ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Institution, an international platform dedicated to contemporary culture, sustainability, and innovation, is launching its new Sustainability Manager and Strategist for Cultural Institutions programme, which may be of interest to colleagues working across the cultural, artistic, and academic sectors. Please feel free to share this announcement with interested colleagues and networks.

The programme is grounded in the premise that sustainability in the cultural sector must move beyond being a subject of research and public discourse to become an everyday institutional practice. It addresses a central challenge facing cultural organisations today: how can museums, art centres, theatres, festivals, and other cultural institutions develop environmentally responsible, socially meaningful, and economically resilient modes of operation? 

Throughout the programme, participants work on a real case study while developing a Sustainability Portfolio tailored to their own institutional context. The portfolio is designed to address each organisation’s priorities, challenges, and sustainability objectives. Topics include ESG frameworks, governance, impact measurement, KPI systems, communication strategies, sustainable fundraising, and sponsorship.

The faculty brings together international experts in sustainability management, cultural policy, fundraising, impact assessment, environmental standards, and strategic leadership across the cultural and creative sectors. 

Preferential accommodation rates are available for participants attending the residency week in Santa Sofia. Reduced participation fees are available for eligible students, entry-level professionals, and applicants from low-income countries. Institution also offers 20 Individual Participation Grants (€200 each), awarded on a rolling basis while places remain. The full programme and registration details are available on the programme website. 

Critical Intercultural Communication Studies (Possibilities), Peter Lang

Deadline: September 1, 2026

Editors: Liliana Herakova (U of Maine), Jennifer A. Zenovich (Cal State East Bay), Marta N. Lukacovic (Clemson U)

We invite academic and creative proposals positioning the Balkans not as passive objects of study, but as active knowledge producers. Moving beyond Western frameworks, this project explores how Balkan "in-betweenness" (liminality) disrupts linear chronologies, stage-based transitologies, and rigid binaries to reframe global communication theorizing.

Deadlines & Guidelines:

• Abstracts (≤500 words) + 150-word author bio: Due September 1, 2026. Abstracts should answer the questions below in ≤100 words/each:
  

1.     What Balkan communication theorizing intervention, contribution, or question are you proposing?

2.     How does your proposal dis/connect with existing theorizing movements (e.g., de-westernizing, post-socialism, transitology)?

3.     How does it move ontologies, epistemologies, and/or axiologies in communication?

4.     How does it re/consider or critique processes of knowledge production?

5.     How does it enable communication studies to play active roles in transdisciplinary geopolitical analyses/actions?

• Invited Full Chapters (≤6,000 words) and Creative Works: Due December 15, 2026.
  

Send your submissions and questions to liliana.herakova@maine.edu with “Communicating Balkan Liminalities” as the subject line. 

See full call for complete details, orienting commitments, and genre guidelines.

Media, War & Conflict

Deadline: August 31, 2026

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to share a call for abstracts for a proposed special issue on “Iran Amid Crises: War, Media, Repression, and the Future of Democratic Movements,” to be submitted for consideration by Media, War & Conflict.

The special issue examines the recent protests, war, and repression in Iran as a critical case for understanding authoritarian power under conditions of extreme coercion, communicative disruption, international conflict, and political uncertainty. The 2025–26 uprising and subsequent war have intensified long-standing questions about state violence, digital authoritarianism, propaganda, information warfare, journalism under restriction, diaspora witnessing, AI-generated disinformation, and the political economy of repression.

We are particularly interested in submissions that move beyond description and offer analytically strong, empirically grounded, and conceptually ambitious contributions. Papers may focus specifically on Iran or place the Iranian case in comparative dialogue with other authoritarian and conflict-affected contexts, including Belarus, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and beyond.

Possible themes include, but are not limited to, state violence and securitization; internet shutdowns and infrastructural repression; propaganda and disinformation; AI-generated content and synthetic media; journalism and fact-checking under blackout; diaspora activism; cultural politics and defiance; trauma and witnessing; political economy; and comparative studies of authoritarian resilience and democratic mobilization.

Abstracts should be sent to Pardis Yarahmadi at pardis.yarahmadi@hdr.qut.edu.au no later than 31 August 2026. The email subject line should be: Abstract Submission for “Iran Amid Crises” Special Issue.

Abstracts should be submitted as a .docx file and include: title, author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), email address(es), abstract, keywords, and short biographical note(s).

