ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Trine Syvertsen (University of Oslo, Norway)

Social media and smartphones are criticised for being addictive, destroying personal relationships, undermining productivity, and invading privacy. In this book, Trine Syvertsen explores the phenomenon of digital detox: users taking a break from digital media or adopting measures to limit smartphone and social media use. Based on studies, documents, media texts and interviews with media users, Syvertsen discusses how media industries intensify the quest for attention, how companies and governments team up to get everybody online, and how the main responsibility for managing online risks and problems are placed on the users' shoulders. She provides a rich account of how users reduce their online engagement through time-limitations, restrictions on smartphone use, productivity apps, and use of analogue media. Syvertsen shows how digital detoxing has much in common with other forms of self-help such as mindfulness, decluttering and simple living and places digital detox within a culture of self-optimisation. But digital detox is also about sustaining face-to-face conversations, better work-life-balance, a deeper connection with nature and more meaningful interpersonal relationships. With a wealth of examples, analyses and stories, Digital Detox is a valuable guide to why digital detox and disconnection has become a topic, how it is practised, what it says about the state of media industries and how people express resistance in the 21st century.

Dear ECREA colleagues:

A team of researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid (Patricia Nuñez, Javier Sierra, Luis Mañas and Natalia Abuín) are carrying out a comparative research about the transition to online teaching in Communication Studies in Spain, Italy and Portugal during the COVID-19 pandemic. The questionnaire and the answers are completely anonymous.

Here, you can find the spanish, portuguese an italian questionnaires.

Spanish: https://forms.gle/DCJCDVTnMb5cpSQe7

Portuguese: https://forms.gle/Sj92DGzJCpFL1JURA

Italian: https://forms.gle/v8C4DiHFgZbarabv5

November 12-15, 2020

University of Tyumen, Russia

Deadline: May 15, 2020

25th DiscourseNet Conference on Global Dispositives

https://discourseanalysis.net/en/DN25

25th DiscourseNet Conference on Global Dispositives (#DN25, November 12-15 2020) deals with the processes of social change that are discursively driven and supported by technological infrastructures and new cultural, economic and political relations. In the context of globalization, they affect transformations in all social domains – from economy to culture, including media and education, (digital) technology, industry and environment, politics and governance.

Global Dispositives can be recognised in popular examples of social change. First of all, the global political and economic projects, i.e. the discourses evolving around the Belt and Road Initiative, new infrastructural development of the Arctic region, Eurasian Economic Union but also on small-scale and in semi-official or informal organisations such as the Three Seas Initiative, Visegrad Group or countries within the mini-Schengen integration project. Secondly, global dispositives can be tied to discourses of technology, security and warfare. Examples are not only projects such as the Internet itself (or rather the entire World Wide Web), but also discourses bound up to its structural changes like the implementation of 5G internet technology, balkanization of the internet, various concepts of IoT or surveillance etc. And finally, the discourses tied to the consequences of various kinds of transitions such as the transforming regulations of global migration (based on causes such as war or environment), an emerging post-liberal global trade system based on nationalism(s), global political upheavals and new struggles over postnational identities (especially among youth cultures). The DN25 on Global Dispositifs aims to attract researchers who explore (inter)cultural, economic, technological and political processes of global change on various levels, from a range of disciplinary perspectives in the broad field of discourse studies.

Hosted by the Cultural Trends Lab, situated at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (University of Tyumen, Siberia, Russia) and organised in cooperation with China Media Observatory (Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland) and the School of Government and Public Affairs (Chinese University of Communication, Beijing, China), this conference endeavors to devote special attention to Belt and Road Initiative as a unique example of a global dispositive. The launch of the Belt Road Initiative (BRI, previously known as One Belt, One Road) in 2013, promised new imaginaries of a multipolar world and an alternative model of globalisation. It came into play in the form of cross-country mega infrastructure projects, new regulating mechanisms and bilateral agreements. These material infrastructures, together with their legal, political and economic dimensions, cultural and educational interconnections, and new media and telecommunication standards represent a chain of social ensembles which create completely new setting. However, integrating processes often ensue discursive struggles and conflicting narratives regarding a number of social changes in important fields such as economy and trade, progress and technology, geopolitical cooperation and competition, domestic and foreign culture, political and national systems. Although some aspects of it have been investigated in specific disciplines such as political economy, media and communication, anthropology, linguistics, human geography, area and (inter)cultural studies, the dialogue across these disciplines rarely takes place. Therefore, there is a strong need for BRI and other global dispositives to be mapped and described from the perspective of social sciences and humanities. One of the aims of this conference would be to develop on theoretical and methodological interdisciplinary approaches which will help grasp some of the issues of global dispositives. Furthermore, we want to reflect on media discourses dealing with BRI as an alternative globalisation model. Critical, affirmative and neutral perspectives should be discussed in both national and regional contexts. The perspectives take place in the broad spectrum from imaginaries to strategies or political doctrines. The question about the representation and positioning is of course connected to the interests of the various actors within the discourses which correspond and define respective dispositifs.

