ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia (JCEA), Vol. 18, No 2 - Winter 2019

Deadline: March 30, 2019

Invited editor: Tim Dwyer, University of Sydney (timothy.dwyer@sydney.edu.au)

In recent times there has been a noticeable shift in thinking about the possibilities for regulating social media platforms. A steady stream of scandals in relation to Facebook and Google sharing personal data with third parties, the growing evidence of Russian hacking of the 2016 US Presidential elections, and the role of the boutique data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica contributed to this shift. The turn to regulatory solutions was prompted by both US Congressional and European Commission investigatory hearings. At the same time, there is a growing understanding that these media-tech platforms in the West and Eastern Asia use less than transparent algorithms to amass personal data for achieving various objectives. We are seeing ongoing investigations and new models of regulation are just around the corner. A pervading sense that the ‘Tech Giants’ have betrayed our trust arising from their role in spreading misinformation and the manipulation of breaking news calls out for more detailed theoretical and empirical analysis. For this special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia we welcome any topics that deal with media manipulation, fake news, misinformation and disinformation. The topics that we are particularly interested in include, but are not limited to:

• Algorithmic news and manipulation
• Media pluralism and algorithmic news provision
• News recommender algorithms such as YouTube’s ‘Up Next’ recommender
• Sellers of fake followers or ‘likes’ on social media platforms
• Elections and strategies for online news manipulation/disinformation
• Regulatory responses, including responses to news manipulation by the platforms

Please submit your abstract in English to timothy.dwyer@sydney.edu.au by 30 March (please include “JCEA Special Issue” in the title). The maximum word limit for the abstract is 500 words.

Deadlines

• Abstract Submission Deadline - March 30, 2019
• Notification on Submitted Abstracts - 15 April, 2019
• Article Submission Deadline - 1 August
• Notification of Article Acceptance/Rejection - 20 September
• Deadline for the final submission of revised papers - 30 October

For more information about the journal, please refer to https://jceasia.org/

Special Issue of Internet Policy Review

Deadline: April 26, 2019

Topic and relevance

The rise of digital technology has major implications for how states and corporations wield coercive regulatory power through the transnational administration of justice. Increases in data transmitted and stored by public and private actors across jurisdictions raise crucial questions about how individual rights and freedoms can be protected in an era of seemingly ubiquitous transnational surveillance. The expanded development and application of domestic and international law to address behaviour in digital spaces, includes existing law applied to online activities, and new law to cover a growing range of internet-specific conduct. A pertinent site of state and corporate power in the digital realm involves attempts to develop and enforce domestic laws, especially criminal laws, transnationally. These processes generally occur outside existing domestic legislative frameworks, and raises questions about how national sovereignty, extraterritoriality and state and corporate interests are expanding at the expense of individual rights and freedoms in digital societies.

Scope of the special issue

This special issue considers how the intersections between power, justice and space challenge existing conceptual and theoretical categories of contemporary law, that span the fields of criminology, international relations, digital media and other related disciplines (see e.g. Johnson & Post, 1996; Goldsmith & Wu, 2006; Brenner, 2009; Hilderbrandt, 2013; DeNardis, 2014). The legal geographies of the contemporary digital world require rethinking in light of calls for a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to understanding sovereignty, jurisdiction and the power to exercise control, yet still protect individual rights through law in the electronic age (Svantesson, 2013). These issues raise a host of additional contemporary and historical questions about the authority exerted by the US over extraterritorial conduct in various fields including laws relating to crime, intellectual property, surveillance and national security (see e.g. Schiller, 2011; Bauman et al., 2014; Boister, 2015).

Legal geography is an emerging multidisciplinary area of inquiry, concerned with interrogating how law is connected to, and interacts with, the social and physical worlds (Braverman et al., 2014). By emphasising how the legitimate exercise of power occurs in and through space, legal geography is of significant relevance to online environments. Initial arguments about regulating the transnational nature of the internet describe the notion of sovereignty becoming ‘softened’ (Culnan & Trinkunas, 2010), while emphasising the need to move beyond outmoded binary notions of extraterritoriality (Svantesson, 2013; 2014; 2017).

