ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Medijska istraživanja / Media Research (SPECIAL ISSUE)

Deadline: November 20, 2022

The editors of Medijska istraživanja / Media Research indexed in SCOPUS would like to invite contributions to a special issue: Higher journalism education online – state, challenges, perspectives

Digital age has significantly transformed higher education of journalists from both of its main aspects - academia and profession. New possibilities and opportunities, as well as more demanding challenges conditioned by rapid technology development particularly call for a specific scientific research and regular improvement of the content of study programs, and of the way they are organized and performed. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the traditional perception of journalism education and the educational experience for all main participants of the educational process.

Scientific journal Medijska istraživanja / Media Research helps to improve journalism theory and media research from 1995 by focusing on a range of important subjects, therefore thematising this topic continues the tradition. This special issue aims to present contemporary practice and theoretical thought of higher journalism education in an online environment with the intent of reviewing new trends in that scholarly area, particularly in the European context. The topic is relevant primarily because we passed the turning point where, using different technological solutions, the conventional journalism education was enriched with new teaching methods, tools, and approaches for educational purposes allowing it to adequately answer the media industry demands. Complex issues arising from web-based/online teaching and learning on an academic level of journalism education requires research of conducting professional journalism competencies from at least two main focuses:

1. Distance academic programs that educate journalists

Distance study programs are those performed entirely at a distance, respectively those in which all courses are performed online and those in which the complete teaching and learning process is mediated by ICT (Sener, 2015, Bates 2020). Distance academic programs that educate journalists have existed in some countries, such as the United States, for almost three decades (Castaneda, 2011), while in some areas, such as Southeastern Europe, they are still missing. There is, as well, a particular lack of literature presenting the introduction of such study programs, analysing curriculum, discussing challenges, advantages and disadvantages, as well as comparative research (Vukić and Brautović, 2021). On that trail, we seek for articles on the following topics:

- planning and conducting study programs

- program concepts diversity

- (specific) teaching contents

- (national) case studies

- analysis of curricula and / or syllabuses

- advantages and disadvantages of study programs

- international comparative analyses

- organization of students' practice in media, etc.

2. Conducting e-learning in study programs that educate journalists

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus required an urgent shift to distance learning at all levels of education and for all the professions around the world, including academic programs that educate journalists, but e-learning in a hybrid form or only remotely was, in some institutions already a well-known academic practice. Similarly, student internships in students' media and in partner media organizations, have moved into a virtual environment. As such teaching experience differs significantly from the classroom experience and from in-person teaching, the transformation was a certain challenge for those who have encountered e-learning for the first time in these circumstances.

Although, there is a range of research topics regarding e-learning which resulted in different insights and conclusions, based on the recent experience of the heads of the higher journalism education institutions in Russian Federation during pandemic (Vartanova and Lukina, 2021), it could be argued that the journalism education in an online environment in the recent years faced numerous issues that can be associated with three key aspects: technological, pedagogical, and communicational. A number of articles illustrates it. For example, Fowler-Watt et al. (2021) present teaching experience of covering COVID-19 crisis within specific pedagogic challenges of the pandemic, such as teaching mobile journalism, reporting of the community and Zoom managing of students' wellbeing during lockdown. Further, Pain, Ahmed and Zahra Khalid (2021) discuss the consequences that the low internet connectivity, and the lack of access to technology brought to journalism education, giving the example of a good practice and remedy in the case of Kashmir, India. Studying the journalism students' distance learning experience at the Lomonosov Moscow State University during restrictive measures Poluekhtova, Vikhrova and Vartanova (2020) found that while effective online education presumes stable communication of all participants in the teaching process and among departments, online learning is not an alternative to the in-person journalism education because the formation of professional identity is hard to acquire at a distance.

Of all the mentioned perspectives from a general or from the emerging pandemic circumstances point of view, we encourage various contributions on the following topics:

- analysis of teaching documentation and curricula and/or syllabuses

- adaptation of teaching contents that are performed in the classroom for e-learning

- e-learning and teaching methods

- lifelong e-learning

- collaborative e-learning systems (Moodle, Merlin, MS Teams, etc.)

- hybrid forms of teaching

- e-learning experiences (teacher/student perspective)

- creativity in e-learning

- conducting student internships at a distance (student media/media organizations), etc.

