ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Dear John (if I may),

Thank you so much for reaching out and your support. It really helps me keep going and warms my heart. These last days have been terrible. I was caught up in a war during my fieldwork, became refugee who left behind his library and some of the materials, my Ukrainian home, Russian tanks rolled past our ancestral home near Chernihiv that I may never see again, and I am now facing a realistic opportunity to take up weapons under duress to defend my life.

I am grateful for the attention and the great and vocal statement by ECREA. This is exactly what we need at this moment. If you want to help, please continue spreading info regarding the plight of Ukrainian media scholars, in the ECREA network as well as in public statements. You may use my own story as an example of the brutal and lawless Russian attack on peaceful researchers and intellectuals. You can also highlight other personal stories. My friend and a leading Ukrainian media scholar Dariya Orlova has just barely survived the night with her 9-year old son caught up in the midst of fierce fighting near Bucha west of Kyiv. I can put you in touch with you. The director of Ukrainian Media and Communication Studies Institute Diana Dutsyk became a refugee. Etc etc. Dozens of journalists volunteered to fight for their homes.

Another thing we would be extremely grateful at this moment when missiles are raining on our heads is a statement in condemnation of the academic relativism and bothsidism that was silencing our voices as we urged to take Russian propaganda seriously. What is happening is the result of this relativism that put many Western governments to sleep regarding the actual Russian intentions.

Warm regards from the relative safety of Khmelnytsky,

Roman

São Paulo State University

Field of knowledge: Communications

FAPESP process: 2021/07344-3

Project title: Pandemic Communication in Times of Populism Building Resilient Media and Ensuring Effective Pandemic Communication in Divided Societies

Working area: Communication

Number of places: 1

Start: 2022-05-01

Principal investigator: Danilo Rothberg

Deadline for submissions: 2022-03-25

Publishing date: 2022-02-18

E-mail for proposal submission: danilo.rothberg@unesp.br

Summary

The post-doctoral fellowship will last for 20 months and includes the participation in a broad comprehensive study of health crisis communication in the context of populist politics and political polarization, which will generate knowledge that will serve as a basis for mitigation strategies adopted by media organizations to be used in future public health crises. The study will bring significant advances in knowledge in two areas of social sciences and humanities: First, it will contribute to health communication research, and specifically to the understanding of the role of communication during public health emergencies. Second, it will make an important contribution to research on populist communication and political polarization.

The postdoc is expected to contribute to a line of research that will examine key features of media coverage of the pandemic in four countries, their implications for the quality of public deliberation, and links to polarization.

In addition to the modality requirements, knowledge in quantitative and qualitative content analysis, health communication and political communication, fluency in Portuguese (to conduct qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews) and English (for working meetings with the project), and availability to carry out activities in the city of Bauru, São Paulo state, Brazil, during the term, are required. The doctoral degree must be in the areas of communication, social sciences, political science or similar.

This opportunity is open to candidates of any nationality. The selected candidate will receive a Post-Doctoral fellowship from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) in the amount of R$ 8,479.20 monthly and a research contingency fund, equivalent to 10% of the annual value of the fellowship which should be spent in items directly related to the research activity.

Read more: https://fapesp.br/oportunidades/comunicacao_pandemica_em_tempos_de_populismo:_construindo_uma_midia_resiliente_e_garantindo_uma_comunicacao_pandemica_eficaz_em_sociedades_divididas/4880/

El Profesional de la Información (Special issue, Scopus Q1, wos Q3)

Deadline: July 10, 2022

Issue: v. 32, n. 1

http://www.profesionaldelainformacion.com/notas/cfp-transparency/

About this issue

Information transparency refers to different spheres of political, communicative and social life. The diverse use of the term in the digital context has turned it into a talismanic word that promises to provide answers to a range of problems and improve processes within the public and private sector. More democracy, more freedom of information and more political efficiency are expected from transparency. Since Barack Obama's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government in 2009, there has been a significant increase in research on transparency and open data worldwide (Matheus; Janssen, 2019), new access to information standards have been adopted and transparency-based initiatives have been launched, such as the Open Government Partnership (Cuccinello et al., 2017).

