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  • 18.03.2021 16:39 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    April 9, 2021- 3pm

    Online via Zoom

    register here: https://yorku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nf57kdxuSySuOPKe2NIRdg

    Please join us for a roundtable discussion about design justice and community-led initiatives engaged in practices for reshaping the future.

    We are pleased to host a conversation about design justice with Sasha Costanza-Chock, Denise Shanté Brown, and Wesley Taylor, members of the steering committee of the Design Justice Network, an organization at the forefront of community-led design for social justice. The DJN is made up of designers, advocates, educators, and researchers, and is dedicated to reshaping existing practices and collaborative approaches to addressing injustices based on race, class, gender, and ability.

    The roundtable will explore the work of the organization and the presenters as well as challenges and opportunities posed by designed inequalities disproportionately impacting on already marginalized communities. It will include remarks from Professor Alison Harvey and responses from York and Ryerson graduate students Mina Momeni, Brianna I. Wiens, and Dayna Jeffrey.

    This event will include ASL interpretation.

    This roundtable is co-presented with the Wendy Michener Memorial Lecture and Design Justice Dialogue Series, and with the generous support of the Division of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation, the Principal’s Office at Glendon College, the Institute for Research on Digital Literacies, Sensorium, Center for Feminist Research, the Digital Media program in the Department of Computational Art, the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York University and Ryerson University, the Department of Design in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, the Department of Communication Studies at Keele campus, the Communications Program at Glendon College and the Department of Social Justice Education, OISE at the University of Toronto.

    Presenter bios:

    Sasha Costanza-Chock is a researcher and designer who works to support community-led processes that build shared power, move towards collective liberation, and advance ecological survival. They are known for their work on networked social movements, transformative media organizing, and design justice. Sasha is a Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Senior Research Fellow at the Algorithmic Justice League (ajlunited.org), and a Faculty Affiliate with the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Sasha is the author of two books and numerous journal articles, book chapters, and other research publications. Their new book, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, was published by the MIT Press in 2020. Sasha is a board member of Allied Media Projects (alliedmedia.org) and a member of the Steering Committee of the Design Justice Network (designjustice.org).

    Wesley Taylor is a graphic designer, fine artist, musician and curator. He has spent many years “scene building” in the Detroit hip-hop community as both an emcee and graphic designer. He is co-founder of Emergence Media, along with Invincible. Taylor’s most recent body of work revolves around the promise of the future; he imagines that “the future” is his client and he is in charge of marketing for “the future” and branding its many possibilities. Taylor holds a graduate degree in 2-D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University. He also manages a five-person artists’ studio collective in Detroit called Talking Dolls.

    Denise Shanté Brown is a holistic design strategist living in Baltimore whose life’s work centers the wellbeing and brilliance of Black womxn and folx who hold marginalized identities. Wholeheartedly and with no apologies. As the Founding Director of Black Womxn Flourish and creator of Design for the Wellbeing of Black Womxn, she has dedicated her holistic practice to actualizing liberating and vibrant futures through design. She believes that creative, hands-on healing experiences can shape possibility and embolden communities to develop the tools and strategies we need for collective wellbeing. Her processes and practices are grounded in design justice and healing justice principles, emergent strategy, nature, womanism, and the feminine economy. She holds a Masters of Arts degree in Social Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has designed unique health interventions, community engagement strategies, and listening session models, facilitated creative dialogue on self-compassion and mindful social practice, and conducted design-led research that emphasizes the lived experiences of the people behind the data.

    Respondent bios:

    Dayna Jeffrey is a PhD candidate in the Science & Technology Studies program at York University. Dayna received an MA in Communication and Culture from a joint program between York and Ryerson University and an Honors BA in Social Anthropology with a minor in Religious Studies from York University. Dayna’s academic passions surround techno-utopian ideology or super-intelligence. Dayna’s current work focuses on the implications of techno-utopian ideology, or transhumanist visions of the future, on the design of artificially intelligent technologies. Dayna considers how does past, present, and future inform technological design. Her theoretical approach focuses on the sociology of technological expectations and ideologies surrounding innovative technology. This builds on her MA work focusing on the controversies surrounding the development of strong AI, specifically by analysing how socio-political and economic issues are seemingly erased and yet transpire in contemporary techno-utopian discourses.

