ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

July 3, 2019

Birmingham, UK

The third annual RGS-IBG Digital Geographies Research Group Symposium will be taking place at the University of Birmingham on 3rd July 2019, examining the Geographies of Gaming and VR.

Since Atari released Pong in 1972 the video game industry has evolved rapidly, with an estimated global value of $137.9 billion in 2018 (Newzoo, 2018). Considering the size of the sector and notwithstanding important exceptions (e.g. Ash & Gallacher 2011, Shaw & Sharp 2013), gaming has received surprisingly little attention from geographers. VR, meanwhile, has been periodically hyped as the next big thing in technology for over thirty years. The immersive qualities of VR drive a particularly compelling experience of virtual space, yet VR has been relatively neglected by geographers (although see Hillis, 1996, Fisher and Unwin, 2002). In recent years VR has been boosted by significant investments from tech giants such as Facebook, Sony and Microsoft and is gaining traction in both consumer and professional contexts as a platform for games, socialisation and immersive media.

The programme for this event has now been finalised, and tickets are on sale via our Eventbrite page. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/geographies-of-gaming-and-vr-3rd-annual-digital-geographies-symposium-tickets-58595899914

Please see the details the event below, including information on keynotes, paper sessions and workshops. All are welcome.

• Keynote 1: Sarah Jones (Head of the Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University) Storyliving: how presence manifests itself within immersive media
• Keynote 2: John Sear (Software developer and CEO of Museum Games) Engaging publics through gaming technologies
• Keynote 3: Melissa Kagen (Lecturer in Digital Media, Bangor University) Misplaying the map in 80 Days

With papers and workshops from

• Emma Fraser
• Leighton Evans & Michał Rzeszewski
• Victoria Williams
• Clancy Wilmott
• Sally Bushell & James Butler
• Vincent Miller & Gonzalo Garcia
• Gareth W. Young & Oliver Dawkins
• Adam Brown
• Peter Nelson
• Jack Lowe
• Phil Jones
• Sally Bushell

Bursaries are also available to cover travel, accommodation and registration fee. More information here here.

NEW DEADLINE: JUNE 21, 2019

November 1, 2019

New York University, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication

Deadline: June 15, 2019

Website: http://postmanconference.org

Keynote: Neferti X. M. Tadiar, Professor and Chair, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University

What is coming to pass? How do we experience that which is passing us everyday? From coastal vantages, friends and lovers wish safe passage with the wave of a hand. In the berths of ships, this security is furnished both through documents of passage — visas, tickets, logbooks — as well as the logistics of oceanic travel and maneuvers of the ship.

Yet transversal, identity, and its mediations sometimes run athwart of each other. After failed attempts, user and password meet interface as impasse. Students get caught lolling in the hallway without a pass only to face the fury of administrators. No, safe passage is not guaranteed. It is a matter of strategy and planning. Taking on the clothes, haircuts, language, and gestures of gendered, sexualized, or racialized normativity, we inhabit forms of passing only to reject them in more familiar community.

Saying passage is a matter of survival is to point to both the quotidian and the crisis. One moment, we’re occupying the ethics of sociality. Someone says, “Pass the salt.” And the next, that someone has “passed on”. Passage directs us from one register to another, from one world to another. These are not merely euphemisms. Our rituals and rites of passage move us forward. They are not something we can pass up.

The 2019 Postman Graduate Conference invites graduate students, artists, and independent scholars to submit projects that attend to passage and acts of passing. Recognizing the mobility of the concept, the selection committee welcomes interdisciplinary responses, artist talks, and academic papers which meditate on passing and its possibilities as modes of inquiry and survival.

Possible topics include (but are by no means limited to):

• Temporalities of passage
• Borders, securitization, and migration
• Strategies of trespassing
• The experience and aesthetics of passing
• The materialities and measurements of sensation
• Gendered and/or racialized performativity as "passing"
• Risk, speculation, and logistics
• Blackness and the Middle Passage
• Debility, capacity, and technological mediation
• Surveillance and policing of affect
• Modes of evidence and witnessing
• Biopolitics, necropolitics, sovereignty, and capital
• Forms of political violence
• Rites of passage and passage as religious motif
• The passage and literature
• Translations across languages, ontologies, and epistemologies

Please email submissions to postman.nyu@gmail.com by June 15, 2019. Abstracts should be 250-300 words in length, formatted as Word documents (.doc, .docx), and accompanied by a CV 

November 27-30, 2019

Brussels, Belgium

Deadline (EXTENDED): June 15, 2019

The Université libre de Bruxelles invites submissions for abstracts for papers and panels for the 12th OURMedia Conference to be held 27-30 November in Brussels, Belgium. The deadline has been extended to June 15.

