ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Communication Studies

Deadline (EXTENDED): July 29, 2024

We invite submissions for the special issue of the journal Communication Studies (Scopus). The deadline has been extended to July 29th. See below or visit this link https://ojs.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/ec/announcement/view/94 for more information.

Call for special issue: Navigating the Ethical Landscape: Organizational dynamics, engagement, and societal impact (extended)

Editors:  Gisela Gonçalves (University of Beira Interior /LabCom, Portugal), Evandro Oliveira (Autónoma University/LabCom, Portugal) and Shannon Bowen (University of South Caroline, USA).

Anachronistic, disruptive change, socio-political dynamics and stakeholder activism have increased the need to make ethical commitments and challenge organizational practices and impacts. Ethical commitments are needed not only to address micro-issues or a few legal concerns, but also to play a central role in finding solutions to global and local challenges. Moreover, these changes are made according to deep overall commitments and positions that are strategically adopted by the organization and do not play a peripheral role. This special issue calls for original research that addresses strategic and organizational communication from a normative and ethical horizon that is now in increasing demand.

Companies now face normative imperatives to address societal issues and engage in political discourse, with instances of corporate social advocacy and CEO activism alongside traditional corporate citizenship and CSR strategies. However, corporate hypocrisy, inauthentic behaviors, and soft propaganda persist, as do the ploys of greenwashing and other colorwashing (including pink, rainbow, and blue).

We invite empirical, conceptual, and critical papers that address issues such as:

• normative and ethical governance in organizational communication
  
• strategic engagement with non-business issues
  
• the societal impact of rhetoric and stories
  
• regulatory implications for the public sector
  
• ethics, leadership and change management
  
• the role of strategic communication in achieving the UN sustainable development goals
  
• communication within the B Corp model, the fourth sector, and social purpose organizations
  
• corporate and social advocacy and CEO activism
  
• greenwashing and other colorwashing
  

Please identify clearly at the beginning of the manuscript that it is a submission for the special issue “Navigating the Ethical Landscape: Organizational Dynamics, Engagement, and Societal Impact." Revised papers from works presented at ECREA-OSC Conference or the Global Strategic Communication Conclave are especially welcomed and sought (please identify as such on the title page).

Submission Guidelines

Full papers must be submitted online through the journal's website.

Papers must be written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. If your text is written in a language other than English, please submit both an original and an English version of your abstract, title, and keywords.

Papers must follow the journal's guidelines for formatting and referencing, available here: https://ojs.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/ec/about/submissions

All papers will be subject to double-blind peer review.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: July 29, 2024 (extended)

Notification of acceptance: September 27, 2024

Publication of the special issue: December 2024

August 19-30, 2024 (online)

Maastricht Summer School, Maastricht University

Deadline: August 9, 2024

The focus of this Summer School course is on critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and news framing. A key objective is to enable you to design an analytical framework to study media representations with textual and/or visual elements (e.g. newspaper/magazine articles with photos, cartoons and social media posts). Most Summer School participants are usually PhD candidates, You can read more about the course content, course objectives and recommended literature below. You also find there the link to the timetable. The course fee is €499. 

To apply for the course, please visit the DreamApply website: https://maastricht.dreamapply.com/courses/course/185-media-representations-and-research-methods-critical-discourse-analysis-social-semiotics-and-news-framing. 

For more information, please contact course coordinator Leonhardt: L.VanEfferink@MaastrichtUniversity.nl

Course Description

How do you make sense of the wide variety of perspectives in the media? For example, how can we interpret newspaper coverage of the War in Ukraine, tweets by Elon Musk, or Instagram posts on climate change, food, and migration? 

This course offers you academic yet practical answers to these questions. It teaches you the analytical skills to study the possible meanings of textual and visual media representations.

Interactive lectures raise your understanding of concepts and methods, helping you examine what combinations of words and/or visual elements could mean in terms of a broader debate in society. These lectures further teach you how national identities and power relations affect the interpretations of media representations. 

Your individual assignment concerns a short paper, in which you apply a method to study one or two news articles, short YouTube videos, or social media posts. You will write and present this paper during this two-week course.

