ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Edited by: Daniel Jackson, Danielle Sarver Coombs, Filippo Trevisan, Darren Lilleker and Einar Thorsen

Featuring 91 contributions from over 115 leading US and international academics, this publication captures the immediate thoughts, reflections and early research insights on the 2020 U.S. presidential election from the cutting edge of media and politics research.

Published within eleven days of the election, these contributions are short and accessible. Authors provide authoritative analysis – including research findings and new theoretical insights – to bring readers original ways of understanding the campaign. Contributions also bring a rich range of disciplinary influences, from political science to cultural studies, journalism studies to geography.

As always, these reports are free to access.

The report can be found on https://www.electionanalysis.ws/us/ alongside our previous reports on UK and U.S. elections.

Direct pdf download is available at: http://j.mp/USElectionAnalysis2020_Jackson-et_al_v1 (please note, large file size!)

The table of contents is below.

1. Introduction: Daniel Jackson, Danielle Sarver Coombs, Filippo Trevisan, Darren Lilleker and Einar Thorsen

Policy and Political Context

2. The far-too-normal election

Dave Karpf

3. One pandemic, two Americas and a week-long election day

Ioana Coman

4. Political emotion and the global pandemic: factors at odds with a Trump presidency

Erik P. Bucy

5. The pandemic did not produce the predominant headwinds that changed the course of the country

Amanda Weinstein

6. Confessions of a vampire

Kirk Combe

7. COVID-19 and the 2020 election

Timothy Coombs

8. President Trump promised a vaccine by Election Day: that politicized vaccination intentions

Matthew Motta

9. The enduring impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on the 2020 elections

Gabriel B. Tait

10. Where do we go from here? The 2020 U.S. presidential election, immigration, and crisis

Jamie Winders

11. A nation divided on abortion?

Zoe Brigley Thompson

12. Ending the policy of erasure: transgender issues in 2020

Anne C. Osborne

13. U.S. presidential politics and planetary crisis in 2020

Reed Kurtz

14. Joe Biden and America’s role in the world

Jason Edwards

15. President Biden’s foreign policy: engagement, multilateralism, and cautious globalization

Klaus W. Larres

16. Presidential primary outcomes as evidence of levels of party unity

Judd Thornton

17. A movable force: the armed forces voting bloc

Amanda Weinstein

18. Guns and the 2020 elections

Robert Spitzer

19. Can Biden's win stop the decline of the West and restore the role of the United States in the world?

Roman Gerodimos

Voters

20. A divided America guarantees the longevity of Trumpism

Panos Koliastasis and Darren Lilleker

21. Cartographic perspectives of the 2020 U.S. election

Ben Hennig

22. Vote Switching From 2016 to 2020

Diana Mutz and Sam Wolken

23. It’s the democracy, stupid

Petros Ioannidis and Elias Tsaousakis

24. Election in a time of distrust

John Rennie Short

25. Polarization before and after the 2020 election

Barry Richards

26. The political psychology of Trumpism

Richard Perloff

27. White evangelicals and white born again Christians in 2020

Ryan Claassen

28. Angry voters are (often) misinformed voters

Brian Weeks

29. A Black, Latinx, and Independent alliance: 2020

Omar Ali

30. Believing Black women

Lindsey Meeks

31. The sleeping giant awakens: Latinos in the 2020 election

Lisa Sanchez

32. Trump won the senior vote because they thought he was best on the economy – not immigration

Peter McLeod

33. Did German Americans again support Donald Trump?

Per Urlaub & David Huenlich

Candidates and the Campaign

34. The emotional politics of 2020: fear and loathing in the United States

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

35. Character and image in the U.S. presidential election: a psychological perspective

Geoffrey Beattie

36. Branding and its limits

Ken Cosgrove

37. Celtic connections: reading the roots of Biden and Trump

Michael Higgins and Russ Eshleman

38. Kamala Harris, Bobby Jindal, and the construction of Indian American identity

Madhavi Reddi

39. Stratagems of hate: decoding Donald Trump’s denigrating rhetoric in the 2020 campaign

Rita Kirk and Stephanie Martin

40. Campaign finance and the 2020 U.S. election

Cayce Myers

41. The Emperor had no clothes, after all

Marc Hooghe

42. Trump’s tribal appeal: us vs. them

Stephen D. Reese

News and Journalism

43. When journalism’s relevance is also on the ballot

Seth C. Lewis, Matt Carlson and Sue Robinson

44. Beyond the horse race: voting process coverage in 2020

Kathleen Searles

45. YouTube as a space for news

Stephanie Edgerly

46. 2020 shows the need for institutional news media to make racial justice a core value of journalism

