ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

November 12-June 24, 2027

Online

Running from October 2026 through summer 2027, the series brings together scholars from different disciplines to explore the relationships between borders, communities, cultures, and environments across historical periods and geographical contexts. We believe its interdisciplinary approach may be of interest to members working on cultural studies, environmental communication, migration, and questions of identity and belonging.

The full programme is available here: https://sites.google.com/view/entangledhistories/programme?authuser=0

We would be grateful if you could circulate the programme for the series as a whole, allowing interested colleagues and students to discover upcoming sessions and follow the discussions throughout the year. I would be happy to provide a short announcement or any additional materials in your preferred format. Below, please find the programme of the seminar series:

12 November 2026

Lorenzo Lozzi Gallo (Pegaso University, Naples, Italy)

Sustainability and post-natal abortion in Medieval Iceland

19 November 2026 

Afkir Nawar (Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah, Fez, Morocco / Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania)

Thresholds of Scarcity and Sanctity: Vernacular Ecological Knowledge, Liminal Figures, and Resource Governance in Tamazight Oral Folktales

26 November 2026 

Sritama Maiti and Jenia Mukherje (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India)

‘Speaking with Nature’: Medicinal Legacies and Sustainable Futures at the Calcutta Botanic Garden

3 December 2026

Maria Isabel Lemos (IELT- Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Ecologies of Colonial Labour: Drought, Mobility, and Cacao Production between Cape Verde and São Tomé

10 December 2026

Shu Wan (University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA)

Exclaiming “Long Live Chairman Mao!”: Propagating Acupuncture-Treating-Deafness in Socialist China

17 December 2026 

Nikolai Belov (HSE University Moscow / Independent scholar)

Shared Shrines, Hardening Borders: Greek-Latin Confessional Boundaries in the Kingdom of Jerusalem

18 December 2026 – 6 January 2027   Winter Break

7 January 2027

Lois Stanford (New Mexico State University, USA)

Sustainability in El Rancho: Losing a Cuisine in the US-Mexico Borderlands

14 January 2027

Danila Kashkin (University of Geneva)

A Border Drawn by Drift: How Unsustainable Navigation Made Ogasawara Japanese

21 January 2027 

Nikoleta Zampaki (University of Information Technology and Management - UITM, Poland)

Crossing Lines, Sustaining Worlds: Romani Ecologies Between Border, Literature and Performance in Greece

28 January 2027 

Charlene Vella (University of Malta)

Crossing the Threshold: Processional Banners, Material Survival and the Borders of the Image in Renaissance Sicily

4 February 2027

Chet Van Duzer (University of Rochester / University of Western Australia)

Beyond the Edge: Negotiating Extreme Geography in Medieval and Early Modern Maps

11 February 2027 

Nicholas R. Miller (East Tennessee State University, USA)

Where Borders Break: Rivers and the Making of Multispecies Worlds

18 February 2027

Sabine Moedersheim (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

“Verbrennt de Bode, wo du 'Heimet' nennsch“ (they burn the Land you call 'Home'): Poetry of the Transborder Anti-Nuclear Resistance in the Early German / French / Swiss Environmental Movements

25 February 2027 

Lucia Groe (University of Calabria, Italy)

Beyond Greenwashing: Advancing Sustainability through “Mitakuyeability”, Environmental Memory, and Native Linguistic Ontologies

4 March 2027 

Sreekishen Nair (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA)

Sharing the Painted Landscape: Ritual Almanacs and Civic Stewardship in Late Postclassic Mexico

11 March 2027

Munia Hweidi (Sophia University, Tokyo)

Building the Dam, Drowning the Village: Submerged Borders and Cultural Sustainability in Ishimure Michiko’s "Lake of Heaven"

18 March 2027 

Ayushi Dhawan (Azim Premji University, Bhopal, India)

Waste, Value, and Environmental Risk at the Alang Shipbreaking Yards

23 March 2027 

Aisling Reid and Valentina Surace (Queen’s University Belfast; University of Messina)

A LAND THAT IS NO LAND: Medieval Whale-Islands and Insular Geophilosophy

1 April 2027

Aleksandra Jakubczak (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Technische Universität Berlin)

“We All Have to Eat Kosher”: Ritual Slaughter, Urban Provisioning, and Antisemitism in Interwar Poland

8 April 2027

Tobias Schank (Saarland University, Germany)

Unwriting the Ocean: Seascape Epistemology and the American Imaginary

15 April 2027

Iqbal Akhtar (Florida International University, USA)

Palimpsests of Pluralism: Material Sustainability in Jain, Jewish, and Muslim Manuscript Cultures of Sindh and Gujarat

22 April 2027 

Dalal Kassab-Kodissieh

AHTTEP ENSA Paris-La Villette

Entangled Frontiers and Resource Conflicts: Land, Water, and Offshore Energy in the Lebanon-Israel-Palestine Borderland (Antiquity-Present)

29 April 2027

Marusca Francini (University of Pavia, Italy)

Heaven and Earth: A Gothic ‘Heaven Above’? Gothic Ufarhiminakunds and its West and North Germanic Cognates

6 May 2027

Tatiana Sitchinava (Institute of Demography and Sociology, Ilia State University, Georgia)

