ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Edited by: Gabriele Balbi and Roberto Leggero

Link to access the contents (3 chapters in Open Access)

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003424536/communication-maintenance-longue-dur%C3%A9e-gabriele-balbi-roberto-leggero?fbclid=IwY2xjawFx0GVleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHYkXfgNcwq4Kxrl5b-tYl_oGeXJm1GQZACIbskoP7EDGR0_YIuI2MyI1dg_aem_y9Myk8Ammo7udpkYosyfYg

Description

This interdisciplinary volume focuses on the politics, economics, technologies, uses, and cultures of maintenance of different forms of communication over long time or in Longue Durée.

Throughout the chapters, contributors from a wide range of fields explore transversal and trans-temporal issues of communication maintenance. Among these are the struggles to keep communication infrastructures functioning, the hidden work of maintenance done by both experts and non-experts such as everyday users, the political significance of maintaining communications (or not maintaining them), and the different habits and significance of maintenance in different times and world regions. The forms of communication covered include broadcasting, telecommunications such as the telegraph and telephone, digital and popular media as computers and mobile phones, mostly forgotten media like pneumatic tubes, transportation infrastructures, maps as used as tools to politically control land, the clock as a medium and a material artifact, and many more.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of communication and media studies, the history of science and technology, general history, geography, maintenance studies, and other related disciplines.

The Introduction, Chapter 5 and 8 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Table of content

Communication Studies Long for Maintenance Cultures: A Theoretical Introduction to the Book

Gabriele Balbi and Roberto Leggero

Part 1: Temporalities

1. The Clock of the Long Now in Longue Durée: Maintaining a Communication “Cool Tool” Through Millennia

Julie Momméja

2. Endless Frontiers of Maintenance: The Longue Durée of Communication Infrastructure in the United States

Andrew L. Russell

3. Sense Perception and the Maintenance of Pneumatic Mail Tubes in the Longue Durée: Feeling the Air, Preventing and Fixing Failures

Laura Meneghello

4. The “Technical Time” of the Luxembourgish Telephone System: Reflections on the Transformative Power of Maintenance

Stefan Krebs and Rebecca Mossop

Part 2: Theorizing

5. Power and Maintenance in the Alpine Middle Ages: A Long-Term View

Roberto Leggero

6. Maps as Maintenance. Designing and Controlling the Kingdom of Sardinia and the State of Milan’s Boundaries and Rivers in the 18th Century

Blythe Alice Raviola

7. Communicative Redundancy as a Maintenance Resource. The Dose Makes the Poison

Kirill Postoutenko

8. We Are All Maintainers: Everyday Practices of Media Maintenance in the Domestication of Technologies

Corinna Peil

Part 3: Infrastructuring

9. A Low Place in High Country: Maintaining Infrastructural Clearance Along the Backbone of the World

Sam P. Kellogg

10. Large-Scale Infrastructure System in Lisbon: Politics of Repair and Maintenance in the European Periphery in the 20th Century

Felipe Beuttenmüller Lopes Silva

11. Maintenance of a Monopoly: The Digitalization of the Telephone Network as an Attempt to Preserve the Telecommunications Monopoly for the Longue Durée

Matthias Röhr 

Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia 

Start date: Semester 1/2025 (enrolment by 24 February 2025) 

Stipend: A$32,192 per annum for a maximum duration of 3.5 years / A$45,000 per annum for Indigenous candidates (tax-free) 

For further information, see https://www.qut.edu.au/study/fees-and-scholarships/scholarships/polarisation-and-partisanship-in-australian-and-international-public-debates-2-phd-scholarships and contact Prof. Axel Bruns (a.bruns@qut.edu.au). 

Research Outline: 

We offer two scholarships on this topic, and specifically seek at least one Indigenous Australian candidate. Students from diverse and multilingual backgrounds are also especially encouraged to apply. 

Candidates may come from a range of backgrounds within the humanities and social sciences, and have an interest in working within media and communication studies, with a particular interest in populism, propaganda, and/or polarisation. At least one candidate should also have an interest in affect, emotion, identity, and fandom in public and political communication, and the way that these factors overlap and intersect with partisanship and populism. 

