Media Rise invites educators, students, scholars, artists, and community leaders of all age groups to share their meaningful media stories during the COVID-19 pandemic to be featured in our blog series called "Quarantined Across Borders." We are especially looking for stories from immigrant/diasporic/borderland communities during the lockdown, quarantine, or shelter-in-place issued in your area due to the COVID-19/coronavirus global pandemic.
What to submit
You can submit stories, personal reflections, and digital essays. The length of the stories is about 800-1000 words. We encourage you to include original images and artwork (or those are that licensed under creative commons). At the moment we are only able to accept entries in English language.
We are especially looking for blog entries that align with Media Rise's three calls to action:
FEEL - Empower people to create and consume meaningful media that promotes universal human values such as compassion, empathy and respect.
INSPIRE - Celebrate stories of how the power of media accelerates social change.
CONNECT - Encourage collaboration between various community groups to amplify collective impact.
Topic ideas:
What are your feelings and emotions during the pandemic?
What are your main ways of coping, caring, and healing?
What brings you hope, strength, and inspiration?
What ways did you see connections across your community to bring about social change?
Writing style:
First-person narratives and personal reflections
Observations about conversations and dialogues happening in your communities (virtual or real life)
Essays and opinions pieces that draw on your professional or scholarly expertise
Who can submit?
Anyone can submit an entry. We are especially looking for entries from around the world:
From educators, scholars, students, activists, artists, and community leaders of all age groups
From those who belong to immigrant/diasporic/borderland communities (or work closely with them)
That amplify voices of historically marginalized groups (people of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, indigenous voices)
Where to submit?
You can email your entries to Dr. Srivi Ramasubramanian at srivi@tamu.edu
Please send a Word document that includes the following information:
Title of essay
Your full name
Country where you were born
Location where you are quarantined
A one sentence summary
Five keywords (please use unique ones to help tag your story - avoid common ones such as immigrant, diaspora, COVID-19, or pandemic)
The main body of the essay (800-1000 words). You may use subheadings. If you include artwork or images, make sure they are original creations or those that are licensed under creative commons.
Citations/references (if applicable)
A brief bio (max. 50 words)
Contact information (email is required; website and/or social media are optional)
When to submit?
Submissions are now open and are accepted till May 10, 2020 May 15, 2020.
Where will your work by published?
The selected blog entries will be published on the Media Rise blog site in May 2020 and shared on its social media pages.
Selected entries will also have the opportunity to be compiled into one or more thematic e-books. The collection will be published through the Texas A&M University Libraries using the TAMU institutional repository (http://oaktrust.tamu.edu/).The book will have a digital object identifier, be indexed by Google and therefore discoverable through Google searches, and metrics of usage and engagement will be collected. While I will edit the book, the publication will not be peer-reviewed. Authors will retain the copyright for their essays. It will be part of creative commons license. Anyone using portions of your essay will cite you as the original author and also attribute the e-book text in which it appears.
We are excited to share that the International Journal of Communication will be inviting selected essays to be published in their Forum special section. Please see here for additional details.
About Us
Media Rise is a global nonprofit alliance established in 2013 that connects people and ideas to promote meaningful media. We believe in the power of positive storytelling, media, art and design to make the world a better place. For more information, contact Dr. Srivi Ramasubramanian