*CFP* "COMMUNICATION AND DISSENT: COMPETING VOICES IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD", ISSUE 14.2 (FALL 2022), CATALAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION & CULTURAL STUDIES

Traditional media were for a long time seen as institutions that had to avoid challenges to the system in order to guarantee the maintenance of the social structure, which was dependant on broad consensus around certain issues. Making news was key to the social construction of reality in a complex world (Tuchman, 1983). The impact of the media on public opinion, approached at first as a desirable influence for the functioning of society (Lippmann, 2011), was later identified as an instrument of control and propaganda (Herman & Chomsky, 2013). However, the media have also proven to be essential in questioning discourses of power. Alternative journalism has offered a discordant as well as rigorous proposal of framing reality (Couldry & Curran, 2003; Barranquero Carretero & Sánchez Mocanda, 2018). And, occasionally, media outlets have also been responsible for the generation of dissent in the public sphere, promoting social protests (Milne, 2005). The expression of dissent has been strengthened thanks to the digital media (Loader, 2018), which have given rise to connective actions (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012); this is, online mobilizations that coexist with collective action in offline world, as the anti-racial protests in the US or the new impetus of the feminist movement have recently shown.

But dissent expressed on the Internet often establishes problematic relationships with factual truths, as COVID-19 denialism has demonstrated in the first pandemic of the post-truth era (Parmet & Paul, 2020). Digital sphere has emerged as a perfect ally for the dissemination of hoaxes and misinformation (Magallón, 2020; Salaverría et al., 2020), conspiracies that tune in with messages delivered by celebrities and politicians such as Bolsonaro (Ricard & Medeiros, 2020) and Trump, who first talked about “alternative facts” to deny data provided by journalists, discredited as fake news. 

*CFP* "COMUNICACIÓN Y CRISIS EN EL ESPACIO PÚBLICO", VOL. 31, Nº 3, REVISTA EL PROFESIONAL DE LA INFORMACIÓN

En los últimos años hemos asistido a un proceso de creciente polarización y descrédito de las instituciones que tradicionalmente han sido representativas de un sistema democrático (Bennett; Pfetsch, 2018), tanto en la esfera internacional como en el contexto español. La irrupción de los populismos, la atomización del voto (Stroud, 2010) y las dificultades para alcanzar mayorías que permitan la formación de gobiernos sólidos plantean serias incógnitas de futuro en un escenario comunicativo híbrido, en el que la desinformación (Guess; Nyhan; Reifler, 2018) empieza a alcanzar niveles preocupantes para una mayoría de ciudadanos.

La pérdida de credibilidad de los medios de comunicación tradicionales, en paralelo a las posibilidades de creación y distribución de mensajes en la esfera pública a través de las redes sociales, ha abierto la puerta a actores políticos y sociales que habían quedado excluidos de la misma, pero también ha rebajado los estándares para la circulación de mensajes centrados en la divulgación de falsedades o en el discurso del odio. En este contexto, lejos de facilitar el consenso y la unidad en torno a valores democráticos, han contribuido a la polarización y disgregación (Sunstein, 2019), así como a una mayor presencia y visibilidad de posturas políticas que confrontan directamente con estos principios. La irrupción de un partido que comulga con los principios de la extrema derecha en el panorama político español -con representación en las instituciones tras casi cuatro décadas de presencia marginal, plantea la necesidad de reflexionar sobre un escenario político, social y mediático que se retroalimenta, y sobre las implicaciones en el sistema democrático.

