ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Edited volume by Olga Kourelou and Philip E. Phillis

Deadline: September 30, 2024

Greek cinema has been defined primarily on national terms with discussions revolving around questions of ‘Greekness’ and what Greek films reveal about the national character and culture. Therefore, the idea of transnational Greek cinema may at first sound like an oxymoron. Yet, as Maria Chalkou has argued, what is perhaps the most distinguished characteristic of Greek cinema today is the ‘renegotiation and redefinition of the national through the transnational’ (2020). Indeed, since the 2000s and especially after 2010 and the international success of the films of the so-called ‘Greek Weird Wave’, Greek film culture has been characterised by an increasing openness – what Lydia Papadimitriou has described as ‘extroversion’ (2018). On the one hand, this is the result of the intensification of co-production activity and the distribution and consumption of Greek films beyond their national borders. On the other, this is evident in the thematic preoccupations of an ever-larger number of films that take a more fluid approach towards the national by focusing on the multicultural make-up of Greek society and by bringing to the fore the subjectivities of ethnic ‘others’, questioning thus nationalist myths of purity, authenticity and containment.

This edited volume invites chapter proposals that will open up discussions of Greek cinema and film culture beyond the national through a consideration of its transnational dimensions. The scope of the book is historical in that we are interested in mapping out Greek cinema’s transnationalism diachronically. While scholars have rightly pointed out the recent outwardness of Greek cinema, Greek film culture has always been transnational. This was especially the case in the post-war era, when production and exhibition practices, as Dimitris Eleftheriotis has demonstrated (2001, 2006), were of a hybrid character, involving cultural exchanges with both the West and the East. However, the transnationalism of this period of Greek cinema, and of others, remains under-researched and this gap in our knowledge is something this book aims to fill. We welcome contributions adopting different methodologies in their analysis, from empirical to text-based. The goal of this publication is to explore at what levels the transnational manifests itself in Greek cinema, whether this is in terms of production, distribution, exhibition, creative personnel, content, or form, as well as to what effect, looking specifically at the politics and ideological implications within transnational flows. For, as Rosalind Galt reminds us, ‘the transnational is always political because it demands that we think about the relationships of cinema and geopolitics through, between, and beyond the state’ (2016).

Topics may include but are not limited to:

•  Transnational modes of production, distribution and exhibition from early Greek cinema to today
  
•  Co-productions
  
•  Auterism and cosmopolitanism
  
•  Genre flows, remakes and remixes
  
•  Transnational cinephilia
  
•  Transnational actors and stars
  
•  Migration (representations of migrants, refugees and ethnic ‘others’; migrant and diasporic filmmakers; borders and border-crossing)
  
•  Queer transnationalism
  
•  Greek locations in international filmmaking, and film tourism
  
•  Reception of Greek films abroad (festivals, audiences, exhibition practices, critical reception)
  
•  Transnational readings of the so-called ‘new’ and ‘old Greek cinema’
  
•  Language, dubbing, subtitling
  

--

The edited volume is under consideration with Edinburgh University Press.

Please send a title, 300 word abstract and a short biography in a single file to transnationalgreekcinema@gmail.com by 30th September 2024. The final chapters should be around 6000-8000 words and submitted to the editors by the end of May 2025. No payment from authors will be required.

September 24, 10.00-13.30

Café Kava Bar Gaj (tbc, close to the Faculty of Social Sciences)

 ECREA Audience and Reception Studies Section

We invite you to join us for an engaging and insightful discussion panel organized by the ECREA Audience and Reception Studies Section. This event is an opportunity to exchange knowledge, gain tips and tricks, and get inspired on how to keep audience studies relevant in today's educational landscape.

We will organize the discussion in two sessions:

In the first session Teaching Audiences, we will map out how audience studies are taught at different institutions, in different countries in terms of content, class activities and assignments, and reading materials. Some of the questions we will address are: What are approaches to the structure of the audience studies and audience research courses? What are the key concepts, theories and messages we want students to take with them? How do we structure the syllabus and focus our lectures - historically, by research methods, by “type of audiences”, etc.?

 In the second session Audience Perspective in Curricula and Other Courses, we will further delve into audience studies and audience research to address the various challenges identified previously and to discuss ideas and practices on how to keep the key questions and concerns of audience centric research and studies relevant to university degrees concerned with media, culture and communications. Some of the questions we will address are: What is the relevance of audience research and studies in different degree programs? How do the audience perspectives fit into courses related to users, digital citizenship, literacy, and technology?

Join us to discuss the contemporary challenges and the future of audience studies within media and communication degrees. Share your experiences and insights, and learn from others in the field.

There is no fee. To participate, please fill out the form by 15th July 2024. 

Email access: form 

Web access: form

As spaces are limited, participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. We will notify all applicants about the selection process by 30th July 2024.

We look forward to your contribution to this important discussion!

