ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Charles University in Prague

We would like to ask you to help us a bit with spreading the word about our new academic Master Programme in Media and Area Studies (MARS) at Charles University in Prague.

You will have to forgive us for being quite proud of this new project. If you find this email too intrusive, please simply delete it. We will not bother you again – this is a one-time mailing.

But in case you are interested in this project, which combines an interest in media and politics with a strong emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe and on the European Union, extending to other social spheres as well, we have produced a 25-seconds video about it, which you can find here: https://vimeo.com/383173852. We also built a MARS website, which is at http://marsmaster.cz.

(Potential) students can now apply to this Master Programme, and we would appreciate it, if you could help us with finding (some of) them. You can find a bit more information below, which can be easily forwarded/posted.

In case you want to help us more, you can also download and distribute the additional material about the MARS MA programme:

An A3 poster: https://marsmaster.fsv.cuni.cz/docs/marsmaster_poster_january2020.pdf

An A4 booklet: http://marsmaster.fsv.cuni.cz/docs/marsmaster_flyer_february2020.pdf

If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the new Programme Coordinator, Jan Miessler at jan.miessler@fsv.cuni.cz.

The Master in Media and Area Studies (MARS) combines two important contemporary fields of study: Media Studies and Area Studies. This combination provides in-depth and critical knowledge about processes of mediation and signification, and how space and geography - the political and social specificities of an area - intersect with them.

The backbone of MARS is a groundedness in Prague, the Czech Republic, Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union. This enables for two particular spatial focal points, which provide the backbone of the MARS programme, namely Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union. At the same time, MARS avoids an exclusive focus on Central and Eastern Europe, and offers (mostly but not exclusively through the electives) knowledge about other European regions, or about Europe as a whole. A second extension relates to more transnational and transcultural approaches, moving away from the logics of nation-state homogeneity, with emphasis on internal conflict and exclusion. This MARS backbone is combined with and strengthened by two main components: A theoretical component, which consists out of a combination of post-colonial theory, media sociology, memory studies and political geography. Moreover, also a methodological component provides the required support. These two focal points and the theoretical and methodological components structure the MARS programme.

MARS will enable a thorough understanding of the role of context. Media (and communication) studies has a long tradition of emphasizing the importance of context, in dealing, for instance, with media production, content and interpretation/reception. And, of course, contexts are also spatial. Regions and countries, with their imagined communities, their politics, their institutional structures, their insides and outsides, are particular, and they impact in particular ways on media (infra)structures, media content and audience practices. MARS will generate a better understanding of the complexity of this context. Regions and countries are not internally homogeneous, and they cannot be studied in isolation and as structurally different from other regions and countries. MARS still takes into consideration that these regions and countries are particular socio-political and cultural entities that have characterizing but complex (and sometimes contradictory) particularities, which are extremely significant for the study of the media spheres that are embedded in these regions and countries.

MARS is a MA programme at Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic). It is organised as a collaboration between the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (ICSJ FSV UK) and the Institute of International Studies (IIS FSV UK). More information can be found at http://marsmaster.cz. For a short video impression of the MARS, see https://vimeo.com/383173852.

University of Bremen

The Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen is offering a 3-year PhD position (f/m/d) – under the condition of job release – which will be based in the Computational Communication and Democracy (CCD) Lab and will be co-sponsored by the Information Management and Media Technology (IMMT) Lab (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science). The PhD student will work with the lab directors, Prof. Yannis Theocharis and Prof. Andreas Breiter on the broader thematic area *Computational Social Science*.

Description of the position

Duration: 3 years

Starting date: as soon as possible

Remuneration is based on grade E13 TV-L (100%, full-time position) of

the German federal employee scale

Tasks:

• Writing a PhD Thesis focusing on one of the research areas of the labs
• Research in the field of political communication, based on computational methods such as text-as-data, network and image analysis
• Research on new methodological approaches with focus on machine-learning and natural language processing
• Teaching assistance in computational methods for social scientists (study programs at Faculty 9) and machine learning models in informatics and educational technologies (Faculty 3)

Description of teaching duties: The position involves 4 hours of teaching per week.

Essential qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Media and Communication, Political Science and/or Sociology with a strong focus on computational methods, or in Computer Science and Digital Media with a strong focus on social phenomena
• * Skills in quantitative methods
• * Skills in computational methods (a focus on text-as-data methods – especially automated text analysis and machine-learning – is a plus)Proven experience with R, Python, Ruby, Java, or equivalent object-oriented programming language
• * Interest in political communication
• * Experience with social media data analysis is desirable
• * Strong command of English (C1), in German at least B2

Candidates who already hold a PhD degree will not be considered.

The University of Bremen has received a number of awards for its diversity policies and offers a family-friendly working environment as well as an international atmosphere. The University of Bremen intends to increase the proportion of women in science and therefore urges women to apply. Handicapped applicants with the same professional and personal suitability are given priority. Applications from people with a migration background are encouraged.

