ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Dublin City University - Ireland India Institute and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

• Qualification Type: PhD
• Location: Dublin - Ireland
• Funding for: UK Students, EU Students, International Students
• Funding amount: €21,000 to €27,000
• £17,713.50 to £22,774.50 converted salary*
• Hours: Full Time
• Placed On: 25th February 2020
• Closes: 26th March 2020

Dublin City University’s Ireland India Institute in conjunction with DCU faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences invites applications for four PhD studentships, valued at between €21,000 and €27,000 pa, for up to four years.

We welcome high quality applications from those interested in working within the wide areas of expertise in the Faculty, but especially in the following topic areas:

• The connections between the Indian nationalist movement and the new Irish state, covering some or all of the period 1920 to 1980. Contact: Dr Daithi O Corrain, DCU School of History and Geography, daithi.ocorrain@dcu.ie
• Peace and conflict studies – focused on one or more cases in the North East of India. (Contact: Prof. John Doyle john.doyle@dcu.ie
• Indian Politics / India’s Foreign Policy – focused on contemporary political issues and / or foreign policy. Contact Dr Jivanta Schottli jivanta.schottli@dcu.ie
• Digital social media practices in contemporary elections: single country or regional South Asian focus or Changing image practices in South Asian news industries. Contact: Dr Saumava Mitra, School of Communications, saumava.mitra@dcu.ie .
• Translator interaction with machine translation for Indian languages. Contact Dr Joss Moorkens, joss.moorkens@dcu.ie
• Languages-in-education policy in India (contact Dr Jennifer Bruen, jennifer.bruen@dcu.ie)
• Writing India: English-language tales and novels between circa 1800 to 1947 (contact Dr Sharon Murphy sharon.murphy@dcu.ie)
• Post-colonial connections: The English-language Indian novel and the Irish novel in the 20th century. (contact Prof. Derek Hand derek.hand@dcu.ie)

DCU has a strong focus on South Asia, with a vibrant PhD community specialising on the region. The University is the host and coordinator for a €3.9m EU funded “European Training Network”, called Global India, focused on India’s emerging international role, linking leading European and South Asian Universities and providing an excellent professional network for our PhD students. The University also hosts the annual South Asia Studies conference in Ireland, now emerging as one of the largest such events in Europe.

Criteria

The successful candidates must have a Masters degree in a relevant discipline, fluent English and excellent academic grades. International students will need to meet the university’s English language requirements. http://www.dcu.ie/registry/english.shtml . The PhD programme will provide significant mentoring support and therefore scholars must be resident in Dublin. All positions will begin on 1 October 2020.

Informal Enquiries are welcomed and can be made to the nominated supervisors listed above or

• Professor Eileen Connolly, Director Ireland India Institute, E-mail: india@dcu.ie
• Potential Supervisors listed above will be happy to facilitate discussion on draft research proposals.

Further information:

These projects will be hosted by the relevant academic schools and the chosen candidates will also work with DCU’s Ireland India Institute. Further details on

https://www.dcu.ie/humanities_and_social_sciences/index.shtml

https://irelandindia.ie

These PhD scholarships have a value of up to €21,000 to €27,000 (full fees either EU or non-EU rate, plus a living allowance of €16,000pa (usually tax free), for up to 4 years, subject to satisfactory progress. Students will also be provided with excellent supervision and strong professional mentoring along with their own workspace in a shared office.

Closing date for receipt of applications: 26 March 2020

Applications should be made to India@dcu.ie and they should include

• a cv,
• a one page letter of application.
• the grades achieved in your Masters degree
• a research proposal (maximum 2000 words), setting out your research question, how the research relates to existing academic literature and a brief description of your proposed methodology.

Submission of expression of interest: March 30, 2020

We warmly invite you to submit your book chapter abstract for consideration for our book proposal.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The aim of this edited volume is to reflect on the concept of disinformation and its multiple dimensions, as well as the strategies and practices developed around them, particularly those linked to political contexts and electoral processes.

The Oxford Dictionary declared post-truth word of the year in 2016, highlighting a historical and political moment in which disinformation strategies, fake news and lies are exponentially spread through social networks: facilitating, among others, Trump’s rise to power and having an impact also in Brexit debates (Jankowski, 2018). Since then, the role of manipulative messages has increased (Baudrillard, 1981; Wardle, 2017) – rising concern about their effects in political decisions, particularly in times of crisis (Spence, Lachlan , Edwards, & Edwards, 2016).

The potential role of social networks in disseminating disinformation (Woolley & Howard, 2016) grows in importance if we take into account that they have become the main source of information (Shearer & Gottfried, 2017), especially during electoral processes (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). Considering that disinformation takes advantage of the increasing polarization of public opinion (Lewandowsky, Ecker & Cook, 2017; Horta et al,. 2017), its pernicious effects on decision-making and political debate demand a greater knowledge of the motivations behind the dissemination of disinformation (Flynn, Nyhan & Reifler, 2017).

Theoretical approaches as well as international and comparative research would be very welcome.

Topics of interest for the book may be related, but not limited, to the following:

• Genealogy of post-truth and its different expressions: misinformation, disinformation, manipulation, fake-news, conspiracy theories, rumours, memes 
• Origins and historical evolution of disinformation.
• Fact-checking and digital platforms for verifying public discourse: Experiences and results.
• Effects of disinformation on democratic stability.
• Polarization and success of disinformation: perception and influence.
• Reception studies of fake-news.
• Disinformation in politics
• Active audiences and the fight against the spread of false news: counter-narratives and different civic society initiatives.
• Bots and dissemination of fake news: who is behind the massive dissemination of false or manipulative messages?
• Algorithmic transparency: The role of platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter in the control of false news
• Regulation and self-control: viability of regulation.
• Actions on tacking disinformation around the world
• News transparency and fact-checkers in the newsrooms.
• Misinformation and human rights.
• Media literacy and misinformation.
• Trends, styles, and narratives of fake news.
• Dynamics of dissemination.

