ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

September 20-22, 2023

Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

The International Doctoral Summer School “The values of the commons in the digital society” is an open space for international PhD students to get together and discuss, reflect on and learn about the relevance of the commons and the public realm in our current societies. It will take place between 20-22 September 2023 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

The main theme of this course will be the public value of public service media within the European framework, considering the impact of digital platforms (research, reach and crisis). However, we aspire to create an open space to debate, reflect on and exchange ideas that will broaden the focus from Communication Studies to other Social Sciences, such as Political Science, Psychology, Pedagogy, Economics and Business, Computer Sciences, Philosophy, Languages and Literature and even Artificial Intelligence and Engineering.

The activity will be certified as a 30-hour course, divided in two different kinds of sessions: keynotes and panel discussions with experts (both professionals and scholars) will take place in the mornings, while workshops and feedback sessions will take place in the afternoons. Moreover, social activities will also be included in the program to encourage networking among all the participants. 

Registration is free of charge.

Number of places available: 30

Deadline for registration: Until full capacity is reached 

Registration form: https://forms.office.com/e/T2ETEvpD6w

Information and Programm: https://valcomm.gal/archivos/3116

Contact: m.rodriguez.castro/at/usc.gal

Deadline: July 28, 2023

Social, cultural, economic and political contexts are directly related to the need for working civic and critical literacies (UNESCO, 2008). Educational institutions play an essential role in the civic and citizenship training of their youth and in building students’ civic literacy abilities in the face of an increasingly complex media landscape in the form of media education. The notions of civic and critical literacy must be thought to include different forms of media culture, ICT and new media. Hence, literacy analysis is deepened to relations between media and citizens addressing topics such as gender issues or other indicators of inequality and power imbalances, as gender differences exist both in education and in the distribution of civic and critical skills.

Critical thinking must be promoted from the intersection of formal learning with civic, social, and personal competencies. Media literacy is directly linked with citizenship and civic culture (Mihailidis, 2012). The complex media landscape increases the challenges of developing the capacities of those literacies, intricating understandings of news and other media forms of (mis)information circulation. The increasing digitalisation of everyday life has increased the flow of (mis)information, which raises questions concerning the role of media in the quality of civic and critical literacies. Therefore, civic and critical literacies encompass understanding the power relations that organise information, journalism and communication in general, as well as the ability to critically understand information conveyed by a growing number of media.

The “MyGender – Mediated young adults’ practices: advancing gender justice in and across mobile apps” (PTDC/COM-CSS/5947/2020) project encourages the submission of chapters of up to 5000 words of theoretical work until 28 July 2023. Scientific contributions are accepted, in ENGLISH LANGUAGE, that address the following themes, though not limited to:

– media literacy in higher education;

– the role of Universities in the promotion of media literacy;

– the links between media landscape and civic and critical literacies;

– democracy and civic and critical literacies;

– disinformation, fake news and other dangers to civic and critical literacies;

– media education;

– gender and civic and critical literacies;

– mobile applications and civic and critical literacies;

– mobile application regulation;

– data literacy;

– digital well-being and civic and critical literacies;

– mobile applications and subjectivities;

– critical thinking about mobile applications in higher education.

Scientific contributions should be submitted via e-mail to mygender@fl.uc.pt by 28 July 2023. The “Handbook of Critical Literacies and Gender Studies” will be published in cooperation with a renowned publisher under the framework of the MyGender project.

November 27, 2023

Online

Institute of Social Communication and Media Studies Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and Wroclaw Academic Centre in partnership with Academia Europaea Wroclaw Knowledge Hub are continuing research meetings focused on specific issues of mediatization research chaired by eminent experts (Göran Bolin (2017), Johan Fornäs (2018), Andreas Hepp (2019), Mark Deuze (2020) André Jansson (2021), Andrew Hoskins (2022)), this year the workshop will take place online on the 27 November 2023 and it will be led by Professor Kirsten Frandsen, Aarhus University.

