ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

November 27, 2024, 6.30pm to 8.00pm

Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building (CKK, see LSE campus map) (In-person and online public event)

Speaker: Prof Sonia Livingstone

Chair: Prof Ellen Helsper

Registration

This public event is free and open to all.

In-person attendance: no ticket or pre-registration is required

Online attendance: register here.

Hosted by the Digital Futures for Children centre (DFC), Department of Media and Communications and 5Rights Foundation

Public anxiety about children’s digital lives and wellbeing is reaching a fever pitch, marking a notable turnaround from the decades-long efforts to ensure children are fully digitally included, literate and empowered. While arguments rage over what’s wrong with ‘screen time,’ ‘online harms,’ and data-driven forms of exploitation, this lecture hosted by the Digital Futures for Children centre will make the case for a rights-based approach that puts children’s needs at the forefront of the design and deployment of digital services.

April 23–24, 2025

Liwa College in collaboration with Abu Dhabi University (English sessions held in a hybrid format at Abu Dhabi University)

Deadline: December 18, 2024

Languages: English, Arabic, and French

Conference Themes:

• Artificial Intelligence and Media Content Industry
  
• Big Data Analysis to Improve Media Strategies
  
• Artificial Intelligence Media Tools and Techniques
  
• Content Customization and User Experience Improvement
  
• Artificial Intelligence and the Podcast Industry
  
• Automated and Robotic Media and the Humanization of Content
  
• Professional Ethics and Challenges in Artificial Intelligence in Media
  
• Bridging the Labor Market and Academic Skills
  
• The Future of Media Professions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
  

Important Dates:

• Abstract Submission Deadline: December 18, 2024
  
• Full Paper Submission Deadline: March 1, 2025
  

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts (max. 300 words) must align with one of the conference themes.

Full papers should be 15-25 pages in length and formatted according to APA style.

Accepted papers will be considered for publication in Crossroads of Social Inquiry, Abu Dhabi University’s academic journal.

Contact Information for Submissions:

Email: lc.media@lc.ac.ae (for general inquiries)

English sessions inquiries: viola.gjylbegaj@adu.ac.ae

Conference Link:

For more information, please visit the conference website.

This conference provides an excellent platform to explore cutting-edge intersections of digital media, artificial intelligence, and data analysis, aligned with the UAE’s National Strategy for Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence.

CAMRI

The University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) is pleased to announce this year’s Quintin Hogg Trust (QHT) PhD Studentships for UK and International applicants to commence in the 2025/26 academic year. 

Full information about the studentships, entry requirements and the application procedure can be found here: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/studentships/quintin-hogg-trust-phd-studentship

HOW TO APPLY

To apply, select the School of Media and Communication and choose the 'MPhil/PhD Media Studies' programme. Be sure to include the title of the studentship, The Quintin Hogg Trust Studentship, in your application. 

Applications must be submitted by 5pm on Friday 7 February 2025.

Interviews will take place in the week beginning 10 March 2025. 

ABOUT CAMRI

The Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) in the School of Media and Communication is a world-leading centre in the study of media and communication, renowned for its critical and international research, which has consistently been ranked highly according to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the QS World University Rankings. In REF 2021 83% of CAMRI's overall research was judged to be ‘world-leading’ and ‘internationally excellent’.

CAMRI welcomes applications which explore the political, economic, social and cultural significance of the media across the globe. CAMRI research is focused on four key themes: Communication, Technology and Society; Cultural Identities and Social Change; Global Media; and Policy and Political Economy. 

CONTACTS

To seek guidance and be connected with prospective supervisors, please contact Dr Ed Bracho-Polanco, Coordinator of the CAMRI Doctoral Researcher Development Programme. 

Email: E.Brachopolanco@westminster.ac.uk

Alternatively, you may directly approach a prospective supervisor. For more information, visit the CAMI website to explore our core research themes and the expertise of our academic staff.

Link: https://www.camri.ac.uk

Edited by: Daniel Jackson, Andrea Carson, Danielle Carver Coombs, Stephanie Edgerly, Einar Thorsen, Filippo Trevisan and Scott Wright

We are pleased to announce the publication of U.S. Election Analysis 2024: Media, Voters and the Campaign

Free report featuring 88 articles from leading scholars with snap analysis and research insights on the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign. 

