ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

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.

April 8 - 9, 2021

Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC), Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Deadline: September 30, 2020

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:

If held in-person, the conference will be on April 8 and 9, 2021 at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, US. It will be held remotely if the circumstances do not allow gatherings.

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.

Funding:

If the conference can be safely held in-person in April 2021, we have a small amount of funds to support participants. Please indicate in the form if you would be interested in being considered for this.

Deadline: The deadline for submissions is September 30, 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.

https://cargc.asc.upenn.edu/call-for-proposals-cargc-fellows-conference-on-global-communication-and-post-pandemic-politics/

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

The College of Communication at Boston University believes that trustworthy, high-quality communication that engages diverse audiences is an essential underpinning for a functioning society. The college invites applications for the Dalton Family Professor, who will use new and emerging media to engage colleagues and communities to address societal challenges, such as in social and economic justice, civic participation, media literacy, science/health communication, urban life, and environmental sustainability. This is a tenured, in-residence position with responsibilities for teaching, research, public engagement and support for the initiatives and curriculum of the College. We seek a forward-looking, dynamic thinker with an international reputation for scholarship and/or professional achievement in emerging communications.

The College believes that communication, as an essential tool for enhancing understanding for all communities and human endeavors, must embrace cultural and social diversity in order to achieve true excellence in our research and academic programs. BU has redoubled its commitment to more fully embody its founding principles. To that end, we are especially eager to have join our ranks a colleague who supports our institutional commitment to ensuring BU is inclusive, equitable, diverse, and a place where all constituents can thrive.

Candidates for this endowed position should present qualifications suitable for appointment as a full professor at Boston University, based on a record of scholarship and intellectual leadership. The Dalton Family Professor should demonstrate a record as a respected researcher, academic or professional in emerging and new media. The professor should have a demonstrated ability to engage students and the public in understanding the role communication plays in identifying, elucidating and solving major societal challenges that have arisen from neglecting the value of human diversity and beneficiaries of structural power. The position presents extensive opportunities for cross-disciplinary pursuits across the College, the University and with national and international institutions.

Boston University’s College of Communication strives to build understanding through education, practice, and discovery in communication. In supporting that mission, the Dalton Family Professor will provide scholarly expertise and important leadership to the university. The role will help COM bring value to communities at the university, and globally through scholarship, experimentation, and contributions to public conversation.

The Professorship is endowed by the Dalton Family, including Nathaniel Dalton, a Boston University trustee, and a Boston University School of Law graduate.

We request a curriculum vitae and a letter of interest as well as the names of three references. Applications may be sent by mail or preferable, by email as a PDF document to:

Maureen A. Mahoney

Associate Dean

College of communication

Boston University

640 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston, MA 02215

Email: maclark@bu.edu

Inquiries may be made to comdean@bu.edu or 617-353-3488. All will be kept confidential.

Review of Materials will begin September 1, 2020, and continue until the position is filled. The estimated start date for the successful candidate is July 1, 2021.

Established in 1947, the College of Communication (COM) at Boston University is a large college with a department specializing in Journalism, as well as a department of Film & Television and a department of Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations. COM’s student population exceeds 2,000 annually, including undergraduates, graduate and PhD’s. The College integrates a strong liberal arts core with a heavy focus on preparing students for careers as communication professionals. Our faculty is a blend of traditional academicians and widely experienced professionals. Located in the “hub of education” and a major media market, Boston University’s College of Communication offers prospective faculty members a wealth of opportunities for collaborative efforts in academic and professional spheres.

Boston University is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.

October 24, 2020

Online/ School of International Communications, University of Nottingham Ningbo China

Deadline: September 20, 2020

We are excited to announce this year’s Chinese DiGRA conference, hosted by the School of International Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China on the 24th of October 2020. Given the current restrictions on travel, we are planning this year’s Chinese DiGRA as an online event. Papers will be presented via Zoom to registered conference attendees, and there will be Q&A sessions as usual. While we would much prefer to be inviting everyone to Ningbo, there are some advantages to the online format: this year, we encourage people to submit and present in Chinese or English, and we will be providing subtitling for all the presentations.

