ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

May 20 - May 23, 2025

New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Deadline (EXTENDED): December 7, 2024

https://www.websci25.org/ 

Important Dates:

• Sat, November 30, 2024 Paper submission deadline
  
• Tue, January 31, 2025 Notification
  
• Tue, February 28, 2025 Camera-ready versions due
  
• Tue - Friday, May 20 - 23, 2025 Conference dates

About the Web Science Conference 

Web Science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding the complex and multiple impacts of the Web on society and vice versa. The discipline is well situated to address pressing issues of our time by incorporating various scientific approaches. We welcome quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research, including techniques from the social sciences and computer science. In addition, we are interested in work exploring Web-based data collection and research ethics. We also encourage studies that combine analyses of Web data and other types of data (e.g., from surveys or interviews) to help better understand user behavior online and offline.

2025 Emphasis: Maintaining a human-centric web in the era of Generative AI 

Web-based experiences are more deeply integrated into human experiences than ever before in history. However, the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (including large language models) has drastically shifted the interactions between humans in the digital environment. The Web has never been more productive, but the integrity of human connection has been compromised. Trust and community have been eroded during this current era of the Web and researching alternative aspects of life on the Web is as essential as ever. Bots, deepfakes, and sophisticated cyberattacks are proliferating rapidly while people increasingly navigate the Web for news, social interaction, and learning. This year's conference especially encourages contributions investigating how humans are reconfiguring their Web-based engagements in the presence of artificial intelligence. Additionally, we welcome papers on a wide range of topics at the heart of Web Science.

Possible topics across methodological approaches and digital contexts include but are not limited to: 

Understanding the Web        

• Trends in globalization and fragmentation of the Web
  
• The architecture, philosophy, and evolution of the Web
  
• Automation and AI in all its manifestations relevant to the Web
  
• Critical analyses of the Web and Web technologies
  
• The Spread of Large Models on the Web
  

Making the Web Inclusive       

• Issues of discrimination and fairness
  
• Intersectionality and design justice in questions of marginalization and inequality
  
• Ethical challenges of technologies, data, algorithms, platforms, and people on the Web
  
• Safeguarding and governance of the Web, including anonymity, security, and trust
  
• Inclusion, literacy and the digital divide
  
• Human-centered security and robustness on the Web
  

The Web and Everyday Life     

• Social machines, crowd computing, and collective intelligence
  
• Web economics, social entrepreneurship, and innovation
  
• Legal and policy issues, including rights and accountability for the AI industry
  
• The creator economy: Humanities, arts, and culture on the Web
  
• Politics and social activism on the Web
  
• Online education and remote learning
  
• Health and well-being online
  
• Social presence in online professional event spaces
  
• The Web as a source of news and information
  

 Doing Web Science      

• Data curation, Web archives and stewardship in Web Science
  
• Temporal and spatial dimensions of the Web as a repository of information
  
• Analysis and modeling of human and automatic behavior (e.g., bots)
  
• Analysis of online social and information networks
  
• Detecting, preventing, and predicting anomalies in Web data (e.g., fake content, spam)
  
• Novel analysis techniques for Web and social network analysis
  
• Recommendation engines and contextual adaptation for Web tasks 
  
• Web-based information retrieval and information generation 
  
• Supporting heterogeneity across modalities, sensors, and channels on the Web. 
  
• User modeling and personalization approaches on the Web.

Format of the submissions

Please upload your submissions via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=websci25 

There are two submission formats.

* Full paper should be between 6 and 10 pages (inclusive of references, appendices, etc.). Full papers typically report on mature and completed projects.

* Short papers should be up to 5 pages (inclusive of references, appendices, etc.). Short papers will primarily report on high-quality ongoing work not mature enough for a full-length publication.

All accepted submissions will be assigned an oral presentation (of two different lengths). 

All papers should adopt the current ACM SIG Conference proceedings template (acmart.cls). Please submit papers as PDF files using the ACM template, either in Microsoft Word format (available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template under “Word Authors”) or with the ACM LaTeX template on the Overleaf platform which is available https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sig-proceedings-template/bmvfhcdnxfty. In particular, please ensure that you are using the two-column version of the appropriate template.

All contributions will be judged by the Program Committee upon rigorous peer review standards for quality and fit for the conference, by at least three referees. Additionally, each paper will be assigned to a Senior Program Committee member to ensure review quality.