In the context of forces which drive the global cultural scene, this conference wants to consider the role of the in-between regions or rather those regions outside the global centres in the contemporary culture. Within the scope of the Cultural Trends Lab’s central project ‘Elsewhere’ (which concentrates on mapping digital streams of culture emerging both autonomously from and partly depending on the models of the centres), this conference is interested in all those contributions discussing, investigating and researching the digital forms of culture and sociality preferably outside the global centres. The idea of culture in transit regions as an element of both the New Silk Road or Arctic region is indivisible from the discussion about the existing and new telecommunication infrastructures and data flows. However, new cultural and social practices of digital and non-digital domains (or the actors that will shape such practices) continue to merit the discussion.

We welcome all contributions that investigate phenomena tied to the digital transformation, people’s cultural understandings of global political-economic imaginaries (such as the BRI) by utilising the conceptual and analytical toolkits of discourse studies, e.g. power, subjectivity, critique, identity, context, language use etc. As the field of discourse studies are inherently interdisciplinary, we invite authors from disciplines as varied as media and communication studies, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, ethnography, cultural and political studies or law. Furthermore, we also invite guests outside of academia, such as activists, NGO and public intellectual scene representatives, to contribute to our topics. Likewise, we seek to provide a forum for discussing methodological and theoretical questions.

Covid19 disclaimer

We are well aware of the Covid19-pandemic. However, we hope and believe that by mid November the danger will be over. Also, we do not want to stop 'doing science'. In case of a different, unwanted, development, we will be able to offer alternatives concerning either the time or the format of the event (e.g. online). We therefore invite you to send in your paper, panel and poster proposals. We will take into account all the recommendations of the authorities and health experts.

https://discourseanalysis.net/en/DN25

The list of possible topics includes (but is not constrained) to the following:

• (Inter)cultural connectedness
• New communication infrastructures
• Digitization, digitalization, digital transformation
• Technologisation of society
• Discourses of Imaginaries
• History of Digital Technology and Imaginary
• Chinese-European Media
• Critical approach to suffering in digital age
• Education in the Digital Age
• Environmental Sustainability and Development of Global Periphery
• Apparatuses of global political economy
• Ethnographic approach to transcultural phenomena
• Global media analysis about BRI
• Cultural traditions across media changes
• Intercultural communication in polycentric world
• The physical traces of BRInfrastructure
• Dispositives of New Digitality
• Ideological and political constructions
• From anthropology to ethnography of global dispositifs
• Gender and class
• Transnational identities
• Subjectivities in a global context
• Cultural and discursive political economy
• (Re)Standardization of the societies
• Centre and periphery discourses
• New global constellations
• Social role of material infrastructure
• The governance of the internet in the age of its balkanization/sovereignty
• Political and economic alliances and ruptures
• Global gaps and digital divides, global exclusion and invisibilities

All abstracts fitting one or more of the aforementioned themes are welcome. We also invite interesting panel proposals and presentations relevant to the overall conference topic. Check the Ideas page on our website for inspiration:

https://discourseanalysis.net/en/DN25

Preliminary list of special guests, keynotes and topics:

University of Tyumen (UoT), Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (SocGum), Cultural Trends Lab (CTL), DiscourseNet Association (DNA), Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), China Media Observatory (CMO), China University of Communication (CUC), School of Government and Public Administration (SoGaPA)

Globalised spaces of academic discourse - Johannes Angermuller, Open University Milton Keyes, UK DNA

Chinese-European Media - Zhan Zhang, Università della Svizzera Italiana /USI, Switzerland CMO

History of Digital Technology and Imaginary - Gabriele Balbi, Università della Svizzera Italiana /USI, Switzerland CMO

Global media analysis about BRI - Zhou Ting, Communication University of China, China CUC

Critical approach to suffering in digital age - Benno Herzog, Valencia University, Spain DNA

Economic Expert Discourses in Globalised Societies - Jens Maeße, Giessen University, Germany DNA

Ethnographic approach to Transcultural Phenomena - Jaspal Naveel Singh, The University of Hong Kong, HKSAR China DNA

Philosophy of Globalisation - Igor Chubarov, University of Tyumen, Russia SocGum

Dispositives of New Digitality - Jan Krasni, University of Tyumen, Russia DNA, CTL, SocGum

Abstracts and Registration

Please submit your 250 word abstracts at the conference registration service on dn25.sciencesconf.org. Keep the following important dates in mind:

Deadline for uploading abstracts for DN25: May 15th, 2020

(If you need to plan your trip in advance, please contact us for a faster review of your abstract. Deadline for those who do not need visa will be extended)

Notification of acceptance for abstracts: June 20th, 2020

(If you need visa, please let us know so we would take care of it earlier)

Registration will be complete upon payment.