PUBLISHER: Wiley

EDITORS:

Guillermo López-García (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies University of Valencia) Bio: http://mediaflows.es/en/investigador/guillermo-lopez/

Bella Palomo (Full Professor in Journalism Studies. University of Malaga). https://www.uma.es/departamento-de-periodismo/info/73080/perfil-bella-palomo/

Dolors Palau-Sampío (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies. University of Valencia). Bio: http://mediaflows.es/en/investigador/dolors-palau/

Eva Campos-Domínguez (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies. University of Valladolid). Bio: http://mediaflows.es/en/investigador/eva-campos/

Pere Masip Masip (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona). Bio: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pere_Masip

CALL FOR CHAPTERS:

Submission procedure

Interested authors should email abstracts of 500-700 words in the form of a word-processed email to Guillermo Lopez (guillermo.lopez@uv.es) or Bella Palomo (bellapalomo@uma.es) no later than 30th of March. Please include the following details:.

• Proposed chapter title
• Author(s) and affiliation details
• Type of contribution (e.g., theoretical, conceptual, methodological, case study)
• Keywords (maximum of 5)

If accepted, full contributions are expected to be a maximum of 5000 words including references.

The fact that an abstract is accepted does not guarantee publication of the final manuscript, as all chapter still undergo a peer-review process.

Each contribution must be original and unpublished work, not submitted for publication elsewhere.

The approximate timeline is as follows:

• Abstract submission deadline: 30 March 2020
• Chapter acceptance notification: 2 April 2020
• Full text submission deadline: 31 July 2020
• Target publication date: May 2021

Helsinki, Finland

September 3-4, 2020

There has been growing discussion on organizational PR & communication ethics in recent years. At the same time the debate on media independence and fake news has increased. We believe that these issues must be addressed, and that you share our commitment to promoting freedom of speech, freedom of press and communication and media ethics.

To initiate an international network on the ethics of communication and media ProCom is organizing an international Communication, PR and Media Ethics Conference in Helsinki on the 3rd and 4th of September 2020. Current and critical issues in communication and media ethics, freedom of speech and media landscape changes are addressed at the conference.

Keynote speakers of the conference are Pulitzer Prize winner and former editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, Executive Director for UK Government Communications, Alex Aiken, author Sofi Oksanen and founder of the constructive journalism movement, Ulrik Haagerup. Several other renowned and award-winning journalists, researchers, practitioners and ethics experts will also be giving speeches.

President of the Republic of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, is the patron of the conference.

ProCom is the main organizer. Key partners include the Councils of Ethics for Communication and PR in Finland, Germany, Austria and ICCO – The International Communications Consultancy Organization. Collaborative partners of the conference include already Unesco, City of Helsinki and Helsingin Sanomat Foundation. Other partners will be announced later.

If HelsinkiEthics2020 is of interest to you, we kindly encourage you to share information about the event in your networks!

Additional information:

Link to the website of the event: https://helsinkiethics2020.com/

Link to a pdf file: Conference program (PDF)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProComRy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/procomry/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/procom-viestinn-n-ammattilaiset-ry

#HelsinkiEthics2020 #ProCom #freedomofspeech #PRethics #democracy #ethics #mediaethics #communicationethics

Content issues: Dr. Elina Melgin, tel. +358408211688 or elina.melgin@procom.fi

Technical issues: Elisa Rouhesmaa, helsinkiethics2020@procom.fi

ProCom – the Finnish Association of Communications Professionals (founded in 1947) – is an organisation for corporate communication and public relations practitioners in Finland. ProCom fosters the professional development of its nearly 3000 members and promotes the value communication provides to society. Members range from industry thought leaders working in strategic leadership positions of major corporations to entry-level practitioners and entrepreneurs.

Media International Australia

Deadline: April 30, 2020

https://journals.sagepub.com/home/mia

Dr. Tom McDonald and Professor Heather A. Horst, Editors

Media of various forms, and the infrastructures and communities that are associated with them, have often been strongly determined by national boundaries. This is particularly the case in the Asia-Pacific region, where media organizations have traditionally been owned by government entities and/or large national conglomerates. At the same time, the movement of people, goods, capital, information and ideas are undergoing shifts and intensifications, owing to broader geopolitical changes, state-led infrastructure projects and the aspirations of individuals and communities shaped by such regional transformations.

Against this context, media flows are being created, worked and reworked, facilitated by new infrastructures, imaginaries and understandings. These flows frequently cross, circumvent or come up against borders, both domestic and international. Online shopping, logistics, blockchain and fin-tech are fostering new cross-border flows of goods and money. Media content is increasingly consumed internationally, posing new opportunities and challenges for media companies, regulators and governments. Users and consumers of the media are also witnessing the reworking of their media environments because of these changes, adopting inventive responses to and adaptations of the media in return.

While much attention has focused on how powerful states seek to exert influence beyond their borders through the promotion of platforms, technologies and services, this special issue challenges dominant narratives of the contemporary moment from the vantage point of the Asia Pacific region and the heterogeneity it embodies. Through attention to the changing circuits of media in the region, this special issue seeks to understand (and explore alternatives to) ‘great power struggle’ narratives by considering the role of local media forms, perspectives and practices in such processes of transformation. Specifically, we ask contributors to consider:

• How are media flows redefining understandings of borders?
• What kinds of novel communities are being created by cross-border media flows?
• What forms of social imaginaries accompany the emergence of new infrastructures from “outside”?
• How are boundaries and borders being made, unmade or remade within and across the Asia-Pacific region?

