*CFP* "NATIONALISM AND MEDIA", 31ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM

31st Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN)

5-7 April 2022 in Antwerp (Belgium)

Nationalism and media

 

For as long as nationalist movements have existed, ideological pamphlets, historical novels that constructed a romantic national past to visual arts and hashtags such as #maga on Twitter have instrumentalised media. Next to disseminating explicit nationalist messages, media (printed press and visual arts included) also play a role for nationalism by making national symbols and discourses part of everyday life. By continuously providing representations of the nation and by presenting the world as a world of nations, media help to naturalise nationalism.

Since Karl Deutsch’s Nationalism and social communication (1953/1966), many studies of nationalism and national movements have pointed at the role of media. Most famously, in Imagined Communities (1983), Benedict Anderson emphasized the importance of ‘print capitalism’ in the emergence of modern nations. The growing distribution of newspapers, magazines, books and other print media facilitated language standardisation and literacy and through that to the development of a collective consciousness and the formation of an imagined community.

*CFP* "COMUNICACIÓN, PROPAGANDA Y MOVIMIENTOS REVOLUCIONARIOS EN LA HISTORIA", NÚMERO ESPECIAL, RAEIC: REVISTA ESPAÑOLA DE LA ASOCIACIÓN DE INVESTIGACIÓN DE LA COMUNICACIÓN

RAEIC, Revista Española de la Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación, abre su llamada a propuestas para los artículos del número especial sobre “Comunicación, propaganda y movimientos revolucionarios en la historia”, que se publicará en mayo de 2022.

La comunicación planificada, especialmente de tipo persuasivo mediante diferentes estrategias y técnicas al servicio de emisores políticos, sociales o culturales, ha tenido un protagonismo relevante en los procesos revolucionarios a lo largo de la historia, sobre todo a partir de su difusión en los medios de comunicación de masas en períodos de crisis y/o conflictos sociales.

El uso de un periodismo militante y de los medios en la esfera pública como instrumentos de lucha política mediante la difusión de mensajes de agitación al servicio de causas que promueven el cambio de modelo político o social y sus instituciones en determinados períodos históricos, ha sido una constante en la historia contemporánea. Pero la capacidad seductora de los movimientos revolucionarios, tanto en su dimensión simbólica como en su cualidad sensacional para los medios periodísticos, ha potenciado su capacidad de impacto mediático y persuasivo.

*CFP* "EPISTEMIC CONTESTATIONS IN THE HYBRID MEDIA ENVIRONMENT", SPECIAL ISSUE, POPULAR COMMUNICATION: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MEDIA AND CULTURE

The aim of this special issue is to explore how a multiplicity of competing epistemologies interact and compete in the “post-Truth” marketplace of ideas in online popular communication. We invite contributions to a special issue on the intersections of popular communication, disinformation, and misinformation. We are especially interested in how popular communication can challenge and even upend traditional and inherited belief systems and knowledge regimes in religion, politics, fandom, and other institutions.

As traditional ideologies and other thought regimes collapse and new ones arise, recent scholarship has examined the contributions of digitalization and datafication of popular communication that contest older communitarian worldviews (e.g. Fuller, 2020). The internet has augmented collective understandings of the world but also undermined a broader sense of belonging, while enabling a new scope of contestation over “epistemic capital” (Robertson, 2016, 2021). In popular communication, especially, the social construction of meaning and worldviews is more manipulable than ever through disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda.

*CFP* "THE FUTURE OF MEDIA IN AFRICA: BUILDING RESILIENCE IN A COVID19 WORLD", AWIM 2021 CONFERENCE

AWiM 2021 Conference

The Future of Media in Africa: Building Resilience in a COVID19 World

2-3 November 2021, online

 

In this year’s virtual conference, we invite presentations on the impact of COVID19 on media in Africa, the gaps it revealed for media industries, women in media, and forward-looking solutions to address these.

COVID-19 has no doubt changed media industries. Our research into the impact of COVID-19 on East African women journalists found that a staggering 63% of respondents said their jobs had been affected during the pandemic. 52% of respondents were placed on unpaid leave. The industry also saw many organisational casualties, with some newsrooms shutting down completely. Alongside these impacts were changes in how we work and gather news. Sexual harassment also increased on the digital platforms which respondents were now using to engage with colleagues. According to a 2021 UNESCO report on online violence against women journalists, 73% of survey respondents said they had experienced online violence.