The nation-state can assert jurisdictional reach through the extraterritorial exercise of power. This is more likely to involve powerful geopolitical actors such as the United States, which has recently enacted the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, and the European Union, via its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The emergence of large transnational corporations providing critical virtual and physical infrastructure adds private governance to this equation, which offers further new dimensions to the rule of law and also self- or co-regulation (see for e.g. Goldsmith & Wu, 2006; DeNardis & Hackl, 2015; Suzor, 2018; Brown & Marsden, 2013). Some of the ways jurisdictional tensions emerge in online spaces – with corresponding offline effects – occur through policing and law enforcement practices in the fields of criminal, intellectual property and corporate law. However, the lack of uniformity of these laws at domestic levels can lead to complicated and protracted legal disputes between nations, or amongst different agencies within nations (Palmer & Warren, 2013). Additional concerns arise regarding whether and how due process and human rights protections are maintained through the extraterritorial access to e-evidence (Warren, 2015; Svantesson & Gerry, 2015), the extradition of alleged offenders (Mann & Warren, 2018; Mann et al., 2018), and new and emerging powers many national law enforcement agencies now possess to engage extraterritorial surveillance and offshore government hacking.

Focus of the papers

Power and jurisdiction are central to understanding justice and regulating the contemporary digital environment. For this special issue, Internet Policy Review invites theoretical, empirical, and methodological papers from law, criminology, digital humanities, critical surveillance studies, and related disciplines on the following issues, which bear relevance to European societies and highlight policy implications or make a reference to regulatory debates:

• How the concept of legal geography can be applied to activities in, and regulation of, digital spaces;
• The impact of the expansion in domestic and international cybercrime, data protection and intellectual property laws on concepts of jurisdiction, sovereignty and extraterritoriality;
• The geopolitical impacts of domestic and international cybercrime laws such as the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention), the recent United States CLOUD Act and other lawful access regimes including EU e-Evidence proposals;
• The application of due process requirements in the contemporary policing of digital spaces;
• The objectives of justice in the study of private governance in online environments;
• The implications of these transnational developments for current and future policy and regulation of online activities and spaces.

A selection of contributions will be made from extended abstracts. Authors of papers selected for the special issue will be invited to present and discuss their paper at a workshop to be held in Brisbane, Australia, in late 2019 (aligned with the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference which will be hosted by QUT Digital Media Research Centre). The workshop will enable exchange of ideas on these timely issues, provide peer-feedback for the finalisation of the papers and promote the forthcoming special edition. A sub-selection of papers will be selected for the special issue based on regular peer review.

Special issue editors

• Dr Monique Mann (m6.mann@qut.edu.au)

Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in Technology and Regulation

School of Justice, Faculty of Law

Queensland University of Technology

• Dr Angela Daly (angela.daly@cuhk.edu.hk)

Assistant Professor

Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

Important dates

• Release of the call for papers - March 2019
• Deadline for expression of interest and abstract submissions (500 word abstracts) - April 26, 2019
• Invitation to submit full text submissions - May 2019
• Full text submissions deadline - August 2019. All details on text submissions can be found here.
• Peer review process - September 2019
• Workshop in Brisbane - October 1, 2019 (attendance is not compulsory)
• Resubmission of papers following review - January 2020
• Preparation for publication - February 2020
• Publication - March 2020

References

Bauman, Z., Bigo, D., Esteves, P., Guild, E., Jabri, V., Lyon, D. and Walker, R.B.J. (2014). After Snowden: Rethinking the impact of surveillance. International Political Sociology, 8(2), 121-144. Doi: 10.1111/ips.12048.

Boister, N. (2015). Further reflections on the concept of transnational criminal law. Transnational Legal Theory, 6(1), 9-30.