Panel organizers: David Mathieu, Jelena Kleut, Maria José Brites, Ranjana Das, Sonia Livingstone, Tereza Pavlickova, Vivi Theodoropoulou

Communication Studies

Deadline (EXTENDED): July 29, 2024

We invite submissions for the special issue of the journal Communication Studies (Scopus). The deadline has been extended to July 29th. See below or visit this link https://ojs.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/ec/announcement/view/94 for more information.

Call for special issue: Navigating the Ethical Landscape: Organizational dynamics, engagement, and societal impact (extended)

Editors:  Gisela Gonçalves (University of Beira Interior /LabCom, Portugal), Evandro Oliveira (Autónoma University/LabCom, Portugal) and Shannon Bowen (University of South Caroline, USA).

Anachronistic, disruptive change, socio-political dynamics and stakeholder activism have increased the need to make ethical commitments and challenge organizational practices and impacts. Ethical commitments are needed not only to address micro-issues or a few legal concerns, but also to play a central role in finding solutions to global and local challenges. Moreover, these changes are made according to deep overall commitments and positions that are strategically adopted by the organization and do not play a peripheral role. This special issue calls for original research that addresses strategic and organizational communication from a normative and ethical horizon that is now in increasing demand.

Companies now face normative imperatives to address societal issues and engage in political discourse, with instances of corporate social advocacy and CEO activism alongside traditional corporate citizenship and CSR strategies. However, corporate hypocrisy, inauthentic behaviors, and soft propaganda persist, as do the ploys of greenwashing and other colorwashing (including pink, rainbow, and blue).

We invite empirical, conceptual, and critical papers that address issues such as:

• normative and ethical governance in organizational communication
  
• strategic engagement with non-business issues
  
• the societal impact of rhetoric and stories
  
• regulatory implications for the public sector
  
• ethics, leadership and change management
  
• the role of strategic communication in achieving the UN sustainable development goals
  
• communication within the B Corp model, the fourth sector, and social purpose organizations
  
• corporate and social advocacy and CEO activism
  
• greenwashing and other colorwashing
  

Please identify clearly at the beginning of the manuscript that it is a submission for the special issue “Navigating the Ethical Landscape: Organizational Dynamics, Engagement, and Societal Impact." Revised papers from works presented at ECREA-OSC Conference or the Global Strategic Communication Conclave are especially welcomed and sought (please identify as such on the title page).

Submission Guidelines

Full papers must be submitted online through the journal's website.

Papers must be written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. If your text is written in a language other than English, please submit both an original and an English version of your abstract, title, and keywords.

Papers must follow the journal's guidelines for formatting and referencing, available here: https://ojs.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/ec/about/submissions

All papers will be subject to double-blind peer review.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: July 29, 2024 (extended)

Notification of acceptance: September 27, 2024

Publication of the special issue: December 2024

August 19-30, 2024 (online)

Maastricht Summer School, Maastricht University

Deadline: August 9, 2024

The focus of this Summer School course is on critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and news framing. A key objective is to enable you to design an analytical framework to study media representations with textual and/or visual elements (e.g. newspaper/magazine articles with photos, cartoons and social media posts). Most Summer School participants are usually PhD candidates, You can read more about the course content, course objectives and recommended literature below. You also find there the link to the timetable. The course fee is €499. 

To apply for the course, please visit the DreamApply website: https://maastricht.dreamapply.com/courses/course/185-media-representations-and-research-methods-critical-discourse-analysis-social-semiotics-and-news-framing. 

For more information, please contact course coordinator Leonhardt: L.VanEfferink@MaastrichtUniversity.nl

Course Description

How do you make sense of the wide variety of perspectives in the media? For example, how can we interpret newspaper coverage of the War in Ukraine, tweets by Elon Musk, or Instagram posts on climate change, food, and migration? 

This course offers you academic yet practical answers to these questions. It teaches you the analytical skills to study the possible meanings of textual and visual media representations.

Interactive lectures raise your understanding of concepts and methods, helping you examine what combinations of words and/or visual elements could mean in terms of a broader debate in society. These lectures further teach you how national identities and power relations affect the interpretations of media representations. 

Your individual assignment concerns a short paper, in which you apply a method to study one or two news articles, short YouTube videos, or social media posts. You will write and present this paper during this two-week course.

Exclusively for this Summer School, Dr. Leonhardt van Efferink developed a template that helps you write a well-structured course paper. On top of this, he offers individual feedback in class and active personal tutoring by e-mail. Finally, his support includes a comprehensive framework to develop focused, consistent, and transparent research questions.

Below you find the course objectives, a link to the timetable and suggested literature. 

Course Objectives

• Write a well-structured research paper in which you study media representations with textual and/or visual elements (e.g., newspaper/magazine articles with photos, cartoons, and Instagram/Twitter posts).
  
• Develop a research method that draws on critical discourse analysis, social semiotic analysis, and/or news framing analysis, in line with your research objectives.
  