Candidates should have an interest in, and early experience with, working with qualitative, quantitative, and/or mixed-methods research approaches; our work provides options for drawing on big data from news media and social media sources as well as for deep analysis of small, targeted collections of content. In particular, this may also include multi-modal approaches which investigate the "video first" Internet and the way that this emphasis on audiovisual content affects the dynamics and drivers of partisanship and polarisation. 

Indigenous Australian candidates are welcome to address any relevant topic. Indigenous candidates may be interested in addressing topics like the recent Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia and/or similar processes elsewhere in the world; however, there is absolutely no requirement for Indigenous candidates to address only such topics. Successful Indigenous Australian candidates will be eligible for the Indigenous Postgraduate Research Award (IPRA), which supersedes the 'Polarisation and Partisanship in Australian and International Public Debates' scholarship stipend. 

These two PhD projects will contribute to the work of the Australian Laureate Fellowship project Drivers and Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate, a groundbreaking research project led by Prof. Axel Bruns and funded by the Australian Research Council for the period of 2022-27, and join a team of more than ten doctoral and postdoctoral researchers working on related issues. 

The successful candidates will be supervised by Professor Axel Bruns and other members of the Laureate team, and have the opportunity to engage in an innovative and highly active team of researchers using cutting-edge qualitative and quantitative methods ranging from in-depth manual content analysis through computational social science to AI-enhanced analysis of public communication data from news media and social media sources. 

The candidates will join the vibrant scholarly community of the world-leading QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), and have an opportunity to connect with researchers across its domestic and international partner networks. As a member of the DMRC, you will also join a supportive and welcoming environment that prides itself on our respectful and diverse community.

October 25, 2024

University of Manchester (UK)

Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite you to the event on ‘Safer Sextech: Intimacy, Pleasure and Wellbeing’ that will take place at the University of Manchester on the 25th of October 2024, between 3:30-5:30pm (Kilburn Building, Theatre 1.3, Oxford Road, Manchester). This event will be held only in person and we kindly ask you to register if you plan to attend: https://www.qualtrics.manchester.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_3PkXs2pODnaqbmS

Safer Sextech: Intimacy, Pleasure and Wellbeing

Everyday sextech: safety and accessibility at home and work by Professor Kath Albury

Popular commentary and research into sextech often focuses on novel technologies or innovative uses.  But the politics of sextech safety, pleasure and accessibility are also the politics of the everyday. In this presentation I reflect on interviews with Australian and Swedish sex-and-gender-diverse sextech users, designers and retailers aged 19-70 [n=38]. Participants shared stories about the ways that AI chatbots, NSFW social media feeds and online sextoy shopping fit in and around their experiences of ageing, gender exploration, transition, shared housing and sexwork. Dialoguing with cultural studies scholars – including Lefebvre (1991) and Morris (1998) - I reflect on the ways that sextech contributes to everyday experiences of sexuality and gender.

Bio: Kath Albury is Professor of Media and Communication, Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. She co-leads the Swedish/Australian collaboration 'Digital sexual health: Designing for safety, pleasure and wellbeing in LGBTQ+ communities' with Professor Jenny Sundén (Södertörn University) and Dr Zahra Stardust (QUT). 

Exploring the Intersection of Privacy and Safety for Sex Workers Online by Yigit Aydinalp

As sex workers increasingly rely on digital platforms to advertise their services and manage their work, the relationship between privacy and safety becomes a critical yet underexplored issue. In this presentation, I outline the early stages of my PhD research, examining the ways privacy protections offered through digital platform design and policies, or the lack thereof, affect the safety of sex workers, particularly those facing multiple marginalisations. Drawing on my decade-long involvement in the European sex workers' rights movement, existing literature, and the preliminary planning of my PhD research, I explore the barriers sex workers face in accessing these essential tools and how online platforms can provide safer working environments.

Bio: Yigit Aydinalp is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield and a human rights activist specialising in sex workers' rights, with a focus on their digital rights and freedoms. He currently serves as a Programme Officer for the European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance (ESWA), a civil society network representing over 100 member organisations across more than 30 countries in Europe and Central Asia. 

Chair: Dr Łukasz Szulc

We hope to see many of you there!

