European Communication Research and Education Association
KU Leuven
Apply here: https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/jobs/60069121?hl=en&lang=en
(ref. ZAP-2021-119)
The research units Inter-Actions of LUCA School of Arts and the Institute for Media Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences (KU Leuven) jointly have one full-time position vacant. Ninety percent of the position is fulfilled as a lecturer at LUCA School of Arts in Genk (C-Mine), the remaining ten percent as a member of the ‘independent academic staff’ (ZAP) at the Institute for Media Studies on the Social Sciences campus in Leuven.
LUCA School of Arts
The main assignment (90%) within the appointment at LUCA School of Arts includes a clear research and teaching mission. LUCA School of Arts offers space – physically and virtually – to grow and stimulate artistic, technical and design talent. It is a meeting place for many cultures and nationalities, a laboratory where regional and international art is made accessible. To this end, LUCA offers contemporary artistic and design-oriented education with a focus on research. LUCA trains students with a critical view and broadly applicable qualities. Reflection and theoretical foundation are important, as well as coordination with the professional field and the alumni. There is a very diverse range of programmes, profiled around spearheads, and spread across five campuses. LUCA's educational courses include professional, academic and advanced programmes: Product Design, Audiovisual & Visual Arts and Music & Drama and the professional programmes Visual Design, TV-Film, Photography, Interior Design and Construction.
LUCA combines the renowned art colleges Sint-Lucas Ghent, Sint-Lukas Brussels, Narafi (Brussels), Lemmens Institute (Leuven) and campus C-Mine (Genk). Within the campus in Genk, the new colleague will be embedded in the research unit Inter-Actions. Inter-Actions brings together a series of research clusters on topics including sustainable design, meaningful play and care & empathy. The research work at Inter-Actions mainly zooms in on research and creation where the relationship between the maker (designer, animator, filmmaker, etc.), the created artefact (film, photographic work, etc.) and the 'audience' (the user, the viewer, etc.) is questioned.
Institute for Media Studies (IMS) of the KU Leuven
The second part (10%) of the vacant position involves an appointment as a member of the ‘independent academic personnel’ (ZAP) at the Institute for Media Studies, embedded in the KU Leuven Faculty of Social Sciences.
KU Leuven is one of the leading academic institutions in Europe and its mission is to provide excellent academic education, research and service. KU Leuven is a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and is consistently ranked within the top 10 universities in Europe. Leuven is a historic yet dynamic and vibrant city in the centre of Belgium, twenty minutes from Brussels and less than two hours from Paris, London and Amsterdam.
Within the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Institute for Media Studies (IMS), in addition to the School for Mass Communication Research (SMCR), is a research unit dedicated to the study of media and communication in society. The focus is on the analysis of media content, its production, effects and use, usually in relation to society and social issues. Much attention is paid in the research to the consequences of the far-reaching digitisation of communication. The IMS is known for its broad orientation, openness and diversity within the team of employees, and this translates into a variety of theoretical perspectives, questions and quantitative and qualitative methodologies in research.
Website unit
Duties
Research
The research assignment comprises artistically oriented scientific research with a view to developing a research cluster in line with the following context:
Rationale: The digitisation of the photographic medium has caused a disruptive upheaval in contemporary visual culture, leading us to consider the digital image as the norm. The naturalisation of the digital image has made it inseparable from the way we perceive, represent and experience our world, ourselves and others. This hyper-documented world, in which thousands of selfies are uploaded in a fraction of a second, automated cameras record every street corner and algorithms increasingly determine our visual culture, is causing a profound shift in our approach to the image, its relationship to society and our view of reality. This process of progressive digitisation and screen culture therefore not only affects the photographic image, but also the social, political and cultural field. The omnipresence of the visual in our mediated culture, with new forms that did not exist two decades ago (for instance, VR, emoticons, memes, deep fakes, viral social media videos), forces us to ask new research questions on media aesthetics and media experiences, the processing of digital media content, human-technology interactions, visual literacy, and visual communication. We may say that we have entered a post-digital era in which we can critically question and dissect this naturalisation of the digital image.
The research programme of this vacancy aims to investigate how photography moves, changes and transforms in this complex post-digital world, and how it can increase its capacity for action (agency) by blending with other domains, disciplines, participatory design methods and technologies. It examines how photography and contemporary visual culture has changed (in the past), is changing (in the present) or can/will change (as a possible future) as a result of the development of digital cameras and computational photography, leaving room for exploration, deep insights, reflection, experimentation and creation in dialogue with other disciplines, including social sciences, such as communication sciences and media studies, as well as disciplines in science and technology.
In this profile we see a maker and an analytical thinker, with a strong feel for the post-digital visual culture and a great research interest in reflecting on, experimenting with and creating within and beyond the boundaries of what was, is and will be.
Within this context, the intention is to find connections with the research programme of LUCA School of Arts as well as with one or more lines of research of the IMS. In view of the interdisciplinary nature of this vacant position, the explicit intention is to bring research at both locations closer together and to facilitate the added value of interdisciplinary cooperation on both a national and international level.
At both locations, research cooperation can take the form of recruiting external project funding, supervising PhD students, interdisciplinary PhD tracks, postdoc tracks and science dissemination.
Education
The teaching assignment at LUCA School of Arts consists of providing academic art education and supervision. The teaching assignment consists of designing educational activities, study counselling or educational concepts in order to provide education tailored to the needs of the student audience; guiding students in conceiving both the artistic and reflective components of final dissertations and interim research assignments; to be the lecturer and coordinator of a number of course units; to supervise assistants within a course unit or a cluster of course units and to take up teaching assignments, in line with the context of the profile vacancy and to contribute to the development of the learning lines in the Genk Fine Arts programme: Experimental Imaging and Future Framing.
There are also opportunities to join relevant educational activities linked to the two research groups on communication sciences at KU Leuven, IMS and SMCR. These research groups are jointly responsible for the organisation of the Bachelor and Master in Communication Sciences, the English-language Master in Digital Media and Society, the Master in Business Communication and the Master in Journalism. Opportunities to be involved in this educational programme include giving guest lectures and supervising master's theses.
Service
This vacant post also includes scholarly, community and internal service at the LUCA School of Arts and IMS. This manifests itself through constructive contribution to teaching and research as partly collective projects of a team, for example through participation in meetings, teacher days, information events, recruitment activities and exchange programmes). In addition, active participation in the academic debate, for example by taking part in conferences, and in councils or committees (artistic organisations, socio-cultural associations, etc.) and any form of engaging in public debate (about your research) are part of your duties.
Profile
Offer
LUCA School of Arts, C-Mine campus (Genk) offers a 90% permanent appointment and KU Leuven, Faculty of Social Sciences (Leuven) a 10% temporary appointment. The appointment at LUCA School of Arts is at lecturer level (salary scale 528 or 512 if combined with substantial side activities of an artistic nature) and appointment at a later stage is possible according to the existing rules and procedures. At the Institute for Media Studies, appointment as a member of the academic staff (scales 142 / 14) is renewable after a positive evaluation. More information on the salary scales can be found on the website of the Education Department (www.ond.vlaanderen.be).|
Interested?
More information on the link with LUCA School of Arts can be obtained from Niels Hendriks (coordinator research unit Inter-Actions – tel. +32 24471098, Email niels.hendriks@luca-arts.be) and Maarten Vanvolsem (vice-dean of education – maarten.vanvolsem@luca-arts.be). For the KU Leuven part, information can be obtained from Prof. Dr. Baldwin Van Gorp (research coordinator IMS – tel.: +32 16 32 32 79, Email: baldwin.vangorp@kuleuven.be) and Prof. Dr. Steven Eggermont (Dean Faculty of Social Sciences – tel.: +32 16 32 38, Email: steven.eggermont@kuleuven.be).
For more information please contact Dr. Niels Hendriks, tel.: +32 2 447 10 98, mail: niels.hendriks@luca-arts.be or Prof. dr. Baldwin Van Gorp, tel.: +32 16 32 31 79, mail: baldwin.vangorp@kuleuven.be.For problems with online applying, please contact solliciteren@kuleuven.be.
You can apply for this job no later than February 28, 2022 via the online application tool
KU Leuven seeks to foster an environment where all talents can flourish, regardless of gender, age, cultural background, nationality or impairments. If you have any questions relating to accessibility or support, please contact us at diversiteit.HR@kuleuven.be.