Braverman, I., Blomley, N., Delaney, D., & Kedar, A. (2014). The expanding spaces of law: A timely legal geography. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Brenner, S. W. (2009). Cyberthreats: The emerging fault lines of the nation state. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brown, I., & Marsden, C. T. (2013). Good governance and better regulation in the information age. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Clunan, A., & Trinkunas, H. (Eds.) (2010). Ungoverned spaces: Alternatives to state authority in an era of softened sovereignty. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

DeNardis, L. (2014). The global war for internet governance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

DeNardis, L. & Hackl, A. M. (2015). Internet governance by social media platforms. Telecommunication Policy, 39, 761-770.

Goldsmith, J. & Wu, T. (2006). Who controls the internet: Illusions of a borderless world. New York, Oxford University Press.

Hilderbrandt, M. (2013). Extraterritorial jurisdiction to enforce in cyberspace: Bodin, Schmitt, Grotius in cyberspace, University of Toronto Law Journal, 63, 196-224.

Johnson, D. & Post, D. (1996). Law and borders: The rise of law in cyberspace, Stanford Law Review, 48(5), 1367-1402.

Mann, M. & Warren, I. (2018). The digital and legal divide: Silk road, transnational online policing and southern criminology. In Carrington, Kerry, Hogg, Russell, Scott, John, & Sozzo, Máximo (Eds.) Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 245-260.

Mann, M., Warren, I. & Kennedy, S. (2018). The legal geographies of transnational cyber-prosecutions: extradition, human rights and forum shifting, Global Crime, 19(2), 107-124.

Palmer, D. and Warren, I. (2013). Global policing and the case of Kim Dotcom. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(3), 105-119.

Schiller, D. (2011). Special commentary: Geopolitical-economic conflict and network infrastructures. Chinese Journal of Communication, 4(1), 90-107.

Suzor, N. (2018). Digital constitutionalism: Using the rule of law to evaluate the legitimacy of governance by platforms. Social Media and Society, 1-11.

Svantesson, D. (2013). A ‘layered approach’ to the extraterritoriality of data privacy laws. International Data Privacy Law, 3(4), 278-286.

Svantesson, D. (2014). Sovereignty in international law – how the internet (maybe) changed everything, but not for long. Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, 8(1), 137-155.

Svantesson, D., & Gerry, S. (2015). Access to extraterritorial evidence: The Microsoft cloud case and beyond. Computer Law & Security Review, 31, 478-489.

Svantesson, D. (2017). Solving the internet jurisdiction puzzle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Warren, I. (2015). Surveillance, criminal law and sovereignty, Surveillance & Society, 13(2), 300-305.

Special issue of Journalism Practice (2020, Vol 14, No 1)

Deadline: June 18, 2019

Guest editors: Andrea Baker (Monash University) and Usha M. Rodrigues (Deakin University)

The guest editors of Journalism Practice invite rigorous empirical scholarly work related to the theme of journalism practice, sexual violence, pre or post the #MeToo era. Papers need to delineate their use of the concept of sexual violence and examine how it is reported on, or distributed by legacy or social media. Research should be based around either quantitative, qualitative, computational and/or mixed research methods. Papers are also encouraged to assess the implications or impact of such reportage, and where appropriate offer recommendations to improve journalism practice vis-à-vis reporting of sexual violence. Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Journalism, sexual violence, race and ethnicity;
• Journalism, sexual violence and the gendered culture;
• Journalism, sexual violence and human rights;
• Journalism, sexual violence and ethics/legal considerations and guidelines;
• Journalism news values, news language, news traditions and sexual violence;
• Solution Journalism and sexual violence reporting; and
• Reporting sexual violence and journalism training/education.

INFORMATION ABOUT SUBMISSION:

We invite research papers between 7000 and 8000s words, (including references, notes, tables, figures) relating to this themed issue, and an abbreviated author(s) bio.

Deadline for full papers to Journalism Practice’s Scholar One by 18 June 2019.

