ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Special issue of the Journal Consumption, Markets and Culture

Deadline: October 1, 2021

Guest editors:

• Arindam Das, Alliance School of Business, Alliance University, India, arindam.das@alliance.edu.in
• Himadri Roy Chaudhuri, Xavier School of Management, XLRI, India, himadri@xlri.ac.in
• Lee Edwards, The London School of Economics and Political Science, England, L.edwards2@lse.ac.uk

COVID-19 was a black swan for which the market and its actors across the globe were not prepared. Such a crisis of global proportion is not unique in world history, but crises tend to take up the character of suddenness because their reverberances get lost in the absence of public or collective memory. The lack of collective/public/cultural/social memory (Casey, 2004) around a crisis contributes to our failure to handle current and future crises. This special issue attempts to move beyond the collective apathy and insularity that is usually hurled at the history of global crises by tracing the impact of contemporary global crises on markets, consumption, and culture, as perceived through the varied practices of communication through which they are constructed and understood. We acknowledge that, during modern global crises, communication practices about organizations, consumers, the relationships they have, and the markets they inhabit, are fraught with discursive power imbalances. This issue critically focuses on the way power imbalances and resistance discourses shape varied perspectives of communication during global crises and how they play an integral role in helping us reimagine market-culture-consumption intersection both during, and beyond the crisis itself.

The volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) of a world—turned upside down by raging global crises such as economic meltdowns (The International Debt Crisis of 1982, Asian Crisis of 1997-2001, Economic Recession of 2007-2009), the Gulf War, the tsunami of 2004, the 9/11 attack, and the COVID-19 pandemic—call for a radical re-imagining of what constitutes markets, consumers and consumption, and what it means to communicate in such redefined settings. Alongside these crises, ongoing global issues such as global warming, world hunger, terrorism, and refugee/migration flow exert a constant influence on the ways in which consumers relate to markets, make demands of organizations as social and cultural actors, rather than only economic agents, and accept or challenge consumption culture. For example, the current COVID-19 situation compels a re-interpretation of the markets as “political sites of contestation where various stakeholder groups compete for resources—economic, political, and symbolic” (Mumby, 2016). To stabilize the VUCA effect of the global crisis and control the individual idiosyncratic responses to the same, markets, generally, have taken recourse to the Tannenbaumian conceptualization of “control” (Tannenbaum, 1968, 3). However, any such control in a post-Fordist liquid modern world (Bauman, 2000)— one where the markets have to move away from solid structures to virtual online processes, employees have evolved to knowledge workers from industrial laborers, and the economy has moved beyond stability to become a gig-economy—is conditioned by ideologically-designed communication structures (Mumby, 2015, 22-23). The COVID-19 that has reified a Baumanian liquid market system has no less promulgated the hegemonic structures of control through communication, market redefinition, and consumption. Yet, there are also evidence of counter-discourses and practices that resist and subvert the hegemonic narratives of a market during the crisis.

This special issue intends to deflect through a “terministic screen” (Burke, 1966) beyond the surface-level realities of business communication around markets and consumers, during a global crisis, to examine the ideological impact of such communication. For example, communication researchers focused on COVID-19 have highlighted aspects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in a flipped normal condition (viz. working online from home [Larson, et al., 2020; Raišienė, et al. 2020; Valet, 2020], marketing communication’s huge shift to the digital and social media platforms [Balis, 2020; Mheidly and Fares 2020; Taylor, 2020a; Taylor, 2020b], and insistence on AI and digitally mediated communication replacing face-to-face communication [Marr, 2020; Sivasubramanian, 2020]). There have also been unquestioning assumptions of the ‘positive/effective vibes’ of a strategized crisis/risk communication of an organization [Argenti 2020; Holtom et al. 2020; Honigmann et al. 2020]. However, this call for papers, instead, suggests examining the more hegemonic communication practices of powerful market actors during global crises and exploring the disruptive, resistive counter-communications by marginalized and coerced consumers/actors that highlight the inequalities and power dynamics produced through such communication.

An example of such communication practice, within a market structure and conditioned by a dominant patriarchal culture, is state-sponsored PR or public policies that ignore the gendered impact of COVID-19, treat women laborers as disposable or unwanted receivers of communication, and ignore the work-life balance and psychosomatic well-being of these subaltern market actors (European Network of Migrant Women 2020, Lewis, 2020). The concerns are far graver if women belong to the subaltern sections of refugees, asylum seekers, geriatric population, and service providers of precarious trade (European Network of Migrant Women 2020). On the other end of the spectrum, we have a more disruptive example where the CEO and President of Boston Pride, Linda DeMarco, negotiated the otherwise hegemonic scopes of computer-mediated communication to host a Zoom Pride Party with online dance parties, digital drag shows, and online pride networking (Tavares, 2020).

