ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

May 15-17, 2024

Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication, Universitat de València. València, Spain

Deadline: February 29, 2024

We invite researchers, scholars, and students to submit their papers to the sixth edition of the International Conference “Media and Governance in Latin America”. This year, the conference will be jointly organized with the R&D project “News puzzlement: Precarised quality, over(dis)information and polarization”.

This academic conference provides a platform for in-depth discussions and analysis of the challenges faced by quality journalism in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. The thematic sessions explore various aspects of media, governance, and journalism, shedding light on the impact of precariousness, the informational disorder, and technological advancements on the profession. By bringing together renowned researchers and experts, the congress aims to foster dialogue and generate insights that can contribute to the advancement of quality journalism in the regions.

We welcome submissions that cover a wide range of topics related to the following thematic areas:

1) Media Systems, Pluralism, and Good Governance: This session seeks to examine how the traditional and new media interact with political and economic elites, and how such relationship influences censorship, clientelism, populism, and media ownership concentration. By addressing these issues, we seek to understand the importance of media systems that promote pluralism and good governance for a healthy democratic society.

2) Media and Political Representation: This session focuses on journalistic practices and organizational dynamics that promote dialogue, tolerance, and diversity. It explores how the media address issues related to unequal power relations, violence, inequality, corruption, and the representation of protest and social unrest. Additionally, it examines the extent to which digital communication platforms incorporate previously marginalized topics and actors, such as racial, gender, and class inequality, as well as indigenous communities, women, and LGBT+ minorities.

3) Precariousness and Safety Risks: This session analyses the effects of various crises on the journalism profession. It explores the impact of precariousness, work overload, violence, pressure, threats, and harassment on the health and practices of journalists. The session aims to promote reflection on the threats to professional autonomy and well-being posed by job insecurity and external pressures.

4) Quality Journalism: This session focuses on media companies’ funding and business models and their impact on journalists’ working conditions and the quality of information. The session welcomes theoretical research on the definition and evaluation of journalistic quality, as well as empirical studies on social responsibility, deontology, ethical codes, and the hybridization of informative and promotional content.

5) Communication for Social Change: This session analyses the impact of various agents of change, such as civil society groups and the independent media, on the public visibility of diverse voices and controversial issues. It explores the impact of digital technologies on citizens’ and civic organizations’ reappropriation of the digital media for advancing their voices.

Keynote Speakers:

• Silvio Waisbord, Director and Professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University (USA) and President of the International Communication Association (ICA).
  
• Mireya Márquez-Ramírez, Professor at Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico.
  

Submission Guidelines:

Authors are invited to submit original and unpublished work. Abstracts should be around 500 words and include: title, name and affiliation, contact information, keywords, brief theoretical framework and main (provisional) findings. All submissions will undergo a peer-review process, carried out by an international panel of experts.

The official languages of the conference are English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and we welcome both abstracts and presentations in these three languages.

The conference will take place mainly face-to-face, but we will reserve some panels for online presentations from scholars based at the global south. 

Important Dates:

- Abstract Submission Deadline: 29 February 2024

- Notification to Authors: 10 March 2024

- Conference Dates: 15, 16 and 17 May 2024

Publication Opportunities:

High-quality papers will be selected for publication in an international peer-review journal or edited volume, subject to a separate review process.

Registration Fees:

(The fee includes coffee breaks and lunch)

General Fee: 100 €

Online presenters: 60 €

Students: 40 €  

If you have any queries, please don't hesitate to contact us at mediagovernancevalencia@gmail.com

We look forward to your submissions and seeing you in Valencia!

Sincerely, the organising team:

Dolors Palau (Universitat de València, Spain)

Sara García Santamaría (University of Bristol, UK)

Guillermo López (Universitat de València, Spain)

Ximena Orchard (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile)

Jairo Lugo-Ocando (University of Sharjah, U.A.E)

Paola Sartoretto (Jönköping University, Sweden)

February 15, 2024

Brussels (Belgium)

It is invitation to the conference ‘Monitoring Mediascapes for Democratic Communication in Europe’, in Brussels on 15 February 2024. 

