ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

April 17, 2020

The Boardroom 309 Regent Campus, University of Westminster, London, W1B 2HW

Deadline: January 14, 2020

International Conference Organised by: Communication and Media Research Institute & The Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster

Keynote Speakers

• Professor Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne, Australia
• Professor Dibyesh Anand, University of Westminster, UK

Institutional and structural racism are major realities that impede different areas of social life, both domestically and internationally. Over the past decade, mass protests in West Asia, North Africa, South America, and other parts of the world created an important transformative momentum, which in turn triggered debates about race, cultural difference and the role of anti-racism in grassroots politics against authoritarianism. The (not so) new issues activists are facing include migration, modern forms of slavery, backlash against indigenous assertion, the plight of south-Asian and African (domestic, construction) workers, the trafficking of female migrants across Europe, colourism and the mainstreaming of Far Right politics speaking against liberal multiculturalism in the defence of the imagined majority.

The 2020 International Conference: Mediating, Constructing, Dismantling Race(ism) is centred around the notion of ‘Race’ and its different cogent variations – ‘racism’, ‘racialisation’, ‘racialised’ – but brings race into conversation with global capitalism, transnational political processes, historical and contemporary social change and technological mediation. Firstly, the conference welcomes papers that explore a new economy of power relations and its interdependency with resistance; this particular connection remains largely understudied in relation to race and racism in non-western contexts. Secondly, we are interested in focusing on ‘transversal’ struggles that are not limited to one county, or necessarily confined to a particular political or economic form of government, but as a form of power that applies itself to everyday life, categorises, makes individuals subjects, subjugates and makes subject too. In this respect, and thirdly, the conference also encourages contributions that may focus on ‘immediate’ struggles that are closer to individuals and their everyday experiences and act as vantage points from which to critique instances of power. Although many campaigns focus on ‘immediate’ struggles that have initiated a scathing critique of nationalism and nativism; of exclusionary discourses of citizenship vis-à-vis minority communities; of rationalisations of beauty; we are interested in approaches that embed the way modern subjectivities are constructed in particular ethnographic social hierarchies, and invite frameworks that trace these convergences along the ways capital flows create the conditions under which colonial manifestations (such as slavery) return. More precisely:

This conference invites speakers to ask:

• How is the notion of race historically (re)constructed through socio, economic, religious and technological contexts?
• What is the relationship of racism and capitalism in the context of the media and ideology?
• How are ideas around race mediated through channels of knowledge production and in turn hegemonised?
• What are the formal and informal media platforms that disseminate ideas about race?
• How does race politics function in non-white contexts?
• How is race mediated in everyday life in institutions and communities in different parts of the world? And
• How are the ensuing processes of othering resisted, undone and thus dismantled against the backdrop of global crises?

These are but a few relevant lines of investigation. We invite papers from across the world that critically deconstruct the politics of race beyond the usual binaries of the ‘west-and the rest’ and focus on the complex and fluid inter and intra-dynamics through which notions of race/racialism are constructed, maintained and dismantled. We are also keen to solicit theoretically innovative, empirically rich and conceptually thought-provoking presentations that are able to empirically illuminate phenomena around race formations. We don’t only value papers that describe these problematics, but also those that address ways to dismantle structural racism and create positive change for peoples’ everyday realities. This thematic is one that demands a combination of theory and practice. We have programmed two internationally renowned keynotes to shed broader light through theoretical and practical areas of investigation.

This event is an initiative of the Communication and Media Research Institute’s newly established Global Media Research Network (GMRN) and the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster. The full-day conference on the 17th of April 2020 provides a space to debate these questions; to understand the often-contentious relationship between theory and practice across disciplines; and to bring the work of activists and academics closer together. This event is part of the underlying aspiration to encourage critical collaboration between scholars and activists.

Academic-activist Keynote Speakers

• Lucia Kula, Black Student Support Coordinator, SOAS
• Akram Salhab, organiser at Migrants Organise
• Chardine Taylor-Stone, Cultural Producer and Writer

PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION

This one-day conference on Friday, 17th of April 2020, will consist of 2 academic keynote presentations, four parallel panel sessions and 3 academic-activist keynote presentations. The fee for registration for all participants, including presenters, will be £45, with a concessionary rate of £15 for students and unwaged, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs.

