ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

January 5-8, 2026

Online

Dear Colleagues, 

I want to alert you to an upcoming short-term training opportunity in health communications. The Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is offering a virtual health communications course during the Johns Hopkins Winter Institute. 

Through Introduction to Persuasive Communications: Theories and Practice, students will learn how messaging can be used to advocate for health policy adoption, address health misinformation, and influence health behavior.     

The course will examine and interrogate theories of persuasion so that these theories can be applied to health behavior change interventions. Students can take the course for credit towards a degree program or for non-credit, at a reduced cost.  

• Course instructor: Meghan Moran, PhD, MA, Associate Professor 
  
• Dates: January 5–8, 2026 
  
• Time: 9 a.m.–5 p.m. 
  
• Format: online. Content will be offered synchronously with lecture content offered asynchronously for those unable to attend synchronous sessions. 
  
• Program cost: $5,716 to take it for academic credit and receive a transcript, $2,858 to take it for non-credit. 
  

For information on how to register, please visit the institute website. 

If you think this course may be of interest to individuals in your organization, please pass this information along. Your Health Communication community includes scholars and practitioners studying message framing, media effects, and public-interest communication. This applied, skills-based course offers immediate practice value and can also provide adaptable teaching material for courses and labs. The course is ideal for early- to mid-career public health professionals who want to improve job performance and expand their skillsets in health communication. 

https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programme-media-and-communication-studies/call-candidates-2026-phd-positions 

The Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University in Prague calls for candidates for the following PhD projects (each supported by a scholarship), for its English-language PhD programme in Media and Communication Studies: 

1. Post-structuralist Communication Studies 

Post-structuralism has slowly entered the field of Communication and Media Studies, offering a series of relevant theoretical frameworks for the theoretical and empirical study of communication. This PhD position is for PhD students who focus on one of the many post-structuralist frameworks, e.g., Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory or Foucauldian discourse theory, to support the research into a particular communication assemblage or into particular representational practices. While in this PhD position the theoretical framework needs to be post-structuralism, the object of study can be freely chosen. 

Proposed supervisor: Nico Carpentier, nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz 

2. Analyzing the Impact of Strategic Communication on Public Health in the Czech Republic: A Mixed-Methods Approach 

This PhD position aims to investigate the effectiveness of strategic communication in influencing public health behavior in the Czech Republic. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the research will examine contemporary communication strategies used in public health campaigns. The project will include a comprehensive survey to quantify public awareness and behavioral changes in response to these campaigns. In-depth interviews and focus groups will qualitatively explore individual perceptions and attitudes towards these communications. Special attention will be given to the role of digital media in disseminating health information. This project, requiring prior consultation with the proposed PhD supervisor, seeks to provide valuable insights into how strategic communication can be optimized for public health promotion in the Czech context. 

Proposed supervisor: Denisa Hejlová, denisa.hejlova@fsv.cuni.cz 

3. Marketing communication and tobacco control 

This PhD position focuses on primary research in tobacco control from the standpoint of marketing and strategic communication (e.g. research of new strategies and tactics employed by tobacco companies, targeting customers, online and social media marketing, stealth marketing, lobbying, public affairs, influencer marketing, etc.). This project’s goal is to analyze and present marketing and communication strategies and tactics by the tobacco industry which prevent consumers from tobacco or nicotine cessation and undermine public health. The project will especially focus on campaigns or tools aimed at adolescents and youth, incl. new forms of tobacco or nicotine products (HTP, pouches, vapes, etc.). Close cooperation with the Addictology Dept. of 1st Medical Faculty, Charles University, is needed. 

Proposed supervisor: Denisa Hejlová, denisa.hejlova@fsv.cuni.cz 

4. Politainment as a part of strategic communication 

This PhD position welcomes Czech or international scholars focusing on primary research in politainment from the standpoint of marketing and strategic communication (e.g., personalization of political messages, image building through entertainment formats, hybrid media strategies, (emotional) branding in politics, viral political content, influencer involvement in political campaigns, etc.). The goal is to analyze and present how political actors and institutions use entertainment-based communication strategies to attract attention, shape public opinion, and influence political behavior. The project will especially focus on the implications of politainment for democratic discourse, political engagement, and the polarization of society, including its impact on young audiences and first-time voters. Close cooperation with media studies or political science departments is encouraged, as is the use of interdisciplinary methods combining communication and media analysis, and political marketing analytical approaches. 

