ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

December 7-11, 2026

Online

Deadline: October 29, 2026

Connecting Games, Film, Animation and Literacy

Games, film, animation and other screen media are no longer only forms of entertainment. They are where young Europeans play, watch, learn, create, and increasingly take part in public life. They are also industries undergoing profound transformation, shaped by digitalisation, artificial intelligence, sustainability imperatives, shifting audience practices, technological innovation and evolving geopolitical priorities.

Across film, animation, video games, video-on-demand platforms and cultural education, new challenges are emerging around competitiveness, inclusion, environmental responsibility, cultural diversity, governance and international cooperation. At the same time, these transformations offer new opportunities for creativity, innovation and civic engagement.

From Play to Policy asks how research on games, screen media and their audiences can inform the governance of Europe’s cultural and creative ecosystems. The Winter School brings together current research from the European collaborative projects GAMEHEARTS (Grant Agreement No. 101132543), REBOOT (Grant Agreement No. 101094769), ANIMA MUNDI (Grant Agreement No. 101178027), STREAMSCAPES (Grant Agreement No. 101177811) and EuroCivic (Erasmus+ grant 2024-1-HU01-KA220-SCH-000251467), in which the Media Governance and Industries Research Lab of the University of Vienna and the Center of International Relations Studies at the University of Liège are partners, and is organised in cooperation with Webster Vienna Private University.

Over five days of panel discussions, paper presentations and collaborative work, participants will engage with themes including digital platforms and sustainability, innovation in the audiovisual and video game industries, cultural policy and international cultural relations, youth engagement and audiences, European identity and citizenship, and the role of culture in advancing democratic values.

We invite applications from Master’s and Doctoral students from all relevant disciplines who wish to take part in the Winter School, contribute to discussions and, optionally, present a 15-minute paper based on their research. Participation is free of charge. We particularly welcome applications that engage with one or more of the following themes:

1. Games and Democracy

2. Film Industry, Creative Labour, and Fair Work

3. Animation and Sustainability

4. Digital Creativity

5. AI Governance

6. Cultural Diversity

7. Youth Participation

8. Audience Engagement

Please read the participant guidelines before applying.

Applications are submitted through the online form.

Applications should include:

1. A brief CV (up to two pages);

2. A statement of purpose (up to 500 words) describing your research, its connection to one or more of the Winter School themes, and what you hope to gain from and contribute to the Winter School;

3. For those who wish to present a paper, an abstract of the proposed paper (up to 500 words).

Deadline for submission of applications and abstracts: 16 October 2026.

Applicants will be notified of the outcome by October 29th, 2026. The Winter School takes place online LIVE from 7 to 11 December 2026, and the 8th is a public holiday. Participants who complete the programme receive a certificate of attendance from the University of Vienna.

Questions?

gamehearts.research@gmail.com

gentiana.ramadani@univie.ac.at

The Winter School is organised as part of the GAMEHEARTS project, funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No. 101132543). Views and opinions expressed are however, those of the organisers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

DEBATES EN SOCIOLOGÍA Nº 65

Deadline: 15 April 2027

Guest editors: Dr. Luis Sujatovich (Universidad del Este / Universidad Siglo 21, Argentina), and Dr. Alfredo Barrales Martínez (Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico).

The expansion of digital platforms, algorithmic systems, and connected interfaces has significantly altered the forms of communication, as well as the conditions shaping social experience, interpersonal bonds, identities, and participation in the public sphere. The digital realm no longer constitutes merely a set of media or devices intervening in previously established social practices; it has become an everyday dimension of contemporary life where people work, consume, produce, build relationships, construct visibility, and participate politically.

These transformations present a challenge to the categories traditionally used by the social sciences to study communication. Concepts such as receiver, audience, consumer, and even prosumer continue to offer relevant tools, yet they hit limits when trying to understand experiences simultaneously characterized by production and consumption, exposure and intimacy, autonomy and algorithmic conditioning, and participation alongside dependence on private infrastructures.

