ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

May 12, 2025

Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: January 11, 2025

The practice of journalism, the roles of journalists, and the information-consumption habits of audiences continue to change dramatically and rapidly. Journalists have already adapted to new media environments and communication tools, and face further change brought on by artificial intelligence and other technologies. This is also reflected in the theoretical field of journalism studies, and evolving theories of epistemology, transparency, objectivity, and audiences. The present and future of journalism is evolving and demands a rethinking or perhaps a reimagining.

Researchers in journalism studies at the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon therefore invite submissions of extended abstracts for a symposium on “Journalism Studies: (Re)Imagining Journalism” to be held on May 12, 2025 at the Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, with a keynote address by Mark Deuze of the University of Amsterdam. 

This symposium aims to bring together researchers, academics, professional journalists, and media organizations who are thinking about what the work of journalists looks like and should look like in 2025 and beyond. The symposium is open to researchers who wish to present on topics relating to the present and future of journalism, such as journalism and artificial intelligence, relational journalism, and journalism and contemporary audiences. 

Please submit an anonymized abstract of no more than 750 words (not including references) to journsymposium@gmail.com by January 11, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by mid-February 2025. Note that the symposium will be held in person. Submissions from early-career researchers, and Ph.D. and M.A. students are especially welcome.

Abstracts may address a number of topics within journalism studies, including, but not limited to:

- Journalism and resistance

- Civic and participatory media

- Journalism and artificial intelligence

- Misinformation, disinformation, junk news

- Contemporary news audiences

- Journalism, peace and conflict

- News sources and journalism

- Journalism and media systems

- Funding models for journalism

- Crises of the institutional press

- What journalism studies can do for journalism

- Journalists and journalism scholars as agents of change

- Journalism and propaganda

- Journalism and emotion  

October 13-14, 2025

Paris, France

Deadline: January 15, 2025

In 1985, four journalists founded the non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Montpellier. Forty years later, RSF is one of the largest human rights NGOs in the world, and one of the few of French origin. In 2025, the organisation will celebrate its fortieth anniversary, marked by the transfer of its archives to “La Contemporaine: bibliothèque, archives, musée des mondes contemporains” (located on the campus of Nanterre University), and their future opening to research.

This anniversary should be an opportunity to look back not only on the history of RSF - its changes in management and strategy, its major "communication operations" and its eighty issues of photo albums - but also on the complex relationship between the media, in the broadest sense of the term, the powers that be, in all their diversity, and the organisations that defend human rights and, more specifically, freedom of expression around the world. Have the hopes of a new "human rights revolution" been fulfilled? Is the freedom to investigate and to publish the results of these investigations better guaranteed today than in the past? What are the risks run by journalists, but also by writers, artists and even ordinary citizens wishing to communicate the fruits of their work or their thoughts to as many people as possible? Has censorship in the traditional sense of the term (a priori intervention by a political, administrative or religious authority in the dissemination of a message) given way to more diffuse forms of control? Has the gap between the concept of freedom of expression in liberal democracies and that prevailing in authoritarian regimes widened or narrowed? To what extent is freedom of expression an absolute and universal right? What have been, and what are today, the forms of action taken by non-governmental organisations fighting for the effectiveness of this right throughout the world?

These questions, which are deliberately very broad, may be addressed from a number of angles by researchers from a variety of geographical and disciplinary backgrounds. The deadline for submitting proposals is 15 January 2025, in the form of a PDF file of no more than one page (accompanied by a brief CV of the author). They will be assessed by a scientific committee, independent of RSF, which will draw up a list of successful proposals by 15 February 2025 at the latest. Proposals should be sent to the following e-mail address: mediascolloque@gmail.com

This conference will be organised in Paris, jointly by La Contemporaine and the Université de la Sorbonne-Nouvelle, October 13-14, 2025.