With the conference we are marking the end of the 3-year project Mediadelcom - the most comprehensive study of its kind done in Europe identifying the risks and opportunities for deliberative communication in today's polarized Europe. With more than 60 major elections scheduled worldwide in 2024, including within the European Union, and arguments that democracy itself could be at stake, now is an apt moment to focus on deliberative communication – a prerequisite of deliberative democracy.

The event includes:

• A keynote speech by Marius Dragomir, Director, Media and Journalism Research Center,  The future of European media: the need for change. Media capture and disinformation in Eastern Europe in a major election year
  
• And panel discussions: 
  
• • Media for Democracy: Crossing the East/West Divide
  • Freedom of expression and freedom of information – who are the agents under pressure and which agents have too much power?

You can see more details about the event in the attached documents. If you want to attend in person, please register via this link. If you want to watch online no registration is needed. You can watch online here.

Deadline: March 31, 2024

In October 2024, the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication celebrates its 50th anniversary.

We will celebrate the half-century anniversary of the establishment of the Faculty as a department of Sofia University with a jubilee collection "Media and Communication. 50 Years of the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication".

The thematic scope of the collection is broad and includes: research on topics related to the theory, history and transformations of communication, journalism and media; the theory, history and strategies of public communication; the theory, history and development of book publishing and editorial and publishing activities; the theory and research of content management and communication management or comparative theoretical developments in the field of media and communication.

We most politely invite you as our colleagues and partners to participate with a scientific text in the jubilee collection and hope that you will be interested in getting your work published by FJMC.

We are looking forward to receiving your papers by 31 March 2024 at the following email address: nauchen@fjmc.uni-sofia.bg.

Christine E. Evans, Lars Lundgren

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546904/no-heavenly-bodies/

The compelling and little-known history of satellite communications that reveals the Soviet and Eastern European roles in the development of its infrastructure.

Taking its title from Hannah Arendt's description of artificial earth satellites, No Heavenly Bodies explores the history of the first two decades of satellite communications. Christine E. Evans and Lars Lundgren trace how satellite communications infrastructure was imagined, negotiated, and built across the Earth's surface, including across the Iron Curtain. While the United States' and European countries' roles in satellite communications are well documented, Evans and Lundgren delve deep into the role the Soviet Union and other socialist countries played in shaping the infrastructure of satellite communications technology in its first two decades.

Departing from the Cold War binary and the competitive framework that has animated much of space historiography and telecommunications history, No Heavenly Bodies focuses instead on interaction, cooperation, and mutual influence across the Cold War divide. 

Evans and Lundgren describe the expansion of satellite communications networks as a process of negotiation and interaction, rather than a simple contest of technological and geopolitical prowess. In so doing, they make visible the significant overlaps, shared imaginaries, points of contact and exchange, and negotiated settlements that determined the shape of satellite communications in its formative decades.

About the authors

Christine Evans is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her first book, Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television, received an Honorable Mention for the 2017 USC Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies.

Lars Lundgren is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University. His work has been published in Media History, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and the International Journal of Communication.

May 30 - June 1, 2024

University of Catania, Italy

Deadline: March 11, 2024

https://www.compol.it/eventi/convegno/convegno-2024/

One of the salient aspects in the recent dynamic transformation of public opinion is the process of integration between national and European communication spaces, which together increasingly converge on a scenario of complex global interdependencies. While this integrative trend was taking shape, itself a topic of debate and controversy, the European arena had to deal with new challenges, that mainly derived from a succession of global crises (economic, migratory, pandemic, war). These challenges, as well as generating geopolitical and economic instability, have highlighted a further and deeper impact of the transformations of the communication context, such as digitalisation, platformisation, polarization and the set of phenomena that cluster around the imprecise and debated concept of post-truth.

