ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Digital Culture & Society (special issue)

Deadline: December 1, 2026

https://digicults.org/callforpapers/cfp-familiar-feeds-unfamiliar-politics/

This special issue approaches Instagram activism from the perspective of everyday life (de Certeau, 1984; Gardiner, 2000; Lefebvre, 2004), foregrounding the digital creation and consumption of activism through the lens of the routine, the repetitive, and the mundane. With 3 billion monthly active users in 2025 (Statista, 2026), Instagram has become an important social media platform for entertainment and social connection, but also for encountering and discovering political life (Faveiro et al., 2026). As the visual, affective, and commercial logics of this platform come with opportunities and challenges for political activism, we are interested in what seemingly ordinary acts of posting, scrolling, and engaging with digital content can reveal about the reconfigurations of contemporary political imaginaries.

The special issue thus asks: How does the political infuse daily life through the mundane routines of Instagram use?

Inspired by Lefebvre's suggestion that "the strangest things are often the most trivial" (1991, p. 13), the special issue is interested in what makes the embedding of Instagram political activism in everyday practices seem trivial, why that may appear to be strange – and to whom. Political activism is broadly understood here as sustained actions meant to advocate and mobilize for social change, which may fall anywhere along the conservative/liberal spectrum. Furthermore, the special issue recognizes contemporary transmedia practices among activists and social movements, in which Instagram is an analytical starting point for investigating everyday digital activism (Caldeira, 2025; Dumitrica & Hockin-Boyers, 2023; Gonzalez et al., 2024; Hannouch & Milstein, 2025; Loyola-Hernandéz, 2026; Yuen & Tang, 2023); contributions are free to pursue connections with analogue and other digital sites of content production and consumption.

The following questions underpin the special issue’s interests: What kinds of political imaginaries, attachments, and subjectivities emerge when activism is not encountered primarily in organized spaces of deliberation or movement-building, but in the ordinary consumption of Instagram content? How does the political come to inhabit the routines of everyday digital life, and how do these routines, in turn, reshape what politics can look and feel like? Which power relations are naturalized in this process, leaving them outside the field of contestation?

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• everyday political mediation on Instagram;
  
• activism, visibility and platformed legitimacy;
  
• everyday temporalities and the rhythms of activism;
  
• the importance of place and space in political activism on the platform;
  
• the relation between visibility and submerged networks;
  
• the commodification of political commitment;
  
• algorithm-aware tactics of the everyday;
  
• the influencer/activist hybrid and the monetisation of causes;
  
• invisible labour, care and exhaustion.
  

We welcome different methodological approaches sharing an interest in critically interrogating the intersection between everyday life, Instagram use, and political activism.

Submission process

Digital Culture & Society is a refereed, international journal, fostering discussion about how digital technologies, platforms and applications reconfigure daily lives and practices. It offers a forum for critical analysis and inquiries into digital media theory. 

The special issue is tentatively scheduled for Spring 2028.

If interested, please submit a 300 words abstract with a clear description of the theoretical framing, research design and connection to the special issue’s focus to familiarfeeds.submissions@gmail.com by December 1, 2026.

Key dates

• December 1, 2026: Abstract submisison
  
• December 15, 2026: Editors invite full-paper submsisions based on selected abstracts
  
• April 15, 2027: Full-papers submission
  
• July 15, 2027: First round of review
  
• September 15, 2027: Second round of review
  
• December 15, 2027: Completion of copy-editing and submission of the final manuscript to the publisher
  

Special issue editors

Dr. Delia Dumitrica is an Associate Professor in Political Communication and Digital Activism in the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on the intersection between digital technologies and protest communication, social movements, and activism. Her work has appeared in journals such as New Media & Society; Media and Communication; Information, Communication & Society; European Journal of Communication; The International Journal of Communication; Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies; Media, Culture & Society.