Proposed supervisor: Marcela Konrádová, marcela.konradova@fsv.cuni.cz 

5. Concepts of National Identity in Europe and the World 

Interest in national issues has increased noticeably in recent years. It seems that the numerous crises in Europe and the world are causing many people to focus more on their own nation, national culture and collective identity. This call is aimed at doctoral students who want to analyze and describe concepts of national identity in a specific country or region of their choice – also from a cultural-historical or comparative perspective. The theoretical framework of the thesis should be based on the paradigm of new realism. With regard to the topic of national identity as a culture-specific concept it should draw on comparative cultural theory. The research should be based on text material from the media, literature,education, etc. Possible methods of text analysis: content analysis, linguistic discourse analysis, semiotic text analysis. Students are welcome to write their dissertation in English or German. 

Proposed supervisor: Ulrike Notarp, ulrike.notarp@fsv.cuni.cz 

6. Sustainability in Intercultural Communication 

Today's working environment is international and globalized. So-called soft skills, such as intercultural competence, are therefore increasingly important. Especially for young professionals, intercultural communication skills are taken for granted. The call is aimed at doctoral students who would like to deal with the content, mediation, practical implementation, and measurement of intercultural communication skills. The topic covers the following key areas: (1) Review of the international state of research on sustainability in intercultural communication, in relation to (a) the central concepts and theories of sustainable communication, interculturality and communication, and (b) the practice of teaching intercultural communication skills; (2) Development and implementation of a training program to acquire intercultural communication skills; (3) Development, application and evaluation of methods for measuring intercultural competencies. Students can write their dissertation in English or German. 

Proposed supervisor: Ulrike Notarp, ulrike.notarp@fsv.cuni.cz 

7. Experience of a Marginalised Group with a Contemporary Media Phenomenon 

The proposed project should focus on the lived and holistic media experience of a selected marginalised group (e.g. children, ethnic minorities, people with obesity, parents or other socially disadvantaged groups) in a particular domain of contemporary media culture. For example, it may investigate questions such as; “How do children or adolescents perceive and experience artificial-intelligence technologies?” or “How do they perceive and experience so-called ‘brain-rot’ / online ‘junk’ content?”. The aim is to gain a deep understanding of the role that the chosen media phenomenon plays in the everyday life of someone facing marginalisation; how they perceive it; how they experience and live through it; and how they interpret and evaluate it in relation to their identity, social relationships, and position in society. 

Potential supervisor: Markéta Supa, marketa.supa@fsv.cuni.cz 

8. AI Experience of University Students 

The proposed project aims to explore the lived and holistic media experience of university students in relation to contemporary AI technologies. The project questions how university students experience and make sense of AI tools, systems, and environments in their everyday and academic lives. The goal is to gain a deep understanding of how and why students engage with, perceive, and evaluate AI; how AI becomes entangled with their identity as students, their study and research practices, social relations, sense of autonomy or dependence, and existential questions in a rapidly changing educational and digital environment. 

Potential supervisor: Markéta Supa, marketa.supa@fsv.cuni.cz 

9. The Para-Social Relationships and Experiences of Youth with the Online Engagement in these: Post-Humanist Perspective 

Traditional human relationships in the experiences of children and young people during their childhoods, such as youth-adult relationships, have been complemented by Para-Social Relationships with media figures. Traditionally, public figures from the media environment (TV, film, newspapers, …) or imaginary figures from books, cartoons and films fulfilled developmental functions for children and young people, such as role-modelling. Recently, the rise of new technologies (AI, with, e.g., ChatGPT) and social media that allow for the active participation of media users, created a space for a new form of relationships, namely digital relationships in the online environment, mediated, e.g., via 'digital empathy' (Unay-Gerhard et al., 2022). Participation in digital interactions, dynamics and functions of digital relationships and types of these being formed with humans as well as with machines (e.g., AI-driven chatbots) with a focus on current young people (11-18 years) will be the subject of this PhD study, contributing to the emergent line of media research deploying a post-humanist perspective. 