Therapeutic Borderlands: Mineral Waters, Imperial Balneology, and the Sustainable Body in Georgia, c. 1870-1930

13 May 2027

Lydia Letsch (Austrian Institute for International Affairs - OIIP)

Caring under Precarious Conditions: Human-Environment Relations and Border Life in the Oasis of Figuig

20 May 2027

Elisa Ramazzina (Queen’s University Belfast)

Flickering Lights, Fire in the Sky: Apocalyptic Imaginaries, Borders, and Sustainability in Early Medieval Literature

27 May 2027

Jennifer A. Miller (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, USA)

The Unsustainable Borders of Nuclear Power in German Memory

3 June 2027

Anju Nofarof Hasudungan, R. Tuty Nur Mutia, and Zeffry Alkatiri (Universitas Indonesia)

Akit Indigenous Knowledge as Social-Ecological Infrastructure: Mangrove Conservation for Resilient Border Islands between Indonesia and Malaysia

10 June 2027

Betsey Price (Glendon College, York University, Toronto)

The Mansions of the Visigoths: Self-Sustainability Through Boundaries

17 June 2027

Eduardo de Melo Salgueiro (Federal University of Southern and Southeastern Pará, Brazil)

Jaborandi Exploitation, Unfree Labour, and Contested Sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon

24 June 2027

Hristo Hristozov (University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria) 

Criss-Crossing Ecological Borders: Pastoral Mobility and the Socio-Natural Transformation of the Ottoman Balkans, 15th-17th Centuries

November 27, 2026, 17.00-18.00 CET / 8:00 AM PST

MS Teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/34276240701277?p=CXnCqOpNJyH7uAHzAi 

Meeting ID: 342 762 407 012 77 

Keypass: BV3Ns2Z3

David Altheide, Regents' Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University

Online open lecture within the 10th Workshop Towards Development of Mediatization Research

Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin

Media Logic is foundational for many derivations of mediated communication. The logics—including formats, grammar, rhythm, etc.-- of various media operating in a historical social context are constitutive of the everyday taken-for-granted social order. Nested within an ecology of communication, this includes information technology and a specific medium; the message assemblers and creators; and the audience which also serves as interpreters, validators, amplifiers, and recruiters as a kind of chorus. Meaning and sense-making reflect this logic which is embedded in social performances as symbolic interaction. The communicative model for the process of constructing and enacting social order is the “generalized other,” or how established expectations are internalized and guide conduct to engage in shared meanings. I suggest that this has changed with digital media that routinely and haphazardly challenge an established communicative order with an “algorithmic generalized other,” which refers to the complex interplay between technology, social interaction, and individual identity in the digital age.  This will be illustrated with the Trump Administrations Gonzo Governance that uses digital media campaigns and disinformation to promote the politics of fear and destabilize established institutions. As one authority noted, “This is digital astroturfing, plain and simple... The more people see an idea online, the more inured to it they become and the more commonplace and acceptable it becomes.” 

If you have any questions, please contact the organiser:

Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech, katarzyna.kopecka-piech@umcs.pl

July 8-9, 2027

Lusofona University, Portugal

Deadline: February 15, 2027

The ECREA TWG Aging & Communication would like to invite you to our third international conference of our TWG. 

It is now possible to submit your abstract! Please do so via our form: https://forms.gle/w1qQb2rBqwMHbLAq7 

Title: Beyond Deficit Narratives: Media Representation, Voice, and the Diversity of Ageing

When: 8-9 July 2027

Where: Lusófona University - Porto University Center (Portugal)

Short summary of the call: Aging is often framed in public discourse through narratives of decline, dependency, vulnerability, and loss. These narratives hide the true heterogeneity of later life. As media and communication are essential contributors to these narratives we invite papers which examine the construction, circulation, negotiation and negation of the deficit narrative. We particularly encourage contributions that challenge everyday assumptions about ageing, engage with diverse social and cultural contexts, and explore the implications of media and communication for age-based inequalities and social justice.

The conference welcomes research from media and communication studies, sociology, critical gerontology, cultural studies, gender studies, science and technology studies, and related disciplines. Both theoretically oriented and empirically grounded contributions are invited, including comparative, interdisciplinary, and innovative methodological approaches.

Submission guidelines and important deadlines: 

• Call for Papers opens: 15 of November 2026
  
• Abstract submission deadline: 15 February 2027
  
• Notification of acceptance and waiting list: 15 April 2027
  
• Registration opens: 16 April 2027
  
• Final registration deadline for presenters: 31 May 2027
  

This conference will benefit from a joint session with the ECREA Audience and Reception Studies Section (ARS).

As always keep an eye on our linked-in for more information.. 

Are you a member of ECREA? Do not forget to register on the ECREA intranet to receive updates from us. 

If you are interested in joining our scientific board do not hesitate to contact us!

