ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

October 8-9, 2026

Potsdam, Germany

Deadline: May 31, 2026

Few topics are currently as widely and often emotionally debated as the impact of digital and social media on young people. But what does empirical research actually tell us? The inaugural “Youth in a Digital Society” conference aims to move beyond public debates by bringing together interdisciplinary, evidence-based perspectives.

This new initiative, the University Research Focus “Education for the Future” at the University of Potsdam, is designed as an annual event that connects international researchers across the broad field of digital media research.

The English-language conference focuses on the use of digital media and its effects on children, adolescents, and young adults. It addresses both psychological outcomes (e.g., mental health) and sociopolitical outcomes (e.g., political engagement and radicalization), as well as interventions to prevent problematic use and mitigate adverse effects.

The program features two keynote lectures and four symposia with leading researchers from Germany, Europe, and beyond. In addition, an open call for poster presentations offers opportunities to share ongoing research. Roundtable sessions will provide space for discussion, exchange, and the development of new collaborative ideas.

• October 8–9, 2026
  
• Neues Palais, University of Potsdam
  
• Registration and Call for abstracts for posters: https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/education-for-the-future/events-of-the-division/conference
  

We warmly invite you to join us and contribute to this interdisciplinary exchange.

University of Antwerp

Departement: Departement Communicatiewetenschappen

Regime Voltijds

Let’s shape the future - University of Antwerp

The University of Antwerp is a dynamic, forward-thinking, European university. We offer an innovative academic education to more than 20000 students, conduct pioneering scientific research and play an important service-providing role in society. We are one of the largest, most international and most innovative employers in the region. With more than 6000 employees from 100 different countries, we are helping to build tomorrow's world every day. Through top scientific research, we push back boundaries and set a course for the future – a future that you can help to shape. 

Position

The Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Communication, The Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center is looking for a full-time PhD-student within the ERC-funded project WALLS2BRIDGES -Media Production of Prison Communities.

The ERC project WALLS2BRIDGES investigates how prison communities produce media and how these practices reshape understanding of justice across France, Türkiye, the UK, and the US. Against the backdrop of expanding incarceration regimes and enduring racial and social inequalities, WALLS2BRIDGES examines how incarcerated people, their families, and anti-prison activists engage in media production (from letters and newspapers to podcasts, films, and digital platforms) to contest dominant narratives and reimagine justice.

The project conceptualizes prison communities as active media producers, foregrounding the interplay between media practices, systems of surveillance, sensory experience, and struggles for justice.

Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, the project combines:

• Archival research on prison-produced media since the mid-1960’s century;
  
• Qualitative interviews and collaborative research with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, families, and activists;
  
• Analysis of diverse media forms, including print, audiovisual, and digital content.
  

Your role

You will conduct in-depth research in France, focusing on abolitionist groups and prison-related NGOs and their media, cultural, and educational practices. You will explore how these actors establish communication with people in prison, mobilize media for advocacy, and how they intervene in public debates on incarceration and justice. You will contribute to the project’s comparative and transnational framework alongside team members working on Türkiye, the UK, and the US.

Research strands 

• Studying NGOs and abolitionist groups “from above”
  

Analysing policy frameworks, institutional structures, funding models, and public discourses shaping prison-related media and cultural initiatives.

• Studying NGOs and abolitionist groups “from below”
  

Examining everyday practices of NGOs, educators, artists, and activists, including their interactions with prison administrations and municipalities.

• Exploring lived experience, and communicative practices
  

Investigating how incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals engage with NGOs and abolitionist groups, media and cultural initiatives, and analysing their creative outputs (letters, films, audio, digital media), with attention to preservation, access, ethics, and afterlives.

The University of Antwerp will be your home base, with extended research stays in France.

Profile

What do we expect from you?

• Master’s degree in media studies, sociology, anthropology, criminology, or a related field;
  
• Fluency in English and French;
  
• Familiarity with, or willingness to develop, engagement with organisations working in prison abolition, education, arts, and media in France;
  
• Experience with qualitative research methods (e.g. interviews, ethnography, discourse analysis), and an interest in working with creative and media-based materials;
  
• Sensitivity to ethical questions related to working with vulnerable communities and to issues of representation, access, and consent;
  

You will:

• Conduct independent doctoral research leading to a PhD dissertation;
  
• Publish in peer-reviewed academic journals and contribute to collective project outputs;
  
• Present research at international conferences;
  
• Contribute to the organisation of workshops and public-facing events;
  
• Engage in societal dissemination of research findings, particularly with NGOs and educational organisations;
  
• Work both independently and collaboratively in an interdisciplinary and international research team.
  