Proposed supervisor: Tereza Javornícky Brumovská, tereza.javornicky.brumovska@fsv.cuni.cz 

10. Communication, democracy and struggle 

This PhD position involves research that explores how democracy is socially constructed, through its representations, contestations and reconfigurations, and how the struggles pertaining to democracy may intersect with claims to freedom, equality and social justice, but also with conflict, violence and war. Projects in this thematic area are expected to be grounded in social constructionist/poststructuralist paradigmatic approaches; embedded in the broad fields of discourse studies, cultural studies or related fields; and, supported by feminist, intersectional, postcolonial, or other relevant, theories. The research can be located in a variety of societal fields, such as media, culture and politics, but the proposals should clearly demarcate the area of research. 

Proposed supervisor: Vaia Doudaki, vaia.doudaki@fsv.cuni.cz 

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Application 

Interested candidates should submit their applications using the online application system, which will be open from 1st January to 30th April 2026. Interest in a particular PhD project should be mentioned in the motivation letter, together with a more developed proposal on the PhD project. 

All relevant information, including the link to the online application system, can be found at: 

https://fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programmes/media-and-communication-studies 

& 

https://is.cuni.cz/studium/eng/prijimacky/index.php 

Please download the form to fill out your dissertation project proposal from this webpage: https://iksz.fsv.cuni.cz/en/admissions/phd-programme-media-and-communication-studies/how-apply 

For general questions, please contact the Centre of PhD Studies at cds.iksz@fsv.cuni.cz. For questions about particular projects, please contact the proposed supervisors. 

The Open Doors Day for the PhD in Media and Communication Studies will take place on February 18, 2026 at 12:30 CET. It will be organised online. If you wish to participate, please email the Centre of PhD Studies at cds.iksz@fsv.cuni.cz without delay.

Deadline: January 12, 2026

Submit abstract HERE.

Supervising editors: Astrid Carolus (Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg), Julian Ernst (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen) and the Merzwissenschaft editorial team (jff)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long been a ubiquitous topic, which is clearly present and the subject of intensive debate in the context of science, education, economics and everyday culture. AI plays a central role in the daily lives of young people in particular. In the latest SINUS study with data from 2024, only two percent of 14 to 17-year-olds indicated that they had never before heard the term AI, while 71 percent said they knew AI and were able to describe it. Almost one third of the youths indicated that they used AI on a daily or regular basis. The JIM study for 2025 shows that ChatGPT is also by far the most popular application among those surveyed in the twelve to 19-year-old age segment (mpfs, 2025, p. 62 sqq.). AI is primarily used for learning purposes and for homework, to search for information as well as to figure out how a given thing works. Around one half of those surveyed indicated that they use AI in class. A total of approximately three quar- ters of the 14 to 17-year-olds use AI applications for school purposes on a weekly basis. Around 60 percent use AI in pri- vate tasks – for example composing personal texts or for fun (ifo Education Survey, 2025). On the whole, youths considered AI to be for the most part positive, to be remarkably helpful, useful, convenient and fun (Wendt et al., 2024). One half of 16 to 29-year-olds could imagine giving precedence to an AI chatbot over friends or family when seeking advice; one fifth of this group can even imagine establishing a friendship with an AI chatbot (BITKOM, 2025). In the USA, one third of the youth population use AI companions for social interaction and relationships, for example for emotional support, role play- ing or for friendship-based or romantic interactions (Common Sense Media, 2025). A common feature shared by all of these fragmentary empirical examinations of the use and relevance of AI chatbots (and of other AI applications) in the everyday lives of youths is the conceptualization of the relationship between AI and the (youth) users as an “in order to“ relation- ship: A relationship which is to result in either the technical automation and removal of certain tasks or to return a specific output. This instrumental analysis overlooks a central aspect of the user‘s experience with AI chatbots, which was already described in connection with the early precursors of these technologies: the interaction with and experience of AI as a companion. Joseph Weizenbaum‘s program ELIZA is regarded as one of the first chatbots. Based on Carl Roger‘s client- centric psychotherapy, ELIZA was developed explicitly without formulated therapeutic objectives. Instead, for pragmatic reasons Weizenbaum chose the setting as “one of the few examples of categorized dyadic natural language communication“ (Weizenbaum, 1966, p. 42), which in technical terms was comparatively easy to realize. However, experiments showed that users quickly began to confide in the program and to recognize in ELIZA a counterpart to which they attributed understan- ding, empathy and intentions (Weizenbaum, 1976).