• Formulate research questions that are clear, focused, and consistent, saving you a lot of time later in the research process.
  
• Compile a dataset for your thesis or dissertation that is manageable and relevant.
  
• Understand the complexity of text-image relations and their role in meaning-making processes.
  
• Explain the role of the national and ideological contexts in which (social) media content is being produced.
  

Timetable

The sixth online edition of this course lasts from 19 until 30 August 2024. The earlier online editions were fully booked and seven earlier editions took place on-campus in Maastricht between 2014 and 2019. This edition has daily teaching sessions of at most three hours. Teaching days will start at 13.00 (Maastricht time zone/GMT+2) and end at the latest at 16.00 (Maastricht time zone/GMT+2). This makes it easier for students from far away countries to deal with the large time differences. Please check Leonhardt's website for most up-to-date version of the timetable: https://vanefferink.com/en/media-representations-and-research-methods-summer-school-critical-discourse-analysis-social-semiotics-and-news-framing/

Literature

Leonhardt has based this course on publications in various languages (see overview below for some examples). You are not required to do pre-course reading. However, if you would like to do so, you are advised to select one of the publications below. You can also contact Leonhardt for tailor-made reading advice.

1.    Caple, H. (2013) Photojournalism. A Social Semiotic Approach.

2.    Dahinden, U. (2006). Framing. Eine integrative Theorie der Massenkommunikation.

3.    D’Angelo, P. (ed.) (2018) Doing News Framing Analysis II. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives.

4.    Geise, S., & Lobinger, K. (eds.). (2013). Visual Framing. Perspektiven und Herausforderungen der visuellen Kommunikationsforschung.

5.    Machin, D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis.

6.    Machin, D. and Mayr, A. (2012) How to do Critical Discourse Analysis.

7.    Richardson, J. (2007) Analysing Newspapers. An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis.

8.    Royce, T. D. (2006). Intersemiotic Complementarity. A Framework for Multimodal Discourse Analysis. In T. D. Royce, & W. Bowcher (Eds.), New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse (pp. 63-109).

9.    Van Gorp, B. (2010) Strategies to take the Subjectivity out of Framing Analysis. In P. D’Angelo, & J. A. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing News Framing Analysis. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives (pp. 84-109).

10.    Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds., 2016) Methods of Critical Discourse Studies.

Student reviews (from LinkedIn recommendations)

1.    “I found Leonhardt very well familiar with all the dynamics of his class room, as he very efficiently caters to the need of all his students coming from different social, cultural and educational backgrounds.” – Sadia from Pakistan

2.    “Leonhardt is a great lecturer who knows his subject matter. I found his inclusive approach particularly useful in teaching media analysis techniques.” – Koen from Belgium

3.    “Not only did Leonhardt demonstrate a high level of expertise in the subject, but he also helped his students understand difficult concepts in a very accessible way, effectively bridging the gap between theory and practice, and fostering fruitful discussions in class.” – Carolina from Brazil

Deadlines:

Expressions of interest/Initial abstracts (max. 300 words) and short biographical note (max. 100 words) are due on: 25 August, 2024.

Submission of full papers: 25 January, 2025

Final versions with the amendments suggested by reviewers are due: 31 April, 2025. 

Scope:

“My men do not fear death, they welcome it and the rewards it brings”

In recent decades, digital games have become an increasingly ubiquitous medium for popular engagement with history. For many players, these digital representations provide a deeper level of engagement with the past than the scientific and scholarly interpretations presented in academic monographs and journal articles.

The above quote is how players of Assassin’s Creed are first introduced to the so-called “leap of faith”, an important gameplay mechanic and navigational element where characters jump from implausible heights, before landing unharmed in carts filled with hay. It has since developed into a signature feature of the franchise, which encourages players to climb culturally and architecturally significant buildings to obtain more information about the surrounding area. Yet many players do not realise that the episode represented in the opening scene of this hugely popular game is adopted almost verbatim from a 13th-century Old French chronicle (Daftary, 1990: 6). Likewise, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, set in 9th century Baghdad, actively engages with controversial historical subjects such as the ‘Islamic Golden Age’, the Zanj slave rebellion, and the ‘translation movement’ from Greek to Arabic that was patronised by the Abbasid Caliphate.

These and many other tropes in digital games raise questions about how historical imageries and imaginaries are developed for the medium. Inquiries include the extent to which game designers want to recover, select, update, and re-enact multifaceted, contested aspects of the past. Similarly, so-called Serious Games have been traditionally designed for education and training purposes across disciplines, but what are the implications of drawing upon historical leitmotifs within this format? Putting these questions into a broader perspective of the digitisation of culture and knowledge practices, this special issue of Digital Culture & Society addresses how knowledge about the past is crafted and curated in and for digital games.

