ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Special Issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society

Deadline:  September 9, 2019

Edited by Jacob Johanssen (Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster, j.johanssen@westminster.ac.uk)

For psychoanalysis, sexuality, how it is both individually thought about and lived and how it is culturally constructed, is key to understanding both the human psyche and social change. Freud believed that the sexual behaviour of an individual, from the earliest stages of development onwards, provided key insights into how they related to others and themselves in life more generally. While Freud stressed that there is no ‘normal’ sexuality and heterosexuality was a myth, his particular theories of female sexuality were nonetheless critiqued by feminist thinkers. Initially for Freud, the symptom itself was a distorted or covered manifestation of sexual activity which related to conflicts. Those ideas were developed by post-Freudian psychoanalysts in numerous ways. It is psychoanalysis that fundamentally contributed to the theorisation and understanding of the role that sexual desires and fantasies play in our (un)conscious forms of relating to ourselves and others. While psychoanalytic schools have come to understand sexuality in different ways, other disciplines such as queer theory, cultural studies and philosophy have grappled with and drawn on those conceptualisations of sexuality. Particular notions that are often taken for granted in every day discourse – perversion, fetishism, voyeurism – were (and are) developed by psychoanalysts. The call for papers for a special issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society takes psychoanalytic theories of sexuality / sexualities and how they were adapted/critiqued by other disciplines as a starting point for analysing contemporary networked media, online spaces and digital phenomena.

In the past two decades, the Internet and networked devices have not only transformed societies but also human agency and subjectivity. How we communicate and relate to others has been shaped by our engagement with and immersion in digital media, devices and platforms. Social media in particular can be seen as enablers of unprecedented levels of human communication and cooperation which result in a sense of recognition and security for individuals, at the same time users have become data points which are commodified, surveyed and tracked by companies, governments and other entities. Contemporary online communication is also often marked by strong levels of hatred, aggression and polarisation which are characterised by the symbolic, and sometimes physical, destruction of the other. This proposed special issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society places a specific focus on sexualities in contemporary online spaces. Sexualities have become more flexible and fluid thanks to technology as they are facilitated through hook up apps like Tinder, or Grindr. In reproductive terms, devices connected to the Internet such as fertility and health check apps have also become available. The Internet facilitates an informative and pleasurable engagement with sexualities, be it through online content, or communities around sexual identities for example. Subjects reveal aspects about their sexualities online more than ever before. At the same time, much of mainstream pornography has been critiqued as depicting women as oppressed, sexualised objects aimed to satisfy a male gaze. Clinicians have also noted that pornography can impact young people’s sexual development in harmful ways. Perhaps somewhat related to the widespread engagement with some forms of pornography, women are discussed in certain online spaces (such as forums on Reddit or 4chan) in highly misogynistic terms. Such language is often inspired by right-wing discourse and imagery which has gained increasing visibility online. The #MeToo movement on the other hand has made use of social media for activist purposes in order to resist and expose the widespread sexual assault and harassment conducted by men. It has attracted criticism for some of the methods and narratives deployed which have led to false accusations for example.

It is safe to say that the representation of and engagement with sexualities has exploded due to digital technologies. There is scope to interpret such aspects in depth through psychoanalysis in combination with other approaches.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Psychoanalytic approaches to sexuality
• Psychoanalysis and other conceptualisations of sexuality (e.g. Foucauldian, Deleuze-Guattarian, queer theoretical)
• Clinical perspectives on sexuality and digital media
• Repression and its status today
• Pleasures, unpleasures – Eros and the death drive
• #MeToo and activism against sexualised violence
• The Alt-Right and online misogyny
• Online pornography
• Livestreaming and camming
• Hook-up apps
• The Internet of Things (fertility devices, sex toys, sex robots, etc.)
•  Social media
• Games and gaming cultures
• Virtual reality and forms of simulation

Please send abstracts of no longer than 500 words to Jacob Johanssen (j.johanssen@westminster.ac.uk) by 09 September 2019. Accepted full papers will be due in February 2020. The special issue will be published in December 2020.

