Call for Book Proposals for the Critical Digital and Social Media Studies Series Now Open

Critical Digital and Social Media Studies is an established open access book series edited by Professor Christian Fuchs.

With funding from the Jisc Open Access Community Framework (OACF), which allows us to publish without author facing fees or book processing charges, we are now inviting submissions for book proposals that fall within the scope of the series and fit the criteria set out below.

Books in the series are published open access online in ePUB, Mobi and PDF formats and simultaneously as affordable paperbacks. They are published using a Creative Commons licence and copyright in the work is retained by the author. Books are hosted on open access book platforms including the UWP website, JSTOR and OAPEN.

The series has published 24 books since its launch in 2016, and titles in the series have won and been shortlisted for major academic book prizes, published in foreign language editions, been widely reviewed in leading journals, and are amongst the most downloaded titles published by the Press.

CALL DETAILS

Submissions must be for projects between 35,000-90,000 words in length, with a preference for projects that can submit a full draft typescript within the next 6-12 months.  We favour single or co-authored monograph proposals but will also consider suggestions for edited collections.

Submissions should include a proposal form, which can be downloaded here, author/editor CVs and one sample chapter.

The submission deadline for proposals is 15 March 2023, 23:59 GMT.

Submissions will be shortlisted by the series editor and successful proposals will then be sent for external peer review. Shortlisted proposals will be peer reviewed in accordance with the Association of University Presses guidelines on peer review, and will be assessed by the series editor, external referees and the UWP Editorial Board.  Final decisions will be made by 31 May 2023.

Submissions should be made via email to Philippa Grand, Press Manager at University of Westminster Press, at p.grand@westminster.ac.uk. Please use this email address for any queries about the submission process or the Call in general.

PROPOSAL DETAILS

The proposal should include the following sections and information:
1) Book title and author/editor detais
2) Project overview (a synopsis of up to 500 words; three main features of the book that make it distinct; five keywords)
3) Table of Contents
4) Chapter abstracts
5) Author/editor biographies
6) Target audience
5) The five most important publications thus far by each author (in the case of collected volumes only refer to the editor(s))
6) Audience (For whom do you write this book? Who will read it?)
7) Competing publications
8) Typescript information
9) Timetable for the project
10) Sample chapter details

SERIES AIMS AND SCOPE

The Critical Digital and Social Media Studies series publishes books that critically study the role of the internet, digital and social media in society and make critical interventions. Books in the series analyse how power structures, digital capitalism, ideology, domination and social struggles shape and are shaped by digital and social media. They use and develop critical theories, are profoundly theoretical and discuss the political relevance and implications of the topics under scrutiny.

The series is a critical theory forum for internet and social media research that makes critical interventions into contemporary political topics in the context of digital and social media.  It is interested in publishing work that, based on critical theory foundations, develops and applies critical social media research methods that challenge digital positivism, as well as digital media ethics that are grounded in critical social theories and critical philosophy. The series’ understanding of critical theory and critique is grounded in approaches such as critical political economy and Frankfurt School critical theory.

TOPICS

Topics that we are interested in receiving proposals on include but are not limited to:

• Digital capitalism
• Digital labour
• The political economy of digital and social media
• Digital and informational capitalism
• Ideology critique in the age of social media
• The political economy of fake news and post-truth on the internet
• Digital fascism
• Digital authoritarianism
• Digital warfare
• Digital socialism
• Marxist theory in the digital age
• The public service internet
• The digital public sphere and digital democracy
• New developments of critical theory in the age of digital and social media
• Critical studies of advertising and consumer culture online
• Critical social media research methods
• Critical digital and social media ethics
• Working class struggles in the age of social media
• The relationship of class, gender and race in the context of digital and social media
• Critical analysis of the implications of Big Data
• Cloud computing
• Digital positivism
• The Internet of Things
• Predictive online analytics
• The Sharing Economy
• Location based data and mobile media
• The role of classical critical theories for studying digital and social media
• Platform co-operatives
• The Digital Commons
• Critical studies of the internet economy
• Online prosumption
• Subjectivity, consciousness, affects, worldviews and moral values in the age of digital and social media
• Digital art and culture in the context of critical theory
• Environmental and ecological aspects of digital capitalism and digital consumer culture
• Algorithmic discrimination
• Critical studies of digital surveillance
• State power in the digital age
• Activism in the digital age
• Digital (in)justice

PUBLISHED TITLES

Christian Fuchs, Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet

Mariano Zukerfeld, Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism: An Introduction to Cognitive Materialism WINNER OF THE AMILCAR HERRARA PRIZE 2018

Trevor Garrison Smith, Politicizing Digital Space: Theory, the Internet, and Renewing Democracy

Scott Timcke, Capital, State, Empire: The New American Way of Digital Warfare

Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano (eds) The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism

Annika Richterich, The Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies

Kane X. Faucher, Social Capital Online: Alienation and Accumulation

Joan Pedro-Carañana, Daniel Broudy and Jeffery Klaehn (eds), The Propaganda Model Today: Filtering Perception and Awareness

Jeremiah Morelock (ed), Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism

Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis and Alex Pazaitis, Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto

Micky Lee, Bubbles and Machines: Gender, Information and Financial Crises

Vincent Rouzé (ed), Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization

Robert Hassan, The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern ­Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life

Benjamin J. Birkinbine, Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software

Paolo Bory, The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

Christian Fuchs, Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory

Mike Healy, Marx and Digital Machines: Alienation, Technology, Capitalism

Vangelis Papadimitropoulos, The Commons: Economic Alternatives in the Digital Age

Antonios Broumas, Intellectual Commons and the Law: A Normative Theory for Commons-Based Peer Production

Jamie Woodcock, The Fight Against Platform Capitalism: An Inquiry into the Global Struggles of the Gig Economy

Pieter Verdegem (ed), AI for Everyone? Critical Perspectives SHORTLISTED IN THE MeCCSA OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS 2022

Jeremiah Morelock and Felipe Ziotti Narita, The Society of the Selfie: Social Media and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake, Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button

Emiliana Armano, Marco Briziarelli and Elisabetta Risi (eds), Digital Platforms and Algorithmic Subjectivities

EDITORIAL BOARD
Dr Thomas Allmer, Paderborn University, Germany
Prof Dr Mark Andrejevic, Pomona College, USA
Dr Miriyam Aouragh, University of Westminster, UK
Dr Charles Brown, University of Westminster, UK
Prof Melanie Dulong De Rosnay, CNRS, France
Dr Eran Fisher, The Open University of Israel
Prof Christian Fuchs, Paderborn University, Germany (Series Editor)
Dr Peter Goodwin, University of Westminster, UK
Prof Jonathan Hardy, University of the Arts London, UK
Prof Kylie Jarrett, Maynooth University, Ireland
Dr Anastasia Kavada, University of Westminster, UK
Dr Arwid Lund, Södertörn University, Sweden
Prof Maria Michalis, University of Westminster, UK
Prof Stefania Milan, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Prof Vincent Mosco, Queens University, Canada
Prof Safiya Noble, UCLA, USA
Prof Jack L Qiu, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Dr Jernej Amon Prodnik, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Prof Sarah Roberts, UCLA, USA
Dr Marisol Sandoval, City University of London, UK
Dr Sebastian Sevignani, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Germany
Dr Pieter Verdegem, University of Westminster, UK
Dr Bingqing Xia, East China Normal University, China
Dr Mariano Zukerfeld, CONICET, Argentina

Image: University of Westminster Press