ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Deadline (extended): July 31, 2025

The 9th issue of Mediatization Studies is on the horizon – and it’s shaping up to be one of our most exciting yet! 

Mediatization Studies is an open access, peer-reviewed academic journal published by Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (Poland). The journal ensures a double-blind review process and does not charge any publication fees.

This upcoming edition will explore some of today’s most urgent and thought-provoking themes:

• Large Language Models (LLMs)
  
• Legal and ethical frameworks of AI
  
• Instagram users and algorithmic cultures
  

If your research lies at the intersection of mediatization and artificial intelligence, we invite you to join—and shape—this timely scholarly conversation.

Author guidelines are available here: https://journals.umcs.pl/ms/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

University of Leipzig, Germany

29–30 September 2025

In its 50th year, Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research invites to reconsider what European communication research is – and what it can be. From its start in 1975, the journal’s mission has been to serve as a forum for scholarship and academic debate in the field of communication science and research from a European perspective. But what is in fact a European perspective?

The conference program includes:

- Keynotes by Keith Roe, Maria Kyriakidou, Göran Bolin & Bernie Hogan

- A reflection by Friedrich Krotz

- Panels on comparative traditions, crisis narratives, AI & creativity, and digital infrastructures

Further information and the full program are available online. Registration is open via the conference website: https://www.sozphil.uni-leipzig.de/en/institut-fuer-kommunikations-und-medienwissenschaft/professuren/professur-fuer-medien-und-kommunikationswissenschaft/european-communication-research-what-whence-and-whither

The Digital Futures for Children centre, Department of Media and Communication, LSE

Apply here: https://jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/3615/0/453848/15539/research-officer-digital-futures-for-children

Salary from £42,679 to £51,000 pa inclusive with potential to progress to £54,730 pa inclusive of London allowance

This is a fixed-term appointment for 12 months

The Digital Futures for Children (DFC) is a joint research centre between LSE and 5Rights Foundation. Through critical and practical research, the DFC aims to generate insights and innovative solutions to ensure that the digital environment respects and promotes children's rights.

In 2025, the DFC has launched a new research project entitled “Better EdTech Futures for Children” together with 5Rights Foundation. The project seeks to develop robust evidence to stimulate a child-rights informed multi-stakeholder conversation on the role of technology in schools by investigating how educational technologies (EdTech) are shaping children’s learning experiences and rights in diverse contexts, with specific focus on AI. Through multidisciplinary research and direct engagement with children, families, and educators, it will explore the equity, design and governance of EdTech systems.

The Research Officer will support the delivery of the research project. Working under the direction and guidance of the DFC Director and in close collaboration with the 5Rights Foundation, this role will contribute to the production of high-impact, policy-relevant research and engagement activities exploring how EdTech affects children’s rights and learning experiences.

Candidates will have a PhD by the post start date, relevant research experience that demonstrates the capability to produce independent original research, experience conducting qualitative research with children in schools and applying child- centred approaches, experience conducting research relating to EdTech, as well as the ability to research complex ideas, concepts, theories and findings relating to children’s rights in the digital environment.

We offer an occupational pension scheme, generous annual leave, hybrid working, and excellent training and development opportunities.

For further information about the post, please see the how to apply document, job description and the person specification.

To apply for this post, please go to www.jobs.lse.ac.uk. If you have any technical queries with applying on the online system, please use the “contact us” links at the bottom of the LSE Jobs page. Should you have any queries about the role, please email s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk

All applicants are asked to submit a CV and a detailed cover letter explaining how they meet the position's requirements.

Please note this position will be subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.  Any offer of employment made is conditional on receipt of a satisfactory DBS check.

The closing date for receipt of applications is 17 July 2025 (23.59 UK time). Regrettably, we are unable to accept any late applications.

Yulia Yurtaeva-Martens

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-47279-5

This volume explores television program exchange within Eastern Europe as well as between East and West, and its crucial role in the development of television as a medium.

