ECREA TWG Media Literacies and Communication Competencies (MLCC) and the Department of Media Education and Digital Literacy at the University of Innsbruck have the pleasure to invite doctoral students and junior scholars to a joint symposium on media literacy. 

Call for Papers

Interdisciplinary Symposium for Emerging Researchers: 
Beyond the Bans – Policies and Pedagogies in the Post-Digital Era of Restrictions

Organized by the ECREA TWG Media Literacies and Communication Competencies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria | One-day workshop | 15 September 2026

Across Europe and beyond, debates are intensifying around age restrictions on social media for children and young people. Proposals to raise minimum age limits or strengthen age verification are often justified by concerns about online safety, mental health, distraction, exposure to harmful content, and the commercial pressures built into platform design. In various European countries, legal approaches to banning social media are being developed, while the European Commission (2026) recently published its plans to develop enforce age limits for social media. Moreover, schools are increasingly introducing restrictions or outright bans on learners’ use of mobile phones during the school day (Campbell et al., 2024; Grigic Magnusson, 2023). The policies of restriction are often justified by concerns related to distraction, wellbeing, academic performance, and the influence of digital media on young people’s social and cognitive development. Digital detox or sufficient use of digital tools is defined as a key factor, but their effects vary (see e.g. Radtke, 2022).

At the same time, social media and smart devices play an important role in young people’s communication, identity formation, civic participation, and access to information. Smartphones, as everyday companions, are also a digital tool for all school subjects, but especially for media education. As a result, age restrictions on social media and bans of smartphones raise complex questions about how to balance protection and participation, how responsibility should be shared among families, schools, policymakers, and platforms, and what such measures mean for young people’s rights, agency, and inclusion in digital society.

The doctoral symposium Beyond the Bans invites doctoral researchers to explore how post-digital educational systems (see e.g. Jopling, 2023) respond to restrictions and bans and how pedagogical practices evolve in their aftermath. The workshop seeks to foster dialogue on the broader implications of these policies and to examine how different European contexts approach the regulation of digital devices and platforms in schools.

The symposium will take place as a one-day workshop at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and is designed as a collaborative forum where doctoral researchers can present and discuss emerging research. Contributions may be authored by doctoral researchers alone or co-authored with senior researchers or supervisors. The event aims to support early-stage scholarship and encourage comparative perspectives across countries and educational systems.

Topics of interest

We welcome contributions addressing questions such as:

Policy perspectives

• How have bans of digital infrastructure – e.g. mobile phones, social media – form school emerged and been implemented in different European contexts?
• How do national or regional education policies frame the role of digital infrastructures in schools?
• How do bans differ across European regions and what role do supranational policies and guidelines (e.g. from EU, UNESCO) or international research on existing bans (e.g. Australia) play in this?
• What rationales and policy discourses underpin these restrictions?
• What differences and similarities emerge in cross-country comparisons?
• What are the blind spots in public and academic discourse, for example regarding the normalisation of technocapitalist developments?

Pedagogical perspectives

• How do teachers and schools adapt their pedagogical practices in response to mobile phone and/or social media bans?
• What alternative pedagogical strategies emerge in classrooms where mobile devices are restricted?
• How do schools balance digital literacy goals with device restrictions?
• What educational implications arise from existing bans on social media, and what didactic and educational implications can be derived from them for European educational contexts?
• What kinds of post-ban pedagogies are being developed to support fosterin critical media education and digital literacies?
• How do bans affect media and information literacy (MIL) and digital competence education?
• How can we deal with blind spots in post-ban pedagogies as well as in corresponding public debates, political reasoning/policy debates and in academic research?

We particularly welcome comparative and cross-national contributions that examine differences between European regions or explore the relationship between policy frameworks and classroom practices. We will be able to host 20 participants at the maximum. Participants will be selected on the basis of relevance and scientific quality, while also aiming to ensure a balanced composition in terms of thematic focus, methodological approach, and gender representation among presenters.

Format

The doctoral symposium will consist of short paper presentations followed by structured discussion sessions. The workshop is intended as a supportive space for developing research ideas, sharing empirical findings, and building networks among doctoral researchers working on digital education, media literacy, and education policy. The symposium will be opened by a keynote lecture.

In addition to peer feedback, participants will receive comments on their papers from senior scholars, either onsite or online. They are also encouraged to further develop their texts in dialogue with a senior scholar; where appropriate, we may suggest a potential senior collaborator, so that the event can also serve as an opportunity to initiate new academic collaborations.

Submission guidelines

Please send your submission to maarit.jaakkola@gu.se by 1 May 2026:

• An abstract (250–300 words excl. references) outlining the research question, theoretical approach, and (if applicable) methodology and empirical material
• Author information, including doctoral affiliation and supervisor(s)
• Indication if the paper will or could be co-authored with a senior researcher

Important dates

• Abstract submission deadline: 1 May
• Notification of acceptance: 1 June
• Symposium at the University of Innsbruck: 15 September

Practical issues

The symposium is free of charge to the selected participants. Participants will cover their own travels and potential accommodation.

Participants receive a certificate that can be used for validating 5 ECTS (recommendation) at the home institution. 

The symposium is organized in collaboration with the Media Education Section of the Austrian Association for Educational Research (ÖFEB – Österreichische Gesellschaft für Forschung und Entwicklung im Bildungswesen), the Young Media Education Network of the Division for Media Education of the German Educational Research Association (GERA, DGfE – Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft), and Network 06 of the European Educational Research Association (EERA).

Contact

For submissions and inquiries, please contact the organisers:

Maarit Jaakkola
Chair, ECREA TWG MLCC
Associate Professor, Department of Journalism, Media and Communication
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
maarit.jaakkola@gu.se

Petra Missomelius
Associate Professor, Department of Media, Society and Communication
University of Innsbruck, Austria
petra.missomelius@uibk.ac.at

Nina Grünberger
Professor, Department of Subject Didactics, Research Group: Media Education and Digital Literacy
University of Innsbruck, Austria
nina.gruenberger@uibk.ac.at 

References

Campbell, M., Edwards, E. J., Pennell, D., Poed, S., Lister, V., Gillett-Swan, J., Kelly, A., Zec, D., & Nguyen, T.-A. (2024). Evidence for and against banning mobile phones in schools: A scoping review. Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools, 34(3), 242–265. https://doi.org/10.1177/20556365241270394

Jopling, M. (2023). The postdigital school. In: Jandrić, P. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of postdigital science and education. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35469-4_24-1

European Commission (2026, March 17). The EU approach to age verification. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-verification

Grigic Magnusson, A., Ott, T., Hård af Segerstad, Y., & Sofkova Hashemi, S. (2023). Complexities of Managing a Mobile Phone Ban in the Digitalized Schools’ Classroom. Computers in the Schools, 40(3), 303–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2023.2211062

Radtke, T., Apel, T., Schenkel, K., Keller, J., & von Lindern, E. (2022). Digital detox: An effective solution in the smartphone era? A systematic literature review. Mobile Media & Communication,10(2), 190–215. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579211028647