Prologi (Special Issue)
Deadline: February 10, 2022
Many societal challenges, such as increasing inequality, social marginalization and exclusion, threatened well-being in worklife, preventing pandemia, and climate change, are embedded in communities and social interaction within them. When finding solutions to these wicked problems, it is crucial to ask how actions taken as well as communication and interactions could be enhanced and how to achieve effective and sustainable outcomes. Research-based knowledge and evidence-based practices, policies and decision making have become even more important in societal decision making, developing communities, creating new practices and procedures as well as delivering interventions. Thus, the importance of research-based knowledge is inevitable.
The meaning and usage of research-based knowledge and evidence-based in developing communities, communication and interactions are at the core of this special issue in Prologi. We encourage proposals aligned with Finnish society but we warmly welcome international perspectives on the topic.
The proposals may focus on development of groups, communities and organizations approached for instance from the perspectives of interpersonal relationships and leadership. Research-based development can be considered from the persuasion and argumentation, political communication and decision making point of view. Utilizing research findings may be examined also in the context of intercultural communication and technology-mediated communication. Furthermore, the proposal may consider research-based development of communication education and training.
The proposals may concentrate on the development of communication, interaction and communities from the following view points (but not limited to):
Utilizing survey results and evidence-based knowledge in developing communication and interaction in communities
Beside peer-reviewed articles, also shorter texts, book reviews, and interesting presentations, such as lectio praecursoria, may be published in the special issue.
PhD Leena Mikkola and PhD Sanna Herkama will serve as guest editors in this special issue. Please, send your abstract (300 - 400 words) to the special issue by 10th of February 2022 to Leena Mikkola via email (leena.mikkola [at] tuni.fi. It is possible to publish in Finnish, Swedish or English in the special issue. You may also send a proposal to publish a shorter text or book review. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 15th of February.
Full manuscripts (6000 words) will be sent by 30th of April 2022 via Open Journal Systems (Please, register here https://journal.fi/prologi).
All the scientific articles published in the special issue will be peer-reviewed (see for more (linkki Prologin ohjeisiin). Other text types should be submitted to OJS-system by 15th of August 2022. More information: Leena Mikkola (leena.mikkola [at] tuni.fi) and Sanna Herkama (sanna.herkama [at] utu.fi) & www.prologos.fi/about.
Prologi – Journal of Communication and Social Interaction is a scholarly journal of The Finnish Association of Communication and Social Interaction Prologos. The journal presents the latest research on communication and social interaction. Manuscripts can be submitted for publication in Finnish, Swedish, and English. Until 2020, Prologi was published as an annual yearbook. Today, the journal aims to publish at least two issues per year. The call for papers is ongoing.
European Journal of Communication and European Journal of Cultural Studies on board for organisation of ECC 2022 in Aarhus
We all hope that ECREA 2022 in Aarhus will be remembered as a way back into the good old academic habitus, including flesh and blood colleagues, face-to-face discussions and coffee made by somebody else than yourself. In one word, we envision the next ECREA conference as a comeback of the old. Despite this, it will bring some new, invigorating events as well. ECREA´s presentation of commencement of our collaboration with leading European media and communication journals - European Journal of Communication (EJC) and European Journal of Cultural Studies (EJCS) - will be one of them. We are happy to announce that EJC will provide the travel grant to one young scholar on the grounds of the quality of the submitted abstract. In addition to this, EJCS and ECREA will introduce entirely new Best Paper Award for young scholars which will be handed over to the award winner at the conference. The EJC´s editor Peter Golding and EJCS´s editor Joke Hermes will sit on the two committees responsible for selection of the two ECREA shooting stars together with other four ECREA Board members. Grant and award holders will be invited to submit their papers to the journals (no prior guarantees of publication).
The calls for applications for EJC travel grant and EJCS Best Paper Award will be launched shortly after notifications of acceptance will be distributed on 26 April 2022.
Irena Reifová
ECREA Vice-President
Stefania Vicari
https://www.routledge.com/Digital-Media-and-Participatory-Cultures-of-Health-and-Illness/Vicari/p/book/9781138603127
This book explores how the complex scenario of platforms, practices and content in the contemporary digital landscape is shaping participatory cultures of health and illness.
The everyday use of digital and social media platforms has major implications for the production, seeking and sharing of health information, and raises important questions about health peer support, power relations, trust, privacy and knowledge. To address these questions, the book navigates contemporary forms of participation that develop through mundane digital practices, like tweeting about the latest pandemic news or keeping track of our daily runs with Fitbit or Strava. In doing so, it explores both radical activist practices and more ordinary forms of participation that can gradually lead to social and/or cultural changes in how we understand and experience health and illness.
