ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Chris Miles

Palgrave Macmillan

Chris Miles, Principal Academic in Marketing & Communication at Bournemouth University, has just published The Marketing of Service-Dominant Logic: A Rhetorical Approach, with Palgrave Macmillan.

Service-Dominant logic can be described as a mind-set for a unified understanding of the purpose and nature of organizations, markets and society. A concept that was first introduced by Vargo and Lusch in 2004, S-D logic has generated not just a vast host of journal articles and books but has established an expanding sphere of influence across marketing scholarship. In this book, Chris Miles uses a rhetorical approach to investigate the ‘marketing’ of Service-Dominant logic, asking how the formulation and presentation of the logic aids in its persuasive promotion. In doing so, the book explores the lexicon choices, metaphors, symbols, and persuasive gambits that have resonated so strongly with marketing academia, with the aim of understanding how these elements work together in a compelling narrative that delivers the logic’s core value proposition of transcendence. Chris Miles investigates how these rhetorical strategies have evolved as the S-D logic framework has developed, examining the revisions to its foundational premises and axioms and the introduction of new perspectives such as systems theory. It is the first book-length rhetorical analysis of a single strand of marketing discourse and as such, it serves as a showcase for the methodology, the insights it can provide, and its value for marketing scholarship.

Book details:

DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46510-9

Hardcover ISBN

978-3-031-46509-3

Published: 01 December 2023

Softcover ISBN

978-3-031-46512-3

Due: 15 December 2024

eBook ISBN

978-3-031-46510-9

Published: 30 November 2023

Number of Pages

IX, 259

May 2nd (full day) & 3rd (half day), 2024

AAU, Copenhagen (TBC)

Deadline: January 26, 2024

Considering the recent climate developments and resulting socio-economic disparities, questions that address media and communication from a broader sustainability perspective have become increasingly urgent. Yet, they reside far too often at the periphery of media and communication research and practice. SMiD 2024 seeks to raise awareness and address these issues, fostering a critical discussion on the role of media and communication in relation to the notion of sustainability. We understand sustainability as defined by the United Nations Brundtland Commission in 1987, as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. We address the topic in its broadest possible sense, ranging from environmental, economic, and political Issues to social well-being. Contributions are invited through both the open call and the themed call.

SMiD 2024 – Open call (on site)

At SMiD’s 2024 biennial meeting, we wish to address questions regarding the relationship of media and communication and sustainability in times of crises. We welcome a diverse range of submissions in the broader field of media and communication studies, from traditional papers to alternative and innovative formats such as roundtables, discussion papers, interviews, posters, workshops, and working group meetings. SMiD’s open call is open to all researchers and practitioners with connections to the media and communication research and/or practice environment in Denmark and/or having the wish to connect to the community. If your work is not related to the overall conference theme, you are still welcome to present. If applicable, please try to reflect on the following question: How can media and communication research and practice contribute towards a sustainable society?

Suggestions for contributions should be between 400-500 words (including references). For panels, the submission should consist of a panel rationale (max 300 words) and abstracts for all papers (max 150 words each). Please submit no later than January 26th, 2024 via e-mail smid@foreningen-smid.dk, indicating that you are answering the open call.

SMiD 2024 – Themed call (hybrid and on site, in collaboration with MedieKultur)

The themed call focusses more specifically on the socio-ecological consequences of digital media and communication, a topic that is becoming increasingly urgent considering recent climate developments. Digital society is built on a pertinent paradox: while a robust information infrastructure is undeniably crucial for modern democracies, the very fabric of contemporary media and digital communication stand as one of the most prominent contributors to the global carbon footprint and associated social inequalities (Kannengießer & McCurdy, 2021; Vestberg, 2014). In fact, already in 2011, digital communication was estimated to produce as much CO2 emissions as the aviation industry and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence threatens to augment this carbon footprint exponentially in the coming years (Saenko, 2023). Within the themed call we wish to address this paradox in more detail and examine the role of (digital) media and communication within the broader theme of socio-ecological sustainability. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• News media: e.g., climate reporting and climate framing, sustainable news production, resilience journalism, news media, and political power.
  
• The ”good” life and datafied living: e.g., balancing personal lifestyle choices and their environmental consequences, navigating environmental data and environmental practices.
  
• Everyday practices and sustainability: e.g., upcycling practices, civil movements, and reimagining everyday practices for a sustainable future.
  
• Organisational practices: e.g., authenticity vs. greenwashing, communication, AI, and digital sustainability.
  