Transparency can be considered to have become an ideology (Han, 2015). In a postmodernist context, transparency is interpreted as an asset in Western society (Etzioni, 2018), which advocates transforming management and accountability into information and data. However, there are certain aspects of transparency that provide a glazed view of political action, where digital platforms and social networks increasingly resemble panopticons that deform public debate. In addition, the evolution of technology is generating new needs where transparency is again presented as a problem and as a solution. Theoretical and empirical studies are therefore needed to investigate the redefinition of the term and to propose critical approaches to the transparency society in the digital ecosystem.

In the political sphere, political parties have taken up the regenerative discourse of transparency in an attempt to regain the credibility and trust of citizens. This is deeply related to the crisis of legitimacy, representation and mediatization of the digital public sphere and its effects on democracy. Civil society has also implemented mechanisms to demand and review political and institutional transparency. Transparency has also been valued as an element of great interest for information professionals, due to its potential for data journalism, fact-checking or for the promotion of ethics in the information process (Karlsson; Clerwall, 2018).

Although its scope remains difficult to estimate, the culture of transparency assumes that data should be used by citizens or any other agent for whom it may be useful and should be available in portals and data repositories that are accessible, understandable, updated and reusable (Lourenço, 2015; King; Youngblood, 2016). It is pertinent, therefore, to explore who uses this data, with what objectives and scope.

This single-subject issue aims to delve into the theoretical and empirical discourses on information transparency, analyze the initiatives and practices that characterize it and discuss its limits and possibilities in the digital context.

Topics

Research papers of an analytical, theoretical, methodological, or review nature –preferably international in scope– are invited on the following topics and lines of research:

- The society of transparency, society of trust and society of control.

- Transparent political communication. Characteristics and strategies

- Critical studies on transparency

- Limits of transparency

- Transparency policies

- Case studies and comparative studies on international initiatives and good practices.

- Mechanisms for measuring and evaluating transparency

- Perspectives on transparency

- Political discourse on transparency

- Open data portal and data journalism

- Transparency and disinformation

- Fact-checking and transparency

- Transparency and political credibility

- Dissemination of the culture of transparency

- Transparency of platforms for political and public debate.

- Transparency as an instrument of media governance.

- Lobbying transparency

- Necessary transparency reforms

- What is transparency for and what is it used for?

- Pro-transparency activism and organizations

- Parliamentarism and Transparency

- Transfer of transparency between the public and private sectors.

Guest editors

Eva Campos-Domínguez, Professor of Journalism, University of Valladolid, Spain, eva.campos@uva.es

María Díez-Garrido, Assistant Professor of Journalism, University of Valladolid, Spain, maria.diez.garrido@uva.es

Timeline

July 10th, 2022 - Manuscript submission deadline (articles of up to 8,000 words)

January-February 2023 - Publication date

Manuscript submission

If you wish to submit an article, please read carefully the journal’s acceptance criteria and rules for authors:

http://www.profesionaldelainformacion.com/authors.html

And then send us your article through the OJS journal manager on:

https://revista.profesionaldelainformacion.com/index.php/EPI/submissions

Important for authors

If you are not yet registered as an author, do so here:

https://revista.profesionaldelainformacion.com/index.php/EPI/user/register

Evaluation

All articles published in EPI are double blind peer reviewed by 2 or more members of the international Scientific Committee of the journal, and other reviewers, always external to the Editorial Board. The journal undertakes to reply with the review results.

Editor: Berta García-Orosa

Provides fresh international perspectives on the study of new technology and political communication

Covers political communication in key areas, including parliaments, political parties, elections, and social movements

Explores the impact of known technical advances in previously understudied contexts

We are proud to inform you that a second book of the JCE TWG has just got out titled 'Rethinking digital native communicators training', and published by Thomsons Reuters Aranzadi in Spain.

This time it is the result of our last JCE TWG conference organised by the University of Barcelona in May 2021.

The book is edited by Santiago Tejedor and Cristina Pulido as organisers of that conference, whom we thank for their effort and collaboration with us.

