ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Deadline: September 15, 2020

Purpose

Gaming is taughtacross multiple content areas (e.g., media studies, education, computer science, design, etc.) and multiple contexts (k-12, undergrad, grad, vocational ed, professional development). However, we don't always share syllabi, teaching strategies, or best practices in the teaching of games. Arguably you can do a Google search to find some syllabi; however, sometimes those syllabi are outdated. They are skeletal structures missing content, or they fail to include deep and rich instructor perspectives. The goal of this edited book is to bring together faculty that teach gaming to share such content.

Each chapter would include multiple parts. For instance:

• Teaching objectives - what are the main goals of the course
• Teaching pedagogy - how do you approach teaching and learning
• Teaching best practices - what have you learned works best; what has failed
• Teaching tools - what tools do you use and why
• Teaching syllabi - each chapter ends with a syllabusthat is enhanced(moves beyond bare bonesto include greater detail)
• Book organization would be by content area (e.g., game programming, topical focilike music or art, education, etc.).

Details

To be considered: please submit a 250-word abstract by September 15 that includes:

• Author Name(s)
• Title of course
• Course keywords (e.g., content area like computer science or design, context like grad vs. undergrad, and medium like online or face-to-face).
• Brief description of course

Full chapters would be due December 1, 2020. Accepted chapters will receive a complete template to support writing. The book will be published open access with Creative Commons licensing.

April 17, 2021

The Queens, Leeds, United Kingdom

Deadline: November 30, 2020

Please note that the conference date is provisional and subject to change due to the epidemiological situation with the COVID-19 pandemic. We will not open a fee payment system until we are sure we can host the event. Please do not book flights and accommodation before the conference date is confirmed by the organizer.

Femspec Journal and The Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, in partnership with Intellect, are seeking abstracts of 250-300 words for papers or creative works in any medium–poetry, fiction, film, TV, dance, theatre, music, opera, social media, gaming, graphic novels, or genre–surrealism, science fiction, magical realism, gothic, horror, fantasy, myth, folklore, rock, punk, etc, that challenges gender using tools that go beyond realism using the speculative exploration of any kind including supernatural or utopian/dystopian framing, posing the “what if,” making gender-bending solutions to contemporary global social and cultural issues, using imagination and fantasy to pose resolution to these problems showing how the problems grew from lack of alignment of power relations between the sexes in the first place.

We encourage submissions of single papers, of panels of three to four papers, and creative works. Themes and questions to be explored might include (but not limited to):

• sci-fi in popular television
• gender in Black Mirrors, the Outcasts, Misfits, the Sarah Jane Adventures, etc.
• what would happen if women had the power to imagine the world? What new kinds of institutions would emerge and what obstacles? How might we meet and overcome those challenges?
• what can we learn from The Handmaid’s Tale, in any of its forms–novel, film, television series? or The Testaments?
• Historically, women have imagined worlds before. What are the lessons to be learned from how these texts have worn with time: The Furies, The Wanderground, Demeter Flower, Motherlines, Parable of the Sower? Female Man?
• How did the journey of the Enterprise change when its Captain became a woman? Or did it?
• How did the plots change when Dr Who became a woman? Or did they? What propelled that change? How do you account for the reaction of the fan base?
• Are the superheroines in series like SuperGirl every really allowed to save the world? Why, and how? Or why not?

Submissions of abstracts (up to 300 words) with an email contact should be sent to Dr Batya Weinbaum (weinbaumbatya@gmail.com) and Dr Martina Topić (martinahr@gmail.com) by 30 November 2020. Decisions will be sent by 30 December 2020 and registrations are due by 01.03. 2021.

The registration fee is £200 and it includes,

• Conference bag and folder with materials
• Meals and drinks during the conference
• WLAN during the conference
• Certificate of attendance
• An opportunity to publish a paper in conference proceedings

Publications

Two special numbers of a journal will be edited, one issue on arts and literature for Femspec and one for an Intellect journal (depending on submissions to the conference)

For more information about Femspec see here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/batyawein

For more information about Intellect, journals see here: https://www.intellectbooks.com/journals

Centre for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences is a private organisation originally founded in December 2013 in Croatia (EU). Since July 2016 the Centre is registered in Leeds, UK. Please note that this is a grassroots initiative to overcome bureaucracy of big conferences and to allow an opportunity to participants from the Third World to present their paper due to language help provided by the organizer who proofreads and edits proposals before sending them to review. Thus, the conferences are international and attended by participants from all over the world, however, these conferences are not massive and impersonal as the entire conference organisation is a ‘one-woman show’ (Dr Martina Topić, https://www.martinatopic.com). The conferences provide a good networking opportunity in small groups of like-minded scholars.