The ELIZA example illustrates how the possible uses of AI chatbots and other technologies do not follow only the inten- tions of their developers. The affordances of these technologies manifest in the relationships between people and machines (Davis, 2020). Similar to other “spectacular machines“ (Strassberg, 2022), AI chatbots are characterized by a “multistability“ (Verbeek, 2005; Ihde, 1990) that entails the potential for quasi-social interaction with them and – over the course of time – establishing quasi-social relationships with them. The continuous use facilitated by permanently available mobile terminal devices exhibits parallels to Hinde‘s definition of relationship, which he describes as “a series of interactions between two individuals known to each other“ and which include “behavioural, cognitive, and affective (or emotional) aspects“ (Hinde, 1979, quoted in Vangelisti & Perlman, 2018, p. 3). For example, empirical research has shown that people develop some pro- perties of social relationships with their smartphones, such as presence and trust (Carolus et al., 2019).

The arrival of Large Language Models (LLMs) fundamentally changed the technological basis of human interaction with technology. Earlier systems like Amazon Alexa or Google Home only offered restricted social context cues and made it practically impossible for the illusion of a human counterpart to arise. ChatGPT constituted a change: The user found it nearly impossible to tell GPT-4 from a human (Jones et al., 2025), a fact which actually satisfies, i. e. the process which tests whether a machine can imitate human communication so convincingly that it can no longer be distinguished from commu- nication with another human. More recent developments go even further, leading to increasingly autonomous AI systems. While past AI chatbots responded to instructions reactively, today‘s AI agents exhibit an increasing degree of proactive behavior, pursue their own objectives and makes decisions without direct input.

From media-educational and media-psychological perspectives, this increasing interactivity and autonomy is concomitant with a quantitative increase and higher level of differentiation of social context cues and thus means a growing potential for social affordances. Consequently, questions arise regarding the social imputations, short-term social interactions as well as long-term relationships which young users in particular enter into with these systems. In addition, AI chatbots are gai- ning in importance as a part of pedagogical practice: teaching staff, school social work and counselling services are making increasing use of generative AI in preparing lessons, structuring counselling processes and as support for organizational procedures (Hein et al., 2024; Linnemann et al., 2025, among others). This can result in the entanglement of the quasi-social relationships young people have to chatbots with institutional educational settings, in which educational specialists them- selves work with AI-assisted systems. This in turn raises new questions relating to professionalization, responsibility and the limits of using AI in educational process.

We look forward to receiving submissions which explore the various aspects of the quasi-social relationships of AI chat- bots and young people as well as the implications of these relationships in various pedagogical contexts. We welcome theoretical-conceptual contributions as well as empirical submissions from media education, media psychology, social work, media sociology, communications science and from the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The submissions should focus on the following questions, among others:

• What forms of social interaction between young people and AI chatbots can be described?
• What forms of social relationships do young people enter into with AI chatbots? What role do emotions play in this process?

• What are the impacts on social relationships between people when more is entrusted to the chatbot than for example to a friend?

• How do young people understand interaction with chatbots, and to what extent does the interaction with chatbots change their understanding of human relationships and the expectations of quality they place on these human relationships?

• How can human-chatbot interactions and human-chatbot relationships be empirically captured, described and analyzed? What are the corresponding methodological points of access?

• How do inter-individual differences influence the formulation of encounters with AI chatbots?
• What new developmental tasks arise for young people in the context of quasi-social interactions and relationships with AI chatbots?

• What new (media) skill requirements can be formulated in the context of quasi-social interactions and relationships with chatbots? How can these requirements be addressed?

• What possible (media) educational approaches are there to addressing quasi-social relationships between young people and AI chatbots?

• To what extent do affect and emotion play a role in interactions between young people and AI chatbots?
•  To what extent should the social character of the use of chatbots be reflected when for example AI chatbots are used as learning aids in the context of schools?
• How does the interaction of young people with AI chatbots impact the design of AI chatbots?
• To what extent do pedagogical practice and profession change in the context of the use of AI chatbots in educational work?
• What new media skill requirements arise for educational specialists when AI chatbots in schools, youth welfare and counselling are integrated in educational work? How significant is the interface in interaction with AI chatbots (text-based input/output vs. spoken input/output)?
• To what extent is it relevant that conventional systems have been programmed as assistants and fundamentally structured in order to support users? To what extent do contradictions and criticism arise in interaction with AI chatbots?

