*CFP* "EDUCACIÓN PARA EL FUTURO: PROSPECTIVA PARA LA SOSTENIBILIDAD Y LA JUSTICIA SOCIAL", NÚMERO 73, COMUNICAR: REVISTA CIENTÍFICA DE COMUNICACIÓN Y EDUCACIÓN

En un contexto de incertidumbre, los Estudios sobre el Futuro (futures studies) se han extendido a diferentes áreas, caracterizándose por su transversalidad, que abarca, entre otros campos, la comunicación y la educación. Los medios de comunicación junto con la educación tienen una gran influencia en la construcción de las imágenes del futuro de la ciudadanía. La Educación para el Futuro como línea de investigación surge en el Reino Unido y en otros países de tradición anglosajona a fin de analizar el lenguaje, los relatos o las imágenes negativas sobre el futuro presentes en los diferentes medios, que demuestran una gran influencia en nuestra participación democrática y en nuestra actitud hacia el cambio social. Con este monográfico, se contribuye al análisis y discusión de los aspectos teóricos y prácticos relacionados con los Estudios sobre el Futuro y la Educación para el Futuro, y su incidencia en todo tipo de aspectos de la educomunicación.

 

Descriptores

*CFP* "PARTICIPATORY CULTURE WARS: CONTROVERSY, CONFLICT AND COMPLICITY IN FANDOM", EDITED COLLECTION

It has become increasingly clear that fandoms and participatory culture are sites of controversy, conflict and even complicity, complicating earlier assessments that sought to celebrate creativity, collegiality, and community. As we continue to make sense of the consequences of web 2.0, the study of fans – the affective bonds, identities, and productive cultures of a highly mediated and networked society – is vital in understanding our current moment, whether expressed in debates about “cancel culture” or ongoing “culture wars”. Fans have had to rethink and reassess their relationships to fan objects, consider their role in reproducing global systems of inequality, and reflect on the meaning of participation in an era that is marked by both moral ambivalence and political earnestness. 

Implicitly and explicitly, fannish practices are involved in a variety of key social, political, and cultural issues across the globe. They can be seen in politics, ranging from QAnon’s role in the storming of the US Capitol building, conspiracy theories relating to the covid pandemic, and the continued expansion of the global reactionary and populist right, from Britain to India to Brazil. They can be seen in new cultural terrains produced by networked movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, #OscarsSoWhite, and the accompanying activism and responses as fans come to terms with the crimes, misdemeanors, and disagreements of former faves, like Xiao Zhan, Joss Whedon, or JK Rowling. They are expressed in the strategies and tactics of inter- and intra-fandom conflicts, whether Meghan Markle and the Royal Family or some Chinese fan responses to BTS talking about the Korean war. And, pressingly, fan tourism, collector culture, and the energy use of digital culture all contribute to the ongoing climate crisis. 

*CFP* "STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT FOR DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE: GOVERNANCE, SUSTAINABILITY AND PARTICIPATORY PERSPECTIVES IN AFRICA", BOOK CHAPTER

In a post-colonial landscape, governments from across the African continent are experiencing a myriad of disparate challenges related to development and social change (cf. Chambua, 1994; Raheem, Anamuah-Mensah & Dei, 2014). At the heart of these challenges, is the need to bring about development, rapid urbanisation, as well as the improvement in the quality of life for all citizens. However, several stumbling blocks stand in the way of this, namely:

• Corruption 
• Challenges with management and sustainable use of natural resources 
• Conflict 
• The debt-crisis and underdevelopment 
• Contestation around legitimacy in the democratisation processes (including protests, violence and resistance, extremism, extreme poverty and famine) 
• Pandemics (i.e. Ebola, Malaria and Covid-19)

These issues have adversely affected the achievement of goals related to humanitarian upliftment, development and social change for all African nations. Consequently, citizen participation lies at the heart of these challenges when considering the question of sustainable governance and policy development for social change in an African context. To this end, various case studies exist where local citizens do not inform sustainable development programmes; while the promotion of bottom-up development and social change is largely replaced by top-down instrumental action approaches and hemispheric communication (cf. Williams, 2006; Molale, 2019; Mwesigwa, 2021). 

