ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Comunicação e Sociedade - Vol. 40 

Deadline: January 29, 2021

Editors: Felisbela Lopes (CECS, University of Minho, Portugal), Rita Araújo (CECS, University of Minho, Portugal) and Peter Schulz (University of Lugano, Switerzland)

Health communication is an interdisciplinary scientific area that gathers Communication Sciences and Health Sciences, namely Medicine both also Public Health, Nursing, and Psychology (Zoller & Kline, 2008). Even though there are several definitions of Health Communication, behavior change is often pointed out as one of its main goals. Indeed, Health Communication aims at involving, capacity-building, and influencing individuals and communities (Schiavo, 2014).

According to the World Health Organization (1998), Health Journalism is an area within Health Communication, such as interpersonal communication, media advocacy or organizational communication. But it is also a Journalism specialization. In fact, although one can understand Health Journalism as a small part of journalism, it has its specificities, just as economic, political or sports journalism. Hallin and Briggs (2014) argue that medical and health journalism is, to a certain extent, different than other kinds of journalism, since health journalists often reveal more didactic and instrumental conceptions of their role. This “hybrid” character of health journalism is one of the characteristics that makes this an interesting object of study for journalism studies (Hallin & Briggs, 2014).

In the past few decades, the emergency of infectious diseases and the increase of chronic diseases reinforced the role of health journalism, since the media have a central social role in portraying these stories. Recent global outbreaks, such as Influenza A (2009) or Ebola (2014), and the Covid-19 pandemic we are experiencing right now, demonstrate the need to invest in Health Journalism and Health Communication. These can be essential tools in fighting pandemics, contributing to informed and health-capacitated audiences and influencing both individual and collective behaviors. Indeed, Health Journalism and Health Communication may have a significant impact in lay people, especially within a public health crisis setting, contributing to health promotion and disease prevention.

This volume of Comunicação e Sociedade focuses on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and aims at gathering researchers from different geographies in thinking about Health Journalism and Health Communication within a global health crisis. Nowadays, the diversity of media platforms, the change in habits of media consumption, or the increase of fake news and disinformation bring renewed challenges to the fields of Health Journalism and Health Communication. Therefore, it is important to understand what is being done, both nationally and internationally, to deal with these challenges and to reinforce the role of journalism and communication applied to health.

Paper proposals should focus one of more of the following topics:

• Health Communication and the Covid-19 pandemic;
• Health Journalism and the Covid-19 pandemic;
• Relationships between media and news sources within a pandemic;
• What impact does confinement have on journalism?
• Covid-19 and disinformation/fake news;
• The importance of health literacy within public health;
• The role of Health Journalism and Health Communication in behavior change.

KEY DATES

• Deadline for submission: January 29th 2021
• Notification of acceptance: april 30th 2021
• Deadline for complete and translated article: june 30th 2021
• Publication: December 2021

LANGUAGE

Articles can be submitted in English or Portuguese. After the peer review process, the authors of the selected articles should ensure translation of the respective article, and the editors shall have the final decision on publication of the article.

EDITION AND SUBMISSION

Comunicação e Sociedade is a peer-reviewed journal that uses a double blind peer review process. After submission, each paper will be distributed to two reviewers, previously invited to evaluate it, in terms of its academic quality, originality and relevance to the objectives and scope of the theme chosen for the journal’s current issue.

Originals must be submitted via the journal’s website. If you are accessing Comunicação e Sociedade for the first time, you must register in order to submit your article (indications to register here).

The guidelines for authors can be consulted here.