The deadline for submission of abstracts with a maximum of 6.000 characters (including blank spaces) is 12 January 2026. Please upload your abstract at https://merz-zeitschrift.de/fuerautorinnen. The format of the submissions should follow the layout specifications of the merzWissenschaft style guide, available at https://merz-zeitschrift.de/manuskriptrichtlinien. The journal articles should not exceed a maximum character count of approximately 35.000 characters (including blank spaces and literature). Please feel free to direct any questions you may have to the merz editorial team, tel.: +49 89 68989 120, e-mail: merz@jff.de

SUMMARY OF DEADLINE

• 12 January 2026: Submission deadline for abstracts
• 2 February 2026: Decision on acceptance/rejection of abstracts
• 18 May 2026: Submission deadline for articles
• May/June 2026: Evaluation period (double-blind peer review)
• June/July 2026: Revision phase (when necessary, multi-phase)
• End of November 2026: Publication of merzWissenschaft 2026

Literature

Bitkom. (2025). Junge Menschen und Künstliche Intelligenz: Einstellungen, Nutzung und Erwartungen. Bitkom e. V. https://www.bitkom.org/ Presse/ Presseinformation/ Freundschaft-KI-Sprachassistent

Carolus, A., Muench, R., Schmidt, C. & Schneider, F. (2019). Impertinent mobiles-effects of politeness and impoliteness in human-smartphone interac- tion. Computers in Human Behavior, 93, 290–300.

Common Sense Media (2025). Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/de- fault/ files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf

Davis, J. L. (2020). How Artifacts Afford. The Power and Politics of Everyday Things. MIT Press.

Hein, L., Högemann, M., Illgen, K.-M., Stattkus, D., Kochon, E., Reibold, M.-G., Eckle, J., Seiwert, L., Beinke, J. H., Knopf, J. & Thomas, O. (2024). Chat-

GPT als Unterstützung von Lehrkräften – Einordnung, Analyse und Anwendungsbeispiele. HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik, 61, 449–470. ifo Institut – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München e. V. (2025). ifo-Bildungsbarometer 2025. https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/sd-2025-09-wedel-etal-ifo-bildungsbarometer-2025.pdf

Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Indiana University Press.

Jones, C. R., Rathi, I., Taylor, S. & Bergen, B. K. (2025). People cannot distinguish GPT-4 from a human in a Turing test. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 1615–1639.

Linnemann, G., Löhe, J. & Rottkemper, B. (Eds.) (2025). Künstliche Intelligenz in der Sozialen Arbeit: Grundlagen für Theorie und Praxis. Beltz. Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest (mpfs) (2025). JIM 2025. Jugend, Information, Medien. Basisuntersuchung zum Medienumgang 12- bis 19-Jähriger in Deutschland. https://mpfs.de/studie/jim-studie-2025

Strassberg, D. (2022). Spektakuläre Maschinen. Eine Affektgeschichte der Technik. Matthes & Seitz.

Vangelisti, A. L. & Perlman, D. (Eds.) (2018). The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships. Cambridge University Press.

Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Pennsylvania State University Press. Weizenbaum, J. (1966). ELIZA - A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine. Communications of the ACM, 9(1).

Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation. W. H. Freeman & Co.

Wendt, R., Riesmeyer, C., Leonhard, L., Hagner, J. & Kühn, J. (2024). Algorithmen und Künstliche Intelligenz im Alltag von Jugendlichen: Forschungs-bericht für die Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (BLM). Nomos.