Nikki Usher

47. Newspaper endorsements, presidential fitness and democracy

Kenneth Campbell

48. Alternative to what?A faltering alternative-as-independent media

Scott A. Eldridge II

49. Collaboration, connections, and continuity in media innovation

Valerie Belair-Gagnon

50. Learning from the news in a time of highly polarized media

Marion Just and Ann Crigler

51. Partisan media ecosystems and polarization in the 2020 U.S. election

Michael Beam

52. What do news audiences think about ‘cutting away’ from news that could contain misinformation?

Richard Fletcher

53. The day the music died: turning off the cameras on President Trump

Sarah Oates

54. When worlds collide: contentious politics in a fragmented media regime

Michael X. Delli Carpini

55. Forecasting the future of election forecasting

Benjamin Toff

56. A new horse race begins: the scramble for a post-election narrative

Victor Pickard

Social media

57. Media and social media platforms finally begin to embrace their roles as democratic gatekeepers

Daniel Kreiss

58. Did social media make us more or less politically unequal in 2020?

Dan Lane and Nancy Molina-Rogers

59. Platform transparency in the fight against disinformation

Valerie Belair-Gagnon, Bente Kalsnas, Lucas Graves and Oscar Westlund

60. Why Trump's determination to sow doubt about data undermines democracy

Alfred Hermida

61. A banner year for advertising and a look at differences across platforms

Markus Neumann, Jielu Yao, Spencer Dean and Erika Franklin Fowler

62. How Joe Biden conveyed empathy

Dorian Davis

63. The debates and the election conversation on Twitter

G.R. Boynton and Glenn W. Richardson

64. Did the economy, COVID-19, or Black Lives Matter to the Senate candidates in 2020?

Heather K. Evans and Rian F. Moore

65. Leadership through showmanship: Trump's ability to coin nicknames for opponents on Twitter

Marco Morini

66. Election countdown: Instagram's role in visualizing the 2020 campaign

Terri L. Towner and Caroline L. Munoz

67. Candidates did lackluster youth targeting on Instagram

John Parmelee

68. College students, political engagement and Snapchat in the 2020 general election

Laurie L. Rice and Kenneth W. Moffett

69. Advertising on Facebook: transparency, but not transparent enough

Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Patricia Rossini, Brian McKernan and Jeff Hemsley

70. Detecting emotions in Facebook political ads with computer vision

Michael Bossetta and Rasmus Schmøkel

Popular culture and public critique

71. On campaigns and political trash talk

Michael Butterworth

72. It's all about my "team": what we can learn about politics from sport

Natalie Brown-Devlin and Michael Devlin

73. Kelly Loeffler uses battle with the WNBA as springboard into Georgia Senate runoff

Guy Harrison

74. Made for the fight, WNBA players used their platform for anti-racism activism in 2020

Molly Yanity

75. Do National Basketball Association (NBA) teams really support Black Lives Matter?

Kwame Agyemang

76. The presidential debates: the media frames it all wrong

Mehnaaz Momen

77. Live... from California, it's Kamala Harris

Mark Turner

78. Who needs anger management? Dismissing young engagement

Joanna Doona

79. Meme war is merely the continuation of politics by other means

Rodney Taveira

80. Satire failed to pack a punch in the 2020 election

Allaina Kilby

81. Election memes 2020, or, how to be funny when nothing is fun

Ryan M. Milner and Whitney Phillips

Democracy in crisis

82. Social media moderation of political talk

Shannon McGregor

83. The speed of technology vs. the speed of democracy

Ben Epstein

84. The future of election administration: how will states respond?

Jennifer L. Selin

85. How the movement to change voting procedures was derailed by the 2020 election results

Martin P. Wattenberg

86. From "clown" to "community": the democratic potential of civility and incivility

Emily Sydnor

87. Searching for misinformation

David Silva

88. Relational listening as political listening in a polarized country

Kathryn Coduto

89. QAnon, the election and an evolving American conservativism

Harrison Lejeune

90. President Trump, disinformation, and the threat of extremist violence

Kurt Braddock

91. The disinformed election

Saif Shahin

92. Election 2020 and the further degradation of local journalism

Philip Napoli

Special issue of New Media & Society, Volume 24, 2022

Deadline: December 30, 2020

Guest editors (ordered alphabetically by last name)

