ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

University of Stirling

The University of Stirling, Scotland is pleased to invite applications for fully funded PhD opportunities within the IAS Creative Industries Cluster.  Successful candidates will join the Division of Communications, Media and Culture, an internationally renowned centre for research and teaching across screen studies, digital media, creative industries, journalism, public relations and media and cultural policy. 

We welcome research projects for conventional or practice-based PhDs in any of the following interdisciplinary areas:

• Regional innovation, business models, and economic development: projects may focus on the role of local film, TV, social media and/or video game production in regional development; the economic, business and strategic impacts of public investment in the film and TV sector in Stirling and Clackmannanshire region or elsewhere in Scotland; or creative skills development, education, and training in the Stirling and Clackmannanshire region or elsewhere in Scotland.
  
• Sustainable work and labour practices: projects may focus on quality and inclusive work and labour practices at the interface between local/national and transnational creative industries; or the roles of non-traditional employment relationships (e.g., freelance and self-employment), labour organisations (e.g., unions and professional associations), or newer forms of labour (e.g., social media content creation) in creative industries.
  
• Social inclusion and cultural representation: projects may focus on strategies to increase diversity and inclusion in the media industries; the relationship between creative production and representation; or the impact of location-based creative production on the cultural presence and material sustainability of built and natural heritage.
  

Funding: Studentship funding awards provide full fees and a stipend set at the UKRI minimum annual award for 2025/26 (which for 2024/25 is £4,786 and £19,237 respectively). A number of fee waivers are available for international students, and a contribution to stipends for those who have fees covered. In addition, there is funding available to support research training requirements. The funded period for all awards is 3 years FTE (36 months).

Candidate profile: Ideal candidates will have a background in media, communications, film and television studies, cultural policy, cultural studies, cultural geography, media economics, media management, or related fields. A strong academic record is essential, with a master’s degree (preferably at Merit or higher), or equivalent relevant professional experience.

Application deadline: 24 March 2025

Full project and application details: https://www.stir.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/institute-for-advanced-studies-studentships/creative-industries/

For any enquiries, please contact the Co-leads of the Creative Industries Research Cluster Dr Errol Salamon (errol.salamon@stir.ac.uk) and Professor Dario Sinforiani (dario.sinforiani@stir.ac.uk).

September 15-17, 2025

Bucharest (Romania)

Deadline: April 4, 2025

The Risk and Crisis Communication Section conference will take place in Bucharest, Romania, from September 15-17 2025. Crisis8 will be hosted by the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, SNSPA. The conference aims to bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners to discuss developments in risk and crisis communication within the evolving communication ecosystem. The conference program includes distinguished keynote speakers, opportunities for networking, as well as engaging social activities. Additional highlights are a workshop on memes and crisis communication, a crisis simulation workshop, and a dedicated PhD workshop. PhD candidates whose abstracts are accepted for presentation at Crisis 8 will have the opportunity to submit their presentation to receive the ‘CCTT Best PhD Paper Award’ ($500), sponsored by the Crisis Communication Think Tank (CCTT). 

All information can be found on the conference website. Deadline for submissions is April 4, 2025.

https://commcenter.eu/ecrea-crisis-8/conference-call/

August 13-15, 2025

University of Helsinki, Finland

Deadline: April 10, 2025

The 31st Nordic Network for Intercultural Communication Conference will be arranged in Helsinki on 13–15 August 2025. The NIC 2025 conference theme is "Evolutions in intercultural communication: New concepts and methodologies". With this theme, we wish to encourage discussion of conceptual and methodological development in the field of intercultural communication, drawing connections between research, teaching and practice. 

In addition to those addressing the theme, we also welcome proposals that explore related aspects of intercultural communication. These are, for example, 

• Critical evaluations of theories of intercultural communication, education, or management  
  
• Migration and new or alternative forms of language, interaction, and communication 
  
• Challenges of trans/poly/cross/intercultural encounters and relationships 
  
• Decolonization and the knowledge on culture and communication 
  
• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in different spaces and settings 
  
• New questions on education and learning in multicultural societies 
  

Intercultural communication is an interest to and researched by scholars in a wide variety of fields and disciplines such as language, media and communication, multilingual and/or multicultural education, sociolinguistics, social interaction, international management, discourse studies, cultural studies, ethnic relations, and cross-cultural psychology. We welcome submissions from all.  