We are particularly excited to include case studies that address imaginations and infrastructures of cross-border media from across the broader Asia-Pacific region.

About the Editors:

Tom McDonald is a media anthropologist dedicated to using ethnographic engagement to achieve a richer understanding of how digital technologies, media and material culture come to mediate ongoing transformations in the communicative practices, economic behaviours, social relationships and human subjectivities of people in China and beyond. Tom joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong in August 2015. Prior to this, he was a Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology, University College London.

Tom’s first monograph, Social Media in Rural China: Social Networks and Moral Frameworks (2016, UCL Press), details the findings of 15-months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Chinese countryside, examining how social media use reconfigures social relations and morality. A separate co-authored volume, How the World Changed Social Media (2016, UCL Press) expands on the wider findings of the larger comparative UCL Why We Post study, to which my ethnography formed a central contribution.

Tom’s research increasingly focuses on economic concerns, reflecting the rapid convergence between digital money and media in China. His current project examines everyday crossborder money transactions between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Heather A. Horst is the Director of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University in Australia. A sociocultural anthropologist, she researches material culture, mobility, and the mediation of social relations through digital media and technology. Her publications focusing upon these themes include The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication (Horst and Miller, 2006); Hanging Around, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (Ito, et al 2010; 10th anniversary edition published in November 2019); Digital Anthropology (Horst and Miller, eds., 2012); Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices (Pink, Horst, et al 2016); The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography (Horst, Hjorth, Galloway and Bell, eds. 2017); The Moral and Cultural Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Perspectives (Foster and Horst, eds 2018) and Location Technologies in International Context (Wilken, Goggin and Horst, ed. 2019). She has also been the executive producer of two films focused upon mobile media, Mobail Goroka (2018) and Parenting in the Smart Age: Fijian Perspectives (2019), based upon research in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Heather’s current research is focused upon the circulation of protest music in Melanesia through mobile technologies as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage project with the Wantok Foundation and Further Arts Vanuatu. She is also a Chief Investigator on a Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society where she will be examining the role of automated decision in design, creativity and fashion as well as new forms of transport and mobility.

Contact:

• Tom McDonald (mcdonald@hku.hk)
• Heather Horst (h.horst@westernsydney.edu.au)

Proposed Timeline:

• 30 April 2020: Abstracts due for submission to guest editors
• 15 May 2020: Invite to submit full papers sent to selected authors
• 30 July 2020: Full papers due for submission to guest editors
•  30 August 2020: Feedback on full papers sent to selected authors
• 30 September 2020: Full papers due for submission to Media International Australia

Loughborough University

The Midlands Graduate School is an accredited Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). One of 14 such partnerships in the UK, the Midlands Graduate School is a collaboration between the University of Warwick, Aston University, University of Birmingham, University of Leicester, Loughborough University and the University of Nottingham.

Loughborough University as part of Midlands Graduate School is now inviting applications for an ESRC Doctoral Studentship in association with our collaborative partner TechNation to commence in October 2020.

The aim of this studentship is to undertake the first critical academic appraisal of the innovation ecosystem around HealthTech, while at the same time providing an important evidence base for our collaborating organisation, TechNation, a UK based organisation whose mission is to make the UK the best place to imagine, start and grow a digital tech business (see https://technation.io/about-us).

Full details of the studentship, along with eligibility and application details, can be found here:

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BYJ466/esrc-dtp-collaborative-studentship-healthtech-critically-appraising-the-innovation-ecosystem-of-a-transformative-technology

Application deadline: 9am, Monday 2 March 2020

Special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

Deadline: March 16, 2020

Issue 44, Spring 2021

Edited by: Enda Brophy, Max Haiven and Benjamin Anderson

For decades under neoliberalism the circuits of finance have been converging with those of information and communication technologies (ICTs). High-tech and big money are leading poles of capitalist accumulation as they restructure or eliminate other industries, capture and transform a vast gamut of social relations, and generate frenetic activity in the industrial expanse between them—a speculative and unfettered field of development known as “fintech.”

The rise of techno-finance in the first two decades of the twenty-first century presents a paradox. On the one hand, the commanding heights of the financialized, digital economy have come crashing down to earth at regular intervals. The dotcom bubble of 2000, the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, and the widespread revelations regarding surveillance capitalists’ models of data capture in the 2010s have discredited these sectors and their elites. Techno-utopian schemes of “financial inclusion” and the promises of a digitally networked public sphere have increasingly appeared morally, politically and economically dubious, if not bankrupt, when considered next to the social disintegration such models have wreaked on a wide scale.

But if the history of capitalism has taught us anything, it is that crises are hardly a barrier to new frontiers of accumulation. Across the vast industrial intersection of finance and tech, the forging of business plans, technologies, and dreams has been white hot. Mobile lending apps have expanded their reach into the global south, crypto-currency capitalists plan tax-free societies run on blockchain principles, platform companies like Facebook dream up digital currencies beyond state control, and the latest “development” schemes of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (2018) rely on the possibilities of fintech. If the myth that better integration into capitalist markets through the spread of ICTs will ameliorate the ills of that system increasingly rings hollow (see Bernards 2019, Gabor and Brooks 2017, Mader 2016, Manyika 2016), it still proves more than functional in raising capital, marshalling labour, and providing the ideological accelerant for new extractive schemes.

