ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Special Issue of Critical Studies in Television 2022

Deadline: October 1, 2020

International coproduction, which Michelle Hilmes (2014:10) defines as “a partnership between two or more different national production entities” located in different countries, is exerting a notable influence on the creation of new high-end TV dramas produced outside the US. As ‘peak TV’ continues to expand the annual volume of US-produced TV fiction to unprecedented levels (Koblin 2020), continuing audience demand for distinctive original drama is fuelling new opportunities for high-end drama production in a larger range of countries.

The important consequence has been an increased cultural and/or linguistic diversity for high-end dramas produced for international distribution. Attended by a new emphasis on serial form and storytelling, this development and diversity is exemplified by /Babylon Berlin/ (ARD/Sky Deutschland/Netflix), /Anne With An E/ (CBC/Netflix), /My Brilliant Friend/ (Rai/HBO), /World On Fire/ (BBC/PBS), /Bad Banks/ (ZDF/Arte) and Finnish/Spanish example /Paratiisi/The Paradise/ (YLE), among others. These dramas make visible and treat as a matter-of-fact the cultural diversity and encounter that Janet McCabe (2017) indicates were previously treated as disruptive to the imagination of the national community that broadcasters sought to represent.

While regional funding schemes and content regulations are making their own contributions, the expansion and cultural diversification of non-US high-end drama can also be attributed to the institutional capacities of ‘multiplatform’ television (Dunleavy 2018). As a label that recognises the internet as a pervasive platform for television, this ‘multiplatform’ era is one in which broadcast, cable/satellite and internet-only TV networks are collaborating as well as competing and the earlier distinctions it was possible to make between internet-distributed and so-called ‘legacy’ TV services are beginning to recede.

Although international coproduction has always been an option for high-end drama (television’s most expensive form), it is moving to the forefront of TV drama’s international industry in the context of three main institutional and industrial conditions. The first is much higher production budgets and costs for the kinds of dramas that aim to succeed on an international stage. Second, the accelerated international circulation of new shows that internet distribution enables has increased the profit margins and extended the ‘afterlife’ of successful dramas (see Lotz 2019). Third is the commercial necessity for leading transnational networks (indicatively the premium players Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO and Disney+) to involve themselves in coproduction. In recognition that the offer of distinctive, original high-end drama is pivotal to the allure of premium TV services, US-based premium networks are coproducing with non-US broadcasters and/or non-US drama producers as a means to engage more directly with their national industries and audiences, to comply with content regulations operating in non-US markets, and to increase their subscribers in non-US territories.

By featuring an indicative selection of recent or current high-end TV drama examples, this special issue aims to explain and explore the increased cultural diversity of high-end dramas produced in non-US territories. It aims to demonstrate the importance of current coproduction strategies in facilitating their cultural distinctions, high-end ambition and appeals to an international audience. We invite abstracts for the themed issue that analyse these dramas from institutional, creative media industries and/or representational perspectives. Articles will be approximately 6-7000 words and engage with some of the questions below:

* How are international coproduction relationships changing the industrial, creative, representational, and/or linguistic parameters for non-US TV drama?

* How and why have these dramas deployed international coproduction?

* Public broadcasters continue to use international coproduction to help them finance unusually ambitious and expensive dramas. But how are their drama coproduction strategies and partnerships changing in the multiplatform era?

* How do dramas arising from creative and/or financial collaboration between non-US producers and transnational networks pursue and negotiate cultural specificity?

* Are today’s internationally coproduced dramas – even as their network investors anticipate wider international reach for them than was possible in past TV eras – extending the cultural specificity (or ‘localism’) of non-US high-end drama?

* How is the imagination of cultural specificity impacted by the co-production process?

Please send your abstract of no more than 750 words to Trisha Dunleavy (trisha.dunleavy@vuw.ac.nz ) and Elke Weissmann (weissmae@edgehill.ac.uk ) by 1 October 2020. The special issue of /Critical Studies in Television/ is scheduled to be published in 2022.

The special issue is part of the outcomes of a Victoria University of Wellington and British Academy-funded project on /Transnational Television in the Multiplatform Age/ for which the editors are principal investigators.

June 28-30, 2021

University of Hertfordshire/virtual

Deadline: December 1, 2020

Delegates can present virtually. The keynote will be held in London.