For further information, please contact: comunicacaoesociedade@ics.uminho.pt

Leeds Beckett University, UK

Leeds Business School (Leeds Beckett University, UK) is hiring 4 fully-funded PhD students starting from February 2021. The positions are based in the Sustainable Business Research Institute and prospective candidates are invited to apply for a PhD in one of the four streams

• Growth, Responsibility and Productivity
• Responsible engagement - the role of communication in society
• Capacity building in SMEs: the role and influence of women as leaders
• Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Resilience

More details on the post are available at the link below:

https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/the-graduate-school/research-degrees-at-leeds-beckett/studentships/leeds-business-school/#3.-Capacity-building-in-SMEs:-the-role-and-influence-of-women-as-leaders

The South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership

Traces of Empire in the Built Environment: Exploring the Collective Memory of Colonialism through the Photographic Collections of the Historic England Archive’ aims to use historic photographs to tease out the multiple ways in which the English built environment has been formed and reformed through its links to empire. This will include an examination of a wide range of areas, including the construction of monuments and statuary, the creation of buildings and spaces, and the work of the tens of thousands of people who travelled from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia and found work as architects and builders in England’s cities. The photography collections of the Historic England Archive provide a unique and currently underexplored resource for exploring these themes. The Archive’s collection of 9 million images is one of the largest photography collections in the country, and provides a crucial window into the shaping of the built environment.

The studentships is funded by the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council, supported by the South West & Wales Doctoral Partnership and co-supervised by the universities of Cardiff and Bristol.

Further details about the studentship can be found here: https://www.sww-ahdtp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/CDA-1-Photographic-Traces.Further-Details.pdf

Details of the application process are provided here: https://www.sww-ahdtp.ac.uk/prospective-students/apply/collaborative-doctoral-award-projects-2021/

The deadline for applications is Monday 25th January 2021.

April 21-23, 2021

Online conference

Deadline: January 31 (panels)/ February 15 (abstracts)

http://connectingeuropeproject.eu/home/conference/?fbclid=IwAR0eLZ819IJN7VSqtc1iAl8smdYlfL_cGjEqXpXo5iJ3tjayxnN1Utis9yY

Migrant belonging through digital connectivity refers to a way of being in the world that cuts across national borders, shaping new forms of diasporic affiliations and transnational intimacy. This happens in ways that are different from the ways enabled by the communication technologies of the past. Scholarly attention has intensified around the question of how various new technical affordances of platforms and apps are shaping the transnationally connected, and locally situated, social worlds in which migrants live their everyday lives.

This international conference focuses on the connection between the media and migration from different disciplinary vantage points. Connecting with friends, peers and family, sharing memories and personally identifying information, navigating spaces and reshaping the local and the global in the process is but one side of the coin of migrant-related technology use: this Janus-faced development also subjects individuals as well as groups to increased datafied migration management, algorithmic control and biometric classification as well as forms of transnational authoritarianism and networked repression.

This conference pays particular attention to the everyday use of digital media for the support of transnational lives, emotional bonds and cosmopolitan affiliations, focusing also on the role digital media play in shaping local/urban and national diasporic formations. This is because it becomes increasingly important to give everyday digital media usage a central role in investigations of transnational belonging, digital intimacy, diasporic community (re)production, migrant subject formation, long-distance political participation, urban social integration and local/national self-organization.

Therefore we need to examine individual and collective user practices within the wider historical and cultural contexts of media studies, cultural studies and postcolonial cultural studies scholarship, attuned to issues of politics and power, identity, geographies and the everyday. This also creates new challenges for cross-disciplinary dialogues that require an integration of ethnography with digital methods and critical data studies in order to look at the formation of identity and experience, representation, community building, and creating spaces of belongingness.

Contributions are welcome from any field of study that engages with questions about how technology and social media usages mediate contemporary migration experiences, not only within media and communication studies, or digital and internet studies but also in neighbouring disciplines such as anthropology, postcolonial studies, gender studies, race studies, psychology, law, visual studies, conflict studies, criminology, sociology, critical theory, political theory and international relations.

Contributions that explore non-media-centric entry points by focusing on users’ digital practices and foregrounding ethnographic exploration as a uniting framework are especially welcome.

The conference is part of the ERC project CONNECTINGEUROPE, Digital Crossings in Europe: Gender, Diaspora and Belonging.

The conference is organized in collaboration with the DMM section (Diaspora, Migration and the Media) of ECREA (European Communication Research and Education).