Alessia Pensabene is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Scuola Normale Superiore. Her research focuses on feminist content creators on Instagram as emerging political actors in the digital public sphere, with a focus on the possibilities and limits of platform-based activism and the ways in which visibility itself functions as both a resource and a constraint for contemporary political action.

References

Caldeira, S. P. (2025). (Re)sharing feminisms: Re-sharing Instagram Stories as everyday feminist practices. New Media & Society, 27(7), 4265-4284.

de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press.

Dumitrica, D., & Hockin-Boyers, H. (2023). Slideshow activism on Instagram: constructing the political activist subject. Information, Communication & Society, 26(16), 3318–3336.

Faverio, M., Park, E., & Gottfried, J. (2026, April 15). Teens’ experiences on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/04/15/teens-experiences-on-tiktok-instagram-and-snapchat/

Gonzalez, A., Schmuck, D. & Vandenbosch, L. (2024) Posting and framing politics: a content analysis of celebrities’, athletes’, and influencers’ Instagram political content. Information, Communication & Society 27(8): 1605-1627. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2285495

Hannouch, B., & Milstein, T. (2025). Activating Ecocentrism: How Young Women Environmental Activists Produce Identity on Instagram. Environmental Communication, 19(2), 198–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2024.2376697

Lefebvre, H. (1991). Critique of Everyday Life, vol. I. Verso.

Loyola-Hernández. L. (2026) Al Glitter de Guerra: cyborg movidas, Instagram and feminist protest in Mexico. Third World Quarterly 47(2), 344-360.

Statista. (2026). Number of Instagram users worldwide from 2013 to 2025 (in millions) [Graph], January 7. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183585/instagram-number-of-global-users/

Yuen, S., & Tang, G. (2023). Instagram and social capital: youth activism in a networked movement. Social Movement Studies, 22(5–6), 706–727. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2021.2011189

September 29, 2026

Brussels, Belgium

Deadline: September 21, 2026

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to “Europe at the Digital Crossroads”, a Complutense Summer Course that will take place in Brussels on 29 September 2026.

The course will address some of the key challenges facing Europe in the digital era, including European digital autonomy, artificial intelligence governance, data protection, digital and hybrid threats, and the protection of democratic values.

The programme will feature experts and representatives from European institutions, including Members of the European Parliament, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), as well as academics from the Complutense University of Madrid.

Attendance is completely free of charge. In addition, participants who attend the full course will be entitled to receive an official diploma from the Complutense Summer Courses of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

29 September 2026

European Parliament, Brussels

Free attendance

Complutense Summer Courses diploma

⏰ Registration deadline: 21 September 2026

We would be delighted to welcome you to this opportunity for discussion and exchange on the digital challenges shaping Europe’s future.

Programme: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lNX6IsJjVm9ZZJ0TK4wbqjJKfqFV5Yin/view

Registration: https://forms.gle/GfQvHBfZ4GZe5M7H9

We look forward to seeing you in Brussels.

Edited By: Scott Rodgers, Helena Atteneder, Lou Therese Brandner, Marcos Dias, Diogo P. Henriques and Sara Trentham-Black

“AI” – as technology, technique, imaginary and debate – has clearly reached the city. Yet its arrival is more mundane than spectacle. Inspired by The Synthetic City Conference, this open-access Dossier in Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture, edited by the ECREA Media, Cities and Space Management Team, explores the implications of AI and related digital technologies for urban living. It offers new ways of thinking about different appearances and manifestations of AI, complementing and expanding existing debates around “urban AI.” 

The Dossier includes eight articles by different authors that analyse the current status of AI systems in urban space, moving away from overly dramatic and technocratic accounts of its agential power towards providing a grounded and critical perspective of its assemblages with urban infrastructure, human and non-human actors. Our introduction maps out how AI agency gets attributed, what AI models can learn about urban life, and the temporal politics of such learning, where what is claimable gets settled in advance. What does it mean if the synthetic city turns out to be banal, if not at all trivial? We argue that having an actionable and critical technical literacy of mundane AI systems, which recede from daily perception, is challenging. We hope this Dossier begins to provide some means of wayfinding around this issue. 

https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/dossiers/dossier-the-synthetic-city/

Dear ECREA friends,

We’re happy to share a new report that grew out of our AoIR 2025 pre-conference in Brazil: Creative Labour in Rupture? GenAI & Future Research Directions.

