ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Comunicar (special issue)

We would like to announce that the latest issue of Comunicar, 70, has been recently published with the title 'New challenges for teachers in the context of digital learning'. As on previous occasions, the journal has a Special Issue section. All articles are available full text and free of charge on our official website (www.comunicarjournal.com).

Teachers' perspectives for a critical agenda in media education post COVID-19. A comparative study in Latin America: Julio-César Mateus | Pablo Andrada | Catalina González-Cabrera | Cecilia Ugalde | Sebastián Novomisky

ICT and Media competencies of teachers. Convergence towards an integrated MIL-ICT model: Alfonso Gutiérrez-Martín | Ruth Pinedo-González | Cristina Gil-Puente

Student satisfaction with online teaching in times of COVID-19: María-Consuelo Sáiz-Manzanares | Joana Casanova | José-Alberto Lencastre | Leandro Almeida | Luis-Jorge Martín-Antón

Critical media literacy to improve students' competencies: Walter-Antonio Mesquita-Romero | Carmen Fernández-Morante | Beatriz Cebreiro-López

Families' perception of children's academic performance during the COVID-19 lockdown: Noemí Serrano-Díaz | Estíbaliz Aragón-Mendizábal | Rosario Mérida-Serrano

Latin American professors' research culture in the digital age: Romel González-Díaz | Ángel Acevedo-Duque | Víctor Martin-Fiorino | Elena Cachicatari-Vargas

Communication bibliometric research in Latin American scientific journals (2009-2018): Jesús Arroyave-Cabrera | Rafael Gonzalez-Pardo

Disinformation and multiliteracy: A systematic review of the literature: Jesús Valverde-Berrocoso | Alberto González-Fernández | Jesús Acevedo-Borrega

Engagement and desertion in MOOCs: Systematic review: Odiel Estrada-Molina | Dieter-Reynaldo Fuentes-Cancell

Exploring cyber violence against women and girls in the Philippines through Mining Online News: January Febro-Naga | Mia-Amor Tinam-isan

In active indexations in 2021/22, Comunicar is top worldwide: 2nd in the world in SCOPUS and 7th in the world in JCR (top 1% and 3% in the world; percentile 99% and 97%).

- In JCR-JIF it is Q1 in Education, in Communication and in Cultural Studies (1st in Spanish).

- It is 1st in FECYT Metrics; 1st in DIALNET METRICS.

- In GOOGLE SCHOLAR METRICS is the 2nd journal indexed in Spanish in all areas; 2nd in REDIB (out of 1,199 journals).

June 30 - July 1, 2022

University of Amsterdam

Deadline: March 15, 2022

Keynote Speakers: Dr Benjamin Stevens (Trinity University) and Dr Rutger Allan (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

This interdisciplinary two-day workshop is devoted to the construction of fantastical worlds across various narrative media from antiquity to the present.

In recent years, media and literary studies have drawn attention to the process of constructing ‘imaginary’ or ‘secondary’ worlds. We define these fantastical universes as fictional worlds that involve creatures and/or events whose existence and/or occurrence is impossible in our actual world. Being often heterotopic and heterochronic and endowed with their own geographies, populations, histories, governments, etc., fantastical worlds may in complex ways reflect, contrast, and/or transcend ordinary reality.

Yet while this phenomenon is generally considered to originate in Tolkien, fantastical worldbuilding can be recognised in antiquity as well. Recent studies in classical literature and receptions have emphasised the fantasy-like quality of classics like Homer’s Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Plato’s eschatological myths (Rogers & Stevens, 2017: 8-9; Nightingale 2002a, 2002b), while linguists and narratologists have brought to light literary devices that might be used by ancient authors to construct fantastical worlds and mediate the audience’s experience of them (e.g., Allan 2020; de Jong 2009; Ryan 1991).

Rarely, however, has the connection been made between the classical and contemporary construction of fantastical worlds, let alone between classics and modern media studies. The overarching aim of the workshop is to launch such an interdisciplinary discussion in search of a comparative, diachronic perspective on fantastical worldbuilding.

Principally, the workshop will focus on the how of fantastical worldbuilding, i.e., on the devices and techniques used in different times and media to create a fantastical world, as well as the ways in which this world is presented as different from yet somehow anchored in reality.

We invite papers that address one (or more) of the following research questions:

1. What devices do authors or artists use to construct fantastical worlds? (E.g., common ground management, deixis, the general rendering of time and space)

2. How are these fantastical worlds anchored to the audience’s actual world, and what devices are used to express this relationship? (E.g., metalepsis, immersive/enactive devices, shifts in the deictic centre)

3. How do fantastical worlds encourage the audience to reflect on the actual world? (E.g., metaphor, metonymy, contrast)

4. What differences and similarities exist between the construction of fantastical worlds in different periods and different media?

5. How are the devices used by ancient authors to construct fantastical worlds reused (consciously or unconsciously) in later times?

We are interested in contributions from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds that discuss the construction of fantastical worlds in or across different media (e.g., written narratives, drama, film, television, video games). Papers may focus on single narratives, authors, and periods, or discuss fantastical worldbuilding techniques more broadly, e.g., from a theoretical, comparative or reception point of view.

The workshop will take place in Amsterdam on the 30th of June and the 1st of July 2022. Should the state of the pandemic require it, the workshop will be held on the same days as either a hybrid or a virtual event.