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS

The deadline for abstracts is Tuesday 14th January 2020. Successful applicants will be notified by Tuesday 21st of January 2020. Abstracts should be 250 words. They must include the presenter’s name, affiliation, email and postal address, together with the title of the paper and a 150-word biographical note on the presenter. Please send all these items together in a single Word file, not as pdf, and entitle the file and message with ‘CAMRI 2020’ followed by your surname. The file should be sent by email to both: Dr Miriyam Aouragh (m.aouragh@westminster.ac.uk) and Dr Tarik Sabry (sabryt@westminster.ac.uk).

Conference Organisation Committee and Advisory Board:

• Miriyam Aouragh
• Christian Fuchs
• Deborah Husbands
• Geetanjali Kala
• Ben Pitcher
• Pablo Morales
• Tarik Sabry
• Doug Specht
• Roza Tsagarousianou

Gloria Dagnino

The history of Italian cinema is mostly regarded as a history of Italian auteurs. This book takes a different standpoint, looking at Italian cinema from the perspective of an unusual, but influential actor: advertisers.

From the iconic Vespa scooterand the many other Made in Italy products placed in domestic and international features, to Carosello’s early format of branded entertainment, up through the more recent brand integration cases in award-winning titles like The Great Beauty, the Italian film and advertising industries have frequently and significantly intersected, in ways that remain largely unexplored by academic research. This book contributes to fill this gap, by focusing on the economic and cultural influence that advertising and advertisers’ interests have been exerting on Italian film production between the post-war period and the 2010s. Increasingly market-oriented film policies, ongoing pressure from Hollywood competition, and the abnormal economic as well as political power held by Italian ad-funded broadcasters are among the key points addressed by the book. In addition to a macro-level political economic analysis, the book draws on exclusive interviews with film producers and promotional intermediaries to provide a meso level analysis of the practices and professional cultures of those working at the intersection of Italian film and advertising industries.

Providing an in-depth yet clear and accessible overview of the political and economic dynamics driving the Italian media landscape towards unprecedented forms of marketisation, this is a valuable resource for academics and students in the fields of film and media studies, marketing, advertising, and Italian studies.

Purchase here: https://www.routledge.com/Branded-Entertainment-and-Cinema-The-Marketisation-of-Italian-Film-1st/Dagnino/p/book/9780815348528

Media, War and Conflict Journal Conference

May 21-22, 2020

Accademia Europea Di Firenze, Florence, Italy

Deadline for abstracts: January 10, 2020

www.warandmedia.org/Spaces

Building on the success of our 2018 international conference ‘Spaces of War: War of Spaces’, the editors of the Media, War and Conflict journal are holding our second conference at Accademia Europea Di Firenze, Florence, Italy in May 2020.

Alongside traditional papers, the expected conference programme will include film screenings and methodological workshops on Digital verification; Visuality/photography; The archive; Performance that are designed to facilitate the development of new ideas, networks and/or research proposals through dialogue with practitioners.

Conference Themes

In 2018 we were motivated by a feeling that broad theses on the transformation of war in new media environments was distracting attention from the richness of detailed work being conducted on specific cases. Macro theorisations were ignoring the varieties and intricacies of spaces through which war was being waged. That conference drew together a new generation of researchers in the field of war and media, and led to the forthcoming Spaces of War book due to publication in 2020. But what emerged and gave meaning to the temporal and spatial dimensions of those dynamic, ever evolving spaces was the overarching theme of bodies and the profoundly corporeal, embodied nature of war and its relationship to space.

For this new conference, we invite contributions that explore the intersections of body and space in the field of war and media through two broad themes:

• Bodily Presence/Absence: How can research illuminate how bodies occupy, inhabit and live through and in spaces of war? When and how are bodies made visible in spaces of war, whose bodies (civic, military, technologized etc) and why? What are the implications of bodily presence and absence in relation to the transformative properties of the space? What are the consequences of post-bodily inhabitation?