Payment deadline: October 1st, 2020. A confirmation email will be sent after the deadline for payments has passed.

All the abstracts are vetted by a blind review. The reviewers belong to the committee selected from our 5000 members. This secures the scientific quality of the presentations.

DISCOURSENET WINTER SCHOOL No7

January 13-15, 2021

Valencia, Spain

Deadline: September 30, 2020

https://discourseanalysis.net/en/DNS7

The DiscourseNet Winter School brings together advanced MA as well as PhD students *(BA students with an own research project are also welcome) who want to pursue research on Capitalism in Global Crisis revolving around economic transformations, new authoritarianism, and resistance with respect to Discourse Studies and to discuss the methodological and theoretical challenges of their thesis projects or first ideas.

In the last decades, the economies in different countries and regions as well as the global economic power relations have changed. Three characteristics are significant: first, the US economic hegemony, expressed by a dominant position in almost all traditional leading industries, becomes step by step replaced by a tri-pole structure consisting by a rising Asian field of economic innovation (with China as regional superpower), a declining North American pole and a consolidating European pole (with Germany as regional hegemon) torn between the aspiring East and former West. Second, rising economic inequalities can be observed in all capitalist economies, including China, Russia and East/Central Europe, with the formation of a small wealthy elite on the top of economic hierarchy, shrinking middle classes splitting up between the top and bottom, and a widening array of lower classes more and more excluded from social recognition, welfare, consumption and other forms of social participation. Wealthy and innovative areas on the one hand, and declining regions disconnected from global innovations on the other hand reflect these cleavages geographically. And, finally, a forth technological revolution (catchwords: Industry 4.0, digitalisation, 5G, green economy) is currently changing global value chains, working relations and the general distribution of labour and value. These tendencies of the global economy have huge impacts on political discourses, social identities, life styles, social conflicts and the formation of new milieus.

Among diverse social, cultural and political reactions to these global transformations new forms of authoritarianism seem to be of significant analytical importance. New authoritarianism can take different forms. The narrative that the (Western) world inscribes itself within a history of progress, of political and social advances and that this process is irreversible are no longer convincing. New forms of nationalism, nativism, racism, anti-semitism, anti-feminism, chauvinism, anti-social, religious extremism, ethnocentrism and ideological responses to economic crises are threatening human emancipation. New forms of authoritarian governance arise on a plurality of social backgrounds and in a variety of forms, from nationalism, to populism and from right-wing extremism towards ideologies of economic impositions. These anti-emancipatory tendencies are not limited to specific social movements or politics. Therefore, they require an analysis of a diversity of social phenomenon, like power constellations, discourses, historic memory, economic conditions, processes of subjectivation, etc. In contrast to extremism, the approach on authoritarianism does not analyze its objects from the margins of society; and unlike populism, authoritarianism does not require an approach on hegemony. However, there are also forms of extremist or populist authoritarianism. Yet, the role of new authoritarianism for and within ongoing global transformations of the economy seems to be oscillating between a consolidation of existing power relations and a nationalist form of resistance against certain neoliberal policies.

Despite the rise of authoritarian tendencies, there is a notable amount of social movements resisting them: the feminist movement, LGBTQ movement, ecological movements, minority group movements, worker movements, refugee movements, anti- racist, anti-nationalist, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist movements, and also more authoritarian resistance. Many of these movements explicitly argue against silencing of experiences of various social groups, and do the work revealing structures of power, imagining alternatives and proposing solutions to power imbalances, exclusion, symbolic and physical violence. In this ideological work, new subjectivities are formed and existing ones redefined, new ways of expressing agency are created. Development of the digital communication infrastructure has been especially important in these processes, as online spaces have been pivotal for coordination of social action, assisting in formation of global social movements. Critical discourse studies have been especially active in critiquing the less-democratic discourses, while the analysis of resistant discourses and clashes between different kinds of discourses, as well as conditions that allow them to arise and develop, are also of significance. We welcome papers exploring these and other possible dimensions of resistant discourses.

Possible topics include:

• Race, class and gender in global capitalism
• Material resistance and counter discourses
• Forms of authoritarianism and its relation to neoliberalism in crisis
• Intersectionality, identity politics and new subjectivities
• Global political economy and economic discourses
• (Post)colonial capitalism in new global constellations
• Anti-Fascism, socialism and left-wing authoritarianism
• Old and new exclusions: migration, borders and ecologic crisis
• Ideologies and post-truth in times of technological revolutions
• Digital transformation & forms of culture and sociality in late capitalism

The aim of the Winter School is to bring young and established discourse researchers together to address practical challenges in discourse research. The event will provide a collaborative exchange and hands-on research experience in a rather informal workshop setting. Introductory workshops on the following fields of inquiry will be given by more experienced scholars from the Universities of Giessen, Moscow, Warwick and Valencia, together with guests from other international universities: Discourse; New Authoritarianism; Resistance.