For any questions please contact Yannis Theocharis at: yannis.theocharisuni-bremen.de

Application

The application should include the following documents:

• A 2-page letter of motivation. Page 1 should describe your research interests and explain why you believe your profile fits with the main objectives and mission of the ZeMKI Labs. Page 2 should briefly sketch the topic of the PhD project you’d like to pursue.
• CV
• A copy of your academic certificates and transcripts
• A writing sample (research paper, publication, or Master’s thesis)
• Names of two referees

Please send your application including the reference number A4/20 until 31 March 2020 to:

Universität Bremen

Zentrum für Medien-, Kommunikations- und Informationsforschung (ZeMKI)

Frau Denise Tansel

Postfach 33 04 40

28334 Bremen

Or as PDF via Email (single file) at: dtanseluni-bremen.de

The employment is fixed-term and serves the scientific qualification, governed by the Act of Academic Fixed-Term Contract, §2 (1) (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz). Therefore, candidates may only be considered for appointment if they still have the respective qualification periods available in accordance with § 2 (1) WissZeitVG.

About the Computational Communication and Democracy Lab

The Lab’s substantive research agenda is driven by the idea that the proliferation of digital media opens up new avenues for social and political interaction that have radical effects on democratic processes: participation, organisation, representation. As such, digital communication offers opportunities, but also poses enormous challenges that fundamentally affect the quality of our democracies. Relying on developments in the field of computational social science as a point of departure, the Lab’s is also interested in methods through which new types of digital information can be processed and repurposed for studying a variety of social and political phenomena enabled by digital technologies. The lab has two main goals. First, to lead research on different but interdependent substantive topics for understanding, the social and political impact of digital communication and address methodological and epistemological issues related to conceptualisation, operationalisation, measurement and inference. Second, to offer BA, Masters, and PhD students a path for specialisation in computational and data science methods, with applications to communication and media research.

About the Information Management and Media Technologies Lab

The Lab combines theoretical research on the change of organizations (particularly in the education sector and in connection with mediatisation) with application-oriented research and the development of media technologies. The lab integrates the perspectives of informatics and social sciences. The underlying assumption is that the change of organisations with and through media technologies can only be studied by an empirically substantiated understanding of the particular application context. Accordingly, a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods is used in the research projects with a focus on computational social science.

About the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI)

As an inter-faculty research institute, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) bundles research activities at the University of Bremen in the area of media and communicative change regarding a broad range of cultural, social, organisational and technological context fields. The research institute is committed to interdisciplinary cooperation, integrating researchers from the areas of media and communication studies, cultural studies, information management and media pedagogics. In addition to their research activities, ZeMKI members are active in the various media related study programmes at the University of Bremen. The ZeMKI oversees the profile-building research group "Communicative figurations of mediatized worlds" of the University of Bremen. The research group has been supported as a "Creative Unit" by the institutional strategy "Ambitious and Agile" of the University of Bremen funded within the frame of the Excellence Initiative by the German Federal and State Governments.

https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/university/the-university-as-an-employer/job-vacancies/details-job-vacancies/joblist/Job/show/1-x-10-doktorandin-doktorand-wmd-im-bereich-computational-social-science-6321/

Aarhus University

The School of Communication and Culture at the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University invites applications for a postdoc position in Intercultural Danish-German communication.

The postdoc position is a full-time, fixed-term position, which begins on 1 August 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter and ends on 31 January 2022.

Place of employment: Department of German and Romance Languages, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4, 8000 Aarhus C Denmark.

The School of Communication and Culture is committed to diversity and encourages all qualified applicants to apply regardless of their personal background.

The position

For the position, funded by an Aarhus University Research Foundation starting grant, we are seeking an applicant who will contribute to the research in the project “Intercultural Danish-German communication”, in close cooperation with the Interreg 5A project kultKIT. The successful applicant will carry out research on Danish-German intercultural communication in close collaboration with principal investigator Erla Hallsteinsdóttir. The successful applicant must be prepared to participate in and contribute to the research activities (data collection and analysis as well as publication and dissemination activities) as they are defined in the project application.

The focus of the research will be on aspects that are fundamental to intercultural understanding in international strategic communication in a broad sense, with special focus on aspects of intercultural understanding, intercultural competences or linguistic aspects of interculturality. The project is linked to the research programme Communication in International Business and the Professions at the School of Communication and Culture.

The postdoctoral researcher is expected to have a background in intercultural communication. We are particularly interested in applicants with both research expertise and practical experience in communication in a Danish-German context.

Qualifications

Applicants must have a PhD degree or equivalent qualifications in a field of intercultural communication or strategic communication. Applicants must furthermore be able to document:

• An internationally oriented publication profile in topics of relevance to interculturality (e.g. intercultural understanding and intercultural competences, stereotypes), intercultural linguistics, strategic communication and/or Danish-German cooperation
• Experience of participation in collective research projects and excellent teamwork skills
• Experience of interdisciplinary cooperation and of cooperation with non-academic partners
• Language skills (minimum B2) in Danish and German.
• Finally, applicants are asked to provide a proposal for research to be undertaken within the stated framework of the research project (max. three pages).
• Research qualifications will be assessed in relation to the period of active research, the degree of originality and the academic output.

Work environment

Active participation in the daily life of the department is a high priority, and we emphasise the importance of good working relationships, both among colleagues and with our students. In order to maintain and develop the department’s excellent teaching and research environment, the successful applicant is expected to be present at the department on a daily basis.

We respect the balance between work and private life and strive to create a work environment in which that balance can be maintained. See Family and work-life balance for further information.

International applicant?

