February 10 – 11, 2025

Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic 

Deadline: September 30, 2024

The advancement of technology has significantly transformed the dynamics of media’s democratic functions and reshaped the relationship between news organizations and their audiences. It raised issues about the impacts of an increasing abundance of information, such as audience fragmentation, heightened polarization, partisan exposure, etc. Understanding these changes and their implications for democracy is crucial in navigating the intricacies of the contemporary information era influenced by the rapid arrival of generative AI. 

Social media is one of the key distribution platforms, and this fact is changing the entire media landscape. The significant role of social media has implications for media pluralism, democracy and regulation. It is essential to strengthen the legislative framework for social media to be able to manage the content they distribute. This conference aims to explore the complexities of regulating these platforms and analyze the challenges and opportunities, focusing on algorithmization, legislation and legislature, and the preservation of democratic principles in the digital environment. 

This conference, organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague on February 10 and 11, 2025, invites submissions that contribute to the expansion of current research from different perspectives to include topics from various disciplines such as media studies and communication, journalism studies, political science, law and legislation, sociology, computer science and technology, strategic communication, social media and audience studies. Even though the main focus is European, we welcome broader perspective, particularly from the global south. The conference will include three online panels that will allow the participation of selected scholars who cannot attend in person. 

About the broad topic of the conference, here are other themes, including but not limited to:

• The role of technology in transforming the media markets and the impact of the changing media’s democratic functions in the hybrid media system
  
• The changes in the media market shares and market sizes of old and new media brands in the European context
  
• The evolution of the main types of the applied business model in media, in particular, news organizations, to compensate for the losses in subscriptions and advertising and ensure the necessary capital to preserve the quality of the journalism
  
• The effect of the broader diversity of news products and how it has impacted the interest of the citizens in public issues
  
• The issue of how professional journalists, alternative media content producers, and media managers balance the required commercial and financial aims with goals of journalistic freedom and media freedom in a democratic society
  
• The risks of a dominant position of social media platforms and search engines in the advertising sector
  
• The analysis of legal frameworks for media pluralism, including a comprehensive examination of regulations on media ownership, content dissemination and access to information
  
• Proposals for fact-checking in the fight against disinformation, including the use of technology
  
• Regulating social media as crucial platforms for media production and consumption
  
• Use of generative AI in journalism and media business
  

This list is not exclusive, and we call for papers which, in a broad sense, deal with the political economy of traditional media and alternative media, including both theoretical and analytical perspectives on the challenges, perceptions, risks, impacts, opportunities and regulatory framework involved, concentrating on the advanced technology, communication creators, alternative media content creators, itself or its audiences. 

The conference is financed by the ReMeD project HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01-06; therefore, no conference fee will be charged). For this conference, ReMeD thematically collaborates with another Horizon Europe project MeDeMAP.

We invite abstracts between 300-500 words (excluding references) submitted in English by 30 September 2024 via email to Dr. Suchibrata Roy, PhD (remed.conference@fsv.cuni.cz). The submission must be anonymized as follows.

The abstracts for both individual papers and panel proposals can be submitted. Each abstract must be attached as an anonymized file to the email (all authors' names and affiliations will be in the email's body). Each panel proposal must include an abstract of the cover topic and the titles of 5 involved papers (names and affiliations of the proposed panel chair and all the authors of the involved papers will be in the email's body). A maximum of 3 papers from the same institution in one panel is allowed (and each paper in a panel has to be presented by a different presenter). Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is for an individual paper or a panel proposal and if it is for an onsite or online presentation.

Abstracts will go through a double-blind peer review process, and the authors will be notified about acceptance by 31 October 2024.