Our keynote speaker Ngai-Ling Sum from the Lancaster University will provide a lecture on

“The Cultural Political Economy of Hope/Fear: Ordoliberal Authoritarianism and the Case of China”

Participants from the disciplines and fields of sociology, political sciences, literary and cultural studies, media and communication, education, geography, philosophy, linguistics and related areas in the social sciences and humanities are all invited.

Applicants are expected to send in proposals which include an abstract with one’s project (no more than 250 words) as well as an academic CV. The abstract will consist of a title and a description of the proposed research project or presentation.

Proposals should be sent in by the 30th of September 2020. We will inform you on 15th of October if you are accepted or not.

In case of acceptance, each participant will be asked to send in a 10-page version of the research project by December 31st 2020. These longer texts should delineate the research object, lay out the research questions, situate the project in the field, and reflect on the preferred methods. These versions will be circulated among the participants prior to the event and will be used by the commentators. Each participant will get two comments on their paper by two experts. During the Winter School, the students will not present their entire papers but elaborate on specific points, practical problems and methodological challenges of their projects. If they wish, the participants can stay the weekend after and join in the social activities with the organisers in the Valencia region.

The DiscourseNet Winter School is free of charge. In case of equal quality of the application, DiscourseNet members will be considered first. If you want to join DiscourseNet, please write a message to membership@discourseanalysis.net including your name, email address and professional status (e.g. PhD student, professor, independent researcher). There are places for up to 25 participants. The working language is English.

The Winter School is organised by members of the DIPE (Discourse, Ideology, and Political Economy) research group within DiscourseNet. DiscourseNet is an interdisciplinary and international association of discourse researchers existing since 2007.

To apply for the Winter School and for any inquiries or questions, please contact:

DNWinterSchoolValencia@gmail.com

Organisation

Johannes Beetz, University of Warwick (UK) | Benno Herzog, University of Valencia (Spain) | Jens Maesse, University of Giessen (Germany) | Ksenia Semykina, Higher School of Economics, Moscow (Russia) | Jan Krasni Tyumen State University (Russia)

Special Issue of Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies

Deadline (EXTENDED): June 1, 2020

Synoptique is inviting submissions for an upcoming special issue entitled “Porn and Its Uses.” Responding to the genre’s marginal status in the academy and beyond, this special issue seeks to explore how pornography can be (re)framed as useful—pedagogically, politically, aesthetically, and libidinally. Broadly framed, this may refer to pornography as both a difficult object of interest and as a method for critically analyzing the most pressing questions in our current moment.

Pioneering explorations of the genre within academia have treated pornography as a vibrant cinematic institution (Lesage, “Women and Pornography,” 1981), an oppositional grass-roots practice (Waugh, “Men’s Pornography, Gay vs. Straight,” 1985) and an instrument to gauge the organization of pleasure and control (Linda Williams, Hard Core, 1989). In 1996, an issue of Jump Cut dedicated a special section to the study of pornography. This seminal publication, edited by Chuck Kleinhans, curated articles, conference reports and even a sample syllabus in order to reframe the genre as a tool for analyzing issues of censorship, national cultures, gender and race. This issue of Synoptique seeks to recapture that intellectual impulse in the wake of recent academic forays that have placed pornography in the context of labour (Heather Berg), affect (Susanna Paasonen) and critical race studies (Mireille Miller-Young), among others.

The theme of this special issue cheekily gestures towards the serviceability of the genre beyond (but certainly not excluding) the happy ending broadly associated with porn. The titular “uses” of pornography expand on a key intervention from Haidee Wasson and Charles Acland’s introduction to Useful Cinema to ask how porn, broadly defined, maintains the “ability to transform unlikely spaces, convey ideas, convince individuals, and produce subjects in the service of public and private aims” (Acland and Wasson 2011, 2). As porn studies proliferates across numerous monographs and edited collections, university curricula, international conferences, podcasts, a dedicated scholarly journal and more, we are interested in porn’s usefulness while at the same time complicating and questioning the impetus to instrumentalize knowledge. How do we continue to shape a field that embraces knowledge traditionally deemed intellectually and morally suspect while responding to the porn industry’s political and economic stakes?

Under this broad inquiry, and abiding by the journal’s mandate to challenge traditional paradigms in media scholarship and publication, we are inviting scholars and practitioners alike to submit academic and creative pieces that testify to porn’s usefulness. In order for the journal to include the widest spectrum of voices possible, including those implicated in the industry, the editorial team will, under request, publish material anonymously or pseudonymously.