Assets (not required, but considered an advantage):

• Experience researching prisons, carceral systems, or social justice issues;
  
• Experience working with NGOs or community-based organisations;
  
• Familiarity with media production or collaborative creative practices;
  
• Interest in or experience with publishing, editing, or curating media content;
  
• Familiarity with debates on media justice, prison abolition, or critical prison studies;
  
• Existing networks related to prison or abolitionist work in France or Europe.
  

What we offer

• We offer a doctoral scholarship for a period of one year. Following a positive evaluation, the scholarship can be renewed for another three years.
  
• The planned start date is September 2026, or as soon as possible after that date.
  
• Your monthly scholarship amount is calculated according to the scholarship amounts for doctoral scholarship holders.
  
• You will receive eco cheques, Internet-connectivity allowance, and a bicycle allowance or a full reimbursement of public transport costs for commuting.
  
• As a doctoral researcher, you will have access to a wide and varied range of courses and an educational credit through the Antwerp Doctoral School.
  
• Apart from the fieldwork, you will do most of your work at the City Campus of the University of Antwerp in a dynamic and stimulating working environment.
  
• Find out more about working at the University of Antwerp here.
  

Want to apply?

You can apply for this vacancy through the University of Antwerp’s online job application platform up to and including June 15, 2026 (by midnight Brussels time).

Click on the 'Apply' button and complete the online application form. Be sure to include the following attachments:

• Your CV (including the contact details of two referees);
  
• a motivation letter outlining your interest in the project and relevant experience;
  
• a writing sample in English (e.g. master’s thesis, student or academic paper);
  
• your course transcript and diploma (not applicable for University of Antwerp alumni).
  
• A short research proposal (max 2 pages, excluding references) in relation to the project, indicating how you would approach research on NGOs, media and prisons in France.
  

Selection process

• Step 1: initial selection based on the application file;
  
• Step 2: interview with shortlisted candidates.
  

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (online or in person) in July 2026.

As part of the interview process, candidates will be asked to present their short research proposal aligned with the objectives of the WALLS2BRIDGES project.

If you have any questions about the online application form, please check the frequently asked questions or send an email to jobs@uantwerpen.be. If you have any questions about the job itself, please contact İpek A. Çelik Rappas, Principal Investigator (ipeka.celik.rappas@uantwerpen.be)

The University of Antwerp received the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research Award for its HR policy. We are a sustainable, family-friendly organisation which invests in its employees’ growth. We encourage diversity and attach great importance to an inclusive working environment and equal opportunities, regardless of gender identity, disability, race, ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation or age. We encourage people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse characteristics to apply.

Apply here.

July 6-10, 2026

University of Manchester, UK

Deadline: June 15, 2026

We would like to invite you to our 3rd Digital Methods Summer School at The University of Manchester, which will take place between 6 and 10 July 2026. 

This year, we'll focus on:

• Visual Methods
  
• Sensing AI Methods
  
• Creative AI Methods
  
• Text Analysis with R
  
• Data Visualisation
  
• Geospatial Methods
  
• Ethics & Open Science

For more details, see: https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/53uwG1yp7TISE

University of Manchester 

The University of Manchester invites applications from suitably qualified candidates for three full-time Lectureships (Teaching and Scholarship) in Digital Media and Culture. These posts are fixed-term for two years, commencing 1 August 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The successful candidates will contribute to the delivery, development and administration of the BA (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/2026/21197/ba-digital-media-culture-and-society/) and MA (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/20641/ma-digital-media-culture-and-society/) programmes in Digital Media, Culture and Society, and will join the core team of The Centre for Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media, https://www.digital-humanities.manchester.ac.uk/about/people/)

Colleagues on Teaching and Scholarship contracts are typically allocated 80% of their time for teaching and administrative duties, and 20% for scholarship, which is currently defined as discipline-based educational or pedagogic research, and the development, application and synthesis of disciplinary knowledge to inform teaching (e.g. research-informed teaching).

Further details, including the full job description and person specification, are available here: https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=34755

Informal enquiries may be directed to Dr Łukasz Szulc, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture, at lukasz.szulc@manchester.ac.uk

June 11, 2026

Barcelona, Spain

We invite you to “PERCIENTEX 2026: Journalism for Scientific Integrity” taking place on June 11th in Barcelona.

