ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Convergence (special issue)

Deadline: April 4, 2025

Edited by: Hanne Bruun, Catherine Johnson, Tim Raats and Vilde Schanke Sundet

Over the past decade, the growth of global platforms has led to the rise of ‘platformisation’: the ‘penetration of infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of digital platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life, as well as the reorganisation of cultural practices and imaginations around these platforms’ (Poell et al. 2019:1). This has specific implications for public service media (PSM), which now operate within a platform ecosystem in which a small number of largely US platforms determine the rules of the game (van Dijck et al., 2018). Platformisation has created the conditions for the emergence of global streaming services, such as Netflix, Disney+, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video, with which PSM compete for audiences, revenue and talent. These new forms of on-demand, data-driven video streaming services challenge the dominance that many PSM organisations once had as the principal providers of domestic audiovisual culture. For PSM organisations this is a double bind: as they have lost audiences to streaming services and platforms, they have also had to develop new on-demand services and online content that can only be delivered through the infrastructures owned by global platforms. Yet the way in which these challenges play out for PSM are context specific. Despite large-scale studies focused on comparing systemic political and economic factors, there are relatively few comparative studies of the organisational practices and cultural outputs of PSM organisations. This is a significant omission because a growing body of work argues that it is precisely in the areas of organisational practice and cultural output that the impact of platformisation on PSM is most keenly felt (see, for example, D’Arma et al., 2021; Iordache et al., 2024; Lassen, 2025).

In response, this special issue asks: How might a comparative approach help us to better understand PSM in the age of platforms? Comparison here could be across different ‘levels of influence’ (Havens and Lotz, 2016) within the media industries, such as comparing policy/regulation and organisational practices, or comparing organisational practices with cultural outputs. In this sense, we particularly welcome articles that take a mixed method approach, combining (for example) document analysis, interviews and/or analysis of texts. Or it could be comparison across different platforms and/or contexts. We particularly welcome studies that compare across more than two contexts and studies that look beyond the Western contexts that have dominated studies of PSM.

Indicative topics include, but are not restricted to:

• Comparative analysis of the changing organisational cultures of PSM
  
• Comparative analysis of PSM commissioning, publishing and/or distribution practices
  
• Comparative analysis of PSM programming/content
  
• Novel methodological approaches to studying PSM in a comparative context
  
• Comparative analysis of the values underpinning PSM organisations
  
• Mixed method approaches that compare across policy, production and/or texts
  
• Theoretical approaches to comparative media systems analysis
  

Please submit a 500-750 word abstract that includes a short statement outlining how your proposed article aligns with the special issue’s aims to PSMspecialissue@leeds.ac.uk email by 4 April 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be circulated by 5 May 2025, with full length articles to be submitted by 22 September 2025.

Special Issue in Discourse & Society

Deadline: June 2, 2025

https://journals.sagepub.com/home/das

• Majid KhosraviNik, Newcastle University
  
• Hossein Kermani, Vienna University
  

Since its introduction, GenAI has revolutionised many aspects of the sociopolitical sphere in recent years. Technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) and, in particular, its baby poster, ChatGPT, have already been the topic of many studies in different fields, from political science to psychology and communication (Bail, 2023; Gilardi et al., 2023). Despite, the obvious relevance of GenAI to working assumptions of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), our knowledge of the nature, quality, and multifaceted implications of this computational breakthrough in discourse production, distribution, and consumption across various contexts is minimal. AI could be viewed as the new phase in forcing reconsideration, and re-examination of the dynamic of discourse in society, following on and going beyond the postulated phase of Social Media Communication (SMC) paradigm (KhosraviNik 2017, 2022, 2023). Both the input and output of many GenAI technologies are largely textual (in broad sense of linguistic, multimodal and multimedia) and, as a result, yield discursive dimensions. For instance, the questions of which power structures these creative meaning making tools enforce or mitigate are relatively understudied (Luitse & Denkena, 2021). At a broad level, we could scrutinise which discourses are substantiated by e.g. LLMs and how these models interact with the existing discourses-in-place. There are also questions about the working definitions of discourse materiality as ‘naturally occurring language’ and its relation to the notion of discursive power.

