European Communication Research and Education Association
UClouvain (Belgium)
Thes positions are part of the research project “Discourse, populism and democracy. Tracking the uses of populism in media and political discourse (TrUMPo)”.
Project description
In contemporary democracies, there is not a day without the word populism being used in political and media discourse. For many observers worldwide, the spread of populism is one of the main threats to democracy. This has led to the development of a booming literature on populist political parties and politicians. These works have provided rich insights into the origin, the discourse and the impact of such particular actors. Nevertheless, one major aspect of populism remains understudied, namely the use of the term populist itself by political and other actors, which is the subject of a real political struggle (Laclau, 2005). Populism is indeed used by some political actors to disqualify political opponents but also as a positive category/label demonstrating proximity to people’s concerns in order to gain legitimacy (Mazzoleni, 2007). These uses of populism lead to fierce debates about the role and place of the people in democracies, and about who can pretend to best represent the people. It also raises the question of what is a legitimate (or illegitimate) way to refer to the people in a democracy in the context of a deep democratic malaise worldwide and in particular in Western democracies. Hence, the way the word and the notion of populism are defined, used and circulated is directly related to competing conceptions of democracy. In order to understand how the construction of this category of populism contributes to shaping our collective imagination of democracy, we consider that we need to understand in which contexts and situations this notion is used, which meaning it conveys in actual discursive practices, and how it circulates in the public debate. This is why we will study this topic from a threefold perspective: political science, communication studies and linguistics. We will compare these discourses in the national public sphere of three countries Belgium, France and Spain, and we will conduct a qualitative and quantitative analysis of data from different forums in which discourses about populism can be held: (i) the parliamentary arena (ii) mass media and (iii) social media platforms.
PhD 1 – Linguistics
1 full-time PhD position, for 4 years (supervisors: B. De Cock and Ph. Hambye). This project will be carried out in the field of linguistics and more precisely discourse analysis. It will focus on the comparison between languages in order to capture in a detailed way how the term “populism” is used, focusing on the linguistic strategies to do so and the specificities of the different languages and countries involved. This PhD will hence involve comparative work on Dutch, French and Spanish data. While approaching the data from a linguistic point of view, this project will consider the Belgian and French data in French separately, in order to take into account differences possibly due to the different constellation of the public sphere.
Profile
PhD 2 – Communication
1 full-time PhD position for 4 years (supervisors: S. Roginsky and B. De Cock) will focus on the circulation of discourses on populism in traditional and social media: how discourse concerning populism is transferred, which fragments are used and re-used, by whom and how, also taking into account the media infrastructures, in two languages. Through its communicative angle, this research will then look into how discourse concerning populism is transferred with a focus both on the communication settings and the forms used to do so. This part of the project then also implies a reflection on the communication infrastructures in the respective case studies. In the second place, this research will also adopt a communicative- linguistic approach to the ways in which the discourses are transformed when being transferred.
The PhD researchers will be funded by the Action de recherche concertée funds of the Université catholique de Louvain within the TrUMPo research project. The salary is according to UCLouvain regulations for PhD scholarships. The employment starts on October 1st 2020. Grant duration: 4 years.
Procedure
Interested candidates should send their application to: Catherine Goossens (trumpo@uclouvain.be) before 10 July 2020. Applications should include in one single pdf file: (1) a curriculum vitae, (2) a letter of application stating to which PhD you apply (PhD 1, PhD 2, or both), (3) a list of courses and academic transcripts, (4) an academic publication (if you have one) or your Master's thesis, and (5) the contact information (e-mail) of two potential references. After a first round of selection based on the applications, the short-listed candidates will be interviewed via videoconferencing between 15 and 20 July 2020.
For questions, please contact the promoters of the project: Barbara De Cock (Barbara.decock@uclouvain.be), Philippe Hambye (philippe.hambye@uclouvain.be), Min Reuchamps (min.reuchamps@uclouvain.be) and Sandrine Roginsky (Sandrine.roginsky@uclouvain.be).
ECREA 2020 Pre-conference
October 2, 2020
Braga, Portugal
Deadline: June 15, 2020
Despite the special and exceptional situation that we all are facing, it's important to keep our activities in the security of our houses.
