ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Fandom | Cultures | Research  (Themed Issue 2/27)

Deadline for Proposals (EXTENDED): October 21, 2026

Contemporary television is now inextricably linked to digital platforms, making it impossible to analyze one without the other. Streaming services, social media infrastructures, algorithmic recommendation systems, and data-driven interfaces have fundamentally reshaped the production, distribution, circulation, and experience of serial narratives. Television today operates as a hybrid, cross-platform phenomenon that unfolds across interfaces, snippets, paratexts, fan practices, and algorithmically curated regimes of visibility. In these environments, users are addressed simultaneously as audiences, consumers, fans, data subjects, and co-producers. By evoking the metaphor of Upstairs, Downstairs (GB, ITV, 1971-1975) this themed issue interrogates the structural hierarchies and power dynamics between platform architectures (the 'upstairs' of algorithmic control and corporate infrastructure) and tactical user practices (the 'downstairs' of audience agency, resistance, and creative appropriation)

Questions of platformization have become a central concern within contemporary Television Studies and constitute a key area of interest. Across streaming services, social media platforms, public service media environments, and participatory cultures, television increasingly operates through mechanisms of attraction, guidance, and capture. Interface design, personalization, algorithmic recommendation, gamification, and affective infrastructures shape how content is discovered, circulated, and experienced. At the same time, audiences and fans engage with these environments in creative, strategic, resistant, and sometimes subversive ways. 

Contemporary television cultures encompass a wide range of practices and infrastructures, including transmedia storytelling and paratextual extensions, platform interfaces and recommendation systems, public service media strategies, livestreaming and participatory cultures, fan investigations and knowledge production, as well as alternative and pirate modes of distribution and access. Examining these diverse phenomena through the lens of seduction and agency highlights how platformed television environments simultaneously enable, structure, and constrain audience participation.

These tensions invite closer examination. While platformization has been widely discussed across media and television studies, the specific relationship between seduction and agency remains a productive lens for understanding how contemporary television cultures are organized, experienced, and contested. Such a perspective allows for the analysis of infrastructures, industries, interfaces, texts, and audiences not as separate domains but as mutually constitutive elements within platformed media environments.

This themed issue seeks to advance these discussions by bringing together theoretical, historical, empirical, methodological, and practice-oriented perspectives from Television Studies, Platform Studies, Media Industry Studies, Fan Studies, and Cultural Studies. We invite contributions that explore how the interplay of platform logics, industrial strategies, technological infrastructures, audience practices, and cultural negotiations shapes contemporary television cultures.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• New theoretical or conceptual approaches to the relationship between seduction and agency in platformed television
  
• Empirical case studies on specific formats, platforms, genres, or regional contexts
  
• Interface design, UX politics, and affective infrastructures
  
• Fan practices, participatory cultures, and forms of resistance or appropriation
  
• Transmedia storytelling, paratextual economies, and snippet/meme circulation
  
• Global platform dynamics and locally specific appropriations
  
• Public service media strategies in platform environments
  
• Methodological challenges and innovations in researching platformed television cultures
  
• Questions of datafication, visibility, moderation, nostalgia, or alternative/pirate practices
  
• The role of AI-generated content and automated participation
  

The issue seeks nuanced analyses that explore the complex entanglements and contradictions between infrastructures, industries, texts, interfaces, and audiences, rather than understanding seduction and agency as simple opposites.

***

Language: Bilingual, English/German

Please submit your proposal (working title, abstract of 300-500 words) along with a short biographical note by October 21st 2026 to fcr-jour@uni-marburg.de.

Notification of acceptance: November 1st 2026

Submission of full papers: April 1st 2027

Guest Editors: Kim Hebben, Christine Piepiorka, Herbert Schwaab, Sven Stollfuß, Yulia Yurtaeva-Martens

***

References

Dragomir, Marius/Túñez López, Miguel: “How Public Service Media are Changing in the Platform Era: A Comparative Study Across Four European Countries.” In: European Journal of Communication 39 (6), 2024, 608-624.

Hebben, Kim/Piepiorka, Christine: “Easy to Snack—Hard to Digest? Strategies of Dis/Array in Streaming, Social Media, and Television.” In: Media and Communication 13, 2025, Art. 9430. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.9430

Helmond, Anne: “The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready.” In: Social Media & Society 1 (2), 2015, 1-11.

Luginbühl, Martin: “TV News on Instagram: Affordances, Genres, Journalistic Cultures.” In: Discourse & Communication 19 (1), 2025, 46-71.

Mayer, Annekatrin: “Updating Public Value: How Journalists Understand Their Societal Role in the Context of Digital Platforms.” In: Digital Journalism, 2025, 1-17.

Moe, Hallvard: “Embrace or Leave Social Media? On the Viability of Public Service Media Organizations’ Strategies Facing Platform Power.” In: European Journal of Communication 39 (6), 2024, 595-607.

Nelson, Jacob L.: Imagined Audiences: How Journalists Perceive and Pursue the Public. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2021.