Participants are responsible for finding funding to cover transportation and accommodation costs during the whole period of the conference. This applies to both presenting and non-presenting participants. The Centre will not discriminate based on the origin and/or methodological/paradigmatic approach of prospective conference participants.

Visa Information

The Centre will issue a Visa letter to participants with UK entry clearance requirement. The British Home Office has a very straightforward procedure, which is not excessively lengthy and the Centre will also issue early decisions to participants with Visa requirements.

March 25-27, 2021

Warsaw, Poland

Deadline: November 1, 2020

During the Covid-19 pandemic, most Churches and believers worldwide resorted to the media to build and maintain their communities, identities, and share their beliefs, which has shown how important media has been for religious organizations and individuals. Analyzing the pre-pandemic context, and inspired by the transformations of mediatized religion landscape, we are excited to open the Call for Papers for the conference “Religious Identity and the Media. Methods, concepts, and new research avenues”, organized by the team of the DFG and NCN funded research project “Minorities and the media. The communicative construction of religious identity in times of deep mediatisation” (https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/religionswissenschaft/forschung/forschungsprojekte/minorities-and-the-media).

The conference theme discusses the manifold relationships between creating, negotiating, maintaining and challenging religious and religion-related identities, and various types of media and forms of media use.

It will be hosted by the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The keynote lectures will be held by Mia Lövheim (Uppsala University) and Christoph Günther (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz).

For the CALL FOR PAPERS visit the conference website: https://media.religion2021.uni-bremen.de/

The deadline for paper proposals is November 1st, 2020.

We are able to financially support two PhD students with the amount of up to 300€ for travel and accommodation costs. For more information on the travel allowance visit: https://media.religion2021.uni-bremen.de/WordPress/travel-allowance/

We will continue to monitor the situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and we will comply with any relevant administrative regulations. We also consider hosting a partially or fully online conference if that is the best solution.

Kind Regards from the organizing committee:

• Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, head of project (University of Bremen)
• Dorota Hall, head of project (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
• Łukasz Fajfer, research associate (University of Bremen)
• Marta Kolodziejska, research associate (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
• Carolin Müller, research assistant

Edited by: Pia Majbritt Jensen and Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen

A new anthology, The Global Audiences of Danish Television Drama, edited by Pia Majbritt Jensen and Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen, sheds light on the global success of Danish television drama and explores the theoretical implications for audience studies.

“When Danish television drama spread across the world it surprised both industry professionals and academics”, write Pia Majbritt Jensen and Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen in the anthology’s first chapter, “It appeared that a public broadcaster from a relatively small nation with a language spoken by only 5.6 million people had succeeded in creating what could indeed be termed ‘a peripheral counter-flow’ of television content.”

This new anthology is the first publication to consider the transnational audiences of Nordic Noir. Intended for students, researchers, and media professionals, it explores the reception of three Danish series – The Bridge, The Killing and Borgen, among global audiences by investigating how they were received in seven different countries: Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Turkey, and the UK.

“The scale of the study is truly global”, comments Pia Majbritt Jensen and Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen, and they continue:

We have used a highly innovative approach to transnational audiences insofar as we also consider distributors, buyers, and cultural intermediaries as important audiences. The anthology maps out transnational audiences and non-Anglophone content in all their complexities.

As a whole, the anthology provides insight on global-audience research in an age of multi-platform and multi-directional media flows, as well as on the complex nature of contemporary audiences located in different parts of the world.

The Global Audiences of Danish Television Drama offers a major contribution to research on Danish television drama, the international circulation of audiovisual content produced in non-Anglophone contexts, and the phenomenon of Nordic Noir.

Read it here

The book is available Open Access on Nordicoms’ website.

• Read The Global Audiences of Danish Television Drama

About the editors

Pia Majbritt Jensen is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies and Journalism, Aarhus University.

Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Aarhus University.

Table of contents

Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen & Pia Majbritt Jensen, Unfolding the global travel of Danish television drama series

Pia Majbritt Jensen & Marion McCutcheon,“Othering the Self and same-ing the Other”: Australians watching Nordic Noir

Andrea Esser, The appeal of “authenticity”: Danish television series and their British audiences

Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen & Alessandra Meleiro, Brazilian encounters: Buyers and bloggers appropriating content

Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen, A cosmopolitan tribe of viewers: Crime, women, and akogare in Japan

Yeşim Kaptan, Sensing authenticity, seeing aura: Turkish audiences’ reception of Danish drama

Susanne Eichner, Lifeworld relevance and practical sense-making: Audience engagement with Danish television drama series

Convergence (special issue)

Deadline: October 9, 2020

Guest Editors:

• Aleena Chia (Simon Fraser University) aleena.chia@sfu.ca
• Paolo Ruffino (University of Liverpool) p.ruffino@liverpool.ac.uk

Since its inception, the humanistic field of digital game studies has been concerned with the politics and aesthetics of interactivity and its delimitation of player agency in relation to other screen-based media. Drawing from media and cultural studies, the humanistic study of games has adopted normative frameworks that divide audiences into active and passive, and media into new and old, in order to evaluate players’ power over and participation within architected environments. Today, discussions about agency in games has diversified from the analysis of interactive forms (Manovich 1996; Laurel 1997; Ndalianis 1999) to include considerations about the contexts of participation and co-creation in game production (Banks 2013; Joseph 2018) diversity and inclusion in game representations and communities (Ruberg and Shaw 2017; Gray and Leonard 2018; Stang 2019), and affordances of bodies, devices, and platforms (Keogh 2018; Brock and Fraser 2018; Nieborg and Poell 2018) that make up assemblages of play (Taylor 2009; De Paoli and Kerr 2010; Apperley and Jayemanne 2012). In 2018, The Velvet Light Trap featured a special issue on power, freedom, and control in game studies, and GAME: Italian Journal of Game Studies is planning a special issue on “Claiming Video Game Agency as an Interdisciplinary Concept.”

Agency continues to be a keyword in game studies. Agency is, however, at an inflection point in the cognate fields of critical theory and media studies. Marxist feminists have proposed ecological frameworks for living ethically in the Anthropocene by reconceptualizing capitalism through complex interdependencies and multispecies commons instead of the agency of individuals or institutions (Roelvink and Gibson-Graham 2009; Tsing 2015). Post-humanists have critiqued Western humanist ideals of reason and autonomy as masculinist, ethnocentric, and anthropocentric (Braidotti 2016) and proposed cognitive assemblages to understand linguistic and volitional acts as emergent from nonconscious biological and algorithmic processes and environments (Hayles 2017). According to this scholarship, once we shift the primary unit of analysis from the properties of objects and boundaries of bodies to intra-acting phenomena, it becomes clear that “agency is not an attribute but the ongoing reconfigurings of the world” (Barad 2007: 141). This shift requires a reworking of causality, which has been undertaken in game studies by decentering hegemonic play practices configured around goal-based challenges and mastery (Keogh 2018), and by using speculative design to challenge assumptions about humans as separate causal agents in locative media’s material entanglements with devices, interfaces, and infrastructures (Leorke and Wood 2019).

This special issue continues this line of inquiry by tracing connections between intra-acting agencies at different scales throughout the assemblage of play. By curating cases that connect devices and bodies to game forms, genres, and governance across infrastructural, material, and discursive scales, this special issue aims to inflect posthuman concerns in ongoing debates about interactivity, inclusion, participation, and co-creation in games. Guided by the pragmatism of the feminist eco-humanities, this special issue will deploy theories and consider methods (Hamilton and Taylor 2017) to politicize ways of conceptualizing, designing, and organizing games for agency beyond human centrism. How can critical game scholars address and advocate for more inclusive, democratic, and sustainable forms of play, understood as performative outcomes of an array of interdependencies between humans, environments and non-human entities? As an artistic and economic expression of the mediated technicity of our current age, videogames crystalize the conundrum of individual agency that has beset our screens and bedevilled our politics. Videogames also embed critiques of this conundrum that are often ambivalent but occasionally trenchant. How can critical game scholarship on post-human agency intervene in pressing debates about persuasive technologies’ manipulation of human volition and its long shadow over the mechanisms and institutions of collective decision-making that constitute democracy?