Article length: 6-8,000 words

About the journal

Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society is an international, peer-reviewed journal published by Palgrave (https://www.palgrave.com/gb/journal/41282). It explores the intersection between psychoanalysis and the social world. It is a journal of both clinical and academic relevance which publishes articles examining the roles that psychoanalysis can play in promoting and achieving progressive social change and social justice.

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society benefits a worldwide community of psychoanalytically informed scholars in the social and political sciences, media, cultural and literary studies, as well as clinicians and practitioners who probe the relationship between the social and the psychic. It is the official journal of the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society.

Special issue of Emerald Studies in Media and Communications

Deadline: May 31

Editor: Lloyd Levine

Emerald Studies in Media and Communications is delighted to announce a special volume on technology and government. Rolling acceptances until May 31, 2019.

Working Title: Technology and Government

The volume will focus on technology and government and will be divided into two parts. Part one will examine how government procures and uses technology, and part two will explore how changes in technology have changed the way government operates. Papers may explore any of the following or related ideas: why government fails at technology purchases, why government lags behind on innovation and implementation, case studies of governments that have done an excellent job of purchasing and using technology, challenges of providing digital government services when large percentages of the population lack digital connectivity due to the digital divide, the effect of technology on transparency, political and/or administrative, and this can be about the disclosure of behaviors, or about more transparency in government due to the ability of government to put information on line where the public can access it directly, how technology has changed the way government, particularly local or state government provides services, the way technology has affected communications between government and those the entity governs, etc. Submissions will be peer-reviewed for publication.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be approximately 7,000-10,000 in length inclusive of abstract, references, and notes. American or British spelling may be used.

While no special formatting is requested at the outset, upon acceptance authors must gain all permissions and format their manuscripts in accordance with the series' guidelines.

Submissions may be considered for either volume. All submissions must be in Word and include:

1) title of manuscript,

2) abstract up to 250 words,

3) up to 6 keywords,

4) main text with headings,

5) references,

6) as appropriate to the submission appendices, images, figures, and tables.

Questions may be addressed to Lloyd.Levine@hotmail.com

ECREA TWG Visual Cultures Conference

September 4–6, 2019

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Submission deadline: May 15, 2019

https://events.tuni.fi/visual-cultures-2019/

Keynotes: Paul Frosh (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) "Moving Images: On the Mobility and Motility of Digital Photography", Jill Walker Rettberg (University of Bergen) "Machine Images: from Vertov’s Kino-Eye to Deep Fakes and Selfie Lenses".

In visual studies, the question of how to apprehend images has been contested at least since WJT Mitchell’s call for a pictorial turn, defined ‘ex negativo’. While books on visual cultures, visual analysis and visual research abound, the kind of consideration that we should give single images is discussed from very different kinds of perspectives. While some suggest paying careful attention to visual detail, form, and motif, others call for a turn away from representations, suggesting that main attention should be given to the practices within which images become meaningful. While the latter approaches may question the usefulness of ‘representation’ per se, the former explicitly prioritize that which is made visible.

While the positions of how to approach images diverge, images as phenomena to be studied are themselves increasingly ‘on the move’.

Operational images, part of complex logistical chains, are just one example of images on the move, that a human being might never get to see. But also photos used for phatic communication might be less important for what they show, in contrast to the social connections that they allow for. On the other hand, public and private environments are increasingly filled with screens that display images to be seen. Images travel between contexts, in time and space, asking us to constantly question who is looking and at what, and in what ways acts of looking play a role in this constellation. In short, both our understandings of how to approach images, and images themselves, are ‘on the move’.

This conference, organized by the ECREA TWG Visual Cultures, discusses the roles of images for visual analysis by focusing on images on the move. This entails work on images capturing movement of unfolding events, images themselves moving in time, space, and across media, as well as the theoretical and analytical approaches that are on the move.

How should we work with images and practices on the move?

