ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Special Issue of Digital Journalism

Deadline: December 1, 2019

Although news consumption has become increasingly central to academic debates about journalism, research that starts explicitly from an emic perspective and the everyday experiences of news users remains relatively rare. The aim of this special issue is to further understanding of how the digitalization of journalism has changed and continues to shape everyday news use. Advancing the audience turn in journalism requires new theories, new concepts and new methods that can help grasp these changes and their implications for journalism.

We are looking for papers related to one or more of the four topics below. We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions that take practices and experiences of everyday news use as point of departure. We welcome comparative and single-country studies from all regions, including the Global South.

1. We encourage submissions to tackle the challenge of both capturing and making sense of everyday news use in a rapidly changing media environment. First, how can we develop methods and measures that do (more) justice to the complexity and multilayerdness of news use? Second, how can we use theories and concepts from other disciplines (e.g., anthropology, human-computer interaction) to enhance our understanding of everyday news use and users’ experiences of news?

2. We invite submissions that consider the socially-integrative potentialities of news, bridging the private world of individuals and the public space of collective entities. In the light of political polarization, populism, and other current challenges to democracy, how do people currently perceive journalism’s civic value? How can the ability of news and journalism to facilitate public connection be understood from the perspective of the news user? How can new formats, forms of storytelling and interactive functionalities be employed to bring the news in such a way that it connects to people’s lifeworld and (public) frame of reference?

3. This special issue also considers how young people understand and make sense of news. Young people say they turn to professional journalism and legacy news media to learn about news issues, but their actual news habits hardly reflect this. Rather, their news sources include many other genres, such as political entertainment, podcasts and blogs, and although critical of the trustworthiness of social media, it is still an important source of news which they make sense of through affective and social processes and contexts. How can we understand such conflicting scenarios and better grasp the orientations, practices and contexts through which young people understand and give meaning to news?

4. Finally, the contemporary practice and study of journalism is governed by a participatory ideal. Although it is technically possible for news users to participate in various stages of news production, research on digital news consumption has taught us that users are reluctant to participate in the news production process. This raises several questions about the feasibility or even desirability of the democratic ideal of participation. What are the kind of news production practices audiences themselves ignore or wish to take part in? What would participatory journalism ideally look like from an audience perspective?

Information about Submissions

Proposals should include the following:

1) an abstract of 500-750 words (not including references)

2) an abbreviated bio that describes previous and current research that relates to the special issue theme (250 words)

Please submit your proposal as one file (PDF), with your names clearly stated in the file name and the first page. Send your proposal to the e-mail address cfpaudienceturn@news-use.com by the date stated in timeline below. Authors of accepted proposals are expected to develop and submit their original article, for full blind review, in accordance with the journal’s peer-review procedure, by the deadline stated. Articles should target 7,000-8,000 words in length. Guidelines for manuscripts can be found here: http://www.news-use.com/?page_id=832

Timeline

• Abstract submission deadline: December 1, 2019
• Notification on submitted abstracts: early January 2020
• Article submission deadline: June 15, 2020

Editorial information

Guest Editors: Joëlle Swart, Tim Groot Kormelink, Irene Costera Meijer, Marcel Broersma

December 13–14, 2019

School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Anglo-American University, Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline for Paper Proposals: November 1, 2019

The 7th Euroacademia International Conference ‘Re-Inventing Eastern Europe’ aims to make a case and to provide alternative views on the dynamics, persistence and manifestations of practices of alterity making that take place in Europe and broadly in the mental mappings of the world.

It offers an opportunity for scholars, activists and practitioners to identify, discuss, and debate the multiple dimensions in which specific narratives of alterity making towards Eastern Europe preserve their salience today in re-furbished and re-fashioned manners. The conference aims to look at the processes of alterity making as puzzles and to address the persistence of the East-West dichotomies.

Not a long time ago, in 2010, a British lady was considered bigoted by Gordon Brown upon asking ‘Where do all these Eastern Europeans come from?’. Maybe, despite her concern with the dangers of immigration for Britain, the lady was right in showing that such a question still awaits for answers in Europe. The ironic thing however is that a first answer to such a question would point to the fact that the Eastern Europeans come from the Western European imaginary. As Iver Neumann puts it, ‘regions are invented by political actors as a political programme, they are not simply waiting to be discovered’. And, as Larry Wolff skillfully showed, Eastern Europe is an invention emanated initially from the intellectual agendas of the elites of the Enlightenment that later found its peak of imaginary separation during the Cold War.

