ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Special issue of CINERGIE - Il Cinema e le Altre Arti

Deadline for abstract submission: 21st of November

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted on media production, distribution, and experience. Long-established practices have undergone dramatic interruptions or major shifts and respective laborers have been forced to strongly revise their activities. For instance, film sets and television studios reconsidered their modes of operation in the face of Covid-prevention rules, protocols and requirements. Likewise, in an epidemic scenario in constant change, film festivals and awards found themselves in the need to repeatedly revise their rituals and forms, to be able to carry on at least part of their activities. Media practitioners have thus been faced with the need of reflecting and discussing pitfalls and opportunities brought to light by the pandemic, while also implementing strategies for facing and countering the crisis.

In Italy, actors and actresses have been among the most affected groups of professionals. Whereas the usual pace of film, television and media production, release and promotion has met deep alterations, as much as usual networking activities during periods of lockdown, fame and exposure have foregrounded film and TV stars in social engagement activities and as testimonials of public health campaigns (including the first tentative rules, the lockdown periods, and the efforts towards mass vaccination).

The aim of this issue of Cinergie is surveying and understanding the manifold impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Italian actors and actresses. Topics within the scope of this issue include but are not limited to:

• Training actors and actresses at the time of the COVID-19 crisis: schools, academies, coaching
• Media production, acting performance, and restrictions: emergency, strategies, and tactics
• Actors, actresses and the promotion of media products: from testimonials to remote endorsers?
• Actors, irregular work, labour activism: workers’ solidarity and institutional and commercial policies during the pandemic
• Acknowledging actors and actresses: festivals, awards, and the economy of prestige during the COVID-19 crisis
• Stardom, public health, and social engagement
• Social networks, self-promotion, and actors and actresses during the COVID-19 crisis
• Job-seeking: finding acting jobs at the times of the pandemic
• Actors, intermediaries, and the COVID-19 crisis: coaches, agents, management, casting departments, press agents, and social media managers during the pandemic
• Theoretical and methodological contributions on actors and actresses in the pandemic
• Case histories on specific actors or actresses, film productions, television shows, digital platforms in the national context and/or in the transnational connections between Italy and other markets.

Submission details

Please send an abstract and a short biographical note to Luca Antoniazzi, Cristina Formenti, and Giulia Muggeo at: luca.antoniazzi3@unibo.it, cristina.formenti@uniud.it, and giuliafrancesca.muggeo@unito.it by November 21, 2021 — [subject: Cinergie Media Performers + name surname author(s)].

Abstracts, in English or Italian, should be from 300 to 500 words of length. Notification of acceptance will be sent within November 28, 2021.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by January 16, 2022.

The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000 words and can include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please, provide correct credits, permissions and copyright information in order to be sure that the images, clips, and links are copyright free and can be published.

Contributions will be submitted to double-blind peer-review.

The issue will be published in July 2022.

June 24-25, 2022

Budapest, Hungary

Deadline (EXTENDED): November 20, 2021

Keynote Speakers

• Mark Deuze (University of Amsterdam)
• Laura Ahva (Tampere University)

A conference exploring the intersections of history, culture, digital technology and journalism.

Although the shared past of digitization and journalism stretches back at least to a half-century, digital journalism history is a field still in formation. Building on the momentum of the recent ‘historical turn’ in digital media and internet studies, the aim of the conference is to bring together an interdisciplinary network of scholars to interrogate digital journalism histories and to start a global critical exchange on various approaches to and aspects of historicising digital journalism.

As digital journalism has been re-configured by socio-historical contradictions of communication and complexities of its technological innovations, journalism scholarship should continuously strive for enhancing critical exchange to advance studies that intersect with numerous disciplines, theoretical approaches and methodological traditions. Emphasis of the conference is on the plurality of histories instead of one single digital journalism history, acknowledging diachronic as well as synchronic complexities of social relations, political contingencies, cultural traditions and power configurations between journalism and digitisation. Instead of enforcing one great master narrative, the conference aims to offer a space to embrace the co-existence of parallel, sometimes complementing, often conflicting historical investigations and narratives.