The conference will be held under the general theme ‘Mediactivism – Scholactivism’. We encourage the submission of papers that focus on the (real or imagined) gap between academia and society, exploring how academic scholarship could be useful for (alternative) media (activists) and the myriad ways in which media scholars can be committed to equality, social justice and progressive social change. The general theme ‘Mediactivism – Scholactivism’ refers to how both media practitioners and media scholars, rather than being impartial or partisan, can be ‘committed’ by actively and openly campaigning for particular ideals. As the conference will coincide with the 20th anniversary of Indymedia, we encourage the submission of papers specifically focusing on analysing its legacy, achievements, shortcomings and influence on contemporary (online) media activism.

The confirmed keynote speakers are Dorothy Kidd (University of San Francisco), Des Freedman (Goldsmiths, University of London), Keltoum Belorf (DeWereldMorgen.be) and Vincent Verzat (Partager C'est Sympa).

The conference program committee consists of Amaranta Cornejo Hernandez (Centro de Estudios Superiores de México y Centroamérica), David Domingo (Université libre de Bruxelles), Pieter Maeseele (Universiteit Antwerpen), Dimitra Milioni (Cyprus University), Ana Lucia Nunes de Sousa (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Robin Van Leeckwyck (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles), Pantelis Vatikiotis (Kadir Has University).

The local organizing committee consists of Roel Coesemans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), David Domingo (Université libre de Bruxelles), Stijn Joye (Universiteit Gent), Florence Le Cam (Université libre de Bruxelles), Pieter Maeseele (Universiteit Antwerpen), Steve Paulussen (Universiteit Antwerpen), Ike Picone (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Robin Van Leeckwyck (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles), Victor Wiard (Université libre de Bruxelles; Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles).

Guidelines

We welcome both individual abstracts and panel presentations in English, Spanish, French or Dutch. All proposals must be submitted to ourmedia12@riseup.net. Abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words. Panel proposals consist of a panel description (title + framing text) and the individual abstract of each panel member contribution.

We particularly encourage the participation of activists, both scholactivist and mediactivist. A limited number of travel grants is available.

Finally, we strongly encourage travelling by train instead of plane. Moreover, a videoconferencing system will be available to those who are unable to physically attend the conference.

Key themes

• In particular, the conference will focus on four topics:
• Legacy of Indymedia
• Mediactivism
• Scholactivism
• Digital and offline media activism

A special series of sessions will be dedicated to the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Indymedia, by critically approaching its legacy: the Indymedia network was set up in 1999 in London and Seattle (with the WTO protests). Using new technologies of information and communication, activists created online content in parallel to what was broadcasted and reported by traditional media. But what is left of the Indymedia network after its 20th anniversary, and how has it helped in shaping the evolution of (alternative) media? We propose to tackle this theme by asking three questions: (1) How can we explain the decline of Indymedia’s local and regional centers? (2) How has the role of Indymedia evolved over time in the social movements landscape of the regions/countries it is or was present in ? And (3) which influence has the "Indymedia experiment" had on new alternative media initiatives?

Indymedia is a form of Mediactivism, which constitutes the second theme of the conference. We encourage presentations that focus on examples of mediactivism, using online and/or offline tools. Activists’ experiences may foster scholarly discussions that take us beyond the classical division between expressivist (ie citizens’ participation) and counter-hegemonic (ie discourses and form opposed to the mainstream) media. We warmly welcome activists’ testimonies and presentations of current and future projects.

As a specific form of activism, we also put forward the question regarding scholactivism, which is the third theme of the conference. As scholars, how can we be involved in activism? To which extent can we collaborate with traditional or alternative media? How can we express our solidarity with progressive social movements, and more importantly, take inspiration from them and embed our work in their campaigns? Can we be part of the “counter-power”? We ask specific experiences that foster innovative research approaches and question established methodological practices. The goal of the conference is to make a link between mediactivism and scholactivism. How can we foster cooperation between scholars, activists and media-practitioners? How can we justify the social engagement of academia and deactivate the assumption that researchers (and professional journalists) are supposed to have a “neutral point of view”?