    Brianna I. Wiens (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in Communication and Culture at York University and co-director of the qcollaborative (http://www.qcollaborative.com/), a feminist design lab. Her SSHRC-funded research draws on her experience as a mixed-race queer activist-scholar to analyze and apply feminist theories and practices, considering the possibilities and constraints of technologies and feminist methods for digital activisms. Wiens’s collaborative work has recently appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Digital Studies/Le Champ Numérique, and Leisure Sciences, and she is a co-editor of the forthcoming collection Networked Feminist Activisms (Lexington Press 2021).

    Mina Momeni is a doctoral candidate in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University and a sessional lecturer at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber. Her research focuses on digital media, visual culture, human-computer interaction, philosophy of technology, and political activism. Momeni is also an interdisciplinary artist, and her artwork explores the relationship between ancient culture, symbology, monuments and memories. Momeni's artwork, such as photographs, videos, multimedia and installation art have been shown in numerous group and individual exhibitions in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

  • 18.03.2021 16:33 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Call for chapters for an edited volume, “Advances in Teaching and Teacher Education” series (Brill/Sense)

    Deadline: March 31, 2021

    The aim of this edited volume is to provide thorough discussions on visual approaches to teaching along with examples of practical application of the discussed activities or educational interventions.

    The proposed chapters can focus on activities from across disciplines, or on specific visual approaches/methods of teaching in higher education. However, instead of describing a sole teaching/learning activity or an exercise, contributors are invited to situate it in a wider theoretical and conceptual context. The chapters may focus on educational experiments or interventions, or elaborate on the projects that aim to develop students’ visual competency, or to advance the general practices in visual education in culturally or disciplinary specific contexts.

    The theoretical background of each chapter should be outlined in a clear manner, providing short elaboration of the key concepts, considering the differences between the terms, such as, visual literacy, visual pedagogy, visual communication, visual competency, etc. The book is intended for an international audience, and thus, each chapter has to be situated in a particular educational context, bringing its key characteristics to the reader. Contributors are also asked to write in a manner accessible to readers outside of their respective fields.

    REVIEW PROCESS

    This publication project will be conducted in a collaborative manner, including two or three rounds of the rigorous review process that can result in either acceptance or rejection. By submitting your chapter manuscript for this edited volume, you agree to participate in the review process and to act as both the prospective author and a peer-reviewer.

    TIMELINE

    • abstract submission (200 words, and 100 words bio) — 31 March 2021
    • full chapter submission — 30 June 2021
    • review process (2-3 rounds): editorial screening, external review and peer-review
    • final revised chapters’ submission — October 2021
    • book manuscript submitted to the publisher — Nov./Dec. 2021
    • envisioned publication date — May/June 2022

    MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION GUIDELINES:

    • submit only original work, not previously published elsewhere in the same or similar form;
    • maximum length of the manuscript is 5.500-6.000 words, including references and footnotes, excluding abstract and keywords;
    • include an abstract of about 200 words and 6-8 keywords,
    • include a short bio (100 words) intended for the ‘Notes on Contributors’;
    • use a Word editor for submission (at the later stage you will be asked to convert your chapter using Brill publication style);
    • consider visually rich submission (you can include up to 4-6 figures in your chapter);
    • apply APA reference style; all in-text references should be included in the Reference list at the end of your manuscript;
    • use footnotes instead of endnotes;
    • use American spelling throughout your manuscript;
    • conduct language-editing and/or language-check before submitting your manuscript — it always helps to get the reviewers on your side; neither the publisher nor the editor can cover the language editing costs;
    • carefully prepare your submission, considering that we all do voluntary work when reviewing each others papers;
    • send your chapter manuscript to Joanna Kedra: joanna.kedra@jyu.fi

    You are welcome to discuss with the editor your ideas for the chapter before submitting the full manuscript. You can contact the editor, Joanna Kedra, via email: joanna.kedra@jyu.fi

    About the editor:

    Dr. Joanna Kędra works in the Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Joanna is a Vice-Chair of the ECREA Visual Cultures Section, and Chair of the International Presence Committee for the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA). Her research interest is in visual culture, photography and visual research methods as well as in visual literacy and visual pedagogy in a higher education context.

