ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

University of Sheffield

The Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield is pleased to advertise a AHRC-funded PhD opportunity with the School of Law (University of Leeds) and NHS Blood and Transplant. The student will be supervised by Dr Ros Williams (Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield) and Prof Marie-Andrée Jacob (School of Law, University of Leeds), along with the Assistant Director of Communications at NHSBT

PhD project description

During the COVID pandemic, NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), the body responsible for blood provision in England, has continued operating, reminding people: ‘giving blood is essential travel’. Whilst past Public Health Messaging (PHM) featured familiar appeals (eat 5-a-day, Stoptober) alongside blood donation campaigns, from early 2020 the UK public was exposed to unprecedented amounts of PHM about pandemic safety. Arguably these different yet equally important PHM appeals were now “competing” for audience attention: “Save Lives”, used to encourage blood donation, and then for recovered COVID patients to donate convalescent plasma, was now linked with calls to stay home to stop spreading the virus. So too emerged public debate about which PHM messages and messengers to trust.

This studentship explores how NHSBT seeks to ensure blood and convalescent plasma supply for patients through PHM in this context. The successful applicant will carry on cutting-edge humanities and social sciences research on media ecology, including the study of local actors, practices and materials that produce and consume media, content producers and the content itself. The study will also consider how emergent issues and technologies prompt changes in media practice and content of PHM and beyond.

“Trust” forms a perennial concern for producers of PHM (Henderson and Hilton 2018). For example, NHSBT undertakes focused recruitment of racially minoritised communities more likely to have certain in-demand blood subtypes, but lesslikely to engage with donation, a fact often attributed to mistrust of health institutions. Trust is a prominent concern for COVID too. From officials breaking laws, to vaccine hesitancy, whether people trust COVID PHM is a central issue which stands to effect NHSBT’s PHM, which exists in the same media ecology. As such, the studentship will explore questions such as:

• How can we use media ecologies theory to understand increasing PHM in the contemporary media landscape?
• How is NHSBT’s own work inflected by other proliferating PHM at national and local scales?
• How does NHSBT understand the relationship between trust and PHM in the media ecology, and how does this figure in their PHM material?

Research methodologies will be developed according to the successful student's experience and supervisor guidance, but could include qualitative methods such as visual analysis of PHM content, interviews with and observation of content production, and digital methods to collate NHSBT’s social media activity for analysis.

Applications are invited from students with a good first degree in an appropriate subject (media studies, sociology, anthropology, social policy or related areas in humanities and social sciences) as well as a Master’s degree appropriate to the topic (or be working towards one). We are also happy to consider applications from students with relevant experience in cognate areas.

Further details:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dzVn7tHHkcnUbc7UUYJu6vL5HArzRbKpkkvGu_XoNts

To apply: https://tinyurl.com/xxkf2d4w

The academic supervisors will hold a virtual information session on 1st April 3-4pm https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/6028f6d71b4347da904c7ea5cd39aebc . Attendance is not required to submit an application.

Please email Dr Ros Williams r.g.williams@sheffield.ac.uk and Prof Marie-Andrée Jacob M.A.Jacob@leeds.ac.uk for any queries.

May 6-7, 2021

Ulster University (Northern Ireland)

Deadline: March 31, 2021

Ulster University, Magee Campus (Derry), is pleased to host the 16th annual Irish Screen Studies Seminar, to be held online on 6-7 May 2021.

The Irish Screen Studies Seminar provides a unique platform for the presentation of new work – research, practice, and research through practice – by scholars and filmmakers from third-level institutions in Ireland, as well as those working on Irish screen-related topics in other universities and colleges worldwide.

The seminar is aimed at academic researchers and practitioners in film and screen cultures in the broadest sense, touching on audio, film, television, digital media, transmedia, gaming and related interdisciplinary activity. The ISSS actively promotes the exchange of ideas and offers postgraduate and early career researchers and practitioners an ideal opportunity to present evolving screen-related research and practice in a constructive and encouraging forum. Conference papers will be archived on the Irish Screen Studies website.

