ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

September 19-20, 2023

Tampere University, Finland

April 15, 2023

https://events.tuni.fi/geomedia2023/workshop-for-doctoral-students/ 

The workshop is aimed at PhD students researching in the field of media and geography, and aims to bring together interdisciplinary approaches that examine contemporary and historical relations of media and spaces in both pre- and post-digital contexts. Deadline for participation with a short abstract (250-300 words) and biographical note is April 15 2023. 

David Gauntlett

This is a lively and thought-provoking book about how to do creativity, unlock your potential, and make a difference.The artists, musicians, and writers we think of as ’very creative’ are just like us, except that they have spent time developing and realising ideas, and have found the confidence to share them with the world. None of this comes naturally. This wide-ranging book offers research, advice, and philosophy to fuel your understanding and passion for creativity.David Gauntlett draws on his own experiences of making music and experimenting with digital media alongside 25 years of researching creativity. Including insights from a diverse array of creators, this book highlights the vitality of the individual creative voice in a world where social media offers a weird mix of inspiration and suffocation, and our struggles for social justice are equally hopeful and upsetting.Creativity shows how vulnerability, experimentation, and courage can enable us to become bold and engaging creators.

https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=creativity-seven-keys-to-unlock-your-creative-self--9781509554102

By Göran Bolin and Per Ståhlberg

An in-depth look at Ukraine's attempts to shape how it is perceived by the rest of the world.

During times of crisis, competing narratives are often advanced to define what is happening, and the stakes of information management by nations are high. In this timely book, Göran Bolin and Per Ståhlberg examine the fraught intersection of state politics, corporate business, and civil activism to understand the dynamics and importance of meaning management in Ukraine. Drawing on fieldwork inside the country, the authors discuss the forms, agents, and platforms within the complex political and communicative situation and how each articulated and acted upon perceptions of the propaganda threat.

Bolin and Ståhlberg focus their analysis on the period between 2013 and 2022, when political tensions, commercial dynamics, and new communication technologies bred novel forms of information management. As they show, entities from governments and governmental administration to commercial actors, entrepreneurs, and activists formed new alliances in order to claim a stake in information policy. Bolin and Ståhlberg also explore how the various agents engaged in information management and strove to manage meaning in communication practice; the communicative tools they took advantage of; and the subsequent consequences for narrative constructions.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545563/managing-meaning-in-ukraine/

Radboud University

A Methods Excellence Network (MethodsNET) Event, hosted by Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, the Netherlands

The academic concept and programme of the 3SRM is designed, coordinated ‘on the ground’ and evaluated by MethodsNET. The event is run in partnership with Radboud University, via the Nijmegen School of Management which hosts the event in corporation with the Radboud Summer School and Radboud Academy. Read more about MethodsNET and Nijmegen School of Management here.

World-class methods courses -- and so much more

Welcome to the second edition of the Summer School in Social Research Methods (3SRM), the most pluralistic methods training event worldwide, with no fewer than 40 main courses (36 one-week courses and 2 two-week courses, + 2 pre-event online software courses) across the whole span of methodological traditions and also covering innovative/emerging topics.

If you want to bring your research to the next level, the 3SRM is the place to be. It is a unique venue: besides world-class methods courses taught by top pedagogues, with small-group interaction and individual tutoring, you get more:

About your main courses:

Tailored advice on choosing courses and a sequence across week 1 and week 2 – the programme has been designed to enable multiple useful sequences

Pluralism, via the full diversity of methods covered

Beyond your main courses: on a weekly basis, your main course fee in fact gives you access to a ‘full package’ which comprises:

Two morning cross-cutting short courses on the Philosophy of Science (week 1) and on Research Approaches and Designs in the Social Sciences (week 2). Both are optional but encouraged to broaden your methodological expertise!`

On both weeks: three late afternoon Supplemental short courses: Math Refresher (both weeks), Missing Data (week 1) and Data Visualization (week 2)

…and lunches are also comprised, in addition to the necessary amount of caffeine and theine over breaks :-)

Ample time for linking up and crossing perspectives. The 3SRM spirit is all about community-building, sharing, and networking. In particular: we have provisioned:

Ample breaks in between the course sessions

A great ‘Methods Café’ (both Mondays, week 1 and week 2) – designed to cross perspectives, link up and get informal feedback from expert instructors

So: for a given week, in terms of academic content, your registration fee gives you access to a given main course (20 hours) + up to 8 hours of extra short courses + the Methods Café.

