ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Birkbeck, University of London, 30 Russell Square, Room 101, London WC1B 5DT

13 June 2022, 11:30am – 5:00pm

Book your place: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=31670

Recent political turmoil has arguably been good for the news industry: Paid subscriptions at the New York Times, for example, surged after Donald Trump was – to the shock of many – elected President of the United States. The Brexit referendum massively boosted newspaper sales in the UK, while a record number of viewers and listeners tuned into political programmes on the BBC. During the Covid-19 pandemic, audiences appeared to show renewed trust in legacy media brands as sources of reliable information (Nielsen et al., 2020). And the horrific Russian invasion in Ukraine glued people all over the world to their screens, with viewer figures for mainstream TV channels such as BBC News or Sky News multiplying.

And yet, if these events seem to have encouraged audiences to (re)turn to traditional news media, how should we understand the falling back on such media in light of an information landscape many still consider to be wrought with mis- and dis-information, antagonistic exchanges, and overpowered by platform companies? Or in an era where democracies seem to be undermined by populism, authoritarian tendencies, political polarisation, and now war?

The symposium aims to explore these questions. The title is meant as provocation: are media good for democracies – as scholars, journalists, and politicians generally assume? If so, just what forms of democracy might media support? Why are mainstream, legacy, traditional, or establishment media so often seen as especially suited to supporting such democracies? What are the democratic responsibilities of platform companies, or for that matter alternative media?

We will discuss new perspectives and approaches to these questions. The symposium will be opened by a keynote speech from Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, followed by two thematic panel discussions.

Schedule:

11:30am – 1pm keynote by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

1pm – 1:45pm lunch break

1:45 – 3:20pm 1st panel

20 min coffee/comfort break

3:40- 5:00pm 2nd panel

Full programme:

Download PDF of programme

Keynote:

Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Cardiff University

“Emerging media ecologies, democracy and emotion"

This talk begins from the premise that media are essential institutions in a democratic society. At the same time, contemporary media ecologies are dynamic and subject to constant change, shaped by complex interactions between legacy media and newer entrants, including social media and digital outlets. Drawing on examples from recent events, ranging from the coronavirus pandemic to the war in Ukraine, the talk suggests that we can no longer assume that media actors and platforms are benign in their normative underpinnings and practices. Instead, they are shaped by an increasingly polarised political context, characterised by the growing prominence of emotional discourse – for better and for worse.

Panel speakers:

Dr Dimitry Chernobrov, University of Sheffield

Professor Des Freedman, Goldsmiths, University of London

Dr Tanya Lokot, Dublin City University

Dr Chanda Mfula, University of Hertfordshire

Dr Monika Metykova, University of Sussex

Dr Tom Mills, Aston University

Dr Judith Möller, University of Amsterdam

Contact:

Dr Imke Henkel

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)

The research training group 2806 “Literature and the Public Sphere in Differentiated Contemporary Cultures” at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), funded by the German Research Foundation, is offering

• 12 Doctoral Positions (m/f/d) (65%, E-13 TV-L)
• 1 Postdoc Position (m/f/d) (100%, E-13 TV-L)

for a duration of three and five years respectively, starting 01.10.2022. Extensions for the doctoral positions are possible.

The interdisciplinary research training group analyzes contemporary literatures since 1945 in different public and cultural contexts. It adopts a broad conception of literature, including socio-cultural, political, and economic contexts, (inter-)mediality, institutional conditions, as well as literary life as subjects for enquiry.

The research training group focuses on literatures in various languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Russian), including ‘small literatures’ and minority cultures on different continents. On the basis of comparative and transnational perspectives, the research training group takes praxeological, social, media related, material, ethical, and economic aspects into account.

The research training group explores the cultural specificities, potentials, and functions of these literatures and investigates their conditions of emergence and public resonance. It conceives of literatures (1) as seismographs of often contradictory cultural, media related, and social developments, (2) as generators of a vocabulary to articulate the multilayered experiences of the contemporary moment, (3) as forums for the discussion of concerns relevant to the public.

Drawing on five closely interrelated fields of interest, the research training group examines how fragmenting publics constitute a relevant context for and a prominent concern of these literatures:

VI. Literatures‘ strategies to activate attention

VII. Public contexts of literatures

VIII. Material appearances/materiality of literatures

IX. Literary knowledge production

X. Literary ethics and politics

The disciplines involved are English and American Studies, Book Studies, Digital Humanities, German Studies, Comparative Literature, (Cultural) Sociology, Media Ethics, Media Economics, Media Studies, Eastern European Studies, and Romance Studies.