We are looking for scientific research articles from a wide range of academic contexts and methodologies, and for book reviews of the books published in 2021-2022, and we actively encourage interdisciplinary, comparative and innovative submissions that will contribute to the development of the journalism education research field.

The Editor-in-Chief of Medijska Istraživanja / Media Research is Nada Zgrabljić Rotar and the guest editor of this special issue is Tijana Vukić. All submissions and questions about this call for contributions should be sent to a special issue editor's email: tijana.vukic@unipu.hr.

The special issue will appear in the second half of 2023.

The deadline for submissions is November 20, 2022.

The procedure with the received papers for this special issue is identical to the procedure for regular publication in the journal Medijska istraživanja / Media Research. Submitted articles are subject to double-blind review and only those submissions with two positive reviews will be published. We seek for 8000 words long articles (about 50,000 characters). Detailed description of the journal, the journal style guide and Guidelines for contributors can be found at http://www.mediaresearch.cro.net/en/guidelines-for-contributors/

This special issue is organized as a project collaboration within the three-year (2021-2023) international scientific project Higher Education of Journalists in a Digital Environment (HEJDE). It is an institutional project of the Faculty of Humanities of the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula aimed at the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research of the state, challenges and educational opportunities of the modern academic education of journalists.

October 12, 2022

We want to invite researchers to discuss the past and the future of mediatization research as a broad yet unifying approach. We would like to open up the discussion, inviting senior scholars, including Göran Bolin, Nick Couldry, Kirsten Frandsen, Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjarvard, Knut Lundby, Friedrich Krotz, Carlos A. Scolariand other guests to provide responses, comments, and to discuss and explore the future of mediatization research. Anyone interested can join, a link to the ZOOM event will appear around 10 October on the event website. 

ZOOM LINK: It will soon be available on the site below

EVENT WEBSITE: https://ecrea.eu/event-4756915 

December 16–18, 2022

University of Belgrade, Serbia

Deadline: October 15, 2022

We invite scholars from diverse fields to evaluate the risks, benefits, and potential outcomes of emerging technologies and to critically examine the ways these technologies affect and shape societies. We welcome submissions examining different aspects of emerging technologies from the perspective of specific disciplines as well as interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary approaches to the topic.

READ MORE: https://emerge.ifdt.bg.ac.rs

December 9, 2022

Online event

Deadline: October 15, 2022

Continuing our research meetings focused on specific issues of mediatization research chaired by eminent experts (Göran Bolin (2017), Johan Fornäs (2018), Andreas Hepp (2019), Mark Deuze (2020) André Jansson (2021)), this year the workshop will take place online on the 9 December 2022 and it will be led by Professor Andrew Hoskins, University of Glasgow. We invite all mediatization researchers who wish to discuss their own research projects in a narrow and closed group of media scholars under the guidance of an expert. The title of this year's edition is: Mediatization of War

READ MORE: https://www.umcs.pl/pl/towards-development-of-mediatization-research-vi-mediatization-of-war,24329.htm#page-1

A special issue of Feminist Media Studies

Deadline: October 15, 2022

Guest edited by:

Mia Liinason, Professor of Gender Studies, Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, Ov Cristian Norocel, Associate Professor of Gender Studies, Department of Gender Studies, Lund University

Forthcoming December 2023 (see full info on all dates below)

Digital media offer tremendous possibilities for feminist and LGBTI+ collectives to connect across geographical distances and to create other possible worlds in solidarity and struggle. Yet, digital media allow similar potentiality for far-right actors to build profoundly different subjectivities and networks of belonging. In the context of these dynamics, this Special Issue encourages transdisciplinary explorations of how, and to what effect, transforming media landscapes enable diverse communities of feminist and LGBTI+ initiatives, as well as exclusionary, misogynist and anti-LGBTI+ collectives, to materialize and shape civil (and uncivil) societies.

We encourage contributions that draw on various ethnographic, empirical and theoretical approaches to explore how digital technologies allow feminist and LGBTI+ actors to reimagine the world through counter-hegemonic worldings and life imaginings, and invite examinations of the gendered dynamics of the far right metapolitics that oppose them.

These developments are global and transnational yet they interact with local practices and contexts in complex ways. Therefore, we welcome contributions that analyze how algorithms, affordances and vernaculars of digital platforms facilitate collective sense-making and network building in embedded contexts of feminist and LGBTI+ struggles, as well as among far-right actors, highlighting what these appearances can reveal about transforming media landscapes from a diverse range of contextual perspectives at various local and global scales.

