ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

September 11-13, 2020

Vienna, Austria

Deadline: February 29, 2020

The year 2000 is often considered a watershed moment in the development of the field of journalism studies, as it marks the year that two key academic journals – Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism and Journalism Studies – were first published. To celebrate their twentieth anniversaries, the journals are organizing a three-day conference in 2020 to look back on the evolution of the field, and to critically consider key questions for the field going forward. The conference will include a number of keynote presentations, round-tables, as well as regular paper presentations.

There is no doubt that journalism is impacted by a whole range of threats, many of which go to the core of what journalism is about, whether it is occupational issues that are failing to provide the cues to make journalism viable, politicians who are pulling into question and attempting to curtail journalism’s role, societal actors who are competing with traditional journalists and questioning journalism’s authority, economic developments that are making it harder and harder to find sustainable business models, or technological advances that threaten traditional news selection processes. The conference will engage with all these developments in the journalistic environment, and we call on submissions that deal with the (ir)relevance of journalism and fields including, but not limited to politics, technology, economics, audience, culture, and academia.

We therefore invite papers that address how journalism studies can help to answer crucial questions about journalism’s relevance, but also the relevance of the field of journalism studies itself. We call particularly for thought-provoking papers that develop new theories or methods and push the boundaries of the field. We welcome submissions from all theoretical, epistemological and methodological perspectives.

The conference will feature six keynote presentations on the topics noted above, some round-table discussions, traditional paper presentations, and coherent panels.

Traditional paper presentations: Traditional paper presentations will take place in panels consisting of four to five papers.

Coherent panels: A limited number of slots will be available for coherent panels where one topic is addressed in four to five presentations, followed by a respondent. Preference will be given to panels with presenters from diverse backgrounds and affiliations.

Following the conference, we envisage to publish special issues in both journals, as well as a book featuring the best submissions.

How to submit

Submissions can be sent to journalism2020.pub@univie.ac.at by no later than February 29, 2020. Please include in the email (1) the title of your paper, (2) an abstract of no more than 400 words, (3) max. 5 keywords, (4) names and affiliations of the authors.

To submit a panel proposal, a 300-word rationale should be sent alongside a 150-word abstract per presentation, as well as the names and affiliations of presenters and respondent.

All submissions will undergo scholarly peer-review.

Notifications of acceptance will be issued in early April.

Please contact the conference organizing committee with questions at journalism2020.pub@univie.ac.at.

Website: https://journalism2020.univie.ac.at/call-for-papers/

Journalism Studies

Deadline: January 31, 2020

This themed issue aims to revisit the conceptual and methodological framework of ‘news values’ in order to assess its merits and limitations as a distinct approach to analyzing current developments in the field of news production, dissemination and reception. Questions about what constitutes ‘news’ (to whom) and how ‘news’ comes about and takes shape, are key to journalism studies. While the exchange of new information has historically fulfilled vital human and communal purposes, a paradigmatic understanding of ‘news’, defined in terms of so-called ‘news value factors’ informing the (perceived) newsworthiness of events, grew entangled with (the development of) professional journalism. Ever since Galtung and Ruge’s 1965 ‘foundation study’ on ‘the structures’ of foreign news coverage, which set off the scholarly tradition of ‘news values’ research, numerous communications and media scholars have built on and complemented their groundbreaking work. However, it could be argued that, in the process, the concept of ‘news values’ has been stretched (too) far beyond the core idea of ‘values that establish the worth of an event to be reported as news’, coming to encompass any and all factors shaping news selection and treatment, as well as general ‘news writing objectives’ (Bednarek & Caple 2016). In order to preserve its usefulness as an analytical approach in its own right, then, retaining and contemplating a narrow, clearly delineated conception of ‘news values’ has become ever more relevant for contemporary work in the field (ibid.).

In addition, it has been pointed out that largely implicit in extant literature on the topic is in fact a multidimensional understanding of newsworthiness, which has translated, correspondingly, into different research foci and methodological approaches (Bednarek & Caple 2012, 2016, 2017). As such, previous studies have mainly defined ‘news values’ either or both in terms of (identifying) the material aspects of an event or issue that render it potentially newsworthy, the cognitive belief systems of journalists or audiences, or the shared routines and codes learned and practiced through socialization in (particular) newsrooms and journalistic communities (ibid.). What characterizes the state of the field, then, is a primary focus on clarifying and explaining why particular events are or may be considered newsworthy. This tends to overlook or background how ‘news values’ are communicated and mutually constituted through the various semiotic resources of language and image that make up (news) discourse (ibid.).