We are delighted to announce that the keynote speakers for the conference will be renowned film theorist Professor John Hill, Professor of Film Studies at Royal Holloway London and Dr. Liz Greene, Reader in Film and Sonic Arts at Liverpool John Moores University.

We invite proposals in all areas of film and screen research and/or practice.

To submit an abstract/proposal, please email 250 words and a short bio to ISS2020seminar@gmail.com by 31 March 2021.

For updated information on the conference please visit irishscreenstudies.ie or the Irish Screen Studies page on Facebook.

October 6-8, 2021

Vilnius (Lithuania)

Deadline: May 3, 2021

26 years of Lukashenko’s rule, hundreds of thousands of protesters, and the regime’s extremely brutal response have prompted researchers and practitioners to look back into the factors of regime stability, public mobilisation, and the effects of external pressures on and incentives for regime transformation in post-Soviet countries. Though the end result of current events in Belarus remains unclear, there is an agreement among scholars that it would be almost impossible to come back to ‘business as usual’ in relations between the authorities and Belarusian society as well as between Belarus and its external partners, especially Russia. Seeking to enhance research and academic discussion on political developments in the country, we invite scholars and researchers to submit paper proposals for the Conference on political developments after the 2020 Presidential elections in Belarus. The deadline for the paper submission is the 3rd of May.

More information on the event is provided here.

June 17-18, 2021

Vilnius University/online

Deadline: April 1, 2021

International conference and workshop

The organizers posit that the understanding of the current political dynamics in the CEE region can be advanced by investigating “deep stories”, that is, personal “truth” experiences, “feels-as-if stories”, frequently narrated through emotions. The event consists of two parts (conference and workshop) and aims at bringing together scholars from different national and institutional backgrounds interested in the in-depth reflection of these topics. Key-note speakers of the conference - Zsuzsa Gille, Professor of Department of Sociology, Director of Global Studies Program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Nicolas Demertzis, Professor at the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens and Director of the National Centre for Social Research. The deadline to submit abstracts for the conference (250 words) and workshop (1000 words) is the 1st of April.

More information on the event is provided here.

Call for chapters

Deadline: April 15, 2021

A re-occurring and dominant theme in public debates is how to understand and talk about controversies pertaining to science and the environment. As Covid-19, climate change and controversial new technologies are pushed forward on the international political agenda, dilemmas of how humans interact with nature, technologies, capital and each other once again become ever more present in public debate. This puts into question well-known as well as new quandaries on the current and future role of science in society. On the one hand, political actors rely on science to produce the facts and evidence required as inputs in decision-making. On the other hand, the privileged position of science to provide the answers is increasingly challenged in the public domain in the face of scientific uncertainty, complexity and disagreement.

The anthology Constructed facts, contested truths will address the question of how media represent and contribute to the construction of facts and knowledge in relation to science and environment controversies. Recent developments in social and digital media have in particular raised the issue of factuality and truths in public debate. Questions on how to maintain scientific integrity in an increasingly politicized environment are brought forward and accentuated by social and digital media. While authors in the field either endorse or take issue with the notion of post-truth, the question still remains how to make sense of the circulations of conflicting facts in current public debates on pandemics, climate-change, pollution, vaccination, food safety and many other areas. This calls for a need to understand the role of media in conveying, spreading, contesting and constructing facts and truths about science and the environment controversies.

The proposed chapters can theoretically, analytically and empirically address the question of how facts are presented, circulated and constructed with an emphasis on:

• Analysis of the construction of truths and facts in media and public debate
• The role of social media in constructing facts within digital networks of communication
• Visualisations of science and environmental information, debates and facts
• Public contestations of scientific doxa
• Populism and polarisation in science and environment communication
• The role played by facts and the presentations of truths in deliberative or radical democratic processes in relation to science and environment decisions
• Issues of public trust in and the legitimization of key actors (e.g. public authorities, industry, media) in fact-making processes
• The role of digital literacy and journalists as educators for increasing public environmental engagement
• Non-western and feminist perspectives on science and the environment are particularly welcome

Time frame:

• 15th of April 2021
• 14th of May 2021: Submission of book proposal (Emerald Publishing)
• 30th of November 2021: Final chapters due
• Publication in 2022

Organisers: The ECREA Section on Science and Environmental Communication. Mette Marie Roslyng, Shai Kassirer and Anna Maria Jönsson

Please submit a 300 word abstract before 15th of April 2021, include name, affiliation and chapter keywords to: mmroslyng@hum.aau.dk

Department of Communication of Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain)

Details about the position are available on the Euraxess website: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/609876

The benefits are:

• Five-year contract with opportunities for permanent stabilization.
• The gross annual salary is €38,000.

Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) has adopted the tenure-track system to attract and retain talent. The tenure-track contract has a fixed term of five years. A year before the contract expires, the candidate will be evaluated by the Communication Department Teaching Staff Committee. If the evaluation is positive, the candidate may apply for a permanent position.

Application Deadline: 31/05/2021 23:00 - America/New York

March 19, 2021, 3-5 pm (CET)

WCSA Event

Participation is free of charge. For administrative reasons, please register before the event using the link:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0lfumoqT0oHtQaZGgcXdCP5rjEH8oRmt8G

Andrea Pitasi is thrilled to invite you to the launching of his book: “The Hypercitizen World Game: Writings on the Emerging Global Order”

Hypercitizenship is a research based policy model developed by Andrea Pitasi and his team. This model copes with the increasing gap between the evolution of the world order towards a transnational-supranational shape and common sense of everyday people in civil society, public opinion and politics. This gap requires to rethink the structural coupling among legislation, development, demography and technology and to redesign the link between knowledge and evolution also by upgrading the educational policies of the citizens of the present and next future; citizens able to master four pivotal skills: 1) cosmopolitanism, 2) knowledge and science intensity, 3) entrepreneurial spirit, 4) societarian autonomy to network, expand and lobby.

For introducing and commenting the book, Andrea will receive:

• Alfredo Spilzinger, Lord of Brownsel, Santa Fe Associates International, Malta
• Mohamed Abdulzaher, Artificial Intelligence Journalism Journal, United Arab Emirates
• Rudy Aernoudt, European Commission, University of Ghent, Belgium
• Bruno Billota, University “Magna Græcia”, L’Harmattan Paris-Turin, Italy
• György Csepeli, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
• Abram De Swaan, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Michel de Kemmeter, Club of Brussels, Belgium
• Piero Dominici, World Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Perugia, Italy
• Polona Filipič and Sinan Mihelčič, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia,
• Sergio Marotta, Sour Orsola University, Italy (t.b.c.)

*Disclaimer: We would like to inform you that this online event on Zoom will be recorded and may be used to inform the public about WCSA activities on Facebook, WCSA webpage (www.wcsaglobal.org) or in any other existing or new mass medium. Should you not wish your participation to be recorded or transmitted online, we kindly ask you to inform your preference to the WCSA before the event by sending an email to wcsaconferences@gmail.com

University of London

Salary: £46,253-£53,013

We are looking for an outstanding teacher and theorist to join the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths. Candidates should be able to teach across our BA and MA programmes and would ideally have a background in researching the nature and impact of datafication. The appointee would be expected to supervise both undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations and to act as a personal tutor. Experience of higher education and an ability to participate in curriculum development, to build on existing synergies between creative practice and critical theory and to contribute to the Department’s research profile, are required.

The Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies is one of the longest established sites for teaching and researching media. Housed in the award-winning Professor Stuart Hall Building, it has an internationally outstanding reputation for creative and radical thinking and practice. We are committed to a vibrant teaching and research programme that combines theory and practice.

Closing date for applications is 12 April; interviews in week commencing 3 May.

More details and application form are here.

Punctum – International Journal of Semiotics

Deadline: April 30, 2021

https://iass-ais.org/…cs/

We bring you the new the new call for papers for the Volume 7, Issue 2 of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, devoted to ''The Social, Political and Ideological Semiotics of Comics and Cartoons'', edited by Stephan Packard and Lukas R.A. Wilde.