We are particularly interested in papers that explore the following and other related questions:

·        How do algorithms, affordances or vernaculars of digital platforms facilitate collective sense-making and network building in feminist and LGBTI+ struggles? How do they facilitate the creation of collectives and networks among far-right actors?

·        How do digital technologies allow feminist and LGBTI+ actors to reimagine the world through decolonial, anticapitalist or antimisogyny worldings?

·        What are the gendered dynamics of the far right metapolitics that oppose feminist and LGBTI+ visions and world making?

·        How do far right enactments in digital space jeopardize locally situated struggles for women’s, gender and sexual justice?

·        What is the effect of interactions between the circulation of popular digital artefacts, such as memes, and political events in particular places?

·        How are subjectivities and representations considered un/trustworthy in contexts of feminist and LGBTI+ online engagements? How do far-right actors deem online dynamics as un/trustworthy?

·        What do these appearances reveal about the generativity and interconnectivity of present-day media ecologies and about the transforming features and meanings of media and communication?

In addition to engaging with the special issue’s theme all articles must (a) comply with the general submission requirements, (b) address the central concerns of the journal, which is to bring together scholars, professionals and activists from around the world to engage with feminist issues and debates in media and communication, and (c) be of relevance to a wide international and multidisciplinary readership (see below for the Journal’s aims and scope).

Key dates

• October 15, 2022: deadline for abstracts (250 words) and biographical note (200 words) to be sent to both Special Issue guest editors Mia Liinason, mia.liinason[at]genus.lu.se AND Ov Cristian Norocel, ov_cristian.norocel[at]genus.lu.se
  

•       November 25, 2022 – Communication of decisions to potential authors

•       January 15, 2023 - Submission of articles for internal review 

•       February 15, 2023 - Deadline for submissions to journal

•       February 15-March 30, 2023 - Double-blind peer review

•       March 30-May 30, 2023 - Revisions by the authors 

•       May 30-July 15, 2023 - Second round of review 

•       July 15 -August 15, 2023 - Revisions by the authors

•       August 15, 2023 - Deadline submission of revised manuscripts for final acceptance

•       August-December 2023 iFirst publication of finalized articles after copyediting process

•       December 2023 – Special Issue published

Submission instructions

Read the Instructions for Authors for information on how to submit your article.

If you have questions about the special issue, please contact Special Issue editors Mia Liinason, mia.liinason[at]genus.lu.se or Ov Cristian Norocel, ov_cristian.norocel[at]genus.lu.se

Warm welcome with your submission!

Mia and Cristian

Journal aims and scope

Aims and scope

Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new media technologies. Feminist Media Studies especially encourages submissions based on original, empirical inquiry of the social experiences of audiences, citizens, workers, etc. and how these are structured by political, economic and cultural circumstances. The journal invites contributions from feminist researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual perspectives.

Feminist Media Studies offers a unique intellectual space bringing together scholars, professionals and activists from around the world to engage with feminist issues and debates in media and communication. Its editorial board and contributors reflect a commitment to the facilitation of international dialogue among researchers, through attention to local, national and global contexts for critical and empirical feminist media inquiry.

Peer Review Policy:

All research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by at least two scholars. Submissions for the special issues of Commentary & Criticism are reviewed by the guest editor (or the associate editors if it is an issue we have organized), not by double blind peer review as with full length articles.

Authors can choose to publish gold open access in this journal.

Website journal: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=RFMS

November 20-22, 2022

University of Bonn/Germany (and online)

Deadline: October 23, 2022

An international Conference of the Research Group “Autonomy and autonomous Systems” of the Universities Bonn & RWTH Aachen

Autonomy, originally a core concept of the Enlightenment epitomizing aspirations of modernity, has become one of the central and particularly high-profile concepts in debates on digital transformations.

The discourse figures of this debate mostly comprise a polarizing perspective that oscillates between the restrictive or dangerously uncontrollable effect of digital technologies, such as facial recognition, surveillance or 'autonomous weapons' and the liberating, autonomy-enhancing function ('smart home', 'assisted living'). Contexts of application include e.g. administration, military and police, social and health- related services, medicine and education, and not to forget, the digital economy with its diverse challenges regarding the future of work. Today, in times of digitalization, datafication, and an increasing influx of artificial intelligence into many sectors of society, the concept of autonomy needs re-definition and reflection under contemporary technological conditions.

