*CFP* "SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, GLOBAL MEDIA AND CHINA JOURNAL

Recent issues of Global Media and China have explored the specifically Chinese characteristics of internet services, involving a particular constellation of companies and services that is distinct from those developed in the USA. How do the particular affordances of the dominant Chinese internet services differ from those of Google, Amazon, Facebook and PayPal? The combination of financial information of personal data that WeChat now has is very different from that held by any Western corporation, where payment systems are separated from social networking systems. 

Indeed, Facebook’s recent attempt to launch a payment system similar to that of WeChat seems to have failed for a variety of reasons, including its potential to destabilise the Western banking system. It is now time for comparative studies and the development of an overview of the different constellations that have developed. Debates in the West are developing around the nature of the privatisation of online services in the age of big data and the intent of things. Two events have accelerated this debate. The first is the growing concern around the misuse of data about individuals and its potential for influencing behaviour, evidenced by the rise of ‘fake news’ in social media and the scandal round Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

*CFP* “AUDIO PORN/PORN AUDIO”, SPECIAL ISSUE, PORN STUDIES JOURNAL

Forbes contributor Franki Cookney recently observed that Audio porn has been steadily growing in popularity over the last 15 years. In the same way that the inscrutability of the eReader was credited for the uptake in literary erotica, audio offers privacy. But it’s more than that: The beauty of audio is its intimacy, the chance to retreat to your personal bubble. That’s true whether you listen to politics, comedy or true crime, but in few genres is it more appealing than with porn (Cookney 2019).

Certainly audio porn seems to be undergoing something of a renaissance - it has become such an important segment of Audible’s output that it has its own subscription and rankings. Website Quinn recently relaunched and with Dipsea, Literotica and Reddit also producing sexually explicit audio it seems that there is a sizeable market for affective pleasures of the aural kind. Elsewhere on the web, community-orientated DIY audio such as r/GoneWildAudio offers forms of interactivity and new possibilities for communicating carnalities. Some formats and output are the revitalisation of that older service, the chat line, while others contribute to the podcast boom in commentary and analysis. From The Ersties through to My Dad Wrote a Porno, pornography has proved a fruitful and popular topic for podcasting.

*CFP* "'A HERO WILL ENDURE': ESSAYS AT THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF 'GLADIATOR' FOR AN EDITED COLLECTION", CHAPTER BOOK

Vernon Press invites chapter proposals on the theme: “A Hero Will Endure”: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator for an edited collection. All areas of study, with a common goal of representing the cultural and material impact of the film since its release in May 2000. Martin M. Winkler edited a collection about Gladiator regarding its historical and media aspects. There are also several single essays about psychological (Skweres), political, or cultural issues related to the film. Nevertheless, there have been no other collections on the cultural and social impact of the film since its release. With the twentieth anniversary approaching in 2020, the time is right for presenting new insights about this award-winning film.

Specific topics that the editor is seeking to round out the collection include:

• Depictions of the environment in the film 
• Depictions of nonhuman animals in the film (i.e. tigers) 
• Insights and innovative interpretations of characters besides Maximus (Commodus, Juba, Proximo, Gracchus, the senators, Lucilla, Lucius Verus) 
• Material and pop cultural aspects of fandom (posters, collectibles, other influences) 
• Cosplay and convention events

*CFP* LLAMADA A PARTICIPACIÓN, I CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE NARRACIÓN Y MUNDOS DE FICCIÓN EN CINE, TELEVISIÓN Y VIDEOJUEGOS

I Congreso Internacional de Narración y Mundos de Ficción en Cine, Televisión y Videojuegos

Sagas, remakes e intermedialidad

14, 15 y 16 de octubre de 2020

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

La evolución el sector del entretenimiento audiovisual y digital ha causado una considerable transformación en la oferta de obras de ficción (filmes, series de televisión y videojuegos). No sólo se ha aumentado el número de producciones ofrecidas a través de las nuevas plataformas de streaming para los tres sectores, sino que se han cambiado la orientación de los contenidos, de productos singulares a sagas, remakes y franquicias ligadas a imaginarios ya consolidados en la memoria del espectador y avalados por éxitos precedentes.  En el sector cinematográfico la proliferación del fenómeno del blockbuster como estrategia para llenar las salas, ha ocasionado que se recurra a valores seguros, lo que lleva a constantes remakes de producciones pasadas (el caso de Disney volviendo a producir sus grandes éxitos de animación en imagen real, filmes de éxito de décadas pasadas como Blade Runner o IT) o a la explotación hasta la extenuación de sagas como Star Wars o las adaptaciones del comic de super héroes de Marvel. 

*CFP* NINETEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES

Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Complutense University of Madrid

Organization: Common Ground Research Networks

New Directions in the Humanities Research Network: a conference and journal collection founded in 2003, exploring established traditions in the humanities as well as innovative practices that set a renewed agenda for their future.

The Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities 2021 will be held in Madrid, Spain on 30 June - 2 July 2021 at Complutense University of Madrid.

Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities 2021 covers topics such as:

*CFP* "TRAUMA AND HORROR", 59.2 ISSUE, FALL 2021, ENGLISH LANGUAGE NOTES, DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Later nineteenth-century psychology appropriated the medical term trauma, used to denote a wound derived from the violent piercing of the skin, to describe a violent breaching of subjectivity. Thus trauma came to refer to the violation of psychic boundaries (often conjoined with a physical violation as in the case of railway and industrial accidents), the event that caused the breach, and the long-term aftereffects of the breach. The event instantiating psychic trauma is so shocking, so devastating, that the ego’s defenses are broken down, and the subject is powerless to resist the overwhelming impressions that flood its barriers or to manage the swell of affective distress that results.

The abreaction or working-through of trauma should be furthered by the most painstakingly accurate representation of its inception and effects. However, contemporary trauma theorists have described the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of a “true” representation of traumatic events, given that the very experience of trauma involves the derangement or shattering of the subjective apparatus designed to process it. Traumatic events can only be understood belatedly and imperfectly; they give rise to repetitive dreams and uncontrollable flashbacks, and generate narratives characterized by disjunction and distortion, including the interpolation of fantasy elements. Thus the most faithful accounts of traumatic events, perversely, can only be rendered by means of narrative breaks and refusals, hyperbole and other modes of distortion, and displacement at one or more removes.

*CFP* "BRANDED CONTENT: NUEVAS FORMAS DE COMUNICACIÓN DE MARCA", MONOGRÁFICO, REVISTA MEDITERRÁNEA DE COMUNICACIÓN

Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación / Mediterranean Journal of Communication invita al envío de textos para el monográfico: Branded content: nuevas formas de comunicación de marca, coordinado por la Dra. Patricia Núñez Gómez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España), el Dr. Luis Mañas Viniegra (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España) y el Dr. Jonathan Hardy (University of East London, Reino Unido) que se publicará en enero de 2022 (V13N2). 

Branded content: nuevas formas de comunicación de marca

La disminución progresiva que en las últimas dos décadas han experimentado las audiencias de los medios convencionales y la eficacia de los formatos publicitarios convencionales ha propiciado la creación de nuevos formatos que buscan generar contenidos de interés para la audiencia en los que integrar la marca de forma natural, emocional y poco intrusiva, de modo que en muchas ocasiones el producto deja de ser lo más importante en virtud de los valores de la marca y la propia marca corporativa.

