ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Frontiers in Health Psychology, special Issue

Deadline: May 14, 2021

The special issue in Frontiers in Health Psychology will focus on studies examining the effectiveness of the use of social influencers to promote health behavior among minors and young adults. Mounting evidence has shown that people, in particular minors and young adults, are susceptible to the promotional activities of influencers on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Until now, limited knowledge exists on how health interventions through social influencers can be implemented to effectively and efficiently promote important health behavior among minors and young adults (8-35 years). Social influencers could also play an important role in social marketing strategies, such as promoting healthier diets, increased physical activity, less substance use, less smoking, safer sex, more and better quality of sleep, more conscious consumption of screen time, health care seeking, increased adherence to medical treatment, and other health-related behavior.

Examples of important research questions that this Research Topic hopes to address include (but are not limited to):

• Which promotion techniques for health behavior do social influencers use and how do these affect people?
• Are some groups, in particular youth, more susceptible to social influencers than other groups?
• How has the use of digital and social media affected how health behavior is promoted to youth and young adults?
• What is the impact of existing governmental programs to stimulate health behavior via social influencers, for example during the COVID-19 crisis, and what is the potential impact of these programs?

The deadline for abstracts is May 14, 2021. The deadline for full papers is September 11, 2021. For the full call and submission website, please visit:

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/20416/social-influencing-for-the-better-how-social-influencers-effectively-promote-healthier-behavior#overview

Silver Screens

Deadline: April 30, 2021

Screen Cultures {film, tv drama} are instrumental not only in reflecting but in constructing and reinforcing popular images and narratives of ageing. In recent years such narratives have gained special pertinence with the demographic shift to older populations across European and western nations.

Following a successful recent conference we are proceeding with an edited collection on the theme of “Silver Screens: Ageing Masculinities in Contemporary [European and Anglophone] Screen Cultures”

We have a strong line up of scholars and topics and welcome further expressions of interest. We are open to any approach but are especially interested in: constructions of Ageing Masculinities in American and Scandinavian screen cultures, auteur studies and constructions of Queer ageing.

For consideration and/or further discussion, please forward a 300-word proposal and a short bio to Dr Tony Tracy (Huston School of Film and Digital Media) and Dr Michaela Schrage-Frueh (NUI Galway) at: Irishmascage@gmail.com before April 30th.

Silver Screens form part of a wider consortium project “Gendering Age: Representations of Masculinities and Ageing in Contemporary European Literatures and Cinemas” [MascAge] at NUI Galway, Ireland funded under ERA Gender-Net + Project under the auspices of the Irish Research Council.

www.mascage.eu

www.filmschool.ie

August 5-7, 2021

Online conference

Extended deadline: Monday April 26, 2021

Hosted by:

• Ryerson University (Canada)
• The Glasgow School of Art (Scotland)
• University of São Paulo (Brazil)
• The University of Texas at Dallas (USA)

This virtual edition of the Interactive Film and Media conference on ‘new narratives, racialization, global crises, and social engagement’ is dedicated to the development, analysis, and research processing of the digital experience that is transforming our contemporary world vision through the immense range of storytelling practices, including visual arts, cinema, digital/graphic/interactive narratives, virtual reality, games, etc. The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners working in diverse disciplinary areas to establish an interdisciplinary framework for research on contemporary narratives, including case studies of the multimodal narratives across media and cultures.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has gone viral across the world raising many concerns about the media’s role in our society. Today, it is not enough for the media to not be racist: it must actively be anti-racist. It would not be an overestimation to say that the participation of media in discourses other than those centered on racism is also paramount: it played a decisive role in many recent social and political events, including the pandemic crisis. Therefore, this conference is proposing to examine how media around the world are dealing with the aftermath of these developments. This conference also aims to discuss how the late proliferation of online social events and the increased fragmentation of the discourse via microblogging, subtitling, hashtags, and the enhanced sharing of images through screenshots, short-form videos, selfies, and video calls have affected interactive narratives.