International applicants are encouraged to see Attractive working conditions for further information about the benefits of working at Aarhus University and in Denmark, including healthcare, paid holidays and, if relevant, maternity/paternity leave, childcare and schooling. Aarhus University offers a broad variety of services for international researchers and accompanying families, including a relocation service and career counselling for expat partners. For information about taxation, see Taxation aspects of international researchers’ employment by AU.

School of Communication and Culture

The school belongs to the Faculty of Arts. You will find relevant information about the school, its research programmes, departments, including the Department of German and Romance Languages, and diverse activities on its website.

Contact

For further information about the position, please contact Erla Hallsteinsdóttir, e-mail: ehall@cc.au.dk.

Interviews will be held in May 2020 in person or via Skype.

Qualification requirements

Applicants should hold a PhD or equivalent academic qualifications.

Formalities

Faculty of Arts refers to the Ministerial Order on the Appointment of Academic Staff at Danish Universities (the Appointment Order).

Appointment shall be in accordance with the collective labour agreement between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations.

Further information on qualification requirements and job content may be found in the Memorandum on Job Structure for Academic Staff at Danish Universities .

Further information on the application and supplementary materials may be found in Application Guidelines.

The application must outline the applicant's motivation for applying for the position, attaching a curriculum vitae, a teaching portfolio, a complete list of published works, copies of degree certificates and examples of academic production (mandatory, but no more than five examples). Please upload this material electronically along with your application.

All interested candidates are encouraged to apply, regardless of their personal background.

Aarhus University also offers a Junior Researcher Development Programme targeted at career development for postdocs at AU. You can read more about it here: http://talent.au.dk/junior-researchers-at-aarhus-university/the-junior-researcher-development-programme/

Faculty of Arts

The Faculty of Arts is one of four main academic areas at Aarhus University.

The faculty contributes to Aarhus University's research, talent development, knowledge exchange and degree programmes.

With its 500 academic staff members, 260 PhD students, 10,500 BA and MA students, and 1,500 students following continuing/further education programmes, the faculty constitutes a strong and diverse research and teaching environment.

The Faculty of Arts consists of the School of Communication and Culture, the School of Culture and Society, the Danish School of Education, and the Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media. Each of these units has strong academic environments and forms the basis for interdisciplinary research and education.

The faculty's academic environments and degree programmes engage in international collaboration and share the common goal of contributing to the development of knowledge, welfare and culture in interaction with society.

Read more at arts.au.dk/en

The application must be submitted via Aarhus University’s recruitment system, which can be accessed under the job advertisement on Aarhus University's website.

Aarhus University

Aarhus University is an academically diverse and research-intensive university with a strong commitment to high-quality research and education and the development of society nationally and globally. The university offers an inspiring research and teaching environment to its 38,000 students (FTEs) and 8,000 employees, and has an annual revenues of EUR 885 million. Learn more at www.international.au.dk/

Deadline: May 30, 2020

MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture invites academic authors with expertise in television studies and other related disciplines to contribute to our upcoming special issue on female detectives on TV.

For decades now, the female detective has occupied space within a genre that has been all-too-often reserved for the celebratory storylines of self-sacrificial men. She has served to break down sexist barriers placed before women within professional and personal frameworks, acting as an on-screen surrogate and inspiration for (female) spectators. The popularity of female-led TV crime drama across the world points to her success in captivating widespread audience attention.

The topic of women in TV crime drama has inspired a range of significant feminist scholarship (see for example, Pinedo 2019; Coulthard, Horeck, Klinger, McHugh 2018; Greer 2017; Buonanno 2017; Moorti and Cuklanz 2017; Steenberg 2017, 2012; Jermyn 2017; Weissman (2016; 2010; 2007); McCabe 2015; Turnbull 2014; Brunsdon 2013; D’Acci 1994). This work has examined female-led TV crime drama from a variety of angles, including transnational cultural exchanges and currencies, serial form and narrative, gender, class, sexual and racial politics, and postfeminist identities and logics.

Certain series such as The Killing (Denmark 2007-2012, US 2011-2014), The Bridge (Sweden 2011-2018, US 2013-2014), The Fall (UK 2013-2016), and Top of the Lake (NZ/Australia 2013/2017), have been singled out for how their female protagonists (Sarah Lund/Sarah Linden; Saga Noren; Stella Gibson, and Robin Griffin) resonate with viewers across transnational borders. Meanwhile, on primetime episodic US TV crime drama, Mariska Hargitay’s 21-year stint as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (US 1999-present) – the longest running live-action TV series in American history – has turned her into a ‘touchstone figure’ (Moorti and Cuklanz 2017). Hargitay’s real-life activism, and her dedication to fighting sexual violence against women, has attained important cultural recognition, as Law & Order: SVU itself has received renewed critical consideration in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Notably, though, the female detectives mentioned in the above paragraph are overwhelmingly white. What shifts occur in the genre when a non-white female actor helms the main role as detective? What new possibilities, for example, are opened up by the emergence of black female legal investigators and detectives on network series such as ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder (US 2014-2019) and online TV series such as Netflix’s Seven Seconds (US 2018)? And to what extent is TV crime drama able to meaningfully engage with issues of intersectionality and the precariousness of social justice in twenty-first century society?