*CFP* "FAKE NEWS AND AUTHENTICITY", INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERECE

Fake News and Authenticity - International Interdisciplinary Conference

Online Conference

2021-05-20 to 2021-05-21

 

Since the postmodern movements such as pop and hyperrealist art or literary genres? new journalism and creative non-fiction – questioned the status of the real and the imitated, the concept of authenticity has called for a constant reevaluation. Walter Benjamin’s 1935 assumption that “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity” has been called into question with the corporate and advertising practice continually rebranding the concept of authenticity to suit mass consumers’ needs. Why is it then that within the contemporary culture the notion of authenticity is still heavily linked with spiritual awakening and happiness? To what extent do authenticity and individuality function as mere commercial products and advertising slogans? Have they over time become shallow romantic ideals or do they still hold the substance to be discovered and implemented into one’s line of thinking and living? What makes authenticity creatively attractive to artists, thinkers and spiritual teachers? Can authenticity be defined, measured, conceptualized in the contemporary context of relativism? Is it at all possible to separate truth from untruth in the world of fake news?

*CFP* "NARRATIVES IN DISPUTE: EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO CONFLICT, PEACE AND SECURITY", SPECIAL ISSUE, TRIPODOS JOURNAL

The monographic is looking for contributions that offer epistemological approaches to the fields of conflict, peace, and security studies. The understanding of these phenomena is always mediated by who tells the story and the language used for it. As a result, in every context there is always a plurality of narratives that are produced by top-down analysis and bottom-up experiences. How these narratives interact, clash, accommodate and influence each other is of utmost importance to make sense of how international interventions and the deployment of security and peace policies are received or confronted at the local level, and in turn, how bottom-up narratives could be integrated and get a central position. 

This call looks for critical articles –feminist, post-colonial, and/or critical and poststructuralist analysis– that focus on the process of narration and the actors involved in defining the script, as well as on intercultural translations by looking into possibilities of coexistence and tolerance.

 

Introduction

*CFP* "GLOBAL CRISES: MEDIA, POLITICS, AND ENVIRONMENT", IX INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONFLICT, TERRORISM AND SOCIETY

IX International Conference on Conflict, Terrorism and Society

“Global Crises: Media, Politics, and Environment”

April 13-14, 2021

Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey

 

Crises signify conflicts, danger and chaos. Global crises, from health crises like COVID-19 pandemic to political crises, from war and terror to humanitarian disasters, represent the dark side of a globalized world. This year’s conference theme focuses on how do global crises emerge from, and result in, social, political, cultural, institutional, economic, technological and environmental changes. The conference aims to analyze the ongoing multi-dimensional crisis of global world and provide interdisciplinary approaches to the current global crises. The major themes to be covered with respect to global crises may include health crises (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic), wars and terrorism, global displacement and mass migration, legal crises and legitimacy, economic crises, disasters, catastrophes and risks, environmental challenges, poverty, politics (e.g. rise of populism, rise of nationalism), security (e.g. national security, digital security), the role of media in crisis time, disinformation and power relations. The conference also aims to understand how global crises are spawned by and shape our global age, and how they are represented in the media.

*CFP* "CHINA, MEDIA AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS", EDITED VOLUME

This edited volume aims to contribute to the studies of complex, fluid and dynamic media-conflict relationship through the lens of China. Studies of mediatized conflict in the digital age is still very much a Eurocentric research area, which requires to be de-Westernized. As McQuail (2006) claims, ‘Western “communication science” does not offer any clear framework for collecting and interpreting observations and information about contemporary war situations’ and has ‘largely neglected were the colonial wars of post-Second World War and the many bitter conflicts that did not directly impinge on western interests or responsibilities’. In a sense, McQuail’s statement still stands today.

The existing researches in media and conflict are mostly confined to the Western democracies and interests. With China showing growing and controversial power and influence on the world’s stage, on the one hand, the East Asian power faces its own security issues due to crises in the Asia-Pacific region that have escalated and intensified such as Sino-Indian border crisis, South China Sea disputes, North Korea nuclear crisis and the Senkaku/Diaoyu-islands disputes.On the other hand, China as one of the five permanent members in the UN Security Council has more and more involvement and interests in the seemingly isolated international conflicts such as Afghanistan war, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Libyan and Syrian crisis.