January 9, 2025

Online

Dear Colleagues, 

On behalf of the Young Scientists Council at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, we would like to invite you to a scientific event, which will be held on 9.01.2025 at 17:00 online (MS Teams platform). The guest of the webinar will be Professor Henrik Örnebring from Karlstad University in Sweden, who has been selected as the best reviewer for the journal Journalism Studies in 2020. Prof. Örnebring will share tips on how to increase your chances of getting published in key journals for the discipline of social communication and media studies. The meeting will last 60 minutes and will include a question and answer session. We encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to meet and discuss. 

RMN UMCS Webinar 

How to satisfy reviewer #2? Increasing your chances of publication success in good journals. 

Thursday, 9.01.2025, 17.00-18.00 CET 

MS Teams 

Link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZGFmZDEwZjctMzYxYS00NTc3LThjY2YtMWIxZjVkODQ5ZGUw%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2280dbd34a-9b20-490b-ac49-035af103ab2b%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%221d210b33-e870-4a96-ad5f-55ab186d58a5%22%7d 

Short link: https://t.ly/5ksQF

November 19, 2024

Online

Under article 40 of the Digital Services Act (DSA), vetted researchers will be able to request data from very large online platforms (VLOPs) and search engines (VLOSEs) to conduct research on systemic risks in the EU.

A draft delegated act clarifies the procedures leading to the sharing of data by VLOPs and VLOSEs with vetted researchers. It also specifies conditions for providing such data and establishes a DSA data access portal to serve as a one-stop-shop for researchers, data providers and Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs).

The European Commission is hosting a Q&A session on the delegated act, taking place online and targeted at researchers who would like to learn more about the delegated act and how it might benefit their research. 

It will take place on 19 November 2024, 10:00-11:30, and you can sign up here.

November 29, 2024

Online

The C&D section is co-organizing an online Zoom talk series titled "Voices of Change: Activism, Democracy, and Social Justice." The first talk will take place via Zoom on Nov. 29, from 10:00 to 11:30 (CET). More information on the talk and free registration can be found here: https://cts.ku.dk/projects/to-use-or-not-to-use/events/prison-media/. We have also attached a flyer for you to help promote the event (here).

This series aims to provide a platform for scholars across disciplines—including communication, sociology, political science, and law—to engage in thought-provoking discussions and pioneering research in these critical areas. It seeks to foster a space for scholars to connect, learn, and grow within a global network dedicated to advancing knowledge and dialogue on democracy, activism, and social justice. The first talk will feature Prof. Anne Kaun from Södertörn University in Stockholm, discussing her book Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology (co-authored with Fredrik Stiernstedt). The book won the ICA Best Book Award in 2024.

Mirca Madianou (Goldsmiths - University of London)

Polity, November 1 2024

ISBN: 9781509559039

https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=technocolonialism-when-technology-for-good-is-harmful--9781509559022

With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are being championed as forces for good and as solutions to the complex challenges of the aid sector.

This book argues, however, that digital innovation engenders new forms of violence and entrenches power asymmetries between the global South and North. Madianou develops a new concept, technocolonialism, to capture how the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures, state power and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial legacies. The concept of technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that digital infrastructures, data and AI play in accentuating inequities between aid providers and people in need.

Drawing on ten years of research on the uses of digital technologies in humanitarian operations, the book examines a range of practices: from the normalization of biometric technologies and the datafication of humanitarian operations to experimentation in refugee camps, which are treated as laboratories for technological pilots. In so doing, the book opens new ground in the fields of humanitarianism and critical AI studies, and in the debates in postcolonial studies, by highlighting the fundamental role of digital technologies in reworking colonial genealogies.

‘A rich and radical rethinking of digital humanitarianism from the perspective of postcolonial theory. Superbly evidenced and argued, this is a must-read that will define critical scholarship on humanitarianism as well as media and communications for years to come.’

Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics and Political Science 

‘Technocolonialism gets at the very core of how humanitarianism is being redefined in the global context when AI technologies and datafication prevail. With analytical mastery, Madianou reveals the multiple hierarchies embedded in this subject. A must-read and timely intervention.’

Radha Sarma Hegde, New York University 

‘Madianou’s groundbreaking work…sheds light on the tangible repercussions of technocolonialism on the most vulnerable of populations, making it indispensable reading for understanding the contemporary landscape of global aid.’