*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* "SOCIEDAD DE LA DESINFORMACIÓN: EL IMPACTO DE LAS FAKE NEWS EN LA ESFERA PÚBLICA", NÚMERO 72, COMUNICAR: REVISTA CIENTÍFICA DE COMUNICACIÓN Y EDUCACIÓN

Los procesos de comunicación tecnológica han experimentado importantes cambios desde antaño, dando lugar a un sistema de medios amplio, diverso y abierto. Los ciclos de noticias se han acelerado, la preeminencia de los medios de comunicación se ha reducido, los comunicadores se han transformado y han emergido nuevos emisores, y la capacidad de selección del público ha aumentado significativamente. En este contexto, el concepto de desinformación ha adquirido especial relevancia, puesto que el flujo incesante de mensajes con orígenes, objetivos y recorridos tan diversos dan cabida a informaciones erróneas, sesgadas o falsas; en ocasiones, se trata de errores involuntarios (misinformation), pero  a  menudo tienen el propósito explícito (disinformation) de confundir al público receptor y transmitirle mensajes falsos −fake news− para conseguir un resultado específico, como orientar y transformar la opinión pública. 

 

Descriptores

*CFP* "DISCURSOS DE ODIO EN COMUNICACIÓN: INVESTIGACIONES Y PROPUESTAS", MONOGRÁFICO 2022-2, REVISTA COMUNICAR

Se entiende por discursos del odio la expresión pública consciente e intencional de contenidos de hostilidad y rechazo hacia individuos, grupos o colectivos, ya sea en función de criterios raciales, étnicos, religiosos o de nacionalidad, por motivos de género, identidad y orientación sexual o por cualquier otro criterio, que fomentan la intolerancia, discriminación, estigmatización, violencia, agresión o, en su vertiente más grave, el exterminio físico. Estos discursos, tradicionalmente reflejados en los medios de masas y circuitos alternativos, hoy centran su canal de difusión en medios online, comunidades digitales, y redes sociales. 

Por consiguiente, la presente convocatoria está abierta a investigaciones que ayuden a comprender el fenómeno, tanto desde una perspectiva centrada en el análisis de los mensajes, como en los antecedentes y efectos de este tipo de discursos, así como en la prevención e intervención para amortiguar la resonancia de dichos mensajes.

 

Descriptores

*CFP* "DIGITAL MEMORY AND POPULISM", SPECIAL ISSUE, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION

For a special section on Digital Memory and Populism in the International Journal of Communication (IJoC), we invite contributions addressing the use of digital memory by populists, their supporters, and their opponents online. Not only did populists evoke and exploit the past to fuel the Trump presidency and Brexit campaign, but it has also become a common populist tool to employ collective memory from local to global politics across the world. With the possibility to bypass traditional media and reach networked audiences, populist actors are increasingly active in digital publics to negotiate the role of the past and their versions of it with their supporters and defend it against their opponents. In this process, personal and collective memories become a contested field in discourses on identity, belonging, and political ideology used to mobilize for or against populist agendas online.

We welcome submissions shedding light on how digital memory is shared, represented, constructed, and instrumentalized online to promote or tackle populist agendas all over the world. We aim at compiling international research that investigates, for example, how memory-related populist communication strategies and their appeal online have become particularly relevant today, how digital memory is integrated in political imaginaries of the future, and how populists' messages thrive on collective memory discourses salient in contemporary digital culture. We also invite research studying the potential of digital memory to challenge populist narratives, and that examines the creative uses of the past to mobilize and organize bottom-up political engagement by the means of digital media, networked communication, and memory.

*CFP* "LOBBYING FOR (IN)ACTION: CLIMATE EMERGENCE, INTEREST GROUPS AND DENIAL", THINKCLIMA VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

THINKClima Virtual Conference

"Lobbying for (in)action: Climate Emergence, Interest Groups and Denial"

26th & 27th of May, 2021

Organized by Pompeu Fabra University, Spain

 

Despite the climate crisis emergency, humans are still not acting with the urgency events demand. Climate inaction – i.e., the absence of effective reaction to mitigate or stop contributing to global warming – is a recurrent, historical and very present reality. We are nowhere near fulfilling the Paris agreement. By some measures, Paris could be judged as a failure: emissions actually rose in 2019 compared to when the agreement was signed in 2015. And although the worldwide pandemic in 2020 produced a relevant fall in carbon output due to coronavirus lockdowns, the data also revealed an uncomfortable truth: even when transport and commerce are dramatically reduced, the majority of emissions remain intact. Far greater systemic change is needed.