The issue is not simply determining what technologies do to people or what people do with technologies. Between these two questions lies a dimension worth examining: how one inhabits a social life increasingly organized through platforms, interfaces, algorithms, and digital infrastructures. Inhabiting implies attending both to individuals' practices of appropriation and production and to the technical, economic, temporal, and political conditions that bound their possibilities for action.

This perspective allows us to question transformations extending beyond the study of technological uses. Acceleration and instantaneity alter our relationships with waiting, attention, and memory. Interfaces organize access and hierarchize possibilities for action. Algorithms classify, recommend, and distribute visibility. Exposure shapes contemporary forms of recognition and identity. Platforms mediate sociability and political participation while concentrating infrastructure, data, and decision-making capacity. Consequently, digital experience is constituted at the intersection between everyday practices and structural conditions that cannot be analyzed in isolation.

These issues are particularly relevant in Latin America, where the expansion of digital communication coexists with persistent inequalities, varying connectivity conditions, hybrid forms of cultural consumption, and a growing dependence on transnational infrastructures and platforms. Rather than assuming a homogeneous digital experience, it is necessary to examine its situated configurations and the specific forms that appropriation, inequality, participation, cultural production, and power relations take.

This dossier invites theoretical and empirical contributions that critically analyze these transformations. Papers from sociology, communication, and other social science disciplines are welcome to help review existing categories, discuss contemporary perspectives, and produce conceptual and methodological tools for understanding current conditions of digital social experience.

THEMATIC FOCUS

• Inhabiting, consuming, and producing: A critical review of the status of the subject in digital communication; limitations of the categories of receiver, consumer, and prosumer; everyday practices of appropriation, creation, resistance, and resignification.
  
• Temporalities of digital experience: Acceleration, instantaneity, the culture of brevity, and fragmentary consumption; transformations of attention, waiting, memory, and the continuity of experience.
  
• Mediations, interfaces, and infrastructures: Interfaces as conditions of access and organization of experience; algorithmic classification, regimes of visibility, architectures of participation, and the material infrastructures of digital communication.
  
• Subjectivation and social bonds: Extimacy, exposure, and the performativity of the self; recognition, belonging, intimacy, and care; digital communities, emerging sociabilities, and forms of connected solitude.
  
• Public sphere and political action: Transformation of public deliberation, digital construction of leadership, personalization of politics, networked mobilization, activisms, cancellation practices, polarization, and institutional disaffection.
  
• Political economy, platforms, and technofeudalism: Concentration of digital ownership, data extraction and appropriation, dependence on private infrastructures, monetization of attention, and new forms of rent and subordination. Scope and limitations of technofeudalism as an explanatory category, in dialogue and discussion with the perspectives of platform capitalism, surveillance capitalism, and digital colonialism.
  

Deadline: 15 April 2027

Publication date: 15 December 2027

Submissions: revistadebates@pucp.edu.pe or via this link.

Author Guidelines

April 14, 2027

Markthalle Basel - Basel, Switzerland

Early Bird Application Deadline: 10 December, 2026

Late Application Deadline: 10 March, 2027

We are cordially inviting you to join next BaselEduCa Expo - 8th International Education & Career Exhibition during 14 April, 2027 in Basel, Switzerland - Markthalle Basel - Basel, Switzerland (Viaduktstrasse 10, 4051 Basel, Switzerland).

BaselEduCa Expo is a vital and unique event place to bring together various Providers, Investors, Suppliers, Candidates, Buyers and Experts via Face to Face meeting method to closely introduce Exhibitors as well actual products, programs, activities, advertisements and services in Education, Research, Employment and Career field.

Your Possible Participation Types

- as Exhibitor - during 2 Expo Dates to promote upcoming application/registration deadlines for all kind of Education, Research & Career opportunities (Degree or non-degree programs, job positions, language courses, child education, internship, volunteership, fellowship, traineeship, apprenticeship, research programs, summer or winter camps, training courses, scholarship programs, gap programs, educational equipment & materials, educational/career publishing materials, stationary materials suppliers and etc.)