We invite submissions for 25-minute presentations. To register your interest, please submit an anonymous abstract of max. 400 words (excluding references and bibliography) to constructingfantasticalworlds@gmail.com by the 15th of March 2022. Your name and affiliation should be included in the body of your email. We aim to respond no later than the 15th of April.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions: Caterina Fossi (c.fossi@uva.nl), Merlijn Breunesse (m.r.e.breunesse@uva.nl) and Koen Vacano (k.vacano@uva.nl).

This workshop is generously funded by the OIKOS research groups Language of Literature, Classical Literature: Theory and Contexts, and Classical Receptions and Traditions and by Anchoring Innovation and the Anchoring Innovation work packages Discourse & Rhetoric, Literature & Art, and Reception of Antiquity.

Bibliography:

Allan, R.J., 2020: “Narrative Immersion: some linguistic and narratological aspects”, in Huitink, L.; Grethlein, J. and Tagliabue, A. (eds), Experience, Narrative and Literary Criticism in Ancient Greece, Oxford, 15- 35.

de Jong, I.J.F., 2009: “Metalepsis in Ancient Greek Literature”, in Grethlein, J. and Rengakos, A. (eds), Narratology and Interpretation. The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature, Berlin, 87–115.

Nightingale, A.W., 2002a: “Toward an Ecological Eschatology: Plato and Bakhtin on Other Worlds & Times”, in Branham, R. B. (ed.), Bakhtin and the Classics, Evanston, IL, 220-249.

Nightingale, A.W., 2002b: “Distant Views: ‘Realistic’ and ‘Fantastic’ Mimesis in Plato”, in Annas, J. and Rowe, C. (eds), 2003: New Perspectives on Plato, Modern and Ancient, Washington, DC, 227-47.

Rogers, B.M. & Stevens, B.E. (eds), 2017: Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy, Oxford.

Ryan, M.L., 1991: Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

Wolf, M.J.P., 2012: Building Imaginary Worlds. The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York & London.

Wolf, M.J.P. (ed), 2018: The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds, New York & London.

May 25, 2022

Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris)

Deadline: January 31, 2022

ICA Pre-conference

This is a final reminder of our call for contributions for a pre-conference in Paris, 25 May 2022, which will be dedicated to the intellectual legacy of our former colleague, Professor Jay G. Blumler. Please submit abstracts or enquiries to the email address blumlerpreconf@gmail.com. Deadline is 31 January 2022.

Hosted by: Center for Political Research at Sciences Po, University of Zurich, University of Leeds

With sponsorship of the ICA Political Communication and Global Communication and Social Change divisions.

Format : Preconference; Half day

Date : Wednesday, May 25 , 2022

Location: Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris)

Time : 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM

Former ICA President Professor Jay G. Blumler was instrumental in establishing political communication as a recognised academic field in Britain in the 1960s, and his writing spanned Global Communication and Political Communication.

His pioneering work with Denis McQuail, in which they applied uses and gratifications theory to understand how voters responded to television election coverage injected a degree of methodological rigour and normative insight to the study of political communication that characterised his many subsequent books and articles. Jay continued to lecture and publish until shortly before his death in 2021.

In 1995 Blumler and Gurevitch described a ‘crisis of Public Communication’. This comprised six main components:

i) a degree of de-politicisation, due to the centre-stage movement of politically independent media into the political process, encouraging an incursion of media personalities into politics;

ii) dissemination of an over-supply of oxygen for cynicism;

iii) projection of a highly pejorative, over-simplified and in many cases probably unfair stereotype of the standard politician as someone who cares only for power and personal advancement;

iv) that less and less of the political communication diet serves the citizen role—due to a predominant presentation of politics as a game (at the expense of coverage of policy issues) and the provision of ever-shorter soundbites;

v) the catapulting of the press into a position of surrogate opposition, imbuing much reporting with qualities of challenge, criticism and exposure at the expense of giving credit where it is due;

vi) the emergence of a “chronic state of partial war” between politicians and journalists.

In celebration of Jay’s remarkable intellectual legacy the ICA divisions of Political Communication and Global Communication and Social Change invite colleagues from around the world to address the question, Is there still a crisis of public communication? This preconference was conceived to offer answers from a range of perspectives and spaces.

Established scholars whose work has engaged with Blumler’s scholarship are invited to provide research-driven reflections upon the pre-conference theme, with particular attention to the following sub themes:

• The condition of the democratic public sphere

Blumler’s starkly-stated critique was that ‘communications as presently organised is sucking both the substance and the spirit out of the politics it projects’. For him, this amounted to a systemically-rooted crisis of democratic citizenship. We invite contributors to discuss the extent to which the concept of ‘crisis’ describes the current condition of the public sphere; whether we might now be in what Philip Schlesinger has called a ‘post-public sphere’; and what, if anything, might be done to address the normative shortcomings of the empirical public sphere.

• The condition of public service broadcasting

Blumler looked to public service broadcasting to offer an alternative to the most egregious failings of the commercial mass media. He argued that ‘For all of its weaknesses as an institutional model, the BBC’s embeddedness within values of public service has led to profoundly civilizing consequences’. However, he went on to catalogue and critique the ‘gradual dilution of the civic mission of the public service broadcaster’. We invite contributors to consider whether the PSB model can help to revitalise democratic citizenship. If it can, what form should that model now take? If not, what is the alternative to the principles of PSB?