The Economist, explicitly considered Eastern Europe to be wrongly labeled and elaborated that ‘it was never a very coherent idea and it is becoming a damaging one’. The EU enlargement however, was expected to make the East – West division obsolete under the veil of a prophesied convergence. That would have finally proven the non-ontologic, historically contingent and unhappy nature of the division of Europe and remind Europeans of the wider size of their continent and the inclusive and empowering nature of their values.

Yet still, 30 years after the revolutions in the Central and Eastern European countries, Leon Mark, while arguing that the category of Eastern Europe is outdated and misleading, bitterly asks a still relevant question: ‘will Europe ever give up the need to have an East?’

Eastern Europe was invented as a region and continues to be re-invented from outside and inside. From outside its invention was connected with alterity making processes, and, from inside the region, the Central and Eastern European countries got into a civilizational beauty contest themselves in search of drawing the most western profile: what’s Central Europe, what’s more Eastern, what’s more Ottoman, Balkan, Byzantine, who is the actual kidnapped kid of the West, who can build better credentials by pushing the Easterness to the next border. A wide variety of scholars addressed the western narratives of making the Eastern European other as an outcome of cultural politics of enlightenment, as an effect of EU’s need to delineate its borders, as an outcome of its views on security , or as a type of ‘orientalism’ or post-colonialism. Most of these types of approaches are still useful in analyzing the persistence of an East-West slope. The region is understood now under a process of convergence, socialization and Europeanization that will have as outcomes an ‘ever closer union’ where the East and the West will fade away as categories. Yet the reality is far from such an outcome while the persistence of categories of alterity making towards the ‘East’ is not always dismantled. The discourse on core-periphery, new Europe/old Europe is rather gaining increasing ground in the arena of European identity narratives often voiced by the EU.

The conference aims to address globally or through case studies the diversity and change within the CEE region 30 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The conference is organized yet by no means restricted to the following topics:

• The Agenda of the Enlightenment: Inventing Eastern Europe
• Thinking Eastern Europe: Contributions to Understanding an Invented Region
• Europe East and West: On the Persistence of the Division
• Reviewing Alternative Modernities: East and West
• Europe and the Inclusive/Exclusive Nexus
• Mental Mappings on Eastern Europe
• People-ing the Eastern Europeans
• Geopolitical Views on the East-West Division
• Post-colonial readings of Eastern Europe
• Making Borders to the East: Genealogies of Othering
• Europe as Seen from its East
• Myths and Misconceptions on Eastern Europe
• Social Causes and the Pursuit of Social Beliefs in Central and Eastern Europe
• Protest and Social Change in Central and Eastern Europe
• Central Europe vs. Eastern Europe
• Reading the Past: On Memory and Memorialization
• The Eastern European ‘Other’ Inside the European Union
• Core Europe/Non-Core Europe
• European Values and the Process of Europeanization of Eastern Europe as Pedagogy
• Assessing Convergence in Eastern Europe
• Explaining Divergence and Diversity in Eastern Europe
• Central and Eastern Europe and the EU
• Scenarios for the Future of Eastern Europe
• Debating the End of European Solidarity
• Eastern Europe and Asymmetries of Europeanization
• Re-making Eastern Europe: Pushing the Easterness to the Next Border
• From the Ottoman Empire to Russia: Cultural Categories in the Making of Eastern Europe
• Go West! Migration from Eastern Europe and Experiences of ‘Othering’
• Explaining the Growth of Far Right Movements and Populist Parties in Eastern Europe
• Lifestyles and the Quotidian Peculiarities of the Invented East
• Europe and the Logic of Growth through Austerity: The Impact on Eastern Europe of the Crises
• Visual Representation of Eastern Europe in Film: From Dracula to Barbarian Kings
• Guidebooks for the Savage Lands: Representations of Eastern Europe in Travel Guides
• Urban Landscapes in Eastern Europe
• Religion and Politics in Eastern Europe
• European Narratives of the Past: The Mnemonic/Amnesic Nexuses
• Eastern European Literature and Authors
• Changing Politics and the Transformation of Cities in Eastern Europe
• Eastern Europe and Artistic Movements
• Writing about the East in West
• Writing about the West in East
• The Eastern European ‘Other’ Inside the European Union
• The Formation of European Subaltern Identities
• Europe and Russia
• European Diplomacy and Consensus in Foreign Policy: What Role for Eastern Europe?
• Feminist & Queer Readings of Contemporary Eastern Europe
• Gender Politics in CEE
• Illiberal States – From Negative Determinants to a Self-Affirming Ideology and State Positioning
• Anti-Immigration, Nationalism and Far Right Parties in Central and Eastern Europe
• Migration Routes and New Walls in CEE
• Assessing the Quality of Democracy and Convergence in the Region

DEADLINE FOR 300 WORDS ABSTRACTS SUBMISSION IS 1ST OF NOVEMBER 2019

For on-line application and complete information on the event, please see: http://euroacademia.eu/conference/7th-reinventing-eastern-europe/

The 300 words titled abstract and details of affiliation can also be sent to application@euroacademia.org with the name of the conference specified in the subject line. We will acknowledge the receipt of all proposals. In case you received no confirmation in one day after applying on-line, please re-send your abstract by e-mail as well.