For more information on the research program, the respective advisors, and contact information, see: https://www.literaturundoeffentlichkeit.phil.fau.de/

If you have any questions, please contact the speakers of the research training group: dirk.niefanger@fau.de and antje.kley@fau.de.

Requirements:

• an excellent academic degree
• an innovative project idea relevant to the program of the research training group
• intercultural competence and an interest in interdisciplinary work
• proficiency in abstract theoretical thinking
• methodological competence
• adequate language skills: B2 German and English, C1 German or English
• first publications, academic talks, or academic administrative experience (e.g. as student assistant) are desirable

• in addition, postdocs should have an outstanding dissertation, scientific experience, and a research project relevant to the program of the research training group

Documents to submit:

• cover letter
• CV
• degree certificates (MA, State Exam, or equivalent degree; dissertation for postdoc)
• research proposal (ca. 8-10 pages)
• writing sample (e.g. Master’s Thesis, dissertation for postdoc)
• certificate(s) of language skills (may be handed in within the first year if necessary)

Please submit your application (English or German) electronically as one single PDF file (plus writing sample in a separate PDF file) to kontakt-grk2806@fau.de by 6th of July 2022.

The Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg strives to increase the number of women in academic research and teaching and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply.

FAU is an equal opportunity employer and gives preference to candidates with disabilities if equally qualified.

Special Issue of Journalism and Media

Deadline: December 31, 2022

(Guest Editors: José Luis Rojas Torrijos and Daniel Nölleke)

The boundaries of sports journalism continue to expand as non-traditional actors emerge and proliferate in the digital environment. This outstanding and vital specialist area of work within the news industry faces increasing pressure from adjacent fields. Amateur sports enthusiasts (bloggers, streamers or influencers) and team media for sports organisations adopt many of the roles and tasks historically attributed to sports journalism and engage in activities that may be perceived and regarded as journalistic by audiences.

As Simon McEnnis points out in his book Disrupting Sports Journalism (2021), “sports journalists are seeing how the very bases of their professional practice are being appropriated by others” and, yet at the same time, they are trying to defend their distinctiveness by elevating their standing and professional status.

The arrival of new actors around the journalistic field, the heavy use of social media and its impact on sports consumption patterns, as well as the search for new business models for news organisations and the disrupting technology that is being explored and applied as innovation in the sports coverage all require new conceptual approaches to better understand the sports newswork in the digital age.

All of these considerations lead this Special Issue to reopen and broaden the discussion among scholars about the current trends in the sports media landscape and the bigger challenges that sports journalists need to face in the coming years.

These are the topics to be addressed in this Special Issue of Journalism and Media:

• Theoretical considerations of professionalism in sports journalism;
• Sports journalism and its boundaries: from bloggers to team media for sports organizations;
• Disrupting technologies, new job profiles and practices in digital sports newsrooms;
• The heavy use of social media and the reshaping of the sports news agenda;
• Audiences' consumption habits and perceptions in the era of attention economy;
• Sports events, TV networks and streaming platforms;
• Esports and other emergent niches in the field;
• Innovation in the sports media coverage: from visual and graphic departments to media labs;
• Editorial strategies to better connect with audiences and the changing business models in sports media;
• The impact of COVID-19 on sports journalism;
• Gender studies in sports journalism.

For detailed information about the submission process, please follow the link to the Special Issue website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/journalmedia/special_issues/sport_journalism

The submission deadline is 31 December 2022. You may send your manuscript now or up until the deadline. Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for open access publication in this Special Issue will be fully waived, which means that you have the privilege to publish your paper free of charge in an open access scholarly journal.

Papers should be in the range of 6,000 to 9,000 words. For further details on the submission process, please refer to the instructions for authors at the journal website or let us know if you have any questions (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/journalmedia/instructions).