Importantly, considerations of ‘newsworthiness’ along each of these dimensions have shifted in the contemporary digital and networked media environment, where the vectors of change affecting the way ‘news’ develops, is exchanged and communicated and, indeed, essentially understood, have been manifold. For the affordances of a participatory media culture have meaningfully extended the range of sources, voices, information and stories surrounding and potentially feeding into the daily news stream. In tandem with the diffusion of digital media technologies, various kinds of (hybrid) ‘newcomers’ have emerged, who both emulate and transform journalistic conventions, adding new inflections to established news selection criteria (like ‘eliteness’, ‘proximity’, or ‘consonance’) but equally challenging legacy media’s longtime status as ‘primary definers’ of news. Likewise, news sites, social media, apps, search engines and (automated) news aggregation, the algorithms and web analytics that drive them, and the monitoring, content optimization and commodification strategies, or audience (inter)activity (clicks, likes, shares, comments, etc.) they generate, have become key to (understanding) journalistic gatekeeping, news circulation, and perceptions and uses of ‘news(worthiness)’.

From a meta perspective, then, these shifting routines and belief systems ultimately open new conversations on the constituent elements of ‘news’. Against the background of a highly competitive, fragmented news market, and a cultural atmosphere of reflexivity, a renewed (public and scholarly) interest in ‘other’, non-traditional and often marginalized journalistic genres and news discourses has emerged. What is implied, thus, is a re-examination of the normative assumptions and epistemologies of paradigmatic ‘hard news’ (values). This occurs, notably, through the proliferation of ‘soft’ and hybrid news (e.g., infotainment, satirical ‘fake news’ shows), and the (re)invigoration of narrative and interpretive news discourses, including digital, multimodal genres (e.g., long-form, editorials, analyses, blogs, infographics). Additionally, alternative forms of journalism such as ‘constructive’ and ‘solutions-oriented’ journalism, or ‘slow journalism’, have taken shape around specific critiques of traditional norms and practices guiding news production, including its basis in formulaic ‘news values’.

This special issue aims to bring together contemporary conceptual, methodological and/or empirical scholarly work that applies, elaborates, interrogates and, in doing so, reflects on the actual and potential merits and limitations of the ‘news values’ framework in a digital, networked age where paradigmatic notions of ‘news(worthiness)’ are shifting. We particularly welcome proposals that contribute, either individually or collectively, to our objective of revisiting ‘news values’ as an analytical approach in its own right:

(1) across disciplinary boundaries within the heterogenous domain of journalism studies, expanding or rethinking conceptual frameworks and methodologies by integrating theoretical perspectives and exploring multimethod or otherwise innovative methodological approaches;

(2) across conceptual dimensions, contemplating the ontological status of news values and articulating (interactions between) material, cognitive, social, and discursive perspectives;

(3) across the diversity of topical areas, journalistic (sub)cultures, news outlets, or (hybrid) genres and actors that make up the fragmented field of contemporary journalism, examining how ‘news values’ are variously conceived and questioning normative assumptions;

(4) across the range of digital media(technologies), their affordances and limitations, adapting ‘news value’ analysis to a multimodal/media, interactive and hyperlinked news environment where established forms of news production, presentation and reception are transformed, and news commodification is co-determined by search engines, social media and web metrics.

Editorial Information

Guest Editors: Jelle Mast & Martina Temmerman (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Submission Instructions

Full papers (6000-9000 words, all inclusive) should be submitted online by 31 January 2020, on manuscript central. Please tick the relevant box on the submission site indicating the manuscript relates to the special issue and follow the general submission guidelines carefully in preparing your manuscript. We strive towards notifying authors within two months upon receipt of submission. Publication of the special issue is planned for mid-2020. For any questions, please contact Jelle Mast.