• Embodied Participation: How do media and digital technologies alter and shift the affective, sensory, mnemonic qualities of space? How are bodies, and the corporeal reality of war, transformed by spaces and visa versa? What are the consequences of our engagement with spaces of war for ourselves, others and the space itself?

Drawing on these broad themes and questions, the conference will showcase exciting new research in this field while pinpointing the emerging puzzles and lines of enquiry we face at the intersection of bodies, media, space and war. We are interested in scholarly and practice contributions that speak to these themes through a range of topics across various spheres and powers relations. While the main theme of this conference is the corporeal nature of war and its relationship to space, we also welcome papers dealing with any aspect of media, war and conflict.

Please submit an abstract of 250 words with author affiliation and brief biog to:

Sarah Maltby: s.maltby@sussex.ac.uk by 10th January 2020

Panel submissions are welcome. Panel proposals should include no more than 4 papers in total, a short description (200 words) together with abstracts for each of the papers (150-200 words each including details of the contributor), and the name and contact details of the panel proposer. The panel proposer should coordinate the submissions for that panel as a single proposal.

Registration Open: 24th January to 27th March 2020

Call for book chapters

Deadline: February 12, 2020

Edited by:

• Lidia Oliveira (Digimedia-Digital Media and Interaction Research Centre, University of Aveiro, Portugal)
• Federico Tajariol, ELLIADD Laboratory, University Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France
• Liliana Gonçalves, Digimedia-Digital Media and Interaction Research Centre, University of Aveiro, Portugal

Dates

• February 12, 2020: Chapter proposal submission deadline
• February 26, 2020: Notification of acceptance of the proposal
• June 11, 2020: Full chapter submission deadline
• October 4, 2020: Final chapter submission

To be published by IGI Global, https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/4552

If you have any questions, please contact

• lidia@ua.pt
• federico.tajariol@univ-fcomte.fr
• lilianabgoncalves@ua.pt

Introduction

The contemporary world is characterized by the massive use of digital communication platforms and services that allow people to stay in touch with each other and their organizations. On the other hand, it is also a world with great challenges in terms of crisis, disaster and emergency situations, of various kinds: humanitarian, environmental, nuclear, political, economic, etc. In this scenario there are many challenges in the communication, prototyping, evaluation and development of digital support platforms and services in crisis, disaster and emergency contexts.

Thus, it is crucial to understand the role of digital platforms/services in the context of crisis, disaster and emergency situations. This can be done through a technological perspective, namely, through the design of digital service specifically designed for use in crisis, disaster and emergency situations. But also, through a communicational perspective, by understanding people's communication wishes and needs in these risky scenarios, as well as understanding the use of digital services/platforms such as online social networks (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.), in crisis, disaster and emergency situations.

This book will present recent studies on crisis, disaster and emergency situations in which digital technologies are considered as a key mediator. It will be a book that features multi and interdisciplinary research findings.

Objective

This book will publish a relevant set of studies on digital services / platforms in the context of crisis, disaster and emergency, which will be a reference for researchers and students in the field of communication, usability, engineering, social intervention and policy makers. It is intended that the different perspectives pointed out by researchers with distinct backgrounds can systematize the interdisciplinary knowledge about crisis, disaster and emergency themes. Combining this with the digital scope, the book will highlight the relevance of society’s digitization and its usefulness and contribution to the different phases and types of risk scenarios. Therefore, the publication of this book will constitute a reference to the researchers, but also, it will be a helpful tool to a large set of stakeholders – governments, local institutions, public corporations, etc. – who deal with crisis, disaster and emergency scenarios.