Cheryll Soriano, De La Salle University, Manila 

Mirca Madianou is Professor in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

For a 30% discount please use code MM30. Valid until the end of 2024 for purchases made directly on the publisher's site: https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=technocolonialism-when-technology-for-good-is-harmful--9781509559022

November 21, 2024

Sam Hind (University of Manchester) will be in conversation with Alex Gekker (University of Amsterdam) on Thursday 21st November, 4-5.30pm to launch his new book, 'Driving Decisions: How Autonomous Vehicles Make Sense of the World' (Palgrave).

The event is supported by the Centre for Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media.

To sign up for the (online) event, follow the link: https://www.qualtrics.manchester.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_eDqtLrOJ5Cl7nNA 

About the book

Driving Decisions: How Autonomous Vehicles Make Sense of the World examines the phenomenon of autonomous driving, and the ongoing, complex, costly, and contentious quest to automate driving. Principally organized around the concept of algorithmic decision-making, the book considers how different mapping, sensing, and machine learning (ML)-dependent capabilities are gifted to autonomous vehicles through different kinds of technical work: from computer science students annotating visual data in industry-funded research centres to software engineers designing ‘end-to-end’ ML models at autonomous vehicle start-ups.

The book intends to complicate, and question, typical understandings of autonomous driving by going ‘under the hood’, challenging the technological determinism or ‘decisionism’ that advocates offer of an inevitable, fully automated, future. Drawing on seven years of research in a range of empirical contexts, the book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of science and technology studies, media studies, digital sociology, human geography, and mobilities and transport studies.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-97-1749-1

January 15, 2025

Södertörn University, Stockholm

Deadline: November 20, 2024

The Centre for Baltic and East European Studies is pleased to announce call for contributions to a workshop that delves into the role of state propaganda in crafting pro-war consensus in Russia. The workshop will take place on January 15th at Södertörn University, Stockholm.

The goal of the workshop is twofold. Firstly, it aims to analyze various forms of propaganda to reconstruct the ideological environment that impacts individuals daily. Secondly, it strives to define recurring narrative structures in different forms of propaganda.

A number of travel grants are available to cover transport and accommodation costs.

More information about the workshop as well as the registration link can be found here.

Important dates:

• Deadline for applications: 20 November 2024
  
• Notification of acceptance: 2 December 2024
  
• Registration deadline for non-presenting participants in the workshop : 17 December 2024
  
• The event takes place on 15 January 2025
  

Form of event: onsite with mandatory registration

For more details, please contact: spr2024@sh.se.

University of Vienna

We are looking for a postdoc in Computational Social Science who would like to co-lead the development and application of new quantitative text models to understand how politicians engage in representing citizens in legislative speech and social media posts. The position is part of the MULTIREP project ("Multidimensional Representation: Enabling An Alternative Research Agenda on the Citizen-Politician Relationship") funded by the European Research Council and conducted at the University of Vienna.

The contract will expire end of August 2028. We offer a salary of ca. 66,500-75,000 € p.a., depending on prior experience.

Applications submitted by 25 November 2024 will receive full consideration.

Detailed information is provided here.

I would be grateful if you could circulate this information to suitable candidates.

Malmö University

Dear colleagues,

At the newly established Digital Work Futures Research Lab at Malmö University, funded by the Swedish Research Council, we offer two fully funded doctoral positions: one in Media and Communication Studies and another in Interaction Design. Our interdisciplinary research lab explores how digital transformations influence the future of work in the digital and creative industries. Please read more about the positions by following the links below. 

Doctoral student in Media and Communication Studies: The future of work with AI-infused platforms in digital and creative industries

https://web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/1015/job?site=7&lang=UK&validator=e5819a4704cd849685049472c0c17895&job_id=3684

Doctoral student in Interaction Design: Production in digital and creative industries

https://web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/1015/job?site=7&lang=UK&validator=e5819a4704cd849685049472c0c17895&job_id=3687

The deadline for applications is January 9, 2025. 

You are most welcome to follow the Digital Work Futures Research Lab on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitalworkfutures/