ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

2026, Routledge

Cultural Journalism in the Digital Age provides the first international, book-length introduction to Western cultural journalism, a distinct type of professional journalism that has expanded and diversified significantly, particularly from the mid-20th century into the first decades of the 21st century. The book shows how cultural journalism, in response to cultural democratization, globalization, and digitalization, engages with a wide spectrum of issues – from culture understood narrowly as arts and popular culture to broader notions encompassing norms, values, and traditions. Drawing on media theoretical, historical, and sociological perspectives, as well as insights from cultural criticism and cultural sociology, the book addresses key questions, such as what characterizes cultural journalism as a research field? What are its democratic roles? What counts as “culture” in cultural journalism? What constitutes its journalistic form? And who are the professionals producing it?

December 2-5, 2026

Vienna, Austria

Deadline: October 26, 2026

SWS Vienna ART 2026 – When Science Meets Art, taking place 2–5 December 2026 at Schönbrunn Palace, 1130 Vienna, Austria, os organised by SWS Scholarly Society / Secretariat Bureau.

The interdisciplinary conference covers arts, social sciences and humanities. For readers of ECREA, the media-relevant directions include Media, Communications and Misinformation in the Digital Age (production, dissemination and impact of information); AI and Society (ethical, social and economic impacts); and Digital Humanities (digital archives, computational analysis, interactive media). Scope details are at https://sgemvienna.org/social-sciences.php and https://sgemvienna.org/art-humanities.php.

Public deadlines:

• abstracts 26 October 2026;
  
• panel/workshop proposals 9 November 2026;
  
• full paper and early-bird 16 November 2026;
  
• poster 23 November 2026.
  

Official site: https://sgemvienna.org/; dates and programme: https://sgemvienna.org/deadlines-programme.php.

Participation is paid according to the organiser's fees; we request an ordinary editorial conference listing without a paid advertising commitment. We would be grateful for the editorial team's judgement on fit.

December 11, 2026

Deadline: November 23, 2026

On December 11, 2026, we're hosting our first ONLINE Junior (and baby) Scholars Work-in-Progress Session, inviting doctoral researchers and early-career scholars to discuss research that's still taking shape. Each participant will have 5 minutes to introduce their work and explain what they'd like help thinking through, followed by 20-25 minutes of generous, constructive group discussion with CCSN members across career stages. We'll share the event schedule and timing as we get closer to the date.

Expression of interest deadline: November 23, 2026, to ContentCreatorScholarsNetwork@gmail.com, including:

- your name and affiliation

- a brief project description (+ its current stage), and

- one or two questions on which you'd particularly appreciate feedback.

THE CCSN BLOG

Our blog has two new pieces by truly brilliant scholars exploring VERY different corners of creator and platform studies:

“From Co-option to Care: Reimagining Justice Through Platforms” by Nora Suren. Drawing on the Platforms, Algorithms, and Social Justice workshop at MIT, Nora explores what justice means for creators navigating platform power, from corporate co-option and cultural misrecognition to censorship, algorithmic suppression, and struggles for visibility.

Read Nora's piece - https://www.ccsn.site/from-co-option-to-care-reimagining-justice-through-platforms

“What Labubu Can Tell Us About TikTok's AI Slop Economy” by Billie Wilcox and Jiaru Tang. What can one strange little creature tell us about the creator economy? Billie and Jiaru follow Labubu across TikTok to explore how human and AI-driven creator cultures coexist, compete, and generate value. The piece also offers a great methodological invitation for online feeds - follow the 'cultural object'!

Read the Labubu piece - https://www.ccsn.site/labubu-a-tale-of-two-creator-cultures

And we'd love more contributions! So if you're working through an emerging concept, methodological question, or curious corner of internet culture, we'd love to hear your ideas for a short CCSN blog post. Just reach out to ContentCreatorScholarsNetwork@gmail.com with a brief pitch.

Here are the CCSN spaces. Would love to have you join and stay in the loop.

- Join our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eMnPfMtT (please also consider submitting your work \ projects \ anything you have creators-related to be featured in the newsletter every month!)

- Come to our Discord: https://lnkd.in/e4knBbmg

- Check out our reading list and syllabi: https://lnkd.in/eDDsg-Eu

- Follow us on Insta @weareccsn  

Deadline: December 1, 2026

We invite contributions to a forthcoming anthology from Intellect Books. Climate in the Classroom: Reimagining Communication, Media and Journalism Pedagogy will be the first book to propose practical and theoretically rich ways for communication and media instructors to teach about climate and environment. 

While climate change affects us all, teaching which addresses it remains only sparsely scattered through the media, journalism, and communications curricula. In contrast to the thorough embedding of AI and digital media into communications teaching, climate change and the environment remains a separate silo, not a priority area in students' education. Yet, as students encounter climate change and the environmental impacts of communications infrastructure like data centres in their daily lives, they increasingly call on educators to address it (Thew et al 2021; SOS/NUS, n.d.).  

Environmentally engaged media studies calls for a radical reorientation of our curricula (Keilbach & Pabiś-Orzeszyna, 2021). This anthology will provide an accessible guide for instructors who want to fill this gap but might feel unqualified, or who already teach environment and media and are seeking inspiration and community. The book will present commissioned essays from experts around the world who are pioneering the teaching of climate change in the media, journalism, and communications fields. 

We suggest several avenues for this below: 

• Encouraging student interest, empowerment, and engagement 
  
• Teaching the next generation of climate communicators
  
• Challenging the illusion of a “clean” or dematerialised media industry, including in the classroom
  
• Foregrounding climate change as a social fact, not just a scientific one
  
• Actively confronting climate denial, greenwashing, and silencing
  
• Approaching institutionalized resistance to climate teaching
  
• Elevating the expertise and leadership of those who are often sidelined from mainstream climate discourse - including students themselves
  
• Decolonizing climate and environmental pedagogy in media and communication
  
• Practice-based reflections
  
• Theoretical reflections
  
• The place of emotions such as hope, fear, anxiety, and grief in the classroom
  
• Collaborations between researchers and practitioners and other innovative formats

We welcome contributions that would contribute to any of the planned sections below, but please contact us if you wish to address a different topic related to the book’s theme.

• Teaching mediation of the environment
  
• Teaching climate change journalism
  
• Classroom innovation: building determination and agency
  
• Embedding critique of the media industry’s environmental impact
  
• Environmental justice in the curriculum
  
• Teaching through environmental communication practice
  
• Building institutional competence: Navigating obstacles to climate change teaching

If you teach and innovate in this area, please contribute to this book. Please send an abstract of no more than 400 words to Rosalind Donald (rdonald@american.edu) and Chris Paterson (c.paterson@leeds.ac.uk) by December 1 2026. We will notify commissioned authors by January 14, 2027. First drafts of chapters (provisionally 5,000-6,000 words) will be due by March 31, 2027. If your contribution is reliant on the collection of new data, please state how far along you are with that process.

University of Fribourg, Switzerland

The Department of Communication and Media Research (DCM) at the University of Fribourg invites applications for a five-year fixed-term position (80%) as Senior Research and Teaching Assistant (Maître-assistant-e ; Postdoc) in Communication and Media Studies and/or Strategic Communication.

The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary research environment connecting communication and media studies, economics, and strategic organizational communication.

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

Teach four hours per week during the teaching semester, primarily in the French-language Bachelor's programme in Communication Studies and, if required, the Master's programme in Business Communication.

Supervise Bachelor's and Master's theses and seminar papers.

Develop high-quality research projects, publish research findings, and pursue external research funding.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Applicants should hold an excellent PhD in communication or a closely related social science discipline, with a clear research focus on communication phenomena, media and/or strategic organizational communication.

Relevant research areas include journalism, media uses and effects, political communication, and strategic organizational communication. Interdisciplinary profiles are welcome.

Applicants should demonstrate strong expertise in empirical social science research methods. Both qualitative and quantitative research profiles are welcome; equivalent expertise in both is not required. However, basic knowledge of quantitative methods is expected for teaching purposes.

Excellent command of French and very good command of English are required. Knowledge of German and international research experience are additional assets.

POSITION DETAILS

Employment: 80%, five-year fixed-term contract

Location: Fribourg, Switzerland

Starting date: 1 January 2027 or by agreement

Application deadline: 15 November 2026

APPLICATION DOCUMENTS

Applicants should submit a motivation letter outlining their research interests and potential projects, a CV with two academic referees, a publication list, a 1–2-page PhD thesis summary, available teaching evaluations, and any other relevant certificates.

FULL JOB ADVERTISEMENT AND APPLICATION

https://jobs.fr.ch/job/Fribourg%2C-CH-Ma%C3%AEtre-assistant-e-en-sciences-de-la-communication-%26-des-m%C3%A9dias-et-communication-strat%C3%A9gique-Sari/1374206657/

August 25-30, 2027

Flamingo Grand Congress Centre, Albena, Bulgaria

Deadline: August 3, 2027

The International Scientific Conference on Social Sciences (ISCSS 2027) and the International Scientific Conference on Arts and Humanities (ISCAH 2027) take place together, organised by SWS Scholarly Society / Secretariat Bureau. This is one joint call for the two co-located conferences.