Website: https://www.electionanalysis.ws/us/

PDF: https://bit.ly/USElectionAnalysis2024_Jackson-et_al_v1-COMPRESSED

Table of contents

Section 1: Democracy at stake

1. Trump’s imagined reality is America’s new reality (Prof Sarah Oates)

2. Trump’s threat to American democracy (Prof Pippa Norris)

3. Why does Donald Trump tell so many lies? (Prof Geoff Beattie)

4. Strategic (in)civility in the campaign and beyond (Dr Emily Sydnor)

5. Can America’s democratic institutions hold? (Prof Rita Kirk)

6. How broad is presidential immunity in the United States? (Dr Jennifer L. Selin)

7. Election fraud myths require activation: Evidence from a natural experiment (Dr David E. Silva)

8. What ever happened to baby Q? (Harrison J. LeJeune)

9. We’re all playing Elon Musk’s game now (Dr Adrienne L. Massanari)

10. Peak woke? The end of identity politics? (Prof Timothy J. Lynch)

11. Teaching the 2024 election (Dr Whitney Phillips)

Section 2: Policy and political context

12. The campaigns’ pandemic memory hole (Prof Michael Serazio)

13. America’s kingdom of contempt (Prof Barry Richards)

14. Americanism, not globalism 2.0: Donald Trump and America’s role in the world (Prof Jason A. Edwards)

15. The politics of uncertainty: Mediated campaign narratives about Russia’s war on Ukraine (Dr Tetyana Lokot)

16. The U.S. elections and the future of European security: Continuity or disruption? (Dr Garret Martin)

17. Trump’s victory brings us closer to the new world disorder (Prof Roman Gerodimos)

18. Abortion: Less important to voters than anticipated (Dr Zoë Brigley Thompson)

19. Roe your vote? (Dr Lindsey Meeks)

20. Gender panics, far-right radicalization, and the effectiveness of anti-trans political ads (Dr Thomas J. Billard)

21. U.S. politics and planetary crisis in 2024 (Dr Reed Kurtz)

22. Trump and Musk for all mankind (Prof Einar Thorsen)

23. Guns and the 2024 election (Prof Robert J. Spitzer)

24. Echoes of Trump: Potential shifts in Congress’s communication culture (Dr Annelise Russell)

Section 3: Voters

25. Seeing past the herd: Polls and the 2024 election (Dr Benjamin Toff)

26. On polls and social media (Dr Dorian Hunter Davis)

27. How did gender matter in 2024? (Prof Regina Lawrence)

28. The keys to the White House: Why Allan Lichtman is wrong this time (Tom Fisher)

29. Beyond the rural vote: Economic anxiety and the 2024 presidential election (Dr Amanda Weinstein, Dr Adam Dewbury)

30. Black and independent voters: Which way forward? (Prof Omar Ali)

31. Latino voters in the 2024 election (Dr Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez)

32. Kamala’s key to the polls: The Asian American connection (Nadya Hayasi)

33. The vulnerability of naturalized immigrants and the hero who “will fix” America (Dr Alina E. Dolea)

34. Did Gen Z shape the election? No, because Gen Z doesn’t exist (Dr Michael Bossetta)

35. Cartographic perspectives of the 2024 U.S. election (Prof Benjamin Hennig)

Section 4: Candidates and the campaign

36. The tilted playing field, and a bygone conclusion (Dr David Karpf)

37. Looking forwards and looking back: Competing visions of America in the 2024 presidential campaign (Prof John Rennie Short)

38. Brat went splat: Or the emotional sticky brand won again (Prof Ken Cosgrove)

39. Election 2024: Does money matter anymore? (Prof Cayce Myers)

40. Advertising trends in the 2024 presidential race (Prof Travis N. Ridout, Prof Michael M. Franz, Prof Erika Franklin Fowler)

41. Who won the ground wars? Trump and Harris field office strategies in 2024 (Sean Whyard, Dr Joshua P. Darr)

42. Kamala Harris: Idealisation and persecution (Dr Amy Tatum)

43. Kamala Harris campaign failed to keep Democratic social coalition together (Prof Anup Kumar)

44. Revisiting Indian-American identity in the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Dr Madhavi Reddi)

45. Harris missed an opportunity to sway swing voters by not morally reframing her message (Prof John H. Parmelee)

46. In pursuit of the true populist at the dawn of America’s golden age (Dr Carl Senior)

47. Language and the floor in the 2024 Harris vs Trump televised presidential debate (Dr Sylvia Shaw)

48. Nullifying the noise of a racialized claim: Nonverbal communication and the 2024 Harris-Trump debate (Prof Erik P. Bucy)