*CFP* "IMÁGENES Y SONIDOS DE LAS GEOPOLÍTICAS URBANAS", Nº 24-2022, REVISTA FOTOCINEMA

El cine y la fotografía han conformado y siguen conformando un imaginario colectivo a través de las imágenes urbanas que desde sus inicios han estado presentes en el celuloide. Las ciudades son escenarios y protagonistas de los metrajes (CAPARRÓS, 2013), se convierten muchas veces en espacios museísticos y en ocasiones llegan a identificarse con espacios a modo de “parque temático”, según la elección de escenarios. Las imágenes urbanas que los cineastas y fotógrafos han recogido en sus obras, han condicionado a menudo nuestra percepción de la ciudad (CAMARERO, 2013: 6), captándolas desde ángulos muy diferentes y con voluntades muy diversificadas: desde las city symphonies como reflexiones complejas sobre las relaciones entre la vanguardia, el cine y la ciudad (GAUTHIER, 2015: 54-55; HUESO, 2013) hasta los escenarios de la imaginación que albergan utopías y distopías, pasando por escenarios recreativos y retratistas de las revoluciones urbanas, lugares costumbristas, destruidos o en construcción, enclaves de conflictos bélicos y de avances cosmopolitas, espacios de una metamorfosis que es signo y significado de la acción (cf. CAMARERO, 2013). Existen muchos tipos de ciudad, tantos como interpretaciones puede tener la propia urbe si nos atenemos a “la mirada del cine” y a las multiplicidades plásticas que en tanto que objeto tiene, como “espacio de modificación”, en el propio cine y en la arquitectura. Pero las ciudades son también contenedores espaciales de eventos geopolíticos (SCHWERTER, 2017: 8): sus calles, sus monumentos, su arquitectura moderna y antigua, la presente y la que ya no se conserva, la efímera y la que perdura; lo material que convive con lo intangible pero no por ello menos definidor del espacio, lo que no se ve, pero se escucha: la palabra, el sonido; aquello que se percibe y se vive: los actos recurrentes… 

*CFP* "LANGUAGE IN ROMANIAN CINEMA", SPECIAL ISSUE, EAST EUROPEAN BULLETIN

As part of its 2021 regional focus on Romanian cinema, the East European Film Bulletin is preparing a special issue on language in Romanian cinema. How do cinematographers and directors work together to create meaning through visual signals?

We are looking for contributions both about language in the linguistic sense and about film language. The two themes our special issue thus aims to bring together are 1) how human language is rendered onscreen, and 2) how the film language employed in films can be analyzed from a linguistic perspective.

We are interested in essays which focus on Romanian productions, filmmakers and styles. Suggested topics and themes:

• the use of irony and metaphor in circumventing Communist-era censorship 
• the translation and incorporation of written texts onscreen (cf. Radu Jude’s work) 
• how speech and language have been used in the films of the Romanian New Wave to mark and reflect political, social and generational divides 

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

Fake News and Authenticity - International Interdisciplinary Conference

Online Conference

2021-05-20 to 2021-05-21

 

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

*CFP* "FILM HISTORY SERIES", EDITED COLLECTIONS

We are seeking proposals for complete/in-progress/planned manuscripts and edited collections for a proposed book series. The series will focus on film history: both the history of film as media texts and the history/evolution of the cinematic apparatus.

RIT press has expressed interest in this series and has asked that we secure some projects before moving forward with approval. 

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• classical films, directors, and genres 
• early cinematic technology 
• historical advances in cinematic technology 
• historical politics and propaganda in film 
• historical analysis of the production, distribution, exhibition, and reception of film 
• historical adaptations 

*CFP* "MUSIC AND NATIONALISM", 3RD GLOBAL INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Music and Nationalism

3rd Global Interdisciplinary Conference

Online

June 12, 2021

 

Music is commonly regarded as a universal language, and yet it is also through music that the fiercest of nationalistic sentiments and inspirations for protest and rebellion have been expressed.

As a unifying force, music has frequently been used in the quest to establish a national identity as well as to emphasise social and political beliefs and promote particular agendas. But in doing so, music also establishes ‘others’ who do not belong to the collective. In light of political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson’s characterisation of nationalism as an imagined community, it is hardly surprising that music, with its extraordinary power over the human imagination, should play such an integral part in the way nationalism is constructed and understood.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION", FALL 2021 SPECIAL EDITION, THE JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN STUDIES

The Journal of Romanian Studies, a refereed, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary publication of the Society for Romanian Studies (in collaboration with ibidem Press) is calling on academics from throughout the world to submit scholarly articles for its Fall 2021 special edition: Media and Communication