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Affective digital practices and the politics of emotion
• Digital diaspora
• Cosmopolitanism
• Cities and urban belonging
• Translocality and transnationalism
• Co-presence and togetherness
• Cultural capital
• Migrant visualization
• Appification of migration
• Platformization of migrant lives
• Gender and critical race
• The migration industry of connectivity
• Digital ethnography
• Transnational authoritarianism
• Networked conflicts
• Datafication and surveillance

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Submissions for panels should be submitted via e-mail to migrantbelongings@uu.nl by 31 January 2021.

Submission for panels should include a chairperson, a rationale for the panel (250 words), and the names of three speakers including their abstract (250 words) and biographical note (150 words).

Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the online submission system by 15 February 2021.

Submissions for papers should include an abstract (max 300 words) and short biographical note (150 words) about the author including her/his current position and interest in the field of digital media and migration.

For further questions please mail: migrantbelongings@uu.nl.

The PDF of this call for papers is available here.

Palgrave Macmillan

Tuesday 15 December 2020, 17:00-18:30

Location: Online (Microsoft Teams)

Book your ticket here https://www.arts.ac.uk/whats-on/book-launch-mediating-the-refugee-crisis-sara-marino

Since 2015, media have interrogated the unfolding of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe in different and often controversial ways, either from the point of view of migration management and control, or from a more humanitarian and compassionate angle.

In her book, Sara Marino offers a more comprehensive analysis of migration governance in Europe through the lens of technological mediation and asks in what ways communication technologies have contributed to the strengthening of Fortress Europe, while providing opportunities for resistance among migrants, activists, and solidarity groups.

The author will discuss the key themes and questions emerging in her research with Professor Myria Georgiou (London School of Economics and Political Science), Dr Amanda Paz Alencar (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Dr Koen Leurs (Utrecht University).

Moderator: Dr Rebecca Bramall, Reader in Cultural Politics, School of Media, London College of Communication

Simón Peña-Fernández, Koldobika Meso-Ayerdi, & Ainara Larrondo-Ureta (Editors)

A media system based on a small number of sources, extremely hierarchical and mainly targeting a passive mass audience, has evolved towards a context where the number of media has exponentially multiplied, audiences are highly fragmented and increasingly active, with almost endless options for news consumption. This new scenario is described as a hybrid media system, where old and new media co-exist.

The first great transformation in the hybrid media system has been the confluence of a great number of actors able to generate information. The second great transformation in the hybrid media system is the empowerment of audiences. Citizens are now ready and able to generate content on an unpreceded scale, especially via social networks.

Nevertheless, the research carried out so far shows that the number of citizens who produce news or contents related to public affairs is reduced. Audiences continue to grant journalists and media the role of primary gatekeepers on the news agenda. However, they also demand to be involved and interact with the content produced by the media and journalists. The spaces for user participation created by online media and social networking platforms constitute public spaces in which citizens can share information, express their opinions and react to the opinions of others.

In a hybrid media system scenario, audiences have become active, and their voice is now more powerful. This book tries to analyze this phenomenon from multiple perspectives.

https://www.mheducation.es/active-audiences-pod-9788448620035-spain#tab-label-product-description-title

StoryFutures Academy

After the success of the work of the first cohort of 7 university projects across the UK, StoryFutures Academy's Train the Trainer initiative is announcing a second call.

StoryFutures Academy is looking to fund interdisciplinary projects (from STEM to STEAM) that address immersive storytelling challenges and explore established or emergent storytelling forms e.g. point of view, editing, spatial sound and attention, haptic engagements etc. in the content of immersive production. The funding available is up to a maximum of £17,000.

Grant awards to successful projects are subject to the acceptance of the contractual terms and conditions of the Train the Trainer scheme, outlined by StoryFutures Academy.

Please see here for the eligibility criteria and application form.

