ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

April 28-29, 2022

Hybrid conference

Deadline: December 15, 2021

We are inviting abstracts for a conference “Media and the Illiberal Turn: Challenges to democracy and public communication in light of the COVID-19 pandemic” that will mark the closure of “The Illiberal Turn” project. The conference will take place on 28-29 April 2022 at Loughborough University.

Attendance is free. The conference will be organized in a hybrid format, allowing for on-site and online participation. There will be limited financial support available to cover the travel expenses of early career scholars. Opportunities for publishing selected conference papers as a journal special issue or an edited volume will be explored after the conference.

Deadline for sending abstracts of 250-300 words is 15 December 2021.

READ MORE: https://www.illiberal-turn.eu/news/call-for-papers-illiberal-turn-final-conference/

University of Erfurt

The Faculty of Philosophy, department for media and communication studies at the University of Erfurt intends to appoint to the following professorship at the earliest possible date:

W3-Professor of Communication Science with focus on Social Communication (f/m/d)

The appointee should cover the entire field of communication studies in research and teaching with a special focus on structures and processes of social communication on a macro and meso level. The candidates should have a clear empirical orientation, should have a track-record in empirical research and focus on one of the following fields: sociology of communication, media economics, gender research, health communication, media socialization. The appointee’s research focus is expected to complement and further enhance the profile of the communication department in Erfurt. The appointee will contribute to teaching in the Bachelor‘s program - including qualitative and quantitative methods training - and in our Master‘s programs "Global Communication: Politics and Society", "Children's and Youth Media" and "Health Communication", in the Erfurt Doctoral and Postdoctoral Program (EPPP) "Communication and Digital Media" and in the Studium Fundamentale - an interdisciplinary teaching program for undergraduates.

The application deadline is January, 15, 2022.

More information can be found here: https://www.uni-erfurt.de/universitaet/arbeiten-an-der-universitaet/stellenausschreibungen/98-2021-w3-prof-komm-wiss-philfak-schmolinsky-englisch

February 9-10, 2022

Köln, Germany. Macromedia University of Applied Sciences

Deadline: December 5, 2021

Almost two years of COVID-19 lockdowns have forced many transformations in our daily lives. Among others, teaching had to move online from one day to the next which accelerated the need to adapt, translate and implement changes involving new skills and new resources both from universities, and from students. For any form of teaching of communication related skills these changes have multiplied discussions and also started a whole new strand of research on teaching communication.

Teaching online is not new. Indeed, theories and practices about distance and online teaching, about hybrid and embedded teaching have been developed and applied intensely over the last few decades (Cavanaugh, 2005; Simonson, Zvacek, & Smaldino, 2019), but it was too much treated as a subsidiary form of presence or synchronous teaching. Furthermore, at the time of implementing and reformulating all the teaching for online delivery, the antecedent knowledge and available studies about distance learning were very little considered (Rapanta, et al. 2020).

Furthermore, the speedy evolution of the communication ecosystem demands new skill sets and questions, too. The development and consolidation and growth of platforms, and proprietary software-based applications, cause issues about ownership and access; the abundance of mobile-laptop devices, and the possibilities of high internet connectivity conditions raise questions about infrastructures, resources, and social inequalities as well as about the availability that require not only the teaching staff to provide their own spaces for work, but also students to make their workspaces available. Needless to mention how mental health and camera-sharing of private spaces have crept into the teaching environment. All these new conditions come with new skills, new ethical questions, and new critical contents that need to be learned and to be taught: media and communication literacy, cybersecurity, and cyber responsibility, data protection and intellectual property protection, among others.

All these aspects add to the regular complexity of teaching communication, especially in the fitting and intersections between applied areas of knowledge, like strategic communication; with long sought, fast developing, and wide-ranging theoretical traditions: psycho-social informed or semiotic approaches, and management theories. Furthermore, professionals of communication are often expected to develop wider skills that trespass the theoretical backgrounds of their field. These skills include dealing with diversity in the classrooms, updating digital resources and tools, and facing an increment of undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

And yet, beyond these insurmountable conditions, teaching staff and students have managed to overcome the challenge with great amounts of creativity and opportunity, showing capacity for innovation and resilience, and they have arranged to teach and learn what was unthinkable before lockdown: sending cameras home to students; using VR and Extended Reality for teaching; incorporating online international experiences for the students, etc.

In this workshop, we invite you to share teaching experiences, research papers (or work in progress), or critical discussions in the format of 10-minute presentations. Around (but not limited to) the following areas:

• Challenges and strategies on theory teaching
• Organisational challenges of Communication Education
• Discussions about topics and new environments of Communication Education
• Innovations and developments in Communication Education
• Case studies and experiences
• Projections and future arrangements
• Implications for social justice and social inequalities
• Platforms, software, devices and technologies for Communication Education
• Students, teaching, and assessment strategies for Communication Education
• Ethics
• Creativity
• ...

The first day of the program will mainly consist of paper presentations and some input statements by external experts. We will close the first day with a hybrid panel in English language fully open to the public in Cologne and all over Europe. The second day will focus on a workshop to discuss and develop new forms of academic training for communication management.