We invite theoretical and empirical submissions that engage in the opportunity to critically reimagine markets, consumers, consumption, and culture, through the lens of communication during moments of global crises. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How do corporate narratives (Moisander and Eriksson, 2006), organizational storytelling (Gabriel, 1991), and organizational nostalgias (Gabriel, 1993) communicate the moment of the global crisis to consumers and markets?
• How does a global crisis facilitate the emergence of new, ubiquitous market icons (viz. symbol of twin-towers post 9/11 attack or that of “99.9% effective” hand sanitizers [Kim, 2016], especially during COVID-19) that challenge the consumer-agency of consumption-reimagination or market-narration?
• To what extent do consumer-centric risk messages during any modern global crisis calm panic (Bove and Benoit, 2020), or act as a homogenizing force, expecting a standardized response from all?
• How does market/consumption-mediated communication during a global crisis intensify or alleviate inequality vectors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and disability, over time?
• Does market/consumption-mediated communication during global crises accentuate or undermine a “consumer society” that has already become “a kind of mundane and everyday micro-dystopia” (Fitchett in Bradshaw et al., 2020)?
• Can the logic of hegemony towards marginal groups, as evident in sustainability communication by capitalist corporates, be better deconstructed during a global crisis (viz. crisis of global warming) to unleash a subaltern view of ethics and communication (viz. the “Stop Adani” protest in Australia by the Wangan and Jagalingou people)? When, where, and how do global crises generate a resistive space for subalterns to speak back to the hegemonic market/consumption narratives?
• How do “marketing images” (not) communicate “missing persons” (Gopaldas et al. 2018) during a global crisis (viz. the geriatric population, the differently-abled, the Dalits/subalterns, migrant laborers, refugees, Indigenous population, sex-workers, and other such vulnerable populations of the nation-state)?
• What role do ethics play in market/consumption-mediated communication during a global crisis (viz. while re-strategizing health communication for the economically, geographically, or racially vulnerable population during a pandemic)?
• How does the state-sponsored communication of public policy erase the voices of subaltern market actors during a global crisis (viz. the concerns of the disposable, vulnerable inter-state migrant laborers in India during COVID-19)?
• Is computer-mediated communication that drives and supports markets or consumer culture during modern global crises an extension of the logic of digital capitalism and a trope of surveillance mechanism?
• How does mosomobilization in the digital age co-produce cyber protest (Odou et al., 2017) at moments of global crisis (viz. cyberactivism and peace movement post 9/11 [Carty and Onyett, 2006])?
• How do social media platforms communicate/influence consumer behavior (individual or collective) during global crises (Naeem, 2021)?
• Does the postmodern market communicate a higher or lower degree of “liquidity” (Bardhi and Eckhardt, 2017) and/or “rhetrickery” (Takhar and Pemberton, 2018) during a global crisis?
• How does market/consumption-mediated communication facilitate the (re)distribution of risk and risk management between organizations and consumers, and how does ethics pay into this dynamic (Ravenelle, 2020)?
• Can market/consumption-mediated communication contribute to collective dialogues about the psychological impacts of global crises?

Closing Date for Submissions: 01 October 2021

Submission Instructions:

Please select this special issue when submitting your paper to ScholarOne. Please ensure that your article is formatted and referenced according to the journal style guidelines. Complete papers should be no longer than 8,000 words (including references and acknowledgements). For this special issue, we wish to prioritise original research articles only.

The special issue editor will review all submitted articles before they are sent for peer review, and may request additional revisions before peer review takes place. Accepted articles will be accordingly rolled out in online version.

Once finalised, the publication of the special issue will fit into the journal’s production schedule; we expect the final special issue to be ready towards the end of 2022.

For further clarification/information about the special issue please feel free to contact any of the special issue editors.

I am pleased to invite you to the next in the series of IPRA Thought Leadership webinars. The webinar SMS: the most effective way to communicate a message will be presented by Alain Grossbard, Board Member of RMIT University Academic Board, RMIT University,Australia on Thursday 9 September 2021 at 12.00 GMT/UCT (13.00 British Summer Time).

What is the webinar content?

With the power of mobile phones to communicate, only 20 percent of businesses use text to promptly communicate a message, whether it is an urgent matter, or an update, or a direction when there is an issue or problem to be managed. Yet, 83 percent of users would like to receive information via SMS. Why are communicators not steering in this direction?

The webinar will be followed by an interactive Q&A session.

How to join

Register here at Airmeet.

A reminder will be sent 1 hour before the event.

Background to IPRA

IPRA, the International Public Relations Association, was established in 1955, and is the leading global network for PR professionals in their personal capacity. IPRA aims to advance trusted communication and the ethical practice of public relations. We do this through networking, our code of conduct and intellectual leadership of the profession. IPRA is the organiser of public relations' annual global competition, the Golden World Awards for Excellence (GWA). IPRA's services enable PR professionals to collaborate and be recognised. Members create content via our Thought Leadership essays, social media and our consultative status with the United Nations. GWA winners demonstrate PR excellence. IPRA welcomes all those who share our aims and who wish to be part of the IPRA worldwide fellowship. For more see www.ipra.org.