- as Presenter - Companies/Institutions has option to present and introduce Products, Programs or Services to audience within 45 - 60 minute period

- as Sponsor - Any State, Private or Public Institutions welcome to support BaselEduCa Expo as Diamond, Gold, Platinum or Silver Sponsor

- Advertisement - Half or Whole page Advertisement options available in BaselEduCa Expo Catalogue

- as Visitor or Guest - Entrance is Free of charge for all Visitors and Guests during 1 day BaselEduCa Expo event.

International Visitors are most welcome also to register by email as well from various countries.

Entrance is free of charge for visitors and guests. But if you need invitation letter for visa application & travel purpose process it costs 155EUR per person.

Due to the long term visa application process we strongly advice visa need visitors/guests send us by email passport page at least 1-2 month in advance.

Privileges of BaselEduCa Expo Event

- Introducing and promoting the educational programs and products, job vacancies, recruitment opportunities and services to local and international Visitors and Guests

- Embracing the opportunity of B2B coaching and meeting with Swiss and international Providers, Investors, Suppliers, Candidates, Buyers and Experts in education and career field

- Finding talented and high-motivated partners, students, employees, volunteers, researchers and scientific fellows

- Exploring and building new partnership ties with local and international state, public, private and academic institutions.

- Booking presentation space at BaselEduCa Expo event period

- 10% Discount as Alumni to join for next exhibition and events planning by IPD

There have also Special Discount opportunities for our valuable Alumni Exhibitors & Partners.

For registration and more information about BaselEduCa Expo event please visit the following website: https://ipdinstitute.ch/BaselEduCa-Expo-2026/ 

Follow expo event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/International-Education-and-Career-Exhibition-139896359675539/

NOTE: Please forward this email to whom it may concern within your institution, network and community.

Your BaselEduCa Expo Team

Address: Ryffstrasse 23,

4056 Basel, Switzerland

Email: baseleducaexpo@ipdinstitute.ch

Tel: +41764316170

Other Upcoming EduCa Expo Events

BakuEduCa Expo 2027 - Baku International Education & Career Exhibition

Expo Sponsor: University of Dubai (You could be also one of the sponsors. Apply soon)

Expo Dates: 3 - 4  April, 2027 (Saturday & Sunday)

- Early Bird Application Deadline: 1 December, 2026

- Late Application Deadline: 25 February, 2027

Expo Hours: 12.00 - 20.00

Venue: Radisson Baku Hotel - Azerbaijan

Entrance is Free for Visitors to Expo Venue

Registration Available in this page: https://ipdinstitute.ch/Trainings-Events/

AntalyaEduCa Expo 2027 - International Education & Career Exhibition 

Expo Dates: 30 September - 1 October, 2027 (Thursday & Friday) 

- Early Bird Application Deadline: 10 June, 2027

- Late Application Deadline: 1 September, 2027

Event Venue: Ramada Hotel Antalya (Central Area of Antalya city)

Registration Available in this page:  https://ipdinstitute.ch/Trainings-Events/

March 1-5, 2026

Umeå University, Sweden

Deadline: October 30, 2026

Dear colleagues,

We are excited to welcome you to the 2027 edition of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries (DHNB) conference in Umeå, Sweden. DHNB is a forum for cross-border collaboration in digital scholarship, bringing together participants from academia and cultural heritage institutions across the humanities, social sciences, and the arts.

The submission deadline is approaching, and we invite you to submit your abstract by 30 October 2026. 

With DHNB2027, the theme Human(ities) in the Loop emphasizes not only our disciplines’ long tradition of methods that do indeed put many different kinds of “humans” in the loop, but also the many loops that our disciplines study, before and beyond AI.

We particularly welcome contributions that reflect on the role of the humanities in understanding not only AI-related changes, but also transformations driven by digital perspectives, methods and practices, in particular how they impact and influence our everyday life, teaching and research practices.

Submission deadline: 30 October 2026

Conference dates: 1-5 March 2027

Location: Umeå University, Sweden

DHNB2027 is hosted by Humlab at Umeå University in collaboration with DIGSUM.