What more can semiotics do for comics? As early as the 1960s and through to the first decades of the 21st century, comics studies have attracted a large and perhaps disproportionate amount of attention from analytical semiotic approaches that foreground description and theory building: Their combination of pictures and text offering a challenge to any attempt towards a systematic theory of signs, and their experimental treatment of their semiotic inventory as well as the genres, imageries, and conventions of other media and art forms inviting descriptive scrutiny as well as playful engagement. Scott McCloud’s famous Understanding Comics (1993), both praised and criticized for its essentially semiotic approach, provided the foundation for the rise of sequential comics studies. Even the relatively more practice-based earlier work of Will Eisner (Comics & Sequential Art, 1985), on which McCloud built his own, focuses on a description of formal semiot-ic and semantic relationships. Thierry Groensteen’s Système de la bande dessinée(1999), on the other hand, elaborated a semiological approach to the comics images’ ’iconic solidarity.’ For semantics rather than syntax, Umberto Eco’s treat-ment of Superman (1962) had already extended a semiological perspective to examining plot and character. The influence of these authors might wrongly cloud the plethora of early interna-tional contributions to a semiotic study of comics, including Ullrich Krafft’s Comics lesen (1978), Ursula Oomen’s Wort – Bild – Nachricht (1975), Daniele Barbieri’s Il linguaggio del fumetto (1990), and Anne Magnussen’s Peircean approach in Comics & Culture (2000, with Hans-Christian Christiansen), among many others. Natsume Fusanosuke’s and Takekuma Kentarō’s collection Manga no yomikata (漫画の読み方1995, roughly: How to Read Manga) inspired a similar Japa-nese wave of formal-aesthetic and semiotic reflections of writing, images, and abstract line-art in the manga tradition, although this has hardly been noticed internationally due to a lack of translations. More recently, the multimodality approach of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) has given rise to new methods, such as Janina Wildfeuer’s empirical discourse analysis of comics (2018ff.), Paul Fisher Davis’ multimodal systemic-functional linguistics (2019), or large-scale formal corpus analytics (cf. Alexander Dunst, Quantitative Analysis of Comics, 2018).

Simultaneously, the combination of semiotics and cognitive linguistics has opened new venues, such as Neil Cohn’s description of distinct visual languages of comics (Cohn 2013). And yet, many of these approaches have been accused of treating their subjects with arbitrary abstraction and an overload of theory, neglecting political and material conditions of comics production, contents, distribution, and fandom, and reproducing distinctions of class, race, and gender by elevating the body depic-tions of a popular genre to the metaphysical dignity of seemingly ahistorical semiotic principles (cf. Horrocks 2001; Frahm 2006). In the face of this criticism, we contend that a semiotic approach to comics studies always has and can continue to engender a thorough and critical engagement with comic books’ social, political, and ideological dimensions.

The naturalization of 'improper,' comical, and deformed shapes in comics can be exposed at the very heart of its ideological tendencies and implicit traditions. Carefully examining the cartoonish depiction of bodies and stereotypes against the political history of caricature offers insight into the reproduction processes that structure these comical signs. The formation and transformation of plot and figural schemata in serial storytelling invites closer looks at the currents shaping and tearing at the conventions of both the popular genres and experimental or avant-garde forms of comics. The drawing pen’s freedom inevitably leads to a pictorial database in which all aspects of the depicted world are specifically appropriated and invite interpretation.

The reinvention of panels, pages, habits, and means of inferences in webcomics demand specific formal scrutiny alongside the social implications of their extended and postdigital usages. If we are to see transnational mainstream comics enter a ‘Blue Age,’ as Adrienne Resha has recently argued (2020), it is not least in the reordering of code, address, and com-municative situation that the expansion of topics and reader bases has to take place. More fundamentally, what has been neglected in much of existing comics scholar-ship is the social implications of semiotics that should be understood as the exami-nation of an inherently social process of “unlimited community” (Peirce), as the “science of the life of signs in society” (Saussure). A comprehensive understand-ing of sign usage rhetorics requires an adequate account of its ideological dimen-sion (Barthes). Against this background, we invite abstracts that focus on the socio-political semi-otics of comic books, manga, graphic storytelling, and political cartooning.

