*CFP* "DIFUSIÓN SOCIAL DE NOTICIAS: PLATAFORMAS, PÚBLICOS Y DIMENSIONES DE NEWS SHARING", NÚMERO ESPECIAL ABRIL 2022, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY JOURNAL

Internet, las redes sociales y los dispositivos móviles han impulsado el papel activo del público en la difusión, el consumo y la interpretación de los medios. Los públicos ya no son simples receptores finales de un mensaje, sino que actúan como nodos en una red en la que seleccionan, moldean y difunden noticias y otros contenidos mediáticos. Este nuevo contexto desafía la influencia de los medios de masas y hace que sea vital entender el modo en el que la audiencia comparte y distribuye noticias entre sus contactos.

Este número especial aborda cuestiones que han sido relativamente poco estudiadas, así como la búsqueda de hipótesis contrarias a la intuición que podrían poner en tela de juicio paradigmas establecidos y ampliamente aceptados en la investigación sobre mes sharing, como las cámaras de eco, los discursos de incitación al odio, el social news gap o el papel de los líderes de opinión. Si bien la mayor parte de la investigación sobre redes sociales se ha centrado en Twitter, algunos estudios han puesto de relieve que el público comparte y comenta cada vez con más frecuencia las noticias en entornos más privados y de menor tamaño, como los servicios de mensajería instantánea (WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.), los grupos de Facebook y otros espacios digitales privados o semiprivados. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, VIRTUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRESS/POLITICS

 "Virtual Conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics"

The International Journal of Press/Politics

13 - 16 September 2021

On 13-16 September 2021, the seventh conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics, focused on academic research on the relationship between media and political processes around the world, will be held virtually. Professor Young Mie Kim from the University of Wisconsin will deliver a keynote lecture.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 5 July 2021. Attendees will be notified of acceptance by 12 July 2021. Full papers based on accepted abstracts will be due 1 September 2021. A selection of the best full papers presented at the conference will be published in the journal after peer review.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND POPULISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, REVISTA MEDIA & JORNALISMO

The scholarly journal Revista Media & Jornalismo (ICNOVA, Nova University, Lisbon) invite researchers to submit articles that discuss the contemporary populisms for a special issue on “Media and Populism” (Number to be published in 2022).

The “populist” label is almost always used to describe a wide range of individuals, parties, and movements, from left to right, who structure their political strategy around a dualistic and simplifying conception of reality. Concept of multiple semantic variations, depending on historical and political context in which it is employed, populism has been identified as a low-density ideology, quite sophisticated in terms of electoral effectiveness, which considers – in a Manichean perspective -society divided in two antagonistic groups: “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” postulating the people’s unrestricted sovereignty. The populist assumes strategies of communication and rhetoric that value the perception of the existence of a monolithic people, whose identity would be threatened by the action of enemy groups -what some leaders call “Homeland enemies”. In this sense, populism is defined as discourse based on simplistic judgments and easy dichotomies, where the people (the crowd) are told what they hope to hear, polarizing society and dividing citizens between good and bad people.

*CFP* "POLÍTICA, MEDIOS Y REDES SOCIALES. ENTRE LA CONVERGENCIA Y LA DIVERGENCIA", VOLUMEN 17, Nº 1, REVISTA INMEDIACIONES DE LA COMUNICACIÓN

La influencia mediática convencional ya no tiene asidero en el nuevo ecosistema, donde el surgimiento de plataformas interactivas convive con las dificultades económicas y financieras que atraviesan los medios tradicionales, vulnerados en su capacidad de demarcar la opinión del público de manera generalizada y homogénea. En este interregno, la pregunta que subyace es: ¿las redes sociales son un desafío real para los estándares tradicionales del periodismo o, en cambio, una herramienta de normalización? Depende.