The fields of finance and tech converge in the notion of credit. On the one hand, the financial apparatus is a capitalist system for producing and allocating credit, a system that, today, as Randy Martin (2007) observed, increasingly divides global populations into the celebrated (and creditworthy) “risk-takers” and the discreditable and abject “at risk” populations whose “financial illiteracy” must be policed and contained (see also Haiven 2017). On the other, the notion of “credits” and “accounts” has been borrowed from finance within the infrastructure by which corporate technologies integrate “users” into their digital empires. Here, as Nick Dyer-Witheford (2015) illustrates, labour and life are increasingly disciplined and shaped by one’s accounts within the hyper-securitized micro-economies of a handful of leading ICT corporations. In both cases, the seemingly neutral, benign, or technocratic notion of credit, its actuarial banality, serves to hide or normalize the neocolonial forms of power and violence at work in our financialized society of control. Each form of credit actualizes our enrollment (and the expropriation of our data) within what Shoshana Zuboff (2019) calls “behavioural futures markets.”

Moreover, with the integration of the spheres of finance and digital technology we are witnessing the proliferation of modes of what Jackie Wang (2018) calls “exclusion through financial inclusion” which, as Paula Chakravartty and Denise Ferreira da Silva (2012) note, aim to integrate the wretched of the earth into a sabotaged system (see also Taylor 2019). These and other authors note that we must see this as a continuation of the means by which capitalism has, throughout its history, seen the poor, the colonized, and the racialized as vectors for new experiments in financial technology, debt and economic power (Kish and Leroy 2015, Roy 2012). Meanwhile, as Veronica Gago (2015) and Silvia Federici (2018) point out, the expansion of digitalized global debt, both national and personal, represents a capitalist seizure of the sphere of social reproduction with particularly disastrous impacts on women.

We propose the theme of “Zero Credit” to designate two overlapping conditions which are the starting point of this collection’s focus. First, the familiar situation of having run out of credit, of being cast out from, yet still enmeshed within, the digital circuits of tech/finance. Second, we refer to the emergent situation of the collective calling in of the ‘debts’ of global capitalism in the form of people’s movement against and beyond financialization and the growing demand for radical alternatives to the global financial order: our credit may be at zero but so is our patience. As Frances Negron-Muntaner (Pérez-Rosario 2018) notes, we are in an era marked by the power of unpayable debts, as shown by the imposition of financially-led disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico (see also Klein 2018). The increasingly common condition of perpetual insolvency, of permanent bankruptcy, has become the staging ground for a new moment of anti-capitalist politics (Berardi 2012). What are the possibilities of what Peggy Kamuf (2007) called “accounterability” in the present moment? What are the methods for countering the dominant measurements of accounts or of recounting value, life, the economy or the possibilities of technology otherwise?

For this special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, we seek to map the convergence of ICTs and the debt/finance system, as well as to bring in to view the forces counteracting and organizing alternatives the dreams of fintech. The editors welcome short proposals (250-300 words) for contributions interrogating the intersections of (1) emergent digital frameworks of power; (2) debt regimes, new and old; and (3) the collective resistance of social movements. We are particularly interested in critical examinations of interventions with the following themes:

• Social media scoring and credit-worthiness

• The end of the cryptodream?

• Algorithmic discipline - real and virtual

• “Third World debts” in a digital age

• Racialized subjects of risk

• Subjectivities of default

• Digital currencies from below

• Reparations in a digital context

• Genealogies of digital technology in debt

• Colonial debt/colonial technology

• (Technologies of) mobility and debt

• Social credit and governmental debt/credit systems

• Credit and social power

• Utopian/dystopian credit economies

• Credit and social reproduction

• Credit, belief, faith

• Tax havens and digital offshore

• History of credit ratings

• Migration and debt

• Policy proposals and their dangers

• The temporal debts of extraction

Interested contributors should submit proposals by following this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGGglfMmktB5LjHxx0Ka2-xo5EcSDKlpcY0GvJXbd72_3XRA/viewform?usp=sf_link

The publication timeline is as follows:

• Deadline for abstracts: March 16, 2020

• Decision notification: April 3, 2020

• First drafts due: June 12, 2020

• Revisions due: October 13, 2020

• Anticipated publication date: Spring 2021

Works cited

“The Bali Fintech Agenda : Chapeau Paper.” The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, September 19, 2018. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/390701539097118625/The-Bali-Fintech-Agenda-Chapeau-Paper%20.

Berardi, Franco “Bifo.” The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012.

Bernards, Nick. “Tracing Mutations of Neoliberal Development Governance: ‘Fintech’, Failure and the Politics of Marketization.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 51, no. 7 (October 2019): 1442–59.

Chakravartty, Paula, and Denise Ferreira da Silva. “Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt: The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism—An Introduction.” American Quarterly 64, no. 3 (2012): 361–385.

Dyer-Witheford, Nick. Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex. London: Pluto, 2015.

Federici, Silvia. “Women, Money and Debt: Notes for a Feminist Reappropriation Movement.” Australian Feminist Studies 33, no. 96 (April 3, 2018): 178–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2018.1517249.

Gabor, Daniela, and Sally Brooks. “The Digital Revolution in Financial Inclusion: International Development in the Fintech Era.” New Political Economy 22, no. 4 (July 4, 2017): 423–36.

Gago, Verónica. “Financialization of Popular Life and the Extractive Operations of Capital: A Perspective from Argentina.” South Atlantic Quarterly 114, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2831257.