The book's Table of content can be found below.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Pandemic snapshots, digital media, and participatory cultures of health and illness
PART 1: Theoretical foundations
2. Digital media, participation, and citizenship
3. Health advocacy and activism
PART 2: The rise of digitised and networked health
4. The rise of the epatient in the internet that was
5. From patient organisations to patient networks
PART 3: Platforms
6. Participatory cultures of health and illness on mainstream social media
7. Participatory cultures of health and illness on digital health platforms
8 Conclusion: Understanding participatory cultures of health and illness in contemporary societies
28-29 April 2022
Middlesex University London
Deadline: March 10, 2022
Abstracts are invited for a research symposium to be held at Middlesex University London as part of the project ‘Journalists’ emotional labour in the era of social media’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Emotional labour can be conceptualised as an effort to manage emotions which professional practitioners perceive as an integral part of their working life experience. In journalism it has primarily been investigated with reference to conflict and trauma reporting. More recently academic researchers have begun investigating the importance of emotions in journalism generally, but emotional labour more specifically. Current evidence suggests that journalism is an occupation characterised with high levels of emotional labour. Journalists use and manage emotions to motivate themselves for work. Emotions evoked at work can be intertwined with those from personal life. Indeed, work-related emotions can also be evoked outside of the story production process, for example in dealing with audiences and harassment, as well as being induced by working conditions (e.g., precarious pay, working hours, job insecurity), work relationships (e.g., within newsroom, with editors), the competitive nature of work, and so on. Importantly, there is evidence to suggest that if work-related emotions are not effectively managed, they can have negative consequences on journalists’ mental and physical health, job satisfaction, and the quality of the journalism being produced.
While papers investigating any aspect of journalists’ emotional labour are welcome, this symposium will provide an opportunity to widen the discussion of emotional labour beyond the scope of ‘Journalists’ emotional labour in the era of social media’ project, by broadening the discussion to consider this area of research more generally in the context of media work. There is some evidence that other types of media work might also be high emotional labour occupations, such as work with media photography, management of media outlets’ social media, stringer work etc.
Both theoretical and empirically informed papers are invited, focusing on topics such as (but not limited to):
- the causes and consequences of emotional labour in journalism and other media work
- the relationship between journalists’ freedom and safety and emotional labour
- emotional labour in the context of precarious employment in media
- the impact of covid-19 pandemic on media workers’ emotional labour
- the impact of social media on media workers’ emotional labour
- the impact of digital transformations on media workers’ emotional labour
- the relationship between media workers’ emotional labour and digital technologies
- emotional labour in areas such as photojournalism, camera work, directing, editing/post-production, stringer work, social media journalism, public relations etc.
- strategies for managing emotional labour in media work
- institutional/industry perspectives on media workers’ emotional labour
- support systems for media workers’ emotional labour
Abstracts of around 300 words should be sent to m.simunjak@mdx.ac.uk by 1 March 2022. Abstract notifications will be sent out by 10 March 2022.
Attendance is free. The panels for the research symposium will be held online on 28 April and a public roundtable on 29 April will be organised in a hybrid format, allowing for on-site and online participation.
Opportunities for publishing selected papers in a journal special issue will be explored after the symposium.
Lusofona University
Reference: Youth, News and Digital Citizenship/Jovens, Notícias e Cidadania Digital/YouNDigital - PTDC/COM-OUT/0243/2021
Scientific areas: PhD in Communication Sciences - Social Sciences / other subareas of Communication Sciences.
Candidates with a PhD in the areas of Sociology of Communication and/or Education Sciences and media/technology are also eligible.
COFAC, Cooperativa de Animação e Formação Cultural crl, opens a call for a Post doc fellowship Research Scholarship in the scope of the project "Youth, News and Digital Citizenship/ Jovens, Notícias e Cidadania Digital (PTDC/COM-OUT/0243/2021)”. The project is financed through national funds in the budget of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) - and developed in the research unit CICANT - Research Centre for Applied Communication, Culture and New Technologies (in Lusófona University, Porto).
YouNDigital aims to understand the attitudes and practices that young people have concerning news and digital citizenship. It is expected to get ,a better understanding of their news interests and needs, socialisation processes for news consumption either in the family, school, peer group context, and their experiences as "produsers” of news. This project is anchored in a participatory action-research approach combined with an initial online survey and a central focus on qualitative methods.
