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NEWS OF POTENTIAL INTEREST:

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Non-Financial Crisis:  Politics, Media, and Culture in the Present Economic Context 
The 7th Annual PhD Conference
The Institute of Communications Studies, U of Leeds 
31 May, 2013, Leeds

The recent financial crisis that caused the collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and the struggle of national and trans-national governments in tackling the crisis, has signalled the need for fundamental changes in economic and political systems.

In this conference we hope to interrogate the various aspects of the crisis. These aspects span beyond economic considerations to broader issues related to socio-political systems, media and cultural production. Almost all fields are affected by the crisis and forced to change. The changes in these fields are interdependent and will have important implications for our future. With this aim in mind we invite submissions which could address any of the following questions or investigate related issues:

1.Politics
-How is the crisis changing the way leaders appeal to audiences?
-How has the crisis influenced political agendas?
-How have governments been dealing with the communication of the crisis?
-Has the crisis brought about new forms of political action?
-Is the economic crisis encouraging citizen participation?
-Is it still possible for the public sphere to influence national government in times of transnational crisis?
-Has the crisis in anyway influenced the legitimacy of transnational institutions?

2.Media and Journalism
-How has the media represented the crisis?
-What are the challenges for communicating the crisis?
-Have journalistic practices changed due to the influence of the crisis?
-How have the economic crisis and budget cuts influenced media production?
-Have new media changed the way news is produced and distributed during crisis?
-Will the media play a different role in society after the crisis?
-Has new media been shrinking or expanding disparity between the North and the South during the crisis?

3.Culture
-Cultural labour and value creation: what impact has the crisis had on the dynamic between creative autonomy and market imperatives?
-Are the creative industries more resilient to the impact of the economic crisis than traditional manufacturing industries?
-What might the implications be of public subsidy cuts for culture and the cultural labour market?
-What roles can the cultural and creative industries play in promoting job creation and economic growth?
-Could the cultural industries play a real and significant role in the development and adoption of new socioeconomic models?
-Where does the culture industry debate lie today: what have been the effects of the commodification of culture?
-What is art’s relationship to social change? Is there legitimate faith in the autonomy of art as bound to the promise of a better world to come?
-What might be the outcomes of the economic crisis for European culture?

Please email 250-300 word abstract, with any institutional affiliation and brief biography, to the following email address by 1 March 2013 (earlier submissions welcome):  ics-pg-conference@leeds.ac.uk


This call for papers is also available online:  http://www.ics-phd-conference.leeds.ac.uk/

CALL FOR PAPERS

Online Journalism and its Publics
December 5-6, 2013, Brussels

Official languages of the conference: English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese

This international and interdisciplinary conference aims at fostering the debate on audience consumption, production and participation in the journalistic sphere. Discussion forums, comment spaces, fact checking, crowdsourcing, blogs and social networks have expanded the opportunities for the participation of Internet users in the news production process. The relationship between journalism and its publics has become more complex, with multiple levels of interaction that are not always easy to fit into professional practices.

In the last decade we have heard utopian discourses announcing a revolution in journalism and the end of one-way mass communication. But we have also lived through the normalisation of audience participation on online news media, with gatekeeping criteria and isolation from news production as key strategies. The moment calls for an in-depth analysis of the circumstances, motivations and habits of the production and consumption of news in a digital context. We know well the professional practices in the newsrooms, but we lack empirical evidence on their publics, how do they select the information they consume and why do they decide to contribute information through any of the available means.

The audience was until recently an imaginary figure in the minds of journalists, editors in chief, marketing or advertising managers, and consulting agencies. It has now materialised online under the shape of contributions, nicknames, arguments and conversations through the diverse socio-technical artefacts of online news media. While in the past the participation of the reader was circumscribed to the letters to the editor in the newspapers (later adopted through the audience ombudsperson in broadcasting media), citizen discourses are now legitimated by news producers. As the category of the “public-user” becomes more visible, we can formulate hypotheses about their consumption and production practices, their representations of journalism and its role in society. We can gather empirical evidence of the evolution of news flows and overcome the sterile cries about the end of journalism and resituate it within the context of the emerging practices in digital environments.