Thus, the Organizational and Institutional Communication SOPCOM Working Group and the Advertising SOPCOM Working Group are pleased to invite you to submit your abstract to the ECREA 2020 Pre-conference “Improving public participation through strategic communication”. The event will take place on the 2nd October 2020.
WHY THIS PRE-CONFERENCE?
We are facing an era of a permanent search for new answers to contemporary environmental, political and social challenges. The public, as producer, receiver or user, has today wide access to information and tends to be more involved in communication, being an essential element in this equation.
Moreover, publics are the engine of paradigm changes, as they have the power to influence behaviors, individually or as part of organizations, to whom they demand more conscious behavior. On another hand, acting as citizens, those publics are important agents of change, with a strong ability to influence decision making.
Considering the role of Strategic Communication in this context, not only for organizations but for the whole society, publics must be taken into account as an essential element of its process. Being a strategic function with specific goals to achieve, the stakeholder mapping in Strategic Communication it’s not an abstract part of planning, but a must-have in the whole process. Through Strategic Communication, and its branches of public relations and advertising, it’s possible to improve the publics’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.
In this context, can Strategic Communication be understood as a way to boost public participation, assuming stakeholders as key players in a changing environment?
We particularly welcome submissions on:
Deadline for submissions: May 15, 2020.
Submission and selection process: Presentations at the conference are based on abstracts of 500 words, to be submitted by June 15, 2020, to strategic.ecrea@ics.uminho.pt
Note: The abstracts should include main idea/argument, research questions, and key concepts, theoretical and/or methodological discussion and analysis (if relevant). All submitted abstracts must be anonymous with no reference to author(s). Submit the abstract as an e-mail attachment and include name, affiliation and contact details in the e-mail message.
Decisions on acceptance: July 8, 2020 (The abstracts will be subject to anonymous peer review.)
For more information, please visit: http://www.cecs.uminho.pt/en/como-promover-a-participacao-dos-publicos-atraves-da-comunicacao-estrategica/?fbclid=IwAR1DA_590X_becesC9ksBiQu138hkWlp0gdSvH-NIETcwCabBiW2iCcNOmw
SCIENTIFIC COMITEE:
ORGANIZATION COMITEE:
The pre-conference is organized by the Organizational and Institutional Communication Sopcom Working Group and the Advertising Sopcom Working Group.
SPONSORS:
SN Social Sciences
Deadline: end of March 2021
Editor: Associate Professor Ignas Kalpokas (Department of Public Communication, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania)
The term ‘synthetic media’ can be used to describe a broad range of content generated, in whole or in part, by employing machine learning or other means of automatic content generation. Such content is currently taken to encompass primarily video, audio, image, and text, but it also extends to digital objects of various descriptions (e.g. virtual influencers), augmented reality (games, product try-on tools etc.), and fully immersive virtual environments. This shift will certainly bring numerous benefits, particularly in terms of fostering creativity and democratising content editing and generation by automating the process. Synthetic media will also enable new ways of storytelling that will span the physical and the virtual environments, potentially erasing boundaries between the two. However, the same attributes of automation and democratisation will also make synthetic media potential security threats, enabling manipulation and deception on a large scale, which is a matter of great concern in a world already permeated by fake news and post-truth (the debate about the manipulative potential of deepfakes is a case in point). No less importantly, the emergence of synthetic media raises the necessity to rethink intellectual property rights, the right to one’s likeness and voice and other ways in which such content can be monetised and misuse of one’s person or the fruit of one’s labour prevented. These and other questions create a fertile ground for academic debate on the present and future impact of synthetic media.
With the above developments in mind, this thematic collection aims to analyse the impact of synthetic media on personal, public, and political communication processes, shifts in creative practices, and disruptions in reality perception and sense-making. The collection also invites considerations of regulatory frameworks applicable to synthetic media.