The study presents a systematic analysis of the emergence, development, and activities of Intervision, an Eastern European—and, from today's perspective, transnational—organization that was founded in 1960 to coordinate television program exchange. Particular attention is given to the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of program exchange within Intervision and its cooperation with the Western European Eurovision, taking into account the political and technological conditions and implications of the time. The historical analysis covers the entire period of Intervision's existence from 1960 to 1993. The volume offers valuable insights into the mechanisms and dynamics of European television program exchange during the Cold War and connects with current research on socialist television from a transnational perspective.

Edited by: Carola Richter, Melanie Radue, Christine Horz-Ishak, Anna Litvinenko, Hanan Badr, Anke Fiedler

This volume proposes a “deep internationalization” of media and communication studies by offering insights and guidance on how to integrate a cosmopolitan perspective in a variety of subfields of this discipline. Building on debates on de-Westernization and cosmopolitanism, the contributors advocate for the inclusion of both global and local perspectives and context-led approaches. They argue that acknowledging and incorporating epistemologies, topics, and methodologies from diverse regions, contexts, and backgrounds will enhance the comprehensiveness and relevance of their discipline and foster a more inclusive and meaningful understanding in communication studies.

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7677-8/cosmopolitan-communication-studies/?number=978-3-8394-7677-2

Edited by: Rita Gsenger, Marie-Therese Sekwenz

Over the last ten years, numerous pieces of EU legislation have been adopted in the field of digital law, including the AI Act, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. These complex but sometimes difficult to understand legal acts play an important role in research and everyday life. In this volume, legal scholars and experts present the key EU legal acts that are relevant to social scientists, students and the general public. The volume also aims to stimulate a greater exchange between the social sciences and law, from which both disciplines can benefit. With contributions by Dr. Adelaida Afilipoaie | Valerie Albus | Dr. Lucie Antoine | Jascha Bareis, M.A. | Prof. Dr. Catrien Bijleveld, LL.M. | Jorge Constantinos | Dr. Max Van Drunen, M.Z. | Rita Gsenger, M.A., M.Sc.| Prisca von Hagen | Liza Herrmann | Julia Krämer | Eyup Kun | Dr. Lucas Lasota | Lisa Markschies | Heritiana Ranaivoson | Nik Roeingh | Jun.-Prof. Dr. Hannah Ruschemeier | Pascal Schneiders | Marie-Therese Sekwenz | Lisa Völzmann | David Wagner

https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/de/10.5771/9783748943990/digital-decade?search-click

September 22-26, 2025

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Deadline: July 15, 2025

The International Conference AI for Science will take place in Ljubljana from 22 to 26 September 2025. 

It will bring together researchers, leading experts in artificial intelligence and domain scientists who apply AI to solve complex problems in their fields. 

The conference will feature several thematic tracks:

• 28th Discovery Science Conference
  
• AI & Life Sciences
  
• AI & Material Science
  
• AI Factories
  
• AI & Space 
  
• AI & Digital Humanities
  
• AI & Environmental Science
  
• AI & Physics
  
• DaFab Summer School

Important dates:

15.7. 2025 - Paper/abstract submission deadline

21.7. 2025 - Notification of acceptance

25. 7. 2025 - Camera-ready version and Author registration deadline 

Find more information on this link: https://ai4science.si/calls-for-papers/

Deadline: September 30, 2025

We welcome contributions from both academic and non-academic authors. Academic papers up to 6,000 words (excluding references) and other work up to 3,000 words are considered.

• Abstracts Due: 30 September 2025
  
• Invitations to submit full papers will be sent by: 30 November 2025
  
• First Draft Due: 15 March 2026
  
• Publication: Spring 2027

POTENTIAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• What consequences do policy-based restrictions or algorithmic steering of content have on diverse children’s digital lives and their rights?
  
• How can children’s rights support children’s digital civic engagement?
  
• How do children understand, experience and voice their opinions on surveillance and tracking technologies and/or the harvesting and monetisation of their data?
  
• How will AI impact child rights and how can child rights be considered in AI development?
  
• How do children engage in issues around their future with AI and how will children’s voices be incorporated?
  
• How are children’s interests and desires informing technology development?
  
• How do children mobilise and use digital media for social change or become activists to promote issues they care about?
  
• How can invisibilized children be considered and included in decision-making and knowledge production?
  
• What does children’s creative use of digital media look like?
  
• How do children build digital cultures and communities?
  