Haiven, Max. “The Uses of Financial Literacy: Financialization, the Radical Imagination, and the Unpayable Debts of Settler-Colonialism.” Cultural Politics 13, no. 3 (2017): 348–69.

Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe, New York and Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013.

Kamuf, Peggy. “Accounterability,” Textual Practice 21, no. 2 (June 2007): 251–66.

Kish, Zenia, and Justin Leroy. “Bonded Life: Technologies of Racial Finance from Slave Insurance to Philanthrocapital.” Cultural Studies 29, no. 5–6 (2015): 630–51.

Klein, Naomi. The Battle for Paradise. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018.

Mader, Philip. “Card Crusaders, Cash Infidels and the Holy Grails of Digital Financial Inclusion.” BEHEMOTH - A Journal on Civilisation 9, no. 2 (December 2016): 59–81.

Martin, Randy. An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management. Durham NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007.

Manyika, James, Susan Lund, Marc Singer, Olivia White, and Chris Berry. “Digital Finance for All: Powering Inclusive Growth in Emerging Economies.” McKinsey Global Institute, September 2016.

Pérez-Rosario, Vanessa. “Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy An Interview with Frances Negrón-Muntaner.” Small Axe (blog), June 18, 2018. http://smallaxe.net/sxlive/unpayable-debt-capital-violence-and-new-global-economy-interview-frances-negron-muntaner.

Roy, Ananya. “Subjects of Risk: Technologies of Gender in the Making of Millennial Modernity.” Public Culture 24, no. 1 66 (April 16, 2012): 131–55.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Wang, Jackie. Carceral Capitalism. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2018.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. New York: Public Affairs, 2019.

Institute of Communication and Media Studies (ikmb), University of Bern

The position will be available from April 1st, 2020 (or by appointment) for an initial period of three years. It is intended to serve the purpose of scientific qualification (doctorate).

Tasks:

• collaboration in a research project (inter alia analysing media usage in the online sector & con- ducting automated content analyses)
• teaching of courses in the BA Social Sciences
• contribution to the general tasks of the Institute

Requirements:

• above-average degree in communication science, a related social science discipline and /or in informatics
• strong interest in online and political communication
• very good skills in the methods of empirical social science
• affinity for computational methods
• ability to work in a team

We offer:

An attractive working environment awaits you at the Institute for Communication and Media Science at the University of Bern: a collegial team, cooperation and exchange, as well as the freedom to de- velop your own ideas. Employment adheres to the regulations of the Canton of Berne.

The University of Bern strives to increase the proportion of women in research and teaching and there- fore urges qualified female candidates to apply.

Applications (letter of motivation including research interests / ideas, CV (if available incl. list of publications), certificates, a central chapter of the master thesis / another publication) should be mailed as a pdf file by March 17th, 2020 to Prof. Dr. Silke Adam (silke.adam@ikmb.unibe.ch). For further information, please contact Prof. Dr. Silke Adam. The job interviews will take place at March 26th / 27th.

May 28-29, 2020

Szeged, Hungary

Deadline: March 20, 2020

XXVI. Annual Conference of the Hungarian Political Science Association

The last 30 years provide an adequate perspective for political science to evaluate the transition of 1989-1990. With three decades’ hindsight, we can reconsider all that seemed obvious during the transition and recognize what was unforeseen in the midst of the events. Re-evaluating the transition is not only about 1989 and 1990, the opposition movements, the roundtable discussions and the first free elections, but also about the system that was established by these events and processes. If the democratic transitions can be considered the basis of the new Central Eastern European democracies, then do they inevitably lead to the present or do we need to pay more attention to what happened after 1990. Ten years ago, we have organized a conference in Szeged with the title “Crisis – Election – Democracy” based on the assumption that “Hungarian democracy have been facing previously unseen challenges, its stability is decreasing, political parties emerge out of the blue and achieve electoral success, while others decline and disappear. The balance of the bipolar party system that was previously considered highly stable is now being upset and new dimensions of conflicts appeared among the political parties. Apparently, many of our assumptions remain relevant in 2020 and the coordinate system we used is still valid. Thus, the goal of the conference is not just to evaluate the democratic transition and the past 30 years, but also to examine how politics and political science changed during this time.

The transition opened the gates for the emerging political science in the region. What did the democratic transition contribute to political science? And what did political science contribute

to the transition? Did Hungarian political science seize the opportunities provided to it and did it correctly assume its responsibilities? Where was the Hungarian political science proven right

or wrong in the past three decades? What are the characteristics of Hungarian political science in an international context, what are its strengths and weaknesses? The conference is also open to the topics of democratic transition in other countries of the Central Eastern European region, and the political and ideological challenges of Euro-Atlantic integration.

Language of the conference: English and Hungarian

Venue: Szent-Györgyi Albert Agóra, Szeged, Kálvária sgt. 23.

Organizer:

University of Szeged

Faculty of Law and Political Sciences

Department of Political Science

Please direct any questions you may have to the organizers, available at

mpttvandor2020@gmail.com

For further information, visit our Hungarian or English language website: 

http://www.juris.u-szeged.hu/english/conferences/political-science-conference-xxvi

http://www.juris.u-szeged.hu/kutatas-tudomany/kari-szervezesu/mptt-vandorgyules-xxvi

Application deadline:

Presenters can apply directly at the panel chairs no later than the 20th of March 2020 with an abstract of 250 words maximum. The final decision on the selection of abstracts will be made by the panel chairs. Panels with more than 5 abstracts will be divided into two.

