News

ECREA is deeply concerned that members of the Philosophy Faculty at Novi Sad University in Serbia have been subject to a variety of threats and intimidation from a number of sources both inside and outside the University with the intention of discouraging the exercise of academic freedom. ECREA calls upon the administrators of the University to be active in defending and promoting the academic freedom of their colleagues and the Serbian authorities to uphold freedom of expression.

Become a part of ECREA core team by becoming the new International Director of the ECREA Media and Communications Summer School.

European Media and Communication Summer School is officially part of the ECREA activities since 2018, but has a long history of voluntary collaboration between European Universities caring about PhD education in the field (https://ecrea.eu/page-18215). The main objective of the Summer School is to provide a strong and supportive learning environment for PhD students, fostering respectful but critical dialogue between students and senior academics. The Summer School aims to provide innovative mutual support for doctoral studies in the field of media and communication and to connect students to activities of the European Communication Research and Education Association and its Sections, Temporary Working Groups and Networks. The Summer School is crucial for the ECREA as it supports the development of an academic culture that values collaboration, networking and belonging.

The International Director upholds the summer school values, supports the organisers, and develops the summer school in collaboration with the local organisers. According to the new statutes (if the General Assembly approves them), the new Summer School director will also be part of the ECREA Governing Body (former Executive Board). There, the International Director reports on the summer school activities and liaisons between the board and the Summer School organisers.

To apply, the candidate is expected to:

1. Send 1-2 page CV demonstrating your experience of supporting PhD students and preferably experience with the ECREA Summer School.
2. Send a short mission statement (up to 500 words) to explain why you would like to be the next International Director.

The call is open for one month (until May 12). The Executive Board decides on their candidate; if need be, interviews with candidates will be organized after the open call is closed. The mandate of the International Director is five years, and their position is approved by the Executive Board as well as the General Assembly. The hand-over process between the Summer School directors will take place at Roskilde, during the ECREA Summer School on 5-10 August (exact time to be determined by people involved).

Questions can be directed to the current director, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt pille.pruulmann.vengerfeldt@mau.se

Candidacy information needs to be sent to info@ecrea.eu by May 12.

 We are excited to announce that the European Journal of Communication has kindly agreed to sponsor a best paper award for early career scholars presenting their research at the ECC in Ljubljana in September 2024. The award carries a financial value of €1,500 and will be presented during the Ljubljana conference. 

Eligibility: 

• The award is open to early career researchers (doctoral candidates and holders of a PhD, up to three years post-graduation). 
• Papers should align with the journal’s comprehensive approach to communication research and theory, embracing all its diversity.  
• Entrants must have their paper accepted for presentation at the ECC and must be members of ECREA. 
• Eligible papers must be either sole-authored or first-authored by the applicant and must not have been previously published in any scholarly journal. 
• Submissions of the same paper to both the EJC Best Paper Award and the EJCS Best Paper Award are not permitted. 

Submission Details: 

• The deadline for submissions is Friday, May 31, at 4 PM CET. 
• All submissions must be full papers and adhere to the submission guidelines of the European Journal of Communication. 
• Entrants are required to submit a short biography (no more than 10 lines) along with their paper. 

Publication Opportunity: 

The winning paper will be considered for publication in European Journal of Communication, following the standard review process. Please note that publication is not guaranteed in advance. 

Submission Process: 

Please email your papers to info@ecrea.eu.

For further inquiries, feel free to contact us at the same email address. 

The award will be judged by a committee comprising of: 

• Peter Golding (Editor of EJC) 
  
• Christina Holtz Bacha 
  
• Félix Ortega 
  
• Irena Reifová
  

 Deadline to apply for ECREA ECC 2024 grants is approching soon. ECREA together with Local organising committee of the ECC 2024 in Ljubljana calls for following grants applications:

- Regional inclusion grants

- Inclusion of Ukraine-based scholars grants

- YECREA Early-career fee waivers and travel grants

- ECREA Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) grants

Deadline to apply for any of the grants is 15 April 2024.