Prospective authors are invited to address the questions above, or expand the line of inquiry towards new critical trajectories.

Submission information:

Please submit a 500 word abstract inclusive of essential bibliography, and short bio (150 word) to both aleena.chia@sfu.ca and p.ruffino@liverpool.ac.uk

• by Friday 9th October 2020
• Notification of acceptance: end of October 2020
• First draft due: February 2021
• Publication: February 2022

*More detailed publication timeline to follow

A selection of authors will be invited to submit a full paper. Please note that acceptance of abstract does not guarantee publication, given that all papers will be put through the journal’s peer review process.

For any question please contact the guest editors:

• Aleena Chia (Simon Fraser University) aleena.chia@sfu.ca
• Paolo Ruffino (University of Liverpool) p.ruffino@liverpool.ac.uk

References

Apperley, T. and Jayemane, D., 2012. Game studies’ material turn. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 9(1), pp.5-25.

Banks, J., 2013. Co-creating videogames. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Braidotti, R., 2016. Posthuman critical theory. In Critical posthumanism and planetary futures (pp. 13-32). Springer, New Delhi.

Brock, T., Fraser, E. 2018.Is Computer Gaming a Craft? Pre-hension, practice and puzzle-solving in gaming labour. Information, Communication and Society 21(9): 1219-1233.

De Paoli, S. and Kerr, A., 2010. The assemblage of cheating: How to study cheating as imbroglio in MMORPGs. The Fibreculture Journal, 16.

Gray, K.L. and Leonard, D.J. eds., 2018. Woke Gaming: Digital Challenges to Oppression and Social Injustice. University of Washington Press.

Hamilton, L. and Taylor, N., 2017. Ethnography after humanism: Power, politics and method in multi-species research. Springer.

Hayles, N.K., 2017. Unthought: The power of the cognitive nonconscious. University of Chicago Press.

Joseph, D.J., 2018. The discourse of digital dispossession: paid modifications and community crisis on steam. Games and Culture, 13(7), pp.690-707.

Keogh, B., 2018. A play of bodies: How we perceive videogames. MIT Press.

Leorke, D. and Wood, C., 2019. ‘Alternative Ways of Being’: Reimagining Locative Media Materiality through Speculative Fiction and Design. Media Theory.

Manovich, L., 1996. On totalitarian interactivity. Posting on www. rhizome. com. Retrieved May, 25, p.2008.

Murray, J.H., 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck. Simon and Schuster.

Ndalianis, A., 1999. " Evil will walk once more": phantasmagoria-the stalker film as interactive movie?. New York University Press.

Nieborg, D.B. and Poell, T., 2018. The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity. New Media & Society, 20(11), pp.4275-4292.

Roelvink, G., Gibson, K. and Graham, J., 2009. A postcapitalist politics of dwelling: Ecological humanities and community economies in conversation.

Ruberg, B. and Shaw, A. eds., 2017. Queer game studies. U of Minnesota Press.

Stang, S., 2019. “This Action Will Have Consequences”: Interactivity and Player Agency. Game Studies, 19(1).

Taylor, T.L., 2009. The assemblage of play. Games and Culture, 4(4), pp.331-339.

Tsing, A.L., 2015. The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.

Press Start

Deadline: October 1, 2020

Following the success of the “Digital Heroisms” online conference, we’re excited to announce a call for papers for the Press Start special issue which explores fantasy, the digital, and the concept of heroism. Press Start is an open access, peer-reviewed student journal that publishes the best undergraduate and (post)graduate research from across the multidisciplinary subject of Game Studies. The CFP is open to both under and postgraduates who contributed to the conference, as well as other students inspired by the topic. To submit, you must be a registered student or within one year of graduating. Please see and adhere to the Press Start submission guidelines (https://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/about/submissions).