• Scott W. Campbell, Constance F. and Arnold C. Pohs Professor of Telecommunications, Dept. of Communication and Media, University of Michigan
• Adriana de Souza e Silva, Professor, Dept. of Communication, North Carolina State University
• Leopoldina Fortunati, Professor, Dept. of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics, University of Udine
• Gerard Goggin, Professor, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University

Overview In recent decades mobile communication has become central to how people navigate and experience everyday social life. As mobile phones diffused globally in the 1990s, scholars began investigating changes in how people relate to distant and proximal others, as well as the physical surroundings. Among the first was Rich Ling, a sociologist with one foot in industry and the other in academia. Throughout his career as a researcher with Norway’s Telenor Group and a faculty member at universities around the world, Rich Ling has contributed to the foundation of the emerging field of Mobile Media and Communication.

In light of Ling’s approaching retirement as an endowed professor at Nanyang Technological University, this special issue pays tribute to his scholarly contributions as we look to the future of mobile communication research. It is no stretch to suggest that Rich Ling is one of the most prolific and influential scholars of mobile communication. He wrote the first single-authored book on the social consequences of mobile communication, The Mobile Connection (2004, Morgan Kaufmann), which remains one of the most heavily cited volumes on the subject. His second book, New Tech, New Ties (2008, MIT Press) reveals how the ritualistic use of mobile media facilitates cohesion in the intimate sphere of friends and family. He extended this analysis in his subsequent book, Taken for Grantedness (2012, MIT Press), which offers a broader theoretical framework explaining how mobile communication has become embedded in the social structure. Along with these and other books, Ling has also published hundreds of journal articles, book chapters, and industry/policy reports on the uses and consequences of mobile media and communication.

In addition to his own scholarship, Rich Ling’s influence in the field is evident through his leadership, serving as editor of many volumes, editor of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and founding co-editor of the journal Mobile Media and Communication. Ling is also recognized for being a generous mentor, providing opportunities for new generations of scholars to become active in the field. As such, Rich Ling’s contributions not only shape the past but also strongly influence the future of mobile communication scholarship.

This special issue seeks papers that envision the future of mobile communication scholarship in the light of Ling’s contributions to research and theory. While articles should primarily raise and address questions about future scholarship in the field, they should also be, at least to some extent, grounded in some aspect of Ling’s work. Submissions can focus on different types of topics and approaches.

Articles may centrally address future directions in research questions pursued, theory, methods, or other aspects of mobile communication scholarship. We are also open to different types of manuscripts, ranging from theoretical essays, empirical investigations, critical/cultural analysis, and other forms of scholarship.

Submission Proposals of no more than 1,000 words should include a brief abstract and a clear explanation of the main argument and how the full submission would contribute to the aims of this special issue.

Please email your proposal to Future.of.Mobile.NMS@gmail.com no later than December 30, 2020. Authors can expect feedback on their proposal by February 1, 2021 and invited paper submissions will be due May 1, 2021.

Invited submissions will undergo peer review following the usual procedures of New Media & Society. Approximately 10-12 papers will be sent out for full review. Therefore, the invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee acceptance into the special issue. Full articles will need to follow the New Media & Society submission guidelines. The special issue is scheduled for publication in Volume 24 of 2022.

References

Ling, R. (2004). The mobile connection: The cell phone’s impact on society. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman Publishers.

Ling, R. (2008). New tech, new ties: How mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ling, R. (2012). Taken for grantedness: The embedding of mobile communication into society. Cambridge, MA; MIT Press.