Detail information about the grants and how to apply is available at: https://ecrea2024ljubljana.eu/grants/

 Before this year's 10th ECREA European Communication Conference hosted in Ljubljana from 24-27 September 2024 eight different pre-conferences will take place:

• (Dis)order in academic culture: Finding meaning in a precarious environment
  
• Building a future for journalism: When researchers, students and practitioners pull together
  
• The informational influence of autocracies abroad
  
• Young people and news: Breaking boundaries across Europe
  
• Exploring the dynamics of digital disconnection – Disruption, inequalities, and norms
  
• Digital content creators, platforms and changing cultural institutions
  
• Mapping AI actor constellations in news media and journalism - Critical perspectives on power (im-)balances, limited autonomy, and reconfigured practices
  
• “We are all victims now” – Emotions and affects of victimhood identities in media and mediatised politics and culture
  

The pre-conferences will be held on 22, 23 or 24 September 2024 as seperate events. Important details (links to their websites, dates, location and submission deadlines) about all eight pre-conferences are also available at https://ecrea2024ljubljana.eu/pre-conferences/.

ECREA will convene the 2024 ordinary General Assembly from 17–21 June. This Assembly will gather in an online space. Links to documents and voting tool will be shared with members when the General Assembly is opened or sooner.

During the Assembly, ECREA members will be asked to approve the Annual Report 2023 as well as the budget for 2024, and also to approve the Ethics code prepared by ECREA Ethics committee.

If you wish to amend the agenda of the General Assembly, please, contact ECREA Administrator at info@ecrea.eu no longer than 17 May 2024 (30 days prior the General Assembly).

WHO CAN VOTE

Following our statutes (see http://www.ecrea.eu/about/statutes), each individual member has one vote, and each coordinator of an institutional member holds five votes. If you are an ECREA member through an institutional membership and you are not the institutional coordinator, you cannot vote but need to communicate with your institutional coordinator. If you do not know who your institutional coordinator is, please ask ECREA’s General Secretary Andra Siibak (generalsecretary@ecrea.eu) and ECREA Administrator (info@ecrea.eu) in cc.

ECREA together with Local organising committee of the ECC 2024 in Ljubljana calls for following grants applications:

• Regional inclusion (LOC)

• Inclusion of Ukraine-based scholars (LOC)

• YECREA Early-career fee waivers and travel grants (ECREA)

• ECREA Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) grants (ECREA)

More about the LOC grants can be found here: https://ecrea2024ljubljana.eu/ecrea-ecc-2024-call-for-grants-applications/

YECREA Early-career fee waivers and travel grants

The ECREA Young Scholars Network (YECREA) and ECREA invite applications for 10 grants and 5 travel for young scholars who are ECREA PhD members and are accepted to present at ECC2024.

• YECREA grants – YECREA will offer 10 grants for early-career scholars (PhD students and scholars 1 year after completion of their PhD) in the form of conference fee waivers. These grants are awarded to PhD students and early-career scholars who lack funding opportunities. At least 5 out of the 10 grants will go to soft-currency ECREA PhD members.
  
• YECREA travel grants – 5 travel and accommodation grants will be offered by ECREA to early-career scholars (PhD students and scholars 1 year after completion of their PhD). These are awarded to PhD students and early-career scholars who lack funding opportunities. The YECREA travel grant will reimburse travel and accommodation costs up to 300 EUR.
  

Deadline for application: 15 April 2024.

The applicants are allowed to combine travel grants with the grants in the form of conference fee vouchers.

The grants are intended for YECREA members (visit yecrea.eu/membership to learn how to become a YECREA member) in order to support access to the academic community of media and communication scholars by attending ECREA’s biannual conference from 24th to 27th  September 2024 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 

Grant awards will be made based on several criteria, of which the most important is the applicants’ access to financial resources (e.g. from their home university, third-party funded projects or national funding institutions). The grants will be awarded only to early-career scholars whose presentation has been accepted to the programme of the conference. The applications will not be reviewed in terms of academic quality. However, applicants should preferably have submitted abstracts as first authors to the ECC conference programme.

Travel grants will be provided as reimbursements. The relevant claim form, digitised invoices and receipts documenting actual costs must be submitted electronically to treasurer@ecrea.eu in addition to the submission of the original documents posted to the ECREA accountants: RSM Belgium, Lozenberg, 22 b3, B1932 Zaventem, Belgium. The applicant will be reimbursed up to the amount of the subsidy that was granted to the particular applicant.