  • 18.03.2021 16:29 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    University of Antwerp

    The University of Antwerp's Research Group MIOS and Research Group Government and Law are seeking to fill the following full-time (100%) vacancy for a Doctoral Grant (starting September 1st, 2021) in the framework of the project: Cyberviolence on social media: a research on hate speech and image-based sexual abuse

    More information on the project, job description and requirements, can be found on: https://tinyurl.com/pymj3n2d

    Deadline for online submission of the candidatures is April 18, 2021.

  • 18.03.2021 16:24 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Technische Universität Ilmenau

    The Faculty of Economic Sciences and Media offers a position at the Research Group on Public Relations and Communication of Technology to be filled by May 1, not later than June 1, 2021 (full time, for three years) as research associate (f/m/d) to fulfill research tasks within the DFG-funded project "Deciphering the 'pandemic public sphere': Government communication, (social) media discourses on and citizens' responses to Covid-19 in Europe and the USA", subject to funding approval by the funding body. The position can also be combined with pursuing a PhD.

    Remuneration is in accordance with the provisions of the collective agreement for the public service of the Länder (TV-L).

    Your tasks

    • Literature research and elaboration of the state of research on relevant topics of risk, crisis and health communication
    • Conceptualization and implementation of comparative quantitative media content analyses (development of codebooks, implementation of coder trainings with international coders, reliability tests, etc.)
    • Data cleansing and data analysis in the project (SPSS / R)
    • Collaboration in the preparation of research reports, conference submissions and publications
    • Participation in the international research team to develop models, methods, approaches to data analysis and coordination
    • Participation in administrative tasks

    Your profile

    • Qualified academic degree (Master, Diplom (Univ.) or equivalent) in communication science, journalism, public relations, or similar
    • Very good knowledge of statistics and research methods (primarily quantitative methods); in particular knowledge of quantitative content analysis
    • very good command of written and spoken English

    above-average commitment and willingness to perform, a cooperative and independent working style, didactic and organizational skills

    Advantageous, but not mandatory, are

    - Good to very good knowledge of the German language

    - Knowledge of one or more of the following topics: Risk and crisis communication, health communication, data analysis with R or SPSS, experience with working in international teams, other foreign language skills (e.g. Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch).

    We offer you

    • an exciting, interdisciplinary and international scientific environment
    • collaboration in an open and motivated team
    • flexible working time models (partially also home office solutions)
    • task-related further training opportunities
    • use of employee discounts in the refectories of the Studierendenwerk Thüringen as well as use of the sports facilities of the university sports center

    About the project

    This large-scale international project analyzes how governments and public health institutions in six European countries and the USA have communicated the Corona pandemic, what role (social) media have played in co-constructing discourses about Covid-19, and how citizens have responded to the respective state and media communications.

    https://jobundkarriere.tu-ilmenau.de/jobposting/423f27eb6004e55c4e9be1880ee0b3285248b7cd0

  • 18.03.2021 16:20 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    NECSUS, Spring 2022

    Deadline: April 30, 2021

    Guest edited by Nicholas Baer (University of Groningen) and Maggie Hennefeld (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)

    Did you hear? Rumor has it that the Spring 2022 issue of NECSUS will be devoted to the topic of gossip as a prolific yet contested form of media discourse. Spread the word!

    As Mladen Dolar has recently argued, rumors are undignified in the history of philosophy, falling under the ancient Greek category of doxa (belief, opinion) rather than episteme (knowledge, logos). Concerning people who are absent or at a remove, rumors are often authorless and unfounded, and yet they can gain enormous traction, authority, and staying power. In this regard, they play a significant and highly complex role in what Erving Goffman called ‘impression management’ as part of the dramaturgy of everyday social interaction.