Prinzler, Saskia/Stollfuß, Sven/Böttke, Anna-Katharina: “Engaging Audiences in Platformized Public Service Media Journalism: User-Generated Content and Editorial Practices in the funk Content Network.” In: Journalism and Media 7 (2), 2026, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia7020090

Stollfuß, Sven: “Platformization as a Structural Dimension for Public Service Media in Germany: The funk Content Network and the New Interstate Media Treaty.” In: Television & New Media 25 (2), 2024, 185-203.

van Es, Karin/Poell, Thomas: “Platform Imaginaries and Dutch Public Service Media.” In: Social Media + Society 6 (2), 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120933289

December 1-2, 2026

Brussels, Belguim

Why do pro-democratic messages find little echo among increasingly polarised European societies? Three Horizon Europe research and innovation projects—PROTEMO, PLEDGE, and MORES—have spent the past years exploring different pieces of the same puzzle: the role emotions play in shaping politics and what they cost democratic life when political decision-makers leave them unaddressed. On 1 and 2 December 2026, the projects are holding their Joint Closing Conference in Brussels for scholars, civil society practitioners, and policy decision-makers. The scientific findings on offer reveal how emotions feed into some of the most pressing political challenges that Europe faces today: 

• What drives the widening gap between political tribes—the affective polarisation eroding trust across democracies—and how might emotions help bridge it?
  
• How emotional appeals shape policy debates and citizens’ attitudes, and how neglecting emotional needs can push vulnerable groups further away from politics?
  
• How and when do personal grievances become a democratic threat, and how can they be channelled into proactive civic engagement instead? 

The conference

The event is organised on two consecutive days. Day one is dedicated to scientific discoveries and discussions. Session panels, led and moderated by project experts, will cover important levels at which emotions operate: citizen behaviour and political attitudes, media and political communication, and the policy process itself. Each session pairs short presentations from across the projects with open discussions. 

The afternoon opens into breakout rooms on methodology, conceptual and theoretical questions, and migration and crises as case studies.

Day two focuses on policy and civil society groups. Sessions will cover the evidence, risks, and opportunities for emotions in policy decision-making, and the hands-on application of science-derived tools for better policy and communication, followed by breakout rooms for civil society and policy practitioners. While the themes and foci change, registered attendees are welcome to join either day of the event and network.

Together, MORES, PLEDGE, and PROTEMO represent nearly €10 million of Horizon Europe investment in research untangling how emotions affect politics and democratic life. The closing conference is where researchers present the evidence and implications of their scientific research to, and debate them with, the wider research and policy communities.

Programme

The programme, a draft subject to change, is available for download here. 

How to attend

More information about the venue and programme will be sent to confirmed attendees after registration. To sign up, please fill in the registration form here.

May 27-28, 2027

Maastricht, Netherlands

Deadline: October 27, 2026

Every new media technology has offered both promise and peril to truth in democracy. Evolving media can spread both truth and untruth at new speeds and scales — mediated (un)truths can be a force for democratisation and de-democratisation. Today we debate the impact of AI and social media; yesterday we debated the impact of the mass press, radio, television, and early internet.

This workshop asks how democratic politicians have perceived, promoted, and protected truth across the media revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We focus on how innovations in print, audio-visual, and early digital media repeatedly forced politicians to reconceive and renegotiate the meaning of truth in democracy. We also discuss how they devised countermeasures against falsehoods, and whether those measures were (counter)productive.

Research questions: presentations address any of these three guiding questions:

1. How did new communication media (re)shape politicians’ perceptions of truth, and of the role of truth in democracy?
   
2. Which policy measures (media regulations etc.) did politicians take to promote and protect truth in democracy?
   
3. What were the intended and unintended (possibly counterproductive) effects of these policy measures, and how were these measures (re)evaluated, adjusted or abandoned?

Scholars from any discipline and case studies from anywhere are welcome, but presentations must focus on politics and media and be historical — concerning pre-twenty-first-century media revolutions.

Slow science format: no parallel panels, each participant gets a full hour, and the whole workshop is one continuous conversation over two days. Around ten presentations. Focus on work in progress: (partially) written papers optional. A joint publication may be explored afterwards.

Included: no registration fee · coffee, lunches, and the Thursday conference dinner

Travel: international rail via Liège, Aachen · air connections via Amsterdam, Brussels, Düsseldorf, Eindhoven

Abstract (300 words) + short bio (100 words) by 27 October 2026

betto.vanwaarden@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Notification by 13 November 2026

Convened by Betto van Waarden, Assistant Professor of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University

Funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) · Supported by the sector plan programme Disinformation & Democracy

Link to DOCA: https://www.hope.uzh.ch/doca/

Link to the Call: https://t.uzh.ch/20g

The Database of Variables for Content Analysis (DOCA) is looking for a communication and media researcher with expertise in automated content analysis to join its international editorial team.

DOCA is an open-access methodological infrastructure that compiles, systematizes, and critically evaluates content-analytical variables used across communication research. It provides a basis for the development and operationalization of variables and contributes to greater transparency and comparability in content analysis.

As a member of the editorial team, you will contribute to the strategic development of DOCA, support the development and integration of variables and methodological standards for automated content analysis, and participate in the review process of submitted DOCA variables.