Conference themes

We invite submissions on any aspect of Chinese games, game industries, game design and gaming cultures. We also invite submissions from people located in the Chinese-speaking region who are researching any aspect of games. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Analyses of game design and development traditions and practices in the region
• Representation, diversity and inclusiveness in ‘Chinese’ games and game (development/play) cultures
• The Chinese game industries and their future possibilities/weaknesses
• Critical analysis of the Chinese game industries
• Gaming and production cultures in specific ‘Chinese’ regions
• China as the biggest videogame market in the world
• Critical analyses of ‘Chinese’ games and games popular in China
• Critical considerations of future game development in the Chinese-speaking region
• Local game design issues
• Specificities regarding computer games within Chinese cross-media environments
• Computer games and playability in the context of interactive art and creative media
• Government policy on production and consumption of games
• Esports in the Chinese speaking region and beyond
• The history of Chinese games and gaming
• Comparative analyses of Chinese and other games, game industries and game cultures

The Chinese DiGRA conference facilitates networking amongst game scholars working in the Chinese-speaking region. Therefore, apart from the above topics we also encourage submissions from scholars located in the Chinese-speaking region working on any aspect of game research.

Format:

Submissions can be in English or Chinese.

Please submit a maximum 1000 word (or 1700 characters) extended abstract.

Important dates

• September 20th: Deadline for submissions
• September 30th: Decisions announced. Presenters receive additional practical information about how to record and submit their presentations (we recommend PowerPoint with voiceover or the free and open software OBS [Open Broadcast Software])
• October 1st: Conference registration opens
• October 7th: To facilitate subtitling, we ask all presenters to send us a video (or a PowerPoint presentation with voiceover) and transcript of their presentation in advance. We will translate and subtitle the video/PPT with voiceover. The presentation will be broadcast at the conference, and this will be followed by a live Q&A session.
• October 24th: Conference.

How to submit

Please email a pdf version of a maximum 1000-word/1700 character (excluding references) extended abstract no later than September 20th, 2020 to Chinesedigra2020@nottingham.edu.cn. Please make sure to include “CDiGRA2020 Submission” in the subject line of your message. Extended abstracts will be selected by conference and program chairs based on their academic rigor and relevance to the themes of the conference. Note that the extended abstracts do not need to be anonymous. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of September. Accepted authors will have an opportunity to submit their extended abstracts for inclusion in the DiGRA Digital Library. For questions regarding paper submission and the topics of the conference, or for questions on the conference, please contact Chinesedigra2020@nottingham.edu.cn.

Organization description and history

Chinese DiGRA is a regional chapter of DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) focusing on game research relevant to Chinese speaking countries and the surrounding regions. Chinese DiGRA aims to enhance the quality, quantity, and international profile of games research in the Chinese-speaking context, by developing a network of game scholars and researchers working in the Chinese-speaking world and/or on aspects of Chinese games and gaming cultures, forging links between academic and professional researchers on games, supporting teaching and PhD development in the region, and disseminating and promoting Chinese game scholarship around the world. Chinese DiGRA is run by a board comprised of top academics in the fields of Chinese games research from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. You can find more information on Chinese DiGRA, including papers from previous conferences, at our website.

Keynote speaker: To be announced.

Organising committee of Chinese DiGRA 2020 Conference

• Dr Bjarke Liboriussen (Assistant Professor, University of Nottingham Ningbo China)
• Dr Paul Martin (Associate Professor, University of Nottingham Ningbo China)

Internet Histories

Deadline: September 1, 2020

Muira McCammon and Jessa Lingel at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication are seeking abstracts for a forthcoming co-edited special issue with  Internet Histories. Details are below. Please note that if authors' abstracts are accepted and if their papers make it through the peer review process, no payment will be expected; there are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) associated with this special issue.

What follows is a summary of the call, which can also be found at the following link: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/…ms/

Rationale & Motivation

This special issue explores internet histories through the lens of “platform death” as a way of understanding how digital communities grapple with absence, invisibility, and disappearance. Collectively, the contributions in this issue will address the cultural, geopolitical, economic, and socio-legal repercussions of what happens when various corners of the Internet fail, decline, or expire. As a point of departure, we assume that platforms can bring together a wide set of actors, from politicians to parents, teens to technologists, spies to free speech activists; they can serve as a stage where people gather, argue, develop personal relationships, and jockey for divergent futures (Marvin, 1988; Pearce, 2011; Baym, 2015; Lee, 2017; Gillepsie, 2018).