Submission can focus on any topic that touches on Romanian and/or Moldovan

• (traditional and/or digital) media, journalism, audiences, functions, roles and effects  
• press freedom 
• domestic or international disinformation, misinformation and propaganda 
• specialized media (sports, arts, entertainment, science, military, et al.) 
• (traditional and/or digital) media economics 
• (traditional and/or digital) media ethics 
• (traditional and/or digital) media and society 
• (traditional and/or digital) media and politics 
• (traditional and/or digital) media and international relations 
• public relations 
• advertising 
• comparative studies on any of the above themes

*CFP* "NEW MEDIA / NEW SOCIETY?", CHAPTER BOOK

New Media / New Society? will focus effects of new media on social relations. This volume has a question: Can we describe our society as a new media society? It intends to open new discussions on new media and social relations. The volume interrogates the question of whether (or not), and to what extent, new media have spawned new varieties of social organization, new practices of social interaction and identity, and new structures of material or symbolic social relations. There have been so many claims regarding how postmodern/postindustrial media modalities are contributing to various iterations of utopian and anti-utopian futures, beyond those traditional views of Orwell, Huxley, Marx, and Weber, for example. In the past decades, we have heard academic claims about a variety of effects, for example, including (but not limited to) simulation, misinformation, balkanization, intersectionality, assemblages, affordances, liquification, disruption, fragmentization, saturation/distraction, propaganda, mediatization, culture wars, (de/post/neo)colonization, modes of signification, gamification, crowdsourcing, participatory media, hypertextualization, assimilation, chaos, spectacles, virtuality, augmented reality, digitization, disconnection, mass surveillance, and cyborgology.  On the other hand, there have been so many descriptions of society, for example including (but not limited to) information society, post-emotional society, consumption society, network society, internet society, cyber society, new media society, post-modernism, post-humanism, the Anthropocene, and digital society.

*CFP* "THE ODYSSEY OF COMMUNISM. VISUAL NARRATIVES, MEMORY AND CULTURE", BOOK CHAPTER

Goal: With obvious propagandistic aims, the feature films and documentaries produced in the Eastern Bloc would ‘rewrite’ the history in the making, providing their home audiences with the image of a system that should have been perceived as victorious against the evils of the corrupt, capitalist West, and as a blessing for the ones fortunate enough to be under the protection of the Party.

Equally worth commenting on are the few cultural products of the age that escaped censorship in their attempt to fight the regime, either by subtle insertion of subversive elements in the communist visual propaganda or by ‘emigration’ to a free world that was more than willing to find out what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.

Following the 1989 revolutions, the fall of the Berlin Wall and, lastly, the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, cultural memory has been set in motion to ‘show and tell’ how communism really was, in visual artefacts which have painted ‘the age of horrors’, 1945-1989, as even darker than it had actually been. With freedom of expression newly guaranteed, art creators have, since then, struggled to re-textualize the imposed narratives of the recent past, thus re-producing a history of communism.

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

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

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

Los ejes temáticos que orientan el llamado son:

*CFP* "EL MEME EN INTERNET", NUEVO NÚMERO, REVISTA VIRTUALIS

El meme en Internet constituye un objeto de estudio que, con base en Dawkins (1976), puede ser entendido como una unidad cultural que es originada / replicada / modificada por los usuarios de esta red, a partir de diversos formatos (cadenas de caracteres, imágenes estáticas con o sin textos incrustados, GIFs animados y audiovisuales) y que forma parte del acervo de una comunidad. Desde esta perspectiva, dicho fenómeno comunicativo puede ser encontrado incluso desde algunas de las primeras etapas de Internet a finales de la década de 1990, en foros de Usenet y el correo electrónico, tanto en emoticones y acrónimos, como en el encadenamiento lúdico de contenidos en torno a un asunto determinado (dentro lo que se conoce como efecto de arrastre / bandwagon effect, y donde el caso de All your base are belong to us es uno de los primeros ejemplos de lo que hoy popularmente se conoce como tren del mame).

A pesar de su existencia desde hace ya un tiempo relativamente considerable, tanto como fenómeno de la comunicación virtual, como noción explicativa; su abordaje empírico y conceptual recientemente ha dado lugar a una renovada atención derivada de su reconocimiento académico y popular. 

*CFP* "COMMUNICATION OUTBREAK", VOL. 3, Nº 2 (2021), SOUTHEAST ASIAN MEDIA STUDIES JOURNAL

The World Health Organization has characterized COVID – 19 as pandemic based on its “spread and severity”. Many reports say that COVID-19 can be transmitted through human contact demonstrating the capacity of individuals to move from one place to another. As part of mitigating the spread of this virus, “social distancing’ is now being implemented. In Southeast Asia, most countries are implementing a wide range of policies: from variations of quarantine, area-specific lockdown to that of the “business as usual” mode of operation consequential to varied, and sometimes, unpredictable human actions.