Please see the link below for further details. I would be grateful if you could circulate this call among colleagues, networks, and researchers who may be interested.

https://www.hosseinkermani.com/blog 

VIEW Journal 

Deadline: October 7, 2026

Dear all,

We are currently accepting proposals for Issue #32 of VIEW Journal - Televising Art Music: Space, Performance and Audiences.

Although musicology and sound studies have extensively analyzed the relationship between art music and audiovisual media, a television-specific perspective remains comparatively fragmented. This issue of VIEW addresses this gap by positioning post-1945 art music not merely as background sound, but as a core structuring element of television history. It explores how TV expanded classical music's audience, created new creative opportunities for composers, and shaped collective culture through broadcasts of operas, concerts, background motifs, and screen-specific experiments. 

We welcome proposals from scholars and practitioners working in television studies, media history, musicology, sound studies, audiovisual media, and related fields. Topics might include:

• Genres and forms of art music and their logics of circulation on television;
  
• The artistic and socio-cultural impact of music programming on television;
  
• The process of popularisation of art music and mediation of other music traditions (i.e. folk, jazz, blues);
  
• And more.
  

Proposal deadline: 7 October 2026

Abstract: max. 500 words (+100-word bio)

Editors: Sara Beimdieke (Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf), Jelena Novak (CESEM, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa), Emiliano Rossi (Università di Padova)

More details: https://viewjournal.eu/announcements#cfp-view-issue-#32:-televising-art-music:-space,-performance-and-audiences 

We look forward to your submissions! 

With warm greetings,

VIEW publishing team and editorial board

November 10-13, 2026

Online

Deadline: September 15, 2026

Organised by CICANT:  MeLCi Lab, AISIC, and InTouch Labs | Lusófona University, Portugal

Website: https://melcilab.cicant.ulusofona.pt/training/vi-melci-lab-autumn-school-2026-advanced-school-on-ai-research-practice-in-media-and-communication/

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Researchers in communication and media studies now face a structural tension. Artificial intelligence - particularly large language models - has entered the research pipeline as a tool for applications such as literature search, data annotation, audience segmentation, and discourse analysis. At the same time, AI has become an object of inquiry: a force reshaping civic cultures, media ecologies, and the conditions under which publics form. These two roles demand different competencies. Using AI as a method requires technical skill, prompt design, and validation protocols. Studying AI as a societal force requires critical frameworks drawn from political theory, media literacy, and the ethics of datafication. Most training programmes address one side or the other. This school addresses both and the friction between them.

The VI MeLCi Lab Autumn School invites applications from PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career scholars for a four-day intensive online programme. The school combines keynote lectures with hands-on workshops, structured around two complementary themes. Participants will work with media-specific datasets, confront the interpretative challenges particular to communication research, like bias in content classification, the instability of AI-generated annotations, and the opacity of recommendation systems, and develop both the technical and critical capacities the current research landscape requires.

No prior experience with AI or data science is assumed. Introductory modules provide the necessary foundations.

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Theme 1: AI in Research Practice: Foundations, Methods, and Ethics

AI tools have entered research workflows faster than the methodological standards needed to govern their use. Zero- and few-shot prompting now enables researchers with no computational training to perform tasks that previously required supervised classifiers or teams of human coders (Gilardi et al., 2023; Grossmann et al., 2023; Ziems et al., 2024). The accessibility is genuine. So are the risks: prompt instability, opaque model behaviour, and the absence of agreed reproducibility standards mean that convenience can outpace accountability (Barrie et al., 2025). This theme equips participants with the methodological foundations, practical skills, and ethical orientation to use AI tools rigorously.

1.1 Foundations of Current AI Tools

Large language models have transformed what is computationally tractable in text-based research. Prompting techniques that require no training data have achieved annotation accuracy comparable to - and in some cases exceeding - expert human coders. But the same flexibility that makes LLMs accessible also makes them fragile: minor prompt adjustments can shift outputs in ways that compromise replicability. This sub-track addresses the theoretical architecture of contemporary AI tools, the methodological principles governing their responsible use, and the best practices emerging for transparent, accountable deployment in communication research.

1.2 Accountable Literature Search Using AI Tools

AI-powered platforms such as SciSpace and Litmaps have accelerated literature discovery, enabling researchers to map citation networks, identify thematic clusters, and surface relevant work at a pace that manual search cannot match. The efficiency gain, however, introduces a new accountability burden. AI-assisted searches can silently exclude relevant literature, privilege certain databases, or present coverage as comprehensive when it is partial. This sub-track develops strategies for validating AI-generated search results, assessing coverage boundaries, and maintaining the transparent documentation practices that methodological rigour demands.

