ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

University of Texas at Austin (U.S.)

The Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin invites applications for an open rank, full-time, tenure-track faculty member interested in teaching and research on topics broadly related to interpersonal communication. The appointment will begin in August, 2021. Applicants must have completed a Ph.D. at the time of the appointment.

We define interpersonal communication broadly and welcome a diversity of epistemological and methodological perspectives. We seek an applicant who complements our current interpersonal faculty but would be particularly interested in those whose research focuses on topics such as health disparities and health equity, intercultural or interracial communication, bias, marginalized identities (LGBTQ+, Latinx, Black, and/or Indigenous identities), conflict and negotiation (e.g., dispute resolution, crisis management, bullying), social influence, nonverbal communication, and/or technology and relationships (e.g., technologically-mediated communication, virtual relationships, artificial intelligence and interpersonal communication). In addition to teaching graduate seminars, the ability to teach large undergraduate lecture classes and web-based courses on interpersonal communication topics is preferred.

Interested applicants should submit a letter of interest, current curriculum vitae, links to or copies of three representative publications, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and the names of at least three individuals to contact for letters of recommendation. Three confidential letters of recommendation will be requested of finalists.

Applicants are also required to submit a separate diversity statement, addressing their commitment to inclusivity and support for diverse populations, along with information on their past contributions to this work and their future plans in these areas.

The Department of Communication Studies and the Moody College of Communication are committed to achieving diversity in its faculty, students, and curricula, and we welcome applicants who can help achieve these objectives. For more information, please see: https://moody.utexas.edu/…ity

The committee will begin considering candidates onOctober 15, 2020 and will review applications until the position is filled. Applications must be made via Interfolio's ByCommittee solution at https://apply.interfolio.com/…422

If you do not have a Dossier account with Interfolio, you will be prompted to create one prior to applying for the position. If you have questions about using Interfolio, please email help@interfolio.com or call (877) 997-8807. Please note that a final determination on filling this position will be contingent on funding availability.

Questions can be directed to the chair of the search committee, Professor RenéDailey, at rdailey@austin.utexas.edu.

The University of Texas at Austin is a tobacco-free campus; for more information visit http://www.utexas.edu/…ee/

Department of Communication Studies: https://commstudies.utexas.edu/

Moody College of Communication: http://moody.utexas.edu/

Austin is a major center of governmental, technological, financial, health-related, environmental, and social-movement activities, along with hosting one of the leading public research universities in the world. The city is regularly rated as one of the best places to live in the U.S.

The University of Texas at Austin, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. This institution does not offer benefits to domestic partners. This institution offers benefits to spouses (including a common-law spouse with whom you’ve filed a Declaration of Informal Marriage).

March 26-27, 2021

Bucharest, Romania

Deadline: September 30, 2020

ECREA’s Political Communication Section Interim Conference

The Political Communication Section of ECREA invites abstracts of papers for the next Interim Conference to be held in Bucharest, March 26th-27th , 2021. For self-explanatory reasons, the theme of the conference is “Communicating crisis: Political communication in the age of uncertainty”. The organizers call for proposals in all sub-fields of political communication research, but particularly invite conceptual, empirical, and methodological proposals reflecting on the ‘plague year’ we are living in, or comparable crisis events, and the role of media and/or communication therein. The conference will reflect both empirically, and conceptually and methodologically focused work.

This is a timely and rich topic, and not only due to the tragic circumstances around Covid 19. The last 20 years have brought or aggravated several challenges to humanity: rapid population increase, climate change, war and conflict, humanitarian catastrophes, economic crises, growing inequalities, population ageing, and the uncertain future of work among them. These ongoing crises are now the background of a pandemic of proportions unseen in at least a century. In such turbulent times, communication in general and political communication in particular play a significant role in helping the public at large as well as volatile groups in society in particular to understand unfolding events, and in developing constructive attitudes and resilient behaviors regarding the crisis. Perspectives can even be adjusted or corrected, e.g. in reorienting audiences to reliable information outlets and away from possibly “polluted information” from untrustworthy sources.