*CFP* "DIGITAL EDUCATION IN A TIME OF CRISIS: REFLECTIONS, CRITIQUES, AND CONVERSATIONS", NEXT ISSUE, DIGITAL CULTURE AND EDUCATION JOURNAL

As an open-access journal focused on the overlaps between technology, education, and culture, we at Digital Culture and Education (DCE) believe there is a pressing need to critically explore and reflect upon the ways in which we find education and technology are enmeshing in this unique and pivotal moment.

Beyond much-needed practical advice about how to use the many systems that are being proposed to address practical and pedagogical challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns remain about a number of issues. For example, concerns about the ways in which educational technologies create and perpetuate inequity; about which voices are emphasised online and which are minimised; about whether this is a pivot point and what it means for the future of higher education; about the creeping data surveillance and the information we reluctantly give away to access these pedagogical solutions; about the ethics and agendas of the companies producing these interventions; and about whether these technologies are fit for purpose.

*CFP* "COMUNICACIÓN DIGITAL Y AMENAZAS HÍBRIDAS", NÚMERO ESPECIAL, REVISTA ICONO14

Las actividades maliciosas en el ámbito de la información por parte de agentes estatales, no estatales y respaldados por el Estado son una parte esencial de las amenazas y operaciones híbridas. La guerra política, las medidas activas y la acción encubierta no son nuevas, pero las TIC y las herramientas y los canales de comunicación digital ofrecen oportunidades sin precedentes para llevar a cabo actividades hostiles coordinadas que explotan las vulnerabilidades de nuestras sociedades democráticas con diferentes objetivos.

El ciberespacio es reconocido como un dominio de operaciones en el que los canales de comunicación digital pueden ser explotados en campañas dirigidas contra individuos, instituciones y sociedades por medio de la información y la influencia en la toma de decisiones. Si bien el contenido de la comunicación de las interacciones simbólicas en las plataformas de los medios sociales tiene diversos grados de visibilidad, los comportamientos coordinados no auténticos y el uso de ciberproxies desafían la detección y la atribución. La militarización de la información por parte de agentes de amenazas híbridas puede adoptar múltiples formas y plantea la cuestión de cómo prevenirla, contrarrestarla y responder a ella sin socavar los derechos y libertades democráticos de nuestras sociedades.

*CFP* “LIFE CYCLES”, ISSUE 16, MEDIA FIELDS JOURNAL

Media lives. From the constant flow of broadcast news across time zones to the instant, constantly updated feed of social networks, the sense that our media is a living thing is central to our understanding and experience of it. While recent news lamenting the discontinuation of Adobe Flash Player and iTunes suggest media’s clearly delineated life expectancies—sparking nostalgic retrospectives and hurried campaigns to archive endangered content—the life cycles of media rarely resemble teleological timelines towards any deathly finality. As Garnet Hertz and Jussi Parikka argue, “Media never dies,” but instead “decays, rots, reforms, remixes, and gets historicized, reinterpreted, and collected.”

One need only look to online fake news campaigns that coopt and appropriate media content to construct new meanings of the past, or to the uncanny resurfacing of scandalous social media posts that undercut the supposed ephemerality of our digital footprint. If media never dies, then it is subject to perpetual recovery and transformation, especially in the contemporary context of a 24-hour news cycle that demands the unbroken replenishment of news stories to maintain a sense of never-ending liveness and feed the insatiable demands of global spectatorship.

*CFP* "GENDER AND COMEDY: STARS, PERFORMANCES, CHARACTERS", NEW ISSUE, THE GENRE EN SÉRIES: CINÉMA, TELÉVISION, MÉDIAS JOURNAL

The open-access and peer-reviewed online French journal Genre en séries: cinéma, télévision, médias is devoted to the study of gender representations in film, television and other visual media. The journal is published twice a year, and it welcomes articles in both English and French. This issue will address comedy from a gender and, more broadly, cultural perspective, focusing on the actors and actresses who have starred in comic films and television.

The immense popularity of some comedy stars is in stark contrast with the relatively few books and articles about them. There are some exceptions, almost always about male comic stars who are also renowned as filmmakers and auteurs (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, etc.), yet comic stars consistently attract less interest than their more “serious” counterparts. Comic performances are often left out of or ignored in filmographies of actors who specialize in other genres. This « ugly duckling » status in the realm of academic research on actors and actresses echoes the lack of critical recognition these stars receive. They rarely win awards at film award ceremonies like the Oscars or the Césars.

*CFP* "CONTENTIOUS DATA: THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF DATAFICATION", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES JOURNAL

Datafication is changing the conditions under which contemporary social movements operate, opening up new terrains of contention. As a result, grassroots initiatives in the realm of data activism, data justice, algorithmic accountability and/or resistance to mass surveillance mushrooms in liberal and authoritarian regimes alike. These initiatives vary by scale, organizational forms, tactics, political visions and technological imaginaries. They may take data “as repertoires”, whereby data and data-based tactics are mobilized as constituents of innovative tactics, or “as stakes”, that is to say issues or objects of political struggle in their own right. However, they share an emphasis on the contentious politics of data. 

While many instances of the contentious politics of data have come under the spotlight of specialists of digital politics and culture, social movement scholars are only starting to investigate the consequences of datafication on organized collective action. Yet datafication represents a paradigm change able to radically transform “social movement society”, urging social movements scholars to reflect on how it intersects with known social movement dynamics.

*CFP* "PORN AND ITS USES", 9.2 ISSUE, SYNOPTIQUE JOURNAL

Synoptique is inviting submissions for an upcoming special issue entitled “Porn and Its Uses.” Responding to the genre’s marginal status in the academy and beyond, this special issue seeks to explore how pornography can be (re)framed as useful—pedagogically, politically, aesthetically, and libidinally. Broadly framed, this may refer to pornography as both a difficult object of interest and as a method for critically analyzing the most pressing questions in our current moment.

Pioneering explorations of the genre within academia have treated pornography as a vibrant cinematic institution (Lesage, “Women and Pornography,” 1981), an oppositional grass-roots practice (Waugh, “Men’s Pornography, Gay vs. Straight,” 1985) and an instrument to gauge the organization of pleasure and control (Linda Williams, Hard Core, 1989). In 1996, an issue of Jump Cut dedicated a special section to the study of pornography. This seminal publication, edited by Chuck Kleinhans, curated articles, conference reports and even a sample syllabus in order to reframe the genre as a tool for analyzing issues of censorship, national cultures, gender and race. This issue of Synoptique seeks to recapture that intellectual impulse in the wake of recent academic forays that have placed pornography in the context of labour (Heather Berg), affect (Susanna Paasonen) and critical race studies (Mireille Miller-Young), among others.

*CFP* "ART AND AFFECT IN THE PREDICTIVE MIND", INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERNATIONAL 2020 CONFERENCE

Art and Affect in the Predictive Mind

24-25th September, 2020

University of York, UK

The conference will bring together philosophers, art historians and cognitive scientists for the first systematic exploration of the rich and still largely uncharted interactions between predictive processing and aesthetic experience.