"The power of the fantasy increases if it offers us something genuinely new and compelling. The limitations of our own corporeality can be abolished or the ground rules changed to give us new experiences.” Kathryn Hume (2014, p. 165)

Where readers once understood heroism through a Gilgamesh, a Frodo or a Katniss, the digital subject can now figure heroism through actions, decisions, and events that are in many ways their own. Video gaming has an especial talent for creating heroes that are lived-through by their users, whether this is via the experience of leading characters such as Link through the temples of Hyrule; via choice-based play utilising avatars such as Frisk of Undertale fame; or by creating entirely unique personas in role play games such as Dragon Age. In a contemporary moment enabled and mediated by a multiplicity of digital spaces, the way we conceptualize heroism will be both enabled and contaminated by games, the virtual, and ever-increasing screentime. The realm of the digital, functioning as a receptacle of imagination, can equip players with the means to express the self. Digital spaces can serve as a conduit for both ludic and fantastical impulses. Heroic research must adapt to this interactive environment—its places, its communities, its values—if it is to keep a handle on the heroic constellation formed of informatic, computational, and digital materials.

Fantasy scholars and authors alike have sought to define the fantasy genre. Whether that be as experienced by characters as “hesitation” (Todorov, 1970, p. 68), a loose genre that can be described as a “fuzzy set” (Attebery, 1992, p. 12), or as being “the mirror of mimetic literature and its inner soul” (Mendlesohn, 2008, p.59), digital iterations of fantasy have enhanced and extended our capability to experience the immersion of fantastic worlds. Though fantasy video games may pay tribute to the literature from which the genre sprang, each form with its differing modes of performance allows the fantastic an opportunity be presented in all of its heterogeneity; players are given the opportunity to experience a new kind of protagonism, a heroism that enables the player to effect and interact with fantasy narratives. The interactivity offered by video games can enable players to experience the self in new ways, whether that be through choice-based narratives, the player-led exploration of a walking simulator, or via avatars that enable players to live the “posthuman fantasy of extending the human subject beyond itself” (Boulter, 2015, p. 3) and craft fantasy personas.

The issue will be seeking submissions on themes such as, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Defining/constructing digital heroism
• The converging interests of fantasy and digital heroism
• Digital and fantastic video game environments and their effect on heroism
• Fantasy video games and avatar creation
• Fantastic VR experiences, the self, and digital heroism
• The social/theoretical implications of digital iterations of fantasy
• Considerations of digital spaces as fantastic ones
• Heroic fantasy video game character(istics)
• Considerations of what heroism means in the digital age
• Problems with digital heroism
• Digital heroism examined through:
• Convergence culture
• Participatory culture
• Feminism
• Postcolonialism
• Queer Studies
• Disability Studies

Please email a 250-300 word abstract to g.cohen.1@research.gla.ac.uk by October 1, 2020. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out within a couple weeks and full papers will be due by January 1, 2021.

Articles in Press Start are normally expected to be 3000-5000 words in length, but for this special issue, longer papers of up to 8000 words (including references and abstracts) will be considered. Informal enquiries may be directed to Gabe Elvery Cohen (g.cohen.1@research.gla.ac.uk) and Francis Butterworth-Parr (f.butterworth-parr.1@research.gla.ac.uk), or feel free to join our friendly Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/PressStartJournal/, as well as the Digital Heroisms Discord server (https://discord.gg/bk3Nbqd) where we will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

References:

Attebery, B. (1992). Strategies of fantasy. Indiana University Press.

Bioware. (2014). Dragon age: Inquisition [Multiple Platforms]. Electronic Arts.

Boulter, J. (2015). Parables of the posthuman: Digital realities, gaming, and the player experience. Wayne State University Press.

Collins, S. (2008) Hunger games. Scholastic.

Fox, T. (2015). Undertale [Multiple Platforms]. Toby Fox.

Hume, K. (2014). Fantasy and mimesis: Responses to reality in Western literature. Routledge.

Mendlesohn, F. (2008). Rhetorics of fantasy. Wesleyan University Press.

Nintendo EPD. (2017). The legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild [Nintendo Switch]. Nintendo.

Sandars, N. K. (1972). The epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin.

Todorov, T. (1975). The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre. Cornell University Press.