The digital information ecosystem comes with further challenges to effective communication in times of crisis. Among them, the large variety of sources of information, the partisan bias of media organizations and outlets, the relatively high incidence of “polluted information” (i.e., dis-, mis-, and mal-information), the potential of each message to go viral due to the constant use of social networking sites and instant messaging platforms, the rapid circulation of conspiracy theories, the high potential of exposure to contradictory information, the almost instant access to interpersonal communication which might fuel various rumors, and so on. All these trends contribute to making people more vulnerable to accept and to disseminate various pieces of ideologically-driven, highly polarized information. Against this backdrop, communication is no longer used as a strategy to keep people well informed, but as an engine responsible for generalized skepticism and emotionally-driven attitudes. Addressing (political) communication changes and challenges during crises is of high relevance not only for scholars, policy-makers, and journalists, but also for citizens, as co-creators of content within the communication flow.

Papers & panels

The conference will feature both presentations of individual research papers, and thematic panels.

Paper submissions will be grouped in sessions of 4-5 papers by the conference program chair. A limited number of slots will be available for coherent panels where one topic is addressed in four to five presentations, followed by responses. Preference will be given to panels with presenters from diverse backgrounds and affiliations.

Submission

• Paper submissions: Please send an MS Word (.doc, .docx) file including (a) the title of your paper and an abstract of no more than 400 words, and (b), on a separate page, the names and affiliations of the authors.
• Panel submissions: Please send an MS Word (doc., docx) file including (a) a rationale of no more than 300 word; (b) summaries for all the presentations in the panel (no more than 150 words for each summary); and (c) the names and affiliations of the chair, presenters, and respondents.
• Please note that all submission will undergo peer-review, and will be accepted or declined accordingly.
• Only one proposal per first author can be accepted.
• All submissions should be sent via email at: contact[at]comunicare[dot]ro.

Deadlines

• Please e-mail your abstract or panel proposal by September 30th 2020.
• Notifications of acceptance will be sent to authors by November 15th 2020.

Local host

Nicoleta Corbu (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania), E-mail: nicoleta.corbu[at]comunicare[dot]ro

Section Management Team

• Andreas Schuck (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Chair)
• Melanie Magin (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; Vice Chair)
• Václav Štětka (Loughborough University, United Kingdom; Vice Chair)

Thematic issue of Facta Universitatis

Deadline: October 31, 2020

We hereby invite all interested colleagues to submit research papers, review articles, discussion papers, and thematic essays for the thematic issue of the journal Facta Universitatis: Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology and History, Vol. 19, No 3, 2020.

This Call for Papers is aimed at bringing together a selected number of scholars and associates from the academic community who wish to participate in the project titled “#METOO MOVEMENT: PAST, PRESENT AND WHAT NEXT?”

#metoo movement has gained prominence in 2017 with Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse case, which triggered many celebrities to accept the hashtag and tweet about their experiences of sexual harassment. Ultimately, this spread to the general public and many women started to openly tweet and talk about harassment and abuse they endured during their lifetimes. The movement soon achieved international recognition and became a truly global movement of women talking about harassment and fighting the prejudice from the post-feminist argument of all battles being won.

However, the term was originally created by a Black woman Tarana Burke in 2006 who started to tweet using ‘me too’ words to warn about harassment and abuse. Thus, #metoo hashtag movement has both raised an important issue and created awareness of harassment women face in their everyday life whilst, at the same time, creating a bitter feeling because it feels as if the movement has been hijacked from Black women whose equality plight is intersectional and fundamentally tied to their race and not just gender.

While the importance of movement and its positive impact is unquestionable, the question is how do we continue from now on and how do we make sure that all voices get heard? How do we teach about #metoo movement? However, these questions are relevant to the West. In other parts of the world, #metoo had a different context and was experienced differently, which again raises an issue, what next?