Más allá de las promesas democratizadoras, las redes sociales son entidades jerárquicas, caracterizadas por asimetrías entre los usuarios y por una alta concentración de la información. Los mayoristas de la información siguen siendo los mismos: Twitter y Facebook comunican masiva y desproporcionadamente la información creada por autoridades de la red o influenciadores virtuales. En esa arena, donde las voces reconocidas por el público no son muchas ni diversas, las batallas culturales las gana la mayor difusión y no el mejor argumento. No todas las noticias tienen un lector. En los medios tradicionales existen brechas entre la instancia de producción y la instancia del consumo de la información, aun cuando los cuadros de mando dan señales a los periodistas y editores acerca del comportamiento de los usuarios en tiempo real, distinguiendo las noticias que tienen alta demanda o las etiquetas que marcan tendencia.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, VIRTUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRESS/POLITICS

Virtual Conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics

Zoom, 13-16 September 2021

 

On 13-16 September 2021, the seventh conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics, focused on academic research on the relationship between media and political processes around the world, will be held virtually. Professor Young Mie Kim from the University of Wisconsin will deliver a keynote lecture.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 5 July 2021. Attendees will be notified of acceptance by 12 July 2021. Full papers based on accepted abstracts will be due 1 September 2021. A selection of the best full papers presented at the conference will be published in the journal after peer review.

*CFP* "RACIALIZING MEDIA POLICY", BOOK CHAPTER

Racialization is a term used within the social sciences to highlight the ways that social interactions become racial. This is an important concept in sociological and political science research when looking at structural mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequalities. The state, and its various organizational spaces of action, is often seen as a site for race to be enacted (e.g., Bracey 2015). Public policy sectors such as housing, taxation, and immigration, to name a few, have been ripe areas of research. However, media policy research has not effectively engaged with this critical conception. Media policy research has been driven by political economy perspectives within the field of Communications and Media Studies, and can benefit from an approach that analyzes it in relation to social science perspectives that focus on processes which constitute, or are constituted by, actors, groups, and organizations.

Racializing Media Policy seeks to fill this scholarly gap by providing case studies which focus on media policy issues in the United States through the lens of racialization. It will contribute to a growing body of media policy research within the Communications and Media Studies literature, as well as anchor the role of media policy in Sociological research – where it is lacking. It would also lend itself toward a growing body of work in the Sociology of Organizations which have begun to focus on “raced organizations” (Ray 2019; Wooten 2019) to understand how racial inequalities are embedded within organizational practices. The volume is under contract with the Emerald series ‘Studies in Media and Communications.’ The series is sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.

*CFP* "MEDIA, POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST", BOOK CHAPTER

We are seeking a limited number of contributions for a forthcoming interdisciplinary edited volume that examines the intersection between media, freedom of expression, political participation, and human rights in the Middle East. The book is currently under contract with Routledge and is due to be published during next year.

You are invited to submit a 250-word abstract and a short biography by June 10, 2021. We welcome theoretical, empirical, or professional contributions of the highest standard on the following topics related to the Middle East including:

• Media and political participation after the Arab Spring 
• Media and human rights in the MENA region
• Media and freedom of expression   
• Online civic engagement and democracy  
• Internet-based activism and political participation 
• Media and democratisation in the Middle East 
• Other topics related to the above are also welcome. 

*CFP* "POLÍTICA POP ONLINE: NUEVAS ESTRATEGIAS Y LIDERAZGOS PARA NUEVOS PÚBLICOS", NUEVO MONOGRÁFICO, INDEX.COMUNICACIÓN: REVISTA CIENTÍFICA DE COMUNICACION APLICADA