But what becomes of platforms when they fade, fail, or fall from publi  favor? What can dead and dying platforms tell us about the internet’s growth and stagnation, its present and futures? We seek to complicate, document, and build on the narratives of platform change, collapse, death, precarity, and frailty that scholars (Gehl, 2012; Chun, 2016; Belleflamme & Neysen, 2017; Gomez-Meijia, 2018; Helmond & van der Vlist, 2019) and tech journalists (Kircher, 2016) have highlighted over the past two decades.

Recent scholarship has focused on the rise and resilience of certain tech enterprises, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter (e.g. Burgess & Green, 2009; Vaidhyanathan, 2018; Jackson, Bailey, & Foucault Welles, 2020), but much of this research has privileged big platforms over the small, surviving digital communities over the dead, and Silicon Valley-born-and-bred design thinking over that birthed outside tech hot spots. Studies imagining the demise of Big Tech platforms (Ohman & Aggarwal, 2019) and tracing consumer resistance to digital media (Katz & Aspden, 1998; Portwood-Stacer, 2013) have largely ignored both the values and frailties of Small Tech in great depth. While historical and contemporary research has addressed the themes of digital departure (Wyatt, 1999; Baumer et al., 2013), disappearing mediums (Gehl, 2012; Suominen et al., 2013; Ballatore & Natale, 2016), and user mortality (Leaver, 2013), it has largely left the theme of “platform death” to the wayside. Another key absence in this literature is attention to platforms and communities outside the U.S. and Europe.

With the above gaps in the literature in mind, the impetus for this special issue came from a forthcoming panel in the Communication History Division at the May 2020 International Communication Association’s Annual Conference, “Dead and Dying Platforms: The Poetics, Politics, and Perils of Internet History.” When organizing the panel, over 20 different scholars in six countries writing on the histories of specific, bounded platforms expressed interest. Though not all could be included in the final panel, many articulated a desire to contribute to a special issue, such as this one, focusing on the promises and perils of single platforms through the lens of Internet history. This special issue seeks to bring together diverse thinkers and scholars with expertise in a range of dead and dying platforms.

Description of CFP Procedure

We aim to bring together contributors active in the fields of history, communication, media studies, law, economics, psychology, internet studies, library and information science, queer theory, journalism studies, and related scholarly domains. The topic of contributions may include, but are not limited to:

* The rise and fall of specific platforms, including discussions on the challenges, factors, and policies responsible for their decline – and rebirth.

* Archival techniques and theoretical frameworks for resurrecting and reimagining dead platforms

* Comparative investigations of platform precarity

* Explorations of the laws, economic forces, and social trends that underlie the historical analysis of platforms that have survived to the present day

* Memory narratives and counter-narratives of platform users, designers, and advertisers

* Media refusal, disconnection and techno-skepticism

* The offline repercussions and cultural reverberations of platform death

* Rhetorics and metaphors of the describe platform death and failures of platform governance (i.e. kill switches)

* The ethnographies, pre-histories, and afterlives of dying digital communities

* Quantitative and qualitative methodologies that can operationalize platform collapse

* Interconnections between the frailties of Small Tech and the failures of Big Tech

* Ways in which the rise and fall of certain platforms are geographically asymmetrical and asynchronous

* Media change, materiality, everyday experience, and nostalgia

* The ontological and epistemological challenges of considering platforms as dead, dying, or alive

* Historiographies of platforms created, used, and/or dismantled outside the United States

* Studies of platforms whose deaths have not received significant Anglophone press coverage

* Analysis of the implications of platform death for international and global discussions of Internet pasts and futures

Although papers do need to be written in English, we especially welcome writing that explores platforms whose histories are rooted in understudied countries, areas, cultures, and digital communities. We particularly encourage submissions about platforms launched, used and/or remembered outside of Silicon Valley.

Submissions & Time Schedule

Abstracts (500 words maximum) should be emailed to deadplatforms@gmail.com by September 1, 2020. Any questions about the CFP can be sent to the co-editors, Muira McCammon (muira.mccammon@asc.upenn.edu ) and Jessa Lingel (jessa.lingel@asc.upenn.edu). Notification about acceptance to submit an article will be sent out by 1 October 2020. Authors of accepted abstracts are invited to submit an article by 1 February 2021.

Final versions or articles are asked to keep within a 6,000 word limit.

