ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

May 25, 2023

Toronto, Canada

Deadline: January 15, 2023

Participants should focus on specific metaphors, groups of metaphors, discourses around metaphors, and reconstruct their histories over time and in certain cultural settings. The local and global dimension of metaphors is indeed crucial and the organizers aim to have a broad representation of different sets of metaphors in different cultures. 

Metaphors have also to do with digital media theory. Metaphors are useful tool to make theories, they can be transversal to different fields and disciplines or, on the contrary, they increase the fragmentation of media and communication theories. Also in this case, the preconference aims to bring together scholars able to link empirical case studies of digital metaphors over time and theoretical perspectives on the relevance of these metaphors. 

Please send your abstract of max 250 words to gabriele.balbi@usi.ch and carlos.scolari@gmail.com  by 15 January 2023. Remember to include in the abstract the category or categories to which your submission refers to:

• Metaphors of transportation (e.g. info highways, surfing, etc.)
  
• Metaphors of human body (e.g. electronic brain, artificial intelligence, etc.) 
  
• Metaphors of nature (e.g. cloud, etc.)
  
• Metaphors of building (e.g. windows, etc.)
  
• Old media metaphors (e.g. envelopes, 3.5 floppy, etc.) 
  
• Objects metaphors (e.g. clocks, bells, etc.)
  
• Metaphors of places (e.g. agorà, square, etc.) 
  
• Other categories.
  

This preconference will have a peculiar structure and aims: it is made of classic presentations, but also would stimulate reflections on specific workshops/hackathon in which these and other metaphors will be discussed. The final aim is to create a group of scholars which could be later contribute to an edited book we plan to publish from the precon. For this reason, this preconference might be just the first workshop and others may follow in the future months.

Important dates:

• 15 January 2023: Submissions’ deadline
  
• 15 February 2023: Notifications of acceptance
  
• 25 May 2023: Preconference
  

Organization: conference organized by Gabriele Balbi (USI – Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland) and Carlos A. Scolari (Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Barcelona, Spain) 

Division Affiliation: ICA Communication History Division  

Sponsor: University of Toronto – St. Michael’s College

Venue: McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology (Coach House), 39A Queens Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ontario

More info here: https://digitalmetaphors.wordpress.com/ 

June 19-21, 2023

Newcastle University, University of Sanctuary

Deadline: December 9, 2023

The academic conference will take place between 19-21 June 2023 during UNHCR Refugee week) at Newcastle University, a University of Sanctuary. The conference will be in person only, although we will record the keynote presentations. The cultural festival will take place in buildings and sites on campus and at venues around the city of Newcastle, a City of Sanctuary, between 19-25 June, although some exhibitions might extend into the following weeks.  Further details about the cultural festival including a programme of events and activities, will be available nearer the time. 

Call for Papers

The experiences of refugees and asylum-seekers remains salient in and for the media as journalists report from one conflict zone to another, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine adding immediacy to the coverage of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, (re)animating public and political debate about how ‘we’ should respond. At the same time, major crises in regions such as DR Congo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, South Sudan, Chad, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria, Burundi and Ethiopia go largely unreported (Wanless et al, 2022). Generations of Palestinians have now grown up in UN-administered refugee camps in the Middle East, around one million Rohingya people from Myanmar are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, and the accelerating climate crisis is leading to the further displacement of millions of people worldwide.  Some scholars suggest that media coverage of war often lacks context or historical perspective, so that discussions about the economic and cultural aspects as well as the wider structural issue of migration, are largely ignored (Fengler et al, 2022). It is scarcely original to suggest that mainstream media outlets play an important role in informing the public about refugees and asylum-seekers – for example, the number of people attempting (and sometimes tragically failing) to enter Britain informally via the English Channel are a regular feature of UK national news – but the way the issue is reported is seen by many commentators as contributing to the rise of hostile populism across Europe and beyond.  However, refugees, asylum-seekers, activists and others interested in calling media to account are not standing passively by, but are increasingly using both legacy and social media platforms and technologies to challenge and contest misinformation and negative and polarising and narratives, not least in order to tell their own stories in their own words.

