ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

The Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a “CARGC Postdoctoral Fellowship.” This is a one-year position renewable for a second year based on successful performance.

Description

The Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication produces and promotes scholarly research on global communication and public life. As an institute for advanced study dedicated to global media studies, we revisit enduring questions and engage pressing matters in geopolitics and communication. Our vision of “inclusive globalization” recognizes plurality and inequality in global media, politics, and culture. Our translocal approach fuses multidisciplinary “area studies” knowledge with theory and methodology in the humanities and social sciences. This synthesis of deep expertise and interdisciplinary inquiry stimulates critical conversations about entrenched and emerging communicative structures, practices, flows, and struggles. We explore new ways of understanding and explaining the world, including public scholarship, algorithmic culture, the arts, multi-modal scholarship, and digital archives. With a core commitment to the development of early career scholars worldwide, CARGC hosts postdoctoral, doctoral, undergraduate, and faculty fellows who collaborate in research groups, author CARGC Press publications, and organize talks, lectures, symposia, conferences, and summer institutes.

CARGC postdoctoral fellows work on their own research, typically a book manuscript, and collaborate with staff and postdoctoral, doctoral, and undergraduate fellows. They may design and teach one undergraduate course during their second year. They present a CARGC Colloquium and publish one CARGC Paper with CARGC Press. Fellows are provided a stipend of $55,000, a research fund of $3000, health insurance, a work space and a computer in the sixth floor premises — CARGC’s “World Headquarters”— on the Penn campus, and library access. In addition, CARGC will cover up to $1000 in domestic relocation expenses and up to $2000 if moving internationally. Fellows who are selected to teach during their tenure will be paid an additional stipend.

CARGC Fellows integrate primary sources and regional expertise in theoretically inflected, historically informed, comparative, translocal, and transnational analyses of media, technology, geopolitics, and culture. Candidates challenging normative paradigms and incorporating non-Western theories, sources and contexts, are especially welcome. Ongoing research groups focus on theory and history in global media studies, geopolitics and the popular, digital sovereignty, and radical media and culture. We recommend that applicants read the CARGC 5-year report to familiarize themselves with our mission and priorities https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=cargc_strategicdocuments. This year we are particularly interested in candidates whose work centers on the Global South.

This is a residential fellowship. CARGC strives to be an inclusive community of scholars driven by intellectual curiosity and exchange, and rooted in the life of the Annenberg School, the University of Pennsylvania, and the city of Philadelphia. To foster mentoring and collaboration at all levels, we expect fellows to be fully engaged in the life of the center. The final determination of the residency requirement for the 2022-2023 academic year will be made in the coming months based on university policy related to COVID-19.

Eligibility

We welcome applications from scholars with PhDs awarded by an institution other than the University of Pennsylvania between May 1, 2020 and August 1, 2022. The appointment typically starts on August 15.

Submitting Your Application

A complete application consists of:

1. Cover Page – Include your name and contact information, dissertation supervisor name and contact information, defense date (if degree not awarded), and 100-word abstract of your project.

2. Research Proposal (not to exceed 1000 words) – Include research questions, topic significance, theoretical framework, methodological design, clear description of primary sources and necessary language skills, and work plan with projected date of manuscript completion and publication.

3. Statement of institutional fit (not to exceed 250 words) – Explain how your project aligns with CARGC’s mission, fits with one or more CARGC research themes listed above, and contributes to the field of global media and communication studies. Please refer to our 5-year report for more information: https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=cargc_strategicdocuments.

4. CV (not to exceed two single-spaced pages, minimum font size 11) – List degrees, peer-reviewed publications, academic non-peer-reviewed publications, public scholarship, invited talks, conference papers, other relevant qualifications, specific research and language skills.

5. Project bibliography (not to exceed one single-spaced page, minimum font size 11) – Include primary and secondary sources.

6. Letters of recommendation – Three are required, including one from the dissertation supervisor, stating unequivocally expected date of Ph.D. defense (if degree not yet awarded).

