ECREA ECREA Weekly

Doctoral Scholarship Media (Media & Prison Studies–US & UK)

Thu, 07 May 2026 20:09:25 GMT

University of Antwerp

Department: Department of Communication Studies

Regime Full-time

Let’s shape the future - University of Antwerp

The University of Antwerp is a dynamic, forward-thinking, European university. We offer an innovative academic education to more than 20000 students, conduct pioneering scientific research and play an important service-providing role in society. We are one of the largest, most international and most innovative employers in the region. With more than 6000 employees from 100 different countries, we are helping to build tomorrow's world every day. Through top scientific research, we push back boundaries and set a course for the future – a future that you can help to shape.

Position

The Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Communication, The Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center is looking for a full-time PhD-student within the ERC-funded project WALLS2BRIDGES -Media Production of Prison Communities.

The ERC project WALLS2BRIDGES investigates how prison communities produce media and how these practices reshape understandings of justice across France, Turkey, the UK, and the US. Against the backdrop of expanding incarceration regimes and enduring racial and social inequalities, WALLS2BRIDGES examines how incarcerated people, their families, and anti-prison activists engage in media production (from letters and newspapers to podcasts, films, and digital platforms) to contest dominant narratives and reimagine justice.

The project conceptualizes prison communities as active media producers, foregrounding the interplay between media practices, systems of surveillance, sensory experience, and struggles for justice.

Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, the project combines:

Archival research on prison-produced media since the mid-1960’s century;
Qualitative interviews and collaborative research with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, families, and activists;
Analysis of diverse media forms, including print, audiovisual, and digital content.

Your role

You will conduct in-depth research in the United States and the United Kingdom, focusing on prison journalism as both a historical and contemporary practice. Your research will combine archival work on newspapers produced by incarcerated people from the 1970s onwards with the study of current journalistic practices inside prisons and the civil society organisations that support them.
You will examine how incarcerated individuals have used journalism as a form of communication, documentation, and critique, and how these practices have evolved over time in both national contexts. You will also investigate the infrastructures that enable or constrain prison journalism, including access to media technologies, institutional regulations, censorship regimes, and collaborations with NGOs, advocacy groups, and independent media initiatives.
You will contribute to the project’s comparative and transnational framework alongside team members working on Türkiye and France.

Research strands:

Studying prison journalism “from above”

Analysing policy frameworks, censorship regimes, institutional regulations, and media infrastructures that shape the production, distribution, and visibility of prison journalism in the US and the UK, both historically and in contemporary contexts.

Studying prison journalism “from below”

Examining the everyday practices of prison journalism, including writing, editing, and publishing processes by incarcerated individuals, as well as collaborations with journalists, NGOs, and advocacy organisations supporting prison-based media.

Exploring lived experience, journalism, and knowledge circulation

Investigating how incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals engage in journalistic practices as forms of self-representation, testimony, and critique; analysing prison newspapers and other media as sites of knowledge production; and examining how these materials circulate (or fail to circulate) beyond prison walls. This includes attention to questions of access, visibility, preservation, and the afterlives of prison-produced journalism.

For this position, the University of Antwerp will serve as your home base, with extended research stays in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Profile

What do we expect from you?

A Master’s degree in media studies, journalism, history, sociology, anthropology, criminology, or a related field;
Fluency in English;
Familiarity with, or willingness to develop engagement with NGOs and organisations working to improve media access to prisons in the US and the UK;
Experience with archival and/or qualitative research methods (e.g. interviews, ethnography, discourse analysis); and an interest in working with creative and media-based materials;
Sensitivity to ethical questions related to working with vulnerable communities and to issues of representation, access, and consent.

You will:

Conduct independent doctoral research leading to a PhD dissertation;
Publish in peer-reviewed academic journals and contribute to collective project outputs;
Present research at international conferences;
Contribute to the organisation of workshops and public-facing events;
Engage in societal dissemination of research findings, particularly with NGOs and educational organisations;
Work both independently and collaboratively in an interdisciplinary and international research team.

Assets (not required, but considered an advantage):

Experience researching prisons, carceral systems, or social justice issues;
Experience with archival research, particularly working with newspapers, periodicals, or historical media collections;
Familiarity with journalism practices, media production, or independent/ alternative media;
Experience working with NGOs, non-profit organisations;
Interest in or experience with publishing, editing, or curating media content;
Familiarity with debates on media justice, prison abolition, or critical prison studies;
Existing networks with organisations working on prison journalism, prison media, or prison education in the US and/or the UK.

What we offer

We offer a doctoral scholarship for a period of one year. Following a positive evaluation, the scholarship can be renewed for another three years.
The planned start date is September 2026, or as soon as possible after that date.
Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for doctoral scholarship holders.
You will receive eco cheques, Internet-connectivity allowance, and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
As a doctoral researcher, you will have access to a wide and varied range of courses and an educational credit through the Antwerp Doctoral School.
Apart from the fieldwork, you will do most of your work at the City Campus of the University of Antwerp in a dynamic and stimulating working environment.
Find out more about working at the University of Antwerp here.

Want to apply?

You can apply for this vacancy through the University of Antwerp’s online job application platform up to and including June 15, 2026 (by midnight Brussels time).

Click on the 'Apply' button and complete the online application form. Be sure to include the following attachments:

Your CV (including the contact details of two referees);
a motivation letter outlining your interest in the project and relevant experience;
a writing sample in English (e.g. master’s thesis, student or academic paper);
your course transcript and diploma (not applicable for University of Antwerp alumni).
A short research proposal (max 2 pages, excluding references) in relation to the project, outlining how you would approach research on prison journalism in the US and the UK.

Selection process

Step 1: initial selection based on the application file;
Step 2: interview with shortlisted candidates.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (online or in person) in July 2026.

As part of the interview process, candidates will be asked to present their short research proposal aligned with the objectives of the WALLS2BRIDGES project.

If you have any questions about the online application form, please check the frequently asked questions or send an email to jobs@uantwerpen.be. If you have any questions about the job itself, please contact İpek A. Çelik Rappas, Principal Investigator (ipeka.celik.rappas@uantwerpen.be).

The University of Antwerp received the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research Award for its HR policy. We are a sustainable, family-friendly organisation which invests in its employees’ growth. We encourage diversity and attach great importance to an inclusive working environment and equal opportunities, regardless of gender identity, disability, race, ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation or age. We encourage people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse characteristics to apply.

Apply here.

Doctoral Scholarship Media (Media & Prison Studies–US)

Thu, 07 May 2026 20:03:13 GMT

University of Antwerp

Departement: Departement Communicatiewetenschappen

Regime Voltijds

Let’s shape the future - University of Antwerp

Position

The project conceptualizes prison communities as active media producers, foregrounding the interplay between media practices, systems of surveillance, sensory experience, and struggles for justice.

Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, the project combines:

Archival research on prison-produced media since the mid-1960’s century;
Qualitative interviews and collaborative research with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, families, and activists;
Analysis of diverse media forms, including print, audiovisual, and digital content.

Your role

You will conduct in-depth research in the United States, focusing on prison education programs, and NGOs and universities working in prison education and re-entry. You will examine media infrastructures that shape access to education–including digital platforms (such as prison tablets), communication technologies, and institutional access regimes–as well as to the role of universities and NGOs as key intermediaries in these processes. You will contribute to the project’s comparative and transnational framework alongside team members working on Türkiye, the UK, and the US.

Research strands

Studying education systems and infrastructures “from above”

Analysing policy frameworks, institutional structures, media access, and public discourses shaping educational programs in prison contexts.

Studying prison education “from below”

Examining how these programs are implemented in everyday practice by NGOs, universities, artists, and institutional actors.

Exploring lived experiences, education and communicative practices

Investigating how incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals engage with educational programs, including literacy, higher education, and informal learning; exploring how education fosters forms of self-representation and mediated expression, including writing, testimony, and other communicative practices; analysing how knowledge produced within prison education circulates (or fails to circulate) beyond prison walls; engaging with questions related to media access, visibility, and the circulation of prison-based knowledge and communication.

For this position, the University of Antwerp will serve as your home base, with extended research stays in the United States.

Profile

What do we expect from you?

A Master’s degree in media studies, sociology, anthropology, criminology, education, or a related field;
Fluency in English;
Familiarity with, or willingness to develop engagement with NGOs and organisations working in prison education in the US;
Experience with qualitative research methods (e.g. interviews, ethnography, discourse analysis); and an interest in working with creative and media-based materials;
Sensitivity to ethical questions related to working with vulnerable communities and to issues of representation, access, and consent.

You will:

Conduct independent doctoral research leading to a PhD dissertation;
Publish in peer-reviewed academic journals and contribute to collective project outputs;
Present research at international conferences;
Contribute to the organisation of workshops and public-facing events;
Engage in societal dissemination of research findings, particularly with NGOs and educational organisations;
Work both independently and collaboratively in an interdisciplinary and international research team.

Assets (not required, but considered an advantage):

Experience researching prisons, carceral systems, or related social justice issues;
Experience working with NGOs, non-profit organisations, or educational programs;
Experience with participatory or collaborative research methods;
Interest in or experience with digital platforms, communication technologies, or mediated learning environments in restricted settings;
Interest in or experience with publishing, editing, or curating media content;
Familiarity with debates on media justice, prison abolition, or critical prison studies;
Existing networks with organisations working in prison education in the United States.

What we offer

We offer a doctoral scholarship for a period of one year. Following a positive evaluation, the scholarship can be renewed for another three years.
The planned start date is September 2026, or as soon as possible after that date.
Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for doctoral scholarship holders.
You will receive eco cheques, Internet-connectivity allowance, and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
As a doctoral researcher, you will have access to a wide and varied range of courses and an educational credit through the Antwerp Doctoral School.
Apart from the fieldwork, you will do most of your work at the City Campus of the University of Antwerp in a dynamic and stimulating working environment.
Find out more about working at the University of Antwerp here.

Want to apply?

You can apply for this vacancy through the University of Antwerp’s online job application platform up to and including June 15, 2026 (by midnight Brussels time).

Click on the 'Apply' button and complete the online application form. Be sure to include the following attachments:

Your CV (including the contact details of two referees);
a motivation letter outlining your interest in the project and relevant experience;
a writing sample in English (e.g. master’s thesis, student or academic paper);
your course transcript and diploma (not applicable for University of Antwerp alumni).
A short research proposal (max 2 pages, excluding references) in relation to the project, outlining how you would approach research on prison education and media in the US.

Selection process

Step 1: initial selection based on the application file;
Step 2: interview with shortlisted candidates.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (online or in person) in July 2026.

As part of the interview process, candidates will be asked to present their short research proposal aligned with the objectives of the WALLS2BRIDGES project.

Apply here.

Doctoral Scholarship Media (Arts & Prison Studies–UK)

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:50:46 GMT

University of Antwerp

Departement: Departement Communicatiewetenschappen

Regime Voltijds

Let’s shape the future - University of Antwerp

Position

The ERC project WALLS2BRIDGES investigates how prison communities produce media and how these practices reshape understandings of justice acrossFrance, Türkiye, the UK, and the US. Against the backdrop of expanding incarceration regimes and enduring racial and social inequalities, WALLS2BRIDGES examines how incarcerated people, their families, and anti-prison activists engage in media production (from letters and newspapers to podcasts, films, and digital platforms) to contest dominant narratives and reimagine justice.

The project conceptualizes prison communities as active media producers, foregrounding the interplay between media practices, systems of surveillance, sensory experience, and struggles for justice.

Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, the project combines:

Archival research on prison-produced media since the mid-1960’s century;
Qualitative interviews and collaborative research with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, families, and activists;
Analysis of diverse media forms, including print, audiovisual, and digital content.

Your role

You will conduct in-depth research in the UK and Northern Ireland, focusing on NGOs and charities working at the intersection of arts, media, and prison education. You will explore how these actors mobilize media for communication, advocacy, and knowledge production, and how they intervene in public debates on incarceration and justice. You will contribute to the project’s comparative and transnational framework alongside team members working on Türkiye, the UK, and the US.

Research strands

Studying prison media and arts initiatives “from above”

Analysing policy frameworks, institutional structures, funding models, and public discourses shaping arts, media, and educational programs in prison contexts.

Studying prison media and arts initiatives “from below”

Examining how these programs are implemented in everyday practice by NGOs, charities, educators, artists, and institutional actors.

Exploring lived experiences, creative practices, and archiving

Investigating how incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals engage with arts and media initiatives, while also documenting and archiving these creative outputs. This includes attending to questions of preservation, access, ethics, and the afterlives of prison-produced media.

For this position, the University of Antwerp will serve as your home base, with extended research stays in the UK and Northern Ireland.

Profile

What do we expect from you?

A Master’s degree in media studies, sociology, anthropology, criminology, or a related field;
Fluency in English;
Familiarity with, or willingness to develop, engagement with organisations working in prison education, arts, and media in the UK and/or Northern Ireland;
Experience with qualitative research methods (e.g. interviews, ethnography, discourse analysis), and an interest in working with creative and media-based materials;
Sensitivity to ethical questions related to working with vulnerable communities and to issues of representation, access, and consent.

You will:

Conduct independent doctoral research leading to a PhD dissertation;
Publish in peer-reviewed academic journals and contribute to collective project outputs;
Present research at international conferences;
Contribute to the organisation of workshops and public-facing events;
Engage in societal dissemination of research findings, particularly with NGOs charities, and community organisations;
Work both independently and collaboratively in an interdisciplinary and international research team.

Assets (not required, but considered an advantage):

Experience in researching prisons, carceral systems, or related social justice issues;
Experience working with or researching NGOs, charities, or community-based organisations;
Familiarity with media production (e.g. film, audio, digital media) or collaborative creative practices;
Interest in or experience with publishing, editing, or curating media content;
Familiarity with debates on media justice, prison abolition, or critical prison studies;
Existing networks with organisations working in prison education in the UK.

What we offer

We offer a doctoral scholarship for a period of one year. Following a positive evaluation, the scholarship can be renewed for another three years.
The planned start date is September 2026, or as soon as possible after that date.
Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for doctoral scholarship holders.
You will receive eco cheques, Internet-connectivity allowance, and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
As a doctoral researcher, you will have access to a wide and varied range of courses and an educational credit through the Antwerp Doctoral School.
Apart from the fieldwork, you will do most of your work at the City Campus of the University of Antwerp in a dynamic and stimulating working environment.
Find out more about working at the University of Antwerp here.

Want to apply?

You can apply for this vacancy through the University of Antwerp’s online job application platform up to and including June 15, 2026 (by midnight Brussels time).

Click on the 'Apply' button and complete the online application form. Be sure to include the following attachments:

Your CV (including the contact details of two referees);
a motivation letter outlining your interest in the project and relevant experience;
a writing sample in English (e.g. master’s thesis, student or academic paper);
your course transcript and diploma (not applicable for University of Antwerp alumni).
A short research proposal (max 2 pages, excluding references) in relation to the project, indicating how you would approach research on prison arts, media, and education in the UK and Northern Ireland.

Selection process

Step 1: initial selection based on the application file;
Step 2: interview with shortlisted candidates.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (online or in person) in July 2026.

As part of the interview process, candidates will be asked to present their short research proposal aligned with the objectives of the WALLS2BRIDGES project.

Apply here.

Communicating narratives, imaginaries and epistemes of hope

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:38:29 GMT

September 7, 2026

Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline: May 10, 2026

Joint Communication, Social Justice and Democracy IAMCR Working Group conference & ECREA 2026 pre-conference

Call for contributions

Hope can be a powerful motivator for mobilisation and societal change. At the same time, aspirations for a better future may be instrumentalised or manipulated for political gain or financial profit. This conference focuses on the constructive force of hope, addressing visions, discourses, and practices of hope for democracy, peace and justice, as articulated in media representations and communicative practices.

By focusing on hope, the conference aims to foster intellectual reflection and dialogue, through diverse approaches and methods, on how spaces, practices, cultures, and technologies of communication can give visibility to or help articulate claims and inform struggles for fairer societies, dignity, and freedom.

A wide range of settings, fields and practices may serve as objects or loci of study (e.g., journalism, political communication, campaigning, activism, popular culture, art, history, education, religion), exploring how hope is represented, negotiated, rearticulated and performed by actors and groups in the social realm.

We welcome contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following thematic areas:

how societal phenomena, challenges, and crises (e.g., climate change, migration, war and conflict, extremism) are mediated and reconfigured through narratives of hope at national and international levels;
how different actors, social groups, and institutions (e.g., media, political parties, education, religion, art) negotiate their visions of hope in mediated environments;
how visions of peace and justice are communicated in public discourse and through people’s struggles;
how history is mobilised in communicative practices and public debates in articulations of better presents and futures;
how space, time and technology inform narratives and imaginaries of hope;
how imaginaries of hope are constructed in contexts of persistent curtailment of freedoms and rights, and increasing authoritarianism;
how viable democratic presents and futures are imagined, under dire conditions of ongoingconflict, violence, or war;
how struggles against injustice, oppression and authoritarianism inform, and are informed by, cultures and epistemes of hope.

Abstract length and submission deadline

Abstracts of 400–500 words should be submitted by 10 May 2026 via email to vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz

Please note that this conference will be held in person only; no arrangements will be made for online participation.

Decisions will be announced by 10 June 2026.

Date and location

Date: 7 September 2026

Location: Centrum Voršilská, 5th floor, Charles University/Voršilská 144/1, Prague, Czech Republic

The conference is scheduled for the day before the ECREA 2026 main conference begins. Brno, the host city of this year’s ECREA conference, is approximately a 2.5–3 hour train ride from Prague, with very frequent connections.

Conference organisers

This is a joint Communication, Social Justice and Democracy IAMCR working group conference &ECREA 2026 pre-conference.

The conference is endorsed by the International and Intercultural Communication ECREA section, and is hosted by the Culture and Communication Research Centre (CULCORC) @ the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism(ICSJ) (Charles University)

Contact: Vaia Doudaki, vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz

Scientific Committee

Vaia Doudaki (Charles University, Czech Republic)
Nico Carpentier (Charles University, Czech Republic)
Ilija Tomanić Trivundža (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Andrea Medrado (University of Exeter, UK)
Fernando Oliveira Paulino (University of Brasilia, Brazil)
Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno (Loyola University Maryland, United States)

For more information: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/research/conferences/communicating-narratives-imaginaries-and-epistemes-hope

Youth in a Digital Society – Inaugural Conference

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:35:19 GMT

October 8-9, 2026

Potsdam, Germany

Deadline: May 31, 2026

Few topics are currently as widely and often emotionally debated as the impact of digital and social media on young people. But what does empirical research actually tell us? The inaugural “Youth in a Digital Society” conference aims to move beyond public debates by bringing together interdisciplinary, evidence-based perspectives.

This new initiative, the University Research Focus “Education for the Future” at the University of Potsdam, is designed as an annual event that connects international researchers across the broad field of digital media research.

The English-language conference focuses on the use of digital media and its effects on children, adolescents, and young adults. It addresses both psychological outcomes (e.g., mental health) and sociopolitical outcomes (e.g., political engagement and radicalization), as well as interventions to prevent problematic use and mitigate adverse effects.

The program features two keynote lectures and four symposia with leading researchers from Germany, Europe, and beyond. In addition, an open call for poster presentations offers opportunities to share ongoing research. Roundtable sessions will provide space for discussion, exchange, and the development of new collaborative ideas.

October 8–9, 2026
Neues Palais, University of Potsdam
Registration and Call for abstracts for posters: https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/education-for-the-future/events-of-the-division/conference

We warmly invite you to join us and contribute to this interdisciplinary exchange.

Doctoral Scholarship Media (Media & Prison Studies–France)

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:29:30 GMT

University of Antwerp

Departement: Departement Communicatiewetenschappen

Regime Voltijds

Let’s shape the future - University of Antwerp

Position

The ERC project WALLS2BRIDGES investigates how prison communities produce media and how these practices reshape understanding of justice across France, Türkiye, the UK, and the US. Against the backdrop of expanding incarceration regimes and enduring racial and social inequalities, WALLS2BRIDGES examines how incarcerated people, their families, and anti-prison activists engage in media production (from letters and newspapers to podcasts, films, and digital platforms) to contest dominant narratives and reimagine justice.

The project conceptualizes prison communities as active media producers, foregrounding the interplay between media practices, systems of surveillance, sensory experience, and struggles for justice.

Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, the project combines:

Archival research on prison-produced media since the mid-1960’s century;
Qualitative interviews and collaborative research with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, families, and activists;
Analysis of diverse media forms, including print, audiovisual, and digital content.

Your role

You will conduct in-depth research in France, focusing on abolitionist groups and prison-related NGOs and their media, cultural, and educational practices. You will explore how these actors establish communication with people in prison, mobilize media for advocacy, and how they intervene in public debates on incarceration and justice. You will contribute to the project’s comparative and transnational framework alongside team members working on Türkiye, the UK, and the US.

Research strands

Studying NGOs and abolitionist groups “from above”

Analysing policy frameworks, institutional structures, funding models, and public discourses shaping prison-related media and cultural initiatives.

Studying NGOs and abolitionist groups “from below”

Examining everyday practices of NGOs, educators, artists, and activists, including their interactions with prison administrations and municipalities.

Exploring lived experience, and communicative practices

Investigating how incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals engage with NGOs and abolitionist groups, media and cultural initiatives, and analysing their creative outputs (letters, films, audio, digital media), with attention to preservation, access, ethics, and afterlives.

The University of Antwerp will be your home base, with extended research stays in France.

Profile

What do we expect from you?

Master’s degree in media studies, sociology, anthropology, criminology, or a related field;
Fluency in English and French;
Familiarity with, or willingness to develop, engagement with organisations working in prison abolition, education, arts, and media in France;
Experience with qualitative research methods (e.g. interviews, ethnography, discourse analysis), and an interest in working with creative and media-based materials;
Sensitivity to ethical questions related to working with vulnerable communities and to issues of representation, access, and consent;

You will:

Conduct independent doctoral research leading to a PhD dissertation;
Publish in peer-reviewed academic journals and contribute to collective project outputs;
Present research at international conferences;
Contribute to the organisation of workshops and public-facing events;
Engage in societal dissemination of research findings, particularly with NGOs and educational organisations;
Work both independently and collaboratively in an interdisciplinary and international research team.

Assets (not required, but considered an advantage):

Experience researching prisons, carceral systems, or social justice issues;
Experience working with NGOs or community-based organisations;
Familiarity with media production or collaborative creative practices;
Interest in or experience with publishing, editing, or curating media content;
Familiarity with debates on media justice, prison abolition, or critical prison studies;
Existing networks related to prison or abolitionist work in France or Europe.

What we offer

We offer a doctoral scholarship for a period of one year. Following a positive evaluation, the scholarship can be renewed for another three years.
The planned start date is September 2026, or as soon as possible after that date.
Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for doctoral scholarship holders.
You will receive eco cheques, Internet-connectivity allowance, and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
As a doctoral researcher, you will have access to a wide and varied range of courses and an educational credit through the Antwerp Doctoral School.
Apart from the fieldwork, you will do most of your work at the City Campus of the University of Antwerp in a dynamic and stimulating working environment.
Find out more about working at the University of Antwerp here.

Want to apply?

You can apply for this vacancy through the University of Antwerp’s online job application platform up to and including June 15, 2026 (by midnight Brussels time).

Click on the 'Apply' button and complete the online application form. Be sure to include the following attachments:

Your CV (including the contact details of two referees);
a motivation letter outlining your interest in the project and relevant experience;
a writing sample in English (e.g. master’s thesis, student or academic paper);
your course transcript and diploma (not applicable for University of Antwerp alumni).
A short research proposal (max 2 pages, excluding references) in relation to the project, indicating how you would approach research on NGOs, media and prisons in France.

Selection process

Step 1: initial selection based on the application file;
Step 2: interview with shortlisted candidates.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (online or in person) in July 2026.

As part of the interview process, candidates will be asked to present their short research proposal aligned with the objectives of the WALLS2BRIDGES project.

Apply here.

3rd Digital Methods Summer School

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:26:23 GMT

July 6-10, 2026

University of Manchester, UK

Deadline: June 15, 2026

We would like to invite you to our 3rd Digital Methods Summer School at The University of Manchester, which will take place between 6 and 10 July 2026.

This year, we'll focus on:

Visual Methods
Sensing AI Methods
Creative AI Methods
Text Analysis with R
Data Visualisation
Geospatial Methods
Ethics & Open Science

For more details, see: https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/53uwG1yp7TISE

Three Lecturers in Digital Media and Culture

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:24:14 GMT

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester invites applications from suitably qualified candidates for three full-time Lectureships (Teaching and Scholarship) in Digital Media and Culture. These posts are fixed-term for two years, commencing 1 August 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The successful candidates will contribute to the delivery, development and administration of the BA (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/2026/21197/ba-digital-media-culture-and-society/) and MA (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/20641/ma-digital-media-culture-and-society/) programmes in Digital Media, Culture and Society, and will join the core team of The Centre for Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media, https://www.digital-humanities.manchester.ac.uk/about/people/)

Colleagues on Teaching and Scholarship contracts are typically allocated 80% of their time for teaching and administrative duties, and 20% for scholarship, which is currently defined as discipline-based educational or pedagogic research, and the development, application and synthesis of disciplinary knowledge to inform teaching (e.g. research-informed teaching).

Further details, including the full job description and person specification, are available here: https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=34755

Informal enquiries may be directed to Dr Łukasz Szulc, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture, at lukasz.szulc@manchester.ac.uk

PERCIENTEX 2026: Journalism for Scientific Integrity

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:22:49 GMT

June 11, 2026

Barcelona, Spain

We invite you to “PERCIENTEX 2026: Journalism for Scientific Integrity” taking place on June 11th in Barcelona.

On its tenth anniversary, PerCientEx project brings together leading experts to discuss the role of science journalism as a key tool for promoting integrity in science. Speakers include Pilar Paneque, director of ANECA, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, journalist at Science, and Mira Petróvic, researcher and whistleblower.

The event will explore how watchdog science journalism helps uncover fraud, misconduct, and unethical practices in research.

DATE & TIME: Thursday, June 11, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

LOCATION: CosmoCaixa Barcelona

ORGANIZED BY: ACCC, with the support of CosmoCaixa and in collaboration with the Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación (UAB)

If you would like to attend the event, please fill out this form: https://cosmocaixa.org/es/p/percientex-2026-periodistas-que-investigan-la-ciencia

Digital Nationalism and Affective Governance Propaganda, Public Sentiment, and Soft Authoritarianism in China

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:20:22 GMT

Dechun Zhang

The book investigates how digital propaganda in China operates as a platform-shaped practice under soft authoritarianism, where nationalism functions as a discursive technology that organizes meaning, structures visibility, and channels public affect. Propaganda is no longer purely top-down; it emerges from a dynamic co-production between state narratives, platform affordances, and public emotions. Governance is enacted subtly through emotional guidance, algorithmic visibility, participatory cues, and discursive standardization, while overt censorship persists in the background. At the same time, citizens are active participants: they use nationalist discourse to express identity, perform loyalty, reshape official narratives, and voice critique. In this system, the public and the state co-produce political meaning, creating fragmented yet structured nationalist expressions that circulate within a platformized governance model. This highlights a form of participatory propaganda, where control is affective and publics negotiate legitimacy, belonging, and authority through digital nationalism. While the book focuses on China, it also provides insights into the broader dynamics of digital politics, affective governance, and authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes.

You can pre-order the book https://www.routledge.com/p/book/9781041308775, 20% Discount with code CISYCDNAG20, and I would be delighted if you share it with colleagues interested in digital politics, digital nationalism, propaganda, online participation, media, governance, and China. I also welcome feedback, discussion, and engagement with anyone working on related topics.

Connected Generations: Media, Communication, and Intergenerational Exchange in Contemporary Lives

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:13:17 GMT

September 17-18, 2026

Online

Deadline: May 15, 2026

ECREA 2026 Post-Conference

Organised by the ECREA Section Children, Youth and Media; ECREA TWG Aging and Communication; and CNSC – UOC research group

This post-conference explores intergenerationality in contemporary mediated lives, focusing on how different generations interact, learn, and communicate across evolving media environments. It brings together scholars and practitioners to reflect on research, practices, and policies related to intergenerational communication. Topics include intergenerational research approaches, media use across age groups, digital literacy and inclusion, family communication, and critical perspectives on ageism and generational stereotypes.

Call for Papers

Abstract deadline: 15 May 2026

Notification: 15 July 2026

Submission form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfKci7psWj6RDZqq1Qo6Sn8Hxwxag_2F58iZirLGJKR1bmEkQ/viewform?pli=1

More info: https://symposium.uoc.edu/149878/detail/connected-generations-media-communication-and-intergenerational-exchange-in-contemporary-lives-17-1.html

Visiting Researchers – Short Scientific Stays

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:11:57 GMT

CICANT

CICANT – Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies (https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/) invites applications from international researchers affiliated with foreign higher education institutions or research centres for short-term scientific stays in Portugal. These visits aim to foster international collaboration, strengthen research networks, and promote interdisciplinary knowledge exchange in the fields of communication, media, arts, and digital technologies. The stays may take place in Lisbon or Porto and should have a duration ranging from a minimum of seven to a maximum of fifteen days.

CICANT researchers work across disciplinary boundaries, drawing on approaches from communication sciences and the arts to address the challenges posed by ongoing digital and technological transformations. Research developed at the centre explores how change emerges through the interplay between technologies, materials, and social imaginaries, as well as issues related to cultural participation and socio-cultural transformation. Additional areas of focus include populism, extremism, and contemporary forms of civic engagement, alongside critical approaches to identities, cultural and creative processes, and practices. These activities frequently involve practice-based research, with a strong emphasis on knowledge transfer through the production and dissemination of content and technologies relevant to diverse target audiences, as well as close articulation with existing doctoral programmes.

Research at CICANT is organised into the following main thematic strands: Media, Society and Literacies, and Media Arts, Creative Industries and Technologies. These strands are operationalised through three Research and Learning Communities (ReLeCos): FLAME – Futures of Literacies, Audiences, Media and Democracy; MACIT – Media Arts, Culture and Creative Industries and Media Technologies; and SUST_MEDIA – Media and Transformations for a Sustainable Future. Each of these communities integrates several laboratories that are responsible for organising research and training initiatives, with a strong emphasis on the involvement of doctoral and, whenever possible, master’s students.

Selected Visiting Researchers will be integrated into CICANT’s research environment and will have access to a shared workspace for researchers. They will also benefit from access to the University’s infrastructures and resources in support of the objectives of their stay. Visiting researchers are expected to actively engage with the centre’s activities, including presenting their work in the form of a seminar or workshop, and exploring opportunities for future collaboration, including joint publications and research projects.

Applicants must be affiliated with a non-Portuguese institution and should hold a doctoral degree or, in duly justified cases, be advanced doctoral candidates. They must demonstrate a research profile aligned with CICANT’s areas of activity and present a solid academic track record.

Applications must be submitted in English and should include a curriculum vitae (maximum five pages), a research proposal or work plan (maximum three pages) outlining the objectives, planned activities, expected outcomes, and relevance to CICANT’s research areas, a motivation letter, and an indication of the preferred period of stay. A letter of support or expression of interest from a CICANT researcher may be included and is encouraged.

Applicants will be evaluated based on the scientific quality and relevance of the proposed work, the applicant’s academic profile and experience, alignment with CICANT’s strategic priorities, and the potential for collaboration and impact.

Applications must be submitted electronically in PDF format by email to cicant@lusofona.pt indicating in the subject: Call for Visiting Researchers (2026) no later than 18:00 (Lisbon time) until the 15 of June 2026. Results will be communicated by email.

The host institution will provide a grant of €1,500.00 to support travel and accommodation costs associated with the stay.

Please note that visiting researchers remain responsible for arranging their travel, accommodation, and insurance unless otherwise specified. An official invitation letter will be issued to selected candidates, and the visit must take place within the agreed period.

For additional queries: cicant@ulusofona.pt

HMN Seminar: Methods, Storytelling, and Generative AI

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:10:00 GMT

October 6-9 2026

Aarhus University, Sandbjerg Estate

Deadline: June 15, 2026

The aim of this interdisciplinary scholarly retreat is to bring together researchers from all fields working with the intersection of AI and storytelling to reflect on and discuss how we study narratives that are no longer authored, circulated, or experienced exclusively by humans.

New practices of storytelling are emerging and existing ones are transformed with the popular uptake of LLM-based chatbots across professional, public, and recreational settings. Today, LLM-infused storytelling impacts all forms of textual practice: from art and creative writing to journalism, politics, and public debate over marketing, SoMe, and influencer culture to everyday conversations, therapy, and intimate interactions, to name a few. For scholars working with narratives, these developments pose fundamental challenges, several of which revolve around questions of method. We invite contributions that address issues of methodology in this evolving landscape of human-machine narration.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

How can existing qualitative methods (e.g., close reading, positioning analysis, rhetorical analysis, interviews) and existing quantitative methods be adapted or revised to meet these new narrative practices?
How can narrative theory account for human–machine co-creation?
How can we analyze the ways in which interactions with LLM-based chatbots transform the generation and reception of core narrative elements such as story, discourse, and narrative act?
What kind of data do we need and what analytical approaches can be developed to understand narration with and to chatbots?
How do we analyze the way LLM-platform infrastructures (e.g., training data, guardrails, alignments) shape or create narrative practices?
How can core story-related concepts within narrative theory, literary theory, rhetoric, journalism studies, psychology, linguistics, and media studies such as ‘intentionality’, ‘causality’, ‘agency’, ‘purpose’, ‘author’, ‘meaning’, and ‘origin’ be rethought and investigated empirically in light of the current transformation?
What forms of data, evidence, and interpretation emerge through human-machine storytelling?
How do we work, critically and reflected, from a starting point of corporate and technological black boxing by Big Tech?
How can the interdisciplinary development of methods to unpack AI-storytelling be pursued and ensured?

To start answering questions such as these, the seminar invites for contributions that may be exploratory or programmatic, fully formed or work in progress; the format is based around 30 minutes presentations from each participant. We hope the seminar will lead into a publication on methods, storytelling, and generative AI. Confirmed seminar participants and speakers are Alexandra Georgakopoulou (King’s College, UK) and Torsa Ghosal (California State University, US).

Practical information

Seminar dates: 6-9 October 2026
Abstract submission deadline: 15 June 2026
Notification of acceptance: 25 June 2026

The seminar is free and all accommodation expenses are covered. Travel expenses must be covered individually.

Submission: Send abstract (max 250 words) and a short bio (max. 100 words) to norsi@cc.au.dk

Organisers: Associate Professor Stefan Iversen, Assistant Professor Ann-Katrine S. Nielsen, Postdoc Pernille Meyer, all Aarhus University, Denmark

Funding: The seminar is funded by the research project GAITS (IRDF 2026–2030)

This HMN Seminar (short for Human-Machine narration) is organized by GAITS (https://projects.au.dk/gaits) and takes place at the Sandbjerg Estate in Southern Denmark October 6-9, 2026. It welcomes a limited number of participants to allow for in-depth discussions and shared conceptual development. The seminar is free and all accommodation expenses are covered. Travel expenses must be covered individually.

Apply by sending a brief bio and a 250-word abstract, describing your ongoing work with methods, storytelling, and generative AI to Stefan Iversen (norsi@cc.au.dk) no later than June 15, 2026.

Does online regulation work for children? Accounting for child rights impacts in the new regulatory era

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:39:00 GMT

May 14, 2026 (6:30 - 8:00 PM, followed by drinks)

LSE & online

A public lecture by the DFC

Major online safety regulations and legislation are now in force across the UK and EU. Platforms have new duties, regulators have new powers, and expectations are high. But what has actually changed for children?

Bringing together leading voices from regulation, legal scholarship and child rights, as well as new research evidence, the event will reflect on how regulation reshapes platform design, governance and accountability in practice.

Speakers:

Steve Wood, PrivacyX Consulting, former Deputy at the Information Commissioners's Office (ICO) will present new research, followed by responses from the panel members:
Baroness Beeban Kidron, Crossbench Peer, House of Lords, UK Parliament and Chair of the Management Committee at the Digital Futures for Children centre
Professor Orla Lynskey, Chair of Law and Technology at UCL
Professor Lorna Woods, OBE, Emeritus Professor of Internet Law at the University of Essex

Chair: Sonia Livingstone, Professor at the Department of Media and Communications, LSE and Director of the Digital Futures for Children centre

Steve Wood: “The research shows that regulation has yet to drive systemic change in safety and privacy by design for children. Instead, platforms are investing more in parental controls than in default protections. At the same time, we observe a rise in age assurance measures and early regulatory effects on AI services used by children.”

More information & free registration: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/events/child-rights-regulation

Recent from the DFC in case you missed it:

African children's rights in relation to the digital environment: child-informed provocations to guide digital policy and practice - https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/our-work/African-childrens-rights

The impact of General comment No. 25 in the UNCRC monitoring process and around the world: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/our-work/impact-gc25

DFC annual research insights day blog overview: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2026/04/14/childrens-rights-in-the-digital-environment-have-been-defined-now-they-need-defending/

Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning: Language, Images and Interpretation in the Digital Age

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:56:17 GMT

Edited volume (Anthem Press) by Ester Cristaldi

Deadline: June 30, 2026

Chapter proposals are invited for the edited volume Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning: Language, Images and Interpretation in the Digital Age, under contract with Anthem Press.

The volume examines artificial intelligence as a cultural, semiotic, social and media phenomenon. Rather than approaching AI only as a technical system or computational tool, the book investigates how AI participates in the production, circulation and transformation of meaning in contemporary digital culture.

The central premise of the volume is that AI does not simply process information. It increasingly mediates how people write, read, see, classify, imagine, remember and interpret the world. AI systems generate texts and images, organise visibility, shape public attention, classify social subjects, predict behaviour and participate in the construction of cultural narratives.

The book is grounded in semiotics and linguistics, but it also welcomes interdisciplinary perspectives from cultural studies, media and communication studies, media sociology, digital sociology, digital humanities, visual culture, platform studies, critical data studies, journalism studies, environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and related fields.

Topics

Possible topics include:

AI, language and meaning
Large language models and linguistic authority
AI and language inequality
AI-generated images and visual culture
Synthetic media and visual disinformation
AI, public trust and the crisis of mediation
AI, platforms and public attention
Algorithmic visibility and digital inequality
AI, datafication and social classification
AI, creativity and cultural production
AI, cultural labour and the creative industries
AI, archives and cultural memory
AI, embodiment, interfaces and everyday experience
AI, environment, infrastructure and digital materiality
AI, interpretation and cultural authority
AI, media ecologies and affective publics
AI, memory, archives and the digital humanities

Submission Guidelines

Interested contributors are invited to submit:

a provisional chapter title;
an abstract of approximately 250–300 words;
a short biographical note of approximately 100 words;
institutional affiliation and contact details.

Full chapters will be expected to be approximately 6,000–8,000 words, including references.

Timeline

Proposal submission deadline: 30 June 2026
Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2026
Full chapter submission: 30 November 2026
Editorial feedback: January 2027
Revised chapter submission: 28 February 2027
Final manuscript preparation: March–April 2027

Submission

Chapter proposals should be sent to:

Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi

Üsküdar University

mariapia.cristaldi @uskudar. edu.tr

Please include “Chapter Proposal – Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning” in the subject line.

Contact Information

Ester Cristaldi, Üsküdar University, mariapia.cristaldi @uskudar.edu.tr

Contact Email: mariapia.cristaldi@uskudar.edu.tr

IAMCR Webinar "Media and Disability": Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:50:55 GMT

May 13, 2026

This webinar aims to provide a much-needed focus on disability studies and media in Africa and to share critical insights from the works of various scholars and practitioners who focus on disability and media in Africa while introducing and centering important voices from African scholarship on disability and media.

Speakers will focus on topics such as “Between Tragedy and Miracles: Personal reflections on encountering blindness narratives in media and the development of authentic identity”, “Community Media as a Tool for Disability Empowerment in Rural Africa”, “The role of the media in shaping attitudes about albinism in Sierra Leone” as well as “Disability, Normalcy, Difference, and Eugenic Thinking”.

Sponsored by the Inclusive Communication and People with Disabilities (ICO) Working Group, this webinar creates a space to share work, identify gaps and spotlight important contributions in African disability studies and media scholarship.

When: Wednesday, 13 May 2026 @ 11:00 UTC / 12h00 London / 13h00 Paris / 14h00 Nairobi / 16h30 Kolkata / 19h00 Beijing / 21h00 Brisbane. The event will last 2 hours.

Pre-registration is required by 11 May. Register at https://iamcr.org/webinars/register-media-and-disability

Sponsored by: IAMCR's Inclusive Communication and People with Disabilities (ICO) Working Group

Organisers

Ngozi Marion Emmanuel, Research Assistant, Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, Birmingham City University, UK
Lorenzo Dalvit, Professor of Digital Media and Cultural Studies, School of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa
Bimbo Fafowora, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa

Moderator

Ngozi Marion Emmanuel, Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, Birmingham City University, UK

For more, see at https://iamcr.org/webinars/media-and-disability

Teaching AI: Syllabi, Pedagogy, and Best Practices in Higher Education

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:44:07 GMT

A Call for Book Chapter Proposals

Deadline: May 15, 2026

We are pleased to share this call for book chapter proposals for Teaching AI, to be published open access by EdTech Books. Abstracts (250 words) are due May 15, 2026. Authors will be notified no later than May 29, 2026. Accepted chapters will be due by July 1, 2026. The book will be published in Fall 2026. Full details are below, but please feel free to contact us with questions or to submit your proposal at rferdig@gmail.com.

We recognize this is an ambitious timeline. However, because each chapter follows a structured template and draws directly from courses you are already teaching, we believe the turnaround is manageable. Accepted authors will receive the full template upon notification and can expect chapters to run approximately 4,000-6,000 words.

Best, Richard E. Ferdig (Kent State University), Richard Hartshorne (U. Central Florida), Enrico Gandolfi (KSU), Laurie O. Campbell (UCF), and Jennifer Petit (KSU)

Purpose

Artificial intelligence is not new. Faculty across computer science, cognitive science, information systems, engineering, and related fields have been teaching AI for decades, building courses, developing pedagogical approaches, and preparing students for a world increasingly shaped by intelligent systems. What has changed in recent years is not the existence of AI but its visibility, its accessibility, and its reach. AI is now part of nearly every discipline and nearly every conversation about the future of education, work, and society.

And yet, despite this breadth, we do not always share what we know. Syllabi go unread beyond individual institutions. Pedagogical decisions made through years of trial and error stay locked in one classroom. Faculty building new AI courses, often under significant institutional pressure and with little time, are reinventing wheels that their colleagues across campus or across the world have already built.

The goal of Teaching AI is to fix that. This edited collection brings together faculty who teach AI (in any discipline, at any level, in any context) to share their syllabi, their teaching strategies, their hard-won best practices, and their vision for where AI education is headed. The result will be a single, rich, open-access resource for anyone teaching AI or thinking about doing so.

This is not a collection about AI in the abstract. It is a collection about the concrete, practical, and deeply human work of teaching AI to students. We are as interested in the instructor who has been teaching machine learning since the 1990s as we are in the instructor who launched an AI literacy course last semester. Both have something essential to contribute.

Each chapter follows a shared template and includes multiple components: course purpose and objectives, disciplinary context, pedagogical approach, AI ethics and academic integrity, course texts and technologies, assignments, an expanded course outline, best practices, and future directions. Chapters will be organized by content area, and that organization will emerge from the submissions themselves.

For a sense of what this format looks like in practice, we encourage prospective contributors to review our related collection, Teaching the Game (Volumes 1 and 2), available free of charge at Volume 1 and Volume 2. While that collection focuses on gaming education, the chapter format, voice, and scope are directly analogous to what we are building here.

Areas We Especially Welcome

Any standalone AI course (i.e., discipline-specific or designed for a general audience) is eligible for consideration. We welcome submissions from institutions around the world and across every level of instruction within higher education.

To ensure the collection reflects the full breadth of how AI is being taught, we are particularly interested in courses that represent the following areas. This is not an exhaustive list but rather an invitation. If your course does not appear here, that is not a reason to hesitate. It may be exactly what this collection needs.

AI literacy and general education. Courses designed for students across majors that build foundational understanding of what AI is, how it works, and what it means for society. We welcome both introductory survey courses and more advanced treatments of AI for non-specialists.
AI ethics, policy, and governance. Courses centered on the societal, legal, and ethical dimensions of AI (i.e., bias, accountability, transparency, regulation) and the responsibilities of those who build and deploy intelligent systems.
AI and human interaction. Courses exploring how humans and AI systems work together (i.e., human-centered AI design, explainability, trust, accessibility, and the user experience of intelligent systems).
Generative AI and creativity. Courses built around generative tools and their implications for art, music, writing, design, and other creative disciplines (including both technical and critical approaches).
AI for soft skills. Courses that address how AI and generative AI can be used to develop and strengthen competencies such as collaboration, teamwork, self-efficacy, and empathy (etc.) across disciplines and professions.
AI and the workforce. Courses focused on how AI is transforming professional practice, career preparation, and workplace dynamics across industries.
AI and society. Courses that examine AI's broader cultural, political, and societal impacts, including surveillance, misinformation, democracy, and questions of power and equity.
Discipline-specific AI. Courses that examine what AI means within a particular field (i.e., health, law, education, business, journalism, the arts, and beyond). Teaching AI in nursing looks fundamentally different from teaching AI in computer science or communications, and those differences are exactly what this collection wants to capture.
Technical and applied AI. Courses focused on building, training, and deploying AI systems (i.e., machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and related areas) with particular interest in how instructors make technical content accessible and pedagogically meaningful.
International and global perspectives. AI is developed, deployed, and experienced differently across cultures, regions, and political contexts. We actively encourage submissions from institutions outside North America and Western Europe, and from courses that engage critically with global dimensions of AI.

One important note: we are specifically seeking standalone AI courses. These are courses in which AI is the primary subject. Courses that include an AI module or unit within a broader curriculum are outside the scope of this collection.

Details

To be considered, please submit a 250-word abstract by May 15, 2026, that includes:

Author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), and email address(es)
Title of course
Course keywords: content area, level (e.g., undergraduate, graduate, professional development), and delivery mode (e.g., online, face-to-face, hybrid)
Brief description of the course, including its context, how long it has been taught, and any ways it has evolved in response to recent developments in AI

Full chapters will be due July 1, 2026. Accepted authors will receive a complete updated chapter template. The book will be published open access with Creative Commons licensing by EdTech Books.

Please send proposals and any questions to rferdig@gmail.com.

AI, Algorithmic Media, and Digital Governance: Power, Control, and Technological Transformation

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:37:05 GMT

Global Media and China

Deadline: May 20, 2026

We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a forthcoming special issue titled “AI, Algorithmic Media, and Digital Governance: Power, Control, and Technological Transformation,” to be published in the journal Global Media and China.

The accelerating integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into digital infrastructures represents a profound transformation in contemporary media environments and governance systems. AI-driven platforms, algorithmic recommendation systems, and automated content moderation increasingly shape how information circulates, how public discourse is structured, and how political authority is exercised across different societies. These developments raise important questions about algorithmic governance, digital sovereignty, media regulation, and the broader political implications of AI-mediated communication.

This special issue seeks to advance interdisciplinary scholarship examining the evolving relationships between AI technologies, media systems, and governance practices. We welcome contributions that critically explore how algorithmic systems influence media production, platform governance, public communication, and political power across diverse institutional and geopolitical contexts.

We invite empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions from scholars working in communication and media studies, political science, digital governance, sociology, science and technology studies, and related disciplines. Submissions may focus on China, or adopt comparative and transnational perspectives.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Algorithmic governance, digital statecraft, and political authority
AI-driven propaganda, information manipulation, and computational misinformation
State-led AI governance and digital surveillance regimes
Platform politics and the political economy of algorithmic systems
Public perceptions of AI and the politics of digital rights
AI infrastructures, technological sovereignty, and global asymmetries in digital power
Smart cities, Internet of Things systems, and algorithmic governance in public administration

Key dates

Abstract submission deadline: 20 May 2026
Notification of invitations for full papers: 1 June 2026
Full paper submission deadline: 30 October 2026

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words to the guest editors with the subject line “GMAC Special Issue Submission.”

Guest Editors:

Dechun Zhang, University of Copenhagen (dezh@hum.ku.dk)

Weiai Xu, University of Massachusetts Amherst (weiaixu@umass.edu)

Han Lin, Soochow University (linhan741@gmail.com)

Full details of the Call for Papers can be found here:

https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/GCH/Algorithmic%20Media_CFP-1773117974170.pdf

We would greatly appreciate it if you could circulate this call among colleagues, research groups, and academic networks who may be interested.

Thank you for your attention, and we look forward to receiving your submissions.

ICA Pre-conference 2026: Children’s rights under pressure in a digital world

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:30:00 GMT

June 4, 2026, 8:30–12:00 (UTC+2)

Cape Town, South Africa (in person)

Deadline: May 4, 2026

We are delighted to announce that registration is officially open for the ICA 2026 pre-conference: https://www.icahdq.org/event/Childrens (deadline, 4 May 2026)

Why attend?

This half-day, workshop-style pre-conference will bring together scholars and practitioners to explore how research can inform policy, regulation and child rights-respecting design in digital environments.

Keynote Speaker – Professor Ann Skelton

University of Pretoria & University of Leiden, Former Chair, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

What to expect:

The programme encompasses an exceptional breadth of scholarship relating to children’s rights, ranging from AI governance, platform power and digital labour to youth activism, digital violence, age-based bans, family mediation, gaming ecosystems and data protection. The conference discussions will be grounded in rich empirical work from across Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Australia.

Registration Details

Fee: $35

Fee waivers available for students and participants from UN third-tier countries. If this applies to you, please email us to obtain a waiver: info@info@dfc-centre.net

ICA membership or main conference registration not required

About

We invite scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and civil society actors to join us for the preconference to discuss how research can guide policy, regulation, and digital design, and how Global South perspectives can strengthen and reshape international debates within the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and General comment No. 25.

The pre-conference is organised by Digital Futures for Children, a joint research centre at LSE with 5Rights Foundation, in association with the ICA divisions Children, Adolescence and Media and Communication Law and Policy. For further information, visit https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/events/ica/preconference

ECC2026: Explore the social program!

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:16:28 GMT

Alongside the academic program, participants are invited to take part in a carefully curated program of guided tours and cultural events, designed to offer a deeper and more distinctive engagement with Brno. Extending beyond standard sightseeing, the program provides access to experiences that are rarely available to visitors: the tours cover key highlights of the city, but they also offer a unique look at some of Brno's architectural marvels, including the functionalist Villa Tugendhat or the city water tanks. Cultural events include English-friendly theatre performance, film screenings in a functionalist church, and a workshop on sustainable analog photography. These events are designed to offer not only cultural insight but also access to spaces and experiences that are often not easily available, even to local residents.

Participants can sign up for these activities during the conference registration process. As capacity is limited and many of these events tend to fill up quickly, we strongly encourage you to secure your spot early, before 31 May 2026.

More information about the program is available here: https://ecrea2026brno.eu/tours-culture-workshops/

Media in Motion Workshop: In-Flight and In-Car Entertainment Systems

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:06:50 GMT

September 14, 2026

Utrecht University (the Netherlands)

Deadline: May 29, 2026

Organized by Karin van Es (Utrecht University), Ramon Lobato (Swinburne University), and Mike Wayne (Erasmus University).

This workshop explores media distribution in connected vehicles. Planes, trains and automobiles have been electronically mediated environments since the appearance of car radios in the 1930s. Yet recent developments in connected and autonomous transport have introduced an expanded array of media experiences, interfaces, and streaming integrations. This prompts new questions for media research: Who controls vehicular screens? What content is available–or restricted? What user experiences are offered and normalised? How are such screens regulated, and to what effect? In addressing these questions, the workshop approaches digital media as mobile and context-dependent rather than primarily domestic or platform-bound. Our aim is to relocate television, radio and other media within infrastructures of mobility, where viewing practices, technologies, and meanings are reconfigured.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Histories of car radio, mobile television, in-flight entertainment, and other transit media
Platform strategies of manufacturers, airlines, and other transport providers
Prominence, discoverability and curation of media interfaces in seat-back screens and dashboards
User experience, affordances and requirements of in-vehicle entertainment
Jurisdiction and regulatory challenges arising from cross-border and in-transit viewing
Content licensing, territorial rights, portability, and distribution models in mobile and transnational contexts
Connectivity, onboard systems, streaming technologies, and the material and infrastructural conditions enabling (or constraining) viewing in transit
Advertising, targeting and monetization strategies shaped by mobility, temporality, and location-specific viewing

We welcome theoretically grounded and empirically oriented contributions from media studies, law, design, sociology, mobility studies and related fields that critically engage with the workshop’s themes.

Submission details:

Abstracts of 350 words are due by 29 May 2026 along with a 100 word bio and should be sent to mediainmotionworkshop@gmail.com

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 5 June, and accepted authors will be invited to submit extended abstracts of 1,500 words by 5 September. The workshop will be held on 14 September at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. A special issue is planned following the workshop. We also welcome expressions of interest from scholars who cannot attend the workshop but would like to be considered for the special issue. Please feel free to reach out to the organisers by email: mediainmotionworkshop@gmail.com

Histories of publishing on media, for History of Media Studies

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:46:33 GMT

History of Media Studies

Deadline: September 15, 2026

History of Media Studies solicits proposals for a special section on the histories of publishing in the media, communication, and film studies fields. The focus of the special section is on the role of publishers—both commercial and nonprofit—in these fields’ development. We are keen to highlight the contributions of publishing houses and publication initiatives from around the world, including those beyond the Anglophone North Atlantic.

Most existing histories of the media, communication, and film studies fields take the publication context of the works they survey for granted. The premise of the special section is that specific publishers—and the wider world of academic publishing—have made a difference in the development of local, national, and subfield traditions of scholarship. Very few works of dedicated history have attended to these publishing ventures. The special section will provide a forum for new accounts, in conversation with these fields’ intellectual and institutional histories.

Proposals of around 1000 words, including references, should be sent to hms@mediastudies.press, with the subject line: Histories of Publishing. The deadline for submitting proposals is September 15, 2026. Please reach out if you have any questions or ideas.

Proposals may be submitted in English or Spanish, the two languages that History of Media Studies publishes.

We expect most contributions to be research articles (generally 14,000 words or fewer), but we will also consider other formats, including research notes, commentaries, interviews/oral histories, overlay re-publications, and contextualized archival materials; please see our Author Guidelines for more details: https://hms.mediastudies.press/author-guidelines

Suggested approaches include, but are not limited to:

case studies of media-related publishing houses
accounts of small and independent presses, as incubators of heterodox media scholarship
treatments of significant commercial publishers (e.g., Routledge)
studies of influential book series, including translation series
accounts of institutional publishing (e.g., UNESCO or CIESPAL)
histories of the publishing initiatives of scholarly associations, including association-affiliated journals
self-publishing and informal circulation in activist media scholarship
the role of translation and translated editions
treatments of the relationship between books and journal portfolios within presses
historical accounts of the political economy of publishing and its effects on the field
reflections on the role of editors and editing as mostly invisible intellectual labor
accounts of publishing initiatives beyond the Anglophone world, including in Latin America
female-run initiatives, editors, and publishers

Please reach out to hms@mediastudies.press with any questions.

History of Media Studies is a peer-reviewed, scholar-run, diamond OA journal dedicated to scholarship on the history of research, education, and reflective knowledge about media and communication—as expressed through academic institutions; through commercial, governmental, and non-governmental organizations; and through “alter-traditions” of thought and practice often excluded from the academic mainstream. The journal publishes high-quality, original articles, reviews, and commentary on the history of this inter- and extra-disciplinary area as it has intersected with other fields in the social sciences and humanities—and with social practices beyond the academy.

Two PhDs positions on Persuasive AI Futures

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:42:19 GMT

University of St. Gallen

The Media and Culture Research Unit at the MCM Institute, University of St. Gallen is hiring:

We are seeking two highly motivated PhD candidates to join an exciting new SNSF-funded research project investigating the persuasive power of communicative AI (comAI) in the everyday lives of adolescents and families across Europe.

The Project

Chatbots, virtual assistants, and AI writing tools are becoming a normal part of daily life for young people across Europe. Yet we know surprisingly little about how these technologies actually influence adolescents - their attitudes, decisions, and relationships - in the context of everyday family life. This four-year cross-national ethnographic study investigates the persuasive power of comAI among adolescents aged 13–18 and their families across Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy. It examines AI influence along three dimensions: the interpersonal dimension, exploring how young people perceive AI as a social actor and navigate questions of agency and relationship; the social and cultural dimension, focusing on how families respond to AI-generated disinformation, bias, and errors; and the technical dimension, examining how families understand emotional design, data profiling, and manipulative by-design features in comAI. Findings will inform AI regulation and digital literacy programmes across Europe.

The DOK Programme

Successful candidates will be enrolled in the PhD Programme in Organisation Studies and Cultural Theory (DOK) at the University of St. Gallen. The DOK programme integrates the university's core and contextual subjects in an interdisciplinary form of doctoral studies, bringing together organisational research and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS). The programme is particularly suited to research that engages with complex social, cultural, and technological questions from multiple disciplinary perspectives, making it an ideal home for this project.

What We Offer

A fully funded PhD position (100%) for four years supervised by Prof. Veronica Barassi, starting in September 2026.
Enrolment in the DOK programme at the University of St. Gallen, one of Europe's leading universities.
Integration into the Media & Culture research unit (=mcm3) at the Institute of Media and Communications Management Institute, a dynamic, international, and interdisciplinary research team. See more information about us here: https://mcm.unisg.ch/en/das-institut/lehrstuehle-und-forschungsbereiche/mcm3/.
Access to a growing network of researchers through the PersuasiveAI Futures Network

Your Profile

Master's degree in communication sciences, social sciences, political sciences, or a related field.
Proficiency in English and fluency in at least one or two of the project languages (German, French, or Italian) is mandatory.
Willingness and ability to spend extended periods conducting fieldwork in one of the following cities: Berlin, Paris, or Milan.
Knowledge of qualitative and ethnographic research methodologies is a strong advantage.
Curiosity, intellectual independence, and a genuine interest in the social impacts of comAI.

How to Apply:

Application must be submitted by 4 May. In person interviews will be held by 15 June, with decisions communicated by the end of that month.

Please send along:

A cover letter explaining who you are, your background, and why you are interested in the PhD position, including your level of language knowledge and your connection to one of the ethnographic areas
A one-page document outlining your potential PhD project
Your CV
A writing sample (MA thesis, article, etc.), if available but not mandatory

APPLICATION LINK: https://jobs.unisg.ch/offene-stellen/two-fully-funded-phd-positions-m-w-d/53f14753-3d80-4877-acfe-1acc0b62e409

For information about the job opening or general questions, please contact philip.disalvo@unisg.ch (applications must be submitted through the application link, applications coming via email won't be considered).

Call for Mentors: ECC 2026 Poster Session & Mentoring

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:41:12 GMT

We invite advanced scholars as well as early-career researchers with a completed PhD to serve as mentors at the poster session of the ECREA European Communication Conference 2026 in Brno.

This session is designed to support Master’s students and early-stage PhD candidates by combining traditional poster presentations with personalized mentorship.

Mentors will be matched with presenters based on shared research interests.

As a mentor, you will:

• Provide feedback on the poster draft ahead of the conference;

• (Ideally) attend the poster session during the conference and engage in discussion with but not limited to your assigned mentee;

• Meet with the mentee during or after the conference (in-person or online) to offer career guidance and/or help mentees refine their research.

After introducing the mentor and mentee to each other via e-mail in May, it will be the mentee’s responsibility to reach out to the mentor, ask for the poster draft feedback, and arrange the mentoring meeting.

Please express your interest in serving as a mentor by April 30 using the following form: https://forms.office.com/e/U3XhhtYaT6

We will get back to you in May to match you with a mentee.

If you have any questions, please contact Lucie Čejková: luccej@fss.muni.cz

Thank you for supporting this initiative and helping us create an inclusive and nurturing environment at ECC 2026!

Scientific publication and academic capitalism

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:33:15 GMT

Comunicação e Sociedade, Estudos em Comunicação, Media & Jornalismo, Observatorio (Special issue)

Deadline: September 30, 2026

Four Portuguese free-to-read and free-to-publish journals in the field of Communication Studies (published by public universities) – Comunicação e Sociedade, Estudos em Comunicação, Media & Jornalismo, and Observatorio (OBS*) – have decided to jointly launch a special issue with the aim of fostering reflection on the policies and logics of sharing scientific knowledge.

With the aim of charting a counter-trend path (and within an unprecedented collaborative initiative), we seek submissions that interrogate the material and institutional conditions of conducting research in Communication Studies, including the role of digital platforms in the circulation of knowledge, the limits and potential of open access, and the tensions between quantitative evaluation and the substantive quality of reflection and critical thought.

Suggested Topics

Marketization of science and academic capitalism;
Academic freedom and university autonomy;
Forms of cultural and organizational resistance;
The nature and reconfiguration of scientific reputation;
Science and language policies;
Academic and scientific rankings;
Oligopolies and scientific publishing;
Metrics, quantification, and impact;
Open access policies and repositories;
The impact of AI on scientific writing and review;
Invisibility, bias, and inequality in scientific citations;
Big Tech, platformization, and publishing ecosystems;
Algorithmic regimes of visibility and classification;
Research independence and innovation agendas;
Research assessment, DORA, and alternatives.

Full manuscripts may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

Submission Period: April 20 to September 30, 2026.

Publication Period: 1st Semester of 2027.

More information here:

https://obs.obercom.pt/index.php/obs/announcement/view/3

https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/mj/announcement/view/352

https://revistacomsoc.pt/.../revist.../announcement/view/128

https://ojs.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/ec/announcement/view/99

De la forma-ritual a la experiencia corporal

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:10:50 GMT

Ariadna Moreno Pellejero

The book analyses the cinematographic oeuvre of the Belgian director Chantal Akerman, seeking to address a fundamental question: in what way does Akerman’s cinema reach the spectator’s body, activating something that did not exist prior to the encounter with the image? Situated at the intersection of aesthetics, film studies, and contemporary feminist film theory, the book proposes an engagement with the ritual dimension of cinema and intimacy, capable of connecting with the audience’s bodily experience. Furthermore, the essay establishes a correspondence between Akerman’s work and that of other filmmakers operating within the personal realm, where experimental, documentary, and fictional modes hybridise.

Please find attached links with further information and a preview of the text: https://puz.unizar.es/3207-de-la-forma-ritual-a-la-experiencia-corporal-el-cine-de-chantal-akerman.html

Books available for review from Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Televisio

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:08:03 GMT

The Spring 2026 list of books available to review in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television has been updated on the IAMHIST website: https://iamhist.net/journal/#books-review

Should you be interested in reviewing a particular title, please contact the book review editor at Veronica.Johnson@outlook.ie giving details about your own research and why you are interested in reviewing the book you have chosen.

ALAIC Summer School: Call for ECREA Representative

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 10:37:59 GMT

August 18-21, 2026

Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil

Deadline: April 30, 2026

ALAIC Holds its 12th Summer School

Continuing a long-standing partnership, the organization counts on the participation of ECREA researchers in the activities.

From August 18th to 21st, the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (https://www2.ufjf.br/international/), Brazil, will host the 12th edition of the Summer School promoted by the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers (ALAIC).

The activities bring together undergraduate and graduate students in communication who can participate in person or online. The working languages are Portuguese and Spanish. In the coming weeks, a Call for Papers will be published with more information at www.alaic.org.

Continuing the long-standing relationship since the first edition of the ALAIC Summer School, the Latin American organization counts on the participation of at least one representative from ECREA in the program. The name of this researcher will be selected by the ECREA Governing Body.

If you are interested, please send us an email at info@ecrea.eu by April 30, 2026.

In addition, ALAIC offers 500 euros to support the participation of ECREA postgraduate students who are selected.

ECREA also supports the 1st World Summer School (WSS), scheduled to take place virtually from October 21st to 24th, resulting from a partnership between scientific associations and universities. The selection of postgraduate students will take place in May.

Senior teaching and research assistant (post-doc) in Communication and Media Research

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:59:01 GMT

University of Fribourg, Switzerland

We are seeking to fill a senior teaching and research assistant position (“maître-assistant”) in Communication and Media Research (teaching in French).

Workload: 40–50% (with the possibility of additional teaching responsibilities)

Location: Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Application deadlinee: April 30, 2026

Start date: September 1, 2026, or to be agreed upon

More information and applications: https://jobs.fr.ch/job/Fribourg2C-CH-MaC3AEtre-assistant-e-en-Sciences-de-la-communication-&-des-mC3A9dias-Sari/1356507857/

ESports. Exploring Cultures, Practices, Pitfalls, and Possible Future Pathways

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:42:42 GMT

Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter

Deadline: April 15, 2026

Guest Editors

Jens F. Jensen, Aalborg University
Kenneth Holm Cortsen, University College Northern Denmark

Esports has rapidly evolved from a niche pastime into a global phenomenon that intersects with multiple dimensions of contemporary life. As a form of competitive gaming, it embodies elite performance, strategy, and digital dexterity. As an industry, it drives innovation, sponsorship, and media engagement, constituting a dynamic sector with substantial economic impact. As part of the experience economy, esports further offers immersive entertainment and community-driven events that redefine audience participation and co-creation.

Beyond its commercial and competitive aspects, esports is increasingly recognized as a powerful medium for learning, fostering competencies such as collaboration, problem-solving, and digital literacy. It also constitutes a vibrant cultural field, shaping identities, narratives, and social practices within digital leisure. Participation in esports—whether as players, spectators, content creators, or organizers—reflects broader transformations in how individuals engage with technology, play, and social interaction.

The approaches to esports as both an empirical field and an analytical object are highly diverse. T.L. Taylor’s work examines the cultural practices of esports and the aspirations associated with professional gamer identity (Taylor 2012). Svensson and Pargman analyse the sportification of esports, exploring how esports legitimizes itself as a sport (Svensson & Pargman 2024). Andy Miah investigates the olympification of esports, addressing whether and how esports may become an Olympic discipline. While these studies are interested in the practices and the potentials of esports, scholars such as Brett Hutchins link the emergence of esport to the sociocultural conditions of second, or reflexive, modernity (Hutchins 2008).

Lately Lu Zhouziang has documented “A History of Competitive Gaming” (2022) presenting an overall historical approach to esports. Further Anne Tjønnedal has edited “Social Issues in Esports” (2023) as a comprehensive research publication identifying important issues such as gender, mental health and integrity, diversity and inclusion.

Even though these approaches do not share the same theoretical or methodological framework, it is possible to understand esport both as a particular circuit of culture and as part of a broader circuit of culture (du Gay, 1996). This approach facilitates the analysis of how esports are represented, what identities are negotiated, what modes of consumption and production are currently dominant or marginal, and what regulatory frameworks are established and which regulations need to be formulated, realized, and policed.

This call invites interdisciplinary contributions that examine esports through lenses including, but not limited to, media studies, education, business, cultural studies, sociology, and game studies. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and practice-based papers that explore esports as a site of innovation, interaction, and influence in the digital age. This volume intends to explore issues such as:

How can the esports gaming experience be conceptualized and described?

• What is the significance of multimodal representation in shaping the esports experience?

• How does gender influence the cultural practices of esports?

• What are the elements in esports that contribute to toxicity and exclusion?

• What role can esports play in teaching and learning?

• What role does esports play in the continuity/discontinuity of the history of sport in general?

• What are the challenges of future esports practices in relation to game design, organization, economic structures, and regulation?

What are the constituent elements of esports ecosystems?

• How does match-fixing challenge esports?

• What key issues related to health and training are relevant to current as well as future esports practices and research studies?

• How are cross-media interactions and convergent media prac- tices relevant to the study of esports?

References

Crawford, Garry, Victoria K. Gosling & Ben Light. 2011. Online Gaming in Context. The social and cultural significance of online games. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

du Gay, Paul. 1996. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage.

Hofmann, Annette R. & Pascal Mamudou Camara. 2024. Critical Perspectives on Esports. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003383178

Hutchins, Brett. 2008. Signs of meta-change in second modernity: the growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games· New Media & Society Vol. 10 (6), p. 851-869. Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444808096248

Miah, Andy. 2017. Sport 2.0. Transforming Sports for a Digital World. Cambridge: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7441.001.0001

Rogers, Ryan ed. 2019. Understanding Esports. An Introduction to the Global Phenomenon. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books. https://doi.org/10.5771/9781498589819

Svensson, Daniel & Daniel Pargman (2024). Esports and Sportification. A View From Sweden. Hoffmann & Camara, eds.: Critical Perspectives on Esports. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003383178-6

Taylor,T.L. 2012. Raising the Stakes. E-sports and the professionalization of computer gaming. London: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8624.001.0001

Tjønndal, Anne, ed. (2023). Social Issues in Esports. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003258650

Zhouxiang, Lu (2022). A History of Competitive Gaming. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003095859

Practical information

Abstracts: 150 words
Full article: 3,000-3,500 words
Video essays: Max 7-12 minutes, accompanied by an academic text (1,000-1,500 words) that explicitly reflects on the scholarly/academic contribution. Videos must be original.

Abstracts and articles should be submitted to Annemette Helligsø (anhe@ikk.aau.dk). Detailed author guidelines and further information are available on the journal’s website: https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/ak

Video Essays

You are welcome to take the opportunity to produce a video essay following these guidelines:

Video essays must be a maximum of 7–12 minutes long and accompanied by an academic guiding text of between 1,000–1,500 words that clearly reflects on the publication’s scientific/academic contribution. Video essays must be original works of publishable quality within a strict scientific context and can take argumentative, expository, explanatory, documentary, performative, essayistic, poetic, symbolic (metaphoric), or artistic forms—or a combination of these. The guiding text must clearly explain the argument in the video essay and/or the insight the viewer can gain by watching and listening to it. This guiding text must follow the instructions in the article stylesheet.

Note: The European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires audiovisual media broadcasters to incorporate features such as closed captions and audio descriptions to make content accessible to people with hearing or visual impairments. Contributors to video essays are therefore obligated to include closed captions in all video essay submissions to meet these access requirements.

Video essays must be final and submitted as a separate mp4 video file. Academic Quarter supports only the publication and not the technical development of video essays, but contributors are welcome to discuss video essays in progress with the editors.

Video essays and the guiding text are reviewed together. The criteria for reviewing submissions are:

a The clarity of the argument (cogency).

b The technical and stylistic execution of the video material.

c The clarity of the guiding text.

Deadlines

Submission/review of abstracts: April 15, 2026
Response to authors on abstracts: May 1, 2026
Submission of articles/videos for peer review: July 17, 2026
Peer review returned to authors: September 15 2026
Resubmission of articles/videos after peer review: October 20, 2026
Layout/copy-editing: November 21, 2026
Publication: December 15, 2026

Model and the Reactor: AI as and against Environmental Media

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:57:06 GMT

Journal of Environmental Media (Special Issue)

Deadline: June 21, 2026

Guest Editors: Luciano Frizzera, Mónica Humeres, and Fenwick McKelvey.

Big AI’s demands for this world are becoming clearer. In 2023, Microsoft announced plans to build new data centers powered by nuclear energy to fuel energy-hungry models (Calma, 2023). Google and Amazon made similar announcements subsequently (da Silva, 2024; Olick, 2024). Plans to build nuclear-powered AI data centers clearly illustrate the scale and consequences of AI as a social blueprint – rendering clear “the choices (implicit or explicit) made in the course of technological innovation” and demanding reflection on “the grounds for making those choices wisely” (Winner, 1986, p. 18). This special issue invites interventions against the growing cyberphysical project of “Big AI” (van der Vlist et al., 2024) or “AI as platform” (Mahnke & Bagger, 2024).

This special issue questions the imbrication of AI and digital sovereignty at work in new articulations of technological nationalism (Charland, 1986; Couture & Toupin, 2019; Grohmann & Costa Barbosa, 2025; Medina, 2011). Theories of the digital sublime and charismatic technologies have long been used to legitimate technologies as social blueprints (Ames, 2019; Carey & Quirk, 1970; Mosco, 2004), but AI arrives at a moment of critical duress for social epistemologies usually found in journalism seem incapable or unable to counter the sociotechnical futures produced by big AI (Bareis & Katzenbach, 2021; Dandurand et al., 2023; Liebig et al., 2024; Valderrama Barragán et al., 2025). We encourage contributions that unite fragmented scholarship as a counterpoint to Big Tech’s global, competitive cyberphysical project (Lai et al., 2026; Salamanca, 2025).

AI’s social blueprint has a ghastly environmental toll that threatens environmental justice (Hogan, 2015; Pasek et al., 2023; Velkova, 2016). We welcome contributions that share findings and digital methods that expose AI’s global technological footprint with an emphasis on the Americas (South and North). Whereas the AI industry itself seeks to bound AI’s toll as merely another technological problem that becomes another benchmark (Jegham et al., 2025), we seek to push media studies, science and technology studies, and communication studies to develop new accounts of AI’s hold on the world.

We hope to move from nationalistic sovereignties to global solidarities. AI’s social blueprint has not developed unopposed; across the world, social movements have turned to fight the spread of toxic data centers and reimagine AI (Halper, 2026; Murphy, 2025; Pasek, 2023). These movements are important sites to theorize the articulations of new political movements and media activism (Baumann et al., 2025; Dunbar-Hester, 2009; Renzi, 2020). We also welcome engaged and speculative research on alternative AI infrastructures that may include local or regional infrastructure, the fediverse, frugal AI infrastructures, decentralized, and/or distributed infrastructures (Coleman, 2021; Gehl, 2025).

Finally, we welcome discussion of what public interest infrastructure would look like for AI. Public interest AI refers to “support those outcomes best serving the long-term survival and well-being of a social collective construed as a ‘public’” (Public Interest AI, n.d.). The Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest (2025), published after the Paris AI Summit, aims to “encourage a more comprehensive and inclusive design of AI in the public interest, in terms of technology, organization and institutions that serve different jurisdictions and communities in attaining similar success.” Public interest AI, however, is already a contentious term and not dissimilar to other terms, such as “AI for Good” or “Responsible AI,” that can act as ethics washing (Bourne, 2024; Wagner, 2018). Scholarly attention is required to define public interest AI as a critical concept advancing social and environmental justice.

Key Dates

13 April 2026 – Call for Papers
21 June 2026 – Deadline for abstracts submission
20 July 2026 – Notification of selected Proposals
18 October 2026 – Full paper submission deadline
Fall 2027 – Special issue publication

Submission Details

We aim to produce a diverse and balanced edition that includes researchers from Latin America. We encourage submissions in Spanish and Portuguese, as well as in English, for this special edition.

Please send a 300-words abstract with bibliographic references and a short biographical note to Luciano Frizzera (luciano.frizzera@me.com) by June 21, 2026.

If accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit a full article by October 18, 2026.

Accepted articles must not exceed 6000 words (including bibliography) and must be accompanied by 5 keywords, author name(s) and a 100-word max bio, institutional affiliation(s) and contact details.

Authors guidelines and further information about the journal are available here: intellectbooks.com/journal-of-environmental-media.

Articles will be submitted to double blind peer review. Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

The publication of this special issue is scheduled by fall 2027.

No payment required.

For any queries do not hesitate to contact the special issue co-guest editors.

Editors

Luciano Frizzera (luciano.frizzera@me.com) is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Guelph. He has a PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University and an MA in Digital Humanities from the University of Alberta. His primary research discusses the political economy of subjectivation driven by AI and digital platforms. He is also an experienced UX designer and web developer.

Mónica Humeres (monica.humeres@uchile.cl) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Communication at the University of Chile. She is also an Adjunct Researcher at the Millennium Nucleus for the Future of Artificial Intelligence (FAIR), an interdisciplinary research and creative group focused on the cultural, social, and environmental implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Fenwick McKelvey (fenwick.mckelvey@concordia.ca) is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. He leads Machine Agencies at the Milieux Institute. He has successfully organized a number of conferences and preconferences, including (un)Stable Diffusions: A two-day international symposium on AI’s publics, publicities, and publicizations at Milieux Institute, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

AI, Algorithmic Media, and Digital Governance (Global Media and China)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:50:00 GMT

Global Media and China

Deadline: May 20, 2026

We invite empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions from scholars working in communication and media studies, political science, digital governance, sociology, science and technology studies, and related disciplines. Submissions may focus on specific national or regional contexts, or adopt comparative and transnational perspectives.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Algorithmic governance, digital statecraft, and political authority
AI-driven propaganda, information manipulation, and computational misinformation
State-led AI governance and digital surveillance regimes
Platform politics and the political economy of algorithmic systems
Public perceptions of AI and the politics of digital rights
AI infrastructures, technological sovereignty, and global asymmetries in digital power
Smart cities, Internet of Things systems, and algorithmic governance in public administration

Key dates

Abstract submission deadline: 20 May 2026
Notification of invitations for full papers: 1 June 2026
Full paper submission deadline: 30 October 2026

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words to the guest editors with the subject line “GMAC Special Issue Submission.”

Guest Editors:

Dechun Zhang, University of Copenhagen (dezh@hum.ku.dk)
Weiai Xu, University of Massachusetts Amherst (weiaixu@umass.edu)
Han Lin, Soochow University (linhan741@gmail.com)

Full details of the Call for Papers can be found here: https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/GCH/Algorithmic%20Media_CFP-1773117974170.pdf

Nordic Manosphere Network. Inaugural Symposium 2026

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 08:00:00 GMT

September 17-18, 2026

Aarhus, Denmark

Deadline: April 17, 2026

The abstract submission deadline for the Inaugural Symposium of the Nordic Manosphere Network is fast approaching. We invite prospective contributors to submit their proposals promptly to ensure consideration.

Although research on the manosphere is expanding globally, Anglo-American perspectives remain dominant. Research into the manosphere in the Nordic countries is currently dispersed and somewhat under-researched. The Nordic Manosphere Network aims to change this by creating a collaborative, interdisciplinary space that brings manosphere researchers together to share and create future collaborations. The purpose of the Network is also to reflect on the Nordic specific cultures and societies that situate and influence Nordic manospheres in different ways, e.g. the Nordic welfare states, gender equality, state feminism and other cultural and societal issues that are specific to the region.

We invite submissions engaging with any aspect of the Nordic manosphere, including but not limited to:

Incel communities
Red-pill narratives
Tradwife discourses
Digital masculinities
Platform dynamics
Manosphere financing and business models
Anti-gender discourse
Overlap with the far-right
Feminist or intersectional approaches to these digital cultures

We especially encourage early-career scholars to contribute. For this, the NMN is able to facilitate limited traveling financial support via application.

Following the symposium, accepted abstracts will be published in a digital booklet, and participants will be invited to join regular online meetings designed to foster collaboration, peer support, and long-term research development. The Network seeks to connect isolated researchers, strengthen Nordic scholarship on gendered digital cultures, and develop regionally grounded frameworks for studying this increasingly influential online phenomenon.

Keynote: Professor Debbie Ging

Debbie Ging is Professor of Digital Media and Gender in the School of Communications at Dublin City University and Director of the DCU Institute for Research on Genders and Sexualities. She teaches and researches on gender, sexuality and digital media, with a focus on digital hate, online anti-feminist men's rights politics, the incel subculture and radicalization of boys and men into male supremacist ideologies. Debbie’s research also addresses youth experiences of gender-based and sexual abuse online and educational interventions to tackle these issues.

About the Nordic Manosphere Network:

The NMN is a newly established network that aims to bring together individuals researching the Manosphere within a Nordic context, with the goal of facilitating discussions and collaboration across borders and boundaries. Our inaugural symposium will bring together different scholars from the Nordics (and beyond) and unite the different strands of work to better facilitate ongoing work with the Nordic Manosphere.

More information on the call and how to apply here: https://nordicmanospherenetwork.com/

Sites of Hostility and Resistance: Navigating the Digital LGBTQ+ Public Sphere in Hungary

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:23:39 GMT

May 5, 2026, 5pm-7.30pm (UK time)

Registration: This event is FREE to attend, but registration is essential. To book your place, please email: a.zsubori@lboro.ac.uk

About the event:

Various digital media platforms in illiberal contexts function as a complex double-edged sword. In Hungary, they often act as additional channels for illiberal attitudes, amplifying state-sponsored negative sentiments. Yet, these same spaces remain vital for the expression of liberal views and resistance. This session explores this tension, focusing on how social media spaces have become sites of both systemic hostility and profound resistance for LGBTQ+ communities in Hungary.

We will be joined by Hungarian guest speakers who will discuss the lived reality of navigating this digital environment. The discussion will cover the online and offline consequences of the regime’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, as well as the state-encouraged harassment. Beyond victimisation, our speakers will highlight the diverse strategies of resistance, exploring how marginalised groups utilise digital media to build counter-narratives, maintain community safety, and challenge the illiberal status quo.

The session features a panel of individuals at the forefront of this struggle, including activists, journalists, and individuals with direct lived experience of digital victimisation. By bringing together those who document these harms and those who experience them, this webinar aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how political communication in an illiberal regime translates into real-world harm, and how resistance persists in the face of structural exclusion.

This webinar will be of interest to academics across communication, digital media, gender and LGBTQ+ studies, human rights, and political science, as well as non-academic audiences interested in the lived realities of LGBTQ+ minorities and their digital experiences.

The event is supported by the British Academy and Loughborough University.

Looking forward to seeing you there! Also, feel free to circulate this invitation!

Vision and Veiling: Photographic Resilience and Sociopolitical Change

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:21:53 GMT

November 5–7, 2026

Online

Deadline: May 31, 2026

Photography Network's Annual Symposium

Photography practitioners, historians, and curators respond in a multitude of ways to political and cultural contexts that challenge their work. Moreover, in response to efforts to remove, omit, occlude, obscure, or manipulate, photographs often persist, transform, and recirculate, reformulating visual worlds. Photographs bear a complex relationship to political and social power; authorities might manipulate or remove photographs to further their goals, but forms of covering up, self-censorship, or self-fashioning might also function in the name of individual privacy, safety, or resistance. Furthermore, as the material capabilities and limitations of photography shift, new questions continually emerge about the role of photographic removal and photographic resilience in constricting cultural climates.

This symposium offers a platform for scholarship that investigates the adaptability of photography and photo history in the face of constraints, be them cultural, governmental, institutional, editorial, individual, or otherwise. What do historians, curators, and photographers do when limitations are placed on their work, and what do the limitations themselves reveal about photography? Relatedly, when is restriction, refusal, or withdrawal protective, strategic, or empowering? Finally, what, if anything, has changed about how the medium navigates social or cultural boundaries—what can we learn from how practitioners have done this in the past that might shed light on present-day questions? We welcome interdisciplinary approaches, and we especially encourage international scholars to submit.

We invite submissions of 15-minute talks related to topics such as:

Photographic exhibitions in complex political or social contexts
Collecting institutions' navigation of political pressures
Image circulation and content moderation on social media
Privacy and surveillance
Photographic archives and repatriation
Photojournalism, political figures, war imagery
Image withdrawal, refusal, or veiling as a form of justice,
resistance, or repair
Challenges in conducting scholarship on controversial imagery
Cancelled exhibitions, publications, and public history projects
Archives and historical erasure
Cancelled negatives, "killed" negatives
The aesthetics of photographic concealment—the blur, the black rectangle, the crop

We also, of course, encourage approaches to these questions beyond what we have outlined here.

To submit, please send a 250-word abstract and your CV to photographynetworksymposium@gmail.com by May 31, 2026.

2026 REAL – Reality Exploration Academy of Locarno

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:17:51 GMT

August 5 - 15, 2026

Locarno, Switzerland

Submission Deadline: May 28, 2026

Call Description: https://www.locarnofestival.ch/it/about/factory/real-academy.html

Program Overview:

REAL – Reality Exploration Academy of Locarno is a newly reimagined ten-day program dedicated to critically engaging with the evolving landscape of non-fiction cinema. Building on the 26-year legacy of the Documentary Summer School, REAL marks a bold shift toward interdisciplinary exploration at the intersection of audiovisual theory, creative practice, and contemporary media ethics.

Hosted by the Institute of Media and Journalism (IMeG) at Università della Svizzera italiana, in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival, REAL offers a transformative educational journey where critical thinking meets cinematic imagination.

What is REAL?

REAL– Reality Exploration Academy of Locarno is where critical thinking meets cinematic imagination. Held during the Locarno Film Festival and hosted by the Institute of Media and Journalism at the Università della Svizzera italiana, REAL provides a transformative educational experience that dives deep into core questions: What is the “real” today? How do we engage with it ethically, creatively, critically?

This is the only program at the Locarno Film Festival awarding ECTS credits (up to 6), making it a unique opportunity for Bachelor, Master, and PhD students, as well as emerging filmmakers who want to deepen their theoretical reflection on the real. REAL embraces an innovative approach that incorporates video essays as practice-based research, utilizing Locarno Film Festival as a laboratory environment for both study and creation.

REAL is not just a course. It’s a journey of discovery that opens doors to new insights and forms lifelong bonds among the next generation of talents. It’s a conversation, a community, and a launchpad for reimagining and questioning how we engage with reality through cinema.

Is REAL for You?

If you’re curious, critical, and ready to challenge the way we see the world through film—then REAL is the right place for you.

REAL is calling for:

University students at Bachelor, Master, or PhD level who want more than just classroom theory.
Emerging filmmakers who want to deepen their understanding of reality through moving images.
Cinematic minds, curious thinkers and bold storytellers obsessed with exploring reality on screen— from raw truths to hybrid forms.
Fluent English speakers ready to dive into global conversations (all sessions are in English).

If I am selected, what can I expect from the REAL Academy?

10 unforgettable days of ideas, images, and inspiration at one of the world’s most iconic film festivals.

Inspiring lectures with leading international scholars and filmmakers
Privileged/priority access to the Locarno “Future of Cinema” conference, August 10-12, which brings leading international researchers on cinema and the audiovisual.
Curated screenings and Q&As from the Locarno Film Festival and Semaine de la Critique
A deep-dive seminar on the video essay, blending artistic research and critical media theory
Creation of a final video essay expressing, your personal reflection on the real, to receive your credit for to up to 6 ECTS recognition
(Experience with video production is encouraged but not required - video essay assignments are adaptable to all levels of expertise).
An official certificate of participation
Festival Accreditation that gives you access to everything the Festival has to offer
10 nights at the Papio College in Ascona, cozy triple rooms shared with fellow participants, private bathroom, and breakfast included, all in a beautiful lakeside setting just 8 minutes from the Festival hub, with easy access via the Festival shuttle bus – included in your participation.
Evening events, informal gatherings, real networking — the kind that shifts your perspective, not just your LinkedIn profile.
A global networking playground with fellow creatives and thinkers from around the world.

Participation fee: CHF 800 covering your stay, festival accreditation, lectures, screenings, and more. You just cover your travel and meals (except breakfast).

Which dates do I need to put in my diary and keep free if selected?

March 10, 2026 – applications open
May 28, 2026 - deadline for sending in your application
June 14, 2026 – by this date you will receive an answer in respect of your application
5–15 August 2026 – participation in the program and Locarno Film Festival

Organizing Committee

Prof. Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at USI. Filmmaker, media artist, and leading expert in video essays and artistic research.
Dr. Eleonora Benecchi, Lecturer and Researcher at USI, expert in audiovisual theory, digital cultures, and social media.
Laura Pranteddu, Doctoral student and researcher at USI, responsible for the audiovisual theory and production lab, with expertise in AI in journalism.
Flavia Mazzarino, Doctoral student and researcher at USI in visual arts, with expertise in experimental cinema, curatorial practices, and avant-garde film production.
Giulia Villani, Doctoral student and researcher at USI in digital communication, with expertise in consumer culture, public opinion, and cultural production in online environments.

By/For: Photography & Democracy

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:10:52 GMT

April 10, 2026

The third event in the 2026 By/For: Photography & Democracy virtual lecture series is coming up on Friday, April 10, at 1pm ET: “When Home is a Photograph: Blackness and Belonging in the World” with Leigh Raiford. Learn more and register here.

By/For: Photography & Democracy is a collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler. Our collective investigates photography’s assumed democratic credentials as an art form and a medium of mass communication. We believe a historical perspective on the complex relationship between photography and democracy is critical to understanding how the medium and related visual technologies can address the social and political issues of our time.

In 2026, we invite you to join leading thinkers Anne Strachan Cross & Matthew Fox-Amato, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Leigh Raiford, Jeehey Kim, Zahid R. Chaudhary, and Tiffany Fairey for thought-provoking conversations on photography and democracy. Explore season two, view recordings, and register for all events here.

AI & Methods in Computational Communication (AIM-CC 2026)

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:06:26 GMT

August 8–16, 2026

Astana, Kazakhstan

Deadline: May 31, 2026

YOUNG SCHOLAR CONFERENCE & RESEARCH SCHOOL

The Kazakhstan Sociology Lab in partnership with the School of Sciences and Humanities at Nazarbayev University invites applications for the Young Scholar Conference & Research School AI & Methods in Computational Communication (AIM-CC 2026).

Computational social science is undergoing a profound transformation driven by artificial intelligence. Methods that once relied on limited automation and classical analytical approaches are now being reshaped by large language models, embedding-based techniques, generative agents, and AI-assisted experimental designs. These developments open new analytical possibilities while simultaneously raising important methodological and epistemological questions.

AIM-CC 2026 is designed to address these transformations directly. The Conference & School provides structured methodological training in major areas of Computational Social Science and Computational Communication Research, while systematically integrating AI-related developments into each course.

The program is designed for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, advanced Master’s students, and early-career scholars working in Computational Communication Research, Computational Social Science, digital sociology, political communication, network science, AI & Society, and related fields. Alongside intensive methodological training, participants will have a chance to present their research in a poster session and receive feedback from instructors and mentors, with the opportunity to further refine and present updated versions of their work.

Instructors

Taha Yasseri – Director, TCD–TU Dublin Joint Centre for Sociology of Humans and Machines (SOHAM), Full Professor and Chair of Technology and Society, Trinity College Dublin & Technological University Dublin
Ivan Smirnov – research consultant for AI in Research and Researcher Training, University of Technology Sydney; External Faculty Member, Complexity Science Hub Vienna
Olessia Koltsova – Director, Laboratory for Social and Cognitive Informatics, Professor, Department of Sociology, HSE University
Basak Taraktas - Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bogazici University
Miriam Schirmer – Postdoctoral researcher, LINK Lab, Northwestern University

Courses and workshops:

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence in Social Sciences
Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Artificial Intelligence in Social Sciences
Experimental Methods and Artificial Intelligence in Social Sciences
Workshop: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Misinformation - Current Trends, Detection, and Mitigation

Contact

More details on the eligibility criteria, application process and travel information are available on the AIM-CC 2026 website. For inquiries, please contact: aim_cc26@kazsoclab.kz

Influencer Diplomacy: a one-day symposium hosted by IERLab

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 08:14:47 GMT

April 24, 2026

Online

The Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab) is pleased to present the Influencer Diplomacy Symposium. This is a one-day, online-only, open-access event focusing on the multifaceted role of influencers in diplomacy. The symposium offers a platform for scholars to examine how influencer cultures, practices, and industries shape diplomatic processes: from influencers taking on diplomatic roles and politicians adopting influencer strategies, to the ways influencer diplomacy extends beyond formal state and institutional settings into everyday politics, influencing public discourse and social engagement.

The symposium will feature a keynote address alongside a series of panel sessions that bring together scholars to discuss the evolving role of influencers in contemporary diplomacy.

More information about this event can be found here: https://ierlab.com/influencer-diplomacy/

The event will take place 24 April, Friday 10.00-16.00hrs AWST (GMT+8). Registration is free, and open now. Please use the link below to register only if you intend to attend live: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_h-voOmGWSUub8nDVMi1Gog

If you cannot attend live, event will be recorded and recordings will be made available shortly after on our website: https://ierlab.com/influencer-diplomacy/

Please feel free to share this email with your networks, and any questions about this event can be sent to contact@ierlab.com

Call for Late-Breaking Results and Demos

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:01:15 GMT

June 8-11, 2026

Göteborg, Sweden

Deadline: March 30, 2026

ACM UMAP is the premier international conference that brings together research in AI and HCI to support effective human-AI collaboration via interactive systems that can model, adapt, and personalize to their users. The conference is sponsored by ACM SIGCHI and SIGWEB User Modeling Inc., as the core Steering Committee oversees the conference organization. UMAP operates under the ACM Conference Code of Conduct.

ACM UMAP 2026 invites Late-Breaking Results (LBR) papers as well as Demonstrations (demos) of innovative UMAP-based systems (including research prototypes). The topics for these submissions are the same as the ones included in the Call for Full and Short Papers. However, their scope, timing, and length are different. In particular, the maximum length of LBR papers is shorter than that of short papers from the main track. More importantly, LBR papers are expected to present innovative ideas that are still being explored and have shown some promising results. The track is also a dissemination channel for new research directions. Mature results that have already undergone extensive experimental validation are more suitable for the general call, either as a full or short paper. Note that LBR papers are also to be presented in person at the conference in poster format, allowing for more informal discussion of the ideas shared.

Demos are intended to present systems relevant to the UMAP conference. These should either have been used to achieve the research outcomes presented as full and short papers, or currently be used as a platform for future research. As such, we highly recommend authors of accepted full and short papers to also prepare a submission for a demo of their system to be showcased at the conference in the LBR and Demo session.

Important Dates

March 30, 2026 - Submission
April 21, 2026 - Notification of Acceptance
April 28, 2026 - Camera-ready Submission (TAPS system)

Note: the submission deadline is at 11:59 pm AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time.

Submission

All submissions must be written in English. They should be submitted electronically, in a PDF format, through the EasyChair submission system, https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=umap2026, by selecting the “UMAP26 Late Breaking Results and Demo Papers” track and, subsequently, choosing the specific format (LBR or demos).

Late-Breaking Results Format

Page Limit. Up to 4 pages, including references (figures, tables, proofs, appendices, acknowledgments, and any other content count toward the page limit).

Proceedings. Publication in the ACM UMAP 2026 main proceedings. Please note that LBR papers will be exempt from the ACM Open APCs (Article Processing Charges), as they fall under the “work in progress” category.

Presentation format. Presented in-person (physically) as a poster during the conference.

Description. LBRs are research-in-progress that must contain original and unpublished accounts of innovative research ideas and preliminary results, addressing both the theory and practice of UMAP. In addition, papers introducing recently started research projects or summarizing project results are welcome. We encourage researchers and practitioners to submit late-breaking work as it provides a unique opportunity for sharing valuable ideas, eliciting useful feedback on early-stage work, and fostering discussions and collaborations among colleagues.

In case papers rejected in the main track (i.e., submitted as full or short papers) are submitted to this track, they should be revised. On the one hand, they should take into account the comments made to help improve the paper. On the other hand, they should also fulfill the scope of the LBR, which emphasizes the novelty of ideas. This is also valid for papers that have been recommended as an LBR when rejected in the main track.

Demos Format

Page Limit. Up to 3 pages, including references and all other content (figures, tables, proofs, appendices, acknowledgments, etc.). On an extra page (not to be published), submissions should include a specification of the technical requirements for demonstrating the system at UMAP 2026.

Supporting Material. Video or external material demonstrating the system.

Proceedings. Publication in ACM UMAP 2026 main proceedings. Please note that Demo papers will be exempt from the ACM Open APCs (Article Processing Charges), as they fall under the “Demonstration” category.

Presentation format. Presented in-person (physically) as a demo, plus as a poster during the conference.

Description. Demos will showcase research (system) prototypes, industry showcases, and commercially available products in a dedicated session. Demo submissions must be based on an implemented and tested system that pursues one or more innovative ideas in the interest areas of the conference. Demonstrations are an excellent and exciting way to showcase implementations and receive valuable feedback from the community, especially for those papers that have been presented in the main track. Each demo submission must make clear which aspects of the system will be demonstrated, and how these will be demonstrated on-site as well as online.

To better identify the value of demos, we also encourage authors to submit a pointer to a screencast (max. 5 minutes on Vimeo or YouTube) or any external material related to the demo (e.g., shared code on GitHub).

More Details

Non-Anonymity

Submissions for both LBR and demos will be reviewed single-masked (i.e., authors’ names must be included in the papers), thus there is no need to anonymize before submission.

Template

Following the ACM Publication Workflow, the proposal should be arranged based on the new ACM two-column format. Instructions for the organizers are given below:

LaTeX (use \documentclass[review,sigconf]{acmart} in the sample-authordraft.tex file for two-column). Please carefully follow the ACM’s instructions for preparing your article with LaTeX.
Overleaf (use \documentclass[review,sigconf]{acmart} for two-column). Please carefully follow the ACM’s instructions for preparing your article with Overleaf.
Word. Please carefully follow the ACM’s instructions for preparing your article with Microsoft Word, ignoring the single-column instructions and the single-column submission template. Please use the double-column Word template.

Should you have any questions or issues going through the instructions above, please contact support at acmtexsupport@aptaracorp.com for LaTeX and Microsoft Word inquiries.

Accessibility

Authors are strongly encouraged to provide “alt text” (alternative text) for floats (images, tables, etc.) in their content so that readers with disabilities can be given descriptive information for these floats that are important to the work. The descriptive text will be displayed in place of a float if the float cannot be loaded. This benefits the author, and it broadens the reader base for the author’s work. Moreover, the alt text provides in-depth float descriptions to search engine crawlers, which helps to properly index these floats. Additionally, authors should follow the ACM Accessibility Recommendations for Publishing in Color and SIG ACCESS guidelines on describing figures.

Submission Policy

All submissions and reviews will be handled electronically. ACM UMAP has a no dual submission policy, which is why submitted manuscripts should not be currently under review at another publication venue. Particularly, please consider the following ACM’s publication policies:

“By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.” https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/research-involving-human-participants-and-subjects
“Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start, and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improving author discoverability, ensuring proper attribution, and contributing to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.”

Review Process & Camera-ready Submission

Review

Submissions will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. They will be assessed based on their originality and novelty, potential contribution to the research field, potential impact in specific use cases, usefulness of presented experiences, and their overall readability. Papers that exceed the page limits or do not adhere to the formatting guidelines will be returned without review.

The ACM Code of Ethics gives the UMAP program committee the right to (desk-)reject papers that perpetuate harmful stereotypes, employ unethical research practices, or uncritically present outcomes/implications that clearly disadvantage minority communities. Further, reviewers will be explicitly asked to consider whether the research was conducted in compliance with professional ethical standards and applicable regulatory guidelines. Failure to do so could lead to a (desk-)rejection.

Camera-ready Information

Accepted papers will be subject to further revision to meet the requirements of the camera-ready format required by ACM. We strongly recommend the use of LaTeX/Overleaf for the camera-ready papers to minimize the extent of reformatting. Users of the Word template must use either the version for Microsoft Word for Windows, Macintosh Office 2011, or Macintosh Office 2016 (other formats, such as Open Office, etc., are not permitted) for the camera-ready submission to avoid incompatibility issues.

Instructions for preparing the camera-ready versions of accepted papers will be provided after acceptance. This might include instructions to prepare a video of the accepted contribution. Camera-ready versions of accepted papers will be later submitted using ACM’s new production platform, where authors will be able to review PDF and HTML output formats before publication.

In-person attendance policy and Open Access

Each accepted contribution must be presented in person to be included in the conference proceedings. All UMAP 2026 papers will be published under ACM Open. Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver.

During the conference, all categories will be presented at the poster reception, in the form of a poster and/or a software demonstration, following the poster format. This form of presentation will provide presenters with an opportunity to obtain direct feedback about their work from a wide audience during the conference.

Late-Breaking Results and Demos Chairs

Sherry Sahebi, University at Albany-SUNY, USA
Alain Starke, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Contact information: umap2026-lbr@um.org

Annual Conference of the Search Engines and Society Network (SEASON 2026)

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:55:56 GMT

September 15-17, 2026

Hamburg, Germany

Deadline: April 30, 2026

Dear colleagues,

On behalf of the Search Engines and Society Network (SEASON), we invite submissions for the 2026 edition of the Search Engines and Society Annual Conference (SEASON 2026), to be held at HAW Hamburg, Germany, from 15-17 September 2026.

Following the success of SEASON 2025, which brought together an engaged and diverse international community of researchers, practitioners, and students, SEASON continues as a dedicated conference series for critical and interdisciplinary research on search engines and their societal implications.

SEASON explores the multifaceted role of search engines in today’s culture and society. The conference fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration to deepen our understanding of search engines as cultural, societal, political, and technical artefacts, as well as their role in everyday practices.

We invite submissions for:

Long presentations
Short presentations
Interactive sessions (e.g., panels and workshops)
Posters

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Social and cultural aspects of relevance
Epistemic implications of search-engine use
Search engines and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
Search engines and information disorders (e.g., disinformation, data voids)
AI and changing patterns of search engine use
Search engines and environmental crises
Political economy of search
Accountability and responsibility of search engine providers
Search engine bias and fair search
Ethical and affective dimensions of search
Media and information literacy
Search engines in everyday life and educational settings
Search engines and specific communities
Methods and data collection for search engine research
Comparative and historical studies of web search
Approaches to opening the “black box” of search engine rankings

We welcome conceptual and empirical contributions from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including the humanities, social sciences, and technical disciplines. Interdisciplinary approaches, work in progress, submissions from practitioners, and student contributions are especially encouraged.

Submission categories and formats:

Long presentations: Extended abstracts, max. 1000 words (excluding references)
Short presentations: Abstracts, max. 500 words (excluding references)
Interactive sessions: Proposals (60–90 minutes), max. 1000 words (excluding references)
Posters: Abstracts, max. 500 words (excluding references)

Submission guidelines:

-Submissions must be in PDF format

-APA referencing style

Please submit via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=season2026

Submission deadline: 30 April 2026

Accepted contributions will be made available to conference participants ahead of the event. All accepted abstracts will be freely accessible after the conference.

SEASON 2026 Website: https://searchenginesandsociety.net/season-2026/

We look forward to your contributions.

With best regards,

The SEASON 2026 Organizing Team

GMICP - Poland and Sweden country reports released

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:20:01 GMT

Today the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project released its reports on market, policy and technological developments in a swathe of communication, internet and media industries for both Poland and Sweden:

- The Sweden report was written by: Jonas Ohlsson and Tobias Lindberg (both of University of Gothenburg)

- The Poland report was written by: Petr Szczepanik, Martin Mišúr, Jan Bergl, Petr Lelek and Jan Hanzlík (all of Charles University)

These follow editions we have already published on the state of media and internet concentration in Canada, Mexico, South Africa, China, the United States and many more, with the end goal a library of regularly updated reports for all of the nearly 40 countries that make up the GMICP.

Finally:

- Our newly launched data dashboard allows anyone to explore our data and to create comparative visualisations across sectors and markets - check it out here.

- We invite other researchers to contribute their expertise to our efforts – please reach out to us here.

New Weapons of Democratic Destruction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:01:18 GMT

Media & Communication (special issue)

Deadline: June 15, 2026

https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/issue/futureissues#i537

Over the past decade, emergent technologies have opened new avenues for political actors to shape public opinion, discredit rivals, and gain advantage—often by subverting established norms of political communication. Billionaires purchase media platforms to influence discourse, influencers are paid to spread covert political messages, and bots and trolls distort opinion and stoke discord to serve hidden agendas. Meanwhile, journalists, institutions, and the public struggle to respond in a chaotic, attention-driven environment where information is weaponised and trust eroded.

This climate has empowered malevolent actors who stage public spectacles to distract attention while operating behind the scenes to weaken democratic norms and concentrate power without scrutiny. While recent research on disinformation and “fake news” has focused on tracking problematic content and its effects, scholars now increasingly recognise that these are not external threats but systemic tools often wielded by elite actors. Yet, there remains a lack of understanding around how specific actors exploit new media to pursue anti-democratic goals.

This thematic issue brings together global scholars to explore how technological affordances are exploited to undermine political institutions, destabilise liberal democracy, and promote nativism, racism, and authoritarianism. By investigating these strategic communication tactics, we aim to identify the roots of political dysfunction and build resilience against these threats.

We welcome research on the communication practices of malign elites and extreme actors, especially from the Global South and East, and non-Western political systems. We also seek work examining intersections with colonial legacies, wealth inequality, and gendered harm.

Topics of interest include:

Strategic political communication in the attention economy, such as micro-targeting;

How “culture war” topics and/or polarisation discourses are used to drive anti-democratic or anti-establishment sentiment;
The strategic use of disinformation tactics and/or conspiracy theories for political advantage;
Use of AI and automation by malign political actors;
Media manipulation strategies, such as the relationship between political actors and hyper-partisan media outlets;
Efforts to erode public trust in institutions and governance.

Instructions for Authors

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Media and Communication is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Open Access

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

Academic Editor(s): Stephen Harrington (Queensland University of Technology), Timothy Graham (Queensland University of Technology), Ella Chorazy (Queensland University of Technology), and Aljosha Karim Schapals (Queensland University of Technology)

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 June 2026

Submission of Full Papers: 15-30 October 2026

Publication of the Issue: January/June 2027

Visual Data and Visual Methods in Social Sciences

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:59:17 GMT

August 17-21, 2026

USI, Lugano (In presence)

Full Program & Registration: https://www.usi.ch/it/formazione/summer-winter-school/ssm

Patricia Prieto-Blanco and Katharina Lobinger from ECREA Visual Cultures section will be co-leading a week-long intensive workshop on Visual Data and Visual Methods in Social Sciences at the Università della Svizzera italiana. This workshop is part of the 30th edition of the Summer School in Social Sciences Methods—one of the largest methods schools in Europe! If you want to expand your knowledge (and practice) of visual research methods, consider joining our workshop :).

We have designed this course to be deeply hands-on. It isn’t just about looking at images; it’s about understanding how visuals can be used for research. We’ll be moving from the "why" to the "how," covering:

Experimenting with visual ethnography, the visual essay, and photo elicitation.
How to engage respondents as partners through drawing-based exercises and card sorting.
Mastering both qualitative and quantitative content analysis to tackle the massive amounts of visual data in our digital world.
We will spend significant time on the feminist ethos in research—discussing power, reflexivity, and the ethics of embodiment.

What makes this Summer School special is the modality. We are meeting in presence in beautiful Lugano. This allows us to engage in real-time experimentation, producing and analysing visual data together in an environment that encourages critical reflection and creative growth.

Whether you are just starting your PhD or looking to add a visual dimension to your existing research projects, Katharina and I look forward to welcoming you to the USI campus! If you are a supervisor, I would appreciate you sharing it with doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in your team.

Online Conference and Data Sprint: Witnessing and Justice in Data-Based Research

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:56:46 GMT

March 31-April 1, 2026

Online

Deadline: March 29, 2026

Registration: To register, please send a short email to warsensing@europa-uni.de by 29 March, expressing your interest to join the public programme.

Event description:

As part of an ongoing collaboration between the “War Sensing” project (European University Viadrina/CRC “Media of Cooperation”) , the Telegram Archive of the War (Center for Urban History, Lviv) and the School of Communications/Conflict Institute (Dublin City University), we are organising a 1,5 day conference and online data sprint “Witnessing and Justice in Data-Based Research”, which is scheduled for 31 March-1 April.

The conference and data sprint will reflect upon the practices and limits of war-related research based on digital, archived and other types of data. The urgent question here is how to address the ongoing tension between such data-based research of war and the injustices that persist. Despite the large volume of data and the variety of ways in which Russia’s war in Ukraine has been documented, represented and analysed in order to expose its unjust nature and practices, the destruction and attacks against Ukraine persist. Data-based investigations using “data for the good” (cf. Williams, 2022; Kazansky et al., 2019) form a small part of achieving transitional justice and maintain hope and demand accountability by using digitally derived evidence of war injustices and crimes. (How) do digital data archives and data-based investigations continue to counter war-related injustices, and what approaches have proved as successful? What are the various limitations of digital data-based witnessing of war in terms of experiential, juridical, political and other nature? How can the tension between the investigations and ongoing injustices tell us about the role and impact of contemporary war witnessing?

The event consists of two sessions that are open for the general public. The first open session takes place on the morning of 31 March and features a keynote talk by Oksana Avramenko "Granting Access to War: Ethics and Accountability in the TG Archive", followed by a roundtable discussion "Limits of War Witnessing" with Jelnar Ahmad, Karina Buhaichenko, Yevheniia Drozdova, Oleksiy Radynski and Bohdan Shumylovych.

The second session, which is also open to the public, will take place in the evening on 1 April and will consist of a roundtable discussion on "Digital Justice and Accountability" with Jenna Dolecek, Kaja Kowalczewska and Maryna Slobodyanuk. This will be followed by a screening of the film “A Home for Rita”, after which there will be a Q&A session with the director, Yulia Appen, and Sashko Protyah from the Freefilmers collective.

The event will also consist of a half-day closed data sprint on 31 March, during which participants from the previous data sprint will discuss their ongoing hands-on work with the Telegram Archive’s data. Due to the sensitive and ongoing nature of the research, this part will only be open to previous data sprint participants.

The detailed event programme can be found on the event page here. The final programme, including the Zoom links, will be sent to registered participants.

To register, please send a short email to warsensing@europa-uni.de by 29 March, expressing your interest to join the public programme.

On behalf of the CRC Media of Cooperation and the project teams “War Sensing” (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) with Prof. Dr. Miglė Bareikytė, Johanna Hiebl and Gregor Wörl, the Telegram Archive of the War (Center for Urban History, Lviv) with Oksana Avramenko and Maryana Mazurak and School of Communication (Dublin City University) with Prof. Dr. Tanya Lokot

International Conference on Identities, Ideologies and Aesthetics in Subcultures, Music Scenes and Urban Tribes

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:54:13 GMT

October 2-3, 2026

University of Oviedo (Historic Building), Spain

Deadline: May 15, 2026

The University of Oviedo, through the Department of Art History and Musicology, in collaboration with the R&D Project Music and Audiovisual Media: Intermedial Transits, Heritage and Cultural Dialogues (MUSIMA) (PID2023-147271NB-I00), announces the call for papers for the International Conference on Identities, Ideologies and Aesthetics in Subcultures, Music Scenes and Urban Tribes, to be held on 2–3 October 2026 at the Historic Building of the University of Oviedo.

The conference provides an interdisciplinary forum for the study of subcultures, music scenes, urban tribes, and related sociocultural formations within popular culture. It welcomes contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including Sociology, Cultural Studies, Musicology, Communication, Anthropology, Cultural Geography, and the Arts and Humanities.

Full call for papers and further details: https://congreso-subculturas-2026.webnode.es/

Thematic areas include:

Concepts, categories, and theorization
Digital cultures, video games, media ecologies, and platforms
Creativity, emerging technologies, and artificial intelligence
Spaces, territories, and urban and rural studies
Situated, mixed, collaborative, and visual methodologies
Memory, musical heritage, nostalgia, and revival
Political economy, cultural labor, and alternative media
Bodies, gender, queerness, and political action
Photography, fashion, and other artistic media
Popular music
Audiovisual media
Film, photography, and music festivals and live events

Submission guidelines:

Proposals should be sent to: congresosubculturas@gmail.com

Subject line: “PROPUESTA DE COMUNICACIÓN UNIOVI 2026”

Submissions must include a single PDF file containing:

An abstract (max. 250 words)
A short biographical note (max. 150 words)
Indication of up to three thematic areas

Proposals may be submitted in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or any of the co-official languages of Spain. Only in-person presentations will be accepted.

Deadline for submission: 15 May 2026

Contact:

congresosubculturas@gmail.com

ECREA Task Force webinar: Publishing in U.S. Academic Journals

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:17:33 GMT

March 30, 2026

Online

The ECREA Ukraine Task Force, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Institute of Media and Communication, invites media and communication researchers, as well as scholars from related fields, to a webinar on publishing in top-tier academic journals, with a specific focus on the United States.

Approaches and expectations in U.S. academic journals often differ significantly from publication practices in other regions. This webinar will explore key aspects of American academic culture and provide practical guidance on manuscript preparation, helping participants better understand the requirements that increase the chances of successful publication.

Speaker:

Jasper Fessmann, PhD, University of Memphis. Since 2023, he has served as a faculty member in the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media. Previously, he worked at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media. Before entering academia, he gained over 15 years of experience in international PR agencies. His research focuses on public interest communications, international PR, disinformation, and crisis communication. He is also a member of the editorial boards of two US-based academic journals.

Date and time:

March 30, 2026, 17:00 (EET)

Webinar format includes two parts:

A short presentation with practical advice on publishing in U.S. academic journals
A discussion involving Roman Horbyk and other members of the ECREA Ukraine Task Force on the challenges faced by Ukrainian scholars in the publication process and possible ways to address them.

Duration: 45 minutes

Language: English

Participation is free and available through registration. Registered participants will receive the Zoom link and other details in advance.

Nordic Network of Intercultural Communication 2026 Conference

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:58:00 GMT

August 17-19, 2026

Vilnius, Lithuania

Deadline: April 20, 2026

The Nordic Network of Intercultural Communication (NIC) Conference 2026 will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 17 to 19 August 2026.

The NIC Conference is an annual interdisciplinary event, held for the 32nd time in 2026. It brings together researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners from the Nordic and Baltic regions and beyond to discuss topics related to intercultural communication.

The theme of this year’s conference is „Intercultural communication for change“. With this theme, we invite contributions that explore intercultural communication as a process of (ex)change of meanings, understandings, values, and knowledge, and examine its role in contexts of transformation and uncertainty. We particularly welcome work addressing intercultural communication as a response to change, a driver of change, or a means of anticipating, managing, and potentially preventing disruptive forms of change, including crises. We also encourage critical reflection on the relationship between intercultural communication research, practice, and policy, including possible mismatches between them and the ways research can (or should) contribute to changes in individual behaviours, professional practices, education, and public policy.

In addition to contributions addressing the conference theme, we also welcome proposals concerning other aspects of intercultural communication.

We invite submissions from researchers at all career stages, as well as practitioners, across the social sciences and humanities.

The deadline for abstract submissions is 20 April 2026.

For further details, including the full Call for Abstracts, important dates and submission guidelines, please visit the NIC Vilnius 2026 conference site: https://www.nicvilnius2026.kf.vu.lt/

Russia's War against Ukraine - EBU/JOMEC Research Fellowship Grant

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:56:10 GMT

Deadline: April 30, 2026

EBU & JOMEC RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP GRANT

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is partnering with the School of Journalism, Media & Culture at Cardiff University (JOMEC) to offer grants that support research in the EBU Ukraine Archive which opened in November 2025.

Launched by the EBU, the Ukraine Archive is a comprehensive, searchable database on the Russia-Ukraine War since February 2022. It brings together thousands of video and audio reports from EBU-member news teams, as well as verified social media clips. The Archive is a resource for journalists, documentary makers, and researchers. It currently comprises nearly 30,000 items and continues to grow as the war goes on. The EBU Ukraine Archive offers an enhanced and focused content search and, in addition, every item is tagged according to editorial and legal categories designed to document human rights abuses in armed conflict.

JOMEC will offer three research fellowships of €500 each to current PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers (within three years of a successful PhD viva) working in a relevant field whose research would benefit from access to this vital resource.

The EBU’s primary objective in supporting this opportunity is to encourage the use of the Archive in research on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Terms of the fellowship:

Successful applicants will consult the EBU Ukraine Archive as part of their research related to the Russia-Ukraine war, attribute the EBU if content from the Ukraine Archive is cited, and submit brief feedback to the EBU about the experience of using the archive.

The EBU Ukraine Archive will be accessed remotely. Half of the fellowship award will be paid at the start of the fellowship, the rest at the end. The fellowship program must be completed within two years of receiving the fellowship.

Selected fellows will enter into a fellowship agreement with the EBU and must adhere to the terms and conditions governing access to and use of the EBU Ukraine Archive.

Application:

This opportunity is open to current PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers (within three years of a successful PhD viva) working in a relevant field.

To apply, please submit a letter of motivation (500 words), a project outline (500 words) and a short CV (2 sides of A4) by email to EBU-fellowships@cardiff.ac.uk before Thursday 30 April 2026.

Decisions will be announced in June 2026.

If you have any questions concerning this fellowship opportunity, please contact EBU-fellowships@cardiff.ac.uk.

Operationalising the Audiovisual Turn in Digital Journalism

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:29:24 GMT

Digital Journalism (special issue)

Deadline: April 17, 2026

Special Issue Editors:

Jonathan Hendrickx, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Jorge Vázquez Herrero, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Cruz Negreira, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Sherwin Chua, PhD, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

This special issue aims to bring together cutting-edge research that contributes to a better understanding of the audiovisual turn in digital journalism. Said turn builds on earlier forms of multimedia journalism and digital longform storytelling, and ties in within the previously acknowledged audience, emotional and labour turns in journalism.

We invite scholars to submit empirical and theoretical contributions that critically engage with the notion of the audiovisual turn, including how it has been effectuated and can evolve over time. In addition to diverse quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods study designs, we particularly encourage submissions from the Global South, as well as cross-national comparisons that reflect platform-specific and regional differences. Focus areas may include, but are not limited to:

The de-institutionalisation of audiovisual journalism and news production by considering non-journalistic interloper actors, including influencers and content creators.
The infrastructural platform dependency, algorithmic ambiguity and/or the ownership of audiovisual journalism in the platformisation era.
A historical evolution of audiovisual journalism from the formats of traditional media to current platforms, considering both common and differentiating elements in journalistic practice.
The production, contents and reception of audiovisual-centric digital journalism, e.g. shortform, vertical videos and/or audio across news outlets’ proprietary as well as social media platforms.
The epistemology and/or ontology of audiovisual journalism.
The news experience and audience interaction through shortform videos and other audiovisual formats.
The production and publication of AI-generated audiovisual news or news-like content and its disinformation effects in a context of algorithmic curation and consumption.

Submission instructions:

Extended abstracts of 500-750 words, not including references, as well as a full list of authors, affiliations, and abbreviated bios for each author.

Please submit your proposal to this Google Form as one file (PDF) with your names clearly stated on the first page: https://lnkd.in/gNxUZJj7

Full manuscripts, if invited, should be between 7,000-9,000 words.

Timeline:

Extended abstracts submission deadline: 18:00 CET on April 17, 2026
Notification on submitted abstracts: May 8, 2026
Article submission deadline: October 30, 2026

Intergenerational Queer Comrades: Visualizing Aging and Belonging in Mainland China

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:22:24 GMT

March 27, 2026, 2 PM (WET)

Online (MS Teams)

Stefan Schweigler (Vienna University)

The webinar will explore the cultural-theoretical, philosophical, aesthetic, historical and political dimensions of intergenerationality—a timely topic at the intersection of media studies, ageing, and communication research.

Stefan Schweigler's interdisciplinary work spans media studies, affect theory, ageing care, gender, queer, disability, and postcolonial studies, offering perspectives from across the arts and humanities on how different generations relate, communicate, and are represented in contemporary media and culture.

In this talk, Stefan Schweigler discusses the 2016 short documentary Papa Weifeng and its relational integration into Chinese media activism.

Organized by the STORYline project (Universidade Lusófona), the webinar is supported, among others, by the ECREA's Children, Youth and Media section and Temporary Working Group on Aging & Communication.

Registration (free but compulsory): https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=BsyME2tRgU6IEwb9JTG93OSldc9WtDlBv3vbnf3mM25UMU00MjVSRjQyR1lPTjcxMFRCOUcyQVAyNy4u

More information: https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/agenda-news/news-events/4279-storyline-webinar-stefan-schweigler

Expanded TV. Platforms, Social Networks, AI

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 21:03:23 GMT

Anna Bisogno

Purchase here: https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/tv-espansa

Television has not disappeared; it has simply moved and now lives elsewhere: in feeds and in the connections of an audience that scrolls through smartphones and tablets and inhabits digital platforms, where algorithms decide what to watch and storytelling blends with consumption. In this new ecosystem, television hybridizes with the language of social media, fragments into clips, recomposes itself into memes, and expands into digital formats.

As the book highlights, this is an expanded television that interacts with artificial intelligence, builds endless archives, and personalizes tastes and viewing experiences. It forms an archipelago of practices, languages, and devices in which data participate in the creative process, shaping narratives, rhythms, and formats, and redefining the role of authors and the very meaning of writing.

In the Italian context, linear television enters into osmosis with platforms and social media, giving rise to a heterogeneous model in which forms of audience participation are reconfigured and viewing becomes a continuous and shared experience.

Anna Bisogno is an Associate Professor at Universitas Mercatorum, where she teaches Cinema, Radio and Television. Her research interests focus on Television Studies, the history of Italian television, and the narrative intersections between TV, digital platforms and social networks. She is also the author for RaiPlay of the program 30×70. Se dico donna….

Atmospheres and Digital Media: Connection and Disconnection Across Everyday Life

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:59:04 GMT

Edited by: Ana Jorge and Sofia P. Caldeira

From parenting and pilgrimage to activism and mourning, this book explores how digital connection - and disconnection - shapes the emotional texture of our lives.

Using the concept of ‘affective atmospheres’, the authors examine the feelings that emerge in the interactions between people, platforms and places. Drawing on rich, real-world examples, it explores how digital media infuse our homes, beliefs, rituals and politics with emotion, tension and meaning.

Pre-order here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/atmospheres-and-digital-media

Or download Open access here: https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_edited/jj.32726851

TOC

Introduction: Atmospheres and Digital Media Dis/connection - Ana Jorge, Sofia Caldeira

Chapter 1: Post-digital parenting: the relational-affective network of the family - Francisca Porfírio, Ana Jorge, Rita Grácio

Chapter 2: Platformised feminisms and social media ambiences - Sofia Caldeira, Ana Jorge, Ana Kubrusly

Chapter 3: Affective temporalities in pilgrimage: anticipation, presence and (pro)longing - Ana Jorge, Filipa Neto, Ana Kubrusly, Edna Santos

Chapter 4: Affective intensities of dis/connection in mourning - Ionara Silva, Ana Jorge, Filipa Neto

Afterword: Reflections on affective atmospheres and felt experience in the mediation of everyday social practices - Peter Lunt

Techno-Magical Futures & Histories

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:57:37 GMT

October 7-10, 2026

Toronto, Canada

Deadline: April 30, 2026

Call for abstracts for an open panel at 4S 2026 (7-10 October in Toronto, Canada): Techno-Magical Futures & Histories (Panel #245).

The panel explores: the historical, material, and socio-cultural dimensions of the relationship between magic and technology; efforts by Silicon Valley to position AI technologies as omniscient, god-like entities with supernatural capabilities; intersections between magic and computation; magic and technoscience; and discussions including techno-magical discourses, sociotechnical imaginaries, material practices, hegemonic order, policy and regulation.

Scholars across various fields and disciplines including communication and media studies are welcome to submit a 250-word abstract. The deadline is 30 April.

Co-Producing Environmental Publics: Technology, Communication, and Ecological Transformation

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:55:45 GMT

Communication and the Public (Special issue)

Deadline: March 20, 2026

Only one week left to submit abstracts for the Call for Papers for an upcoming Special Issue of Communication and the Public (https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ctp), entitled: Co-Producing Environmental Publics: Technology, Communication, and Ecological Transformation

In recent decades, environmental challenges—ranging from climate change and air pollution to biodiversity loss and resource scarcity—have increasingly shaped not only policy agendas but also the very texture of public life globally. Responding to these crises, digital technologies—including sensor networks, big data analytics, algorithmic systems, and artificial intelligence—have become constitutive elements in how environmental issues are rendered visible, knowable, and actionable.

These technologies do more than document ecological change. They actively intervene in the communicative infrastructures through which publics emerge, take shape, and act. Systems of sensing, modeling, and prediction increasingly define what counts as “environmental risk,” thereby shaping understandings of responsibility, urgency, and agency. At the same time, these infrastructures operate unevenly: algorithmic filtering, platform governance, and unequal access to data intensify existing inequalities in visibility, participation, and recognition—particularly in contexts of rapid or uneven environmental degradation.

As a result, environmental publics are increasingly co-produced through the interaction of ecological conditions, technological systems, and communicative practices. Yet many existing theories of publicness and communication—largely premised on stable media environments and human-centered deliberation—struggle to account for publics constituted through algorithms, sensors, platforms, and predictive ecologies.

This special issue seeks to advance scholarly understanding of how technological systems reshape environmental communication and how ecological crises, in turn, reconfigure the communicative, institutional, and imaginative infrastructures of public life. By foregrounding the mutually constitutive relationship between technology, publics, and ecological transformation, the issue aims to deepen theoretical debates on public formation, algorithmic governance, mediated knowledge production, and collective action in an era of planetary uncertainty.

Scope and Themes

We welcome conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions that examine how digital technologies mediate environmental governance, identity formation, activism, and the circulation of ecological knowledge. Contributions may engage with one or more of the following (non-exhaustive) themes:

Algorithmic infrastructures and the formation of environmental publics
Datafication, environmental knowledge, and public authority
Public communication of climate models, predictive ecologies, and digital simulations
Networked environmental activism and hybrid public mobilization
Communicative agency among scientists, Indigenous communities, and climate advocates
Surveillance ecologies, risk governance, and public trust
Digital platforms, environmental legitimacy, and contestations of power
Environmental media propaganda, misinformation, and AI-generated narratives

We especially encourage submissions from underrepresented regions (Asia, Africa, Latin America, Indigenous contexts) and interdisciplinary perspectives across communication studies, STS, environmental governance, and political ecology.

Submission Process and Key Dates

Abstract submission deadline: March 20, 2026

Notification of invitations to submit full papers: March 30, 2026

(Please note that an invitation does not guarantee publication; all full manuscripts will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process.)

Full paper submission deadline: July 31, 2026

Planned publication: 2027

Abstract Submission Guidelines: Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words, in English, to all guest editors with the subject line: “CAP Special Issue Submission”

Guest Editors:

Dr. Dechun Zhang, University of Copenhagen (dezh@hum.ku.dk)

Dr. Weiai Xu, University of Massachusetts Amherst (weiaixu@umass.edu)

Dr. Han Lin, Soochow University (linhan741@gmail.com)

Full call for paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zAr6qNL5YtkC9YKQtj9VexGcPmZxelaq/view?usp=sharing

We would greatly appreciate it if you could circulate this Call for Papers within your professional networks and among colleagues who may be interested. We look forward to your submissions.

Resurfacing feminist voices

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:49:24 GMT

Siren! Magazine (Inaugural Issue, May 2026)

Deadline: March 30, 2026

Siren! Magazine is a transnational student-led feminist magazine dedicated to amplifying voices, knowledges, and practices that are often submerged within dominant media and cultural ecosystems.

Our inaugural issue, “Resurfacing feminist voices,” will be launched as an intervention into the noise of contemporary media culture, resisting silencing, challenging hegemonic narratives, and reclaiming communication as a key site for care, solidarity, and transformation.

To accompany our first issue, alongside scholarly submissions, Siren! Magazine invites news, announcements, and short reports about events, initiatives, and cultural interventions related to submerged knowledges, practices, and forms of collective resistance. We aim to remain open to any and all spaces. Our intention is to share updates and collaboration opportunities transnationally and to foster dialogue across contexts we might not otherwise be able to access.

We invite short submissions (200-400 words) that clearly document and contextualize specific initiatives, events, or projects. Submissions should include key details such as the name of the event or initiative, dates, location (if applicable), organizing bodies

or collaborators, and a brief reflection on its aims, methods, and impact. When relevant, contributors are encouraged to include links, images, or contact information to support further connection and collaboration.

We welcome submissions that share information about:

Activist gatherings, workshops, and assemblies, including their themes, participants, and outcomes
Exhibitions, performances, and film screenings, with attention to curatorial or artistic interventions
Community-based media projects and collaborative platforms
Indigenous, queer, feminist, or diasporic cultural events and organizing spaces
Archival initiatives, memory work, and counter-archives in practice
Transnational solidarity networks and grassroots organizing efforts

We are especially interested in submissions that critically engage how these initiatives challenge dominant media narratives, center historically silenced voices, and experiment with alternative forms of communication and collective knowledge production.

How to submit

Please send your submission by email to asc-sirenmagazine@asc.upenn.edu with the subject line: “Siren! News & Events Submission – Inaugural Issue”

Deadline: March 30th, 2026

Submissions may be written or multimedia, and can document past, ongoing, or upcoming events. Selected contributions will be featured in the inaugural issue of

Siren!, scheduled for publication in May 2026.

Algorithmic Images and Information Urgencies: Challenges and Transformations of Contemporary Graphic Journalism

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:03:22 GMT

Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico

Deadline: June 30, 2026

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite submissions for the upcoming special issue in the journal Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico (EMP), a Q1 journal in Scopus: "Algorithmic Images and Information Urgencies: Challenges and Transformations of Contemporary Graphic Journalism."

As generative AI and digital shifts redefine our visual culture, photojournalism faces unprecedented aesthetic, ethical, and industrial hurdles. This monograph seeks to explore the complexities of documentary photography in an era marked by rapid technological change and global crises, from climate change and migration to the rise of polarized political narratives.

Languages for Submission:

Please note that the journal accepts original articles in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese.

Key Information:

Submission Deadline: June 30, 2026
Expected Publication: October 2026
More Details and Submission Platform: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESMP/monograficos/periodismografico

Topics include (not limited):

AI & Image Mutation: Deontological limits, deepfakes, and algorithmic bias.
Representing Reality: Visual activism, hybrid narratives, and documenting humanitarian crises or climate change.
Structural Challenges: Gender equality in the profession and the economic sustainability of the photojournalistic industry.

Editors: Nieves Limón-Serrano (UCLM), Marta Martín-Núñez (UJI), and Mathias-Felipe-de-Lima-Santos (UNSW/UNIFESP/UPF).

UMAP 2026 Workshops and Tutorials links

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:01:53 GMT

Dear colleagues,

The lists of workshops and tutorials at ACM UMAP'26 are now available on the webpage of the conference, including links to each event's webpage.

Workshops: https://www.um.org/umap2026/workshops/

Tutorials: https://www.um.org/umap2026/tutorials/

We look forward to your participation!

The UMAP'26 organizers

AI Between Code and Ethics: Interdisciplinary Dialogues from Computing, Philosophy, and Industry

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:59:23 GMT

March 12, 2026

London, England

As part of the Italian Symposium in London, we are delighted to invite you to an evening of interdisciplinary dialogue exploring the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence, ethics, and society with Professor Luciana Parisi (Duke University), Professor Francesca Toni (Imperial College London) and Bianca de Teffé Erb (Deloitte).

What do we mean when we call a machine “intelligent”? And what happens to ethics, accountability and power when decision-making is increasingly shared with, or delegated to, algorithms?

This panel opens a critical interdisciplinary conversation across five key dimensions: how we define intelligence itself; how ethics must evolve after and with the machine; how bias and systems of social reproduction are encoded into data and predictive models; how explainability shapes trust between humans and AI; and how technological transformation demands new forms of governance that move beyond hype and fear towards an alternative understanding of human-AI operations.

Thursday, March 12

6:15 PM – 8:00 PM GMT

King's College London, Strand Building (Room S-2.08)

London, England

The event is free and will be held in English. Booking is required at the link here.

About the Speakers

Luciana Parisi is Professor in Literature and core faculty for the Graduate Program in Computational Media Art and Culture at Duke University, USA. She was a member of the CCRU (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) and currently a co-founding member of CCB (Critical Computation Bureau). Her research is a philosophical investigation of technology in culture, aesthetics and politics. She is the author of Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (2004, Continuum Press) and Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space (2013, MIT Press). She is completing a monograph on automation and philosophy (MIT Press, forthcoming) and co-editing the collection Colonial Fractals: The Racial Politics of Planetary Computation (Duke University Press, forthcoming).

Francesca Toni is Professor in Computational Logic in the Department of Computing, at Imperial College London, UK. She is the founder and leader of the CLArg (Computational Logic and Argumentation) research group and of the XAI Research Centre at Imperial. Her research interests lie within the broad area of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning in AI and Explainable AI, and in particular include Argumentation, Argument Mining, Logic-Based Multi-Agent Systems, Non-monotonic/Default/Defeasible Reasoning, Machine Learning. She is corner editor on argumentation for the Journal of Logic and Computation, in the editorial board of the Argument and Computation journal and associate editor for Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. She is also in the Board of Directors for KR Inc. and IJCAI trustee.

Bianca de Teffé Erb is Partner and Data & AI Ethics Lead at Deloitte. With over a decade of experience in consulting, she specialises in AI Governance, Ethics, Risk and Compliance. She supports multinational organisations such as NATO and ESA, public institutions and large industrial groups such as Confindustria in developing ethical and compliant AI adoption strategies, with a particular focus on the European AI Act. She is the author of the report “Towards an Ethics by Design Approach for AI,” presented at the European Parliament in 2024. Bianca was included in the “Top 20 Under 30” list by Forbes Italy in 2018. She was among the first professionals in Italy to obtain the ISO 42001 Lead Auditor certification.

The discussion will be moderated by Aglaia Freccero (Imperial College London), Dr Edoardo Occhipinti (UCL), Simone Pellegrino (Goldsmiths, University of London), and Emma Prévot (University of Oxford), four PhD and early-career researchers who will bring their diverse academic perspectives to this timely conversation on AI.

Under the broader Symposium theme, “Innovare Audere: A Future-Ready Italy,” this event reflects on the need for a critical approach to innovation and risk in shaping the future. In London, we explore how this spirit translates into Italy’s role in a rapidly changing world, through complementary perspectives on geopolitics and international relations, economic and financial competitiveness, and technology and innovation.

Over five days and across four universities, the Symposium convenes leading voices to discuss how Italy can strengthen its global influence and remain competitive in the decades ahead. The initiative is organised by United Italian Societies (UIS), a non-profit founded and led by Italian students abroad, connecting over 60 universities in more than 10 countries and representing a vibrant community of over 11,000 Italian students worldwide.

This panel is co-organised with UIS Research Centre, a student-led think tank rooted in academic excellence, committed to producing rigorous policy proposals and forward-thinking research on some of Italy's most compelling issues.

We look forward to welcoming you all to a stimulating discussion!

“Content creators”. Capturing the economic, social, and material realities of creation on digital platforms

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:54:50 GMT

Reset ( special issue)

Deadline: May 4, 2026

Edited by Quentin Gilliotte (Carism, Université Panthéon-Assas), Marion Michel (Carism, Université Panthéon-Assas) and Phoebé Pigenet (Carism, Université Panthéon-Assas)

While research on content creation has existed since the 1990s, the recent development of platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok has marked a turning point by enabling the expansion of commercial activities and the professionalization of the sector. The marketing institute Reech estimates the number of “influencers” in France around 150,000 (Reech, 2025; Vie Publique, 2025). However, this estimate leaves behind a multitude of actors who engage in this activity more or less regularly, with uneven income streams, and enjoy varying degrees of visibility. These actors operate and circulate across spaces with diverse thematic orientations (ecology, sports, politics, well-being, etc.) and develop their activities both at the core of platforms (through audience success and monetization revenues) and at their margins (niche spaces, sites of reputation-building, or off-platform activities). These dynamics give rise to numerous economic or thematic subspaces that often function in opposition to dominant platform spaces.

This diversity is reflected in the ways of identifying and labeling these activities. Depending on whether the emphasis is placed on their actual or supposed influence over audiences (influencers, opinion leaders, media figures), on a specific type of production (videographers, podcasters, streamers), on claims to expertise or professional status in a given field or topic (nutritionists, journalists, engineers, sports coaches), or on anchoring within a particular digital ecosystem (YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers), these labels vary according to contexts, publics, and settings. This proliferation of terminologies is also found in the academic literature and reflects divergent perspectives on these activities. Some studies refer to “Internet celebrities” or “micro-celebrities” (Abidin, 2018; Vizcaíno-Verdú & Abidin, 2023) to capture the articulation between visibility in these spaces and relationships with audiences. Other approaches foreground labor and subordination to digital infrastructures, analyzing these actors as “platform workers” within broader processes of platformization (Poell et al., 2019). Others examine content creators through the lens of leisure commodification and the continuum between amateurs and professionals, highlighting the specific forms of aspirational labor involved (Duffy, 2016). Finally, some studies explicitly label a subset of these actors as “influencers,” particularly concerning commercial or ideological forms of prescription (Bishop, 2025; Duverné et al., 2022; Godefroy, 2021; Michel, 2023), sometimes extending to attempts to measure the presumed effects of such prescriptions on audiences. Online content production for multiple and heterogeneous audiences is thus associated with a variety of labels, reflecting multiple disciplinary anchoring points (digital sociology, sociology of work, economic sociology, STS, communication and media studies, cultural studies, etc.).

In this issue, we approach these individuals and their practices through the notion of “content creators” referring to individuals who, via an account on a platform, publish digital productions to a community of followers. This term has gained significant traction in media and professional discourses—particularly among talent agencies, production companies, and communication firms—to describe segments of content production most closely aligned with commercial logic, while distancing itself from the more controversial notion of “influencer.” Nevertheless, the term has the advantage of designating these actors based on what they actually do, without presuming their degree of professionalization, economic model, focus, platform affiliation, or capacity to influence, prescribe, or orient audiences.

Research Strands

This issue aims precisely to focus on content creation and to examine the social, material, and economic conditions under which it is carried out on digital platforms. The issue welcomes a plurality of theoretical frameworks (digital and media sociology, sociology of work, economic sociology, gender studies, cultural studies, political economy of platforms, etc.) and empirical fields (France and other national or transnational contexts). Particular attention will be paid to the contributions empirical robustness, as well as to the ways in which they articulate in-depth analysis of a case or segment with a more general reflection on the structuring of the content creation space, its niches, markets, and hierarchies. The study of content creators also raises numerous methodological and epistemological challenges. Without constituting a standalone axis, submitted proposals are expected to take into account the issues involved in online data collection and to clearly explicate the chosen methodology, its relevance to the object of study, and its limitations. We also encourage submissions to detail how the production of scientific results is articulated with compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

1. Social and Professional Trajectories of Content Creators

While a substantial body of research has examined the formats, contents, and even the economic models of this activity, the individual trajectories of content creators remain largely under-explored. This axis seeks to fill this gap by examining how social, professional, and biographical trajectories articulate with the ways in which these online activities are carried out, in light of promises to lower barriers to entry.

On the side of professional trajectories, the question of the pro–am continuum (Flichy, 2010) has already been the object of a very large number of studies on online activities, which could be revisited in the light of recent developments in platform operations. Since this activity can expose individuals to many risks and criticisms from large audiences, one might ask what drives some amateurs to invest in these platforms if professionalization is not their career horizon.

When one seeks to qualify the occupations, professions, or activities involved, the extreme diversity of profiles and practices often makes analysis difficult: creators frequently combine several activities, oscillating between different professions—journalists, nutritionists, researchers, retailers, psychologists, reality TV stars. Thus, many individuals do not necessarily consider themselves content creators, while in practice being invested in these socio-digital platforms. This is, for example, the case for the artists studied by Sophie Bishop (2025), who clearly shows how the logic of commercial influence on platforms extends to many other sectors of activity, including highly amateur ones. At which point do individuals engaged in an activity outside platforms come to qualify themselves as content creators?

Although some studies have explored individual pathways through case studies (Assilaméhou-Kunz & Rebillard, 2022; Celik, 2014), it remains necessary to adopt a more systematic approach in order to analyze the dynamics of entry, staying, and career change within this activity, facilitated by the possibility of carrying out these activities remotely. How does membership in certain professional groups shape content creation? What are the bridges and the breaks between this activity and other professional sectors? While this may constitute a form of involuntary career change, as in the case of YouTube cartomancers (Gilliotte & Guittet, 2025), or a way to align professional activity with passion (Duffy, 2016), the sector’s strong commodification can also lead individuals to engage directly in it after their initial training. Which social and trajectory-related factors account for these differences?

When focusing on issues of trajectories and social stratification, several studies emphasize the belonging of some of content creators to upper social classes, such as YouTube science popularizers (Blanchard et al., 2018), eco-responsible content creators (Michel, 2023), or fitness influencers (Godefroy, 2021). Conversely, other spaces of online creation appear to be invested by members of the working and middle classes (Brasseur & Finez, 2019; Gilliotte & Guittet, 2023, 2025), which significantly shapes how they carry out their activity and how they position themselves professionally. These gaps bring to light dynamics of social stratification that deserve further investigation: what is the weight of social inequalities in creators’ access to and success within this activity? To what extent do these online spaces reproduce or transform traditional career logic and professional trajectories? Finally, to what extent do these diverse patterns of social recruitment lead to the valorization of certain segments of content-creation work? Conversely, do we observe that certain tasks tend to be delegated, following the model of “dirty work” (Hughes, 1962), and if so, which tasks and according to what criteria? Is it moderation work, accounting, video editing? These considerations invite us to rethink content creation within a collective framework: who takes charge of this “dirty work” (family, paid professionals), and how do creators’ economic, social, and cultural resources enable—or fail to enable—access to such forms of delegation?

