October 7-9, 2020

Örebro, Sweden

Deadline: March 30, 2020

Welcome to the 26th Arab US Association for Communication Educators Conference. The conference will be held in Örebro, Sweden between 7-9 October 2020. The conference is hosted by Örebro University.

The aim of this year’s conference is to explore and critically discuss how journalism is redefining its identity against the economic, cultural and technological challenges especially with the rise of fake news era.

Studies showed fake news and false rumours spread six times faster on Twitter than any attempts to correct or clarify. Many more people are only seeing the first version of a story, not the following ones with updates, making it even more imperative journalists get the facts right on the first go. Incidents of racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have risen past their previous peak levels following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2010 Arab spring.

Misinformation and hateful rhetoric and discourses about the motives and citizenship status of these groups has led to harassment, graffiti, and mass shootings. From fake news to the deepfake, the digital eraʼs expanded possibilities for fabrication and falsehood are endangering the fourth estate, especially as many people are turning their mind to the future of journalism. How, in the future, are we to know the difference between truth, myth and lies?

There is a new concern for the virtues of the traditional newsroom, and what good journalists do. That is, find things out, verify the facts and publish them in outlets which, despite famous stuff-up, can generally be relied upon to provide the best available version of the truth.

We invite proposals that address this multifaceted phenomenon focusing on topics that include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Professional identities and organizational cultures
• Local and hyper-local media
• Social and civil functions of local journalism and impact on the public sphere
• Participatory/citizen journalism, community media
• Audience
• Emerging trends in digital storytelling, immersive journalism, data visualization
• New forms of journalism activism including but not limited to migrant journalism, political activism, etc.
• How the public and journalists contribute to, perceive, and deal with misinformation, disinformation, and fake new

Information in Arabic here

Successful abstracts will be considered for inclusion in a Special Issue proposal to be submitted to Nordic Journal of Media Studies.

Working language for the conference is both Arabic and English.

• Abstract (250 words maximum), submission deadline: 30 March 2020
• Authors notified of acceptance: 15 April 15 2020
• Full papers due: 20 August 2020

Please send:

English abstracts to: Ahmed El Gody: ahmed.elgody@oru.se

Arabic abstracts to: Abdulrahman Al-Shami: aalshami8@gmail.com