Call for Papers
The Velvet Light Trap #91
Digital Storytelling
Digital environments have quickly become major catalysts in our shifting
conversations about the ways narratives and stories are told across the
media ecology. While scholarship on legacy media storytelling has
traditionally been shaped by frameworks of text, audience, and industry,
discourses of digital media storytelling show signs of growth and expansion
as production and distribution of digital stories continue to rise in the
2020s. Notably, technology companies such as Facebook and Apple as well as
those satellite corporate stakeholders which have investments in the
digital technologies and storytelling strategies employed within the new
media ecology have become significantly powerful players within this
digital revolution. As technology companies blend and converge with the
media industries, distinctions between story and medium have become harder
to identify. Additionally, the evolving nature of storytelling throughout
the new media ecology has and continues to influence the ways audiences
engage with digital content.
Although topics related to digital storytelling have pushed many scholars
to discuss streaming media technologies and culture, The Velvet Light Trap
attempts to map out a broader and more comprehensive snapshot of digital
storytelling. This issue welcomes submissions that connect concerns within
the technology industries to the texts produced and distributed within the
parameters of digital storytelling in the 21st century. The integration of
technology and text can open up new discussions of contemporary
storytelling while also recontextualizing older bifurcated studies with a
more comprehensive lens. Traditional forms of media storytelling have been
largely controlled by institutionalized major media companies who own the
means to produce and distribute media. In television’s case, linear
transmission, scheduling, and the advertising model have led to formulaic
storytelling models that have shaped the ways various genres and forms of
television storytelling are produced with audiences in mind. However, the
digital era has seen these types of institutional barriers broken down,
expanding the ways in which stories can be told and diversifying who tells
them. While certain limitations within the developments of technology and
digital media have received scholarly criticism, this issue wishes to
explore the expanding field of digital storytelling as an articulation of
the democratizing effect of the digital revolution as well as a site for
critical engagement in issues focused on algorithms, surveillance, platform
capitalism, and other digitally-forward concerns.
The Velvet Light Trap #91 seeks a variety of topics and approaches which
include but are not limited to media industries, production culture,
participatory culture, textual analysis, paratextual analysis, authorship
studies, transmedia storytelling, media convergences, and contextual
culture in analyzing storytelling within its respective digital
environment. We welcome submissions that explore the shifting or newly
emerging trends in storytelling in the broader media ecology, especially
those that push the boundaries of formulaic legacy media storytelling and
contextualize the changing modes of narratives within the new media
environment, as well as any submissions that explore any of the following
themes:
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Histories of digital storytelling, particularly on precedents of today’s
digital media ecology and practices
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Algorithm-based storytelling
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Binge-watching and its effects on episodic structures, seasonal
structures, and seriality
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Storytelling in social media spaces such as Facebook and Instagram or in
digital content spaces such as YouTube and TikTok
-
Shifts and evolutions in transmedia storytelling
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Convergent gaming spaces, such as Fortnite
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Cyberspace, virtual reality, metaverse, and other emergent forms of
digital storytelling
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Regulation in relation to digital storytelling, including digital
copyright, creative commons, and intellectual property law
-
Advancement in production technology, particularly in mobile media
production, including GoPro, camera drones, and iPhones
-
Analysis of short form and newer/alternative genres within the digital
media environment
-
Textual or genre analysis of particular programming or content within
the digital media environment
-
Industry strategies in relation to audience enticement and retention,
including subscriptions to streaming content platforms, such as HBO Max,
and specialty content services, such as OnlyFans
-
Digital and social media marketing, including branded content in social
media spaces
-
Influences of participatory culture in online spaces on new modes of
storytelling as well as its reverse effect on legacy media
-
Influences of media convergence in legacy media and social media spaces
on cultural storytelling
-
Shifts in financing in relation to production shifts, particularly from
legacy media to streaming and technology-based platforms
-
Audience and fan studies in relation to the convergence of theater,
television, gaming, and other cultural and media forms
-
Changes and/or continuities in relation to computer graphics, animation,
virtual effects, and other digital effects and the advancement of realistic
or aesthetic expression
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words, formatted in Chicago
Style. Please submit an electronic copy of the paper, along with a separate
one-page abstract, both saved as Microsoft Word files. Remove any
identifying information so that the submission is suitable for anonymous
review. Quotations not in English should be accompanied by translations.
Send electronic manuscripts and/or any questions to [log in to unmask] by
January 31, 2022.
About the Journal
TVLT is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal of film, television, and new
media. The journal draws on a variety of theoretical and historiographical
approaches from the humanities and social sciences and welcomes any effort
that will help foster the ongoing processes of evaluation and negotiation
in media history and criticism. While TVLT maintains its traditional
commitment to the study of American film, it also expands its scope to
television and other media, to adjacent institutions, and to other nations'
media. The journal encourages both approaches and objects of study that
have been neglected or excluded in past scholarship.
Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University
of Texas at Austin coordinate issues in alternation, and each issue is
devoted to a particular theme. TVLT's Editorial Advisory Board includes
such notable scholars as Lauren S. Berliner, Dolores Inés Casillas, Aymar
Jean Christian, Lisa Dombrowski, Raquel Gates, Daniel Herbert, Aniko Imre,
Deborah Jaramillo, Lori Morimoto, Meenasarani (Linde) Murugan, Safiya
Noble, Debra Ramsey, Bob Rehak, Bonnie “Bo” Ruberg, Avi Santo, Samantha
Noelle Sheppard, Dan Streible, Neil Verma, and Alyx Vesey. TVLT's graduate
student editors are assisted by their local faculty advisors: Mary Beltrán,
Ben Brewster, Jonathan Gray, Lea Jacobs, Derek Johnson, Shanti Kumar,
Charles Ramírez Berg, Thomas Schatz (emeritus), and Janet Staiger
(emeritus).
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Screen-L is sponsored by the College of Communication and Information Sciences,
the University of Alabama: https://cis.ua.edu
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