7. Up to two publications (not to exceed 50 pages in total) – Published peer-reviewed articles preferred.

Timeline

All materials except reference letters must be sent as a single PDF document to cargc@asc.upenn.edu by February 1, 2022. Because of the volume of applications, we are unable to read drafts of submissions. Incomplete or late applications will not be considered. Applicants should arrange for their letters of recommendation to be sent to the same address by the same date. We expect to contact finalists for phone interviews by mid-March and make final decisions shortly thereafter.

Additional Information

If you have additional questions, please email us at cargc@asc.upenn.edu . Kindly do not contact CARGC staff individually.

The University of Pennsylvania is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, creed, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. For more information, go to http://www.upenn.edu/affirm-action/eoaa.html.

Soapbox Journal for Cultural Analysis

Deadline (EXTENDED): December 14, 2021

For the upcoming issue of Soapbox, a graduate peer-reviewed journal for cultural analysis, we invite young researchers and established scholars alike to submit academic essays or creative work that critically engages with the theme of interface. We are inviting extended proposals (500-1000 words) that follow the MLA formatting and referencing style to be submitted to submissions@soapboxjournal.net by December 14, 2021.

An interface is a space of contact and interconnection. Thinking within but also beyond a media studies framework, we can understand our lives to be constantly mediated by interfaces of one form or another. They can be understood to serve as an intermediary between individuals and cultural objects, or alternatively, between experience and infrastructure. Interfaces mediate between a body and its environment, the private and public, subject and object. In each instance, the interface enables interaction and activity.

Consider the movement from print to digital media, the structural design of spaces and buildings, or the format of an academic paper: as we move through the world we encounter and interact with a range of interfaces that delineate the possibilities of experience and knowledge in profound ways. As such, interfaces are cultural as well as political: they connect us to a matrix of histories and structures while their imbrication in power can afford and advance the needs of one group at the expense of another.

WITHIN AND BEYOND A DEFINITION​

Interface (noun/verb)​

in·​ter·​face | \ ˈin-tər-ˌfās \​

[Mediation]

In a highly mediated world, the most immediate image of an interface is as a programmed screen or device that facilitates a connection between a real-time user and a digital non-user. Media ecologist Marshall McLuhan describes the interface as a place of interaction between two systems (1967). In computing, a mediator pattern defines an object in such a way as to establish a behavioural directive for its interaction with other objects. In each case, the interface becomes a site of communication and interaction, but also the boundary that differentiates bodies, spaces, and phases.​

We invite you to think through and beyond the somatechnic view of the interface, allowing perspectives that explore the material, aesthetic, affective, and political dimensions of the interfaces that give shape to contemporary experience. ​

[Affect and Materiality]

Interfaces mediate the aesthetic experience of cultural objects. Turning our focus towards the materiality of the written page, a digitised book, the cinema screen, or a streaming service, can inflect our reading of their content and our responses in illuminating ways. Affective experiences and attachments, for example, are intimately tied up with the materiality of these interfaces. Historicising these entanglements, we can ask, how are affective attachments to interfaces disrupted by medial changes (Pressman)? And how and why do we form attachments to some interfaces and not others (Felski)?

[Infrastructure and il/literacies]

Interfaces connect us to infrastructures and systems: front desks, government websites, a border checkpoint. In these instances, the interface acts as a threshold, and questions of access, dependence, and trust arise. Who can become adept at interacting with interfaces and by what means? How does the connection between interface and infrastructure shape the routes we take, and the experiences we make? Relatedly, il/literacies with interfaces are central to the formation of political communities. The role of the book and the newspaper in the emergence of nationalism provides a historic example (Anderson). Contemporary interfaces are thus entangled with local, national and global (pre-)formations in complex ways.