Conference presentations will take place at the University of Hertfordshire campus in Hatfield on the outskirts of London.

https://architecturemps.com/london-hatfield/

Disciplines: AI, Data and technology, Media and communications, art, design and film, architecture and urban design, sociology and politics

Formats: in-person, pre-recorded films, Zoom, written papers

Today, the city is a technological infused entity premised on a plethora of digital phenomena including the Internet of Things, ubiquitous computing, computer-led infrastructure, big data and AI. It is also a place designed, envisaged and increasingly built through data based digital architecture, planning and construction. Both scenarios mediate how we design and experience of the city. The result is a series of complex interactions of people, place and data and the establishment of the ‘digital city’, ‘smart buildings’ and ‘intelligent’ urbanism.

This new polemic agency of the machine informs the creative industries. A plethora of films in recent decades have built on the imaginary it offers while, in the arts, data is increasingly used as both a tool and motive for artworks. However, there are concerns. GIS, Google Maps and Facebook all offer interconnected information on urban life. They are also conduits for the collation of personal data and its misuse.

Sociologists highlight the dangers of the digital dependency of future generations. 3D printed buildings threaten job losses in the construction industry. The idea of parametric urbanism is anathema to many for whom city is a place of interpersonal interaction. This conference seeks to explore these and related issues from a variety of discipline perspectives.

PUBLICATIONS:

This event is part of the research programme, ‘The Mediated City’. Previous events have been held by universities in London, Los Angeles, Bristol, Istanbul and Canterbury. Each conference leads to a book as part of the associated Intellect Book series ‘Mediated Cities’. In addition, delegates submitting papers related to teaching and learning will be considered for Routledge book series: ‘Focus on Design Pedagogy’.

To participate, submit an abstract: https://architecturemps.com/london-hatfield/

Organisers: University of Hertfordshire, UK and Intellect Books, with Routledge, AMPS and PARADE.

New collaborative space: COVID-19 from the margins

Data are at the core of the narration of the pandemic. Numbers affect our ability to care, share empathy, and donate to relief efforts and emergency services. Numbers are the condition of existence of the problem, and of a country or given social reality on the global map of concerns. Yet most countries from the so-called Global South are virtually absent from this number-based narration of the pandemic, and so are many invisible populations like migrants. Why, and with what consequences? To answer this and many other pressing questions, we have launched a new collaborative space: COVID-19 from the margins.

The multilingual blog COVID-19 from the margins [0] invites contributions reflecting on the first pandemic of the datafied society as it intersects situations of marginality, inequality, alterity, poverty but also resistance and subversion. Thanks to the support of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (University of Amsterdam), we are currently able to ***offer a small compensation to authors of accepted blog posts*** who are in precarious job conditions, are students or unemployed, and/or from the Global South. Requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. To contribute visit [1] for English and [2] for Spanish. Any other language accepted!

So far the blog features articles on the widening data divide in the global South, the perils of biometric social welfare during lockdowns, invisibilized populations (e.g. migrants) in the European continent, the privacy hurdles of newly adopted contact tracing app in India. More are on the way. This blog is part of the Big Data from the South Research Initiative [3]. It is funded by the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University and the European Research Council (through the DATACTIVE project).

Best & stay safe... And help us to spread the word!

The editorial crew--Emiliano Treré (Cardiff University), Silvia Masiero (Loughborough University) & Stefania Milan (University of Amsterdam)

[0] https://data-activism.net/blog-covid-19-from-the-margins/

[1] https://data-activism.net/2020/05/how-to-contribute-to-covid-19-from-the-margins/

[2] https://data-activism.net/2020/05/como-colaborar-en-covid-19-from-the-margins/

[3] https://data-activism.net/publications/big-data-from-the-south/

Deadline: 30th June 2020 at noon (Beijing Standard Time)

The School of International Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) invites applications for our Visiting Scholars programme. This position includes visa, transportation, accommodation, and a research stipend. The Visiting Scholar residency is 2-3 months in duration (exact date range chosen by the Scholar), and there are two positions: the first will be held during Semester 1 (Oct. 1, 2020 – Jan. 15, 2021), and the second will be held Semester 2 (March 1, 2021 – June 30, 2021).

The aim of this award is to foster research collaboration with members of staff in the School. During the residency, the scholar will undertake their research and collaborate with one or more members of IC staff on a research project (proposed by the Visiting Scholar) that will result in a publication and/or a grant application. They will also deliver one lecture for our School’s UG and PG students and will give one presentation to the wider University on their research as part of our Invited Speakers programme. There are no further teaching or administrative responsibilities.

