ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

ECREA 2020 Pre-conference 

October 2, 2020

Braga, Portugal

Deadline: June 15, 2020

Despite the special and exceptional situation that we all are facing, it's important to keep our activities in the security of our houses.

Thus, the Organizational and Institutional Communication SOPCOM Working Group and the Advertising SOPCOM Working Group are pleased to invite you to submit your abstract to the ECREA 2020 Pre-conference “Improving public participation through strategic communication”. The event will take place on the 2nd October 2020.

WHY THIS PRE-CONFERENCE?

We are facing an era of a permanent search for new answers to contemporary environmental, political and social challenges. The public, as producer, receiver or user, has today wide access to information and tends to be more involved in communication, being an essential element in this equation.

Moreover, publics are the engine of paradigm changes, as they have the power to influence behaviors, individually or as part of organizations, to whom they demand more conscious behavior. On another hand, acting as citizens, those publics are important agents of change, with a strong ability to influence decision making.

Considering the role of Strategic Communication in this context, not only for organizations but for the whole society, publics must be taken into account as an essential element of its process. Being a strategic function with specific goals to achieve, the stakeholder mapping in Strategic Communication it’s not an abstract part of planning, but a must-have in the whole process. Through Strategic Communication, and its branches of public relations and advertising, it’s possible to improve the publics’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.

In this context, can Strategic Communication be understood as a way to boost public participation, assuming stakeholders as key players in a changing environment?

We particularly welcome submissions on:

• Key concepts, perspectives and frameworks in research on Strategic Communication;
• Innovative methodological approaches to studying Strategic Communication;
• Theoretical or empirical studies about publics/citizens in Strategic Communication;
• Digital challenges in Strategic Communication;
• Measuring the impact of Strategic Communication;
• Redefining the borders of Strategic Communication;
• Collaborative projects in Strategic Communication;
• The future of Strategic Communication.

Deadline for submissions: May 15, 2020.

Submission and selection process: Presentations at the conference are based on abstracts of 500 words, to be submitted by June 15, 2020, to strategic.ecrea@ics.uminho.pt

Note: The abstracts should include main idea/argument, research questions, and key concepts, theoretical and/or methodological discussion and analysis (if relevant). All submitted abstracts must be anonymous with no reference to author(s). Submit the abstract as an e-mail attachment and include name, affiliation and contact details in the e-mail message.

Decisions on acceptance: July 8, 2020 (The abstracts will be subject to anonymous peer review.)

For more information, please visit: http://www.cecs.uminho.pt/en/como-promover-a-participacao-dos-publicos-atraves-da-comunicacao-estrategica/?fbclid=IwAR1DA_590X_becesC9ksBiQu138hkWlp0gdSvH-NIETcwCabBiW2iCcNOmw

SCIENTIFIC COMITEE:

• Ana Raposo, Lisbon Polytechnic Institute
• Isidoro Arroyo, King Juan Carlos University
• Ivone Ferreira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
• Joep Cornelissen, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• José Gabriel Andrade, Minho University
• Lars Thøger Christensen, Copenhagen Business School
• Pedro Hellín, University of Murcia
• Sara Balonas, University of Minho
• Teresa Ruão, University of Minho

ORGANIZATION COMITEE:

• José Gabriel Andrade, University of Minho – jgandrade@ics.uminho.pt
• Ivone Ferreira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa – ivoneferreira@fcsh.unl.pt
• Ana Raposo, Lisbon Polytechnic Institute – araposo@escs.ipl.pt
• Sara Balonas, University of Minho – sarabalonas@ics.uminho.pt

The pre-conference is organized by the Organizational and Institutional Communication Sopcom Working Group and the Advertising Sopcom Working Group.

SPONSORS:

• Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS) of the University of Minho
• NOVA Institute of Communication (ICNOVA) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa
• Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences (Sopcom).

SN Social Sciences

Deadline: end of March 2021

Editor: Associate Professor Ignas Kalpokas (Department of Public Communication, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania)

The term ‘synthetic media’ can be used to describe a broad range of content generated, in whole or in part, by employing machine learning or other means of automatic content generation. Such content is currently taken to encompass primarily video, audio, image, and text, but it also extends to digital objects of various descriptions (e.g. virtual influencers), augmented reality (games, product try-on tools etc.), and fully immersive virtual environments. This shift will certainly bring numerous benefits, particularly in terms of fostering creativity and democratising content editing and generation by automating the process. Synthetic media will also enable new ways of storytelling that will span the physical and the virtual environments, potentially erasing boundaries between the two. However, the same attributes of automation and democratisation will also make synthetic media potential security threats, enabling manipulation and deception on a large scale, which is a matter of great concern in a world already permeated by fake news and post-truth (the debate about the manipulative potential of deepfakes is a case in point). No less importantly, the emergence of synthetic media raises the necessity to rethink intellectual property rights, the right to one’s likeness and voice and other ways in which such content can be monetised and misuse of one’s person or the fruit of one’s labour prevented. These and other questions create a fertile ground for academic debate on the present and future impact of synthetic media.