1.3 AI-Assisted Data Annotation in Research Pipelines

Data annotation anchors most empirical research pipelines. Where this task once relied exclusively on human coders, AI-based annotation now offers a viable and often highly effective alternative - particularly at scale. The central challenge is consistency. Barrie et al. (2025) demonstrate that prompt stability, i.e., the degree to which semantically equivalent prompts produce equivalent annotations, remains a significant source of variability. This sub-track introduces participants to AI-driven annotation workflows, focusing on practical approaches to assessing and improving annotation reliability through frameworks such as Prompt Stability Scoring (PSS) and integrating responsible validation practices into research design.

Theme 2: Communication, Audiences, and Civic Cultures in the Age of AI

AI does not only reshape how researchers work. It reshapes the media environments researchers study. Algorithmic recommendation determines what the public sees, platform architectures mediate how citizens engage, and the datafication of everyday life raises questions about equity, inclusion, and democratic participation that existing frameworks struggle to answer. This theme addresses AI not as a methodological resource but as a structural force within media ecologies - one that demands critical engagement from researchers who study communication, audiences, and civic cultures.

2.1 Civic Cultures and Artificial Intelligence

AI-driven platforms and recommendation algorithms now mediate core dimensions of civic life: how citizens encounter information, how activist networks form, and how media literacy is exercised or undermined (Sarafis et al., 2025). This sub-track examines the opportunities and challenges AI introduces for civic engagement, exploring how algorithmic mediation reconfigures the conditions under which publics participate in democratic processes.

2.2 Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy in an AI-Mediated World

The competencies required for informed participation in AI-mediated environments remain poorly defined. Critical media literacy now extends to skills that existing frameworks have not yet systematised: recognising AI-generated content, understanding how recommendation systems shape information exposure, and assessing the epistemic status of machine-produced outputs (Chiu et al., 2024). This sub-track examines what digital citizenship demands in an environment shaped by misinformation, deepfakes, and opaque algorithmic curation.

2.3 Data Ethics, Equity, and Inclusivity in AI Research

AI technologies carry biases embedded in their training data, design choices, and deployment contexts. The ethical implications of using these tools for knowledge production: who is represented, whose categories are imposed, and whose communities bear the risks of misclassification, remain insufficiently examined (Ferrara, 2024; Ntoutsi et al., 2020). This theme moves beyond the binary framing of AI as either a technological panacea or an existential threat. It addresses responsible research practice, equitable research design, and the specific obligations researchers hold when working with data from or about underrepresented communities.

Application Details

• Deadline for submission: 15 September 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance: 12 October 2026
  
• Registration deadline: 28 October 2026
  

Interested participants should submit their application (in English) by 15 September 2026, including:

1. An updated curriculum vitae (max. 3 pages)

2. A research statement describing their doctoral dissertation or current research project, including research questions and methods (max. 2 pages)

3. A motivation letter describing their current engagement with AI, specific concerns or interests regarding AI's role in media research and practice, and their preferred theme (max. 2 pages)

Applications should be submitted as a single ZIP file to melci.lab@ulusofona.pt with the subject line: "Application for the VI MeLCi Lab Autumn School".

The school will be conducted online and in English.

For enquiries, please contact: melci.lab@ulusofona.pt

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References

Barrie, C., Palaiologou, E., & Törnberg, P. (2024). Prompt stability scoring for text annotation with large language models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.02039. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.02039

Chiu, T. K., Ahmad, Z., Ismailov, M., & Sanusi, I. T. (2024). What are artificial intelligence literacy and competency? A comprehensive framework to support them. Computers and Education Open, 6, 100171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2024.100171

Ferrara, E. (2024). Fairness and bias in artificial intelligence: A brief survey of sources, impacts, and mitigation strategies. Sci, 6(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/sci6010003

Gilardi, F., Alizadeh, M., & Kubli, M. (2023). ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(30), e2305016120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305016120

Grossmann, I., Feinberg, M., Parker, D. C., Christakis, N. A., Tetlock, P. E., & Cunningham, W. A. (2023). AI and the transformation of social science research. Science, 380(6650), 1108–1109. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adi1778

Ntoutsi, E., Fafalios, P., Gadiraju, U., Iosifidis, V., Nejdl, W., Vidal, M., ... & Staab, S. (2020). Bias in data-driven artificial intelligence systems — An introductory survey. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/widm.1356

Sarafis, D., Karamitsios, K., & Kravari, K. (2025). AI and civic engagement: A brief exploration of applications and opportunities. 2025 International Conference on Advancement in Data Science, E-learning and Information System (ICADEIS), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/icadeis65852.2025.10933183

Ziems, C., Held, W., Shaikh, O., Chen, J., Zhang, Z., & Yang, D. (2024). Can large language models transform computational social science? Computational Linguistics, 50(1), 237–291.