This special issue seeks to build on the existing body of feminist writing on women in TV crime drama, through a further investigation of the figure of the female detective at this critical juncture for feminist television studies. What new feminist visions of the female detective have emerged with changes in industrial practices and the growth of online streaming and niche television? How does the female detective of streaming TV compare to the images of the female detective found in the middlebrow crime dramas of linear TV? In an era of networked media in which popular feminism and popular misogyny (Banet-Weiser 2018) are more intertwined than ever before, what notions of empowerment are articulated through the figure of the female detective? To what extent does the female detective enable an exploration of central issues regarding female subjectivity and political resistance against systemic forms of violence?

We hope to open further debate on the subject of the female detective in all her guises. Staying true to MAI spirit, we are seeking papers written from intersectional and multivalent feminist perspectives. We hope this issue not only examines the figures and representations of women crime investigators on the screen, but also situates their work in related social, cultural and political contexts.

Our definition of the female detective is broad and inclusive. She can, but doesn’t have to be a private eye or a police professional, just as long as she pursues social justice or truth.

While analyses of current and recent examples seem to be an obvious priority as far as contribution to the field knowledge of visual culture analysis, we also welcome papers on female detectives from the past.

In particular, we would like to encourage authors to consider submitting articles on the following titles:

• Seven Seconds
• How to Get Away with Murder
• Marcella
• Spiral
• Unbelievable
• Killing Eve
• Safe
• Top of the Lake
• The Fall
• The Bridge
• Veronica Mars
• Southland
• Fargo
• Prime Suspect
• La Mante
• Castle
• The Killing
• Broadchurch
• Lucifer
• Elementary
• The Wire
• The Closer
• Happy Valley
• Jessica Jones
• Absentia
• Tatort
• The Bletchley Circle
• Collateral
• Suspects
• Witnesses
• Loch Ness
• Cagney and Lacey

We recognise that there are many more titles of interests, and the list could run quite long. If you wish to propose a paper on any other TV title, please get in touch with the editors to discuss your suggestion: contact@maifeminism.com

We plan to publish this issue in the first half of 2021.

The editorial team includes:

Tanya Horeck (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)

Jessica Ford (University of Newcastle, Australia)

Anna Backman Rogers (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)

Anna Misiak (Falmouth University, UK)

300-word Abstracts due: 30 May 2020

4000-6000-word Full Papers due: 1 December 2020

Please consult the MAI submission guidelines before submitting: https://maifeminism.com/submissions/

Please send your abstracts and forward responses to this call to contact@maifeminism.com

Dublin City University - Ireland India Institute and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

• Qualification Type: PhD
• Location: Dublin - Ireland
• Funding for: UK Students, EU Students, International Students
• Funding amount: €21,000 to €27,000
• £17,713.50 to £22,774.50 converted salary*
• Hours: Full Time
• Placed On: 25th February 2020
• Closes: 26th March 2020

Dublin City University’s Ireland India Institute in conjunction with DCU faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences invites applications for four PhD studentships, valued at between €21,000 and €27,000 pa, for up to four years.

We welcome high quality applications from those interested in working within the wide areas of expertise in the Faculty, but especially in the following topic areas:

• The connections between the Indian nationalist movement and the new Irish state, covering some or all of the period 1920 to 1980. Contact: Dr Daithi O Corrain, DCU School of History and Geography, daithi.ocorrain@dcu.ie
• Peace and conflict studies – focused on one or more cases in the North East of India. (Contact: Prof. John Doyle john.doyle@dcu.ie
• Indian Politics / India’s Foreign Policy – focused on contemporary political issues and / or foreign policy. Contact Dr Jivanta Schottli jivanta.schottli@dcu.ie
• Digital social media practices in contemporary elections: single country or regional South Asian focus or Changing image practices in South Asian news industries. Contact: Dr Saumava Mitra, School of Communications, saumava.mitra@dcu.ie .
• Translator interaction with machine translation for Indian languages. Contact Dr Joss Moorkens, joss.moorkens@dcu.ie
• Languages-in-education policy in India (contact Dr Jennifer Bruen, jennifer.bruen@dcu.ie)
• Writing India: English-language tales and novels between circa 1800 to 1947 (contact Dr Sharon Murphy sharon.murphy@dcu.ie)
• Post-colonial connections: The English-language Indian novel and the Irish novel in the 20th century. (contact Prof. Derek Hand derek.hand@dcu.ie)

DCU has a strong focus on South Asia, with a vibrant PhD community specialising on the region. The University is the host and coordinator for a €3.9m EU funded “European Training Network”, called Global India, focused on India’s emerging international role, linking leading European and South Asian Universities and providing an excellent professional network for our PhD students. The University also hosts the annual South Asia Studies conference in Ireland, now emerging as one of the largest such events in Europe.

Criteria

The successful candidates must have a Masters degree in a relevant discipline, fluent English and excellent academic grades. International students will need to meet the university’s English language requirements. http://www.dcu.ie/registry/english.shtml . The PhD programme will provide significant mentoring support and therefore scholars must be resident in Dublin. All positions will begin on 1 October 2020.

Informal Enquiries are welcomed and can be made to the nominated supervisors listed above or

• Professor Eileen Connolly, Director Ireland India Institute, E-mail: india@dcu.ie
• Potential Supervisors listed above will be happy to facilitate discussion on draft research proposals.