With the above developments in mind, this thematic collection aims to analyse the impact of synthetic media on personal, public, and political communication processes, shifts in creative practices, and disruptions in reality perception and sense-making. The collection also invites considerations of regulatory frameworks applicable to synthetic media.

The collection is open to all disciplines from across the social sciences, and qualitative, quantitative, or purely theoretical contributions are equally welcome. Potential questions to be asked include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

• What are the potential uses of synthetic media and how do they compare with other types of media?
• How do synthetic media transform self-expression, marketing, political communication, or journalism?
• How do synthetic media affect personal and group identities?
• What are the social and political threats of synthetic media?
• What are the appropriate tools and frameworks for regulating synthetic media?
• What new monetisation practices are enabled by synthetic media and how does that impact on content creators and consumers?
• What are the likely future directions of synthetic media’s development?

This is a rolling collection and as such submissions will be welcomed up until the end of March 2021. Authors who wish to discuss ideas for articles are asked to contact the guest editor direct before submission. Full papers (original or review) must be submitted via the journal’s submission system. Submissions by email cannot be accepted.

ICNOVA – Nova Communication Institute a NOVA FCSH’s research unit of excellence in the communication sciences field, is accepting expressions of interest from potential candidates for Marie Skłodowska-Curie – Individual Fellowships 2020.

We welcome candidates in the category of European Fellowships or Global Fellowships. Candidates with excellent scientific CV (peer review publications and participation in projects are priorized) and a relevant track record of obtaining funding for their research activities are especially welcome.

Working with ICNOVA is to be part of a team that brings together more than 200 researchers and develops research and promotes knowledge dissemination work in the field of communication sciences. Our work develops around the areas of media and journalism, culture and arts, strategic communication, performance and cognition, and digital media.

We are housed on the Campolide campus, sharing the Almada Negreiros college building with the other NOVA FCSH research units and promoting interdisciplinary and collaboration networks with these and other international researchs units.

Our strategic agenda for 2020-2023 is entitled Media Practices: Cultural, Societal and Technological Challenges, aiming at the achievement of inclusion and diversity in a world of social acceleration and deep mediatisation. These global goals will be pursued through the following major themes: 1) Diversity, Pluralism, Inclusion; 2) Cognitive, Mediation and Decision-Making Processes; 3) Culture, Criticism and Digital Practices.

If your project and your academic path connects with the scientific field of Communication Sciences and you are interested in researching with high level quality in the areas of our estrategic agenda, send us your pre-application until the 19th of June, with your CV and a detailed synopsis of your research project.

Deadline: Friday, 19 June, 2020 – 00:00

Host Institution: NOVA Communication Institute – ICNOVA

Field: Individual Fellowships

Call ID: H2020-MSCA-IF-2020

Publish date: Tuesday, 14 April, 2020 – 13:30

Start date: Wednesday, 8 April, 2020 – 00:00

Call deadline: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 – 17:00

For more detailed information, please contact

Patrícia Contreiras

patriciacontreiras@fcsh.unl.pt

Special Issue of Media Studies (Mediální studia)

Editors: Andra Siibak, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt and Risto Kunelius

• Philipp Seuferling: Hopeful and Obligatory Remembering: Mediated Memory in Refugee Camps in Post-War Germany
• Lorenzo Giuseppe Zaffaroni: Distinctions Between Photographs Matter: Theorising the Artistic Legitimisation of Photography in Italy
• Maris Männiste and Anu Masso: "Three Drops of Blood for the Devil": Data Pioneers as Intermediaries of Algorithmic Governance Ideals
• Natasja van Buggenhout, Wendy van den Broeck and Pieter Ballon Exploring the Value of Media Users’ Personal Information (PI) Disclosure to Media Companies in Flanders, Belgium
• Kathrin Stürmer, Gearoid OSullebhain, Pio Fenton and Lars Rademacher: Lobbying On The German Federal Level: The Unknown Shift Through Digital Transformation
• Raluca Iacob: Blind Spots in the Spotlight: Media Reporting on the National Bank of Romania’s answers to Financial Crisis Aftershock PDF
• Kaisa Tiusanen: Strategies of Middle-class Distinction and the Production of Inequality in Food Media Texts: Good Food and Worthy Food Culture in Mainstream Broadsheet Journalism

About the Journal:

Mediální studia / Media Studies (ISSN 2464-4846) is a peer-reviewed, open access electronic journal, published in English, Czech and Slovak twice a year. Based in disciplines of media and communication studies, it focuses on analyses of media texts, media professionals practices and media audiences behaviour. We especially welcome papers covering media in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and support the emphasis on the dynamics of local-global knowledge on media and its mutual connections.