In addition to developing deliberate visions of the past through narrative design and gameworld imagery, the embedded practical interactive experience provided by gaming has become an important means of making historical material accessible to wider audiences. This possibility, which has evolved over at least the past three decades through numerous genre codes into more multisensory experiences, led contemporary history-themed games to be compared to a form of historical tourism (Schwarz, 2024).

Therefore, while addressing sensitive historical themes, digital games are also expected to serve as new drivers of popular history. Consequently, they incorporate contemporary cultural debates into the historical settings they recreate. This phenomenon is not unique to gaming. Other mass media, from literature to cinema, have grappled with similar issues when representing the past. However, digital games highlight the need to update these discussions, as computer simulation, rule structures, and user-oriented media affordances can offer features to engage players through particular narrative architectures (Jenkins, 2004), procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2007), and affective experiences (Jagoda & McDonald, 2018). Computer games exhibit similarities but also very significant differences to how other means, including traditional institutional structures and pedagogical platforms, propose engaging with history and heritage (Houghton, 2023). Therefore it is relevant to understand how these differences influence the representation of the past in digital games, especially in games that advert fidelity or realism as hallmarks of their worldbuilding.

As the scope of themes in digital games stretches to the past, gameworld imaginations paint vivid pictures of transcontinental expeditions, previous civilisations, and political or religious conflicts. Yet, while the representation and the immersive experiences based on these motifs raise several important epistemological questions, the concrete social contexts in which these historical images are created have received comparatively little attention. The social studies concerning the practical production of historical games remain only marginally explored (Sotamaa & Švelch, 2021). Observing how the decision-making process in historical games is tailored between developers, narrative designers, and historical advisors, one can better understand the importance placed on historical knowledge within the gaming industry, especially when questions of so-called historical ‘authenticity’ collide with the demands of user-oriented digital media.

Therefore, with this special volume of Digital Culture & Society, we wish to explore the epistemological, political, and practical issues that arise through the intermingling of digital games and history across multiple dimensions. We aim to do so by being open to multiple branches of research, ranging from the representational gameworlds and playful experiences about the past to the paratexts surrounding historical game releases, from the diverse methodological approaches applied to study the intermingling of games and history to the game production aspects that play a decisive role in how such games are shaped.

The special issue is led by a set of questions concerning the practical and conceptual intricacies of developing and presenting games about historical themes to a global audience:

• How are the imageries of in-game historical conflicts or cross-cultural ‘tolerance’ developed?
  
• How does the categorisation of digital games into different genres influence how we analyse historical aspects of this medium?
  
• In which ways are history-based games serious?
  
• How are game logics and structures used as engagement tools by organisations, companies, and states?
  
• What are the different implications of digital games for the reception of historical knowledge when history is meant to be played as a user-oriented medium?
  
• What are the benefits that can be gained from analysis of paratexts, and which insights can they provide into these processes?
  
• How is the decision-making process tailored between developers, concept designers, and historical advisors?
  
• What are the game studio dynamics that play a role in shaping how historical games are developed?
  
• What interdisciplinary methods can be developed to study the intersection of digital games and historical knowledge?
  

We encourage historians, designers, anthropologists, sociologists, and researchers from other disciplines engaged with history-related topics in digital games to contribute to this special issue.

Journal Sections:

When submitting an abstract, please state to which of the following issue sections you would like to submit your paper:

Field Research and Case Studies (full paper: 6.000 – 8.000 words)

We welcome articles that explore empirical findings on the relationship between games and history. These articles may examine aspects ranging from gameworld representations and game paratexts to the processes involved in game production or reception. These studies might be based on empirical investigations or autoethnographic research.

Conceptual/Theoretical Reflection (full paper: 6.000 – 8.000 words)

conceptual and theoretical dimensions of intertwining historical knowledge with digital games. This may involve examining the challenges posed to the discipline by the format of games, employing comparative media approaches to address the potential and pitfalls of engaging with the past through digital games, or exploring the inherent complexities of dealing with the past through this medium.

Entering the Field (2.000 – 3.000 words; experimental formats welcome)

This experimental section presents initial and ongoing empirical work in historical game studies. The editors have created this section to provide a platform for researchers who would like to initiate a discussion concerning emerging (yet perhaps incomplete) research agendas and plans, as well as methodological approaches to historical game studies. Contributions may also include discussions about the handling of sources or archival work conducted specifically for developing digital games.

Publisher and Open Access: 

DCS is published by transcript. All articles will be published as open access on our website 12 months after the initial publication. Previous issues are available here: http://digicults.org/issues

Edited by: 

Eduardo Luersen (Zukunftskolleg/Department of Literature, Art and Media Studies, University of Konstanz) and James Wilson (Zukunftskolleg/Department of History and Sociology, University of Konstanz)

Please send expressions of interest/initial abstracts and short biographical notes to Eduardo Luersen (eduardo.luersen@uni-konstanz.de) and James Wilson (james.wilson@uni-konstanz.de).