Background to the Alain Grossbard

Alain Grossbard is a global authority in SMS (short message service). He has extensive experience as a Chairman, MD, GM in communications for numerous Australian and overseas companies. Alain is now lecturing in public relations and marketing at RMIT University, Australia. He is an IPRA Board member.

Contact

International Public Relations Association Secretariat

United Kingdom

secgen@ipra.orgTelephone +44 1634 818308

Special Issue in Digital Creativity

Deadline for abstracts: October 4, 2021

The past few years have seen a rapid increase in the number and variety of technologies embedded in and passing through home environments. Researchers increasingly recognize the distinct nature of the home as a site of research. The past four decades have seen a significant shift in the technology environment from the “media home” (Spigel, 2001) to the “smart home” (Woods, 2021). We have seen significant additions to the abundant digital ecology of the home, increasing the number of digital access-points and available services, and intensifying the data-circulation in connected homes. The home is a site of mundane, private, usually hidden but highly significant everyday practices (Pink et al. 2017). Yet it is also increasingly becoming a part of national healthcare infrastructures through the deployment of welfare technologies, and energy policy through smart meters. During the “global lockdown” caused by the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, technologies took a prominent role as the home transformed itself into a site in which activities such as learning, parenting, work, entertainment, and remote medical care intermingled.

The increasing complexity of the digital infrastructures and the experiences, spaces, visions of the home in a current era of connected homes and connected living pose particular challenges for conducting research in such an environment. This also calls for methodological innovations that shape how we see the home as a research site and how we engage with it.

For this special issue, we invite contributions that make a strong methodological contribution by highlighting the innovations and challenges of conducting research on technology in home environments. Papers could, for example:

• Explore cross-disciplinary methodological approaches in a project related to the connected home.
• Develop an innovative methodological framework or research design to address a specific research challenge concerning the technologically connected home.
• Apply new and emergent forms and sources of digital data from the connected home.
• Describe and evaluate research tools and techniques.

Submissions may cover issues such as:

• Participatory and co-design approaches to research related to the home
• Novel ways of capturing, visualizing and analyzing digital infrastructures and data connected to the home
• Multisensory and multimodal approaches to studying technologies in the home
• Narrative methods for researching and designing in the home
• Negotiating relationships between researchers, research participants, and technologies in the home
• Ethical dilemmas related to methods for studying technology in the home
• Interventions as a research method to study technological practices in the home
• Probing and elicitation techniques for uncovering practices with technology in the home

Submissions Requirements: Submission to this special issue is a two-stage process. Authors interested in contributing are invited to submit an extended abstract (500 words) for review. Please email abstracts directly to the editors listed below. Authors whose abstracts are accepted will then be invited to submit a full paper (up to 7000 words). Full papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed for acceptance into the special issue.

Upon acceptance of the abstract, you will be sent further authors’ guidelines based on the Digital Creativity guidelines (Instructions for Authors) at https://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/NDCR. Note that acceptance of abstract alone does not imply acceptance for publication in the journal. The extended abstract should include the following information: 1) Name of author(s) with email addresses and affiliation, if applicable 2) Title of the paper 3) Body of the abstract 4) Preliminary bibliography 5) Author(s)’s short bio(s)

Guest Editors: Henry Mainsah, Emma Slade, Dag Slettemeås, Dale Southerton, and Ardis Storm-Mathisen

Important Dates

Abstracts due (via email): October 4, 2021

Submission method: Please send abstracts as PDFs (and any questions) to Henry Mainsah, henryma@oslomet.no, as well as to the editors of Digital Creativity, dcsubmit@gmail.com.

References

Pink, S. Leder-Mackley, K. Morosanu, R. Mitchell, V. & Bhamra, T. (2017) Making homes: ethnography and design. Oxford: Bloomsbury.

Spigel, L. (2001). Media homes: then and now. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 4(4): 385-411.

Woods, H. S. (2021): Smart homes: domestic futurity as Infrastructure. Cultural Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2021.1895254

November 17-19, 2021

Online conference

Submission Deadline: August 29, 2021

We are delighted to invite proposals from academic researchers to be presented at the I International Symposium of Cinema and Film Analysis; organized by the CNPq research group CineArte – Cinema, Film Analysis, and Intellectual Experience.

The event will be held online from 17-19 November 2021, and our goal is to deepen and broaden the exchange between research works centered on film analysis by gathering different perspectives, observing the outcomes when selecting different theoretical approaches and methodologies, and seeing how film language can be intertwined with numerous fields of study.

We are interested in the moving image studies, sound, film analysis definitions, case studies, changes throughout the time, and debates centered beyond movies, such as the interchange between other fields of study within the Arts and Human Sciences.