Target Audience

This book will be particularly useful to researchers, students and teachers of universities and technic schools working on fields such as Communication, Multimedia, Sociology, Political Science and Engineering. Also, professionals of services usability labs and digital Applications, policy makers, professionals of institutions of crisis, disaster and emergency scenarios management as well as professionals of crisis management companies will benefit from the knowledge collected in this book.Recommended Topics

• Digital services in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency planning
• Digital services in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency prevention
• Digital services in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency preparedness and mitigation
• Digital services in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency response and public policy
• Digital services in environmental Crisis, Disaster and Emergency
• Digital services in humanitarian Crisis, Disaster and Emergency
• Digital services in political Crisis and Emergency
• Digital services in nuclear Crisis, Disaster and Emergency
• Digital services in Resilience and social capital evaluation in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency situations
• Digital services Social vulnerability and resiliency in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency situations
• Instructional communication in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency situations
• Other topics related to digital services in the context of Crisis, Disaster and Emergency Situations

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on before February 12, 2020, a chapter proposal of 1,000 to 1,500 words, with title and keywords, clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by February 26, 2020 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by June 11, 2020, and all interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions at http://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/before-you-write/ prior to submission. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial process.

All proposals should be submitted through the eEditorial Discovery®TM online submission manager.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the "Information Science Reference" (formerly Idea Group Reference), "Medical Information Science Reference," "Business Science Reference," and "Engineering Science Reference" imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2021.

Important Dates

• February 12, 2020: Chapter proposal submission deadline
• February 26, 2020: Notification of acceptance of the proposal
• June 11, 2020: Full chapter submission deadline
• August 9, 2020: Review results returned to authors
• September 6, 2020: Revision Due from Authors
• September 20, 2020: Final Acceptance/Rejection Notification
• October 4, 2020: Final chapter submission

September 25-26, 2020

National Research University ‘Higher School of Economics’, Moscow, Russian Federation

Deadline: February 15, 2020

This conference provides a forum for researchers who seek to analyze, challenge, and rethink the concepts of “platform imperialism” in the age of hybrid warfare.

Basically, we are interested in the exchange of opinions on the following issues:

(1)The distribution of global power in terms of the domination over the global platform market by the West (predominantly, the US: e.g., Google, Facebook, Youtube) and control over regional platform markets by China (Baidu, QQ, etc.), Russia (VK, Yandex, etc.), Korea (Cyworld), and so on.

(2) The possibility of the stabilization of meanings (the propaganda of specific power narratives) by means of controlling digital platforms and of increasingly digitized "legacy media""; the possibility of control over the production of knowledge in the interests of those controlling digital markets (global and regional); and social consequences of the stabilization of global and regional hegemonic configurations.

(3) The possibility of resistance to hegemonic narratives by means of information wars, their hybridization, the destabilization/schizophrenization of stable meanings, and social consequences of these destabilizing developments.

Finally, it would be interesting to consider the following question:

(4) Do we really live in the age of digital/platform imperialism, or should we characterize the current state of globalization in alternative terms?

All theoretical perspectives are welcome; case studies comparing the representation of issues across platforms would be of particular interest.

Keynote speakers:

• Dr. Oliver Joseph Boyd-Barrett, Bowling Green State University, Ohio (USA)
• Dr. Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies (UK)
• Dr. David Miller, University of Bristol (UK)

The conference languages are English and Russian.

Abstracts of 250-300 words (excluding bibliography) of single papers should be sent by email as a Word document attachment to olga.baysha@colorado.edu .

Please include name, affiliation, email address and paper title in the body of the email.

Deadlines:

• February 15, 2020 – Deadline for submitting individual abstracts
• April 1, 2020 – Notification of papers acceptance

Queries about the conference and abstracts should be sent to Dr. Olga Baysha at olga.baysha@colorado.edu

May 27-29, 2020

University of Technology Sydney (UTS), School of Communication, Sydney, Australia

Deadline (extended): January 15, 2020

Keynote speakers: Barbie Zelizer, Hugo de Burgh, and Mark Deuze

ICJ2020 is an ICA post-conference. It aims to spur an engaged scholarly debate on how different cultures of journalism become distinctly visible across the world. Though journalism is usually taught and practiced through a traditional model developed in the West, the routines and conventions of journalism have distinctive meanings in the non-Western context. For an effective practice of journalism, there is a need to develop a model that will sit outside the long-established Western paradigm and reflect better national contexts. Therefore, this conference offers an international and intercultural environment for academics, researchers, journalists and postgraduate students to exchange and share research results and experiences about the various cultures of journalism.

