Date and time
Sunday 10 July 2022: 08:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC (09:00 to 17:00 London time)

Description
This one-day virtual symposium focuses upon the specific non-Western context of digital political communication and women. While much research has been undertaken and published upon the use and impact of social media, largely by male politicians and policymakers in the West, there has been a paucity of similar investigations elsewhere in the world. Research has shown that political communication is shaped not only by cultural context (Shehata & Stromback, 2011) but also by gender (Osei-Appiah, 2021; Yarchi & Samuel-Azran, 2018). This symposium is predicated upon the contention that the study of digital political communications requires a recalibration of focus that produces both a more comprehensive international understanding and one that is sensitive to gendered relations of power and inequality.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

What kind of theoretical or methodological contributions might best be deployed to advance intersectional scholarship on women and political communication?
How do contextual factors like ethnicity, religion, socio-economic, post-colonialism influence cultural norms that might shape women politicians’ communication with voters?
What is the impact of contextual factors on voter evaluations of women politicians?
How do women politicians utilize digital and other communication technologies in their campaigning, political marketing, or self-branding?
What is the impact of political structures and cultures on women politicians’ campaign strategies?
Are there alternative channels of communication deployed by women politicians compared to men politicians?

A selection of papers presented at the symposium will be published in a special issue of the international journal Information, Communication & Society.

We invite 400-word abstracts outlining empirical, theoretical, or policy-orientated papers that address these or related questions. Abstracts should be accompanied by a 100-word biography of the presenter(s) together with contact details.

Further information
For full details download the CfP for this pre-conference (PDF)

Key dates
Abstract submission deadline: 15 March 2022
Notification on submitted abstracts: 31 March 2022
Date and time of Preconference: 10 July 2022: 08:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC (09:00 to 17:00 London time)
Full article submission deadline (for papers selected for the special issue of Information, Communication & Society): 1 February 2023

Location
Online. Details to follow

Convenors and organisers
Sally Osei-Appiah (University of Leeds)
Kristin Skare Orgeret (Oslo Met University)
Bruce Mutsvairo (Utrecht Universit)

Contact email: s.osei-appiah@leeds.ac.uk

For full details download the CfP for this pre-conference