Kind regards, 

Management team TWG Aging & Communication

Journalism (Special issue)

Deadline: November 20, 2026

Guest Editors: Pedro Jerónimo, Alba Diez-Gracia, and Joy Jenkins

Rationale and contribution

Local journalism is commonly discussed through a crisis of provision: newsroom shrinking and closures, diminishing coverage, weakened business models, and the expansion of news deserts. These developments are fundamental, but they do not fully explain how people experience local information in everyday life. The presence of a local news outlet does not necessarily result in attention, engagement, trust, knowledge, or civic connection. Conversely, weak, or absent journalism does not always lead people to experience themselves as uninformed, as local knowledge can be assembled through social media, messaging groups, search engines, local authorities, community organisations, creators, and interpersonal networks.

This Special Issue proposes an audience-centred agenda focused on a central question: how do people decide that they are sufficiently informed about the places where they live, and what role does journalism play in retaining, losing, or transforming in that judgement? We use local informedness as an organising lens for examining perceived information sufficiency, demonstrable knowledge, news use and non-use, selective avoidance, incidental exposure, trust, relevance, place attachment, participation/engagement, and unequal access to local public information.

Local news avoidance is an important part of this agenda, but it is not the only form of disconnection. Residents might deliberately avoid news, use it only intermittently, fail to recognise it within platform feeds, distrust it, find it irrelevant to their concerns, lack affordable or accessible provision, or replace it with non-journalistic sources. These processes should not be collapsed into a single category. Uniting them allows the special issue to interrogate when local journalism becomes present, absent, useful, avoidable, or irrelevant in people's understanding of place.

The issue therefore connects audience studies with research on local journalism, news deserts, media systems, platforms, information inequalities, participation/engagement, place, and community. It also moves beyond the local newspaper by inviting work on radio, television, magazines, public service and community media, digital-native outlets, newsletters, podcasts, messaging applications, creators, and mixed local information ecosystems. Internationally comparative research is particularly encouraged, as are studies of underrepresented territories, media systems, and publics.

Scope and possible themes

We invite theoretical and empirical contributions addressing at least two of the following dimensions: audience relationships, local information conditions, and consequences for journalism and public life. Possible themes include:

• Local news avoidance, passive non-use, weak news habits, fatigue, alienation, distrust, and constrained access;

• Perceived local informedness, information sufficiency, uncertainty, and the relationship between subjective informedness and objective knowledge;

• Trust, relevance, representation, and whether audiences perceive local news as made for people like them;

• News deserts, underserved and marginalized communities, rural and peripheral regions, urban neighbourhoods, minority-language publics, diasporic populations, and inequalities within apparently well-served markets;

• Audience practices across newspapers, radio, television, magazine, public service, community and Indigenous media, digital-native outlets, newsletters, podcasts, social platforms, and messaging applications;

• Relationships among journalism, municipal communication, civic organisations, activists, businesses, influencers, interpersonal networks, search engines, and AI-mediated interfaces;

• Algorithmic visibility, incidental exposure, search, notifications, and the conditions under which local journalism is encountered, missed, misattributed, or decontextualised;

• Consequences for local knowledge and perceptions of place, civic engagement, accountability, belonging, access to services, media literacy, newsroom innovation, policy, and democratic life.

Approaches. We welcome qualitative, quantitative, computational, ethnographic, experimental, participatory, historical, and mixed-methods research, as well as theoretical interventions and systematic comparative work. Single-country studies should offer conceptual innovation, distinctive evidence, or wider comparative relevance. Studies combining audience evidence with content, organisational, infrastructural, or policy analysis are especially welcome.

First-stage submission: extended abstracts

Prospective authors are invited to submit an extended abstract of 800-1,000 words and not exceeding two A4 pages, including references. Extended abstracts should be formatted in Times New Roman, 12-point font, single-spaced, with standard margins. The title and authors’ names, affiliations, and contact details are excluded from the word count. The abstract should state: (1) the research problem and conceptual contribution; (2) research question(s) or central argument; (3) method or analytical approach; (4) empirical context and data, where applicable; (5) expected findings or argument; and (6) explicit fit with the Special Issue. Please also include the article title, author name(s), affiliation(s), corresponding author's email address, and three to five keywords.

Send abstracts to pj@ubi.pt and alba.diez.gracia@usal.es by 20 November 2026. Authors will be notified by 18 December 2026.

Full manuscripts and review

Selected authors will be invited to submit a full manuscript through Journalism's electronic submission system by 30 June 2027. Full articles must not exceed 8,000 words, including references, tables, figures, charts, and all other elements. Invitation following the abstract stage does not guarantee publication. All manuscripts will be screened for quality and scope and will undergo the journal's standard double-blind peer-review process, with at least two external reviewers. Guest Editors will not act as reviewers. No more than one article per person, whether single-authored or co-authored, may appear in the collection. The planned collection will comprise approximately twelve research articles and may include an editorial introduction.