Łukasz Szulc

July 7-10 , 2025

ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Brussels

Deadline: February 28, 2025

Website: www.discourseanalysis.net/DNC6 

Contact: contactdnc6@gmail.com 

Important dates:

• Deadline paper proposals: February 28th 2025
  
• Letter of acceptance or refusal: March 7th, 2025
  
• Deadline registration: April 31st 2025 (authors of papers need to be paying DN members)
  

Language policy:

DiscourseNet is a multilingual association. At DNC6 we welcome contributions in the following languages: French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. We highly recommend providing a visual aid in English if you decide to present in Spanish or Portuguese. This is likely to facilitate interaction in multilingual panels. 

Topic:

Discourse and the imaginaries of past, present and future societies: media and representations of (inter)national (dis)orders)

The 6th DiscourseNet Congress (DNC6) focuses on the discursive construction of social and political imaginaries. It offers a forum to discuss how social actors imagine and articulate past, present and future societies in a world marked by multiple and overlapping crises.

DNC6 welcomes contributions of authors who explore ontological, theoretical, and methodological aspects of imaginaries that may (re)shape our societies. We also welcome analyses and case studies of specific imaginaries circulating in our mediatized societies. These may focus on linguistic, textual, narrative, visual, multimodal, and/or ideological articulations of social and political imaginaries.

This conference is open to discourse scholars from all disciplines, as well as to other scholars in the humanities and social sciences working on (aspects of) the imaginaries that allow us to make sense of and shape our realities. DNC6 offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussing imaginaries and the discursive construction of old and new (inter)national (dis)orders.

A non-exhaustive list of questions that may be addressed at this event is provided below:

• How are past, present, and future societies imagined in debates over culture, education, migration, economy, climate change, AI and/or robotics?
  
• What are the building blocks of populist, neoliberal, environmentalist, radically democratic, reactionary and/or post-humanist imaginaries? How do these evolve?
  
• What role do media play in the production, distribution, and consumption of imaginaries? How do media impact on the articulation of imaginaries?
  
• How do media figure with(in) discursive imaginaries of past, present and future societies? What socio-technical imaginaries inform existing and future mediascapes?
  
• How can one operationalize discourse analytical approaches, concepts, and methods to investigate cultural, social, political and/or environmental imaginaries.
  
• How are imaginaries of past, present and future expressed in different media types and genres?
  
• How can we identify imaginaries in works of fiction, non-fiction, and science fiction? What are their characteristics and how do they evolve over time?
  
• How do discursively constructed imaginaries inform social identities and subjectivities? How do they impact on past, present, and future notions of citizenship?
  

DNC6 invites scholars to submit papers that may enrich our understanding of social and political imaginaries, through explicit theoretical discussions and/or through relevant case studies and discourse studies.

Concepts of the ‘imaginary’ have so far occupied a relatively marginal position in the field of discourse studies. While the notion is not absent in (critical) discourse studies, other meta-concepts such as narrative, ideology, hegemony tend to be used more frequently.

The concept of the imaginary currently figures more prominently in sociology, political philosophy, psychoanalysis, and media studies. In these disciplines we find competing and overlapping notions of the imaginary that merit discourse theoretical and analytical attention.

What place can we give to the concept of the imaginary in the field of discourse studies? What concepts and methods can discourse scholars offer to investigate social and political imaginaries? DNC6 invites discourse scholars to present relevant research and/or explicit reflections on such matters.

The imaginary has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Imaginaries have been thought of as background horizons providing tacit and pre-reflective social meanings that prefigure the way subjects relate to themselves and to the world. They have been treated as images of self and society that infuse reality with imaginary significations. Authors have also drawn attention to the interpretive functions of imaginaries. 

Imaginaries play a key role in fictional and non-fictional types of discourse. They also play a role in the construction of social identities and ideologies. Psychoanalysis has stressed the importance of the imaginary in constituting subjects and subjectivity. The imaginary has been theorized in relation to ideology, as well as in relation to specific ideologies such as nationalism.

Concepts of the imaginary may help us to understand how social actors construct discourses of social (dis)order. Empirical studies have focused on topics as varied as the way scientists imagine the future of climate change, the construction of plans for the future of urban environments, migration, cyber- and energy security, university education, and so on.