Contact: medialnistudia@fsv.cuni.cz

https://www.medialnistudia.fsv.cuni.cz/en/

Researchers from the University of Malaga in Spain ask ECREA members for help with their study on podcasts as the branded content. The message from Emilia Smolak, the head of the study follows:

"Together with two other collueagues at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, the Prof.  Paloma Villafranca and Prof. Carmen Monedero we conduct the study on podcast among the professionals and academics. I would appreciate your help in disseminating the link among members of the ECREA, as we are particularly interested in the opinions of the members of the association."

Check the survey :

English version: https://forms.gle/B9unzvxSASvm5Ae77

Spanish version: https://forms.gle/HMmwpbab42pbRVcd7

November 20-21, 2020

Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University, Prague

Deadline: June 15, 2020

International Colloquium

Societies are in a permanent dialogue with change. Change is dealt with in configurations of the present and societies’ visions of the future, entailing reflections and re-constructions of the past. Our apprehension of the features and dimensions of change drives political, economic and cultural responses, at the individual and collective level. Furthermore, change is perceived as a positive or negative outcome or prospect, as an opportunity or a threat, driving the social actors’ struggles for maintenance or reconfiguration of power positions.

This colloquium aims to bring together scholars from a diverse set of foci and backgrounds, from the broad area of media and communication studies, to examine, discuss and reflect upon, through various approaches and methods, how change is constructed, in media and communication practices.

Diverse settings, fields and practices can be objects or loci of study (e.g., journalism, political communication, advertising, campaigning, activism, education, culture, sports) in an exploration of how change is represented, negotiated, contested and appropriated by actors and groups in the social realm.

We welcome contributions related, but not limited, to the following thematic areas:

• how societal phenomena, challenges and crises (e.g., epidemics and pandemics, climate change, migration, war and conflict, extremism) are mediated and reconfigured through the prism of change, at the national, European and international level;
• how different actors, social groups and institutions (e.g., media, political parties, education, religion) negotiate, in mediated environments, their identities and societal roles, in times of change;
• how communicators and mediators apprehend, and deal with, change, in a world in flux;
• how different ideological positions are articulated in public discourse, in visions about stability and change of national and European identity;
• how history is brought into communicative practices and public debates about the present and the future;
• how Europe is represented, in public discourse, through the prism of change.

Abstracts of 500 words (in English) can be submitted by 15 June 2020 to Vaia Doudaki (vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz)

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 10 July 2020.

Amongst the aims of the colloquium is the publication of an international edited collection or a special issue of an international peer-reviewed journal, with selected contributions from the colloquium’s participants. More details will be provided later.

For this purpose, participants will be expected to pre-circulate drafts of works in progress in advance of the colloquium.

Deadline for pre-circulation of draft works in progress: 2 November 2020

Our intention is to hold an in-person event, in Prague. We will be monitoring closely how the Covid-19 pandemic evolves and will consider alternatives to this model, if need be.

For news and updates, visit the colloquium’s web page.

The colloquium is organised by the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (Charles University).

The colloquium is supported by the 4EU+ consortium project “Mediating Change: Strengthening collaboration in research and research-oriented education” (Charles University, University of Copenhagen, University of Warsaw), and by DESIRE, the Centre for the study of Democracy, Signification and Resistance.

ECREA is happy to announce a new promotional leaflet. The main goal is to invite new scholars and students to become ECREA members. It can be distributed at the conferences, workshops, and different academic meetings. Feel free to spread it.

You can download the leaflet here: EcreaLeaflet_WEB.pdf

Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. 39

Deadline: September 15, 2020

Editors: Rodrigo Saturnino (CECS, University of Minho, Portugal), Helena Sousa (CECS, University of Minho, Portugal) & Jack Qiu (School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)

Sharing Economy is a common expression used to refer to various forms of exchange facilitated by digital platforms involving a great diversity of profit-oriented and non-profit activities with a broad spectrum of social, economic, cultural, and political purposes. The underlying idea of the sharing economy is generally about giving access to unused resources. This model has rekindled the promises of an economically sustainable society shaped by the various forms of connections.

