ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

February 9-10, 2022

Köln, Germany. Macromedia University of Applied Sciences

Deadline: December 5, 2021

Almost two years of COVID-19 lockdowns have forced many transformations in our daily lives. Among others, teaching had to move online from one day to the next which accelerated the need to adapt, translate and implement changes involving new skills and new resources both from universities, and from students. For any form of teaching of communication related skills these changes have multiplied discussions and also started a whole new strand of research on teaching communication.

Teaching online is not new. Indeed, theories and practices about distance and online teaching, about hybrid and embedded teaching have been developed and applied intensely over the last few decades (Cavanaugh, 2005; Simonson, Zvacek, & Smaldino, 2019), but it was too much treated as a subsidiary form of presence or synchronous teaching. Furthermore, at the time of implementing and reformulating all the teaching for online delivery, the antecedent knowledge and available studies about distance learning were very little considered (Rapanta, et al. 2020).

Furthermore, the speedy evolution of the communication ecosystem demands new skill sets and questions, too. The development and consolidation and growth of platforms, and proprietary software-based applications, cause issues about ownership and access; the abundance of mobile-laptop devices, and the possibilities of high internet connectivity conditions raise questions about infrastructures, resources, and social inequalities as well as about the availability that require not only the teaching staff to provide their own spaces for work, but also students to make their workspaces available. Needless to mention how mental health and camera-sharing of private spaces have crept into the teaching environment. All these new conditions come with new skills, new ethical questions, and new critical contents that need to be learned and to be taught: media and communication literacy, cybersecurity, and cyber responsibility, data protection and intellectual property protection, among others.

All these aspects add to the regular complexity of teaching communication, especially in the fitting and intersections between applied areas of knowledge, like strategic communication; with long sought, fast developing, and wide-ranging theoretical traditions: psycho-social informed or semiotic approaches, and management theories. Furthermore, professionals of communication are often expected to develop wider skills that trespass the theoretical backgrounds of their field. These skills include dealing with diversity in the classrooms, updating digital resources and tools, and facing an increment of undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

And yet, beyond these insurmountable conditions, teaching staff and students have managed to overcome the challenge with great amounts of creativity and opportunity, showing capacity for innovation and resilience, and they have arranged to teach and learn what was unthinkable before lockdown: sending cameras home to students; using VR and Extended Reality for teaching; incorporating online international experiences for the students, etc.

In this workshop, we invite you to share teaching experiences, research papers (or work in progress), or critical discussions in the format of 10-minute presentations. Around (but not limited to) the following areas:

• Challenges and strategies on theory teaching
• Organisational challenges of Communication Education
• Discussions about topics and new environments of Communication Education
• Innovations and developments in Communication Education
• Case studies and experiences
• Projections and future arrangements
• Implications for social justice and social inequalities
• Platforms, software, devices and technologies for Communication Education
• Students, teaching, and assessment strategies for Communication Education
• Ethics
• Creativity
• ...

The first day of the program will mainly consist of paper presentations and some input statements by external experts. We will close the first day with a hybrid panel in English language fully open to the public in Cologne and all over Europe. The second day will focus on a workshop to discuss and develop new forms of academic training for communication management.

Please, submit a 1 page abstract (max. 500 words) a.s.a.p for peer review to ecreaosc@gmail.com. We start the review process as soon as you submit and provide feedback within a few days. This is a hybrid conference.

December 5th	Deadline for Abstract submission	1 page ecreaosc@gmail.com
	Communication of Acceptance	Peer review
December 12th	Program publication
December 19th	Registration deadline for presenters
December 21th	Definitive Program
February, 9-10th 2022	Conference Venue in Köln, Germany	Starting around 13:00

Registration Price:

50 Euro - including all meals and conference dinner (two days)

25 Euro - online participation (only 9th)

Paypal: paypal.me/ecreaoscsection

If you have further questions, please feel free to contact ecreaosc@gmail.com. This conference workshop is organised by the ECREA OSC management team (Prof. Dr. Evandro Oliveira, Dr. Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat and Prof. Dr. Ileana Lis Zeler), together with Macromedia University and OSC member local organizer Prof. Dr. Holger Sievert.

References:

Cavanaugh, J. (2005). Teaching online-A time comparison. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8(1)

Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L., & Koole, M. (2020). Online university teaching during and after the Covid-19 crisis: Refocusing teacher presence and learning activity. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 923-945.

Simonson, M., Zvacek, S. M., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education 7th Edition.