Selected References:

Bogost, Ian (2007) Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Daftary, Farhad (1990) The Isma’ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Houghton, Robert (2023) ‘Awesome, but Impractical? Deeper Engagement with the Middle Ages through Commercial Digital Games’, Open Library of Humanities 9(2).

Jagoda, Patrick and McDonald, Peter (2018) ‘Game Mechanics, Experience Design, and Affective Play’, in Jentery Sayers (ed.) Routledge Companion to Media Studies and the Digital Humanities. New York: Routledge, pp. 174–182.

Jenkins, Henry (2004) ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’, in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrington (ed.) First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 118–130.

Schwarz, Angela (2024) ‘Discovering the Past as a Virtual Foreign Country: Assassin’s Creed as Historical Tourism’, in Erik Champion and Juan Francisco Hiriart Vera (ed.) Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or a Stab in the Dark? Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 169–187.

Sotamaa, Olli and Švelch, Jan (2021) Game Production Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Frontiers 

Deadline: September 30, 2024

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/63975/contesting-artificial-intelligence-communicative-practices-organizational-structures-and-enabling-technologies   

Deadline for abstracts: 30 Sept 2024

Deadline for full papers: 31 Mar 2025

Expected date of publication: Dec 2025

For this interdisciplinary research topic we are looking forward to contributions addressing concepts, approaches, and techniques of AI contestability in the context of organizational and cross-organizational communication. This may involve interventions from research fields such as science and technology studies, organizational sociology, critical algorithm and data studies, applied ethics, legal studies, data science, software engineering, human-centered computing, and critical design.

Frontiers Research Topics are collaborative initiatives by multiple journals gathering contributions on one thematic area or issue. In our case, accepted contributions can be published in one of the following peer-reviewed journals: Frontiers in Communication (lead), Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Frontiers in Sociology, Frontiers in Big Data, Frontiers in Computer Science and Frontiers in Human Dynamics. You can decide for yourself which journal to submit to. If a considerable number of articles are collected, they will additionally be published as a special issue / ebook.

November 7-8, 2024

University of Beira Interior, Portugal

Website: https://televisaoenovosmeios.ubi.pt

(The conference will accept proposals for in-person and remote presentation.)

Synopses 

How do we represent diversity in television today? Are we thinking of diversity of voices, people, content, vehicles or places?

On 7 and 8 November 2024, the fourth International Television and New Media Conference will focus on contemporary dynamics that accommodate different needs, such as the inclusion of minority perceptions, the deconstruction of stereotypes based on historical misconceptions, an excess of unverified information or information created by artificial intelligence, and the political validation of discourses that encourage polarisation and the formation of pro-violence clusters against minorities, women and migrants.

Bringing together academics, professionals and representatives of civil society organisations, TV and New Media 2024, promoted by the LabCom - Communication and Arts Research Unit at the University of Beira Interior (UBI), will reflect on diversity in television and its programmatic, geographical, ethical or gender representation, in an attentive analysis of the countless constructions of reality that the medium continues to promote.

Between apocalyptic and integrated readings, returning to Eco, we invite you to submit proposals in the following categories: Strategic Communication, Culture, Journalism, Gender and Human Rights, Fiction, Production and Programming, Audiences and New Platforms.

The fourth International Conference on Television and New Media will be held in the Council Room at the Faculty of Arts and Letters at UBI, and also remotely.

KU Leuven

The fulltime professor position (open rank) will be held at the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, a research unit within the Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven (Belgium). KU Leuven represents a leading academic institution in Europe that is currently the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure. The university’s mission is to provide excellence in academic education and research and to offer a distinguished service to society. Owing to KU Leuven’s cutting-edge research, KU Leuven is a charter member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and is consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in Europe. Within KU Leuven, the Leuven School of Mass Communication Research (SMCR) represents a pioneering institution for media effects research. The research focus of SMCR lies on the use of information- and entertainment media (including social media, ICT, television, games, mobile devices), and on how these uses may harm or enhance various components of individuals’ wellbeing and social cohesion. We have a strong expertise in explaining the processes through which various forms of media use affect physical, psychological and social wellbeing in the long run, and the conditions under which these processes occur. Therefore, a series of advanced methods are applied, including longitudinal survey studies, daily diary studies and content analysis. Issues studied in recent years include, for example, alcohol and drug use, (positive) sexuality and sexism, risk taking, depression, self-harm, (positive) body image, and mental and physical wellbeing. The School adheres to the highest academic standards and strives towards publishing its research in top academic journals (e.g., Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, New Media & Society, Media Psychology). SMCR staff is involved in various national and international multidisciplinary research projects, primarily of fundamental nature but also with societal relevance.