Website: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/journalism-studies-digital-network-methodology/?utm_source=TFO&utm_medium=cms&utm_campaign=JOI11455

Journalism Practice

Deadline for abstracts: January 6, 2020

Guest Editors: Oscar Westlund (Oslo Metropolitan University), Roy Krøvel (Oslo Metropolitan University), Kristin Skare-Orgeret (Oslo Metropolitan University)

Editor-in-Chief: Bonnie Brennan, Marquette University

Journalism is one of, if not the most important, knowledge producing institutions in society. It is also an institution and practice facing substantial challenges. This includes, but is not limited to, how news media companies should maintain a sustainable business model and also how journalists can ensure they have the expertise, resources and support necessary to produce and publish verified news perceived to have high quality in a media environment seemingly marked by misinformation. To date, however, relatively few researchers have focused their research efforts to the critical challenges arising in the intersection of journalism practice and the safety of journalists in a digital mediascape, an increasing threat to journalism and those who produce it. This special issue addresses that void.

Safety is vital for those who practice journalism, for their families, and for their sources. Safety is  essential  for  the  wellbeing  of  media  institutions,  civil  society,  academia  and  the  private sector more broadly. Unfortunately, journalists and their sources are repeatedly subject to attacks that threaten the safety of their practice, their technological infrastructures, and the psychological and physical safety of individual persons. Criminal organizations, authorities, activists, and citizens carry out deliberative and substantial attacks against journalists and media outlets or contribute to online harassments via social media that result in severe consequences. In the worst case, journalists and sources are killed and important news stories are silenced. Ultimately, both small and large attacks threaten safety – and the future role and function of journalism practice.

This special issue introduces the three-dimensional concept Newsafety. The concept blends news and what is new with safety with the intention to stress how safety and news should be approached in tandem. Importantly, this concept does not focus only on the safety of journalists, but on all interrelated actors involved in sustaining safety for journalism and the production of news. Moreover, the concept focuses on actions taken that enable safety in infrastructures, and thus facilitates safety in journalism practice, countering negative consequences. The three sub-dimensions of this concept are 1) Safety and infrastructures, 2) Safety in practice, and 3) Safety and its consequences. Through our outline of these sub-dimensions, we welcome theoretical, conceptual and empirical submissions that contribute to their further development.

Firstly, safety and infrastructures focuses on technological and legal developments surrounding safety. This includes challenges to safety such as those linked to surveillance, interception of information, hacking, etc., as well as legal and technological responses to such challenges. Such challenges include enhanced cryptography, development of secure communication channels, digital protection of sources including whistle-blowers, more secure data storage, and so forth. We are interested in how news media and its actors develop and use proprietary infrastructures (i.e. platforms, systems and tools) as well as how they approach non-proprietary platforms beyond their own control, to improve safety issues when it comes to protection of self, story, and the journalist’s role, as well as their existing and potential sources. We welcome submissions addressing safety structures in journalism as well as in journalism training and education.   

Secondly, safety in practice encompasses research into how matters of safety influence epistemological news production processes. More specifically, it explores what knowledge journalists, technologists, sources and other actors who may be involved in news production have when it comes to different matters of safety. Moreover, how do they use this knowledge when using information- and communication technologies in journalism practice? Do they turn to specific information and communication technologies (ICT’s) in certain ways, and which practices are they avoiding? How do perceptions about surveillance and digital threats and harassments possibly influence the stories journalists choose to work with, how they communicate with sources, and how they produce news materials with certain truth claims? What steps do individual journalists and news companies take to achieve and maintain safety, and what forms of cross-cultural collaborations are there? Are there specific topics more associated with risks and safety that may affect the news and knowledge produced?

Thirdly, safety and its consequences focuses on both psychological, social and political consequences that arise when safety of journalists is being challenged. What are the costs of intimidation, harassment and hate speech for democratic processes? Are some groups of journalists more exposed to intimidation, harassment and hate speech than others – and what are the implications in terms of voices lost and stories not told? What are the effects of confiscation of journalistic work, forced exposure of online networks, defamation and libel – and how do these processes impact on which perspectives of reality we are given? This section is particularly interested in how such challenging pressures affect the news and knowledge produced in general, and how this may impact freedom of expression and processes of democracy in general, in a given society or across regions.

Helping you Publish your Research

We aim to make publishing with Taylor & Francis a rewarding experience for all our authors. Please visit our Author Services website for more information and guidance, and do contact us if there is anything we can help with!

Submission Instructions

This is a call for extended abstracts (500-750 words), accompanied by a 100-150 word bio introducing your relevant expertise. Upon selection, we invite scholars to submit full papers. Article submissions should target 8,000 words in length, including references, and are subject to full blind peer-review, in accordance with the peer-review procedure of Journalism Practice.