    This special section invites consideration of the non-traditional sources of knowledge that have gained increasing currency in film and media studies, challenging the empirical standards of evidence that informed the discipline’s ‘historical turn’. We encourage topics and modes of engagement that might be deemed speculative, unsubstantiated, or otherwise unscientific, confronting elisions and erasures in the archive. Of particular interest is work in Black, feminist, queer, and trans media studies as well as scholarship on celebrity, fandom, and counterpublics.

    The topic of rumors and gossip is also lent vital urgency by the #MeToo movement. Existing outside of official accounts and professional historiography, whisper networks have served as key sites for communicating stories of rape and abuse, even as their truth-claims pose a crisis of documentation and verifiability. Here we are interested in the ambivalence and political promiscuity of gossip in relation to the Foucauldian power/knowledge complex: while rumors serve as a crucial resource for the vulnerable, they can also be a means of baseless, malevolent slander, leaving power structures in place and contributing to an often-exploitative, profit-driven culture of scandal and outrage.

    Finally, this special section will examine rumors and gossip as linguistic utterances and modes of address that are transmitted and often amplified through historically variable media forms. Gossip has repeatedly been ignored or dismissed by linguists and philosophers, reduced to what Martin Heidegger deemed Gerede (idle talk). Yet various thinkers have argued that it serves an essential function in social interaction, involving group membership, moral judgment, and relations of trust and confidentiality. Building on existing scholarship, this section hopes to reassess rumors and gossip in relation to current issues in film and media studies, including digital networks, the viral spread of (mis)information, and renegotiations of the distinction between publicity and privacy.

    Contributions may focus on but are not limited to the following topics:

    # Conceptual clarifications: What are the relations and differences between terms such as rumors, gossip, hearsay, slander, calumny, and scandal?

    # Historiographical challenges: How does one research and write the history of film and media in the face of informal networks, material gaps, irreducible ambiguities, and unverified or unauthorised information?

    # Theories and methods: Which theoretical and methodological approaches are especially generative for the epistemology of rumors and gossip?

    # Stardom and reception studies: What role does the rumor mill play in celebrity and fan communities as well as in the formation of alternative histories, identities, and public spheres?

    # MeToo: How do rumors and gossip serve as sites for sharing stories of sexual violence and abuse, and what are their potentialities, limitations, and dangers as means of resistance to hegemonic narratives and institutional power structures?

    # Media figurations: How have film and other media visualised, thematised, and participated in the production and circulation of knowledge and (mis)information?

    # Democracy and civil society: What insights can film and media scholars contribute to ongoing debates about social media, the viral spread of falsehoods and conspiracy theories, and other challenges to democracy and civil society?

    Please send abstracts of 300 words, 3-5 bibliographic references, and a short biography of 100 words to g.decuir@aup.nl by 30 April 2021. On the basis of selected abstracts, writers will be invited to submit full manuscripts (6,000-8,000 words, revised abstract, 4-5 keywords) by 1 February 2022. Manuscripts will subsequently go through a double-blind peer review process before final acceptance for publication.

  • 18.03.2021 16:17 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    March 26-27, 2021

    Online

    We are excited to announce that the program of ECREA's Political Communication Section Interim Conference on “Communicating crisis: Political communication in the age of uncertainty” is out!

    It is organized by Prof. Nicoleta Corbu and her team at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest and takes place digitally from March 26th-27th, 2021.

    The Keynote lecture will be provided by Prof. Darren Lilleker (Bournemouth University, UK) on Friday March 26th, 10:30-11:30 and is entitled "Understanding crises and the role of political communication". The (online) Business Meeting will be open for all section members, regardless if you participate in the conference or not, and will take place on Saturday March 27th, 10:00-11:00.

    Please find the program attached. The conference fee is 40 EUR. For more information please check the conference website: http://comunicare.ro/en/index.php?page=ecrea-2021

  • 18.03.2021 16:11 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    October 14-16, 2021

    Online conference (Zoom)

    Deadline: April 12, 2021

    Zoom Conference Narrative, Media and Cognition

    The 6th edition of the conference Narrative, Media and Cognition aims to combine narrative, as an artistic and social phenomenon, with the artistic and technical media that convey it and with the cognition that produces it and gives it meaning. The 2021 edition of the conference is hosted by the Theatre and Film School of the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, in Portugal, in association with the WG of the Audiovisual Narratives of AIM - The Moving Image Association in Portugal. It will take place on 14th, 15th and 16th of October 2021, via Zoom.