WebSci-2025 review is double-blind. Therefore, please anonymize your submission: do not put the author(s) names or affiliation(s) at the start of the paper, and do not include funding or other acknowledgments in papers submitted for review. References to authors' own prior relevant work should be included, but should not specify that this is the authors' own work. It is up to the authors' discretion how much to further modify the body of the paper to preserve anonymity. The requirement for anonymity does not extend outside of the review process, e.g. the authors can decide how widely to distribute their papers over the Internet. Even in cases where the author's identity is known to a reviewer, the double-blind process will serve as a symbolic reminder of the importance of evaluating the submitted work on its own merits without regard to the authors' reputation.

For authors who wish to opt-out of publication proceedings, this option will be made available upon acceptance. This will encourage the participation of researchers from the social sciences that prefer to publish their work as journal articles. All authors of accepted papers (including those who opt out of proceedings) are expected to present their work at the conference.

ACM Publication Policies 

1. By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

2. Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.  ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors.  The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022.  We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts. 

Program Committee Chairs:

• Fred Morstatter (University of Southern California)
  
• Sarah Rajtmajer (Penn State University)
  
• Vivek Singh (Rutgers University)
  
• Marlon Twyman (University of Southern California)
  

For any questions and queries regarding the paper submission, please contact the chairs at websci25@easychair.org

June 18-20, 2025

University of Lincoln, UK

Deadline: December 6, 2024

Please see the CFP below (submit here). 

Confirmed Keynotes:

• Dr Debashree Mukherjee (Columbia University, USA)
  
• Dr Kate Terkanian (Bournemouth University, UK)
  

This seventh iteration of the Women’s Film and Television History Network conference will foreground transnational and transmedial approaches to histories of women’s work in and across film, television and related media. The conference seeks to expand women’s film and TV histories by exploring cross-border and cross-medial relationships. 

An 'entangled’ approach to film, TV and media historiography problematises national and mono-medial histories (Cronqvist and Hilgert, 2017). It recognises the complex processes by which film and television are made, distributed, seen and received across borders, be they geographical, cultural, ideological or otherwise defined, and in dialogue with other media.

This compels us to ‘read against the grain’ of existing histories, paying attention to ‘how historical silences are produced’ (Hilmes, 2017). These are the fundamentals of feminist media historiography, and this conference aims to bring women’s voices, figures, organisations, and stories into the light, giving them sharper focus. The conference will emphasise women’s roles in these entanglements. Our understanding of ‘women’ is inclusive and gender-expansive. 

We encourage transmedial approaches that account for the role of women in the long histories of media convergence in different social and cultural contexts, as well as related practices, such as divergence, conglomeration, inter- and cross-mediality. ‘Media’ is defined broadly.  Work that engages with (interconnected) histories of women’s film and television beyond Western contexts is welcome.  

We are calling for papers in any area of women’s film and television history, but especially those that respond to the theme, on topics such as, but not limited to: 

• Entangled and / or transnational women’s media histories and historiography: theory, practice, challenges  
  
• Case studies of film and TV workers across national or medial borders 
  
• Historicising women’s role in digital or online screen media production, distribution, consumption, promotion, publicity or criticism. 
  
• Media convergence pre- and post-digital media 
  
• Feminist and/or decolonising approaches to media archaeology
  
• Methodological challenges and approaches to entangled media histories 
  
• Entangled histories in cinema and TV industries beyond the mainstream e.g. amateur cinema, community television, independent and activist film and TV.  

We welcome proposals in the following three formats: 

• 15-minute presentations, including the following information: 
  
• • title  
  • 250-word abstract  
  • brief biography of the author(s).  
• pre-constituted panels with a maximum of 4 speakers (panel length will be 90 minutes and should include at least 15 minutes for discussion). Pre-constituted panel proposals should include: 
  
• • short (250-word) rationale statement, explaining the constitution of the panel and types of contributions it will include. 
  • individual abstracts (250 word)   
  • brief biography of all contributors

Panels can also be constituted as roundtables, workshops or other non-standard forms. Please contact the organising team to discuss ideas. 

• Practice-led contributions which address women’s histories in film, television and audio/visual media are encouraged. Please submit:  
  
• • a 250-word description  
  • running time 
  • display requirements   
  • links to an excerpt and/or full work 
  • brief biography of creator(s). 

If accepted, practice-led contributions may be presented as part of panels or as a limited number of separate sessions/screenings and/or made available to delegates online.   

Please submit here: https://forms.office.com/e/NvRLHtdNa2

Deadline for proposals: 6 December 2024. The acceptance of your proposal will be communicated to you by the end of January 2025.