The pre-conference brought together 50 scholars working across creative labour, cultural production, platforms, and AI to think collectively about what GenAI is changing, how we might study those transformations, and which questions should guide the next phase of research.

The report (linked below) opens with provocations from Arturo Arriagada, Robert Prey, Alessandro Gandini, Daphne Idiz, Thomas Poell, David Nieborg, Godwin Simon, Jiaru Tang, Caitlin Petre, Rafael Grohmann, M.E. Luka, and Tom Divon. It then brings together the voices of all 50 scholars in the room through three lenses: Ruptures, Reactions, and Resistances.

The report is a shared baby of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF), DigiLabour, and the Content Creator Scholars Network (CCSN). We hope it can serve as a resource for any of you who wish to carry these conversations forward, for research, teaching, and for thinking together about where scholarship on GenAI and creative labour needs to go next.

And to make that continuation more practical, we have also built a collaborative reading list on GenAI and creative labour, drawing on the references and intellectual traditions brought into the room in Rio. The list is designed to stay open and evolve with the field, and we warmly invite you to add your own work, reports, or anything you’ve read and haven’t been able to shut up about.

Read and use the full report:

Creative Labour in Rupture? GenAI & Future Research Directions - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1srOcSNmdy4n_vFefM4Cfgu5I3zGObPUd/view?usp=sharing

Explore and contribute to the living reading list:

GenAI & Creative Labour | Reading List - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VWE5Bp9_92bjE4dIdO5rpwJkkcBC6P8UR2wXL2FjDNw/edit?tab=t.0

Check out our sites (we provide more useful resources there!)

CCSN - https://www.ccsn.site/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/weareccsn/ | Newsletter https://shorturl.at/vez3a

DigiLabour - https://digilabour.com.br/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/digilabour/

CLCF - https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/

Tom Divon, Rafael Grohmann, M.E. Luka & Zoe Glatt

Platforms & Society (Special Issue)

Deadline: December 15, 2026

Digital platforms have become central spaces through which an expanding spectrum of conflicts is mediated, from affective polarization to online culture wars, humanitarian crises, armed violence, and information warfare. Platforms shape how conflicts become visible, circulate among publics, and are acted upon. The special issue of Platforms & Society invites empirical and theoretical contributions on how digital platforms mediate conflict in politically hostile environments. More details can be found here in this call for paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dxkjuuhAKQlR7T5iD6Yla2GoemRqvU2M/view

OPEN CULTURAL STUDIES

Deadline: March 31, 2027

“Open Cultural Studies” (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/culture/html) invites submissions for a special issue entitled “Sense of Humour, Sense of Style: Humour In And About Fashion”, edited by Kristina Stankevičiūtė (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania) and Nuno Amaral Jeronimo (University of Beira Interior, Portugal).

DESCRIPTION

Fashion’s relationship with humour has never been a fluent one – it has been addressed as a notoriously serious industry, and perhaps rightly so. Nevertheless, sparks of its funny or ironic side have been notable at various times, from Elsa Schiaparelli and her iconic surrealist designs to Franco Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Jean-Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, as well as quite a number of others.

“Millennial” fashion designers, such as Virgil Abloh and Demna Gvasalia, have turned to irony as an expression of postmodernist fashion creation, while Viktor&Rolf have employed it for presenting their critique of the severely demanding fashion system.