KEYWORDS AND TOPICS

We welcome submissions adjacent to (but not limited to) the following thematic areas: 

• Digital childhoods
  
• Social media
  
• Media regulation and policy
  
• Digital media industry
  
• Datafication, tracking and privacy issues
  
• Social media, child labour and the commodification of childhood
  
• Children’s digital culture and community building
  
• Rights, participation, citizenship, and activism
  
• Access to information
  
• Gender and sexuality
  
• Ableism and health inequalities
  
• Help seeking
  
• Catastrophes and preparedness
  
• Migrant children’s use of digital media
  
• Ethnic minority children
  
• Social class
  
• Urban and rural childhoods
  
• Digital exclusion and poverty
  
• Creativity, art, music and play
  
• School, leisure and family life
  
• Children as researchers and research with children
  
• Methodologies and ethics in researching digital childhoods

BACKGROUND

Recent developments aimed at restricting children’s access to digital and social media across the globe, including Australia, Europe, China, and some parts of the US for example, open up questions about the social constructions of childhood. Such policy changes have a direct and, in some cases, profound impact on children’s life experiences and abilities to exercise their rights in the digital environment, including engaging in public life and seeking information, and their rights to culture, leisure and play, to mention a few. In response to these developments and calls for more child-centric research, we propose a Global Studies of Childhood themed issue on ‘Children as rights holders in the digital world’.

Digital and social media use is almost ubiquitous among teenagers. Nearly all US teens (96%) report using the Internet daily (Faverio and Sidoti 2024), and globally approximately 30% of Internet users are children, with an even higher proportion of child users estimated in the Global South (Ghai et al. 2022). Young people continue to make up the highest proportion of social media users. 

In Sub-Saharan Africa, children make up the majority of mobile users, although digital media use and access to devices among children and youth vary significantly across diverse settings. We also see increasing use of smartphones and tablets in early childhood globally, and although the use of social media is still limited among toddlers and preschoolers (0-4 years old) 16% of Swedish children aged 5-8 see their friends online regularly (Andersson 2023:9). In their annual study of children’s relationship with the media and online worlds, Ofcom (2024) recently reported that use of social media and apps among 5-7-year-olds in the UK has increased year-on-year. For many children, measures such as lockdowns and school closures, introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, meant that even more of their daily lives moved online.

Recent Developments and Children's Digital Worlds

Recent public debate across several international settings focuses predominantly on the risks and perceived harms associated with children’s digital screen and social media use. Governments and policymakers have advocated for implementing new age restrictions and other restrictive measures, such as restricting children’s use of smartphones. Most social media platforms require users to be 13 or older to have a user account. However, age limits are regulated differently across different countries, and recently, we have seen some rollback of younger teenagers’ access to social media, such as Australia’s social media ban for under 16-year-olds; France’s lobbying for an EU-wide policy, modelled on French law, requiring parental authorisation for children under 15 to use a social network service; mirrored by a similar call for a 15+ age limit by Denmark’s Prime Minister; Instagram’s introduction of a ‘teen’ (parental control) version in the UK; and several other countries implementing restrictions aimed at limiting social media use for teenagers under 16 (Livingstone and Sylwander 2025). The Australian social media ban is seen as a test case keenly observed across the globe by those actors seeking to advocate for regulatory interventions.

Accountability in a highly commercialised online environment is paramount, and making social media platforms, apps, and other online services more responsible for user safety is important. Policies aimed at strengthening children’s rights in online environments concerning datafication, privacy, and consent are positive developments. However, debates on the ‘banning of’ or introducing new restrictions to children’s access to digital and social media are dominated by deficit approaches and relatively narrow protectionist perspectives, with the view to protect children from various harms and risks, either as mediated through social media platforms (e.g., bullying, exploitation, ideological influencing) or as associated with the use of devices (e.g., screen time) or the techno-social dimension of platforms (e.g., ‘addiction’, social pressures). Increasingly, evidence is emerging on how simplistic approaches to limiting children’s time spent on screen-based media have proven ineffective. However, more importantly, little attention has been given to the impact on groups of marginalised children and young people for whom the digital connections offered by social media and other internet-based platforms are vital. The impact of restrictive approaches, for example, on refugee and migrant young people, LGBTQ+ children, and children with disabilities, as well as other invisibilised groups (Jordan and Prendella 2019), is not greatly understood and notably absent from both policy and public discourse. Furthermore, little attention has been given to the role of digital and social media in children’s political discourse and civic participation, which may be impinged upon following rollback measures.