We welcome papers on topics including, but not limited to:

• methodological approaches that focus on representational features of images and/or the flows, contexts and - practices around images
• researching the visual: new methodological approaches and challenges
•  visual ethics / ethics in visual research
• studies or reflections on how to handle image flows and large (moving) sets of visual data
• theoretical approaches on representational vs non-representational approaches
•  entanglements between the material aspect of images and visual practices
• images and infrastructures
• ‘fake news’ and the visual: verification of images
• generic images, stock photos and images banks: modes of production, distribution and effects
• digitally mediated visual communication in everyday life
• images and popular culture
• images and developers
• phatic communication and the question of representation

Abstracts of up to 750 words, including a motivation for the study, information on theory/concepts used, data/phenomena analyzed and methods used, should be sent by 15 May 2019 with an electronic form: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/visual-cultures-2019-cfp.

There will be a conference fee of ca. 120-140 Euros, and slightly reduced rates to PhD students and ECREA members.

Please find more information on the conference website: https://events.tuni.fi/visual-cultures-2019/

July 12, 2019

University of Segovia, Spain

Deadline: April 10, 2019

Organisers: Annette Hill, Peter Lunt, Miguel Vicente, Asta Zelenkauskaite, Erika Polson

The Audiences Section of IAMCR is organising a one day post-conference on the concept of Mobile Socialities. The Audiences section aims to encourage new thinking and approaches to global audience research and to inspire greater interest in exploring and understanding audiences in diverse settings, including non-Western approaches to audiences, the nature of audiences as ‘knowledge communities’, ethnographic approaches to researching them, and the extent to which traditional classifications of audiences (masses, publics and markets) are being challenged by the fluidity and ephemeral nature of virtual and mobile audiences.

The themed post-conference critically examines the bridging concept of mobile socialities across international perspectives, ensuring dialogue on the connections between audience studies, mobilities and mobile communication research. Key questions include:

1) What forms of socialities do we find in mobile times?

2) In what ways are time and place critical to mobile socialities?

3) How do we research the mobile nature of screen content for transnational audiences, users and publics?

Mobile socialities is a bridging concept that links the phenomena of people on the move and the role of mobile media in everyday life. People are on the move across national borders through, for example, economic and forced migration or tourism; people are on the move from rural contexts to urban centres and transitions in social class. There are opportunities and barriers to mobility within working and living conditions and people transition between public and private spheres, home and workspaces through media. These movements question, and sometimes reinforce, existing notions of boundaries, differences and power relations. In such mobile contexts, we find media entangled in audiences’ lived realities, for example in mobile media and place, knowledge work and mobile spaces, or mobile media and time.

This post-conference addresses mobile socialites through empirical and theoretical analysis of audiences in situated contexts. Areas of interest include: mobile media and time, mobile media and geography, mobile communications directed at connecting people to place, transportation and media research, the blurred boundaries between work place-space within mobile communications, transnational audiences for global media; mobile apps and social relations, critical algorithm studies and intimacies, migration and mobile media, conviviality and mobile communications, historical approaches to mobile media and people on the move, methodological challenges for mobile media audiences, as well as other areas of interest.

We encourage multi-method and theoretical approaches to audience research that explores the concept of mobile socialities as something concerned with not only fluidity and movement, or place and scale, but also the possibilities and barriers to being mobile. In such a way, the post-conference addresses the flow and stillness of digital technologies and our lived realities, and the power dynamics of emerging forms of the social in mobile times.

Keynote speakers include Professor Maren Hartmann (Berlin University of the Arts), Professor Peter Lunt (Leicester University) and Erika Polson (University of Denver). The schedule will include a combination of keynote panels, workshops and panel presentations.

The post-conference takes place at the Segovia Campus of the University of Valladolid on Friday 12th July 2019. A fee of 20-50 Euros for participants and IAMCR members covers food and beverages for the day. There are regular high speed trains and buses from Madrid to Segovia; and local hotels ranging from 30-70 Euros per night. There are scholarships of 150 US dollars per person to cover the costs of registration, transportation and/or accommodation to support early-stage scholars from middle or low income countries.

Please send abstracts of 300 to 500 words by April 10, 2019 to Miguel.vincente@uva.es. This section is only able to receive proposals and schedule sessions in English for the post-conference.