*CFP* "RADICAL FILM AT THE DAWN OF A NEW SOCIETY", BOOK CHAPTER

You are invited to make a contribution to a new book arising from the Radical Film Network Meeting Berlin (RFNMB). Under the working title “Radical Film at the Dawn of a New Society”, the book aims to critically interrogate how various actors working at the intersection of radical film, art and digital culture are engaging with issues of our present time shaped by changes and disruptions of seismic proportions. The events of the year 2020 have fundamentally transformed public life almost beyond recognition. It remains to be seen if these transformations are here to stay or just a passing phase. These events and many of the transformations they have given rise to have fostered a surge of anxiety, feelings of powerlessness and a dark vision of the future.

However, if we take a second look at the current situation, we can also see a newly developed focus on the importance of community, of solidarity and on maintaining sociality, all of which hold the promise of a new society. And while anxiety is often said to embody paralyzing features, one could argue that anxiety — a basic human emotion like joy, lust and anger — is a strong motive for collective human action because nobody wants to stay alone in the dark.

*CFP* "ART AND HUMAN RIGHTS", INTERNATIONAL LISBON CONFERENCE

Art and Human Rights. International Conference

20th-21st May 2021

Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian Lisbon, Portugal

Within the scope of the current human rights challenges our world is facing, arts have been striving to be recognized as a fundamental place for debate and critical thinking, as well as a catalyst for collective awareness and empathy. Exploring topics that range from climate change to the refugee crisis, from discrimination to authoritarian regimes affirmation, several events are prompting artists, both individually and collectively, to rethink the role of art as an agent for social change.

 

In the last decade, several projects were created in countries that continually suffered human rights violations, such as Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and others, which enrich our current knowledge and challenge our perspectives on artistic practices and ways of working around freedom of expression. In the face of current circumstances and having in mind the increase of information shared globally, the relevance of artistic productions as a tool for debate and political intervention becomes more evident. Indeed, we can currently find numerous civic movements, collectives, activists and organizations collaborating with artists to enrich their projects and amplify their values and messages. 

*CFP* "GLOBAL CRISES", 2ND COMMUNICATION, MEDIA AND JOURNALISM RESEARCH GROUP PGR/ECR CONFERENCE

2nd Communication, Media and Journalism Research Group PGR/ECR Conference

Global Crises

14th January 2021

Hosted Online by the Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield

 

The second Communication, Media and Journalism Research Group Conference aims to unite postgraduate researchers and early career academics whose research lies in the interconnected fields of communication, media and journalism. This one day online conference focuses on the broad theme of crisis. We are interested in engaging with the interrelationships between political, economic, healthcare and media industry crises, both past and present. 

*CFP* "MEDIA, RELIGION AND RELIGIOSITIES IN THE AGE OF DIGITALIZATION", SPECIAL ISSUE, TROPOS: COMUNICAÇÃO, CULTURA E SOCIEDADE

The Journal Tropos: Comunicação, Cultura e Sociedade in partnership with the academic site Mídia, Religião e Sociedade announces the Call for papers for the special issue “Media, religion and religiosities in the Age of Digitalization”.

Guest editors: Dr. Marco Túlio de Sousa (UEMG, Brazil), Dra. Mihaela Alexandra Tudor (CORHIS-UPVMIII, France) and Dra. Giulia Evolvi (EUR, The Netherlands)

Suggested title for the call: “Media, religion and religiosity in the digital age”

The religious world has always been connected with the media. Historically, the emergence of new media has always implied transformations in the relationship between religious sphere and society, changes in how the followers and faithful of a religion profess it and institutions carry out their practices and position themselves in the public sphere (Horsfield, 2015).

*CFP* "RELIGION, MOBILITIES AND BELONGING IN CONTEMPORARY ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE AND FILM/TV SERIES PRODUCTION", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE JOURNAL OF ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE, CULTURE AND MEDIA

Religion has re-emerged as a public force, a marker of ethnic identities and one of the main ways of identifying the ‘difference’ of migrants, diasporic subjects and transnationals in contemporary multicultural societies. As Craig Calhoun has pointed out, we live in a “postsecular” world, where the term “postsecular” registers the awareness that religious belief is not something to be overcome, but rather a force to be continually contended with (2011). Processes of dislocation and resettlement have resulted in a resignification of religious practices and religious identity. Religious identities are recognized as open to revision, a process that involves different generations negotiating their interpretations of sacred scriptures, rituals, communal claims and norm-setting institutions.