Indicative timetable

• Call for extended abstracts launched: 1 October 2026
  
• Extended abstract submission deadline: 20 November 2026
  
• Notification of abstract decisions and invitations to submit full manuscripts: 18 December 2026
  
• Confirmation of participation by invited authors: 8 January 2027
  
• Full manuscript submission deadline: 30 June 2027
  
• First-round peer review: 1 July–15 September 2027
  
• Revised manuscript submission deadline: 15 November 2027
  
• Further review and final decisions: 16 November 2027–15 January 2028
  
• Online First publication: from February/March 2028 onwards

Guest Editors

• Pedro Jerónimo, University of Beira Interior, Portugal, pj@ubi.pt

• Alba Diez-Gracia, University of Salamanca, Spain, alba.diez.gracia@usal.es

• Joy Jenkins, University of Missouri, United States, joyjenkins@missouri.edu

June 3, 2026

Glasgow, Scotland

Deadline: January 29, 2027

Deadline:

Co-sponsored by the Communication History Division and the Activism, Communication and Social Justice Division

DATE: Thursday 3 June 2027, 8.30am-5pm

VENUE: Civic House, 26 Civic Street, Glasgow G4 9SH

Reparation has regained visibility in the public domain in recent years as a way to address the dehumanising pasts associated with historical harms inflicted through genocide, enslavement and colonialism. This preconference explores how media have harmed people and what reparative approaches to communication and research in communication studies might look like, i.e. approaches that acknowledge past harms while reorienting how humans relate to and understand one another as communities across the world grapple with uncertain futures. It examines the intersection between reparation and communication through the role of communication and communication studies in inflicting and repairing historical harms as well as the role of media in framing global reparation activism.

The CARICOM Reparations Commission and the African Union recently launched a partnership to demand formal apologies, financial compensation, and debt relief from former European colonial powers for the transatlantic trafficking in enslaved people. Both prior to and in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter, racial justice activists in the United States, Europe and Australia advocated for reparations to address the legacy of enslavement and colonialism and ongoing systemic racism and racial inequalities. Journalists have a responsibility to report on these calls for reparation but frequently have been caught up in fierce contestations over history as part of ideological ‘culture wars’.

Media institutions, especially in the Minority World, have in different ways confronted their own implication in historical injustices through official apologies, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programmes, or specific reparative initiatives such as The New York Times’ 1619 Project and The Guardian’s Cotton Capital Project. Such critical moments in media reckoning call for closer attention to the modes of repair being undertaken, to how media reform intersects with goals of racial and reparative justice, to how mainstream media have framed these initiatives, and to the implications of these initiatives for audience trust.

Aside from media institutions, attention has turned to academia’s historical harms and its complicity in perpetuating harms in the present. #RhodesMustFall protests drew attention to the different ways in which the lack of post-Apartheid racial transformation at the University of Cape Town inflicted pain on Black students and staff. Student encampments highlighted the role of universities in contributing to the genocide in Palestine. The death of Professor Jason Arday raised questions about the complicity of both universities and media in ongoing racial harms. Fields such as media and communication studies have reflected on the way in which our own disciplinary pasts have dehumanised, silenced and harmed particular groups of people through academic scholarship, canonical texts and scholarly practices.

Calls for reparation are made amid significant global uncertainty. The rise of populism and disinformation on digital platforms, the growing influence of far-right media, and the mounting rhetoric against DEI initiatives have challenged reparative projects —and academia itself— through increasingly polarised political discourses. Social media have been instrumental to those advocating for reparation but have also caused harm through hateful content targeting marginalised communities. Harms of the past are perpetuated in the present through algorithmic practices, AI’s distortion of Indigenous knowledges and misinformation, and big tech data extraction practices in the Majority World. 

The aims of this pre-conference are to examine the intersection between reparation and communication through (1) the role of communication and communication studies in inflicting and repairing historical harms; and (2) the role of media in framing global reparation activism. We encourage scholars to discuss how communication itself might be turned towards repair through emerging concepts such as ‘reparative media’ and ‘media reparations’ and ‘algorithmic reparations’, which could offer ways of rethinking epistemic injustices.

We invite contributions that:

-explore the conceptual dimension of the intersection between reparation and communication

-examine the role of communication in inflicting or repairing historical harms

-discuss reparatory justice in relation to journalism, media institutions, social media platforms or artificial intelligence

-provide reparatory histories of media institutions, communicative practices or publics

-interrogate the role of media and communication studies in inflicting or repairing historical harms

-investigate the role of legacy and social media in framing global reparation activism

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

A 350-word abstract and a 150-word bio should be submitted to communicationreparation@gmail.com by 29 January 2027. Participants will be notified by 26 February 2027 on the outcome of their submissions. We expect to have space for 15-20 papers as part of this pre-conference.

REGISTRATION FEE

The conference registration fee is USD 25. You do not have to be an ICA member or register for the main conference to attend this pre-conference.

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

David Cheruiyot (School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, Australia)

Khadijah Costley White (School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, US)

Wendy Willems (Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

The organisers are grateful for the financial contribution of the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science towards the costs of this preconference.

June 2, 2026

King's College London

Deadline: February 1, 2026

We're excited to announce our ICA 2027 pre-conference, "Centring Creators across Intersecting Ecosystems: Labour, Agency, and Collaboration," taking place on June 2, 2027, at King's College London!

We're bringing together researchers, creators, and industry professionals to critically rethink creator and influencer cultures beyond the conventional creator-platform relationship. Our goal is to explore how creators operate within complex, intersecting ecosystems of platforms, governance, communities, brands, agencies, institutions, and cultural industries. How do these relationships shape their labour, agency, identities, opportunities, ethics, and inequalities? And what can we learn by bringing different disciplinary and professional perspectives into conversation?