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

Please email an abstract of 500 words (250 words for non-academic work) and a short bio of each author to guest editors by September 30th at gscspecialissue@gmail.com

Please feel free to direct any queries to the editorial team: gscspecialissue@gmail.com

TIMELINE

• Abstracts Due: 30 September 2025
  
• Invitations to submit full papers will be sent by: 30 November 2025
  
• First Draft Due: 15 March 2026
  
• Themed Issue editors review and provide feedback to authors: 15 June 2026
  
• Authors submit articles to Global Studies of Childhood: 15 September 2026
  
• Peer review and revisions: September 2026 – November 2026
  
• Feedback / Acceptance: 15 November 2026
  
• Anticipated submission date for the Themed Issue: 15 March 2027

Please Note: all accepted articles can be published online first with SAGE Journals and provide authors with an accepted, reviewed paper at that time with all scholarly attributes awarded.

About the Journal:

Global Studies of Childhood is a space for peer-reviewed research and discussion about issues that pertain to children in a world context, and in contemporary times. Journal description: https://journals.sagepub.com/overview-metric/GSC

For a full version of the call, see: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/gsc/call-for-papers

About the Editors:

Helena Sandberg is Professor of Media and Communication Studies, Lund University, Sweden. She is the PL of DIGKIDS Sweden, researching the introduction of digital media in early childhood, and member of the Swedish advisory group for policy on Children and Youth's Digital Media use, and Health.

Olu Jenzen is Professor of Media and Digital Culture, University of Southampton, UK, with expertise in LGBTQ+ social media youth cultures. She is PL on the AHRC-funded project Creativity, Community & Resilience, researching trans and gender diverse young people’s collective resilience and community building in the UK through a strength-based and youth-led participatory approach. 

Tessa Lewin is a Senior Research Fellow in the Participation, Inclusion and Social Change cluster at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, specialising in gender politics, sexuality, visual activism, and child rights. She co-led the Rejuvenate project on children’s rights and participation.

CAIS

The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) funds innovative research on the societal impact of digital transformation. We support individual researchers (fellows) and collaborative projects (working groups).

Fellowships: Time and Space for Focus and Inspiration

A fellowship at CAIS provides the freedom to dedicate yourself to your research and the opportunity to become part of a vibrant interdisciplinary community. Step away from daily work routines to gain new perspectives and build lasting connections.

As a fellow, you can spend either six or three months in Bochum, Germany. During this time, we will cover your sabbatical leave from work through financial compensation (e.g. for a teaching substitute) or provide grants of up to 2.000 € per month. In addition, we will provide a fully furnished apartment free of charge. You can invite guests for collaboration and receive financial support for research expenses. Private offices and meeting rooms with modern facilities offer optimal working conditions.

You can apply for our regular open call, or for our special call “Creating a Human-Centered Future: Exploring the Promise of Industry 5.0”.

Find out more: https://www.cais-research.de/en/cais-college/fellowships/

Working Groups: Boost Your Research Collaboration

A working group at CAIS enables you to assemble your own team of experts from different locations to collaborate in a stimulating environment.

We provide modern meeting facilities and catering for groups of up to ten members. In addition, we will cover travel and accommodation expenses. You can spend up to three weeks in Bochum or get together for several shorter meetings.  

Find out more: https://www.cais-research.de/en/cais-college/working-groups/

Application

The next deadline for applications is 31 July 2025. You can currently apply for a fellowship taking place between October 2026 and March 2027, or for working group meetings taking place from March 2026 onwards. Please use the application forms provided on our website.

The funding program is open to excellent scholars and practitioners at all career stages and from all disciplines. Both fundamental research and applied projects are welcome.

Questions? Please contact esther.laufer@cais-research.de.