Our starting point for the reflections on understanding of autonomy in the digital age is a conceptual sensitivity that asserts the possibility of autonomy for both personal-subjective and collective-social relations. On both levels, conditions for autonomy are subject to rapid change. Outlining the distinction between autonomous and automatic systems, different degrees of autonomy can be distinguished - from weak forms, in which it is a matter of gradual absence of external control, to strong forms, in which the respective 'autonomous' entity is able to set its own laws (rules).

With the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and the increasing use of robots in everyday life technological transformations have come along with social changes and new conflicts. Questions of privacy and data use, the future of work or the subsequent dawn of a 'post-capitalist' society, as well as the discussions about the consequences of autonomously acting combat robots and the ethical regulation of warfare are just a few examples of the present challenges and those still to come. Meanwhile, discourses of technological autonomy address an array of issues concerning the future of democracy. Global digital dependencies, the delegation of authoritative power and the rise of global platform companies challenge the political autonomy of democratic states and their technological sovereignty. On a cultural level, the integration of autonomous systems into society launches a discussion about a technologically induced crisis of humanist values and question the ideals of the enlightenment for today’s socio-technical practices. Studies related to trans- or posthumanism construe technologies as an opportunity to improve or even overcome the human condition. Visions of human enhancement, virtuality, cyborg-societies mingling with autonomous machines and artificial superintelligence might sound utopian today, but perhaps not anymore tomorrow. The reasoning in both optimistic assumption and skeptical anticipation illustrates the urgency of re-defining not just our idea of personal autonomy within the digital, and datafied society but also the need to theorize and analyze new forms of autonomy to understand the next phase of digital society. Interdisciplinary research on the concept of autonomy is needed in order to substantiate our normative, functional, and epistemic claims on the development of the relationship between humans and technology in the future.

The conference “Autonomy in the Digital Age: Rethinking Relationships between Humans, Technology, and Society” aims to encourage a conversation among all disciplines interested in issues concerning ‘Autonomy and Technology’, allowing for diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives. We intend to explore the significance of autonomous living in our digital societies, to question the humanist concept of autonomy itself in our technological reality and to analyse the implications of our interaction with (semi)autonomous systems.

Submissions from all social sciences, humanities and technology disciplines related to the following topics and questions are highly welcomed, but do not need to be limited to these:

Section 1: Theoretical approaches & interdisciplinary perspectives:

How are digital data practices in public and private life enabling or hindering informational self- determination? How do we reconfigure notions like privacy and surveillance? How will the growing influence of autonomous systems affect social structures, political systems, labour and governmental control measures?

Section 2: Contexts:

How are (emerging) modes of (technical) autonomy and agency reshaping societies and personal life- worlds? Which different puzzles of “autonomy” emerge in practical contexts and fields from art, medicine and political institutions? Are we as a digital society at the beginning of a cultural opposition of humanism and technicity? How can cultural and systemic differences in technology policy be reflected and specified on the basis of the innovation of autonomous systems?

Section 3: Norms and ethics:

Which (post-Eurocentric) epistemologies and vocabularies question/enrich the debates about “autonomy” and Humanism in the new digital reality? Are agens/patiens ethics suitable as a theoretical framework for ascribing moral status (person and actor status) to autonomous systems? Should autonomy be understood as an intrinsic quality or as an effect in a relationship characterized by power relations? What normative requirements must autonomous systems and infrastructures meet in an ethically engaged digital society?

Section 4: Conversations:

How to conceptualize Human-Machine Interaction and machine-machine interactions in social sciences? Are individualistic or collectivistic designs of the digital society the vanishing point of technical autonomy issues? What is the status of the idea of autonomy in a digital society in which mutually autonomous interactions between humans and technology have become a reality?

Section 5: Systems and machines:

What degree of autonomy do we ascribe to robots? What synergies arise from the collaboration between humans and autonomous systems in different contexts? What role do autonomous robots play in hybrid decision-making-processes? Can autonomous robots be conceptualized as part of an automated process? Which criteria guide the human-centered design of autonomous systems?