*CFP* "THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF SOFT POWER", BOOK CHAPTER

The First Edition of The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power contributed, through essays, (in Part One) to advancement in theorisation of soft power; and the clarification of soft power’s relationship with public diplomacy. It also offered research chapters, (in Part Two) on the use and or reception of soft power, across four swathes of the world – Europe and the Americas; the Middle East and Africa; Central and South Asia; and Northeast and Southeast Asia. There has been much change since it came out in 2017. The Second Edition will seek to further contribute to theory development, as well as map soft power issues that have become salient after 2017. The theory essay (Part One) and research article (Part Two) model will be retained, but content will be fully refreshed.

Geopolitical competition, accentuated by the pandemic of 2020-21, has had an impact on how actors treat soft power as a resource, and as a targeted outcome.  An old term, ‘sharp power’ has surfaced in the new geopolitical climate. The change in administrations in the United States portends a renewed emphasis on soft power; there has been talk at the highest levels of the need to focus on the power of example rather than the example of power.

*CFP* CALL FOR AUDIOVISUAL WORK, IAMCR NAIROBI CONFERENCE

IAMCR calls for academic audio and/or visual work to be presented at the IAMCR Nairobi conference, which will be held online from 11 to 15 July, 2021. With this call, IAMCR aims to stimulate the use of a broader range of modes for the communication of academic knowledge, complementing conference papers and oral presentations with audio and/or visual work. In particular, we seek podcasts and videos that integrate academic and aesthetic dimensions, and that use sound and/or image creatively to communicate academic knowledge. This implies that we will not select audio/visual work that merely consists of recorded lectures.

We call for audio/visual work with a maximum duration of 30 minutes, but shorter contributions are also welcomed. Proposals for presentation of audio/visual work will consist out of two documents, namely an abstract and a (basic) script. The abstract describes the research communicated by the audio/visual work (its research question, theoretical framework, methodology, research design and corpus, …), while the script provides a chronological description of the form of the audio/visual work. Each document has a maximum length of 500 words.

*CFP* "POPULISM, MEDIA AND JOURNALISM", ISSUE V.17, BRAZILIAN JOURNALISM RESEARCH JOURNAL

Populist practices and discourses have shaped contemporary politics in profound ways in every corner of the world. Populist rhetoric has flourished in some corners of public opinion and become ubiquitous in recent elections while populist forces have imposed important policy shifts in many issue areas, from immigration to reproductive health. While multiple definitions of populism exist, two defining features of populism are largely shared across perspectives. First, populism has at its core a belief in an authentic, righteous people – be it defined by class, race or other markers. Second, populism is defined by a profound distrust of elites, although who these elites are varies by context and by the ideological positions of its proponents.

Populism can also be thought about at multiple levels: public opinion can espouse populist beliefs, populist discourses can dominate both traditional media and social media coverage, and parties, leaders and movements can carry populist agendas. Populism is polysemic and full of empirical contradictions, not to speak of the theoretical debates surrounding it.

*CFP* "RESILIENCE, EXPERTISE, HOPE", POLITICAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL 2021 CONFERENCE

Political Studies Association Annual International 2021 Conference

Resilience, Expertise, Hope

29th-31st March, 2021

Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland

 

The Covid-19 pandemic will have a lasting impact on all aspects of our lives and the societies in which we live, providing new challenges, but also opportunities, in terms of how we think about and study socio-economic organisation, democratic institutions and international governance, as well as the fundamental questions of justice and equality that provide the normative underpinnings to social scientific research. The 2021 PSA Conference seeks contributions that address these multifarious challenges and opportunities in the context of three overarching themes: Resilience, Expertise and Hope.

