ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

October 30-31, 2025 

Stockholm, Sweden 

Deadline: May 1, 2025 

The conference aims to foster engaged debates about, and a comprehensive understanding of, challenges related to the quickly transforming algorithmic society, for media users across Europe. We welcome a wide range of approaches and look forward to discussions that will contribute to scientific analysis of our contemporary media world. 

Read more: https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/calendar/events/2025-10-30-ecrea-audience-and-reception-studies-2025 

Ipek A. Celik Rappas

Cornell University Press, 2025

Filming in European Cities explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. Ipek A. Celik Rappas accounts the rising demand for original and affordable locations for screen projects due to the growth of streaming platforms. As a result, screen professionals are repeatedly tasked with chores such as transforming a former factory in Istanbul to resemble a war zone in Aleppo, or finding a London street that evokes Barcelona. 

Celik Rappas highlights the pivotal role crew members play in transforming cities and locations into functional screen settings. Examining five European media capitals—Athens, Belfast, Berlin, Istanbul, and Paris—the book delves into the overlooked aspects of location-related screen labor and its ability to generate production value. Filming in European Cities demonstrates that in its perpetual quest for authentic filming locations, the screen industry extracts value from cities and neighborhoods, their marginalized residents, and screen labor, enriching itself through this triple exploitation. 

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501779985/filming-in-european-cities/#bookTabs=1 

Please use code 09BCARD for 30% discount 

Media Industries, Media Geography, European Studies

Edited By: Nelson Ribeiro, Barbie Zelizer

ISBN 9781032756011, March 2025, Routledge

A critical and timely collection that argues for the centrality of propaganda in discussions about the contemporary media landscape and its informational ecosystems.

This book explores how “propaganda,” a foundational concept within media and communication studies, has recently been replaced by alternative terms (disinformation, misinformation, and fake news) that fail to capture the continuities and disruptions of ongoing strategic attempts to (mis)guide public opinion. Edited by Nelson Ribeiro and Barbie Zelizer, the collection highlights how these concepts must be understood as part of a long legacy of propaganda and not just as new phenomena that have emerged in the context of the digital media environment. Chapters explore the strategies and effects of propaganda through a variety of globally diverse case studies, featuring both democracies and autocratic regimes, and highlight how only by understanding propagandistic forms and strategies can we fully begin to understand how public opinion is being molded today by those who resort to deception and falsehood to gain or keep hold of power.

An important resource for students and scholars of media and communication studies and those who are studying and/or researching media and propaganda, media and power, disinformation, fake news, and political communication.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Groningen University, Centre for Media and Journalism Studies

We’re happy to announce that we are taking applications for 3 fully funded positions at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands! 

The open PhD positions offer unique opportunities to work in an internationally recognized research centre and gain valuable research experience at a top-ranked European university. As a PhD candidate, you will develop your own research project in consultation with the supervisory team. You will conduct independent and original academic research and report results via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and ultimately a PhD dissertation. The PhD thesis is to be completed within four years. You are also requested to teach. 

The Groningen Centre for Media and Journalism Studies conducts interdisciplinary research in the field of media and journalism studies. It aims to do cutting-edge research that addresses issues that are essential to understand processes of communication in an increasingly mediatized society. 

The positions will all be associated with the CMJS, with an expected start date in September 2025. Deadline for applications is 30 April 2025. 

Open positions:

Gendered Visual Disinformation

This PhD project investigates disinformation at the intersections of gender, visual communication, and political discourse. It studies how women politicians’ intersectional identities are targeted in false and misleading (visual, GenAI) content (e.g., deepfakes), and explores how such discourse poses new challenges for women’s political representation in democratic discourse and civic life. 

