ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

September 17-18, 2026

Aarhus, Denmark

Deadline: April 17, 2026

Although research on the manosphere is expanding globally, Anglo-American perspectives remain dominant. Research into the manosphere in the Nordic countries is currently dispersed and somewhat under-researched. The Nordic Manosphere Network aims to change this by creating a collaborative, interdisciplinary space that brings manosphere researchers together to share and create future collaborations. The purpose of the Network is also to reflect on the Nordic specific cultures and societies that situate and influence Nordic manospheres in different ways, e.g. the Nordic welfare states, gender equality, state feminism and other cultural and societal issues that are specific to the region.

We invite submissions engaging with any aspect of the Nordic manosphere, including but not limited to:

• Incel communities
  
• Red-pill narratives
  
• Tradwife discourses
  
• Digital masculinities
  
• Platform dynamics
  
• Manosphere financing and business models
  
• Anti-gender discourse
  
• Overlap with the far-right
  
• Feminist or intersectional approaches to these digital cultures

We especially encourage early-career scholars to contribute. For this, the NMN is able to facilitate limited traveling financial support via application.

Following the symposium, accepted abstracts will be published in a digital booklet, and participants will be invited to join regular online meetings designed to foster collaboration, peer support, and long-term research development. The Network seeks to connect isolated researchers, strengthen Nordic scholarship on gendered digital cultures, and develop regionally grounded frameworks for studying this increasingly influential online phenomenon.

Keynote: Professor Debbie Ging

Debbie Ging is Professor of Digital Media and Gender in the School of Communications at Dublin City University and Director of the DCU Institute for Research on Genders and Sexualities. She teaches and researches on gender, sexuality and digital media, with a focus on digital hate, online anti-feminist men's rights politics, the incel subculture and radicalization of boys and men into male supremacist ideologies. Debbie’s research also addresses youth experiences of gender-based and sexual abuse online and educational interventions to tackle these issues. 

About the Nordic Manosphere Network:

The NMN is a newly established network that aims to bring together individuals researching the Manosphere within a Nordic context, with the goal of facilitating discussions and collaboration across borders and boundaries. Our inaugural symposium will bring together different scholars from the Nordics (and beyond) and unite the different strands of work to better facilitate ongoing work with the Nordic Manosphere.

More information on the call and how to apply here: https://nordicmanospherenetwork.com/

Global Media and China

Deadline: May 20, 2026

We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a forthcoming special issue titled “AI, Algorithmic Media, and Digital Governance: Power, Control, and Technological Transformation,” to be published in the journal Global Media and China.

The accelerating integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into digital infrastructures represents a profound transformation in contemporary media environments and governance systems. AI-driven platforms, algorithmic recommendation systems, and automated content moderation increasingly shape how information circulates, how public discourse is structured, and how political authority is exercised across different societies. These developments raise important questions about algorithmic governance, digital sovereignty, media regulation, and the broader political implications of AI-mediated communication.

This special issue seeks to advance interdisciplinary scholarship examining the evolving relationships between AI technologies, media systems, and governance practices. We welcome contributions that critically explore how algorithmic systems influence media production, platform governance, public communication, and political power across diverse institutional and geopolitical contexts.

We invite empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions from scholars working in communication and media studies, political science, digital governance, sociology, science and technology studies, and related disciplines. Submissions may focus on specific national or regional contexts, or adopt comparative and transnational perspectives.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Algorithmic governance, digital statecraft, and political authority
  
• AI-driven propaganda, information manipulation, and computational misinformation
  
• State-led AI governance and digital surveillance regimes
  
• Platform politics and the political economy of algorithmic systems
  
• Public perceptions of AI and the politics of digital rights
  
• AI infrastructures, technological sovereignty, and global asymmetries in digital power
  
• Smart cities, Internet of Things systems, and algorithmic governance in public administration
  

Key dates

• Abstract submission deadline: 20 May 2026
  
• Notification of invitations for full papers: 1 June 2026
  
• Full paper submission deadline: 30 October 2026
  

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words to the guest editors with the subject line “GMAC Special Issue Submission.”

