ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Edited By: Scott Rodgers, Helena Atteneder, Lou Therese Brandner, Marcos Dias, Diogo P. Henriques and Sara Trentham-Black

“AI” – as technology, technique, imaginary and debate – has clearly reached the city. Yet its arrival is more mundane than spectacle. Inspired by The Synthetic City Conference, this open-access Dossier in Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture, edited by the ECREA Media, Cities and Space Management Team, explores the implications of AI and related digital technologies for urban living. It offers new ways of thinking about different appearances and manifestations of AI, complementing and expanding existing debates around “urban AI.” 

The Dossier includes eight articles by different authors that analyse the current status of AI systems in urban space, moving away from overly dramatic and technocratic accounts of its agential power towards providing a grounded and critical perspective of its assemblages with urban infrastructure, human and non-human actors. Our introduction maps out how AI agency gets attributed, what AI models can learn about urban life, and the temporal politics of such learning, where what is claimable gets settled in advance. What does it mean if the synthetic city turns out to be banal, if not at all trivial? We argue that having an actionable and critical technical literacy of mundane AI systems, which recede from daily perception, is challenging. We hope this Dossier begins to provide some means of wayfinding around this issue. 

https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/dossiers/dossier-the-synthetic-city/

Dear ECREA friends,

We’re happy to share a new report that grew out of our AoIR 2025 pre-conference in Brazil: Creative Labour in Rupture? GenAI & Future Research Directions.

The pre-conference brought together 50 scholars working across creative labour, cultural production, platforms, and AI to think collectively about what GenAI is changing, how we might study those transformations, and which questions should guide the next phase of research.

The report (linked below) opens with provocations from Arturo Arriagada, Robert Prey, Alessandro Gandini, Daphne Idiz, Thomas Poell, David Nieborg, Godwin Simon, Jiaru Tang, Caitlin Petre, Rafael Grohmann, M.E. Luka, and Tom Divon. It then brings together the voices of all 50 scholars in the room through three lenses: Ruptures, Reactions, and Resistances.

The report is a shared baby of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF), DigiLabour, and the Content Creator Scholars Network (CCSN). We hope it can serve as a resource for any of you who wish to carry these conversations forward, for research, teaching, and for thinking together about where scholarship on GenAI and creative labour needs to go next.

And to make that continuation more practical, we have also built a collaborative reading list on GenAI and creative labour, drawing on the references and intellectual traditions brought into the room in Rio. The list is designed to stay open and evolve with the field, and we warmly invite you to add your own work, reports, or anything you’ve read and haven’t been able to shut up about.

Read and use the full report:

Creative Labour in Rupture? GenAI & Future Research Directions - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1srOcSNmdy4n_vFefM4Cfgu5I3zGObPUd/view?usp=sharing

Explore and contribute to the living reading list:

GenAI & Creative Labour | Reading List - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VWE5Bp9_92bjE4dIdO5rpwJkkcBC6P8UR2wXL2FjDNw/edit?tab=t.0

Check out our sites (we provide more useful resources there!)

CCSN - https://www.ccsn.site/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/weareccsn/ | Newsletter https://shorturl.at/vez3a

DigiLabour - https://digilabour.com.br/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/digilabour/

CLCF - https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/

Tom Divon, Rafael Grohmann, M.E. Luka & Zoe Glatt

Platforms & Society (Special Issue)

Deadline: December 15, 2026

Digital platforms have become central spaces through which an expanding spectrum of conflicts is mediated, from affective polarization to online culture wars, humanitarian crises, armed violence, and information warfare. Platforms shape how conflicts become visible, circulate among publics, and are acted upon. The special issue of Platforms & Society invites empirical and theoretical contributions on how digital platforms mediate conflict in politically hostile environments. More details can be found here in this call for paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dg2D1NdEBQ50KAMCmypz8IaFduF4heSj/view?usp=sharing 

OPEN CULTURAL STUDIES

Deadline: March 31, 2027

“Open Cultural Studies” (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/culture/html) invites submissions for a special issue entitled “Sense of Humour, Sense of Style: Humour In And About Fashion”, edited by Kristina Stankevičiūtė (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania) and Nuno Amaral Jeronimo (University of Beira Interior, Portugal).