The collection is open to all disciplines from across the social sciences, and qualitative, quantitative, or purely theoretical contributions are equally welcome. Potential questions to be asked include, but are by no means limited to, the following:
This is a rolling collection and as such submissions will be welcomed up until the end of March 2021. Authors who wish to discuss ideas for articles are asked to contact the guest editor direct before submission. Full papers (original or review) must be submitted via the journal’s submission system. Submissions by email cannot be accepted.
ICNOVA – Nova Communication Institute a NOVA FCSH’s research unit of excellence in the communication sciences field, is accepting expressions of interest from potential candidates for Marie Skłodowska-Curie – Individual Fellowships 2020.
We welcome candidates in the category of European Fellowships or Global Fellowships. Candidates with excellent scientific CV (peer review publications and participation in projects are priorized) and a relevant track record of obtaining funding for their research activities are especially welcome.
Working with ICNOVA is to be part of a team that brings together more than 200 researchers and develops research and promotes knowledge dissemination work in the field of communication sciences. Our work develops around the areas of media and journalism, culture and arts, strategic communication, performance and cognition, and digital media.
We are housed on the Campolide campus, sharing the Almada Negreiros college building with the other NOVA FCSH research units and promoting interdisciplinary and collaboration networks with these and other international researchs units.
Our strategic agenda for 2020-2023 is entitled Media Practices: Cultural, Societal and Technological Challenges, aiming at the achievement of inclusion and diversity in a world of social acceleration and deep mediatisation. These global goals will be pursued through the following major themes: 1) Diversity, Pluralism, Inclusion; 2) Cognitive, Mediation and Decision-Making Processes; 3) Culture, Criticism and Digital Practices.
If your project and your academic path connects with the scientific field of Communication Sciences and you are interested in researching with high level quality in the areas of our estrategic agenda, send us your pre-application until the 19th of June, with your CV and a detailed synopsis of your research project.
Deadline: Friday, 19 June, 2020 – 00:00
Host Institution: NOVA Communication Institute – ICNOVA
Field: Individual Fellowships
Call ID: H2020-MSCA-IF-2020
Publish date: Tuesday, 14 April, 2020 – 13:30
Start date: Wednesday, 8 April, 2020 – 00:00
Call deadline: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 – 17:00
For more detailed information, please contact
Patrícia Contreiras
patriciacontreiras@fcsh.unl.pt
Special Issue of Media Studies (Mediální studia)
Editors: Andra Siibak, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt and Risto Kunelius
About the Journal:
Mediální studia / Media Studies (ISSN 2464-4846) is a peer-reviewed, open access electronic journal, published in English, Czech and Slovak twice a year. Based in disciplines of media and communication studies, it focuses on analyses of media texts, media professionals practices and media audiences behaviour. We especially welcome papers covering media in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and support the emphasis on the dynamics of local-global knowledge on media and its mutual connections.
Contact: medialnistudia@fsv.cuni.cz
https://www.medialnistudia.fsv.cuni.cz/en/
Researchers from the University of Malaga in Spain ask ECREA members for help with their study on podcasts as the branded content. The message from Emilia Smolak, the head of the study follows:
"Together with two other collueagues at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, the Prof. Paloma Villafranca and Prof. Carmen Monedero we conduct the study on podcast among the professionals and academics. I would appreciate your help in disseminating the link among members of the ECREA, as we are particularly interested in the opinions of the members of the association."
Check the survey :
English version: https://forms.gle/B9unzvxSASvm5Ae77
Spanish version: https://forms.gle/HMmwpbab42pbRVcd7
November 20-21, 2020
Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University, Prague
International Colloquium
Societies are in a permanent dialogue with change. Change is dealt with in configurations of the present and societies’ visions of the future, entailing reflections and re-constructions of the past. Our apprehension of the features and dimensions of change drives political, economic and cultural responses, at the individual and collective level. Furthermore, change is perceived as a positive or negative outcome or prospect, as an opportunity or a threat, driving the social actors’ struggles for maintenance or reconfiguration of power positions.
This colloquium aims to bring together scholars from a diverse set of foci and backgrounds, from the broad area of media and communication studies, to examine, discuss and reflect upon, through various approaches and methods, how change is constructed, in media and communication practices.
