ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

January 13, 2022

I am pleased to invite you to the next in the series of IPRA Thought Leadership webinars. The webinar EU opportunities: tapping into EU funds for your PR project will be presented by Jacqueline Purcell in conversation with Angele Giuliano on Thursday 13 January 2022 at 12.00 GMT/UCT (unadjusted).

What is the webinar content?

The webinar will adopt an interview format with Jacqueline Purcell drawing out information from EU specialist Angele Giuliano. We will learn about the approaches needed to qualify for EU funds, the multi-country approach required, as well as learning from successful case studies for EU funded grants and tenders. Many EU funded PR projects are relevant to countries outside of EU member states.

How to join

Register here at Airmeet. (The time shown should adjust to your device’s time zone.)

A reminder will be sent 1 hour before the event.

Background to IPRA

IPRA, the International Public Relations Association, was established in 1955, and is the leading global network for PR professionals in their personal capacity. IPRA aims to advance trusted communication and the ethical practice of public relations. We do this through networking, our code of conduct and intellectual leadership of the profession. IPRA is the organiser of public relations' annual global competition, the Golden World Awards for Excellence (GWA). IPRA's services enable PR professionals to collaborate and be recognised. Members create content via our Thought Leadership essays, social media and our consultative status with the United Nations. GWA winners demonstrate PR excellence. IPRA welcomes all those who share our aims and who wish to be part of the IPRA worldwide fellowship. For more see www.ipra.org

Background to Angele Giuliano

Angele Giuliano is CEO and managing director of AcrossLimits, a company that empowers pre-qualified public and private organisations to engage with the EU. Her expertise is on making the best use of European opportunities for business growth. She was appointed a member of the advisory board of the EU Horizon2020 programme and is also an Innovation Champion of the European Innovation Council.

Background to Jacqueline Purcell

Jacqueline Purcell serves on the IPRA board, is the UK and Ireland chapter chair and an IPRA GWA judge. A published author, she is a fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy, and an accredited international business consultant and trainer. Purcell is CEO and co-founder of Jasper Alliance London, a company that positions organisations to maximise international opportunities and funding of worthy projects.

Contact

International Public Relations Association Secretariat

United Kingdom

secgen@ipra.orgTelephone +44 1634 818308

Deadline: January 31, 2022

Ethan and Joel Coen’s The Big Lebowski (1998) is lauded as the first cult film of the internet age, due in no small part to the role played by online communities in its gradual rise to popularity. It sees a travelling festival dedicated to it, The Lebowski Fest, celebrated annually across various cities in the USA and the UK since 2002 and 2008 respectively. Over years, the film’s protagonist has garnered such adoration that it led to the formation of a contemporary religion, Dudeism, in 2005, with a community of more than 600,000 members worldwide ordained through its simple online procedure. After being trashed initially, the film has gone on to garner critical acclaim and was even added to the USA's Library of Congress’ National Treasury in 2014. It has also drawn a fair share of scholarly attention with time in critical anthologies such as The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies (2009), The Big Lebowski and Philosophy: Keeping Your Mind Limber with Abiding Wisdom (2012), and Fan Phenomena: The Big Lebowski (2014). However, these represent only a fraction of the vast body of literature on the film, with numerous (aca)fan books, fan theories, and online forums passionately dissecting it as well. The film seems to have sustained its cultural relevance over the years — as evidenced by a Super Bowl commercial featuring its protagonist as well as popular films like Avengers: Endgame referencing it, in 2019, and a spinoff titled The Jesus Rolls releasing in 2020. As recently as August 2021, a reddit user posited that the underlying message of The Big Lebowski is more relevant now than it has ever been.