October 11, 2019

Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich, Germany

Deadline: June 1, 2019

Organizers

• Prof. Sahana Udupa (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich)
• Dr. Elisabetta Costa (University of Groningen)
• Dr. Philipp Budka (University of Vienna)

By building on the Media Anthropology Network panel at the EASA 2018 conference in Stockholm and the follow-up e-seminar from 16 Oct. - 9 Nov. 2018 (http://www.media-anthropology.net/index.php/e-seminars), this workshop critically explores “the digital turn” in the anthropological study of media, and aims to push further ethnographic knowledge into the role that digital media technologies play in people's everyday life and broader sociopolitical transformations. In so doing, this workshop contributes to the reassessment of media anthropology in digital times, and raises critical questions on how digital media have posed new epistemological challenges, inspired methodological innovations, and offered opportunities for political activism for media anthropologists.

A key question that drives this discussion is whether the digital turn has reconfigured the classic distinction between “home” and “field” through temporally intensified “horizontal” networks on a global scale.

Have these connections – culturally translated across different societies – collapsed the distinction between “home” and “field”? As users and researchers of digital media, how do we rework anthropology’s classic conundrum of home-field, distance-nearness and us-other in radically progressive ways? What does the “digital turn” entail in terms of how we engage research participants, and how do we use these new pathways to critique the multidirectional “colonial matrix of power” (Mignalo & Walsh, 2007) that is riding on the very infrastructure of contemporary digital media?

We invite scholars to engage with these questions through various topic fields they are researching, and consider this reflexive move as an important step towards challenging “the global fact” of racial, gender, ethnic and religion-based exclusions. We also invite scholars to bring cases of innovative use of digital research to overcome prevailing hierarchies in anthropological knowledge production – between researchers and research participants, as well as within the academic community.

Drawing from their own research, and from their engagement with relevant literatures, workshop participants will ask the following questions:

* What is the present state of anthropological study on digital media technologies and their impact on culture and society?

* What are the main questions in need of urgent research (especially in connection to decolonizing media/digital anthropology, gender, visuality, extreme movements and speech)?

* How have digital technologies transformed (media) anthropology and how does the future look for media anthropologists?

* What is the role of digital technology in transforming knowledge production and dissemination in media anthropology?

* How can anthropologists contribute to the interdisciplinary effort of theorizing digital media practices and digital technologies?

* Who will be the main beneficiaries of this research, both in academia and beyond?

We invite ethnographic and/or theoretical papers that focus on the above questions.

Participants who need travel support to attend the workshop are invited to mention the same (limited financial support is available for travel and accommodation).

In a single word document, please send your abstracts of 1000 words and a short bio (100 words) stating your current affiliation, mentioning whether you are an EASA member.

Please use the filename format: authorlastname_digitalturnworkshop2019, and send this no later than 1 June 2019 to digitalturnworkshop@ethnologie.lmu.de

Selected participants will be notified by 30 June 2019. EASA members will get the first preference in travel bursaries.

Proposal Submission Deadline: March 30, 2019

A book edited by Serpil Karlidag (Baskent University) and Selda Bulut (Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University)

Introduction

The political economy approach deals with communication and media as commodities produced by capitalist industries. Media operates as an industry that produces and distributes commodities. As Golding & Murdock (1997:49) identified, the media outputs produced by these industries (newspapers, advertisements, TV programs, movies, music, the gaming industry, etc.) play a vital role in organizing images and discourses that people make the world meaningful. In a sense, media do not only transmit information but also have the function of producing and spreading the symbols that can be called symbolic production. The cultural production produced by the media has a very complex structure. Although the cultural production process has its own characteristics, it is still part of the production of commodification area.

While analyzing the cultural products produced by the media, it should be taken into consideration the relation of this symbolic production with the ideological processes on the basis of material production of society. It is considered that the area of cultural production is not pointless, on the contrary, it is a part of the social control mechanism.

Objective of the Book

The purpose of this book is to provide new approaches besides current trends in the political economy of communication researches in the process of globalization. Specific examples from the above-mentioned subjects including different countries particular in Turkey will contribute to the field and extend the border of the political economy of communication studies into the relatively undiscovered areas. Since the political economy is a holistic field, it can focus on the whole system with more complex and richer analysis. This tradition is also instrumental in attracting the target audience.