For more information: e.r.amit-danhi@rug.nl or m.gehrke@rug.nl  

For the full ad and application link: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S000B8ZP 

Uncovering Women’s Cultural Production in India’s Marathi Film Industry Archives

This PhD project investigates the representation and preservation of feminist and women’s cultural heritage within India's Marathi film industry archives. We are particularly interested in projects invested in studying the Marathi film industry post-independence, including any period between 1947-2025. This project aims to (a) address the gaps in archival material related to women's contributions to Marathi cinema and (b) explore how these representations have evolved and what they reveal about broader industrial and socio-cultural changes over time.

For more information: a.v.m.copeland@rug.nl or s.n.mehta@rug.nl  

For the full ad and application link: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S000B8YP 

Media literacy as resilience for Ukrainian refugees

This PhD project will study how Ukrainian refugee families in The Netherlands use and co-develop media literacy skills to cope with wartime information challenges. The project will involve ethnographic (including traditional and digital ethnography) work with Ukrainian refugees in The Netherlands, following their daily media use practices to develop a theoretical framework and practical tools for building resilience against disinformation and mediated trauma during war

For more information: o.pasitselska@rug.nl or a.neag@rug.nl

For the full ad and application link: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S000B8JP

September 11-12, 2025

Vilnius University, Lithuania

Deadline: May 18, 2025

Five years after the pivotal conference “Belarus 2020 and Beyond: Path Dependency or Break with the Past?”, the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University is hosting a new international conference to examine Belarus’s evolving political landscape in the face of continued repression, war, and shifting geopolitical situation. The event will take place at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University on September 11-12, 2025.

The 2020 protests marked a defining moment in Belarusian history. However, in the years that followed, the Lukashenka regime intensified its authoritarian grip and aligned itself more closely with Russia’s war in Ukraine. This conference will critically assess the consequences of these developments, the transformation of the Belarusian state and society under deepening repression and co-option, and the changing geopolitical situation. The event will also address such topics as diaspora, exiled political leadership, and civil society.

Bringing together scholars, policymakers, and experts, this conference will explore the geopolitical struggle over Belarus, analysing Russia’s strategic influence and the EU’s policy responses in the situation of shifts in the US foreign policy. As Belarus remains at the intersection of regional instability and great-power politics, this conference aims to provide an in-depth analysis of its developments. Reflecting on five years after the mass protest in authoritarian Belarus and three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what lessons have been learned?

The invitation extends to the researchers interested in Belarus, its domestic and foreign policies and working in the academic fields of area studies, comparative politics, international relations, security studies, economics, history, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and related disciplines. Organisers suggest the following Conference topics, but proposals for papers on other topics related to the developments in Belarus and Belarusian diaspora after 2020 are also welcome:

Belarus in the current geopolitical situation: security and military threats

We invite submissions of papers on official Minsk’s foreign policy and Belarusians’ geopolitical orientations, as well as Russia and the EU’s responses to developments in Belarus amid shifts in US foreign policy. Contributions may explore hard and soft security issues, including military aspects of Russia-Belarus cooperation, security threats linked to energy and the Astravets nuclear power plant, and challenges related to disinformation and cyber security. Papers may also examine Belarus’s role in regional power struggles and its geopolitical future.

Belarusian diaspora and migration

We invite submissions of papers analysing issues related to Belarusian migration and diaspora, focusing on Belarusians in Lithuania in particular. Papers may examine the political, social, and economic dynamics of Belarusian migration, the role of the diaspora, exiled opposition and civil society in promoting democratic norms, and the relations between Belarusian migrants and host societies. Topics may include but are not limited to analysis of a post-2020 Belarusian diaspora in different countries, transnational networks, and the challenges Belarusians abroad face.

Ukraine, Belarus, and regional security: war’s impact and responses

We invite submissions examining Belarus’s role in Russia’s war against Ukraine, focusing on the Lukashenka regime’s support for the Kremlin and the Belarusian opposition and civil society’s solidarity with Ukraine. Papers may explore the geopolitical and security implications of Belarus’ alignment with Russia and its impact on regional stability. Additionally, we welcome analyses of how the war has shaped attitudes toward Belarusians, both in Ukraine and among other democratic nations, and growing security concerns linked to Belarus.