As the 25th anniversary of its release draws closer, we look to revisit The Big Lebowski to facilitate and foster further scholarly dialogue on this film which seems well on its way to becoming a cultural artefact. For this, we seek original contributions of qualitative research that offer fresh perspectives on The Big Lebowski from a myriad of vantage points and analytical frameworks. Prospective strands of discussion include but are not limited to:

• Film theory and The Big Lebowski
• The filmography of the Coen brothers
• The Big Lebowski’s b(l)ending of conventional genre norms
• Cyberculture and The Big Lebowski
• Fan(dom) studies and The Big Lebowski
• The Lebowski lexicon
• Philosophical readings of The Big Lebowski
• Comparative studies of The Big Lebowski
• The Big Lebowski in and as adaptation
• Gender in The Big Lebowski
• Queer aesthetics in The Big Lebowski
• Reading The Big Lebowski through critical race theory
• The Big Lebowski beyond the anglophone world

We welcome interested contributors to submit Abstracts of around 250 words along with a bio- note of no more than 150 words as a single MS Word (.doc or .docx) file to cinej25yearsoflebowski@gmail.com by 31 January 2022. Authors of selected Abstracts will be invited to contribute full papers for a Special Section/Issue of the CINEJ Cinema Journal to be published around the 25th anniversary of The Big Lebowski’s release.

Key Dates:

• Abstract (250 words) Deadline: 31 January 2022
• Intimation of Selection: 1 March 2022
• Full paper (5,000-7,000 words) Deadline: 1 July 2022
• Publication: Early 2023

GUEST EDITORS:

• Elloit Cardozo, independent scholar, Mumbai, India
• Dr. Sachin Labade, Associate Professor of English, University of Mumbai, India

Vista

Deadline: April 30, 2022

Thematic editors: José Capela (School of Architecture, Art and Design/Lab2PT, University of Minho, Portugal) & Ana Cristina Pereira (CES, University of Coimbra)

The communication mechanisms have been a central theme of the so-called “conceptual art”. Within the broad theme of communication — and despite the porosity of artistic categories characterising this kind of art — the specific theme of visual representation assumed particular importance for artists. Millennia of pictorial figuration of reality, and decades of photography, were thus placed under scrutiny that, despite fitting into the work of art and not renouncing its artistic condition, is often close to the mission of art theory or of semiotics. Art was, accordingly, set to serve the consideration of the phenomena — namely those of communication — that underlie it. For that reason, it may be said to be a self-reflexive art: art about art.

In this new issue of Vista, we propose to focus on the entity linguistics has called “referent” and on the possibility of its resurgence beyond its mere representation — a territory that extends from the impossibility of absolute fidelity to the model (is it in the lack of fidelity that art may reside?) to the characterisations aiming at manipulating, distorting and abusing.

Much importance has been given to the most diverse form of art works’ receiver as a producer of meanings for those works. Importance is given to this phenomenon that lies downstream of the work and ultimately determines what it is to our eyes. The aim here is to highlight what lies upstream: the entity that precedes the representation and whose presence that representation intends to replace, in this case, in the specific context of the visual arts and images. This perspective may include themes such as:

• the representation of visual configuration mechanisms within artistic practices;
• the condition of the referent (absent or present) in the context of visual representation;
• the rights of the referent and iconographic ethics: between self-representation and appropriation;
• the possibility of inserting the readymade in a work/image;
• animism in visual representation;
• memory, trauma and the possibility of emancipation of the referent.

IMPORTANT DATES

Full article submission deadline: April 30, 2022

Journal publication date: continuous edition (January to June 2022)

LANGUAGE

Articles can be submitted in English or Portuguese. After the peer review process, the authors of the selected articles should ensure translation of the respective article, and the editors shall have the final decision on publication of the article.

EDITING AND SUBMISSION

Vista is an open access academic journal following demanding peer-review standards, based on a double-blind review process. After submission, the papers will be forwarded to two reviewers, previously invited to evaluate them according to their academic quality, originality and relevance to the journal’s objectives and scope.

Originals must be submitted through the journal’s website. If you are accessing Vista for the first time, you must register before submitting your article (instructions for registration here).

The guidelines for authors are available here.

For further information, please contact: vista@ics.uminho.pt

No payment from the authors will be required.

Roel Puijk

Bristol: Intellect

Slow TV, developed by Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK, is broadcasting in which the event on television lasts as long as in real time, and has been adopted by others including BBC Four and Netflix. This unique study discusses concepts of slowness, innovation, genre, media event, reception, local and national identity. 56 col. illus.

Slow TV has become a familiar feature of broadcasting in Norway. It refers to a set of programmes produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) since 2009, starting out with a seven-hour broadcasting of the train ride between Bergen and Oslo.

