ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Medijske studije/Media studies (special issue)

Deadline: June 20, 2024

Medijske studije / Media studies journal announces call for papers for the special issue: New European Media and Platform Policy: Implications for the Political Economy of News

Guest editors:

Tales Tomaz (University of Salzburg), Josef Trappel (University of Salzburg), Mercedes Medina (University of Navarra)

Important dates:

• Extended abstract submission deadline (800-1000 words, excluding references): 20 June 2024
  
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 15 August 2024
  
• Full paper submission deadline: 15 December 2024
  
• Special issue publication date: June 2025

Different economic arrangements of media and technology lead to different outcomes. Publicly funded media with independent governance structures usually provide more accurate and public-oriented coverage, upholding the rights of vulnerable groups (Benson, 2018; Cushion, 2017). Even distinct ownership and governance forms of private media matter: publicly traded companies are more aligned with general capitalist demands than family-owned outlets, or ad-based outlets are more sensitive to corporate interests than subscription-based ones (Dunaway, 2008; Soloski, 2019).

Thinking about these conditions is ever more important as the political economy of news has significantly changed in the recent decades. News has become digital (Newman et al., 2023), platformised (Poell et al., 2023) and produced and distributed by a variety of actors beyond media companies, ranging from big tech platforms to small alternative content producers (Mancini, 2020). In addition, the advertising-based business model of news production does not seem to be sustainable for the demands of democratic societies facing (geo)political, economic, societal and ecological crises, while the pressure on publicly funded media only increases (Sjøvaag & Ohlsson, 2019).

Far from the libertarian fantasy that an economy can be created outside the control or oversight of governments, political bodies are active in shaping the conditions under which all stakeholders operate. This is also true for media and technology (Griffin, 2023). Accordingly, the European Union has followed these developments and created a comprehensive regulatory package to influence the political economy of media and platforms. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the AI Act and the Media Freedom Act (EMFA), among others, have laid down new baselines for the operation of media and digital platforms. To what extent are these changes having a real impact on the political economy of news production, distribution and consumption? Should we expect changes in EU countries in terms of ownership concentration, funding of public interest content or the balance between profit and non-profit news production? Does the new regulatory framework favour the promotion of public interest content? Should we expect EU influence in middle powers, which are often “policy followers”, shaping their regulation and political economy of news as well?

On top of those questions, the governance toolbox is more diverse than the one reflected in this EU regulatory framework. There are options on the table such as stronger antitrust enforcement against platforms (as attempted by the FTC in the US), increasing public subsidies to news media (the Nordic experience) or requiring platforms to fund news media (as represented by the Australian Media Bargaining Code). There is also the proposal to create a fully-fledged public service internet (D’Arma et al., 2021). Would such measures in Europe achieve better results than the current framework? What impact should we expect from different instruments? How to design these alternatives, given the current framework, and how to build the political will to bring them about?

This special issue welcomes proposals on the topics above and related discussions. Submissions can be theoretical, methodological or empirical, case studies or comparative work. Innovative use of methods is encouraged. We expect extended abstracts of 800 to 1.000 words, excluding references, by 20 June 2024.

Abstracts should be sent to tales.tomaz@plus.ac.at, josef.trappel@plus.ac.at, mmedina@unav.es and ms@fpzg.hr.

Manuscripts should be submitted directly through the Media Studies OJS system. The manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review, following the standard procedure of the journal. When submitting the manuscript, please make a note that submission is for the special issue New European Media and Platform Policy: Implications for the Political Economy of News.

Manuscripts should be up to 8.000 words, including footnotes and references. Detailed instructions for authors can be found here.

For more information about the special issue, please contact: tales.tomaz@plus.ac.at, josef.trappel@plus.ac.at, mmedina@unav.es or grbesa@fpzg.hr.

Articles published in the Media Studies journal are indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, ProQuest - Social Science Database and Social Science Premium Collection, ERIH PLUS, Hrčak – The Portal of Croatian Scientific Journals and DOAJ – the Directory of Open Access Journals.

For more information about the journal, visit Media Studies.

References

Benson, R. (2018). Rethinking the sociology of media ownership. In L. Grindstaff, M.-C. M. Lo, & J. R. Hall (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology (pp. 387–396). Routledge.

Cushion, S. (2017). The democratic value of news: Why public service media matter. Bloomsbury Publishing.

D’Arma, A., Fuchs, C., Horowitz, M. A., & Unterberger, K. (2021). The future of public service media and the internet. In C. Fuchs & K. Unterberger (Eds.), The Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto (pp. 113–127). University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.16997/book60

Dunaway, J. (2008). Markets, ownership, and the quality of campaign news coverage. The Journal of Politics, 70(4), 1193–1202. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381608081140

Griffin, R. (2023). Public and private power in social media governance: Multistakeholderism, the rule of law and democratic accountability. Transnational Legal Theory, 14(1), 46–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2023.2203538

Mancini, P. (2020). Comparing media systems and the digital age. International Journal of Communication, 14, 5761–5774.

Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Eddy, K., Robertson, C. T., & Nielsen, R. K. (2023). Digital News Report 2023. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2023

Poell, T., Nieborg, D. B., & Duffy, B. E. (2023). Spaces of negotiation: Analyzing platform power in the news industry. Digital Journalism, 11(8), 1391–1409. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2103011

Sjøvaag, H., & Ohlsson, J. (2019). Media ownership and journalism. In H. Sjøvaag & J. Ohlsson, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.839

Soloski, J. (2019). The murky ownership of the journalistic enterprise. Journalism, 20(1), 159–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918809250

November 29, 2024

Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline: June 2, 2024

It is our pleasure to open the call for papers and presentations for the 2024 Prague Media Point Conference, which will take place on November 29, in Prague, Czech Republic.

Artificial intelligence has come with a power to dramatically shaken our economic, labour, and information systems. For the media sphere, it means yet another drastic turn on its bumpy ride towards any prospect of renewed stability. But unlike many other such turns, AI may provide professionals with a reactive (and creative) potential on a more egalitarian and therefore democratic basis. With the hindsight of coming on to two years of widely accessible AI tools, join Prague Media Point in assessing the impact on and responses of the media sphere and journalism to the two-vowel phenomenon. Be that on the job market, school curricula, newsroom policies, media regulation, journalistic solidarity, and beyond.

We seek submissions of abstracts, presentations or session proposals that focus on research, projects, and practices in the media that appear to be working and generating impact in the response to AI-induced media volatility (alternatively, which clearly demonstrate a potential to do so). We stress the importance of this AI-volatility link and the example-based approach for the submissions. The topical areas should be related to the following:

·         Reforming media/journalism education and media literacy for the new paradigm

·         Responses to increasingly precarious and volatile work conditions of journalists

·         Freelancing as the new norm

·         Building cross-journalism solidarity and new forms of collaboration

·         Internal changes at newsrooms – policies, workers, leadership, strategies

·         AI and new business models

·         Success of hitherto platform and media regulation and what to improve

·         Protecting journalism in adversity – standards, volatility, SLAAPs, pluralism, trust

·         Harnessing AI for investigative and data journalism

·         AI and English-language dominance vs. small-language media – marginalization or expansion?

·         Election super-year and beyond: what’s new on the disinfo scene, what’s missing in our responses

Please submit max 500-word abstracts or proposals + a short bio by June 2, 2024 to: precek@keynote.cz.

Please use the templates on our webpage, where you can also find more information on registration, deadlines, and fees: https://www.praguemediapoint.com/call-for-abstracts

Contact: Marek Přeček, Project Coordinator, precek@keynote.cz

May 21, 2024

Online

IAMCR Presidential PhD Research Seminar on "News Agencies in Transition: An Exploration of Their Status Quo, Challenges, and Future Prospects convened by Jasmin Surm 

Join the webinar on “News Agencies in Transition” on 21 May 2024 at 08:00 UTC. 

This webinar offers an exceptional opportunity to foster enriching scholarly dialogue on the dynamic field of news agencies. Participants will have the chance to network and engage in meaningful exchanges of ideas. 

Our presenters will address a range of critical topics, including: 

- Jasmin Surm: "News Agencies in Transition: An Exploration of Their Current State, Challenges, and Future Prospects” 

- Sina Thäsler-Kordonouri: "Exploring AI Integration in UK Newsrooms: An Investigation into the Use and Evaluation of News Agency Automated Journalism” 

- Barbara Ravbar: "Refugee Crisis through Media Lenses: Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Xenophobia in Reporting of European News Agencies on the Ukrainian and Syrian Refugee Crisis” 

Your participation is highly anticipated! 

To receive an invitation, please contact Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen at <mazlum@iamcr.org>.

November 22, 2024

MS Teams

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

Continuing our research meetings focused on specific issues of mediatization research chaired by eminent experts (Göran Bolin (2017), Johan Fornäs (2018), Andreas Hepp (2019), Mark Deuze (2020) André Jansson (2021), Andrew Hoskins (2022), Kirsten Frandsen (2023), this year the workshop will take place online on the 22 November 2024 and it will be led by Professor Carlos A. Scolari, Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University. We invite all mediatization researchers who wish to discuss their own research projects in a narrow and closed group of media scholars under the guidance of an expert. 

MORE INFO AND REGISTRATION:

https://www.umcs.pl/pl/towards-development-of-mediatization-research-viii-mediatization-s-conversations-of-theories-concepts-and-traditions,29680.htm 

Fribourg, Switzerland

The Chair in Communication and Media Studies (Prof. Thilo von Pape) at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) offers a fully funded 5 year PhD position for graduates with at least intermediate skills in French.