It is also possible to apply with a complete panel of 4 or 5 abstracts until the 20th of March 2020 at mpttvandor2020@gmail.com

Panels:

1. The impact of leadership and plebiscitary techniques on governments

Chair: Attila Gyulai

Affiliation: Centre for Social Sciences

Email: gyulai.attila@tk.mta.hu

Personalization, political leadership, and plebiscitary techniques have been on the top of the agenda of political scientists for decades. Additionally, their role has become more and more apparent as political leadership seems not only to supplement the functioning of the established patterns of governments but contribute also to the restructuring of polities. Furthermore, this trend of strengthening political leadership occurs differently across various political systems.

The panel aims at discussing how governments and political systems throughout Europe have changed due to the activity of political leaders. Specifically, the panel focuses on leadership and plebiscitary techniques that had a structural and lasting impact both on the institutional setting and the ways of governing. The panel welcomes submissions that address the impact of leadership and plebiscitary techniques on the political systems either from a theoretical or an empirical point of view.

2. Decline of democracy in East-Central Europe

Chair: Attila Ágh

Affiliation: Corvinus University, Budapest

Email: attila.agh@chello.hu

The panel deals with the main issues, first, the development of the East-Central European countries in the European Union, and second, with the democracy debates in the last years in the region. These two issues have closely been interwoven, still they need a separate treatment as the international and domestic dimension that have a common framework in the emergence of the New World Order and the reverse wave in the global democratization.

The focus of the first part of panel is on the current institutional change in the EU between the Juncker and Leyen Commissions with regards to the Conference on the Future of Europe starting on 9 May 2020. It offers an opportunity of the overcoming the Core-Periphery Divide in the twin process of Europeanization and Democratization.

The focus is in the second part of the panel is on the backsliding of democracy and the recent wave of the authoritarian system in ECE that has led to the eruption of debates around the

character of the new political system. The recent studies have usually distinguished between democracies, hybrid systems and autocracies, this panel will discuss the characters of these political systems and their recently changing borderlines in ECE.

(See e.g. :EC, European Commission (2020) Shaping the Conference on the Future of Europe, 22 January 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_89, IDEA (2020) The Global State of Democracy 2019, https://www.idea.int/publications/catalogue/global-state-of-democracy-2019)

3. East Central Europe in the European Union

Chair: Krisztina Arató

Affiliation: Eötvös Lóránd University

Email: krisarato@ajk.elte.hu

The European Union has been the Framework for co-operation for East Central European countries for the last 15 years. The panel explores how the European Union and the region developed in this period. Papers on the institutionalization of EU membership, EU policies in our region, developments in Europeanization and Eurocsepticism are expected as well as studies on the nature and environment of the enlarged European Union.

4. Elections, electoral systems

Chair: Levente Nagy

Affiliation: University of Debrecen

Email: nagy.levente@arts.unideb.hu.

Modern (representative) democracy is in fact party democracy in which parties compete with one another for parliamentary seats. Elections and electoral systems exist to structure this competition by selecting the major political decision makers through free elections among candidates. The operation and the political consequences of elections (as well as the linkage between parties and elections) are in the focus of academic research on electoral studies, and among the key components of any democratic system. The aim of this section is to provide a platform for discussion for scholars, researchers, students and anyone in the domain of interest.

The organizers of the conference under the theme of Crisis, Elections and Democracy would like to invite you to submit an abstract (250 – 300 words) on „Elections, electoral systems” presenting the results of your current research.

5. Elections and Voting Behavior

Chair: Gábor Tóka

Affiliation: Central European University

Email: tokag@ceu.edu

This panel will accommodate the presentation of four-five English language papers addressing the “Crisis – Choice – Democracy 2.0” theme as it arises in elections and the study of voting behavior. Our time is rich in dramatic elections attracting a great deal of international attention and a sense of crisis is palpable throughout the democratic world. Backwaters are no exception: by the end of 2020, Hungary and all her seven neighbors will have seen national elections with unusual drama within the last two years. However, we are not even close to a consensus on what if anything is in crisis: is it just some party types or ideologies that are going out of use?

New lines of conflict are upsetting pre-existing equilibria? Massive shifts in trade, wealth and social structures are making their presence felt via undermining the political status quo? The nature of party-voter linkages is changing in ways that are hard to reconcile with the past century’s understanding of representative democracy? A system of political communication is crumbling to give way to a post-truth world? Democracy itself is in crisis? The panel invites empirically informed papers that look at voting behavior and the organization of campaigns and elections to explore such questions explicitly or indirectly with data from Hungary, the surrounding region, or the rest of the world.

6. Political communication in hybrid media system

Chair: Jelena Kleut

Affiliation: University of Novi Sad

Email: jelena.kleut@gmail.com

The panel invites theoretically and empirically informed papers on the complexity, interdependance and transition emering from the various blends of older and newer media logics in political communication. Using Chadwick's (2017) concept of hybrid media system as the initial thinking tool, not as the exclusive framework, the panel seeks to examine variety of genres, technologies, practices and actors. Which communication strategies emerge in these combinations? Which logics are they guided by? Who, or even what - knowing the presence of social bots, is shaping the content and distribution of political messages. What are the short and long term consequences of hybridity. Although in general open to different avenues of political communication, slight advantage will be given to papers focusing on elections, protests and different types of contentious action.

7. Political Thinking in Hungary: Thirty Years

Chair: Zoltan Balazs

Affiliation: Corvinus University, Budapest

Emial: zoltan.balazs@uni-corvinus.hu

This panel aims at taking stock with the post-regime change decades in terms of the history of political ideas, ideologies, and debates. The history of Hungarian political thinking has been unevenly researched. 19. century liberalism and conservatism, Völkisch, radical conservative interwar thinking, and various leftist ideologies have been more or less thoroughly explored, and important methodological issues been discussed, including contextualism, discourse analysis, author-centrism. However, there is practically no systematic overview available on the past thirty years, despite the unprecedented freedom for the exchange of ideas, discussions and debates.