The Belarusian economy in a shifting geopolitical situation

We invite submissions of papers examining the economic situation in Belarus. Contributions may explore the impact of EU sanctions on Belarus in the situation of possible changes in the US sanctions policy. We welcome analyses of Russia-Belarus economic cooperation, including Moscow’s increasing economic leverage over the country and the risks of deeper economic absorption. Papers may address, but are not limited to, topics such as the structural challenges of the Belarusian economy, trade and energy dependencies, and the prospects for economic diversification.

Media and civil society in Belarus: resistance and cooption. Human rights, gender and inclusion

We invite papers examining the role of media and civil society in Belarus, focusing on resistance and, vice versa, state-led co-optation. We are interested in research on human rights, gender equality, and inclusion, which are both instrumentalised and actively suppressed by the authoritarian regime. Papers may explore media censorship, propaganda, disinformation, grassroots activism, civil society, and human rights.

Public administration, government, and governance in Belarus

We invite submissions of papers exploring public administration issues in Belarus and how democratic concepts and norms—such as good governance and transparency—are promoted, adapted, and manipulated in the authoritarian state. Papers might include but are not limited to analysis of civil service, public finances and budgeting, international development, and infrastructure programmes and projects in Belarus focused on governance issues.

The deadline for the paper submission is the 18th of May, 2025. Proposals have to be submitted in English by filling out the this form.

All proposals will undergo a selection procedure by the Conference Programme Committee. The Committee will send e-mail notifications of acceptance by the 2nd of June, 2025.

There is no Conference fee. The organisers will issue visa invitations if needed.

In-person conference participation is strongly encouraged. Remote online participation is allowed only under extraordinary circumstances. In such cases please contact belarusconference@tspmi.vu.lt.

November 3-7, 2025

Charles University, Czech Republic

Deadline: July 1, 2025

https://culcorc.fsv.cuni.cz/phd-course-on-discourse-theory/

Course coordinator and leader: Nico Carpentier

Course credits: 5 credits

Course location: Centrum Voršilská, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Contact person: Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen

COURSE BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

The course aims to discuss two methods in the field of discourse studies: Discourse-theoretical analysis (DTA) and Discursive-material analysis (DMA). Both are grounded in so-called high theory, with discourse theory as its main starting point, but with elements of actor-network theory and new materialism. This course will start with an introduction to these theoretical models but will then move on to their analytical deployment in communication and media studies research. 

Special attention will be spent on the creation of a theory-grounded analytical model to guide the research. Apart from attending lectures, participants will be expected to participate in both theoretical and research-driven workshops.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On completion of this course, successful students will be able to:

• have a deeper understanding of the field of discourse studies and, in particular, of its discourse-theoretical component; 
  
• have a deeper understanding of the theoretical relationship between the discursive and the material;
  
• know how to translate discourse-theoretical models into analytical practice through the use of the notion of the sensitising concept (applied to discourse theory and to discourse-theoretical rereading of other theories);
  
• set up an analytical model for a discourse-theoretical analysis and a discursive-material analysis.
  

TEACHING AND EVALUATION

The one-week course will be organised in 10 teaching slots, combining lectures and workshops. These workshops are partially theoretical (presenting an article or chapter) and partially research-driven (presenting an analytical model). 

A certificate (with a grade “Pass”) is given after 1) attendance of a minimum of 8 meetings, 2) a working group theoretical presentation, and 3) an individual case study presentation.

AVAILABLE PARTICIPANT SLOTS AND COSTS

A total number of 20 participant slots are available. The participation fee is 50 euros and only covers course attendance. Participants are required to pay themselves for their travel and accommodation costs, and all other expenses.

REGISTRATION

To register for this course, the following three documents have to be submitted:

• A motivation letter
  
• A brief description/abstract of the ongoing (PhD) research (including the current stage of the research) 
  
• A CV (including information about your university affiliation and your contact information)
  

Please use this form to submit your application. If you need assistance regarding registration, please get in touch with Mazlum Kemal Dağdelen, mazlum.dagdelen@fsv.cuni.cz

The deadline for the application submission is 01 July 2025; the applicants will be notified about the results by 31 July 2025. The accepted applicants will receive further details for registration and payment in due time.

