ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

May 21, 2024

Online

https://iamcr.org/webinars/presidential-phd-webinar-2024

IAMCR invites presenters for the upcoming IAMCR Presidential PhD Research Webinar convened by Jasmin Surm from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. 

The webinar will take place on 21 May 2024 at 08:00 UTC.

This webinar serves as an opportunity for PhD researchers to showcase their work, fostering a rich scholarly dialogue on news agencies.  Additionally, it seeks to facilitate networking opportunities and encourage a meaningful exchange of ideas among different generations of news agency scholars.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

• Any exploration of the status quo, challenges, and future horizons of news agencies in the respective area of focus, which can include topics such as:
  
• Economic Pressures: Examining the economic challenges news agencies face, including their evolving business models and strategies for ensuring financial sustainability.
  
• Ownership Structures, Business Models and Editorial Independence: Discussion on the influence of ownership structures on news agency operations, editorial decision-making processes, and editorial independence. 
  
• Technological Adaptation: Exploration of how news agencies leverage technology, including artificial intelligence and automation, to enhance news gathering, production, and distribution processes. 
  
• Disinformation, Fake News and Ethical Considerations: Investigation into the role of news agencies in combating disinformation and fake news. This can include fact-checking initiatives, content verification processes, and collaboration with other stakeholders.
  
• Globalisation vs. Localisation: Analysis of the interplay between global and local news coverage and production, and how news agencies navigate this balance in their reporting practices. This exploration can include an examination of the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for news agencies in serving diverse clients with diverse audiences in different geographical, linguistic and cultural contexts. 
  
• News Agency Personnel: Analysis of the roles and challenges of diverse professionals working within and for news agencies. 
  
• Future Pathways: Exploration of potential future directions for news agencies, including business models, emerging technologies, and strategies.

To submit your paper for presentation in the webinar, please download and complete the application form (*). Send the completed form to Jasmin Surm (j.surm@leeds.ac.uk), the convenor of the webinar, and Mazlum Kemal Dağdelen (mazlum@iamcr.org), the assistant to Nico Carpentier, IAMCR President, with the subject line “IAMCR Presidential PhD Research Webinar: Title of your Paper Proposal” by 15 April 2024, 23.59 UTC. If there are multiple presenters, each should fill out an individual application form and send all forms in one email.

Please note that only IAMCR member PhD students are eligible to present in the IAMCR Presidential PhD Research Webinar.

Timeline 

• Deadline for Applications: 15 April 2024, 23h59 UTC
  
• Decision Announcement: 29 April 2024
  
• Submission of the final presentations (and a brief note on the research): 14 May 2024 
  
• Date of the Webinar: 21 May 2024
  

(*) Link: https://iamcr.org/system/files/PresenterApplicationForm_NewsAgenciesinTransition.docx

We are pleased to announce that the Liverpool School of the Arts Doctoral Award (LADA) is now open for applications. The award provides assistance with fees and maintenance for full-time PhD study, renewable each year for up to 3 years, based on satisfactory progress. LADA comes with an expected commitment of up to 150 hours of teaching or research assistance work per year. Applications are welcome from all students, UK or international, who are applying to a PhD programme within School of the Arts.

To be eligible, candidates must have applied to a PhD programme in SotA by 3rd April 2024. The LADA application itself must then be submitted by 8th May 2024, with interviews expected to take place on 16th July 2024.

The application form and further details are available here: Doctoral Award - School of the Arts - University of Liverpool. 

Please don’t hesitate to contact pgarts@liverpool.ac.uk if you have any queries.

June 6, 2024, 5:00PM - 7:00PM

IALS Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DR

Contact: ials.events@sas.ac.uk 

Press Freedom and Regulation in a Digital Era: A Comparative Study assesses the extent to which the emergent regulatory model for online news media is shaped by analogies from the past, or rather by a newly prevalent culture of control. By interweaving two distinct strands of analysis - the concepts of press freedom and regulation, and the phenomena of convergence and digitalization - this book examines the challenges for press freedom in the nascent digital news ecosystem. Drawing upon decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as from German, UK and US case law, this comparative work explores the regulation of the press in the digital era and the impact of the proliferating media laws, policies, and jurisprudence on press freedom.

Part of the book was written while the author was an ILPC Research Associate. The book launch and panel discussion should be of interest beyond the academy, namely for lawyers and policymakers working in government departments and/or involved with media regulation as well as for campaigners defending press freedom and/or advocating for greater press accountability. The book launch will also be an opportunity for collaboration between the ILPC and CFOM.  