Meanwhile, the globalization of politics and the new technologies of international media transmission cannot but affect religious identities and identifications through the creation of transcultural bonds and alliances, the production of dominant perceptions, and the popularizing stereotypes. Not surprisingly, there is a growing awareness that, as William Connolly has insisted, rather than demarcating the line between irrational religion and secular reason, contemporary multicultural societies should expand their thinking about the kind of pluralism which has come to mark 21st century experience (2005). From the culture wars that succeeded the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to the waves of displaced peoples from the Global South that have challenged conceptions of citizenship, and the recent global success of TV series that engage with the theme of religion, what creative expression and sociopolitical fact remind us is that religion maintains a significant role in 21st century societies.

*CFP* "REVISTAS CULTURALES EN TIEMPOS DE GUERRA (SIGLOS XIX Y XX)", 9TH ISSUE, THE HUMANIDADES JOURNAL

La Revista Humanidades: Revista de la Universidad de Montevideo invita a participar en este monográfico: Revistas culturales en tiempos de guerra (siglos XIX y XX) que se publicará en 2021. 

La presente convocatoria apunta a reunir trabajos que sean producto de investigaciones innovadoras sobre el impacto de diversos procesos bélicos (guerras civiles, guerrillas, insurrecciones, ocupaciones militares, terrorismo, intervenciones armadas, guerras mundiales) en revistas durante los siglos XIX y XX, atendiendo a que estas constituyen soportes que pueden aportar una mirada original al estudio de los conflictos y que a la vez han sido poco requeridas, en tanto fuentes, por la historiografía para el análisis de este tipo de fenómenos.

Los ejes temáticos que orientan el llamado son:

*CFP* “TOWARDS CRITICAL ACADEMIC STUDIES: TRACING THE EFFECTS OF CONFLICT, CRISIS AND COMMUNICATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION”, CHAPTER BOOK

Violence on campus. Decline of the Humanities. Impoverished contingent labor. Student debt. Sexual harassment. Hate speech. Death of tenure. Conversations surrounding volatile subjects such as these are powerfully shaping the lives of those of us who work and learn in 21st-century academe.

When framed as a crisis or as a series of conflicts within higher education, such subjects are often studied for the benefit of an executive audience and thus involve a sense of expectation: What can be done? But research aimed at recommendations, strategies, and policies can overlook the heterogeneous effects of a problem and thus overstate the likelihood that it can be resolved through administrative action.

We recognize a potential to enrich our understanding of academic conflicts and crises by focusing on their effects on individuals and within groups, communities, and societies. Specifically, careful tracing of effects can enrich our understanding of how multiple stakeholders experience and engage creatively with conflict and crisis in academe.

*CFP* "MIGRANT BELONGINGS. DIGITAL PRACTICES AND THE EVERYDAY", CONFERENCE

Migrant Belongings. Digital Practices and the Everyday

4-6 November 2020

Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Migrant belonging through digital connectivity refers to a way of being in the world that cuts across national borders, shaping new forms of diasporic affiliations and transnational intimacy. This happens in ways that are different from the ways enabled by the communication technologies of the past. Scholarly attention has intensified around the question of how various new technical affordances of platforms and apps are shaping the transnationally connected, and locally situated, social worlds in which migrants live their everyday lives.

This international conference focuses on the connection between the media and migration from different disciplinary vantage points. Connecting with friends, peers and family, sharing memories and personally identifying information, navigating spaces and reshaping the local and the global in the process is but one side of the coin of migrant-related technology use: this Janus-faced development also subjects individual as well as groups to increased datafied migration management, algorithmic control and biometric classification as well as forms of transnational authoritarianism and networked repression.

*CFP* "MEDIA, MATERIALITY AND EMERGENCY", ISSUE 2, MAST: JOURNAL OF MEDIA ART, STUDY AND THEORY

In what ways do questions of materiality matter in a time of crisis? What does it mean to explore the matter of things at a time when we are threatened with the annihilation of that matter, its disappearance, or its disintegration? The second issue of MAST journal seeks to answer and further explore these questions through essays from arts practitioners and theorists.

Questions of materiality have been central to both media arts practice and media and communication theory. In most accounts, media is situated as the ‘inbetween’ of bodies. A sender and a receiver, one and another, stand at either side of a divide and communicate via a medium. In this sense, media might, following Sybille Krämer’s (2015) reading of Habermas, be considered erotic, connecting material bodies, providing the conditions for the emergence of material assemblages. Of course, media may undertake the opposite role, as Krämer also points out, dividing matter into separate bodies, keeping the sender and receiver at a distance. Media arts practice in the most general sense has been about asking questions about these functions of mediation, which connect, divide and express materialities.