Guest Editors:

José Luis Rojas Torrijos, PhD, Associate Professor of Journalism, Universidad de Sevilla, jlrojas@us.es

JProf. Dr. Daniel Nölleke, Assistant Professor, German Sport University Cologne, d.noelleke@dshs-koeln.de

October 19, 2022

Aarhus University, Denmark (hybrid with onsite and online panels)

Deadline: July 8, 2022

Preconference of the ECREA Temporary Working Group “Communication and Sport”

The relationship between media and sport can for many good reasons be characterized as entirely strategic, both in a historical and contemporary perspective. In this one-day preconference hosted by Aarhus University on October 19 2022, the ECREA Temporary Working Group on Communication and Sport calls for papers exploring strategic dimensions of the sport-media nexus from diverse perspectives and on many levels. The aim is to share and nuance our existing knowledge about the many ways in which mediated communication about sport in Europe is developing in close connection with various forms of strategic concerns in the realm of sports, in media and/or wider societal contexts.

Abstracts between 300 and 500 words can be submitted by July 8, 2022.

For more than a century some sports and events have been vital content for certain media businesses to achieve pivotal strategic goals, like attracting more or new audiences/users, create traffic and data, and build up new markets, perhaps in connection with processes of rebranding. And for an increasing number of sports organizations and managers, partnerships and contracted collaborations with media organizations have been crucial elements in the development of still more complex business models involving a range of other strategic business partners. These formalized collaborations have together with more informal relationships with independent journalists all been important for the public image of many sports and organizations. Not to mention nations, regions or cities using hosting/organization of sports events of different scales as vehicles for social, economic or infrastructural development or a ‘soft power’ strategy seeking political and cultural recognition on a global or international scene.

Digitization has added new dimensions to this broad picture of strategic intertwinements between powerful media and sport, which we are interested in. The profession of journalism and the working conditions for journalists have changed profoundly, requiring new strategies from them to get access to sources and thus to produce sports content. We witness a wave of sports activism, where athletes use their status as (media-created) icons and the direct access to fans and the wider public on social media to pursue different sorts of (political) goals. Sports organizations on all levels in European sports increasingly engage in different forms of digitally facilitated sports activities, sometimes in close collaboration with new types of media businesses. Sports clubs and governing bodies communicate with a wide range of stakeholders via global digital platforms, and the commercially strong organizations build up their own professionally staffed media and marketing units, trying to produce data and get more leverage to the public image of their sports and events.

We call for papers which deal with historic and contemporary strategic dimensions in European sports communication, including both theoretical and analytical perspectives on the tensions, conflicts, many dilemmas and negotiations involved, like when power balances are changing and different strategic interests co-exist or merge around the same sport or event.

We invite abstracts between 300-500 words submitted in English language by July 8 2022 via e-mail to the Chair of the TWG JProf. Dr. Daniel Nölleke (d.noelleke@dshs-koeln.de).

To support the integration of as many scholars as possible, we invite to 1-2 onsite panels and 1 online panel. Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is for onsite or online presentation.

Authors will be notified about acceptance at the end of July.

Call for papers for a special issue of Nordicom Review and Invitation to Symposium at Stockholm University

November 10, 2022

Stockholm, Sweden

Deadline: September 1, 2022

Editors:

Andreas Widholm, Stockholm University (andreas.widholm@ims.su.se)

Mattias Ekman, Stockholm University (mattias.ekman@ims.su.se)

Important dates

• Deadline for extended abstracts: 1 September 2022
• Notification of acceptance to symposium (attendance voluntary): 15 September 2022
• Symposium at Stockholm University: 10 November 2022
• Invitation to submit full paper: 24 November 2022
• Full paper submission: March 2023
• Peer review process: Summer/Autumn 2023
• Expected publication (Open Access): January 2024

The Digital Human Sciences Research Hub and the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University and Nordicom invite scholars from a broad range of disciplines to submit extended abstracts for a special issue of Nordicom Review, focusing on the political, social, cultural, and juridical implications of digital technologies for a sustainable democratic information environment.

Accompanying the call, we welcome interested scholars to a symposium with the theme “Democracy and Digital Disintegration”. Our goal is to facilitate dialogue between researchers of various disciplines and create opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.

The symposium will take place in the Film House in Stockholm and is free of charge. Acceptance of a paper for the special issue is not dependent upon participation in the symposium. Coffee, lunch, and dinner on the evening of 10 November is included for all participants. After the symposium, selected papers will be considered for the special issue.

Background and aim

The rapid and profound transformations associated with contemporary media systems have severe consequences for democracy and public debates. Social media play an increasingly central role for political participation, especially among young citizens, and digital platforms have significantly changed how political parties operate strategically to mobilise voters and influence public opinion. Furthermore, activists and social movements have access to new digital tools to raise awareness about their causes and to coordinate protests. Digital platforms have also become central venues for the distribution and circulation of news – by legacy media institutions as well as new alternative or “fake” media organisations. Hence, today’s citizens find themselves in a hybrid information environment, where the boundaries of traditional journalism, hyper-partisan news, political propaganda, and strategic (dis)information have become increasingly blurred.