Proposals are invited across the published social sciences, arts and humanities sections. Topics relevant to media and communication researchers include Media, Digital Transformations and Library Science, alongside sociology, education, psychology, cultural studies, linguistics, literature, visual and performing arts. Please consult the official website for the complete section scope and submission requirements.

Working language: English. On-site and virtual participation options are offered. Participation is paid; current categories, fees and conditions are published on the official website. Papers are subject to scientific peer review and acceptance is not guaranteed.

Abstract deadline: 3 August 2027.

Full paper and workshop proposal deadline: 17 August 2027.

Registration/welcome: 25 August; scientific sessions: 26–29 August. A post-conference excursion on 30 August is conditional on sufficient registrations. The programme is preliminary.

Official information and submissions: https://www.sgemsocial.org/

Official dates and deadlines: https://www.sgemsocial.org/index.php/dates-deadlines/dates-deadlines-1

Contact: scienceart@sgemsocial.org

Organiser: SWS Scholarly Society / Secretariat Bureau

December 7-11, 2026

Online

Deadline: October 29, 2026

Connecting Games, Film, Animation and Literacy

Games, film, animation and other screen media are no longer only forms of entertainment. They are where young Europeans play, watch, learn, create, and increasingly take part in public life. They are also industries undergoing profound transformation, shaped by digitalisation, artificial intelligence, sustainability imperatives, shifting audience practices, technological innovation and evolving geopolitical priorities.

Across film, animation, video games, video-on-demand platforms and cultural education, new challenges are emerging around competitiveness, inclusion, environmental responsibility, cultural diversity, governance and international cooperation. At the same time, these transformations offer new opportunities for creativity, innovation and civic engagement.

From Play to Policy asks how research on games, screen media and their audiences can inform the governance of Europe’s cultural and creative ecosystems. The Winter School brings together current research from the European collaborative projects GAMEHEARTS (Grant Agreement No. 101132543), REBOOT (Grant Agreement No. 101094769), ANIMA MUNDI (Grant Agreement No. 101178027), STREAMSCAPES (Grant Agreement No. 101177811) and EuroCivic (Erasmus+ grant 2024-1-HU01-KA220-SCH-000251467), in which the Media Governance and Industries Research Lab of the University of Vienna and the Center of International Relations Studies at the University of Liège are partners, and is organised in cooperation with Webster Vienna Private University.

Over five days of panel discussions, paper presentations and collaborative work, participants will engage with themes including digital platforms and sustainability, innovation in the audiovisual and video game industries, cultural policy and international cultural relations, youth engagement and audiences, European identity and citizenship, and the role of culture in advancing democratic values.

We invite applications from Master’s and Doctoral students from all relevant disciplines who wish to take part in the Winter School, contribute to discussions and, optionally, present a 15-minute paper based on their research. Participation is free of charge. We particularly welcome applications that engage with one or more of the following themes:

1. Games and Democracy

2. Film Industry, Creative Labour, and Fair Work

3. Animation and Sustainability

4. Digital Creativity

5. AI Governance

6. Cultural Diversity

7. Youth Participation

8. Audience Engagement

Please read the participant guidelines before applying.

Applications are submitted through the online form.

Applications should include:

1. A brief CV (up to two pages);

2. A statement of purpose (up to 500 words) describing your research, its connection to one or more of the Winter School themes, and what you hope to gain from and contribute to the Winter School;

3. For those who wish to present a paper, an abstract of the proposed paper (up to 500 words).

Deadline for submission of applications and abstracts: 16 October 2026.

Applicants will be notified of the outcome by October 29th, 2026. The Winter School takes place online LIVE from 7 to 11 December 2026, and the 8th is a public holiday. Participants who complete the programme receive a certificate of attendance from the University of Vienna.

Questions?

gamehearts.research@gmail.com

gentiana.ramadani@univie.ac.at

The Winter School is organised as part of the GAMEHEARTS project, funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No. 101132543). Views and opinions expressed are however, those of the organisers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

DEBATES EN SOCIOLOGÍA Nº 65

Deadline: 15 April 2027

Guest editors: Dr. Luis Sujatovich (Universidad del Este / Universidad Siglo 21, Argentina), and Dr. Alfredo Barrales Martínez (Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico).