 Keynote Speakers

We are pleased to announce the keynote speakers for the conference:

• Professor Dr. Lucy Suchman
  
• University of Lancaster (UK)
  

Submissions

The CfP invites contributions to: (1) individual presentations, (2) thematic panels. If possible, submissions should be assigned to one of the topics above. Please let us know whether you would like to come to Bonn or only participate online. This is not a final decision. We will ask you for a final decision during the registration process (October 2022).

(1) Submissions for individual presentations: Submissions for individual 20-minute presentations include an abstract of max. 2000 characters (including spaces, title and bibliography with max. three titles plus a short CV). Please make clear in the submission whether the submitted talk can be considered for a short talk and poster presentation, if applicable.

(2) Submissions for thematic panels: Proposals for thematic panels include three to four individual papers (per individual paper an abstract of max. 2000 characters incl. spaces, title and bibliography with max. three titles as well as a short CV) as well as a frame text (max. 2000 characters incl. spaces, title and bibliography with max. three titles) outlining the topic of the panel, the context of the papers as well as the fit to the conference topic. Please include a proposal for the panel moderation.

Please submit via email to thimm@uni-bonn.de or phengel@uni-bonn.de

Review

All submissions will be reviewed by the members of the research group ‘Autonomy and autonomous Systems’ in a double-blind review process. The following evaluation criteria apply to (1) individual presentations:

1. Clarity and conciseness of the presentation

2. Originality and innovativeness of the contribution 3. Relevance of the research question

4. Quality of the theoretical framework

 5. Quality of methodology/approach

6. Fit of the contribution to the conference topic

For (2) panel submissions, the entire panel, rather than the individual presentations, will be evaluated, and therefore will be judged based on the following criteria:

1. Clarity and conciseness of the presentation

2. Fit of the individual contributions to each other

3. Relevance of the panel within the conference topic

Deadline and Notifications:

Deadline for all submissions: October 23rd, 2022 Notification for acceptance until November 1st, 2022

Contact: Prof. Caja Thimm (thimm@uni-bonn.de) or Phillip Engelhardt, M.A. (phengel@uni-bonn.de)

Fees: The conference is free of charge.

Venue:

Universitätsclub Bonn e.V. Konviktstraße 9

53113 Bonn

More information: www.autonomy-research-group.org

October 13, 2022

I am pleased to invite you to the next in the series of IPRA Thought Leadership webinars. The webinar Rising to the challenge: how to protect reputation when crisis strikes will be presented by Jonathan Hemus on Thursday 13 October 2022 at 12.00 GMT/UCT (unadjusted).

What is the webinar content?

When crisis strikes, an organisation's reputation, value, and the livelihoods of its stakeholders are all in jeopardy. The ability of leaders to do and say the right things at this moment will determine the fate of the organisation and all those affected by it. Given this intense pressure, it's not surprising that some leaders falter. PR professionals can play a major role in helping their senior management colleagues to navigate through a crisis but only if they fully understand the context in which they are working and the pitfalls to avoid. Calling upon twenty-five years' experience in crisis management, Jonathan Hemus will share with attendees: why smart people do irrational things in a crisis; the most common mistakes made by leaders in a crisis; 10 golden rules for crisis management success; and how to become a trusted advisor.

How to join

Register here at Airmeet. (The time shown should adjust to your device’s time zone.)

A reminder will be sent 1 hour before the event.

Background to IPRA

IPRA, the International Public Relations Association, was established in 1955, and is the leading global network for PR professionals in their personal capacity. IPRA aims to advance trusted communication and the ethical practice of public relations. We do this through networking, our code of conduct and intellectual leadership of the profession. IPRA is the organiser of public relations' annual global competition, the Golden World Awards for Excellence (GWA). IPRA's services enable PR professionals to collaborate and be recognised. Members create content via our Thought Leadership essays, social media and our consultative status with the United Nations. GWA winners demonstrate PR excellence. IPRA welcomes all those who share our aims and who wish to be part of the IPRA worldwide fellowship. For more see www.ipra.org

Background to Jonathan Hemus

Jonathan is the founder of crisis management consultancy Insignia. He was previously global head of crisis and issues management at Porter Novelli. Jonathan works with business leaders to ensure they have the capability to do the right things under the intense pressure of a crisis. Driven by a passion to prevent the needless harm caused by a mis-handled crisis, he enables his clients to successfully prepare for cyber-attacks, catastrophic accidents, management misdeeds, product contamination or environmental incidents. He is the author of Crisis proof – How to prepare for the worst day of your business life. He is a visiting lecturer at Henley Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the University of Central Florida.