Please send your abstracts to oscarw@oslomet.no, with "Journalism Practice Newsafety-- Abstract proposal" in the header of the email. Manuscripts are submitted through the journal’s website.

Timeline

• Deadline submission of extended abstracts: 6 January 2020
• Decision on abstracts: 17 January 2020
• Deadline for final submission: 20 June 2020.
• Publication: OnlineFirst when accepted, and in issue upon agreement with journal editor.

Special Issue of Digital Journalism

Deadline: December 1, 2019

Although news consumption has become increasingly central to academic debates about journalism, research that starts explicitly from an emic perspective and the everyday experiences of news users remains relatively rare. The aim of this special issue is to further understanding of how the digitalization of journalism has changed and continues to shape everyday news use. Advancing the audience turn in journalism requires new theories, new concepts and new methods that can help grasp these changes and their implications for journalism.

We are looking for papers related to one or more of the four topics below. We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions that take practices and experiences of everyday news use as point of departure. We welcome comparative and single-country studies from all regions, including the Global South.

1. We encourage submissions to tackle the challenge of both capturing and making sense of everyday news use in a rapidly changing media environment. First, how can we develop methods and measures that do (more) justice to the complexity and multilayerdness of news use? Second, how can we use theories and concepts from other disciplines (e.g., anthropology, human-computer interaction) to enhance our understanding of everyday news use and users’ experiences of news?

2. We invite submissions that consider the socially-integrative potentialities of news, bridging the private world of individuals and the public space of collective entities. In the light of political polarization, populism, and other current challenges to democracy, how do people currently perceive journalism’s civic value? How can the ability of news and journalism to facilitate public connection be understood from the perspective of the news user? How can new formats, forms of storytelling and interactive functionalities be employed to bring the news in such a way that it connects to people’s lifeworld and (public) frame of reference?

3. This special issue also considers how young people understand and make sense of news. Young people say they turn to professional journalism and legacy news media to learn about news issues, but their actual news habits hardly reflect this. Rather, their news sources include many other genres, such as political entertainment, podcasts and blogs, and although critical of the trustworthiness of social media, it is still an important source of news which they make sense of through affective and social processes and contexts. How can we understand such conflicting scenarios and better grasp the orientations, practices and contexts through which young people understand and give meaning to news?

4. Finally, the contemporary practice and study of journalism is governed by a participatory ideal. Although it is technically possible for news users to participate in various stages of news production, research on digital news consumption has taught us that users are reluctant to participate in the news production process. This raises several questions about the feasibility or even desirability of the democratic ideal of participation. What are the kind of news production practices audiences themselves ignore or wish to take part in? What would participatory journalism ideally look like from an audience perspective?

Information about Submissions

Proposals should include the following:

1) an abstract of 500-750 words (not including references)

2) an abbreviated bio that describes previous and current research that relates to the special issue theme (250 words)

Please submit your proposal as one file (PDF), with your names clearly stated in the file name and the first page. Send your proposal to the e-mail address cfpaudienceturn@news-use.com by the date stated in timeline below. Authors of accepted proposals are expected to develop and submit their original article, for full blind review, in accordance with the journal’s peer-review procedure, by the deadline stated. Articles should target 7,000-8,000 words in length. Guidelines for manuscripts can be found here: http://www.news-use.com/?page_id=832

Timeline

• Abstract submission deadline: December 1, 2019
• Notification on submitted abstracts: early January 2020
• Article submission deadline: June 15, 2020

Editorial information

Guest Editors: Joëlle Swart, Tim Groot Kormelink, Irene Costera Meijer, Marcel Broersma

December 13–14, 2019

School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Anglo-American University, Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline for Paper Proposals: November 1, 2019

The 7th Euroacademia International Conference ‘Re-Inventing Eastern Europe’ aims to make a case and to provide alternative views on the dynamics, persistence and manifestations of practices of alterity making that take place in Europe and broadly in the mental mappings of the world.

It offers an opportunity for scholars, activists and practitioners to identify, discuss, and debate the multiple dimensions in which specific narratives of alterity making towards Eastern Europe preserve their salience today in re-furbished and re-fashioned manners. The conference aims to look at the processes of alterity making as puzzles and to address the persistence of the East-West dichotomies.