The Symposium is a result of an interdisciplinary exchange between researchers who investigate the relationship between cinema, audiovisual, by selecting film analysis as a methodology within different usages and contexts. Structured as a subject between 1960 and 1970, film analysis divides and reconstitutes meanings within audiovisual products. Between the twentieth and the twenty-first century, we can identify different branches of it: François Jost and André Gaudreault's narratology, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's narrative and style analyses, Jacques Aumont's immanent perspective, Laura Mulvey's feminist film theory that investigated the male gaze through the psychoanalysis and also her counter cinema proposal, Eisenstein's montage, the interchange between art history and style, formal aesthetics, social and historical perspectives, allegories, among others. Considering the ongoing and broad debates within film analysis, we invite proposals within four different approaches. Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

1. Film theory, case studies, and film analysis. Theoretical studies questioning the concepts and the kind of analysis. These papers may be drawn from canonic film theories and also other fields of study. Film analysis as a tool to investigate specific audiovisual products.

2. Intersections between audiovisual and other arts. Different epistemologies and approaches emerged from the intersection between films and other art forms, concepts, and audiovisual objects created in the space between the edge of cinema and other arts. Methodological challenges to instigate possible debates between the avant-garde films, modern films and flux cinema, and their connection with paintings, photography, and theater. Conceptual interactions between theory and art history.

3. Female gaze and feminism. Feminist film studies, female authorship, films and gender, feminism and modernity, female star system.

4. The politics, the engagement, and the criticism: film analysis and its interfaces. Theoretical contributions developed by eminent critics, critical studies and resistance as the foreground of interpretative constructions and historical contexts, the critics' tasks such as creating theories that relate the movies to the society, film analysis' usage of the critical studies tools, investigation centering the politics; including urban conflicts, socio-environmental problems, minority group issues, or other perspectives about the country.

More information is available on GP CineArte – Cinema, Film Analysis and Intellectual Experience https://linktr.ee/…ica

Guideline for submission

Please, send a 400-word abstract to cinemaeanalisefilmica@gmail.com, including title, name, institution, a short bio (80 words max.), and a short bibliography (5 references max.) by August 29, 2021.

The proposal must be sent as a ".doc" file, Arial, size 12, 1,5 line spacing (“.pdf” submissions will not be accepted). We will accept original proposals in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French.

Applicants can submit them individually or with a co-author. Each author can submit only one abstract for a 20-minute presentation. The event is free of charge.

Organizing team:

Fábio Raddi Uchôa – UAM

Hanna Henck Dias Esperança – USP

Margarida Maria Adamatti – UFSCar

Mariana Dias Antonio – UFPR

Pedro Plaza Pinto – UFPR

Vanessa de Cassia Witzki Colatusso – UFPR

Virgínia Jangrossi – UFSCar

Scientific Committee

Albert Elduque – Universidad Pompeu Fabra

Arthur Autran Franco de Sá Neto – UFSCar

Cristian Borges – USP

Eduardo Victorio Morettin – USP

Laura Cánepa – UAM Luiz Antonio Mousinho Magalhães – UFPB

Jamer Guterres de Mello – UAM

Julierme Sebastião Morais Souza – UEG

Marga Carnicé Mur – Escuela Superior de Cine y Audiovisuales de Cataluña

Margarida Maria Adamatti – UFSCar

Pedro Plaza Pinto – UFPR Ramayana Lira de Sousa – UNISUL

Rogério Ferraraz – UAM

Rosane Kaminski – UFPR

Suzana Reck Miranda - UFSCar

Jessica Roberts and Adam Maksl

According to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, American journalists came under physical attack in 88 distinct incidents in 2017 and 2018 across the United States, with incidents ranging from assault at the hands of far-right protestors and police officers to outright murder.

This authoritative annotated document collection surveys and explains efforts to censor, intimidate, suppress—and reform and improve—news organizations and journalism in America, from the newspapers of colonial times to the social media that saturates the present day.

This primary source collection will help readers to understand how the press has been vilified (usually by powerful political or corporate interests) over the course of American history, with a special focus on current events and how these efforts to censor or influence news coverage often flout First Amendment protections concerning freedom of the press. Selected documents highlight efforts to intimidate, silence, condemn, marginalize, and otherwise undercut the credibility and influence of American journalism from the colonial era through the Trump presidency.

Most of the featured documents focus on efforts borne out of self-interested attempts to shape or conceal news for political or economic gain or personal fame, but coverage also includes instances in which press actions, attitudes, or priorities deserved censure. All told, the collection will be a valuable resource for understanding the importance of a free press to American life (and the constitutional basis for preserving such), the motivations (both selfish and altruistic) of critics of American journalism from the earliest days of the Republic to today, and the impact of all of the above on American society.