Read the Call for Papers: DHNB2027 Call for Papers

We look forward to receiving your submission and welcoming you to Umeå in March 2027!

Best regards,

The DHNB2027 Organising Committee through 

Evelina Liliequist, Associate Professor in Digital Humanties and Deputy Director at Humlab, Umeå University

Friday, 27 November 2026, 17.00-18.00 CET / 8:00 AM PST

MS Teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/34276240701277?p=CXnCqOpNJyH7uAHzAi 

David Altheide, Regents' Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University

Online open lecture within the 10th Workshop Towards Development of Mediatization Research

Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin

Media Logic is foundational for many derivations of mediated communication. The logics—including formats, grammar, rhythm, etc.-- of various media operating in a historical social context are constitutive of the everyday taken-for-granted social order. Nested within an ecology of communication, this includes information technology and a specific medium; the message assemblers and creators; and the audience which also serves as interpreters, validators, amplifiers, and recruiters as a kind of chorus. Meaning and sense-making reflect this logic which is embedded in social performances as symbolic interaction. The communicative model for the process of constructing and enacting social order is the “generalized other,” or how established expectations are internalized and guide conduct to engage in shared meanings. I suggest that this has changed with digital media that routinely and haphazardly challenge an established communicative order with an “algorithmic generalized other,” which refers to the complex interplay between technology, social interaction, and individual identity in the digital age.  This will be illustrated with the Trump Administrations Gonzo Governance that uses digital media campaigns and disinformation to promote the politics of fear and destabilize established institutions. As one authority noted, “This is digital astroturfing, plain and simple... The more people see an idea online, the more inured to it they become and the more commonplace and acceptable it becomes.” 

If you have any questions, please contact the organiser:

Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech, katarzyna.kopecka-piech@umcs.pl

April 15-16 2027

University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Deadline: November 15, 2026

& International Journal of Communication special issue

Questions? Contact: aaron.hyzen@uantwerpen.be

Full call: https://www.algepi.com/call-for-contributions-epistemic-welfare-role-media-algorithmic-awareness/

Submission site: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/84043/submitter

About the symposium:

As media organizations incorporate algorithmic systems into the production, curation, recommendation and distribution of content, questions have come to the foreground about how citizens encounter, understand and engage with knowledge. This has been the topic of a four-year international, interdisciplinary research project, Understanding Algorithmic Gatekeepers to Promote Epistemic Welfare (ALGEPI), funded by FWO, FNRS and SNSF. This two-day symposium serves as the project's capstone event.

While valuable research on algorithms, artificial intelligence, platforms and media has largely focused on the risks and harms associated with algorithmic systems, this symposium seeks to broaden that conversation, starting from the notion of epistemic welfare, defined as creating and maintaining the conditions and capabilities that ensure citizens' epistemic agency in the public sphere. We aim to generate a dialogue across disciplinary and professional boundaries that envisions solutions: how can media organizations, regulation and governance, as well as algorithmic design, contribute to citizens' epistemic agency in the digital public sphere?

The symposium therefore welcomes scholars from communication and media studies, Human-Computer Interaction, law and policy studies, philosophy, media management studies and related fields, alongside media practitioners, regulators, policymakers and civil society organizations.

The symposium follows a twenty-four-hour format. The first half day (Thursday 15 April, afternoon) focuses on exchanges between researchers and media stakeholders, while the second half day (Friday 16 April, morning) is devoted to academic presentations and discussion. Keynote speakers include Prof. Anne Kaun (Södertörn University) and Prof. Minna Horowitz (University of Helsinki). An evening event on Thursday will allow for exchange and networking.

Selected papers presented at the symposium will be invited to submit full manuscripts for consideration in a special issue of the International Journal of Communication.