Panellists:  

• Mr Adam Baxter (Director of Standards and Audit Protection, Ofcom)
  
• Ms Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana (IMPRESS)
  
• Professor Jacob Rowbottom (University College, Oxford)
  
• Dr Sejal Parmar (Cardiff University)
  
• Dr Irini Katsirea, Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM), School of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Sheffield (author)
  

Chair: Mr William Horsley (International Director, CFOM)

This event is organised in collaboration with the Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) at the University of Sheffield. 

All welcome- this event is free to attend but booking is required. 

Irini Katsirea

• Provides a cutting-edge analysis of current legislative, jurisprudential, and policy developments of online news media regulation
  
• Offers a comparative analysis of the regulation of the online news media across different jurisdictions
  
• Provides interdisciplinary insights from legal as well as media, communication, and journalism research
  

The processes of convergence and digitalization have altered the technological conditions in which the press operates. More than that, they have altered the environment in which the press stakes its claim to freedom and strives to protect its turf from other media players. The advent of internet-based services and applications has blurred the technological boundaries between the press, broadcasting, and telecommunications, challenging their regulatory silos.

Press Freedom and Regulation in a Digital Era: A Comparative Study assesses the extent to which the emergent regulatory model for online news media is shaped by analogies from the past, or rather by a newly prevalent culture of control. By interweaving two distinct strands of analysis - the concepts of press freedom and regulation, and the phenomena of convergence and digitalization - this book examines the key implications of digitalization and assesses the challenges for press freedom in the nascent digital news ecosystem. 

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/press-freedom-and-regulation-in-a-digital-era-9780198858607?q=katsirea&lang=en&cc=gb#

University of Southampton

The University of Southampton is looking for two Lecturers in Digital Media with research interests in Artificial Intelligence to join the Film department. These posts are available from August 1 2024. Details on the role further below.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to the Head of Film, Prof. Shelley Cobb (s.cobb@soton.ac.uk). Whilst this post is offered on a full-time basis, hours are not a barrier, and we are interested in individuals wishing to work 0.6 FTE and above. 

You can apply at jobs.soton.ac.uk. REF 2659424AR

The deadline is May 1, 2024 and we expect interviews to take place June 3rd and 4th.

The University of Southampton is in the top 1% of world universities and is one of the UK’s top 15 research-intensive universities.  Committed to excellence in all we do, we are growing and investing in our research and people to accelerate our remarkable achievements. With particular focus on four key impact themes chosen to build on the university’s existing strengths and to address the most complex societal and environmental challenges: Artificial Intelligence, sustainability and resilience, decarbonisation and engineering better health, this role is integral to our aim of making a lasting difference.  

The Film Department at Southampton has an excellent reputation for teaching and research. For REF 2021, 95% of our research was judged ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’, and we achieved the highest scores for impact beyond the academy. We have close interdisciplinary links with other members of the School, Faculty and the wider University. Our research-led teaching across film, television and digital media includes modules on history, theory, industry, and cultural studies. 

The role  

These posts are REF (Research Excellence Framework) led and require academics with a developing and growing research profile that indicates an

 existing or developing national reputation in their area of expertise, as well as strong potential for participation and/or leadership in grant applications.

About you  

You will be capable of engaging with critical questions about the place of artificial intelligence in society from a humanities or social science perspective. Your research agenda will address a larger question of social importance (sustainability, policy/governance, wellbeing or social resilience), and its potential to impact beyond the academy will be an advantage. An ability to teach undergraduate students in modules dealing with digital labour, algorithmic cultures, and automated systems and decision-making processes will be highly regarded, and we are keen to hear from applicants whose teaching and research expertise can productively engage with media industries. The ability of your research to have impact beyond the academy and/or familiarity with computational methods may be advantageous.

Editors: Peter Jakobsson, Johan Lindell, and Fredrik Stiernstedt

Download the book as open access or order a print copy here: https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/publications/future-nordic-media-model-0

Content

Peter Jakobsson, Johan Lindell, & Fredrik Stiernstedt

Introduction: The future of the digital media welfare state

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-i

PART I THE MEDIA WELFARE STATE AND MEDIA POLICY IN THE NORDICS

Kim Christian Schrøder, Mark Blach-Ørsten, & Mads Kæmsgaard Eberholst

Chapter 1. Nordic media welfare states from a comparative perspective: Unpacking audience fragmentation and polarisation

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-1

Randa Romanova & Mats Bergman

Chapter 2. Similar media systems, different self-regulation: A closer look at the Nordic media accountability models

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-2

Reeta Pöyhtäri

Chapter 3. Addressing the hate speech issue in the Nordic countries: A challenge for media welfare states or a chance for their revival?