Therefore, this special issue tackles some of the problems outlined above. The proposed structure of the special issue is divided into two sections, a) section on problematising #metoo movement and b) teaching about #metoo movement. An introductory article will outline a timeline of the movement, its impact and some issues and debates that arose, and then discuss these against articles in the special issue.

You are kindly invited to submit the final versions of your research paper (in electronic format) by October 31, 2020.

The research papers should be submitted in English, and it should not exceed 16 pages (A4 format, max. 40.000 characters with spaces, line spacing 1.5, font Times New Roman, font size 12).

The submitted papers will be subject to double-blind peer review. In order to ensure the authenticity, relevance and legibility, the submitted papers are also subject to the process of proof-reading and copy-editing by the editors and editorial staff.

For technical details and editorial requirements on preparing the paper for publication, please refer to Author Guidelines, available at http://casopisi.junis.ni.ac.rs/index.php/FUPhilSocPsyHist/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

Editor of the thematic issue: Dr Martina Topić, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom

Niš, February 14, 2020

ISSN 1820-8495 (Print)

ISSN 1820-8509 (Online)

Edited by Claudia Mellado

This book contests and challenges pre-established assumptions about a dominant type of journalism prevailing in different political, economic, and geographical contexts to posit the fluid, and dynamic nature of journalistic roles.

The book brings together scholars from Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia, reporting findings based on data produce thematic chapters that address how journalistic cultures vary around the globe, specifically in relation to challenges that journalists face in performing their journalistic roles. The study measures, compares, and analyzes the materialization of the interventionist, the watchdog, the loyal-facilitator, the service, the infotainment, and the civic roles in more than 30,000 print news stories from 18 countries. It also draws from hundreds of surveys with journalists to explain the link between ideals and practices, and the conditions that shape this divide.

This book will be of great relevance to scholars and researchers working in the fields of journalism, journalism practices, philosophy of journalism, sociology of media, and comparative journalism research.

You can pre-order our book on this link: https://www.routledge.com/Beyond-Journalistic-Norms-Role-Performance-and-News-in-Comparative- Perspective/Mellado/p/book/9781138388499

March 15-16, 2021

University College Cork (Ireland)

Deadline: October 30, 2020

Conference Theme

The Irish Humanities Alliance (IHA), in collaboration with University College Cork, presents- “EXCITING NEWS! Event, Narration and Impact from Past to Present,” bringing together a broad range of current research in Ireland and abroad, regarding an issue of crucial importance for the understanding of past cultures and our own. The conference is organised in collaboration with the EURONEWS project, an IRC-funded effort to trace the concept and use of news back to the early modern origins, as Ireland became integrated within a European network of shared experiences. The conference will take place on 15-16 March 2021 (either virtually or socially distanced subject to government Covid-19 advice and regulations at that time).

Call for Papers

Papers will discuss the many ramifications of media-induced anxiety and anxiety-induced mediality, engaging the humanities, including history, film studies, literature, folklore, creative writing and adjacent fields intersected by sociology, politology, psychology, anthropology. News Media here include all means of mass communication impinging on daily experience, from books to music, from the social web to films, on multiple platforms and in multiple languages across municipal, state, regional boundaries.

Irish humanities have a key role to play in understanding the wider ramifications of traumatised media space that are fresh as today’s news reporting about BREXIT or COVID19 and as serious as the recurring nightmares about catastrophic events which have occurred on these and other shores from time to time.

Panels will be oriented around the basic themes of production (form and narration), distribution (reproduction and exchange), translation (cultural and linguistic), vocabularies (narrative representations), iconographies (visual representations), consumption (usage, redistribution), response (appropriation, agency), control (institutions, individuals), pathologies (biological, psychological and social), etc., including such specific analytical categories as disasters, scapegoating, traumatic memory, and the like, as well as methodological insights regarding text analysis and data mining. The two-day conference will close with a round table drawing together and updating the perspectives studied, with suggestions for further research. Publication of proceedings is envisioned in an opensource framework.