Features

• More than 65 essential and illuminating primary documents provide key insights into American news media and freedom of the press
• Primary source selections span the history of American news coverage, from the nation's earliest days to today's Twitter-driven media landscape
• Informative, authoritative, and balanced introductory notes for each primary source help readers to understand the context in which they were created
• A Reader's Guide to Related Documents and sidebars connecting readers with additional information on the topic 

Raquel V. Benítez Rojas

In Production 101, noted researcher, producer, entertainment executive and PhD candidate at Universidad Complutense de Madrid , Raquel V. Benítez Rojas provides a clear, concise and practical summary of the fundamentals of film, television and multimedia production. Topics covered in the book include:

• Copyright and moral rights
• Legal organization of a production company
• Submission forms
• Option, purchase and writing agreements
• Assignment and waiver of rights
• Non-disclosure and non-circumvention agreements
• Teasers and test samples
• Co-productions
• Canadian content regulations
• Budgets and schedules
• Insurance
• Distribution
• Rights acquisition
• Merchandising

The numerous sample agreements and documents included in the book serve as useful templates for students and professionals alike.

“… this handy book by industry veteran Raquel Benitez Rojas is … a fantastic addition to the genre of how-to books dealing with live action and animated filmmaking. What makes her take on the business different from others is her practical knowledge of the inner workings of the industry, because she herself has directed and produced content for TV, digital media, and theatrical releases. She reviews all the various steps of a project, from the earliest stages of development, through financing, clearing rights, hiring writers and artists, production, signing co-pro deals, and taking advantage of global tax credits, all the way to licensing, merchandising, distribution and residuals.” —Ramin Zahed, Editor, Animation Magazine

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Centennial College Press (Oct. 7 2020)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 198 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0919852785

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0919852785

Item weight ‏ : ‎ 408 g

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 20.32 x 1.14 x 25.4 cm

The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), Bochum, Germany

Are you studying the social, political, economic, media-related or cultural effects of digitalization? Do you want to concentrate exclusively on a project and are interested in interdisciplinary exchange?

The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany, supports innovative projects that deal with the social opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation. Experts from academia and practice can apply for fellowships and working groups.

The funding program is open to experts of all career stages, to all disciplines and areas of investigation, as well as to pure research and to projects that are more applied in orientation.

The funding program is continuous. Apply now for fellowships and working groups starting from April 2022.

Please follow the two-step application process:

Send an abstract of your project (max. 300 words) with letterhead and information on the desired time of implementation as a PDF to application@cais.nrw by 31 August 2021.

Submit the full proposal by 30 September 2021 via the application form on our website.

For more information go to: www.cais.nrw/en/callforapplications/.

If you have any questions, please contact esther.laufer@cais.nrw.

An Anthem Press Series

Anthem Studies in Emerging Media and Society invites scholarly enquiries into how transformations and continuities in the digitalised media landscape might (or might not) shape the way we live in, connect with and act for society at large. The series welcomes fresh empirical, interpretative and critical approaches to the diffusion and socio-political impact of emerging media forms, platforms, channels and devices. A major, but not exclusive, focus is on new developments that can influence democratic processes and their lifeblood, the quality of news and information.

Series Editor

An Nguyen – Bournemouth University, UK

Editorial Board

Stuart Allan – Cardiff University, UK

Axel Bruns – Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Kayt Davies – Curtin University, Australia

Andrew Duffy – Nanyang University of Technology, Singapore

Dan Jackson – Bournemouth University, UK

Nikki (Usher) Layser – George Washington University, USA

Angela Lee – University of Texas at Dallas, USA

Simon Lindgren – Umeå University, Sweden

Wiebke Loosen – University of Hamburg, Germany

Henrik Ornebring – Karlstad University, Sweden

Angela Phillips – Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Julie Posetti – Oxford University, UK

Jane Singer – City University, London, UK

Einar Thorsen – Bournemouth University, UK

Tim Vos – Michigan State University, USA

Hong Vu – University of Kansas, USA

Amy Schmitz Weiss – San Diego State University, USA

Oscar Westlund – Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

PROPOSALS

We welcome submissions of proposals for challenging and original works from emerging and established scholars that meet the criteria of our series. We make prompt editorial decisions. Our titles are published in print and e-book editions and are subject to peer review by recognized authorities in the field. Should you wish to send in a proposal for a monograph, edited collection, handbook or companion, reference or course book, please contact us at: proposal@anthempress.com.

Strongly international and interdisciplinary in focus, Anthem Press is a leading independent academic and trade publisher in established and emerging Social Sciences, Business and Humanities fields of study. Headquartered in London (UK) with sales and distribution outlets in the USA, UK, Australia and India, Anthem Press is an imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company.

