ECC2026 has announced its keynote speakers, bringing together leading scholars whose workaddresses some of the most pressing transformations shaping communication and media research today.

The opening plenary, Shifting Grounds: Paths, Connections, and Futures, reflects on the conference theme through a cumulative roundtable discussion featuring Sandra Banjac, Emilija Garčin, Michael Bossetta, and Monika Metyková. Additional keynote lectures will be delivered by Lenka Waschková Císařová and Frank Esser. Lenka Waschková Císařová’s lecture, Exemplary Journalistic Actors: What Can the Core Learn from the Exemplary?, examines power relations within journalism and the lessons that research and practice can draw from actors at the periphery. Frank Esser’s keynote, The Price of Democracy: How Digital Platforms Make Illiberalism Cheap, presents a conceptual framework for understanding communicative democratic erosion and the role of political communication in contemporary democratic challenges.

More information about the keynote speakers and programme is available here: https://ecrea2026brno.eu/keynote-speakers/