The expected commitment is approximately 2 hours per month + participation in a monthly online editors’ meeting.

We offer the opportunity to:

• collaborate in an engaged and international editorial team,
  
• take on an editorial role in an established database for content analysis,
  
• actively contribute to Open Science in communication and media research, and
  
• help shape methodological standards for automated content analysis within DOCA.
  

Interested in joining us? Please send a short email outlining your motivation to Franziska Oehmer-Pedrazzi at franziska.oehmer-pedrazzi@mileva-institut.ch.

We are very much looking forward to hearing from you!

Franziska Oehmer-Pedrazzi, University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons FHGR; Sabrina H. Kessler, fög – Research Center for the Public Sphere and Society, University of Zurich; Edda Humprecht, University of Jena; Laia Castro Herrero, Universitat de Barcelona; Nicole Bizzotto, University of Zurich; Philippe Sloksnath, University of Zurich

June 21-23, 2027

Geneva, Switzerland

Deadline: October 31, 2026

In the current era of globalisation and media convergence, multilingualism, multiculturalism, and translation appear in most of the news, whether international news or national news, whether in monolingual or multilingual countries (Rodriguez-Blanco and Davier 2026). Scholarly interest in international news flows can be traced back to the landmark Foreign News Study (Sreberny-Mohammadi et al. 1980) and the MacBride report (International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, MacBride, and UNESCO 1980), which criticised the uniformity of news flows from the Global North to the Global South. More recent research has reopened these debates by examining contra- or South–South flows of information (Kavoori 2007; Rantanen 2007; Thussu 2007). Nevertheless, inequalities in representation persist. Africa, for example, has long been subjected to negative coverage, despite slight shifts in journalistic angles (Bunce, Franks, and Paterson 2016). Latin America has remained underrepresented by international news organisations (Wu 1998; Cazzamatta 2020), with indigenous voices being marginalised or silenced, even if they now appear in some news reports by global news agencies (Rodríguez-Blanco 2025).

In times of cascading crises, news organisations, news agencies, public relations practitioners, digital platforms, and citizen journalists all participate in shaping public agendas and circulating information across borders (Valenzuela and McCombs 2019 [1996]; Golan 2006). Furthermore, the transnational nature of disinformation raises questions about multilingual factchecking practices and the circulation of contested narratives across linguistic and cultural contexts (Cazzamatta 2025).

More broadly speaking, the practice of interlingual translation influences the syntax of the target language (McLaughlin 2011), the selection of sources (Davier 2017; van Doorslaer 2009), and the framing of countries and individuals (Bassnett 2005; Valdeón 2014; Filmer and Riggs 2023). Furthermore, since the disruption caused by the public release of ChatGPT in late 2022, journalists have increasingly integrated machine translation and AI into their daily news routines to meet the demands of the industry or in response to organisational policies (Conway et al. 2025; Nurminen 2025).

From a methodological perspective, contrastive media analysis (Kelly-Holmes and Milani 2013; Hauser and Luginbühl 2012) has progressively integrated ethnographic sources of information (Coesemans 2012) and drawn on insights from the sociology of journalism (Paterson 2008). Journalistic translation research has also imported methods of data collection from the social sciences, for example observations, field notes, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires (van Rooyen and Davier 2025; Bielsa and Bassnett 2009). In addition, applied linguistics has combined ethnography and process-oriented methods of data collection such as screen recording and retrospective interviews (Perrin 2013; Merminod and Haapanen 2025).

Beyond interlingual translation, contemporary media increasingly rely on multimodal forms of communication in which information is transformed across semiotic modes (Riggs 2024), for example, from text to image, video, infographics, or social media content. Pan, Wu, Luo and Qian (2024) emphasise the inherent multimodality of any form of communication, including a focus on paratextual features (including headlines and photos) in the news narrative. The multimodal nature of news therefore invites the examination of how meaning is negotiated, transformed, and contested across languages, cultures, and media formats.

Given that translation and related multilingual, multicultural, and multimodal processes, practices, and products permeate the media without necessarily leaving visible traces (Van Rooyen and Davier 2026), this conference aims to showcase research that sheds light on these often-hidden forms of mediation.

To date, these issues have largely been examined within the separate traditions of translation studies, applied linguistics, journalism studies, communication, and media studies. This conference aims to bring these disciplines into closer dialogue.

For the Multilingualism, Multiculturalism, and Translation in the News Conference, we welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines, addressing some of the following questions:

• How is the news produced in multilingual and multicultural environments?
  
• What role does translation play in contemporary news production and dissemination?
  
• How do journalistic writing practices reflect multilingual and multicultural influences?
  
• How is multilingualism made visible or rendered invisible in news?
  
• How do journalistic cultures differ across countries, regions, and language communities?
  
• How does topic selection vary among language services and media organisations?
  
• How is multimodality integrated into multilingual news production processes?
  
• What is the effect of increased multimodality or cross-platform production on multilingualism and translation?
  
• How do disinformation and misinformation spread across national borders?
  
