ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

5th Helsinki Photomedia Conference in 2020

April 16-18, 2020

Aalto University, Finland

Deadline: November 30, 2019

Submit here

The conference brings together international photography researchers, artists and practitioners. It offers various platforms where artistic, philosophical, social and technological approaches to photography can meet.

“Those who write and make images will have to become envisioners” (Vilém Flusser)

The theme “Images Among Us” refers to the roles of photographic images in a world that is vibrant, transitory and overcharged by affects. The contours and borders of media rearrange themselves in virtual and material environments in various platforms and social spaces. The flicker of their dividing lines becomes intermittently vague and distinct. In this dense historical assemblage, the photographic image itself has become disintegrated and embedded in different media.

Evidently, the present condition is difficult to access through our customary photographic categories and thinking. Photographic images are much more than familiar mediators between the world and ourselves. They have become simultaneously comforting and threatening. Photographic operations have become more and more elusive, with photography becoming less and less reducible to its myriad uses and capacities. However, enduring ontological questions on the essence, materiality and origins of photography have become more significant than ever. For example, photographs still possess traces of the evidential currency that has defined much of photography’s history.

Helsinki Photomedia 2020 invites alternative formulations, critical observations, artistic reflections and presentations of photography projects that react to the present photographic condition in various ways, seeking to instigate productive dialogues.

We invite you to address and challenge these concerns from the perspective of your practice, guided by the following intertwined subthemes:

Theme 1. Artistic Practices

What is the role of photographic art in the present media environment? How is the intimacy of singular imaging practices possible within contemporary visual abundance? How can artistic research contribute? Is the task of the artist to describe and understand or to critically engage? What documentary strategies and imaginary fictions have become most pressing?

Theme 2. Technologies & Cultures

The track technologies and cultures is particularly interested in the intertwinements between visual and material photographic practices. Exemplary questions include, but are not limited to: How are our understandings of photographic images altered by technologies, both “old” and “new”? What kinds of cultural effects do specific technologies have, and how in turn do particular cultures form what photographic technologies are understood to be? What is the relation of photographic technologies to various ecological concerns, to issues of privacy, or understandings of ethical use?

Theme 3. Critical Approaches

What does the concept of “critical” mean (or potentially mean) in the context of contemporary photography? What kinds of current critical photographic practices do we find in the realms of gender, migration, climate change, politics and media? How has the problem of critical practices been articulated in social and political theories of photography? How do the production of visual knowledge and critical practices relate to each other in the “post-truth” era?

Important dates

• 30.11.2019 – Deadline for submissions (500 word abstracts) by 23.59 Finnish time (UCT +2:00)
• Notification of Acceptance will be sent in December 2019
• 31.03 2019 – Deadline for conference registration
• 16-18.04.2020 – Conference at Aalto University

After Post-Photography 6 (APP6)

May 28-30, 2020 (to be confirmed)

European University St Petersburg, Russia

Deadline: December 22, 2019

From the beginnings, photography changed the relation of humans to time. In its pictures, the present was translated into a future past. On closer looks however, and with some attention to the practices photography is part of, it turns out that the connections between photography and time are more complex than the common understanding of photographs being an image from the past: When granny for instance shows her album to her grand-children they have a hard time understanding that the old lady besides them should be identical to that young girl on the pictures. And it doesn’t stop there: Product photography for instance often shows us our happy future if only we buy this car, this trip or that outfit. Re-viewing old photographs uncovers details that during the time they were taken the contemporaries were oblivious to. If a photograph of a far away galaxy gets taken today, it shows us what has happened there ages ago. Using the appropriate filters, digital photographs appear as if they were albumen prints or Polaroids.

At the same time, photography itself was never a stable medium. Instead it has constantly been changing and becoming. In particular in the past 30 years, that is, since the introduction of electronic media and digital cameras to the consumer market, photography has been part of ever new practices and processes. Reading QR codes with the camera of a smartphone is a photographic process. Imaging techniques such as computer tomography translate measurements into images with x-ray aesthetics. It is possible to translate ordinary photographs into 3D-prints. Certain genres of video games become increasingly photo-realistic. With deep-fakes, politicians are convincingly made into dictators and actors into pornstars. And with the downturn of previously dominating analog photography, not only certain processes, but photographic papers, emulsions and other materials vanish - sometimes to the dismay of specialized photographers depending on them.

If, on the one hand, the processes, practices and pictures of photography do not fit easily into the plain concept of past, present and future; and if, on the other hand, photography in itself is constantly in motion, it seems that there are no easy or general concepts that explain the relations of photography and time once and for all. Instead, these relations are volatile, convoluted and contradictory, often depending on the applications the uses of the multitude of photographic processes and influencing them in the process. Hence, questions of time and photography do not only concern theorists of photography. Instead they are also at the core of each and any discipline using photography, including, but not limited to, cultural history, history of art, medicine, law, linguistics, astronomy, environmental studies etc.