The award is competitive, and will be based on the proposed research proposal and the applicant’s CV. Applicants should have already been awarded their PhD degrees and have expertise relevant to IC, which includes media and communication studies, cultural studies, film and television studies, game studies, etc. (see: https://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/internationalcommunications/know-our-people/know-our-people.aspx).

For further details and application instructions, please see the website: https://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/internationalcommunications/call-for-visiting-scholars.aspx

Edited by: Julio Juárez-Gámiz, Christina Holtz-Bacha, Alan Schroeder

This Handbook is the first major work to comprehensively map state-of-the-art scholarship on electoral debates in comparative perspective. Leading scholars and practitioners from around the world introduce a core theoretical and conceptual framework to understand this phenomenon and point to promising directions for new research on the evolution of electoral debates and the practical considerations that different country-level experiences can offer.

Three indicators to help analyze electoral debates inform this Handbook: the level of experience of each country in the realization of electoral debates; geopolitical characteristics linked to political influence; and democratic stability and electoral competitiveness. Chapters with examples from the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania add richness to the volume. Each chapter:

• Traces local historical, constitutive relationships between traditional forms of electoral debates and contexts of their emergence;
• Compares and critiques different perspectives regarding the function of debates on democracy;
• Probes, discusses and evaluates recent and emergent theoretical resources related to campaign debates in light of a particular local experience;
• Explores and assesses new or neglected local approaches to electoral debates in a changing media landscape where television is no longer the dominant form of political communication;
• Provides a prospective analysis regarding the future challengers for electoral debates.
• The Routledge International Handbook on Electoral Debates will set the agenda for scholarship on the political communication for years to come.

Purchase here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429331824

September 15-16, 2020 (online)

Deadline: June 19

How can journalism serve its publics when mediated political discourse appears dominated by fact-averse bombast and bluster? How can political and governmental communication mark out, conserve and develop an impartial information terrain as a civic tool in democracy? What are current notions of responsible journalism and ethical communication, and how does theory mirror practice? What particular issues present in conflict-affected, divided societies, and with what implications?

Scholars of Journalism, Political and Governmental Communication meet in this innovative conference, to consider leading-edge developments in both their respective fields, with opportunities for dialogue between them to foster mutual insight and collaboration. Selected papers from the conference will be gathered and presented for publication as an edited collection to a major international academic publisher.

It is expected that topics will include (but by no means be limited to):

• Roles of news in conflict including Peace Journalism.
• (Lack of) trust in news and public communication.
• ‘Fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ environments, and their implications for journalism and communication.
• New innovative forms of journalism and communication including public and community journalism.
• Ways to evaluate impact by journalist training and education.

Email expressions of interest to : Jake.Lynch@sydney.edu.au

Booking information

Information on how to register for the conference will be made available shortly.

Abstract Submission Deadline: 19th June 2020

Find more details at the conference page here: https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/about-us/research-events/2020/responsible-journalism/

Submit an abstract to jake.lynch@sydney.edu.au by June 19th 2020

Later, selected presenters will be invited to contribute to an edited collection to be offered to Routledge for publication in their Research in Journalism series.

For any questions, please contact Prof Jake Lynch at: jake.lynch@sydney.edu.au

Edited volume

Deadline: May 29, 2020

Women make up half of all gamers and female participation in gaming increases with age. Yet the role of women in historical or archaeological video games has been significantly understudied. The proposed volume will address this gap in the field and provide a more comprehensive and more nuanced treatment of women in historical and archaeological video games than has so far been available.

Abstracts for proposed submissions are invited on topics such as:

• How are women portrayed in historical and/or archaeological video games?
• Why are they portrayed in these ways?
• Are these portrayals authentic and/or accurate? Does this authenticity/accuracy matter?
• What do female characters allow a video game to do that male ones don’t?
• What types of stories do historical or archaeological video games tell using their female characters?

Abstracts and any questions should be sent to Dr Jane Draycott by Friday 29th May 2020 . For more detail on the volume’s aims and principles, and for a full timeline for submissions see below.

Call for Papers:

Edited by Jane Draycott and Kate Cook

In 2018, Creative Assembly’s Total War: Rome II was updated to include playable female characters, and this update triggered a huge backlash and wave of review-bombing. Some players objected to the update on the grounds of historical inaccuracy, an objection that Creative Assembly.