Diverse settings, fields and practices can be objects or loci of study (e.g., journalism, political communication, advertising, campaigning, activism, education, culture, sports) in an exploration of how change is represented, negotiated, contested and appropriated by actors and groups in the social realm.
We welcome contributions related, but not limited, to the following thematic areas:
Abstracts of 500 words (in English) can be submitted by 15 June 2020 to Vaia Doudaki (vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz)
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 10 July 2020.
Amongst the aims of the colloquium is the publication of an international edited collection or a special issue of an international peer-reviewed journal, with selected contributions from the colloquium’s participants. More details will be provided later.
For this purpose, participants will be expected to pre-circulate drafts of works in progress in advance of the colloquium.
Deadline for pre-circulation of draft works in progress: 2 November 2020
Our intention is to hold an in-person event, in Prague. We will be monitoring closely how the Covid-19 pandemic evolves and will consider alternatives to this model, if need be.
For news and updates, visit the colloquium’s web page.
The colloquium is organised by the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (Charles University).
The colloquium is supported by the 4EU+ consortium project “Mediating Change: Strengthening collaboration in research and research-oriented education” (Charles University, University of Copenhagen, University of Warsaw), and by DESIRE, the Centre for the study of Democracy, Signification and Resistance.
ECREA is happy to announce a new promotional leaflet. The main goal is to invite new scholars and students to become ECREA members. It can be distributed at the conferences, workshops, and different academic meetings. Feel free to spread it.
You can download the leaflet here: EcreaLeaflet_WEB.pdf
Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. 39
Deadline: September 15, 2020
Editors: Rodrigo Saturnino (CECS, University of Minho, Portugal), Helena Sousa (CECS, University of Minho, Portugal) & Jack Qiu (School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
Sharing Economy is a common expression used to refer to various forms of exchange facilitated by digital platforms involving a great diversity of profit-oriented and non-profit activities with a broad spectrum of social, economic, cultural, and political purposes. The underlying idea of the sharing economy is generally about giving access to unused resources. This model has rekindled the promises of an economically sustainable society shaped by the various forms of connections.
On the one hand, it is considered that the connective power of information and communication technologies has led to the creation of new business models motivated by cyber culture-inspired logics (e.g., open access, collaboration and sustainability), as well as favouring the financial autonomy of users and environmental preservation through a community consumption project on the global and/or regional scales. On the other hand, a more critical view considers that when it is being dominated by large companies such as Uber and Airbnb, Sharing Economy helps to instrumentalise expensive social concepts such as the idea of home, solidarity, and trust to reinforce capitalist interests and reiterate precariousness, technological dependence, and social inequalities.
This thematic volume aims to approach and critically understand the varied interfaces of this economy based on the emergence of digital platforms, considering the scope and scale that such models have contracted in the daily life world. It is interesting to discover, for example, how international regulatory frameworks have systematised and are dealing with the platform operations, and what strategies are being developed by users either to resist and/or to benefit from them. And yet, what are the resilience and sustainability strategies that their users have used to co-exist with such platforms?
This volume of Comunicação e Sociedade is devoted to studies on Sharing Economy. It pays special attention to proposals for articles that result from scientific research work on the following topics:
KEY DATES
Full article submission deadline: 15 September 2020
Editor’s decision on full articles: 15 November 2020
Deadline for sending the full version and translated version: 05 February 2021
Issue publication date: June 2021
LANGUAGE
Articles can be submitted in English or Portuguese. After the peer review process, the authors of the selected articles should ensure translation of the respective article, and the editors shall have the final decision on publication of the article.
EDITION AND SUBMISSION
Comunicação e Sociedade is a peer-reviewed journal that uses a double blind peer review process. After submission, each paper will be distributed to two reviewers, previously invited to evaluate it, in terms of its academic quality, originality and relevance to the objectives and scope of the theme chosen for the journal’s current issue.
Originals must be submitted via the journal’s website. If you are accessing Comunicação e Sociedade for the first time, you must register in order to submit your article (indications to register here).
The guidelines for authors can be consulted here.