As with previous conferences, After Post-Photography conferences were and are interested in all kinds of new approaches, discoveries and hypothesis concerning the history and theory of photography. For the 6th issue we also specifically ask for papers that one way or the other deal with issues of time, temporality, timelessness and timeliness in photography in ways similar to those described above. We welcome in particular key studies on specific and concrete subjects, and we explicitly invite not only researchers and practitioners with a background in history and theory of photography, but also cultural historians, art historians, chemists, historians, architects, criminologists or any other discipline that one way or the other is involved in thinking about photography.

Please submit your application, including a short summary of your paper (250- 400 words) in English using the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=app6 no later than 22 December 2019. Note that you should register at the Easychair website in order to submit your application. Should you like to consult with us prior to your submission please get in touch via app@mur.at. We also will be available on Skype for both Russian and English speakers; for the schedule, please see /www.after-post.photography and write an eMail in advance for co-ordination. You can also find the programs and speakers of the previous conferences on that page.

There is no participation fee, neither for speakers nor for guests. Should your paper be accepted we regret that we can’t sponsor travelling or accommodation; but if need be we’re happy to help you finding a place to stay. We will also provide you with an invitation in case you need a visa.

The working languages of the conference are Russian and English; translations from the one to the other are provided. For programs of After Post-Photography conferences since 2015, please see /www.after-post.photography

We would appreciate it if you would circulate the call to your own networks and other mailing lists.

Organising committee After Post Photography 6 Maria Gourieva, Olga Davydova, Natalia Mazur, Daria Panaiotti, Friedrich Tietjen, Jennifer Tucker

Dept of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield

Deadline: December 1, 2019

We are looking to recruit a further French-speaking Research Associate (12 months at 0.8fte) to join our growing team on the FemmePowermentAfrique project, which is assessing the impact of radio on women’s rights and empowerment in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. You will be working on a new part of the project, recently funded by a large GCRF grant, and will be examining radio output using natural language processing, but also gathering listener feedback through social media platforms.

Radio is an essential form of independent information in many regions in Global South. It is extensively used for many purposes including providing news, information, and awareness campaigns, particularly regarding youth and female empowerment. Given its potential influence and its capacity to change behaviour and influence attitudes (for good or bad), it is important to determine whether the information that radio broadcasts is accurate, independent, targeted, or even aligns with listeners’ needs or wishes.

Working in collaboration with Fondation Hirondelle, a Swiss-based media development organisation based in Lausanne, and its radio studios in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, you will be involved in the quantitative and qualitative analysis of data, radio programmes and radio generally. You will be fluent in French. Key areas of investigation will be radio, women, youth, politics, and Mali/Niger/Burkina Faso. Experience in these areas will be beneficial. You will have a good honours degree and will be undertaking or have recently completed a PhD in a relevant area. Familiarity with data management and natural language processing will also be advantageous. Some overseas travel may be required.

To apply, please click here. Closing date - 1 December 2019

For informal enquiries about this job, contact: Dr Emma Heywood - e.heywood@sheffield.ac.uk.

Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Apply here

The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia invites applications for a teaching-track faculty position in Communication to begin in August 2020. Open rank. Ph.D. preferred. This full-time, nine-month appointment requires teaching five courses per year. Writing cases and curriculum materials for internal and external use, and actively serving the Communication area and the Darden School are also expected. Initial appointments are normally for a three-year term, but may be renewed, pending review.

To keep pace with a rapidly changing global world, we seek an engaged colleague interested in transforming the way Communication is learned in business education. All faculty in the Communication (COM) area teach up to two sections of Leadership Communication, a required course in all Darden degree programs – Residential MBA, Executive MBA, and MS in Business Analytics. In particular then, we seek candidates who are able to work collaboratively with a faculty team to design and deliver a common syllabus, lead discussion-based and experiential courses, and model leadership communication in the classroom and the school.

COM area faculty also teach electives, which will depend on both the candidate’s expertise and students’ interests. Current elective courses include: advanced leadership communication; interpersonal communication; strategic communication; and corporate communication. Topics for new business-relevant electives may be proposed and developed. New courses may include, but are not limited to, requested topics such as: communicating to promote diversity, inclusion and belonging, especially in global contexts; mastering current and emerging communication platforms and technologies; visualizing and communicating data; communicating in impromptu and improvisational situations; or negotiating and transforming conflict. Opportunities to teach abroad in one-week Global Immersion Courses are also possible.