Please note that acceptance of abstract does not ensure final publication as all articles must go through the journal’s usual peer review process.

— 1 Sep 2020: due date for abstracts

— 1 Oct 2020: notification of acceptance

— 1 Feb 2021: accepted articles to be submitted for review

— Feb 2021-May 2021: review process and revisions

November 19-20, 2020

Virtual conference (hosted by Malmö University, Sweden)

Deadline: August 15, 2020

https://mau.se/…ty/

Notification of acceptance: 1 September 2020

The Artificial Creativity conference aims to stir a discussion about the cultural, societal and ethical aspects of artworks featuring A.I. or robots engaged in creative production.

We encourage submissions regarding ongoing research about creative embodied robots (i.e. robotic systems that use physical brushes, pencils, etc. to make their artefacts), but do welcome any inquiries concerning the use of A.I. and deep learning in the production of novel artefacts. The notion of a "robotic system" above may include different types of embodied agents such as an appropriated industrial arm, swarm, drone, etc.

We also welcome submissions that critically challenge contested terms, such as "creativity", "artificial intelligence" and our playful conference title "artificial creativity".

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Creative robotics and/or A.I.
• Ethical questions regarding authorship in computational art
• The analysis of media discourses about creative A.I.
• Human-robot collaboration in the process of cultural production
• Robots and performative arts
• Cultural imaginaries about creative artificial agents
• Design approaches to creative robotics

The keynote speakers are: Professor Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths University, UK), Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany), and Professor Mark Amerika (University of Colorado, US).

The online conference will feature a virtual exhibition supported by Mozilla’s Hubs. Amongst other content, the exhibition will feature the latest works of the artist Justine Emard (France).

The call for abstracts invites researchers from different areas of expertise, including but not limited to: creative arts research, humanities, human-robot interaction (HRI), art history, media and communication, ethics of technology, design anthropology, social sciences, gender studies, posthumanism, voice interface design, and science and technology studies (STS).

The discussion around the Artificial Creativity theme will continue in a special issue in Transformations, an open access peer-reviewed journal, in 2021.

Please submit a 500-word abstract (excluding references) to Dr. Bojana

Romic: bojana.romic@mau.se before 15 August 2020.

Please include:

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s)
• The e-mail address, and telephone number(s) of the corresponding author
• Your time zone

If using any pictures in your abstract, please do not include more than three. If you are experimenting with creative A.I. or robots and want to include some recordings to our virtual exhibition, please indicate that in the abstract. This, however, will not be a criterion for acceptance.

The notification of acceptance is 1 September 2020.

The Artificial Creativity conference is free of charge for all participants. It is hosted by the research lab Medea, School of Arts and Communication, and the Data Society research programme – all at Malmö University, Sweden. The conference has received generous support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden.

AnthroVision Journal special issue

Deadline: September 7, 2020

https://journals.openedition.org/…on/

The AnthroVision Journal special issue on “Computer Vision” explores design, co-creation, and labour with image recognition technologies, and the shifting ontologies between knowledge and the senses using new digital tools. What methodological frameworks are there for anthropologists to work alongside engineers, designers and other professionals? We are seeking papers dealing with such issues, as well as, on the conditions of immaterial labour to create training sets.— Based off "Training Humans" by Dr. Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, the current practices for creating training sets for computer vision AI harkens back to the colonial era of anthropology: systems-based interpretations of discrete cultures and the positivistic apparatus of observational film. In particular, people of color, migrants, and low-wage workers are the most vulnerable targets of this visual taxonomy.

Furthermore, platforms for training computer vision, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, are exploitative. Workers, based mainly in the global south, have just seconds to analyze each image in order to work at a pace that can profit them. This complicates the multi-sited entanglements of subjugation and exploitation between the observer and observed, laying the ground for examining the interrelations of epistemology, labour and AI bias.—How can anthropologists articulate ethical issues between knowledge formation, scientific institutions and neoliberalism. How do anthropologists find reflexive modes of analysis? Where are possibilities for future interventions?

Send abstract to :

jielianglin821(at)gmail.com

and nadinewanono(at)gmail.com

Abstract Deadline: Monday, September 7th.

Abstract length: 500 words.

Essay length: 6-7000 words

https://journals.openedition.org/…ons

Access and Licensing

Publication in open access

Publication costs

Publication fees: no

Submission fees: no