CDS now carries established credentials in tackling social ills and inequalities through the prism of discourse conceptualisation. This includes socio-politics of group identity and Self-Other constructions. The developments in digital media GenAI are now part of these research foci. Some critical explorations, and problematisation around AI and its social impacts on racism and gender bias are already emerging (see e.g. Adib-Moghaddam 2023, Noble 2018, Siapera 2022). This Special Issue, however, aims to bring in a specifically CDS perspective to the field. It pertains to how a Critical Discourse Studies frame can be envisaged theoretically and methodologically for the new socio-technological dynamic as well as the way AI may interact with resident discourses of racism, gender inequality, ethnic discrimination, and political Self- Othering.

In addition to various levels and types of conceptual considerations, GenAI such as LLMs could bear potential as analytical tools of paramount interest to CDS and its methodological processes -including but also beyond quantification. At its textual level, in one way or another, CDS is tasked with ‘text’ analysis, a job that is now arguably done by LLMs. Prior to LLMs as zero-shot models, other supervised and unsupervised machine algorithms like topic modeling or BERT have been adapted to automatedly analyse large text data (Barberá et al., 2021; Kermani, 2023). While the debate about the potential and weaknesses of such models is ongoing, the arrival of LLMs changes the game entirely. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of knowledge of the capabilities and shortcomings of LLMs in discourse analysis, which could be tackled. Whilst there is growing literature examining LLMs’ power in annotating texts, these studies ordinarily lack the conceptual insights from discourse studies and often end up doing pre-defined annotation tagging hence missing subtle and interpretive dynamics of meaning-making (De Grove et al., 2020; Gilardi et al., 2023). As such, there is a missed body of scholarship in dealing with discursive constructs such as metaphors or argumentation among others. 

As the rapid development of models adds to the emerging complexity at both theory and methodology ends, it remains a fact that CDS cannot continue the business as usual similar to changes to other frames of inquiry in social sciences. To envisage a specific CDS take on this nascent field, there is a need for interdisciplinary deliberation to formulate questions, identify the challenges and elaborate on opportunities while acknowledging the ambitiousness of the task at hand. In addition to emerging few studies on LLMs and  CDS  (e.g. Gillings et al., 2024), there is certainly room to identify perspectives, problematise working notions, and apply methodologies at the intersection of GenAI and CDS. This is, ultimately, about the CDS’ claim to provide critical explanations for the socio-political characteristics of societies and the way power (relations) is established through discourses. We go where discourse goes, and (important degrees of) discourse is now entangled with these technological developments.

Such an endeavor is interdisciplinary by definition and invites empirical studies, theoretical engagements, critical reflections, and methodological considerations from scholars in different fields, such as computer science, discourse studies (in its broad sense), social sciences, political communication, media and technology, digital geography, and Informatics to discuss timely topics including but not limited to:

-   Problematisation of mediation processes and its impact on discourse: how AI can be viewed in connection with past, present and future of CD

-   Theoretical mapping for a viable, principled CDS analysis in the new contexts

-   The way GenAI or in particular LLMs reinforce or undermine power relations and discourses in communication, media, and public opinion.

-   The way GenAI or in particular LLMs may contribute to the evolution or transformation of discourses of Hate Speech, Racism, Gender bias, Islamophobia, etc., across different domains (e.g., media, politics, education).

-   Innovative methodologies for analysing the interplay between GenAI of various content types (language, videos, and other multimodal trends) and discourse within CDS frameworks.