• How is factchecking conducted across linguistic and cultural boundaries?
  
• How are the concepts and practices of constructive journalism, peace journalism, or development journalism, among others, translated and adapted across cultural and linguistic boundaries?
  
• How do practitioners conceive of their journalistic work aimed at multilingual and multicultural audiences?
  
• How do audiences perceive international news coverage across different linguistic and cultural settings?
  
• How do machine translation and generative artificial intelligence reshape multilingual journalistic practices?
  
• Do they make multilingualism and translation more or less visible?
  
• How are marginalised, indigenous, and underrepresented voices translated, mediated, and circulated in local and global news ecosystems?
  
• How do processes of resemiotisation transform information across linguistic, cultural, and multimodal contexts?
  

The conference focuses on key themes, including:

• News/journalism
  
• Multilingualism
  
• Multiculturalism/intercultural studies
  
• Translation
  
• International/regional/national news
  
• Infrastructure/materiality
  
• News values/news selection/journalistic discourse
  
• Global news flows
  
• Factchecking beyond borders
  
• Multimodality
  

We welcome contributions from a range of disciplines, including, but not limited to:

• Applied linguistics
  
• Communication studies
  
• Contrastive media studies
  
• Intercultural communication
  
• International journalism
  
• Journalism studies
  
• Media studies
  
• Multimodal studies
  
• Pragmatics
  
• Sociology of journalism
  
• Translation studies
  

The conference seeks to create a space for meaningful exchange between the Global South and North, encouraging dialogue across disciplines. We look forward to receiving proposals that advance our understanding of multilingualism, multiculturalism, translation, and media production in an increasingly interconnected yet uneven global information landscape.

Organising Committee

• Lucile Davier, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
  
• Natalia Rodriguez-Blanco, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
  
• Marlie van Rooyen, University of the Free State (South Africa)
  

Scientific Committee

• Aragrande, Gaia (University of Bologna, Italy)
  
• Boulanger, Pier-Pascale (Concordia University, Canada)
  
• Bornoz, Tristan (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland)
  
• Conway, Kyle (University of Ottawa, Canada)
  
• Davier, Lucile (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
  
• Feinauer, Ilse (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa)
  
• Gagnon, Chantal (University of Montreal, Canada)
  
• Hernández Guerrero, María José (University of Málaga, Spain)
  
• Huotari, Léa (University of Turku, Finland)
  
• Jalalian Daghigh, Ali (Universiti Malaya, Malaysia)
  
• Kelly-Holmes, Helen (University of Limerick, Ireland)
  
• Kim, Kyung Hye (Dongguk University, South Korea)
  
• Lagneau, Éric (EHESS, France)
  
• Mairi McLaughlin (UC Berkeley, United States)
  
• Merminod, Gilles (Zurich University of Applied Sciences)
  
• Mustvairo, Bruce (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
  
• Perrin, Daniel (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland)
  
• Riggs, Ashley (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy)
  
• Rodriguez-Blanco, Natalia (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
  
• Surm, Jasmin (University of Leeds, United Kingdom)
  
• Valdeón, Roberto A. (University of Oviedo, Spain)
  
• van Doorslaer, Luc (University of Tartu, Estonia & KU Leuven, Belgium)
  
• Van Leuven, Sarah (Ghent University, Belgium)
  
• van Poucke, Piet (Ghent University, Belgium)
  
• Van Rooyen, Marlie (University of the Free State, South Africa)
  

Keynote speakers

• Regina Cazzamatta, University of Erfurt (Germany)
  
• Kyle Conway, University of Ottawa (Canada)
  
• Cyril Lemieux, EHESS (France)
  

Timeline

• Submission of 300-word abstracts by 31 October 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance by 31 January 2027
  
• Travel grants, decision by 15 February 2027
  

Support

This conference is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) as part of the SNSF-NRF project “South–North flows of information through translation in the global news agency AFP”.

References

Bassnett, Susan. 2005. "Bringing the News Back Home: Strategies of Acculturation and Foreignisation." Language and Intercultural Communication 5 (2): 120-130. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708470508668888.

Bielsa, Esperança, and Susan Bassnett. 2009. Translation in Global News. London: Routledge.

Bunce, Mel, Suzanne Franks, and Chris Paterson. 2016. "A new Africa's Media Image?" In Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising", edited by Mel Bunce, 1-14. London: Routledge.

Cazzamatta, Regina. 2020. "Four facets of Latin America: A study of the German press coverage from 2000 to 2014." SComS: Studies in Communication Sciences 20 (1): 7-23. https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2020.01.002.

---. 2025. "Building a cross-border European information network: Hyperlink connections among fact-checking organizations." Media and Communication 13. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.9389.

Coesemans, Roel. 2012. "Contrastive News Discourse Analysis from a Pragmatic Perspective: Context, Ideology and Representation in Press Coverage About Kenya's Crisis." In Contrastive Media Analysis: Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Mass Media Communication, edited by Stefan Hauser and Martin Luginbühl, 67-98. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Conway, Kyle, Julie Alice Gramaccia, Nikita Scholz, and Téana Averbeck. 2025. "Measuring lexical distance between parallel corpora: the case of AI-generated news translation." Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice: 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2025.2590066.