Humour has been increasingly present in fashion for the last decade, both in luxury fashion and streetwear, in fashion shows and advertising, used by designers and customers for sheer entertainment and for expressions of criticism, discontent or disagreement. The current atmosphere of post-pandemic relief mixed with the tensions of ongoing military conflicts and controversial political leadership as well as the challenges of the global climate change questions the very relevance of fashion as we know it; humour, being a global pervasive discourse in all private and public spheres, as many authors have noted, seems to be an attractively sensible choice of commenting on this most wasteful and the second most polluting industry today.

The aim of the collection is to debate on this unpardonably overlooked theme in fashion research, discussing various forms of fashion’s humour, such as fashion irony, sarcasm and/ or satire.

The volume is aiming to address the questions whether fashion humour is relevant today and how it has been relevant in the past; what forms of it have been the most eloquent, noticeable and most effective, and what exactly that effect has been.

Suggested themes include but are not limited to:

• Humour in fashion design
  
• Streetwear humour
  
• Humorous/ witty fashion representation (on the catwalk, in photography, advertisement, etc.)
  
• Humour about fashion (in cinema, literature, stand-up comedy, other forms of high and pop culture)
  
• National examples of fashion humour (design, advertising, etc.)
  
• Humorous/ ironic/ satirical/ sarcastic fashion communication
  
• Fashion memes
  
• Humorous fashion commentary
  
• The effects of fashion’s humour (on fashion’s perception, on the customer, on the wearer; psychological,
  
• aesthetic, etc.)
  
• Fashion humour/ irony/ satire as a form of art

HOW TO SUBMIT

Submissions will be collected from February 1, 2027 to March 31, 2027 via the online submission system at https://www.editorialmanager.com/culture/

Please choose section/category: “special issue: Fashion and Humour”.

Before submission, authors should carefully read the Instructions for Authors, available at https://www.degruyter.com/publication/journal

All contributions will undergo critical peer review before being accepted for publication.

Further questions about content for this thematic issue can be addressed to the Guest Editors:

Kristina Stankevičiūtė (kristina.stankeviciute@vilniustech.lt) 

and 

Nuno Amaral Jerónimo (nunoaj@ubi.pt)

As a general rule, publication costs should be covered by Article Publishing Charges (APC); that is, be defrayed by the authors, their affiliated institutions, funders or sponsors. Any financial matters can be discussed with the journal’s OA Portfolio Manager, Magdalena Skoneczna at magdalena.skoneczna@degruyterbrill.com before submitting their manuscript.

In case of technical problems with submission, please write to Assistant.Managing.Editor@degruyterbrill.com

Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OpenCulturalStudies/degruyterbrill.com/culture

July 19-21, 2026

Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany

Deadline: October 31, 2026

The 2027 DiscourseNet congress will take place between July 19th and July 21st at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, in Germany. The topic of the congress is Discursive imaginaries of change: Heterotopias, PowerKnowledge and the “Great Transformation”. 

Thematic Focus

The 2027 DiscourseNet congress focuses on the imaginaries that different actors, movements, disciplines, and epistemological traditions bring to the question of change. Transformation is a not a settled concept. It always points in progressive directions. Right-wing populisms and authoritarian movements offer their own powerful imaginaries of transformation. So do the counter-discourses of feminist care ethics, indigenous knowledge systems, commoning movements, de-growth advocates, and de-colonial scholars. 

We welcome contributions that address : 

Imaginaries and discourse: How is the meaning of "transformation", "crisis", or “the future" discursively constructed, stabilised, and contested across political, media, and everyday registers? What social imaginaries shape collective understandings of economy, democracy, social life and ecology?

Power, knowledge, and epistemic struggles: Whose knowledge counts, and whose is marginalised? We especially welcome contributions from Southern, de-colonial, feminist, and indigenous perspectives that challenge Western-modernist frameworks. We encourage analysis of how educational systems, organisations and communicative practices normalise particular epistemic orders.

Heterotopias and counter-movements: Where do alternative spaces, practices, and discourses emerge? How are commons, care, solidarity, and more-than-human entanglements articulated as alternatives to market logic? How do such spaces relate to — and potentially transform — hegemonic formations?