When challenged about what a certain section of the gaming community perceived to be ‘historical inaccuracy’, the company argued that the game was intended to be historically authentic, not historically accurate, and that, in any case, female generals would only spawn under certain very specific circumstances. Yet, as a number of ancient historians pointed out on social media, and a number of games journalists picked up and included in their coverage of the fracas, this in itself was historically inaccurate because there are numerous examples from ancient Graeco-Roman history of female involvement in martial activity, ranging all the way from the individual combatant to the general and/or admiral, examples which are not confined to mythology (e.g. the Amazons, the goddess Athena/Minerva etc.).

Women make up half of all gamers and female participation in gaming increases with age. With the notable exception of Christian Rollinger’s recently published Classical Antiquity in Video Games: Playing with the Ancient World (2020), to date video games have been understudied in Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology, and the role of women in these video games even more so. Consequently, the subject of women in historical and archaeological video games is an untapped resource, and the aim of this edited volume is to contribute both to Reception Studies, and to Video Game Studies, and provide a more comprehensive and more nuanced treatment of women in historical and archaeological video games than has so far been available. The volume will examine the following issues:

• How are women portrayed in historical and/or archaeological video games?
•  Why are they portrayed in these ways? 
• Are these portrayals authentic and/or accurate? 
• Does this authenticity/accuracy matter? What do female characters allow a video game to do that male ones don’t? 
• What types of stories do these video games tell using their female characters? 

The volume’s scope includes video games set in historical periods (e.g. the Assassin’s Creed franchise), video games that are not set in the past but incorporate aspects of historical or archaeological activity (e.g. the Tomb Raider franchise), and video games with fantasy or science fiction settings that include some aspect of classical reception. Additionally, the volume will contain case studies focused on individual female characters of all kinds, both playable and non-playable. Bloomsbury has already expressed an interest in publishing the volume as part of the Imagines: Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts series. 

People interested in contributing to the volume are asked to submit a 500-word abstract and selective bibliography. If your abstract is accepted, you will be invited to submit a first draft which will be subjected to collective peer review by other contributors, with chapters disseminated between contributors for both individual and group discussion, and you will then revise it based on their recommendations.

We are exploring the possibility of organising a workshop to discuss submissions that takes place entirely online. All initial communication will take place online over email and/or via Skype, Zoom or an equivalent platform.

While the scope of the edited volume will be focused primarily upon Graeco-Roman antiquity, there are no firm chronological or geographical parameters in place, and diverse approaches to the material (e.g. interdisciplinary approaches; multidisciplinary approaches; the incorporation of gender studies, queer studies, disability studies etc.) are welcome and encouraged. Early career researchers (including PhD students) are particularly encouraged to apply.

Timetable:

Given the current circumstances, requests for alternative deadlines or schedules during the writing period will be considered very sympathetically.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday 29th May 2020

Applicants informed of outcome: Friday 19th June 2020

Deadline for submission of first draft chapters: Friday 28th August 2020

Peer reviewed chapters returned to contributors with feedback and recommendations for revisions: Autumn/Winter 2020.

Deadline for submission of revised chapters: Spring/Summer 2021.

The volume will then be submitted to Bloomsbury.

Contact:

For more information, or to submit an abstract, please email Dr Jane Draycott at the University of Glasgow at Jane.Draycott@Glasgow.ac.uk

Cooperative Research Center "Media of Cooperation" - University of Siegen

https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en

The University of Siegen is an innovative and interdisciplinary university with almost 20,000 students, about 1,300 scientists and 700 employees in technology and administration. With a wide range of subjects ranging from humanities and social sciences to economics and natural and engineering sciences, it provides an outstanding teaching and research environment with numerous interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects. The University of Siegen supports a wide range of opportunities to combine work and family life. It has therefore been certified as a family-friendly university since 2006 and offers a dual career service.

At the University of Siegen, as of 1 July 2020 the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1187 „Media of Cooperation“ offers six Short-Term Scholarships to promote the work of early-carrier researchers. The duration of the scholarships is 6 months. A longer-term collaboration with the goal of a doctorate within the CRC is envisaged.

The basic amount of the scholarship is based on the maximum rate of the DFG (1.365,- EUR). In addition, an allowance for material expenses and, if applicable, a child allowance will be paid. The allocation of the fellowships is subject to the release of funds by the DFG.

CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation“ 

The CRC is an interdisciplinary research network consisting of 15 projects and more than 60 scientists from the fields of media studies, science and technology studies, ethnology, sociol-ogy, linguistics and literature studies, computer science and medicine as well as history, edu-cation and engineering. It has been funded by the DFG since 2016.