Bremen: edition lumière

Edited by Maria Francesca Murru, Fausto Colombo, Laura Peja, Simone Tosoni, Richard Kilborn, Risto Kunelius, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Leif Kramp and Nico Carpentier

We're pleased to announce that our new ECREA Summer School book is now also available free to download at http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/

This is the direct link to the book's pdf: http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/SuSobook2018.pdf

Individual chapters can be downloaded here: http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/TOC_book14.html

This book, the fourteenth in the Researching and Teaching Communication Book Series launched in 2006, stems from the communal intellectual work of the lecturers, the students and the alumni of the 2018 edition of the European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School (SuSo).

The book gives an account of the plurality of research interests and analytical perspectives that the SuSo community values as its main asset. What was especially apparent in this year’s cluster of contributions is that our field of study integrates a wide variety of media technologies (ranging from old to new), demonstrating that contemporary societies are not characterized by the replacement of technologies, but by the always unique articulations, integrations and intersections of old and new. The book is structured in four sections:

1) Theories and Concepts

2) Media and the Construction of Social Reality

3) Mediatizations

4) Media, Health and Sociability

Contributors are: Fatoş Adiloğlu, Magnus Andersson, Nico Carpentier, Xu Chen, Vaia Doudaki, Edgard Eeckman, Timo Harjuniemi, Kari Karppinen, Alyona Khaptsova, Ludmila Lupinacci, Fatma Nazlı Köksal, Ondrej Pekacek, Michael Skey, Piia Tammpuu, Ruben Vandenplas, Konstanze Wegmann and Karsten D. Wolf. The book additionally contains abstracts of the doctoral projects that were discussed at the 2018 European Media Communication Doctoral Summer School.

The book was published by edition lumière, Bremen (http://www.editionlumiere.de). The book is a part of the Researching and Teaching Communication Series, edited by Nico Carpentier and Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (see http://www.researchingcommunication.eu). The publishing of this book was supported by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) and the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).

April 16-18,2020

Helsinki, Finland

Deadline: November 30, 2019

"Those who write and make images will have to become envisioners" (Vilém Flusser)

The conference brings together international photography researchers, artists and practitioners. It offers various platforms where artistic, philosophical, social and technological approaches to photography can meet.

The theme “Images Among Us” refers to the roles of photographic images in a world that is vibrant, transitory and overcharged by affects. The contours and borders of media rearrange themselves in virtual and material environments in various platforms and social spaces. The flicker of their dividing lines becomes intermittently vague and distinct. In this dense historical assemblage, the photographic image itself has become disintegrated and embedded in different media.

Evidently, the present condition is difficult to access through our customary photographic categories and thinking. Photographic images are much more than familiar mediators between the world and ourselves. They have become simultaneously comforting and threatening. Photographic operations have become more and more elusive, with photography becoming less and less reducible to its myriad uses and capacities. However, enduring ontological questions on the essence, materiality and origins of photography have become more significant than ever. For example, photographs still possess traces of the evidential currency that has defined much of photography’s history.

Helsinki Photomedia 2020 invites alternative formulations, critical observations, artistic reflections and presentations of photography projects that react to the present photographic condition in various ways, seeking to instigate productive dialogues.

We invite you to address and challenge these concerns from the perspective of your practice, guided by the following intertwined subthemes:

Theme 1. Artistic Practices

What is the role of photographic art in the present media environment? How is the intimacy of singular imaging practices possible within contemporary visual abundance? How can artistic research contribute? Is the task of the artist to describe and understand or to critically engage? What documentary strategies and imaginary fictions have become most pressing?

Theme 2. Technologies & Cultures

The track technologies and cultures is particularly interested in the intertwinements between visual and material photographic practices. Exemplary questions include, but are not limited to: How are our understandings of photographic images altered by technologies, both “old” and “new”? What kinds of cultural effects do specific technologies have, and how in turn do particular cultures form what photographic technologies are understood to be? What is the relation of photographic technologies to various ecological concerns, to issues of privacy, or understandings of ethical use?