The concept of slow TV and ‘minute-by-minute’ broadcasting was developed so that the event on television lasts as long as in real time. Several broadcasters outside Norway, including BBC Four, YLE, SRF and Netflix, have now taken up the concept of slow TV.

The first study of this genre, this highly original book explores three different aspects of the phenomenon of slow TV: the perspective of the broadcaster, the perspective of the producers and other actors involved in the production of the programme, and that of the audience.

It goes beyond the question of genre and considers how slow TV fits into television scheduling and how the audience appeal can be understood within broader concepts such as media events, media tourism, reception and national identity. Public service broadcasters can be seen as having more opportunity to experiment, and slow TV can be seen as a good example of public service programming. What attracts viewers to the programmes is that they invite a contemplative mode of watching: there is a chance to see something unexpected, or to be introduced to interesting new things.

Illustrated throughout in full colour, using stills from broadcast programmes.

This book will appeal primarily to an academic readership, both researchers and students. Most readers are likely to be involved with media and communication studies, cultural studies and film studies. It will also be of interest more generally to the humanities and social sciences fields as it touches on topics such as national and local identity, popular culture, Nordic lifestyle, well-being, tradition, community and popular culture.

Edited by: Nelson Ribeiro and Christian Schwarzenegger

Part of the Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research.

Available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-84989-4

“This is an outstanding book which will be of interest to media historians and communications scholars around the world. It reveals how fear is incubated, spread and, sometimes, countered through the media in ways that are profoundly illuminating and relevant in the era of Covid.”

—James Curran, Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London

“This outstanding volume traces the impact of fear, uncertainty – and sometimes related – hope, historically, from World War I to the present and the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, media reporting is deconstructed in much systematic detail which allows understanding continuities and discontinuities of its complex role, locally, glocally, and globally. A must read for scholars and laypeople alike!”

—Ruth Wodak, Emeritus Distinguished Professor, Lancaster University

“Media and the Dissemination of Fear explores its workings across natural disasters, wars, conflicts and health crises over the past 100 years. Although circumstances may have changed, the exploitation of fear as a means of social control and intimidation has not, and this book speaks to the myriad ways in which its damaging currents destabilize individuals and communities, force widespread compliance and entrench enmity and otherness, particularly in association with populist regimes. A thoughtful, important volume that wrestles mightily with the centrality of fear in contemporary life writ large.”

—Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Media and Fear—Diachronic, Intermedia, and Transcultural Perspectives on a Toxic and Functional Relationship during Pandemics, Wars, and Political Crises

• Nelson Ribeiro, Christian Schwarzenegger

From Black Death to COVID-19: The Mediated Dissemination of Fear in Pandemic Times

• Anna Wagner, Doreen Reifegerste

Hebrew Popular Press, Catastrophe Stories, and the Instigation of Fear in Ottoman Palestine

• Ouzi Elyada

Fear-Relations: Word War I, Military Authorities, and the International Feminist Peace Movement

• Susanne Kinnebrock

Voices for a World In-Between? Exile Media as Transnational Fulcrums Between Confidence and Fear

• Christian Schwarzenegger, Gabriele Falböck

Terror, Fear, Disbelief, and Complacency in the Face of Evil: The Reactions of the Hebrew Press in Palestine to the First News on the Extermination of the European Jewry by the Nazis in 1942

• Gideon Kouts

The News Media and the Ever-Present Fear in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

• Thomas Birkner, Aysha Agbarya, Oren Meyers, Rachel Somerstein

Fear of the Spanish Red Danger: Anti-Communist Agitation and Mobilisation in Portugal during the Spanish Civil War

• Alberto Pena-Rodríguez

Nazi Broadcasts to a Neutral Country: Disseminating Fear in Portugal during the Second World War

• Nelson Ribeiro

Fear of Communism in the Twentieth-Century United States and the Vietnam War

• Paul Haridakis

“Beware of Terrorists, Spies and Chaos!”: Stabilization Techniques from the Arab Uprisings

• Hanan Badr

Educate Online Through Online Fear: Exploring the Chinese Rumours Online Phenomenon

• Gianluigi Negro

Media Logic, Terrorism, and the Politics of Fear

• David L. Altheide

ECREA Film Studies section conference

June 2-3, 2022

Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: March 11, 2022

Keynote Speakers: Erica Carter &Alexandra D’Onofrio

Although the Covid-19 pandemic has, among many other things, drastically changed global human mobility, migration remains a key phenomenon for the understanding of contemporary society. Sounds and moving images of migrants fill the small and large screens around us, with an urgency that has evident political, economic and social implications. The phenomenon of migration is also, of course, historical, which makes the archive an important actor in the current relationship between migration and cinema.