Exclusively for this Summer School, Dr. Leonhardt van Efferink developed a template that helps you write a well-structured course paper. On top of this, he offers individual feedback in class and active personal tutoring by e-mail. Finally, his support includes a comprehensive framework to develop focused, consistent, and transparent research questions.

Below you find the course objectives, a link to the timetable and suggested literature. 

Course Objectives

• Write a well-structured research paper in which you study media representations with textual and/or visual elements (e.g., newspaper/magazine articles with photos, cartoons, and Instagram/Twitter posts).
  
• Develop a research method that draws on critical discourse analysis, social semiotic analysis, and/or news framing analysis, in line with your research objectives.
  
• Formulate research questions that are clear, focused, and consistent, saving you a lot of time later in the research process.
  
• Compile a dataset for your thesis or dissertation that is manageable and relevant.
  
• Understand the complexity of text-image relations and their role in meaning-making processes.
  
• Explain the role of the national and ideological contexts in which (social) media content is being produced.
  

Timetable

The sixth online edition of this course lasts from 19 until 30 August 2024. The earlier online editions were fully booked and seven earlier editions took place on-campus in Maastricht between 2014 and 2019. This edition has daily teaching sessions of at most three hours. Teaching days will start at 13.00 (Maastricht time zone/GMT+2) and end at the latest at 16.00 (Maastricht time zone/GMT+2). This makes it easier for students from far away countries to deal with the large time differences. Please check Leonhardt's website for most up-to-date version of the timetable: https://vanefferink.com/en/media-representations-and-research-methods-summer-school-critical-discourse-analysis-social-semiotics-and-news-framing/

Literature

Leonhardt has based this course on publications in various languages (see overview below for some examples). You are not required to do pre-course reading. However, if you would like to do so, you are advised to select one of the publications below. You can also contact Leonhardt for tailor-made reading advice.

1.    Caple, H. (2013) Photojournalism. A Social Semiotic Approach.

2.    Dahinden, U. (2006). Framing. Eine integrative Theorie der Massenkommunikation.

3.    D’Angelo, P. (ed.) (2018) Doing News Framing Analysis II. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives.

4.    Geise, S., & Lobinger, K. (eds.). (2013). Visual Framing. Perspektiven und Herausforderungen der visuellen Kommunikationsforschung.

5.    Machin, D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis.

6.    Machin, D. and Mayr, A. (2012) How to do Critical Discourse Analysis.

7.    Richardson, J. (2007) Analysing Newspapers. An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis.

8.    Royce, T. D. (2006). Intersemiotic Complementarity. A Framework for Multimodal Discourse Analysis. In T. D. Royce, & W. Bowcher (Eds.), New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse (pp. 63-109).

9.    Van Gorp, B. (2010) Strategies to take the Subjectivity out of Framing Analysis. In P. D’Angelo, & J. A. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing News Framing Analysis. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives (pp. 84-109).

10.    Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds., 2016) Methods of Critical Discourse Studies.

Student reviews (from LinkedIn recommendations)

1.    “I found Leonhardt very well familiar with all the dynamics of his class room, as he very efficiently caters to the need of all his students coming from different social, cultural and educational backgrounds.” – Sadia from Pakistan

2.    “Leonhardt is a great lecturer who knows his subject matter. I found his inclusive approach particularly useful in teaching media analysis techniques.” – Koen from Belgium

3.    “Not only did Leonhardt demonstrate a high level of expertise in the subject, but he also helped his students understand difficult concepts in a very accessible way, effectively bridging the gap between theory and practice, and fostering fruitful discussions in class.” – Carolina from Brazil

Frontiers 

Deadline: September 30, 2024

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/63975/contesting-artificial-intelligence-communicative-practices-organizational-structures-and-enabling-technologies   

Deadline for abstracts: 30 Sept 2024

Deadline for full papers: 31 Mar 2025

Expected date of publication: Dec 2025

For this interdisciplinary research topic we are looking forward to contributions addressing concepts, approaches, and techniques of AI contestability in the context of organizational and cross-organizational communication. This may involve interventions from research fields such as science and technology studies, organizational sociology, critical algorithm and data studies, applied ethics, legal studies, data science, software engineering, human-centered computing, and critical design.