The YECREA management team is happy to announce that a new call for representatives is out! We have a total of 17 vacant positions for Sections, Networks and Temporary Working Groups. Applications should be no more than 500 words and contain the following information:

1. A heading with your name and the specific position you are applying for

2. Details on your current university, position and progression

3. A brief description of your research

4. A brief statement on your work’s connection to the specific section, TWG or network

5. A brief statement on your aspirations for improving early-career research

The deadline to send applications to yecreanetwork@gmail.com is December 20th, 2020. Further details and the full list of open positions can be found here: http://yecrea.eu/2021/11/17/call-for-yecrea-representatives-2021/

Being a YECREA representative is a great opportunity to learn how a big scholarly association like ECREA works, as well as an opportunity to network with more senior researchers in your field.

We look forward to your applications!

Sandra, Antonio and Valentinal, the YECREA management team

June 15-17, 2022

University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)

Deadline: December 5, 2021

11th European Feminist Research Conference

https://11efrc.unimib.it/

Keynote Speakers: Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University, USA / Carmen Leccardi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy /

Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK

Strand 3: Critiques and strategies of mediation, representation, and digital technologies

The conference raises the general question on what it means to imagine, to enact and to analyse “social change” from a feminist perspective.This conference-strand focuses on how media and the process of digitalisation contribute to the production and contestation of the spaces/relations/canons we inhabit individually and collectively. Especially the last year(s) of pandemic have made the use of digital media a constitutive part of the process of subjectivation and the construction of the public sphere, even more crucial.

This strand invites papers and panels from a wide range of (inter)disciplines, both empirical and theoretical contributions, on topics which include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Affordances and constraints of digital platforms
• Cyberfeminist legacies (hacklab, hacktivism)
• Alternative media industries, representations and networks
• Feminist networking, digital activism and collective action in pandemic time
• Transfeminist critiques to computational culture (big data, creative methodologies, ethics)
• Mediated articulation of the affective and intimate everyday life (dating app, family, friendship, alternative intimacies and radical kinships)
• The complexities of feminist communication and knowledge exchanges across academic and non academic spaces (e.g.: issues of accessibility, production, and dissemination)
• Community media
• Normative regime of (in)visibility and resistance (representation, self-representation, disidentifications)
• Critical takes on the popularised issue of fake news and post-truth
• Platforms/digital practices of care, networking, participation
• Memes as aesthetiques and language

Read the entire call here: https://11efrc.unimib.it/strand-3/

Deadline: December 5, 2021

→ abstracts to be sent to: efrc.strand3@gmail.com, info@atgender.eu

Defined as the overabundance of information on a given subject, infodemic has been described by the World Health Organization as one of the most serious problems we face as a society. This is an investigation carried out by researchers from the Nebrija_INNOMEDIA research group, trying to ellucdate how young adults access information and navigate media, social networks, and fake news. Answers are collected totally anonymously and only for scientific and academic purposes. The survey takes 5 minutes to respond: https://forms.gle/PoGip8CD98ochKeX6

QUT Digital Media Research Centre

The QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) in Brisbane, Australia, is currently seeking applicants for four five-year Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) positions. The four PDRAs contribute to an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship led by Professor Axel Bruns, a flagship five-year research project that investigates the Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate. The successful applicants will contribute to the Laureate's overall research programme, and lead specific research streams within the Laureate Fellowship. They will be mentored by the Laureate Fellow, Prof. Axel Bruns.

The Laureate Fellowship is situated within the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), one of eleven flagship University Research Centres at QUT. In addition to the Laureate team itself, the PDRAs will also have an opportunity to work closely with the other international research leaders, early-career researchers, and postgraduate research students in the DMRC. They will also co-supervise postgraduate research students aligned with the Laureate project.

Rapidly increasing partisanship and polarisation, especially online, poses an urgent threat to societal cohesion in Australia and other established western democracies; polarisation is also a critical cybersecurity concern when actively promoted by bad-faith actors to undermine citizens' trust in democratic institutions. By introducing an analytical framework that distinguishes four key dimensions of polarisation, the Fellowship aims to conduct the first-ever assessment of the extent and dynamics of polarisation in the contemporary online and social media environments of six nations, including Australia. The evidence is expected to enable an urgently needed, robust defence of our society and democracy against the challenges of polarisation.

Successful candidates will contribute to high-quality research activities relevant to one or more of the Laureate project's four research streams. They must demonstrate substantial mixed-methods expertise in digital and social media analysis, with a focus on one of more of the following research areas: journalism studies, media and communication studies, political science, social media analytics, computational social science, computational discourse analysis, social network analysis, issue mapping. They will also have an opportunity to contribute actively to the DMRC's overall research culture, including participation in strategic planning, research collaboration, and community-building, and to collaborate with other world-leading researchers at the DMRC.