REGISTRATION FORM: https://tinyurl.com/24sz8dnf 

MORE INFO: https://www.umcs.pl/pl/towards-development-of-mediatization-research-vii-mediatization-of-sport-physical-activity-and-recreation,27346.htm

View, #26

Deadline: July 31, 2023

We are currently accepting proposals for the upcoming Issue #26 “Archive Television: Storing, structuring and accessing content in the time of algorithmic curation”. This new issue is co-edited by guest editors Giulia Taurino (Northeastern University) and Georgia Aitaki (Karlstad University). It seeks to bring scholarly attention to the primary role of streaming platforms as content repositories, virtual places for storing, structuring, and accessing television content via complex library systems designed to organize, filter, and retrieve audiovisual records, making them available for simultaneous distribution.

The full call for papers can be found here: https://bit.ly/VIEW_CfP2023_1

Hi All,

On behalf of the Everyday Misinformation Project at the Online Civic Culture Centre, Loughborough University, we wanted to share our latest report “Beyond Quick Fixes: How Users Make Sense of Misinformation Warnings on Personal Messaging”. The report uncovers multiple interpretations users have of WhatsApp’s “forwarded” and “forwarded many times” tags. Based on these findings, it puts forward five key principles for the design of effective misinformation warnings.  

You can access the report here: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/online-civic-culture-centre/news-events/articles/o3c-4-beyond-quick-fixes/ 

This comes at an important time, as the Online Safety Bill is currently being debated in the UK House of Lords. That bill requires social media providers to take responsibility for harmful content published on their platforms, including misinformation. However, for encrypted apps such as WhatsApp, this could potentially mean compromising end-to-end encryption in order to monitor and censor messages, something Meta says it is not prepared to do.  

Our report shows that these platforms can protect user privacy, whilst also doing more to tackle misinformation. 

You can read the Loughborough University press release here: 

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2023/june/whatsapp-forwarded-tags-misunderstood-report/  

We hope you find the report insightful and useful. Please don’t hesitate to get in contact with any questions. 

The Everyday Misinformation Project Team (Natalie-Anne Hall, Brendan T Lawson, Cristian Vaccari and Andrew Chadwick) 

http://everyday-mis.info 

everyday.sharing@mailbox.lboro.ac.uk 

October 6, 2023

London College of Communication (UK)

Deadline: July 3, 2023

Dear Colleagues and TikTok researchers,

Deadline approaching! Please submit your abstracts and bios to DCE@lcc.arts.ac.uk by July 3 for an online symposium on July 6.

Full details of the CFP and how to apply can be found here: https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-communication/stories/call-for-papers-for-tiktok-creators-and-digital-economies-symposium 

Thomas Hanitzsch, Antonia Markiewitz, Henrik Bødker

Despite a growing body of research on the mental health of academics in general, relatively little is known about the situation within the field of media and communication studies in particular.

This study therefore aimed to (1) gauge the scale of the problem in our discipline, (2) identify structural conditions that might produce greater vulnerability among individuals, and (3) point to potential ways of improving the situation.

Read the study HERE.

Tampere University, Finland

A fantastic opportunity: We have an opening in visual information (tenure track professorship at Tampere University, Finland)! We are looking for a person with a social scientific and/or humanities background, who focuses reflexively and critically on various forms of visual information.

Please distribute widely, particularly to good people and researchers that you might know. And if of interest, consider applying yourself too. Happy to discuss if you should have any further questions.

https://tuni.rekrytointi.com/paikat/?o=A_RJ&jgid=3&jid=1959

For questions, contact Asko Lehmuskallio asko.lehmuskallio@tuni.fi

October 24 - October 26, 2023 

Tallinn, Estonia 

Deadline: July 10, 2023

Accommodation options are available near the university, more information about hotels is on our website.

Registration fee: Early Bird 300 € /Standart 350 €, Early Bird Student 190 €/ Standart 220 € (PhD workshop included), Early Bird PhD workshop 50 €/ Standart 70 €

We are excited to announce our wonderful keynote speakers: Dr. Kristina Scharp (Associate Professor, School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, US) and Dr. Rudi Palmieri (Associate Professor, Strategic Communication, University of Liverpool, UK). These esteemed scholars will be sharing their expertise and their insight of the future prospects. Additionally, they will serve as mentors in the Young Scholars Workshop. More information about the keynote speakers below.

In this year’s conference we will be "Looking forward!". We want to look ahead after recent – even still ongoing – challenging and hard times in Europe. ICSI wants to provide a platform for wondering and visualizing the future and the solutions that we can provide as communication scholars.