By aiming to explore the intersections of history, culture, digital technology and journalism, the conference welcomes papers and panels that are grounded on diachronic or synchronic explorations of digital journalism ‘pasts’, while elaborating the relevance of its historical findings for digital journalism ‘futures’. The conference invites theoretical and methodological reflections on historicising digital journalism as well as original single case studies or comparative inquiries into the phenomena from the decades of the long digital revolution of journalism. The conference welcomes papers that examine the digital journalism histories of the global ‘centers’ and we especially encourage inquiries from the ‘peripheries’ of digital journalism development and scholarship.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- Mythologies of technology: reconsidering ‘dead’ and ‘new’ technologies in journalism

- Transforming social control in the digitized newsroom: investigating separation and integration tendencies

- Re-configuring the labour process in digital journalism: between standardisation and creativity of digital news production

- Digital platforms, tools and practices in journalism: from Teletext, CD-ROMS and Minitel to www, smartphones and social media

- Changing skillsets in digital journalism: deskilling, reskilling, upskilling newsworkers

- (Dis)continuities of forms and genres in journalism

- Labour relations of digital journalism: standardisation, precarisation, entrepreneurialism

- Liquefied identities of digital journalism: boundary work between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ journalists, ‘professional’ and ‘citizen’ journalists, journalists and ‘technologists’, ‘journalists’ vs ‘bloggers’

- Re-inventing journalistic profiles: from ‘mouse monkeys’, ‘meta journalists’ to ‘robot journalists’

- Digitized audiences between participation and commodification

- Business models of digital journalism: from legacy media ecosystem to platform capitalism

- Ethical, legal and regulatory issues of digital journalism: from www to automation

- Particular online journalistic genres moving online: digital music, sport, food journalism

Technical details and important dates

Deadline for submitting abstracts and panel proposals is November 20, 2021 (CET).

Please submit all submissions via this online form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScLTg4do6bMlFrDrcxL6MJJJqudnWJtR9rrRxrRSgtUoo0qiA/viewform

Panel proposals should consist of 3 or 4 papers, and all the paper abstracts belonging to a proposed panel should be submitted individually through the form. The maximum length for panel and paper abstracts is 400 words.

Conference talks will be 15 minutes long followed by 5 minute long discussions.

Further information will be found on the constantly updated conference website: https://sites.google.com/view/hodj2022/news

Organizers and contact information

The conference will be held at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), and is jointly organised by the Department of Sociology and Communications, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, BME and the Social Communication Research Centre, University of Ljubljana (UL).

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact the organizers:

Dr. Tamas Tofalvy, Associate Professor (BME): tofalvy.tamas@gtk.bme.hu

Dr. Igor Vobič, Associate Professor (UL): igor.vobic@fdv.uni-lj.si

November 17

Online event

Comparative research on Digital disconnection

The field of study on digital disconnection is flourishing, yet comparative research is only starting to emerge. The Norwegian project Digitox (https://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/projects/digital-disconnection/index.html) and the comparative project Dis/Connect, in Portugal (https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/research/projects/national-funding/137-dis-connect-individuals-digital-disconnection), seek to advance the field through two cross-national qualitative studies.

On November 17th, 10-11 am CET, the research teams will present results of 'Disconnection and leisure locations', and 'Disconnection and youth', reflecting on the merits and challenges of comparative studies. Speakers include Trine Syvertsen, Ana Jorge, Patrícia Dias, Brita Ytre-Arne.

This presentation is offered in the scope of Dis/Connect project led by CICANT/Lusófona University (Portugal), a comparative project with Digitox, led by Universities of Oslo and Bergen, and in collaboration with CRC-W (Catholic University of Portugal). Dis/Connect is funded by EEA Grants (FBR_OC1_69_COFAC).

The event will take place on Microsoft Teams.

