ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

November 3-7, 2025

Charles University, Czech Republic

Deadline: July 1, 2025

https://culcorc.fsv.cuni.cz/phd-course-on-discourse-theory/

Course coordinator and leader: Nico Carpentier

Course credits: 5 credits

Course location: Centrum Voršilská, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Contact person: Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen

COURSE BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

The course aims to discuss two methods in the field of discourse studies: Discourse-theoretical analysis (DTA) and Discursive-material analysis (DMA). Both are grounded in so-called high theory, with discourse theory as its main starting point, but with elements of actor-network theory and new materialism. This course will start with an introduction to these theoretical models but will then move on to their analytical deployment in communication and media studies research. 

Special attention will be spent on the creation of a theory-grounded analytical model to guide the research. Apart from attending lectures, participants will be expected to participate in both theoretical and research-driven workshops.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On completion of this course, successful students will be able to:

• have a deeper understanding of the field of discourse studies and, in particular, of its discourse-theoretical component; 
  
• have a deeper understanding of the theoretical relationship between the discursive and the material;
  
• know how to translate discourse-theoretical models into analytical practice through the use of the notion of the sensitising concept (applied to discourse theory and to discourse-theoretical rereading of other theories);
  
• set up an analytical model for a discourse-theoretical analysis and a discursive-material analysis.
  

TEACHING AND EVALUATION

The one-week course will be organised in 10 teaching slots, combining lectures and workshops. These workshops are partially theoretical (presenting an article or chapter) and partially research-driven (presenting an analytical model). 

A certificate (with a grade “Pass”) is given after 1) attendance of a minimum of 8 meetings, 2) a working group theoretical presentation, and 3) an individual case study presentation.

AVAILABLE PARTICIPANT SLOTS AND COSTS

A total number of 20 participant slots are available. The participation fee is 50 euros and only covers course attendance. Participants are required to pay themselves for their travel and accommodation costs, and all other expenses.

REGISTRATION

To register for this course, the following three documents have to be submitted:

• A motivation letter
  
• A brief description/abstract of the ongoing (PhD) research (including the current stage of the research) 
  
• A CV (including information about your university affiliation and your contact information)
  

Please use this form to submit your application. If you need assistance regarding registration, please get in touch with Mazlum Kemal Dağdelen, mazlum.dagdelen@fsv.cuni.cz

The deadline for the application submission is 01 July 2025; the applicants will be notified about the results by 31 July 2025. The accepted applicants will receive further details for registration and payment in due time.

COURSE READINGS

Main reading:

Carpentier, Nico (2017) The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation. New York: Peter Lang.

Secondary readings:

Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of 'sex'. New York, London: Routledge.

Dolphijn, Rick, van der Tuin, Iris (2012) New materialism: Interviews and cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open humanities press.

Glynos, Jason, Howarth, David (2007) Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. London and New York: Routledge.

Howarth, David (2000) Discourse. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Howarth, David (2012) "Hegemony, political subjectivity, and radical democracy", in Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (eds.) Laclau: A critical reader. London: Routledge, pp. 256-276.

Howarth, David, Stavrakakis, Yannis (2000) “Introducing discourse theory and political analysis”, in David Howarth, Aletta J. Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis (eds.) Discourse theory and political analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 1-23.

Laclau, Ernesto, Chantal Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the social. An introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mouffe, Chantal (2005) On the Political. London: Routledge.

Philips, Louise, Jørgensen, Marianne W. (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988) "Can the subaltern speak?", in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271-313.

Torfing, Jacob (1999) New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, and Zizek. Oxford: Blackwell

Follow CULCORC on Bluesky and Mastodon

Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague

We are seeking two PhD students to work on dissertations aligned with the ERC grant “GAMEINDEX: Politics and aesthetics of indexical representation in digital games and VR.“ The project starts in October 2025, is headed by Dr. Jaroslav Švelch, and located at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism within the Prague Game Production Studies research group. 

Dissertation topic: 

GAMEINDEX focuses on indexical representation in games – both as traces of real-life objects or people in the simulated worlds of digital games and VR, and as references to physical locations. PhD students will be involved in the work package that analyzes indexical representation in games and/or VR apps as media artifacts. The applicants are invited to propose a project within the scope of GAMEINDEX, focusing on representation of a certain region and its locations, culture, and/or history in games and VR apps produced both within and outside that region. We are looking for applicants from a diverse set of regional backgrounds including locations deemed peripheral by mainstream game culture. The research is expected to involve qualitative content analysis/close reading, discourse analysis, and interviews with developers or stakeholders. For more information about the project, see the project description here. Besides their main focus on in-game representation, the PhD students will also take part in the analysis of discourse about indexical techniques and contribute to a database that is a part of the project’s output. 