Target Audience

The target audience of this book will be composed of academics, postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, professionals.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

1) What is Political Economy approach?: Historical development, features, methods, and importance.

2) Media property/ownership relations: the ownership of media products and copyright policies

3) Propaganda model: Factors affecting the news production process

4) What Media Produces? Properties of media products, Ideology

5) Audience commodification: commodification, the commodification of audience, the commodification of user in new media

6) The political economy of culture: production, distribution and consumption processes of cultural products, Culture Industry.

7) Labor process: conceptualizations on labor and working in media.

8) The political economy of digital media: new communication technologies, the structure of digital media production.

9) Structures determining consumer preferences and discussions on audience freedom within these structures.

10) Media and state relations.

Submission Procedure

Contributors are invited to submit on or before March 30, a chapter proposal of 400 to 500 words clearly identifying the topic of the chapter. Proposals should be submitted through the IGI-Global submission system. Authors will be notified of the status of their proposal no later April 29, 2019. Once accepted, all submitted chapters must be original, of high quality 7,000- 10,000 words in length at the publication stage. All submissions will be refereed through a double-blind review process. Author(s) of the accepted proposal are required to submit their full chapter no later than September 30, 2019 to facilitate the review process. Submitted chapters should not have been previously published nor be currently under review for publication at other venues. Submissions should follow the manuscript format guidelines from IGI Global. All authors are encouraged to visit the IGI Global resource site below before beginning the writing process:

http://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/#books-authors

Note:

There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication, Current Theories and Practice in the Political Economy of Communications and Media. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double blind peer review editorial process.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), an international academic publisher of the "Information Science Reference" (formerly Idea Group Reference), "Medical Information Science Reference," "Business Science Reference," and "Engineering Science Reference" imprints. IGI Global specializes in publishing reference books, scholarly journals, and electronic databases featuring academic research on a variety of innovative topic areas including, but not limited to, education, social science, medicine and healthcare, business and management, information science and technology, engineering, public administration, library and information science, media and communication studies, and environmental science. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2020.

Important Dates

• March 30, 2019: Proposal Submission Deadline
• April 29, 2019: Notification of Acceptance
• September 30, 2019: Full Chapter Submission
• November 30, 2019: Review Results Returned
• December 30, 2019: Final Acceptance Notification
• january 30, 2019: Final Chapter Submission

Editorial Advisory Board Members:

• Serpil Karlidag, Baskent University, Ankara/Turkey
• Selda Bulut, Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, Ankara/Turkey
• Inquiries can be forwarded to
• Serpil Karlidag, Baskent University
• Selda Bulut, Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University

Editor's Contact Information

serpilkarli@yahoo.com

seldabulut@gmail.com

 October 17-18, 2019

University of Amsterdam

Deadline: May 15, 2019

Around the world, racist discourses, attitudes, and practices have moved from the fringes into the mainstream, putting core democratic values under pressure. Familiar racial orders have resurfaced and reinforced racist borders, both metaphorical and material. The sixth annual conference of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS) invites papers that examine how forms, discourses and practices of racism have materialized in various institutional contexts.

Keynote speakers:

• Gargi Bhattacharyya (University of East London, UK)

Gargi Bhattacharyya is a Professor of Sociology at the UEL’s Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging and the author, most recently, of Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of Reproduction and Survival (2018).

• Barnor Hesse (Northwestern University, Evanston, USA)

Barnor Hesse is an Associate Professor of African American Studies, Political Science and Sociology and the co-editor, most recently, of After #Ferguson, After #Baltimore: The Challenge of Black Death and Black Life for Black Political Thought (2017, with Juliet Hooker).

• David Lloyd (University of California, Riverside, USA)

David Lloyd is Distinguished Professor of English and the author, most recently, of Under Representation: The Racial Regime of Aesthetics (2018).