We are inviting submissions from scholars of all disciplines, on topics such as (but not limited to):

• pornography as visual, textual, and auditory genres
• historical approaches to pornography
• porn studies as academic field: methods, frameworks, ethics
• porn and/as pedagogy, in and out of the classroom
• porn studies and postcolonial and/or critical race theory
• porn as site of feminist, queer and trans interventions
• archives and material cultures of pornography
• pornification and the mainstreaming of pornography
• porn in the context of celebrity studies
• pornography’s audiences and fan cultures
• pornography's digital cultures and economies
• porn and sex work in legislative contexts
• anti-pornography discourses

Essays submitted for peer review should be approximately 5,500-7,500 words and must conform to the Chicago author-date style (17th ed.). All images must be accompanied by photo credits and captions.

We also warmly invite submissions to the review section, including conference or exhibition reports, book reviews, film festival reports, thought pieces and interviews related to the aforementioned topics. All non-peer reviewed articles should be a maximum of 2,500 words and include a bibliography following Chicago author-date style (17th ed.).

Creative works and interventions in the forms of digital video, still imagery, creative writing, and other multimedia forms are also welcome. These works will be hosted or embedded on the Synoptique website, and/or otherwise linked to in the PDF version of the journal. Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions regarding your submission ideas for the non-peer reviewed section.

All submissions may be written in either French or English.

Please submit completed essays or reports to the Editorial Collective (editor.synoptique@gmail.com) and the issue guest editors Rebecca Holt (reba.s.holt@gmail.com), Darshana Sreedhar Mini (mini@usc.edu), and Nikola Stepić (nikola.stepic@concordia.ca) by June 1. We will send notifications of acceptance by June 30.

Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies

www.synoptique.ca

Special Issue of New Media & Society

Deadline: May 22, 2020

Over the last three decades, researchers have increasingly understood the existence of multiple and complex digital inequalities that vary in breadth and depth and involve evolving nuances, assigning a multi-faceted nature to digital inclusion and flagging up a complex terrain of hurdles to it (Blank and Groselj, 2014; Borg and Smith, 2018; Brandtzæg et al., 2011; Katz and Gonzalez, 2016; Mubarak, 2015; Tsatsou, 2011; 2012; 2017; van Deursen et al., 2011; van Deursen and van Dijk, 2014; Witte and Mannon, 2010).

It is widely acknowledged that barriers to digital inclusion are connected with social exclusion and associated social capital and social stratification trends (Clayton and McDonald, 2013) and that those vulnerable and at high risk of social exclusion are also those in greatest need of digital inclusion (e.g., Acharya, 2016; Alam and Imran, 2015; Chadwick, Wesson and Fullwood, 2013; Fisher et al., 2014; Helsper and Eynon, 2010; Menger, Morris and Salis, 2016, Seale et al. 2015, Tsatsou, Youngs and Watt, 2017). Vulnerability, namely the ‘susceptibility to physical or emotional injury or attack’ (Ståsett, 2007, p. 51), is not a new concept and, while we ought to acknowledge that all humans and populations are potentially subject to conditions of vulnerability, there are some groups, which persistently face conditions of vulnerability, such as ethnic minorities/refugees, elderly, people with disabilities, homeless people, one-parent households, unemployed people, Gypsy-travelers, and others. To shed light on vulnerability in the context of the forces and significance of digital inclusion, intersectionality is a key notion. Coined by Crenshaw (1989) in feminist and gender studies, the notion of intersectionality points to interlocking systems of power and oppression and how they impact those most marginalized in society, acknowledging the multidimensionality of people’s experiences, namely the ‘intersectional experience’ (p. 140) within and outside the digital realm.

This special issue seeks to offer broad and case-specific, theoretical and empirical accounts that shed light on major dimensions, complexities and intersectionality patterns in the digital inclusion of those who find themselves at the margins of social inclusion and most vulnerable to existing and emerging societal challenges. In this sense, this issue aims to constitute a timely and diverse collection of studies of vulnerable people’s digital inclusion that will present original insights into the factors, significance, intersectionality patterns, and policymaking challenges concerning the digital inclusion of those who are vulnerable in socio-demographic, economic, geographic, political or other terms.

We invite papers that focus on one or more vulnerable populations and/or contexts and either offer an overarching (conceptual or empirical) account or delve into a specific case study. Suitable papers will make a distinct contribution to the exploration of the status and role of digital technologies in the lives of vulnerable population groups or communities in today’s society, drawing expertise and insight from the fields of digital media studies, social computing, community informatics, information systems, sociology, social psychology, and cultural studies. In light of the current COVID19 pandemic, in particular, we invite papers that examine questions of factors, significance, intersectionality or policy challenges in the context of the pandemic and in consideration of today’s heightened necessities for and dependencies on digital inclusion, especially for those most vulnerable.