-   The capabilities and shortcomings of LLMs as a viable tool in CDS and their mutual interactions

-   The methodological innovations to conduct multimodal discourse analysis using GenAI technologies

Submission Process:

Authors are invited to submit abstracts (approximately 500 words, all-inclusive) outlining the manuscript's approach, objectives, and relevance. The abstract should demonstrate how the paper contributes to the synergic understanding of the field.

Please submit the abstract and author information to guest editors (Majid.Khosravinik@newcastle.ac.uk and hossein.kermani@univie.ac.at) by June 2, 2025. Please use ‘Submission for the SI on CDS and GenAI’ as the email subject. Abstracts should be formatted as: title, author names, affiliations and contact information, main text, keywords (up to five), along with short bio/s of the author/s. Notifications regarding invitations for full papers will be sent by July 1, 2025. Full papers should be submitted by December 15, 2025.

Refs

Adib-Moghaddam, A. (2023) Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity. Bloomsbury.

Noble, N., S. (2018) Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York University Press

Bail, C. A. (2023). Can Generative AI Improve Social Science? [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/rwtzs

Barberá, P., Boydstun, A. E., Linn, S., McMahon, R., & Nagler, J. (2021). Automated Text Classification of News Articles: A Practical Guide. Political Analysis, 29(1), 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.8

De Grove, F., Boghe, K., & De Marez, L. (2020). (What) Can Journalism Studies Learn from Supervised Machine Learning? Journalism Studies, 21(7), 912–927. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1743737

Gilardi, F., Alizadeh, M., & Kubli, M. (2023, March 27). ChatGPT Outperforms Crowd-Workers for Text-Annotation Tasks. arXiv.Org. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305016120

Gillings, M., Kohn, T., & Mautner, G. (2024). The rise of large language models: Challenges for Critical Discourse Studies. Critical Discourse Studies, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2024.2373733

Kermani, H. (2023). Framing the Pandemic on Persian Twitter: Gauging Networked Frames by Topic Modeling. American Behavioral Scientist, 00027642231207078. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231207078

KhosraviNik, M. (2017) Social Media Critical Discourse Studies. J. Flowerdew, J. Richardson (Eds.), Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis, Routledge, London (2017), pp. 582-596

KhosraviNik, M. (2022) Digital meaning-making across content and practice in social media critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse Studies, Vol 19(2): 119-123. Special Issue on SM-CDS.

KhosraviNik, M. (2023) Connecting the digital with the social in digital discourse. In M. KhosraviNik (ed) Social Media and Society: Integrating the digital with the social in digital discourse. John Benjamins. PP 1-15.

Luitse, D., & Denkena, W. (2021). The great Transformer: Examining the role of large language models in the political economy of AI. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211047734. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211047734

Siapera, E. (2022) AI content moderation, racism and (de) coloniality. International journal of Bullying Prevention. 4(1) 55-65.

Deadline: April 30, 2025

Dear all,

Do you know an outstanding journal paper related to recommender systems authored by a researcher who self-identfies as a woman? Or have you perhaps published one yourself?

The Women in RecSys Journal Paper of the Year Award is now accepting nominations—but the deadline is fast approaching!

Two award categories:

• Junior: For PhD students or researchers who obtained their PhD within the last five years
  
• Senior: For researchers with more than five years of experience

 Why Nominate?

Recognizes innovative, high-quality research in recommender systems

Awarded papers receive free registration for ACM RecSys 2025 and a chance to present at the conference

A great way to support and highlight the contributions of women researchers in RecSys (DEI is not dead!)

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2025, midnight, AoE

Nomination Details & Submission: https://recsys.acm.org/recsys25/women-in-recsys/#content-tab-1-1-tab

Self-nominations are welcome! If you have an eligible paper, don’t hesitate to submit. And if you know a deserving colleague or collaborator, encourage them to apply or nominate them yourself!

Looking forward to celebrating the achievements of women in RecSys at ACM RecSys 2025.