Further inquiries: ana.jorge@ulusofona.pt

Free event, registration required at https://forms.office.com/r/8eXfLjEWE8

The Spanish research cluster Nebrija_INNOMEDIA is working on a project about media, social networks, and fake news. We are trying to elucidate how young adults access information and navigate what has been called "infodemic." If you could please share this research form with your students it would be wonderful, as we are trying to gather responses from countries other than Spain to compare international data. The form is anonymous and takes 5-10 minutes to complete. You can find the information bellow.

Thank you very much for your help.

Defined as the overabundance of information on a given subject, infodemic has been described by the World Health Organization as one of the most serious problems we face as a society. This is an investigation carried out by researchers from the Nebrija_INNOMEDIA research group. Answers are collected totally anonymously and only for scientific and academic purposes. The survey takes 5 minutes to respond: https://forms.gle/PoGip8CD98ochKeX6

March 12, 2022

Online

Deadline: December 10, 2021

Biographic, Narrative and Lifecourse Research Group (BNLR) of the Sociological Association of Ireland (SAI)First Biennial Conference Online

Overview

The Biographic, Narrative and Lifecourse Research Group (BNLR) of the Sociological Association of Ireland (SAI) was established in 2019 as a forum for critical discussion and debate among Irish, European and international social scientists on the multidimensionality of narrative, biographic and lifecourse inquiry, to address methodological questions and challenges and advance scholarship in these interlinking fields. Our first biennial conference engages critically with national and international biographic, narrative and lifecourse scholarship on voices in uncertain times; how voice is conceptualised, why and how some voices are accorded greater or lesser social legitimacy depending on context and how the voices of some social groups that have traditionally been marginalised from social debates, might be given more primacy in contemporary social and political debates. We are also interested in the interplay between voice and visibility, i.e. how voices may become noticeable and seize public spaces.

The Covid-19 pandemic has wrought unprecedented changes in global societies, irrevocably transforming governance and social relationships, everyday interactions, touch practices, and emotional displays. At the same time, international debates rage about climate justice, inequitable impacts of environmental degradation in majority and minority world contexts, while major transformations take place globally and locally in how society is organised and governed. The social and cultural effects of these events on people’s lived experiences are long-lasting affecting how we talk, touch, move, and interact in private and public spaces. In contemporary society, voices are continually repositioned and their legitimacy is reimagined due to profound cultural transformation with regards to rights, freedoms, membership of online communities, political protests and the impact of non-human actors (e.g. viruses, animals) on human worlds (and vice versa).

For this first biennial conference, we invite abstracts for papers and proposed conference roundtables and panels from narrative, lifecourse and biographical researchers which engage with one or more of the following themes/topics relating to voice and social transformation:

• The meaning of voice in contemporary societies; positionalities, legitimation and de-legitimation of particular voices;
• Methodological innovations, challenges and novel solutions to capturing, analysing and interpreting voices and lived experiences in times of unprecedented social and cultural transformation;
• Research with groups often considered to be ‘marginalised’ and/or ‘hard to reach’;
• Effects of recent social transformations on lived lives and everyday social experiences, including concealed and unspoken aspects of daily living;
• Interdisciplinary or Transdisciplinary research which incorporates distinctively biographic, narrative or lifecourse research focus;
• Research on socially fragmented professional and working lives (e.g. working arrangements, emotions, social isolation, innovative technological responses; ‘blurred’ boundaries of professional and personal living arrangements, impacts on particular professional groups;
• Voices of young people in contemporary education systems and novel challenges of learning and teaching online;
• Societal perceptions of Covid-19, risk, trust and governance;
• Research on built space, urban/rural environments and our relationships with non-humans;
• Reflexivity and research impacts upon individual researchers and/or research teams.

Submission of Abstracts

Abstracts for papers should be 200-250 words approximately and must also contain an indicative title, list of authors’ names, institutional affiliation and 2-3 keywords.

Proposals for individual panels, roundtables or workshops should be approximately 700 words in length and must contain a title, list of convenors, outline of the key focus, and description of workshop/panel activities (if appropriate).