If you have any questions please contact Hannah Andrews (handrews@lincoln.ac.uk) and/or Jeongmee Kim (jkim@lincoln.ac.uk). On behalf of the conference organising team: Hannah Andrews, Diane Charlesworth, Jeongmee Kim, and Frances Morgan.

References 

Cronqvist, M. and Hilgert, C. (2017) Entangled Media Histories: The Value of Transnational and Transmedial Approaches in Media Historiography. Media History 23(1): 130-141. 

Hilmes, M. (2017) Entangled Media Histories: a Response. Media History 23(1): 142-4.

May 28-30, 2025 

Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Deadline: April 1, 2025

The 18th Biennial Communication Ethics Conference and the Silver Jubilee Anniversary Conference of the International Communicology Institute will be held May 28-30, 2025. The conference is sponsored by the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies and the Communication Ethics Institute at Duquesne University and the International Communicology Institute in Washington, DC. 

Theme: Ethical Communicology of the Image and Imagination: Discovering the Ethical as Natural or Artificial, Real or Surreal 

The conference proposes to explore current research on the “image” across the human sciences. We hope to make concrete the ethical, logical, philosophical, and rhetorical foundations of communication as “imagination” in the experience of embodied thinking, speaking, and inscribing as the ecology of culture. We wish to (1) explore current frontiers of natural and artificial sign-systems, (2) encounter diverse manifestations of concrete reality and abstract surreality of human imagination, and (3) discover future domains of conscious experience that found the art and practice of the human sign milieu.

 The domain of the image/imagination includes all the Arts and Sciences of expression and perception, including: (1) Arts of Media: speaking, writing, painting, printing, sculpture, performance, voice; (2) Sciences of Media: social and media ecology, film and video, photography, digital and legacy media; and (3) Technological Media of Artificial Intelligence (AI): ubiquitous computing, robotics, holographics, and applied algorithms. Communication ethics theory, research, and application corresponds with and enriches our understanding of each domain. To assist in their exploration, questions and problematics that presenters may consider include, but are not limited to:

• What questions are raised by recent phenomenological, rhetorical, and critical theories of vision, visuality, perception, expression, and the experience of communication?
  
• Is there a general theory of image ethics? If so, what are its foundations and some of its value limitations (e.g., journalism, cinema, advertising, design, propaganda)?
  
• How is the rhetoric of images impacted by networked and internetworked media?
  
• How does an epidemiological perspective (e.g., transmission, contagion, virality) add to our understanding of the production and circulation of image artifacts as ecology?
  
• What do images want from AI? What does AI want from images? What constitutes personification in/of the media?
  
• What pasts, presents, and futures are imagined by the visualization of data?

We invite completed papers or extended abstracts of 200–500 words. 

We also invite panel proposals of three speakers per panel. Please include a panel title with 250-word rationale, titles and 200-word abstracts for each presentation, and contributor contact information (institutional affiliation and email).

Please send submissions to cec@duq.edu by April 1, 2025

Essential Conference Information 

Location: Located in the heart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, Duquesne University is a vibrant, private institution known for its commitment to academic excellence and social justice. Duquesne University is home to the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, a hub for phenomenological research and scholarship, with extensive collections including the archives of prominent phenomenologists.

Transportation: Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) has direct international flights from London and easy connecting flights via New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth and others. The airport is 18 miles (approx. 20 minutes) to city center/Duquesne University.

From airport to conference location (18 miles):

Ride sharing services (Uber, Lyft)

Port Authority Bus #28X Airport Flyer (stops in city center at Liberty Ave @ Wood Street, then approximately 15-minute walk to campus).

Hotels: Nearest walkable (10-15 minutes): Marriott City Center (request the Duquesne University rate), Cambria Hotel (request the conference rate), Double Tree. Also walkable: Omni William Penn, Embassy Suites, Kimpton Hotel Monaco

Parking: parking is available on campus for $20/day

Journalism Studies (special issue)

Deadline: June 15, 2025

Much journalism is produced, consumed and given meaning through interconnected cycles, waves, rhythms and rituals. While such fluctuations, some of which are recurring, consistently have been paid some attention within journalism studies, there has been little focus on broader seasonal patterns related to weather or/and culture. The more recent interest in seasons and seasonality within the (environmental) humanities and social sciences — e.g. Fischer and Macauley (2021) and Bremer and Wardekker (2021) — has thus largely bypassed journalism studies. This may be due, in part, to the fact that this interest partly has emerged in relation to climate change as “seasonal disruption has been occurring at a faster rate over the last several decades” (Fischer and Macauley 2022, 13); another and related reason for the neglect of seasons may be that seasonal disruptions primarily have surfaced in weather reporting, which has never figured prominently in journalism studies.