Abstract submission

Please submit your max 250-word abstract using the abstract form below. The abstracts will be anonymously peer reviewed. Note that all submissions should be in English and those submitting the abstract should be prepared to attend the conference in person. The deadline for submitting your abstract is April 10th, 2025. 

SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT HERE

If the abstract includes citations, please provide the appropriate references (the list of references is not included in the word count).  

Welcome to Helsinki in August!

For further details and up-to-date information, see the NIC Helsinki 2025 Conference website.

Organizing committee: Saila Poutiainen (Chair), Mélanie Buchart, Yoonjoo Cho, Niina Hynninen, Janne Niinivaara

Deadline: February 26, 2025

We are planning to propose a special issue to a peer-reviewed journal on the theme of Digital Authoritarianism in the Global South, and soliciting brief abstracts from scholars working in this field to be a part of our proposal.

We consider Digital Authoritarianism to include all the ways in which digital practices, platforms, and policies contribute to maintaining or exacerbating authoritarianism. These can range from the active use of digital infrastructures by states or related entities against organized opposition or common citizens (e.g., for surveillance, disinformation, or propaganda) to prohibitions on internet access, blocking of content, restrictions on private communication driven by political motivations, and so on.

While recognizing that the Global South is an ambiguous construct, for our SI proposal we consider it to cover all parts of Asia (including the Middle East), Africa, and Latin America that have historically experienced colonialism. Studies that look at interrelations between the Global North and South in the context of digital authoritarianism will also be considered.

Abstracts may focus on states under authoritarian rule or putatively democratic nations that indulge in digital authoritarianism. While country-specific case studies are welcome, we are also interested in comparative or cross-border studies that illustrate digital authoritarianism as a transnational phenomenon. Although we expect most abstracts to be empirically driven (using qualitative, quantitative, or computational methods), conceptual articles and policy-oriented papers may also be submitted.

If you are interested in contributing to our SI proposal, please submit:

1. A 150-word abstract, including your problem statement/research question, methods and materials, and scientific/societal contribution, and

2. A 50-word bio of each author.

All submissions should be sent to Dr. Saif Shahin (s.s.shahin@tilburguniversity.edu) and Dr. Junki Nakahara (junki@stanford.edu)  by Wednesday 26 February.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Editors: Tamas Tofalvy and Igor Vobič

Routledge, 2025

https://www.routledge.com/Histories-of-Digital-Journalism-The-Interplay-of-Technology-Society-and-Culture/Tofalvy-Vobic/p/book/9781032795072

About the book:

Building on the momentum of the recent “historical turn” in digital media and Internet studies, this volume explores how digital journalism has developed from a historical perspective. With contributions from established and emerging scholars from Europe, Asia, South and North America, the book investigates not only how established journalistic systems transformed in the early days of digital but how the structural, technological, and cultural changes induced by digitization have reconfigured the trajectory of journalism.

The book argues in support of three main claims. The first is that emphasis should be given to the plurality of histories instead of one single digital journalism history, thereby acknowledging the complexities, interactions of social relations, cultural traditions, power configurations, and technological changes that have shaped journalism and digitization. The second is the decentralization and decolonization of digital journalism histories. The third refers to the need to highlight and demonstrate the idea that the evolution of digital journalism should be viewed as the co-construction of the social and technological realms.

With theoretical and methodological reflections on historicizing digital journalism along with original case studies or comparative inquiries into the phenomena over the decades-long digital revolution of journalism, this volume will shape the nascent field of digital journalism history and start a global critical exchange of various approaches to and aspects of historicizing digital journalism. As such, it will interest scholars and students of digital journalism, journalism history, digital media, Internet studies, and technology studies.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1: Why historicize digital Journalism? Disentangling the relationship between journalism, technology, and history

Tamas Tofalvy & Igor Vobič

PART 1: Theories and methods of digital journalism histories

Chapter 2: Conceptualizing change in digital journalism: Three key theories in comparison

Thomas Schmidt

Chapter 3: "I tape therefore I am": Excavating digital journalism’s lieux de memoire through oral history

Christopher Silver

Chapter 4: Bridging boundary work theory and the social construction of technology from a historical perspective: On the construction of socio-technical boundaries of digital journalism