Looking at the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street Movement or the Indignados, the anti-TTIP movements or the more recent climate marches, and the influence of Facebook and Twitter on those movements, it may seem that social media are at the core of contemporary counter-hegemonic communication strategies, in the realm of digital activism. This is the fourth theme of the conference. In this regard, social media are not always used by the same kinds of activists. Extremist right-wing political trolls seem to have found online the perfect space to bully professional politics and shape the agenda towards intolerance and hate. Are social media really helping us to structure social movements and effectively changing political power imbalances? Is the political economy of social media being critically discussed and assessed when used? For this crucial discussion, both media practitioners and scholars can exchange experiences and knowledge regarding the effects of social media platforms, their interfaces and algorithmic mechanisms in the hope to gain knowledge on how to use or distance oneself from these online services. Finally, research and debate among scholars today are generally focused on online communication. Is there still a place for offline activism and offline media? How can one develop alternative media without social media, the internet or digital technologies? Are face-to-face discussions and the quite old-fashioned leaflets still useful? We welcome contributions on the offline side of mediactivism.

Media and Communication, Volume 8, Issue 3

Deadline: November 15, 2019

Editor(s): Johannes Breuer (GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany), Tim Wulf (LMU Munich, Germany) and M. Rohangis Mohseni (TU Ilmenau, Germany)

• Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 November 2019
• Submission of Full Papers: 15-30 March 2020
• Publication of the Issue: July/September 2020

Information:

Since its subject of study is changing constantly and rapidly, research on media entertainment has to be quick to adapt. This need to quickly react and adapt not only relates to the questions researchers need to ask but also to the methods they need to employ to answer those questions. For several decades now, the large majority of quantitative research on the content, uses, and effects of media entertainment has been based on data from surveys, manual content analyses, or lab experiments. While there is no doubt that these studies have produced numerous important insights into media entertainment, they have certain limitations, some of which may entail significant biases. For example, several recent studies have shown that self-reports of media use tend to be unreliable. This is especially problematic if researchers are interested in very specific, rare, or socially undesirable forms of media entertainment. Experimental lab studies, on the other hand, tend to have relatively small samples and often occur in somewhat unnatural settings. And manual content analyses are not suitable for the large amounts of data that new forms of media entertainment generate (e.g., comments on YouTube videos). Over the last few years, the nascent field of computational social science has been developing and using methods for the collection and analysis of data that can help to address some of the limitations of traditional methods. For example, the use of digital trace data, such as data collected via APIs or tracking apps/plugins, can alleviate some problems associated with self-report data, and methods from the area of machine learning can be used to (semi-)automatically analyze large amounts of media content (or reactions to it). For this thematic issue, we invite substantive as well as methodological contributions that employ computational methods—either standalone or in combination with traditional methods—to study the content, uses, and effects of media entertainment. Submissions should either apply computational methods to investigate the content, uses or effects of media entertainment (studies that combine different types/sources of data, such as surveys and digital trace data, are especially welcome) or present and discuss novel computational methodologies for collecting and/or analyzing data on the content, uses or effects of entertainment media.

We invite two types of submissions: (1) late-breaking brief reports (of no longer than 3000 words, inclusive of all manuscript elements) and (2) longer-format manuscripts (of no longer than 6000 words, inclusive of all manuscript elements). Submissions engaging in open science practices will be given particular consideration in the review process (for some practical primers on the adoption of open science practices see https://how-to-open.science or http://psych-transparency-guide.uni-koeln.de). We also especially welcome preregistered studies (for an introduction to preregistration see https://how-to-open.science/plan/preregistration/why or http://psych-transparency-guide.uni-koeln.de/preregistration.html).

Instructions for Authors: Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal’s instructions for authors and send their abstracts (about 250 words, with a tentative title and reference to the thematic issue) by email to the Editorial Office (mac@cogitatiopress.com).

Open Access: The journal has an article publication fee to cover its costs and guarantee that the article can be accessed free of charge by any reader, anywhere in the world, regardless of affiliation. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and advise them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication fees. Institutions can also join Cogitatio’s Membership Program at a very affordable rate and enable all affiliated authors to publish without incurring any fees. Further information about the journal’s open access charges and institutional members can be found here.