The main challenges in digital communicators training are addressed by European university teachers.

This book presents the last reflections focused on teaching artificial intelligence applied in journalism, innovation on teaching experiences, and new emerging professional profiles.

On behalf of all of our members, we heartily congratulate the editors, and published authors.

We believe this new publication will be useful literature for all of us, and our colleagues dealing with the same topic worldwide.

September 30, 2022

Online conference (Zoom)

Deadline: July 1, 2022

Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Faculty of Law and Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU)

Faculty of Law are pleased to announce a conference entitled "Audiovisual Media Regulation during the COVID-19 in Central and Eastern Europe", for which we invite applications for speakers.

Date: 30 September 2022 (Friday)

Application deadline: 1 July 2022 (Friday)

Approval deadline: 2 September 2022 (Friday)

Venue: Zoom

The international pandemic situation, which has been going on for two years now, impacts our daily lives. However, this natural phenomenon does not leave the world of media world untouched either. Moreover, in Central and Eastern Europe, these processes are often covert: as if governments are using the viral situation to achieve their unstated goals.

Freedom of expression as a fundamental human right can very quickly face severe restrictions in such cases, raising the problem of conflicting fundamental rights. In addition, legislation, the functioning of the media system and other media rights issues have been on the agenda in many Central and Eastern European countries. The exercise of exceptional powers has reached the region: extraordinary seems to become the norm.

The conference thus aims to bring together the historical and contemporary challenges of the press, the media and our mediatised world, i.e. to explore the issue from the perspectives of (legal) history and existing law, as well as social and political science, identifying the intersections where past experience can help to address the social and regulatory challenges of the present.

The main objective of the conference is to make the links visible to the broader audience between the pandemic situation and media legislation (negative and positive), its history, its social impact, its effects on the exercise of fundamental rights, and the experience, research findings and academic positions in Central and Eastern Europe on past and current regulatory issues. Therefore, the organisers of the conference will welcome contributions from the fields of law, political science, journalism, history and social science. The deadline for the application for the conference is 1 July 2022. Please, send a title with a short abstract (maximum 400 words) in English on the topic of the presentation to gosztonyi@ajk.elte.hu.

The conference will be held online via Zoom platform due to the current epidemiological situation. If there are enough applicants, a separate Master and PhD session will be organised. In adddition, the organizers will provide publication opportunities for manuscripts based on the best presentations. If there are enough applicants interested,

Russian-English translation will be provided.

Organizers:

• Dr Gergely Gosztonyi PhD, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), gosztonyi@ajk.elte.hu
• Dr Evgenia Kryukova PhD, Lomonosov Moscow State University, media.law.msu@mail.ru

October 14, 2022

PhD workshop (online)

Deadline: April 1, 2022

We invite PhD students to send us a proposal on the theme of Rethinking positionality in media and migration research, to be considered for an online workshop we are organising ahead of the ECREA 2022 9th European Communication Conference.

The workshop aims to provide support to doctoral students by connecting them with junior and senior researchers with experience in the field of media and migration research. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss their works and receive detailed feedback as well as guidance.

We welcome theoretical and empirical proposals from PhD candidates at the beginning or in the middle of their research projects, focusing specifically on the following themes:

- Ethical challenges in media and migration research;

- The contribution of intersectional approaches, post-colonial and de-colonial perspectives, and the challenges they pose;

- Moving beyond Euro-centrism in media and migration studies;

- Alternative approaches to the study of diasporic communities and imaginaries;

- Re-addressing and re-thinking positionality and relationality in migration research.

Interested applicants should submit an abstract of 800 words outlining the topic of their PhD project, its objectives, theoretical and methodological approaches. They should also specify at what stage of their doctoral study they are, and what are the specific challenges they are encountering whilst doing their research. This is to allow for a more structured support during the workshop.

Please send your abstract via this link https://forms.gle/XFKU6iDVWJT4JAk38

The deadline for the online submission of abstracts is April 1st, 2022. The online workshop will take place on the 14th of October 2022 (all day). Speakers tbc.