COURSE READINGS

Main reading:

Carpentier, Nico (2017) The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation. New York: Peter Lang.

Secondary readings:

Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of 'sex'. New York, London: Routledge.

Dolphijn, Rick, van der Tuin, Iris (2012) New materialism: Interviews and cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open humanities press.

Glynos, Jason, Howarth, David (2007) Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. London and New York: Routledge.

Howarth, David (2000) Discourse. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Howarth, David (2012) "Hegemony, political subjectivity, and radical democracy", in Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (eds.) Laclau: A critical reader. London: Routledge, pp. 256-276.

Howarth, David, Stavrakakis, Yannis (2000) “Introducing discourse theory and political analysis”, in David Howarth, Aletta J. Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis (eds.) Discourse theory and political analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 1-23.

Laclau, Ernesto, Chantal Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the social. An introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mouffe, Chantal (2005) On the Political. London: Routledge.

Philips, Louise, Jørgensen, Marianne W. (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988) "Can the subaltern speak?", in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271-313.

Torfing, Jacob (1999) New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, and Zizek. Oxford: Blackwell

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TMG—Journal for Media History

Deadline (Abstracts): May 31, 2025

How can “transmedia” history be put into practice from empirical perspectives? Following on the successful conference “Transmedia History” organised by the Impresso project and the University of Lausanne’s History Department, TMG—Journal for Media History invites scholars to contribute to a special issue on Transmedia Histories.

Media history is composed of a myriad of parallel histories, which makes comparisons difficult. Research in the field has indeed long focused on single types of – often legacy – media or single institutions within their national contexts. In the mid-2000s, however, the transnational turn allowed for new trends in research objectives to emerge. Research scopes overcame previous temporal and spatial frameworks and thereby became less driven by institutional perspectives than by contents and their circulation. Moreover, this new focus on transnational perspectives enlarged its scope to encompass a wider range of topics within media history, such as technologies and communication. The development of the history of communication, cultural industries, techniques, and international relations all contributed to a form of decompartmentalisation that paved the way for a more comprehensive history of media systems. These new approaches were made possible most notably by mass digitisation of media sources and the improvement of their online accessibility to researchers. International research networks, such as the Transnational Radio Encounters, have gathered around such transnational ambitions. The transnational turn was a major breakthrough that resulted in important publications (e.g. Mollier and Lyon 2012; Fickers and Johnson 2012; Badenoch, Fickers and Henrich-Franke 2013).

It remains, however, that research in media history continues to face borders it has not managed to cross yet: beyond geographical borders, those between media institutions and between different types of media (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 134). This challenge gave the impulse for the establishment of the Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS) network in 2013. In a milestone article published in 2017, Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert defined the concept of entangled media histories “as a means of better understanding the dynamic interconnectedness of media across semiotic, technological, institutional and political boundaries in history” (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 130). Rather than accumulating histories of different media, they advocated for a focus on the elements that bridge them. However, a lack of empirical studies persists, primarily due to the enduring division of knowledge and the practical challenges associated with navigating separate, multilingual archives. These factors discourage research that moves beyond compartmentalised, sector-specific approaches. Exceptions notwithstanding, monomedia perspectives still dominate the field of media history and too little research is being carried out on exchanges and cooperation between media.

This special issue aims to extend those efforts and reflections by inviting papers that prioritise a transmedia approach. We seek to present research that explores media history through the simultaneous analysis of different media, thereby emphasising the significance of the media ecosystems in which they co-evolve. ‘Media’ is understood in a broad sense here. It includes traditional media (books, posters, press, cinema, radio and television), but also more recent historical examples such as video games and the Internet (e.g. streaming services, podcasts, online news). The targeted timeframe is extensive, though – per the scope of TMG—Journal for Media History – a historical perspective has to be central. The special issue ultimately seeks to contribute to a decompartmentalised and interconnected history of media. The featured articles will not only place media history within a broader social, political, and cultural context but also foster a dialogue among them.