Edited volume

Editors:

• Dr. Shixin Ivy Zhang, Associate Professor in Journalism Studies (University of Nottingham Ningbo China)
• Dr. Altman Yuzhu Peng, Lecturer in PR & Global Communication (University of Newcastle)

This edited volume aims to contribute to the studies of complex, fluid and dynamic media-conflict relationship through the lens of China. Studies of mediatized conflict in the digital age is still very much a Eurocentric research area, which requires to be de-Westernized. As McQuail (2006) claims, ‘Western “communication science” does not offer any clear framework for collecting and interpreting observations and information about contemporary war situations’ and has ‘largely neglected were the colonial wars of post-Second World War and the many bitter conflicts that did not directly impinge on western interests or responsibilities’. In a sense, McQuail’s statement still stands today. The existing researches in media and conflict are mostly confined to the Western democracies and interests.

With China showing growing and controversial power and influence on the world’s stage, on the one hand, the East Asian power faces its own security issues due to crises in the Asia-Pacific region that have escalated and intensified such as Sino-Indian border crisis, South China Sea disputes, North Korea nuclear crisis and the Senkaku/Diaoyu-islands disputes.On the other hand, China as one of the five permanent members in the UN Security Council has more and more involvement and interests in the seemingly isolated international conflicts such as Afghanistan war, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Libyan and Syrian crisis.

The media and conflict studies are multi-leveled and multi-faceted. Thus, we invite scholars to explore and study media-conflict relationship either from the view of China or conduct comparative analysis between China and other nation-states.Here media can be mass media (TV, films, newspapers, magazines, posters, etc.), digital and/or social media at local, national, regional or global levels.

International conflicts include but not limited to Sino-Indian border crisis, South China Sea disputes, North Korea nuclear crisis, the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands disputes, Afghanistan war, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Libyan and Syrian crisis.

The proposed chapters can be either theoretical, empirical or comparative work. Authors are welcome to explore and address the following questions and go beyond.

1. What roles do media (both traditional and new media) play in the conflicts that directly or indirectly involve China?

2. What is the media-conflict relationship in China and in the Asia-Pacific region more broadly?

3. How is China represented in the media and what is the image and the role of China in the international conflicts?

4. What are the changes and continuity of media representation of China in the international conflicts?

5. Do Chinese media practice peace or war journalism? How?

6. How are international conflicts mediated in China within its particular historical and cultural contexts?

7. How do the local, national and global audience receive and perceive China’s role in international conflicts?

8. What are the impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) on the media-conflict relationship in China?

Please send your abstracts (max. 300 words) by 1 February 2020 to Shixin Zhang (Shixin.zhang (at) nottingham.edu.cn) and Altman Peng (altman.peng (at) ncl.ac.uk).

References

McQuail D (2006) On the mediatization of war. /The International Communication Gazette/ 68(2): 107–118.

November 19-20, 2020

Online

Ola Ogunyemi is inviting you, on behalf of the Steering Commitee, to register for this international symposium. The international symposium is jointly organised by the Lincoln School of English and Journalism and the Lincoln Institute for Advanced Studies in partnership with the Association for Journalism Education and the Manchester; Salford Branch of the National Union of Journalists, UK and Journalism/PR subject group at Sheffield Hallam University.

Keynote speakers include: Gavin Rees and Stephen Jukes (DART Centre Europe); Jo Healey (Journalist, trainer and author of Trauma Reporting, A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories); and Hannah Storm (CEO of the Ethical Journalism Network).

International symposium on 'Trauma Resilience Building in Journalism Curricula: Facing Research Challenges, Ethical Considerations and Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice'.

Pls register via this link and you will get invite to join us on 'Teams' for the event https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/…939

Pls find a link to the press release and programme via https://staffnews.lincoln.ac.uk/…-2/

Due to Covid 19 restrictions across the world, the event will run virtually from Thursday 19th to Friday 20th November 2020.

Tallinn University of Technology

The Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance within Tallinn University of Technology is opening two academic positions (one PhD and one Postdoc) both scheduled to begin in *February 2021*. Feel free to circulate this call with anyone who might be interested. Thank you.

The PhD is on "Urban Analytics and Data Technologies", under the supervision of Prof. Anu Masso. This position is for 4 years.

Deadline for application: December 16, 2020. The selection process will begin soon after.

All information can be founded at: https://taltech.glowbase.com/…165

Applicants are invited to submit their ideas for topic specific research projects, which will be in line with the main research axes of the FinEst Twins project, from which the position is funded. The projects should focus on theoretical and empirical research that contributes to establishing smart, resilient, and sustainable cities worldwide and fostering the design and use of data technologies that consider social diversities.