December 1-2, 2025

online

Deadline: September 2, 2025

Platform governance continues to grow in importance and intellectual vibrancy as an interdisciplinary field of research. A changing mix of competing platform companies faced with various efforts to regulate, influence, or control them and their offers has become an ever more central feature of many societies. As monolithic services begin to fracture and decentralized platform infrastructures, some governments assert their power and authority, and new constellations of actors emerge, we witness more than mere technical transitions and instead realignments in the political economy of platforms and societies. These changes manifest through multiple frictions across state, market, and civil society – between digital sovereignty and transnational platform operations, established market leaders and nascent alternatives, context and consistency, regulatory intent and practice, and between pragmatic appraisals and normative aspirations. Understanding these transitions demand empirical analysis and may require new conceptual and methodological approaches.

The 2025 Platform Governance Research Network (PlatGovNet) online conference seeks submissions focused on these issues. We welcome a wide range of different perspectives and interests, including, but not limited to, submissions that focus on the complex and contentious politics of platforms, for example new (geo)political tensions, developments around generative artificial intelligence, and the wider diversity of rarely examined actors including smaller platforms, non-state actors, and middleware initiatives.

This is the third PlatGovNet international online conference, which brings together researchers engaging with the social and political questions posed by the transformation and emerging realities of the platformized societies. We seek to fostercutting-edge interdisciplinary research that critically engages with the social and political questions posed by a broad range of digital platforms. Beyond showcasing current research and getting feedback, the conference helps participants build community and find collaborators.

Relevant Research Topics

In particular, network members are typically interested in:

• Empirical studies of platform governance in all of its forms, including investigations into the emerging platform infrastructures, the labor practices, technologies, and institutional arrangements that characterize new governance configurations, and the implications for users, platforms, communities, and society;
  
• Conceptual contributions that may describe and interpret current changes in platform governance, namely (but not exclusively): decentralization; middleware; bridge-building, “prosocial” or “community-based” moderation techniques and philosophies;
  
• Policy-oriented analyses of private and governmental efforts to govern platforms, including comparative studies of governmental interventions across different geopolitical contexts, through both formal regulatory frameworks and informal governance mechanisms;
  
• Normative, conceptual, or theoretical insights into aspects of platform governance, especially those that highlight gaps in current public or scholarly discourse;
  
• Historical analyses and temporal perspectives on platform governance and speech moderation more widely;
  
• Methodological innovations for studying platform governance in transition, particularly in the absence of affordable or stable platform APIs;
  
• Research on the meta-aspects of platform governance scholarship, examining how the relationships between industry, government, academia and civil society are being reconfigured, and how these shifts impact knowledge production and policy development in the field.

We are keen on incorporating multiple perspectives from researchers located all around the world, so we encourage submissions from under-represented groups and diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds. We are especially interested in perspectives outside of U.S. and European contexts and will strive to accommodate multiple participant time zones in the conference program.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit extended abstracts of 800-1000 words via EasyChair at this link: https://easychair.org/cfp/PlatGovNet2025

Abstracts will be blind peer-reviewed and should include:

• a short section framing the context/problem being addressed;
  
• a clear research question;
  
• conceptual framework;
  
• details about how the submission seeks to address that question, including its research design; and 
  
• a brief discussion of the paper’s contributions to the literature and/or ongoing policy debates.

Authors of selected abstracts will present their ongoing work at the online conference. Submission of a complete paper before the Conference will not be required, although the organizers and PlatGovNet will, where useful, seek to help advise participants on possible avenues for publication.

This conference is open to all interested researchers and members of civil society and will have no registration fee. 

Timeline

• Deadline for abstract submission: end of day September 2, aka 00:00:00 anywhere on earth time
  
• Accepted submissions announced: mid-October 2025
  
• Online conference: December 1-2, 2025
  

Conference Organizing Committee

• Pranav Bidare, Center for Internet and Society
  
• Robert Gorwa, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
  
• Ivar Hartmann, Insper São Paulo
  
• Clara Iglesias Keller, Weizenbaum Institute, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
  
• Emillie de Keulenaar, University of Copenhagen
  
• Diyi Liu, University of Copenhagen
  
• João C. Magalhães, University of Manchester
  
• Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, University of Copenhagen