We invite articles that could fall within three promising research axes:

1. Transmedia circulations, adaptations and reciprocal influences 

The aim of this strand of research is to identify and analyse various factors that facilitate the circulation of content and formats across media and/or that foster interactions between media:

• specific actors or media professions such as news and advertising agencies, foreign correspondents, exiles and diaspora representatives active in various media, translators, arrangers, cross-border media;
• spaces of circulation and exchanges that transcend traditional political and/or linguistic boundaries, such as fictional serial productions, co-productions, joint-broadcasts, technical cooperation associations in the telecommunications field, foreign-language press;
• socio-economic factors like concentration and financial globalisation, liberalisation and deregulation, convergence and new consumption habits.
• the rhythms and temporality of information, the modes of circulation (e.g. scissors-and-paste journalism), adaptations and reconfigurations (e.g. comics to radio)
• the transmission of practices and the mobility of people or resistance to these phenomena, i.e. factors that hinder or trouble transmedia circulation (seasonal and geopolitical conditions, legal matters, censorship, etc.)

2. Intersections, reconfigurations and new media genealogies

The goal of this strand is to refine our understanding of how media define themselves in relation to each other and how – from a diachronic-historical perspective – once-new media were perceived, integrated, and critiqued. We aim to identify productions and documentary resources that reflect such intertwined relations, such as anticipation tales, criticism in the press, advertising productions, etc. Potential questions to be addressed are:

• How did the advent of new media affect existing media? How were they perceived and narrated by other media?
• How do media publicize, promote, and criticize each other’s content? What are motives and strategies?
• What “media imaginaries” emerged and how did these perhaps shape new periodisations of media history?

• 3. New approaches, resources and methods 

  In what ways can the mass digitisation of archival collections and the advancement of computational analysis tools foster transmedia research? Computational research methods allow processing large volumes of data and in recent times also increasingly across languages and modalities (e.g. image, text, sound). Until recently, most projects that embraced data-driven approaches focused on a single media, mostly the press. Research now starts to explore how to set up the processing—and how to conduct the analysis—of transmedia data; projects in the likes of TwiXL: An infrastructure for cross-media research on public debates, Clariah Media Suite and Impresso - Media Monitoring of the Past II all welcomed this goal. The third axis of this special issue thus, a.o., seeks to

   

• identify new and/or digital approaches that facilitate and bolster comparisons. 
• discuss methods which enable analyses of the circulation of contents and formats at scale, in order to enhance our understanding of information fluxes. We therefore look to understand the effects that such tools have on studying transmedia histories, based on concrete historical case studies.

We also welcome contributions utilizing a transmedia perspective which are beyond these thematic lines but are still complementary to the overall special issue.

In short, this special issue seeks to contribute to the clarification and development of a transmedia approach in the historical sciences. It aims to address transmedia from a historical, long-term perspective based on concrete historical case studies and original research and, more broadly, to promote a decompartmentalised, entangled history of media. 

Submission procedure and important dates

Abstract submissions are due on May 31, 2025. They have to be in English and have present the main research question(s), academic literature, data, method and concrete historical case study the authors plan to use. Abstracts should not exceed 1500 words. Please submit your abstract and a short bio to all four guest editors at transmediahistories@gmail.com.  

Since this special issue follows from the Transmedia conference referred to above, it is addressed primarily – but not exclusively! – to those who presented there. Those scholars, who already submitted an abstract before, can either send in the same abstract, or send in an updated version. Either way, make sure it complies with the above instructions.

In June, we will inform the authors whether they are invited to submit a full article.

Selected authors shall be invited to submit an article of 6000-8000 words (including notes). Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer review process. Deadline for the manuscript is November 1, 2025. Revised drafts are expected by March 1, 2026 (and, if necessary, a second round of rewriting and reviews in the ensuing months). Copy-editing will take place in the Fall. The special issue will be published in January 2027. Publications are open access; no payment from the authors will be required.