June 27-July 2, 2027

University of Helsinki, Finland

Deadline: September 15, 2026

Abstract submission to: artificialothers@proton.me

20th International Pragmatics Conference

Panel organisers: Emma Lupano, Bettina Mottura, Natalia Riva

Bridges are not built only between people. They are also imagined through the figures, technologies, and social actors that societies create to negotiate difference. Among these figures, humanoid robots and biomimetic agents occupy a revealing position: they are simultaneously technological artefacts, cultural objects, and discursive constructions.

In a period marked by growing social and political polarisation, public discourse increasingly presents artificial agents as potential mediators, companions, assistants, or, conversely, as threats and sources of disruption. This panel examines discourse about robots rather than human–robot interaction itself, while recognising the close relationship between representations of artificial agents and the forms of interaction they make possible.

The panel explores how linguistic and multimodal resources contribute to the construction of robots as social actors and how these constructions shape understandings of otherness, agency, and social cohesion. We are particularly interested in the metaphors, narratives, evaluative practices, and stance-taking strategies through which humanoid and biomimetic robots are represented in different social, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts. While the panel is not inherently contrastive, it encourages contributions that can help shed light on local, national or international discursive trends on the subject.

Possible topics of research include (but are not limited to):

• the institutional, corporate, and policy discourses that formulate promises, expectations, or warnings concerning robots in social domains;
  
• the ethical debates surrounding the deployment of robots in contexts such as education, healthcare, social management, justice, political dialogue, and military activities;
  
• the discursive representations of biomimetic robots and the ways they blur or reinforce categorical boundaries between humans, animals, plants, and machines.

We welcome established as well as innovative analytical approaches including metaphor analysis, critical discourse studies, conversation analysis, corpus pragmatics, historical pragmatics, and related frameworks, in order to shed light on:

• narratives that portray robots as agents of conflict resolution, reconciliation, or social integration, as well as discourses that challenge or resist such visions;
  
• metaphors and figurative framings of robots as bridges, mediators, servants, threats, or mirrors of the human, and their variation across languages and cultures;
  
• epistemic markers, evaluative language, and other pragmatic resources that contribute to attribution or denial of intentionality, emotions, and agency;
  
• discursive strategies such as humour and irony that either humanise or delegitimise artificial agents.
  

By bringing together pragmatics, discourse analysis, human–robot interaction, and science and technology studies, the panel aims to advance understanding of how discourse about artificial beings may contribute to either reinforcing or reconfiguring contemporary social divides.

Please send a short bio of max. 150 words and an abstract of min. 250-max. 500 words with 5 key bibliographical sources to artificialothers@proton.me.

Abstract submission deadline: 15 September 2026.

Acceptance notifications will be sent out by the end of September 2026.

The panel is part of the 20th International Pragmatics Conference to be held at the University of Helsinki, Finland, from 27 June to 2 July 2027. For further information, please check the Conference link: https://pragmatics.international/page/IPC20

Please note that the conference will be held only in person. Travel and accommodation expenses are to be covered by the participants.

November 5-6, 2026

University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal 

Deadline: September 1, 2026

https://televisaoenovosmeios.ubi.pt/

Democracy is increasingly challenged by political polarization, disinformation, populist communication, declining trust in institutions, and the rapid transformation of the media ecosystem. Television now coexists with digital platforms, streaming services, social media, and algorithmically curated information environments that profoundly shape political debate and public opinion.

The International Conference Television and New Media invites scholars, researchers and media professionals to reflect on the role of television and audiovisual media in contemporary democratic societies. Under the theme “Democracy in Times of Anger”, the conference seeks to explore how television and new media contribute to the construction, mediation, amplification or resistance of democratic and non-democratic discourses.

We welcome theoretical, empirical and comparative contributions from communication and media studies, political communication, journalism, propaganda, political science, cultural studies and related fields.