DESCRIPTION

Fashion’s relationship with humour has never been a fluent one – it has been addressed as a notoriously serious industry, and perhaps rightly so. Nevertheless, sparks of its funny or ironic side have been notable at various times, from Elsa Schiaparelli and her iconic surrealist designs to Franco Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Jean-Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, as well as quite a number of others.

“Millennial” fashion designers, such as Virgil Abloh and Demna Gvasalia, have turned to irony as an expression of postmodernist fashion creation, while Viktor&Rolf have employed it for presenting their critique of the severely demanding fashion system.

Humour has been increasingly present in fashion for the last decade, both in luxury fashion and streetwear, in fashion shows and advertising, used by designers and customers for sheer entertainment and for expressions of criticism, discontent or disagreement. The current atmosphere of post-pandemic relief mixed with the tensions of ongoing military conflicts and controversial political leadership as well as the challenges of the global climate change questions the very relevance of fashion as we know it; humour, being a global pervasive discourse in all private and public spheres, as many authors have noted, seems to be an attractively sensible choice of commenting on this most wasteful and the second most polluting industry today.

The aim of the collection is to debate on this unpardonably overlooked theme in fashion research, discussing various forms of fashion’s humour, such as fashion irony, sarcasm and/ or satire.

The volume is aiming to address the questions whether fashion humour is relevant today and how it has been relevant in the past; what forms of it have been the most eloquent, noticeable and most effective, and what exactly that effect has been.

Suggested themes include but are not limited to:

• Humour in fashion design
  
• Streetwear humour
  
• Humorous/ witty fashion representation (on the catwalk, in photography, advertisement, etc.)
  
• Humour about fashion (in cinema, literature, stand-up comedy, other forms of high and pop culture)
  
• National examples of fashion humour (design, advertising, etc.)
  
• Humorous/ ironic/ satirical/ sarcastic fashion communication
  
• Fashion memes
  
• Humorous fashion commentary
  
• The effects of fashion’s humour (on fashion’s perception, on the customer, on the wearer; psychological,
  
• aesthetic, etc.)
  
• Fashion humour/ irony/ satire as a form of art

HOW TO SUBMIT

Submissions will be collected from February 1, 2027 to March 31, 2027 via the online submission system at https://www.editorialmanager.com/culture/

Please choose section/category: “special issue: Fashion and Humour”.

Before submission, authors should carefully read the Instructions for Authors, available at https://www.degruyter.com/publication/journal

All contributions will undergo critical peer review before being accepted for publication.

Further questions about content for this thematic issue can be addressed to the Guest Editors:

Kristina Stankevičiūtė (kristina.stankeviciute@vilniustech.lt) 

and 

Nuno Amaral Jerónimo (nunoaj@ubi.pt)

As a general rule, publication costs should be covered by Article Publishing Charges (APC); that is, be defrayed by the authors, their affiliated institutions, funders or sponsors. Any financial matters can be discussed with the journal’s OA Portfolio Manager, Magdalena Skoneczna at magdalena.skoneczna@degruyterbrill.com before submitting their manuscript.

In case of technical problems with submission, please write to Assistant.Managing.Editor@degruyterbrill.com

Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OpenCulturalStudies/degruyterbrill.com/culture

July 19-21, 2026

Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany

Deadline: October 31, 2026

The 2027 DiscourseNet congress will take place between July 19th and July 21st at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, in Germany. The topic of the congress is Discursive imaginaries of change: Heterotopias, PowerKnowledge and the “Great Transformation”. 

Thematic Focus

The 2027 DiscourseNet congress focuses on the imaginaries that different actors, movements, disciplines, and epistemological traditions bring to the question of change. Transformation is a not a settled concept. It always points in progressive directions. Right-wing populisms and authoritarian movements offer their own powerful imaginaries of transformation. So do the counter-discourses of feminist care ethics, indigenous knowledge systems, commoning movements, de-growth advocates, and de-colonial scholars. 

We welcome contributions that address : 

Imaginaries and discourse: How is the meaning of "transformation", "crisis", or “the future" discursively constructed, stabilised, and contested across political, media, and everyday registers? What social imaginaries shape collective understandings of economy, democracy, social life and ecology?

Power, knowledge, and epistemic struggles: Whose knowledge counts, and whose is marginalised? We especially welcome contributions from Southern, de-colonial, feminist, and indigenous perspectives that challenge Western-modernist frameworks. We encourage analysis of how educational systems, organisations and communicative practices normalise particular epistemic orders.