If you have questions, please contact the editors of the special issue, Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz, François Vallotton, Martin Grandjean and Jesper Verhoef at transmediahistories@gmail.com. 

Convergence (special issue)

Deadline: April 4, 2025

Edited by: Hanne Bruun, Catherine Johnson, Tim Raats and Vilde Schanke Sundet

Over the past decade, the growth of global platforms has led to the rise of ‘platformisation’: the ‘penetration of infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of digital platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life, as well as the reorganisation of cultural practices and imaginations around these platforms’ (Poell et al. 2019:1). This has specific implications for public service media (PSM), which now operate within a platform ecosystem in which a small number of largely US platforms determine the rules of the game (van Dijck et al., 2018). Platformisation has created the conditions for the emergence of global streaming services, such as Netflix, Disney+, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video, with which PSM compete for audiences, revenue and talent. These new forms of on-demand, data-driven video streaming services challenge the dominance that many PSM organisations once had as the principal providers of domestic audiovisual culture. For PSM organisations this is a double bind: as they have lost audiences to streaming services and platforms, they have also had to develop new on-demand services and online content that can only be delivered through the infrastructures owned by global platforms. Yet the way in which these challenges play out for PSM are context specific. Despite large-scale studies focused on comparing systemic political and economic factors, there are relatively few comparative studies of the organisational practices and cultural outputs of PSM organisations. This is a significant omission because a growing body of work argues that it is precisely in the areas of organisational practice and cultural output that the impact of platformisation on PSM is most keenly felt (see, for example, D’Arma et al., 2021; Iordache et al., 2024; Lassen, 2025).

In response, this special issue asks: How might a comparative approach help us to better understand PSM in the age of platforms? Comparison here could be across different ‘levels of influence’ (Havens and Lotz, 2016) within the media industries, such as comparing policy/regulation and organisational practices, or comparing organisational practices with cultural outputs. In this sense, we particularly welcome articles that take a mixed method approach, combining (for example) document analysis, interviews and/or analysis of texts. Or it could be comparison across different platforms and/or contexts. We particularly welcome studies that compare across more than two contexts and studies that look beyond the Western contexts that have dominated studies of PSM.

Indicative topics include, but are not restricted to:

• Comparative analysis of the changing organisational cultures of PSM
  
• Comparative analysis of PSM commissioning, publishing and/or distribution practices
  
• Comparative analysis of PSM programming/content
  
• Novel methodological approaches to studying PSM in a comparative context
  
• Comparative analysis of the values underpinning PSM organisations
  
• Mixed method approaches that compare across policy, production and/or texts
  
• Theoretical approaches to comparative media systems analysis
  

Please submit a 500-750 word abstract that includes a short statement outlining how your proposed article aligns with the special issue’s aims to PSMspecialissue@leeds.ac.uk email by 4 April 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be circulated by 5 May 2025, with full length articles to be submitted by 22 September 2025.

Special Issue in Discourse & Society

Deadline: June 2, 2025

https://journals.sagepub.com/home/das

• Majid KhosraviNik, Newcastle University
  
• Hossein Kermani, Vienna University
  

Since its introduction, GenAI has revolutionised many aspects of the sociopolitical sphere in recent years. Technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) and, in particular, its baby poster, ChatGPT, have already been the topic of many studies in different fields, from political science to psychology and communication (Bail, 2023; Gilardi et al., 2023). Despite, the obvious relevance of GenAI to working assumptions of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), our knowledge of the nature, quality, and multifaceted implications of this computational breakthrough in discourse production, distribution, and consumption across various contexts is minimal. AI could be viewed as the new phase in forcing reconsideration, and re-examination of the dynamic of discourse in society, following on and going beyond the postulated phase of Social Media Communication (SMC) paradigm (KhosraviNik 2017, 2022, 2023). Both the input and output of many GenAI technologies are largely textual (in broad sense of linguistic, multimodal and multimedia) and, as a result, yield discursive dimensions. For instance, the questions of which power structures these creative meaning making tools enforce or mitigate are relatively understudied (Luitse & Denkena, 2021). At a broad level, we could scrutinise which discourses are substantiated by e.g. LLMs and how these models interact with the existing discourses-in-place. There are also questions about the working definitions of discourse materiality as ‘naturally occurring language’ and its relation to the notion of discursive power.