In addition to teaching courses in Darden degree programs, Darden faculty are expected and encouraged to engage actively with business practitioners. For example, engagement may take the form of participating in the Communication area’s Darden Leadership Communication Council, teaching in Darden’s Executive Education programs, or independent consulting. COM area faculty are also encouraged to maintain active professional ties through academic conferences and networks, and to generate and share new knowledge, especially related to teaching and learning. Opportunities for summer research and course development funding are available.

Attractive candidates will hold a Ph.D. in Communication or a related discipline. Non-tenure track faculty with a doctoral-level degree are appointed with a professorial rank – assistant, associate, and full professor. Applicants with a master’s degree, strong practitioner experience, and evidence of teaching excellence will be considered, and if hired, appointed as a lecturer. The appointment will follow the University of Virginia guidelines for peer review, renewal, and promotion opportunities, detailed in the policy for “Academic General Faculty – Teaching Track.”

Regularly ranked in the US and internationally among top schools in MBA and Executive Education, the Darden School’s culture values exceptional teachers with an on-going passion for the craft of teaching. Traditionally a case-method school with a general management approach, Darden’s pedagogical style promotes lively student discussion and experiential learning. Most teaching will take place on the historic Grounds at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Some teaching may occur at Darden’s new building in Rosslyn, VA, just across the Potomac from Washington, DC. Currently, instruction may occur in face-to-face courses, or in blended learning formats (face-to-face, synchronous and asynchronous online). The ability to produce video or Coursera-style courses is desirable. For more information about UVA and the surrounding area, please visit UVA Prospective Employees. See also 21 Reasons to Choose Darden.

To Apply:

Please apply through Workday, and search for ‘'Open Rank, Communication Faculty – Darden School of Business​". Complete an application online and see below for documents to attach. Please note that multiple documents can be uploaded in the CV/Resume box. Internal applicants must apply through their UVA Workday profile.

Required Application Materials:

• CV
• Cover Letter – please include how you learned about this position
• Contact information for 3 references
• Evidence of teaching excellence
• Evidence of curriculum materials, scholarship, or thought leadership

Please note multiple documents can be submitted in the CV/Resume Box. Applications that do not contain all of the required documents will not receive full consideration.

The position will remain open until filled. For questions about the application process, please contact Bethany Case, Academic Recruiter, at bcase@virginia.edu. For questions about the position, please contact Lili Powell, Associate Professor and Area Head for Communication, Darden School, at lili.powell@virginia.edu.

The University of Virginia offers benefits for legally-recognized spouses in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The University assists UVA faculty spouses and partners seeking employment in the Charlottesville area. To learn more about those services, please see Dual Career Program at UVA.

The selected candidate will be required to complete a background check at time of offer per University Policy.

The Darden School of Business is committed to fostering a diverse educational environment and encourages applications from members of groups under-represented in academia. The Darden School especially encourages applications from minorities, women, and those with significant international experience.

The University of Virginia, including the UVA Health System and the University Physician’s Group are fundamentally committed to the diversity of our faculty and staff. We believe diversity is excellence expressing itself through every person's perspectives and lived experiences. We are equal opportunity and affirmative action employers. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, national or ethnic origin, political affiliation, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, veteran status, and family medical or genetic information.

Digital Culture and Education (Special Issue)

Submission deadline (extended): December 31, 2019, 12.00 (GMT)

Notifications: Feb 1 2020 (at the latest)

Aiming for publication mid 2020

5000 – 7000 word articles

This special issue of the Digital Cutlture and Education open access, online journal explores contemporary issues in digital ecopedagogy, particularly in relation to the education of children.

The worldwide youth climate strike on March 15 reflects young people’s growing frustrations with the lack of political response to the escalating ecological crisis. It also reflects the impact of efforts already underway to highlight environmental concerns. The

ecological turn has been gaining ground in social and theoretical discourse since at least the 1970s. During that time environmental education has been a concept in progress. Early debates concerning the notion of eco-citizenship and even the definition of nature itself express the growing realisation that environmental stewardship in the age of the Anthropocene (when humans dominate the earth) is a multi-dimensional cultural project incorporating everything from emotional re-learning of nature connectivity, through to eco-media literacy training, scientific witnessing, philosophical/economic reassessment and citizen action.

Alongside this, the growing ubiquity of digital culture has fuelled concern. In Last Child in the Woods (2008) Richard Louv blames the rise of digital screen culture for what he calls children’s ‘nature-deficit disorder’. Indeed, a 2013 study revealed that only 1 in 5 UK children felt sufficiently connected with nature (rspb.org.uk/connectionmeasure), raising the question of potential consequences for those 40% of the world's species already at risk of extinction and reliant upon human passion and dedication to save them.