The crisis phases have highlighted the progressive shift towards the European sphere of many issues that previously featured in national contexts of debate and policy-making. This has made this process of Europeanization an object of persistent attention in flows of political communication, and given integration itself a structure of polarized politicization.

Due to the growing importance of the Union and the greater prominence of European-level issues in national political-media systems, it can be hypothesized that the phase of European elections as "second-order" elections in member countries has ended. One significant aspect is that they have become an object of interest for some foreign governments who, through the propagation of fake news and propaganda, attempt to influence the choices of citizens and governments to the point of undermining the integrity of the elections. At the level of individual states, we note the role of populist parties and their leaders, who are accused of spreading content of dubious veracity to influence electoral contests and referendums. These processes are considered a threat to the values of civil coexistence and public debate, and trust in democratic institutions.

The increased salience of the issues now found in European public space poses challenges to the agency of organized civil society. The structure of national public spheres has in fact changed, giving greater space to new actors with the ability to set agendas and influence public debate. In this context, a different methodological approach has made it possible to overcome the top-down/bottom-up dichotomy of participatory processes in the process of integrating the European communication space. It thus seems appropriate to pay attention to the communicative activities of social movements that operate at a trans-national level (e.g. environmentalists), and to those of interest groups that expand their activities towards the European dimension (trade unions, businesses and consumers). Worthy of interest are the movements of protest, sometimes labeled as populist, which mobilize simultaneously in various European countries, displaying networked transnational connections.

These processes are discursively articulated within a media ecosystem that is significantly influenced and distorted by phenomena of intolerance and incivility present in digital environments; communicative exchanges become radicalized and the very frames of the issues are influenced, causing the polarization of the arenas of debate.

The world of journalism has followed the process of Europeanization of national spheres and their politicization, often from a critical perspective, underlining the inadequacy of the Union's institutional responses and calling for their reform. This is accompanied by a crisis of journalism, characterized by loss of legitimacy of traditional media, which faces the affirmation of a framework of extreme fragmentation in information practices. It is necessary to deepen our understanding of the transformation of the news generation process, the impact on the role of journalists and editorial staff as gatekeepers and guarantors, and what adaptation and reaction strategies are in place, in the face of the complexity of the debate on information in European space.

On the basis of this framework, the call for papers solicits contributions that investigate the transformation of the national and European public sphere with particular attention to the challenges posed by crises, disinformation and manipulation phenomena. The areas investigated are those of electoral campaigns, strategies implemented by political actors and civil society and by traditional media, the impact of platformization processes on the fields of political communication, journalism and all other forms of communication.

Theoretical and empirical analysis papers are welcome, with research designs that include qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods methodologies.

Some possible relevant topics, though this is not intended to be an exhaustive list:changes that have occurred and new communication scenarios in the increasingly close and complex relationship between political communication and the public sphere;

• the restructuring of ideologies and propaganda practices;
  
• the redefinition of the public agenda in European space;
  
• the transformations and controversial nature of the international-European public debate with reference to processes of ideological and affective polarization, the use of incivility, and forms of discrimination online and offline, also with attention to gender issues;
  
• policies regarding political communication, information and the integrity of elections, formulated by European and national institutions (transparency of platforms and privacy; regulation of electoral campaigns, etc.);
  
• the emergence of new repertoires of extra-institutional political communication linked to protests, social movements and civil society actors, especially of a transnational nature;
  
• transformations and crises of contemporary journalism, with particular attention to the growth of new professional models and the role of the digital platform;
  
• trends that have emerged in the communication styles of leadership and parties in a hybrid and platformized communication ecosystem;
  
• from a discourse analytical perspective, linguistic and/or multimodal aspects of post truth communication;
  
• the technological infrastructure of political participation with particular regard to young generations (digital parties, networks, influencers, memes, UGC);
  
• methodological proposals and theoretical contributions to address the transformations of the public sphere, disinformation and new forms of conflict and political competition;
  
• (computational) propaganda techniques and mis/dis-information strategies in conflict scenarios.
  