 

Best regards,

Lien

On behalf of the Women in RecSys Committee

October 17-19, 2025

Cairo, Egypt

Deadline: June 15, 2025

In today’s high velocity digital media markets and accelerating AI revolution, competence in management and leadership are critical success factors. It is especially important to develop mastery in leveraging creativity as a strategic resource for strengthening competitive advantages in company processes, products, market relationships, and business models. The complexity of digital disruption makes innovation and creativity a necessity for long-term sustainability. Company success requires competencies in emerging digital technologies and fostering organizational cultures that encourage experimentation, agility and respect for ethical responsibilities. Strategic managers are challenged with demands to rethink orientations, practices, and structures, to redesign business models, and to boost productivity by improving efficiencies that can be gained by harnessing AI technologies. Doing so raises ethical and legal issues pertaining to intellectual property rights and managing human creativity. 

The International Media Management Academic Association (IMMAA) invites submissions for its 19th Annual Conference, hosted by The American University in Cairo (AUC), October 17–19, 2025. Join global scholars and industry leaders to explore “Managing Innovation and Creativity for Sustainability in Media Companies” in the dynamic setting of Cairo, Egypt. Read full call for papers here (www.immaaegypt.com)  

KEY THEMES

Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Innovation in media management theory/practice
  
• AI-driven business analytics & ethical frameworks
  
• Leadership for creativity and organizational agility
  
• Evolving media business models & market strategies
  
• Cross-cultural management challenges
  
• Media policy, regulation, and sustainability
  
• Advances in advertising, marketing, and digital tech

IMPORTANT DATES

• June 15, 2025: Abstract/panel proposal deadline
  
• July 7, 2025: Acceptance notifications
  
• July 7 – Sept 15: Early registration
  
• Oct 17–19: Conference dates
  

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Papers: Extended abstracts (750–1,000 words) outlining focus, methods, and relevance to media management.

Panels: 300-word proposal + 300-word abstracts per presentation + panelist bios.

Submit via email to: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu (Double-blind peer-reviewed). 

Discounted rates for global participation. Full details on conference website.

WHY ATTEND?

Engage with cutting-edge research and industry insights.

Network in Cairo—home to the Pyramids, Nile cruises, and a vibrant cultural scene.

Hosted by AUC, a leading MENA institution with world-class facilities. 

LINKS & CONTACT

Conference website: https://immaaegypt.com

IMMAA website: www.immaa.org

Questions? Email: immaaegypt2025@aucegypt.edu

Join us to advance media management scholarship amid Cairo’s historic wonders!

Best regards,

IMMAA 2025 Organizing Team

The American University in Cairo

#IMMAA_Egypt | Follow updates @immaaegypt2025

 The newsletter European Media Policy from Nordicom offers concise, curated updates on regulatory developments, policy changes, and industry trends across Europe's media landscape. Serving as a comprehensive reference, it provides media researchers with current insights and helps you stay informed about emerging trends and the impact of policy shifts on media practices in Europe. 

Read more: https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/latest/newsletters

May 30, 2025

Advanced Research Centre (ARC), University of Glasgow

Deadline: April 4, 2025

Half-day Unconference & Book Launch

Organised by members of Sociological & Cultural Studies and the Glasgow University Media Group in partnership with the Glasgow Latin American Research Network at the University of Glasgow.

Cost: Free

This dynamic half-day unconference combines the launch of the edited book Media Capture in Africa and Latin America: Power & Resistance (Palgrave, 2025) with a participant-led dialogue that brings together established scholars, early career scholars, journalists, and civil society organisations to explore the particularities of media capture – the covert instrumentalisation of the news media by various centres of power – in the Global South.