The CRC investigates the emergence and dissemination of digitally networked, data-intensive media and understands these as cooperatively accomplished conditions for cooperation. The research of the partici-pating subprojects focuses on data practices that are explored in the situated interplay of me-dia practices, infrastructures and public spheres.

The newly established short-term fellowship program of the CRC provides national and inter-national doctoral students the opportunity to further develop their research project in the CRC, to get to know participating researchers and to exchange ideas with them. The research pro-jects of the scholarship holders should be thematically related to the subprojects of the CRC, so that their work can be supported by the principal investigators and their teams. Scholarship holders are assigned to the newly established Integrated Research Training Group (MGK) of the CRC and benefit from its structured training program. The CRC offers scholarship holders an international environment for interdisciplinary media research as well as an extensive pro-gram of events and training in ethnographic, digital, sensor-based and linguistic methods.

Further information on the CRC’s research agenda and subprojects can be found at https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en.

Your Profile 

− Relevant, above-average degree in one of the disciplines participating in or related to the CRC, preferably in media and cultural studies, sociology or in the field of socio- or business informatics, human-computer interaction or information systems (equivalent to a Master’s degree, Magister, Diplom or Lehramt/Staatsexamen Sek. II)

− Individual research project in one of the above-mentioned disciplines within the subject area of the CRC. Ideally, you can assign the project to one of the subareas of the CRC – infrastructures, publics or praxeology

– Interest in methods of media research, the analysis of data practices and an affinity for working in an interdisciplinary research environment

– Willingness to participate in the international event program of the CRC and the MGK

– Very good written and spoken English language skills

Your Tasks

Expectations of successful candidates:

– Regular participation and involvement in the events and the training program of the MGK (colloquia, workshops, summer schools, methodology workshops, interdisciplinary groups)

– Presentation of preliminary results of the individual research project within the MGK collo-quium

Equal opportunities and diversity are promoted and actively practiced at the University of Siegen. Applications from women are highly welcome and will be given special consideration in accordance with the federal state equality law. We also welcome applications from people with different personal, social and cultural backgrounds, people with disabilities and those of equal status.

For further information contact Dr. Timo Kaerlein (Tel.: +49 271/740-5251)

E-Mail: timo.kaerlein@uni-siegen.de

Please send your application documents (letter of motivation, curriculum vitae, copies of cer-tificates, 3-page outline of a project idea plus bibliography) by 15 May 2020 to Dr. Timo Kaer-lein, Herrengarten 3, 57072 Siegen, Germany. Alternatively, you can also send your applica-tion in a single PDF file by e-mail (max. 5 MB) to timo.kaerlein@uni-siegen.de .

Please note that risks to confidentiality and unauthorized access by third parties cannot be ruled out when communicating by unencrypted e-mail. Information about the University of Siegen can be found on our homepage: www.uni-siegen.de .

Trine Syvertsen (University of Oslo, Norway)

Social media and smartphones are criticised for being addictive, destroying personal relationships, undermining productivity, and invading privacy. In this book, Trine Syvertsen explores the phenomenon of digital detox: users taking a break from digital media or adopting measures to limit smartphone and social media use. Based on studies, documents, media texts and interviews with media users, Syvertsen discusses how media industries intensify the quest for attention, how companies and governments team up to get everybody online, and how the main responsibility for managing online risks and problems are placed on the users' shoulders. She provides a rich account of how users reduce their online engagement through time-limitations, restrictions on smartphone use, productivity apps, and use of analogue media. Syvertsen shows how digital detoxing has much in common with other forms of self-help such as mindfulness, decluttering and simple living and places digital detox within a culture of self-optimisation. But digital detox is also about sustaining face-to-face conversations, better work-life-balance, a deeper connection with nature and more meaningful interpersonal relationships. With a wealth of examples, analyses and stories, Digital Detox is a valuable guide to why digital detox and disconnection has become a topic, how it is practised, what it says about the state of media industries and how people express resistance in the 21st century.

Dear ECREA colleagues:

A team of researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid (Patricia Nuñez, Javier Sierra, Luis Mañas and Natalia Abuín) are carrying out a comparative research about the transition to online teaching in Communication Studies in Spain, Italy and Portugal during the COVID-19 pandemic. The questionnaire and the answers are completely anonymous.

Here, you can find the spanish, portuguese an italian questionnaires.

Spanish: https://forms.gle/DCJCDVTnMb5cpSQe7

Portuguese: https://forms.gle/Sj92DGzJCpFL1JURA

Italian: https://forms.gle/v8C4DiHFgZbarabv5