ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

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.

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

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.

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

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

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).

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)

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.

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 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)