For the academic conference, we now welcome abstracts which focus on any aspect of the relationship between refugees, asylum-seekers and the media from a range of contributors including academics, media professionals and media practitioners, especially those with lived experience and/or experience of collaborating with refugee or asylum-seeker communities. We are keen to receive abstracts of work which will be presented in a variety of formats including text, screen and sound-based based forms, as well as multi-media work*.  Topics could range from, but are definitely not limited to:

§   representations in mainstream or social media

§   reporting policy and/or legal responses

§   refugee and asylum-seeking media practices, websites and/or social media accounts

§   refugee and asylum-seeking experiences as sources or subjects of news discourse

§   alternative media and community media representations

§   refugees and asylum-seekers making media

§   citizen journalism and the refugee and asylum-seeking experience

§   participatory media projects with refugees and asylum-seekers

§   practices of journalists and media practitioners with lived experience as refugees   

§   the ethics of reporting

§   refugee and asylum-seeker voices in the public sphere

§   empathy and affect in media discourse

§   journalism education in relation to covering refugees and asylum-seekers

§   collaborative media projects with refugee or asylum-seeker communities

§   refugees, asylum-seekers and the adoption/adaptation of media technologies

Publication opportunity

After the conference, we will be inviting full papers to be submitted for possible inclusion in a special double issue of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics which will be published in 2024 (issue 2, summer; issue 3, autumn).

Dates for your diary

§   9 December, 2022 – submission of abstracts/posters (350-500 words)

§   6 February, 2023 - decisions announced

§   20 February, 2023 – registration opens

Posters

PhD students are welcome to submit abstracts but can, as an alternative, submit a research poster.

For further information, please contact Karen Ross and David Baines at:

sanctuarysongs2023@newcastle.ac.uk  

Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. 43

Deadline (EXTENDED): December 11, 2022

Thematic editors: Daniel Brandão (CECS, Universidade do Minho, Portugal), Nuno Martins (ID+, Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave, Portugal) and Rachel Cooper (PETRAS, Lancaster University, United Kingdom)

The growing presence of digital technologies in citizens’ daily lives has resulted in a constant enhancement of the unexpected. Spontaneity and reactivity assume an increasingly prominent role in the communication universe, inevitably influencing social dynamics.

Faced with a highly mediated and mediatised world, communication has attained significant power. A dispersed power shared between different protagonists. A power that is not always identifiable and often tends to be more associated with rumour and crisis than with information and clarification. This power of communication, more and more horizontal, challenges established power bases.

What role can design play in this mediation of interpersonal and global communication?

In its most varied perspectives and disciplines, design can be an important contribution to the construction of more informed, enlightened and, consequently, fairer societies. Whether in a supervisory capacity, deconstructing and decoding graphic, photographic, animated representations and all kinds of narratives of high cosmetic-manipulative content; or in the proposal of models, prototypes or the most varied type of solutions that seek to contribute to an active citizenship and respond to the challenges and dilemmas of digital and contemporary societies. In fact, design is much more than a tool of mere aesthetic operation. It also has a relevant role in the organisation of information, in the construction of narratives and, consequently, in the suggestion of meanings.

This thematic volume of the journal Comunicação e Sociedade invites national and international academics and researchers from different areas of design, communication and digital technologies to share scientific work developed on emerging topics, such as:

• sustainable and healthy design
  
• inclusive, collaborative and participatory design
  
• creativity, arts and design in education
  
• identities, citizenship and social cohesion in design
  
• design and communication for the mobility and the future of cities
  
• challenges of digital interaction and communication
  
• information design, data journalism and quality of information
  
• responsible design: security, privacy, ethics and trust
  
• design, equality and human rights
  
• design for health and well-being
  
• eating, dressing and breathing design
  
• design, media arts and culture
  
• expression and impression of audio-visual on digital communication
  
• sound design: perception and performance in the real
  
• frontiers and challenges of a technocentric design
  
• conceptions and misconceptions of the virtual
  

KEY DATES

Proposals submission (full manuscript): September 5 to December 11, 2022

Notification of acceptance: January 8, 2023

Deadline for the submission of the final article (PT and EN): March 19, 2023

Publication: June 2023

Comunicação e Sociedade is an open-access academic journal indexed in several databases, including SCOPUS.

https://revistacomsoc.pt/index.php/revistacomsoc/announcement/view/44

November 25-26, 2022

Berlin, Germany

The Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies (ZeM) and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) would like to draw your attention to the conference „Infrastructures of Autonomy“, which will take place on November, 25-26th at HIIG (Berlin, Germany). The conference will be opened with a Keynote address from Beate Rössler (University of Amsterdam).