1 - Applicable legislation: Legal Regime of the Research Grant Holder Statute (Law no. 40/2004, of August 18, republished in annex to Decree-Law no. 202/2012, of August 27, and amended by Decree-Law no. 123/2019, of August 28, which proceeds with the fourth amendment to the Research Grant Holder Statute); and Regulation no. 950/2019, of December 16, which approves the FCT Research Grant Regulations - 2019 (https://www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/docs/RegulamentoBolsasFCT2019.pdf ).
2 - Scientific Area - PhD in Communication Sciences - Social Sciences / other subareas of Communication Sciences. Candidates with a PhD in the areas of Sociology of Communication and/or Education Sciences and media/technology are also eligible.
3 - Principal Investigator: Maria José Brites
4 - Duration of the Fellowship: the fellowship will have a duration of 12 months, and can be renewed up to a maximum of 36 months.
5 - Amount of the grant and method of payment: The monthly payment is 1646€/month, in accordance with the table of values for grants awarded by FCT, I.P. (http://www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/valores). The monthly payment of voluntary social insurance is also foreseen.
6 - Host institution: The candidate will work at Lusofona University/CICANT (Porto), where we offer a positive working environment and experience. Our facilities continue to develop and grow and the candidate will have access to quality conditions and digital equipment, and the opportunity to connect with a vivid and engaging research environment with junior and senior researchers.
7 - Research experience and skills - The fellow will work under the supervision of the PI Maria José Brites, the Co-PI, Teresa Sofia Castro, and the other project’s team members.
The candidate CV must evidence previous work that demonstrates the candidate is qualified to carry out activities to support the organisation, implementation, and technical-scientific development of the project, namely:
- To develop and implement activities related with literature review,
- To prepare and implement surveys and semi-structured interviews;
- To conduct qualitative research tasks, namely data analysis and validation;
- To ensure the management of digital research activities;
- To prepare training courses;
- To prepare and conduct dissemination and sustainability tasks;
- To develop field work and dissemination activities in Portuguese and in English.
- To help preparing publications to submit scientific journals, with peer reviewing, on media, young people, and digital citizenship;
- To collaborate in other publications in areas relevant to the project;
- Other tasks to support the project's development.
8 - Admission requirements: Applicants must meet the eligibility conditions set out in Articles 7 and 9 of the FCT I.P. Research Grant Regulations (2019) https://www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/docs/RegulamentoBolsasFCT2019DR.pdf
All individuals with a PhD in the areas of Communication Sciences - and other subareas of Communication Sciences are eligible to apply for this scholarship.
Preferential admission requirements. Preference will be given to candidates that demonstrate:
a) academic and professional experience skills in the areas of Communication Sciences, with special focus - at least partially - on youth and media/news, digital citizenship, youth activism, audience and reception studies, media literacy, and/or journalism;
b) academic and professional experience capacity in research network construction and the development or implementation of training activities;
c) academic and professional experience to have participated or lead European projects;
d) experience in dissemination activities directed to different audiences, and in creating dissemination products;
e) strong skills using research data analysis softwares (namely MaxQda and SPSS) and experience in qualitative and quantitative methodologies;
f) excellent knowledge of the Portuguese and English languages, both written and spoken, is required;
g) research autonomy, collaborative teamwork, deadlines fulfilment, and ethical skills.
9 - Application deadline and application submission: The call is open from February 4th to March 3rd, 2022 at 6pm WET. Applications and application support documents requested in the call must be submitted via email to cicant@ulusofona.pt, indicating in the email subject: “Youth, News and Digital Citizenship/Jovens, Notícias e Cidadania Digital” - PTDC/COM-OUT/0243/2021.
The applications must be accompanied by the following documents:
a) Detailed Curriculum Vitae clearly indicating how was acquired the knowledge and experience to meet the selection criteria by giving specific examples.
b) a motivational letter in Portuguese and in English;
c) documents proving that the candidate meets the required conditions for the type of scholarship to which he/she is applying for, namely qualification certificates with final average. In the case of academic degrees awarded by foreign higher education institutions, and in order to ensure the application of the principle of equal treatment to applicants holding foreign and national academic degrees, it is mandatory to recognize these degrees and convert the respective final classification to the Portuguese classification scale. The recognition of foreign degrees and diplomas and the conversion of the final classification into the Portuguese classification scale may be requested at any public higher education institution or at the Directorate-General for Higher Education (DGES, only in the case of automatic recognition). Regarding this matter, we suggest consulting the DGES portal at the following address: http://www.dges.gov.pt.; updated document proving the professional situation, indicating the nature of the contract and duties, which may be replaced by a sworn statement if there is no professional activity or provision of services;
d) other relevant documents for the candidate evaluation.