Theme 3. Critical Approaches

What does the concept of “critical” mean (or potentially mean) in the context of contemporary photography? What kinds of current critical photographic practices do we find in the realms of gender, migration, climate change, politics and media? How has the problem of critical practices been articulated in social and political theories of photography? How do the production of visual knowledge and critical practices relate to each other in the “post-truth” era?

Important dates

• 30.11.2019 – Deadline for submissions (500 word abstracts) by 23.59 Finnish time (UCT +2:00)
• Notification of Acceptance will be sent in December 2019
• 31.03 2019 – Deadline for conference registration
• 16-18.04.2020 – Conference at Aalto University

https://helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi

https://twitter.com/Photomedia2020

https://www.facebook.com/HelsinkiPhotomedia/

CONTACT:

• info-hpm-2020@aalto.fi
• submissions-hpm-2020@aalto.fi

December 5, 2019

Middlesex University, UK

Symposium and a plenary session will be open to the public. If you would like to attend the plenary session, please book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/media-and-economic-inequality-tickets-76877274999

Plenary session, HG19, Middlesex University, Hendon, London.

5.30-6.30pm.

• Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in economics.
• Vince Cable, Lib Dem leader 2017-19.
• Ben Chu, economics editor, BBC's Newsnight.

Limited places are still available for the symposium; please email Sophie Knowles S.Knowles@mdx.ac.uk if you wish to book a place.

Symposium, Barn 1 and 2, Middlesex University, Hendon, London.

10am-4.30pm

Panel 1 Interrogating Economic Inequality.

10am-12pm

• John Hills, Professor, Social Policy, LSE.
• Robert Joyce, Deputy Director, Institute of Fiscal Studies.
• Carys Roberts, Head of Economic Justice, IPPR
• Duncan Exley, Author, The end of aspiration? Former Head of Equality Trust.
• Martin Schuerz, Head of Monetary Unit, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Vienna.

Discussant: Steve Schifferes, Professor emeritus, City Uni

Panel 2 Representations of Inequality in the Press

1pm-2.30pm

• Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Author Poor News. Professor, Northwestern University, Qatar.
• Joanna Mack, Author, Breadline Britain. Open University.
• Peter Golding, Author of many titles including Public attitudes to poverty. Professor Emeritus, Northumbria University.
• Andrea Grisold, Professor, WU Vienna. Head of Institute for Institutional and Heterodox Economics.

Discussant: Anya Schiffrin, Director of Technology, Communications, Columbia University.

Panel 3 Political and Public Discourse on Inequality

3pm-4.30pm

• Mike Berry, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University School of Journalism.
• Aaron Reeves, Associate Professorial Research Fellow, LSE and Oxford.
• Elizabeth Clery, Research Director, Nat Cen.
• Jonathan Mijs, Associate Professorial Research Fellow, LSE and Harvard.

Discussant: Aeron Davis, Professor, Political Communication, Goldsmiths.

Special Issue  of Contracampo: Brazilian Journal of Communication

Deadline: November 11, 2019

Guest Editors: Rafael Grohmann (Unisinos University, Brazil) and Jack Qiu (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Contracampo: Brazilian Journal of Communication, an open access journal, invites submissions to our special issue “Platform Labor”. We ask: what are the contributions of communication research to understand platform/digital labor or platformization of labor? The special issue encourages submissions of articles that explore one or more of the following issues:

• How platformization affects work;
• Working conditions on digital platforms;
• Communication as labor/work in platform capitalism;
• Social class and collective formation among platform workers;
• Gender and race inequalities in platform labor;
• International division of digital labor and global gig economy;
• Platform labor in the Global South;
• Surveillance and privacy of workers in platform capitalism;
• Value theory and social classes in platform capitalism;
• Human work and artificial intelligence;
• Data labor and algorithmic labor;
• Algorithmic management in platform labor;
• Microwork and free labor on digital platforms;
• Silicon Valley ideology and digital labor;
• Media representations and circulation of meanings on platform labor;
• Mediatization and datafication of labor;
• Political economy of communication and platform labor;
• Alternatives to the digital labor scenario;
• Collective organization of platform workers;
• Platform Cooperativism and worker-owned platforms;
• Regulation and ethical guidelines of platform labor;
• Digital labor and environmental sustainability.