For more information on Keynote and event regestration please visit:  https://www.hiig.de/en/events/infrastructures-of-autonomy-i-conference-opening/

For more Information on conference and regestration please visit: https://www.hiig.de/en/events/infrastructures-of-autonomy/

Journal of Digital Social Research (special issue)

Deadline: December 15, 2022

Following our preconference workshop, the Visual Cultures section is proud to share a Call for Papers for a Special Issue on "Methodological Developments in Visual Politics & Protest", to be published in the Journal of Digital Social Research (https://www.jdsr.io/). Abstracts of 400-500 words are due 15th December 2022.

Full details regarding the scope, timeline and editing team can be found on the dedicated call website: https://www.jdsr.io/call-for-papers

November 21, 2022

Virtual event

Join us on World Children’s Day for the virtual launch of our new essay collection by regulators, specialists and academics on the problems and possibilities for children’s education data.

 Details:

Date: Monday 21 November

Time: 15:00 – 16:30 GMT

Location: Virtual, see link below  

Register for the event here

Baroness Beeban Kidron and Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE, LSE, will be joined by:

• Kruakae Pothong, DFC
  
• Ben Williamson, University of Edinburgh
  
• Julia Cooke, Information Commissioner’s Office
  
• Riad Fawzi, Second Stand Solutions Ltd
  
• Andrew McStay, Bangor University 
  
• Larissa Pschetz, University of Edinburgh
  
• Roger Taylor, Open Data Partners
  

More speakers are to be confirmed. 

We do hope you will be able to join us, and please do feel free to forward this invitation to anyone in your network who may be interested in attending. 

If you have any questions about the event or the Digital Futures Commission please contact us on info@5rightsfoundation.com.

Thank you,

The Digital Futures Commission team

The Digital Futures Commission – hosted by 5Rights Foundation – is a flagship project driven by a board of Commissioners. It consists of three work streams – Play in the Digital World, Beneficial Uses of Education Data, and Guidance for Innovators. In each strand we are trying to shift the dial – our outputs will be focused on reimagining the digital world as if it were built for children, by design. 

Our Commissioners represent the following organisations: 5Rights Foundation; BBC Research & Development North Lab; Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation; Erase All Kittens; EY; Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop; LEGO; London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); Technological University Dublin; The Alan Turing Institute; The Behavioural Insights Team; University of Leeds.

You can learn more about the Digital Futures Commission here. You can also check out our blog, where we regularly profile the DFC's work. 

Deadline for proposals (EXTENDED): November 30, 2022

Edited by Willemien Sanders and Anna Zoellner

Media occupy an increasingly central position in our everyday lives, facilitated by the development of increasingly smaller and smarter screens and sophisticated digital, interactive infrastructures. The mediatisation of society entails that the production of media is no longer limited to the field of audio-visual culture, communication and entertainment (such as film, television, radio, advertising, PR, and gaming) but pervades a range of other areas, including, but not limited to, governance, education, health care, tourism, the military, religion, and sports. In these areas, media content in the form of audio, video, apps, virtual and augmented reality, and social media is increasingly part of everyday practices.

Expanding the field and focus of existing media production research, this book explores this trend of media production in non-media domains. With non-media domains we mean domains other than legacy media (print, radio, television, film, and social media). Our focus lies on the production of media content that is not intended for communication to a wider public, such as popular and news media, and that is instrumental rather than intrinsic in its purpose: these media serve as a means to achieve some other goal. They facilitate professional and everyday practices (and will, arguably, often replace previous practices that did not include audio-visual media). In that sense, they are oriented to a specific professional/practice field. This includes media such as nutrition apps, serious games for military training, and augmented reality in tourism. In all these cases, the media texts are a means within a mediatised practice in a non-media domain. Propaganda material or public health communication, for example, would not fall in this category.

This kind of media production for non-media sectors is by nature interdisciplinary. It requires a mix of skills, techniques and technologies and therefore the collaboration of people from different sectors and work roles. We provisionally label this ‘cross-sector’ media production, to refer to the collaboration between the media sector and other sectors. This book explores how cross-sector media production functions, how different professionals collaborate – having different occupational identities, bringing in different perspectives and relying on a wide variety of work cultures, epistemologies, and ethics.