November 15-16, 2019

University of Padova (Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology)

Deadline: July 20, 2019

Organized by Gender & Communication Section in collaboration with Women’s Network and Film Studies Section (ECREA)

Keynote speakers

• Prof. John Mercer (Birmingham City University)
• Prof. Karen Ross (Newcastle University)

Roundtable

• Organized by ECREA Network
•  “Gender and Knowledge Production in Contemporary Academia. Unpacking challenges and possibilities”

Call for Papers

The relations between gender, sexuality and the media are ubiquitous and firmly embedded in everyday practices at a cultural and social level. Our understanding of how people across Europe interpret and consume media content and perform gender and sexual identities within this context is changing alongside the modification of the media landscape.

Due to political and cultural changes across Europe and the rest of the world, issues connected to sexual identity and gender are in the process of being renegotiated and, in certain instances, even questioned. On the one hand, there are tendencies reconfirming patriarchal scripts; on the other hand, there are challenges and redefinitions of old paradigms.

Researchers within media studies have been working within diverse epistemological and methodological contexts in order to understand this mutation. This conference attempts to position itself within this debate with the aim of problematising such issues across research fields.

We are looking for original and innovative research within media, cultural and feminist studies, exploring the complex set of relations between media, gender and sexuality and the approaching aspects of the changing social and sexual landscape. We are especially looking for contributions that approach the topics of interest analytically in terms of production, representation and consumption, reflecting different cultural constructions and experiences.

We welcome presentations from (though not exclusively) the following topics:

• performing gendered and sexual identities
• forging new normative gendered identities
• motherhood and sexuality
• gender equality in media industries
• performing gender and sexuality in social networking sites, including dating apps
• rebranding feminism
• virtual intimacies, desires and affect
• digital technologies, methods and the study of sexuality
• games, gender and sexualities
• pornography
• datafication of gender and sexuality
• representation of gender and sexuality in popular culture
• gender, sexuality and media production
• gender, sexuality and technologies, technology of pleasure, sex robots
• futures of European gender, feminist, sexuality and LGBTQ media studies
• film, gender and sexuality

Abstract Submission

Please submit your 350-400 words abstract in English, along with a short bio (up to 150 words), including contact details before the 20th of July. Abstracts will be reviewed via a blind peer review process.

Please upload your abstract and bio (in a unique file) using this link: https://www.dropbox.com/request/JKDWPEavZIwqPtLYFSxY

Please name the file as follow: LastName_Name

For any further questions or information about the CFP please contact ECREA G&C section (Management team: Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Despina Chronaki, Sara de Vuyst and Florian Vanlee) at genderandcommunication.ecrea@gmail.com

Schedule

• 1st June: Call for papers opens
• 20th July: Deadline for abstract submissions
• 24th August: Notification of acceptance/rejection
• 26th August: Registration opens
• 1st October: Deadline for conference registration

Registration:

• Students-Phd Students: 60 €
• Regular registration: 75 €

The conference registration fee includes: conference kit, coffee breaks and launches.

Host/Location: Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.

University of Padova, City of Padova (40 km from Venice).

see at URL: https://goo.gl/maps/2q5FAtY7UzC8nn5z5

Local organizer

Cosimo Marco Scarcelli (IUSVE and University of Padova), marco.scarcelli@gmail.com

Renato Stella (University of Padova), renato.stella@unipd.it

Scientific Committee:

• Valentina Anania (University of Nottingham)
• Dr. Despina Chronaki (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens & Hellenic Open University)
• Dr. Sara de Vuyst (University of Ghent)
• Dr. Ayşegül Kesirli (Istanbul Bilgi University)
• Dr. Arianna Mainardi (University of Milano-Bicocca)
• Prof. Claudia Padovani (University of Padova)
• Dr. Cosimo Marco Scarcelli (University IUSVE & University of Padova)
• Prof. Renato Stella (University of Padova)
• Jolien van Keulen (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
• Dr. Florian Vanlee (University of Ghent)
• Dr. Sergio Villanueva (University of Barcelona)

Follow Gender&Communication Section:

Twitter: @GC_ECREA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1511687835825667/

Instagram: gc_ecrea

Website: https://gcecrea.wixsite.com/gendercommunication

Special Collection for the Communication and Media Section of Global Perspectives

Deadline: July 1, 2019

Please submit abstracts to Lina Dencik (DencikL@cardiff.ac.uk) and Anne Kaun (anne.kaun@sh.se)

Estimated Timeline

• 1st July 2019 - 500-word abstracts
• 20th of July 2019 - notification of invitation to submit full papers (6000-8000 words)
• 1st of November 2019 - submission of full papers
• 1st of April 2020 - review process complete
• 1st of June 2020 - publication of articles