Paper proposals must include: name, affiliation and email address, a title and an extended abstract with bibliographic references (600/800 words excluding bibliography), 3 key words. The proposers must also explicitly indicate whether they request the paper to be taken into consideration, after the conference, for publication in the magazine "Comunicazione Politica". In the event of an equal evaluation by referees, the authors who have indicated this option will have priority in selection for the conference.

Useful information on how to write an abstract for AssoComPol conferences is available in the “Abstract Instructions” section (https://www.compol.it/eventi/convegno/convegno-2024/ under construction)

Deadline for sending proposals: 11 March 2024

Acceptance notification: 25 March 2024

Complete papers must be sent by May 22, 2024 to the conference paper room (accessible after login)

Scientific committee: Cristopher Cepernich, Marco Mazzoni, Rolando Marini, Antonio Martella, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Melissa Mongiardo, Mariaeugenia Parito, Rossana Sampugnaro, Hans-Jörg Trenz, Douglas Ponton.

Local organizers: Rossana Sampugnaro, Francesca Montemagno, Mariaeugenia Parito, Martina Faia, Patrizia Santoro.

Secretaris: Melissa Mongiardo, Antonio Martella, Cesar Crisosto.

May 16-18, 2024

İstanbul Bilgi University İstanbul (Türkiye)

Deadline: February 15, 2024

https://futuresofcom.bilgi.edu.tr/#

Contact E-mail Address: futuresofcomm@bilgi.edu.tr 

Hosted by İstanbul Bilgi University, Faculty of Communication, the Global Communication Association invites you to submit your abstracts and panel proposals for the 16th annual convention to be held in İstanbul, Türkiye, between May 16-18, 2024.

A significant aspect of modernity enabled by media and communication technologies has been the collapse of time and distance. Global connectedness through social media platforms, flow of information through the internet, real-time communication through smartphones, and virtual meetings via Zoom have historically been credited for making the world a more connected place. However, unforeseen predicaments of new technologies have raised concerns about the lack of control over their use, the potential biases of machine visions and thinking, and their potential to facilitate crime as well as security and privacy breaches.

However, the contemporary technological assemblage does not allow time for such critical reflections. Paul Virilio suggests that ‘the faster the technology advances, the more accidents we will see’. He described the internet as ‘“the best and the worst of things…the advance of a limitless — or almost limitless — communication; and at some point, it is also the disaster — the meeting with the iceberg — for this Titanic of virtual navigation.’.’’

The Titanic metaphor refers to the disastrous nature of the contemporary technological assemblage and the gradual disappearance of the gap between the implementation of new technologies and the emergence of their adversary effects. The conference takes the increasing speed of technological development in the field of media and communication as its starting point and explores how and whether, if at all, the predicaments parallel and/or supersede the promises of the implementation of new technologies.

The GCA invites research papers exploring any aspect of issues related to the theme of the conference, including but not limited with the following topics:

• The risk society, uncertainties, and risk
  
• Re-thinking communication and communication theory
  
• Life after social media
  
• The future(s) of media industry and alternative media economies
  
• Reconsidering the methodologies of communication
  
• Revisiting the discussion on communication as a discipline or area?
  
• Crises of democracy and the media
  
• Pedagogy of communication and communication technologies as pedagogical tools
  
• Media archeology and revisiting the past
  
• Populism and the media
  
• Artificial intelligence tools & applications
  
• AI and the transformation of society
  
• Humanitarian crises and the media
  
• Climate change and the media
  
• Media persistence
  
• Migration, forced displacement, and the media
  
• Media worlds of terror
  
• Margins of communication – re-thinking the boundaries of interactions
  
• Multimodality and the media
  
• Search for alternative modalities of the media

Important Dates

Submissions due: February 15, 2024

Acceptance notification: March 1, 2024

Conference: May 16-18, 2024

May 10, 2024, Accompanying events: 9 and 11 May, 2024

Hybrid: Lublin & Online

Deadline: March 20, 2024

Organizers: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, University of Wrocław , Polish Communication Association, Mediatization Section