Description:

Around the world, racist discourses, attitudes, and practices have moved from the fringes into the mainstream, putting core democratic values under pressure. Familiar racial orders have resurfaced and reinforced racist borders, both metaphorical and material. The sixth annual conference of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS) invites papers that examine how forms, discourses and practices of racism have materialized in various institutional contexts. Organized in cooperation with the collaborative research centre Dynamics of Security at the Universities of Giessen and Marburg, Germany, the conference’s main conceptual focus is on the institutional dimensions of racism. How and by whom has racism been ‘mainstreamed’ in different countries and regions around the globe? What kinds of discourses, techniques, strategies and tactics have been mobilized to mainstream racism? And how does this take shape in diverse institutional settings, including politics, education, international institutions, the media, cultural foundations, the police, and the legal system? In the wake of unrestrained, state-led xenophobia and populist nationalism, the function of race as a building block of culture, education, finance, nationalism and democracy can no longer be dissolved into ethnicity, nationalism and religion. Thus, the function of race cannot be hidden behind modernity, the Enlightenment, multiculturalism or civilization, deferred to the histories of ‘other’ places and ‘other’ peoples, or relegated to a past that was ostensibly erased with the end of the Holocaust and the birth of modern institutions such as the European Union and the United Nations. We need to employ the full range of research tools and approaches to take stock of how race and racism have continued to underscore state histories and institutions, as well as everyday practices, habits, gestures, affects, languages, aesthetics and representations alike.

Avenues of inquiry may include, but are not limited to:

• Histories of institutional racism
• Racism and populist governance
• Intersectional perspectives on race and racism
• Intersections between different practices of racism
• Whiteness
• Racism and #metoo
• Racism and social media
• Race, immigration and refugee flows
• Race (and) wars
• Borders and bodies
• Race, racism and the digital
• Race and technology
• Legalizing race and racism
• Teaching race and racism
• Race, policing and profiling
• Globalization and neoliberalism
• Nationalism and the nation-state
• Race and popular media
• Fake news and the crisis of journalism
• Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism
• Colonial legacies, decolonization and neoimperalism
• Aesthetics of race and racism
• Race and cultural institutions
• The politics of color-blindness

Contributions from across the social and political sciences and the humanities are welcome. Please submit an abstract (max. 250-300 words) and a short bio (max. 100 words) by 15 May 2019 to acgs-fgw@uva.nl. Submissions for pre-constituted panels with a maximum of four papers are also welcome.

Notice of acceptance will be sent by 15 June 2019. Draft papers should be submitted before 15 September 2019 and made available for internal circulation among conference participants.

Conference fee: 50 Euros (25 Euros for PhD students).

Conference dinner: 25 Euros.

Organisers: Jeroen de Kloet, Amade M’charek, Thomas Poell (University of Amsterdam), Regina Kreide, Huub van Baar (Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany), Anikó Imre (University of Southern California, USA), Dušan Bjelić (University of Southern Maine, USA).

Edited by: Josef Trappel

Inequalities are the unwanted companions of media and communication. Tradi­tional analogue mass media were criticized for creating inequal

ities by being biased, serving hegemonic interests, and accumulating far too much power in the hands of mighty industrial conglomerates. Under the digital regime, most inequalities survived, and new ones occurred. Knowledge gaps transformed into digital divides, news journalism is challenged by social networking sites, and global corporate monopolies outperform national media companies. Algorithmic selection, surveillance, Big Data and the Internet of Things are creating new inequalities which follow traditional patterns of class, gender, wealth and education. This book revisits old and new media and co

mmunication inequalities in times of digital transition. It has been written in a collective effort by the members of the Euromedia Research Group.

Purchase here.