Guest Editors:

• Dechun Zhang, University of Copenhagen (dezh@hum.ku.dk)
  
• Weiai Xu, University of Massachusetts Amherst (weiaixu@umass.edu)
  
• Han Lin, Soochow University (linhan741@gmail.com)
  

Full details of the Call for Papers can be found here: https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/GCH/Algorithmic%20Media_CFP-1773117974170.pdf

Digital Journalism (special issue)

Deadline: April 17, 2026

Special Issue Editors: 

• Jonathan Hendrickx, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  
• Jorge Vázquez Herrero, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
  
• Cruz Negreira, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
  
• Sherwin Chua, PhD, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
  

This special issue aims to bring together cutting-edge research that contributes to a better understanding of the audiovisual turn in digital journalism. Said turn builds on earlier forms of multimedia journalism and digital longform storytelling, and ties in within the previously acknowledged audience, emotional and labour turns in journalism.

We invite scholars to submit empirical and theoretical contributions that critically engage with the notion of the audiovisual turn, including how it has been effectuated and can evolve over time. In addition to diverse quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods study designs, we particularly encourage submissions from the Global South, as well as cross-national comparisons that reflect platform-specific and regional differences. Focus areas may include, but are not limited to:

•  The de-institutionalisation of audiovisual journalism and news production by considering non-journalistic interloper actors, including influencers and content creators.
  
• The infrastructural platform dependency, algorithmic ambiguity and/or the ownership of audiovisual journalism in the platformisation era.
  
• A historical evolution of audiovisual journalism from the formats of traditional media to current platforms, considering both common and differentiating elements in journalistic practice.
  
• The production, contents and reception of audiovisual-centric digital journalism, e.g. shortform, vertical videos and/or audio across news outlets’ proprietary as well as social media platforms.
  
• The epistemology and/or ontology of audiovisual journalism.
  
• The news experience and audience interaction through shortform videos and other audiovisual formats.
  
• The production and publication of AI-generated audiovisual news or news-like content and its disinformation effects in a context of algorithmic curation and consumption.
  

Submission instructions:

Extended abstracts of 500-750 words, not including references, as well as a full list of authors, affiliations, and abbreviated bios for each author. 

Please submit your proposal to this Google Form as one file (PDF) with your names clearly stated on the first page: https://lnkd.in/gNxUZJj7

Full manuscripts, if invited, should be between 7,000-9,000 words.

Timeline:

• Extended abstracts submission deadline: 18:00 CET on April 17, 2026
  
• Notification on submitted abstracts: May 8, 2026
  
•  Article submission deadline: October 30, 2026
  

March 27, 2026, 2 PM (WET)

Online (MS Teams)

Stefan Schweigler (Vienna University)

The webinar will explore the cultural-theoretical, philosophical, aesthetic, historical and political dimensions of intergenerationality—a timely topic at the intersection of media studies, ageing, and communication research.

Stefan Schweigler's interdisciplinary work spans media studies, affect theory, ageing care, gender, queer, disability, and postcolonial studies, offering perspectives from across the arts and humanities on how different generations relate, communicate, and are represented in contemporary media and culture.

In this talk, Stefan Schweigler discusses the 2016 short documentary Papa Weifeng and its relational integration into Chinese media activism.

Organized by the STORYline project (Universidade Lusófona), the webinar is supported, among others, by the  ECREA's Children, Youth and Media section and Temporary Working Group on Aging & Communication.

Registration (free but compulsory): https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=BsyME2tRgU6IEwb9JTG93OSldc9WtDlBv3vbnf3mM25UMU00MjVSRjQyR1lPTjcxMFRCOUcyQVAyNy4u

More information: https://cicant.ulusofona.pt/agenda-news/news-events/4279-storyline-webinar-stefan-schweigler

Anna Bisogno

Purchase here: https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/tv-espansa

Television has not disappeared; it has simply moved and now lives elsewhere: in feeds and in the connections of an audience that scrolls through smartphones and tablets and inhabits digital platforms, where algorithms decide what to watch and storytelling blends with consumption. In this new ecosystem, television hybridizes with the language of social media, fragments into clips, recomposes itself into memes, and expands into digital formats.

As the book highlights, this is an expanded television that interacts with artificial intelligence, builds endless archives, and personalizes tastes and viewing experiences. It forms an archipelago of practices, languages, and devices in which data participate in the creative process, shaping narratives, rhythms, and formats, and redefining the role of authors and the very meaning of writing.

In the Italian context, linear television enters into osmosis with platforms and social media, giving rise to a heterogeneous model in which forms of audience participation are reconfigured and viewing becomes a continuous and shared experience.

Anna Bisogno is an Associate Professor at Universitas Mercatorum, where she teaches Cinema, Radio and Television. Her research interests focus on Television Studies, the history of Italian television, and the narrative intersections between TV, digital platforms and social networks. She is also the author for RaiPlay of the program 30×70. Se dico donna….