These social effects should also be analyzed through the lens of gender. Many studies indeed highlight the continuity between feminine norms, digital expression, and the management of an online community (Duffy & Hund, 2015; Rocamora, 2017). Others show how digital entrepreneurship, because it can take place at home, is massively chosen by women seeking a better articulation between professional and family time, with the consequence of increasing their domestic workload (Landour, 2019). However, the growing commodification of content creation, alongside a symbolic revalorization of the activity, leads men to invest certain sectors such as political commentary or science popularization (Blanchard et al., 2018; Louis, 2016), while relegating women to sectors that are less socially valued, such as “lifestyle” (Gauthier, 2025). How does gender thus influence practices and representations of content creation? In the case of science popularization, for instance, women creators are more often victims of sexist attacks in comment sections than their male counterparts (Douyère & Ricaud, 2019); how can we describe the activity of these “men in women’s jobs” (Couppié & Epiphane, 2016) and, conversely, the reverse situation? How should we conceptualize the boundary between content creation “for men” and content creation “for women”? Similarly, many authors, including Angèle Christin and Yingdan Lu (Christin & Lu, 2024), have underscored the effects of race within platform capitalism, showing significant pay gaps depending on whether creators are racialized or not. Overall, intersectional approaches are strongly encouraged.

Finally, proposals may also examine these trajectories through the angle of creators’ insertion into professional organizations within the content-creation activity. This may already involve shedding light on the internal organization of channels. Thus, despite a strong embodiment around a particular figure, many channels nonetheless rely on highly collective production, as exemplified by the HugoDécrypte channel, which has more than 30 employees. How is this organization structured? How do the different actors divide up the work and manage the tension between visible and invisible labor? One may also question the professional organization of the sector more broadly. The sociology of markets observes that, in markets insufficiently regulated by public authorities, actors cooperate to collectively produce norms of exchange (Castel et al., 2016; Mallard, 2011). Since a Union of Influence Professions and Content Creators was established in 2023, what role do collective organizations take on and play in these markets? What positioning do content creators adopt vis-à-vis them?

2. Make a Living in the Content Creation Market

Various studies have highlighted the economic precariousness of the majority of these creators (Alexandre et al., 2024; Alexandre & Benbouzid, 2024). One of the first challenges for them is the organizational and economic viability of their activity, particularly in terms of shifting from amateur to professional production, given that many of them often fall within the pro-am continuum (Flichy, 2010, 2017). How do these creators manage to make a living from their activity? When creative activity pays little, what economic strategies are put in place to remain visible in the hope of one day being able to make a living from their passion (Duffy, 2016)? How do these creators professionalize themselves, while juggling different sources of income within a multifaceted market?

In terms of commercial partner relationships, a special focus will be placed on how creators negotiate relationships with various commercial partners. Creators must present themselves as trustworthy to businesses while creating a brand image that will attract specific audiences (Van Driel & Dumitrica, 2021). Marion Michel (2022) shows that eco-responsible content creators must learn to filter and choose their partners carefully so that they do not arouse suspicion among their audiences. How is the value of this relationship to audiences determined? More broadly, how do creators learn to “sell themselves,” set their rates, refuse or renegotiate certain partnerships? On the other hand, certain economic actors do not necessarily have an interest in these creators becoming more professional. This is highlighted in particular by the work of Joseph Godefroy (2021), which clearly shows how creators’ proximity to their audience leads to “friendly, contract-free work”, with creators being paid in goods or vouchers. What is preventing or slowing down the professionalization of some of these creators?

When it comes to analyzing the relationship with audiences, many studies focus on the ways in which certain forms of authenticity and closeness to audiences are performed (Bishop, 2025; Coavoux & Roques, 2020; Duverné et al., 2022). However, these performances of authenticity vary in different contexts—they depend on multiple factors such as the creators’ area of expertise, their gender, the platform, and their level of professionalization. Brasseur & Finez (2019) show how cam girls must “perform” amateurism in order to appeal to their audiences. How are these tensions expressed in other sectors? How does this proximity to audiences translate economically? In fact, certain content creation sectors place significant emphasis on donation and subscription mechanisms (Ferret, 2024), which can make the activity economically viable despite a limited presence in the public sphere. Others resort to a service market (coaching, training, consulting, crafts, care, etc.) or sell derivative products (Gilliotte & Guittet, 2025), using audiovisual platforms as a showcase for loss leaders. This diversity of models raises the issue of strategies adopted to ensure financial stability. How can content creation for large audiences be combined with smaller-scale service provision?

Finally, several studies show that monetization remains, for the most part, an uncertain source of income in the economic relationship forged with platforms, heavily influenced by the opacity of the algorithm and the volatility of visibility and remuneration criteria (Bishop, 2019; Gilliotte & Pasquier, 2024). The official rules for accessing monetization programs coexist with more discretionary changes in recommendation systems, which are never publicly announced, fueling a climate of uncertainty (Bishop, 2019, 2021) in which creators struggle to anticipate the effects of their editorial and economic choices. Contributions could therefore examine how creators interpret these changes: how do they learn to read, to comment, to anticipate or to circumvent the metrics and revenue dashboards made available to them? What strategies for maximization, diversification or, conversely, disengagement from these mechanisms do they develop (multiplication of platforms, arbitrage between monetisable and non-monetisable content, segmentation of channels according to editorial or economic functions, etc.)? How do these rules circulate in the professional field?

Beyond content creators themselves, the way the content creation market is organized can be called into question, particularly with the emergence and development of a variety of intermediaries, such as talent agencies and multichannel networks. The latter play a key part in negotiating content with advertisers, treating creators’ productions as actual advertising spaces (Desmoulins et al., 2018). What role do these commercial actors play in the professionalization of content creators and in revenue negotiations? To what extent do these new intermediaries participate in forms of delegation of “dirty work” (Hughes, 1962) or, on the contrary, reinforce the constraints on content production?

3. Creative Production and Formatting Under Constraints

Finally, the last axis focuses on content creation as an activity of its own, the practices and forms of knowledge it requires and the various trade-offs made in context. Beyond the economic issues discussed in Axis 1, content creators must operate within constrained frameworks, develop not only commercial but also artistic, bodily, and communication skills, while adapting and resisting to regulatory, technical, or algorithmic constraints (Bigot et al., 2021; Gomez-Mejia, 2016).

A growing body of research has highlighted the ways in which platforms prescribe and standardize content formats, as illustrated by the systems framing production on YouTube (Mattelart, 2021), TikTok (Guinaudeau et al., 2022), and Facebook (Alloing et al., 2021). This standardization relies on creators’ adaptation to platforms whose modes of operation are often described as opaque and highly specific. Many studies emphasize the importance of exchanging practical knowledge, through both experimentation and informal discussions among creators (Bishop, 2019), leading over time to a degree of convergence in practices. How does the learning of these norms take place in practice? What resources are mobilized? This learning process is all the more crucial given that content moderation policies are known to contribute to the visibility or invisibility of certain social groups, as illustrated by LGBT collectives affected by “over-moderation” (Grison et al., 2023). Various strategies are regularly implemented, such as creating backup accounts, self-censoring terms or images, resorting to alternative platforms, or collectively denouncing moderation measures perceived as abusive (Badouard, 2021). These constraints may even encourage voluntary exits from platforms, as illustrated by the HelloQuitX movement calling for users to leave X (formerly Twitter). Alongside strategies of resistance to censorship mechanisms are those aimed at instrumentalizing them, for instance for community-based purposes: organizing coordinated reporting campaigns or creating block lists (Pigenet, 2024). How is resistance to platform-imposed constraints organized? How are the closure or reopening of profiles across different platforms negotiated over time?

These difficulties are further compounded for creators who invest in multiple digital platforms and services simultaneously (Millette, 2013), which entails specific forms of trade-offs. Creators must therefore contend with more or less constraining formats, which may involve, for example, adapting long, horizontal content into short, vertical formats. This process constrains choices of staging and potentially complicates multi-platform creation. How does the adaptation from one format to another take place in practice? Which trade-offs lead to the choice of specific formats on particular platforms? Beyond their varying affordances, platforms also differ in terms of history, culture, and audiences. While some are experiencing rapid growth, others are in decline; some are particularly popular among younger publics, while others are more widely used by older users (Pacouret et al., 2024). How do creators adapt to real or imagined audiences?

Finally, this axis also invites reflection on adaptations to emerging legislative constraints. The rapid expansion of commercial collaboration practices targeting young audiences, combined with the media coverage of scandals involving content creators, has led in France to the adoption of a law on commercial influence on 9 June 2023. This law aims both to protect the work of creators—particularly minors—to prohibit certain practices, and to regulate advertising. Belgium has also strengthened its regulatory framework for creators, as part of a broader European movement toward the regulation and oversight of commercial influence practices, exemplified by the Digital Services Act adopted by the European Union in 2022. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission issues guidelines for creators but adopts a more flexible approach. As a result, the sector is characterized by an evolving and uneven regulatory landscape across territories, despite the international nature of creators’ visibility and content. Yet few studies have examined how legislative regulation shapes practices. How do creators take legislative developments into account? Moreover, many creators enjoy international visibility: how does this affect their commercial practices, and how do they navigate between different regulatory frameworks? Submissions grounded in legislative contexts other than France are encouraged whether or not they adopt a comparative approach.

Practical Information

The abstracts (4000 signs maximum, plus references) are due on May 4, 2026. They should be sent to the following address: journal.reset@gmail.com

And to the coordinators of the issue:

Quentin Gilliotte : quentin.gilliotte@gmail.com
Phoebé Pigenet : ppigenet@gmail.com
Marion Michel : marion.michel@sciencespo.fr

The proposal, written in either English or French, should state the research question, the methodology, and the theoretical framework used. It will focus on the scientific relevance of the proposed article in light of the existing literature and the call for papers, and may be accompanied by a short bibliography. We would like to draw the authors’ attention to a special section called Revisiting the Classics, devoted to new readings of classical authors and theories in light of the Internet.

The abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the issue coordinators and the members of the editorial board. Authors of submissions selected at this stage will be asked to e-mail their full papers on January 15, 2013.

The journal Reset also accepts submissions to its “Varia” section, open to scholarly work in the Humanities and Social Sciences dealing with an Internet-related object or method of research.

Important dates

Deadline for abstract submission (4000 signs maximum, plus references): May 4, 2026.

Responses to authors: Before the end of June 2026.

Deadline for full papers (6,000 to 9,000 words, plus references): November 23, 2026.

Contact

Editorial board: journal.reset@gmail.com

Coordinators:

Quentin Gilliotte : quentin.gilliotte@gmail.com
Phoebé Pigenet : ppigenet@gmail.com
Marion Michel : marion.michel@sciencespo.fr

Bibliographie

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Rewriting Reality: The Role of Algorithmic Media in Shaping Thought, Society, and Digital Belonging

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:49:20 GMT

Dear Colleagues,

I have begun work on a forthcoming book project. The development of the manuscript is scheduled to commence in June 2026.

The title is Rewriting Reality: The Role of Algorithmic Media in Shaping Thought, Society, and Digital Belonging

I would be grateful if you could let me know whether you would be interested in contributing a chapter to this volume. On this occasion, chapters will be authored by a single contributor, and participation will be strictly by invitation.

If you believe that this topic may also be of interest to other colleagues, please feel free to let me know so that their potential participation may be considered. Write to me at raquelbenitezrojas@gmail.com.

Digital Methods Summer School

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:46:57 GMT

July 6-10, 2026

University of Manchester

We would like to invite applicants for the Digital Methods Summer School that will take place at the University of Manchester between 6th and 10th July 2026.

This year, we will cover the following topics:

Visual Methods
Sensing AI Methods
Creative AI Methods
Text Analysis with R
Data Visualisation
Geospatial Methods
Ethics & Open Science

Check out our website for more information about the content, fees and bursaries: https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/53uwG1yp7TISE

The summer school is co-organised by the Centre for Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media (https://www.digital-humanities.manchester.ac.uk/) and Methods@Manchester (https://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/).

Building the Algorithmic Audience: Shifting Paradigms in Communications, Media, and Democracy

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:43:16 GMT

Media and Journalismo, vol. 26 N49 (2026)

Deadline: April 30, 2026

Editors:

Berta García Orosa iD icon “ University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, berta.garcia@usc.es
Inês Amaral iD icon “ University of Coimbra, Portugal, ines.amaral@uc.pt
Noel Pascual Presa iD icon “ University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, noel.pascual.presa@usc.es

The topic of this call for papers seeks to gather original, interdisciplinary, and empirically grounded research that exploreshow audiences are constructed within digital public spheres. The development of technologies such as artificial intelligence or big data has not only transformed the production, distribution, and circulation of information, but also redefined theways in which audiences are imagined and constructed. In its early stages (approximately 20 years ago), the continuous analysis of big data allowed for real-time audience insights and, subsequently, the prediction of audience behaviour, as exemplified by the Cambridge Analytica case. However, the focus has now shifted towards constructing audiences beforemessages are even produced, particularly in the context of electoral campaigns.

While there is a growing academic interest in the effects of media automation and personalisation, there has yet to be aconvergence of studies that systematically examine the epistemological, political, ethical, and communicative implicationsof this new relationship between algorithms and audiences. This gap is even more striking when considering the far-reaching nature of the phenomenon, which spans across journalism, political communication, digital culture, and platformgovernance.

In this fourth wave of digital communication, algorithms not only predict audience behaviours but also influence and shape them, giving rise to what has been termed the "algorithmic audience" (Riemer & Peter, 2021). This process ofdatafication has led to new methods of classification, personalisation, and micro-segmentation of audiences, profoundlytransforming the logic of political mediation.

This scenario marks a paradigm shift: while traditional scientific episteme conceived of audiences through ascribed categories such as class, gender, or ideology, the new algorithmic paradigm is grounded in behavioural data, adopting aperformative logic that dissolves fixed classifications (Fisher & Mehozay, 2019).

However, this transformation is far from neutral. The new ways of constructing algorithmic audiences present democraticrisks: automated biases (Kordzadeh & Ghasemaghaei, 2021), opacity in content selection (Livingstone, 2019), challengesto informational plurality and freedom of expression (Riemer & Peter, 2021), and growing inequality in voice representation (Jones, 2023; Zarouali et al., 2021). The construction of new public spheres requires critical and urgentanalysis.

These changes are affecting public discourse, with journalism at the forefront of the transformation. The growing relianceon algorithms is reshaping the profession, giving rise to what has been termed "automated journalism" or "robot journalism", driven by the automation and personalisation of news content (Carlson, 2015; Clerwall, 2014). Although thispersonalisation offers opportunities to strengthen the relationship with audiences (Ford & Hutchinson, 2019), it also introduces challenges, as public trust in the media may be undermined by the perceived risks inherent to these dynamics(Livingstone, 2019; Sehl & Eder, 2023). These new tools have far-reaching implications, both professionally and socially:from threats to freedom of expression and the need for new policies on content authorship, to the impact on the legitimacy of journalistic judgement and the reconfiguration of audiences (Carlson, 2018; Fisher & Mehozay, 2019; Montal & Reich,2016; Riemer & Peter, 2021).

From an identity perspective, the relationship with audiences remains central. However, the emphasis has shifted:personalised and individualised messaging have lost prominence, giving way to a more community-centred discourse. Inpractice, community is constructed around paid subscriptions and access to exclusive features and content. Narratives areconstructed around this group of members or subscribers to persuade them of their relevance to the survival and qualityof the media’s journalistic practice.

At the same time, users often perceive algorithmic content selection based on their consumption behaviour in a positive light (Thurman, 2018). This personalisation is accompanied by increasing categorisation and micro-segmentation, allowing for more granular and precise user classification (Beauvisage et al., 2024). Nonetheless, this positive perception and micro-segmentation do not protect users from the risks inherent to algorithmic governance, often carefully designedaround opaque or hidden interests (Jones, 2023; Reynolds & Hallinan, 2024).

This Call for Papers aims to:

Explore epistemological transformations in the conceptualisation of audiences
Analyse emerging journalistic and communicative practices within algorithmic logics
Examine the democratic, ethical, and regulatory implications of algorithm-mediated personalisation
Propose innovative methodologies for investigating hyper-segmented and opaque audiences
Foster interdisciplinary dialogue bridging political communication, digital sociology, platform economics, and critical theory

ECC2026 Registration open

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:25:53 GMT

Registration for the 11th European Communication Conference (ECC2026) is now open. The conference will take place in Brno and will bring together communication scholars from across Europe and beyond for four days of research presentations, scholarly discussion, and networking. ECC2026 offers a unique platform to engage with current research, strengthen international collaboration, and help shape the future of communication studies. Detailed information on registration fees, accommodation, and the conference program is available on this website. Notifications regarding abstract submissions will be sent after 17 March 2026. The deadline for early registration is 15 June 2026.

PhD fellowship with the title PAY4PLAY: Entrepreneurial Organizing in the Platform Society (5+3)

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:33:06 GMT

Aarhus University

Apply here: https://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/open-and-specific-calls/phd-call-2026-9

The Graduate School at Arts, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, in collaboration with the European Research Council and the Department of Media and Journalism Studies at Aarhus University, invites applications for a fully funded PhD fellowship in PAY4PLAY: Entrepreneurial Organizing in the Platform Society provided the necessary funding is available. This PhD fellowship is available as of 1 September 2026 for a period of up to three years (5+3).

It is expected that candidate awarded the PhD fellowship will be able to commence the PhD degree programme on 1 September 2026.

PAY4PLAY is an interdisciplinary, large-scale investigation of organizing in the creator economy concerned with how creators and their communities come together and create value. The project is premised on the idea that organizing is essential to understand how creators—and people more broadly—both exploit and challenge the growing power of digital platforms. The project approaches creator organizing from three perspectives (culture, infrastructure, policy) and compares three industrial sectors (gamers, VTubers, adult content creators). In so doing, the project will map the industrial conditions of the creator economy, develop a new theory of organizing and platform power, and provide policy recommendations for platforms and regulators.

The PAY4PLAY team includes the principal investigator Blake Hallinan, a postdoctoral researcher, and three PhD fellows working on the sub-project “Cultures of Participation within and among Creator Communities.”

This PhD fellowship focuses on video game creators making content in English and, preferably, Spanish, as the second largest language on the livestreaming platform Twitch. The project design is flexible but should investigate organizing within (i.e., how creators, co-producers, volunteers, and audience members relate to each other) and among creator communities (i.e., how creator communities form alliances to shape industrial conditions). The PhD fellow will also have the opportunity to collaborate with team members working in other sectors and in the projects focused on infrastructure and policy, as well as with an international network of advisors and collaborators.

The PhD fellowship will be supervised by Blake Hallinan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Journalism Studies, and co-supervised by Pablo Velasco, Associate Professor in the Department of Digital Design and Information.

Tasks and responsibilities

The candidate will:

Design and conduct studies of organizing within and among gaming creator communities across social media platforms (e.g., Twitch, YouTube, Discord, Patreon, TikTok)
Conduct interviews with members of gaming creator communities
Observe creator community organizing at industry events (e.g., TwitchCon, Gamescom)
Observe creator community organizing online using relevant methods (e.g., digital ethnography, digital methods analysis of social media data)
Collaborate closely with supervisors, the postdoctoral researcher, and fellow PhD researchers on the PAY4PLAY project
Present research at international conferences
Publish PhD research in international publication venues

Requirements

Master’s degree (120 ECTS) in a relevant field (e.g., media studies, communication, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies)
Experience with studying digital platforms and/or online communities
Ability to speak and write in English at an academic level

Desirable assets

Ability to conduct research in Spanish (reading documents, interviewing participants)
Domain expertise in the creator economy
Theoretical sophistication, as reflected in the project description
Experience with collaborative, interdisciplinary, and/or international research projects

Enrolment and place of work

The PhD student must complete the studies in accordance with the valid regulations for the PhD degree programme, currently the Ministerial Order of 27 August 2013 on the PhD degree programme at the universities: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/thephddegreeprogramme/

Description of the graduate school’s PhD degree programme: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/phdstudystructure/

Rules and regulations for the PhD degree programme at the Graduate School at Arts: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/thephddegreeprogramme/

The PhD fellow will be enrolled as a PhD student at the Graduate School at Arts, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, with the aim of completing a PhD degree at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.

The PhD student will be affiliated with the PhD programme ICT, Media, Communication and Journalism.

The PhD student’s place of work will be the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. In general, the student is expected to be present at the school on an everyday basis.

The PhD degree programme is expected to include a lengthy research stay at a foreign institution, cf. Description of the graduate school’s PhD degree programme.

School of Communication and Culture’s research programme: http://cc.au.dk/en/research/research-programmes/

5+3 programme

When you apply for a 3-year PhD fellowship (5+3), you must have completed your two year Master’s degree (120 ECTS) no later than 31 August 2026.

The PhD fellow will be employed as a PhD student at the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University. The terms of employment are in accordance with the agreement between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations, as well as with the protocol to the agreement covering staff with university degrees in the state sector (see enclosure 5). The agreement and the protocol including amendments are available online: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/thephddegreeprogramme/

Salary: https://phd.arts.au.dk/4-4-part-b-and-5-3/salary-and-employment

How to apply

The application must include:

Motivation/cover letter (statement of motivation and research interests, max one A4 page of 2,400 characters including spaces)

CV (including a complete list of education, positions, publications and other qualifying activities)

Project description outlining how the candidate envisages completing the work to be undertaken during the course of the term of appointment.

The overall project description (excl. list of project literature/bibliography/reference list and timetable) must not exceed 12,000 characters including spaces, tables, diagrams, footnotes, endnotes and illustrations (5 A4 pages of 2,400 characters each)

Project literature/reference list

Timetable (mandatory form)

Cover sheet (form stating your degrees)

Copies of educational certificates (Bachelor and Master’s degrees). The diplomas or diploma supplement/transcript of records must state: name of university, education (Bachelor or Master), duration (number of years, full-time), courses, marks and (if given) ECTS credits.

Please see a detailed description of the requirements for the application in the guide for the application facility: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/how-to-apply/

Application

If you require professional guidance regarding your application for the PhD fellowship please contact the PhD programme director at ICT, Media, Communication and Journalism: http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/contact/

For further information, please contact Assistant Professor Blake Hallinan, School of Communication and Culture, bhallinan@cc.au.dk, + 45 93 99 75 01.

The application must be submitted in English.

All applicants must provide documentation of excellent communication skills in English which are considered essential, and you must therefore be able to read, write, and speak academic English fluently. English language requirement is comparable to a minimum of TOEFL 83 or IELTS 6.5. Please see this page for further information: http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/english-test/

Child protection certificate

In accordance with Ministerial Order no. 554 of 23 May 2023, Aarhus University is obliged to obtain a statement of no previous convictions in respect of children in connection with the appointment and employment of staff whose work will involve direct contact with children under the age of 15. If you, in connection with your PhD project, will be in direct contact with children under the age of 15 who are not accompanied by a parent or guardian, childcare professional or teacher, you will be covered by the requirements of the ministerial order.

If you are covered by these requirements and read Danish, please complete the section “Samtykkeerklæring” (declaration of consent) in the police form and upload the file under “Other information to consider” in the application form. You can download the form here: https://politi.dk/-/media/mediefiler/landsdaekkende-dokumenter/straffeattest/brneattest-p274.pdf

If you are covered by these requirements and do not read Danish, please upload a brief statement with the headline “Child protection certificate needed” under the field “Other information to consider” in the application form.

Applications for the PhD fellowship and enrolment in the PhD degree programme can only be submitted via the application form in Aarhus University’s web-based facility.

Deadline for applications: 1 April 2026 at 23.59 Danish time (CET/CEST).

Reference number: 2026-9

During the assessments, Aarhus University can conduct interviews with selected applicants.

What’s new in EurOMo – and how to use it for journalism, research, and policy work

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:27:16 GMT

March 20, 2026 and March 23, 2026

Online

The Euromedia Ownership Monitor (EurOMo) has now made its full database available to registered users, including information on beneficial owners. To introduce the database and highlight the main resources in EurOMo’s latest version, we are hosting a public webinar with two sessions:

Friday, 20 March 2026, 11:00 CET

Monday, 23 March 2026, 15:00 CET

Each session includes a 30-minute presentation and live demo, followed by a Q&A. If you would like to attend, please register via this form (also available on the project's website).

Kind regards,

Tales Tomaz and Josef Trappel

Coordinators of EurOMo

ChatGPT and Beyond: AI Literacy for Early-Career Scholars

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:16:05 GMT

Paulo Couraceiro and Nivedita Chatterjee

This report presents the outcomes of the workshop "ChatGPT and Beyond: AI Literacy for Early-Career Scholars", organised by ECREA's Audience and Reception Studies Section at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. The workshop created a structured yet open space for early-career researchers to examine how artificial intelligence is reshaping academic research and professional identity. Fifteen participants, mainly doctoral candidates from diverse national and disciplinary backgrounds, took part in a three-hour interactive session. The workshop combined reflection, practical exercises, and group discussion. It addressed three main areas: expectations and concerns about AI, everyday academic uses of AI tools, and the broader social implications of AI adoption. Participants expressed mixed emotions. Many described AI as useful and efficient, especially for assisting in literature review, text editing and managing routine tasks. Simultaneously, they also expressed concerns about authorship, bias, data privacy, and the risk of AI hallucinations. A key theme that emerged from the interaction was uncertainty. This was reflected in how university policies for AI adoption were often perceived as vague, inconsistent, or difficult to interpret. The ambiguity contributes to hesitation in disclosing the usage of AI and, in some cases, fear of reputational damage. Overall, the workshop highlights a strong demand for practical guidance and transparent discussion. Early-career scholars are not seeking to replace their work with AI, but to use it responsibly within clear ethical boundaries.

Download HERE.

AI Between Code and Ethics: Interdisciplinary Dialogues from Computing, Philosophy, and Industry

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:11:16 GMT

March 12, 2026 (6:15 - 8:00 GMT)

King's College London, Strand Building (Room S-2.08), London, England

What do we mean when we call a machine “intelligent”? And what happens to ethics, responsibility, and power when decision-making is increasingly shared with, or delegated to, algorithms?

This panel opens a critical interdisciplinary conversation across five key dimensions: how we define intelligence itself; how ethics must evolve after and with the machine; how bias and systems of social reproduction are encoded into data and models; how explainability shapes trust between humans and AI; and how technological transformation demands new forms of governance that move beyond hype and fear towards an ecological understanding of AI operations.

The event is free and will be held in English. Booking is required at the link here.

About the Speakers

Luciana Parisi is Professor in Literature and core faculty for the Graduate Program in Computational Media Art and Culture at Duke University, USA. She was a member of the CCRU (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) and currently a co-founding member of CCB (Critical Computation Bureau). Her research is a philosophical investigation of technology in culture, aesthetics and politics. She is the author of Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (2004, Continuum Press) and Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space (2013, MIT Press). She is completing a monograph on automation and philosophy (MIT Press, forthcoming) and co-editing the collection Colonial Fractals: The Racial Politics of Planetary Computation (Duke University Press, forthcoming).

Francesca Toni is Professor in Computational Logic in the Department of Computing, at Imperial College London, UK. She is the founder and leader of the CLArg (Computational Logic and Argumentation) research group and of the XAI Research Centre at Imperial. Her research interests lie within the broad area of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning in AI and Explainable AI, and in particular include Argumentation, Argument Mining, Logic-Based Multi-Agent Systems, Non-monotonic/Default/Defeasible Reasoning, Machine Learning. She is corner editor on argumentation for the Journal of Logic and Computation, in the editorial board of the Argument and Computation journal and associate editor for Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. She is also in the Board of Directors for KR Inc. and IJCAI trustee.

Bianca de Teffé Erb is Partner and Data & AI Ethics Lead at Deloitte. With over a decade of experience in consulting, she specialises in AI Governance, Ethics, Risk and Compliance. She supports multinational organisations such as NATO and ESA, public institutions and large industrial groups such as Confindustria in developing ethical and compliant AI adoption strategies, with a particular focus on the European AI Act. She is the author of the report “Towards an Ethics by Design Approach for AI,” presented at the European Parliament in 2024. Bianca was included in the “Top 20 Under 30” list by Forbes Italy in 2018. She was among the first professionals in Italy to obtain the ISO 42001 Lead Auditor certification.

This event is co-organised with UIS Research Centre, a student-led think tank rooted in academic excellence, committed to producing rigorous policy proposals and forward-thinking research on Italy's most compelling issues that contribute to real-world institutional change.

We look forward to welcoming you all to a stimulating discussion!

EUPRERA Paper Development Workshop Announcement

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:08:33 GMT

September 16, 2026

Malaga, Spain

Deadline: March 15, 2026

Are you looking for an opportunity to discuss and develop your research paper? For the fifth time, we offer a Paper Development Workshop (PDW) during the annual EUPRERA congress. The PDW will take place on 16 September 2026 in Malaga, Spain, and will provide a highly interactive environment to discuss and receive feedback on papers. The deadline for submissions is 15 March 2026; submissions for the PDW are made during standard paper submissions for the EUPRERA congress. Join us!

More information: www.euprera.org/pdw

Redistributive Imaginaries: How do digital platforms shape meanings and practices of redistribution in Europe’s mixed economies of welfare?

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:04:58 GMT

March 18, 2026

Online seminar

Online seminar and presentation of the final report of the European project Redistributive Imaginaries (University of the Arts London, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, University of Zurich, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, University of Lapland).

We invite you to attend the online seminar taking place on Wednesday, March 18, from 12:00 to 13:30 (CET) to present the final report of the project Redistributive Imaginaries: digitalization, culture and prosocial contribution. REDIGIM is a 3-year research and knowledge exchange project funded by CHANSE and carried out in Spain, Finland, Montenegro, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

More information and registration: https://www.ema.uzh.ch/en/register/redigim.html

About the Project: In Europe’s mixed economies of welfare, redistribution practices are dispersed through civil society. Voluntary organisations involved in the delivery of welfare increasingly rely on digital tools and platforms to raise funds and manage relationships with donors. The project interrogates the systems of meaning that people use to make sense of redistribution and welfare provision. Through platform analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, we have examined emerging practices in the voluntary sector and identified some of the significant ways in which digital platforms are shaping dominant and emerging redistributive imaginaries.

In this seminar, members of the research team will discuss the project and its key findings, followed by discussion with respondents John Clarke, Eva Frade and Hanna Kuusela, and a Q&A with the audience.

Chair: Emma Dowling (University of Vienna)

Presenters from the research team: Rebecca Bramall (University of the Arts London), Milana Čergić (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz), Moritz Ege (University of Zurich), Mercè Oliva (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Respondents: John Clarke (Emeritus, Open University), Eva Frade (Platoniq Foundation), Hanna Kuusela (University of Jyväskylä)

Download the report: https://redigim.arts.ac.uk/publications/how-do-digital-platforms-shape-meanings-and-practices/

Visualization of project's key findings: https://redigim.arts.ac.uk/imaginaries/

Project website: https://redigim.arts.ac.uk/

AI in Research: Predictive Practices

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:02:24 GMT

March 25-27, 2026

University of Bonn, Germany

March 17, 2026

Dear colleagues,

from 25 to 27 March 2026, the University of Bonn will host the final conference of the research group “How Is AI Changing Science? Research in the Era of Learning Algorithms (HiAICS)”. The conference is entitled AI in Research: Predictive Practices and examines how AI-based methods are reshaping contemporary research practices, particularly with regard to infrastructures, data regimes, and forms of predictive work.

Over the past years, the transdisciplinary HiAICS group has investigated how learning algorithms transform epistemic procedures, evidentiary standards, and institutional structures across disciplines. The final conference aims to open this discussion to a broader academic audience and to foster exchange across fields.

The programme brings together 25 speakers from climatology, sociology, media studies, history of science, computer science, law, anthropology, mathematics, philosophy, and related disciplines. Keynote speakers are Gabriele Gramelsberger (RWTH Aachen University), Alexander Waibel (KIT/Carnegie Mellon University), and Markus Gabriel (University of Bonn). A panel discussion on the second day will feature Alexander Winkler, Christian Djefall, Gabriele Schabacher, Orit Halpern, Anne Dippel, and Christian Bauckhage.

Further information and the full programme are available at: https://howisaichangingscience.eu/final-conference/

Please note that capacity is limited. Participants who are not registered speakers are required to register by 17 March 2026: https://forms.gle/tqfY4zSdPnVRBLfJ9

We would be grateful if you could share this announcement within your institute and among potentially interested colleagues.

For further inquiries, please contact: contact.howisaichangingscience@gmail.com

Kind regards,

Matthias Ernst

HiAICS Project Team

Influencer Diplomacy Symposium

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:00:08 GMT

April 24, 2026

Online

Deadline: March 16, 2026

Read the full CfP here: https://ierlab.com/influencer-diplomacy/

This is a reminder that the submission deadline for the upcoming Influencer Diplomacy Symposium, hosted by the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab), is in two weeks [16 March 2026].

The symposium will be held online via Zoom on 24 April 2026 and will examine the evolving practice of influencer diplomacy across political, cultural, and geopolitical contexts.

Recent scholarship has highlighted the growing role of influencers in political arenas, including their involvement in diplomatic communication, soft power initiatives, conflict mediation, and international perception management. While research has addressed political influencers, geopolitical influencers, and state–influencer collaborations, there remains no shared definition of ‘influencer diplomacy.’

This symposium foregrounds influencer diplomacy as a generative concept, referring to the ways in which influencer cultures, practices, and industries impact diplomatic processes, from influencers assuming diplomatic roles and politicians adopting influencer strategies, to marketing firms leveraging influencer infrastructures in the mediation of international relations. Influencer diplomacy operates not only at formal state and institutional levels but also intersects with everyday politics, shaping public discourse and social engagement. Moreover, it must account for how influencers, as platform-savvy actors, tailor diplomatic communication to the vernaculars, norms, and affordances of specific digital platforms.

To explore this phenomenon in more detail, the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab) will be hosting a one-day online symposium (on Zoom) to examine the evolving practice of influencer diplomacy. We invite submissions from humanities and social sciences, including but not limited to media studies, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, area studies, and international relations. We particularly welcome submissions that focus on empirically grounded research and comparative case studies.

Selected papers will be considered for a peer reviewed edited collection. As such, we are only able to consider original, previously-unpublished abstracts/papers. Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

Influencers as official and unofficial intermediaries in diplomatic endeavours
Motivations, labour, and negotiation in influencers’ diplomatic practice
Politicians adopting influencer strategies in international communication
The role of affect, intimacy, authenticity, and storytelling as diplomatic resources
Audience participation, public formation, and the politicisation of influencer collaborations
Influencer diplomacy as both a practice and a governing logic: how diplomacy increasingly ‘thinks like an influencer’
Influencer diplomacy in crisis, conflict, humanitarian, and wartime contexts
Regulation, disclosure, and governance of state–influencer collaborations

To be considered for the symposium, please submit a 250-word abstract and 100-word bio via the Google form below by 1700hrs (GMT+8) 16 March 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent on 20 March 2026. We gladly welcome co-authored submissions; to keep presentations consistent, each submission is limited to one presenter, preferably the corresponding author. Please submit via this form: https://forms.gle/7EWBPEuR4gk3ceKK7

All enquiries should be directed to contact@IERLab.com

Key Dates:

16 March 2026: Abstracts and biographies due
20 March 2026: Notifications of acceptance
24 April 2026: Influencer Diplomacy Symposium

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Faye Mercier, Wuxuan Zhang, Prof. Crystal Abidin

Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab), Curtin University

By/For: Photography & Democracy

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:57:10 GMT

March 6, 2026

Online

The second event in the 2026 By/For: Photography & Democracy virtual lecture series is coming up on Friday, March 6, at 1pm EST: “Studio Ilankai: A Tamil Photographic History of Sri Lankan Citizenship” with Vindhya Buthpitiya. Learn more and register here.

If you missed our first event, “To Show or Not to Show: Ethics, Censorship, and the Case of the Scourged Back” with Anne Strachan Cross & Matthew Fox-Amato, we invite you to view the recording here.

ECREA Panel @ IAMCR 2026

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:18:48 GMT

28 June – 2 July 2026

Galway, Ireland

Call for Abstracts – ECREA panel at IAMCR conference 2026

International Association for Media and Communication Research

IAMCR Annual Conference: Peripheries and Connections: Media, Communication, and Transformation

The 2026 central theme, Peripheries and Connections: Media, Communication, and Transformation, addresses the complexities of contemporary media systems in a polarised and interconnected world. By emphasising intersections between the global and the local, IAMCR 2026 will provide a platform for reimagining media’s role in addressing critical challenges such as climate change, migration, representation, and digital inequalities.

More information: https://iamcr.org/galway2026/theme

ECREA will host one panel at IAMCR 2026 and invites high quality submissions 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. As ECREA’s mission is advancing European scholarship, 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. Panels provide a good forum for the discussion of new approaches, ongoing developments, innovative ideas, and debates in the field. If you plan to submit a panel, please submit the following details: (a) Panel theme or title, (b) a 75-word description of the panel for the conference program, (c) a 400-word rationale, providing justification for the panel and the participating panelists, (d) 75-word abstract of each paper, (e) names of panel participants (usually 4-5 presenters, plus an optional designated respondent), and (f) name of panel chair/organizer. 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. Panels should consist of personal on-site presentations. 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 provides a registration waiver only for the panel convener, not for the other panelists. Also ECREA does not cover any travel expenses.

How to submit?

Email to: info@ecrea.eu
Submission deadline is 9th of March 2026, 23:59 CET
In case of questions please contact: info@ecrea.eu

ECREA Conference Review Committee:

Indrek Ibrus (Tallinn University)

Dina Vozab (University of Zagreb)

Malgorzata Winiarska-Brodowska (Jagiellonian University)

Children's Rights Under Pressure in a Digital World

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:36:46 GMT

June 4, 2026 (8:30)

CTICC | Cape Town International Convention Centre - 1.61

Contact: Prof Sonia Livingstone, s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk

Objective: Children and young people are often the earliest to go online, arguably the "canaries in the coal mine" of digital innovation around the world. Early optimism that the internet would enhance the realisation of children's rights is giving way to concern that digital business models are driving problematic societal transformations that undermine children's rights. Simultaneously, the Global South seeks ever greater digital connectivity to overcome barriers of access and inclusion, while the Global North increasingly calls out the adverse effects of digital inclusion on children's wellbeing. Education and awareness-raising for a digital world are crucial, but they are insufficient on their own. Many now call for stronger regulation to rein in the power of big tech to commodify and reshape all aspects of daily life in the interests of profit. But this is proving hugely contentious, with rights seemingly in conflict -safety, speech, privacy, participation- and with stakeholders also arguing over the roles of government, business, civil society, families, educators and more in safeguarding children's rights in a rapidly changing and complex digital world. This pre-conference will bring together scholars across ICA divisions and interest groups to address urgent and intersecting questions such as: How can data governance and AI design respect children's rights? What do child influencers, digital labour and commercial platforms mean for children's possibilities to exercise their rights in a digital age? How are gender, disability, and intersectional vulnerabilities shaping digital childhoods? What roles do digital participation, climate justice, and youth activism play? Although the questions are diverse, a child rights focus is simultaneously integrative yet flexible. The objective is to bring together different perspectives, expertise and approaches under the umbrella of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child's General comment No. 25 on Children's Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment. At the same time, we will seek to recognise and discuss questions of interpretation, application and contestation over children's rights, on the one hand, and the digital environment, on the other, especially as these are contextualised around the world.

Description:

An open call for short papers will allow inclusive participation from different parts of the world. These will be pre-circulated to ensure depth and informed discussion on the day. We will begin at 8.30 with a short welcome from the organisers, introducing the aims of the pre-conference and why children's rights in the digital world matter now. At 9.00, Ann Skelton, former Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, will give the keynote address. She will reflect on the significance of General Comment no. 25 and the challenges of realising children's rights in practice in rapidly changing digital contexts. From 9.30 to 10.30 we will discuss a set of short papers, in thematically-arranged groups around the banquet tables. These may cover themes such as child online safety, regulating for children's privacy, children's participation in digital governance, legal contestation over competing rights, young influencers and the platform economy, algorithmic childhoods, and the best interests of the child in digital environments. After a coffee break from 10.30 to 11.00, we return for a panel discussion. Scholars and practitioners will explore how research can inform policy, regulation and design, and how Global South perspectives can shape global debates. It will be a priority to build research capacity, to prioritise attention to research in the global South, and to develop a mutual research agenda to advance this field and its impact.

DFC Annual Research Insights Day

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:29:43 GMT

March 13, 2026 (10:00 AM - 4:00 PM)

Join us for the DFC Research Insights Day, a full-day hybrid event showcasing new research and evidence about children’s digital lives. The day brings together scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and young people to discuss what we know, what’s changing, and what’s next.

We will focus on children’s rights in the digital environment, as they relate to the rapid adoption of education technologies, online risks, resilience and mental health, and the real-world impacts of digital regulation. The day is designed to spark critical dialogue, cross-sector learning, and future collaboration grounded in children’s lived experiences.

10:00–10:30 | Arrival & Coffee

10:30–11:30 | Morning Session 1: Children’s Rights and the Digital Environment: General comment No. 25 - 5 years on

Panel: Beeban Kidron (House of Lords), Eva Lievens (Ghent University), Kim R. Sylwander (LSE)

Chair: Sonia Livingstone (LSE)

Session description:

Five years since the publication of UNCRC General Comment No. 25, we take stock of its influence on policy, regulation, advocacy, and research globally. Drawing on legal, policy, and civil society perspectives, the panel will reflect on what has changed for children online, where implementation has succeeded or stalled, and how children’s rights frameworks are shaping the next phase of digital governance.

11:30 - 11:45 Comfort break

11:45–12:45 | Morning Session 2: A Better EdTech Future for Children: Learning, Rights, and AI

Panel: Sandra El Gemayel (LSE), Colette Collins-Walsh (5Rights), youth representatives, Kasia Suliga (teacher)

Chair: Alison Powell (LSE)

Session description:

This session examines how educational technologies (EdTech), including AI tools, are shaping children’s learning experiences and rights. Bringing together research, policy, and lived perspectives, the panel will discuss equity, design, and governance in EdTech systems, highlighting best practices and rights-based approaches. Through engagement with children, educators, and civil society, the discussion will explore ways to create more inclusive, transparent, and accountable digital learning environments and stimulate public debate on the future of digital education.

12:45–13:45 | Lunch (provided)

13:45–14:30 | Afternoon Session 1: Designing New Research on Children’s Digital Lives, Mental Health and Resilience

Speakers:

Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne (Queen Mary University of London)

ORChiD – Online Risks and Resilience in Children’s Daily Lives

Damon De Ionno (Revealing Reality)

DigiPulse – Real-time Ecological Momentary Assessment of children’s smartphone engagement and mental health

Chair: Mariya Stoilova

Session description:

This session introduces emerging insights from new research projects that use real-time and child-centred methodologies to explore the relationship between children’s digital engagement, mental health, and resilience. Looking beyond simplistic narratives of screen time, the speakers outline how these studies aim to capture the ways online interactions, risks, and opportunities are embedded in children’s everyday lives and emotional experiences. The session looks ahead to how this work can deepen understanding of how mental health impacts are shaped by context, timing, and individual differences, while advancing innovative methods and frameworks for future research, policy, and practice.

14:30–15:15 | Afternoon Session 2: From Policy to Practice: Regulating Platforms to Benefit Children’s Digital Lives

Presentation & conversation: Steve Wood (PrivacyX Consulting), Beckett LeClair (5Rights), Jasmina Byrne (former Chief of Foresight and Policy, UNICEF)

Chair: Beeban Kidron

Session description:

Building on earlier work on the Impact of Regulation on Children’s Digital Lives, this session examines how recent regulatory and technological developments are shaping children’s online experiences. Combining academic research and civil society perspectives, the discussion explores what regulation is achieving in practice - and where gaps remain between policy intent and children’s lived realities.

The session will start with a brief presentation by Steve Wood, followed by a panel discussion.

15:15–16:00 | Wrap-up by Sonia Livingstone, Reflections & Coffee

Closing reflections: Key insights from across the day. Emerging research and policy priorities. Opportunities for collaboration across research, policy, and practice

Five years of General comment No. 25. Impact, best practices, and the path forward

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:22:03 GMT

March 2, 2026

Join us at the event Registration via Zoom

March 2026 marks five years since the adoption of UNCRC's General comment No. 25 (GC25), which states that children's rights, as outlined under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, extend to the digital environment. The comment was a milestone for children across the world: providing guidance on how to implement, embed and advocate for children's rights in the digital age.

To mark the fifth anniversary of GC25, the Digital Futures for Children centre and 5Rights are organising an online event, launching two new reports:

5Rights' best practices report, which will examine what good has looked like over the past five years.
DFC's second GC25 report, which will look at how to assess impact across the world. Access the first report.

By identifying what works, we can look forward to what must happen next to ensure GC25’s standards are realised globally. The event will reflect on lessons learned across different regions and sectors, and set out priorities for the next phase of implementation.

Join us to celebrate this milestone, share learning, and look ahead to the future of children’s rights in the digital environment.

Date: 2nd March 2026

Times: 08:00 Brazil | 11:00 London | 12:00 CET | 18:00 Indonesia

How to join? Register via Zoom

Speakers

Baroness Beeban Kidron

5Rights Founder and President, Member of the UK House of Lords

Baroness Kidron is a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environmentand a global authority on digital regulation and accountability. She has played a determinative role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world.

Baroness Kidron sits as a crossbench peer in the UK’s House of Lords. She is an advisor to the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford, a Commissioner on the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, an expert advisor for the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, and Founder and Chair of 5Rights Foundation. She is a Visiting Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics, where she chairs the research centre Digital Futures for Children, and a Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford.

Before being appointed to the Lords she was an award-winning film director and co-founder of the charity Filmclub (now Into Film).

Prof. Dr. Sophie Kiladze

Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

X: @SophieKiladze, @UNChildRights1

Prof. Dr. Sophie Kiladze is a Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Prior to joining the UN CRC in 2021, she was elected Member of Parliament of Georgia, a Chair of Human Rights Committee as well as the Chair of the Child Rights Council. She is an author of comprehensive reforms in the field of child rights and social work in Georgia. She served as a Vice-Rector of the Police Academy. Since 2023 she is a member of the Council of Europe ECRI. Prof. Kiladze has an extensive academic experience, including the work at Max-Planck Institute for Public International Law in Heidelberg; teaching Public International Law, Constitutional Law and Child Rights Law at different universities, publishing books and articles. She is a graduate of the Law Faculty of the University of Heidelberg (Staatsexamen), Germany, holds PhD degree and is the Professor at Grigol Robakidze University.

Gina Bergh

Human Rights Officer at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

LinkedIn, X: @UNHumanRights

Gina Bergh is a Human Rights Officer at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), where she leads work on children's rights in the digital environment, including consultations on a global framework for the Human Rights Council and participatory research centering children's voices in digital governance. She recently joined the tech team after a decade in OHCHR's Child and Youth Rights Unit, where she worked on child participation, safeguarding, and support to the implementation of General Comment No. 25. She also contributed to consensus on the global Joint Statement on AI and the Rights of the Child. Before joining the UN, she led policy research on governance, accountability, and child rights at ODI in London, and worked on EU development policy at the UK Department for International Development. She holds an MA in International Relations from King's College London and a BA in Sociology from the University of Cape Town, with advanced training in international human rights law from Åbo Akademi University, Finland.

Dr. Kim R Sylwander

Postdoctoral Researcher at the Digital Futures for Children centre

Linkedin, X: @MediaLSE

Dr Kim R. Sylwander is a Postdoctoral Research Officer in the Department of Media and Communications at the . Kim’s research at the department focuses on children’s rights in digital environments.

Kim is interested in children’s everyday lived experiences in online environments. Much of her research has been devoted to exploring how youth culture is intertwined with digital technologies and affordances. Her research has further explored how norms regarding sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and age are practiced and exacerbated by platform design and algorithms.

Kim’s PhD research investigated girl’s exposure and engagement with sexualized and racialized hate on social media. Kim’s postdoctoral research investigated how young people practice and understand sexual consent in digital communication. The project explored themes such as intimate digital choreographies, the limits of consent in digital environments and sexual digital generationality. Kim has also headed research on the implementation of a new sexuality education curriculum through a practice based and collaborative research method in Swedish secondary school.

Kim has also worked on children’s rights for the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Violence against Children, at the Ombudsman for Children Sweden, ECPAT Norway and other civil society organizations, where she has headed various projects on children in online environments. Examples include government inquiries on the effects of pornography consumption on children and a number of reports on the online sexual exploitation of children. Kim has also held several expert positions in government inquiries in Sweden on sexual exploitation and the effects of digital media on children.

João Francisco de Aguiar Coelho

Child rights advocate and Lawyer at the Alana Institute

LinkedIn, X: @InstitutoAlana

João Francisco de Aguiar Coelho is a child rights advocate and lawyer for the digital axis of the Alana Institute (Instituto Alana). He is currently a master's student in human rights at the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo (USP).

Marie-Ève Nadeau

Head of International Affairs

LinkedIn and X: @MarieEve5Rights

Marie-Ève Nadeau is Head of International Affairs at the 5Rights Foundation, leading global efforts to advance children's rights in the digital environment. With a background in international law and human rights, she is a dedicated advocate working with governments, regulators, international institutions, civil society, and academic partners worldwide to embed children’s rights, safety and privacy by design and by default in AI, data protection, online safety, and technology governance more broadly.Based in Brussels, she has spent the last 5 years shaping policies and strengthening global frameworks, holding companies accountable across Europe, the African Union, and more than 15 countries, from Indonesia to Brazil.Before joining 5Rights, she advanced human rights with the EU delegation of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), supported UNDP projects on human rights and global supply chains, and volunteered with Québec without Borders in Peru to bolster community development initiatives.

Prof. Sonia Livingstone

Director of the Digital Futures for Children centre

LinkedIn and X: @Livingstone_S

Sonia Livingstone DPhil (Oxon), OBE, FBA, FBPS, FAcSS, FRSA, is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. Much of Sonia’s time these days is concerned with Children’s Rights in the Digital Age.

Sonia has published 20 books on media audiences, especially children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment, including The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age (New York University Press, with Julian Sefton-Green) (view here). Her new book is Parenting for a Digital Future: How hopes and fears about technology shape children's lives (Oxford University Press), with Alicia Blum-Ross (view here).

Recipient of many honours, she has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, OECD, ITU and UNICEF, among others, on children’s internet safety and rights in the digital environment. Sonia served as chair of the LSE’s , Special Advisor to the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Communications, Expert Advisor to the Council of Europe, President of the International Communication Association, and Executive Board member of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety.

Sonia is Director of Digital Futures for Children, a joint LSE and 5Rights Foundation research centre. She has recently directed the Digital Futures Commission (with the 5Rights Foundation) and the Global Kids Online project (with UNICEF). She is Deputy Director of the UKRI-funded Nurture Network, contributes to the euCONSENT project, and leads work packages for two European H2020-funded projects: ySKILLS (Youth Skills) and CO:RE (Children Online: Research and Evidence). Founder of the EC-funded 33 country EU Kids Online research network, she is a #SaferInternet4EU Ambassador for the European Commission. She is a project lead for DIORA: Dynamic Interplay of Online Risk and Resilience in Adolescence as part of the MRC Digital Youth Programme.

Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:41:41 GMT

Issue 16 – 2025 (2)

https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/issue-16-2025-2/?lang=en

With number 16, Tecmerin celebrates the eighth anniversary of the Journal of Audiovisual Essays. This issue is composed of four video essays that, quite by chance, have brought a warm note of colour to the cold office from which our modest publication is edited.

In “What’s behind Kubrick’s characters?” Mariana Schwartz analyzes the role of production design in Stanley Kubrick’s cinema, focusing on a habitually ignored element: the walls. “AGON. Constructions of democracy” by Ali Minanto, Nico Carpentier and Jhon Sany Purwanto helps us reflect on the term “democracy” as a contested concept, in complex times for addressing such an idea. “haidh na hAithrise/ Nostalgia of imitation” by Nail Ó Muchu transports us to a beautiful montage about Irish cinematic representations of coastal labour history. The final note of colour is provided by “Satoshi Kon. Animation’s place in the cinematographic landscape,” where Sara Mai Ortiz de Manuel relates the director’s aesthetics to his industrial influence.

The “From the archive” section features guest contributor Eva Vaca Carrión, whose work on actress Emma Cohen brings us closer to the RTVE archive and allows us to learn through her interviews about her struggles to assert herself as a creator.

++++++++++

What’s behind the Kubrick’s characters?

Mariana Schwartz (Beira Interior University) – 4:45

Through the analysis of six films directed by Stanley Kubrick, this audiovisual essay invites reflection on the design of his sets, focusing on the question: what lies behind Kubrick’s characters?

Keywords: film, digetic space, Kubrick, production design, walls

https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/whats-behinf-the-kubricks-characters/?lang=en

++++++++++

AGON. Constructions of Democracy

Ali Minanto (Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, CharlesUniversity), Nico Carpentier (Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University), Jhon Sany Purwanto (independent filmmaker) – 26:00

The film essay AGON is a theoretical reflection on the political construction of democracy. It emphasizes the controversial nature of democracy, distinguishing between its fundamental defining elements, the arenas of political struggle for democracy, the conditions of possibility for democracy, and the threats to democracy.

Keywords: democracy, art research, film essay

https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/agon-constructions-of-democracy/?lang=en

++++++++++

Cumhaidh na hAithrise/ Nostalgia de la imitación

Niall Ó Murchú (Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Western

Washington University)– 7:00

The video shows multi-screen compositions to compare three films shot on the Atlantic coast of Ireland: Man of Aran (Flaherty et al, 1934), The Secret of Roan Inish (Sayles et al, 1994), and Arracht/Monster. (Sullivan et al, 2019). The essay argues that Irish cinematic representations of coastal labor history are influenced by the pre-existing imaginative nostalgia of Irish-American filmmakers.

Keywords: Atlantic Ocean, Ireland, Memory, Labor, Transtextuality

https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/cumhaidh-na-haithrise-nostalgia-de-la-imitacion/?lang=en

++++++++++

Satoshi Kon. The Place of Animation in the Film Landscape

Sara Mai Ortiz de Manuel (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) – 12:45

This video essay will analyze the relationship between Satoshi Kon and cinema as an industry, a reference point, and a concept, through three of his works: the films Perfect Blue (1997), Millennium Actress (2001), and Paprika (2006).

Keywords: anime, Kon, animation, Japan, metacinema

https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/satoshi-kon/?lang=en

++++++++++

From the archive:

Infantilisation and Sexualisation in Media Representation: Emma Cohen and the Recovery of the Television Archive

In this section the archives of two interviews with Emma Cohen are shared. They were broadcast on TVE in the 1970s and 1980s, when her creative output was at its peak, have been recovered. Both archives reflect her multidisciplinary creative personality, but also the irony and infantilization with which the media treated her throughout her life.

Section curated by Eva Vaca Carrión (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/from-the-archive-16/?lang=en

European children's use and understanding of Generative AI

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:37:14 GMT

New EU Kids Online report on children’s use of generative AI across Europe.

Based on data from 20 countries, it explores risks, opportunities, and policy implications

Read the European children and generative AI press release

Over the past three decades, the internet and digital technologies have become deeply integrated in the everyday lives of children and young people across Europe. The EU Kids Online network (EUKO) has systematically studied these changes since 2006. This multidisciplinary research network was established to provide policymakers, educators, parents and other stakeholders with a robust evidence base on how children use digital technologies, the opportunities they encounter, and the risks they face. Through successive international surveys, most notably the 2010 and 2018 EUKO international comparative studies, EUKO has documented how emerging technologies, from personal computers to smartphones, from chatgroups to social networks, have become embedded in children’s everyday lives.

In recent years, children’s online environments have been reshaped by the rapid integration of AI-based tools into search engines, social media platforms, messaging services, creative applications, and educational technologies. These developments introduce new possibilities for learning, creativity and support, while also raising new concerns related to misinformation, synthetic content, privacy, automation, and manipulation. At the same time, regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR and the EU Artificial Intelligence Act seek to respond to these changes, underlining the need for timely, evidence-based knowledge about how children use and experience GenAI in their daily lives.

Responding to the growing need to understand if and how children use GenAI across Europe, and its potential implications for risks and opportunities, this EUKO report is a thematic publication based on data from the EUKO 2025 survey. It is the first international report released from the new dataset and is published in connection with Safer Internet Day 2026 under its theme: 'Smart tech, safe choices – Exploring the safe and responsible use of AI'. The main aim of this report is to map children’s access to, use of and experiences with GenAI across Europe, and to examine if and how GenAI is becoming part of their everyday digital lives.

The report draws on comparative data from 20 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. This includes data from the EU Kids Online survey with 25,592 children aged 9 to 16 in 17 countries and additional qualitative interviews with 244 children aged 13 to 17 years in 15 countries. The report identifies emerging patterns, differences between groups and countries, and key areas of opportunity and concern. In doing so, it provides an early and policy-relevant insight into how GenAI is reshaping childhood in Europe.

Read the report: Staksrud, E., Mascheroni, G., Milosevic, T., Ní Bhroin, N., Ólafsson, K., Şengül-İnal, G., & Stoilova, M. (2026). European children's use and understanding of generative AI. EU Kids Online V.

Link to the EU Kids Online website.

Digital Popular Culture and Politics in Africa: Theory and Practice

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:06:18 GMT

Deadline: March 31, 2026

Editors:

Tendai Chari, University of Venda, South Africa
Ufuoma Akpojivi, Independent Researcher/Research Fellow, UNISA

Digital media technologies have become a key site upon which political meanings are produced, consumed and challenged. While politicians use digital popular cultural repertoires to ingratiate themselves with the electorate, the same technologies are being harnessed by ordinary people to speak truth to power, exposing abuses, mobilising protests and demanding accountability from authorities, often bypassing centralized traditional media. On the African continent, examples include the #EndSARS in Nigeria in 2020 when youth shared videos of police brutality via Twitter (formerly X) and Instagram, sparking nationwide protests, crowdfunding, and global solidity that pressured the government to dissolve the SARS unit. In 2024 during the Kenya Gen Z Protests against the Finance Bill, young people used TikTok, X and AI generated content under the hashtag #RejectFinance Bill2024 to educate, organize street actions and crowdfund transport, forcing parliamentary rejection of the Bill amid clashes. Similarly, in 2020 Zimbabweans used the hashtag #ZimbabweanLivesMatter during protests against human rights abuses, trending globally and attracting support of the global community. In all the cases highlighted above, the mutual amplification of politics and popular culture was on display signifying the enmeshment of politics and popular culture (Street et al, 2013). Increased “fluidization” of the border between politics and popular culture in the digital age demonstrates how popular culture is a crucial realm for shaping, performing and challenging political meanings (Chen, 2023). Digital technologies are enabling citizens to participate in the simultaneous production and consumption of content, highlighting the importance of popular culture in the production of politics (Hamilton, 2016). The intersection manifests at different levels. For instance, politicians are becoming more of digital icons while popular artists such as musicians, sports and media personalities, are venturing into politics using digital media (Street, 1997) either as participants or endorsers; a phenomenon referred to as “celebrification/celebritisation of politics” (Agyepong, 2016; Ahmad, 2020; Brooks et al, 2021). In Africa well-known artists who have vied for political office include the Democratic of Congo’s Rhumba maestro, Kanda Bongoman, soccer idol, George Weah who participated in the 2006 Liberian presidential elections and most recently South African musician Penny Penny (real name, Erick Nkovane), who became a councillor for the opposition MK party, to mention but a few. Despite online activism being criticized for being “vacuous and superficial” (Drumbl, 2012) resulting in pejorative descriptions such as “clicktivism” or “slacktivism” digital media has enabled citizens to perform political activism such as signing petitions online and sharing protest messages with virtual communities. Existing scholarship problematizes the intersection of popular culture and digital media in Africa as a double-edged force where digital media are lauded for their potential to democratize discourse through grassroots memes, hashtags and music remixes, yet derided for engineering fragmentation, misinformation, erosion of political trust and creating “multiple truths” as aiding vigilantism (Ajaegbu & Ajaegbu, 2024). Drawing on network society theory, studies highlight how platforms like WhatsApp and X enable networked publics to challenge elite control but amplify echo chambers and post-truth rhetoric. For instance, studies on Nigerian #EndSARS or election memes illustrate how digital popular culture subverts governance narratives through pidgin and Nollywood tropes (Ajaegbu & Ajaegbu, 2024), how online media have become veritable sites of youth cultures from which vulnerable young people negotiate the unstable landscape of a post-colonial state that has foisted on its vulnerable youth population (Imoka, 2023). Prior scholarship has examined the intersection of digital media and politics has predominantly focused on how digital media have been leveraged for political purposes in industrialised democracies of the West and “popular cultural manifestations” of politics in digital media (Hamilton, 2016:4) while very few studies have been devoted to understanding how digital media shape the production, consumption and contestation of political meanings and narratives. Consequently, this has left a lacuna on how everyday practices, the banal and the trivial, what Roland Barthes refers to as the “what-goes without-saying” (Barthes, 2009: 10) shape the production, consumption and contestations of political meanings and narratives in the African context. The proposed edited volume seeks to fill this gap by providing an expanded view of the digital popular culture-politics nexus from a global South, particularly an African perspective by examining politics in Africa through the prism of digital popular culture, and its potential to transform our perception of the “sights, sites and cites of power” (Hamilton, 2016:4). Taking after Hamilton (2016) we contend that studying politics through the prism of digital popular culture not only creates possibilities to illuminate the myriads of ways in which politics intersects with everyday lived experiences of citizens thus reclaiming the status of popular culture as an important site upon which political meanings can be constructed and deconstructed. Our goal is to foreground digital popular culture as a potent vehicle for contesting power. The volume seeks to demonstrate that contrary to perceptions that popular culture is ‘vacuous’, ‘trash’, ‘inferior culture’ ‘artificial’ or mere entertainment devoid of any substance (Englert, 2008; Fabian, 1997; Street, 2001; Marchart, 2008; Street, 2004; Street et al, 2013), digital popular culture can be an authentic source of knowledge about the way in which politics is understood, practiced, performed, and consumed in the African context. The volume illuminates how politics is substantiated through diverse digital popular cultural forms and artefacts. The volume explores the intertextuality between politics and popular culture, demonstrating how political discourse draws on references, or mixes prior texts, popular discourses, symbols or cultural narratives to create layered meanings, particularly in Africa’s digital arena through social media memes, videos, and posts. This manifests through citizens repurposing historical slogans, popular aphorisms, wise sayings, biblical allusions, or popular media to critique power, blending traditional rhetoric with digital formats or viral posts.

The book makes two important contributions. First, it addresses the paucity of African focused studies on popular cultural manifestations of politics in digital spaces by systematically examining everyday practices and intertextual remixes of popular tropes that construct and subvert power – moving beyond Western-centric perspectives to foreground banal and everyday socio-political dynamics. Secondly, the book reclaims popular culture’s agency by challenging dismissals of digital popular culture and repositioning it as a potent, decolonial site for reclaiming political imagination – transforming perceptions of power through citizen authorship on digital platforms while problematizing risks like misinformation and vigilantism.

The book addresses the following questions:

In what way is digital media expanding our knowledge and understanding of politics in contemporary Africa?
How do popular cultural artefacts stimulate and sustain political expression on digital platforms in the African context?
How do politicians and political institutions discipline and co-opt digital media to manufacture consent through ordinary everyday practices?
How are citizens leveraging the everyday cultural practices on digital media to subvert the power of powerful elites and institutions?
How has the ubiquity of digital media shaped the production, performance and consumption of political meanings?
In what ways are the borders between politics and popular culture collapsing in the digital age?

The book distinguishes itself from existing scholarship by foregrounding political significations embodied everyday practices in the digital sphere. It views digital popular culture as having the potential to influence politics and communication, thereby expanding perspectives on politics by exposing citizens to “different places, voices, views and experiences” (Hamilton, 2016:4). The volume offers a continent-wide exploration of everyday digital popular cultural practices in Africa, thus addressing existing knowledge gaps in the global South.

We invite contributions that engage with theoretical and empirical research that consider the socio-political and cultural factors shaping digital media and popular culture in Africa. We are particularly interested in original contributions that tackle the identified and related themes using a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches.

Chapters may draw on interdisciplinary approaches from media studies, communication, political science, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, and related fields. The abstract must clearly state the objectives of the study, the theoretical framework and the methodological approaches to be deployed. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:

Intertextuality of politics and popular culture in the digital age
Sports and politics in the digital age
Fandom and politics in the digital age
Religion, politics and digital media
Popular theatre and politics online
Political advertising in the digital age
Film, politics and digital media
Popular Music and politics in the digital age
Political satire in the digital media
Celebrification/celebritisation of politics in the digital age
Clandestine radio and politics in the digital age
Intersection of food cultures, politics and digital media
The politics of political party regalia, costume and national symbols in the digital era
Popular theatre, politics and digital media
Sculpture, politics and digitality
Political propaganda online
Avant-garde arts and politics
Politics, hactivism, clictivism and slacktivism
Memefication of politics
Microcelebrities and influencers and politics
Digital politics and celebrity activism
Digitality and celebrity humanism in Africa
Gamification of politics in Africa
Digital media and political scandals
Subversive digital artefacts and politics
Digital political satire in Africa
Fictional representations of politics in the digital media
User-generated content and politics in Africa
Podcasts as alternative public spheres
Blog, vlogs and politics in Africa
Popular entertainment and politics in the digital age
Political cartoons in the digital era
Mass culture and politics in the digital age
Popular culture and politics in the age of Artificial intelligence

Abstracts and biographies

Abstracts of between 400 and 500 words should be send by the 31 March 2026.

Abstracts should be emailed as word to tendai.chari@univen.ac.za/cc ufuoma.akpojivi@gmail.com

Chapters (6000 -8000 Words) will be due by 30 September 2026

Biographies should not be more than 200 words

Reference Style: Harvard

Note: We do not require an article publishing charge (APC)

Important Dates

Abstract Submission Deadline: 31 March 2026
Notification for Accepted Abstracts: 15 April 2026
Deadline for Full Papers: 30 September 2026
Expected Date of Publication: 31 December 2026

Targeted Publisher: Routledge

References

Agyepong, L. (2016). Understanding the Concept of Celebrity Capital through an Empirical Study of the Role of Celebrity Endorsements in 2008 and 2012 Ghana Election Campaigns. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Communication. University of Leicester.

Ahmad, N. (2020). Celebrification of Politics: Understanding Migration of Celebrities into Politics Celebrification of Celebrity Politicians in the Emerging Democracy of Indonesia. East Asia, 37:63-79.

Ajaegbu, O.O. and Ajaegbu, C. (2004). The New Democratisation: Social Media Impact on the Political Process in Sub-Saharan Africa: Frontiers in Communication. 9:1394949. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1394949.

Barthes, R. (2009) [1957] Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. London: Vintage.

Brooks, G., Drenten, J., and Piskorski, M.J. (2021). Influencer Celebrification: How Social Media Influencers Acquire Celebrity Capital. Journal of Advertising, 50(5) 528-547.

Chen, D. (2023). Seeing Politics Through Popular Culture. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 29: 185-205.

Driessens, O. (2013a). Celebrity Capital: Redefining Celebrity Using Field Theory: Theory and Society, 42(5): 543-560.

Driessesn, O. (2013b). Being a Celebrity in Times of Its Democratisation: A Case Study from the Flemish Region. Celebrity Studies, 4(2):249-253.

Drumbl, M.A. (2012). Child Soldiers and Clicktivism: Justice, Myths and Prevention. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 4(3): 481-485.

Englert, B. (2008) Popular Music and Politics in Africa. Some Introductory Reflections. Stichproben Wiener Zeitschrift fur Kritische Afrikastudien, 8(14): 1-15.

Fabian, J. (1997). Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjunctures. In Karin Barber (eds). Readings in African Popular Culture. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Grayson, K. (2016). Foreword. In Caitlin Hamilton and Laura J. Shepherd (eds.) Popular Culture and World Politics, (x-xi). London: Routledge.

Hamilton, C. (2016). World Politics 2.0: An Introduction. In Caitlin Hamilton and Laura J. Shepherd (eds.) Popular Culture and World Politics, (pp3-14). London: Routledge.

Hamilton, C., and Shepherd, L.J. (2016). Understanding Culture and World Politics in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.

Imoka, C. (2023). Digital Media, Popular Culture and Social Activism Amongst Urban Youth in Nigeria. Critical African Studies, 15(2): 134-148.

Literat, and Kligler -Vilenchik (2021). How Popular Culture Prompts Youth Collective Political Expression and Cross-Cutting Political Talk on Social Media: A Cross-Platform Analysis. Social Media and Society, 7(2): 1-14

Marchart, O. (2008). Cultural Studies. Konstanz: UTB.

Patti, E. (2020). Popular Culture in the Digital Age. In Enrico Minardi and Paolo Desogus (eds.) The Last Years of Italian Popular Culture: “Andare al Popolo”, (pp1-8). New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Storey, J. (2018). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. London: Routledge.

Street, J. (1997). Politics and Popular Culture. Pennsylvania: Temple University Press.

Street, J. (2001). The Politics of Popular Culture. In Kate Nash and Allan Scott (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Street, J. (2004) Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6(4): 435-452.

Strinati, D. (1995). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. London: Routledge.

ACM UMAP 2026 Doctoral Consortium

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:03:53 GMT

Gothenburg, Sweden

June 8-11, 2026

Deadline: March 6, 2026

Dear community,

We would like to remind PhD students about the upcoming deadline for the ACM UMAP 2026 Doctoral Consortium, with paper submissions due on March 6, 2026 (AoE).

ACM UMAP brings together research in AI and HCI to support effective human-AI collaboration via interactive systems that can model, adapt and personalize to their users. The conference will take place on June 8-11, 2026 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Doctoral Consortium is a great chance to get direct mentoring from world-leading experts, connect with other students, and present work in a supportive, yet critical environment.

Key dates:

Paper submission: March 6, 2026
Notification: March 20, 2026
DC Day: June 8, 2026

Call for DC papers: https://www.um.org/umap2026/call-for-doctoral-consortium-applications/

We look forward to your submissions.

Kind regards,

The UMAP 2026 organizing committee

ECREA 2026 Pre-Conference on Election Campaigning

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:02:12 GMT

September 7, 2026

Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

Deadline: March 31, 2026

Dear all,

We are pleased to share the Call for Papers for the ECREA 2026 Pre-Conference “The Evolution of Election Campaigning on Social Media”, which will take place on September 7, 2026, at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno.

The pre-conference focuses on comparative perspectives on social media election campaigning, including campaign strategies, communication styles (e.g., negativity, populist rhetoric, personalization), the use of AI, the role of misinformation, voter engagement, and methodological innovations in studying digital campaign data.

Submission deadline: March 31, 2026

Submit a 300-word abstract (excluding references) to: DLilleker@bournemouth.ac.uk

Fee: €25 (coffee break and lunch included)

More information about the call can be found here.

We look forward to seeing you in Brno.

On behalf of the organizers,

Darren, Martina, and Alena

Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Flashpoint symposium: Imagining and Co-creating Methods for Internet Research

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:39:00 GMT

August 11-12

Malmö University Malmö, Sweden

Deadline: March 30, 2026

In collaboration with Malmö Research Centre for Imagining and Co-Creating Futures, AoIR invites participants to its annual Flashpoint symposium.

For those interested in participating in the symposium, the deadline to submit an abstract of up to 300 words is March 30, 2026.

Confirmed keynote plenary speakers are

prof. Annette Markham, Utrecht University, Netherlands
prof. Susana Tosca, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
prof. Kat Jungnickel, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
prof. Sarah T. Roberts, UCLA, USA

As technologies evolve, our relationship to the technological world changes, and so should our methods of studying the world around us. The methods we use to conduct research matter in understanding what can be studied, how the studies reflect the world, and how the groups we are studying (with) relate to academia. Internet research faces challenges in recruitment, data quality, practicality, and ethics, leading to questions about sampling bias, data truthfulness, and other issues that require creative solutions. We need to question and challenge many of the dominant approaches and find ways to reimagine methods that fit contemporary research challenges. Research methods need to evolve with the world, respect its diversity and be open to inventive ways to involve research participants in knowledge co-creation.

Creative research methods can be methods that draw on creative self-expressions of research participants or researchers, including visual, text, sound, and materials. They may also involve creative use of technologies as part of the research process and outcome – apps, mash-ups, data visualisations, APIs, etc. In addition, creative methods can encompass transformative approaches, including participatory, speculative, artistic, worldbuilding, decolonising, activist and community-based research approaches that are designed to reduce the power imbalances and include diverse voices in academic research. Mixed and hybrid methods that challenge researchers to question the paradigmatic assumptions of their work may also be understood as creative research practices.

In the spirit of challenging established academic traditions, the symposium invites scholars interested in method-related discussions to join us in imagining and co-creating methods for a new era of internet research.

We invite individual abstracts for papers, performances, spoken word pieces or artistic creations that highlight creative research methods or focus on the process of creating new methods. Please submit an abstract no longer than 300 words, five keywords and a short bio (including contact details) by March 25, 2026.

The symposium will charge a fee of 500 SEK (~47 EUR/~56 USD/~41 GBP) that will cover lunches and coffee, and AoIR will also sponsor dinner for symposium participants. If you do not want to share any work but would still like to be part of the symposium, you can also sign up as a participant after March 15. PhD students and early-career scholars are particularly welcome, and AoIR will provide some fee waivers for the early-career scholars (available at a later stage when registration opens).

Submit your contribution to the symposium: Imagining and Co-creating Methods for Internet Research AoIR Flashpoint Symposium at Malmö – Fill out form (https://forms.office.com/e/yzLEg9T0fb)

Important dates:

Deadline for abstract submission: March 30, 2026
Registration opens March 15, 2026
Notification of acceptance: mid-April, 2026
Deadline for registrations June 15, 2026
Symposium in Malmö 11-12 August, 2026

More information about Malmö Research Centre for Imagining and Co-Creating Futures: https://mau.se/en/research/research-centres/imagining-and-co-creating-futures/

The Symposium organiser is prof. Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt

(contact: pille.pruulmann.vengerfeldt@mau.se), The scientific committee includes Prof. Andra Siibak and prof. Julia Velkova.

Global Media & Internet Concentration Project - Data dashboard webinar

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:31:52 GMT

The Global Media & Internet Concentration Project is delighted to announce the launch of its data dashboard. This powerful tool provides an interactive view of global media and internet revenues, market structures and concentration by drawing on data compiled by the GMICP.

The dashboard is designed to help researchers, policymakers, journalists, and the public explore trends in media ownership and digital platform dominance and to create customised, comparative visualisations, across 24 countries and 15 industry sectors.

We are hosting two sets of webinars to introduce this tool and its functionality. Each set of webinars is tailored for particular stakeholder groups and is offered in duplicate for convenience across time zones. Each session will be hosted by researchers from the GMICP and will last approximately 90 minutes.

Please email Guy Hoskins at ghoskins@torontomu.ca to request Zoom registration details.

Researchers/journalists/civil society organizations:

March 11th, 9.30pm EST
March 12th, 8.30am EST

Policymakers & regulators:

March 25th, 9.30pm EST
March 26th, 8.30am EST

ACM Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:29:47 GMT

June 8-11, 2026

Gotheborg, Sweden

Deadline: March 6, 2026

Dear Community,

The submission deadline for Industry Papers at the ACM Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization (ACM UMAP 2026) is quickly approaching.

The industry track is the perfect venue to showcase real-world solutions in user modeling, adaptation, and personalization, discuss deployment challenges, and share effective solutions with the community.

Important Dates (AoE)

Paper submission: March 6, 2026
Notification of acceptance: April 3, 2026
Conference: June 8-11, 2026

Call: https://www.um.org/umap2026/call-for-industry-track-papers/

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

The UMAP 2026 organizing committee

Full Professor and Senior Research Fellows in Creative Industries

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:21:11 GMT

Cardiff University

We are seeking a talented mix of high-profile, innovative, current and future leaders of research to join our values-driven, pioneering, and vibrant university as part of our allocation of the UKRI Global Talent Fund initiative.

Open to international applicants currently living and working outside the UK, we want to appoint Global Talent Senior Research Fellows and Professors to accelerate our research leadership in key strategic areas aligned to the following UK industrial strategy areas. One of these areas is creative industries, including digital technologies.

The successful candidates will be well-established in their fields and have a significant portfolio of research with an established track record of publication and research grants and national, emerging, or international reputation in their chosen research area. Importantly, successful candidates will have the ability to drive areas of research and innovation in partnership with external partners and other disciplines.

If you feel that you have the skills, enthusiasm and drive to meet this challenge, we'd love to hear from you.

Find out more information, and how to apply, on our website.

Influencer Diplomacy Symposium

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:54:54 GMT

April 24, 2026

Online

Deadline: March 16, 2026

For more details, click here https://ierlab.com/influencer-diplomacy/

The Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab) is calling for submissions for our upcoming symposium on Influencer Diplomacy, to be held online via Zoom on 24 April 2026.

Recent research on influencers has highlighted their growing presence in political arenas. Concepts such as ‘political influencers’ (Schwemmer & Riedl 2025), ‘political relational influencers’ (Goodwin et al. 2023), ‘propaganda influencers’ (Woolley 2022), or ‘influencers as ideological intermediaries’ (Arnesson 2023) capture the varied ways creators engage with political content, whether by shaping public opinion, amplifying state messaging, or embodying ideological narratives. Within these political capacities, influencers are playing an increasingly prominent role in diplomacy, though their involvement is met with mixed responses. For example, the European Union’s use of influencers on platforms such as TikTok to engage younger audiences reflects an institutional embrace of influencer-led diplomacy (DiSario 2026), as does the positive reception of American streamer iShowSpeed’s state-sanctioned tour of China (Latifah Aini 2025). By contrast, Chachavalpongpun (2025) critiques how influencers have leveraged the Thai–Cambodian border conflict to expand their digital visibility in ways that intensify geopolitical tensions, while Colombian influencers have faced backlash for promotional activities in Israel (Freixes 2025). Together, these examples reveal that the involvement of influencers in diplomatic arenas warrants closer attention, as they are not merely amplifying diplomatic messages but are actively shaping diplomatic processes, mediating between publics, political conflict, and state agendas.

Research on political influencers has shown how digitally native creators blend advocacy (Riedl et al. 2021; Martin et al. 2024), self-branding (Ong et al. 2022), and platform vernaculars (Harris et al. 2023) to engage audiences through affective and narrative labour (Goodwin et al. 2023; Martin et al. 2024). While this literature has focused primarily on domestic politics, recent studies demonstrate growing overlaps between influencer practices and diplomacy. For example, Lo Presti et al. (2025) identify ‘geopolitical influencers’ shaping public discourse around international conflicts, while Arnesson (2024) shows how state-sponsored trips by Swedish influencers function as soft power and perception management. Influencers also enact diplomacy through semi-official and spontaneous practices, including war influencing (Divon & Eriksson Krutrök 2025; Taher et al. 2025;) and activist interventions that reshape international perceptions of nationhood (Casas 2025). Taken together, these studies reveal influencers operating across multiple diplomatic registers, yet without a shared definition of ‘influencer diplomacy’.

The uncertain boundaries of ‘influencer diplomacy’ reflects broader transformations in diplomacy itself. Diplomacy has traditionally been understood as negotiation among states through official representatives (Cornago 2022). However, diplomacy has expanded beyond its traditional focus on state actors, to include a broader range of actors and practices. Cultural diplomacy shifts representation away from diplomats, with the state using culture to foster trust, promote the nation, and shape international perceptions (Kim 2017). Citizen diplomacy moves diplomacy further from the state, as individuals undertake diplomatic work through journalism, activism, and community initiatives, acting as political agents in their own right (Anton & Moise 2022). Meanwhile, everyday diplomacy highlights how diplomacy unfolds in ordinary, mundane encounters, showing how international relations are experienced and enacted outside formal state institutions (Jones & Clark 2015; Marsden et al. 2016).

In the age of influencers, diplomacy is shaped further by branding infrastructures, visibility economies, and platform logics. For example, government–influencer collaborations are often regulated through commercial frameworks that inadequately capture their political implications (Annabell et al. 2025), while political and diplomatic communication increasingly adopts influencer-oriented logics of metrics, relatability, and attention—or ‘wanghong thinking’—shaping practices in China (Xu 2024). Meanwhile, influencers on platforms like TikTok also enable states to reach foreign audiences while circumventing official restrictions (Fjällhed et al. 2024), raising concerns about instrumentalisation and blurred boundaries with propaganda (Ong et al. 2022; Reveilhac 2025; Wooley 2022; Xu & Schneider 2025). Scholars further question who counts as an influencer and what agency these actors hold: Anton and Moise (2022) situate influencer diplomacy within citizen and informal diplomacy; Casas (2025) includes artists, minor celebrities, activists, and indigenous cultural producers; and Tian et al. (2025) and Manfredi et al. (2024) highlight overlaps between politicians, influencers, and citizen journalists, underscoring the lack of a shared definition.

Context-specific studies illustrate how influencer diplomacy operates across multiple registers and produces varied impacts. In Indonesia, for example, influencers can soften national symbolism, potentially signalling shifts in paternalistic governance, while also intersecting with nation branding moments such as sporting events (Li & Feng 2022; Ratriyana et al. 2024). In China, state-curated collaborations privilege particular racialised and national subjectivities, raising questions about imagined diplomatic audiences, while foreign YouTubers are incorporated into official networks through reposting by diplomats and state media (Brockling et al. 2023; Cho-Li et al. 2025). In Russia, unofficial actors such as the Night Wolves biker group are embedded within national influence ecosystems (Boichak 2023). Wartime and border-region contexts further illustrate these dynamics: Brazilian influencers shape narratives around the Russia-Ukraine war (Pelevina & Salojärvi 2025), and 'pro-China foreign political influencers' share content across borders in international contexts to reshape global reputation and national image (Tian et al. 2025). Studies also highlight influencers’ own strategies, balancing official collaborations, spontaneous content, personal branding, audience expectations, and political sensitivities, while leveraging participation for visibility and professional gain in China and Korea (Lee & Abidin 2022; Lee & Alhabash 2022; Xu & Qu 2025). At the level of everyday diplomacy and transnational imaginaries, Chinese vloggers also participate in shaping ‘unofficial geopolitics’ in Pakistan (Zoppolato & Culcasi 2026).

In this symposium, we focus on the generative concept that we call influencer diplomacy. We see this as the ways in which influencer cultures, practices, and industries impact diplomatic processes, from influencers assuming diplomatic roles and politicians adopting influencer strategies, to marketing firms leveraging influencer infrastructures in the mediation of international relations. Influencer diplomacy operates not only at formal state and institutional levels but also intersects with everyday politics, shaping public discourse and social engagement. Moreover, it must account for how influencers, as platform-savvy actors, tailor diplomatic communication to the vernaculars, norms, and affordances of specific digital platforms.

Influencers as official and unofficial intermediaries in diplomatic endeavours
Motivations, labour, and negotiation in influencers’ diplomatic practice
Politicians adopting influencer strategies in international communication
The role of affect, intimacy, authenticity, and storytelling as diplomatic resources
Audience participation, public formation, and the politicisation of influencer collaborations
Influencer diplomacy as both a practice and a governing logic: how diplomacy increasingly ‘thinks like an influencer’
Influencer diplomacy in crisis, conflict, humanitarian, and wartime contexts
Regulation, disclosure, and governance of state–influencer collaborations

To be considered for the symposium, please submit a 250-word abstract and 100-word bio via the Google form below by 1700hrs (GMT+8) 16 March 2024. Notifications of acceptance will be sent on 20 March 2024. We gladly welcome co-authored submissions; to keep presentations consistent, each submission is limited to one presenter, preferably the corresponding author. Please submit via this form: https://forms.gle/7EWBPEuR4gk3ceKK7

All enquiries should be directed to contact@IERLab.com

Key Dates:

16 March 2026: Abstracts and biographies due
20 March 2026: Notifications of acceptance
24 April 2026: Influencer Diplomacy Symposium

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Faye Mercier, Wuxuan Zhang, Prof. Crystal Abidin

Influencer Ethnography Research Lab (IERLab), Curtin University

References:

Aini, Fauzia Latifah. 2025. ‘Changing China’s Global Image through IShowSpeed Visit’. Modern Diplomacy, April 26. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/04/26/changing-chinas-global-image-through-ishowspeed-visit/.

Annabell, Taylor, Catalina Goanta, Thijs Kelder, and Felix Pflücke. 2025. ‘Sponsored by the State: The Private Regulation of Government Influencers’. Journal of Consumer Policy, ahead of print, September 16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10603-025-09598-x.

Anton, Anca, and Raluca Moise. 2022. ‘The Citizen Diplomats and Their Pathway to Diplomatic Power’. In Diplomacy, Organisations and Citizens: A European Communication Perspective, edited by Sónia Pedro Sebastião and Susana de Carvalho Spínola. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81877-7_13.

Arnesson, Johanna. 2023. ‘Influencers as Ideological Intermediaries: Promotional Politics and Authenticity Labour in Influencer Collaborations’. Media, Culture & Society 45 (3): 528–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221117505.

Arnesson, Johanna. 2024. ‘“Endorsing a Dictatorship and Getting Paid for It”: Discursive Struggles over Intimacy and Authenticity in the Politicisation of Influencer Collaborations’. New Media & Society 26 (3): 1467–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211064302.

Boichak, Olga. 2023. ‘Mapping the Russian Political Influence Ecosystem: The Night Wolves Biker Gang’. Social Media + Society 9 (2): 20563051231177920. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177920.

Brockling, Marie, Haohan Lily Hu, and King-wa Fu. 2023. ‘The Role of “State Endorsers” in Extending Chinese Propaganda: Evaluating the Reach of Pro-Regime YouTubers’. International Journal of Communication 17 (September): 23–23.

Casas, Ccory Yamina Silva. 2025. ‘Digital Ambassadors of Peru: Cultural Diplomacy in the Age of Content Creators’. Política Internacional, no. 137 (June): 253–68. https://doi.org/10.61249/pi.vi137.225.

Chachavalpongpun, Pavin. 2025. ‘How a Thai Influencer Is Profiting From the Border Conflict With Cambodia’. The Diplomat, August 20. https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/how-a-thai-influencer-is-profiting-from-the-border-conflict-with-thailand/.

Cho-Li, Qiuyue, Rebecca Frazer, Tse-hsi Chien, and Spiro Kiousis. 2025. ‘Pro-China YouTubers in Digital Diplomacy: Shaping Americans’ Perceived Credibility, Trust, Media Engagement, and Attitudes Towards China’. SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 5496847. Social Science Research Network, September 17. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5496847.

Cornago, Noé. 2022. ‘Diplomacy’. In Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Third Edition), Third Edition, edited by Lester R. Kurtz. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-820195-4.00137-0.

Di Sario, Federica. 2026. ‘“We Would Be Foolish If We Didn’t Use Influencers”: The EU’s Bet on TikTok Diplomacy’. The Parliament Magazine, January 14. https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/we-would-be-foolish-if-we-didnt-use-influencers-how-the-eu-is-bypassing-traditional-media.

Divon, Tom, and Moa Eriksson Krutrök. 2025. ‘The Rise of War Influencers: Creators, Platforms, and the Visibility of Conflict Zones’. Platforms & Society 2 (December): 29768624251325721. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251325721.

Fjällhed, Alicia, Matthias Lüfkens, and Andreas Sandre. 2024. ‘New Trends in Digital Diplomacy: The Rise of TikTok and the Geopolitics of Algorithmic Governance’. The Oxford Handbook of Digital Diplomacy, 288–96.

Freixes, Josep. 2025. ‘Controversy over Colombian Influencers’ “War Tourism” in Israel’. Colombia One: News from Colombia and the World, November 12. https://colombiaone.com/2025/11/12/colombia-influencers-war-tourism-israel/.

Goodwin, Anastasia, Katie Joseff, Martin J. Riedl, Josephine Lukito, and Samuel Woolley. 2023. ‘Political Relational Influencers: The Mobilization of Social Media Influencers in the Political Arena’. International Journal of Communication 17 (February): 21–21.

Harris, Brandon C., Maxwell Foxman, and William C. Partin. 2023. ‘“Don’t Make Me Ratio You Again”: How Political Influencers Encourage Platformed Political Participation’. Social Media + Society 9 (2): 20563051231177944. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177944.

Jones, Alun, and Julian Clark. 2015. ‘Mundane Diplomacies for the Practice of European Geopolitics’. Geoforum 62 (June): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.03.002.

Kim, Hwajung. 2017. ‘Bridging the Theoretical Gap between Public Diplomacy and Cultural Diplomacy’. The Korean Journal of International Studies 15 (2): 293–326. https://doi.org/10.14731/kjis.2017.08.15.2.293.

Lee, Heijin, and Saleem Alhabash. 2024. ‘The Role of Social Media Influencers in Public Diplomacy and Relationship Building with Foreign Publics’. SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 4915071. Social Science Research Network, August 3. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4915071.

Lee, Jin, and Crystal Abidin. 2022. ‘Oegugin Influencers and Pop Nationalism through Government Campaigns: Regulating Foreign-Nationals in the South Korean YouTube Ecology’. Policy & Internet 14 (3): 541–57. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.319.

Li, Xiufang (Leah), and Juan Feng. 2022. ‘Influenced or to Be Influenced: Engaging Social Media Influencers in Nation Branding through the Lens of Authenticity’. Global Media and China 7 (2): 219–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364221094668.

Lo Presti, Letizia, Veronica Capone, and Giulio Maggiore. 2025. ‘Geopolitical influencers: examining their role in shaping opinions on international conflicts’. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy 19 (2): 245–63. https://doi.org/10.1108/TG-12-2024-0300.

Marsden, Magnus, Diana Ibañez-Tirado, and David Henig. 2016. Everyday Diplomacy. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology. September 1. https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2016.340202.

Martin, Zelly, Gabrielle D. Beacken, Inga K. Trauthig, and Samuel C. Woolley. 2024. ‘Embodied Political Influencers: How U.S. Anti-Abortion Actors Co-Opt Narratives of Marginalization’. Social Media + Society 10 (2): 20563051241245401. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241245401.

Pelevina, Nuppu, and Virpi Salojärvi. 2025. ‘YouTube as a narrative battlefield: Brazilian social media influencers and the Russian war in Ukraine’. The Communication Review 28 (4): 363–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2025.2545676.

Ratriyana, Ina, Desideria Cempaka Wijaya Murti, and Immanuel Dwi Asmoro. 2024. ‘#IndonesiaRepresent: Investigating Nation Branding at International Fashion Events through the Presence of Social Media Influencers’. Asiascape: Digital Asia 11 (1–2): 56–84. https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10056.

Reveilhac, Maud. 2025. ‘Mapping Government Use of Social Media Influencers for Policy Promotion’. Media and Communication 13 (0). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10371.

Riedl, Magdalena, Carsten Schwemmer, Sandra Ziewiecki, and Lisa M. Ross. 2021. ‘The Rise of Political Influencers—Perspectives on a Trend Towards Meaningful Content’. Frontiers in Communication 6 (December). https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.752656.

Riedl, Martin J., Josephine Lukito, and Samuel C. Woolley. 2023. ‘Political Influencers on Social Media: An Introduction’. Social Media + Society, ahead of print, June 7. Sage UK: London, England. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177938.

Ryan, Fergus, Daria Impiombato, and Hsi-Ting Pai. 2022. ‘Policy Brief: Frontier Influencers: The New Face of China’s Propaganda’. ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre. https://cms2.dijitalhafiza.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/1_compressed-1.pdf.

Schwemmer, Carsten, and Magdalena Riedl. 2025. ‘From Hashtags to Ballots: Conceptualizing Political Influencers and Evaluating Their Impact on Election Outcomes’. PLOS ONE 20 (5): e0321592. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321592.

Taher, Ahmed, Hoda El Kolaly, and Nourhan Tarek. 2025. ‘Examining Crisis Communication in Geopolitical Conflicts: The Micro-Influencer Impact Model’. Journalism and Media 6 (3). https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia6030116.

Tian, Leiyuan, Fan Liang, and Zhao Alexandre Huang. 2025. ‘China Defenders From Abroad: Exploring Pro-China Foreign Political Influencers on X/Twitter’. Social Media + Society 11 (3): 20563051251358526. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251358526.

Woolley, Samuel C. 2022. ‘Digital Propaganda: The Power of Influencers’. Journal of Democracy 33 (3): 115–29.

Xu, Jian. 2024. ‘From “Wanghong” to “Wanghong Thinking”: New Research Agenda and Critical Reflection’. Communication and the Public 10 (2): 81–85. Sage UK: London, England. https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473241264896.

Xu, Jian, and Lina Qu. 2025. ‘“Telling China’s Stories Well” through Wanghong’. In Asian Celebrity Cultures in the Digital Age, edited by Glen Donnar, Divya Garg, and Jian Xu. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.34206972.8.

Xu, Jian, and Florian Schneider. 2025. ‘Influencers as Emerging Actors in Global Digital Propaganda’. European Journal of Cultural Studies, July 5, 13675494251351221. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494251351221.

Zoppolato, Davide Giacomo, and Karen Culcasi. 2026. ‘Social Media Geopolitics: The “Unofficial Geopolitics” of Chinese Vloggers in Pakistan’. Geopolitics 31 (1): 313–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2025.2499133.

6 fully funded PhD studentships in CreativeAI

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:51:14 GMT

University of Manchester, UK

The CreativeAI studentships (2026-29) - fully-funded PhD studentships on cutting-edge creativeAI projects - will explore the rapidly evolving relationship between creativity and artificial intelligence (AI), considering what AI does for creativity and what creativity does for AI.

Six supervisor-led interdisciplinary projects bring together outstanding expertise by over 15 academic staff in arts, languages and cultures, computer science, social anthropology and law to address timely societal questions around AI’s impact on agency, authorship, imagination, inequality, and social relationships.

Studentships will be organised around three strands: AI for creativity, creativity for AI, and creativity of AI, supported by a methodological training theme, creative AI methods.

The Centre for Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media (DHCM) will serve as the intellectual and organizational home of the CreativeAI studentships, with members already working at the intersection of AI, creativity, society, and culture.

Key features of this studentship

Receive a fully funded studentship covering tuition fees and an annual stipend at the UKRI rate (previously 2025/26 £20,780 per year) for 3.5 years.
Research Training and Support Grant (RTSG): £3,000 total over 3.5 years.
CreativeAI studentship methods training and cohort-building activities.

The deadline for applications is March 30, 2026. Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact the project leads in question. General questions about the CreativeAI studentships can be directed to Sam Hind (sam.hind@manchester.ac.uk).

For more details, see: https://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/funding/list-of-awards/creativeaistudentships

Shaping AI for Inclusion: Barcelona Summer School 2026

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:49:19 GMT

July 15-17, 2026

Barcelona, Spain

Deadline: March 10, 2026

The techno-deterministic paradigm of AI has exacerbated social challenges. Academia is mobilising to assess the impact of AI in society and understand how to contribute to shaping this paradigm. This summer school aims to explore the social, ethical, and political challenges posed by contemporary artificial intelligence systems, with particular attention to any form of discrimination, including all intersectional manifestations of ageism, racism, sexism, ableism, and others. Thus, the focus is on the critical examination of how power relations enter algorithmic systems, including the roles of data practices and institutional arrangements, and on how we can reimagine accountability, anti-discriminatory action, and inclusion in automated socio-technical environments.

More info: https://anyage.ai/article/shaping-ai-for-inclusion-barcelona-summer-school-2026

PhD summer course: Media Engagement

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:43:47 GMT

August 16-22, 2026

Jönköping University Sweden

Deadline: March 1, 2026

Democracy depends on engaged citizens. And yet, the most powerful discourses surrounding engagement are strategically designed to drive commercial markets. As a counterpoint to this horizon, the main purpose of this PhD residential course is to understand theories and methods of media engagement not as a metric but as a marker of power relations.

This 7.5 credit course offers an international platform for PhD researchers to write, present and receive feedback on work in progress from global experts on theories and methods for media engagement. The course will cover key concepts for engagement, including political and public spheres, digital media and AI related technologies, social movements and mobilisation, transmedia engagement, and cultural citizenship and popular culture.

Key Highlights:

Mentoring and networking with world leading scholars and international doctoral researchers; slow thinking, with time to write thesis chapters and peer reviewed journal articles; residential setting of Gränna Campus, overlooking the great lake of Vättern, with easy access to local food and crafts, clear water swimming, nature walks and mountain views; social events, including trips to the historical island of Visingsö.

Teaching Team:

course leader Annette Hill (co author with Dahlgren of Media Engagement Routledge 2023), Peter Dahlgren (author of Media and Political Engagement 2009), Renira Gambarato (author of Streaming Media and Cultural Memory in a Postdigital Society 2024) and Hario Priambodho (author The Cult Film Atmosphere 2025).

Website and application: for information on the course, application process, fees, and key dates see https://ju.se/samarbeta/event-och-konferenser/event/phd-summer-course-media-engagement.html

Contact Annette Hill (Annette.hill@ju.se)

Invitation to participate in the Futures of Digital Democracy Survey (FDDS)

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:41:03 GMT

We want to invite you to participate in an expert survey that addresses a key political topic of our time: the future of democracy in the digital age and the rise of authoritarianism.

The EU research project INNOVADE: Innovative Democracy through Digitalisation https://innovade-democracy.eu/ studies digital democracy. Paderborn University’s INNOVADE research team (led by Christian Fuchs) runs the Futures of Digital Democracy Survey (FDDS):

https://bit.ly/fdds_1

https://digital-democracy.net/d/index.php/111849

Particiation will take about five minutes.

The goal of the survey is to analyse how digital media experts assess the potential futures of digital society and the Internet and what visions they have for these futures.

INNOVADE will use the results of the survey as inputs to European Union policy debates on the future of democracy (that is currently being discussed as part of the European Democracy Shield’s goal to strengthen the EU’s democratic resilience, digital autonomy/sovereignty from big tech, etc.).

The survey has two rounds. In the first round, we ask for basic assessments. In a follow-up round, we report some of the first round results to the participants and ask for further assessments. After the survey’s second round is completed, all data will be published anonymously as an open data set.

We’d be happy if you were able to participate. The first round is open until 23 February 2026. The second round will take place some time in March or April.

https://bit.ly/fdds_1

https://digital-democracy.net/d/index.php/111849

Below you find some links to research that INNOVADE has already conducted on the topic of digital democracy.

With kind regards

Christian Fuchs

on behalf of the Paderborn University INNOVADE research team

Relevant INNOVADE reports:

Christian Fuchs: What is and How Do We Achieve a Resilient Digital Democracy? https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.21988.1

Christian Fuchs, Joel Museba, Kevin Friesch: White Paper: The Futures of Digital Democracy. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17747936

Christian Fuchs (Editor) Interdisciplinary Knowledge Base on Digital Democracy. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17079016

Communications for Development 2.0: Rethinking Sustainable Communication in the AI Century

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 19:26:48 GMT

Deadline: March 6, 2026

Call for Chapters

Editors: Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u & Lara Martin Lengel

Communication for development has evolved over the last seventy to eighty years with impactful contributions from leading scholars. The impact of their work has reverberated beyond academic circles, shaping policy and practice especially in the global south.

These groundbreaking contributions include the modernization theories of the 1950s and 1960s led by Daniel Lerner, Wilbur Schramm and Everett Rogers whose insights on the stages of modernization, the contribution of mass media to national development, and the diffusion of innovation became guiding principles for engaging with publics for decades.

The work of dependency and other critical theorists, especially in the 1970s, provided an alternative view in communication for development and by extension the international development trajectory. Thinkers like Andre Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Luis Ramiro Beltrán and Paulo Freire recalibrated the debates by bringing to the fore issues of inequality, internal failure dynamics and the need for communication to address power imbalances.

The 1980s and 1990s introduced a seismic shift in the communication for development discourse by focusing on participatory approaches to communication. The works of Paulo Freire, Paolo Mefalopulos, Jan Servaes, Thomas Tufte, Alfonso Gumucio Dagron, and Srinivas Melkote among others reshaped the debate particularly on the need for community engagement and sustainable social change.

The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in the 2000s and the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 as well as the technological revolutions spurred by the internet and the sudden emergence of COVID-19 that rebooted how people communicated had profound impact on communication for development, leading to calls on the United Nations to reconsider the 17 SDGs by adding SDG18—Communications for All, to ensure that the role of communication does not take a back seat in the development process.

While this is going on, the phenomenon of artificial intelligence has emerged as a transformative force. Thisrevolutionary phenomenon is altering how development is implemented at individual, country and continental levels. Artificial intelligence is likely to define the development path in the 21st century with profound impact on all sectors, be it health, education, infrastructure, poverty alleviation, food security, energy access, and climate action. Artificial intelligence presents new promises, yet also presents challenges that may exacerbate inequality. The algorithmic governance of information flows, the concentration of AI capabilities in the global north, and the potential exclusion of marginalized voices from AI-mediated development discourse demand urgent scholarly attention.

This reality calls for rethinking of how communication for development will be implemented in the coming decades. The aim of this book, currently under consideration by the renowned publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, is to examinecommunications for development in light of the rise of artificial intelligence. It aims to revisit previous theories, models and approaches to communications for development and assess their potency or otherwise in the artificial intelligence century. Communication for Development 2.0 intends to be a major scholarly collection and reference work that will shape the communication for development discourse in the AI era. We seek contributions from established and emerging scholars to critically review and propose new approaches to communications for development in light of artificial intelligence and its implications for development practice.

Potential chapter topics comprise but are not limited to the following:

Diffusion, innovation and artificial intelligence
Participatory communication and artificial intelligence
Communication for development, artificial intelligence and inequality
Communicating national development in the age of artificial intelligence
Development communication and artificial intelligence in the global south
Development communication and artificial intelligence in the global north
Communicating social change in the era of artificial intelligence
Data colonialism, artificial intelligence and communications for development
Artificial intelligence infrastructure and communication for development
Communication for development, language and artificial intelligence
Digital inequality, artificial intelligence and development communication
AI divide and digital dependency
Communicating Sustainable Development Goals in the AI era
AI ethics and communication for development
Algorithmic governance and development communication
AI literacy and capacity building in development contexts
Case studies of AI applications in development communication practice

Submission Requirements

Prospective authors should send their abstract submissions to Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u (mjyushau@gmail.com) by 6th March 2026. Abstracts should comprise the following:

250 words abstract
Institutional affiliation
Corresponding email address
200 words author bio

All submissions should be in Word document format. Authors whose abstracts have been accepted will be notified by 3rd April 2026. Final chapters should be between 5,000- and 6,000-words and will be due by 12thJune 2026. Co-authored chapters will be considered. Full papers will undergo a rigorous peer review process. Submitted work must be original and not under consideration elsewhere.

Call for Authors for the Database of Variables for Content Analysis (DOCA) – Thematic Call: Digital Publics

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:33:35 GMT

Link to DOCA: https://www.hope.uzh.ch/doca/

Link to the Call: https://t.uzh.ch/1Wn

The Database of Variables for Content Analysis (DOCA) invites researchers to submit variable entries on the overarching theme of digital publics.

Digital publics refer to communicative spheres in networked digital media where individuals and groups exchange and negotiate opinions on public issues. DOCA seeks entries on variables such as platform affordances, publicness levels, audience engagement, networked visibility, deliberative quality, polarization, community governance, user-generated visuals, and automated indicators (e.g., sentiment, network structures, visibility analytics)...

We are looking for contributions that systematize and operationalize key variables and constructs for the analysis of digital publics, using both standardized and automated content analysis approaches. DOCA provides an open-access infrastructure for documenting and enabling the comparability of content-analytical variables in communication research.

Interested authors are invited to indicate which variable or construct they intend to contribute by May 3, 2026. Final entries (approximately 2–3 pages) are due by June 28, 2026. More information: https://t.uzh.ch/1Wn

We are very much looking forward to your submissions.

Franziska Oehmer-Pedrazzi, University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons FHGR; Sabrina H. Kessler, University of Zurich; Edda Humprecht, University of Jena; Katharina Sommer, ZHAW; Laia Castro Herrero, Universitat de Barcelona; Nicole Bizzotto, University of Zurich; Philippe Sloksnath, University of Zurich

Humor in Art in the Contemporary Context Cancel Culture, Techno-Feudalism, Regional Wars, NSFW

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:29:10 GMT

May 22-23, 2026

Bucharest, Romania

Deadline: April 10, 2026

Venue: Faculty of Letters, Bucharest / Department of Communication Sciences & National University of Theatre and Cinematography "I.L. Caragiale", Bucharest / Animation Department

Email for inquiries and submission: eugen.istodor@unibuc.ro

Format: Hybrid / The conference has a section for online presentations

Open to: Undergraduate students, Master’s students, PhD candidates, and Academic Faculty/Researchers

The conference organizers do not provide accommodation or meals. There is no participation fee.

Call for Papers

We live in an era of "polycrisis," where the absurdity of reality seems to surpass any fiction. From the trenches of Eastern Europe to the ruins of the Middle East, and from the courts of digital public opinion to the algorithms that curate our reality. Under these conditions, humor has ceased to be merely a form of entertainment. It has become a weapon, a survival mechanism, a propaganda tool, and, sometimes, the last refuge of freedom.

This conference aims to explore the functions, failures, and mutations of humor in the present day. How can we still laugh when the news cycle is dominated by images of atrocity? Are there any "harmless jokes" left in the age of ideological surveillance?

We invite researchers, critics, and practitioners to submit proposals addressing the following critical themes:

1. Humor Under Siege: Cancel Culture and the New Blasphemies

In a cultural climate marked by hypersensitivity and social vigilantism, comedy has become a minefield.

Humor as the last bastion of free speech vs. social responsibility. Is the comedian a hero defending the truth at any cost (even if it offends), or an opinion leader who must take care not to incite hate or "punch down"?

Analysis of comedian "deplatforming" mechanisms. Pressure on content hosts to sanction speech deemed offensive. Algorithmic censorship on social networks (*shadowbanning*). Access to an audience — a privilege conditioned by moral conformity.

Cancel Culture as a form of Censorship (The New Inquisition). It is not the state that censors you, but your neighbors. In "Cancel Culture," the sentence (deplatforming) precedes the trial, and context is often ignored in favor of a 10-second out-of-context clip.

The "Chilling Effect" (Self-censorship). The homogenization of art and the forced "sanitization" of discourse.

The tyranny of the vocal minority which succeeds in intimidating corporations and organizers. The impossibility of forgiveness: Cancel Culture tends to judge past actions (from 10-20 years ago) through the moral lens of the present, without offering a clear path to rehabilitation.

2. Laughter in the Time of Algorithms: Techno-Feudalism and Meme Warfare

In an era defined by what Yanis Varoufakis calls "techno-feudalism," humor is a commodity and a currency.

Memes as tools of political propaganda and radicalization.

How do TikTok and X (Twitter) algorithms shape the collective sense of humor?

Ownership of laughter: Who owns the joke in platform capitalism? Post-internet irony and digital alienation.

3. Dark Humor and the Horrific: The War all around

Can humor coexist with tragedy in real-time? How does satire transform in the face of extreme violence?

Humor as a coping mechanism (psychological survival) for populations under bombardment. The memeification of war: From "Saint Javelin" to frontline soldiers' TikToks.

The role of political caricature in contemporary asymmetric conflicts.

4. NSFW: Eroticism, the Grotesque, and Taboo

In a society increasingly puritanical in public discourse but saturated with pornography in private, NSFW (*Not Safe For Work*) humor becomes a space for contestation.

The return of the grotesque and bodily humor (scatological, sexual). Pornography and parody: Cultural intersections.

The limits of obscenity: What is still considered "shocking" today? OnlyFans, performative sexuality, and humor as a fetish.

We are also open to any theme related to humor as the main character of these times.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit an abstract of maximum 300 words, accompanied by a short author biography (max. 100 words), to the email address: eugen.istodor@unibuc.ro

Proposals are accepted in: Romanian, English.

Important Dates:

Submission Deadline: April 10, 2026
Notification of Acceptance: April 20, 2026
Conference Date: May 22-23, 2026

The organizing committee:

Nina Mihăilă, Matei Branea, National University of Theatre and Cinematography "I.L. Caragiale", Bucharest

Eugen Istodor, Faculty of Letters Bucharest

Digital Audiences: Youth, Algorithmic Mediations and Political Socialization

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:18:57 GMT

July 6-7, 2026

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain

Deadline: March 13, 2026

Full information: https://incom.uab.cat/congreso26/en/

Given the key role that digital platforms currently play in the media and cultural consumption of young people, the influence of artificial intelligence systems for organizing and generating content is a phenomenon of great academic relevance. Through personalized recommendations and systems that provide plausible answers to queries formulated in natural language, algorithmic mediations not only determine the information and entertainment content that young people consume, but also shape public opinion and levels of engagement with political and social issues.

With the I International Conference on Digital Audiences: Youth, Algorithmic Mediations and Political Socialization, organized by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the aim is to create a meeting space for researchers interested in analysing how digitalization and algorithmic mediations shape reception processes and the very configuration of audiences.

In this first edition, there is a particular interest in proposals that adopt an intersectional perspective on digital audiences, that take into account diversity and social inequalities, but there is also a desire to devote significant attention to the “informational experience”. More broadly, the objective is to discuss how the progressive displacement of human agency is affecting social engagement and citizen participation in the digital public sphere.

We expect contributions that delve into one of the following thematic lines:

1. New informational habits of youth audiences: This line seeks to explore how young people consume, share, and produce informational content on digital platforms. The goal is to address all types of digital environments, whether linked to traditional media or independent of them.

2. Algorithmic perceptions and imaginaries: This theme focuses on the role of personalization algorithms in content mediation and, more specifically, on how they are perceived by youth audiences. Particular interest lies in assessing the sense of control over algorithmic mediations, as well as the ability to identify and respond to biases and disinformation. Proposals may address studies on algorithmic literacy.

3. Political socialization: This section examines dynamics of political socialization in digital environments, considering aspects such as ideology formation, levels of social/collective engagement, or political participation. A wide range of topics is welcome, from the potential of digital activism to fears of cancellation among the most vulnerable groups. Although most available studies have been conducted during election campaigns, we aim to include all types of empirical work in this conference.

4. Gender and social representation: Through this thematic line, we intend to explore how gender identity and sexual orientation shape algorithmically mediated consumption. Proposals are invited on algorithmic biases, from analyses documenting the presence of prejudices and negative stereotypes toward minority social groups or "invisible" topics, to works offering solutions or strategies to address these issues.

Abstract: 300 -500 words (submitted via Form available at the site)

Proposal submission deadline: March 13, 2026

Proposals can be individual or collective (up to four authors).

Participation will be in-person (with at least one of the authors present).

Proposals may be submitted in Spanish, Catalan, or English.

All proposals will undergo a double-blind peer review process.

Registration is free for participants

Organized by:

ALCOM - Perception and Knowledge generation on personalization algorithms in digital communication platforms ( PIs – Fernanda Pires and Celina Navarro - UAB). PID2023-1-48682OA-I00, financed by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/, FEDER/UE. https://webs.uab.cat/alcom/

POINTAP - Social Polarization and Interculturality: Monitoring Political News by Migrant and Native Youth from an Intersectional Perspective (PI – Amparo Huertas Bailén – UAB). https://incom.uab.cat/pointap/?lang=es

Partner organizations:

ICPS - The Political and Social Science Institute of Barcelona

INCOM-UAB - Institute for Communication/ UNESCO Chair for Communication UAB

Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising UAB

AE-IC - Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación

Cine-Barbaras: Reclaiming Feminist Perspectives, Practices, and New Methodologies in Cinema and Audiovisual Studies

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:09:18 GMT

International Journal of Film and Media Arts (special issue)

Deadline (full papers): April 15, 2026

This special issue seeks to foreground renewed and insurgent feminist approaches within film and audiovisual scholarship and practice. We invite contributions that interrogate dominant historiographies, reclaim marginalised genealogies, and propose innovative methodologies capable of reshaping the epistemological frameworks of cinema and media studies. We particularly welcome work that bridges theory and practice, fosters transnational dialogues, and advances intersectional, decolonial, and speculative perspectives.

CFP: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijfma/announcement/view/255

LSE public lecture on technology & education

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:06:06 GMT

February 12, 2026

LSE/online

Apps and AI are now part of everyday schooling: who are they really for?

Homework platforms, learning apps, AI-driven assessments, classroom monitoring… Digital tools and AI are embedded in children’s school experience.

While these technologies promise innovation, efficiency and personalisation, we must also urgently explore:

- children’s rights and wellbeing, what “good learning” actually looks like

- how decisions about classroom technologies are made

- and what it means to profit from compulsory schooling

At our upcoming public lecture, we will explore these topics by bringing together perspectives that are rarely in the same room: child rights advocates, investors shaping the learning technology market and academics.

Speakers: Dr Sandra El Gemayel, Jen Persson, Prof Julian Sefton-Green, Rhys Spence, Chair Sonia Livingstone

Public lecture, Thursday 12 Feb | 6:30-8pm (UTC) | in-person at LSE (with drinks reception) and online

Topic: EdTech at the crossroads of pedagogy vs profit

Hosted by the Digital Futures for Children centre, Department of Media and Communications at LSE & 5Rights

Communicating narratives, imaginaries and epistemes of hope

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 19:58:39 GMT

September 7, 2026

Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline: May 10, 2026

Joint Communication, Social Justice and Democracy IAMCR Working Group conference & ECREA 2026 pre-conference

Political ideology, religious faith, science and art are all informed by visions of hope, the promise or prospect of a good state of affairs in the future. While hope is shaped by ideas of the present (and the past), it is mainly forward-looking, articulating visions of possible futures. Hope can be a powerful motivator for mobilisation and societal change. At the same time, aspirations for a better future may be instrumentalised or manipulated for political gain or financial profit. This conference focuses on the constructive force of hope, addressing visions, discourses, and practices of hope for democracy, peace and justice, as articulated in media representations and communicative practices.

We welcome contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following thematic areas:

how societal phenomena, challenges, and crises (e.g., climate change, migration, war and conflict, extremism) are mediated and reconfigured through narratives of hope at national and international levels;
how different actors, social groups, and institutions (e.g., media, political parties, education, religion, art) negotiate their visions of hope in mediated environments;
how visions of peace and justice are communicated in public discourse and through people’s struggles;
how history is mobilised in communicative practices and public debates in articulations of better presents and futures;
how space, time and technology inform narratives and imaginaries of hope;
how imaginaries of hope are constructed in contexts of persistent curtailment of freedoms and rights, and increasing authoritarianism;
how viable democratic presents and futures are imagined, under dire conditions of ongoing conflict, violence, or war;
how struggles against injustice, oppression and authoritarianism inform, and are informed by, cultures and epistemes of hope.

Abstract length and submission deadline

Abstracts of 400–500 words should be submitted by 10 May 2026 via email to vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz

Please note that this conference will be held in person only; no arrangements will be made for online participation.

Decisions will be announced by 10 June 2026.

Date and location

Date: 7 September 2026

Location: Centrum Voršilská, 5th floor, Charles University / Voršilská 144/1, Prague, Czech Republic

Conference organisers

This is a joint Communication, Social Justice and Democracy IAMCR working group conference & ECREA 2026 pre-conference.

Contact: Vaia Doudaki, vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz

Scientific Committee

Vaia Doudaki (Charles University, Czech Republic)

Nico Carpentier (Charles University, Czech Republic)

Ilija Tomanić Trivundža (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Andrea Medrado (University of Exeter, UK)

Fernando Oliveira Paulino (University of Brasilia, Brazil)

Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno (Loyola University Maryland, United States)

World Press Freedom Day Academic Conference: Shaping a Future at Peace – Press Freedom, Information Integrity, and Democratic Resilience

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 19:56:16 GMT

May 5, 2026

Lusaka, Zambia

Deadline: February 20, 2026

In connection with the World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) 2026 Global Conference, which will take place in Lusaka on 4 May, UNESCO and partners: University of Liverpool, Oslo Metropolitan University, the University of Sheffield, Tampere University, the University of Zambia, and the Worlds of Journalism Study invite scholars to submit abstracts for the WPFD Academic Conference to be held on 5 May 2026 in Lusaka.

At a time of declining global freedom of expression, rising conflict, digital disruption, and growing economic pressure on independent media, the academic conference will provide a platform for evidence-based research and interdisciplinary dialogue on the future of journalism, information ecosystems, and democratic governance.

Please submit your abstracts via this link: https://forms.gle/mT8YsCQGSoLcxpja7

The deadline for abstract submissions is 20 February.

For any further inquiries, please contact either:

Dr Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova, University of Liverpool, vpetkova@liverpool.ac.uk

Dr Brenda Bukowa, University of Zambia, hod.dmcs@unza.ac.zm

Human-AI Creative Workflows: Creativity, Labour & Education

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 19:46:46 GMT

June 1, 2026

International Online Symposium

Deadline: April 1, 2026

Website: HERE

The growing complexity arising from the integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) into creative practices requires equally complex theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches across different disciplines and fields of research (Ruszev et al. 2025). Likewise, the functionalities of the new generative models, its multi-level adoption, and the expanding range of uses, establish a paradigm that goes beyond the generation of isolated outputs towards a complete reconfiguration of creative workflows (Santoso & Wijayanti, 2024; Valverde-Valencia, 2025).

In this context, the notion of workflow seems to call for a renewed approach, distinct from more traditional uses and definitions. Traditionally envisioned as a sequential organization to complete any type of work (Oxford UP; Cambridge UP), the concept has been expanded to accommodate the complexity of human-technology relationships within production processes, focusing on the design, coordination and adaptation of work processes through and with technology (Nicoll and Keogh, 2019). The emergence of Generative AI and its integration into creative practices requires a further expansion of this concept to encompass notions such as distributed agency (Celis Bueno et al. 2024) or Human-AI collaboration (Geroimenko, 2025), which frame these processes not as sequential but as dynamic and co-evolutionary (Moruzzi, 2023). Therefore, Human-AI creative workflows can be understood as an entanglement of relationships between actors, practices, and artifacts that includes mutual learning, feedback loops, iteration, strategies and social, ethical, and labour implications. However, this renewed interest in the concept of workflow also raises new questions: How is learning organized and performed in these iterative processes? How do the stages of creative work adapt when Generative AI plays a role in the process? How can the labour implications of these changes be addressed? How do we negotiate value and authenticity when creative agency is distributed? How can we redefine and reimagine the concept of workflows? And conversely, how this might change our understanding of creativity?

Considering these questions and the challenges posed by Generative AI in creative fields, this International Online Symposium on Human-AI Creative Workflows aims to bring together scholars, professionals and creative practitioners who are embracing complex approaches to the study of these topics. More specifically, we invite proposals that address, but are not limited to, the professional fields such as the Audiovisual Industry, Visual Arts, Videogames, Journalism, Music or Advertising while connecting with the following lines of interest:

Educational approaches: Teaching-learning processes, contexts and strategies in Human-AI Creation and the role of AI Literacy.
The political economy of Human-AI workflows: monopolisation of workflows (Young et al. 2025), Human-AI co-creation from the perspective of labour, shifts in industry dynamics, business models, and labour conditions.
Agency and Authorship: How is the authorship framed in Human-AI Creativity? Negotiations of control and autonomy in collaborative workflows.
Conceptual contributions: How to redefine the concept of workflow?; which novel theoretical frameworks can we deploy to examine this phenomenon?
Case studies: Case studies on GenAI implementation in studios, newsrooms, agencies... Resistance, workarounds, and/or adoption patterns.

Submit your abstract

Registration

Format: 100% Online (Synchronous). A link will be provided before the symposium.

Cost: The attendance and participation to the symposium is free of charge. Registration is required.

Certification: The organizing committee of the symposium can provide a certificate of participation and attendance if needed.

Submission Details: We welcome submissions from diverse disciplines, including but not limited to communication, media studies, computer science, (digital) humanities, social sciences and the arts. Submissions should delve deep into critical insights, conceptual and theoretical frameworks, empirical research, or innovative methodologies aligned with the conference themes.

Abstract length: 300-500 words, excluding references.

Bio: Brief author biography, max. 100 words.

Language: Proposals have to be submitted in English.

Key dates
Abstract submission deadline: 1st of April, 2026
Notification of acceptance: 2nd of May, 2026
Conference date: 1st of June, 2026

Programme

To be announced.

Contact

For more information, or if you encounter any problems with the submission form, please contact alex.valverde@upf.edu

References

Cambridge University Press. (n.d.). Workflow, n. In Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved January 20, 2026, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/workflow

Claudio Celis Bueno, Pei-Sze Chow, & Ada Popowicz. (2024). Not ‘what’, but ‘where is creativity?’: Towards a relational-materialist approach to generative AI. AI & Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-01921-3

Geroimenko, V. (2025). Generative AI: From human–computer interaction to human–computer creativity. In Human-computer creativity: Generative AI in education, art, and healthcare (pp. 3–29). Springer Nature Switzerland.

Moruzzi, C. (2023). Creative agents: Rethinking agency and creativity in human and artificial systems. Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 9(2), 245–268.

Nicoll, B., & Keogh, B. (2019). The Unity game engine and the circuits of cultural software. In The Unity game engine and the circuits of cultural software (pp. 1–21). Springer International Publishing.

Oxford University Press. (n.d.). Workflow, n. In Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved January 20, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2899020370

Ruszev, S., Trifonova, T., & Guerrero-Solé, F. (2025). Authorship and creativity in the era of AI: Towards a transformation of contemporary media narratives. Hipertext.net, (31), 1–10.

Santoso, B., & Wijayanti, R. (2024). Human–AI collaboration in creative industries: Workflows in media production and community-driven platforms. Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Cognitive Systems, 9(11), 11–26.

Valverde-Valencia, À. (2025). Introducing the concept of relational processes in human–AI creativity. Hipertext.net, (31), 55–66.

Young, C., Joseph, D., & Nieborg, D. (2025). Workflow monopolies: A platform historiography of Unity in the immersive app economy. Platforms & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251376562

Swedish STS Conference

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:02:00 GMT

June 10-12, 2026

Malmö, Sweden

Deadline: February 27, 2026

Welcome to the 20th anniversary of the Swedish STS Conference that will be held at the Niagara building in Malmö, 10–12 juni 2026.

It's hosted by Malmö University in collaboration with Lund University.

The Swedish STS Conference is an open, widely advertised, biennial conference, organised since 2006. It is an interdisciplinary meeting place for researchers interested in issues related to technology and science in society as approached from social science and humanities perspectives, and while it gathers researchers at all levels of their careers, it is planned and coordinated to particularly appeal to doctoral students and early career researchers, with special sessions and events catering to the concerns of junior colleagues.

Conference theme

The theme Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration invites contributions that address pressing global challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence, warfare, infectious diseases and migration. The conference explores how cultures, technologies and disciplines interact in ongoing processes of exchange, how contamination shapes interdependence and accessibility, and how collaborations across boundaries can foster innovation and societal change. A particular strength of the STS field is its ability to critically examine both successes and failures of science and technology across their entire life cycle – from inception to everyday use and eventual decline.

Collaboration is central to STS practice, often requiring interdisciplinarity and engagement across the traditional divide between natural sciences and the humanities. This conference will highlight how such collaborations can generate new methods, perspectives and models for engagement, while also interrogating the values that underpin them – who participates, what counts as legitimate knowledge, and how boundaries are maintained or transgressed. Without cross-pollination, contamination and collaboration with wider society, science risks losing relevance and legitimacy.

Conference website: Swedish STS conference 2026: Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration | Malmö University

14th Graduate Spring School & Research conference on Comparative Media Systems: “Autocratization and the Media in the Digital Age”

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:51:54 GMT

April 13-17, 2026

IUC, Dubrovnik

Call for participation in the post-graduate course and research conference

The third wave of autocratization is spreading in democracies and deepening in existing autocracies around the world which now outnumber democracies 91 to 88 for the first time in 20 years - only 29 countries remain liberal democracies (V-Dem, 2025, March). Global freedom has also declined for the 19th consecutive year, primarily in relation to political rights and civil liberties including freedom of expression.

The current expansion of autocratization is unfolding in the digital network society (Castells 2006, 2019), a global space connected by various digital communication networks, in which communication technologies and services have penetrated all societal domains and become unavoidable for most social interactions (Bolin & Hepp 2017). This transformation of communication structures makes the present autocratization wave different from the previous ones in terms of its practices, strategies and participating actors. This major communicative shift has been largely neglected in important studies of autocratization in the 21st century.

Attempts to repress media freedom appear before visible changes to institutions of government and elections in later stages of autocratization and provide an early warning. Democratic indicators that have substantially declined over the last decade are all related to media freedom or freedom of expression, and government censorship of media along with media capture have significantly risen, while academic and artistic freedom as well as journalistic safety have deteriorated. Another important element is increased political polarization, fuelled by the dynamics of the hybrid media system, as well as the incursion of AI into the communication mix of both editorial media and social media.

The course & research conference will discuss new research on autocratization and the media in a comparative fashion.

Course directors:

Zrinjka Peruško, University of Zagreb
Carmen Ciller, University Carlos III - Madrid
Susanne Fengler, Technical University Dortmund
Göran Bolin, Södertörn University
Epp Lauk, University of Tartu
Paolo Mancini, University of Perugia
Slavko Splichal, University of Ljubljana
Miklós Sükösd, University of Copenhagen

This 14th "slow science" IUC-CMS is an interdisciplinary research conference & post-graduate course open to academics, doctoral and post-doctoral students in media, communication and related fields engaged with the issue of media and media systems, that wish to discuss their current work with established and emerging scholars and get relevant feedback.

Invited research conference participants will deliver keynote lectures with ample discussion opportunities. In this unique academic format, student course attendees will have extended opportunity to present and discuss their current own work with the course directors and other lecturers and participants in seminar form (English language) and in further informal meetings around the beautiful old-town of Dubrovnik (UNESCO World Heritage) over 5 full working days (Monday to Saturday).

The working language is English.

Participation in the course for graduate (master and doctoral) students brings 3,5 ECTS credits, and for doctoral students who present their thesis research 6 ECTS. The course is accredited and the ECTS are awarded by the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb (www.fpzg.unizg.hr). All participants will also receive a certificate of attendance from the IUC.

Enrolment

To apply, send a CV and a motivation letter to zrinjka.perusko@gmail.com Students who wish to present their research should also send a 300 word abstract. The course can accept 20 students, and the applications are received on a rolling basis. After notification of acceptance you need to register also on this web page https://iuc.hr/programme/1844.

The IUC requires a small enrolment fee from student participants. Participants are responsible for organizing their own lodging and travel. Affordable housing is available for IUC participants. Stipends are available from IUC for eligible participants, further information at https://www.iuc.hr/iuc-support.php. For information on these matters please contact the IUC secretariat at iuc@iuc.hr.

Venue Information

The Inter-University Centre was founded in Dubrovnik in 1972 as an independent, autonomous academic institution with the aim of promoting international co-operation between academic institutions throughout the world. Courses are held in all scientific disciplines around the year, with participation of member and affiliated universities.

Additional Information

For further information about academic matters please contact the organizing course director: professor Zrinjka Peruško zrinjka.perusko@gmail.com, Centre for Media and Communication Research (www.cim.fpzg.unizg.hr), Department of Media and Communication, Faculty of Political Science (www.fpzg.unizg.hr), University of Zagreb (www.unizg.hr).

ECC26: Pre- and post-conferences programme is available

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:37:05 GMT

The pre- and post-conferences programme for the European Communication Conference 2026 (ECC2026) is now available. Delegates are invited to apply to a diverse range of pre-conferences addressing key and emerging topics in communication and media research. These events offer an opportunity for focused discussion, networking, and collaboration. Full details of the individual calls for abstracts and participation requirements can be found at:https://ecrea2026brno.eu/pre-post-conferences-call-for-abstracts/.

International Online Symposium on Human-AI Creative Workflows

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:27:02 GMT

June 1, 2026

Online

Deadline: April 1, 2026

Educational approaches: Teaching-learning processes, contexts and strategies in Human-AI Creation and the role of AI Literacy.
The political economy of Human-AI workflows: monopolisation of workflows (Young et al. 2025), Human-AI co-creation from the perspective of labour, shifts in industry dynamics, business models, and labour conditions.
Agency and Authorship: How is the authorship framed in Human-AI Creativity? Negotiations of control and autonomy in collaborative workflows.
Conceptual contributions: How to redefine the concept of workflow?; which novel theoretical frameworks can we deploy to examine this phenomenon?
Case studies: Case studies on GenAI implementation in studios, newsrooms, agencies... Resistance, workarounds, and/or adoption patterns.

Digital Communication and Social Practices under Algorithms: Challenges and Opportunities

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:15:56 GMT

BiD (special issue)

Deadline: September 30, 2026

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to invite submissions for Issue 57 of BiD, titled "Digital Communication and Social Practices under Algorithms: Challenges and Opportunities":

Predictive artificial intelligence and personalization algorithms in recommendation systems have become key mediators of everyday activities on digital platforms. These systems process personal data to offer lists of content that, in theory, adapt to citizens’ tastes and interests. By shaping cultural and informational consumption, this process introduces dynamics that are largely invisible to users, who often perceive it as “useful” and “accurate” due to the high level of personalization.

This personalization, as part of the broader phenomenon of platformization, has transformed the communication industry and altered sociocultural habits, at times limiting the diversity of perspectives on issues such as politics, culture, health, and lifestyles, among others. It also raises questions about privacy and about how these technologies influence the ways in which identities and communities are constructed.

This special issue section seeks contributions that critically analyze the interactions between citizens and recommendation systems on digital communication platforms, exploring how these algorithms shape experiences, sociocultural practices, and creative processes. Beyond identifying risks, it is essential to reflect on the capacities and tools that enable people to interact with these technologies in a conscious and critical manner.

Understanding these dynamics requires studying the systems themselves, but also strengthening algorithmic literacy as an essential competence for questioning and managing the logics that govern personalization, avoiding a passive relationship with systems that influence cultural, informational, and social decisions.

We invite the submission of contributions that delve into the following thematic axes. Nevertheless, research that goes beyond these points and analyzes the social role of algorithms and predictive systems in practices of cultural consumption and communication will also be considered.

Proposed thematic axes:

- Algorithmic literacy: the set of knowledge (formal, informal, and non-formal) that users develop to interact and coexist with recommendation algorithms, considering the actors involved in this learning process and the competencies required.

-Tactics of evasion and algorithmic shaping: analysis of the active strategies that citizens use to interact with algorithms and influence the content they receive, as well as to avoid exposure to unwanted content.

-Bias, discrimination, hate speech, and normalization of patterns: how algorithms can reinforce social stereotypes or normative patterns (such as canonical bodies or gender roles) and expose users to objectifying content or hate speech, including racism, xenophobia, and LGBTIQphobia, exacerbating discrimination and disadvantage in cases of intersectional bias.

-Algorithms and migratory and ethnic experience: understanding how algorithmic personalization conditions the representation and sense of belonging of migrants, as well as ethnic communities.

- Algorithms in opinion formation and polarization: analysis of algorithmic influence on the configuration of political and social opinions.

-Modification of citizens’ everyday practices: algorithmic influence on consumption practices and habits, such as exercise and diets, as well as fashion, brand consumption, the idealization of relationships, the commodification of authenticity, personal vulnerability, among others.

-Creativity and algorithm-mediated cultural production: analysis of how recommendation systems influence content creation, transform creative processes, and redefine authorship in digital environments.

We warmly encourage colleagues across communication, media studies, digital sociology, cultural studies, and related fields to submit their work and to share this call within their networks.

Submission Process and Key Dates

Full Paper Submission Deadline 30/09/2026 in the journal system:

https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/bid/about/submissions

No payment from the authors will be required.

This forthcoming special issue is open access, and welcomes original research articles in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

Link to the journal full text of the CFP: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/bid/announcement/view/982

Please note that this invitation does not guarantee publication, all full manuscripts will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process.

We look forward to your submissions.

The special issue editors,

Fernanda Pires (fernanda.pires@uab.cat - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) ,

Celina Navarro (celina.navarro@uab.cat) Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Liana Pithan ( liana.pithan@gmail.com - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul)

Aging and Communication: Rethinking Later Life in a Digitized Society

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:11:50 GMT

Deadline: February 15, 2026

Call for Chapter Proposals

We are preparing a proposal titled Aging and Communication: Rethinking Later Life in a Digitized Society. The book is edited by Francesca Comunello, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Simone Mulargia, and Cora van Leeuwen, and builds on the work of the ECREA Temporary Working Group on Aging and Communication.

The volume aims to strengthen European scholarship on aging and communication by critically examining media representations of later life, digital ageism, communication practices of older adults, and their participation in civic and public life. It takes a critical and intersectional approach, highlighting older adults as active communicators and agents shaping media cultures.

Abstract deadline: 15 February 2026

Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2026

More information on the attached PDF. If you are interest in submitting your proposal, please contact the editors: ecrea.aging.communication@gmail.com

Co-Producing Environmental Publics: Technology, Communication, and Ecological Transformation

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:09:00 GMT

Communication and the Public (special issue)

Deadline: March 20, 2026

https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ctp

Scope and Themes

Algorithmic infrastructures and the formation of environmental publics
Datafication, environmental knowledge, and public authority
Public communication of climate models, predictive ecologies, and digital simulations
Networked environmental activism and hybrid public mobilization
Communicative agency among scientists, Indigenous communities, and climate advocates
Surveillance ecologies, risk governance, and public trust
Digital platforms, environmental legitimacy, and contestations of power
Environmental media propaganda, misinformation, and AI-generated narratives

Submission Process and Key Dates

Abstract submission deadline: March 20, 2026
Notification of invitations to submit full papers: March 30, 2026
(Please note that an invitation does not guarantee publication; all full manuscripts will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process.)
Full paper submission deadline: July 31, 2026
Planned publication: 2027

Abstract Submission Guidelines

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words, in English, to all guest editors with the subject line: “CAP Special Issue Submission”

Guest Editors:

Dr. Dechun Zhang, University of Copenhagen (dezh@hum.ku.dk)

Dr. Weiai Xu, University of Massachusetts Amherst (weiaixu@umass.edu)

Dr. Han Lin, Soochow University (linhan741@gmail.com)

Full call for paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zAr6qNL5YtkC9YKQtj9VexGcPmZxelaq/view?usp=sharing

Governing Ethics in Ethnographic Research: Current Debates and Futures

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:08:00 GMT

Culture Unbound (Special Issue)

Deadline (EXTENDED): February 20, 2026

Editors: Johanna Dahlin and Hossam Sultan

In many countries, research ethics in qualitative and ethnographic research—including digital and online ethnographies—are increasingly subject to formalized governance. A growing tendency toward bureaucratization introduces standardized procedures that often reflect criteria and expectations from clinical or laboratory settings. While these frameworks aim to ensure accountability, they can clash with the relational, adaptive, and context sensitive nature of ethnographic practice. Requirements such as detailed pre-study protocols, rigid consent forms, and extensive documentation can in some cases,—such as recordings, the management of sensitive data, or consent forms requested by ethics approval authorities—pose risks to participants and lead to over-bureaucratization for researchers. In other contexts, such as participant observation in large groups, it may be practically impossible to obtain informed consent from everyone involved. These developments raise fundamental questions about how ethical review systems can accommodate the complexity and unpredictability inherent in ethnographic research, without reducing ethics to formal procedures and the ticking of boxes.

The governance of research ethics is not a neutral or purely technical matter—it shapes what kinds of knowledge can be produced, whose voices are heard, and which methods are considered legitimate. As ethical review systems become increasingly standardized and bureaucratized, there is a risk that flexible, context-sensitive approaches such as ethnography are marginalized or forced into compliance frameworks that do not fit their epistemological foundations. These developments have implications not only for researchers but also for participants, communities, and the broader public.

By critically examining these transformations, this special issue aims to advance scholarly debate on how ethical governance can protect participants and uphold integrity without undermining methodological diversity and innovation. We invite academic contributions that analyze tensions, unintended consequences, and creative responses to current systems, as well as conceptual and empirical work proposing alternative approaches that better align with the relational and processual nature of ethnographic practice. The purpose is to generate knowledge and critical perspectives that can inform future discussions and scholarly agendas for ethical governance—agendas that respect both accountability and the complexity of qualitative research.

Types of Contributions

This special issue invites contributions in the form of full papers (8000 words) or short commentaries (3000-4000 words) that reflect upon current transformations in the regulation of ethics in ethnographic research with focus tensions, emergent questions, work arounds and future agendas that they see needed to be put in place. We welcome:

Empirical studies, including shorter vignettes, examining how ethical review systems shape research practices in different contexts.
Theoretical and conceptual analyses of ethics as practice, situated ethics, and reflexivity in relation to governance.
Methodological reflections on alternative consent models (oral, processual, participatory) and their recognition within formal systems.

Contributors can reflect upon questions such as, but not limited to, the following:

How can ethics be understood as relational and processual rather than fixed and standardized?
What risks arise when journals and institutions impose “one-size-fits-all” requirements on diverse research practices?
How might digital, online and hybrid ethnographies challenge existing assumptions about consent, privacy, and data security?
In what ways can critical and postcolonial perspectives inform the design of ethical review systems?
What strategies can researchers and institutions adopt to balance accountability with methodological flexibility?

Contributions are welcome from scholars working in a variety of fields and disciplines that engage in ethnographic research. The special issue will be published in the international open-access journal Culture Unbound. All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review.

Timeline:

20 February 2026: Deadline for Abstract submission. Please send a 500-word extended abstract to johanna.dahlin@liu.se and hossam.sultan@liu.se. Please indicate whether the intended manuscript is going to be a full article (up to 8000 words) or a short commentary (up to 4000 words).
2 March 2026: Notification of acceptance of proposal for paper.
15 August 2026: Submission of full papers
30 October 2026: Reviews in
31 December 2026: Revised manuscripts due
Spring 2027: Publication in Culture Unbound

Submit your proposals and any queries to johanna.dahlin@liu.se and hossam.sultan@liu.se

6th Mobile Studies Congress

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:04:56 GMT

August 21-22, 2026

Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India

Deadline: March 1, 2026

The 6th Mobile Studies Congress invites researchers, creative practitioners, designers, filmmakers, and industry professionals to submit papers and proposals for presentations, workshops, screenings, showcases, and panel discussions on the theme "Go Mobile, Stay Connected." This annual event examines the transformative impact of mobile media, cellphilming and smart technologies on our lives, society, and creative industries. The congress will explore new ways to connect with culture, country, and communities. The 6th Mobile Studies Congress will also feature a screening of the Mobile Innovation Networks and Association (MINA) smartphone film festival. Selected conference papers and projects will be published in a special issue and edited collection.

Details: https://www.6thmobilestudiescongress.org/

IAMCR Pre-Conference: Representations of (Post-)Industrial Communities: Voice, Visibility and Value

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:02:03 GMT

June 27, 2026

Dublin, Ireland

Deadline: March 15, 2026

This pre-conference hosted by IAMCR’s Communication in Post- and Neo-Authoritarian Societies Working Group (CPN), examines public and communicative processes around (de-)industrialisation in Europe and North America, focusing on questions of voice, visibility, representation, and inequality. It takes a pluralist approach, combining analyses of public discourse with research grounded in lived experience.

Call for proposals

Authors are invited to submit abstracts of 250-300 words (excluding references, figures, and tables) by 15 March 2026 (23:59 CEST / 21:59 UTC).

Download the full call for papers

Abstracts must include name, affiliation, and contact information. Submissions should be written in English and include the main research question(s), research interest, theoretical framework, methodological approach, and key empirical findings (if applicable).

A selection of papers presented at the pre-conference will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the open-access, double-blind peer-reviewed Global Media Journal (German edition).

Date and time

Saturday, 27 June 2026

10:00–17:00 (to be confirmed)

Location

Dublin (venue to be confirmed)

About the pre-conference

Industrialization in Europe and North America was associated with profound societal transformations, most notably the urbanisation of populations and the creation of mass workforces. Across generations, many families expected their children to follow established occupational trajectories into mines, steelworks, docks, mills, and factories. For much of the twentieth century, heavy industries offered relatively stable employment and social security, contributing to gradual improvements in working-class conditions up to the 1960s.