We especially encourage submissions from early-career researchers, MA and PhD students, and scholars working across disciplinary boundaries, including those whose research intersects with creator cultures but may not identify primarily as creator or influencer studies scholarship. Beyond traditional papers, we welcome panels, roundtables, creator-researcher dialogues, participatory sessions, posters, and creative formats that foster meaningful exchange between academic and practitioner communities.

Important dates

• February 1, 2027: Submission deadline (23:59 GMT)
  
• March 1, 2027: Notification of decisions
  
• April 1, 2027: Preliminary programme announced
  
• June 2, 2027: Pre-conference at King's College London!
  

*A limited number of scholarships are available to support participation*

Full CFP, submission guidelines, and scholarship details:

https://kingsdh.net/2026/10/13/call-for-papers-centring-creators-across-intersecting-ecosystems-labour-agency-and-collaboration/

We look forward to bringing different corners of the field together in London!

Questions or inquiries? Feel free to reach out to the organizing team at creatorcon@kcl.ac.uk.

With excitement,

Tom Divon (on behalf of the organizing team)

Deadline: November 22, 2026

The Children, Youth and Media section invites proposals from its members to organise and host the 2027 Mid-Term Conference. The section welcomes proposals from institutions or research groups within the section to host this event. In a context of rapid technological and sociocultural change, the conference seeks to reflect on how research on children, youth and media can remain relevant, responsive and socially meaningful. The section is particularly interested in proposals that foster theoretical, methodological and disciplinary innovation through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Interested members should submit an extended abstract of their proposal by 22 November 2026, 23:59, to ecreacymcom@gmail.com.

More information here: https://cymecrea.wordpress.com/2026/09/28/call-for-organizers-2027-mid-term-conference-of-ecreas-children-youth-and-media-section/

On behalf of the ECREA CYM Management Team,

Silvia Rusiñol-Romero

November 13 , 2026

Aarhus, Denmark

Aarhus University is celebrating the launch of the Public Tech Media Lab-Aarhus on November 13 at 14:00-16:00 at the  Lille Auditorium, Incuba Katrinebjerg (5510-104, Åbogade 15, 8200 Aarhus N).

 This is an open invite to all, and we hope to welcome academic colleagues, industry practitioners, students, and anyone else interested in learning more about the network and our plans to forge closer academic-journalism industry ties across Europe. The panel has the title “Translating Research into Innovative Public Interest Journalism”.

Here, we will bring together speakers from each of the fields we are trying to unite within the PTML-A network. This is a hybrid event which you can join in person or online via this page, which also include more details on the event, the speakers, and the PTML-A concept: https://cc.au.dk/en/news-and-events/events/event/artikel/friday-lecture-translating-research-into-innovative-public-interest-journalism 

October 4-6, 2027

Guadalajara (Mexico), Hanover (Germany) and online

Deadline: January 31, 2027

Language: English and Spanish

Critical times challenge society to its core. They raise questions and tensions around who belongs to the society and which values will shape its future trajectories. Experiences of crises compel us to revisit past and present practices and to imagine alternative future societies we want to live in. Despite global dependence on Big Tech infrastructures leaving little leeway for alternative data practices and meanings, digital data have become indispensable for navigating the uncertainty of critical times. Today, these data come under threat, e.g. of loss or discontinuation of recording. At the same time, decisions about what data are kept, deleted, made visible, or hidden increasingly shape how crises, conflicts, and everyday forms of distress are experienced and governed. That concerns data about public health, precarious labour, and environmental degradation, as well as governmental and activist records of violence.

Organizations such as truth commissions, governments, universities, alternative media, and civil society groups, all work with digital data to document various forms of harms and social suffering, sometimes not even acknowledged as a societal crisis. These data are crucial to design and manage public policies, to support social movements, to sustain collective memory, and to articulate critical narratives that include testimonies of crisis victims and survivors.

Data Power 2027 invites empirical, methodological, and conceptual engagement with the critical role data play in both provoking and tackling current societal crises, including but not limited to the following questions:

• How can data be preserved when they come under threat, and what alternative data practices, initiatives, and forms of resistance are emerging in critical times?
  
• How do AI and automated decision-making reshape societally critical data practices and infrastructures and what is the role of infrastructural and data sovereignty in preserving situated local meanings?
  
• What social tensions arise between remembering and forgetting in digital societies and what does it mean for the contemporary struggles for social justice?
  
• How can different critical perspectives on data (e.g. human rights, environmental defense, and journalism) be brought together to navigate critical times?
  
• How can NGOs, alternative media, social movements, and academia create shared spaces for acting upon data for exchanging their unique experiences, conceptual frameworks, and methodological tools?
  
• How can data about various situations and experiences of crises be analyzed, visualized, and communicated without reproducing the violence they document?
  
• What ethical protocols are needed when designing visual interfaces, maps, dashboards, archives, or narrative platforms based on sensitive data?
  

We also invite interdisciplinary contributions on cross-cutting topics including issues of data power, in/equalities and in/justices, methodological reflections, participatory research, and reflections on academic knowledge production in critical times.