The International Cultures of Journalism conference ICJ2020 aims to focus on how journalism is developing in different countries outside Western contexts. Traditionally journalism across the world has been taught and practiced through an Anglo/American apparatus, which has not necessarily been very useful for non-Western contexts. The reasons behind this include differing political, economic, technological, social, and ideological systems in various parts of the world, which make one model of journalism training and practice infeasible. Even journalistic linguistic structures offer an effective variant to journalism practices across the world.

This two-day conference aims to discuss these variants within different structures of journalism operation around the world, and addresses issues that are relevant, but not restricted, to the following questions:

• What are the challenges or opportunities for training and/or practicing journalism within different parts of the world?
• What kind of factors influence the development of journalism in certain contexts?
• Can we see particular practices of investigative journalism emerge in different cultural journalism contexts?
• What kind of models of operation can develop in order to foster the training and practice of investigative journalism outside Western contexts?
• What case studies can we use to understand the complexity of developing non-Western models of journalism?
• What kind of theoretical or policy-based models of journalism can be developed for specific regions of the world?
• How can cultures of journalism evolve in non-Western contexts? Are there examples of ones that have developed? What do they look like?
• How have new technologies impacted and/or facilitated the development of distinctive cultures of journalism?

The conference will include paper and panel presentations, with keynote speakers: Professor Barbie Zelizer, Professor Hugo de Burgh, and Professor Mark Deuze. You will have the chance to receive constructive and meaningful feedback from experts in the field, engage in academic debate and create connections with researchers with similar interests.

Submission:

https://www.uts.edu.au/icj2020

For any enquiries, please contact Professor Saba Bebawi (conference convener) or Oxana Onilov (conference organiser) at icj2020@uts.edu.au

Key dates

• Call for papers opens – 1 August 2019
• Closing date for abstract and panel submissions – 15 January 2020
• Author notifications – 15 February 2020
• Registration opens – 20 February 2020
• Registration deadline – 15 March 2020
• Full paper submission – 3 April 2020
• Conference dates – 27-28 May 2020

January 27 - February 6, 2020

Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: January 13, 2020

Digital Media Winter Institute has annually gathered a network of international researchers, with different backgrounds and expertise, interested in doing investigations from the perspective of digital methods. New media researchers, journalists, developers, data designers, digital methods experts, sociologists, data scientists and more are meeting in Lisbon to work and improve their skills, in theory, practice and critique of digital methods.

The program of #DMWI2020 brings the fourth edition of #SMARTDataSprint with an international program: keynotes and practical labs by Tommaso Venturini (médialab of Sciences Po Paris) and Bernhard Rieder (University of Amsterdam). His keynote talk and practical labs are going to explore visual network analysis. Rieder is an associate professor in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam and a researcher at the Digital Methods Initiative. He will give a keynote on mapping value(s) in artificial intelligence (AI).

In the first week of DMWI, from 27 to 31 January 2020, participants from around the world will come to Lisbon to attend keynote lectures, short talks, parallel sessions of practical labs and join applied research projects. Experts and scholars will invite participants to work collectively on issues involving internet memes and platform censorship, Anti-Feminist and Anti-LGBT Discourses, Method maps and Cross-Platform Digital Networks. Other opportunities for hands-on experimentation with methods are on the schedule with the following practical labs:

• YouTube Research & Ranking Culture
• Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Creating Maps and Measures with NodeXL
• Gephi for beginners
• How to work with spreadsheets
• Shaping questions for Trends Studies through Digital Methods
• Raw Graphs for data exploratory analysis
• Data mining and visualisation with R
• Getting to know data extraction + text analysis tools
• Visual Network Analysis
• Building Image-hashtag Networks
• Visual social media analysis
• Studying visual social media through Vision APIs
• Data Beautification
• Natural language processing tools for data analysis and extraction
• When DataViz is ugly