Frontiers Research Topics are collaborative initiatives by multiple journals gathering contributions on one thematic area or issue. In our case, accepted contributions can be published in one of the following peer-reviewed journals: Frontiers in Communication (lead), Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Frontiers in Sociology, Frontiers in Big Data, Frontiers in Computer Science and Frontiers in Human Dynamics. You can decide for yourself which journal to submit to. If a considerable number of articles are collected, they will additionally be published as a special issue / ebook.

November 7-8, 2024

University of Beira Interior, Portugal

Website: https://televisaoenovosmeios.ubi.pt

(The conference will accept proposals for in-person and remote presentation.)

Synopses 

How do we represent diversity in television today? Are we thinking of diversity of voices, people, content, vehicles or places?

On 7 and 8 November 2024, the fourth International Television and New Media Conference will focus on contemporary dynamics that accommodate different needs, such as the inclusion of minority perceptions, the deconstruction of stereotypes based on historical misconceptions, an excess of unverified information or information created by artificial intelligence, and the political validation of discourses that encourage polarisation and the formation of pro-violence clusters against minorities, women and migrants.

Bringing together academics, professionals and representatives of civil society organisations, TV and New Media 2024, promoted by the LabCom - Communication and Arts Research Unit at the University of Beira Interior (UBI), will reflect on diversity in television and its programmatic, geographical, ethical or gender representation, in an attentive analysis of the countless constructions of reality that the medium continues to promote.

Between apocalyptic and integrated readings, returning to Eco, we invite you to submit proposals in the following categories: Strategic Communication, Culture, Journalism, Gender and Human Rights, Fiction, Production and Programming, Audiences and New Platforms.

The fourth International Conference on Television and New Media will be held in the Council Room at the Faculty of Arts and Letters at UBI, and also remotely.

KU Leuven

The fulltime professor position (open rank) will be held at the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, a research unit within the Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven (Belgium). KU Leuven represents a leading academic institution in Europe that is currently the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure. The university’s mission is to provide excellence in academic education and research and to offer a distinguished service to society. Owing to KU Leuven’s cutting-edge research, KU Leuven is a charter member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and is consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in Europe. Within KU Leuven, the Leuven School of Mass Communication Research (SMCR) represents a pioneering institution for media effects research. The research focus of SMCR lies on the use of information- and entertainment media (including social media, ICT, television, games, mobile devices), and on how these uses may harm or enhance various components of individuals’ wellbeing and social cohesion. We have a strong expertise in explaining the processes through which various forms of media use affect physical, psychological and social wellbeing in the long run, and the conditions under which these processes occur. Therefore, a series of advanced methods are applied, including longitudinal survey studies, daily diary studies and content analysis. Issues studied in recent years include, for example, alcohol and drug use, (positive) sexuality and sexism, risk taking, depression, self-harm, (positive) body image, and mental and physical wellbeing. The School adheres to the highest academic standards and strives towards publishing its research in top academic journals (e.g., Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, New Media & Society, Media Psychology). SMCR staff is involved in various national and international multidisciplinary research projects, primarily of fundamental nature but also with societal relevance.

Unit website

Research

You will be expected to develop an international research program, to aim at excellent scientific output of international level, and support and promote the School for Mass Communication Research in national and international research collaborations. These research efforts should be situated in the broad field of digitalization and society. Digital natives grow up in a world in which digital media technologies influence all spheres of individual development, social life and society. Relatedly, adults are increasingly governed by digital media platforms to which they seem endlessly connected. Accordingly, digitalization intersects with human challenges associated with staying healthy, developing advanced cognitive structures and building meaningful social ties. Digitalization brings along risks but can simultaneously also empower (young) individuals in their health, education, social and romantic relationships, political participation and managing their overall day-to-day lives. 

The role of digitalization in individual’s life and, more generally, society at large, is expected to be central in the research of the applicant. More precisely, your research focuses on the development of innovative theory and advanced research techniques in this field. You have a strong background in predominantly quantitative research methods and have demonstrated research excellence in various ways (e.g., top ranked ISI publications, awards, societal impact etc.).