On its tenth anniversary, PerCientEx project brings together leading experts to discuss the role of science journalism as a key tool for promoting integrity in science. Speakers include Pilar Paneque, director of ANECA, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, journalist at Science, and Mira Petróvic, researcher and whistleblower.

The event will explore how watchdog science journalism helps uncover fraud, misconduct, and unethical practices in research.

 DATE & TIME: Thursday, June 11, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

LOCATION: CosmoCaixa Barcelona

 ORGANIZED BY: ACCC, with the support of CosmoCaixa and in collaboration with the Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación (UAB)

If you would like to attend the event, please fill out this form: https://cosmocaixa.org/es/p/percientex-2026-periodistas-que-investigan-la-ciencia

Dechun Zhang

The book investigates how digital propaganda in China operates as a platform-shaped practice under soft authoritarianism, where nationalism functions as a discursive technology that organizes meaning, structures visibility, and channels public affect. Propaganda is no longer purely top-down; it emerges from a dynamic co-production between state narratives, platform affordances, and public emotions. Governance is enacted subtly through emotional guidance, algorithmic visibility, participatory cues, and discursive standardization, while overt censorship persists in the background. At the same time, citizens are active participants: they use nationalist discourse to express identity, perform loyalty, reshape official narratives, and voice critique. In this system, the public and the state co-produce political meaning, creating fragmented yet structured nationalist expressions that circulate within a platformized governance model. This highlights a form of participatory propaganda, where control is affective and publics negotiate legitimacy, belonging, and authority through digital nationalism. While the book focuses on China, it also provides insights into the broader dynamics of digital politics, affective governance, and authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes.

You can pre-order the book https://www.routledge.com/p/book/9781041308775, 20% Discount with code CISYCDNAG20, and I would be delighted if you share it with colleagues interested in digital politics, digital nationalism, propaganda, online participation, media, governance, and China. I also welcome feedback, discussion, and engagement with anyone working on related topics.

CICANT

CICANT – Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies (https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/) invites applications from international researchers affiliated with foreign higher education institutions or research centres for short-term scientific stays in Portugal. These visits aim to foster international collaboration, strengthen research networks, and promote interdisciplinary knowledge exchange in the fields of communication, media, arts, and digital technologies. The stays may take place in Lisbon or Porto and should have a duration ranging from a minimum of seven to a maximum of fifteen days.

CICANT researchers work across disciplinary boundaries, drawing on approaches from communication sciences and the arts to address the challenges posed by ongoing digital and technological transformations. Research developed at the centre explores how change emerges through the interplay between technologies, materials, and social imaginaries, as well as issues related to cultural participation and socio-cultural transformation. Additional areas of focus include populism, extremism, and contemporary forms of civic engagement, alongside critical approaches to identities, cultural and creative processes, and practices. These activities frequently involve practice-based research, with a strong emphasis on knowledge transfer through the production and dissemination of content and technologies relevant to diverse target audiences, as well as close articulation with existing doctoral programmes.

Research at CICANT is organised into the following main thematic strands: Media, Society and Literacies, and Media Arts, Creative Industries and Technologies. These strands are operationalised through three Research and Learning Communities (ReLeCos): FLAME – Futures of Literacies, Audiences, Media and Democracy; MACIT – Media Arts, Culture and Creative Industries and Media Technologies; and SUST_MEDIA – Media and Transformations for a Sustainable Future. Each of these communities integrates several laboratories that are responsible for organising research and training initiatives, with a strong emphasis on the involvement of doctoral and, whenever possible, master’s students.

Selected Visiting Researchers will be integrated into CICANT’s research environment and will have access to a shared workspace for researchers. They will also benefit from access to the University’s infrastructures and resources in support of the objectives of their stay. Visiting researchers are expected to actively engage with the centre’s activities, including presenting their work in the form of a seminar or workshop, and exploring opportunities for future collaboration, including joint publications and research projects.

Applicants must be affiliated with a non-Portuguese institution and should hold a doctoral degree or, in duly justified cases, be advanced doctoral candidates. They must demonstrate a research profile aligned with CICANT’s areas of activity and present a solid academic track record.

Applications must be submitted in English and should include a curriculum vitae (maximum five pages), a research proposal or work plan (maximum three pages) outlining the objectives, planned activities, expected outcomes, and relevance to CICANT’s research areas, a motivation letter, and an indication of the preferred period of stay. A letter of support or expression of interest from a CICANT researcher may be included and is encouraged.