The Theme

Predictive processing (PP) is an emerging framework at the cutting edge of theoretical cognitive science, and its philosophical implications are currently being hotly debated. This wide-ranging approach describes the human brain as an embodied probabilistic model of the world, constantly generating predictions about the causes of its sensory states and updating itself when a prediction error is encountered, in an effort to maintain a sustainable and homeostatic exchange with its environment. This prediction error minimization process is often taken to be an imperative of every biological system and a possible unifying principle for understanding perception, action, attention, experience and learning.

*CFP* "LA COMUNICACIÓN ANTE LA PANDEMIA DEL COVID-19", PRÓXIMO NÚMERO, REVISTA ESPAÑOLA DE COMUNICACIÓN EN SALUD

La Revista Española de Comunicación en Salud es una publicación editada por la Asociación Española de Comunicaciónen Salud (AECS) y la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, España. La revista considerará manuscritos para su revisión relacionados con la Comunicación y Salud en cualquiera de sus campos, teniendo como objetivo la difusión y mejora de la comunicación en salud en la sociedad actual, posicionándose como la revista científica de la comunicación y salud en español.

Se publica con una periodicidad semestral en formato electrónico de libre acceso y sus idiomas de referencia son el castellano, el portugués y el inglés, pudiéndose enviar el artículo en cualquiera de estos idiomas.

Con el objetivo de reflejar el momento trascendental en el que nos encontramos actualmente, la Revista Española de Comunicación en Salud ha decidido publicar este CFP para la publicación de manuscritos sobre la comunicación ante la pandemia del Covid-19. 

*CFP* "NOSTALGIA AND POPULAR CULTURE", SPECIAL ISSUE, AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE

Nostalgia is a pervasive part of our contemporary moment in popular culture. Connected to a sentimental longing and yearning for the return of an idealised and “mythical past” (Boym, 2001, p. 8), nostalgia can be seen to give a sense of comfort and reassurance. This goes towards explaining why popular culture is an ideal conduit for nostalgia, readily embraced as an “expedient and marketable mode” (Grainge, 2002 p. 58). Whether it is how media is put together and distributed, how technologies are perceived and received, or how narratives in popular culture are conceived and produced, nostalgia plays a pivotal role. It defies genre, mode, or medium; from television series such as Mad Men, Stranger Things, and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, to trends in fashion and popular music, nostalgia can be seen across the broad spectrum of popular culture texts and artefacts. These forms or modes use whimsy and re-imaginings of the past to remix, reboot, reissue, or reform ideas, ideologies, or narratives in purposeful and recurrent ways—popular culture seems addicted to its own past (Reynolds, 2011).

This special issue seeks articles that interrogate how nostalgic expressions are reviewed, reshifted, or revived in popular culture to illustrate how perceptions of memories and history shape our everyday lives. The editors invite submissions that examine intricate intersections between nostalgia and popular culture, particularly ones that explore dominant conceptions of nostalgia. This could include discussions pertaining to whether nostalgia restricts innovation and exploits our emotional connection to the past, real or imagined, or whether the use of nostalgia gives us an opportunity to re-examine ourselves and our history. Submissions should critically explore diverse and transformative examples in popular culture to illustrate how nostalgia is conceptualised.

*CFP* "THE ROCKY FORUM", NEW ISSUE, THE POPMEC RESEARCH BLOG

What can be better, during these uncertain times, than producing innovative research about fun primary sources that can fill our hearts with hope and motivation? With the aim of making that possible, the PopMec academic collective opens a call for papers about one of the most successful and influential American popular culture productions: the Rocky film series. Mostly written, starred and directed by Sylvester Stallone, the story of the Italian-American boxer Rocky Balboa cautived the world, since 1976 till our days, with 6 movies and 2 spin-offs (the Creed series). 

Do not let the crisis knockout your ideas and counterattack by submitting a full paper (4000 words max. including references) about any aspect related with the Rocky series and its multifaceted representation of the US, its internal conflicts and external enemies (all must include a 150-250 words max. abstract, author’s name and affiliation). The papers will be peer-reviewed on a rolling basis by our editorial team and external collaborators, who will get back at you with the shortest notice possible. In this case, the only language accepted is English.

*CFP* "VISUAL WORK IN PROGRESS", ECREA VISUAL CULTURES SECTION PRE-CONFERENCE

ECREA Visual Cultures Section Pre-Conference

2 October 2020

Braga, Portugal

Interest in visual forms of communication is rising, but researchers seldom get insight on how to go about one's research. During the pre-conference 'Visual Work in Progress' we will explicitly focus on ways of working with visual materials, thinking together about the pros and cons of various methodological alternatives.

The pre-conference will focus on our “visual work in progress”, mainly the conceptualization of and methodological approach to visual data in ongoing research projects. We encourage participants to share some part of their research visual material, so that we can discuss together our 'visual work in progress'.

The workshop will be organised as ‘data sprint’. Data Sprints are inspired by hackathons organised by the open source community, and are workshops in which participants from diverse backgrounds meet physically and collaborate intensively on a pre-determined subject and dataset.

*CFP* "DIGITAL INCLUSION OF VULNERABLE PEOPLE: FACTORS, SIGNIFICANCE, INTERSECTIONALITY, AND POLICY CHALLENGES", SPECIAL ISSUE, NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY JOURNAL

Over the last three decades, researchers have increasingly understood the existence of multiple and complex digital inequalities that vary in breadth and depth and involve evolving nuances, assigning a multi-faceted nature to digital inclusion and flagging up a complex terrain of hurdles to it (Blank and Groselj, 2014; Borg and Smith, 2018; Brandtzæg et al., 2011; Katz and Gonzalez, 2016; Mubarak, 2015; Tsatsou, 2011; 2012; 2017; van Deursen et al., 2011;  van Deursen and van Dijk, 2014; Witte and Mannon, 2010).

It is widely acknowledged that barriers to digital inclusion are connected with social exclusion and associated social capital and social stratification trends (Clayton and McDonald, 2013) and that those vulnerable and at high risk of social exclusion are also those in greatest need of digital inclusion (e.g., Acharya, 2016; Alam and Imran, 2015; Chadwick, Wesson and Fullwood, 2013; Fisher et al., 2014; Helsper and Eynon, 2010; Menger, Morris and Salis, 2016, Seale et al. 2015, Tsatsou, Youngs and Watt, 2017). Vulnerability, namely the ‘susceptibility to physical or emotional injury or attack’ (Ståsett, 2007, p. 51), is not a new concept and, while we ought to acknowledge that all humans and populations are potentially subject to conditions of vulnerability, there are some groups, which persistently face conditions of vulnerability, such as ethnic minorities/refugees, elderly, people with disabilities, homeless people, one-parent households, unemployed people, Gypsy-travelers, and others. 

*CFP* CALL FOR WORK: FIRST ANNUAL SMALL FILE MEDIA FESTIVAL

What do cat videos, facial recognition and porn all have in common? You can find them at the first annual Small File Media Festival!

The coronavirus pandemic is showing us how dependent people are on streaming media. Streaming media currently is responsible for over 1% of our global carbon footprint and rising fast.

Use your artistic voice to contribute to climate change action and cool down the planet. We’re going to make HD, 4K, and 5G look unnecessary, unsexy, and so last decade. Small file videos are intellectual, innovative, attractive, creative, and fun. We encourage you to explore experimental processes through low-energy technologies and deconstruct the fetishization of the pristine image.