For further information, please contact: comunicacaoesociedade@ics.uminho.pt
Special Issue of Critical Studies in Television 2022
Deadline: October 1, 2020
International coproduction, which Michelle Hilmes (2014:10) defines as “a partnership between two or more different national production entities” located in different countries, is exerting a notable influence on the creation of new high-end TV dramas produced outside the US. As ‘peak TV’ continues to expand the annual volume of US-produced TV fiction to unprecedented levels (Koblin 2020), continuing audience demand for distinctive original drama is fuelling new opportunities for high-end drama production in a larger range of countries.
The important consequence has been an increased cultural and/or linguistic diversity for high-end dramas produced for international distribution. Attended by a new emphasis on serial form and storytelling, this development and diversity is exemplified by /Babylon Berlin/ (ARD/Sky Deutschland/Netflix), /Anne With An E/ (CBC/Netflix), /My Brilliant Friend/ (Rai/HBO), /World On Fire/ (BBC/PBS), /Bad Banks/ (ZDF/Arte) and Finnish/Spanish example /Paratiisi/The Paradise/ (YLE), among others. These dramas make visible and treat as a matter-of-fact the cultural diversity and encounter that Janet McCabe (2017) indicates were previously treated as disruptive to the imagination of the national community that broadcasters sought to represent.
While regional funding schemes and content regulations are making their own contributions, the expansion and cultural diversification of non-US high-end drama can also be attributed to the institutional capacities of ‘multiplatform’ television (Dunleavy 2018). As a label that recognises the internet as a pervasive platform for television, this ‘multiplatform’ era is one in which broadcast, cable/satellite and internet-only TV networks are collaborating as well as competing and the earlier distinctions it was possible to make between internet-distributed and so-called ‘legacy’ TV services are beginning to recede.
Although international coproduction has always been an option for high-end drama (television’s most expensive form), it is moving to the forefront of TV drama’s international industry in the context of three main institutional and industrial conditions. The first is much higher production budgets and costs for the kinds of dramas that aim to succeed on an international stage. Second, the accelerated international circulation of new shows that internet distribution enables has increased the profit margins and extended the ‘afterlife’ of successful dramas (see Lotz 2019). Third is the commercial necessity for leading transnational networks (indicatively the premium players Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO and Disney+) to involve themselves in coproduction. In recognition that the offer of distinctive, original high-end drama is pivotal to the allure of premium TV services, US-based premium networks are coproducing with non-US broadcasters and/or non-US drama producers as a means to engage more directly with their national industries and audiences, to comply with content regulations operating in non-US markets, and to increase their subscribers in non-US territories.
By featuring an indicative selection of recent or current high-end TV drama examples, this special issue aims to explain and explore the increased cultural diversity of high-end dramas produced in non-US territories. It aims to demonstrate the importance of current coproduction strategies in facilitating their cultural distinctions, high-end ambition and appeals to an international audience. We invite abstracts for the themed issue that analyse these dramas from institutional, creative media industries and/or representational perspectives. Articles will be approximately 6-7000 words and engage with some of the questions below:
* How are international coproduction relationships changing the industrial, creative, representational, and/or linguistic parameters for non-US TV drama?
* How and why have these dramas deployed international coproduction?
* Public broadcasters continue to use international coproduction to help them finance unusually ambitious and expensive dramas. But how are their drama coproduction strategies and partnerships changing in the multiplatform era?
* How do dramas arising from creative and/or financial collaboration between non-US producers and transnational networks pursue and negotiate cultural specificity?
* Are today’s internationally coproduced dramas – even as their network investors anticipate wider international reach for them than was possible in past TV eras – extending the cultural specificity (or ‘localism’) of non-US high-end drama?
* How is the imagination of cultural specificity impacted by the co-production process?
Please send your abstract of no more than 750 words to Trisha Dunleavy (trisha.dunleavy@vuw.ac.nz ) and Elke Weissmann (weissmae@edgehill.ac.uk ) by 1 October 2020. The special issue of /Critical Studies in Television/ is scheduled to be published in 2022.
The special issue is part of the outcomes of a Victoria University of Wellington and British Academy-funded project on /Transnational Television in the Multiplatform Age/ for which the editors are principal investigators.
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