Edited by: Ana Jorge and Sofia P. Caldeira

From parenting and pilgrimage to activism and mourning, this book explores how digital connection - and disconnection - shapes the emotional texture of our lives.

Using the concept of ‘affective atmospheres’, the authors examine the feelings that emerge in the interactions between people, platforms and places. Drawing on rich, real-world examples, it explores how digital media infuse our homes, beliefs, rituals and politics with emotion, tension and meaning.

Pre-order here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/atmospheres-and-digital-media

Or download Open access here: https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_edited/jj.32726851

TOC 

Introduction: Atmospheres and Digital Media Dis/connection - Ana Jorge, Sofia Caldeira

Chapter 1: Post-digital parenting: the relational-affective network of the family - Francisca Porfírio, Ana Jorge, Rita Grácio

Chapter 2: Platformised feminisms and social media ambiences - Sofia Caldeira, Ana Jorge, Ana Kubrusly

Chapter 3: Affective temporalities in pilgrimage: anticipation, presence and (pro)longing - Ana Jorge, Filipa Neto, Ana Kubrusly, Edna Santos

Chapter 4: Affective intensities of dis/connection in mourning - Ionara Silva, Ana Jorge, Filipa Neto

Afterword: Reflections on affective atmospheres and felt experience in the mediation of everyday social practices - Peter Lunt

October 7-10, 2026

Toronto, Canada

Deadline: April 30, 2026

Call for abstracts for an open panel at 4S 2026 (7-10 October in Toronto, Canada): Techno-Magical Futures & Histories (Panel #245). 

The panel explores: the historical, material, and socio-cultural dimensions of the relationship between magic and technology; efforts by Silicon Valley to position AI technologies as omniscient, god-like entities with supernatural capabilities; intersections between magic and computation; magic and technoscience; and discussions including techno-magical discourses, sociotechnical imaginaries, material practices, hegemonic order, policy and regulation.

Scholars across various fields and disciplines including communication and media studies are welcome to submit a 250-word abstract. The deadline is 30 April.

Communication and the Public (Special issue)

Deadline: March 20, 2026

Only one week left to submit abstracts for the Call for Papers for an upcoming Special Issue of Communication and the Public (https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ctp), entitled: Co-Producing Environmental Publics: Technology, Communication, and Ecological Transformation

In recent decades, environmental challenges—ranging from climate change and air pollution to biodiversity loss and resource scarcity—have increasingly shaped not only policy agendas but also the very texture of public life globally. Responding to these crises, digital technologies—including sensor networks, big data analytics, algorithmic systems, and artificial intelligence—have become constitutive elements in how environmental issues are rendered visible, knowable, and actionable.

These technologies do more than document ecological change. They actively intervene in the communicative infrastructures through which publics emerge, take shape, and act. Systems of sensing, modeling, and prediction increasingly define what counts as “environmental risk,” thereby shaping understandings of responsibility, urgency, and agency. At the same time, these infrastructures operate unevenly: algorithmic filtering, platform governance, and unequal access to data intensify existing inequalities in visibility, participation, and recognition—particularly in contexts of rapid or uneven environmental degradation.

As a result, environmental publics are increasingly co-produced through the interaction of ecological conditions, technological systems, and communicative practices. Yet many existing theories of publicness and communication—largely premised on stable media environments and human-centered deliberation—struggle to account for publics constituted through algorithms, sensors, platforms, and predictive ecologies.

This special issue seeks to advance scholarly understanding of how technological systems reshape environmental communication and how ecological crises, in turn, reconfigure the communicative, institutional, and imaginative infrastructures of public life. By foregrounding the mutually constitutive relationship between technology, publics, and ecological transformation, the issue aims to deepen theoretical debates on public formation, algorithmic governance, mediated knowledge production, and collective action in an era of planetary uncertainty.

Scope and Themes

We welcome conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions that examine how digital technologies mediate environmental governance, identity formation, activism, and the circulation of ecological knowledge. Contributions may engage with one or more of the following (non-exhaustive) themes:

• Algorithmic infrastructures and the formation of environmental publics
  
• Datafication, environmental knowledge, and public authority
  
• Public communication of climate models, predictive ecologies, and digital simulations
  
• Networked environmental activism and hybrid public mobilization
  
• Communicative agency among scientists, Indigenous communities, and climate advocates
  
• Surveillance ecologies, risk governance, and public trust
  
• Digital platforms, environmental legitimacy, and contestations of power
  
• Environmental media propaganda, misinformation, and AI-generated narratives
  

We especially encourage submissions from underrepresented regions (Asia, Africa, Latin America, Indigenous contexts) and interdisciplinary perspectives across communication studies, STS, environmental governance, and political ecology.