Please submit all abstracts and panel/workshop proposals to bnlrgroup@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions: 10th December 2021

Authors will be notified of the outcome of their submission by email on/by 8th February 2021.

November 18-19, 2021

This is an invitation to register for virtual or in-person participation!

The Union of International Associations (UIA) cordially invites European Communication Research and Education Association to participate in its 14 th Associations Round Table Europe in Prague (Prague Congress Centre) on Thursday 18 & Friday 19 November 2021

The UIA Associations Round Table Europe 2021 is a hybrid event designed for participants working in and with international associations. If travel is not permitted, then in-person registrations will be converted to online participation.

We hope to see many of you in-person in Prague. And for those, who wish to participate virtually, our hosts the Prague Convention Bureau will provide a virtual meeting platform where easy access, networking and educational content will combine to provide an engaging and rewarding experience for all delegates.

What you can expect:

• presentations on common challenges by peers working in international associations
• discussions in workshops and break-out rooms with the chance to ask in-depth questions and to share and exchange knowledge and experience
• UIA team members will moderate the sessions throughout, guiding and assisting the delegates
• the host teams will assist virtual attendees with any technical need
• networking breaks
• in-person attendees: optional city tours and everyone will enjoy tasty food and the city of Prague

See the topics of the programme at https://uia.org/roundtable/2021/europe/

Thanks to the support of our hosts, we are able to offer a high-level educational programme through a professional and easy to access technology platform for a low fee:

• the registration fee for the hybrid Round Table Europe is EUR 60.00 plus 21% VAT

How to register for Round Table Europe 2021:

(1) Go to https://uia.org/user/login

(2) Fill in your username : XF5766

(3) Fill in your password: DTSRQAZH

(4) Click on “Register for the 2021 Round Table Europe in Prague”

You can use this username and password to register any number of delegates; each of your delegates will need to log in and register separately.

UIA is an independent non-profit research institute founded in 1907 which documents and promotes the work of international associations since over 110 years.

We look forward to welcoming you at our Round Table Europe this year and we thank our host partner Prague Convention Bureau – and our Platinum Special Partners: Thailand Convention & Exhibitions Bureau and Business Events Sarawak

Sincerely,

Carol Williams

Union of International Associations

PS. While you are logged in on the UIA website, you may also wish to check your association’s profile in the Yearbook of International Organizations.

Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information

Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information, the Institute for Women’s Leadership, and the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences, are joining together to seek a prominent leader in the area of media, culture, and feminist studies to hold the prestigious Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair.

The Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies reflects and builds on the work and world view of Gloria Steinem, feminist journalist and activist, organizer, reporter, editor, and humanist. The chair inspires students and faculty at Rutgers, as well as the wider audience outside the university, to explore and reimagine the role of the media in serving democracy, with an explicit focus on women and under-served communities. Connecting the worlds of academia and media, this chair will invite students to come together across boundaries, to analyze, critique, and create media that reflect reality, and to provide facts, narratives, and new forms of storytelling that advance empathy, democracy, communal action, and innovative solutions.

This notable leader may come from the academic, media, and/or activist worlds and will engage with topics such as (a) examining the relationship among media technologies, democracy, social change, gender and racial equality, and public policy as well as catalyzing and supporting others in the Rutgers and engaged communities; (b) providing opportunities for students and faculty to learn from scholars, experts, and activists with frontline experience; (c) developing classes and educational programs to enhance students’ understanding of how technology and media shape who we are; and (d) guiding students toward critically analyzing important social and cultural questions and encouraging them to take action to address social inequalities.