If we can get together physically, the Small File Media Festival will be held August 10-12 in the beautiful cinema at Simon Fraser University in glorious Vancouver, Canada, and streamed in curated programs of tiny files. Selected works will be screened live and receive a rental fee. We will be featuring an “obsolete” media viewing platform for submissions with alternative technologies, and an anti-facial-recognition fashion show and workshops alongside the festival. Additionally, all accepted works will have the option of being curated and streamed online through energy conscious means.

*CFP* "POSTCOLONIAL POPULAR CULTURE: TEXTS, ARTEFACTS AND AFFECTS", CHAPTER BOOK

In a recent article Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen regretfully asked: “We did understand in our colonial past the inferior status of being a citizen of the British Raj. But can we really accept having a similar subjugation in our own democracy?” (ndtv.com. 16 April 2020).  However, it is not just the political reality of contemporary India that resonates with reverberations of colonial heritage. The typical postcolonial dream of provincializing Europe and by extension the West, remains a distant mirage as various aspects of contemporary Indian reality continue to longingly look west in search of models that may be emulated. 

The entire cultural world as a whole bears testimony to this phenomenon in the form of multiple texts, artefacts and attendant generation of affects. The quest for NRI grooms, popular Indian cinema, tourism industry, advertisements, reality shows, fashion trends, cartoons and merchandise, cosmetics and cafes - all exhibit varying degrees of conscious and unconscious mimicry, generated by the hegemonic authority of Western culture and its negotiations with diverse currents of the Indian popular cultural domain.  

*CFP* "MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNICATION IN A PANDEMIC CONTEXT", BOOK CHAPTER

The coronavirus crisis has led to individual reflections, sometimes presented in cChronicles, Oopinion Aarticles or Iinterviews, about the foundations of contemporary society, humanistic, mostly democratic and defender of Individual Human Rights.

The COVID-19 appears to have suspended all alleged certainties, freedoms, and guarantees. The first viral episode in Wuhan, China, in early December 2019, and which was only reported by the Chinese authorities just 30 days later, quickly replicated in other countries with overwhelming numbers of infected people and deaths, which would lead the World Health Organization to consider that the outbreak had reached pandemic status on 11 March 11. The pandemic has been making taking victims in 193 countries (RTP, 13/04/2020) and it is estimated that about 1/3 of the world’s population is estimated to be in isolation (Observador, 26/3/2020).

In this context, it is open a call for book chapters that integrate the perspectives of the communication sciences and that of social and human sciences on this phenomenon is opened, namely:

*CFP* "THE DARK SOCIAL: ONLINE PRACTICES OF RESISTANCE, MOTILITY AND POWER", SPECIAL EDITION, CONTINUUM JOURNAL

The intention of this special edition is to provoke critical examination of dark social spaces that are characterised by privacy enhancing technologies that might give rise to acts of resistance, division and evasion. Frequently, the actors using these technological affordances are commonly identified as subcultural groups, activists, marginalised cultures and communities, trolls and socially divisive actors who seek to evade, refuse or disrupt institutional power. We want to suggest, however, that this interpretation creates an artificial binary positioning a fringe of radical actors against institutions of governance, regulation and control. Similarly, approaches that distinguish between social agency and technological affordances protecting privacy, on the one hand, and institutional regulation and centralised surveillance on the other, do not acknowledge how powerful institutional actors use these decentralised technologies to reinforce their authority and control.

This special edition seeks to draw on, but push past these binaries to create new approaches to darknet and dark social studies. What is dark online often connotes moral registers toward what society hides or fears. Yet social spaces that are ‘dark’ offer autonomy and relief from the ever-lasting digital light in current iterations of capitalisms, authoritarianisms and surveillance cultures. A technical rather than moral definition of darkness (Gehl 2018) critiques moral determinism and opens for exploration those dark social spaces that seek legitimacy by offering linked anonymities for reader and publisher, against structural surveillance.

*CFP* "POLITICAL IMAGINARIES OF SMALL CINEMAS AND CULTURES", 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

11th International Conference

Political Imaginaries of Small Cinemas and Cultures

Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

September 11-12, 2020

In a world of mainly undisputed capitalism, growing populism, increased global mobility, migration catastrophes, and minority activism, new forms of political experience and imaginaries are emerging. For this reason, film and cultural studies need to reconsider the range and impact of the political and social forces that drive, within global frameworks, the construction and circulation of cultural products. Charles Taylor describes the social imaginary as a way to convey both the subjective realm of social existence and the collective strata of common practices and of perpetually evolving political institutions. The notion of the imaginary has emerged across diverse fields in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in other disciplines. However, film studies have not convincingly addressed the way in which small cinemas have attempted in the last decades to translate cultural, economic, social complexities on screen. The question is how images of the social, political, ideological were reshaped in the (post)neoliberal age and what effects they have on the cultural production of small nations.

*CFP* "COMICS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19", EDITED COLLECTION

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to infect millions, kill people around the world, dismantle political, economic and cultural infrastructures, and disrupt our everyday lives, we have seen a surge in amateur and professional creative activity in the comics medium. From blogs to Instagram, superheroes to public health, educational comics to graphic memoirs, etc., artists are engaging with a variety of genres, narratives, platforms and styles to tell stories.

This edited collection seeks to bring together a range of creative work, along with practice-based and critical reflections on what it means to make, share and read comics in the time of COVID-19. Bridging the fields of comics studies, memoir studies, graphic medicine and data storytelling, this collection also aims to explore our definitions of ‘what counts’ as graphic medicine and graphic storytelling.

*CFP* "FROM #DIGITALREVOLUTION TO THE #NEWSILKROAD", 25TH DISCOURSENET CONFERENCE ON GLOBAL DISPOSITIVES

25th DiscourseNet Conference on Global Dispositives

From #DigitalRevolution to the #NewSilkRoad

12-15.11.2020

University of Tyumen

25th DiscourseNet Conference on Global Dispositives (#DN25, November 12-15 2020) deals with the processes of social change that are discursively driven and supported by technological infrastructures and new cultural, economic and political relations. In the context of globalization, they affect transformations in all social domains – from economy to culture, including media and education, (digital) technology, industry and environment, politics and governance.

Global Dispositives can be recognised in popular examples of social change. First of all, the global political and economic projects, i.e. the discourses evolving around the Belt and Road Initiative, new infrastructural development of the Arctic region, Eurasian Economic Union but also on small-scale and in semi-official or informal organisations such as the Three Seas Initiative, Visegrad Group or countries within the mini-Schengen integration project. Secondly, global dispositives can be tied to discourses of technology, security and warfare. Examples are not only projects such as the Internet itself (or rather the entire World Wide Web), but also discourses bound up to its structural changes like the implementation of 5G internet technology, balkanization of the internet, various concepts of IoT or surveillance etc. 

*CFP* "PHILOSOPHY AND LANDSCAPE. EAST AND WEST", SPECIAL ISSUE 2020, THE JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND PHENOMENOLOGY

The landscapes we live within play a vital role in all aspects of human life and have become an important locus of phenomenological analysis. Often, landscapes are venerated for their beauty, sublimity, or their sacred status. Others, those too close to notice, the mundane landscapes of our everyday lives, hide themselves and in so doing are no less (or perhaps more) important for determining how we are as human beings, how we move, perceive, imagine, and think, perhaps even how we philosophize. We find ourselves as earthbound beings among the landscapes of the sacred and the mundane, the elevated and the everyday, the visible and the invisible. Inquiring between and beyond these binaries, the Fall 2020 volume of the The Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology will explore the various thinkers and artists East and West who have disclosed the rich potential of landscape for philosophy.