See this bird’s eye view (pdf, 182 kB) of the main courses over the successive weeks, the event flyer and a video on our MethodsNET YouTube channel explaining in short the whole logic of the 3SRM programme, training package and pedagogy. Finally, here you can find an overview of the summer school programme, per week.

Find all courses in Social Research Methods here

November 2-3, 2023

Salzburg, Austria

Deadline: June 9, 2023

The “Communication Law and Policy” Section of the European Communications Research and Education Association (ECREA) and the Jean Monnet Network “European Media and Platform Policy” (EuromediApp) invite abstracts for theoretical and empirical papers on the topic Digital Platform Policy Spring? Promises and Trajectories for Digital Platform Regulation. This workshop will be a unique opportunity to bring together those investigating the processes of regulating media and digital intermediaries in Europe and beyond. The workshop will take place in Salzburg, Austria, on 2-3 November 2023. It is hosted by the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Salzburg.

Context

Digital platforms and intermediaries are increasingly disseminating news and structuring news consumption across the globe. They have become crucial spaces of civic discourse and cultural expression. Unique levels of ownership concentration in the hands of few extremely large industrial conglomerates dominate digital media landscapes. Checks and balances from media and telecommunication policy do not apply to these new players, enabling digital platforms and intermediaries to exercise unprecedented power in various ways.

While implicitly accepting or even fostering media ownership concentration, European institutions have lately recognized the various challenges for media freedom, freedom of expression and the quality of news created by digital platforms and intermediaries. Digital Markets Act (DMA), Digital Services Act (DSA) and European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) address such challenges. These European initiatives also have a geopolitical dimension, shaping and being shaped by developments in other rich countries and in the Global South. This workshop is dedicated to discussing the nature of such challenges and the appropriateness of policy solutions offered by the European Commission, national governments from around the globe or national and international regulatory bodies.

Thus, the workshop invites interdisciplinary contributions interested in digital platform policy, regulation and policy implementation. We welcome submissions from political economy, policy and governance studies, media and communication law, and other approaches and fields. We welcome theoretical, methodological and empirical submissions, case studies and comparative work. Innovative use of methods is encouraged. The organizers are especially interested in the following areas, in particular in the intersection between European and non-European problems and solutions:

• Digital intermediaries and media ownership concentration: What are the implications of ownership concentration on freedoms, news organizations, content, dissemination of news, and the public discourse at large? How do current policy developments such as the Anti-Money Laundering Directive affect platform and media ownership transparency?
  
• Editorial independence in the digital platform environment: How far, and how, do digital platforms affect editorial independence of incumbent newsroom structures?
  
• Quality of content and combat of misinformation: What is the economics of high-quality content in the digital environment? How are policy interventions seeking to fund quality content, and with what implications?
  
• Public interest content in digital intermediaries: How are platforms dealing with prominence and discoverability of content? Which legal measures can be put in place to ensure that public service media and further public-oriented content remain visible in digital inter-mediaries, including devices such as smart TVs?
  
• Inequalities and disparities: How do digital platforms and intermediaries contribute to increase or diminish inequalities and disparities in the field of communication? How effective are policy measures to combat such inequalities and disparities?
  
• Inclusion: How can digital platforms engage marginalized and diasporic communities towards more inclusion? What are the links between technological infrastructure, innovative business models and inclusive media practices aimed at fostering justice and participation?
  

Submission

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted for blind peer review in DOCX or ODT directly to the organisers of the conference by Friday, June 9, 2023: contact@euromediapp.org. 

Each abstract should address one of the above topics in a sound theoretical and methodological manner, and include a title as well as the name(s), institutional affiliation(s) and e-mail address(es) of the author(s). The colleagues will be notified of acceptance by July 15, 2023, and registration is required by September 30, 2023.