Methodological reflexivity: How can discourse research itself reflect on its own positioning, avoid reproducing hegemonic closures or epistemic romanticism, and develop what some call "caring research"? What are the implications of engaged, trans-disciplinary, or co-creative methodologies for our scholarly practices?

A more detailed version of this CfP can be found on the conference website : https://discourseanalysis.net/DNC2027. 

Submission Guidelines

All Submissions are to be submitted via Conftool at https://www.conftool.com/dnc2027/

Important Dates

• Abstract submissions open: 15th of June 2026
  
• Submission deadline: 31st of October 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance: 15th of December 2026
  
• Registration deadline: 31st March 2027 (early bird fee) & 15 June 2027 (regular fee)
  

Contact

Suzanne Weber (local organisation) and Thomas Jacobs (DiscourseNet Event coordinator)

For further information regarding the congress, registration, accommodation, or programme updates, please contact: DNC 2027 Organizing Committee dncongress2027@gmail.com

SOUNDS

The Societal Observatory Using Novel Data Sources (SOUNDS) is looking to fill a W3 Professorship position (m/f/x) in Compuational Social Science.

This professorial appointment is open regarding the candidate's specific research focus within the field ofcomputational social science. The successful candidate will define their own research agenda, provided thatit demonstrates excellence in computational social science, addresses current societal questions, makes useof novel digital data sources and establishes clear links with computer science.

SOUNDS is a research project at Saarland University funded through the Saarland state government’s Transformation Fund. It investigates societally relevant questions through novel digital data sources, digital behavioural traces, social media data and Al-based methods. This professorship provides the computational social science core of the SOUNDS project. It will combine social-science theory with network analysis, automated text analysis, the study of large-scale digital behavioural data, mobile sensing and Al-based modelling, addressing questions such as collective opinion formation, social cohesion and polarisation, or the role of digital platforms in public communication, and contributing to joint questions, methods and publications with the social sciences and computer science. The successful candidate will be expected to develop and lead externally funded research, including principal investigator roles in coordinated funding initiatives such as Collaborative Research Centres. Teaching duties will include computational and methodological courses, for example on the analysis of digital behavioural data, automated text analysis and network analysis. These courses will contribute to degree programmes in the social sciences, computer science, data science and psychology. The role also includes the supervision of student theses and the mentoring of early-career researchers.

We are looking for a researcher with excellent international standing in computational social science and a strong record of working with novel digital data sources applied to societally relevant questions. Your expertise should include computational methods such as network analysis, automated text analysis, the analysis of large-scale digital behavioural data and Al-based modelling. You should be open to a formal affiliation with the Department of Computer Science. You will have an established international researchnetwork, an excellent record of high-impact publication and of third-party funding, including grants secured and applications submitted. You should also be prepared to take on principal investigator roles in coordinated funding initiatives such as Collaborative Research Centres. A willingness to teach in English is expected, as is the willingness to teach in German in the medium term.

Application deadline: October 15th, 2026

Full call for applications: https://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/upload/verwaltung/stellen/Wissenschaftler/W2906_W3_SOUNDS_CompSocScien_EN.pdf

SOUNDS

The Societal Observatory Using Novel Data Sources (SOUNDS) is looking to fill a W2 Professorship position (W3 tenure track, m/f/x) in Political, Social or Communication Science.

This professorial appointment is open regarding the candidate's specific research focus within the field of political, social or communication science. The successful candidate will define their own research agenda, provided that it demonstrates excellence in the field, addresses current societal questions, makes use of novel digital data sources and establishes clear links with computer science.

SOUNDS is a research project at Saarland University funded through the Saarland state government’s Transformation Fund. It investigates societally relevant questions through novel digital data sources, digital behavioural traces, social media data and Al-based methods. Based in the department of European Social Research, the person appointed to this position will work at the intersection of political science, sociology and communication science. They will pursue theory-driven, comparative research on public communication and societal change with data-driven methods, addressing questions such as political and social opinion formation, the mediated public sphere, or processes of social change. The professorship will also contribute to the development of joint research questions, methods and publications with the wider SOUNDS project and computer science.