• The role of social media

Blumler described social media as possessing a ‘vulnerable potential’ to improve public communication – and went on to outline a strategy for making this happen. We invite contributors to explore that potential as well as its manifest vulnerability. We are equally interested in contributions from those wishing to argue that the maturation of ‘surveillance capitalism’ (Zuboff 2019) and ‘datafication’ (Meijas and Couldry, 2019) are fundamentally altering what constitutes public communication.

Two types of in-person participation are invited:

Ø Prospective ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANTS should submit an abstract of up to 500 words elaborating their perspective. Submissions will be selected by the conference committee on the basis of originality and relevance to the conference theme, and to ensure a diversity of viewpoints and geographic origins. Up to nine roundtable participants will be selected, and will each be given 5 minutes at the start of the roundtable to outline their perspective.

Ø PhD researchers and early career scholars will be invited to submit an abstract of up to 500 words for a POSTER PRESENTATION addressing the preconference theme through original theory and research. Up to 15 poster presenters will be selected and will be matched with an experienced scholar participating in the event for one to one discussion of their project.

Abstracts, indicating which type of participation is requested (roundtable or poster), should be emailed to the organisers at blumlerpreconf@gmail.com . The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 31 January, 2022. Accepted participants will be notified by 28 February 2022.

Selected poster presenters will be expected to provide a paper of up to 4000 words by April 29, 2022. A prize will be awarded for the best paper as determined by the organising committee.

Two travel bursaries of up to UK £200 will be available to qualifying participants from outside of (World Bank defined) high-income countries. These are sponsored by the University of Leeds School of Media and Communication. Details of how to apply for a travel bursary will be provided to accepted poster presenters upon notification of acceptance of their paper. Bursary recipients will have their registration fee for the preconference waived.

Provisionally, all presentations will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of a leading journal in the field.

Registration will be via the ICA website and will open in March 2022. Non-participating delegates will be accepted within the capacity limitations of the venue. A nominal fee for registration is anticipated and will be announced at the ICA website. We anticipate providing a recording of the roundtable discussion for later viewing online.

Organisers:

• Stephen Coleman, University of Leeds
• Frank Esser, University of Zurich
• Julie Firmstone, University of Leeds
• Katy Parry, University of Leeds
• Chris Paterson, University of Leeds
• Thierry Vedel, Sciences Po

EDITED BY Aleena Chia; Ana Jorge and Tero Karppi

2021, Rowman & Littlefield

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538147405/Reckoning-with-Social-Media

Once celebrated for connecting people and circulating ideas, social media are facing mounting criticisms about their anticompetitive reach, addictive design, and toxicity to democracy. Known cumulatively as the “techlash,” journalists, users, and politicians are asking social media platforms to account for being too big, too engaging, and too unruly. In the age of the techlash, strategies to regulate how platforms operate technically, economically, and legally, are often stacked against individual tactics to manage the effects of social media by disconnecting from them. These disconnection practices—from restricting screen time and detoxing from device use to deleting apps and accounts—often reinforce rather than confront the ways social media organize attention, everyday life, and society.

Reckoning with Social Media challenges the prevailing critique of social media that pits small gestures against big changes, that either celebrates personal transformation or champions structural reformation. This edited volume reframes evaluative claims about disconnection practices as either restorative or reformative of current social media systems by beginning where other studies conclude: the ambivalence, commodification, and complicity of separating from social media.

Introduction and Chapter 6 are available open access, respectively at: https://rowman.com/webdocs/reckoningwithsocialmediaintroduction.pdf and https://rowman.com/webdocs/reckoningwithsocialmediachapter6.pdf

ToC

Introduction: Reckoning with Social Media in the Pandemic Denouement: Aleena Chia, Ana Jorge, and Tero Karppi

Why Disconnecting Matters? Towards a Critical Research Agenda on Online Disconnection: Magdalena Kania-Lundholm

The Ontological Insecurity of Disconnecting: A Theory of Echolocation and the Self: Annette N. Markham

‘Hey! I’m back after a 24h #DigitalDetox!’: Influencers posing disconnection: Ana Jorge and Marco Pedroni

Privacy, energy, time and moments stolen: Social media experiences pushing towards disconnection: Trine Syvertsen and Brita Ytre-Arne

Quitting Digital Culture: Rethinking Agency in a Beyond-Choice Ontology

Zeena Feldman

Ethics and Experimentation in The Light Phone and Google Digital Wellbeing: Aleena Chia and Alex Beattie

From digital detox to 24/365 disconnection: between dependency tactics and resistance strategies in Brazil: Marianna Ferreira Jorge and Julia Salgado

Overcoming Forced Disconnection: Disentangling the Professional and the Personal in Pandemic Times: Christoffer Bagger and Stine Lomborg

Disconnecting on Two Wheels: Bike touring, leisure and reimagining networks: Pedro Ferreira and Airi Lampinen

Analogue Nostalgia: Examining Critiques of Social Media: Clara Wieghorst

ICA Pre-conference 2022

May 26, 2022 (12:30-17:00)

On-site and online

Submission Deadline: February 14, 2022

ICA Visual Communication division website is here

Results Released March 1

Division Affiliation: Visual Communication Studies Division, Popular Media and Culture Division, and Computational Methods Division.