For further questions please email ecreadmm@gmail.com

28-29 April 2022

Middlesex University London

Abstract submission deadline: 1 March 2022

Abstracts are invited for a research symposium which is part of the project ‘Journalists’ emotional labour in the era of social media’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Emotional labour can be conceptualised as an effort to manage emotions which professional practitioners perceive as an integral part of their working life experience. In journalism it has primarily been investigated with reference to conflict and trauma reporting. More recently academic researchers have begun investigating the importance of emotions in journalism generally, but emotional labour more specifically. Current evidence suggests that journalism is an occupation characterised with high levels of emotional labour. Journalists use and manage emotions to motivate themselves for work. Emotions evoked at work can be intertwined with those from personal life. Indeed, work-related emotions can also be evoked outside of the story production process, for example in dealing with audiences and harassment, as well as being induced by working conditions (e.g., precarious pay, working hours, job insecurity), work relationships (e.g., within newsroom, with editors), the competitive nature of work, and so on. Importantly, there is evidence to suggest that if work-related emotions are not effectively managed, they can have negative consequences on journalists’ mental and physical health, job satisfaction, and the quality of the journalism being produced.

While papers investigating any aspect of journalists’ emotional labour are welcome, this symposium will provide an opportunity to widen the discussion of emotional labour beyond the scope of ‘Journalists’ emotional labour in the era of social media’ project, by broadening the discussion to consider this area of research more generally in the context of media work. There is some evidence that other types of media work might also be high emotional labour occupations, such as work with media photography, management of media outlets’ social media, stringer work etc.

Both theoretical and empirically informed papers are invited, focusing on topics such as (but not limited to):

• the causes and consequences of emotional labour in journalism and other media work
• the relationship between journalists’ freedom and safety and emotional labour
• emotional labour in the context of precarious employment in media
• the impact of covid-19 pandemic on media workers’ emotional labour
• the impact of social media on media workers’ emotional labour
• the impact of digital transformations on media workers’ emotional labour
• the relationship between media workers’ emotional labour and digital technologies
• emotional labour in areas such as photojournalism, camera work, directing, editing/post-production, stringer work, social media journalism, public relations etc.
• strategies for managing emotional labour in media work
• institutional/industry perspectives on media workers’ emotional labour
• support systems for media workers’ emotional labour

Abstracts of around 300 words should be sent to m.simunjak@mdx.ac.uk by 1 March 2022. Abstract notifications will be sent out by 10 March 2022.

Attendance is free. The panels for the research symposium will be held online on 28 April and a public roundtable on 29 April will be organised in a hybrid format, allowing for on-site and online participation. Tickets (free) for the roundtable 'Dealing with online abuse in journalism' can be booked here - https://bit.ly/3I9y2M4

Opportunities for publishing selected papers in a journal special issue will be explored after the symposium.

Sophia C. Volk

Comparative research has gained enormous popularity in communication and media studies in the last two decades and is increasingly conducted in international research teams. Collaboration with scholars from different countries brings many advantages, but it is also prone to conflict. This book presents the first systematic reflection on the conceptual, methodological, and social challenges of international collaborative and comparative studies in communication science. A systematic review of 335 comparative studies published in 27 communication journals and expert interviews with 15 communication scholars shed light on how challenges manifest themselves empirically and what solutions have proven to be appropriate. The book proposes a phase model of collaborative and comparative research that can serve as a guide for scholars on what conditions should be created for productive collaboration in temporary research projects.

Free access here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-36228-7

May 26, 2022

Paris, France

Deadline (EXTENDED): March 1, 2022

ICA 2022’s location in Paris is a significant one for critical race scholars. Paris was a key site for the Négritude movement, and became a city of exile for influential Black scholars and artists including James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet and Richard Wright. Building on the 2019 #CommunicationSoWhite ICA preconference, the theme of this event centers on exile and scholarship on the edges. It considers what it means to experience exile in our own fields and disciplines, to be pushed out, excluded, living outside the boundaries. It also addresses ways to tackle the pain of exile, or to understand exile as replenishing and restorative.