On the one hand, it is considered that the connective power of information and communication technologies has led to the creation of new business models motivated by cyber culture-inspired logics (e.g., open access, collaboration and sustainability), as well as favouring the financial autonomy of users and environmental preservation through a community consumption project on the global and/or regional scales. On the other hand, a more critical view considers that when it is being dominated by large companies such as Uber and Airbnb, Sharing Economy helps to instrumentalise expensive social concepts such as the idea of home, solidarity, and trust to reinforce capitalist interests and reiterate precariousness, technological dependence, and social inequalities.

This thematic volume aims to approach and critically understand the varied interfaces of this economy based on the emergence of digital platforms, considering the scope and scale that such models have contracted in the daily life world. It is interesting to discover, for example, how international regulatory frameworks have systematised and are dealing with the platform operations, and what strategies are being developed by users either to resist and/or to benefit from them. And yet, what are the resilience and sustainability strategies that their users have used to co-exist with such platforms?

This volume of Comunicação e Sociedade is devoted to studies on Sharing Economy. It pays special attention to proposals for articles that result from scientific research work on the following topics:

• Sharing economics and regulatory frameworks;
• New professions and new lifestyles;
• Sharing economics and communication theory;
• Social theory and economics of sharing
• Digital platforms (for-profit and non-profit);
• Digital labour, precariousness and dependence;
• Unemployment through the sharing economy;
• Alternative platform formations (e.g., platform cooperatives);
• Collaborative consumption and environmental footprint;
• Commodification of trust, reputation and solidarity;
• Sustainable forms based on the sharing economy;
• Big data, surveillance, privacy and intimacy
• Social inequality, racism and risk behaviours through the sharing economy;
• Economy of sharing, culture of access and connection
• Covid-19 effects on sharing economy.

KEY DATES

Full article submission deadline: 15 September 2020

Editor’s decision on full articles: 15 November 2020

Deadline for sending the full version and translated version: 05 February 2021

Issue publication date: June 2021

LANGUAGE

Articles can be submitted in English or Portuguese. After the peer review process, the authors of the selected articles should ensure translation of the respective article, and the editors shall have the final decision on publication of the article.

EDITION AND SUBMISSION

Comunicação e Sociedade is a peer-reviewed journal that uses a double blind peer review process. After submission, each paper will be distributed to two reviewers, previously invited to evaluate it, in terms of its academic quality, originality and relevance to the objectives and scope of the theme chosen for the journal’s current issue.

Originals must be submitted via the journal’s website. If you are accessing Comunicação e Sociedade for the first time, you must register in order to submit your article (indications to register here).

The guidelines for authors can be consulted here.

For further information, please contact: comunicacaoesociedade@ics.uminho.pt

Special Issue of Critical Studies in Television 2022

Deadline: October 1, 2020

International coproduction, which Michelle Hilmes (2014:10) defines as “a partnership between two or more different national production entities” located in different countries, is exerting a notable influence on the creation of new high-end TV dramas produced outside the US. As ‘peak TV’ continues to expand the annual volume of US-produced TV fiction to unprecedented levels (Koblin 2020), continuing audience demand for distinctive original drama is fuelling new opportunities for high-end drama production in a larger range of countries.

The important consequence has been an increased cultural and/or linguistic diversity for high-end dramas produced for international distribution. Attended by a new emphasis on serial form and storytelling, this development and diversity is exemplified by /Babylon Berlin/ (ARD/Sky Deutschland/Netflix), /Anne With An E/ (CBC/Netflix), /My Brilliant Friend/ (Rai/HBO), /World On Fire/ (BBC/PBS), /Bad Banks/ (ZDF/Arte) and Finnish/Spanish example /Paratiisi/The Paradise/ (YLE), among others. These dramas make visible and treat as a matter-of-fact the cultural diversity and encounter that Janet McCabe (2017) indicates were previously treated as disruptive to the imagination of the national community that broadcasters sought to represent.

While regional funding schemes and content regulations are making their own contributions, the expansion and cultural diversification of non-US high-end drama can also be attributed to the institutional capacities of ‘multiplatform’ television (Dunleavy 2018). As a label that recognises the internet as a pervasive platform for television, this ‘multiplatform’ era is one in which broadcast, cable/satellite and internet-only TV networks are collaborating as well as competing and the earlier distinctions it was possible to make between internet-distributed and so-called ‘legacy’ TV services are beginning to recede.