You are a creative and autonomous person, and you enjoy the theories and methods of social research. You can work both independently and as part of a team. You are interested in the following areas:

- uses, effects, and social issues of media innovations: equal access, everyday appropriation, well-being, privacy, sustainability,

- digital communication: mobile media, social networks, human-machine communication, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, internet of things

You are proficient in qualitative or quantitative methods of data collection and analysis applied in the social sciences.

Percentage of employment: 100%

Application deadline: June 8

Start of employment: September 1.

Complete job ad: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm/de/assets/public/files/jobs/2405-DiplomassistenzCommMediaE.pdf

Questions to: thilo.vonpape@unifr.ch

Anna Zsubori

Since the creation of the franchise in 2000, Disney Princesses have become a ‘phenomenon’ receiving international attention, admiration as well as criticism from both consumers and scholars. Although audience research has seen growing recognition recently, the investigation of audiences in Central and Eastern Europe and those of Disney animated features is greatly neglected by academics. Within the framework of audience research and by employing Disney Princess animations as the object of study, Anna Zsubori’s book examines the verbal and visual identity constructions of tweens in illiberal Hungary.

Through Hungarian tweens’ ambivalent and sometimes even contradictory ideas of identity, this research reveals the heterogeneity of both the ‘Princess Phenomenon’, by highlighting that its local negotiation is profoundly impacted by cultural and societal characteristics, and of the diverse audiences, who are multifarious in their understandings that often incorporate antithetical and dynamic discourses. Combining textual, thematic and semiotic, analyses of the conversations, tweens’ drawings and building blocks, and broader contextual examinations of the sessions with Hungarian children, this book offers original contributions on both theoretical and methodological levels. Its findings demonstrate the novelty of this project, and its relevance to audience, communication, cultural, feminist media, film and tweenhood studies, and sociology.

Praise:

“In this absorbing and thought-provoking text, Zsubori deftly explores the complex position that Disney Princesses inhabit within the lives of Central and Eastern European tweens. Exploring the inbetweenness of age, geography, and culture, this book offers a nuanced reading of Hungarian tweens as intelligent and critical viewers of Disney media, drawing on rich empirical data to give voice to this under-researched group. Through its interdisciplinary approach Zsubori contributes to our understanding of the limits of Western theories in non-Western contexts, and what it means to do gender-specific field work in an anti-gender environment.”

— Victoria Cann, University of East Anglia

“The Walt Disney Company is one of the oldest and most complex global entertainment empires today, engaging with and influencing our lives in various ways regardless of age, race, gender, or geographical location. This book provides a powerful lens inviting the reader to look at Disney not only at the global, macro level, but also the micro-level: in our daily lives, around the family dinner table, in the classroom setting and elsewhere. While the focus is on the Disney Princess phenomenon, and tweens negotiating self-representation and identity in the small Central European nation of Hungary, the insights and conclusions are, in many ways, rather universal, often surprising and paradoxical. The reader will not only see the Disney Princess Franchise but the Disney Company from a more nuanced and informed perspective after reading this influential and well-researched book.”

— Katalin Lustyik, Ithaca College

“What unfolds when a Princess from the West claims her throne in Eastern and Central Europe? Is she a colonial ruler or a feminist icon? Anna Zsubori's insightful book explores the interpretation of Disney Princesses by Hungarian tweens, examining reception of their gender roles and racial identities within the context of Hungary's increasingly patriarchal, racially intolerant, and illiberal society. This exploration delves into the "in-betweenness" of Hungarian tweens, a concept that captures not just their transitional age but also Hungary's delicate balance between East and West.”

— Irena Reifová, Charles University

About the Author:

Anna Zsubori is a media sociologist and film studies scholar, presently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Loughborough University. She specialises in conducting audience research with marginalised and vulnerable participants in Central and Eastern Europe. Her research explores the heterogeneity of Hungarian tween audiences through the participants’ ambivalent and sometimes even contradictory ideas about their identity, while her latest project, funded by the British Academy, examines social media usage among Hungarian LGBTQ+ citizens. Dr Zsubori’s articles have been published in prestigious journals such as the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Children and Media and Studies in Eastern European Cinema.

Module Reading Lists:

Please do consider requesting a copy of Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary for your university library. It should be relevant to reading lists for various gender, media and film modules/studies, including:

• Audiences, Users and Producers
  
• Children, Culture and Cinema
  
• Culture and Media
  
• Cultural Studies
  
• Disney Studies
  
• Feminist Approaches to Media Analysis
  
• Feminist Media Studies
  
• Film Studies
  
• Gender and Representation
  
• Gender, Identity and Media
  
• Global Audiences
  
• Media Audiences
  
• Media, Identity and Diversity
  
• Popular Media
  
• Researching the Audience
  
• Society and Representation
  
• Texts and Audiences
  
• Tweenhood Studies
  
• Youth Culture and the Media
  

Availability:

Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary is now from Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield) for £92 (Hardcover) and £38 (Ebook). For more information, please visit: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793647115/Disney-Princesses-and-Tween-Identity-The-Franchise-in-Illiberal-Hungary

September 4-7, 2024

Como, Italy

Deadline: May 24, 2024

Find out more

Apply

The TCS organising group is pleased to announce the third edition of its summer school.