En la era de lo que Mazzoleni y Sfardini denominan “política pop” (2009), el espectáculo ha invadido un territorio reservado durante décadas al ámbito puramente informativo, convirtiendo los detalles sobre la privacidad y personalidad de los gobernantes en objeto de las pretensiones de conocimiento que imperan en la sección, a menudo veleidosa, alimentada por las celebridades. Ya en 1997, David Marshall reflexionaba en una de sus más reconocidas obras sobre el peculiar nexo de unión entre el concepto de “celebridad” y los rasgos característicos del poder, con el fin de profundizar en el innato deseo del ser humano por descubrir en los personajes públicos un reflejo de sus propias inquietudes, rutinas y anhelos. En este contexto, la enciclopedia internacional de la Comunicación Política recoge el término “celebrity politics” (Richardson, 2015) para aludir al recodo de la investigación en ciencias sociales que atiende a la manera en que rostros conocidos del panorama internacional (políticos o no), combaten la apatía del elector con acciones que permiten humanizar a las figuras gubernamentales y contribuir a la propagación de un mensaje digerible y ameno. La proliferación de contenidos sobre información política espectacularizada o politainment se ha incrementado con el creciente uso de redes sociales como Facebook, Twitter o Instagram, donde los públicos menos interesados en la actualidad parlamentaria pueden encontrar imitaciones hilarantes, memes y vídeos de talk shows relacionados con la esfera gubernamental. A este respecto y siguiendo la vía que marcan los recientes estudios sobre “política pop online” (Bracciale y Mazzoleni, 2019), el presente monográfico invita a remitir propuestas que ahonden en estrategias de captación del voto enfocadas a públicos diversos, nuevos tipos de liderazgo y celebritización del poder en redes sociales, entre otros fenómenos que evolucionan al calor de la cultura popular.

*CFP* "COMMENTS, HATE SPEECH, DISINFORMATION, AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION REGULATION", INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE

International scientific conference

Comments, hate speech, disinformation, and public communication regulation

(Zagreb, Croatia, Sheraton hotel, 16 and 17 September 2021)

 

In case of an unfavorable epidemiological situation, the conference will be held online.

We invite you to contribute with your scientific papers to theoretical discussions on issues of freedom of speech and censorship of public speech, comments on news portals and social networks, hate speech, disinformation as well as questions about media freedom, right to information, internet neutrality. At the conference, we would like to discuss, among other topics, issues such as how to contribute to the fight against disinformation and hate speech in the age of digital communication, which strategies are acceptable, which stakeholders should be involved and which place belongs to self-regulation and which to the regulatory system? How should legislation participate in this? What are the experiences of different national legal regulations? Information about the conference and how to apply for participation is available via this link.

*CFP* "MASCULINITY IN TIMES OF CHANGE", ONLINE SYMPOSIUM

MASCNET: Masculinity Sex and Popular Culture Network

In collaboration with

Men in Movement 5: Intersectional Masculinities and Feasible Futures

Masculinity in Times of Change

Online symposium

20th to 22nd September 2021

 

We are living through a period of profound change and the title of our third symposium event seems more timely than we could have imagined.

*CFP* "CONSPIRACY THEORIES IN DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS", SPECIAL ISSUE, CONVERGENCE: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH INTO NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

“Conspiracy theories”, once perceived as harmless phenomena that are “silly and without merit” (Keelley, 1999, p.109), have garnered increased attention among scholars, in news media and public discourse. Factors contributing to the current prevalence of conspiracy theories are manifold. From the rise of populist politics (Bergmann & Butter, 2020) and science-related populism (Mede & Schäfer, 2020) to the current pandemic, societal and political upheaval are associated with an increase in conspiracy theories. For researchers of new media technologies, one factor rendering conspiracy theories particularly worthy of interrogation is their close interplay with information and communication technologies. These technologies can amplify the visibility of conspiracy theory-related content and its promulgators (Bessi et al., 2015; Hellinger, 2018). 

Digital platforms are also congregation points for conspiracy theorists, risking polarisation of these “epistemologically isolated networks” (Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009, p. 204). Digital platform logics (Van Dijck & Poell, 2013) may exacerbate the problem of conspiracy theories, which has led to the recent trend of the deplatformisation (Rogers, 2020) of conspiracy theorists. As a result, many conspiracy theorists and their followers have migrated to fringe platforms such as Gab, Parler, and BitChute.

*CFP* "THE MEDIATION OF SUSTAINABILITY: THE UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE", BOOK CHAPTER

This CFC emerges from recent conferences held by the MDC in 2019 and 2020, in Jakarta and the UK. In 2015 the United Nations set out an audacious plan - under UN Resolution 70/1 - to promote health, life, equality, and the environment. In order to achieve this ambition, it created seventeen separate development goals, to be met over a fifteen-year period.