Please, submit a 1 page abstract (max. 500 words) a.s.a.p for peer review to ecreaosc@gmail.com. We start the review process as soon as you submit and provide feedback within a few days. This is a hybrid conference.

December 5th	Deadline for Abstract submission	1 page ecreaosc@gmail.com
	Communication of Acceptance	Peer review
December 12th	Program publication
December 19th	Registration deadline for presenters
December 21th	Definitive Program
February, 9-10th 2022	Conference Venue in Köln, Germany	Starting around 13:00

Registration Price:

50 Euro - including all meals and conference dinner (two days)

25 Euro - online participation (only 9th)

Paypal: paypal.me/ecreaoscsection

If you have further questions, please feel free to contact ecreaosc@gmail.com. This conference workshop is organised by the ECREA OSC management team (Prof. Dr. Evandro Oliveira, Dr. Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat and Prof. Dr. Ileana Lis Zeler), together with Macromedia University and OSC member local organizer Prof. Dr. Holger Sievert.

References:

Cavanaugh, J. (2005). Teaching online-A time comparison. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8(1)

Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L., & Koole, M. (2020). Online university teaching during and after the Covid-19 crisis: Refocusing teacher presence and learning activity. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 923-945.

Simonson, M., Zvacek, S. M., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education 7th Edition.

The YECREA management team is happy to announce that a new call for representatives is out! We have a total of 17 vacant positions for Sections, Networks and Temporary Working Groups. Applications should be no more than 500 words and contain the following information:

1. A heading with your name and the specific position you are applying for

2. Details on your current university, position and progression

3. A brief description of your research

4. A brief statement on your work’s connection to the specific section, TWG or network

5. A brief statement on your aspirations for improving early-career research

The deadline to send applications to yecreanetwork@gmail.com is December 20th, 2020. Further details and the full list of open positions can be found here: http://yecrea.eu/2021/11/17/call-for-yecrea-representatives-2021/

Being a YECREA representative is a great opportunity to learn how a big scholarly association like ECREA works, as well as an opportunity to network with more senior researchers in your field.

We look forward to your applications!

Sandra, Antonio and Valentinal, the YECREA management team

June 15-17, 2022

University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)

Deadline: December 5, 2021

11th European Feminist Research Conference

https://11efrc.unimib.it/

Keynote Speakers: Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University, USA / Carmen Leccardi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy /

Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK

Strand 3: Critiques and strategies of mediation, representation, and digital technologies

The conference raises the general question on what it means to imagine, to enact and to analyse “social change” from a feminist perspective.This conference-strand focuses on how media and the process of digitalisation contribute to the production and contestation of the spaces/relations/canons we inhabit individually and collectively. Especially the last year(s) of pandemic have made the use of digital media a constitutive part of the process of subjectivation and the construction of the public sphere, even more crucial.

This strand invites papers and panels from a wide range of (inter)disciplines, both empirical and theoretical contributions, on topics which include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Affordances and constraints of digital platforms
• Cyberfeminist legacies (hacklab, hacktivism)
• Alternative media industries, representations and networks
• Feminist networking, digital activism and collective action in pandemic time
• Transfeminist critiques to computational culture (big data, creative methodologies, ethics)
• Mediated articulation of the affective and intimate everyday life (dating app, family, friendship, alternative intimacies and radical kinships)
• The complexities of feminist communication and knowledge exchanges across academic and non academic spaces (e.g.: issues of accessibility, production, and dissemination)
• Community media
• Normative regime of (in)visibility and resistance (representation, self-representation, disidentifications)
• Critical takes on the popularised issue of fake news and post-truth
• Platforms/digital practices of care, networking, participation
• Memes as aesthetiques and language

Read the entire call here: https://11efrc.unimib.it/strand-3/

Deadline: December 5, 2021

→ abstracts to be sent to: efrc.strand3@gmail.com, info@atgender.eu

Defined as the overabundance of information on a given subject, infodemic has been described by the World Health Organization as one of the most serious problems we face as a society. This is an investigation carried out by researchers from the Nebrija_INNOMEDIA research group, trying to ellucdate how young adults access information and navigate media, social networks, and fake news. Answers are collected totally anonymously and only for scientific and academic purposes. The survey takes 5 minutes to respond: https://forms.gle/PoGip8CD98ochKeX6

QUT Digital Media Research Centre

The QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) in Brisbane, Australia, is currently seeking applicants for four five-year Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) positions. The four PDRAs contribute to an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship led by Professor Axel Bruns, a flagship five-year research project that investigates the Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate. The successful applicants will contribute to the Laureate's overall research programme, and lead specific research streams within the Laureate Fellowship. They will be mentored by the Laureate Fellow, Prof. Axel Bruns.

The Laureate Fellowship is situated within the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), one of eleven flagship University Research Centres at QUT. In addition to the Laureate team itself, the PDRAs will also have an opportunity to work closely with the other international research leaders, early-career researchers, and postgraduate research students in the DMRC. They will also co-supervise postgraduate research students aligned with the Laureate project.

