Call: Presence and Communication – Special issue of Review of Communication

Published: Thu, 03/17/22

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Presence Research
 
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Call: Presence and Communication – Special issue of Review of Communication

March 17, 2022


Call for Papers

Presence and Communication
Special issue of Review of Communication
https://bit.ly/Presence_Communication

Special Issue Editor:
Stephanie Kelly, North Carolina A&T State University, sekelly@ncat.edu

Manuscript submission deadline: 01 October 2022

Presence variables play a role in any communication context. In an early discussion of presence technologies such as virtual reality, 3-D films, television, and telephones, Lombard and Ditton (1997) explained that what these types of technologies have in common is that they are, “designed to give the user a type of mediated experience that has never been possible before: one that seems truly ‘natural,’ ‘immediate,’ ‘direct,’ and ‘real,’ a mediated experience that seems very much like it is not mediated; a mediated experience that creates for the user a strong sense of presence” (pp. 1).

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to stark attention for many the critical nature of that sense of presence, of non-mediation, as the world worked to stay connected in fully mediated environments. The pandemic made presence a central variable of focus in many instructional, interpersonal, workplace, crisis, and health studies. Presence variables are psychological constructs of perceived closeness or non-mediation, including electronic propinquity, social presence, co-presence, spatial presence, perceived immediacy, construal, and many more.

Although presence variables have primarily been studied in technology-mediated contexts, they have more recently been studied in face-to-face contexts as well. Presence permeates the communication discipline, often being found to mediate human interactions. Thus, this themed issue asks us as a discipline to explore the role of presence in communication. The call is particularly interested in, though not limited to, the following topics:

  • Presence in siloes- Where have scholars studied the same variable with a different label?
  • Historic analyses of presence in research
  • The positive and negative effects of presence – When is there too much? When is there too little?
  • The future of presence technologies
  • Validity and reliability of presence measures
  • Reviews of literature of interdisciplinary presence research
  • The role of presence in virtual and augmented reality
  • Presence in human-machine communication
  • New avenues for presence research

More details:
https://bit.ly/Presence_Communication


 
 

Managing Editor: Matthew Lombard

The International Society for Presence Research (ISPR) is a not-for-profit organization that supports academic research related to the concept of (tele)presence. ISPR Preseence News is available via RSS feed, various e-mail formats and/or Twitter. For more information please visit us at http://ispr.info.