Tama Leaver dot Net

Call For Papers:

Gaming Disability: Disability perspectives on contemporary video games

Edited by Dr Katie Ellis, Dr Mike Kent & Dr Tama Leaver
Internet Studies, Curtin University

Abstracts Due 15 February 2017

Video games are a significant and still rapidly expanding area of popular culture. Media Access Australia estimated that in 2012 some twenty percent of gamers were people with a disability, yet, the relationship between video gaming, online gaming and disability is an area that until now has been largely under explored. This collection seeks to fill that gap. We are looking for scholars from both disability studies and games studies, along with game developers and innovators and disability activists and other people with interest in this area to contribute to this edited collection.

We aim to highlight the history of people with disabilities participating in video games and explore the contemporary gaming environment as it relates to disability. This exploration takes place in the context of the changing nature of gaming, particularly the shift from what we might consider traditional desktop computer mediation onto mobile devices and augmented reality platforms. The collection will also explore future possibilities and pitfalls for people with disabilities and gaming.

Areas of interest that chapters might address include

• Disability narratives and representation in gaming
• Accessibility of gaming for people with disabilities
• Mods, hacks and alterations to games and devices for and by people with disabilities
• Augmented reality games and disability
• Disability gaming histories
• Mobile gaming platforms and disability
• Specific design elements (such as sound) in terms of designing accessible games
• Gaming, television and disability
• Future directions for disability and gaming

Submission procedure:

Potential authors are invited to submit chapter abstracts of no more than 500 words, including a title, 4 to 6 keywords, and a brief bio, by email to Dr Mike Kent <m.kent@curtin.edu.au> by 15 February 2017. (Please indicate in your proposal if you wish to use any visual material, and how you have or will gain copyright clearance for visual material.) Authors will receive a response by 15 March 2016, with those provisionally accepted due as chapters of approximately 6000 words (including references) by 15 June 2016. If you would like any further information, please contact Mike Kent.

About the editors:

The editors are all from the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University and have a history of successfully publishing edited collections in the areas of and gaming, disability, and new media.

Dr Katie Ellis is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. Her research focuses on disability and the media extending across both representation and active possibilities for social inclusion. Her books include Disability and New Media (2011 with Mike Kent), Disabling Diversity (2008), Disability, Ageing and Obesity: Popular Media Identifications (2014; with Debbie Rodan & Pia Lebeck), Disability and the Media (2015; with Gerard Goggin), Disability and Popular Culture (2015) and her recent edited collection with Mike Kent Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives (2017).

Dr Mike Kent is a senior lecturer and Head of Department in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. Mike’s research focus is on people with disabilities and their use of, and access to, information communication technology and the Internet. His other area of research interest is in higher education and particularly online education, as well as online social networking platforms. His book, with Katie Ellis, Disability and New Media was published in 2011 and his edited collection, with Tama Leaver, An Education in Facebook? Higher Education and the World’s Largest Social Network, was released in 2014. His latest edited collection, with Katie Ellis, Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives is available 2017, along with his forthcoming edited collections Massive Open Online Courses and Higher Education: What went right, what went wrong and where to now, with Rebecca Bennett and Chinese Social Media Today: Critical Perspectives with Katie Ellis and Jian Xu.

Dr Tama Leaver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. He researches online identities, digital media distribution and networked learning. He previously spent several years as a lecturer in Higher Education Development, and is currently also a Research Fellow in Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology. His book Artificial Culture: Identity, Technology and Bodies was released through Routledge in 2012 and his edited collections An Education in Facebook? Higher Education and the World’s Largest Social Network, with Mike Kent, was released in 2014 through Routledge, and Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The Changing Gaming Landscape, with Michele Wilson, was released through Bloomsbury Academic in 2016.

For Kath: How to replace every mention of “Internet of Things” with “Skynet” and vice versa in your Chrome browser.

1. In Chrome, install the Word Replacer 2 plugin.
2. Click the plugin settings, select settings.
3. Click ‘new’ on the left and enter your item name (I’ve called mine “Internet of Things” in the left box, “Skynet” in the box next to it on the right.)
4. At the top of the right pane, select ‘Swap’ (or just ‘Simple’ if you just want “internet of things” replaced, but IOT mentions of Skynet turing into Internet of Things).
5. Type “internet of things => skynet” into the right pane’s text box, and hit return/enter.
6. Click Export (ensuring the tickbox is still selected on the left next to your new item).
7. The instruction will be made into code, and shown to you. Something like this …
8. Click ‘Apply to selected’ after the code has appeared.
9. Click the ‘x’ to close the settings window.
10. Click on the Word Replace II icon and ensure it’s enabled (the term enabled will be green).
11. Search for “Internet of Things” and see if it works. (If it doesn’t, I’d blame Skynet.) Also, checking the “Internet of Things” Wikipedia page becomes amusing.
12. PS If it is working, this post clearly won’t make sense anymore!

Here’s the Call for Papers (well, call for Abstracts, initially) for a special issue of Social Media + Society I’m editing with Bjorn Nansen:

Dear colleagues,

Special Issue of Social Media + Society
http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal202332

Infancy Online

Eds Tama Leaver (Curtin University) and Bjorn Nansen (University of Melbourne)
 
From the sharing of ultrasound photos on social media onward, the capturing and communicating of babies’ lives online is an increasingly ordinary and common part of everyday digitally mediated life. Online affordances can facilitate the instantaneous sharing and joys of a first smile, first steps and first word spoken to globally distributed networks of family, friends and publics. Equally, from pregnancy tracking apps to baby cameras hidden inside cuddly toys, infants are also subject to an unprecedented intensification of surveillance practices. Reflecting both of these contexts, there is a growing set of questions about the presence, participation and politics of infants in online networks. This special issue seeks to explore these questions in terms of the online spaces in which infants are present; the forms of online participation enabled for and curated on behalf of infants, and the range of political implications raised by infants’ digital data and its traces, for both their present and future lives. Ideally papers will focus on the impact of digital technologies and networked culture on pre-birth, birth and the early years of life, along with related changes and challenges to parenthood and similar domains.

Possible areas of focus include, but are by no means limited to:
•    Social media and infant presence and profiles
•    Cultural and national specificities of infant media use and presence
•    Digital media in the everyday lives of young children
•    The app economy, and capture of infant attention
•    “Mommy blogs,” and online curation
•    Identity and impression management
•    Ethics, persistence and the right to be forgotten
•    Geographies of infant media use
•    Infant interfaces and hardware
•    Cultural responses to parenting, “oversharing”, privacy and surveillance
•    Erasure of maternal bodies in digitising infancy
•    Apps and services targeting infants as a consumer market

Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted to both Tama Leaver t.leaver@curtin.edu.au  and Bjorn Nansen nansenb@unimelb.edu.au  by Friday, 1 April. Where appropriate, please nominate an author for correspondence.

On the basis of these short abstracts, invitations to submit full papers (of no more than 8000 words) will then be sent out by 15 April 2016. Full papers will be due by 1 July 2016, and will undergo the usual Social Media + Society review procedure. Please note that an invitation to submit a full paper for review does not guarantee paper acceptance.