The Sustainable Development Goals include: ending Poverty and Hunger; promoting Health and Well-being; providing Quality Education; the pursuit of Gender and Racial Equality; Clean Water and Sanitation; Affordable and Clean Energy; Decent Work and Economic Growth; Developing Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; Responsible Consumption and Production; creating Sustainable Cities; protecting Life Below Water and on Land; and the pursuit of Peace and Justice through forming Strong Institutions. In response to the UN’s SDG programme, this edited volume explores the way in which Sustainability narratives are disseminated in public discourse. The project examines how the UN SDGs are envisaged, articulated and then enacted by state and non-state actors, and how the outcomes are communicated to audiences throughout the world. The volume welcomes contributions that investigate unique or novel responses to the UN’s ambitions by NGOs, charitable organisations, and by grass roots campaigners, and seeks to document the substantial work being done by numerous public agencies.

*CFP* "COMMENTS, HATE SPEECH, DISINFORMATION, AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION REGULATION", INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Comments, hate speech, disinformation, and public communication regulation

Zagreb, Croatia, Sheraton hotel, 

16 and 17 September 2021

 

Technological development has brought rapid and simple spread of speech in professional and civic communication. Digital public space is a space of democratic freedoms for each individual, but it is often a space of numerous disinformation and fake news, concerning offensive speech and discriminatory speech targeting ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities, immigrants, and various vulnerable groups. Readers’ comments can be an important form of argumentative civic debate, but they are also a way for citizens to express aggressive, inciting, or offensive attitudes toward others or use hate speech. Both media and other business entities on the internet encounter this phenomenon of digital communication and try to resist it in different ways. In the issues between freedom of speech and censorship of public speech, there is a daily intellectual struggle for the right to information, media freedom, internet neutrality. How should our legislation participate in this, what are the experiences of different national legal regulations? What does the struggle against disinformation and hate speech involve, is this fight a multidimensional task in the age of digital communication, which strategies are acceptable, which stakeholders should be involved and which place belongs to self-regulation and which to the regulatory system?

*CFP* "COVID CRISIS AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION", ISSUE 3/2021, COMUNICAZIONE POLITICA

Since the first months of 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has developed globally, generating consequences and reactions in various aspects of social life. One of the most specific and characterizing features of this crisis lies in the coexistence and interconnection of multiple elements of change in (so far) seemingly distant fields. The crisis immediately turned out to be “hyperconnected”, due to its genesis, geography, dynamics, institutions, impact, perspectives, communication, information, protagonists, as well as the centrality of the digital infrastructure that innervates communication and activities in the contemporary world.

In its most directly political aspects, the crisis has acquired great media visibility and has brought to the fore the issue of the connection between scientific and political communication. The stress to which healthcare institutions have been subjected has led to unprecedented responses from government institutions at different levels, in an attempt to reconcile the tackling of pandemic emergencies, the subsequent economic crisis and the reactions of public opinion. The emergency has also highlighted the role of “fake news” in shaping the public opinion and in affecting individual behavior and the progressive choices of decision makers. As scholars of political communication well know, the crowding of information and narratives in a hybrid and high-choice communicative environment constitutes a challenge for the functioning of democracies. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, JOINT AUTUMN CONFERENCE OF THE DIVISIONS OF MEDIA EDUCATION

Joint Autumn Conference of the Divisions of Media Education (DGfE and DGPuK)

16 and 17 September 2021

Leipzig and online

 

The concept of social cohesion is booming. The term, which until recently was virtually unknown beyond the world of think tanks, has become an integral part of media debates and political communication about the state of our society. One encounters it as a matter of course in party programmes, on election posters, in political commentaries, and in talk show discussions. At the same time, its meaning often remains diffuse in these contexts and can be reduced to the fact that social cohesion is basically something good and desirable, but is currently being threatened or is dwindling and therefore needs to be strengthened again. Against the background of this everyday observation, the conference aims at a heuristic and transparent deconstruction of the term from a media education perspective.