CDS now carries established credentials in tackling social ills and inequalities through the prism of discourse conceptualisation. This includes socio-politics of group identity and Self-Other constructions. The developments in digital media GenAI are now part of these research foci. Some critical explorations, and problematisation around AI and its social impacts on racism and gender bias are already emerging (see e.g. Adib-Moghaddam 2023, Noble 2018, Siapera 2022). This Special Issue, however, aims to bring in a specifically CDS perspective to the field. It pertains to how a Critical Discourse Studies frame can be envisaged theoretically and methodologically for the new socio-technological dynamic as well as the way AI may interact with resident discourses of racism, gender inequality, ethnic discrimination, and political Self- Othering.

In addition to various levels and types of conceptual considerations, GenAI such as LLMs could bear potential as analytical tools of paramount interest to CDS and its methodological processes -including but also beyond quantification. At its textual level, in one way or another, CDS is tasked with ‘text’ analysis, a job that is now arguably done by LLMs. Prior to LLMs as zero-shot models, other supervised and unsupervised machine algorithms like topic modeling or BERT have been adapted to automatedly analyse large text data (Barberá et al., 2021; Kermani, 2023). While the debate about the potential and weaknesses of such models is ongoing, the arrival of LLMs changes the game entirely. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of knowledge of the capabilities and shortcomings of LLMs in discourse analysis, which could be tackled. Whilst there is growing literature examining LLMs’ power in annotating texts, these studies ordinarily lack the conceptual insights from discourse studies and often end up doing pre-defined annotation tagging hence missing subtle and interpretive dynamics of meaning-making (De Grove et al., 2020; Gilardi et al., 2023). As such, there is a missed body of scholarship in dealing with discursive constructs such as metaphors or argumentation among others. 

As the rapid development of models adds to the emerging complexity at both theory and methodology ends, it remains a fact that CDS cannot continue the business as usual similar to changes to other frames of inquiry in social sciences. To envisage a specific CDS take on this nascent field, there is a need for interdisciplinary deliberation to formulate questions, identify the challenges and elaborate on opportunities while acknowledging the ambitiousness of the task at hand. In addition to emerging few studies on LLMs and  CDS  (e.g. Gillings et al., 2024), there is certainly room to identify perspectives, problematise working notions, and apply methodologies at the intersection of GenAI and CDS. This is, ultimately, about the CDS’ claim to provide critical explanations for the socio-political characteristics of societies and the way power (relations) is established through discourses. We go where discourse goes, and (important degrees of) discourse is now entangled with these technological developments.

Such an endeavor is interdisciplinary by definition and invites empirical studies, theoretical engagements, critical reflections, and methodological considerations from scholars in different fields, such as computer science, discourse studies (in its broad sense), social sciences, political communication, media and technology, digital geography, and Informatics to discuss timely topics including but not limited to:

-   Problematisation of mediation processes and its impact on discourse: how AI can be viewed in connection with past, present and future of CD

-   Theoretical mapping for a viable, principled CDS analysis in the new contexts

-   The way GenAI or in particular LLMs reinforce or undermine power relations and discourses in communication, media, and public opinion.

-   The way GenAI or in particular LLMs may contribute to the evolution or transformation of discourses of Hate Speech, Racism, Gender bias, Islamophobia, etc., across different domains (e.g., media, politics, education).

-   Innovative methodologies for analysing the interplay between GenAI of various content types (language, videos, and other multimodal trends) and discourse within CDS frameworks.