Following the peer review process, accepted papers will be notified by August, 2019 for final revisions. Final, accepted papers need to be uploaded to Scholar One by 1 December 2019.

May 17, 2019

Bush House ( North East) ground floor, King's College London, Strand

Deadline: March 21, 2019

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Tobias Blanke will be opening the conference and Dr. Natalie Fenton will be presenting the keynote address.

Social media platforms and the internet have become a battleground for ideas and political discussion. As the importance of these digital intermediaries has grown, many questions about how to navigate the world of digital politics in a meaningful and effective way have emerged. With the controversies surrounding the 2016 United States Presidential election, Brexit, the #MeToo movement, and other democratic conflicts across the globe, it is becoming increasingly evident that these media have come to play an essential role in structuring political discourse, social movements, and collective identity.

When the internet emerged as a global commodity, it came with promises of nascent forms of political engagement. Digital platforms gave people new methods of voicing common grievances, starting social movements, and creating an impetus towards a more just society. However, in recent years there is evidence of increased polarisation and even hostility in online networks. With curated news feed, echo chambers, and fake news, users can shape their own isolated online politics.

This conference will investigate how social media platforms and the digital are changing the nature of political discourse, online debate, and collective action. These platforms have shaped and altered many traditional forms of political involvement, such as campaign funding, candidate representation, and pertinent debates remain as to what extent digital media is enhancing or limiting democratic processes 

Digital technologies have impacted politics and social engagement in a myriad of ways, so we invite submissions that breach this theme from multifarious critical and methodological approaches and from diverse contexts. The academic implications or this broad topic are numerous, as we begin to understand more deeply how digital technologies are adapting to and transforming the political world.

Topics for discussion may include (but are not limited to):

• The role of digital media in elections across the globe

• Collective action and social movements online

• Online campaigns

• Alt-Right and populist politics

• Free speech and liberty online

• Regulation and data misuse of online political spaces

• Gender and online politics

• Big data and politics

Abstracts are to be submitted to digitalpeople.digitalpolitics@gmail.com by March 21, 2019. We are open to:

• Individual papers (250 word abstract with a short academic bio, plus any specific requirements authors may have).

• Panel proposals (250 word abstract with a short academic bio for each person, additional 250 word abstract for the panel as a whole, plus any specific requirements authors may have).

• Workshops (1.5 hours – 250 word abstract with the aims and a description of the proposed workshop, short academic bios of workshop organisers plus any specific requirements organisers may have)

• Posters/ multimedia presentations/ art (250 word abstract with a short academic bio, any relevant URLS, plus any specific requirements).

All applicants will be notified as to whether or not they have been invited to present by 15th April, 2019.

For updated information on the conference, please see the website: http://newperspectivesdh.com

May 24, 2019

Georgetown University, Washington, United States

Deadline to register: May 3, 2019

Contact: Eve Ng, evecng@hotmail.com

Non-presenters are warmly welcomed to register and attend. Early registration, by Mar 31, is $US40; regular registration (Apr 1-May 3) is $US60.

Register here.

As part of an ongoing movement to decenter white masculinity as the normative core of scholarly inquiry, the recent article, “#CommunicationSoWhite” by Chakravartty et al. (2018) in the Journal of Communicationexamined racial disparities within citational practices to make a broader intervention on ways current Communication scholarship reproduces institutional racism and sexism. The underrepresentation of scholars of color within the field in regards to citations, editorial positions, and publications and ongoing exclusion of nonwhite, feminist, queer, post-colonial, and Indigenous voices is a persistent and systemic problem in the production of disciplinary knowledge. ICA President Paula Gardner echoed similar sentiments in her 2018 presidential address, calling for steps for inclusion and diversity within the International Communication Association as well as the larger field.

This pre-conference aims to highlight, consider, and intervene in these issues. We seek submissions that address areas such as:

• The marginalization of communication scholarship in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other axes of exclusion are central;
• Communication scholarship in the context of the global rise of white supremacy and right-wing ethno-nationalism movements;
• Communication scholarship from postcolonial and decolonial perspectives;
• Who tends to be hired and who serves as leaders/gatekeepers in the field;
• The politics of citation and publication;

How #CommunicationSoWhite can function as an intervention within communication studies organizations, departments, and scholarship.