[Sense and ecology]​

The touch of a palm on damp grass, the sounds of typing on a keyboard, the taste of something sweet at the tip of your tongue: what is the interface and what is becoming interfaced? These are questions that are at once ethical and political. Amanda Boetzkes draws attention to the inevitable aporia that exists between the elemental world and the representational frameworks that we bring to it. This symbolic world is also necessarily material in its implications, and thinking through the interface allows us to probe the kind of relationships that we have constructed towards the elemental. How to move away from an incorporative logic that constructs “nature” as mere “tap” (resources) and “sink” (waste) (Moore)? Artistic practices that create “receptive surfaces” provide one such example of an ethical turn towards the elemental that aims to acknowledge and uphold fundamental alterity (Boetzkes).

We encourage submissions relating to the themes above, as well as, but not limited to, the following:

• Engagements with cultural objects that critically explore the concept of the interface.
• Reflections on the interconnections between genre, narrative modes, and the aesthetic experience enabled by different interfaces.
• Platforms and streaming services: economic imperatives and aesthetic possibilities.
• Il/literacies, agency, and the politics of access.
• The interface as a verb: what does it mean to interface with space, others, the world, and beyond?
• Engagements with social interface theory and German media theory (Kittler et al.)
• Meaning-making and translatability: the interface as a vessel for signs.
• Epistemology and/of the interface: the interface as a hermeneutic tool.
• Interfaces and perception of self/identity formation.
• Biometrics and technology in border and domestic policing.
• Interfaces in contemporary work environments and labour practices.
• Interfaces in architecture, design, and AI.
• Knowledge production and interdisciplinarity.
• Devices, screen culture and history.
• Remediation.

We invite extended proposals (500-1000 words) that follow the MLA formatting and referencing style to be submitted to submissions@soapboxjournal.com by December 14 2021. Following conditional acceptance, an initial draft version (3000 words) would be due two weeks after the acceptance email. The editing process will take place over winter and early spring 2022. If you have any questions regarding your submission, do not hesitate to contact us. Editing and peer review guidelines will be sent to authors individually upon acceptance of their submission.

Guidelines for creative submissions are more flexible and can be finished works, but please keep in mind spatial limitations: there is usually room for one longer or two shorter pieces in the print version. A sense of the formatting possibilities can be garnered from previous issues (open-access pdf versions are available on our website).

We also accept submissions for our website all year round. We encourage a variety of styles and formats, including short-form essays (around 2000 words), reviews, experimental writing, and multimedia. These can engage with the theme of the upcoming issue but are not limited to it. Please get in touch to pitch new ideas or existing projects that you would like to have published by reading our submission guidelines and filling in the form.

Soapbox Journal website

Works Cited ​

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books, 1983.

Boetzkes, Amanda. The Ethics of Earth Art. University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Felski, Rita. Hooked: Art and Attachment. University of Chicago Press, 2020. ​

McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage. Bantam Books, 1967.

Moore, Jason. Capitalism in the Web of Life. Verso Books, 2015.

Pressman, Jessica. Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age. Columbia University Press. 2020.

Freie Universität Berlin

The Institute of Media- and Communication Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin has a vacancy for a research assistant with working hours set at 65% of a full-time position (pay group 13 TV-L FU) starting as soon as possible (planned 01.01.2022), subject to third-party-funding.

The position is part of a research project which analyzes diffusion dynamics of conspiracy theories in digital public spheres (Head: Dr. Annett Heft). The project explores how conspiracy theories spread across different actors and digital public spheres and which technical and communicative strategies are used to adapt conspiracy narratives to the respective communication environments. The project offers the opportunity to work on a methodologically innovative and socially relevant question and to contribute to a widely visible publication output and transfer into society. The research project is part of a larger thematic research network and is also closely linked to the work of the research group Digitalization and the Transnational Public Sphere based at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, Berlin.

Job description:

- Planning and implementation of empirical studies in the project in cooperation with the project lead/other project members;

- Data management and documentation, taking into account aspects of data protection law and research ethics;

- Supervision and guidance of student assistants in content analyses;

- International publication and conference activities;

- Participation in transfer activities to the broader public.