SUGGESTED TOPICS INCLUDE

• Television and democratic resilience
  
• Television and political communication
  
• Populism, polarization and media
  
• Television, propaganda and non-democratic discourses
  
• Disinformation, misinformation and fact-checking
  
• Television news and public trust
  
• Public service media and democracy
  
• Authoritarian narratives in audiovisual media
  
• Electoral campaigns and political advertising
  
• Journalism, editorial independence and democratic accountability
  
• Artificial intelligence, algorithms and political communication
  
• Television and social media ecosystems
  
• Platformisation of television
  
• Streaming platforms and the transformation of the public sphere
  
• Digital participation and civic engagement
  
• Hate speech, online extremism and media regulation
  
• Media literacy and democratic citizenship
  
• Visual communication and political persuasion
  
• Comparative perspectives on media systems and democracy
  
• Media regulation and freedom of expression
  
• Television audiences and democratic culture
  

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Researchers are invited to submit original abstracts of up to 500 words, clearly outlining the research question, theoretical framework, methodology and main findings or expected contribution.

Submissions should be written in English and subjected to: https://forms.gle/sNGAvrceNQSHTDUB7

IMPORTANT DATES

• Call for Papers: 15 June 2026
  
• Submission deadline: 1 September 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance: 30 September 2026
  
• Conference: 5–6 November 2026
  

We look forward to welcoming researchers from around the world to the University of Beira Interior for two days of discussion on the future of television, audiovisual media and democracy.

REGISTRATION

• €50: PhD holders
  
• €25: Students
  
• Free: UBI/LabCom members
  

ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE

• Sónia de Sá (LabCom-UBI)
  
• Haphisa Mugnaini
  
• Inês Salvador
  
• Nuno Teixeira
  
• Débora Gato
  

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Coming soon…

September 17-18, 2026

Online

Deadline: September 12, 2026

Registration is now open for the ECREA 2026 Post-Conference Connected Generations: Media, Communication, and Intergenerational Exchange in Contemporary Lives, which will take place online on 17–18 September 2026.

Organised by the ECREA Section Children, Youth and Media, the ECREA Temporary Working Group Aging and Communication, and the CNSC – UOC research group, the post-conference will bring together scholars and practitioners interested in intergenerational communication, media, and digital technologies.

Participation is free of charge, but registration is mandatory.

Registration is open until 12 September 2026 and can be completed here: https://symposium.uoc.edu/149878/tickets/connected-generations-media-communication-and-intergenerational-exchange-in-contemporary-lives-17-1.html.

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

Mediapolis, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Themed dossier)

Deadline: September 10, 2026

Edited by: Susana Viegas

Every city must negotiate the place of its dead. Cemeteries, crematoria, memorial parks, roadside shrines, temporary memorials, and other deathscapes form an often-overlooked layer of the urban fabric, revealing how societies negotiate memory, ecology, religion, politics, and everyday life. Whether depicting deathscapes as places of dwelling, as in Sérgio Tréfaut’ s “The City of the Dead” (2011), or as destinations of travel, as in Roberto Rossellini’s “Journey to Italy” (1954), media reveal the many ways in which spaces of the dead participate in the social, cultural, and political life of cities. Documentary and fiction films, photography, television, digital media, video games, and social media not only represent urban deathscapes but also influence how they are experienced, imagined, and transformed.

This dossier for Mediapolis – A Journal of Cities and Culture seeks contributions that examine how media engage with urban deathscapes across historical and contemporary contexts. We welcome contributions from scholars working across film and media studies, urban studies, geography, architecture, anthropology, death studies, environmental humanities, memory studies, and related fields.Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Housing, everyday life, and communities in spaces of the dead;
  
• Tourism, pilgrimage, walking, and travel through urban deathscapes;
  
• Colonial cemeteries, military cemeteries, contested memorials, and unmarked graves;
  
• Green burial, biodiversity, and environmental transformations;
  
• Representations of urban deathscapes in cinema, photography, television, digital media, and video games;
  
• Heritage, ruins, archaeology, memory, and the coexistence of multiple urban pasts;
  

Please submit an abstract (maximum 300 words) and a short biography (maximum 100 words) to Susana Viegas (filmdeath@fcsh.unl.pt) by 10 September 2026. Authors will be notified shortly after the deadline. Full articles (maximum 3,000 words, including references following the Chicago Manual of Style, notes and bibliography system) will be due 1 November 2026 and will undergo anonymous peer review. More info here. 

November 5-6, 2026

Lusófona University

Deadline: July 29, 2026

On 5 and 6 November 2026, Lusófona University will host the European conference for the NewsArcade – Seriously Play the News in the Classroom! project (Project Number 101186092).

The event has an open call for papers for various presentation formats until 29 July. A special issue of the International Journal of Games and Social Impact is planned for publication following the event.

https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/agenda-news/news-events/21055-newsarcade-european-conference-2026