*CFP* "CONFLICT AND DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION IN THE DIGITAL SOCIETY", VOL. 5(2), CULTURE E STUDI DEL SOCIALE JOURNAL

The concept of participation requires a careful and thorough revision. In the different ideals of representative democracy, political participation is declined as an institutionalised practice, considered as compulsory for the exercise of representation and necessary for increasing the civil attention to the common good; in the experiences of direct democracy (or rather in the various and sometimes trivializing theories of it) participation overlaps with the idea of personal involvement and it is exercised (usually) through the rejection of delegation. It is no coincidence that representation and participation were very often placed in an antithetical and mutually exclusive position. In the concrete practices of democracy, however, things are certainly more complex, to the point that the concept of participation itself has variously intertwined with that of representation, has been variously declined and even its operationalization appears at least problematic. 

The topic of conflict – traditional in the social sciences but at the same time declined in various dimensions – inevitably intertwines with the concept of participation and the practices of civic engagement. Alongside the forms of participation “by  invitation” – typical, for example, of many experiments of democratic innovation or of some practices, more or less depoliticised, of collaborative governance – new trends of participation “by irruption” have developed, where social actors have become protagonists in the institutional re-shaping of procedures and organisation of social spaces. 

*CFP* "DIGITAL SERVICES IN CRISIS, DISASTER, AND EMERGENCY SITUATIONS", CHAPTER BOOK

The contemporary world is characterized by the massive use of digital communication platforms and services that allow people to stay in touch with each other and their organizations. On the other hand, it is also a world with great challenges in terms of crisis, disaster and emergency situations, of various kinds: humanitarian, environmental, nuclear, political, economic, etc. In this scenario there are many challenges in the communication, prototyping, evaluation and development of digital support platforms and services in crisis, disaster and emergency contexts.

Thus, it is crucial to understand the role of digital platforms/services in the context of crisis, disaster and emergency situations. This can be done through a technological perspective, namely, through the design of digital service specifically designed for use in crisis, disaster and emergency situations. But also, through a communicational perspective, by understanding people's communication wishes and needs in these risky scenarios, as well as understanding the use of digital services/platforms such as online social networks (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.), in crisis, disaster and emergency situations.

*CFP* “JOURNALISM AND TRAFFICKING: DEVELOPMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES”, SPECIAL ISSUE, THE BRAZILIAN JOURNALISM RESEARCH JOURNAL

This Special Issue of Brazilian Journalism Research will look at the relationship between journalism and trafficking. Trafficking is a rather complex phenomenon which comprises arms trafficking, drug trafficking and human trafficking. All three top the world’s criminal enterprises, with drug trafficking taking the number one slot, human trafficking taking third, and small arms following not too far behind. In great expansion, human trafficking umbrellas sex, labor, organ and child trafficking, or the illegal adoption of children. Trafficking is no respecter of persons; it can affect the young/old, rich/poor, educated/illiterate, Global North citizen/Global South citizen, etc. 

Media – in particular news coverage – contribute toward shaping public understanding and opinion on societal issues. They also influence (inter)national policies, programs, and legislative action.

This special issue explores the range of ways that media, broadly construed, are connected with all facets of trafficking. How might media be influencing trafficking legislation? How might it be affecting victims? Perpetrators? What effect has journalism coverage of trafficking had on the crime? In what ways might media representations of trafficking be legitimating or challenging different kinds of power imbalances and social hierarchies based on gender, class or race?

*CFP* “WAR MEMORIES: SHARING WAR MEMORIES. FROM THE MILITARY TO THE CIVILIAN”, LE MANS UNIVERSITY 2020 CONFERENCE

War Memories.

Sharing War Memories. From the Military to the Civilian 

24-26 de junio de 2020

Le Mans University, Francia

With keynote speeches by:

Jonathan Bignell (Professor of Television and Film, Reading University, United Kingdom)

Keynote provisional  title: Television and Ephemerality: Remembering and Forgetting War

Daniel Palmieri (Historian, International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, Switzerland)

Keynote provisional title: Now, the World without me. Humanitarians and Sexual Violence in Time of War.

Stéphanie Bélanger (Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario)

Keynote provisional title: Voice or Loyalty? Dealing with Memories in the Armed Forces