Submissions are welcome from all philosophical approaches and traditions exploring any number of issues or debates relating to and expanding the philosophies and phenomenological analysis of aesthetic issues relating to landscape; including, landscape art, painting, sculpture, landscape gardens, representations in cinema, virtual landscapes, topics relating to landscape and territory, migration, pilgrimage, religion, boundaries/borders, geophilosophy, the environment, as well as philosophies of place, environmental aesthetics, and issues arising from intercultural dialogue on landscape art and aesthetics.

*CFP* "SVOD PLATFORMS AND THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION", CHAPTER BOOK

Τelevision content has expanded to different and new ways of distribution and screening enabled by the evolution of technology and the advent of new media. The diversity of production and distribution models can be divided into three general categories: broadcast networks (such as ABC, NBC, CBS etc.), cable networks (such as HBO, Showtime, AMC etc.), and online subscription services that provide their content via streaming (such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max etc.)

Subscription video on demand (SVOD) platforms are similar to traditional TV packages that allow users to consume as much content as they desire at a flat fee per month. Unlike the economic model of conventional broadcast networks that is primarily dependent on revenue provided by advertisers in exchange for a network’s inclusion of advertisements within their programming broadcasts, the subscription model is based on a direct economic relationship between the institution and its subscribers who pay a fee in exchange for access to programming. Netflix is a pioneer in this field, but currently, a lot of production companies, like Disney, Apple, and WarnerMedia, have created their SVOD platforms to host their content.

*CFP* "WHO CARES? DIGITAL PLATFORMS, SHARING AND REGULATION IN CONNECTED ECONOMIES" EDITED VOLUME, COMUNICAÇAO E SOCIEDADE

Sharing Economy is a common expression used to refer to various forms of exchange facilitated by digital platforms involving a great diversity of profit-oriented and non-profit activities with a broad spectrum of social, economic, cultural, and political purposes. The underlying idea of the sharing economy is generally about giving access to unused resources. This model has rekindled the promises of an economically sustainable society shaped by the various forms of connections.

On the one hand, it is considered that the connective power of information and communication technologies has led to the creation of new business models motivated by cyber culture-inspired logics (e.g., open access, collaboration and sustainability), as well as favouring the financial autonomy of users and environmental preservation through a community consumption project on the global and/or regional scales. On the other hand, a more critical view considers that when it is being dominated by large companies such as Uber and Airbnb, Sharing Economy helps to instrumentalise expensive social concepts such as the idea of home, solidarity, and trust to reinforce capitalist interests and reiterate precariousness, technological dependence, and social inequalities.

*CFP* "TEACHING JOURNALISM IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: CONSTRAINTS AND OPPORTUNITIES", EDITED COLLECTION

The proposed edited collection aims to explore the possibilities and limitations of teaching journalism in countries with strong media control. Target publisher: Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South, Palgrave Macmillan. Recent scholarship has expressed increasing concern over the importance of acknowledging the varieties of journalism and its teaching around the world. It has been suggested that universalistic assumptions of what constitutes journalism should be challenged and domestic cultural standards and diverse political configurations should be taken into account (Mensing and Franklin, 2011; Hanitzsch et al., 2019; Bebawi, 2016; Mikal, 2014; Obijiofor and Hanusch, 2011; Berger, 2011; Schiffrin, 2011; Josephi, 2010; Hossein, 2007; Friedman, Shafer and Rice, 2006). An interdisciplinary, cross-geographical approach has been advocated as a way to spur discussion and criticism of the theoretical and practical principles underpinning journalism education. Collaborative work, at the global level among journalism educators, could foster the reciprocal exchange of ideas promoting innovation in practice, curriculum design and research (Mensing and Franklin, 2011). 

A focus on countries with robust media control, in times when the relationship between education and profession is being debated at a global level, might foster a discussion on the paradoxical features characterizing the tension between theory and practice. Typical questions arising are, for instance, whether journalism educators can teach effectively in a restrained media environment without compromising the very principles they are trying to abide by (Thompson, 2007). Existing studies note how in countries with strong governmental influence journalism programs face contradictory priorities over ideological impositions and commercial or educational imperatives (Obijiofor and Hanusch, 2011).

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, NEW ISSUE, JOURNAL OF GENDER, ETHIC AND CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES

The Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary journal with the primary goal to facilitate the examination of the intersection among gender, cultural, and ethnic studies. Published biannually, this journal seeks to invigorate discussions of the global mobilization of people, ideas, and capital, and the ways in which this circulation has influenced conceptions of gender, ethnicity/race, migration, and culture. In the very same way, the journal examines the gendered nature of cultures and cultural encounters across borders. It is committed to facilitating intersectional, interdisciplinary dialogue which results from the crossing of disciplinary boundaries.

By virtue of this commitment, The Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies invites the submission of scholarly articles from diverse fields and disciplines including, but not limited to, Gender and Women’s Studies, History, Literary and Critical Studies, Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Cultural Studies, Disabilities Studies, and Religious Studies.

All research articles in this journal undergo peer review.

*CFP* "POSTHUMAN PATHOGENESIS: VIRUS, DISEASE AND EPIDEMIOLOGY IN LITERATURE, FILM AND MEDIA", EDITED VOLUME

Since the Age of Enlightenment, which glorified reason and empirical observation as the nexus for human knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution, which brought about robust technological changes, science and scientific thinking have been increasingly placed above everything else. But from a humanities perspective, fiction has always moved one step ahead of science, dreaming of the impossible first. Science-fiction and speculative fiction, in both utopian and dystopian forms, are concrete examples of this. From Mary Shelley to Jules Verne, George Orwell, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Margaret Atwood, many authors explored what the future holds for the world in their narratives of the ‘back-then’ unimaginable. Following a similar path to the literary examples, film industry and new media genres such as music videos, computer and mobile games, and advertisements have come to shape our imagination and paved the way for the future technologies, at least before they came true.

Germs, bacterial and viral infections, and subsequent pandemics are no exception to the meeting point of science, technology, and fiction. They are, to adopt and evolve Donna Haraway’s metaphor of the cyborg, a blend of myth and social reality. Bending the boundaries between life and death, they are the powerholders in Achilles Mbembe’s “necropolitics,” calling to mind Jacques Derrida’s words in his exploration of the animal question: “The dead-alive viruses, undecidably between life and death, between animal and vegetal, that come back from everywhere to haunt and obsess my writing” (“The Animal that Therefore I am” 406).

*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* "THE ZOOM FUNCTION", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA

Technology zooms. This brief phrase points to its kinetic dimensions (automobiles zoom across our landscape), its temporality (microchips advance and processing power proliferates exponentially), and the ways it modulates space and scale (zooming in, a molecule becomes a mountain; zooming out, a planet becomes a pea). Zooming links senses of sight (magnification), sound (onomatopoeia), and touch (movement), key dimensions in which performance proceeds and through which art--especially technologically mediated art--addresses its audiences.