With this vacancy we aim to further strengthen the research and complement the expertise at SMCR. We are looking for a candidate with a strong experience in the understanding of the mechanisms that underlie transformations in individuals and broader human culture as a result of digitalization. 

Specifically, with this position we aim to further strengthen and expand the research at SMCR. Consequently, your research is expected to relate to the aforementioned lines of research of SMCR and to complement this research in one or more ways.

We welcome excellent scholars who complement SMCR research lines on digitalization in terms of (1) themes (e.g., (but not limited to) education (e.g., digital skills, disinformation, misinformation, creativity, digital divide..), artificial intelligence (algorithmic awareness, chatbot interactions, …), civic engagement (e.g., political self-efficacy), social capital (e.g., parental and peer communication and ties, …), health (e.g., digital well-being, health communication…)  and/or (2) quantitative methods (e.g., (but not limited to) ESM research, the development and testing of mediated promotion and intervention campaigns, computational and digital social science methods, statistical modelling, data visualization, or psychophysiological research), and/or (3) audiences (e.g., (but not limited to) minorities, people with addictions). In close collaboration with SMCR staff, you contribute to the existing lines of research and set up your own program through the acquisition of research funding.

Teaching

The Department of Communication Science, consisting of two research groups SMCR and IMS, organizes the Bachelor and Master of Communication Science, and the (English) Masters in Digital Media and Society and Journalism. Your teaching will contain several courses at the Bachelor’s and Master’s level and will include theoretical and methodological courses on communication science. You supervise students working on their master thesis and PhD students.

Your teaching is expected to meet the KU Leuven standards regarding academic program level and orientation and to be in keeping with the educational vision of KU Leuven. Commitment to the quality of education as a whole is naturally expected.

Service

You provide scientific, societal and internal services. This is reflected, among other things, in a constructive contribution to education and research, as part of a team's collective projects (e.g. through participation in meetings, teacher days, information sessions, recruitment activities, exchange programs), and service to the academic community (e.g., service to academic associations such as ICA and journals (reviews)), education (e.g., participation in program committee meetings), and faculty (e.g., participation in faculty council etc.) You have an elaborate network of important stakeholders in the field, and have collaborated with these stakeholders to create societal impact and disseminate research.

Profile

Applicants hold a Ph.D. degree in communication sciences, social sciences, psychology, or an equivalent diploma. We seek a scholar with a broad theoretical- and interdisciplinary interest and a strong background in quantitative research methods, whose research both relates to and complements the current research lines at SMCR. The successful candidate has an excellent research record as evidenced by more than one dimension, e.g., the quality of their PhD research, high-level publications in the important journals of our field (i.e., ICA journals) and related fields, research impact (e.g., citations) and acquired research funding. We attach great importance to professional and value-driven behavior, an attitude of sharing, mentoring and inclusivity, and collegiality, and will encourage the candidate to collaborate with SMCR researchers as well as with interdisciplinary research groups and centers within KU Leuven. The candidate has a large international network and is eager to further develop this within the context of SMCR.

Applicants have demonstrated excellent teaching skills (including when teaching for large groups) and have a broad employability due to in-depth and detailed knowledge about the social sciences, media sociology and media psychology. In addition, the candidate has demonstrated excellent leadership skills (e.g., through the (current) supervision of PhD students), and is a strong team player.

The official administrative language used at KU Leuven is Dutch and there is a legal requirement to become proficient in Dutch up to a certain level. If you do not speak Dutch (or do not speak it well) at the start of employment, KU Leuven will provide language training to enable you to take part in administrative meetings and over time to teach in Dutch. A thorough knowledge of English is required.

Offer

We offer a full-time employment in an intellectually challenging and international environment. You will work in Leuven, a historic and lively city located in the heart of Belgium, within 20 minutes from Brussels, and less than two hours from Paris, London and Amsterdam.

Depending on your experience and qualification, the position will be at one of the levels of the senior academic staff (Tenure Track Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor). Junior researchers are appointed as assistant professor on the tenure track for a period of five years; after this period and a positive evaluation, they are permanently appointed (or tenured) as  an associate professor. For professors without substantial other funding (e.g., ERC),  a starting grant of 110.000 euro is offered to facilitate scientific onboarding and accelerate research in the first phase. 