Articles must be between 5000 and 8000 words in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese and must be submitted by the journal's website: http://periodicos.uff.br/contracampo/

Please send any inquiries to rafaelgrohmann@unisinos.br or jacklqiu@cuhk.edu.hk

Edited by Simone Natale and Diana Pasulka

Oxford University Press

Believing in Bits advances the idea that religious beliefs and practices have become inextricably linked to the functioning of digital media. How did we come to associate things such as mindreading and spirit communications with the functioning of digital technologies? How does the internet’s capacity to facilitate the proliferation of beliefs blur the boundaries between what is considered fiction and fact? Addressing these and similar questions, the volume challenges and redefines established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the supernatural.

“Human beings and their technological creations, including and especially their modern digital technologies, reflect, express, and intensify their fundamental strangeness. Scholars have long known that the history of religions is intimately related to the history of technology, from the ancient practices of agriculture, writing, the domestication of the horse, and the forging of iron, to the more recent invention of the printing press and the telegraph and telephone. This book takes that key insight into the present and near future, to the cell phone in your pocket, the computer game on your screen, and the VR system strapped around your skull. This book takes that key insight into the human-techno cyborg that is you.”

Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions

“Believing in Bitsis a guide to why media technologies are magical: they create beliefs, manipulate thoughts, make us see things. After reading this wonderful collection of essays, you realize why the most natural thing about media is that they are supernatural. This book is full of media archaeological joys and insightful contemporary readings.”

Jussi Parikka, Professor of Technological Culture & Aesthetics, University of Southampton

Simone Natale is a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University, UK.

Diana Pasulka is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington,and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

Purchase here.

More here

The European Journal of Health Communication (EJHC) is a peer-reviewed open access journal for high-quality health communication research with relevance for Europe or specific European countries. The journal aims to represent the international character of health communication research given the cultural, political, economic, and academic diversity in Europe.

EJHC presents the full breadth of health communication research. It will publish articles that relate to the following health communication issues with an emphasis on the relevance for Europe:

• Media issues, such as media coverage of health topics, health literacy, information seeking behaviour, usage and effects of health messages;
• Strategic issues, focusing on communication strategies and prevention campaigns, narrowcasting health messages, and health public relations;
• Health technologies issues, such as usage and effects of novel health technologies, communicative challenges related to novel technologies, e-health, telemedicine;
• Social and community issues, such as health-related interpersonal communication, social influence and support, as well as community health risk management;
• Patient-provider issues, such as determinants, content, and outcomes of patient-provider interactions, communication skills, or trust and disclosure in interactions;
• Intercultural issues, such as health communication for ethnic minorities, challenges of intercultural health communication, and cross-cultural differences in health communication issues;
• Methodological issues, comprising methodological innovations and challenges in current health communication research, both qualitative and quantitative approaches;
• Academic issues, such as self-observations and introspective studies in the field of health communication.

Article Types

EJHC publishes original research papers, theoretical and methodological papers, review articles and living reviews, as well as brief research reports in English.

• Original research papers report empirical studies (based on quantitative and/or qualitative methods) and range between 5,000 and 7,000 words (plus abstract, notes, tables and figures, references, and supplements).
• Theoretical papers present innovative theories and models for health communication. The specifications are the same as for original research papers.
• Methodological papers focus on methodological issues relevant for the discipline (e.g., tracking health data). The specifications are the same as for original research papers.
• Review articles systematize the existing literature or present a meta-analysis of published results or multiple data sets. The specifications are the same as for original research papers.
• Living reviews are updated versions of review articles. They need to incorporate the research that has been published since its original/last publication and underline the development and its relevance to the field. The updated version will also be peer reviewed (single blind) and published as new article with its own DOI.
• Brief research reports focus on methods, such as the development of a new questionnaire, or they may feature small empirical studies. They contain up to 3,000 words, excluding abstract, notes, tables and figures, references, and supplements.

As an online journal, EJHC is able to publish all types of electronic supplements. The idea of supplements is to provide information that are not essential for the basic understanding of the article but nevertheless provide the reader with additional insight to instruments, measures, datasets, statistical models etc.

Peer Review Process

All articles undergo a rigorous peer review process. Once the paper has been assessed as appropriate by the editors (with regard to form, content, and quality), it will be peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers in a double-blind review process, meaning that reviewers are not disclosed to authors, and authors are not disclosed to reviewers. To ensure short review and publication processes, EJHC builds on a broad editorial structure and immediately publishes articles online after their acceptance.