Zooming draws together fields as varied as aeronautics, optics, and economics, and it calls to mind unique bodily effects, including frenetic gestures, droning sounds, and the energies that indicate vivaciousness itself. And zooming reverberates politically: it names the speed of progress and progressive desires; it undergirds the logic of anarchist, Marxist, or post-humanist accelerationism; it prompts the protests of those who call for slow food, slow medicine, slow travel, and so (slow) on. The zoom function can be found at work at diverse interfaces between science, art and architecture, and philosophy; it appears implicitly or explicitly in the writings of scholars as varied as Richard Feynman, Donna Haraway, and Paul Virilio to name a small sample. The zoom function provides a framework to understand our relationship to technology in the 21st century.

*CFP* "THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY IN LATIN AMERICA", VOL. 1 AND VOL. 2, CHAPTER BOOK

David Ramírez Plascencia (University of Guadalajara) and Barbara Carvalho Gurgel (UMass Dartmouth) invite you to send full chapters for the edited collections The Politics of Technology in Latin America Vol. 1 and Vol. 2., which will be submitted to Routledge’s Series, Emerging Technologies, Ethics and International Affairs. The editorial has already accepted the project and it is under contract, we are looking for additional works to complete both volumes. Chapters related with the following topics are particularly welcome:

1. Deep Web. 
2. Cyberterrorism. 
3. Data privacy in the workplace. 
4. Labor market, robots and artificial intelligence. 
5. Human trafficking and digital media. 
6. Covid-19 pandemic and the use of Information technology in health, domestic and education issues. 
7. Women and digital activism. 
8. Robots, artificial intelligence and healthcare.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, THE SUPERHERO PROJECT: THE GLOBAL MEETING 2020

The Superhero Project: 4th Global Meeting

Friday 4th to Sunday 6th September 2020

Die Wolfsburg, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen, Germany

“What would you prefer, yellow spandex…?”

X-Men (2000)

2020 marks twenty years since the release of X-Men, which sparked a re-emergence of the superhero on screen and led to a spectacular ascent towards being the most successful and globally popular genre in cinema history, with dozens of films produced and many billions of dollars earned in the last two decades – an aggressive dominance that shows no signs of receding.

In the last year, the titanic Avengers: Endgame provided the superhero film with its biggest-ever canvas and, sandwiched between Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home, brought Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a triumphant finish, after eleven years and twenty-three films. Yet, late in 2019, DC placed its most iconic villain centre stage in Todd Phillips’ Joker, which provided a truly striking take on Batman’s arch-nemesis, drawing on 70’s New Hollywood aesthetics and exploring issues such as mental health and social revolt. 

*CFP* CALL FOR BOOK REVIEWS, GLOBAL MEDIA AND CHINA JOURNAL

Global Media and China (GMAC) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal, which provides a dedicated, interdisciplinary forum for international research on communication and media with a focus on China. It is also a journal of the International Communication Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). 

GMAC has been accepted for inclusion in Web of Science’s Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in October 2019.

The journal now is seeking reviewers for the following books:

*CFP* "FICTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS OF NERDS AND LONELINESS ACROSS VARIOUS MEDIA AND CULTURES", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, in association with SOAS and the University of Oxford, is delighted to announce the latest opportunity to contribute to a special issue, on the theme of Fictional representations of nerds and loneliness across various media and cultures.

We are looking for contributions which explore fictional representations of nerds and loneliness across various media and cultures. Traditionally associated with a particular niche culture, nerds entered the mainstream through popular formats such as the highly successful TV show The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019) in the early 21st Century. Besides, the pervasiveness of the popular image of nerds has crossed linguistic borders and depictions of nerds are frequent beyond the Anglo-American context, as attested by the term nerd being widely used in languages such as Italian or German.

Full details on the call, along with how to submit are available online.

*CFP* "FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN RECONFIGURATIONS IN THE JOURNALISM-AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP", EDITED COLLECTION

Since the advent of the internet, the rapid development of emerging technologies has posed significant challenges and opportunities for journalism. Many of the implications, driven by a digital revolution, have been complex, latent and unforeseen. Rigorously researched and well-argued predictions can contribute to the planning and development of journalistic practice and output.

Arguably, the most crucial locus of change is the journalism-audience relationship. Or as more contemporary parlance would have it: the relationship between journalism and the “people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen 2006). The past few decades have already brought about seismic shifts of power in this relationship. Further technological advancements are likely to continue impacting on an increasingly fluid status quo.

We invite scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to author chapters forming empirical, theoretical, critical, practice-reflections and policy-based contributions to an edited collection that aims to predict future trends in journalism.

*CFP* “KNOWLEDGE INFRAESTRUCTURES AND DIGITAL GOVERNANCE. HISTORY, CHALLENGES, PRACTICES”, OPERAS 2020 WORKSHOP

Knowledge Infraestructures and Digital Governance. History, Challenges, Practices

Three-day OPERAS 2020 Workshop

7-9 de Septiembre 2020

University of Luxembourg, Luxemburgo

This 3 days workshop is organized by the OPERAS (a European research infrastructure for the development of open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities) community. It aims at revisiting digital knowledge infrastructures from an organisational and governance perspective, through their history, their stakes and achievements, as well as their challenges and obstacles.

Our workshop aims to explore how these infrastructures frame themselves, evolve and adapt, how they stimulate participation and implement innovative models of governance (e.g. Wikipedia) as well as how they create a shared culture and common values, how they sustain knowledge commons and may contribute to a new epistemology and scientific environment.

*CFP* "POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY", THEMATIC DOSSIER, DOC ON-LINE 28 (SEPTEMBER 2020), DIGITAL MAGAZINE ON DOCUMENTARY CINEMA

Moving images have always been a valuable document about the moment in which they were produced. Whether fabulous, invented stories, or recorded situations of the historical world, cinema, as well as any form of representation, keeps traces of its time. With regard to documentary cinema, crises, national or international commotions were responsible for the emergence of new trends in the recording of reality or led certain filmmakers to acquire their credentials to occupy a place in the history of nonfiction film. In the first case, as an example, we have the “Kino Pravda” emerging in the post-revolution environment of 1917 in the Soviet Union; or the “British Documentary Film Movement” that promoted the British empire in the late 1920s and 30s. Then, we find Leni Riefensthal and the propaganda of the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945), or Pare Lorentz in the United States and his engagement in Frank D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s. In these cases, politics and ideology were evident drivers of the nominated movements.

Nowadays, we have seen a wave of political conservatism on a planetary level and a geopolitical rearrangement involving the main global economies.

*CFP* "ORIENT YOURSELF IN THE SOCIETY OF UNCERTAINTY. LIFE PATHS AND TRAJECTORIES IN THE AGE OF THE NEW/NET/KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY", SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE LAB'S QUATERLY CFP

Recent developments in globalisation processes have produced an increasing precariousness in the labour market. The New/Net/Knowledge Economy requires a capacity for continuous adaptation to innovations following one another at an increasingly accelerated pace, and needs a “human capital” prepared to carry out work activities with the best possible results in rapidly changing conditions. In this scenario, competences have assumed a strategic role, meant primarily, even if not exclusively, as a set of resources that are acquired through practice and get transformed into useful devices for productive activities.