Topics may include but are not limited to the following technologies:

• virtual reality
  
• augmented reality
  
• web 2.0, web 3.0
  
• apps
  
• holograms
  
• serious games
  
• websites
  
• other sound and screen applications
  

Topics may concern but are not limited to the following sectors:

• education
  
• health care
  
• manufacturing
  
• sports
  
• travelling
  
• commerce
  
• home appliances
  
• design
• fine arts

The book will be structured in three corresponding sections: (1) theoretical debates on its origin and related developments, to discuss how we can understand cross-sector media production better; (2) methodological debates about such research, to explore methodological implications, challenges, and approaches; and (3) empirical research of cross-sector media practices, to investigate these particular production contexts including their conditions, processes and practices.   

Section 1

For this section we invite contributions that address the origins and conceptualisation of cross-sector media production. Contributions will discuss theoretical approaches and histories of digitalisation, mediatisation, platformisation, innovation and other relevant theories in different domains, with a focus on what these mean for cross-sector production specifically. The section will address various developments (technical, social, cultural, legal) that facilitate and co-shape cross-sector media production by setting and extending boundaries.

Section 2

The second section of the book discusses the investigation of cross-sector media production as research process. For this section we invite contributions that explore theoretical, epistemological, methodological and other challenges as well as solutions in the study of cross-sector media production practices. This section problematizes taken for granted research methods and approaches and invites discussion of alternatives and new directions, including those that go beyond conventional ethnography, as well as those instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Section 3

Drawing on empirical research of cross-sector media production practices, the chapters in this section will explore the assumptions, interests, and challenges when producing media in such cross-sector production contexts. This includes how media makers navigate the ideas and demands within a non-media domain in relation to their own expertise and preferences. The section explores what kind of values, expectations and cultures underlie cross-sector media production. It also looks at the epistemologies, competencies and best practices for the different occupations involved. 

Submission details

Please send proposals for chapters before the deadline of Wednesday, November 30, 2022. Proposals should be between 500-800 words, excluding notes and referenced sources. In addition, short bios for each author (150 words) should be included. Please indicate for which section you are proposing your chapter.

Proposals and any inquiries should be sent to the editors: w.sanders@uu.nl and  a.zoellner@leeds.ac.uk

Decisions will be communicated in January 2023. Chapter manuscripts are expected to be submitted in June 2023.

Media Production in Non-Media Domains – Researching cross-sector media production will be published in the Springer Media Industries series, edited by Bjørn von Rimscha and Ulrike Rohn.

November 30, 2022

On November 30, 2022, from 6.00 to 7.00 pm, the next event of the European Media Salon will take place on the topic "Communicative AI, Human-Machine Communication and the Automation of media and Communications: Taking a societal view“. 

Artificial Companions like voice-based agents, social robots, bots on Twitter and other platforms, systems of automated generation of journalistic content are increasingly spreading. These technological developments are seemingly associated with a major change in the media environment and the ways in which we communicate, challenging our understanding of the nature, actors and borders of communication. Yet, to media and communication scholars, this shift is similar to the development of the Internet towards the commercialized Web 2.0 and associated platforms. At the same time, the public, but also media and communication research, has a persistently limited view of this automation of communication. There is little discussion and research on what consequences this has for societal communication and human agency as a whole. Instead, the discourse is either dominated by techno-utopian views, or comparatively “narrowly” focused on the interaction of humans and machines as happening in a vacuum, while the research is often instrumental on the “improvement” and “implementation” of such systems. In this event of the European Media Salon we want to discuss how critical and sociologically informed research on communicative AI, human-machine-communication and the automation of communication should look like, which sees these as part of societal communication. 

Discussants: 

• Leopoldina Fortunati (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldina_Fortunati) 
  
• David Gunkel (https://www.gunkelweb.com) 
  

For more information on the event, visit: 

https://www.european-media-salon.org/events/communicative-ai-human-machine-communication-and-the-automation-of-media-and-communications-taking-a-societal-view 

To register for this and future events, email: 

EuropeanMediaSalon@uni-bremen.de 

University of Salzburg

The University of Salzburg (Dept. of Communication Studies) is inviting applications from  qualified candidates for a faculty position at the level of PhD student [Dissertant/in] in the chair of  Communication Policy and Media Economics. The department looks for candidates who could  contribute to the research of the department, including the Euromedia Ownership Monitor  (EurOMo), a project funded by the European Commission which deals with media ownership  transparency in Europe. The dissertation should address areas such as media and internet  policy/governance, media structure, and critical political economy of media and communication.  Focus is preferably Austria or Europe, but comparative analysis with other countries/regions are  also welcome.​​

Additional information: 

• Start of employment: 1st March, 2023 
• Duration of employment: 4 years 
• Weekly hours: 30 (20 for faculty projects and teaching, as assigned by the head of the unit) 
  
• Job description: scientific support of research, teaching (from year 3) and administrative tasks; own research/PhD dissertation, cooperation with research proposals  (conceptualisation, writing, and submission), support of planning and conducting  conferences. 
  