These changes in the journalistic landscape call for analyses from multiple backgrounds: sociology of journalism and news, reception studies, history of communication, discourse analysis, cultural studies, anthropology. Contributions to the conference can focus on the following issues:

The public as:

• An actor present in the newsroom: the public lives in the mental and discursive representations of the journalists, but also in a more concrete way in the contributions of the users and the data generated by the monitoring of audience activity on news websites. It also involves the creation of new professional practices (such as the role of the community manager to deal with active audience participation). How do media companies adapt to this configuration (automated treatment of comments, new moderation tasks, outsourcing of moderation).

• An economic actor: news media try to monetise online audiences through support diversification of their products, recording increasingly complete consumer data, or developing production strategies that allow news consumption anywhere and anytime.

• An information producer, an expert: the public becomes an information source through comments in news and on the blogs embedded on the news websites. It is as well used by the media to legitimise some journalistic formats.

• A discourse producer: what are the features of the discourses of the publics? How do they engage in debates? What are their representations of the news products? To what extent do they challenge their reader's contract?

• A referee of social discourses: the new configuration enables the citizens to challenge the established distribution of knowledge in the public sphere and allows them to collectively monitor the journalistic discourse and propose rectifications.

Call for papers

Contributions to the conference can be sent in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese (max. of 500 words) to publics2013@gmail.com before 5 May 2013.

Calendar:

Diffusion: 5 February 2013
Deadline for abstracts: 5 May 2013
Acceptance communication: 1 June 2013
Deadline for full papers: 5 October 2013

Organised by:

ReSIC: Centre de Recherche en Information et Communication (Université Libre de Bruxelles) & PReCoM : Pôle de Recherches sur la Communication et les Médias (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles).

Presented in partnership with:

Action COST IS0906 Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies
DigiLab, Facultat de Comunicació Blanquerna (Universitat Ramon Lull, Barcelona)

Organising committee:

Laura Calabrese (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Juliette De Maeyer (Université Libre de Bruxelles), David Domingo (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Marie-Soleil Frère (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Tomke Lask (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Florence Le Cam (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Geoffroy Patriarche (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles).

Scientific committee:

Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
Laura Calabrese (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
João Canavilhas (Universidade da Beira Interior, Portugal)
David Domingo (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
Marie-Soleil Frère (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
François Heinderyckx (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
Alfred Hermida (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Ari Heinonen (University of Tampere, Finland)
María Elena Hernández (Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico)
Josianne Jouët (Université Paris II, France)
Florence Le Cam (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
Salvador de León (Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, Mexico)
Pere Masip (Universitat Ramon Lull, Catalonia)
Cécile Méadel (École des mines de Paris – ParisTech, France)
Geoffroy Patriarche (Université Saint-Louis, Belgium)
Steve Paulussen (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium)
Fabio Henrique Pereira (Universidade de Brasília, Brazil)
Ike Pikone (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (Cardiff University, UK)

Media Meets Climate. The Clobal Challenge for Journalism

Eds.: Elisabeth Eide and Risto Kunelius
Nordicom, U of Gothenburg, 2012, 340 p. - ISBN 978-91-86523-51-0,

There is no way of not meeting climate change. It reframes our public debates, from shifting global power relations to political participation and individual lifestyle choices. It begs questions about our basic formulas for economics, science and democracy. It is a key theme in thinking about identities and the human condition, making us ask not only “who are we,” but also who the “we” in that question is. Climate change forces states, societies and people to look critically at the political, cultural and material ingredients of our world. For media and journalism, climate change brings up new challenges of coverage. But it also sheds light on the assumptions and distinctions – about facts, representation, and participation – that media and journalism are built on. By meeting climate change, globalizing journalism also meets itself.

Media Meets Climate looks at these crucial 21st century questions through studying global coverage of the United Nations climate change summits. Building on global research from the MediaClimate Network the book offers transnational analyses of how climate change is mediated.

