European Communication Research and Education Association
Journal of the New Techno Humanities (special issue)
Deadline: April 30, 2021
Short title: Interactivity and Virtual Reality
Guest Editors
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.
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 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:
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.
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:
Time frame:
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:
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:
*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
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