Further information:

These projects will be hosted by the relevant academic schools and the chosen candidates will also work with DCU’s Ireland India Institute. Further details on

https://www.dcu.ie/humanities_and_social_sciences/index.shtml

https://irelandindia.ie

These PhD scholarships have a value of up to €21,000 to €27,000 (full fees either EU or non-EU rate, plus a living allowance of €16,000pa (usually tax free), for up to 4 years, subject to satisfactory progress. Students will also be provided with excellent supervision and strong professional mentoring along with their own workspace in a shared office.

Closing date for receipt of applications: 26 March 2020

Applications should be made to India@dcu.ie and they should include

• a cv,
• a one page letter of application.
• the grades achieved in your Masters degree
• a research proposal (maximum 2000 words), setting out your research question, how the research relates to existing academic literature and a brief description of your proposed methodology.

Submission of expression of interest: March 30, 2020

We warmly invite you to submit your book chapter abstract for consideration for our book proposal.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The aim of this edited volume is to reflect on the concept of disinformation and its multiple dimensions, as well as the strategies and practices developed around them, particularly those linked to political contexts and electoral processes.

The Oxford Dictionary declared post-truth word of the year in 2016, highlighting a historical and political moment in which disinformation strategies, fake news and lies are exponentially spread through social networks: facilitating, among others, Trump’s rise to power and having an impact also in Brexit debates (Jankowski, 2018). Since then, the role of manipulative messages has increased (Baudrillard, 1981; Wardle, 2017) – rising concern about their effects in political decisions, particularly in times of crisis (Spence, Lachlan , Edwards, & Edwards, 2016).

The potential role of social networks in disseminating disinformation (Woolley & Howard, 2016) grows in importance if we take into account that they have become the main source of information (Shearer & Gottfried, 2017), especially during electoral processes (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). Considering that disinformation takes advantage of the increasing polarization of public opinion (Lewandowsky, Ecker & Cook, 2017; Horta et al,. 2017), its pernicious effects on decision-making and political debate demand a greater knowledge of the motivations behind the dissemination of disinformation (Flynn, Nyhan & Reifler, 2017).

Theoretical approaches as well as international and comparative research would be very welcome.

Topics of interest for the book may be related, but not limited, to the following:

• Genealogy of post-truth and its different expressions: misinformation, disinformation, manipulation, fake-news, conspiracy theories, rumours, memes 
• Origins and historical evolution of disinformation.
• Fact-checking and digital platforms for verifying public discourse: Experiences and results.
• Effects of disinformation on democratic stability.
• Polarization and success of disinformation: perception and influence.
• Reception studies of fake-news.
• Disinformation in politics
• Active audiences and the fight against the spread of false news: counter-narratives and different civic society initiatives.
• Bots and dissemination of fake news: who is behind the massive dissemination of false or manipulative messages?
• Algorithmic transparency: The role of platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter in the control of false news
• Regulation and self-control: viability of regulation.
• Actions on tacking disinformation around the world
• News transparency and fact-checkers in the newsrooms.
• Misinformation and human rights.
• Media literacy and misinformation.
• Trends, styles, and narratives of fake news.
• Dynamics of dissemination.

PUBLISHER: Wiley

EDITORS:

Guillermo López-García (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies University of Valencia) Bio: http://mediaflows.es/en/investigador/guillermo-lopez/

Bella Palomo (Full Professor in Journalism Studies. University of Malaga). https://www.uma.es/departamento-de-periodismo/info/73080/perfil-bella-palomo/

Dolors Palau-Sampío (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies. University of Valencia). Bio: http://mediaflows.es/en/investigador/dolors-palau/

Eva Campos-Domínguez (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies. University of Valladolid). Bio: http://mediaflows.es/en/investigador/eva-campos/

Pere Masip Masip (Associate Professor in Journalism Studies, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona). Bio: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pere_Masip

CALL FOR CHAPTERS:

Submission procedure

Interested authors should email abstracts of 500-700 words in the form of a word-processed email to Guillermo Lopez (guillermo.lopez@uv.es) or Bella Palomo (bellapalomo@uma.es) no later than 30th of March. Please include the following details:.

• Proposed chapter title
• Author(s) and affiliation details
• Type of contribution (e.g., theoretical, conceptual, methodological, case study)
• Keywords (maximum of 5)

If accepted, full contributions are expected to be a maximum of 5000 words including references.

The fact that an abstract is accepted does not guarantee publication of the final manuscript, as all chapter still undergo a peer-review process.

Each contribution must be original and unpublished work, not submitted for publication elsewhere.

The approximate timeline is as follows:

• Abstract submission deadline: 30 March 2020
• Chapter acceptance notification: 2 April 2020
• Full text submission deadline: 31 July 2020
• Target publication date: May 2021

Helsinki, Finland

September 3-4, 2020

There has been growing discussion on organizational PR & communication ethics in recent years. At the same time the debate on media independence and fake news has increased. We believe that these issues must be addressed, and that you share our commitment to promoting freedom of speech, freedom of press and communication and media ethics.

To initiate an international network on the ethics of communication and media ProCom is organizing an international Communication, PR and Media Ethics Conference in Helsinki on the 3rd and 4th of September 2020. Current and critical issues in communication and media ethics, freedom of speech and media landscape changes are addressed at the conference.