Tolkien, J.R.R. (1994) The fellowship of the ring. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Special Issue - Journal of Alternative and Community Media

Deadline: October 1, 2020

Guest Editors:

• Tanja Dreher, University of New South Wales, Australia 
• Pieter Maeseele, University of Antwerp, Belgium 
• Susan Forde, Griffith University, Australia

The Journal of Alternative & Community Media (JOACM) publishes research that helps explain the shifting media environment, and the ways in which people use alternative forms of media and communication. Issues of concern to the journal include the nature and distribution of media power; access to and participation in media; media practices of communities and social movements; and the possibilities of emerging technologies and new media.

This special issue of the Journal of Alternative and Community Media is inspired by papers from the OURMedia gathering in Brussels, 2019; and the planned (but cancelled) post-conference to the ICA 2020, to submit papers on the theme,  Community and Activist Media: Resistance and Resurgence’.

Planned publication is September, 2021.

We call for academic papers alongside contributions from alternative media practitioners who will contribute to a special section, ‘Essays from the Frontline’.

Context 

From the resurgence of white supremacy and authoritarian rule to rapidly changing technologies and the rise of social media; and from the precarious state of journalism to state crackdowns on dissent and the ‘free press’, community and activist media face multiple ‘disruptions’ and challenges. While the 21^st century media environment offers increasing opportunities for ‘voice’, the challenges for community and activist media are practical, political and fundamental. At the same time that this is occurring in community and activist media, scholars in this field are often working at the intersection of research and activism, a theme explored in the 2019 OURMedia gathering.

This special issue will bring together engaged scholars to explore the challenges and opportunities for community and activist media at a time of unprecedented pressures – considering new resurgences, and enhanced opportunities for resistance. Additionally, paper proposals at the intersection of research and activism are most welcome; and by extension, papers which draw connections between scholarly activism (scholactivism) and media activism, emanating from a key theme of the OURMedia conference, are also sought.

Key questions to be explored include:

• What is the role of activist and community media in contemporary social justice struggles – including anti-racist work in the context of resurgent racisms, and intersectional work in the context of anti-feminist backlash? What are the possibilities for resistance and transformation?
• How can we best analyse and respond to white supremacist and far-right media?
• How do community and alternative media enable voices that are marginalized or excluded from the ‘mainstream’ to be heard – what can we learn (or not) from their practices?
• What is the role and value of established ‘community’ media when social media platforms enable a proliferation of voice?
• What have we learned from the legacy of platforms such as Indymedia, and how can it inform our structures, agendas and goals for the future?
• How does one integrate activism and scholarship? What are the tensions between the ‘scientific’ needs of research and commitments to social change and social justice?
• What is the state of news and current affairs – including news journalisms and issues-based talks programming – at a time of both technological and professional ‘disruption’?
• What does ‘community’ or ‘alternative’ media mean in the current digital media environment, which features a proliferation of non-mainstream voices?

The special issue welcomes participation from researchers and practitioners across community and activist media very broadly defined – including alternative media in all its guises, community media interventions, alternative journalism initiatives, citizens media, media activism and more. No APCs are charged.

Media activist and other practitioners who wish to contribute should contact Susan Forde directly (s.forde@griffith.edu.au) to discuss an alternative ‘Essays from the Frontline’ format to complement the suite of academic papers to be published in this special issue.

Timeline

• Abstracts due October 1, 2020
• Full papers due December 10, 2020
• Reviews sent to authors February 15, 2021
• Revised manuscripts due April 30, 2021
• Paper acceptances notified June 30, 2021
• Publication September 2021

Please send your abstracts to the Guest Editors: 

Tanja Dreher, t.dreher@unsw.edu.au

Pieter Maeseele, pieter.maeseele@uantwerpen.be

Susan Forde, s.forde@griffith.edu.au

October 22-23, 2020

Online

Mini-conference hosted by the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA)

Deadline: September 18, 2020

Food correlates to a number of environmental issues from land and water use to pollution from pesticides and herbicides. Food production, packaging, and waste all impact the environment. Sustainable perspectives of food may also connect with morality, ethics, and spirituality. Of course, issues of labor and culture surface as well. Individual practices and social structures all come into how we feed ourselves.