We welcome contributions in different formats in English or Spanish:

• Individual paper presentations
  
• Closed panels of max. 5 papers
  
• Workshops and Making & Doing sessions
  
• Art-based presentations
  
• Collaborative formats with field experts
  

If you have questions or ideas for further presentation formats, please get in touch.

The Data Power 2027 conference will take place in Guadalajara (Mexico), Hanover (Germany), and online. 

Presenters in Guadalajara will have the option to present in either English or Spanish. Please add both an English and Spanish abstract to the submission form if you wish to present in Spanish. 

Submission guidelines

Please submit your abstract (max. 300 words) for individual presentations by 31.01.2027 using this submission form. You will be prompted to specify your preferred location for participation.

Workshops, Making & Doing sessions, arts-based presentations and collaborative formats require a 300 word abstract outlining your proposal and required resources e.g. space, tech, number of participants. These should be submitted by email to datapowerconference@proton.me by 31.01.2027.

Closed panel submissions of max. 5 papers require a panel title, brief abstracts describing the panel (max. 200 words) and each contribution (max. 300 words per paper). Please email closed panel submissions directly to datapowerconference@proton.me by 31.01.2027.

Moderate conference fees with distinction between low-GDP and high-GDP countries and in line with the previous years will be charged for the conference participation. Details will follow in due time.

Timeline

Abstract submission deadline: 31.01.2027

Decision notification: 28.02.2027

Conference: 04.-06.10.2027

Data Power 2027 conference team (Víctor Hugo Ábrego, Paloma López-Portillo, Narce Ruiz, Irina Zakharova, Friederike Bahl, Stefanie Büchner, Yana Boeva, Jo Bates, Juliane Jarke, Janaki Srinivasan) Datapowerconference.org

Comunicazioni Sociali: Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies (special issue)

Deadline: December 13, 2026

Edited by: Gaia Amadori, Daniel Fernández Galeote, Paolo Ruffino and Alessandro Soriani

Playing the Anthropocene: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ecogames

Video games have become one of the most widespread and culturally significant media of our time. Beyond their role as entertainment – and despite frequently being targets of moral panic – they increasingly serve as spaces where players encounter, engage with and make sense of broader political and social questions (Soriani et al., 2026), including climate change and the ecological crisis. Ecogames (also referred to as green games, sustainability games or climate games) constitute a conceptual umbrella term encompassing games which aim to foster sustainability-oriented attitudes and behaviours among players and/or to reduce their ecological footprint through sustainable production, distribution, and gameplay practices (op de Beke et al., 2024). They address a wide range of themes, from climate change mitigation and adaptation to resource and energy management, pollution and waste, biodiversity conservation, deforestation, sustainability, and human–nature and more-than-human relationships. Although evidence on their effects on attitudes and behaviours remains mixed (op de Beke et al., 2024), ecogames can also be approached as spaces for critical reflection and meaning-making. In this view, they allow players to raise ethical questions, imagine alternative ecological futures and explore new relationships between humans, nonhuman beings and the environment (Grattarola, 2026; Ruffino, 2024).

Ecogames are shaped by a diverse ecosystem of actors, spanning industry, academia and international organisations. At the industry level, the Playing for the Planet Alliance, launched in 2019 and facilitated by the United Nations Environment Programme, brings together game companies and trade bodies around measurable commitments. These concern both the sustainability of production, such as reducing carbon emissions, and the environmental content of games. The latter is promoted through the Alliance’s annual Green Game Jam, a challenge in which studios implement themed “green activations” in popular titles, often linked to fundraising for conservation organisations. The Alliance also makes resources available to the industry, including an annual report documenting members’ commitments and activations. Alongside this initiative, the Sustainable Games Alliance (SGA), a non-profit cooperative of developers, universities and associations, has introduced an industry standard for sustainability reporting and coordinates a network of academic researchers. Similarly, the IGDA Climate Special Interest Group, itself a member of SGA, is an open community of game developers and researchers which promotes grassroots climate action within studios and shares practical resources such as the “Environmental Game Design Playbook” (Whittle et al., 2022). Funded European programmes and academic collaborations are also contributing to this landscape, such as the Horizon-funded project STRATEGIES (Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries), which supports the sustainable transition of the game industry.

Mirroring this diverse scenario, existing scholarship spans several interconnected research strands. Systematic and scoping reviews have mapped research on ecogames (e.g. Fernández Galeote et al., 2025; Ahmadov et al., 2025), highlighting a literature long centred on serious games and gamified interventions aimed at individual attitudinal and behavioural change. More recently, this literature has broadened to include commercial entertainment titles and goals such as critical reflection, community action and speculation about the future (Blake et al., 2026). A smaller set of mapping studies has instead catalogued the games themselves, classifying their design features, purposes, and audiences (e.g. Moossdorff & Vervoort, 2026; Stanitsas et al., 2019; Fernández Galeote & Hamari, 2021; Fernández Galeote et al., 2022).