49. A pseudo-scientific revolution? The puzzling relationship between science deference and denial (Dr Matt Motta)

50. Amidst recent lows for women congressional candidates, women at the state level thrive (Dr Jordan Butcher)

Section 5: News and journalism

51. The powers that aren’t: News organizations and the 2024 election (Dr Nik Usher)

52. Newspaper presidential endorsements: Silence during consequential moment in history (Dr Kenneth Campbell)

53. Trump after news: a moral voice in an empty room? (Prof Matt Carlson, Prof Sue Robinson, Prof Seth C. Lewis)

54. Under media oligarchy: profit and power trumped democracy once again (Prof Victor Pickard)

55. The challenge of pro-democracy journalism (Prof Stephen D. Reese)

56. Grievance and animosity: Fracturing the digital news ecosystem (Dr Scott A. Eldridge II)

57. Considering the risk of attacks on journalists during the U.S. election (Dr Valerie Belair-Gagnon)

58. What can sentiment in cable news coverage tell us about the 2024 campaign? (Dr Gavin Ploger, Dr Stuart Soroka)

59. The case for happy election news: Why it matters and what stands in the way (Dr Ruth Palmer, Prof Stephanie Edgerly, Prof Emily K. Vraga)

60. Broadcast television use and the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Jessica Maki, Prof Michael W. Wagner)

61. Kamala Harris’ representation in mainstream and Black media (Dr Miya Williams Fayne, Prof Danielle K. Brown)

62. Team Trump and the altercation at the Arlington military cemetery (Dr Natalie Jester)

63. Pulling their punches: On the limits of sports metaphor in political media (Prof Michael L. Butterworth)

Section 6: Digital campaign

64. Reversion to the meme: A return to grassroots content (Dr Jessica Baldwin-Philippi)

65. From platform politics to partisan platforms (Prof Philip M. Napoli, Talia Goodman)

66. The fragmented social media landscape in the 2024 U.S. election (Dr Michael A. Beam, Dr Myiah J. Hutchens, Dr Jay D. Hmielowski)

67. Outside organization advertising on Meta platforms: Coordination and duplicity (Prof Jennifer Stromer-Galley)

68. Prejudice and priming in the online political sphere (Prof Richard Perloff)

69. Perceptions of social media in the 2024 presidential election (Dr Daniel Lane, Dr Prateekshit “Kanu” Pandey)

70. Modeling public Facebook comments on the attempted assassination of President Trump (Dr Justin Phillips, Prof Andrea Carson)

71. The memes of production: Grassroots-made digital content and the presidential campaign (Dr Rosalynd Southern, Dr Caroline Leicht)

72. The gendered dynamics of presidential campaign tweets in 2024 (Prof Heather K. Evans, Dr Jennifer Hayes Clark)

73. Threads and TikTok adoption among 2024 congressional candidates in battleground states (Prof Terri L. Towner, Prof Caroline Muñoz)

74. Who would extraterrestrials side with if they were watching us on social media? (Taewoo Kang, Prof Kjerstin Thorson)

75. AI and voter suppression in the 2024 election (Prof Diana Owen)

76. News from AI: ChatGPT and political information (Dr Caroline Leicht, Dr Peter Finn, Dr Lauren C. Bell, Dr Amy Tatum)

77. Analyzing the perceived humanness of AI-generated social media content around the presidential debate (Dr Tiago Ventura, Rebecca Ansell, Dr Sejin Paik, Autumn Toney, Prof Leticia Bode, Prof Lisa Singh)

Section 7: Popular culture

78. Momentum is a meme (Prof Ryan M. Milner)

79. Partisan memes and how they were perceived in the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Dr Prateekshit “Kanu” Pandey, Dr Daniel Lane)

80. The intersection of misogyny, race, and political memes… America has a long way to go, baby! (Dr Gabriel B. Tait)

81. Needs Musk: Trump turns to the manosphere (Dr Michael Higgins, Prof Angela Smith)

82. “Wooing the manosphere: He’s just a bro.” Donald Trump’s digital transactions with “dude” influencers (Prof Mark Wheeler)