• Sustainable communication: e.g., new ways of explaining the impacts media habits induce on the climate and environment, communicating these challenges,
  
• Politics and governance: e.g., communication practices of political parties, issues in climate governance, political and institutional decision-making.
  

For the themed call, we invite on-going research as well as more experimental forms such as academic essays and/or other formats. The themed call builds the basis for a special issue to be published in MedieKultur in fall 2025 following the official editorial guidelines, including a double-blind peer-review process. SmiD’s themed call is open to media and communication scholars, from PhD candidates to professors, and practitioners in the field.

Suggestions for contributions should be between 400-500 words (excluding references). Please submit no later than January 26th, 2024, via e-mail smid@foreningen-smid.dk, indicating that you are answering the themed call.

Overall timeline

Deadline for contributions: January 26th, 2024

Notice of acceptance: No later than February 23rd, 2024

Deadline for conference registration: March 15th, 2024

Download full call as PDF

References

Kannengießer, S., & McCurdy, P. (2021). Mediatization and the Absence of the Environment. Communication Theory, 31(4), 911–931. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa009

Maxwell, R. (2014). Media Industries and the Ecological Crisis. Media Industries Journal, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.3998/mij.15031809.0001.207

Saenko, K. (2023, May 23). Is generative AI bad for the environment? A computer scientist explains the carbon footprint of ChatGPT and its cousins. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/is-generative-ai-bad-for-the-environment-a-computer-scientist-explains-the-carbon-footprint-of-chatgpt-and-its-cousins-204096

Vestberg, R. M., Raundalen, J. & Lager, N. (Ed.). (2014). Media and the Ecological Crisis. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315885650

“Under Strong Interest” by McFarland’s Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy series (Call for Book Chapters )

Deadline: June 30, 2024

Editors’ Introduction

Science fiction cinema is about a new idea or novum (Suvin) and the impact of technology on our lives, and although it often looks into the future, it is also about the present, reflecting the problems of our time (Schlobin). These visions and phantasmas and their realism bring science fiction into intense interaction with other genres, from comedy to horror, from fantasy to thriller. As in every major genre, science fiction has a great power in visualizing social structure (Cornea). The forms of interaction between people, or between people and other things, are also of a social nature, and class relations are in one way or another at the center of every situation in which science fiction depicts possibilities (Roberts).

In the 19th century, the phenomenon of class conflict, which manifested itself in all aspects of life with industrialization, capitalism, and modernization (Dahrendorf) also finds its place in the stories of science fiction as a genre that examines the search for the novum, or the effects of the new on our lives. Science fiction, as a genre primarily oriented towards the future, inevitably depicts ideal or uncomfortable situations related to social life in the stories it describes. Like every social structure, the societies that are the subject of science fiction narratives are at the center of various production and sharing relations. Thus, it becomes necessary to consider the individual within his/her social relations. Although Marxist theory has conducted the most intense debates on this subject, since the 19th century, different views within and against Marxism (Freeden) have addressed social relations and thus class conflicts with new dimensions. Class conflicts, hegemony relations, the production of consent, imperialism, the influence of the ideological apparatuses of the state, the changing structure of classes and identity debates reveal a wide network of theoretical relations in this regard. In this respect, the book aims to bring together theoretical perspectives that evaluate the way science fiction imagines societies in a multidimensional way. 

Social classes, their changing structures, stratification and its consequences and class relations are widely discussed topics in the literature. In this book, we intend to continue this debate in a different context. Contributors to the book are expected to present chapters with different theoretical perspectives centered on class conflict.

The chapters will be written in an argumentative rather than a descriptive style, so that each chapter will come up with its own unique results/findings. The purpose of this book is not to describe class conflict in SF films, but rather to discuss class struggle from a wide spectrum of theoretical arguments.

The edited volume is planned to be published within the "Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy" series of McFarland books. McFarland, an international and influential publishing company, that has a strong reputation and influence in this field for many years.

Each chapter will consist of comprehensive essays of at least 5,000 - 6,000 words, including footnotes and references.

The chapters will be written in MLA 9 format.

Please select one of the proposed chapters below send an abstract of at least 300 words (with five references that will guide the chapter) and a short author biography (150 words) to scificinemanadclassstruggle@gmail.com

The editors have framed the chapters as follows, but we welcome proposals that are creative and address different topics in this context.