• Supervision by Prof. Josef Trappel 
  
• Requirements: 
  
• • Diploma or Master in communication studies or related social sciences 
  • Fluency in English 
  • Willingness to learn German within 2 years (fluency by the time of application is an  asset) 
  • Willingness to live in Salzburg 
• Desired qualifications: 
• • Previous experience in researching issues of media policy and economics 
  • Knowledge of the relevant literature 
  • Experience with qualitative and quantitative methods of communication science 
  • Publications of scientific papers on these topics 
• Remuneration: € 2.294 (gross, 14× year) 
  
• Submission by email – including CV, letter of motivations and relevant documents – to  bewerbung@plus.ac.at with reference to GZ A 0232/1-2022, on or before 23 November 2022. 
  
• For information, please email the contact person of the chair, Prof. Sergio Sparviero, at sergio.sparviero@plus.ac.at 
  

April 4-5, 2023

University of Paris Panthéon-Assas, France

Deadline: December 1, 2022

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the conference Media and sexist and sexual violence. Inform, denounce, raise awareness, which will take place on April 4 and 5, 2023 at the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas.

Proposals must be sent no later than December 1, 2022 to the following address: mediavss2023@gmail.com

The organizing committee:

Charlotte Buisson, Maëlle Bazin, Cécile Méadel, Giuseppina Sapio, Jeanne Wetzels

------ 

Argument

This symposium aims to question the role of the media in the production of information about sexual and gender-based violence (hereafter referred to as SGBV), which we understand as ‘a multiplicity of types of coercive, non-hierarchical acts imposed by men to control women and any people who do not belong to the hegemonic masculine, throughout their lives’ (Connell, 2014; Buisson and Wetzels, 2022: 4). Thus, our approach to violence is based on the concept of a continuum (Kelly, 1988), making it possible to apprehend the different forms of this violence in their plurality and to define them by the way they are linked together. Such violence manifests itself in several forms: physical, verbal, psychological and sexual, as well as economic and administrative. It forms part of relationships of domination intertwined with other factors such as race, age, social class, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity (Crenshaw, 2005; Diederich, 2006; Direnberger and Karimi, 2019).

Over the past twenty years, many disciplines have taken up the issue of SGBV: psychology (Salmona, 2018; Pache, 2019), law (Le Magueresse, 2012 and 2021; Moron-Puech, 2022), medicine (Jouault, 2020), political science (Boussaguet, 2009; Delage, 2017) and sociology (Debauche and Hamel, 2013; Le Goaziou, 2013 and 2019; Brown et al., 2020; Lacombe, 2022). Different fields have been studied, such as armed conflicts (Audouin-Rouseau, 1994; Virgili and Branche, 2011; Cohen and Nordas, 2014), public space (Coutras, 1996; Condon and Lieber, 2005; Dekker, 2021), the family (Hamelin et al., 2010; Dussy, 2013), and work (Baldeck, 2021).

But SGBV has rarely been discussed by researchers in terms of its media coverage. While this question is the subject of studies abroad, particularly in English-language research (Bullock, 2007; Charlesworth and McDonald, 2013; Easteal et al., 2015; De Benedictis et al., 2019), this is far from being the case within French-language research, including in France itself. However, many dissertations in progress will soon be extending this state of the art (Beaulieu, Buisson, Itoh, Khemilat, Ruffio and Wetzels: see bibliography). The few existing studies focus on the media, but this research mainly focuses on femicide (Guérard and Lavender, 1999; Sapio, 2017, 2019, 2022) or on domestic violence; it particularly analyzes the press, and more specifically the daily press (Mucchielli, 2005; Hernández Orellana, 2012; Sépulchre, 2019; Lochon, 2021).