Topics:

We welcome theoretical, empirical, methodological, design and practice-oriented contributions exploring the relationship between algorithmic systems, media, epistemic welfare and citizen awareness. Topics include, but are not limited to:

- Algorithmic awareness, transparency and explainability

- Epistemic agency in algorithmically mediated environments

- Recommender systems and the discovery of epistemically valuable content

- Artificial intelligence in journalism and media production

- Public service media and epistemic welfare

- Media literacy, algorithmic literacy and public understanding of AI

- Governance, regulation and accountability of algorithmic systems

- User agency, trust and knowledge-seeking practices

- Design approaches that support epistemic welfare

- Comparative and cross-cultural perspectives on algorithms and knowledge environments

- Measuring and evaluating epistemic welfare

- Intersections between generative AI and epistemic welfare

- Critical perspectives on the role of media and epistemic welfare

Submission format and deadlines

- Please submit: 1) title and keywords; 2) an abstract (500-750 words); and 3) a yes/no indication of interest in submitting a full paper to the International Journal of Communication special issue.

- The submission form closes on 15 November 2026.

- Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 1 December 2026.

- Authors who indicate interest in the special issue and whose abstract is accepted for the symposium are required to submit a full paper by 31 January 2027. This date serves as the submission deadline for the special issue.

- A registration fee of approximately EUR 60 applies to symposium attendees; it includes the Thursday dinner and social programme. There are no additional fees for papers selected for the IJoC special issue.

Questions? Contact: aaron.hyzen@uantwerpen.be

Full call: https://www.algepi.com/call-for-contributions-epistemic-welfare-role-media-algorithmic-awareness/

Submission site: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/84043/submitter

Journalism Studies (Special issue)

Deadline (EXTENDED): February 1, 2027

Guest editors: Julius Reimer, Bernadette Uth, and Sandra Banjac

Relationships have always played a central role in journalism. In today’s journalism, the importance of relationships has increased further as our “hybrid media environment” (Chadwick, 2017) is shaped by social networks and platforms that are built around and simultaneously alter connections. As a result, journalism studies is continually grappling with the question of how the journalistic field, actors, practices, and content are embedded in a network of relationships (Uth et al., 2025).

Thus far, studies have mainly focused on the relationship between journalism and its audiences, e.g., investigating communities, trust, and loyalty through “relational work” (Koliska et al., 2023) or “relational labor” (Bossio & Holton, 2021). Other works have shown how social relationships in journalism are characterized by mutual perceptions and expectations (Heise et al., 2014; Wilhelm et al., 2021) and “relationship practices” (Loosen et al., 2025: 6) that are constantly evolving with/in a changing media environment. Further, scholars have analyzed journalists’ changing relationships to sources and how ‘dancing’ this “tango” (Gans, 1979) demands special “interactional expertise” (Reich, 2012). A third strand of relationship research focuses on journalists’ “boundary work” (Carlson, 2019) in relation to peripheral actors (Hanusch & Löhmann, 2023; Maares & Hanusch, 2023) that play an increasingly important role in journalism. Here, research investigated either the perspectives of journalists (Chua & Duffy, 2019) or peripheral actors (Bélair-Gagnon & Holton, 2018; Eldridge, 2018; Schapals, 2022, for exceptions see Löhmann et al., 2025 and Lewis and Usher (2014, 2016) on journalists and programmers).

While there is ample research focusing on how journalists perceive their various relationships, this short overview exemplifies a major limitation: these relationships are usually explored from the perspective of only one of the relationship partners. We argue that this results in an incomplete and potentially biased picture as relationships can only be fully grasped by taking into account “both sides of the story” (Schmidt & Loosen, 2015). Their very character arises from ‘the in-between’ (Seyfert, 2019, own translation). In the relationship between journalists and peripheral actors, for instance, it is through a relational approach—by exploring how the boundary work of both parties ‘clashes’ and plays out—that we can ascertain the actual outcome of boundary work: the extent to which journalists succeed in (re-)establishing their profession’s boundaries in the digital realm, and the extent to which contesters succeed in challenging and changing them. Actual “relationship studies” (Loosen et al., 2025: 22) that investigate and compare both journalists’ perspectives and those of their relationship partners (e.g., audiences, sources, media managers) are still scarce. This is particularly true if we look beyond the audience: while a growing amount of scholarship investigates both journalists and their recipients (e.g., Abdenour et al., 2021; Banjac & Hanusch, 2022; Loosen et al., 2020; Mellado & Gajardo, 2024; Riedl & Eberl, 2022), there is much less research on journalists and their counterparts in other relationships, for instance, politicians (e.g., Fawzi et al., 2026; Hoffjann & Seeber, 2021; Larsen & Naper, 2022; Ólafsson, 2024), scientists (e.g., Post, 2015), or media executives (e.g., Laor, 2020). Likewise, scholars rarely employ concepts that magnify the in-between processes, e.g., boundary objects (Star, 2010) or trading zones (Galison, 1997).