The required documentation described in the application submission section is mandatory. Only complete applications will be accepted and considered.
10 - Selection and evaluation procedure:
The selection will be based on the curricular evaluation (15 points) and interview (5 points), with a total value of 20 points. If the selected candidate drops out and there is another candidate on the final list with a score resulting from the curricular evaluation and interview equal to or higher than 15, the jury will proceed to select that candidate. In case of a tie in the first two positions, the candidates will be called for a second interview, with an evaluation between 0 and 5 points. The score of this interview is added to the results of the 1st phase in order to select the final candidate.
Evaluation criteria:
1 - Curriculum:
a) Integrated evaluation of the scientific production in areas related to YouNDigital:
- relevance of the publications to the area of the project;
- fulfilment of the requirements specified in "preferential admission requirements”;
- participation in scientific projects;
- other relevant professional/academic/research experience.
b) evaluation of extension activities and dissemination of knowledge in areas related to YouNDigital:
- organisation of scientific events;
- participation in activities of communication and dissemination of science;
- presentation of oral communications in scientific events;
- organisation and/or delivery of training.
c) motivation letter.
2 - Interview
The evaluation subcriteria to be used will be as follows:
1. Curriculum: a) 50% + b) 40% + c) 10% = 0 to 15 points
2. Interview 100% = 0 to 5 points
11 - Composition of the Jury: President of the Jury PhD Maria José Brites; Effective Member: PhD Teresa Sofia Castro; Effective Member: PhD Carla Cerqueira; Substitute Member: PhD Célia Quico.
12 - Publication and notification of the results: candidates will be notified of the results of the competition via email and the ordered list of candidates will be posted on the CICANT website (https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/careers/).
13 - The candidates will be excluded in the following cases:
1) applications sent by other means or extemporaneously will not be accepted;
2) application not submitted properly or not presenting the requested documents to prove a), b) and c);
3) making false declarations
4) application not in accordance with R2 profile as defined in Euraxess Researchers referencial.
The jury may request more information or documents to validate the information submitted by the candidate.
14 - Policy of non-discrimination and equal access: CICANT actively promotes a policy of non-discrimination and equal access, whereby no candidate may be privileged, benefited, disadvantaged or deprived of any right or exempted from any duty on the grounds of, inter alia, ancestry, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, family situation, economic situation, education, origin or social condition, genetic heritage, reduced work capacity, disability, chronic illness, nationality, ethnic origin or race, territory of origin, language, religion, political or ideological convictions and trade union membership.
Deadline: February 15, 2022
Preliminary title: The Return of Propaganda
Editors:
Contact:
Important dates:
Background and aim
Digitisation has brought with it increased opportunities for individuals, organisations, and loosely formed groups to produce and disseminate information. This new infrastructure has undermined traditional gatekeepers and led to a more plural landscape of information and opinions, creating a media landscape where quality control and accuracy of disseminated knowledge and facts has become increasingly difficult to maintain. At the same time, the potential power to control datafied flows in the platformed media environment of communication has become more centralised and opaque, raising questions about “networked propaganda” and data as a source of social and political power. In recent years, we have witnessed new forms of foreign interventions through social media in national elections, as well as the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories during times of military and civil crises, for instance, the Ukranian–Russian war and the Covid-19 pandemic. Legacy news media have increasingly come under attack from populist movements at the same time as authoritarian political forces are using digital media and datafied techniques to question key democratic institutitions in society. Global tech companies have not only become incredibly rich, but have also acquired unprecedented power to control communication networks and flows.
This twin process of fragmentation of communication infrastructures and centralisation of their control capacity coincides with the rise of new social political movements (on both sides of traditional left–right divides) and formation of new political divisions and identities.
A number of neologisms have thus entered into the vocabulary of research and public debate – such as “fake news”, ”misinformation”, “disinformation”, and “post-truth” – which has revived discussions on persuasion, strategic communication, strategic narratives, soft power, information management, and other concepts for what was once termed propaganda.