The expected starting date is 1 January 2025.

Immediately upon starting you will be able to independently develop your own line of research, serve as a supervisor of dissertations, and raise your own research funding.

KU Leuven welcomes international scholars and their family and provides practical support with regard to immigration and administration, housing, childcare, learning Dutch, partner career coaching,…

Interested

For more information please contact:

Prof. Dr. Laura Vandenbosch (Research director School for Mass Communication Research), mail: Laura.Vandenbosch@kuleuven.be. 

Prof. Dr. Stef Aupers (Program director Communication Sciences), mail: Stef.Aupers@kuleuven.be 

Prof. Dr. Steven Eggermont (Dean Faculty of Social Sciences), mail: Steven.Eggermont@kuleuven.be 

You can apply for this job no later than August 01, 2024 via the online application tool.

KU Leuven strives for an inclusive, respectful and socially safe environment. We embrace diversity among individuals and groups as an asset. Open dialogue and differences in perspective are essential for an ambitious research and educational environment. In our commitment to equal opportunity, we recognize the consequences of historical inequalities. We do not accept any form of discrimination based on, but not limited to, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, ethnic or national background, skin colour, religious and philosophical diversity, neurodivergence, employment disability, health, or socioeconomic status. For questions about accessibility or support offered, we are happy to assist you at this email address.

Job application procedure

Working conditions

Career opportunities

Do you have a question about the online application system? Please consult our FAQ or email us at apply@kuleuven.be

Charles University (Czech Republic)

Charles University  will make a limited number of Post-Doctoral Fellowships available, financed through its JUNIOR Fund. Post-Doctoral Fellows will be engaged to work on a project taking no longer than 2 years (24 months) of full-time employment. The scholarship will be around 2400 Euro per month. 

Scholarships will be awarded for projects in different thematic areas, one of which is the "discursive construction of peace", with Nico Carpentier as its supervisor, who is affiliated to Charles University's Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (ICSJ) and in particular to the Culture and Communication Research Centre (CULCORC). 

This call is for candidates who wish to work within the domain of discursive construction of peace (from a post-structuralist perspective), and who want to submit a credible proposal in this thematic area. More information about the exact nature of this theme can be found below. 

Potential candidates are strongly recommended to consult with the supervisor, Nico Carpentier (at nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz), before submitting their final application to him. 

Time table: 

* Deadline for final applications sent to Nico Carpentier: July 24, 2024 

* Deadline for these applications to be submitted to the Faculty: July 26, 2024 

* First selection (nomination by the respective Faculties): August 5, 2024 

* Second selection (University Committee): September 2024 

* Decision by Rector: September 2024 

* Position available from (if selected): January 1, 2025 

Prerequisites (https://cuni.cz/UKEN-178.html#10): 

* The applicant must be a resident of a country different than the Czech Republic. 

* Applicants of Czech and Slovak nationality are also eligible to apply for financial support from the Fund if they have successfully completed their doctoral studies at a non-Czech/Slovak university. 

* At the time of submission the applicant must have completed Ph.D. studies outside the Czech Republic. 

* No more than 5 years must have elapsed since the completion of the applicant’s Ph.D. at the time of filing the application. The time-limit may be extended by the time spent on maternity or paternity leave. 

* The applicant can not be qualified for an associate professorship (habilitation) prior to the application deadline. 

Charles University reserves the right not to select any candidate. 

Required application documents: 

(see https://cuni.cz/UKEN-178.html#10 for templates) 

* Application Form (use template 1) 

* Letter of Reference: written even by the supervisor in the PhD programme or by a researcher/head of establishment, where the applicant completed the doctoral study (use template 2). 

* Professional Curriculum Vitae, including the commented list of up to 5  most important publications. Please specify your research contribution and input to each publication (all together max. 2 pages A4) 

* Copy of University Diploma or Provisional certificate of completion of PhD studies or another official confirmation, that the applicant has been awarded PhD Degree. 