Heterotopias and counter-movements: Where do alternative spaces, practices, and discourses emerge? How are commons, care, solidarity, and more-than-human entanglements articulated as alternatives to market logic? How do such spaces relate to — and potentially transform — hegemonic formations?

Methodological reflexivity: How can discourse research itself reflect on its own positioning, avoid reproducing hegemonic closures or epistemic romanticism, and develop what some call "caring research"? What are the implications of engaged, trans-disciplinary, or co-creative methodologies for our scholarly practices?

A more detailed version of this CfP can be found on the conference website : https://discourseanalysis.net/DNC2027. 

Submission Guidelines

All Submissions are to be submitted via Conftool at https://www.conftool.com/dnc2027/

Important Dates

• Abstract submissions open: 15th of June 2026
  
• Submission deadline: 31st of October 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance: 15th of December 2026
  
• Registration deadline: 31st March 2027 (early bird fee) & 15 June 2027 (regular fee)
  

Contact

Suzanne Weber (local organisation) and Thomas Jacobs (DiscourseNet Event coordinator)

For further information regarding the congress, registration, accommodation, or programme updates, please contact: DNC 2027 Organizing Committee dncongress2027@gmail.com

SOUNDS

The Societal Observatory Using Novel Data Sources (SOUNDS) is looking to fill a W3 Professorship position (m/f/x) in Compuational Social Science.

This professorial appointment is open regarding the candidate's specific research focus within the field ofcomputational social science. The successful candidate will define their own research agenda, provided thatit demonstrates excellence in computational social science, addresses current societal questions, makes useof novel digital data sources and establishes clear links with computer science.

SOUNDS is a research project at Saarland University funded through the Saarland state government’s Transformation Fund. It investigates societally relevant questions through novel digital data sources, digital behavioural traces, social media data and Al-based methods. This professorship provides the computational social science core of the SOUNDS project. It will combine social-science theory with network analysis, automated text analysis, the study of large-scale digital behavioural data, mobile sensing and Al-based modelling, addressing questions such as collective opinion formation, social cohesion and polarisation, or the role of digital platforms in public communication, and contributing to joint questions, methods and publications with the social sciences and computer science. The successful candidate will be expected to develop and lead externally funded research, including principal investigator roles in coordinated funding initiatives such as Collaborative Research Centres. Teaching duties will include computational and methodological courses, for example on the analysis of digital behavioural data, automated text analysis and network analysis. These courses will contribute to degree programmes in the social sciences, computer science, data science and psychology. The role also includes the supervision of student theses and the mentoring of early-career researchers.

We are looking for a researcher with excellent international standing in computational social science and a strong record of working with novel digital data sources applied to societally relevant questions. Your expertise should include computational methods such as network analysis, automated text analysis, the analysis of large-scale digital behavioural data and Al-based modelling. You should be open to a formal affiliation with the Department of Computer Science. You will have an established international researchnetwork, an excellent record of high-impact publication and of third-party funding, including grants secured and applications submitted. You should also be prepared to take on principal investigator roles in coordinated funding initiatives such as Collaborative Research Centres. A willingness to teach in English is expected, as is the willingness to teach in German in the medium term.

Application deadline: October 15th, 2026

Full call for applications: https://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/upload/verwaltung/stellen/Wissenschaftler/W2906_W3_SOUNDS_CompSocScien_EN.pdf

SOUNDS

The Societal Observatory Using Novel Data Sources (SOUNDS) is looking to fill a W2 Professorship position (W3 tenure track, m/f/x) in Political, Social or Communication Science.

This professorial appointment is open regarding the candidate's specific research focus within the field of political, social or communication science. The successful candidate will define their own research agenda, provided that it demonstrates excellence in the field, addresses current societal questions, makes use of novel digital data sources and establishes clear links with computer science.

SOUNDS is a research project at Saarland University funded through the Saarland state government’s Transformation Fund. It investigates societally relevant questions through novel digital data sources, digital behavioural traces, social media data and Al-based methods. Based in the department of European Social Research, the person appointed to this position will work at the intersection of political science, sociology and communication science. They will pursue theory-driven, comparative research on public communication and societal change with data-driven methods, addressing questions such as political and social opinion formation, the mediated public sphere, or processes of social change. The professorship will also contribute to the development of joint research questions, methods and publications with the wider SOUNDS project and computer science.