For decades, alarm bells have sounded over severe forms of media influence, and, in an era of deepening media control and shrinking press freedoms, the phenomenon of media capture has emerged as a defining challenge in the Global South. While much scholarly attention has historically focused on established capitalist societies in the Global North, regions of the Majority World, such as Africa and Latin America, reveal distinct and evolving forms of control. Governments, corporate interests, and powerful elites are increasingly exerting influence over news ecosystems, shaping narratives to serve their own agendas. From direct ownership and regulatory pressures to the subtle forces of digital platform dominance, underpinned by the growing influence of Big Tech platforms and algorithm-driven influence that shapes public discourse and suppresses independent journalism. Media capture thus manifests not as a singular process but as a complex and evolving system of control. Yet, resistance persists. Independent journalists, alternative media, and civil society actors continue to challenge these forces, deploying innovative strategies to push back against censorship and distortion. However, much remains to be understood about the viability and scalability of such countermeasures, as media ecosystems become increasingly fragmented and digitalised.

This inclusive and dynamic unconference is an opportunity to share current expertise and address the research gap on the topic in the Global South. It will include a book launch, unconference and roundtable of civil society experts.

We invite researchers working in this area – particularly early career researchers (ECRs), who would benefit from the opportunity to present their research and network with senior colleagues, journalists, and civil society organisations – to submit short topic proposals or discussion prompts that outline your topic and key questions for discussion while offering empirical or theoretical insights. These may include (but are not limited to) the following: 

- Media capture as contested term in the Global South

- Exploring the distinctive forms and manifestations of media capture in the Global South

- The increasingly sophisticated nature of media capture, focussing on Big Tech/AI/algorithms

- Distinctive forms of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech in the Global South

- The impact of media capture in the context of Sustainable Development Goals

- How transnational actors, media outlets/journalists and civil society are responding to media capture

Please submit your brief topic proposal (max 50 words) for a 5 minutes presentation and a short bio (max 50 words) by 4th April 2025 here:  https://forms.office.com/e/mgQ3mSp1Xr  

Notifications of Acceptance will be sent out on 15th April 2025.

For questions, please contact the conference convenors Dr Hayes Mabweazara and Dr Beth Pearson: mediacapture-globalsouth@glasgow.ac.uk

September 9-12, 2025

Šibenik, Croatia

Deadline: April 1, 2025

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

• Micky Lee, Suffolk University, USA
  
• Mandy Troeger, University of Tuebingen, Germany
  

COURSE DIRECTORS

• Thomas Allmer, Paderborn University, Germany
  
• Paško Bilić, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
  
• Benjamin Birkinbine, University of Wisconsin, USA
  
• Jernej Amon Prodnik, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
  
• Jaka Primorac, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
  
• Toni Prug, University of Rijeka, Croatia
  
• Aleksander Slaček-Brlek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

ECTS ACCREDITATION:

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (10 ECTS points for PhD students upon full completion of the course)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The media are central institutions of modern societies, providing channels for corporate and political control and public space for disseminating and consuming communication on systemic changes in politics, culture, and economics to the public. The media underwent massive restructuring through neoliberal policies in the 1970s. Introducing new communication technologies such as satellite and cable television, internet, and web platforms went hand in hand with market liberalisation and communication commercialisation. The multiplication of channels and media outlets was accompanied by concentration and centralisation of ownership. Recently, large transnational digital platforms have solidified their position as core companies within contemporary capitalism, restructuring the distribution of media advertising investments, speeding up the circulation of capital, automating global consumption patterns, avoiding national taxes, and siphoning revenues to offshore entities. At the same time, they benefit from automated management of their diversified and essentially precarious workforces of content moderators, warehouse workers, and gig workers, as well as from software inputs from free and open source communities (FLOSS) communities.

The rise of platforms reshapes traditional institutional mechanisms that broadly safeguard freedom of expression, media pluralism, and public interests. An open political issue is how these mechanisms will be reconsidered and how private interests will shape markets and societies. Alternatives are envisioned in areas ranging from platform cooperatives and commons projects to strategic calls for technological sovereignty and public wealth creation. However, such initiatives usually need broader political support from the public already accustomed to the commercial logic of the media. The commodification of everyday life through data capture, surveillance and privacy intrusion is easily dismissed by citizens as a minor side effect of free usage and flexibility of ubiquitous digital services.