*CFP* "LAZARSFELD AT 120", SHORT ESSAYS, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

The International Journal of Communication will publish a Forum timed to appear with the 120-year anniversary of Paul Lazarsfeld’s birth, in August 2021. We are inviting contributions of 1500- to 3000-word essays that reflect on the late sociologist’s legacy for communication research and for empirical social research more broadly.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Lazarsfeld and the institutionalization of social science research 
• Lazarsfeld’s media research program, beyond the best-known studies of opinion leaders and personal influence 
• Under-explored aspects of Lazarsfeld’s intellectual history 
• Lazarsfeld as historian of empirical research methods 
• The reception of Lazarsfeld’s research programs and methodological contributions around the world, including his native Europe 
• Questions of credit and division of labor in Lazarsfeld-directed research projects 
• Histories of lesser-known and uncompleted projects and proposals 
• Lazarsfeld’s place in the remembered history of media and communication research

*CFP* "MEDIA PERFORMANCE & SOCIAL INCLUSION", ICA PRECONFERENCE 2021

ICA Preconference 2021: Media Performance & Social Inclusion

Sponsored by the Journalism Studies Division & the Political Communication Division

May 27, 2021, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. EST

Virtual conference (platform: Cadmore – same platform as used for the ICA main conference)

 

During the Covid pandemic it has become extremely clear that public communication may do both: contribute to the inclusion of people in a diverse society or amplifies the disintegration of society into groups serving particular interests. The preconference therefore aims at intensifying the discussion on media performance, initiated by two ICA preconferences in 2016 and 2017, but considering the main theme of ICA 2021, it will focus on how media should act to support the inclusion of people in a diverse democratic society, and how media actually act.

*CFP* "COMMUNICATING CRISIS IN NETWORKED ASIA", SPECIAL WINTER 2021 ISSUE, JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EASTERN ASIA

The Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia (JCEA), a refereed biannual open access journal on East and Southeast Asia is announcing a call for papers for a special Winter 2021 issue: Communicating Crisis in Networked Asia

 

Invited Editors:

K. Hazel Kwon, Arizona State University, (khkwon@asu.edu)

Sejung Park, John Carroll University, (sjpark@jcu.edu)

Youngju Shin, Arizona State University, (Youngju.Shin@asu.edu)

*CFP* "FUTURE OF PR & COMMUNICATION", VOL. 14, Nº 1(27) 2021, ESSACHESS: JOURNAL FOR COMMUNICATION STUDIES

The Covid-19 pandemic has been dubbed the “golden hour for communicators”. As demand for communication services increases, questions about the role, function, ethics and loyalties of the profession become apparent.

The misinformation challenges surrounding Covid-19[1] have become an infodemic alongside the health aspects of the pandemic[2], and communicators including Public Relations practitioners are called upon to address and mitigate the problem. In a political climate of increased partisanship and polarization, this will bring to the fore issues of social responsibility for organizations and communicators.  

If Public Relations and Communications practitioners are to be trusted advisors how can they ensure their organizational independence and move away from a “service/servant” approach? Moreover, how can communicators understand and facilitate negotiation and conversation with diverse, international, multicultural stakeholder groups when their teams are non-diverse? On the same note, how can communicators facilitate discussion at societal level on issues that are divisive and divided? What are the implications, ethical and otherwise, of the values-based approach to effective communications?

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, ESSAYS OR DISCUSSIONS, NEXT ISSUE, THE JOURNAL FOR DISCOURSE STUDIES

The Journal for Discourse Studies (JfDS)/Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung (ZfD) is a bilingual, double blind peer-reviewed academic journal that documents the widespread interest in discourse studies within social sciences by publishing outstanding articles from several academic disciplines in the field of discourse research. As an interdisciplinary forum for discourse studies, the Journal for Discourse Studies has been publishing contributions on theory, methodology, methods, and empirical studies from social scientists, linguists, and researchers from other disciplines since 2013. It offers a forum for discussion that is open to all theoretical and empirical perspectives on discourse research. The Journal for Discourse Studies is published two times a year.

we would like to remind you that the Journal for Discourse Studies is interested in your submissions! You are welcome to submit your manuscripts at any time in German or English by sending them to zfd@phil.uni-augsburg.de. Many different formats are possible, including but not limited to long or short articles, essays, or discussions.