Hence, the themes addressed in this issue include, but are not limited to:

• Theorising vulnerable people’s digital inclusion.
• Vulnerability in the context of digital inclusion.
• Current state of vulnerable people’s digital inclusion and associated trends and developments.
• Value of intersectionality for the study of vulnerable people’s digital inclusion.
• Empirical insights into patterns of intersectionality among different vulnerable populations’ digital inclusion.
• Continuing or emerging factors influencing vulnerable people’s digital inclusion.
• Significance of digital inclusion for vulnerable people’s social inclusion and wellbeing.
• Research lessons and insights for policymaking on vulnerable people’s digital inclusion.
• Emerging or new necessities for and lessons on vulnerable people’s digital inclusion in the context of the COVID19 pandemic.

Special Issue Editor / Correspondence: Panayiota Tsatsou (pt133@le.ac.uk)

Important dates:

Submission of abstracts (500 words): 22 May 2020.

Notification of decision on abstracts: 22 June 2020

Submission of full papers: 31 August 2020

Notification of peer review outcome: 30 October 2020

Submission of final papers: 1 December 2020

Instructions for authors: Abstracts must be submitted to pt133@le.ac.uk. Abstracts should not exceed the limit of 500 words (word limit excludes author details and list of references).

November 2-4,2020

Oslo, Norway

Deadline: August 17, 2020

The 6th international conference on the Safety of journalists

The conference will take place in Oslo on November 2, 3 and 4th 2020 in connection with UNESCO’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists at OsloMet University and The Freedom of Speech Foundation (Fritt Ord), Norway.

Attacks on journalists is a growing problem globally and threats and violence against journalists affect freedom of expression and the public sphere in many ways. For the sixth consecutive year, the research group MEKK at OsloMet University organizes an international conference to address the safety of journalists.

This year’s conference will focus on examples of “resistance” and “resilience”, in addition to risks related to certain topics and/or working in specific geographical, social or/and political contexts. “Resistance” could mean both fighting back as well as the refusal to accept or comply with something and/or the ability not to be affected by something. The concept may also be linked to organizations in resistance. In terms of the concept of resilience, it is often assumed that a person with good resilience has the ability to bounce back more quickly and with less stress than someone whose resilience is less developed. Greater resilience is often associated with the ability to self-organise, and with social learning as part of a process of adaptation and transformation. Looking at risk, resistance and resilience opens up for discussions from different angels and concrete experiences.

The aim of the conference is to increase the knowledge about measures that can improve the situation for journalists and journalism, whether it is what the individual journalist can do to protect herself, alone or in groups, and collective and structural measures to protect journalists and put an end to impunity. Perhaps a combination of resistance and resilience can be the way forward? Perhaps a better understanding of risks helps making it possible to build collective resilience? We believe this focus can lead to useful learning across borders and contexts. Case studies of resistance and/or resilience are welcome. Furthermore, we open for deliberations of more general safety issues for journalists by inviting papers discussing topics such as (but not limited to):

• Collective action to enhance the safety of journalists
• Cross border initiatives to improve safety
• Self-education and organisation as means to make journalism safe
• The role of the UN and UNESCO in protecting journalists
• Safety training for journalists and the role of safety trainers/organizations
• Fake news and disinformation as a threat against journalism
• Media ownership and safety of journalists

For the last five years a large number of scholars and journalists have participated at the annual safety conferences at OsloMet in Norway. The conferences have been organised as a mixture of key note speakers, working groups, panels and paper presentations. As we are now facing a global pandemic crisis where travelling and gathering is difficult, and may be so for quite some time still, we have started to think of some possible alternative scenarios and solutions for the 2020 conference. We will think of possible virtual solutions for paper presentations and key notes.

As before, we prioritize scholarships for researchers coming from outside Europe and North America. This year we also include a scholarship that can contribute to the making of a virtual presentation. This scholarship is meant as a grant that can contribute to the production of such a presentation.

Virtual presentation:

We encourage researchers to partner with journalists or media projects to make virtual presentations, documentaries, journalism, storytelling etc. on “resistance”, “resilience” and the risks journalists are facing. In addition to the ordinary research papers we therefore include a call for virtual presentations (could be a movie, animation, etc.), where you are asked to describe the project, collaboration, case and planned result.

To send a proposal for a regular paper or a virtual presentation you can use this form: https://nettskjema.no/a/safety2020

Please include an abstract/description (max 250 words), short bio, and a profile picture.

The deadline is August 17, 2020.

There is no registration fee and the participants are expected to cover their own costs for travel and accommodation. A limited number of scholarships to cover flight and/or accommodation is available for Ph.D. students and researchers from low-income countries. Applications for scholarships should be submitted with the abstract together with a short CV.

The best papers will be considered for a forthcoming peer reviewed publication.

If you have any questions about the call for papers and virtual presentations, please do not hesitate to contact: safetyofjournalists@oslomet.no

Link to MEKK blog: Call for Papers

University College Dublin

School: Information and Communications Studies

Supervisor: Marco Bastos marco.bastos@ucd.ie

Starting date: 1st Sept 2020 (likely later, when academic activities resume post-COVID-19)

Position: 100%, full-time position, tuition fees waived by the School

Remuneration: PhD studentship renewable for up to four years and consisting of:

- PhD student stipend of €18k per annum (tax free)

- €4k per annum towards research costs of the PhD student.