We invite proposals for:

• 20 minute papers, from local, International and conceptual perspectives (abstracts 250 words);

• three person panels (abstracts 500 words).

Proposals should be emailed to Prof. Brendan Dooley b.dooley@ucc.ie by 5pm on Friday 30 October 2020.

Further information

Irish Humanities Alliance – Promoting the Value of the Humanities

19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, Ireland

T. +353 1 609 0666 E. info@irishhumanities.com

April 8-9, 2021

Virtual conference

Deadline: October 15, 2020

Biennial Early Career Conference

CARGC Fellows (Virtual) Conference on Global Communication and Post-Pandemic Politics

UPDATE: Given the circumstances, the conference will take place virtually. The first day, April 8, will be focused on participants and the second day, April 9, will be open to the general public.

On suddenly sparse streets, artists confront the grim reality of the moment. With a nod to the anti-globalization movement or the music notes seemingly playing off the guest that has overstayed its welcome, both messages diagnose the ailment and gesture toward a hope for and belief in change. In a moment shaped by closures – of borders, stores, schools, offices, jobs, and, for many, a dream of “going back to normal” – what openings are made possible?

The second biennial early career conference by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania asks: What are post-pandemic politics? We understand post-pandemic, not as a myopic focus on COVID-19, but rather as an optic illuminating both persistent and emergent conditions of inequity and precarity. We also use post-pandemic as an opportunity to imagine new forms of politics, community, solidarity, and action.

We invite early career scholars, activists, artists, and journalists to reflect on the crucial role of communication in this moment of rupture and offer the following questions as a provocation for participants:

What can the critical study of global communication – in all its expansiveness and imaginative force – offer us in a moment when uncertainty, insecurity, and risk have saturated hegemonic imaginations of the global?

How might these times, which have both exacerbated and highlighted marginalization and oppression across global Norths and Souths and along lines of race, class, gender, and other axes of identity, move us towards justice and anti-oppression?

What other ways of coming together, collective action, and organizing have been brought to the forefront of dominant imaginations, and what ways of being and living remain possible outside their ambit?

We invite a range of interventions, be they artistic, activist, academic, or some combination thereof, on post-pandemic politics in the context of global communication. Possible topics may include:

• Affect (paranoia, exhaustion, anxiety, grief, joy, shame, pressure, hope, etc.)
• Communication and Rights (privacy, freedom of speech, harassment, etc.)
• Connectivity (broadband, virtualization of life, audience practices, etc.)
• Data science (Big Data, small data, profiling, tracing-and-tracking, etc.)
• Discipline and Surveillance: (state, corporate, and community surveillance, violence through surveillance, internet of things, artificial intelligence, etc.).
• Globalization and Communication (the global and the local, North-to-South, South-to-South, South-to-North processes, transnationalism, nation, borders and citizenship, etc.)
• Humor (memes, online humor, entertainment, political satire, etc.)
• Inequalities (digital inequalities, communication inequalities, structural inequalities, like those related to gender, race or ethnicity, class, sexuality, and others.)
• Infrastructures and Materialities (communication and media infrastructure, power concentration, etc.)
• Journalism (news productions, news reception, misinformation, polarization, etc.)
• Labor (precarious labor, gig economy, unionization, etc.).
• Media representations ((in)visibilities, audience reception, etc.).
• Social Movements and Activism (digital activism, feminist activism, anti-racist movements, etc.)
• Visual and sound communication (videos, photographs, visual and sound interventions, etc.)

Date and Place:

The conference will be held virtually on April 8 and 9, 2021.

Submissions:

Contributions can take the form of academic papers or other creative and multimodal works (audio submissions, short film or documentaries, or creative writing). Please, follow the specific guidelines for each type of submission. Submit your work using this form.