Applicants will be evaluated based on the scientific quality and relevance of the proposed work, the applicant’s academic profile and experience, alignment with CICANT’s strategic priorities, and the potential for collaboration and impact.

Applications must be submitted electronically in PDF format by email to cicant@lusofona.pt indicating in the subject: Call for Visiting Researchers (2026) no later than 18:00 (Lisbon time) until the 15 of June 2026. Results will be communicated by email.

The host institution will provide a grant of €1,500.00 to support travel and accommodation costs associated with the stay.

Please note that visiting researchers remain responsible for arranging their travel, accommodation, and insurance unless otherwise specified. An official invitation letter will be issued to selected candidates, and the visit must take place within the agreed period.

For additional queries: cicant@ulusofona.pt

October 6-9 2026

Aarhus University, Sandbjerg Estate

Deadline: June 15, 2026

The aim of this interdisciplinary scholarly retreat is to bring together researchers from all fields working with the intersection of AI and storytelling to reflect on and discuss how we study narratives that are no longer authored, circulated, or experienced exclusively by humans. 

New practices of storytelling are emerging and existing ones are transformed with the popular uptake of LLM-based chatbots across professional, public, and recreational settings. Today, LLM-infused storytelling impacts all forms of textual practice: from art and creative writing to journalism, politics, and public debate over marketing, SoMe, and influencer culture to everyday conversations, therapy, and intimate interactions, to name a few. For scholars working with narratives, these developments pose fundamental challenges, several of which revolve around questions of method. We invite contributions that address issues of methodology in this evolving landscape of human-machine narration. 

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• How can existing qualitative methods (e.g., close reading, positioning analysis, rhetorical analysis, interviews) and existing quantitative methods be adapted or revised to meet these new narrative practices?
  
• How can narrative theory account for human–machine co-creation?
  
• How can we analyze the ways in which interactions with LLM-based chatbots transform the generation and reception of core narrative elements such as story, discourse, and narrative act?
  
• What kind of data do we need and what analytical approaches can be developed to understand narration with and to chatbots?
  
• How do we analyze the way LLM-platform infrastructures (e.g., training data, guardrails, alignments) shape or create narrative practices?
  
• How can core story-related concepts within narrative theory, literary theory, rhetoric, journalism studies, psychology, linguistics, and media studies such as ‘intentionality’, ‘causality’, ‘agency’, ‘purpose’, ‘author’, ‘meaning’, and ‘origin’ be rethought and investigated empirically in light of the current transformation?
  
• What forms of data, evidence, and interpretation emerge through human-machine storytelling?
  
• How do we work, critically and reflected, from a starting point of corporate and technological black boxing by Big Tech?
  
• How can the interdisciplinary development of methods to unpack AI-storytelling be pursued and ensured?
  

To start answering questions such as these, the seminar invites for contributions that may be exploratory or programmatic, fully formed or work in progress; the format is based around 30 minutes presentations from each participant. We hope the seminar will lead into a publication on methods, storytelling, and generative AI. Confirmed seminar participants and speakers are Alexandra Georgakopoulou (King’s College, UK) and Torsa Ghosal (California State University, US).

Practical information

• Seminar dates: 6-9 October 2026
  
• Abstract submission deadline: 15 June 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance: 25 June 2026
  

The seminar is free and all accommodation expenses are covered. Travel expenses must be covered individually.

Submission: Send abstract (max 250 words) and a short bio (max. 100 words) to norsi@cc.au.dk

Organisers: Associate Professor Stefan Iversen, Assistant Professor Ann-Katrine S. Nielsen, Postdoc Pernille Meyer, all Aarhus University, Denmark

Funding: The seminar is funded by the research project GAITS (IRDF 2026–2030)

This HMN Seminar (short for Human-Machine narration) is organized by GAITS (https://projects.au.dk/gaits) and takes place at the Sandbjerg Estate in Southern Denmark October 6-9, 2026. It welcomes a limited number of participants to allow for in-depth discussions and shared conceptual development. The seminar is free and all accommodation expenses are covered. Travel expenses must be covered individually.

Apply by sending a brief bio and a 250-word abstract, describing your ongoing work with methods, storytelling, and generative AI to Stefan Iversen (norsi@cc.au.dk) no later than June 15, 2026.