We expect you to develop and lead externally funded research, including third-party funding applications at national and European level and to participate actively in coordinated funding initiatives such as Collaborative Research Centres. Your teaching duties will include courses on empirical social research, digital communication research and computational methods, which will also be offered as part of related degree programmes in neighbouring disciplines. The role also includes the supervision of student theses and the mentoring of early-career researchers.

We are looking for a researcher with excellent academic standing in political science, sociology and/or communication science, with an empirical and quantitative focus, and a strong record of working with novel digital data sources to address societally relevant questions. You should also be open to formal affiliation with the Department of Computer Science. You will have an established international research network and an excellent track record of relevant publication and of third-party funding, including grants awarded, applications submitted or applications being prepared. A willingness to teach in English is expected, as is the willingness to teach in German in the medium term. The tenure evaluation follows the criteria of the university's tenure-track regulations.

This professorial position is a fixed-term public sector appointment ('Beamtenverhältnis auf Zeit') for a maximum period of five years. If the tenure evaluation procedure (teaching appraisal and external assessment of research work) is positive, the appointee will be promoted to a permanent professorship (lifetime tenure) at the German academic salary scale W3.

Deadline for applications: October 15th, 2026

Full call for applications: https://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/upload/verwaltung/stellen/Wissenschaftler/W2905_W2TTW3_SOUNDS_PolSocComScien_EN.pdf

October 9, 2026 (12:10-18:00)

University of Helsinki, Main Building, Hall F3017 or remotely at https://video.helsinki.fi/unitube/live-stream.html?room=l73.

Deadline: September 30, 2026

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland's accession to NATO, and wider shifts in the international order have transformed public debate, journalism, and media representations of security, identity, and geopolitics. How do these changes reshape journalistic practices, public narratives, and understandings of the world around us? The symposium brings together researchers studying the changing relationship between media, war, security, and geopolitical imaginaries.

The event presents key findings from three research projects funded by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation's special call "War Became the Topic: What Is the Role of the Media?"

The research projects are:

• Forces of Change in War Journalism: Open Source Intelligence, Information Warfare, and Patriotic Pressure by Joonas Koivukoski & Markus Ojala (PI) (University of Helsinki)
  
• Imagined West: Occidentalist Narratives in Finnish News Media in the Context of the War in Ukraine by Jukka Jouhki (PI), Jere Kyyrö & Suvi Mononen (Tampere University)
  
• Journalism, Media and the New Security Challenge: The Securitization of the Eastern Border in Media Debate Marko Ampuja, Mervi Pantti (PI), Nuppu Pelevina & Erjon Sjenderi (University of Helsinki)
  

Programme

12:10-12:15 Welcome

12:15-13:00 Keynote: Antal Wozniak (University of Manchester)

13:00-14:00 Presentations associated with the Imagined West project: Jukka Jouhki & Jere Kyyrö (Tampere University), Kiryl Kascian (Vilnius University), Elise Kraatila (Tampere University), Sisanda Nkoala & Doniquah Allies (University of the Western Cape), Vladyslav Vodko (Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University) and Stanislav Hrabovetskyi (University of Vienna), Matti Puranen (Finnish National Defence University).

14:00-14:20 Coffee break

14:20-15:20 Presentations associated with the projects Forces of Change in War Journalism: Markus Ojala (University of Helsinki), and Journalism, Media and New Security Challenges: Mervi Pantti & Risto Kunelius (University of Helsinki).

15:20-15:40 Coffee break

15:40-16:40 Panel discussion: Noora Kotilainen (University of Helsinki), Ville Similä (Helsingin Sanomat), Antal Wozniak (University of Manchester), Johanna Vuorelma (Tampere University).

16:40-16:50 Final words

17:00-18:00 Finger food & refreshments

Register by 30 September here.

June 9-11, 2027

University of Groningen

Deadline: November 15, 2026

RESAW 2027 addresses the theme Engaging Public Internet Histories, bringing together theoretical, methodological, empirical, and creative reflections on the role and value of public history in shaping understandings of the web of the past. In recent years, web historical research has steadily increased. Histories have more impact when translated into forms that engage wider publics. By drawing on the practices and principles of public history, web history can move beyond academic scholarship to foster dialogue, participation, and critical reflection on the internet’s cultural, social, and political significance. Ideally, as Faye Sayer put it, ‘public history in action acts to […] help communities to understand their place in modern society and the world around them’ (Sayer, 2015, p. 3). The conference therefore explores how the stories of the web can be researched, interpreted, communicated, and co-created with diverse audiences, ensuring that internet histories become meaningful public histories.