We invite paper and panel proposals from all communication or communication-related disciplines that align with the section's themes. We encourage innovative ideas and proposals for future research. As part of our conference program, we will be providing a workshop specifically designed for young scholars, including doctoral students and early-career researchers.

For more information and submission instructions, please visit our website at: https://www.tlu.ee/en/bfm/icsi  

Our keynotes

Kristina M. Scharp (Ph.D, University of Iowa) is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She is also the Director of the Family Communication and Relationships Lab. Scharp's research focuses on interpersonal, family, and health communication. Her work examines marginalization and how people cope with major disruptions in their lives. She aims to expose institutionalized oppression, understand marginalized populations, and illuminate communication processes they use to cope with inequities. Scharp has over 90 publications in prestigious outlets and has received several awards, including the International Communication Association's Early Career Award and the Leslie A. Baxter Early Career Award in Family Communication. Her work on family estrangement has been featured in prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Conversation, and NPR. Publications, see https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fi&user=TFUGv-YAAAAJ

Rudi Palmieri (PhD in Communication Sciences, USI Lugano) is an Associate Professor of Strategic Communication at the University of Liverpool (UK). His expertise lies in analyzing argumentation in strategic communication, focusing on areas such as financial communication, crisis communication, and entrepreneurial discourse. His research aims to understand how the complexities of communicative situations impact the design, delivery, and exchange of reasons by organizational leaders and stakeholders to influence opinions and decisions. Trust-oriented (crisis) communication is a key focus area, viewed as an inherently argumentative process. Dr. Palmieri's research takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining theories from argumentation, rhetoric, linguistics, semiotics, strategic management, and corporate communications. He has published extensively in renowned journals and taught courses at various academic levels in the UK, Switzerland, and other European countries. His work involves identifying and examining argumentative strategies in genres like takeover documents, earnings calls, proxy fights, investor pitching, crowdfunding campaigns, and crisis responses. Publications, see https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fi&user=AoQOm9QAAAAJ

About

The ICSI Conference is the 7th bi-annual meeting of the Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction section of ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association). This year’s conference is hosted by Baltic Film, Media and Art School, Tallinn University, Estonia: https://www.tlu.ee/en/bfm/icsi

In this year’s conference we will be "Looking forward!". We want to look ahead after recent – even still ongoing – challenging and hard times in Europe. ICSI wants to provide a platform for wondering and visualizing the future and the solutions that we can provide as communication scholars. Each of the different sub-disciplines of interpersonal communication and social interaction has the capacity to provide an important contribution to the work for a sustainable society and well-being in relationships, families, communities, workplaces, and networks. This contribution may take place, for example, in the arenas of politics, health care, and intercultural encounters, in face-to-face, mediated, and digitalized environments, interpersonally and in interaction with AI. The City of Tallinn, the Green Capital in 2023 provides us a stimulating environment for discussing interpersonal and social aspects of ecological, societal, responsibility end sustainability questions. 

We are also “Looking forward!” to seeing all the ICSI scholars again after four years break, since due to the COVID19-pandemic, the section conference was cancelled two years ago. Now it is truly exciting to meet again in this active and intriguing section conference. The ICSI Conference 2023 provides an opportunity to share our ideas, theories and research about interpersonal communication and social interaction across our different specializations. Connecting our insights from different approaches will inform our own current research, provide creative ideas for future research, and help theory development. 

We call for paper and panel proposals from any communication or communication-related discipline that addresses the section's themes. Ideas and proposals for future research are highly encouraged. Please, submit your 500-word abstract by July 10 (Midnight CET) at the latest. 

We also invite young scholars to join us from the different sub-disciplines of interpersonal communication and social interaction, working with some section’s themes. As part of our conference program, we will provide a workshop for young scholars (doctoral students and early-career researchers). The workshop provides a great opportunity to receive feedback from senior mentors on the paper you submit, and to network with your international colleagues.

Please submit your 500-word proposal by July 10 (Midnight CET) at the latest. In the workshop, you can present either A) an article manuscript you are currently working on, B) an extended abstract of your doctoral dissertation, or C) a detailed research plan/dissertation proposal. During the workshop, participants and senior faculty members will discuss the papers submitted by the participants. Your participation will include submitting a paper (1300–1500 words) by September 30, giving a short (5–10 minutes) presentation of your work, and actively engaging in the workshop discussions. You will receive detailed instructions once accepted.