Organizer Contact: Mary A. Bock, mary.bock@austin.utexas.edu

DESCRIPTION

Social media are visual media. Every day, users upload billions of photos and hundreds of thousands of hours of video to the internet, and media producers are encouraged to use still and moving images to attract viewers (Evelith, 2015). Images document the lives of ordinary people, celebrities and pets. They are also used to inform, persuade and deceive. Exploring the role of the visual online and in pop culture is essential to understanding the nature of social media.

Yet images are often harder to research than text. They pose methodological challenges in terms of data collection and analysis, and are therefore left out of many analyses of social media. Considering that images are cognitively and emotionally more powerful than words alone, this is problematic.

This Pre-Conference is designed to maximize dialogue about researching visuality in social media among scholars at all career levels, including students, early-career, mid-career and senior scholars. Students and early-career scholars will have the opportunity to present research and works-in-progress for feedback from mid-career and senior scholars. A session is planned for mid-career and senior scholars to present their research. The event will conclude with a methods workshop focusing on techniques and strategies for researching visuality in social media. To that end, we invite extended abstracts of no more than 2,500 words pertaining to, but not limited to, the following topics:

Celebrity: How is celebrity represented and visually constructed on social media? In contrast, how are the quotidian and banal aspects of life represented and visually constructed in such contexts?

Technology: How has the ubiquity of higher-quality cameras and editing software/apps changed the way non-professional users are able to brand themselves or construct themselves as “celebrities” or influencers? Which techniques of visual production are used in social media? Which techniques are tied to old media, and which might represent new forms of visual communication?

Methods: What methods, technologies, and tools are being developed that can assist researchers in the study of images and video on social media? How might researchers adapt existing systems for social media analysis? What sort of automated or big data analyses might best be employed by visual researchers? Where might those analyses be limited compared to small data projects? What challenges do visuals pose for social media researchers, and how might they be overcome?

Optics: What differences exist between video and still imagery online and in social media? What about graphic design, such as animated GIFs? Are there differences in the way the forms are deployed online? How are optical, audio and editing techniques employed in social media?

Semiotics: What sorts of signs predominate on social media? How are they understood, used, or constructed by users? How have signs evolved?

Narrative: How do developments of ephemeral “story” sharing, live-streaming and other similar social media features change the nature of storytelling and representation online? What stories emerge from the mixing and matching shared audio tracks with video and imagery?

SCHEDULING DETAILS

The pre-conference will include three events:

• A poster session for the students and emerging scholars with mentoring from mid-career and senior scholars
• A research session for up to five of the mid-career and senior scholars who served as mentors for the poster session
• A computational research methods workshop

The poster session will allow students and early-career scholars to display their research and works-in-progress for feedback from the mentor scholars.

The traditional research session will allow the mentoring scholars to present research.

In the methods workshop session, students, early-career, mid-career and senior scholars confer together on research methods for visual data collection and analysis. In this workshop, all pre-conference participants will discuss methodological approaches for visual data collection and analysis in current networked media environments and avenues and guidelines for best practices — as well as any ethical concerns that arise in the course of such research.

This pre-conference will be designed as a hybrid to maximize opportunities for participation. It will use video conferencing as necessary to enable remote engagement.

If the pre-conference needs to be moved fully online because of COVID-19, we will adapt to a fully virtual format and organize synchronous mentoring and workshop sessions (grouped according to time zones) over Zoom.

How to participate/register

Click here to submit to the pre-conference

Registration is open to all and will be available at a later date.

The fee to attend is $30.

We encourage students, early-career scholars and those from the Global Majority to participate. A limited number of waivers will be available.

February 10, 2022

I am pleased to invite you to the next in the series of IPRA Thought Leadership webinars. The webinar Reputation management during the pandemic: the status quo and the trends will be presented by Professor Heath Applebaum on Thursday 10 February 2022 at 12.00 GMT/UCT (unadjusted).

What is the webinar content?

Since the global pandemic struck, organizations of all sizes have been under increasing scrutiny by a broad range of empowered and vocal stakeholders, from consumers, investors, suppliers, employees, governments and media. Reputations have never been more valuable and vulnerable. International-award-winning reputation expert, Heath Applebaum will share the latest global reputation research findings and actionable advice drawn from his 20 years of corporate, agency, non-profit and consulting work. This will be a fascinating conversation that will reference case study examples that we can all learn from.

Participants will gain key insights into:

- What new trends have emerged since the onset of covid-19 that communications professionals must adapt and respond to in 2022.

- What reputation management issues continue to be crucial.

- Tips for effectively prioritizing and aligning your organisation’s or client’s actions and words during these precarious times.

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 Heath Appelbaum

Heath Applebaum is a reputation management consultant, university professor and business strategist. He is the President of Echo Communications Inc., a reputation management consulting firm founded in 2000. In 2021, Heath was as recognized as the Educator of The Year by the Canadian Public Relations Society. Heath holds a MA in communications management, from McMaster University, and a BA in political science from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Contact

International Public Relations Association Secretariat

United Kingdom

secgen@ipra.orgTelephone +44 1634 818308

Deadline: February 18, 2022

Preliminary title: The Future of the Nordic Media Model: A Digital Media Welfare State?