Candidate requirements: 

Candidates must complete their Master’s degree by August 30, 2025. They are expected to be well-versed in literature related to game production and game representation and be skilled in qualitative content analysis or related methods. During their PhD, the candidates will be required to present papers at academic conferences and produce publications for international peer-reviewed journals.  

Practical arrangements: 

Starting in the Fall semester of 2025, the successful applicants will enroll into the Media and Communication Studies 4-year English-language PhD program in the combined form. They will be employed by the GAMEINDEX project and will receive a full-time salary for the duration of four years. Successful applicants are expected to relocate to Prague and are eligible for a relocation fee from the project budget. 

Application procedure: 

The deadline for the application is APRIL 30, 2025. To apply, the candidate must submit a structured CV, a 10-page dissertation project and a list of literature they wish to discuss at the admission interview. We strongly encourage prospective applicants to get in touch earlier to consult their application. The admission interview will focus on the dissertation project and the list of literature and will be conducted remotely. The application and the interview will be evaluated by the selection committee, chaired by the guarantor of the PhD program. If accepted for the PhD program, the applicant’s employment on the ERC project will then be confirmed by GAMEINDEX’s PI. 

More information about the admissions process, along with a link to the online application form are available here: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programme-media-and-communication-studies/how-apply 

When applying, please choose the “combined” rather than “full-time” form of study. For administrative purposes, externally funded full-time PhD students fall under the “combined” form.  

Frequently asked questions:

Can international students apply? 

The position is primarily intended for international, meaning non-Czech, students. We are looking for expertise on other countries or regions.

What do you mean by “dissertation project”? How should it relate to GAMEINDEX? 

Based on the information about the GAMEINDEX project, you are supposed to come up with your own dissertation project that is in line with our goals, meaning that it studies indexical representation in games from a certain region. You can specify your research question and add your own twists based on your knowledge of a given region or based on your previous work and academic background. When filling in the dissertation project, use this form, as instructed on the “How to apply” page. The form is generic and meant for any applicant into the program. You will be able to elaborate on your project’s relationship to GAMEINDEX in multiple fields of the form.

How should I start consulting my application?

Check the dissertation project form to familiarize yourself with its structure. In line with the instructions within the form, prepare an extended abstract (800 words) of your prospective project. Send the extended abstract to the GAMEINDEX PI Jaroslav Švelch (address below) along with your CV. Prepare the questions you want to ask.

For more information about the positions (including the salary) and GAMEINDEX, please contact Jaroslav Švelch at Jaroslav.Svelch@fsv.cuni.cz.  

To learn more about the doctoral program, please check this webpage: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/study/phd-studies.

TMG—Journal for Media History

Deadline (Abstracts): May 31, 2025

How can “transmedia” history be put into practice from empirical perspectives? Following on the successful conference “Transmedia History” organised by the Impresso project and the University of Lausanne’s History Department, TMG—Journal for Media History invites scholars to contribute to a special issue on Transmedia Histories.

Media history is composed of a myriad of parallel histories, which makes comparisons difficult. Research in the field has indeed long focused on single types of – often legacy – media or single institutions within their national contexts. In the mid-2000s, however, the transnational turn allowed for new trends in research objectives to emerge. Research scopes overcame previous temporal and spatial frameworks and thereby became less driven by institutional perspectives than by contents and their circulation. Moreover, this new focus on transnational perspectives enlarged its scope to encompass a wider range of topics within media history, such as technologies and communication. The development of the history of communication, cultural industries, techniques, and international relations all contributed to a form of decompartmentalisation that paved the way for a more comprehensive history of media systems. These new approaches were made possible most notably by mass digitisation of media sources and the improvement of their online accessibility to researchers. International research networks, such as the Transnational Radio Encounters, have gathered around such transnational ambitions. The transnational turn was a major breakthrough that resulted in important publications (e.g. Mollier and Lyon 2012; Fickers and Johnson 2012; Badenoch, Fickers and Henrich-Franke 2013).

It remains, however, that research in media history continues to face borders it has not managed to cross yet: beyond geographical borders, those between media institutions and between different types of media (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 134). This challenge gave the impulse for the establishment of the Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS) network in 2013. In a milestone article published in 2017, Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert defined the concept of entangled media histories “as a means of better understanding the dynamic interconnectedness of media across semiotic, technological, institutional and political boundaries in history” (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 130). Rather than accumulating histories of different media, they advocated for a focus on the elements that bridge them. However, a lack of empirical studies persists, primarily due to the enduring division of knowledge and the practical challenges associated with navigating separate, multilingual archives. These factors discourage research that moves beyond compartmentalised, sector-specific approaches. Exceptions notwithstanding, monomedia perspectives still dominate the field of media history and too little research is being carried out on exchanges and cooperation between media.