We are inviting interdisciplinary proposals reflecting on the recent changes to the mediascape and the closely related medium of interactive narrative, in its many forms and iterations. Submissions that consider the advantages and drawbacks of the current trends in film, media, and interactive narratives, will be of special value, as well as those that develop new approaches to the process of algorithmization and hybridization between the information ecosystems dominated by tech enterprises and the mediasphere’s micro-level, where the instant-message apps transform our everyday lives by exposing polarized and contradictory messages, disseminating the misinformation.

The organizers will consider unpublished works that present research results and/or theoretical reflections within the scope of Interactive Film and Media Studies, with a special focus on ‘new narratives, racialization, global crises, and social engagement’.

CONFERENCE FEE: No registration fee will be charged for participation/presentation at this conference.

SUBMITTING PROPOSALS

Submit an abstract (around 500 words in length including the research objectives, theoretical framework, methodology, and conclusions) and a brief Bio-CV (100 words maximum). Please fill out the form available at https://forms.gle/…dP7

CONTACT EMAIL: interactivefilmconference@gmail.com

MORE INFO: https://interactivefilm.blogspot.com

National University of Singapore (NUS)

We invite applications for Assistant Professor of Global Media Communication and other tenure-track positions in the Communications and New Media department at the National University of Singapore (NUS). The application deadline is June 1, 2021.

We welcome candidates whose expertise falls in one or more of the following areas: global media and communication, environmental communication, media industry studies, intercultural communication, science and technology studies, development communication, digital technology and social change, global media governance, media communication in Asia and/or Southeast Asia.

Candidates are expected to have a PhD in Media Studies, Communications Studies, or a closely related discipline at the time of appointment. This position has a maximum teaching load of three courses per year and will commence in January 2022. For more information, see: https://academicjobsonline.org/…089

Other positions can be found here: https://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/…ngs

Inquiries about these positions may be directed to Jasmin Tay at: cnmcareer@nus.edu.sg

Deadline: July 16, 2021

Call for chapters, Studies in Media and Communications (Emerald series)

Edited by:

• Jason A. Smith, Center for Social Science Research - George Mason University
• Richard T. Craig, Department of Communication - George Mason University

http://www.emeraldmediastudies.com/…tml

Racialization is a term used within the social sciences to highlight the ways that social interactions become racial. This is an important concept in sociological and political science research when looking at structural mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequalities. The state, and its various organizational spaces of action, is often seen as a site for race to be enacted (e.g., Bracey 2015). Public policy sectors such as housing, taxation, and immigration, to name a few, have been ripe areas of research. However, media policy research has not effectively engaged with this critical conception. Media policy research has been driven by political economy perspectives within the field of Communications and Media Studies, and can benefit from an approach that analyzes it in relation to social science perspectives that focus on processes which constitute, or are constituted by, actors, groups, and organizations.

Racializing Media Policy seeks to fill this scholarly gap by providing case studies which focus on media policy issues in the United States through the lens of racialization. It will contribute to a growing body of media policy research within the Communications and Media Studies literature, as well as anchor the role of media policy in Sociological research – where it is lacking. It would also lend itself toward a growing body of work in the Sociology of Organizations which have begun to focus on “raced organizations” (Ray 2019; Wooten 2019) to understand how racial inequalities are embedded within organizational practices.

The volume is under contract with the Emerald series ‘Studies in Media and Communications.’ The series is sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.

Proposals of 750-1000 words are due by July 16, 2021. Submissions that are theoretical and/or empirical are welcomed, although we will give more weight to empirical submissions that can demonstrate the mechanisms of racialization throughout the media policy process. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches will be welcomed, as well as case study approaches which allow authors to connect to larger structural conditions within media policy debates.