Deindustrialization, by contrast, has often been experienced as a process of decline and loss – in economic as well as social terms. Beyond the erosion of material living standards, it has entailed the loss of pride, security, and self-worth among urban working-class communities. As industries disappeared, so too did the social infrastructures that sustained everyday life. Urban spaces fell into decay, amenities declined, and the voices, values and identities of communities were increasingly marginalised within broader national imaginaries. For many affected communities, this history continues to shape present experiences of being voiceless, unrepresented, and neglected.

The proposed pre-conference seeks to explore these dynamics by examining the public and communicative processes around (de-)industrialization. It aims to take a pluralist approach to industrial transformation, attending both to macro-level public discourses and to the lived experiences of communities navigating industrial decline and post-industrial restructuring. By foregrounding communication as a central site through which industrial transformation is interpreted, contested, and experienced, the pre-conference invites critical engagement with questions of inclusion/exclusion, voice, (in)visibility, (mis/under-)representation and inequality in societies shaped by ongoing processes of deindustrialization.

Mobile communication and later life: From theories to empirical frescoes

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:55:35 GMT

Guest Editor: Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Sakari Taipale

Special issue of Mobile Media & Communication

Volume 14 Issue 1, January 2026 (It is now the current issue)

This special issue of Mobile Media & Communication advances research on mobile communication and aging. It is framed as a navigation from theories to empirical frescoes, aiming "to bring into discussion various theories that help unravel the empirical reality of mobile communication in later life in its many colors, shades, and nuances.” (p.1).

The 12 contributions take a broad approach, analyzing not only mobile devices (hardware) and digital spaces but also social, cultural, spatial, and future aspects of mobile communication.

Introduction:

Fernández-Ardèvol, M., & Taipale, S. (2026). Mobile communication and later life: From theories to empirical frescoes. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 3-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251398570 [Free access]

Contributions (alphabetical order):

Carlo, S., & Diodati, F. (2026). Ageing and Mobile Phones: Tactical Uses/Nonuses in postpandemic Italy. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 89-107. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251359072

Chakraborty, D., & Garg, C. (2026). Navigating Technology: Mobile Media Usage and Reticence Among Older Adults in Rural India. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 31-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251378548

Dalmer, N. K., Katz, S., Marshall, B. L., & Ellison, K. L. (2026). Connections, negotiations, and tensions: Talking tech with older adults. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 190-210. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251394803 [Open Access]

Erdenebat, A., & Veloso da Silva, A. (2026). Digital ageism? Analyzing women's depictions on TikTok through user-generated content under# aging and# antiaging. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 230-251. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251350900 [Open Access]

Fortunati, L., Farinosi, M., & de Luca, F. (2026). Aging in the digital era: A study on Italian older adults’ complex relationship with mobile phones. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 127-148. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251353639

Gan, J. (2026). “It's Great to have Fun While Earning Small Money”: Gamified Apps in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Shanghai. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 50-67. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251386226 [Open Access]

Hänninen, R., & Tiihonen, S. (2026). Navigating mobile technologies: Older adults’ mobile, digital, and non-digital strategies for enhancing subjective well-being. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 108-126. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251348098 [Open Access]

Li, Y., & Krijnen, T. (2026). “Vlogging my lives of two homes”: Chinese Houniao and their place-making in the online–offline nexus. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 211-229. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251385038 [Open Access]

McGrane, C., & Hjorth, L. (2026). Creating speculative mobile media futures with older adults in Australia. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 170-189. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251342016 [Open Access]

Pei, X. (2026). Polymedia within constraints: Negotiating smartphone usage among socioeconomically marginalized older female adults in the Global South. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 12-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251346244 [Open Access]

Rosenberg, D. (2026). Perceived health-related mobile device usefulness in older adults: Results from the Health Information National Trends Survey. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 149-169. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251353644

Wagner, S. (2026). Relational digital agency: An everyday life study of mobile communication in nursing homes. Mobile Media & Communication, 14(1), 68-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579251379751 [Open Access]

Doctoral Student in Media and Communication StudiesLogin and apply

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:26:12 GMT

Lund University

Apple here: https://lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:896015/type:job/where:4/apply:1

Lund University was founded in 1666 and is repeatedly ranked among the world’s top universities. The University has around 47 000 students and more than 8 800 staff based in Lund, Helsingborg and Malmö. We are united in our efforts to understand, explain and improve our world and the human condition.

Lund University welcomes applicants with diverse backgrounds and experiences. We regard gender equality and diversity as a strength and an asset.

The Department of Communication is an interdisciplinary, international, and dynamic environment for education and research in media and communication studies, strategic communication, and journalism, with particular emphasis on digital communication technologies. The department is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences, which is highly ranked internationally (46th place according to Times Higher Education). We combine theoretical knowledge with practical skills to prepare students for professional careers as well as further academic studies.

The department has close collaborations with the media and communication industry, civil society, and public authorities. Our researchers study communication and media environments at all levels and analyze communication practices in organizations, politics, society, and culture. Research and teaching are conducted in Lund, Malmö, and Helsingborg.

About the position

The main responsibility is to pursue your doctoral studies, which include both independent research and coursework within the doctoral programme. In addition to doctoral studies, participation in teaching and other departmental duties (up to a maximum of 20%) may be included. The position is limited to four years (up to a maximum of five years with departmental duties corresponding to 20%). Regulations concerning doctoral student employment can be found in the Higher Education Ordinance (1998:80).

As a doctoral student, you will become part of a creative and international research environment with seminars, workshops, and conferences, as well as opportunities to participate in pioneering interdisciplinary projects.

More information about the doctoral programme is available on the department’s website:

(https://www.iko.lu.se/en/research/doctoral-studies).

Eligibility

General eligibility for third-cycle (doctoral) education is granted to applicants who have completed a second-cycle degree, fulfilled course requirements of at least 240 higher education credits (ECTS), of which at least 60 credits are at the second-cycle level, or who have acquired substantially equivalent knowledge in some other way, in Sweden or abroad.

In addition to meeting the general entry requirements for doctoral studies, the applicant must have at least 30 higher education credits at the second-cycle level in the main field of media and communication studies, or have acquired equivalent knowledge (for example in strategic communication), in Sweden or abroad.

The applicant must also have completed independent scholarly work amounting to at least 15 higher education credits at the second-cycle level.

Applicants must have sufficient proficiency in English to be able to comprehend research literature, complete doctoral-level coursework, and participate actively in seminar activities.

Assessment Criteria

Regulations governing employment as a doctoral student can be found in the Higher Education Ordinance (SFS 1998:80). Only those who have been admitted to third‑cycle (doctoral) education may be appointed to a doctoral studentship. In the selection process, primary consideration will be given to the applicant’s ability to benefit from doctoral studies. Particular weight will be placed on the applicant’s master’s thesis (or equivalent degree project) and the proposed doctoral dissertation idea.

The assessment will also consider the applicant’s ability to work independently and in a well‑structured manner, as well as their ability to contribute to good collaboration and a positive research environment within the department.

The Application Must Include

1. A CV including certified copies of degree certificates, academic transcripts, and other relevant documentation.

2. A copy of the master’s thesis and, where applicable, the applicant’s other scholarly publications (for example, articles in academic journals).

3. A personal statement describing the applicant’s background, interest in the field, and motivation for pursuing doctoral studies.

4. A dissertation proposal outlining the applicant’s proposed doctoral project (maximum five pages). If AI has been used in preparing the application, please specify how it was used.

5. Contact details for two referees.

Recruitment Timeline

The application deadline is 31 March. Interviews will be conducted online, and the decision on the appointment will be announced in June. The position begins on 30 August 2026.

Terms and Conditions

The position is a fixed-term employment of four years, in accordance with Chapter 5, Section 7 of the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance.

Lund University welcomes applicants with diverse backgrounds and views gender equality and diversity as a strength.

We look forward to receiving your application!

We kindly decline all contact from advertising salespersons as well as recruitment and staffing agencies.

The Faculty of Social Sciences at Lund University is one of the leading education and research institutions in Sweden and operates both in Lund and Helsingborg.

The Department of Communication is an interdisciplinary, international, dynamic teaching and research environment, including journalism, strategic communication, and media and communication studies. Our education emphasises theoretical knowledge and practical skills to prepare students for professional careers and further academic studies. We work closely with the media industry, civil society, corporations and the public sector to enable students and researchers to contribute to and benefit from activities outside academia. Our researchers study communication and media environments at the local, national and global levels. They explore, explain, and critically analyse communication and digital media technologies in contemporary organisations, politics, society, and culture.

We kindly decline all sales and marketing contacts.

Type of employmentTemporary position

First day of employment2026-08-30

SalaryMonthly salary

Number of positions1

Full-time equivalent100

CityLund

CountySkåne län

CountrySweden

Reference numberPA2026/227

Contact

Cecilia Cassinger, Director of Third Cycle Studies, +4642356525, cecilia.cassinger@iko.lu.se

Tobias Linné, Head of Department, +46462224164, tobias.linne@iko.lu.se

Union representative

OFR/ST:Fackförbundet ST:s kansli, 046-2229362, st@st.lu.se

SACO:Saco-s-rådet vid Lunds universitet, kansli@saco-s.lu.se, kansli@saco-s.lu.se

SEKO: Seko Civil, 046-2229366, sekocivil@seko.lu.se

Published22.Jan.2026

Last application date31.Mar.2026

From Print to Prompt: Media and Communication Research and Education in the Era of GenAI

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:48:10 GMT

May 7-8, 2026

Roskilde University, Denmark

Deadline: February 28, 2026

SMiD 2026 – 50 Years Anniversary Conference

Generative AI (GenAI) fundamentally reconfigures the very processes that lie at the core of media and communication scholarship. Recent estimates show that ChatGPT alone processes approx. 2.5 billion prompts daily, which illustrates the unprecedented speed and scale at which GenAI tools are adopted and integrated into everyday practices. This development raises not only critical questions about the changing conditions of communication and media practices but also knowledge work, journalism, organisational structures and cultures, agency, authenticity, transparency, accountability, labour, bias, power relations, etc. In addition, GenAI sparks fundamental methodological debates and challenges the status quo of academic teaching and learning.

Current GenAI developments echo, mirror and build upon previous technological innovations and are deeply embedded into and shaped by societal and cultural transformations. Over the past five decades, such transformations have continuously redefined the study objects of media and communication scholarship, leading to an expansion of the field from its early focus on mass media, radio, print journalism and television to encompass a wide array of social media, digital cultures and datafied infrastructures.

The SMiD 2026 anniversary conference wishes to mark 50 years of media and communication research in Denmark, the Nordics and beyond, as well as 45 years of MedieKultur. It aims to provide a forum for critical reflection that situates current GenAI developments and disruptions within broader historical trajectories and transformations in media and communication studies. Scholars and educators are invited to engage in discussions on how media and communication research can provide adequate responses to the pressing questions contemporary societies are facing in the era of GenAI. Topics may include but are not limited to:

Changing communication and media practices, e.g., transformations in everyday communication practices, shifting norms, cultures, human-machine communication, health communication.
GenAI in relation to news production, journalism and data, e.g., how GenAI reshapes journalistic routines, newsroom work, GenAI as epistemic authorities.
Platform materiality and environmental communication, e.g., critical examinations of the material and environmental demands of GenAI and how these are communicated, justified and/or obscured, narratives of resistance on the inevitability of GenAI.
Historical, ethical and philosophical perspectives on GenAI, e.g., historical trajectories, philosophical and ethical implications, and changing human-machine relations.
Audience and user studies, e.g., how users and audiences make sense of, interpret, and co-create GenAI output, shifting forms of agency, engagement, trust, and literacy across various contexts.
Methodological explorations, e.g., opportunities and challenges for research design, data collection, and analysis, as well as ethical considerations.
Academic teaching and learning, e.g., innovative pedagogical approaches to using/resisting GenAI in media and communication education.

The conference’s aim is to bring together academic scholars, from PhD candidates to professors, and practitioners within the broader field of media and communication research.

We welcome traditional academic formats in the form of abstracts and presentations, and we encourage creative and/or experimental, alternative contributions. In connection to the conference, participants are invited to submit a full paper for peer-review to MedieKultur.

As in the previous years, SMiD 2026 is open to all researchers and practitioners with connections to the media and communication research and/or practice environment in Denmark and/or having the wish to connect to the community. If your work is not related to the overall conference theme, you are still welcome to submit an abstract and present your work.

Abstract submissions and other contributions should be between 300 and 500 words (excluding references and a short bio). Please submit no later than February 28th via email to smid@foreningen-smid.dk.

For further information please visit: https://www.foreningen-smid.dk/

Conference costs (including lunch, dinner and refreshments, excluding transportation and lodging):

Conference participation and full SMiD membership: 2000 DKK
Conference participation and reduced SMiD membership (e.g., PhD students and emerita): 1700 DKK
Conference attendance only: 1500 DKK

In special circumstances it is possible to waive the conference fee, e.g. if you are an independent researcher. Please write a short informal application stating your current situation via e-mail to smid@foreningen-smid.dk.

Doctoral position in the Doctoral Network "RePIM – Revisioning Public Interest Media"

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:14:13 GMT

University of Zurich

The Media & Internet Governance Division (Prof. Dr. Natascha Just), Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ), University of Zurich, invites applications for a doctoral position in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network "RePIM – Revisioning Public Interest Media". The Doctoral Candidate will investigate how automated content is used in Public Interest Media and assess the emerging potentials and challenges this creates. The position will involve close collaboration with other Doctoral Candidates in the RePIM doctoral Network Project, and an academic secondment of approximately 2 months at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria. The candidate will also carry out 3-month internship at the VRT, the Public Service Media organisation in Flanders, Belgium.

The planned starting date is 1 May 2026.

For further information and application details, visit https://repimnetwork.eu/dc1-coping-with-the-challenges-of-automated-content-in-public-interest-media/

Mediatization Conference 7

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:11:30 GMT

March 19-20, 2026

Lublin, Poland

Deadline (EXTENDED): February 4, 2026

Don't miss your chance to meet our keynote speaker professor Martin Riedl at the Mediatization Conference 7. Come to Lublin 19–20 March 2026 and join the discussion on “Mediatization and Artificial Intelligence. Values, Principles and Practices of AI-zation?”

Martin Riedl Ph. D. is an Assistant Professor at School of Journalism and Media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and will deliver his speech in person on the subject: Resuscitated at the deathbed? GenAI as challenge and opportunity for journalism

There is still time to share your ideas and to submit your abstract till 4 February 2026. See the details here: https://www.umcs.pl/en/ms-registration.htm

The conference fee is €48 (PLN 200) and the deadline for payment is 28 February 2026.

Post-conference articles will be published in: Vol. 10, 2026, Mediatization Studies.

ilinglist@ecrea.eu

DigiMig Webinar: Digital Inclusion and Migration

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:08:14 GMT

February 5, 2026

The DigiMig Webinar Series aims to create a space for exchange and reflection on how digital technologies shape experiences of migration, belonging, and participation. By bringing together research from different disciplines and countries, the series highlights diverse perspectives on digital inclusion — from education and labour integration to gender and ageing. The series are a part of the NWO VIDI-funded DigiMig project, carried out at the University of Groningen. More information about the project and the webinar series can be found on the project website: www.digimig.nl

Programme

Nov 6th, 2025 - 15:00-16:00 (CET) (past webinar, recording will be available soon)

Maria José Brites, Lusófona University; Terasa Sofia Castro, Lusófona University

Digital wellbeing in schools: the example of Information and Communication Clubs

February 5th, 2026 - 16:00-17:00 (CET) (Online)

Panayiota Tsatsou, Birmingham City University

Exploring digital inclusion, vulnerability and migration: A social lab framework

March 20th, 2026 - 09:00-10:00 (CET) (Online)

Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto, Monash University

Networked Mobility Divide among Older Migrants and their Fragmented Social Networks

April 9th, 2026 - 16:00-17:00 (CET) (Online)

Giacomo Solano, Radboud University

Digitalisation and social and labour market inclusion of female refugees in the Netherlands

May 6th, 2026 - 16:00-17:00 (CET) (Online)

Noemi Mena Montes, Radboud University

Mind the Digital Gap: From Digital Inequality to Digital Equity in Migration & Media

June 25th, 2026 - 16:00-17:00 (CET) (Online)

Claudia Minchilli, University of Groningen

The Myth of Digital Diaspora. An intersectional approach to the study of diasporic digital networking

September 15th, 2026 - 14:00-15:00 (CET) (Online)

Annamaria Neag. University of Groningen; Cigdem Bozdag, University of Groningen; Koen Leurs, Utrecht University

Inclusive media education for diverse societies

Please register for the webinars to receive the Zoom links: https://bit.ly/49XmvP9 <https://bit.ly/49XmvP9

The recordings of the webinars will be available on the project website. Please follow the website or subscribe our email list for project updates: https://bit.ly/4bRO1Qw <https://bit.ly/4bRO1Qw

Feminisms and Domesticity in Times of Crisis: The Rise of the Austerity Celebrity

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:06:10 GMT

February 4, 2026 (5pm - 6:30pm)

University of London, UK (LG01, Professor Stuart Hall Building, Goldsmiths)

Speaker: Dr Jessica Martin, University of Leeds

Chair: Prof Jo Littler, Goldsmiths

https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=15778

Free, all welcome, no need to book. Part of the MCCS Community Lecture Series.

In this talk, Jess Martin will introduce her new book, Feminisms and Domesticity in Times of Crisis: The Rise of the Austerity Celebrity. The book explores the rise of traditionally “feminine” domestic practices exemplified by key celebrity figures who have forged their public personas in articulation with austerity culture, exploring the potential of the domestic space to be a site for resistance toward or complicity in accepting rising inequalities. The talk will consider how this nostalgic turn to domesticity has intensified during the convergence of crises in the UK, reinforcing narratives of heteronormative femininity, patriotic stoicism, and the so-called British Blitz spirit, while helping to obscure the escalating inequalities of austerity-era Britain. Martin argues that the convergence of nostalgia and femininity has produced new discourses of performative thrift, feminized labour and aspirational domesticity which are key resources for the justification of austerity policy.

About the speaker

Jessica Martin is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Leeds, where she runs the MA in Gender Studies. Her research interests are in feminist cultural studies, and she has published widely on politics and popular culture, postfeminism and contemporary celebrity and digital cultures. She is assistant editor for The European Journal of Cultural Studies and her new book Feminisms and Domesticity at Times of Crisis was released with Bloomsbury in 2025.

Living Books about History

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:01:59 GMT

Deadline: March 20, 2026

Dear list members,

‘Living Books about History’ is a collection of digital anthologies on current research topics. Each volume will feature an essay written by the editors as well as a selection of annotated texts and research resources. These contributions may include online resources such as open source articles, images, films, websites, or sound recordings.

The project offers an innovative form of scientific publication that experiments with the possibilities offered by digital media. It revives the anthology format by virtually compiling scientific papers alongside their sources and resources. Readers can participate in ‘Living Books about History’ by suggesting further contributions, which will be added to the table of contents after approval by the editors.

‘Living Books about History’ showcases noteworthy and hitherto neglected scientific publications and sources on current topics. The selection made by the editors serves as a filter that distinguishes remarkable contributions from the mass of information available online. The project aims to reinforce the principles of ‘Open Science’.

The 12 volumes published to date are available online, in both English and a second language.

Types of Proposals Expected:

infoclio.ch is launching a new series of ‘Living Books about History’ in 2026. The collection publishes research primarily in the field of historical sciences but welcomes diverse perspectives from other disciplinary fields. Proposals may address a variety of topics, without chronological, or geographical restrictions. The selected sources and scientific papers shed light on the respective research topics from different perspectives.

‘Living Books about History’ can have different objectives, such as providing a historiographical overview of a research trend, defining the contours of a new area of study, offering an introduction to a topic, illustrating different ways of interpreting a specific corpus of sources, or analyzing the challenges of a paradigm shift.

Format of ‘Living Books about History’:

Each volume consists of an original introduction of 20,000 to 40,000 characters and a selection of 20 to 30 resources already available online, accompanied by a brief commentary. Each volume is assigned a DOI and an ISBN.

Submission of Proposals:

This call for proposals is open to advanced researchers.

We welcome proposals for volumes in the form of an abstract of no more than 4,000 characters outlining the theme and focus of the project, 2-3 examples of online resources to be included in the anthology, and a short CV of the editors. Proposals may be submitted in English, French, or German.

The deadline for submitting proposals is March 20, 2026.

Notification of accepted proposals will be sent on April 2, 2026.

Please send proposals by email to: livingbooks@infoclio.ch

Accepted anthologies will be published during the summer and fall of 2026.

The costs of editing and online publication will be covered in full by infoclio.ch (Diamond Open Access). If the text is written in a language other than English, editors are invited to participate in fundraising for translation.

Contact:

‘Living Books about History’ is a publishing project of infoclio.ch, the Swiss professional portal for historical sciences. infoclio.ch is an institute of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW).

Questions can be addressed to Enrico Natale: enrico.natale@infoclio.ch

By/For: Photography & Democracy virtual lectures: Anne Cross and Matthew Fox-Amato

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:59:05 GMT

February 6, 2026

The first event in the 2026 By/For: Photography & Democracy virtual lecture series is coming up on Friday, February 6, at 1pm EST: “To Show or Not to Show: Ethics, Censorship, and the Case of the Scourged Back” with Anne Cross & Matthew Fox-Amato. Learn more and register here.

By/For: Photography & Democracy is a collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler.

Our collective investigates photography’s assumed democratic credentials as an art form and a medium of mass communication. We believe a historical perspective on the complex relationship between photography and democracy is critical to understanding how the medium and related visual technologies can address the social and political issues of our time.

In 2026, we invite you to join leading thinkers Anne Cross & Matthew Fox-Amato, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Leigh Raiford, Jeehey Kim, Zahid R. Chaudhary, and Tiffany Fairey for thought-provoking conversations on photography and democracy. Explore season two and register for all events.

Rethinking Media and Communication: A Critical Sociological Lens

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:54:14 GMT

Series: Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Volume: 355

Volume Editors: Paško Bilić and Thomas Allmer

https://brill.com/display/title/64825

In this book, the authors address critical questions about the role of media and communication in capitalist societies. How do power structures shape communication processes? How are inequalities reinforced across different levels of society—micro, mezzo, and macro? Drawing on sociology, political economy, media studies and related fields, the book offers fresh insights into how communication supports capitalist domination, from media commodification to media concentration. It calls for a rethinking of how communication affects social relations and how social relations influence communication, exposing its deep connection to economic and political power. This book is essential for anyone seeking to understand the forces shaping today’s media landscape.

Hardback ISBN: 978-90-04-74853-8

E-Book (PDF): 978-90-04-74854-5

TOC

Chapter 1 Introduction

Authors: Paško Bilić and Thomas Allmer

Part 1 Setting the Scene

Chapter 2 Contested Legacies – Marxian Influences on the Sociology of Media and Communication

Authors: Sašo Slaček-Brlek and Boris Mance

Part 2 Abstraction and Fetish

Chapter 3 Between Capital and the Lifeworld: Contradictions of Value-Regulated Social Interactions

Author: Paško Bilić

Chapter 4 Theorising a Multidimensional Model for Analysing Data Fetishism: Reconciling Marxist and Freudian Approaches to the ‘Split’

Authors: Andrea Miconi and Nico Carpentier

Open Access:

https://brill.com/downloadpdf/display/book/9789004748545/BP000012.pdf

Chapter 5 Actio in distans: a Critical Node of Technological and Social Mediation

Author: Marco Briziarelli

Part 3 Dominance and Counter-Dominance

Chapter 6 From the Iron Cage to the Silicon Cage: New Forms of Domination within Hypermediated Societies

Authors: Davide Lucantoni, Francesco Orazi, and Federico Sofritti

Chapter 7 Legal Determination of Forms in Software and Communication: between Public and Capital

Authors: Toni Prug and Mislav Žitko

Part 4 Public Opinion, Public Sphere and Communicative Activity

Chapter 8 Fast and Shallow: towards a Critical Theory of Opinion

Author: Eric-John Russell

Chapter 9 Activity Theory in the Digital Age: Can Communication and Data Be Expropriated, Exploited, or Alienated?

Author: Sebastian Sevignani

Part 5 Non-Western Directions in the Critical Sociology of Media and Communication

Chapter 10 Ibn Khaldûn and the Political Economy of Communication in the Age of Digital Capitalism

Author: Christian Fuchs

Chapter 11 Ibn Khaldûn Revisited: Responding to Christian Fuchs

Author: Graham Murdock

Chapter 12 Ibn Khaldûn and the Political Economy of Communication: a Reply to Graham Murdock

Author: Christian Fuchs

Chapter 13 Re-reading Ibn Khaldûn in Critical Times

Author: Graham Murdock

Chapter 14 Critical Sociological and Media Studies: How Latin America Learned to Contest Power from the Periphery

Authors: Jairo Lugo-Ocando and Monica Marchesi

Part 6 Re-focusing the Sociology of Media and Communication Debate

Chapter 15 Dialectics of the Symbolic: Michel Freitag and the Critique of Communication

Authors: Claude Leduc and Maxime Ouellet

Chapter 16 Re-examining News Sources in the Sociology of the Media: a Political Economy of Communication Approach

Authors: Jernej A. Prodnik and Igor Vobič

Chapter 17 Narrating the Field of Communication: Charting an Unstable Territory

Author: Steven Maras

IAMCR - Multimodal Communication Research WG

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:51:29 GMT

June 28 - July 2, 2026

Galway, Ireland

Deadline: February 3, 2026

The Multimodal Communication Research (MCR) Working Group invites the submission of abstracts for its 2026 conference, to be held from 28 June to 2 July 2026 in Galway, Ireland, hosted by the University of Galway. The deadline for submission is 3 February 2026 at 23:59 UTC.

Moving beyond assumptions that text is the only format in which media and communication research takes place, MCR welcomes projects in any modality other than a traditional research paper (e.g., ethnographic or documentary film, audiovisual essay, podcast, photo essay, exhibition, installation, performance, data visualization, game, animation, etc.). We feature peer-reviewed, multimodal research projects that rely upon arts-based methodologies to consider a range of epistemological, theoretical, ethical, and socio-cultural questions central to media and communication research.

link: https://iamcr.org/galway2026/cfp-mcr

Researching Media Production in the Global South

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:48:08 GMT

June 3, 2026

Cape Town, South Africa

Deadline (EXTENDED): February 6, 2026

2026 ICA half-day hybrid Preconference

Dear colleagues,

Following requests from potential contributors, the deadline for paper proposals for the 2026 ICA half-day hybrid Preconference, “Researching Media Production in the Global South”, has been extended to 06 February 2026.

Date: Wednesday, 3 June 2026

Time: 12:00-17:00

Venue: University of Cape Town, Centre for Film and Media Studies & online

This preconference will explore the particularities of researching media production in non-Western contexts. Building on the success of the inaugural online conference held in May 2024, this second iteration seeks to bring together scholars examining how cultural, political, and industrial conditions shape media production practices across the Global South. We welcome theoretically informed empirical studies that expand and challenge dominant, Western-centric perspectives on media industries and contribute to the development of de-Westernised and decolonised approaches to production research.

Thematic areas of focus may include:

How local (political, economic and cultural) contexts shape or constrain media production practices
The appropriation of new digital technologies (including AI and associated tools); the role of platforms in shaping/influencing production practices
The impact of shifting industrial contexts (including decentralisation) and changing media ecologies on production
Methodological approaches
Context- or site-specific challenges and emerging solutions for media production research; the particularities of labour markets and working conditions
Cross-cultural and collaborative media production
The impact of foreign media investment on local production practices
The effects of resource constraints on journalism and other forms of media production

Please submit your abstract for a 10-minute presentation (max. 300 words) along with a short biography (approx. 100 words) via this form: Submission Form (form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdi3dIxHgq69bNr-TdeDVpVrS__2M2nTSJXZBq5IheWncxS9g/viewform?usp=publish-editor) by 06 February 2026, indicating whether you wish to participate in person or online.

We aim to provide decisions by the end of February.

If you have any questions, please contact us at: mediaproduction.globalsouth@leeds.ac.uk

Presentation at the preconference is conditional on submission of an extended abstract by 15 April 2026. Acceptance to the main ICA conference is not required.

For the full call for papers and registration instructions, please visit: ICA26 Preconference Details

This preconference is sponsored by the Global Communication and Social Change Division of ICA, supported by the Universities of Cape Town, Glasgow, and Leeds, and organised by Anna Zoellner (University of Leeds), Chris Paterson (University of Leeds), Hayes Mabweazara (University of Glasgow), and Tanja Bosch (University of Cape Town).

Handbook of Independent Journalism

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:45:55 GMT

Deadline: March 15, 2026

We invite abstracts for the forthcoming Handbook of Independent Journalism, deadline March 15th.

Independent journalism is considered an important pillar of democratic societies, enabling citizens to make informed decisions, creating trust in quality information, and the role of journalists as watchdogs of society. Independence is often considered a pre-requisite for good quality news and watchdog journalism and has been described as free from control or influence. Despite being an omni-present normative standard, independent journalism often appears in academic works as a buzzword, implicit assumption or underlying belief system. This handbook brings together work which examines the conditions, functions, perceptions, delimitations and challenges surrounding independent journalism as a concept, practice, standard, organizational form and discourse. Through this work we want to emphasize independent journalism as a field of study and highlight existing and emerging scholarship.

This handbook brings together scholarly work on independent journalism at a time when its survival is threatened globally and its future uncertain. Various international agencies and national advocacy groups, including the UN, EU, and OSCE and Journalistic Unions, have called for independent journalism to be supported. At this time, substantial and systematic scholarly work is needed to accompany these calls, with concrete insights into the value of and threats to independent journalism for societies around the world. We call for submissions of chapter proposals (250 -350 words) including, but not limited to the following areas:

Independent journalism as field of study
Theories and concepts in the study of independent journalism
Practices and strategies of independent journalism
Independent journalists, work conditions, typologies, training
Challenges, delimitations, attacks
Independent journalism and discourses
Drivers and support systems of independent journalism
Different approaches to studying independent journalism
International perspectives on independent journalism

Deadline Abstracts: March 15th 2026 (250-350 words) Please submit abstracts to this form.

Deadline Chapter submission: November 2026 (5000 words)

Editors:

Sarah Anne Ganter (Simon Fraser University)

Musawenkosi Ndlovu (University of Cape Town)

Sisanda Nkoala (University of the Western Cape)

Beth Pearson (City St George’s University of London)

Mediatization of the Sport–Fashion Nexus: Trends, Convergences, and Transformations

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:43:56 GMT

Zonemoda

Deadline: March 15, 2026

Mediatization is commonly understood as a meta-process (Krotz, 2007) through which media logics permeate social institutions and cultural practices, producing long-term transformations at micro-, meso-, and macro-social levels (Hepp, 2012). Operating alongside other meta-processes such as globalization and commercialization, mediatization assumes differentiated forms across socio-cultural contexts. In the field of sport (Frandsen, 2020; Tirino, 2025), it has significantly reshaped organizational structures, cultural meanings, and value systems, redefining the relationship between media, sport institutions, and audiences.

These dynamics have intensified through successive waves of “digital mediatization” (Couldry & Hepp, 2016), associated with mobile connectivity, social media platforms, immersive environments, and generative artificial intelligence. Contemporary elite sport has thus consolidated its role as a highly mediatized, commercialized (Horne, 2006), and globalized (Giulianotti & Numerato, 2018) cultural industry, exemplified by events and circuits such as the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup, the NBA, Formula 1, and the ATP Tour. Within the so-called “media/sports complex” (Jhally, 1984), the convergence of interests among sports organizations, media industries, and multinational corporations generates new forms of participation, visibility, and consumption, extending beyond sport-specific merchandise to the broader circulation of sports symbols across multiple product sectors.

Within this framework, the relationship between fashion and sport represents a particularly significant area of investigation. Historically rooted in class-based distinctions and embodied in garments associated with specific sporting practices (e.g. tennis, golf, sailing), sport has long functioned as a vehicle for the production and dissemination of styles, lifestyles, and values, co-constructed by media representations. Recent transformations are characterized by the progressive erosion of traditional boundaries between sport and fashion, as sportswear increasingly permeates everyday wardrobe and even formal dress codes — a process institutionalized in cultural settings such as the Fashion V Sport exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2009). At the same time, sport has partially reconfigured itself, acquiring renewed authority in technical, aesthetic, and symbolic terms, particularly evident during sports mega-events (Williams, 2025).

Further convergence has emerged through processes of hybridization and innovation. Collaborations between fashion designers and sportswear brands (e.g. Jil Sander and Puma) operate as experimental sites in which media visibility, design practices, and industrial strategies intersect, fostering innovation in materials, production technologies, and sustainability-oriented solutions (Bielefeldt Bruun & Langkjær, 2016). In this context, athletes and designers act as key mediators, mobilizing symbolic capital and professional identities within highly mediatized environments.

Social media platforms play a central role in these processes, enabling more direct, interactive, and partially disintermediated circulation of fashion- and sport-related value (Hou, 2025). They contribute to new forms of identification between brands, sports institutions, celebrities, and audiences (Loureiro et al., 2023), while the recurrence of mediatized representations supports the circulation of shared meanings and values within a framework combining personalization and commercialization (Driessens, 2013).

This special issue of Zone Moda Journal invites interdisciplinary contributions about the cultural, symbolic, and socio-economic dynamics emerging from the mediatization of the sport–fashion nexus.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

technical sportswear and fashion trends;
sports celebrities as fashion influencers, testimonials and trendsetters;
media narratives of sports-fashion connections;
sports fandom, social media, and fashion practices;
sport–fashion relations in digital and immersive environments;
digital fashion, e-sports, and video games;
sports mega-events and fashion;
fashion and forms of cultural resistance within the commodified media/sport complex.

Submissions

Abstracts of no more than 600 words, excluding bibliographical references (word*.docx format), written either in Italian or English, are required to illustrate the objectives of the paper, the research question(s) and the methodology adopted. They must be sent, together with a short biographical note, to: sicastellano@unisa.it; zmj@unibo.it (with object: Abstract submission for ZMJ – Mediatization of the Sport-Fashion Nexus).

Authors will be notified of proposal acceptance by April 17, 2026.

Abstract acceptance does not guarantee publication of the article, which will be submitted to a double-blind peer-review process. Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

Key Deadlines:

Abstract submission: March 15, 2026.

Notification of acceptance/rejection: April 17, 2026 (notice of acceptance might include comments and requests for explanations).

Full-length paper (6000/7000 words) submission: June 19, 2026.

Comments of the reviewers will be conveyed together with the editor’s decision (approval with no changes, approval with major/minor changes and/or rejection): July 20, 2026.

Authors shall send the reviewed article to the editorial staff by August 24, 2026.

ZMJ Vol. 16 N.2 is scheduled to be published by December 2026.

Re-Imagining Organizational Socialization: The Work of Communication

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:37:34 GMT

May 6-8, 2026

Aalborg University, Denmark

The Doctoral School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Aalborg Universitet

Welcome to Re-imagining organizational socialization: The work of communication

Description:

The field of organizational socialization originates in the social sciences and is concerned with ways in which employees become integrated into organizations to meet corporate goals. This is, therefore, also often constructed as a management-centric endeavour, paying little heed to employee needs and well-being. However, changes in work, organizing, economics and politics in and around the post-modern organization requires new ways of thinking and talking about employees and organizations that address the uncertainties and unpredictability (such as job insecurity, precarity and anxiety) that follow from these changes.

The PhD-course takes a humanities perspective to this discussion, focusing on key concepts such as discourse, communication, identity, affect, power and relationality to understand organizational socialization and practices in the postmodern organization. This entails seeing the organization as a construct emerging through the joint communicative, material and embodied efforts of the people that populate it and hence, acknowledging the special condition of the employee. The PhD-course invites students to join the conversation on these concepts as well as relevant theories and methodologies to consider for their PhD-studies.

Guided by faculty with deep experience in relevant disciplines, the aim will be for students to leave this course with a more robust understanding of the field of organizational socialization set against current developments. Furthermore, students will be encouraged to use the insights from the course in the pursuit of their unique and diverse research interests.

Students must do course readings before the course to become acquainted with the scope of research. In addition, they must read fellow students’ papers to prepare them to engage in conversation about the themes of the course and potential applications.

For additional information, updates, and registration, please refer to AAU PhD Moodle via the link HERE.

Gender and Imperialisms: Intersectional Research of Oppressions and Resistances

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:32:03 GMT

Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research (special issue)

Deadline: March 2, 2026

The journal Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research announces a call for abstracts for the special issue on Gender and Imperialisms: Intersectional Research of Oppressions and Resistances.

Editors: Leandro Wallace, Tereza Krobová, and Magali Segovia

This special issue has as its main objective to engage with research being carried across the axis of Imperialisms and Genders from an intersectional and transdisciplinary perspective, paying special attention to the workings of race, class, sex, sexuality, national identities, ableism, among others. At the same time, the call aims to reflect how both key constructions interact across several historical, social, political and cultural backgrounds emerging from and about different contexts.

We understand both Imperialism (Gramsci, 1975; Dussel, 1994; Quijano, 2008; Grosfoguel, 2008) and Gender (Lugones, 2008, Tlostanova, 2008; 2011; Espinoza-Miñoso, 2014; Curiel Pichardo, 2015; O’Sullivan, 2021; Markowitz, 2024) as complex formulation of structures and relations that are closely tied to the circumstance in which they develop but have a regional and global reach at the same time. We propose to think about both Gender and Imperialism as a non-universal, multidimensional and intersectional forces that are not limited to its “traditional” understandings. For example, we aim to emphasize that the concept of Imperialism goes beyond its western perspective and needs to be extended by the context of the Soviet and post-Soviet forces described as colonialist (Lieven 1995; Yusupova, 2022)

To be able to reach complex understanding of the diverse exchanges between all the analytical elements mentioned above, calls for the transdisciplinary practice that we seek to portray in this special issue. This call pursues highlighting the latest research being done in these spaces by researchers who work in these connections between Imperialisms and Genders.

This special issue has as its main aim to showcase the work being developed criticizing the attempts to impose the universal, hegemonic, hierarchical and binary western understanding of gender and its alliance with Imperialist perspectives and actions, as well as the multiple efforts to resist to them. We are interested in contributions that dwell on (but are not limited to) the complex interactions between:

Theoretical and practical understandings of Gender and Imperialism
Relationships between Gender and Imperialism (in all their forms)
Non-western Imperialism and Gender
Post-colonial, decolonial and anti-colonial approaches to imperialism and its gender(ed) framework
Imperialism in far-right gendered discourses
Imperialist digital practices
Imperialist gendered media practices
Imperialist and anti-imperialist aspects on human health
Environmental projections of Imperialist and anti-Imperialist actions
Environmental justice
Gender aspects in Environmental engagement
Gender and Imperialism as intersectional force: Influence and impacts of race, class, knowledge production, sexuality
Languages and languages revitalizations
Gender aspects of migration and forced migration
Anticolonial practices and Resistances

We welcome papers, book reviews and reports. Articles should be in English and between 6,000 and 10,000 words, including footnotes and references. Abstract should be submitted in English and be no longer than 300 words, the title of the article, three keywords, and brief bio about the author. Book reviews (of books not older than 3 years) should be no longer than 1,500 words.

Abstracts should be submitted by 2 March 2026 via email to the special issue editors (wallace.leandro13@gmail.com, tereza.krobova@fsv.cuni.cz, magalibsegovia@gmail.com) and the journal genderteam@soc.cas.cz.

Please include in the heading of the email “Special Issue: Gender and Imperialisms” followed by the reason for contacting (enquiry, abstract submission or paper submission) and the title of paper.

Schedule:

Deadline for abstracts: 2nd of March 2026.
Decision on abstracts: 6th of April 2026.
Deadline for full paper: 5th of October 2026.
Publication: 2027 (issue no. 1)

Reimagining Public Service Media. Navigating Change and Exploring Public Consensus in the Czech Republic

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:14:29 GMT

Marína Urbániková, Klára Smejkal, Iveta Jansová, Lenka Waschková Císařová

Incorporating perspectives of various key stakeholders, this book critically explores the state and future of public service media (PSM), and maps areas of consensus upon which a renewed social contract for PSM could be built.

Broadening the debate beyond normative frameworks and drawing on perspectives other than elite and expert opinions, this book represents a vital contribution to the discussion over PSM’s present and future. The study uses the Czech Republic as a case study, a representative Central and Eastern European (CEE) country that, following the fall of its Communist regime, successfully transformed its former state-run media propaganda system into PSM. Employing a mixed-methods research design, it provides empirically-based insights from three groups, namely: the general public, PSM’s audience and source of funding; politicians and members of PSM supervisory bodies; and PSM journalists and managers. This book synthesises the perspectives of these three groups, focusing on the common ground in their expectations and evaluations, and exploring where the societal consensus lies in terms of the public service PSM should provide and the public value it should bring. The analysis pays particular attention to the unique position of PSM in smaller countries and within the CEE region.

Reimagining Public Service Media is recommended reading for advanced students and researchers in fields including Media Ownership, Media Regulation, and Media and Politics.

Purchase it HERE.

Media Cymru Innovation Conference and Showcase 2026

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:11:30 GMT

September 14-17, 2026

School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales

Deadline (EXTENDED): January 30, 2026

Participants can look forward to an engaging and interdisciplinary programme featuring invited speakers from across academia, industry, and policy, including national and international experts in media and creative industries. A full list of keynote and featured contributors will be announced in due course.

We invite all researchers and professionals to submit their academic work that explores approaches to and analysis of media and creative industries innovation in ways that can inform future practice and policy. We welcome a broad range of topics.

Conference Themes and Topics

Submissions should align with (at least one of) our four themes: Green, Fair, Global, and Growth. These themes reflect Media Cymru’s four strategic pillars, which serve as tracks for submissions:

Green - Environmental Sustainability: Research on the media’s role in tackling the climate crisis. Topics include the role of media content in responding to the climate crisis, sustainable film/TV production, green broadcasting technologies and practices, energy-efficient infrastructure for creative studios, and case studies on carbon reduction in media and the wider creative industries.
Fair - Inclusive & Equitable Creative Industries: Research promoting a fair, equitable and diverse media sector. Topics include diversity and inclusion in media content and production, representation and accessibility in film, television and gaming, community media initiatives, minority language media production and consumption, and research that focuses on how to create greater equity in the creative industries.
Global - International Collaboration & Reach: Research on expanding the global impact and connections of small creative industries companies or regional ecosystems. Topics include international co-productions and partnerships, cross-cultural innovation in media, export of creative content, global audiences and markets, creative tourism, and comparisons of creative economy policies across regions. Work that highlights place-based innovation in the global creative landscape is especially welcome.
Growth - Creative Economy Development: Research driving economic growth and productivity through media R&D and innovation. Topics include creative entrepreneurship and startups, media business models and monetisation, creative hubs and regional cluster development, skill development and talent pipelines (linking education with industry), impacts of emerging technologies (AI, XR, gaming) on the creative economy, and evaluations of creative industry support programs or policy interventions.

These topics are not exhaustive. We welcome proposals that explore media workforce development, particularly in-work training, upskilling, and professional development models that support fair work across the media and creative industries. The committee also welcomes submissions with a focus on R&D methodologies and practice-based research closely aligned with industry needs and engagement. If you are unsure whether your topic fits, please contact the organisers at mcconf@cardiff.ac.uk .

We invite postgraduate and early career researchers to submit papers for a special session on the future of Creative Industries research. We welcome work that explores collaboration with industry, assesses partnership impact, or presents case studies bridging academia and practice.

Submission Guidelines and Publication

Submission Format: Authors are invited to submit abstracts of up to 500 words (excluding references) by Friday 30 January 2026.

Submissions should outline the research and contribution to the field or to creative industry development and policy. Submissions should also indicate the relevant conference theme or themes (Green, Fair, Global, Growth, Postgraduate Researcher session). All submissions will be subject to a peer review process.

How to Submit: Abstracts must be submitted in PDF format via the Frontiers in Communication submission portal. Frontiers | Media Cymru Innovation Conference and Showcase 2026: Call for Papers https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Fresearch-topics%2F74172%2Fmedia-cymru-innovation-conference-and-showcase-2026-call-for-papers&data=05%7C02%7CRabyJ%40cardiff.ac.uk%7C20f577865a5d4d54d71f08de53784cc2%7Cbdb74b3095684856bdbf06759778fcbc%7C1%7C0%7C639039973360280815%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=vBZVKdWo332NqydtaW5VY9AgzUKdrCGalAeDwUSUpwM%3D&reserved=0

All abstract submissions for the conference will be managed through the Frontiers in Communication Research Topic platform and should be submitted via this page. Please note that Frontiers refers to abstracts as ‘manuscript summaries.’ To submit your abstract, please click ‘Submit’ > ‘Submit your manuscript summary’ and follow the on-screen instructions. Any reference to manuscripts, manuscript submission, and publication fees on this page or within the submission portal should be ignored.

Conference Proceedings and Publication Opportunities

Special Issue Opportunity: Selected authors will be invited to submit a full-length version of their research for publication consideration in a peer-reviewed special issue of Frontiers in Communication, within the journal’s Media, Creative and Cultural Industries section. Invitations for full paper submissions will be issued following the conference and will be subject to a separate peer review process.

Attendance

Location: Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK (in-person)

Conference and Showcase Activities: Following the conference, a two-day showcase will highlight the innovations and impact of the Media Cymru programme. Attendees will be invited to explore the latest in sustainable and inclusive media innovation, from immersive storytelling to green production models. The showcase offers valuable opportunities to connect with industry professionals, discover new collaborations, and engage with bold ideas shaping the future of media.

About Media Cymru: Media Cymru is working towards sustainable and inclusive economic growth in the Welsh media sector. Backed by £49 million in funding, including £22 million from UKRI’s Strength in Places Fund and significant investment from government and industry, Media Cymru is a collaborative initiative led by 22 partner organisations. Find out more about Media Cymru.

Bursary support: A limited number of registration fee waivers will be available for eligible presenters.

Important Dates

30 January 2026 – Submission deadline
14–17 September 2026 – Conference and Showcase take place

All deadlines are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE). Early submissions are appreciated.

Contact and Organisers

The conference is organised by Media Cymru and the Centre for the Creative Economy at Cardiff University.

Contact: mcconf@cardiff.ac.uk

Entangled Histories – Borders and Cultural Encounters from the Medieval to the Contemporary Era

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:08:01 GMT

January 21 - July, 2026

Online (5:00 PM, CET)

Through this series of seminars, we explore the concept of borders from multiple perspectives, including communicative, linguistic, geographical, historical, and political borders.

The seminar series is sponsored by the Faculty of Communication and by the Master’s Programme in Media and Cultural Studies at Üsküdar University. The meetings take place online on Zoom every Wednesday at 5:00 pm (CET).

We also have a website where all updates and information about the seminar series can be found: https://sites.google.com/view/entangledhistories/programme

We hope this initiative may be of interest to you and that it could be included in the weekly digest. Below, please find the programme of the seminar series:

January 21, 2026

Sophie Ling-chia Wei (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Typology Meets the Yijing: Jesuit Figurists' Intralingual Translation and the Sinification of Jesus

January 28, 2026

Jasmine Bria (University of Bari Aldo Moro)

Borderlands and Cultural Identities in Arthurian Narratives

February 4, 2026

Naoko Kato (Corpus Christi College at the University of British Columbia/Independent Scholar)

Double Abandonment: Transpacific Borders of Erasure and Resistance (1942–1965)

February 11, 2026

Dario Capelli (University of Urbino Carlo Bo)

Echoes of the Struggles Against the Beguines in a Poem by Thomas Hoccleve

February 18, 2026

Peppino Ortoleva (University of Turin)

Surreal Frontiers: Decolonisation, Borders, and Never-Ending Wars

February 25, 2026

Anik Nandi (Woxsen University)

Transnational Migration and Language Policies in Northern Ireland, UK: Family Dynamics towards Heritage Language Maintenance

March 4, 2026

Muhammet Enes Akdağ (Üsküdar University)

Transnational Film Networks and Moviegoing Culture in the Jerusalem Mutasarrifate (1874–1917)

March 11, 2026

Karen Pinto (University of Colorado Boulder)

Through the Eye of the Cartographer: The KMMS Islamicate Vision of the Bilad al-Rum Byzantine Frontier with Syria

March 18, 2026

Sonja Brentjes (Max Planck Institute/Independent Scholar)

Formal and Informal Borders: How Much Did They Matter in the Mathematical Sciences in Premodern Islamicate Societies?

March 25, 2026

Eleonora Matarrese (University of Bari)

Edible Wild Plants: Widespread and Futuristic Knowledge in the Middle Ages (with practical workshop)

April 1, 2026

Pierpaolo De Giosa (National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris), Luigi Andriani (University of Hamburg)

More-than-human Encounters under the Same Roof: Household Spirits and Rituals in Bari

April 8, 2026

Marusca Francini (University of Pavia)

Beyond Poetry. The Style of the Norwegian 'Tristrams Saga'

April 15, 2026

Gesufrancesco Petrillo & Cristiano Bedin (Istanbul University)

Queer Encounters Across Borders: Adapting Perfect Strangers (2016) into Stranger in My Pocket (2018)

Academic Leave (20-26 April)

April 29, 2026

Elisa Ramazzina (University of Insubria)

Margins, Maps, and Monsters: Negotiating Borders in the “Wonders of the East”

May 6, 2026

Seda Öz (University of Delaware)

Entangled Germanies: Remaking Cinema at the Borders of Cultural Memory

May 13, 2026

Giorgio Ennas (University of Utrecht/Franklin University Switzerland)

Borders and Epidemics: Sanitary Transformation of State Borders in the Ottoman Empire between the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth Centuries

May 20, 2026

Nora Berend (University of Cambridge)

May 27, 2026

Valentina Surace (University of Messina) and Aisling Reid (Queen’s University Belfast)

Divided We Stand: Belfast’s ‘Peace’ Walls and the Logic of Security

June 3, 2026

Elisa Cugliana (Cologne University)

«Altez Gaschraibach» and New Technologies: Documenting Cimbrian Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

June 10, 2026

Luigi Andriani (University of Hamburg)

One Language Fits All? The Spectacular Case of Multilingual Italy

June 17, 2026

Betsey Price (York University)

The Mansions of the Visigoths: Self-Definition Through Boundaries

June 24, 2026

Nancy Bruseker (University of Toulouse)

Gender Jetset: The Carrousel Cabaret and Transfemininity on Tour, 1950-1969

July 1, 2026

Feride Zeynep Güder (Üsküdar University)

Borders of Memory: Queen Zenobia as a Connective Turn in the Digital Legacy of Antioch

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Reimagining Society: Arts, Education, and Social Transformation

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:05:08 GMT

April 8-10, 2026

College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences, Abu Dhabi University, UAE

Deadline: January 30, 2026

Dear Scholars, Researchers, and Industry Experts,

The College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences (CAESS) at Abu Dhabi University invites scholars to submit research papers for its 2026 international conference, ’Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Reimagining Society: Arts, Education & Social Transformation.' This premier platform will foster interdisciplinary dialogue on post-pandemic and Fourth Industrial Revolution challenges.

Important Submission Deadlines:

Abstract Submission: 30 January 2026
Acceptance Notification: Within 2 weeks
Full Paper Submission: 28 February 2026

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts: 250–300 words (We have started receiving Abstracts - Deadline: 30 January 2026)
Full Papers: 4,000–6,000 words (Deadline: 28 February 2026)
Formats: APA 7th edition (General) / IEEE (Technical)
Submit via: www.adu.ac.ae/mprs

Join us in exploring the Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Reimagining Society: Arts, Education & Social Transformation at Abu Dhabi University’s International Conference.

We look forward to your valuable contributions!

Accepted papers for the "Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Reimagining Society: Arts, Education and Social Transformation" Conference will undergo a rigorous peer-review process; only selected papers will be published in Scopus-Indexed Journals and Books.

For inquiries and submissions visit our conference website: www.adu.ac.ae/mprs

From Competencies to Capacity: Preparing the Next Generation of Health Communicators to Address Persistent and Emerging Challenges

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:02:15 GMT

Journal of Health Communication (special issue)

Deadline: February 15, 2026

In recognition of the busy end-of-semester period many colleagues faced in December, followed closely by the holiday break, we have decided to extend the submission deadline to provide additional time for manuscript preparation and submission.

This special issue focuses on the competencies, training models, and institutional supports needed to prepare a responsive, equity-oriented health communication workforce across global and local contexts.

New submission deadline: February 15, 2026
A rolling peer-review process is underway, and early submissions are encouraged.

Full Call for Papers: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/from-competencies-to-capacity-preparing-the-next-generation-of-health-communicators-to-address-persistent-and-emerging-challenges/

We especially welcome solution-oriented, equity-centered contributions that bridge theory and practice, particularly work that moves beyond identifying training gaps to proposing, testing, or evaluating innovative approaches to health communication capacity building.

Guest Editors:

Matthew Matsaganis (Rutgers University)

Itzhak Yanovitzky (Rutgers University)

Iccha Basnyat (George Mason University)

Brian Southwell (RTI International)

We hope you’ll consider submitting and sharing this call with colleagues and networks who may be interested.

Warm regards,

Matthew Matsaganis, Itzhak Yanovitzky, Iccha Basnyat & Brian Southwell

Ukraine Task Force Webinar on Academic Mobility and International Fellowships

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:35:47 GMT

January 29, 2026

Online

The ECREA Ukraine Task Force, in collaboration with the Ukrainian Media and Communication Institute, invites media and communication researchers, as well as scholars from related fields, to a webinar on applying to academic mobility and international fellowship programs.

The webinar will cover the following topics:

preparing an English-language academic CV;
differences between European and American CV formats;
key requirements for completing applications for fellowships and international academic mobility programs;
tips on writing a personal statement;
tips on writing a professional statement.

The webinar will be led by Kateryna Sirinyok-Dolharova, PhD in Social Communications, Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism, Zaporizhzhia National University (Ukraine); doctoral researcher at the School of Journalism and Advertising, Southern Illinois University; Secretary of the ECREA Ukraine Task Force. She has extensive international experience as a visiting research fellow at the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan (USA) and through programs such as UGRAD, Fulbright, IREX, Erasmus+, and others.

Format and Participation

The webinar will take place online (Zoom).

Date and time: January 29, 2026, 4-5:30 pm (EET).

Participation is free and available through registration. Registered participants will receive the Zoom link and other details in advance.

Working language: Ukrainian.

ECC 26 Preconference : HARMFUL VISUALS: CASES, PRACTICES, AND ETHICS

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:31:43 GMT

September 7, 2026

Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

Deadline: March 31, 2026

Visual media increasingly shape how harm is produced, circulated, and contested across intimate and public domains. From non-consensual image sharing and online hate to the journalistic circulation of war and atrocities, images raise urgent ethical, political, and regulatory questions. These challenges are intensified by uneven governance across platforms, shifting regimes of visibility, and the growing prevalence of manipulated and AI-generated imagery. This preconference invites critical engagement with harmful visual practices, cultures, and infrastructures in times of social and technological change. We welcome contributions examining visual ethics, regulation, pedagogies, and witnessing across diverse visual and multimodal formats.

Find more information here: https://visualculturesecrea.wordpress.com/harmful-visuals-precon-2026/

UMAP 2026 Call for Full and Short Papers

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 13:34:00 GMT

June 8-11, 2026

Gothenburg, Sweden

Deadline: January 22 (abstract)/January 29 (paper), 2026

Dear Community,

This is a reminder!!

The Call for Full and Short Papers for UMAP 2026 - the 34th ACM Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization is out!

Link to call: https://www.um.org/umap2026/call-for-full-short-papers/

Important Dates

Abstract submission: January 22, 2026
Paper submission: January 29, 2026
Rebuttal phase: March 2-9, 2026
Notification of acceptance: March 25, 2026

Topics of Interest include but are not limited to

Creativity in User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization
Intelligent and personalized user interfaces
Data mining techniques for user modeling, adaptation, and personalization
Application of user modeling and personalization to well-being and health
Personalized behavior change and persuasive applications
Human-agent interaction
Long-term personalization and lifelong learning
Intelligent and personalized e-learning applications and educational games
Generative AI techniques for user modeling, adaptation, and personalization
Personalized user interaction with agents
Large Language Models and Natural Language Processing methods for user modeling, adaptation and personalization
Knowledge graphs, Linked data, and semantics for user modeling, adaptation, and personalization
Modeling and adapting to human affective states
Virtual assistants, conversational agents, and personalization in augmented reality
Group modeling and collaborative team formation
Ethical issues of personalization and human-centered AI systems: Privacy, Fairness, Accountability, Transparency
Personalized approaches for preventing eco-chambers, user manipulation, and disinformation
Evaluation methods for human-centered adaptive systems

Call for Papers: https://www.um.org/umap2026/call-for-full-short-papers/

ACM UMAP WhatsApp channel: https://tinyurl.com/umapwa

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

The UMAP 2026 organizing committees

Anti-migration contemporary narratives in America and Europe

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:56:57 GMT

Edward Elgar’s Conflict, Security, and Migration series

Deadline: April 19, 2026

David Ramírez Plascencia (Universidad de Guadalajara, México) and Sonia Parella Rubio (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain) invite abstracts for the edited collection “Anti-migration contemporary narratives in America and Europe,” which will be submitted to Edward Elgar Publishing. The publisher has already expressed great interest in the project.

By the mid-2010s, the media, governments and local populations in Europe began to acknowledge the concrete dimensions of the migratory influx originating from Africa and the Middle East into member states of the European Union. According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), within a five-year period (2015-2020), the migrant population in Europe increased by approximately 16%, rising from 75 million to 87 million individuals. Across the Atlantic, during the same period, perhaps with less international visibility, a comparable migratory and humanitarian crisis was emerging. Large-scale movements of Venezuelans, Cubans, and Haitians, combined with the traditional migratory flows from Central America and Mexico, started departing their communities en masse, seeking to escape economic collapse, political repression, and widespread insecurity. While their primary destination was the US-Mexican border, trying to reach the “American Dream,” in recent years, with the arrival of Donald Trump to his second term, entering the US has become even more difficult, therefore millions of Latin American migrants are relocating in neighboring countries such as Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile, creating new diverse migration patterns. By now, according to a recent United Nations report (2024), of the nearly 138 million displaced persons worldwide, approximately 17% reside in Latin America.

Besides their palpable differences, the migration flows in Europe and America share strong similarities. Both phenomena have spread within a highly mediated and socially polarized context, characterized by the widespread use of digital media, economic recessions, and a growing political polarization over key public issues. These migration movements have also emerged, and can be partly explained, by political instability, armed conflicts, the economic crises, and the effects of climatic change in various countries across Latin America, Africa and the Middle-East, where social and political turmoil has forced displacements and cross-border movements toward the wealthier countries.

Moreover, the mediatization of contemporary migration processes has contributed to the strengthening of far-rightmovements and politicians in the United States, Europe and even in Latin America. These actors have focused their agendas on a discourse of suspicion and hostility towards migrants and refugees, who are often stigmatized as scapegoats and portrayed as sources of social disorder and economic hardship. In mainstream media, migrants are frequently depicted as criminals or social burdens who threaten local employment and social stability. This discourse is routed by far-right political parties through social media (X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) which have become their main spaces for communication and propaganda. These parties have become successful in engaging the young electorate by appealing to concerns about immigration and the struggle for a “traditional” national identity.

Social media enables the spread of hate speech due to structural characteristics, such as potential anonymity, low-cost, flexibility and global reach. Social media, along with the irruption of fake news and social polarization, promote the irruption of digital echo chambers where information is shared within ideologically homogeneous groups in Telegram and WhatsApp, reinforcing the impact of hostile and polarized narratives. This process contributes to radicalization and social division even in democratic societies.

The main goal of this volume is to analyze, from a critical and comparative approach, the anti-migration narrative caused by the allocation flows in both continents in the last decade. Understanding this anti-migration narrative is essential for identifying, promoting, and developing alternate narratives that can contribute positively to the integration of migrants and foster greater social cohesion.

We are particularly interested in the following topics: (a) The political anti-narrative of migration (migration as a topic in the electoral campaigns, weaponization of refugees, migrants as scapegoats, etc.), (b) Media coverage and framing of the migration flows. How the media encourages hate discourse among the people, and (c) social media and anti-migrant hate discourse. How spaces such as Facebook or TikTok promote the creation and dispersion of content that promotes hate discourse towards migrants in both continents.

You are warmly invited to send an extended abstract of 500 words, please also include a brief bio for every author (no more than 250 words with titles, affiliations, and contacts). Send your proposal to the following addresses: davidram@udgvirtual.udg.mx and sonia.parella@uab.cat Please feel free to contact the editors if you have any questions.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

Journalism Studies Symposium: Connecting to the Human

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:55:42 GMT

May 11, 2026

Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline (EXTENDED): January 25, 2026

As digital tools, especially machine learning and artificial intelligence, have come to play a greater role in journalism practices, journalists and researchers have begun to reconsider the value of the human in journalism, whether the human touch in reporting, human connection, or a greater acknowledgement of the humanity of journalists and audiences. In this vein, researchers in journalism studies at the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, invite submissions of extended abstracts for the symposium, “Journalism Studies: Connecting to the Human” to be held on May 11, 2026, with a keynote address by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, professor at the Cardiff University School of Journalism.

This symposium aims to bring together researchers, students, and journalists who are thinking about how journalists can connect or re-connect with the people and communities they are meant to serve, what aspects of journalistic work require a human element, and how journalists as human beings are affected by the work they do. The symposium is open to researchers who wish to present on topics relating to these and other issues related to the human/humanity in journalism.

Please submit an anonymized abstract of no more than 750 words (not including references) to journsymposium@gmail.com by the extended deadline of January 25, 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by mid-February 2026. Submissions may also be considered for inclusion in a poster session. Please note that the symposium will be held in person, and we cannot accommodate remote participation. Submissions from early-career researchers and Ph.D. and M.A. students are especially welcome. In the spirit of the theme of the symposium, we would like to emphasize that all abstracts should be original and human-authored.

Abstracts may address a number of topics within journalism studies, including, but not limited to:

- Humanitarian journalism

- Solutions journalism

- Journalism and human story-telling

- Human-machine connections

- Journalism and communities

- Mental health and well-being of journalists

- The role of empathy in journalism

- Journalism and humanity

- Local journalism

- Civic and participatory media

- Journalism and artificial intelligence and its rejection/backlash

- Misinformation, disinformation, junk news, and its effects

- Contemporary news audiences

- Genres and styles of journalistic writing

- Human judgement in journalism

- AI (slop) and human perceptions

NCS Graduate Workshop: Silence(d) and Silencing: (Un)heard Sounds and Voices in Audiovisual Media

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:51:35 GMT

June 17, 2026

Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France

Deadline: January 28, 2026

In echo to Gayatri Spivak and her seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1999), this Graduate Workshop would like to explore the question: Can the silenced be heard and made audible? More precisely, to what extent can cinema and audiovisual media be used to counter various processes of silencing that have led to the erasure of certain peoples and communities, notably to reconfigure what Jacques Rancière (2000) calls the “distribution of the sensible”, allowing another politics of aesthetics to emerge? Or, on the contrary, to redouble efforts to silence by claiming that it is the norm that is currently being silenced? This Graduate Workshop is an invitation to approach the question of silence and silencing in terms of both aesthetics (including the distribution and organization of sounds and the underlying hierarchy they imply) and politics (the distribution of speech, the processes of silencing, or the foregrounding of previously unheard, discarded voices), and their intricate ethical relationships.

What cannot be heard is often what is silenced. How do cinema and audiovisual media in general work to reinforce or, on the contrary, to counter the inaudibility and invisibility of some people or topics? To what extent can the use of sounds and silences be reconfigured to create a space of emergence for the voices of those who are not heard or whom we refuse to hear? In short, who gets to occupy the auditive spaces? While silence can operate as an instrument of oppression, it can also be considered as a site of political resistance against rational speech and should not be equated with the absence of sound. Can films, TV series and other audiovisual productions make the unspeakable and inaudible heard?

Find the full call for papers here: https://necs.org/conference/2026/university-of-montpellier-paul-valery.

Early-career researchers from cinema, visual and media studies are invited to submit proposals for contributions by 28 January 2026 to graduates@necs.org. The submission should include the name of the speaker, an email address, the title of the paper, an abstract (max. 300 words) and a short bio (max. 150 words). In addition to articles, scholarly film submissions are also welcome (max. length 15 minutes). Université de Montpellier 3 Paul-Valéry will not provide funding: participants are required to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses. Travel information, as well as a list of affordable hotels and other accommodation, will be provided on the conference website and program. The Workshop attendance is free, but valid membership in the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) is required to participate.

2026 NECS CONFERENCE IN|VISIBLE

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:48:26 GMT

June 18-20, 2026

Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France

Deadline: January 28, 2026

Cinema, in particular, and media, in general, have often been considered through their tensions and resolutions between the realms of visibility and of invisibility. This inherent duality – between appearance and disappearance, materiality and temporality, inner and outside world, ideality and imagination, human and non-human – has persisted, even as technologies and formats have evolved. The 2026 Conference of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) – taking place from 18-20 June 2026 at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France – will explore how in/visibility has been traditionally linked to formal and technical aspects (their aesthetics, apparatus, and most current actualizations), to economical choices, to bio-politics, and to historiographical shifts that have rearticulated these partitions within their socio-cultural and political contexts. media historiography has substantially reassessed the influence of marginalized and silenced groups, rediscovering or acknowledging the major contributions of minorities, peripheries, women, and racialized communities to filmmaking and media productions. Recent academic research has shed new light on the feminization of the media industry and their persistent discriminations, inviting us to extend this analysis to other underrepresented social groups or cultural areas. To this end, the status of archives is particularly challenging: incomplete and fragmented archival traces (including lost versions, unachieved projects, abandoned scenarios) raise the question of an “absent presence” and the efforts to recover, acknowledge, and legitimize these traces for historiographical purposes. Furthermore, the shift from analogue to digital archives, in the context of digitization of old media and the expansion of new digital screen media, deeply transforms the constructing processes of representation and memory, calling us to renew our vision of the representativity of the archive itself. Therefore, the 2026 NECS Conference will tackle more generally the processes through which invisibilization occurs, from pre-cinematographic apparatuses to contemporary screen and media industries, and how these dynamics concretely affect today’s professional landscapes. It will also consider how resisting and alternative spaces continue to redefine what can be seen, by whom, under what conditions, and how the gradual inclusion of new media and the reinvention of old ones have expanded – or restricted – the horizons of visibility.

Please submit proposals for individual papers, panels or workshops by 28 January 2026, using the submission form available on the NECS website: https://necs.org/conference/

There is no conference fee. However, kindly note that the submission form is only accessible to NECS members with valid membership. Every author of paper, panel and workshop proposals is required to be NECS members. Being a part of NECS gives access to a vibrant, diverse and engaging community of scholars and workgroups. The yearly NECS Conference is a privileged moment for academics from all over the world, at different stages of their careers, to come together to share knowledge and experiences and exchange ideas about the latest research in the areas of film and media studies. The beautiful Montpellier serves as the background for the NECS 2026 Conference and provides plenty of opportunities for socialization, informal networking and sightseeing.

If you experience any problem with registration or membership renewal, please write an e-mail to support@necs.org.

What did #MeToo Accomplish?

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:45:14 GMT

Deadline: January 31, 2026

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

Linda Steiner, lsteiner@umd.edu

We seek expressions of interest, in the form of short abstracts for an edited volume engaging with the aftermath of the MeToo movement across the globe, with a focus on the media/social media/journalism domain. Investigations about a major Hollywood sexual predator published in October 2017 reignited a movement exposing and challenging workplace sexual violence and sexual harassment. Within a few weeks, this movement was genuinely global: versions of the #meetoo hashtag appeared in at least 80 countries and seemingly across every work domain. What has happened in subsequent years?

We intend this volume to be international in scope and already have proposals from scholars in Africa and Europe, and in China, India, Brazil, and Egypt. We are particularly interested in proposals for internationally comparative studies and/or that deal with Russia and former SSRs, Mexico, Israel, and MENA nations.

A highly incomplete list of potential topics would include coverage at different points of time (including “anniversary” coverage); analyses of changes in language such as with victim blaming/shaming; assessments of the short-, mid-, long-term impacts/consequences--including for people who were accused of harassment and/or who made accusations; and what happened with the initiatives proposed to address the problem in journalism and comm industries and classrooms? Ethical issues include how to assess and investigate accusations, and what journalists do or should do when they overplay a story. Of course, we seek consideration of the implications for race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender identity, and class and especially intersections of these. Internationally comparative topics include analyses of how/when sources, politicians, and/or journalists mocked #MeToo as representing US prudery and/or feminist hysteria. We are welcome to other topics and themes: the above list is merely suggestive.

A scholarly press has already expressed interest in the volume. We hope the manuscript will be completed by late 2027, in time to appear in print in early 2028.

Please send your 80 – 120 words idea, with your name, email address, and affiliation, to Dinfin Mulupi (University of Colorado Boulder) Dinfin.Mulupi@colorado.edu and to Linda Steiner (University of Maryland College Park) at lsteiner@umd.edu by January 31, 2026. We will get back to you in early February. Feel free to contact us with your questions.

2026 Quintin Hogg Trust (QHT) PhD studentships

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:42:51 GMT

School of Media and Communication, University of Westminster, London

The University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) is pleased to announce this year’s Quintin Hogg Trust (QHT) PhD Studentships for UK and International applicants to commence in the 2026/27 academic year.

Full information about the studentships, entry requirements and the application procedure can be found here: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/studentships/quintin-hogg-trust-qht-studentships-september-2026-entry

HOW TO APPLY

To apply, select the School of Media and Communication and choose the 'MPhil/PhD Media Studies' programme. Be sure to include the title of the studentship, The Quintin Hogg Trust Studentship, in your application.

Applications must be submitted by 6 February 2026.

Interviews will take place in the week commencing on 9 March 2026.

ABOUT CAMRI

The Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) in the School of Media and Communication is a world-leading centre in the study of media and communication, renowned for its critical and international research, which has consistently been ranked highly according to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the QS World University Rankings. In REF 2021 83% of CAMRI's overall research was judged to be ‘world-leading’ and ‘internationally excellent’.

CAMRI welcomes applications which explore the political, economic, social and cultural significance of the media across the globe. CAMRI research is focused on four key themes: Communication, Technology and Society; Cultural Identities and Social Change; Global Media; and Policy and Political Economy.

CONTACTS

To seek guidance and be connected with prospective supervisors, please contact Dr Alessandro D’Arma and Dr Ed Bracho-Polanco.

Emails:

A.Darma@westminster.ac.uk

E.Brachopolanco@westminster.ac.uk

Alternatively, you may approach a prospective supervisor directly. For more information, visit the CAMRI website to explore our core research themes and the expertise of our academic staff.

Link: https://www.camri.ac.uk

Entangled Histories: Borders and Cultural Encounters from the Medieval to the Contemporary Era series

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:39:41 GMT

Online Seminar Series – Every Wednesday, 5 pm CET

Zoom

After our winter break, we’re excited to announce the fifth meeting of our seminar series, “Entangled Histories: Borders and Cultural Encounters from the Medieval to the Contemporary Era”. This series, promoted by the Faculty of Communication and the Master’s Programme in Media and Cultural Studies at Üsküdar University, brings together academics, students, and curious minds to explore how borders — political, cultural, social, epistemic, disciplinary, and symbolic — shape our world, our communication, and our histories.

When: Every Wednesday at 5 pm (Central European Time)

Where: Online via Zoom

Zoom link for all meetings: https://tinyurl.com/aumv88jz

We’re back after the holidays and will continue weekly until 1 July! (Browse our programme at https://sites.google.com/view/entangledhistories/programme?authuser=0 )

Next Seminar: January 14, 2026

Speaker: Rafael Juan Pascual Hernández (University of Granada)

Title: Crossing Epistemological Borders: New Ways of Studying Alliteration in Old English Verse

About the talk: How can we study ancient poetry in new ways? In this seminar, Rafael Juan Pascual Hernández will show how his project bridges disciplinary and methodological borders by combining traditional philological analysis with digital, data-driven approaches. His new database covers over 40,000 lines of Old English verse, allowing researchers to explore patterns of alliteration and metre with both classic and modern tools. By crossing boundaries between close reading and statistical methods, this work opens up fresh perspectives on how we understand early medieval English poetry—and on how different disciplines can work together.

About the speaker

Rafael Juan Pascual Hernández is Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the University of Granada, where he leads a major research project on Continental Sources of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, funded by the Spanish State Research Agency. He specialises in medieval English language and literature, especially Old English poetry. He has published widely, including as co-editor of Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R. D. Fulk (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016) and contributor to The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014). His research has been recognised with several awards, including the Extraordinary Doctorate Award (2013–2014) and the “Excellence in Knowledge” Research Award of Grupo Caja Rural (2017).

Join us for lively discussions and new insights into how borders, of all kinds, shape our lives, our cultures, and our research!

Regeneration(s): Association of Internet Researchers 2026 Conference

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:42:00 GMT

October 14-17, 2026

Mexico City, Mexico

Deadline: March 1, 2026

Regeneration(s) opens us up to exploring deeper processes of technological, cultural, political, artistic, and infrastructural renewal. Online cultures are born, mature, decay, and are reborn in slightly different forms; generations of internet researchers train and mentor each other; new ideas and approaches emerge. Regeneration here is not simply understood as technological repair or sustainability, but as a relational and ethical process grounded in ongoing responsibilities to land, peoples, data, and communities; Regeneration is cyclical and inseparable from complex histories of resistance as a counterweight to the logics of optimization and maximization that characterize the tech industry.

Generation and generativity as productive capacities are also contested processes and capacities as AI companies try to frame generativity as automation, reproduction, and passivity at scale. The challenge then is to generate technical, political, and communal imagination and maps that allow us to articulate embodied, alternative, and active generative futures around collective technological use. This also offers an opportunity to think seriously about how our scholarly networks themselves are generated, regenerated, and maintained.

This year’s conference is co-hosted by scholars and institutions in both Mexico City/CDMX, MX, and Los Angeles, CA, two cities with complex and entangled histories. Although they are often thought of as distinct worlds - one, the historic capital of México, and the other, a paradigmatic U.S. metropolis molded by migration, sprawl, and imagination. Both historically and now, they are inextricably tied; from colonial and imperial trade routes to cross-border familial legacies, to twentieth century labor markets and migration. Turning colonial historical narratives on their heads, Chicano activists of the 1960s and 70s reminded the world with an insistent rallying cry, “the border crossed us.”

In recent years, both have seen unprecedented investment from tech companies expanding infrastructure and the transformation of core industries and craft by the increasing encroachment of AI, even as both cities struggle with severe drought and other environmental and economic consequences hastened by legacies of resource extraction. Mexico City/CDMX has also experienced challenges posed by a significant influx of so-called “digital nomads,” particularly from the North. Worsening gentrification and an ever-growing population of non-Spanish speakers have sparked a backlash, pushing back against displacement and economic stratification. Los Angeles, too, has been subject to the crisis of housing affordability and gentrification, a perennial issue exacerbated by the tech hubs like Silicon Beach. It is against these backdrops and complex, intertwined but distinct histories and cultures that we invite the AoIR global community of internet scholars to participate in this conference.

Call for Participation

AoIR 2026 solicits work exploring the theme of regeneration(s) in all of its manifold usages.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

Regenerative technologies: Regeneration and Indigenous feminist theories of relationality and care; Technologies that add to rather than extract, lab cultures, autonomous infrastructure.
Platform genealogies: The evolution and reconfiguration of social media, online communities, and digital economies.
Generative media and AI: Challenging and deepening engagement with the realities and rhetorics of “generativity.”
Activism and continuity: Intergenerational organizing and learning in digital social movements, creation and care.
Reflection: Legacies of scholarship, reflecting on generations of AoIR and Internet Studies scholarship, mentorship, and intergenerational collaboration.
Multispecies ethics: Biological, ecological, digital systems.
Identity and community: Engagements with the theme through dimensions of identity, including race, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, language, citizenship, and culture.
Digital age and life course: Generational identities online; intergenerational communication and conflict; youth, aging, and digital
inclusion.
Technological generations: Successive waves of internet platforms, infrastructures, and protocols; how technologies inherit, disrupt, or forget previous generations.
Cultural memory and legacy: Internet nostalgia, digital preservation, and the archiving of online histories.
Digital caretaking: Skill shares and makerspaces, familial tech maintenance, community pedagogy.
Technoptimism/pessimism: Imaginaries of regeneration, resilience, and refusal.

We also welcome submissions on topics that address social, cultural, political, legal, aesthetic, economic, and/or philosophical aspects of the internet beyond the conference theme.

The committee extends a special invitation to students, researchers, and practitioners who have previously not participated in an AoIR event to submit proposals, and to scholars from the Global South, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color globally, LGBTQIA+ peoples, scholars living with disabilities, and people outside or adjacent to the academy. With this in mind, AoIR renews its commitment to travel scholarships, as well as other initiatives, to support conference participants. We will also follow the lead of last year’s committee and continue to experiment with forms of multi/bilingualism to further our mission of diversity and inclusivity within internet research. The conference committee will accept applications, in English, for participation in Spanish at the conference.

Please make these selections within ConfTool.

This year’s conference will offer opportunities for hybrid participation for keynote and plenary viewing only in order to focus on multilingual access at the conference itself.

Location and Venue

We could not be more delighted to be coming together in Mexico City/CDMX, an ideal host city and venue for our community of researchers. The conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency in the Polanco neighborhood. A block of rooms has been reserved at a conference rate for participants. The reservations for the Hyatt block will be made available at a later date; please watch the AoIR Listserv for announcements. The Hyatt has been newly renovated and offers accessible rooms, air conditioning, a gym, onsite dining, an indoor pool, and spectacular views of Chapultepec Park. Those wishing to make alternative lodging should feel free to do so at their leisure. Mexico City/CDMX has a great network of public transportation and affordable private transport options (e.g., taxis).

Polanco is known for its historical architecture, public green spaces, and several of the city’s most visited museums and collections, including the Soumaya and Jumex Museums, in addition to the National Museum of Anthropology. The neighborhood is walkable and proximate to public transportation to connect to the rest of the city. Mexico City/CDMX is one of the great culinary and cultural capitals while also standing as a focal point for contemporary research and activism around the digital, including labor organizing among app-based and gig-economy workers, public campaigns over the environmental and social impacts of data centers, and national debates over data protection, platform governance, and digital sovereignty.

Hosts

The 2026 Conference Host Committee is an international, cross-border collective made up of scholars and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pomona College, and the Platform Observatory.

To Apply

We will once again use the ConfTool submissions management software system to manage the CFP process. To submit, please use this link.

Please note: all applicants will need to recreate a ConfTool account for the 2026 instance, even if you have submitted in the past.

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For more information on how to submission guidelines, please visit our website: http://aoir.org/aoir2026.

Sincerely,

AoIR2026 Program Chair

AoIR2026: Regenerations, http://aoir.org/aoir2026

Contemporary Digitalized Gender Politics: Sociological Thinking on Gender and Sexualities in Communication

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:37:48 GMT

A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698)

Deadline for manuscript submissions: September 30, 2026

Special Issue Editors:

Dr. Daniel Cardoso

Guest editor
e-mail, website
CICANT, Lusophone University, 1749-024 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: consensual non-monogamies; kink/BDSM; social movements; genders and sexualities; contemporary intimacies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Sara De Vuyst

Guest Editor
e-mail, Website
Department of Literature and Arts, Maastricht University, 6211 Maastricht, The Netherlands
Interests: feminist and queer media studies; ageing studies; digital platforms and platformisation; (queer) ageing in media and art; gender issues in media; journalism and technology

Dr. Inês Amaral

Guest Editor
e-mail, Website
Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, 3000-370 Coimbra, Portugal
Interests: participation and social media; feminist media studies; gender and media; media and digital literacy; audiences; disinformation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Contemporary societies are deeply mediatized, a process that encompasses even those who do not, or cannot, access media technologies—this is particularly evident when considering how digital media, with its supposed ability to transcode any other form of representation or communication, operates. While some theorists from the late 20th century saw networked digital media as a way to overcome, or trouble, the norms often associated with the gendering of bodies, or viewed technology as a means of creating a globalized experience of commonality and empathy, recent years have provided ample evidence to the contrary. Neofascist movements, purported “men’s rights activists”, anti-trans mobilizations, right-wing populism, reinforced border controls, hyperbolic discourses about generative language and image models, and much more are all phenomena partly fueled by the technical and social affordances of widespread digital media; that is, digital media are co-constitutive of these dynamics, not merely modes of expressing or representing them. Under platform capitalism, these processes are further entangled with profit-driven logics of extraction and engagement, as platforms commodify attention, amplify antagonism, and algorithmically shape new contours by which oppression and discrimination are enacted.

Building on this dynamic, tech fascism arises through aesthetic and emotional cues that subtly reinforce gender hierarchies. Digital platforms create spaces where feelings of intimacy, nostalgia, and hyper-feminine visual styles reframe traditional gender norms as sources of comfort and stability, while hyper-masculine styles sell the promise of strength and dominion (over one’s own body, first and foremost). What seems like harmless lifestyle imagery serves as a data-driven mechanism that upholds patriarchal expectations, optimized for visibility and engagement. Thus, gendered performances are not just personal expressions, they are algorithmically curated artefacts that replicate power relations while appearing individualized, apolitical, and visually appealing.

In all these contexts, though sometimes in less obvious ways, gender/sex and sexualities have been instrumental in shaping the surrounding political dynamics. Right-wing populists decry ‘the gay agenda’; legislators define ex cathedra, which sexes are biologically ‘real’ or not; social media platforms and generative systems collect, analyze and (re)produce certain perspectives or experiences of genders and sexualities; and queer and Global South activists push back against epistemicide, articulate strategies of survival, and continue to reinvent non-hegemonic projects of contemporary intimacies.

In Europe, in particular, celebrations of LGB(TQ+) rights sit side by side with unscientific probing and testing of professional athletes, high-tech surveillance systems intended to keep (some) migrants out, reports of ‘medical anal inspections’ for refugees seeking asylum from sexual orientation-related persecution, and profits of millions in sales of weaponry to genocidal nations. Again, we find here the promise of data (understood as objectivity and truth)—made possible at scale by digitalization—as a central political strategy and praxis.

As digital infrastructures increasingly mediate the most intimate dimensions of life—touch, desire, care, and identity—our bodies become entangled with the logics of data extraction, surveillance, and algorithmic governance. Such processes are not governed by the logics of the technologies alone, but also (or perhaps mostly) by the political economies underpinning them, and their profit-maximizing imperatives. As economic trends start to emerge in relation to those technologies, so do questions about whether we find ourselves in a state of (post-industrial) capitalism, in post-capitalism, or in technofeudalism.

This Special Issue invites contributions that examine how intimacies, bodies, and desires are shaped, commodified, and disciplined by technological systems and the global political economy that sustains them. This includes contributions that do not foreclose or minimize the role that individualized agency or feelings thereof play in the uptake and deployment of such disciplinary systems, and how homo oeconomicus might be seen as both a consequence and a cause of the current sociopolitical and technical changes. We seek critical work that interrogates how affect, embodiment, and relationality are reconfigured in an age of platforms, biometrics, and digital capital. We are particularly interested in contributions that approach these questions through intersectional frameworks, attending to how categories such as gender, race, social class, sexuality, and (dis)ability shape and are shaped by digital infrastructures.

Aim of the Special Issue and how the subject relates to the scope of the journal

This Special Issue aligns closely with the scope of Societies, which is dedicated to interdisciplinary research on contemporary social transformations, and the journal’s focus on the intersections of technology, identity, and social structures provides an ideal framework for examining how digital infrastructures mediate intimate life and sustain intersectional forms of oppression. By exploring how platform capitalism structures visibility, affect, and relationality, the Special Issue will addresses Societies’ interest in the social implications of science and technology, constructions of identity, and the dynamics of inclusion, justice, and power. By bringing together perspectives from sociology, feminist theory, transgender studies, queer studies, critical race studies, queer ecologies, intersectional theory, media studies, and critical political economy, this Special Issue contributes to the journal’s mission to illuminate emerging societal questions and foster critical, interdisciplinary dialogue on how digital systems reconfigure the most personal dimensions of social life.

Suggest themes

Contributions to this Special Issue should follow one of the three following categories of papers: 1) article, 2) conceptual paper, or 3) review. In addition to following the guidelines and thematic focus of the journal, contributions should also address the topics that are the in focus of the Special Issue.

As a suggestion for the topics that can potentially be covered (though by no means intended as an exhaustive list) please see the following:

The technological production of gender and sexualities;
Intersectionally framed appropriations and deployments of technology within the context of gender and in connection with other systems of structural power asymmetry (e.g., race, class, sexuality, disability, species, age, etc.);
The political economy of the platforming of gendering, and the gendering of platforms;
The role of platform logics play in academic work related to gender and sexualities;
Theoretical innovation in conceptualizing gender and sexualities, and techno-facilitated cisnormativity;
The struggles around the visibility, ownership, and deployment of signifiers around gender and sexualities (e.g., “gender ideology”, “queer”/”cuír”, and “identity politics”) within contemporary digital manifestations of culture;
The situatedness of epistemic frameworks on gender and sexualities, and their shaping in and through platformed economics and politics;
The materiality of gendered (digital) media systems as part of the Earth system;
The role of non-hegemonic and counter-hegemonic epistemologies and praxeologies in challenging and maintaining gendered platform logics;
The mediatic becoming-salient of certain fields (e.g., professional sports) as material and symbolic battlegrounds;
Digitally manifested expressions of gender “diversity” and “empowerment” as techniques of political economy occlusion;
The resurgence of ‘the real’, ‘the authentic’, or ‘the truth’ in (digital) populist and popular narratives around gender and sexualities;
The deep mediatization of Global North models of gender and sexualities in the context of neocolonialism;
The affordances and perils of digitalized understandings of analogue embodiments;
The tensions and continuities between individualized and collectivistic forms of (digital) organizing and mobilizing within and/or against platforms;
The politics of (automated and algorithmic) recognition, and their social and economic implications;
The gendered politics of algorithmic fascism;
The aesthetic infrastructures of digital patriarchy.

Dr. Daniel Cardoso

Dr. Sara De Vuyst

Dr. Inês Amaral

Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

intersectionality
deep mediatization
affect
embodiment
platformization
gender
sexualities
neocolonialism
technofascism

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellowship 2026

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:51:15 GMT

Bremen University

Call closes on January 30, 2026, 23:59 CET

Come and work with us!

Our Fellowship Program invites international researchers to Bremen to deepen and connect their research in the transformation of media, communication, and information. We are looking for established scholars who want to enjoy the thriving interdisciplinary research environment at ZeMKI. Disciplines include media and communication studies, computer science, film studies, educational science, studies in religion, and history. Since mid-2017, ZeMKI has regularly hosted colleagues from all over the world.

What we expect:

The duration of the fellowship is one month. Applicants should demonstrate experience in their respective field of research and a strong interest in working jointly with principal investigators at ZeMKI to develop new ideas together. The main focus of the ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellowship is to pursue a joint project with at least two ZeMKI Labs (find all descriptions here: https://zemki.uni-bremen.de/en/research/labs/). The joint project can take various forms and should aim to have an impact on academic and public debates in their respective area of scholarly focus.

The following outputs are expected:

a research paper submitted to the peer-reviewed ZeMKI Working Paper Series
a public presentation in the ZeMKI Research Seminar

For a successful application it is highly recommended to inform oneself thoroughly about current activities in the ZeMKI Labs of interest and the work of principal investigators at ZeMKI.

What we offer:

Research Resources: Fellows are welcome and encouraged to make use of and connect with ZeMKI’s research resources in the context of their collaboration with ZeMKI labs, including the research studios, IT pools/technical equipment, cooperatives, and initiatives.
Access to the State and University Library Bremen: All fellows will be provided with access to the central academic library of the University of Bremen.
Courses: Fellows are eligible to participate as listeners or guest lecturers in courses in the diverse media study programmes at ZeMKI. They have to individually ask for permission directly from the professor or lecturer.
A stipend of 3,000 euros plus a budget for research-related expenses of up to 1,500 euros

Please fill out all fields of the application form and submit it in order to apply by January 30, 2026 (23:59 CET): https://nc.uni-bremen.de/index.php/apps/forms/s/WHTbJbx8wfPjkSEGt5JdakNo

Call website: https://zemki.uni-bremen.de/en/call-for-applications-zemki-visiting-research-fellowship-2026/

Academic Writing Retreat

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:00:00 GMT

June 22-26, 2026

Gränna Campus, Jönköping University

Deadline (EXTENDED): February 7, 2026

https://ju.se/academicwritersretreat

Writing Retreat Theme: Research Spices

Annette Hill and Joke Hermes

What kinds of savoury and sweet spices do you add to your research practice? This academic writers’ retreat takes the metaphor of spices to explore research craft.

We consider the seeds, roots, bark and fruits in our writing and analysis. And we reflect on layering of empirical and conceptual thinking, from whole to ground spices, toasted and roasted spices, and subtle and strong fragrances.

The retreat starts with a choice of spices and then we try out, write and reflect on the flavours and fragrances we want to create in our research craft. Each day we spend time in workshops, private writing time, go on walks by the lake and mountainside, and we cook together.

To find out more about registration, fees and the programme go here: https://ju.se/academicwritersretreat

2026 International Conference on Social Media & Society (#SMSociety)

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 09:45:54 GMT

July 13-15, 2026

Glasgow, UK

Deadlines: January 26/February 16/March 13

Conference format: In person

Submission Dates:

Papers (extended abstracts):

What: 1000-1500 words
Due date: January 26, 2026
Notification of results: March 2

Panels

What: 2000-3000 words
Due date: February 16, 2026
Notification of results: March 9

Workshops & Tutorials

What: 1000-3000 words
Due date: February 16, 2026
Notification of results: March 9

Posters (extended abstracts)

What: 1000-1500 words
Due date: March 13, 2026
Notification of results: March 27

We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the 2026 International Conference on Social Media & Society (#SMSociety)! #SMSociety will return as an in-person event at the University of Glasgow, Glasgow UK from July 13th to 15th. The 2026 conference is co-organized by the Digital Cultures and Economies Research Hub at the University of the Arts London (UAL), the University of East Anglia (UEA), and the hosts at the Division of Urban Studies and Social Policy at Glasgow University.

The conference’s three-day program will feature panels and paper presentations, workshops, tutorials, networking events, and a poster session.

In keeping with the conference’s inter- and transdisciplinary focus, we welcome both quantitative and qualitative scholarly and original submissions that crosses disciplinary boundaries and expands our understanding of current and future trends in social media research across many fields including (but not limited to): Communication, Computer Science, Critical Data Studies, Education, Journalism, Information Science, Law, Management, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Public Administration, Science and Technology, Sociology, Urban Studies, among others.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

#SMSociety is a biennial gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. It is the premier venue for sharing and discovering new peer-reviewed interdisciplinary research on how social media affects society. #SMSociety provides participants with opportunities to exchange ideas, present original research, learn about recent and ongoing studies, and network with peers.

TOPICS OF INTEREST (the list is not exhaustive)

Affordances
AI and LLMs
Algorithms
Computational, digital and data methods
Creators and Influencers
Cyberbullying, Trolling and Antisocial Behavior
Digital Education
Digital Intimacies
Discourse and Public Opinion
Health and Wellbeing
Infrastructures, platformisation and datafication
Marketing and Promotional Social Media
Misinformation and Disinformation
Online and Offline Communities
Platform Cultures
Platform Governance and Regulation
Emerging and Established Social Technologies, Apps and Platforms
Politics, Policy, and Regulation
Privacy, Security and Trust
Social Media Cultures and Everyday Life
Use and Users
Vibes, memes and trends

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Submission types and guidelines: You can submit an extended abstract for a paper or poster presentation, and/or propose a panel, workshop or hands-on tutorial.

How to create or log in to CMT to submit a paper or poster (extended abstract).

PUBLICATIONS:

Publication of Pre-prints and Datasets: To promote your work during and after the conference, authors of accepted papers (extended abstracts) are encouraged to share their work as a pre-print via a public repository of your choice. Preprint will be accessible via the conference online program and other channels. If you have a dataset to share, you can also upload it to one of many data repositories such as Dataverse or figshare. Authors of accepted papers will have an opportunity to provide a link to their pre-print and/or dataset for inclusion in the conference program.

Journal Publications: We hope that feedback received from other scholars during the review process and the Q&A part of your presentation will help you refine your ideas and develop your work into a full paper after the conference. Once ready, you are encouraged to submit your full paper to a journal of your choice.

All #SMSociety conference presenters will also receive an exclusive invitation to submit their work as an expanded full paper for consideration in an open access, conference thematic issue of Platforms & Society.

#SMSociety was founded by Anatoliy Gruzd and Philip Mai in 2011.

For #SMSociety 2026, the Microsoft CMT service is and will be used for managing the peer-reviewing process. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.

Fragmented and Contested? Debates on Racism in Traditional and Social Media

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 09:43:57 GMT

June 12, 2026

DeZIM, Berlin

Deadline: January 31, 2026

Organized by: Nader Hotait, Tom Runge, Elias Steinhilper (DeZIM – German Center for Integration and Migration Research)

In recent years, particularly sparked through the Black Lives Matter campaign, racism has become an increasingly prominent subject in both traditional and social media. Yet its visibility, framing, and interpretation seem to vary greatly across contexts, platforms, and political environments. While some racist incidents spark widespread media outrage and mobilization, others remain less visible or get reframed in ways that minimize or distort their significance. This workshop invites critical academic engagement with the dynamics of media salience and valence to explore not only what becomes visible in media debates, but how it is made to matter. Is racism portrayed as a serious structural issue, an individual moral failing, a contested label, or even dismissed altogether?

We seek contributions that interrogate in how far racism is made visible or invisible, normalized or contested in contemporary media landscapes—ranging from traditional print media to user-generated content platforms. We welcome qualitative case studies, quantitative content analyses, comparative research, theoretical contributions, and mixed methods approaches. The workshop aims to bridge disciplinary and methodological boundaries, fostering dialogue between scholars working in media and communication studies, political sociology, and ethnic and racial studies, among other fields.

We welcome papers that address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

How do salience and valence of racism differ across space, time and media types?
Which factors explain variance in the salience and valence of racism in media debates?
What role do editorial practices, technical affordances, algorithms, or audience engagement play in shaping the salience and valence of racism?
How do different actors (journalists, activists, policymakers) frame and evaluate racist incidents?
How do societal contexts shape media representations of racism, and what are the measurable societal effects of such representations on public attitudes, policy preferences, and experiences of racialized communities?
How can novel methodological and ethical approaches advance the study of racism in media? What insights emerge from critically reassessing or innovating upon conventional research methods?

Please submit an abstract of 250–300 words outlining your proposed paper, along with a short bio (max 150 words), by January 31, 2026, to hotait@dezim-institut.de.

The workshop is designed as an author workshop where full papers are discussed in detail. Selected papers may be considered for inclusion in a special journal issue following the workshop. Selected participants will be asked to submit full papers of 6,000–8,000 words (including references) by May 31, 2026, for circulation prior to the workshop.

For inquiries or further information, please contact: Nader Hotait, hotait@dezim-institut.de; Tom Runge, runge@dezim-institut.de; or Elias Steinhilper, steinhilper@dezim-institut.de.

Comparison as Method and Heuristic in Communication Research

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 09:39:00 GMT

September 23-25, 2026

Vienna, Austria

Deadline: February 27, 2026

The conference “Comparison as Method and Heuristic in Communication Research” takes place against the backdrop of rapid technological, media, and societal change. It focuses on innovations, trends, challenges, and solutions in comparative research within the field of media and communication studies.

Back in November 2006, the former Commission for Comparative Media and Communication Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the Department of Communication at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, organized a workshop on this topic (Melischek et al., 2008). That workshop examined the state of comparative media and communication research in Germanspeaking countries, addressing core questions: What is comparative communication research? What are its objects of study? And what is the scientific value of comparison? At the heart of the discussion was comparison as a method and methodological principle.

The workshop was held at a time when comparative approaches in media and communication studies were not yet systematically established. However, they had been gaining increasing relevance since the 1990s (Livingstone, 2003; Pfetsch & Esser, 2004) and have since matured into a more consolidated area of inquiry (Esser & Hanitzsch, 2012; Esser, 2016; Chan & Lee, 2017; Holtz-Bacha, 2021; Volk, 2021).

Today, the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies (CMC) brings together key perspectives on public discourse, media change, and transformations in mediated public communication through its Research Groups on Media Accountability & Media Change, Media, Politics & Democracy, and Science Communication & Science Journalism. These Research Groups focus on questions of ethics and responsibility, democracy and participation, as well as truth and factuality—unified by a common methodological foundation: the comparative approach (see also: Melischek & Seethaler, 2017).

This conference revisits the comparative paradigm with fresh urgency. It addresses the pressing need to reflect on methodological innovation, technological transformation, and shifting global contexts from an international perspective. By bringing together scholars working across global regions, the event aims to critically assess the role of comparison as both method and heuristic in contemporary communication research—and to chart pathways for its future development.

Call for Papers (Themes)

1. Innovations, New Developments, and Approaches in Comparative Communication Research

We welcome submissions that explore methodological developments, discuss the use of new digital and technological tools, examine the challenges and potentials of comparative approaches, or present innovative proposals for advancing comparative methodology.

Questions might include:

How can emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, or natural language processing enhance comparative research designs in communication studies?
In what ways do automated content analysis and large-scale digital datasets (e.g., news archives, digital platforms) reshape the scope and scale of comparative research?
How can comparative methods be adapted to address new forms of digital and hybrid media, such as influencer communication, platform governance, or algorithmic curation?
How can mixed-method approaches strengthen comparative communication research?
How can we ensure that long-term panel designs evolve methodologically in response to technological developments without compromising their scientific rigor and comparability?
What are best practices for ensuring transparency, replicability, and ethical integrity in technologically mediated comparative studies?

2. Methodological Reflection and Critique

Comparative methods offer many advantages: they are context-sensitive, contribute to theory-building, help identify causal relationships, and have high heuristic value. Nevertheless, this conference also invites critical perspectives. What are the blind spots, limitations, and epistemological or methodological challenges associated with comparative methods? How can we overcome these issues?

Questions might include:

What are the methodological implications of using computational tools for comparability—do they introduce new biases or overcome traditional limitations?
How can we make comparative research more participatory, inclusive, or decolonial—both in design and in interpretation?
How can comparative research contribute to the de-Westernization of communication studies?
How should comparative research reflect upon the concept of national states?
How relevant is historic comparison to understand current developments? What are the obstacles and potentials we have to consider?
How do comparative approaches manage the demand for replicability, the tension between internal and external validity, or generalizability?

3. After Comparison: Making Use of Comparative Results

Comparative methods help identify patterns, uncover similarities and differences, and advance theory. They contribute to a deeper understanding of complex social phenomena. This section asks how comparative findings can be used productively—both within academia and in broader societal contexts.

Questions might include:

How can comparative results be theoretically integrated or related back to existing frameworks?
What generalization strategies (e.g., typologies, model building) are especially fruitful in comparative research?
How can comparative insights be made productive across interdisciplinary contexts?
In what ways can comparative findings inform methodological innovation or open new research perspectives?
What is the value of comparative results for policy-makers and other stakeholders—and how can we rethink discursive science-to-policy or science-to-public processes?

Submission Guidelines

We welcome regular and student-led submissions. The conference language is English. All submissions must contain a separate cover page and an extended abstract. The cover page should provide the title of the submission, author information, 3–5 keywords and, if applicable, a note identifying the submission as a student-led paper. Extended abstracts must be fully anonymized for peer review. They should be 800–1.000 words long (excluding references, tables, and figures).

Please send your submissions containing separate PDF files for cover page and anonymized extended abstract to cmc@oeaw.ac.at.

The deadline for submissions is February 27, 2026. Submissions will undergo peer review, and acceptance notifications will be sent out no later than March 30, 2026.

Date

The conference will open with a keynote and panel discussion on the evening of September 23, 2026.

Authors of accepted extended abstracts will present their papers in person in Vienna on September 24 and 25, 2026. The conference will conclude around noon on September 25, 2026.

Organizers

Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies (CMC)

Austrian Academy of Sciences | University of Klagenfurt

Bäckerstraße 13

1010 Vienna, AUSTRIA

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/cmc

Contact

cmc@oeaw.ac.at

Conference Venue

The conference will be held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), located in the heart of Vienna at Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna, AUSTRIA.

Conference Registration

Registration will be open from March 30, 2026. Conference attendance is free.

Publication

The organizing team aims to publish selected contributions and results of the conference in an academic context.

References

Chan, J. M., & Lee, F. L. F. (Eds.). (2017). Advancing comparative media and communication research. Routledge.

Esser, F. (2016). Komparative Kommunikationswissenschaft: Ein Feld formiert sich [Comparative communication science: A field takes shape]. Studies in Communication Sciences, 16(1), 54-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scoms.2016.03.005

Esser, F., & Hanitzsch, T. (Eds.). (2012). The Handbook of Comparative Communication Research. Routledge.

Holtz-Bacha, C. (2021). Comparative media research. European Journal of Communication, 36(5), 446-449. https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231211043179

Livingstone, S. (2003). On the challenges of cross-national comparative media research. European Journal of Communication, 18(4), 477-500. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323103184003

Melischek, G., Seethaler, J., & Wilke, J. (Eds.). (2008). Medien & Kommunikationsforschung im Vergleich: Grundlagen, Gegenstandsbereiche, Verfahrensweisen [Media and communication research in comparison: Foundations, areas of study, methods]. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Melischek, G., & Seethaler, J. (2017). Die Institutionalisierung der Kommunikationswissenschaft an der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Geschichte und Aufgabenbereiche des Instituts für vergleichende Medien- und Kommunikationsforschung [The institutionalization of communication science at the Austrian Academy of Sciences: History and areas of responsibility of the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies]. Geistes-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Anzeiger, 152(1), 65-98. https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger152-1s65

Pfetsch, B., & Esser, F. (Eds.). (2004). Comparing political communication: Theories, cases, and challenges. Cambridge University Press.

Volk, S. C. (2021). Comparative communication research: A study of the conceptual, methodological, and social challenges of international collaborative studies in communication science. Springer VS.

RePIM Doctoral Network – Open PhD Positions

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 08:49:00 GMT

RePIM – Revisioning Public Interest Media – is a four-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Network dedicated to reimagining how Public Interest Media can remain relevant, sustainable, and impactful in a rapidly changing, data-driven and platform-dominated environment.

The network unites leading European universities, Public Interest Media organisations, and industry partners to train 12 Doctoral Candidates (DCs) working across media content innovation, infrastructure transformation, organisational change, audience analysis, and policy development. RePIM offers an interdisciplinary, international, and cross-sectoral training environment, including secondments, summer/winter schools, scenario-building workshops, and close collaboration with non-academic partners.

We are now recruiting 12 fully funded PhD researchers, each employed for 36 or 48 months (project-dependent) at one of the participating universities across Europe.

All positions are full-time, fully funded according to Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network regulations, including living allowance, mobility allowance, and, when applicable, family allowance.

Eligibility (MSCA-DN Requirements)

To be eligible, applicants must:

Not already hold a doctoral degree.
Not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies) in the host country for more than 12 months in the 36 months before the recruitment date (MSCA mobility rule).

General Requirements

You hold a Master’s degree in a relevant field
You are motivated to pursue a doctoral degree through an individual research project
You are open to international mobility, in line with the MSCA-DN framework, and are willing to relocate to the host university’s country, as well as attend international trainings, internships, and academic exchanges
You demonstrate a strong academic track record
You have a solid scientific background, possibly with prior relevant research experience
You are proficient in written and spoken English.

Open PhD Positions (12 Doctoral Candidates)

Below is an overview of all RePIM Doctoral projects. Each title links to a full description and guidelines for applying.

Applicants may indicate interest in up to three positions. This can be done as part of a single application but this must clearly specify their first choice.

PhD project

DC1. Coping with the challenges of automated content in public interest media

University of Zurich (UZH)

Switzerland

DC2. Reinventing content for online-first public media

Charles University Prague (CU)

Czechia

DC3. Quality news bots for public service media

Aalborg University (AAU)

Denmark

DC4. Object oriented edge-casting using semantic encoding

Aalborg University (AAU)

Denmark

DC5. Digital infrastructures in the public interest

University of Stavanger (UiS)

Norway

DC6. Global logics in local contexts: Reinventing partnership strategies for Public Interest Media

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

Belgium

DC7. Reconfiguring organisational structures for delivering platformised public value

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

Belgium

DC8. Developing and transforming sustainability requirements for Public Interest Media

Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS)

Austria

DC9. Regulating Public Interest Media in a platform world

Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS)

Austria

DC10. Public support for non-public service media organisations

University of Warsaw (UW)

Poland

DC11. Reaching the unreachable

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

Belgium

DC12. Audience data management and performance measurement in the cross-media landscape

Tallinn University (TLU)

Estonia

Deadline for Applications

Apply before 31 January 2026 by following the procedure detailed in each job posting.

What RePIM Offers

All DCs will benefit from:

Employment at a leading European university with full social security coverage
A competitive salary in accordance with the MSCA Call 2025 regulations for Doctoral Researchers, paid from the relevant monthly gross allowances: living allowance, mobility allowance, family allowance (only if applicable)
International secondments at partner universities
Paid internships at relevant media organisations
A comprehensive training programme including three Summer Schools (Brussels, Copenhagen, Salzburg), three Winter Seminars (online), and cross-sector training in research skills, data management, ethics, policy, management and leadership
A final RePIM Scenario-Building Symposium & Career Days in Brussels
Close supervision by world-leading academics and Public Interest Media experts
A vibrant interdisciplinary research community spanning content, infrastructure, organisation, audiences and policy.

RePIM – Revisioning Public Interest Media is a four-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Doctoral Network dedicated to reimagining the role and future of public interest media in a data-driven, platform-dominated environment. RePIM brings together leading European universities, industry partners, and 12 Doctoral Candidates in an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral training and research programme. The network investigates how public interest media can remain relevant, sustainable, and impactful by transforming how content is produced, packaged, distributed, and supported organisationally and technologically. Through its focus on strategic innovation, organisational change, and media management, RePIM equips its doctoral researchers with advanced analytical and managerial skills to help reshape public interest media across diverse European contexts.

Empathy Machines: This American Life, Podcasting, and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:53:17 GMT

Jason Loviglio

The first book-length treatment of This American Life, Empathy Machines contextualizes the influential show within the history of radio, looking back to radio's golden era and the para-social connections that it encouraged, as well as the formation of NPR in the 1960s and the “Great Society Liberalism” that guided its programming and approach to the audience.

Empathy Machines identifies This American Life as a central cultural institution in the evolution of empathy as a “liberal feeling” central to podcast storytelling and the neoliberal era in which it developed. This American Life revitalized the public radio traditions of investigative journalism and sonically inventive audio production. An early adopter of podcasting as a time-shifted delivery mechanism for its broadcast content, the program also ushered in appointment listening, a key innovation and disruption in the emerging chaotic attention economy of the 21st century. Empathy Machines centers This American Life as a model for prioritizing empathy as an affective and ideological strategy for feeling liberal as liberal democracy's precarious balance of opposites began to fracture into hypercapitalism, atavistic ethnonationalism, and new identity politics.

Postdoc: "Role of Social Norms and Norms Transgression in the Acceptance of Negative Campaigning"

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:37:00 GMT

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University o Amsterdam

Apply HERE.

Are you passionate about political communication, election campaigns, and quantitative empirical research? The Amsterdam School of Communication Research is seeking a highly motivated Postdoc for the research project ‘That’s (not) appropriate’– Role of Social Norms and Norm Transgression in Voters’ Acceptance of Negative Campaigning, led by Dr. Corinna Oschatz.

Postdoc Position in Political Communication

Project goals

While considerable research exists on the causes and consequences of negative campaigning, the perceptual dynamics remain largely under-investigated. How is negative campaigning perceived by those who are exposed to it? How can differences in accepting such behaviour as legitimate action – a vital component for the success of a political candidate – be explained? Against the background of an increasingly polarized society with strong ideological camps, this project tests the idea that group belongings shape political judgements. We assume that political attitudes towards negative campaigning are not solely individually developed but socially constructed. If so, what are the consequences of normative violations of group standards on an electoral and systematic level? If working on these fundamental questions seems attractive to you, this Postdoc vacancy might be just for you.

What are you going to do

The project builds on multiple rich panel survey datasets (with rolling cross-section components) conducted during previous elections in the Netherlands, USA, Germany and Japan.

Specifically, you will

Conduct automated content analysis of the media and elite campaign communication and link it to panel data to test for the dynamic evolution of norms as a function of campaign negativity over time (feedback loop).

Compare panel data to explore whether culture and the political system “sets the stage” for the effects of social norms about negativity and their consequences.

Conduct experimental studies on the impact of norm violations on the acceptance of negative campaigning and voting behavior.

Write up findings for publications and present them at (inter)national conferences.

What do you have to offer

You are:

Curious, creative, and interested in learning from different disciplines
Familiar with quantitative data analysis in social sciences with a demonstrated ability to learn new techniques
Resilient in the face of challenges that come
Able to balance the demands of several tasks (e.g., combining research and teaching) successfully
Organized, flexible, and demonstrate attention to detail
Able to work both independently and collaboratively. You are a team player but also have a proactive attitude

You have:

A PhD in communication science, political science, computation social science (or related disciplines) - or are expected to obtain it soon
Strong interest in topics associated with negative campaigning or social norms
Demonstrated experience in quantitative methods, including automated content analyses and/or handling panel data
Advanced analytical skills preferably using in R, Stata, or Python
Excellent proficiency in English

What do we have to offer

The planned starting date for this project is 1 April 2026 (to be negotiated). The position concerns temporary employment of 38 hours for a maximum term of 2 years including a probation period of two months. You will have the opportunity to attend training courses and both national and international events. You will also be able to build up demonstratable teaching skills as part of the 20% teaching component of the contract.

The UFO profile Onderzoeker 4 or Onderzoeker 3 applies.Your salary will range from €4,412 to €5.057 (10.5 - 11.2) based on your experience, full-time employment and in keeping with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities. We additionally offer an extensive package of secondary benefits, including 8% holiday allowance and a year-end bonus of 8.3%.

What else do we offer you

A position in which initiative and input are highly valued, with ample opportunities for scholarly and professional development,
An enthusiastic and warm team and department that is open to new colleagues
The possibility to join a project on a “hot” topic at the cutting edge of the literature
An inspiring academic and international working environment in the heart of Amsterdam

Your place at the UvA

You will work here

This project is embedded within the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam. ASCoR is the research institute for Communication Science, structured around four program groups: Persuasive Communication, Corporate Communication, Political Communication & Journalism, and Youth & Media Entertainment. For more information, see the https://ascor.uva.nl/.

The Postdoc project is led by Dr. Corinna Oschatz in close cooperation with Dr. Alessandro Nai and Dr. Andreas Schuck. It will be embedded within the Political Communication & Journalism programme group. In our group, we explore the contributions of media and communication to citizens' perception, knowledge, and understanding of political issues and political and social groups, as well as citizens' participation in the political arena and their electoral behaviour.

Within the PolCom & Journalism group and ASCoR at large, you’ll join a welcoming and dynamic research community where collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches are highly valued. Set in the vibrant city of Amsterdam, you’ll engage with impactful research addressing key challenges across the field of Communication Science.

About the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) is the largest educational and research institution in the field of social and behavioural sciences in Europe. Here, we explore societal and human-centered issues, driven by scientific curiosity but also with an eye for current themes. For example, the impact of media and communication on individuals and society, healthcare challenges, global urbanization, human development, the role of political institutions, understanding the human mind, growing inequality, diversity issues, and changing social relationships.

In Europe and beyond, the FMG holds a leading position, thanks in part to its more than 1,300 staff members who contribute to education and research. Will you be one of them?

Read more about the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Important to know

Your application & contact

If you recognize yourself in this profile and are interested in the role, we look forward to receiving your motivation letter and CV by 18. January 2026.

Please submit your application as a single .pdf file, including:

Curriculum vitae, with grade transcripts from your (research) master’s studies; and potentially your PhD diploma
Letter of motivation: Outline your fit to this topic, your readiness for the Postdoc project, and how you meet the selection criteria. If any criteria are not yet fully met, explain how you plan to develop the necessary skills. Optionally, include contact details of two academic referees familiar with your work;
Writing sample in English, such as a recent article.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

As an employer, the UvA maintains an equal opportunities policy. We value diversity and are fully committed to being a place where everyone feels at home. We nurture inquisitive minds and perseverance and allow room for persistent questioning. With us, curiosity and creativity are the prevailing culture.

Studies show that women and members of underrepresented groups only apply for jobs if they meet 100% of the qualifications. Do you meet the educational requirements but not yet all of the requested experience? The UvA encourages you to apply anyway.

Interviews will take place during the 2nd week of February. In case of equal qualifications, internal candidates will be given preference over external candidates.

For questions about the vacancy, you can contact: Dr. Corinna Oschatz (c.m.oschatz@uva.nl).

No agencies please.

Interdisciplinary International Training on ICT for Developing Societal Impact (IN2TIC): 12 predoctoral contracts

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:30:33 GMT

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), in Barcelona, invites interested candidates to participate in this call for applications for twelve (12) predoctoral contracts as part of the Interdisciplinary International Training on ICT for Developing Societal Impact (IN2TIC) project. Funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie predoctoral grant agreement no. 101217250, this project aims to support the completion of doctoral theses by predoctoral trainee research staff, in accordance with the applicable regulations (see the legal terms for COFUND IN2TIC grants).

The purpose of this call is to promote the training of researchers in the research groups at the UOC, through the completion of doctoral theses in 6 following doctoral programmes. The ones linked to communication studies are:

Society, Technology and Culture
Humanities and Communication

Prospective candidates must complete the IN2TIC (COFUND) admission application form, together with the documentation required for the IN2TIC doctoral programme, please see: https://www.uoc.edu/portal/en/escola-doctorat/beques/beques-uoc-escola-doctorat/in2tic/index.html

Benefits:

Contract: There will be a full-time, 3-year predoctoral contract.

Salary: €29,934.12 gross per year.

Additional allowances (subject to eligibility under MSCA rules), that include:

Family allowance: €116 per month (if applicable).
Relocation allowance: €1,563 (one-off payment, if applicable).
Disability support allowance: €893 per year (if applicable).
Coverage: The UOC will cover the costs of enrolment on the doctoral programme, as well as the fee for the degree certificate (only if the thesis is defended before the end of the predoctoral contract and provided the contract is still in force at that time).
Equipment: You'll be provided with the computer equipment and ergonomic material you need to work both from home and on the UOC Campus.
Development: Access to training opportunities to support your professional growth.
Wellness benefits: Wellness activities, medical service, physiotherapy service, and workplace assessment and adaptation where needed, among other benefits.
Open working model: You'll be joining an organization with an open working model that combines remote and in-office work, depending on organizational needs and the nature of your tasks.

The UOC is a pioneering and leading university in e-learning. A digital native with a global reach and a public service mandate. We have been providing accredited, high-quality online education for the last 30 years, and our mission is to develop people's talents throughout their lives. We take a transformative approach to our research in order to generate social impact.

Location: UOC Campus, Rambla del Poblenou 154-156, Barcelona (Catalonia). Spain.

Digital Sovereignty: Policies, Alliances, and Imaginaries

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:21:40 GMT

Deadline: January 15, 2026

Guest Editors: Abdelfettah Benchenna and Olivier Koch

Since the 2010s, the notion of digital sovereignty has gained prominence in public discourse and has been established as a new priority on political and institutional agendas. In France, in 2019, the Senate Committee of Inquiry on Digital Sovereignty published a dedicated report that has since become a key reference. A year later, in its report Shaping Europe’s Digital Future, the European Commission articulated its sovereignty-oriented ambitions for a renewed coordination among Member States. The Covid-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst in Europe (Thumfart, 2021), but discussions on the establishment or restoration of state authority in the digital sphere had already begun earlier, as an extension of debates on internet governance. Outside Europe, this notion was taken up by the Chinese government in the 1990s as part of a policy aimed at countering US hegemony, with particular emphasis on the technological dominance of countries of the Global North over those of the Global South. This political concern is not new. It follows on from earlier debates: those on technological sovereignty in the 1960s in Canada and in the 1980s in Australia, which denounced dependence on the United States; and those on information sovereignty in the 1970s in the context of the Nomic World Information and Communication Order, centered on the computerisation of so-called Third World countries and the technological dependence of Southern countries on Northern countries, debates that continued into the early 2000s in the framework of the two World Summits on the Information Society (Benchenna, 2006).

However, this historical overview is not sufficient to grasp the challenges posed today by this sovereignty imperative in the three main domains of digital technology: hardware and software infrastructures, data, and informational and cultural content. It must also be related to the consequences of the state’s “withdrawal” in the second half of the twentieth century (Strange, 1995), to the mobilisation of sovereign powers in the implementation of neoliberal policies since the 1970s and 1980s (Dardot, Laval, 2020), and to shifts in the technological balance of power between countries of the North and South. The complex (inter)dependencies inherited from these historical sequences, together with the deregulation of telecommunications and the globalisation of digital networks and services (Smyrnaios, 2017), call into question the conditions under which sovereignty might be established or restored over.

This question arises because the sovereignty claimed by states remains fragile and characterized by numerous contradictions. Despite investments in national infrastructure, dependence on foreign suppliers (particularly American ones) for internet backbone and cloud services continues to restrict states ability to exercise effective control over digital technologies (Bômont, 2021; Coelho, 2023). Public administrations largely rely on foreign proprietary software (Jeannot, Cottin-Marx, 2022), which complicates any transition towards so-called sovereign solutions. Critical infrastructures frequently depend on foreign digital giants that are difficult to regulate, insofar as they often operate beyond the effective reach of national legislation. In matters of content regulation, states struggle to impose their own norms given the predominance of American platforms, which apply their own regulatory frameworks. The cross-border nature of the internet further facilitates the circumvention of control mechanisms, thereby rendering the exercise of digital sovereignty, in many respects, largely illusory.

Finally, data sovereignty is undermined by the centralization and monetization of data by foreign actors. Despite the GDPR, states remain vulnerable to extraterritorial access by US authorities, as exemplified by the Cloud Act. Digital sovereignty thus appears as a fragile equilibrium between aspirations to autonomy, technological dependencies, and geopolitical constraints. In many respects, the “return” of the sovereign state in this domain remains more a political project than a fait accompli. It entails a repoliticization of relations of dependence and autonomy, within which the redefinition of antagonistic identities and the coordination of strategic actors are at stake.

Given that “digital sovereignty” entails complex trade-offs between professed independence and industrial, economic, and diplomatic realities, and that it remains largely conditioned by the technological and legal choices of foreign actors, thereby compromising the very objectives of independence (Fisher, 2022), this special issue aims to examine how these contradictions are addressed and negotiated within public policy, international alliances, and sovereignty-oriented rhetoric.

1. Public Policies, Actors, and Indicators

Drawing on specific case studies, this axis invites analyses of the public policies, programs and industrial partnerships implemented in the name of digital sovereignty, as well as of the controversies they generate or, conversely, leave unaddressed, particularly with regard to data protection, the control of infrastructures and content, and the certification of technologies. Particular attention may be devoted to the procedures used to evaluate these public policies, to the construction and mobilization of indicators of progress or regression in terms of sovereignty (Kaloudis, 2021), and to the functions of labelling (for example, the “cloud confiance” or “Je choisis la French Tech” labels) in the coordination and steering of industrial dynamics.

2. International Alliances, Standards, and Interoperability

This axis welcomes contributions that examine international alliances formed or dissolved in the name of digital sovereignty, the forms of consensus and dissensus that emerge within them, and their implications for international governance (Budnistky, Jia, 2018; Perarnaud et al., 2024). These alliances prompt a critical examination of the concrete conditions under which sovereignty is exercised at national and regional scales, while taking into consideration the specific configurations of national networks, the interdependencies among infrastructures, and the forms of techno-feudalism associated with digital oligopolies.

Within the framework of these alliances, particular attention may be given to the processes through which norms and standards are selected, adopted, and exported, as well as to the legal and technical mechanisms of interoperability that are implemented, with specific consideration of the configurations of public–private partnership chains. In addition to existing work on Russia, China, the United States and Europe, contributions grounded in empirical research, and in particular those focusing on French-speaking African countries, are especially welcome.

3. Rhetoric and Imaginaries of Digital Sovereignty

This axis seeks to analyse the ways in which digital sovereignty is mobilized, narrated, and endowed with meaning by public, private and civil-society actors across diverse geopolitical and cultural contexts (Pohl, Thorsten, 2020; Couture, Toupin, 2019).

It aims to foster critical reflection on the ways in which digital sovereignty is conceptualized, articulated, and projected, as well as on the performative effects of these rhetorics. Contributions may focus on the technological imaginaries that underpin national or regional policies, and on the tensions between aspirations to digital autonomy and the structural logics of global interdependence.

Contributors are invited to send abstracts (approximately 5 000 characters including spaces) to : etudes.digitales.soumissions@gmx.fr

Key Dates

Abstract submission deadline: January 15, feedback to authors on January 30, 2025
Submission of full articles: April 15, 2026

Bibliography

Benchenna, A., 2006, « Réduire la fracture numérique Nord-Sud : une croyance récurrente des organisations internationales », Terminal, n°95-96, pp. 33-46.

Budnistky S., Jia L., 2018, « Branding Internet sovereignty: Digital media and the Chinese–Russian cyberalliance », European Journal of Cultural Studies, 21(2), pp. 1-20

Coelho O., 2023, Géopolitique du numérique. Les éditions de l’atelier.

Couture S., Toupin S., 2019, « What does the notion of “sovereignty” mean when referring to the digital », New media and society, 21(10), pp. 1-18.

Dardot P., Laval C., 2020, Dominer. Enquête sur la souveraineté de l’État en Occident. La Découverte.

Fischer D., 2022, « The digital sovereignty trick: why the sovereignty discourse fails to address the structural dependencies of digital capitalism in the global south ». ZPolitikwiss 32, pp. 383–402.

Jeannot, Cottin-Marx, 2022, La privatisation numérique. Déstabilisation et réinvention du service public. Raisons d’agir Éditions.

Kaloudis M., 2021, « Sovereignty in the Digital Age – How Can We Measure Digital Sovereignty and Support the EU’s Action Plan? », New Global Studies ,16(3).

Perarnaud C., Rossi J., Musiani F., Castex L., 2024, L’avenir d’internet. Unité ou fragmentation ?, Le bord de l’eau.

Pohle, J., Thorsten T., 2020, « Digital Sovereignty », Internet Policy Review, 9(4), pp. 1-19.

Smyrnaios N., 2017. Les GAFAM contre l’internet. Une économie politique du numérique. INA.

Thumfart, J., 2021. « The norm development of digital sovereignty between China, Russia, the EU and the US: From the late 1990s to the Covid-crisis 2020/21 as catalytic event ». SSRN Electronic journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3793530

Johns Hopkins Winter Institute: Virtual Health Communications Course

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:17:22 GMT

January 5-8, 2026

Online

Dear Colleagues,

I want to alert you to an upcoming short-term training opportunity in health communications. The Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is offering a virtual health communications course during the Johns Hopkins Winter Institute.

Through Introduction to Persuasive Communications: Theories and Practice, students will learn how messaging can be used to advocate for health policy adoption, address health misinformation, and influence health behavior.    

The course will examine and interrogate theories of persuasion so that these theories can be applied to health behavior change interventions. Students can take the course for credit towards a degree program or for non-credit, at a reduced cost.

Course instructor: Meghan Moran, PhD, MA, Associate Professor
Dates: January 5–8, 2026
Time: 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Format: online. Content will be offered synchronously with lecture content offered asynchronously for those unable to attend synchronous sessions.
Program cost: $5,716 to take it for academic credit and receive a transcript, $2,858 to take it for non-credit.

For information on how to register, please visit the institute website.

If you think this course may be of interest to individuals in your organization, please pass this information along. Your Health Communication community includes scholars and practitioners studying message framing, media effects, and public-interest communication. This applied, skills-based course offers immediate practice value and can also provide adaptable teaching material for courses and labs. The course is ideal for early- to mid-career public health professionals who want to improve job performance and expand their skillsets in health communication.

Call for candidates for the PhD projects 2026

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:01:14 GMT

https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programme-media-and-communication-studies/call-candidates-2026-phd-positions

The Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University in Prague calls for candidates for the following PhD projects (each supported by a scholarship), for its English-language PhD programme in Media and Communication Studies:

1. Post-structuralist Communication Studies

Post-structuralism has slowly entered the field of Communication and Media Studies, offering a series of relevant theoretical frameworks for the theoretical and empirical study of communication. This PhD position is for PhD students who focus on one of the many post-structuralist frameworks, e.g., Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory or Foucauldian discourse theory, to support the research into a particular communication assemblage or into particular representational practices. While in this PhD position the theoretical framework needs to be post-structuralism, the object of study can be freely chosen.

Proposed supervisor: Nico Carpentier, nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz

2. Analyzing the Impact of Strategic Communication on Public Health in the Czech Republic: A Mixed-Methods Approach

This PhD position aims to investigate the effectiveness of strategic communication in influencing public health behavior in the Czech Republic. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the research will examine contemporary communication strategies used in public health campaigns. The project will include a comprehensive survey to quantify public awareness and behavioral changes in response to these campaigns. In-depth interviews and focus groups will qualitatively explore individual perceptions and attitudes towards these communications. Special attention will be given to the role of digital media in disseminating health information. This project, requiring prior consultation with the proposed PhD supervisor, seeks to provide valuable insights into how strategic communication can be optimized for public health promotion in the Czech context.

Proposed supervisor: Denisa Hejlová, denisa.hejlova@fsv.cuni.cz

3. Marketing communication and tobacco control

This PhD position focuses on primary research in tobacco control from the standpoint of marketing and strategic communication (e.g. research of new strategies and tactics employed by tobacco companies, targeting customers, online and social media marketing, stealth marketing, lobbying, public affairs, influencer marketing, etc.). This project’s goal is to analyze and present marketing and communication strategies and tactics by the tobacco industry which prevent consumers from tobacco or nicotine cessation and undermine public health. The project will especially focus on campaigns or tools aimed at adolescents and youth, incl. new forms of tobacco or nicotine products (HTP, pouches, vapes, etc.). Close cooperation with the Addictology Dept. of 1st Medical Faculty, Charles University, is needed.

Proposed supervisor: Denisa Hejlová, denisa.hejlova@fsv.cuni.cz

4. Politainment as a part of strategic communication

This PhD position welcomes Czech or international scholars focusing on primary research in politainment from the standpoint of marketing and strategic communication (e.g., personalization of political messages, image building through entertainment formats, hybrid media strategies, (emotional) branding in politics, viral political content, influencer involvement in political campaigns, etc.). The goal is to analyze and present how political actors and institutions use entertainment-based communication strategies to attract attention, shape public opinion, and influence political behavior. The project will especially focus on the implications of politainment for democratic discourse, political engagement, and the polarization of society, including its impact on young audiences and first-time voters. Close cooperation with media studies or political science departments is encouraged, as is the use of interdisciplinary methods combining communication and media analysis, and political marketing analytical approaches.

Proposed supervisor: Marcela Konrádová, marcela.konradova@fsv.cuni.cz

5. Concepts of National Identity in Europe and the World

Interest in national issues has increased noticeably in recent years. It seems that the numerous crises in Europe and the world are causing many people to focus more on their own nation, national culture and collective identity. This call is aimed at doctoral students who want to analyze and describe concepts of national identity in a specific country or region of their choice – also from a cultural-historical or comparative perspective. The theoretical framework of the thesis should be based on the paradigm of new realism. With regard to the topic of national identity as a culture-specific concept it should draw on comparative cultural theory. The research should be based on text material from the media, literature,education, etc. Possible methods of text analysis: content analysis, linguistic discourse analysis, semiotic text analysis. Students are welcome to write their dissertation in English or German.

Proposed supervisor: Ulrike Notarp, ulrike.notarp@fsv.cuni.cz

6. Sustainability in Intercultural Communication

Today's working environment is international and globalized. So-called soft skills, such as intercultural competence, are therefore increasingly important. Especially for young professionals, intercultural communication skills are taken for granted. The call is aimed at doctoral students who would like to deal with the content, mediation, practical implementation, and measurement of intercultural communication skills. The topic covers the following key areas: (1) Review of the international state of research on sustainability in intercultural communication, in relation to (a) the central concepts and theories of sustainable communication, interculturality and communication, and (b) the practice of teaching intercultural communication skills; (2) Development and implementation of a training program to acquire intercultural communication skills; (3) Development, application and evaluation of methods for measuring intercultural competencies. Students can write their dissertation in English or German.

Proposed supervisor: Ulrike Notarp, ulrike.notarp@fsv.cuni.cz

7. Experience of a Marginalised Group with a Contemporary Media Phenomenon

The proposed project should focus on the lived and holistic media experience of a selected marginalised group (e.g. children, ethnic minorities, people with obesity, parents or other socially disadvantaged groups) in a particular domain of contemporary media culture. For example, it may investigate questions such as; “How do children or adolescents perceive and experience artificial-intelligence technologies?” or “How do they perceive and experience so-called ‘brain-rot’ / online ‘junk’ content?”. The aim is to gain a deep understanding of the role that the chosen media phenomenon plays in the everyday life of someone facing marginalisation; how they perceive it; how they experience and live through it; and how they interpret and evaluate it in relation to their identity, social relationships, and position in society.

Potential supervisor: Markéta Supa, marketa.supa@fsv.cuni.cz

8. AI Experience of University Students

The proposed project aims to explore the lived and holistic media experience of university students in relation to contemporary AI technologies. The project questions how university students experience and make sense of AI tools, systems, and environments in their everyday and academic lives. The goal is to gain a deep understanding of how and why students engage with, perceive, and evaluate AI; how AI becomes entangled with their identity as students, their study and research practices, social relations, sense of autonomy or dependence, and existential questions in a rapidly changing educational and digital environment.

Potential supervisor: Markéta Supa, marketa.supa@fsv.cuni.cz

9. The Para-Social Relationships and Experiences of Youth with the Online Engagement in these: Post-Humanist Perspective

Traditional human relationships in the experiences of children and young people during their childhoods, such as youth-adult relationships, have been complemented by Para-Social Relationships with media figures. Traditionally, public figures from the media environment (TV, film, newspapers, …) or imaginary figures from books, cartoons and films fulfilled developmental functions for children and young people, such as role-modelling. Recently, the rise of new technologies (AI, with, e.g., ChatGPT) and social media that allow for the active participation of media users, created a space for a new form of relationships, namely digital relationships in the online environment, mediated, e.g., via 'digital empathy' (Unay-Gerhard et al., 2022). Participation in digital interactions, dynamics and functions of digital relationships and types of these being formed with humans as well as with machines (e.g., AI-driven chatbots) with a focus on current young people (11-18 years) will be the subject of this PhD study, contributing to the emergent line of media research deploying a post-humanist perspective.

Proposed supervisor: Tereza Javornícky Brumovská, tereza.javornicky.brumovska@fsv.cuni.cz

10. Communication, democracy and struggle

This PhD position involves research that explores how democracy is socially constructed, through its representations, contestations and reconfigurations, and how the struggles pertaining to democracy may intersect with claims to freedom, equality and social justice, but also with conflict, violence and war. Projects in this thematic area are expected to be grounded in social constructionist/poststructuralist paradigmatic approaches; embedded in the broad fields of discourse studies, cultural studies or related fields; and, supported by feminist, intersectional, postcolonial, or other relevant, theories. The research can be located in a variety of societal fields, such as media, culture and politics, but the proposals should clearly demarcate the area of research.

Proposed supervisor: Vaia Doudaki, vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz

++++

Application

Interested candidates should submit their applications using the online application system, which will be open from 1st January to 30th April 2026. Interest in a particular PhD project should be mentioned in the motivation letter, together with a more developed proposal on the PhD project.

All relevant information, including the link to the online application system, can be found at:

https://fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programmes/media-and-communication-studies

https://is.cuni.cz/studium/eng/prijimacky/index.php

Please download the form to fill out your dissertation project proposal from this webpage: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programme-media-and-communication-studies/how-apply

For general questions, please contact the Centre of PhD Studies at cds.iksz@fsv.cuni.cz. For questions about particular projects, please contact the proposed supervisors.

The Open Doors Day for the PhD in Media and Communication Studies will take place on February 18, 2026 at 12:30 CET. It will be organised online. If you wish to participate, please email the Centre of PhD Studies at cds.iksz@fsv.cuni.cz without delay.

AI as a companion – AI chatbots in the daily lives of young people, the educational contexts of the chatbot

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:49:06 GMT

Deadline: January 12, 2026

Submit abstract HERE.

Supervising editors: Astrid Carolus (Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg), Julian Ernst (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen) and the Merzwissenschaft editorial team (jff)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long been a ubiquitous topic, which is clearly present and the subject of intensive debate in the context of science, education, economics and everyday culture. AI plays a central role in the daily lives of young people in particular. In the latest SINUS study with data from 2024, only two percent of 14 to 17-year-olds indicated that they had never before heard the term AI, while 71 percent said they knew AI and were able to describe it. Almost one third of the youths indicated that they used AI on a daily or regular basis. The JIM study for 2025 shows that ChatGPT is also by far the most popular application among those surveyed in the twelve to 19-year-old age segment (mpfs, 2025, p. 62 sqq.). AI is primarily used for learning purposes and for homework, to search for information as well as to figure out how a given thing works. Around one half of those surveyed indicated that they use AI in class. A total of approximately three quar- ters of the 14 to 17-year-olds use AI applications for school purposes on a weekly basis. Around 60 percent use AI in pri- vate tasks – for example composing personal texts or for fun (ifo Education Survey, 2025). On the whole, youths considered AI to be for the most part positive, to be remarkably helpful, useful, convenient and fun (Wendt et al., 2024). One half of 16 to 29-year-olds could imagine giving precedence to an AI chatbot over friends or family when seeking advice; one fifth of this group can even imagine establishing a friendship with an AI chatbot (BITKOM, 2025). In the USA, one third of the youth population use AI companions for social interaction and relationships, for example for emotional support, role play- ing or for friendship-based or romantic interactions (Common Sense Media, 2025). A common feature shared by all of these fragmentary empirical examinations of the use and relevance of AI chatbots (and of other AI applications) in the everyday lives of youths is the conceptualization of the relationship between AI and the (youth) users as an “in order to“ relation- ship: A relationship which is to result in either the technical automation and removal of certain tasks or to return a specific output. This instrumental analysis overlooks a central aspect of the user‘s experience with AI chatbots, which was already described in connection with the early precursors of these technologies: the interaction with and experience of AI as a companion. Joseph Weizenbaum‘s program ELIZA is regarded as one of the first chatbots. Based on Carl Roger‘s client- centric psychotherapy, ELIZA was developed explicitly without formulated therapeutic objectives. Instead, for pragmatic reasons Weizenbaum chose the setting as “one of the few examples of categorized dyadic natural language communication“ (Weizenbaum, 1966, p. 42), which in technical terms was comparatively easy to realize. However, experiments showed that users quickly began to confide in the program and to recognize in ELIZA a counterpart to which they attributed understan- ding, empathy and intentions (Weizenbaum, 1976).

The ELIZA example illustrates how the possible uses of AI chatbots and other technologies do not follow only the inten- tions of their developers. The affordances of these technologies manifest in the relationships between people and machines (Davis, 2020). Similar to other “spectacular machines“ (Strassberg, 2022), AI chatbots are characterized by a “multistability“ (Verbeek, 2005; Ihde, 1990) that entails the potential for quasi-social interaction with them and – over the course of time – establishing quasi-social relationships with them. The continuous use facilitated by permanently available mobile terminal devices exhibits parallels to Hinde‘s definition of relationship, which he describes as “a series of interactions between two individuals known to each other“ and which include “behavioural, cognitive, and affective (or emotional) aspects“ (Hinde, 1979, quoted in Vangelisti & Perlman, 2018, p. 3). For example, empirical research has shown that people develop some pro- perties of social relationships with their smartphones, such as presence and trust (Carolus et al., 2019).

The arrival of Large Language Models (LLMs) fundamentally changed the technological basis of human interaction with technology. Earlier systems like Amazon Alexa or Google Home only offered restricted social context cues and made it practically impossible for the illusion of a human counterpart to arise. ChatGPT constituted a change: The user found it nearly impossible to tell GPT-4 from a human (Jones et al., 2025), a fact which actually satisfies, i. e. the process which tests whether a machine can imitate human communication so convincingly that it can no longer be distinguished from commu- nication with another human. More recent developments go even further, leading to increasingly autonomous AI systems. While past AI chatbots responded to instructions reactively, today‘s AI agents exhibit an increasing degree of proactive behavior, pursue their own objectives and makes decisions without direct input.

From media-educational and media-psychological perspectives, this increasing interactivity and autonomy is concomitant with a quantitative increase and higher level of differentiation of social context cues and thus means a growing potential for social affordances. Consequently, questions arise regarding the social imputations, short-term social interactions as well as long-term relationships which young users in particular enter into with these systems. In addition, AI chatbots are gai- ning in importance as a part of pedagogical practice: teaching staff, school social work and counselling services are making increasing use of generative AI in preparing lessons, structuring counselling processes and as support for organizational procedures (Hein et al., 2024; Linnemann et al., 2025, among others). This can result in the entanglement of the quasi-social relationships young people have to chatbots with institutional educational settings, in which educational specialists them- selves work with AI-assisted systems. This in turn raises new questions relating to professionalization, responsibility and the limits of using AI in educational process.

We look forward to receiving submissions which explore the various aspects of the quasi-social relationships of AI chat- bots and young people as well as the implications of these relationships in various pedagogical contexts. We welcome theoretical-conceptual contributions as well as empirical submissions from media education, media psychology, social work, media sociology, communications science and from the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The submissions should focus on the following questions, among others:

What forms of social interaction between young people and AI chatbots can be described?
What forms of social relationships do young people enter into with AI chatbots? What role do emotions play in this process?

What are the impacts on social relationships between people when more is entrusted to the chatbot than for example to a friend?

How do young people understand interaction with chatbots, and to what extent does the interaction with chatbots change their understanding of human relationships and the expectations of quality they place on these human relationships?

How can human-chatbot interactions and human-chatbot relationships be empirically captured, described and analyzed? What are the corresponding methodological points of access?

How do inter-individual differences influence the formulation of encounters with AI chatbots?
What new developmental tasks arise for young people in the context of quasi-social interactions and relationships with AI chatbots?

What new (media) skill requirements can be formulated in the context of quasi-social interactions and relationships with chatbots? How can these requirements be addressed?

What possible (media) educational approaches are there to addressing quasi-social relationships between young people and AI chatbots?

To what extent do affect and emotion play a role in interactions between young people and AI chatbots?
To what extent should the social character of the use of chatbots be reflected when for example AI chatbots are used as learning aids in the context of schools?
How does the interaction of young people with AI chatbots impact the design of AI chatbots?
To what extent do pedagogical practice and profession change in the context of the use of AI chatbots in educational work?
What new media skill requirements arise for educational specialists when AI chatbots in schools, youth welfare and counselling are integrated in educational work? How significant is the interface in interaction with AI chatbots (text-based input/output vs. spoken input/output)?
To what extent is it relevant that conventional systems have been programmed as assistants and fundamentally structured in order to support users? To what extent do contradictions and criticism arise in interaction with AI chatbots?

The deadline for submission of abstracts with a maximum of 6.000 characters (including blank spaces) is 12 January 2026. Please upload your abstract at https://merz-zeitschrift.de/fuerautorinnen. The format of the submissions should follow the layout specifications of the merzWissenschaft style guide, available at https://merz-zeitschrift.de/manuskriptrichtlinien. The journal articles should not exceed a maximum character count of approximately 35.000 characters (including blank spaces and literature). Please feel free to direct any questions you may have to the merz editorial team, tel.: +49 89 68989 120, e-mail: merz@jff.de

SUMMARY OF DEADLINE

12 January 2026: Submission deadline for abstracts
2 February 2026: Decision on acceptance/rejection of abstracts
18 May 2026: Submission deadline for articles
May/June 2026: Evaluation period (double-blind peer review)
June/July 2026: Revision phase (when necessary, multi-phase)
End of November 2026: Publication of merzWissenschaft 2026

Literature

Bitkom. (2025). Junge Menschen und Künstliche Intelligenz: Einstellungen, Nutzung und Erwartungen. Bitkom e. V. https://www.bitkom.org/ Presse/ Presseinformation/ Freundschaft-KI-Sprachassistent

Carolus, A., Muench, R., Schmidt, C. & Schneider, F. (2019). Impertinent mobiles-effects of politeness and impoliteness in human-smartphone interac- tion. Computers in Human Behavior, 93, 290–300.

