*CFP* "DIGITAL MEMORY AND POPULISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

For a special section on Digital Memory and Populism in the International Journal of Communication (IJoC), we invite contributions addressing the use of digital memory by populists, their supporters, and their opponents online. Not only did populists evoke and exploit the past to fuel the Trump presidency and Brexit campaign, but it has also become a common populist tool to employ collective memory from local to global politics across the world. With the possibility to bypass traditional media and reach networked audiences, populist actors are increasingly active in digital publics to negotiate the role of the past and their versions of it with their supporters and defend it against their opponents. In this process, personal and collective memories become a contested field in discourses on identity, belonging, and political ideology used to mobilize for or against populist agendas online.

We welcome submissions shedding light on how digital memory is shared, represented, constructed, and instrumentalized online to promote or tackle populist agendas all over the world. We aim at compiling international research that investigates, for example, how memory-related populist communication strategies and their appeal online have become particularly relevant today, how digital memory is integrated in political imaginaries of the future, and how populists' messages thrive on collective memory discourses salient in contemporary digital culture. We also invite research studying the potential of digital memory to challenge populist narratives, and that examines the creative uses of the past to mobilize and organize bottom-up political engagement by the means of digital media, networked communication, and memory.

This special section broadens the theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationships between populism, memory, and the digital by asking:

• How do populists, their supporters, and/or their opponents use digital memory to gain support for their political convictions, positions, and agendas? 
• How do populists, their supporters, and/or their opponents employ digital memory as an affective feature in their communication? 
• How are digital media adopted by populists, their supporters, and/or their opponents to add, resist, share, and play with personal and collective memories in online discourses? 
• Which creative, strategic, or mundane digital mnemonic practices evolve in accordance with or opposition to populist agendas, and in which digital formats do personal and collective memories enter discourses online? 
• How can analytical concepts of populism and models of populist communication be complemented by digital memory studies perspectives and vice versa? 
• Which innovative theoretical approaches and empirical methods can be developed and applied to study the relationships between populism, memory, and the digital?

 

Abstracts of 500 words (excluding tables, figures, and references) should outline the research topic as well as the theoretical and methodological approach. All abstracts will be subject to peer review. Please submit an anonymized abstract and a separate cover page including the names, affiliations, and contact details (email) of the author(s) in an editable format (e.g., .docx) by 7 May 2021 to manuel.menke@hum.ku.dk. Notifications for full paper invites will be sent by the end of May 2021. If invited, the manuscript of max. 8000 words will be due on 31 October 2021. All manuscripts will undergo the usual double-blind peer review process of IJoC. Publication of the open access special section is planned for summer 2022.

The publication will be open access and authors will not have to pay any fees.

Guest editors: dr. Manuel Menke (University of Copenhagen) & dr. Berber Hagedoorn (University of Groningen)