Please be mindful that the application key dates are:

Call Closes – midnight Thursday, 17th December 2020

Winners announced – Monday 18th January 2021

Launch event – Train the Trainer Cohort 1 Showcase and Cohort 2 launch, 29 January 2021

Workshop 1 for cohort (and mentors) – 25th and 26th February 2021

Workshop 2 for cohort (and mentors) – 22nd and 23rd April 2021

Bi-monthly mentor meetings – February – July 2021

Workshop 3 for cohort (and mentors), Framing the Learning – 4th June 2021

Delivery of all project outputs – July 16th 2021

Final Showcase – July 30th 2021 (tbc)

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

Deadline: January 4, 2021

Issue 22, Winter 2021

Editor: James Mulvey (YECREA Film Studies Representative)

YECREA, the Young Scholars Network of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), represents early-career scholars including doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. The Film Studies Section of YECREA aims to give a voice and platform to emerging scholars within the field by collaborating with Alphaville on a curated dossier. This is an “opentheme” dossier specifically designed for early-career researchers to provide publication opportunities and to portray a snapshot of new research and trends in film studies. To uncover the most contemporary and upcoming thinking, theory and practice, YECREA and Alphaville invite article proposals from doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in Film Studies which deal with cinema from a broad variety of perspectives – film as cultural artefact and commercial product, as embodied and social experience, as a symbolic field of cultural production, and as a mediating technology. We are particularly interested in work that displays a clear engagement with emerging concerns in the field or that advances novel perspectives on existing debates.

This dossier will consist of up to six articles of about 6,000 words each. Articles will undergo double blind peer-review.

In the first instance, please send a 200-word abstract and a 100-word biography to James Mulvey at yecrea.alphaville@gmail.com by January 4th 2021. Responses will be issued by January 18th 2021.

Drafts of full articles in Alphaville House Style will be due on March 1st 2021.

Special Issue of The International Journal of Press/Politics

Deadline: February 1, 2021

Guest editors:

• Kim Andersen, University of Southern Denmark and University of Gothenburg
• Jakob Ohme, University of Amsterdam
• Erik Albæk, University of Southern Denmark
• Claes H. de Vreese, University of Amsterdam

Citizens’ political engagement is essential for the well-functioning of democracies. From boycotting products and signing petitions to discussing politics, attending demonstrations, and voting, citizens’ political engagement shapes our societies. In order for such engagement to take place, people need information that can mobilize them. For a long time, the news media was the key source in this regard. As a natural consequence exposure to news and political information in the media is a well-known forerunner for democratic engagement.

The relationship between news exposure and democratic engagement is constantly evolving, however. In today’s hybrid media system, people get information about politics and society from various sources and on many different platforms. In the contemporary media environment an endless list of information sources, including legacy news outlets, alternative news sites, politicians, and interest organizations, are therefore competing for people’s attention. Exposure to political information can take place on traditional platforms, like television or newspapers, or on new digital platforms, such as social media sites or other private online platforms. Not all information is equally reliable, and mis- and disinformation is part of the information ecosystem. At the same time, new forms of political participation are also emerging, especially online where people, for example, can discuss politics or contact politicians without much investment.

When examining the consequences of such changes it is relevant to focus on young people. Young people grow up with and get socialized into a political world full of new information and engagement possibilities. As such, young people are to an increasing extent turning their backs to traditional legacy news outlets and getting political information on social media sites.

At the same time, they are engaging in new forms of political participation. Young people can thus be seen as first movers—both when it comes to news ways of getting political information and new ways of engaging in politics. In parallel, broader societal tendencies make young people especially interesting to study in this regard. Across Western societies, as seen with examples like the election of President Trump, Brexit, and the battle against climate change, the combination of changing demography and differential levels of political participation across age groups mean that younger generations are experiencing that older generations are deciding their future. Often these decisions are characterized by increasing support for authoritarian populists and redistributive policies that massively disadvantage the youth.

The developments described above call for new research examining young people’s exposure to news and their democratic engagement. Despite the high relevance of this relationship in contemporary societies, we know relatively little of how changes in the media and political environments are affecting the relationship between news exposure and democratic engagement for young people. How do young people engage with news and politics, and is their democratic engagement able to generate the change they hope for and in which way?

Against this backdrop, this special issue invites original research that fits the theme “Youth, News, and Democratic Engagement”. The invitation is open for any methodological tradition, seeks international contributions from across the globe, and is especially welcoming comparative work drawing attention to how contextual differences influence the relationships under consideration.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Comparative differences and similaritires in young people’s news consumption patterns across the world

• What kind of political information are young people engaging with and with what democratic consequences?