Editors:

• Peter Jakobsson (Uppsala University)
• Johan Lindell (Uppsala University)
• Fredrik Stiernstedt (Södertörn University)

Contact:

• Peter Jakobsson: peter.jakobsson@im.uu.se
• Johan Lindell: johan.lindell@im.uu.se
• Fredrik Stiernstedt: fredrik.stiernstedt@sh.se

Format: Open Access, double-blind peer-reviewed anthology

Important dates:

Deadline for extended abstracts: 18 February 2022

Deadline for full submissions: 14 October 2022

Peer review: December 2022–February 2023

Expected publication: 2023

For more information, please visit: https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/publications/academic-books/calls-anthology-contributions

Background and aim

Like in many other policy areas (Esping-Andersen, 1990; West Pedersen & Kuhnle, 2017), the Nordic media policy system has stood out internationally. In a seminal contribution to comparative media studies, Syvertsen and colleagues (2014) detailed the traits that set the media system of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden apart from the rest of the world. Although sharing certain qualities with other media systems (see, e.g., Hallin & Mancini, 2004), the system in these countries – referred to as the media welfare state – has stood out in a number of ways. The media have been approached as public goods which manifest in a strong public service media, and there exist ambitions for universal access to communication infrastructures. Furthermore, the Nordic countries show egalitarian patterns in news consumption and high levels of trust in news media, and they have long and stable traditions of institutionalised editorial freedom. Additionally, media and communications have been regulated within a broader cultural policy framework, and press subsidies have been comparably generous. Finally, the media market has been characterised by consensual relations between stakeholders (Syvertsen et al., 2014). This media system – which is celebrated internationally by media scholars (Benson et al., 2017) and supported locally by voters (Lindell et al., 2021) – facilitated the egalitarian democracies in which they were shaped (Enli et al., 2018).

The Nordic media model is, however, challenged on several fronts. First, a neoliberal policy regime emerging in the late 1970s has had a significant impact, not only on the welfare state more generally (Kvist et al., 2011), but also on media and communications policy (Ala-Fossi, 2020; Jakobsson et al., 2021). Previous policy measures and institutions that were designed to limit the impact of market forces, or to compensate for market failures, have been either abolished or gradually transformed (Jakobsson et al., 2021). Second, the rise of radical right-wing attacks on the key institutions of the media welfare state – for example, public service media – pose new threats to the Nordic media model (Holtz-Bacha, 2021; Jakobsson et al., 2021). Third, the globalisation and the subsequent digitalisation of the media, and the dominant role played by transnational platform companies and global tech giants in media and communications have made national media policy an increasingly difficult endeavour (Syvertsen et al., 2014).

These contemporary challenges to the Nordic media model raise many questions. What remains of this system today? Is the Nordic media model, as has been suggested, merely an “image in the rearview mirror” (Ala-Fossi, 2020: 146)? Is it a viable alternative for the future? What are the risks – and possibilities – of a transforming Nordic media model? Would it be worthwhile to defend or adapt the Nordic media system to deal with future challenges? What arguments exist for welfare in the media and communications area, and what does welfare mean in this context? What normative basis is there for welfare more generally, and for media welfare specifically?

This edited volume aims to address these and other issues, and to bring together contributions on the current state and the possible futures of the Nordic media (post-)welfare states. We invite both empirical contributions from scholars in all the Nordic countries on the current state of Nordic media welfare, as well as analyses of the possible future (or futures) of the Nordic media model (or models), and theoretical and normative work on the general concept of media welfare and its wider social implications.

merzWissenschaft

Deadline: February 11, 2022

Supervising Editors Prof. Dr. Patrick Bettinger (PH Zürich), Dr. Wolfgang Reißmann (FU Berlin) and merzWissenschaft editorial board (JFF)

The sovereign subject is a core concept in media-educational activity. Sovereignty expresses the possibility of emancipation from power structures and as a concept of political theory outlines a societally negotiated desired or target horizon. Understood as empowerment for social entitlement, sovereignty includes a normative component which assumes a fundamental ability to act and thus enables freedom of movement for critical positioning. This target horizon is also to be found in current variations on 'data literacy', 'informational media education', 'digital sovereignty', 'informational self-determination' – and in German-speaking areas also the highly regarded Dagstuhl and Frankfurt triangles. In conceptual terms this understanding is as a rule linked with the idea of a 'strong' subject which can be empowered to productively process reality and actively interpret the world.

However, in the context of the Digital Transformation it must be asked to what extent 'individual sovereignty' is still viable and more than anything practically feasible as a media-educational target category. This question is also encountered in the recent (renewed) debate regarding a modified and in particular more strongly decentered concept of subject and concepts of shared agency. Faced with the immanent potent and yet perceptually elusive omnipresence of algorithmic structures, the rapid growth of digital corporate concerns, the associated tendencies towards monopolization and the increasing integration of algorithmic decision-making systems in media services which can intervene in the individual's freedom to make decisions, the possibilities of self-determined and autonomous media behavior become threatened as an objective. Strictly speaking, it could be theorized that digital, commercially driven mediatization and continuous datafication make the 'strong' subject impossible both empirically and in terms of utopia and make it a 'weak' subject: Surveillance in the 'datafied society', value creation in 'digital capitalism' and technological 'black boxes' increase doubts about whether media-educational impulses oriented towards the ability of the subjects to act (can) actually contribute to a sovereign life with media.