Nevertheless, the role that digital culture plays in this crisis is still unclear and also in flux. Büscher’s (2016) concept of Nature 2.0 to describe the emerging digital representations of nature and networked engagements with the natural world points to the growing research interest in eco-digital cultures. Indeed, as Dobrin (2014: 205) observes, digital environments are “themselves natures … environments in and with which humans and non-humans forge relationships”. The ways that digital culture and nature are becoming increasingly enmeshed invites more discussion, particularly in relation to the role that eco-pedagogies play within thesesocial and material assemblages. Recent provocations include Fletcher’s (2017) discussion of the “environmental values behaviour” gap between the mediated appreciation for nature, versus the lack of societal commitment to conservation action.

Whilst nature-relatedness research (Richardson 2015, 2018) indicates that in order to build a joyous connection with nature, children in particular will often need to do so by focusing on the positives, free from the impending fear of environmental collapse. More evidence is required to help better understand the role that digital eco-pedagogy plays regarding these sorts of tensions.

This special issue invites researchers to explore these contemporary issues in digital eco-pedagogy.

Empirical studies are particularly welcome. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Engaging pedagogy with mediated experiences of nature relatedness
• Interplays of real/virtual, action/simulation, inside/outside, the physical world and digital space in environmental education
• Eco-media literacy, including awareness of the creative, economic and material modes of digital production
• Progressive and social constructions of ecological citizenship
• Navigating the limits, as well as the potential benefits of digital nature connections
• The intercultural, multi-dimensional, interdisciplinary and/or inter-generational dimensions to eco-citizenship
• Digital eco-pedagogy and cultural theory
• The digital mediation of inter-species relationships
• Digital representations of climate change e.g. abstraction, versus digital photo-realism
• Links between mediated play, expectations of nature and off-line behaviours
• Digital green-washing
• Testing the educational and social impact of digital nature connections across genres and platforms
• The use of portable, personalised, automated and/or ubiquitous technologies in digital eco-pedagogy
• Digital eco-feminist interventions
• Digital citizen science initiatives
• Collaborative Design of digital nature

5000 – 7000 word paper submission is due Nov 30, 2019. For author guidelines please see: http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/submissions/style-guide/

Please direct your questions to Bronwin Patrickson at floatingblueseen@gmail.com in the first instance, or alternately Alexander Schmoelz at alexander.schmoeltz@univie.ac.at

An ECREA Media Industries and Cultural Production Section Conference

November 22-23, 2019

National Film Archive, Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline: June 15, 2019

Sponsored by the Charles University in Prague, the Media Industries and Cultural Production Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), and the Czech Society of Film Studies

The Eighth Annual Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference (SIECE) is following up with the previous year’s topic by providing a forum for discussing the online strategies of public service broadcasters and their possible transformations into a new kind of media services. While critical studies of television in the internet era and of online distribution of audiovisual content more generally have boomed in recent years, there has not been enough attention paid to the specific challenges and opportunities that the internet brings to public service media (PSM). This is even more the case in the small countries of Central and Eastern Europe where PSM have generally limited their online presence to catch-up services and are still looking for more complex solutions to keep up with commercial and global competition. They face enormous difficulties ranging from outdated legal frameworks and financing models, a lack of skills in digital curation or data analytics, unpredictable changes in consumer habits, the impact of social media platforms, and political attacks trying to take advantage of PSM’s insecure position. At the same time, the convergence of television and the internet presents opportunities for new business models, modes of audience engagement, and conceptualisations of public value. The SIECE VIII will strive to bring together international scholars of online TV with media professionals and policymakers to draw a picture of the situation, its roots and contexts, and possible scenarios for future development within East-Central Europe and beyond.

Potential topics for papers and panels include, but are not limited to:

• Public value: how the shift to online TV makes media professionals as well as policymakers and audiences reconsider the core values of public service media possibilities for creating public value outside the designated institutional spaces of PSM
• Industry structures: shifts in the dual TV market and the place of PSM in the emerging online-TV/VOD market competition/cooperation with the commercial and global digital services strategies of overcoming the public/commercial divide (such as the “ecosystem approach”) and their dangers
• Infrastructures: issues of access and digital divide, net neutrality, mobile data, smart TV
• Digital curation and big data: balancing linear schedules with nonlinear catalogues, archival material with new content, personalized recommendation algorithms with top-down editorial selections and curation
• - Online content strategies: development of trans-platform narratives, new promotional content/strategies, novel media formats, and short-form, web-only, spreadable content as a measure to re-connect with under-served (younger) audience groups
• Online audiences: the place of PSM online viewing in “media ensembles” and “use genres” of today’s TV audiences PSM’s own concepts and measurements of online audiences
• “Public social” media or “platformization” of PSM: consequences of interactions and hybridizations between social media and PSM
• - National and supra-national policies/politics vis-à-vis online TV: the European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy and its potential impact on PSM online services the place and role of the EBU; territoriality of copyright and geoblocking new dangers PSBs face from their political opponents after transforming into PSM PSM’s open data policy
• - Professional cultures: tensions between TV and internet cultures within the PSM institutional spaces self-conceptions of PSM employees, independent producers and freelance talent up and down the professional hierarchy “industry lores” of PSM decision-makers
• - Transnational flows and globalization: co-production, format adaptation, cross-border circulation, and localization of public service content in the internet era, threats to local content and content diversity