Hence, by organizing this panel, we invite scholars to begin with this work. How has post-1990 liberalism/conservatism/Völkish thinking evolved? To what extent have international tendencies influenced Hungarian political thinking (the impact of communitarianism, republicanism, Third Way ideologies, ecologism, feminism, altright movement and so on)? Have such conceptions and theories been successfully related to Hungarian political traditions?

The panel is open to papers on methodology (how to write the most recent history of ideas), case studies (e.g. a certain ideology, a particular author, an interesting debate in the focus), and various other issues (what is political thinking in the first place, are there still 'ideologies' or broad political traditions, etc.).

8. Regime change interpretations

Chair: Andrius Švarplys

Affiliation: Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas

Email: andrius.svarplys@vdu.lt

When 1989 communist empire controlled by Soviet Union collapsed, many hopes were raised along with new paths of development the post-communist countries started to realize. One grand idea was guiding the majority of Central Eastern European countries above all – the return to Europe, which was perceived foremost as the moral and historical justice, as Milan Kundera expressed in his famous essay „The Tragedy of Central Europe“ (1984). The political- economical program for reforms of post-communist transition was written by global neoliberal agenda, known as Washington consensus. It included privatization of state enterprises, trade liberalization, to secure private property, enabling entrepreneurship. It was a belief that free market, a limited power of the state in combination with democratically working political institutions would inevitably and naturally lead to successful integration into European/Western economic-political-security system. Entering the European Union in 2004 for majority of CEE countries seemed to be a culmination of successful transition.

Massive scientific attempts were introduced to interpret the various aspects of post-communist transformation. They reflected different historical, economic, political, geographical, structural aspects of experiences from successful „shock therapy“ cases (Estonia, the Baltic States), or „shock without therapy“(Poland) to no less successful incremental reforms cases (Slovenia, Hungary), or political oligarchy regime formation (Russia, Azerbaijan) or even sultanism (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). The scientific literature have enumerated many key-factors to explain and evaluate these reforms in transition: the level of modernization within the states before they were subjected to communist dictatorship; the type of political regime that evolved in the particular state during the late communism period (Kitschelt 1995, Kitschelt et al. 1999); the type of economic reforms: radical shock therapy of neoliberal kind (Sachs 1994, Aslund 2002, 2007) or gradualist reforms with social concerns over market liberalization (Stiglitz 1999); the role of the political elites in the process of democratization (Przeworski 1991) etc.

Regime change depended on diverse conditions and decisions made by political elites - to reflect those is the main goal of the panel.

Bearing in mind all the variety of different paths the post-communist states have chosen providing multiple combinations of economic and political reforms that scientific literature reflects, the panel focuses on the following issues:

• Theoretical interpretations on various factors, reasons and outcomes of political transition in CEE countries that might explain the regime change;
• Overview of economic reforms to compare and explain the results different states achieved so far;
• Evolving the post-communist political party systems: patterns and problems;
• The problems of democracy consolidation during three decades of transition;
• Studies in political culture: value change in post-communist societies and its political consequences;
• Communist legacy and politics of history: remembering the past to construct the future.

9. Rethinking the Conditions of Local and Territorial Governance in the Era of State

Modernisation Reforms

Chair: Edith Somlyódyné Pfeil

Affiliation: Széchenyi István University

Email: somlyody@sze.hu

Since the 1990s there was a shift away from “classical” territory-based hierarchical structure (government) and towards more fluid, de-territorialised, network-based, multi-actor structures (governance) (Rhodes 1996; Pierre, 2000; Osborn 2010) in all over the World. Additionally, as impact of the global financial crisis territorial and structural reforms have been on the Agenda in the recent past. The objectives of the reforms are mainly improving efficiency, enhancing transparency and accountability, reducing problems associated with the local and self-national governments as well (Callanan et al. 2014). With similar aims in some European countries recentralisation and the negligence of local and subnational self-governments can be seen. All these reforms have firmly affected the self-governmental sector in scale, autonomy and financial position, which manifests itself in re-municipalisation and in the appearance of state- centred approach. Notwithstanding the last feature is considered progressive and society oriented, which favour the participative democracy (Post-NPM). Considering the mentioned different trends, the key question of the Panel is how local and sub-national levels could be governed effectively and democratically concerning public policy making process and strategical development decisions in our days. On this basis the Panel seeks to understand what conditions might encourage the emergence of cooperation horizontally and coordination vertically in different institutional and legal framework. It attempts to identify factors which contribute or hinder voluntary collaboration. Presentations are likewise welcomed in the field of best practices in local and territorial governance in different public policy fields; functional space construction (de-territorialisation) via cooperation, theory of multi-level governance; new technics and coordination mechanisms working among central, sub-national and local governmental tiers.

10. Social Movements and Civil Society. Risk and challenge in Europe

Chair: László Kákai

Affiliation: University of Pécs

Email: kakai.laszlo@pte.hu

The purpose of the panel is to better understand the role of NGOs in governance in Europe. We are also interested in a wide range of social movement activity, from traditional or creative forms of protest to service provision and legislative work.

Our definition of NGOs is broad and involves informal organisations, cooperatives, non-profits, civil society organisations, and so forth. Our focus is particularly on those NGOs whose mission is strongly related to the public interest and that work in the areas of governance, social and health services, public policy, citizen participation, human rights, and/or humanitarian aid.