Common Sense Media (2025). Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/de- fault/ files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf

Davis, J. L. (2020). How Artifacts Afford. The Power and Politics of Everyday Things. MIT Press.

Hein, L., Högemann, M., Illgen, K.-M., Stattkus, D., Kochon, E., Reibold, M.-G., Eckle, J., Seiwert, L., Beinke, J. H., Knopf, J. & Thomas, O. (2024). Chat-

GPT als Unterstützung von Lehrkräften – Einordnung, Analyse und Anwendungsbeispiele. HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik, 61, 449–470. ifo Institut – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München e. V. (2025). ifo-Bildungsbarometer 2025. https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/sd-2025-09-wedel-etal-ifo-bildungsbarometer-2025.pdf

Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Indiana University Press.

Jones, C. R., Rathi, I., Taylor, S. & Bergen, B. K. (2025). People cannot distinguish GPT-4 from a human in a Turing test. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 1615–1639.

Linnemann, G., Löhe, J. & Rottkemper, B. (Eds.) (2025). Künstliche Intelligenz in der Sozialen Arbeit: Grundlagen für Theorie und Praxis. Beltz. Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest (mpfs) (2025). JIM 2025. Jugend, Information, Medien. Basisuntersuchung zum Medienumgang 12- bis 19-Jähriger in Deutschland. https://mpfs.de/studie/jim-studie-2025

Strassberg, D. (2022). Spektakuläre Maschinen. Eine Affektgeschichte der Technik. Matthes & Seitz.

Vangelisti, A. L. & Perlman, D. (Eds.) (2018). The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships. Cambridge University Press.

Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Pennsylvania State University Press. Weizenbaum, J. (1966). ELIZA - A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine. Communications of the ACM, 9(1).

Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation. W. H. Freeman & Co.

Wendt, R., Riesmeyer, C., Leonhard, L., Hagner, J. & Kühn, J. (2024). Algorithmen und Künstliche Intelligenz im Alltag von Jugendlichen: Forschungs-bericht für die Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (BLM). Nomos.

Fourth international Data Justice conference

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:52:58 GMT

June 1-2, 2026

Cardiff University in Cardiff, UK

Deadline: December 31, 2025

Host: Data Justice Lab

Although contested and multifaceted, the field of data justice continues to engage critical debates on the societal implications of datafication in all its iterations, from social media to platform capitalism to the current hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI). Much of this focus has been on the potential harm of such technologies on different communities and on the societal shifts associated with their uses by a diverse range of actors. Less focus, perhaps, has been on the way the advent of data-driven technologies has intermingled with and transformed the state. From high-stake uses, such as those revealed in the Snowden leaks, to crisis management as evidenced during the Covid-19 pandemic, to the mundane and everyday delivery of public services, platforms and AI systems are now deeply embedded within roles and functions associated with the state. At the same time, the state has been instrumental in the advancement of datafication and the role that technology, and its providers, now play in society. At a time when governments and technology companies are seen to be closer than ever, examining their relationship and its consequences seems pivotal for our understanding of data justice.

This two-day conference will therefore explore the role and transformations of the state in an age of datafication and what this means for social justice and resistance. It will examine the interrelations between data-driven technologies and government, the changing role of corporations, emerging popular responses, and efforts to democratise datafication. Hosted by the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC) in the UK, it will bring together international scholars, practitioners and community groups to discuss the nature and implications of the datafied state.

Keynote Speakers include:

Oriana Bernasconi, UC Chile, Chile
Sarah Myers West, AI Now, US
Nick Srnicek, King’s College London, UK

Submission of abstracts of max 500 words to DataJusticeLab@cardiff.ac.uk

Deadline for submissions of abstracts: 31st of December, 2025

Conference registration fees:

Regular: £175 (£150 early bird)
Students: £125 (£100 early bird)

Conference registration deadlines:

6th of March 2026 – early bird
17th of April 2026 – final deadline

Conference attendance:

Data Justice 2026 will be an in-person conference. After previous Data Justice conferences were held in-person (2018), online (2021), and hybrid (2023), the next conference should allow participants to come together physically to discuss their work. We have tried to keep registration fees as low as possible in order to enable attendance for as many of you as possible. This will unfortunately not allow for meaningful hybrid participation, but we will try to provide online streams or recordings of keynotes and major events.

Tenure-track assistant professorship in empirical communication research

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:51:38 GMT

University of Copenhagen

The Department of Communication, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen is inviting applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in empirical communication research starting on June 1, 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter.

The Department is seeking a new colleague with strong qualifications in quantitative communication research as demonstrated through the application in research projects and teaching activities. In addition, competencies in qualitative and mixed-methods studies of communication are an advantage. It is a further advantage, if the candidate has experience from collaborations with organizations outside the university in research and/or teaching.

The deadline for applications is 23:59 [CET] on 26 January 2026.Read more

By/For: Photography & Democracy

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 08:00:48 GMT

By/For: Photography & Democracy is a collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler.

We are delighted to announce that our second season of programs will begin in February 2026. Please join leading thinkers Anne Cross & Matt Fox-Amato, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Leigh Raiford, Jeehey Kim, Zahid R. Chaudhary, and Tiffany Fairey for a year of thought-provoking conversations on photography and democracy. Explore season two and register for all events.

We’d also like to announce that at the end of our inaugural 2024/2025 season, we convened a reflective roundtable conversation with Shawn Michelle Smith, Brenna Wynn Greer, Thy Phu, Darren Newbury, Ileana L. Selejan, and Patricia Hayes. Together, they examined the stakes of photography in our contemporary moment and explored its complex entanglements with power structures and systemic injustice. Read the transcript of the conversation.

Theorizing Communication in, of, and from the Balkans Summer Intensive

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 07:59:21 GMT

May 27-28, 2026

Virtual

Deadline: January 20, 2026

Scholars and practitioners at all career levels are invited to join the inaugural virtual summer intensive on Theorizing Communication in, of, and from the Balkans, May 27-28, 2026. The summer intensive will offer opportunities to learn about borderlands and culture-centered theorizing and envision future research and applied collaborations. We hope to foster a multinational, interdisciplinary, and intercultural scholarly community around shared interests in questions of communication in the region. We welcome scholars and practitioners of any academic background who are actively engaged in analyzing, creating, and/or theorizing from and with Balkan (Southeastern European) perspectives and experiences. See the attached document (opens in a new window) for more information and application instructions (deadline to apply is January 20, 2026) or contact Dr. Lily Herakova (liliana.herakova@maine.edu) if you have questions.

Link to full call: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14u8ypZVlUHszXwWnwROWQaLVi5e3FmMD/view?usp=sharing

Revisiting the Nexus of Science, Politics, Media, and Publics Amid Digital and Societal Transformations

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 07:57:50 GMT

Media and Communication (special issue)

Deadline: September 15, 2026

We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a forthcoming Special Issue of the open-access journal Media and Communication, titled “Revisiting the Nexus of Science, Politics, Media, and Publics Amid Digital and Societal Transformations.”

This Special Issue invites contributions that explore how digitalization, political dynamics, and societal change reshape the relationships between science, politics, media, and diverse publics.

The guest editors are Silke Fürst (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Lars Guenther (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany), and Lili Rademan (Stellenbosch University, South Africa). Researchers from all disciplines are encouraged to submit abstracts.

The abstract submission deadline is 15 September 2026. The full details of the call can be found here: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/issue/futureissues#i572

We look forward to receiving your contributions!

ACM Web Science Conference

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 07:46:40 GMT

May 21-26, 2026

TU Braunschweig, Germany

Deadline: December 17, 2025 (papers), January 9, 2026 (Workshops & Tutorials), EXTENDED, February 18, 2026 (posters, PhD symposium)

Dear Research Community,

Just a quick reminder that Wednesday, Dec. 17, is the final deadline for paper submissions! More details about submission format and topics can be found here: Call for Papers

The deadline for Workshops & Tutorials submission has been extended to January 9, 2026!!!

Call for Posters - Submission deadline: February 18, 2026

Call for PhD Symposium - Submission deadline: February 18, 2026

About the ACM Web Science Conference

Web Science is the study of the most complex artifact, entangling technology, humans, and information ever created. Today, the World Wide Web has evolved into billions of technical and human components operating globally, with each piece subtly influencing the others. To gain a deep understanding of the complex and multifaceted impacts the Web has on the daily lives of individuals, organizations, and society as a whole, a strong interdisciplinary approach is essential.

Establishing a prime venue for Web Science as a dedicated research focus, the Web Science Conference has been held annually since 2009 and has been an ACM conference since 2011. The series has produced over 800 publications, which have been downloaded more than 400,000 times. The Web Science Conference series is sponsored by the Web Science Trust (WST), the ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext and the Web (SIGWEB), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

The theme for 2026 is Managing Risks in the Era of Generative AI - How 20 Years of Web Science Research Can Help.

Web Science 2026 invites interdisciplinary research exploring the Web’s societal impacts — from AI and misinformation to inclusion, governance, and online behavior.

All the best,

Sierra Kaiser, Publicity Chair WebSci’26

Operationalising the Audiovisual Turn in Digital Journalism

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:45:50 GMT

Digital Journalism (special issue)

Deadline: April 17, 2026

Special Issue Editors:

Jonathan Hendrickx, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Jorge Vázquez Herrero, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Cruz Negreira, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Sherwin Chua, PhD, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

The de-institutionalisation of audiovisual journalism and news production by considering non-journalistic interloper actors, including influencers and content creators.
The infrastructural platform dependency, algorithmic ambiguity and/or the ownership of audiovisual journalism in the platformisation era.
A historical evolution of audiovisual journalism from the formats of traditional media to current platforms, considering both common and differentiating elements in journalistic practice.
The production, contents and reception of audiovisual-centric digital journalism, e.g. shortform, vertical videos and/or audio across news outlets’ proprietary as well as social media platforms.
The epistemology and/or ontology of audiovisual journalism.
The news experience and audience interaction through shortform videos and other audiovisual formats.
The production and publication of AI-generated audiovisual news or news-like content and its disinformation effects in a context of algorithmic curation and consumption.

Submission instructions:

Extended abstracts of 500-750 words, not including references, as well as a full list of authors, affiliations, and abbreviated bios for each author.

Please submit your proposal to this Google Form as one file (PDF) with your names clearly stated on the first page: https://lnkd.in/gNxUZJj7

Full manuscripts, if invited, should be between 7,000-9,000 words.

Timeline:

Extended abstracts submission deadline: 18:00 CET on April 17, 2026
Notification on submitted abstracts: May 8, 2026
Article submission deadline: October 30, 2026

From mainstream to margins: Capturing developing practices, publics and persuasion

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:51:24 GMT

September 2-4, 2026

University of Leicester, UK

Deadline: February 20, 2026

MeCCSA Annual Conference

We welcome submissions to the MeCCSA Annual Conference that align with the conference theme and / or any areas covered by MeCCSA, its sections and networks. This includes submissions of abstracts for scholarly papers, themed panels, posters, film screenings, performances, installations, and other practice-based or artistic research contributions.

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From mainstream to margins: Capturing developing practices, publics and persuasion

The media have been operating against the backdrop of recent large-scale developments and within unsettled times. But with what consequence? In seeking to capture the moment, the conference will take stock of the present configuration of media developments and showcase our growing understanding of prevalent aspects of continuity and change found within the mainstream and margins of media systems. It seeks to cast light on the changing situation of media institutions, practitioners and practices (deprofessionalisation / precarity of established media workers among them) and the assumed agile creativity and fluidity characterising modern media work. It proposes to explore the evolving ‘publics’ (or audiences) to which the media shape, speak and listen at these times, observing both changing relationships and evidence of substantive responses and challenges. Recognised, likewise, is a need to re-examine our understandings of media persuasion, including the newfound forms these are assuming, from public messaging to disinformation and propaganda, and related concerns of cohesion, power and control. All of which, this suggests, must be situated in context of increasingly interconnected ‘hybrid’ media systems which as entities are evolving amid prevalent forms of both global and domestic politics, economics and policy at this time.

This conference invites research insights from the full range of the specialisms of MeCCSA colleagues.

Themes for this conference include - but these will not be limited to:

Media pasts, presents and futures
Media developments within, and outside, the nation
Technologies and evolving cultural practices/content
Cultural work, professional cultures and (the value of) human ‘creativity’
Media presence and evolution in the mainstream and margins
Publics / audiences and everyday interactions
Representations and issues, crises and conflicts
Media hybridity and the interconnectedness of media forms and flows
Cultural policy, regulation and change
Mediated interactions between institutions, groups and individuals

Submission

Individual Papers: Please submit abstracts for individual papers (max 250 words) with presentation title, up to 5 key words, your name, affiliation, and email address

Practice-as-research: We actively support the presentation of practice-as-research and have a flexible approach to practice-based papers and presentations. This includes opportunities to present papers, screenings, etc, in the same session or as part of a separate strand.

Panels: Panel proposals should include a short description and rationale (200 words) together with abstracts for each of the 3-4 papers comprising the panel (150-200 words each including details of the contributor/s), and the name and contact details of the panel proposer with up to 5 key words. The panel proposer should integrate the separate abstracts to comprise a single proposal

We particularly welcome submissions from early career and postgraduate researchers.

Use the following link for all submissions: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=meccsa2026

For any queries, please contact the chair of the organising committee: Julian Matthews (jpm29@leicester.ac.uk), cc’ing the conference comms team (meccsa2026@leicester.ac.uk)

The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Journalism

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:48:18 GMT

Edited by: Aynur Sarısakaloğlu and Martin Löffelholz | Technische Universität Ilmenau

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape the media landscape, The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Journalism provides the first comprehensive academic exploration of the intersection between AI technologies and journalism. Edited by Aynur Sarısakaloğlu and Martin Löffelholz, this foundational volume brings together 37 leading scholars from six continents to examine how AI is redefining the structures, practices, and epistemologies of journalism.

Organized around key thematic areas, the Handbook investigates the driving forces propelling the algorithmic transformation and unveils emerging trends in journalistic practice and journalism research, moving beyond Western-centric perspectives to incorporate diverse global experiences and knowledge production. 28 original chapters address systemic shifts such as evolving structures of media organizations, changing roles of actors, transformations in news production routines, and shifting patterns of news consumption. By integrating theoretical, empirical, and practice-oriented perspectives, the Handbook sets the stage for a new research agenda that deepens and expands the understanding of the sociotechnical developments transforming AI-driven journalism in a global context.

The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Journalism is ideal for undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students in journalism, communication, and media studies programs. It also serves as a vital reference for researchers, educators, media professionals, and policy advisors engaged in digital journalism, journalism research, media innovation, and public communication.

More details about the Handbook here: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781394250424

Contact:

PD Dr. phil. habil. Aynur Sarısakaloğlu (aynur.sarisakaloglu@tu-ilmenau.de)

Prof. Dr. Martin Löffelholz (martin.löffelholz@tu-ilmenau.de)

ICA26 Preconference – African and Global Media Representations of Africa

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:43:22 GMT

June 3, 2026

Cape Town, South Africa

Deadline: February 15, 2026

The ICA 2026 Preconference African and Global Media Representations of Africa invites extended abstracts that critically examine how Africa is narrated, imagined, and negotiated in mediated discourse, both within the continent and globally. The preconference foregrounds work that moves beyond familiar critiques of distortion to explore the institutional, material, technological, and epistemic conditions shaping contemporary media representations, with particular encouragement for scholarship grounded in African contexts, theories, and practices.

The pre-conference will take place June 3, 2026, at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. There is no registration fee. Scholars are invited to submit 800–1000 word abstracts by February 15, 2026. A selection of papers will be invited for a peer-reviewed journal Special Issue. Full details, themes, and the submission link are available here: https://ica-gcsc.org/activities/prepost_conferences/african-and-global-media-representations-of-africa/

Winter 2025 list of books for reviews

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:40:16 GMT

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

The Winter 2025 list of books available to review in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television has been updated on the IAMHIST website: https://iamhist.net/journal/#books-review

First Nations approaches to public relations: Resisting colonialist legacies of communication

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 09:59:25 GMT

Special issue of Public Relations Inquiry

Deadline: January, 31, 2026

Guest Editors

Treena Clark University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Juli Holloway Indigenous communications practitioner, British Columbia, Canada
Debashish Munshi University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand

Whiteness, as an invisible default, continues to shape public relations, reinforcing power structures that marginalise Indigenous voices. Colonial-era tactics of division and control are evident even in contemporary public relations discourses that strategically promote Western hegemony.

This special issue seeks contributions that interrogate this white Western privilege by centring Indigenous ways of being and knowing and building a foundation for future work by Indigenous communications scholars.

Indigenous public relations is grounded in cultural values, self-determination, and social change, aligning with critical, sociocultural, and decolonial perspectives. These approaches challenge power dynamics, capitalist frameworks, and the systemic privileging of whiteness.

With a focus on embedding Indigenous knowledge and professional practices in public relations scholarship, we welcome proposals from all parts of the world that amplify Indigenous voices, increase Indigenous representation within the profession, and foster genuine and lasting change in the way equitable public relations can be conceived.

Proposals may examine a variety of topics including:

Indigenous epistemologies of building relationships
Alternative frameworks of public relations built on Indigenous experiences
Case studies of social movement campaigns led by Indigenous activists
Analysis of Indigenous-led practice in communication industries
Movements of resistance against settler colonialism, systemic occupation, and dispossession
Indigenous-led theory and practice of critical public relations and public engagement
Networks of solidarity between Indigenous communities and other marginalised groups
Unique forms of Indigenous communication that align with public relations
Historical insights of Indigenous forms of public relations and communications
Indigenous-led approaches to free, prior informed consent

The special issue will feature peer-reviewed conceptual essays and research articles, based on any methodology. We will also consider shorter submissions in other genres such as reflective essays, interviews with activist-practitioners, or alternative forms of creative expressions.

The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2026 (see the journal guidelines here). For enquiries about this Special Issue, please email Dr Treena Clark on Treena.Clark@uts.edu.au

More details: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/pri/callforpapers

Invitation to French stakeholder event (in French)

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 20:23:05 GMT

December 17, 2025

Paris, France

Dear all,

I would like to share an invitation to our Study Day/Stakeholder Event — Growing Up in the Digital Age: Five Years of European Research on Screens and Adolescent Mental Health. Please note that this event will be held in French, and is intended primarily for a French-speaking audience (researchers, practitioners, institutions, and organizations working with young people in France).

Topic: How do digital media shape young people’s well-being and mental health today? Growing up in 2025 means navigating daily between smartphones, social networks, online gaming, and platforms like Spotify. While these digital practices can boost some adolescents’ self-esteem, they can also heighten anxiety for others. Understanding why these effects occur—and for whom—has never been more essential.

Since 2020, researchers from KU Leuven (Belgium), the University of Tours (France), and the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) have been conducting the international MIMIc project (coordinated by Prof. Laura Vandenbosch), funded by the European Research Council (ERC). The project examines the digital habits of more than 2,700 adolescents aged 12 to 18 in Belgium, Slovenia, and France — including over 800 in France alone.

Our research focuses on two central questions:

Do young people imitate the lifestyles they see on social media and entertainment platforms, and what does this mean for their mental health?
How do their favorite influencers convey political and moral messages that may, in turn, shape adolescents’ beliefs and behaviors?

As we conclude this project, we are pleased to invite you to our study day, which will take place on Wednesday, 17 December 2025, from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm at Deskeo République – 32 Rue René Boulanger, 75010 Paris (with an option to join online, though in-person attendance is encouraged).

This event aims to bring scientific findings into dialogue with educational practice and emerging regulatory frameworks, including the Digital Services Act. It will bring together researchers, institutional stakeholders, education professionals, and youth-focused organisations. Confirmed speakers include Prof. Grégoire Borst (Université Paris Descartes), Arthur Tréguier (DSA Officer for France, European Commission) and Mrs Axelle Desaint (director of Internet Sans Crainte).

You will find all relevant materials attached and listed below:

Mandatory registration link: https://forms.gle/TeZNqqU4TX15mnQE8

LinkedIn invitation: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anaellegonzalez_dsa-jeunesetaezcrans-recherche-activity-7403732183112241152-jvTN

We look forward to sharing our findings and engaging in discussion with all stakeholders committed to supporting young people in their digital lives.

TERMS OF REFERENCE - CONSULTANCY ASSIGNMENT Svoboda Satellite Project - Impact Assessment

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 12:51:02 GMT

1/ Reporter Without Borders (RSF)

Founded in 1985, Reporters sans frontières (RSF) defends the right to reliable information. Its mandate is based on article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers".

RSF strives to ensure that all human beings benefit from information that enables them to know, understand and form an opinion on the issues facing the world and their environment. To achieve this, the organisation is developing a holistic strategy, with 360° activities, to bring about global change. RSF acts on four levels: press freedom, relations between the public and journalists, the information market and the information space.

RSF also demonstrates creativity by developing systemic initiatives that address the causes of problems: the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) and the Partnership on Information and Democracy (I&D).

RSF has an international secretariat in Paris, thirteen sections and offices around the world, more than 150 correspondents, 4 representatives and local partners in a wide range of countries. RSF is a registered association in France and has consultative status with the United Nations and UNESCO.

2/ Context of the project

Access to free, reliable and independent information is a fundamental right and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières - RSF) fights for the power of journalism to shape societies and promote transparency and accountability. RSF has been involved for years in exposing Russian propaganda. As RSF’s World Press Freedom Index highlights, the Russian state is pursuing its crusade against journalism, with almost all independent media banned, blocked and/or declared “foreign agents” or “undesirable organisations” and all others subject to military censorship. Throughout the last 25 years of Vladimir Putin’s regime, Russians have been subjected to a non-stop barrage of propaganda from all media sources. A systematic suppression of freedom of expression has occurred within Russia and the neighbouring states, engendering an alternative reality media universe. Since the beginning of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, the lockdown on independent media has worsened, rendering it virtually impossible for Russians to access reliable information. A war of information happens daily alongside the physical conflict, both in broadcasting media and on social platforms, as Russia projects a message of aggression against Ukraine and against the West, inciting hatred and spreading misinformation.

At a time when the level of censorship of journalists and media is unprecedented in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, civil society and independent media in exile have rallied to combat propaganda and find innovative and different solutions to ensure that populations in the region have access to alternative voices. To lead this fight, RSF has stepped up its efforts to create the concrete conditions for the circulation of free, pluralistic independent news and information in the region (JX Fund, Collateral Freedom).

Given the intensification of the Russian government's actions and measures to prevent the spread of reliable information and strengthen the grip of propaganda and disinformation campaigns, it was necessary to develop new ambitions and innovative solutions that are aimed more broadly at the Russian audience and public in the region, which are deprived of access to alternative, independent and pluralistic information. To meet this objective, the Svoboda Satellite Project, a package of mainly Russian-speaking television and radio channels run by independent media in exile, was launched in March 2024. Svoboda, which means "freedom" in Russian, represents a significant step forward in the quest for unrestricted access to information in a region where media freedom faces numerous challenges. This ambitious initiative intends to reverse the logic of propaganda. With the Svoboda project, the aim is to provide an alternative source of information, give access to exiled media content and ensure media pluralism for the people in Russia and in the region.

3/ The project

Title : Svoboda Satellite Project, bringing free, alternative and trustworthy information to the people in Russia and neighbouring countries

Donor : European Union (DG Connect) + RSF

Duration : 1 November 2024 - 31 October 2026 (2 years implementation period).

Budget : 2 599 868,29€.

Target countries : Russia and neighbouring countries.

Target groups :

Russian media outlets in exile ;
International media who are no longer able to access audiences in Russia and the neighbouring countries ;
Russian people living in Russia ;
People (including but not limited to Russian-speaking people) living in the neighbouring countries ;
Russian diaspora living anywhere abroad across the world.

The Svoboda Satellite Project aims to ensure the free flow of alternative, pluralistic and independent media information in countries subject to intense propaganda. The project, a pioneering initiative, aims to provide an alternative source of information and ensure media pluralism. The project aims to provide independent journalists and media outlets, particularly those working in exile, the technical means to broadcast their content effectively in Russia and neighbouring countries. In order to reverse the logic of propaganda, and based on the independent media in exile, the project operates an independent and diverse package of TV channels distributed via direct-to-home satellite.

The project has two specific objectives :

Specific objective 1 : Operate an independent and diverse TV channels package distributed via direct-to-home satellite.

Specific objective 2 : Expand the access to independent, alternative and pluralistic information for audiences in Russia and in the neighbouring countries.

The project is organised into three work packages which includes tasks :

Work Package 1: Project management and Coordination

Task 1.1 : Grant management and project coordination
Task 1.2 : Governance
Task 1.3 : Audit and evaluations

Work Package 2: Deployment of the technical means to ensure the access to independent, alternative and pluralistic information in Russia and in the region

Task 2.1 : Content identification and selection
Task 2.2 : Content formatting and packaging
Task 2.3 : Playlist development
Task 2.4 : Satellite distribution

Work Package 3: Communication and dissemination

Task 3.1 : Dissemination strategy
Task 3.2 : Outreach towards the final beneficiaries

4/ Objectives of the impact assessmen

RSF reserves the right to make small changes to the content of these ToR after their publication. If changes have to be made, they will be discussed during the inception phase of the assessment.

The main objective of the impact assessment is to determine how many households are reached by RSF's Svoboda satellite package and are watching the channels. The other objective of the assessment is to have a global overview of RSF’s Svoboda satellite impact. Some impact that could be studied are the following :

Impact on the channels and content providers which benefit from the project to be able to broadcast their contents in countries or areas where they would normally be banned or restricted.
Impact of the project communication on social media (Telegram, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok).
Impact of the channels on streaming applications, (UVOtv, Kartina, etc)
Impact of the Youtube channel.
Impact of working with pay TV platform and streaming services
Impact on helping partners reach their global audiences, (Current Time, DW, RFI).
Impact in the press (press releases about Svoboda, interviews, etc.).

The aim of this call for proposals is to find consultants who can offer innovative solutions to meet this objectives, taking into account the following elements and limits:

It is not possible to calculate by technical means the number of people watching the Svoboda package through the satellite.
RSF is listed as an “undesirable organisation” in Russia. Anyone cooperating with listed "foreign organisations" or helping to fund them in Russia can be subjected to administrative prosecution and fined. Repeat offences may lead to criminal prosecution punishable by up to five years in prison. Even the slightest reference to such an organisation or sharing its posts is enough to trigger these prosecutions.
It is not possible to contact people in Russia without exposing them to excessive risk.

Stakeholders who can be involved in the impact assessment are :

RSF Project officer
RSF Projects Director
RSF Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk
Director of the Svoboda project and his technical support team (external consultant)
Channel editor consultant
Marketing sales consultant
Representatives of channels
Content providers
Eutelsat
The company in charge of doing the uplink to the satellite

All the documents required for the assessment will be made available to the consultants after the signature of the contract.

5/ Deliverables

The expected deliverables includes :

An inception report that will form the basis for the impact assessment process and shall be approved by RSF before starting to implement the assessment. The inception report should be written in English. The report will include:

An updated work plan and timeline based on the documentation review and the kick-off meeting.
Updated methodology and data collection tools
A list of stakeholders who will be contacted.

A final report (including draft reports for comments and review by RSF). The format of the final report will be decided during the inception phase based on the methodology chosen. Additional documents to the final report may be proposed as part of the methodology in the response to the terms of reference.

6/ Budget

The maximum budget available for this impact assessment is €35,000 all taxes included. This amount must include all the costs required to carry out the impact assessment.

The assessment can be carried out remotely or the evaluators can decide to carry out field mission(s), with the prior agreement of RSF. In the event of mission(s), the costs must be part of the total budget and the consultants will be required to arrange the logistics including any necessary security arrangements.

7/ Calendar

The impact assessment consultancy mission is scheduled to start at the end of January 2026.

RSF will need the results of the impact assessment as soon as possible. The impact assessment must be finalised and the final report approved by RSF by the end of May 2026 at the latest.

As part of their proposal, consultants are expected to submit a timetable. The timetable must allow for a certain degree of flexibility.

8/ Consultant qualifications

For this assessment, RSF is seeking to recruit a team of consultants. Preference will be given to the team with the most relevant expertises and experiences, and that proposes the methodology that best meets the objectives.

The following skills will be sought :

Expertise in media ecosystem ;
Knowledge of the Russian and regional media ecosystem ;
Knowledge of television ecosystems and technology, including satellite.
Fluent spoken and written English and Russian.

9/ Submission of the offer and selection

Team of consultants interested in the impact assessment should include the following documents in their application:

A technical proposal detailing the understanding of the assessment stakes, the proposed methodology, as well as the implementation schedule considered.
CVs describing education and experience.
A list describing previous assessment/consultancies. Please give details of similar contracts: donor and organisation that implemented the project, budget and duration of the project concerned, budget and duration of the assessment/consultancy, main results, etc.
A detailed financial proposal (estimate) with the total budget all taxes included.

Proposals must be submitted in English. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Full applications must be sent by email to the following addresses before 07/01/2026 at 9.00 a.m (Paris time, CET) :

Charlie Troncy, MEAL officer: ctroncy@rsf.org

Cléa Monier, Project officer : cmonier@rsf.org

The interviews with pre-selected applicants could be organised in January 2026.

Bridging Inequality Gaps in Public Relations and Strategic Communication: Power, Ethics and Inclusion

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 12:05:30 GMT

June 3 (9:00 AM - 5:00 PM)

Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) - Hanover St, District Six, Cape Town, 7925, South Africa

Deadline: February 15, 2026

Division(s)/Interest Group(s): Public Relations

Rationale & theme

Public relations and strategic communication often sit at the intersection of power, ethics, and inclusion. Around the world, widening gaps in wealth, voice, and representation shape who gets heard and how institutions and organizations are held to account. This preconference invites scholarship and practice that examine how public relations and strategic communication can help bridge inequality gaps, as well as what role they play in reproducing them across organizational, community, governmental, and transnational contexts. We welcome conceptual and empirical work as well as practitioner‐academia collaborations that surface actionable insights for practice and policy.

We especially encourage contributions that:

Shed light on power dynamics (agenda‐setting, visibility regimes, “strategic silence”, influence industries) and their consequences for equity and justice; Advance ethical frameworks for practice under uncertainty, polarization, and AI‐mediated communication;
Move beyond diagnosis and into actionable research through workable tools, interventions, and partnerships that demonstrably improve inclusion and accountability in/through public relations and strategic communication.
Suggested topics (but not limited to)
Inequality as a communication problem: who benefits/loses from current communicative arrangements?
Organizational responsibility, legitimacy, and trust in divided societies (CSR/ESG, stakeholder capitalism, social license)
Activism, advocacy, and coalition‐building; tensions in corporate/NGO/grassroots collaborations
Ethics in practice: competing accountabilities, dilemmas, and decision‐making models
AI, datafication, targeting, and automation: risks/opportunities for inclusion, transparency, and participation
Publics, counter‐publics, and audience segmentation beyond the “usual suspects”
Internal communication, voice at work, and equitable change from within organizations
Crisis, disaster, health, and environmental communication through an equity lens
Measurement beyond media hits: evaluating social impact and equity outcomes
Pedagogy and professional formation: curricula, credentialing, and pathways that reduce (not widen) inequality

Participation tracks

1) Research papers

Original scholarly submissions (conceptual or empirical) that advance theory and/or evidence on the conference theme.

Format

Extended abstracts (800 words incl. references).

2) Actionable research & practice labs

Short, impact‐oriented contributions that translate scholarship into tools for practice and policy.

Submissions should include at least one tangible output, such as:

A practitioner toolkit/checklist or decision‐making flowchart;
A policy/practice brief (2–4 pages) targeting a defined audience;
An open protocol (e.g., equity audit, listening/engagement method, evaluation template);
A partnership plan with a civil‐society, public‐sector, or industry actor;
A dataset or replicable codebook enabling comparative equity analysis (e.g., comparing voice/access gaps across sectors, countries, or stakeholder groups).

Publication opportunities

Special issue in Journal of Communication Management

Special issue in Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa

Costs

The conference fee is 40 USD and includes a light breakfast on arrival, lunch, and refreshments during session breaks. Participants attending this pre-conference on June 3rd as well as the Metamodern Public Relations pre-conference on June 4th will benefit from a reduced joint participation fee of 60 USD.

The pre-conference is supported by the Public Relations Division of the ICA.

Abstract submission

The deadline for submissions is February 15, 2026.

Abstracts of up to 800 words are invited. Please send your abstract to: bridginggapsconf@gmail.com

Submissions will undergo blind peer review, so please make sure to submit a suitably anonymized text. Please make sure that your abstract is a specific contribution to this pre-conference.

Acceptance notifications will be sent out by mid-March, 2026. It is understood that, by submitting an abstract, you are going to attend the pre-conference should it be accepted.

Check the Call for Papers on the ICA website: https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/ICA26-prepostconferences

Organizers

Rene Benecke, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Anca Anton, University of Bucharest, Romania
Alice Cheng, North Carolina State University, USA Jesper Falkheimer, Lund University, Sweden
Cindy Ngai, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Caroline Azionya, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Local organizers

Nirvana Bechan, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa Deidre Porthen, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa

3 research associates in social science (m/w/d)

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:53:11 GMT

Weizenbaum Institut

Founded in 2017, the Weizenbaum Institute researches the effects of advancing digitalisation on our society. With its recommendations for action, it helps to ensure that the digital transformation is sustainable, self-determined and responsible. The Weizenbaum Institute is supported by a network of seven partners, including Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin University of the Arts, the University of Potsdam, the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) and the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB). The institute is financed by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the state of Berlin. It is located in Berlin.

For our third-party-funded research group “Local Digital Public Spheres” at the Weizenbaum-Institut e.V. we are looking, at the earliest possible date, for 3 research associates in social science (m/w/d) with 29.25 hours per week (75%). The position is initially limited until 31 December 2028. Further employment up to a total duration of four years will be sought and is dependent on further funding approval.

The Team

The junior research group “Local Digital Public Spheres” is funded as part of the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Emmy Noether program. It investigates how contemporary local public spheres are formed under conditions of digitalization and globalization, as local issues and events often gain national or even international attention. The project investigates digital discourses on places which have gained public notoriety in the fields of (a) illiberalism and backlash against plural societies and (b) industrial transformations and environmental concerns. It further investigates how residents respond to such public attention and organize around these issues locally. The group employs a mixed-methods design of computational (text-as-data, network analysis) and qualitative approaches (interviews, ethnographic field work) to investigate six local digital public spheres in three countries (Poland, Germany, the United Kingdom). Based on this empirical data, it will develop a theory of the spatial dimension of digital public spheres. You can take a closer look at the team and their work here.

Your tasks

Conceptualization and execution of a doctoral dissertation in the research group’s fields of study (e.g., local public spheres, political discourses, mobilization and protest, local communities and social cohesion) and utilizing project data
Conducting qualitative and/or mixed-methods fieldwork for one of the three countries of study (Poland, Germany, the United Kingdom), including qualitative interviews with local stakeholders and citizens
Working with the team of two other PhD students and the research group leader on cross-case analyses and theory building in the field of study
Regular publication and presentation of research results at national and international conferences and workshops
Organization of events and activities for the research community and the broader public
Participation in the events and program of the Weizenbaum Institute and - as an associated member - of the Collaborative Research Center 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces”

Your profile

Master’s degree in the social sciences (e.g., communication studies, sociology, political science, human geography), area studies, or a related field
Very good knowledge of qualitative research methodologies and willingness to conduct fieldwork
Excellent proficiency in the national language of the case study you intend to work on (i.e., Polish, German, or English) and very good understanding of the respective political and cultural context
Interest in interdisciplinary social scientific research, particularly in the areas of public spheres, digital transformations of society, and/or spatial theory
Basic knowledge of quantitative and/or computational methodologies and interest in developing mixed-methods approaches to the analysis of local digital public spheres
Excellent English skills and very good communication, presentation, and academic writing skills
Enjoy working in a team

Your chance

Exciting tasks: Work in a committed, innovative, and scientific environment
Optimal conditions: Compensation depending on qualifications up to EG 13 (TVöD Bund), including annual bonus, company pension plan, and subsidy for the Deutschlandticket
Work-life balance: We offer mobile working, flexible working hours, and 30 days of vacation per year (based on a 5-day week), plus paid time off on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.
Central location: Work in the center of Berlin
Personal development: Regular professional development opportunities

Severely disabled applicants with equal qualifications will be given preference. We value diversity and welcome all applications - regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic or social origin, religion, disability, age and sexual orientation. The Weizenbaum Institute expressly encourages women and people with a history of migration to apply.

Please submit your application, consisting of a motivation letter, your curriculum vitae (including a list of publications, conference presentations, or other academic activities, if applicable), university degree and other relevant certificates, and a writing sample (e.g., a student paper or master’s thesis) in English or German addressed to Dr. Daniela Stoltenberg, in our application portal until 2nd January 2026. Please indicate clearly for which country case studies you are applying. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Maite Vöhl from our HR team (personal[at]weizenbaum-institut.de) at any time. We look forward to receiving your documents.

Application portal

"Participation, Knowledge and Communication: An Intersection of Transformative Forces" panel at the IAMCR 2026 Galway conference

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:49:01 GMT

Deadline for panel paper abstracts: January 15, 2026 (5pm UTC)

Panel Convenor: Nico Carpentier, CULCORC, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.

Submission to be sent to: nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz

Dear all,

I plan to submit a panel proposal for the IAMCR 2026 conference, which will take place in Galway (Ireland), from 28 June - 2 July 2026. The theme of this year's conference is "Peripheries and Connections: Media, Communication and Transformation", with panel and paper submission deadline of 3 February 2026. More about the conference can be found (as you know) at https://iamcr.org/galway2026.

This panel proposal, which originates from my work in MeDeMAP (a European research project), will be entitled “Participation, Knowledge and Communication: An Intersection of Transformative Forces”; the abstract is below.

With this call for papers (for this panel) I want to invite interested scholars, activists and artists, from a diversity of locations and affiliations, to join me in this panel proposal. In order to allow time for the panel selection process, proposals should reach me, at nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz, on or before 15 January 2026, 5pm UTC.

Proposals need to include (1) an abstract between 500 and 800 words, (2) a title, (3) an author list with names, affiliations and email addresses, and (4) a note confirming that at least one author will be present in person at the IAMCR conference (if the panel is accepted).

The panel “Participation, Knowledge and Communication: An Intersection of Transformative Forces” incorporates theoretical and empirical research papers which scrutinise the intersection of three key concepts and the multitude of practices they cover. First, participation, defined here as the rebalancing of power imbalances (see, e.g., Pateman, 1970), or, as the sharing of power, with its promises of empowerment, is central to our understanding of political processes in a variety of societal fields (also moving beyond politics). Participation has the capacity to validate ordinary people and the decentralisation of decision-making processes. Knowledge, in its very Foucauldian meaning, is seen the assemblage of the discourses that are constructed as truthful renderings of social reality. To use McCarthy (1996: 2) definition: “knowledge refers to any and every set of ideas accepted by one or another social group or society of people, ideas pertaining to what they accept as real.” Finally, communication is approached here as the interpreting and sharing of meaning, through the exchange of signifying practices, structured through discourses and ideologies. Also knowledge and communication, are deeply political practices, structured through power relations, and part of discursive-material construction processes, always located in particular geographies.

This panel is particular interested in how these three notions theoretically and empirically intersect, and how these intersections allow us to (re)think societal transformations, in a diversity of centres and peripheries. For instance, this panel aims to open up discussions about situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988), and its capacity to feed into participatory processes, but also how participatory processes can bring out a diversity of voices which otherwise would be silenced by hegemonic knowledge and communication practices. Similarly, the panel is interested in collaborative-participatory knowledge production and communication processes, which disrupt the traditional centres and hierarchies of knowledge production. Equally important are alternative-participatory communication practices, which allow for the generation of new knowledges, or for the re-articulation of existing hegemonic knowledge frameworks. Through an articulation of different critical perspectives, this panel aims to deepen our reflections on how these three notions intersect, and how they can support (or disrupt) social change processes and societal transformations.

The Gig Public

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:44:54 GMT

Slavko Splichal

A new book by Slavko Splichal, titled The Gig Public, was recently published by Anthem Press. The book explores the rise of the “gig public” in the age of performative publicness, highlighting challenges in sustaining meaningful discourse, the impact of new technologies and AI on public engagement, and the emergence of the will to visibility within the context of capitalism and algorithmic governmentality.

Read open access version HERE.

Contents:

Introduction: The Gig Public – Rethinking Publicness in the Age of AI

1-From Collective to Counter: Understanding the Evolving Territories of Publicness

2-Paradigm Shifts: Habitual and Contractual Foundations of Publics

3-The Gig Public: Redrawing the Boundaries between Public and Private Realms

4-Invigorating Publicness in the AI World: Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies

Global Media & Internet Concentration Project

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:41:42 GMT

Today the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project released its report on market, policy and technological developments in a swathe of communication, internet and media industries in Germany:

- The Germany report was prepared by: Lukas Barbutev, Dr Hendrik Theine, Dr Tobias Mast and Josefine May Spannuth

This follows editions we have already published on the state of media and internet concentration in Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Norway the United States and many more, with the end goal a library of regularly updated reports for all of the nearly 40 countries that make up the GMICP.

These reports are rich with insights into growth and concentration trends within media and communication sectors in these countries, as well as key regulatory developments.

Finally:

- Please review any of our reports and the underlying data sets here.

- We invite other researchers to contribute their expertise to our efforts – please reach out to us here.

ICA Pre-conference 2026: Children's rights under pressure in a digital world

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:40:00 GMT

June 4, 2026 (8:30 - 12:00 PM (UTC+2)

Cape Town, South Africa (in-person only)

Deadline: December 15, 2025 (12:00 CET)

Organised with the ICA divisions Children, Adolescence and Media and Communication Law and Policy, the DFC welcomes original research studies addressing the theme of children’s rights in the digital environment, from all disciplines, employing empirical methods, relevant theory, and contributing to children’s rights in the digital environment, especially Global South perspectives.

In the pre-conference, scholars and practitioners will explore how research can inform policy, regulation and design with children in digital environments, framed by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25 on Children’s Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment.

More info: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/events/ica-preconference/call-for-submissions

Mediatization Conference 7, 2026: Mediatization and Artificial Intelligence: Values, Principles, and Practices of AI-zation?

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:28:26 GMT

March 19-20, 2026

Hybrid: Lublin, Poland & Online

Deadline: January 20, 2026

Organizers: Institute of Social Communication and Media Science

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin

Polish Communication Association, Mediatization Section

This year the keynote speech will be given by Professor Martin Johannes Riedl, representing School of Journalism and Media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville: Resuscitated at the deathbed? GenAI as challenge and opportunity for journalism

For more information please visit the conference website: https://www.umcs.pl/en/ms-cfp.htm

Forms of participation: personal and online; languages of the conference: English and Polish; conference site: Institute of Social Communication and Media Science, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Głęboka Street 45.

Accompanying event: Workshop: From data to interpretation: NLP techniques in digital discourse analysis (onsite event).

Important dates:

Abstract submission: 20 January, 2026
Abstract acceptance: 30 January, 2026
Conference program announcement – first draft: 6 February, 2026

Conference fee for the personal and online participation: PLN 200 (PTKS/Polish Communication Association members: PLN 150; plus 60-100 PLN [for the Workshop participants, depending on their number);

The conference concept:

Mediatization and Artificial Intelligence: Values, Principles, and Practices of AI-zation?

When observing the constant deepening of the mediatization process, one can ask what comes after mediatization? Is this term still relevant or should we look for an alternative, such as 'AI-zation', to describe and explain the transformations driven by Large Language Models witnessed by people in different fields and sectors of their private and public lives? These questions concern the accelerators, obstacles and disruptors introduced by AI technologies and the kinds of transformations or breakthroughs they bring about when human dependency on media is considered. At the same time, we may feel lost when trying to determine the principles that should organize the media and AI worlds, and the values that they should reflect. In particular, discussions about the AI-related principles and values face us with the problem of obsolescence, need for updates or new rules and ideals, as well as their commonality and applicability in different societal and national contexts.

When asking these questions, we would like to invite media and communication scholars, as well as researchers interested in technology, the humanities, psychology, and other disciplines, to discuss the topics, we believe, will help us to consider the current and future stages of media- and AI-related phenomena wisely and visionary.

The list of expected topics includes, but is not limited to:

What comes after deep mediatization? Does AI technologies introduce the next phase of mediatization (AI-zation)?
What are the features, principles and consequences of human-machine communication, especially in the current era of LLMs proliferation?
Which values are of paramount importance and should be preserved first in human-machine communication?
Are generative AI tools merely intermediaries in media communication, or are they the authors, creators and broadcasters of messages? To what extent can they be perceived as having agency and/or subjectivity?
Given the vast application of generative AI tools, can we trust media materials, including journalistic content, in terms of their veracity and factuality?
What can technological approach to mediatization teach us about human-machine communication? Is AI technology similar to any other invention, e.g. the internet, or is it a game changer unlike anything we have ever seen before?
What role do machine participants play in the meaning-making process, and who or what do they represent? The European and national laws and regulations on AI (e.g. AI Act 2025) and the ethics of human-machine communication?
Originality and creativity in media production in the face of generative AI application. Affective artificial communication (e.g. AI-driven emotion recognition, relationships and intimacy in the age of AI, technological forms of empathy, affective computing).

Accompanying event: Workshop: From data to interpretation: NLP techniques in digital discourse analysis (onsite event): Kamil Filipek, Michał Błaszczykowski, Center for Artificial Intelligence and Computational Modeling.

The aim of the training is to familiarise social communication researchers with modern natural language processing methods used to analyse texts obtained from digital platforms. Participants will learn how to prepare data, select appropriate analytical techniques (e.g. embedding models, classification, topic analysis) and interpret results in the context of discourse theory. The training also aims to develop competencies that allow for critical assessment of both the potential and limitations of NLP methods in communication research.

On behalf of Scientific and Organizational Committee

Ewa Nowak-Teter, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Karolina Burno-Kaliszuk, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Dr hab. Ewa Nowak-Teter, prof. UMCS

Senior Research and Teaching Associate/Postdoc Position in Media & Internet Governance

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:07:00 GMT

University of Zurich, Switzerland

The Media & Internet Governance Division (Prof. Dr. Natascha Just) of the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich invites applications for an open position of Senior Research and Teaching Associate/Postdoc (80%). Start of employment: 1 February 2026 / upon agreement.

The Media & Internet Governance Division studies media policy and media economics in the convergent communications sector. Alongside research on traditional mass media, the division focuses on Internet Governance and Platform Studies. The successful applicant will work on dedicated topics that align with the division's research program.

Further information and application details: https://jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancies/senior-research-and-teaching-associate-postdoc-position-media-internet-governance-division-ikmz/995cf26d-8973-49eb-8f1e-385950f00513

Review of applications starts immediately, but the position will remain open until a qualified candidate is found.

Please contact Alena Birrer, MA (a.birrer@ikmz.uzh.ch) if you have any further questions.

Webinars by Ukraine Task Force

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 10:08:27 GMT

December 12, 2025 and January 5, 2026

Online

The ECREA Ukraine Task Force, in collaboration with the Ukrainian Institute for Media and Communication, invites researchers in media, communication, and related fields to two practical webinars on submitting successful abstracts for conferences. The webinars will take place on December 12, 2025 and January 5, 2026 at 13:00 CET. Both webinars will last three hours with a break.

They will be led by Roman Horbyk, Research Lecturer at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), Director of the WarDS Lab, Visiting Researcher at Uppsala University (Sweden), and Chair of the ECREA Ukraine Task Force.

Topics include:

What an ideal ECREA conference abstract looks like

Key elements: research problem, originality, theory, method, contribution

How to avoid common mistakes and attract reviewers’ attention

How to adapt your idea to the specific sections and working groups of ECREA

Working with academic English: terminology, clarity, conciseness, scholarly logic

Live analysis of examples and Q&A

Preparing your submission with a view toward a successful conference presentation
Opportunity to receive individual mentoring from Roman Horbyk after the webinar: consultation on your abstract and recommendations before final submission

Format and Participation

Both webinars will take place online (Zoom).

Participation is free of charge and available through registration. Registered participants will receive the Zoom link and other details in advance.

Working language: Ukrainian.

Textures of Digital Entertainment

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 13:33:04 GMT

June 25-26, 2026

The University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense (Denmark)

Deadline: February 15, 2026

Digital entertainment has moved from the margins of leisure to the centre of everyday life. It unfolds across fragmented temporalities, hybrid spaces, and shifting sensory environments, becoming woven into the rhythms through which people navigate work, leisure, relations, care, rest, or exercise through different modes of engagement (attention, distraction, intention…). Yet despite its ubiquity, entertainment remains undertheorised in media studies, overshadowed by approaches that focus on platforms, industries, or traditional media formats. Much of this scholarship explains how digital media function, but is not concerned with what entertainment feels like and does in lived experience, or how emerging formats—from short-form video to ambient gaming—reshape everyday life.

This conference invites contributions that address the experiential, aesthetic, cultural and practice-based textures of contemporary digital entertainment. We welcome work that examines how entertainment punctuates daily routines; how sensory formats organise micro-temporalities; how emerging genres such as cozy games, reaction-loops, streamers’ para-social hangouts, ASMR, mood-playlists, or hybrid meme-aesthetics shape everyday engagement; and how entertainment logics “spill over” into other societal domains. We are especially interested in research that integrates practices and formats—showing how people use entertainment, how new genres acquire recognisable aesthetic signatures, and how users cultivate meta-awareness of styles, conventions, and genre cues.

The conference will be held at The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Odense. There is no registration fee, but participants are responsible for covering their own travel and accommodation. Lunch and refreshments will be provided during the conference. A conference dinner will be organised, with separate payment for those who wish to attend.

This conference marks the official conclusion of the DiEM (Digital Entertainment Machine) project, generously funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The DIEM team is looking forward to discussing these exciting topics with you in Odense this summer!

We welcome contributions from media studies, cultural studies, game studies, aesthetic theory, film/audiovisual studies, literary theory, communication studies, and adjacent disciplines. We invite empirical, theoretical, and analytical approaches that speak to (but are not limited to) the following themes:

Practices: rhythms, habits, ambience, transitions, sensory modulation in everyday use
Formats and genres: for example short-form video, hybrid meme-genres, atmospheric and cozy gaming, slow or ambient livestreams, platform-specific micro-genres
Aesthetics: visual, sonic, and bodily grammars, platform vernaculars and stylistic conventions
Cultural textures: emerging taste clusters such as #cleangirl, genres such as oddly satisfying, shared imaginaries such as revenge scrolling, and other circulating moods and trends
Meta-aesthetic reflexivity: how users recognise, classify, and play with evolving genres, conventions, and aesthetic cues
Cross-domain pollination: entertainment logics in news, museums, education, marketing, politics and others

The accepted formats are papers, panels, and workshops; all will be allocated to 90 min sessions. All submissions should be in the form of a 300–500‑word abstract as a single PDF file.

A brief bibliography may be included (not counted toward the word limit), and authors should provide a short bio (approx. 100 words/person). The conference does not use anonymous review.

There are no proceedings. Presenters will be invited to submit a paper for a special issue of MedieKultur on the theme of the conference, scheduled for publication in May 2027.

Details regarding the journal submission process will be provided during the conference.

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: 15 February 2026

Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2026

Conference dates: 25–26 June 2026

More here: https://event.sdu.dk/texturesofdigitalentertainment/signup

YECREA Workshop Series on Positionality and EDI in Academic Careers

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:09:16 GMT

Deadline: January 20, 2026

Early-career scholars today are increasingly expected to demonstrate awareness of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), articulate their own positionality, and present coherent academic identities, all while navigating highly competitive job markets.

This interactive four-session series offers a focused, practice-oriented space to meet these demands with confi dence, clarity, and authenticity.

Across the series, you will:

1. Clarify what EDI actually means in academia and learn how it directly shapes CVs, applications, and career trajectories, including how your own positionality becomes part of your professional profi le.

2. Work with your biography as a resource, exploring how your personal experiences can meaningfully inform your research, teaching, and applications — and how to do so in a way that feels appropriate, balanced, and professionally aligned.

3. Develop job position literacy, learning how to read, decode, and strategically respond to academic job calls (with input on networking and reaching out to potential hosts or collaborators.)

4. Craft a strong, meaningful teaching statement that communicates your pedagogical identity, values, and EDI commitments in a way that is grounded, credible, and distinctly your own.

Throughout the series, you will have the opportunity to refl ect on your academic identity, gain a clearer sense of how your experiences and values inform your professional trajectory, and experiment with ways of communicating this in application contexts. Rather than aiming for perfect documents, the workshops offer space to explore, articulate, and refi ne your voice as a scholar supported by peers and guided input that helps you move forward with more confi dence and direction. The workshop will be facilitated by an external expert on EDI in academia.

The ECREA EDI Committee funds this workshop series, and participation is free of charge. To ensure sustained engagement, participants will be eligible for a certifi cate only if they attend at least three of the four sessions. The sessions will be held on four consecutive Thursdays — 26.02.26, 5.03., 12.03., and 19.03. from 17:00 to 18:30 (Central European Time).

Applications are open to YECREA members who meet the criteria for early-career status, defi ned as holding a non-tenured academic position. If you are unsure about your membership status, please consult the instructions provided here: https://yecrea.eu/membership/

Submit your application via the following link: https://forms.gle/XrC724vPdJ62NGTu5

Deadline: 20 January 2026, 23:59 CET. Results will be published in early February 2026. Questions? Drop us an email at yecreanetwork@gmail.com

Controversies of AI society

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:07:00 GMT

April 9-10, 2026

Copenhagen, Denmark

Deadline (EXTENDED): December 15, 2025

The research projects Algorithms, Data & Democracy (the ADD-project) and Strategic Communication and Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) are pleased to announce the Controversies of AI society conference to be held at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, on 9-10 April 2026. We invite contributions across disciplines and hope to see you there.

With the accelerated implementation of algorithmic technologies, now broadly referred to as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI), across all dimensions of society, it is imperative to consider how technological and societal developments shape each other: What social formations do AI systems invite? How do emerging uses of AI inform further developments across public, private, and third sectors? What social changes emerge out of these new technologies, and how are social dynamics embedded within their infrastructures? How do business models and consumption patterns enable some technological developments (and not others), and what relations of production and consumption are pushed by AI technologies? Can legal frameworks and political agendas influence the operations of the tech industry, and what are the alternatives to established actors, organizational forms, and ways of working? Can such alternatives influence technological developments, and how are public perceptions and collective actions informed by the material conditions of technological innovation, from venture capital through computing power to data centers? How, in short, might we understand the current constellation(s) of technocapitalism?

To inquire into these issues, and the many that follow from them, please join us for an interdisciplinary conference on the controversies of AI society.

As no one perspective can fully capture the complex interplay between technology (in its various forms) and society (in its various forms), we invite participants to address this broad agenda from within, from outside, and from the intersections of relevant disciplines across the social sciences, humanities, and technical sciences. That is, investigations of the relationships and tensions that constitute AI society, such as, but not limited to:

Civil society and democratic concerns
Corporate strategies and business models
Data, data sciences, and data practices in society
Digital platforms and algorithmic publics
Educational systems and approaches to learning
Environmental sustainability and planetary crisis
Ethics, (in)equality, and sovereignty in AI society
Political imaginaries and forms of governance
Public administration and state-citizen interactions
Technological innovations and industry developments

Current trends and tendencies may be many things – consensual, collaborative, contentious, or even contradictory – but no matter how we see them, or what powers support them, they all help us see a little bit further. They may never fully line up, they may be messy, but this messiness is integral to how they exist in the world. For instance, some might argue that regulation stands in the way of innovation or that the interests of industry actors are always already misaligned with those of civil society. Others might claim that the interests of industry and democracy can be aligned only through policy, and that we need regulation to curb the excesses of unfettered competition. Yet others might claim that real technological innovation grows from grassroots communities, which need to be be politically and economically supported. Three competing narratives that contribute to the discussion, playing their part – along with multiple others – in narrating the messy whole of AI society, controversies and all.

In sum, we see the developments of what might be termed ‘AI society’ as by their very nature debatable and suggest such debates benefit from interdisciplinary perspectives. Consequently, we particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions, but we also invite participants to shed light on ongoing practical and theoretical controversies from within specific disciplines – and from outside them. We wish for the conference to be an inclusive space for lively and robust debate, not only welcoming controversies but celebrating them.

We accept two forms of contributions: abstract-based presentations and full papers. Please, submit your abstract of no more than 500 words OR your paper of maximum 8000 words (including references) by 15 December 2025. We welcome both technical papers and position papers as well as conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions. Author guidelines will be posted on this website shortly.

All submissions will undergo peer review, and a decision will be communicated by mid-January. Abstracts will be assessed on an accept/reject basis. Authors of full papers will receive reviewer comments, and those who are invited to participate, will be offered the chance of revising their manuscript towards publication in the conference proceedings. The proceedings be published through AAU OPEN.

Important dates:

1 November: Submission platform opens
15 December: Submission deadline (abstracts and papers)
19 January: Decisions (and reviews of full papers) sent to authors
9 March: Revised papers (for publication in the conference proceedings) due in camera ready format (guidelines on formatting to follow)
9-10 April: Conference

Special issue on Exploring the Intersections of Gender, Power, and Collective Resistance in Gaming Cultures

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:00:51 GMT

The International Journal of Games and Social Impact

Deadline: April 31, 2026

Guest Editors: Luciana Lima (Integrated Researcher at Interactive Technologies Institute (https://iti.larsys.pt), LARSyS (Laboratory of Robotics and Systems in Engineering and Science), Universidade de Lisboa) & Ana Pires (Integrated Researcher at Interactive Technologies Institute (https://iti.larsys.pt), LARSyS (Laboratory of Robotics and Systems in Engineering and Science) and Invited Professor at Instituto Técnico Superior (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

This special issue of The International Journal of Games and Social Impact invites contributions that propose strategies for change, including inclusive design practices, intersectional moderation systems, case studies of community resistance, feminist pedagogies, collective activism, and studies that reimagine representation, participation, and relational responsibility in different forms of play.

Submissions may address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

How do communities, both within and beyond “traditional” gamer identities, mobilise to challenge and/or resist gender-based violence and misogyny?
How can co-creation, participatory design, and inclusive development practices combat structural exclusion and gendered toxicity?
What industry, sports and live-streaming practices dismantle power asymmetries in games?
How can justice-oriented frameworks help us understand how women and other marginalized groups respond to gendered toxicity (e.g., collective action, exit strategies, community building) and envision new possibilities for play?

Publication Timeline

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Dates are indicative.

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 31-04-2026

Notification of Acceptance for Full Paper Submissions: 31-07-2026

Publication Date: First semester of 2026

For more information: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijgsi/announcement/view/250

Launch of findings: Left out and Misunderstood: Children in Digital Policies

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:58:12 GMT

December 16, 2025 (4 - 5:30pm (GMT)

LSE Old Building & Online

Digital transformation and inclusion policies are reshaping societies worldwide, yet the ways in which children are recognised - or excluded - within these agendas remain poorly understood. This event presents new cross-national analyses of over 300 policies from 35 countries and organisations, offering critical insights into how children’s rights, agency, and inequalities are framed in the pursuit of digital futures.

Speakers: Ellen Helsper and Shivani Rao (LSE), Respondent: Steven Vosloo (UNICEF)

Info and registration: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/digitalfuturesforchildrencentre/1944910

New report: The impact of General comment No. 25 in the UNCRC monitoring process

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:56:47 GMT

Since 2021, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has reshaped its oversight of how governments address children’s rights in the digital environment. This study analyses 79 country reviews to track that evolution, examining how states, civil society, National Human Rights Institutions and UN bodies raise digital issues, and how the Committee integrates General Comment No. 25 into its questioning and recommendations.

On World Children's Day, the DFC launched its new report. Read the report and watch the launch (panel: Gerison Lansdown, Kim R Sylwander and Gastón Wright; chair: Sonia Livingstone).

Read the report: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/our-work/impact-gc25

AI Adoption by UK Journalists and their Newsrooms: Surveying Applications, Approaches, and Attitudes

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 11:11:58 GMT

Neil Thurman, Sina Thaesler-Kordonouri and Richard Fletcher

This report is based on a survey conducted between August and November 2024 with a broadly representative sample of 1,004 UK journalists. The survey was primarily focused on whether and how journalists and news organisations use artificial intelligence (AI), and how it relates to other aspects of their work.

ECREA members can access the publication open access here: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/ai-adoption-uk-journalists-and-their-newsrooms-surveying-applications-approaches-and-attitudes

Pragmatic approaches to framing analysis

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 21:22:04 GMT

Editors:

Simon Borchmann | Roskilde University

Anne Fabricius | Roskilde University

Ida Klitgård | Roskilde University

Purchase HERE

This volume invites its readers to rethink the linguistic basis for framing analysis by problematizing the existing foundation and presenting eight new pragmatically based framing analyses.

The book challenges the assumption that there is a unilateral, one-to-one relationship between words and frames, such that framing occurs when a language user is exposed to a word that activates a frame.

Conversely, it is assumed that framing emerges in social interaction through a complex interplay between the participants, the semiotic resources employed, the circumstances, and the multiple frames of interaction. This assumption calls for the relationship between words and frames to be analyzed in pragmatics, including in cross-fertilization with other disciplines such as discourse analysis, interaction analysis, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and social psychology.

The assumption is operationalized in eight different exemplary framing analyses. Each analysis has its own focus, drawing on its own disciplines, and utilizing its own concepts, tools, and methods.

The results of the analyses are noteworthy and demonstrate how a pragmatic approach to framing analysis can enhance the validity and reliability of the analysis.

“The Kids Like It, So What Do We Care About the 55-Year-Olds?” Baller League and the Mediatization of Contemporary Sport

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 21:18:26 GMT

ONLINE OPEN LECTURE

December 5, 8.30-9.30 CET

Michael Skey, Loughborough University

“The Kids Like It, So What Do We Care About the 55-Year-Olds?” Baller League and the Mediatization of Contemporary Sport

MS Teams: tiny.pl/q2r7dy65

Digital Authoritarianism in the Global South and East

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 21:09:35 GMT

April 7-10, 2026

at the ECPR Joint Sessions

University of Innsbruck, Austria

Deadline (EXTENDED): December 10, 2026

The Workshop will examine how emerging digital platforms, practices, and policies help entrench authoritarianism, or exacerbate democratic backsliding, across the Global South and East — including Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. It aims to map the transforming terrain of digital authoritarianism, from internet shutdowns and online censorship to surveillance, disinformation, and participatory propaganda.

Journalism in the Hybrid Media System

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 21:03:30 GMT

Media and Communication

We are pleased to announce that the thematic issue “Journalism in the Hybrid Media System”, edited by Silke Fürst, Florian Muhle, and Colin Porlezza, is now published in Media and Communication.

This thematic issue examines journalism’s role within complex, hybridized media environments shaped by platforms, algorithms, shifting logics of attention, and various actors. Bringing together empirical, theoretical, methodological, and historical perspectives from across three continents, the contributions reveal both enduring structures and transformative dynamics, offering nuanced insights into journalism’s evolving practices, societal functions, and current—as well as future—challenges.

Access the full special issue in Media and Communication here: https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.i494

ARTICLES

Journalism in the Hybrid Media System: Editorial

Silke Fürst, Florian Muhle and Colin Porlezza

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.11227

Ensuring News Quality in Platformized News Ecosystems: Shortcomings and Recommendations for an Epistemic Governance

Pascal Schneiders and Birgit Stark

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10042

Historical Roots of Information Flows in Hybrid Media Systems

Silke Fürst

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10375

Network Analysis for Media Ownership: A Methodological Proposal

Mariia Aleksevych and Tales Tomaz

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10141

A See-Through Curtain of Varying Texture: Negotiating Power and Material Realities in Engaged Journalism

Bissie Anderson

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10027

Fact-Checkers as New Journalistic Mediators: News Agencies’ Verification Units and Platform Dynamics

Regina Cazzamatta

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.9867

Search in the Newsroom: How Journalists Navigate Google’s Dominance in a Hybrid Media System

Daniel Trielli

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.9975

Media Hybridization and the Strategic Value of Political Incivility: Insights From Italian Journalists

Rossella Rega

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10236

Artificial Amplification and Intermedia Dynamics in the Hybrid Media System: The Case of #LaschetLacht

Florian Muhle and Indra Bock

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10244

Climate Communication in the Hybrid Media System: Media and Stakeholder Logics on Social Media

Simon M. Luebke, Nadezhda Ozornina, Mario Haim and Jörg Haßler

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.9892

Issue Attention and Semantic Overlap in Vaccination Coverage Within Switzerland’s Hybrid Media System

Dario Siegen and Daniel Vogler

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.10040

If you have any questions about this thematic issue, please contact guest editor Silke Fürst: s.fuerst@ikmz.uzh.ch

What did #MeToo Accomplish?

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:59:59 GMT

Deadline: January 31, 2026

A scholarly press has already expressed interest in the volume. We hope the manuscript will be completed by late 2027, in time to appear in print in early 2028.

PhD summer course Media Engagement

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:56:47 GMT

August 16-22, 2026

Jönköping University Sweden

Deadline: March 1, 2026

Key Highlights:

Teaching Team:

Website and application: for information on the course, application process, fees, and key dates see https://ju.se/samarbeta/event-och-konferenser/event/phd-summer-course-media-engagement.html

Contact: Annette Hill (Annette.hill@ju.se)

Scandalisation across media: New scandal trajectories, temporalities, and actors

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:55:00 GMT

Nordic Journal of Media Studies

Deadline: January 15, 2026

Nordic Journal of Media Studies invites contributions to the 2027 issue exploring how scandals unfold and are communicated across media.

Editors:

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen (University of Copenhagen): netenk@hum.ku.dk
Anne Jerslev (University of Copenhagen): jerslev@hum.ku.dk

Important dates:

Deadline for abstracts: 15 January
Deadline for full submissions: 15 August

Nordic Journal of Media Studies invites contributions to the 2027 issue exploring how scandals unfold and are communicated across media. The issue welcomes international as well as Nordic perspectives and asks the following questions: How have the emergence and development of scandals evolved with the advent of social media, algorithmic amplification, and platform-driven visibility? In what ways do audiences, users, and digital publics engage in the exposure, circulation, and escalation of scandal online? What counts as “scandalous” – and to whom? What are the (social, political, cultural, and personal) consequences of the disclosure of morally dubious and transgressive actions in a networked media landscape? How can scandals be understood as cross-platform and cross-mediated public events today? Can value be attributed to scandal communication and scandals as networked public events? What role do automation and emerging technologies of generative AI play in accelerating or fabricating scandal? How do new technologies complicate questions of responsibility and accountability in scandals and their aftermath? By addressing these questions, this issue offers new insights about the multiple trajectories and shifting temporalities of contemporary scandals, particularly in view of audiences taking on active roles in exposing, co-constructing, and driving scandal.

Media studies have long conceptualised scandals as the mediated disclosure of what a society considers morally dubious and objectionable (e.g., Lull & Hinerman, 1997). John B. Thompson’s (2000) classical definition stated that “‘scandal’ refers to actions or events involving certain kinds of transgressions which become known to others and are sufficiently serious to elicit a public response”. Occupied with the processes through which moral transgressions were scandalised and with the public reaction to scandal, Ari Adut (2008) similarly regarded scandals as “symbolic centers” that confirm, contest, or reinforce societal values. Scandals used to be extraordinary media events; however, mediatisation, personalisation, and celebritisation have, over the past decades, made, for instance, political, financial, and celebrity scandals the “new normal” (Pollack et al., 2018; Entman, 2012). Tabloid and investigative journalism continue to give prominence to the coverage of transgressive behaviour among celebrities, politicians, CEOs, and so on, but the rise of social media has also challenged the key role played by news media in uncovering, defining, and framing scandal and the scandalous.

Demarcating and tracing the unfolding of scandals has thus become more complex. Scandals today emerge and progress across media, involve multiple actors, are fuelled and amplified by emotionalised, personalised, and polarised communication online, and unfold intensely for short periods of time with more or less severe consequences for those involved. One might say that mediated scandals – or scandals as (news) media events (Thompson, 2000) – have transitioned into socio-mediated scandals – or scandals as communicative events (Zulli, 2021). Understanding scandals today necessitates analysing their rise and development as more unpredictable processes, as well as recognising the role of (social) media users in co-constructing and circulating the scandalous. At times, these users take on the role of investigating and exposing possible transgressions which may then travel to traditional news media. This challenges clear distinctions between participants and non-participants in scandals and the temporal unfolding of a scandal in relatively linear phases across media, as originally conceptualised by Thomspon (2000). Finally, the altered circuits of communication suggest that scandals may serve as sites for public value negotiation and creation with unifying, empowering, yet also polarising potential, as audiences articulate their worries, interests, and emotions online. As such, scandal communication may be seen as expressions or gestures of concern (Ingraham, 2021).

With this issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies, we thus invite scholars to explore how to understand processes of scandalisation and scandal communication in an era when social media users play a significant role in co-constructing the scandalous.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Scandals as cross-media events Visual dimensions of scandal communication
Memetic scandal communication
Gossip, rumours, and audiences’ scandal communication
Humor, irony, and scandal communication
Hate speech and scandal communication
Scandal and audience engagement in digital niche communities
Audience polarisation and scandal communication
Audience motivations for engaging in scandal communication
Audience engagement and public value
Self-scandalisation as a strategy for audience engagement
Methods for studying audiences’ participation in scandal
Theoretical perspectives on changing scandal dynamics
Historical perspectives on changing scandal dynamics
Comparative perspectives on audiences and scandal
Nordic perspectives on audiences and scandal
Emotion/affect in audiences’ scandal communication
Scandal as a site for changing morals and values
Scandal and the culture war
GenAI and scandalisation

References

Adut, A. (2008). On scandal: Moral disturbances in society, politics and art. Cambridge University Press.

Entman, R. M. (2012). Scandal and silence: Media responses to presidential misconduct. Polity.

Ingraham, C. (2021). Gestures of concern. Duke University Press.

Lull, J., & Hinerman, S. (Eds.). (1997). Media scandals: Morality and desire in the popular culture marketplace. Columbia University Press.

Pollack, E., Allern, S., Kantola, A., & Ørsten, M. (2018). The new normal: Scandals as a standard feature of political life in Nordic countries. International Journal of Communication, 12, 3087–3108. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/7099 

Thompson, J. B. (2000). Political scandal: Power and visibility in the media age. Polity.

Zulli, D. (2021). Socio-mediated scandals: Theorizing political scandals in a digital media environment. Communication Theory, 31(4), 862–883. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa014

Procedure

Those with an interest in contributing should write an abstract (max. 750 words) where the main theme (or argument) of the intended article is described. The abstract should contain the preliminary title and five keywords. How the article fits with the overall description of the issue should be mentioned.

Send your abstract to both editors by 15 January 2026 at the latest

Scholars invited to submit a full manuscript (6,000–8,000 words) will be notified by e-mail after the abstracts have been assessed by the editors. All submissions should be original works and must not be under consideration by other publishers. All submissions are submitted to Similarity Check – a Crossref service utilising iThenticate text comparison software to detect text-recycling or self-plagiarism.

Visit Crossref to learn more about Similarity Check

After the initial submission and review process, manuscripts that are accepted for publication must adhere to our guidelines upon final manuscript delivery. You may choose to use our templates to assist you in correctly formatting your manuscript.

Read the instructions for authors and download a manuscript template here

About Nordic Journal of Media Studies

Nordic Journal of Media Studies is a peer-reviewed international publication dedicated to media research. The journal is a meeting place for Nordic, European, and global perspectives on media studies. It is a thematic digital-only journal published once a year. The editors stress the importance of innovative and interdisciplinary research, and welcome contributions on both contemporary developments and historical topics.

Read the aims & scope of NJMS

About the publisher

Nordicom is a centre for Nordic media research at the University of Gothenburg, supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Nordicom publishes all works under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence, which allows for non-commercial, non-derivative types of reuse and sharing with proper attribution. All works are published Open Access and are available to read free of charge and without requirement for registration. There are no article processing charges for authors, and authors retain copyright.

Read Nordicom's editorial policies

Visit Creative Commons to learn more about the CC licence

Media and disability. Journalistic Representations, Digital Practices and Social Justice

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:51:26 GMT

Problemi dell’informazione (Special Issue)

Deadline: January 31, 2026

Guest editors: Gaia Peruzzi & Raffaele Lombardi

Description

Disability Media Studies is an emerging disciplinary field situated at the intersection of Disability Studies and Media Studies. Its common ground lies in the critique of essentialist conceptions of the concept of disability: the constructivist approach of Disability Studies merges with the critical spirit of Cultural Studies and with theories that emphasise the role of media narratives in the social construction of reality, in order to deconstruct the perception of disability as a purely material issue.

The intersectional orientation of the field, together with its focus on everyday and popular experience - whether physically lived (as emphasised by Disability Studies) or mediated (as examined within Media Studies) - are other elements that strengthen the convergence between the two strands.

Over the past two decades, Disability Media Studies has thus consolidated a critical and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the relationship between media representations and conditions of disability, helping to challenge traditional deficit-oriented frameworks, i.e. those perspectives that describe disability solely as a lack, deficiency or deviation from a presumed norm of full functionality (Ellcessor, 2016). Such traditional approaches reduce the person with disabilities to their clinical or biological condition, obscuring the social, cultural and political dimensions of the disabling experience. In contrast, this strand of scholarship promotes perspectives grounded in diversity rights and social participation (Ellis et al., 2025; Ellis et al., 2021; Shakespeare, 2018).

In the meantime, the evolution of sensitivities and mentalities, the erosion of the sharp boundaries between presumed normality and disability by new vulnerabilities (neurodivergences, attention disorders, etc.), the spread of inclusion policies, and above all the demographic transformations, which with the ageing of the population have made it clear that frailty and disability are universal and not exceptional conditions, have made the issue a social priority.

Today, Disability Media Studies, far from considering the media as mere channels of representation, investigates how journalistic practices, audiovisual productions, social media and digital platforms contribute to the construction of collective representations and imaginaries and, at the same time, influence inclusion and exclusion policies (Barden, 2018; Peruzzi, Battisti and Lombardi, 2024; Umar et al., 2024;). In particular, with the rise of digital media and participatory platforms, reflection has expanded to the active role of people with disabilities in the production of alternative content and narratives, capable of challenging dominant stereotypes and giving visibility to marginalised experiences (Jones et al., 2021; Baumgartner et al., 2021). Recent research highlights, for instance, how TikTok, YouTube or Instagram become spaces of self-representation and online communities where practices of cultural resistance and forms of digital activism emerge (Ellcessor & Kirkpatrick, 2017; Bitman, 2022). At the same time, it is pointed out that the platforms themselves are crossed by technological and algorithmic accessibility barriers that risk reproducing pre-existing inequalities (Alper, 2021; Holland et al., 2023). Furthermore, the presence of disabled activists and influencers on the Web, while obviously read as an opportunity for popularity of the topic, raises specific questions about the subjectivity-objectivity tension in professional journalism (Battisti, Bruno and Peruzzi, 2025).

In this perspective, Disability Media Studies is today a constantly evolving line of research, attentive to both the criticalities and the opportunities offered by the contemporary media ecosystem, and capable of interweaving cultural, sociological and political analysis of disability in the digital era (Pacheco & Burgess, 2024).

This monographic issue aims to bring together contributions that explore the state of Disabilities Media Studies, also from an international perspective. We welcome contributions that offer perspectives and methods to analyse how disability shapes media narratives and technologies, as well as how media represent and construct disabled bodies and subjects - and the world that surrounding them (caregivers, institutions and disability policies). Both a theoretical and empirical contributions are invited, provided they offer original insights for advancing reflection within the field.

This issue aims to contribute to a critical debate that refuses to separate the study of media from the cultural and political transformations shaping our societies. Within this framework, disability should be understood not as a marginal category but as a lens through which to reflect on the relationships between media, vulnerability, and social justice.

Below we outline a non-exhaustive set of possible thematic directions, which may also intersect with one another:

1. disability and Critical Media Studies: theoretical and methodological perspectives, approaches, methods of study, intersectionality;

2. frames and representations of the world of disability in information, mainstream journalism and social journalism;

3. frames and representations of the world of disability in mass-media narratives: literature, cinema, radio, theatre, etc.;

4. representations and narrative practices on disability in the platforms and "conversations" of online networks;

5. mainstream and specialist journalism on disability, disability influencers, editorial practices, disability-led media practices;

6. disability and social, institutional and political communication: disability campaigns, representation of people with disabilities and disability in diversity and inclusion policies, advocacy strategies, etc.;

7. disability and visual representations: problems and strategies of visual representation of disabilities, physical and cognitive;

8. disability and accessibility: inclusive communication practices; accessibility technologies and policies; social justice and medial citizenship processes.

Key dates:

Deadline for abstract submissions: January 31, 2026
Decision by issue editors sent by: February 15, 2026
Full paper submissions: May 30, 2026
First round of reviews completed by: July 20, 2026
Resubmissions of papers: September 20, 2026
Second round of reviews completed by: October 30, 2026
Submission of final manuscripts: December 15, 2026

Abstracts (300-500 words plus references) in English or Italian should be submitted at: https://submission.rivisteweb.it/index.php/pdi

Abstracts should be proposed for the section “Saggi”. Please indicate that the proposal is for the special issue edited by Peruzzi and Lombardi in the box “Comments for the editor”.

For further information about the submission process, please contact: gaia.peruzzi@uniroma1.it, r.lombardi5@lumsa.it

There are no APC (article processing charge) for authors.

About the venue

Established in 1976, Problemi dell’Informazione (PdI) has been the first Italian scientific journal focusing specifically on journalism and communication studies. Since then, PdI has represented a dedicated venue for the development of a vivid debate on these topics, fueled both by academic research and by contributions from professionals. More recently PdI has expanded its aims and scope by broadly considering all forms of communication, also to keep pace with the latest transformations in the field of journalism and of journalism studies. PdI publishes contributions in Italian and English after a rigorous double-blind peer review process.

Principal Editor: Carlo Sorrentino.

Here: https://www.mulino.it/riviste/issn/0390-5195 its national and international board.

Problemi dell'Informazione is A-class rated journal by ANVUR (Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems) in Sociology of culture and communication

Perspectives on Netflix’s Ripley

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:46:45 GMT

Deadline: May 15, 2026

I am pleased to announce a call for papers for the first edited volume devoted to the Netflix limited series Ripley (Zaillian, 2024). Perspectives on Netflix’s Ripley seeks to explore the myriad ways in which this striking adaptation reimagines Patricia Highsmith’s iconic character for a new era of streaming television. I invite proposals from scholars, practitioners, and critics whose work engages with adaptation, media studies, sexuality, and screen cultures.

About the Volume

Ripley, based on Highsmith’s celebrated novel, offers a noir-inflected meditation on duplicity, queerness, and identity within the seductive landscapes of mid-century Italy. Written and directed by Steven Zaillian and starring Andrew Scott in the titular role, the series stands at the crossroads of literary adaptation and the shifting aesthetics of contemporary streaming television. Its monochrome palette, deliberate pacing, and psychological intensity invite viewers to re-examine not only the figure of Tom Ripley, but also the very structures that define contemporary television.

This edited volume aims to situate Ripley within broader conversations about adaptation in the age of streaming, the affordances and limitations of new media, and the cultural, political, and psychological dimensions of the titular character. The volume seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue, and I welcome contributions from established and emerging voices. Join us in interrogating the darkness and allure of Ripley.

The aim is for a proposal for this collection to be submitted to Intellect, which has expressed an interest. It is designed for their Television Studies series.

Possible Themes and Topics

I encourage authors to engage with Ripley broadly and creatively. Submissions might address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Adaptation and remediation in the Streaming Age: How does Ripley rework Highsmith’s novel and remediate earlier screen versions (notably Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, René Clément’s Plein Soleil, and Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches)? What does adaptation mean within the context of Netflix’s transnational audience and algorithmic reach?
Streaming Television’s Affordances: In what ways does the streaming format—bingeability, episodic structure, global accessibility—shape the series’ narrative, formal, and thematic choices?
Sexuality and Queerness: How is desire, intimacy, and queer identity articulated in Ripley? How do the series’ visual, narrative and representational strategies encode or obfuscate sexual tension, power, and repression?
Visual Style: What is the significance of the show’s black-and-white cinematography, its painterly compositions, and its interplay with previous cinematic intertexts or the visual arts?
Soundscape and Score: How does the series’ musical score and sound design contribute to the construction of suspense, affect, and atmosphere?
Transnationalism and Locale: How does the series portray Italy and Italians? How does it portray émigrés living in Italy? What are the implications of setting and place for character and genre? How is Ripley situated in terms of Netflix’s transnational co-production output? What are the implications for its transnational microaudiences?
Class, Mobility, and Social Performance: In what ways does Ripley interrogate questions of class, aspiration, and the performance of identity?
Reception, Fandom, and Critique: How has Ripley been received by critics and audiences? What discourses have emerged on social media, in reviews, and among fans?

Aim and Scope

This book aims to assemble a diverse array of perspectives that illuminate the aesthetic, political, and cultural resonances of Netflix’s Ripley. By gathering essays that traverse disciplinary boundaries, I hope to offer a comprehensive account of how this adaptation both reflects and reframes the enduring fascination with Highsmith’s enigmatic antihero.

The collection will be of interest to:

Scholars of film, television, adaptation, and media studies
Researchers in gender, sexuality, and queer studies
Students and educators seeking new approaches to intermedial adaptation and remediation, and Highsmith’s work
Cultural critics and practitioners interested in streaming media’s impact on narrative
Fans of Highsmith, noir, and prestige television drama

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, outlining the proposed chapter’s title, contents, argument, approach, and significance.

Please include

Up to 5 key words outlining the proposed chapter’s focus.
A brief author biography (up to 150 words), including institutional affiliation and relevant publications.
An acknowledgement of use of AI in preparation of the abstract, if applicable, including the AI tool/s used, the extent of their use, and the prompts used. (up to 150 words).

Deadline: 15 May 2026

Please use the following webform for submissions: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2ON1aS110iv43gcEsqO2paSkt3ccQcWiAWcm9FStsBjvdyQ/viewform?usp=heade

About the Editor

The volume will be edited by Joy McEntee, author of the first monograph on the Ripley: Netflix’s Ripley: Television Antiheroes, Difficult Empathy, and the Aesthetics of Forgery (forthcoming). She is also co-editor of Kubrick and Race (2025) and author of Kubrick and Women (forthcoming).

Contact and Further Information

For all queries, please direct correspondence to joy.mcentee@adelaide.edu.au

Updates regarding the project will be posted to those who submit in due course.

Acknowledgement of AI

I acknowledge the use of CoPilot to generate this Call for Papers.

Gen Zs, Digital Media, Elections and the Politics of Inclusive Democracy in Africa

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:43:39 GMT

Deadline: January 15, 2026

Editors: Ufuoma Akpojivi, Job Mwaura, Teke Ngomba & Jimmy Ochieng

Focus of Study:

A growing body of scholarship has interrogated the dynamics of electoral politics in Africa with a particular emphasis on the implications of democratic backsliding, the resurgence of coups, and the shifting landscape of citizen engagement (see Ndlela and Mano 2020, Lilleker and Mutsvairo 2026). The electoral cycles of 2022 to 2025 have seen a significant number of African states, such as South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania and Kenya, amongst others, conduct elections, revealing a salient and often underestimated actor: Generation Z (Gen Z). According to Afrobarometer, 60% of Africa’s population consists of individuals aged 25 and below, most of whom fall within the Gen Z category (born between 1997-2012), and are considered to be digitally native (BBC n/d). This means that these Gen Zs are not only the future generation that will (re)shape politics and democratic processes in the continent, but their voices cannot be silenced or ignored in the democratic process, as their actions have a broader implication on democracy and democratic sustenance.

Rice and Moffet (2021) argue that Gen Z’s political behaviour stands apart from that of older generations. While the older generation of voters may tend towards caution and compromise, Gen Zs, on the other hand, are less willing to accept poor governance or systemic failure quietly. These inclinations described above are at the heart of recent varied forms of demonstration in countries such as Madagascar, Cameroon, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria, where these groups of young Africans have demanded good governance. Their constant exposure and access to information shape the forms and manner of their political engagement and participation. Their expressions are grounded in their critique of political and economic failures of African states, as these factors have formed the catalyst of their engagement (Mbugua 2025).

In light of the above, this proposed edited collection seeks to understand how Gen Zs are influencing political participation, electoral behaviours and democratic transformation across the African continent. We are interested in the broader questions of how Gen Z is (re)shaping political participation and elections in Africa? Are there structural or socio-economic barriers to Gen Z’s political participation? If there are, what are these and in what form do they exist? How is Gen Z’s voting behaviour different from other generations, and what is the broader impact of their voting behaviour on the electioneering process? What role, if any, do social media influencers and activists play in shaping the electioneering process and in influencing the political awareness of Gen Zs? Ultimately, this volume seeks to place Gen Zs at the centre of the current debates about democracy in Africa, not as future citizens, but as active political agents in the present.

We welcome submissions that address but are not limited to the following themes related to Gen Zs in Africa:

Political participation and everyday engagement with the state
Psychological factors that influence political participation and engagement (i.e. political interests, efficacy and agency)
Generational shifts in political behaviours, especially concerning electoral choices
Online and offline activism and protest cultures
Civic trust and policy influence
Trust, disillusionment, and civic withdrawal
Misinformation, disinformation and their impact on Gen Z’s political behaviour
Influencer politics, micro-celebrities, and youth mobilisation
Surveillance, voter suppression and politics of fear
Youth-State relations and the reimagining of political accountability
Informal political spaces and alternative forms of organising

Submission details:

Please, email a chapter proposal of up to 400 words and brief author’s biographical information and affiliations to the editors at ufuoma.akpojivi@gmail.com, job.mwaura@lmu.de and jochieng@iu.edu. Decisions on chapter proposals will be communicated to the authors by February 16, 2026. This proposed edited volume is earmarked for publication with a university press.

Note: We do not require an article publishing charge (APC)

Tentative Timelines:

January 15, 2026: Abstract submission deadline

February 16, 2026: Notification of decision

May 15, 2026: Deadline for the submission of the full draft

August 31, 2026: Feedback from peer reviewers

November 2, 2026: Deadline for submission of revised chapter

December 7, 2026: Final decision on chapter submission

February 1, : 2027: Submission of book manuscript to the publisher

References:

Afrobarometer (2023). Understanding the Youth’s Perspectives: Highlights of Afrobarometer R9 Findings. Online: https://www.afrobarometer.org/articles/understanding-the-youths-perspective-highlights-of-afrobarometer-r9-findings/#:~:text=Findings%20from%20the%20joint%20webinar,engagement%20with%20the%20youth%20demographic.

BBC (n/d). What is the Gen Z Stare? Online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zf8kfdm#zvjw3qt,

Lilleker, D. and Mutsvairo, B. (2026). Election Campaigning in Sub-Saharan Africa: Democracy, Societal Cleavages and Social Media. London: Palgrave

Mbugua, J. (2025). Why Kenyan’s Gen Z Has Taken to the Streets. Journal of Democracy, Online: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/why-kenyas-gen-z-has-taken-to-the-streets/#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%20year%2C%20the%20nation%20has,however%2C%20the%20state%20has%20responded%20with%20force.

Ndela, M. and Mano, W. (2020). Social Media and Elections in Africa, Volume 1: Theoretical Perspective and Election Campaigns. London: Palgrave.

Rice, L and Moffet, K. (2021). The Political Voices of Generation Z. New York: Routledge.

Researcher: Video On Demand, business models and carbon footprint

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:27:45 GMT

imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

The research group SMIT (Studies in Media, Innovation and Technology) is a research centre at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. It is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School, department Communication Sciences. It is also part of imec, Flanders leading strategic research institute for nano-technology and ICT innovation. For over 30 years, SMIT has been specializing in social scientific research on media and ICT, with an emphasis on innovation, policy and socio-economic questions.

The Media Economics and Policy (MEP) unit focuses on analyzing and ensuring the economic and cultural viability of content production, aggregation, and consumption. Researchers in the MEP unit work on fundamental and applied research tracks seeking to advance knowledge on how digitalization, internationalization, and platformisation are impacting the business models of traditional media players, how these media players innovate and interact with new players, and how governments contribute to sustaining or strengthening local media ecosystems. Our research projects cover both market and policy aspects for a multitude of creative sectors, from publishing and cultural heritage to broadcasting, film, video games, music, and documentary filmmaking.

Position description

More concretely your work package, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains:

StreamSCAPES is an EU / Horizon Europe-funded initiative that aims at analyzing and driving sustainable climate transition of video-on-demand platforms. The VUB is one of the research partners involved in this European interdisciplinary project, through its SMIT research centre.

You will conduct research and innovation activities to analyse carbon footprint in video streaming activities and support VOD services in their efforts to assess and reduce such footprint, in particular in their production and distribution activities. You will take an active participation in, and eventually lead, “sustainable business clinics” where you will provide practical guidance and support to small companies, fostering the improvement of their business models in alignment with environmental and economic sustainability goals. You will contribute to:

Guideline development;
Coaching sessions: implement coaching sessions within the sustainable business clinics. The focus is on assessing and reducing the companies’ carbon footprint while taking into account the business and market conditions;
Individual strategies and roadmaps: utilise the coaching sessions to identify various options for stakeholders and develop individual strategies and roadmaps for each partner. This personalised approach ensures practical and actionable steps for realising the potential of sustainable business practices.

During the sustainable business clinics, we will use the Green Producers Tool, the carbon calculator developed by one of the StreamSCAPES partner, the Green Producers Club. Therefore, the sustainable business clinics also provide the opportunity for the Green Producers Club to test their calculator prototypes, providing valuable feedback for continuous refinement.

Besides, you will contribute to an analysis of the value network of VOD services, to provide a high-level analysis of how they insert in audiovisual ecosystems, considering both economic and environmental aspects.

Your tasks will include

Business models and value network analysis
Lead or proactively contribute to the sustainable business clinics
Literature review and desk research
Daily project management and reporting to coordinator
Working on publications (peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters) and presenting research findings internally and to a broader academic community

Profile

What do we expect from you?

Master’s degree in management, economics, communication/media studies, engineering (industrial ecology, environmental/sustainability, computer science/ICT/network), data science/analytics, or a closely related field. You can proof you finished your studies with outstanding academic results.
Good knowledge of video-on-demand from a business and/or technical perspective is a strong asset
Experience with business modelling and company coaching is another strong asset
Ability to work independently, good self-management and planning skills
Teamwork skills
Flexible attitude when working in a dynamic environment with a variety of professional interlocutors
Interdisciplinary mindset
Analytical thinking and strong communication skills in English (including academic writing skills)

We Offer

A dynamic and stimulating work environment with enterprising young scientists and experienced senior research staff in an international setting;
High-quality innovative research on future-oriented services;
Support and guidance by and experience team of senior researchers;
Attractive VUB salary with extralegal benefits
A full-time contract: the position is initially for a duration 12 months that can be prolonged. There are opportunities for future funding acquisition which can lead to PhD opportunities and an academic career at SMIT.

Interested?

Deadline to respond: December 12, 2025

Do you have questions about the job content?

Contact Heritiana Ranaivoson at hranaivo@vub.be or Kitty Van der Schraelen at Kitty.Van.der.Schraelen@vub.be

Please provide a CV and if applicable, track record of publications including reports and academic publications to smit.jobs@vub.be.

Children's rights under pressure in a digital world: ICA Pre-conference 2026

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:18:43 GMT

June 4, 2026 (8:30-12:00)

Cape Town, South Africa (in person only)

Deadline: December 15, 2025

Keynote speaker:

Ann Skelton, Professor, University of Pretoria and University of Leiden, and former Chair, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

About the pre-conference

The Digital Futures for Children centre is pleased to announce the call for applications for the ICA 2026 pre-conference “Children’s rights under pressure in a digital world” organised in association with the ICA divisions Children, Adolescence and Media and Communication Law and Policy.

Children and young people are often the early adopters, the ‘canaries in the coalmine’ of digital innovation around the world. We are long past the early optimism that digital technologies would spur development and close global inequalities. Instead, today’s concerns focus on how dominant digital business models are fuelling societal transformations that increasingly undermine children’s rights. As digital connectivity expands across the global South, countries in the region are beginning to grapple with the same adverse effects of digital inclusion on children’s wellbeing that have already prompted concern in the global North. Growing evidence also shows that different groups of children experience these impacts unevenly, with new research highlighting the distinct challenges faced by indigenous children as connectivity reaches their communities.

Education and awareness-raising for a digital world are crucial, but they are insufficient on their own. Many now call for stronger regulation to rein in the power of big tech to commodify and reshape all aspects of everyday life in the interests of profit.

This is proving contentious, with key rights – safety, speech, privacy, participation – appearing to conflict and with stakeholders debating the respective responsibilities of government, industry, civil society, families, and educators in safeguarding children’s rights within a fast-moving and complex digital landscape.

Call for submissions

This pre-conference brings together scholars and practitioners to explore how research can inform policy, regulation and design, and how global South perspectives can inform and shape international debates. The discussions will combine different perspectives, expertise and approaches under the umbrella of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25 on Children’s Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment.

Possible topics include:

Artificial intelligence, governance, privacy and safety
Child rights-respecting AI design
Intersectional perspectives on children’s digital lives
Children’s participation in digital environments
Children’s digital labour and the platform economy
Commercial exploitation and children’s data
Children’s activism online
Children’s participation in digital governance
Algorithmic childhoods
EdTech and the right to education
Child rights by design
Age restrictions and age-appropriate design
Measures for protecting children in digital environments
Digital childhoods, parenting and rights

Submission guidelines

We welcome original research studies addressing the theme of children’s rights in the digital environment, from all disciplines, employing empirical methods, relevant theory, and contributing to children’s rights in the digital environment. We invite extended abstracts of up to 1500 words (excluding references and tables). Each abstract must include the following subheadings: research questions, theoretical framework, empirical method, key findings and a description of how the work relates to children’s rights.

Six keywords should be identified. Submissions should include two files – one anonymous with author information removed throughout, and the second with all author information (name/s, institution/s, contact details).

Submission deadline:

Extended abstract (up to 1500 words) deadline: 15 December 2025 (12:00 CET), sent to info@dfc-centre.net

Notification of acceptance: 15 January 2026

Publication: Following the pre-conference, DFC will publish the extended abstracts on its website, accessible via LSE Research Online repository, with authors’ permission.

Registration fee: $35, fees will be waived for students and participants from UN third-tier countries. Note: you do not have to be an ICA member or register for the main conference to attend this pre-conference.

This pre-conference is co-organised by:

Sonia Livingstone and Kim Sylwander, DFC, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (UK)
Patrick Burton (South Africa)
Magdalena Claro Tagle, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Chile)
Matías Dodel, Universidad Católica del Uruguay (Uruguay)
Jennifer Kaberi, Mtoto News (Kenya)
Admark Moyo, Faculty of Law, Stellenbosch (South Africa)
Julian Sefton-Green, Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Deakin University (Australia)
Fabio Senne, Cetic.br (Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society) (Brazil)

Queries are welcome, addressed to s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk

More about the pre-conference: bit.ly/preICA

Summer Intensive: Theorizing Communication in, of, and from the Balkans (TCB)

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:10:45 GMT

May 27-28, 2025

Online

Deadline: January 20, 2026

Scholars and practitioners at all career levels are invited to join the inaugural virtual summer intensive on Theorizing Communication in, of, and from the Balkans, May 27-28, 2026.

Responding to the academic dominance of Western theorizing of communication, this summer intensive aims to “come back to basics” and activate Balkan place-based knowledges to wonder together: What counts as communication in the first place and in this place? Who and what communicates? What forms of communication feel un/familiar and un/necessary? How is communication shaped by and how does it shape creative, educational, civic and political activities and processes, difference and belonging, community building and resilience, and (responses to) local and global crises and conflicts?

This summer intensive will welcome participants to inhabit together the in-betweens of the Balkans as a rich borderlands locale for communication theorizing, so that we can chart new place-based questions and paths for exploring them. We hope to foster a multinational, interdisciplinary, and intercultural scholarly community around shared interests in questions of communication in the region. We think of communication very broadly and welcome scholars and practitioners of any academic background who are actively engaged in analyzing, creating, and/or theorizing from and with Balkan (Southeastern European) perspectives and experiences.

In this two-day intensive, participants will first learn about culture-centered approaches (CCAs) and borderlands theorizing as models to elevate context-specific ways of knowing and being and how they are expressed and negotiated with/in communication. Workshops during the first day will focus on methodologies for culture-centered theorizing, such as ethnography, narrative and arts-based research, and critical realist analysis of media. During the second day, we will gather in participatory working groups to further explore how such approaches can be adapted or redefined in and from Balkan contexts. Participants will be able to connect with fellow academics regarding ongoing or future research projects and submit work emerging from the intensive to upcoming publications, including an edited volume.

Who Should Attend?

This summer school is open to scholars and practitioners, including graduate students, curious about and working on advancing communication theorizing with place-based Balkan perspectives and in relation to the varied socio-historic legacies and specifics of the region. Participants at any career level and from any academic field are welcome since communication is necessarily interdisciplinary: we think of it as paying attention to how symbols and signs function socially to make and negotiate meanings, identities, relationships, cultures, and historic and contemporary “wicked problems.” Thus, we particularly invite those interested in communication-related questions and theories relevant to the following themes and their intersections:

(Post-)Conflict experiences and representations
Creativities, imaginations, activism, and (resilient) communities
Identities and belonging (ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, race, etc.; dis/unifications)
Literacies and learning (e.g., mis/dis-information, critical media literacy, cultural forms and culturally-sustaining pedagogies)
Crises, risks, and violence (cultural, structural, direct)
Borderlands, liminalities, transitions, and knowledge decolonization

Registration

To be considered for the summer school, please submit your application no later than January 20, 2026 using the form linked here (opens in a new window). Please include the following two documents in English:

A brief statement of interest (maximum 500 words) detailing your academic background and why you are interested in this topic. What questions of communication in, of and from the Balkans interest you? What do you hope to gain from participation in the Summer Intensive? How do you envision your engagement with and contributions to the TCB Summer Intensive?
A current curriculum vitae (CV) or resume (maximum 5 pages).

The above information will be used to form preliminary working groups and focus the sessions of the summer intensive. Because of the number of facilitators, we are able to register no more than 40 participants total for this inaugural gathering. Should interest exceed this number, the organizers may have to exercise discretion in selecting participants.

Practical Information and Dates to Remember

Interest form due (linked here, opens in a new window): Jan. 20, 2026
Confirmation of participation sent: End of March, 2026
Dates of the TCB Summer Intensive: May 27 and May 28, 2026
Location: Virtual, over Zoom
Language: English
Registration fee: NONE

Confirmed Facilitators:

Dr. Lily Herakova, Communication and Journalism, University of Maine, Orono, USA
Deniza Mulaj, Mass Communication, Ohio University, Ohio, USA & Development Manager, Teach of Kosova, Pristina, Kosova
Dr. Senem Konedareva, Cultural Studies, American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
Dr. Jennifer A. Zenovich, Communication, California State University, East Bay
Dr. Marta N. Lukacovic, Communication and Mass Media, Angelo State University, USA
Dr. Ian MacMillen, Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies and Music, Yale University, USA

Contact

Dr. Lily Herakova, liliana.herakova@maine.edu

Funding for Research Sabbaticals (Fellowships) and Working Groups

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:02:00 GMT

The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS)

The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) funds innovative research on the societal impact of digital transformation. We support individual researchers (fellows) and collaborative projects (working groups).

Fellowships: Time and Space for Focus and Inspiration

A fellowship at CAIS provides the freedom to dedicate yourself to your research and the opportunity to become part of a vibrant interdisciplinary community. Step away from daily work routines to gain new perspectives and build lasting connections.

As a fellow, you can spend either six or three months in Bochum, Germany. During this time, we will cover your sabbatical leave from work through financial compensation (e.g. for a teaching substitute) or provide grants of up to 2.000 € per month. In addition, we will provide a fully furnished apartment free of charge. You can invite guests for collaboration and receive financial support for research expenses. Private offices and meeting rooms with modern facilities offer optimal working conditions.

Find out more: https://www.cais-research.de/en/cais-college/fellowships/

Working Groups: Boost Your Research Collaboration

A working group at CAIS enables you to assemble your own team of experts from different locations to collaborate in a stimulating environment.

We provide modern meeting facilities and catering for groups of up to ten members. In addition, we will cover travel and accommodation expenses. You can spend up to three weeks in Bochum or get together for several shorter meetings.

Find out more: https://www.cais-research.de/en/cais-college/working-groups/

Application

The next deadline for applications is 19 December 2025. You can currently apply for a fellowship taking place between April and September 2027, or for working group meetings in 2027. Please use the application forms provided on our website.

The funding program is open to excellent scholars and practitioners at all career stages and from all disciplines. Both fundamental research and applied projects are welcome.

Questions? Please contact esther.laufer@cais-research.de.

Autonomy In and Through Interactive Digital Storytelling

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 19:51:36 GMT

Journal of Interactive Narrative (Special Issue)

Deadline: January 19, 2026

This special issue is an initiative and sponsored by the Digital Storytelling and Innovation Network (DSIN), a research cluster hosted by the Leeds School of Arts.

Scope of the Special Issue

Building on previous work in the disciplines of art, design, communications and media —i.e. on open cultural production (Velkova, 2016b), the interactive digital narrative field (Murray, 2018; Rouse & Koenitz, 2018), interactive documentary production (Dubois, 2021), and autonomous art schools (Hudson-Miles and Goodman, 2024)— this special issue seeks contributions that raise questions of autonomy in and through interactive digital storytelling.

Recent scholarship has highlighted the need for negotiation of “human-machine co-creativity” (Fisher, 2023; McCormack et al., 2020) and distributed cognition (Taffel, 2019; Hayles, 1999).

We are particularly (but not exclusively) interested in surfacing complexity and ambiguities around maker agency and authorship within cooperative or independent interactive digital narrative (IDN) production arrangements. Communication and social interactions among makers in various human/nonhuman assemblages (Romic, 2022; Zylinska, 2020) and engagement with generative AI software in particular are of key interest.

The use and détournement (de Certeau & Rendall, 2004) of technological tools can lead to more or less creative autonomy (Banks, 2010) or craft autonomy (Velkova, 2016) in media making. This is particularly true in autonomous media (Langlois & Dubois, 2005) settings, where the final work and the process are intrinsically aligned with the very empowerment of makers of media.

Interactive digital storytelling practices —e.g. interactive film, narrative-based computer games (Buckles, 1985), digital and participatory theatre (influenced by Laurel, 2013), narrative virtual reality, or augmented reality stories— have seen practitioners share their autonomy together with increasingly interdisciplinary teams on the one hand, and end users on the other (as the limits of what is internal or external to production teams has become malleable at best). Put differently, Koenitz (2023) points to IDNs being ‘incomplete’, as long as the user is not interacting with it: “The designer of an IDN work no longer produces a finished object in the sense of a printed book or the theatrical release of a movie. Instead, they create artifacts that can be considered purposefully incomplete, as they require the active engagement by an audience to be fully realized.“ (p. 101)

In parallel, technological infrastructures such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and large language models have percolated production cultures to a point where the lines between what is maker-driven and what is algorithm-driven have started to blur. This in turn provokes questions of various forms of shared agency between human and nonhuman actors (Spierling & Szilas, 2009; Zylinska, 2020).

It is in this context of organisational and technological innovation in interactive digital storytelling production that we are asking how autonomy can be defined, as part of the shifting maker culture and where it is found/negotiated.

We are also interested, following the scepticism of writers such as Goldsmith and Wu (2007), about philosophical conceptualisations of the term ‘autonomy’ (see, for example: Coeckelbergh, 2004), including its manifestations in various niche contexts of interactive digital storytelling, such as Hakim Bey’s ‘temporary autonomous zones’ (1985).

We welcome research-creation scholars, reflective practitioners, critical and analytical scholars to participate in the special issue. Please submit one of three options by 19 January 2026 at: https://journal.ardin.online/index.php/jin/about/submissions

You can choose between:

1) a scholarly essay or paper of 6,000-8,000 words (excluding abstract, reference list, and meta information),

2) a 20-minute audiovisual-essay, or

3) a 12-minute IDN in combination with a short paper (between 2,400 and 3,200 words).

For any inquiry related to the special issue, don’t hesitate to contact us via autonomy@filmschule.de

Guest editors

Frédéric Dubois, Department of Digital Narratives, ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln

Bojana Romic, School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University

Important dates

20 October 2026: Publication of the call for papers

19 January 2026: Deadline for submission of draft manuscripts

2 February 2026: Desk-selection sent to authors

13 April 2026: Combined peer review and editorial review back to authors

15 June 2026: Deadline for submission of full advanced manuscripts

20 July 2026: Second and final review

21 September 2026: Deadline for submission of final manuscripts

1 November 2026: Papers are published as they are readied. They are bundled into a special issue post-publication.

References:

Banks, M. (2010). Autonomy Guaranteed? Cultural Work and the “Art–Commerce Relation.” Journal for Cultural Research, 14(3), pp. 251–269. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797581003791487

Bey, H. (1985). 'The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism', Available <https://hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont>.

Buckles, M. A. (1985). Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame “Adventure”. Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, San Diego. https://www.proquest.com/openview/c7864197158c0dc9cf96c199b4c9963e/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Coeckelbergh, M. (2004) The Metaphysics of Autonomy: The Reconciliation of the Ancient and Modern Idea of a Person. Palgrave Macmillan.

De Certeau, M., & Rendall, S. F. (2004). From the practice of everyday life (1984). The city cultures reader, 3(2004), p. 266.

Dubois, F. (2021). Interactive Documentary Production and Societal Impact: The Case of Field Trip. Doctoral thesis. Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.

Fisher, J.A. (2023). “Centering the Human: Digital Humanism and the Practice of Using Generative AI in the Authoring of Interactive Digital Narratives.” In: Holloway-Attaway, L. & Murray, J.T. (eds.) Interactive Storytelling. 16th International Conference of Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2023, Kobe, Japan, Proceedings, Part I. pp.73-88.

Goldsmith, J., and Wu, T. (2007). Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hargood, C., Millard, D., Mitchell, A., & Spierling, U. (Eds.). (2022). The Authoring Problem. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05214-9

Hayles, K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press

Hudson-Miles, R., and Goodman, J. eds. (2024). Cooperative Education, Politics, and Art, London and New York: Routledge.

Koenitz, H. (2023). Understanding Interactive Digital Narrative. Immersive Expressions for a Complex Time. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106425)

Langlois, A., Dubois, F. eds. (2005). Autonomous Media: Activating Resistance and Dissent. Montreal: Cumulus Press.

Laurel, B. (2013). Computers as theatre. Addison-Wesley.

McCormack, J., Hutchings, P., Gifford, T., Yee-King, M., Llano, M.T., D’Iverno, M. (2020). Design Considerations for Real-Time Collaboration with Creative Artificial Intelligence. Organised Sound 25(1), pp. 41–52

Murray, Janet. (2018). Research into Interactive Digital Narrative: A Kaleidoscopic View: 11th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2018, Dublin, Ireland, December 5–8, 2018, Proceedings. 10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_1.

Romic, B. (2022) ‘It’s in the Name: Technical Nonhumans and Artistic Production’. Transformations, issue #36. pp. 1-16. ISSN 1444-3775

Rouse, R., & Koenitz, H. (2018). “Preface: Authoring Our Own Disciplinary Identity as the Interactive Digital Narrative Field Matures.” In: Rouse, R., Koenitz, H., Haahr, M. (eds.). Interactive Storytelling: Lecture Notes In Computer Science. Proceedings of ICIDS 11th Interactional Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, Dublin Ireland, December 5-8, 2018, Springer Verlag.

Taffel, S. (2019). Automating Creativity - Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Cognition. Spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures. Spectres of AI #5. pp. 1-9. ISSN 2363-8621.

Spierling, U., & Szilas, N. (2009). Authoring issues beyond tools. In Interactive storytelling: Second joint international conference on interactive digital storytelling, ICIDS 2009, guimarães, portugal, december 9-11, 2009, proceedings (pp. 50–61). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10643-9_9

Velkova, J. (2016). Free Software Beyond Radical Politics: Negotiations of Creative and Craft Autonomy in Digital Visual Media Production. Media and Communication, 4(4), pp. 43-52. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v4i4.693

Velkova, J. (2016b). Open cultural production and the online gift economy: The case of Blender. First Monday, 21(10). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i10.6944

Zylinska, J. (2020) AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams. Open Humanities Press.

The Interplay of Physical and Digital Authoritarianism: Methodological and Theoretical Challenges and Approaches

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 19:46:41 GMT

April 7-10, 2026

University of Innsbruck, Austria

Deadline: December 10, 2025

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to invite paper proposals for my workshop at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops 2026: The Interplay of Physical and Digital Authoritarianism: Methodological and Theoretical Challenges and Approaches

Endorsed by the ECPR Research Network on Digital Authoritarianism, the workshop explores how offline (physical) and online (digital) forms of authoritarianism intersect and mutually reinforce each other across regime types. While there is a rich literature on traditional repression and a rapidly growing body of work on digital authoritarianism, we still know relatively little about how these domains are connected in practice and how to study such hybrid campaigns systematically.

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers that address (among others) the following themes:

Conceptualising the nexus of physical and digital authoritarianism, including links between long-standing offline practices and their digitally mediated adaptations
Methodological challenges of researching repression and control across online/offline spaces (e.g. access, risk, ethics, data limitations) and innovative solutions using digital, traditional, or mixed methods
Empirical studies of hybrid repressive campaigns (e.g. surveillance, censorship, disinformation, intimidation, carceral practices) spanning streets, institutions, and platforms
Cross-platform and cross-country analyses of digital authoritarianism and its entanglement with offline coercion in both authoritarian and democratic settings
The role of platform algorithms, AI, and data infrastructures in shaping authoritarian practices and their connections to physical repression

The Joint Sessions format is designed for intensive, small-group discussion: each workshop typically hosts 15–20 papers, giving participants the opportunity to receive detailed feedback and develop collaborative projects over several days.

Submission details

Where to submit: via the ECPR website (MyECPR account required) – click on “Propose a Paper” on the workshop page: The Interplay of Physical and Digital Authoritarianism: Methodological and Theoretical Challenges and Approaches

What to submit: paper title, abstract (up to 500 words), and 3–8 keywords

Call for Papers window: 5 November – 10 December 2025 (midnight UK time)

We particularly encourage submissions from early-career scholars and those working in or on constrained research environments. Interdisciplinary contributions (political communication, IR, sociology, area studies, media studies, etc.) are very welcome.

Please feel free to circulate this call within your departments, institutes, and networks, and to share it with PhD students and early-career colleagues who may be interested.

I look forward to receiving your proposals and to an engaging workshop in Innsbruck.

With best wishes,

Hossein Kermani

University of Vienna

Chair, ECPR Research Network on Digital Authoritarianism

Engaging Publics in Media, Cities and Space – and Boosting the Impact of Your Research

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 20:48:47 GMT

November 25, 2025

Online

The ECREA Media, Cities and Space (MCS) section invites you to attend our Engaging Publics 2025 Online conference on Tuesday, 25 November 2025. Please see information below. Registration is open (click on link below):

Engaging Publics in Media, Cities and Space – and Boosting the Impact of Your Research

An online one-day Conference by the ECREA Media, Cities and Space (MCS) section

Tuesday, 25 November 2025 | 10:00–17:00 GMT | Online

The ECREA Media, Cities and Space (MCS) section is hosting a free, one-day online conference exploring how to engage publics and amplify the impact of research in the inter- and multi-disciplinary field of media and urban studies.

Expect insightful talks on both traditional and alternative academic media formats - from monographs and journals to podcasts and walking tours - plus dedicated networking sessions.

Speakers include:

- Prof. Scott McQuire (University of Melbourne) – Media cities and urban communication: an evolving paradigm

- Dr. Marcos Dias (Dublin City University) – Repurposing a PhD into a monograph

- Dr. Lou Therese Brandner & Dr. Helena Atteneder (University of Tübingen) – Publishing journal articles: tips and best practice

- Dr. Burcu Baykurt (University of Massachusetts Amherst) – Editing as Method: Special Issues as Scholarly Practice

- Dr. Paul O’Neill (University of Galway) – Dublin Infrastructure Tour: Disseminating research through critical media art practice

- Linda Kopitz (University of Amsterdam) – Engaging publics in ‘small gauge’ online academic journals

- Dr. Scott Rodgers (Birkbeck, University of London) – Podcasting practice and the mediated city

Free and open to all, including early career researchers.
Opportunities to share work, network, and collaborate.

Also the event will conclude with:

• YECREA Post-Conference Networking Event (16:30–17:00 GMT)

Open to all Early Career Researchers (both YECREA and non-YECREA members). A chance to connect, share experiences, and discuss how the MCS section can support your research journey.

ECC2026: Call for pre-conferences

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 07:08:34 GMT

Deadline: November 30, 2025

The organisers of the 11th European Communication Conference (ECC2026) invite submissions of proposals for pre-conference events.

Pre-conferences are events that function independently from the main conference, each having its own program, budget, organisation, and logistics. The pre-conference organisers have full autonomy to define the thematic focus and design the format, duration, schedule, presentation style, and usage of innovative elements. They are also responsible for the peer-review process, which is separate from the review process of the main conference.

The pre-conference should occur before the main ECREA 2026 conference, ideally in Brno or nearby locations between 5 and 7 September 2026.

The ECC2026 Local Organising Committee may be able to help with contacts to possible locations in Brno. Still, the pre-conference organisers are responsible for securing the venue and catering for the pre-conference. For any inquiries regarding pre-conference organisation, please contact: info@ecrea2026brno.eu

Proposal Submission

The proposal for pre-conference (500-800 words) should include:

title and thematic rationale of the pre-conference,
date and location (if already available),
general format (full-day or half-day event),
brief presentation of the pre-conference organisers,
institutional links to ECREA (e.g., if the pre-conference is organised or endorsed by one of ECREA’s Temporary Working Groups, Networks, or Sections),
expected number of participants and budget (please note that participation fees for ECREA members should be lower than fees for non-members).

Please send the proposal in English as a PDF or Word document to info@ecrea2026brno.eu by 30 November. The local organising committee will evaluate the proposals and select pre-conferences. The proposals will be evaluated by 19 December 2025.

Upon selection, pre-conferences will be promoted via the ECC2026 website and communication channels and the ECREA website and communication channels.

Postdoctoral Researcher in Monetisation, Governance, and the Creator Economy at the Department of Media and Journalism Studies

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 22:13:16 GMT

Aarhus University

Apply HERE

The Department of Media and Journalism Studies within the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University invites applications for a postdoctoral position in monetisation, governance, and the creator economy. The postdoctoral position is part of the research project ‘New Media Monetisation’ funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF).

The postdoc is a full-time, 2.5-year fixed-term position. It begins on 1 March 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The School of Communication and Culture is committed to diversity and encourages all qualified applicants to apply regardless of their personal background.

Project

The New Media Monetisation project investigates the governance of new funding models for creators and influencers, including subscriptions, donations, and the purchase of products and services. The project approaches governance holistically, encompassing the social norms around fan-creator interactions, the rules codified in platform policies, the expectations built into the design of platform tools, and state regulatory initiatives. Subscription platforms like Patreon or OnlyFans, fundraising platforms like Kickstarter, or donation tools built into video platforms like YouTube or TikTok reconfigure the relationship between creators, audiences, and platforms. Creators are less dependent on traditional intermediaries but must engage in significant audience management. Audiences have unprecedented influence on cultural production but struggle to define appropriate boundaries around parasocial relationships. Platforms draw significant revenue from transactions but face growing pressure from regulators, venture capital, and competitors. Together, these factors monetisation an ideal site to investigate and shape the future of work, cultural production, and the platform society.

The New Media Monetisation position is situated within the CREATOR:GOV Lab, providing opportunities for collaboration, and the working language is English. The postdoc will develop their own project within the framework of New Media Monetisation and collaborate with the PI on related studies. While the postdoctoral project needs to address issues related to creators, monetisation, and governance, the context, methods, and disciplinary orientation are relatively open. Regarding context, projects can address any industrial sector or geographic region of the creator economy. Regarding methods, projects must involve empirical research but can employ qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. Regarding disciplinary orientation, the postdoctoral researcher should be comfortable working in an interdisciplinary environment but can target the research they lead toward relevant disciplinary audiences, conferences, and publication venues. The flexibility in focus is meant to attract innovative and impactful research proposals.

Postdoctoral position

The postdoc position involves 80% research, 20% teaching and departmental service, following the principles formulated in relation to the Independent Research Foundation of Denmark. The working hours (excluding holidays) are 1643 hours, which means that 20% of working hours corresponds to 328 hours annually. This typically means that the postdoctoral fellow will teach one major course annually, as well as perform other work tasks related to teaching, including supervision and exams.

Regarding research, the successful applicant will be expected to:

design research, in coordination with PI, that investigates the governance of new funding models for creators and influencers,
collect and analyse empirical data (flexible, but please specify),
present research at national and/or international events,
lead the publication of at least two articles for international journals or conference proceedings,
participate in the CREATOR:GOV Lab’s collaborative research environment through, for example, attending lab meetings, discussing relevant literature, and co-authoring papers.

Teaching and supervision

As postdoctoral researcher, your position is primarily research-based, but it will also involve a small degree of teaching and supervision. To that end, the successful applicant will be expected to take part in the department’s teaching and supervision activities related to BA courses like “Analysis of Digital Media” and “Media Systems Analysis” or MA courses like “Digital Media and Societal Transformations” and “Research Design and Method: Case Studies.” The successful applicant will be able to teach in English or Danish.

Qualifications

Required qualifications:

PhD degree or equivalent qualifications in a field relevant to the study of digital platforms, such as media studies, communication, information science, or sociology
expertise in the domains of platform governance, the creator economy, or platform labour, as documented by the dissertation and/or published research
publications in international journals or conference proceedings, including at least one lead or sole-authored article
ability to speak and write in English at an academic level, as documented by publications, conference presentations, and/or teaching experience in English.

Desired qualifications:

theoretical sophistication, reflected in the argumentation and conceptualisation of prior work and/or the proposed research
innovative approach to platform governance (including social norms, content moderation, or legislation), reflected in the writing samples and/or proposed research
experience with collaborative, interdisciplinary, and/or international research
strong communication and interpersonal skills to engage with the research team and external stakeholders.

Application

Interested candidates should submit the following material:

a cover letter explaining your qualifications for the position (1-2 pages)
a short proposal for the research you would lead under the ‘New Media Monetisation’ framework, indicating the type of questions, data, and analytic methods involved (1 page)
a CV
official documentation of a PhD degree or its equivalent
a full list of publications
two writing samples, at least one of which should be published
a teaching portfolio demonstrating your qualifications and approach to teaching

Please note that although the application process can be completed on the Aarhus University system without uploading publications, applications that do not include up to two uploaded writing samples will not be considered.

Additionally, please do not include letters of recommendation or references with the application. Applicants who are invited to an interview may be asked to provide references.

Work environment

We respect the balance between work and private life and strive to create a work environment in which that balance can be maintained. You can read more about family and work-life balance in Denmark.

Aarhus University also offers a Junior Researcher Development Programme targeted at career development for postdocs at AU.

International applicants

International applicants are encouraged to read about the attractive working conditions and other benefits of working at Aarhus University and in Denmark, including healthcare, paid holidays and, if relevant, maternity/paternity leave, childcare and schooling. Aarhus University offers a wide variety of services for international researchers and accompanying families, including a relocation service and an AU Expat Partner Programme. You can also find information about the taxation aspects of international researchers’ employment by AU.

The department

The place of employment is Department of Media and Journalism Studies, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark.

Prospective applicants are invited to view the department’s website.

School of Communication and Culture

The school is a part of the Faculty of Arts. You will find information about the school and its research programmes, departments, and diverse activities on its website.

Contact

For further information about the position, please contact the principal investigator (PI), Blake Hallinan by e-mail: bhallinan@cc.au.dk

If you need help uploading your application or have questions about the recruitment process, please contact Arts HR support by email: hsi@au.dk.

Qualification requirements

Applicants should hold a PhD or equivalent academic qualifications.

Formalities

The Faculty of Arts refers to the Ministerial Order on the Appointment of Academic Staff at Danish Universities (the Appointment Order).

Appointments shall be in accordance with the collective labour agreement between the Danish Ministry of Taxation and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations.
Further information on qualification requirements and job content may be found in the Memorandum on Job Structure for Academic Staff at Danish Universities.
Further information on the application and supplementary materials may be found in Application Guidelines.
The application must outline the applicant's motivation for applying for the position, attaching a curriculum vitae, a teaching portfolio, a complete list of published works, copies of degree certificates and examples of academic production (mandatory, but no more than two examples). Please upload this material electronically along with your application.

Aarhus University also offers a junior researcher development programme targeted at career development for postdocs at AU. You can read more about it here: https://talent.au.dk/junior-researcher-development-programme/

If nothing else is noted, applications must be submitted in English. The application deadline is at 11.59 pm Danish time (same as Central European Time) on the deadline day.

Aarhus University’s ambition is to be an attractive and inspiring workplace for all and to foster a culture in which each individual has opportunities to thrive, achieve and develop. We view equality and diversity as assets, and we welcome all applicants.

Shortlists may be prepared with the candidates that have been selected for a detailed academic assessment. A committee set up by the head of school is responsible for selecting the most qualified candidates. See this link for further information about shortlisting at the Faculty of Arts: shortlisting

Faculty of Arts

The Faculty of Arts is one of five main academic areas at Aarhus University.

The faculty contributes to Aarhus University's research, talent development, knowledge exchange and degree programmes.

With its 700 academic staff members, 200 PhD students, 9,000 BA and MA students, and 1,500 students following continuing/further education programmes, the faculty constitutes a strong and diverse research and teaching environment.

The Faculty of Arts consists of the School of Communication and Culture, the School of Culture and Society and the Danish School of Education. Each of these units has strong academic environments and forms the basis for interdisciplinary research and education.

The faculty's academic environments and degree programmes engage in international collaboration and share the common goal of contributing to the development of knowledge, welfare and culture in interaction with society.

Survey to understand research practices in Computational Communication Science

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 22:10:29 GMT

Dear colleagues,

As part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), we are conducting a survey to better understand research practices in Computational Communication Science. We invite you to participate in a short survey focusing on researchers’ attitudes, experiences, and intentions regarding the reassessment of prior research and the reliability of scholarly work in the field.

If you have conducted or are currently conducting research in the area of Computational Communication Science, we kindly invite you to participate. Your insights will contribute to a broader understanding of current practices, challenges, and opportunities in the field. We expect the survey to take approximately 10-15 minutes.

Link to the survey: https://www.soscisurvey.de/AutoFrontCCS/

Participation is anonymous and voluntary. The study has been reviewed and approved by the IRB at LMU Munich. If you’ve already received this invitation via another channel, please disregard this message to avoid duplicate responses.

Please feel free to distribute the survey invitation to any colleagues who might be interested!

If you have any questions about the study, please feel free to contact us at philipp.knoepfle@ifkw.lmu.de or Xinyue.Zhao@cais-research.de.

Thank you for your time and contribution!

Best regards,

Philipp Knöpfle, M.Sc. (LMU Munich)

Xinyue Zhao, M.A. (Center for Advanced Internet Studies)

Prof. Dr. Mario Haim (LMU Munich)

Prof. Dr. Johannes Breuer (Center for Advanced Internet Studies & University of Duisburg-Essen)

Book launch: Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Beyond: Theorising Society and Culture of the 21st Century

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 21:50:19 GMT

November 21, 2025

Online

We are inviting you to the launch of the book Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Beyond: Theorising Society and Culture of the 21st Century (Routledge 2025).

The meeting, organised by the Theory Study Group of British Sociological Association, will take place online on November 21st from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

More information about the event can be found HERE.

Registration is possible via the website: https://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/key-bsa-events/book-launch-algorithms-artificial-intelligence-and-beyond-theorising-society-and-culture-of-the-21st-century-routledge-2025/

Digital Authoritarianism in the Global South and East

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 11:54:26 GMT

April 7-10, 2026

University of Innsbruck, Austria

Deadline: December 3, 2025

at the ECPR Joint Sessions

World Internet Project – Switzerland 2025 (WIP-CH): Reports

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 11:51:35 GMT

The Media Change & Innovation Division at the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ) of the University of Zurich published 4 new representative survey reports from the World Internet Project – Switzerland 2025 (WIP-CH) last Thursday.

The main take away: generative AI deepens the digital divide in Switzerland and is increasingly becoming part of everyday life. In addition to the short summary below, you can explore the executive summary of the findings (English/German), the full reports (German), and various infographics (English/German) at mediachange.ch/news/187.

Short summary:

AI deepens the digital divide between generations

Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming part of everyday life. Most people in Switzerland are concerned about AI and the next generation of technology, but those who use AI regularly are more optimistic. While younger people spend more time online than they would like, older people and those with low digital literacy are falling behind. These are the latest findings from a representative long-term study by the University of Zurich.

In 2025, people in Switzerland spend an average of 5.7 hours online each day – three times more than in 2011 (1.8 hours) and two hours more than before the Covid pandemic in 2019 (3.6 hours). Among 20- to 29-year-olds, daily internet usage time reaches 8.4 hours. "For this age group, the internet has for the first time become more important than personal contacts – both for information and entertainment", says study leader Michael Latzer, Professor of Media Change & Innovation at the University of Zurich.

Social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram play a central role in the daily lives of young people (used by 95% of 20- to 29-year-olds), and their use is also increasing among older generations (58% among those aged 70+). The digitalization of everyday life is progressing rapidly: two out of three transactions are cashless, 39% of products are purchased online, and a third of work that can be done remotely is carried out from home.

Almost half of Switzerland uses generative AI regularly

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the share of the population that has used generative AI has risen sharply – from 37% in 2023 to 54% in 2024 and 73% in 2025. What began as one-time experimentation has turned into regular use: almost half of the people in Switzerland now use generative AI at least once a month (weekly: 21%, daily: 17%), and among 14- to 19-year-olds, the figure is as high as 84%. "Actual AI use is considerably higher, as AI is increasingly integrated into everyday services such as search engines and chatbots," says Latzer.

Generative AI is most commonly used in education and work (53%), with two-thirds of 20- to 29-year-olds doing so. Three in ten 14- to 19-year-olds say they use AI to create content they were actually supposed to produce themselves. For regular users, AI has also become an important advisor in everyday decisions, for example, regarding finances and career choices (21% each). However, compared to traditional sources, the overall importance of generative AI and influencers remains low: when it comes to political decisions, only 7% consider AI-generated information important, compared to 27% who rely on classic internet sources.

Surveillance, loss of control, and job fears – a call for AI regulation

Despite widespread use, skepticism and concern about potential risks remain high: while a clear majority (71%) of regular users believe AI helps them complete tasks more efficiently, only one in three thinks it will improve life overall. Six in ten people in Switzerland fear increased surveillance, and one in three worries that generative AI could spiral out of control or lead to mass unemployment. Accordingly, the demand for regulation is strong: one in two calls for stricter rules on generative AI – significantly more than for the internet in general (36%).

Artificial General Intelligence" is coming – with negative consequences

Almost half of Swiss internet users believe that generative AI will soon evolve into "Artificial General Intelligence" – a general-purpose application that surpasses humans in nearly all areas of life. More than half of them expect this to happen already within the next five years. Those who use AI regularly are more likely to believe in the emergence of such "Artificial General Intelligence". However, this belief is accompanied by growing concerns about consequences: 60% of the population and 49% of AI users expect "Artificial General Intelligence" to have mostly negative effects on humanity. In contrast, attitudes toward the internet remain far more positive: 60% believe it is good for society.

Skepticism toward cyborg technologies prevails

The next generation of technology combines internet-, bio-, and nanotechnologies with the aim of enhancing human abilities and overcoming biological limits – for example, through so-called cyborg products. While Silicon Valley has high hopes for such future technologies, the Swiss population remains skeptical: only one-fifth believes in their potential, rising to 30% among AI users. The majority, however, see mainly risks, such as new forms of cybercrime (78%), privacy violations (67%), and social inequality (64%).

AI fuels divides between young and old

Social divides in digitalization follow age and internet skills, reinforced by the use of AI. While 91% of 20- to 29-year-olds in Switzerland rate their internet skills as good to excellent, this applies to only 59% of those aged 70 and above. The difference is even more pronounced when it comes to generative AI: almost half of 14- to 19-year-olds feel comfortable using it, but only 20% of those aged 70 or older do. These differences are reflected in the sense of belonging to the information society. Only 34% of the population feel part of it, 25 percentage points less than in 2015. The sense of inclusion is particularly low among older people (19% among those 70+) and those with lower internet skills (14%), while 20- to 29-year-olds and people with high internet skills feel significantly more integrated (54% each).

While older people and those who do not use AI are falling behind, younger people and AI users are struggling with digital overconsumption. More and more people are spending more time online than they would like (38% vs. 2019: 24%). 82% of 14- to 19-year-olds and 58% of AI users want to reduce their usage time.

Authors: Michael Latzer, Noemi Festic, Céline Odermatt & Alena Birrer

RIPE @ 2026 Conference: Politics and Public Service Media

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 11:43:57 GMT

October 20-23, 2026

Taipei, Taiwan

Deadline: February 28, 2026

https://iapmr.media/category/ripe/

The 13th biennial RIPE conference is sponsored by the Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation (PTS) and hosted by the School of Communication at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Our theme focuses on the politics and politicization of public service media (PSM). The organizers welcome proposals for papers analyzing how political forces, trends, processes, and influences affect PSM structures, operations, and performance. There is particular interest in challenges for maintaining independence and ensuring sustainability in a shifting policy and technological environment. RIPE@2026 will convene experts and scholars from around the world, especially including the Global South, in a collaboration to advance understandings that matter for theorization and practice.

Elaboration of the Theme

Many have observed that politics are an inevitable aspect of public service media policy with significant implications for practice. PSB was established partly on a political foundation in the early decades of 20th century, mainly in Europe, with a mission to serve people as citizens rather than consumers, to preserve and promote cultural diversity, to care about the interests of disadvantaged and minority groups, and above all to maintain an independent stance vis a vis both the state and market. Today, PSB has become PSM and is challenged by digitalization, platformization, international media companies, escalating costs for content rights, especially in sports, public value testing requirements, and uneven competitive performance. Promoting cultural diversity and encouraging tolerance across sociocultural aspects are under attack by far-right political movements.

In the Asia-Pacific region, public broadcasting is navigating development challenges in a context of shifting geopolitical dynamics. Lacking European traditions, Taiwan PTS confronts unprecedented challenge to its budget, its international news role, the intended purposes of the Taiwanese Language Channel, and neo-colonialism dispute over some historical related programs. The Conservative party has been especially active in holding PSM accountable. The rise of commercialization and digitalization has been complicated and complex.

For the first time, the RIPE@2026 conference will focus attention on the politics of PSB/PSM, a critical area of contemporary discourse in a globally inclusive dialogue. The conference welcomes paper proposals relevant to six aspects of crucial importance that although distinct are interconnected.

Topics of specified interest

1. Political Dynamics, Media Capture, and PSM Autonomy

The conference welcomes empirical and theoretical exploration of the complex and often fraught relationship between PSM and the political sphere. Topics of interest include but aren’t limited to:

Critical examination of the diversity of political actors—including governments, political parties, and civil society organizations—and their interactions that affect PSM.
Research about negotiations, challenges, and the defense of PSM autonomy that clarify broader power dynamics related to threats of political interference and state capture. This matters greatly for safeguarding journalistic integrity and maintaining independence.
Political challenges to funding and how PSM organisations are coping.
Governance and relations: legislative frameworks, appointments to governing and bodies and managerial roles, best practices in governance, and the nature of state interventions.
Understanding how regional bodies like ASEA (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) contribute to or influence national media policy discussions.
The role and practices of civil society organizations and public advocacy in both defending and challenging PSM independence.

2: Geopolitics, Global Power Shifts, and the Evolution of PSM

The conference welcomes papers that analyze overarching global trends, pressures, and influences that are shaping the establishment, funding, and developmental trajectories of PSM in countries around the world. Topics of interest include but aren’t limited to:

Examination of the complex interplay of power and politics over time, especially illustrating how global forces transcend national borders to influence the domestic media landscape’s fundamental architecture.
Legacies of colonial broadcasting and how they have been adapted or repurposed. This may relate to the geopolitical experience of decolonization and the Cold War that have influenced the establishment and subsequent evolution of PSB / PSM in newly independent states.
The role of international regulations, standards, and control over digital infrastructure (e.g., internet cables, satellite frequencies) for enabling and constraining PSM's ability to operate across borders.
Case studies of the impacts of foreign aid, technical assistance, and ideological alignment from major powers that have shaped PSM infrastructure, training, and content priorities.

3. Policy-Making and Regulatory Regimes in a Shifting Media Environment

The conference welcomes papers investigating how media policies are formulated and implemented across varying political systems in time and space. Topics of interest include but aren’t limited to:

Examination of media-government relations to understand how media institutions are conceptualized as partners in national development and operate under varying degrees of state control.
Comparative analysis of public media policy frameworks across different countries and regions, especially in Asia and countries of the Global South.
The role of various stakeholders in policy-making: governments, regulators, industry, civil society, and political parties.
Challenges and trends in media regulation: content standards, market competition, and accountability in the digital environment.
Technological convergence and its implications for traditional regulatory boundaries and PSM operational models.

4. PSM in the Digital Age: Navigating Disinformation and Platform Power

The conference welcomes papers focused on advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that are fundamentally reshaping the public sphere, creating an “algorithmic era” where information flows, content curation, and public discourse are increasingly influenced by automated systems. Topics of interest include but aren’t limited to:

Research on PSM’s proactive and reactive strategies for combating AI-empowered information manipulation.
The political implications of algorithmic bias, transparency deficits, and content moderation practices (often driven by proprietary AI) for PSM impartiality, pluralism, and ability to foster informed public debate.
Ethical frameworks, internal governance models, and professional standards for AI use within PSM organizations.
Research on beneficial developments for PSM in harnessing AI.
Political implications of algorithmic curation and content moderation for PSM’s visibility and impartiality.
Understanding how various nations, particularly those in the diverse and technologically advanced Global South and Indo-Pacific regions, grapple with these challenges and opportunities.

5. Trust, Neutrality, and Public Legitimacy: The Political Battleground

The conference welcomes papers on public trust, the perceived neutrality, and PSM legitimacy and effectiveness that are increasingly contested in politically polarized societies. Topics of interest include but aren’t limited to:

Work on conceptualizing and achieving political neutrality and impartiality in diverse political contexts.
Factors contributing to the erosion of public trust in PSM, including perceived political bias or capture.
Factors accounting for higher trust in PSM news and information than media in the commercial sector where trust has remained strong or increased.
The role of PSM in fostering media pluralism and providing diverse perspectives in fragmented information environments.
Accountability mechanisms for PSM: transparency, public complaints, and independent oversight.
Case studies of PSM navigating political attacks and efforts to delegitimize its public service mission.

6. Emerging Agendas: Sustainability, DEI, and the Future Mandate of PSM

The conference welcomes papers focused on how developments in sustainability goals (environmental, social, and economic) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies are increasingly integral to PSM contemporary mandates and challenged on ideological grounds. Topic of interest include but aren’t limited to:

Integrating environmental and social sustainability goals into PSM operational practices and content strategies.
DEI policies and practices in PSM: representation in content, workforce diversity, and inclusive governance.
Political challenges to sustainability and DEI mandates.
PSM’s role in fostering civic engagement and public discourse on climate change, social justice, and other issues of critical importance, especially for countries in the Global South.
Future proofing PSM: adapting mandates to address emerging and evolving societal needs to maintain both political and popular support.

Submission Requirements

Abstracts for RIPE conferences are submitted through the RIPE Ex Ordo Platform. Each submission should include two parts:

A title page listing the working title, author name(s), job title(s), organizational affiliation(s) with location, and the corresponding author’s email address; and

A main document containing the working title, an abstract of no more than 600 words, two relevant conference themes, and up to six keywords.

To ensure an impartial review process, please do not include any identifying information (such as names or affiliations) in the main document. All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review conducted by the conference’s scientific committee.

The deadline for abstract submissions is 28 February 2026. Review decisions will be finalized in March, and notifications of acceptance will be sent on 1 April 2026. Accepted authors are expected to submit their full papers by 1 August 2026.

The conference website will be launched in the beginning of December 2025, and the link to RIPE Ex Ordo Platform for submitting the abstracts will announce same here in January 2026.

Selection Criteria

Submissions will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

Relevance: The abstract’s alignment with the overall conference theme and its fit within one or more of the six designated themes.
Scholarly Quality: For empirical studies, the soundness of the theoretical framework and methodological rigor; for conceptual papers, the originality and significance of the concepts and arguments presented.
Practical Contribution: The extent to which the paper offers implications or insights for public service media (PSM) practice.
Presentation Quality: The overall clarity, coherence, and quality of the abstract.
Diversity of Perspective: Special consideration will be given to papers addressing PSM issues in the Global South.

Approximately 60 papers will be selected for presentation at the conference. The conference language is English.

Registration and Fees

Conference registration website will open in April 2026, including the information of participation fees. Please note that RIPE does not provide financial support for personal travel expenses, except for invited keynote speakers. The conference registration fee will include two dinners (welcome reception and gala dinner), 3-day lunches, coffee breaks, and all conference sessions and materials.

Conference Schedule

The RIPE 2026 Conference will span two and a half days, from October 21 to 23, 2026. A welcome reception will be held on the evening of October 20, prior to the start of the conference.

Day 1 (October 21) will take place at Public Television Service (PTS), Taiwan, while Days 2 and 3 (October 22–23) will be hosted by National Chengchi University (NCCU). A gala dinner will be held on October 22. The afternoon of the final day will feature a guided city tour for all participants. Depending on interest, an optional social program will be offered on October 24, the day following the conference, at an additional cost for those who wish to participate.

Contacts:

For answers to questions related to logistics or other practical matters not addressed here, you can send an email to either of the following addresses:

The Conference organizer’s email address: ripe2026nccu@gmail.com

For information about the International Association of Public Media Researchers (IAPMR), please email: contact@iapmr.media

ECREA celebrates 20 years!

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 08:20:31 GMT

Founded on 25 November 2005 in Amsterdam, ECREA has grown into a lively community of communication scholars across Europe and beyond. Throughout November, we are celebrating this anniversary by sharing memories and reflections from our community in each weekly issue of the ECREA Digest.

You can check the memories HERE.

We are still collecting contributions — if you have a memorable moment to share, please write to info@ecrea.eu.

Join us in celebrating!

Call for Applications: YECREA Section Representatives 2026

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 21:31:04 GMT

Deadline: November 15, 2025

The Young Scholars Network (YECREA) of the ECREA seeks early-career researchers to serve as section representatives. We have 3 vacant positions, offering opportunities for emerging scholars to help shape their field while gaining international leadership experience.

Available Positions

We are seeking representatives for the following Sections, Temporary Working Groups (TWG), and Networks:

Central and East-European Network
Science and Environment Communication
Organizational and Strategic Communication

We recommend applying to the section where you typically present your research and whose scholarly conversations you wish to join more actively.

Position Overview

The role of a YECREA representative involves working closely with the section leadership to advance research and support early-career scholars in their respective fields. Key responsibilities include:

Collaborating with section management teams on academic events
Organizing pre-conference workshops and meetings
Facilitating networking opportunities for young scholars
Disseminating information about field-specific opportunities
Contributing to YECREA’s strategic initiatives

The position of YECREA representative requires approximately 5-8 hours per month on average, depending on the activity of the section and your own initiative.

While this is currently an unpaid volunteer position, it provides valuable opportunities for professional development. Representatives gain hands-on experience organizing academic events while building an international network in their field. Through active

involvement in section activities, the role offers a platform to develop leadership capabilities and increase visibility within the research community.