    Upon entering a new decade of the twenty first century the artistic landscape is increasingly hybrid and veering from the norms; a growing blend of forms, contents and genres is taking place. Therefore, it is imperative to reflect on the interrelation of the three main topics of the conference – narrative, media/arts, and cognition – and to contribute with academic theorization that allows for a broadening of reflection upon the nature and role of narrative as the binding element of a new audiovisual praxis. In this sense, the current edition of the conference focuses on the multiple challenges of artistic contemporaneity, seeking to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue.

    There will be a publication with selected, peer-reviewed articles issuing from this conference.

    Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

    • Complex, non-linear and fragmentary narrative structures.
    • Self-reflexivity, metalepsis, ekphrasis, embedding.
    • Unreliable narration.
    • Characters and diegetic universes.
    • Time and space in narrative.
    • Scriptwriting techniques.
    • Essay film, webdocumentary.
    • Autobiography, self-portrait, autofiction.
    • Transmedia storytelling.
    • Intermediality: narrative as cutting across different media.
    • Film adaptation.
    • Seriality, complex television series.
    • Narrative and new media.
    • New exhibition and exposition formats, streaming.
    • Interactive narrative.
    • Design, characters and narrative structures in videogames.
    • Narrative as a cognitive structure.
    • Relationship between media and cognition.
    • Narration and altered states of consciousness.
    • Narrative reception and creation mechanisms.

    Keynote speakers:

    • Professor Jane Alison – University of Virginia.

    Author of the book Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative (2019).

    • Professor Nitzan Ben Shaul – University of Tel-Aviv.

    Author of the book Cinema of Choice: Optional Thinking and Narrative Movies (2012).

    • Professor Jens Eder – University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf.

    Co-editor of Image Operations. Visual Media and Political Conflict (2017) and Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media (2010).

    • Professor Marina Grishakova – University of Tartu.

    Co-author of The Gesamtkunstwerk as a Synergy of the Arts (Peter Lang, 2020); co-editor of Narrative Complexity: Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution (2019) and Intermediality and Storytelling (2010).

    • Miklós Kiss – University of Groningen.

    Co-author of the book Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (2018).

    • Professor Jason Mittell – Middlebury College.

    Author of the book Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. (2015).

    Conference languages: English and Portuguese.

    The conference is free of charge for selected participants, but registration is required to be able to access the sessions.

    Timetable: (2021)

    • April 12: Deadline for proposal submission.
    • May 12: Notification of acceptance.
    • July 7: Deadline for registration (free of charge).
    • October 14-16: Conference dates.

    Submission:

    We invite each of you to submit a proposal for a 20-minute presentation. Each participant is limited to one talk. Both theoretical and analytical-theoretical approaches are accepted.

    The proposal must contain an abstract (500 words max.), 5 keywords, 3 bibliographical references and a short bio of the author (250 words max.). Send to Fátima Chinita (chinita.estc@gmail.com) and Abel Júpiter (estc.conferencia.2021@gmail.com).

    Suggested bibliography: available on the conference website: https://reconfiguracoes.estc.ipl.pt

    Organizers:

    Fátima Chinita,

    PhD. - Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, Theatre and Film School

    Guilhermina Castro, PhD.

    Catholic University, School of the Arts, CITAR

    Jorge Palinhos, PhD.

    Lisbon Polytechnic Institute, Theatre and Film School

  • 18.03.2021 16:07 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    May 25 - 27th 2021

    Unversitat Pompeu Fabra (ONLINE EDITION)

    Deadline: March 27, 2021

    The I International Congress "The cinematographic stardom in Spain": Actresses under Francoism intends to open a way of thinking upon the cinematographic star-system in Spain, and, particularly, upon the actresses' role during Franco's dictatorship. This initiative is part of the research project REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMALE DESIRE IN SPANISH CINEMA DURING FRANCOISM: THE GESTURAL EVOLUTION OF THE ACTRESS UNDER CENSORSHIP (Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, REF: CSO2017-83083-P).