Pre-Registration

As an alternative to the traditional article types and review process, EJHC provides the opportunity to “pre-register” original research before data collection. For this purpose, authors are called to submit a proposal for a scientific question, presenting the theoretical background, hypotheses, and a detailed methods and analysis plan (up to 4,000 words). The proposal will be reviewed and if it is evaluated positively, the study receives an “in principle” acceptance. After completion of the study, authors submit the second part of their work presenting and discussing their results (additional maximum of 1,000 to 2,500 words). Though the second part will undergo a review round (to evaluate whether the results and discussion sections meet the standards of the journal), the manuscript will be published regardless of whether the hypotheses are supported or not.

Open Access Strategy

Academic research is publicly funded and both editors and reviewers work voluntarily. Therefore, EJHC supports the idea of open science and will be established as a platinum standard open access journal. This means that neither the users nor the authors will be charged. This open access strategy will heighten the visibility of the European field of health communication and ensure that authors obtain the maximum possible exposure for their work. Articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Indexing

All articles will receive a unique digital object identifier (DOI). This will ensure their unambiguous identification by databases, search engines, and other researchers. After its launch, the journal aims to be listed in the relevant indices of its field. The editors will manage the journal with the aim to qualify the journal for the relevant indices.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
• Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
• The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
• The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

May 14-15, 2020

Dijon, France

Deadline (EXTENDED): October 31, 2019

In recent years, social tensions linked to national, religious and ethnic identities have made the headlines in many countries, often linked to migration, as this “other globalization” (Wolton, 2003) brings the not-so-exotic “Other” ever closer in our cosmopolitan societies. For decades now, scholars have denounced the way in which the notion of culture has been exploited and misused in the public sphere, in support of various causes grounded in majority or minority identity discourse, by various groups defending or promoting national/nationalist, regional/regionalist, postcolonial, religious or other agendas, and resorting to “culture speak” (Hannerz, 1999). However, despite repeated warnings against rigid and “essentialised” uses of the concept of culture, these same social discourses and the identity phenomena motivating them seem to resist and even to grow stronger.

In the wake of the postmodern turn in anthropology (Clifford & Marcus, 1986) and in cultural studies (Hall, 1997), intercultural communication scholars have gradually shifted towards a more dynamic conception of culture as a communication process on the microsocial level (Dervin, 2011; Holliday, 2016). There appears to be a consensus emerging among many researchers within the field, as to the necessity of “deconstructing” the notion of culture by adopting more “liquid” (Bauman, 2011) or “fluid” (Ogay & Edelmann, 2016) perspectives, and such approaches have progressively been applied to associated fields, such as management studies (Primecz, Romani & Sackmann, 2011), public relations (Carayol & Frame, 2012; Frame & Ihlen, 2018), education science (Ogay & Edelmann, 2016; Tremion & Dervin, 2018), media studies (Sommier, 2017), and migration studies (Frame, 2018). And yet, paradoxically, solid discourses about “cultural” identities appear to be becoming more resistant in the public sphere. Reductive, xenophobic populist discourse, on the one hand, but also accusations of cultural appropriation and minority identity movements on the other, seem to threaten social cohesion in political models based on British or North-American multiculturalism or indeed the French republican model of integration, as well as in many other areas of the world affected by perceived “migration crises.”

But could it be that these two opposing views – fluid and solid approaches to culture – actually work to strengthen one another? In a context where the legitimacy of “experts” is increasingly being challenged, a process catalysed by the trends of fact-checking, “fake news” and the fragmentation of the digital public sphere, academic discourse is frequently discredited, falling victim to the social constructionist relativism it extols. It seems to reflect less and less the social consciousness of those parts of the world population who feel they have been left behind in the rush towards globalization.

What is needed to reconcile these two extremes, to enable academics to re-engage with social debate and reduce the apparent gap between prevailing discourses within the ivory tower and those spread in society at large, amplified by the media and some politicians? Even if we deconstruct and show certain uses of the notion of culture to be oversimplified and hegemonic from an academic point of view, we must also take into account the fact that such “culture speak” makes sense to many people thinking about identity in their everyday interactions (Holliday, 2015). To address this gap we might examine possible points of convergence between critical approaches to culture in intercultural communication (Dervin & Machart, 2015; Nakayama & Halualani, 2010; Romani et al., 2018) and in postcolonial or critical cultural studies, which have long been interested in the (de)construction and repression of identity discourse notably within minority groups (Gilroy, 1987; Hall & Du Gay, 1996).

How should we understand interculturality in the light of increasingly strongly-expressed identity claims on the one hand, and of assigned “prison identities” (Abdallah-Pretceille, 2006) on the other?

How should we take into account these “cultural identities” which are experienced, emotionallycharged, and which give meaning to everyday social interactions?