Eligibility and Requirements

PhD candidates and post-doctoral researchers in non-tenure positions
ECREA membership (required upon acceptance)
Minimum one-year commitment (ideally two)
Fluent English communication skills

Application Process

Submit a single PDF document (max. 500 words) containing:

A heading with your name and the specific position you are applying for
Details on your current university, position, and career progression (1 paragraph)
A brief description of your research + a brief statement on your work’s connection to the specific section, TWG, or network (1 paragraph)
A brief statement on your aspirations for improving early-career research/experiences (1 paragraph). For this point, please acquaint yourself with the YECREA website and our strategic initiatives.
A short CV (max. 2 pages, not included in the word count).
Team applications (two people) are welcome. We encourage applications from researchers of all backgrounds and institutions across Europe.

Submit applications and/or questions to: yecreanetwork@gmail.com

Timeline

Deadline: 15 November 2025, 23:59 CET

Results notification: 15 December 2025

On-boarding: late January 2026

The YECREA managing committee will evaluate applications based on research alignment, motivation, and commitment to supporting emerging scholars.

For section details: https://www.ecrea.eu/Sections

Comics and Machines

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 21:07:05 GMT

April 22-23, 2026

Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm & Uppsala University

Deadline: December 1, 2025

steering committee:

Jan Baetens, Jaqueline Berndt, Jan von Bonsdorff, Gareth Brookes, Benoît Crucifix, Björn-Olav Dozo, Anna Foka, Isabelle Gribomont, Andre Holzapfel, Per Israelson, Gaëtan Le Coarer, Ilan Manouach, Pedro Moura, Everardo Reyes, Keith Tillford, Ray Whitcher

Today, the field of comics is undergoing a profound transformation marked by a growing heterogeneity of forms, formats, and production processes. From synthetic comics, operational images, data-driven visualization to embodied, non-visual comics, comics are expanding beyond the conceptual and historical frameworks that have traditionally defined it. Existing models in research— grounded in the artisanal craft traditions, narratology, text-image correlation, and human-centered authorship— are struggling to account for this rapidly diversifying landscape. Craft-based approaches might appear resistant or inadequate in the face of new technological practices that recombine production, circulation, and reception through computational logics.The current moment compels a broader redefinition of comics as fundamentally technical objects. The boundaries that once separated comics from technical and operational systems are dissolving. To grasp the full scope of these developments, we must account for comics as sites where technological processes are not external influences but internal engines — where creation is entangled with computation, standardization, and new modes of mediation. As computational processes— from machine learning to synthetic image generation and communication systems powered by computer vision— increasingly shape the creation, distribution, and experience of comics, it is no longer sufficient to understand the medium solely through the lenses of narrative, visual storytelling, or artisanal craft. Recognizing comics as engineered configurations of information, relational diagrams, and experimental knowledge structures is not a speculative gesture; it is a necessary step for understanding the profound transformation underway in the medium’s ontology, practice, and future potential.

Within this expanded computational landscape, comics increasingly function as sites of artistic research— experimental configurations that generate knowledge through making rather than merely representing it. As comics engage with computational systems, they become laboratories for investigating the material conditions of contemporary media production. These research-oriented practices extend beyond traditional academic boundaries. Rather than simply illustrating research findings, comics-as-research deploys their unique capacity for relational thinking— the medium’s inherent ability to orchestrate temporal, spatial, and conceptual relationships — to investigate how technical systems reshape creative labor, audience relations, and the very possibility of narrative meaning. This artistic research dimension positions comics not as objects of study but as active investigative tools, capable of generating insights about computational culture that emerge specifically through the medium’s hybrid technical-aesthetic operations.

We are pleased to announce a two-day international conference on April 22-23, 2026 at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and at Uppsala University dedicated to examining the rapidly evolving landscape of comics. Rather than framing this transformation solely as a rupture, the conference seeks to situate it within a longer history of computational rationality— a lineage in which the medium has continuously negotiated the demands of efficiency, scalability, and technical constraint. Our aim is to critically rethink comics not as passive recipients of technological change, but as active computational configurations: media fundamentally entangled with systems of automation, standardization, and information processing.

We welcome submissions addressing the following areas (among others):

Histories of automation and engineering in comics production and distribution
Transformations in formats and workflows driven by technological change
Comics as data: informatization, discretization, and database design
Human-machine collaborations in past, present, and speculative comics practice
Audience and user labor in automated platforms and circulation systems
Data-mining and recirculation techniques in digital comics ecologies
Machine subjectivities: authorship, intention, and expression in machinic agents
Computational archiving practices: scraping, clustering, and vectorization
Speculative and critical practices addressing automation and machinic mediation
Industrial logics in comics: international and comparative perspectives
Resistance to automation: sabotage, slow media, and disobedient design
Operational aesthetics: the visual and affective languages of automation
Speculative histories and alternative futures of comics as technical media
Comics as simulations: diagrams, blueprints, and procedural environments
Comics as artistic research methodologies: practice-based inquiry and knowledge production where comics are used to interrogate emerging technologies and social systems

We invite submissions for the following presentation formats:

Research Papers (20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion): Traditional academic presentations suitable for theoretical, historical, or analytical work
Practice-Based Presentations (15 minutes + 15 minutes discussion): Presentations by creators, artists, and practitioners demonstrating work and reflecting on process
Interactive Demonstrations (30 minutes): Hands-on sessions showcasing new tools, platforms, or methodologies
Panel Discussions (90 minutes): Collaborative sessions bringing together multiple perspectives on specific themes
Lightning Talks (5 minutes): Brief presentations ideal for work-in-progress, provocations, or preliminary findings
Workshop Sessions (3 hours): Extended collaborative sessions for skill-sharing and collective exploration of tools and methods

Abstract length : 250 words

Short bio: 150 words

Deadline for abstracts: 1st December 2025

Notifications of acceptance: 30th December 2025

Send to: conference@echochamber.be

Postdoctoral Researcher in Digital Methods and the Creator Economy

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:44:28 GMT

Aarhus University

Apply here: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPG525/postdoctoral-researcher-in-digital-methods-and-the-creator-economy

The Department of Media and Journalism Studies within the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University invites applications for a postdoctoral position in digital methods and the creator economy. The postdoctoral position is part of the research project ‘PAY4PLAY: Entrepreneurial Organising in the Platform Society,’ led by Assistant Professor Blake Hallinan and funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

The postdoc is a full time, 2.5-year fixed-term position. It begins on 1 February 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The School of Communication and Culture is committed to diversity and encourages all qualified applicants to apply regardless of their personal background.

Project

The PAY4PLAY project is an interdisciplinary, large-scale investigation of organising in the creator economy concerned with how creators and their communities come together and create value. The project is premised on the idea that organising is essential to understand how creators—and people more broadly—both exploit and challenge the growing power of digital platforms. Internally, creators bring together co-producers, volunteers, and audience members into platform-based associations with (1) hierarchical structures, (2) monetised interactions, and (3) asymmetrical relationships. Externally, creators form alliances to shape the conditions of content production. The project approaches creator organising from three perspectives (culture, infrastructure, policy) and compares three industrial sectors (gamers, VTubers, adult content creators). In so doing, the project will map the industrial conditions of the creator economy, develop a new theory of organising and platform power, and provide policy recommendations for platforms and regulators.

The PAY4PLAY team includes the principal investigator Blake Hallinan, three PhD researchers who will each focus on one of the industrial sectors, and this postdoctoral research position, as well as an international network of advisors and collaborators. The project is situated with the Creator Economies Lab, and the working language of the project is English, although data collection will also include Japanese and Spanish. The postdoc will lead a sub-project titled ‘Sociotechnical infrastructures for managing and monetising communities’, using digital methods and social media data to research the influence of platforms and third-party tools. The sub-project is flexible, meaning that the postdoc will have the opportunity to design studies, in coordination with the PI, which align with the researcher’s interests and methodological skillset. The postdoc will also have the opportunity to collaborate with team members working on the sub-projects focused on culture and policy.

Postdoctoral position

The postdoc is research-only and the successful applicant will be expected to:

Design research, in coordination with PI, which investigates the influence of platforms and third-party tools on the creator economy using social media data and digital methods
Collect social media data using platform APIs and/or web scraping
Analyse large-scale data using appropriate digital methods (flexible, but please specify)
Present research at national and/or international events
Lead the publication of at least two articles for international journals or conference proceedings
Participate in the Creator Economy Lab’s collaborative research environment through, for example, attending lab meetings, discussing relevant literature, and co-authoring papers.

Comparison as Method and Heuristic in Communication Research

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:37:33 GMT

September 23-25, 2026

Vienna, Austria

Deadline: February 27, 2025

Back in November 2006, the former Commission for Comparative Media and Communication Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the Department of Communication at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, organized a workshop on this topic (Melischek et al., 2008). That workshop examined the state of comparative media and communication research in German- speaking countries, addressing core questions: What is comparative communication research? What are its objects of study? And what is the scientific value of comparison? At the heart of the discussion was comparison as a method and methodological principle.

Call for Papers (Themes)

1. Innovations, New Developments, and Approaches in Comparative Communication Research

Questions might include:

How can emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, or natural language processing enhance comparative research designs in communication studies?
In what ways do automated content analysis and large-scale digital datasets (e.g., news archives, digital platforms) reshape the scope and scale of comparative research?
How can comparative methods be adapted to address new forms of digital and hybrid media, such as influencer communication, platform governance, or algorithmic curation?
How can mixed-method approaches strengthen comparative communication research?
How can we ensure that long-term panel designs evolve methodologically in response to technological developments without compromising their scientific rigor and comparability?
What are best practices for ensuring transparency, replicability, and ethical integrity in technologically mediated comparative studies?

2. Methodological Reflection and Critique

Questions might include:

What are the methodological implications of using computational tools for comparability—do they introduce new biases or overcome traditional limitations?
How can we make comparative research more participatory, inclusive, or decolonial—both in design and in interpretation?
How can comparative research contribute to the de-Westernization of communication studies?
How should comparative research reflect upon the concept of national states?
How relevant is historic comparison to understand current developments? What are the obstacles and potentials we have to consider?
How do comparative approaches manage the demand for replicability, the tension between internal and external validity, or generalizability?

3. After Comparison: Making Use of Comparative Results

Questions might include:

How can comparative results be theoretically integrated or related back to existing frameworks?
What generalization strategies (e.g., typologies, model building) are especially fruitful in comparative research?
How can comparative insights be made productive across interdisciplinary contexts?
In what ways can comparative findings inform methodological innovation or open new research perspectives?
What is the value of comparative results for policy-makers and other stakeholders—and how can we rethink discursive science-to-policy or science-to-public processes.

Submission Guidelines

Please send your submissions containing separate PDF files for cover page and anonymized extended abstract to cmc@oeaw.ac.at.

The deadline for submissions is February 27, 2026. Submissions will undergo peer review, and acceptance notifications will be sent out no later than March 30, 2026.

Date

The conference will open with a keynote and panel discussion on the evening of September 23, 2026. Authors of accepted extended abstracts will present their papers in person in Vienna on September 24 and 25, 2026. The conference will conclude around noon on September 25, 2026.

Organizers

Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies (CMC) Austrian Academy of Sciences | University of Klagenfurt Bäckerstraße 13

1010 Vienna, AUSTRIA

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/cmc

Contact: cmc@oeaw.ac.at

Conference Venue

The conference will be held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), located in the heart of Vienna at Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna, AUSTRIA.

Conference Registration

Registration will be open from March 30, 2026. Conference attendance is free.

Publication

The organizing team aims to publish selected contributions and results of the conference in an academic context.

References

Chan, J. M., & Lee, F. L. F. (Eds.). (2017). Advancing comparative media and communication research. Routledge.

Esser, F., & Hanitzsch, T. (Eds.). (2012). The Handbook of Comparative Communication Research. Routledge. Holtz-Bacha, C. (2021). Comparative media research. European Journal of Communication, 36(5), 446-449.

https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231211043179

Livingstone, S. (2003). On the challenges of cross-national comparative media research. European Journal of Communication, 18(4), 477-500. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323103184003

Melischek, G., & Seethaler, J. (2017). Die Institutionalisierung der Kommunikationswissenschaft an der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Geschichte und Aufgabenbereiche des Instituts für vergleichende Medien- und Kommunikationsforschung [The institutionalization of communication science at the Austrian Academy of Sciences: History and areas of responsibility of the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies]. Geistes-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Anzeiger , 152(1), 65-98. https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger152-1s65

Pfetsch, B., & Esser, F. (Eds.). (2004). Comparing political communication: Theories, cases, and challenges. Cambridge University Press.

Volk, S. C. (2021). Comparative communication research: A study of the conceptual, methodological, and social challenges of international collaborative studies in communication science. Springer VS.

Distributed Citizenship: Sharing, Shifting, and Appropriating the Chores of Democracy Across Platforms, Networks, and Infrastructures

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:34:00 GMT

International Journal of Communication (Special Section)

Deadline: May 31, 2026 (full papers)

Information overload and political and news fatigue are part of everyday life. Few of us can or want to stay up to speed on every issue or engage equally across all issues and arenas. This special section asks how citizens share, delegate, or even outsource the work of democracy, and when does this distribution empower citizens, and when does it deepen inequality. We invite contributions that rethink how contemporary democratic engagement is practiced, organized, and mediated. Theoretical, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method work are all welcome, and especially from underrepresented contexts.

To help authors connect and refine ideas, we are also hosting a workshop in Bergen (Norway) in early March 2026. It will be a chance to meet, discuss, and develop work-in-progress together. Not mandatory but encouraged.

Key dates:

Abstracts (for workshop): 15 December 2025

Workshop: Early March 2026, Bergen

Full paper submission: 31 May 2026

Expected publication: Summer 2027

Read the full call and submission details here: https://www4.uib.no/en/research/research-projects/distributed-and-prepared-a-new-theory-of-citizens-public-connection/call-for-papers-special-section-on-distributed-citizenship

For inquiries, feel free to contact us (details in the link).

Guest Editors: Emilija Gagrčin, Hallvard Moe, Özlem Demirkol-Tønnesen, and Mehri Agai / Media Use Group, University of Bergen: https://www4.uib.no/en/research/research-groups/bergen-media-use-research-group

Funded by the European Union (ERC, PREPARE, 101044464).

Artificial Intelligence and Communication in Europe – Literacy, Creativity, and Human Labour

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 18:50:01 GMT

Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research

Deadline: March 31, 2026

Special Issue co-edited by Cristina Ponte (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal), Philippe J. Maarek (UPEC, France), and Leen d’Haenens (KU Leuven, Belgium).

Europe is experiencing a rapid AI-driven transformation of communication. Generative AI (e.g., large language and image models) and predictive AI (e.g., recommendation algorithms) are now embedded in media, culture, and everyday life. For example, recent reviews note that AI tools like ChatGPT support every stage of news production, reshaping editorial workflows, while also generating new ethical and human labour concerns. Journalists have reported AI-powered surveillance systems that collect unprecedented volumes of data on citizens. AI‑driven targeted messaging has enabled political actors to personalize communication at an unprecedented scale, while at the same time, AI has been extensively used for disinformation, deepfakes, and algorithmic amplification of misleading content. The latter use of AI has particularly contributed to a new kind of Cold War against Western democracies. In response, European policymakers and educators emphasize digital and AI literacy for all citizens. This Special Issue invites diverse scholarship examining how AI technologies affect communication processes, media practices, and social and political life across Europe. We especially seek people-centered and comparative perspectives on AI’s role in communication, drawing on interdisciplinary methods.

Thematic scope

This issue welcomes contributions that explore the social, cultural, and political dimensions of AI in European communication contexts. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: AI and digital literacy; AI’s role in sustainability and green communication; AI-driven innovation in creative industries; AI’s part in internal political communication as well as between European countries. We invite studies of how generative AI tools (e.g., for text, audio or image creation) and predictive systems (e.g., recommender algorithms, automated content moderation) transform media and artistic practices. Critical analyses of AI-induced deskilling and reskilling of creative and communicative labor are encouraged. Contributions may examine systemic and personal risks: e.g., algorithmic bias, privacy violations, misinformation, surveillance, impacts on mental health as well as AI’s implications for work. In particular, we welcome research on AI’s effects on employment in the creative and media industries, the gig or platform economy, and emerging human-machine interfaces such as brain-computer interaction. European policy and regulatory contexts (e.g., the EU’s AI Act, media regulation) and the metaphors embedded in public discourses on AI are also highly relevant. We encourage

theoretical and empirical submissions (quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods) and especially those offering European or comparative perspectives (acknowledging that much existing scholarship is concentrated in a few countries).

This Special Issue is open to innovative approaches from communication, media studies, philosophy, sociology, political science, cultural studies, design research and related fields. In the spirit of recent Communications calls, we welcome both established and early-career researchers.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- AI and literacy/education: Digital, media, and AI literacy among European youth and educators; curriculum development for AI; participatory media projects on AI.

- AI and sustainability: AI in environmental communication; green technology literacy; AI for climate change awareness and action; “green” AI and media sustainability.

- AI in creativity: Use of AI in artistic and cultural production (film, music, design, visual arts, literature); AI-assisted creativity; questions of authorship, aesthetics, and authenticity.

- Automation and deskilling: How AI automates creative or communicative tasks; effects on professional roles in journalism, design, advertising, film, etc.; new skills and competencies required.

- Risks and harms: Algorithmic bias and discrimination; data privacy and consent; manipulation; misinformation, deepfakes and their potential for abuse in the political communication process; surveillance capitalism; personal autonomy; mental health and social well-being’s troubles in AI-mediated communication.

- Ethics: Principles of transparency, fairness, inclusivity, accountability, reliability, responsibility, and explainability; generative morality; integrative ethics.

- Human labour and work: Impacts of AI on labour in creative/media industries, the platform economy, and knowledge work; precarity and exploitation on AI-driven platforms; unionizing and collective action in AI-era workplaces.

- Human-machine interaction: Interfaces and devices that mediate communication (including brain–computer interfaces, virtual/augmented reality, chatbots and agents) and their implications for identity and social interaction, including uses of AI as new warfare tools.

- Media and journalism: Deployment of generative and predictive AI in newsrooms, fact-checking, and content curation; effects on journalistic norms, audience engagement, and the public’s right to information.

- Policy, regulation, and discourse: European AI governance, media regulation, and ethics frameworks; public debates and communication around AI; cross-national comparisons of AI policies.

- Methodological and theoretical innovation: Interdisciplinary, critical or historical studies of AI; novel research methods (e.g., design research, human-centered AI studies, computational methods) applied to communication questions.

Contributions are expected to foreground European experiences or comparative analyses that include Europe. We welcome submissions from diverse disciplinary and methodological backgrounds: for example, cultural analysis, political economy, design research, ethnography, surveys, experiments, computational approaches, as long as they address the human and communicative dimensions of AI. As with previous Communications Special Issues, we are interested in conceptual frameworks as well as empirical insights.

Submission procedure and timeline

Authors should submit a 600-700 word abstract outlining the central issue or research question, the theoretical or methodological approach, and anticipated conclusions or contributions. Abstracts (in English) should be emailed to the guest editors at comm.special.issue@gmail.com by March 31, 2026. We encourage clear and inclusive language that will appeal to a wide academic readership. Prospective authors may contact the editors in advance to discuss their proposals. Decisions on abstracts will be communicated by April 30, 2026. Invitations to submit full papers will be issued shortly thereafter. Invited manuscripts (full papers) will be due by August 31, 2026 and should be prepared according to the journal’s author guidelines. All submissions will undergo peer review under Communications’ standard double-blind process. The invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee acceptance. We anticipate that the Special Issue will be published in autumn 2027. There will be no publication fee.

For inquiries or further information, please contact one of the guest editors: Prof. Cristina Ponte (cristina.ponte@fcsh.unl.pt), Prof. Philippe J. Maarek (p.j.maarek@gmail.com), or Prof. Leen d’Haenens (leen.dhaenens@kuleuven.be). We look forward to your submissions and to advancing the conversation on AI and communication in Europe.

Timeline: Abstract deadline March 31, 2026; notification by April 30, 2026; full paper submission by August 31, 2026.

Media Realities International Symposium

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 18:48:08 GMT

April 29-30, 2026

Jönköping University Sweden

Deadline: December 12, 2025

Organisers: Annette Hill (MKV, Jönköping University) and Hario Priambodho (Lund University)

Media realities face multilevel challenges. Realities play off varieties of representations, technologies and experiences. Media realities are rooted in different professional traditions, e.g. film and television, radio and journalism, gaming, social and synthetic media. There are multiple routes for realities, including archives and records, representations and remixes, virtual and artificial intelligence. These roots and routes for media realities take place in intense, contested settings regarding trust, truth and treatment of the real.

In a post referential framework, traditional knowledge systems associated with media and public service institutions face intense scrutiny by audiences and publics, politicians, NGOs and policy and community leaders. For example, engagement with witnesses and accounts of real events, or experts and explanations of scientific knowledge struggle to maintain referential integrity. Is reality played out?

This symposium addresses the multiplicities of realities within empirical and theoretical research across media and communications, digital technologies, culture and society. The combination of panels and roundtable discussions foster critical perspectives and methodological reflections on the performative and distortive aspects of media past, present and future. Key questions for this international symposium include 1) what are the various understandings and practices of media realities across industries, technologies, culture and society? 2) How are representations of realities constituted and contested in public, popular and mediated spheres?

We invite researchers to explore, analyse and understand the theme of media realities across the following connected areas of enquiry:

Professional practices for media and representations of realities;
Creating realities in film and media, radio and music, virtual realities and AI, gaming and live events, arts and museums;
Deep fakes and manipulation of realities in automated and artificial content:
Media and realities within social movements, mobilisation and activism;
Political realities in news, documentary, information, disinformation and polarization
Popular realities in fiction, drama and entertainment:
Varieties of engagement and experiences of media and realities;
Communication of realities within organisations and media, film and cultural industries;
Realities and mobility, transnational communication and transportation of goods and services, humans and non humans
Global, local, transnational and decolonial media and realities

The programme for the symposium across two days includes keynote panels with invited speakers of senior and junior scholars, editors and publishers and open parallel panels. There will be a dedicated website, streaming podcasts of keynote speakers and selected papers from the symposium will be edited in international academic publications, in collaboration with Routledge and Intellect. The senior editors at Routledge and Intellect Press and open access peer reviewed academic journal Media Theory will be present, chairing a workshop on impact, quality research and academic publishing for scientific books and journals.

International invited speakers include Julia Brockley (Intellect Press), Simon Dawes (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France), Natalie Foster (Routledge), Annette Hill (Jönköping University, Sweden), Tim Markham (Birkbeck, UK) Hario Priambodho (Lund University, Sweden) and Robert Willim (Lund University, Sweden).

Please submit an abstract of 300 words in English by deadline Friday 12 December 2025 to Hario Priambodho (hario.priambodho@iko.lu.se). For further information please consult our website https://ju.se/mediarealitiesinternationalsymposium2026

There is a registration fee of 2800 SEK. The fee covers lunches, beverages and snacks over two days, and an end of symposium meal.

Media Cymru Innovation Conference and Showcase 2026

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:14:58 GMT

September 14-17, 2026

School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales

Deadline: January 16, 2026

Organised by Cardiff University’s Centre for the Creative Economy, the Media Cymru Innovation Conference and Showcase will spotlight research and innovation in the media and creative industries, with a focus on making them greener, fairer, globally connected, and economically sustainable. Participants can look forward to an engaging and interdisciplinary programme featuring invited speakers from across academia, industry, and policy, including national and international experts in media and creative industries. A full list of keynote and featured contributors will be announced in due course.

Conference Themes and Topics

Submissions should align with (at least one of) our four themes: Green, Fair, Global, and Growth. These themes reflect Media Cymru’s four strategic pillars, which serve as tracks for submissions:

Green – Environmental Sustainability: Research on the media’s role in tackling the climate crisis. Topics include the role of media content in responding to the climate crisis, sustainable film/TV production, green broadcasting technologies and practices, energy-efficient infrastructure for creative studios, and case studies on carbon reduction in media and the wider creative industries.
Fair – Inclusive & Equitable Creative Industries: Research promoting a fair, equitable and diverse media sector. Topics include diversity and inclusion in media content and production, representation and accessibility in film, television and gaming, community media initiatives, minority language media production and consumption, and research that focuses on how to create greater equity in the creative industries.
Global – International Collaboration & Reach: Research on expanding the global impact and connections of small creative industries companies or regional ecosystems. Topics include international co-productions and partnerships, cross-cultural innovation in media, export of creative content, global audiences and markets, creative tourism, and comparisons of creative economy policies across regions. Work that highlights place-based innovation in the global creative landscape is especially welcome.
Growth – Creative Economy Development: Research driving economic growth and productivity through media R&D and innovation. Topics include creative entrepreneurship and startups, media business models and monetisation, creative hubs and regional cluster development, skill development and talent pipelines (linking education with industry), impacts of emerging technologies (AI, XR, gaming) on the creative economy, and evaluations of creative industry support programs or policy interventions.

The above list of topics is not exhaustive. We welcome proposals that explore media workforce development, particularly in-work training, upskilling, and professional development models that support fair work across the media

and creative industries. The committee also welcomes submissions with a focus on R&D methodologies and practice-based research closely aligned with industry needs and engagement. If you are unsure whether your topic fits, please contact the organisers.

Submission Guidelines and Publication

Submission Format: Authors are invited to submit abstracts of up to 500 words (excluding references) by 16th January 2026.

How to Submit: Abstracts must be submitted in PDF format via the Frontiers in Communication submission portal.

Frontiers | Media Cymru Innovation Conference and Showcase 2026: Call for Papers

Conference Proceedings and Publication Opportunities

Attendance

Location: Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK (in-person)
Conference and Showcase Activities: Following the conference, a two-day showcase will highlight the innovations and impact of the Media Cymru programme. Attendees will be invited to explore the latest in sustainable and inclusive media innovation, from immersive storytelling to green production models. The showcase offers valuable opportunities to connect with industry professionals, discover new collaborations, and engage with bold ideas shaping the future of media.
About Media Cymru: Media Cymru is working towards sustainable and inclusive economic growth in the Welsh media sector. Backed by £49 million in funding, including £22 million from UKRI’s Strength in Places Fund and significant investment from government and industry, Media Cymru is a collaborative initiative led by 22 partner organisations. If you want to learn more about Media Cymru, click here.
Bursary support: A limited number of registration fee waivers will be available for eligible presenters.

Important Dates

2025

15 Oct – Call for Papers opens

2026

16 Jan – Submission deadline
14–17 Sept – Conference and Showcase take place

All deadlines are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE). Early submissions are appreciated.

Contact and Organisers

The conference is organised by Media Cymru and the Centre for the Creative Economy at Cardiff University.

Contact: mcconf@cardiff.ac.uk

Full professor of Communication, Cognition, and Information

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:07:32 GMT

Tilburg University

Apply here.

Tilburg University | Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences is seeking a full professor of Communication, Cognition, and Information

Department: Communication and Cognition

Location: Tilburg

Contract size: 0.8 – 1.0 FTE (32 – 40 hours per week)

Full-time gross monthly salary: minimum €7,202 and maximum €10,441

Contract duration: 18 months, with the prospect of permanent employment

Context

The Department of Communication and Cognition is highly multidisciplinary and combines communication and cognitive sciences with artificial intelligence (AI) and (computational) linguistics, human-computer interaction, psychology, and sociology. We conduct both fundamental and applied research, striving to contribute to today's major issues. For example, we study how we can improve communication about climate change, how we can use data to properly inform patients about treatment options, and how we can turn polarized online discussions into more constructive interactions. We also work on improving the understanding and the responsible use of AI and digital technologies. We use a wide range of methodologies, including experiments, surveys, corpus analysis, computational modeling, interviews, digital ethnography, and design research. In addition, we are responsible for a successful Bachelor's and Master's program in Communication and Information Sciences. Within these programs, students can follow three tracks: Bedrijfscommunicatie and Digitale Media, Communication and Cognition, and New Media Design.

In the Department, we place great emphasis on sustainable research and education and attach great importance to academic freedom and scientific independence. We do also encourage team science and (interdisciplinary) collaboration (with colleagues within and outside the Department) because we believe this is essential to tackle the complex challenges we face. We see research as a steady and curiosity-driven process that requires careful reflection and attention. That is why we value slow science and prefer quality over quantity.

Description of the chair

Due to the departure of a colleague and the growth of our Department, we are looking to strengthen our team with a full professor who will conduct research and teach on the cognitive or social aspects of human communication (face-to-face or digital). In terms of content, you will align with and help shape one of the Department's priorities (e.g., climate communication, responsible and human-centered AI research, health communication, misinformation and polarization, and interpersonal and multimodal communication). You are also expected to be willing and able to take on administrative positions within the Department and to help shape education and research for the coming years, based on the values that are central to the Department.

Research

The research that you conduct is interdisciplinary and can be qualitative and descriptive as well as quantitative. You will help shape the Department's research program through the research and the broader initiatives you develop. To this end, you help set the research agenda, develop new research lines, and are committed to (methodological) innovation. You also take the lead in raising external funds for research, mentor and inspire colleagues, and actively seek collaboration with others, both within and outside the University. You critically reflect on your field and on the (social) consequences of your research and identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement where possible. You further develop and contribute to a sustainable and positive research climate in the Department, in which slow science and ethically responsible and open research are central.

Education

You will teach students in the Bachelor's and Master's programs in Communication and Information Sciences (CIW) and can also contribute to other programs if desired. You help create an environment in which high-quality, inspiring, and critical education is possible for both students and lecturers. You provide ideas and initiate new educational initiatives that contribute to a future-proof study program that is scientifically in-depth and socially relevant. In doing so, you also build bridges between the CIW study program and other degree programs within and outside the School. You have a clear vision on education and also critically reflect on the role of academic education in society and on our position and responsibility as a University and as lecturers to contribute to complex (social) issues.

Management

You take responsibility for the management of the Department. In this role, you help to formulate a sustainable and future-proof vision and research and education strategy. You also actively contribute to a value-driven, inclusive, and sustainable academic environment based on openness, integrity, trust, and solidarity. You take responsibility within the Department and beyond, setting an example for others. You are able to fulfill administrative roles elsewhere in the University as well and you reflect critically on academia in a broader sense. You also contribute to the positioning and profiling of the Department and the School within and outside the University.

Team spirit

You feel responsible and are committed to your colleagues, the Department, and the School. You are mindful of the common interest, actively seek cooperation with others, and share your knowledge and experiences. You are open to reflection and feedback and contribute to a positive culture and working environment.

Impact

You initiate activities that influence or benefit society and the wider environment in the short and long term. Where possible and desirable, you seek collaboration with social partners and make efforts, for example, to involve society and underrepresented groups in your research. You share the results of your work with a wider audience, for example through public lectures, participation in panels, debates or advisory committees, professional publications, or media appearances.

Profile and requirements for the chair holder

The prospective chair holder has the following profile characteristics:

Holds a PhD and conducts excellent, (methodologically) innovative, and in-depth research on one or more of the Department's core themes.
Is an excellent lecturer who provides inspiring, high-quality, and critical education.
Has an affinity for and a demonstrable ability to work in an interdisciplinary manner in both research and education.
Has a clear vision of sustainable education and research and clearly promotes and demonstrates the importance of slow science and ethically responsible and open research.
Has demonstrable leadership and administrative skills and is willing and able to take on administrative roles, both within the Department and beyond.
Encourages research by others by taking on the role of leader and inspirer and has a team-oriented and connecting attitude towards colleagues and others (academic citizenship).
Is able to build bridges (within the Department and beyond) between the themes and initiatives that are relevant to the Department and the University.
Embodies the core values of the Department and embraces Tilburg's vision of Connected Leading, Recognition and Rewards, inclusivity, and diversity.
Has experience in supervising young researchers (PhD researchers) and in applying for and leading research projects.
Has excellent command, both in writing and orally, of the Dutch and the English language at CEFR C-2 level.
Possesses a UTQ and excellent presentation and communication skills.

What we offer

Tilburg University offers excellent terms of employment in a pleasant working environment:

A position based on 0.8–1.0 FTE (32–40 hours per week).
A salary of at least €7,202 and at most €10,441 gross per month for full-time employment, based on the UFO profile for Full Professor 2. Tilburg University uses a neutral remuneration system for grading based on relevant education and work experience.
This is a vacancy for a position in accordance with Article 2.3(1) of the CLA NU (Collective Labor Agreement for University Professors). You will receive a temporary contract for a period of 18 months. If, in the opinion of the employer, you perform well, on the condition that there is continuity in the same position and that there are equal financial and organizational circumstances, you will receive a permanent contract thereafter.
A vacation allowance of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.
The option to work partly on campus and partly from home, with a working-from-home allowance of €2 per day and a monthly internet allowance of €25.
Reimbursement for sustainable commuting: walking, cycling, and public transport.
An Options Model in which you can exchange employment conditions for, for example, additional leave, more pension, a bicycle, or personal training at our Sports Center.
Relocation allowance (subject to conditions).
Employees from outside the Netherlands may be eligible for the 30/20/10% tax facility.
Pension through the ABP.
Wide range of training options: personal development, leadership, education, research, or language courses.
A work culture in which we embrace differences, everyone is welcome, and everyone has equal opportunities.
A vibrant campus in a green environment that is easily accessible by public transport.

For more information, visit our website and consult the Collective Labor Agreement for Dutch Universities.

Information and application

For more information about this position, please contact the Head of Department, Prof. dr. Juliette Schaafsma, j.schaafsma@tilburgUniversity.edu or +31 (0)13-4663579.

We cordially invite you to apply no later than November 10, 2025; applications can only be submitted online.

As part of the application, we ask you to include the following documents:

cover letter
CV (maximum 10 pages)
your vision on research and education (maximum 1 page each)
at least two references (including their names, telephone numbers, and email addresses)

An assessment may be part of the selection process.

Ideally, you will start in this position at Tilburg University on April 1, 2026.

This vacancy has been published internally and externally simultaneously.

About Tilburg University

Tilburg University is an academic, inclusive, and engaged community. Together with nearly 3,000 employees, we are committed to broad prosperity, sustainability, for everyone, and for current and future generations. We develop and share knowledge for the needs of people and our society. In this way, we contribute to solving complex societal issues and help society move forward.

We educate our 19,500 students of 110 nationalities to become responsible leaders with knowledge, skills, and character. With our education and research into broad prosperity, we focus on themes such as mental and preventive care, an inclusive labor market, the energy transition, and digitalization.

About the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences

Research and education at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) has a unique focus on humans in the context of the globalizing digital society, on the development of artificial intelligence and interactive technologies, on their impact on communication, culture and society, and on moral and existential challenges that arise. The School of Humanities and Digital Sciences consists of six departments: Communication and Cognition, Computational Cognitive Science, Intelligent Systems, Culture Studies, Philosophy, and the Tilburg Center of the Learning Sciences. The University College Tilburg is also part of the School. The School has approximately 3,100 students and around 270 employees. Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences | Tilburg University)

Recruitment code

Tilburg University applies the recruitmentcode of the Dutch Association for Personnel Management & Organization Development (NVP).

Disclaimer

The text of this vacancy advertisement is copyright-protected property of Tilburg University. Use, distribution and further disclosure of the advertisement without express permission from Tilburg University is not allowed, and this applies explicitly to use by recruitment and selection agencies which do not act directly on the instructions of Tilburg University. Responses resulting from recruitment by non-contractors of Tilburg Universities will not be handled.

Doctoral Position in the Research Project “Audiovisual Content Production on LGBTIQ+: Agents, Industrial Contexts, Platforms, and Impact Expectations”

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:02:19 GMT

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Description of the Position

The Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) invites applications for a doctoral position within the research project PID2024-160145NB-C21, funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI).

The selected candidate will join the research team and work in close collaboration with the PI and the research team, the doctoral researcher will:

Develop a PhD thesis aligned with the objectives of the project.
Contribute to the design, implementation, and advancement of the research.
Present and publish findings derived from the project.
Assist in organizing and participating in academic events such as conferences, workshops, and seminars related to the project.

About the Project

The project PID2024-160145NB-C21 seeks to understand how audiovisual production structures, professional roles, and creators’ lived experiences influence the production, circulation, and representation of LGBTIQ+ content, filling gaps in Media Production Studies and Queer Production Studies. It does so by examining differences between professional, independent, and grassroots creators; exploring how platforms, both traditional and social media, shape creative practices; and investigating how identities such as age, sexuality, gender, and ethnicity intersect with production routines, creative agency, and well-being.

In addition, it assesses the impact of emerging professional roles—including intimacy coordinators and trans consultants—on authenticity and representation, while also connecting producer perspectives with audience needs, particularly those of older audiences and queer subcultures.

Ultimately, the project aims to reveal how industrial contexts, cultural norms, and professional dynamics shape LGBTIQ+ portrayals, authenticity, and inclusivity in media.

Main Requirements

Academic Background

Master’s degree or advanced studies in Communication, Social Sciences, Psychology, Media Studies, or related fields.

Methodological Skills

Familiarity with both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Experience in data analysis and use of specialized software (e.g., ATLAS.ti, NVivo, SPSS, R, Python, SmartPLS, etc.).
Ability to design and implement surveys and questionnaires (e.g., Qualtrics, LimeSurvey, Google Forms).

Languages

Advanced proficiency in English (reading, writing, and speaking).
Knowledge of Spanish and/or Catalan will be considered an asset.

Technological and Creative Skills

Knowledge and experience in audiovisual production, including editing and the use of digital media tools.

Desirable Qualifications

Research experience: Previous participation in academic or applied research projects.
Publications: Contributions to journal articles, book chapters, or conference presentations.
Project management: Strong organizational skills, ability to coordinate research tasks, and meet deadlines.
Research interests: Alignment with topics such as communication, science, technology, digital media, gender, or social representation.

Personal Competencies

Strong analytical and critical thinking skills.
Excellent academic writing abilities in English.
Capacity for autonomy, initiative, and teamwork.
Adaptability to international and interdisciplinary research environments.

Application Procedure

Applications must be submitted from October 29 to November 19 (both inclusive) through the UAB Research Portal at the following link:

https://tauler.seu-e.cat/detall?idEns=11&idEdicte=594087

Further Information

The contract terms and conditions document is available in three languages (Catalan, Spanish, and English) at the following link (same as for application procedure): https://tauler.seu-e.cat/detall?idEns=11&idEdicte=594087

For additional information about the position or the project, please contact:

Dr. Maite Soto-Sanfiel

Principal Investigator, PID2024-160145NB-C21

Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)

Email: mariateresa.soto@uab.es

Young Media and Communication Scholars Mentoring Program

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:59:52 GMT

We kindly invite you to participate in the 8th edition of the Young Media and Communication Scholars Mentoring Program of the Polish Communication Association. The Mentoring Program is addressed to Ph.D. and MA students who want to develop their research competencies under the guidance of renowned Polish researchers. Participation in the program is free of charge.

Applications (in Polish or English) will be accepted until December 3, 2025. Application form and detailed information about mentors are available here: https://www.ptks.pl/en/programs/pca-mentoring-program

We encourage you to submit your application!

If you have any additional questions, do not hesitate to contact us via: mentoring.fmmik@gmail.com

PhD position

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:58:29 GMT

Institute of Media and Journalism at USI Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, Switzerland)

100%, starting date 1 March 2026

The research group focusing on young people, the media and fan cultures led by Dr. Eleonora Benecchi at the Institute of Media and Journalism at USI Università della Svizzera italiana is seeking to fill a doctoral position. The position is primarily linked to the SNSF-funded research project «Swiss Fan Worlds and Social Exclusion». This project explores how children and young people engaged in fan worlds perceive and experience online risks, develop social and emotional capacities, and implement coping strategies in digital spaces.

The Institute for Media and Globalization (IMeG) provides an international, interdisciplinary, and intellectually stimulating environment that embraces diverse perspectives and methodologies while fostering a culture of collaboration and mutual support. Within the Institute, scholars and professionals from a wide range of backgrounds work together to generate knowledge with meaningful societal impact. IMeG also offers outstanding opportunities for both national and international networking.

Job description:

Conduct high-quality research in the field of media and digital culture
Complete a dissertation in three to four years
Excellent oral and written English skills
Excellent oral and written German is an advantage
Attend academic conferences and publish in academic journals in the field
Handle organizational and administrative tasks
Collaborate in existing projects and develop new projects with members of the research team related to media and fan cultures
Cover the role of a teaching assistant for courses at Bachelor and Master levels

Application deadline: 15 December 2025

For more information see: link

Six fully funded PhD studentships (home students)

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:47:17 GMT

Department of English and Media, BCU

The Doctoral Landscape Awards is an AHRC-funded initiative hosted by Birmingham City University (BCU), supporting the development of a vibrant and inclusive doctoral research culture in the arts and humanities.

The scheme provides combined research expertise for the professional and personal development of the next generation of arts and humanities doctoral researchers. It delivers excellence in all aspects of research supervision and training. It provides access to a wide range of facilities, cohort events, and development opportunities across the university and a regional Hub comprising seven universities across the East and West Midlands.

For 2026 entry, BCU will offer six fully funded PhD studentships to UK/Home Students eligible for Home Tuition Fees through an open competition. Each year, at least one studentship will be dedicated to a home fee status candidate from a Global Majority background, continuing the legacy of BCU’s That's Me! Project widening participation initiative and offering bespoke professional development.

The Department of English and Media at Birmingham City University is inviting applications from students whose research interests connect with our fields of expertise in:

Creative Writing
English Linguistics
English Literature
Media and Cultural Studies
Journalism
Cultural Activism
Creative Industries
Equality and Diversity in the Media Industries
Games Cultures
Film
Gender and Sexuality
History, Heritage and Archives
Popular Music Studies
South Asian Media

Enquiries about PhDs in the Department of English and Media can be directed to yemisi.akinbobola@bcu.ac.uk

The deadline for Doctoral Landscape Award funding applications is 27 January 2026 - 12.00 hours (noon, UK Time). For full details of eligibility, funding, research supervision areas, and for dates of our November application writing workshop, please visit our BCU DLA webpage here: www.bcu.ac.uk/research/doctoral-landscape-awards

BledCom 2026

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:42:00 GMT

June 26-27, 2026

Lake Bled, Slovenia

Deadline: February 3, 2026

https://www.bledcom.com/

Leading theme is Disaster, Health, and Organizational Crisis Communication. BledCom invites abstracts between 500 and 800 words (including title, keywords, and references) and panel proposals. We welcome all papers related to public relations and strategic communication, not just those addressing the conference theme. Submission deadline is February 3, 2026.

In a world increasingly defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, crises are no longer exceptions.They have become the rule. Disasters—natural and man-made—continue to ravage communities. Global public health threats such as COVID-19 have revealed systemic vulnerabilities and communication breakdowns. Further, organizational crises—from product recalls to reputational scandals—threaten not only economic performance but also trust, legitimacy, and stakeholder relationships.

Crisis communication is at the heart of societal resilience. How organizations communicate before, during, and after, crises often determine whether trust in the organization is preserved or lost; whether harm is mitigated or exacerbated; and whether reputations survive or collapse. Managing crisis communication is also a defining function of modern public relations, whose practitioners increasingly operate at the intersection of strategy, ethics, and emergency response. These reasons compelled BledCom to again focus on this critical organizational function by selecting it as the theme.

Coombs defined organizational crisis as: "a perceived violation of salient stakeholder expectations that can create negative outcomes for stakeholders and/or the organization." This definition reminds us that crises are not only operational, but also social, perceptual, and relational. A modern crisis may be triggered by a cyberattack, a climate event, a health emergency, a viral tweet, or even an armed invasion (the nuclear threat is a clear and present danger in the 21st century). The responses must be equally complex, coordinated, and ethically grounded.

BledCom 2026 invites scholars, practitioners, and educators to explore the multifaceted world of crisis communication across domains including disaster response, public health, and organizational resilience. We encourage contributions that analyze crisis narratives, evaluate communication strategies, interrogate digital responses, or reflect on lessons learned across the three core crisis types as well as other types of crises as well

We therefore welcome presentations from scholars and practitioners focusing on the ongoing evolution of crisis communication.

Some topics relevant to the theme are:

crisis communication management,
internal communication in crisis management,
social media and digital platforms and crisis communication,
social listening and real-time feedback analysis,
stakeholder activism and cancel culture,
misinformation and disinformation challenges,
ethics and equity in emergency messaging,
cross-sector collaboration in crisis preparedness,
comparative and international case studies,
the influence of culture on crisis communication, and
emotional, moral, and rational dimensions of stakeholder response.

As in previous years, BledCom welcomes all papers related to public relations and strategic communication, not just those addressing the conference theme. Panel proposals are also invited.

Guidelines for Submission

We invite abstracts between 500 and 800 words (including title, keywords, and references) and panel proposals.

Abstracts should include:

Introduction and purpose of the study (including research question if applicable),
Literature review (just long enough to situate the work in existing scholarship),
Methodology (including data sources, rationale, and sample),
Results and conclusions (highlighting implications and limitations),
Practical and social implications.

Please provide 3–5 keywords that reflect your study. Use APA style (latest edition). Abstracts must be submitted anonymously, with identifying information included on a separate cover page. A list of references is optional but included in the word count.

Panel proposals should include:

Title and focus of the panel,
Name of the panel chair,
Names of participants and titles or foci of their contributions.

Deadlines and Dates

Submission deadline: February 3, 2026

Notification of acceptance after peer review: March 3, 2026

Full papers (up to 6,000 words): due September 15, 2026, for inclusion in conference proceedings

Please send all submissions to: bledcom@fdv.uni-lj.si

Program Committee

Dejan Verčič, University of Ljubljana & Herman & partnerji, Slovenia
Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Ana Tkalac Verčič, University of Zagreb, Croatia

BledCom 2026 Advisory Committee

Amela Duratović Konjević, Slovenian Cancer Registry, Institute of Oncology Ljubljana
Maja Jančič, University of Ljubljana
Urška Kolar, National Institute of Public Health
Samo Kropivnik, University of Ljubljana
Saška Terseglav, University of Ljubljana & Association of Health Institutions of Slovenia
Mitja Vrdelja, National Institute of Public Health

BledCom 2026 is supported by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Slovenia and the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS), under project V5-24042.

The International History of Public Relations Conference

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:33:47 GMT

June 22-23 2026

Bournemouth University, UK

Media School, MST

Deadline: February 16, 2026

Academics, practitioners and research students are invited to submit competitive abstracts for presentation at the 14th International History of Public Relations Conference (IHPRC) which will again be held at Bournemouth University.

Since 2010, IHPRC has been the premier international conference addressing the history of public relations and related disciplines. It has attracted papers from around the world and led to a major expansion of publishing on the public relations history field in academic journals and research books.

Conference themes

Among the themes IHPRC continues to promote are:

The history of public relations and its developing or diverging relationships with other disciplines such as marketing, HR, legal and corporate governance
The historiography of public relations and the application of historical theories and interpretations to the history of PR; alternative and unheard histories and herstories; archaeological methodologies and theoretical analyses
Seminal personalities or events that shaped the formation of public relations as a discipline (This can also include challenges to the “Great Man” or “Great Woman” approach)
History of the PR/Communication departments of organisations (companies, associations, political organisations, NGOs, etc.)
History of PR instruments (press releases, press conferences, campaigns, social media, etc.)
Alternative approaches to the history of public relations, e.g. on the basis of culture (personal networks and influence) or via definitions of public relations
The evolving naming of the field from propaganda and press agentry to corporate and strategic communications
The evolution of public relations in nations, government and industry
The history of public relations in specific sectors (for example, consultancy, education, health, and politics)
The public relations of dissent and activism; historical analysis of public relations in activist and non-profit campaigns
The evolution of public relations theory(ies) over time; the history of schools of thinking in public relations
The formation of industry and professional bodies and their impact on public relations practice and education; professionalisation of public relations
The ethics of public relations and its discussion over time
Oral histories of public relations; discussion of this methodology

Papers for presentation at IHPRC 2026 will be selected, after peer review, on the basis of abstracts. Authors are invited to submit a single Word document. The first page of the word document should include the title of the paper, author(s) name(s) and affiliations. Page two onwards will include the abstract. The abstract will be of no more than two pages total length, including references. The abstract should express the purpose, methodology, findings and implications of the research. Author and affiliation details are to be presented only in first page and should not be identified in the abstract.

Abstracts must be presented in Word format, 12-point font size, single spacing with a 1-inch (25mm) margin on A4 page size. Submissions and enquiries should go to atheofilou@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Information on conference registration and conference hotels follows.

Given that the IHPRC will be taking place as from now on biennially (ie every second year rather than every year) the conference will be held in person rather than any other format.

Submissions – Deadline for consideration: 16 February 2026.

We look forward to welcoming PR scholars to Bournemouth in June 2026.

Follow the conference on @historyofpr and Facebook.com/IHPRC

Seeing Through Complexity: Entanglements in Visual Cultures

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 15:05:08 GMT

November 6, 2025

Online conference

Visual Cultures Section

https://visualculturesecrea.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/conference-programme/

Scholars from 15 different countries will examine entanglements of visual cultures with memory, identity, gender, technology, and truth-making at this online conference. It will be a day to reflect on research objects, methods and interdisciplinarity in visual social research. How do visual cultures both reflect and challenge the deepening crisis of trust in democratic, scientific, and journalistic institutions? What roles do AI-generated images and deepfakes play in amplifying or destabilising collective perception? How do images, visual narratives, and aesthetic practices participate in shaping collective experiences, identities, and histories? In what ways do visual cultures and regimes (re)mediate but also disrupt collective memories, ideologies and identities? What methodological innovations are needed to “see through” complexity in our research?

ISWNE/Huck Boyd Competition: Strengthening Community News – 2026

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 08:52:27 GMT

Deadline: November 3, 2025

The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE) and the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media at Kansas State University are seeking proposals for papers that provide insight and guidance on general issues and/or everyday problems that confront community newspapers and their newsrooms, with particular reference to weekly general-interest publications with circulations under 10,000.

This competition is an extension of the Center’s former “Newspapers and Community-Building Symposium,” co-sponsored for 20 years by the National Newspaper Association (NNA) and its foundation. The competition’s ultimate goal is to engage academicians and community newspaper journalists in productive “conversations about community journalism.”

Proposals will first be peer-reviewed by faculty with expertise in community journalism. Final selection of the papers to be written will be made by a panel of working and retired community journalists who will evaluate the proposals on the basis of their potential value to newsrooms.

Completed papers will undergo a final academic peer review prior to publication in an issue of ISWNE’s Grassroots Editor. The schedule has been set up to ensure publication of all accepted papers by January 2027 or sooner.

Proposals from graduate students are especially encouraged, as are proposals with an international focus, or reflecting an international perspective on community papers’ newsrooms.

One paper will be selected by the community journalists panel for presentation at the 2026 ISWNE conference tentatively scheduled forJuly 15-19 in Cardiff, Wales. ISWNE and the ISWNE Foundation will provide the author with a complimentary conference registration as well as $250 toward travel. The paper’s author will be expected to make whatever arrangements are necessary to attend this conference or to present on Zoom.

A second place paper also will be selected and the authors of both top papers will receive complimentary one-year memberships in ISWNE.

Focus: Papers should deal with topics relevant to the newsrooms of community weeklies, particularly those with small staffs and circulations under 10,000. The papers should provide useful guidance on general issues and/or everyday problems that such newsrooms may face.

Examples could include legal, political, or ethical issues; alternative print/digital integration models; or surveys to determine successful techniques for staff recruitment/retention, for boosting online presence or to elicit “best practices” for special editions. Roundups of how states handle Sunshine Law violations or how papers train young reporters to be alert for such violations would also be of interest. So would explorations of new ways to convey information to a local audience (e.g., using AI) and how to monetize them. These, of course, are only some of the many areas on which research could focus.

Note that ISWNE members have access to the organization’s Hotline, where topics of current interest to weekly newsrooms are regularly discussed. Non-members may request temporary access by contacting Executive Director Chad Stebbins at cstebbins@mopress.com. This is one way to focus Proposals and the resulting papers on issues of concern to community weekly newsrooms.

Most successful proposals will deal with applied research, although theoretical papers that provide the basis for further applied research also are acceptable, as are general research topics that establish a clear connection to newsroom issues.

Guidelines for Developing Proposals: Proposals should be limited to a maximum of two pages. These proposals should explain clearly and concisely how the final papers will be of practical use to community weekly newsrooms. They should note any prior work on which they will build or which they will assess critically.

Proposals will be evaluated on the relevance and importance of the topic and on its value to newsrooms. Other criteria include originality, clarity of the writing, appropriateness of the methodology to be used, the likelihood that valid conclusions will be reached and the choice of materials that will be used to document the paper’s conclusions/support its recommendations.

Suggested Length for the Paper: 2,500 to 6,000 words.

Logistics for submission: Proposals should be submitted electronically to Huck Boyd Center Director Sam C. Mwangi at scmwangi@ksu.edu. The proposal itself should contain nothing that would identify the author. It must be accompanied by a separate title page containing full author contact information (name, email-address, mailing address, university and/or professional affiliation and phone number). These two items must be emailed by Nov. 3, 2025.

Other Dates:

Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by Dec. 1, 2025.
Completed papers are due to scmwangi@ksu.edu no later than March 15, 2026.
The author of the paper selected for presentation at the 2024 ISWNE conference will be notified by April 15, 2026; peer review comments will be provided as soon as possible.
Changes suggested by the second peer review will be sent to all other authors by July 31, 2026 for use in preparing the final version of their papers.
Final versions of the papers should be sent electronically to Chad Stebbins at cstebbins@mopress.com by Sept. 15, 2026.

ISWNE was founded in 1955 to promote high standards of editorial writing, facilitate the exchange of ideas and foster freedom of the press in all nations. It aims to help members of the weekly press improve their editorial writing and news reporting and to encourage strong, independent editorial voices. Chad Stebbins has been ISWNE’s executive director since 1999.

The mission of the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media, established in 1990, is to serve and strengthen local newspapers, radio stations, online media and other outlets that play a key role in the survival and revitalization of small towns in the United States. Gloria Freeland was the Center’s director from 1998 until her retirement in 2020. Sam C. Mwangi is the new director.

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships 2026

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 08:37:10 GMT

University of East Anglia, Faculty of Arts and Humanities

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities invites expressions of interest for Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships to be held at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Early Career Fellowships aim to provide career development opportunities for those who are at a relatively early stage of their academic careers, who are yet to hold a full-time permanent post but who have a proven record of research. The expectation is that Fellows should undertake a significant piece of publishable work (but should not be a reworking or extension of the doctoral research project) during their tenure. Fellowships have to start between 1 September 2026 and 1 May 2027.

Each year the Faculty supports a limited number of applications for projects in: the School of Media, Language and Communication Studies; the School of History and Art History; the School of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing; the School of Politics, Philosophy and Area Studies, Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities; the Sainsbury Centre; the Sainsbury Research Unit and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture.

UEA is fully committed to supporting the scholarship and career development of these fellows, and each will be assigned an academic mentor and will be fully integrated into the life of their host School / unit.

A candidate may submit only one application per year. Previously unsuccessful applicants may reapply.

Each Faculty at UEA has its own process so please make sure you follow the one for the faculty you want to be considered in.

If you are interested in applying, please:

Read the guidance about the scheme at: https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/funding/grant-schemes/early-career-fellowships
Make sure you meet the Leverhulme Trust eligibility criteria. Please note we cannot assess EoIs from applicants who do not meet this criteria.
Make contact with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities academic member of staff closest to your research area to ask if they act as your mentor if successful and provide advice on your application.

Unsupported applications will not be considered.

To find a mentor, please see: https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/faculties-and-schools/faculty-of-arts-and-humanities/research/fellowships

Expression if interest form can be found HERE.

Complete the expression of interest form and submit to hum.research@uea.ac.uk by 9am on Monday 17th November.

Fourth international Data Justice conference: The Datafied State

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:33:57 GMT

June 1-2, 2026

Cardiff University in Cardiff, UK

Deadline: December 31, 2025

Host: Data Justice Lab

Keynote Speakers include:

Nick Srnicek, King’s College London, UK
Sarah Myers West, AI Now, US
Oriana Bernasconi, UC Chile, Chile

Submission of abstracts of max 500 words to DataJusticeLab@cardiff.ac.uk

Deadline for submissions of abstracts: 31st of December, 2025

Conference registration fees:

£175 / £150 (early bird)
£125 / £100 students (early bird)

Conference registration deadlines:

6th of March 2026 – early bird
17th of April 2026 – final deadline

We hope to see you there!

Interrogating Trust & Safety

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:32:33 GMT

Internet Histories (Special Issue)

Deadline: May 1, 2026

All submitted and accepted articles will be considered for inclusion in a special issue “Interrogating Trust & Safety”

Special issue guest editors Amanda Menking and Toby Shulruff encourage authors to interrogate trust and safety from a range of perspectives, prioritizing academic rigor and historical dimensions.

Please see the full call for papers here: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/interrogating-trust-safety/

Kind regards of behalf of

The editors of Internet Histories and the guest editors

Asger Harlung,

Editorial Assistant, Internet Histories

Healthcare and Patient Communication in the Digital Era: A Patienthood and Patient Perspective

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:28:27 GMT

Sinikka Torkkola, Anna Sendra Toset

How is digitalization transforming healthcare communication, and how is it reconstructing patienthood? Published by Routledge and co-authored by Sinikka Torkkola and Anna Sendra Toset, Healthcare and Patient Communication in the Digital Era: A Patienthood and Patient Perspective examines the digitalization of healthcare communication through empirical case studies from three viewpoints: illness or the perspective of patients, disease or the perspective of healthcare professionals, and sickness or the perspective of society. Overall, the book outlines how the sociocultural understanding of patienthood is altered by the ways digitalization is changing healthcare communication.

Healthcare and Patient Communication in the Digital Era: A Patienthood and Patient Perspective can be found in the following link: https://www.routledge.com/Healthcare-and-Patient-Communication-in-the-Digital-Era-A-Patienthood-and-Patient-Perspective/Torkkola-SendraToset/p/book/9781032857336

Decoding Artificial Sociality: Technologies, Dynamics, Implications

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:22:11 GMT

New Media & Society

We are pleased to announce that the special issue Decoding Artificial Sociality: Technologies, Dynamics, Implications is now published in New Media & Society.

Conducting conversations with artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT is becoming an everyday experience for large masses of people. This special issue tackles a dimension of AI that is becoming increasingly relevant and ubiquitous: artificial sociality, defined as technologies and practices that construct the appearance of social behaviour in machines and stimulating humans who interact with them to project social frames and meanings.

The issue includes outstandings contributions that offer empirical findings and theoretical insights by examining a broad array of AI technologies, ranging from ChatGPT to Replika.

Special issue highlights:

Decoding Artificial Sociality: Technologies, Dynamics, Implications

In the introduction to the special issue, Iliana Depounti and Simone Natale discuss the dynamics and implications of artificial sociality and show how these technologies are increasingly incorporated and normalized within digital platforms.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448251359217

“Capacities for social interactions are just being absorbed by the model”: User engagement and assetization of data in the artificial sociality enterprise

Jieun Lee analyzes ScatterLab’s use of user-generated language data to develop the Korean chatbot Luda, showing how data, even if harmful or abusive, may be repurposed for business interests.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448251338275

Grooming an ideal chatbot by training the algorithm: Exploring the exploitation of Replika users’ immaterial labor

Shuyi Pan, Leopoldina Fortunati and Autumn Edwards conducted a digital ethnography on a pioneer online community related to companion chatbot Replika. Their analysis revealed that Replika users invest a significant amount of intellectual and affective resources into the chatbot through algorithm training, driven by fascinating imaginaries of an ideal AI partner.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448251338271

The quasi-domestication of social chatbots: The case of Replika

Gina Neff and Peter Nagy discuss how users adapt to changing AI companions, showing that re-domestication strategies are essential to re-integrate these technologies into everyday life.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448251359218

‘I think I misspoke earlier. My bad!’: Exploring how generative artificial intelligence tools exploit society’s feeling rules

Lisa M. Given, Sarah Polkinghorne, and Alexa Ridgway analyze how genAI bots mobilize social rules and gendered feeling norms to imitate emotional responsiveness.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448251338276

The sociocultural roots of artificial conversations: The taste, class and habitus of generative AI chatbots

Ilir Rama and Massimo Airoldi explore how large language models inscribe class bias and reproduce sociocultural patterns of taste and habitus.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448251338273

Meta-authenticity and fake but real virtual influencers: A framework for artificial sociality analysis and ethics

Do Own (Donna) Kim examines the relationship between artificial sociality and authenticity through the case of CGI virtual influencers, proposing “meta-authenticity” as a framework to assess realness and inauthenticity.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448251338272

The conversational action test: Detecting the artificial sociality of artificial intelligence

Saul Albert, William Housley, Rein Sikveland, and Elizabeth Stokoe introduce a “Conversational Action Test” to assess how artificial agents achieve conversational competence.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448251338277

In mobilizing the concept of artificial sociality, the issue stresses the importance of identifying and exploring the implications, potentials, and risks of AI technologies that create the appearance of sociality in a society increasingly shaped by encounters between humans and machines.

Access the full special issue in New Media & Society here:

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/nmsa/27/10

Workshop on Indigenous communities & digital media

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:18:00 GMT

December 3, 2025 at 8pm (CET) - 3pm (Buenos Aires) - 2pm (Ottawa) - 11am (Vancouver)

Online

Deadline: October 19, 2025

Workshop was postponed to December 3rd. You can still sign up!

Registration: https://forms.gle/ux8RFWQvYg6J9PV7A

With this call, we invite practitioners, academics, and activists who work from and alongside Indigenous communities on digital media, most broadly conceived, to join us for an online workshop to share ideas, insights, and challenges with one another. We are non-Indigenous academics working alongside Quechua and Inuit communities in Argentina and Canada. It is our intention to create a space for forming reciprocal relationships across projects and locations. We would like to bring together people from diverse backgrounds to discuss shared concerns and interests in this field, join our forces, and raise awareness of each others’ work, positions, experiences, and uncertainties.

We believe that the concerns and practices of Indigenous peoples are not well represented in current discussions about the politics of digitization, although these standpoints are needed to understand its role in how people relate to each other and the world. While big tech fastens its grip on more and more areas of everyday life, and “data colonialism” (Mejias and Couldry 2024) and a push toward extractive AI technologies seems to be the sign of the times, this development is arguably not a new experience for many Indigenous peoples around the world who have been dealing with similar corporate colonialist strategies for centuries. Galloway (2012) argues that computers are “ethical machines” that make certain ideologies of objectification, individualization, calculability, and compartmentalization the very basis of everyday economic, social, and political processes. At the same time, Indigenous actors are at the forefront pushing for sovereignty over data and infrastructure to contend with extractivism that encroaches upon both data and land. In this situation, how are these multi-layered digital logics understood by Indigenous actors? How do they engage with digital technologies in the face of their colonizing tendencies? And how do Indigenous peoples leverage them to pursue their own cultural, economic, and political priorities?

In this workshop, we aim to create a space for collective reflection rather than privileging formal presentations. To that end, we are organizing an online meeting structured in two parts. In the first part, participants are invited to select an image as a starting point for a brief (10-minute) story related to their research, experiences, and/or concerns on the topic. This initial segment is intended to set the tone for the encounter and help identify shared issues. In the second part, we will revisit the questions that emerged, engaging in a collective discussion to exchange perspectives, articulate challenges, offer advice, and develop ideas collaboratively. The goal is to establish a set of common concerns that can serve as a basis for further work.

If you are interested in participating, please submit a short (e.g. 300 words) description of your intended story/presentation, a short biography, and a brief description of the themes and questions you would like to discuss with others (if any) before October 5th through this form: https://forms.gle/ux8RFWQvYg6J9PV7A

We are inviting anyone who would like to be in conversation about themes surrounding Indigenous communities and digital media, including:

Everyday realities and challenges of digital media in Indigenous communities
Indigenous governance of media infrastructures
Indigenous media-making practices
Land relations and digital media
Digital media in the context of Indigenous media histories
Indigenous and tech temporalities
Online sociality in Indigenous communities
Arts, crafts, and culture in digital spaces
Colonial tendencies of digital technologies in Indigenous communities
Digital media and self-determination/sovereignty
Indigenous online activism
Digital media and Indigenous well-being
Digital sovereignty and infrastructures

Organizers:

Jonathan Spellerberg - University of Groningen j.spellerberg@rug.nl

Martina Di Tullio - University of Buenos Aires ditulliomartina@gmail.com

Speak at Your Own Risk: The Many Faces of (Self-)Censorship

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:06:20 GMT

Diffractions

Deadline: November 15, 2025

Editors-in-chief: Inês Fernandes and Teresa Weinholtz

“In a society like ours, the procedures of exclusion are well known. […] We know quite well that we do not have the right to say everything” (Foucault 1980, 52). Often regarded as an instrument of repression of ideas and information (American Library Association 2021), censorship “refers to the control by public authorities (usually the Church or the State) of any form of publication or broadcast, usually through a mechanism for scrutinising all material prior to publication” (McQuail and Deuze 2020, 589). Most commonly associated with control that is visible and imposed by the State, censorship can be regarded “as a subject of history, which means that it has to be considered not only in its formal dimension, as an apparatus of State control and repression, but also as a social agent that permanently and complexly shapes the relationship between individuals and institutions” (Barros 2022, 17). Either through literature, with the act of burning books in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 ([1953] 2018) and the control of thought in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four ([1949] 2023), or the morality or political restrictions in cinema (Biltereyst and Winkel 2013), or even contemporary China with the firewall that controls internet access (Stanford University n.d.; Gosztonyi 2023), censorship has gathered a broader definition beyond that of State control.

The study of censorship should not be limited to dictatorships or historically oppressive political regimes, as it can also be found as an institutionalised social force, based on the concept of “public morality” (Mathiesen 2008, 577), in cultural institutions, digital platforms, and academic environments. In its more formal configuration, censorship can be a tool of repression and strict prohibition. In its informal and more personal perspective, it can be viewed as socially imposed censorship and/or self-censorship, thereby expanding its definition “to the productive force that creates new forms of discourse, new forms of communication, and new models of communication” (Bunn 2015, 26). As Judith Butler (2021) argues, censorship precedes speech, as it determines in advance what type of speech is or is not acceptable. Similarly, Bourdieu (1991) describes how censorship affects language, as what we are authorised to say becomes internalised. Censorship, in this light, is not only a legal or institutional force, but can also become a social imposition. This issue thus seeks to explore the many forms of censorship, self-censorship, and everything in between; past and present, imposed and chosen, visible and hidden.

Recent events have shed light into an ongoing reality of censorship that contributes to the urgency of these discussions. Most recently, in the United States, governmental restrictions on words such as “women,” “diversity,” and “disability” in academic grant applications and school curricula (Yourish et al. 2025) reveal the close relationship between language and ideological control through State censorship. In Germany, artists and curators have been fired or publicly blacklisted for expressing solidarity with Palestine on their personal social media (Solomon 2023), demonstrating that speech can be punished even within liberal democracies when it contradicts socially established narratives, creating environments of fear through instances of social censorship. On social media platforms like TikTok, users increasingly engage in linguistic innovation. With phrases like “unalive” instead of “kill,” they intentionally alter or misspell specific trigger words to avoid algorithmic suppression, or shadowbanning (Calhoun and Fawcett 2023). This form of self-censorship is strategic and creative, but also reveals the pressures users face to remain visible in social media spaces that are moderated by strict automated systems.

This issue invites contributions that critically examine how all forms of censorship and self-censorship operate today, as well as how they have operated historically. We invite interventions from different contemporary, historical, and geopolitical perspectives, and interdisciplinary approaches from all fields in the humanities. Besides proposals for academic papers on the topic of this issue, we also welcome proposals in the form of interviews, book reviews, essays, artistic contributions, as well as non-thematic articles. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to the following:

Historical and contemporary (self-)censorship
Censorship and political regimes
Self-censorship as personal, professional, and intellectual preservation
Censorship and self-censorship…
in media ecosystems
in film and cinema
in art, performance, and curatorship
in image and photography
in language, literature, and translation
in knowledge and academia
in artificial intelligence
in memory: preservation and/or erasure
in children’s media and literature
in social media, online content and behaviour
and cancel culture

…

For artistic submissions, we are interested in proposals that engage in form or content with the theme of censorship and/or self-censorship, such as:

Visual essays
Graphic or visual storytelling
Collaborations between text-based and image-based artists
Poetry and visual poetry

…

Submissions and review process

Abstracts will be received and reviewed by the Diffractions editorial board who will decide on the pertinence of proposals for the upcoming issue. After submission, we will get in touch with the authors of accepted abstracts in order to invite them to submit a full article. However, this does not imply that these papers will be automatically published. Rather, they will go through a peer-review process that will determine whether papers are publishable with minor or major changes, or they do not fulfil the criteria for publication.

Please send abstracts of 150 to 250 words, and 5–8 keywords by NOVEMBER 15, 2025, to info.diffractions@gmail.com with the subject “Diffractions 12”, followed by your last name.

The full papers should be submitted by MARCH 15, 2026, through the journal’s platform: https://revistas.ucp.pt/index.php/diffractions/about/submissions.

Every issue of Diffractions has a thematic focus but also contains special sections for non-thematic articles. If you are interested in submitting an article that is not related to the topic of this particular issue, please consult the general guidelines available on the Diffractions website at https://revistas.ucp.pt/index.php/diffractions/about/submissions. The submission and review process for non-thematic articles is the same as for the general thematic issue. All research areas of the humanities are welcome, and we accept contributions in English or Portuguese.

The journal is published bi-annually under the editorial direction of graduate students in the doctoral program in Culture Studies of the Lisbon Consortium, at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. It is a platform where graduate students and other young researchers can showcase their current research as well as reviews of the latest books of interest in the field.

Diffractions welcomes submissions from a wide range of disciplines that share a common interest in the multiple ways cultures produce meaning, including but not limited to critical theory, cultural studies, comparative literature, translation studies, postcolonial studies, visual culture, film, media, and gender studies, popular culture, creative industries, museum studies, memory studies, amongst others.

Professorship (W2) in Political Psychology

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 13:25:13 GMT

RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, Campus Landau

Deadline: October 22, 2025

RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany, is pleased to announce an open position for a Professorship (W2) in Political Psychology, located at our Landau campus. We would appreciate if you could distribute this post via your mailing list and/or job offers at your website.

The successful candidate will represent the field of political psychology in research and teaching. Teaching duties will be based on the curricula of the Bachelor and Master programs in Psychology, Social and Communication Sciences, and Environmental Challenges and Human Responses. We expect a high level of willingness and ability to collaborate within the Institute for Communication Psychology and Media Educaction, the Department of Psychology, and the RPTU, and activities in the acquisition of joint projects. Furthermore, we expect the regular individual acquisition of third-party funding and participation in academic self-administration. In addition to the relevant academic qualifications, applicants are expected to have special didactic skills and experience in teaching.

We are looking for an internationally visible person with high potential for development, very good leadership qualities, and a particularly high level of connectivity to the Institute for Communication Psychology and Media Education, the Department of Psychology, the research network SCOPE (Societal COmmunication in times of PErmacrisis), and the RPTU. Examples of relevant topics include political attitudes and their measurement, political communication, conflict and cooperation, polarization in times of crisis, radicalization, conspiracy ideologies, populism, the role of digital media environments, and the supplementation of classic social science methods with computational approaches (computational social science).

We look forward to receiving your detailed application with the documents listed at https://wiwi.rptu.de/en/bewerbung by 22. October 2025 at the latest. Please submit your application via the "Online Application" button below or via our application portal (https://jobs.rptu.de). Prof. Dr. Stephan Winter (stephan.winter@rptu.de) and Prof. Dr. Michaela Maier (michaela.maier@rptu.de) are available to answer your questions about the position, and you may contact Prof. Dr. Eunike Wetzel (eunike.wetzel@rptu.de) for formal questions concerning the application process. The job talks are expected to take place during the week of 17 November, 2025

The full job posting with further information can be found at the RPTU web page (please down scroll for the English version) https://jobs.rptu.de/jobposting/37d573b1fcfedc7671cfe2100288df1c29230e770

Call for Input: Shaping Future ECREA Methods Workshops

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 09:41:45 GMT

The ECREA Methods Subcommittee is inviting members to help shape the future of our methods-focused activities.

We are currently gathering expressions of interest from members who would like to lead a workshop, either online or as a preconference at the ECREA 2026 ECC Shifting Grounds Conference, as well as suggestions for topics and methodological areas you would like to see covered.

Whether your expertise lies in digital, qualitative, quantitative, creative, or mixed methods, or you simply have ideas for innovative methodological approaches you want to see being delivered, we want to hear from you!

Please take a few minutes to complete our short form and share your ideas. Your input will help us build a vibrant, inclusive programme of methodological learning and exchange across the ECREA community.

Complete the form here: https://forms.office.com/e/H13Kew2msa

Please submit your responses by 7th November 2025.

Ethical Space: Papers on the ethics of generative artificial intelligence and related topics in communication practice

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:21:33 GMT

Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics

Deadline: October 15, 2025

Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, welcomes papers on the ethics of generative artificial intelligence and related topics in communication practice. How do we sort the competing claims and concerns made for AI tools, including problems of bias, accuracy and hallucination, concerns over how it changes professional work or even displaces it, questions of transparency, control or ownership of content? How do these stack up against the opportunities that AI affords to make work more efficient, less prone to error or enabling professionals to extend their work? What ethical or regulatory boundary rails need to be put in place or what literacy is needed among both professionals and audiences? Underneath these questions are broader questions around these synthetic media, such as human autonomy or editorial independence and AI’s invisible role in shaping how knowledge is both produced and understood.

Please send us an expression of interest in the first instance. From the expressions, we will invite authors to submit full papers for the editors’ consideration. Acceptance will be on the basis of peer review of the full papers. We are looking for papers in two areas:

1) critical-theoretical contributions on principles relating to the ethical use of AI in communication. This can include conceptual work on problems and issues, work on codes of ethics or other normative proposals, explorations of underlying ideas, analysis of the political economy of AI or similar approaches. This work may be empirical, but the focus should be on contributing to the analytical toolkit on AI

2) contributions on the use of AI in media and other communication practices. This can include analysis of media practice, case studies of good practice, reflections from practitioners on challenges and opportunities and the like.

We welcome work by scholars, research students and communication professionals. The deadline for expressions of interest is 15 October 2025. Full papers will be due in March 2026 and publication will be in July 2026.

Expressions of interest should be 250 words and discuss, argument, approach and (where appropriate) the methods used.

Papers in Ethical Space are usually 5000 words, excluding references.

More on the journal at https://ethicalspace.pubpub.org

Please contact the special issue editors, Donald Matheson and Stephen J.A. Ward, with any questions.

donald.matheson@canterbury.ac.nz

stephen.ward@bellaliant.net

Messaging Applications and Global Cultures of Mobility

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:19:19 GMT

Mobile Media & Communication (Special issue)

Deadline: November 1, 2025

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to submit papers for the Special Issue: Messaging Applications and Global Cultures of Mobility in the journal Mobile Media & Communication, an international and interdisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing academic research analyzing the intersection of communication and mobility.

This special issue, edited by Rose Marie Santini (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), James Fitzgerald (Dublin City University), Rosana Pinheiro-Machado (University College Dublin), and Débora Salles (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), seeks papers that critically analyze the intersections between messaging applications and practices of mobility in both local and global contexts.

Once conceived as simple alternatives to SMS, messaging applications have transformed into multimedia ecosystems central to contemporary life, with uses ranging from real-time tracking to political and economic organization across different cultural contexts. While much of the academic literature emphasizes their risks—such as disinformation, surveillance, and illicit activities—it is equally important to examine their productive potential, from reducing social isolation to integrating businesses and increasing the visibility of marginalized groups. This special issue thus aims to bring together contributions that deepen the understanding of these multiple dynamics and their local and global impacts.

The CFP encourages regional and interdisciplinary contributions from scholars at all career stages, to investigate how and why messaging applications intersect with mobility, while analyzing their impacts on individuals, politics, culture, and society. We welcome single-platform case studies as well as comparative analyses of two or more applications, with a special emphasis on contributions from the Global South to ensure geographical and conceptual diversity.

We are particularly interested in articles that address topics such as:

Cultures of mobility on messaging applications in the Global North and South;
Messaging applications as tools for real-time political resistance and organized protest;
Messaging applications as sites of (state or private) surveillance;
Differences in cultures of mobility across different messaging applications, within the same territory or across different regions;
The impact of specific business models on mobility within messaging applications;
The use of messaging applications for formal and informal economic activities, and their implications for boundaries between legal/illegal and formal/informal practices;
How messaging applications shape the geographies of commercial activities;
The effects of artificial intelligence integration on new or transformed practices of mobility.

Important dates:

Submission of extended abstracts (500–700 words): November 1, 2025

Notification of accepted abstracts: November 15, 2025

Submission of first full drafts (8,000 words): March 15, 2026

Submission of second drafts: July 15, 2026

Final acceptance: November 15, 2026

Please submit abstracts by November 1, 2025 to:

marie.santini@eco.ufrj.br and james.fitzgerald@dcu.ie

Further information is available at:

https://journals.sagepub.com/page/mmc/messagingapplications

From Screens to Spaces: The Use of Mapping in Media Studies

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:15:47 GMT

October 29, 2025

The Urbanism/Geography/Architecture Scholarly Interest Group at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) invites you to its first virtual event of the 2025-2026 cycle!

Please join us on Wednesday, October 29th, for a virtual workshop with our special guests Chris Lukinbeal (University of Arizona) and Tara Plath (University of California, Santa Barbara).

The workshop will explore how mapping can be applied in media studies research. Together, we’ll consider how mapping opens up new perspectives on film, media, and space, and you’ll leave with fresh ideas for bringing spatial thinking and mapping techniques into your own work.

For more details and to register: https://luma.com/gw4t4yph

ACM WebSci’26

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:10:40 GMT

May 21-24, 2026

TU Braunschweig

Deadline: December 10, 2025

https://websci26.org/

Important Dates

December 10, 2025: Paper submission
February 4, 2026: Notification
February 28, 2026: Camera-ready versions due
May 26-29, 2026: Conference dates

About the Web Science Conference

Web Science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding the complex and multiple impacts of the Web on society and vice versa. The interdisciplinary field is well situated to address pressing issues of our time by incorporating various scientific approaches. We welcome quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research, including techniques from the social sciences and computer science. In addition, we are interested in work exploring Web-based data collection, research ethics, and emerging methods. We also encourage studies that combine analyses of Web data and other types of data (e.g., from surveys or interviews) to help better understand user behavior online and offline.

Theme for Web Science 2026: Managing Risks in the Era of Generative AI - How 20 Years of Web Science Research Can Help

Web content is influencing human experiences more than ever before. The rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (including large language models) has created new risks for humans in the digital environment. These risks include customly crafted misinformation at scale, realistic AI-generated harmful content and deepfakes, as well as fraudulent activities and scams becoming more effective thanks to AI. Trust and community have been eroded during this current era of the Web, and researching means to manage these risks on the Web is as essential as ever. The Web Science community has looked at this complex socio-technical system for 20 years, exploring its structure, dynamics, and impact on society. This year’s conference especially encourages contributions investigating the risks for society on the web in the presence of artificial intelligence. Additionally, we welcome papers on a wide range of topics at the heart of Web Science.

In 2026, we will also be able to allocate a limited amount of funding for student travel provided by SIGWEB and WebIST.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Understanding the Web

Trends in globalization and fragmentation of the Web
The architecture, philosophy, and evolution of the Web
Automation and AI in all its manifestations relevant to the Web
The interrelationship between the structure of the web and social behavior
Critical analyses of the Web and Web technologies
The spread of large models on the web

Making the Web Inclusive

Issues of discrimination and fairness
Intersectionality and design justice in questions of marginalization and inequality
Ethical challenges of technologies, data, algorithms, platforms, and people on the Web
Safeguarding and governance of the Web, including anonymity, security, and trust
Inclusion, literacy, and the digital divide
Human-centered security and robustness on the Web

The Web and Everyday Life

Social machines, crowd computing, and collective intelligence
Web economics, social entrepreneurship, and innovation
Legal and policy issues, including rights and accountability for the AI industry
The creator economy: Humanities, arts, and culture on the Web
Politics and social activism on the Web
Relationships, organization, and social interaction on the Web
Online education and remote learning
Health and well-being online
Social presence in online professional event spaces
The Web as a source of news and information

Doing Web Science

Data curation, Web archives, and stewardship in Web Science
Temporal and spatial dimensions of the Web as a repository of information
Analysis and modeling of human and automatic behavior (e.g., bots)
Analysis of online social and information networks
Detecting, preventing, and predicting anomalies in Web data (e.g., fake content, spam)
Novel analysis techniques for Web and social network analysis
Recommendation engines and contextual adaptation for Web tasks
Web-based information retrieval and information generation
Supporting heterogeneity across modalities, sensors, and channels on the Web
User modeling and personalization approaches on the Web

Format of the submissions
Please upload your submissions via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=websci26

There are two submission formats:

Full paper should be between 6 and 10 pages (including references, appendices, etc.). Full papers typically report on mature and completed projects.
Short papers should be up to 5 pages (including references, appendices, etc.) and primarily report on high-quality ongoing work that is not mature enough for a full-length publication.

All papers should adopt the current ACM SIG Conference proceedings template (acmart.cls). Please submit papers as PDF files using the ACM template, either in Microsoft Word format (available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template under “Word Authors”) or with the ACM LaTeX template on the Overleaf platform, which is available at https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sig-proceedings-template/bmvfhcdnxfty. In particular, please ensure that you are using the two-column version of the appropriate template. All contributions will be judged by the Program Committee by at least three referees based on rigorous peer review standards for quality and fit for the conference. Additionally, each paper will be assigned to a Senior Program Committee member to ensure review quality.

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Important update on ACM's new open access publishing model for 2026 ACM Conferences!

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Eurovision Song Contest and Humanities and Social Sciences: Issues, questions and perspectives

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 18:48:30 GMT

April 1 - 3, 2026

Paris, Campus des Cordeliers

Deadline: October 15, 2025

https://encore-network.org/call-for-papers/

Since its inception in 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) has launched the careers of global stars such as ABBA and Celine Dion. Multicultural and multilingual, and unmatched in scale outside the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the ESC has become a fixture of the European public media landscape. In 2025, the contest reached 166 million television viewers and garnered 1.8 billion views across its social media platforms. As a ceremonial media event (Dayan & Katz, 1996), the ESC carries significant economic, political, and social implications.

On the eve of its 70th anniversary, the ESC is far from being an outdated or kitschy public spectacle. Instead, it crystallizes numerous complex issues. It serves as a platform where Europe and its neighbors express national identities and shared imaginaries, while also reflecting geopolitical rivalries—from East-West tensions during the Cold War to more recent conflicts such as Armenia/Azerbaijan, Ukraine/Russia, and Israel/Palestine. Positioned at the intersection of the cultural and media industries, the ESC raises questions about the construction of norms and the representation of certain populations. Finally, the ESC prompts critical inquiry into cultural legitimacy and its counterpoint—the eclecticism of taste—raising the question: what does it mean today to ‘love the Eurovision Song Contest’?

Studying the ESC thus entails exploring the intersections of identity, collective rituals, and social media participation, while also illuminating the complex political and social dynamics within the cultural and media industries. To what extent can the humanities and social sciences help us to illuminate, understand, and critically analyze the social, cultural, and political issues—both past and present—embodied in the ESC?

In recent years, a growing body of research has examined the ESC through a variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches. This body of work engages with multiple disciplinary perspectives, including explorations of national and cultural identities in Europe (Fricker & Gluhovic (eds.), 2013; Jordan, 2014; Neves, 2017; Panea, 2020; Venon, 2007), as well as approaches rooted in musicology and popular culture (Björnberg, 1987; Fornäs, 2017; Shuker, 2016; Raykoff, 2021; Tragaki (ed.), 2013), cultural sociology and fan studies (Le Guern, 2007; Vieira Lopes, 2023), cultural studies (Carniel, 2018; Coleman, 2008; Salgó, 2017), history (Vuletic, 2018), communication and media studies (Appiotti, Bolz, Boittiaux & Neuvillers, 2025; Pajala, 2011), education studies (Cremona, 2022), and gender studies (Baker, 2024; Imre, 2020; Lemish, 2004; Vänskä & Tuhkanen (eds.), 2007).

The conference “Eurovision Song Contest and the Humanities and Social Sciences” seeks to build upon the collective initiatives that have helped establish an interdisciplinary state of the art in ESC research (Raykoff & Tobin, (eds.), 2007; Fricker & Gluhovic, (eds.), 2013; Dubin, Vuletic & Obregón, (eds.), 2023). Adopting an interdisciplinary and critical perspective, the conference aims to explore and interrogate emerging approaches and studies related to the contest and its multiple dimensions.

The discussions at this conference will be structured around the following central research questions:

How are the humanities and social sciences approaching the ESC? Conversely, how might the ESC stimulate and challenge the theoretical frameworks and methodologies of these disciplines?
Is the ESC an original social object with its own distinct questions and methods, or does it resemble other research topics that pose similar analytical challenges?
Does current research on the ESC reflect a profound renewal of academic approaches, or is it primarily shaped by long-term dynamics involving the revision and adaptation of existing themes, objects, and analytical frameworks?
What do analyses of the ESC contribute to the humanities and social sciences, particularly in terms of methodological tools, and interpretive perspectives?
How do disciplinary orientations and the ethnocentric perspectives of researchers shape their interpretations of the ESC and influence their research practices?

This conference also aims to underscore the importance of diverse perspectives, disciplines, and research traditions, recognizing that only an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to the ESC can fully capture and update the current state of scholarship on the subject. As such, paper proposals are welcome from a wide range of disciplines and methodologies, including but not limited to: anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies, law, economics, gender studies, tourism studies, aesthetics, geography, history, fan studies, musicology, narratology, performance and theater studies, political science, linguistics, semiotics, and sociology. In particular, papers are expected to include:

A critical and reflective presentation of the concepts, paradigms, and methodologies employed to address the questions raised by the conference. Special attention should be given to the identification of the disciplinary fields involved and the ways in which they are brought into dialogue. Contributions should demonstrate how these interdisciplinary engagements offer an original lens for understanding the ESC.
An analysis grounded in verifiable and contestable empirical material, such as ethnographic fieldwork, textual or media corpora, databases, or other forms of structured data, allowing for critical debate and scholarly validation.

To this end, we propose several thematic areas for consideration. These are not exhaustive and are intended as a guiding framework to assist in the drafting of paper proposals.

1. As stated above, we are interested in the epistemologies and methodologies employed in conducting field research on the ESC:

Between the “aca-fan” stance (Jenkins, 2006: 4) and the claim to axiological neutrality, how can researchers study the ESC while maintaining reflexivity, critical distance, and scientific rigor?
What approaches are commonly favored to define the ESC as a research subject, and what are the underlying reasons for these preferences?
In what ways do the social, political, and historical contexts of research shape the situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988) of scholars studying the ESC?
From the Super Bowl halftime show to the Olympic Games (Gilbert & Lo, 2007; Baker, 2016; Baker, Atkinson, Grabher & Howcroft, 2025), television competitions (Leveneur-Martel, 2021) and music festivals (Delanty, Giorgi & Sassatelli (eds.), 2011; Djakouane & Négrier, 2021), what comparisons and dialogues can be drawn between the ESC and other cultural phenomena and concrete research topics?
How can alternative research methods and protocols, including action research and research-creation, open new ways for investigating the ESC?
Finally, how do methodological and scientific experiments, for example related to digital research methods in the humanities and social sciences and digital humanities, renew scientific questions and research protocols concerning the ESC?

2. The role of the ESC as a mirror reflecting socio-cultural and political issues, tensions, and debates—an aspect that has drawn increasing scholarly attention in recent years—also deserves to be critically examined.

To what extent does the ESC function as a catalyst, a revealer, or a mirror of past and contemporary social, political, and cultural issues?
How can we move beyond the conventional dichotomy of apoliticism vs. politicization often applied to analyze the ESC, and instead develop a more nuanced understanding of the actors, dynamics, and forms of politicization and depoliticization involved in the contest?
Why—and through what mechanisms—is the ESC frequently connoted, or even disqualified, as an outdated, kitschy, or culturally illegitimate form? How can we (re)qualify the cultural hierarchies and tastes that shape perceptions of the ESC?
Why does the ESC crystallize a wide array of debates, social discourses, values, and ideologies? In what ways are these performed and staged in the public sphere through interpretive conflicts, controversies, and scandals?

3. We also place great importance on the various social actors involved in the ESC. Our aim is to better understand the relational, interactional, and even ‘cooperative-competitive’ (Legavre, 2011) dynamics that structure the interactions among actors within the ‘Eurovision world’.

This line of research invites submissions that explore—whether through monographic case studies or comparative analyses—the understanding of one or more types of social actors gravitating around the ESC, such as:

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) ;
Public service media members of the EBU and broadcasters of the contest ;
Artists and their “cooperation chains” (Becker, 1988): record labels, managers, musicians, dancers, producers, technicians, etc. ;
Private or public media providing coverage of the competition (Wolther, 2006; Pajala, 2011): journalists, commentators, content creators, influencers, fan media, etc. ;
The audiences (Ballarini & Ségur (eds.), 2017), non-audiences, and fans of the ESC, in all their diversity of practices and imaginations related to the competition ;
Politicians, and how they have approached the ESC over the years ;
ESC sponsors and partner brands.

4. The forms and formats of the ESC could also serve as a focal point for discussion at the conference, particularly in relation to the following aspects:

A study of performances (songs, lyrics, staging, etc.);
The (multi-)media dimension of the contest: the ESC is a concert stage, a television show, and an unprecedented catalyst for a variety of formats (videos, photos, memes, rankings, predictions, polls, etc.) on the web and on digital social networks;
The ESC as an incubator for technical and technological innovations;
The dramaturgy of the contest, with a continuous evolution of its rules and staging (voting rules, announcement of points, etc.);
The spectacularization of the ESC’s staging: evident both in the increasing professionalization of its shows and artistic performances, as well as in the substantial annual budget allocated to the event’s organization, production, multiple rehearsals, promotion, and broadcasting.

5. We also believe that the links between the ESC and the territories provide a valuable gateway for dialogue on the following approaches and themes:

The value of various scientific approaches, such as geopolitics (Yair, 1995; Yair & Maman, 1996) or socio-history, in understanding: the social and symbolic construction of territories, borders, and cultural identities through the lens of the ESC; the construction of territorial images and imaginaries through diverse discursive strategies (such as narratives of national and cultural identities, and the production and circulation of stereotypes) and semiotic strategies (such as video “postcards” presenting artists, host countries and candidates, costumes, flags, national symbols, etc.);
The role of the ESC in territorial development strategies: particular attention may be given to the economic, territorial, and tourism ecosystem of the ESC in relation to the host country and city. This includes examining its most contested dimensions (Shepherd, 2021), such as public administrations (tourist offices, information centers) and local authorities (city, region, etc.) as well as tourists.
The dialectical tensions between territorialization and deterritorialization (do Carmo Cruz, 2019), as well as between globalization and glocalization (Robertson, 1994) of the ESC.

In all cases, fieldwork, corpus-based studies, and reflexive approaches to the ESC’s epistemological and methodological frameworks will be central to our discussions.

Aligned with the founding of the Eurovision Research Network (“Europe and the ‘New’ Europe Research Network,” 2009 in Fricker, Gluhovic, 2013: 3; 6), this conference aims to serve as a catalyst for the formation of an international scholarly network exploring the ESC through interdisciplinary and cross-thematic perspectives.

In a second phase, a collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles in English is planned for publication in a specialized academic volume.

Calendar

Publication of the call for papers: September 1, 2025
Paper proposal submission deadline: October 15, 2025
Notification of paper acceptance: December 10, 2025

Submission guidelines

Proposals should be sent by October 15, 2025 to the following email address : escconference.paris@gmail.com

Please submit paper proposals in French or English as follows :

A file (in .pdf format) containing: the title of the paper, a short bio-bibliographical note (maximum 500 characters, including surname, first name, and institutional affiliation), an email address, and up to 5 keywords;
An anonymous file (in .pdf format) containing: the title of the paper, the paper proposal of no more than 3,000 characters including spaces, excluding bibliographical references.

As a reminder, paper proposals are expected to include:

A concise overview of the research context;
A clear and well-structured presentation of the research question, along with the key concepts, paradigms, and methodologies used to engage with the themes of the conference;
A presentation of fieldwork-based analysis (e.g., ethnographic studies, corpora, textual analysis, databases, etc.). If the research is still in progress, please provide initial hypotheses and a description of the research protocol.

All information related to this call for papers and the international conference is also available on https://encore-network.org.

References

Appiotti, S., Bolz, L., Boittiaux, J., & Neuvillers, M.-C. (8 avril 2025). Mutations de la couverture médiatique du concours Eurovision de la chanson en France (analyse exploratoire de la presse écrite et de la télévision 1998–2024). Presentation at the seminar “Penser l’Eurovision”.

Baker, C. (2016). The ‘gay Olympics’? The Eurovision Song Contest and the politics of LGBT/European belonging. European Journal of International Relations, 23(1), 97–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116633278

Baker, C. (2024). Lion of Love: Representations of Russian Homosexuality and Homophobia in Netflix’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Historical Reflections, 50(2), 61–76.

Baker, C., Atkinson, D., Grabher, B., & Howcroft, M. (2025). Bridging the ‘sport/culture silo’: the Eurovision Song Contest and its lessons for sporting and cultural mega-events. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2025.2521115

Ballarini, L., & Ségur, C. (eds.). (2017). Devenir public. Modalités et enjeux (Série « Media critic »). Éditions Mare et Martin.

Björnberg, A. (1987). En liten sång som alla andra : Melodifestivalen 1959–1983 [A Little Song Like All the Others: Melodifestivalen 1959–1983] [Doctoral thesis, University of Göteborg].

Carniel, J. (2018). Understanding the Eurovision Song Contest in multicultural Australia. Palgrave Macmillan.

Coleman, S. (2008). Why is the Eurovision Song Contest Ridiculous? Exploring a Spectacle of Embarrassment, Irony and Identity. Popular Communication, 6(3), 127–140.

Cremona, G. (2022). The Eurovision University Study Unit and Its Pedagogic Value: A Critical Evaluation of Public and Media Reaction Towards Innovation in Higher Education. International Journal of Higher Education Pedagogies, 3(1), 13–23.

Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1996). La télévision cérémonielle : anthropologie et histoire en direct. Presses universitaires de France.

Delanty, G., Giorgi, L., & Sassatelli, M. (eds.). (2011). Festivals and the cultural public sphere. Routledge.

Djakouane, A., & Négrier, E. (2021). Festivals, territoire et société. Ministère de la Culture – DEPS. https://doi.org/10.3917/deps.djako.2021.01

Do Carmo Cruz, V. (2019). Territoire et processus de territorialisation : usages et conceptions méthodologiques dans le domaine de la géographie. In Action publique, dynamiques sociales et pauvreté (1‑). Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pulm.21706

Dubin, A., Vuletic, D., & Obregón, A. (eds.). (2022). The Eurovision Song Contest as a cultural phenomenon: From concert halls to the halls of academia. Routledge.

Fornäs, J. (2017). Euro-Visions: East European Narratives in Televised Popular Music. In J. Fornäs (Dir.), Europe Faces Europe: Narratives from Its Eastern Half (pp. 179–236). Intellect.

Fricker, K., & Gluhovic, M. (eds.). (2013). Performing the “New” Europe. Identities, Feelings and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gilbert, H., & Lo, J. (2007). Cosmopolitics: Cross-cultural Transactions in Australasia. Palgrave Macmillan.

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066

Imre, A. (2020). The Eurovision Song Contest: Queer Nationalism. In E. Thompson & J. Mittell (eds.), How to Watch Television (2nd ed., pp. 193–202). NYU Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York University Press.

Jordan, P. (2014). The Modern Fairy Tale: Nation Branding, National Identity and the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia. University of Tartu Press.

Le Guern, P. (2007). Aimer l’Eurovision, une faute de goût ? Une approche sociologique du fan club français de l’Eurovision. Réseaux, 25(145), 231–265.

Legavre, J.-B. (2011). Entre conflit et coopération. Les journalistes et les communicants comme « associés-rivaux ». Communication & langages, 169, 105–123. https://doi.org/10.4074/S0336150011003097

Lemish, D. (2004). « My Kind of Campfire »: The Eurovision Song Contest and Israeli Gay Men. Popular Communication, 2(1), 41–63.

Leveneur-Martel, L. (2021). Les cérémonies Miss France, de la télévision à Twitter : Une ritualisation des commentaires (2015–2019). Réseaux, 230(6), 171–214. https://doi.org/10.3917/res.230.0171

Neves, M. (2017). Croatia in the Eurovision Song Contest: From an Anti-War Message to the Recognition of a Cultural Tradition. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 48(1), 133–147.

Pajala, M. (2011). Making Television Historical: Cultural memory of the Eurovision Song Contest in the Finnish media 1961–2005. Media History, 17(4), 405–418. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2011.602859

Panea, J. L. (2020). Las escenografías del Festival de Eurovisión: Estética, tecnología e identidad cultural al albor de la reconstrucción europea (1956–1993). Ámbitos: Revista de Estudios de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 49, 23–40.

Raykoff, I. (2021). Another Song for Europe. Music, Taste, and Values in the Eurovision Song Contest. Routledge

Raykoff, I., & Tobin, R. D. (eds.). (2007). A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. Routledge.

Robertson, R. (1994). Globalisation or glocalisation? Journal of International Communication, 1(1), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/13216597.1994.9751780

Salgó, E. (2017). ‘Rise like a Phoenix’: A New Anthem for (Federal) Europe. In Images from Paradise: The Visual Communication of the European Union’s Federalist Utopia (pp. 141–159). Berghahn Books.

Shepherd, J. (2021). ‘I’m not your toy’ : rejecting a tourism boycott. Tourism Recreation Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2021.1998874

Shuker, R. (2016). Understanding Popular Music Culture. Routledge.

Tragaki, D. (Ed.). (2013). Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest. Scarecrow Press.

Vänskä, A., & Tuhkanen, M. (eds.). (2007). Special Issue: “Queer Eurovision”. SQS: Journal of Queer Studies in Finland, 2(2). https://journal.fi/sqs/issue/view/3606

Venon, F. (2007). L’Eurovision et les frontières culturelles de l’Europe. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography. http://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/5633

Vieira Lopes, S. (2023). Música, televisão, memória e representação: Um estudo do Festival RTP da Canção (1964–2020) [Doctoral thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa].

Vuletic, D. (2018). Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest. Bloomsbury.

Wolther, I. (2006). Der Eurovision Song Contest als Mittel national-kultureller Repräsentation. Königshausen & Neumann.

Yair, G. (1995). Unite, Unite, Europe: The Political and Cultural Structures of Europe as Reflected in the Eurovision Song Contest. Social Networks, 17(2), 147–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-8733(95)00253-K

Yair, G., & Maman, D. (1996). The Persistent Structure of Hegemony in the Eurovision Song Contest. Acta Sociologica, 39(3), 309–325. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4194833

Organizing committee

Sébastien Appiotti, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

Lisa Bolz, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

Johan Boittiaux, LabSIC, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord

Philippe Le Guern, PTAC, Université Rennes 2

Marie-Caroline Neuvillers, Centre Norbert Elias, Avignon Université

Scientific committee

Sébastien Appiotti, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

Catherine Baker, University of Hull

Alix Bénistant, LabSIC, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord

Johan Boittiaux, LabSIC, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord

Lisa Bolz, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

Marcin Bogucki, Instytut Kultury Polskej, University of Warsaw

Isabel Campelo, NOVA University of Lisbon

Jessica Carniel, University of Southern Queensland

Juliette Charbonneaux, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

Thierry Devars, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

Karen Fricker, Brock University

Thibault Grison, GERiiCO, Université de Lille

Jonathan Hendrickx, University of Copenhagen

Zhao Alexandre Huang, Dicen-IDF, Université Gustave Eiffel

Virginie Julliard, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

Valeriya Korablyova, University Charles Michel

Philippe Le Guern, PTAC, Université Rennes 2

Louisa Martin-Chevalier, IreMuS, Sorbonne Université

Marie-Caroline Neuvillers, Centre Norbert Elias, Avignon Université

Ivan Raykoff, New School, New York

Simon Renoir, Centre Norbert Elias, Avignon Université

Sofia Vieira Lopes, NOVA University of Lisbon

Hécate Vergopoulos, GRIPIC, CELSA – Sorbonne Université

ECREA Webinar Series on Academic Freedom: NEW DATE

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 08:52:00 GMT

November 11, 2025, 14:00 CET

Registration for ECREA members is now open: https://forms.gle/YzAQWM7LoVmGHY3v6

The recent years have been marked by wars and authoritarian repression that have greatly affected the academic community. There have been various responses from academic institutions aimed at supporting scholars at risk, supporting academic freedom, and discussing the role educational institutions should have in responding to conflict and pressure. Wars, persecution, and insecurities have pushed scholars into exile, forcing them to adapt to new academic environments.

ECREA already started the discussion with a focus on Ukraine and Gaza, which opened many questions about the academic role in responding to mass atrocities and authoritarian threats to academic freedom. For this reason, the EDI subcommittee proposed ECREA to hold a series of webinars to discuss academic freedom, scholars at risk, and strategies for assisting scholars.

The first webinar will address the issue of scholars in exile and strategies for supporting them. The discussion will focus on the experiences of scholars who were forced to leave their country and adapt to a new academic environment. The webinar will provide an opportunity to reflect on the structures or circumstances that forced scholars into exile, as well as the pressures, expectations, and roles scholars experience while in exile.

In what ways can ECREA protect and support its members, whose physical safety can be at risk if they are in zones of war or violence, or whose academic and civic freedoms might be under attack from repressive governments or institutions, including academic institutions? We hope the webinar series will help ECREA develop a response to these issues, such as recommendations or other practices designed to support academics.

Confirmed Speakers:

Dr. Bermal Aydın, formerly a lecturer at Mersin University in Turkey, was dismissed, banned from public employment, and had her passport cancelled for signing the Peace Petition, “We will not be a party to this crime.” Supported by CARA (Council for At-Risk Academics), she became a postdoctoral fellow and later a guest teacher at the London School of Economics (LSE), researching authoritarian neoliberalism and the politically motivated precarisation of academics and journalists in Turkey. She taught and supervised master’s dissertations at LSE, published in journals such as Globalizations and Turkish Studies, co-edited books, contributed chapters, and continues her work independently.

Dr. Zeina Al Azmeh is political sociologist at the University of Cambridge. Her work examines the cultural sociologies of knowledge production in exile and their impact on diasporic political subjectivities. Her book Syrian Intellectuals in Exile: The Dilemmas of Revolution and the Cost of Leaving will be published this December with Cambridge University Press. She has published in journals such as Theory and Society, Cultural Sociology, Qualitative Inquiry, and IJPCS and chairs the Syrian Academics and Researchers’ Network in the UK.

Dr. Olena Zinenko is a media scholar and senior lecturer at Institute of Sociology and Media Communication, Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine, a feminist peace activist, and currently a PSI Visiting Fellow at the IFHV, Ruhr University, Bochum. Her research focuses on media discourse analysis, investigating the role of media in peace processes and public communication in Ukraine.

The webinar will be accessible to ECREA members only.

Social Change and the Role of Advertising Regulation: New Challenges and Opportunities

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 08:19:43 GMT

Journal of Advertising (Special issue)

Deadline: July 31, 2026

Advertising regulation is becoming increasingly important as governments, industry bodies and international organizations respond to mounting concerns over online harms, misinformation, sustainability, and consumer vulnerability. With the rapid growth of social media, AI-generated content and advanced forms of data tracking, advertising is now woven into the fabric of daily life, often in ways that are not visible or well understood. These technological and market developments have moved faster than the regulatory systems intended to manage them, creating significant gaps in the protection of the public, particularly for children and other vulnerable groups.

Globally, regulators are rethinking how advertising should be governed in the face of a shifting digital landscape and rising pressure for more responsible corporate behavior (Dickinson-Delaporte et al., 2020; Stewart, 2019). The rapid growth of digital advertising has significantly complicated regulatory oversight, as traditional rules struggle to keep pace with real-time, algorithm-driven targeting, cross-border content flows, and platform-mediated ad placements. This complexity is heightened by the opacity of digital advertising supply chains, where intermediaries and platform algorithms operate with limited transparency, highlighting the need for more responsive and accountable regulatory approaches.

Advertising regulatory approaches vary across the globe, and typically include government regulation, where laws and public agencies enforce advertising standards; industry self-regulation, where advertising bodies develop and apply their own codes of practice; media-led regulation, where platforms or publishers set and enforce their own standards of practice; and the laissez-faire approach, which relies on market forces and consumer response to address advertising issues without formal oversight. There is often a hybrid approach in practice, with many countries combining elements of these models to suit regulatory, cultural, and market contexts (see Appendix 1 for advertising regulation models in top 10 ad-spending countries).

Increasingly, there is recognition of the need for stronger mechanisms and greater international coordination (Greer & Thompson, 1985) across different regulatory forms, in order to address the dynamic issues of the contemporary world, such as online safety (Ahmad et al., 2024; Diaz Ruiz, 2025), advertising fraud (Liang et al., 2024), the use of AI (Hardcastle et al., 2025), influencer advertising (Asquith & Fraser, 2020), environmental claims and greenwashing (Parguel et al., 2015; Schmuck et al., 2018), advertising of harmful products (Abernethy & Teel, 1986; Adams et al., 2012), and gender stereotyping (Antoniou & Akrivos, 2020; Knoll et al., 2011) (see Appendix 2 for examples of recent changes in advertising regulation).

At the same time, efforts to enhance consumer protections are meeting resistance. In contexts such as the United Kingdom and the United States, anti-regulatory sentiment is gaining traction, driven by concerns that increased oversight might restrict innovation and economic progress. This push and pull between protecting the public and preserving commercial freedom is making the regulation of advertising a more urgent and contested issue. Public distrust of digital platforms and unease about how personal data is used for advertising only sharpen the need for a re-evaluation of current frameworks. In this context, we highlight the crucial role advertising research plays in informing and shaping such regulatory frameworks (Kees & Andrews, 2019).

With this Special Issue, we focus on the systems that govern advertising, rather than on advertising content or ethical intention alone. Our interest lies in the legal, institutional, and procedural arrangements that support, or fail to support, ethical and socially beneficial advertising. We aim to draw attention to the conditions under which regulation can enable greater transparency, accountability, and harm reduction. Beyond analyzing what regulation currently does, we also seek to develop theory on what advertising regulation could become: how regulatory development might advance social wellbeing, shape markets more ethically, and position advertising as a force for social good. The purpose is not to promote one model of regulation over another, but to build a deeper understanding of how governance - in all its forms - shapes advertising’s societal influence and its capacity to address pressing societal issues.

We encourage submissions that theorize how regulatory approaches effect social change, and conceptual papers that propose new directions for research on advertising governance. We welcome empirical contributions that adopt multidisciplinary perspectives (Rotfeld & Taylor, 2009) and employ diverse methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks, including—but not limited to—work grounded in Transformative Advertising Research (Gurrieri et al., 2022), institutional theory, market shaping, and ethics. We are especially interested in scholarship that explores where regulation is falling short, how new interventions affect both industry and society, and theorizing that can help reimagine advertising regulation in light of contemporary challenges.

Key Themes and topics

We invite submissions that address regulatory questions across the following areas:

Advertising and Institutional Change: How advertising regulation influences social norms, consumer rights, and the broader role of advertising in shaping public life, which may include examination of the role of consumer advocacy.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Accountability: The use of regulation to support sustainable advertising, reduce greenwashing and strengthen corporate responsibility, which may include for example, how different jurisdictions address misleading sustainability advertising.
Risk, Innovation and Regulatory Resilience: The effects of regulation on managing business risk, and how to design adaptable frameworks that remain effective in fast-moving digital environments.
Regulation of Cross-Border Challenges, Geo-socio-political Contexts and Global Disparities: Comparative studies of regulatory approaches to particular challenges, including successful reforms, international coordination, and lessons for different contexts. How governmental structures, socio-political context, or culture influence forms of regulation and prioritization of regulatory issues across different geographical contexts.
Industry Practice, Responsibility and Culture: The impact of regulation on advertising professionals, industry cultures, and legal responsibility for harmful advertising processes or outcomes.
Online Harms and Safety, Surveillance and Algorithmic Systems: Regulatory responses to harmful online advertising practices, particularly concerning vulnerable populations. The role of advertising platforms in spreading or combating harmful content, for example online hate speech and misinformation.
Advertising Fraud: The rise of advertising fraud, including deceptive programmatic ads, click fraud, and misleading financial promotions.
Gender Stereotypes and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG): Evaluating the effectiveness of regulatory interventions in addressing gendered advertising harms.
Social Media Influencers and Digital Advertising: Regulatory gaps in influencer marketing and sponsored content disclosures.
Generative AI and Deepfake Advertising: Ethical and regulatory challenges posed by AI-generated advertising content.
Harmful or Addictive Products: Regulatory approaches to advertising of HFSS foods, alcohol, gambling, and social media addiction.
As advertising continues to shape consumer behavior and societal norms, regulation plays a crucial role in mitigating harm and fostering positive change. This Special Issue seeks to advance discussions on how regulatory frameworks can help to create an advertising ecosystem that prioritizes social good, consumer well-being, and ethical advertising practices.

(please contact Guest Editors for list of references)

Submission Instructions

Submissions should follow the manuscript format guidelines for JA found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=ujoa20. The word count should be no longer than 12,000 words for Original Research Articles and Literature Reviews, and 6,000 words for Research Notes (including references, tables, figures, and appendices).

The submission deadline is July 31, 2026

All manuscripts should be submitted through the JA Submission Site. The link to the submission site can be found at this link (“Go to submission site”). Authors should select “Article Type” (e.g., research article, literature review) on the first page of the submission website. On the second page, authors will be asked if this is for a specific special issue or article collection. Select “Yes” and select “Social Change and the Role of Advertising Regulation” from the drop-down menu. Please also note in the cover letter that the submission is for the Special Issue on Social Change and the Role of Advertising Regulation: New Challenges and Opportunities.

All articles will undergo blind peer review by at least two reviewers.

The anticipated date for publication of the Special Issue is June 2027.

Any questions about the Special Issue can be sent to the guest editors: Drs. Karen Middleton, Kristina Auxtova, Lauren Gurrieri & Sean Sands at AdRegulationJA@gmail.com.

Updated: Public statement on state's pressure on the academic community in Serbia

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 08:58:32 GMT

ECREA is still deeply concerned about the state's pressure on the academic community in Serbia.

See the updated Public Statement HERE.

Please consider signing a letter in support of Associate Professor Jelena Kleut (University of Novi Sad), ECREA Governing Body member, who was targeted in a campaign recently.

You can sign the letter HERE.

EASSH position paper: Society in FP10 is for research on Society

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 08:51:33 GMT

On 2 September 2025, Commissioner Ekatherina Zarahieva clarified that the European Commission (EC) proposal from 16 July 2025 aims at strengthening research on Society within Pillar 2. EASSH welcomes the move and invites legislators to confirm the commitment.

EASSH calls for the European Parliament and the EU member states to support the key issues described in the paper in the EC proposal for a new framework programme (FP10).

EASSH also invites member and related organisations to endorse this position paper. Please send your organisation's contact details and logo to executive.secretary@eassh.eu.

Download paper HERE.

International Forum Citizenship through Aesthetics

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 07:23:59 GMT

October 16-18, 2025

São Miguel, Azores (Portugal)

Deadline: October 8, 2025

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to announce the International Forum Citizenship through Aesthetics, to be held in São Miguel, Azores (Portugal), from 16 to 18 October 2025.

The Forum is conceived as a space of gathering, reflection, and action at the intersection of art, politics, imagination, and community. It will bring together artists, scholars, curators, cultural programmers, and civic agents to explore how aesthetic practices can shape processes of active and critical citizenship.

Open Call — Public Speech Acts

We invite proposals for short interventions (max. 15 minutes) designed as speech acts: critical and poetic gestures capable of provoking debate and opening shared space.

Deadline for submissions: 8 October 2025
Notification of results: 10 October 2025
Public presentations: 16 October 2025 · 17:00–20:00 · Ponta Delgada, São Miguel (Azores)

Support offered:

Selected participants will receive travel, accommodation, and meals covered, plus a gift bag and a ticket for the closing performance of the POP Festival (May B, by Maguy Marin). All applicants will benefit from special accommodation and meal conditions during the Forum.

More information and the full programme:

www.aestheticivitas.org

internationalforum@aestheticivitas.org

Shaping the Future of the Information Society: WSIS+20 and Beyond

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 07:22:06 GMT

Policy & Internet Journal

Deadline: November 2, 2025

Policy & Internet Journal has launched a special issue call for papers on the topic of “Shaping the Future of the Information Society: WSIS+20 and Beyond”, edited by Prof. Dr. Jonathon Hutchinson (University of Sydney) and Nadia Tjahja (United Nations University-CRIS and Free University of Brussels):

https://internet-policy-meco.sydney.edu.au/2025/09/specialissuewsis20/

We invite papers that explore:

Governance Modalities and Stakeholder Dynamics

We welcome papers that critically examine the evolving architecture of Internet governance, key questions include:

* Modes of Governance and Participation: Analyses of the WSIS+20 Review process, including its modalities, elements and drafts.

* Stakeholder Inclusion and Participation Models: Reviewing how the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and WSIS have approached multistakeholderism, inclusion and diversity in its processes.

* Meta-participation in Digital Governance: Exploring second-order stakeholder engagement – where stakeholders not only participate in processes, but actively shape the process itself

* Norm Development and Frameworks: Studies on the alignment and adoption of the SDGs, Sao Paulo Principles, the GDC Frameworks and ROAM-X as normative anchors.

* Multilateralism and Multistakeholderism: Reviewing the interplay between multilateralism and multistakeholderism

* Global and regional multistakeholderism: Evaluating tensions, synergies and practical implications in decision-making

Institutional Futures in Internet Governance

We invite contributions that address the evolution and future of key institutions shaping Internet governance:

* Preserving and Evolving the IGF: The future of multistakeholder governance through the IGF and its potentially renewed mandate

* Developing Institutional Architectures: Reevaluating the changing role of different offices such as the UN Tech Envoy’s office/ODET, and proposals for new bodies for future governance.

* Evolving institutions: Reflecting on ICANN’s role in the evolving governance ecosystems and its place in future frameworks.

* Governing Artificial Intelligence: Proposals for new spaces or mechanisms to coordinate global AI governance across stakeholders.

User-centric Perspectives in Internet Governance: Exploring Internet use and its socioeconomic consequences

We invite contributions that are user-centric and/or address topics related to the WSIS Action Lines:

* Digital Inclusion and Equity

* User rights

* Behavioural and psychological impacts

* Economic and labour transformations

* Education

* Cultural and language diversity

* Data sovereignty

* Topics related to the WSIS Action Lines

Submission Guidelines:

Please send through your title and 300-word abstract to Jonathon Hutchinson [jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au] and Nadia Tjahja [nadia.tjahja@vub.be] with the subject line: “Policy & Internet Special Issue” by 2 November 2025.

* Abstracts: up to 300 words

* Abstract deadline: 2 November

* Full papers: 6000-8000 words

* Full paper Deadline: 1 March 2026

Kind regards,

Jonathon (on behalf of Nadia Tjahja).

Assistant Professor of Communication & Media

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 07:20:53 GMT

IE University, Madrid

IE University is hiring at least one tenure-track Assistant Professor of Communication & Media, to begin in September 2026. Applications are due on 24 November. The call is open but some of our areas of interest include Media Studies and Political Communication; Strategic, Corporate, and Visual Communication; and Critical, Cultural, and International Communication.

We are a research-intensive institution with an international student body. Salary is competitive. Courses are taught in English. Spanish proficiency is helpful but not required.

Find the full call here: https://apply.interfolio.com/174413

Please don't hesitate to reach out to search chair Dr. Vincent Doyle at vdoyle@faculty.ie.edu if you have any questions.

15th International Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts (Videojogos 2025)

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 07:20:00 GMT

December 5-6, 2025

Porto, Portugal

Deadline (extended): October 9, 2025

https://videojogos2025.ipmaia.pt/

The call for full papers, short papers, posters, doctoral consortium papers, workshops, demos, and games is open for the 15th International Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts (Videojogos 2025), organised by IPMaia (Porto) and Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências dos Videojogos.

Important update:

The submission deadline has been extended - New date: 09/10/2025

The submission platforms and forms are now fully operational.

Main website: https://videojogos2025.ipmaia.pt

Paper submissions: https://pubreview.maieutica.pt

Games, demos & workshops submissions: https://forms.gle/c4ysRzmAChQvhNgj9

All selected papers (short or full) must be submitted in English to be eligible for international publication. The top 40% of research papers—peer-reviewed and evaluated for originality, relevance, and presentation quality—will be published in the annual Springer proceedings volume (Communications in Computer and Information Science – CCIS series).

The conference will be held on the 4th and 5th of December 2025 in Porto, and more information about keynotes and programme will be available soon.

We look forward to receiving your contributions and to seeing you at Videojogos 2025.

Istanbul 2025 – EMMA

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:09:32 GMT

November 7-8, 2025

Istanbul, Turkey

Deadline (extended): October 7, 2025

We are pleased to announce that the submission deadline for Istanbul 2025 – EMMA (European Media Management Association) has been extended to 7 October 2025.

This year’s emmahub workshop in Istanbul will focus on the growing complexities of media production, engagement, and sustainability within polarized media systems. Particular attention will be given to the evolving relationship between legacy media institutions and non-legacy actors, including influencers, content creators, and independent digital platforms. The workshops will be held at Istanbul Bilgi University.

As part of a program that combines workshops, ignite talks, and roundtables, we invite scholars and practitioners to contribute to discussions around key questions such as:

How do audiences navigate between legacy and non-legacy media, and what drives their trust and engagement?
In what ways do non-legacy actors challenge or reinforce the authority of traditional institutions?
How are legacy media organizations adapting to decentralized ecosystems and shifting audience behaviors?
What new strategies and business models are emerging at the intersection of legacy and digital-native media?
How do platform dependencies and algorithms shape these dynamics within polarized contexts?
Can collaboration across sectors support depolarization and democratic renewal?

We warmly welcome your contributions and participation in shaping these timely discussions in Istanbul.

For more details and submission guidelines, please visit: Istanbul 2025 – EMMA

Please send any questions to: emmahub@bilgi.edu.tr

We look forward to your proposals and to seeing many of you in Istanbul.

With best regards,

On behalf of the organizing committee

Prof. Dr . Eylem Yanardagoglu

Macromedia University of Applied Sciences |EMMA

Email: e.yanardagoglu@macromedia.de

Cosmopolitan Communication Studies: Toward Deep Internationalization

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 12:21:00 GMT

Edited by: Carola Richter, Melanie Radue, Christine Horz-Ishak, Anna Litvinenko, Hanan Badr, Anke Fiedler

This volume proposes a “deep internationalization” of media and communication studies by offering insights and guidance on how to integrate a cosmopolitan perspective in a variety of subfields of this discipline. Building on debates on de-Westernization and cosmopolitanism, the contributors advocate for the inclusion of both global and local perspectives and context-led approaches. They argue that acknowledging and incorporating epistemologies, topics, and methodologies from diverse regions, contexts, and backgrounds will enhance the comprehensiveness and relevance of their discipline and foster a more inclusive and meaningful understanding in communication studies.

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7677-8/cosmopolitan-communication-studies/?number=978-3-8394-7677-2

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Books for review available

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 12:17:35 GMT

The Autumn 2025 list of books available to review in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television has been updated on the IAMHIST website: https://iamhist.net/journal/#books-review

The OpenQDA team announces the release of version 1.0.3 of their qualitative communication and media research software (open source)

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:52:22 GMT

Based on our own needs regarding collaborative work, methodological expansion, fair data usage, and support for open research processes, ZeMKI, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, has been developing OpenQDA since January 2023. You can use the software at https://openqda.org/ and find the source code and developer documentation at https://github.com/openqda.

The OpenQDA team is pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.3. OpenQDA has been enhanced with new features, which are now available at https://openqda.org. Below, we would like to introduce these features:

1) Project Management

The listed projects now show how many documents (sources) are already available in each project. In addition, the project overview now also offers the option of selecting documents, allowing you to immediately proceed to editing (Preparation Editor) a document.

2) Visualizations

All visualizations have been revised and expanded to include various parameterizations. This allows visualizations to be customized even more extensively to suit your specific needs.

3) Feedback and Help Form

It is now possible again to open a dialog for an integrated form via the navigation bar. This enables low-threshold contact with the OpenQDA team without requiring, for example, an account on another platform such as GitHub.

4) Documentation

The user documentation at https://openqda.github.io/user-docs/ has also been expanded to include the above-mentioned features.

Support OpenQDA

We welcome any form of feedback via all available channels (see below) as well as any form of participation in software development and documentation. If you have a GitHub account, you are also welcome to support us with a star.

Links and resources

OpenQDA application: https://openqda.org

User documentation: https://openqda.github.io/user-docs/

Source code: https://github.com/openqda/openqda

doi: 10.5281/zenodo.17182559

Contact: openqda@uni-bremen.de

https://zemki.uni-bremen.de/en/9287-2/

The Postal Revolution: Courier Networks in Italy, 1260-1600

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:46:51 GMT

Juraj Kittler

Publisher: Brill (Leiden, NL)

Publication Date: July 2025

This monograph explores the impact of expanding long-distance communication networks on late medieval business, politics, diplomacy, international law, and personal freedom. Trailblazed initially by pedestrian and later also mounted couriers in the context of Italy, postal operations were first and foremost at the heart of the commercial revolution that transformed late medieval banking and commerce. In their next stage, they were also essential to the formation of centralized states and early modern diplomacy. Expanding access to postal services during the Renaissance was likewise instrumental to the inception of the Republic of Letters, while travel by the posts fostered personal freedom and mobility. The emergence of the earliest postal networks is therefore presented in this volume as the opening stage of an entire series of subsequent communications revolutions that ushered in the modern era.

Publisher’s Page Link: https://brill.com/display/title/72460?language=en&srsltid=AfmBOooNHzKlavrR0CM3MPt2D2lV2S3IkrG1TiuxMe4ZLV41ADiWtK-g

Reclaiming the past, rethinking the future: Marking 50 years in media and communication scholarship

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:32:55 GMT

COMMUNICATIONS - THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

(special issue, volume 50, issue 3)

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/comm/50/3/html

The entire issue is freely accessible.

EDITORIAL

Reclaiming the past, rethinking the future: Marking 50 years in media and com£munication scholarship

Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz, Leen d’Haenens, Viviane Harkort

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2025-0087/html

ARTICLES

Grappling with surveillance before datafication

Göran Bolin

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0150/html

Reclaiming the Radical: Feminist Legacies and the Transformative Power of Media Ethnography

Laura Candidatu and Koen Leurs

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0198/html

Media use as social action – then and today

Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink and Uwe Hasebrink

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0142/html

The changing norms and standards of scholarly journal articles. A response to Pietilä’s “Peoples Conceptions of the Mass Media”

Jesper Strömbäck

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0128/html

To construct or to reveal? Network analysis as formalising communication

Bernie Hogan

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2025-0071/html

Stereotyping the Foreigner: Revisiting Gumpert & Cathcart’s Seminal Contribution

Maria Kyriakidou

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0183/html

Making progress in a trackless, weightless and intangible space

Keith Roe

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0185/html

Alphons Silbermann (1909–2000) and the founding of Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research

Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0196/html

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Review of „Turkle, S. (1997). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. Simon & Schuster. 352 pp.“

Giovanna Mascheroni

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0121/html

Book Review of „Thompson, J. B. (1995). The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Polity Press.“

César Jiménez-Martínez

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0174/html

Book Review of „Atton, C. (2002). Alternative media. Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446220153“

Bart Cammaerts

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0143/html

Book Review of „Jensen, K. B. (Ed.) (2012). Handbook of media and communication research: Qualitative and quantitative methodologies (2nd edition). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203357255“

Martine van Selm

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2024-0209/html

COMMUNICATIONS

Editors: Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz-Lietz & Leen d’Haenens

Associate Editors: Denisa Hejlová, Philippe J. Maarek, Hillel Nossek, Christian Pentzold, Cristina Ponte, Christian Ruggiero, Brigitte Sebbah

Book Review Editors: Olivier Driessens, Stijn Joye, Rebecca Venema

Editorial Management: Viviane Harkort

For questions please contact the editorial management: journal.comun@degruyterbrill.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/communications-journal/

Twitter: @commejcr

V MeLCi Lab Autumn School – “AI Research Practice and Media and Communication: Science bootcamp to improve research hands-on skills"

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:24:00 GMT

November 11-14, 2025

Lusófona University, Portugal

Deadline: September 26, 2025

The Media Literacy and Civic Cultures Lab – MeLCi Lab (Lusófona University, CICANT) is organising its V Autumn School from 11 to 14 November 2025 in the form of a bootcamp to boost research hands-on skills.

The MeLCi Lab Autumn School invites applications from PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career scholars for a four-day intensive online program focused on innovative research methods at the intersection of AI, Communication, and Media Studies.

The School combines practical workshops and keynote lectures, allowing participants to develop hands-on skills with classical and AI-driven methodologies.

In 2025, the school’s AI tracks are specifically designed to meet the needs of media studies and PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and early-career scholars. Participants will explore case studies and practical examples directly relevant to media analysis, digital journalism, and content curation. The sessions will address unique challenges in media-related research, such as bias in content classification, audience segmentation, and the interpretative complexity of multimedia annotation. Interactive workshops and tailored exercises will enable participants to apply AI tools to media-specific datasets, ensuring immediate applicability and facilitating deeper understanding through experiential learning.

In this sense, contributions for the following tracks (not exclusively) will be considered.

Track 1: AI in Research Practice: Foundations, Methods, and Ethics

1. Foundations of current AI tools → Recent natural language processing (NLP) breakthroughs, particularly through large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini, have significantly transformed research methodologies across disciplines. The unprecedented accessibility and effectiveness of zero- and few-shot prompting techniques have led to widespread adoption, sometimes even replacing traditional human coders (Gilardi et al., 2023; Grossmann et al., 2023; Ziems et al., 2024). Yet, these powerful tools introduce critical concerns regarding reproducibility, transparency, and ethical use. Prompt stability and variability in LLM responses—affected by minor prompt adjustments—can challenge the replicability and accountability of research (Barrie et al., 2025). This subtrack equips researchers in communication science with essential knowledge of the theoretical foundations of contemporary AI tools, highlighting methodologies and best practices for their ethical and accountable use.

2. Accountable Literature Search Using AI Tools → AI-powered tools such as SciSpace and Litmaps have radically improved the efficiency and comprehensiveness of literature searches. However, the convenience of these tools requires heightened researchers’ accountability. This subtrack guides participants through strategies to validate AI-generated results, critically assess literature coverage, and maintain transparent documentation practices, ensuring methodological rigour and reliability in AI-assisted literature reviews.

3. AI-Assisted Data Annotation in Research Pipelines → Data annotation is a cornerstone in research pipelines, traditionally relying heavily on human coders. However, AI-based annotation tools are emerging as viable and highly effective alternatives, particularly for large datasets. Barrie et al. (2025) highlight that prompt stability—the consistency of AI-generated annotations across multiple semantically similar prompts—remains a significant challenge. This subtrack introduces participants to AI-driven annotation, focusing on practical approaches to enhancing annotation consistency through frameworks like Prompt Stability Scoring (PSS). Participants will gain hands-on experience in assessing and improving the reliability of AI annotations, integrating responsible AI practices into their research workflows.

Track 2: Communication, Audiences, and Civic Cultures in the Age of AI

1. Civic Cultures and Artificial Intelligence → AI can play a crucial role in how citizens engage with the digital world in contemporary times, and a set of opportunities and challenges emerge from it (Sarafis et al., 2025). This subtrack explores the impact of AI-driven platforms and recommendation algorithms on civic engagement, activism, and media literacy.

2. Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy in an AI-Mediated World → Leveraging AI and overcoming its challenges requires the development of broad and critical skill sets, the definition of which is still fuzzy (Chiu et al., 2024). This subtrack intends to explore critical media literacy skills in the era of misinformation, deepfakes, and algorithmic personalisation.

3. Data Ethics, Equity, and Inclusivity in AI Research → Different biases can emerge from the use of AIs, and the ethical implications of using different tools for knowledge production are still unclear. While AI is frequently represented as either a magical solution or a looming threat, our Autumn School aims to demystify AI, exploring its realistic capabilities, limitations, and responsible use (Ferrara, 2024; Ntoutsi et al., 2020). This subtrack will focus on responsible research practices, equity grants, and inclusive research design for underrepresented communities.

Participants do not require previous experience with AI or data science, as introductory modules will provide a foundational understanding.

The Autumn School will be conducted online and in English.

For inquiries, please contact: melci.lab@ulusofona.pt

Call for proposals deadline

Deadline: 26th September 2025

Notification of Acceptance: 13th October 2025

Registration: 27th October

See details about how to submit a proposal at the bottom of this page.

Format

Online

Dates

11 to 14 November 2025 – V MeLCi Lab Autumn School

TIME (Lisbon time zone)

V MeLCi Lab Autumn School Schedule

Check the website for details.

How to apply

Interested participants must send their application (in English) by 26 September 2025, including:

Updated Curriculum Vitae (máx. 3 pages);
Candidate’s research statement that includes a description of their doctoral dissertation, research questions and methods (máx. 2 pages);
Motivation letter describing your current perspective on AI, specific concerns or interests regarding AI’s role in media practices, and your preferred track/subtrack(s) máx. 1-2 pages;

Please send your application as a ZIP file to melci.lab@ulusofona.pt with the subject “Application for the V MeLCi Lab Autumn School”.

Target-group

PhD Students

Early Career Researchers (with a PhD obtained in the last five years)

Fee *

Lusófona University, CICANT PhD Students 70 euros

PhD students from other Institutions 100 euros

Others 150 euros

*The best participant will not pay the fee

Keynote Speakers

Joana Gonçalves Sá, Researcher at LIP – Laboratory of Particle Physics and at NOVA-LINCS

Massimo Ragnedda, Associate Professor/Reader in Media and Communication Studies at both Sharjah University (UAE) and Northumbria University, Newcastle (UK)

Mustafa Can Gursesli, Postdoctoral Researcher, Gamification Group, Tampere University

Saul Albert, Lecturer in Social Science (Social Psychology) in Communication and Media at Loughborough University

Simone Natale, Associate Professor in Media Theory and History, University of Turin

Tutors

Carla Cerqueira – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Carla Sousa – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Fábio Ribeiro – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Lúcia Mesquita – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Pedro Costa – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Rita Grácio – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Sofia Caldeira – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Sónia Lamy – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Teresa Sofia Castro – Profile | Ciência Vitae | ORCID

Vanessa Rodrigues – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Organisers

Bruno Saraiva – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Carla Sousa – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Lúcia Mesquita – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Manuel Marques-Pita – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Maria José Brites – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

Zuil Pirola – Profile | CienciaVitae | ORCID

From Asylum to Arrest: The Criminalization of Migration, Dehumanization, and Technological Control”

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:17:57 GMT

October 10, 2025

Online

The Diaspora and Media Working Group will host, together with the Translocal Lives digital initiative, the webinar titled “From Asylum to Arrest: The Criminalization of Migration, Dehumanization, and Technological Control”.

When: Friday 10 October @13h00 UTC / 09h00 New York / 14h00 London / 15h00 Paris / 16h00 Nairobi / 18h30 Kolkata / Brisbane 23h00. The event will last 90 minutes.

Pre-registration is required by 8 October. This webinar seeks to explore the intersection of migration, technology, and human rights, contributing to a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by migrants and the complexities of migration criminalization, along with ethical implications of using digital tools in migratory contexts. By promoting dialogue among academics from both Global North and South perspectives, we aim to engage with critical questions and provide insights into these pressing issues.

Co-sponsored by: IAMCR’s Diaspora and Media Working Group and the Translocal Lives digital initiative

Moderators:

Sofia Zanforlin, Professor at Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and Vice-chair of the Diaspora and Media Working Group.
Amanda Alencar, Associate Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Director of Translocal Lives digital initiative.

For more information and to subscribe, here:

https://iamcr.org/webinars/migration-technology-humanrights

ISWNE/Huck Boyd Competition: Strengthening Community News – 2026

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 18:57:05 GMT

Proposals will first be peer-reviewed by faculty with expertise in community journalism. Final selection of the papers to be written will be made by a panel of working and retired community journalists who will evaluate the proposals on the basis of their potential value to newsrooms.

Proposals from graduate students are especially encouraged, as are proposals with an international focus, or reflecting an international perspective on community papers’ newsrooms.

One paper will be selected by the community journalists panel for presentation at the 2026 ISWNE conference tentatively scheduled forJuly 15-19 in Cardiff, Wales. ISWNE and the ISWNE Foundation will provide the author with a complimentary conference registration as well as $250 toward travel. The paper’s author will be expected to make whatever arrangements are necessary to attend this conference or to present on Zoom.

A second place paper also will be selected and the authors of both top papers will receive complimentary one-year memberships in ISWNE.

Focus: Papers should deal with topics relevant to the newsrooms of community weeklies, particularly those with small staffs and circulations under 10,000. The papers should provide useful guidance on general issues and/or everyday problems that such newsrooms may face.

Examples could include legal, political, or ethical issues; alternative print/digital integration models; or surveys to determine successful techniques for staff recruitment/retention, for boosting online presence or to elicit “best practices” for special editions. Roundups of how states handle Sunshine Law violations or how papers train young reporters to be alert for such violations would also be of interest. So would explorations of new ways to convey information to a local audience (e.g., using AI) and how to monetize them. These, of course, are only some of the many areas on which research could focus.

Note that ISWNE members have access to the organization’s Hotline, where topics of current interest to weekly newsrooms are regularly discussed. Non-members may request temporary access by contacting Executive Director Chad Stebbins at cstebbins@mopress.com. This is one way to focus Proposals and the resulting papers on issues of concern to community weekly newsrooms.

Guidelines for Developing Proposals: Proposals should be limited to a maximum of two pages. These proposals should explain clearly and concisely how the final papers will be of practical use to community weekly newsrooms. They should note any prior work on which they will build or which they will assess critically.

Suggested Length for the Paper: 2,500 to 6,000 words.

Logistics for submission: Proposals should be submitted electronically to Huck Boyd Center Director Sam C. Mwangi at scmwangi@ksu.edu. The proposal itself should contain nothing that would identify the author. It must be accompanied by a separate title page containing full author contact information (name, email-address, mailing address, university and/or professional affiliation and phone number). These two items must be emailed by Nov. 3, 2025.

Other Dates:

Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by Dec. 1, 2025.
Completed papers are due to scmwangi@ksu.edu no later than March 15, 2026.
The author of the paper selected for presentation at the 2024 ISWNE conference will be notified by April 15, 2026; peer review comments will be provided as soon as possible.
Changes suggested by the second peer review will be sent to all other authors by July 31, 2026 for use in preparing the final version of their papers.
Final versions of the papers should be sent electronically to Chad Stebbins at cstebbins@mopress.com by Sept. 15, 2026.

ISWNE was founded in 1955 to promote high standards of editorial writing, facilitate the exchange of ideas and foster freedom of the press in all nations. It aims to help members of the weekly press improve their editorial writing and news reporting and to encourage strong, independent editorial voices. Chad Stebbins has been ISWNE’s executive director since 1999.

Media and Communication Research Through a Multimodal Lens Report, by IAMCR INTER/ACTIONS: Multimodal Academic Communication Task Force

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:19:29 GMT

IAMCR’s INTER/ACTIONS: Multimodal Academic Communication Task Force launched its report, Media and Communication Research Through a Multimodal Lens, at the 2025 conference in Singapore.

Presented at the International Council meeting in July 2025, the report highlights the value of initiatives and strategies that stimulate the use of non-written communication of research results (e.g., documentary and ethnographic film, video essay, exhibition, installation, performance). Reflecting on how theorizing through and as production can generate new research insights for media and communication studies, the report identifies several areas where IAMCR’s support of multimodal scholarship would make lasting impact in the discipline.

Download the report at: https://iamcr.org/MCR-report-2025

Direct link to PDF: https://iamcr.box.com/shared/static/0ydqyr8934xpbkau87luyu7v44oatabc.pdf

TOC

What is Multimodal Research?

Examples of Multimodal Research

* Documentary & Ethnographic Film

* Video Essay and/or Videographic Criticism

* Exhibition

* Installation Art

* Performance

Opportunities & Challenges with Multimodal Research

What IAMCR Can Do to Support Multimodal Research

About the Task Force

The report was prepared by members of the IAMCR’s INTER/ACTIONS:

Multimodal Academic Communication Task Force. The Task Force was established with a threefold mandate: (1) to examine the various possibilities for multimodal research; (2) to develop initiatives and strategies that stimulate the use of non-written communication of research findings at IAMCR; and (3) to reflect on the use of such strategies at IAMCR and beyond. Its members include:

* Sandra Ristovska, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Boulder, USA (Chair)

* Arezou Zalipour, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

* Aysu Arsoy, Associate Professor, Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus

* Jeremy Shtern, Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada (EB liaison)

* John L. Jackson Jr., Provost, University of Pennsylvania, USA

* Johanna Sumiala, Professor, University of Helsinki, Finland

* Nico Carpentier, Extraordinary Professor, Charles University, the Czech Republic

* Pedro Pinto de Oliveira, Professor, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Brazil

Knowledge Graphs and Contemporary Media: Power, Practice, Publics

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:14:42 GMT

Baltic Screen Media Review

Deadline: October 15, 2025

Over the past decade, media have quietly become graph-shaped. Newsrooms, streaming platforms, archives, and social networks now depend on webs of entities - people, places, works, events - and the typed relations that connect them. Under labels such as linked data, the semantic web, and knowledge graphs, these infrastructures coordinate how content is produced, described, discovered, licensed, preserved, and increasingly generated by AI. They sit beneath the interfaces we see, but they structure what becomes visible, recommendable, and valuable. Understanding contemporary media therefore requires understanding the graphs that organise them.

The rise of knowledge graphs in media is not an accident of technical fashion; it is the logical outcome of long trajectories in cataloguing, digitisation, and platformisation. Libraries and broadcasters moved from card catalogues to MARC and Dublin Core; heritage institutions spent two decades aligning authority files and opening collections; web companies standardised schema-based markup at scale; collaborative knowledge bases such as Wikidata turned entity curation into a public good; and audiovisual industries confronted the complexity of rights, versions, localisations, and windowing across global markets. In parallel, machine learning made structured, linked metadata indispensable: entity linking, recommendation, search, summarisation, and content moderation all perform better when grounded in persistent identifiers and interoperable ontologies. To all this was added the trust and provenance crises of the synthetic media era, which has led to a renewed emphasis on verifiable origin trails, signatures, and content credentials that are most useful when they are linked. The economics of attention, the politics of authenticity, and the pragmatics of large-scale automation all seem to converge on the need for shared, machine-readable meaning.

These developments demand analysis from multiple angles. From the political economy of media, knowledge graphs can be read as new “coordination layers” that concentrate bargaining power and lock in ecosystems - or, alternatively, as public infrastructures that lower search and verification costs, widen market access, and enable plural discovery. Media industry studies can show how graphs reshape workflows: from pre-production knowledge bases and clearance graphs, to versioning and localisation, to explainable recommendation pipelines in the platform back-end. Media economics can evaluate the intangible asset value of metadata itself, model network effects that arise when catalogues interlink across firms and borders, and assess when openness produces positive externalities and when enclosure yields short-term rents but long-term fragility.

For media semiotics, graphs offer a new instrument to study meaning circulation: intertextuality, world-building, genre drift, and translation across modalities can be traced as patterns of links among works, motifs, and characters. Audience and reception studies can examine how knowledge graph-grounded explanations and provenance labels affect trust and satisfaction, when serendipity expands or narrows horizons, and how fan communities co-produce knowledge that later feeds institutional graphs. Media archaeology could bring historical depth, showing how past documentation practices prefigure today’s ontologies and how reconciliation of “lost” entities can revive suppressed or minoritised histories. Science and Technology Studies could open the black box of standards and maintenance: ontologies are negotiated, versioned, and policed by communities; their categories include and exclude, often reproducing the centre–periphery dynamics of media culture.

For media law and ethics licensing and rights graphs raise questions about privacy and cross-jurisdictional compliance. Provenance frameworks aim to restore trust, yet their governance determines who can certify whom, under what terms, and at what cost. Finally, a public value perspective to media infrastructures asks how these infrastructures can be designed as durable, fair, and pluralistic, especially for small languages and small markets where linked openness may be the difference between invisibility and participation.