Candidates must follow the application instructions at http://bit.ly/laureateteam. Note that applications must include a CV, response to selection criteria, and statement of research interests with respect to the aims of the Laureate project.

Applications are due by 30 January 2022, and open to Australian and international applicants. Subject to travel and visa arrangements, the Postdoctoral Research Associates should commence in mid-2022.

December 10, 2021

It is with great pleasure that we announce and invite you to participate in the final conference of the SMaRT-EU project. The conference will take place on December 10th, in online format, and will bring together researchers, practitioners and end-users to present and discuss the results of the project. The conference will also feature a number of speakers who will address topics related to new horizons and challenges for resilience towards misinformation and social media.

Save the date: 10 December 2021, from 9.30am (CET - Central European Time)

The full programme and registration available at http://smart-toolkit.eu/smart-eu-conference/

University of Fribourg

The Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences (SES) at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, invites applications for a 5-years PhD position at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies. The successful candidate will work as a teaching and research assistant at the Department of Communication and Media Research (DCM) and write a doctoral thesis under the direction of professor Thilo von Pape.

The DCM offers an outstanding and supportive research environment based on interdisciplinary and innovative collaborations at the interface between communication, media, business and society. Unique in its bilingualism, located in the heart of Europe, and renowned for its rigorous training and research, the University of Fribourg affords a decisive first step towards a rewarding research career.

Information

Start date: February 1st, 2022, or to be agreed

Contract duration: 5 years (1 year; renewable 4 years)

Employment rate: 100%; the salary will be established according to the guidelines of the University of Fribourg

Profile

Interests:

You are creative and enthusiastic about the theory and methods of empirical social research. You like working autonomously as well as in a multilingual team. You are interested in one or more of the following areas:

- qualitative or quantitative methods of social research,

- communication in digital contexts: social networks, smartphones, ...,

- uses, effects, and social and environmental issues of media innovations: equal access, everyday appropriation, social support, privacy, sustainability, …

- teaching through research.

Skills:

Ideally, you are proficient in the qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis applied in the social sciences; expertise in software tools (R, Python, NVivo, ...) is considered an additional asset.

Education:

You have obtained a Master’s degree in communication studies or in a closely related social science (sociology, psychology, …) with a focus on empirical research.

Languages:

Full proficiency in French and a good command of English. Notions in German and a commitment to perfect your language skills are appreciated.

Application

Questions:

Please address any questions regarding the position and/or the application to Jolanda Wehrli (jolanda.wehrli@unifr.ch), with the object “PhD position von Pape”.

Documents:

The application must contain:

- a cover letter specifying research interests and motivations,

- a CV containing the names of two academic references,

- transcripts of completed academic training,

- summary of the Master thesis on one page,

- other relevant certificates (e.g., TOEFL) or documents (e.g., evaluation of Master thesis).

The evaluation will focus on your academic record, interests, attitude, and the ensuing potential for academic success; it is committed to diversity and inclusion.

Deadline:

The application must be sent as one single PDF document to Jolanda Wehrli (jolanda.wehrli@unifr.ch) by December 1st, 2021.

Link to pdf of job opening: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm/en/assets/public/files/jobs/2111AssvonPape_en.pdf

French version: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm/en/assets/public/files/jobs/2111AssvonPape_fr.pdf

University of Georgia

The University of Georgia’s Department of Entertainment and Media Studies seeks to fill one position for a teacher and scholar of media visual entertainment. Appointment will either be at the Assistant tenure-track level or at the Associate level with tenure. The faculty member will teach four courses a year on an academic appointment (nine months). Preferred research emphases include but are not limited to post-broadcast television, diversity, intersectionality, and/or social movements.

Address questions to: Professor Anandam Kavoori, Grady College Search Committee Chair and Professor, Department of Entertainment and Media Studies, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-3154, (706) 542-4971 or akavoori@uga.edu

https://www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/230170

Comunicazioni Sociali

Deadline: January 10, 2022

Edited by Marco Cucco, Massimo Scaglioni, Anna Sfardini, Gertjan Willems

Website: https://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.it/news-call-for-papers-cfp-sustainable-screenings-economic-touristic-and-cultural-impact-of-audiovisual-productions-on-the-host-locations-in-the-post-lockdown-era-5717.html

In the last twenty years, the relationship between media production and places has been a key topic in the field of media studies. Despite that, in the post-lockdown world this relationship still needs to be properly investigated since nowadays it embodies new meanings that invite media scholars to redefine their understanding of how media may serve and/or impact places and vice versa.