-   The capabilities and shortcomings of LLMs as a viable tool in CDS and their mutual interactions

-   The methodological innovations to conduct multimodal discourse analysis using GenAI technologies

Submission Process:

Authors are invited to submit abstracts (approximately 500 words, all-inclusive) outlining the manuscript's approach, objectives, and relevance. The abstract should demonstrate how the paper contributes to the synergic understanding of the field.

Please submit the abstract and author information to guest editors (Majid.Khosravinik@newcastle.ac.uk and hossein.kermani@univie.ac.at) by June 2, 2025. Please use ‘Submission for the SI on CDS and GenAI’ as the email subject. Abstracts should be formatted as: title, author names, affiliations and contact information, main text, keywords (up to five), along with short bio/s of the author/s. Notifications regarding invitations for full papers will be sent by July 1, 2025. Full papers should be submitted by December 15, 2025.

Refs

Adib-Moghaddam, A. (2023) Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity. Bloomsbury.

Noble, N., S. (2018) Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York University Press

Bail, C. A. (2023). Can Generative AI Improve Social Science? [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/rwtzs

Barberá, P., Boydstun, A. E., Linn, S., McMahon, R., & Nagler, J. (2021). Automated Text Classification of News Articles: A Practical Guide. Political Analysis, 29(1), 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.8

De Grove, F., Boghe, K., & De Marez, L. (2020). (What) Can Journalism Studies Learn from Supervised Machine Learning? Journalism Studies, 21(7), 912–927. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1743737

Gilardi, F., Alizadeh, M., & Kubli, M. (2023, March 27). ChatGPT Outperforms Crowd-Workers for Text-Annotation Tasks. arXiv.Org. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305016120

Gillings, M., Kohn, T., & Mautner, G. (2024). The rise of large language models: Challenges for Critical Discourse Studies. Critical Discourse Studies, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2024.2373733

Kermani, H. (2023). Framing the Pandemic on Persian Twitter: Gauging Networked Frames by Topic Modeling. American Behavioral Scientist, 00027642231207078. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231207078

KhosraviNik, M. (2017) Social Media Critical Discourse Studies. J. Flowerdew, J. Richardson (Eds.), Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis, Routledge, London (2017), pp. 582-596

KhosraviNik, M. (2022) Digital meaning-making across content and practice in social media critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse Studies, Vol 19(2): 119-123. Special Issue on SM-CDS.

KhosraviNik, M. (2023) Connecting the digital with the social in digital discourse. In M. KhosraviNik (ed) Social Media and Society: Integrating the digital with the social in digital discourse. John Benjamins. PP 1-15.

Luitse, D., & Denkena, W. (2021). The great Transformer: Examining the role of large language models in the political economy of AI. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211047734. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211047734

Siapera, E. (2022) AI content moderation, racism and (de) coloniality. International journal of Bullying Prevention. 4(1) 55-65.

Deadline: April 30, 2025

Dear all,

Do you know an outstanding journal paper related to recommender systems authored by a researcher who self-identfies as a woman? Or have you perhaps published one yourself?

The Women in RecSys Journal Paper of the Year Award is now accepting nominations—but the deadline is fast approaching!

Two award categories:

• Junior: For PhD students or researchers who obtained their PhD within the last five years
  
• Senior: For researchers with more than five years of experience

 Why Nominate?

Recognizes innovative, high-quality research in recommender systems

Awarded papers receive free registration for ACM RecSys 2025 and a chance to present at the conference

A great way to support and highlight the contributions of women researchers in RecSys (DEI is not dead!)

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2025, midnight, AoE

Nomination Details & Submission: https://recsys.acm.org/recsys25/women-in-recsys/#content-tab-1-1-tab

Self-nominations are welcome! If you have an eligible paper, don’t hesitate to submit. And if you know a deserving colleague or collaborator, encourage them to apply or nominate them yourself!

Looking forward to celebrating the achievements of women in RecSys at ACM RecSys 2025.

 

Best regards,

Lien

On behalf of the Women in RecSys Committee