Contact

International Public Relations Association Secretariat

United Kingdom

secgen@ipra.org 

Telephone +44 1634 818308

The European Audiovisual Observatory, which is part of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, is recruiting Junior Analysts for both its Market and Legal Departments. Eligible candidates must be aged under 32 and hold the citizenship of one of the Members of the Council of Europe.

The deadline for applications is the 18th of October 2022.

More information can be found here: https://www.coe-recruitment.com/files_pdf.axd?id=36f8e95f-3635-4755-b14a-aa65d74e0c3a&filename=1961_VacancyDetails.pdf

Crisis is always upon us. One after another and often overlapping, we live in a constant state of crisis. Journalism plays a fundamental role in such context fostering public deliberation and holding those in power to account. In this sense, two researchers from the University of Coimbra and the University of Edinburgh are launching, between September and November, a crowdfunding initiative for publishing a book on crisis and journalism, under the perspective of scholars and professional journalists.

The crowdfunding campaign is held and supported through the scientific crowdfunding channel of the OPERAS Research Infrastructure, which supports open scholarly communication in the European Research Area for the Social Sciences and Humanities and gathers 54 organisations in 18 countries.

The goal of the campaign is to gather 6,200 euros for covering the costs of the book publication, which will invite scholars and professional journalists to discuss a wide range of perspectives of crisis and journalism, in six thematic areas, connecting theory and practice. The crowdfunding campaign is being run from Tuesday, 27 September to Friday, 11 November 2022.

About the book

Journalism provides crucial and accurate information for better decision-making among citizens and can promote necessary debates to help policymaking at the governmental level. During the current Covid-19 pandemic, journalism sounded the alarms. Helped to raise awareness and clarified a virus that was yet unknown, defended vaccination programs and denounced world leaders doing a poor job of managing a global health crisis.

However, journalism faces a crisis of its own struggling with radical changes in the media system amidst disinformation and infodemics. At the same time, different crises affect different countries in different ways. Therefore, it is time for a book that analyses the dynamics within the relationship between crisis and journalism, taking these aspects into account. Furthermore, a book that can abridge the theory and practice divide as well as go beyond Western or Global North perspectives.

The book will be divided into six specific thematic areas under the broader theme of journalism and crisis (politics, economics, public health, climate change, migration, and war and conflict) Each of the areas will form a chapter with two key papers, being always addressed by an invited diverse range of academics and professional journalists. Then, each thematic area will be addressed one time from the perspective of Journalism Studies by academics and one time from the perspective of those who produce the news, who will have the opportunity to critically reflect on their experiences. 

About the editors

Juliana Alcantara, PhD candidate in Communication Sciences and master’s in journalism and Communication at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra. In 2018/2019, she received the 3% Award of the Best Students of the UC. In 2022, she was also a visiting PhD Scholar at Utrecht University. Juliana has postgraduate degrees in Business Communication and Teaching in Higher Education. Bachelor in Social Communication with a major in Journalism. Plus, she has more than ten years of professional experience as a public relations and journalist, working in the Brazilian mainstream media. She is currently working on her PhD thesis funded by the Portuguese national funding (FCT) on gender and journalism in the context of the covid-19 public health crisis.

Ricardo Ferreira Ribeiro, PhD candidate in Politics and tutor (teaching assistant) at the University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science. His research analyses the roles of journalism in processes of democratic backsliding. Ribeiro’s thesis is shaped by his experience as a journalist, which includes 18 years as a reporter, editor, and international correspondent for major Brazilian news outlets. Ricardo also has a master’s in journalism and Communication from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, where he received three awards for outstanding academic performance.

About OPERAS

OPERAS is the Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the European Research Area. Its mission is to coordinate and federate resources in Europe to efficiently address the scholarly communication needs of European researchers in the field of SSH.

OPERAS aims to make Open Science a reality for research in the SSH and achieve a scholarly communication system where knowledge produced in the SSH benefits researchers, academics, students and more generally the whole society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers. 