83. Star supporters (Prof John Street)

84. Pet sounds: Celebrity, meme culture and political messaging in the music of election 2024 (Dr Adam Behr)

85. The stars came out for the 2024 election. Did it make a difference? (Mark Turner)

86. Podcasting as presidential campaign outreach (Ava Kalinauskas, Dr Rodney Taveira)

87. Value of TV debates reduced during Trump era (Prof Richard Thomas, Dr Matthew Wall)

88. America’s “fun aunt”: How gendered stereotypes can shape perceptions of women candidates (Dr Caroline Leicht)

May 20 - May 23, 2025

New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Deadline (EXTENDED): December 7, 2024

https://www.websci25.org/ 

Important Dates:

• Sat, November 30, 2024 Paper submission deadline
  
• Tue, January 31, 2025 Notification
  
• Tue, February 28, 2025 Camera-ready versions due
  
• Tue - Friday, May 20 - 23, 2025 Conference dates

About the Web Science Conference 

Web Science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding the complex and multiple impacts of the Web on society and vice versa. The discipline is well situated to address pressing issues of our time by incorporating various scientific approaches. We welcome quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research, including techniques from the social sciences and computer science. In addition, we are interested in work exploring Web-based data collection and research ethics. We also encourage studies that combine analyses of Web data and other types of data (e.g., from surveys or interviews) to help better understand user behavior online and offline.

2025 Emphasis: Maintaining a human-centric web in the era of Generative AI 

Web-based experiences are more deeply integrated into human experiences than ever before in history. However, the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (including large language models) has drastically shifted the interactions between humans in the digital environment. The Web has never been more productive, but the integrity of human connection has been compromised. Trust and community have been eroded during this current era of the Web and researching alternative aspects of life on the Web is as essential as ever. Bots, deepfakes, and sophisticated cyberattacks are proliferating rapidly while people increasingly navigate the Web for news, social interaction, and learning. This year's conference especially encourages contributions investigating how humans are reconfiguring their Web-based engagements in the presence of artificial intelligence. Additionally, we welcome papers on a wide range of topics at the heart of Web Science.

Possible topics across methodological approaches and digital contexts include but are not limited to: 

Understanding the Web        

• Trends in globalization and fragmentation of the Web
  
• The architecture, philosophy, and evolution of the Web
  
• Automation and AI in all its manifestations relevant to the Web
  
• Critical analyses of the Web and Web technologies
  
• The Spread of Large Models on the Web
  

Making the Web Inclusive       

• Issues of discrimination and fairness
  
• Intersectionality and design justice in questions of marginalization and inequality
  
• Ethical challenges of technologies, data, algorithms, platforms, and people on the Web
  
• Safeguarding and governance of the Web, including anonymity, security, and trust
  
• Inclusion, literacy and the digital divide
  
• Human-centered security and robustness on the Web
  

The Web and Everyday Life     

• Social machines, crowd computing, and collective intelligence
  
• Web economics, social entrepreneurship, and innovation
  
• Legal and policy issues, including rights and accountability for the AI industry
  
• The creator economy: Humanities, arts, and culture on the Web
  
• Politics and social activism on the Web
  
• Online education and remote learning
  
• Health and well-being online
  
• Social presence in online professional event spaces
  
• The Web as a source of news and information
  

 Doing Web Science      

• Data curation, Web archives and stewardship in Web Science
  
• Temporal and spatial dimensions of the Web as a repository of information
  
• Analysis and modeling of human and automatic behavior (e.g., bots)
  
• Analysis of online social and information networks
  
• Detecting, preventing, and predicting anomalies in Web data (e.g., fake content, spam)
  
• Novel analysis techniques for Web and social network analysis
  
• Recommendation engines and contextual adaptation for Web tasks 
  
• Web-based information retrieval and information generation 
  
• Supporting heterogeneity across modalities, sensors, and channels on the Web. 
  
• User modeling and personalization approaches on the Web.

Format of the submissions

Please upload your submissions via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=websci25 

There are two submission formats.

* Full paper should be between 6 and 10 pages (inclusive of references, appendices, etc.). Full papers typically report on mature and completed projects.

* Short papers should be up to 5 pages (inclusive of references, appendices, etc.). Short papers will primarily report on high-quality ongoing work not mature enough for a full-length publication.

All accepted submissions will be assigned an oral presentation (of two different lengths). 

All papers should adopt the current ACM SIG Conference proceedings template (acmart.cls). Please submit papers as PDF files using the ACM template, either in Microsoft Word format (available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template under “Word Authors”) or with the ACM LaTeX template on the Overleaf platform which is available https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sig-proceedings-template/bmvfhcdnxfty. In particular, please ensure that you are using the two-column version of the appropriate template.