In the “Knowledge Society”, theoretical knowledge seems to be placed in the background, while skills are considered fundamental for overcoming the imbalance between job demand and supply (skills mismatch) and consequently for economic growth processes. Particularly, in the workplace, alongside “hard skills” − formal competences based on the knowledge of subjects − so-called transversal competences or “soft skills” are increasingly required. Non-formal competences, related to the social and emotional dimension, such as perseverance, flexibility, self-confidence, communication skills, the ability to work in a team, conflict management, etc. are considered decisive aspects in the workplace and more and more often school or academic certifications are of less importance because they are deemed of little utility in order to assess workers’ potential.

*CFP* "TEATRO, NARRATIVA Y DEPORTES EN LOS INICIOS DEL SIGLO XXI", XXIX SEMINARIO INTERNACIONAL DEL SELITEN

XXIX Seminario Internacional del SELITEN: 

Teatro, narrativa y deportes en los inicios del siglo XXI

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

Edificio de Humanidades, UNED. Paseo Senda del Rey, 7. 28040- Madrid (España)

Viernes, 15 mayo, 2020

El Centro de Investigación de Semiótica Literaria, Teatral y Nuevas Tecnologías (SELITEN@T), de la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), celebra este seminario del 24 al 26 de junio de 2020 en Madrid (España). 

El objetivo de estudiar lo publicado/representado en el ámbito teatral desde el año 2000 al 2020, tanto en España (en sus diferentes lenguas) como en Iberoamérica y otros ámbitos internacionales, en relación con dos líneas básicas desarrolladas en el SELITEN@T, en los siguientes apartados:

*CFP* CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, CULTURE IN QUARANTINE JOURNAL

With approximately one-fifth of the world’s population currently in lockdown, the novel coronavirus (COVID–19) pandemic has drastically changed many of our lives. According to official statistics, the virus has now infected over one million individuals across 209 countries and territories, and such draconian measures are likely to have saved countless lives. But, the effects of the virus reach far beyond its biological capacity to cause illness. Originating in Wuhan, China, its rapid spread across national boundaries has drawn attention to the porous and interconnected world that we live in. The resulting economic consequences of the lockdown measures highlight the volatility of the global economy and the precarity of those whose labour sustains it. At the same time, it has transformed the way we interact with one another and understand ourselves, as new forms of creativity and solidarity emerge. In the time of coronavirus, both critical cultural analysis and sustained personal reflection are needed more than ever to put these emerging new realities into perspective.

*CFP* "NERD: NEW EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH IN DESIGN", 2020 CONFERENCE

NERD: New Experimental Research in Design

23-24 October 2020

HAW Hamburg, Germany

The particular epistemic and innovative potentials of Design Research are increasingly recognized within the wider academic sphere and are in constantly growing demand by businesses, institutions and politics alike. Yet, design research also is a field and practice that, due to its in-between nature, lacks the clear boundaries and formal dogmatisms of more traditional research disciplines, as well as their implicit notions of secured knowledge and linear progress.

Recognizing this inherent openness as one of its key qualities, the New Experimental Research in Design (in short: NERD) conference aims at providing a genuinely diverse and open platform for discussing, reflecting on and exposing to a wider public the manifold ways in which design’s unique perspective and proficiencies can intelligently be applied as a research competence. It does so by inviting presentations of empirical research projects by researchers from around the world and from all areas of design research with a focus on methodologically and thematically original approaches.

*CFP* "ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIA AMIDST THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC", 1.2 ISSUE SPECIAL SUPLEMENT, JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIA

While immediate global efforts are focused on containing the devastating spread of Covid-19, important conversations are also emerging regarding the immediate and long-term social, political, cultural and environmental implications of the current crisis. Among them are two widely addressed, but rarely intersecting topics. The first is environmental – for example, noting the positive impact of global lockdowns on carbon emissions due to reduced flights and motor travel; or addressing the future of ecological resilience and climate change based on lessons learned during the coronavirus pandemic. The second regards the role of digital media – the rise of remote working, teleconferencing, online education, and in the immediate tackling of the epidemic via contact tracing. Digital media has proven central to sustaining the social fabric of everyday life, accentuating the importance of digital access at times of restricted movement and physical contact, as well as substantially expanding digital surveillance.

While each of the two topics – digital media and the environment – are receiving their due media and scholarly attention, they are rarely examined together, leaving unchallenged crucial questions regarding the relations between digital knowledge and technologies, environmental justice and the global pandemic. This special, open access section of the Journal of Environmental Media aims to facilitate a collection of ‘rapid response’ reflections on these questions, by inviting short (2000–3000 words) contributions. 

*CFP* "ADVANCING DIGITAL DISCONNECTION RESEARCH", PRE-CONFERENCE

Advancing Digital Disconnection Research

Date of pre-conference: 2 October 2020

Over the past years, digital disconnection has attracted interest across media and communication studies. “Digital disconnection” as well as related concepts (non-use, abstention, avoidance and detox) are discussed in a growing number of publications. However, questions are also raised about what disconnection really means and how we can study it, about paradoxes and inherent dilemmas that affect research on disconnection as well as the phenomenon itself. The time has come to critically consider the contributions, challenges and promises of digital disconnection research. This preconference invites papers on digital disconnection as a concept and area of research, and engages participants in a dialogue concerning contradictions and dilemmas, as well as future possibilities and agendas.

The pre-conference is supported by the ECREA sections: Audience and Reception Studies, Digital Culture and Communication, and Mediatization. It is sponsored by the research project Digitox at the University of Oslo, funded by the Research Council of Norway, and Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies (CICANT) at the Lusófona University of Porto.

*CFP* "MISINFORMATION/DISINFORMATION STUDIES", Nº 11 (2020), ESTUDOS DE JORNALISMO JOURNAL

In this issue of Estudos de Jornalismo Journal, we propose to take a look at the problem of disinformation/misinformation, “fake news” and manipulation. The emphasis on disinformation/misinformation is more than ever justified by the proliferation of phenomena related to it and by the risks involved in public dialogue and decision-making in areas such as politics, economics, culture, science and the journalistic field itself. Unpublished papers are accepted that present research results and/or theoretical reflection on, among others:

• Disinformation and “false news” in national, regional, local and community contexts; 
• Disinformation processes and new gatekeepers capable of spreading false information virally; 
• New gatekeeping processes: algorithms, polarization and filter bubbles; 
• Journalistic practices, objectivity and distance in contexts of proximity information; 
• The role and perceptions of audiences and audiences on issues related to misinformation and “false news”; 
• Social media and the selective sharing of news in disinformation processes; 
• Media literacy strategies as an element to prevent and combat disinformation; 
• New or reformulated theoretical, experimental and methodological approaches to the study of disinformation processes.

*CFP* "SILVER SCREENS: AGEING MASCULINITIES IN FILM AND VISUAL CULTURES", CONFERENCE AND EDITED COLLECTION

Silver Screens: Ageing Masculinities in Film and Visual Cultures

conference and edited collection

NUI Galway Sept 4-5th 2020

Film and Visual Cultures [TV; advertising; photography; media] are instrumental not only in reflecting but in constructing and reinforcing popular images and narratives of ageing.

As western cinema makers and audiences are “greying”, it is to be expected that explorations of the theme of ageing and representations of mature characters are becoming more popular and diverse.

