ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

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). 

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:

• 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!

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

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  

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  

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

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.

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

 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: 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