Eligibility: EU and non-EU students are equally eligible for studentships under this award

Requirement: Students accepted under this scheme must meet the university entry standards.

Description of the post:

The School of Information and Communications Studies at University College Dublin is offering one fully funded PhD scholarship under the supervision of Dr Marco Bastos.

The PhD student will work on quantifying offline phenomena through online data and/or new theories, methods, and objectives to the study of problematic content and misinformation online.

We also welcome candidates interested in the social implications of technology, including the dynamics of social influence and contagion, computational communication science, ethics of computational research on human behaviour, and the forecasting of social phenomena with digital trace data.

The candidate will explore computational models of social phenomena, including behaviour modelling, social network analysis and modelling, mining of large-scale social data, algorithms and protocols driving information diffusion on social platforms, and data mining of social media platforms.

The candidate will be provided a desk in the School’s dedicated PhD office and a dedicated budget for research expenses is included with the Scholarship. The School of Information and Communications Studies has a healthy cohort of 10+ PhD students.

Substantive research area:

The post holder will be supervised by Dr Bastos, whose research addresses the cross-effects between online and offline social networks, including the association between geography and network formation, the direction of homophily, and the elapsed effects of online activity on physical groups.

The substantive research question explored by the candidate may draw from communication and information studies, sociology, political communication, geographic information systems, and social network analysis or related areas.

Responsibilities:

The post holder will be expected to write and successfully defend a PhD thesis focused on the areas listed in the description of the post and meet the degree requirements set by UCD to advance through the PhD programme.

The candidate is also expected to produce research outputs in relation to their doctoral research and attend conferences to disseminate the research findings.

Conferences of interest to the post holder include the Association of Internet Researchers, the International Conference on Social Media & Society, the International Communication Association, the International Conference on Social Informatics, and the International Conference on Web and Social Media.

The candidate is expected to assist in the organisation of project meetings, workshops, and activities within the scope of this research area.

The candidate should take part in seminars, workshops, and events organised within the School and across University College Dublin that are relevant to the project.

Finally, the development of teaching skills and teaching activities will be considered at a later stage of the PhD in discussion with the candidate and the supervisors.

Role profile:

Candidates are expected to be familiar with or interested in developing skills in computational methods. Familiarity with leveraging digital media to the study of social phenomena is highly desirable. Other key skills include familiarity with data mining, text-as-data, network analysis, spatial statistics, machine-learning, and natural language processing.

Requirements:

Strong command of English is required. English proficiency at the C2 or C1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is advised. UCD Graduate Studies TOEFL and IELTS score requirements can be viewed here.

• Candidates are expected to hold a Master’s Degree in Media and Communication, Information Sciences, Geography, Political Science, Sociology, Digital Methods or comparable Master’s Degree in the Social Sciences, preferably a research master/Mlitt.
• Organisational experience and skills.
• Preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate experience and expertise in quantitative methods, including network analysis and modelling, spatial statistics, automated text analysis, and machine-learning in application material. Affinity for data-driven research, preferably as evidenced by your Master’s dissertation, publications, and research project.
• Proven experience with R, Python, MATLAB, Julia, Ruby, JavaScript, TypeScript or equivalent object-oriented programming language is highly desirable.
• Experience with the analysis of social media data is desirable.

Applications are open to students of all nationalities and backgrounds.

Apply:

Applications need to be submitted via UCD’s application portal. The candidate should apply to Programme Code W139 using the UCD Admissions online application portal (a €50 application fee applies).

The School of Information and Communication Studies requires PhD applicants to submit their curriculum vitae, an applicant statement, and a personal statement. Candidates are advised to describe their research interests, explain why they believe this position fits their profile, and include a brief description of the topic they would like to explore in their PhD project. In addition to that, applicants should submit a writing sample, preferably a piece that has been published, as additional information.

Applications will be reviewed through our system of open, transparent, and merit-based recruitment of researchers.

For questions related to this post please contact Marco Bastos at marco.bastos@ucd.ie

October 8-10, 2020

University of Tuebingen, Germany

Deadline: May 31, 2020

15th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor)

ComFor’s 15th annual conference aims to intensify a dialogue between the various disciplinary approaches to the medium of comics and related popular narrative images (including manga, graphic novels or cartoons) by focusing on the concept of medial, mediated, and mediating agency. Building on perspectives from actor-network theory and subsequent approaches to a possible actor-media theory, the conference aims to reconstruct the complexities of distributed agency within historical and contemporary cultures of comics.