 

Resilience, Expertise and Hope will be crucial ingredients in our ability to adapt and respond in the wake of fundamental disruption. They will also prove invaluable in informing and shaping diverse and evolving research agendas in political science to make sense of and understand the global economy, global ecosystems and the climate, public health, international security, and many other interrelated issue areas that combine to generate the most pressing challenges of our age. 

*CFP* "EMOTIONS, POPULISM AND POLARISATION", SECOND HELSINKI CONFERENCE

First call for papers for the Second Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation

The first CfP for our HEPP2 conference 6-8 May 2021 is out. Please consider filling the webform to submit your abstract.

The Second Helsinki Emotions Populism and Polarisation Conference: Call for Papers

After the success of our conference in August 2019, the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation and its associated projects, Mainstreaming Populism in the 21st Century (MaPo) and Whirl of Knowledge: Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies (WhiKnow), invite proposals for papers for the Second Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation, to be held both in person and online from 6 to 8 May 2021.

*CFP* "SCANNING THE FUTURE: CLIMATE, POPULISM, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & JOBS", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE YOUTH VOICE JOURNAL

The Youth Voice Journal (YVJ®) is the leading, international, multidisciplinary and double-blind peer-reviewed journal specialising in publishing theoretical contributions and empirical research on issues affecting young people all over the world.

The Youth Voice Journal (ISNN 2056-2969) is ranked and indexed by Scopus, ORCID, Kudos, EBSCO Information Services, The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS) and Criminal Justice Abstracts. YVJ is also a member of COPE, ensuring we adhere to codes of conduct for journal editors.

The YVJ is managed by an independent Academic and Editorial Board and seeks to provide a reference source for academia, policymakers and youth services internationally.

*CFP* "UNSTABLE DEMOCRACIES: POLARIZATION, POPULISM AND DISINFORMATION IN A HYBRID MEDIA CONTEXT", MEDIAFLOWS CONFERENCE

Mediaflows Conference

Unstable democracies: Polarization, populism and disinformation in a hybrid media context

11, 12 and 13 November 2020. Valencia (Spain)

In order to present a paper, 250-word proposals should be sent through the specific section form to which it is addressed until July 25, 2020.

The conference accepts papers in Spanish and English.

Considering the health circumstances facing Covid-19, the conference will have a semi-virtual character.

Sections

*CFP* “EXCLUSION”, SPECIAL ISSUE, M/C JOURNAL

Exclusion is the antithesis of integration. In everyday life interactions, with and without media, mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion emerge simultaneously, contradicting each other and often politically motivated. Social media and social media groups have been praised as realms of political activism, as sheltered places for minority groups, or as platforms to give hitherto unheard voices a forum (e.g. #metoo). At the same time social media came to the fore as realms of exclusion and othering: we are witnessing verbal abuse, threats, and death threats on social media platforms against migrants, politicians, LGBTIQ persons, women, or activists. We are familiar with professional media output employing excluding terminologies and depictions of the outsider, thus evoking and strengthening ideas of the "other" (e.g. in terms of gender, ethnicity, political opinion, space, and place). We watch on screens in factual and fictional formats the depicted "other" - either as absent or as stereotyped.

This issue of M/C Journal seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of societal exclusion in and through media with a special focus on - but not restricted to - social media. Following the discussions of the Mediated Communication, Public Opinion, and Society Section at IAMCR Madrid 2019, we invite contributions on the theme of "exclusion" from a wide spectrum of social, cultural, institutional, and affective domains.

*CFP* "DEMOCRACY AND/OR POPULISM: EXCLUSION, EQUALITY AND DISAGREEMENT", 2020 CONFERENCE

Democracy and/or Populism

Exclusion, Equality and Disagreement

7th- 9th September 2020

University of Brighton, UK

This conference invites reflection on the relationship between Democracy and Populism; and consideration of new developments in democratic theory and politics in the 21stcentury. This is all the more pertinent in light of the extraordinary intervention of states across the globe in response to CV19. In this light we explore two related areas of critical thought and politics.