The impact of globalization on the welfare state has been a prominent long-standing issue in both scholarly and policy debate. Whilst the advent of digital technologies has been central to this debate, the more recent onus on data and data-driven technologies across business, government and civil society brings with it a particular set of concerns. Data and algorithmic processes are increasingly an integral part of governing populations and used to categorize, profile and score individuals, households and communities, with a view to allocate services, target and identify people, and make decisions about them. In this sense, datafication is part of (re)shaping state-citizen relations, the nature of statecraft and (re)defining state models, particularly in relation to public services and welfare provision. Advancing unevenly and in diverse contexts, this trend is often underpinned by a rationale centred on efficiency, resource-saving and more ‘objective’ decision-making. Yet critical scholarship on datafication has pointed to the ways in which this ‘new public analytics’ paradigm (Yeung 2018) is embedded in a particular set of values, and advances certain epistemological and ontological assumptions that carry substantial social and political significance (e.g. boyd and Crawford 2012, Van Dijck 2014). Moreover, both assumptions and responses to such assumptions have tended to rely on universalist understandings of developments and rights, bypassing nuanced and contextual engagement with the way data systems are developed, implemented and understood across the globe (Arora 2019; Milan & Treré 2019). For this special collection, we therefore invite submissions that engage with the notion of the welfare state from global perspectives, with a particular focus on datafication.

We seek contributions that examine the kinds of practices, values and logics that underpin the advancement of datafication and consider how these relate to the practices, values and logics that form the basis of public services and social welfare in the context of globalisation. For example, research has suggested that data analytics advances a society organized around risk management, in which it is assumed that it is possible to predict individual behaviour from the aggregation of data points pertaining to group traits, with the aim to both pre-empt and personalize risk (Amoore 2013, Van Dijck 2014, Andrejevic 2017). In addition, many of the tools being deployed originate in a commercial sphere, perpetuating the presence of multi-national companies in the public sector, often favouring economic values rather than social, relational and personal values (Baym 2013, Redden 2015). These logics can be seen as the continued dismantling of the welfare state, understood in terms of a commitment to universal access, decommodification, and social solidarity. Moreover, the prevalence of data science as developed and practiced by a few dominant global players raise questions about the standardization of governance and statecraft. By fleshing out these issues, the special collection invites contributions that reflect on transformations brought about by data processes in the public sector and across social life, and contextualise these in terms of different value-systems and visions for how society should be organised.

References:

Andrejevic, M. (2017). To pre-empt a thief. International Journal of Communication, 11(2017), pp. 879-896.

Amoore, L. (2013). The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Arora, P. (2019). Decolonizing Privacy Studies. Television & New Media, 20(4): 366-378.

Baym, N. K. (2013). Data Not Seen: The Uses and Shortcomings of Social Media Metrics. First Monday, 18(10).

boyd, d. and Crawford, K. (2012). Critical Questions for Big Data. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), pp. 662-679.

Milan, S. and Treré, E. (2019) Big Data from the South(s): Beyond Data Universalism. Television & New Media, 20(4): 319-335.

Redden, J. (2015). Big data as system of knowledge: investigating Canadian governance. In: G. Elmer, G. Langlois and J. Redden, J., eds., Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data, London: Bloomsbury.

Van Dijck, J. (2014). Datafication, Dataism and Dataveillance: Big Data Between Scientific Paradigm and Ideology. Surveillance & Society, 12(2), pp. 197-208.

Yeung, K. (2018) Algorithmic government: Towards a New Public Analytics? Paper presented at ThinkBig, Windsor, 25 June.

Practicalities

Please submit a 500-word abstract to Lina Dencik (DencikL@cardiff.ac.uk) and Anne Kaun (anne.kaun@sh.se) before 1 July 2019.

The special collection will be published as part of the Communication and Media Section of the Global Perspectives journal. Full papers – 6000-8000 words in length – are required by 1 November 2019.

About the journal

Global Perspectives (GP) is an online-only, peer-reviewed, transdisciplinary journal seeking to advance social science research and debates in a globalizing world, specifically in terms of concepts, theories, methodologies, and evidence bases. Work published in the journal is enriched by invited perspectives, through scholarly annotations, that enhance its global and interdisciplinary implications.

GP is devoted to the study of global patterns and developments across a wide range of topics and fields, among them trade and markets, security and sustainability, communication and media, justice and law, governance and regulation, culture and value systems, identities, environmental interfaces, technology-society interfaces, shifting geographies and migration.