June 1-2, 2026

Cardiff University in Cardiff, UK

Deadline: December 31, 2025

Host: Data Justice Lab

Although contested and multifaceted, the field of data justice continues to engage critical debates on the societal implications of datafication in all its iterations, from social media to platform capitalism to the current hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI). Much of this focus has been on the potential harm of such technologies on different communities and on the societal shifts associated with their uses by a diverse range of actors. Less focus, perhaps, has been on the way the advent of data-driven technologies has intermingled with and transformed the state. From high-stake uses, such as those revealed in the Snowden leaks, to crisis management as evidenced during the Covid-19 pandemic, to the mundane and everyday delivery of public services, platforms and AI systems are now deeply embedded within roles and functions associated with the state. At the same time, the state has been instrumental in the advancement of datafication and the role that technology, and its providers, now play in society. At a time when governments and technology companies are seen to be closer than ever, examining their relationship and its consequences seems pivotal for our understanding of data justice. 

This two-day conference will therefore explore the role and transformations of the state in an age of datafication and what this means for social justice and resistance. It will examine the interrelations between data-driven technologies and government, the changing role of corporations, emerging popular responses, and efforts to democratise datafication. Hosted by the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC) in the UK, it will bring together international scholars, practitioners and community groups to discuss the nature and implications of the datafied state.

Keynote Speakers include:

• Oriana Bernasconi, UC Chile, Chile
  
• Sarah Myers West, AI Now, US
  
• Nick Srnicek, King’s College London, UK

Submission of abstracts of max 500 words to DataJusticeLab@cardiff.ac.uk

Deadline for submissions of abstracts: 31st of December, 2025

Conference registration fees:

• Regular: £175  (£150 early bird)
  
• Students: £125 (£100 early bird)
  

Conference registration deadlines:

• 6th of March 2026 – early bird
  
• 17th of April 2026 – final deadline

Conference attendance:

Data Justice 2026 will be an in-person conference. After previous Data Justice conferences were held in-person (2018), online (2021), and hybrid (2023), the next conference should allow participants to come together physically to discuss their work. We have tried to keep registration fees as low as possible in order to enable attendance for as many of you as possible. This will unfortunately not allow for meaningful hybrid participation, but we will try to provide online streams or recordings of keynotes and major events.

University of Copenhagen

The Department of Communication, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen is inviting applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in empirical communication research starting on June 1, 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter.

The Department is seeking a new colleague with strong qualifications in quantitative communication research as demonstrated through the application in research projects and teaching activities. In addition, competencies in qualitative and mixed-methods studies of communication are an advantage. It is a further advantage, if the candidate has experience from collaborations with organizations outside the university in research and/or teaching.

The deadline for applications is 23:59 [CET] on 26 January 2026.Read more

Read more

By/For: Photography & Democracy is a collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler.

We are delighted to announce that our second season of programs will begin in February 2026. Please join leading thinkers Anne Cross & Matt Fox-Amato, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Leigh Raiford, Jeehey Kim, Zahid R. Chaudhary, and Tiffany Fairey for a year of thought-provoking conversations on photography and democracy. Explore season two and register for all events.

We’d also like to announce that at the end of our inaugural 2024/2025 season, we convened a reflective roundtable conversation with Shawn Michelle Smith, Brenna Wynn Greer, Thy Phu, Darren Newbury, Ileana L. Selejan, and Patricia Hayes. Together, they examined the stakes of photography in our contemporary moment and explored its complex entanglements with power structures and systemic injustice. Read the transcript of the conversation.

May 27-28, 2026

Virtual

Deadline: January 20, 2026

Scholars and practitioners at all career levels are invited to join the inaugural virtual summer intensive on Theorizing Communication in, of, and from the Balkans, May 27-28, 2026. The summer intensive will offer opportunities to learn about borderlands and culture-centered theorizing and envision future research and applied collaborations. We hope to foster a multinational, interdisciplinary, and intercultural scholarly community around shared interests in questions of communication in the region. We welcome scholars and practitioners of any academic background who are actively engaged in analyzing, creating, and/or theorizing from and with Balkan (Southeastern European) perspectives and experiences. See the attached document (opens in a new window) for more information and application instructions (deadline to apply is January 20, 2026) or contact Dr. Lily Herakova (liliana.herakova@maine.edu) if you have questions. 

Link to full call: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14u8ypZVlUHszXwWnwROWQaLVi5e3FmMD/view?usp=sharing 

Media and Communication (special issue)

Deadline: September 15, 2026

We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a forthcoming Special Issue of the open-access journal Media and Communication, titled “Revisiting the Nexus of Science, Politics, Media, and Publics Amid Digital and Societal Transformations.”

