ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

June 25-26, 2026

The University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense (Denmark)

Deadline: February 15, 2026

Digital entertainment has moved from the margins of leisure to the centre of everyday life. It unfolds across fragmented temporalities, hybrid spaces, and shifting sensory environments, becoming woven into the rhythms through which people navigate work, leisure, relations, care, rest, or exercise through different modes of engagement (attention, distraction, intention…). Yet despite its ubiquity, entertainment remains undertheorised in media studies, overshadowed by approaches that focus on platforms, industries, or traditional media formats. Much of this scholarship explains how digital media function, but is not concerned with what entertainment feels like and does in lived experience, or how emerging formats—from short-form video to ambient gaming—reshape everyday life.

This conference invites contributions that address the experiential, aesthetic, cultural and practice-based textures of contemporary digital entertainment. We welcome work that examines how entertainment punctuates daily routines; how sensory formats organise micro-temporalities; how emerging genres such as cozy games, reaction-loops, streamers’ para-social hangouts, ASMR, mood-playlists, or hybrid meme-aesthetics shape everyday engagement; and how entertainment logics “spill over” into other societal domains. We are especially interested in research that integrates practices and formats—showing how people use entertainment, how new genres acquire recognisable aesthetic signatures, and how users cultivate meta-awareness of styles, conventions, and genre cues.

The conference will be held at The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Odense. There is no registration fee, but participants are responsible for covering their own travel and accommodation. Lunch and refreshments will be provided during the conference. A conference dinner will be organised, with separate payment for those who wish to attend.

This conference marks the official conclusion of the DiEM (Digital Entertainment Machine) project, generously funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The DIEM team is looking forward to discussing these exciting topics with you in Odense this summer!

We welcome contributions from media studies, cultural studies, game studies, aesthetic theory, film/audiovisual studies, literary theory, communication studies, and adjacent disciplines. We invite empirical, theoretical, and analytical approaches that speak to (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• Practices: rhythms, habits, ambience, transitions, sensory modulation in everyday use
  
• Formats and genres: for example short-form video, hybrid meme-genres, atmospheric and cozy gaming, slow or ambient livestreams, platform-specific micro-genres
  
• Aesthetics: visual, sonic, and bodily grammars, platform vernaculars and stylistic conventions
  
• Cultural textures: emerging taste clusters such as #cleangirl, genres such as oddly satisfying, shared imaginaries such as revenge scrolling, and other circulating moods and trends
  
• Meta-aesthetic reflexivity: how users recognise, classify, and play with evolving genres, conventions, and aesthetic cues
  
• Cross-domain pollination: entertainment logics in news, museums, education, marketing, politics and others
  

The accepted formats are papers, panels, and workshops; all will be allocated to 90 min sessions. All submissions should be in the form of a 300–500‑word abstract as a single PDF file. 

A brief bibliography may be included (not counted toward the word limit), and authors should provide a short bio (approx. 100 words/person). The conference does not use anonymous review.

There are no proceedings. Presenters will be invited to submit a paper for a special issue of MedieKultur on the theme of the conference, scheduled for publication in May 2027. 

Details regarding the journal submission process will be provided during the conference.

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: 15 February 2026

Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2026

Conference dates: 25–26 June 2026

More here: https://event.sdu.dk/texturesofdigitalentertainment/signup 

June 10-12, 2026

Malmö, Sweden

Deadline: March 1, 2026

Welcome to the 20th anniversary of the Swedish STS Conference that will be held at the Niagara building in Malmö, 10–12 juni 2026.

It's hosted by Malmö University in collaboration with Lund University. 

The Swedish STS Conference is an open, widely advertised, biennial conference, organised since 2006. It is an interdisciplinary meeting place for researchers interested in issues related to technology and science in society as approached from social science and humanities perspectives, and while it gathers researchers at all levels of their careers, it is planned and coordinated to particularly appeal to doctoral students and early career researchers, with special sessions and events catering to the concerns of junior colleagues.