Preface

Editors’ Introduction: Class Conflict in Science Fiction Film 

Cenk Tan & Mikail Boz

Part I: Social Stratification

1) The Platform 1-2, 2019-2024, Dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

2) In Time, 2011, Dir. Andrew Niccol

Part II: Otherness / Identity

3) Matrix Resurrections, 2021, Dir. Lana Wachowski

4) Blade Runner 2049, 2017, Dir. Denis Villeneuve

Part III: Resistance to Oppression

5) Snowpiercer, 2013, Dir. Bong Joon Ho

6) Cloud Atlas, 2012, Dir. Tom Tykwer, Lana & Lilly Wachowski

Part IV: Migration & Refugees

7) Children of Men, 2006, Dir. Alfonso Cuarón

8) Dune, 2021-2024, Dir. Denis Villeneuve

Part V: The Society of the Spectacle

9) Ready Player One, 2018, Dir. Steven Spielberg

10) The Stepford Wives, 2004, Dir. Frank Oz

Part VI:  The Quest for Hope & Equality

11) Interstellar, 2014, Dir. Christopher Nolan

12) Mad Max Fury Road, 2015, Dir. George Miller

Key Dates:

• Deadline for abstract submission: 30 June 2024
  
• Deadline for chapter submission: 30 September 2024
  
• Anticipated publication date: Spring 2025
  

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have further questions.

Editors:

Cenk Tan & Mikail Boz

scificinemanadclassstruggle@gmail.com

References

Cornea, Christine. Science Fiction Cinema Between Fantasy and Reality. Edinburg University Press, 2007.

Dahrendorf, Ralf. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford University Press, 1959.

Freeden, Michael. Ideology and Political Theory. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction. Routledge, 2006.

Schlobin, Roger C. “Definitions of Science Fiction and Fantasy.” The Science Fiction Reference Book, edited by Marshall B. Tymn, Starmont House., 1981, pp. 496–511.

Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. Yale University Press, 1979.

University of Westminster

The University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) is pleased to announce this year’s Quintin Hogg Trust (QHT) PhD Studentships for UK and International applicants to commence in the 2024/25 academic year. 

Full information about the studentships, entry requirements and the application procedure can be found here: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/studentships/quintin-hogg-trust-phd-studentships-at-the-university-of-the-westminster-0

HOW TO APPLY

To apply please select the “MPhil/PhD Media Studies” programme, and make sure you indicate on your application form that you wish to be considered for a QHT studentship.

Applications must be submitted by 5pm on Friday 2 February 2024.

Interviews will take place in the week beginning 11 March 2024.

ABOUT CAMRI

The Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) in the School of Media and Communication is a world-leading centre in the study of media and communication, renowned for its critical and international research, which has consistently been ranked highly according to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the QS World University Rankings. In REF 2021 83% of CAMRI's overall research was judged to be ‘world-leading’ and ‘internationally excellent’.

CAMRI welcomes applications which explore the political, economic, social and cultural significance of the media across the globe. CAMRI research is focused on four key themes: Communication, Technology and Society; Cultural Identities and Social Change; Global Media; and Policy and Political Economy.

CONTACTS

Please contact Dr Alessandro D’Arma, Director of the CAMRI Doctoral Programme, who can advise you and put you in touch with prospective supervisors.

Email: darmaa@westminster.ac.uk

Alternatively, you can contact a prospective supervisor directly. Please consult the CAMRI’s website for details of our core research themes and the research expertise of academic staff.

Link: https://www.camri.ac.uk

December 12, 2023, at 09h00 UTC

https://iamcr.org/phd-webinars/de-westernizing

IAMCR is pleased to present the IAMCR Presidential PhD Research Webinar on “De-Westernizing Global Media Studies: Bridging Disciplinary, National, and Regional Divides for a More Inclusive and Decolonized Future” co-convened by Karl Patrick R. Mendoza and Samuel I. Cabbuag. 

This PhD webinar will investigate how media studies can progress towards a more inclusive and decolonised future by promoting the incorporation of diverse perspectives and theories from various disciplinary, national, and regional contexts. It will investigate how the historical dominance of Western perspectives and theories in shaping the discipline has led to a dearth of diversity and inclusion.

The webinar will examine potential strategies for de-Westernizing global media studies, such as promoting the incorporation of non-Western perspectives and theories and reconsidering the role of Western theories and approaches in shaping the field. In addition, it will investigate how to create more equitable and inclusive collaborations across disciplinary, national, and regional boundaries, as well as the challenges and opportunities associated with such collaborations.

Duration: 3 hours 

Location: The meeting will take place on Zoom. Attendees will receive their personal invitation at least 24 hours before the webinar begins.

The research group 'Diversidad Audiovisual / Audiovisual Diversity' of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) publishes the report 'Availability and prominence of Spanish works in subscription video-on-demand services – 2023 edition'. This report analyzes the Spanish films and series offered through the services Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney+ and AppleTV+.