Unit website

Research

You will be expected to develop an international research program, to aim at excellent scientific output of international level, and support and promote the School for Mass Communication Research in national and international research collaborations. These research efforts should be situated in the broad field of digitalization and society. Digital natives grow up in a world in which digital media technologies influence all spheres of individual development, social life and society. Relatedly, adults are increasingly governed by digital media platforms to which they seem endlessly connected. Accordingly, digitalization intersects with human challenges associated with staying healthy, developing advanced cognitive structures and building meaningful social ties. Digitalization brings along risks but can simultaneously also empower (young) individuals in their health, education, social and romantic relationships, political participation and managing their overall day-to-day lives. 

The role of digitalization in individual’s life and, more generally, society at large, is expected to be central in the research of the applicant. More precisely, your research focuses on the development of innovative theory and advanced research techniques in this field. You have a strong background in predominantly quantitative research methods and have demonstrated research excellence in various ways (e.g., top ranked ISI publications, awards, societal impact etc.).

With this vacancy we aim to further strengthen the research and complement the expertise at SMCR. We are looking for a candidate with a strong experience in the understanding of the mechanisms that underlie transformations in individuals and broader human culture as a result of digitalization. 

Specifically, with this position we aim to further strengthen and expand the research at SMCR. Consequently, your research is expected to relate to the aforementioned lines of research of SMCR and to complement this research in one or more ways.

We welcome excellent scholars who complement SMCR research lines on digitalization in terms of (1) themes (e.g., (but not limited to) education (e.g., digital skills, disinformation, misinformation, creativity, digital divide..), artificial intelligence (algorithmic awareness, chatbot interactions, …), civic engagement (e.g., political self-efficacy), social capital (e.g., parental and peer communication and ties, …), health (e.g., digital well-being, health communication…)  and/or (2) quantitative methods (e.g., (but not limited to) ESM research, the development and testing of mediated promotion and intervention campaigns, computational and digital social science methods, statistical modelling, data visualization, or psychophysiological research), and/or (3) audiences (e.g., (but not limited to) minorities, people with addictions). In close collaboration with SMCR staff, you contribute to the existing lines of research and set up your own program through the acquisition of research funding.

Teaching

The Department of Communication Science, consisting of two research groups SMCR and IMS, organizes the Bachelor and Master of Communication Science, and the (English) Masters in Digital Media and Society and Journalism. Your teaching will contain several courses at the Bachelor’s and Master’s level and will include theoretical and methodological courses on communication science. You supervise students working on their master thesis and PhD students.

Your teaching is expected to meet the KU Leuven standards regarding academic program level and orientation and to be in keeping with the educational vision of KU Leuven. Commitment to the quality of education as a whole is naturally expected.

Service

You provide scientific, societal and internal services. This is reflected, among other things, in a constructive contribution to education and research, as part of a team's collective projects (e.g. through participation in meetings, teacher days, information sessions, recruitment activities, exchange programs), and service to the academic community (e.g., service to academic associations such as ICA and journals (reviews)), education (e.g., participation in program committee meetings), and faculty (e.g., participation in faculty council etc.) You have an elaborate network of important stakeholders in the field, and have collaborated with these stakeholders to create societal impact and disseminate research.

Profile

Applicants hold a Ph.D. degree in communication sciences, social sciences, psychology, or an equivalent diploma. We seek a scholar with a broad theoretical- and interdisciplinary interest and a strong background in quantitative research methods, whose research both relates to and complements the current research lines at SMCR. The successful candidate has an excellent research record as evidenced by more than one dimension, e.g., the quality of their PhD research, high-level publications in the important journals of our field (i.e., ICA journals) and related fields, research impact (e.g., citations) and acquired research funding. We attach great importance to professional and value-driven behavior, an attitude of sharing, mentoring and inclusivity, and collegiality, and will encourage the candidate to collaborate with SMCR researchers as well as with interdisciplinary research groups and centers within KU Leuven. The candidate has a large international network and is eager to further develop this within the context of SMCR.

Applicants have demonstrated excellent teaching skills (including when teaching for large groups) and have a broad employability due to in-depth and detailed knowledge about the social sciences, media sociology and media psychology. In addition, the candidate has demonstrated excellent leadership skills (e.g., through the (current) supervision of PhD students), and is a strong team player.

The official administrative language used at KU Leuven is Dutch and there is a legal requirement to become proficient in Dutch up to a certain level. If you do not speak Dutch (or do not speak it well) at the start of employment, KU Leuven will provide language training to enable you to take part in administrative meetings and over time to teach in Dutch. A thorough knowledge of English is required.

Offer

We offer a full-time employment in an intellectually challenging and international environment. You will work in Leuven, a historic and lively city located in the heart of Belgium, within 20 minutes from Brussels, and less than two hours from Paris, London and Amsterdam.

Depending on your experience and qualification, the position will be at one of the levels of the senior academic staff (Tenure Track Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor). Junior researchers are appointed as assistant professor on the tenure track for a period of five years; after this period and a positive evaluation, they are permanently appointed (or tenured) as  an associate professor. For professors without substantial other funding (e.g., ERC),  a starting grant of 110.000 euro is offered to facilitate scientific onboarding and accelerate research in the first phase. 

