Call for Papers – Nordisk tidsskrift for ungdomsforskning [Nordic Journal for Youth Research]

Call for Papers for a Special Issue on the Digital Life of Young People in the Nordics

This special issue of Nordisk tidsskrift for ungdomsforskning – Nordic Journal for Youth Research (NTU) invites researchers from different scholarly fields to contribute with empirically founded articles investigating young people’s digital lives in the Nordic countries

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 1 June 2023 

Today, young people are leading digital lives with multiple connections to their physical lives. Digital communities play a significant role for youth in the management of their everyday lives. In globalised online spheres, communities span geographical locations, crossing cultural and linguistic barriers. Young people are also navigating different platforms and leading digital lives in parallel in different communities. The Nordic countries are advanced information societies where the young people’s digital consumption is high. Young users are members of different communities where they share a common goal with others and are able to develop agency and strengthen their identities. What characterises the digital life of the young in terms of their identity work, relationships, sharing of ideas and practices, and cultural exchange? How do digital technologies affect the young people’s everyday lives, as well as shifts from childhood to adult life? What characterises young people’s agency, cultural engagement and lifestyle in online communities? What new possibilities, challenges and research agendas emerge?

This special issue of Nordisk tidsskrift for ungdomsforskning – Nordic Journal for Youth Research (NTU) invites researchers from different scholarly fields to contribute with empirically founded articles investigating young people’s digital lives in the Nordic countries. We invite researchers interested in, above all, media, information, digital literacy, and digitalisation, as well as non- and informal learning in different disciplines and interdisciplinary settings to contribute to this special issue. We are interested in articles that examine youth-initiated activities in the digital sphere and relate to questions and approaches in youth research. We define young people as individuals from their pre-teens to early adolescence (about 11–25 years) but expect each contributor to define their target group.

The special issue is planned to be published in 2024. 

We encourage scholars from different disciplinary fields and different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to contribute. Relevant topics may include but are not restricted to, the following:

  • young people’s engagement and content production in nationwide and specifically Nordic/local communities of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, as well as cross-platform audiovisual content consumption, and/or production.
  • gaming on different platforms, and the activities’ effects on health and everyday life.
  • genres and genre practices: practices of sharing content related to distinct interests, vlogging, curating, collaborative forms of creation.
  • problems and challenges: information mis- and maluses, disinformation, misinformation and information disorders, fake content, cyberbullying.
  • emergence, advocacy, and development of new digital literacies: algorithmic literacy, artificial intelligence (AI) literacy, cross-platform literacy, multiliteracy in online environments.
  • diversity in online youth communities: gender differences, digital life of vulnerable, marginalised and minority groups, multilingualism, multicultural encounters, ethnicity, religion.
  • policies and informal pedagogies: sustainability, digital resilience, youth’s responses to crises, peer support communities.

Submissions

Please submit a 200-word abstract with 3–5 keywords, written in English or Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian or Swedish) by 1 June 2023, to sevtap.gurdal@hv.se.  NTU is an interdisciplinary social science journal. The maximal length of articles is 7,500 words. Submitted manuscripts must comply with the journal’s guidelines for authors and will be subject to a double blind peer review.

Important dates

  • June 1, 2023: Deadline for abstracts
  • June 5, 2023: Authors are notified of acceptance
  • November 15, 2023: Deadline for submitted first draft (full papers)
  • May 1, 2024: Deadline for submitted revised manuscript after peer review
  • June/July 2024: Issue will be published

Editors of the special issue

For any inquiries, please contact the editors of the special issue:

Sevtap Gurdal, PhD, Senior Lecturer, University West, Trollhättan, Sweden, sevtap.gurdal@hv.se

Maarit Jaakkola, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Gothenburg, maarit.jaakkola@gu.se

Linus Andersson, PhD, Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer, Halmstad University, linus.andersson@hh.se