Davier, Lucile. 2017. Les enjeux de la traduction dans les agences de presse. Lille: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.

Filmer, Denise, and Ashley Riggs. 2023. Translating the cultural Other during Covid: A comparative study of Italian and UK online news. inTRAlinea 25.

Golan, Guy. 2006. "Inter-media agenda setting and global news coverage." Journalism Studies 7 (2): 323-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700500533643. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700500533643.

Hauser, Stefan, and Martin Luginbühl. 2012. "Approaching contrastive analysis." In Contrastive Media Analysis: Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Mass Media Communication, edited by Stefan Hauser and Martin Luginbühl, 1-7. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, Sean MacBride, and UNESCO. 1980. "Many voices, one world: Towards a new, more just, and more efficient world information and communication order. Report of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems." UNESCO. Accessed 26/08/2026. http://www.un-documents.net/macbride-report.pdf.

Kavoori, Anandam P. 2007. "Thinking through contra-flows: Perspectives from post-colonial and transnational cultural studies." In Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, 49-64. London: Routledge.

Kelly-Holmes, Helen, and Tomasso M. Milani. 2013. "Introduction: Thematising multilingualism in the media." In Thematising multilingualism in the media, edited by Helen Kelly-Holmes and Tomasso M. Milani, 1-22. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

McLaughlin, Mairi. 2011. Syntactic Borrowing in Contemporary French: A Linguistic Analysis of News Translation. Vol. 30Research monographs in French studies. London: Legenda.

Merminod, Gilles, and Lauri Haapanen. 2025. "Hidden behind the text: A linguistic ethnographic study of stancetaking in news production." Language and Communication 101: 15-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2024.12.014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530924001046.

Nurminen, Mary. 2025. "Machine translation in non-translation workplaces." In The Routledge Handbook of Translation Technology and Society, edited by Stefan Baumgarten and Michael Tieber. London: Routledge.

Pan, Li, Xiaoping Wu, Tian Luo, and Hong Qian, eds. 2024. Multimodality in Translation Studies: Media, Models, and Trends in China London: Routledge.

Paterson, Chris. 2008. "Why ethnography?" In Making online news, edited by Chris A. Paterson and David Domingo, 1-14. New York: Peter Lang.

Perrin, Daniel. 2013. The linguistics of newswriting. Vol. 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Rantanen, Terhi. 2007. "Flows and contra-flows in transitional societies." In Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, 165-181. London: Routledge.

Riggs, Ashley. 2024. "Verbal and visual communication in constructive news across cultures: A case study of a bilingual English-Spanish corpus with a focus on metaphor." Language & Communication 96: 26-41. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2024.02.001. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530924000107.

Rodríguez-Blanco, Natalia. 2025. "'El litio, no comemos nosotros': la traducción de voces locales en la cobertura multilingüe y multimedia de Agence France-Presse." Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción 18 (2): 318-343. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v18n2a03. https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/mutatismutandis/article/view/360514.

Rodriguez-Blanco, Natalia, and Lucile Davier. 2026. "Translation in news agency journalism." In Routledge Handbook of News Agencies, edited by Pedro Aguiar, Joseph Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Christian Vukasovich, 483-493. London: Routledge.

Sreberny-Mohammadi, Annabelle, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Robert Stevenson, and Frank Okwu Ugboajah. 1980. The World of the News/The News of the World: Final Report of the ‘Foreign Images’ Study Undertaken by the International Association for Mass Communication Research for UNESCO. University Centre for Mass Communication Research (Leicester). https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000065257.

Thussu, Daya Kishan. 2007. "Mapping global media flow and contra-flow." In Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, 11-32. London: Routledge.

Valdeón, Roberto A. 2014. "From adaptation to appropriation: Framing the world through news translation." Linguaculture 5 (1). https://doi.org/10.1515/lincu-2015-0019.

Valenzuela, Sebastián, and Maxwell E. McCombs. 2019 [1996]. "The agenda-setting role of the news media." In An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research, edited by Don W. Stacks and Michael B. Salwen, 99-112. London: Routledge.

van Doorslaer, Luc. 2009. "How language and (non-)translation impact on media newsrooms: the case of newspapers in Belgium." Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 17 (2): 83-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/09076760903125051.

van Rooyen, Marlie, and Lucile Davier. 2025. "Translation and mass media." In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Sociology, edited by Sergey Tyulenev and Wenyan Luo, 306-321. London: Routledge.

---. 2026. "Learning from news translation research to unblackbox paraprofessional translation." In Translating at Work: Paraprofessional translation in organizations, edited by Kaisa Koskinen, 76-96. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Wu, Haoming Denis. 1998. "Investigating the determinants of international news flows: A meta-analysis." Gazette 60 (6): 493-512.

We are pleased to announce that Connectist: Istanbul University Journal of Communication Sciences has been recognized as an Affiliate Journal of the International Communication Association (ICA).