We anticipate many submissions will center on the U.S. and other Western contexts; we also hope the pre-conference will provide a discussion that spans both global North and South, and we encourage participation by submitters from outside North America and the U.K.

Monash University

Deadline: April 12, 2019

Monash University is an energetic and dynamic university committed to high quality education, outstanding research and international engagement. A member of Australia’s Group of Eight research intensive universities, and consistently ranked among the top 100 universities worldwide, Monash is a university seeking to make a difference in everything we do, through seeking new answers and solutions to the challenges facing our world. Discover more at www.monash.edu.

The Professor of Creative & Cultural Industries, Communications & Media is in the School of Media, Film and Journalism in the Faculty of Arts. The Faculty, currently ranked 39th in the world in the QS World University rankings, is one of the largest, most diverse and dynamic arts faculties in Australia.

The School of Media, Film and Journalism is based at the Caulfield campus. Its staff conduct research in media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, journalism, film theory and criticism, media practice and related interdisciplinary fields. The School offers programs and teaching at undergraduate, honours and postgraduate levels. To learn more about the School of Media, Film and Journalism please visit: http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mfj/

You will be able to demonstrate strong and committed leadership in teaching, research and external engagement. You will have an outstanding track record of international research achievement, including generating research income, fostering research excellence in others, mentoring junior staff and attracting high quality Higher Degree Research students. You will have an excellent capacity to create and leverage opportunities, work collegially to build collaborative partnerships across disciplines and with external stakeholders, and be able to share a vision for the future needs and development of creative and cultural industries, communications and media. The right candidate will preferably hold a doctoral qualification in a discipline which complements an area of current research within the School.

The University is keen to achieve greater gender balance in its academic leadership profile and applications from suitably qualified women are particularly encouraged.

Enquiries regarding the role can be made in confidence to:

For Australia, NZ and North America: Brenda Gibbons on +61 421 388 657 or email brenda@carolwatson.com.au

For UK, Europe and Asia: Kim Lew on +61 438 664 281 or email kim.lew@carolwatson.com

Applications: Please submit your application, including cover letter, responses to the key selection criteria and CV, directly to Debbie Dickinson at debbie@carolwatson.com.au

Closing Date: No later than 5.00pm on 12 April 2019. Early applications are encouraged.

Södertörns högskola

Deadline: April 14, 2019

Ref AP-2019/111

Södertörns högskola (Södertörn University) in south Stockholm is a dynamic institute of higher education with a unique profile and high academic standard. A large proportion of the university staff holds doctorates and there is a strong link between undergraduate education and research. Södertörn University has around 11 000 students and 840 employees.

Undergraduate and postgraduate education and research are conducted in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Life Sciences, Technology and Education. Our site is in Flemingsberg.

Södertörn University is an equal opportunities employer.

Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University is a research-intensive environment, characterised by nationally and internationally oriented research and education based on the social sciences and humanities. The profile of the subject at Södertörn University is the study of the contemporary digital media society using a historicising and critical perspective. This also entails an emphasis on interpretive perspectives and qualitative methods.

The subject has more than twenty members of staff: senior lecturers, associate professors, professors and doctoral students, and offers bachelor’s level education as degree programmes and freestanding courses, as well as offering a two-years Master’s programme and providing doctoral education in the research area of Critical and Cultural Theory. The subject also cooperates with other subjects, such as Environmental Science, and is part of Teacher Education at Södertörn University. Media and Communication Studies is located at the School of Culture and Education. A majority of the subject’s research is funded via project funding from the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies.