Given the relevance of relationships in journalism, we argue that explicitly relational approaches are crucial for understanding journalism. The proposed special issue provides a space for expanding conceptual, empirical, and methodological relational approaches and for reflecting on their unique potential. In so doing, the special issue consolidates a strand of relational research in journalism studies thus advancing the field. To examine the often under-explored quality of journalists’ diverse relationships, we can look to the three components—trust, satisfaction, and commitment—that have been central to understanding different types of relationships—from child-parent to customer-brand relationships—across a variety of academic fields and disciplines (Athanasopoulou, 2009; Ziegele, 2025). Besides evaluating quality itself, submissions could engage with the factors that influence it and how it, in turn, affects journalism and its performance. Further, we encourage submissions to analyze power relations within journalistic relationships, in particular, shifts within those relationships induced by the changing, networked media environment.

We invite contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

• The exploration of journalism’s diverse relationships from more than one perspective, ideally analyzing all sides of these relationships, including:
• relationships between journalism & actors outside newsrooms, e.g., audience, other newsrooms, freelancers, service providers, peripheral actors (influencers, newsfluencers, alternative media), representatives of other fields (e.g., politics, science, PR);
• (changing) relationships within newsrooms, e.g. to colleagues, superiors, programmers, infographic designers, marketing departments;
• relational theoretical and conceptual approaches for journalism research centering around such relationship analyses, e.g., relational sociology, trading zones and boundary objects, relational work, social positioning theory, identity and practices;
• relational method(ologie)s to conduct such studies, e.g., relationship studies comparing relational imaginaries and perspectives, relational content analyses, innovative and creative methods for relational research.

We explicitly encourage scholars to engage in relationships themselves, i.e., to team up and combine data or conceptual knowledge on different sides of a relationship, e.g., compare data on journalists’ views on media managers and media managers’ view on journalists.

Link to CfP: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/relational-perspectives/

Contact: j.reimer[at]leibniz-hbi[dot]de

Submission Instructions

We invite authors to submit a full draft manuscript of 8,000 words (inclusive of the abstract, tables, references, figure captions, endnotes). Full manuscripts must be submitted via ScholarOne, selecting this Special Issue (“Relational Perspectives in Journalism (Studies)”) on the submission system. The cover letter accompanying the submission (max. 400 words) should clearly address the relevance of the proposed article to the theme of the special issue. Please follow the instructions on the journal homepage for formatting your paper. Manuscripts will undergo desk and double-blind peer review. The selected articles will be published as they finish the review and publication process but will appear as a collection once all articles are completed. We expect the special issue to be completed by autumn 2027. There are no publishing costs for the authors.

Deadline for submissions extended until: 1 February 2027

20th International Pragmatics Conference

June 27–July 2, 2027

University of Helsinki, Finland

Submission deadline: 15 October 2026

We invite contributions to our accepted panel on reacting as a pragmatic, multimodal and affective practice of digital participation. From likes, comments, quotations, screenshots and reposts to duets, livestreams and reaction videos, the panel asks how digital content is taken up, reused, transformed and recontextualised, and how participants position themselves towards content and audiences.

We welcome empirically grounded and theoretically oriented papers across languages, platforms and communities, including approaches from media linguistics, digital communication, multimodal analysis and interaction research.

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words through the conference platform by 15 October 2026, midnight CEST. In step 4 (“Topics”), select “Reacting to Digital Content: Pragmatics of Reuse, Uptake and Affective Alignment”. Active IPrA membership is required for submission.