Applicants are expected to complete and submit the following Application Forms here:  

• YECREA grant: https://ecrea.eu/event-5647331
• YECREA travel grant: https://ecrea.eu/event-5650946

If selected for a grant, you will be asked to send proof of acceptance to the conference (forwarding the acceptance e-mail) as well as some evidence of your PhD or post-doctoral research status (e.g. proof of enrolment, a letter from your institution, or a link to your home university profile).

To apply, please complete the form no later than 15 April 2024 at 23:59 CEST. We will notify the applicants by 30 May 2024. All grantees should confirm their attendance by 2 August 2024.

ECREA Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) grants

ECREA Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) grants will be awarded to future attendees who experience barriers and biases to participation and those who come from underrepresented groups. To facilitate participation of individuals identifying with this category we hope to make ECREA more equitable, diverse and inclusive. The EDI grants are in addition to the already existing Young Scholar support initiatives, so if you are an Early Career scholar (PhD Student or up to 1 year after completing your PhD), we suggest you apply to YECREA grants  (see above).

For everyone else:

• Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) grants – 15 grants in the form of conference fee vouchers will be offered by ECREA to scholars who would otherwise have difficulties accessing the conference. 
  
• Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) travel grants – 5 travel and 5 accommodation grants will be offered by ECREA to scholars who would otherwise have difficulties accessing the conference. 

Applicants are allowed to combine travel grants, accommodation grants and the grants in the form of conference fee vouchers.

Applications deadline: 15 April 2024.

Apply here: https://forms.gle/tVFAu7hiYCbzTiZG6

Deadline: March 29, 2024

https://iamcr.org/christchurch2024

The IAMCR conference theme „Weaving People Together: Communicative projects of decolonising, engaging, and listening“, taking place in Christchurch, New Zealand, is based on a Māori proverb (whakataukī) „Whiria te tāngata“, weaving people together in English, which is about the strength that comes through common purpose. IAMCR invites reflections upon (but not limited to) contemporary forms of communication, commonality, challenges to colonial structures and indigenous communication. 

ECREA will host one panel at IAMCR 2024 and invites the submission of panel proposals that are focused on timely and innovative topics and are diverse in terms of methodologies, theoretical standpoints and/or nationalities of the presenters. We especially encourage panel proposals which include a European perspective and a comparative research focus. This call for panel proposals is open to ECREA members of all ECREA sections and to all topics.

Please note the following information:

Panel submissions. Please submit the following details: (a) panel theme or title, (b) description of the panel, (c) names, titles of talks, affiliations and emails of each participant

In terms of diversity, we expect a strong panel proposal to (a) include contributions of at least two different countries, (b) feature gender balance, and, ideally, (c) include not more than one contribution from a single faculty, department or school. Panel proposals need to be original and may not have been submitted to IAMCR before or at the same time. 

Panels must be presented on-site at the venue of the conference.

Accepted panel presentations do not count towards the max. allowed individual paper presentations at the IAMCR conference.

Registering panelists. All panelists must be ECREA members by the time the conference takes place and agree in advance of submission to participate as panel presenters and to register for the IAMCR conference. IAMCR only provides a registration waiver for the panel convener, not for the other panelists.

How to submit?

• Email to: info@ecrea.eu

• Submission deadline is 29 March 2024, 23:59 CET

• In case of questions please contact: Irena Reifová (irena.reifova@fsv.cuni.cz)

ECREA-IAMCR Conference Review Committee:

Andreas Schuck (U Amsterdam, chair)

Christina Holtz-Bacha (U Erlangen-Nürnberg, co-chair)

Irena Reifová (Charles U Prague, co-chair)

We are excited to announce that the registration for the 10th ECREA ECC 2024 is now open!

The 10th ECREA ECC will be held from 23 to 27 September 2024 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, under the title ‘Communication & social (dis)order‘. Please register through the Online Registration Form. At the conference website you can find all the details regarding the conference fees and payments and registration guidelines. The Early-Bird Registration is available until 27 June 2024.

For any registration questions please do not hesitate to contact the ECREA Conference Secretariat at registration@ecrea2024ljubljana.eu.

We are pleased to announce that the 10th ECREA ECC 2024, which will take place from 23 to 27 September 2024 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has received a record number of submissions!

We received a total of 2915 submissions. This included 2580 individual abstracts, 52 panels with 5 abstracts each and 15 round tables with 5 abstracts each.

We extend our gratitude to all contributors!