Media Meets Climate looks into the broad structures of global climate coverage. Who or what dominates global news flows? How is the future imagined? It tackles crucial professional issues facing climate journalists. What is the role of journalistic advocacy? How is science represented? Are social media redefining journalism-source relations? It asks questions about the media’s role in global representation and misrepresentation of climate change and actors. How is climate change visualized? What role is played by gender? How are activists framed in the media? How are indigenous people covered?

For more information: http://www.nordicom.gu.se/?portal=publ&main=info_publ2.php&ex=367&me=13

CALL FOR PAPERS
for the Special issue of the Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition 
2013: Volume 6, Issue 1 -- Journalism and New Media Guest Editor: Dr. Geneviève A. Bonin, U of Ottawa

Papers are invited for a special issue of the Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition that will focus on journalism trends and new media in the 21st century. Please go to the following link for the full description: http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/gmj--ce_cfp_v6_i1_13.pdf

Deadline for submissions is: 15 March 2013.

Research on the Internet has garnered more attention than any other technology in our history. Researchers have examined cyberspace from different angles; including, the technology itself, its creators, its users, its content, and its socioeconomic outputs. Journalism scholars have examined issues of convergence, production, alternative forms of journalism, content and the evolution of business models, only to name a few. However, research in this area is still evolving as social applications of new media are growing. Social networking sites are now an integral part of modern life. As far as journalism is concerned, the uses of these tools and user-generated content are still being explored.

The socio-economic constraints on this profession force managers and owners to make difficult decisions involving journalists’ workloads, work environments, and required skills which often include the ability to produce content for many platforms and sometimes in multiple languages. These challenges certainly affect content, production, and consumption.

Papers are invited for this issue of the Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition that will focus on journalism trends and new media in the 21st century. The guest editor welcomes theoretical, analytic, critical, empirical, or comparative submissions that discuss the most recent debates and discourses about, but not limited to, the following topics:

* journalism history
* new media evolution
* journalism ethics
* responsibility and accountability
* freedom of expression and new media journalism
* relationships between journalists, their organizations, and their audiences
* implications of new technology and social media for journalism
* citizen and user-generated content and journalism challenges
* economic, political, and social situations impacting new media journalism
* digital policy and journalism industry
* progress of new media journalism
* journalistic innovations
* journalism production
* events shaping new media journalism

The Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition
(http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/) welcomes high-quality, original submissions on related topics to the above theme. Submissions are expected to develop communication and media theories, report empirical and analytical research, present critical discourses, apply theories to case studies, and set out innovative research methodologies. The Journal is bilingual (English and French) open-access online academic refereed publication that aims to advance research and understanding of communication and media in Canada and around the globe.

Deadline: 15 March 2013

Submissions: Papers (5,000 to 7,500 words), review articles of more than one book (2,500 to 3,000 words), and book reviews (1,000 to 1,200 words).

Method: All manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Word Document attachments, directly to Dr. Geneviève A. Bonin (gbonin@uottawa.ca).

Guidelines available at: http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/for-authors_e.html

Decision: 30 April 2013

Publication: 15 June 2013

Journalism in Francophone Africa -- a special issue of Ecquid Novi

Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies
Volume 33, Issue 3, 2012

In his recent contribution the International Communication Association (ICA) newsletter, Francois Cooren, Past President of the ICA, pleaded for a ‘true conversation’ between French-speaking scholars and their English-speaking counterparts. This also applies to African scholarship on journalism. Not only are African scholars on the whole in a minority in international scholarly organisations like ICA, but scholarship on media in Africa also tends to be dominated by perspectives from and on Anglophone Africa. The result is that scholars from Anglophone and Francophone Africa seldom get the opportunity to reach each other’s work.

In recognition of this imbalance in scholarly production on journalism in the continent, the latest issue of Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies features articles dealing exclusively with journalism in Francophone Africa, translated into EnglishThe objective of the issue, edited by Marie-Soleil Frère, herself an experienced researcher on media in Francophone Africa, wishes to introduce an English-speaking audience to a number of topics that are currently being studied by French-speaking researchers working on African media. The articles span several Francophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and topics include the political economy of newspapers, denominational radio, journalism ethics and regulation.