Digital platforms are drivers of change towards a more globalised, interconnected, and socially integrated world. However, platforms simultaneously contribute to the disintegration of the citizenry. While algorithmic content recommendation systems may help people more easily navigate abundant information flows online, concerns have been raised that they may also contribute negatively to information diversity, prioritising content that corresponds to the worldviews and ideological preferences of individual users. Moreover, in addition to benefits such as facilitating public debate and mobilisation, the economic and technological infrastructure of social platforms have proved to fuel political polarisation, racism, and affective language use, making democracies increasingly vulnerable and open to manipulation and antidemocratic influences.

This global information environment raises questions related to algorithmic transparency, regulation of information, digital censorship, and freedom of expression online, reflected most recently in the European Union’s ban of RT and Sputnik, two of Russia’s most influential global propaganda channels. Elon Musk’s potential acquisition of Twitter as an alleged act of “securing free speech” is a harbinger of future changes, also in need of scholarly attention.

We aim for a collection of contributions with a clear interdisciplinary relevance for the Nordic region and beyond. We welcome contributions with longitudinal and/or comparative perspectives, as well as specific case studies that inform the Nordic and global context. We particularly welcome contributions employing innovative methodological approaches (qualitative as well as quantitative). Topics may include but are not limited to the following areas:

• Political news in mainstream and alternative media
• Political communication, activism, and digital propaganda strategies
• Integrative, transnational, and boundary-crossing aspects of digital media
• Affective platforms and politics of emotion
• Populism, racism, polarisation, and disintegrative aspects of digital media
• Practices of disinformation, manipulation, and “deep fakes”
• Discourses of disinformation (in politics, journalism, and other contexts)
• Fact-checking and source criticism
• Free speech, censorship, and regulation of information online
• The democratic challenges of algorithms and artificial intelligence
• Young citizens and digital media literacy

Procedure

Those with an interest in contributing should write an extended abstract (max. 750 words) where the main theme (or argument) of the intended paper is described. How the paper fits with the overall theme of the issue and symposium should be mentioned.

Send your extended abstract to digdis@ims.su.se

Scholars invited to submit a full manuscript (7,000–9,000 words) will be notified by e-mail after the symposium and after the abstracts have been assessed. All submissions should be original works and must not be under consideration by other publishers.

Contact

Questions about Digital Human Sciences Research Hub (DHV), the special issue, and related November symposium can be addressed to Andreas Widholm (andreas.widholm@ims.su.se) or Mattias Ekman (mattias.ekman@ims.su.se).

About Nordicom Review

Nordicom Review adheres to a rigorous double-blind reviewing policy and articles are published Open Access with no processing charges for authors. Nordicom Review includes research with relevance for the Nordic context and welcomes interdisciplinary submissions from a worldwide authorship, including both empirical and theoretical articles.

Read more about Nordicom Review here:

https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/publications/nordicom-review

10.10.2022

Online pre-conference

Deadline: August 10, 2022

As some countries begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and while some countries are still experiencing significant levels of transmission and deaths, the field of crisis and risk communication has the opportunity to learn from the experiences of the last two years to consider:

• What impact in crisis and risk communication means across the field of communication?
• Is pandemic communication fundamentally different from crisis and risk communication?
• What are critical pedagogical, research, theoretical, amplification, and collaboration lessons have been learned through the pandemic?
• What critical themes of research and practice should be addressed in the short, medium, and long-term?
• What can be learned with a view to the communicative challenges that come with imminent wicked problems like climate change, mass migration, immigration, and other potential pandemics?
• In moving forward from 2022, how can our field meet crisis and risk communication needs across sectors?

We welcome abstract-based submissions addressing these themes as we begin to "Rethink Impact" for the European Communication Conference.

Moving ahead, we explicitly also invite presentations on topics that are not related to the pandemic but touch other topical themes, as well as methodological and theoretical issues et cetera.

Questions/submissions should be directed to the Head of the Crisis Communication Section, Audra Diers-Lawson (Audra.Diers-Lawson@kristiania.no).