‘The public’ in public history should not be seen as monolithic. Therefore, this conference urges scholars to take up the question of how to write not just about, but for and with specific audiences, to do justice to the multivocality of the past. This is increasingly happening amid rapid technological innovation and global conflicts. Phenomena such as polarisation and generative AI increasingly reshape how heritage data is accessed, owned and controlled, and definitions of ‘access,’ ‘memory,’ and ‘publicness’become blurred. What does it mean to engage in public web history in such contexts, where topics are often highly contemporary and may provoke public debate or backlash? ‘The web’ is not a fixed object; it means different things at different times for different people, invoking different practices. To adequately preserve digital heritage and write public history, we need to bring together various approaches and perspectives from the field. How can researchers navigate their own positionality and potential vulnerability, particularly for early-career scholars? How do we do justice to personal experiences of (everyday) people without disregarding established narratives of designers and pioneers? Ideally, this call benefits a more lively, representative, and inclusive understanding of web history.

Based on this central theme, we invite scholars, archivists and other professionals to reflect on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

1) Contemporary challenges and technologies

• Impact of societal tensions and developments, such as polarisation and geopolitical
  
• conflicts, on public web history.
  
• Emerging questions concerning the usage of generative AI (e.g. accessibility,
  
• surveillance, ownership, research).
  
• Forms of crisis archiving and the inclusion of citizens in bottom-up processes.
  
• Potential and blind spots of technostalgic initiatives and collections.
  

2) Inclusive public histories

• Regional and local histories.
  
• Marginalised communities, for example, LGBTQ+ communities, the role of women in building the web.
  
• Non-Western perspectives, particularly from the Global Majority.
  
• Age and generational experiences of and on the web.
  

3) Sources and methods

• User-generated content across different timelines (early web, social media, metaverse).
  
• Reflections on common or novel methods in doing public web history research.
  
• Including the public: community-driven initiatives, citizen science, participatory action research, oral history.
  

4) Narrative Forms and Formats

• Data stories (e.g. interactive timelines, emulations, visualisations, interactive interfaces).
  
• Storytelling and narration (e.g. documentaries, personal reflections, micro-histories or grand-narratives).
  
• The inclusion of personal sources or private/domestic archives.
  
• Presentations and exhibitions.
  

Possible formats

• Individual papers of 15 minutes (500-word abstract).
  
• Panel sessions consisting of three individual papers of 15 minutes, introduced by a chair (500-word abstract for each paper, a brief 300-word description of the purpose of the panel).
  
• Other unconventional proposals, such as lightning talks, roundtables, etc., are welcome (300-word abstract).
  
• Demonstrations and (virtual) exhibitions (500-word abstract including specific requests concerning technology or space).
  
• “My PhD in 5 Minutes” (300-word abstract).
  

Acceptance of submissions is based on double-blind peer review.

Possible formats for the pre-conference day

Submissions related to web archives are welcome from all fields and disciplines, and we would particularly encourage workshops related to tools, hands-on, as well as training sessions and demos.

• Workshops, demos or hands-on sessions (500-word abstract, specifying the expected duration).
  
• Q+A or discussion sessions (for example, for early-career scholars). 

The deadline for submissions (including the pre-conference day) is 15 November 2026.

To submit a proposal: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=resaw2027

See also the conference website: https://resaw27.neocities.org/

Timetable

• 15 November 2026: Deadline for submissions
  
• January 2027: Notifications of acceptance
  
• February 2027: Preliminary Programme
  
• March 2027: Registrations open (fees: 90 euros for advanced scholars, 50 euros for PhD students)
  
• 9 June 2027: Pre-conferences and demos
  
• 10-11 June 2027: Conference
  

Local Organizers

University of Groningen

Susan Aasman Nathalie Fridzema Marije Miedema Rik Smit Jesper Verhoef

AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images

Submission deadline: January 31, 2027

The issue explores the relations between death, mourning, media, images, and technologies, including digital afterlives, posthumous AI, immersive encounters with the dead, mediated mourning, spectral communication, and the mortality of media themselves.

The full Call for Papers is available here: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/announcement/view/1039