To address mediatization we have invited the renowned keynote speaker Andreas Hepp (Universität Bremen) who will give a keynote speech on:Datafication, automation and communicative AI: Toward a redefinition of mediatization research (personal presentation; see the abstract here). We open our conference to a wide range of topics related to mediatization and media studies in general, and therefore welcome all papers that address the topics listed below:

• Mediatization and datafication – a conceptual dialogue and/or competition
  
• Datafication as a phase/layer of mediatization
  
• Mediatization research in times of datafication
  
• Datafication of interpersonal, organizational and institutional communication
  
• Data colonialism; colonial appropriation of social-personal data
  
• Digital infrastructures and platform economies
  
• Artificial intelligence as a tool of mediatization
  
• Algorithmization of public and interpersonal communication
  
• Platformization of interpersonal, organizational and institutional communication
  
• Automation of communication
  
• Mediatization of politics and electoral campaigns
  
• Mediatization of war and conflict
  
• Mediatization of sport, physical activity and recreation
  
• Mediatization of business and economy
  
• Mediatization of popular culture and fashion
  
• Mediatization of leisure
  
• Mediatization of religion and spiritual life
  
• Mediatization of daily and family life
  
• (De)mediatization, counter-mediatization and media de-saturation
  

DETAILS: https://www.umcs.pl/en/ms-cfp.htm 

June 30-July 4, 2024

Christchurch, New Zealand

Deadline: February 7, 2024

https://iamcr.org/christchurch2024/cfp-flow34 

The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) calls for academic audio/visual work to be presented at IAMCR 2024, which will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, from 30 June to 4 July 2024. 

The deadline for submission is 7 February 2024, at 23.59 UTC.

With this call, IAMCR aims to stimulate the use of a broader range of modes for the communication of academic knowledge, complementing conference papers and oral presentations with audio/visual work. In particular, we seek podcasts and videos that integrate academic and aesthetic dimensions, and that use sound and/or image creatively to communicate academic knowledge. This implies that we will not select audio/visual work that merely consists of recorded lectures. The selected works will be presented during the conference in Christchurch from 30 June to 04 July. Flow34 creators are not required to attend the Christchurch conference.

We call for audio/visual work with a maximum duration of 30 minutes, but shorter contributions are also welcomed. 

Submission guidelines

Proposals for the presentation of audio/visual work will consist of one abstract, which will have two parts, namely an academic description of the work and a (basic) script of the audio/visual work. The academic description describes the research communicated by the audio/visual work (its research question, theoretical framework, methodology, research design and corpus, …), while the script provides a chronological description of the form of the audio/visual work. The abstract (with its two parts) has a maximum length of 750 words. Abstracts must be submitted online by 07 February 2024.

The Flow34 evaluation team will review the submitted proposals and announce their decisions in March 2024. The audio/visual work itself will then need to be submitted by 7 June 2024.

Abstracts and scripts must be submitted in English. The final work can be in any language, but subtitles in English are appreciated (but not compulsory).

For further information about Flow34, please contact Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen at <mazlum@iamcr.org> (mazlum /at/ iamcr /dot/ org)

Comunicazioni Sociali — Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies

Deadline: March 1, 2024

Edited by: Paola Dalla Torre, Mariagrazia Fanchi, Elena Mosconi

To be published in December 2024.

Proposal should be sent by March 1, 2024 to the following addresses:  redazione.cs@unicatt.it;  mariagrazia.fanchi@unicatt.it; p.dallatorre@lumsa.it; elena.mosconi@unipv.it.

Acceptance will be notified by March 15, 2024.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article in English by July 31, 2022.

Articles must not exceed 5’000/6’000-words (including references).