Edited volume

Deadline: September 15, 2021

Edited by Gilda Seddighi and Sara Tafakori

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in exploring motherhood and mothering as political and emotional resources for digital activism. Although the intertwinement of mothering and politics predates the digital context, feminist debates around the politicization of mothering, from protests against state killings and disappearances, via the role of the mother in nation-building, to advocacy for right wing populisms, need addressing all the more urgently as we endeavour to understand the ways in which mothering is not only mediatised, but agentively deployed across social media platforms. The political role and significance of the mother, the uneasy relation between motherhood as gendered identity and mothering as daily practice, continue to be contentious issues for feminists (Rich 1976, DiQuinzio 1999, Gumbs, Martens and Williams 2016, Naber 2021). Mother-activists have historically constructed public issues from their personal experiences of suffering and loss within family structures (Reiger 2000), utilizing the symbolic power of motherhood in order to motivate others to join their causes (LogsdonConradsen 2011). Notwithstanding, campaigns such those of the Argentinian Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been cast as ‘trapped by a bad script’ (Taylor 1997), that is as reproducing the same narratives of familialism and heteropatriarchal bloodline that underpin the narrative of the state. Conversely, many feminist scholars have argued that the political mobilisation of the trope of the mother has the potential to challenge the ‘official’ frameworks of national, ethnic or other group loyalty and to undermine or to radically reframe these very narratives (Kim 2020, Athanasiou 2017, Carreon and Moghadam 2015, ). For example, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have raised the slogan ‘One child, all the children’ (Sosa 2014), taking the campaign beyond limits of blood kinship.

A key debate to address is the relation between individual and collective in mothers’ digital activism, and how this relation shapes the politics of mothering. On the one hand, digital activism is often celebrated as connecting ‘private’ individual and personal experiences and emotions with the public realm (Bennett and Segerberg 2013, Papacharissi 2010, Vivienne 2016), something which has perhaps favoured ‘popular feminism’ in the shape of MeToo and other mobilisations (Baer 2016, Banet-Weiser 2018). On the other hand, this perspective is often criticised as downplaying the potential of digital activism both for building collective identifications and projects (Gerbaudo 2012, Dean 2016, Nunes 2015) and for creating new forms of exclusion and hierarchy (Seddighi 2014). In light of discussions around datafication (Lomborg, Dencik, & Moe 2020) and disinformation (Bennett & Livingstone 2018), the question of how mother-activists utilise digital media affordances to shape modalities of political intervention, has become even more important.

The proposed edited volume aims to bring together contributions from a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives with a focus around mothering and the uses of social media for social and political change. We aim to include conceptual papers as well as empirical studies from a broad range of contexts across the global South and global North.

Papers may address one or more of the following topics but are not limited to these:

- The relation between digital affordances and mother-activism

- Creating digital political spaces beyond the binary of horizontalism vs hierarchy

- Intersectional and decolonial approaches to mediating mother-activism

- Mediating queer mothering

- How to build spaces and practices of solidarity

- Centre-periphery narratives and mothers at the margins: how hierarchies and mechanisms of social exclusion are reproduced and/or challenged/interrupted

- The mediation of/relations between local, national and transnational spaces of mothering

- Temporalities of mothering: memory work; futurities

- Mediated affects and affective practices of mother-activism

- The visual mediation of mothering; tropes, repertoires, disruptions

- Mobilising motherhood and mothering under authoritarian governments

- The deployment of motherhood tropes in right-wing movements; the mother figure and racism or nativism

- Mediating motherhood during economic or political crises

- Interrelations and tensions between online and offline activism

Abstract submission deadline: September 15, 2021. Please submit a title and an abstract of around 500 words with a short bio (150 words) to both email accounts: Gilda Seddighi gse@vestforsk.no and Sara Tafakori s.tafakori@lse.ac.uk. Abstracts should reference 3-4 works in the relevant literature. The accepted abstracts will serve as chapter summaries in the book proposal.

Notification of abstract acceptance: October 1, 2021

Full paper submission: March 6, 2022 (between 6500 and 7500 words)

Please note: Our initial book proposal received interest from the editor of the Palgrave

MacMillan Gender Studies list. The full proposal with chapter summaries will go out by

November 8, 2021 with the intention of getting a book contract early in 2022.

ZeMKI Bremen

The ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany, is offering two Phd-Posts with the following profiles:

A 162/21

three-year doctoral position – under the condition of job release – in the Lab "Audio-visual Media and Historiography", which will be co-supervised by the Lab "Communication History and Media Change" as soon as possible:

Doctoral student (f/m/d)

Remuneration group 13 TV-L

with 50% of the regular working time

for a period of three years

in the field of "Dictatorship and Unequal Memory in Digital Society: Historical Images in Feature Films and their Communicative Appropriation Using the Example of the Last Argentine Military Dictatorship (1976-1983)".

The time limitation is based on § 2 (1) WissZeitVG (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, i.e. temporary science employment act). Therefore, candidates may only be considered who dispose of the respective scope of qualification periods according to § 2 (1) WissZeitVG.

The doctoral student (f/m/d) will work on the above-mentioned topic with the lab leaders Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels and Prof. Dr. Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz. The aim is to write a qualification thesis and to work on the project of the ZeMKI research focus "Audiovisual Cultures and Communicative Appropriations of Historical Images: New Inequalities in Digital Society".