Conference theme

The theme Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration invites contributions that address pressing global challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence, warfare, infectious diseases and migration. The conference explores how cultures, technologies and disciplines interact in ongoing processes of exchange, how contamination shapes interdependence and accessibility, and how collaborations across boundaries can foster innovation and societal change. A particular strength of the STS field is its ability to critically examine both successes and failures of science and technology across their entire life cycle – from inception to everyday use and eventual decline.

Collaboration is central to STS practice, often requiring interdisciplinarity and engagement across the traditional divide between natural sciences and the humanities. This conference will highlight how such collaborations can generate new methods, perspectives and models for engagement, while also interrogating the values that underpin them – who participates, what counts as legitimate knowledge, and how boundaries are maintained or transgressed. Without cross-pollination, contamination and collaboration with wider society, science risks losing relevance and legitimacy. 

Conference website: Swedish STS conference 2026: Cross-Pollinations, Contamination, Collaboration | Malmö University

Deadline: January 20, 2026

Early-career scholars today are increasingly expected to demonstrate awareness of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), articulate their own positionality, and present coherent academic identities, all while navigating highly competitive job markets.

This interactive four-session series offers a focused, practice-oriented space to meet these demands with confi dence, clarity, and authenticity.

Across the series, you will:

1. Clarify what EDI actually means in academia and learn how it directly shapes CVs, applications, and career trajectories, including how your own positionality becomes part of your professional profi le.

2. Work with your biography as a resource, exploring how your personal experiences can meaningfully inform your research, teaching, and applications — and how to do so in a way that feels appropriate, balanced, and professionally aligned.

3. Develop job position literacy, learning how to read, decode, and strategically respond to academic job calls (with input on networking and reaching out to potential hosts or collaborators.)

4. Craft a strong, meaningful teaching statement that communicates your pedagogical identity, values, and EDI commitments in a way that is grounded, credible, and distinctly your own.

Throughout the series, you will have the opportunity to refl ect on your academic identity, gain a clearer sense of how your experiences and values inform your professional trajectory, and experiment with ways of communicating this in application contexts. Rather than aiming for perfect documents, the workshops offer space to explore, articulate, and refi ne your voice as a scholar supported by peers and guided input that helps you move forward with more confi dence and direction. The workshop will be facilitated by an external expert on EDI in academia.

The ECREA EDI Committee funds this workshop series, and participation is free of charge. To ensure sustained engagement, participants will be eligible for a certifi cate only if they attend at least three of the four sessions. The sessions will be held on four consecutive Thursdays — 26.02.26, 5.03., 12.03., and 19.03. from 17:00 to 18:30 (Central European Time).

Applications are open to YECREA members who meet the criteria for early-career status, defi ned as holding a non-tenured academic position. If you are unsure about your membership status, please consult the instructions provided here: https://yecrea.eu/membership/

Submit your application via the following link: https://forms.gle/XrC724vPdJ62NGTu5

Deadline: 20 January 2026, 23:59 CET. Results will be published in early February 2026. Questions? Drop us an email at yecreanetwork@gmail.com

April 9-10, 2026

Copenhagen, Denmark

Deadline (EXTENDED): December 15, 2025

The research projects Algorithms, Data & Democracy (the ADD-project) and Strategic Communication and Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) are pleased to announce the Controversies of AI society conference to be held at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, on 9-10 April 2026. We invite contributions across disciplines and hope to see you there.

With the accelerated implementation of algorithmic technologies, now broadly referred to as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI), across all dimensions of society, it is imperative to consider how technological and societal developments shape each other: What social formations do AI systems invite? How do emerging uses of AI inform further developments across public, private, and third sectors? What social changes emerge out of these new technologies, and how are social dynamics embedded within their infrastructures? How do business models and consumption patterns enable some technological developments (and not others), and what relations of production and consumption are pushed by AI technologies? Can legal frameworks and political agendas influence the operations of the tech industry, and what are the alternatives to established actors, organizational forms, and ways of working? Can such alternatives influence technological developments, and how are public perceptions and collective actions informed by the material conditions of technological innovation, from venture capital through computing power to data centers? How, in short, might we understand the current constellation(s) of technocapitalism? 