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-3

Minna Horowitz & Hannu Nieminen

Chapter 4. Communication rights and the Nordic epistemic commons: Assessing the media welfare state in the age of information disorder 

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-4

Marko Ala-Fossi, Katja Lehtisaari, & Riku Neuvonen 

Chapter 5. Public service without broadcasting? Conditions for abandoning terrestrial television in Finland 

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-5

Lars Julius Halvorsen & Paul Bjerke

Chapter 6. Cracks in the foundations? Shifting consensual relations in two media fields in Norway 

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-6

Birgir Guðmundsson & Valgerður Jóhannsdóttir

Chapter 7. Iceland’s media policy and the Nordic media welfare model: A fragile support and uncertain future 

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-7

PART II BEYOND THE NORDIC MODEL

Sofie Flensburg & Signe Sophus Lai

Chapter 8. Public goods and private property: A waltz between Big Tech and the Nordic welfare states 

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-8

Helle Sjøvaag & Raul Ferrer-Conill

Chapter 9. Digital communication infrastructures and the principle of universality: Challenges for Nordic media welfare state jurisdictions

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-9 

Nina Kvalheim

Chapter 10. Who owns the owners? An analysis of ownership patterns in the Norwegian newspaper market

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-10

Hallvard Moe, Gunn Enli, & Trine Syvertsen

Chapter 11. The dark side of the media welfare state: How media policy ignored consumption and climate change

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-11

Anne Kaun & Helena Löfgren

Chapter 12. From media welfare to data welfare: Broadening the scope of media welfare 

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-12

Linus Andersson, Martin Danielsson, Malin Hallén, & Ebba Sundin

Chapter 13. From reality-TV to rurality-TV: Exploring the genre of idealised rural lifestyles in Nordic public service television

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-13

Peter Jakobsson, Johan Lindell, & Fredrik Stiernstedt

Afterword. What’s next for the media welfare state?

Download the chapter here: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855893-a

Department of Communication Studies, University of Salzburg (AT)

Deadline (EXTENDED): May 1, 2024

The Department of Communication Studies at the University of Salzburg, Austria, invites applications for a tenure track position in research and teaching as an Assistant Professor in combination with a qualification agreement in the field of media structure and platform research. 

The starting date is scheduled for 1 October 2024. The department strongly encourages qualified female candidates to apply. The application deadline is 1 May 2024. Please find all further information here.

September 26-28, 2024

Piedmont (Italy)

Deadline (EXTENDED): April 11, 2024

Dear all,

This is to let you know that we are accepting panel proposals for the stream Food Media and Communication in the congress of the International Society for Gastronomic Sciences and Studies (ISGSS). As detailed below, we will soon open our call for abstracts as well. The title of this year's congress is Shaping Gastronomy: Regenerating Food Systems and Societies. It will take place in Piedmont (Italy), between the 26th and the 28th of September 2024. For details on our organization, on the congress and its beautiful locations, please follow this link: https://www.internationalgastronomicsociety.org/congress-overview

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

Important Dates

• Call for Panels (open or closed): Open from 2nd February 2024 to 1st of April 11st April 2024
  
• Call for Abstracts (papers and posters): Open form the 15th of April to the 15th of May
  
• Early Bird Registration: From 15th May 2024 to 15th July 2024
  
• Standard Registration: From 16th July 2024 to 1st September 2024
  

June 24, 2024 (1:30 PM - 2:45 PM)

Currumbin Boardoom (Star L2), Gold Coast, Australia

Deadline: April 1, 2024

Proposers:

Dr. Lindsay Palmer (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

Dr Soomin Seo (Sogang University, South Korea)

Dr. Ruth Moon (Louisiana State University, USA)

Prof. Saba Bebawi (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

Dr. Saumava Mitra (Dublin City University, Ireland) [Acting as Chair]

About the workshop

When conducting journalism research in spaces where groups of humans are experiencing marginalisation, the academic researcher and human research subjects necessarily encounter each other on an unequal plane of power and privilege. While critiquing the power imbalances between Western journalists and their news subjects, or their non-Western colleagues working alongside them, journalism scholarship in this area remains largely silent about its own problematic position vis-à-vis the actors it studies in liminal spaces.