Review Process:

Submissions will be reviewed based on clarity, significance, relevance, creativity, and how well they respond to the conference theme. Only submissions that meet the submission guidelines will be considered. For any questions about the submission or review process, please reach out to cargcfellows@gmail.com.

Deadline:

The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2020.

This conference is the second biennial early career conference at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Its inaugural conference was held on March 27 and 28, 2019 and featured a keynote conversation at Slought, a not-for-profit organization based at the University of Pennsylvania, entitled “Practicing Decolonization,” as well as presentations by 13 early career scholars.

University of Copenhagen

The Media Studies Section, Department of Communication (COMM), Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Denmark, invites applications for a postdoc position in digital media analysis to be filled by December 1, 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter. The position is for 2 years.

Job content

The postdoc will be part of the project ProDem - Protests and Democracy: How Movement Parties, Social Movements, and Active Citizens are Reshaping Europe funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and will work alongside co-principal investigator Assoc.Prof. Christina Neumayer. The project aims to comparatively assess the medium and long-term effects of the triple interaction between citizens, social movements, and movement parties. We seek to explain how social movements and movement parties, together with a realignment of citizens’ values and attitudes, have affected democratic quality in Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and the UK between the peak of the global wave of protests in 2011 and 2019.

The postdoc works with digital media analysis and should have experience with collecting and analyzing data from various social media platforms. In collaboration with the co-PI at UCPH, the postdoc investigates patterns of the triple interaction between citizens, social movements, and movement parties over time. An interest in civic or political participation, social movements, political parties, digital media and political communication, is an advantage. The postdoc will be part of the Media Studies section at COMM at UCPH and will work in close cooperation with the international ProDem consortium. There will be ample opportunity for exchange and collaboration with postdocs and senior researchers in the consortium.

Qualifications requirements

The successful candidate will have, or is about to be awarded, a PhD in computational social science, media or communication studies, sociology, political science, or a related discipline, have good command of digital media analysis and/or computational social science methods as well as an interest in civic or political participation, social movements, political parties, digital or broadcasting media.

Furthermore, emphasis will be placed on the following:

• Experience with computational social science methods / digital data analysis methods, and data collection from various social media platforms;
• A developing publication record in good quality publications;
• Ability to conduct literature reviews and relevant background research (to identify, summarize and code relevant studies for further analysis);
• Good written and verbal communication skills and an ability to communicate research findings effectively to both specialist and lay audiences including project stakeholders such as policy-makers, party or social movement representatives, in order to generate impact;
• Interest in civic or political participation, social movements, political parties, digital media and political communication;
• Experience with data visualizations;
• Knowledge of a range of research methods;
• Ability to publish, e.g. blogs, with content management systems;
• Ability to work effectively in a team, together with the principal investigator at UCPH and the other members of the consortium, as well as independently; to recognize when to seek advice and to meet collective deadlines.

For further information, please contact Assoc.Prof. Christina Neumayer, christina.neumayer@hum.ku.dk

Full job post and details for the appointment procedure: https://jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabelige-stillinger/?show=152580

December 3, 2020

Online

Deadline: October 15, 2020

A one-day online academic-industry conference of the SCMO network in cooperation with HMTM Hanover (Institute for Musicology) and TU Berlin (Audio Communication Group)

The global Covid-19 pandemic, the resulting lockdown imposed in many countries, as well as related safety measures taken by governments and authorities pose big challenges to classical music culture. Concert producers, artists and audiences are still suffering intensely from the situation, whilst digital streaming of recorded or live music events has quickly turned out to be the only way to supply classical music enthusiasts and to provide a perspective for artists, musicians as well as opera and concert houses.