This Special Issue invites contributions that explore how digitalization, political dynamics, and societal change reshape the relationships between science, politics, media, and diverse publics.

The guest editors are Silke Fürst (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Lars Guenther (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany), and Lili Rademan (Stellenbosch University, South Africa). Researchers from all disciplines are encouraged to submit abstracts. 

The abstract submission deadline is 15 September 2026. The full details of the call can be found here: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/issue/futureissues#i572

We look forward to receiving your contributions!

May 21-26, 2026

TU Braunschweig, Germany

Deadline: December 17, 2025 (papers), January 9, 2026 (Workshops & Tutorials), EXTENDED, February 18, 2026 (posters, PhD symposium)

Dear Research Community,

Just a quick reminder that Wednesday, Dec. 17, is the final deadline for paper submissions! More details about submission format and topics can be found here: Call for Papers

The deadline for Workshops & Tutorials submission has been extended to January 9, 2026!!!

Call for Posters - Submission deadline: February 18, 2026

Call for PhD Symposium - Submission deadline: February 18, 2026

About the ACM Web Science Conference

Web Science is the study of the most complex artifact, entangling technology, humans, and information ever created. Today, the World Wide Web has evolved into billions of technical and human components operating globally, with each piece subtly influencing the others. To gain a deep understanding of the complex and multifaceted impacts the Web has on the daily lives of individuals, organizations, and society as a whole, a strong interdisciplinary approach is essential.

Establishing a prime venue for Web Science as a dedicated research focus, the Web Science Conference has been held annually since 2009 and has been an ACM conference since 2011. The series has produced over 800 publications, which have been downloaded more than 400,000 times. The Web Science Conference series is sponsored by the Web Science Trust (WST), the ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext and the Web (SIGWEB), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

The theme for 2026 is Managing Risks in the Era of Generative AI - How 20 Years of Web Science Research Can Help.

Web Science 2026 invites interdisciplinary research exploring the Web’s societal impacts — from AI and misinformation to inclusion, governance, and online behavior. 

All the best,

Sierra Kaiser, Publicity Chair WebSci’26

Digital Journalism (special issue)

Deadline: April 17, 2026

Special Issue Editors: 

• Jonathan Hendrickx, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  
• Jorge Vázquez Herrero, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
  
• Cruz Negreira, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
  
• Sherwin Chua, PhD, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
  

This special issue aims to bring together cutting-edge research that contributes to a better understanding of the audiovisual turn in digital journalism. Said turn builds on earlier forms of multimedia journalism and digital longform storytelling, and ties in within the previously acknowledged audience, emotional and labour turns in journalism.

We invite scholars to submit empirical and theoretical contributions that critically engage with the notion of the audiovisual turn, including how it has been effectuated and can evolve over time. In addition to diverse quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods study designs, we particularly encourage submissions from the Global South, as well as cross-national comparisons that reflect platform-specific and regional differences. Focus areas may include, but are not limited to:

•  The de-institutionalisation of audiovisual journalism and news production by considering non-journalistic interloper actors, including influencers and content creators.
• The infrastructural platform dependency, algorithmic ambiguity and/or the ownership of audiovisual journalism in the platformisation era.
• A historical evolution of audiovisual journalism from the formats of traditional media to current platforms, considering both common and differentiating elements in journalistic practice.
• The production, contents and reception of audiovisual-centric digital journalism, e.g. shortform, vertical videos and/or audio across news outlets’ proprietary as well as social media platforms.
• The epistemology and/or ontology of audiovisual journalism.
• The news experience and audience interaction through shortform videos and other audiovisual formats.
• The production and publication of AI-generated audiovisual news or news-like content and its disinformation effects in a context of algorithmic curation and consumption.

Submission instructions:

Extended abstracts of 500-750 words, not including references, as well as a full list of authors, affiliations, and abbreviated bios for each author. 

Please submit your proposal to this Google Form as one file (PDF) with your names clearly stated on the first page: https://lnkd.in/gNxUZJj7

Full manuscripts, if invited, should be between 7,000-9,000 words.

Timeline:

• Extended abstracts submission deadline: 18:00 CET on April 17, 2026
• Notification on submitted abstracts: May 8, 2026
•  Article submission deadline: October 30, 2026