Requirements:

university degree (Magister, Diplom, Master), preferably in the field of media and communication science, computer/data science, political science, sociology or another social science.

Desirable:

- very good university degree

- very good knowledge of and interest in empirical communication research with a focus on researching digital political public spheres and analysing communication in digital media;

- Programming experience, preferably in R and/or Python, and routine application knowledge in the field of statistical data analysis;

- very good knowledge of and experience with standardised empirical methods of communication research, especially content analysis;

- Knowledge of data-intensive methods in the social sciences (computational social science), in particular knowledge of one or more of the following methods: network analysis, automated content analysis (topic modelling and similar);

- Experience in working with digital trace data (data collection via API and web scraping);

- Experience in assisting in the implementation of third-party funded research projects;

- Willingness to engage in interdisciplinary work;

- Team and communication skills;

- Ability to work independently;

- very good English skills

For further information, please contact Mrs. Dr. Annett Heft (annett.heft@fu-berlin.de ).

Weitere Informationen

Applications should be sent by e-mail, together with significant documents, indicating the reference code, in PDF format (preferably as one document) to Mrs. Dr. Annett Heft: antje.wolters@fu-berlin.de .

On the given occasion and for the duration of the essential on-site operations by Freie Universität Berlin, we kindly ask you to apply electronically by e-mail. The processing of a postal application cannot be guaranteed.

Freie Universität Berlin

Fachbereich Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

AS Kommunikationstheorie / Medienwirkungsforschung

Mrs. Dr. Annett Heft

Garystr. 55

14195 Berlin (Dahlem)

With an electronic application, you acknowledge that FU Berlin saves and processes your data. FU Berlin cannot guarantee the security of your personal data if you send your application over an unencrypted connection.

Conference Call for Panel proposals

Deadline: January 24, 2022

The ICA 2022 conference theme One World, One Network‽ invites reimagining communication scholarship on globalization and networks. The use of the interrobang glyph - a superposition of the exclamation and question punctuation marks – seeks to simultaneously celebrate and problematize the “one-ness” in the theme.

ECREA will host one panel at ICA 2022 and invites the submission of panel proposals that are focused on timely and innovative topics and are diverse in terms of methodologies, theoretical standpoints and/or nationalities of the presenters. We especially encourage panel proposals which include a European perspective and a comparative research focus. This call for panel proposals is open to ECREA members of all ECREA sections and to all topics.

Please note the following information:

Panel submissions. Panels provide a good forum for the discussion of new approaches, ongoing developments, innovative ideas, and debates in the field. If you plan to submit a panel, please submit the following details: (a) Panel theme or title, (b) a 75-word description of the panel for the conference program, (c) a 400-word rationale, providing justification for the panel and the participating panelists, (d) 300-word (max) abstract of each paper, (e) names of panel participants (usually 4-5 presenters, plus an optional designated respondent), and (f) name of panel chair/organizer. In terms of diversity, we expect a strong panel proposal to (a) include contributions of at least two different countries, (b) feature gender balance, and, ideally, (c) include not more than one contribution from a single faculty, department or school. Panel proposals need to be original and may not have been submitted to ICA before or at the same time. The format of the panel can be in person, virtual (live, not pre-recorded), or hybrid. Accepted panel presentations do not count towards the max. allowed individual paper presentations at the ICA conference.

Registering panelists. All panelists must be ECREA members by the time the conference takes place and agree in advance of submission to participate as panel presenters and to register for the ICA conference. ICA only provides a registration waiver for the panel convener, not for the other panelists.

How to submit?