More analytically, abstracts can be about topics such as, but not limited to:

• various forms of cartoonish representation in historical context;

• new approaches to the pictorial ideology of comics conventions and traditions;

• studies into the semiotic techniques of fandom appropriation and remixes;

• engagements with the sequential and serial forms of comic books and their social and economic conditions;

• narratological criticisms and revisions of 'reality principles' and 'natural' forms of meaning-making;

• inter- and transcultural adaptations, negotiations, and appropriations as semi-otic transcriptions;

• research into specific comic genres and their conventionalized forms of expres-sions (e.g., superheroes, shōnen manga, funny strips, etc.) between conservatism and subversion, and many more.

Prospective authors are asked to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words by mail to the guest editors, Prof. Dr. Stephan Packard (packard@uni-koeln.de) and Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde (lukas.wilde@uni-tuebingen.de), including their affiliation and contact information. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication, given that all research articles will be subjected to the journal’s double peer-review process.

Deadline for Abstracts: April 30, 2021

Notice of Acceptance of the Abstract: May 15, 2021

Deadline for Submission of Full Papers: September 1, 2021

Peer Review Due: November 1, 2021

Final Revised Papers Due: December 1, 2021

Publication Date: Winter 2021-22

University of Sheffield

Contract Type: Open-ended

Working Pattern: Full-time

Faculty: Social Sciences

Department: Department of Journalism Studies

Salary: Professorial

Pay Scheme for appointment as Chair: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hr/thedeal/professorial/structure OR Grade 9: £52,560 to £ 59,135 per annum (pro-rata), with potential to progress to £68,529.

Closing Date: 29th March 2021

This is a unique and exciting opportunity to join the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield, a world top 100 University. We are seeking applications for a Head of Department (HoD) and/or Chair. The successful candidate may be either on a Teaching and Research career pathway (T&R), or a Teaching career pathway (T).

This is an exciting opportunity to provide academic leadership, including original studies in your subject area and to further influence the direction of your subject area on other fields of academic work. You will work in a diverse community of colleagues and students, with a shared commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. You will provide dynamic leadership, aligned with the strategic goals of the University and Faculty, in order to promote and enhance the Department’s strengths and specialisms in teaching and research in collaboration with the Department’s senior leadership teams.

The Department of Journalism Studies is one of the major journalism research and teaching establishments in Europe. Our staff are drawn from journalism practice and academia and are complemented by an excellent and dedicated professional services team who support education, research and the management and administration of the school. We have an excellent network of national and international contacts both in journalism and in the academic world and are home to the internationally recognised research and advocacy centre, Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM). We have a thriving international community of postgraduate research students, taught postgraduates and undergraduates. Our alumni are working in newsrooms in the UK and abroad as reporters, editors, producers, presenters while others have gone on into the wider media and communications sector and into academic careers.

For more information on the Department of Journalism Studies please visit our website: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/journalism

You will have a doctorate in the discipline of Journalism, or a related Social Sciences or a related Arts and Humanities discipline, or equivalent experience.

Ability to demonstrate strategic leadership and management of the Department, consistent with Department and Faculty vision and goals for research, knowledge exchange and impact, student recruitment and student experience, and quality assurance is essential.

We’re one of the best not-for-profit organisations to work for in the UK. The University’s Total Reward Package includes a competitive salary, a generous Pension Scheme and annual leave entitlement, as well as access to a range of learning and development courses to support your personal and professional development.

We build teams of people from different heritages and lifestyles from across the world, whose talent and contributions complement each other to greatest effect. We believe diversity in all its forms delivers greater impact through research, teaching and student experience.

To find out what makes the University of Sheffield a remarkable place to work, watch this short film: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LblLk18zmo, and follow @sheffielduni and @ShefUniJobs on Twitter for more information.

Apply now by clicking on the Apply button located near the top left of your screen here: https://jobs.shef.ac.uk/sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/hrrcf_a_posting_apply?PARAM=cG9zdF9pbnN0X2d1aWQ9NjAzN0RDRDBERjNBMUIzOUUxMDAwMDAwQUMxRTg4NzgmY2FuZF90eXBlPUVYVA%3D%3D&sap-client=400&sap-language=EN&sap-accessibility=X&sap-ep-themeroot=%2FSAP%2FPUBLIC%2FBC%2FUR%2Fuos%23