This special issue aims to extend those efforts and reflections by inviting papers that prioritise a transmedia approach. We seek to present research that explores media history through the simultaneous analysis of different media, thereby emphasising the significance of the media ecosystems in which they co-evolve. ‘Media’ is understood in a broad sense here. It includes traditional media (books, posters, press, cinema, radio and television), but also more recent historical examples such as video games and the Internet (e.g. streaming services, podcasts, online news). The targeted timeframe is extensive, though – per the scope of TMG—Journal for Media History – a historical perspective has to be central. The special issue ultimately seeks to contribute to a decompartmentalised and interconnected history of media. The featured articles will not only place media history within a broader social, political, and cultural context but also foster a dialogue among them.

We invite articles that could fall within three promising research axes:

1. Transmedia circulations, adaptations and reciprocal influences 

The aim of this strand of research is to identify and analyse various factors that facilitate the circulation of content and formats across media and/or that foster interactions between media:

• specific actors or media professions such as news and advertising agencies, foreign correspondents, exiles and diaspora representatives active in various media, translators, arrangers, cross-border media;
• spaces of circulation and exchanges that transcend traditional political and/or linguistic boundaries, such as fictional serial productions, co-productions, joint-broadcasts, technical cooperation associations in the telecommunications field, foreign-language press;
• socio-economic factors like concentration and financial globalisation, liberalisation and deregulation, convergence and new consumption habits.
• the rhythms and temporality of information, the modes of circulation (e.g. scissors-and-paste journalism), adaptations and reconfigurations (e.g. comics to radio)
• the transmission of practices and the mobility of people or resistance to these phenomena, i.e. factors that hinder or trouble transmedia circulation (seasonal and geopolitical conditions, legal matters, censorship, etc.)

2. Intersections, reconfigurations and new media genealogies

The goal of this strand is to refine our understanding of how media define themselves in relation to each other and how – from a diachronic-historical perspective – once-new media were perceived, integrated, and critiqued. We aim to identify productions and documentary resources that reflect such intertwined relations, such as anticipation tales, criticism in the press, advertising productions, etc. Potential questions to be addressed are:

• How did the advent of new media affect existing media? How were they perceived and narrated by other media?
• How do media publicize, promote, and criticize each other’s content? What are motives and strategies?
• What “media imaginaries” emerged and how did these perhaps shape new periodisations of media history?

• 3. New approaches, resources and methods 

  In what ways can the mass digitisation of archival collections and the advancement of computational analysis tools foster transmedia research? Computational research methods allow processing large volumes of data and in recent times also increasingly across languages and modalities (e.g. image, text, sound). Until recently, most projects that embraced data-driven approaches focused on a single media, mostly the press. Research now starts to explore how to set up the processing—and how to conduct the analysis—of transmedia data; projects in the likes of TwiXL: An infrastructure for cross-media research on public debates, Clariah Media Suite and Impresso - Media Monitoring of the Past II all welcomed this goal. The third axis of this special issue thus, a.o., seeks to

   

• identify new and/or digital approaches that facilitate and bolster comparisons. 
• discuss methods which enable analyses of the circulation of contents and formats at scale, in order to enhance our understanding of information fluxes. We therefore look to understand the effects that such tools have on studying transmedia histories, based on concrete historical case studies.

We also welcome contributions utilizing a transmedia perspective which are beyond these thematic lines but are still complementary to the overall special issue.

In short, this special issue seeks to contribute to the clarification and development of a transmedia approach in the historical sciences. It aims to address transmedia from a historical, long-term perspective based on concrete historical case studies and original research and, more broadly, to promote a decompartmentalised, entangled history of media. 

Submission procedure and important dates

Abstract submissions are due on May 31, 2025. They have to be in English and have present the main research question(s), academic literature, data, method and concrete historical case study the authors plan to use. Abstracts should not exceed 1500 words. Please submit your abstract and a short bio to all four guest editors at transmediahistories@gmail.com.  

Since this special issue follows from the Transmedia conference referred to above, it is addressed primarily – but not exclusively! – to those who presented there. Those scholars, who already submitted an abstract before, can either send in the same abstract, or send in an updated version. Either way, make sure it complies with the above instructions.

In June, we will inform the authors whether they are invited to submit a full article.

Selected authors shall be invited to submit an article of 6000-8000 words (including notes). Final acceptance depends on a double-blind peer review process. Deadline for the manuscript is November 1, 2025. Revised drafts are expected by March 1, 2026 (and, if necessary, a second round of rewriting and reviews in the ensuing months). Copy-editing will take place in the Fall. The special issue will be published in January 2027. Publications are open access; no payment from the authors will be required.

If you have questions, please contact the editors of the special issue, Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz, François Vallotton, Martin Grandjean and Jesper Verhoef at transmediahistories@gmail.com. 

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/