Job description

Duties include teaching and supervision, as well as administration and the development of courses in Media and Communication Studies. This is done at all levels of Bachelor’s education, on programme-specific profile courses, and at Master’s level. Teaching is conducted in Swedish and English. Applicants are expected to contribute to course development at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels, to be prepared to take administrative responsibilities and to participate actively as a member of the teaching staff. Research is included at the position at 10% of full-time. Courses in and elements of media production may be included in teaching. Work in Teacher Education programmes may be included.

Qualifications

An individual is qualified for employment as senior lecturer in Media and Communication Studies if they have demonstrated educational skills, possesses a doctoral degree or the equivalent scholarly expertise or other professional skills that are of significance in relation to the position’s demands and job description.

Completed courses in teaching and learning in higher education or the equivalent are advantageous, please refer to item 2.2.1 of Södertörn University’s Appointments Procedure. The Appointments Procedure is available at www.sh.se/vacantpositions.

Basis for assessment

The basis for assessment when employing a senior lecturer is the degree of expertise required to be eligible for the position. Scholarly expertise is demonstrated through research. Educational expertise must be demonstrated through documented and recommended experience of conducting and developing courses and a written presentation of the applicant’s educational approach. Applicants must also have the personal skills necessary to meet the demands of the position. Scholarly and educational expertise must be given equal weight, please refer to items 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 of Södertörn University’s Appointments Procedure. The Appointments Procedure is available at www.sh.se/vacantpositions.

The following grounds for assessment have been established for this position (in order of importance):

• Scholarly and educational expertise in Media and Communication Studies relevant to the subject’s profile.
• Experience of and expertise in course development and administration in Media and Communication Studies
• Experience of research relevant to the Baltic Sea region and/or Eastern and Central Europe.
• Good cooperation and communication skills

The above items must be documented.

Employment

The position is full-time and until further notice. First date of employment as agreed. The university may apply a six-month probationary period.

Application

Application deadline: 14 April 2019.

Additional information

Head of Department Michael Forsman, tel: +46 (0)8 608 42 69, michael.forsman@sh.se

HR Officer Camilla Bengtsson, tel: +46 (0)8 608 51 72, camilla.bengtsson@sh.se

You apply for this position here.

You find instructions for application above at “Appointment Procedure"/"Mall för ansökan".

Observe that:

• Publications referred to must be attached to the application.
• An application that is not complete or arrives at Södertörn University after the closing date may be rejected.
• On the website sh.se/vacantpositions there is a template for applications that the applicant needs to follow.

Union representatives:

• SACO: Antonia Ribbing, tel: +46 70 602 87 61, antonia.ribbing@sh.se
• ST: Karin Magnusson, tel: +46 8 608 41 75, karin.magnusson@sh.se
• SEKO: Henry Wölling tel: +46 8 524 840 80, henry.wolling@ki.se

The current employment is valid on condition that the employment decision becomes valid.

Södertörn University may apply CV review.

Welcome with your application!

Membrana

Deadline: April 2, 2019

Throughout the twentieth century, political and social protests have become one of the most widespread forms of political contention and collective social action and are to an ever greater extent shaping the contours of public debate since the beginning of the new millennium. Unsurprisingly, within the present milieu of crumbling social consensus, growing political polarization and legitimacy crisis of key institutions of modern state, various forms of political and social protests are on the rise. Visual capabilities of new communication technologies have not only significantly changed the nature and extent of documentation and challenged the institutionalized mediation and communication, but also contributed to codification, even standardization of the visual representations of protests. Strained between symbols (e.g. tank man), metaphors (e.g. protesters giving flowers to police/military) and visual clichés (e.g. rock-throwing masked protester), images of protests and protesters play an important role in struggles over interpretation of the events, legitimacy of protester’s demands and their status as either citizens, crowds, “the people” or mobs. Moreover, protest visuals are not simply part of representation of events; they are increasingly becoming tools of political mobilization, resistance and even modes of protesting themselves through image-based activism, documentation and archiving projects and more.