Whether you take the perspective of a researcher, digging into interviews about food or analyzing food policies, for example, OR an artist who creates food-related sculptures or performance pieces, for example, OR a practitioner, helping local community members start gardens or cook with the veggies in their CSAs, for example, we’d love to hear what you know about how best to communicate for sustainable food.

The conference will be on October 22/23, 2020 depending on where you are in the world. We will select panelists for a more academic/artistic-focused panel and facilitators for an applied, practitioner-focused workshop. We recognize that there may be overlap in these categories and that your role does not preclude you from applying for one or the other. So, you can self-identify your proposal as either for the panel or workshop. All presenters must be members of the IECA at the time of the event.

Conference attendance will be open to everyone.

Submissions must focus on the theme of communicating for food sustainability. Please submit a 500-word summary of your presentation or workshop idea via email to Samantha.Senda-Cook@theieca.org  by September 18, 2020.*

Include in your proposal what time zone you’re in and if you are willing to present at an inconvenient time (e.g., early morning, late evening, or even the middle of the night where you live).

Nordicom Review Special Issue

Deadline: November 1, 2020

Editors: Pernilla Severson (Linnaeus University), Sara Leckner (Malmö University), Carl-Gustav Lindén (University of Helsinki). For any inquiries, please contact pernilla.severson@lnu.se

Media development as an academic field focuses on research questions spanning from technical, economic, and political issues to the social and the cultural spheres. Media development has implications for society in many ways. Since all media today are more or less digital, research has approached digital media by exploring “new” methods, like digital methods (Rogers, 2019) but also as action research methods (Deuze & Witschge, 2020; Wagemans & Witschge, 2019). Action research in, as well as for, media development is part of a transformation where media research is more and more considered to solve societal problems.

Often, action research is practiced in local settings, interacting with stakeholders within a shared place and space and who have a shared concern for issues related to this. Both the local and the digital seem to have stimulated the application and appropriation of more normative projects characterised by the methods and sometimes also ideological foundations that action research utilises. In this realm, several applied projects touch upon research and development and innovation projects, innovation themes in the creative industries, and social innovation and social entrepreneurship.

It seems as though local digital media projects – spanning from business models to technologies like artificial intelligence – aim to create and solve media organisations’ problems through collaboration between researchers, media organisations, and audiences. These kinds of projects exist on other levels too, for example in applied projects from the EU, Swedish Vinnova, and so forth.

Action research is an ideological approach as much as a set of methods (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003). It comes with a more or less interventionist and collaborative goal, like collaborative media (Löwgren & Reimer, 2013), participatory communication (Tufte, 2014), alternative journalism (Deuze & Witschge, 2020), and innovation and journalism (Wagemans & Witschge, 2019).

Participant-oriented action research strives for interaction and joint knowledge production where the decisive factor is that some form of social change occurs. The classical theoretical concepts worked with are those such as empowerment, participation, and the commons. At the same time, action research methods seem to be an important driver in the increasing pressure to demonstrate research impact, spurred by innovation and development using collaborative practices.

What do these intersections and boundaries of social change, innovation, and entrepreneurship mean for media scholars using action research in digital media research? And how can scholars meet and deal with the fact that action research is often criticised for the descriptive nature, lack of analysis, and low research contribution?

Hence, as with other methodological approaches, action research methods are developing. It is therefore important to discuss what such approaches mean and can be in relation to these contemporary media developments. The aim of this special issue is to invite a broad discussion of the boundaries of the field: the advantages and challenges with action research focusing on media development in the intersection of social change, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This special issue welcomes articles on all matters pertaining to developing what an action-research approach could and should mean for media development studies.

The purpose of this special issue of Nordicom Review is to define and understand action-oriented research practices in relation to media development, where media, communication, and journalism studies have discipline specificities and cultural contexts that beneficially will enhance understandings of action research. Nordic media development shows strong linkages to the welfare state and particular national culture values. In the commercial field, action research has been rebranded as design thinking and product development (Lundin & Norbäck, 2015). What does that mean in a context where action research is also mainly used as applied research, for improving media services and developing new forms of journalism through experiments and tests? Design thinking has become the main framework for developing commercial service, also in media and journalism. And how is the particular heritage of Scandinavian Participatory Design and participatory action research explored and utilised in relation to more studies now making use of action research, more or less with the ideological standpoint of empowering the weak and making social change?