Interesting thoughts can be derived from this current event that underscores the importance of communication as part of survival. In the implementation of the practice on “social distance,” more people are utilizing alter forms of communication to maintain relationships. The field of communication becomes more relevant as people demand more information and knowledge on the pandemic and other issues that pertain to it. Alongside the establishment of communication as a need for maintaining human relationships and for gaining knowledge are inquiries on rights: Are we getting all the information that we need to survive this pandemic? Do we all have access to internet? Can we say that maintaining relationships can be temporarily replaced by online or remote forms of communication? Evident in this event as well are numerous forms of human actions that emerge problems on power relations and bold displays of social differences.

*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* "MID-CENTURY MEDIASCAPES: LITERARY AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES", INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

Mid-Century Mediascapes: Literary and Historical Perspectives

5th and 6th August 2020, Durham University (UK)

Birley Room, Hatfield College

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the significance of new media and technologies in Britain during the mid-century (1930s-1960s). We invite proposals for 20-minute papers that consider the rapid emergence and consolidation of different media forms (such as radio, telephone, music recording and reproduction, television, sound and colour film) and their significance and interaction with mid-century culture, politics, and society.

We are especially interested in proposals that address modern media and technologies vis-à-vis political conflict, ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the Cold War, as well as papers that consider wider historical or literary perspectives on the mid-century mediascape.

Proposals might include, but are not limited to,

*CFP* "PERIODISMO, PROPAGANDA Y GUERRA CIVIL ESPAÑOLA: NUEVAS MIRADAS EN EL 80 ANIVERSARIO DEL FIN DEL CONFLICTO", VOL. 25, Nº 2, REVISTA HISTORIA Y COMUNICACIÓN SOCIAL

La revista Historia y comunicación social de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid hace un llamamiento para la recepción de artículos para su Volumen 25 nº2, que será publicado en 2020.

El número será un monográfico titulado Periodismo, propaganda y Guerra Civil Española: nuevas miradas en el 80 aniversario del fin del conflicto. Con la distancia que ofrece el tiempo, en este número se pretende reflexionar sobre uno de los acontecimientos más importante de la Historia de España, la sangrienta guerra civil. El objetivo es ofrecer nuevas líneas de investigación sobre el conflicto, poniendo el acento en los nuevos enfoques que se han brindado al tema en los últimos años. Nuevos enfoques y perspectivas sobre un tema de gran interés y relevancia para comprender el pasado pero también el presente y el futuro no solo de España.   

Por todas estas razones, desde la revista Historia y comunicación social (UCM), queremos invitar a un debate y reflexión sobre estos temas desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar. 

*CFP* "ARCHITECTURES OF VISION", 6TH BIENNIAL CONFERENCE

International Association for Visual Culture’s 6th biennial conference in cooperation with the Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka

September 10 - 12, 2020

“[T]he important thing is neither what was said (a content), nor the saying itself (an act), but rather the transformation, and the invention of still unsuspected mechanisms that will allow us to multiply the transformations.” 

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

Architecture etymologically belongs to the order of power. Stemming from Greek and Latin, it means “master builder”, derived from archon, chief. Historically, it is understood as building with the vision of the upward, the improved, that is to say an ideal of progress. For its 2020 conference, the International Association for Visual Culture proposes, however, a different formulation of architecture–one of layering, of consciously building from something rather than of scripted building that seeks to level or eliminate the past. What can it mean when we think of architecture as a horizontal network–even a strategy–of different, converging and simultaneous processes?

*CFP* "MEDIA AND FAKERY", SPECIAL ISSUE, CONTINUUM, JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

Digital communications have inaugurated a proliferation of resources for faking the origins of information. As developments such as the ‘deepfake,’ fake news or AI-generated content destabilise presumptions of informational dependability and authenticity, it becomes increasingly clear that a new set of communication theories are needed to probe these complex mediated relations. We invite scholars working in media, communication and cultural studies to submit abstracts that interrogate the impact of media fakery on theories of media, communication and cultural studies.

A Special Issue on the topic of Media and Fakery will be submitted to Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

While all media contains elements of creative fabrication, we define media fakery as an attempt to conceal the origins of information that must contain a degree of human intentionality to be considered ‘fake.’ Rather than understandings of ‘the fake’ as merely a vehicle to undermine or exploit trust, which inform characterisation of fake news as mis- or dis-information, ‘media fakery’ attempts to broaden the scope of interrogation.