Tasks:

A) The interdisciplinary study of images of history and traumatic historical experience in contemporary Argentine feature films and their social discussion, taking into account the disciplines of history as well as communication and media studies and the highlighted importance of social media for current media practice in everyday life.

B) Writing a dissertation with a focus on one of the research areas of the participating labs on the topic of "Dictatorship and Unequal Memory in Digital Society: Images of History in Feature Films and Their Communicative Appropriation Using the Example of the Last Argentine Military Dictatorship (1976-1983)".

C) Conducting courses amounting to 2 SCH (semester contact hours per week) in the degree programmes of Communication and Media Studies as well as participation in the conduct of examinations in the degree programmes supported by the ZeMKI.

Objectives:

- Testing new methodological approaches for combining historical research on contemporary feature films on the traumatic history of the last Argentinean military dictatorship with subject-centred and actor-based media research.

- Participation in the further development of the research profile of the ZeMKI through collaboration in the aforementioned research focus "Audiovisual Cultures and Communicative Appropriations of Images of History: New Inequalities in the Digital Society".

Recruitment requirements:

- Above-average Master's degree in history and communication and/or media studies or comparable degrees that indicate an aptitude for working on a doctorate in the aforementioned field.

- Knowledge of historical analysis as well as social-empirical qualitative methods and/or the willingness to develop this knowledge further.

- Knowledge in the field of Latin American history and knowledge of the Spanish language at level B 2.2 (Common European reference framework for languages).

- Interdisciplinary research interest or interest in the scientific analysis of audiovisual cultures and communicative appropriations of historical images as well as in the topic of inequality in the digital society.

- Experience in the field of social media data analysis is desirable.

- Enjoy organisational tasks and working in a team

The University of Bremen is committed to increasing the proportion of women in academia and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply. Severely disabled applicants will be given priority if they have essentially the same professional and personal qualifications. Applications from people with a migration background are welcome.

Questions should be addressed to Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels at dgr@uni-bremen.de or to Prof. Dr. Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz at stefanie.averbeck.lietz@uni-bremen.de.

Application

Applications should include the following documents:

- A two-page letter of motivation: On the first page, please outline your interests in terms of content and methodology and explain how your work will contribute to the research focus "Audiovisual Cultures and Communicative Appropriations of Historical Images: New Inequalities in Digital Society".

- Curriculum vitae with the usual information about your career.

- A copy of your certificates (university entrance qualification, degrees).

- A writing sample (a research paper, publication or your Master's thesis).

- The names of two reviewers who will be able to comment on your previous work and your suitability for participation in the project.

Please send your application, quoting the reference number A162/21, by September 9th, 2021 to

Universität Bremen

Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels

Bibliothekstr. 1

28359 Bremen

or as PDF by e-mail (single file to): bewerbungen-zemki@uni-bremen.de

Further information:

Lab "Audio-visual Media and Historiography"

The Lab researches AV media - especially film and television - as historical sources or documents of the history of modernity. It focuses on the role of these media for the memory and construction of historical processes and looks at films of all kinds, sound recordings and of photographs, which are to be systematically lifted and made accessible for historical research. The approaches and theoretical approaches developed by historians for text sources can only be transferred to audio-visual sources to a limited extent, which results in a methodological problem for historians that the Lab would like to help solve. One focus is therefore on the discussion of methods, another on exploring the significance of audio-visual media, such as films and images, for historical research. It is currently concentrating on the fields of Latin American population and development policy after 1945 as well as coming to terms with and overcoming the Latin American military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s.

Lab "Communication History and Media Change

The Lab sees itself as an inter/transdisciplinary platform for research in the history of media and communication: The change in social communication, media dispositives and appropriations are researched and described from different perspectives and with a variety of methods and sources. The subject of research on mediatisation in the history of communication is in particular the emergence and development of the various media and their interplay with each other, the history of communication and the social change of the public sphere, also from the perspective of communication and media ethics as well as in inter/transnational comparison. The study of communication and media change is linked with the history of ideas on communication, media and the public sphere, or the history of the subject and theory of newspaper, journalism and communication studies. Also relevant is methodological research on the history of communication and media, e.g. on (qualitative) content analysis, historical document analysis and digital methods.

Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research

The Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) is one of nine central academic institutions at the University of Bremen and is one of the most important European institutions for research into questions of media and communication change at the interface of cultural and social sciences on the one hand and technical sciences on the other. A special focus of the research is the emerging digital society with regard to existing inequalities, both in terms of historical questions of their genesis and current challenges of algorithms, automation and data. The ZeMKI carries the research focus "Audiovisual Cultures and Communicative Appropriations of Historical Images: New Inequalities in Digital Society".

A163/21

The Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen offers – under the condition of job release – a three-year doctoral position to be based in the Lab "Media and Religion" and co-supervised by the Lab "Film, Media Art and Popular Culture as soon as possible:

Doctoral student (f/m/d)

Remuneration group 13 TV-L

with 50% of the regular working time

for a period of three years

in the field of "Colonialism in Video Gaming: Audiovisual Histospheres and Communicative Appropriations of Historical Images as Processes of Othering".