This biennial course aims to explore traditional (e.g. ownership, production, content, consumption, labour, regulation) and contemporary (e.g. algorithms, platforms, data, artificial intelligence) perspectives on the media from the lens of critical political economy. The course will explore how capital and the state(s) control, regulate and form the media (broadly conceived as ranging from traditional printed press to algorithms and software) in societies shaped by persistent social inequalities. The level of analysis can vary from macro phenomena of geopolitics, transnational, national and institutional dynamics, through mid-range phenomena of the structure(s) of the public sphere(s) to micro-phenomena of class-based conditions shaping inequalities of access and skill for using the media in everyday life and for work.

The course will include presentations from keynote speakers and course directors and presentations by advanced MA and PhD students. Through lectures and discussions with international experts, students will gain in-depth knowledge about recent communication, media, and journalism developments from a critical political economy perspective. Methods and analytical tools commonly used in the approach will be explained and discussed. Presentation of the research papers (considered work in progress) will lead to comprehensive feedback that will help students develop their projects further and result in publishable academic writing. Discussions will be carried out collaboratively, with reciprocal assessment by students.

SUMMER SCHOOL VENUE

St. John's Fortress in Šibenik, Croatia, was built in 1646 in just 58 days as the main point of the city's new defence system just before a major attack by the Ottoman army. The city residents built the fortress with their own hands and resources, and it was named after the church that once stood there. The fortress renovation was completed in 2022, with the fortress walls completely restored and new features introduced, including an underground campus below the so-called pliers, the northern part of the fortress. The campus is equipped with interactive classrooms, bedrooms and conference rooms. More info is available at: https://www.tvrdjava-kulture.hr/en/st-johns-fortress/plan-your-visit/

DEADLINES

* The course is open to advanced MA and PhD students. Please submit your CV (maximum two pages), title and an extended abstract of your presentation (maximum two pages with references) by 1 April 2025 to political.economies.of.the.media@gmail.com

* Course directors will review applications and final decisions on acceptance will be sent by 1 May 2025.

* Accepted applicants will be invited to submit 6 to 9,000-word research papers by 1 July 2025. After completing the course, they will be encouraged to submit their manuscripts for review in an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of political economy.

* Note: only PhD students can receive 10 ECTS points upon course completion, which entails a submitted research paper, paper presentation and full-week active attendance participation in the course (more information will be published on the course website).

* Please note that all participants pay a registration fee of 60 EUR. A limited number of partial stipends and registration waivers will be available. If you need participation support, please indicate this in your application.

* All further details about the course will be available at http://www.poleconmed.net/

August 28-30, 2025

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana

Deadline: April 1, 2025

Mid-term conference of the European Sociological Association, Research Network 18 – The Sociology of Communications and Media Research

The small-scale and focused mid-term conferences of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network 18 seek to ensure that the sociological investigation of media and communications is given full focus, distinguishing its work from that of large international associations, which provide important forums for communications and media research but do not have especially sociological concerns.

The challenges facing societies today seem daunting even by the most volatile historical standards. These include deepening economic inequalities, class antagonisms, the rise of radical right-wing authoritarianism around the world and violent wars that may soon erupt into even wider international conflicts. Generative AI is increasingly reshaping virtually all relations, and digital tech giants are running amok along with their increasingly unhinged owners. Somewhere behind all this, looming on the horizon, is an ecological crisis. While many of these issues are intricately interlinked and, among other things, speak volumes about the deepening power imbalances and crises of liberal institutions, their causes and trajectories may be divergent and contradictory, with outcomes that seem difficult to predict.