This thematic issue takes linked data not as a niche technique but as a constitutive feature of contemporary media. We invite contributions from all the perspectives discussed above to open up the phenomenon and to illuminate the diverse implications that linked data has brought to contemporary media.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

The role of linked data in organizing contemporary media ecosystems.
Governance models for media knowledge infrastructures and their societal impacts.
How linked data adoption reshapes news and platform discovery.
How interoperability standards shape collaboration across media institutions.
Cross-ID interoperability among broadcasters, archives, and streamers.
Economic consequences of open vs. proprietary media metadata.
Linked data, cultural diversity, and the visibility of small languages and regions.
Audience trust and transparency in graph-enabled discovery and curation.
Legal and ethical frameworks for graph-based media production and reuse.
From catalogues to knowledge graphs: historical trajectories and lessons.
Research methods for studying media with graph-based datasets.
Public value and policy approaches to sustaining linked media data.
Fan wikis as co-curators: aligning community and institutional graphs.
Graph-aware recommenders and explainability in public service media.
Mapping intertextuality and transmedia worlds via entity-relation graphs.
Ontology politics: who defines genres, roles, and identities.
Privacy-preserving linkage of audience data with content graphs under GDPR.
Media archaeology of metadata: reconciling legacy catalogues into RDF.
Event knowledge graphs for breaking-news verification.
Authority alignment between knowledge graphs and cross-border memory.
Knowledge graphs as coordinators in media innovation systems.
Ethical risks of automated ontologies: bias, erasure, contested identities.
The use of graphs for AI training.
Media data spaces (e.g., European initiatives): architectures, incentives, and competition effects.

Submission Guidelines

We invite scholars, practitioners, and interdisciplinary researchers to contribute original research articles, theoretical essays and industry case studies. Submissions should not exceed 8000 words and must adhere to the journal’s formatting guidelines. All manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review process.

- Abstract Submission (400 words) Deadline: October 15th 2025

- Full Paper Submission Deadline: January 23rd 2026

- Publication Date: August 20th 2026

Please submit your abstracts and papers by email to (bsmr/at/tlu.ee). For any inquiries, contact the editorial team at indrek.ibrus/at/tlu.ee.

We look forward to receiving your contributions to this timely discussion.

Issue editor: Indrek Ibrus, Tallinn University

The Baltic Screen Media Review is a free-to-publish open-access peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the analysis of audiovisual media and screen culture, particularly in the Baltic Sea region and its surrounding areas. It seeks to address media transformations within broader European and global contexts, emphasizing both regional specificities and transnational connections. Published by Tallinn University's Baltic Film, Media and Arts School, the journal serves as a forum for interdisciplinary research, offering insights into film, television, new media, and related cultural phenomena. Find out more: https://sciendo.com/journal/bsmr

Constructive News Across Languages and Cultures

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:10:35 GMT

Edited by: Ashley Riggs, Lucile Davier

Constructive news is an alternative to the negativity of if-it-bleeds-it-leads journalism but still unfamiliar to some audiences and still relatively under-researched, particularly by news translation scholars. And yet, it is “done” across cultures and, therefore, languages. This innovative book contributes to filling that research gap and raising awareness of the phenomenon by showcasing cross-cultural research on constructive news, including in the Global South – a region that has traditionally received less scholarly attention than the Global North.

Constructive news is resolutely multimodal, and so a number of chapters analyse it from that perspective. The chapters also tackle such topics as audience attitudes, service to the local community, pedagogy, financial news, and religious news. This book will appeal to journalism studies and translation scholars, applied linguists, lecturers, journalists, editors, and members of the public who consume, study, or teach news but are looking for alternatives.

https://www.routledge.com/Constructive-News-Across-Languages-and-Cultures/Riggs-Davier/p/book/9781032849058?srsltid=AfmBOoonvJjJkgamIQsQsfWj-aAl21GLE8VANPlLbYNr_YUot9nGm_J2

A child rights audit of GenAI in EdTech: Learning from five UK case studies

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 07:28:09 GMT

Ayça Atabey, Kim R. Sylwander and Sonia Livingstone

Read full report here

Read the press release

This report advances the DFC’s and 5Rights’ research on A better Edtech future for children and builds on our earlier DFC research on EdTech and education data.

“Across all GenAI tools we studied, children’s perspectives were largely excluded from their design, governance and evaluation and all tools undermine children's rights to privacy and protection from commercial exploitation.” (Ayça Atabey)

Executive summary

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools are increasingly embedded in digital services and products that are used for and in education (EdTech), raising urgent questions about their impact on children’s learning and rights. We take a holistic child rights approach to children’s learning to evaluate five GenAI tools used in education – Character.AI, Grammarly, MagicSchool AI, Microsoft Copilot and Mind’s Eye.

Using mixed sociolegal methods, including product walkthroughs, policy analysis and consultations with children, educators and experts around the world, we evaluate how these digital tools operate, and we assess the claims they make. These assessments are conducted in the light of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25 regarding the digital environment.

Our primary focus is on how these tools uphold key rights under the UNCRC, including children’s rights to education (Article 28), privacy (Article 16), to be heard and have their views respected (Article 12), non-discrimination (Article 2), the principle of the best interests of the child (Article 3.1), the right to appropriate support for children with disabilities (Article 23), access to information (Article 17) and freedom of expression (Article 13).

While each GenAI tool offers the potential to facilitate learning through, for example, supporting creativity, communication and accessibility, each also presents notable risks. These risks arise because of opaque data practices, poor transparency, commercial exploitation through nudges, advertising and tracking, including from age-inappropriate adult website advertisers, all of which are incompatible with children’s best interests. Overall, many claimed benefits remain unverified, and the increasing presence of GenAI and its increasingly ‘by default’ integration reflects institutional or market priorities more than children’s needs and interests.

Across the five tools studied, children’s perspectives were largely excluded from their design, governance and evaluation. The case studies reveal that these tools undermine children’s rights to privacy and protection from commercial exploitation. The tools may support rights such as education, play, expression and access to information, potentially enhancing children’s learning. However, there is limited evidence for these benefits, especially a lack of evidence from diverse groups of children, younger children and those with disabilities.

Key findings from the case studies:

Although marketed as an educational and supportive tool, Character.AI poses risks to children’s rights and wellbeing due to insufficient safety safeguards (as evidenced by ongoing litigation), misleading or harmful content, and design features that foster unhealthy emotional dependency. While it can offer some creative and motivational benefits (e.g., Article 13), especially in informal learning contexts, the risks it poses, particularly for vulnerable children (such as young children, children suffering from mental health issues and children with disabilities), may amount to violations of children’s rights to information (Article 17), education (Articles 28, 29), health (Article 24), privacy (Article 16), and non-discrimination (Article 2).
While Grammarly can support children’s learning and expression, particularly for language learners and children with additional needs (Article 23), the audit found that Grammarly tracks and processes children’s data in ways that contradict its own privacy commitments. Further, it promotes inaccurate and potentially harmful AI detection tools that risk undermining student–teacher trust and lack child-friendly safeguards or remedies. These practices risk violating children’s rights to privacy (Article 16), protection from commercial exploitation (Article 32), and being treated in their best interests (Article 3).
MagicSchool AI makes strong claims about reducing teacher workload and supporting student learning. However, we identified a number of ways that its design and data practices risk undermining children’s rights. For instance, despite the company’s stated privacy commitments, children are, by default, exposed to commercial tracking (including from adult site advertisers), and chatbots have been found to provide misleading assurances and inappropriate or unsafe responses. This lack of safeguards, reliable emergency support, and rights-based information means that children’s rights to privacy (Article 16), protection from commercial exploitation (Article 32), information (Article 17), and health and safety (Articles 6, 24, and 19) are potentially at risk.
Microsoft Copilot, embedded in Microsoft 365 tools widely used in UK educational settings, is increasingly accessed by children despite originally being intended for adults. While it can support accessibility, expression, and reduce teacher workload, particular risks arise from its design and deployment. A Dutch data protection impact assessment (DPIA) identified significant privacy concerns, including fabricated personal data, opaque filtering, and extensive tracking. Our research revealed that when a child user accessed the service, commercial trackers were activated, including advertising trackers such as Google Ads. Copilot lacks a child rights impact assessment, clear opt-out options, and transparency about hidden filters. These practices can undermine children’s rights to privacy, agency, and protection from exploitation (Articles 16, 32–36), while overreliance risks weakening core skills and trust in education.
Mind’s Eye is a GenAI art expression tool developed to support children and adults with disabilities, using features such as eye tracking technology and predictive text to enable participation in creative tasks. It offers significant potential to enhance children’s freedom of expression (Article 13) and the rights of children with disabilities (Article 23), particularly for those excluded from mainstream GenAI tools. However, biased or inappropriate suggestions risk undermining expression and engagement, while privacy practices raise concerns about opaque data-sharing practices and lack of child-friendly rights mechanisms (Articles 16, 17 and 32). Without child-specific research, transparency and accessible safeguards, the tool risks reinforcing inequalities rather than removing them.

We conclude that GenAI can only enhance education if children’s rights are placed at the centre of its design, deployment and governance. A holistic, child rights-based approach should guide decisions about GenAI use in education, ensuring that children’s best interests, participation and full range of rights are prioritised, with particular emphasis on their right to education. The potential benefits of GenAI in EdTech can only be fully achieved when learning is recognised not as an isolated outcome, but as a process supported by interconnected rights. This means mandatory child rights and data protection impact assessments, accessible safeguards, and meaningful participation of children in decision-making. Without these, children’s right to education can be undermined, and GenAI risks deepening inequalities and exploiting children, rather than supporting their learning.

“The pandemic saw a rapid digitalisation of education, but in the five years since no one has stopped to think if this is benefiting children. This is having serious consequences: children are being tracked by erotic websites and chatbots are providing wrong emergency helplines risking lives and creating dependencies that can damage mental health. As the Government presses ahead with spreading AI far and wide, we must have rules in place to protect children and their education. In the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, parliament has a chance to ensure this happens.” (Colette Collins-Walsh, Head of UK Affairs at 5Rights Foundation)

ChatGPT and Beyond: AI Literacy for Early-Career Scholars

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 07:49:03 GMT

October 29, 2025

Södertörn University (Stockholm, Sweden)

As part of the upcoming ECREA ARS 2025 mid-term conference, the pre-conference workshop "ChatGPT and Beyond: AI Literacy for Early-Career Scholars" will take place at Södertörn University (Stockholm, Sweden) on the 29th October 2025 from 14:00-17.00 (CET).

This in-person workshop is free and open to all interested participants. Designed for a small group of 15-20 PhD students and early-career scholars from diverse backgrounds, it will offer a space to explore and discuss ethical, professional, and societal dimensions of AI in academia, including concerns and opportunities arising from generative AI technologies.

To register for the workshop follow this link: https://forms.gle/919RHmvypjX3wS1d6

For further information, contact Nivedita Chatterjee (n.chatterjee@surrey.ac.uk) Paulo Couraceiro (paulo.couraceiro@obercom.pt) or Jan Weis (jan.weis@sh.se) via email.

This workshop is supported by the EDI Grant awarded to the ECREA ARS Section. Please note that participation in the workshop does not require registration for the main conference.

The Changing Media: Professional. Regulatory and Ethical Challenges Facing Media and Communications in a Digital Environment

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 07:45:18 GMT

October 30 – 31, 2025

Faculty of journalism and mass communication, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”

Deadline (extended): September 30, 2025

THE FACULTY OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION organizes a 6th International Scientific Conference that will be held on the 30th and 31st of October 2025 within the framework of the St. Kliment Ohridski Days on the video conference platform Teams.

The theme is: The Changing Media: Professional. Regulatory and Ethical Challenges Facing Media and Communications in a Digital Environment

We most politely invite the specialists in media and communications, as well as those who are involved with the problems of the media and communication environment and culture in their various dimensions and manifestations. We welcome the interdisciplinary approach to the contemporary challenges in the education and practice of journalism and to the communication activities as a whole.

See details following the link https://commed21.com/

11 Doctoral Researchers in the Research Training Group

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 07:42:05 GMT

Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), Germany, has the following open positions:

11 Doctoral Researchers in the Research Training Group: “The Experience of Stories in the Digital Age (TESDA)” (100% TV-L salary)

The positions will begin on April 1, 2026, and end on September 30, 2029. Each position is full-time. Remuneration will be based on the collective agreement for the public service of the German federal states (Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst der Länder, TV-L).

Disciplines Involved: Communication Science, Psychology, Computer Science

The Research Training Group (RTG)

Humans spend a large part of life engaging with stories. Research from recent decades shows that stories have a strong influence on recipients, and scholars have identified experiential states that are characteristic of story engagement (e.g., narrative transportation, presence). Digital technologies and new media landscapes (e.g., artificial intelligence, virtual reality, social media, social robots) have introduced new challenges and opportunities to the field.

The aim of the RTG is to provide an interdisciplinary, collaborative research environment that enables doctoral researchers to conduct both disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies on stories in the digital realm. The challenges and opportunities of experiencing stories in the digital age will be explored across three main project areas:

1. Immersive virtual reality

2. New (para-)social encounters

3. Epistemic challenges

These three areas comprise a total of seven research projects. Two of the research projects focus on children.

Detailed information on the project areas and individual projects is available at https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/grk3087/.

Your responsibilities

• Complete a doctoral thesis in your discipline within 3.5 years

• Actively participate in the joint activities of the RTG

• Contribute to the self-administration and self-organization of the RTG

Your qualifications

• Strong interest in pursuing an academic career

• An above-average master’s degree or equivalent in one of the relevant disciplines (exceptional candidates with a bachelor’s degree may be considered)

• Excellent command of English (all RTG activities will be conducted in English)

• Experience in empirical social science research; specific technical computer science/HCI skills for some positions

Application procedure

Your application should include:

a) A cover letter outlining your motivation to apply

b) A CV

c) A brief statement (maximum 2 pages) specifying which of the seven projects you are applying for and explaining your choice

d) Your BSc/MSc thesis and/or other scientific work

You may apply for one or more projects. Applicants with severe disabilities will be given preferential consideration when equally qualified. Please send your application and supporting documents, preferably by email, to jmu-grk.tesda@uni-wuerzburg.de. Review of applications begins on October 20, 2025, and will continue until the positions are filled.

GAMEINDEX: Two funded postdoc positions

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 08:44:00 GMT

Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences

We are seeking two post-doctoral researchers to conduct ethnographic studies of game production for the ERC grant GAMEINDEX: Politics and aesthetics of indexical representation in digital games and VR. The project is headed by Dr. Jaroslav Švelch and located at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, within the Prague Game Production Studies research group. The starting date is in 2026 and the duration of the position is 2 years, with the possibility of extension to 3 years.

The deadline for applications is 30 September 2025.

Project focus:

GAMEINDEX focuses on indexical representation in games – both as traces of real-life objects or people in the simulated worlds of digital games and VR, and as references to physical locations. Besides games themselves, we are interested in analyzing indexical techniques such as motion capture, 3D scanning, voiceover recording, and others. The post-doctoral researchers will primarily contribute to the work package that analyzes the use of indexical techniques within the production practices of video games and/or VR, and explores the transformation of real-life objects and people into in-game assets. The GAMEINDEX project presupposes that material will be collected in game/VR production studios using ethnographic methods (studio ethnographies, participants observation, interviews). Within the scope of the GAMEINDEX project, described here, the applicant is free to come up with their own research project with more specific research questions.

Required qualifications:

A completed Ph.D. degree or a document from home university confirming that Ph.D. will be awarded by the starting date of contract
Documented experience in social scientific or humanistic research of digital games or other media

Recommended qualifications:

Experience with studio ethnographies or other ethnographic methods of researching game or media production
A Ph.D. from fields such as media studies, film studies, anthropology, or sociology
A solid record of publishing academic research in the English language
Knowledge of contemporary game production and familiarity with indexical techniques (technical experience with them is welcome but not required)

Required materials:

An academic CV and a list of published works
Two references from within academia (include name, title, institution, email address, and phone number); an additional reference from the game industry may be provided if applicable. No letters needed.
A copy of a Ph.D. certificate or an official record of planned/completed defence
Research project – a 2,000 word description of your intended project, which should fit the aims and scope of GAMEINDEX but may reflect the applicant’s personal research interests and previous experience. The project should include: a theoretical background and positioning, research questions, methodology, a list potential case studies, risk analysis, and a rough work plan for the 2 years (Gantt chart not needed).
Two samples of academic writing – ideally from published articles, dissertation, or conference papers

Practical arrangements:

The incoming applications will be screened by the GAMEINDEX team and suitable candidates will be invited for an online or in-person interview. Successful applicants are expected to relocate to Prague and are eligible for a relocation fee from the project budget.

Successful applicants will become full-time employees of Charles University, with benefits and a competitive salary commensurable with experience (details provided upon request).

Once employed, the researcher can be granted funding from GAMEINDEX to cover costs of fieldwork and conference travel.

Submissions:

Applicants may submit their applications by September 30, 2025, via e-mail to:

kariera@fsv.cuni.cz, with the subject: “Postdoc ERC GAMEINDEX”. Applicants may approach the PI Jaroslav Švelch at jaroslav.svelch@fsv.cuni.cz to ask questions about GAMEINDEX and the postdoc positions.

By responding to this advertisement, you consent to the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, located at Smetanovo nábřeží 6, Prague 1, Postal Code 110 01, processing your personal data for the purposes of the selection procedure. The processing of personal data is carried out in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) and Act No. 110/2019 Coll., on the Processing of Personal Data.

Executive Director

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 07:15:13 GMT

IAMCR

Lead a global network advancing media and communication research. IAMCR, with 3,500+ members in 85 countries, seeks a full-time, remote Executive Director to run a small virtual secretariat, support specialised thematic groups, drive membership growth and funding, and help shape our flagship annual conference. The role suits a highly organised, self-directed leader experienced with professional/academic associations; fundraising skills are an asset. Limited travel (2 trips/year). English required; French/Spanish/Mandarin an asset. Start as early as January 2026. Salary commensurate with experience.

Apply by 17 October 2025 with: CV, cover letter, references (with contact details), and a brief vision statement. Interviews in November.

Full announcement & how to apply: https://iamcr.org/vacancy-ed

RE: TREND – Culture in Motion

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:06:17 GMT

November 22, 2025

Online

Deadline: September 30, 2025

Dear colleagues,

From algorithmic cultures to participatory trends, from narrative futures to inclusive innovation – RE: TREND – Culture in Motion is calling for your contribution.

We want to invite you to submit a communication proposal to the III Trends and Culture Management Colloquium, hosted by ICNOVA/iNOVA Media Lab in collaboration with CEAUL/Trends and Culture Management Lab.

This edition focuses on digital transformations and cultural practices in motion, encouraging critical and creative reflection on the signals of change shaping today’s culture. We particularly welcome submissions from students and early-career researchers. Participation is free of charge.

We invite abstracts (250–300 words) for 10-minute online presentations in Portuguese or English, addressing one or more of the following themes (but not limited to):

• Living Intelligence & Algorithmic Cultures

• Culture in Beta: Labs, Prototypes and Experiments

• Trendspotting, Semiotics and Brand Strategies

• Narrative Futures and Sociocultural Anticipation

• Datafied Culture and Inclusive Innovation

• Fandoms, Microcultures and Participatory Trends

• AI and Trend Research

• Communication, New Media and Trends

Date: Saturday, 22 November 2025

Format: Online

Keynote speaker to be announced soon

Submit your abstract: https://bit.ly/trendscolloquium

Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2025

We look forward to your contribution.

For more details, please visit: https://trendsandculture.fcsh.unl.pt

Best regards,

Ana Marta M. Flores & Organising Committee

The Imaginative Landscape of AI: Visions, Positions, Conflicts

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 12:59:00 GMT

The International Journal of Communication (SPECIAL SECTION)

Deadline: December 1, 2025

Few technological developments spark more debate today than artificial intelligence. From promises of human advancement to fears of existential risk, AI generates a multitude of visions, conflicts, and societal debates. This “imaginative landscape of AI” goes beyond technical issues, encompassing political struggles, social movements, and ideas about the future of communication and society.

The International Journal of Communication is launching a Special Section on The Imaginative Landscape of AI: Visions, Positions, Conflicts. The editors of this Special Section, Andreas Hepp and Nathan Schneider, invite submissions that empirically explore emerging imaginaries, ideological positions, and conflicts surrounding AI.

Key deadlines:

Abstracts (500 words) due December 1, 2025
Notification of acceptance by January 1, 2026
Full manuscripts due May 1, 2026
Publication in spring 2027

More information and the submission form can be found here:

View the Call for Papers (PDF):https://comai.space/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/CfP-Imaginative-Landscape-of-AI.pdf

Link to the submission form: https://nc.uni-bremen.de/index.php/apps/forms/s/ctFFdYg5X3XKpeBBjoEQSMGm

Set-going in global cinemas: history and current forms of a cultural practice

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 12:56:22 GMT

Special issue/edited volume

Deadline: November 17, 2025

When does the experience of watching a film truly begin? Could it start long before the movie theatre or the living room, but on a backstreet, a remote field, or a historical site where a local film shoot is taking place? These questions invite us to rethink spectatorship not as something that only happens in front of a screen, but as a lived, spatial, and participatory experience embedded in the making of the movies.

Set-going is a novel concept referring to the practice of visiting filming locations during the principal photography of a movie. This practice opens a rich and overlooked field of interaction between audiences and production cultures. Set-going is not merely a variant of fan studies or media tourism; it is a socially embedded experience transforming how spectatorship, spatial belonging, and film culture are understood. Unlike film tourism or film-induced tourism, which typically involves visits to sound stage studios or iconic shooting locations after a film gains popularity, set-going centres on the live presence of non-professionals during the filmmaking process itself, making it an immediate, participatory, and temporally bound engagement with cinema (Şavk et al., 2025).

Rooted in the New Cinema History (NCH) paradigm—which emphasises the social and cultural dimensions of cinema through research on audiences, exhibition practices, and the lived experience of film consumption—set-going extends this approach upstream into the production phase. NCH has redirected attention from film texts to the contexts in which films are distributed and viewed, as seen in studies of cinema-going habits, neighbourhood theatres, and audience memories (see Maltby, Biltereyst & Meers, 2011). Rather than focusing solely on how films are consumed, set-going shows that spectatorship begins before exhibition and is co-produced through on-site encounters among publics, places, and industry labour. Set-going thus offers a fresh perspective on how cinematic meaning and participation are shaped not only in the theatre but also on the set.

This perspective resonates with and seeks to extend several key strands of media and cinema scholarship. Studies of production cultures have shown how the backstage dynamics of filmmaking reveal broader industrial reflexivities and critical practices (Caldwell, 2008), while research in spatial media theory has foregrounded the significance of place in the experience and negotiation of media (Jansson & Falkheimer, 2006; Reijnders, 2011). The concept of set-going also builds on work in audience memory and cultural geography that emphasises spectatorship as an embodied, affective, and place-bound activity (Kuhn, 2002). At the same time, it offers a necessary counterpoint to discussions of fan cultures and participatory media (Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2013; Hills, 2002) by focusing on forms of engagement that may be informal, improvised, or locally rooted rather than networked and transnational. By bridging these bodies of work, set-going enables a rethinking of how film cultures are lived, co-produced, and remembered across time and space.

Certain commonalities emerge across film industries and countries where set-going has developed as a component of cinema culture. Foremost among these is the practice of shooting on real locations rather than exclusively in sound stage studios. The partial or complete use of real settings is a key factor enabling local residents to become set-goers. Secondly, these cinema cultures tend to emphasise locality, making set-going a critical practice through which audiences engage with films at a community or regional level. When local identity holds significant cultural and economic value within a film culture, set-going gradually shifts from being tolerated to being a desired phenomenon. Thirdly, cinemas where set-going is prevalent often operate under lower-budget and more pragmatic production modes, rather than adhering strictly to high-end industrial standards. On-location shooting environments typically do not allow for, nor enforce, absolute control, thus making it difficult to prevent the presence of set-goers.

We invite proposals that explore the concept of set-going across different cinematic traditions, historical periods, and geographic contexts. Submissions from scholars working in areas such as cinema history, fan studies, film tourism, production cultures, media studies, urban history, and cultural geography are especially encouraged.

We welcome abstracts on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

Historical and contemporary case studies of set-going in various national and regional cinema contexts;
Theoretical engagements with set-going as a form of audience-making, participatory spectatorship, or informal labour;
Explorations of how set-going intersects with class, gender, place, memory, and the politics of access;
Theoretical and cultural connections between set-going, fan studies and film tourism;
Archival or oral history sources that offer insight into everyday interactions at film sets;
Set-going practices in the context of TV productions and platform series;
Set-going as an area of encounter and conflict between film professionals, the public and local authorities;
Transnational comparisons of production visibility and on-location shooting within the context of set-going practices;
Strategic use of set-going activities as part of marketing and publicity.

Please send your abstracts of 300-500 words along with short bios (max. 100 words for each author) to serkan.savk@ieu.edu.tr no later than November 17, 2025. These abstracts do not need to follow a rigid format, but are encouraged to include:

A short and precise description of your proposed subject;
Relevant methodological tools and resources are required for examining the subject;
Current state of the proposed research: Have you already begun working on this topic, or is it something you relate to after reading the call but have not yet started? (This information will not prejudice the evaluation of your abstract);
Tentative research plan (where necessary);
2-3 key references.

Based on the number and content of proposals, this publication project will take the form of either a special issue of a reputable journal indexed by Scopus and/or Web of Science or an edited volume by a recognised academic or university publisher. Word count and citation format of the final manuscripts will be decided accordingly. Accepted papers will go through the peer-review process required by the journal/publisher. Please note that editorial acceptance does not guarantee publication.

Timeline

Abstract submission: November 17, 2025
Notification of acceptance: December 22, 2025
Full paper submission: July 6, 2026 (peer-review process starts)

Scholars who are interested in rethinking where and how cinema is experienced and how such encounters might be written into the broader story of film culture are warmly encouraged to respond. No payment from the autors will be required for this publication.

Editors

Serkan Şavk

Gulf University for Science and Technology

Izmir University of Economics

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Serkan-Savk

Aydın Çam

Çukurova University

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aydin-Cam

Works cited

Caldwell, J. T. (2008). Production culture: Industrial reflexivity and critical practice in film and television. Duke University Press.

Hills, M. (2002). Fan cultures. Routledge.

Jansson, A., & Falkheimer, J. (Eds.). (2006). Geographies of communication: The spatial turn in media studies. Nordicom.

Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. NYU Press.

Kuhn, A. (2002). An everyday magic: Cinema and cultural memory. I.B. Tauris.

Maltby, R., Biltereyst, D., & Meers, P. (Eds.). (2011). Explorations in new cinema history: Approaches and case studies. Wiley-Blackwell.

Reijnders, S. (2011). Places of the imagination: Media, tourism, culture. Ashgate.

Şavk, S., Çam, A., & Şanlıer, İ. (2025). Set-going chronicles: Rethinking Turkish cinema through the lens of new cinema history. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 64(2), 126–147.

Unmasking Gender: Power, Identity, Privilege in Film

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 12:39:57 GMT

December 10, 2025

MediaCity, University of Salford, Manchester, UK

Deadline: September 28, 2025

Conference Convenors

Pete Deakin
Rania Kosmidou

Keynote Speaker: Professor Kirsty Fairclough, School of Digital Arts (SODA), MMU

Call for papers

In the 1970s Anglo-American feminist scholars in a variety of disciplines began to explore the problematic representations of women in Hollywood cinema, issues and concerns over female spectatorship, as well as the history of women’s cinema in Hollywood and beyond. Two seminal works Marjorie Rosen’s 1973 Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies and the American Dream, and Molly Haskell’s 1974 From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, pointed to stereotypical portrayals of women mostly in Hollywood films. The conclusions were epitomised by Molly Haskell when she said, “You’ve come a long way baby … and it’s all been downhill.” Meanwhile in Britain several female scholars developed ideas grounded in psychoanalysis, semiotics and Marxist ideology. Claire Johnston (1973) discussed how cinema can construct a particular view of reality and stereotypical images of women from a semiotic point of view and proposed instead a counter cinema; Laura Mulvey (1975) used psychoanalysis to show how the female character in classical Hollywood cinema is made passive and powerless, is there to-be-looked-at, and proclaimed that there is no place for a female spectator in classical narrative cinema (ideas that she revisited later on). Others were not so pessimistic. Miriam Hansen (1986) demonstrated how the male character on screen can also be the object of desire for a female spectator; Johnston (1975) introduced the concept of masquerade in relation to female spectatorship, a notion explored further by Mary Ann Doane (1982/1991) who discussed masquerade not as cross-dressing, but as a mask of femininity among others. Such accounts raised questions about female spectatorship and the male gaze. They also questioned the female gaze and the male body.

By end of the millennium, for cultural commentators like Susan Faludi (1999), it was curiously Western masculinity that had apparently reached an apocalyptic state. Its traditional markers – strength, a breadwinner status, social dominance, emotional self-efficacy and regulation – had been pathologised. In the wake of this sociocultural evolution, old jobs were lost; so-called masculine spaces once filled with miners, dockers and engineers were left barren or converted to penthouse homes and middle-management sites for the newly saturating white collar (so went the rhetoric), while the modern western male was increasingly under pressure to conform to commercial cultures of style, celebrity, and consumption. Ros Coward (1999) asked: when looking back on the achievements of feminism, “Is it now holding us back?” Is it demonising men and denying them the right to understanding and equality in a world that is perhaps far harsher for them than ever before?

Many years later, and in wake of the #MeToo Movement and the current sociopolitical climate that has seen Andrew Tate’s brand of hypermasculinity, misogyny and anti-feminism poll favourably in and beyond the ‘manosphere’, we believe there is an urgent need to re-examine gender in contemporary cinema. From researchers and scholars, from outreach initiatives to practice-based research among others, we welcome a diversity of approaches from a broad variety of perspectives on how film is grappling with contemporary portraits of gender in cinema in and beyond Hollywood.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

The status of cinematic masculinity nowadays
The status of cinematic femininity nowadays
Challenging male or female dominance on screen
The female spectator then and now
The female gaze then and now
The male gaze then and now
The male spectator then and now
The more recent appropriation of cinematic texts into the “manosphere” (by individuals such as Andrew Tate) and/or far- and alt-right communities
Gender equality in contemporary cinema
Gender in cinema and identity formation
Gender bending in cinema
Impact of gender stereotypes on screen
The evolution of gender and sexual diversity in cinema
Toxic masculinity as a cinematic theme
Gender and empowerment on screen
Gender and social change on screen
Women’s and/or men’s weaknesses on screen
Women’s and/or men’s strengths on screen
The role of women filmmakers in shaping cinematic discourse
The role of men filmmakers in shaping cinematic discourse

Please submit abstracts for individual papers (max 250 words) with presentation title, up to 5 key words, your full name, affiliation, 50 word biography, and email address to conferencesalford@gmail.com

Submission deadline: 28 September 2025.

Notification of acceptance of papers: 5 October 2025.

We support the presentation of practice-as-research, with papers and screenings. We also welcome abstracts from early career and postgraduate researchers.

All or a selection of papers will be considered for publication.

No Registration Fee.

Visual Political Communication in the Nordic Region: Strategies, Narratives, and Challenges in a Digital Age

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 08:58:33 GMT

Nordicom Review (Special Issue)

Deadline: September 15, 2025

Franziska Marquart (University of Copenhagen) and Xénia Farkas (DIGSUM, Umeå Univesity) invite scholars from the fields of media, communication, political science, and related disciplines to submit extended abstracts for a special issue of Nordicom Review. This issue will explore the evolving landscape of visual political communication in the Nordic countries, focusing on comparative aspects, content, and effects of visual politics in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

Editors:

Franziska Marquart (University of Copenhagen)

Xénia Farkas (DIGSUM, Umeå University)

Contact:

Franziska Marquart: fm@hum.ku.dk

Xénia Farkas: xenia.farkas@umu.se

Important dates:

Deadline for extended abstracts: 15 September 2025
Invitation to submit full paper: 3 October 2025
Full paper submission: 9 February 2026
Peer review processing: Spring 2026
Expected publication (Open Access): Early 2027

Background and aim

Visuals have always been central to political communication, shaping how political actors convey messages and how audiences interpret political realities (e.g., Graber, 1988; Lanzetta et al., 1985; Masters et al., 1986). Research has long recognised the unique cognitive and emotional power of visual information, acknowledging that images are processed and remembered more efficiently than verbal communication (e.g., Graber, 1996) and can influence political attitudes and behaviours (Grabe & Bucy, 2009). Despite early recognition of its importance, visual political communication has only gained sustained scholarly attention in recent decades (Farkas, 2023; Schill, 2012).

In addition, the rise of digital media platforms has fundamentally transformed the visual dimension of political discourse (Lilleker, 2019; Marquart, 2023). Political narratives are increasingly constructed and contested through images, memes, videos, and data visualizations. These developments call for research that do not only consider the general content, strategies, and effects of visual political communication, but also account for their broader societal embeddedness and implications for trust, engagement, and democratic resilience.

In the Nordic context, where political systems are marked by high levels of institutional trust, transparency, and democratic participation, visual political communication takes on distinctive characteristics. While the region is often associated with social cohesion and stable governance, it is not immune to political polarisation, populist rhetoric, and digital disinformation. Recent years have seen intensifying debates on immigration, identity, and climate change – all heavily mediated through visual content. At the same time, the widespread use of social media has enabled new forms of political expression by citizens, activists, and alternative media actors.

This special issue invites contributions that explore how visual political communication unfolds across the Nordic countries in this evolving digital landscape, assessing the production, spread, and impact of visual content across a range of contexts – from electoral campaigns and protest movements to policy advocacy and state communication. We are particularly interested in how visual strategies interact with core democratic values in the region, such as openness, inclusivity, and (political and media) trust. We welcome empirical studies, theoretical contributions, and methodological innovations that engage with visual political communication from diverse perspectives. Comparative and longitudinal designs are especially encouraged, as they can illuminate both shared trends and country-specific dynamics shaped by cultural, regulatory, and technological factors.

Ultimately, the aim is to deepen our understanding of how visuals contribute to the transformation of political communication in the Nordic region and what this means for democracy in a digital age.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

Visual strategies in political campaigning: The use of imagery, video, and branding by parties, candidates, and campaign teams during elections and referenda
Visual activism and protest culture: How activists, movements, and civil society actors use visual media to mobilise, resist, and advocate for change
Memes, infographics, and short-form videos: Emerging visual formats on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and X, and their role in shaping political discourse
Influencers as political communicators: Exploring how digital influencers shape political discourse through visual content, for example, through agenda-setting, issue advocacy, or political endorsements, particularly in addressing youth audiences
Personalisation and performance: The visual representation of political leaders, including aesthetics of authenticity, relatability, trust, and authority
Disinformation and visual manipulation: The role of images and videos in spreading misleading or false political content, including deepfakes and edited footage
Algorithmic visibility: How platform logics and recommender systems shape the prominence and reach of political visuals
Public service and institutional communication: Visual strategies employed by state institutions and public broadcasters to engage citizens and maintain trust
Crisis communication: Studying the visual strategies employed during political conflicts, economic, environmental, or health crises, and their effectiveness in managing public perception and behaviour
Ethics and accountability: Addressing ethical considerations in the creation and dissemination of political visuals, including issues of consent, manipulation, and the responsibilities of content creators

We welcome submissions employing a wide range of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches, including (but not limited to) qualitative visual analysis, content analysis, computational methods, discourse analysis, and mixed-method designs. Interdisciplinary perspectives from political science, media and communication studies, sociology, visual culture, and digital humanities are particularly encouraged.

Procedure

Please send an extended abstract of no more than 750 words to both fm@hum.ku.dk and xenia.farkas@umu.se by 15 September 2025. The abstract should outline the main theme and approach of the intended paper and mention how it fits with the overall theme of the special issue.

Authors invited to submit a full manuscript (6,000–8,000 words, excl. references) will be notified by e-mail when all abstracts are assessed by the editors. Also, authors who are invited to submit a full paper will be invited to an online seminar where the rationale for the special issue and the steps that follow will be discussed in more detail. All submissions should be original works and must not be under consideration by other publishers.

Read the full instructions for authors and download a manuscript template

References

Farkas, X. (2023). Visual political communication research: A literature review from 2012 to 2022. Journal of Visual Political Communication, 10(2), 95–126. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00027_1

Grabe, M. E., & Bucy, E. P. (2009). Image bite politics: News and the visual framing of elections. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372076.001.0001/acprof-9780195372076

Graber, D. A. (1988). Processing the news: How people tame the information tide (2nd ed). Longman.

Graber, D. A. (1996). Say it with pictures. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 546, 85–96. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1048172

Lanzetta, J. T., Sullivan, D. G., Masters, R. D., & McHugo, G. J. (1985). Emotional and cognitive responses to televised images of political leaders. In S. Kraus, & R. E. Perloff (Eds.), Mass media and political thought. Sage.

Lilleker, D. G. (2019). The power of visual political communication: Pictorial politics through the lens of communication psychology. In A. Veneti, D.

Jackson, & D. G. Lilleker (Eds.), Visual political communication (pp. 37–51). Springer.

Marquart, F. (2023). Video killed the Instagram star: The future of political communication is audio-visual. Journal of Visual Political Communication, 10(1), 49–57. https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00024_1

Masters, R., Sullivan, D., Lanzetta, J., Mchugo, G., & Englis, B. (1986). The facial displays of leaders: Toward an ethology of human politics. Journal of Social and Biological Systems, 9(4), 319–343. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-1750(86)90190-9

Schill, D. (2012). The visual image and the political image: A review of visual communication research in the field of political communication. Review of Communication, 12(2), 118–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2011.653504

About the publisher

Nordicom Review is an international peer reviewed journal devoted to new Nordic media and communication research. In 2023, Nordicom Review recorded a Journal Impact Factor of 2.0, a CiteScore of 2.8, and an H-Index of 23.

6th Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication: Media and Courage

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 08:55:01 GMT

January 6-9, 2026

Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: September 5, 2025

Jointly organized by the Faculty of Human Sciences (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) and the Center for Media@Risk (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania), the Lisbon Winter School offers an opportunity for doctoral students and early career post-doctoral researchers to strategize around the study of media and courage together with senior scholars in the field. It is held in coordination with the Annenberg Schools of the University of Southern California & University of Pennsylvania, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s School of Journalism and Communication, the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, and The Europaeum.

Call for Papers

As uncertainty and disruption settle in as central features of contemporary democracies, the media are faced with rewriting the rules by which they are allowed to operate. New limitations are constraining how the media portray a wide range of topics, from wars and international alliances to human rights and knowledge formation, from immigration and social marginalization to the economic and cultural policies implemented by those in power. While in the past, dire threats to the media were mostly associated with authoritarian regimes, the autocratic turn taking place in liberal democracies has forced those involved with media environments to deal with intimidation and punishments once considered taboo in democracies. With the distinction between liberal and illiberal media systems rendered more or less irrelevant by today’s realities, engaging with the media everywhere now requires a kind of strength not typically seen in democratic settings: courage.

Courage calls for beliefs, values and actions that have not tended to need articulation for those living under democracy, largely because their viability was normalized long ago as part of its default setting. And yet, the capacity today to sustain one’s beliefs, commit to one’s values and act boldly in the face of adversity have become a golden rule for surviving democratic backsliding. Drawing on confidence, persistence, initiative and adaptability, courage can be physical, emotional, moral, social, spiritual and/or intellectual. With institutions central to democracy no longer able to accomplish their mission by following the rules that once governed their actions, courage is needed to persevere in the face of danger, intimidation and uncertainty. Because it involves a choice to confront risks that might otherwise seem unsurmountable, courage is crucial for developing ways of thinking and acting that are better attuned to the cobbled state of today’s institutions.

Perhaps nowhere is this as much the case as with the media. It takes extraordinary strength for media practitioners, activists and scholars to sustain their previously normalized roles and avoid falling into the traps set by those in power. Being courageous means not accepting what George Orwell defined as the “truth of the leader,” and it comes at a high price, where daring to question official narratives is no longer assured. Not only is the survival of media corporations being put on the line, but all those involved with the media face a myriad of risks and dangers. These circumstances call upon media practitioners, activists and scholars to imagine alternative tools to express dissent.

In these challenging and dangerous times, the Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication proposes to discuss the interconnections between Media and Courage. Courage can be addressed from a wide range of perspectives, understood as an ontological but also as an ethical concept in which one “affirms his own being” (Tillich, 1952: 3).

While the consequences of challenging those in power may be better-known for those living in dictatorial states, in contemporary times expressing disagreement and dissent also demands courage from many living in democratic settings. So, what lessons are there to be learned from media courage and resistance in non-liberal countries? Which strategies have been used by scholars, filmmakers, photographers, journalists and social activists to denounce malpractices in autocratic regimes? How can such strategies be adopted in countries whose democratic institutions are being challenged? How can the media but also individuals use different platforms to denounce wrongdoings and expand the perspectives being debated in the public arena? How can the media avoid falling into the trap of being used as tools at the service of those who aim to promote fear and hate? How is dissidence being silenced through online and offline shaming, book bans, financial and physical threats? And how can communities support those who show courage to report on issues that challenge the official narratives? We welcome proposals by doctoral students and early career post-doctoral researchers from all over the world to discuss the intertwined relations between media and courage in different geographies and temporalities. The list below illustrates some of topics for possible consideration. Other topics dealing with media and courage are also welcomed:

- Courage in news reporting

- Witnessing war and tragedy

- Courage on social media

- Media activism

- Denouncing hate speech and aggression against gender, racial and religious minorities

- Alternative and underground media

- Threats and intimidation

- Opposing anxiety and irrationality

- Courage and Resistance

- Countering disinformation and misinformation

- Courage, populism and the media

- (Self-)censorship

- Courage and identity formation

- Algorithms, AI and social trust

- Expressing courage in the public arena in specific national or regional contexts

- …

CONFIRMED KEYNOTES:

Jacques Chevalier, Carleton University

Cherian George, Hong Kong Baptist University

Ejvind Hansen, Danish School of Media & Journalism

Ola Hnatiuk, Ukrainian Research Institute & University of Warsaw

Sarah Jackson, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Patricia Kingori, University of Oxford

Jessica Roberts, Catholic University of Portugal

Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College

PAPER PROPOSALS

Proposals should be sent to lisbonwinterschool@ucp.pt no later than 5 September 2025 and include a paper title, extended abstract in English (700 words), name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation and a brief bio (max. 100 words) mentioning ongoing research. Applicants will be informed of the result of their submissions by late September.

FULL PAPER SUBMISSION

Presenters will be required to submit full papers (max. 20 pages, 1.5 spacing) by 10 December 2025.

VENUE

The Lisbon Winter School will take place in the Lisbon campus of Universidade Católica Portuguesa and in several cultural institutions in the city of Lisbon

ORGANIZERS

Nelson Ribeiro, Catholic University of Portugal

Barbie Zelizer, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

CONVENORS

Sarah Banet-Weiser

Risto Kunelius

Francis Lee

For more information visit lisbonwinterschool.com

Ethics of AI

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 11:57:37 GMT

Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics

Deadline (for expression of interest): October 15, 2025

Expressions of interest should be 250 words and discuss, argument, approach and (where appropriate) the methods used.

Papers in Ethical Space are usually 5000 words, excluding references.

More on the journal at https://ethicalspace.pubpub.org/

Please contact the special issue editors, Donald Matheson and Stephen J.A. Ward, with any questions.

donald.matheson@canterbury.ac.nz

stephen.ward@bellaliant.net

RE: TREND | III Trends and Culture Management Colloquium

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 11:54:49 GMT

November 22, 2025

Online

Deadline: September 30, 2025

From algorithmic cultures to participatory trends, from narrative futures to inclusive innovation – RE: TREND – Culture in Motion is calling for your contribution.

We invite abstracts (250–300 words) for 10-minute online presentations in Portuguese or English, addressing one or more of the following themes (but not limited to):

• Living Intelligence & Algorithmic Cultures

• Culture in Beta: Labs, Prototypes and Experiments

• Trendspotting, Semiotics and Brand Strategies

• Narrative Futures and Sociocultural Anticipation

• Datafied Culture and Inclusive Innovation

• Fandoms, Microcultures and Participatory Trends

• AI and Trend Research

• Communication, New Media and Trends

Date: Saturday, 22 November 2025

Format: Online

Keynote speaker to be announced soon

Submit your abstract: https://bit.ly/trendscolloquium

Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2025

We look forward to your contribution.

For more details, please visit: https://trendsandculture.fcsh.unl.pt

Screening the Scene: Rethinking European film competitiveness

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 15:27:55 GMT

October 9-10, 2025

Vienna, Austria

Deadline: August 17, 2025

As streaming platforms challenge traditional distribution, AI reshapes storytelling and production processes, and as underrepresented communities continue to push for visibility and participation, the question is no longer whether the European film industry must adapt, but how, and who gets to lead the change.

Rebooting the industry requires an intersectional approach, one that considers the dynamic role of people (creators, audiences, and different groups), technological innovation (AI, digital platforms, XR), and institutions (festivals, funding bodies, policy frameworks). This conference will be a space for critical exchange, bold ideas, and collaborative futures.

Areas of interest

We welcome contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

What is film industry competitiveness?
European policy/legal frameworks concerning the European film industry (e.g. copyright law, public support and European funding frameworks, media/entertainment law, platform regulation and content moderation, protection of minors).
The role of children & youth for the European film industry as creators and audiences.
Bringing overlooked European films into the spotlight (e.g. alternative film festivals, alternative film modes of film production, collectives, centre vs. periphery in European film industries)
European distribution & new technology (e.g. streaming platforms and digital disruption)
Innovative storytelling (e.g. AI/VR/XR, interactive formats)
The interplay of generative AI and filmmaking (e.g. working conditions of creative workers, AI and ethical creativity, AI literacy and cultural industries)
Representation and inclusion in the European film industry
New narratives by women, youth, diaspora, and intersectional identities
Gender and the European screen industries
European film festivals as spaces of resistance and cultural diversity
Training, access, and equity in the European film workforce
Governance, sustainability and democratic participation in the audiovisual sector

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts (300-400 words) should be accompanied by a short bio (max. 100 words each).

Panel proposals (ca. 60 minutes) must include a panel title, brief rationale (max. 300 words), and details of 3-4 speakers.

Abstracts must be submitted via the following link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/79051/submitter

Panel proposals must be submitted via email: info@thereboot-project.eu

Screening the Scene: Rethinking European film competitivenessConference Dates: 9 and 10 October 2025

Location: Department of Communication, University of Vienna

Deadline for Abstract Submission: on a rolling basis until August 17, 2025

Conference Description

The European film industry stands at a critical juncture, shaped by shifting technologies, evolving societal demands, global political changes and the need for more inclusive and adaptive institutional frameworks. Under the theme “Screening the Scene: Rethinking European film competitiveness”, this conference seeks to explore innovative strategies and fresh perspectives that can reinvigorate the industry for a sustainable, equitable, and competitive future.

We invite scholars, practitioners, policymakers, creatives and industry stakeholders to submit abstracts for the REBOOT Conference, a two-day, no entry-fee event dedicated to critically reflecting on and advancing the future of the European film industry.

The REBOOT project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme under grant agreement 101094796.

Conference Registration opens on August 17, 2025

Please note, as this is a free to attend event, we have limited places; if we have enough interest in a hybrid format, we will open this event to online participation.

Join us as we bring the REBOOT project to a powerful close through dialogue, debate and vision - building.Let’s collectively shape the next chapter of Europe’s film and audiovisual future.

Conference Speakers

Roland Teichmann (Director – Austrian Film Institute)

Katharine Schenk (Director – ORF Television Film)

Rodrigo Gómez (Professor, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa)

Ufuoma Akpojivi (Policy-Research and Leearning Lead – A4ID)

Juliette Prissard (General Delegate - Eurocinema)

Brigid O’Shea (Director - Documentary Association of Europe)

Scientific Committee Bios

(available here)

Jean-François Trubert
Kaisa Hiltunen
Daniel Biltereyst
Melis Behlil
Caterina Sganga
Jacek Mikucki
Fernando Ramos Arenas
Antonios Vlassis
Katharine Sarikakis
David Nieborg
Ramon Lobato

Organising Committee

Katharine Sarikakis

Professor of Communication Science, Media Governance and Industries Research Lab, Department of Communication, Univie

T: +43-1-4277-493 94

E: katharine.sarikakis@univie.ac.at

Angeliki Chatziefraimidou

Researcher, Media Governance and Industries Research Lab, Department Of Communication, Univie

T: +43-1-4277-49348

E: angeliki.chatziefraimidou@univie.ac.at

Gentiana Ramadani

Researcher, Media Governance and Industries Research Lab, Department of Communication, Univie

T: +43-1-4277-48328

E: gentiana.ramadani@univie.ac.at

Simon Haslauer

Student Project Researcher, Media Governance and Industries Research Lab Department of Communication, Univie

E: simon.haslauer@univie.ac.at

Yves Saint Clair Zogo

Student Project Researcher, Media Governance and Industries Research Lab, Department of Communication, Univie

E: yves.saint.clair.zogo@univie.ac.at

The International Order in Question: Regional Security and Prosperity in Times of Global Flux and Disarray

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 20:58:53 GMT

October 3-4, 2025

University of Nicosia (Cyprus)

Deadline (EXTENDED): August 20, 2025

The conference is co-organized by the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean Review (BSEMR), the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), the School of Law in the University of Nicosia, and the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Black Sea and Mediterranean Studies in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (ILABSEM AUTh). The conference will take place in UNIC premises, Nicosia, on October 3-4, 2025.

The NEW DEADLINE for submitting an abstract proposal to our conference is August 20th 2025.

The Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean Review (BSEMR) and its constituent institutions, the School of Law in the University of Nicosia and the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Black Sea and Mediterranean Studies in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (ILABSEM AUTh) issue a call for abstracts for participation in an international conference. The conference is co-organized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).

We are at a time when peace, security and prosperity are deteriorating globally and regionally. This trend is observable in the devastating wars that have evolved over the past three years in the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean (BSEM) regions, as it surely is evident in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the inordinate regime change in Syria. These cases make a contrast to the state of international affairs during the immediately previous period. Notably in the face of the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, when members and agencies of the International Community coordinated normally and cooperated duly in an orderly fashion.

These recent incidents mark the utterly volatile times of dense and rapid changes that we are undergoing. They concurrently mark a remarkable and precipitous now transition of the global system: from a perceived global unipolarity of power, towards a de facto multi-polar global system of powers. Despite these fundamentally structural changes, or rather more because of them, state sovereignty and governing power, ordered stability, diplomacy and principled leadership are all in question, as they are in demand, on many interconnected levels. Yet, they are in short supply, even in the worst hit areas.

During such fluid, fast-accelerating, uncertain developments one observes both state and non-state agencies promoting their narrow scope, agendas in unconventional, underhand, and opportunistic ways, thereby pursuing unilateral, questionable, or aggressively selfish strategies in contravention of international law and of acceptable ‘good practices’.

In both the international and transnational arenas prevalent modii operandi have been altered, moving away from the consensus of internationally acceptable norms and courses of action. A sharp dichotomy arises between two groups of states: a. those that respect the law and international institutions such as the UN and its agencies, and which act accordingly, and in defense of international law, and b. those that violate it, blatantly, albeit without publicly and officially admitting to such strategies.

Alongside overt military conflicts numerous covert wars are also deployed such as organized crime cyber-attacks, vandalism, massive bot-fake-news’ manipulation operations or targeted violence that challenge the political stability and the effectiveness of states, or power blocks such as the EU, and which undermine social cohesion and confidence. This entails that politically accountable policymaking is now in question. Destabilizing governments occur via confusion and elements of flux, as confidence and effectiveness in political systems evaporates. Besides, citizens in democracies are astounded by the double-standards of certain rulers and the consequences of unpredictable and shocking events which result in subverting their security, peace, and prosperity.

The organizers invite abstracts for conference papers which focus on topics deriving from this rationale. Notably,

* The interplay between regional and global dynamics in ascertaining legality, legitimacy and in matters of security and social cohesion,

* Corruption aberrations and manifestations of violence underpinned by the phenomena of international lawlessness or anomia,

* Interplay of trust and political credibility between the regional, local and international at large and global levels.

* Power handling, power management by governing elites and civic powerlessness.

* The rapid growth of strong-arm tactics at all levels, both national, international and transnational,

* The abandonment of free trade and the return to protectionist economic measures by the USA, all during sheer deregulation of several hegemonic players,

* Current NATO countries’ antagonisms and/or persistent conflictual relations, including reorientation amongst certain North-Atlantic partners.

*Europe’s turn towards autonomous defense and its potential implications in the BSEM,

* The tremendous rise of cyber-attacks and their impact on both private and public life as well as on the stability of states,

* Impact of inter-neighbour sabotage actions.

These are some of the central topics that conference participants are welcome to address with their research papers, but this list is not exhaustive.

VENUE: University of Nicosia, Cyprus

SIGNIFICANT DATES:

Paper proposals (abstracts up to 500 words) should be submitted via email, to bsemr@auth.gr by August 20, 2025 (extended deadline)

Response to applicants will be sent by August 25, 2025

Full papers should be handed in by September 20, 2025, via email to bsemr@auth.gr

Conference dates: October 3 and October 4, 2025

There are no fees to participate in this Conference. Participants are, however, responsible for securing their own funding for travel and lodging.

Online participation allowed for participants who cannot travel to Cyprus.

Papers may qualify for publication to the BSEMR and the South Eastern European Journal of Economics, following a double-blind peer review process.

AI, Children and Youth: Transforming Media, Play, and Social Interaction

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 15:20:22 GMT

November 19-21, 2025

Seville, Spain

Early bird submission deadline: September 10 (inclusive)

Late submission deadline: October 15 (inclusive)

https://eventos.us.es/138341/detail/ai-children-and-youth-transforming-media-play-and-social-interaction.html

Artificial intelligence (AI) is (re)defining the way children and teenagers relate to media, play, as well as their social interactions. Through chatbots and voice assistants, applications (storytelling, language learning, emotional recognition, etc.), and virtual/interactive educational games, AI-driven tools are becoming essential companions in their digital experiences. This conference aims to explore the cultural and social impacts of these changes, focusing on AI’s influence on digital self-expression, play-related experiences, intergenerational relationships, and audio-visual production. Rather than perceiving AI merely as a neutral instrument, our goal is to explore its role as a cultural force that guides the ways in which young individuals relate to media and the world surrounding them.

From this standpoint, we seek submissions that examine the role of play (both physical and digital) within artificial intelligence: as a medium for literacy development; to personalize the learning experience by adapting activities based on a child’s responses; to simulate and create virtual realities where children can establish forms of communication with one another (e.g., Animal Crossing); for narrative construction and image generation; to explore their environment through a dual modality of discovery (e.g., Pokemon Go); and in instances where the user is required to engage physically, among other aspects. How do these factors shape the way youngsters learn, play and interact with each other?

In this sense, AI driven tools present new creative opportunities for young people, yet they may also limit these opportunities due to algorithmic biases and the lack of autonomy in children’s decision-making. AI tools for content creation, such as story generation or character illustration may be configured to reinforce biases related to race or gender (e.g., “create a character” and the image generated is a white male). Simultaneously, algorithmic personalization, which depends on user data (e.g., likes, previous choices, etc.), has an impact on the construction of media referents and the identities of young individuals. As AI customizes content according to “preferences” and responses, children and adolescents are presented with specific representations that either reinforce stereotypes or, conversely, exclude them from certain categories. Such exposure can significantly influence the identity that youth develop.

Furthermore, contributions exploring the influence of AI on intergenerational relationships are also encouraged. Children’s exposure and engagement with AI-based content can sometimes exceed the understanding of parents and caregivers. However, AI also presents opportunities for fostering intergenerational connections. For instance, AI-driven educational games may create a collaborative environment where both children and adults can jointly explore the ethical, creative, and social ramifications of emerging technologies.

Ultimately, as audiovisual media remains central to Communication Studies, AI is also transforming the practices of content creators who produce for young audiences. The increasing use of generative AI in the creative industries has raised concern among screenwriters and animators, triggering debates around authorship, ethics, and creative ownership, as evidenced by recent writers’ strikes and the controversy surrounding AI- generated images that imitate established artistic styles. Simultaneously, children’s media also incorporates these issues into its narratives, often oscillating between utopian promise and dystopian threat, as seen in films like The Mitchells vs. The Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021) or The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders, 2024). These representations are key in shaping how youth think about and relate to technology, trust, and agency, highlighting the need to analyze both the production and depiction of AI in contemporary storytelling and animation.

Key topics (included but not limited to):

Definitions and fundamentals of AI related to childhood context.
Regulations and norms on AI in media for children and teenagers.
Ethical and social concerns regarding AI in youth media.
AI-driven play based on child responses.
AI games that promote movement and interaction with the environment.
Interactive AI games for narrative building and image generation.
Digital literacy in children through AI-based play and ethical considerations.
Content mediation and parenting in the age of AI.
Transformations in children’s communicative practices in AI.
Role of algorithmic recommendation in the shaping of children’s media identities.
AI and the reinforcement of cultural stereotypes in visual and narrative constructs.
Ideological discourses present in AI-driven media narratives for children and youth.
Role of AI in creating shared learning experiences across generations.
Representations of AI in film and television for children and youth.
Authorship, consent, and the aesthetics of appropriation in AI-generated art.
Intersection of AI and artistic labor exploring the challenges faced by animators and writers.

Format and participation

This CYM Mid-Term Conference 2025 will be held over three days, divided into different thematic blocks.

PhD Workshop - Wednesday, November 19

This workshop is aimed at PhD students, and its main objective is to promote networking among participants before the start of the congress. It will be a meeting place to share lines of research, explore possible forms of collaboration, and encourage the creation of academic networks.

In addition to the open discussion and the opportunity to ask questions in an informal setting, the meeting will include a couple of talks focused on the use of artificial intelligence in relation to some of the key topics of the congress, which will be detailed in the program soon.

Conference - Thursday, November 20 and Friday, November 21

During these two days the congress will be held in its usual format, with parallel round tables dedicated to different thematic lines. We will have the participation of keynote speakers specialized in children's content and/or artificial intelligence. Also, there will be video essay projection sessions in the Home Cinema room, in order to give visibility to this format as a legitimate form of research and creation in academia.

The conference prioritizes face-to-face participation. The hybrid modality will only be considered in exceptional cases that justify it. In the case of video-essays, the physical presence of the author will not be mandatory, although it is recommended in case the audience wishes to ask questions after the screening.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions may consist of either individual presentations or panel proposals comprising no more than five contributors or co-authors. Proposals that are inter or multidisciplinary in nature are encouraged, and submissions from early-stage researchers are welcomed. We also consider the possibility of including video essays as a format of participation. A video essay is a short audiovisual piece that develops an argument, theory or critical analysis using the expressive tools of audiovisual language (editing, voice-over, music, or the use of images, including clips from films, series, animations, etc.). Video essays should be between 4 and 10 minutes long and must include English subtitles if the audio is in Spanish.

The individual proposal should include the following information:

● Title of the proposal

● Abstract (max. 300 words)

● Author name(s), institutional affiliation(s) and short bio (max. 100 words)

The panel proposal should include the following information:

● Panel abstract (max. 300 words)

● A maximum of 4–5 papers, each with:

1. Paper title

2. Abstract (max. 150 words)

3. Author’s name and affiliation

4. Short bio (max. 100 words)

Note: All participants must register individually once the panel is accepted.

The abstract should clearly state the topic of the research, the main arguments or research questions, its relevance to the conference theme, the theoretical framework and/or methodology used, as well as the expected findings or contributions.

Abstracts must be submitted in English. However, the registration form includes an option to indicate a preference for presenting in Spanish. Should a significant number of proposals be submitted in Spanish, a dedicated session in Spanish will be organized within the conference program.

The organizing committee is currently in contact with academic journals and publishing houses to explore potential publications arising from the conference. Additional details will be provided communicated in due course.

Here on the website, you’ll find a language selection tab at the top right corner. In the “Proposal Submission” section, you can fill out the form and submit your abstract. To do so, you will need to log in through your university or create an account as an external user — only then will the submission form become available.

For any questions, please contact us through the “Contact” section or by email at ecrea.cym.2025.sevilla@us.es.

Submission and Registration Deadlines

Early bird submission deadline: September 10 (inclusive)

● Notification of acceptance: by September 25

Late submission deadline: October 15 (inclusive)

● Notification of acceptance: by November 1

Please note: Abstracts will be reviewed and accepted on a rolling basis as they are received, aiming for the shortest possible turnaround time. If you submit an abstract after the early bird notification deadline (September 25), we may still be able to provide an acceptance decision by October 5 to allow registration at the early bird rate. However, this cannot be guaranteed, and the time available to complete payment will be shorter. Same applies for the late registration dates.

*To view the fees and deadlines for early and late registration, please visit the "Registration" section.

Organizers

This conference is a Mid-Term Conference of the Children, Youth and Media (CYM) Section of ECREA, supported by Universidad de Sevilla (Spain).

The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 20:32:10 GMT

Springer Book Series

Deadline: August 31, 2025

We are pleased to announce a Call for Chapters for two upcoming edited volumes in Springer’s book series, The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology. Both volumes are under contract with Springer and will be co-edited by Ljubisa Bojic, Zoran Eric, and Ana Lipij.

The book titles are:

1. Ethics of AI Alignment: Rethinking Society Beyond Human

2. Ethics of AI Alignment: The Challenge of International Alignment

We have already confirmed a number of contributors, but we are seeking up to 10 additional chapter authors. We welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives.

Possible overarching topics (indicative, not limited to):

- Part I: Theoretical Foundations of AI Ethics

- Part II: Societal, Environmental, and Existential Implications

- Part III: Global Challenges and Future Directions

- Part IV: AI in Creative and Applied Domains

Please send an abstract of up to 200 words (using this template) to Ljubisa Bojic at: ljubisa.bojic@ifdt.bg.ac.rs

Deadline: 31 August

We look forward to receiving your proposals and to exploring the important issues at the intersection of AI alignment, ethics, global challenges, and societal changes.

Best regards,

Ljubisa Bojic, Zoran Eric, and Ana Lipij

Editors

Junior Professorship (W1) in Communication and Media Studies (with a focus on gender, diversity, and inequality) with tenure track to W3 (m/f/d)

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:41:07 GMT

University of Rostock

The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rostock is filling the following position as of October 1, 2026, subject to budgetary regulations.

This tenure track professorship is funded by the Lola Zahn Professorinnen Program, which aims to increase the proportion of women among professors at the University of Rostock.

The successful candidate is expected to represent a wide spectrum of media and communication studies in research and teaching by the end of the Junior Professorship. The main focus will be on empirical (quantitative and/or qualitative) media research in the context of digitalization with a view to gender, diversity, and inequality. In addition, teaching methodological skills in the field of empirical media research is a central component of the teaching duties.

Participation in the dual bachelor's program in Communication and Media Studies and in the master's programs in Communication and Media Studies (dual master's) and Media Education and Media Culture (single master's) is expected.

The professional focus of the position holder should be compatible with the profile of the Institute for Media Research at the University of Rostock. The Institute for Media Research at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rostock sees itself at the interface between empirical social science communication studies and humanities oriented media studies. The social science oriented Junio Professorship for communication and media studies should be embedded in this tradition. Relevant experience in university teaching and a willingness to contribute to the interdisciplinary faculty of the University of Rostock are expected.

This call is aimed at scholars in the early stages of their careers who are expected to gain national and international visibility in the field of communication and media studies with a focus on gender, diversity, and inequality research.

A corresponding research concept must be submitted with the application. Special skills and achievements in teaching, scientific organization, and academic self-administration will be taken into account. To this end, applicants should outline their ideas for future teaching, including the didactic design of courses, and describe their experience in scientific management.

Requirements:

For further inquiries, please contact:

Prof. Dr. Nicola Hömke, Chair of the Search Committee

Fon: +49 381 498 2781

E-Mail: nicola.hömke@uni-rostock.de

****

Qualifications are as per § 62 (1) of the Higher Education Act of the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (LHG MV).

So far as there has been a period of employment as a member of scientific staff or as a scientific assistant in Germany, before or after completion of the doctorate, it is required that the doctorate period and the employment period combined have not exceeded nine years.

The professorship is to be filled according to § 62 (2) LHG M-V as a position with civil servant status of time or as a regular state employee. The employment relationship is extended for a further three years in the event of probation as part of an interim evaluation after the third year. Pursuant to § 62a LHG M-V, the appointment to the junior professorship is linked to the promise that a professorship in the civil service status for life or as a regular state employee will be accepted if the individual defined performance requirements are met during the junior professorship. Before the end of the second phase of the junior professorship, a tenure track evaluation is carried out in order to check the prerequisites for taking on the permanent W3 professorship.

A special focus is placed on academic achievement and teaching qualifications as well academic organization and administration. For this reason, candidates should describe previous teaching results, ideas regarding future teaching (including didactic lesson planning) and their prior experience in academic and scientific management. In addition, candidates are expected to have experience and interest in developing programs that can attract and maintain external funding.

The University of Rostock is committed to their university management guidelines.

Equal opportunities are part of our personnel policy. The announcement is therefore aimed at all persons regardless of their gender. Disabled applicants will be given preference if all other qualifications are essentially equal.

The University of Rostock is especially interested in promoting women within the context of § 7 (3) of the Gender Equality Act, and therefore specifically encourages applications from qualified women. Women will be given priority if their qualifications are essentially equivalent, unless reasons attributable to the person of the competitor predominate.

Applications with the usual documents (full CV, certificates, a complete list of academic and professional background, publications, teaching experience, any additional qualifications, a summary of grants and sponsored research activities and a description of future research plans) should be sent no later than 5th September 2025 to the Universität Rostock, Dekan der Philosophischen Fakultät, August-Bebel-Straße 28, 18055 Rostock or by e-mail to berufungen.phf@uni-rostock.de. We would like to point out that your e-mail will be sent to us unencrypted.

The protection of your personal information is very important to us. Therefore, the data collected during the application process will be collected, processed and used in accordance with the relevant data protection rules.

Application costs cannot be reimbursed by the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. We ask you to submit applications only in copy, as they will not be returned after the procedure has been completed.

Beyond the Audience: Rethinking Participation and Power in the Age of Data Capitalism

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:30:13 GMT

January 15-16

Rome, 2026 IULM, University

Deadline: September 30, 2025

Keynote speakers

Tiziana Terranova, University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’
TBC

Description

The audience regards a “large number of unidentifiable people, usually united by their participation in media use” (Hartley 2002, p. 11), yet it is always already plural, diverse, fragmented, fluid and in many ways “ungraspable”, both everywhere and nowhere (Carpentier & Wimmer, 2023, p. 38). In the age of data capitalism, audiences become users and creators, seemingly blurring the division between the official and the vernacular, the elite and popular. Yet the vast majority of audiences remain in a subordinate position vis-à-vis the owners of the platform or elite audience members (e.g., influencers) insofar as platforms control their creativity, interaction, and usage. In this regard, although analytically helpful, terms such as “creators” and “users” may be romanticizing the division between the few and the many.

The discussion above echoes tensions between two critical yet seemingly opposing, if not contradictory, audience roles discussed in critical media studies. The political economy approach, argues that by exploiting audience time, attention, data and sociality, digital media treat audiences as commodities (Smythe, 1977), labourers (Terranova, 2001) and subjectify them in the lifeworld of surveillance and platform capitalism (Zuboff, 2019; Andrejevich, 2020; Srnicek, 2017; Fuchs, 2015). Developed in the 1970s by Dallas Smythe and later guided critical political economy approaches in media and communication (e.g., Mosco, 2009), the audience-commodity thesis became again relevant after 2010s with the blatant commodification of media and the rise of smartphones and digital platforms; it has been reflected in critical works, including that of Evgeny Morozov (2020), Mark Andrejevic (2013), Jodi Dean (2010), Christian Fuchs (2015; 2020) and has been popularized beyond academic with the theses of “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2017) and platform capitalism (Sadowski, 2020). On the other hand, there is the “active audience”, a figure clustered around cultural studies and ethnography, where audiences casually and routinely do things with social media, exercising their voice, agency and empowerment. The active audience prioritizes the uses of media over the structures determining usage (Ambercombie, 1998), partaking of the enthusiasm that characterized the early days of internet research in media and communication studies, including the idea of a new and booming participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). There have been attempts to bridge these approaches, such as in Nick Couldry’s concept of the “media manifold” (2016), Ytre-Arne’s and Das’ unpacking of “communicative agency” in datafication (2021) or the “duality of media” by James G. Webster (2011). The spread of deepfakes complicates this media landscape, contributing to a wider movement of communicative polarization and geopolitical deglobalization (D’ Eramo, 2022).

The shift from singular to plural, from top-down to bottom-up processes as well as the high customization of contents is then not necessarily a “positive” or emancipating aspect. As a consequence of the postfordist organization, it represents a problematic transformation of power through a democratizing narrative.

The concept of the “audience” is then useful for critical scholarship insofar as it intertwines concerns around participation and engagement with commodification and exploitation — yet to what extent are we also “beyond” it? How can we think of concepts like participation and power in the context of data capitalism through and beyond the figure of the audience? How can in turn figures like users, participants and communities be thought within the critical tradition of both political economy and cultural studies in a landscape dominated by algorithmic data extraction?

This conference invites contributions studying audiences through the lens of critical media research. The latter questions positivistic paradigms of social research, highlighting issues from commodification and exploitation to resistance and alternative forms of world- building. We look for abstracts thinking through agency, everyday contexts and socializations together with political economy, commodification and value creation.

We welcome both theoretical and case studies driven papers and seek contributions in the following indicative topics:

The audience commodity and its contemporary applications
The audience as worker in the digital age
Questioning the term ‘audience’
Content creators, bloggers and influencers
Algorithmic audiences
Datafied audiences
Generative AI and audience replacement
Clickification of news and information
The effectiveness of media literacy in the context of data societies
Activism, hashtags and platforms
Audience exploitation
Mobile audiences
Media lifeworlds and everydayness
Film and music audiences
Data journalism and news audiences
Social listening and feedback
Cybernetic audiences
Audience polarization
Fans in data-driven contexts
Streaming audiences
Audiences in Video on Demand (VOD), Streaming Video on Demand (SVOD) and Over the Top (OTT) Platforms
Audiences and piracy
Audiences as publics and communities
Deepfakes and Gen-Z

Please send an abstract of max 500 words and a short bio at the following address: conference@medemap.eu

Deadline: September 30, 2025

Organizing board

Giulia Ferri, Andrea Miconi, and Elisabetta Risi (IULM University)

Scientific board

Nello Barile (IULM University), Nico Carpentier (Charles University in

Prague), Panos Kompatsiaris (HSE), Andrea Miconi (IULM University),

Elisabetta Risi (IULM University), Josef Seethaler (Austrian Academy of

Sciences), Tiziana Terranova (Orientale University, Naples).

This conference is organized in the framework of MEDEMAP, a Horizon

Europe research project (www.medemap.eu).

References

Abercrombie, N., & Longhurst, B. (1998). Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination. Sage Publications.

Andrevich, M. (2013). The Digital Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know. Routledge.

Carpentier, Nico and Wimmer, Jeffrey (2023) Democracy and Media: A Discursive-Material Approach. MEDEMAP, Deliverable 2.1.

Castells, M. (1999). The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell Publishing.

Castells, M. (2009). Communication Power. Oxford University Press.

Couldry, N., 2016. Life with the media manifold: Between freedom and subjection. In Kramp, Leif, Nico Carpentier, Andreas Hepp, Richard

Kilborn, Risto Kunelius, Hannu Nieminen, Tobias Olsson, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Ilija Tomanic Trivundža, and Simone Tosoni, R. Kilborn, (eds.) Politics, Civil Society and Participation: Media and Communications in a Transforming Environment. Bremen: Edition Lumière, 25-39.

D’Eramo M. (2022), Deglobalization, Newleftreview, 3/29.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press.

Livingstone, S. (2005). Audiences and Publics: When Cultural Engagement Matters for the Public Sphere. Intellect Books.

Livingstone, S. (2019). Audiences in an age of datafication: Critical questions for media research. Television & New Media, 20(2), 170-183.

Livingstone, S., & Das, R. (2013). The end of audiences? Theoretical echoes of reception amid the uncertainties of use. A companion to new media dynamics, 104-121.

McGuigan, L. (2023). Selling the American people: Advertising, optimization, and the origins of adtech. MIT Press.

Smythe, D. W. (1977). Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 1(3), 1-27.

Terranova, T. (2000). Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy. Social Text, 63(18), 33-58.

Webster, J. G. (2011). Duality of Media: A Structurational Theory of Public Attention. Communication Theory, 21(1), 44–474.

Ytre-Arne, B. and Das, R., 2021. Audiences’ communicative agency in a datafied age: Interpretative, relational and increasingly prospective. Communication Theory, 31(4), pp. 779-797.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Public Affairs.

Populism, Territories, Name Disputes, and Hyperreality: Greek Nationalism and the Macedonian Case

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:22:05 GMT

Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis

In Populism, Territories, Name Disputes, and Hyperreality: Greek Nationalism and the Macedonian Case, Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis examines how and why societal actors may use different names to refer to the same territory. Karyotakis demonstrates the enormous symbolic power that the names of places can hold through a study of the Macedonian name dispute (MND), arguing that territorial names can be symbolic and crucial for constructing nation-states through imbued influential meanings affecting citizens' hearts and minds. These symbolic name disputes (SNDs), he posits, offer societal elites the opportunity to further their own personal ambitions, which can include winning electoral power and spreading hatred against non-supporters. Karyotakis then delineates how some disputes have maintained a seemingly improved version of reality that strongly attaches the conflict to a dogmatized dominant narrative which exploits the nationalistic ideas of the nation-state and blurs territorial borders (hyperreal symbolic name disputes), while other disputes are firmly attached to actual territorial claims that arise from a disagreement over control of a well-defined physical territory (referential symbolic name disputes). Pointing to several persistent territorial name disputes - such as the Arabian/Persian Gulf, Kurdistan, the Kuril Islands/Northern Territories, Macedonia, Navasa Island/La Navase, and Western Sahara, among others - this book provides a model for a novel categorization that broadens our understanding of these conflicts.

Reviews of the Book

Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis investigates a heated international dispute, not over land or resources, but over the symbolic power of a country’s name. His richly detailed and theoretically groundbreaking study has global, cross-disciplinary relevance in an age of identity wars, when populists inflate enmities for political gain.

Cherian George, author of Fighting Polarisation (Polity, 2025)

Theoretically innovative and empirically rich, this book ably analyses a hitherto neglected field: media narratives surrounding the politics of naming, supported by a compelling case study.

Daya Thussu, Professor of International Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University

Dive into a compelling exploration of territorial name disputes through the lens of the Macedonian Name Dispute (MND) in this insightful book by Dr. Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis. Combining rigorous historical analysis with contemporary political discourse, Karyotakis conducts a novel categorisation of territorial name disputes and reveals how names and identities shape national narratives and political power dynamics. With a keen focus on the interplay between populism and identity politics, this work examines the MND’s impact on Greek political actors, the media’s role in shaping public perception, and the existential threats perceived by citizens. Readers will gain a nuanced understanding of how hyperreality influences societal divisions and the implications for democracy.

Dionysios Stivas, Professor of International Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University

Publisher’s page: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/populism-territories-name-disputes-and-hyperreality-9781666950069/

mediastudies.press book manuscript

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 15:29:22 GMT

Deadline: July 31, 2025

mediastudies.press, the scholar-led and nonprofit OA publisher, is happy to announce that our annual proposal window, which opened on 1 June, closes on 31 July, 2025. Authors are encouraged to submit a proposal for review.

mediastudies.press welcomes submissions from scholars across media, communication, and film studies. We currently publish in four series:

Media Manifold series — monographs and other book-length works of contemporary media scholarship
Public Domain series — reprints of neglected classics, in new critical editions anchored by framing introductions
Open Reader series — themed collections of openly licensed, public domain, and linked materials curated and introduced by leading experts
History of Media Studies series — monographs and other original scholarly works centered on history of media, communication, and film studies
Goffman in the Open series — public domain texts, monographs, translations, and other original scholarly works centered on the Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman

We are small and artisanal by mission, and aim to publish just five books a year. Given the volume of proposals that we receive—and with our production schedule in mind—we maintain an annual proposal window (1 June to 31 July), for the review of manuscripts slated for publication in the following calendar year. You are welcome to send informal queries outside these dates, but our general practice is to only consider proposals within the annual window. Each year, we review proposals with an initial reply by August 30, with the aim to conduct peer review of proposals of expressed interest by the end of September.

mediastudies.press is an open-access publisher for the media and communication studies fields. The press is nonprofit and scholar-led. We publish living works, with iterative updates stitched into our process. And we encourage multi-modal submissions that reflect the mediated environments our authors study.

Publishing with mediastudies.press is free on principle. Our aim is to demonstrate, on a small scale, an open-access publishing model supported by libraries rather than author fees, via the Open Book Collective. Open access for readers, we believe, should not be traded for new barriers to authorship.

All our published works are rigorously peer-reviewed, and receive unusual editorial attention. We prioritize discoverability through careful metadata, library records, and directory listings. As a scholar-run operation, our publicity outreach is uncommonly informed by the fields’ intellectual contours.

We kindly ask that proposals be submitted as a single PDF. Proposals should include the following elements, in addition to at least one draft chapter:

Proposed title and subtitle
A 500- to 1000-word narrative description of the book
Short bios of author(s) and/or editor(s)
Proposed series (see above)
Tentative table of contents, preferably annotated
Estimated word-length
Multi-modal components, if any
Status of the book (i.e., expectation of completion date, the portion now complete)
At least one draft chapter

To submit your work to mediastudies.press please follow our submission link.

If you have any questions at all about the proposal process for books, please contact us at press@mediastudies.press

Jeff Pooley, co-director of mediastudies.press

Dave Park, co-director of mediastudies.press

One doctoral studentship in Media and Communication Studies with a focus on AI and Welfare within the research area of Critical and Cultural Theory and the WASP-HS Graduate School

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 19:00:57 GMT

Södertörn University

Apply here

Reference number AP-2025/293

Södertörn University is a higher education institution in Stockholm that conducts education, research, and collaboration for sustainable societal development. We have around 14 000 students, 80 programmes and 300 courses, and we conduct education and research in the humanities, social sciences, technology and natural sciences. The university also offers police education and teacher education with an intercultural profile. A great deal of our research relates to the Baltic Sea region and Eastern Europe. We combine subjects, perspectives, people and experiences, and are worldminded, curious and questioning, searching for surprising syntheses, challenges and development.

Södertörn University welcomes doctoral proposals in Media and Communication Studies, to be conducted within the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS). The successful applicant will write their thesis as part of the AI Welfare State cluster, which is an interdisciplinary collaboration between several universities and is led by researchers at Södertörn University, Lunds University and Karlstad University.

The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS) is a national research program in Sweden. The vision of WASP-HS is to foster novel interdisciplinary knowledge in the humanities and social sciences about AI and autonomous systems and their impact on human and social development. WASP-HS enables cutting edge research, expertise, and competence building in the humanities and social sciences. The WASP-HS graduate school trains promising young researchers to understand the challenges and implications of autonomous systems and AI in society. A complement to students’ doctoral studies, the graduate school offers courses, a summer school, a winter conference, a semester abroad, and study visits both within Sweden and internationally. Students work collaboratively to solve real-world problems and are equipped with the theories, methods, and background critical for investigating questions on the consequences of AI and autonomous systems for humanity and society.

Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University is one of Sweden’s leading environments for media research and education. Research and education are focused on the contemporary digitised media landscape and founded on a historically informed understanding of new communication technologies and their contexts. The research environment currently comprises around 30 researchers/teachers including full professors, associate professors, assistant professors and nine doctoral students. All our doctoral students have an international profile, and the working language of the doctoral programme is English. For more information, please click here (English version) or see www.sh.se/mkv (Swedish version).

Doctoral education at the Department of Media and Communication Studies is part of the research area of Critical Cultural Theory. This is an interdisciplinary research environment which consists of seven subjects in the humanities. Research focuses on critically motivated studies of cultural artifacts and human practices. For more information, please click here. For a Swedish version click here.

Description of the doctoral position

The AI Welfare State cluster addresses the vulnerabilities that arise with the introduction of artificial intelligence into our welfare systems for better service and control. As AI technologies become increasingly embedded in public services, new potential harms are materialising; these imperil both the technical infrastructure and the individuals affected by the systems. The cluster is developing an understanding of emerging AI vulnerabilities, which include the generation of false information, dependence on Big Tech, misuse by malicious actors, disclosure of sensitive data, and bias in automated decision-making. By examining AI vulnerabilities in three research streams, which focus on imaginaries, governance and practices, the cluster will provide a comprehensive analysis of how AI impacts society. It combines infrastructural analysis with an analysis of how citizens relate to AI in welfare in terms of meaning-making, feelings and perceptions. This multidisciplinary effort aims to develop a new theory of the AI welfare state to ensure that AI technologies support, rather than undermine, public values such as justice, transparency, and social cohesion. Through its ambitious empirical and theoretical research as well as a well-integrated outreach programme, the cluster aspires to highlight AI vulnerabilities for policymakers and the public, facilitating a well informed and sustainable AI welfare state.

For more information about the graduate school and the doctoral position, please contact the cluster leader, Anne Kaun (see below).

Entry requirements

All credits are ECTS credits.

The general entry requirements are:

1. a second-cycle qualification, or

2. fulfilled requirements for courses comprising at least 240 credits, of which at least 60 credits were awarded in the second-cycle, or

3. substantially equivalent knowledge acquired in some other way in Sweden or abroad.

The Faculty Board may permit an exemption from the general entry requirements for an individual applicant, if there are special grounds. (Ordinance 2010:1064)

Specific entry requirements

The specific entry requirements are met by someone who has at least 90 credits in Media and Communication Studies, including an independent work of at least 15 credits. The ability to assimilate academic material in English and a command of the language necessary for work on the thesis are prerequisites for admission to the degree programme.

Admission and employment

This position includes admission to third-cycle education, i.e. research level, and employment on a doctoral studentship at the School of Culture and Education at Södertörn University. The intended outcome for admitted students is a PhD. The programme covers 240 credits, which is the equivalent of four years of full-time study. The position may be extended by a maximum of one year due to the inclusion of departmental duties, i.e. education, research and/or administration (equivalent to no more than 20% of full-time). Other grounds for extension could be leave of absence because of illness or for service in the defence forces, an elected position in a trade union/student organisation, or parental leave. Provisions relating to employment on a doctoral studentship are in the Higher Education Ordinance, Chapter 5, Sections 1-7.

Date of employment: 19 January 2026

General Syllabus for third-cycle programmes in Media and Communication Studies: English version or Swedish version

Information about admission regulations including selection criteria, and third-cycle education at Södertörn University: English version or Swedish version

Application procedure

For more details, see this website under FAQ. Please use Södertörn University’s web-based recruitment system “ReachMee”. Click on the link "ansök" (apply) at the bottom of the announcement.

Your application should be written in English and must include:

- an application letter

- curriculum vitae

- degree certificate and certificates that demonstrate eligibility to apply for the position (if not written in English or Swedish/Norwegian/Danish, you must enclose a version that has been professionally translated)

- Bachelor’s essay and Master’s dissertation in the field in accordance with the entry requirements (if not written in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish or English, you must enclose summaries of approximately 2500 words each, in addition to copies of the essay and the dissertation in the original language)

- a research plan (project plan) of between 1000 and 1500 words. The project’s relevance to Media and Communication Studies, Critical and Cultural Theory and the Graduate School must be clear.

- name and contact details for two reference persons, and a short note on their relationship to the applicant (for example supervisor).

If available, a maximum of three publications may also be attached.

Incomplete applications will not be processed.

Application deadline: 18 August 2025 at 23:59

Further information

Anne Kaun, Cluster Leader, Professor, Media and Communication Studies, anne.kaun@sh.se

Göran Bolin, Director of Studies (third cycle), Professor, Media and Communication Studies, goran.bolin@sh.se

Martina Sundström, Human Resources Officer, School of Culture and Education, martina.sundstrom@sh.se (questions about employment as a doctoral student)

Welcome with your application!

Publications referred to must be attached to the application.

An application that is not complete or arrives at Södertörn University after the closing date may be rejected.

The current employment is valid on condition that the employment decision becomes valid.

Union representatives:

SACO: info.saco@sh.se

ST: st@sh.se

SEKO: Henry Wölling tel: +46 8 524 840 80, henry.wolling@ki.se

Södertörn University has made strategic advertisement choices for this recruitment. Therefore, we decline all contact with advertisers and other salespersons of advertisement.

URL to this page

https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/meet-sodertorn-university/this-is-sodertorn-university/vacant-positions?rmpage=job&rmjob=8996&rmlang=UK

Children, Youth and Media in the Algorithm Conundrum of Play, Polarization and Hate: Mapping the Algorithm Conundrum

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 08:55:00 GMT

October 15-17, 2025

Madrid and Salamanca (Spain)

Deadline (EXTENDED): August 20, 2025

ECREA CYM Mid-Term Conference

Children’s play is undergoing a profound transformation in a world increasingly shaped by algorithmic infrastructures. No longer confined to physical spaces or open-ended exploration, today’s play journeys are routed through opaque recommendation systems that curate stories, games, and peers according to commercial logic. What once fostered imagination and serendipity is now entangled in platforms that gamify interactions, influence tastes, and weave childhood experience into data-driven ecosystems.

At the heart of this transformation lies the architecture of algorithmic infrastructures. Research with young users shows how platforms like TikTok or YouTube Kids not only mediate choices but actively shape habits, preferences, and social bonds. Feeds become curated playgrounds where children’s agency is subtly engineered—reflecting not neutrality, but corporate interests.

Compounding this, we confront the datafication of childhood. Connected toys, wearables, and apps turn children into both data subjects and profitable data sources. Echoing Shoshana Zuboff’s concept of surveillance capitalism, children’s playful interactions now feed predictive analytics systems that anticipate and monetize their desires, reinforcing asymmetries of power and diminishing spaces for genuine, autonomous play.

Meanwhile, gamification strategies—such as points, badges, and infinite scroll designs—blur the lines between play, work, and consumption. Although they boost engagement, they also risk creating compulsive loops and fostering exploitative forms of participation, raising urgent ethical concerns around persuasive and addictive technologies.

In parallel, algorithmic personalization fosters polarization rather than just entertainment. Personalized feeds often create “echo chambers” that isolate children in homogeneous bubbles of opinion and taste. Surveys across Europe and North America show increasing parental concern about how these dynamics challenge civic dialogue, empathy, and coexistence, leading regulatory bodies like Ofcom to recommend interventions to mitigate divisive content exposure.

This algorithmic environment also heightens risks of exposure to hate, misogyny, and bias. Empirical studies reveal how quickly recommendation systems can escalate from benign content to extreme narratives, amplifying harmful discourses among adolescents. Simultaneously, the automated systems designed to moderate hate speech often replicate biases of race and gender, creating a double bind where marginalized voices are silenced even as harms proliferate.

The impact on mental health and privacy is equally profound. Teenagers themselves report links between heavy social-media use and challenges such as sleep disruption, anxiety, and declining self-esteem. Efforts by schools and parents to monitor and mitigate these risks—often through AI surveillance tools—introduce further tensions, raising fresh questions about trust, autonomy, and digital rights in educational and domestic spaces.

In response to these complex challenges, scholars call for a shift towards critical algorithmic literacy and reparative digital design. Instead of merely protecting young users through surveillance or restrictions, participatory approaches aim to empower them to interrogate and reshape the very infrastructures that mediate their digital lives. Such frameworks advocate for inclusive, plural, and rights-respecting online spaces that children and youth can co-create alongside educators, caregivers, designers, and policymakers.

This mid-term conference invites contributions that engage with these intertwined issues—algorithmic infrastructures, datafication, gamification, polarization, hate, mental health, critical literacy, and participatory design. We seek to foster a rich, interdisciplinary dialogue that advances our understanding of how play, pleasure, and participation are being fundamentally reconfigured under algorithmic conditions. We welcome submissions from scholars, educators, activists, designers, and practitioners working across media studies, childhood and youth studies, education, digital culture, AI, and ethics.

Key Topics (include but are not limited to):

Algorithmic influence on play, imagination, and autonomy
Media and information literacy in algorithmic environments: challenges and pedagogies
Artificial intelligence and data: ethical tensions, transparency and children’s rights
Platform design and children’s play behavior
Branded content in youth media cultures: commercial influence and participatory formats
Gamification and its educational/ethical implications
Surveillance and datafication of children’s leisure
Creative resistance: how children subvert algorithmic norms
Play, inclusion and marginalization in digital spaces
Digital well-being and psychological implications of algorithm-driven play
Educational tools to foster critical play and media literacy
Regulation, parental mediation and institutional responses

Format and Participation

This CYM Mid-Term Conference 2025 will take place over three consecutive days, each with a distinct thematic and structural focus.

On 15 October, the event will open at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid with a day centered on youth participation and industry-academia dialogue. This first day aims to foreground the voices of children and to explore the intersections between research, media practice and policy through collaborative sessions and a special roundtable.

On 16 October, hosted at Universidad Villanueva (Madrid), the conference will feature the core parallel paper sessions, alongside two keynote lectures and an expert roundtable discussion on artificial intelligence and children’s media use. This central academic day will highlight critical perspectives on digital infrastructures, algorithmic mediation and well-being.

Finally, on 17 October, a Doctoral Colloquium will be held at Universidad de Salamanca, exclusively dedicated to PhD students working on topics related to children, youth and media in digital environments. This session offers a supportive space for doctoral researchers to present their research projects, conceptual frameworks, and methodological approaches, whether they are in early or advanced stages of development. Each participant will receive constructive feedback from senior scholars in the field, as well as input from peers, with the aim of strengthening their academic work and expanding their research networks. The colloquium is designed to foster dialogue, mentoring and scholarly exchange, and to provide visibility for emerging voices within the CYM and ECREA communities.

This conference prioritizes in-person participation. All accepted presentations will be delivered onsite, fostering direct interaction, collaboration and networking. However, the Doctoral Colloquium on 17 October will exceptionally offer a hybrid participation option for PhD students, allowing for remote presentations in justified cases.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit an abstract of 300–400 words, clearly stating:

Research question and relevance to the theme
Theoretical framework and/or methodology
Key findings or expected insights

For the Doctoral Colloquium taking place on October 17, participants are invited to submit 300-400 words text clearly stating:

Title of the research project
Research context and relevance (why is this topic important?)
Main research questions or objectives
Theoretical and/or methodological approach
Current stage of the research
One or two specific aspects you would like to receive feedback on

Submissions must be in English. Authors can only submit 2 proposals as first author.

Abstracts must be submitted exclusively via the following form:

https://forms.gle/kCMiFVbZ3eyAyvqAA

Submissions sent by email will not be considered.

Deadline (EXTENDED): August 20, 2025

Notification of acceptance: July 29^th, 2025/ September 10th, 2025

For any questions related to this call or the submission process, please write to us at: ecrea.cym.2025.madsal@gmail.com

Organizers

This conference is a Mid-Term Conference of the Children, Youth and Media (CYM) Section of ECREA, supported by Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Universidad Villanueva and CÁTEDRA RTVE USAL (Universidad de Salamanca).

Chairs:

Patricia Núñez Gómez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Beatriz Feijoo, Universidad Villanueva (Spain)
Teresa Martín García, Universidad de Salamanca (Spain) / Cátedra RTVE-USAL (Spain)

Organizing Team:

Patricia Lafuente Pérez, Universidad Villanueva (Spain)
Jose Alberto Irarrázaval, Universidad de Navarra (Spain)
Isabel Rodrigo, Universidad de Valladolid (Spain)
Luis Rodrigo, Universidad de Valladolid (Spain)
Maciej Wysokinski, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
William González Baquero, Universidad Salamanca (Spain)
Álvaro Núñez, Universidad Salamanca (Spain)

Scientific Committee

This CYM Mid-Term Conference 2025 is supported by a diverse and interdisciplinary Scientific Committee, composed of international scholars and experts in the fields of media, communication, childhood and youth studies and digital culture.

Félix Ortega, Universidad de Salamanca (Spain)
Ana Filipa Oliveira, Lusófona University (Portugal)
Patricia Núñez Gómez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Beatriz Feijoo, Universidad Villanueva (Spain)
Teresa Martín García, Universidad de Salamanca (Spain)
Carlos Arcila Calderón, Universidad de Salamanca (Spain)
Tomás Atarama Rojas, Universidad de Piura (Perú)
Erika Fernández Gómez, Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (Spain)
Jonathan Hardy, University of the Arts London (United Kingdom)
Viera Kacinová, Univerzita sv. Cyrila a Metoda v Trnave (Slovakia)
Herminder Kaur, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (United Kingdom)
Patricia Lafuente Pérez, Universidad Villanueva (Spain)
Kepa Larrañaga, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Iain MacRury, University of Stirling (United Kingdom)
Mónica Mongui, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Pedro Moura, University of Minho (Portugal)
Sara Pereira, University of Minho (Portugal)
Clarisse Pessôa Universidade Europeia (Portugal)
Isabel Rodrigo, Universidad de Valladolid (Spain)
Luis Rodrigo, Universidad de Valladolid (Spain)
Sandrina Teixeira, Instituto Politécnico de Oporto (Portugal)
Arantxa Vizcaíno Verdú, Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (Spain)
Maciej Wysokinski, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)

Fees (registration September 30^th)

15, 16, 17 of October 2025

ECREA Members (regular): €100
ECREA Members (Junior scholars*): €50
Non-ECREA Members (regular): €150
Non-ECREA Members (Junior scholars*): €70

*Junior Scholars (PhDs, early career up to a year after finishing their PhD)

IMMAA 2025: Managing Innovation & Creativity for Sustainability in Media

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 08:33:31 GMT

October 17-19, 2025

Cairo, Egypt

Deadline: July 20, 2025

In today’s high velocity digital media markets and accelerating AI revolution, competence in management and leadership are critical success factors. It is especially important to develop mastery in leveraging creativity as a strategic resource for strengthening competitive advantages in company processes, products, market relationships, and business models. The complexity of digital disruption makes innovation and creativity a necessity for long-term sustainability. Company success requires competencies in emerging digital technologies and fostering organizational cultures that encourage experimentation, agility and respect for ethical responsibilities. Strategic managers are challenged with demands to rethink orientations, practices, and structures, to redesign business models, and to boost productivity by improving efficiencies that can be gained by harnessing AI technologies. Doing so raises ethical and legal issues pertaining to intellectual property rights and managing human creativity.

The International Media Management Academic Association (IMMAA) invites submissions for its 19th Annual Conference, hosted by The American University in Cairo (AUC), October 17–19, 2025. Join global scholars and industry leaders to explore “Managing Innovation and Creativity for Sustainability in Media Companies” in the dynamic setting of Cairo, Egypt. Read full call for papers here (www.immaaegypt.com)

KEY THEMES

Topics include (but are not limited to):

Innovation in media management theory/practice
AI-driven business analytics & ethical frameworks
Leadership for creativity and organizational agility
Evolving media business models & market strategies
Cross-cultural management challenges
Media policy, regulation, and sustainability
Advances in advertising, marketing, and digital tech

IMPORTANT DATES

June 20, 2025: Abstract/panel proposal deadline
July 7- August 7, 2025: Acceptance notifications
July 7 – Sept 15: Early registration
Oct 17–19: Conference dates

Keynote Speakers:

Charlie Becket: Director of Polis and the Polis/LSE JournalismAI project, London School of Economics;

Edson Tandoc: Associate Chair, Research and Strategy; Professor, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Noha Mellor: Media Professor at the University of Sharjah, UAE.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Papers: Extended abstracts (750–1,000 words) outlining focus, methods, and relevance to media management.

Panels: 300-word proposal + 300-word abstracts per presentation + panelist bios.

Submit via email to: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu (Double-blind peer-reviewed).

REGISTRATION FEES

Early registration:

Faculty/Researcher: €70–270
Grad Student: €50–150

Late registration:

Faculty/Researcher: €120–320
Grad Student: €100–200

Discounted rates for global participation. Full details on conference website.

WHY ATTEND?

Engage with cutting-edge research and industry insights.
Network in Cairo—home to the Pyramids, Nile cruises, and a vibrant cultural scene.
Hosted by AUC, a leading MENA institution with world-class facilities.

LINKS & CONTACT

Conference website: https://immaaegypt.com
IMMAA website: www.immaa.org
Questions? Email: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu

Join us to advance media management scholarship amid Cairo’s historic wonders!

Diasporic Media: Business Models, Audiences, and Innovation

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 08:18:47 GMT

Journal of Media Business Studies (Special Issue)

Submission Deadline: October 24, 2025

Guest Editor: Eylem Yanardagoglu, Macromedia University

Inspired by the European Media Management Association’s (EMMA) “emmahub workshop” held in Berlin (November 13-15, 2024), this special issue in the Journal of Media Business Studies addresses the intersection of media management and migration.

Diasporic communities, defined as groups of individuals who maintain cultural, social, or emotional ties to their country of origin while living abroad, present unique opportunities and challenges for the media industry. Despite their growing presence in Europe’s diversifying societies, the media needs of these communities are often inadequately addressed: they typically remain underrepresented or misrepresented in mainstream media coverage, and their specific interests are often not catered to. However, diasporic audiences also contribute significantly to media innovation through their entrepreneurial efforts to develop media offerings targeting their needs and fostering integration into their host societies. They also contribute to diverse consumption patterns.

This special issue aims to improve academic understanding and inform industry practice by focusing on the economic conditions and managerial as well as business consequences of effectively serving and representing diasporic communities. It will explore the creative and economic potential tapped by new media entrepreneurs, content creators, and established media companies from both the countries of origin and the host countries.

Scope and Possible Topics:

This special issue invites submissions that examine topics such as:

Diasporic Audiences and Consumption Patterns:
- How do diasporic communities/audiences engage with mainstream and alternative media?
- What are the emerging trends in content preferences and distribution platforms among diasporic audiences?
- How and why do diasporic media consumption patterns differ from those of the general population in the host country?
Media Entrepreneurship and Innovation by and/or for Diasporic Communities, explaining:
- Case studies of successful media startups founded and led by members of the diaspora.
- Business models that effectively cater to the unique needs and preferences of diasporic audiences.
- The role of technology and digital platforms in facilitating media entrepreneurship within diasporic communities.
Representation and Inclusivity in Legacy Media:
- Analysis of the barriers to equitable representation of diasporic voices and perspectives in traditional media institutions (e.g., news outlets, television networks).
- Strategies for fostering inclusivity through diverse hiring practices, content development, and partnerships with diasporic communities.

Submission Guidelines:

Submission deadline: 24 October 2025. Submissions will be handled on a rolling basis.
Authors of selected submitted papers will be invited to a paper development workshop hosted at the Media, Management and Transformation Centre, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden, 20-21 November 2025.
Submissions follow the author guidelines for the Journal of Media Business Studies (Submit to Journal of Media Business Studies).
Submission Process: Submit manuscripts electronically through the journal's online submission system. The system can be accessed from the journal’s webpage (Journal of Media Business Studies | Taylor & Francis Online).
Peer Review: All submissions will undergo an initial check by the editor-in-chief and the special issue editor. Submissions of high quality and a good fit with the special issue topic will undergo a double-blind peer-review process.

Expected Contributions:

This special issue aims to:

Advance scholarly understanding of the economic and cultural contributions of diasporic communities to the media industry.
Provide actionable insights for media managers, policymakers, and industry professionals to foster inclusivity and innovation.
Highlight best practices for balancing commercial and ethical imperatives in media production and management within the context of diasporic communities.

Contact:

For any inquiries regarding the special issue, please contact the special issue editor Eylem Yanardagoglu (e.yanardagoglu@macromedia.de) or the editor-in-chief Leona Achtenhagen (acle@ju.se).

NB: No payment from the authors will be required.

The European Union in the New Global Disorder: Transformations, Challenges, and Future Scenarios

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:47:34 GMT

Polis (Special Issue)

Deadline: September 1, 2025

In recent years, the international landscape has been shaken by profound and rapid transformations: the war in Ukraine, the erosion of the US-led global order, increasing tensions within in transatlantic relations, and the proliferation of systemic challenges — Including climate change, energy crises, migration, digital disruptions — are reshaping the foundations of global governance. In this evolving scenario, the European Union (EU) is facing a critical political and institutional juncture, one that may mark a turning point in its historical evolution. These dynamics are testing the EU’s capacity to adapt, respond, and redefine its role on the global stage, while also prompting introspection about its internal cohesion, democratic legitimacy, and long-term strategic direction.

Beyond these institutional and international developments, social transformations, public opinion and media representations are also playing an increasingly central role. European citizens are responding in complex and sometimes contradictory ways: while many call for greater EU sovereignty and protection, others express growing mistrust towards supranational institutions and elites, oftentimes supporting Eurosceptic political parties. At the same time, profound social transformations are shaping the ways in which European societies perceive and engage with the idea of the EU. Changing social identities, shifting values, and new forms of collective action are central to understanding how legitimacy, belonging, and solidarity are constructed and contested. From everyday practices to broader public discourses, individuals and groups negotiate their relationship to European institutions through experiences marked by inequality, cultural tension, and symbolic recognition. These dynamics, which reflect deeper social structures and power relations, contribute to the polarization of attitudes but also open spaces for the emergence of new imaginaries of unity, resilience, and common purpose.

This ‘new political moment’ calls for a collective and multidisciplinary reflection on the EU’s capacity for reinvention, both internally and in its external projection. We thus invite empirical contributions that explore these developments and their implications for the EU.

The special issue aims to bring together emerging and innovative research that reflects on the EU’s capacity to reinvention in the face of shifting geopolitical dynamics and complex internal challenges. We encourage contributions that adopt interdisciplinary approaches, drawing from sociology, political science, international relations, economics, and other related disciplines.

We welcome empirical articles that critically examine the implications of recent global and regional transformations for the EU. Contributions may focus on, but are not limited to, the following themes:

A new institutional architecture for the future EU

Assessment of ongoing and proposed institutional reforms (e.g., ending unanimity, strengthening the European parliament, expanding shared competences, etc.) and the tensions between supranational integration and national sovereignty. What modes of governance can best meet the demand for democratic legitimacy and policy effectiveness? How are different member states positioning themselves in the debate on EU reform? What role do crises and external pressures play in accelerating or hindering institutional change?

The EU’s role in the emerging international (dis)order

Exploration of EU strategies in a multipolar world: strategic autonomy, common defense, relations with the US, China, Russia, and the Global South. What future lies ahead for the EU as a geopolitical actor amid conflicts, regionalization or deglobalization, and global competition? How do internal divisions and external pressures shape its ability to act coherently on the global stage? How is the EU navigating its pursuit of strategic autonomy, the development of common defense capabilities, and its evolving relationships with key global actors — including the United States, China, Russia, and the countries of the Global South?

Public policies and multilevel governance in response to new challenges

Evaluation of major EU policies (e.g., NextGenerationEU, Green Deal and energy strategies) and their effects on territorial cohesion and multi-level coordination between EU institutions, member states, and regional authorities. How is European governance evolving to cope with complex and interrelated crises? What tensions or innovations are emerging in the interplay between national prerogatives and supranational priorities?

Towards inclusive digital transformation in EU

The digital revolution — encompassing the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and the broader digital transformation of societies and economies — represents a critical and complex dimension change. The role of the EU in shaping digital governance, including regulatory frameworks for data, platforms, AI, and emerging technologies. However, this transformation also risks deepening digital inequalities — between regions, generations, and social groups — if not guided by inclusive and human-centric policies. How does digitalization affect European sovereignty, competitiveness, and democracy?

Institutional communication and EU narratives

Analysis of how EU institutions communicate and legitimize their policies and actions, both within the Union and on the global stage. What narratives are being promoted in response to global challenges? How is the EU’s role conveyed to citizens and international partners? To what extent are institutional communication strategies effective in fostering public engagement, countering disinformation, and strengthening the EU’s international visibility and credibility?

Citizens’ attitudes and perceptions toward the EU

Investigation of changes in European public opinion: trust in institutions, European identity, support for integration, attitudes toward sovereignty, security and solidarity. How have recent crises shaped citizens’ connection to the European project? What divides and convergences emerge across member states, generations, or political orientations? What implications does this have for democratic legitimacy and participation?

Media representations and the EU in collective imaginaries

Research on how the EU is portrayed in legacy and digital media, political discourse, and popular culture is particularly welcome. What images of Europe circulate in the public sphere, and how do they influence perceptions of the EU and its legitimacy? What role do social media platforms, algorithms, and influencers play in shaping attitudes toward the EU? Special attention may also be given to the imaginaries produced through entertainment media—such as television series, films, and online content—which increasingly contribute to the construction of narratives around European identity, solidarity, and geopolitical power. How do these media narratives reflect, reinforce, or contest dominant visions of Europe and its role in the world?

Submission guidelines/instructions Abstract submission instruction

Authors are encouraged to submit the title and an abstract of their planned article by September 1, 2025. The abstract (which can be written in English or Italian) should be 600 words (references excluded) and should include: aims/research questions, methodology, findings, main contribution, and a short statement of how the submission is related to this call for papers.

Please submit the title and long abstract by email to the guest editors (Marco Valbruzzi marco.valbruzzi@unina.it; Cecilia Manzo cecilia.manzo@unicatt.it; polis@cattaneo.org) with the subject line: “Special Issue Polis abstract”.

Submission instruction

The editors, with editorial board, will review the submission and invite the selected authors to submit a final manuscript. Final manuscripts will undergo the usual double-blind peer-review process.

Please refer to the Author Guidelines of Polis to prepare your manuscript: https://www.rivisteweb.it/issn/1120-9488/informazioni#come-si-sottopone

Timeline

Deadline to submit long abstracts: September 1, 2025 Abstract acceptance notification: September 22, 2025

Submission deadline of final manuscripts: February 28, 2026 Expected publication date: July 2026 (Polis 2/2026)

Guest Editors

Marco Valbruzzi, University of Naples Federico II, marco.valbruzzi@unina.it Cecilia Manzo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, cecilia.manzo@unicatt.it

Polis: https://www.cattaneo.org/pubblicazioni/polis/

Cfp: https://www.mulino.it/riviste/a/issn/1120-9488/newsitem/442

PhD Course on Discourse Studies and Method: Using Discourse-Theoretical Analysis and Discursive-Material Analysis

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:39:57 GMT

November 3-7, 2025

Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline: July 31, 2025

https://culcorc.fsv.cuni.cz/phd-course-on-discourse-theory/

We have reopened the call for applications to the Prague PhD Course on Discourse Studies and Method. A limited number of spots are still available, and the new application deadline is 31 July 2025.

Course coordinator and leader: Nico Carpentier

Course credits: 5 credits

Course location: Centrum Voršilská, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Dates: 03 - 07 November 2025

Contact person: Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen

COURSE BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

The course aims to discuss two methods in the field of discourse studies: Discourse-theoretical analysis (DTA) and Discursive-material analysis (DMA). Both are grounded in so-called high theory, with discourse theory as its main starting point, but with elements of actor-network theory and new materialism. This course will start with an introduction to these theoretical models but will then move on to their analytical deployment in communication and media studies research.

Special attention will be spent on the creation of a theory-grounded analytical model to guide the research. Apart from attending lectures, participants will be expected to participate in both theoretical and research-driven workshops.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On completion of this course, successful students will be able to:

have a deeper understanding of the field of discourse studies and, in particular, of its discourse-theoretical component;
have a deeper understanding of the theoretical relationship between the discursive and the material;
know how to translate discourse-theoretical models into analytical practice through the use of the notion of the sensitising concept (applied to discourse theory and to discourse-theoretical rereading of other theories);
set up an analytical model for a discourse-theoretical analysis and a discursive-material analysis.

TEACHING AND EVALUATION

The one-week course will be organised in 10 teaching slots, combining lectures and workshops. These workshops are partially theoretical (presenting an article or chapter) and partially research-driven (presenting an analytical model).

A certificate (with a grade “Pass”) is given after 1) attendance of a minimum of 8 meetings, 2) a working group theoretical presentation, and 3) an individual case study presentation.

AVAILABLE PARTICIPANT SLOTS AND COSTS

A total of 20 participant slots are available. Following the first round of applications, only a limited number of places remain.

Participants are required to pay for their travel and accommodation costs, and all other expenses.

APPLICATION AND REGISTRATION

To apply to this course, the following three documents have to be submitted:

A motivation letter
A brief description/abstract of the ongoing (PhD) research (including the current stage of the research)
A CV (including information about your university affiliation and your contact information)

Please use the form on the CULCORC website to submit your application. If you need assistance regarding registration, please get in touch with Mazlum Kemal Dağdelen, mazlum.dagdelen@fsv.cuni.cz

The new deadline for the application submission is 31 July 2025. The accepted applicants will receive further details for registration and payment in due time.

COURSE READINGS

Main reading:

Carpentier, Nico (2017). The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation. New York: Peter Lang.

Secondary readings:

Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of 'sex'. New York, London: Routledge.

Dolphijn, Rick, van der Tuin, Iris (2012). New materialism: Interviews and cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.

Glynos, Jason, Howarth, David (2007). Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. London and New York: Routledge.

Howarth, David (2000). Discourse. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Howarth, David (2012). "Hegemony, political subjectivity, and radical democracy", in Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (eds.) Laclau: A critical reader. London: Routledge, pp. 256-276.

Howarth, David, Stavrakakis, Yannis (2000). “Introducing discourse theory and political analysis”, in David Howarth, Aletta J. Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis (eds.) Discourse theory and political analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 1-23.

Laclau, Ernesto, Mouffe, Chantal (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the social. An introduction to Actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mouffe, Chantal (2005). On the Political. London: Routledge.

Philips, Louise, Jørgensen, Marianne W. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988). "Can the subaltern speak?", in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271-313.

Torfing, Jacob (1999). New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, and Zizek. Oxford: Blackwell

Follow CULCORC on Bluesky and Mastodon

Thinking Through Sound

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:30:00 GMT

September 9, 2025

The University of Sheffield

Deadline (EXTENDED): July 27, 2025

Online presentations are also accepted.

R. Murray Schafer said that “the sense of hearing cannot be closed off at will. There are no earlids. When we go to sleep, our perception of sound is the last door to close and it is also the first to open when we awaken” (Schafer, 1977, p. 11). The experience of “Thinking through sound” is not only a sensory experience but also its a phenomenon that shapes how we perceive the society and the world, and make meaning of life. This notion also intersects with different fields: media, philosophy, cultural studies, gender, acoustic ecology, musicology, audio accessibility, urban sounds, artificial intelligence, among others. But what is the conception of thinking through sound in the different areas of studies? Sound manifests itself in various formats and shapes across different times and spaces. How can we think through sound in both everyday life and broader societal issues? How can we think our research through sound -even if sound is not the center of the research? In what ways does sound contribute to other disciplines and vice versa? How can sound shape our methodologies? Can sound play a role in how we reflect on and within our research practices? Can sound play a role in revealing the archive of resistances, tracing the history and building identity? Keeping this in mind, how can sound be used as a tool in research? These questions are an invitation to explore the multiplicity of sound—as medium, metaphor, method, and memory. We are inviting paper abstracts, proposals that revolve around, but not limited to, the following areas:

Art, Creativity and Culture
Sound, Technology and Communication
Gender, Sexuality and Sound
Memory and Archives
Urban Spaces and Acoustics
Acoustic Ecology and Activism
Sound and Epistemology
Sound/ Music Industries
Music Production and Sound Design
Cinema and Sound
Therapeutic Sounds

Submission Guidelines:

Deadline for Abstracts (EXTENDED): July 27, 2025

Format: 300-500 word abstract

Include: Name, institutional affiliation, short bio (max 100 words), and indication if you prefer to present online or in person

Submit to: https://forms.gle/vhRNBpNegTiMx8RdA

This event is an opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue, share your research, and contribute to a growing field of radio and sound. We look forward to hearing from you

With warm regards,

ECREA Postgraduate Conference Team

Postdoctoral position

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:56:17 GMT

SFU School of Communication in the area of Journalism and Platforms

The School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (SFU) is inviting applications for a one-year Postdoctoral position as an integral part of a SSHRC funded Insight Grant, with the possibility to extend to a second year. This post is a unique opportunity for a researcher who has completed their PhD or will have their degree completed by September 1st 2025 and works at the intersections of media and communication policy, governance, journalism and platform studies. The successful candidate will work together with Associate Professor Dr. Sarah Ganter. Deadline to apply is August 15th, the position is open to Canadian and international candidates. SFU is an equity employer and strongly encourages applications from all qualified individuals including women, Indigenous Peoples, visible minorities, people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, persons with disabilities, persons with English as additional language and others who will further diversify the university.

Your qualifications

You will have completed your PhD degree in journalism or media and communication studies by September 1st 2025.
You are excited about topics at the intersection of journalism, policy, and platform studies and appreciate comparative work
You have experience in survey design, quantitative analysis and also are interested in mixed methods designs
You have a developing publications record
You are comfortable working with computers and willing to use new software and project management tools
Your written and spoken English is excellent, fluency in French would be a plus
You have excellent communication skills and appreciate and embrace teamwork and collegiality
You are dedicated, curious, enthusiastic and have distinct organizational skills

Your work

35hrs/week Postdoctoral position, as part of a SSHRC funded Insight Grant
Leading the research on the project together with the PI
Leading the development of survey design and analysis, semi-structured interview guidelines together with the PI
Leading the research project, analysis and interpretation of data together with the PI
Active involvement in outreach and publication activities
Attending team meetings on Burnaby Campus and occasionally with our consortium members online
Administrative coordination, where feasible (e.g. ethics approval)
Your workplace will be on the SFU Burnaby Mountain Campus in Burnaby, BC,Canada (Metro Vancouver)
Mayority in-person presence will be required

What we offer

Annual salary is $70,000 CAD
Benefits available
Additional funding to present work from the project at conferences
Workplace on SFU’s Burnaby Mountain Campus
Access to an international network of scholars and a local scholarly and student-driven community
Professional mentorship
Access to additional training programs as provided by SFU Library
We advocate for and value work-life balance in academia
We advocate for and value diversity and collegiality in academia and beyond

You can find information about the different activities of the research group you willbe part of here: https://www.sfu.ca/communication/research/labs/independent-journalisms-edit/team-edit.html;https://www.sfu.ca/communication/research/labs/cultural-industries-in-acute-crisis.html;

Application Requirements

Interested candidates are invited to submit the following documents in a single PDF file:

1.Letter of interest: outlining your reasons for applying, your qualifications, and fit for the position, as well as potential start date (1-2 pages)2.A short research portfolio: outlining your research agenda plans beyond your PhD (1-2 pages)3.Academic curriculum vitae: Include academic degrees, achievements, research experience, and professional background. If applicable, include a list of your research publications and conference presentations.4.Three academic reference letters5.Transcripts: Provide academic transcripts of all your degrees.6.Two samples of academic writing (these can be published, forthcoming or in progress)7.

Deadline: August 15th

Application Process

Please send your complete application as a single PDF file to sganter@sfu.ca with the subject line: Post-doctoral Position—[Your Name]. The applications will be reviewed after the deadline and interviews will be conducted online where feasible.

About the SFU School of Communication

Located in Metro Vancouver, Canada, the SFU School of Communication is a leading school for research and education in communication studies. Our faculty is committed to fostering a vibrant, diverse academic community that addresses critical issues of public concern through interdisciplinary and collaborative research.

For questions about this call, please contact sganter@sfu.ca.

We look forward to receiving your application and welcoming you to the School of Communication at SFU!

Joint annual conference of the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group & Technology, Information and Policy Group

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:38:51 GMT

January 8-9, 2025

Bournemouth University, UK

Deadline: September 26, 2025

You are warmly invited to submit papers for presentation at the joint annual conference of the Political Studies Association’s Media and Politics Group & Technology, Information and Policy Group

This year’s conference theme, “Navigating Digital Democracy,” will explore the intersection of technology, media, and politics in shaping democratic practices and governance.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, technology plays a central role in influencing political discourse, policy development, citizen engagement, and the broader democratic process. From the amplification of polarizing and anti-democratic voices to the facilitation of political campaigning and pro-democracy movements, the dynamics of digital technology are both challenging and enriching the foundations of democratic societies. This conference seeks to critically examine the opportunities and risks technology presents in these areas.

We welcome paper submissions that address any of the following topics*:

Do digital platforms impact citizen engagement and connection? How do digital platforms facilitate civic engagement, political participation, democratise political representation, and allow for access to the political process?
What is the role of digital platforms in political campaigning? How are digital technologies and platforms reshaping campaign strategies, political marketing, civic participants, and voter engagement?
The amplification of polarising and anti-democratic voices through digital platforms: how do social media platform rules and algorithms impact political discussion, polarisation, and harmful rhetoric?
What role do digital platforms play in informing or misinforming citizens? What are the ethical implications of misinformation, what are the consequences of misinformation on political trust and accountability?
What role do deepfake and AI-generated images play in shaping political narratives?
How are digital platforms impacting social movements and democratic engagement? Are digital platforms providing spaces for pro-democracy movements in otherwise hostile states, are they havens of free speech or do they offer limited offline impact?
The impact of generative technology on policy development; how does this simplify complex issues, perpetuate inequalities, or aid swift and dynamic changes to legislation?
What is the role of digital games in contemporary politics? How can digital games be used to promote civic engagement and political awareness? How have online multiplayer games become spaces for political discussion and activism?

We encourage submissions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including but not limited to political science, media studies, communication, sociology, law, and technology studies. Submissions are welcomed from scholars at all career stages, including PhD candidates and early-career researchers, as well as practitioners engaged in media, politics or related fields.

*While the main theme of this conference is navigating digital democracy, the MPG and TIP operate an open and inclusive policy, and papers dealing with any aspect of media, technology and politics are welcomed. Papers may focus on areas from political communication and journalism to data, artificial intelligence, social media and tech policy; but also include a broader view of the political sphere within such areas as television, cinema and media arts, both factual and fictional. In addition to academic research, the conference will also welcome practice-based work in art, film and performance related to the area of media and politics.

There are two ways to attend this conference. There is an in-person conference held in Bournemouth, UK, on 8-9 January 2026. For those who cannot make it in person but who wish to participate, we will host an online conference on 7th January 2026. Both will include a keynote presentation (TBA).

Please note this is not a hybrid conference and the in-person conference will not be streamed online.

Key dates:

Friday 26th Sept 2025. Deadline for paper submission
Early October 2025. Paper proposers notified of the decision by the conference committee. Conference registration opens.
Friday 19th December 2025. Extended abstract deadline for James Thomas Memorial Prize applicants.
Wednesday 7th January 2026. Online conference.
8-9th January 2026. Conference held in Bournemouth

Submitting proposals

We welcome both paper and panel proposals for this conference.

Paper proposals should be for 15 minute presentations. Submitted abstracts should be no more than 300 words (excluding references).

If you wish to propose a panel, please note for following stipulations:

Panel proposals should include a panel overview (max. 300 words), outlining the title, synopsis, and chair details, as well as the abstracts for each contributor (no more than 250 words each).
Panels usually consist of three to four papers and a chair.
Panels should aim to reflect the diversity of the profession.

Please submit all proposals through this online form: https://forms.gle/i5wtmmWKeJexva2m8

Registration fees

For PSA members, the cost of in-person attendance is £125 for salaried academics and £75 for PGR/low waged.

For non-PSA members, the cost of in-person attendance is £150 for salaried academics and £85 for PGR/low waged.

This covers lunches, coffee breaks, a drinks reception and the annual dinner. It also includes access to the online conference.

For the online conference the cost of attendance for participants is £30 for salaried academics and £20 for PGR/low waged.

Financial support

The PSA offers a limited number of travel subsidies (up to the value of £100) to support postgraduate student participation in this event. Postgraduate students interested in applying for these subsidies should please note this when submitting.

James Thomas Memorial Prize

Extended abstracts of a maximum of 2000 words submitted by postgraduate students will be entered into the James Thomas Memorial Prize. This annual award is presented to the most outstanding paper by a postgraduate student at the Media & Politics Group Annual Conference. Postgraduate students wishing to be considered for the prize should send extended abstracts to Dan Jackson: jacksond@bournemouth.ac.uk by 19th December 2025.

About Bournemouth

Bournemouth is a coastal town and resort located in the South West of England, in the county of Dorset. Bournemouth is about 94 miles (151 km) southwest of London. It has good transport links with its own airport, and rail links to Southampton Airport (35 minutes), Heathrow Airport (2 hours) and London Waterloo (2 hours).

Famous for its sandy beaches, Bournemouth attracts 3.5 million visitors every year and is home to a vibrant nightlife, international cuisine, and a Premier League football team. Bournemouth is also one of the fastest digital and creative hubs in the UK with some 400 digital, creative communication agencies operating in the area.

The award-winning Faculty of Media & Communication at Bournemouth University (BU) comprises over 4,000 students and more than 250 academic staff across four Departments. The Faculty is one of the leading destinations for the study of creative media in the United Kingdom, based on a combination of top-quality education, world leading research and industry-standard professional practice.

About the PSA

The Political Studies Association (https://www.psa.ac.uk/) is the UK’s leading association in the study and research of politics. The Media and Politics Group and Technology, Information and Policy Groups are welcoming and inclusive. The conference welcomes contributions both from members and non-members of the Political Studies Association.

Organising committee

Dan Jackson. Bournemouth University

Sarah Ledoux. University of Manchester

Darren Lilleker. Bournemouth University

Liam McLoughlin. University of Liverpool

Amy Tatum. Bournemouth University

Anastasia Veneti. Bournemouth University

Mediatization Studies, Issue 9

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:36:59 GMT

Deadline (extended): July 31, 2025

The 9th issue of Mediatization Studies is on the horizon – and it’s shaping up to be one of our most exciting yet!

Mediatization Studies is an open access, peer-reviewed academic journal published by Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (Poland). The journal ensures a double-blind review process and does not charge any publication fees.

This upcoming edition will explore some of today’s most urgent and thought-provoking themes:

Large Language Models (LLMs)
Legal and ethical frameworks of AI
Instagram users and algorithmic cultures

If your research lies at the intersection of mediatization and artificial intelligence, we invite you to join—and shape—this timely scholarly conversation.

Author guidelines are available here: https://journals.umcs.pl/ms/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

European Communication Research: What, whence, and whither?

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:33:32 GMT

University of Leipzig, Germany

29–30 September 2025

In its 50th year, Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research invites to reconsider what European communication research is – and what it can be. From its start in 1975, the journal’s mission has been to serve as a forum for scholarship and academic debate in the field of communication science and research from a European perspective. But what is in fact a European perspective?

The conference program includes:

- Keynotes by Keith Roe, Maria Kyriakidou, Göran Bolin & Bernie Hogan

- A reflection by Friedrich Krotz

- Panels on comparative traditions, crisis narratives, AI & creativity, and digital infrastructures

Further information and the full program are available online. Registration is open via the conference website: https://www.sozphil.uni-leipzig.de/en/institut-fuer-kommunikations-und-medienwissenschaft/professuren/professur-fuer-medien-und-kommunikationswissenschaft/european-communication-research-what-whence-and-whither

Research Officer for Digital Futures for Children

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:30:08 GMT

The Digital Futures for Children centre, Department of Media and Communication, LSE

Apply here: https://jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/3615/0/453848/15539/research-officer-digital-futures-for-children

Salary from £42,679 to £51,000 pa inclusive with potential to progress to £54,730 pa inclusive of London allowance

This is a fixed-term appointment for 12 months

The Digital Futures for Children (DFC) is a joint research centre between LSE and 5Rights Foundation. Through critical and practical research, the DFC aims to generate insights and innovative solutions to ensure that the digital environment respects and promotes children's rights.

In 2025, the DFC has launched a new research project entitled “Better EdTech Futures for Children” together with 5Rights Foundation. The project seeks to develop robust evidence to stimulate a child-rights informed multi-stakeholder conversation on the role of technology in schools by investigating how educational technologies (EdTech) are shaping children’s learning experiences and rights in diverse contexts, with specific focus on AI. Through multidisciplinary research and direct engagement with children, families, and educators, it will explore the equity, design and governance of EdTech systems.

The Research Officer will support the delivery of the research project. Working under the direction and guidance of the DFC Director and in close collaboration with the 5Rights Foundation, this role will contribute to the production of high-impact, policy-relevant research and engagement activities exploring how EdTech affects children’s rights and learning experiences.

Candidates will have a PhD by the post start date, relevant research experience that demonstrates the capability to produce independent original research, experience conducting qualitative research with children in schools and applying child- centred approaches, experience conducting research relating to EdTech, as well as the ability to research complex ideas, concepts, theories and findings relating to children’s rights in the digital environment.

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

For further information about the post, please see the how to apply document, job description and the person specification.

To apply for this post, please go to www.jobs.lse.ac.uk. 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 s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk

All applicants are asked to submit a CV and a detailed cover letter explaining how they meet the position's requirements.

Please note this position will be subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Any offer of employment made is conditional on receipt of a satisfactory DBS check.

The closing date for receipt of applications is 17 July 2025 (23.59 UK time). Regrettably, we are unable to accept any late applications.

The History of Intervision: Transnational Television Program Exchange in Eastern Europe, 1960–1993

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:18:59 GMT

Yulia Yurtaeva-Martens

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-47279-5

This volume explores television program exchange within Eastern Europe as well as between East and West, and its crucial role in the development of television as a medium.

The study presents a systematic analysis of the emergence, development, and activities of Intervision, an Eastern European—and, from today's perspective, transnational—organization that was founded in 1960 to coordinate television program exchange. Particular attention is given to the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of program exchange within Intervision and its cooperation with the Western European Eurovision, taking into account the political and technological conditions and implications of the time. The historical analysis covers the entire period of Intervision's existence from 1960 to 1993. The volume offers valuable insights into the mechanisms and dynamics of European television program exchange during the Cold War and connects with current research on socialist television from a transnational perspective.

Digital Decade: How the EU shapes digitalisation research

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 08:26:01 GMT

Edited by: Rita Gsenger, Marie-Therese Sekwenz

Over the last ten years, numerous pieces of EU legislation have been adopted in the field of digital law, including the AI Act, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. These complex but sometimes difficult to understand legal acts play an important role in research and everyday life. In this volume, legal scholars and experts present the key EU legal acts that are relevant to social scientists, students and the general public. The volume also aims to stimulate a greater exchange between the social sciences and law, from which both disciplines can benefit. With contributions by Dr. Adelaida Afilipoaie | Valerie Albus | Dr. Lucie Antoine | Jascha Bareis, M.A. | Prof. Dr. Catrien Bijleveld, LL.M. | Jorge Constantinos | Dr. Max Van Drunen, M.Z. | Rita Gsenger, M.A., M.Sc.| Prisca von Hagen | Liza Herrmann | Julia Krämer | Eyup Kun | Dr. Lucas Lasota | Lisa Markschies | Heritiana Ranaivoson | Nik Roeingh | Jun.-Prof. Dr. Hannah Ruschemeier | Pascal Schneiders | Marie-Therese Sekwenz | Lisa Völzmann | David Wagner

https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/de/10.5771/9783748943990/digital-decade?search-click

AI 4 Science

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:09:04 GMT

September 22-26, 2025

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Deadline: July 15, 2025

The International Conference AI for Science will take place in Ljubljana from 22 to 26 September 2025.

It will bring together researchers, leading experts in artificial intelligence and domain scientists who apply AI to solve complex problems in their fields.

The conference will feature several thematic tracks:

28th Discovery Science Conference
AI & Life Sciences
AI & Material Science
AI Factories
AI & Space
AI & Digital Humanities
AI & Environmental Science
AI & Physics
DaFab Summer School

Important dates:

15.7. 2025 - Paper/abstract submission deadline

21.7. 2025 - Notification of acceptance

25. 7. 2025 - Camera-ready version and Author registration deadline

Find more information on this link: https://ai4science.si/calls-for-papers/

Themed issue of Global Studies of Childhood (Sage), on the theme of Children as rights holders in the digital world

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:02:48 GMT

Deadline: September 30, 2025

We welcome contributions from both academic and non-academic authors. Academic papers up to 6,000 words (excluding references) and other work up to 3,000 words are considered.

Abstracts Due: 30 September 2025
Invitations to submit full papers will be sent by: 30 November 2025
First Draft Due: 15 March 2026
Publication: Spring 2027

POTENTIAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS

What consequences do policy-based restrictions or algorithmic steering of content have on diverse children’s digital lives and their rights?
How can children’s rights support children’s digital civic engagement?
How do children understand, experience and voice their opinions on surveillance and tracking technologies and/or the harvesting and monetisation of their data?
How will AI impact child rights and how can child rights be considered in AI development?
How do children engage in issues around their future with AI and how will children’s voices be incorporated?
How are children’s interests and desires informing technology development?
How do children mobilise and use digital media for social change or become activists to promote issues they care about?
How can invisibilized children be considered and included in decision-making and knowledge production?
What does children’s creative use of digital media look like?
How do children build digital cultures and communities?

KEYWORDS AND TOPICS

We welcome submissions adjacent to (but not limited to) the following thematic areas:

Digital childhoods
Social media
Media regulation and policy
Digital media industry
Datafication, tracking and privacy issues
Social media, child labour and the commodification of childhood
Children’s digital culture and community building
Rights, participation, citizenship, and activism
Access to information
Gender and sexuality
Ableism and health inequalities
Help seeking
Catastrophes and preparedness
Migrant children’s use of digital media
Ethnic minority children
Social class
Urban and rural childhoods
Digital exclusion and poverty
Creativity, art, music and play
School, leisure and family life
Children as researchers and research with children
Methodologies and ethics in researching digital childhoods

BACKGROUND

Recent developments aimed at restricting children’s access to digital and social media across the globe, including Australia, Europe, China, and some parts of the US for example, open up questions about the social constructions of childhood. Such policy changes have a direct and, in some cases, profound impact on children’s life experiences and abilities to exercise their rights in the digital environment, including engaging in public life and seeking information, and their rights to culture, leisure and play, to mention a few. In response to these developments and calls for more child-centric research, we propose a Global Studies of Childhood themed issue on ‘Children as rights holders in the digital world’.

Digital and social media use is almost ubiquitous among teenagers. Nearly all US teens (96%) report using the Internet daily (Faverio and Sidoti 2024), and globally approximately 30% of Internet users are children, with an even higher proportion of child users estimated in the Global South (Ghai et al. 2022). Young people continue to make up the highest proportion of social media users.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, children make up the majority of mobile users, although digital media use and access to devices among children and youth vary significantly across diverse settings. We also see increasing use of smartphones and tablets in early childhood globally, and although the use of social media is still limited among toddlers and preschoolers (0-4 years old) 16% of Swedish children aged 5-8 see their friends online regularly (Andersson 2023:9). In their annual study of children’s relationship with the media and online worlds, Ofcom (2024) recently reported that use of social media and apps among 5-7-year-olds in the UK has increased year-on-year. For many children, measures such as lockdowns and school closures, introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, meant that even more of their daily lives moved online.

Recent Developments and Children's Digital Worlds

Recent public debate across several international settings focuses predominantly on the risks and perceived harms associated with children’s digital screen and social media use. Governments and policymakers have advocated for implementing new age restrictions and other restrictive measures, such as restricting children’s use of smartphones. Most social media platforms require users to be 13 or older to have a user account. However, age limits are regulated differently across different countries, and recently, we have seen some rollback of younger teenagers’ access to social media, such as Australia’s social media ban for under 16-year-olds; France’s lobbying for an EU-wide policy, modelled on French law, requiring parental authorisation for children under 15 to use a social network service; mirrored by a similar call for a 15+ age limit by Denmark’s Prime Minister; Instagram’s introduction of a ‘teen’ (parental control) version in the UK; and several other countries implementing restrictions aimed at limiting social media use for teenagers under 16 (Livingstone and Sylwander 2025). The Australian social media ban is seen as a test case keenly observed across the globe by those actors seeking to advocate for regulatory interventions.

Accountability in a highly commercialised online environment is paramount, and making social media platforms, apps, and other online services more responsible for user safety is important. Policies aimed at strengthening children’s rights in online environments concerning datafication, privacy, and consent are positive developments. However, debates on the ‘banning of’ or introducing new restrictions to children’s access to digital and social media are dominated by deficit approaches and relatively narrow protectionist perspectives, with the view to protect children from various harms and risks, either as mediated through social media platforms (e.g., bullying, exploitation, ideological influencing) or as associated with the use of devices (e.g., screen time) or the techno-social dimension of platforms (e.g., ‘addiction’, social pressures). Increasingly, evidence is emerging on how simplistic approaches to limiting children’s time spent on screen-based media have proven ineffective. However, more importantly, little attention has been given to the impact on groups of marginalised children and young people for whom the digital connections offered by social media and other internet-based platforms are vital. The impact of restrictive approaches, for example, on refugee and migrant young people, LGBTQ+ children, and children with disabilities, as well as other invisibilised groups (Jordan and Prendella 2019), is not greatly understood and notably absent from both policy and public discourse. Furthermore, little attention has been given to the role of digital and social media in children’s political discourse and civic participation, which may be impinged upon following rollback measures.

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

Please email an abstract of 500 words (250 words for non-academic work) and a short bio of each author to guest editors by September 30th at gscspecialissue@gmail.com

Please feel free to direct any queries to the editorial team: gscspecialissue@gmail.com

TIMELINE

Abstracts Due: 30 September 2025
Invitations to submit full papers will be sent by: 30 November 2025
First Draft Due: 15 March 2026
Themed Issue editors review and provide feedback to authors: 15 June 2026
Authors submit articles to Global Studies of Childhood: 15 September 2026
Peer review and revisions: September 2026 – November 2026
Feedback / Acceptance: 15 November 2026
Anticipated submission date for the Themed Issue: 15 March 2027

Please Note: all accepted articles can be published online first with SAGE Journals and provide authors with an accepted, reviewed paper at that time with all scholarly attributes awarded.

About the Journal:

Global Studies of Childhood is a space for peer-reviewed research and discussion about issues that pertain to children in a world context, and in contemporary times. Journal description: https://journals.sagepub.com/overview-metric/GSC

For a full version of the call, see: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/gsc/call-for-papers

About the Editors:

Helena Sandberg is Professor of Media and Communication Studies, Lund University, Sweden. She is the PL of DIGKIDS Sweden, researching the introduction of digital media in early childhood, and member of the Swedish advisory group for policy on Children and Youth's Digital Media use, and Health.

Olu Jenzen is Professor of Media and Digital Culture, University of Southampton, UK, with expertise in LGBTQ+ social media youth cultures. She is PL on the AHRC-funded project Creativity, Community & Resilience, researching trans and gender diverse young people’s collective resilience and community building in the UK through a strength-based and youth-led participatory approach.

Tessa Lewin is a Senior Research Fellow in the Participation, Inclusion and Social Change cluster at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, specialising in gender politics, sexuality, visual activism, and child rights. She co-led the Rejuvenate project on children’s rights and participation.

CfA Funding for Research Sabbaticals (Fellowships) and Working Groups

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:07:39 GMT

CAIS

Fellowships: Time and Space for Focus and Inspiration

You can apply for our regular open call, or for our special call “Creating a Human-Centered Future: Exploring the Promise of Industry 5.0”.

Find out more: https://www.cais-research.de/en/cais-college/fellowships/

Working Groups: Boost Your Research Collaboration

A working group at CAIS enables you to assemble your own team of experts from different locations to collaborate in a stimulating environment.

Find out more: https://www.cais-research.de/en/cais-college/working-groups/

Application

The next deadline for applications is 31 July 2025. You can currently apply for a fellowship taking place between October 2026 and March 2027, or for working group meetings taking place from March 2026 onwards. Please use the application forms provided on our website.

The funding program is open to excellent scholars and practitioners at all career stages and from all disciplines. Both fundamental research and applied projects are welcome.

Questions? Please contact esther.laufer@cais-research.de.

PlatGovNet2025: Transitions, Frictions, and New Realities in Global Platform Governance

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:03:31 GMT

December 1-2, 2025

online

Deadline: September 2, 2025

Platform governance continues to grow in importance and intellectual vibrancy as an interdisciplinary field of research. A changing mix of competing platform companies faced with various efforts to regulate, influence, or control them and their offers has become an ever more central feature of many societies. As monolithic services begin to fracture and decentralized platform infrastructures, some governments assert their power and authority, and new constellations of actors emerge, we witness more than mere technical transitions and instead realignments in the political economy of platforms and societies. These changes manifest through multiple frictions across state, market, and civil society – between digital sovereignty and transnational platform operations, established market leaders and nascent alternatives, context and consistency, regulatory intent and practice, and between pragmatic appraisals and normative aspirations. Understanding these transitions demand empirical analysis and may require new conceptual and methodological approaches.

The 2025 Platform Governance Research Network (PlatGovNet) online conference seeks submissions focused on these issues. We welcome a wide range of different perspectives and interests, including, but not limited to, submissions that focus on the complex and contentious politics of platforms, for example new (geo)political tensions, developments around generative artificial intelligence, and the wider diversity of rarely examined actors including smaller platforms, non-state actors, and middleware initiatives.

This is the third PlatGovNet international online conference, which brings together researchers engaging with the social and political questions posed by the transformation and emerging realities of the platformized societies. We seek to fostercutting-edge interdisciplinary research that critically engages with the social and political questions posed by a broad range of digital platforms. Beyond showcasing current research and getting feedback, the conference helps participants build community and find collaborators.

Relevant Research Topics

In particular, network members are typically interested in:

Empirical studies of platform governance in all of its forms, including investigations into the emerging platform infrastructures, the labor practices, technologies, and institutional arrangements that characterize new governance configurations, and the implications for users, platforms, communities, and society;
Conceptual contributions that may describe and interpret current changes in platform governance, namely (but not exclusively): decentralization; middleware; bridge-building, “prosocial” or “community-based” moderation techniques and philosophies;
Policy-oriented analyses of private and governmental efforts to govern platforms, including comparative studies of governmental interventions across different geopolitical contexts, through both formal regulatory frameworks and informal governance mechanisms;
Normative, conceptual, or theoretical insights into aspects of platform governance, especially those that highlight gaps in current public or scholarly discourse;
Historical analyses and temporal perspectives on platform governance and speech moderation more widely;
Methodological innovations for studying platform governance in transition, particularly in the absence of affordable or stable platform APIs;
Research on the meta-aspects of platform governance scholarship, examining how the relationships between industry, government, academia and civil society are being reconfigured, and how these shifts impact knowledge production and policy development in the field.

We are keen on incorporating multiple perspectives from researchers located all around the world, so we encourage submissions from under-represented groups and diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds. We are especially interested in perspectives outside of U.S. and European contexts and will strive to accommodate multiple participant time zones in the conference program.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit extended abstracts of 800-1000 words via EasyChair at this link: https://easychair.org/cfp/PlatGovNet2025

Abstracts will be blind peer-reviewed and should include:

a short section framing the context/problem being addressed;
a clear research question;
conceptual framework;
details about how the submission seeks to address that question, including its research design; and
a brief discussion of the paper’s contributions to the literature and/or ongoing policy debates.

Authors of selected abstracts will present their ongoing work at the online conference. Submission of a complete paper before the Conference will not be required, although the organizers and PlatGovNet will, where useful, seek to help advise participants on possible avenues for publication.

This conference is open to all interested researchers and members of civil society and will have no registration fee.

Timeline

Deadline for abstract submission: end of day September 2, aka 00:00:00 anywhere on earth time
Accepted submissions announced: mid-October 2025
Online conference: December 1-2, 2025

Conference Organizing Committee

Pranav Bidare, Center for Internet and Society
Robert Gorwa, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Ivar Hartmann, Insper São Paulo
Clara Iglesias Keller, Weizenbaum Institute, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Emillie de Keulenaar, University of Copenhagen
Diyi Liu, University of Copenhagen
João C. Magalhães, University of Manchester
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, University of Copenhagen

Dialogue as Community Building and as Philosophical Method

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:30:00 GMT

September 22-23, 2025

Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Deadline (EXTENDED): July 4, 2025

ECREA Philosophy of Communication Section, 2025 workshop

Institute for Media and Communication Studies

In an age acutely defined by digital fragmentation, the relentless logic of the attention economy, and increasingly polarized public spheres, dialogue emerges not merely as endangered but as an existential, epistemic, and civic necessity. This workshop seeks to radically revisit and reclaim the notion of dialogue, not only as a communicative ideal but also as a foundational philosophical practice, an ethics of relationality, a crucial means of co-constructing shared worlds, and an essential practice for cultivating positive freedom. We approach this exploration keenly aware that dialogue never occurs in a vacuum, but always within, and often constrained by, pre-existing discourses that articulate and enact power, shaping what is considered sayable, knowable, and legitimate.