In spite of the modified point of departure, it is eminently important for media education to be able to rely on a concept or a vision which is in principle feasible and which also appears well-reflected in normative terms and which provides media education with orientation and points of reference for practical action as well as in theoretical reflection. In this context merzWissenschaft 2022 addresses the question of how sovereignty can be newly defined and how media-educational actions can be re-oriented. We look forward to receiving articles which look at the issue outlined above in empirical terms; we also welcome theoretical-conceptual contributions and reflections from practice which address one or more of the following questions and areas:

● Forms of sovereignty: Traditionally, media education addresses the socially positioned individual active in a community. However, sovereignty as used in political theory has a significantly broader scope of meaning and is not bound to subjects alone. What additional forms and layers of sovereignty can and should media education focus on in order to continue to ensure its own relevance? What is the meaning of digital sovereignty/digital autonomy? How can the concept be meshed with educational approaches? How would a (new) realistic utopia look?

● Understanding media and subject: The media-educational understanding of the subject developed in the 1980s/90s in orientation towards action-theory socialization approaches and in reference to publicly available (mass) media. To what extent do types of media and technology, which appear as infrastructures and data (tracks) and not primarily as symbol and knowledge inventories modify, traditional notions of the subject (including media appropriation and media education processes)? To what extent does the term 'media' have to be investigated and be subject to new discussion? What demands result for the socialization-theory foundations of media-educational concepts?

● Shared agency: To what extent can changes in perspective, based for example on 'practice' and/or 'material turn', provide new insights and approaches for media-educational research and activity? How is sovereignty to be understood, when the conceptual point of departure is 'weak' subjects? How are the interaction and balance of power between humans and technology to be described and researched? What experience has already been gained with technologies such as AI and what conclusions can be derived from that experience?

● Invisibility and objectification: To an increasing extent, media education is encountering phenomena and questions (e. g. Artificial Intelligence, 'algorithmic cultures') which do not exist per se in objectified forms such as image, sound, or video. What methods does media education have, or lack, for making visible e. g. processes of data collection and data processing and thus making it possible to discuss such processes and integrate them in the critical, societal debate? What practical approaches are taken today to handling the invisibility or opacity of digital media? What best practices emerge when it comes to the transformation?

● New alliances/governance/cross-networking: What models and strategic concepts are there for intermeshing and intensifying the collaboration between media education, informational education, media and infrastructure design, technological impact assessments, media policy and/or media law?

● Historical comparisons: What previously existing core media-educational concepts still remain formative today? What can be learned for the present from previous 'disruptions' in media-educational work and theory? How did media education deal with the invisible, intangible dimensions of the medial world in the past (e. g. embedding medial products in cultural discourse; media-economic power and domination relationships)? How do these challenges differ?

merzWissenschaft provides a forum advancing scientific analysis in media education and promoting progress in the theoretical foundation of the discipline. For this purpose, qualified articles are called for from various relevant disciplines (including media-educational, communications sciences, media sciences, (developmental) psychological, informatics, professional-historical, and philosophical perspectives), also with an interdisciplinary approach, for the continuing development of expert media-educational dialog. Of interest are original papers with an empirical or theoretical foundation, presenting new findings, aspects or approaches to the topic and which are explicitly related to one of the topic areas or questions outlined above, or which explore a separate topic within the scope of the overall context of the Call.

Abstracts with a maximum length of 6,000 characters (including blank spaces) can be submitted to the merz-editorial team (merz@jff.de) until February 11, 2022. Submissions should follow the merzWissenschaft layout specifications, available at https://www.merz-zeitschrift.de/manuskriptrichtlinien/. The length of the articles should not exceed a maximum of approximately 35,000 characters (including blank spaces). Please feel free to contact Susanne Eggert, tel.: +49.89.68989.152, e-mail: susanne.eggert@jff.de

Deadlines at a glance

• 11 February 2022: Submission of abstracts to merz@jff.de
• 28 February 2022: Decision on acceptance/ rejection of abstracts
• 20 June 2022: Submission of articles
• June/July 2022: Assessment phase (double-blind peer review)
• August/September 2022: Revision phase (multi-phase when appropriate)
• End of November 2022: merzWissenschaft 2022 published

IAMCR-AIECS-AIERI

Deadline: February 10, 2022

The Palgrave/IAMCR book series, Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research, was launched in 2014 and has since produced 17 books (with one more in the pipeline). With the current editorial team (Claudia Padovani and Majan de Bruin) completing their term and stepping down, the series requires a new team of two co-editors to take on the responsibility.

The IAMCR Publications Committee invites expressions of interest for two new co-editors for the series. The series’ webpage has further information about the series, including details of the books already published.

Only current IAMCR members are eligible to apply. The call is for a team of two co-editors. Individual applications will not be considered. The two members should apply as a team, submitting a single application that includes:

* An expression of interest clearly stating the names of the proposed team, briefly outlining your publishing experience and what you might bring to the role (no more than 1 page), and

* A 2-page CV for each team member

Expressions of interest should be sent by email to: palgrave-series@iamcr.org

Deadline: 10 February 2022, 23:00 hrs GMT

Decision process:

1. A 5-member sub-committee from the IAMCR Publication Committee will review the applications and recommend a ranked shortlist within one month after the closing date.