As the conference title suggests, no social issues can be addressed without recourse to communication or capitalism. For Hanno Hardt, critical scholar and former professor in Ljubljana, communication could be considered “the sine qua non of human existence” (1979, 1). In this sense, the study of communication must always be the first stepping stone, but one that is now influenced and shaped in various ways by digital giants and media-as-industries. Similarly, critical authors have historically regarded capitalism as a system that cannot be ignored in a holistic social analysis. Sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has, for instance, asserted “that contemporary society cannot really be understood by a sociology that makes no reference to its capitalist economy” (2012, 1). In other words, the sociology of communications and media must inevitably include or address these two of the most fundamental social relations in its research.

In line with these premises, the conference will feature a plenary round table on digital platforms and labour and plenary talks by critical scholars who have addressed the dynamic between communication and capitalism throughout their careers:

• Kylie Jarrett (University College Dublin, Ireland)
  
• Graham Murdock (Loughborough University, UK)
  
• and Slavko Splichal (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).

The Communication and Capital(ism) conference aims to bring together contributions that explore the unpredictable and unstable social terrain in the era of digital capitalism. It seeks to critically engage with these issues and their consequences by focusing on the role of social communication, media, and journalism. We are looking for theoretical and empirical submissions that may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Theoretical reflections on political economy and cultural studies;
  
• The role of critique and criticality for the sociology of media;
  
• Digital capitalism, imperialism and colonialism;
  
• Digital platforms and tech giants;
  
• Labour and platformisation of working conditions;
  
• Capital, class, gender, and race;
  
• Global media corporations and media-as-industries;
  
• Capitalism and journalism;
  
• Sociology of news;
  
• The material and ideological impact of advertising;
  
• Transformations in political communication;
  
• Democracy and democratic transformations;
  
• The public sphere;
  
• (Re-)presentations in journalism and the media;
  
• Possible alternatives to the existing political/economic malaise and digital capitalism.

Abstract submission

• Abstract submission deadline: 1 April 2025
  
• Notification of selected abstracts: 15 May 2025
  
• Conference dates: 28-30 August 2025
  

Abstracts should be sent to: Conference Organising Committee, rn18esasubmission@gmail.com

Abstracts should be sent as an e-mail attachment (400-600 words including title, author name(s), email address(es), and institutional affiliation(s)). Please insert the words “ESA RN18 Submission” in the subject. Although we do not provide a template for the abstract submission, we expect abstracts that include a rationale, research question(s), theoretical and/or empirical methods applied, and potential results and implications. Each abstract will be independently reviewed by two members of the ESA RN18 Board based on the call for papers.

Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research 

Deadline: March 30, 2025

Guest edited by: Christian Pentzold, Leipzig University, Germany; Anne Kaun, Södertörn University, Sweden; Stine Lomborg & Sille Obelitz Søe, both Copenhagen University, Denmark. 

Much is at stake: The welfare sector across the EU faces growing demands and dwindling resources, with automation expected to bring about significant changes. Automated decisionmaking (ADM) is being proposed as a solution to improve efficiency in the provision of public goods and services by leveraging data-driven processes and reallocating resources to better support citizens’ well-being. Recent academic work, especially within the humanities and social sciences, has critically examined algorithms, datafication, and AI. These studies often emphasize the need for accountability in technical systems, focusing on data ethics, transparency, and regulatory oversight to safeguard human justice within ADM systems. Yet, real-world examples abound of human rights violations, including privacy breaches, biases in automated systems, and discriminatory outcomes. Cases such as the use of data for fraud detection, welfare distribution, and profiling vulnerable populations illustrate these issues globally. Consequently, concerns about the potential adverse effects of automation on various aspects of life—healthcare, welfare, labor, and the functioning of public spheres—have been raised by researchers, public figures, and the general public. 