All contributions will be judged by the Program Committee upon rigorous peer review standards for quality and fit for the conference, by at least three referees. Additionally, each paper will be assigned to a Senior Program Committee member to ensure review quality.

WebSci-2025 review is double-blind. Therefore, please anonymize your submission: do not put the author(s) names or affiliation(s) at the start of the paper, and do not include funding or other acknowledgments in papers submitted for review. References to authors' own prior relevant work should be included, but should not specify that this is the authors' own work. It is up to the authors' discretion how much to further modify the body of the paper to preserve anonymity. The requirement for anonymity does not extend outside of the review process, e.g. the authors can decide how widely to distribute their papers over the Internet. Even in cases where the author's identity is known to a reviewer, the double-blind process will serve as a symbolic reminder of the importance of evaluating the submitted work on its own merits without regard to the authors' reputation.

For authors who wish to opt-out of publication proceedings, this option will be made available upon acceptance. This will encourage the participation of researchers from the social sciences that prefer to publish their work as journal articles. All authors of accepted papers (including those who opt out of proceedings) are expected to present their work at the conference.

ACM Publication Policies 

1. By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

2. Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.  ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors.  The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022.  We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts. 

Program Committee Chairs:

• Fred Morstatter (University of Southern California)
  
• Sarah Rajtmajer (Penn State University)
  
• Vivek Singh (Rutgers University)
  
• Marlon Twyman (University of Southern California)
  

For any questions and queries regarding the paper submission, please contact the chairs at websci25@easychair.org

June 18-20, 2025

University of Lincoln, UK

Deadline: December 6, 2024

Please see the CFP below (submit here). 

Confirmed Keynotes:

• Dr Debashree Mukherjee (Columbia University, USA)
  
• Dr Kate Terkanian (Bournemouth University, UK)
  

This seventh iteration of the Women’s Film and Television History Network conference will foreground transnational and transmedial approaches to histories of women’s work in and across film, television and related media. The conference seeks to expand women’s film and TV histories by exploring cross-border and cross-medial relationships. 

An 'entangled’ approach to film, TV and media historiography problematises national and mono-medial histories (Cronqvist and Hilgert, 2017). It recognises the complex processes by which film and television are made, distributed, seen and received across borders, be they geographical, cultural, ideological or otherwise defined, and in dialogue with other media.

This compels us to ‘read against the grain’ of existing histories, paying attention to ‘how historical silences are produced’ (Hilmes, 2017). These are the fundamentals of feminist media historiography, and this conference aims to bring women’s voices, figures, organisations, and stories into the light, giving them sharper focus. The conference will emphasise women’s roles in these entanglements. Our understanding of ‘women’ is inclusive and gender-expansive. 

We encourage transmedial approaches that account for the role of women in the long histories of media convergence in different social and cultural contexts, as well as related practices, such as divergence, conglomeration, inter- and cross-mediality. ‘Media’ is defined broadly.  Work that engages with (interconnected) histories of women’s film and television beyond Western contexts is welcome.  

We are calling for papers in any area of women’s film and television history, but especially those that respond to the theme, on topics such as, but not limited to: 

• Entangled and / or transnational women’s media histories and historiography: theory, practice, challenges  
  
• Case studies of film and TV workers across national or medial borders 
  
• Historicising women’s role in digital or online screen media production, distribution, consumption, promotion, publicity or criticism. 
  
• Media convergence pre- and post-digital media 
  
• Feminist and/or decolonising approaches to media archaeology
  
• Methodological challenges and approaches to entangled media histories 
  
• Entangled histories in cinema and TV industries beyond the mainstream e.g. amateur cinema, community television, independent and activist film and TV.  

We welcome proposals in the following three formats: 

• 15-minute presentations, including the following information: 
  
• • title  
  • 250-word abstract  
  • brief biography of the author(s).  
• pre-constituted panels with a maximum of 4 speakers (panel length will be 90 minutes and should include at least 15 minutes for discussion). Pre-constituted panel proposals should include: 
  
• • short (250-word) rationale statement, explaining the constitution of the panel and types of contributions it will include. 
  • individual abstracts (250 word)   
  • brief biography of all contributors

Panels can also be constituted as roundtables, workshops or other non-standard forms. Please contact the organising team to discuss ideas. 