Topics of interest for this volume might include, but are not limited to:

-A focus on traditional (print, radio, television) and new (internet, social) media issues

-Historical media policy issues analyzed through the lens of racialization

-Contemporary issues such as: Net Neutrality, Privacy, Telecom Development (5G), Broadband Access

-Tensions over media ownership

-The role of federal agencies in policy formation and decisions

-The role of media activist groups who engage in media policy work/spaces

-Localized media policy decisions at the municipal/county or state level

-Discourses of policy debates

-Racialized outcomes of media policy decisions

Submissions should be sent to Jason A. Smith jsm5@gmu.ed and Richard T. Craig rcraig@gmu.edu .

References

Bracey, G. E. (2015). Toward a critical race theory of state. Critical Sociology, 41(3): 553-572.

Ray, V. (2019). A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1): 26-53.

Wooten, M. E. (Ed.). (2019). Race, organizations, and the organizing process. Emerald.

Imke Henkel

This book offers a new approach to understanding disinformation and its destructive impact on the democratic function of the news media. Using the notoriously false reporting of EU policies by the British press as a starting point, it utilises Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the linguistic properties of false news stories and to understand how they function as myth in Roland Barthes’ sense. The disinformation is essential for the impact these news stories had as it provides the simplification which creates the blissful clarity of myth that Barthes described. As myth, the false news stories depoliticised a political argument and naturalised the claim of antagonistic British-European relations. Henkel shows how news stories used disinformation to articulate a Eurosceptic myth of the feisty, witty Briton who stands up against the European bully. Her main argument is that the disinformation contributed to the Brexit vote because, as myth, it transported an ideology. Henkel argues that the Brexit debate and the news reporting that preceded it for decades can be understood as a case study for how political journalism becomes democratically dysfunctional. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of journalism, media and culture, political communication, and Critical Discourse Analysis.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030695026

September 10, 2021

Online conference

Deadline: May 31, 2021

Media and communication studies today especially focus on questions surrounding how digital media and digitization have changed and revolutionized previous media ecologies. Funding opportunities, PhD dissertations, journals and books on digitization and the relevance of digital media are overwhelming. This joint ECREA postconference, organized by the Communication History, Radio Research, and Television Studies Sections, invites colleagues to focus on and discuss claims that studying old media is imperative and still fully relevant to understand our contemporary media landscapes. In several media sectors, traditional media, such as television and radio, printing, analog photography and music, are still the most profitable businesses. The integration of old and new media seems to be more effective than disruptive models, and the so-called “old media” are still used and appreciated by media audiences worldwide. This postconference invites empirical and theoretical contributions from different angles. Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Old media persistence in terms of content, political mentality, business, law, regulation, audience and usage;
• Remediation and persistence of old media forms into new media, processes of digitization of old media and persistence of old media business models;
• The significance of traditional media (e.g. broadcasting, printing, analog photography and music, etc.) in contemporary digital culture;
• Production studies of old media industries;
• The persistence of propaganda and fake news from old to new media;
• Old media and how they contribute to the process of datafication;
• The persistence of old media in the everyday life of minoritarian or marginalised audiences;
• New media histories for old media;
• The persistence of old media activism;
• The continuation and renewal of old controversies and debates (on governance, neutrality, etc.);
• Nostalgia and use of old media archives as current practices both in the production of new media contents and in the audience consumptions.
• Analog photography, vinyl, tapes and Super8 movies (among others): the return of nostalgic media

Please send your 500 word abstract and a short bio of 100 words to info@oldnewspersistence.com. Deadline for submissions is 31 May 2021 and the conference will take place as an online event only on 10 September 2021.

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Salary from £36,647 to £44,140 pa inclusive with potential to progress to £47,456 pa inclusive of London allowance

Based in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

This is a fixed term appointment for two years, starting from 1 September 2021, with a possibility of extension for one further year, subject to funding

Applications are invited from outstanding candidates in the field of Media, Communication and Development. The successful candidate will join an established and successful Department which graduates 300+ MSc students a year and is ranked #1 in the UK and #3 globally in our field (2021 QS World University Rankings).