The successful candidate will be the second Gloria Steinem Chair and will play an important role in shaping the chair’s development, ensuring that its work is world-leading in envisioning its positive impact on gender equality in society. The successful applicant’s expertise and interest may be grounded in gender, communication, media, or information. They will be excited by students and teaching; a leader who will foster robust collaboration among related scholars and practitioners and build a hub for innovation in teaching and practice. We seek a leader who is creative, dynamic, and energetic, an effective and trusted communicator who is excited about collaborating and leading a diverse and dynamic team of colleagues and students, and about engaging in national and international arenas. The successful candidate will also have a demonstrable record of public engagement as a public intellectual, scholar, professional, and/or activist in related areas.

The Position

This is a two to three-year rotating position.

The individual chosen for this chair may come from the academic, media, or activist worlds and will be, first and foremost, interested in and excited by students and education. Responsibilities of the position include undergraduate and graduate teaching assignments (one course each semester) in communication, media, information, and women studies; an active program of engagement in the candidate’s area of expertise and interest; initiating and facilitating events and collaborations (e.g., workshops, internships, symposia, guest lectures, projects, etc.); and communicating on behalf of the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair with all relevant stakeholders.

The expected start date for the position is August 2022.

The Environment

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a leading national research university and the state of New Jersey’s preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education. Established in 1766, the university is the eighth oldest higher education institution in the United States. Nearly 71,000 students and 23,600 full- and part-time faculty and staff learn, work, and serve the public at Rutgers locations across New Jersey and around the world. An equal opportunity and affirmative action employer, Rutgers is committed to building a diverse community and encourages women, minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities to apply. For additional information please see our Non-Discrimination Statement at http://uhr.rutgers.edu/non-discrimination-statement

Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information (SC&I) houses a dynamic and engaged community of scholars studying real-world problems related to knowledge, technology, culture, media, creativity, health, social justice, organizations, communities, policy, leadership, and their interrelations. It is unique in its mature and dynamic combination of communication, information science, journalism, and media studies. The school teaches over 10,000 students, of whom 2,500 are its own undergraduate, master, and doctoral students. Geographically adjacent and closely connected to the world’s largest media and information hubs and supported by Rutgers’ vibrant scholarly community, the School embraces the University's goals of promoting diversity throughout our networks and programs and is strongly committed to social engagement. For more about the School see: http://comminfo.rutgers.edu

Rutgers University’s Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies teaches approximately 4,000 undergraduate students and over 200 graduate students annually. In its major and four minors it introduces path-breaking research that addresses concerns of particular interdisciplinary constituencies in the areas of women and gender studies, critical sexualities, social justice, and gender and media (in collaboration with the School of Communication and Information). Reflecting the fundamental commitments of feminist pedagogy, the program provides students with critical tools to engage and challenge contemporary life and to work toward the social transformation and social justice. For more about the department see: http://womens-studies.rutgers.edu/

Rutgers University’s Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL) is a consortium of ten participating members dedicated to the mission of examining and advancing women's leadership for a just world. Consortium members include: Douglas Residential College, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Center for American Women and Politics, Institute for Research on Women, Center for Women and Work, Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics, Center on Violence Against Women and Children and Center for Women in Business. For more about IWL see: http://iwl.rutgers.edu/

How to Apply

Applicants should apply at https://jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/143220.

Include a CV and a cover letter that addresses the points above and clearly articulates the candidate’s expertise in media, culture, and feminist studies. Also include a list of up to five referees, with full contact information and rationale for their inclusion. Active review of applications will begin on November 15, 2021, and the position will remain open until filled.

For queries regarding the position, please contact Distinguished Professor Dafna Lemish, chair of the search committee, at dafna.lemish@rutgers.edu.

Ruth Garland

This book opens up the black box of government communication during the age of political spin, using archival and official documents, memoirs and biographies, and in-depth interviews with media, political and government witnesses. It argues that substantive and troubling long-term changes in the ways governments manage the media and publicly account for themselves undermine the public consent essential to democracy. Much of the blame for this crisis in public communication has been placed at the feet of politicians and their aides, but they are just part of the picture. A pervasive ‘culture of mediatization’ has developed within governments, leading to intended and unintended consequences that challenge the capacity of central public bureaucracies to implement public values and maintain impartiality. It concludes that public servants, elected officials and citizens have an important role to play in accounting for governments’ custodianship of this most politically-sensitive of public goods – the public communications function.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030775759

This study focuses on experiences and perceptions on co-authorship in scientific research. This questionnaire is entirely anonymous, results will be treated globally, and no singularities will be applied.