• Practice-led contributions which address women’s histories in film, television and audio/visual media are encouraged. Please submit:  
  
• • a 250-word description  
  • running time 
  • display requirements   
  • links to an excerpt and/or full work 
  • brief biography of creator(s). 

If accepted, practice-led contributions may be presented as part of panels or as a limited number of separate sessions/screenings and/or made available to delegates online.   

Please submit here: https://forms.office.com/e/NvRLHtdNa2

Deadline for proposals: 6 December 2024. The acceptance of your proposal will be communicated to you by the end of January 2025.

If you have any questions please contact Hannah Andrews (handrews@lincoln.ac.uk) and/or Jeongmee Kim (jkim@lincoln.ac.uk). On behalf of the conference organising team: Hannah Andrews, Diane Charlesworth, Jeongmee Kim, and Frances Morgan.

References 

Cronqvist, M. and Hilgert, C. (2017) Entangled Media Histories: The Value of Transnational and Transmedial Approaches in Media Historiography. Media History 23(1): 130-141. 

Hilmes, M. (2017) Entangled Media Histories: a Response. Media History 23(1): 142-4.

May 28-30, 2025 

Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Deadline: April 1, 2025

The 18th Biennial Communication Ethics Conference and the Silver Jubilee Anniversary Conference of the International Communicology Institute will be held May 28-30, 2025. The conference is sponsored by the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies and the Communication Ethics Institute at Duquesne University and the International Communicology Institute in Washington, DC. 

Theme: Ethical Communicology of the Image and Imagination: Discovering the Ethical as Natural or Artificial, Real or Surreal 

The conference proposes to explore current research on the “image” across the human sciences. We hope to make concrete the ethical, logical, philosophical, and rhetorical foundations of communication as “imagination” in the experience of embodied thinking, speaking, and inscribing as the ecology of culture. We wish to (1) explore current frontiers of natural and artificial sign-systems, (2) encounter diverse manifestations of concrete reality and abstract surreality of human imagination, and (3) discover future domains of conscious experience that found the art and practice of the human sign milieu.

 The domain of the image/imagination includes all the Arts and Sciences of expression and perception, including: (1) Arts of Media: speaking, writing, painting, printing, sculpture, performance, voice; (2) Sciences of Media: social and media ecology, film and video, photography, digital and legacy media; and (3) Technological Media of Artificial Intelligence (AI): ubiquitous computing, robotics, holographics, and applied algorithms. Communication ethics theory, research, and application corresponds with and enriches our understanding of each domain. To assist in their exploration, questions and problematics that presenters may consider include, but are not limited to:

• What questions are raised by recent phenomenological, rhetorical, and critical theories of vision, visuality, perception, expression, and the experience of communication?
  
• Is there a general theory of image ethics? If so, what are its foundations and some of its value limitations (e.g., journalism, cinema, advertising, design, propaganda)?
  
• How is the rhetoric of images impacted by networked and internetworked media?
  
• How does an epidemiological perspective (e.g., transmission, contagion, virality) add to our understanding of the production and circulation of image artifacts as ecology?
  
• What do images want from AI? What does AI want from images? What constitutes personification in/of the media?
  
• What pasts, presents, and futures are imagined by the visualization of data?

We invite completed papers or extended abstracts of 200–500 words. 

We also invite panel proposals of three speakers per panel. Please include a panel title with 250-word rationale, titles and 200-word abstracts for each presentation, and contributor contact information (institutional affiliation and email).

Please send submissions to cec@duq.edu by April 1, 2025

Essential Conference Information 

Location: Located in the heart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, Duquesne University is a vibrant, private institution known for its commitment to academic excellence and social justice. Duquesne University is home to the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, a hub for phenomenological research and scholarship, with extensive collections including the archives of prominent phenomenologists.

Transportation: Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) has direct international flights from London and easy connecting flights via New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth and others. The airport is 18 miles (approx. 20 minutes) to city center/Duquesne University.

From airport to conference location (18 miles):

Ride sharing services (Uber, Lyft)

Port Authority Bus #28X Airport Flyer (stops in city center at Liberty Ave @ Wood Street, then approximately 15-minute walk to campus).