    To this extent, the aim is to gather specialists in Spanish cinema history and the Star Studies methodologies to think about the role of the female stars during Francoism concerning the behaviours that the regime had established for women. We are interested in the normative models, as much as possible contradictions, transgressions, and alternatives inside the industry itself generated by the actresses on and off the screen. Moreover, we are interested, mainly, in the possible elements of creative subjectivity that actresses played in the configuration of their roles as stars and constructing the characters they played.

    Paper Submission Guidelines

    There will be accepted, after being evaluated and selected, the proposals which address some of the following research lines, always within the framework of Spanish cinema during Franco's dictatorship and the actresses as an object of study:

    1. Building of the cinematographic star in Spain. Industrial and advertising strategies in the consolidation of female stars.

    2. Creative subjectivity of the actress in her Star Image or Screen Image.

    3. Comparatives between stardom in Francoist Spain and other models of international star system.

    4. Comparatives between stardom in Francoist Spain and other periods of Spanish cinema history.

    5. From the theatre scene to the cinematographic screen.

    6. Actresses and models.

    7. Voice, body and gesture as a statement of the interpretative personality.

    8. Actresses and censorship.

    9. Actresses against the regime.

    10. The actress as a channel of female desire.

    11. Actresses and female archetypes.

    12. Actresses and gallants: the role of female stars in the consolidation of recurring couples.

    13. Female star's reception.

    14. Foreign female stars in Francoist cinema.

    15. Interpretive schools and cinematographic stardom.

    16. Supporting actresses.

    The abstract should be no longer than 300 words (minimum 150). Please include a short biography and follow the application rules. Make your submission here.

    Deadline for abstracts: March 27, 2021

    Invited Speakers
    • Vicente Benet - Professor of Audiovisual Communication. Universitat Jaume I, Castellón de la Plana.
    • José Luis Castro de Paz - Professor of Audiovisual Communication. Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.
    • Marta García Carrión - Permanent Lecturer of University. Universitat de València
    • Jo Labanyi - Professor of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures. University of New York.
    • Imma Merino - Associate Professor. Universitat de Girona.
    • Angel Quintana - Professor of History and Film Theory. Universitat de Girona.
    • Kathleen Vernon - Associate Professor. Stony Brook University, New York.

    Publication

    Applicants are invited to submit their communications for publishing to the Congress before September 1, 2021.

    https://eventum.upf.edu/61056/detail/l-international-congress-the-cinematographic-stardom-in-spain_-actresses-under-francoism.html

  • 11.03.2021 20:35 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Journal of the New Techno Humanities (special issue)

    Deadline: April 30, 2021

    Short title: Interactivity and Virtual Reality

    Guest Editors

    • Keyan G Tomaselli: keyant@uj.ac.za, University of Johannesburg

    Dr Keyan G Tomaselli is Distinguished Professor, Humanities Dean’s Office, University of Johannesburg, a Laureate Fellow of the International Communicology Institute, and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He is editor of Critical Arts and founder and co-editor of Journal of African Cinemas.

    • Damien R Tomaselli: damientomaselli@gmail.com

    Dr Damien R Tomaselli is a postdoctoral fellow at the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD), based at the University of Johannesburg. He works as a cinematic transmedia storyteller and is a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute. His Ph.D. thesis is entitled, ‘Cosmology of the Relativistic Multi-Modal Chronotope. A metaphysical lens on how creators may rhetorically embed fictional spacetime into various story-world configurations for dramatic narratives.’ He is also co-founder of an international storytelling association for professional practitioners involved with emerging narrative forms, called The Cauldron. He is also managing editor, Communicare: Journal for Communication Sciences in Southern Africa.

    Background

    This new journal targets at the creative aspect of the humanities still to be fully recognized in the established classification and methodology of disciplines. By embracing the practical extension of the latest scientific and technological methods, the journal aims to provide a forum for transdisciplinary discussion and in-depth analysis on the nature and development of humanities, as well as the latter's interface with other disciplines.