The recent interest in, and somewhat changed significance of, seasons provide fertile ground for a broader discussion of the intersections of journalism and seasonal patterns. Few people, arguably, live in “seasonless places” (Orlove 2003, 121), which means that most of us inhabit what have been called “seasonal cultures” (Bremer and Wardekker 2021, viii). As diverse amalgamations of astronomy, biology, meteorology, everyday observations, historical data, memory, power and culture, seasons provide important interpretive layers for understanding and situating ourselves and our communities in relation to continuity and change; and as Carey (1989) emphasized through his notion of “ritual communication”, journalism is an integral part of such processes.

Journalistic coverage of the weather follows and is inscribed within seasonal patterns (see e.g., Zion 2016; Bødker & Simonsen 2023). However, seasons consist of many other interrelated rhythms. Given the prominence of (national) politics in journalism, it is unsurprising that one of the most widespread terms linking journalism and seasons is the notion of the silly season, which — in certain countries — connects journalistic content to the rhythms of national politics, particularly the summer period when parliament is in recess. Yet, seasonal journalism (Bødker 2025), which concerns seasonally recurrent forms of journalistic content, is also tied to a range of other important rhythms, including those related to sports, fashion, education, theatre, film, music, religious festivals, holidays, finance, business, international meetings, and more. A seasonal perspective is related to, but also distinct from, “issue-attention cycles” (Downs 1972), which — as the name suggests — focuses on how journalistic attention to issues develops and fades, and what drives such waves, which may or may not be linked to seasons. A seasonal perspective is more likely to be interested in incremental changes over time, or in understanding significant disruptions to what would normally be expected.

Analyzing journalism as seasonal will, arguably, reveal important insights into how journalism aligns with and helps (re-)negotiate broader societal and/or natural rhythms. The goal of this special issue is to assemble work based on this premise. It aims to encourage and develop analytical perspectives on seasonality and journalism through a series of culturally and geographically diverse empirical and theoretical investigations that may explore both the production and consumption of journalism.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of possible themes to address within the framework outlined above:

• How are particular types of journalistic content, forms and/or tropes related to seasonal rhythms, such as the opening of parliament, the start of the football season, or specific religious events and holidays?
  
• How is the production and consumption of journalism linked to seasonal patterns, such as (almost) pre-written content published at specific times of year? How is such predictable content received and appropriated by audiences?
  
• How do seasonal disruptions feature in journalistic productions (e.g., the coverage of heat waves, floods, or changing patterns of tourism), and how are such productions interpreted?
  
• How can a seasonal perspective be related to or enhance environmental or climate change journalism?
  
• How is journalism related to the increased challenges to the four-fold, temperate seasonal pattern that has been imposed on indigenous cultures in settler countries?
  
• How is the perspective of seasonality, both theoretically and empirically, linked to other concepts of fluctuations within journalism studies (e.g., cycles, waves, rhythms, and rituals)?
  
• What are some of the methodological approaches and implications of studying seasonal patterns in journalism?
  

References:

Bremer, S. and Wardekker, A. (eds.) (2021) Changing Seasonality: How Communities are Revising their Seasons. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Bødker, H. (forthcoming, 2025). Seasonal Journalism and Climate Change. In Eldridge II, S. et al (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (second edition). London: Routledge.

Bødker, H. and Simonsen, S. (2023) Danish Public Service Online Weather from 2005-2022: from Meteorological Data and Information to Leisurely Commonality. Media, Culture & Society 46(3): 591–606.

Carey (1992) J.W. Communications and culture: Essays on media and society. New York, NY: Routledge.

Downs, A. (1972) Up and down with ecology — the ‘issue-attention cycle’. The Public Interest 28: 38-50.

Fischer, L. and Macauley, D. (eds.) (2022) The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Zion, L. (2016) The Weather Obsession. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Submission Instructions

The format of the special issue is full research articles of 6000 and 9000 words, inclusive of the abstract, tables, references, figure captions, endnotes. WHen submitting your manuscript please select the "seasonalities of journalism" issue. The articles will appear as they a finished but will appear as a collection once all articles are completed. This will most likely be in the spring of 2026.

Submit here.

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