The Screen Industries in East-Central Europe conference investigates the region’s audiovisual media industries from all angles – local, transnational, economic, cultural, social, and political – and through a broad range of original scholarship delivered in the form of conceptual papers and empirical case-studies. We welcome papers and panels exploring these issues from a range of contexts within and beyond Europe. A selection of the conference proceedings will be published in a special English-language issue of the Czech Film Studies journal Iluminace (www.iluminace.cz).

The 2019 Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference is co-organized with the ECREA Media Industries and Cultural Production Section. The conference will be preceded by a PhD workshop organized by the Media Industries and Cultural Production YECREA section, which will be held on 22 November.

The 2019 SIECE Program Committee invites proposals for twenty-minute conference papers and for panels of three or four speakers focusing on any topic related to public service media’s online strategies and within and beyond the East-Central European audiovisual industries. Panels of three to four papers should include a brief summarizing reflection of between five and ten minutes, which will be delivered by an assigned respondent to facilitate discussion. Proposals for conference papers should include a title, an abstract of up to 150 words, and between three and five key bibliographical references, along with the presenter’s name, the presenter’s institutional affiliation, and a concise academic bio. Panel proposals should include a panel title, a short description of up to 100 words on the panel’s focus, and proposals of all of the papers to be delivered (including the information described above). Please submit proposals no later than 15 June 2019 to Petr.Szczepanik@ff.cuni.cz.

Conference attendance is free, and the conference will be conducted in English.

Conference Organizers: Petr Szczepanik, Catherine Johnson, Pavel Zahrádka, Johana Kotišová, Giulia Manica, Maria Michalis, Julia Velkova, Kateřina Svatoňová, and Lucie Česálková, in association with the the Film Studies Department, Charles University, and the National Film Archive, Prague.

Conference Management: Jiří Anger (jiri.anger@nfa.cz; [+ 420] 778 522 720)

University of Queensland

Deadline: November 28, 2019

Apply here

Job No:505312

Area: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Salary (FTE): Advertised at multiple classifications

Work type: Full Time - Continuing

Location: St Lucia

SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION AND ARTS

The School of Communication and Arts is a large, research-intensive unit with an international reputation for outstanding research and teaching in English Literature, Art History, Communication, Media, Film and Television Studies, Journalism and Communication, Public Relations, Creative and Professional Writing, and Drama. It has over 50 academic and research staff and 11 professional staff. Our academics are widely published internationally and have extensive research backgrounds. The School is one of seven schools within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and is based on the St Lucia Campus.

The School teaches into the Bachelor of Arts, the Bachelor of Communication, the Bachelor of Journalism, and the Bachelor of International Studies, and has a suite of postgraduate coursework programs. Its postgraduate programs include Creative Writing; Writing, Editing, and Publishing; Strategic Communication; and Communication for Social Change. The School attracts a large number of Australian and international students to its research higher degree programs, which may be undertaken as PhD or MPhil.

The School has a world-class reputation in Communication and Media, which is currently ranked 32 in the QS World University rankings. Our undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs provide a strong foundation in writing, industry engagement, practice and production skills, advanced portfolio development and a critical and strategic view of media and communication in society. Our Communication and Media courses draw on the deep expertise of a research-intensive university, coupled with up-to-date industry knowledge and trends. We aim to educate the standard bearers of professional and critical practice in Communication and Media and lead research innovation and design across the sector.

More information about the School can be accessed at https://communication-arts.uq.edu.au/

The Role

The successful appointee is to undertake teaching and administrative duties associated with the area’s current and future offerings in Communication at undergraduate and postgraduate levels; and contribute to the continued development of our research program in communication, and its allied areas.

The Person

Applicants should possess qualifications in relevant disciplines. They should have a strong desire to further develop a successful and highly-productive research career in Communication and Digital Media, proven high level teaching skills, excellent communication and interpersonal skills, and the capacity to work with multidisciplinary research teams and with industry groups.