To inquire into these issues, and the many that follow from them, please join us for an interdisciplinary conference on the controversies of AI society.

As no one perspective can fully capture the complex interplay between technology (in its various forms) and society (in its various forms), we invite participants to address this broad agenda from within, from outside, and from the intersections of relevant disciplines across the social sciences, humanities, and technical sciences. That is, investigations of the relationships and tensions that constitute AI society, such as, but not limited to:

• Civil society and democratic concerns
  
• Corporate strategies and business models
  
• Data, data sciences, and data practices in society
  
• Digital platforms and algorithmic publics
  
• Educational systems and approaches to learning
  
• Environmental sustainability and planetary crisis
  
• Ethics, (in)equality, and sovereignty in AI society
  
• Political imaginaries and forms of governance
  
• Public administration and state-citizen interactions
  
• Technological innovations and industry developments
  

Current trends and tendencies may be many things – consensual, collaborative, contentious, or even contradictory – but no matter how we see them, or what powers support them, they all help us see a little bit further. They may never fully line up, they may be messy, but this messiness is integral to how they exist in the world. For instance, some might argue that regulation stands in the way of innovation or that the interests of industry actors are always already misaligned with those of civil society. Others might claim that the interests of industry and democracy can be aligned only through policy, and that we need regulation to curb the excesses of unfettered competition. Yet others might claim that real technological innovation grows from grassroots communities, which need to be be politically and economically supported. Three competing narratives that contribute to the discussion, playing their part – along with multiple others – in narrating the messy whole of AI society, controversies and all.

In sum, we see the developments of what might be termed ‘AI society’ as by their very nature debatable and suggest such debates benefit from interdisciplinary perspectives. Consequently, we particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions, but we also invite participants to shed light on ongoing practical and theoretical controversies from within specific disciplines – and from outside them. We wish for the conference to be an inclusive space for lively and robust debate, not only welcoming controversies but celebrating them.

We accept two forms of contributions: abstract-based presentations and full papers. Please, submit your abstract of no more than 500 words OR your paper of maximum 8000 words (including references) by 15 December 2025. We welcome both technical papers and position papers as well as conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions. Author guidelines will be posted on this website shortly.

All submissions will undergo peer review, and a decision will be communicated by mid-January. Abstracts will be assessed on an accept/reject basis. Authors of full papers will receive reviewer comments, and those who are invited to participate, will be offered the chance of revising their manuscript towards publication in the conference proceedings. The proceedings be published through AAU OPEN.

Important dates:

• 1 November: Submission platform opens
  
• 15 December: Submission deadline (abstracts and papers)
  
• 19 January: Decisions (and reviews of full papers) sent to authors
  
• 9 March: Revised papers (for publication in the conference proceedings) due in camera ready format (guidelines on formatting to follow)
  
• 9-10 April: Conference

Read more here.

The International Journal of Games and Social Impact 

Deadline: April 31, 2026

Guest Editors: Luciana Lima (Integrated Researcher at Interactive Technologies Institute (https://iti.larsys.pt), LARSyS (Laboratory of Robotics and Systems in Engineering and Science), Universidade de Lisboa) & Ana Pires (Integrated Researcher at Interactive Technologies Institute (https://iti.larsys.pt), LARSyS (Laboratory of Robotics and Systems in Engineering and Science) and Invited Professor at Instituto Técnico Superior (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)

This special issue of The International Journal of Games and Social Impact invites contributions that propose strategies for change, including inclusive design practices, intersectional moderation systems, case studies of community resistance, feminist pedagogies, collective activism, and studies that reimagine representation, participation, and relational responsibility in different forms of play.

Submissions may address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

• How do communities, both within and beyond “traditional” gamer identities, mobilise to challenge and/or resist gender-based violence and misogyny?
  
