The communicative realities of the contemporary and continued violent military occupation of Palestine remain underexplored in international and intercultural communication scholarship. In a radical step of resistance, this special issue provides a critical forum for communication scholars to name, explore, and identify the socio-material experiences of Palestinians and challenge the discursive power of dominant groups who weaponize symbols, language, and narratives that justify the denial of human rights to marginalized peoples. We invite scholars to theorize international and intercultural communication in a way that amplifies the cries for sovereignty, solidarity, and survival from pro-Palestinian voices globally. The idea is to cultivate a body of scholarship that centers Palestinian experiences, identities, and voices to engage in ways of thinking, writing, and doing that dismantle discriminatory, oppressive, and colonialist processes of political and academic domination in global contexts. This special issue also aims to interrogate the complicity of political and academic structures of power in the dehumanization of the Palestinian people and the denial of their right to self-determination, safety, and dignity.
With a focus on building solidarity with Palestine, we welcome proposals from all parts of the world, especially the Global South, that grapple with two key questions: (1) In what ways can Palestinian-centered approaches to communication inform us about the realities of settler colonialism in the 21st century? and (2) What does it mean for academics, communication practitioners, and community organizers to act in solidarity with the movement towards a free Palestine?
Proposals from diverse critical approaches may examine a variety of topics such as (but not limited to):
- Settler colonialism, systemic occupation, and dispossession in the context of Palestine
- Influence of businesses, lobby groups and communication industry practitioners in crafting narratives of neocolonial dominance in Palestine
- Palestinian activism, resistance, and resilience in the face of systemic occupation, displacement, destruction, and genocide
- Palestinian epistemologies, ontologies, axiologies, sense-making, sense-giving, and sense-breaking
- Advocacy for and allyship with the Palestinian cause
- Humanitarian operations in occupied Palestinian territories
- Digital media activism (e.g., Block-out movement and other pro-Palestine social media advocacy movements)
- Resistance movements such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement
- Palestinian diaspora and solidarity
- Framing and rhetorical examinations of occupation and resistance in Palestine