To participate in the SMART Data Sprint 2020 is necessary to submit an application, until January 13, and pay the attendee fee. Also scheduled for the Digital Media Winter Institute 2020, from February 3 to 6, the workshop "Tracking, visualizing and accounting for the networks of (dis-)information with the web crawler Hyphe", taught by Mathieu Jacomy will be promoted. Jacomy is a techno-anthropologist at the University of Aalborg, TANTLab, a former researcher engineer at médialab of Sciences Po Paris and co-founder of Gephi software. The proposal of the workshop is to study and apply the Hyphe webcrawler and understand both information and misinformation issues on the web. Participation in the workshop also requires prior registration by January 20, 2020.

Application #SMARTDataSprint: http://bit.ly/SMARTdatasprint2020

Application deadline: January 13, 2020

Application Workshop Tracking, visualizing and accounting for the networks of (dis-)information with the web crawler Hyphe: http://bit.ly/DMWI-HypheWorkshop

Application deadline: January 20, 2020

Complete info: http://smart.inovamedialab.org

Special Issue of Brazilian Journalism Research

Deadline: January 31, 2020

Guest editors: Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno (Loyola University Maryland, US), Rita

Basílio de Simões (Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal), and Salvador de León Vázquez (Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, México)

This Special Issue of Brazilian Journalism Research will look at the relationship between journalism and trafficking. Trafficking is a rather complex phenomenon which comprises arms trafficking, drug trafficking and human trafficking. All three top the world’s criminal enterprises, with drug trafficking taking the number one slot, human trafficking taking third, and small arms following not too far behind. In great expansion, human trafficking umbrellas sex, labor, organ and child trafficking, or the illegal adoption of children. Trafficking is no respecter of persons; it can affect the young/old, rich/poor, educated/illiterate, Global North citizen/Global South citizen, etc.

Media – in particular news coverage – contribute toward shaping public understanding and opinion on societal issues. They also influence (inter)national policies, programs, and legislative action.

This special issue explores the range of ways that media, broadly construed, are connected with all facets of trafficking. How might media be influencing trafficking legislation? How might it be affecting victims? Perpetrators? What effect has journalism coverage of trafficking had on the crime? In what ways might media representations of trafficking be legitimating or challenging different kinds of power imbalances and social hierarchies based on gender, class or race?

Contributors may choose to look at different types of news media, i.e. newspapers, TV, radio, online, etc., and use quantitative and qualitative data. Submissions that are theoretical, empirical, critical, comparative or applied, and which represent a wide range of conceptual and methodological approaches relevant to a focus on media and domestic and/or transnational trafficking are welcome. While a comparative approach to journalism in the context of trafficking is not compulsory for inclusion, it is strongly encouraged.

Contributors are invited to focus on the following issues:

Journalism and:

• Trafficking legislation
• Trafficking victim recovery
• Trafficking prevention
• Trafficking prosecution
• Trafficking victim protection
• Trafficking representations
• Trafficking and social power imbalances

To be considered, articles must be submitted by January 31 2020.The length of texts must be between 40 000 and 55 000 characters with spaces.

As the Brazilian Journalism Research publishes two versions of each article (Portuguese/Spanish and English), the authors of accepted papers submitted in Portuguese or Spanish must provide a translation into English. Likewise, the articles submitted and accepted in English must provide a translation into Portuguese or Spanish. A selected number of accepted papers from non-Portuguese or Spanish speaking contexts will be eligible for translation services provided by the journal.

Articles should be sent exclusively through the electronic system SEER / OJS, available from the journal website: http://bjr.sbpjor.org.br

If you have any questions, send an e-mail to bjr@gmail.com

Guidelines for authors: http://bjr.sbpjor.org.br/bjr/aboutsubmissions#authorGuidelines

Deadlines:

• Submission of papers: until January 31th 2020
• Notification of acceptance: April 30th 2020
• Delivery of final versions in English and Portuguese or Spanish and with revision and additional information suggested by the editors: June 30th 2020
• Publication: August 2020

March 12-13, 2020

Leipzig, Germany

Deadline: January 8, 2020

International Workshop 

The Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) in cooperation with the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Leipzig is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the international and interdisciplinary Workshop ‘Media Representations of Law and Justice: Middle Eastern Perspectives’ in Germany at the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Leipzig, 12−13 March 2020.