2. The International Council will be asked to endorse the ranking proposed by the 5-member sub-committee. The IC can also decide to alter the ranking, or to reject the proposal and ask for the call to be re-opened.

3. The Executive Board will then invite the team of co-editors to take up the positions.

For informal queries, please email palgrave-series@iamcr.org

See this EOI online

 Wednesday May 25, 9.00pm to 6.00pm (CET)

Hybrid format: Online and Université Paris Nanterre

Deadline: March 4, 2022

in collaboration with the Culture/cultures/CREA 370 research group (François Cusset, Veronique Rauline and Thierry Labica), Université Paris Nanterre

Conference registration fee: $35.00 USD

Keynote speakers (with more to be confirmed):

• François Cusset (Université Paris Nanterre)
• Alan Finlayson (University of East Anglia)
• Sahana Udupa (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

A commitment to critique – in its diverse theoretical forms and idioms – is the defining ethos of scholarship attuned to the power dynamics of academic research and knowledge production more generally. Critique encourages us to interpret the given world suspiciously, often for very good reasons. However, it can also be a “thought style” (Felski, 2015, p. 2) with its own intellectual and political limitations. This pre-conference will reflect on the place of critique in a political moment that poses some distinct challenges to how critique is imagined and practised in communication and media studies and elsewhere. It does so from a perspective that is affirmative of critique, yet mindful that “to be faithful to its core principle, critique must involve its self-critique” (Fassin & Harcourt, 2019, p. 3). It also invites perspectives and contributions from different fields and disciplines. We think the question of critique should summon a healthy disregard for disciplinary strictures and imperatives, and demand engagement with all the paradoxes and tensions of the present conjuncture.

Three rather different conjunctural developments justify discussion of this topic now. First, authors in different fields have questioned the condition of critique by invoking the notion of “post-critique” (Anker & Felski, 2017). This label has been read by some as signifying a straightforward renunciation of critique. However, this characterization annihilates the intellectual richness of some of the post-critique literature, and we agree with Rita Felski’s (2015) observation that it is “becoming ever more risible to conclude that any questioning of critique can only be a reactionary gesture or a conservative conspiracy” (p. 8). Similar arguments have been made by appealing to motifs like “critique of critique” or “critique of the critical”, to signify how critique can take forms that are formulaic and marketized (Billig, 2013), disenchanted from the political question of emancipation (Rancière, 2011), or over-reliant on a rhetoric of moral denunciation (Phelan, 2021). Work done under the heading of “critical university studies” (Smyth, 2017) emphasizes, in turn, the need for meaningful critique in the institutional universe that shapes scholarly identities and practices, as an antidote to a critical gaze that directs its attention exclusively outwards.

Second, critique is increasingly being represented in pejorative ways by an ideologically heterogenous cast of political, cultural and media actors, often self-styled academic dissidents. These figures sometimes assume the mantle of the real critical thinkers unmasking the politicized scholarship of left-wing academics, as if to dramatize Bruno Latour’s (2004) fears about how the “weapons of social critique” can be reappropriated (see also Tebaldi, 2021). These developments have gained wider public visibility in far-right attacks against “critical race theory” in the US (Goldberg, 2021). They are also expressed in a generalized condemnation of “critical” and “postmodern” scholarship across the humanities and social sciences. These anti-critique discourses are produced in malleable forms (Jay, 2020) that circulate easily across media cultures and national boundaries. They become part of the ready-to-hand weaponry of “culture war” politics. The critical academy is targeted for its role in the creation of an authoritarian “woke” culture that, we are told, threatens sacred Enlightenment values.

Third, the university is now routinely depicted on the political right as one of a number of elite social institutions (including “the media”) that has been captured by “wokeness” and the forces of “cancel culture” (Labica, 2021). Yet, in tandem with these discourses, it is not hard to cite examples of how the culture of scholarly critique is being “cancelled” in a rather different way by forces within and outside the neoliberal university. This was exemplified by events at the University of Leicester in 2021, when several critical management studies and political economy academics (Halford, 2021) were made redundant for doing research that was deemed to be at odds with the future strategic vision of the university’s business school. It was illustrated in a June 2021 motion passed by Danish parliamentarians on the boundaries between science and politics, which was described – in a letter co-signed by over 3,000 academics – as an attack on “critical research and teaching” in areas like “race, gender, migration and post-colonial studies” (Myklebust, 2021). It also takes a distinctly French form in the image of academic departments that have been taken over by the forces of “islamo-gauchisme”, or in the assumption that even talking about race indicates activist commitments at odds with a normative conception of proper science (Dawes, 2020; Mohammed, 2021). Universities can, and do, respond differently to external political attacks, and sometimes in ways that affirm a principled commitment to scholarly critique. This was illustrated by cross-university support for a September 2021 conference Dismantling Global Hindutva, despite the “harassment and intimidation” of speakers and organizers “by various Hindu right-wing groups and individuals staunchly opposing the conference” (Naik, 2021). Nonetheless, the transnational dynamics of such attacks point to the normalization (Krzyżanowski, 2020) and mainstreaming (Mondon & Winter, 2020) of far-right discourses globally. It is not difficult to imagine a dystopian future for the university where attacks against critical academics become more common, or where the managerial class of more universities capitulate to the agenda of reactionary publics.