Submission deadline: July 10 (midnight CET). 

More information and submission website: https://www.tlu.ee/en/bfm/icsi

Media and Communication, Volume 12, Issue 3  (special Issue)

Deadline: September 15, 2023

https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/pages/view/nextissues#GeomediaFutures 

Title: Geomedia Futures: Imagining Tomorrow’s Mediatized Places and Place-Based Technologies 

Editor(s): Karin Fast (Karlstad University), Cornelia Brantner (Karlstad University), and Pablo Abend (Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle) 

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 September 2023 

Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 January 2024 

Publication of the Issue: July/September 2024 

Information: Representations of geomedia technologies tend to celebrate convergent, mobile, and location-based technologies as constitutive of tomorrow’s society and life. In other words, they tend to extend the socio-technological regime we have come to know as geomedia into the future (Fast et al., 2018; McQuire, 2016). As a sister project to a themed issue on Geomedia Histories (Fast & Abend, in press; forthcoming in New Media and Society), this thematic issue aims to challenge what has been identified as “geomediatization realism” by investigating multiple geomedia futures. Hartmann and Jansson (2022, p. 5) engage the term geomediatization realism to refer to “processes of acceptance and resignation not only in relation to media use but also to the wider context of the expansion of geomedia businesses and corporations.” Geomediatization realism encompasses both utopian and dystopian outlooks through which our future with geomedia appears in the singular rather than plural, as if there were no alternatives to the visions of tomorrow that surface in hegemonic geomedia representations (cf. Rose, 2018). In seeking to challenge geomediatization realism, this thematic issue effectively bridges Critical Geomedia Studies and Critical Future Studies. Critical geomedia studies scrutinizes the complex relationship between people, technology, and space/place (Fast et al., 2018). Critical future studies “investigates the scope and constraints within public culture for imagining and debating different potential futures” (Goode & Godhe, 2017, p. 109). Both strands challenge what Fisher (2009) calls “capitalist realism,” the idea that the world defined by capitalism constitutes the only realistic alternative. Goode and Godhe (2017, p. 110) argue for critical future studies that explore the repertoire of possible futures available for public consideration, but also “that both utopian and dystopian modes of imagination are vital for reinvigorating a futural public sphere.” We hope that this interdisciplinary thematic issue can challenge capitalist and geomediatization realism by producing insights into hegemonic and counter-hegemonic visions of our future with geomedia. 

We will prioritize contributions that refer to literature from critical geomedia studies and critical future studies (and adjacent literature), that engage key concepts appearing in this call for papers (geomedia, geomedia futures, geomediatized realism, etc.), and that critically and empirically explore future-directed geomedia representations. We anticipate that contributions use methods such as (critical) discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, (socio-)semiotics, or the similar, but do not exclude other approaches. We welcome contributions by scholars of fields of research that study the interplay of people, technology, and space/place. 

References 

Fast, K., & Abend, P. (in press). Geomedia histories. New Media and Society. 

Fast, K., Jansson, A., Lindell, J., Bengtsson, L. R., & Tesfahuney, M. (Eds.). (2018). Geomedia studies: Spaces and mobilities in mediatized worlds. Routledge. 

Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? John Hunt Publishing. 

Goode, L., & Godhe, M. (2017). Beyond capitalist realism: Why we need critical future studies. Culture Unbound, 9(1), 108–129. 

Hartmann, M., & Jansson, A. (2022). Gentrification and the right to the geomedia city. Space and Culture. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221090600 

McQuire, S. (2016). Geomedia: Networked cities and the future of public space. Polity. 

Rose, G. (2018). Look insideTM: Corporate visions of the smart city. In K. Fast, A. Jansson, J. Lindell, L. R. Bengtsson, & M. Tesfahuney (Eds.), Geomedia studies: Spaces and mobilities in mediatized worlds (pp. 97–113). Routledge. 

Instructions for Authors: Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Media and Communication is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee). 

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: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/about/editorialPolicies#publicationFees 

The call also can be found here: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/pages/view/nextissues#GeomediaFutures