You can fill the questionnaire here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfA2KUPOUxsRPDTSbeoYQKd_FeJWV4tq7SQrWaVauj0ZKBg7Q/viewform

We appreciate your honesty and participation in our research.

For inquiries, please contact the corresponding author: clara.fernandes@lasalle.edu.sg

June 15-18, 2022

University of Milano-Biocca (Italy)

Deadline: November 21, 2021

https://11efrc.unimib.it/strand-3/

→ abstracts to be sent to: efrc.strand3@gmail.com, info@atgender.eu

Coordinators: Arianna Mainardi, University of Milano-Bicocca; Nina Ferrante, ULiège; Åsa Ekvall, independent researcher; Domitilla (domi) Olivieri, Utrecht University.

The conference raises the general question on what it means to imagine, to enact and to analyse “social change” from a feminist perspective. This conference-strand focuses on how media and the process of digitalisation contribute to the production and contestation of the spaces/relations/canons we inhabit individually and collectively. Especially the last year(s) of pandemic have made the use of digital media a constitutive part of the process of subjectivation and the construction of the public sphere, even more crucial.

Media and digital media in particular are often analysed in mainstream scholarship as well as in popular culture and journalism, either as exploitative tools that mine data, are vulnerable to hacking, violate our privacy, manipulate the so-called public opinion, and expose minorities and oppressed groups to online violence /aggression; or they are praised as tools which can enable unlimited access to information, as a medium for ‘democratic’ freedom of expression and free speech, that are the beacon of a teleological future of progress and speed, or are the battleground for recognition and (self)representation.

In this framework, the longstanding idea that new technologies are linked to novelty, innovation and acceleration crashes against the material impossibility for public discourse and institutions to guarantee a ‘good and productive’ idea of the future. (Digital) Media participate in the production of the current, colonial, patriarchal meanings associated with time on a large scale. But precarious communities and subjectivities have always experienced the non-linearity of time associated with hetero-cis-white-middleclass-white-able idea of progress. As decolonial, feminist, queer scholars and activists we are interested in how within the ambivalences of contemporary (digital) media could emerge imaginaries, practices, narratives, and figurations that point to alternative ways of being in the world and relating to each other, and go towards other ways of relating to temporal horizons of (cyber-)feminist and non-dystopian ecologies.

Recently, feminist, transfeminist and queer critiques and practices of resistance have been directed towards digital platforms and the way in which they produce new mechanisms of the extraction of value along with data exploitation. This logic of extraction not only pertains to the exploitation of labour, but to processes of self-representation and desires (such as in social platforms and dating apps). The pandemic scenario has accelerated even more those dynamics of neoliberal extractive capitalism. At the same time, formal and informal online networks, that have been strengthened to bridge the physical distance in everyday life, are experimenting with other practices and strategies of care and participation.

Against this background, this strand invites papers and panels from a wide range of (inter)disciplines, both empirical and theoretical contributions, on topics which include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Affordances and constraints of digital platforms
• Cyberfeminist legacies (hacklab, hacktivism)
• Alternative media industries, representations and networks
• Feminist networking, digital activism and collective action in pandemic time
• Transfeminist critiques to computational culture (big data, creative methodologies, ethics)
• Mediated articulation of the affective and intimate everyday life (dating app, family, friendship, alternative intimacies and radical kinships)
• The complexities of feminist communication and knowledge exchanges across academic and non academic spaces (e.g.: issues of accessibility, production, and dissemination)

• Community media
• Normative regime of (in)visibility and resistance (representation, self-representation, disidentifications)
• Critical takes on the popularised issue of fake news and post-truth
• Platforms/digital practices of care, networking, participation
• Memes as aesthetiques and language