• Email to: info@ecrea.eu
• Submission deadline is 24 January 2022, 23:59 CET
• In case of questions please contact: Andreas Schuck (a.r.t.schuck@uva.nl)

ECREA-ICA Conference Review Committee:

Andreas Schuck (U Amsterdam, chair)
Christina Holtz-Bacha (U Erlangen-Nürnberg, co-chair)

Irena Reifová (Charles U Prague, co-chair)

March 16, 2022

Lund University, Sweden, Department of Communication and Media

Deadline: December 14, 2021

Organisers: Annette Hill, Hario Satrio Priambodho and Cheryl Fung

Break up, break down, and break away: variations on media and the breaking down of infrastructures, technicalities, texts, contexts and social relations are the basis of this international symposium Media, Breakdown and Recovery. This event explores how we can understand media, culture and society as a site of collapse and repair, and as a place for theoretical and empirical analysis within media, communication and cultural studies.

Breakdown signifies wearing down, collapse, and catastrophe; this meaning of breakdown relates to media technologies and services, representations and themes in factual and fictional genres, or broader issues such as a crisis of democracy, and a thin trust between politicians, the media and publics. The COVID-19 crisis has brought into sharp relief media power and inequalities during the global pandemic. Breakdown also signifies taking apart something to analyse and understand how it works; this meaning of breaking down relates to deconstructing a text and its internal workings and contradictions, or forensically analysing media systems, political economics and power structures. Moments of media breakdown can reveal that which is otherwise hidden. And breakdown can be related to processes of fluidity and renewal, in the breaking down of barriers and divisions.

Originally slated for 2020 on the theme of breakdown, this international symposium returns in live and digital mixed mode to engage in dialogue on media, breakdown and recovery. We invite papers related to the following themes:

• Media and crises of democracy
• Media, COVID-19 and the global pandemic
• Media, civility and incivility
• Media misinformation, bias and fake news
• Media and failure of institutions, infrastructures, and professionals
• Media framing of catastrophe, crisis, and apocalypse
• Media and breaking down genres and narratives
• Media and cultural practices of collapse, repair and reconciliation
• Media, arts and creativity on breakdown, dissolution and resolution
• Media and cultural methods of deconstruction and reconstruction

The research questions include: 1. How can we critically examine media, breakdown and recovery across news, radio and television, film, arts and museums, digital and social media? 2. In what ways can we understand breakdown and repair in our analysis of media and culture? 3. What methods can we apply to the study of media breakdown and recovery? Different disciplinary approaches to research on the theme have developed in a variety of subject areas such as media, communication and cultural studies, political communication, sociology and anthropology, cultural geography, media history, film studies, art and creative practice, and memory studies. The symposium offers opportunities to seek overlaps and connections in pursuing our topic.

Confirmed speakers include Nico Carpentier (Charles University, Czech Republic), Simon Dawes (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France), Christine Geraghty (Glasgow University, UK), Joke Hermes (InHolland University, Netherlands), Annette Hill (Lund University, Sweden), and Peter Lunt (University of Leicester, UK).

Please submit an abstract of 300 words in English by December 14th 2021 to hario.priambodho@kom.lu.se. For further information please consult our website https://www.kom.lu.se/en/research/konferenser-och-natverkstraffar/media-and-breakdown/. There is a registration fee of 850 SEK (90 Euros) that covers food and drink for the day and an evening buffet.

Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), Bochum, Germany

Are you studying the social, political, economic, media-related or cultural effects of digitalization? Do you want to concentrate exclusively on a project and are interested in interdisciplinary exchange?

The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany, supports innovative projects that deal with the social opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation. Experts from academia and practice can apply for Fellowships and Working Groups.

The funding program is open to experts of all career stages, to all disciplines and areas of investigation, as well as to pure research and to projects that are more applied in orientation.

The funding program is continuous. Apply by 31 January 2022 for Fellowships starting from October 2022 and for Working Groups starting from January 2023.

For more information go to: www.cais.nrw/en/callforapplications/.

If you have any questions, please contact esther.laufer@cais.nrw.

University of Salzburg 

GZ A 0155/1-2021

The Department of Communication Studies, is seeking to fill a research and teaching position, in accordance with the Universities Act 2002 (UG) and the Austrian Employee Act (Angestelltengesetz) with a university assistant in accordance with § 26 of the Collective Agreement for Universities (Postdoc position). (Application group B1; the monthly salary for this position is € 3,945.90 gross (14 times per year)).