Format and papers

Our description of the pre-conference theme is intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive: we welcome diverse paper proposals that confront all the contradictions and possibilities of the current political moment, both from a critical communication and media studies perspective and a wider interdisciplinary horizon. The conference will be organized as short keynote and roundtable panels that will create space for conversation between panellists and audience questions. We also encourage submissions that reflect plurality in terms of region, career level, ethnicity, gender, class, disability and sexual orientation.

The format of the conference is hybrid. Speakers can present either in person or online (the precise online platform is subject to confirmation). The on-site gathering will take place at the Université Paris Nanterre. Registration costs for paper presenters and in-person attendees will be US$35, to help cover basic conference expenses, including catering costs. We also hope to open the event (at no cost) to a wider online audience.

Paper proposals should be submitted as short abstracts of 150 to 250 words (not counting references). They should be sent as PDF attachments to the email address critiqueICA2022@gmail.com, with the pre-conference title listed in the abstract. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday March 4, 2022. Please also include a short bio note of 100 words maximum. And please clarify how you are planning to attend the pre-conference, indicating “don’t know yet” if you are not sure.

The pre-conference chairs are Sean Phelan (Massey University/University of Antwerp), Simon Dawes (Université Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines) and Pieter Maeseele (University of Antwerp). Any questions about the pre-conference should be emailed to Sean at sean.phelan@uantwerpen.be.

Abstracts should be framed as short provocations that speak clearly to the pre-conference theme. Potential sub-themes include:

• Critique, the university and the politics of knowledge production
• Reflections on the post-critique debate
• Critique, post-critique and capitalism
• Critique, media and journalism
• Critique, post-critique and communication studies
• Critique and digital culture
• Critique, Marxism and socialism
• Critique, suspicion and reactionary politics
• Critique and the left
• Critique, race and racism
• Critique, gender, and gender theory
• Critique and the politics of social justice
• Critique and ideology
• Critique and critical discourse studies
• Critique, meaning and identity
• Critique, science and activism
• Anti-critique, critical theory and reactionary pedagogy
• Anti-critique and the transnational far right
• Far-right appropriation of critical discourse and signifiers

Advisory committee

• Sarah Banet-Weiser (USC Annenberg)
• Lilie Chouliaraki (LSE)
• Mohan Dutta (Massey University)
• Jayson Harsin (American University of Paris)
• Thierry Labica (Université Paris Nanterre)
• Robert Porter (University of Ulster)
• Veronique Rauline (Université Paris Nanterre)
• Gavan Titley (Maynooth University/University of Helsinki)
• Sahana Udupa (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Institutional supporters

• ICA Division: Philosophy, Theory and Critique
• ICA Division: Race and Ethnicity in Communication
• Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp
• Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), France
• Université Paris Nanterre

Selective references

Billig, M. (2013). Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press.

Dawes, S. (2020, November 2). The Islamophobic witch-hunt of Islamo-leftists in France. openDemocracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/islamophobic-witch-hunt-islamo-leftists-france/

Fassin, D., & Harcourt, B. E. (2019). A Time for Critique. Columbia University Press.

Felski, R. (2015). The Limits of Critique. University of Chicago Press.

Goldberg, D. T. (2021, May 2). The War on Critical Race Theory. Boston Review. https://bostonreview.net/race-politics/david-theo-goldberg-war-critical-race-theory

Halford, S. (2021, May 11). BSA President writes to Leicester VC on the proposed closure of Critical Management Studies and Political Economy. https://es.britsoc.co.uk/bsa-president-writes-to-leicester-vc-on-the-proposed-closure-of-critical-management-studies-and-political-economy/

Jay, M. (2020). Splinters in Your Eye: Essays on the Frankfurt School. Verso Books.

Krzyżanowski, M. (2020). Normalization and the discursive construction of “new” norms and “new” normality: Discourse in the paradoxes of populism and neoliberalism. Social Semiotics, 30(4), 431–448.

Labica, T. (2021, November 30). De l’ « islamogauchisme » au « wokisme »: Blanquer et la cancel-culture des dominants –. CONTRETEMPS REVUE DE CRITIQUE COMMUNISTE. https://www.contretemps.eu/islamogauchisme-wokisme-decolonialisme-cancel-culture-blanquer/

Latour, B. (2004). Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(Winter), 24.

Mohammed, M. (2021, May 14). Islamophobic Hegemony in France: Toward a Point of No Return? Berkley Forum. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/islamophobic-hegemony-in-france-toward-a-point-of-no-return

Mondon, A., & Winter, A. (2020). Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream. Verso Books.

Myklebust, J. P. (2021, June 10). Uproar as MPs claim university research is ‘politicised.’ University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210610103648390

Naik, R. H. (2021, September 7). US academic conference on ‘Hindutva’ targeted by Hindu groups. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/7/us-academic-conference-dismantling-global-hindutva-hindu-right-wing-groups

Phelan, S. (2021). What’s in a name? Political antagonism and critiquing ‘neoliberalism.’ Journal of Political Ideologies, 1–20.

Rancière, J. (2011). The Emancipated Spectator. Verso Books.

Smyth, J. (2017). The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars and Neoliberal Ideology. Springer.

Tebaldi, C. (2021). Speaking post-truth to power. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 43(3), 205–225.