GP sets out to help overcome national and disciplinary fragmentation and isolation. GP starts from the premise that the world that gave rise to the social sciences in their present form is no more. The national and disciplinary approaches that developed over the last century are increasingly insufficient to capture the complexities of the global realities of a world that has changed significantly in a relatively short period of time. New concepts, approaches and forms of academic discourse may be called for.

About the Communication and Media Section of Global Perspectives

Section Editor: Payal Arora, Erasmus University Rotterdam

The ‘global turn’ in communications, advances in mobile technologies and the rise of digital social networks are changing the world´s media landscapes, creating complex disjunctures between economy, culture, and society at local, national, and transnational levels. The role of traditional mass media - print, radio and television - is changing as well. In many cases, traditional journalism is declining, while that of user-generated content by bloggers, podcasters, and digital activists is gaining currency worldwide, as is the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on communication systems. Today, researchers find themselves at important junctures in their inquiries that require innovations in concepts, frameworks, methodologies and empirics. Global Perspectives aims to be a forum for scholars from across multiple disciplines and fields, and the Communication and Media Section invites submissions on cutting-edge research on changing media and communication systems globally.

London South Bank University - Arts & Creative Industries

Deadline: June 19, 2019

Location: London

Salary: £36,620 to £43,030 pro rata, per annum incl. London weighting.

Hours: Full Time

Contract Type: Permanent

Placed On: 16th May 2019

Closes: 19th June 2019

Job Ref: REQ3250

The BA (Hons) Film Practice degree is the largest course in The School of Arts and Creative Industries. With ScreenSkills accreditation, the course offers students a thorough grounding in film production, while allowing a choice of specialist pathways in Cinematography, Writing/Directing, and Editing and Post Production (EPP). Our Elephant Studios at LSBU is an interlinked media space, offering high-specification production facilities at the forefront of digital technologies and multimedia practice. With a fully equipped film studio, Arri cameras and high end editing and grading suites, our students have the best possible environment for developing their film practice.

We are seeking to appoint a well-qualified, experienced and highly committed film lecturer focusing on cinematography to join the course team. The appointee will have an understanding of current debates and theoretical issues relevant to film practice, and experience of integrating research and practice in their film work and teaching. They will also be able to evidence the impact of their practice through dissemination across academic or professional forums, along with any markers of excellence such as film festival selection, peer review, public endorsement, awards, commissions, professional contracts etc.

The appointee will have the capacity to work across the course team, developing the curriculum, approaches to teaching and learning, and the management and internal and external profile of the course. They will facilitate the development of professional networks and maintain ongoing partnerships with media producers, as an important step in boosting the employability of our graduates. They will also have excellent organisational and communication skills, and the ability to both inspire and guide students. You will be an engaging lecturer with experience of designing and delivering high quality, innovative teaching and learning. The appointee should be able to teach practical filmmaking modules that range in their ambition from getting the basics right to developing original content for cinematic or other digital exhibition formats.

In addition to teaching and research, the successful candidate will also take on administrative duties, which will include engaging in the periodic quality processes of the university. Reporting to the Head of Division, the successful applicant will take up a portfolio of teaching within the School's Division of Film and Media.

To view the Job Description & Person Specification - please visit the LSBU vacancies webpage by pressing the apply button.

Please Note: Job Reference # is REQ3250.

Apply here.

Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies

Deadline: June 7, 2019

8387BR

Teaching & Scholarship

To contribute to the development of the School’s provision in data journalism, delivering high-quality scholarship-led teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. To pursue excellence in teaching and pedagogy and to inspire others to do the same. To supervise students and to carry out administrative duties within the work area as required.

This post is full-time and open-ended.

Salary: £42,036 - £48,677 per annum (Grade 7)

Date advert posted: Wednesday, 22 May 2019

Closing date: Friday, 7 June 2019

Please be aware that Cardiff University reserves the right to close this vacancy early should sufficient applications be received.

Cardiff University is committed to supporting and promoting equality and diversity and to creating an inclusive working environment. We believe this can be achieved through attracting, developing, and retaining a diverse range of staff from many different backgrounds who have the ambition to create a University which seeks to fulfil our social, cultural and economic obligation to Cardiff, Wales, and the world. In supporting our employees to achieve a balance between their work and their personal lives, we will also consider proposals for flexible working or job share arrangements.