Keynote speakers of the conference are Pulitzer Prize winner and former editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, Executive Director for UK Government Communications, Alex Aiken, author Sofi Oksanen and founder of the constructive journalism movement, Ulrik Haagerup. Several other renowned and award-winning journalists, researchers, practitioners and ethics experts will also be giving speeches.

President of the Republic of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, is the patron of the conference.

ProCom is the main organizer. Key partners include the Councils of Ethics for Communication and PR in Finland, Germany, Austria and ICCO – The International Communications Consultancy Organization. Collaborative partners of the conference include already Unesco, City of Helsinki and Helsingin Sanomat Foundation. Other partners will be announced later.

If HelsinkiEthics2020 is of interest to you, we kindly encourage you to share information about the event in your networks!

Additional information:

Link to the website of the event: https://helsinkiethics2020.com/

Link to a pdf file: Conference program (PDF)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProComRy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/procomry/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/procom-viestinn-n-ammattilaiset-ry

#HelsinkiEthics2020 #ProCom #freedomofspeech #PRethics #democracy #ethics #mediaethics #communicationethics

Content issues: Dr. Elina Melgin, tel. +358408211688 or elina.melgin@procom.fi

Technical issues: Elisa Rouhesmaa, helsinkiethics2020@procom.fi

ProCom – the Finnish Association of Communications Professionals (founded in 1947) – is an organisation for corporate communication and public relations practitioners in Finland. ProCom fosters the professional development of its nearly 3000 members and promotes the value communication provides to society. Members range from industry thought leaders working in strategic leadership positions of major corporations to entry-level practitioners and entrepreneurs.

Media International Australia

Deadline: April 30, 2020

https://journals.sagepub.com/home/mia

Dr. Tom McDonald and Professor Heather A. Horst, Editors

Media of various forms, and the infrastructures and communities that are associated with them, have often been strongly determined by national boundaries. This is particularly the case in the Asia-Pacific region, where media organizations have traditionally been owned by government entities and/or large national conglomerates. At the same time, the movement of people, goods, capital, information and ideas are undergoing shifts and intensifications, owing to broader geopolitical changes, state-led infrastructure projects and the aspirations of individuals and communities shaped by such regional transformations.

Against this context, media flows are being created, worked and reworked, facilitated by new infrastructures, imaginaries and understandings. These flows frequently cross, circumvent or come up against borders, both domestic and international. Online shopping, logistics, blockchain and fin-tech are fostering new cross-border flows of goods and money. Media content is increasingly consumed internationally, posing new opportunities and challenges for media companies, regulators and governments. Users and consumers of the media are also witnessing the reworking of their media environments because of these changes, adopting inventive responses to and adaptations of the media in return.

While much attention has focused on how powerful states seek to exert influence beyond their borders through the promotion of platforms, technologies and services, this special issue challenges dominant narratives of the contemporary moment from the vantage point of the Asia Pacific region and the heterogeneity it embodies. Through attention to the changing circuits of media in the region, this special issue seeks to understand (and explore alternatives to) ‘great power struggle’ narratives by considering the role of local media forms, perspectives and practices in such processes of transformation. Specifically, we ask contributors to consider:

• How are media flows redefining understandings of borders?
• What kinds of novel communities are being created by cross-border media flows?
• What forms of social imaginaries accompany the emergence of new infrastructures from “outside”?
• How are boundaries and borders being made, unmade or remade within and across the Asia-Pacific region?

We are particularly excited to include case studies that address imaginations and infrastructures of cross-border media from across the broader Asia-Pacific region.

About the Editors:

Tom McDonald is a media anthropologist dedicated to using ethnographic engagement to achieve a richer understanding of how digital technologies, media and material culture come to mediate ongoing transformations in the communicative practices, economic behaviours, social relationships and human subjectivities of people in China and beyond. Tom joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong in August 2015. Prior to this, he was a Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology, University College London.

Tom’s first monograph, Social Media in Rural China: Social Networks and Moral Frameworks (2016, UCL Press), details the findings of 15-months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Chinese countryside, examining how social media use reconfigures social relations and morality. A separate co-authored volume, How the World Changed Social Media (2016, UCL Press) expands on the wider findings of the larger comparative UCL Why We Post study, to which my ethnography formed a central contribution.

Tom’s research increasingly focuses on economic concerns, reflecting the rapid convergence between digital money and media in China. His current project examines everyday crossborder money transactions between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Heather A. Horst is the Director of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University in Australia. A sociocultural anthropologist, she researches material culture, mobility, and the mediation of social relations through digital media and technology. Her publications focusing upon these themes include The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication (Horst and Miller, 2006); Hanging Around, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (Ito, et al 2010; 10th anniversary edition published in November 2019); Digital Anthropology (Horst and Miller, eds., 2012); Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices (Pink, Horst, et al 2016); The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography (Horst, Hjorth, Galloway and Bell, eds. 2017); The Moral and Cultural Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Perspectives (Foster and Horst, eds 2018) and Location Technologies in International Context (Wilken, Goggin and Horst, ed. 2019). She has also been the executive producer of two films focused upon mobile media, Mobail Goroka (2018) and Parenting in the Smart Age: Fijian Perspectives (2019), based upon research in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Heather’s current research is focused upon the circulation of protest music in Melanesia through mobile technologies as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage project with the Wantok Foundation and Further Arts Vanuatu. She is also a Chief Investigator on a Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society where she will be examining the role of automated decision in design, creativity and fashion as well as new forms of transport and mobility.