Link to the crowdfunding webpage:

https://wemakeit.com/projects/crisis-and-journalism  

Contacts and more information:

Ricardo Ribeiro Ferreira - ricardo.rf@ed.ac.uk  

Juliana Alcantara - alc.juli@gmail.com

For the OPERAS crowdfunding channel info: arasteh@maxweberstiftung.de  

Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2022

Edited by Frédérik Lesage and Michael Terren

As part of Palgrave Macmillan’s “Creative Working Lives” series (edited by Susan Luckman and Stephanie Taylor) 

The tools, instruments, and media used to create cultural artefacts have always played a key role in culture: they enable and constrain how creators express themselves through their works, and in doing so shape our understanding of skill, formal conventions, and the social order of culture and creativity. An increasing number of these tools for creative practices are software whose use is a near-compulsory aspect of the contemporary working lives of their practitioners. Despite the ubiquity of software tools in contemporary cultural production, and while there are studies that consider individual fields or industries, there have been few opportunities to consider this condition from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This book will explore how creativity is increasingly designed, marketed, and produced through these digital products and services — a process we refer to as softwarization. We use this term as a kind of provocation that speaks to historically and materially specific sensibilities that shape contemporary cultural practices and creative industries. While softwarization draws particular attention to application software as the quintessential contemporary creative tool, we use the term to encompass a more complex digital assemblage that includes complementary processes in the composition of creative tools including their remediation, platformization, and datafication (to name only a few). If, as we argue, creative tools and softwarization are key to understanding contemporary cultural production, it is essential that we understand them as articulations of political forces, economic interests, and cultural forms in their own right.

Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production aims to advance this concept from a variety of creative disciplines and practices, toward a more holistic understanding of the relations between cultures and their contemporary means of production. By bringing disparate creative and methodological traditions together in one volume, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of approaches for understanding this complex, emerging, and dynamic field that speaks beyond the disciplinary-specific categories of ‘tool,’ ‘instrument,’ and/or ‘software’. This edited book will make a unique intervention in the fields of cultural production and the cultural and creative industries.

This edited volume is to be published in late 2023 in Palgrave Macmillan’s “Creative Working Lives” series, edited by Susan Luckman and Stephanie Taylor. We welcome contributions from researchers, instructors, and creative practitioners from any discipline. We also welcome contributions from anywhere in the world.

Examples of creative tools:

We acknowledge that ‘creative tools’ and ‘software tools’ are imprecise terms that point to the lack of shared vocabulary across disciplines — thus, we find it appropriate to suggest example types of tools that we are particularly interested in:

1.       Digital audio workstations (Pro Tools, Ableton Live, GarageBand), plug-ins, software synthesisers, and peripheral hardware

2.       Image editors (Photoshop, Sketch) and historical visual editors (e.g. Flash, Corel Draw) 

3.       Video editors (Premiere Pro, Final Cut)

4.       Game engines (Unity, Unreal), middleware (Wwise), and in-game creative tools (Roblox, Minecraft)

5.       3D modelling (CAD, Blender) and animation software (Maya)

6.       Bespoke text editors (e.g. Scrivener, Ulysses) and mainstream text editors used in literary production (Microsoft Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice)

7.       Suites, software bundles, and parent companies (Adobe Creative Cloud, Avid, Apple, Autodesk) and historical examples (Macromedia)

8.       Presentation software (PowerPoint, Canva)

9.       Social media content creation functionality (e.g. video editing in TikTok)

The chapters for this book will be between 6000-7500 words and will be organised into the following broad areas: 

Creative tools and technologies for cultural production: theoretical perspectives

Chapters in this section will examine various definitions of creative tools and their implications for cultural production along various theoretical and methodological perspectives (ex. historical, ethnographic, political economic, etc.). How can scholars of cultural production take the role of media technologies and digital tools seriously without falling into technological determinism? In what ways does the softwarization of artistic and creative practice shape cultural production? What theories of techno-social relations can account for the rise, proliferation, and in some cases hegemonic status of softwarization? How can we reconcile changing conceptions of creativity and artistic agency with advancements in theories of technological mediation? How do existing conceptions of creative tools reproduce existing gendered and racialized inequities (to name only two)? How might we better critique such conceptions?  