The contemporary dominance of monological forms of expression, often performative, algorithmically amplified, and emotionally charged, threatens to erode the very conditions for authentic dialogical encounter. This erosion is compounded by inherent human tendencies: our reasoning is frequently driven by partisan loyalties and identity-protective cognitions, creating anthropological and psychological impediments that render the cultivation of genuine dialogue—and by extension, the exercise of positive freedom—both more challenging and more urgent. This necessitates a critical engagement not only with our own biases but also with the power structures embedded in our communicative ecosystems.

We propose to explore dialogue as a liminal space where understanding is not a pre-existing entity to be unilaterally imposed, but rather emerges processually and intersubjectively. This emergence is contingent upon profound openness, radical listening, and mutual recognition of the Other in their irreducible particularity – a feat requiring conscious effort against our more primal, self-justifying inclinations, critical vigilance towards how discourse itself can marginalize or silence, and an active exercise of our capacity to co-determine our shared realities.

Can dialogue, in its Socratic spirit of maieutic inquiry, still function as a robust method of philosophical investigation and critical thinking in a world increasingly structured by immediacy, curated visibility, and self-affirming echo chambers, especially when confronted with our innate biases and the subtle yet pervasive workings of discursive power? What does it truly mean to think with others, engaging in a shared pursuit of understanding that consciously strives to transcend motivated reasoning and actively challenges hegemonic narratives? How can dialogue serve not only as a method of inquiry but as a practice that cultivates positive freedom: the capacity to act, to participate meaningfully, and to co-shape our institutions and collective life, even against the grain of dominant discourses? How might embodied dialogical practices resist the pervasive atomization, the instrumentalization of communication, and the deficit of presence that characterize contemporary societies, while simultaneously fostering the self-awareness needed to navigate our own cognitive limitations and our complicity in, or resistance to, prevailing power dynamics? How can dialogue cultivate the phronesis (practical wisdom) needed to navigate complex ethical and political landscapes with humility, intellectual honesty, active agency, and a critically discerning eye for power? How can, in turn, cultural practices, such as art, open dialogues in an increasingly disaffected world?

This event is an invitation to collectively reflect, converse, and experiment with the multifaceted possibilities of dialogue: as a rigorous philosophical method, as an ethical praxis rooted in care and responsibility, and as a vital force for community-building, democratic renewal, and the empowerment of individuals to exercise their positive freedom by critically engaging with and seeking to reshape the discourses that define our world, fully acknowledging the profound challenges this entails.

We welcome contributions that engage with (but are not limited to):

Ontological and Epistemological Foundations of Dialogue.
The Epistemic Functions of Dialogue
Psychological and Cognitive Barriers to Dialogue
Dialogue and Positive Freedom.
Dialogue and Recognition.
Dialogue, Debate, Discussion, Conversation
The Phenomenology of Listening and Encounter.
Dialogue and Education.
Dialogue in Digital Spheres.
Dialogical Resistance and Praxis.
Dialogue, Power, and the Public Sphere.
Dialogue and Democracy
Dialogue as Method
Dialogue and the Arts
Dialogue and Monologue
Ethics of Dialogue
Approaches to Dialogue in the History of Philosophy and Communication Theory

Please send your abstract by July 4 (deadline extended) to the Management Team of the ECREA Philosophy of Communication section via EasyChair at https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=ecreaphilcomm2025 AND BY EMAIL ioan.suhov2@mail.dcu.ie

Abstracts should be 300–500 words long.

Postdoctoral position in digital media and communication research

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:08:42 GMT

Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen

The Department of Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invites applications for a postdoctoral position in digital media and communication research beginning January 1, 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter.

The position is a fixed-term position for three years.

Introduction

The successful applicant will become part of the project entitled, GREENWATCH – Green Surveillance: Imagining a Sustainable Internet of Things, funded through a European Research Council Advanced Grant, 2025-2029. The project examines the potentials and challenges of employing the Internet of Things (IoT) as a communication system monitoring the effects of human activities of Earth’s ecosystems, which further entails surveillance of human individuals and social institutions. The position represents a unique opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary and culturally comparative work covering China, Europe, and the United States, and to contribute to theory development on a strategic issue with global ramifications.

Duties and Responsibilities

The successful applicant will undertake computational and other quantitative analyses of public debate in China, Europe, and the United States regarding the pros and cons of employing the Internet of Things (IoT) as a communication system monitoring the effects of human activities of Earth’s ecosystems.

Qualification requirements and assessment criteria

Employment as a postdoc requires academic qualifications at PhD level.

Applicants must have specific theoretical and methodological competences in research on digital media and communicative practices, with a particular emphasis on computational approaches. Other things being equal, applicants with previous experience in methods such as natural language processing, representation learning, and/or large-scale text analysis will be preferred.

Applicants must be fluent in speaking and writing both English and Mandarin.

More information on careers at UCPH and the requirements for different academic positions is available at: Career at The University of Copenhagen – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk).

For more about postdoc positions and qualification requirements, see the Job Structure for Academic Staff at Universities: Ministerial Order on Job Structure for Academic Staff at Universities (in Danish only).

Applicants will primarily be assessed in relation to their research qualifications, including their publications, ability to conduct independent research and participate in research collaborations, and their experience with research management. In addition, the applicant’s research plan and research potential will be assessed in relation to the GREENWATCH project described above.

Application

Applications must be submitted online in PDF or Word format. Click on the “Apply now” button at the bottom of this advertisement to apply.

Applications must be written in English and must include the following attachments:

Letter of motivation
CV
Documentation of qualifications (exam certificates and PhD diploma)
Complete publication list (attached publications must be marked with an asterisk). The list must be structured systematically and divided into the following categories:
- Peer-reviewed publications:
- - Monographs and anthologies
  - Articles in journals
  - Book chapters/anthology contributions, etc.
- Non-peer-reviewed publications:
- - Publications disseminating research findings, etc.

Applicants can attach a maximum of 3 publications. The publication dates must be clearly marked on the list. The selected publications must be uploaded as attachments and numbered 1-3.

Research plan.
Documentation of other work on the dissemination of research.

Only documentation in English will be assessed.

Applicants are invited to familiarize themselves with the Faculty of Humanities’ strategic landmarks here: Strategic landmarks – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk).

Salary and terms of employment

Terms of appointment and salary will be in accordance with an agreement between the Ministry of Finance and The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC). The salary range for Postdocs starts at approximately DKK 38,700 (EUR 5,190) + a 18.07 % contribution to the pension scheme. It is possible to negotiate salary supplements on an annual basis.

The recruitment process

Once the deadline for applications has expired, the Head of Department will consider advice from an appointment committee and select applicants for further assessment. All applicants will be notified whether they have been shortlisted. The Head of Department then sets up an expert assessment committee to consider the applications. The selected applicants will be informed who is serving on the committee, and will be offered the opportunity to comment on the committee’s assessment of their application before an appointment is announced.

Further information on the recruitment process at University of Copenhagen can be found here: Recruitment process – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk).

An Equal Opportunity Workplace

The University of Copenhagen is committed in its pursuit of academic excellence to equality of opportunity and to creating an inclusive working environment, and therefore encourages all qualified candidates to apply, regardless of personal background, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, ethnicity, etc. For more on the diverse working place environment at the University and the University’s participation in the HRS4R HR Excellence in Research, please see HR Excellence in Research – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk).

International applicant?

The University of Copenhagen offers a variety of services for international researchers and accompanying families, including support before and during relocation and career counselling for expat partners. Please find more information about these services as well as information on entering and working in Denmark here: For international researchers at the University of Copenhagen – University of Copenhagen (ku.dk).

Contact information

Further information about the recruitment process is available from HR email: hr-soendre@adm.ku.dk, please refer to ID number: 211-2222/25-2I #2.

Additional information about the position, including an outline of the GREENWATCH project, can be obtained from the PI of the project, Professor Klaus Bruhn Jensen, email: kbj@hum.ku.dk.

The deadline for applications is 23:59 [CEST] on September 12, 2025.

Any applications or additional material submitted after the deadline will not be considered.

Part of the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), and among Europe’s top-ranking universities, the University of Copenhagen promotes research and teaching of the highest international standard. Rich in tradition and modern in outlook, the University gives students and staff the opportunity to cultivate their talent in an ambitious and informal environment. An effective organisation – with good working conditions and a collaborative work culture – creates the ideal framework for a successful academic career.

Link to application system:

https://employment.ku.dk/faculty/?show=164371

Images in Motion and Moving Images: Gender, Power & Mobility

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:06:32 GMT

November 19-21, 2025

Tübingen University, Germany

Deadline: June 30, 2025

https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/278964

Joint conference of the DGPuK Divisions of „Media, Public Sphere, Gender“ and „Visual Communication“

From baby monitors to livestreams, from migrants crossing borders to digital navigation systems in our pockets; from Black Lives Matter demonstrations to COVID-19 tracking apps, and from Woman, Life, Freedom to influencers staging their journeys through social media – these examples demonstrate how people get and are set in motion with and through "their" media.

But who or what is actually mobile? How do people on the move become visible through mobile, networked media technologies, and who or what remains invisible? What role do gender and power relations play in this? How do mobilities and visualities shape each other? To what extent do different social categories and inequalities shape regimes of mobility and visibility from an intersectional perspective? In addition, the discussion of methodological challenges will be given space: How can mobile media use be analysed when both people and media are constantly moving? How can research methods be flexibilised to adequately capture the ephemerality of visual content and the processuality of media practices? This conference invites to engage with the topic of mobility from a media and communication studies perspective, both theoretically and methodologically.

29th Workshop on Aggression

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:03:37 GMT

November 29-28, 2025

Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic)

Deadline (EXTENDED): July 6, 2025

Workshop on Aggression is a friendly, medium-sized conference and an annual event for all European and international researchers in the field of empirical aggression research, enabling a platform for the presentation and discussion of the newest research findings, theoretical advancements, and practical applications in aggression research. Workshop on Aggression is an ideal place for scientific exchange between researchers with different theoretical and methodological backgrounds concerning aggression. This year's focus is on Aggression, media, and digital technologies. In the face of the dynamic development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence, we are especially interested in submissions on basic and applied research on the intertwined relation of (communication) media, digital technologies and aggressive behaviour. Likewise, we welcome contributions that identify how to prevent and diminish cyberaggression. However, all submissions that cover the breadth of topics within the field of aggression research are invited.

READ MORE:

We are proud to announce three interesting keynotes, delivered by established researchers and esteemed colleagues in aggression research:

Brad J. Bushman, The Ohio State University, USA: Blood, gore, and video games: Effects of violent content on players
Lenka Kollerová, Czech Academy of Sciences / Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic: When teachers intervene in school bullying: How morality and bias related to peer exclusion shape anti-bullying efforts
Jörg Matthes, University of Vienna, Austria: Cutting one head, growing two: The struggle to combat digital hate

Call for abstracts is now open with an extended deadline of July 6. See all the detailed information here: https://irtis.muni.cz/woa

V MeLCi Lab Autumn School – “AI Research Practice and Media and Communication: Science bootcamp to improve research hands-on skills”

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 11:57:35 GMT

November 11-14, 2025

Lusófona University, Portugal

September 26, 2025

The School combines practical workshops and keynote lectures, allowing participants to develop hands-on skills with classical and AI-driven methodologies.

In this sense, contributions for the following tracks (not exclusively) will be considered.

Track 1: AI in Research Practice: Foundations, Methods, and Ethics

Track 2: Communication, Audiences, and Civic Cultures in the Age of AI

Participants do not require previous experience with AI or data science, as introductory modules will provide a foundational understanding.

The Autumn School will be conducted online and in English.

For inquiries, please contact: melci.lab@ulusofona.pt

Call for proposals deadline

Deadline: 26th September 2025

Notification of Acceptance: 13th October 2025

Registration: 27th October

See details about how to submit a proposal at the bottom of this page.

Format

Online

Dates

11 to 14 November 2025 – V MeLCi Lab Autumn School

TIME (Lisbon time zone)

V MeLCi Lab Autumn School Schedule

Check here for details.

How to apply

Interested participants must send their application (in English) by 26 September 2025, including:

Updated Curriculum Vitae (máx. 3 pages);
Candidate’s research statement that includes a description of their doctoral dissertation, research questions and methods (máx. 2 pages);
Motivation letter describing your current perspective on AI, specific concerns or interests regarding AI’s role in media practices, and your preferred track/subtrack(s) máx. 1-2 pages;

Please send your application as a ZIP file to melci.lab@ulusofona.pt with the subject “Application for the V MeLCi Lab Autumn School”.

Target-group

PhD Students

Early Career Researchers (with a PhD obtained in the last five years)

Fee *

Lusófona University, CICANT PhD Students 70 euros

PhD students from other Institutions 100 euros

Others 150 euros

*The best participant will not pay the fee

Keynote Speakers

To be announced shortly.

Organisers

# Symposium: History of Communication Studies in the Portuguese-Speaking World

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 18:46:51 GMT

December 11-12, 2025

Virtual

Deadline: July 30, 2025

Organizers: Filipa Subtil, LIACOM/ESCS-Politécnico de Lisboa, Portugal and Rafiza Varão, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil

Portuguese- and Spanish-language version of the call are available here: https://hms.mediastudies.press/pub/mundo-de-lingua-portuguesa

## Call for Papers

Communication and media studies have historically been narrated or recounted from canons centered on the Anglophone world, especially the USA, erasing intellectual traditions, voices, and contexts that have grown up outside of and challenged this hegemony. This symposium will give participants an opportunity to map, critique, and celebrate the histories of communication studies in the Portuguese-speaking world - including Portugal, Brazil, Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP), East Timor, Macau, and the diasporas - by inquiring into how the dynamics of colonialism, post-colonialism, dictatorships, and globalization have shaped the field. We have a twofold commitment: to decentre dominant narratives, highlighting epistemologies, institutions, and marginalized figures; and to connect the multiple Portuguese-speaking world traditions, exploring transatlantic dialogues and tensions and resistances. We encourage papers that explore connections among Portugal, Africa, Brazil, East Timor, and Macau, as well as connections with other countries and regions in the “Global South.”

We invite proposals that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

1. Field Genealogies

* National or regional histories of communication and media studies in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, and Macau;

* Influential figures, forgotten pioneers,(e.g. women and members of other marginalized groups), as well as intellectual networks;

* The role of universities, associations, and scientific journals in establishing the field.

2. Colonialism, dictatorships and resistances

* Communication as an instrument of power during Portuguese colonialism and the dictatorships of the 20th century;

* Communication theories and practices developed in contexts of anti-colonial struggle and post-independence;

* The place of the portuguese language as a vehicle of domination and/or emancipation.

3. History of the transatlantic dialogues and hegemonies

* The influence of Anglo-Saxon, French, and German traditions on the Portuguese-speaking world;

* Circulation of ideas between Brazil, Africa, Asia and Portugal: appropriations, adaptations, and resistances;

* The myth of the “universality” of North American models and their local critiques.

4. Alternative epistemologies

* Decolonial, feminist, and anti-racist perspectives in Portuguese language studies;

* Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, and community knowledge in the history of communication research;

* The impact of social movements (e.g. land struggles, Indigenous rights, Black feminisms) on communication theory.

5. Contemporary challenges

* The place of the Portuguese-speaking world in global debates in the history of communication;

* Digitalisation, platforms, and new forms of exclusion/epistemocide;

* Pedagogical proposals for decolonizing communication education.

In this way, we hope to contribute to a broader global understanding of the history and traditions of communication research in the Portuguese-speaking world as well as to foster new opportunities for collaboration between researchers and academics from different parts of the world.

### Organization

This symposium is an initiative of LIACOM/Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, Politécnico de Lisboa, ICNOVA and the Faculdade de Comunicação, Universidade de Brasília, in partnership with Associação Portuguesa de Ciências da Comunicação, Associação Moçambicana de Ciências da Comunicação e da Informação, Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Interdisciplinares da Comunicação, and with the scholar-run US journal History of Media Studies. Our aim is to strengthen critical research networks in the Portuguese-speaking community.

### Calendar

Extended abstracts (3.000 characters including spaces and excluding bibliography) must be sent in Portuguese, English or Spanish by 30 July 2025 to:

historia.dos.estudos.de.com.pt@gmail.com

Decisions will be announced by 30 September 2025.

Registration for the symposium will run from 1 October to 15 November 2025. To help with the costs of simultaneous translation and the organisation of the event, a symbolic registration fee will be charged (20 euros/120 reais). If the participant does not have institutional support, he/she/they should contact the organization in order to assess a possible waiver from the registration fee.

Papers must be sent to the organizers by 30 November in order to be circulated among commentators.

### Other relevant information

Potential publication in History of Media Studies journal: http://hms.mediastudies.press

Selected papers may be considered for publication in a special issue of the open access, scholar-run journal History of Media Studies. The deadline for submitting full articles for peer review will be 30 May 2026.

The (Un)Sustainability of the Media

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 14:02:18 GMT

November 20, 2025

Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline (EXTENDED): July 4, 2025

Dear colleagues,

We hereby announce the new deadline for submitting abstracts for the I LIACOM International Conference, under the theme “The (Un)Sustainability of the Media”, which will be held on November 20, 2025, at the School of Communication and Media Studies – Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon (ESCS-IPL).

We inform you that the call for papers has been extended until July 4, 2025, for the following parallel sessions:

Journalism: Sustainability in an ecosystem looking for solutions
Media Literacy and Communication: Challenges for Citizenship
Brands, Advertising, and Consumption in the Age of Media (Un)Sustainability
Mobilizing for Change: The Role of Public Communication Campaigns
Disruptions and continuities in communication professions

For more information about the conference and details on submitting proposals, please do not hesitate to contact us (conferencia.liacom@escs.ipl.pt), or visit the official conference website: https://liacom.escs.ipl.pt/en/conferencia-liacom/

We look forward to your participation and would like to thank you in advance for sharing the new deadline with your networks and institutions.

Best regards,

Jorge Veríssimo and Sandra Miranda

Participations on SVODs, audiences and democracy in Europe

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 12:41:23 GMT

Participations (special issue)

Deadline: September 30, 2025

The European audiovisual landscape is complex, with a huge variety of content providers and a traditionally strong public service. While only about 10% of all European providers feature public ownership, these play a key role as facilitators of original European productions across the continent (Fontaine, 2024:7; Antoniazzi et al., 2022). However, the US has a substantial and increasing influence on the European audiovisual sector (Schneeberger, 2024:7). The SVOD segment, as the most concentrated market segment in Europe, has the highest share of US (84%) and private (99%) interests (Ene Iancu, 2024:10). In terms of SVOD consumption, a lion part of what is watched originates from the US (Grece & Tran, 2023; Iordache et al., 2023), and earlier concerns on US cultural imperialism have been revived (Davis, 2023; Lotz, 2021).

Recently, public service media across Europe have experienced dire economic conditions. For example, in Sweden, budget cuts were announced for public service in the spring of 2024 with the argument of unfair competition, while diversity and democratic arguments are downplayed (SOU 2024:34). This development is in line with the European Commission’s focus on competition and on creating a single market. Ultimately, this bypasses opportunities for cultural objectives such as media pluralism, cultural protection or social regulations (Humphreys, 2008:154). Although the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2018) has sought to level the market between domestic and transnational platform suppliers and protect the production of film and television in Europe (Kostovska et al. 2020), the political space to discuss streamed content as culture seems to have shrunk. This has far-reaching consequences for European content and democratic values such as equality and diversity (Jansson et al., 2024). In this special issue for the journal Participations, we aim to investigate what these developments mean for audiences, as fiction consumers, but also – and especially – in their role as citizens.

On a theoretical level, there is a range of conceptualizations of how fiction (and culture) shapes citizens, including the “political self” (Van Zoonen, 2007), the cultural public sphere (McGuigan, 2005), and civic cultures (Dahlgren, 2009). Scholars have focused on identity formation, articulations of community (Askanius, 2019:273) and “public connection” (Couldry ea., 2007; Nærland 2019:652), as well as the creation of “lifeworlds” (Bengesser, 2023: 63) to denote more complex orientations of the audience toward the public and the political.

On an empirical level, the link between fiction and democracy is often presupposed in research relating to democratic values or “the political” (Van Belle, Aitaki and Jansson, 2025). Audiovisual fiction has been argued to directly correlate with political engagement (e.g. Fielding, 2014; Cardo, 2011) and opinion-formation or political attitudes (e.g. Hermann et al., 2023; Swigger, 2017; Adkins et al., 2014; Butler et al., 1995). Indirectly, identities and bodies are assumed to be the glue between connecting audiences and democracy through the viewing of fiction (e.g. Smith, 2020; Yea, 2014). On a more structural level, fiction is seen as contributing to imagined worlds (Randall, 2011) or discourses (Kato, 2015). Regardless of theoretical belonging, most studies have a rather crude understanding of the audience and its agency (see e.g. La Pastina, 2004). This activates questions about how democratic values and political topics are negotiated in relation to the fictional content audiences watch. Further, it includes exploring audiences’ understandings of fiction in relation to their roles as citizens in a democratic European context.

This special issue is interested in contributions that could, but are not limited to, illuminate some of the following topics:

- The relation between SVODs, reception and citizenship or democracy

- Public service audiences and society

- Fiction and political activism from an audience perspective

- Viewers’ negotiation of identities via fiction, in relation to democracy and politics

- Viewers’ negotiation of political and democratic values in relation to fiction, such as equality, solidarity, community, or freedom

- Fiction audiences and political trust

- Missing audiences/citizens

- Media pluralism, cultural protection, social regulations, or diversity from an audience perspective

- SVODs’ conceptualizations of audiences and audiences’ conceptualizations of SVODs

- Fiction, ethics, and democracy from an audience perspective

Those with an interest in contributing should submit an abstract (max. 750 words) where the main theme (or argument) of the intended article is described along with an indication of the theoretical and methodological approach of the article. The abstract should contain the preliminary title and five keywords. A clarification on how the article fits into the overall scope of the issue should be included.

Send your abstract to the editors by 30 September 2025 on jono.van-belle@oru.se, georgia.aitaki@kau.se and maria.jansson@oru.se.

Scholars invited to submit a full manuscript (maximum 8000 words including footnotes, bibliography, tables and appendices) will be notified by e-mail after the abstracts have been assessed by the editors. All submissions should be original works and must not be under consideration by other publishers. The reference system should be Harvard author-date format. More information on style and formatting can be found on the Participations website: https://www.participations.org/submissions/

Deadline for submission abstract: 30 September 2025

Deadline for full paper: 30 January 2025

Estimated publication date: November 2026.

Towards Development of Mediatization Research IX: Youth, Sports, and Media

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 19:38:59 GMT

December 5, 2025

Online

Deadline: October 27, 2025

Continuing our series of research meetings focused on specific issues in mediatization research — chaired in past years by eminent experts such as Göran Bolin (2017), Johan Fornäs (2018), Andreas Hepp (2019), Mark Deuze (2020), André Jansson (2021), Andrew Hoskins (2022), Kirsten Frandsen (2023), and Carlos A. Scolari (2024) — this year’s workshop will be held online on 5 December 2025.

It will be led by Michael Skey from Loughborough University.

The title of this year’s edition is: Youth, Sports, and Media.

We invite researchers who wish to discuss their current projects within a focused and closed group of media scholars, under the guidance of an expert.

Important dates:

27 October 2025 – Submission of abstracts
5 December 2025 – Closed online workshop

Details and registration form:

https://www.umcs.pl/pl/towards-development-of-mediatization-research-ix-youth-sports-and-media,32378.htm?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ1eVpleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFYVmd3MVhPdXh2U0NDM1VVAR6n83CD81hTEs8jIjkc1w33VqH2zVxwWR3It2-6kgtBwj4oIKyUPWl12AoMZA_aem_yo4EG_k9V-m5jI6jjoWMbg

For any substantive questions about the workshop, please contact:

Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin

katarzyna.kopecka-piech@umcs.pl

Overcoming differences

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 19:26:00 GMT

September 24-26, 2025

University of Pamplona (Spain)

Deadline (EXTENDED): June 30, 2025

ECREA’s section for Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction (ICSI) is delighted to announce that the 8th bi-annual meeting of the ICSI section of ECREA will take place in University of Pamplona in Navarra, Spain at 24.-26.9.2025.

Overcoming differences celebrates the spectrum of research themes, metatheories, methods and paradigms that have created a fruitful soil for understanding mutual interaction in interpersonal encounters. Overcoming differences means accepting differences, respecting them and seeing the huge possibilities and synergies that we have as interpersonal, interaction and communication scholars. ICSI2025 conference creates a platform for being together and discussing the nuances and potential that our discipline provides. During the conference a Young Scholar’s workshop will also take place.
Call for abstracts is now open. See all the detailed information here: https://www.unav.edu/web/instituto-cultura-y-sociedad/actividades/overcoming-differences-icsi-conference-2025 Notice the extended deadline June 30.

If you have any questions, please contact: ICSI2025@tuni.fi

GAMEINDEX: 2 funded PhD positions

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 07:42:00 GMT

Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague

We are seeking two PhD students to work on dissertations aligned with the ERC grant “GAMEINDEX: Politics and aesthetics of indexical representation in digital games and VR.“ The project starts in October 2025, is headed by Dr. Jaroslav Švelch, and located at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism within the Prague Game Production Studies research group.

Dissertation topic:

GAMEINDEX focuses on indexical representation in games – both as traces of real-life objects or people in the simulated worlds of digital games and VR, and as references to physical locations. PhD students will be involved in the work package that analyzes indexical representation in games and/or VR apps as media artifacts. The applicants are invited to propose a project within the scope of GAMEINDEX, focusing on representation of a certain region and its locations, culture, and/or history in games and VR apps produced both within and outside that region. We are looking for applicants from a diverse set of regional backgrounds including locations deemed peripheral by mainstream game culture. The research is expected to involve qualitative content analysis/close reading, discourse analysis, and interviews with developers or stakeholders. For more information about the project, see the project description here. Besides their main focus on in-game representation, the PhD students will also take part in the analysis of discourse about indexical techniques and contribute to a database that is a part of the project’s output.

Candidate requirements:

Candidates must complete their Master’s degree by August 30, 2025. They are expected to be well-versed in literature related to game production and game representation and be skilled in qualitative content analysis or related methods. During their PhD, the candidates will be required to present papers at academic conferences and produce publications for international peer-reviewed journals.

Practical arrangements:

Starting in the Fall semester of 2025, the successful applicants will enroll into the Media and Communication Studies 4-year English-language PhD program in the combined form. They will be employed by the GAMEINDEX project and will receive a full-time salary for the duration of four years. Successful applicants are expected to relocate to Prague and are eligible for a relocation fee from the project budget.

Application procedure:

The deadline for the application is APRIL 30, 2025. To apply, the candidate must submit a structured CV, a 10-page dissertation project and a list of literature they wish to discuss at the admission interview. We strongly encourage prospective applicants to get in touch earlier to consult their application. The admission interview will focus on the dissertation project and the list of literature and will be conducted remotely. The application and the interview will be evaluated by the selection committee, chaired by the guarantor of the PhD program. If accepted for the PhD program, the applicant’s employment on the ERC project will then be confirmed by GAMEINDEX’s PI.

More information about the admissions process, along with a link to the online application form are available here: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programme-media-and-communication-studies/how-apply

When applying, please choose the “combined” rather than “full-time” form of study. For administrative purposes, externally funded full-time PhD students fall under the “combined” form.

Frequently asked questions:

Can international students apply?

The position is primarily intended for international, meaning non-Czech, students. We are looking for expertise on other countries or regions.

What do you mean by “dissertation project”? How should it relate to GAMEINDEX?

Based on the information about the GAMEINDEX project, you are supposed to come up with your own dissertation project that is in line with our goals, meaning that it studies indexical representation in games from a certain region. You can specify your research question and add your own twists based on your knowledge of a given region or based on your previous work and academic background. When filling in the dissertation project, use this form, as instructed on the “How to apply” page. The form is generic and meant for any applicant into the program. You will be able to elaborate on your project’s relationship to GAMEINDEX in multiple fields of the form.

How should I start consulting my application?

Check the dissertation project form to familiarize yourself with its structure. In line with the instructions within the form, prepare an extended abstract (800 words) of your prospective project. Send the extended abstract to the GAMEINDEX PI Jaroslav Švelch (address below) along with your CV. Prepare the questions you want to ask.

For more information about the positions (including the salary) and GAMEINDEX, please contact Jaroslav Švelch at Jaroslav.Svelch@fsv.cuni.cz.

To learn more about the doctoral program, please check this webpage: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/study/phd-studies.

The Ameri-fan Experiment: Political Fandoms, Populism, and Representative Democracies

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:14:34 GMT

Call for Chapter Proposals

Deadline: August 15, 2025

Editors: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, Linda Howell, and Jessica Hautsch

In the wake of the 2024 American presidential campaigns and election, this book seeks to explore the current American political situation from the perspective of fan studies. The goal of this collection is to understand the conditions, processes, objects, people, and institutions of contemporary democracies for their overlaps with fans, fandoms, and fan communities. The collection seeks to answer this question: can fan studies help us understand political experience and expression within American democracy and, if so, what led to, is involved in, and impacted by this understanding?

A political fandom occurs when fannish behaviors, both external and internal, operate in relation with a traditional political entity or process. Political fandoms have emerged in the 21st century as politics have increasingly become mediated and celebritized, with the emergence of Trump and the MAGA movement as, perhaps, the inevitable expression of the intersection between politics, mass media, and celebrity culture. These observations are also not unique to fan scholars, as journalists have begun to question the extent to which political campaigns and politicians have begun to interact with voters and constituents as fans. Journalists and political analysts have even begun to use fannish terms like “cosplay” in their discussion of the second Trump Administration. This collection, then, seeks to explore and understand how fandom concepts occur in contemporary democratic processes and institutions.

Understanding political fandoms means utilizing both the affective and cognitive aspects of fandom to illuminate the personal, social, and political actions of networked citizen-as-fans. We hope this book will theorize the nature of the citizen-as-fan and the development of political fandoms, analyze the actions that constitute and maintain political fandoms, and understand the implications of political fandoms and citizens-as-fans for the world and people’s everyday lives and, through these implications, to offer warnings and suggestions for the future.

Thus, the purpose of this book is both an analysis of the current state of politics in the United States and a consideration of what the future may hold for this Ameri-fan experiment.

We are seeking chapter proposals from various methodological, disciplinary, and ideological perspectives to help us explore current American politics from a fan studies perspective. Our hope is to produce a collection of interest outside of academia, as such a general interest book may be of vital importance at this time.

The chapters can be empirical studies, case studies, theoretical explorations, philosophical musings, and/or conceptual explorations that seek to answer the question above. Thus, the chapters can be of variable length, from 2000-8000 words, including references (likely a footnotes system). Possible topics for these chapters includes, but are not limited to:

Applications of fan studies concepts and theories to political sphere (e.g., MAGA merch and memes)
Relationships between emotions, fandom, and political attitudes and actions (e.g., patriotism)
Relationships between ideology, politics, popular culture and fandom (e.g., Aaron Rodgers)
Fandoms that interconnect popular culture, celebrities and politics (e.g., Joe Rogan)
Indoctrination into political ideology through popular culture fandoms (e.g., UFC)
Canons, fanons, and head canons in political fandoms
Fannish rhetoric in political sphere
Co-optation of fannish behaviors by political movements
Overlaps in psychology of fandom and politics
Overlaps in political economics of fandom and politics
Historical perspective on the relationship between politics and fandom
Ethical considerations associated with political fandom and citizen-as-fan conceptualizations
Suggestions for how to handle this current political situation

This list is not comprehensive, as it reflects our perspectives, and the goal of the anthology is to bring together a variety of perspectives. Additionally, ideas can be combined in whatever way you feel illuminates this current moment.

We will write the introduction chapter to set a conceptual foundation for the collection, and we will provide a conclusion chapter that comments on the throughlines and connections among the chapters as well as recommendations for future actions for fans, fan scholars, citizens-as-fans, and citizens.

The number of accepted proposals depends on the variety of topics received and the desired lengths of those proposed chapters. Right now, we anticipate the anthology’s overall word count to be 100,000-200,000.

Chapter proposals are due by August 15, 2025. Proposals should be sent to carrielynn.reinhard@gmail.com and include the following: Title; 3-5 keywords; 300-500 word abstract that covers chapter’s topic, approach taken, purpose of the work, significance of the work; Proposed length of the chapter (between 2000-8000 words); Contact information

The current timeline for the project is:

8/15/25: Proposals due
9/15/25: Proposal acceptances notified
11/15/25: Finalize contract with publisher (several currently interested)
2/28/26: Chapter first drafts due
4/30/26: Internal peer review complete
7/30/26: Chapter final drafts due
9/30/26: Manuscript sent to publisher

Communicating Science, Climate Change and the Environment in Hybrid Media. Constructed Facts, Contested Truths

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:11:43 GMT

Edited By: Mette Marie Roslyng, Anna Rantasila, Anna Maria Jönsson

This volume examines how a new hybrid mediascape represents and contributes to the construction of facts and knowledge in relation to science, environment, and climate controversies, providing a new, critical perspective to the bourgeoning field of science and environment communication.

Arguing that science must be understood from an inclusive perspective, respecting public values and concerns alongside scientific arguments, the authors demonstrate how this will allow us to properly understand the role of science, truth, and factuality alongside the ethical, cultural, and political concerns about science raised in different publics. The chapters focus on the more controversial aspects of science and environmental communication: misinformation, public understandings of science and the environmental crises, vaccination, and the role of the hybrid mediascape in science, environment, and climate conflicts.

Offering a much-needed interdisciplinary approach to understand the role of science of media in science and environment conflicts, this book will appeal to students and academics in the areas of media and communication, journalism, cultural studies, science, environment and risk communication, and digital media studies, as well as sociology and political science.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched (KU). KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 9781003479550. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.

https://www.routledge.com/Communicating-Science-Climate-Change-and-the-Environment-in-Hybrid-Media-Constructed-Facts-Contested-Truths/Roslyng-Rantasila-Jonsson/p/book/9781032766652

GESIS Fall Seminar in Computational Social Science 2025 – Places Available!

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:06:27 GMT

Dear colleagues,

The GESIS Fall Seminar in Computational Social Science 2025 takes place from 01 to 26 September and offers a variety of introductory and advanced courses in computational social science methods in Mannheim and online. It targets researchers who want to collect and analyze data from the web, social media, or digital text archives.

Participants can pick from ten week-long courses, including introductory courses on Computational Social Science, Web Data Collection, and Machine Learning, and more specialized topics such as Computer Vision, Large Language Models, Agent-Based Computational Modeling, Causal Machine Learning, and Social Network Analysis. All courses feature an interactive mix of lectures and hands-on exercises, giving participants the opportunity to apply these methods to data.

Introduction to Computational Social Science with R [01-05 September | online]
Johannes B. Gruber, GESIS

Introduction to Computational Social Science with Python [01-05 September | online]
John McLevey, Memorial University

Web Data Collection with Python [08-12 September | online]
Iulia Cioroianu, University of Bath

Web Data Collection with R [08-12 September | online]
Iulia Cioroianu, University of Bath

Introduction to Machine Learning for Text Analysis with Python [15-19 September | Mannheim]
Rupert Kiddle and Sjoerd Stolwijk, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Advanced Methods for Social Network Analysis [15-19 September | Mannheim]
Lorien Jasny, University of Exeter

Computer Vision for Image and Video Data Analysis [15-19 September | Mannheim]
Andreu Casas, Royal Holloway University of London

Agent-Based Computational Modeling [22-26 September | Mannheim]
Daniel Mayerhoffer, University of Amsterdam

From Embeddings to LLMs: Advanced Text Analysis with Python [22-26 September | Mannheim]
Hauke Licht, University of Innsbruck

Causal Machine Learning [22-26 September | online]
Marica Valente, University of Innsbruck

For those without any prior experience in R or Python and those who’d like a refresher, we’re additionally offering two online pre-courses, “Introduction to R” (25-27 August) and “Introduction to Python” (25-28 August).

All courses are stand-alone and can be booked separately – feel free to mix and match to build your own personal Fall Seminar experience that perfectly suits your needs and interests. There is no registration deadline, but places are limited and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. To secure a place in the course(s) of your choice, we strongly recommend that you register early.

Thanks to our cooperation with the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities at the University of Cologne, participants of the GESIS Fall Seminar can obtain 2 ECTS credit points per one-week course. More information is available here.

For detailed course descriptions and registration, please visit our website and sign up here.

If you’re looking for recommendations on which courses to combine, we’ve put together a handy guide for you here.

For further training opportunities, have a look at our Summer School in Survey Methodology and workshop program:
https://www.gesis.org/en/gesis-training

In particular, do not miss these upcoming CSS workshops:

Interactive Data Analysis with Shiny [03-04 & 10-11 July | Online]
https://training.gesis.org/?site=pDetails&child=full&pID=0x78290C6C49F6457BB13DB55B2FA2055C

Designs and Methods for Mobile Data Collection [09-11 July | Online]
https://training.gesis.org/?site=pDetails&child=full&pID=0x1B293A6C3D964D629888A30793666F66

Explainable AI und Fair Machine Learning [22-24 October | Online]
https://training.gesis.org/?site=pDetails&child=full&pID=0xF18D1E324A6A419AA84A987DE344FE83

Never miss a GESIS Training course by subscribing to our newsletter.

Thank you for forwarding this announcement to other interested parties.

Best wishes,
Your GESIS Fall Seminar team

Global Public Goods Communication. Mapping Actors, Policies, and Narratives

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 07:57:27 GMT

Editors: Sónia Pedro Sebastião, Anne-Marie Cotton

Dear All,

We are delighted to announce the publication of our latest book with Springer: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-90667-1?sap-outbound-id=B373153CD4F1808530CC80CA025D20A6229B2034#overview

The book, titled "Global Public Goods Communication: Mapping Actors, Policies, and Narratives", is co-edited with Anne-Marie Cotton and features 16 chapters authored by contributors from Portugal, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, and the USA.

The content highlights the crucial role of communication in fostering knowledge and participation in global governance. It emphasizes the necessity of transparent communication channels for effective sustainable development and advocates for responsible communication as a fundamental enabler of sustainable citizenship and human rights.

Radical Thought in the Anthropocene. Theories and Concepts of Radical Theory

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 16:16:39 GMT

June 26-28, 2025

University of Graz, Austria

radikales-denken.uni-graz.at

What is critique? What can Critical Theory do for society? What characterizes critical thinking? How can radical thought be rendered practically relevant?

We will bring the concept and idea of critique into productive constellations with a variety of concepts and categories pertaining to social and cultural theory. In doing so, and by highlighting fundamental societal and existential challenges of the 21st century, we will reflect upon the possibilities and potentials of a productive critique of society, especially concerning its implications for academic theory and lived practice.

In view of the great global, societal, ecological and economic challenges, we will put to the test the social significance and practical relevance of cultural and social theory in the 21st century.

Zoom link - MR 33.0.010

Zoom link - SÜ 33.0.008

For details please refer to the program.

The Social Impact of Sports Communication: (Sports) Media, Engagement, and Activism in the Digital Sphere

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 14:20:00 GMT

November 13-15, 2025

Institute of Communication and Media Research, German Sport University, Cologne, Germany (conference will be held onsite with inclusion of 1 online panel)

Deadline: June 23, 2025

Conference of the ECREA Temporary Working Group Communication and Sport

Sports media play a crucial role in shaping public discourse, influencing narratives, and determining the visibility of social issues within both the sports industry and wider society. From investigative sports journalism uncovering injustices to strategic communication efforts by athletes, teams, and brands, the role of media in shaping social impact requires critical exploration. Moreover, audiences actively engage with, interpret, and respond to these narratives, shaping the effectiveness and reach of various movements in sports media. Additionally, sports journalism can take on an interventionist role, with journalists advocating for social issues, giving voice to marginalized groups, and driving conversations on equity and justice. Activism within sports communication, whether led by athletes, media professionals, or fans, continues to be a significant factor in addressing societal challenges. Beyond journalism, various forms of engagement—including fan mobilization, community-driven initiatives, and participatory media practices—are shaping the broader landscape of social influence in sports communication.

The Conference of the ECREA TWG “Communication and Sport”, hosted by the Institute of Communication and Media Research at the German Sport University in Cologne, on November 13-15, 2025 (Get Together, Nov 13; Academic Program Nov 14 and 15) invites scholars (not necessarily only from Europe) to submit abstracts that investigate the relationship between sports communication and its broader societal influence. It aims to foster interdisciplinary discussions that deepen our understanding of how journalism, digital platforms, strategic communication, audience reception, engagement, activism, and advocacy intersect with social impact in sports communication.

The conference will feature one online panel that will allow participation of a select number of researchers who are unable to travel to Cologne.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

Sports Media:
- The role of sports journalism in shaping social change
- The interventionist and activist role of sports journalists
- Media framing of social issues and activism in sports
- Intersectionality and diversity in media portrayals of athletes and social issues
- Regulation and censorship in sports media
Sports Actors:
- The role of sociopolitical issues in athletes’ self-presentation
- Strategic communication in socially responsible and activist sports initiatives
- Corporate media and its stance to social activism in sports
- Athletes’ employment of different media channels for activist purposes
- Sports actors’ responses to online hate
- Social media’s influence on activism and public engagement in sports
Sports Audiences:
- Fan engagement, mobilization, and advocacy through media platforms
- Audience expectations and perceptions of activism in sports communication
- Community engagement and grassroots movements in sports media
- Case studies of sports media’s impact on social discourse and activism

This list is not exclusive, and we call for papers which in a broad sense deal with different forms of engagement, including both theoretical and empirical perspectives on the potential social impact of sports communication

We invite abstracts between 300-500 words (excluding references) submitted in English language by June 23, 2025 via email to ecrea_sports_2025@dshs-koeln.de or directly to the main organiser JProf. Dr. Daniel Nölleke (d.noelleke@dshs-koeln.de). The submission should be anonymized.

The abstracts can be both for individual papers and panel proposals. Each panel proposal must include an abstract of the cover topic and the titles of 4-5 involved papers with the names of the authors. Each paper in the panel needs to be presented by people from different universities. Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is for an individual paper or a panel proposal.

The TWG (in collaboration with its YECREA representative) particularly invites early career researchers to submit abstracts for the conference. Please indicate on your submission if it is authored exclusively by (bachelor, master or Ph.D.) students.

To support the integration of as many scholars as possible, we will hold approx. 5 onsite panels and 1 online panel for the colleagues who have difficulties travelling to Cologne on the dates of the conference. Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is for onsite or online presentation. Authors will be notified about acceptance by July 25, 2025.

To cover the expenses for room rental and on-site catering (coffee, cold drinks, finger food), a fee of max. 70 Euro (max. 40 Euro for Early Career Scholars) will be charged for on-site participation. Detailed information on fees, accommodation options and the social program will be sent with the acceptance notification in July.

The European Union in the New Global Disorder: Transformations, Challenges, and Future Scenarios

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 14:16:15 GMT

Polis (Special Issue)

Deadline: September 1, 2025

A new institutional architecture for the future EU

The EU’s role in the emerging international (dis)order

Public policies and multilevel governance in response to new challenges

Towards inclusive digital transformation in EU

Institutional communication and EU narratives

Citizens’ attitudes and perceptions toward the EU

Media representations and the EU in collective imaginaries

Submission guidelines/instructions Abstract submission instruction

Submission instruction

The editors, with editorial board, will review the submission and invite the selected authors to submit a final manuscript. Final manuscripts will undergo the usual double-blind peer-review process.

Please refer to the Author Guidelines of Polis to prepare your manuscript: https://www.rivisteweb.it/issn/1120-9488/informazioni#come-si-sottopone

Timeline

Deadline to submit long abstracts: September 1, 2025 Abstract acceptance notification: September 22, 2025

Submission deadline of final manuscripts: February 28, 2026 Expected publication date: July 2026 (Polis 2/2026)

Guest Editors

Marco Valbruzzi, University of Naples Federico II, marco.valbruzzi@unina.it Cecilia Manzo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, cecilia.manzo@unicatt.it

Polis: https://www.cattaneo.org/pubblicazioni/polis/

Cfp: https://www.mulino.it/riviste/a/issn/1120-9488/newsitem/442

Edited Volume on Ethnographic Methods and Artificial Intelligence

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 14:14:48 GMT

Deadline: July 15, 2025

We are seeking submissions of short chapters for an edited volume dedicated to theoretical, methodological, and practical innovations in ethnographic methods for AI-augmented and algorithmically mediated social worlds. The different sections of the volume will combine innovative conceptual frameworks, experimental case studies, and hands-on toolkits, aiming to guide researchers across disciplines and industries in applying and adapting ethnographic methods to the “synthetic situations” (Knorr Cetina, 2009) opened up by new computational technologies.

Editors and Publication Details:

The volume, provisionally titled Synthetic situations: Ethnographic methods for post-artificial worlds, will be published by Routledge in 2026. The editors are Gabriele de Seta (University of Bergen), Aleksi Knuutila (University of Helsinki) and Matti Pohjonen (University of Helsinki).

The editors will organise a chapter development seminar and a workshop with invited contributors in September 2025 at the University of Helsinki (participation optional), for which a limited number of travel grants will be available. Unfortunately no payment for authors is available.

Submission Guidelines:

Deadline for abstracts: 15th of July 2025

Notification of acceptance: 30th of July 2025

Deadline for first draft: 31 December 2025

Submission requirements: We invite researchers, practitioners and artists working across the social sciences, digital humanities, computer science, HCI and other fields to submit an abstract (max. 250 words) for a 3,000–5,000-word chapter. We welcome contributions across genres, including:

Epistemological interrogations
Methodological frameworks
Case studies
Fieldnotes and experiment reports
Ethical reflections
Toolboxes and field devices
Multimodal outputs
Commented code
…and more

We especially encourage submissions centred on majority world contexts, subaltern communities, marginal epistemologies, and decolonial perspectives on research methods.

For further details or to submit your abstract, please contact us at: gabriele.seta@uib.no

Editorial Vision:

In recent years, a vast variety of technologies which we call “artificial intelligence” - from Large Language Models and synthetic media generators to warehouse optimization and self-driving cars - have seen dramatic technical advancements and wide societal adoption. For social scientists and ethnographers, this has been simultaneously a source of fear and inspiration. New predictive models and large-scale datasets have given social currency to particular forms of expertise and practices of knowledge production, such as data science and big data analytics. This foregrounding of quantitative methods has often been at the expense of more qualitative ways of knowing the co-construction of social worlds and technological systems.

Our edited volume foregrounds synthetic situations: sociotechnical arrangements in which artificial intelligence is both an ethnographic object of study and a qualitative research tool. We understand ethnography in a broad sense, as a research sensibility grounded on long-term presence, immersive participation, and dialogic understanding of otherness. This book aims to explore how computational methods and artificial intelligence are not merely displacing or challenging ethnographic practices, but also augmenting them and being augmented by them. Through our curated collection of chapters, the book contributors explore how computational technologies and ethnography co-construct “post-artificial worlds” - for instance, how LLMs become entangled with increasingly mediated fieldsites, how machine learning models essentialize, reproduce or erase situated knowledges, or how chatbots function as collaborators for participatory research.

Call for Autumn Online Workshop Contributions

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 08:32:51 GMT

Deadline: June 16, 2025

The ECREA TWG on Aging and Communication was thrilled by how fruitful and pleasant its conference in Lleida was last April. Due to the time and logistical constraints of the conference, many interesting and original submissions could not be accepted. We would like to honor these submissions and give them another chance. Therefore, we are launching a call for contributions to our next online workshop in autumn 2025.

You can check summaries of our former activities on our LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aging-and-communication-studies-twg-ecrea/

Please send your ideas and suggestions for an online workshop related to the study of aging and communication to ecrea.aging.communication@gmail.com by June 16, 2025.

ECREA Journalism Studies PhD colloquium

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 07:48:01 GMT

April 8, 2026

University of Groningen, Netherlands

Deadline: August 22, 2025

Are you a PhD candidate working in the field of Journalism Studies? Would you like to connect with other up-and-coming journalism researchers based in Europe, and receive in-depth feedback on your work from experienced scholars in the field? The ECREA Journalism Studies Section and the Young Scholars Network (YECREA) invite applications for the 6th Journalism Studies PhD Colloquium, which is organised by the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies and will take place on 08 April 2026 at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Deadline for abstract submissions: 22 August 2025

Deadline for full papers: 9 March 2026

Full CfP and to apply: https://edu.nl/nfd7h

Cog in a wheel? Radio and Sound in the Changing Mediascape

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 08:58:02 GMT

September 8-10, 2025

University of Sheffield, UK

ECREA Radio and Sound Section

We are pleased to announce that registration for the ECREA Radio and Sound Section Conference to be held at the University of Sheffield is now OPEN.

Please click on this link to register: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ijc/events-index/ecrea-radio-and-sound-2025

For further information, please contact the organising committee at: radioandsoundconference@gmail.com

PhD student (75-100%) / Post-doc (80-100%) in political communication

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 07:00:22 GMT

University of Bern

The Institute of Communication and Media Studies (icmb) at the University of Bern is part of the Department of Social Sciences. It focuses on political communication in all its dimensions, exploring, for example, how digitalization, algorithms, but also social and psychological mechanisms shape communication.

Tasks

(potential for) collaboration in an SNF-sponsored cross-national research project about how the feeling of being left-behind by society influences political information usage and effects. Our project draws on the role of social identity and identity threats for political information behavior.
development and implementation of own research ideas
teaching of courses in the BA Social Sciences and supervision of BA thesis
contribution to the general tasks of the institute

Requirements

above-average degree in communication science, a related social science discipline and /or psychology
strong interest in political communication
very good skills in quantitative (surveys & experiments) and/or qualitative (interviews) methods of empirical social science
willingness to present research at (inter-)national conferences and to publish in top journals
ability to work in a team
very good command in English (German and French is a plus)

We offer

An attractive working environment awaits you at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Bern: a collegial team, cooperation and exchange, as well as the freedom to develop your own ideas. Employment adheres to the regulations of the Canton of Berne.

Applications, should be mailed as a PDF file by July 7th, 2025, to Prof. Dr. Silke Adam at silke.adam@unibe.ch

The application should include:

letter of motivation including research interests and ideas
CV including a list of publications
certificates
a central chapter of the thesis or another publication
recommendation letter

The talks will take place on Monday, July 21 and Tuesday, July 22.

Apple HERE.

Viewpoint: Europe’s research priorities must catch up with reality

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 15:14:35 GMT

To defend democracy, ensure security and guarantee prosperity, Europe must understand the societies it aims to serve

An article by the EASSH Director Gabi Lombardo for Science|Business (read also HERE).

As Europe transitions into summer, the heat is rising in the debate about the next cycle of its flagship research and innovation Framework Programme. A fundamental question looms: in what kind of future are we investing?

Since 1945 Europe’s research priorities have revolved around a simple formula: technological innovation equals economic growth, equals social progress. That logic made sense in the ashes of World War II, but the world – and Europe – have changed.

Today, we face a very different landscape, with rising inequality, fractured societies, erosion of trust in democratic institutions and geopolitical uncertainty. In this context, a research strategy focused solely on economic output and tech-driven competitiveness is not just outdated, it is recklessly insufficient.

If Europe wants to remain globally competitive and strengthen its social model, it must reimagine what progress means for research and innovation investment and must place questions of citizens’ needs, human rights and ethics at the heart of its vision.

For decades, GDP has dominated the political and economic discourse. It measures what economies produce, but not what societies achieve. It says nothing about whether citizens are healthy, educated, safe, free or happy.

In contrast, the Social Progress Index (SPI) assesses how well countries provide for people’s needs: healthcare, education, housing, rights and access to opportunity. The latest SPI data is sobering. Four out of five people globally live in countries where social progress is stagnating or declining.

This isn’t just a social crisis, but an alarm to encourage new strategic choices. Societies that can’t meet their people’s needs, including their sense of wellbeing, become breeding grounds for instability, populism and illiberalism.

A social model built on research

Europe today enjoys some of the highest living standards in the world. That success was not automatic. It was built on decades of deliberate investment in public goods such as healthcare, education, social protections, cultural infrastructure and academic freedom.

Critically, these policies were shaped and refined by insights and ideas from scholars addressing critical social questions and assessing policies, indicators of inequality and the hard work of those working in the humanities and social sciences. These disciplines identified gaps, mapped disparities and offered insights that led to public policies that made systems more inclusive and sustainable and drove economic growth.

But that legacy is now being tested. As budgets tighten and political rhetoric hardens, the role of the humanities and social sciences in shaping our collective future is at risk. And that’s a mistake we can’t afford.

The narrative around the next EU Framework Programme suggests a focus on three keywords: competitiveness, defence and democracy. These are the right priorities, but they are being approached in the wrong way.

Competitiveness is still framed almost exclusively in terms of technological innovation and markets. Yet reports from Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta show that Europe’s problem is weak policy integration and limited technology transfer. Without understanding the human, cultural and institutional barriers to adoption, innovation cannot deliver its full benefits.

Defence, meanwhile, is often reduced to militarisation. But true peace demands deeper insight. We must monitor how the forces that drive instability, including nationalism, marginalisation, misinformation, propaganda cultural alienation lead to conflict.

These are issues about which political scientists, historians, psychologists and anthropologists can inform the diplomats who are on the frontline for peacebuilding. We cannot just rely on generals and engineers. And the cost of this research is minuscule compared to militarisation and weapons development.

And democracy, perhaps the most urgent pillar of the next Framework Programme, must be more than a checkbox. Europe is still a stronghold of liberal democracy, but cracks are appearing. Abroad, efforts such as the Project 2025 agenda in the US, have shown how easily and quickly democratic norms can be eroded from within. Funding to monitor our democracies’ progress is critical.

This erosion doesn’t start with tanks. It starts with silence. With the threats to, and defunding of, academic research. With attacks on data transparency, gender equality and diversity initiatives. With the attacks on, and withdrawal of support for, disciplines that educate on critical thinking, ethical reasoning and historical context.

Does Europe want to slide down a similar path? Funding to protect our democracies is critical.

Resilience isn’t enough

Early glimpses of the next Multiannual Financial Framework offer little comfort that policymakers will take the social dimension into account. The humanities and social sciences are still treated as peripheral, tasked with helping people become “resilient” rather than helping shape the kind of society we are building in the first place.

But resilience is just survival. What Europe needs is ambition: to prevent crises, to imagine better systems, to nurture democratic values, to foster growth and to sustain cultural vitality. That means moving beyond token support for the humanities and social sciences and making mainstream and critical investments in both fundamental and cross border research.

It means including social knowledge into the design of all major initiatives, from green transitions to artificial intelligence governance, from healthcare policy to security and peacebuilding. Not as an afterthought, but as a dedicated investment in this research so that it becomes a guiding principle for pro-social policymaking.

The evidence is clear: Europe cannot meet the challenges of this century with a research strategy designed for the last one. And it certainly cannot defend democracy, ensure security or guarantee prosperity without understanding the societies it aims to serve.

Social scientists, historians, artists and philosophers are not a luxury. They are Europe’s competitive edge in a world where values, meaning and legitimacy matter more than ever.

The next Framework Programme is not just a funding instrument. It is a political signal. It is a statement about what we believe, what we value and what kind of Europe we are committed to building. Let’s ensure it reflects the full complexity, and humanity, of that task.

Gabi Lombardo is the director of the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities.

6th Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication | MEDIA AND COURAGE

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 08:27:49 GMT

January 6-9, 2026

Lisbon, Portugal

The Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication takes a comparative and global approach to the study of media and courage. Jointly organized by the Faculty of Human Sciences (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) and the Center for Media@Risk (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania), the Lisbon Winter School offers an opportunity for doctoral students and early career post-doctoral researchers to strategize around the study of media and courage together with senior scholars in the field. It is held in coordination with the Annenberg Schools of the University of Southern California & University of Pennsylvania, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s School of Journalism and Communication, the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, and The Europaeum.

Call for Applications

- Courage in news reporting

- Witnessing war and tragedy

- Courage on social media

- Media activism

- Denouncing hate speech and aggression against gender, racial and religious minorities

- Alternative and underground media

- Threats and intimidation

- Opposing anxiety and irrationality

- Courage and Resistance

- Countering disinformation and misinformation

- Courage, populism and the media

- (Self-)censorship

- Courage and identity formation

- Algorithms, AI and social trust

- Expressing courage in the public arena in specific national or regional contexts

- …

PAPER PROPOSALS

FULL PAPER SUBMISSION

Presenters will be required to submit full papers (max. 20 pages, 1.5 spacing) by 10 December 2025.

ORGANIZERS

Nelson Ribeiro

Barbie Zelizer

CONVENORS

Sarah Banet-Weiser

Risto Kunelius

Francis Lee

For more information visit lisbonwinterschool.com

Redefining Public Service Media in the Age of Platforms: Values, Strategies and Organisations

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 08:12:53 GMT

September 16-17, 2025

Brussels, Belgium

The closing event of the Public Service Media in the Age of Platforms Conference (PSM-AP) marks the conclusion of a three-year collaborative research project. We invite media professionals, scholars, and policymakers to reflect on our findings and the insights gained throughout this journey, while also looking ahead to the future of public service media (PSM) and its implications for various stakeholders.

The conference will focus on the platformisation of public service media and its reinvention, as it adapts to ongoing developments in technology, industry, and politics. We welcome researchers, policymakers, and industry experts to join us in Brussels on 16-17 September 2025 to share insights, present new research, and engage in thoughtful dialogue on key themes that have emerged from the project.

More info and preliminary programme: https://psm-ap.com/redefining-public-service-media-in-the-age-of-platforms-values-strategies-and-organisations/

Registration is free but mandatory at: https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=qHxbaagtRUWi2kLQN4TlhR9lwXSFoedNqs3SHMv8ziRUQzhFTTNEUjRLM1hHOUpTRkE4SzI1OEw1SS4u&route=shorturl

What’s class got to do with it? Rethinking TV from the inside out

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:07:40 GMT

September 19, 2025

University of Leeds, UK

Deadline: July 4, 2025

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to share the call for papers for a one day symposium at the University of Leeds.

Please find details below.

The AHRC What's On? Project Team: Beth Johnson, Dave O'Brien, Laura Minor, Anna Viola Sborgi

Keynote: Philip Ralph, award-winning writer of screenplays for television and film and plays for stage and radio

Closing plenary panel

A One-Day Symposium as part of the What’s On? Rethinking Class in the TV Industry research project – funded by the AHRC

From the working-class characters we see on screen to the systemic barriers behind the scenes, class has never been more central to debates about the British TV industry.

Recent data from the Creative Industries Policy Evidence Centre (PEC) reveals a stark picture: just

8% of the Film, TV and Radio workforce come from working-class backgrounds - the lowest figure in over a decade (McAndrew et al. 2024; Stephenson 2024). Studies show that individuals from these backgrounds are systematically excluded at every stage of their careers (Carey et al. 2021; O’Brien et al. 2016; Oakley et al. 2017; Brook et al. 2018). In response, the Creative Diversity Network (CDN) has committed to better tracking socio-economic diversity by adding class-focused questions to its 2024 Diamond survey.

Class is also increasingly visible in public and industry discourse. In 2024, James Graham used the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival to deliver a powerful critique of the industry’s class inequalities, calling for structural change.

On screen, television is engaging with class in more complex and intersectional ways. Alma’s Not Normal (BBC Two), Help (C4), Derry Girls (C4), Dreamers (C4) and Sherwood (BBC One) all portray class alongside gender, race, disability and place - reflecting shifting cultural conversations and the urgent need for scholarly engagement with these representations.

This one-day symposium invites new perspectives on class and television as both a site of cultural meaning and a structure of exclusion. While the central focus of the What’s On? research and this symposium is on television drama, we also welcome proposals that engage with other genres where class is a significant concern. Inspired by the What’s On? research project, we draw on the Circuit of Culture model developed by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), which highlights five interlinked moments in cultural production: representation, identity, production, consumption, and regulation. This framework helps us ask: how can we rethink class in TV from the inside out?

We’re especially interested in work that:

Analyses how class is represented on screen - whose stories are told, and how are classed experiences shaped by race, gender, disability, and other intersecting identities?
Explores how class, in conjunction with other social positions, shapes identities and career trajectories within the industry.
Examines the structures of production - from hiring to commissioning, from freelancing to gatekeeping - with a focus on how intersecting inequalities of class, race, gender and disability are embedded in industry norms.
Investigates patterns of consumption - asking how classed experiences, alongside factors such as cultural background, language, and access, shape how audiences interpret and relate to television content.
Critiques regulatory frameworks - including policy, data collection, funding and diversity schemes – through the lens of class and its intersections with other structural inequalities.

While academic work has made valuable contributions - especially in reality TV and class representation (Wood & Skeggs 2011, 2012; Biressi & Nunn 2005, 2008; Munt 2008; Deery & Press 2017; Minor 2023) - important gaps remain. We need deeper intersectional analyses (Rice et al. 2019) and more focus on how class interacts with other forms of marginalisation (Malik 2013; Conor et al. 2015). We also need to connect industry practice, policy shifts, viewer experience and scholarly critique.

We welcome proposals from scholars, early career researchers, industry practitioners, activists, and creatives across disciplines and sectors.

Key questions include:

What is the impact of class and its intersections on contemporary TV production?
How is class represented, misrepresented, or silenced on screen, and how do these depictions intersect with race, gender, disability, and other identities?
How do audiences engage with classed narratives, and how are these experiences shaped by other aspects of identity and lived experience?
How do current policies, data practices, and regulatory frameworks address or overlook the intersecting inequalities of class, race, gender, and other identities in TV production?
How can scholarship and industry practice work together to address intersecting inequalities and create meaningful change?

Join us in Leeds for a critical and creative day of discussion, collaboration, and reimagining the future of British television - on and off screen.

We invite proposals for 15–20-minute papers. Please submit a 250-word abstract along with a short biography (maximum 80 words) to whatsontvclass@gmail.com by 4th July 2025.

Applicants will be notified of the outcome during the week beginning 21st July 2025.

Registration is free.

We are pleased to offer a limited number of UK travel bursaries (2–3) for PGRs, ECRs, or independent scholars presenting at the event. If your paper is accepted and you are eligible, you will be invited to complete a short application form.

The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 11:57:01 GMT

Edited By: Susan Aasman, Anat Ben-David, Niels Brügger

The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies explores the untapped potential of web archives for researching transnational digital history and communication. It covers cross- border, cross- collection, and cross- institutional examination of web archives on a global scale.

This comprehensive collaborative work, emerging from the WARCnet research network, presents an exploration of the ways web archive research can transcend technological and legal challenges to allow for new comparative, transnational studies of the web’s pasts, and of global events. By combining interdisciplinary work and fostering collaboration between web archivists and researchers, the book provides readers with cutting- edge approaches to analyzing digital cultural heritage across countries. The book contains concrete examples on how to research national web domains through a transnational perspective; provides case studies with grounded explorations of the COVID- 19 crisis as a distinctly transnational event captured by web archives; offers methodological considerations while unpacking techniques and skill sets for conducting transnational web archive research; and critically engages the politics and power dynamics inherent to web archives as institutionalised collections.

The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies is an essential read for graduate students and scholars from internet and media studies, cultural studies, history, and digital humanities. It will also appeal to web archiving practitioners, including librarians, web curators, and IT developers.

Seeing Through Complexity: Entanglements in Visual Cultures

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 11:53:08 GMT

November 6, 2025

Online conference

Deadline: August 15, 2025

The ECREA Visual Cultures Section invites scholars to examine the entanglements of visual cultures with power, identity, technology, and truth-making. We seek contributions that analyse visual cultures through lenses attentive to epistemologies and ethics. In particular, we are interested in questions that reflect on research objects, methods and teaching practices in visual social research.

Authors may submit to one of three conference streams: the general conference stream, the methods, or teaching streams. Submission deadline: 15th August 2025.

More information: https://visualculturesecrea.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/call-for-papers-online/

Engagement with Culture in Transformative Times

Thu, 29 May 2025 07:19:56 GMT

Susanne Janssen, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Marc Verboord, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

2025, Routledge

Website, open access: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003460497

Against the backdrop of globalisation, digitalisation, growing diversity and social inequality, the book offers timely and critical insights into the role of culture and cultural participation in the daily lives of Europeans from different social groups and countries. In fifteen thematic chapters, it explores how residents of nine European countries engage with and experience culture, with particular attention given to the perspectives of migrants. The book is based on extensive empirical research conducted as part of the EU-funded Horizon 2020 INVENT project (European Inventory of Societal Values of Culture as a Basis for Inclusive Cultural Policies). Fieldwork was carried out in nine countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Croatia, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The collaborative work of the INVENT consortium has provided a rich empirical foundation for cultural research, policymaking, and practice.

Ethical and Legal Dilemmas of Artificial Intelligence in Latin America

Thu, 29 May 2025 07:03:16 GMT

Ramírez Plascencia, D., & Alonzo González, R. M. (Eds.). (2025)

This book analyzes the potential benefits of using artificial intelligence to surpass traditional social and economic problems in Latin America, but it also looks to understand the perils and barriers derived from the adoption of this technology. This volume is divided in Section 1. “Considering AI in the private sphere” that debates about the employment of artificial intelligence from the citizen’s perspective. It embraces topics related with the introduction of AI in the media and the labor market, and how Latin Americans perceive, engage and mobilize before the rising presence of AI in their daily lives. Section 2. Challenges and promises of AI in the public sector centers on the ethical and legal controversies triggered by the incorporation of artificial intelligence in the public sphere. It focuses on the promising benefits of introducing AI in the public administration, education and public security, but also the latent impacts on human rights.

TOC

1. The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Latin America

David Ramírez Plascencia, Rosa María Alonzo González Pages 1-18

Considering AI in the Private Sphere

2. Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, and Media: An Analysis of Journalism in Latin America from an International Perspective David Ramírez Plascencia Pages 21-39

3. From Epistemological Foundations over Futuristic Speculations to Fact-Based Concerns: Evolving Discussions on Artificial Intelligence in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico (2014–2024) Fátima Ávila-Acosta, Lucía Morales-Lizárraga, Jan Nehring Pages 41-65

4. The Algorithmic Tyranny in the Gig Economy: National Strategies and Policy Implications in the Latin American Context Alisa Petroff Pages 67-83

5. Mapping the Future of AI Regulation in Latin America: Civil Society Perspectives on Brazil’s Pilot AI Regulatory Sandbox Kenzo Soares Seto Pages 85-104

Challenges and Promises of AI in the Public Sector

6. Ethical and Legal Dilemmas of National AI Policies in Latin American Countries Rosa María Alonzo González Pages 107-124

7. The Use of Biometrics and AI for Border Control and Its Impact on Human Rights Jezabel Pérez Yáñez, Natalia Brzezinski Ramírez Pages 125-141

8. Ethical and Educational Dilemmas of AI in Latin American Higher Education Institutions: Persistent Challenges and Inquiries

Jairo Alberto Galindo-Cuesta, Rubén Yáñez Reyna, Paola Mercado Lozano Pages 143-164

9. The Quest for a Responsible Use of AI in Latin America Rosa María Alonzo González, David Ramírez Plascencia Pages 165-177

How Does Artificial Intelligence Change Communication?

Wed, 28 May 2025 13:42:23 GMT

Journal of Language and Social Psychology (special issue)

Deadline: August 1, 2025

Link to Journal CFP: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/jls/callforpapers

Editors: Dr. Andrea L. Guzman (Northern Illinois University), Dr. Bingjie Liu (Ohio State University), and Dr. Renwen Zhang (National University of Singapore)

Goals and Foci

How we study and understand the social psychology of language is rapidly changing with the growth of AI. This special issue of the JLSP focuses on scholarship that addresses the conceptual and theoretical questions regarding how artificial intelligence (AI) changes communication practices and research. We invite submissions from scholars in the fields of communication, psychology, linguistics, sociology, education, information science, health, computational social science, and others. We are especially interested in conceptual and theoretical contributions as well as empirical work that push the boundaries of our thinking on the impact of AI on communication mechanisms at fundamental levels. The goal is to provide thought-provoking scholarship that can further progress the study of AI’s implications for language and social psychology in the tradition of other special issues that have guided research on communication into a new era of inquiry (e.g., Journal of Communication - The Disciplinary Status of Communication Research, 1993; New Media & Society - Internet Studies: Perspectives on a Rapidly Developing Field, 2013; Computers in Human Behavior - Digital Interlocutors: Theory and Practice of Interactions Between Human and Machines, 2019; Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication - What is Computer-Mediated Communication?, 2020).

Artificial intelligence is defined as machines that can simulate human intelligence and perform tasks that would require human intelligence (e.g., Turing, 1950). With the rapid development of AI, such as natural language processing, machine learning, affective computing, and, more recently, large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, AI-based technologies are increasingly mediating and affecting language and communication in innumerable ways. Examples include, but are not limited to, “communicative AI” (Guzman & Lewis, 2020; Hepp et al., 2023) conversing with humans (e.g., chatbots, robots, smart speakers, AI companions) in human-machine communication (Fortunati & Edwards, 2020; Guzman, 2018), applications that enable AI-mediated communication (Hancock et al., 2020) by modifying human communication (e.g., Grammarly) or even communicating on behalf of humans (e.g., smart reply), and algorithms that make decisions on communication flows and exposure to messages (e.g., algorithms that moderate the content in news and social media platforms) and that connect communicators (e.g., matching algorithms in online dating platforms).

As a result, AI has brought changes to many communication practices and has inspired numerous empirical studies on the uses and effects of AI. Nevertheless, what AI-induced changes are meaningful and fundamental to the understanding of communication and to theory building about the social psychology of language? Communication is traditionally conceived as a uniquely human activity (Peters, 2012; Schramm, 1973), and most theories are developed based on the assumption that the participants of communication are only human agents. The involvement of AI thus pushes us to rethink the nature as well as the future of communication and human connection (Gunkel, 2012; Zhao, 2006). In other words, AI raises new questions regarding how we create meaning with, make sense of, and relate to each other. We encourage researchers, including both junior and established scholars, to join us in contemplating how existing concepts and theories are challenged, expanded, revived, and nullified, and what new concepts and theoretical perspectives are inspired, invoked, or necessitated by AI in the domain of language and social psychology and beyond.

Scope

We welcome submissions focusing on any type(s) of AI-based technologies, including narrow AI, machine learning, and GenAI, and the full range of applications (e.g., chatbots, virtual agents, algorithms), and any communication context or across contexts (e.g., intercultural, interpersonal, mass, political, organizational communication), communication processes (e.g., language use and effects, message production and interpretation, information access and processing, dynamics in dyads or small groups), from all research traditions and approaches. We also are interested in conceptual pieces that consider the larger philosophical and historical implications of AI for the study of communication and language.

Artificial Intelligence notoriously is an area of study that spans many different disciplines and fields, each with different definitions of what constitutes AI, as well as goals in studying AI. Furthermore, there are many different types of AI in use and development (e.g., narrow AI, generative AI) and applications (e.g., chatbots, programs for developing text, audio, and/or visual content, data processing, curation, information gathering, social listening, etc). For this special issue, we are open to the varying definitions and forms of AI.

The potential topics for submissions are wide-ranging, and authors are welcome to reach out to the special issue editors with questions regarding relevant topics. Some possible areas of inquiry include:

How does AI change/challenge/redefine the nature of communication and its study?
How does AI alter the psychological processes and outcomes of language use and effects?
How does AI moderate the dynamics of communication, such as in human-machine communication and AI-mediated communication?
What implications emerge from AI when considering information credibility?
How does AI challenge or expand the key concepts or theories regarding communication? For example, how do we need to adapt existing theories, the meaning they create, and the effects and implications of social interaction (for self, organizations, society, etc.) to account for AI?
In what ways might AI promote or hinder diversity, inclusivity, and fairness in language and communication practices?
In what ways is AI unique as a communicator and mediator compared to previous technologies and human communicators?
What new insights can AI provide regarding previous forms of communication, such as human-human communication and CMC, that may have gone unnoticed?
How might AI induce a paradigm shift in the social psychology of language and related areas of study germane to communication?

Timeline:

August 1, 2025: Abstract due
September 2025: Decisions on the abstract sent back to authors
January 9, 2026: Full paper submission due, followed by peer review
September 2026: Special issue to be published

Submission Format

Abstract

We welcome extended abstracts (up to 500 words, excluding references) for both theoretical and empirical papers that examine how AI is reshaping communication in various contexts. The abstract should clearly state the focus of the manuscript and its contribution related to the topic of the special issue and explain the scholarly format it will take (e.g., theoretical, empirical). Be specific regarding the objectives and/or questions the manuscript will address and, if applicable, articulate pertinent details regarding the approach and method. Abstracts should be submitted via Google Form: https://forms.gle/XbPdLwpHiffr5YvZ6.

Full Manuscript

Papers in the special issue will be consistent with the JLSP’s existing guidelines and requirements for papers.

Contact

Questions about submissions to this special issue can be addressed to Dr. Andrea Guzman (alguzman@niu.edu), Dr. Bingjie Liu (liu.11321@osu.edu), and Dr. Renwen Zhang (r.zhang@nus.edu.sg).

Mediatization Studies: Volume VIII

Wed, 28 May 2025 13:40:09 GMT

Mediatization Studies

Deadline: June 30, 2025

We are pleased to invite researchers and scholars to submit articles for Volume VIII (2025) of the journal: Mediatization Studies, published by Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin.

Mediatization Studies is the first international open access journal dedicated entirely to the theory and processes of mediatization. The journal is free of charge for authors and is currently indexed in ERIH Plus and positively recommended to DOAJ.

Preferred manuscript topics include: mediatization and mediated communication, human-machine communication, the role of AI tools in communication and media production. Both theoretical and empirical articles are welcome, as well as book reviews and conference reports.

If you are interested in submitting but require more time, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Board – we are happy to consider individual circumstances.

Languages accepted: English and Polish

No publication fees

Previous issues: https://journals.umcs.pl/ms/issue/archive

Registration & submission portal: https://journals.umcs.pl/ms/login

Author Guidelines: https://journals.umcs.pl/ms/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

We warmly welcome your contributions and look forward to your insights into the expanding field of mediatization research.

The Future of Sound: Memories, Networks and Artificial Intelligence

Wed, 28 May 2025 13:29:53 GMT

Revista Comunicando

Deadline: October 15, 2025

This thematic section of Revista Comunicando aims to create a broad space for debate and exchange of knowledge that, with eyes (and ears) set on the future, does not forget history or the urgency of caring for the memory of sounds.

Full text submission period: September 1st to October 15th, 2025

https://revistacomunicando.sopcom.pt/index.php/comunicando/announcement/view/19

Doctoral Candidate / Research Associate (100 %, 5 years) Strategic Communication, PR & Public Diplomacy

Wed, 28 May 2025 13:22:35 GMT

University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Department of Communication & Media Research

Chair of Prof. Dr. Diana Ingenhoff

Start: September 1, 2025 (or by agreement)

Shaping digital strategic communication in the public interest — join us as a doctoral researcher and contribute to advancing academic insights that benefit organizations, governments, and society.

Position profile

• Research (50 %) – develop and execute a self-chosen PhD project in strategic communication (corporate or country); present and publish your findings.

• Chair activities (50 %) – contribute to ongoing empirical projects, assist with teaching (English MA courses; German BA courses if applicable), and support various administrative tasks.

• Participate in methods training and international conferences (funding provided). Requirements

• Excellent Master’s degree in Communication Science or a related social science field.

• Sound knowledge of empirical social research methods; confident in statistics.

• Excellent command of English; proficiency in German is preferred

• Motivation for academic work, reliability, and the ability to work independently and collaboratively in our team.

We offer

• A full-time, five-year position at Switzerland’s only trilingual university (D/F/E).

• Access to didactic programs, advanced methods courses, language courses, and mentorship.

• Funding for conference travel and research stays.

• Close links to practice through societally relevant research with partners from business, government, and the non-profit sector.

Application

Please send one PDF (motivation letter, CV, certificates, and—if available—a sample of academic writing, e.g., your master thesis) by June 27 or until the position is filled to:

• Prof. Dr. Diana Ingenhoff – diana.ingenhoff@unifr.ch

• Jolanda Wehrli – jolanda.wehrli@unifr.ch

We look forward to your application.

Postdoc Opportunity – Climate Misinformation & Strategic Political Communication

Wed, 28 May 2025 12:56:56 GMT

University of Galway

We are seeking an experienced postdoctoral researcher to join the interdisciplinary project CLiME — Tackling Climate Misinformation in Ireland — led by Dr Brenda McNally and co-supervised by Professor Karyn Morrissey. The project explores how climate policy misinformation is produced and circulated through strategic political communication, particularly in elite discourses about decarbonising agriculture.

The researcher will analyse political, and interest group discourses and collaborate on co-producing recommendations for journalists and communications practitioners as well as media and education policy. You will contribute to stakeholder-facing resources and engage with a dynamic team including a PhD researcher and an international advisory board.

This is an exciting opportunity for a postdoctoral researcher with 3–4 years of experience and a background in critical climate communication, political communication, and/or misinformation studies. The role includes publication support, research-led teaching development, stakeholder engagement, and opportunities for training and international collaboration.

Candidates must hold a PhD and demonstrate expertise in qualitative or mixed methods research. Familiarity with Irish/EU climate policy or media systems is desirable.

Further details and application process: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/human-resources/links/011106/

W3-Professorship for Communication and Media Sciences (female/male/diverse)

Mon, 26 May 2025 06:51:44 GMT

University Cologne

With more than 6000 students from 93 countries, the German Sport University Cologne (GSU) is currently an outstanding university location both nationally and internationally. The GSU stands for proven research with a high volume of third-party funding and research-based as well as international teaching in sports practice and in all social and life science sub-disciplines of sport science. Research, teaching, and transfer are supported by the administration and central operating units with their services.

At the German Sport University Cologne, the Institute for Communication and Media Research is seeking to fill the following position as of April 1, 2026:

W3-Professorship for Communication and Media Sciences (female/male/diverse)

We are looking for an internationally recognized personality who represents the communication and media sciences in all its breadth in research and teaching. Special expertise is expected in the areas of „Digital transformation of media in sport“ and „Processes of change in sports journalism and media reporting in sport“.

The tasks of the professorship include collaboration in the Bachelor's, Master's, teacher training, and doctoral degree programs as well as in the academic self-administration of the university. The German Sport University Cologne pursues the goal of promoting (inter-) disciplinary and cooperative research. Accordingly, participation in joint research activities of the Institute and the University as well as the successful acquisition and implementation of third-party funded projects are an integral part of the professorship's remit.

Requirements for employment pursuant to § 36 of the Higher Education Act of North Rhine-Westphalia are:

Completed university studies
Ph.D. or equivalent
Appropriate pedagogical/educational skills,
Post-doctoral qualification (habilitation) or equivalent academic achievements.

Applicants are expected to have:

Expertise in the above-mentioned research fields: 1) Digital transformation of media practice and 2) Journalism research
Relevant international and thematically broad publication achievements in the field of communication and media studies, preferably in the context of the professorship
High level of expertise in quantitative and/or qualitative methods of empirical social, media or communication research
Ability to develop and represent topics of sports communication and sports media in research and teaching
Cooperation with media and sports practice organizations and transfer of scientific findings into practice
Successful acquisition of, in particular, competitive third-party funding
Experience with interdisciplinary and international research collaborations
Positively evaluated teaching.
Experience in the (further) development of study programmes and/or teaching formats
Expertise in staff management and staff development
Ability to connect to existing and developing research projects at GSU
Experience in academic self-administration.

Desirable are

References of own scientific activities to the context of sport
English-language teaching skills
Experience abroad in academic institutions.

The position entails a teaching obligation of 9 SWS.

International applicants are expected to be able to offer German-language courses within six semesters.

The German Sport University Cologne sees itself as an open-minded employer that values diversity. It is committed to diversity and gender equality and welcomes applications that contribute to this – regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic and social origin, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation, and identity. Increasing the proportion of women in research and teaching is one of the university's strategic goals; qualified female academics are therefore expressly encouraged to apply. Women are given preferential consideration in accordance with the State Equality Act. Severely disabled persons and persons of equal status are very welcome and will be given preferential consideration within the framework of the statutory provisions.

The German Sport University Cologne offers an excellent academic environment, a wide range of professional development programmes, and support in balancing family and career.

Please send your application with the usual documents, in particular a description of your professional career, a list of publications, and a selection of important publications, quoting the reference number 2517 Prof-Kommunikation by 16. June 2025 in the form of a pdf file exclusively to the e-mail address bewerbung@dshs-koeln.de.

Please also visit our homepage www.dshs-koeln.de. There, at www.dshs-koeln.de/datenschutz/, you will also find information on the handling of your personal data transmitted for the purpose of your application.

Adaptation in Digital Journalism

Mon, 26 May 2025 06:47:47 GMT

Digital Journalism (special issue)

Extended abstract submission deadline: July 1, 2025

In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital journalism, adaptation has become a crucial strategy for survival and growth. This special issue of Digital Journalism seeks to explore the multifaceted nature of adaptation within the field, examining how the relevant actors and institutions of digital journalism proactively and reactively adapt to technological advancements, shifting audience behaviors, and the changing socio-political environment.

As a construct that has emerged out of biology, anthropology, and health sciences, we know that adaptation is crucial human skill. Yet as Sarta et al. (2021) argue, “scholars have used the concept of adaptation inconsistently across research traditions without always being able to push the research agenda beyond analogical reasoning” (p. 44). While there might be a notion that adaptation is a passive process, one that happens to, for example, journalists or journalism organizations, this is only one portion of the concept. Research primarily defines adaptation as a response or reaction to a force in that an “instance of adaptation is viewed as a modification” that occurs “in reaction (or response, for that matter) to an external or environmental contravention” (Sachs & Meditz, 1979, p. 1084; Giddens, 1999). In this way, adaptation is opportunistic and describes how an individual or organization or institution can choose change and but still engage in a range of different forms of adaptation (Sachs & Meditz, 1979). Adaptation in digital journalism can take many forms, from the integration of emerging technologies and platforms to the reimagining of practices and ethics. And there are a range of actors engaged in the adaptation in digital journalism, who may not be formally affiliate with journalism, and who conduct work relevant to the overall adaptation of the field (as with technologists, peripheral actors).

In our field, adaptation has been primarily considered through the lens of technology, yet the actors of digital journalism actively adapt to a range of actions, actors and contexts: changes in the audience (e.g. rising audience hostility), physical environment (e.g. COVID protocols, violence), personal circumstances (e.g. precarity, life changes, employment disillusionment), political environment (e.g. democratic backsliding), market changes, and others. Adaptation means actors at times engage in “adoption” of new processes, seeking to normalize them as a part of working routines (Perreault & Ferrucci, 2020). As actors have engaged in platformization, this means at times that they have adapted through the stacking of platform-specific skills, using the skills gained in adapting to one platform to jumpstart their adaptation to others. But at times actors also engage in “selection” of other processes to denormalise when they no longer serve (e.g. many journalists are stepping away from social media; Bossio et al., 2024). Research produced within the “emotional turn” (e.g. Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020) and “audience turn” (e.g. Costera Meijer, 2020) shows that, to stay relevant to changing audiences and new political and cultural contexts, actors reconsider/select old and actively adopt new processes and skills. For example, journalists have engaged in adaptation through personalizing their reporting, using authenticity, empathy, and passion as strategic skills, building emotional and trauma literacy, and redefining long-dominating cornerstones of journalistic professionalism, such as objectivity and impartiality.

Digital journalism bears meaningful similarities in this regard to other fields: journalists can anticipate change even if they don’t know what that change will entail. But conversely, and unlike other fields, journalists are often not provided the resources to ease adaptation. For this reason, this special issue seeks to center adaptability as a crucial journalistic professional skill; it is perhaps more crucial in journalism than other fields given that journalists consistently find themselves negotiating new circumstances and environments as a native part of their work.

This special issue invites contributions that investigate these adaptive processes, particularly those that challenge traditional norms and propose innovative approaches to journalism in the digital age.

We are interested in a wide and overlapping range of digital journalism actors–journalists, technologists, businesspeople, fact checkers, fixers, peripheral actors, news organizations, platforms, policymakers, regulatory bodies–and topics, including but not limited to:

Technological Adaptation: How are relevant actors and organizations incorporating emerging technologies such as AI, VR, and blockchain into their workflows? What are the implications of these technologies for media integrity and audience trust? How have actors adapted through platformization and datafication?
Emotional Adaptation: How are the actors of digital journalism adapting emotionally to changes within the media ecosystem to which they can have little effect? What are the means by which actors engage in selection in order to engage in emotional management? How can actors cultivate and actively employ emotional literacy to adapt to changing media landscapes and audience behavior, increase their relevance for broader audiences, and secure their unique role and place within the attention economy?
Adaptation to Audiences: How are the actors of digital journalism adapting to changes in audience behavior and preferences? What strategies are being employed to engage diverse and fragmented audiences? How can actors actively go to meet their audiences, including young audiences, where they are?
Normative Adaptation: How are ethical standards in media being redefined in the digital era? What new ethical dilemmas are emerging, and how are the actors of digital journalism addressing them? How have norms adapted to digitization?
Economic Adaptation: How are news and tech organizations adapting their business models to ensure sustainability in a digital-first world? What innovative revenue streams are being explored?
Cultural and Political Adaptation: How are the actors of digital journalism navigating the complex cultural and political landscapes of the 21st century? How are they addressing issues of misinformation, polarization, and censorship?

Submission Instructions

Extended abstracts should include an abstract of 500 words (not including references) as well as a full list of author(s) with affiliation(s) and abbreviated bio(s). Please submit your proposal to Dr. Gregory Perreault (gperreault@usf.edu) as one file (PDF) with your names clearly stated on the first page.

Full manuscripts should target a length of 7,000-9,000 words.

Timeline:

Extended abstract submission deadline: July 1, 2025
Notification on acceptance of abstract: August 1, 2025
Deadline for full manuscripts: October 31, 2025

No payment from the authors will be required.

For questions, please contact one of the Special Issue Editors:

Gregory Perreault, University of South Florida
gperreault@usf.edu

Patrick Ferrucci, University of Colorado-Boulder
Patrick.Ferrucci@Colorado.EDU

Johana Kotišová, University of Amsterdam
j.kotisova@uva.nl

Dariya Orlova, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
orlova@ukma.edu.ua

The (Un)Sustainability of the Media

Mon, 26 May 2025 06:41:32 GMT

November 20, 2025

Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon (ESCS-IPL), Portugal

Deadline: June 20, 2025

Dear colleagues,

It is with great enthusiasm that we announce the I LIACOM International Conference, under the theme “The (Un)Sustainability of the Media”, which will be held on November 20, 2025, at the School of Communication and Media Studies – Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon (ESCS-IPL).

The event will feature the participation of French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky as the keynote speaker, providing an in-depth reflection on the contemporary challenges of sustainability in the media ecosystem.

We also invite the academic and research community to submit communication proposals, in abstract form, until June 20, 2025, for the following parallel sessions:

Journalism: Sustainability in an ecosystem looking for solutions
Media Literacy and Communication: Challenges for Citizenship
Brands, Advertising, and Consumption in the Age of Media (Un)Sustainability
Mobilizing for Change: The Role of Public Communication Campaigns
Disruptions and continuities in communication professions

We look forward to your participation and would like to thank you in advance for sharing this event with your networks and institutions.

ECREA Journalism Studies Section 2026 Conference

Mon, 26 May 2025 06:26:08 GMT

April 9-10, 2026

University of Groningen, Netherlands

Deadline: August 22, 2025

Journalism has long been a field caught up in discussions of trends and changes. Technological changes, in particular, have been highlighted as well as changes in media structures, alongside changing political, economic, and social trends all playing out in changing societies. This has led - understandably - to a preoccupation within industry and scholarship with journalism's future, as it tries to navigate each new development to both stay afloat, economically, and stay relevant in the societies where journalism operates.

However, an overemphasis on novelty and change at the same time makes it “difficult to discern passing fads from deeper shifts” within journalism (Carlson and Lewis, 2019: 644). Behind each headline-grabbing development is a larger set of dynamics, from societal forces and public values to technological opportunities and business decisions. Highlighting and scrutinizing these dynamics provides a better understanding of the complex context that shapes the nature and pace of journalistic change and can elucidate structural impediments to, for instance, diversity, inclusion and representation, journalists’ wellbeing and mental health, and the ongoing contestations over journalism’s boundaries.

With this conference, we aim to weave together the threads beneath these trends, situating change in context with an eye towards journalism's future.

Scholars can opt for either thematic or open submissions:

Thematic submissions

The conference aims to bring together a diverse mix of scholars from the field of journalism studies. It invites papers that focus on key developments and trends in journalism and put these in a broader perspective. Both theoretical/conceptual and empirical contributions to journalism studies are welcome.

Submissions responding to the conference theme can address (but are not limited to) the following areas that are currently at the cutting edge of the field (cf. Westlund et al., 2025):
• Digital innovation, adaptation and changing journalism practices;
• journalism and algorithmic culture;
• datafication of audiences;
• journalism’s position in platform societies;
• hybrid storytelling forms;
• changing patterns of news use, news avoidance and non-use;
• spread of online mis- and disinformation;
• digital press and media criticism;
• epistemologies of digital news production;
• journalism, emotion and subjectivity;
• new business models for digital journalism;
• alternative media and peripheral journalistic actors;
• rise of anti-media populism;
• social media journalism;
• digital hate and online threats to the safety of journalists;
• novel methodological approaches to studying digital journalism.

Please emphasize in your abstract how you see your paper responding to the conference theme – "the threads behind the trends".

Open submissions
While we encourage thematic submissions, we also hope to create an open forum for the latest research in journalism studies in its many facets. Contributors can also submit abstracts for open sessions, for which there are no thematic requirements. Again, both theoretical/conceptual and empirical contributions to journalism studies are welcome.

Submission guidelines

Abstracts should be no more than 500 words (excl. references, tables and graphs) and should be submitted no later than 22 August 2025 via this form.

The abstract must include an indication whether you submit to the conference theme or to the open panels. As we aim for a conference that provides extensive space for reflection, discussion and connection, we also ask you to indicate your preferred presentation format. This could include:
• A traditional research paper presentation in a thematically linked session
• A proposal for a pre-constituted panel
• Participation in a thematically-focused roundtable discussion
• High-density pitch sessions

Only one proposal per first author can be accepted (submitting further abstracts as co-author is accepted). Diversity in nationality, gender and country of affiliation can be prioritized in selection. Notifications of acceptance will be sent in early November 2025.

Submission will undergo scholarly peer-review and adhere to the newly established ECREA Journalism Studies section rule: For every abstract you are listed as an presenter/contributor, you are expected to review 2-3 abstracts (this applies to all authors on the paper).

The organizers will provide proof of conference attendance/presentation upon request.

PhD Colloquium

The day before the main conference, Dr. Sandra Banjac and Dr. Marilia Gehrke, together with the section’s YECREA representative Dr. Bissie Anderson, will organize the 6th ECREA Journalism Studies Section PhD Colloquium on 8 April 2026 at the University of Groningen. Further details about this event will soon be published on this webpage.

Conference Organization

The conference will be hosted by the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, organized by Dr. Joëlle Swart, Dr. Frank Harbers, Dr. Marilia Gehrke, Dr. Sandra Banjac and Dr. Scott Eldridge. The city of Groningen is two hours from Amsterdam and Schiphol Airport by train, and three hours from Bremen Airport by public transport.

If you have any questions, contact the conference organizing committee at journalismconferences@rug.nl.

Registration will open in November 2025. More information about the conference will be posted regularly on this webpage.

PLEASE NOTE: The conference will take place in-person only and we are unable to accommodate requests for virtual presentations.

Timeline

• Monday 12 May 2025 - submissions open
• Friday 22 August 2025 - deadline for abstract submissions
• Early November 2025 - acceptance notification and registration opens
• Before Christmas 2025 - first draft of the programme published
• Friday 27 February 2026 - deadline for delegate registration

Visual Political Communication in the Nordic Region: Strategies, Narratives, and Challenges in a Digital Age

Mon, 26 May 2025 04:30:34 GMT

Nordicom Revies (Special Issue)

Deadline: September 15, 2025

Editors:

Franziska Marquart (University of Copenhagen)
Xénia Farkas (DIGSUM, Umeå University)

Contact:

Franziska Marquart: fm@hum.ku.dk
Xénia Farkas: xenia.farkas@umu.se

Important dates:

Deadline for extended abstracts: 15 September 2025
Invitation to submit full paper: 3 October 2025
Full paper submission: 9 February 2026
Peer review processing: Spring 2026
Expected publication (Open Access): Early 2027

Background and aim

Ultimately, the aim is to deepen our understanding of how visuals contribute to the transformation of political communication in the Nordic region and what this means for democracy in a digital age.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

Visual strategies in political campaigning: The use of imagery, video, and branding by parties, candidates, and campaign teams during elections and referenda
Visual activism and protest culture: How activists, movements, and civil society actors use visual media to mobilise, resist, and advocate for change
Memes, infographics, and short-form videos: Emerging visual formats on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and X, and their role in shaping political discourse
Influencers as political communicators: Exploring how digital influencers shape political discourse through visual content, for example, through agenda-setting, issue advocacy, or political endorsements, particularly in addressing youth audiences
Personalisation and performance: The visual representation of political leaders, including aesthetics of authenticity, relatability, trust, and authority
Disinformation and visual manipulation: The role of images and videos in spreading misleading or false political content, including deepfakes and edited footage
Algorithmic visibility: How platform logics and recommender systems shape the prominence and reach of political visuals
Public service and institutional communication: Visual strategies employed by state institutions and public broadcasters to engage citizens and maintain trust
Crisis communication: Studying the visual strategies employed during political conflicts, economic, environmental, or health crises, and their effectiveness in managing public perception and behaviour
Ethics and accountability: Addressing ethical considerations in the creation and dissemination of political visuals, including issues of consent, manipulation, and the responsibilities of content creators

Procedure

Read the full instructions for authors and download a manuscript template

References

Farkas, X. (2023). Visual political communication research: A literature review from 2012 to 2022. Journal of Visual Political Communication, 10(2), 95–126. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00027_1
Grabe, M. E., & Bucy, E. P. (2009). Image bite politics: News and the visual framing of elections. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372076.001.0001/acprof-9780195372076
Graber, D. A. (1988). Processing the news: How people tame the information tide (2nd ed). Longman.
Graber, D. A. (1996). Say it with pictures. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 546, 85–96. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1048172
Lanzetta, J. T., Sullivan, D. G., Masters, R. D., & McHugo, G. J. (1985). Emotional and cognitive responses to televised images of political leaders. In S. Kraus, & R. E. Perloff (Eds.), Mass media and political thought. Sage.
Lilleker, D. G. (2019). The power of visual political communication: Pictorial politics through the lens of communication psychology. In A. Veneti, D. Jackson, & D. G. Lilleker (Eds.), Visual political communication (pp. 37–51). Springer.
Marquart, F. (2023). Video killed the Instagram star: The future of political communication is audio-visual. Journal of Visual Political Communication, 10(1), 49–57. https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00024_1
Masters, R., Sullivan, D., Lanzetta, J., Mchugo, G., & Englis, B. (1986). The facial displays of leaders: Toward an ethology of human politics. Journal of Social and Biological Systems, 9(4), 319–343. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-1750(86)90190-9
Schill, D. (2012). The visual image and the political image: A review of visual communication research in the field of political communication. Review of Communication, 12(2), 118–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2011.653504

About the publisher

Read the call for papers here:

https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/latest/news/call-papers-visual-political-communication-nordic-region-strategies-narratives-and

Mapping News as a Critical Method for Understanding Journalism

Mon, 26 May 2025 04:27:51 GMT

Journalism Studies (Special Issue)

Deadline: 15 November 2025

Through a series of empirical and theoretical investigations, this special issue aims to encourage and develop a robust discussion of and debate around mapping and related practices undertaken by journalism scholars to understand and analyze media ecosystems.

A global decline in the number of news services – especially at the local level – has raised alarm among journalists, academics, policymakers and community members alike (Weber and Matthews, 2024). In an attempt to make sense of – and document – this rapidly changing landscape, there is increasing emphasis on mapping techniques to visualize where news outlets exist (or not) within and across countries. Mapping and other visual techniques are increasingly being applied to measure and assess ongoing changes in the health of local media systems. These approaches are married with others such as textual analysis and topic modeling to better understand the nuances of what is being produced by journalists and where.

The pace of growth of research mapping and analyzing media landscapes is such that there have been few moments to pause and reflect on the state of research in this domain. As such, there has been little attention paid to the methodology of mapping in journalism studies. This risks a laissez-faire approach to the use of mapping in journalism scholarship, especially given mapping is broad and multi-disciplinary and afforded with rich and rigorous methodological histories and practices.

A typology of mapping suggests there are four ways in which journalism scholars are using mapping in their research: digital cartographic mapping, network mapping, spatial cognitive mapping and loose metaphoric references to mapping (McAdam and Hess, 2022). This special issue aims to explore the use of cartographic mapping to map geographic dimensions (see, for example: Negreira-Rey, Vazquez-Herrero and Lopez-Garcia, 2023; Lindgren, Corbett, & Hodson, 2020), network mapping to understand spatial connections and social cognitive mapping to explore concepts.

This special issue also aims to explore the theoretical and methodological frames - or, in other words, the ‘why’ - that guide the use of mapping as a method. Existent literature has explored broader related concepts such as theorizing about the spaces and places of journalism, notably, the ‘geographic turn’ that emphasizes the ‘places’ news is produced as well as the digital and physical spaces of journalism. Theoretically, this aligns with the ‘networked public sphere’ and extends into research on audience interaction and global connectivity. Reese (2016) argues the ‘new journalistic ecosystem’ presents fresh methodological challenges. This special issue provides a platform to discuss these methodological challenges, as well as any theoretical possibilities associated with the use of mapping.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of possible themes to address within the framework outlined above:
● Theoretical developments enabled through evolving methods:

○ Why is mapping being used in journalism studies?

○ What theories, concepts and/or methodologies can scholars draw on to guide or frame their use of mapping?

○ In what ways - if any - does mapping facilitate theoretical and methodological advancement of journalism studies more broadly?

○ Papers that connect mapping methods to specific theoretical discussions.

● The application of the method:

○ Ways mapping is used, for example digital cartography to map news deserts, network maps to map social media links, spatial/cognitive mapping and participatory mapping to understand audience spatial relationships.

○ Challenges associated with producing maps (such as the cost, time and skills involved) and how these may be overcome.

● The value of mapping

○ Benefits of visual communication to community, industry and policymakers

○ How scholars value mapping as a method for data collection/analysis.

○ Approaches for visual analysis and visual communication afforded by mapping.

Submission instructions
The format of the special issue is full research articles of max. 9000 words, inclusive of the abstract, tables, references, figure captions, endnotes. When submitting your manuscript please select the "mapping journalism" issue. The articles will appear online once accepted, and in an issue of Journalism Studies once all articles are completed.

Please email mapping.journalism@gmail.com with any questions.

More information:
https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/mapping-news-as-a-critical-method-for-understanding-journalism/?_ga=2.67220049.1575866221.1747670144-995254403.1747670144

Picture Post (1938-57): Genesis, History & Legacy of a Photo-Magazine

Mon, 26 May 2025 04:25:01 GMT

June 13, 2025 (09.00 to 17.30, BST)

Cardiff University, UK

One-day in-person workshop

REGISTRATION: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/picture-post-1938-57-genesis-history-legacy-of-a-photo-magazine-tickets-1365505476639?aff=oddtdtcreator

LOCATION: School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, Two Central Square, Cardiff, CF10 1FS, UK

Dear friends & colleagues,

We are excited to announce that registration is now open for a one-day, in-person research workshop concerning the landmark British photo-magazine, Picture Post (1938-57).

Picture Post was launched in the era of the Spanish Civil War and the Popular Front. Conceived for Hulton Press by Stefan Lorant (a Hungarian editor exiled from Nazi Germany), Picture Post had a transnational staff and a global outlook. It was the leading British example of an international phenomenon – the birth of photojournalism and the photo-essay. The equivalent of Life in the US and Paris-Match in France, the magazine achieved circulation figures of 1.7m.

To mark the opening of a major exhibition at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Cardiff, we are hosting a research workshop bringing together an international cohort of researchers, curators, archivists and librarians to discuss the development and impact of Picture Post.

The programme is included in the PDF attached. Registration is via the link above. Please note this is a free in-person event.

The workshop is co-hosted by the Tom Hopkinson Centre for Media History (School of Journalism, Media & Culture, Cardiff University) and Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales. It is organised by Dr Tom Allbeson (Reader in Media & Photographic History, Cardiff University) and Dr Bronwen Colquhoun (Senior Curator of Photography, Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales). And we look forward to welcoming you in Cardiff!

Media Capture in the Global South: Power and Resistance

Mon, 26 May 2025 04:20:36 GMT

May 30, 2025

Online

Dear colleagues,

Registration is now open for the FREE Online Half-Day, Book Launch and Unconference, "Media Capture in the Global South: Power and Resistance,” Friday, 30 May 2025 (Online, 10:00-15:05 BST).

You can register for the event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/media-capture-in-the-global-south-power-and-resistance-tickets-1347887410529?aff=oddtdtcreator

Programme:

10:00-10:15
Welcome & Introduction

10:15–11:00
Book Launch: Media Capture in Africa & Latin America: Power and Resistance (2024, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan)
Chair: Beth Pearson & Hayes Mabweazara (University of Glasgow)

Seige and resistance: Media, journalism and democracy in Colombia
Catalina Montoya Londoño & Jorge Iván Bonilla Vélez (Liverpool Hope University, UK / EAFIT University, Medellín, Columbia)

New and old captured policies, resistances and diversity in media and internet in Argentina
María Soledad Segura, Alejandro Linares, & Ana Bizberge (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina / Universidad Nacional de Formosa, Argentina / Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina)

The Nigerian press and its plutocratic relationship
Ufuoma Akpojivi & Olaniyan Akintola (University of Ghana / Centre for Social Media Research, Nigeria)

Resisting media capture: Mobilising for media freedom in Uganda
Carl-Magnus Höglund & Johan Karlsson Schaffer (Fojo Media Institute, Linnaeus University, Sweden / University of Gothenburg, Sweden)

11:00-11:10
BREAK

11:10–12:20
Unconference Panel 1: Power (Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, The Gambia, South Africa)
Chair: Mo Hume (University of Glasgow and Glasgow Latin America Research Network)

How does media capture operate in contexts of peacebuilding? Evidence from Colombia’s 2012-2016 peace negotiations
Jose David Ortega Chávez (University of Winchester, UK)

Media capture in Indonesia as a transitional democracy
Ardhanareswari Handoko Putri (University of Glasgow, UK)

Media capture in Mexico at the intersections of sports, media, and business
Mireya Marquez-Ramirez (Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City)

Media capture and its implications for Sustainable Development Goal attainment in The Gambia
Yaya B. Baldeh (Journalist / independent researcher)

State capture and media-state relations in South Africa: Groundwork for an African media-state model
Adrian Hadland & Bernadine Jones (University of Stirling, UK)

12:20-12:35
BREAK

12:35–13:45
Unconference Panel 2: Resistance (Guinea-Bissau, India/South Asia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Lebanon)
Chair: Lluis de Nadal Alsina (University of Glasgow and Glasgow University Media Group)

Media capture in Guinea-Bissau: State fragility, external influences, and the roles of media development actors
Johanna Mack (Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism / Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg)

What role does transnational mediascape and diaspora play in countering media capture in the Global South?
Cheshta Arora (Western Norway Research Institute, Norway)

Media capture in marginalised communities: Insights from South Africa’s post-apartheid community media sector
Franz Krüger (NLA Høgskolen, Norway & Wits University, South Africa)

Understanding media capture and journalistic resistance in Burkina Faso in a context of autocratic legalism and informational autocracy
Emma Heywood (University of Sheffield, UK)

Examining alternative media and digital activism in Lebanon during the 2019 protests, as a form of resisting algorithmic media capture
Yara El Turk (Euro-Mediterranean University, Slovenia)

13:45-13:55
BREAK

13:55–14:55
Round Table: Media Capture in the Global South: From Research to International Policymaking and Action
Camille Grenier (Forum on Information and Democracy), Sacha Meuter (Foundation Hirondelle), Churchill Otieno (The Africa Editors Forum), Mel Bunce (City St George’s, University of London)
Chair: George Ogola (University of Nottingham, UK)

14:55–15:05
Closing

Organised by members of the Sociological & Cultural Studies and the Glasgow University Media Group at the University of Glasgow in partnership with the Glasgow Latin American Research Network.

Media History Multiple Book Launch

Mon, 26 May 2025 04:12:49 GMT

June 3, 2025

Online/Cardiff University

The Tom Hopkinson Centre for Media History at Cardiff University is delighted to invite you to a free hybrid event showcasing new books and projects on media history, exploring a diverse range of media forms, including photography, digital technology, film, and journalism.

The presentations will be followed by a discussion on the current role and future directions of media history research.

The hybrid event will take place on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, from 16:00 to 17:30 (BST), both online via Teams and in person at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC), Cardiff University.

All welcome!

Featured publications include:

Conflicting images: Histories of war photography in the news, Stuart Allan and Tom Allbeson (Routledge, 2024)
Picturing peace: photography, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding, Tom Allbeson, Pippa Oldfield, and Jolyon Mitchell (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Incomplete: The feminist possibilities of the unfinished film, Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon (University of California Press, 2023)
Virtual holocaust memory, Matthew Boswell and Antony Rowland (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Reporting skin and the wounded body in Victorian Britain, Diana Garrisi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Film, feminism and rape culture in the Yorkshire Ripper years, Hannah Hamad (British Film Institute, forthcoming)

Please register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/multi-book-launch-at-the-tom-hopkinson-centre-for-media-history-tickets-1362166238889?aff=oddtdtcreator

For any queries email us at: jomecresearch@cardiff.ac.uk

Post-doctoral Research Fellow - Journalism and Democracy

Mon, 26 May 2025 04:10:16 GMT

ESRC / Trans-Atlantic Partnership Grant

This is an exciting opportunity for a researcher to play a central role in an international research project on journalism and democracy. The project is funded by an ESRC / Trans-Atlantic Partnership Grant, and it has research teams based in the UK, Brazil, Canada, and South Africa.

The successful candidate will be on “Team UK” working with Mel Bunce (City) and Richard Fletcher (RISJ, Oxford). The project explores how independent journalism is defined and understood by citizens, journalists, policy makers and academics; how independent journalism is practiced; and the forms of solidarity and support that may protect its independence.

We’re looking for great skills in data collection, analysis, and writing – and the ability to work independently to really push forward this project.

The job includes a lot of career development opportunities, including leading on publications and presenting at international conferences plus working with a team of supportive international scholars.

We can sponsor an international candidate (although they will need to demonstrate good understanding of UK journalism). They need to have finished their PhD - or at minimum submitted their thesis - by July 1st.

Full details and to apply:

https://www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/about/jobs/apply/details.html?jobId=5351&jobTitle=Post-doctoral%20Research%20Fellow%20-%20Journalism%20and%20Democracy

Images in Motion and Moving Images: Gender, Power & Mobility

Mon, 26 May 2025 04:07:42 GMT

November 19-21, 2025

Tübingen University, Germany

Deadline: June 30, 2025

https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/278964

Joint conference of the DGPuK Divisions of „Media, Public Sphere, Gender“ and „Visual Communication“

Submission Deadline: 30. June 2025

Local organising team

Dr. Helena Atteneder, Prof. Dr. Martina Thiele, Julia Fischer

University of Tübingen, Institute of Media Studies

Contat: mobility@mewi.uni-tuebingen.de

Mediastudies.press book manuscript submission window

Mon, 26 May 2025 03:53:44 GMT

Deadline: : 1 June through 31 July, 2025

mediastudies.press, the scholar-led and nonprofit OA publisher, is happy to announce our annual proposal window from 1 June to 31 July, 2025. During this date window, authors are encouraged to submit a proposal for review.

mediastudies.press welcomes submissions from scholars across media, communication, and film studies. We currently publish in four series:

Media Manifold series — monographs and other book-length works of contemporary media scholarship
Public Domain series — reprints of neglected classics, in new critical editions anchored by framing introductions
Open Reader series — themed collections of openly licensed, public domain, and linked materials curated and introduced by leading experts
History of Media Studies series — monographs and other original scholarly works centered on history of media, communication, and film studies

We kindly ask that proposals be submitted as a single PDF. Proposals should include the following elements, in addition to at least one draft chapter:

Proposed title and subtitle
A 500- to 1000-word narrative description of the book
Short bios of author(s) and/or editor(s)
Proposed series (see above)
Tentative table of contents, preferably annotated
Estimated word-length
Multi-modal components, if any
Status of the book (i.e., expectation of completion date, the portion now complete)
At least one draft chapter

To submit your work to mediastudies.press please follow our submission link.

If you have any questions at all about the proposal process for books, please contact us at press@mediastudies.press

Jeff Pooley, co-director of mediastudies.press

Dave Park, co-director of mediastudies.press

PhD Scholarship on Mainstreaming Climate Policy Misinformation

Tue, 06 May 2025 13:50:31 GMT

School of English, Media and Creative Arts (SEMCA), University of Galway

Applications are invited for a full-time, funded PhD scholarship in Journalism and Media at the University of Galway. This position is co-funded by Research Ireland, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Met Éireann, and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).

Project Description:

The PhD is part of a project titled Tackling Climate Misinformation in Ireland (CLiME). The project explores how misleading claims, delay discourses, and climate-sceptic arguments—especially around agricultural decarbonisation—are reproduced and normalised in Irish news media and public discourse.

The PhD researcher will help identify such claims in news coverage and examine how journalistic practices contribute to the spread of misinformation. The project aims to build an evidence base for climate policy misinformation in Ireland and develop resources for journalists and communication professionals.

Supervisors: Dr Brenda McNally (PI), Professor Karyn Morrissey
Location: Moore Institute for the Humanities and Social Studies, University of Galway
Start Date: 1st September 2025
Stipend: €25,000/year (tax-exempt)
Duration: 4 years (includes funding for tuition fees, computer, travel, and summer schools)

Academic Requirements:

MA/MSc (2:1 or higher) in Media and Communications, Journalism Studies, Political Science, Social Sciences, or a related field
Strong interest in misinformation, journalism, or climate communication

Essential Criteria:

Master’s degree (2:1 or equivalent)
Independent research ability
Motivation and excellent communication skills
Fluent in spoken and written English
Teamwork skills

Desirable Criteria:

Experience in climate communication or misinformation studies
Experience working in a research team

To Apply:
Email a single PDF containing your CV, cover letter, and two academic references to:
brenda.mcnally@universityofgalway.ie
Filename should include your name and “CLiME”.

Cover Letter Guidelines:

Academic awards/scholarships (max 300 words)
Previous research experience (max 500 words)
Motivation for the PhD and relevance to CLiME (max 1000 words)
Other relevant info (max 500 words)
Two full references (not “available on request”)

Deadline: 6 June 2025, 17:00 (Irish time)
Keywords: Climate Communication, Misinformation Studies, News Media Analysis, Political Communication, Environmental Communication

Managing Innovation & Sustainability in Media

Tue, 06 May 2025 11:20:00 GMT

October 17-19, 2025

Cairo, Egypt

Deadline: June 15, 2025

KEY THEMES

Topics include (but are not limited to):

Innovation in media management theory/practice
AI-driven business analytics & ethical frameworks
Leadership for creativity and organizational agility
Evolving media business models & market strategies
Cross-cultural management challenges
Media policy, regulation, and sustainability
Advances in advertising, marketing, and digital tech

IMPORTANT DATES

June 15, 2025: Abstract/panel proposal deadline
July 7, 2025: Acceptance notifications
July 7 – Sept 15: Early registration
Oct 17–19: Conference dates

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Papers: Extended abstracts (750–1,000 words) outlining focus, methods, and relevance to media management.

Panels: 300-word proposal + 300-word abstracts per presentation + panelist bios.

Submit via email to: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu (Double-blind peer-reviewed).

Discounted rates for global participation. Full details on conference website.

WHY ATTEND?

Engage with cutting-edge research and industry insights.

Network in Cairo—home to the Pyramids, Nile cruises, and a vibrant cultural scene.

Hosted by AUC, a leading MENA institution with world-class facilities.

LINKS & CONTACT

Conference website: https://immaaegypt.com

IMMAA website: www.immaa.org

Questions? Email: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu

Join us to advance media management scholarship amid Cairo’s historic wonders!

Best regards,

IMMAA 2025 Organizing Team

The American University in Cairo

#IMMAA_Egypt | Follow updates @immaaegypt2025

UK journalists in the 2020s: Who they are, how they work, and what they think

Tue, 06 May 2025 11:20:00 GMT

Edited by: Neil Thurman, Imke Henkel, Sina Thaesler-Kordonouri and Richard Fletcher

This report is based on a survey conducted between September and November 2023 with a representative sample of 1,130 UK journalists, a follow-up to a similar survey in 2015 (Thurman et al. 2016). The survey was carried out as part of the third wave of the Worlds of Journalism Study project. Our analysis of the survey data and of over 200 other relevant sources of information has produced numerous findings.

This report documents increased precarity in the profession with a shift away from permanent contracts and growth in the number of freelancers, lingering inequalities between specific groups in terms of pay and seniority, the continued adoption of new technologies that bring benefits but also exacerbate risks, and changing conceptions of roles, ethics, and journalism’s relationship with society.

ECREA members can access the publication open access here: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/uk-journalists-2020s

Bridges and Barriers: Rethinking Connections and Disconnections in Contemporary Canada

Tue, 06 May 2025 09:35:00 GMT

November 26-28, 2025

University of Napoli, Italy

Deadline: June 30, 2025

In an era marked by rapid globalization, digital transformation, and shifting socio-political landscapes, contemporary Canada faces evolving challenges and opportunities in fostering stability and belonging while addressing divisions and conflicts (Simpson 2020; Coulthard 2021).

Canada has long been seen as a bridge between different cultures, identities, and geopolitical forces, yet barriers - both historical and contemporary - persist in shaping its national discourse. The complexities of Indigenous reconciliation efforts, the legacy of residential schools and land rights disputes (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015); regional disparities between provinces, particularly regarding economic development and resource distribution (Banting & Thompson 2023); linguistic tensions between English and French-speaking communities (Sioufi & Bourhis 2018); the outbreak and escalation of global conflicts, resulting in further divisions and negotiations; the evolving discourses on ethnicity, cultural diversity and gender equality which resonate in contemporary struggles for resistance and transformation (Abu-Laban 2023); the effects of migration and multiculturalism that shape urban and rural communities, raising questions about integration, identity, and policy responses (Li 2023). Canada's reputation as a welcoming nation for immigrants coexists with growing debates on border security, asylum policies, and systemic discrimination. Moreover, digital and physical infrastructures increasingly impact access to services, exacerbating socio-economic inequalities in an era of rapid technological advancement.

Canada’s dual role as a place of connection and disconnection is therefore evident. The Conference seeks to explore the multifaceted ways in which Canada engages with the notions of connection and separation across cultural, political, linguistic, economic, and social spheres. We invite proposals that critically examine the factors that build bridges and create barriers in contemporary Canadian society, from a range of disciplines in the wider field of the Humanities. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches as well as geographic, historical, sociological, legal, literary, linguistic and cultural perspectives.

Proposals may address (but are not limited to) the following topics:

Indigenous sovereignty, reconciliation, and self-governance
Bilingualism and multilingualism: policies, identities, and challenges
Immigration, multiculturalism, and social integration
Climate change, environmental justice, and Indigenous perspectives
Digital and physical infrastructures: access, exclusion, and connectivity
Cultural production and artistic expressions of belonging and alienation
Social movements and activism: building solidarities or reinforcing divides
The role of education in shaping national identity
Inclusion and accessibility: policies, challenges, and opportunities
Literature and narratives of connection and disconnection

We encourage both theoretical and empirical approaches. Submissions from graduate students and early-career researchers are also welcome.

The official languages of the conference: Italian, English and French

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts should be no more than 250 words and be accompanied by a brief biographical note (100 words). Please submit your proposals by June 30 to aiscnapoli2025@gmail.com

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 15.

For further inquiries, please contact aiscnapoli2025@gmail.com

Works cited

Abu-Laban, Y. (2023). Contemporary Canadian Multiculturalism and Racial Justice. UBC Press.
Banting, K., & Thompson, D. (2023). Inequality and the Future of the Canadian Federation. University of British Columbia Press.
Coulthard, G. (2021). Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. University of Minnesota Press.
Li, P.S. (2023) Deconstructing Canada’s discourse of immigrant integration. Int. Migration & Integration 4, 315–333
Simpson, L. (2020). As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota Press.
Sioufi, R., & Bourhis, R. Y. (2018). Acculturation and Linguistic Tensions as Predictors of Quebec Francophone and Anglophone Desire for Internal Migration in Canada. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 37(2), 136-159.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Lorimer.

Getting ready for trouble: communication for evidence-informed policy-making in crisis management

Tue, 06 May 2025 09:27:44 GMT

November 27-28, 2025

Brussels, Belgium

Deadline: June 15, 2025

An international scientific symposium and stakeholder workshop organised by the Belgian Pandemic Intelligence Network (BE-PIN)

This event wants to bring together the research traditions connected to evidence-informed policy-making (EIPM): science communication research, risk communication, political communication, organisational communication, knowledge exchange, journalism studies, crisis management and political sciences.

We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions with a special focus on the communication processes for EIPM in the context of the management of crises such as pandemics and other emergencies (natural disasters or incidents involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear agents, usually grouped under the acronym CBRN).

In those contexts, we propose to analyse two intertwined levels of communication that are crucial to understand: 1) the organisation of scientific knowledge exchange between a diversity of stakeholders (amongst others: researchers, professionals, knowledge brokers, interest organisations and policy-makers); and 2) public communication explaining the policy decisions and managing the risks produced by public administrations, university press offices, scientists, journalists, etc.

Themes:

Science communication as part of crisis management
From (scientific) evidence to decisions: the communication processes of EIPM related to crisis preparedness and response
Public communication of (evidence-informed) policy during a crisis
Citizen perspectives on and expectations of public policy communication during crises
Ethics and governance of EIPM in crisis times
Professional knowledge and competences for an efficient EIPM ecosystem

Participation to the event will be free of charge for those presenting accepted papers.

Please submit a 300-word abstract, indicating the theme you want to contribute to, by 15 June 2025 to ingrid.van.marion@ulb.be

Location and program details will be available at the BE-PIN research project website once the selection of papers has been made:
https://www.pandemicintelligence.be/event-details/getting-ready-for-trouble

Climate Disinformation: European and Global Perspectives

Tue, 06 May 2025 09:02:53 GMT

Special Issue of International Journal of Communication (IJoC)

Deadline: End of June 2025

The Open Society Hub for the Politics of the Anthropocene (Central European University, Austria) and the Disinformation Research Cluster (University of Sheffield, UK) are pleased to invite submissions for a Special Issue of International Journal of Communication (IJoC) on the theme of “Climate Disinformation: European and Global Perspectives”, to be published by July 2026.

Climate-related disinformation, ranging from climate change denialism to conspiratorial narratives about decarbonisation, remains a serious obstacle to effective climate action. This disinformation is often amplified by networks involving politicians, think tanks, politically motivated organisations, and anonymous actors, all working to sow doubt and undermine public trust in climate science. Such efforts not only delay urgent policy responses but also erode the scientific consensus necessary for broad societal change.

In Europe, while political momentum around decarbonisation is growing, denialist voices continue to challenge green initiatives. Climate denialism is increasingly used as a political tool, shaping electoral campaigns and lobbying against environmental regulation. Meanwhile, greenwashing by corporations adds another layer of complexity, eroding public confidence in legitimate sustainability efforts and blurring the line between genuine action and corporate PR.

International bodies like UNESCO and the UN have called for stronger action against disinformation, yet significant gaps remain in our understanding of how it spreads and how best to counter it. This Special Issue seeks contributions that critically examine the dynamics of climate disinformation and evaluate the effectiveness of counterstrategies, such as fact-checking, emphasising scientific consensus, cultural messaging, and pre-emptive inoculation approaches.

We invite papers that focus on, but are not limited to, the following issues:

• Climate change disinformation: mapping the stakeholders contesting public perceptions of climate change and decarbonisation
• Influence of political ideologies on climate change beliefs
• Impact of Big Tech companies: investigating how technology and social media algorithms contribute to the spread of climate change denialism
• Geopolitics, political warfare and climate change disinformation
• Climate change scepticism in the “Global South”: exploring the dynamics of climate change scepticism in developing regions
• Challenges of greenwashing: eroding public trust and slowing down systemic change
• Strategies for countering climate change disinformation

Deadline for submissions: end of June 2025

The submission must default to the 6th edition of the APA style guide.

Research articles should range between 6,000 and 8,900 words (all-inclusive). Papers must not exceed 8,900 words.

We would also like to stress that submission to the IJoC Special Issue does not guarantee publication. This will depend on the outcome of the peer review process.

Please send your manuscripts by the indicated deadline to KocsanyA@ceu.edu.

Journalism in a Fractured World

Tue, 06 May 2025 08:34:53 GMT

Scott A. Eldridge II, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Copyright 2025, Peter Lang
Series: Frontiers in Journalism Studies, editor: Scott A. Eldridge II
Website: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1288791

Journalism in a Fractured World addresses the fractured nature of journalism as it has developed online. Engaging with theories from journalism studies and politics, it bases its findings on the study of peripheral journalistic media from the US, UK, and Netherlands. It addresses the pronounced animosity that has become a feature of peripheral, political, digital news. Focusing on the metajournalistic discourses produced by peripheral actors, it develops a framework to distinguish between peripheral antagonists and agonists. Antagonists blur lines between news and politics and foment societal divisions through narratives of backlash, fragmentation, and grievance. Journalistic agonists, on the other hand, are also political and critical, but offer a constructive vision of what journalism and society can become. Journalism in a Fractured World presents theories and frameworks for engaging with these actors with a clear-eyed message about the challenges journalism faces and how we might find our way forward, even in our fractured societies.

Journalism in a Fractured World is available Open Access, courtesy the University of Groningen Library Open Access Book Fund.

ECREA Workshop Series: Methods for Media and Communication Research

Mon, 05 May 2025 15:23:00 GMT

In 2025, the ECREA sub-committee for Methods is organising a series of workshops on different methods, tools and designs for junior researchers and PhD candidates. The sessions will include: refining a research project, designing a suitable methodological approach, research tools, research ethics, analysing quantitative research data, analysing qualitative research data, and AI. The sessions will be held online and will generally last between 90-120 min, hosted by senior researchers and experts in the respective fields.

Workshop 4: Research ethics

May 30, 14:00 (CET) (1h 30mins)

Lecturer: Dr Herminder Kaur, Senior Lecturer in Digital Sociology in the Department of Criminology and Sociology at Middlesex University, London

This workshop provides a comprehensive introduction to ethical considerations in research, ensuring participants understand the principles of conducting responsible and ethical studies. Key topics include informed consent, data protection, confidentiality, and avoiding bias. Participants will explore real-world ethical dilemmas and discuss strategies for addressing challenges in their own research. The session will also cover institutional ethical approval processes and the importance of maintaining integrity throughout the research journey. Through case studies and interactive discussions, attendees will develop a strong ethical foundation for their projects.

If you would like to attend this workshop, please fill out the form HERE.

PhD Opportunity – Climate Policy Misinformation & Media

Sun, 04 May 2025 21:09:11 GMT

University of Galway

Journalism & Media

Fully Funded

We are inviting applications for a fully funded PhD scholarship as part of the interdisciplinary project CLiME (Tackling Climate Misinformation in Ireland), starting September 2025.

The project examines how climate policy misinformation, particularly around agricultural decarbonisation, is reproduced and normalised in Irish news media. The successful candidate will investigate media discourses, news production practices, and contribute to co-developing tools for journalists and educators.
Supervision: Dr Brenda McNally (PI) and Prof Karyn Morrissey

Funding: 25,000 EUR per year stipend plus fees and travel/conference support (4 years)

Further details:

https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/339659
To apply: Please send a CV, letter of motivation with details of any awards and contact details for two references to

brenda.mcnally@universityofgalway.ie

Deadline: 6th June 2025

Paradoxes of Visibility: Negotiating Race and Gender in the UK Political and Media Landscape

Sun, 04 May 2025 13:41:41 GMT

May 21, 2025

Online

MeCCSA Race, Ethnicity, and Postcolonial Network and MeCCSA Women’s Network present:

Wednesday 21st May 2025

Please join us for Paradoxes of Visibility: Negotiating Race and Gender in the UK Political and Media Landscape, a half-day symposium exploring key issues of representation in contemporary media.

2pm: Welcome

2.15pm to 3.15pm Panel 1: Women of Colour in British Politics

Sophia Kanaouti (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) ‘Bureaucratization of politics: identity without responsibility’
Craig Ryder (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich) ‘Fringe platforms and the prevalence of digital macroaggressions against UK female leaders’
Anna Sanders and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield (University of York) ‘The Glass Cliff in Contemporary British Politics: The non-traditional aspect of contemporary leadership contests and their gendered and intersectional consequences’

3.30pm to 4.15pm Panel 2: The Politics of Visibility

Tina Frederikke Kristensen (University of Sunderland) ‘#metoo was started by a black woman, @Tarana Burke!!! Give credit where it’s due! <3 (Marqueza, 2017): The discursive strategies used to increase visibility of people of colour in the #MeToo movement on Twitter’
Hannah Yelin (Oxford Brookes University) ‘Trans and nonbinary youth navigating celebrity culture and the risks of visibility’

All times BST

You can register for the event here: https://buytickets.at/universityofsurrey1/1651077

Connected Lives: Wellbeing and Health in a Globalised World

Sun, 04 May 2025 13:35:00 GMT

June 16-17, 2025

Universidade Católica Portuguesa

Deadline: April 27/May 14, 2025

International Conference and Working Group Meeting – COST Action TraFaDy

Globalisation and migratory flows have profoundly reshaped contemporary societies, prompting challenges and opportunities for individuals, families and organisations. In this context, transnational dynamics and relationships have become striking phenomena, associated with complex processes of autonomisation, co-dependence, intergenerational solidarity, connection and the construction of intercultural identities (Baykara-Krumme & Fokkema, 2019; Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002; Cienfuegos et al., 2023).

Our digital world, while enabling further interactions, the reinvention of relationships, and new ways of being present, also brings with it the risks associated with the spread of misinformation and ambivalent dynamics with digital tools (Baldassar et al., 2016; Smets et al., 2020). All the above seriously impact relationships within families and therefore merit analysis in various fields.

Therefore, despite the increase in the mobility and circulation of people and goods, there are also challenges to family/relational fragmentation of interest to transdisciplinary studies in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, particularly in the areas of Psychology, Cultural Studies, Communication and Social Work.

This event, which combines a meeting of Working Group 4 of the TraFady COST Action and a conference, aims to promote theoretical approaches, training, and capacity building. To this end, we are opening a call for presentations including, but not limited to the following topics:

Cultural representations of migration and transnational relationships
Transnational Family Dynamics
National and international migration
Social policies for the family
Social policies for migration
Digital practices for wellbeing in a transnational context
Media literacy and information in transnational and migratory contexts
Relationship between work and migration
Brain Drain and its impact
Intergenerational solidarity
Artistic responses to migration and translational relationships
The role of cultural and artistic expressions in health and wellbeing in transnational settings
The impact of technology and communication
Environmental migration
Cultural adaptation
The emotional impact of migration
The emotional impact of family separation

The event will include:

Keynote Lectures (to be confirmed);
Workshop on the role of the media in the integration and well-being of transnational families;
Paper sessions (subject to submission);
Round table with community agents working with migrants in Portugal;
Meetings and training for WG4 of COST Action TraFaDy (members-only event).

Organising Committee:
Barros, Carlos – Chair | Borges Tavares, Sandra | Costa Ramalho, Susana | Jesus, Antonela | Lindemann Lino, Verena.

How to submit:
Please fill in the following form link, including title, three to five keywords, an abstract (between 250 and 350 words), as well as references in APA 7 format.

Submission of papers – Important deadlines:

Early Submission: until 27th April (23h59, GMT+1); communication of acceptance of proposals – by 4th May (23h59, GMT+1); Conference registration/confirmation - by 9th May (23h59, GMT+1)
Late Submission: until 14th May (23h59, GMT+1); communication of acceptance of proposals – by 18th May (23h59, GMT+1); Conference registration/confirmation - by 21st May (23h59, GMT+1)

Fees and grants:

The conference is free but requires submission before the dates set above. Registration for members of the audience will take place at a later stage.
A grant is available to support travel to the meeting + conference (this includes the daily allowance and flight support) for Action COST TraFaDy members. There are 26 grants available for early submissions only. Should any grants remain after this period, they will be allocated to late submissions. For all funding inquiries, members of Action COST TraFaDy should contact the local COST organiser and co-leader of the group, Carlos Barros, at cbarros@ucp.pt. For all other queries, please contact us at connectedlivesconference@gmail.com.

References:
Baldassar, L., Nedelcu, M., Merla, L., & Wilding, R. (2016). ICT-based co-presence in transnational families and communities: Challenging the premise of face-to-face proximity in sustaining relationships. Global Networks, 16(2), 133-144. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12108

Baykara-Krumme, H., & Fokkema, T. (2019). The impact of migration on intergenerational solidarity types. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(10), 1707-1727. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1485203

Bryceson, D., & Vuorela, U. (Eds.). (2002). The transnational family: New european frontiers and global networks (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003087205

Cienfuegos, J., Brandhorst, R., & Bryceson, F.B. (Eds.). (2023). Handbook of transnational families around the world. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15278-8

Smets, K., Leurs, K., Georgiou, M., Witteborn, S., & Gajjala, R. (2020). The SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration. SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526476982

IMMAA 2025 Call for Papers: Managing Innovation & Creativity for Sustainability in Media

Thu, 01 May 2025 18:20:18 GMT

October 17–19, 2025

Cairo, Egypt

Deadline: June 15, 2025

Key Themes

Topics include but are not limited to:

Innovation in media management theory/practice
AI-driven business analytics and ethical frameworks
Leadership for creativity and organizational agility
Evolving media business models and market strategies
Cross-cultural management challenges
Media policy, regulation, and sustainability
Advances in advertising, marketing, and digital technology

Important Dates

June 15, 2025: Abstract/panel proposal deadline
July 7, 2025: Acceptance notifications
July 7 – Sept 15: Early registration
Oct 17–19: Conference dates

Submission Guidelines

Papers: Extended abstracts (750–1,000 words) outlining focus, methods, and relevance to media management
Panels: 300-word proposal + 300-word abstracts per presentation + panelist bios
Submit via email to: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu (double-blind peer-reviewed)

Registration Fees

Tier	Faculty/Researcher	Grad Student
Early	€70–270	€50–150
Late	€120–320	€100–200

Discounted rates for global participation. Full details on conference website.

Why Attend?

Engage with cutting-edge research and industry insights
Network in Cairo—home to the Pyramids, Nile cruises, and a vibrant cultural scene
Hosted by AUC, a leading MENA institution with world-class facilities

Links & Contact

Conference website: https://immaaegypt.com
IMMAA website: www.immaa.org
Email: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu

Join us to advance media management scholarship amid Cairo’s historic wonders!

Best regards,
IMMAA 2025 Organizing Team
The American University in Cairo

PhD Scholarship on Mainstreaming Climate Policy Misinformation

Thu, 01 May 2025 10:50:18 GMT

University of Galway

Apply here: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/339659

Research Field: Environmental science » Other
Researcher Profile: First Stage Researcher (R1)
Positions: PhD Positions
Country: Ireland
Application Deadline: 6 Jun 2025 - 17:00 (Europe/Dublin)
Type of Contract: Not Applicable
Job Status: Other
Job Status Extra Information: Other
Hours Per Week: 39 hr/week
Offer Starting Date: 1 Sep 2025
Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Other EU programme
Reference Number: PHD GSO 010-25
Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

Application(s) are invited from suitably qualified candidates for a full-time, funded PhD scholarship in the Discipline of Journalism and Media within SEMCA at the University of Galway.

This position is co-funded by Taighde Éireann (Research Ireland), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Met Eireann, and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).

University of Galway

Located in the vibrant cultural city of Galway in the west of Ireland, the University of Galway has a distinguished reputation for teaching and research excellence. For information on moving to Ireland please see www.euraxess.ie

Detailed Project Description

This is an exciting opportunity to undertake a PhD as part of a Research Ireland Project addressing the emerging and urgent challenge of climate policy misinformation. The project, entitled Tackling Climate Misinformation in Ireland: An Evidence Base and Novel Resources for Journalists and Communications Professionals (CLiME), examines how misleading claims, delay discourses, and climate-sceptic arguments — particularly in relation to decarbonising agriculture — are reproduced and normalised within Irish news media and public discourse.

The PhD candidate will play an important role in the project working collaboratively with the PI and a postdoctoral researcher, and there will be excellent training and travel opportunities. The candidate will also have opportunities to gain teaching experience. The supervisory team will include Dr Brenda McNally (PI) and co-supervisor Professor Karyn Morrissey. The project is also supported by an advisory board of international experts in the field.

CLiME’s overarching aim is to shed light on the evolving forms of climate misinformation, to provide an evidence base of climate policy misinformation in Ireland and to raise awareness of the discursive strategies used to mainstream climate policy misinformation, while also interrogating the political and institutional power structures that enable their mainstreaming. The successful PhD candidate will conduct foundational research by identifying misleading and climate sceptic claims in news media coverage about decarbonising agriculture – a key area of climate policy contestation in Ireland and contribute to knowledge of the influence of journalistic news routines and production practices on the reproduction of misinformation in Irish news media. The findings of the PhD research will be used to inform the development of evidence-based tools and resources to support journalists and communication professionals.

The post will also provide the opportunity to develop a range of highly transferable skills, including policy translation, stakeholder engagement, public communication, interdisciplinary collaboration, and project management — all of which are relevant for academic careers as well as roles in the public, non-profit, and media sectors.

The ideal candidate will have a background in qualitative research, news media analysis, or misinformation studies, with an interest in strategic political communication. This is an opportunity to contribute to current debates on climate action, public trust, and media responsibility, while also advancing scholarship in climate policy misinformation, journalism studies, and environmental communication.

The successful candidate will be based in the Moore Institute for the Humanities and Social Studies (MI) at the University of Galway and will be a registered student within SEMCA. MI provides a particularly supportive environment for early career researchers and is a first port-of-call for collaborators working in academia, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), government, and industry. They will also have access to the Researcher Development Centre, which supports researcher training, researcher career development and the integration of researchers into University of Galway’s community.

Living allowance (Stipend): €25,000 per annum [tax-exempt scholarship award]. Computer equipment and funding for travel (e.g. to conferences) as well as attendance at international summer schools will be provided in addition to the stipend.

University fees: Funding support is in place for 4 years of fees.

Start date: 1st September 2025.

Academic Entry Requirements: An MA/MSc in any of the following areas: Media and Communications; Journalism Studies; Political Science; Social Sciences; or a related area to at least a high 2:1 standard. Other evidence that signifies suitability for the programme (e.g. demonstrated interest in misinformation studies, journalism studies and/or climate communication research).

Essential Selection Criteria

Master’s degree to honours 2:1 standard (or equivalent international qualification) in a relevant area, such as Media and Communications or Social Sciences
Evidence of an ability to carry out independent research
Highly self-motivated
Excellent written and oral communication skills
Ability to work independently and as part of a team
High level of spoken and written English. Please see link for details entry requirements

Desirable Selection Criteria

Professional experience in environmental/climate communication or misinformation studies
Experience of working as part of a research team

To Apply for the Scholarship: Email a cover letter and CV with TWO references in one PDF File with your name and CLiME as the file name to Brenda.mcnally@universityofireland.ie

The cover letter should include the following information:

i) Academic Awards or Scholarships received (max 300 words)
ii) Details of your previous research experience (max 500 words)
iii) Personal statement on your motivation for pursuing a PhD on this research topic and why you are particularly suited to the CLiME research project (max 1000 words).
iv) Please provide any other relevant information (max 500 words).
v) TWO academic references with full contact details. References listed as ‘available on request’ will not be accepted.

PLEASE SUBMIT ALL INFORMATION IN ONE PDF DOCUMENT

Contact Name: Dr. Brenda McNally
Contact Email: brenda.mcnally@univesityofgalway.ie
Application Deadline: 6th June, 2025, 17:00 hours
Primary Supervisor name: Dr Brenda McNally

IMT-PHD: Norm Critical Research 2025

Thu, 01 May 2025 10:38:19 GMT

Doctoral School of People and Technology at Roskilde University

Contents

The course is aimed at PhD students with an interest in norm critique, norm-critical interventions, and the significance of norms for (in)equality, (in)justice as well as inclusion and exclusion in various societal contexts such as educational practice, urban planning, sustainable transition, innovation, working life, and management.

Norm critique – and particularly norm-critical pedagogy – is a Nordic phenomenon which initially grew out of Swedish activist and educational circles. Later, the norm-critical approach to equality and social change has spread to the rest of the Nordic countries, and in Sweden it has even become a state-approved approach in diversity and equality work. At the same time, norm critique has encountered political and public opposition and has been criticized for being yet another strand of identity politics and, thus, undermining society. Hence, it becomes even more important to consolidate the theoretical basis for norm-critical research, which more and more PhD students and researchers are conducting.

Originally, norm critique draws on Freirean liberation thinking, feminist theory, critical gender studies, intersectionality, queer theory, and critical race theory. But only recently has there been research interest in disentangling, developing, and discussing the theoretical basis for norm critique in research across disciplines.

The PhD course taps into these current theoretical, methodological, and analytical discussions of how norm critique can offer new ways of studying inequality and how norm critical research practices can revitalize a feminist and anti-racist ethical imperative of social change and refurbish the social obligation of research.

The course is organized around three themes:

The theoretical foundation and epistemology of norm critique:

Modern legacies and postmodern possibilities (Krøjer)
Norms, normalcy and norm violations (Padovan-Özdemir)
Firstness and otherness (Brade)

Norm-critical methodologies:

Queering as a strategy (Just)
Critical design (Hagbert)
Cabinet of Rarities (Padovan-Özdemir)

Norm-critical ethics:

Heterotopic horizon of change (Padovan-Özdemir)
Feminist ethics of care (Krøjer)

In this way, the participants get the opportunity to sharpen the distinction between norm critique in practice/activism and norm critique as a research approach and perspective, while at the same time being able to observe and relate to the ethical basis of norm critique.

https://phdcourses.dk/Course/130355

Thematic issues of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 19:35:17 GMT

Deadline: June 16, 2025

The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television is an international and interdisciplinary journal concerned with the history of the audio-visual mass media from c.1900 to the present. It explores the institutional and ideological contexts of film, radio and television, analyses the evidence produced by the mass media for historians and social scientists, and considers the impact of mass communications on political, social and cultural history. It is the official journal of the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST).

The editors of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television are pleased to announce an annual call for proposals for guest-edited thematic issues. We invite scholars, researchers, archivists, and practitioners from around the world to submit proposals for special issues to be published in 2026. One exceptional proposal will be selected and commissioned by the editors of the HJFRT.

We seek proposals that focus on innovative and compelling themes within the scope of film, radio, and television history. Thematic issues should aim to advance the field by exploring new theoretical frameworks, methodologies, or areas of study that engage with historical perspectives on media and articles should be grounded in or based upon empirical and archival research. Contributions based on conference presentations or panels are welcome, provided they have not been published in any form or in any language before. No payment from the guest editors or the authors will be required.

Each proposal must include:

Title and description of the theme: A clear and concise title, along with a detailed description (up to 2,000 words) of the proposed thematic issue. The description should outline the significance of the theme, its relevance to the field of media history, and how it contributes to advancing scholarly discourse.
List of Proposed Articles and Authors: Include the titles and abstracts (300-500 words each) of 8–10 articles, along with the names, e-mail addresses, biographies and affiliations of the authors. There must be an introductory article that sets the context for the theme.
Guest Editors: Thematic issues must have at least two guest editors. Provide the names, affiliations, short biographies (up to 150 words each), and contact information of the proposed guest editors. Highlight any relevant experience in editing or coordinating scholarly work.
Additional Information: Include any other pertinent information that would strengthen the proposal, such as plans for promoting the thematic issue or potential impact on the field.