To address this silence, we are organising a Blue Sky Big Ideas workshop for attendees of ICA 2024 in Gold Coast, Australia. The workshop will facilitate a dialogue among a diverse group of researchers who have previously conducted fieldwork among journalists and journalism-adjacent workers in liminal spaces, particularly those in the Global South but also in other relevant marginalised contexts. It will also include those who might be planning such fieldwork. The participants will come together to reflect on their own practices as researchers, and engage with each other to find common ground across their various positionalities, identities and experiences. The aim of the workshop will be to outline the inequities and imbalances which scholars need to be aware of in their work.

How to join

The workshop will be open to 10 interested participants apart from the initial proposers. Please write to Saumava Mitra (saumava.mitra@dcu.ie) to express your interest by 01st April 2024 with a short rationale of 75 words outlining why you would like to participate. Scholars based in ICA-designated tier B or C countries and early career or student scholars planning fieldwork in marginalised research contexts will be prioritised as workshop attendees.

Journal of Greek Media and Culture (special issue)

Deadline: May 15, 2024

Since the publication of Richard Dyer’s Stars (1979), which initiated the beginning of scholarly enquiry into film stardom, star studies have been constantly evolving and expanding. While most early work on stardom focused on issues of representation and the ideological significance of film stars, or their role in the industrialisation of Hollywood cinema, the field has expanded across film, TV and media studies, adopting new areas of investigation and methodological approaches, including work on the nature of fame and celebrity (Holmes & Redmond 2007; Holmes & Negra 2011), empirical audience research (Herzog & Gaines 1991; Stacey 1994), acting and performance (Naremore 1988; Hollinger 2006; Baron 2018), as well as national and transnational stars and stardoms (Vincendeau 2000; Landy 2010; Meeuf & Raphael 2013; Yu & Austin 2017; Lawrence 2020). 

Meanwhile, Greek film studies have been experiencing an exponential growth in both the Greek- and English-language academe. However, while popular Greek cinema has been reclaimed as a serious object of academic study for some time now, the phenomenon of stardom in Greece has not enjoyed a similar academic reappraisal, despite its acknowledged centrality in Greek cinema and beyond. It is primarily in connection with Old Greek Cinema (Kourelou 2020; Karalis 2015; Potamitis 2013; Kartalou 2011; Kyriacos 2009), genre (Papadimitriou 2009, 2004; Eleftheriotis 1995) and, to a lesser extent, acting (Lykourgioti 2017; Dimitriadis 2008; Kourelou 2008) that Greek film criticism has recognised the role of stardom. Beyond these contexts, there has been a considerable lack of critical engagement with the diachronic manifestation and development not only of stardom but also of celebrity.

This issue aims to lay the groundwork for a wide-ranging debate on the subject that will improve our understanding of stardom in Greece. The issue, however, does not seek to simply celebrate individual stars, unearth their biographies or elaborate on the types they embody. Rather, our concern is with exploring theoretical issues individual or groups of stars raise, the kinds of identities and meanings they personify, as well as the ways in which they negotiate the values and contradictions of their era. At the same time, we are not only interested in revealing the textual significance of stars in specific historical contexts, but also their political economy and discursive construction. Some of the lines of enquiry we would particularly like to pursue revolve around the following questions: how has stardom evolved historically in Greece? Does cinema still provide the ultimate confirmation of stardom, as Christine Gledhill (1991) claimed in relation to Hollywood stars more than three decades ago? How have media technologies (from TV and VHS to social media) impacted not only the way stars emerge, but also the way their fame has been conceptualised and their fans engage with them? How can we understand Greek stardom in nationally and culturally specific terms as well as through the way it intersects with other – dominant or peripheral – transnational contexts? What ideas about personhood do stars articulate, how do these change over time and how do they help audiences make sense of themselves and the (Greek) world?

In order to reveal the multitude of stardoms in Greek film, TV and media, we invite (but do not limit) proposals on the following topics: 

• Histories of stardom and celebrity
  
• Stars and genre
  
• Stars and film style
  
• Stars, gender and sexuality
  
• Stars, ethnicity and race
  
• Stars and the nation
  
• Star labour
  
• Ageing
  
• Acting and performance
  
• The relationship between studios and stars; auteurs and stars
  
• The interconnectivity between theatrical, film and/or TV stardom
  
• Non-film stardom
  
• Cult stardom
  
• Reception and spectatorship: stardom and film criticism; the role of the audience (and different types of audiences) and how they make use of star images 
  

Please send a title, 300 word abstract and a short biography to Dr Olga Kourelou (kourelou.o@unic.ac.cy) and Dr Lydia Papadimitriou (editorJGMC@gmail.com) by 15 May 2024. The final articles should be around 6000-8000 words, and submitted to the editors by 1st November 2024.

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Information about the call can also be found here:

https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-greek-media-culture#call-for-papers