Contributions to the special issue could address, but are not limited to, action research examples within media, communication, and journalism studies from various disciplines and cultural contexts, aiming to define and describe or critically discuss issues related to this.

Contributions can, for instance, focus on some of the following themes:

• Development of action research methods in digital media studies

• Collaborative development in media organisations
• New audience approaches and participatory business media models

• Inclusion and integration of less-resourced groups

• Contributions to action research theory and method building, for example, ethics.

• Critique of action research and participatory approaches in media, communication, and journalism studies.

• Innovation and entrepreneurship for local media
• Conceptual developments on action research for social change and social innovation.

• Action research as creating “real-life difference”, not always “creating solution”.

The selection of papers to be published will take place according to the following three-step procedure:

Step 1: Authors are requested to submit the title and abstract (600 words max. incl. references) of their papers along with five to six keywords and short bios (150 words max. for each author) to the special issue editors. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 1 November 2020, and the authors will be notified of the eventual acceptance by 20 December 2020 at the latest.

Step 2: If an abstract is accepted, the authors will be requested to submit full papers (7,000 words max. inclusive of any front or end matter) anonymised for double-blind review and formatted according to the Nordicom Review guidelines. The deadline for submission of full anonymised papers is 1 May 2021, after which a double-blind peer review will take place. Please note that an accepted abstract is not automatically an accepted article. The special issue editors reserve the right to reject articles that are not in line with Nordicom Review’s aims and scope, where the quality is insufficient, or the guidelines have not been followed.

Feedback from reviewers will be sent to authors by the end of July 2021 at the latest. The deadline for submission of revised manuscripts is September 2021. Planned publication is January 2022.

No payment from authors will be expected.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

https://www.nordicom.gu.se/…4_U

Liverpool John Moores University

Contract Type: Permanent

Hours: Full Time

Job Type: Academic

Salary: £41,526 - £51,034 per annum

Vacancy Type: Academic / Research Vacancies

Closing Date: 10/09/2020

Ref No: 3006

https://jobs.ljmu.ac.uk/vacancy/lecturer-or-senior-lecturer-in-practical-film-making-423608.html

The Liverpool Screen School seeks a highly motivated individual to work in the Film Studies department, with expertise and experience in fiction filmmaking.

The Liverpool Screen School, part of LJMU's Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies, offers undergraduate programmes in Creative Writing, Drama, Film Studies, Journalism and Media Production, together with postgraduate courses in Film, Documentary, Immersive Arts, Creative Technology, International Journalism, Writing and Screenwriting.

Film Studies is a well-established programme with a growing research profile and reputation, particularly in Film Festivals, Transnational Cinemas, Documentary filmmaking, Black American culture, Sound and Audiovisual essays. The team currently comprises eight members of staff, all of whom are research and/or professionally active and play a part in delivering undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

The Film Studies Programme at LJMU offers a hybrid model with all students undertaking theoretical/critical modules alongside practical filmmaking. The department is developing its strategic priorities in research, postgraduate provision, internationalisation, public engagement and enterprise activity. Reporting to the Programme Leader, you will contribute to these developments, whilst also undertaking teaching and administrative duties across the Film Studies portfolio: BA (Hons) Film Studies, BA (Hons) Creative Writing and Film Studies and our MA Film.

Liverpool, the most filmed in city in the UK outside of London, is an excellent base to make and teach media. Filmmaking in the city is set to grow exponentially with Twickenham Studios set to open a new development of production facilities and film stages in the very heart of Liverpool at the iconic Littlewoods Building. The city boasts a vibrant culture and LJMU is proud of its many connections with local media and arts organisations, including Liverpool Film Office, Lime Pictures, ITV and the BBC The Everyman and Playhouse, The Unity Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre, The Liverpool Philharmonic and The Liverpool Tate.

LJMU is an equal opportunities employer and welcome applicants from all background and communities irrespective of age, transgender status, disability, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion or belief. All our appointments are made on merit.

Informal enquiries may be made to Ruth Doughty, Programme Leader: Film Studies at the Liverpool Screen School, Email: R.J.Doughty@ljmu.ac.uk

Please note all of our vacancies will be closed to applications at midnight on the advertised closing date, unless otherwise stated.