The current moment (conjuncture) calls for a collective and critical reflection by the community of communication scholars. This effort demands robust empirical evidence of the dynamics changing information environments and new methodological innovations for better analysis of data-driven communication, but also a reinvigorated conceptual debate.
At the same time – as the history of the field (communication research) is intimately intertwined with the social and political power of media and communication – this points to the need for reengaging with earlier theories of propaganda (for example, contributions by Harold Lasswell, Jaqcues Ellul, Edward Berneys, Hanna Arendt, and Noam Chomsky), paradigm encounters (in the field of communication research) around media power and effects, as well as theoretisations about earlier transformative moments.
How can we read contemporary discussions in the light of previous thinking about political, state, or commercial propaganda and related phenomena? What lessons can be learned from earlier theories, formed in different political and cultural conjunctures and media landscapes? How are new media technologies adopted for strategic purposes, and what does that mean for theorising communication? What new evidence is there of the “return” of propaganda in the digitalised, conflictual, and networked media landscape? What are most promising and innovative methods that could harness communication research with better tools to take part in these debates?
We invite scholars around the world to address these questions in scholarly reflections that can be descriptive, analytical, as well as normative, and can relate to topics including, but not limited to, the following:
Procedure
Those with an interest in contributing should write an extended abstract (max. 750 words) where the main theme (or argument) of the intended article is described. The abstract should contain the preliminary title and five keywords. How the article fits with the overall aim of the issue – to critically reflect on the dynamics changing information environments, propose innovative methodological approaches for analysing data-driven communication, and reinvigorate the conceptual debate around propaganda – should be mentioned.
Send your extended abstract to Göran Bolin (goran.bolin@sh.se) and Risto Kunelius (risto.kunelius@helsinki.fi) by 15 February 2022.
Scholars invited to submit a full manuscript (6,000–8,000 words) will be notified by e-mail after the extended abstracts have been assessed. All submissions should be original works and must not be under consideration by other publishers. All submissions are submitted to Similarity Check – a Crossref service utilising iThenticate text comparison software to detect text-recycling or self-plagiarism.
After the initial submission and review process, manuscripts that are accepted for publication must adhere to our guidelines upon final manuscript delivery. You may choose to use our templates to assist you in correctly formatting your manuscript.
Download a manuscript template (docx, 31 kB)
Read the full instructions for authors
About Nordic Journal of Media Studies
Nordic Journal of Media Studies is a peer-reviewed international publication dedicated to media research. The journal is a meeting place for Nordic, European, and global perspectives on media studies. It is is a thematic digital-only journal published once a year. The editors stress the importance of innovative and interdisciplinary research, and welcome contributions on both contemporary developments and historical topics.
About the publisher
Nordicom is a centre for Nordic media research at the University of Gothenburg, supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Nordicom publishes all works under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence, which allows for non-commercial, non-derivative types of reuse and sharing with proper attribution. All works are published Open Access and are available to read free of charge and without requirement for registration. Authors retain copyright.
Special issue of Media Practice and Education Journal (March 2023)
Deadline for 500-word Abstract Submissions: 15 March 2022
Guest editors: Patrícia Nogueira, Ana Carvalho and Joana Pestana
disrupting.surveillance[@]ismai.pt
We invite submissions for a special issue of The Journal of Media Practice and Education on the topic of Disrupting Surveillance
Deadline for Full Papers: 31 July 2022
Expected date of publication: March 2023
Surveillance in the 21st Century is characterized by ubiquitous data collection, storing and analysis, both visual and algorithmical, leading to a world of networked media and to diagnoses of surveillance and platform capitalism (Zuboff, 2019; Srnicek, 2017). In contemporary screen culture, namely with the omnipresence of surveillance devices, society has become a space of control (Pisters, 2012). Besides the ubiquitous surveillance, materialized by the proliferation of CCTV cameras scattered everywhere - in indoor and outdoor, public and private spaces - each one of us carries a personal camera, daily capturing everything around us, including ourselves and others, sharing our interests, the places where we go, the daily activities we do, the products we consume… actively contributing to a self-monitored society, or more precisely, to “societies of control” (Deleuze, 1992). Therefore, surveillance is not just an external act, it is a voluntary, embodied everyday practice, which increasingly becomes an integral part of everyday life. It presents new sorting and controlling practices that promote new forms of visibility and control, new modes of power, as well as unintended consequences and disadvantages. Whereas such a scenario seems unavoidable, scholars and artists have been raising numerous questions to critique and reimagine the social and political landscape of contemporary surveillance society, refusing to indulge “technological determinism” (Jordan, 2008; Smith & Marx, 1994). While some artists and practitioners appropriate and repurpose surveillance images and technologies to interrogate the realm, others question the surveillance status quo by proposing strategies of disruption and escape. The special issue therefore aims to provide a space for discussing strategies of subversion and alternatives concerning various forms of surveillance through technological means, relating to the crossover between artistic practices and technologies. The themed issue encourages bringing together a range of artistic, critical and scientific perspectives, affording visibility to recent artistic practices and research works, and exploring, broadly, the interdisciplinary frameworks for understanding contemporary surveillance and, particularly, how surveillance practices intersect with visual technologies, visual culture, and moving image studies. The issue aims to interrogate a manifold of perspectives, from the aestheticization of surveillance to networked images, by exploring their intersections and derivations. We propose to discuss the way in which contemporary visual arts are contributing to the creation of new approaches and perspectives to interrogate the societies of surveillance, re-imagining and proposing alternative futures.