Remuneration

This is a full-time, continuing appointment at Academic level B or Academic Level C. The remuneration package will be in the range (Level B $95,771 - $113,728; Level C $117,319 - $135,276) p.a., plus employer superannuation contributions of up to 17% (total package will be in the range: Level B $112,052 - $133,061 p.a.; or Level C $137,263 - $158,272 p.a.).

Enquiries

To discuss this role please contact Professor Bronwyn Lea on +61 7 3365 2960 or b.lea@uq.edu.au.

To submit an application for this role, use the Apply button below. All applicants must supply the following documents: Cover letter, Resume and Selection Criteria responses.

For information on completing the application process click here.

Advertised: 31 Oct 2019

Applications close: 28 Nov 2019 (11:00 PM) E. Australia Standard Time

Special issue of MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research

Deadline: January 15, 2020

Guest editor: David Mathieu (Roskilde University)

Theme editor: Ana Jorge (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Instituto Superior Miguel Torga)

Check the Website

Academic knowledge built over the last five decades on media audiences may be called into question by algorithmic recommendations, machine learning, platform design and new metrics that describe, anticipate and shape the audience’s every move. While we hold that audiences are selective in their choice of content (Katz et al., 1974), form communities of interpretation (Fish, 1980) and are freely giving their attention to public issues (Warner, 2002), it would appear that they are now increasingly being selected, calculated, interpreted and anticipated by media on the basis of a wide range of data provided more or less willingly and consciously. This datafication of media (and) audiences – i.e. the quantification of audience mediated experiences – is not to be understood simply as a new form of knowledge, but also as a new era in the commodification of audiences, challenging our understanding of audiences as an agentic and autonomous subjects.

This special issue invites contributions that:

• explore critically the tensions between, on the one hand, attempts at control and commodification made possible by the datafication of media (and) audiences, and on the other hand, the reactions and agentic possibilities of audiences to comply, avoid or cope with these attempts at control;
• provide empirical basis to answer broad and worrying questions about the democratic and societal consequences of datafication, about its impact on media consumption, everyday and cultural life, by operationalizing media audiences as a key actor in mediated processes of datafication;
• shed light on and theorise new forms of relation and mutual influence that link media with their audiences in the age of datafication.

Contributions can address, but are not limited to, these topics:

• Type, nature and origin of data collected on media audiences and their purposes in media production and practice
• Media practices made possible by data that contribute to the quantification, objectification and commodification of audiences
• Coping strategies and reactions of resistance or appropriation to datafication from the part of media audiences
• Audiences’ experiences of normalization, trust, comfort, compliance, numbness, resignation, anxiety in the face of datafied media
• Implications of data collection, aggregation, analysis, prediction, profiling and brokering on audience agency
• Consequences of the quantification of human experience, the transformation of subjective experience into ‘objective’ knowledge, the algorithmic personalization and recommendation of media content on the mediated experiences and everyday life of audiences
• The transformation of news practice, public connection and audience engagement in the age of datafication
• The (lack of) transparency and accountability of data practices in media industries, and especially the challenges this poses for audiences’ capacity to read the media (their media literacy)
• The new asymmetries and power relations that data practices may bring between media institutions and audiences, or between different segments of audiences
• Cultural specificities of the processes of datafication of media and the reception by audiences, including cross-cultural variations
• Impact of datafication on theories and methodologies in media and audience research

References:

Fish, S. (1980). Is There A Text in This Class, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. Press.

Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Ulilization of mass communication by the individual. In J. G. Blumler, & E. Katz (Eds.), The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratifications research (pp. 19–32). Beverly Hills: Sage.

Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics (abbreviated version). Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(4), 413–425.

Call for contributions and key dates:

Interested contributors to this special issue are first invited to provide an extended abstract of 500 words (excluding references) to mathieu@ruc.dk with the subject ‘Datafication of media (and) audiences’. Following a first review process, invitations will be sent to provide a full paper of 6000-8000 words (including references) through the Open Journal System, which will then go under peer review following the usual procedure of the journal MedieKultur. Invitation to submit a full paper does not guarantee acceptance for final publication in the journal. Accepted languages of contribution are English and Danish.

• January 15th 2020: Deadline for abstract submission
• February 1st 2020: Invitation to submit a full paper
• June 1st 2020: Submission of full paper
• July 31st 2020: Notification of acceptance and/or revisions
• August-October 2020: Revision period
• October 31st 2020: Final submission

About the editors:

David Mathieu is associate professor at the Department of Communication & Arts at Roskilde University, Denmark. He chairs the Audience and Reception Studies section of the European Communication, Research and Education Association and is leader of the research group Audiences & Mediated life. His current work focuses on audience and reception research in the context of social media, digitalisation of communication and datafication of society.

Ana Jorge is Guest Assistant Professor at Universidade Católica, Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Instituto Superior Miguel Torga, Portugal. She is Vice-Chair of the Digital Culture and Communication section of ECREA.

May 7-8, 2020

Vienna, Austria

Deadline: February 9, 2020

4th GIG-ARTS Conference

Organised by:

• Media Governance and Industries Research Lab & Jean Monnet
• Centre of Excellence FreuDE / Universität Wien
• LIP6 Computer Science Research Lab / Sorbonne Université &
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

It is now 30 years since the invention of the World Wide Web, and over fifteen years since the development of the interactive Web or also known as Web2.0. Online information and communication have never seemed easier and more accessible to everyone, thanks to the mediation of social networks, search engines, and other kinds of platforms and technologies.

With such capabilities “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”, freedom of speech and freedom of the press should have grown to such an extent that some of the utopian visions of full participatory democracy would have appeared to be within our reach. At the very least, some of the long-standing informational imbalances concerning information flow globally, diversity of content and authors, and the accessibility of accurate information would have been taken as a given framework against which societies would have been called to solve problems and to look after citizens’ well-being.

Paradoxically, the levels of freedom and freedom of expression, as captured in global measuring instruments by a variety of institutions and organisations, do not show the expected or desired advancement. Rather there is evidence that freedom in societies and freedom of the press deteriorate.

Ambitious goals of freedom to express one’s own identity and opinion at the global public sphere on an equal basis and free from fear of retaliation or misuse evaporate for many, such as those subjected to hate speech, those persecuted by autocratic authorities and the great majority of citizens whose personal data become de facto ownership of private companies.

Misinformation, spread not only by politically extreme groups but also by “normal”, mainstream parties in the (desperate or calculated) attempt to influence voters, can undermine the quality and freedom of global debate. Information conflict thus becomes even more an object of state rivalry and diplomacy, but also the tool for the erosion of citizenship as the utmost form of participation in the commons. These phenomena are coupled with the fact that even values once considered unquestionable, such as the value of independent journalism, the value of human rights such as privacy and dignity, are being challenged.

The technological capabilities allowed the world over to express and share information and opinions, to connect and form alliances. However, they have also enabled the spread of misinformation, have been undermining the human right to privacy on digital communication channels, subjected vulnerable groups to more vulnerability, and provided for economic models putting at stake the fundamental pillars of democracy. Within this context, policies governing the fate of users’ data, citizens’ freedoms and the integrity of content have fallen short of helping pave the path to the desired communication environment. Regulatory responses capturing communication and information have oscillated between forms of a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to resist any attempt to provide for the normative standards of content and a tendency to securitise communication as a matter of national security.

Importantly, critics argue that even where governance has allowed for more democratic processes in raising concerns and suggesting solutions, the gaps in connecting the dots are glaring. If governance refers to the role of ideas and principles, the role of actors and the processes of negotiation and solution, it is urgent to return, on the one hand, to the basic and fundamental rights questions and take stock of the achievements of hitherto frameworks. On the other hand, it seems crucial to interrogate what futures exactly are current policy frameworks shaping, especially in relation to a politics of care for young citizens and hence the future generations?

After having addressed global internet governance as a diplomacy issue at its first edition held in Paris in 2017, how to overcome inequalities in internet governance at the second edition held in Cardiff in 2018, and the role of Europe in the global governance of the internet at its third edition held in Salerno in 2019, this year’s GIG-ARTS conference turns its attention to the governance of online information, to address the relation of citizens to the quality of content online as an often neglected area of regulation and governance of the internet. In that respect, the conference continues the conversation on internet governance turning its attention from institutions and structural factors to the role of content and misinformation as an object of governance, and to internet users as forces of change. GIG-ARTS is inviting you to this conversation to help shape the debate of what kinds of futures might be desirable and envisioned in the process of internet governance, who and which actors might be most suitable to help shape such governance goals and under which conditions might these be achieved.

Hence, in addition to general internet governance issues and topics, submissions are particularly welcome on the following possible areas of investigation:

• The governance of fundamental freedoms online between global platforms, conflicts of jurisdictions and extraterritorial legislation
• The role of European and global institutions in shaping the conditions of free expression online
• Responsibility and liability of platforms and other intermediaries in content regulation
• Restrictive regulation and the securitization of content
• Privacy, misinformation, democracy: challenges to internet governance
• Structural role of individual targeting, behavioural advertising and other economic models of online platforms on the reshaping of fundamental freedoms and democracy
• From nudging to manipulation: consequences on autonomy and human dignity
• Successive copyright reforms and their impact on freedom of expression, freedom of the press and democracy
• Changes in and challenges to journalism practice through intentional misinformation
• Governance from below: how practices and principles by civil society aim to shape the conditions of technology for the advancement of democracies and human wellbeing
• Youth and access to information; news and misinformation in the online world; the purpose of thinking towards the future

Submission Information and Publication Opportunities

Authors are invited to submit their extended abstracts (no longer than 500 words), describing their research question(s), theoretical framework, approach and methodology, expected findings or empirical outcome. Submitted abstracts will be evaluated through a peer-review process.