Proposals should be submitted in a single PDF document to hjfrt.1981@gmail.com with the subject line “Thematic Issue Proposal Submission”. The deadline for submissions is June 16, 2025. Late submissions will not be considered.

The Editorial Board will evaluate all proposals based on the following criteria:

Relevance of the proposed theme.
Scholarly significance and potential impact on the field.
Quality and diversity of the proposed articles and authors.
Feasibility of the timeline and the guest editors’ ability to manage the project.

Guest editors of the chosen proposal will work closely with our editorial team to ensure the high standard of our journal is maintained throughout the publication process.

Articles (co-)written by the guest editors must be externally peer-reviewed to ensure academic integrity and impartiality. This will be coordinated by the editors of the HJFRT.

Timeline: You will be informed no later than July whether your proposal has been accepted. The application process may include an online interview with one or more of the co-editors.

The initial submission deadline for all articles is February 1, 2026. A detailed timeline for the remainder of the process (peer review, revisions, and final manuscript submission) will be discussed. However, the initial deadline of February 1 must be strictly observed.

For any inquiries or additional information regarding this call, please contact the editors of the HJFRT through hjfrt.1981@gmail.com

For more information about the journal, visit https://tandfonline.com/journals/chjf20

The Media as a Tool of International Intervention: House of Cards

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 20:10:53 GMT

May 6, 2025

Online

ECREA CEE Network is organizing an online book presentation — The Media as a Tool of International Intervention: House of Cards by Nidžara Ahmetašević, published in 2024 by Routledge. The book discusses programs of media assistance as tools of democratization in post-conflict societies. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Southeast Europe, international organisations, peacebuilding, and rebuilding society in post-war countries, as well as journalists and policymakers.

The event will be held on Tuesday, 6 May 2025, from 11:00 to 12:00 CET, online, via Google Meet.
The link for the online event will be sent to you via e-mail after you register by filling out this form:
https://forms.office.com/e/96ip0QJ2xx

Book Talk: The Margins of Journalism

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 20:00:22 GMT

May 6, 2025

Masaryk University (Brno)/online

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

You are cordially invited to a talk about and celebration of Lenka Waschková Císařová’s book The Margins of Journalism (Peter Lang 2025) on 6 May 2025 from 4pm Central European Summer Time. The event takes place in person at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic and online. For further details and to register for the online event, please visit:
https://medzur.fss.muni.cz/en/news/book-talk-the-margins-of-journalism

Lenka Waschková Císařová has been one of the most distinguished and insightful observers of the transformation of the Czech journalistic profession and news organizations with much of her research focusing on regional and local journalists and news media. In this talk with Monika Metyková (University of Sussex), Waschková Císařová discusses her book The Margins of Journalism (Peter Lang 2025). The book brings together her insights into peripheral journalists and media organizations within the context of a rapidly changing journalistic field. Waschková Císařová’s comprehensive study of local journalism in the post-socialist, post-transitional Czech media system offers broader learnings for the future of journalism and moves beyond a western-centric gaze.

I look forward to seeing you at the event,

Monika
Dr. Monika Metykova
Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
University of Sussex

Hype Studies Conference

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 19:58:00 GMT

September 10-12, 2025

Barcelona, Spain

Deadline: May 10, 2025

Please consider submitting an abstract (academic, practitioner or artistic) to the newly founded Hype Studies Platform, organising its first edition of the Hype Studies Conference "DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE" in Barcelona, the 10th-12th of September, 2025.

You can find the CfP on the brand new webpage: https://hypestudies.org/conference

Abstract submission is open till the 10th of May.

What is Hype studies about?

Hype Studies is an emergent, transdisciplinary research arena aimed at inquiring hype as a powerful and pervasive phenomenon that influences economic trends, political agendas, media narratives, and technological developments.

We are a group of researchers, scholars and designers exploring how hype is a thing that does things. A force composing and affecting attention, markets, politics, feelings, imagination, matter, knowledge and the social experience of time. The Hype Studies Platform is aimed at sharing resources and events to collectively understand and intervene into hype and its politics.

Join us at the inaugural conference at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya this September. We will organise the conference around these themes and formats:

THEMATIC TRACKS

Concepts and characteristics: How to define hype against rivaling concepts in academic and media representations? What is the difference between hype an imaginaries, trends, alarmism, visions, expectations or futures?
Dynamics and temporalities: How can hype be read, studied, assessed - or even anticipated? When and where does hype happen? How can linguistic, narratological, artistic, historic, ethnographic, statistical and bibliometric, or discourse analytical approaches inform the study of hype?
Engaging: How do practitioners and artists depict, experience, produce and deal with hypes? We welcome contributions on topics ranging from debunking, myth-busting, fact-checking, training in journalism, science and technology communication, artistic interventions...

FORMATS

Panel presentation: Traditional academic panel where you will present your research or insight into a topic, theory, initiative or project and its background. The conference organisers will put your proposal along other 3 similar.
Open floor: Curate a discussion space, where two or more people gather to discuss about a topic, concept, project or event. We expect this format to be interactive and participatory, including the audience. You can submit individually, or as a group.
Making and Doing: Present on the conference space action-research projects, workshops, activist interventions, games, video art and other experiments. We will incorporate your work on the conference location as an art installation, workshop/game or a video. Alternatively, you can also pitch a format you find inspirational (open format).

With best regards,
The hype study group

Generative AI, Media, and Society

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 13:41:21 GMT

Katalin Feher

This groundbreaking book demystifies generative AI’s transformative impact on media, socio-cultural dynamics, ethics, and policy. Defining generative AI as an evolutionary leap in the development of artificial intelligence, the author examines intricate human-machine interactions and socio-technical dynamics, advocating robust, proactive AI governance to address emerging uncertainties. The book is clearly structured into six key chapters, each exploring distinct aspects of the relationship between artificial intelligence, media, and society. The chapter on "Transformation" examines how machine behavior is reshaping our datafied society, questioning whether data is the new oil or digital manure. "Generative AI" investigates the models and future impacts of generative AI as a co-intelligence, revisiting the Turing Test and analyzing societal-business impacts. "AI Media" explores the convergence of media and AI, highlighting robot journalism, synthetic content, and the disinformation era and discussing the trend toward high-risk optimism. "Uncertainties" addresses inherent unpredictability vs. strategic foresight, focusing on challenged business models, sustainability concerns, and emotional intelligence factors. "Ethics" analyzes generative morality and dual-use technology, covering trusted AI principles—from misuse to integrative solutions. Finally, "Policy" discusses governance, labor market impacts, and the importance of human rights and power dynamics in generative AI. Each chapter also provides summaries of impact projects, reflective art, scholarly questions, and strategic takeaways extended with a comprehensive glossary. This is an essential resource for scholars, students, policymakers, technologists, ethicists, and AI industry leaders seeking to rapidly understand and address the challenges and opportunities of generative AI and AI media in a cohesive framework.

https://www.routledge.com/Generative-AI-Media-and-Society/Feher/p/book/9781032968735?srsltid=AfmBOooSTC_hfiwOont0FsNEGcbFfBAyzhem8zvnsoI8FLljX0snefgj

Digital Worlds, Real Impact - The Evolving Role of Games in Society

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 15:19:16 GMT

September 25-26, 2025

University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca

Deadline: May 26, 2025

ECREA Digital Games Research Section symposium

As games become more deeply integrated into everyday life, their cultural, societal, and political significance continues to evolve. Recent shifts in the game industry—including AI-generated content and the rise of platform monopolies—are reshaping how games are designed, distributed, and played. At the same time, societal debates around digital cultures, inclusivity, and the ethics of play highlight the need for critical engagement with games as a force beyond entertainment.

We invite researchers, academics, and experts from diverse disciplines (e.g., Media and Communication, Media Psychology, Education, Sociology etc.) to submit their original contributions related to the evolving role of games in society. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Games as tools for education and game-based learning
E-sports and competitive gaming
Exploring the positive and negative impacts of games on mental health and well-being
Unveiling the profound meaning of games as a form of eudaimonic entertainment
Investigating the social benefits and challenges arising from online gaming
Examining toxicity and extremism within gaming cultures and their impact on society and individuals
Understanding the power of games for information dissemination and persuasion
The cultural and political impact of games
Possible negative effects of gaming on individuals (e.g., aggressiveness, addiction, social isolation)
Platformization in the game industry
Emerging technologies in game design
The role of games in shaping public discourse
Diversity and inclusion in game design and game communities
Environmental sustainability and ecological impact of game production and consumption
Analysing games as art and cultural heritage, and their representation of cultural legacies
Unpacking the applications of games in museums and exhibitions
Delving into the theory and philosophy of meaningfulness in gaming contexts

We additionally welcome submissions on any other aspect of game studies or the intersection of game studies with the broader field of communication and media science. We welcome theoretical contributions, literature reviews, work-in-progress submissions, as well as qualitative and quantitative empirical studies. The submission of panel proposals consisting of 4 presentations is also possible.

PhD panel

The conference will feature a PhD panel for young scholars to give them the opportunity to present their (PhD-) projects and receive feedback from experienced researchers. Presentations of projects at any stage and on any topic related to game studies are welcome.

Application process

Abstracts should be max. 300 words + bibliography. To apply for the PhD panel, add “PhD panel:” to the title of your submission.

Panel proposals should include 1) a 300-word rationale for the panel, 2) a 150-word abstract describing each participant's contribution.

Submission should be made through the online form available here: https://forms.gle/XQnMFEGFCFZfKkir6

The submission deadline is 26th May 2025.

Decisions on the proposals will be made by the middle of June 2025.

The conference will be held at University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The conference fee is 70 Euros (50 Euros for PhD students) and will include catering for lunch and coffee breaks. Each participant should cover their travel and accommodation costs.

For further information

ECREA Digital Games Research Section management team:

Felix Reer, felix.reer@uni-muenster.de
Teresa de la Hera, delahera@eshcc.eur.nl
Salvador Gómez-García, salvadorgomez@hmca.uva.es

Local conference team:

Júlia Vilasís-Pamos, julia.vilasis@uib.es
Jorge Oceja, jorge.oceja@uib.es

Media, Management and Economics

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:33:14 GMT

Arab Media & Society (Issue 39, Winter/Spring)

Deadline: July 30, 2025

The media landscape in the Arab World is undergoing a rapid and profound transformation, shaped by technological advancements, shifting consumer behaviors, and evolving business models. Digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and content creators are redefining the media ecosystem, influencing economic structures, managerial strategies, and regulatory frameworks. As media organizations, content producers, and digital platforms adapt to this changing environment, new challenges and opportunities emerge for sustainable business models, ethical considerations, and innovative revenue streams.
This call for papers seeks to explore the dynamic intersections of media management, economics, and digital transformation in the Arab World. We invite contributions that critically examine how traditional and digital media industries are responding to these shifts and what strategies are being employed to sustain media operations in an era marked by algorithm-driven content distribution, influencer economies, and platformized communication.

Key Themes:

We encourage submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Economic and Managerial Strategies in the Digital Media Environment
Business models of digital media companies, streaming platforms, and content creators.
Monetization strategies in platform economies (e.g., subscriptions, advertising, influencer marketing).
Sustainability and financial resilience of media organizations in the Arab World.
The Role of Social Media and Content Creators in Media Economies
The economic impact of influencers, micro-entrepreneurs, and independent content producers.
Social media monetization and its implications for traditional media businesses.
Algorithm-driven visibility and its effect on content distribution and economic viability.
AI, Automation, and the Future of Media Management
The role of artificial intelligence in newsroom operations, advertising, and audience analytics.
Ethical concerns and regulatory challenges surrounding AI-driven content moderation and personalization.
AI’s impact on labor structures in media industries.
Regulation, Policy, and Media Sustainability
Media policies and regulations affecting digital media and platform governance in the region.
The role of governments and regulatory bodies in shaping digital economies.
Strategies for ensuring content diversity and safeguarding media pluralism in the digital age.
Audience Behavior, Consumption Patterns, and Market Trends
Changing media consumption habits across different demographic segments.
The role of mobile-first and on-demand media consumption in shaping business strategies.
The effects of disinformation, trust erosion, and audience fragmentation on media sustainability.
Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and New Business Models
Media startups, digital entrepreneurs, and emerging players in the Arab Worldern media industry.
Case studies of innovative digital ventures in content production and distribution.
The intersection of technology, creativity, and economic models in media entrepreneurship.
The Global and Local Dynamics of Media Markets
Internationalization and localization strategies of global media players in the region.
Cross-cultural influences on media management and content strategies.
Economic implications of media collaborations and mergers in the Arab World.

The above list is a non-exhaustive set for suggested areas of research. We welcome contributions that explore other dimensions related to media and conflict in the Arab region.

Deadline for Submissions:

Authors interested in submitting their research for peer-review consideration must submit manuscripts by July 30, 2025. Other submissions, including book and conference reviews, shorter (non-peer reviewed) research papers, and columns, should be submitted by August 15, 2025.

Submission Guidelines:

All submissions must be in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx), adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, and have a maximum length of 10,000 words (including footnotes and citations). Please include the author's name (as it should be published), their affiliation, and a brief abstract of no more than 150 words. Please email all submissions to: editor@arabmediasociety.com
For further information regarding our publishing policies, kindly visit: www.arabmediasociety.com/publishing-policies/

Contact Information:

For any inquiries regarding the call for papers, please contact: editor@arabmediasociety.com. Thank you for your interest and support of Arab Media & Society. We look forward to your contributions to this timely and important issue.

How can we give science back to the community?

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:41:10 GMT

May 28, 2025

Online

The coffee gathering of the Children, Youth & Media Section of ECREA will take place virtually on 28 May at 5 pm (CET).

Towards Development of Mediatization Research IX: Youth, Sports, and Media

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:17:36 GMT

December 5, 2025

Online

It will be led by Michael Skey from Loughborough University.
The title of this year’s edition is: Youth, Sports, and Media.
We invite researchers who wish to discuss their current projects within a focused and closed group of media scholars, under the guidance of an expert.

Important dates:

27 October 2025 – Submission of abstracts
5 December 2025 – Closed online workshop

Details and registration form:
https://www.umcs.pl/pl/towards-development-of-mediatization-research-ix-youth-sports-and-media,32378.htm?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ1eVpleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFYVmd3MVhPdXh2U0NDM1VVAR6n83CD81hTEs8jIjkc1w33VqH2zVxwWR3It2-6kgtBwj4oIKyUPWl12AoMZA_aem_yo4EG_k9V-m5jI6jjoWMbg

For any substantive questions about the workshop, please contact:
Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin
katarzyna.kopecka-piech@umcs.pl

Professorship in media pedagogy

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:16:52 GMT

Paderborn University

Paderborn University is a high-performance and internationally oriented university. Within interdisciplinary teams, we undertake forward-looking research, design innovative teaching concepts and actively transfer knowledge into society. As an important research and cooperation partner, the university also shapes regional development strategies. We offer our employees in research, teaching, technology and administration a lively, family-friendly and equal opportunity environment, a lean management structure and diverse opportunities. Join us to invent the future!

In the Faculty of Arts and Humanities the following position is to be filled by 1 April 2026:

W3-Professorship (f/m/d) of Media Pedagogy with a Focus on Empirical Media Research

The future incumbent of the position should conduct research and teaching in the realm of Media Pedagogy with a Focus on Empirical Media Research.

The tasks of the jobholder include:

Teaching in the degree programmes offered by the Department of Media Studies and the Institute of Educational Science (50% each)
Contribution to the development and design of degree programmes
Research in the realm of Media Pedagogy and Empirical Media Research
Involvement in joint research projects
Participation in the University's self-administration

We expect:

Research and teaching experience in Media Pedagogy
Experience in the application and teaching of empirical research methods in the Social Sciences and Media Research
Experience in the critical analysis of and critical reflection on the relationship of the media and education/pedagogy in the context of society, culture, and technology
Doctorate and additional academic achievements that go beyond a doctorate (such as habilitation or habilitation-equivalent achievements)

We favour:

Interdisciplinary research in relevant areas of society such as critical political education, education for democracy, or education for sustainable development
A critical engagement with Media Pedagogy-concepts and practices such as media literacy, media criticism/critical media education/critical media pedagogy, digital education, digital & data literacy, AI literacy
An international academic orientation
Ability to teach also in English

Recruitment requirements:
§ 36 Abs. 1 Ziff. 1 to 4 HG NRW (University law of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia) (completed university degree, pedagogical aptitude, Ph.D. degree and additional academic achievements).

Applications from women are particularly welcome and, in case of equal qualifications and experiences, will receive preferential treatment according to state law (LGG), unless there are preponderant reasons to give preference to another applicant. Applications from disabled people with appropriate suitability are explicitly welcome. This also applies to people with equal opportunities in accordance with the German social law SGB IX.

Paderborn University is certified as a family-friendly university. With our Dual Career Service, we support your partner with career orientation in the region if required. We will be happy to provide you with information about living and working in Paderborn and help you to find childcare options. If you are coming to us from abroad, our Welcome Services will support you on your arrival in Germany.

Please submit your application consisting of the following documents using the Ref. No. 6862 until 5 June 2025 in English or German electronically via the job portal of Paderborn University here:

A cover letter of no more than three pages in length, in which the motivation, suitability for the professorship (structured discussion of the application criteria) and the planned profile of the professorship in the context of the Department, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and Paderborn University are outlined
CV
Certificates
Publication list (the 5 publications most relevant to the professorship are to be marked)
Overview of the courses held and the supervision of dissertations
Three course evaluations
If applicable, information on severely disabled status

Please submit only the requested documents in full. A more detailed research and teaching concept, along with relevant publications, should only be submitted at the second stage of the application process if requested.

The status of the appointment process can be followed on the Appointment Monitor: here

Information regarding the processing of your personal data can be located at: www.uni-paderborn.de/zv/personaldatenschutz

The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Paderborn University
Warburger Straße 100
33098 Paderborn, Germany

Mediatization and Society: Truth, Trust, Technology

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:14:26 GMT

October 9-10, 2025

Budapest, Hungary

This interdisciplinary symposium will explore the evolving intersection of mediatization, technology, and society, focusing on how automation, algorithmic culture, and AI systems transform media, communication, institutions, and everyday life. Under the thematic triad of truth, trust, and transformation, we invite contributions that critically examine how technological mediation reshapes epistemic authority, social imaginaries, public discourse, science communication or journalism while also interrogating the shifting boundaries between humans, technologies, and institutions.

We welcome theoretical and empirical work from scholars in media and communication studies, science and technology studies (STS), sociology, political science, digital humanities, and related fields of interdisciplinary research. The event aims to foster dialogue on the role of mediatization in reinforcing or disrupting trust, navigating post-truth conditions, and envisioning new pathways for democratic and ethical transformation in technologically saturated societies.

As part of this initiative, the organizing committee will submit a proposal for a Special Issue in a Q-ranked journal. The highest-rated papers from the symposium will be considered for publication, especially those developed through open discussion/workshop-based collaboration.

Apply HERE.

PhD Studentship

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:07:42 GMT

University of the Arts London (UAL)

We invite applications for a PhD studentship at University of the Arts London (UAL) to work on a project on “Understanding social media disinformation and war propaganda through the historical archive”, supervised by Dr. Felipe Soares.

This project aims to understand contemporary practices of disinformation and war propaganda on social media through comparison with war propaganda from historical archives linked to the First and Second World Wars. This project will broadly explore the following question: How can we better understand and contextualise contemporary practices of war propaganda on social media through the investigation of WWI and WWII historical archives?

The PhD student will be based at London College of Communication and work in partnership with the Imperial War Museum Institute.

The studentships cover fees at the UK Home rate and a tax-free stipend at the UKRI rate for three years full time or six years part time, pro rata for part-time (2025/26 full time rate £22,780). Students with an ‘overseas’ fee status can apply but will need to cover the difference between the UK and overseas fees rate (2025/26 home rate £6620/overseas £26310), and will be required to reside in the UK until completion of the PhD.

Please review the following link for more information about the project and how to apply: https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/fees-and-funding/phd-and-mphil-funding/ual-post-graduate-research-studentships. The deadline for applications is 12 May 2025.

BACL Book discussion: 'Press Freedom and Regulation in a Digital Era: A Comparative Study'

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:06:07 GMT

April 29, 2025 (1:30 PM)

The British Association of Comparative Law warmly invite you to a discussion of Dr Irini Katsirea’s book, Press Freedom and Regulation in a Digital Era: A Comparative Study (2024), from 12.30-2pm.

This book examines the challenges for press freedom in the nascent digital news ecosystem. Drawing upon decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as from German, UK and US case law, this comparative work explores the regulation of the press in the digital era and the impact of the proliferating media laws, policies, and jurisprudence on press freedom.

Professor Jacob Rowbottom (University of Oxford) will chair the discussion between Dr Irini Katsirea (University of Sheffield), Dr Peter Coe (University of Birmingham), Emeritus Professor Thomas Gibbons (University of Manchester), and Emeritus Professor Bernd Holznagel (University of Münster). There will be time for Q&A.

Max Gressly and Florian Fleck Fund 2026 – International Visiting Scholarship

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:00:39 GMT

University of Fribourg, Switzerland

The Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, offers an International Visiting Scholarship for communication scientists in the postdoctoral phase, financed by a fund raised by the department’s founding fathers Dr. Max Gressly and Dr. Florian Fleck. The remuneration consists of CHF 5.000, permitting a stay of two to three months. The full call for applications for a stay in Fribourg in 2026 is available here: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm/en/assets/public/files/flyers/Gressly-Fleck2026.pdf. Application deadline is 30 September 2025.

Navigating Algorithmic Society: Audiences’ tactics to understanding the world

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 08:59:00 GMT

October 30-31, 2025

Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

Deadline: May 1, 2025

Social media platforms have dramatically changed the ways that people of all ages encounter and engage with news and information, as well as manage vital aspects of everyday life. The algorithmically governed media landscape of today, likewise, not only situates media users in a ‘world of information plenty’ but shapes our daily practices and impacts on how we think, learn, and socialise. This entanglement of media technologies and everyday life is challenging for a variety of reasons, not least as the structure of platforms is ephemeral and fluctuating. This conference brings together scholars to discuss media users’ tactics to navigate news and information, time and space, relations, and identities in an increasingly ephemeral algorithmic landscape.

https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/calendar/events/2025-10-30-ecrea-audience-and-reception-studies-2025

Digital intimacies, young people and everyday life

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 08:51:00 GMT

September 25-26, 2025

University of Padova, Italy

Deadline: April 27, 2025

The conference invites researchers to investigate the multiple ways in which young people interact with, negotiate, and reinvent intimacy in a progressively digitalized world. The goal of the conference is to create a critical discussion space to reflect on the opportunities, challenges, and contradictions inherent in digital intimacies, exploring its intersections with the social, cultural, and technological dimensions of daily life. While the digital offers new possibilities for connections, self-expression, and identity construction, it simultaneously raises questions about privacy, surveillance, commodification, and inequalities.

Find the full call for papers and submission guidelines here: http://www.digitalintimacies.eu/conference

Taylor Swift and the Art of Meaning-Making: Communities, Affect and Storytelling

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 08:45:58 GMT

June 23, 2025

Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC), Human Sciences School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa

Deadline: May 5, 2025

CECC will be hosting a conference on Taylor Swift and the Art of Meaning-Making: Communities, Affect and Storytelling on 23 June 2025.

This conference will explore the Taylor Swift phenomenon and gather scholars working at the intersection of media, literary, cultural, and political studies to explore Taylor Swift’s role in meaning-making processes.

Anonymized abstracts of no more than 500 words (not including references), as well as a short bio should be sent to taylorswiftconference@gmail.com by 5 May 2025. Submissions from early-career researchers and Ph.D. and M.A. students are welcome.

For full details, please visit the conference website: https://taylorswiftconfere.wixsite.com/cecc

Organization: Carla Ganito, Patrícia Tavares, Cátia Ferreira, Naíde Müller, and João Simão

Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC), Human Sciences School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa

18th Biennial Communication Ethics Conference

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 08:40:01 GMT

May 28-30, 2025

Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA

Deadline (EXTENDED): April 30, 2025

The 18th Biennial Communication Ethics conference and the Silver Jubilee Anniversary Conference (2000-2025) of the International Communicology Institute will explore current research on the “image" and "imagination," broadly conceived, across the human sciences.

Our focus is on the phenomenological, semiotic, rhetorical and ethical foundations of communication in the experience of embodied thinking, speaking and inscribing. We seek to explore the frontiers of natural and artificial sign-systems, encounter diverse manifestations of concrete reality and abstract surreality of human imagination, and discover future domains of conscious experience that found the art and practice of human communicating.
We welcome a diversity of scholarly and creative approaches.

Problematics that presenters may consider include, but are not limited to:

What questions are raised by recent phenomenological, semiotic, rhetorical, and critical theories of visual and mental images, visibility and nonvisibility, presence and absence, perception and expression?
Is there a general theory of image ethics? If so, what are its foundations and some of its value limitations (e.g., psychoanalysis, journalism, design, propaganda)?
What does it mean to "see" oneself or another? What is a just distance from which to look?
What social, political, economic and/or ethical contradictions have emerged with new convergences among art, media, software and the communication practices they afford?
How is the rhetoric of visual images impacted (enhanced, limited, etc.) by networked media?
What does artificial intelligence want from images? What do images want from AI? What constitutes personification in/of the media?
In what ways do advertisers imagine consumers?
What pasts, presents, and futures are depicted by the visualization of digital data?
How can we reimagine the objectives of network and social media science?
What histories of communicology and communication ethics have yet to be written? What futures can we imagine?

The domains of the image and imagination encompass all the Arts and Sciences of expression and perception. These include, the Arts of Media: speaking, writing, painting, printing, sculpture, performance, voice; the Sciences of Media: social and media ecology, film and video, photography, screen/digital and legacy media; and Technological Media of Artificial Intelligence: ubiquitous computing, robotics, holographics and applied algorithms. Communication ethics theory, research and application corresponds with and enriches our critical understanding of each domain.

We invite completed papers or extended abstracts of 200–500 words. We also invite panel proposals of three speakers per panel. Please include a panel title with 250-word rationale, titles and 200-word abstracts for each presentation, and contributor contact information (institutional affiliation and email).
New submission deadline: April 30, 2025.

Please visit the conference website for details.

The Margins of Journalism

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 08:25:56 GMT

Lenka Waschková Císařová, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Copyright 2025, Peter Lang
Series: Frontiers in Journalism Studies, editor: Scott A. Eldridge II, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Website: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1340781

The Margins of Journalism explores the peripheral journalists and media organisations who have been overlooked in our efforts to understand a changing journalistic field. Seeing local journalists as unmapped agents of the journalistic field, this book provides a comprehensive study of local journalism in the post-socialist, post-transitional Czech media system, and conceptualises these actors as unique agents within the journalistic field. Informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, it adopts an inductive approach, presenting the stories of specific journalists derived from interviews and participant observation in the places where they work, alongside surveys of local newspapers. From these studies, this book systematically maps these peripheral, journalistic actors and their positions in the journalistic field, accounting for their relationships and the trends shaping Czech journalism to give voice to those who are not usually heard – journalists on the margins.

Building media trust

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:42:09 GMT

Pedro Jerónimo & Inês Amaral (Eds)

Journalism is facing a crisis of trust. Disinformation, political manipulation, “news deserts”, and the decline of independent media threaten access to quality information. Building Media Trust examines this global challenge and presents tangible solutions—from fostering stronger community engagement with local media to the impact of regulation and transparency in journalism. Featuring case studies from Europe, Latin and North America, and Africa, this book outlines pathways to rebuilding a more resilient and trustworthy media ecosystem.

https://labcom.ubi.pt/building-media-trust/

ISBN: 978-989-9229-26-6

Audiences and Intersectionalities

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:40:19 GMT

Media & Jornalismo

Deadline: September 15, 2025

EDITORS:

Juan José Sánchez Soriano - Universidad de Murcia, España; juanjose.sanchez4@um.es
Rafael Ventura - Universitat de Lleida, España; rafael.ventura@udl.cat
Isabel Villegas Simón - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, España isabelmaria.villegas@upf.edu

The research topic of this call for papers primarily focuses on studies of audience reception across various intersectionalities, including LGBTIQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, older adults, racialized communities, people with diverse body types, and women. The objective is to analyze how these social groups interpret and engage with their representation in various media formats (TV news, press, reality shows, TV series, feature films, social media, content creation platforms, etc.). Additionally, it is valuable to examine how general audiences perceive media discourses surrounding these intersectionalities. In this way, the goal is to explore both the mirror effect and the window effect within the audience.

On the one hand, we define audiences in a broad sense, encompassing all individuals who engage with and interact with media content reflective of their time (Ha, 2020). Moreover, we propose viewing audiences not merely as passive consumers of cultural and media content, but as active agents with a crucial role in interpreting these messages (Livingstone, 2015). Therefore, it is essential to understand and explore how these audiences relate to and engage with such content, as evidenced by recent studies, such as those examining the interpretations of trans individuals regarding their representation in television series (Villegas-Simón et al., 2024).

On the other hand, like the society in which it exists, the audience is diverse and heterogeneous (Kristensen & From, 2015). Thus, we are in a context where, historically, the representation of minority social groups has been underrepresented or often constructed through stigma and negative stereotypes (Sánchez-Soriano, 2023), as is the case with people with disabilities (Page et al., 2024) or individuals with diverse body types (Collins et al., 2024). As a result, numerous studies have focused on discourse analysis of both traditional and emerging representations (Ventura et al., 2024). However, we believe it is essential to shift the focus to the final stage of the entire media cycle: how audiences interact with these representations, examining how they engage with and respond to such content.

At the same time, social media has allowed the emergence of new content and representations that generate seemingly more diverse discourses, but which also compete with the spread of hate speech (Miranda et al., 2024). For this reason, it is valuable to develop new research that, within the framework of intersectionality, focuses on analyzing the reception of content from any media and format, including the press, radio, and cinema, as well as social media and content creation platforms like SVODs, while focusing on the current cultural and media context.

Topics:

Methodologies focused on audiences and their interactions with cultural and media content. Reflections and ethics surrounding their application;
Minority audiences and their media and cultural consumption, including women, LGBTIQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, older adults, racialized communities, and individuals with diverse body types;
Perceptions, interactions, and responses of general audiences to content addressing diversity and intersectionality;
Media literacy and intersectionality. Formal and informal learning about diversity and intersectionality through the media;
Fandom and intersectionality;
Youth, intersectionality, and cultural and media consumption;
Digital audiences and intersectionality. Interaction, consumption, and responses to content generated on digital platforms;
Meta-research focused on academic production about audiences and intersectionalities.

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for submitting articles: September 15, 2025
Editors' decision: January 2026
Expected publication date: April 2026

Media & Jornalismo (RMJ) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal, indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science (Emerging Sources Citation). Each paper is sent to two reviewers, who are invited in advance to evaluate it based on the criteria of quality, originality, and relevance in line with the aim and theme of the specific issue of the journal.

Articles can be submitted in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Manuscripts must be submitted through the journal’s website (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/mj). Once accessing RMJ for the first time, registration is required to submit the article and track the editorial process. We recommend reviewing the Author Guidelines, Submission Conditions, and the journal's Editorial Policy.

For more information, you can contact patriciacontreiras@fcsh.unl.pt

Head of Department / Reader / Professor

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:38:17 GMT

City St George’s, University of London - Department of Journalism

City St George’s, University of London is the University of business, practice and the professions and brings together the expertise and excellence of City, University of London and St George’s, University of London into one institution. The combined university is now one of the largest higher education destinations for London students, combining a breadth of disciplines across health, business, policy, law, creativity, communications, science and technology. Our students are at the heart of everything that we do, and we are committed to supporting them to pursue their career and personal ambitions.

Our research is engaged, at the frontier of practice and has a positive impact on the world around us.

Background

The Journalism Department at City St George’s, University of London has been a leader in its field since 1976, with an unrivalled record of getting graduates into the best jobs in journalism. The Department is ranked number one in the UK for Journalism (Guardian University Guide 2023) and number one in the UK for graduate outcomes in Communication and Media (Complete University Guide 2024). Based in the centre of London, the Department has strong industry links, regular high-profile events, and a professional-grade studio and journalism facilities. Many of the Department’s 7000+ alumni now occupy senior positions in the media across the world.

Responsibilities

As Head of Department, you will be the academic and strategic lead with responsibility for day-to-day management, change management, and supporting and mentoring staff. You will have a track record of academic or professional practice experience and be able to evidence success in leading and delivering excellence in teaching and learning, as part of an excellent student experience. As Head of Department, you will be responsible for the oversight of the student experience and for developing and maintaining and developing a portfolio of programmes with national and international appeal. You will have responsibility for enhancing the research performance and external profile of the department, including income generating opportunities and fostering research and external engagement activity.

Person Specification

Applicants will need to have a degree, proven experience of working with or within the relevant sectors to deliver excellent outcomes. You will be either a leading researcher as evidenced through world-leading or internationally excellent publications or a practitioner with significant experience of delivering excellent education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Additional Information

Closing date: 27th April 2025 at 11:59pm.

City St George’s offers a sector-leading salary, pension scheme and benefits including a comprehensive package of staff training and development.

City St George’s, University of London is committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in all its activities, processes, and culture for our whole community, including staff, students and visitors.

We welcome applications regardless of age, caring responsibilities, disability, gender identity, gender reassignment, marital status, nationality, pregnancy, race and ethnic origin, religion and belief, sex, sexual orientation and socio-economic background.

City St George’s operates a guaranteed interview scheme for disabled applicants.

The University of business, practice and the professions.

Apply here: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMP632/head-of-department-reader-professor

Cultural Workers and Generative AI

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:35:21 GMT

AI & Society Journal

Deadline: June 30, 2025

Since the unprecedented agreement that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) managed to negotiate in relation to the use of generative AI in the workplace in 2023, cultural workers—in sectors such as music, film and television, journalism, social media content creation and gaming have been in the spotlight as one of the main exponents of how workers, individually and collectively, have responded to the development of generative AI around the world. These issues range from questions of workforce replacement and the reshaping of labor processes, working conditions, forms of building collectivities (e.g. unions, associations, cooperatives, guilds) and how cultural workers have understood the meanings and practices of AI (e.g. culturally, discursively and politically).

Themes:

This topical collection of AI & Society (AI&S) focuses on how workers in the cultural sector—understood as actors, writers, musicians, game performers, journalists, content creators, etc.—are engaging with generative AI in the workplace. It aims to analyze, on the one hand, the ways that cultural labor is being reshaped by AI in terms of labor process and cultures of production, and, on other hand, the ways that cultural workers are collectively fighting back against AI, through bargaining, co-operative formation or refusal. We are looking for articles that centre workers and work experience in relation to AI around the world. The collection will include empirically-grounded articles with original arguments covering different geographies and sectors. Topics and themes will include:

Labor Processes: How generative AI is reshaping labor processes in the cultural sector, both within and beyond the point of production, including the role of social reproduction.
Cultures of Production: How generative AI is reshaping the cultures of production and creative practices in cultural industries.
Working Conditions: Experiences of everyday work with generative AI in the cultural sector around the world, and in different sub-sectors of the cultural industries.
Identities: The ways that social and global hierarchies and intersectional inequalities (e.g. gender, sexuality, race, ability, nationality, class, etc.) embedded in generative AI models intersect with uses, experiences and organizations of power in the cultural industries.
Data Work: The role of AI data work (Miceli & Posada 2022) in cultural industries. Who are the data workers feeding the machine (Muldoon, Graham & Cant 2024) for the cultural sector, and what are the conditions and politics of their labor?
Worker Organizing: The ways that cultural workers are organizing for and against generative AI in the workplace. How are workers bargaining, campaigning, protesting and mobilizing in relation to AI? How do cultural workers intervene in policies through collective action? How do they collectively learn about and come to understand generative AI?
Worker-Led Reappropriations: How cultural workers are reappropriating AI in non-dominant work arrangements, e.g. cooperatives and collectives, in terms of “computing otherwise” (Amrute & Murillo 2020)?
Geographies and Value Chains: The commonalities and differences of cultural workers’ experiences in relation to generative AI. The role of global dependencies in the cultural sector in relation to AI (e.g. a fair agreement for an actor in one country can badly affect voice actors in another country). How to connect the AI value chains in the cultural industries.
Industry Changes: How is generative AI changing cultural sectors at the industry level? What are the impacts of Big Tech’s increasing involvement in cultural production, especially their investments in generative AI? Who are the tech workers behind these projects on generative AI in cultural production? How is the political economy of cultural production transforming due to the introduction of generative AI?
Intimacies: How generative AI is transforming the nature of relationships between cultural producers and their audiences and fans, for example through the introduction of personalized chatbots trained on the data of (micro)celebrities and through the emergence of AI-generated influencers.

Guest Editors:

Dr Rafael Grohmann, University of Toronto, Canada, rafael.grohmann@utoronto.ca
Dr Daphne Idiz, University of Toronto, Canada, daphne.idiz@utoronto.ca
Dr Zoë Glatt, Microsoft’s Social Media Collective, United States, zoe.glatt@microsoft.com

Contribution Types:

We welcome contributions in the format of research papers (max 10K words) with substantial theoretical, methodological, and empirical interventions. Original papers will be double blind peer-reviewed by two reviewers and the editorial team.

Firstly, send a 500-word abstract to rafael.grohmann@utoronto.ca, outlining a) the main argument; b) the theoretical background; c) methods; d) main findings. If your abstract is accepted, you will be invited to submit the full manuscript.

Important Dates:

Abstract submission: 30th June 2025
Manuscript submission: 31st October 2025
Notifications: 28th February 2026
Revised papers due: 30th April 2026

Submission:

You can find more information about formatting under the section “Submission guidelines” https://www.springer.com/journal/146.

For inquiries and to submit your abstract, please contact: rafael.grohmann@utoronto.ca with the subject “AI&S Special issue on Cultural Workers and Generative AI.”

After approval of the abstract please do submit your manuscript via the 'Submit your manuscript' button available on https://www.springer.com/journal/146.

Academic Writing Retreat

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:34:19 GMT

June 23-27, 2025

Gränna Campus, Jönköping University

Deadline (extended): April 17, 2025

Annette Hill and Joke Hermes

https://ju.se/academicwritersretreat

Writing Retreat Theme: Research Spices

What kinds of savoury and sweet spices do you add to your research practice? This academic writers’ retreat takes the metaphor of spices to explore research craft.

To find out more about registration, fees and the programme go here: https://ju.se/academicwritersretreat

Doctoral student in Media and Communication Studies

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:31:49 GMT

Karlstadt University

The advertised doctoral studentship (fully funded for 4 years) is tied to the research project Beyond Fact-Checking: Detecting Frames and Disinformation in News and Social Media Content with Computational Methods(PI: Dr. Peter Maurer). The project has an interdisciplinary specialisation and will apply advanced methods for digital (computational) text analysis to identify frames and opinions in political texts. The project also includes a comparative perspective where texts in different languages (English, Swedish, German, etc.) are analysed. Applicants with a background in Media and communication, journalism, political science as well as computer/data science (or a related discipline) are welcome to apply.

Apply here: https://kau.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:806004/

Crisis Communication and Conflict Resolution. Dealing with Uncertainties in the New Global Political Era

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:27:31 GMT

May 14-15, 2025

Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Deadline: April 17, 2025

The Faculty of European Studies – Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, The Centre for African Studies – BBU, The uOttawa-IBM Cyber Range and The University of Johannesburg, have the pleasure of announcing the organization of the 5th edition of the international conference Crisis Communication and Conflict Resolution. Dealing with Uncertainties in the New Global Political Era, which will be held on May 14th-15th, 2025.

In crisis situations, effective communication and conflict resolution strategies are important aspects that cannot be disregarded. In order to address these challenges, this international conference aims to support academics, researchers, PhD and postgraduate students, by offering them an opportunity to present their latest research results in the fields of:

Crisis and Risk Communication
Conflict Transformation and Resolution
The United Nations and Conflict Resolution
The European Union and Conflict Resolution
Dealing with Ethnic and Religious Conflicts
Political Communication
Institutional and Corporate Communication
Environmental Communication
Mass-media Communication
Cybersecurity in Politics
AI in Crisis Communication
Discourse Analysis
Education and Learning

The 2025 edition will be held in a hybrid format, both onsite and online. Accepted papers will be published in a post-conference volume (e-book with ISBN).

Supporting journals: Synergies Roumanie and Studia Europaea UBB

Conference languages: English and French

Venue: Faculty of European Studies (1 Em. de Martonne St., Cluj-Napoca, Romania)

Important deadlines:

April 17th, 2025 – deadline for title and abstract submission
April 19th, 2025 – notice of acceptance
October 2025 – deadline for paper submission (optional)

All paper proposal forms should be submitted to both e-mail addresses below:

delia.flanja@ubbcluj.ro & laura.herta@ubbcluj.ro

Appel à communications – Communication de crise et résolution des conflits

Organizing committee:

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Delia Pop-Flanja – BBU

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Laura-Maria Herța – BBU

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Adrian-Gabriel Corpădean – BBU

Dr. Iosif-Viorel Onuț – uOttawa-IBM Cyber Range

Prof. Dr. Bhaso Ndzendze – UJ

Prof. Dr. Sergiu Mișcoiu – BBU

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Paula Mureșan – BBU

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elena Grad-Rusu – BBU

Lect. Dr. Roxana-Maria Nistor – BBU

Lect. Dr. Andreea-Bianca Urs – BBU

Lect. Dr. Gianina Joldescu-Stan – BBU

Assist. Dr. Ramona-Alexandra Neagoș – BBU

Greening the Digital Society: Platforms, Sustainability & the Climate Crisis

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 19:26:28 GMT

Platforms & Society (special issue)

Deadline: May 23, 2025

Editors: Rianne Riemens, Donya Alinejad, Judith Keilbach, Anne Helmond (Utrecht University)

Call: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/pns/callforpaper

Rationale:

Digital technologies, including cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI), are often framed as indispensable allies in the fight against climate change. At the same time, these technologies have an enormous negative environmental impact through their high demands for energy, water, and their reliance on critical raw materials. In recent years, tech companies have increasingly positioned themselves as environmentally responsible actors, working towards decarbonizing their businesses. However, these same companies have reported rising emissions linked to their AI products, still depend on fossil fuels, and continuously expand their infrastructures. Meanwhile, as knowledge brokers, they fail to address climate disinformation circulating on their platforms. Nevertheless, sustainability scholarship has a demonstrated tendency to celebrate platforms as drivers of sustainable societal change (Kuntsman and Rattle 2019; Mouthaan et al., 2022).

We invite contributions that critically engage with the complex and often contradictory relationship between platform companies, the climate crisis, and the pursuit of just, sustainable futures. We seek papers that explore the role of platform companies in the challenge of greening the digital society.

This special issue asks: How does the role of platform companies—ranging from Big Tech firms to AI startups, chip manufacturers, and cloud infrastructure providers—in the climate crisis call for new perspectives on platform power and its environmental impact? How can we analyze the infrastructural, political, and cultural power of the “new conglomerates” (Srnicek, 2024), particularly in their roles as knowledge brokers or energy intermediaries? Can we speak of a “platformization” of the climate crisis (Helmond, 2015), and if so, what does that entail? And how do these changes occur in different geographical contexts or parts of the supply chain?

We invite contributions from a diverse group of authors using a range of methods, working in different regional and institutional contexts, and focusing on a variety of case studies. Possible topics include:

* Methods and approaches for studying the environmental impact of digital platforms;

* Sustainability and waste across data infrastructures and the stack;

* Tech companies and CEOs as environmental actors;

* Theorizations of green platform capitalism and “green extractivism”;

* Digital platforms and the production, dissemination, and control of climate knowledge;

* The political economy of Big Tech and energy provision/distribution (wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, fossil fuels) across different scales;

* Sustainability as a “hype” and platforms’ corporate greenwashing;

* Corporate environmentalism of Big Tech versus state politics (e.g. national public–private partnerships, friction in local contexts, lobby practices);

* Big Tech and climate justice movements (including local and Global South resistance);

* Visions and imaginaries of a green platform society.

Deadlines: Interested authors are invited to submit abstracts (400-500 words excl. references) to r.riemens@uu.nl<mailto:r.riemens@uu.nl> until May 23rd. After acceptance, authors will be asked to discuss first full drafts of papers during a hybrid workshop in January 2026, with official submissions due in March 2026. We aim to publish the special issue in Platforms & Society in winter 2026/2027.

You can find more information here:https://journals.sagepub.com/page/pns/callforpaper

We look forward to receiving your abstracts.

Post-doctoral candidate AI, Emotion Detection and Political Ideology

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 13:05:13 GMT

University of Amsterdam

We are hiring: For the project "Ideology, Emotion Detection AI, & the Propagation of Social Inequality" we are looking for a post-doc (application deadline April 15th). The project examines how AI emotion detection models may perpetuate political ideology by reinforcing gender and ethnic stereotypes. A key concern is that these models are trained on datasets labeled by human annotators, whose political ideology may shape how they categorize emotional expressions—often in ways that align with stereotypes. When AI systems learn from these biased labels, their outputs can further influence human decision-making, unintentionally reinforcing existing inequalities. To investigate these dynamics, the project will hire a post-doc for 12 months, starting this spring.

See the vacancy: https://werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies/postdoc-investigating-human-sources-of-bias-in-ai-face-classification-models-netherlands-13907

Global Processes in Audio Content Creation

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 12:45:46 GMT

Deadline (EXTENDED): May 6, 2025

Editors: Dr. Emma Heywood, Dr. Richard Berry, Prof. Tanja Bosch and Prof. Kim Fox

Publisher: Peter Lang

Overview

This edited volume seeks to explore the evolving landscape of global audio production and use, with a particular focus on moving beyond Western-centric narratives. The book will bring together contributions from academics, practitioners, and organizations to highlight diverse perspectives on the theory and practice of radio, podcasting, and other audio media. It aims to foster a dialogue between practice and theory, engaging voices from the Global North and South and showcasing underrepresented practices, technologies, and cultures.

Call for Contributions

We invite submissions from scholars, practitioners, and organizations to contribute original chapters that reflect on the production, use, and impact of audio media globally. Contributions may explore the intersections of practice and theory, offer case studies, or provide evidence-based insights into audio production in diverse contexts.

Chapters may be theoretical (5,000–6,000 words) or shorter reflections by practitioners or organizations (1,000–3,000 words). Submissions from underrepresented regions, particularly the majority world, are highly encouraged.

Themes and Topics

We welcome proposals on (but not limited to) the following themes:

1. The Universality of Listening:

How is audio experienced, produced, and consumed globally?
Cross-cutting themes including culture, technology, gender, language, and community.

2. Global Perspectives on Production and Technology:

Audio production in resource-limited settings (e.g., solar-powered devices, limited internet access).
Innovations and adaptations in audio technologies across regions.
Ethical questions and applications of AI in audio production: Is AI a Western obsession or globally relevant?

3. The Producer:

Diverse roles and practices of audio producers, from community radio broadcasters to DIY creators and AI-generated content.
Challenges and opportunities faced by local and community organizations.

4. The Place:

The influence of geographic and cultural contexts on audio production and consumption.
Case studies from the Global South, conflict zones, and areas with limited connectivity.

5. The User:

Audiences and their evolving engagement with audio content.
Radio as a tool for advocacy, education, and democracy—or propaganda and control.
Generational perspectives: Is youth radio dead, and if so, who killed it?

6. The Purpose:

Exploring the role of audio across organizational types: public service broadcasters, commercial media, community radio, and alternative platforms.
State vs. public service broadcasting: tensions and challenges.

7. Audio and Podcasts in Global Markets:

Podcasting as a cultural phenomenon and its industrial practices.
How audio formats are converging with other media.

Submission Process

Please submit an abstract of 300–500 words along with a brief bio (150 words) detailing your background and expertise. Abstracts should clearly state the chapter’s objectives, methodology, and contribution to the field.

Deadlines

● Abstract Submission Deadline: Tuesday 6th May 2025

● Notification of Acceptance: Friday 23rd May 2025

● Deadline for submission of first draft: Monday 6th October 2025

● Full Chapter Submission Deadline: Monday 8th January 2026

Contact Information

Please send your submissions and any inquiries to theglobalaudiobook@gmail.com.

About the Editors

The book is edited by Dr. Emma Heywood, a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Sheffield with expertise in radio journalism in conflict and humanitarian settings; Dr. Richard Berry, a scholar specialising in radio and podcasting as audio media; Prof Tanja Bosch, National Research Foundation Chair in the Digital Humanities at the University of Cape Town; and Prof Kim Fox who is an award-winning professor of practice in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication in the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo.

We look forward to your contributions to this exciting exploration of global audio practices!

Special issue on Inquiring the Intersection of Game and Play through Contemporary Artistic Practices

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 06:27:36 GMT

International Journal of Games and Social Impact

Deadline: June 15, 2025

Guest Editors: Hugo Barata (Lusófona University, CICANT) & Rui Antunes (Lusófona University, CICANT)

This special issue of The International Journal of Games and Social Impact invites contributions that delve into the role of artistic practices in shaping game experiences and social narratives. In the same way, it aims to contribute to a multidisciplinary dialogue that examines the convergence of art in game design through its theoretical, practical, and methodological dimensions.

Submissions may address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

In what ways can games be considered a legitimate form of artistic expression?
How can interdisciplinary approaches enhance our understanding of the relationship between Games and Art?
What potential exists for collaboration between artists and game designers to create innovative and socially impactful experiences?
What role do emerging technologies, such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, play in shaping the future of games as an art form?
How have advancements in technology transformed the horizon of game design and artistic expression?
In what ways can games challenge stereotypes and promote inclusivity?
How do the mechanics of games contribute to their potential as a medium for cultural critique?
How have historical games been influenced by artistic practices?

Publication Timeline

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Dates are indicative.

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 15-06-2025

Notification of Acceptance for Full Paper Submissions: 16-10-2025

Publication Date: First semester of 2026

For more information: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijgsi/announcement/view/231.

Call for organizers: Mid-Term Conference for ECREA’s Children, Youth & Media Section

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 05:54:56 GMT

The Children, Youth & Media Section of ECREA invites proposals from its members to organize and host the 2025 Mid-Term Conference. We welcome institutions or research groups within the section to submit proposals to host this event.

Interested members should submit their proposals by May 2nd.

ARS ECREA: Methodologies, case studies and experiences

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 15:11:59 GMT

April 15, 2025

Online

The Audience and Reception Studies (ARS) section of the ECREA [European Association of Comunication and Education Research ] and YECREA [ Young Scholars Network of ECREA]; invites everyone to an insightful online discussion about the diverse experience of doing audience and reception studies in diverse contexts.

Reserve a spot in this event for free to receive the link to access the event. You can also get in touch with the organisers mentioned below for more information :

Nivedita Chatterjee (n.chatterjee@surrey.ac.uk )

Paulo Cauraceiro (Paulo.couraceiro@obercom.pt)

Between Bodies and Homes

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:39:02 GMT

Soapbox 7.0

Deadline: April 30, 2025

To feel like we belong is one of our most common desires. Our bodily relation to home is not a simple one: it is marked by hostile power structures. These structures plunge the body into an interconnected web of demarcations, mediations, and hierarchisation, which determine one’s ability or failure to feel at home. Race, gender, ability, and class are factors that designate one’s sense of home. Labels further differentiate between bodies, some rendered political (“immigrant,” “refugee”), while others insidiously a-political (“expat”). How do we think with the body in ways that address its complicated relationship to home? What are the ways to engage with our bodily positionalities that may allow for a more equitable habitation?

Thinking with aestheSis that privileges sensing over totalising reasoning of aestheTics, María Lugones sees the body through its permeability, which “allows us to reconceive about the world we live in.” Turning towards the sensorial relationality, we discover that the fixed, man-made, ‘rational’ lines that demarcate home and body as separate, contain leaks. Leaks that bring the body home. For its eighth issue, Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis invites (young) researchers, (established) scholars, and creatives alike to submit works that consider practices, experiences, and methodologies that uncover punctures and cavities of structures, lines, boundaries, and borders. What seeps, spills, or flows through these holes? What exists in between home and body that informs who and where we are? What are the moments when the body and home are torn apart? And when do they collapse into one?

Decolonial theory offers one perspective from which we can explore the leaks between homes and bodies. For non-Western subjects, when one has seen oneself as the Other through Western eyes, the decolonial journey begins to return to one’s bodies and homes. Quijano teaches us that the relationship between European and other cultures is one of “subject” and “object,” while Tlostanova, in her seminal paper “Can the Post-Soviet Think?,” reminds us that inventing theory “remains a privilege of the West.” Nevertheless, these man-made divisions only appear as stable and can be questioned through embodied relationality that allows “communities and social movements to defend their territories and worlds against the ravages of neoliberal globalization” (Escobar). Lugones calls for “a resistant permeable sensing” (Calderon). Vasquez speaks of worldhood and earth-hood, the possibility of being at home in and with others and with Earth that stands in opposition to the homelessness of modernity’s artifice. Taking a decolonial lens on Merleau-Ponty’s flesh and Barthes’s notion of punctum, Ortega argues that Latinx art carnally pierces with love that frees from dominant knowledges. Finally, Anzaldúa asks us to stay with the border and perceive it as a wound that offers hybridity.

other possible access points:‍

affective leaks

Sarah Ahmed writes that “being-at-home suggests that the subject and space leak into each other”: home becomes a second skin that allows for a receptive touch. What does it mean to feel at home, and how does the body sense home? Rather than spatiotemporal, can home become an emotion?

phenomenological leaks

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological attention to the in-between of the body and the world that gives form to a chiasmatic flesh has long entertained cultural scholars, with Baker and Sobchak contributing to understanding cinema as tactile. How can the phenomenological attention to bodies and the world inform our understanding of home?

architectural leaks

Architecture architectures—or builds—a predetermined relationship between subject and structure. Dwellings provide shelter just as much as they violently enclose. Ingold advocates a dwelling perspective that argues it is the surroundings that shape the mind and not the opposite. Where does the body stop and the city start?

posthuman leaks

In Tuana’s concept of viscous porosity, it is the membrane that facilitates the interactions. In what way do the permeable borders mimic membranes when choosing who to accept and who to refuse? Re-thinking the neoliberal ideal, can a better future exist within the membrane?

leaks and memory studies

How do forms of violence pertain to what Ann Laura Stoler theorizes as ‘disabled’ and ‘dissociated’ histories? What does it mean to be-long in that what no-longer exists or never existed? How does nostalgia entail a violent form of be-longing that implicates the present? (Boym).

leaks in everyday life

Marxist sociologist-philosopher Henri Lefebvre tells us that “a revolution will come about when, and only when, people can no longer live their everyday lives.” A leakage, a failure of infrastructure, may precisely set such a process in motion. At what point—while cooking, walking the dog, showering, seeing friends—do we notice the droplets dripping from the ceiling, forming a deep puddle in the centre of the living room?

the details:

We are inviting extended proposals in MLA formatting and referencing style to be submitted to submissions@soapboxjournal.net by April 30th, 2025. Each proposal must include an abstract of 300-500 words and a brief outline of the content and its order (up to 200 words, can be in bullet points!). The outline is meant to indicate the intended structuring and weighing of the various elements of your text; we understand and expect that this will change again during drafting and editing. Submissions should be sent as a file attachment to the email, and the file's content should be anonymised.

Guidelines for creative submissions are more flexible. They can be finished works, word-based or otherwise, but please keep in mind our spatial limitations: we publish and print in book format, and we have a limited number of pages to give to each submission. This year, we are also open to visual submissions (excluding moving image), provided they are accompanied by an artistic statement and an explanation of how the work connects to the theme. A sense of the formatting possibilities can be garnered from previous issues and our Instagram (open-access PDF versions are available on our website).

We will try to send out conditional acceptance emails by May 23rd. Upon acceptance, the authors of the academic essays will be asked to submit a 4000-6000-word full draft by August 25th. The editing and publishing process will span the next academic year (September 2025 - February 2026).

It would be very helpful if you could let us know in your email where you saw our CFP. If you have any questions regarding your submission, do not hesitate to contact us at submissions@soapboxjournal.net.

works referenced

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 1987.

Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press, 2018.

Meda Calderon, Denise. “Decolonial Movidas: María Lugones’s Notion of Decolonial Aesthesis through Cosmologies.” The Pluralist, vol. 18, no. 1, 2023, pp. 22–31, https://doi.org/10.5406/19446489.18.1.03.

Ortega, Mariana. Carnalities. Duke University Press, 2024.

Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 2-3, 2007, pp. 168–178, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353.

Tlostanova, Madina. “Can the Post-Soviet Think? On Coloniality of Knowledge, External Imperial and Double Colonial Difference.” Intersections, vol. 1, no. 2, 2015, pp. 38-58, https://doi.org/10.17356/ieejsp.v1i2.38.

Vazquez, Rolando. “Precedence, Earth and the Anthropocene: Decolonizing Design.” Design Philosophy Papers, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 77-91, https://doi.org/10.1080/14487136.2017.1303130.

further suggestions

Ahmed, Sara. “Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, 1999, pp. 329–347, https://doi.org/10.1177/136787799900200303.

Alaimo, Stacy. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana University Press, 2010.

Barker, Jennifer M. The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience. University Of California Press, 2009.

Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. Basic Books, 2001.

Deleuze, Gilles and Tom Conley. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. University Of Minnesota Press, 2012.

Fisher, Mark. “What Is Hauntology?” Film Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 1,2012, pp. 16–24, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2012.66.1.16.

Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Routledge, 2000.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Translated by Alphonso Lingis, edited by Claude Lefort, Northwestern University Press, 1968.

Mogoș, Petrică and Laura Naum. “On Easternfuturism: Imagining Multiple Futures.” Kajet Journal, no. 05, 2022.

Lefebvre, Henri. Everyday Life in the Modern World. Translated by Sacha Rabinovitch, Harper & Row, 1971.

Parvulescu, Anca. “Eastern Europe as Method.” The Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 63, no. 4, 2019, pp. 470-481, https://doi.org/10.30851/634002.

Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics. Edited by Gabriel Rockhill, Bloomsbury Academic, 2004.

Rigney, Ann. “Remaking Memory and the Agency of the Aesthetic.” Memory Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 2021, pp. 10–23, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020976456.

Sobchack, Vivian. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. University Of California Press, 2004.

Stoler, A. L. “Colonial Aphasia: Race and Disabled Histories in France.” Public Culture, vol. 23, no. 1, 2011, pp. 121–156, https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2010-018.

Toop, David. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. Serpent’s Tail, 2001.

Tuana, Nancy. “Viscous Porosity: Witnessing Katrina.” Material Feminisms, edited by Susan Hekman and Stacy Alaimo, Indiana University Press, 2008.

NIC Helsinki 2025 Conference

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:34:26 GMT

August 13-15, 2025

University of Helsinki, Finland

Deadline: April 10, 2025

The 31st Nordic Network for Intercultural Communication Conference will be arranged in Helsinki on 13–15 August 2025. The NIC 2025 conference theme is "Evolutions in intercultural communication: New concepts and methodologies". With this theme, we wish to encourage discussion of conceptual and methodological development in the field of intercultural communication, drawing connections between research, teaching and practice.

In addition to those addressing the theme, we also welcome proposals that explore related aspects of intercultural communication. These are, for example,

Critical evaluations of theories of intercultural communication, education, or management
Migration and new or alternative forms of language, interaction, and communication
Challenges of trans/poly/cross/intercultural encounters and relationships
Decolonization and the knowledge on culture and communication
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in different spaces and settings
New questions on education and learning in multicultural societies

Intercultural communication is an interest to and researched by scholars in a wide variety of fields and disciplines such as language, media and communication, multilingual and/or multicultural education, sociolinguistics, social interaction, international management, discourse studies, cultural studies, ethnic relations, and cross-cultural psychology. We welcome submissions from all.

Abstract submission

Please submit your max 250-word abstract using the abstract form below. The abstracts will be anonymously peer reviewed. Note that all submissions should be in English and those submitting the abstract should be prepared to attend the conference in person. The deadline for submitting your abstract is April 10th, 2025.

SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT HERE

If the abstract includes citations, please provide the appropriate references (the list of references is not included in the word count).

Welcome to Helsinki in August!

For further details and up-to-date information, see the NIC Helsinki 2025 Conference website.

Organizing committee: Saila Poutiainen (Chair), Mélanie Buchart, Yoonjoo Cho, Niina Hynninen, Janne Niinivaara

Communication and Capital(ism)

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:29:03 GMT

August 28-30, 2025

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Deadline: April 15, 2025

Co-organised by the Slovene Communications Association

Mid-term conference of the European Sociological Association, Research Network 18 – The Sociology of Communications and Media Research

The small-scale and focused mid-term conferences of the European Sociological Association's Research Network 18 seek to ensure that the sociological investigation of media and communications is given full focus, distinguishing its work from that of large international associations, which provide important forums for communications and media research but do not have especially sociological concerns.

The challenges facing societies today seem daunting even by the most volatile historical standards. These include deepening economic inequalities, class antagonisms, the rise of radical right-wing authoritarianism around the world and violent wars that may soon erupt into even wider international conflicts. Generative AI is increasingly reshaping virtually all relations, and digital tech giants are running amok along with their increasingly unhinged owners. Somewhere behind all this, looming on the horizon, is an ecological crisis. While many of these issues are intricately interlinked and, among other things, speak volumes about the deepening power imbalances and crises of liberal institutions, their causes and trajectories may be divergent and contradictory, with outcomes that seem difficult to predict.

As the conference title suggests, no social issues can be addressed without recourse to communication or capitalism. For Hanno Hardt, critical scholar and former professor in Ljubljana, communication could be considered "the sine qua non of human existence" (1979, 1). In this sense, the study of communication must always be the first stepping stone, but one that is now influenced and shaped in various ways by digital giants and media-as-industries. Similarly, critical authors have historically regarded capitalism as a system that cannot be ignored in a holistic social analysis. Sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has, for instance, asserted "that contemporary society cannot really be understood by a sociology that makes no reference to its capitalist economy" (2012, 1). In other words, the sociology of communications and media must inevitably include or address these two of the most fundamental social relations in its research.

In line with these premises, the conference will feature a plenary round table on digital platforms and labour and plenary talks by critical scholars who have addressed the dynamic between communication and capitalism throughout their careers:

Kylie Jarrett (University College Dublin, Ireland)

Graham Murdock (Loughborough University, UK)

and Slavko Splichal (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).

The Communication and Capital(ism) conference aims to bring together contributions that explore the unpredictable and unstable social terrain in the era of digital capitalism. It seeks to critically engage with these issues and their consequences by focusing on the role of social communication, media, and journalism. We are looking for theoretical and empirical submissions that may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Theoretical reflections on political economy and cultural studies;
The role of critique and criticality for the sociology of media;
Digital capitalism, imperialism and colonialism;
Digital platforms and tech giants;
Labour and platformisation of working conditions;
Capital, class, gender, and race;
Global media corporations and media-as-industries;
Capitalism and journalism;
Sociology of news;
The material and ideological impact of advertising;
Transformations in political communication;
Democracy and democratic transformations;
The public sphere;
(Re-)presentations in journalism and the media;
Possible alternatives to the existing political/economic malaise and digital capitalism.

Abstract submission:

Abstract submission deadline: extended until 15 April 2025

Notification of selected abstracts: 15 May 2025

Conference dates: 28-30 August 2025

Abstracts should be sent to: Conference Organising Committee,

rn18esasubmission@gmail.com

Abstracts should be sent as an e-mail attachment (400-600 words including title, author name(s), email address(es), and institutional affiliation(s)). Please insert the words "ESA RN18 Submission" in the subject. Although we do not provide a template for the abstract submission, we expect abstracts that include a rationale, research question(s), theoretical and/or empirical methods applied, and potential results and implications. Each abstract will be independently reviewed by two members of the ESA RN18 Board based on the call for papers.

Permanent Lecturing Post

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:27:07 GMT

Limerick, Ireland

We are happy to announce that we have a permanent position on staff here in the Department of Media and Communication Studies in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland.

The title may be confusing “Assistant Professor” but the grade is that of “Lecturer”. This is a higher level than the title used in the advertisement may show, it is not a junior position. The salary scale reflects that. It is €63,309 to €101,462.

The job specification and application form are available here: https://www.mic.ul.ie/about-mic/vacancies

The closing date is 22nd April.

DCLead Salzburg School for ESR “Digital Communication and Sustainable Societies”, Autumn 2025

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:25:55 GMT

September 29-October 2, 2024

Puchberg, Austria

Deadline: April 30, 2025

Join us at the first DCLead Salzburg School taking place from 29 September to 2 October 2025 in Puchberg, Austria!

This four-day PhD School invites early-stage researchers (PhDs and advanced MA students) to explore global perspectives on communication, sustainability, and social good. The programme includes workshops & academic feedback, keynote talks, and excursions. It awards 5 ECTS credits, then working language is English.

The application deadline for the DCLead Salzburg School is 30 April 2025. The application must include an abstract (3,000–6,000 characters), a motivation letter (up to 5,000 characters), and the details of a referee, including their email address.

Fee: € 490 / € 250 (based on currency strength; includes accommodation, meals, excursions)

Find more information on our homepage https://dclead.eu/ and apply now!

Maps as Media Constructs: Exploring Theory, Practice, Critique, and Neopragmatism

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:22:58 GMT

Helena Atteneder, Olaf Kühne, Timo Sedelmeier

Publisher: Springer, 2025

Link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-80707-7

The book offers an interdisciplinary introduction to cartographic representations as multimedia constructs, drawing from media and communication studies, geography, and cartography. It addresses both theoretical foundations and practical applications, with examples from public discourse on climate change, COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine.

We hope this publication will be of interest to scholars working in media geographies, visual communication, and critical cartography.

Please let me know if you need any further details or a short blurb.

Thank you very much in advance – I’d greatly appreciate it!

Warm regards,

Helena Atteneder

ARS 2025: Navigating Algorithmic Society: Audiences’ tactics to understanding the world

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:21:38 GMT

October 30-31, 2025

Stockholm, Sweden

Deadline: May 1, 2025

The conference aims to foster engaged debates about, and a comprehensive understanding of, challenges related to the quickly transforming algorithmic society, for media users across Europe. We welcome a wide range of approaches and look forward to discussions that will contribute to scientific analysis of our contemporary media world.

Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:17:40 GMT

Ipek A. Celik Rappas

Cornell University Press, 2025

Filming in European Cities explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. Ipek A. Celik Rappas accounts the rising demand for original and affordable locations for screen projects due to the growth of streaming platforms. As a result, screen professionals are repeatedly tasked with chores such as transforming a former factory in Istanbul to resemble a war zone in Aleppo, or finding a London street that evokes Barcelona.

Celik Rappas highlights the pivotal role crew members play in transforming cities and locations into functional screen settings. Examining five European media capitals—Athens, Belfast, Berlin, Istanbul, and Paris—the book delves into the overlooked aspects of location-related screen labor and its ability to generate production value. Filming in European Cities demonstrates that in its perpetual quest for authentic filming locations, the screen industry extracts value from cities and neighborhoods, their marginalized residents, and screen labor, enriching itself through this triple exploitation.

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501779985/filming-in-european-cities/#bookTabs=1

Please use code 09BCARD for 30% discount

Media Industries, Media Geography, European Studies

Media and Propaganda in an Age of Disinformation

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:13:20 GMT

Edited By: Nelson Ribeiro, Barbie Zelizer

ISBN 9781032756011, March 2025, Routledge

A critical and timely collection that argues for the centrality of propaganda in discussions about the contemporary media landscape and its informational ecosystems.

This book explores how “propaganda,” a foundational concept within media and communication studies, has recently been replaced by alternative terms (disinformation, misinformation, and fake news) that fail to capture the continuities and disruptions of ongoing strategic attempts to (mis)guide public opinion. Edited by Nelson Ribeiro and Barbie Zelizer, the collection highlights how these concepts must be understood as part of a long legacy of propaganda and not just as new phenomena that have emerged in the context of the digital media environment. Chapters explore the strategies and effects of propaganda through a variety of globally diverse case studies, featuring both democracies and autocratic regimes, and highlight how only by understanding propagandistic forms and strategies can we fully begin to understand how public opinion is being molded today by those who resort to deception and falsehood to gain or keep hold of power.

An important resource for students and scholars of media and communication studies and those who are studying and/or researching media and propaganda, media and power, disinformation, fake news, and political communication.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

3 Fully Funded PhD Positions

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:06:33 GMT

Groningen University, Centre for Media and Journalism Studies

We’re happy to announce that we are taking applications for 3 fully funded positions at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands!

The open PhD positions offer unique opportunities to work in an internationally recognized research centre and gain valuable research experience at a top-ranked European university. As a PhD candidate, you will develop your own research project in consultation with the supervisory team. You will conduct independent and original academic research and report results via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and ultimately a PhD dissertation. The PhD thesis is to be completed within four years. You are also requested to teach.

The Groningen Centre for Media and Journalism Studies conducts interdisciplinary research in the field of media and journalism studies. It aims to do cutting-edge research that addresses issues that are essential to understand processes of communication in an increasingly mediatized society.

The positions will all be associated with the CMJS, with an expected start date in September 2025. Deadline for applications is 30 April 2025.

Open positions:

Gendered Visual Disinformation

This PhD project investigates disinformation at the intersections of gender, visual communication, and political discourse. It studies how women politicians’ intersectional identities are targeted in false and misleading (visual, GenAI) content (e.g., deepfakes), and explores how such discourse poses new challenges for women’s political representation in democratic discourse and civic life.

For more information: e.r.amit-danhi@rug.nl or m.gehrke@rug.nl

For the full ad and application link: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S000B8ZP

Uncovering Women’s Cultural Production in India’s Marathi Film Industry Archives

This PhD project investigates the representation and preservation of feminist and women’s cultural heritage within India's Marathi film industry archives. We are particularly interested in projects invested in studying the Marathi film industry post-independence, including any period between 1947-2025. This project aims to (a) address the gaps in archival material related to women's contributions to Marathi cinema and (b) explore how these representations have evolved and what they reveal about broader industrial and socio-cultural changes over time.

For more information: a.v.m.copeland@rug.nl or s.n.mehta@rug.nl

For the full ad and application link: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S000B8YP

Media literacy as resilience for Ukrainian refugees

This PhD project will study how Ukrainian refugee families in The Netherlands use and co-develop media literacy skills to cope with wartime information challenges. The project will involve ethnographic (including traditional and digital ethnography) work with Ukrainian refugees in The Netherlands, following their daily media use practices to develop a theoretical framework and practical tools for building resilience against disinformation and mediated trauma during war

For more information: o.pasitselska@rug.nl or a.neag@rug.nl

For the full ad and application link: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S000B8JP

Belarus and Belarusians in the time of geopolitical insecurities: global perceptions and domestic realities

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 09:22:12 GMT

September 11-12, 2025

Vilnius University, Lithuania

Deadline: May 18, 2025

Five years after the pivotal conference “Belarus 2020 and Beyond: Path Dependency or Break with the Past?”, the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University is hosting a new international conference to examine Belarus’s evolving political landscape in the face of continued repression, war, and shifting geopolitical situation. The event will take place at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University on September 11-12, 2025.

The 2020 protests marked a defining moment in Belarusian history. However, in the years that followed, the Lukashenka regime intensified its authoritarian grip and aligned itself more closely with Russia’s war in Ukraine. This conference will critically assess the consequences of these developments, the transformation of the Belarusian state and society under deepening repression and co-option, and the changing geopolitical situation. The event will also address such topics as diaspora, exiled political leadership, and civil society.

Bringing together scholars, policymakers, and experts, this conference will explore the geopolitical struggle over Belarus, analysing Russia’s strategic influence and the EU’s policy responses in the situation of shifts in the US foreign policy. As Belarus remains at the intersection of regional instability and great-power politics, this conference aims to provide an in-depth analysis of its developments. Reflecting on five years after the mass protest in authoritarian Belarus and three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what lessons have been learned?

The invitation extends to the researchers interested in Belarus, its domestic and foreign policies and working in the academic fields of area studies, comparative politics, international relations, security studies, economics, history, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and related disciplines. Organisers suggest the following Conference topics, but proposals for papers on other topics related to the developments in Belarus and Belarusian diaspora after 2020 are also welcome:

Belarus in the current geopolitical situation: security and military threats

We invite submissions of papers on official Minsk’s foreign policy and Belarusians’ geopolitical orientations, as well as Russia and the EU’s responses to developments in Belarus amid shifts in US foreign policy. Contributions may explore hard and soft security issues, including military aspects of Russia-Belarus cooperation, security threats linked to energy and the Astravets nuclear power plant, and challenges related to disinformation and cyber security. Papers may also examine Belarus’s role in regional power struggles and its geopolitical future.

Belarusian diaspora and migration

We invite submissions of papers analysing issues related to Belarusian migration and diaspora, focusing on Belarusians in Lithuania in particular. Papers may examine the political, social, and economic dynamics of Belarusian migration, the role of the diaspora, exiled opposition and civil society in promoting democratic norms, and the relations between Belarusian migrants and host societies. Topics may include but are not limited to analysis of a post-2020 Belarusian diaspora in different countries, transnational networks, and the challenges Belarusians abroad face.

Ukraine, Belarus, and regional security: war’s impact and responses

We invite submissions examining Belarus’s role in Russia’s war against Ukraine, focusing on the Lukashenka regime’s support for the Kremlin and the Belarusian opposition and civil society’s solidarity with Ukraine. Papers may explore the geopolitical and security implications of Belarus’ alignment with Russia and its impact on regional stability. Additionally, we welcome analyses of how the war has shaped attitudes toward Belarusians, both in Ukraine and among other democratic nations, and growing security concerns linked to Belarus.

The Belarusian economy in a shifting geopolitical situation

We invite submissions of papers examining the economic situation in Belarus. Contributions may explore the impact of EU sanctions on Belarus in the situation of possible changes in the US sanctions policy. We welcome analyses of Russia-Belarus economic cooperation, including Moscow’s increasing economic leverage over the country and the risks of deeper economic absorption. Papers may address, but are not limited to, topics such as the structural challenges of the Belarusian economy, trade and energy dependencies, and the prospects for economic diversification.

Media and civil society in Belarus: resistance and cooption. Human rights, gender and inclusion

We invite papers examining the role of media and civil society in Belarus, focusing on resistance and, vice versa, state-led co-optation. We are interested in research on human rights, gender equality, and inclusion, which are both instrumentalised and actively suppressed by the authoritarian regime. Papers may explore media censorship, propaganda, disinformation, grassroots activism, civil society, and human rights.

Public administration, government, and governance in Belarus

We invite submissions of papers exploring public administration issues in Belarus and how democratic concepts and norms—such as good governance and transparency—are promoted, adapted, and manipulated in the authoritarian state. Papers might include but are not limited to analysis of civil service, public finances and budgeting, international development, and infrastructure programmes and projects in Belarus focused on governance issues.

The deadline for the paper submission is the 18th of May, 2025. Proposals have to be submitted in English by filling out the this form.

All proposals will undergo a selection procedure by the Conference Programme Committee. The Committee will send e-mail notifications of acceptance by the 2nd of June, 2025.

There is no Conference fee. The organisers will issue visa invitations if needed.

In-person conference participation is strongly encouraged. Remote online participation is allowed only under extraordinary circumstances. In such cases please contact belarusconference@tspmi.vu.lt.

PhD Course on Discourse Studies and Method: Using Discourse-Theoretical Analysis and Discursive-Material Analysis

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:37:01 GMT

November 3-7, 2025

Charles University, Czech Republic

Deadline: July 1, 2025

https://culcorc.fsv.cuni.cz/phd-course-on-discourse-theory/

Course coordinator and leader: Nico Carpentier

Course credits: 5 credits

Course location: Centrum Voršilská, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Contact person: Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen

COURSE BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On completion of this course, successful students will be able to:

have a deeper understanding of the field of discourse studies and, in particular, of its discourse-theoretical component;
have a deeper understanding of the theoretical relationship between the discursive and the material;
know how to translate discourse-theoretical models into analytical practice through the use of the notion of the sensitising concept (applied to discourse theory and to discourse-theoretical rereading of other theories);
set up an analytical model for a discourse-theoretical analysis and a discursive-material analysis.

TEACHING AND EVALUATION

A certificate (with a grade “Pass”) is given after 1) attendance of a minimum of 8 meetings, 2) a working group theoretical presentation, and 3) an individual case study presentation.

AVAILABLE PARTICIPANT SLOTS AND COSTS

A total number of 20 participant slots are available. The participation fee is 50 euros and only covers course attendance. Participants are required to pay themselves for their travel and accommodation costs, and all other expenses.

REGISTRATION

To register for this course, the following three documents have to be submitted:

A motivation letter
A brief description/abstract of the ongoing (PhD) research (including the current stage of the research)
A CV (including information about your university affiliation and your contact information)

Please use this form to submit your application. If you need assistance regarding registration, please get in touch with Mazlum Kemal Dağdelen, mazlum.dagdelen@fsv.cuni.cz

The deadline for the application submission is 01 July 2025; the applicants will be notified about the results by 31 July 2025. The accepted applicants will receive further details for registration and payment in due time.

COURSE READINGS

Main reading:

Carpentier, Nico (2017) The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation. New York: Peter Lang.

Secondary readings:

Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of 'sex'. New York, London: Routledge.

Dolphijn, Rick, van der Tuin, Iris (2012) New materialism: Interviews and cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open humanities press.

Glynos, Jason, Howarth, David (2007) Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. London and New York: Routledge.

Howarth, David (2000) Discourse. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Howarth, David (2012) "Hegemony, political subjectivity, and radical democracy", in Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (eds.) Laclau: A critical reader. London: Routledge, pp. 256-276.

Howarth, David, Stavrakakis, Yannis (2000) “Introducing discourse theory and political analysis”, in David Howarth, Aletta J. Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis (eds.) Discourse theory and political analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 1-23.

Laclau, Ernesto, Chantal Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the social. An introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mouffe, Chantal (2005) On the Political. London: Routledge.

Philips, Louise, Jørgensen, Marianne W. (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988) "Can the subaltern speak?", in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271-313.

Torfing, Jacob (1999) New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, and Zizek. Oxford: Blackwell

Follow CULCORC on Bluesky and Mastodon

Transmedia Histories

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:10:34 GMT

TMG—Journal for Media History

Deadline (Abstracts): May 31, 2025

How can “transmedia” history be put into practice from empirical perspectives? Following on the successful conference “Transmedia History” organised by the Impresso project and the University of Lausanne’s History Department, TMG—Journal for Media History invites scholars to contribute to a special issue on Transmedia Histories.

Media history is composed of a myriad of parallel histories, which makes comparisons difficult. Research in the field has indeed long focused on single types of – often legacy – media or single institutions within their national contexts. In the mid-2000s, however, the transnational turn allowed for new trends in research objectives to emerge. Research scopes overcame previous temporal and spatial frameworks and thereby became less driven by institutional perspectives than by contents and their circulation. Moreover, this new focus on transnational perspectives enlarged its scope to encompass a wider range of topics within media history, such as technologies and communication. The development of the history of communication, cultural industries, techniques, and international relations all contributed to a form of decompartmentalisation that paved the way for a more comprehensive history of media systems. These new approaches were made possible most notably by mass digitisation of media sources and the improvement of their online accessibility to researchers. International research networks, such as the Transnational Radio Encounters, have gathered around such transnational ambitions. The transnational turn was a major breakthrough that resulted in important publications (e.g. Mollier and Lyon 2012; Fickers and Johnson 2012; Badenoch, Fickers and Henrich-Franke 2013).

It remains, however, that research in media history continues to face borders it has not managed to cross yet: beyond geographical borders, those between media institutions and between different types of media (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 134). This challenge gave the impulse for the establishment of the Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS) network in 2013. In a milestone article published in 2017, Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert defined the concept of entangled media histories “as a means of better understanding the dynamic interconnectedness of media across semiotic, technological, institutional and political boundaries in history” (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 130). Rather than accumulating histories of different media, they advocated for a focus on the elements that bridge them. However, a lack of empirical studies persists, primarily due to the enduring division of knowledge and the practical challenges associated with navigating separate, multilingual archives. These factors discourage research that moves beyond compartmentalised, sector-specific approaches. Exceptions notwithstanding, monomedia perspectives still dominate the field of media history and too little research is being carried out on exchanges and cooperation between media.

This special issue aims to extend those efforts and reflections by inviting papers that prioritise a transmedia approach. We seek to present research that explores media history through the simultaneous analysis of different media, thereby emphasising the significance of the media ecosystems in which they co-evolve. ‘Media’ is understood in a broad sense here. It includes traditional media (books, posters, press, cinema, radio and television), but also more recent historical examples such as video games and the Internet (e.g. streaming services, podcasts, online news). The targeted timeframe is extensive, though – per the scope of TMG—Journal for Media History – a historical perspective has to be central. The special issue ultimately seeks to contribute to a decompartmentalised and interconnected history of media. The featured articles will not only place media history within a broader social, political, and cultural context but also foster a dialogue among them.

We invite articles that could fall within three promising research axes:

1. Transmedia circulations, adaptations and reciprocal influences

The aim of this strand of research is to identify and analyse various factors that facilitate the circulation of content and formats across media and/or that foster interactions between media:

specific actors or media professions such as news and advertising agencies, foreign correspondents, exiles and diaspora representatives active in various media, translators, arrangers, cross-border media;
spaces of circulation and exchanges that transcend traditional political and/or linguistic boundaries, such as fictional serial productions, co-productions, joint-broadcasts, technical cooperation associations in the telecommunications field, foreign-language press;
socio-economic factors like concentration and financial globalisation, liberalisation and deregulation, convergence and new consumption habits.
the rhythms and temporality of information, the modes of circulation (e.g. scissors-and-paste journalism), adaptations and reconfigurations (e.g. comics to radio)
the transmission of practices and the mobility of people or resistance to these phenomena, i.e. factors that hinder or trouble transmedia circulation (seasonal and geopolitical conditions, legal matters, censorship, etc.)

2. Intersections, reconfigurations and new media genealogies

The goal of this strand is to refine our understanding of how media define themselves in relation to each other and how – from a diachronic-historical perspective – once-new media were perceived, integrated, and critiqued. We aim to identify productions and documentary resources that reflect such intertwined relations, such as anticipation tales, criticism in the press, advertising productions, etc. Potential questions to be addressed are:

How did the advent of new media affect existing media? How were they perceived and narrated by other media?
How do media publicize, promote, and criticize each other’s content? What are motives and strategies?
What “media imaginaries” emerged and how did these perhaps shape new periodisations of media history?

3. New approaches, resources and methods

In what ways can the mass digitisation of archival collections and the advancement of computational analysis tools foster transmedia research? Computational research methods allow processing large volumes of data and in recent times also increasingly across languages and modalities (e.g. image, text, sound). Until recently, most projects that embraced data-driven approaches focused on a single media, mostly the press. Research now starts to explore how to set up the processing—and how to conduct the analysis—of transmedia data; projects in the likes of TwiXL: An infrastructure for cross-media research on public debates, Clariah Media Suite and Impresso - Media Monitoring of the Past II all welcomed this goal. The third axis of this special issue thus, a.o., seeks to
identify new and/or digital approaches that facilitate and bolster comparisons.
discuss methods which enable analyses of the circulation of contents and formats at scale, in order to enhance our understanding of information fluxes. We therefore look to understand the effects that such tools have on studying transmedia histories, based on concrete historical case studies.

We also welcome contributions utilizing a transmedia perspective which are beyond these thematic lines but are still complementary to the overall special issue.

In short, this special issue seeks to contribute to the clarification and development of a transmedia approach in the historical sciences. It aims to address transmedia from a historical, long-term perspective based on concrete historical case studies and original research and, more broadly, to promote a decompartmentalised, entangled history of media.

Submission procedure and important dates

Abstract submissions are due on May 31, 2025. They have to be in English and have present the main research question(s), academic literature, data, method and concrete historical case study the authors plan to use. Abstracts should not exceed 1500 words. Please submit your abstract and a short bio to all four guest editors at transmediahistories@gmail.com.

Since this special issue follows from the Transmedia conference referred to above, it is addressed primarily – but not exclusively! – to those who presented there. Those scholars, who already submitted an abstract before, can either send in the same abstract, or send in an updated version. Either way, make sure it complies with the above instructions.

In June, we will inform the authors whether they are invited to submit a full article.

Selected authors shall be invited to submit an article of 6000-8000 words (including notes). Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer review process. Deadline for the manuscript is November 1, 2025. Revised drafts are expected by March 1, 2026 (and, if necessary, a second round of rewriting and reviews in the ensuing months). Copy-editing will take place in the Fall. The special issue will be published in January 2027. Publications are open access; no payment from the authors will be required.

If you have questions, please contact the editors of the special issue, Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz, François Vallotton, Martin Grandjean and Jesper Verhoef at transmediahistories@gmail.com.

Comparative Approaches to Public Service Media in the Age of Platforms

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:13:39 GMT

Convergence (special issue)

Deadline: April 4, 2025

Edited by: Hanne Bruun, Catherine Johnson, Tim Raats and Vilde Schanke Sundet

Over the past decade, the growth of global platforms has led to the rise of ‘platformisation’: the ‘penetration of infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of digital platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life, as well as the reorganisation of cultural practices and imaginations around these platforms’ (Poell et al. 2019:1). This has specific implications for public service media (PSM), which now operate within a platform ecosystem in which a small number of largely US platforms determine the rules of the game (van Dijck et al., 2018). Platformisation has created the conditions for the emergence of global streaming services, such as Netflix, Disney+, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video, with which PSM compete for audiences, revenue and talent. These new forms of on-demand, data-driven video streaming services challenge the dominance that many PSM organisations once had as the principal providers of domestic audiovisual culture. For PSM organisations this is a double bind: as they have lost audiences to streaming services and platforms, they have also had to develop new on-demand services and online content that can only be delivered through the infrastructures owned by global platforms. Yet the way in which these challenges play out for PSM are context specific. Despite large-scale studies focused on comparing systemic political and economic factors, there are relatively few comparative studies of the organisational practices and cultural outputs of PSM organisations. This is a significant omission because a growing body of work argues that it is precisely in the areas of organisational practice and cultural output that the impact of platformisation on PSM is most keenly felt (see, for example, D’Arma et al., 2021; Iordache et al., 2024; Lassen, 2025).

In response, this special issue asks: How might a comparative approach help us to better understand PSM in the age of platforms? Comparison here could be across different ‘levels of influence’ (Havens and Lotz, 2016) within the media industries, such as comparing policy/regulation and organisational practices, or comparing organisational practices with cultural outputs. In this sense, we particularly welcome articles that take a mixed method approach, combining (for example) document analysis, interviews and/or analysis of texts. Or it could be comparison across different platforms and/or contexts. We particularly welcome studies that compare across more than two contexts and studies that look beyond the Western contexts that have dominated studies of PSM.

Indicative topics include, but are not restricted to:

Comparative analysis of the changing organisational cultures of PSM
Comparative analysis of PSM commissioning, publishing and/or distribution practices
Comparative analysis of PSM programming/content
Novel methodological approaches to studying PSM in a comparative context
Comparative analysis of the values underpinning PSM organisations
Mixed method approaches that compare across policy, production and/or texts
Theoretical approaches to comparative media systems analysis

Please submit a 500-750 word abstract that includes a short statement outlining how your proposed article aligns with the special issue’s aims to PSMspecialissue@leeds.ac.uk email by 4 April 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be circulated by 5 May 2025, with full length articles to be submitted by 22 September 2025.

Critical Discourse Studies and GenAI

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 13:41:00 GMT

Special Issue in Discourse & Society

Deadline: June 2, 2025

https://journals.sagepub.com/home/das

Majid KhosraviNik, Newcastle University
Hossein Kermani, Vienna University

Since its introduction, GenAI has revolutionised many aspects of the sociopolitical sphere in recent years. Technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) and, in particular, its baby poster, ChatGPT, have already been the topic of many studies in different fields, from political science to psychology and communication (Bail, 2023; Gilardi et al., 2023). Despite, the obvious relevance of GenAI to working assumptions of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), our knowledge of the nature, quality, and multifaceted implications of this computational breakthrough in discourse production, distribution, and consumption across various contexts is minimal. AI could be viewed as the new phase in forcing reconsideration, and re-examination of the dynamic of discourse in society, following on and going beyond the postulated phase of Social Media Communication (SMC) paradigm (KhosraviNik 2017, 2022, 2023). Both the input and output of many GenAI technologies are largely textual (in broad sense of linguistic, multimodal and multimedia) and, as a result, yield discursive dimensions. For instance, the questions of which power structures these creative meaning making tools enforce or mitigate are relatively understudied (Luitse & Denkena, 2021). At a broad level, we could scrutinise which discourses are substantiated by e.g. LLMs and how these models interact with the existing discourses-in-place. There are also questions about the working definitions of discourse materiality as ‘naturally occurring language’ and its relation to the notion of discursive power.

CDS now carries established credentials in tackling social ills and inequalities through the prism of discourse conceptualisation. This includes socio-politics of group identity and Self-Other constructions. The developments in digital media GenAI are now part of these research foci. Some critical explorations, and problematisation around AI and its social impacts on racism and gender bias are already emerging (see e.g. Adib-Moghaddam 2023, Noble 2018, Siapera 2022). This Special Issue, however, aims to bring in a specifically CDS perspective to the field. It pertains to how a Critical Discourse Studies frame can be envisaged theoretically and methodologically for the new socio-technological dynamic as well as the way AI may interact with resident discourses of racism, gender inequality, ethnic discrimination, and political Self- Othering.

In addition to various levels and types of conceptual considerations, GenAI such as LLMs could bear potential as analytical tools of paramount interest to CDS and its methodological processes -including but also beyond quantification. At its textual level, in one way or another, CDS is tasked with ‘text’ analysis, a job that is now arguably done by LLMs. Prior to LLMs as zero-shot models, other supervised and unsupervised machine algorithms like topic modeling or BERT have been adapted to automatedly analyse large text data (Barberá et al., 2021; Kermani, 2023). While the debate about the potential and weaknesses of such models is ongoing, the arrival of LLMs changes the game entirely. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of knowledge of the capabilities and shortcomings of LLMs in discourse analysis, which could be tackled. Whilst there is growing literature examining LLMs’ power in annotating texts, these studies ordinarily lack the conceptual insights from discourse studies and often end up doing pre-defined annotation tagging hence missing subtle and interpretive dynamics of meaning-making (De Grove et al., 2020; Gilardi et al., 2023). As such, there is a missed body of scholarship in dealing with discursive constructs such as metaphors or argumentation among others.

As the rapid development of models adds to the emerging complexity at both theory and methodology ends, it remains a fact that CDS cannot continue the business as usual similar to changes to other frames of inquiry in social sciences. To envisage a specific CDS take on this nascent field, there is a need for interdisciplinary deliberation to formulate questions, identify the challenges and elaborate on opportunities while acknowledging the ambitiousness of the task at hand. In addition to emerging few studies on LLMs and CDS (e.g. Gillings et al., 2024), there is certainly room to identify perspectives, problematise working notions, and apply methodologies at the intersection of GenAI and CDS. This is, ultimately, about the CDS’ claim to provide critical explanations for the socio-political characteristics of societies and the way power (relations) is established through discourses. We go where discourse goes, and (important degrees of) discourse is now entangled with these technological developments.

Such an endeavor is interdisciplinary by definition and invites empirical studies, theoretical engagements, critical reflections, and methodological considerations from scholars in different fields, such as computer science, discourse studies (in its broad sense), social sciences, political communication, media and technology, digital geography, and Informatics to discuss timely topics including but not limited to:

- Problematisation of mediation processes and its impact on discourse: how AI can be viewed in connection with past, present and future of CD

- Theoretical mapping for a viable, principled CDS analysis in the new contexts

- The way GenAI or in particular LLMs reinforce or undermine power relations and discourses in communication, media, and public opinion.

- The way GenAI or in particular LLMs may contribute to the evolution or transformation of discourses of Hate Speech, Racism, Gender bias, Islamophobia, etc., across different domains (e.g., media, politics, education).

- Innovative methodologies for analysing the interplay between GenAI of various content types (language, videos, and other multimodal trends) and discourse within CDS frameworks.

- The capabilities and shortcomings of LLMs as a viable tool in CDS and their mutual interactions

- The methodological innovations to conduct multimodal discourse analysis using GenAI technologies

Submission Process:

Authors are invited to submit abstracts (approximately 500 words, all-inclusive) outlining the manuscript's approach, objectives, and relevance. The abstract should demonstrate how the paper contributes to the synergic understanding of the field.

Please submit the abstract and author information to guest editors (Majid.Khosravinik@newcastle.ac.uk and hossein.kermani@univie.ac.at) by June 2, 2025. Please use ‘Submission for the SI on CDS and GenAI’ as the email subject. Abstracts should be formatted as: title, author names, affiliations and contact information, main text, keywords (up to five), along with short bio/s of the author/s. Notifications regarding invitations for full papers will be sent by July 1, 2025. Full papers should be submitted by December 15, 2025.

Refs

Adib-Moghaddam, A. (2023) Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity. Bloomsbury.

Noble, N., S. (2018) Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York University Press

Bail, C. A. (2023). Can Generative AI Improve Social Science? [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/rwtzs

Barberá, P., Boydstun, A. E., Linn, S., McMahon, R., & Nagler, J. (2021). Automated Text Classification of News Articles: A Practical Guide. Political Analysis, 29(1), 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.8

De Grove, F., Boghe, K., & De Marez, L. (2020). (What) Can Journalism Studies Learn from Supervised Machine Learning? Journalism Studies, 21(7), 912–927. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1743737

Gilardi, F., Alizadeh, M., & Kubli, M. (2023, March 27). ChatGPT Outperforms Crowd-Workers for Text-Annotation Tasks. arXiv.Org. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305016120

Gillings, M., Kohn, T., & Mautner, G. (2024). The rise of large language models: Challenges for Critical Discourse Studies. Critical Discourse Studies, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2024.2373733

Kermani, H. (2023). Framing the Pandemic on Persian Twitter: Gauging Networked Frames by Topic Modeling. American Behavioral Scientist, 00027642231207078. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231207078

KhosraviNik, M. (2017) Social Media Critical Discourse Studies. J. Flowerdew, J. Richardson (Eds.), Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis, Routledge, London (2017), pp. 582-596

KhosraviNik, M. (2022) Digital meaning-making across content and practice in social media critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse Studies, Vol 19(2): 119-123. Special Issue on SM-CDS.

KhosraviNik, M. (2023) Connecting the digital with the social in digital discourse. In M. KhosraviNik (ed) Social Media and Society: Integrating the digital with the social in digital discourse. John Benjamins. PP 1-15.

Luitse, D., & Denkena, W. (2021). The great Transformer: Examining the role of large language models in the political economy of AI. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211047734. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211047734

Siapera, E. (2022) AI content moderation, racism and (de) coloniality. International journal of Bullying Prevention. 4(1) 55-65.

Call for Nominations for the Women in RecSys Journal Paper of the Year Award

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 13:33:39 GMT

Deadline: April 30, 2025

Dear all,

Do you know an outstanding journal paper related to recommender systems authored by a researcher who self-identfies as a woman? Or have you perhaps published one yourself?

The Women in RecSys Journal Paper of the Year Award is now accepting nominations—but the deadline is fast approaching!

Two award categories:

Junior: For PhD students or researchers who obtained their PhD within the last five years
Senior: For researchers with more than five years of experience

Why Nominate?

Recognizes innovative, high-quality research in recommender systems

Awarded papers receive free registration for ACM RecSys 2025 and a chance to present at the conference

A great way to support and highlight the contributions of women researchers in RecSys (DEI is not dead!)

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2025, midnight, AoE

Nomination Details & Submission: https://recsys.acm.org/recsys25/women-in-recsys/#content-tab-1-1-tab

Self-nominations are welcome! If you have an eligible paper, don’t hesitate to submit. And if you know a deserving colleague or collaborator, encourage them to apply or nominate them yourself!

Looking forward to celebrating the achievements of women in RecSys at ACM RecSys 2025.

Best regards,

Lien

On behalf of the Women in RecSys Committee

Subscribe to the European Media Policy newsletter

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMT

The newsletter European Media Policy from Nordicom offers concise, curated updates on regulatory developments, policy changes, and industry trends across Europe's media landscape. Serving as a comprehensive reference, it provides media researchers with current insights and helps you stay informed about emerging trends and the impact of policy shifts on media practices in Europe.

Media Capture in the Global South: Power & Resistance

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:02:43 GMT

May 30, 2025

Advanced Research Centre (ARC), University of Glasgow

Deadline: April 4, 2025

Half-day Unconference & Book Launch

Organised by members of Sociological & Cultural Studies and the Glasgow University Media Group in partnership with the Glasgow Latin American Research Network at the University of Glasgow.

Cost: Free

This dynamic half-day unconference combines the launch of the edited book Media Capture in Africa and Latin America: Power & Resistance (Palgrave, 2025) with a participant-led dialogue that brings together established scholars, early career scholars, journalists, and civil society organisations to explore the particularities of media capture – the covert instrumentalisation of the news media by various centres of power – in the Global South.

For decades, alarm bells have sounded over severe forms of media influence, and, in an era of deepening media control and shrinking press freedoms, the phenomenon of media capture has emerged as a defining challenge in the Global South. While much scholarly attention has historically focused on established capitalist societies in the Global North, regions of the Majority World, such as Africa and Latin America, reveal distinct and evolving forms of control. Governments, corporate interests, and powerful elites are increasingly exerting influence over news ecosystems, shaping narratives to serve their own agendas. From direct ownership and regulatory pressures to the subtle forces of digital platform dominance, underpinned by the growing influence of Big Tech platforms and algorithm-driven influence that shapes public discourse and suppresses independent journalism. Media capture thus manifests not as a singular process but as a complex and evolving system of control. Yet, resistance persists. Independent journalists, alternative media, and civil society actors continue to challenge these forces, deploying innovative strategies to push back against censorship and distortion. However, much remains to be understood about the viability and scalability of such countermeasures, as media ecosystems become increasingly fragmented and digitalised.

This inclusive and dynamic unconference is an opportunity to share current expertise and address the research gap on the topic in the Global South. It will include a book launch, unconference and roundtable of civil society experts.

We invite researchers working in this area – particularly early career researchers (ECRs), who would benefit from the opportunity to present their research and network with senior colleagues, journalists, and civil society organisations – to submit short topic proposals or discussion prompts that outline your topic and key questions for discussion while offering empirical or theoretical insights. These may include (but are not limited to) the following:

- Media capture as contested term in the Global South

- Exploring the distinctive forms and manifestations of media capture in the Global South

- The increasingly sophisticated nature of media capture, focussing on Big Tech/AI/algorithms

- Distinctive forms of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech in the Global South

- The impact of media capture in the context of Sustainable Development Goals

- How transnational actors, media outlets/journalists and civil society are responding to media capture

Please submit your brief topic proposal (max 50 words) for a 5 minutes presentation and a short bio (max 50 words) by 4th April 2025 here: https://forms.office.com/e/mgQ3mSp1Xr

Notifications of Acceptance will be sent out on 15th April 2025.

For questions, please contact the conference convenors Dr Hayes Mabweazara and Dr Beth Pearson: mediacapture-globalsouth@glasgow.ac.uk

Political Economies of the Media. Theories and Methods, an advanced postgraduate course.

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 11:59:41 GMT

September 9-12, 2025

Šibenik, Croatia

Deadline: April 1, 2025

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Micky Lee, Suffolk University, USA
Mandy Troeger, University of Tuebingen, Germany

COURSE DIRECTORS

Thomas Allmer, Paderborn University, Germany
Paško Bilić, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
Benjamin Birkinbine, University of Wisconsin, USA
Jernej Amon Prodnik, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Jaka Primorac, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
Toni Prug, University of Rijeka, Croatia
Aleksander Slaček-Brlek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

ECTS ACCREDITATION:

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (10 ECTS points for PhD students upon full completion of the course)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The media are central institutions of modern societies, providing channels for corporate and political control and public space for disseminating and consuming communication on systemic changes in politics, culture, and economics to the public. The media underwent massive restructuring through neoliberal policies in the 1970s. Introducing new communication technologies such as satellite and cable television, internet, and web platforms went hand in hand with market liberalisation and communication commercialisation. The multiplication of channels and media outlets was accompanied by concentration and centralisation of ownership. Recently, large transnational digital platforms have solidified their position as core companies within contemporary capitalism, restructuring the distribution of media advertising investments, speeding up the circulation of capital, automating global consumption patterns, avoiding national taxes, and siphoning revenues to offshore entities. At the same time, they benefit from automated management of their diversified and essentially precarious workforces of content moderators, warehouse workers, and gig workers, as well as from software inputs from free and open source communities (FLOSS) communities.

The rise of platforms reshapes traditional institutional mechanisms that broadly safeguard freedom of expression, media pluralism, and public interests. An open political issue is how these mechanisms will be reconsidered and how private interests will shape markets and societies. Alternatives are envisioned in areas ranging from platform cooperatives and commons projects to strategic calls for technological sovereignty and public wealth creation. However, such initiatives usually need broader political support from the public already accustomed to the commercial logic of the media. The commodification of everyday life through data capture, surveillance and privacy intrusion is easily dismissed by citizens as a minor side effect of free usage and flexibility of ubiquitous digital services.

This biennial course aims to explore traditional (e.g. ownership, production, content, consumption, labour, regulation) and contemporary (e.g. algorithms, platforms, data, artificial intelligence) perspectives on the media from the lens of critical political economy. The course will explore how capital and the state(s) control, regulate and form the media (broadly conceived as ranging from traditional printed press to algorithms and software) in societies shaped by persistent social inequalities. The level of analysis can vary from macro phenomena of geopolitics, transnational, national and institutional dynamics, through mid-range phenomena of the structure(s) of the public sphere(s) to micro-phenomena of class-based conditions shaping inequalities of access and skill for using the media in everyday life and for work.

The course will include presentations from keynote speakers and course directors and presentations by advanced MA and PhD students. Through lectures and discussions with international experts, students will gain in-depth knowledge about recent communication, media, and journalism developments from a critical political economy perspective. Methods and analytical tools commonly used in the approach will be explained and discussed. Presentation of the research papers (considered work in progress) will lead to comprehensive feedback that will help students develop their projects further and result in publishable academic writing. Discussions will be carried out collaboratively, with reciprocal assessment by students.

SUMMER SCHOOL VENUE

St. John's Fortress in Šibenik, Croatia, was built in 1646 in just 58 days as the main point of the city's new defence system just before a major attack by the Ottoman army. The city residents built the fortress with their own hands and resources, and it was named after the church that once stood there. The fortress renovation was completed in 2022, with the fortress walls completely restored and new features introduced, including an underground campus below the so-called pliers, the northern part of the fortress. The campus is equipped with interactive classrooms, bedrooms and conference rooms. More info is available at: https://www.tvrdjava-kulture.hr/en/st-johns-fortress/plan-your-visit/

DEADLINES

* The course is open to advanced MA and PhD students. Please submit your CV (maximum two pages), title and an extended abstract of your presentation (maximum two pages with references) by 1 April 2025 to political.economies.of.the.media@gmail.com

* Course directors will review applications and final decisions on acceptance will be sent by 1 May 2025.

* Accepted applicants will be invited to submit 6 to 9,000-word research papers by 1 July 2025. After completing the course, they will be encouraged to submit their manuscripts for review in an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of political economy.

* Note: only PhD students can receive 10 ECTS points upon course completion, which entails a submitted research paper, paper presentation and full-week active attendance participation in the course (more information will be published on the course website).

* Please note that all participants pay a registration fee of 60 EUR. A limited number of partial stipends and registration waivers will be available. If you need participation support, please indicate this in your application.

* All further details about the course will be available at http://www.poleconmed.net/

Communication and Capital(ism)

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 11:55:25 GMT

August 28-30, 2025

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana

Deadline: April 1, 2025

Mid-term conference of the European Sociological Association, Research Network 18 – The Sociology of Communications and Media Research

The small-scale and focused mid-term conferences of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network 18 seek to ensure that the sociological investigation of media and communications is given full focus, distinguishing its work from that of large international associations, which provide important forums for communications and media research but do not have especially sociological concerns.

As the conference title suggests, no social issues can be addressed without recourse to communication or capitalism. For Hanno Hardt, critical scholar and former professor in Ljubljana, communication could be considered “the sine qua non of human existence” (1979, 1). In this sense, the study of communication must always be the first stepping stone, but one that is now influenced and shaped in various ways by digital giants and media-as-industries. Similarly, critical authors have historically regarded capitalism as a system that cannot be ignored in a holistic social analysis. Sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has, for instance, asserted “that contemporary society cannot really be understood by a sociology that makes no reference to its capitalist economy” (2012, 1). In other words, the sociology of communications and media must inevitably include or address these two of the most fundamental social relations in its research.

Kylie Jarrett (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Graham Murdock (Loughborough University, UK)
and Slavko Splichal (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).

Theoretical reflections on political economy and cultural studies;
The role of critique and criticality for the sociology of media;
Digital capitalism, imperialism and colonialism;
Digital platforms and tech giants;
Labour and platformisation of working conditions;
Capital, class, gender, and race;
Global media corporations and media-as-industries;
Capitalism and journalism;
Sociology of news;
The material and ideological impact of advertising;
Transformations in political communication;
Democracy and democratic transformations;
The public sphere;
(Re-)presentations in journalism and the media;
Possible alternatives to the existing political/economic malaise and digital capitalism.

Abstract submission

Abstract submission deadline: 1 April 2025
Notification of selected abstracts: 15 May 2025
Conference dates: 28-30 August 2025

Abstracts should be sent to: Conference Organising Committee, rn18esasubmission@gmail.com

Abstracts should be sent as an e-mail attachment (400-600 words including title, author name(s), email address(es), and institutional affiliation(s)). Please insert the words “ESA RN18 Submission” in the subject. Although we do not provide a template for the abstract submission, we expect abstracts that include a rationale, research question(s), theoretical and/or empirical methods applied, and potential results and implications. Each abstract will be independently reviewed by two members of the ESA RN18 Board based on the call for papers.

Datafied Welfare for Human Flourishing: People-centered perspectives on automation and communication from Europe

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 11:52:55 GMT

Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research

Deadline: March 30, 2025

Guest edited by: Christian Pentzold, Leipzig University, Germany; Anne Kaun, Södertörn University, Sweden; Stine Lomborg & Sille Obelitz Søe, both Copenhagen University, Denmark.

Much is at stake: The welfare sector across the EU faces growing demands and dwindling resources, with automation expected to bring about significant changes. Automated decisionmaking (ADM) is being proposed as a solution to improve efficiency in the provision of public goods and services by leveraging data-driven processes and reallocating resources to better support citizens’ well-being. Recent academic work, especially within the humanities and social sciences, has critically examined algorithms, datafication, and AI. These studies often emphasize the need for accountability in technical systems, focusing on data ethics, transparency, and regulatory oversight to safeguard human justice within ADM systems. Yet, real-world examples abound of human rights violations, including privacy breaches, biases in automated systems, and discriminatory outcomes. Cases such as the use of data for fraud detection, welfare distribution, and profiling vulnerable populations illustrate these issues globally. Consequently, concerns about the potential adverse effects of automation on various aspects of life—healthcare, welfare, labor, and the functioning of public spheres—have been raised by researchers, public figures, and the general public.

Stories about the implications of ADM for the welfare of citizens sometimes come to public scrutiny, such as a recent WIRED piece on the Danish welfare system turning into a ‘surveillance nightmare’. When these stories surface, they relay ADM as extraordinary and scandalous. But in fact, ADM for welfare provision is becoming ordinary, widespread, and is fundamentally changing the nature of public goods provision and public services, and thus the conditions for human flourishing. Some argue that ADM is critically altering European welfare states from being based on trust, equity and solidarity to being based on efficiency, control, and discrimination of vulnerable populations. This transformation is largely happening under the public radar. As governments try to ride the waves of automation and drive the exploitation of technological potentials and vast registers of data on citizens, we argue that it is urgent to have a critical and informed debate to shape the use of ADM in the interest of public values, and for the people. Indeed, this call comes at a moment when automation is changing the very notion of what communication and information is. Rather than being mainly about the rights and processes of creating and distributing messages, of speaking and being heard, data streams become significant assets and objects of interest no matter what they contain.

This Special Issue seeks to explore the impact of ADM on welfare and well-being from European perspectives. It starts from the position of those directly involved: the engineers and designers, the case workers who collaborate with these systems in welfare and service provision decisions, and the people whose data fuel the systems and are affected by automation efforts. The Special Issue aims to address the digital transformation of the citizen–state relationship by examining the development, data work, and human-machine collaboration within ADM, alongside the technological, social, and cultural dynamics that either facilitate or impede progress in automating welfare for the public good.

A people-centered approach builds on the idea that welfare in societies is fundamentally about fostering the conditions for the flourishing of everybody. Hence public goods and services provision becomes a question of justice and equity. When welfare is increasingly automated this consequently has implications for social justice for the people more generally and must be addressed through the lens of the people implicated in the process of automation.

The Special Issue is open to theoretical and empirical approaches. It invites senior as well as emerging scholars. Contributions can address, but are not limited to, the following aspects:

· Conceptualizations of automation, datafication, and communication

· Reflections on human flourishing in datafied and automated citizen–state relationships

· Public communication and discourses around datafication and automation for the public good

· Communicative and media practices around automation, datafication and artificial intelligence

· Case studies of ADM implementation in public administration and public service provision, including public service broadcasting

· ADM’s and AI-powered tools in newsrooms and their implications for journalistic practices and the public’s right to information

· Policies, norms, and regulations of ADM deployment and development

· Human rights perspectives on automation and public goods

· Resistance and civic actions against automated processes

· Impacts of ADM on employability in the media sector and beyond, and the shifting roles of human labor

· Environmental and climate impacts of ADM and AI deployment for public service provision and media production

There will be no publication fee.

Timeline and procedure

500 to 700 word abstracts should be sent to (christian.pentzold@uni-leipzig.de) by March 30, 2025. The abstract should articulate: 1) the issue or research question to be discussed, 2) the methodological or critical framework used, and 3) the expected findings or conclusions. Feel free to consult with the Special Issue Editors about your article ideas and potential angles or approaches.

Decisions will be communicated to the authors by April 30, 2025. Invited paper submissions will be due August 31, 2025 and will be submitted to christian.pentzold@uni-leipzig.de. They will then undergo peer review through Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research following the journal’s standard double-blind procedures. The invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee acceptance into the Special Issue. The Special Issue is scheduled for publication in summer 2026.

This call for abstracts is also accessible via

https://www.degruyter.com/publication/journal_key/COMM/downloadAsset/COMM_Datafied%20Welfare%20COMMUNICATIONS.pdf

Contact

Prof Christian Pentzold

Email: christian.pentzold@uni-leipzig.de

ARS 2025: Navigating Algorithmic Society: Audiences’ tactics to understanding the world

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 11:49:54 GMT

October 30-31, 2025

Stockholm, Sweden

Deadline: May 1, 2025

Post-doctoral candidate AI, Emotion Detection and Political Ideology

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 11:44:32 GMT

University of Amsterdam

To investigate these dynamics, the project will hire a post-doc for 12 months, starting this spring, see the vacancy: https://werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies/postdoc-investigating-human-sources-of-bias-in-ai-face-classification-models-netherlands-13907

Post-doctoral candidate AI, media and society

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 19:36:48 GMT

University of Antwerp, Belgium

Apply here

Department: Department of Communication Studies

Regime Full-time

Let’s shape the future - University of Antwerp

The University of Antwerp is a dynamic, forward-thinking university. We offer an innovative academic education to more than 20000 students, conduct pioneering scientific research and play an important service-providing role in society. We are one of the largest, most international and most innovative employers in the region. With more than 6000 employees from 100 different countries, we are helping to build tomorrow's world every day. Through top scientific research, we push back boundaries and set a course for the future – a future that you can help to shape.

The research group AMSoC of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Antwerp is seeking a post-doctoral candidate willing to write a research proposal about AI, media and society.

External and internal post-doc researchers who are eligible to submit an FWO and/or MSCA post-doc application are invited to apply. The top ranked candidate with the best profile (project proposal & CV) acquires a preparatory post-doctoral research mandate to further develop and submit a competitive research proposal to FWO (Flemish Science Foundation) and/or MSCA (Horizon Europe Marie Curie fellowships), with the University of Antwerp as host institution.

A preparatory full-time or part-time mandate of at least 6 months (up to a maximum of 12 months) will be provided.

Profile

You hold a PhD in Communication Studies or other relevant discipline in the social sciences and humanities (or you will have obtained it by the time you start work).
Your research qualities are in line with the faculty and university research policies.
You act with attention to quality, integrity, creativity and cooperation.
You can speak and write fluently in English.
You comply with the FWO Post-doc and/or Marie Sklodowska-Curie Post-doc eligibility criteria.
You have a good publication record in international peer-reviewed journals.
Experience with project writing, acquisition and management is a plus.

Position

Since the launch of ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an accessible part of everyday life. We define AI broadly, looking beyond generative AI and including other forms of 'smart' automation, such as algorithmic recommendation and chatbots. We are hiring a postdoctoral researcher to develop a project critically analyzing the role of AI in media and society. The aim is to come to a balanced assessment of its opportunities and risks, in particular in relation to underlying power relations in media and society. The candidate should focus on one or more of the following aspects:

Media discourses: you use qualitative and/or quantitative methods to analyze the way AI is discussed and represented in media.
Political economy: you research the ownership and governance of AI and related automated systems, with a focus on digital empires such as Meta/Facebook and Alphabet/Google.
User perspectives: you use qualitative and/or quantitative methods to analyze how media users think about and deal with automated content such as social media feeds and news recommendations.

Your proposal should be connected to the research interests and expertise of (at least) one of the professors of the Antwerp Media in Society Centre: Sander De Ridder, Alexander Dhoest, Pieter Maeseele and Steve Paulussen.
The main aim of this temporary position is to develop a proposal for a postdoctoral fellowship to be submitted to FWO and Horizon-MCSA.

What we offer

The planned start date is 1 September 2025 or as soon as possible after that date.
Appointments are made in one of the following categories, depending on your profile:
- Postdoctoral scholarship holder
- - In order to be eligible in this statute, you must have spent at least twelve months of the three years prior to the start date as a postdoctoral scholarship holder abroad and did not work or study in Belgium during these twelve months. Short-term stays (e.g. holidays, participation in conferences, preparation for this stay as a postdoctoral scholarship holder) will not be taken into account.
  - We offer a full-time appointment for a period of one year.
  - Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for postdoctoral scholarship holders on the pay scales for Contract Research Staff (Dutch: Bijzonder Academisch Personeel, BAP).
  - You will receive ecocheques, Internet-connectivity allowance and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
- Postdoctoral researcher (contractual)
- - If you don’t qualify for the specific eligibility criteria for scholarship holders, we can offer a full-time appointment for a period of six months or a half-time appointment for a full year.
  - Your gross monthly salary is calculated according to the pay scale for a principal research fellow in the Contract Research Staff category (Dutch: Bijzonder Academisch Personeel, BAP).
  - You will receive ecocheques, Internet-connectivity allowance, a group insurance, an income protection insurance, and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
You will do most of your work at the City Campus in a dynamic and stimulating working environment.
Find out more about working at the University of Antwerp here.

Want to apply?

You can apply for this vacancy through the University of Antwerp’s online job application platform up to and including 22 April 2025 (by midnight Brussels time). Click on the 'Apply' button and complete the online application form. Be sure to include the following attachments:
- a motivation letter
- your academic CV
- a provisional project proposal of two to four pages
- two published papers.
The selection committee reviews all applications as soon as possible after the application deadline. As soon as a decision is made, we will notify you. If you are still eligible after the pre-selection, you will be informed about the possible next step in the selection procedure, which consists of an (online) interview on 15 May.
If you have any questions about the online application form, please check the frequently asked questions or send an email to jobs@uantwerpen.be. If you have any questions about the job itself, please contact Alexander.dhoest@uantwerpen.be.

Digital Methods summer school in Manchester

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 19:06:08 GMT

June 30 - July 4, 2025

Manchester, UK

Dear colleagues,

I'm happy to announce that we're again organizing a 'Digital Methods' summer school in Manchester! (30 June 2025 - 4 July 2025)

What you can expect to learn:

- text mining

- creative AI methods

- sensing methods

- geospatial methods

- visual methods

- data visualisation

(+ critical reflections on ethics and open science)

We have two bursary options available.

For more details, see: https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/db5oUkcvjH3iw

Food for All: Media, Communication and Food Democracy

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 19:04:18 GMT

September 10-12, 2025

Université de Lille, France

Deadline: March 15, 2025

4th CONFERENCE ON FOOD AND COMMUNICATION

The final submission deadline is approaching quickly - please send abstracts by 15th March 2025 via the platform below. Join the diverse international community of scholars already selected through our early bird submissions!

The 4th Conference on Food & Communication aims to critically explore the diverse roles of media and communication in shaping and advancing food democracy in all its dimensions. Food democracy encompasses not only equitable access to nutritious, sustainable, and enjoyable food for all—regardless of socio-economic status, age, or situations of vulnerability—but also stresses transparency in food systems, access to knowledge, public deliberation, and the protection of individual rights and freedoms.

Any topic related to food, communication, media and discourse can be submitted.

Conference details and abstract submission: https://foodforall.sciencesconf.org/

Our network: www.foodcommunication.net

Gaining Access, Building Relationships: Researching Media Industries in a Changing Landscape

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 10:12:00 GMT

August 12, 2025

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Deadline: April 11, 2025

ECREA Media Industries and Cultural Production Workshop

This one-day conference tackles a central and persistent challenge in media industries research: How scholars gain entry into media companies and navigate the personal and professional relationships that shape researcher-industry interactions.

Issues of trust, access, and working beyond polished corporate narratives have long been debated in studies of media production, distribution, and industrial organization. These questions have been approached from both pragmatic and strategic perspectives, which focus on the practical challenges of forming relationships and gaining access, as well as from ethical perspectives, that address normative concerns about how these relationships should be structured.

The urgency of these questions has only grown in recent years. As international tech giants reshape the media landscape, their corporate cultures and structures pose new barriers to access. Traditional media companies, too, have evolved—fragmentation, competition, and shifting security protocols have made research entry more complex than ever. These changes not only reinforce enduring methodological challenges but also demand fresh approaches to researcher-industry relations.

We invite papers that critically examine the dynamics of access, relational work, and researcher-industry engagement—whether through empirical case studies, methodological discussions, or theoretical inquiry. Our goal is to share experiences, refine our research strategies, and deepen our understanding of the evolving conditions of media industries research.

Presentations at the conference may address, but are not limited to:

● The ethical dimensions of relational work in media industries research—and the insights gained from openly reflecting on access strategies and the challenges of managing academia-industry relationships.

● How strategies for gaining access may differ depending on the specific media industries or organizations, their sizes, and political contexts.

● Longitudinal accounts of how mutual trust is maintained or challenged in relationships between individual researchers and industry actors over time.

● Professional “breakups” between researchers and industrial actors, and what can be learned from ending or exiting collaborations.

● The issues of sharing or accessing historical data or archival material.

● The issues of accessing media organizations’ digital platforms, internal systems, or internal communication channels.

● How taking part in committees and policy work can challenge researchers’ autonomous role and how they have mitigated this.

● Creative workarounds to gain access to organizations once initial attempts are denied.

We invite scholars to submit abstracts for papers addressing these themes.

Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted no later than the 11 April 2025. Send abstracts to: fredrik.stiernstedt@sh.se. Authors will be informed regarding acceptance/rejection for the conference no later than 16 May 2025. Early career scholars and graduate students are highly encouraged to submit their work (please indicate if the research submitted is part of your thesis or dissertation project).

Fees and accommodation. The conference registration fee is 50 Euros, and participants are asked to cover their travel expenses. This fee includes coffee breaks, lunch and drinks at the get-together. For participants that will continue to the NordMedia 2025 Conference in Odense (13-15 August), trains from Copenhagen to Odense depart frequently and take about 90 minutes. Participants are asked to cover their accommodation.

Organizing committee

Local organizers: Mads Møller Tommerup Andersen (University of Copenhagen)

For the section management team: Fredrik Stiernstedt (Södertörn University), Vilde Schanke Sundet (Oslo Metropolitan University), Catalina Iordache (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Torbjörn Rolandsson (Roskilde University).

The Older, the Better! Ageing celebrity in contemporary media and sport context

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 16:30:00 GMT

September 15-17, 2025

University of Bologna, Italy

Deadline: May 15, 2025

PRIN 2022 PNRR “CELEBR-AGE” FINAL CONFERENCE - organised by Ylenia Caputo, Simona Castellano, Antonella Mascio, Roy Menarini, Sara Pesce, Mario Tirino

Celebrities occupy a prominent position in contemporary (media) society for several reasons. In addition to being a form of ‘commodity’ used by the media industry (Turner, 2004), they represent devices capable of creating connections between the media world and the audience world, acting as models for inspiration.

For an ever-increasing number of subjects (people, users, audiences), the activities, speeches and performances of celebrities become symbolic materials, forms of cultural mediation through which they elaborate their own interpretations of the world. In the words of Nick Couldry (2009), it seems useful to look at celebrity as ‘a generative centre that explains the social world's functioning and its values’, i.e. a privileged access point for interpreting a set of fundamental phenomena affecting society.

Many studies have been carried out on celebrities, starting with the figures who embody this role and the type of relationship they have with their publics, also highlighting their ‘measure’ (macro, meso and micro measure, Marwick, 2007). However, few analyses have accompanied these reflections regarding ‘elderly’ celebrities, i.e. all those celebrities who have reached a certain age threshold. Their role seems to have changed compared to the past and the media spaces in which they appear are increasingly numerous and differentiated (films, TV series, social networks...) bringing significant novelties not only on a spectacular level, but also - and perhaps most importantly - on a cultural and social ones.

Ageing is increasingly evident in the world's population, with a significant impact on the economy, politics and social life of many countries. As a result, the cultural models referred to over the past three decades have changed rapidly: advertising, cinema, sports and other spheres now propagate conceptions of ageing under the banner of intellectual activism, psycho-physical well-being and social prominence.

Within a vast constellation of phenomena, events and products that, in various ways, shape new and often contradictory conceptions of ageing, the cultural discourses elaborated by celebrities assume a clear centrality in the mediatised public scene.

For this reason, it now appears necessary to analyse in depth the link between celebrity and ageing, from a multidisciplinary and transcultural perspective.

We therefore invite scholars of Film Studies, Media Studies, Sociology of Culture and Communication and, more generally, scholars interested in the study of the social, anthropological and cultural dynamics of ageing, to send in a paper relating to (but not limited to) these issues:

- celebrity ageing and fiction (films, TV series, comics, podcasts, novels, etc.);

- the role of celebrities in promoting active ageing;

- the function of ageing and the conversion of celebrity capital into other forms of capital (political, economic, etc.) in post-career life (especially for sports celebrities);

- gender differences among celebrities in their experience of ageing;

- nostalgia and ‘ageing’ celebrities;

- ageing celebrity fandom/fans;

- ageing theories in the Celebrity and Media Studies;

- theoretical analyses of the celebrity-ageing nexus from humanities and social science perspectives;

- the social role of celebrities in the evolution of beauty standards, glamour and desirability in old age;

- the role of social media in cultural discourses on celebrity and ageing;

- comparative analyses of celebrity ageing in different historical, cultural, social and geographical contexts.

Abstracts should be up to 300 words, plus key references. Papers must add a short biographical note of the author (max. 150 words). The evaluation will focus on the relevance to the conference topic, the selection of research objects and the clarity of the use of methodology. Only one abstract per author can be submitted. Pre-constituted panels (3 to 5 participants) will be welcomed.

Papers must be submitted to: celebrageunibo@gmail.com.

The conference will be held in-person only. Submission should be made by May 15th, 2025. Notification of acceptance will be sent by June 30th, 2025.

The keynote speakers will be announced soon.

No fees will be charged, but individual voluntary contributions for social dinners will be encouraged.

Please also note that conference participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation arrangements.

Media Studies Meet Drug Research

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:44:22 GMT

Routledge

Deadline: April 20, 2025

An upcoming edited volume, “Media Studies Meet Drug Research,” co-edited by Dr. Piotr Siuda (Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz) and Dr. Michał Wanke (University of Opole), seeks chapter contributions exploring the intersections of media studies and drug research. The book has received initial positive feedback from Routledge’s commissioning editors and aims to bring together scholars from both fields to examine theoretical, empirical, and methodological connections.

Contributions are invited on topics including:

Theoretical and conceptual frameworks linking media and drug research
Identity, stigma, and agency in drug-related and media environments
Representations, narratives, and moral panics
Digital platforms, online drug markets, and algorithmic influence
Policy, governance, and surveillance across both fields
Methodological and ethical innovations in interdisciplinary research

Key deadlines:

*Extended abstract submission: April 20, 2025

*Notification of acceptance: April 30, 2025

*First drafts due: October 1, 2025

*Final drafts due: December 31, 2025

Further details are available here: https://drugsproject.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CfP_Media_Studies_Meet_Drug_Research.pdf

Scholars interested in contributing are encouraged to submit proposals or share this call with relevant colleagues. For inquiries or discussions on potential topics, please feel free to contact the editors.

MeCCSA Postgraduate Network (PGN) Conference

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:42:40 GMT

September 12, 2025

University of London, UK

Deadline: May 16, 2025

This is a call for papers for the upcoming MeCCSA Postgraduate Network (PGN) Conference, which will be hosted in the Professor Stuart Hall Building at Goldsmiths, University of London on Friday, 12 September 2025.

The theme of this year will be Media and Instability. The committee welcomes contributions that critically explore the intersection of media and instability from any disciplinary, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary perspective and engage with the theme in unique and innovative ways. Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words in length.

We are also delighted to offer up to five £50 bursaries to help presenters cover some of their conference-related expenses. Candidates wishing to apply for the bursary will be required to submit a further 200 words detailing the relevance, timeliness and rationale of their work.

Submissions can be completed via the form here, which also contains a detailed introduction to the potential developments of the conference theme. We invite all research from any areas and strongly encourage PhD students to apply even if their proposed work does not directly align with the specific topics we suggest in the form.

The deadline for abstract submissions is Friday, 16th May 2025 at 12pm (BST).

We look forward to receiving submissions and welcoming all of you to Goldsmiths this year! For further enquiries, do not hesitate to reach out to Miriam Suleiman (msule004@gold.ac.uk).

All very best,

The 2025 MeCCSA PGN Conference Committee

20 Years into the Future: What is our vision of media, data, and society?

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:39:00 GMT

October 23-24, 2025

Sandstraße 4/5, Bremen, Haus der Wissenschaft, ZeMKI, University of Bremen

Deadline: March 15, 2025

20th Anniversary Conference

Media and communication research has traditionally focused on the present, often asking: What are the consequences of each “new” medium? How do digital media and their infrastructures impact contemporary cultures and societies? With this conference, however, we aim to shift the perspective—from analyzing present-day impacts to envisioning future possibilities. What can we learn from the current mediatization and datafication of society to imagine possible futures? What roles might media discourses, technologies, and practices play in ongoing and future societal transformations?

In raising these foundational questions, the conference is broadly situated within the fields of media, communication and information research. Topics may include:

the role of media discourses, technologies, and practices in narrating and shaping the future;
the importance of media policy and governance in building better futures;
recent technological developments such as communicative AI and their potential role for future media environments;
ways in which our narratives of the past, media history, and archeology shape our imaginaries of the future;
digital gaming and emerging forms of entertainment;
future media-related challenges for future sustainability and quality of life;
and methodologies in media and communication research that address emerging media-related developments from a forward-looking perspective.

With discussion topics like these, the ZeMKI’s 20th anniversary conference is not about speculative forecasting but is grounded in media and communication research. We aim to explore long-term trends emerging from today’s media-related transformations and reflect on our visions of the future.

We invite those who have previously engaged with us—our cooperation partners, ZeMKI fellows, guests, and friends—and those interested in starting new conversations. Presentations may cover any area of media and communication research, provided they also address the question of where a mediatized and datafied society might be heading.

Abstracts of up to 500 words can be submitted by March 15th, 2025 via this online submission form.

Participation is free of charge.

Download the call as a PDF file.

Travel

Public Transport

Bremen Central Station is centrally located in the city center and is connected to the public transport network (BSAG) by bus and streetcar. The journey time to the university is 20 minutes (streetcar 6 in the direction of “Universität” to the stop “Bremen Universität/Zentralbereich”).

Car or Intercity Bus

The central bus station is located in the center of Bremen, right next to Bremen Central Station.

The University of Bremen is located on the A27. Coming from the A1 highway, change to the A27 at Bremer Kreuz in the direction of Bremen-Bremerhaven, leave the A27 at the Universität/Horn-Lehe exit and drive in the direction of Centrum/Universität.

Sufficient parking spaces are available on the campus and in the University Technology Park, but these are subject to a charge.

via the Airport

City Airport is well connected by the BSAG streetcar line 6. The journey to the city center takes 11 minutes, to the university it takes 36 minutes (streetcar 6 in the direction of “Universität” to the stop “Bremen Universität/Zentralbereich”).

Accomodation

Bremen has a wide range of accommodation options near the main train station and the airport – Bremen has almost 30 hotels in the city center alone. You can find an overview here.

Radisson Blu Hotel Bremen

Böttcherstr. 2

28195 Bremen

Book Now

H+ Hotel Bremen

Wachtstraße 27-29

28195 Bremen

Book Now

B&B Hotel Bremen-City

Findorffstraße 28-32

28215 Bremen

Book Now

Hotel Ibis Budget (at Main Station)

Bahnhofsplatz 41B

28195 Bremen

Book Now

Screen encounters with Britain. What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture?

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:34:43 GMT

Andrea Esser, Jeanette Steemers, Alessandro D'Arma

Culture, Media & Creative Industries

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the publication of a free downloadable Final report on young audiences in Europe (16-34) (2025) and their engagement with British screen entertainment (films and TV) on streaming and broadcast services. It compares experiences in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. Here are the details:

Esser, A., Steemers, J., & D'Arma, A. (2025). Screen encounters with Britain. What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture? FINAL REPORT. King's College London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-204

https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/322938157/Final_Report_20250211.pdf

Please share with colleagues, students and whoever else might be interested.

Earlier Country reports can also be accessed as follows:

Italy: Esser, A., Hilborn, M., Steemers, J., & D'Arma, A. (October 2024). Screen Encounters with Britain - Interim Report Italy: What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture? King's College London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-195

Netherlands: Esser, A., Hilborn, M., & Steemers, J. (May 2024). Screen Encounters with Britain - Interim Report Netherlands: What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture? . King's College London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-177

Germany: Esser, A., Hilborn, M., & Steemers, J. (September 2023). Screen Encounters with Britain - Interim Report Germany: What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture?. King's College London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-139

Denmark: Esser, A., Hilborn, M., & Steemers, J. (September 2023). Screen Encounters with Britain - Interim Report Denmark: What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture?. King's College London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-118

Predictive Governance in the 21st Century – Governing Futures through Forecasting Algorithms

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:28:27 GMT

Deadline: March 31, 2025

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to submit abstracts for the planned special issue on ‘Predictive Governance in the 21st Century – Governing Futures through Forecasting Algorithms’. Deadline for 300-500 word abstract submission is 31 March 2025. Invited full texts (max. 8000 words) must be submitted by the end of September 2025. Further information can be found via this link: https://uni-bielefeld.sciebo.de/s/eiU2a6lj28tNceq.

PhD Student Proposals of Presentations at the Scholarly Seminar Intergenerational Pedagogies of Remembrance: Arts, Curatorship, and Youth Participation

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:06:26 GMT

October 8, 2025

University of Wrocław, Poland

Deadline: March 26, 2025

The University of Wrocław, in collaboration with the CoREM Consortium, invites PhD students to submit presentation proposals for the academic seminar "Intergenerational Pedagogies of Memory: Arts, Curatorship, and Youth Participation," which will take place on October 8, 2025, in Wrocław, Poland.

This event marks the launch of the European-funded project "Collective Remembrance: Engaging Youth Through Curatorial Practices" (CoREM), coordinated by Pompeu Fabra University under the direction of Dr. Macarena García González. The project aims to engage young people in historical memory and genocide education through curatorship at institutions such as the POLIN Museum in Warsaw, the Museum of History of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA).

The seminar will feature international academics and professionals discussing key topics related to the project. Two PhD students whose research is relevant to CoREM will be selected, offering them the opportunity to contribute to developing methodologies that promote youth participation in curating historical narratives.

Submission Requirements

Applicants must submit:

Proposal title.
300-word abstract.
Academic CV.
Motivation letter (400-500 words).

All documents must be combined into a single PDF file, named using the format "CoREM_Seminar_[LastName]_[FirstName].pdf," and sent via email to Dr. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (justyna.deszcz-tryhubczak@uwr.edu.pl) with the subject: "CoREM Seminar Proposal - [Name]."

Submission deadline: March 26, 2025

Notification of acceptance: April 12, 2025

Selected participants will receive support for accommodation for up to three nights and a travel expense reimbursement of up to 300 EUR. Additionally, they will be invited to attend the internal CoREM Consortium seminar on October 9, 2025.

For more information, please contact Dr. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak at the email address above.

https://www.upf.edu/web/joviscom/noticies/-/asset_publisher/ZdlBO3f8Y0u1/content/convocat%25C3%25B2ria-per-a-estudiants-de-doctorat-seminari-acad%25C3%25A8mic-sobre-pedagogies-intergeneracionals-de-la-mem%25C3%25B2ria/maximized

DIGISCREENS Conference on Identity and Democratic Values in the Age of Streaming

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:02:53 GMT

October 23-24, 2025

Vilnius, Lithuania, Sinemateka

Deadline: April 15, 2025

Conference organisers: The DIGISCREENS team (University of Bergen, Örebro University, University of Granada, Cinema and Media Research Center at Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre)

Selection committee: Jono Van Belle (Örebro University, Sweden), Angela Rivera (University of Granada, Spain), Lina Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė (Cinema and Media Research Center at Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre)

The rise of streaming platforms has changed the production, distribution and consumption of films and TV series. On the one hand, streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, or Max have increased the possibilities for viewers to watch content produced in a wide variety of national contexts. On the other hand, some policies, such as the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVSMD), have sought to level the market between domestic and transnational platform suppliers and protect the production of film and television in Europe (Lobato 2019; Kostovska et al. 2020). This competition to preserve the European audiovisual sector raises a number of questions about programming, content, and viewing habits as well as how audiences negotiate their identities in relation to what they watch.

The DIGISCREENS’ team invites participants to focus on how digital audiovisual platforms contribute to transform social and cultural dynamics in Europe in the era of streaming. This conference, concluding our project, aims to connect researchers working with films and TV series on streaming platforms from the perspective of policy, production and distribution, social and cultural values on screen or audience reception. We hope to bring together industry actors and academics to assess how the current audiovisual media landscape affects (a) the construction of identity and understanding of the other through global, yet culturally specific, mediations of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other social aspects, and (b) the negotiation of democratic values such as equality, inclusion, and solidarity.

We welcome submissions on (but not limited to):

* (trans)national audiovisual media policy;

* impact of audiovisual policy on global and national streaming platforms;

* audiovisual policy and negotiation of democratic values (equality, inclusion and solidarity);

* audiovisual policy and negotiation of identity (gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.) and diversity;

* the impact of global streaming platforms for European national film or TV industries;

* representation of diversity and identity (gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.) in films and TV series distributed on streaming platforms;

* audience viewing habits and streaming platforms;

* audience reception and representation of diversity and identity (gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.) in films and TV series;

* audience preferences choosing content;

* identities and diversity of audiences and streaming platforms;

* streaming and research methods;

* streaming audiovisual media and data.

The project DIGISCREENS is supported by The Research Council of Norway, Research Council of Lithuania, FORTE: Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, la Agencia Nacional de Investigación del Ministerio de Ciencia e Investigación, under CHANSE ERA-NET Co-fund programme, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement no 101004509.

For more info about the DIGISCREENS project: https://www.uib.no/en/digiscreens

Send your an abstract (max 300 words) and a short bio digiscreens.conference@gmail.com before Tuesday 15th of April. Participants will be notified by the 15th of May.

ACM Web Science Conference 2025 (WebSci’25)

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 19:56:14 GMT

May 20, 2025

New Brunswick, USA

Deadline: March 10, 2025

We’re excited to share the call for the interdisciplinary PhD Symposium that will be held as part of the 17th Annual ACM Web Science Conference 2025 (WebSci’25).

Applications should be up to 3 pages (including references, appendices, etc.), single-blind submissions, and the student should be the single author. Submissions will be accepted through March 10th, 2025 (AOE) at the following Google form link: https://forms.gle/eiZDoUi6e2b5NKpc6. Accepted submissions will be included in the WebSci’25 companion proceedings and allowed for oral presentation during the PhD Symposium on 20 May 2025 in New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

Full details about the WebSci’25 Symposium can be found at: https://www.websci25.org/call-for-phd-symposium/ and are copied below.

Important dates

PhD Symposium proposal submission: March 10, 2025
PhD Symposium proposal notification: April 1, 2025
Camera ready version due: April 8, 2025
PhD Symposium Date: May 20, 2025

Note that all submission deadlines are end-of-day in the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone.

Overview

We are pleased to announce the Interdisciplinary PhD Symposium at WebSci’25 happening in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA on 20 May 2025. This symposium will offer PhD students the opportunity to present and discuss their research plans and ongoing research for an interdisciplinary audience. We aim for a lively and engaged discussion, maximizing early-stage ideas exchange and interdisciplinary discussion on emerging or novel ideas/research. This Symposium provides an opportunity for PhD students to receive constructive feedback and aims to bring together early-career and senior scholars working on related topics.

Submission Guidelines

We are seeking up to 3 pages (including references, appendices, etc.) single-blind submissions, and the student should be the single author. All papers should adopt the current ACM SIG Conference proceedings template (acmart.cls). Please submit papers as PDF files using the ACM template, either in Microsoft Word format (available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template under “Word Authors”) or with the ACM LaTeX template on the Overleaf platform, which is available at https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sig-proceedings-template/bmvfhcdnxfty. In particular; please ensure that you are using the two-column version of the appropriate template.

Submissions will be accepted through March 10th, 2025 (AOE) at the following Google form link: https://forms.gle/eiZDoUi6e2b5NKpc6

All contributions will be judged by the PhD Symposium Program Committee. Accepted submissions will be included in the WebSci’25 companion proceedings and allowed for oral presentation during the PhD Symposium on 20 May 2025.

Submission Themes

We welcome quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research, including techniques from the social sciences and computer science. We welcome papers on a wide range of topics at the heart of Web Science, including but not limited to:

Understanding the Web

Trends in globalization and fragmentation of the Web
The architecture, philosophy, and evolution of the Web
Automation and AI in all its manifestations relevant to the Web
Critical analyses of the Web and Web technologies
The Spread of Large Models on the Web

Making the Web Inclusive

Issues of discrimination and fairness
Intersectionality and design justice in questions of marginalization and inequality
Ethical challenges of technologies, data, algorithms, platforms, and people on the Web
Safeguarding and governance of the Web, including anonymity, security, and trust
Inclusion, literacy and the digital divide
Human-centered security and robustness on the Web

The Web and Everyday Life

Social machines, crowd computing, and collective intelligence
Web economics, social entrepreneurship, and innovation
Legal and policy issues, including rights and accountability for the AI industry
The creator economy: Humanities, arts, and culture on the Web
Politics and social activism on the Web
Online education and remote learning
Health and well-being online
Social presence in online professional event spaces
The Web as a source of news and information

Doing Web Science

Data curation, Web archives and stewardship in Web Science
Temporal and spatial dimensions of the Web as a repository of information
Analysis and modeling of human and automatic behavior (e.g., bots)
Analysis of online social and information networks
Detecting, preventing, and predicting anomalies in Web data (e.g., fake content, spam)
Novel analysis techniques for Web and social network analysis
Recommendation engines and contextual adaptation for Web tasks
Web-based information retrieval and information generation
Supporting heterogeneity across modalities, sensors, and channels on the Web.
User modeling and personalization approaches on the Web.

PhD Symposium Chairs

Arpita Biswas (Rutgers University)

Jianing Li (Rutgers University)

Kenny Joseph (University of Buffalo)

Yphtach Lelkes (University of Pennsylvania)