Submission Process and Key Dates

Abstract submission deadline: March 20, 2026

Notification of invitations to submit full papers: March 30, 2026

(Please note that an invitation does not guarantee publication; all full manuscripts will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process.)

Full paper submission deadline: July 31, 2026

Planned publication: 2027

Abstract Submission Guidelines: Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words, in English, to all guest editors with the subject line: “CAP Special Issue Submission”

Guest Editors:

Dr. Dechun Zhang, University of Copenhagen (dezh@hum.ku.dk)

Dr. Weiai Xu, University of Massachusetts Amherst (weiaixu@umass.edu)

Dr. Han Lin, Soochow University (linhan741@gmail.com)

Full call for paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zAr6qNL5YtkC9YKQtj9VexGcPmZxelaq/view?usp=sharing

We would greatly appreciate it if you could circulate this Call for Papers within your professional networks and among colleagues who may be interested. We look forward to your submissions.

Siren! Magazine (Inaugural Issue, May 2026)  

Deadline: March 30, 2026

Siren! Magazine is a transnational student-led feminist magazine dedicated to amplifying voices, knowledges, and practices that are often submerged within dominant media and cultural ecosystems.  

Our inaugural issue, “Resurfacing feminist voices,” will be launched as an intervention into the noise of contemporary media culture, resisting silencing, challenging hegemonic narratives, and reclaiming communication as a key site for care, solidarity, and transformation. 

To accompany our first issue, alongside scholarly submissions, Siren! Magazine invites news, announcements, and short reports about events, initiatives, and cultural interventions related to submerged knowledges, practices, and forms of collective resistance. We aim to remain open to any and all spaces. Our intention is to share updates and collaboration opportunities transnationally and to foster dialogue across contexts we might not otherwise be able to access.  

We invite short submissions (200-400 words) that clearly document and contextualize specific initiatives, events, or projects. Submissions should include key details such as the name of the event or initiative, dates, location (if applicable), organizing bodies

 or collaborators, and a brief reflection on its aims, methods, and impact. When relevant, contributors are encouraged to include links, images, or contact information to support further connection and collaboration. 

We welcome submissions that share information about: 

• Activist gatherings, workshops, and assemblies, including their themes, participants, and outcomes 
  
• Exhibitions, performances, and film screenings, with attention to curatorial or artistic interventions 
  
• Community-based media projects and collaborative platforms 
  
• Indigenous, queer, feminist, or diasporic cultural events and organizing spaces 
  
• Archival initiatives, memory work, and counter-archives in practice 
  
• Transnational solidarity networks and grassroots organizing efforts 
  

We are especially interested in submissions that critically engage how these initiatives challenge dominant media narratives, center historically silenced voices, and experiment with alternative forms of communication and collective knowledge production. 

How to submit 

Please send your submission by email to asc-sirenmagazine@asc.upenn.edu with the subject line: “Siren! News & Events Submission – Inaugural Issue” 

Deadline: March 30th, 2026

Submissions may be written or multimedia, and can document past, ongoing, or upcoming events. Selected contributions will be featured in the inaugural issue of

Siren!, scheduled for publication in May 2026. 

Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico

Deadline: June 30, 2026

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite submissions for the upcoming special issue in the journal Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico (EMP), a Q1 journal in Scopus: "Algorithmic Images and Information Urgencies: Challenges and Transformations of Contemporary Graphic Journalism."

As generative AI and digital shifts redefine our visual culture, photojournalism faces unprecedented aesthetic, ethical, and industrial hurdles. This monograph seeks to explore the complexities of documentary photography in an era marked by rapid technological change and global crises, from climate change and migration to the rise of polarized political narratives.

Languages for Submission:

Please note that the journal accepts original articles in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese.

Key Information:

• Submission Deadline: June 30, 2026
  
• Expected Publication: October 2026
  
• More Details and Submission Platform: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESMP/monograficos/periodismografico

Topics include (not limited):

• AI & Image Mutation: Deontological limits, deepfakes, and algorithmic bias.
  
• Representing Reality: Visual activism, hybrid narratives, and documenting humanitarian crises or climate change.
  
• Structural Challenges: Gender equality in the profession and the economic sustainability of the photojournalistic industry.
  

Editors: Nieves Limón-Serrano (UCLM), Marta Martín-Núñez (UJI), and Mathias-Felipe-de-Lima-Santos (UNSW/UNIFESP/UPF).