We invite textual and visual contributions that explore both images of protest and protest through images from (but not limited to) the following perspectives:

• representation of protests and protesters
• protest images as icons, symbols, metaphors or clichés
• circulation and reinterpretation of protest imagery
• mimicking iconic photographs
• historical perspectives of protest imagery
• protests and photography
• changes of protest paradigm
• protests and/on social media
• archiving
• surveillance
• visual activism
• protests in art

Format of contributions

• Essays, theoretical papers, overview articles, interviews (approx. 14.000 characters with spaces), visuals encouraged.
• Theoretical articles (approx. 20.000 characters with spaces), visuals encouraged.
• Short essays, columns (approx. 6.000 characters with spaces), visuals encouraged.
• Photographic projects and artwork: proposals for non-commissioned work or samples of work.

Contributions will be published in the English edition – magazine Membrana (ISSN 2463-8501) as well as in the Slovenian edition – magazine Fotografija (ISSN 1408-3566).

Proposals and deadlines

Please contact the editors at editors(at)membrana.org. The deadline for contribution proposals (150-word abstracts and/or visuals) is April 2, 2019. The deadline for finished contributions from accepted proposals is June 24, 2019. Please send proposals or contact the editors at editors(at)membrana.org.

About Membrana

Membrana is a contemporary photography magazine dedicated to promoting a profound and theoretically grounded understanding of photography. Its aim is to encourage new, bold, and alternative conceptions of photography as well as new and bold approaches to photography in general. Positioning itself in the space between scholarly magazines and popular publications, it offers an open forum for critical reflection on the medium, presenting both analytical texts and quality visuals. The magazine is published biannually in the summer and winter in the English language and in Slovenian under the title Fotografija by the Slovene non-profit institute Membrana.

More about the third edition can be found HERE.

Contact

Membrana, Maurerjeva 8, SI-1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

editors(at)membrana.org / mail(at)membrana.org

SComS - Studies in Communication Sciences (OPEN ACCES)

Deadline for abstracts: July 15, 2019

(Deadline for inivited full papers: November 30, 2019)

Guest Editors: Cornelia Brantner (University of Augsburg; IWAF, Vienna) & Helena Stehle (University of Hohenheim)

In the digital age, calls for transparency and openness as well as for privacy and confidentiality prevail: Struggles for visibility occur simultaneously with fights for invisibility and hidden battles for power and privileges of interpretation. Concerns about a loss of digital self-determination exist just like concerns about the “right to be forgotten”. While a few years ago the idea of a “transparent user”–as the ultimate of (in)voluntary visibility–caused a broad outcry in society and scientific debate (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008), the debate is nowadays shifting towards considerations of Internet governance and regulation (Camenisch, Fischer-Hübner, & Hansen, 2015). The societally relevant aspects of visibility and invisibility in the digital age are increasingly discussed and analyzed. Visibility and invisibility become important dimensions in the description and explanation of digital communication. They encompass for example “(1) the availability of information, (2) approval to share information, and (3) the accessibility of information to third parties” (Stohl, Stohl, & Leonardi, 2016, p. 125). They can be addressed with regard to individuals and institutions (e.g., their ability to speak, their power or opinion leadership), structures and processes (e.g., in the meaning of becoming visible or making visible), as well as data and information (e.g., their accessibility or comprehensibility). Studies are, however, scattered across various fields of research in media and communication science. Therefore, the thematic section aims at gathering cutting-edge research on visibility and invisibility in digital publics. We invite submissions from different divisions in media and communication studies that present outstanding meta-analytical perspectives, new theoretical approaches, innovative methodological approaches, or lessons to be learned from empirical analyses.