• How can co-creation, participatory design, and inclusive development practices combat structural exclusion and gendered toxicity?
  
• What industry, sports and live-streaming practices dismantle power asymmetries in games?
  
• How can justice-oriented frameworks help us understand how women and other marginalized groups respond to gendered toxicity (e.g., collective action, exit strategies, community building) and envision new possibilities for play?
  

Publication Timeline

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Dates are indicative.

Full Paper Submission Deadline:  31-04-2026

Notification of Acceptance for Full Paper Submissions: 31-07-2026

Publication Date: First semester of 2026

For more information: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijgsi/announcement/view/250 

December 16, 2025 (4 - 5:30pm (GMT)

LSE Old Building & Online 

Digital transformation and inclusion policies are reshaping societies worldwide, yet the ways in which children are recognised - or excluded - within these agendas remain poorly understood. This event presents new cross-national analyses of over 300 policies from 35 countries and organisations, offering critical insights into how children’s rights, agency, and inequalities are framed in the pursuit of digital futures.

Speakers: Ellen Helsper and Shivani Rao (LSE), Respondent: Steven Vosloo (UNICEF)

Info and registration: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/digitalfuturesforchildrencentre/1944910

Since 2021, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has reshaped its oversight of how governments address children’s rights in the digital environment. This study analyses 79 country reviews to track that evolution, examining how states, civil society, National Human Rights Institutions and UN bodies raise digital issues, and how the Committee integrates General Comment No. 25 into its questioning and recommendations.

On World Children's Day, the DFC launched its new report. Read the report and watch the launch (panel: Gerison Lansdown, Kim R Sylwander and Gastón Wright; chair: Sonia Livingstone).

Read the report: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/our-work/impact-gc25

 June 4, 2025 (8:30 - 12:00 PM (UTC+2)

Cape Town, South Africa (in-person only) 

Deadline: December 15, 2025 (12:00 CET)

Organised with the ICA divisions Children, Adolescence and Media and Communication Law and Policy, the DFC welcomes original research studies addressing the theme of children’s rights in the digital environment, from all disciplines, employing empirical methods, relevant theory, and contributing to children’s rights in the digital environment, especially Global South perspectives.

In the pre-conference, scholars and practitioners will explore how research can inform policy, regulation and design with children in digital environments, framed by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25 on Children’s Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment. 

More info: https://www.digital-futures-for-children.net/events/ica-preconference/call-for-submissions

Neil Thurman, Sina Thaesler-Kordonouri and Richard Fletcher

This report is based on a survey conducted between August and November 2024 with a broadly representative sample of 1,004 UK journalists. The survey was primarily focused on whether and how journalists and news organisations use artificial intelligence (AI), and how it relates to other aspects of their work. 

ECREA members can access the publication open access here: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/ai-adoption-uk-journalists-and-their-newsrooms-surveying-applications-approaches-and-attitudes

Editors:

Simon Borchmann | Roskilde University

Anne Fabricius | Roskilde University

Ida Klitgård | Roskilde University

Purchase HERE

This volume invites its readers to rethink the linguistic basis for framing analysis by problematizing the existing foundation and presenting eight new pragmatically based framing analyses.

The book challenges the assumption that there is a unilateral, one-to-one relationship between words and frames, such that framing occurs when a language user is exposed to a word that activates a frame.

Conversely, it is assumed that framing emerges in social interaction through a complex interplay between the participants, the semiotic resources employed, the circumstances, and the multiple frames of interaction. This assumption calls for the relationship between words and frames to be analyzed in pragmatics, including in cross-fertilization with other disciplines such as discourse analysis, interaction analysis, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and social psychology.

The assumption is operationalized in eight different exemplary framing analyses. Each analysis has its own focus, drawing on its own disciplines, and utilizing its own concepts, tools, and methods.

The results of the analyses are noteworthy and demonstrate how a pragmatic approach to framing analysis can enhance the validity and reliability of the analysis.