Humanities and Social Sciences Online

November 1, 2022

Often unified by the concept of the “cinematic city”, different approaches in film studies tend to examine urban space through three main angles. Films shot within the build environment may record - perhaps unwillingly- its current dynamics, architecture and urban planning (city as background), consciously use the representational value of specific places for narrative purposes (as character) or directly comment on the socio-political conditions and memories of a city (as subject). However, it can be argued that most of these discussions eventually converge to a double question: how does cinema reflect upon the past, present and future of a city and how do films reinforce or contest narratives and myths and affect the collective urban experience.

Following our previous special issue on urban themes in Russian and Soviet cinema, this year we turn our focus to the Balkans. Often described as the “other” of Europe, “insufficient European”, or a “specter haunting Western culture” (to use the Maria Todorova’s provocative description), the countries and people of the Balkan Peninsula more often than not are seen as a geographic and culturally unified unit of measurement, against which Europeans can prove their superiority. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent Balkan wars as well as breakup of Yugoslavia, led the newly formed Balkan states to assert distinct national identities, mainly structured around religion and language. The collective amnesia of

a multiethnic past is however negated in everyday practices where cultural footprints proliferate (linguistic and culinary p.e.), the result of a century-long multicultural blend and the Ottoman presence in the region.

The special issue is intended to discuss Balkan urban space and architecture through a cinematic perspective, and further explore elements linking urban studies with film studies. We are particularly interested in contributions discussing fiction films or documentaries focused on specific urban spaces of the Balkans, significant constructions, major cities or lesser-known towns and villages. We are also interested in itinerary films that map the peninsula through their passage from different built environments.

Suggested topics (non-exhaustive list):

• Urban space, planning, architecture on screen
• Common aesthetic trends between architecture and cinema
• How films record urban dynamics and practices and comment upon them
• How films reinforce or resist dominant narratives about the identity of a city
• Topographies of memory and places with socio-historical significance
• Cinema as the vehicle touncoverhushedorerasedstories
• Urban manifestations of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-linguistic past.
• Cities a score places for political protest and resistance
• The experience of displaced persons in alien urban environments
• Internal migration towards cities and external migration towards Western urban centers

Contributions should be in English

Proposals of 250-500 words for contributions that deal with any aspects of the above themes should be sent to Antonis Lagarias at antonislagarias@eefb.org by July 15th 2022

Stylistic guidelines for contribution can be found https://eefb.org/contribute/

Contact Info:

Antonis Lagarias at antonislagarias@eefb.org by July 15th 2022

Contact Email: antonislagarias@eefb.org

URL: https://eefb.org/contribute/

Are you our new communication officer?

From July-August 2022, Salome will hand over her position as Communication Officer of our Section to someone new.

We encourage early career scholars to consider applying for this vacant position and see this as an opportunity to train communication skills, develop your organizational skills and significantly expand your network.

If you are a senior researcher, be sure to forward this vacancy to promising new talent!

You can apply until 10 June. Below you find more information about the job description. Of course, you can always contact us with your questions.

Academia always has something to say to the broader audience, but, unfortunately, the core messages are often not inefficiently conveyed to the target groups. Therefore, our ECREA Children, Youth, and Media Section is dedicated to sending messages that engage and inform young scholars, academics, and also other stakeholders to increase their impact in Children, Youth, and Media research and practice. We consider our communication strategy as a way to achieve that goal. Having that in mind, we count on our new Communications Officer, who will join our diverse team working from all parts of Europe. We expect someone to have a thorough knowledge and experience of communications tools, enthusiasm and discipline to fulfill the communication needs of our section. Please, read the description of expectations below and join us, if you are interested:

If you join our team, you will be leading the following activities:

• Attend the management meeting (about 8 times a year)
• Managing the section’s social media channels (Twitter/Facebook internal group)
• Preparing the newsletter depending on the updates from the section (about 5 times a year): brainstorming topics, writing the draft of the newsletter, putting it in a template, and distributing through the section's listserv, and social media)
• Planning and facilitating the informal online meetings (about 4 times a year)

Please note, that this is a volunteer and remote position. Depending on your talents and your own ideas and availability, together we will look for a feasible way to implement our section’s communication strategy. There is certainly room to come up with your own ideas and make your own mark.

If you are interested, please send your CV and a motivation letter (no more than 500 words) explaining why you are applying for the position and what you would like to contribute to the section. Send your application to ecreacymcom@gmail.com until June 10th, 6 pm CET.

We are looking forward to receiving your application.