Starting date: 1 March 2022

Duration of employment: 5 years

Number of hours per week: 40

Responsibilities:

• conduct independent scientific research and teaching at the Division of Public Spheres and Inequalities,
• academic support in research and teaching, and support in research and teaching as well as participation in administrative tasks in the Public Spheres and Inequality division at the department with a focus on the research global communication and international asymmetries;
• independent teaching of 4 semester hours per week;
• experience with qualitative and/ or quantitative methods, possibility to work on habilitation (second book) is provided

Employment requirements:

• completed doctoral studies in communication science or a related field with a recognisable thematic focus
• scientific publications
• sound and differentiated knowledge of theories and methods in communication studies

Desired additional qualifications:

The application must be submitted in electronic form and, in addition to a letter of motivation, curriculum vitae and references, must include the following:

a) Presentation of achievements in science and research

b) Description of experience and activities in teaching (and, if applicable, in the supervision of young academics)

c) Concept for future plans in research and teaching and for the contribution to the internationalisation of the academic profile of the department

d) Considerations on knowledge transfer and science management as well as presentation of social and other competences

e) Good knowledge of German and a 3rd foreign language are advantageous

Desired personal qualities: independence and taking initiative, teamwork and cooperation, reliability, openness, critical skills

For further information please contact hanan.badr@plus.ac.at

How To Apply:

Please send your application, stating the reference number of the job advertisement GZ A 0155/1-2021, via e-mail to bewerbung@plus.ac.at

Application deadline is 22 December 2021

Full German job ad here: https://www.plus.ac.at/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/A-0155-Postdoc-KoWi.pdf

The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg aims to increase the proportion of women among academic and general university staff, especially in management positions, and therefore expressly invites applications from qualified women. In the case of equal qualifications, women will be given priority.

Persons with disabilities or chronic illnesses who meet the required qualification criteria are expressly encouraged to apply. Information is available at +43/662/8044-2462 and at disability@plus.ac.at.

Unfortunately, travel and accommodation expenses incurred during the admission procedure cannot be reimbursed.

Admissions are made in accordance with the provisions of the Universities Act 2002 (UG) and the Austrian Employee Act.

GZ A 0156/1-2021

The Department of Communication Studies is seeking to fill a research and teaching position in accordance with the Universities Act 2002 (UG) and the Austrian Employee Act (Angestelltengesetz) with a university assistant in accordance with § 26 of the Collective Agreement for Universities (PhD Position). (Application group B1; the minimum monthly salary for this position is € 2,228.60 gross (14 times per year) and may be increased on the basis of the provisions of the collective agreement by taking into account previous experience relevant to the job).

Starting date: 1 March 2022

Duration of employment: 4 years

Hours per week: 30, working hours determined by agreement

Responsibilities:

• academic support in research and teaching in the Public Spheres and Inequality division of the department as well as administrative tasks;
• independent research activities, including the writing and publication of a dissertation
• from the third year of employment onwards, independent teaching for two hours per week; cooperation in the department's research projects is expected

Employment requirements: completed diploma or master's degree in Communication Studies or a related subject with a recognisable thematic reference; commencement of the relevant doctoral studies at the University of Salzburg.

Desired additional qualifications: experience with qualitative and/or quantitative social science research methods; interest in interdisciplinary research; good knowledge of communication and media theories as well as critical theories, with a focus on media, (post)migration and participation; very good spoken and written language skills in English and German, knowledge of a 3rd foreign language is an advantage; experience in academic work is also an advantage as well as editorial experience, e.g., in content management systems or PR.