    The journal welcomes contributions from the pragmatic and experimental approaches by employing new technological methodologies, such as computational methods, visualization, data archives, processing and interaction, or surveys. The journal also welcomes philosophical, hermeneutic, critical, rhetorical, and historical approaches to interpretations of scientific and technological phenomena, focusing on their ontologies, nature, histories, methodologies and prospect of development.

    New Techno Humanities will publish original research articles, review articles and book reviews on the topics including, but not limited to Methodology, Authorship attribution stylometry stylistics, Modelling, digital visualization, Digital cultural heritage, Digital cultural heritage, Data visualization, statistical analysis, big data, Semantic web technology, network theory, Translation studies with technological methods, Corpus analysis, and Textual analysis.

    Motivation

    In 2017 Klaus Schwab, chairperson of the World Economic Forum, described the fundamental changes brought about by the expansion of digital domain, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (among other developments) as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. He describes a world where individuals move between digital domains and offline reality with the use of connected technology to enable and manage their lives.

    This is significantly different to previous social and economic regimens in terms of its velocity, scope, and systems impact, and “it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance”. In this arrangement, knowledge workers provide focus, creativity, and leverage in using those investments to achieve the organization’s objectives more efficiently. In other words, knowledge is an integral part of total management and cuts across functional boundaries.

    Much of what has been developed in the realm of 4IR is driven by advances in science, technology and software development. These are all essential components for the comprehension of phenomena; however, the content of software and creative outputs and manner in which people, both as creators and consumers, interface with the content, is often neglected. This special issue is intended specifically to focus on the aspect of the narrative in digital audio-visual formats, including gaming, motion books, virtual and augmented reality forms. It further aims to develop methods of visually representing the progress of narrative in these ‘new’ modalities, specifically in terms of its space-time compression and dilation. The value of the research is to shift the discussion of 4IR from the predominantly technicist to a more interdisciplinary and holistic dialogue of content, form and narrative that was available during the previous period of analogue media.

    Where text-based film theorists prevailed during the 20st century, now in the 21st it is software programmers, gamers and media agencies who are driving both practice and theory. They are simultaneously relocating the interpreter (viewer) of new media from being a spectator to being a co-author of plot outcomes. The late 1980s saw a ‘theoretical turn’ towards the concept of the ‘active audience’, arguing that savvy media audiences do not receive information passively, but are actively involved in the sense-making of messages within the contexts of their social, class and personal experiences. The ‘interactive’ nature of digital media has extended this notion: not only do audiences make sense of what they consume, they actively co-create meaning. This is most clearly seen in gaming, in which the ‘story line’ is determined by the choice of the player’s moves to shape the outcome of the narrative in various directions. Games and gamification are becoming a popular field of research, which New Techno Humanities will study.

    The new theorists of the virtual (the new media) are addressing issues of multi-dimensional multi-platform interaction, and multi-media real time spectatorship that includes virtual-enabled interactions of various kinds. The issue here involves next-generation narratives, immersed audiences** and interactive experiences with content enabled by new technologies. These are generated by cross-platform experiences that anticipate new types of audiences searching for deeper access to the minds of characters they encounter in the digital media, but also how they can shape narrative digestion.

    A key question is: is the idea of spectatorship still relevant, or should it be reformulated in a loose Boalian performative sense of spect-actor where spectators become involved in the shaping of narrative outcomes? Normative theories can be no longer automatically applied in the body-less, borderless, immersive dynamic intertextual media age, that is taking shape in the 4IR era. In semiology, film theory is treated as a language while in Peirceian semiotics visual narrative theory is treated as a conversation between participant and text. New kinds of multi-faceted narrative arise out of these kinds of virtual relations that displace spectators from cinema seats into a networked world that involves spect-actors from anywhere.

    A second research question thus concerns how individuals appropriate and use such technologies in their own lives. Thirdly, how can the**content they create benefit to re-balancing society in terms of both message making and product delivery? For instance, the infancy of intellectual property crypto currency solutions driven through blockchain such as Etheruem based Singles tokens and the Unlock protocol, instigate the roots for a potential democratization of an artist first-rights management system that significantly undermines the status quo of the current entertainment economy.