Tamas Tofalvy

PART 2: Professionalism and meta-discourses of digital journalism

Chapter 5: The short history of naming journalism in the digital era

Laura Ahva

Chapter 6: Inquiry into the digital sublime: Interrogating the major narratives concerning new technologies in journalism research between 1980 and 2013

Igor Vobič, Jernej Amon Prodnik & Boris Mance

Chapter 7: Digital disruption or union neutralization? A diachronic history of tensions between the figures of the professional and the worker in the history of a Canadian newspaper

Samuel Lamoureux

Chapter 8: “A whiff of panic”: How journalists in the UK and Germany articulated their professional beliefs and identity in crisis times

Imke Henkel

Chapter 9: From bytes to bylines: A history of AI in journalism practices

Carl-Gustav Lindén & Laurence Dierickx

PART 3: Cultures of data, organizations, and journalism practices

Chapter 10: From audience clicks to time spent: Evolution of audience analytics and metrics in Norwegian newsrooms

Ana Milojević

Chapter 11: No crisis but cooperation: Construction of online newspapers in Nepal

Harsha Man Maharjan

Chapter 12: A singular public model: A history of online journalism through DiarideBarcelona.com

Javier Díaz Noci

Chapter 13: Digital journalism in Brazil: A history of diversity in products and research

Suzana Barbosa & Otávio Daros

Chapter 14: History of digital journalism in Egypt: Between institutionalism and individualism

Nagwa Fahmy & Maha Abdul Majeed Attia

CODA

Chapter 15: Historiography and digital journalism

John Nerone

Teresa Sofia Castro, Maria João Leote de Carvalho, and Maria José Brites

We are excited to share the open-access new book, "Let’s Talk About Ethics in Research with Children and Young People? What Nobody Shared Online… Until Now", published by Edições Universitárias Lusófonas. This publication is part of the project YouNDigital – Youth, News and Digital Citizenship (https://doi.org/10.54499/PTDC/COM-OUT/0243/2021) based at CICANT, Lusófona University, Portugal. You can learn more about YouNDIgital on the website youndigital.com.

This book brings together researchers from different geographies and their invaluable insights and discussions on the ethical challenges and considerations in research involving children and young people. Born from a series of thought-provoking conversations, the book offers a deep dive into real-world experiences, dilemmas, and best practices in the field.

To make these conversations even more accessible, we have also launched a series of podcasts, allowing researchers, educators, and students to engage with these discussions in a dynamic and convenient format.

Get the book here: https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/agenda-news/news-events/1454-ynd-book-ethics

Listen to the podcasts on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Wx2WjrgEMxT8ustab7XcS

We invite you to explore, share, and engage with this work. Your support in spreading the word will help extend this crucial discussion to a wider audience.

Let’s keep the conversation going! If you have any thoughts, feedback, or would like to collaborate, feel free to reach out.

Teresa Sofia Castro, Maria João Leote de Carvalho, and Maria José Brites (Authors)

Hossein Kermani

This book investigates Twitter activism in authoritarian regimes, with particular attention to Iran. Twitter provides citizens around the globe with a free and quick way to engage in politics and public discourses. The role of Twitter, alongside other social media, is even more critical in authoritarian regimes where official media is systematically monitored and censured. Thus, social media is vital in restrictive (non-democratic) societies for people to seek their liberty, raise their voice, and create counter-narratives and discourses. There is substantial research into Twitter and democracy, both in democratic and non-democratic regimes. However, Iran, as a country with a high population of tech-savvy users who actively participate in political discussions online, remains understudied to a great extent. Twitter in Iran has been blocked since the 2009 presidential election and its subsequent protests, the Green Movement. Nevertheless, Iranians have been continually using it to date.Recently, another significant hashtag movement unfolded in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini. But it is only an instance of how Iranians employ Twitter to fight a dictatorship. Given the unique context of Iran as a non-democratic society with a high number of Twitter users, this book tries to explore how Iranian users participate in politics, challenge the regime, mobilize their protests, and shape anti-regime discourses. It also examines the strategies that the Iranian regime takes to dismantle Twitter activism. Therefore, this work will fill some gaps in the existing literature on Twitter and democracy, which is relatively Western-centered.

https://link.springer.com/book/9783031815379

The International Journal of Games and Social Impact  (Special issue)

Deadline: May 15, 2025

Guest Editors: Rikkie Toft Nørgård (Aarhus University, Danish School of Education) & Conceição Costa (Lusófona University, CICANT

This special issue of The International Journal of Games and Social Impact invites contributions that delve into the manifold theoretical, practical, and methodological dimensions of game jams, game-making and games as cultural expression, engagement, practice, transformation, or invention.