The study provides hitherto unknown data of great interest for the audiovisual sector. In a context of strong inter-company competition and new regulatory obligations for these agents in the European Union, it sheds light on questions such as how many Spanish works make up the different catalogs, what are the main characteristics of these works and what prominence is given to them by each service. 

The work has been developed by Luis A. Albornoz, Mª Trinidad García Leiva and Pedro Gallo, has the support of the University Institute of Spanish Cinema of the UC3M and is part of the research project 'Diversity and subscription video-on-demand services' (PID2019-109639RB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the State Research Agency (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/).

The full study, in Spanish and English, is available here.

Dear all, 

We are thrilled to announce that registration is now open for the Konstanz Methods Excellence Workshops (komex), organized by the University of Konstanz in collaboration with the Methods Excellence Network (MethodsNET). We offer excellent, inclusive, and sustainable PhD-level methods training held February 22nd to 23rd (short courses) and February 26th to March 1st, 2024 (compact & main courses). Our online courses cover a spectrum of quantitative and qualitative methods at budget-friendly rates:

Main course (5 days): €390 early bird (€460 regular)

Compact course (3 days): €220 early bird (€270 regular)

Short course (2 days): €120

Online Short Courses 

• Learning Data Visualisation in R by Massimiliano Canzi
  
• A Basic Introduction to R for Beginners by Karina Shyrokykh
  
• Outlierism – Learning from Deviant Cases by Anat Gofen
  
• Introduction to Python by Indira Sen

Online Main Courses 

• Introduction to Causal Process Tracing by Hilde van Meegdenburg
  
• Introduction to Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) by Barbora Valik and Ioana-Elena Oana
  
• Advanced Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) by Ioana-Elena Oana and Carsten Q. Schneider
  
• Qualitative Data Analysis Concepts and Techniques by Anka Kekez Koštro
  
• Doing Fieldwork in Challenging Contexts by Catherine Owen and Xianan Jin
  

Thank you for disseminating this information widely—and see you at KOMEX2024!

Browse the komex courses and register here: tinyurl.com/komexreg   

Follow komex: on X @komex_methods or on BlueSky  @komex.bsky.social

Best wishes,

KOMEX Team

May 21-24, 2024

Stuttgart (Germany)

Deadline: November 30, 2023

https://websci24.org/ 

Hosted by the University of Stuttgart | Sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) • Interchange Forum for Reflecting on Intelligent Systems (IRIS) | Partners ACM • Cyber Valley • Web Science Trust • SigWeb

• Papers [LINK] Submission Deadline: Nov. 30, 2023
  
• • Contact for questions: acmwebsci24@easychair.org
• Workshops/Tutorials [LINK] Submission Deadline: Dec 2, 2023
  
• • Contact for questions: workshops@iris.uni-stuttgart.de
  • Workshop/Tutorials on May 21, 2024
• Posters [LINK] Submission Deadline: Feb. 15, 2024
  
• • Contact for questions: posters@iris.uni-stuttgart.de
  • Poster Session on May 22, 2024 
• PhD Symposium [LINK] Submission Deadline: Feb. 26, 2024
  
• • Contact for questions: phd-symposium@iris.uni-stuttgart.de
  • PhD Symposium on May 21, 2024

Margaret Gallagher (Editor), Aimee Vega Montiel (Editor)

A timely feminist intervention on gender, communication, and women’s human rights

The Handbook on Gender, Communication, and Women's Human Rights engages contemporary debates on women’s rights, democracy, and neoliberalism through the lens of feminist communication scholarship. The first major collection of its kind published in the COVID-19 era, this unique volume frames a wide range of issues relevant to the gender and communication agenda within a human rights framework.

An international panel of feminist academics and activists examines how media, information, and communication systems contribute to enabling, ignoring, questioning, or denying women's human and communication rights. Divided into four parts, the Handbook covers governance and policy, systems and institutions, advocacy and activism, and content, rights, and freedoms. Throughout the text, the contributors demonstrate the need for strong feminist critiques of exclusionary power structures, highlight new opportunities and challenges in promoting change, illustrate both the risks and rewards associated with digital communication, and much more.

• Offers a state-of-the-art exploration of the intersection between gender, communication, and women's rights
  
• Addresses both core and emerging topics in feminist media scholarship and research
  
• Discusses the vital role of communication systems and processes in women's struggles to claim and exercise their rights
  
• Analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated structures of inequality and intensified the spread of disinformation
  
• Explores feminist-based concepts and approaches that could enrich communication policy at all levels
  

Part of the Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research series, TheHandbook of Gender, Communication, and Women's Human Rights is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, journalism, feminist studies, gender studies, global studies, and human rights programs at institutions around the world. It is also an invaluable resource for academics, researchers, policymakers, and civil society and human rights activists.