Hotels: Nearest walkable (10-15 minutes): Marriott City Center (request the Duquesne University rate), Cambria Hotel (request the conference rate), Double Tree. Also walkable: Omni William Penn, Embassy Suites, Kimpton Hotel Monaco

Parking: parking is available on campus for $20/day

Journalism Studies (special issue)

Deadline: June 15, 2025

Much journalism is produced, consumed and given meaning through interconnected cycles, waves, rhythms and rituals. While such fluctuations, some of which are recurring, consistently have been paid some attention within journalism studies, there has been little focus on broader seasonal patterns related to weather or/and culture. The more recent interest in seasons and seasonality within the (environmental) humanities and social sciences — e.g. Fischer and Macauley (2021) and Bremer and Wardekker (2021) — has thus largely bypassed journalism studies. This may be due, in part, to the fact that this interest partly has emerged in relation to climate change as “seasonal disruption has been occurring at a faster rate over the last several decades” (Fischer and Macauley 2022, 13); another and related reason for the neglect of seasons may be that seasonal disruptions primarily have surfaced in weather reporting, which has never figured prominently in journalism studies.

The recent interest in, and somewhat changed significance of, seasons provide fertile ground for a broader discussion of the intersections of journalism and seasonal patterns. Few people, arguably, live in “seasonless places” (Orlove 2003, 121), which means that most of us inhabit what have been called “seasonal cultures” (Bremer and Wardekker 2021, viii). As diverse amalgamations of astronomy, biology, meteorology, everyday observations, historical data, memory, power and culture, seasons provide important interpretive layers for understanding and situating ourselves and our communities in relation to continuity and change; and as Carey (1989) emphasized through his notion of “ritual communication”, journalism is an integral part of such processes.

Journalistic coverage of the weather follows and is inscribed within seasonal patterns (see e.g., Zion 2016; Bødker & Simonsen 2023). However, seasons consist of many other interrelated rhythms. Given the prominence of (national) politics in journalism, it is unsurprising that one of the most widespread terms linking journalism and seasons is the notion of the silly season, which — in certain countries — connects journalistic content to the rhythms of national politics, particularly the summer period when parliament is in recess. Yet, seasonal journalism (Bødker 2025), which concerns seasonally recurrent forms of journalistic content, is also tied to a range of other important rhythms, including those related to sports, fashion, education, theatre, film, music, religious festivals, holidays, finance, business, international meetings, and more. A seasonal perspective is related to, but also distinct from, “issue-attention cycles” (Downs 1972), which — as the name suggests — focuses on how journalistic attention to issues develops and fades, and what drives such waves, which may or may not be linked to seasons. A seasonal perspective is more likely to be interested in incremental changes over time, or in understanding significant disruptions to what would normally be expected.

Analyzing journalism as seasonal will, arguably, reveal important insights into how journalism aligns with and helps (re-)negotiate broader societal and/or natural rhythms. The goal of this special issue is to assemble work based on this premise. It aims to encourage and develop analytical perspectives on seasonality and journalism through a series of culturally and geographically diverse empirical and theoretical investigations that may explore both the production and consumption of journalism.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of possible themes to address within the framework outlined above:

• How are particular types of journalistic content, forms and/or tropes related to seasonal rhythms, such as the opening of parliament, the start of the football season, or specific religious events and holidays?
  
• How is the production and consumption of journalism linked to seasonal patterns, such as (almost) pre-written content published at specific times of year? How is such predictable content received and appropriated by audiences?
  
• How do seasonal disruptions feature in journalistic productions (e.g., the coverage of heat waves, floods, or changing patterns of tourism), and how are such productions interpreted?
  
• How can a seasonal perspective be related to or enhance environmental or climate change journalism?
  
• How is journalism related to the increased challenges to the four-fold, temperate seasonal pattern that has been imposed on indigenous cultures in settler countries?
  
• How is the perspective of seasonality, both theoretically and empirically, linked to other concepts of fluctuations within journalism studies (e.g., cycles, waves, rhythms, and rituals)?
  
• What are some of the methodological approaches and implications of studying seasonal patterns in journalism?
  

References:

Bremer, S. and Wardekker, A. (eds.) (2021) Changing Seasonality: How Communities are Revising their Seasons. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Bødker, H. (forthcoming, 2025). Seasonal Journalism and Climate Change. In Eldridge II, S. et al (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (second edition). London: Routledge.

Bødker, H. and Simonsen, S. (2023) Danish Public Service Online Weather from 2005-2022: from Meteorological Data and Information to Leisurely Commonality. Media, Culture & Society 46(3): 591–606.

Carey (1992) J.W. Communications and culture: Essays on media and society. New York, NY: Routledge.

