication infrastructure to enable marginalised groups to convey their own messages, bypassing the filters of commercial and state gatekeepers”.

With this in mind, this special edition wishes to explore fractures in the relationships between truth, power, and knowledge as they play out in relation to digital cultures and education.  Papers may approach the topic from theoretical, conceptual, and/or empirical positions. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) how digital spaces are challenging the ‘truths’ that underpin education:

• Truths around the body and development 
• Truths around youth 
• Truths around knowledges 
• Truths around sexualities 
• Truths around gender 
• Truths around time 
• Truths around culture 
• Truths around discrimination 
• Truths around disability 
• Truths around agency 
• Truths around the individual 
• Truths around the value of education

This list is merely suggestive of the range of topics of interest to the editors and is not in any way restrictive of possible interpretations of the theme.  We encourage contributors to be imaginative in formulating ideas and paper proposals.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words – or inquiries – should be submitted via email to one of the editors by 05 November 2018. Editor contacts:

Harry.T.Dyer@uea.ac.uk

E.Priya@uea.ac.uk

alexander.schmoelz@univie.ac.at

V.Carrington@uea.ac.uk

Full Papers will be due by 30 June 2019. The word limit for articles is 6,000 words (maximum) including Reference List. Papers that are not included in this special edition may nonetheless be considered for publication in future editions of Digital Culture and Education. Please visit the Style Guide for Authors.

References

Carrigan, M., (2011). There’s more to life than sex? Difference and commonality within the asexual community. Sexualities, 14(4), pp.462-478.

Daniels, J., (2018). The Algorithmic Rise of the “Alt-Right”. Contexts, 17(1), pp.60-65.

Doherty, C., Kiley, J. and Johnson, B., (2016). In presidential contest, voters say “basic facts,” not just policies, are in dispute. Pew Research Center, October, 2016

Dyer, H., (2018) I watched an entire Flat Earth Convention for my research – here’s what I learnt. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/i-watched-an-entire-flat-earth-convention-for-my-research-heres-what-i-learnt-95887

Emejulu, A. and McGregor, C., 2016. Towards a radical digital citizenship in digital education. Critical Studies in Education, pp.1-17.

Florini, S., (2014). Tweets, Tweeps, and Signifyin’ Communication and Cultural Performance on “Black Twitter”. Television & New Media, 15(3), pp.223-237.

Gray, M.L., (2009). Negotiating identities/queering desires: Coming out online and the remediation of the coming‐out story. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 14(4), pp.1162-1189.

Jackson, S.J., Bailey, M. and Foucault Welles, B., 2017. # GirlsLikeUs: Trans advocacy and community building online. New Media & Society