October 30th, 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. We solicit scholarly essays that take this broadcast event as a starting point, or point of reference, in investigating the continuities and discontinuities between old and new media and their use by citizens in times of crisis. We seek essays that address a number of questions within three broad areas:

1) War of the Worlds and media power in times of crisis
-- How has the War of the Worlds broadcast served as a touchstone for conceptualizing media power and audience agency in the 20th and 21st centuries?

2) War of the Worlds, broadcasting conventions, and crisis
-- How was War of the Worlds shaped by – and how did it shape – the emerging broadcast conventions and genres of the 1930s? To what extent is “crisis” an enduring or structural aspect of broadcast address?

3) War of the Worlds and the promise of social media
-- How are social media transforming the parameters and practices of citizenship, communication and crisis in the 21st century? To what extent do “new media” make use of “old media” conventions in the case of crisis communication?

Editors: Joy Elizabeth Hayes, The University of Iowa; Kathleen Battles, Oakland University; Wendy Hilton-Morrow, Augustana College

Publisher: Peter Lang

Nov. 25, 2011: Paper abstracts are due to the editors (500 words)
Dec. 16, 2011: Paper selections announced
March 16, 2012: Extended abstracts or outlines due to the editors.
July 16, 2012: Paper draft due
August 17, 2012: Final papers due to editors