Downs, A. (1972) Up and down with ecology — the ‘issue-attention cycle’. The Public Interest 28: 38-50.

Fischer, L. and Macauley, D. (eds.) (2022) The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Zion, L. (2016) The Weather Obsession. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Submission Instructions

The format of the special issue is full research articles of 6000 and 9000 words, inclusive of the abstract, tables, references, figure captions, endnotes. WHen submitting your manuscript please select the "seasonalities of journalism" issue. The articles will appear as they a finished but will appear as a collection once all articles are completed. This will most likely be in the spring of 2026.

Submit here.

May 12, 2025

Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: January 11, 2025

The practice of journalism, the roles of journalists, and the information-consumption habits of audiences continue to change dramatically and rapidly. Journalists have already adapted to new media environments and communication tools, and face further change brought on by artificial intelligence and other technologies. This is also reflected in the theoretical field of journalism studies, and evolving theories of epistemology, transparency, objectivity, and audiences. The present and future of journalism is evolving and demands a rethinking or perhaps a reimagining.

Researchers in journalism studies at the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon therefore invite submissions of extended abstracts for a symposium on “Journalism Studies: (Re)Imagining Journalism” to be held on May 12, 2025 at the Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, with a keynote address by Mark Deuze of the University of Amsterdam. 

This symposium aims to bring together researchers, academics, professional journalists, and media organizations who are thinking about what the work of journalists looks like and should look like in 2025 and beyond. The symposium is open to researchers who wish to present on topics relating to the present and future of journalism, such as journalism and artificial intelligence, relational journalism, and journalism and contemporary audiences. 

Please submit an anonymized abstract of no more than 750 words (not including references) to journsymposium@gmail.com by January 11, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by mid-February 2025. Note that the symposium will be held in person. Submissions from early-career researchers, and Ph.D. and M.A. students are especially welcome.

Abstracts may address a number of topics within journalism studies, including, but not limited to:

- Journalism and resistance

- Civic and participatory media

- Journalism and artificial intelligence

- Misinformation, disinformation, junk news

- Contemporary news audiences

- Journalism, peace and conflict

- News sources and journalism

- Journalism and media systems

- Funding models for journalism

- Crises of the institutional press

- What journalism studies can do for journalism

- Journalists and journalism scholars as agents of change

- Journalism and propaganda

- Journalism and emotion  

October 13-14, 2025

Paris, France

Deadline: January 15, 2025

In 1985, four journalists founded the non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Montpellier. Forty years later, RSF is one of the largest human rights NGOs in the world, and one of the few of French origin. In 2025, the organisation will celebrate its fortieth anniversary, marked by the transfer of its archives to “La Contemporaine: bibliothèque, archives, musée des mondes contemporains” (located on the campus of Nanterre University), and their future opening to research.

This anniversary should be an opportunity to look back not only on the history of RSF - its changes in management and strategy, its major "communication operations" and its eighty issues of photo albums - but also on the complex relationship between the media, in the broadest sense of the term, the powers that be, in all their diversity, and the organisations that defend human rights and, more specifically, freedom of expression around the world. Have the hopes of a new "human rights revolution" been fulfilled? Is the freedom to investigate and to publish the results of these investigations better guaranteed today than in the past? What are the risks run by journalists, but also by writers, artists and even ordinary citizens wishing to communicate the fruits of their work or their thoughts to as many people as possible? Has censorship in the traditional sense of the term (a priori intervention by a political, administrative or religious authority in the dissemination of a message) given way to more diffuse forms of control? Has the gap between the concept of freedom of expression in liberal democracies and that prevailing in authoritarian regimes widened or narrowed? To what extent is freedom of expression an absolute and universal right? What have been, and what are today, the forms of action taken by non-governmental organisations fighting for the effectiveness of this right throughout the world?

These questions, which are deliberately very broad, may be addressed from a number of angles by researchers from a variety of geographical and disciplinary backgrounds. The deadline for submitting proposals is 15 January 2025, in the form of a PDF file of no more than one page (accompanied by a brief CV of the author). They will be assessed by a scientific committee, independent of RSF, which will draw up a list of successful proposals by 15 February 2025 at the latest. Proposals should be sent to the following e-mail address: mediascolloque@gmail.com

This conference will be organised in Paris, jointly by La Contemporaine and the Université de la Sorbonne-Nouvelle, October 13-14, 2025.