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Handbook+of+Gender,+Communication,+and+Women%27s+Human+Rights-p-9781119800682

Communication+1 (Special Issue)

Deadline: December 31, 2023

ed. Christoph Borbach, Carolin Gerlitz, and Tristan Thielmann

Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, and new smart sensor technologies have an enormous disruptive potential: not only for the replacement of established media and cultural techniques, but also for the future shaping of digital practices, the cohesion of societies, data justice, and, last but not least, on contentious issues of digital sovereignty. The special issue of the platinum open access and double-blind peer review journal Communication+1 (https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/) on “Digital Sovereignty” will therefore bring together current research on the subject area.

This issue addresses sovereignties in a pluralistic way, regarding: the technical sovereignty of critical infrastructures; right to informational self-determination; cognitive sovereignty with respect to automated decisions; the supposed sovereignty of the internet of autonomous things, or digital practices like autonomous driving; and questioning the sovereignty of traditional scientific disciplines when it comes to overarching (Critical) Data Studies. Updating Callon and Latour’s classical analysis of a new body politic (1981), this issue conceptualizes digital sovereignty as a distributed accomplishment. It is based on a multitude of small socio-technical mediations that unfold agency in every step of data production, distribution, and consumption. Data-intensive media, distributed agency, and digital sovereignty are therefore co-constitutive.

The current ubiquity of environmental sensor technologies and the associated “environmental conditioning of media” (Thielmann 2022) results in a ubiquitous datafication (Cukier/Mayer-Schoenberger 2013) and the collection and valorization of huge amounts of big data – including sensitive data such as movement profiles, tracking of purchasing and internet behavior, or face and voice recognition, of which the datafied subjects are largely unaware. This touches on ethical as well as legal issues and establishes new forms of discrimination, which now appears as data discrimination. Data bias as ‘the dark side of big data’ directly touches on issues of sovereignty both of the subject and of entire cultures and societies, with technologies of the Global North often being the focus of research and aspects of indigenous data sovereignty (Kukutai/Taylor 2016) being neglected.

In 2022, the entire digital universe comprised a data volume of approx. 94 billion gigabytes which equates to 94 zettabytes. In 2025, the amount of global data will already exceed 200 zettabytes (Rydning 2022). Such quantities of data allow for new modes of capture (Agre 1994) and surveillance (Zuboff 2019) and can no longer be sensorily processed and understood by humans, even if artificial intelligence and algorithms harbor the promise of making the flood of data manageable. The transformation of contemporary cultures into scalable data societies or “datafied societies” (van Es/Schäfer 2017) demands interdisciplinary research on the consequences of today’s ubiquitous and omnipresent datafication.

The current discussion on digital sovereignty is an immediate consequence of economic, political, and technical developments. This concerns economic questions on the use of personal data; the political dimensions of digital sovereignty of whole nations, and individual self-determination regarding information; or the technological pervasion of our everyday lives by AI, machine learning, and blockchain media, as well as network technologies (Augsberg and Gehring 2022). To date, the discourse on digital data sovereignty has primarily been shaped by the social sciences. Hardly any research has been conducted on the media of sovereignty and their data practices (Couture and Toupin 2019; Amoore 2020). The planned special issue of the journal Communication+1 takes this as an opportunity to represent current research on the topic of digital sovereignty in all its breadth.

We are seeking abstracts (500 words max.) for submissions until December 31, 2023 (to be sent to christoph.borbach@uni-siegen.de, subject: “Communication+1 Special Issue: Digital Sovereignty”), that might address—but are not limited to—one or more of the following topics:

●        Practices and technologies of data sovereignty

●        Conceptual work on the terminology: what does “digital sovereignty” mean and what does it look like

●        Perspectives on digital and data sovereignty beyond the Global North

●        Data bias and data discrimination as counterparts of digital sovereignty

●        Histories and fictions/imaginaries of digital sovereignty

●        Relevance of activist groups and countercultures to prevent data discrimination

●        Legal aspects of data sovereignty, also from a historical perspective

●        Ethical aspects of sensor media

●        Media technologies and politics of sensors and sensing

●        Sociological perspectives on sensor practices

●        Ubiquitous datafication

●        Counterpractices to regain digital sovereignty

●        Potentials of praxeology to investigate modes of digital sovereignty

●        Dangers of ubiquitous datafication for sovereignty in the digital age

●        Data-processing law and legal aspects of digital data sovereignty