Content

• Preface
• Inequality, (new) media and communications (Josef Trappel)
• Equality – an ambiguous value (Denis McQuail)
• Inequality, social trust and the media. Towards citizens’ communication and information rights (Hannu Nieminen)
• Scale economies and international communications inequality, 1820-2020 (Jeremy Tunstall)
• Political communication, digital inequality and populism (Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, Ralph Negrine)
• Economic inequality, appraisal of the EU and news media (Barbara Thomass)
• Inequality in the media and the “Maslow pyramid” of journalistic needs in Central and Eastern Europe (Péter Bajomi-Lázár)
• The illusion of pluralism. Regulatory aspects of equality in the new media (Judit Bayer)
• The missing link. Blind spots in Europe’s local and regional news provision (Leen d’HaenensWillem Joris, Quint Kik)
• Transforming the news media. Overcoming old and new gender inequalities (Claudia Padovani, Karin Raeymaeckers, Sara De Vuyst)
• Invisible children. Inequalities in the provision of screen content for children (Jeanette Steemers)
• New forms of the digital divide (Elena Vartanova, Anna Gladkova)
• Information and news inequalities (Tristan Mattelart,Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, Josef Trappel)
• Why free news matters for social inequality. Comparing willingness to pay for news in the Nordic region (Hallvard Moe)
• Representation, participation and societal well-being. Addressing inequality in agency in Europe (Aukse Balcytiene, Kristina Juraite)
• Towards a policy for digital capitalism? (Werner A. Meier)
• Contributors 

Deadline: August 1, 2019

South Korea’s ethnoscape has undergone dynamic change. It is peculiar as it has both a postcolonial history with Japan and a neocolonial relationship with the United States. These histories shape complex views of who belongs and who is valued vis-a-vis racial, ethnic, and national others. One major site of the construction of difference is popular culture. Popular and online media in South Korea construct difference through the celebration of the desirable otherness of Whites and biracial White-Koreans (Ahn, 2015), the joining of Southeast Asian women and their multi-ethnic children in the paternal nation-state through the loss of their difference (Oh & Oh, 2016), and marginalized, outcast others, who are rendered irredeemably different. With this in mind, the purpose of the book is to animate postcolonial impulses by drawing together local theories developed in the South Korean context that focuses on the construction of ethnicized, racialized, and nationalized difference in the local cultural terrain.

Previous literature on ethnoracial differences in Korea explains that differences are due to (1) Korea’s myth of ethnic homogeneity (2) Confucian preferences for “civilized” societies, (3) internalization of the racial logics of the US, and (4) a lack of distinction between race, ethnicity, and nation. While each is informative and useful, they are partial explanations and do not adequately explain the ways difference is mediated and discursively constructed, e.g., Western racial hierarchies are not merely mapped onto Korean cultural logics of difference nor are there simple binaries of Koreans versus others.

By bringing together media scholars of Korean popular culture located in and outside Korea, the project aims to map the ways in which ethnic/racial/national difference vis-a-vis Koreanness is represented and constructed at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and nation. Thus, I seek contributions that analyze the discourse of multiculturalism and ethno/racial/national/regional difference.

As an interdisciplinary project, I am interested in contributions, which include fields such as Communication Studies, Media Studies, Korean Studies, Asian Studies, Sociology, Literature, Performance Studies, and Ethnic Studies. Though it is interdisciplinary, I limit the methods to critical qualitative inquiry in order to maintain a focused epistemological vantage point. Finally, I accept original, unpublished submissions that are written in English. Areas of interest might include but are not limited to:

• Mediated constructions of desirable otherness

• Mediated constructions of assimilated otherness

• Mediated constructions of marginalized otherness

• Mediated constructions of multiple assimilations

• Mediated constructions of ambivalent otherness

• Self-mediated constructions of belonging in the imagined nation

• Self-mediated rejection of the imagined nation

If interested in contributing, please submit a 250-400 word extended abstract and CV to David C. Oh (doh@ramapo.edu) and a 100-word bio by August 1, 2019. Please include (1) your purpose, (2) justification, (3) proposed method, (4), if available, tentative findings, and (5) references. Final manuscripts should be 7,000-8,000 words, which includes all elements of the paper – title page, body essay, references, and, if necessary, tables and figures. Final book chapters will be due June 1, 2020.

September 5-6, 2019

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Deadline: May 15, 2019

An interdisciplinary conference hosted by ‘Mediatized diaspora (MEDIASP): Contentious Politics among Arab Media Users in Europe’

Keynote speakers:

• Professor Naomi Sakr: Westminster School of Media and Communication, UK.
• Professor Myria Georgiou: Dept of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
• Associate professor Tourya Guaaybess: Humanities and Social Sciences-Nancy, University of Lorraine. France
• Professor Carola Richter: Institute for Media and Communication Studies. The Free University of Berlin, Germany.