Desired personal skills: teamwork, cooperation, reliability, taking initiative, openness, critical skills

For further information write to hanan.badr@plus.ac.at

Please send your application, stating the reference number of the job advertisement GZ A 0156/1-2021, via e-mail to bewerbung@plus.ac.at

Application deadline is 22 December 2021

Full German job ad here: https://www.plus.ac.at/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/A-0156-Diss-KoWi.pdf

The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg aims to increase the proportion of women among academic and general university staff, especially in management positions, and therefore expressly invites applications from qualified women. In the case of equal qualifications, women will be given priority.

Persons with disabilities or chronic illnesses who meet the required qualification criteria are expressly encouraged to apply. Information is available at +43/662/8044-2462 and at disability@plus.ac.at.

Unfortunately, travel and accommodation expenses incurred during the admission procedure cannot be reimbursed.

Admissions are made in accordance with the provisions of the Universities Act 2002 (UG) and the Austrian Employee Act.

December 9

I am pleased to invite you to the next in the series of IPRA Thought Leadership webinars. The webinar Science based reputation management: insight, influence and persuasion will be presented by Ashwani Singla, founding managing partner at Astrum, India on Thursday 9 December 2021 at 12.00 GMT/UCT (unadjusted).

What is the webinar content?

The webinar will explore science-based reputation management considering aspects of insight, influence and persuasion. Drawing on examples from Asia we will consider the five aspects of reputation management which are:

• Discover and define the persuadables
• Discover and define the drivers of opinion
• Define and develop sources of influence and information
• Define and develop your Big Picture Story
• Deliver your communication by being holistic yet focused.
• The webinar will be followed by an interactive Q&A session.

How to join

Register here at Airmeet.

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 Ashwani Singla

Ashwani Singla is the founding managing partner of Astrum, India’s first specialist reputation management advisory that uses science to understand and shape public opinion. In his two decades of experience, he has been a trusted advisor and strategist for both c-suite executives and political leaders. He has advised Indian and multinational corporations across a range of sectors. He has been an election campaign strategist and pollster for national and regional political parties and has been involved in election campaigns for close to a decade, including the defining 2014 campaign of India’s BJP. Prior to founding Astrum, Ashwani was the CEO of Genesis Burson-Marsteller and Asia MD of Penn Schoen Berland. He is also the founder executive director of Impact Research & Measurement.

Contact

International Public Relations Association Secretariat

United Kingdom

secgen@ipra.orgTelephone +44 1634 818308

Special issue of Communication, Culture and Critique (Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2023)

Abstracts due December 15, 2021

Editors: Bo Ruberg (University of California, Irvine) and Whit Pow (New York University)

Contribution length: 6,000 to 7,000 words, inclusive of all notes and references

Trans studies and game studies—the academic study of video games, analog games, and play—have many productive points of resonance. Transgender people have long made and played games, despite the misconception that trans inclusion is a recent addition to the medium. Trans representation in games has had its own long-standing yet rocky history, while trans players themselves have for years used game spaces for their own radical purposes: exploring gender identity and alternate modes of embodiment in ludic and often digital spaces. Even in the face of transphobia, trans designers, programmers, artists, and fans have worked to trans games themselves: repurposing games and reimagining them in ways that resist and refuse the dominant cis-normativity of games culture. These are only some of the myriad ways that trans issues have come to intertwine with games.

The intersection of trans experience and games is not yet as codified an area of study as queer game studies, which allows for a great deal of potential and possibility as work on the intersection of trans lives and games continues to grow. We take this special issue as an opportunity to turn toward community imaginings of the past, present, and future of trans game studies. While an imagined trans game studies has much to draw from the established sub-field of queer game studies, trans game studies (like trans studies more broadly) must be understood as distinct from the study of queerness. Addressing trans experiences and trans lives in games may necessitate its own set of approaches, methodologies, theories, and archives. It may also raise its own array of rich new perspectives and productive contradictions between this widely influential media form and the realities of trans life.