Institutions are increasingly vigilant about the role played by the media in the visibility and prevention of SGBV: in this sense, it is interesting to note that the Istanbul Convention, ratified by France in 2014, appeals to the ‘Participation of the private sector and the media’ in order to ‘to set guidelines and self-regulatory standards to prevent violence against women and to enhance respect for their dignity’ (art. 17). And, in a note written by Margaux Collet in the same year for the French High Council for Gender Equality, she emphasizes, among other things, that it is crucial to include articles relating to acts of violence against women in the ‘Politics’ section of newspapers, rather than in the ‘Other news’ section; it is also inadvisable to use the ‘words of the aggressor to create a headline’ or to use expressions such as ‘crime of passion’, a formula still very frequently found in the regional daily press (Ambroise-Rendu, 1993; Houel and al., 2003; Sapio, 2019). For its part, in March 2019, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted new Recommendation on Preventing and Combating Sexism, noting that: ‘Another aggravating factor is where the reach, or potential reach, of the sexist words or acts is extensive, including the means of transmission, use of social or mainstream media and the degree of repetition.’

The persistence of sensitive areas in media discourse – despite these recommendations – stems, among other things, from the structural characteristics of journalistic circles (Neveu, 2000; Damian-Gaillard and Saitta, 2020; Damian-Gaillard et al., 2021) which are not immune to the sexist logics of the society in which they exist. The composition of the editorial staff, the training and the conditions of recruitment and development of journalists are significant factors in producing information, as shown by the results of the Global Media Monitoring Project (Biscarrat et al., 2017; Breda, 2022). Thus, certain culturally and historically situated journalistic practices and traditions persist.

While they are partly responsible for the propagation of hate speech and harmful narratives about SGBV, the media also play a fundamental role in the prevention and denunciation of the latter, by opening up spaces for the production of ‘counter- discourses’ (Baider and Constantinou, 2019) and responses to stigmatization, ranging from ‘destigmatization’ (Bazin and Sapio, 2020) to ‘resignification’ (Paveau, 2020). In some cases, journalists themselves can provide metadiscursive reflections on media productions; this is the case with the collective known as Prenons la Une, which endeavours to take a critical look at the problematic aspects of journalistic writing.

Presentation of themes for papers

We are calling for proposals from different disciplines: information and communication sciences, history, sociology, semiology, law, political science, linguistics, and more broadly from any interdisciplinary approach able to shed light on the production, circulation and reception of media productions on SGBV. We thus subscribe to a broad vision of the notion of media, focusing not only on traditional information media – the press, television, radio, online media and other social media – but also on all media structures as defined by Benoit Lafon (2019), encompassing the publishing industry and exhibitions, as well as proto-media such as posters and engravings. Please note, however, that this call for papers relates only to informational discourse: we have excluded fiction and entertainment from our scope. Research on music, for example, will not be taken into account, especially since a symposium on the subject will soon be organized. Studies analyzing the media coverage of SGBV from a comparative perspective (international, over time, comparing different objects/platforms and types of violence) are welcome. Proposals can fall under one or more of the five proposed themes.

Theme 1 – The conditions of production of media content

For this theme we call for papers that question the professional logics at work in the visibility or concealment of SGBV within the media industries themselves. Proposals that address this perspective may relate, for example, to media that have built their editorial line around SGBV, but also to services or mechanisms created by the media industries so as to editorialize this violence: the creation of pools of journalists dedicated to these questions, the creation of posts as gender editors or the drafting of good practice guides and other editorial charters. Also, the violence that takes place within media companies themselves can be questioned, in particular by examining emblematic case studies such as the Ligue du Lol, the Patrick Poivre D’Arvor (PPDA) affair and the ‘Bas les Pattes’ (‘Hands off’) column published in Libération in 2015. A more general apprehension of this violence could enrich the reflections envisaged here. To what extent is it visible in media industries (Beaulieu, 2019)? Is it heard and/or addressed, and if so, by whom? What are the strategies used to fight against SGBV in these spaces? Conversely, by what mechanisms are they discredited or silenced? Finally, this theme will be an opportunity to consider the vocabulary (for example, the (non)use of the term femicide) and formats mobilized in the media field to place violence on the agenda (such as the interactive online map of the newspaper Libération to count femicides).