Full panel call: https://universe.uibk.ac.at/s/gZNmg83tWgQMMfC

Submission: https://ipra2027.exordo.com/

Official conference call: https://pragmatics.international/page/CfP2027

Panel organisers: Carolin Dix, Karina Frick and Daniel Pfurtscheller, University of Innsbruck.

Contact: daniel.pfurtscheller@uibk.ac.at

Fandom | Cultures | Research  (Themed Issue 2/27)

Deadline for Proposals (EXTENDED): October 21, 2026

Contemporary television is now inextricably linked to digital platforms, making it impossible to analyze one without the other. Streaming services, social media infrastructures, algorithmic recommendation systems, and data-driven interfaces have fundamentally reshaped the production, distribution, circulation, and experience of serial narratives. Television today operates as a hybrid, cross-platform phenomenon that unfolds across interfaces, snippets, paratexts, fan practices, and algorithmically curated regimes of visibility. In these environments, users are addressed simultaneously as audiences, consumers, fans, data subjects, and co-producers. By evoking the metaphor of Upstairs, Downstairs (GB, ITV, 1971-1975) this themed issue interrogates the structural hierarchies and power dynamics between platform architectures (the 'upstairs' of algorithmic control and corporate infrastructure) and tactical user practices (the 'downstairs' of audience agency, resistance, and creative appropriation)

Questions of platformization have become a central concern within contemporary Television Studies and constitute a key area of interest. Across streaming services, social media platforms, public service media environments, and participatory cultures, television increasingly operates through mechanisms of attraction, guidance, and capture. Interface design, personalization, algorithmic recommendation, gamification, and affective infrastructures shape how content is discovered, circulated, and experienced. At the same time, audiences and fans engage with these environments in creative, strategic, resistant, and sometimes subversive ways. 

Contemporary television cultures encompass a wide range of practices and infrastructures, including transmedia storytelling and paratextual extensions, platform interfaces and recommendation systems, public service media strategies, livestreaming and participatory cultures, fan investigations and knowledge production, as well as alternative and pirate modes of distribution and access. Examining these diverse phenomena through the lens of seduction and agency highlights how platformed television environments simultaneously enable, structure, and constrain audience participation.

These tensions invite closer examination. While platformization has been widely discussed across media and television studies, the specific relationship between seduction and agency remains a productive lens for understanding how contemporary television cultures are organized, experienced, and contested. Such a perspective allows for the analysis of infrastructures, industries, interfaces, texts, and audiences not as separate domains but as mutually constitutive elements within platformed media environments.

This themed issue seeks to advance these discussions by bringing together theoretical, historical, empirical, methodological, and practice-oriented perspectives from Television Studies, Platform Studies, Media Industry Studies, Fan Studies, and Cultural Studies. We invite contributions that explore how the interplay of platform logics, industrial strategies, technological infrastructures, audience practices, and cultural negotiations shapes contemporary television cultures.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• New theoretical or conceptual approaches to the relationship between seduction and agency in platformed television
  
• Empirical case studies on specific formats, platforms, genres, or regional contexts
  
• Interface design, UX politics, and affective infrastructures
  
• Fan practices, participatory cultures, and forms of resistance or appropriation
  
• Transmedia storytelling, paratextual economies, and snippet/meme circulation
  
• Global platform dynamics and locally specific appropriations
  
• Public service media strategies in platform environments
  
• Methodological challenges and innovations in researching platformed television cultures
  
• Questions of datafication, visibility, moderation, nostalgia, or alternative/pirate practices
  
• The role of AI-generated content and automated participation
  

The issue seeks nuanced analyses that explore the complex entanglements and contradictions between infrastructures, industries, texts, interfaces, and audiences, rather than understanding seduction and agency as simple opposites.

***

Language: Bilingual, English/German

Please submit your proposal (working title, abstract of 300-500 words) along with a short biographical note by October 21st 2026 to fcr-jour@uni-marburg.de.