Applications are now open!

The spectre of digital capitalism is haunting the world.

The so-called “AI boom” of the past few years has now taken centre stage in the public debate, scientific research, and in the political agendas of international institutions.

As the Global North seems to have embarked on a relentless journey towards the digital restructuring of our societies, the digital transition has given rise to new problems regarding the societal and political implications of new technologies.

Is a new form of digital capitalism emerging from the interplay of digital technology and pre-existing social relations? What is the direct impact of digital technology on human labour? How does this affect our life as a whole? And how is it revolutionising the public sphere? More urgently, what is the role of emancipatory politics in this scenario?

These are some of the questions that tech enthusiasts and technophobes alike are ill-prepared to address.

The third edition of the Lake Como Summer School in Critical Theory of Society will gather scholars of renowned reputation to discuss these issues from different perspectives.

Application deadline: Friday, 24 May 2024 at 11:59 p.m. CET (UTC + 01:00)

Keynote speakers

Gavin Mueller

Rachel O’Dwyer

Tiziano Bonini

Emiliano Treré

Workshops

Philip Di Salvo 

Gala Hernández López

August 18-25, 2024

Jönköping University Sweden

Deadline: May 17, 2024

Democracy depends on engaged citizens. And yet, the most powerful discourses surrounding engagement are strategically designed to drive commercial markets. As a counterpoint to this horizon, the main purpose of this PhD residential course is to understand theories and methods of media engagement not as a metric but as a marker of power relations.

This 7.5 credit course offers an international platform for PhD researchers to write, present and receive feedback on work in progress from global experts on theories and methods for media engagement. The course will cover key concepts for engagement, including political and public spheres, digital media and AI related technologies, social movements and mobilisation, transmedia engagement, and cultural citizenship and popular culture.

Key Highlights: Mentoring and networking with world leading scholars and international doctoral researchers; slow thinking, with time to write thesis chapters and peer reviewed journal articles; residential setting of Gränna Campus, overlooking the great lake of Vättern, with easy access to local food and crafts, clear water swimming, nature walks and mountain views; social events, including trips to the historical island of Visingsö.

Teaching Team: course leader Annette Hill (co author with Dahlgren of Media Engagement Routledge 2023), and Peter Dahlgren (author of Media and Political Engagement 2009), Renira Rampazzo Gambarato (co-author of Theory, Strategy, and Development in Transmedia Storytelling 2020), and Joke Hermes (author of Cultural Citizenship and Popular Culture 2023).

Website and application: for information on the course, application process, fees, and key dates (deadline soon!) see https://ju.se/mediaengagement. Contact Annette Hill (Annette.hill@ju.se)

September 26-28, 2024

Piedmont (Italy)

Deadline: May 18, 2024

This is to let you know that we are now accepting abstract proposals for the stream on Food Media and Communication in the congress of the International Society for Gastronomic Sciences and Studies (ISGSS) titled Shaping Gastronomy: Regenerating Food Systems and Societies. The deadline is the 18th of May. If you wish you can associate your abstract to the panel Taste Experience and Media in Contemporary Society or send it as an independent oral contribution. Here is the link to the call: https://www.internationalgastronomicsociety.org/calls/food-media-and-communication

The congress takes place in Piedmont (Italy) between the 26th and the 28th of September 2024. For details on our organization, on the congress and its beautiful locations, please follow this link: https://www.internationalgastronomicsociety.org/congress-overview

Contact (stream): Luca Antoniazzi, l.antoniazzi@unisg.it

Media and Communication researchers, please consider taking part in the study “Affecting research in media and communication”, which aims to map and quantify emotional risks and emotional labour of conducting research in our disciplines, its impact on job stress, burnout and satisfaction, as well as best practice in supporting researchers’ well-being.

The survey is in English, anonymous, takes around 10 minutes to complete, and is open to media and communication researchers from across the world.

Survey link: https://eu.surveymonkey.com/r/KHGGDF2

As we are increasingly working in precarious environments, investigating the emotional toll of media and communication production and consumption, as well as studying distressing content, we should also be acknowledging our own experiences of working in these fields and ways in which we can be best supported.

If you need any further information about participation in the study then please contact Dr Maja Simunjak (Middlesex University London) - M.Simunjak@mdx.ac.uk