ICA is a leading international scholarly association dedicated to advancing the scholarly study of communication worldwide, with more than 7,000 members in more than 85 countries. Since 2003, ICA has been formally associated with the United Nations as a non-governmental organization. It promotes international research, scholarly exchange, and academic publishing in the field of communication.

Established by the ICA Board in 2015, the Affiliate Journal program promotes high-quality communication research from diverse linguistic and regional contexts and enhances the international visibility of such research. With this recognition, Connectist joins a select group of six ICA Affiliate Journals worldwide.

For more information about the ICA Affiliate Journal program: https://www.icahdq.org/page/Affiliatejournals

Université de Montréal

Department Statement

Vibrant, multidisciplinary and innovative, the Faculty of Arts and Science is one of Université de Montréal’s largest faculties. Through its 28 departments, schools, centres and one institute, it offers over 300 undergraduate and graduate programs, some of which are unique in Quebec. It is also home to some 30 interdisciplinary research centres and groups. Every day, its 650 faculty members are helping shape a better tomorrow by advancing knowledge and encouraging the convergence of perspectives.

The Department of Communication is home to faculty members with expertise across a wide range of areas in communication studies. Our faculty are actively engaged in cutting-edge research, committed to excellence in teaching, and dedicated to fostering innovation, often through interdisciplinary approaches. We are seeking a colleague specializing in communication and digital technologies whose work will strengthen our areas of expertise and foster connections with research taking place in the Department. The position is open to a range of approaches and perspectives for studying contemporary digital technologies and the social transformations to which they contribute. These may include social and organizational reconfigurations; the production and circulation of knowledge; rhetorical, media, and cultural practices; infrastructures; regulation; and, more broadly, societal challenges (environmental, ethical, political, and economic). 

While this is not an exclusionary criterion, particular attention will be given to candidates whose work examines the role of artificial intelligence in these transformations, whether as a research object in its own right or as part of a broader research agenda. 

Day-to-day responsibilities

Through your undergraduate and graduate-level teaching, and your research activities, you will contribute to the faculty’s pursuit of excellence. Furthermore, you will promote your discipline and actively participate in the daily activities of a renowned institution. As such, you will:

• Develop an independent, innovative, and high-quality research program in your area of expertise. 
  
• Develop courses and teach at the undergraduate and graduate levels, while supervising graduate students. 
  
• Contribute to the University’s visibility and to knowledge dissemination through publications, conferences, scholarly activities, and other initiatives. 
  
• Contribute to the operation and development of the Department, the Faculty of Arts and Science, and the University by participating in various committees and working groups (departmental and Faculty committees, program administration, etc.).
  

Qualifications

• Hold a PhD in Communication or a related field. Applications from candidates who are in the final stages of completing their dissertation will also be considered; 
  
• Have an excellent publication record; 
  
• Demonstrate research expertise and a proven ability to conduct high-quality research; 
  
• Demonstrate the ability to provide high-quality university teaching and student supervision; 
  
• Demonstrate the potential to develop collaborations within the University, as well as nationally and internationally; 
  
• Demonstrate the ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary environment and in ways that complement the expertise of existing faculty members;
  
• Have adequate proficiency of the French language or be committed to learning it once hired, through the Université de Montréal’s French language support program, in accordance with the Université de Montréal language policy.

Additional information about the position

• Competitive salary and a comprehensive range of benefits 
  
• Expected start date: June 1st, 2027 
  
• Located at the Montreal Campus
  

How to submit your application

Submit your application through our online recruitment system (click on the “Apply for job” button) before November 20, 2026 . Your application must include the following documents:

• A cover letter; 
  
• A curriculum vitae; 
  
• Copies of, or links to, three recent publications or research papers; 
  
• A statement outlining your teaching and mentoring experience and approach; 
  
• A research program proposal; 
  
• Three letters of recommendation submitted directly by the referees to the department​ 
  

Contact information for recommendation letters

Chantal Benoit-Barné, Chair 

Département de communication / FAS  

chantal.benoit-barne@umontreal.ca 

UdeM places the values of diversity, equity and inclusion at the heart of each of its missions. It adopts a broad and inclusive definition of diversity that goes beyond applicable laws, and encourages all qualified individuals, regardless of their characteristics, to apply. To learn more about the Université de Montréal's commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, click here. 

Université de Montréal’s application process allows all members of the Professor’s Assembly to review the application files submitted. If you wish to keep your application confidential until the shortlist is established, please mention it in your application. 

June 28-30, 2027

University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Deadline: December 1, 2026

“Provokaties zijn aanleidingen | Provocations are catalysts”

Roel van Duyn, “Van palingoproer tot provohappening,”

Provo, no. 3 (22 September 1965)

Console-ing Passions was founded in 1989 by a group of feminist media scholars and artists looking to create a space to present work and foster feminist scholarship on issues of television, culture, and identity. Since its first conference at the University of Iowa in 1992, Console-ing Passions has expanded to become not only the most important conference for scholars studying gender in television but also among the top conferences for feminist scholars of media more broadly.