An “actor” is here understood as any entity that becomes recognizable as the catalyst or cause of interrelated, complex chains of action, transformation, or reconfiguration. According to “new materialist” approaches, agency can not only be attributed to “natural” persons, but also to “things” as heterogeneous as materialities, devices, inscriptions, or programs within complex configurations or assemblages. The ComFor conference is going to focus primarily on the interrelations between (groups of) individual, collective, and institutional or corporate actors.

From this point of view, many classifications that are fundamental for the world of comics, such as the distinction between producers and consumers, authors and readers, appear as mere effects of a particular distribution of agency within historically evolving media configurations. Agency is thus at stake when recipients resist hegemonic meanings and readings of multimodal texts in order to assume opposing positions. In the same manner, “authorship” could be understood as the attribution of agency of and between various medial instances and roles such as writers, artists, colorists, letterers, or editors, as well as with regard to commercial rights holders such as publishing houses or conglomerates and reviewers or fans. From this point of view, aspects of comics‘ production (authorship and institutionalization) can be related to aspects of comics’ reception (appropriation and discursivation) as well as to aspects of comics’ circulation (participation and canonization), including their potential for transmedialization and making contributions to the formation of the public sphere.

Against this backdrop, potential topics for contributions may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• (De)construction of authorship
• Production-oriented research
• Fan discourses and review mechanisms
• Issues of cultural participation
• Canonization and the in/exclusion from continuities
• Control over transmedia franchises, storyworlds, and characters
• Influences of changing techniques and technologies on practices of production, distribution, and reception

• Impacts of economical forces on comic cultures
• Question about the formation of various public spheres of/by comics

Conference papers will be accepted in either English or German and should not exceed 20 minutes. We plan to publish selected contributions in an edited volume. Participants are not required to be members of ComFor. Contributions from non-members welcome!

Beyond the discussion of each year’s special topic, ComFor aims to further co-operation and dialogue in all areas of comics research. The 15th Annual Conference in Tuebingen will therefore continue the tradition of an open workshop format that allows researchers to present and gather feedback on on-going projects within comics studies in all stages of development, and without any thematic restrictions. We thus warmly invite colleagues in all phases of academic careers to discuss any projects on which they are currently working. The open workshop presentations are limited to a maximum of 15 minutes. Please send an abstract of approx. 500 words plus a short biography (as a word and pdf file) in English or German no later than 31 May 2020 to comfor2020@comicgesellschaft.de.

Please indicate whether your submission is intended for the main conference or the open workshop.

The University of Stirling

The University of Stirling's Division of Communications, Media and Culture is offering exciting opportunities for the following positions:

1. Lecturer in Interactive Media (1.0FTE, open-ended, Grade 7/8, £33,797-£49,322)

The successful candidate will enhance the Division's capacity to teach in one or more of the following areas: Digital research methods/digital humanities; Games studies; Digital content design; video production; web/app development; content marketing/visual social media marketing; Interaction Design/User Interaction/User Experience; Creative enterprise and digital creative economies; Data analytics.

Further details: https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/work-at-stirling/list/details/?jobId=2330&jobTitle=Lecturer%20in%20Interactive%20Media

2. Lecturer in Multi-Media Journalism (0.5FTE, open-ended, Grade 8, £41-526-£49,322)

The successful candidate will have newsroom experience and a knowledge of multi-media platforms and technologies as well as the workings of digital journalism.

Further details: https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/work-at-stirling/list/details/?jobId=2327&jobTitle=Lecturer%20in%20Multi-Media%20Journalism

3. Lecturer/Practitioner in Multi-Media Communication/Digital Journalism (1.0FTE, open-ended Grade 7/8, £33,797-£49,322)

The successful candidate will organise and deliver the Division's growing international exchange programme, will have knowledge of multi-media platforms and technologies and experience of teaching and managing international students.

Further details: https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/work-at-stirling/list/details/?jobId=2328&jobTitle=Lecturer/Practitioner%20in%20Multi-Media%20Communication/Digital%20Journalism

Closing date for all three posts is 6 May 2020 with interviews scheduled later in May.

Successful candidates will contribute to teaching and enhancing international collaboration on courses in Communications, Media and Culture, consistently ranked among the best in the UK. With a focus on innovation, exploration and creativity, the successful candidates will be part of a vibrant environment defined by world-class teaching and research. Staff thrive in a dynamic culture where collaboration is key, international links abound and the desire to make a meaningful contribution to society is always at the forefront of our minds. If you’re joining us as a researcher, you’ll soon see why we placed first in Scotland for our research impact in Communications, Media and Culture, in the Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF 2014).

The University of Stirling is a leading UK teaching and research-intensive university, created by Royal Charter in 1967. Since its foundation, the University has embraced its role as an innovative, intellectual and cultural institution with a pioneering spirit and a passion for excellence in all that it does.

Informal enquiries can be made to Prof Adrian Hadland, Head of the Division of Communications, Media & Culture: adrian.hadland@stir.ac.uk.