Shortly before lockdown, the successful kick-of meeting of the European “Streaming Classical Music and Opera” (SCMO) academic-industry collaboration network took place, with 14 participants from four different countries. Sixth months later, we are eager to continue and extend the fruitful discussion between classical music researchers and opera and concert producers regarding psychological, sociological, cultural and economic aspects that pertain the use of streaming technology in the field of classical music. Given the remaining travel restrictions and the unforeseeable further development of the pandemic with the upcoming winter months, we have decided for an online conference format.

In the initial part of a series of three consecutive online conferences planned for the upcoming months we will focus on the institutional perspective: Our call for contributions arrives at a point in time, when several European countries have already seen leases in pandemic-related concert prohibitions in terms of open-air concerts and indoor music events with reduced audience. Hence, streaming digital content is no longer the only way to reach the audience, however, a ‘normal’ public service is also still not possible for most institutions.

Hence, we expect increasingly heterogeneric conditions for classical music performances across Europe together with an unclear future perspective for the whole field and, specifically, the role of streaming. At this time, we deem it fruitful to invite managers, producers and event organizers to share and discuss their experiences and current strategies amongst each other, as well as with researchers devoted to the institutional perspective in the field of classical music.

For December 3rd 2020, we therefore ask network members as well as externals for short 20min presentations on questions such as:

• How do lockdowns and safety measures affect the work organization of opera and concert houses?
• How do they alter marketing and advertising strategies for performances and streaming content?
• How is the work of dramaturgs, the artist booking, and the repertoire influenced and changed?
• How does the pandemic affect the offered aesthetic formats online and on stage?
• Which new role does, specifically, streaming technology play in this time of transition?

While the SCMO network is centrally devoted to the topic of streaming, we strongly encourage to also submit contributions on related issues regarding to the overall conference theme of “strategic realignment due to the pandemic”. Presentation formats are not limited to scientific research reports, but can also be informal talks on in-house experiences, mission statements, video examples from performances, media reviews etc..

Proposals for individual contributions (20 minutes presentation time) should be submitted before October 15th 2020 to ruth.mueller-lindenberg@hmtm-hannover.de. They should include presenter’s full name, country and institution, e-mail address, and presentation title. For academic research presentations we would like you to also include a short abstract of maximum 350 words. Apart from individual presentations and their discussion, the conference will also provide time slots for general discussions on central topics. Selected contributions of the conference series will be later published online in an academic outlet.

For more information and membership in the SCMO network, please contact hauke.egermann@york.ac.uk

October 29, November 5, 12 and 19, 2020

Online

Authenticity has become a buzzword for our times. Much of the travel industry is built around the provision of ‘authentic’ experiences, global brands fight to be seen as ‘authentic’ and social media platforms are awash with arguments about the authenticity of this post or that vlogger. But what we do mean by authenticity? And why have these debates grown so dramatically in the last two decades?

Leading experts from around the globe will be discussing the answers to these and other related questions in a series of webinars hosted by the Centre for Research in Communications and Culture at Loughborough University. Commencing in autumn 2020, the series will feature high-profile scholars from across the social sciences, including Professor Sharon Zukin of City University, New York and Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser of London School of Economics, UK.

The concept of authenticity has a long history, having first emerged as a response to the processes of homogenisation, rationalisation and standardisation at the heart of modernity. In recent years, authenticity has again come to the fore where social, political, cultural and technological upheavals give rise to feelings of distrust, detachment and alienation against which supposedly authentic people, places and things are sought out for their reassuring certainty and value. Yet, there are huge contradictions and inequalities in who can make claim to authenticity and its construction and communication invariably involves competing narratives and oppositional assertions about what is authentic and how and why the authentic gains its value.

The purpose of the webinars – and of an edited book planned to follow the series – is to provide a space for scholars interested in the culture, politics and ethics of authenticity to share their research and insights and together examine the continued salience of this concept to understanding of contemporary social, cultural and political life.

Each webinar features a keynote speaker followed by a panel of 3-4 research presentation and time for questions and discussion. Registration is free via the individual links included in the session summaries below.