We only started to scratch the surface of the literature on social and political imaginaries here. DNC6 invites scholars from all subfields of the transdisciplinary field of (critical) discourse studies to submit papers and to explore what lies under the tip of the iceberg. We also explicitly welcome scholars from other disciplines and perspectives in the humanities and social sciences:

• Media studies
  
• Communication sciences
  
• Political sciences
  
• International relations
  
• History
  
• Ideology studies
  
• Semiotics
  
• Linguistics
  
• Post-foundational social research
  
• Critical fantasy studies
  
• Sociology of knowledge
  
• Cultural studies
  
• Audience and reception studies
  
• Governmentality studies
  
• Strategic narrative studies
  
• Journalism studies
  
• Populism studies
  
• (Social) media studies
  
• Visual culture
  
• Future studies
  
• Gender studies
  
• Development studies
  
• Post- and De     colonial studies
  
• Environmental studies
  
• …
  

October 22, 2024

Online

Join us for the ECREA24 Post-Conference Webinar, Developing Digital Literacies in Algorithmic Cultures, featuring keynote speaker Julian McDougall, Professor of Media and Education at Bournemouth University. The webinar will take place on October 22, 2024, from 1:00–4:00 PM CET, providing a platform to explore critical insights that we couldn’t accommodate during the main ECREA conference due to our single-session format. No registration is necessary, so all interested participants can join freely. The webinar link will be available on our website soon: https://ecreamlcc.natminforskning.se/category-events/ecrea24-post-conference-webinar/. The MLCC management team looks forward to seeing you there and engaging in thoughtful discussions on these pressing issues!

Dear all,

My name is Magda, and I am a Research Fellow at the University of Greenwich, working alongside Dr Thomas Rhys Evans. I am reaching out to invite the community to take part in an exciting global research initiative that aims to transform feedback practices in academia. In collaboration with FORRT (Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training)—a community of over 1,000 academics worldwide advocating for transparency, rigour, and inclusivity in research—this project addresses longstanding challenges with traditional peer-review processes and other well-established feedback mechanisms in academic research. 

As part of our mission to make academic research more inclusive and effective, we are conducting a survey to explore how researchers across different disciplines seek and receive feedback.  By participating, you will help us identify ways to better support marginalised and early-career researchers, ensuring everyone has the opportunity to thrive in academia.  The survey takes just 5-15 minutes to complete, and your insights will play a crucial role in shaping future research practices. We are currently entering the data collection phase and need as many responses as possible to make this study impactful, so please consider sharing this survey with your colleagues. Your participation and support are invaluable to us.  

https://greenwichuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9SwlPSLrgHg9dyu  

This is a unique opportunity to contribute to a global conversation and make a real difference in the academic community.  

Thank you for helping us build a more inclusive research environment. 

Kind regards, 

Magda Skubera

Edited volume by Olga Kourelou and Philip E. Phillis 

Deadline (EXTENDED): October 31, 2024

Greek cinema has been defined primarily on national terms with discussions revolving around questions of ‘Greekness’ and what Greek films reveal about the national character and culture. Therefore, the idea of transnational Greek cinema may at first sound like an oxymoron. Yet, as Maria Chalkou has argued, what is perhaps the most distinguished characteristic of Greek cinema today is the ‘renegotiation and redefinition of the national through the transnational’ (2020). Indeed, since the 2000s and especially after 2010 and the international success of the films of the so-called ‘Greek Weird Wave’, Greek film culture has been characterised by an increasing openness – what Lydia Papadimitriou has described as ‘extroversion’ (2018). On the one hand, this is the result of the intensification of co-production activity and the distribution and consumption of Greek films beyond their national borders. On the other, this is evident in the thematic preoccupations of an ever-larger number of films that take a more fluid approach towards the national by focusing on the multicultural make-up of Greek society and by bringing to the fore the subjectivities of ethnic ‘others’, questioning thus nationalist myths of purity, authenticity and containment.