Not a long time ago, in 2010, a British lady was considered bigoted by Gordon Brown upon asking ‘Where do all these Eastern Europeans come from?’. Maybe, despite her concern with the dangers of immigration for Britain, the lady was right in showing that such a question still awaits for answers in Europe. The ironic thing however is that a first answer to such a question would point to the fact that the Eastern Europeans come from the Western European imaginary. As Iver Neumann puts it, ‘regions are invented by political actors as a political programme, they are not simply waiting to be discovered’. And, as Larry Wolff skillfully showed, Eastern Europe is an invention emanated initially from the intellectual agendas of the elites of the Enlightenment that later found its peak of imaginary separation during the Cold War.

The Economist, explicitly considered Eastern Europe to be wrongly labeled and elaborated that ‘it was never a very coherent idea and it is becoming a damaging one’. The EU enlargement however, was expected to make the East – West division obsolete under the veil of a prophesied convergence. That would have finally proven the non-ontologic, historically contingent and unhappy nature of the division of Europe and remind Europeans of the wider size of their continent and the inclusive and empowering nature of their values.

Yet still, 30 years after the revolutions in the Central and Eastern European countries, Leon Mark, while arguing that the category of Eastern Europe is outdated and misleading, bitterly asks a still relevant question: ‘will Europe ever give up the need to have an East?’

Eastern Europe was invented as a region and continues to be re-invented from outside and inside. From outside its invention was connected with alterity making processes, and, from inside the region, the Central and Eastern European countries got into a civilizational beauty contest themselves in search of drawing the most western profile: what’s Central Europe, what’s more Eastern, what’s more Ottoman, Balkan, Byzantine, who is the actual kidnapped kid of the West, who can build better credentials by pushing the Easterness to the next border. A wide variety of scholars addressed the western narratives of making the Eastern European other as an outcome of cultural politics of enlightenment, as an effect of EU’s need to delineate its borders, as an outcome of its views on security , or as a type of ‘orientalism’ or post-colonialism. Most of these types of approaches are still useful in analyzing the persistence of an East-West slope. The region is understood now under a process of convergence, socialization and Europeanization that will have as outcomes an ‘ever closer union’ where the East and the West will fade away as categories. Yet the reality is far from such an outcome while the persistence of categories of alterity making towards the ‘East’ is not always dismantled. The discourse on core-periphery, new Europe/old Europe is rather gaining increasing ground in the arena of European identity narratives often voiced by the EU.

The conference aims to address globally or through case studies the diversity and change within the CEE region 30 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The conference is organized yet by no means restricted to the following topics:

• The Agenda of the Enlightenment: Inventing Eastern Europe
• Thinking Eastern Europe: Contributions to Understanding an Invented Region
• Europe East and West: On the Persistence of the Division
• Reviewing Alternative Modernities: East and West
• Europe and the Inclusive/Exclusive Nexus
• Mental Mappings on Eastern Europe
• People-ing the Eastern Europeans
• Geopolitical Views on the East-West Division
• Post-colonial readings of Eastern Europe
• Making Borders to the East: Genealogies of Othering
• Europe as Seen from its East
• Myths and Misconceptions on Eastern Europe
• Social Causes and the Pursuit of Social Beliefs in Central and Eastern Europe
• Protest and Social Change in Central and Eastern Europe
• Central Europe vs. Eastern Europe
• Reading the Past: On Memory and Memorialization
• The Eastern European ‘Other’ Inside the European Union
• Core Europe/Non-Core Europe
• European Values and the Process of Europeanization of Eastern Europe as Pedagogy
• Assessing Convergence in Eastern Europe
• Explaining Divergence and Diversity in Eastern Europe
• Central and Eastern Europe and the EU
• Scenarios for the Future of Eastern Europe
• Debating the End of European Solidarity
• Eastern Europe and Asymmetries of Europeanization
• Re-making Eastern Europe: Pushing the Easterness to the Next Border
• From the Ottoman Empire to Russia: Cultural Categories in the Making of Eastern Europe
• Go West! Migration from Eastern Europe and Experiences of ‘Othering’
• Explaining the Growth of Far Right Movements and Populist Parties in Eastern Europe
• Lifestyles and the Quotidian Peculiarities of the Invented East
• Europe and the Logic of Growth through Austerity: The Impact on Eastern Europe of the Crises
• Visual Representation of Eastern Europe in Film: From Dracula to Barbarian Kings
• Guidebooks for the Savage Lands: Representations of Eastern Europe in Travel Guides
• Urban Landscapes in Eastern Europe
• Religion and Politics in Eastern Europe
• European Narratives of the Past: The Mnemonic/Amnesic Nexuses
• Eastern European Literature and Authors
• Changing Politics and the Transformation of Cities in Eastern Europe
• Eastern Europe and Artistic Movements
• Writing about the East in West
• Writing about the West in East
• The Eastern European ‘Other’ Inside the European Union
• The Formation of European Subaltern Identities
• Europe and Russia
• European Diplomacy and Consensus in Foreign Policy: What Role for Eastern Europe?
• Feminist & Queer Readings of Contemporary Eastern Europe
• Gender Politics in CEE
• Illiberal States – From Negative Determinants to a Self-Affirming Ideology and State Positioning
• Anti-Immigration, Nationalism and Far Right Parties in Central and Eastern Europe
• Migration Routes and New Walls in CEE
• Assessing the Quality of Democracy and Convergence in the Region