How can we make sense of the footage currently shot and screened, preserved and archived, lost and found, of past and current migration, and what consequences does this have for the understanding of film and moving image archives in the twenty-first century?

This conference brings together scholars and film practitioners working at the intersections between film, migration and the archive, to ask what can be learnt from the opening of private, regional, or national public archives, and from the creation of new image databases on migration, as well as the mobility of moving images themselves. The conference will include a visit to the film archive of Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema.

Discussion topics include, but are not limited to:

• Case studies of film archives or collections related to migration
• The role of the archive as history depository, tool or writing device, in relation to the topic of migration
• Newly created archives and the connection between migration and the digital humanities
• Ethical concerns about the use of migrant images in found footage films
• Methodological questions about the structuring of archives integrating films about human mobility, including matters of cataloguing, digitization and access
• Screening practices of archival films about migration
• New visual representations of migration, including self-representation
• Emerging migrant filmmakers, producers and storytellers
• Participatory cinema and migration

Please submit an abstract (max 300 words) along with key references, institutional affiliation and a short bio (max 150 words); or a panel proposal, including a panel presentation (max 300 words) along with a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 4 individual abstracts.

Submission deadline: 11 March 2022

Proposal acceptance notification: 8 April 2022

Please send your abstract/panel proposals to the conference email address: filmstudiesecrea@gmail.com

ECREA membership is not required to participate in the conference. The conference fee will not exceed 50 EUR and will include coffee breaks, lunches, receptions and the visit to the Cinemateca Portuguesa archive.

Conference organisation

The conference takes place in Lisbon and is hosted by the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon. The conference is organised by the ECREA Film Studies Section in co-operation with ICS-ULisboa, the Research Project “Cartografías del Cine de Movilidad en el Hispánico Atlántico” (CSO2017-85290-P) at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the University of Antwerp.

Conference organisers: Mariana Liz (University of Lisbon), Miguel Fernández Labayen (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Gertjan Willems (University of Antwerp/Ghent University) and Pedro Figueiredo Neto (University of Lisbon).

University of Salzburg

The University of Salzburg (Dept. of Communication Studies) is inviting applications from qualified candidates for a faculty position at the level of PhD student [Dissertant/in]. The department looks for candidates who could contribute to the ongoing research project Euromedia Ownership Monitor (EurOMo), which deals with media ownership transparency in Europe and is funded by the European Commission. The dissertation should preferably address the same topic, but also closely related areas such as media and internet policy/governance, media economics and structure, political communication, critical political economy of media and communication, media systems in Austria and Europe.

Additional information:

Start of employment: 1st March, 2022

Duration of employment: 4 years

Weekly hours: 30 (20 for faculty projects and teaching, as assigned by the head of the unit)

Job description: scientific support of research, teaching (from year 3) and administrative tasks; own research/PhD dissertation, cooperation with research proposals (conceptualisation, writing, and submission), support of planning and conducting conferences.

Supervision by Prof. Josef Trappel

Requirements:

• Diploma or Master in communication studies or related social sciences
• Fluency in English
• Willingness to learn German within 2 years (fluency by the time of application is an asset)

Desired qualifications:

• Previous experience in researching issues of media policy and economics
• Knowledge of the relevant literature
• Knowledge of the methods of communication science
• Publications of scientific papers on these topics

Remuneration: € 2.228,60 (gross, 14× year)

Submission by email – including CV, letter of motivations and relevant documents – to bewerbung@plus.ac.at with reference to GZ A 0133/1-2021, on or before 22 December 2021.

For information, please email Sergio Sparviero, at sergio.sparviero@plus.ac.at

Official announcement: https://kowi.uni-salzburg.at/stellenausschreibungen-2-2/#1639405098248-ebb67644-dc5c

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.