In 2027, Console-ing Passions comes to Amsterdam under the theme Provocations. Our motto takes inspiration from Amsterdam’s Provo movement and Roel van Duyn’s proposition that provocations are aanleidingen: they serve as catalysts to create occasions (or the Provos’ favorite word, “happenings”) in which pre-existing as well as emergent conflicts and contradictions become visible. Amsterdam offers a resonant history for thinking about provocation in these terms, from the Provos’ playful interventions in public life to feminist and queer actions that used disruption and media visibility to challenge established norms and inequalities. In line with this genealogy, we envision CP 2027 becoming such an occasion: a provocative space for feminist media scholarship to encounter, question, and rework its objects, histories, methods, and futures.

The 2027 Conference Organizing Committee in the Department of Media Studies / Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam invites proposals for individual papers, pre-constituted panels, and pre-constituted roundtables addressing media, broadly conceived, through intersectional feminist perspectives, including questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, coloniality, and other systems of power and inequality. Proposals need not address the conference theme, but we particularly welcome reflections on what provocation might mean for feminist media studies. How have media and media practices been provocative, and how do understandings of what is “provocative” change and collide? Who gets to provoke, and who is presumed to be provocative by speaking, appearing, desiring, refusing, embracing or making media? What happens when boundaries between media, disciplines, generations, publics, or forms of knowledge are disturbed? How might provocation operate epistemologically or methodologically, making different objects, archives, relations, pleasures, or ways of knowing perceptible? And what might such questions provoke us to reconsider about the histories, boundaries, and futures of feminist media scholarship itself?

CP 2027 will be an in-person conference because this is a better experience for everyone involved. Virtual participation can be accommodated, but only in exceptional circumstances and on a case-by-case basis.

We are working to make childcare and mobility support available during CP 2027 and will provide further information as options are confirmed.

Submission Guidelines

We invite proposals in the following formats:

Individual papers

A title and abstract of up to 300 words.

Pre-constituted panels

Three papers plus one provocateur, who will offer a critical response and moderate the discussion. Proposals should include a panel title, a 150-word rationale, and a title and abstract of up to 300 words for each paper.

Pre-constituted roundtables

Four or five participants and one provocateur, who will moderate and enliven the discussion. Roundtables should be designed around exchange rather than a sequence of short papers. Proposals should include a title and up to 400 words identifying the central question or tension, explaining the envisioned format and participants’ contributions, and indicating how the session will create space for wider discussion. Experimental and original formats are particularly welcome.

All proposals should include a brief biographical note of up to 100 words for each participant. Panels and roundtables bringing together different career stages, institutional locations, and perspectives are encouraged.

A delegate may participate in a maximum of two capacities across the conference programme.

Proposals should be submitted via this form by Tuesday, 1 December 2026, 23:59 Central European Time (CET). Submission link: https://forms.gle/1i62NU3NGJ3SYbwJ7

Notifications of acceptance will be sent in late January 2027.

For questions about the conference or the submission process, please contact the organizing committee at cp27-fgw@uva.nl.

Please watch for updates and news at http://www.console-ingpassions.org/ and on the conference website, which is expected to go live at the end of September.

Conference Organizers: Misha Kavka and Balázs Boross Department of Media Studies / ASCA, University of Amsterdam

November 19-21, 2026

University of Lodz, Department of Pragmatics, Poland

Deadline (EXTENDED): October 15, 2026

Positioned within contemporary struggles over public meaning, social affiliation and political legitimacy, digital religion is articulated through mediated practices in which claims about faith, community, authority and truth become resources for negotiating belonging, morality, identity and power.

Digital Religion V invites papers that examine these practices at the interfaces of discourse, society and politics, with a focus on digital religious discourse both as product and as practice: as a textual and multimodal form, and as situated action involving the production, distribution, and consumption of religious meanings across platforms, publics and institutional contexts. 

The interfaces are approached as sites of contact and tension, with religious doctrine informing everyday moral judgement, ritual participation intersecting with activism, institutional authority being negotiated alongside influencer charisma, and private spirituality assuming sociopolitical significance. Central to these processes are conceptualization, representation, recontextualization and affect: religious meanings are made cognitively accessible, salient, and invested with the emotional force. Digital affordances, in turn, enable their circulation across genres, platforms and publics, attaching them to causes and conflicts and intensifying the interplay between religious expression, social affiliation and political positioning.

We invite papers addressing, but not limited to, the following questions and areas:

• How does digital religious discourse shape public debates, legitimise authority or mark the limits of belonging?
  
• How do social and political conflicts become legible through religion in platformed public communicative practice?
  
• Under what conditions do digital religious practices sustain care, solidarity, memory and participation, or produce antagonism, exclusion and radicalisation?
  
• What happens when politics borrows religious repertoires, when religious actors adopt platform tactics, and when platforms order religious visibility?
  
• How are institutional religion, lived religion, spirituality, atheism and anti-religious discourse brought into contact in digital environments?
  
• How are religious authority, expertise, authenticity, charisma and credibility established, challenged or displaced under conditions of platformed visibility?
  
• How do religious symbols, narratives, values and moral vocabularies enter nationalism, populism, conspiracy cultures, extremism and culture-war discourse?
  