This edited volume invites chapter proposals that will open up discussions of Greek cinema and film culture beyond the national through a consideration of its transnational dimensions. The scope of the book is historical in that we are interested in mapping out Greek cinema’s transnationalism diachronically. While scholars have rightly pointed out the recent outwardness of Greek cinema, Greek film culture has always been transnational. This was especially the case in the post-war era, when production and exhibition practices, as Dimitris Eleftheriotis has demonstrated (2001, 2006), were of a hybrid character, involving cultural exchanges with both the West and the East. However, the transnationalism of this period of Greek cinema, and of others, remains under-researched and this gap in our knowledge is something this book aims to fill. We welcome contributions adopting different methodologies in their analysis, from empirical to text-based. The goal of this publication is to explore at what levels the transnational manifests itself in Greek cinema, whether this is in terms of production, distribution, exhibition, creative personnel, content, or form, as well as to what effect, looking specifically at the politics and ideological implications within transnational flows. For, as Rosalind Galt reminds us, ‘the transnational is always political because it demands that we think about the relationships of cinema and geopolitics through, between, and beyond the state’ (2016).

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Transnational modes of production, distribution and exhibition from early Greek cinema to today
  
• Co-productions
  
• Auterism and cosmopolitanism
  
• Genre flows, remakes and remixes
  
• Transnational cinephilia
  
• Transnational actors and stars
  
• Migration (representations of migrants, refugees and ethnic ‘others’; migrant and diasporic filmmakers; borders and border-crossing)
  
• Queer transnationalism
  
• Greek locations in international filmmaking, and film tourism
  
• Reception of Greek films abroad (festivals, audiences, exhibition practices, critical reception)
  
• Transnational readings of the so-called ‘new’ and ‘old Greek cinema’
  
• Language, dubbing, subtitling
  

--

The edited volume is under consideration with Edinburgh University Press.

Please send a title, 300 word abstract and a short biography in a single file to transnationalgreekcinema@gmail.com by 31st October 2024. The final chapters should be around 6000-8000 words and submitted to the editors by the end of May 2025. No payment from authors will be required. 

Département de communication of the Université de Montréal

We are hiring! 

The Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal brings together professors who excel in various fields related to communication studies. Our members are actively engaged in cutting-edge research, provide high-quality teaching, and promote innovation, often within an interdisciplinary framework. 

We are looking to hire a colleague specializing in organizational communication whose work will enrich our departmental expertise, particularly, but not exclusively, on topics such as the relationships between technology and organizations, workplace relationships and emotions, as well as organizational practices related to environmental challenges. We welcome a diversity of conceptual and methodological approaches. 

For more information, please visit: https://rh-carriere-dmz-eng.synchro.umontreal.ca/psc/rhprpr9_car_eng/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM_FL.HRS_CG_SEARCH_FL.GBL?Page=HRS_APP_JBPST_FL&Action=U&FOCUS=Applicant&SiteId=3&JobOpeningId=527488&PostingSeq=1

October 25, 2024 (9-10:30 AM EST)

The Urbanism/Geography/Architecture Scholarly Interest Group at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) invites you to its online book talks on "home on screen." Please find the information on our first virtual talk below.

Home Screens: Public Housing in Global Film & Television (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Join us for a conversation featuring editor Lorrie Palmer and contributors Michael Dwyer, Heidi Kumpf, Steven Macek, Anna Viola Sborgi, Chung-kin Tsang and Kalima Young!

For more details and the Zoom link please register here: https://lu.ma/f66s6nqs

October 16, 2024

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to invite you to the online launch of the new Special Issue on ‘Transnational Queer Cultures and Digital Media’, edited by Yener Bayramoğlu, Łukasz Szulc, and Radhika Gajjala for Communication, Culture & Critique (see: https://academic.oup.com/ccc/issue/17/3). During the launch, the editors will explain the rationale behind the Special Issue and some authors will summarize their papers. There will be time for questions and discussion.

There is no need to register. Simply join us on the 16th of October 2024 at 4:00pm UK time (BST). Here are the details for the Zoom meeting:

Topic: SI Launch: Transnational Queer Cultures and Digital Media

Time: Oct 16, 2024 04:00 PM London 

Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/99557251541?pwd=QsbxElMTLDqMG56dEM2H3xSeX8wbKh.1

Meeting ID: 995 5725 1541

Passcode: 744986

We hope to see many of you there!

Łukasz, Yener, and Radhika