Stories about the implications of ADM for the welfare of citizens sometimes come to public scrutiny, such as a recent WIRED piece on the Danish welfare system turning into a ‘surveillance nightmare’. When these stories surface, they relay ADM as extraordinary and scandalous. But in fact, ADM for welfare provision is becoming ordinary, widespread, and is fundamentally changing the nature of public goods provision and public services, and thus the conditions for human flourishing. Some argue that ADM is critically altering European welfare states from being based on trust, equity and solidarity to being based on efficiency, control, and discrimination of vulnerable populations. This transformation is largely happening under the public radar. As governments try to ride the waves of automation and drive the exploitation of technological potentials and vast registers of data on citizens, we argue that it is urgent to have a critical and informed debate to shape the use of ADM in the interest of public values, and for the people. Indeed, this call comes at a moment when automation is changing the very notion of what communication and information is. Rather than being mainly about the rights and processes of creating and distributing messages, of speaking and being heard, data streams become significant assets and objects of interest no matter what they contain. 

This Special Issue seeks to explore the impact of ADM on welfare and well-being from European perspectives. It starts from the position of those directly involved: the engineers and designers, the case workers who collaborate with these systems in welfare and service provision decisions, and the people whose data fuel the systems and are affected by automation efforts. The Special Issue aims to address the digital transformation of the citizen–state relationship by examining the development, data work, and human-machine collaboration within ADM, alongside the technological, social, and cultural dynamics that either facilitate or impede progress in automating welfare for the public good. 

A people-centered approach builds on the idea that welfare in societies is fundamentally about fostering the conditions for the flourishing of everybody. Hence public goods and services provision becomes a question of justice and equity. When welfare is increasingly automated this consequently has implications for social justice for the people more generally and must be addressed through the lens of the people implicated in the process of automation. 

The Special Issue is open to theoretical and empirical approaches. It invites senior as well as emerging scholars. Contributions can address, but are not limited to, the following aspects: 

· Conceptualizations of automation, datafication, and communication 

· Reflections on human flourishing in datafied and automated citizen–state relationships 

· Public communication and discourses around datafication and automation for the public good 

· Communicative and media practices around automation, datafication and artificial intelligence 

· Case studies of ADM implementation in public administration and public service provision, including public service broadcasting 

· ADM’s and AI-powered tools in newsrooms and their implications for journalistic practices and the public’s right to information 

· Policies, norms, and regulations of ADM deployment and development 

· Human rights perspectives on automation and public goods 

· Resistance and civic actions against automated processes 

· Impacts of ADM on employability in the media sector and beyond, and the shifting roles of human labor 

· Environmental and climate impacts of ADM and AI deployment for public service provision and media production 

There will be no publication fee. 

Timeline and procedure 

500 to 700 word abstracts should be sent to (christian.pentzold@uni-leipzig.de) by March 30, 2025. The abstract should articulate: 1) the issue or research question to be discussed, 2) the methodological or critical framework used, and 3) the expected findings or conclusions. Feel free to consult with the Special Issue Editors about your article ideas and potential angles or approaches. 

Decisions will be communicated to the authors by April 30, 2025. Invited paper submissions will be due August 31, 2025 and will be submitted to christian.pentzold@uni-leipzig.de. They will then undergo peer review through Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research following the journal’s standard double-blind procedures. The invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee acceptance into the Special Issue. The Special Issue is scheduled for publication in summer 2026. 

This call for abstracts is also accessible via 

https://www.degruyter.com/publication/journal_key/COMM/downloadAsset/COMM_Datafied%20Welfare%20COMMUNICATIONS.pdf 

Contact 

Prof Christian Pentzold 

Email: christian.pentzold@uni-leipzig.de

October 30-31, 2025 

Stockholm, Sweden 

Deadline: May 1, 2025 

The conference aims to foster engaged debates about, and a comprehensive understanding of, challenges related to the quickly transforming algorithmic society, for media users across Europe. We welcome a wide range of approaches and look forward to discussions that will contribute to scientific analysis of our contemporary media world. 

Read more: https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/calendar/events/2025-10-30-ecrea-audience-and-reception-studies-2025