Should you have any questions, please email us at ecreacymcom@gmail.com

May 27, 2022

Online symposium

Deadline (registration): May 26, 2022

Water is the medium through which we experience many of the impacts of climate change: in droughts or floods, in melting glaciers, rising sea levels and more. Accordingly, visualisations of water or its absence have been at the core of climate change media discourse for decades and have shaped popular perceptions of this crisis. In recent years, ‘water resilience’ has increasingly been embraced as a tool for addressing the impacts of climate change and other ongoing stressors; not only as a tool for adaptation, but also as a tool for mitigation that addresses the water-energy nexus and greenhouse gas emissions from water infrastructure. However, water resilience scholarship is still primarily focussed on the physical, technological and managerial aspects of the climate crisis, while issues of social justice, power and politics are at the margins of the debate. As such, the transformative potential of climate and water resilient futures goes unrecognised.

This symposium aims to bring together the overlapping conversations around resilience, climate, water, communication and politics in order to advance social justice and reduce climate-induced water vulnerability. 

Keynote speakers:

Prof. Joanne Garde-Hansen (University of Warwick), author of Media and Water: Communication, Culture and Perception

Dr Filippo Menga (University of Bergamo), author of Water and Power in Central Asia and co-editor of Water, Technology and the Nation State

Registration is via Eventbrite – registration is open until May 26th (a day before the event).

Timetable:

10:00-11:15 Opening Keynote Talk:

Opening greetings by Prof. Melissa Leach (IDS).

Keynote lecture by Prof. Joanne Garde-Hansen (University of Warwick): Amphibious Screens – Sustainable Cultures of Water

11:30-12:50 Session 1: News, media and water resilience:

• Swati Jaywant Rao Bute (Jagran Lakecity University): Role of news channels in running media campaigns for water conservation projects in India
• Edson Capoano, Alice Balbé & Pedro Rodrigues Costa (University of Minho): Analysis of Brazilians comments on the water issue on Twitter
• Nelson Okorie (Pan-Atlantic University): Media Framing, Climate Change and issues of Water Security in South Africa
• Shai Kassirer (University of Reading): “Israel Is Drying, Again”: Framing Resilience in Televised Water Conservation Campaigns

12:50-13:20 Break

13:20-14:40 Session 2: Water (in)justice in Jamaica and India

Henrice Altink (University of York): “No water”: the unequal impact of drought in Jamaica in the 1990s.
Shruti Jain (Institute of Economic Growth Delhi) & Bhupen Singh (Uttarakhand Open University): Essentiality of Rights for Building Resilience Climate and Water Politics in Uttarakhand Himalaya
Farhat Naz (Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur): Dynamics of Water Access: Trust and Mistrust at the International Border Line
Asrarul Haque Jeelani (Jawaharlal Nehru University): No Water No Votes: Electoral Right as a Political Tool for Dealing with Water Distress

15:00-16:20 Session 3: Water, technology and public perception

• Piotr Szpunar (University at Albany): Walled Shores, Waning Future
• Christina Walter (Universität Augsburg): Digital Technologies for Water Resilience? Examining the Discourse on Digital Water
• Biliana Gaume, Pascal Verhoest, Joke Bauwens, Petrus te Braak and Marijke Huysmans (Vrij Universiteit Brussel): Food for Thought A Survey on the Acceptance of Crops Grown with Treated Wastewater
• Ruhil Iyer (IDS), Jeremy Kohlitz (University of Technology Sydney), Nicole Klaesener-Metzner (UNICEF) & ​Sue Cavill, (UNICEF): Water management for hygiene and sanitation in the climate crisis: Programming lessons from South Asia and the Pacific

16:30-18:00 Closing Keynote Talk:

Dr Filippo Menga, University of Bergamo: Spectacular Environments: Framing the Global Water Crisis in Troubled Times

For further details contact s.kassirer[at]reading.ac.uk

Registration is via Eventbrite

23-25 November 2022

Berlin, Germany (HIIG Berlin, ZeM Potsdam)

Deadline: June 20, 2022

Autonomy has been a multifaceted term for centuries that was and remains a key concept in discussions about individuals and societies alike. More recently, autonomy has gained a renewed relevance and additional meanings in the context of technical innovation, where it is ubiquitously employed in variations of “autonomous systems”. It is often associated with independently moving or self-controlling machines such as drones, vehicles or robots, or more generally with a wide range of automation processes. In this broad understanding, 'autonomous' becomes an attribute for (artificial) intelligence or (machine) learning and is used synonymously with self-determination or adaptability. At the same time, the term invokes (at least) one other meaning: a relational understanding of autonomy that denotes individual and collective processes that are embedded in infrastructures and conditioned by them. It is only in relation to and in the context of media, rules, norms, laws, practices, architectures, materialities or machines that the idea of autonomy acquires any meaning at all.