Populism is at the centre of contemporary political, critical and democratic debate. Is the demosdistinct from the populus? Is populism a necessary element of democratic politics or merely the perverse shadow of capitalism? Does populism open space for democratic renewal or is populism of necessity exclusionary and racist? Has neoliberalism spawned a right-wing and racist populist politics?

*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* "TRANSFORMATIONAL POP: TRANSITIONS, BREAKS, AND CRISES IN POPULAR MUSIC (STUDIES)", 4TH BIENNIAL IASPM D-A-CH CONFERENCE

Transformational POP

Transitions, Breaks, and Crises in Popular Music (Studies)

4th Biennial IASPM D-A-CH Conference, 22–24 October 2020

Pop music cultures, in their entire breadth, are seismographs of social, political, economic, ecological, media, artistic, and technological transformations. In and through them, fields of tensions, disruptions, and lines of conflict become not only visible, audible and perceptible, but also communicable and thus, negotiable. Economic and ecological crises, social structural changes, political shifts, communicative-media discourses, atmospheric moods, and disturbances of the most diverse kind cannot be appreciated in isolation from specific sounds, performances, lyrics, images, stars, genres, etc. Therefore, these are always changing in the process: pop music cultures transform and are themselves transformed. “Pop is transformational, always. It is a dynamic movement in which cultural materials and its social environments mutually reshape each other, crossing previously fixed boundaries: class boundaries, ethnic boundaries or cultural boundaries [own translation].“ (Diedrich Diederichsen, Pop – deskriptiv, normativ, emphatisch (1996). In: Charis Goer, Stefan Greif, Christoph Jacke (Eds.): Texte zur Theorie des Pop, 2013: 188)

*CFP* "MEDIA AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE NORDIC JOURNAL OF MEDIA STUDIES

As a complex and systemic problem of collective action (in the Anthropocene), the climate crisis poses challenges on a new scale. They range from translating scientific knowledge to sustainable policy, from debating radical changes in energy supply and infrastructures to discussions of everyday consumer choices, from dialogues about identity and historical justice to the risks and scenarios of the future (which has gained ever more immediacy). 

Towards the end of the 2010s, the gap between hopeful scenarios and the real trajectories of climate change became increasingly severe. Politically, the short-lived optimism of the 2015 Paris Agreement waned under the pressure. As a result, national decision-making structures are weakened by a conjuncture of political polarisation where climate policies intersect with issues of immigration, identity, and inequality both between and within countries.The ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius seems to be slipping away – and the predictions of concerned scientists are increasingly pessimistic. At the same time, global media is filled with signs of the crisis: unforeseen fires, devastating floods and draughts – to name the obvious, dramatic examples – but also news of widening civic protests calling for climate action.

*CFP* "EUROPE FACING POPULISTS IN POWER: COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES", PROTAGORAS SYMPOSIUM

Protagoras symposium:

“Europe facing populists in power: communication strategies and practices”

IHECS Bruxelles/Brussels,

June 4 & 5, 2020

Since the early 2000s, "populist" governments as well as governments with a populist coalition partner, both right wing and left wing, have led to democratic paradigmatic shifts such as the advent of the so-called "illiberal" democracy in Hungary, the "conservative revolution" in Poland, the "entrepreneurial populism" in the Czech Republic and the unprecedented "anti-system" coalitions set up in Italy and Greece (Taguieff, 2015; Dieckhoff, Jaffrelot & Massicard, 2019). 

Once in power, populists seek to control all aspects of the state. By practising a form of mass clientelism in order to win the loyalty of the people (Laclau, 2005) or by distinguishing themselves by means of their undeniable hostility towards organised civil society and the media, populists can be described through their constitutive anti-elitism and assumed anti-pluralism. Research shows that a key element of populist strategies is the discursive construction of the "homogeneous", "good", "honest", and "hard-working" people on the one hand, in opposition to the "lazy" and "corrupt" elites on the other hand (Canovan, 1999; Jamin, 2009; Mudde, 2004; Taggart, 2004; Tarchi, 2015).