Ecocritical and environmental humanities, for their part, examine games as environmental texts that shape representations and imaginaries of nature, nonhuman life and ecological crisis (Ruffino, 2026; Chang, 2019; Aliano & Crowley, 2024). Empirical studies, in turn, investigate how gameplay relates to environmental knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and behaviours, drawing on survey-based, experimental, quasi-experimental and mixed-method designs (e.g. Ho et al., 2022; Janakiraman et al., 2021; Fernández Galeote et al., 2023).

Pedagogical research adds a further angle, investigating how playful experiences become meaningful learning opportunities. Drawing on experiential, situated and critical approaches, it examines how players engage with complex socio-ecological systems and how learning emerges from game design, user agency, social interaction and critical reflection (Dieleman & Huisingh, 2006; Marín-Rubio et al., 2026).

Community-oriented research shifts attention to players, with a specific focus on collaborative play, ecomodding and critical metagaming practices, exploring their potential to foster ecological reflection, sustainability discourse and climate communication (e.g. Lamerichs, 2024; Werning, 2021; McDonald et al., 2026).

Widening the lens further, industry and material studies examine the environmental impact of gaming hardware and software, focusing on the material conditions of production and consumption (e.g. Abraham, 2022) as well as the working cultures, practices, and perspectives of game-industry professionals (Eggel & Fizek, 2026).

Complementing these perspectives, analytical and design-oriented approaches provide tools for interpreting ecogames and supporting their development. The former examine ecogames’ design-related, cultural, communicative and contextual dimensions, enabling the assessment of their applications, strengths and limitations (e.g. Amadori, 2024, 2026; Kłosiński, 2025). The latter focus on how ecogames are conceived and built, identifying features that sustain engagement and learning and outlining procedures for designing and evaluating them (e.g. Bjørner & Schønau-Fog, 2024).

Taken separately, these strands illuminate only part of the picture. Putting them into dialogue is key to capturing the nuances of ecogames and the plurality of approaches that study them. This call for papers, entitled Playing the Anthropocene: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ecogames, aims to foster such dialogue and to draw the scientific community’s attention to the field. It also invites a wider conversation on ecogames as spaces where responsibility and hope for the future are cultivated and alternative horizons can be critically interrogated.

To this end, ecogames are understood in a broad sense, encompassing three complementary logics. The first is content- and goal-oriented: games and playful experiences that engage with environmental issues or seek to foster critical reflection and/or sustainability-oriented attitudes and behaviours. The second is process-oriented: games whose ‘ecological’ character lies in how they are produced, distributed and played. The third is reception-oriented: games that acquire an ecological meaning through players' (over)interpretations, even when their textual strategies contain no explicit reference to eco-themes.

This breadth calls for equally plural approaches. Contributions may be theoretical, empirical, critical or design-oriented, and may draw on sociology, pedagogy, media and communication studies, game studies, semiotics and related fields. Diverse methodological traditions are welcome in exploring the cultural, educational, social and representational dimensions of ecogames.

Within this framework, possible contributions include, but are not limited to:

• Analyses of how ecogames represent environmental issues, such as climate change, biodiversity, resources and human–nature relationships.
• Studies of players, communities and playing practices, including modding, streaming and online discussion.
• Research on campaigns and "green activations" promoted by industry and non-industry stakeholders, including ambivalent cases where environmental engagement intersects with branding and corporate communication.
• Educational and pedagogical perspectives on ecogames and playful experiences, including experiential and situated learning, critical environmental literacy, sustainability education and environmental citizenship.
• Empirical studies of the relationship between play and knowledge, attitudes or behaviours, with attention to methodological design.
• Critical perspectives on sustainability in the game industry, including production practices, reporting and greenwashing.
• Regional and comparative perspectives on ecogames, including how they are produced, played, interpreted and used in different cultural, institutional and geographical contexts.

Submission details

December 13, 2026 – Deadline for abstract submission. Prospective authors are invited to submit an abstract of 300 to 400 words, accompanied by five keywords, the author' name, affiliation and contact details, and a short biographical note (max. 150 words), to the following email addresses: gaia.amadori@unicatt.it and redazione.cs@unicatt.it

December 30, 2026 – Authors will be notified of proposal acceptance.

April 30, 2027 – Deadline for submission of the full paper, if the proposal is accepted.

Submission of a paper implies that it is unpublished and not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Articles must not exceed 5,000-6,000 words in English (including references). For editorial guidelines, please refer to the section “Guide for the authors” on the Comunicazioni Sociali website: https://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.it/media/c49e263.pdf

Contributions will be submitted through a double-blind peer review process.

Issue 2/2027 of Comunicazioni Sociali will be published in September 2027 and will be available in open access on the journal’s website.

References

Ahmadov, T., Karimov, A., Durst, S., Saarela, M., Gerstlberger, W., Wahl, M. F., & Karkkainen, T. (2025). A two-phase systematic literature review on the use of serious games for sustainable environmental education. Interactive Learning Environments, 33, 1945-1966.

Aliano, K. I., & Crowley, A. (Eds.). (2024). Video Games and Environmental Humanities: Playing to Save The World. Springer Nature.

Amadori, G. (2024). Gaming for ecological activism: a multidimensional model for networks articulated through video games. Games and Culture, 19, 551-570.