It is hoped that this issue would strike up the kind of conversation between scholars that Francois Cooren envisaged, not only between Francophone and Anglophone scholars on the continent, but also between scholars further afield internationally for whom African scholarship too often remains out of earshot.

Access the Introduction for FREE today! http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02560054.2012.732218

Perspectives on the media in ‘another Africa’
Marie-Soleil Frère

Included articles:

Cameroon's private daily press: In search of a viable economic model
Thomas Atenga

The media economy in French-speaking Africa: When fragmentation threatens survival
Emmanuel V. Adjovi

Denominational radio stations in French-speaking Africa: Emergence and development
Etienne L. Damome

The challenges of journalism ethics in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Vicky Elongo Lukulunga

Media regulation in sub-Saharan Africa: Trends and stakes in French-speaking countries
Renaud de la Brosse & Marie-Soleil Frère

Redefining Journalism in the Era of the Mass Press

U of Sheffield, 5 July 2013

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Professor Joel H. Wiener (City University of New York)
Professor Jane Chapman (Lincoln University, UK)
Professor Martin Conboy (University of Sheffield, UK)

This conference seeks to interrogate two key trajectories arising from the change or stasis in the role perceptions of journalism that occurred between 1880 and 1920 with the rise of the mass press. The way we speak of and interrogate this period continues to exert great influence in terms of how we understand contemporary journalism, and how we conceptualize the role of the journalist in terms of its historical, cultural and economic development.

Specifically, this conference aims to discuss how we now define journalism at the end of the 19th century from our  contemporary and comparative perspective.

It seeks to contrast this with how contemporaries defined journalism during this actual period of transition.

Was there an expression of shifting role perception towards journalism and the journalist at the onset of the era of the mass press?

We are inviting contributions to help craft a taxonomy of journalism at the cusp of the twentieth century, a chronology of significant indicators that help describe this period and its ongoing significance to journalism scholarship. We welcome papers on various countries, international comparisons or transnational developments.

Conference Themes:

Journalism at the end of the nineteenth century could be said to have entered an era of creative reformulation. Yet this era was not necessarily one which was marked primarily by technological changes but rather by an accumulation of social and cultural changes in the expectations of what journalism was supposed to deliver.

These shifts in expectation were in turn reconstituting the role of the journalist. This was not a simple trajectory but one which bore the cultural traces of many previous iterations of the role of the public communicator. The changes in perception of the journalist and journalism were not driven by or even most importantly structured by technological changes but perhaps more by the confluence of cultural and political expectations of periodical publications directed commercially towards the masses.

What was the role of the reporter in this new era? The journalist may be defined at this point onwards by his/her engagement with mass popular audiences and the extent to which these contrasted/complemented/contradicted rival perceptions of the journalist as either a hack or a political publicist. It might be that the technological and infrastructural changes of the late nineteenth century were not as significant as the political and cultural purposes to which journalism was now contributing.

Of course the coming of the mass press was not a phenomenon restricted to the UK and its geo-cultural variations had complex interactions with one another. We therefore encourage various national and international perspectives on change in this period.

Context of the research project:

This interdisciplinary project is made more urgent by the need of scholars, journalists and the media industry to tackle what is often labeled as a growing ʽcrisis of journalismʼ. While there is a certain level of agreement in scholarship on the importance of journalism for democracy and civil engagement, as well as over the existence of a contemporary economic and professional crisis, research that strives to understand the structure of transformation is scarce. Much like its position at the turn of the 20th century, journalism is now forced to reconsider the roles it can play in society and to come up with new justifications for its position. The contemporary influence of digitization, Internet and mobile communications is changing the informational needs of citizens and the news media must adapt. This project argues that crucial to understanding journalismʼs future role is looking to previous moments when its position in society was seemingly tenuous. It aims to amplify this research theme by clarifying how journalists themselves perceive their role and their relationship with the public – historically, in contemporary society, and going forward.