More information: 

* About JUNIOR Fund: https://cuni.cz/UKEN-178.html 

* All thematic areas at the Faculty of Social Sciences: https://fsv.cuni.cz/en/exchange/academics/incoming-academics/junior-post-doc-fund 

* Nico Carpentier: http://nicocarpentier.net/ 

* ICSJ: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/ 

* CULCORC: https://culcorc.fsv.cuni.cz/ 

+++ 

Theme: The discursive construction of peace 

Short summary: 

With Europe being more and more confronted with armed conflict at (and within) its borders, peace has become materially, but also conceptually elusive, often only negatively defined—as war’s opposite—without much substance. This project is embedded in the discursive-constructionist approaches to war (e.g., Jabri 1996) in order to study a particular conflict-related setting to better understand how peace is defined, as, for instance, an unreachable utopia or a legitimation of war. 

Description and intellectual context: 

Although the materialist perspectives on war dominate the field of conflict studies, Keen (1986), Jabri (1996), Mansfield (2008) and Demmers (2012) have recognized the importance of the discursive dimension of violence, conflict and war (Carpentier, 2017, p. 160-162). These authors have pleaded for taking this discursive dimension seriously, because, as Keen (1986, p. 10) wrote: “In the beginning we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them.” Or, as Jabri (1996, p. 23) wrote: “[…] knowledge of human phenomena such as war is, in itself, a constitutive part of the world of meaning and practice.” Of course, the psychological and linguistic dimensions of war have received considerable attention, even in some of the key theoretical conflict models, as is exemplified by Galtung’s conflict triangle model (Galtung, 2009). But the discursive – used here in the macro-textual and macro-contextual meaning it receives in discourse theory (Laclau; Mouffe, 1985, p. 105; Carpentier, 2017, p. 16-17) – argues for the importance of a broader dimension, which is located at the epistemological level. 

The previous paragraph also highlights the significatory relationship between war and peace. In particular, peace has proven to be difficult to be conceptualized without reference to war. Biletzki raises this point in the following terms: "'War and Peace' is the ultimate posit which grounds the concept of peace in a dichotomous definition. In the effort to define, explain, explicate, illustrate and finally understand peace it is natural to ask what peace is not. […] This binary, even exclusionary, use of both terms, ‘war’ and ‘peace’, constitutes their meaning, almost of necessity […]" (Biletzki, 2007, p. 347). Although it is possible to construct a language-game of peace without the signifier war, we need to acknowledge that the signifier war is often used in peace discourses (and the other way around). Basic definitions of war and peace, also used in academic literature, often set up these two signifiers in an oppositional relationship, allocating a primary defining role to war, defining peace as “the absence of war” (or, of armed conflict) (Matsuo, 2007, p. 16). Still, in the field of peace studies, ample attention has been spent on developing a more autonomous definition of peace, where, for instance, Galtung (1964; 1969) – one of the founders of this field – uses the concept of structural violence, which includes such conditions as poverty, humiliation, political repression and the denial of self determination that limits the human potential for self-realization. ‘Positive peace’ then becomes defined as the transcendence of these conditions to assure non-violence and social justice. 

Post-structuralist approaches allow us to argue that we construct knowledge about peace (and war) through discursive-ideological frameworks, that are not so much located at the individual-interactional level, but at the social level. Discourses of peace are frameworks of intelligibility – ways of knowing peace – which are available to individual subjects for identification (or disidentification), but that are also inherently contingent and fluid. This does not mean that there is a multitude of ever-changing discourses, with meanings neurotically floating around. It means that there are several, always particular, ways of thinking peace, which are in themselves never perfect copies of the Real, but imperfect representations, bound to always somehow fail. In some cases, this failure to represent – to incorporate events or ideas – can threaten the integrity of discourse, and can, to use a discourse-theoretical term, dislocate it. Moreover, these discourses also engage with each other in struggles, and sometimes become dominant (or hegemonic) and sedimented through these discursive struggles. Even then, no hegemony is total and necessarily lasts forever; hegemonic discourses can become politicized again and dragged into a new political-discursive struggle, that might alter or destroy them. 