Amadori, G. (2026). Playing for the Planet? A Process-Centric Framework for Analyzing Ecogames in Commercial Platforms. Mediascapes journal, 27, 368-390.

Bjørner, T., & Schønau-Fog, H. (2024). A dynamic engagement model to provide ecological awareness of the climate crisis through video games. In L. op de Beke, J. Raessens, S. Werning, & G. Farca (Eds.), Ecogames: Playful perspectives on the climate crisis (pp. 129-143). Amsterdam University Press.

Blake, K., Arbieu, U., Castelló y Tickell, S., Gleave, A., Johnson, P., Kubo, T., Lai, S., Mameno, K., Marchini, S., Petros, C., Rodríguez-Sánchez, C., Sequeira, V., Tan, C., Zhou, K., & Veríssimo, D. (2026). How commercial video games engage with biodiversity and conservation: a systematic map of literature. ACM Games: Research and Practice, 4, 1-22.

Chang, A. Y. (2019). Playing nature: Ecology in video games. University of Minnesota Press.

Dieleman, H., & Huisingh, D. (2006). Games by which to learn and teach about sustainable development: Exploring the relevance of games and experiential learning for sustainability. Journal of Cleaner Production, 14, 837-847.

Eggel, R., & Fizek, S. (2026). From pixels to planet: How game makers strive for planetary impact beyond the magic circle. In Abstract proceedings of DiGRA 2026.

Fernández Galeote, D., & Hamari, J. (2021). Game-based climate change engagement: analyzing the potential of entertainment and serious games. Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction, 5, 1-21.

Fernández Galeote, D., Gabrielaitis, L., Guillén, G., & Hamari, J. (2025). Play, games, and gamification to support sustainability transitions: a scoping review and research agenda. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 57, 101025.

Fernández Galeote, D., Legaki, N. Z., & Hamari, J. (2022). Avatar identities and climate change action in video games: analysis of mitigation and adaptation practices. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-18).

Fernández Galeote, D., Legaki, N. Z., & Hamari, J. (2023). Text-and game-based communication for climate change attitude, self-efficacy, and behavior: A controlled experiment. Computers in Human Behavior, 149, 107930.

Grattarola, M. (2026) Glitching Objects as Temporal Mediators: Hyperobject Temporality in NORCO. In Abstract Proceedings of DiGRA 2026.

Ho, M. T., Nguyen, T. H. T., Nguyen, M. H., La, V. P., & Vuong, Q. H. (2022). Virtual tree, real impact: how simulated worlds associate with the perception of limited resources. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 1-12.

Janakiraman, S., Watson, S. L., Watson, W. R., & Newby, T. (2021). Effectiveness of digital games in producing environmentally friendly attitudes and behaviors: A mixed methods study. Computers & Education, 160, 104043.

Kłosiński, M. (2025). Mapping game biopolitics. Games and Culture, 20, 1030-1049.

Lamerichs, N. (2024). Sustainable fandom: Responsible consumption and play in game communities. In L. op de Beke, J. Raessens, S. Werning, & G. Farca (Eds.), Ecogames: Playful perspectives on the climate crisis (pp. 543–558). Amsterdam University Press.

Marín-Rubio, K., Moldes-Rivas, V., & Casasús, P. A. (2026). Exploring Critical Utopian Gaming Pedagogy in a youth club in Barcelona. In Abstract Proceedings of DiGRA 2026.Marín-Rubio, K., Vilasís-Pamos, J., & Rubio-Campillo, X. (2026). The ecocritical dimensions of entertainment video games: A systematic review. Games and Culture, 15554120261437894.

McDonald, R., Simon, B., & Earl, M. (2026, June). For the Trees: Envisioning Sustainable Futures Through Ecomodded Minecraft. In Abstract Proceedings of DiGRA 2026.

Moossdorff, C., & Vervoort, J. (2026). Beyond awareness: Climate games as invitations to care for the future. Futures, 103760. op de Beke, L., Raessens, J., Werning, S., & Farca, G. (2024). Ecogames: Playful perspectives on the climate crisis. Amsterdam University Press.

Ruffino, P. (2024). Videogames, the anthropocene, and other problems of scale: Methodological notes for the study of digital games in times of ecological crisis. Journal of Games Criticism, 6.

Ruffino, P. (2026, forthcoming). Unplayable: Videogames for the Post-Anthropocene. MIT Press.

Soriani A., Brooks A., Meriläinen M., Serada A. (Eds.)(2026). Educating for a Videogame Culture – Volume Two: Keep on Playing, Keep on Growing. Council of Europe Publishing.

Stanitsas, M., Kirytopoulos, K., & Vareilles, E. (2019). Facilitating sustainability transition through serious games: A systematic literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 208, 924-936.

Werning, S. (2021). Ecomodding. Understanding and communicating the climate crisis by co-creating commercial video games. communication +1, 8, 1-27.

Whittle, C., York, T., Escuadra, P. A., Shonkwiler, G., Bille, H., Fayolle, A., McGregor, B., Hayes, S., Knight, F., Wills, A., Chang, A., & Fernández Galeote, D. (2022). The environmental game design playbook (presented by the IGDA Climate Special Interest Group). International Game Developers Association.