The Department is seeking to appoint an LSE Fellow who can make important contributions to its teaching and research. This post presents an excellent opportunity for the successful candidate to expand on their teaching experience while developing their research career.

The postholder will contribute to the core teaching of the MSc in Media, Communication and Development, as well as other Department theories and methods courses, and in addition to lecture and seminar teaching, will act as Academic Mentor to MSc students and supervise their dissertations. The postholder will also be expected to contribute to the research culture of the Department.

Candidates will have a completed PhD in Media and Communications, Development Communication or a closely related discipline/field with a focus on socio-political, economic and communication inequality in the global south (doctoral examination/viva to be completed before post start date). Candidates must demonstrate evidence of high quality teaching at graduate level and an interest in contributing to teaching critical approaches to media, communication and development, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and visual or discourse analysis methods. Candidates will have a developing research record in the field of media and communications, with evidence of a commitment to critically assessing theories and empirical research. Candidates must demonstrate excellent communication and presentation skills and a demonstrable commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion in Higher Education.

We offer an occupational pension scheme, generous annual leave and excellent training and development opportunities.

For further information about the post, please see https://jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/2199/0/295232/15539/lse-fellow-in-media-communication-and-development.

If you have any technical queries with applying on the online system, please use the "contact us" links at the bottom of the LSE Jobs page.

Should you have any queries about the role, please email Professor Shakuntala Banaji: S.Banaji@lse.ac.uk

The closing date for receipt of applications is Sunday 9 May 2021 (23.59 UK time). Regrettably, we are unable to accept any late applications.

An LSE Fellowship is intended to be an entry route to an academic career and is deemed by the School to be a career development position. As such, applicants who have already been employed as an LSE Fellow for three years in total are not eligible to apply. If you have any queries about this please contact the HR Division.

LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university.

September 16-17, 2021

Zagreb (Croatia)

Deadline: April 16, 2021

We are happy to invite you to participate in International Scientific Conference Comments, Hate Speech, Disinformation, and Public Communication Regulation in Zagreb, Sheraton hotel, on 16 and 17 September 2021

Technological development has brought rapid and simple spread of speech in professional and civic communication. The digital public space is a space of democratic freedoms for each individual, but it is often a space of numerous disinformation and fake news, concerning offensive speech and discriminatory speech targeting ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities, immigrants, and various vulnerable groups. Readers’ comments can be an important form of argumentative civic debate, but they are also a way for citizens to express aggressive, inciting, or offensive attitudes toward others or use hate speech. Both media and other business entities on the internet encounter this phenomenon of digital communication and try to resist it in different ways. In the issues between freedom of speech and censorship of public speech, there is a daily intellectual struggle for the right to information, media freedom, internet neutrality. How should our legislation participate in this, what are the experiences of different national legal regulations? What does the struggle against disinformation and hate speech involve, is this fight a multidimensional task in the age of digital communication, which strategies are acceptable, which stakeholders should be involved and which place belongs to self-regulation and which to the regulatory system?

Topics to be covered:

* Legal aspects and freedom of speech in the regulation of public communication

• Fight against disinformation
• Hate speech in the public media space
• Hate speech in the citizens’ comments
• Readers’ comments as a form of political participation
• The impact of citizens’ comments on the journalistic profession
• The impact of citizens’ comments on business in tourism and other professions
• The role of self-regulation in regulating disinformation and unacceptable forms of speech
• Methodological approaches in scientific research of misinformation and comments on the Internet (big data)
• Network tools for collecting, analysing, and visualising online forms of discourse
• Analysis of sentiment in offensive and insulting speech according to vulnerable groups

ORGANISERS:

Agency for Electronic Media: www.aem.hr

Media Research: http://www.mediaresearch.cro.net

CO-ORGANISER:

Scientific Council for the Theatre, Film, Radio and Television of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts: http://info.hazu.hr/hr/