Series Schedule

Webinar One: Cities & Urban Culture

Thursday 29th October, 1400-1630

Keynote: Sharon Zukin (City University of New York)

We start the series by examining the relevance of authenticity to understanding cities and urban culture. While urban spaces are often valorised as sites of creativity and cultural expression, the multiple ways in which cities develop and change through fractious processes of growth, urban renewal and gentrification gives rise to competing claims to authenticity. Cities often manifest processes of globalisation, homogenisation and, increasingly, digitisation, yet enclaves of authentic sociability survive and continue to appeal to many.

Register for Webinar One here

Webinar Two: Place & Heritage

Thursday, 5th November, 1400-1630

Keynote: Jillian Rickly (University of Nottingham)

The second webinar in the series addresses debates about the preservation of history and the communication of culture and belonging. Thus, many parts of the tourism and heritage industries involve complex decisions about the (re)creation of the past and who can access cultural communities and traditions. Specific locations often give rise to tensions about claims to authorship and ownership of ‘real’ culture making authenticity claims a significant feature of many struggles over heritage, culture and place.

Register for Webinar Two here

Webinar Three: Social Media & Digital Communication

Thursday 12th November, 1000-1230*

Keynote: Crystal Abidin (Curtin University, Australia)

*Please note earlier start time of Webinar Three accommodating the time difference between UK and keynote speaker

The advent and meteoric rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram means authenticity has recently taken on new meaning in explaining the appeal of internet celebrities, their followers and the wider pressure to self-present an authentic version of the self in digital spaces. The third webinar in the series will address these concerns by examining a range of recent trends and examples which question how the authentic can be created, communicated and profited from in creative yet often highly problematic ways.

Register for Webinar Three here

Webinar Four: Gender & Identity

Thursday 19th November, 1400-1630

Keynote: Sarah Banet-Weiser (London School of Economics)

Webinar Four brings the initial series to a close through discussion of the relationship between gender, identity and authenticity. The webinar will feature papers addressing how claims to “real” femininity and masculinity are contested and how gender politics frequently involves the negotiation of competing claims to authentic voices, bodies and gendered ways of being.

Register for Webinar Four here

Event Organisation Team

Dr Michael Skey, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies, Loughborough University, Centre for Research in Communication and Culture

Dr Thomas Thurnell-Read, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Loughborough University, Centre for Research in Communication and Culture

Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross

The book is published today in the UK following earlier publication in the US.

It’s available with a 30% discount at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/parenting-for-a-digital-future-9780190874704?cc=gb&lang=en& (order with promo code ASFLYQ6). The first chapter of the book is free to read until 24 October at Expectations.

“Parenting for a Digital Future” asks how parents manage digital devices, what they should expect of them, and why these questions are so contested within families, among policymakers and in the media. Based on rigorous and in-depth fieldwork with diverse families around London, we argue that ‘digital parenting’ is not only about technology, salient as this may seem. Indeed, family practices and values around technology have become a crucial means by which people explore pressing dilemmas over how to live, what constitutes wellbeing and what ‘good life’ to hope for.

By inviting parents to look back to their own childhood and then forward to their children’s futures, we first position parenting in relation to the risk society before showing how digital technologies intensify families’ opportunities and risks in distinctive ways. We introduce three distinct genres for ‘digital parenting’ – embrace, balance and resist – and we explore how these play out in terms of screen time, social inequalities, geeky families, parents of children with disabilities, and more.

The book reveals the pincer movement of parenting in the digital age, in which parents are, on the one hand, more burdened with responsibilities given the erosion of state support and an increasingly uncertain financial future and yet, on the other, charged with respecting and encouraging the agency of their child as they negotiate ‘the democratic family.’

Links

Read more at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2020/08/19/book/

Review copies available from academic.reviews@oup.com

UK book launch event on 24th September, please register at https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2020/09/202009241600/parenting