Contact:

• Tom McDonald (mcdonald@hku.hk)
• Heather Horst (h.horst@westernsydney.edu.au)

Proposed Timeline:

• 30 April 2020: Abstracts due for submission to guest editors
• 15 May 2020: Invite to submit full papers sent to selected authors
• 30 July 2020: Full papers due for submission to guest editors
•  30 August 2020: Feedback on full papers sent to selected authors
• 30 September 2020: Full papers due for submission to Media International Australia

Loughborough University

The Midlands Graduate School is an accredited Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). One of 14 such partnerships in the UK, the Midlands Graduate School is a collaboration between the University of Warwick, Aston University, University of Birmingham, University of Leicester, Loughborough University and the University of Nottingham.

Loughborough University as part of Midlands Graduate School is now inviting applications for an ESRC Doctoral Studentship in association with our collaborative partner TechNation to commence in October 2020.

The aim of this studentship is to undertake the first critical academic appraisal of the innovation ecosystem around HealthTech, while at the same time providing an important evidence base for our collaborating organisation, TechNation, a UK based organisation whose mission is to make the UK the best place to imagine, start and grow a digital tech business (see https://technation.io/about-us).

Full details of the studentship, along with eligibility and application details, can be found here:

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BYJ466/esrc-dtp-collaborative-studentship-healthtech-critically-appraising-the-innovation-ecosystem-of-a-transformative-technology

Application deadline: 9am, Monday 2 March 2020

Special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

Deadline: March 16, 2020

Issue 44, Spring 2021

Edited by: Enda Brophy, Max Haiven and Benjamin Anderson

For decades under neoliberalism the circuits of finance have been converging with those of information and communication technologies (ICTs). High-tech and big money are leading poles of capitalist accumulation as they restructure or eliminate other industries, capture and transform a vast gamut of social relations, and generate frenetic activity in the industrial expanse between them—a speculative and unfettered field of development known as “fintech.”

The rise of techno-finance in the first two decades of the twenty-first century presents a paradox. On the one hand, the commanding heights of the financialized, digital economy have come crashing down to earth at regular intervals. The dotcom bubble of 2000, the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, and the widespread revelations regarding surveillance capitalists’ models of data capture in the 2010s have discredited these sectors and their elites. Techno-utopian schemes of “financial inclusion” and the promises of a digitally networked public sphere have increasingly appeared morally, politically and economically dubious, if not bankrupt, when considered next to the social disintegration such models have wreaked on a wide scale.

But if the history of capitalism has taught us anything, it is that crises are hardly a barrier to new frontiers of accumulation. Across the vast industrial intersection of finance and tech, the forging of business plans, technologies, and dreams has been white hot. Mobile lending apps have expanded their reach into the global south, crypto-currency capitalists plan tax-free societies run on blockchain principles, platform companies like Facebook dream up digital currencies beyond state control, and the latest “development” schemes of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (2018) rely on the possibilities of fintech. If the myth that better integration into capitalist markets through the spread of ICTs will ameliorate the ills of that system increasingly rings hollow (see Bernards 2019, Gabor and Brooks 2017, Mader 2016, Manyika 2016), it still proves more than functional in raising capital, marshalling labour, and providing the ideological accelerant for new extractive schemes.

The fields of finance and tech converge in the notion of credit. On the one hand, the financial apparatus is a capitalist system for producing and allocating credit, a system that, today, as Randy Martin (2007) observed, increasingly divides global populations into the celebrated (and creditworthy) “risk-takers” and the discreditable and abject “at risk” populations whose “financial illiteracy” must be policed and contained (see also Haiven 2017). On the other, the notion of “credits” and “accounts” has been borrowed from finance within the infrastructure by which corporate technologies integrate “users” into their digital empires. Here, as Nick Dyer-Witheford (2015) illustrates, labour and life are increasingly disciplined and shaped by one’s accounts within the hyper-securitized micro-economies of a handful of leading ICT corporations. In both cases, the seemingly neutral, benign, or technocratic notion of credit, its actuarial banality, serves to hide or normalize the neocolonial forms of power and violence at work in our financialized society of control. Each form of credit actualizes our enrollment (and the expropriation of our data) within what Shoshana Zuboff (2019) calls “behavioural futures markets.”

Moreover, with the integration of the spheres of finance and digital technology we are witnessing the proliferation of modes of what Jackie Wang (2018) calls “exclusion through financial inclusion” which, as Paula Chakravartty and Denise Ferreira da Silva (2012) note, aim to integrate the wretched of the earth into a sabotaged system (see also Taylor 2019). These and other authors note that we must see this as a continuation of the means by which capitalism has, throughout its history, seen the poor, the colonized, and the racialized as vectors for new experiments in financial technology, debt and economic power (Kish and Leroy 2015, Roy 2012). Meanwhile, as Veronica Gago (2015) and Silvia Federici (2018) point out, the expansion of digitalized global debt, both national and personal, represents a capitalist seizure of the sphere of social reproduction with particularly disastrous impacts on women.