    As a practitioner who can execute 'future' narrative forms, as well as an academic who specializes in the theoretical discourse of various forms of narrative execution, the digital creator’s ability is of storyform to develop a craft-first theory in the climate of the 4IR ‘digital area/canvas'. Where software companies are tech oriented, there is a need for associated critical analytical study of the sector and how it is applied, by who, with what effects.

    The purpose of the special issue is the exploration of systems of representation that will allow us to model, or ‘see’ the warping of time and space in relation to a specific narrative output. This process merges metaphysics with narrative architecture and visual and other representations of spatial-temporal signification. This aspect of visualizing digital narratology, including quite specifically virtual reality and enhanced reality, is key to providing tools to understand the ways in which the content of 4IR is understood.

    Bakhtin’s chronotope legitimizes the idea of the space-time meaning within the literary realm. However, in in this number of JNTH we want to include visual representations (models) of concrete visual narratives with the specific focus on space-time as the primary organizer of meaning, as well as an anchor of dramatic unfoldings (diegesis) or analysis of ‘fabric’ within narrative. This fabric is of course metaphysical, rather than material. In a metaphorical manner it manifests itself as solidified, concrete expression of the space-time narrative. This is because in the case of digital texts, a trail of information is able to be indexed as a result of the digital pipeline through which the visual representation must occur. This information includes colour, light, narrative density among other indices.

    This visual representation, or mapping, of space-time within a narrative, is dependent on a dialogue between metaphysics, visual representation, space-time rhetoric, trails of digital information, narratology and the configuration between audience and the represented fictional world to which the audience is potentially immersed. These concepts are understood as metaphysical, rather than material manifestations, and are not necessarily bound to any specific narrative form, since any form of narrative is chronotopic in nature.

    Submission timeline

    • Submission of Abstracts: 30 April 2021
    • Invitation to write a full article or commentary: 15 May
    • Submission of completed articles: 30 October
    • Peer review process: 6 months - estimated

    Submission guidelines 

    Kindly submit your paper to the Special Issue category through the online submission system (https://www.editorialmanager.com/…spx ) of New Techno Humanities. All the submissions should follow the general author guidelines of New Techno Humanities available at https://www.elsevier.com/…ors

  • 11.03.2021 20:26 | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

    Université libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) opens a full-time academic position in Strategic Communication.

    The appointee is expected to teach courses and to conduct research in communication, particularly in the transversal and strategic aspects related to influence mechanisms (e.g., in the political, commercial, health, humanitarian, military, diplomatic, domains). The pedagogical and scientific activities of the candidate will fit in the following areas: persuasive and influence communication, public relations, lobbying, corporate communication, communication of international institutions, crisis communication, communication and conflicts, intercultural communication, health communication.

    The applicant will articulate theoretical analysis and fieldwork, both in teaching and research. They will provide the contexts and the stakes pertaining to various forms of communication and their strategic implications.

    The successful candidate will devise courses both at the Bachelor and Master levels. They are expected to demonstrate potential for managing a pedagogical team (at the Bachelor level in information and communication, and/or at the Master level in communication and in multilingual communication).

    The candidate’s research activities and projects should fit within the interests of the Research Center in Information and Communication at ULB (ReSIC center).

    Research Field : Information and Communication

    Teaching and Research Objectives:

    The appointee must develop a teaching and research program in communication, in the topics listed above. They are expected to mentor students and supervise their Master theses and PhD dissertations. They will also collaborate effectively with the research team and reinforce their efforts in developing collective projects, applying for external funds (FNRS, Regions, Europe…), and promoting research in the department.

    Courses included in the teaching load at the time of recruitment:

    The candidate will be teaching courses in the Bachelor’s Degree in Information and Communication, in the Master’s Degree in Communication and in Multilingual Communication, in relation to the domains listed above. They will create courses connected to their research interests. The teaching load consists of a maximum of 120 hours per year; such load is reduced during the first three years.

    Main Research Field : Communication Sciences

    Required educational level: PhD Degree in Communication

    Required Languages :

    Français : excellent

    English : excellent

    For more information, please contact Prof. Irene Di Jorio (Irene.Di.Jorio@ulb.be).

    Details: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/613421

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