Full papers might be invited after the workshop for publication. Reduced fee for ECREA-recognised “soft-currency” countries and non-waged participants is possible for accepted submitters. More information will be available in due time on the ECREA CLP and EuromediApp websites.

May 2-3, 2023

University of Tübingen, Germany 

https://uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet/campusleben/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungskalender/kongresse-und-tagungen/social-justice-and-technological-futures/  

Registration as participant via email to Ms. Laura Schelenz (laura.schelenz@uni-tuebingen.de) 

Social justice theories are crucial instruments to meet the challenges of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence. The Tübingen Symposium questions canonical values in technology creation while also exploring diverse and potentially competing social justice concepts. The works of Black feminists and critical race theorists as well as decolonial and Global South scholars and activists render visible the interlockings of societal, economic, cultural, and political injustice in the design, production, and distribution of technology. In thinking about the future and its daunting challenges, including the transformation of work, climate change, migration, and overall precarity, what should be the role of technology? What do technological futures look like from a social justice perspective?

August 8-11, 2023

Oslo, Norway

Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2023

https://ifip-summerschool.github.io/#2023-call-for-papers-out-now 

Our future is shared. The Internet and the web, (personal) data, resources, climate effects, music, genetic information, trading routes, celestial bodies, holiday homes, rides: we have built a globalized world on sharing, and sharing will be the great protagonist of our future. However, sharing is mostly realized through centralized platforms, controlled by dominant industry players, instead of decentralized architectures and communities. The 18th IFIP Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management takes a holistic approach to society and technology. We support interdisciplinary research exchange and foster discussions through keynote lectures, tutorials and workshops. Participants will benefit from presenting their research and receiving meaningful feedbacks. The summer school culminates in the publication of selected papers among those submitted by the participants, in the form of an edited volume published by Springer.

City, University of London

The School of Communication & Creativity (SCC) at City, University of London is a cosmopolitan, industry-focused, socially engaged and politically conscious centre of educational excellence and world-changing interdisciplinary research which shapes and influences professional practice.

Our PhD studentships will support the next generation of researchers, practitioners and entrepreneurs working across the media, creative and cultural sectors. More information on our website and below.

We want to support PhD research that will make a positive difference in the world, pushing forward knowledge and/ or practice in the creative and cultural industries, and are particularly interested in receiving proposals that are interdisciplinary and/ or engage with equality, diversity and inclusion.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• transformative justice;
  
• radical creativity;
  
• social justice and communication and/ or creativity;
  
• power, representation and communication;
  
• anti-racist, feminist and queer futures;
  
• the role of creativity and/or communication in tackling climate change, crises, conflict and racism;
  
• race and migration;
  
• media freedom;
  
• criminalisation and media victimisation;
  
• digital/ new media;
  
• aural environmentalism;
  
• sonic cities;
  
• health humanities.
  

What is included

Funding is available for UK, EU and international students.

The doctoral studentships will consist of:

• An annual stipend (currently £19,688; will rise in line with UKRI guidelines) for three years full-time (pro-rata for part-time study), inclusive of London weighting
  
• A full tuition fee waiver
  
• £1500 in research expenses/ consumables over the course of the award
  

Eligibility

The studentships will be awarded on the basis of academic promise, creative thinking and/ or practice-based achievement, or professional equivalent. Projects demonstrating a commitment to interdisciplinarity, social change, and/ or equality, diversity and inclusion are particularly encouraged.

• Applicants must hold, or be on course to complete, at least a good Second-Class Honours degree and a Master's degree in a relevant subject (or international equivalent), or provide equivalent qualifications or professional/ practice-based experience that evidences their preparedness for PhD study.
  
• Applicants whose first language is not English and whose qualifications were not completed in a majority English-speaking country must achieve at least 7.0 in IELTS or a recognised equivalent. Please see the entry requirements for further information.
  
• Applicants must not be currently registered as a doctoral student at City, University of London or any other academic institution.
  

October 28-30, 2023

Kuwait University, Kuwait

Deadline: May 15, 2023

The Twenty Seventh Annual Conference of the Arab-US Association for Communication Educators Kuwait University

Media platforms have developed at an unprecedented rate recently, disrupting traditional models for publishing, broadcasting, and advertising and creating a need for identifying new models. As media become more fragmented and at the same time converge, implications can be seen across several different areas, such as the way people access media, how media are marketed, and how the media industry is changing.