It is widely known that film and audiovisual shoots can have a positive impact on the host location economy: more tax revenues, new employment and facilities, etc. Sometimes, film and audiovisual products stimulate tourism too, which implies once again economic benefits. In both cases, they feed local pride and contribute to re-define the image and status of the host places. In the framework of the post-pandemic recovery, these two capabilities are receiving even more attention than in the past: tourism, for instance, was one of the sectors that suffered most due to the health emergency, and its relaunch is at the top of the agenda of many public institutions. Thus, the current scenario moves film and audiovisual production at the center of the action plans for the post-pandemic economy and society. However, all the current recovery policies base themselves on the concept of sustainability, and this raises the question how film and audiovisual production meet the concept of sustainability.

In the (post-)pandemic world, the capability of film and audiovisual production to serve places needs to be reconsidered through the lens of sustainability and its three pillars: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, and social sustainability. This reconceptualization challenges the widely accepted idea of a win-win relationship between audiovisual production and places. In doing that, it invites to distinguish between good and bad practices, to investigate complex networks of stakeholders that pursue different goals, to adopt new research perspectives and research tools that allow media scholars to fruitfully address the most urgent issues on the political agenda.

Starting from these considerations, this special issue of Comunicazioni Sociali invites international scholars to discuss the economic, touristic, and cultural impact of audiovisual productions (films, documentaries, scripted and unscripted TV products) on the host places considering both the contemporary unprecedented scenario and the concept of sustainability. Case studies able to enrich or contest the achieved understanding of the relationship between media and places are particularly encouraged. We invite abstracts from different research perspectives (a.o. Film and Television Studies; Media Industry Studies; Sociology) that address the following topics:

• Good and bad practices in the relationship between different stakeholders: production companies, local institutions, population
• Green protocols in the audiovisual production
• Sustainable screen-induced tourism practices and apps
• Local people’s reactions to audiovisual shoots and screen-induced tourism
• The impact of audiovisual products in defining local reputation and in promoting/branding places
• Circulation of national media products and national brand image
• Media induced tourism and media pilgrimages
• Audiovisual place and local tourism: national or local data, trends, opportunities, good or bad case studies
• European and national green policies for the audiovisual industry
• Methodologies for investigating sustainable screen-induced tourism

Submission details

Please send your abstract and a short biographical note by January 10, 2022 to:

• redazione.cs@unicatt.it
• m.cucco@unibo.it
• massimo.scaglioni@unicatt.it
• anna.sfardini@unicatt.it
• gertjan.willems@uantwerpen.be

Abstracts should be from 300 to 400 words of length (in English). All submissions should include: 5 keywords, name of author(s), institutional affiliation, contacts details and a short bio for each author. Authors will be notified of proposal acceptance by January 28, 2022.

If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article, in English, by April 3, 2022.

Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000-words.

Contributions will be submitted to a double blind peer review process.

The issue number 2/2022 of Comunicazioni Sociali will be published in September 2022.

“Comunicazioni Sociali” is indexed in Scopus and it is an A-class rated journal by ANVUR in: Cinema, photography and television (L-ART/06), Performing arts (L-ART/05), and Sociology of culture and communication (SPS/08)

April 7-8, 2022

University of Seville, Spain

Deadline: February 20, 2022

Welcome to the GENDERCOM (Gender & Communication) congress that will be held on 7 and 8 April 2022 in hybrid mode (online and in person), at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Seville. Paper proposals (abstracts) in English, Spanish and Italian can be submitted until 20 February 2022. The selected papers will be published in the Scientific Journal Ámbitos de la Comunicación and by the publishing houses Dykinson and Fragua.

GENDERCOM began its journey a decade ago (2012). Since then, every two years it proposes a debate on gender controversies in communication. The complexity of social networks has both increased phobias towards sexual diversity and has also promoted initiatives to claim other ways of understanding the heteronormative sexual identities within patriarchy.

In the 7th edition, in addition to issues such as discrimination due to gender or representations of sexual identities, we want to highlight the debate on new masculinities. Full equality will only be possible if we reconsider the shortcomings of the patriarchal construction of the male model to achieve more open, horizontal and communicative models from a plural understanding of masculinity. The thematic axes proposed for this edition are eight, including Studies and debates on new masculinities in communication and other scientific disciplines and Hate speech relating to gender identity.

For more information and to see all eight thematic axes, visit the congress website https://gendercom.org/

To submit your paper proposal for the congress, visit https://gendercom.org/propuestas/