As so, we are seeking contributions of full papers that explore the intersection of Surveillance, Arts, and Technology from various perspectives. We are particularly interested in papers focusing on the practice-based media-arts research and analysis, its communication and circulation that respond to one or more of the special issue strands.
Film and Moving Images — the use, re-use, manipulation, and re-contextualization of surveillance, sousveillance, and self-surveillance moving and still images in contemporary film, video art and art installations, namely:
To submit
Please send a 500-word abstract, and a 100-word bio per author to the guest editors at disrupting.surveillance@ismai.pt by 15 March 2022. Authors of accepted abstracts will be contacted in mid-April and invited to submit full contributions by 31 July 2022.
Style guide for authors
Issue Schedule
15 March 2022: 500-word proposals to be submitted (disrupting.surveillance@ismai.pt).
15 April 2022: Response from editors and, if successful, invitation to submit contribution.
31 July: Full Papers submission (5000 to 7000 words, incl. references).
August to November: Peer review period.
31 December: Submission of reviewed final papers.
March 2023: expected date of publication.
About the journal
Media Practice and Education is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality, original research. Please see the journal's Aims & Scope for information about its focus and peer-review policy. Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English. Taylor & Francis is committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review.
References:
Crawford, Kate (2021). Atlas of AI. Yale University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1992). “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, The MIT Press, vol.59. pp.3-7.
Jordan, Tim (2008). Hacking: Digital Media and Technological Determinism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Foucault, Michel (1991). Discipline and Punish - The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin.
Pisters, Patricia (2012). The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen. Stanford University Press.
Smith, Merritt Roe & Marx, Leo (1994). Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Srnicek, Nick (2017). Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, Malden: Polity.
Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs.
ECREA Executive Board is organizing regular meetings every two months to exchange ideas and approve reports by different sub-committees led by the members of the Executive Board.
During the last two meetings (a hybrid meeting held on November 18-19, 2021 in Prague, and an online meeting on 7 January) the members of the Bureau of the Executive Board have provided updates about the planning of the Aarhus 2022 conference; Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt gave feedback about the outcomes of the Doctoral Summer School of 2021 and organization of the Summer School of 2022; and approved the report presented by Christina Holtz-Bacha of the 18th wave in the ECREA book series.
In addition to the previous initiatives led by the members of the executive board (e.g. ethics committee), several new sub-committees were launched on topics that are at the heart of the values of ECREA. For example, Zlatan Krajina is leading the work of the equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) sub-committee and Andreas Schuck is responsible for leading the subcommittee on minimising the environmental impact. In order to promote collaboration and to develop common actions between ECREA and Latin American Communication Researchers Association (ALAIC), a sub-committee was formed, led by Patricia Nunez Gomez.
The next meeting of the Executive Board will take place in March 11.
Andra Siibak, General Secretary
Editors: Sandra Marinho, Pilar Sánches-García
This book explores the challenges of teaching journalism and communication in an ever-changing media environment. It considers the classroom as a space of “trial and error” and, therefore, of necessary innovation. It brings together professors and students from different universities across Europe to recount their teaching and learning experiences. The book also provides training proposals which offer an insight into the ongoing international debate on which teaching trends and practices can be effective in the digital environment. As such, the text will contribute to strengthening the university teaching of professional communicators based on technological innovation and critical thinking.
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