The expansion of digital platforms, algorithmic systems, and connected interfaces has significantly altered the forms of communication, as well as the conditions shaping social experience, interpersonal bonds, identities, and participation in the public sphere. The digital realm no longer constitutes merely a set of media or devices intervening in previously established social practices; it has become an everyday dimension of contemporary life where people work, consume, produce, build relationships, construct visibility, and participate politically.

These transformations present a challenge to the categories traditionally used by the social sciences to study communication. Concepts such as receiver, audience, consumer, and even prosumer continue to offer relevant tools, yet they hit limits when trying to understand experiences simultaneously characterized by production and consumption, exposure and intimacy, autonomy and algorithmic conditioning, and participation alongside dependence on private infrastructures.

The issue is not simply determining what technologies do to people or what people do with technologies. Between these two questions lies a dimension worth examining: how one inhabits a social life increasingly organized through platforms, interfaces, algorithms, and digital infrastructures. Inhabiting implies attending both to individuals' practices of appropriation and production and to the technical, economic, temporal, and political conditions that bound their possibilities for action.

This perspective allows us to question transformations extending beyond the study of technological uses. Acceleration and instantaneity alter our relationships with waiting, attention, and memory. Interfaces organize access and hierarchize possibilities for action. Algorithms classify, recommend, and distribute visibility. Exposure shapes contemporary forms of recognition and identity. Platforms mediate sociability and political participation while concentrating infrastructure, data, and decision-making capacity. Consequently, digital experience is constituted at the intersection between everyday practices and structural conditions that cannot be analyzed in isolation.

These issues are particularly relevant in Latin America, where the expansion of digital communication coexists with persistent inequalities, varying connectivity conditions, hybrid forms of cultural consumption, and a growing dependence on transnational infrastructures and platforms. Rather than assuming a homogeneous digital experience, it is necessary to examine its situated configurations and the specific forms that appropriation, inequality, participation, cultural production, and power relations take.

This dossier invites theoretical and empirical contributions that critically analyze these transformations. Papers from sociology, communication, and other social science disciplines are welcome to help review existing categories, discuss contemporary perspectives, and produce conceptual and methodological tools for understanding current conditions of digital social experience.

THEMATIC FOCUS

• Inhabiting, consuming, and producing: A critical review of the status of the subject in digital communication; limitations of the categories of receiver, consumer, and prosumer; everyday practices of appropriation, creation, resistance, and resignification.
  
• Temporalities of digital experience: Acceleration, instantaneity, the culture of brevity, and fragmentary consumption; transformations of attention, waiting, memory, and the continuity of experience.
  
• Mediations, interfaces, and infrastructures: Interfaces as conditions of access and organization of experience; algorithmic classification, regimes of visibility, architectures of participation, and the material infrastructures of digital communication.
  
• Subjectivation and social bonds: Extimacy, exposure, and the performativity of the self; recognition, belonging, intimacy, and care; digital communities, emerging sociabilities, and forms of connected solitude.
  
• Public sphere and political action: Transformation of public deliberation, digital construction of leadership, personalization of politics, networked mobilization, activisms, cancellation practices, polarization, and institutional disaffection.
  
• Political economy, platforms, and technofeudalism: Concentration of digital ownership, data extraction and appropriation, dependence on private infrastructures, monetization of attention, and new forms of rent and subordination. Scope and limitations of technofeudalism as an explanatory category, in dialogue and discussion with the perspectives of platform capitalism, surveillance capitalism, and digital colonialism.
  

Deadline: 15 April 2027

Publication date: 15 December 2027

Submissions: revistadebates@pucp.edu.pe or via this link.

Author Guidelines

April 14, 2027

Markthalle Basel - Basel, Switzerland

Early Bird Application Deadline: 10 December, 2026

Late Application Deadline: 10 March, 2027

We are cordially inviting you to join next BaselEduCa Expo - 8th International Education & Career Exhibition during 14 April, 2027 in Basel, Switzerland - Markthalle Basel - Basel, Switzerland (Viaduktstrasse 10, 4051 Basel, Switzerland).

BaselEduCa Expo is a vital and unique event place to bring together various Providers, Investors, Suppliers, Candidates, Buyers and Experts via Face to Face meeting method to closely introduce Exhibitors as well actual products, programs, activities, advertisements and services in Education, Research, Employment and Career field.

Your Possible Participation Types

- as Exhibitor - during 2 Expo Dates to promote upcoming application/registration deadlines for all kind of Education, Research & Career opportunities (Degree or non-degree programs, job positions, language courses, child education, internship, volunteership, fellowship, traineeship, apprenticeship, research programs, summer or winter camps, training courses, scholarship programs, gap programs, educational equipment & materials, educational/career publishing materials, stationary materials suppliers and etc.)