Abstracts and authors’ information should be submitted through the Easychair conference management system at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gigarts2020

Authors of selected submissions will have the opportunity to submit their full manuscript for publication.

Key dates

• Deadline for abstract submissions: 9 February 2020
• Notification to authors: 19 March 2020
• Programme publication: 9 April 2020
• Conference dates: 7 & 8 May 2020

GIG-ARTS 2020 Co-Chairs

• Meryem Marzouki (LIP6, CNRS & Sorbonne Université, France)
• Katharine Sarikakis (Media Governance and Industries Research Lab & Jean Monnet
• Centre of Excellence FreuDE, University of Vienna, Austria)

GIG-ARTS 2020 Scientific Programme Committee

• Francesco Amoretti (University of Salerno, Italy)
• Eric Brousseau (Université Paris Dauphine, France)
• Andrea Calderaro (Cardiff University, United Kingdom)
• Jean-Marie Chenou (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
• Loreto Corredoira y Alfonso (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
• Wolfgang Hofkirchner (The Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society, Austria)
• Matthias C. Kettemann (Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut, Germany)
• Joanna Kulesza (University of Lodz, Poland)
• Nanette S. Levinson (American University Washington DC, USA)
• Robin E. Mansell (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
• Meryem Marzouki (CNRS and Sorbonne Université, France)
• Trisha Meyer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
• Michèle Rioux (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
• Mauro Santaniello (University of Salerno, Italy
• Katharine Sarikakis (University of Vienna, Austria)
• Yves Schemeil (Sciences Po Grenoble, France)
• Ingrid Schneider (University of Hamburg, Germany)
• Jan Aart Scholte (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) (TBC)

Venue

The conference will be held at the Concordia Press Club, in the heart of Vienna (https://concordia.at/).

Conference Registration and Fees

Registration fees are 100 EUR for regular participants and 50 EUR for students showing proof of status. The conference fees include a participant kit as well as coffee breaks and meals.

GIG-ARTS 2020 Communication Details

• Website: http://events.gig-arts.eu
• Email for information: events@gig-arts.eu
• Submissions: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gigarts2020
• Twitter: @GigArtsEU - Hashtag: #GIGARTS20
• Mailing list for updates: http://tinyurl.com/yc7rvxm4

Paris-Lodron University Salzburg, Department of Communication (Intercultural and Transcultural Communication)

Deadline: November 27, 2019

A new PhD position is available at the Department of Communication Studies (within the field of Intercultural and Transcultural Communication), starting 1st March 2020. The successful candidate will be offered a four-year position at the University of Salzburg.

Main duties and responsibilities

• supporting the research and teaching endeavours of the transcultural communication team
• taking on administrative duties
• carrying out individual research
• teaching duties comprise two hours a week from year three onwards
• the PhD thesis has to be defended and published within 4 years

Qualification requirements

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with experiences in intercultural competence (theories & methods), intercultural trainings (training design & evaluation), intercultural mediation, cultural studies, empirical data analysis as well as interest in the concept of resilience and various interdisciplinary avenues (e.g. cognitive sciences) regarding communication.

• The applicant must hold a master’s degree in communication studies or an affiliated discipline.
• Personal characteristics
• Agreeable, conscientious, flexible, industrious and adaptable to new environments.

We offer

• · exciting and stimulating tasks in a strong international academic environment (https://kowi.uni-salzburg.at)
• · an inspiring work environment with dedicated colleagues

Salary and conditions

PhD candidates work 30hrs a week and are remunerated € 2.148,40 a month (14x a year). The place of work is Salzburg City, Austria.

For further information please call: +43 (0)662 8044-41-92

About the application:

The application comprises:

• CV including information on educational background, work experience, preprints and publications.
• Any relevant publications.
• Certified copies of relevant transcripts and diplomas.
• Contact information for at least two references.
• Documentation of fluency in English and/or German.

Other documents which the applicant finds relevant may also be included. We might ask for further documents when necessary during the hiring process.

Please submit your application electronically: bewerbung@sbg.ac.at

Please refer to application number: GZ A 0066/1-2019 in your covering letter.

Application deadline: 27th November 2019.