Further information can be found at: https://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.it/news-call-for-papers-italian-cinemas-and-moviegoing-places-businesses-people-6405.html 

The new historiographical paradigms (Biltereyst, Malby, Meers 2019), the relevant boost of film audience studies provided by networks such as HoMER, and the convergence of an increasing number of disciplines around cinema history: geography (Hallam, Roberts 2014; Treveri Gennari, O’Rawe, Hipkins 2019; Celata, Simone 2023), ethnography (Treveri Gennari et al, 2020; Stokes, Jones, Pett 2022; Antichi, Fedele, Garofalo 2023; Wessels et al 2022; Kuhn 2023), phenomenology (Hanich 2017), have, in recent years, produced an important growth in historical knowledge about movie theatres, the public, and, more generally, cinema experiences.

Data-driven approaches and open science models (Deb Verhoeven’s work has been pivotal in this regard) have in addition contributed to deeply transforming the work of scholars, even in traditional fields, such as early cinema (Slugan, Biltereyst 2022), introducing new perspectives, encouraging to intersect many and different sources (Egan-Smith-Terrill, 2021), and developing longitudinal and comparative studies (van Oort, Whitehead, 2023).

The research on movie theatres and moviegoing in Italy has certainly benefited from this conjuncture. However, some aspects and periods have been investigated less (systematically) than others. For example, the long and non-linear phase of the decline of cinemas and cinema-going in Italy, from the 1960s to the 1980s and the subsequent revival, from the second half of the 1990s have been understudied; cinema-going in rural areas and Southern regions, despite being the subject of some pioneering research (Pinna et al, 1958), still largely needs to be investigated. Likewise, the history of entrepreneurs running cinemas in Italy – predominantly family-run enterprises – is a relatively unexplored field. The history of the professions that revolve around cinema (managers, projectionists, cashiers…), in turn need to be completely reconstructed. In the same way, the experience of moviegoers, their relationship with cinema and the role that the viewing experience has taken on in their lives continue to offer many opportunities for study and investigation, strengthened by new investigation techniques and methodologies.

Considering this landscape, this special issue aims to analyze how cinema and movie theatres shaped the history of territories, businesses, and people in the past and present, with a particular but non-exclusive focus on the case of Italy.

Special attention will be given to papers proposing new methodologies and perspectives, also using data-driven approaches, and/or papers involving comparative studies with the case of Italy.

Proposals on non-standard cinemas (such as small gauge cinemas, parish cinemas, drive-in cinemas, cinemas in hospitals) or ephemeral cinemas (Vélez-Serna 2020) (arenas, travelling cinemas…) are also encouraged.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

- Ephemeral cinemas (Vélez-Serna 2020);

- Cinemas and public fundings;

- Cinemas and public regulations:

- Geospatial analysis of cinemas;

- Cinemas in depressed areas;

- Cinemas in industrial districts;

- Cinemas in Northern and Southern Italy;

- Cinemas and tourist areas;

- Cinema exhibition: management models;

- Movie theatres as family businesses;

- History of male/female cinema exhibitors;

- Cinemas as a workplace: roles and professions;

- Cinemas and moviegoing: data, memories, ephemerals;

- Moviegoing in urban vs. rural areas;

- Cinemas and fragile audiences: Cinemas and minors, Cinemas and female audiences, Cinemas and disadvantaged audiences, Cinemas and ‘second-generation’ audiences.

Thematic section in SComS, edited by Gabriele Balbi, Berber Hagedoorn, Nazan Haydari, Valérie Schafer, & Christian Schwarzenegger

Studies in Communication Sciences (SComS) is a peer-reviewed journal of communication and media research with platinum open access: https://www.hope.uzh.ch/scoms/. The journal is edited by Jolanta Drzewiecka, Silke Fürst, Katharina Lobinger, and Thilo von Pape.

Issue 23(3) is published and can be accessed for free https://www.hope.uzh.ch/scoms/issue/view/375. It includes a Thematic Section on “Old media persistence. Past continuities in the brand-new digital world” as well as a General Section which is composed of two studies investigating into parasocial relationships with morally ambiguous media characters on the one hand and the COVID-19 discourse in politicians’ speeches in Iran on the other hand. Additionally, the issue contains a dissertation summary, a fact sheet on DOCA as well as two book reviews.