The panel aims to take a closer look at these phenomena and to offer different empirical perspectives (based on narrative interviews, protest surveys, protest event analysis etc.), not only beyond progressive and formalized movements but also to uncover little explored lines of development.

The panel will focus mainly on the specificity of social movements and civil societies in post-communist Europe and address, among others, the following questions:

• What is the role of NGOs in delivering services at the national and local level in CEE countries?
• What are examples of existing cooperation between NGOs and national and/or local government in the region to deliver services in various policy arenas?
• How and why does civic activism differ in CEE from that in Western Europe?
• What role do social movements play for the quality of democracy in Europe?
• How do social movements mobilize people for their aims?
• What methodological challenges do we encounter in CEE?
• Social movements in the European Union; the role is enabled by the multi- level/polycentric structure of the EU; possible emergence of a European civil society;
• Civil society organisation can be effective, within limits, by seeking to improve the quality of the electoral and policy process without intruding into the substance of politics and policy

Our panel is open to papers related to our theme regarding the role of NGO’s in shaping governance and on multi-sector strategies for meeting the public interest. The papers include a focus on the ways NGO’s have sought greater transparency in the public sector, have sought to refine democratic processes, and have mobilised for advocacy across the European Union as a whole.

May 6-7, 2020

Loughborough University

Deadline: March 18, 2020

Please note that due to ongoing industrial action across UK universities the deadline has been revised and papers can now be submitted until Wednesday 18th March

A two-day interdisciplinary symposium hosted by the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture (CRCC), Loughborough University

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Prof Gunn Enli (University of Oslo)

Author of Mediated Authenticity: How Media Constructs Reality

&

Prof Sarah Banet-Weiser (London School of Economics), Author of Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture

Topic of the Symposium

A widespread fascination with the authentic is said to have emerged as a response to the processes of homogenisation, rationalisation and standardisation at the heart of modernity. The concept of authenticity arose historically at a time of rapid social change and has again come to the fore where social, political, cultural and technological upheavals give rise to feelings of distrust, detachment and alienation against which supposedly authentic people, places and things are sought out for their reassuring certainty and value. Yet, there are huge contradictions and inequalities in who can make claim to authenticity and its construction and communication invariably involves competing narratives and oppositional assertions about what is authentic and how and why the authentic gains its value.

Thus, while the concept of authenticity has a long history, in recent years it has emerged as a prominent theme in many of the most pressing debates about contemporary communication and culture. In political communication there are ongoing concerns about misinformation and fake news, while the success of populist parties is often tied to their claims to be a more authentic representative of ‘the people’ than a detached and dispassionate elite. Similarly, the increasingly fractious debates around migration that are taking place across the globe often centre on the desire to protect ‘authentic’ national cultures from globalising forces and the perceived threat of ‘other’ people, products, ideas and images. In the area of culture, economy and policy, copyright, privacy and authorship remain central issues for the major media industries, while for smaller-scale content and craft producers, authenticity may operate as a key selling point and a marker of cultural distinction for both producers and consumers. Likewise, many parts of the tourism and heritage industries see the provision of authentic experiences as their raison d’etre, offering re(creations) of the past and access to ‘real’ cultural communities and traditions.

We therefore invite paper proposals from any disciplinary background for this two-day Symposium hosted by the Centre for Research in Communications and Culture at Loughborough University. We are interested in a broad range of papers exploring authenticity and abstract submissions addressing authenticity in relation to, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Authenticity, politics and political communication
• Consumption and the use of authenticity in branding and marketing
• Authenticity, the internet and the rise of social media
• Authenticity in subcultures, fan cultures and celebrity culture
• Authenticity in tourism, heritage and memorialisation
• Authenticity, literature and authorship
• Authenticity in sports, lifestyle and leisure pursuits and practices

Submissions

Abstracts of up to 250 words for presentations of 20 minutes are invited to be submitted by Wednesday 18th March. Abstract, title, author(s) name and institutional affiliation should be sent to m.skey@lboro.ac.uk.

Registration

Registration rates are the following:

• Delegate £60
• Concessionary Delegate £40

Key Dates

• Abstract submission deadline: Wednesday 18th March 2020
• Abstracts notification: Friday 27th March 2020
• Presenter booking deadline: Friday 10th April 2020
• Initial programme sent to participants: Friday 17th April 2020
• Conference: 6th & 7th May 2020

Event Organisation Team

• Dr Michael Skey, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies
• Dr Thomas Thurnell-Read, Senior Lecturer in Sociology

LSE Department of Media and Communications

The Department of Media and Communications at LSE is seeking to provide mentorship for Early Career Research (Postdoctoral) Fellows.

Current schemes we are interested in providing mentorship for include:

• ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Deadline 23 March 2020, 4pm UK time) https://info.lse.ac.uk/current-students/phd-academy/esrc-doctoral-training-partnership/postdoctoral-fellowships
• Newton International Fellowship (Deadline 26 March 2020, 3pm UK time) https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/newton-international-fellowships

Find a potential mentor our list of academic staff and email them with an informal enquiry: http://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/people

Research in the Department of Media and Communications at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) examines how changes in media and communications shape, and are shaped by, social, cultural, political, economic, and historical developments. We draw upon and contribute to multiple disciplinary agendas. Our concern is with inequalities, discrimination, representation, voice and violence in an unevenly media-saturated society. We examine structures, processes, practices and discourses and their role in power relations on the global, national and local levels. We are committed to de-Westernising scholarship and to undertaking comparative and transnational research. Our research is organised around four intersecting themes: Media Culture and Identities; Media Participation and Politics; Communication Histories and Futures; Communication, Technology, Rights and Justice.