This call focusses on projects that study a particular conflict-related setting to better understand how peace is discursively constructed. This implies that project proposals will need to (1) highlight the exact theoretical framework (within the post-structuralist tradition) that will be used, (2) specify and contextualize the conflict-related setting that will be studied, (3) specify the types of signifying machines that will be studied (e.g., news media, popular culture, memorials, art, museums, ...), (4) describe and motivate the research questions, corpus and research design, and methodology that will be used, (5) include a time plan, allocating sufficient time to the academic dissemination of the results, (6) and motivate the collaboration with ICSJ and CULCORC. 

(Text from: CARPENTIER, NICO, KEJANLIOĞLU, D. BEYBIN (2020) The Militarization of a Public Debate: A Discourse-Theoretical Analysis of the Construction of War and Peace in Public Debates Surrounding the Books of Three Turkish Military Commanders on the “1974 Cyprus Peace Operation”, Revista de Comunicação Dialógica, 3: 107-139.) 

Workplace: Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University) 

Supervisor: doc. Nico Carpentier, Ph.D. 

E-mail: nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz 

Applicants must submit all required documents to nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz 

Revista Comunicando 

Deadline: July 10, 2024

In recent decades, journalism has been shaken by a series of technological, social, cultural, and economic transformations that imply renewed challenges not only for editorial projects and professionals, but also for the sustainability of journalism's role and place in society. This new paradigm also represents a series of challenges for journalism teaching, giving rise to new debates and new concerns. This thematic section of Revista Comunicando aims to contribute to this debate.

https://revistacomunicando.sopcom.pt/index.php/comunicando/announcement/view/15

Revista Comunicando

Deadline: permanently open

invites you to submit papers in the different areas of Communication Sciences. The call for papers is permanently open for articles, interviews, reviews, and experience reports.

https://revistacomunicando.sopcom.pt/index.php/comunicando/announcement

Media and Communication

Deadline: September 15, 2024

Editors: Silke Fürst (University of Zurich), Florian Muhle (Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen), and Colin Porlezza (Università della Svizzera italiana)

• Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 September 2024
  
• Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 January 2025
  
• Publication of the Issue: July/September 2025
  

Information:

Digitalization has not only changed the ways journalism is produced, disseminated, used, and financed, but it has also challenged the central position of journalism in the public sphere, making it one communicative form competing for attention and authority among others (Carlson et al., 2021). We now live in a complex media ecosystem where human and algorithmic actors, legacy and alternative media, as well as newer and older media observe, compete, influence, and interact with each other (Fürst & Oehmer, 2021; Reese, 2022). This leads to blurred boundaries, raising questions about the societal function, relevance, and value of journalism, how users discern and experience journalism and its actors, and how journalists distinguish themselves, their practices, and their products from non-journalistic modes of content production (Edgerly & Vraga, 2020; Splendore & Iannelli, 2022).

In his seminal book The Hybrid Media System, Chadwick (2017) moved scholars to understand the changing logics of attention and news production, as well as shifting power dynamics within the public sphere, through the lens of a networked media environment (Russell, 2020). This thematic issue takes up this invitation and aims to bring together theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions which reflect on the role of journalism in hybrid media systems. Single-country studies and comparative research using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches are all welcome. Given the prevailing “presentism” (Hallin et al., 2023) in research on hybrid media systems, we also particularly welcome historical and long-term analyses.

Lines of inquiry can include, but are not limited to:

• Key features and patterns of hybrid media systems and their implications for the role, function, societal importance, and funding of journalism;
  
• Changes in the diffusion of power, journalist-source relationships, and news quality;
  
• Interactions, competition, and attention dynamics between legacy news media and online platforms;
  
• The role of algorithms, (social) bots, and usage data in cross-platform dynamics and news practices;
  
• Changing journalistic norms, role conceptions, and practices, as well as changing actor constellations in hybrid media systems;
  
• International comparisons, historical studies, and long-term analyses of journalism in hybrid media systems;
  
• Trust in news and audience perceptions of journalism in the hybrid media system;
  
• Methodological challenges and approaches to studying journalism in the hybrid media system.
  

Further information: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/pages/view/nextissues#Journalism

University of Zurich

Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich (IKMZ, Prof. Dr. Nadine Strauss).

Applications deadline: 8 July.

Further information is available here.