Theme 2 - Media representations of SGBV

Media discourses, whether ‘socially constitutive’ or ‘socially constituted’ (Fairclough, 1997), are not merely illustrative of the society that produces them but are considered in their capacity both to consolidate and to transform the latter. In other words, ‘journalistic writings are also social facts’ (Neveu, 2013: 64) that can reinforce sexist stereotypes (Coulomb-Gully, 2019), fuel violence and shape – by helping to naturalize them – stereotypical depictions of victims and attackers. Media devices can thus become the sounding board for hate speech defined ‘as any discursive or semiotic manifestation inciting hatred, whether ethnic, racial, religious, or based on gender or sexual orientation’ (Baider et al. Constantinou, 2019: 10). This type of discourse can either be characterized by violent formulations (from insults to verbal abuse) or it can be ‘disguised’, thus operating in a more insidious way. Without neglecting the contributions of feminist movements promoting, among other things, a critical scrutiny of media representations of SGBV (Ruffio, 2019; Lamy, 2021; Noetzel et al., 2022; Cavalin et al., 2022), we are asking for analyses of fact-based narratives attentive to the representations of the actors involved (victims, perpetrators of violence, witnesses, experts, politicians, activists), to the sources used by journalists (the police, the judicial system, local associations), to the images used and to the rhetorical devices deployed. These include the ‘other news’ style of information on SGBV; sensationalism; ascribing guilt to the victims; and the euphemization and even trivialization of SGBV (Burt, 1980; Benedict, 1992).

Theme 3 - Media circulation of testimonials

Going beyond the #MeToo phenomenon already studied by French researchers (Cavalin et al., 2022), this symposium aims to broaden the analysis of the testimony of violence through media other than social networks: television, radio, podcasts, cinema, press, and publishing. Who is behind the publication of these testimonies and to what extent does their publication contribute to the constitution of the public problem of SGBV? Does the appropriation of testimonies by mainstream media contribute to democratizing the subject? Does such an appropriation take place at the cost of depoliticization? How does the voice of victims circulate in media and cultural productions (to varying degrees of visibility), and can we identify particular characteristics from the profiles of the victims (public or anonymous personalities) and types of violence? By way of example, case studies could be based on testimonials on the radio (the Baupin case, Mediapart and France Inter [Buisson, 2022, forthcoming]); in the press (the Haenel case, Mediapart); on YouTube (Alix Desmoineaux, reality TV candidate, for Melty), in a book (Acquittée. Je l’ai tué pour ne pas mourir (Acquitted. I killed him so as not to die), by Alexandra Lange), on television (Delphine Leclerc, a victim of obstetric violence, in La Maison des Maternelles) or in a podcast (Ou peut-être une nuit, Charlotte Pudlowski).

We invite contributors to question the specificities of media platforms and their role in highlighting the power relations relating to SGBV testimonies, both for the audiovisual media (seating of guests, duration and modalities of exchanges between speakers, editing techniques, blurring of faces) and for the press (layout, anonymization, format, headings).

The place taken by the perpetrators of violence is also a subject for study. How do the media use the perpetrators’ words and does this editorial choice raise questions within the profession? Whether it is the sequence cut from the documentary Je ne suis pas une salope, je suis une journaliste (I’m not a slut, I’m a journalist), where Marie Portolano confronts Pierre Menès with the sexual assault to which he subjected her a few years earlier, or the ‘Lettre d’un violeur’ (‘Letter from a rapist’) published by Libération the same year, what does this tell us about editorial developments taking place within the media industries?

Theme 4 – The mechanisms and language of prevention and awareness

The language used about the prevention and/or awareness of SGBV can foster a critique of existing norms and promote behaviours that can prevent and/or subvert it, but they can also function as receptacles for these same norms, despite their initial aims. In this perspective, the book Quand l’État parle des violences faites aux femmes (When the state speaks of violence against women) by Myriam Hernández Orellana and Stéphanie Kunert is an essential contribution that points out the limits and contradictions of institutional communication in France. Based on the analysis of a corpus of government campaigns, the authors underline the paradoxical nature of the language used in institutional communication where ‘women’s power to act is almost non-existent [...] while the State, as a tutelary speaker, systematically addresses them in the imperative (in particular by enjoining them to “break their silence”)’ (2014: 90-91). We therefore invite contributors to extend these observations by working on other French or foreign government initiatives, and on institutional campaigns led by associations and communities such as the Hubertine Auclert centre in Île-de-France. We are also looking for work analyzing educational content dealing with SGBV such as comics (Les Crocodiles by Thomas Mathieu and Mon vagin, mon gynéco et moi (My vagina, my gynecologist and me by Rachel Lev) and Instagram accounts (@stopfisha; @disbonjoursalepute), to mention just a few examples.