The expected starting date is 1 January 2025.

Immediately upon starting you will be able to independently develop your own line of research, serve as a supervisor of dissertations, and raise your own research funding.

KU Leuven welcomes international scholars and their family and provides practical support with regard to immigration and administration, housing, childcare, learning Dutch, partner career coaching,…

Interested

For more information please contact:

Prof. Dr. Laura Vandenbosch (Research director School for Mass Communication Research), mail: Laura.Vandenbosch@kuleuven.be. 

Prof. Dr. Stef Aupers (Program director Communication Sciences), mail: Stef.Aupers@kuleuven.be 

Prof. Dr. Steven Eggermont (Dean Faculty of Social Sciences), mail: Steven.Eggermont@kuleuven.be 

You can apply for this job no later than August 01, 2024 via the online application tool.

KU Leuven strives for an inclusive, respectful and socially safe environment. We embrace diversity among individuals and groups as an asset. Open dialogue and differences in perspective are essential for an ambitious research and educational environment. In our commitment to equal opportunity, we recognize the consequences of historical inequalities. We do not accept any form of discrimination based on, but not limited to, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, ethnic or national background, skin colour, religious and philosophical diversity, neurodivergence, employment disability, health, or socioeconomic status. For questions about accessibility or support offered, we are happy to assist you at this email address.

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Do you have a question about the online application system? Please consult our FAQ or email us at apply@kuleuven.be

Charles University (Czech Republic)

Charles University  will make a limited number of Post-Doctoral Fellowships available, financed through its JUNIOR Fund. Post-Doctoral Fellows will be engaged to work on a project taking no longer than 2 years (24 months) of full-time employment. The scholarship will be around 2400 Euro per month. 

Scholarships will be awarded for projects in different thematic areas, one of which is the "discursive construction of peace", with Nico Carpentier as its supervisor, who is affiliated to Charles University's Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (ICSJ) and in particular to the Culture and Communication Research Centre (CULCORC). 

This call is for candidates who wish to work within the domain of discursive construction of peace (from a post-structuralist perspective), and who want to submit a credible proposal in this thematic area. More information about the exact nature of this theme can be found below. 

Potential candidates are strongly recommended to consult with the supervisor, Nico Carpentier (at nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz), before submitting their final application to him. 

Time table: 

* Deadline for final applications sent to Nico Carpentier: July 24, 2024 

* Deadline for these applications to be submitted to the Faculty: July 26, 2024 

* First selection (nomination by the respective Faculties): August 5, 2024 

* Second selection (University Committee): September 2024 

* Decision by Rector: September 2024 

* Position available from (if selected): January 1, 2025 

Prerequisites (https://cuni.cz/UKEN-178.html#10): 

* The applicant must be a resident of a country different than the Czech Republic. 

* Applicants of Czech and Slovak nationality are also eligible to apply for financial support from the Fund if they have successfully completed their doctoral studies at a non-Czech/Slovak university. 

* At the time of submission the applicant must have completed Ph.D. studies outside the Czech Republic. 

* No more than 5 years must have elapsed since the completion of the applicant’s Ph.D. at the time of filing the application. The time-limit may be extended by the time spent on maternity or paternity leave. 

* The applicant can not be qualified for an associate professorship (habilitation) prior to the application deadline. 

Charles University reserves the right not to select any candidate. 

Required application documents: 

(see https://cuni.cz/UKEN-178.html#10 for templates) 

* Application Form (use template 1) 

* Letter of Reference: written even by the supervisor in the PhD programme or by a researcher/head of establishment, where the applicant completed the doctoral study (use template 2). 

* Professional Curriculum Vitae, including the commented list of up to 5  most important publications. Please specify your research contribution and input to each publication (all together max. 2 pages A4) 

* Copy of University Diploma or Provisional certificate of completion of PhD studies or another official confirmation, that the applicant has been awarded PhD Degree. 

More information: 

* About JUNIOR Fund: https://cuni.cz/UKEN-178.html 

* All thematic areas at the Faculty of Social Sciences: https://fsv.cuni.cz/en/exchange/academics/incoming-academics/junior-post-doc-fund 

* Nico Carpentier: http://nicocarpentier.net/ 

* ICSJ: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/ 

* CULCORC: https://culcorc.fsv.cuni.cz/ 

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Theme: The discursive construction of peace 

Short summary: 

With Europe being more and more confronted with armed conflict at (and within) its borders, peace has become materially, but also conceptually elusive, often only negatively defined—as war’s opposite—without much substance. This project is embedded in the discursive-constructionist approaches to war (e.g., Jabri 1996) in order to study a particular conflict-related setting to better understand how peace is defined, as, for instance, an unreachable utopia or a legitimation of war. 