DEADLINE FOR 300 WORDS ABSTRACTS SUBMISSION IS 1ST OF NOVEMBER 2019

For on-line application and complete information on the event, please see: http://euroacademia.eu/conference/7th-reinventing-eastern-europe/

The 300 words titled abstract and details of affiliation can also be sent to application@euroacademia.org with the name of the conference specified in the subject line. We will acknowledge the receipt of all proposals. In case you received no confirmation in one day after applying on-line, please re-send your abstract by e-mail as well.

Bremen: edition lumière

Edited by Maria Francesca Murru, Fausto Colombo, Laura Peja, Simone Tosoni, Richard Kilborn, Risto Kunelius, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Leif Kramp and Nico Carpentier

We're pleased to announce that our new ECREA Summer School book is now also available free to download at http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/

This is the direct link to the book's pdf: http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/SuSobook2018.pdf

Individual chapters can be downloaded here: http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/TOC_book14.html

This book, the fourteenth in the Researching and Teaching Communication Book Series launched in 2006, stems from the communal intellectual work of the lecturers, the students and the alumni of the 2018 edition of the European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School (SuSo).

The book gives an account of the plurality of research interests and analytical perspectives that the SuSo community values as its main asset. What was especially apparent in this year’s cluster of contributions is that our field of study integrates a wide variety of media technologies (ranging from old to new), demonstrating that contemporary societies are not characterized by the replacement of technologies, but by the always unique articulations, integrations and intersections of old and new. The book is structured in four sections:

1) Theories and Concepts

2) Media and the Construction of Social Reality

3) Mediatizations

4) Media, Health and Sociability

Contributors are: Fatoş Adiloğlu, Magnus Andersson, Nico Carpentier, Xu Chen, Vaia Doudaki, Edgard Eeckman, Timo Harjuniemi, Kari Karppinen, Alyona Khaptsova, Ludmila Lupinacci, Fatma Nazlı Köksal, Ondrej Pekacek, Michael Skey, Piia Tammpuu, Ruben Vandenplas, Konstanze Wegmann and Karsten D. Wolf. The book additionally contains abstracts of the doctoral projects that were discussed at the 2018 European Media Communication Doctoral Summer School.

The book was published by edition lumière, Bremen (http://www.editionlumiere.de). The book is a part of the Researching and Teaching Communication Series, edited by Nico Carpentier and Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (see http://www.researchingcommunication.eu). The publishing of this book was supported by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) and the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).

April 16-18,2020

Helsinki, Finland

Deadline: November 30, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theme 1. Artistic Practices

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

Theme 2. Technologies & Cultures

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

Theme 3. Critical Approaches

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

Important dates

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

https://helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi

https://twitter.com/Photomedia2020

https://www.facebook.com/HelsinkiPhotomedia/

CONTACT:

• info-hpm-2020@aalto.fi
• submissions-hpm-2020@aalto.fi

December 5, 2019

Middlesex University, UK

Symposium and a plenary session will be open to the public. If you would like to attend the plenary session, please book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/media-and-economic-inequality-tickets-76877274999

Plenary session, HG19, Middlesex University, Hendon, London.

5.30-6.30pm.

• Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in economics.
• Vince Cable, Lib Dem leader 2017-19.
• Ben Chu, economics editor, BBC's Newsnight.

Limited places are still available for the symposium; please email Sophie Knowles S.Knowles@mdx.ac.uk if you wish to book a place.

Symposium, Barn 1 and 2, Middlesex University, Hendon, London.

10am-4.30pm

Panel 1 Interrogating Economic Inequality.