From tools to platforms: developing and maintaining technical ecologies

Processes of softwarization for creative tools sometimes embrace the logic of the platform, bringing creatives, third-party developers, and secondary content creators together in some sort of mediated exchange of cultural goods. Distinct from content distribution platforms like Amazon, Spotify, or Netflix, the platformization of creative tools can foster new industries, such as audio plug-ins or 3D model libraries, bringing reputation and diversity to the platform. However, developing for privatised platforms carries risks and contingencies, and, as attested by Photoshop’s transition to Creative Cloud, can be captured into proprietary ecosystems. In this section, we consider the political, economic, and infrastructural effects of organising cultural production and tool development in this way. We also consider adjacent processes and structures of development such as certified educational programmes, proprietary or third-party hardware, application programming interfaces (APIs) for creative tools, and software-as-a-service pricing models. 

Cultures of creative tools: communities of practice and their individuation 

Commercial interests continue to co-opt and reify artistic and creative methods into tools as a means of establishing a particular, neoliberal kind of creative working life. This engenders new forms of community and participation, from social media platforms and forums dedicated to certain creative tools to communities of artistic and creative practitioners organising to design and disseminate and use creative tools that challenge this alienating creativity dispositif. In this section, we collect case studies and examples of collaborations, remixes, hacks, and any other alternative approaches to creative tools for cultural production. 

The following is a list of potential topics:

• Bridging theories of technology and cultural production
  
• Categorical distinctions between software tools and digital media
  
• Theoretical perspectives on creative agency and its mediation/mediatization through creative tools
  
• Cultural/creative industries of software and creative tools
  
• The material assemblages of creative tools
  
• Affordances of softwarization and creative tools
  
• The marketization, financialization, and/or assetization of creative practice through software
  
• Cultural work of designing creative tools
  
• Creative labour with creative tools
  
• Critical pedagogical perspectives on creative tools
  
• (Con)figurations of creativity through creative tools
  
• Representations of creative subjectivities through advertising and grey literature on software tool
  
• Gendered subjectivities of creative tools and their communities
  
• Global perspectives on creative tools and their intersections with race, class, and cultural capital
  
• Colonizing and decolonizing creative practice through software
  
• Alternative uses of creative tools
  
• The aesthetic economies of plugins and patches 
  
• Social media as creative tools
  
• Gaming and creative tools
  
• Music and creative tools
  
• Graphic design and creative tools
  
• Video and creative tools
  
• Memes and creative tools
  
• Presentations and creative tools
  
• Visualization and creative tools
  
• Photography and creative tools
  
• Conceptualizing creative tools for cultural production 
  
• Exploring the various modalities of creative tools
  
• The platformization of creative tools
  
• Designing software tools greater creative autonomy for practitioners
  
• Creative tools and the culture industry

Potential list of approaches and methodologies invited to discuss these topics:

• Software studies 
  
• The political economy of creative tools
  
• Comparative studies of softwarization
  
• Historical studies of creative tools
  
• Case studies of creative tools for alternative forms of co-creation and distribution
  
• Case studies of the softwarization of creative practices
  
• Communities of practice and creative tools
  
• Creative organizations and creative tools
  
• Art worlds and software tools
  
• Fields of cultural production and softwarization
  
• Cultural techniques and softwarization
  
• Media archaeologies of creative tools
  
• Ethnographies of creative software development
  
• Tool criticism and analysis

About the editors:

Frédérik Lesage is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, whose research focuses on the intersections between digital culture and cultural production. His work can be found in academic journals like Convergence, Fibreculture, and the International Journal of Communication. 

Michael Terren is an academic and musician based in Boorloo/Perth, Australia, whose research focuses on digital audio workstations and their relationship with contemporary forms of labour, venture capital, and music culture. He works at Edith Cowan University and the University of Western Australia.

Submission Instructions:

Please send a 500 word chapter proposal by Monday 31 October 2022 to both Frédérik Lesage <flesage@sfu.ca> and Michael Terren <m.terren@ecu.edu.au>. In the subject line of your email, include “CTSCP Chapter Proposal”. In the body of your email include:

Chapter title

Section you are submitting to:

Section 1: Creative tools and technologies for cultural production: theoretical perspectives

Section 2: From tools to platforms: developing and maintaining technical ecologies

Section 3: Cultures of creative tools: communities of practice and their individuation

500 word proposal

100 word bio of the authors

Name of author(s), title(s), institution(s), & email addresses. 

We will send out confirmations by Monday 14 November 2022. First drafts are expected by Monday 6 February 2023. All chapters will be 6000-7500 words including notes and references.