The research project ‘Mediatized diaspora (MEDIASP): Contentious Politics among Arab Media Users in Europe’ at the University of Copenhagen is pleased to announce the call for papers for a two-day conference on regime-critical media – produced in or outside the Middle East and North Africa – and their users in diaspora.

After the Arab Spring, political developments in the Arab countries have varied from sustained civil war in Syria and Yemen to fragile political democracy in Tunisia; from successive regime changes in Egypt to regime maintenance in Bahrain; and from ongoing uprisings in Sudan to “successful” pressure against the regime to resign in Algeria. These developments have a direct impact on the conditions for regime-critical and politically mobilized media and for Arab diasporas living outside the Arab world. Regime-critical media have faced new restrictions and challenges in the Middle Eastern and North African countries post-Arab Spring, letting several media to move to other countries. Likewise, the situation of political activists either still living in the Middle East or in diaspora has greatly changed and their contributions have taken on a new significance.

Hence, the overall questions are: how do regime-critical media produced for the Middle Eastern or North-African audiences meet new challenges and opportunities? How do Middle Eastern and North-African diaspora groups mobilize politically and engage in transnational political activities? How does the audiences’ use of regime-critical media influences political action formation in diaspora?

We invite conference papers that examine the regime-critical media produced both in and outside the Middle East, and/or how media practices of Middle Eastern and North-African political activists in diaspora contribute to political transformation. The conference aims at exploring and discussing the potentially wide variations in regime-critical media and the Arab diasporas’ practices of using them. Both theoretical and empirical contributions are welcome.

The conference welcomes papers on any of the following – or allied – topics or themes:

Regime-critical media in the Middle East and North African countries:

• The history (and developments) of Arab critical media
• Politicization of critical media after the 2011 Arab Spring
• Social media in light of political repression
• Critical media coverage of social movements
• Critical media censorship and ownership
• The performing of conflict by critical media
• Violence and affective media events
• Audio-visual modalities of critical media
• Art, creativity, alternative features of critical media
• Virtual mobility and glocality of critical media
• The legal framework of Arab media
• The future of Arab critical media
• Political activism and media users of regime-critical media:
• Media practices in the diaspora
• Media and migrationhood
• Practices of citizen journalism
• Political activism in digital media
• Cyber activism post-Arab Spring
• Transnational media practice
• Mediatized negotiations and contestations of current developments
• Connective and collective action formations
• Electronic armies (committees) on social media

Abstract Submission

The deadline for submitting proposals for individual papers is May 15. Please submit a title and abstract of about 250 words, in addition to your name, institutional affiliation and contact information.

Please send your abstracts or any enquiries to mediasp@hum.ku.dk.

A selection of accepted papers will be published in a special issue in Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research in April 2020 (Volume 13, Issue 1).

Key dates

• 20 March 2019 – Call for papers is announced
• 15 May 2019 – Deadline for submitting abstracts
• 22 May 2019 – Notification of accepted abstracts
• 4 August 2019 – Deadline for registration
• 1 September 2019 – Deadline for full paper submission, 7500 words
• 5-6 September 2019 – The conference takes place in Copenhagen
• 6 October 2019 – Deadline for paper submission after revisions
• 3 November 2019 – Peer reviewer’s feedback will be send to author
• 1 December 2019 – Deadline for submission of final paper

The conference does not cover travel or accommodation costs for the participants.

Conference host

The host of the conference is the research project ‘Mediatized diaspora (MEDIASP): Contentious Politics among Arab Media Users in Europe’. You can read more about the project here: https://ccrs.ku.dk/research/centres-and-projects/mediatizeddiaspora/

The project has its home at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (language, religion and society), University of Copenhagen.

For more information about the conference, please contact the organizing committee at mediasp@hum.ku.dk. The organizing committee consists of Dr. Ehab Galal, Dr. Thomas Fibiger, Dr. Mostafa Shehata, and PhD-fellow Zenia Yonus.