Law and/in popular culture has been an emerging field of research (at least) since the 1980s. Its initial prominence was primarily limited to North America – the main hub of popular legal culture which, through various kinds of movies and television shows, impinged on what people generally believe about law and legal institutions. By now, the interrelation of law and popular culture has made its way into European legal academia. In addition, transnational comparative studies on how law and justice are portrayed in movies and fictional television dramas have been conducted, providing additional insight for both scholars of law and media studies.

At the same time, the law and/in popular culture discourse has been largely restricted to Europe and North America. Research usually centers on ‘Western’ legal culture and its cinematic/televised representations. Oftentimes, non-‘Western’ legal traditions and systems are only portrayed as supposed counter-examples to the liberal state under the rule of law that is promoted in dominant popular culture.

The AGYA workshop on ‘Media Representations of Law and Justice: Middle Eastern Perspectives’ moves away from this established regional focus by including Middle Eastern legal regimes and their respective local media depictions. We particularly invite contributions on Arabic-language cinematic and television formats (including those on more recent streaming services and social media sites) screening legal system in either contemporary or historical perspective. We also welcome papers on legal dramas from neighboring countries in the ‘Greater Middle East’, as well as comparative studies to allow for broader transnational perspectives. By enabling a conversation not only between different regional sites of media production, but also among various disciplines, a range of analytical methods will be tested and employed to analyze the means and ends to which a legal system is portrayed in popular formats.

Topics, themes, and issues to be explored include, but are not confined to the following:

• Cultural representations of domestic legal systems and legal traditions in contemporary courtroom dramas;
• The political framework in which legal dramas are produced and its impact on both content and format;
• Audiences, viewers, and their changing perceptions of the law;
• The impact of satellite TV and online streaming services on legal dramas, their production, and content;
• Plots, characters, and sociopolitical critique in legal dramas.

The workshop is organized by AGYA member Lena-Maria Möller (Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Leipzig/Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg) and AGYA alumna Hanan Badr (Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin). Travel costs and accommodation for confirmed speakers will be covered by AGYA. Funding is still subject to approval.

Those interested in presenting papers are invited to send a tentative title, an abstract of around 300-500 words, and a short biography to:

Lena-Maria Möller (moeller@mpipriv.de) by 8 January 2020.

Notifications of acceptance will be announced by 15 January 2020 and draft papers will be due by 15 February 2020. The workshop language will be English. The organizers aim to publish the papers either as an edited volume or as a special issue of an academic journal.

About AGYA

The Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) is based at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and at the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) in Egypt. It was established in 2013 and is the first bilateral young academy worldwide. AGYA promotes research cooperation among outstanding early-career researchers from all disciplines who are affiliated with a research institution in Germany or in any Arab country. The academy supports the innovative projects of its members in various fields of research as well as in science policy and education. Currently, 50 members – in equal number Arab and German scholars – realize joint projects and initiatives. AGYA is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and various Arab cooperation partners.

For more information about AGYA and the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Leipzig please visit:

www.agya.info

www.orient.uni-leipzig.de

March 19, 2020

Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

Deadline: January 15, 2020

“There is a growing global consensus that the secrecy-havens—jurisdictions which undermine global standards for corporate and financial transparency—pose a global problem: they facilitate both money laundering and tax avoidance and evasion, contributing to crime and unacceptably high levels of global wealth inequality.” (Joseph E. Stiglitz and Mark Pieth)

Secrecy mechanisms and facilitators of illicit financial flows hamper public understanding of financial markets. As a result, cross border investigative journalism has become vital in order to build public understanding of the consequences of secrecy in financial markets. However, investigative journalists researching illicit financial flows face a number of challenges. We wish to explore what can be done to facilitate investigative journalism of illicit financial flows.