Even if all communication is intercultural because of our multiple social identities (Dacheux, 1999; Lahire, 2001), interculturalists must also engage with social discourse about culture and the social psychological mechanisms it implies, and not simply reject it as oversimplified. By dismissing it, we only continue to widen the gap between scholarly discourse and the social reality which it seeks to analyse. The aim of this 2-day conference isto focus on this gap and addresssocial discourse on cultural identities, with the following objectives:

• To analyse social discourse on cultural identities (populist political speeches, media coverage of migration, cultural appropriation, reification of cultural forms through heritage, banal nationalism, institutional racism…) in order to better grasp underlying theoretical models and the conceptual and psychological mechanisms involved in this discourse.

• To propose methods (research activities, awareness-raising, training tools…) to better engage with social debate around those questions.

• To study the areas of convergence and possible synergies, in relation to these questions, between critical cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and intercultural communication.

• To open a space of dialogue between anglophone and francophone intellectual traditions in intercultural communication research, focusing particularly on critical approaches, applied to a  variety of types and levels of cultural phenomena, without geographical limits.

This conference will take place in Dijon, on May 14th and 15th 2020. It is organized by the University of Burgundy (“Text-Image-Language” research group) and supported by the ECREA International and Intercultural Communication division and SAES. Conference languages will be English and French with mediation provided between the two languages.

Paper proposals of around 800 words, including a short bibliography, in English or French, should be submitted via the conference website (http://blog.u-bourgogne.fr/aci2020/) by 1 st October 2019 for double-blind peer review. A selection of submitted texts will be published either in an edited volume or a journal special issue after the event.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

• Fred Dervin (University of Helsinki)
• Vincent Latour (University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès)
• Laurence Romani (Stockholm School of Economics)
• Gavan Titley (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)

Scientific Committee

• Eric Agbessi, Clermont Auvergne University
• Nathalie Auger, Montpellier 3 Paul Valéry University
• Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz, University of Bremen
• Christoph Barmeyer, University of Passau
• Jean-Jacques Boutaud, University of Burgundy
• Valérie Carayol, Bordeaux Montaigne University
• Lilian Ciachir, University of Bucharest
• Robert Geisler, University of Opole
• Mélanie Joseph Vilain, University of Burgundy
• Malgorzata Lahti, University of Jyväskylä
• Vincent Latour, Toulouse Jean Jaurès University
• Éric Maigret, Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 University
• Will Noonan, University of Burgundy
• Tania Ogay, University of Fribourg
• Philippe Pierre, Paris Dauphine University
• Saila Poutiainen, University of Helsinki
• Nadine Rentel, University of Applied Sciences Zwickau
• Laurence Romani, Stockholm School of Economics
• Sébastien Rouquette, Clermont Auvergne University
• Claire Scopsi, CNAM, Paris
• Marko Siitonen, University of Jyväskylä
• Helen Spencer-Oatey, University of Warwick
• Christoph Vatter, Saarland University
• Jacco Van Sterkenburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Albin Wagener, Campus Tech
• Jacques Walter, University of Lorraine
• Michal Wanke, University of Opole
• Carsten Wilhelm, University of Haute Alsace
• Romy Woehlert, German Institute for Economic Research
• Khaled Zouari, Clermont Auvergne University

Organising Committee

• David Bousquet (Associate Professor, Cultural Studies, University of Burgundy)
• Alex Frame (Associate Professor, Communication Science, University of Burgundy)
• Mélodine Sommier (Assistant Professor, Intercultural Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Calendar

Deadline for abstract submission 31st October 2019

Feedback from scientific committee January 2020

Texts submitted for inclusion in digital conference proceedings 15th April 2020

Conference 14th -15th May 2020

Selected final papers submitted for publication September 2020

Conference fees

Full rate: 200€

Student rate: 90€

The registration fees include all the conference materials, coffee breaks and lunch, and social programme with the exception of the conference dinner.

http://blog.u-bourgogne.fr/aci2020/

aci2020ub@gmail.com

References

Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2006). L’interculturel comme paradigme pour penser le divers. Presented at Congreso internacional de educacion internacional, Madrid, 15-17 March 2006.

Bauman, Z. (2011). Culture in a Liquid Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (Ed.). (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dacheux, E. (1999). La communication : point aveugle de l’interculturel ? Bulletin de l’ARIC, 31, 2.