• Young people’s news avoidance and news snacking
• Young people’s exposure to news on social media sites and its consequences for political knowledge and participation

• Political socialization in a new and hybrid media environment
• How does young people’s (digital) media literacy enable them to engage with news in today’s media environment with varying quality of political information?

• Young people’s political discussions in networked (online) settings
• How young people’s democratic engagement is affecting and affected by the norms of political discussion (civility, trolling, etc) and the quality of news?

• Whether and how generational conflict between younger and older citizens is articulated on digital media

• Novel news products and their relation with young people’s democratic engagement

Submission Information

Manuscript submissions for this special issue are due on 1 February 2021.

Please submit your work through our online submission portal (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijpp) and ensure that the first line of the cover letter states: “Manuscript to be considered for the special issue on Youth, News, and Democratic Engagement”. Manuscripts should follow the IJPP submission guidelines (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/journal/international-journalpresspolitics#submission-guidelines). Submissions will be subject to a double-blind peer review process and must not have been published, accepted for publication, or under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Please note that, to ensure consistency, submissions will only be considered for peer review after the 1 February 2021 deadline has passed.

Authors interested in submitting their work are encouraged to contact Kim Andersen (kand@journalism.sdu.dk) with questions.

Timeline and Workshop information

As part of the process towards this special issue, we will hold an online international workshop with the possibility to opt-in for physical attendance at the University of Southern Denmark, the current situation permitting. The workshop will be held 19-20 November 2020 and will be a venue for feedback and discussion prior to formal paper submissions. The workshop is fully funded. We will reserve funding to work with scholars whose first language is not English.

• Abstract submission for workshop: 1 September 2020 – send an abstract of maximum 500 words by email to Kim Andersen (kand@journalism.sdu.dk)

• Notification of workshop acceptance: 8 September 2020
• Workshop (with draft papers): 19-20 November 2020
• Submission of full papers to IJPP Special Issue: 1 February 2021 (also open to papers not presented at the workshop)

• Revisions and resubmission: August 2021
• Online publication: January 2022
• Print publication: April 2022 (issue 2-2022)

London School of Economics and Political Science

Salary is competitive with Departments at our peer institutions worldwide and not less than £55,974 pa inclusive

The post will commence on 1 September 2021

Applications are invited from outstanding candidates in the field of media and communications. The successful candidate will join an established and successful department, ranked first in the UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework evaluation and third in the QS 2020 World University rankings.

The Department is known for its distinctive interdisciplinary approach to the field of media and communications, primarily based in the social sciences, but also open to humanities perspectives. You will contribute to the intellectual life of the School through conducting and publishing outstanding quality research, engaging in high-quality teaching as instructed by the Head of Department, and participating in the School and wider Department activities.

Candidates will have:

• a completed PhD in media and communications, or a closely related field, by the post start date;
• expertise on media and communications in relation to one or more of the following areas of research: gender, sexuality and/or race. Within these primary areas, we are particularly ― but not exclusively ― interested in candidates with a global and comparative research approach, a focus on the Global South and a commitment to issues of marginality, inequality and social justice.
• a proven ability, as evidenced by existing publications, or potential, to publish in top journals or with leading book publishers in media and communications and;
• a clear, well-developed and viable strategy for future outstanding research that has the potential to result in world-leading publications.

We offer an occupational pension scheme, generous annual leave and excellent training and development opportunities.

For further information about the post, please see the how to apply document, job description and the person specification.

If you have any technical queries with applying on the online system, please use the “contact us” links at the bottom of the LSE Jobs page.

Should you have any queries about the role, please email Dr Wendy Willems (W.Willems@lse.ac.uk), Deputy Head of Department. Applicants are also invited to attend a Zoom webinar Q&A for further details on Wednesday 16 December 2020, 2-3pm UK time or Wednesday 6 January 2021, 2-3pm UK time. Please RSVP here.

The closing date for receipt of applications is Sunday 10 January 2021 (23.59 UK time). Regrettably, we are unable to accept any late applications.

Online interviews and presentations will take place in February 2021.