Submissions may address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

• How can game jams facilitate the integration of tangible/intangible cultural heritage and values into the game-making process?
  
• In what ways do game jams in cultural contexts empower youth as active participants and co-creators of tangible/intangible cultural heritage?
  
• How can game jams foster curiosity, creativity, and community in cultural contexts and among participants from diverse backgrounds?
  
• What are some of the practical and methodological challenges of designing and implementing game jams and game-making in cultural heritage contexts?
  
• How do games created with the use of tangible/intangible cultural heritage or in cultural heritage contexts reimagine, reconfigure, or in other ways transform tangible and intangible cultural heritage?
  

Publication Timeline

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Dates are indicative.

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 15-05-2025

Notification of Acceptance for Full Paper Submissions: 30-07-2025

Publication Date: Second semester of 2025

Contact

For inquiries about the special issue or submission process, please contact Rikke Toft Nørgård (rtoft@edu.au.dk)

Join us in exploring how games and game-making practices can reshape our engagement with cultural heritage, values, and culture, creating new spaces for cultural expression and social transformation.

For more information: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijgsi/announcement/view/225

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
  
• …
  

May 5, 2025

Södertörn University, Sweden

Deadline: May 2, 2025

Symposium arranged by the Knowledge Center for Public Service Media (Kpub), the Center of Excellence for Digital Transformations (DigiTrans) and the ECREA Section for Media Industries and Cultural Production.

Public service media (PSM) in Europe are undergoing significant transformations over the last decade. Some of these are necessitated by technological shifts, such as the dominance of digital platforms within contemporary media ecologies. Others are precipitated by political and geopolitical developments. Some actors are questioning the overall need for public service media in a transforming media landscape, and others dispute if they still carry a democratic role.

How can we imagine a future for public service media in Europe? How can contemporary challenges understood and met? And what should be the role of PSM in the future media- and political landscapes of Europe?

This symposium will tackle these issues drawing on current international and comparative research, as well as insights from the Swedish broadcasting companies themselves.

Programme

• Presentations, 13:00-14:30
  

José van Dijck, Professor of Media and Digital Society at Utrecht University

Public Service Media in the age of platformization and Big Tech

Catherine Johnson, Professor of Media and Communication, University of Leeds

Content distribution and independence: a comparative study of European Broadcasters

Jannie Møller Hartley, Professor in Communication and Journalism, Roskilde University

Datafication of Journalistic Practices – An Ethnographic Inquiry

Victor Picard, Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy, the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Funding democracy: Public media and democratic health in 33 countries

• Coffee break 14:30-15:00
  
• Panel discussion 15:00-16:00
  

K-pub (sh.se/kpub) is a knowledge and research center on public service media at Södertörn university, Sweden.

K-pub is takes as its starting point the rapid technological and industrial shifts as well as the (geo)political challenges for public service media in Sweden and Europe. K-pub seeks to stimulate research and disseminate knowledge in order to enhance evidence-based policy and development.

K-Pub offers:

• An infrastructure for knowledge about public service media: making existing knowledge available to relevant users.
• A platform for knowledge exchange: through publications, seminars, workshops, etc. in cooperation between industry, decision-makers and the research community.
• A forum for learning: by organizing and coordinating education about public service media and about its role in a contemporary media landscape.
• A Hub for research: gathering and coordinating researchers and research projects on the future of public service media, in Sweden and internationally.

K-pub is funded by the research environment Digital Vulnerabilities in Automated Welfare: Infrastructures, Citizens’ Experiences and Public Values (Swedish Research Council, 2024-01837_VR), the ECREA Section for Media Industries and Cultural Production. and the research platform on Digital Transformations at Södertörn university.

Registration until 2 May - see link HERE.

https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/calendar/events/2025-05-05-the-future-of-public-service-media