Submissions relating (but not limited) to the following areas and questions are invited:

• Understanding and analysis of digital (in)visibility: How can visiblity be conceptualized in the digital world? How is it connected to other concepts, e.g., transparency or attention? What aspects are included in the state of being visible in comparison to the process of becoming visible? Which theoretical concepts and methodological perspectives are useful and necessary to describe and analyze the (in)visible of digital communication? How can the invisible be made visible for research? How can the effects of the invisible, but also of the visible, be measured?
• Tensions between visibility and invisibility: What tensions between visibility and invisibility can be observed in society in general or in specific contexts? Why do they emerge? How are these tensions addressed by various actors, e.g., in interactions between journalists and audience members or in instances of cyberbullying?
• Actors, institutions, structures and processes regarding digital (in)visibility: Who is involved in creating, shaping or governing digital (in)visibility? How can structures and processes regarding (in)visibility be described? How are conditions and constraints of (in)visibility created and shaped? In what ways do processes of governance or management and intervolved power relations become visible themselves? How does the (in)visibility of information affect structures and processes in society in general or in specific contexts like media companies or other organizations? How do users deal with (in)visibility in their everyday media practices and how are they influenced by the affordances of social media or underlying societal and cultural norms?
• Sociopolitical significance and consequences of digital (in)visibility: What significance does (in)visibility have in the digital world? What positive or negative implications for sociopolitical frameworks and contexts arise from the influence of actors, technologies, processes, and practices on what users see or do not see online and how they see it? How does the visible frame the media- and non-media-related everyday life? What consequences does the (in)visibility of actors, opinions, or processes have for social coexistence, societal institutions, or foundations of democracy?

The full call for papers and author guidelines HERE.

SUBMISSION GUIDLINES

The length of the articles in the thematic section should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words (including abstract and references). All submitted papers must adhere to APA6 style (www.apastyle.org). The journal welcomes submissions in English, German, French, or Italian, but the abstract must be in English. All submissions should be sent to the guest editors via the following email addresses: brantner@iwaf.at and helena.stehle@hohenheim.de.

The submission process consists of two phases:

• In a first step, abstracts of 500 words (plus the name(s) of the author(s) and affiliation(s), title, and 3 to 5 keywords) should be submitted no later than July 15, 2019.
• In the second step, the decision for an invitation to submit a full paper will be given by August 15, 2019. Invited paper submissions will be due November 30, 2019. The invitation to submit a full paper does not guarantee acceptance into the thematic section. Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer review process. The expected publishing date of this thematic section is December 2020. Successful contributions that are not accepted for the thematic section will be published in other issues of the journal.

ABOUT SComS

SComS is an international open access journal of communication research that is jointly edited by the Swiss Association of Communication and Media Studies (SACMR) and the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano). The journal is fully open access to both the authors and readers. The publishing home is HOPE, which stands for Hauptbibliothek Open Publishing Environment, which is offered by the Main Library of the University of Zurich based on the infrastructure of the Zentrale Informatik.

We look forward to receiving your submissions. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the guest editors: Cornelia Brantner (brantner@iwaf.at) or Helena Stehle (helena.stehle@hohenheim.de).

Review of Communication Research (http://www.rcommunicationr.org) is an open-access academic journal specialized in publishing literature reviews and meta-analysis for the communication field of study. Our policy is to publish articles of the highest quality, and at the same time, we commit with our authors. For example, we do not reject a draft in the first round, and we keep working with authors to make the article publishable if we believe that the paper will help the advancement of the field.

Articles are published online as soon as accepted and listed in Scopus and Web of Science, among other databases. The articles are highly cited (e.g., average citation per item in WoS = 7.2; Scopus CiteScoreTracker 2018 = 3.0).

We are now interested in increasing the number of published papers per year. Therefore, we are inviting proposals and manuscripts in any communication subfield. We are especially interested in articles that may be of relevance to a wide audience from all over the world (i.e., not local themes.)

If you would like to submit a manuscript for publication in RCR, register and upload a draft in our journal management system (www.review-of-communication-research.org); if you have a proposal, download the form (https://rcommunicationr.org/index.php/write-an-article/call-for-proposals), fill it, and send it to the editor (editor@rcommunicationr.org). Send your proposal or manuscript as soon as possible, during March or April.

For more information, please contact: Dr. Giorgio De Marchis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, editor@rcommunicationr.org