This is confirmed by the success of recent European films such as Pain & Glory (2019) Toni Erdmann (2016), Youth (2016) A Man Called Ove (2018), 45 Years (2015), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) and Amour (2012), among others. American cinema has also generated a range of texts in recent years such as The Old Man & the Gun (2018), The Mule (2019), Nebraska (2013).

*CFP* "REINVENTIONS AND NEW POETICS OF CINEMA IN THE POST-INTERNET ERA", NEW ISSUE, CONTRATEXTO JOURNAL

Contratexto is an Open Access refereed academic journal published by the Faculty of Communication at the University of Lima every six months, with emphasis on the field of communication and related branches. It edits articles, research papers, essays and bibliographical reviews in Spanish, Portuguese and English. Article Processing Charges (APC) are not required.

The 34th edition of Contratexto will address the deep transformations caused by the democratization of internet access, phone applications, digital cameras, and in general terms, of new technologies and new audiovisual media in the aesthetic and poetic tendencies, the film industry and its economy, the production, distribution and exhibition practices but also in critical and academic reception of film works.

Dossier editors: Gala Hernández López (Universidad París 8, Francia) y Alex Pena Morado (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, España).

*CFP* "ADAPTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY SCANDINAVIAN SCREEN CULTURES", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF SCANDINAVIAN CINEMA

Adaptations have played a significant role throughout the history of Nordic cinema, from Victor Sjöström’s reverential silent adaptations to Aki Kaurismäki’s quirky take on world literature. To this day, adaptations remain of utmost importance to Nordic film and television, as the multi-media phenomenon of Nordic noir conclusively establishes. Both in Sweden and internationally, readers have followed Lisbeth Salander and Kurt Wallander from book to screen and back again.

The scope and role of adaptation in the Nordic region is nevertheless far from limited to crime fiction. In this Special Issue we therefore wish to broaden the scope by looking at other important aspects of Nordic adaptation.

In particular, we encourage contributions on the following topics and approaches:

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, GIGANET 2020 SYMPOSIUM

 GigaNet 2020

The Global Internet Governance Academic Network

Monday, 2 November 2020

Katowice, Poland

GigaNet – the Global Internet Governance Academic Network – is now accepting extended abstracts for papers to be presented at its annual symposium.

As of now, GigaNet 2020 is planned to be held alongside the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Katowice, Poland. We expect our symposium to take place on “Day 0” of the IGF, which is Monday, 2 November.

Papers on any Internet/data governance-related topic are welcome. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. There will be the possibility of a focused subset of accepted papers to be fast-tracked for publication in a relevant journal. 

*CFP* "ADAPTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY SCANDINAVIAN SCREEN CULTURES", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE JOURNAL OF SCANDINAVIAN CINEMA

Adaptations have played a significant role throughout the history of Nordic cinema, from Victor Sjöström's reverential silent adaptations to Aki Kaurismäki’s quirky take on world literature.

To this day, adaptations remain of utmost importance to Nordic film and television, as the multi-media phenomenon of Nordic noir conclusively establishes. Both in Sweden and internationally, readers have followed Lisbeth Salander and Kurt Wallander from book to screen and back again.

The scope and role of adaptation in the Nordic region is nevertheless far from limited to crime fiction.

In this special issue of the Journal of Scandinavian Cinema we therefore wish to broaden the scope by looking at other important aspects of Nordic adaptation. In particular, we encourage contributions on the following topics and approaches:

*CFP* "CHINESE AESTHETICS: TRADITIONAL AND TRANSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES", SPECIAL VOLUME, THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS (JCLA)

China has a long and rich tradition of artistic practices and aesthetic theory, but this tradition has, in contemporary times, been underutilized in international philosophical aesthetics and transcultural theory. This issue of JCLA aims to address this problem by inviting papers that explore Chinese aesthetics, the role it has played in international and transcultural aesthetics, and the most promising ways it could contribute to these fields: 

• Chinese Aesthetic Theory (Traditional and Contemporary); 
• The “traveling” of Chinese art and aesthetics in the history, such as Chinoiserie; 
• Chinese aesthetics as inspirations for other aesthetic cultures or theoretical invention; 
• Comparative studies of aesthetics or artistic genres (poetry, painting, music, drama, calligraphy, etc) between Chinese and other cultural traditions. 

*CFP* "THE US REPRESENTATION IN POPULAR CULTURE AND MEDIA", NEW ISSUE, THE POPMEC ACADEMIC BLOG

We are a lively academic collective interested in investigating the articulation of the numerous and heterogeneous representations which have been constructing images of the US. Our research delves into how the US—their history, society, and diverse cultures—have been represented in popular media and cultural creations. Our blog aims at providing a collaborative, engaging, and fair environment for any interested scholar, promoting the sharing of knowledge, experience, and ideas across disciplines and thematic fields. We’re also working to foster a stimulating space for early career researchers and postgraduate students in North American studies, thus we’ll warmly welcome their proposals.

True to the PopMeC spirit, we would like to take advantage of this (confusing and boring) quarantine moment to keep on producing and sharing engaging, stimulating, fun academic work. We invite you to browse the academic blog, and write write write! Contribute to feed our space with your work, have fun jotting down your thoughts, ideas, reshaping your working papers, putting your pop review out there!

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, ISSUE 7, FOUND FOOTAGE MAGAZINE

Found Footage Magazine is a printed and double-blind peer reviewed film studies publication devoted to the reuse and repurposing of extant media in moving image art. FFM will select essays/articles that engage with scholar discourses from a wide range of found footage filmmaking theory and praxis.

Key words:

• Found Footage filmmaking
• Recycled Film
• Collage Film
• Archival Footage
• Compilation Film 
• Assemblage Films
• Recut movies
• AV Remix
• Mashup
• Supercut

*CFP* "IMPROVING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION THROUGH STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION", ECREA 2020 PRE-CONFERENCE

ECREA 2020 Pre Conference

Improving public participation through strategic communication

2nd October 2020

University of Minho, Portugal

Keynote Speaker: Magda Pieczka, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

We are facing an era of a permanent search for new answers to contemporary environmental, political and social challenges. The public, as producers, receivers or users have wide access to information and tend to be more exposed to communication, being an essential element in this equation.

Publics are at the origin of the paradigm changes, thus they have the power to influence behaviors, individually or being part of organizations and they ask for different ways of behavior from the organizations. From the other side, themselves, acting as citizens, are at the same time change agents with a strong ability to influence decision making.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND THE CORONA PANDEMIC IN AFRICA", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF AFRICAN MEDIA STUDIES

The Journal of African Media Studies is cordially inviting you to submit a paper to be included in a thematic issue on Media and the Corona Pandemic in Africa. Since its outbreak in China, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has brought the world into a standstill, through various forms of lockdown, social distancing and self-quarantine. In Africa, as in other parts of the world, the pandemic is affecting every sphere of life including travel, education, business, informal sector, religion, health and entertainment. The public demand for information is unprecedented. The pandemic is attracting a huge amount of attention in media. Conversation issues in social media revolve around Covid-19. We invite articles that focus on the unfolding corona-crisis in Africa. 

What are the stories emerging from the continent? How is the media depicting the coronavirus pandemic? Articles for this special issue will focus on a number of issues around the Covid-19 pandemic and the media in Africa.