Job Description

Teaching

• To independently contribute to module and curriculum development and lead modules across undergraduate and postgraduate levels, inspiring students, in the areas of best practise on digital platforms, including Data Journalism..
• To identify, develop and facilitate opportunities for curriculum innovations and enhancements, including;

1) helping with new provision for course development

2) enhancing existing modules and programmes and evaluating the impact of innovations as appropriate

3) Review on a regular basis course content and materials, updating when required

• To contribute to the co-ordinatorship of the JOMEC component (50 percent) of the MSc in Computational and Data Journalism, ensuring delivery of teaching in line with current curricular requirements, developing and applying appropriate teaching techniques and material which create interest, understanding and enthusiasm amongst students.
• To undertake work associated with examinations, such as setting and marking assessments and providing student feedback
• To act as a Personal Tutor and provide pastoral support to students, including supervising the work of Undergraduate and Master’s students, and post-graduate research student support as appropriate

Scholarship

• To undertake educational research in data journalism, pedagogical evaluation and scholarly activity, leading to publications
• To participate in conferences, seminars and other academic and professional forums to disseminate the results of one’s own scholarship

Other

• To engage effectively with data journalism-related stakeholders, including industrial, commercial and public sector organisations, professional institutions, other academic institutions etc., regionally and nationally and internationally, to raise awareness of the School’s profile, to cultivate strategically valuable alliances, and to pursue opportunities for collaboration across a range of activities. These activities are expected to contribute to the School and the enhancement of its external profile
• Any other duties not included above, but consistent with the role.

Person Specification

Essential Criteria

Qualifications and Education

1. Postgraduate degree at PhD level in a related subject area or relevant industrial experience

2. Postgraduate Certificate in University Teaching and Learning or equivalent qualification or experience

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

3. Teaching experience, demonstrating learning innovation and course development and design

4. Growing reputation for data journalism education

5. Some experience or understanding of computational journalism and coding

Pastoral, Communication and Team Working

6. Excellent communication skills with the ability to disseminate complex and conceptual ideas clearly and confidently to others using high level skills and a range of media

7. The ability to provide appropriate pastoral support to students, appreciate the needs of individual students and their circumstances and to act as a personal tutor.

Other

8. Proven ability to demonstrate creativity, innovation and team working within work

Desirable Criteria

1. Relevant professional qualification(s).

2. Evidence of collaborations with industry.

3. Proven ability to adapt to the changing requirements of the Higher Education community.

4. Evidence of ability to participate in and develop both internal and external networks and utilise them to enhance the teaching and research activities of the School.

5. Proven record of taking responsibility for academically related administration.

6. Experience of cross disciplinary working

Apply here.

Edited book 

Deadline: June 28, 2019

We are looking for abstracts for an edited collection, provisionally entitled Mothers and Motherhood: Negotiating the international audio- visual industry. This question of how women reconcile care-work with formal work and qualitative insights into mothers’ experiences in the audio -visual industry, is under-researched in international production studies literature; something that this collection seeks to address.

Chapters will explore the gendered challenges facing mothers and the attempts they make to address those challenges in order to sustain their working lives.

Areas of inquiry could include, but are not limited to, maternity leave, returning to work, the challenges of balancing motherhood with work at various ages of child development, motherhood and industrial practices, women who leave work because of care-work demands, the concealment o maternal status in the workplace, the rejection of motherhood by women who prioritize their careers, women who ‘missed’ motherhood for a variety of reasons, motherhood as a barrier to career progression and successful interventions by the industry to facilitate mothers.

It is anticipated that this book will make a valuable contribution to international debates on equality, mothers and motherhood. It is expected that it will facilitate scholars, students, activists, policy makers and practitioners in understanding the impact of motherhood on the engagement of women in the industry across the globe.

We have received a strong expression of interest from an international publishers who is awaiting the submission of a full proposal.

Potential contributors should send us a detailed 300 word abstract and a short bio by 28 June 2019. The estimated timeframe for the completed first draft of approx. 6,000 words is November 30, 2019.