This is the fourth research conference in the series “Making Transparency Possible - Interdisciplinary dialogues”. The conference invites research papers for a special session on investigative journalism and hindrances and threats investigative journalists face when researching and revealing illicit financial flows.

Confirmed speakers:

Nicholas Lord is a Professor of Criminology. He joined the University of Manchester in September 2013 and teaches in the areas of white-collar and corporate crimes, financial and economic crimes, serious and organized crimes, and criminological research. Nicholas has primary research interests in white-collar and corporate crimes of a financial and economic nature, such as fraud, corruption and bribery, as well as the organization of serious crimes for financial gain, such as 'organized crime' and food fraud.

Tina Søreide is Professor of Law and Economics, NHH. Her research is focused on corruption, governance, markets and development, currently with an emphasis on law enforcement. At NHH, she teaches courses in business ethics, corruption and governance, coordinates a student mobility program in anti-corruption with schools in Ukraine and Georgia, and organizes a research program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement.

Kalle Moene is a Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Oslo. He is the head of ESOP (a center for the study of Equality, Social Organization, and Performance). His research interest is the study of inequality in income and wealth in rich and poor countries. A core interest is the role of economic development, institutions, unions and welfare states. He was a lead author in the International Panel of Social Progress. He has published widely in international journals and received the Fridtjof Nansen Prize for excellent research in 2016.

Bradley Birkenfeld is a whistle-blower and former international banker and wealth manager who worked with the Swiss investment bank UBS. UBS enabled wealthy Americans to hide wealth due to Switzerland’s banking secrecy laws and to avoid paying tax in the US. In 2007, Birkenfeld became a whistle-blower. He later obtained the largest whistle-blower reward ever given to an individual whistle-blower for reporting IRS Tax Fraud.

Simon Bendtsen is a Danish journalist with the newspaper Berlingske Tidende. Bendtsen helped expose the Danske Bank money laundering scandal. The bank is currently under investigation for channeling 234 billion dollars through an affiliate in Estonia.

Linda Larsson Kakuli and Axel Humlesjö investigated and helped revealed the so-called Sewdbank money laundering scandal for Uppdrag Granskning (Swedish SVT). The bank is currently under criminal investigation for channeling around 40 billion Swedish kroner through affiliates in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

Ingi Freyr Vilhjálmsson is a journalist at Stundin, a media platform for investigative journalism financed through crowdfunding, subscriptions and public support. In 2019, Vilhjálmsson revealed how “an Icelandic fishing company bribed officials in Namibia and used Norway's largest bank to transfer 70 million dollars to a tax haven”.

Roar Østby, head of compliance in the Norwegian bank DnB.

Lars Erik Bolstad is a data scientist and expert on artificial intelligence in the Norwegian bank DnB.

Gunnar Holm Ringen is responsible for fraud prevention services and legal services in PwC Forensics Oslo and works extensively with accounting investigations. He has worked as a senior public prosecutor in the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (ØKOKRIM) and as a police inspector on the police force, and has extensive experience in the investigation, prosecution and litigation of serious cases related to most forms of financial irregularities. He has also been a district court judge.

The organizers seek paper presentations based on on-going research. We particularly welcome original, high-quality papers that can deepen our understanding of the following questions:

• What information hindrances do investigative journalists investigating illicit financial flows face?
• What type of threats/pressures/dangers/risks do investigative journalists face when investigating illicit financial flows?
• What do journalists and journalist organisations do to protect investigative journalists facing threats/pressures/dangers/risks when investigating illicit financial flows?

Other relevant topics are also welcome.

We have a limited number of scholarships available to cover direct costs for travel/hotel. Priority will be given to researchers from Latin America, Africa, The Middle East and Asia.

Abstracts and applications for scholarships have to be submitted before January 15th 2020. Please submit a one-page paper abstract together with a short CV of no more than two pages. Please send to conference@pwyp.no

The conference is organized by the research project Making Transparency Possible at Oslo Metropolitan University and financed by The Research Council of Norway.