ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS)

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

The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany, supports innovative projects that deal with the social opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation. Experts from academia and practice can apply for fellowships and working groups at CAIS. The funding program is open to experts of all career stages, to all disciplines and areas of investigation, as well as to pure research and to projects that are more applied in orientation.

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

The funding program is continuous. Apply by 12 April 2021 for fellowships starting from October 2021.

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.