This preconference has two purposes:

– It follows up critical conversations around #CommunicationSoWhite, in terms of both Chakravartty et al.’s (2018) Journal of Communication article and the 2019 ICA pre-conference (organized by Eve Ng, Khadijah Costley White, Alfred Martin Jr., and Anamik Saha). Since then, there has been a greater recognition amongst our departments, associations, and institutions about the historical marginalization of racialized folk in university culture, followed by some increased investment in equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives. As such, the first aim of the preconference is to reflect upon the new forms of equality, diversity and inclusion that have been implemented in media and communication since the #CommunicationSoWhite moment.

– The second aim is to extend the discussion beyond academia, and consider the recent broader political attacks on critical race scholarship. The past year has seen the disturbing trend of populist right-wing political forces across Europe and the US painting critical race theory (whatever they understand it to be) as a threat to liberal democracy. This has also been a pronounced trend in France, which finds political leaders attacking such critical scholarship as fundamentally at odds with French liberal ideals. As such, the preconference will provide a space for delegates to reflect upon these troubling new political currents and conceptualize our responses to it as academics and activists. We will explore these complex conditions of intellectual and political contestation through the theme of ‘exile’; in terms of what it means to be forced into exile, in our disciplines, in our institutions, in national life, but also in terms of choosing to go into exile, as a form of refusal of and resistance to conditions in former birthplace or intellectual homes.

Overall, this preconference will explore the marginalization and alienation of critical race scholarship in media and communication and political discourse more generally, and responses thereof (both in regards to interventions and survival). We aim to build conversations between academics and scholars from different national contexts, since the challenges and attacks experienced are not unique to one particular region.

Submissions

We anticipate many submissions will center on the U.S. and other Western contexts; we also hope the pre-conference will provide a discussion that spans both global North and South, and we encourage participation by submitters from outside North America and the U.K.

Please submit either:

(1) An abstract of 500-1,000 words, including notes and references. We encourage different types of submissions including position papers, case studies, and more conventional research papers that tackle any issue relating to the preconference themes. Please include your name, affiliation, and contact information (submission does not need to be anonymous).

(2) A panel proposal. Panels should include a minimum of four participants. We will accept panels following a traditional format where presenters each speak for 10-15 minutes before a Q-and-A period. We also encourage alternative panel format, such as high-density panels (six or more participants who each speak for 6 minutes or less), or panels where panelists circulate their papers to each other ahead of time to generate a more engaged discussion. Provide a 400-word rationale describing the panel overall, a 200-word abstract for each participant’s contribution, and a list of participants’ names, affiliations, and contact information.

Exclusions: Submissions should not consist primarily of previously published or in-press scholarship.

Deadline:

Please submit by Tuesday, March 1, 2022, 16:00 UTC, by emailing BOTH Anamik Saha at a.saha@gold.ac.uk and Khadijah Costley White at klw147@comminfo.rutgers.edu.

Travel grants

Depending on funding availability, we may have the ability to offer one or two modest travel grants (maximum $400). If you are a graduate student and/or a scholar resident in a non-Tier A country (see https://www.icahdq.org/page/tiers for a list), please note this status in your submission and indicate that you would like to be considered for a travel grant.

Date and Location

The pre-conference is currently being planned as an in-person event for Thursday, May 26, 2022, in Paris, France (specific location to be announced – will be either at the conference hotel or a short distance away). Should Covid-19 conditions mean that in-person events are unadvisable or impossible, the event will be held virtually.

Registration

Early registration fee, by March 31: $US40

Regular registration fee: US$60

Lunch will be included for all registered participants.

Note that if the conference becomes virtual, registration fees will be adjusted down.

Organizers

• Anamik Saha

Department of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies

Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

a.saha@gold.ac.uk

• Khadijah Costley White

School of Communication and Information

Rutgers University, USA

klw147@comminfo.rutgers.edu

• Eve Ng

School of Media Arts and Studies, WGSS Program

Ohio University, USA

evecng@hotmail.com

• Simon Dawes

l’Institut d’études culturelles et internationales (IECI)

Université de Versailles, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France

simondawes0@gmail.com

Co-Sponsors

ICA IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) Committee

ICA Ethnicity and Race in Communication division