Although international coproduction has always been an option for high-end drama (television’s most expensive form), it is moving to the forefront of TV drama’s international industry in the context of three main institutional and industrial conditions. The first is much higher production budgets and costs for the kinds of dramas that aim to succeed on an international stage. Second, the accelerated international circulation of new shows that internet distribution enables has increased the profit margins and extended the ‘afterlife’ of successful dramas (see Lotz 2019). Third is the commercial necessity for leading transnational networks (indicatively the premium players Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO and Disney+) to involve themselves in coproduction. In recognition that the offer of distinctive, original high-end drama is pivotal to the allure of premium TV services, US-based premium networks are coproducing with non-US broadcasters and/or non-US drama producers as a means to engage more directly with their national industries and audiences, to comply with content regulations operating in non-US markets, and to increase their subscribers in non-US territories.

By featuring an indicative selection of recent or current high-end TV drama examples, this special issue aims to explain and explore the increased cultural diversity of high-end dramas produced in non-US territories. It aims to demonstrate the importance of current coproduction strategies in facilitating their cultural distinctions, high-end ambition and appeals to an international audience. We invite abstracts for the themed issue that analyse these dramas from institutional, creative media industries and/or representational perspectives. Articles will be approximately 6-7000 words and engage with some of the questions below:

* How are international coproduction relationships changing the industrial, creative, representational, and/or linguistic parameters for non-US TV drama?

* How and why have these dramas deployed international coproduction?

* Public broadcasters continue to use international coproduction to help them finance unusually ambitious and expensive dramas. But how are their drama coproduction strategies and partnerships changing in the multiplatform era?

* How do dramas arising from creative and/or financial collaboration between non-US producers and transnational networks pursue and negotiate cultural specificity?

* Are today’s internationally coproduced dramas – even as their network investors anticipate wider international reach for them than was possible in past TV eras – extending the cultural specificity (or ‘localism’) of non-US high-end drama?

* How is the imagination of cultural specificity impacted by the co-production process?

Please send your abstract of no more than 750 words to Trisha Dunleavy (trisha.dunleavy@vuw.ac.nz ) and Elke Weissmann (weissmae@edgehill.ac.uk ) by 1 October 2020. The special issue of /Critical Studies in Television/ is scheduled to be published in 2022.

The special issue is part of the outcomes of a Victoria University of Wellington and British Academy-funded project on /Transnational Television in the Multiplatform Age/ for which the editors are principal investigators.

June 28-30, 2021

University of Hertfordshire/virtual

Deadline: December 1, 2020

Delegates can present virtually. The keynote will be held in London.

Conference presentations will take place at the University of Hertfordshire campus in Hatfield on the outskirts of London.

https://architecturemps.com/london-hatfield/

Disciplines: AI, Data and technology, Media and communications, art, design and film, architecture and urban design, sociology and politics

Formats: in-person, pre-recorded films, Zoom, written papers

Today, the city is a technological infused entity premised on a plethora of digital phenomena including the Internet of Things, ubiquitous computing, computer-led infrastructure, big data and AI. It is also a place designed, envisaged and increasingly built through data based digital architecture, planning and construction. Both scenarios mediate how we design and experience of the city. The result is a series of complex interactions of people, place and data and the establishment of the ‘digital city’, ‘smart buildings’ and ‘intelligent’ urbanism.

This new polemic agency of the machine informs the creative industries. A plethora of films in recent decades have built on the imaginary it offers while, in the arts, data is increasingly used as both a tool and motive for artworks. However, there are concerns. GIS, Google Maps and Facebook all offer interconnected information on urban life. They are also conduits for the collation of personal data and its misuse.

Sociologists highlight the dangers of the digital dependency of future generations. 3D printed buildings threaten job losses in the construction industry. The idea of parametric urbanism is anathema to many for whom city is a place of interpersonal interaction. This conference seeks to explore these and related issues from a variety of discipline perspectives.

PUBLICATIONS:

This event is part of the research programme, ‘The Mediated City’. Previous events have been held by universities in London, Los Angeles, Bristol, Istanbul and Canterbury. Each conference leads to a book as part of the associated Intellect Book series ‘Mediated Cities’. In addition, delegates submitting papers related to teaching and learning will be considered for Routledge book series: ‘Focus on Design Pedagogy’.

To participate, submit an abstract: https://architecturemps.com/london-hatfield/

Organisers: University of Hertfordshire, UK and Intellect Books, with Routledge, AMPS and PARADE.