We propose the theme of “Zero Credit” to designate two overlapping conditions which are the starting point of this collection’s focus. First, the familiar situation of having run out of credit, of being cast out from, yet still enmeshed within, the digital circuits of tech/finance. Second, we refer to the emergent situation of the collective calling in of the ‘debts’ of global capitalism in the form of people’s movement against and beyond financialization and the growing demand for radical alternatives to the global financial order: our credit may be at zero but so is our patience. As Frances Negron-Muntaner (Pérez-Rosario 2018) notes, we are in an era marked by the power of unpayable debts, as shown by the imposition of financially-led disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico (see also Klein 2018). The increasingly common condition of perpetual insolvency, of permanent bankruptcy, has become the staging ground for a new moment of anti-capitalist politics (Berardi 2012). What are the possibilities of what Peggy Kamuf (2007) called “accounterability” in the present moment? What are the methods for countering the dominant measurements of accounts or of recounting value, life, the economy or the possibilities of technology otherwise?

For this special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, we seek to map the convergence of ICTs and the debt/finance system, as well as to bring in to view the forces counteracting and organizing alternatives the dreams of fintech. The editors welcome short proposals (250-300 words) for contributions interrogating the intersections of (1) emergent digital frameworks of power; (2) debt regimes, new and old; and (3) the collective resistance of social movements. We are particularly interested in critical examinations of interventions with the following themes:

• Social media scoring and credit-worthiness

• The end of the cryptodream?

• Algorithmic discipline - real and virtual

• “Third World debts” in a digital age

• Racialized subjects of risk

• Subjectivities of default

• Digital currencies from below

• Reparations in a digital context

• Genealogies of digital technology in debt

• Colonial debt/colonial technology

• (Technologies of) mobility and debt

• Social credit and governmental debt/credit systems

• Credit and social power

• Utopian/dystopian credit economies

• Credit and social reproduction

• Credit, belief, faith

• Tax havens and digital offshore

• History of credit ratings

• Migration and debt

• Policy proposals and their dangers

• The temporal debts of extraction

Interested contributors should submit proposals by following this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGGglfMmktB5LjHxx0Ka2-xo5EcSDKlpcY0GvJXbd72_3XRA/viewform?usp=sf_link

The publication timeline is as follows:

• Deadline for abstracts: March 16, 2020

• Decision notification: April 3, 2020

• First drafts due: June 12, 2020

• Revisions due: October 13, 2020

• Anticipated publication date: Spring 2021

Works cited

“The Bali Fintech Agenda : Chapeau Paper.” The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, September 19, 2018. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/390701539097118625/The-Bali-Fintech-Agenda-Chapeau-Paper%20.

Berardi, Franco “Bifo.” The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012.

Bernards, Nick. “Tracing Mutations of Neoliberal Development Governance: ‘Fintech’, Failure and the Politics of Marketization.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 51, no. 7 (October 2019): 1442–59.

Chakravartty, Paula, and Denise Ferreira da Silva. “Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt: The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism—An Introduction.” American Quarterly 64, no. 3 (2012): 361–385.

Dyer-Witheford, Nick. Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex. London: Pluto, 2015.

Federici, Silvia. “Women, Money and Debt: Notes for a Feminist Reappropriation Movement.” Australian Feminist Studies 33, no. 96 (April 3, 2018): 178–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2018.1517249.

Gabor, Daniela, and Sally Brooks. “The Digital Revolution in Financial Inclusion: International Development in the Fintech Era.” New Political Economy 22, no. 4 (July 4, 2017): 423–36.

Gago, Verónica. “Financialization of Popular Life and the Extractive Operations of Capital: A Perspective from Argentina.” South Atlantic Quarterly 114, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2831257.

Haiven, Max. “The Uses of Financial Literacy: Financialization, the Radical Imagination, and the Unpayable Debts of Settler-Colonialism.” Cultural Politics 13, no. 3 (2017): 348–69.

Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe, New York and Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013.

Kamuf, Peggy. “Accounterability,” Textual Practice 21, no. 2 (June 2007): 251–66.

Kish, Zenia, and Justin Leroy. “Bonded Life: Technologies of Racial Finance from Slave Insurance to Philanthrocapital.” Cultural Studies 29, no. 5–6 (2015): 630–51.

Klein, Naomi. The Battle for Paradise. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018.

Mader, Philip. “Card Crusaders, Cash Infidels and the Holy Grails of Digital Financial Inclusion.” BEHEMOTH - A Journal on Civilisation 9, no. 2 (December 2016): 59–81.

Martin, Randy. An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management. Durham NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007.

Manyika, James, Susan Lund, Marc Singer, Olivia White, and Chris Berry. “Digital Finance for All: Powering Inclusive Growth in Emerging Economies.” McKinsey Global Institute, September 2016.

Pérez-Rosario, Vanessa. “Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy An Interview with Frances Negrón-Muntaner.” Small Axe (blog), June 18, 2018. http://smallaxe.net/sxlive/unpayable-debt-capital-violence-and-new-global-economy-interview-frances-negron-muntaner.

Roy, Ananya. “Subjects of Risk: Technologies of Gender in the Making of Millennial Modernity.” Public Culture 24, no. 1 66 (April 16, 2012): 131–55.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Wang, Jackie. Carceral Capitalism. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2018.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. New York: Public Affairs, 2019.