There are relatively few studies of the language used to prevent SGBV (Bruneel, 2018; Stassin, 2019; see also theme 4 of the ‘(Cyber)harcèlement’/‘(Cyber)harassment’ symposium), and there are even fewer relating to the reception of the language and mechanisms for preventing violence against women (Potter and al., 2011; Romero, 2020; Sapio, 2020; Basile-Commaille and Fourquet-Courbet, 2021; Léon, 2021).

In this theme, we are also interested in media platforms and digital mechanisms when they are mobilized within the framework of a mediation with the perpetrators of violence, with the victims and the actors in the field (Oddone 2020; Sapio 2023), and in the framework of restorative justice. Recent years seem to have witnessed an increasing number of initiatives, such as the app developed by the Marseille city hall to fight against SGBV on the beach and the website ‘deposetaplainte.fr’.

Theme 5 – The sensitive corpus of data: emotions and commitment in research  

Studying practices and media discourses relating to SGBV can place researchers who come into contact with them in a situation of emotional vulnerability, in some cases identified as a ‘vicarious syndrome’ (Bourdet, 2021). But what can be said and done about such emotions experienced during research? We invite contributors to reflect on this question by foregrounding their places as social and political subjects. How does ‘our fieldwork, especially when it is difficult or painful, modify us, both as people and as researchers?’ (Paveau, 2013). How can repeated exposure to stories and images of violence affect research? What should we do when the media language that we study revives personal traumas? While the emotions experienced are likely to hinder scientific reflection, they can also trigger a power to act (Paveau, 2013), an ‘emotional charge (émotricité)’ (Le Cam and Ruellan, 2017), and lead to the development of new hypotheses for research (Dalibert, 2021). The researcher may also not feel any particular emotions, and then feel at odds with the social reactions that people expect in the discussion of sensitive subjects.

In this theme, we are also interested in the place of affects in the relationship to fieldwork, and more specifically to the corpus of data, something much less often studied in existing research: for example in the process of data collection, during which a feeling of guilt towards the victims (Dussy, 2013) or sometimes one of joy (Joël, 2015) can emerge. Finally, there is the question of the conditions for sharing research results: how are we to talk about sensitive and gruelling data? What place should be given to victims and aggressors? Should we anonymize victims, or on the contrary give them a face and a name when they are sometimes reduced to a mere statistic (Salles, 2021)? How are we to communicate stories and images of violence without thereby rekindling their pain (Julliard, 2021)?

Submission guidelines

Paper proposals should be sent to: mediavss2023@gmail.com by 1 December 2022.

In order to guarantee the double-blind evaluation process, please send us (in Word format) :

• a first anonymous document with your paper proposal of a maximum length of 500 words (specifying the title, the axis(es) in which the proposal fits, an abstract presenting the research question, a brief review of the literature and/or theoretical perspectives, elements of methodology) as well as an indicative bibliography.
  
• a second document specifying the title of your paper and a bio-bibliographical note of 150 words maximum in which your name, first name, institutional affiliation, and a brief presentation of your research themes and main publications appear.
  

Notification of acceptance will be sent in mid-January 2023.

Scientific committee

Laurence Allard (Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, IRCAV)

Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, CHCSC)   

Maëlle Bazin (Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)

Laetitia Biscarrat (Université Côte-d’Azur, LIRCES)   

Laurie Boussaguet (European University Institute, Florence)

Charlotte Buisson (Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)

Maxime Cervulle (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, CEMTI)   

Marlène Coulomb-Gully (Université Toulouse 2 Jean-Jaurès, LERASS)

Pauline Delage (CRESPPA-CSU, CNRS)

Sophie Dubec (Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, IRMÉCCEN)

Eric Fassin (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, LEGS)

Isabelle Garcin-Marrou (Institut d’Études Politiques de Lyon, ELICO)

Josiane Jouët (Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)

Cécile Méadel (Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)

Sandy Montañola  (Université Rennes 1, ARÈNES)

Bibia Pavard (Université Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)   

Giuseppina Sapio (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, CEMTI)

Florian Vörös (Université de Lille, GERIICO)

Jeanne Wetzels (Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, CARISM)

Organizing committee

Charlotte Buisson   

Maëlle Bazin   

Giuseppina Sapio   

Jeanne Wetzels   

Cécile Méadel

Arielle Haakenstad