Dervin, F. (2011). A plea for change in research on intercultural discourses: A ‘liquid’ approach to the study of the acculturation of Chinese students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 6(1), 37‑52. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2010.532218

Dervin, F., & Machart, R. (Ed.). (2015). Cultural Essentialism in Intercultural Relations. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Frame, A. (2018). Repenser l’intégration républicaine à l’aune de l’interculturalité. Communiquer. Revue de Communication Sociale et Publique, 24(1), 59–79.

Frame, A., & Ihlen, Ø. (2018). Beyond the Cultural Turn: A Critical Perspective on Culture-Discourse within Public Relations. In S. Bowman, A. Crookes, S. Romenti, & Ø. Ihlen (Eds.), Public

Relations and the Power of Creativity: strategic opportunities (pp. 151–162). New York: Emerald.

Gilroy, P. (1987). There ain't no black in the Union Jack. London: Routledge.

Hall, S., & Du Gay, P. (Eds.). (1996). Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage Publications.

Hall, S. (Ed.). (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage Publications.

Hannerz, U. (1999). Reflections on varieties of culturespeak. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), 393‑407. https://doi.org/10.1177/136754949900200306

Holliday, A. (2015). Afterword. In F. Dervin & R. Machart (Ed.), Cultural Essentialism in Intercultural Relations (pp. 198‑202). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Holliday, A. (2016). Difference and awareness in cultural travel: Negotiating blocks and threads.

Language and Intercultural Communication, 16(3), 318–331.

Lahire, B. (2001). L’homme pluriel : Les ressorts de l’action. Paris: Armand Colin / Nathan.

Nakayama, T. K., & Halualani, R. T. (Ed.). (2010). The handbook of critical intercultural communication. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ogay, T., & Edelmann, D. (2016). ‘Taking culture seriously’: implications for intercultural education and training. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 388-400. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2016.1157160

Primecz, H., Romani, L., & Sackmann, S. (Eds.). (2011). Cross-cultural management in practice: Culture and negotiated meanings. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar.

Romani, L., Mahadevan, J., & Primecz, H. (2018). Critical Cross-Cultural Management: Outline and Emerging Contributions. International Journal of Management and Organisation, 48, 403-418. https://doi.org/10.1080/00208825.2018.1504473

Sommier, M. (2017). Insights into the construction of cultural realities: Foreign newspaper discourses about the burkini ban in France. Ethnicities, 19(2), 251–270.

Tremion, V., & Dervin, F. (2018). De Cultura aux MOOCs de communication interculturelle : Quelles opportunités pour l’apprentissage interculturel à distance ? Revue internationale du elearning et la formation à distance, 33(1).

Wolton, D. (2003). L’autre mondialisation. Paris: Flammarion.

Monash university

Deadline: October 30, 2019

Job No.: 599192

Location: Caulfield campus

Employment Type: Full-time

Duration: 2-year fixed-term appointment

Remuneration: $97,203 - $115,429 pa Level B (plus 17% employer superannuation)

Everyone needs a platform to launch a satisfying career. At Monash, we give you the space and support to take your career in all kinds of exciting new directions. You’ll have access to quality research, infrastructure and learning facilities, opportunities to collaborate, as well as the support needed to publish your work. We’re a university full of energetic and enthusiastic minds, driven to challenge what’s expected, expand what we know, and learn from other inspiring, empowering thinkers.

The Opportunity

Monash Arts is one of the most dynamic Arts faculties in the world, the School of Media, Film and Journalism was formed in 2014 and conducts research in the media and communication studies, film and screen studies, and journalism. We are currently recruiting for a Post-Doctoral Research fellow to join us on an exciting research project.

Centred on the global communication of environmental issues and sustainability, this appointment will develop and complete a two-year research project investigating the environmental and sustainability programs of the International Olympic Committee, including communication, features, performance and impacts.

The successful applicant will contribute in the following ways:

• Conducting research either as a member of a team or independently
• Contribution to the preparation of research proposals submissions to external funding bodies
• Administrative functions related to the area of research
• Contribution to the teaching program
• Co-supervision of major honours or masters-by-coursework research

This role is a full-time position; however, flexible working arrangements may be negotiated.

At Monash University, we are committed to being a Child Safe organisation. Some positions at the University will require the incumbent to hold a valid Working with Children Check.

Your application must include your highest quality research output to date, as well as addressing teaching experience in cover letter, please refer to “How to apply for Monash Jobs”.

Enquiries

Professor Brett Hutchins – Head of School, School of Media, Film and Journalism, brett.hutchins@monash.edu

Position Description

Download it here: http://careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/599192/postdoctoral-research-fellow-in-environmental-communication-and-media

Closing Date: Wednesday 30 October 2019, 11:55 pm AEDT