Description and intellectual context: 

Although the materialist perspectives on war dominate the field of conflict studies, Keen (1986), Jabri (1996), Mansfield (2008) and Demmers (2012) have recognized the importance of the discursive dimension of violence, conflict and war (Carpentier, 2017, p. 160-162). These authors have pleaded for taking this discursive dimension seriously, because, as Keen (1986, p. 10) wrote: “In the beginning we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them.” Or, as Jabri (1996, p. 23) wrote: “[…] knowledge of human phenomena such as war is, in itself, a constitutive part of the world of meaning and practice.” Of course, the psychological and linguistic dimensions of war have received considerable attention, even in some of the key theoretical conflict models, as is exemplified by Galtung’s conflict triangle model (Galtung, 2009). But the discursive – used here in the macro-textual and macro-contextual meaning it receives in discourse theory (Laclau; Mouffe, 1985, p. 105; Carpentier, 2017, p. 16-17) – argues for the importance of a broader dimension, which is located at the epistemological level. 

The previous paragraph also highlights the significatory relationship between war and peace. In particular, peace has proven to be difficult to be conceptualized without reference to war. Biletzki raises this point in the following terms: "'War and Peace' is the ultimate posit which grounds the concept of peace in a dichotomous definition. In the effort to define, explain, explicate, illustrate and finally understand peace it is natural to ask what peace is not. […] This binary, even exclusionary, use of both terms, ‘war’ and ‘peace’, constitutes their meaning, almost of necessity […]" (Biletzki, 2007, p. 347). Although it is possible to construct a language-game of peace without the signifier war, we need to acknowledge that the signifier war is often used in peace discourses (and the other way around). Basic definitions of war and peace, also used in academic literature, often set up these two signifiers in an oppositional relationship, allocating a primary defining role to war, defining peace as “the absence of war” (or, of armed conflict) (Matsuo, 2007, p. 16). Still, in the field of peace studies, ample attention has been spent on developing a more autonomous definition of peace, where, for instance, Galtung (1964; 1969) – one of the founders of this field – uses the concept of structural violence, which includes such conditions as poverty, humiliation, political repression and the denial of self determination that limits the human potential for self-realization. ‘Positive peace’ then becomes defined as the transcendence of these conditions to assure non-violence and social justice. 

Post-structuralist approaches allow us to argue that we construct knowledge about peace (and war) through discursive-ideological frameworks, that are not so much located at the individual-interactional level, but at the social level. Discourses of peace are frameworks of intelligibility – ways of knowing peace – which are available to individual subjects for identification (or disidentification), but that are also inherently contingent and fluid. This does not mean that there is a multitude of ever-changing discourses, with meanings neurotically floating around. It means that there are several, always particular, ways of thinking peace, which are in themselves never perfect copies of the Real, but imperfect representations, bound to always somehow fail. In some cases, this failure to represent – to incorporate events or ideas – can threaten the integrity of discourse, and can, to use a discourse-theoretical term, dislocate it. Moreover, these discourses also engage with each other in struggles, and sometimes become dominant (or hegemonic) and sedimented through these discursive struggles. Even then, no hegemony is total and necessarily lasts forever; hegemonic discourses can become politicized again and dragged into a new political-discursive struggle, that might alter or destroy them. 

This call focusses on projects that study a particular conflict-related setting to better understand how peace is discursively constructed. This implies that project proposals will need to (1) highlight the exact theoretical framework (within the post-structuralist tradition) that will be used, (2) specify and contextualize the conflict-related setting that will be studied, (3) specify the types of signifying machines that will be studied (e.g., news media, popular culture, memorials, art, museums, ...), (4) describe and motivate the research questions, corpus and research design, and methodology that will be used, (5) include a time plan, allocating sufficient time to the academic dissemination of the results, (6) and motivate the collaboration with ICSJ and CULCORC. 

(Text from: CARPENTIER, NICO, KEJANLIOĞLU, D. BEYBIN (2020) The Militarization of a Public Debate: A Discourse-Theoretical Analysis of the Construction of War and Peace in Public Debates Surrounding the Books of Three Turkish Military Commanders on the “1974 Cyprus Peace Operation”, Revista de Comunicação Dialógica, 3: 107-139.) 

Workplace: Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University) 

Supervisor: doc. Nico Carpentier, Ph.D. 

E-mail: nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz 

Applicants must submit all required documents to nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz 

Revista Comunicando 

Deadline: July 10, 2024

In recent decades, journalism has been shaken by a series of technological, social, cultural, and economic transformations that imply renewed challenges not only for editorial projects and professionals, but also for the sustainability of journalism's role and place in society. This new paradigm also represents a series of challenges for journalism teaching, giving rise to new debates and new concerns. This thematic section of Revista Comunicando aims to contribute to this debate.

https://revistacomunicando.sopcom.pt/index.php/comunicando/announcement/view/15