The employment relationship is fixed-term and serves to attain academic advancement as regulated by the act on academic fixed-term contracts, §2 (1) (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz). Therefore, applicants can only be considered for the position if they still dispose of the relevant qualification periods according to §2 (1) WissZeitVG.

The doctoral student will work on the above-mentioned topic with the lab leaders Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler and Prof. Dr. Winfried Pauleit. The project is part of the ZeMKI research focus "Audiovisual Cultures and Communicative Appropriations of Historical Images: New Inequalities in Digital Society".

Tasks:

- Research in the field of colonialism in video gaming under two perspectives:

A) media-centred investigation of colonial aesthetics through audio-visual modelling of immersive historical space-time structures (audio-visual histospheres) and/or

B) actor-centred communication about colonial historical images from the perspective of communicative figuration with regard to attribution and negotiation processes as well as the appropriation of colonial stereotypes by players.

- Writing a dissertation with a focus on one of the research areas of the participating labs on the topic of "Colonialism in Video Gaming: Audiovisual Histospheres and Communicative Appropriations of Historical Images as Processes of Othering".

- Testing new methodological approaches for combining object-centred media research and actor-centred media research

- Research interest in the analysis of audiovisual cultures and communicative appropriations of historical images as well as in the topic of inequality in digital society.

- Conducting courses in the amount of 2 SCH (semester contact hours per week) in the Communication and Media Studies programmes, participation in the conduct of examinations.

Recruitment requirements:

- Above-average Master's degree in communication and/or media studies or comparable degree that indicates an aptitude for working on a doctorate in the aforementioned field

- Knowledge of media-aesthetic analysis and/or socio-empirical qualitative methods

- Knowledge in the field of video gaming / game studies

- Interdisciplinary research interest

- Experience with data analysis of social media is desirable

- Good command of English

- Ability to organise and work in a team

- Participation in the ZeMKI doctoral programme

The University of Bremen is committed to increasing the proportion of women in academia and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply. Severely disabled applicants will be given priority if they have essentially the same professional and personal qualifications. Applications from people with a migration background are welcome.

Questions should be addressed to Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler radde@uni-bremen.de or Prof. Dr. Winfried Pauleit pauleit@uni-bremen.de.

Application

Applications should include the following documents:

- A two-page letter of motivation. Page 1 should describe your interests in terms of content and methodology and explain why you believe your profile fits the research focus "Audiovisual Cultures and Communicative Appropriations of Images of History: New Inequalities in Digital Society"

- Curriculum vitae

- A copy of your academic transcripts

- A writing sample (research paper, publication or master's thesis)

- Names of two reviewers who can assess your previous academic expertise

Please send applications with the reference number A163/21 by September 9th, 2021 to

Universität Bremen

Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler

Bibliothekstr. 1

28359 Bremen

or as PDF by e-mail (single file) to: bewerbungen-zemki@uni-bremen.de

Further information:

Lab "Media and Religion

The Lab Media and Religion deals with the connection between media and religions and their change. The perspective is twofold: on the one hand, current and historical religious discourses and their authorities are shaped by the media. On the other hand, religious practices are always media practices, and religious identities are always media identities. Thus, actors or groups present, discuss and organise their religious ideas by means of diverse media (books, images, video, virtual worlds, etc.). In this sense, religion is also a mediatised phenomenon that needs to be analysed with regard to questions of media communication.

Lab "Film, Media Art and Popular Culture

The Lab "Film, Media Art and Popular Culture" deals with visual and audio-visual media, their aesthetics and history, as well as their change in the context of digitalisation and globalisation. A special focus of the research is on the specific forms and dispositives of film, media art and popular culture, their production, distribution, broadcasting, exhibition, mediation and appropriation, as well as their storage and collection in archives. In addition to media products and media artworks, their aesthetic experience through communal and individual use, as well as the discourses and cultural interactions that flank them, are also examined.

Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research

As an interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Bremen, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) deals with questions of media and communication change at the interface of cultural and social sciences on the one hand and technical sciences on the other. The special feature here is the interdisciplinary orientation of the research institute: it involves researchers from film studies and media aesthetics, history, information management, communication and media studies, cultural and religious studies and media education. The ZeMKI carries the research focus "Audiovisual cultures and communicative appropriations of historical images: New Inequalities in Digital Society." The aim of the ZeMKI doctoral programme at the University of Bremen is to provide cooperative and collegial supervision for its doctoral students. Participants must be registered as doctoral students at the University of Bremen and be supervised by professors working at the ZeMKI. The doctoral programme is based on a binding doctoral agreement, separates supervision from peer review and gives doctoral candidates broad opportunities to develop and complete their dissertation projects in a constructive environment.