- as Presenter - Companies/Institutions has option to present and introduce Products, Programs or Services to audience within 45 - 60 minute period

- as Sponsor - Any State, Private or Public Institutions welcome to support BaselEduCa Expo as Diamond, Gold, Platinum or Silver Sponsor

- Advertisement - Half or Whole page Advertisement options available in BaselEduCa Expo Catalogue

- as Visitor or Guest - Entrance is Free of charge for all Visitors and Guests during 1 day BaselEduCa Expo event.

International Visitors are most welcome also to register by email as well from various countries.

Entrance is free of charge for visitors and guests. But if you need invitation letter for visa application & travel purpose process it costs 155EUR per person.

Due to the long term visa application process we strongly advice visa need visitors/guests send us by email passport page at least 1-2 month in advance.

Privileges of BaselEduCa Expo Event

- Introducing and promoting the educational programs and products, job vacancies, recruitment opportunities and services to local and international Visitors and Guests

- Embracing the opportunity of B2B coaching and meeting with Swiss and international Providers, Investors, Suppliers, Candidates, Buyers and Experts in education and career field

- Finding talented and high-motivated partners, students, employees, volunteers, researchers and scientific fellows

- Exploring and building new partnership ties with local and international state, public, private and academic institutions.

- Booking presentation space at BaselEduCa Expo event period

- 10% Discount as Alumni to join for next exhibition and events planning by IPD

There have also Special Discount opportunities for our valuable Alumni Exhibitors & Partners.

For registration and more information about BaselEduCa Expo event please visit the following website: https://ipdinstitute.ch/BaselEduCa-Expo-2026/ 

Follow expo event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/International-Education-and-Career-Exhibition-139896359675539/

NOTE: Please forward this email to whom it may concern within your institution, network and community.

Your BaselEduCa Expo Team

Address: Ryffstrasse 23,

4056 Basel, Switzerland

Email: baseleducaexpo@ipdinstitute.ch

Tel: +41764316170

Other Upcoming EduCa Expo Events

BakuEduCa Expo 2027 - Baku International Education & Career Exhibition

Expo Sponsor: University of Dubai (You could be also one of the sponsors. Apply soon)

Expo Dates: 3 - 4  April, 2027 (Saturday & Sunday)

- Early Bird Application Deadline: 1 December, 2026

- Late Application Deadline: 25 February, 2027

Expo Hours: 12.00 - 20.00

Venue: Radisson Baku Hotel - Azerbaijan

Entrance is Free for Visitors to Expo Venue

Registration Available in this page: https://ipdinstitute.ch/Trainings-Events/

AntalyaEduCa Expo 2027 - International Education & Career Exhibition 

Expo Dates: 30 September - 1 October, 2027 (Thursday & Friday) 

- Early Bird Application Deadline: 10 June, 2027

- Late Application Deadline: 1 September, 2027

Event Venue: Ramada Hotel Antalya (Central Area of Antalya city)

Registration Available in this page:  https://ipdinstitute.ch/Trainings-Events/

March 1-5, 2026

Umeå University, Sweden

Deadline: October 30, 2026

Dear colleagues,

We are excited to welcome you to the 2027 edition of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries (DHNB) conference in Umeå, Sweden. DHNB is a forum for cross-border collaboration in digital scholarship, bringing together participants from academia and cultural heritage institutions across the humanities, social sciences, and the arts.

The submission deadline is approaching, and we invite you to submit your abstract by 30 October 2026. 

With DHNB2027, the theme Human(ities) in the Loop emphasizes not only our disciplines’ long tradition of methods that do indeed put many different kinds of “humans” in the loop, but also the many loops that our disciplines study, before and beyond AI.

We particularly welcome contributions that reflect on the role of the humanities in understanding not only AI-related changes, but also transformations driven by digital perspectives, methods and practices, in particular how they impact and influence our everyday life, teaching and research practices.

Submission deadline: 30 October 2026

Conference dates: 1-5 March 2027

Location: Umeå University, Sweden

DHNB2027 is hosted by Humlab at Umeå University in collaboration with DIGSUM.

Read the Call for Papers: DHNB2027 Call for Papers

We look forward to receiving your submission and welcoming you to Umeå in March 2027!

Best regards,

The DHNB2027 Organising Committee through 

Evelina Liliequist, Associate Professor in Digital Humanties and Deputy Director at Humlab, Umeå University