The Postdoc position is on "Critical Understadning of Predictive Policing", under the supervision of Prof. Anu Masso. The position is initially for 1 year, with the possibility of renewing it for 2 more years.

Deadline for applications: *December 7, 2020*. The selection process will begin soon after.

All information can be founded at: https://www.researchgate.net/…ing

Postdoctoral researchers are invited to submit their ideas for topic specific research projects, which will be in line with the main research axes of the NordForsk project, from which the position is funded. Notably, the project should focus on theoretical and empirical research that contributes to establishing transparency and set an epistemological standard for the critical investigation of innovative data-driven policing. The Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance (RND) is an interdisciplinary, international research center within Tallinn

University of Technology hosting world-renowned award-winning scholars and focusing on socially relevant research and teaching. Notably:

* digital transformation of societies: social datafication, algorithmic governance, data justice, state-citizen relations in the digital era, smart cities and cross-border data relations;

* models and practices of (e)-governance and public administration globally;

* P2P technologies, its' governance and potential new production models;

* fiscal governance and fiscal bureaucracies;

* science and innovation policies and its' management.

* philosophy and ethics of science and technology.

The Ragnar Nurkse Department recently initiated a major, €32 million international R&D project on Smart Cities (FinestTwins) and coordinated the H2020 funded large-scale innovation pilot on implementing the Once-Only Principle (TOOP), which laid the foundation for the data exchange layer foreseen in the European Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR).

For any further information about the two positions, please contact Prof Anu Masso (anu.masso@taltech.ee ) or visit http://ttu.ee/…kse . To get more information about the research team, please visit https://taltech.ee/…lab

George Mason University

If you are interested in Cultural Studies, please consider applying for our PhD program at George Mason University. Our program is the oldest of its kind in the U.S.: a stand-alone, post-MA doctoral program providing interdisciplinary training in the traditions of cultural studies.

We have fully funded graduate assistantships available for qualified applicants in Fall 2021, and call specific attention to our Graduate Inclusion & Access Scholarship.

Topicality is our watchword. We offer course work in gender, sexuality, race, biopolitics, globalization, science and technology, and political economy, as well as mass, visual, textual, and digital culture.

Our faculty can support a broad range of research interests. Recent dissertations include research on: the Radical Faeries; Whole Foods; the business of “mindfulness;” the iconography around President Obama; the birth of the modern organ transplant industry; the current place of literature outside the academy; excessive policing; greeenwashing, and much more…

Our student body is diverse and international. Our alumni have had notable success as researchers and instructors.

For more information, please visit our website or contact our program’s interim director Roger Lancaster .

University College London

This is an exciting opportunity to conduct a funded full-time, four-year long PhD at University College London (UCL) a world leading research university. The funding is available to UK/EU/Third Country Nationals. The successful candidate will benefit from the opportunities presented by a thriving research community as part of the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Cybersecurity at UCL, which encompasses the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), the Department of Security and Crime Science (SCS), and the Department of Computer Science (CS).

The Supervisory Team

The supervisory team for this project will include Dr Leonie Maria Tanczer (UCL STEaPP) and Professor Shane D. Johnson (UCL Crime Sciences).

About the PhD Project

Intimate partner violence such as domestic abuse, sexual assault, and stalking describes a continuum of behaviours, ranging from verbal abuse, threats and intimidation, manipulative behaviour, physical and sexual assault, through to rape and homicide. Increasingly, abuse enabled through smartphones, laptops or even emerging technologies such as “smart”, Internet-connected household devices are being at the centre of attention in research, policy, and practice. So-called “technology-facilitated abuse” or “tech abuse” describes the breadth of harmful actions perpetrators may use to harass and intimidate victims and survivors through digital means.

The proposed PhD project is expected to produce unique insights on a specific issue of tech abuse. Existing literature has focused on topics such as image-based abuse (“revenge porn”), malicious software such as “stalkerware”, as well as harms that derive from “Internet of Things” devices. However, more research needs to be conducted to quantify the scale and nature of tech abuse, to examine legal and industry responses, and to design, develop and assess possible interventions.

The exact remit of the project will be defined by the student in the first year of their PhD and in interaction with their supervisors. However, an aspired vision/topic must be set out at the application stage and showcased in the applicant’s proposal.

This PhD will run in affiliation with the “Gender and IoT” research project at UCL STEaPP, with the candidate having a chance to gain teaching experience through their contribution to module offerings.

Further Information:

About the PhD: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/.../files/phd_studentship_2020.pdf

About the CDT: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/.../centre-doctoral-training...

Relevant Deadlines

Submission Deadline: 29th January 2021

Start Date: 27th of September 2021

KU Leuven

The fulltime professor position (open-rank) will be held within the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, a research unit within the Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven (Belgium). KU Leuven represents a leading academic institution in Europe that is currently by far the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure. The university’s mission is to provide excellence in academic education and research and to offer a distinguished service to society. Owing to KU Leuven’s cutting-edge research, KU Leuven is a charter member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and is consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in Europe.

Within KU Leuven, the Leuven School of Mass Communication Research (SMCR) represents a pioneering institution for media effects research. SMCR strives to contribute to the most advanced methodological techniques and theoretical insights in communication studies, cognitive and social psychology, sociology, and public health. The research focus lies on the use of information- and entertainment media (including social media, ICT, television, games, mobile devices), and on how these uses may harm or enhance various components of individuals’ wellbeing. We have a strong expertise in explaining the processes through which various forms of media use affect physical, psychological and social wellbeing in the long run, and the conditions under which these processes occur. Therefore, a series of advanced methods are applied, including longitudinal survey studies, daily diary studies and content analysis. Issues studied in recent years include alcohol and drug use, sexuality and sexism, aggression, risk taking, depression, self-harm, (positive) body image, sleep, mental wellbeing, health information seeking, self-esteem, parental mediation, and nutrition.

The School adheres to the highest academic standards and strives towards publishing its research in top academic journals (e.g., Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, New Media & Society). For this research, prestigious grants from multiple funding agencies are attributed yearly and SMCR’s excellent research has been awarded on a yearly basis by different international and interdisciplinary organizations. SMCR staff is involved in various national and international multidisciplinary research projects, primarily of fundamental nature but also with societal relevance

Website unit

Duties

• Research

You will be expected to develop a research program, aim at excellent scientific output of international level, and support and promote national and international research collaborations in the broad field of health communication and in the context of the School for Mass Communication Research. Your research focuses on the development of innovative theory and advanced research techniques in this field. You have a strong background in predominantly quantitative research methods and have demonstrated research excellence in various ways (e.g., top ranked ISI publications, awards, societal impact etc.).

With this vacancy we aim to further strengthen and expand the research at SMCR. We are looking for a candidate with a strong experience in research in communication and the advancement of health and wellbeing in society. Specifically, your research may encompass one of the following subdomains of health communication: (1) effects of media use on various health (e.g., addiction, suicide,…) or societal issues (e.g., hate speech, sustainability,…), and ways of responding to these effects with communication and intervention, (2) the development and testing of mediated promotion and intervention campaigns aiming to advance public health or societal wellbeing, (3) health information seeking and effects (e.g., resistance to health information, public service announcements,…), and/or (4) technological perspectives on health communication (e.g., effects of VR on health outcomes, potential of mHealth in health promotion, artificial intelligence,…).

Your research may focus on the (strategic) uses or effects of different types of media including but not limited to, social media, entertainment media, television, news media, apps, video games, blogs, websites, serious games, virtual reality etc.

In close collaboration with SMCR staff, you contribute to the existing lines of research and set up your own program through the acquisition of research funding.

• Education

The Department of Communication Science, consisting of two research groups SMCR and IMS, organizes the Bachelor and Master of Communication Science, the (English) Master in Digital Media and Society, and is involved in the Master’s program of Business Communication and Journalism. Your teaching will contain several courses at the Bachelor’s and Master’s level and will include theoretical and methodological courses on communication science in general and health communication in particular. You have experience in lecturing large groups and you have a broad employability due to in-depth and detailed knowledge about the social sciences, media sociology and media psychology. You supervise students working on their masterthesis and PhD students.

Your teaching is expected to meet the KU Leuven standards regarding academic program level and orientation and to be in keeping with the educational vision of KU Leuven. Commitment to the quality of education as a whole is naturally understood.

• Service

You provide scientific, social and internal services. This is reflected, among other things, in a constructive contribution to education and research, as part of a team's collective projects (e.g. through participation in meetings, teacher days, information sessions, recruitment activities, exchange programs).

Profile

Applicants hold a Ph.D. degree in communication sciences, social sciences, psychology, public health or an equivalent diploma. We seek a scholar with a broad theoretical- and interdisciplinary interest and a strong background in quantitative research methods, whose research relates to and complements the current research lines at SMCR with a strong health communication profile. The successful candidate has an excellent research record as evidenced by more than one dimension, e.g., the quality of his/her PhD research, high-level publications in the important journals of our field (i.e., ICA journals) and related fields, research impact (e.g., citations) and acquired research funding. We value professional behavior and collegiality, and will encourage the candidate to collaborate with SMCR researchers as well as with interdisciplinary research groups and centers within KU Leuven. The candidate has a large international network and is eager to further develop this within the context of SMCR.

Applicants have demonstrated excellent teaching skills which preferably include experience in teaching large groups of students.

The official administrative language used at KU Leuven is Dutch. If you do not speak Dutch (or do not speak it well) at the start of employment, KU Leuven will provide language training to enable you to take part in administrative meetings. A thorough knowledge of English is required.

Offer

We offer a full-time employment in an intellectually challenging and international environment. You will work in Leuven, a historic and lively city located in the heart of Belgium, within 20 minutes from Brussels, and less than two hours from Paris, London and Amsterdam. Depending on your experience and qualification, the position will be filled at one of the levels of the Senior Academic Staff (Tenure Track Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor). Junior researchers are appointed as assistant professor on the tenure track for a period of five years; after this period and a positive evaluation, they are permanently appointed (or tenured) as an associate professor. The anticipated starting date for this position is September 1, 2021.

To facilitate scientific onboarding and accelerate research in the first phase a starting grant of 100.000 euro is offered to new professors without substantial other funding (e.g., ERC).

KU Leuven welcomes international scholars and their family and provides practical support with regard to immigration and administration, housing, childcare, learning Dutch, partner career coaching,…

Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. Kathleen Beullens, tel.: +32 16 32 32 19, mail: kathleen.beullens@kuleuven.be or Prof. dr. Stef Aupers, tel.: +32 16 37 23 07, mail: stef.aupers@kuleuven.be or dean prof. dr. Steven Eggermont, tel: +32 32 32 38, mail: steven.eggermont@kuleuven.be. For problems with online applying, please contact solliciteren@kuleuven.be.

You can apply for this job no later than February 22, 2021 via the online application tool

KU Leuven seeks to foster an environment where all talents can flourish, regardless of gender, age, cultural background, nationality or impairments. If you have any questions relating to accessibility or support, please contact us at diversiteit.HR@kuleuven.be.

https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/jobs/55921882?fbclid=IwAR1xklKJwV_HvzmncHPRTITmxMtPjjoV_A-CkHrTZ6FYvnTIXxHe1UW9a_k&hl=en&lang=en

April 20-22, 2021

Online

Deadline: January 15, 2021

The theme for the 2021 Spring Seminar is monstrosity. This theme explores the role of monsters and monstrosity in games, play, game cultures, and other forms of playful media and popular cultures. The figure of the ‘monster’ is a crucial area for development in game studies. Recent scholarship has opened important trajectories for examining how such figures can embed problematic world views (Stang & Trammel 2019; Young 2016), and how the mythic dimensions of the monster are made mundane and knowable through containment within the rules (Švelch 2018). Monsters appear widely across digital and non-digital games and we welcome work that considers how they are deployed in game design and world-building, as well as critical analysis of specific monsters or games.

We are also interested in work that explores the theme of monstrosity more broadly. ‘Monstrosity’ evokes a taste-based or even ethical judgment, traditionally regarding architecture. What constitutes a monstrosity in the context of games and game cultures? What edifices, institutions, and monuments blight this domain? Are there elements of gaming culture and games that are indelibly evil? In some cases, the figure of the ‘gamer’ has become monstrous (e.g. Consalvo 2003), the commercial gaming culture’s role in enforcing racialised and gendered structures and practices is widely acknowledged (e.g. Richard & Gray 2018), while widespread industry practices such as ‘crunch-time’ are routinely condemned (e.g. Dyer-Withefor & de Peuter 2006).