Additional information can be found on conference website: https://conference2021.aem.hr/?lang=en

October 14-16, 2021

Online conference

Deadline for proposal submission: April 12, 2021

The 6th edition of the conference /Narrative, Media and Cognition/ aims to combine narrative, as an artistic and social phenomenon, with the artistic and technical media that convey it and with the cognition that produces it and gives it meaning. The 2021 edition of the conference is hosted by the Theatre and Film School of the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, in Portugal, in association with the WG of the Audiovisual Narratives of AIM - The Moving Image Association in Portugal. It will take place on the 14th, 15th, 16th of October 2021, via Zoom.

Upon entering a new decade of the twenty-first century the artistic landscape is increasingly hybrid and veering from the norms; a growing blend of forms, contents and genres is taking place. Therefore, it is imperative to reflect on the interrelation of the three main topics of the conference – narrative, media/arts, and cognition – and to contribute with academic theorization that allows for a broadening of reflection upon the nature and role of narrative as the binding element of a new audiovisual praxis. In this sense, the current edition of the conference focuses on the multiple challenges of artistic contemporaneity, seeking to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue.

There will be a publication with selected, peer-reviewed articles issuing from this conference. 

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• ·Complex, non-linear and fragmentary narrative structures.
• ·Self-reflexivity, metalepsis, ekphrasis, embedding.
• ·Unreliable narration.
• ·Characters and diegetic universes.
• ·Time and space in narrative.
• ·Scriptwriting techniques.
• ·Essay film, webdocumentary.
• ·Autobiography, self-portrait, autofiction.
• ·Transmedia storytelling.
• ·Intermediality: narrative as cutting across different media.
• ·Film adaptation.
• ·Seriality, complex television series.
• ·Narrative and new media.
• ·New exhibition and exposition formats, streaming.
• ·Interactive narrative.
• ·Design, characters and narrative structures in videogames.
• ·Narrative as a cognitive structure.
• ·Relationship between media and cognition.
• ·Narration and altered states of consciousness.
• ·Narrative reception and creation mechanisms.

We are proud to present the following keynote speakers: 

• Professor Jane Alison – University of Virginia.Author of the book Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative (2019).
• Professor Nitzan Ben Shaul – University of Tel-Aviv.Author of the book Cinema of Choice: Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies (2012).
• * Professor Jens Eder – University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. Co-editor of Image Operations. Visual Media and Political Conflict (2017) and Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media (2010).
• Professor Marina Grishakova – University of Tartu.Co-author of The Gesamtkunstwerk as a Synergy of the Arts (Peter Lang, 2020); co-editor of Narrative Complexity: Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution (2019) and Intermediality and Storytelling (2010).
• Miklós Kiss – University of Groningen.Co-author of the book Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (2018). 
• Professor Jason Mittell – Middlebury College.Author of the book Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. (2015).

Conference languages: English and Portuguese.

The conference is free of charge for selected participants, but registration is mandatory to be able to access the sessions.

Timetable: (2021)

• April 12: Deadline for proposal submission.
• May 12: Notification of acceptance.
• July 7: Deadline for registration (free of charge).
• October 14-16: Conference dates.

Submission:

We invite each of you to submit a proposal for a 20-minute presentation. Each participant is limited to one talk. Both theoretical and analytical-theoretical approaches are accepted.

The proposal must contain an abstract (500 words max.), 5 keywords, 3 bibliographical references and a short bio of the author (250 words max.). Send to Fátima Chinita (chinita.estc@gmail.com ) and Abel Júpiter (estc.conferencia.2021@gmail.com ).

Suggested bibliography and more information available on the conference website: https://reconfiguracoes.estc.ipl.pt

Organizers:

Fátima Chinita, PhD. - Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, Theatre and Film School

Guilhermina Castro, PhD. - Catholic University, School of the Arts, CITAR

Jorge Palinhos, PhD. - Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, Theatre and Film School