Against this backdrop the Infrastructures of Autonomy conference’s main objective is to address said conditions, structures and relations that constitute both human and machine autonomy. This also entails the various interpretations of the concept of autonomy.

In particular, papers are invited that address the following core themes:

• Conceptual aspects: This core theme reflects on the historical and philosophical roots that shape today’s debates on autonomy and automation. We pick up on the feminist discourse of “relational autonomy” that established the irreducibility of interdependence and relatedness for normative theories of autonomy. We posit that there is a troubling tension between industrial and digital automation that benefits consumerist subjects and the struggle for autonomisation that is dependent upon the suspension of automatic responses made by moral subjects. This struggle has always relied on external means of suspension and establishing new habits. For example, what is the contribution of technical,  economic or public infrastructures to the normative claims and ethical or political practices of autonomisation? How does the extended conception of rationality that explicitly includes artefacts relate to the findings of infrastructure studies? Is autonomy always “scaffolded”? What can automated data capture and processing contribute to the struggles for autonomisation? Or does this automation of so many aspects of life rather interfere with these struggles? Lastly, if autonomisation depends on uncovering and suspending habits in the sense of dis-automatisation, how can the conspicuous tension between this dis-automatisation and the automatisation of infrastructures be conceived without falling back into a simple opposition?
• Technologies: This core theme is primarily driven by the idea of so-called “autonomous systems”, a term often used to describe a degree of (machine) agency without human oversight or control. These phenomena necessitate a reflection of agential hybrids – intricate human/machine networks of distributed agency and responsibility – and lead to questions on the varying degrees of automation and the contexts and structures of human/machine relations and interaction. What are the conditions of autonomy in “autonomous systems” – from planning and implementation to interaction with them; is it conceivable at all to make autonomy programmable? Which concept of learning is applied in “self-learning systems”? We are also interested in exploring the configurations of machine autonomy, may it be enacted or prescribed to these technical objects, and understanding its relationship(s) to human autonomy in the varying contexts that exist today.

• Bodies: The third core theme focuses on the somatic aspects and cognitive requirements of (human) autonomy. This refers to those premises of autonomy that are associated with socio-cultural constructs of human dis/ability, but also includes the role of affects, non-conscious cognitions and ‘automatic’ habits that counter the prevalent idea of the conscious and autonomous mind. The material dimension of technology plays an important role in these considerations, namely in settings of human-machine interaction, leading to questions of interface design, the ‘bodily’ presence of machines and the complex aspect of their potential to enable or constrain human agency and autonomy. We are interested in discussing how infrastructures in interaction with bodies shape, enable or prohibit autonomy; what performances of bodily autonomy might look like; and how this entanglement and enactment changes with new mechanical and digital infrastructures. In particular, we would like to address how the practice of care for one's own and other bodies is changing under the conditions of a computerised world. 

All these major themes are to be understood as highly interconnected with the effect of 

mutually constituting dynamic infrastructures of autonomy.

We believe the discourse on infrastructures of autonomy is highly relevant beyond a theoretical perspective, since it touches upon issues with high stakes and severe consequences, such as:

• autonomous weapon systems
• robotics and smart technologies in the field of care work
• health care applications and technologies
• autonomous systems in the field of machine learning
• smart housing and smart cities
• ...

We welcome contributions from scholars of diverse disciplines, such as the arts, cognitive science, computer science, cultural studies, design studies, literature and film studies, media and communication studies, philosophy, psychology, political science, science and technology studies or sociology. Interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., those combining social, cultural and technical perspectives) are particularly encouraged.

Submission process

• Abstracts of approximately 300 to 500 words in length (excl. references) should be submitted no later than 20 June 2022 to autonomy@hiig.de
• Speakers will be notified by 30 July 2022

It is planned to publish selected papers.

If you have any questions, you can contact the conference organisers via autonomy@hiig.de. For more information, visit our website at hiig.de/en/infrastructures-of-autonomy/.

Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)

Thomas Christian Bächle & Theresa Züger

Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM)

Bernd Bösel & Jan Distelmeyer