The main objectives of this conference are to discuss, analyze, and critique topics related to those phenomena and to contribute to the academic debate about new media models and theory. The subjects and themes covered in the conference will include, without being limited to:

• History of media fragmentation and convergence in media landscape

• Digital and social media fragmentation and convergence in media landscape

• Changes in media theories and research in a fragmented and converged media landscape

• New media for media education in a fragmented and converged media landscape

• Effects of media convergence and fragmentation in media landscape

• Corporate and strategic communication and their relationships with media convergence and fragmentation in media landscape

• Agenda setting effects of influencers in media landscape

• Effects of media fragmentation and convergence on consumers in media landscape

• Fragmentation and convergence of journalism in media landscape

• Health and emergency communication in a fragmented and converged media landscape

Site: Kuwait University, Kuwait

Date: 28-30 October 2023

Languages of the conference: Arabic and English Registration fees: $150

Hotels: To be announced later

Important deadline dates:

• May 15th: Submission of abstract

• June 15th: Response to abstracts

• August 15th: Submission of registration forms and fee payments

• Sept. 1st: Submission of full paper

Consequently, the consumers of media messages have changed their usual patterns of consumption. The phenomena of digitization, media convergence, media fragmentation, and consumption of media and user-generated content set the agenda of interests and concerns for educators, scholars, and practitioners.

• Sept. 20th: Dissemination of final conference program

Contact:

Send abstracts and questions to Dr. Yousef AlFailakawi, President of AUSACE

yalfailakawi@ku.edu.kw

www. https://ausace.mystrikingly.com

June, 22-23, 2023

Bucharest, Romania (Virtual and in-person sessions)

Deadline: April 23, 2023

Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies, University of Bucharest

The Institute for International Journalism of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University Yuriy Fed'kovych Chernivtsi National University of Ukraine

The International Conference

Communication in times of (poly)crisis and digital disruptive transformations

The current context in Europe and around the world seems to be marked by a sense of perpetual, although uneven and differently experienced, crisis and uncertainty. On the background of (post)Covid pandemic situation, issues that have been put on hold - climate change, food insecurity, population aging and migration, to name just a few - are reappearing, with a greater force, powered by the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and growing inequalities. These difficult challenges have triggered populist discourses, favor nationalism and extremism, mainly because the digital informational ecosystem favors the simplicity and emotionality of those responses.

In these boisterous times, trustworthy communication is essential; the high capacity of conspiracy theories to go viral, the threat of exposure to contradictory information and fake-news/disinformation might contribute to making people more vulnerable and confused and also might persuade them to accept and to disseminate ideologically-driven content and polarized information.

The purpose of this conference is to consider the state of digital informational ecosystem and communications research in the times of (poly)crisis and uncertainty. The conference theme focuses on the intersection between the role of quality press, traditional journalism, political/public communication and digital technologies, all understood as potential enhancers of democracy, yet vulnerable when under attack.

We invite participants to submit theoretical and empirical proposals that might contribute to a critical discussion on the reconfiguration of journalistic and political/public communication practices in a hybridized and polarized networked media environment.

·         How can the emerging disruptive forms of communication and information be meaningfully delineated?

·         How do strategies and tactics change in relation to the construction of (alternative) agendas, claims and politics?

·         How do journalists engage in (re)enforcing public confidence and accountability?

·         How has the proliferation of digital populism, misinformation and disinformation/fake news transformed political communication? 

We are interested in papers on the following topics:

@ Disinformation and misinformation in media and political/public communication;

@the vulnerability of audiences in major crisis situations – the impact of gender, social class, age and other identity categories;

@ Ethical and moral dilemmas of using Artificial Intelligence in public communication;

@hate speech in digital informational ecosystem;

@ digital communications and the re-actualization of populism and nationalism;

@ Conceptual and methodological challenges of studying journalists’ roles in a digital environment;

@ communication role in citizen sciences and participatory transformation of research;

@ Marcom and creative industries strategies;

@data-driven propaganda strategies and conspiracy theories;

@ work, gender and new technologies;

@organizational communication (in time of crisis), communication campaigns, types of activism and political movements in digital informational ecosystem;

@ communication of climate change and adaptation; politics of climate;

@ (higher) education in digital informational ecosystem.