10am-12pm

• John Hills, Professor, Social Policy, LSE.
• Robert Joyce, Deputy Director, Institute of Fiscal Studies.
• Carys Roberts, Head of Economic Justice, IPPR
• Duncan Exley, Author, The end of aspiration? Former Head of Equality Trust.
• Martin Schuerz, Head of Monetary Unit, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Vienna.

Discussant: Steve Schifferes, Professor emeritus, City Uni

Panel 2 Representations of Inequality in the Press

1pm-2.30pm

• Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Author Poor News. Professor, Northwestern University, Qatar.
• Joanna Mack, Author, Breadline Britain. Open University.
• Peter Golding, Author of many titles including Public attitudes to poverty. Professor Emeritus, Northumbria University.
• Andrea Grisold, Professor, WU Vienna. Head of Institute for Institutional and Heterodox Economics.

Discussant: Anya Schiffrin, Director of Technology, Communications, Columbia University.

Panel 3 Political and Public Discourse on Inequality

3pm-4.30pm

• Mike Berry, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University School of Journalism.
• Aaron Reeves, Associate Professorial Research Fellow, LSE and Oxford.
• Elizabeth Clery, Research Director, Nat Cen.
• Jonathan Mijs, Associate Professorial Research Fellow, LSE and Harvard.

Discussant: Aeron Davis, Professor, Political Communication, Goldsmiths.

Special Issue  of Contracampo: Brazilian Journal of Communication

Deadline: November 11, 2019

Guest Editors: Rafael Grohmann (Unisinos University, Brazil) and Jack Qiu (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Contracampo: Brazilian Journal of Communication, an open access journal, invites submissions to our special issue “Platform Labor”. We ask: what are the contributions of communication research to understand platform/digital labor or platformization of labor? The special issue encourages submissions of articles that explore one or more of the following issues:

• How platformization affects work;
• Working conditions on digital platforms;
• Communication as labor/work in platform capitalism;
• Social class and collective formation among platform workers;
• Gender and race inequalities in platform labor;
• International division of digital labor and global gig economy;
• Platform labor in the Global South;
• Surveillance and privacy of workers in platform capitalism;
• Value theory and social classes in platform capitalism;
• Human work and artificial intelligence;
• Data labor and algorithmic labor;
• Algorithmic management in platform labor;
• Microwork and free labor on digital platforms;
• Silicon Valley ideology and digital labor;
• Media representations and circulation of meanings on platform labor;
• Mediatization and datafication of labor;
• Political economy of communication and platform labor;
• Alternatives to the digital labor scenario;
• Collective organization of platform workers;
• Platform Cooperativism and worker-owned platforms;
• Regulation and ethical guidelines of platform labor;
• Digital labor and environmental sustainability.

Articles must be between 5000 and 8000 words in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese and must be submitted by the journal's website: http://periodicos.uff.br/contracampo/

Please send any inquiries to rafaelgrohmann@unisinos.br or jacklqiu@cuhk.edu.hk

Edited by Simone Natale and Diana Pasulka

Oxford University Press

Believing in Bits advances the idea that religious beliefs and practices have become inextricably linked to the functioning of digital media. How did we come to associate things such as mindreading and spirit communications with the functioning of digital technologies? How does the internet’s capacity to facilitate the proliferation of beliefs blur the boundaries between what is considered fiction and fact? Addressing these and similar questions, the volume challenges and redefines established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the supernatural.

“Human beings and their technological creations, including and especially their modern digital technologies, reflect, express, and intensify their fundamental strangeness. Scholars have long known that the history of religions is intimately related to the history of technology, from the ancient practices of agriculture, writing, the domestication of the horse, and the forging of iron, to the more recent invention of the printing press and the telegraph and telephone. This book takes that key insight into the present and near future, to the cell phone in your pocket, the computer game on your screen, and the VR system strapped around your skull. This book takes that key insight into the human-techno cyborg that is you.”

Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions

“Believing in Bitsis a guide to why media technologies are magical: they create beliefs, manipulate thoughts, make us see things. After reading this wonderful collection of essays, you realize why the most natural thing about media is that they are supernatural. This book is full of media archaeological joys and insightful contemporary readings.”

Jussi Parikka, Professor of Technological Culture & Aesthetics, University of Southampton

Simone Natale is a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University, UK.

Diana Pasulka is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington,and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

Purchase here.