This special issue of Communication, Culture & Critique calls for the envisioning of—and a critical self-reflection on—a trans game studies. We understand this issue to be exploratory in spirit, driven by an interest in speculative futures, reimagined histories, and alternate presents. What is trans game studies? What has it been, what is it now, and what would we like to see it become? We are particularly interested in contributions from authors who themselves identify as part of trans (game) communities—as well as those who are similarly invested in the importance of positioning trans life, and Black and Indigenous trans lives and trans lives of color, as inseparable from the study and the design of games and computational media.

With this special issue, we aim to explore the following questions:

- What is trans game design and/or what are trans games? How might trans perspectives shift the creation of games, their temporalities and spaces, or the politics of their labor and design?

- What is the place of trans people or trans issues in video game history? What might it mean to re-tell the history of games through trans perspectives or trans lives, or to use trans game studies to question existing modes of writing and thinking about history?

- What is the relationship between trans studies and game studies? What might it mean to trans the field of game studies or to bring a focus on games and play to the field of trans studies?

Building from these questions, potential article topics may include but are not limited to:

- Games (digital or analog) with trans representational content

- Games interpreted through trans lenses

- Trans game creators and/or design

- Trans lives in game history and/or trans approaches to game history

- Perspectives, experiences, and politics of Black and Indigenous trans people and trans people of color and games

- Trans embodiment in or through games

- Digital trans aesthetics in games

- Tensions between the representational and the deliberately non-representational and their relation to trans life and experience (e.g. the glitch, the pixelated, or the deliberately opaque)

- Trans issues in game culture

- Experiences of trans players

- Trans video game live streamers

- Trans game fandoms

- The place of trans topics within game studies and vice versa

- The relationship between trans game studies and queer game studies

Submission Instructions:

Please submit an abstract of approximately 500 words, not inclusive of references, to the special issue editors Bo Ruberg (bruberg@uci.edu) and Whit Pow (wpow@nyu.edu) by December 15, 2021.

No payment is required from authors.

Based on the relevance and strength of the proposed work, the special issue editors will choose a selection of the submitted abstracts and invite their authors to submit full drafts of their articles for peer review. Because all articles undergo a full anonymous peer review process, an invitation from the editors to submit does not guarantee acceptance in the issue. Notifications regarding abstract selection will be sent out by January 15, 2022. For those authors invited to submit, full articles will be due May 1, 2022. These will be submitted directly to Communication, Culture, and Critique via ScholarOne (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cccr)

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the co-editors, Bo Ruberg (bruberg@uci.edu) and Whit Pow (wpow@nyu.edu).

Special Issue Editors:

Bo Ruberg, Ph.D. (they/them) is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. They are the author of The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (Duke University Press, 2020) and Video Games Have Always Been Queer (New York University Press, 2019) as well as the co-editor of Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).

Whit Pow, Ph.D. (they/them) is an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Their work has been published in Feminist Media Histories, ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and The Velvet Light Trap.

MARIA BAKARDJIEVA; STINA BENGTSSON; GÖRAN BOLIN AND KJELL ENGELBREKT

Based on an extended empirical research project, this book advances the theoretical, normative and practical understanding of civil society under the conditions of digital mediatization and in relation to a set of particular historical and geopolitical circumstances.

Digital Media and the Dynamics of Civil Society adds to existing knowledge of the democratizing role of digital media in communication studies by carefully tracing the trajectory of the emergent communicative and representational practices of civil society in a pair of new European democracies – Estonia and Bulgaria – facing distinctive socio-cultural and political challenges. The book combines macro and micro perspectives to illuminate the activities of civic activist and civil society organizations in the new media environment taking into account the social and cultural developments characteristic of each country. Have digital media contributed to the constitution of a new public space fostering the vitality and democratic potency of civil society in countries where it has suffered historical obstacles?

The book addresses this question by traversing the whole range between personal, group and societal beliefs, lived experiences and actions unfolding in a concrete region at a time when civic activists around the world are grappling to understand and harness the powers of digital communication.

Purchase here: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786616401/Digital-Media-and-the-Dynamics-of-Civil-Society-Retooling-Citizenship-in-New-EU-Democracies