Notification of acceptance: November 1st 2026

Submission of full papers: April 1st 2027

Guest Editors: Kim Hebben, Christine Piepiorka, Herbert Schwaab, Sven Stollfuß, Yulia Yurtaeva-Martens

***

References

Dragomir, Marius/Túñez López, Miguel: “How Public Service Media are Changing in the Platform Era: A Comparative Study Across Four European Countries.” In: European Journal of Communication 39 (6), 2024, 608-624.

Hebben, Kim/Piepiorka, Christine: “Easy to Snack—Hard to Digest? Strategies of Dis/Array in Streaming, Social Media, and Television.” In: Media and Communication 13, 2025, Art. 9430. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.9430

Helmond, Anne: “The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready.” In: Social Media & Society 1 (2), 2015, 1-11.

Luginbühl, Martin: “TV News on Instagram: Affordances, Genres, Journalistic Cultures.” In: Discourse & Communication 19 (1), 2025, 46-71.

Mayer, Annekatrin: “Updating Public Value: How Journalists Understand Their Societal Role in the Context of Digital Platforms.” In: Digital Journalism, 2025, 1-17.

Moe, Hallvard: “Embrace or Leave Social Media? On the Viability of Public Service Media Organizations’ Strategies Facing Platform Power.” In: European Journal of Communication 39 (6), 2024, 595-607.

Nelson, Jacob L.: Imagined Audiences: How Journalists Perceive and Pursue the Public. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2021.

Prinzler, Saskia/Stollfuß, Sven/Böttke, Anna-Katharina: “Engaging Audiences in Platformized Public Service Media Journalism: User-Generated Content and Editorial Practices in the funk Content Network.” In: Journalism and Media 7 (2), 2026, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia7020090

Stollfuß, Sven: “Platformization as a Structural Dimension for Public Service Media in Germany: The funk Content Network and the New Interstate Media Treaty.” In: Television & New Media 25 (2), 2024, 185-203.

van Es, Karin/Poell, Thomas: “Platform Imaginaries and Dutch Public Service Media.” In: Social Media + Society 6 (2), 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120933289

December 1-2, 2026

Brussels, Belguim

Why do pro-democratic messages find little echo among increasingly polarised European societies? Three Horizon Europe research and innovation projects—PROTEMO, PLEDGE, and MORES—have spent the past years exploring different pieces of the same puzzle: the role emotions play in shaping politics and what they cost democratic life when political decision-makers leave them unaddressed. On 1 and 2 December 2026, the projects are holding their Joint Closing Conference in Brussels for scholars, civil society practitioners, and policy decision-makers. The scientific findings on offer reveal how emotions feed into some of the most pressing political challenges that Europe faces today: 

• What drives the widening gap between political tribes—the affective polarisation eroding trust across democracies—and how might emotions help bridge it?
  
• How emotional appeals shape policy debates and citizens’ attitudes, and how neglecting emotional needs can push vulnerable groups further away from politics?
  
• How and when do personal grievances become a democratic threat, and how can they be channelled into proactive civic engagement instead? 

The conference

The event is organised on two consecutive days. Day one is dedicated to scientific discoveries and discussions. Session panels, led and moderated by project experts, will cover important levels at which emotions operate: citizen behaviour and political attitudes, media and political communication, and the policy process itself. Each session pairs short presentations from across the projects with open discussions. 

The afternoon opens into breakout rooms on methodology, conceptual and theoretical questions, and migration and crises as case studies.

Day two focuses on policy and civil society groups. Sessions will cover the evidence, risks, and opportunities for emotions in policy decision-making, and the hands-on application of science-derived tools for better policy and communication, followed by breakout rooms for civil society and policy practitioners. While the themes and foci change, registered attendees are welcome to join either day of the event and network.

Together, MORES, PLEDGE, and PROTEMO represent nearly €10 million of Horizon Europe investment in research untangling how emotions affect politics and democratic life. The closing conference is where researchers present the evidence and implications of their scientific research to, and debate them with, the wider research and policy communities.

Programme

The programme, a draft subject to change, is available for download here. 

How to attend

More information about the venue and programme will be sent to confirmed attendees after registration. To sign up, please fill in the registration form here.