ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

University of Fribourg, Switzerland

The Department of Communication and Media Research (DCM) at the University of Fribourg invites applications for a five-year fixed-term position (80%) as Senior Research and Teaching Assistant (Maître-assistant-e ; Postdoc) in Communication and Media Studies and/or Strategic Communication.

The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary research environment connecting communication and media studies, economics, and strategic organizational communication.

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

Teach four hours per week during the teaching semester, primarily in the French-language Bachelor's programme in Communication Studies and, if required, the Master's programme in Business Communication.

Supervise Bachelor's and Master's theses and seminar papers.

Develop high-quality research projects, publish research findings, and pursue external research funding.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Applicants should hold an excellent PhD in communication or a closely related social science discipline, with a clear research focus on communication phenomena, media and/or strategic organizational communication.

Relevant research areas include journalism, media uses and effects, political communication, and strategic organizational communication. Interdisciplinary profiles are welcome.

Applicants should demonstrate strong expertise in empirical social science research methods. Both qualitative and quantitative research profiles are welcome; equivalent expertise in both is not required. However, basic knowledge of quantitative methods is expected for teaching purposes.

Excellent command of French and very good command of English are required. Knowledge of German and international research experience are additional assets.

POSITION DETAILS

Employment: 80%, five-year fixed-term contract

Location: Fribourg, Switzerland

Starting date: 1 January 2027 or by agreement

Application deadline: 15 November 2026

APPLICATION DOCUMENTS

Applicants should submit a motivation letter outlining their research interests and potential projects, a CV with two academic referees, a publication list, a 1–2-page PhD thesis summary, available teaching evaluations, and any other relevant certificates.

FULL JOB ADVERTISEMENT AND APPLICATION

https://jobs.fr.ch/job/Fribourg%2C-CH-Ma%C3%AEtre-assistant-e-en-sciences-de-la-communication-%26-des-m%C3%A9dias-et-communication-strat%C3%A9gique-Sari/1374206657/

August 25-30, 2027

Flamingo Grand Congress Centre, Albena, Bulgaria

Deadline: August 3, 2027

The International Scientific Conference on Social Sciences (ISCSS 2027) and the International Scientific Conference on Arts and Humanities (ISCAH 2027) take place together, organised by SWS Scholarly Society / Secretariat Bureau. This is one joint call for the two co-located conferences.

Proposals are invited across the published social sciences, arts and humanities sections. Topics relevant to media and communication researchers include Media, Digital Transformations and Library Science, alongside sociology, education, psychology, cultural studies, linguistics, literature, visual and performing arts. Please consult the official website for the complete section scope and submission requirements.

Working language: English. On-site and virtual participation options are offered. Participation is paid; current categories, fees and conditions are published on the official website. Papers are subject to scientific peer review and acceptance is not guaranteed.

Abstract deadline: 3 August 2027.

Full paper and workshop proposal deadline: 17 August 2027.

Registration/welcome: 25 August; scientific sessions: 26–29 August. A post-conference excursion on 30 August is conditional on sufficient registrations. The programme is preliminary.

Official information and submissions: https://www.sgemsocial.org/

Official dates and deadlines: https://www.sgemsocial.org/index.php/dates-deadlines/dates-deadlines-1

Contact: scienceart@sgemsocial.org

Organiser: SWS Scholarly Society / Secretariat Bureau

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