Please send abstracts and queries to: Susan Liddy, Department Media and Communication Studies, MIC. Susan.liddy@mic.ul.ie or Anne O Brien Department of Media Studies, Maynooth University. Anne.obrien@mu.ie

Special Issue of The International Journal of Press/Politics

Deadline: December 15, 2019

Guest editors: Erik Bucy (erik.bucy@ttu.edu), Texas Tech University Jungseock Joo (jjoo@comm.ucla.edu), University of California at Los Angeles

Images are both ubiquitous and consequential in contemporary politics. The rise of images in politics parallels the rise of images in society as icons of socio-political messaging, vessels of persuasive intent, and efficient carriers of social information for citizens of increasingly harried societies. From television coverage of campaigns and elections to visual memes and images of leaders circulated on social media, visual portrayals shape perceptions of the political world. When used strategically, visual portrayals hold the capacity to frame issues, candidates, and causes in a particular light and affect the acceptance or rejection of social policies. As representations of public opinion and leadership, political images influence issue understanding and motivate citizens to action.

Political visuals are potent in part because they do not require conventional literacy to apprehend and operate at both an individual and cultural level. From an information processing perspective, political images are highly efficient carriers of social and symbolic information that is quickly assessed, rapidly judged, and readily remembered. In news coverage, candidate portrayals and event depictions may crystallize sentiment among the viewing public and alternately inspire increased involvement or disenchantment with politics. Culturally, images can act as icons of social solidarity or political isolation, serving to mainstream or marginalize individuals, groups, and causes. The polysemic quality of images opens them to diverse interpretation, depending on the viewer’s orientation.

As forms of information, political images are not only open to interpretation but are also susceptible to digital manipulation. Image shading, facial blending, digital editing, and other alterations of political materials can have persuasive effects on audiences, raising troubling ethical concerns. More recently, the mass spread of “deepfakes”, i.e., manipulated video recordings, threatens to undermine the authenticity of recorded candidate communication and further confuse unsuspecting viewers, already buffeted by fabricated visual memes and text-based disinformation campaigns.

These and related considerations make the systematic study of political visuals and their effects necessary and urgent. Despite renewed interest in visual analysis within political communication, images remain an understudied feature of the contemporary political media landscape. This special issue of The International Journal of Press/Politics therefore invites original research conducted in any methodological tradition that fits the theme of “Visual Politics.” In this special issue, we hope to highlight new possibilities for theory development, methodological innovation, and cross-national approaches to advance the study of visual political communication.

RESEARCH TOPICS

• Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
• The influence of political images in digital campaigns, including comparisons between online messaging, social media strategies, and more traditional forms of political advertising
• The role of visual messaging in disinformation efforts, whether used to confuse, incite resentment, or demotivate potential voter or citizen involvement
• Computational analysis of large-scale visual datasets to detect patterns of coverage or behavior not evident in smaller, hand-coded projects
• Integrated or comparative analysis of multimodal cues in political messages and their synergistic or differential impacts on viewer perceptions
• Visual analysis of protest and collection action, including visual framing of activism or demonstrations as well as visual memes circulated on social media
• Cross-national comparisons of visual news framing of politics or protest and its reception by audiences
• Viewer reception of newer visual technologies such as 360-degree video cameras to depict campaign events, demonstrations, marches, or other collective actions
• Visual depictions of populist and fringe political actors, including signature gestures and nonverbal displays, expressive range, or performative repertoires
• Effects of nonverbal aggression, norm violations, and other transgressive candidate behavior on viewers of political programming
• Visual measures of negative advertising, incivility, “in your face”-style of candidate interaction, or other normatively fraught political communication styles
• Visual analysis of hate speech and white nationalism, including identifiable signs and symbols as identified by the Anti-Defamation League and other watchdogs
• The role of viewer orientations (e.g., ideology, partisanship, political interest, age cohort, moral outlook, geographical situatedness, issue attitudes) in shaping political image interpretations and message efficacy
• The role of visual content in explaining patterns of news sharing on social media
• The use of visuals in emerging genres of political campaign communication, whether mini-documentaries, mash-up advertising, candidate-generated videos, or political selfies.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

Manuscript submissions for this special issue are due on 15 December 2019.

Please submit your work through our online submission portal and ensure that the first line of the cover letter states: “Manuscript to be considered for the special issue on Visual Politics”. Manuscripts should follow the IJPP submission guidelines. Submissions will be subject to a double-blind peer review process and must not have been published, accepted for publication, or under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Authors interested in submitting their work are encouraged to contact the guest editors, Erik Bucy (erik.bucy@ttu.edu) and Jungseock Joo (jjoo@comm.ucla.edu) with questions.

EXPECTED TIMELINE

• Paper submissions: 15 December 2019
• First decision: 15 February 2020
• Paper revisions: 15 April 2020
• Final decision: 15 May 2020
• Online publication: July 2020
• Print publication: October 2020