We expect you to develop and lead externally funded research, including third-party funding applications at national and European level and to participate actively in coordinated funding initiatives such as Collaborative Research Centres. Your teaching duties will include courses on empirical social research, digital communication research and computational methods, which will also be offered as part of related degree programmes in neighbouring disciplines. The role also includes the supervision of student theses and the mentoring of early-career researchers.

We are looking for a researcher with excellent academic standing in political science, sociology and/or communication science, with an empirical and quantitative focus, and a strong record of working with novel digital data sources to address societally relevant questions. You should also be open to formal affiliation with the Department of Computer Science. You will have an established international research network and an excellent track record of relevant publication and of third-party funding, including grants awarded, applications submitted or applications being prepared. A willingness to teach in English is expected, as is the willingness to teach in German in the medium term. The tenure evaluation follows the criteria of the university's tenure-track regulations.

This professorial position is a fixed-term public sector appointment ('Beamtenverhältnis auf Zeit') for a maximum period of five years. If the tenure evaluation procedure (teaching appraisal and external assessment of research work) is positive, the appointee will be promoted to a permanent professorship (lifetime tenure) at the German academic salary scale W3.

Deadline for applications: October 15th, 2026

Full call for applications: https://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/upload/verwaltung/stellen/Wissenschaftler/W2905_W2TTW3_SOUNDS_PolSocComScien_EN.pdf

October 9, 2026 (12:10-18:00)

University of Helsinki, Main Building, Hall F3017 or remotely at https://video.helsinki.fi/unitube/live-stream.html?room=l73.

Deadline: September 30, 2026

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland's accession to NATO, and wider shifts in the international order have transformed public debate, journalism, and media representations of security, identity, and geopolitics. How do these changes reshape journalistic practices, public narratives, and understandings of the world around us? The symposium brings together researchers studying the changing relationship between media, war, security, and geopolitical imaginaries.

The event presents key findings from three research projects funded by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation's special call "War Became the Topic: What Is the Role of the Media?"

The research projects are:

• Forces of Change in War Journalism: Open Source Intelligence, Information Warfare, and Patriotic Pressure by Joonas Koivukoski & Markus Ojala (PI) (University of Helsinki)
  
• Imagined West: Occidentalist Narratives in Finnish News Media in the Context of the War in Ukraine by Jukka Jouhki (PI), Jere Kyyrö & Suvi Mononen (Tampere University)
  
• Journalism, Media and the New Security Challenge: The Securitization of the Eastern Border in Media Debate Marko Ampuja, Mervi Pantti (PI), Nuppu Pelevina & Erjon Sjenderi (University of Helsinki)
  

Programme

12:10-12:15 Welcome

12:15-13:00 Keynote: Antal Wozniak (University of Manchester)

13:00-14:00 Presentations associated with the Imagined West project: Jukka Jouhki & Jere Kyyrö (Tampere University), Kiryl Kascian (Vilnius University), Elise Kraatila (Tampere University), Sisanda Nkoala & Doniquah Allies (University of the Western Cape), Vladyslav Vodko (Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University) and Stanislav Hrabovetskyi (University of Vienna), Matti Puranen (Finnish National Defence University).

14:00-14:20 Coffee break

14:20-15:20 Presentations associated with the projects Forces of Change in War Journalism: Markus Ojala (University of Helsinki), and Journalism, Media and New Security Challenges: Mervi Pantti & Risto Kunelius (University of Helsinki).

15:20-15:40 Coffee break

15:40-16:40 Panel discussion: Noora Kotilainen (University of Helsinki), Ville Similä (Helsingin Sanomat), Antal Wozniak (University of Manchester), Johanna Vuorelma (Tampere University).

16:40-16:50 Final words

17:00-18:00 Finger food & refreshments

Register by 30 September here.