Rapidly increasing partisanship and polarisation, especially online, poses an urgent threat to societal cohesion in Australia and other established western democracies; polarisation is also a critical cybersecurity concern when actively promoted by bad-faith actors to undermine citizens' trust in democratic institutions. By introducing an analytical framework that distinguishes four key dimensions of polarisation, the Fellowship aims to conduct the first-ever assessment of the extent and dynamics of polarisation in the contemporary online and social media environments of six nations, including Australia. The evidence is expected to enable an urgently needed, robust defence of our society and democracy against the challenges of polarisation.

Successful candidates will contribute to high-quality research activities relevant to one or more of the Laureate project's four research streams. They must demonstrate substantial mixed-methods expertise in digital and social media analysis, with a focus on one of more of the following research areas: journalism studies, media and communication studies, political science, social media analytics, computational social science, computational discourse analysis, social network analysis, issue mapping. They will also have an opportunity to contribute actively to the DMRC's overall research culture, including participation in strategic planning, research collaboration, and community-building, and to collaborate with other world-leading researchers at the DMRC.

Candidates must follow the application instructions at http://bit.ly/laureateteam. Note that applications must include a CV, response to selection criteria, and statement of research interests with respect to the aims of the Laureate project.

Applications are due by 30 January 2022, and open to Australian and international applicants. Subject to travel and visa arrangements, the Postdoctoral Research Associates should commence in mid-2022.

December 10, 2021

It is with great pleasure that we announce and invite you to participate in the final conference of the SMaRT-EU project. The conference will take place on December 10th, in online format, and will bring together researchers, practitioners and end-users to present and discuss the results of the project. The conference will also feature a number of speakers who will address topics related to new horizons and challenges for resilience towards misinformation and social media.

Save the date: 10 December 2021, from 9.30am (CET - Central European Time)

The full programme and registration available at http://smart-toolkit.eu/smart-eu-conference/

University of Fribourg

The Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences (SES) at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, invites applications for a 5-years PhD position at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies. The successful candidate will work as a teaching and research assistant at the Department of Communication and Media Research (DCM) and write a doctoral thesis under the direction of professor Thilo von Pape.

The DCM offers an outstanding and supportive research environment based on interdisciplinary and innovative collaborations at the interface between communication, media, business and society. Unique in its bilingualism, located in the heart of Europe, and renowned for its rigorous training and research, the University of Fribourg affords a decisive first step towards a rewarding research career.

Information

Start date: February 1st, 2022, or to be agreed

Contract duration: 5 years (1 year; renewable 4 years)

Employment rate: 100%; the salary will be established according to the guidelines of the University of Fribourg

Profile

Interests:

You are creative and enthusiastic about the theory and methods of empirical social research. You like working autonomously as well as in a multilingual team. You are interested in one or more of the following areas:

- qualitative or quantitative methods of social research,

- communication in digital contexts: social networks, smartphones, ...,

- uses, effects, and social and environmental issues of media innovations: equal access, everyday appropriation, social support, privacy, sustainability, …

- teaching through research.

Skills:

Ideally, you are proficient in the qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis applied in the social sciences; expertise in software tools (R, Python, NVivo, ...) is considered an additional asset.

Education:

You have obtained a Master’s degree in communication studies or in a closely related social science (sociology, psychology, …) with a focus on empirical research.

Languages:

Full proficiency in French and a good command of English. Notions in German and a commitment to perfect your language skills are appreciated.

Application

Questions:

Please address any questions regarding the position and/or the application to Jolanda Wehrli (jolanda.wehrli@unifr.ch), with the object “PhD position von Pape”.

Documents:

The application must contain:

- a cover letter specifying research interests and motivations,

- a CV containing the names of two academic references,

- transcripts of completed academic training,

- summary of the Master thesis on one page,

- other relevant certificates (e.g., TOEFL) or documents (e.g., evaluation of Master thesis).

The evaluation will focus on your academic record, interests, attitude, and the ensuing potential for academic success; it is committed to diversity and inclusion.

Deadline:

The application must be sent as one single PDF document to Jolanda Wehrli (jolanda.wehrli@unifr.ch) by December 1st, 2021.

Link to pdf of job opening: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm/en/assets/public/files/jobs/2111AssvonPape_en.pdf

French version: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm/en/assets/public/files/jobs/2111AssvonPape_fr.pdf

University of Georgia

The University of Georgia’s Department of Entertainment and Media Studies seeks to fill one position for a teacher and scholar of media visual entertainment. Appointment will either be at the Assistant tenure-track level or at the Associate level with tenure. The faculty member will teach four courses a year on an academic appointment (nine months). Preferred research emphases include but are not limited to post-broadcast television, diversity, intersectionality, and/or social movements.

Address questions to: Professor Anandam Kavoori, Grady College Search Committee Chair and Professor, Department of Entertainment and Media Studies, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-3154, (706) 542-4971 or akavoori@uga.edu

https://www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/230170