• How do metaphors organise the affective and moral intelligibility of digital religious discourse, shaping how publics recognise threat, victimhood, duty, crisis, hope or belonging?
  
• How are religious identities politicised, and how are social or political conflicts religionised, across digital platforms?
  
• How do digital religious discourses construct publics, counter-publics, minorities, moral communities, dissent and exclusion?
  
• How are gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, migration, diaspora, class, generation and disability articulated through religious and anti-religious discourse online?
  
• How does digital religious communication respond to war, displacement, ecological crisis, violence, inequality, insecurity and social change?
  
• How does affect shape the public force of digital religion, from fear, hope and compassion to resentment, moral outrage, grief and collective grievance?
  
• How do digital affordances, algorithms, metrics, moderation, recommendation systems and visibility regimes condition religious discourse and participation?
  

We welcome theoretical, methodological and empirical papers from media and communication studies, discourse studies, religious studies, theology, sociology, anthropology, political science, linguistics, cultural studies, digital humanities and related fields. Contributions may focus on particular platforms, communities, traditions, controversies or media genres, as well as on comparative, transnational or historical perspectives.

The conference will be organised in a hybrid format, with the possibility of both on-site and online participation. While the main conference language is English, a limited number of papers in Polish may also be accepted.

Keynote speakers

Prof. Elizabeth Poole, Keele University, UK

Dr. Stephen Pihlaja, Aston University UK

Conference date

November 19-21, 2026

Conference venue

Faculty of Philology

University of Lodz

Pomorska 171/173

90-236 Lodz, Poland

Conference website

https://www.ethicsinmedia.eu/digital-religion-2026

Conference email

digital.religion@uni.lodz.pl 

Submissions and deadlines

Abstracts in English, along with a short bio including full name, email address and affiliation, should be submitted by September 30th, 2026 via the conference submission form at:  https://www.ethicsinmedia.eu/digital-religion-2026

Extended deadline: 15th October 2026

Notifications of acceptance will be sent to authors by October 7th, 2026.

Conference fee

The conference fee is EUR 80, and the payment deadline is November 3rd, 2026.

A reduced fee for PhD students and participants from low-income countries is EUR 50.

Bank transfer and exchange costs are paid by participants. 

Conference fees should be transferred to the following bank account:

Please ensure that the participant’s name and “Digital Religion 2026” are included in the payment reference.

The bank account holder:

Uniwersytet Łódzki / University of Łódź

PL 26 1240 3028 1111 0011 7022 1640

BIC/SWIFT: PKOPPLPW

Bank: Bank Polska Kasa Opieki S.A., II Oddział w Łodzi

ul. Piotrkowska 270, 90-361 Łódź 

For participants from Poland – additional financial information

Osoby, które będą potrzebowały faktury, prosimy o dokonanie płatności przelewem do 03.11.2026 i wpisanie danych do faktury w formularzu zgłoszeniowym.

Dane do faktury dla uczestnika konferencji ‘Digital Religion 2026’:

Imię i nazwisko:

Nazwa i adres instytucji:

NIP Instytucji:

Upoważniam Uniwersytet Łódzki w Łodzi do wystawienia faktury VAT bez mojego podpisu:

Data i czytelny podpis

Any inquiries and questions regarding the conference should be sent to digital.religion@uni.lodz.pl 

Proceedings

Selected papers will be considered for publication in Lodz Papers in Pragmatics (De Gruyter-Brill) and an edited volume with an international publisher.

Organizing committee

Monika Tosik, Department of Pragmatics, University of Lodz, Poland 

Jaroslav Franc, Department of Communication, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Renata Sedlakova, Department of Communication, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Damian Guzek, Center for the Study of the Digital Public Sphere, University of Silesia in Katowice Department of Communication, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Veronika Müllerová, Department of Communication, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Institute of Communication Science, Friedrich Schiller University Jena

We invite applications for two academic positions in the DFG-funded project “Strategic Narratives in the Age of Transnational Influence Campaigns,” which examines how foreign actors adapt strategic narratives across different information environments, how these narratives are amplified by domestic actors, and how audiences ultimately respond to them.

We are hiring:

1. PhD Researcher with a focus on narrative formation and dissemination (75%, 3 years, TVL E-13)

Link to Job Posting: Doctoral Candidate / Scientific Researcher | Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena | 2143

2. PhD Researcher with a focus on narrative reception and interpretation (75%, 3 years, TVL E-13)

Link to Job Posting: Doctoral Candidate / Scientific Researcher | Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena | 2140

Both positions commence on 1 April 2027.

We offer:

• Opportunity to work in an appreciative and internationally connected project team
  
• Involvement in impactful research
  
• Individual support and diverse opportunities for further training, including through the Graduate Academy for doctoral candidates at Friedrich Schiller University Jena
  
• Flexible working hours (flexitime and, if applicable, teleworking)
  

Ideal candidates have experience in the methods specified in the respective job listings, knowledge of statistical and programming language R, and an interest in comparative political communication research, particularly in the topic of malign information influence.

The applications are accepted by 31 October 2026.