May 14, 2026 (6:30 - 8:00 PM, followed by drinks)

LSE & online

A public lecture by the DFC 

Major online safety regulations and legislation are now in force across the UK and EU. Platforms have new duties, regulators have new powers, and expectations are high. But what has actually changed for children?

Bringing together leading voices from regulation, legal scholarship and child rights, as well as new research evidence, the event will reflect on how regulation reshapes platform design, governance and accountability in practice. 

Speakers:

• Steve Wood, PrivacyX Consulting, former Deputy at the Information Commissioners's Office (ICO) will present new research, followed by responses from the panel members:
  
• Baroness Beeban Kidron, Crossbench Peer, House of Lords, UK Parliament and Chair of the Management Committee at the Digital Futures for Children centre
  
• Professor Orla Lynskey, Chair of Law and Technology at UCL
  
• Professor Lorna Woods, OBE, Emeritus Professor of Internet Law at the University of Essex

Chair: Sonia Livingstone, Professor at the Department of Media and Communications, LSE and Director of the Digital Futures for Children centre

Steve Wood: “The research shows that regulation has yet to drive systemic change in safety and privacy by design for children. Instead, platforms are investing more in parental controls than in default protections. At the same time, we observe a rise in age assurance measures and early regulatory effects on AI services used by children.”

More information & free registration: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/events/child-rights-regulation

Recent from the DFC in case you missed it:

African children's rights in relation to the digital environment: child-informed provocations to guide digital policy and practice - https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/our-work/African-childrens-rights

The impact of General comment No. 25 in the UNCRC monitoring process and around the world: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/our-work/impact-gc25

DFC annual research insights day blog overview: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2026/04/14/childrens-rights-in-the-digital-environment-have-been-defined-now-they-need-defending/ 

Edited volume (Anthem Press) by Ester Cristaldi

Deadline: June 30, 2026

Chapter proposals are invited for the edited volume Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning: Language, Images and Interpretation in the Digital Age, under contract with Anthem Press.

The volume examines artificial intelligence as a cultural, semiotic, social and media phenomenon. Rather than approaching AI only as a technical system or computational tool, the book investigates how AI participates in the production, circulation and transformation of meaning in contemporary digital culture.

The central premise of the volume is that AI does not simply process information. It increasingly mediates how people write, read, see, classify, imagine, remember and interpret the world. AI systems generate texts and images, organise visibility, shape public attention, classify social subjects, predict behaviour and participate in the construction of cultural narratives.

The book is grounded in semiotics and linguistics, but it also welcomes interdisciplinary perspectives from cultural studies, media and communication studies, media sociology, digital sociology, digital humanities, visual culture, platform studies, critical data studies, journalism studies, environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and related fields.

Topics

Possible topics include:

• AI, language and meaning
  
• Large language models and linguistic authority
  
• AI and language inequality
  
• AI-generated images and visual culture
  
• Synthetic media and visual disinformation
  
• AI, public trust and the crisis of mediation
  
• AI, platforms and public attention
  
• Algorithmic visibility and digital inequality
  
• AI, datafication and social classification
  
• AI, creativity and cultural production
  
• AI, cultural labour and the creative industries
  
• AI, archives and cultural memory
  
• AI, embodiment, interfaces and everyday experience
  
• AI, environment, infrastructure and digital materiality
  
• AI, interpretation and cultural authority
  
• AI, media ecologies and affective publics
  
• AI, memory, archives and the digital humanities
  

Submission Guidelines

Interested contributors are invited to submit:

• a provisional chapter title;
  
• an abstract of approximately 250–300 words;
  
• a short biographical note of approximately 100 words;
  
• institutional affiliation and contact details.
  

Full chapters will be expected to be approximately 6,000–8,000 words, including references.

Timeline

• Proposal submission deadline: 30 June 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2026
  
• Full chapter submission: 30 November 2026
  
• Editorial feedback: January 2027
  
• Revised chapter submission: 28 February 2027
  
• Final manuscript preparation: March–April 2027

Submission

Chapter proposals should be sent to:

Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi

Üsküdar University

mariapia.cristaldi @uskudar. edu.tr

Please include “Chapter Proposal – Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Meaning” in the subject line.

Contact Information

 Ester Cristaldi, Üsküdar University, mariapia.cristaldi @uskudar.edu.tr

Contact Email: mariapia.cristaldi@uskudar.edu.tr