Special Panel: Exploring (dis)continuities in work, gender and technology

The session seeks research that employs work-centered perspectives alongside a gender or intersectional lens to examine the current context, marked by (poly)crisis and technological disruptions. Traditionally, the media field has privileged the symbolic as an object of inquiry, but as digital technologies have become ubiquitous, it has manifested a growing, trans-disciplinary concern with understanding how the means of communication shape material life, not only how they represent it. With the rise of the platform economy, and the increasing proportion of knowledge workers who depend on communication to carry out their tasks, the media field is turning its gaze towards work-related matters. We want to contribute to this turn by exploring the (dis)continuities that digital technologies create between work, home and leisure time, while keeping in mind that the impact will differ across identities. Gender remains a core organizing principle in our society, but we acknowledge that it is influenced and often becomes less prominent in relation to other identity categories, namely, social class, age, race/ ethnicity, educational background, occupational status, job type, bodily and cognitive abilities, non-normative sexualities, and nationality. We welcome with equal interest submissions that belong to the media field and to other disciplines, both empirical and theoretical approaches connected to the following areas:

·      Work in communication industries

·      Knowledge workers and communication practices

·      Technology and paid/unpaid labor in the platform economy

·      Work and intersectional (digital) inequalities 

·      Designing technology and policy for digital wellbeing

Practical information

The abstract (300 words) will contain author’s/authors’ details, the study’s purpose, research questions, employed methodology or approach, (potential) results, including references (please, use the template attached below).

The submission languages are Romanian and English. The time allocated to each presentation will be 15-20 minutes, and it can be delivered online/virtual and face to face (the corresponding author is expected to express this choice when submitting the abstract). The deadline for abstract submission is April, 23, 2022, at the address: conference@fjsc.ro

 NO participation fees.

If you have further questions, please contact the organizers at the address: conference@fjsc.ro

Scientific Committee

Jatin Srivastava, PhD, Full Professor, Ohio University, USA

Natalia Nechaieva Yuriichuk, PhD, Associate Professor, Yuriy Fed'kovych Chernivtsi National University

Marian Petcu, PhD, Full Professor, University of Bucharest, Romania

Antonio Momoc, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Bucharest, Romania

Camelia Beciu, PhD, Full Professor, University of Bucharest, Romania

Camelia Cmeciu, PhD, Full Professor, University of Bucharest, Romania

Georgeta Drulă, PhD, Full Professor, University of Bucharest, Romania

Adriana Ștefănel, PhD, Lecturer, University of Bucharest, Romania

Pierre Morelli, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Lorraine, France

Dana Popescu-Jourdy, PhD, Associate Professor, Université Lyon 2 Louis Lumière, France

Delia Cristina Balaban, PhD, Full Professor, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Nataša Simeunović Bajić, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Niš, Serbia

Gheorghe-Ilie Fârte, PhD, Associate Professor, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi, Romania

Elena Prus, PhD, Full Professor, Universitatea Liberă Internațională din Moldova, Chișinău, Republica Moldova

Florin Ardelean, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Oradea, Romania

Irina Diana Mădroane, PhD, Associate Professor, West University of Timișoara, Romania

Organising Committee

Antonio Momoc, Dean - FJSC, PhD, Associate professor, University of Bucharest

Romina Surugiu, Vice Dean - FJSC, PhD, Associate professor, University of Bucharest

Jatin Srivastava, PhD, Full Professor, Ohio University, Institute for International Journalism (IIJ)

Nicoleta Apostol, PhD, Lecturer, University of Bucharest

Alexandra Bardan, PhD, Lecturer, University of Bucharest

Доц. др Наташа Симеуновић Бајић

Филозофски факултет Универзитета у Нишу

Doc. dr Nataša Simeunović Bajić, Filozofski fakultet Univerziteta u Nišu