We plan to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to explore the theme of monstrosity. We are particularly interested in how this theme intersects with feminist scholarship, disability studies, gender studies, indigenous studies, queer studies and critical race/whiteness studies, and scholars who are working in these areas are encouraged to apply.

The possible list of topics includes but is not limited to:

• Monsters and the monstrous in playful media and popular cultures
• Panic discourses on gaming in mainstream media
• Harassment in gaming, social media, and streaming platforms
• Precariousness of work in the game industry
• Destructive capitalist and neoliberal structures and practices in gaming
• Gaming controversies
• Censorship, violence and pornography in games
• Toxicity in competitive gaming and esports
• Monstrosity as a playful practice
• Racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and hostility towards marginalised groups in gaming

Monstrosity is the 17th annual spring seminar organised by Tampere University Game Research Lab. The seminar emphasises work-in-progress submissions, and we strongly encourage submitting late-breaking results, working papers, as well as submissions from graduate and PhD students. The purpose of the seminar is to have peer-to-peer discussions and thereby provide support in refining and improving research work in this area. The seminar is organised in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies.

The papers to be presented will be chosen based on extended abstract review. Full papers are distributed prior to the event to all participants, in order to facilitate discussion. Three invited expert commentators, Dr. Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), Doctoral Candidate Sarah Stang (York University, Canada), and Dr. Jaroslav Švelch (Charles University, Prague), will provide feedback on the papers.

The seminar is looking into partnering with a journal so that the best papers would be invited to be further developed for publication in a special journal issue. In the past, we have collaborated with Games and Culture, Simulation & Gaming, International Journal of Role-Playing, and ToDiGRA journals.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the seminar will be held online. The seminar is free of charge.

Submission guidelines

The papers will be selected for presentation based on extended abstracts of 500–1000 words (plus references). Abstracts should be delivered in PDF format. Please use 12 pt Times New Roman, double-spaced, for your text. Full paper guidelines will be provided with the notification of acceptance.

Our aim is that all participants can familiarise themselves with the papers in advance. Therefore, the maximum length for a full paper is 5000 words (plus references). The seminar presentations should encourage discussion, instead of repeating the information presented in the papers. Every paper will be presented for 10 minutes and discussed for 20 minutes.

Submissions should be sent to gamestudiesseminar@gmail.com.

Important dates

• Abstract deadline: 15 January 2021
• Notification of acceptance: 29 January 2021
• Full Paper deadline: 30 March 2021
• Seminar dates: 20–22 April 2021

References

Mia Consalvo 2003. The Monsters Next Door: Media Constructions of Boys and Masculinity. Feminist Media Studies 3(1): 27-45.

Gabriela T. Richard and Kishonna L. Gray 2018. Gendered Play, Racialized Reality: Black Cyberfeminism, Inclusive Communities of Practice, and the Intersections of Learning, Socialization, and Resilience in Online Gaming. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 39(1): 112-148.

Sarah Stang and Aaron Trammell 2020. The Ludic Bestiary: Misogynistic Tropes of Female Monstrosity in Dungeons & Dragons. Games and Culture 15(6): 730-747.

Jaroslav Švelch 2018. Encoding monsters: “Ontology of the enemy” and containment of the unknown in role-playing games. In the edited proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Copenhagen 2018. http://gameconference.itu.dk/papers/09%20-%20svelch%20-%20encoding%20monsters.pdf

Nick Dyer-Witheford and Grieg de Peuter 2006. “EA Spouse” and the Crisis of Video Game Labour: Enjoyment, Exclusion, Exploitation, and Exodus. Canadian Journal of Communication 31(3).

Helen Young 2016. Racial Logics, Franchising, and Video Game Genres: The Lord of the Rings. Games and Culture 11(4): 343-364.

April 21-23, 2021

Utrecht University (Netherlands)

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

The conference has been postponed to Spring 2021. The new submission deadline for panels is 31 January 2021. Abstracts can be submitted until 15 February 2021.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

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

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Submissions for panels should be submitted via e-mail to ERC2020@uu.nl by 31 January 2021.

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

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

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

For further questions please mail: ERC2020@uu.nl

The PDF of this call for papers is available here.